Science EXPO Day, June 8

Join Us At Science EXPO Day!

June 8, 2013 – Seattle Center
10 a.m.-6 p.m.

Admission is Free!

Science EXPO Day is a festive, one-day event featuring over 150 booths, activities, demonstrations, and performances that celebrate science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) and show how integral they are to the region’s culture and prosperity. In addition to Science EXPO Day, Seattle Center will host the Seattle Mini Maker Faire and the Pagdiriwang Philippine Cultural Festival.

Program Highlights
Science EXPO Day is filled with fun and educational programs, including over 150 engaging exhibits, an introduction to Geocaching, the 2013 Laser Roadshow, “an Amazing Glimpse into Lasers, Optics, and Photonics!” and a full day of Stage Programming.

Exhibit Highlights
Organizations from across the region will be on-site to demonstrate how the STEM fields contribute to their work. Don’t miss the amazing exhibits and activities, including a submarine, near space satellites, underwater robots, real-time 3D modeling with Microsoft Kinect and a bilingual inflatable colon.

Health Care Is Spread Thin on Alaskan Frontier

Jim Wilson/The New York TimesA plane arriving with a patient at the airport in Bethel, Alaska.
Jim Wilson/The New York Times
A plane arriving with a patient at the airport in Bethel, Alaska.
 
By KIRK JOHNSON
May 28, 2013 The New York Times

 

BETHEL, Alaska — Americans in some rural places fret at how far away big-city medical help might be in an emergency, or at the long drives they are forced to make for prenatal care, or stitches, or chemotherapy.

Dr. Ellen Hodges only wishes it could be so easy.

She oversees health care for a population of 28,000, mostly Alaska Natives, here in the state’s far west end, spread out over an area the size of Oregon that has almost no roads. People can travel by boat or snow machine at certain times of the year, but not right now: the Kuskokwim River, which wends through Bethel to the Bering Sea, is choked with unstable melting ice in late May, magnifying the isolation that defines everything in what may be America’s emptiest corner.

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“If you have a road, you’re not remote,” Dr. Hodges said.

The complex machinery of health care is being reimagined everywhere in the nation through the combined prism of new regulations and shifting economics, even here on the continent’s frosted fringe.

The grandly named Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corporation, for example, where Dr. Hodges is chief of staff, is scrambling this spring to install a new electronic medical records system. That is a hallmark of the federal health care overhaul, compounded out here by the fact that computers run by generators in far-flung villages are subject to brownouts and fuel shortages.

Cost controls are also the way of the medical frontier no matter where you look. In other places, such constraints may be driven by insurance companies; here, by sequester-driven budget cuts to the federal Indian Health Service. The agency is the 50-bed hospital’s main support in treating the tribes and villagers who have lived for thousands of years in the boggy crescent of lowlands where the Yukon and Kuskokwim Rivers carve their paths to the sea.

The 56 tribes in the region voted in the mid-1990s to bundle their health care money from the federal government to finance the hospital. Grants supplement the work.

But the one thing that shapes every care decision, from the routine to the catastrophic, is the map. Triage in medical decisions, logistics and money is all filtered through an equation of time and distance on a vast and mostly untracked land.

Is air transport justified for medical reasons? Too slow to make a difference? Too dangerous in bad weather to attempt? What should a health worker on the ground — in most villages a local resident trained by the hospital — be told to do, or not do?

“There are judgment calls that you never have to make in the lower 48,” said Dr. David Bielak, 31, a family medicine practitioner who started coming here last fall in temporary stints from his home near San Jose, Calif.

And many of those decisions, often based on telephone descriptions from a villager, can be weighty. None of the more than four dozen communities served by the hospital have a doctor in residence.

“It’s the middle of the night, and you get a call from a clinic way up in the middle of nowhere where something very, very strange has happened,” Dr. Bielak said. “A lot of it is dark: a lot of alcoholism, suicidal ideation, a lot of abuse.”

A lack of running water and sewer systems in many villages in turn compounds the struggle to make, or keep, people well in a place long marked by poverty and isolation.

Take a glimpse, for example, into Alexandria Tikiun’s world: At age 25, with four children at home to care for, she is a community health aide, the closest thing to an M.D. in her village, Atmautluak, population about 400.

