The Bohr model of atomic structure was developed by Danish physicist and Nobel laureate Niels Bohr (1885-1962). Published in 1913, Bohr's model improved the classical atomic models of physicists J. J. Thomson and Ernest Rutherford by incorporating quantum theory. While working on his doctoral dissertation at Copenhagen University, Bohr studied physicist Max Planck's quantum theory of radiation. After graduation, Bohr worked in England with Thomson and subsequently with Rutherford. During this time Bohr developed his model of atomic structure.  (more)

The term quasar is used to describe quasi-stellar radio sources that are the most distant, energetic objects ever observed. Quasars are enigmatic. Despite their great distance from Earth, some are actually brighter than hundreds of galaxies combined, yet are physically smaller in size than our own solar system. Astronomers calculate that the first quasar identified, 3C273 (3rd Cambridge catalog, 273rd radio source) located in the constellation Virgo, is moving at the incredible speed of one-tenth the speed of light and, although dim to optical astronomers, is actually five trillion times as bright as the Sun. Many astronomers theorize that very distant quasars represent the earliest stages of galactic evolution. The observations and interpretation of quasars remain controversial and challenge many theories regarding the origin and age of the Universe. In particular, studies of the evolution and distribution of quasars boosted acceptance of Big Bang-based models of cosmology (i.e., theories concerning the creation of the Universe) over other scientific and philosophical arguments that relied on steady-state models of the Universe. (more)

In April 2010, a oil well blowout in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Louisiana, caused an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon offshore oil drilling rig operated by BP (formerly British Petroleum) and a vast oil spill into the Gulf waters that lasted for 87 days before being capped. The explosion killed 11 workers and injured 17. The incident is commonly called the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the BP oil spill, the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, and the Macondo blowout. Within 24 hours, the Coast Guard determined the incident had the potential to become a major environment disaster for the United States. more

In April 2010, a oil well blowout in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Louisiana, caused an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon offshore oil drilling rig operated by BP (formerly British Petroleum) and a vast oil spill into the Gulf waters that lasted for 87 days before being capped. The explosion killed 11 workers and injured 17. The incident is commonly called the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the BP oil spill, the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, and the Macondo blowout. Within 24 hours, the Coast Guard determined the incident had the potential to become a major environment disaster for the United States. more

This is a preprint of an overview article originally published in the Gale Global Issues in Context resource center and database, written by K. Lee Lerner in 2009 and updated by K. Lee Lerner and Brenda Wilmoth Lerner, ca 2009-2018.

Weather starts with the Sun.

Weather plays an important role in our lives, and all forms of weather are produced by complex, constantly changing conditions in Earth's atmosphere. However, the driving force behind the weather is the Sun. The Sun continually generates energy, which escapes from its surface and flows through space. Solar energy travels 93 million miles (149 million kilometers) to reach Earth. It warms all of Earth's atmosphere, some parts more than others. The area of Earth that receives the Sun's rays most directly, the equatorial region, is heated the most. The poles, conversely, never receive sunlight directly. Sunlight strikes the poles only at a steep angle. Hence, they are warmed the least.

Another factor that determines how much solar energy strikes any particular part of Earth at any time is the season, a period of year characterized by certain weather conditions. Most places in the world have four seasons: winter, summer, spring, and fall. In winter, the Sun shines for the fewest hours per day and never gets very high in the sky. In summer, day is longer than night, and the Sun shines high in the sky. In spring and fall, the Sun rises to an intermediate height, and there are roughly the same number of hours of daylight as darkness.

The change in seasons is caused by a combination of Earth's tilt and its yearly journey around the Sun. Earth's axis of rotation is tilted 23.4 degrees away from the perpendicular. At different points along Earth's orbit around the Sun, the Northern Hemisphere, the half of the earth which lies north of the equator (which includes the United States) is tilted either toward or away from the Sun. For instance, on or about June 21, the first day of summer, the Northern Hemisphere receives more sunlight than on any other day. On or about December 21, the first day of winter, the Southern Hemisphere, the half of the earth that lies south of the equator, receives its greatest amount of sunlight...

The uneven heating of the atmosphere sets the atmosphere in motion. Air moves through the atmosphere in such a way as to even out the distribution of heat around the planet, with warm air moving from the equator to cold areas at the poles and cold air back toward the equator. The movement of air between the equator and the poles is influenced by other factors as well, such as differences in composition of air over land and sea, and Earth's rotation. The result is a complex web of air currents whirling around the globe, the ingredients of weather. (more) K. Lee Lerner. Paris.

