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Tag: rice

  • Nun Sentenced To Prison For Peace Activism

    The 84-year-old nun, Sister Megan Rice, is no stranger to activism. She has been protesting and wreaking havoc on sites that deal with nuclear power for decades. Now, she has been sentenced to nearly three years in prison.

    She doesn’t seem to mind though, because she was quoted by Al Jazeera as saying that being in prison for an extended time would allow her “to serve the other women in prison.”

    “Please have no leniency on me,” Rice told the judge. “To remain in prison for the rest of my life would be the greatest honor you could give me.”

    In prison, Rice said she learned to see her fellow inmates not as perpetrators but as “victims” of a system that gave them few options.

    Regardless of her preferences or beliefs, on Tuesday, a U.S. Judge sentenced her to 35 months in prison for breaking into a Tennessee defense facility where enriched uranium for nuclear bombs is stored, known as the Y-12 National Security Complex. Both of Rice’s accomplices, Michael Walli, 65, and Gregory Boertje-Obed, 58, received 62-month terms, more than Rice because of their previous acts of civil disobedience. All three were collectively fined in excess of $53,000 for damages.

    The catalyst to this escapade, strangely enough, created some serious embarrassment when the facility, also known as the country’s Fort Knox of uranium, was so easily accessed.

    Rice and her cohorts decided to stage a protest to draw attention to the U.S. nuclear arsenal. Outdated cameras and fences couldn’t prevent the three elderly people from damaging what some believe was an extremely secure facility, raising questions about how they might restrain professional thieves with less idealistic intentions.

    Some members of Congress even thanked Rice and her accomplices for bringing the Y-12 facility’s security problems to the nation’s attention.

    The three activists were prepared for the worst. “We were very aware that we could have died,” Rice said.

    Their activism was twofold. It brought attention to the easily accessible arsenal of nuclear weaponry, as well as to drew attention to the U.S nuclear stockpiles.

    Rice called it “hypocritical” to demand other countries to disarm, when in 2008, for example, the U.S. was spending at least $52 billion a year on nuclear weapons, according to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. And only 10 percent of that spending is devoted to disarmament.

    Image via YouTube

  • Uncle Ben’s Infused Rice Recalled Over Food Poisoning Concerns

    The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Mars Foodservices today issued a recall of all Uncle Ben’s Infused Rice. The recall pertains to both five- and 25-pound bags of such rice. Other types of Uncle Ben rice, including Ready to Heat, boxed, or cup rice are not part of the recall.

    The recall was issued following illnesses reported in Katy, Texas public schools. According to the FDA, children and teachers who had consumed Uncle Ben’s Infused Rice Mexican Flavor experienced burning, itchy rashes, headaches, and nausea for up to an hour-and-a-half. The FDA and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are currently investigating the illness and its cause.

    This latest incident follows a December 2013 case in which 25 children at an Illinois school experienced similar symptoms after consuming Uncle Ben’s Infused Rice. Another case in October involving several children at a North Dakota daycare facility was also reported to the FDA.

    Uncle Ben’s Infused Rice is most commonly distributed to schools, restaurants, and hospitals through food service companies. All flavors of the product are subject to the recall, including roasted chicken, garlic & butter, mexican, pilaf, saffron, cheese, and spanish.

    The FDA is recommending that the recalled rice be returned to distributors or, in the case of individual consumers, to the place where it was purchased. Consumers may also simply dispose of the rice themselves.

    Image via Mars

  • Rice Diet Center in North Carolina Closes

    Rice Diet Center in North Carolina Closes

    The Rice Diet Program, formerly a part of Duke University’s medical center, has officially closed its doors after 70 years of operation. The diet was founded in the 1930s by German immigrant Dr. Walter Kempner. Dr. Kempner stated that his original goal was not to create a diet program, but instead to create a regimen that would combat high blood pressure and kidney disease. However, the program went on to have the positive side effects of treating angina pectoris, heart failure, diabetes, hyperchlosterolemia, and obesity. The rice diet’s success toward fighting obesity became the program’s selling point, though. Many actors and actresses during the time heard about the effects of the rice diet and sought out Dr. Kempner’s practice in Durham, North Carolina. And, as life goes in American culture, the average citizens followed their idols footsteps in waves.