The aide system itself is uniquely Alaskan. It was developed in the 1950s, during an outbreak of tuberculosis, when the first health aides were trained to dispense medicine. Now, in sessions here at the hospital, Ms. Tikiun and 150 other aides, mostly women, learn medical skills that include trauma response, pregnancy testing and vaccination, all based on a book that they call their bible, which walks them through a kind of algorithm of step-by-step questions leading to treatment protocols.

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This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: May 28, 2013

An earlier version of this article misstated the number of tribes that voted in the mid-1990s to bundle their health care money from the federal government to finance a hospital. It was 56, not 58. 

Federal Recognition for VA’s Indian Tribes

400-Year Wait

Tue May 28, 2013
By Matt Laslo in WVTF.org

 

A bipartisan group of Virginia lawmakers is fighting to win federal recognition of six tribes in the commonwealth.

The tribes have treaties dating back to the 1600s. But there ‘s a catch: the agreements are with the King of England. Even now, the UK recognizes and honors these American tribes, while the US government doesn’t. That’s partly because in 1924, a law was passed that declared Virginia contained no Native Americans and wiped the commonwealth’s record books of their history.

The six tribes are fighting for federal recognition that would provide them educational and health care benefits enjoyed by other tribes. That also would allow them to collect their ancestors remains kept in the Smithsonian.

The House has passed legislation recognizing Virginia ‘s tribes twice. So has a Senate committee, but the full upper chamber has never recognized the tribes.

While optimistic, supporters say the legislation won’t likely come up until near the end of this session. Which means after about a 400-year wait, these tribes continue to wait.

 

Read more here. Congressman Moran’s News Commentary: Native Americans Still Facing Injustice

Restoration planned this summer for Skagit River tributary

Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission

Work is set to begin this summer to restore salmon habitat in Illabot Creek, a tributary to the Skagit River.

Once a winding, multi-channeled creek, Illabot was straightened and diked in 1970 when a bridge crossing was constructed on Rockport-Cascade Road. Straightening the creek degraded salmon habitat by creating a steeper gradient, reducing channel area and habitat complexity.

Illabot Creek is a highly productive tributary to the upper Skagit River, supporting chinook, chum, coho and pink salmon, native char and steelhead trout. Much of the watershed already has been protected or restored, but this half-mile reach on the historic alluvial fan remains heavily degraded.

The Skagit River System Cooperative (SRSC), the natural resources extension of the Swinomish and Sauk-Suiattle tribes, plans to restore Illabot Creek to its historic channel by removing dikes downstream of the road and excavating to encourage new channels to develop.

“Not only will the restoration improve channel complexity and instream habitat conditions, but it also will restore connectivity within the floodplain and increase the number and surface area of channels as Illabot Creek migrates over time,” said Devin Smith, senior restoration ecologist with SRSC.

Future restoration plans include installing two new bridges and removing dikes upstream of the road.

Work starts on temporary section for collapsed bridge

Acrow BridgesAn Acrow bridge used at ground zero in New York City. Acrow is building a temporary span to replace the portion of the Skagit River Bridge that collapsed last week.
Acrow Bridges
An Acrow bridge used at ground zero in New York City. Acrow is building a temporary span to replace the portion of the Skagit River Bridge that collapsed last week.

Jerry Cornfield, The Herald

Construction of a 160-foot steel Band-Aid for the Skagit River Bridge began Tuesday while a meticulous examination of the damaged section continued above and below the water.

Acrow Bridge is building the temporary span in pieces on a closed stretch of I-5 to be rolled into place for final assembly once the National Transportation Safety Board completes its work and demolition crews clear away the remains of the collapsed segment.

The Department of Transportation didn’t say how much the temporary bridge costs, but said it would be part of the $15 million emergency contract awarded to Atkinson Construction in Renton to clear the wreckage and rebuild the bridge.

Gov. Jay Inslee is pushing for a mid-June reopening, and state transportation officials say the timeline is doable but caution against chiseling in a date.

There’s no plan to hurry the federal authorities or rush the cleanup. Plus, state bridge experts must still examine the steel and concrete piers that supported the collapsed span to be sure they can be used for the replacement.

“We do have some challenges ahead of us,” said Travis Phelps of the DOT. “We are going to do our best to meet that timeline. We want to be sure it is done right and safe. This work ain’t easy.”

Tuesday brought word that Acrow Bridge, a 62-year-old New Jersey bridge-building firm, will construct the temporary four-lane segment to replace the section that crumbled into the Skagit River on May 23.

