Jules Siegel

a writer and graphic designer whose work has appeared over the years in Playboy, Best American Short Stories, Library of America's "Writing Los Angeles," and many other publications. He administers newsroom-l.

Plants use perfume to attract beneficial bacteria to their roots

Apr 302012

(Sheffield University) Scientists have discovered maize crops emit chemical signals to attract growth promoting microbes to their roots, which boosts performance and could combat world food shortages.

The groundbreaking research – the first chemical signal that has been shown to attract the beneficial bacteria – could reduce agricultural reliance on fertilisers and pesticides across the globe.

Researchers from the University of Sheffield and Rothamsted Research in Hertfordshire, who collaborated on the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) funded project, discovered that maize crops emit chemical signals which attract growth-promoting microbes to live amongst their roots.

Dr Andrew Neal, who co-led the research, said: “We have known for a while that certain plants exude chemicals from their roots that attract other organisms to the area. In fact, the environment around a plant´s roots teems with microorganisms and populations of bacterial cells can be up to 100 times denser around roots than elsewhere.

April 30, 2012 Posted by Jules Siegel at 1:35 pm Comments Off

Privatized prison labor competes with regular business at 93 cents a day

Apr 202012

By Steve Fraser and Joshua B. Freeman (AlterNet) Prisoners, whose ranks increasingly consist of those for whom the legitimate economy has found no use, now make up a virtual brigade within the reserve army of the unemployed whose ranks have ballooned along with the U.S. incarceration rate. The Corrections Corporation of America and G4S formerly Wackenhut, two prison privatizers, sell inmate labor at subminimum wages to Fortune 500 corporations like Chevron, Bank of America, AT&T, and IBM.

These companies can, in most states, lease factories in prisons or prisoners to work on the outside. All told, nearly a million prisoners are now making office furniture, working in call centers, fabricating body armor, taking hotel reservations, working in slaughterhouses, or manufacturing textiles, shoes, and clothing, while getting paid somewhere between 93 cents and $4.73 per day.

via Getting Paid 93 Cents a Day in America? Corporations Bring Back the 19th Century | Civil Liberties | AlterNet.

April 20, 2012 Posted by Jules Siegel at 1:13 pm Comments Off

There is no invisible hand

Apr 152012

By Jonathan Schlefer (Harvard Review) Adam Smith suggested the invisible hand in an otherwise obscure passage in his Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations in 1776. He mentioned it only once in the book, while he repeatedly noted situations where “natural liberty” does not work. Let banks charge much more than 5% interest, and they will lend to “prodigals and projectors,” precipitating bubbles and crashes. Let “people of the same trade” meet, and their conversation turns to “some contrivance to raise prices.” Let market competition continue to drive the division of labor, and it produces workers as “stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become.”

via There Is No Invisible Hand – Jonathan Schlefer – Harvard Business Review.

April 15, 2012 Posted by Jules Siegel at 8:54 am Comments Off

Does Mitt Romney support paid sick days for working mothers?

Apr 142012

By Melissa Boteach (ThinkProgress) Ann Romney has tweeted, “All moms are entitled to choose their path.” But unfortunately for low-wage working moms and nearly half of private sector workers, the” choice” is either “go to work and send my sick kid to school” or “stay at home with my sick child and risk losing my job or needed income.” That’s a choice no parent should have to make. Does Mitt Romney agree?

Women are now half of all workers on U.S. payrolls and breadwinners or co-breadwinners in nearly two-thirds of all families. Their incomes are sorely needed to provide basic economic security for their families.

Yet the U.S. also faces high rates of work-family conflict with few laws to support working families. One of the biggest culprits is workers’ lack of paid sick days to care for themselves, an elderly parent, or a sick kid – an issue that has been largely absent in the election debates.

Forty percent of private sector workers and 80 percent of low-wage workers do not have a single, paid sick day to recover from a short-term illness or to provide care for their loved ones.

via Does Mitt Romney Support Paid Sick Days? | ThinkProgress.

April 14, 2012 Posted by Jules Siegel at 6:26 pm Comments Off

No such thing as 'women and children first' without threats of physical force

Apr 142012

(The Local) Scientists at Uppsala University have found that the widespread belief that women and children are saved first in maritime disasters is a myth, unless the men are threatened with physical violence like on the Titanic.

“It is expected that the crew should rescue passengers, but our results show that captains and crew are more likely to survive than passengers,” said Mikael Elinder at the Department of Economics, Uppsala University and at the Research Institute of Industrial Economics (IFN) in a statement.

“We also found that women and children were more inclined to die than men.”

via ‘Women and children first’ a myth: study – The Local.

April 14, 2012 Posted by Jules Siegel at 6:54 am Comments Off

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