Outstanding Academic Title, 2010

2010 CODIE Award Finalist for Best Online News Service

2009 School Library 10 Best

GIC is an international news service and academic resource. K. Lee Lerner served as Editor-in-Chief and  Brenda Wilmoth Lerner served as a senior editor for GIC content development and they were instrumental in developing the "In Context" concept for Cengage. GIC was one of the first internet-based resources to be named an Outstanding Academic Title, a designation previously reserved for books. After the launch of of GIC in 2009 Lerner & Lerner, along with LMG subject matter experts, continued to serve as primary advisors and contributing editors for science and public health content until 2018. Global Issues in Context was named an Outstanding Academic Title in 2010; named to the  SL Journal Annual 10 Best List and in 2010 was an CODIE Award Finalist for Best Online News Service.​​​​​​

Siem Reap, Cambodia — If all of the infectious diseases of mankind were listed in order of incidence, Dengue fever (also known as Breakbone Fever) would rank among the top ten. Yet, it’s officially a neglected disease, receiving less than one half of one percent of the funding spent on AIDs, malaria, and tuberculosis. 

Although standing water provides a ready breeding ground for many disease vectors, including the mosquitoes that transmit Dengue Hemorrhagic Fever, agricultural rice paddies are also needed to sustain the population and provide for economic exports. In Siem Reap the paddies are in close proximity to the town. 

Workers also labor -- some clearing landmines -- in areas with high mosquito concentrations, increasing their risk of contracting Dengue Hemorrhagic Fever 

Dengue is endemic in at least 115 countries and spreading globally. There is no cure. Of the 30,000 to 50,000 people who die each year, children under five are especially vulnerable. Dengue perpetuates poverty, robbing millions of their economic health. In the poorest and most vulnerable regions, Dengue steals already slim chances to live a long, productive, and healthy life.  (download to read more)

Angkor Wat, Cambodia -- Archaeological restorations and aerial surveys. A photo essay.

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At the core of the advances in biotechnology lies the science of molecular biology and genetics. Because theEncyclopedia of Biotechnology: Changing Life Through Science is designed for younger students and general readers, the editors have attempted to include simple explanations of sometimes advanced scientific principles. Despite the complexities of genetics, along with the fast pace of research and innovation, every effort has been made to set forth entries in everyday language and to provide generous explanations of the most important terms used by professional scientists.

Written by experts, teachers, and expert writers in fields of physics, molecular biology, genetics, and microbiology, every effort has been taken to explain scientific concepts clearly and simply, without sacrificing fundamental accuracy. The articles in the book are meant to be understandable by anyone with a curiosity about biotechnology. (more) K. Lee Lerner & Brenda Wilmoth Lerner, editors. Cairo, Egypt and London, U.K. October, 2006

Moscow -- In November 2006, former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko, an ex-KGB and FSB officer living in London who defected to British Intelligence in 2001, was killed after ingesting radioactive poison laced with polonium-210. 

Only advanced state-level agencies have the resources to manufacture polonium-210. More specifically, analysis of trace elements and decay rates have allowed British Atomic Weapons Establishment investigators to trace the specific polonium-210 used to kill Litvinenko to a reactor in Russia. 

Polonium-210 emits alpha particles at 803 kilo-electron volts (keV). Unlike gamma rays, alpha particles don't penetrate clothing or skin. In some ways, polonium is a perfect poison. It can be carried through airports and even skip past sophisticated radiation detectors. 

Dangerous when breathed, injected or ingested, polonium-210 poisons victims from the inside to produce a slow and tortured death, the exact kind of death one might intend for a defector deemed a traitor to his country by his former colleagues because it serves as punishment and warning. Those in the know, suspect, but unless one is looking for it, polonium-210 poisoning may slip past detection, with the victim's death attributed to industrial-strength rat poison. Investigative agencies are left in a murky fog of conflicting facts and enigmatic radioactive trails. 

While Russian intelligence services certainly had the motive and means, tracing polonium-210 to a reactor in Russia does not create and open and shut case. 

Polonium-210 is specifically manufactured inside nuclear reactors to reduce static electric buildup in components of nuclear reactors, but It also has commercial uses and is a component of products openly available. Static electrical charges allow dust to cling to objects. Polonium ionizes air passing over it, the charged air then binds with and electrically neutralizes dust, allowing it to be easily blown away.  (more)

Primary sources allow readers and researchers to come as close as possible to understanding the perceptions and context of events and thus, to more fully appreciate how and why misconceptions occur. 
The definition of what constitutes a primary source is often the subject of scholarly debate and interpretation. Although primary sources come from a wide spectrum of resources, they are united by the fact that they individually provide insight into the historical milieu (context and environment) during which they were produced. Primary sources include materials such as newspaper articles, press dispatches, autobiographies, essays, letters, diaries, speeches, song lyrics, posters, works of art—and in the twenty-first century, web logs—that offer direct, first-hand insight or witness to events of their day.  (download to read more)

Under mandatory evacuations, I sent Brenda and Ellie (the last child left at home) to Texas for both Hurricanes Ivan (2004) and Katrina (2005). 

