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An article about emergining issues in ports. This doesn't touch on current problems related to back ups from COVID, but it identifies several other issues such as international considerations, environmental, port scalability, governance and volatility of demand. Interesting in that it touches on so many issues. While so many articles focus on climate change this touches on other areas such as port governance.

Insight into what a generation is focused on. "Issues that dominated campuses during the Vietnam War look a lot like the current social issues college students care about in 2020. Like then, students today are rallying around civil rights and racial justice as a larger cultural rift continues to divide American politics." Also interesting - "Nearly half of students report changing their political leanings during college."

"The global energy management system market was valued at USD 8.2 billion in 2020 and expected to reach USD 19.91 billion by 2026 and grow at a CAGR of 16.2% over the forecast period (2021 - 2026). The increasing focus toward issues, such as managing energy consumption, optimizing the use for renewable energy sources, and reducing carbon footprint and greenhouse gas emissions, is creating a demand for EMS. Further, cloud services effectively minimize operational costs of software development and maintenance and direct the monetary costs, cost of time, and spent resources on maintaining the in-house IT professionals and infrastructure on gathering, storing, and analyzing energy data.​ Cloud services are an ongoing trend responsible for the growth of the market studied."

"The Biden administration has issued a warning that the pending federal debt crisis might trigger an economic recession that would affect economic growth and trigger job losses across the United States."

Article about the administration mobilizing some national guard troops to help with the supply chain issues. The idea is that truck drivers and others could be used to help free up some of the bottlenecks. The idea probably won't go far, but reflects the how important the current supply problems are to the current administratioin.

Good article on the entire shipping industry. The current backlogs have driven many to take a closer look at the day-to-day operations. This article gives a good overview of operations and problems. It identifies problems such as container shortages, to inefficient shipping, to integration with rail, and the effects of the pandemic. Lots of issues to be addressed as reliance on supply chains increase globally.

Article on the supply chain issues affecting the global economy. The increased demand along with shortages in available labor has added to the problem. Also mention of inflation and how the supply chain bottlenecks is likely to result in continued inflation in coming months. The reliance on ports is critical and with the anticipated growth in coming years, it will be even more critical.

"However, in this configuration, the alluvial aquifers are also highly vulnerable to pollution. To address the issue of pollutant transfer, it is common to use natural or artificial tracing methods. In particular, the stable isotopes of the water molecule (2H, 18O) have many applications, allowing a better understanding of hydrosystems. They are used to estimate the recharge, to know the origin of water, the mixing processes and the transit times [2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11]. The use of this tracer is particularly relevant in the context of short transit times within the aquifer, as is the case for exchanges between alluvial aquifers and rivers. However, it is necessary to have a marked isotopic signature for the input signal to the system and a different signature between the input and output signal [11]."

Here are 12 critical facts about TTHM as the city's fight to reduce it continues: 1. Trihalomethanes are actually a group of four chemicals that are formed along with other disinfection byproducts when chlorine reacts with organic materials such as leaves or dirt in water, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. 2. TTHMs are odorless and colorless, according to the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality. That means the high levels of TTHM in Flint water last year are not related to problems such as discoloration and odor in tap water. 3. The four trihalomethane chemicals are chloroform, bromodichloromethane, dibromochloromethane and bromoform. 4. U.S. EPA regulates TTHM at a maximum allowable, annual, average level of 80 parts per billion. The standard has been in place since December 2001 for large public surface water systems and since December 2003 for small surface water and all groundwater systems. 5. Four of eight testing sites in Flint averaged more than the acceptable limit of 80 parts per billion of TTHM last year. 6. Testing for TTHM is done on a quarterly basis, which means that people who use the system are exposed to water for several months before public notice is required. That's because TTHM is a chronic -- not immediate --health threat, according to the DEQ. 7. U.S. EPA estimates the 80 parts per billion standard prevents an estimated 280 cases of bladder cancer each year out of a total of more than 330 million people who use public water supplies nationwide. 8. Since it started using the Flint River as its water source, three quarterly tests have produced these TTHM results in the city: 15 samples have been above the TTHM threshold. Nine samples have tested at less than 80 parts per billion. 9. The most recent quarterly test showed just one site of eight that was above the 80 parts per billion threshold. And a voluntary test of the same sites in late January by the city were all within were all within the limits. 10. The testin