    One woman who took her struggles to North Carolina after hearing the success stories of celebrities was Jean Renfro Anspaugh. Based on her experiences and others, she wrote the book Fat Like Us. According to Anspaugh, the center was run like a military bootcamp: “One ate rice and fruit and walked. The staff didn’t care what you thought, only what you ate and how often you exercised.” The center was run so strictly by Dr. Kempner, in fact, that it was the subject of several lawsuits in 1993, one of which even claimed that the patient was whipped with a riding crop whenever she deviated from the diet or gained weight.

    Despite the boot-camp-esque qualms, the rice diet did achieve results. The program was so successful that it allowed Duke to open the Duke Diet and Fitness Center and to become one of the top science universities in the United States. Shelly Green, the president of the Durham Convention & Visitors Bureau, stated that visitors to the center accounted for $80 million of revenue each year.

    So why did the center shut down after 70 years of success? One would have to believe that the recent trend of diverse and ever-more intense diet fads have simply pushed the old-school rice diet out of the way. While the rice diet does reduce the amount of calories one eats per day, it is very carbohydrate heavy. All the diet trends today seem to be more protein heavy (such as the Atkins and South Beach), ensuring that people have a feeling of “fullness” while still reducing the amount of calories they consume.

    Drs. Robert and Kitty Rosati, the couple who was running the center when it closed, are not going to allow the Rice Diet to completely die-out, however. Since the doors of the center in Durham closed, the Rosatis have started leading rice diet retreats. This past December, the couple led a rice diet retreat in the Smokey Mountains and have intentions to lead another retreat in Italy soon. (How one can eat just rice and fruit in Italy, I will never know…)

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  • Inexpensive Solar Cells Made From Carbon Nanotubes

    Scientists at Rice University are developing new solar cells from single-wall nano tube arrays. These nano-tubes, grown in a process invented at Rice, are more electroactive and cheaper to make than current dye-sensitized solar cells (DSC). These solar cells typically use platinum as a catalyst, making solar power a not-so-cheap alternative.

    The new nanotube solar cells will pave the way for a low-cost highly efficient alternative to silicon based cells, says Jun Lou and Hong Lin, the scientists who released their findings in Nature Scientific Reports. I suggest an advanced engineering degree if you plan on checking it out. Not an easy read.

    To put it in layman’s terms, DSCs, as mentioned above, use a catalyst and an electrolyte to convert photon energy from the sun into electric energy we use every day. The scientists at Rice have developed a new catalyst in the form of carbon nanotubes, and are pairing that with a new sulfide based electrolyte to make the process more efficient.

    DSCs are typically easier to manufacture than an alternative form of solar cell called solid-state photovoltaic cells, but they aren’t as efficient. The scientists at Rice are attempting to up the efficiency of DSCs with this new carbon nanotube technology while retaining the ease of manufacturing DSCs are known for.

    In tests, resistance between the components of these new solar cells is very low, making for a more efficient cell.

    As Lou explains in his report, the technology is very promising, but there is still work to be done: “The carbon nanotube-to-current collector still has a pretty large contact resistance, and the effects of structural defects in carbon nanotubes on their corresponding performance are not fully understood, but we believe once we optimize everything, we’re going to get decent efficiency and make the whole thing very affordable,” Lou says.

    One of the largest deterrents for the use of solar energy is it’s high start-up cost. If Lou and Lin complete their work, creating a low cost alternative to current solar cells, it could welcome a whole new wave of consumers trying out the technology for themselves. A low cost and self-regenerating energy source is exactly what we need right now.