When completed, it will consist of two prefabricated steel bridges installed side by side. Each piece will be 160 feet long and 24 feet wide, which is wide enough to support two lanes of traffic. The road will have an asphalt overlay or a factory-applied aggregate anti-skid finish, according to a company spokeswoman.

When the bridge reopens, just about every vehicle, commercial truck and tractor-trailer allowed to travel on it before the incident will be able to travel on it again, Phelps said.

Transportation officials will set a maximum vehicle weight to be allowed on the temporary bridge. Overweight vehicles, referred to as super loads, are not going to be permitted, he said.

Some trucks with oversized loads, like the one that struck the bridge and caused the collapse, could use the bridge if they do not exceed the weight limit, he said. They will need to comply with existing rules, such as use of a pilot car with a height rod, he said.

Speed will be reduced on the bridge because the lanes will be narrower, there will be little or no shoulder and some type of barrier will be in place dividing the northbound and southbound lanes, Phelps said.

Acrow Bridge, which has an office in Camas, Wash., specializes in pre-fabricated modular steel bridges. It has built similar bridges to replace ones damaged in hurricanes Katrina, Irene and Sandy, according to the company.

Meanwhile Tuesday, Inslee moved to assist retailers who’ve seen business plummet since the span tumbled into the river, fracturing one of the major trade and travel corridors on the West Coast.

He approved using $150,000 of the state’s Economic Development Strategic Reserve Account to support economic activity in Skagit County and surrounding areas.

None of the money can go directly to a business, according to the governor’s office. The Department of Commerce will use the money for a media campaign focused on informing the public that the region’s businesses and attractions are open and how best to get there. Island, Whatcom and San Juan counties also will be involved.

The Washington State Patrol has beefed up its presence along the detour routes due to complaints of semi-trucks and cars with trailers running red lights and blocking intersections when traffic signals turn red. Both are infractions and can result in a $124 ticket, according to the state patrol.

“We understand the detours are an inconvenience for motorists but we want to make the routes as safe as possible. Motorists need to pack their patience while these detours are in place,” Trooper Mark Francis said in a statement issued Tuesday.

No end in sight for Skywalk troubles

5/27/2013 10:00:00 PM
Editorial in The Daily Courier

If you want to look straight down at one of the Seven Wonders of the World, be sure to take a wallet full of cash.

The Hualapai Tribe Skywalk at Grand Canyon WestPhoto courtesy of Hualapai Tribe
The Hualapai Tribe Skywalk at Grand Canyon West
Photo courtesy of Hualapai Tribe

The glass-bottomed Skywalk at Grand Canyon West, a horseshoe-shaped bridge that juts out from the Canyon walls some 70 feet into pure, empty space, has seen its share of difficulties since long before it opened in 2007. The Hualapai Tribe, which owns and operates the tourist attraction, has battled forces both internal – factions within the tribe argued that the structure was defiling sacred ground – and external. Environmentalists believed the bridge was an incongruous eyesore and the original developer of the $31 million project, Grand Canyon Skywalk Development of Las Vegas, won a $28 million judgment against the tribe. The court agreed with David Jin, creator of the spectacle, who maintained that his contract called for GCSD to receive half of the attraction’s revenue in return for fronting the money to build it.

Shortly after the Skywalk opened, though, the tribe took it back from Jin’s company, claiming GCSD hadn’t finished the job. Jin countered by blaming the lack of completion on the tribe’s failure to provide infrastructure, and the back-and-forth ultimately resulted in the tribe’s choice to invoke eminent domain and seize the bridge.

The loss of the court battle earlier this year was a huge blow to the Hualapai, who have seen other business ventures fall by the wayside on their sprawling reservation south of the Canyon and west of the National Park.

This past weekend, a neighbor dealt the tribe another blow. Nigel Turner, owner of the 168-square-mile Grand Canyon Ranch, said he was tired of the tourists and the traffic that crossed his land on the way to the Skywalk, and that’s why he decided to start charging a $20 toll. For that fee, tourists, primarily those coming from Las Vegas, can enjoy a rodeo show and other ranch activities, but the already hurting tribe says the charge is inappropriate, based on a 2008 settlement that netted Turner $750,000 and gave the tribe an easement across his land.

Once again, the Hualapai and their ambitions seem certain to be headed for court in this dispute. It’s hard to say which side has right on its side, but it certainly begs the question of whether the tribe’s minority was right in objecting to the building of the attraction in the first place.