DRIVER-PUBLICNOTICE-TTHM-TREATMENT When a PWS exceeds the maximum contaminant level (MCL) for both Total Trihalomethanes (TTHM) and Haloacetic Acids (HAA5) it must issue a public notice to inform the consumers of its water that the levels of Total Trihalomethanes and Haloacetic Acids detected in their water have exceeded the MCLs set by Federal Regulations. You can use this template as a guide to prepare that public notice

DRIVER-POLITICS Over the past two decades, global studies on the water have reported ongoing issues. In 2008, the United Nations Millennium Development Goals Report said that while there is greater access to drinking water, there are still about 1 billion people without access to safe water and more than 2.5 billion people without good sanitation. The Charting Our Water Future Report by a consortium of business partners in 2009 said that water demand will exceed supply by 50 percent in 2030.

"It is estimated that worldwide plant disease caused 13%, insect 14% and weed 13% loss in food production and accounted for 2000 billion dollars economic loss per year" The initial response to this challenge has been the use of chemical pesticides, but those have historically caused environmental and health issues. This article does a nice job of summarizing the current state of nanopesticides, which hold the promise of being equally effective as the chemicals in use now while doing much less collateral damage. The article concludes with a punch list of the challenges that need to be overcome to make these nanopesticides easy to deploy and raise the confidence that they are safe.

The supply chain issue has been escalated to where the government is getting involved. Biden is talking with big retailers and looking for solutions as the problem seems to be getting worse and more likel to affect the economy

Countering a common point of view, Liberty Street Economics claims that on the policy front, physical distance from a bank seems not to be what keeps the unbanked away, and so motivating or compelling banks to open branches near the unbanked may not reduce their numbers. In fact, in the FDIC's 2015 survey, only 2 percent of unbanked respondents cited "inconvenient location" as the main reason why they did not have a bank account. Far more important reasons were "not enough money to keep in account," "don't trust banks," and "account fees too high." Those issues merit more attention than banking deserts.

The paradoxical result of widespread remote work is that it represents both a centralization and a decentralization of where new technologies are built. That is, even as workers disperse geographically, more of them are doing their work in a single place: the internet. This change is already helping Silicon Valley giants break through logjams like regional housing crises in order to poach talent wherever it lives. The world has never managed hybrid work before. We're going to see a huge issue with culture and connection. How can you be connected and motivated. New slick tools aren't enough. Humans need and require human engagement.

"What sounds like sci-fi is now becoming a reality, and as these minute cameras pass through your body, they take two pictures per second checking for signs of cancer and other conditions like Crohn's disease." This new technology is a less invasive and more convenient alternative to current practices. The ease of this care provides a more comfortable experience for those who would have needed a traditional endoscopy.

I've swallowed the pill camera before to check an issue in my gut. It was 14 hours of video!!!

Not everybody is happy about Musk rolling into south Texas. There are issues with the environment as well - the area he picked is ripe birds and other critters that need protecting from big business.

The battle lines are drawn!

Quantum engineers from UNSW Sydney have solved a problem that has baffled scientists for decades: How to reliably control millions of qubits in a silicon quantum computer chip without wasting valuable space with extra wiring. This issue had been a significant roadblock to the development of a full-scale quantum computer, but it has now been overcome thanks to the engineers who developed a new technique capable of controlling millions of spin qubits simultaneously. Quantum computing will open the door to solving a whole new set of challenges requiring intense computational power.

One-in-ten eligible voters in the 2020 electorate was part of a new generation of Americans - Generation Z. Members of Gen Z are more racially and ethnically diverse than any previous generation, and they are on track to be the most well-educated generation yet. But when it comes to their views on key social and policy issues, they look very much like Millennials.