Potawatomi bingo casino’s sustainable energy project

 

Food manufacturers evaluate Potawatomi digester option for waste.

Manufacturing, Food & Agriculture

By Molly Newman in Biztimes.com

May 27. 2013 2:00AM

Southeastern Wisconsin food and beverage manufacturers recently had a chance to tour the anaerobic digester being constructed at Potawatomi Bingo Casino during a “first look” event hosted by Advanced Waste Services and the Forest County Potawatomi Community in Milwaukee.

The tour introduced interested businesses to the digester project, which is being coordinated by FCPC Renewable Generation LLC and would serve as a community food waste recycling facility. Its proponents are encouraging food and beverage manufacturers, grocery stores and other large organic waste producers to send their waste product to the digester instead of landfills.

The Potawatomi Community, which is adding a service road near the Milwaukee casino for the increased truck traffic the digester would bring, expects the digester to be completed by July and start accepting industrial, commercial and institutional waste by September.

There would be a tipping fee for contributors, which the tribe says it plans to price competitively with local alternatives.

“What we’re trying to do here is put a little twist in the model you’ve been working with and hopefully it will be a win-win,” said Jeff Crawford, attorney general for the Forest County Potawatomi Community. “We want to be able to build this thing so it’s good for the environment, making energy, but we’re not trying to make money off it.”

The digester would offset 30 percent of the energy costs for the Forest County Potawatomi Community.

Before beginning the project, the Potawatomi Community completed an energy audit, after which it purchased renewable energy credits and installed a 132-panel solar array on the FCPC administrative building in Milwaukee.

In addition, local food waste that’s currently being dumped could be converted to energy in the Potawatomi digester, Crawford said.

The energy produced by the digester will be sold back to Milwaukee-based Wisconsin Energy Corp. under a special tariff to offset the Potawatomi Community’s energy costs throughout the state. The Potawatomi tribe has about 17,000 acres of land in northern Wisconsin and in Milwaukee.

Milwaukee-based Titus Energy has been developing the digester for three years, said Bryan Johnson, renewable and sustainability leader. The $18.5 million project will include two 1.3 million gallon tanks that will generate 2 megawatts of continuous power, enough to power 1,500 homes. A $2.6 million Department of Energy grant awarded to the FCPC in 2011 is contributing to the project.

The tanks are 50 feet tall and 80 feet in diameter. General Electric Waukesha Gas Engines has provided the engines for the conversion process. The controls were made by Rockwell Automation.

Smaller feed tanks will accept individual waste streams that have been converted to slurry. The slurries will be combined into the proper mix of materials to meet certain carbon, nitrogen, pH and chemical levels. When the mix is right, it’s fed into the digester tanks, heated to about 100 degrees and held in the tanks for about 30 days.

The digester will turn the waste into methane gas to power an on-site biogass engine that will produce electricity. Heat recovery and fertilizer are also byproducts.

The facility will accept between 100,000 and 130,000 gallons of waste material per day, Johnson said. Tipping fees will be based on each customer’s situation and shipping costs. The casino will not be an initial supplier, because its waste stream is too small.

Project organizers have been targeting the meat, cheese, dairy, grocery, produce and bakery industries to participate in the process. Many types of feedstock, including dry ingredients like spices, can be converted to energy.

“About any type of food waste has fairly high energy potential in it,” Johnson said.

West Allis-based Advanced Waste Services has been testing potential feedstock samples and marketing the digester to local businesses.

FCPC has retained Advanced Waste to transport the waste and slurry from producers to the digester. AWS may also oversee the slurry production, though the offsite conversion process has not been finalized.

Right now, AWS is using its industry connections to approach potential feedstock generators, said Joe DeNucci, marketing manager.

“We see this as opportunities for companies to be known for their green initiatives,” Johnson said. “We expect at any one time to have more than 20 suppliers for this project. That all depends on the size of the waste material coming in.”

More than half of those suppliers have committed to the project, he said. The digester is on track to be at capacity by fall.

Gilbert Jasso, plant maintenance director at Kemps in Cedarburg, attended the tour to find out more about the digesters.

Kemps currently sends about 6,000 gallons of dairy waste per day from its Cedarburg plant to digesters in West Bend, and is exploring the alternative digester at Potawatomi.

“We’re just trying to be a good neighbor, because we do produce waste and we’re not going to change that,” he said.

Michael Keleman, lead environmental engineer at InSinkErator in Racine, also attended the informational meeting to learn more about the digester.

InSinkErator produces both residential and commercial waste disposal products, mostly on the home kitchen end.

But the company may be able to assist with the industrial, commercial and institutional sector’s waste-to-slurry preparation.

“We see this as a tremendous opportunity to be involved in feedstock preparation for anaerobic digestion,” Keleman said. “Our appliances have mainly been sold for convenience in kitchen hygiene, and really we’ve only been focused on the residential side, and that’s only about 50 percent of the food waste generated in the U.S.”

 

Read previous article here.

 

Carmen: Treaty Council’s Inclusion on Racist List is ‘Badge of Honor’

Gale Courey Toensing, Indian Country Today Media Network

Groucho Marx famously said, “I wouldn’t want to belong to a club that has someone like me as a member.” In a kind of reversal of that humorous sentiment, Andrea Carmen, the executive director of the International Indian Treaty Council, says she’s glad her organization belongs to a club in the form of a list of allegedly “UnAmerican” people, places and things. The reason? The list was compiled by the late Billy James Hargis, a southern white racist preacher who was anti-communist, anti-union, pro-segregationist, anti-black and, apparently, also anti-Indian, and it includes some of the most revered civil rights leaders, artists, activists and other people and organizations that have worked for social justice.

In 1950, Hargis founded a ministry called Christian Crusade, a media empire that included a magazine, a daily radio program, Christian Crusade Publications, and a direct mail operation in those pre-e-mail times that distributed his propaganda throughout the world. His heyday as a televangelist peaked during the 1950s and 1960s when he made daily broadcasts on 500 radio stations and 250 TV channels. He died in 2004 at the age of 79.

The International Indian Treaty Council (IITC) was founded in 1974 at a gathering by the American Indian Movement in Standing Rock, South Dakota that was attended by more than 5,000 representatives of 98 Indigenous Nations. The organization advocates for treaty lands and the basic human rights of freedom and sovereignty. Carmen (Yaqui Indian Nation) has been a staff member of the International Indian Treaty Council since 1983 and its executive director since 1992.

“IITC is the only Indigenous Peoples organization to be listed on this racist list, and yes I do consider it to be a badge of honor,” Carmen told Indian Country Today Media Network in an e-mail. “These types consider anyone making a serious stand for Treaty Rights, justice and human rights to be a threat to their vision of how society and its power relationship should be organized.”

On May 3, Carmen received an e-mail from a colleague who notified her that the International Indian Treaty Council was included on one of Hargis’s immense files of “UnAmerican” people and organizations in a collection of his papers housed by the University of Arkansas. “I found this today in a link sent to me from a woman in Tulsa who was researching her pro-choice organization,” Carmen’s colleague wrote. “The files were compiled by the Oklahoma equivalent of Joseph McCarthy, Tulsa racist minister Billy Hargis, who was alleged to have been having sex with male and female students at his Christian College in Tulsa.”

The particular file that includes the International Indian Treaty Council is listed under “Series II, Domestic Policies and Issues, Subseries #5: Social Issues.” The subsector is divided into categories on race, the civil rights movement, Hispanics, racist organizations, women’s issues and organizations, families and the changing sexual morality of the 1960s and 1970s, the 1960s counterculture, drug and alcohol abuse, crime and law enforcement, health care and poverty. Among the “UnAmerican” individuals Hargis listed are civil rights hero Martin Luther King Jr., comedian Bill Cosby, author James Baldwin, jazz great Louis Armstrong, Nobel prize-winning social worker Jane Addams, and singer Harry Belafonte. Among the “UnAmerican” organizations and initiatives are the Black Panthers, Fisk University, the Equal Rights Amendment, and Freedom Riders.

The International Indian Treaty Council is listed as number 31, squished between “Hispanics, 26-30” and “Racist Individuals and Organizations, 32-46,” oddly under the heading “African Americans and Civil Rights by State.”

News about the inclusion of IITC on Hargis’ target list was posted to the mailing list of the North American Indigenous Peoples Caucus to the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. The posting elicited a number of congratulatory responses. “IITC has to be doing something right to make them list you,” one writer told Carmen. “Congratulations!”

 

Read more at https://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2013/05/27/carmen-treaty-councils-inclusion-racist-list-badge-honor-149357