Ivan scored a direct hit, the eye passed right over Sibley. Katrina devastated the Mississippi coast and caused the levee breach that flooded New Orleans, but located in the northeast quadrant of Katrina, Mobile Bay and the Gulf Coast to Pensacola also suffered severe damage.

I weathered both storms at Sibley with an array of pets that could not be evacuated. Most boats not anchored out were lost. Power was out for weeks with Ivan and about a week with Katrina. Until the National Guard found its footing -- resources after Katrina were justifiably concentrated on Mississippi and New Orleans -- it was time to fire up the motorcycle, strap a pistol to my hip, and help out wherever needed. (more)

2007 CODIE Award: Best Online Science or Technology Site

Since 2003,  K. Lee Lerner and Brenda Wilmoth Lerner have served as the principal science advisors and contributing editors for this respected online science educational resource.   Many of the articles in the collection come from other Lerner & Lerner works,  including the Gale Encyclopedia of Science, the RUSA and Outstanding Academic Title award-winning Environmental Encyclopedia, and Macmillan Science Reference Series articles. New news-driven contributions by K. Lee Lerner, serving as an author or contributing editor, are continuously added. SCIC, received a 2007 CODIE Award as Best Online Science or Technology Service, 

The intelligence community of the United Kingdom is both older and more complicated than that of the United States. MI5, or the Security Service, and MI6, the Secret Intelligence Service, are the most well known components of the British intelligence structure, but these are just two parts of a vast intelligence apparatus. Communications intelligence is the responsibility of the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), which works closely with the Communications Electronics Security Group, while a number of agencies manage military intelligence under the aegis of the Ministry of Defense. London's Metropolitan Police, or Scotland Yard, has its own Special Branch concerned with intelligence. 

The "MI" by which the two principal British security services are known (MI5, or Security Service, and MI6, or Secret Intelligence Service) refers to their common origins in military intelligence. Both can trace their roots to the Secret Service Bureau, created in 1909 after a report by Parliament's Committee on Imperial Defense concluded that "an extensive system of German espionage exists in this country..." Working with the War Office, Admiralty, and various operatives and agents overseas, the bureau had both a Home Section and a Foreign Section--precursors, respectively, of MI5 and MI6. 

Command and control operates through no less than four entities: the Central Intelligence Machinery, the Ministerial Committee on the Intelligence Services, the Permanent Secretaries' Committee on the Intelligence Services, and the Joint Intelligence Committee. (more)

The government of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK, also commonly known as North Korea) is a strict and isolationist dictatorship ruled by Kim Jong-un (1984-2013). Despite decades of international diplomatic efforts, superior U.S. military capacity, United Nations prohibitions, and attempts at both international aid and sanctions aimed at eliminating its nuclear and missile programs, North Korea continues to develop increasingly sophisticated nuclear weapons and higher capacity missiles.  (more)

Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) was the first emergent and highly transmissible viral disease to appear among humans during the twenty-first century. Caused by a coronavirus (SARS-CoV), SARS is far more lethal than the pandemic 2009 H1N1 influenza (caused by a Type A H1N1 influenza virus). Although less lethal than the H5N1 avian flu virus, the SARS virus is more transmissible among humans than the H5N1 virus. 

The first known case of SARS was traced to a November 2002 case in Guangdong province, China. By mid-February 2003, Chinese health officials tracked more than 300 cases, including five deaths in Guangdong province from what was at the time described as an acute respiratory syndrome. Chinese health officials initially remained silent about the outbreak, and no special precautions were taken to limit travel or prevent the spread of the disease. The world health community, therefore, had no chance to institute early testing, isolation, and quarantine measures that might have prevented the subsequent global spread of the disease. 

Under a new generation of political leadership, Chinese officials subsequently apologized for a slow and inefficient response to the SARS outbreak. Allegations that officials covered up the extent of the spread of the disease caused the dismissal of several local administrators, including China's public health minister and the mayor of Beijing. 

In many regards, the SARS outbreak revealed what was effective in terms of public health responses, readiness, and resources. The outbreak also spurred reforms in the International Health Regulations (IHR) designed to increase both surveillance and reporting of infectious diseases and to enhance cooperation in preventing the international spread of disease. (more)

The standard model of quantum physics offers a theoretically and mathematically sound model of particle behavior that serves as an empirically validated middle-ground between the need for undiscovered hidden variables that determine particle behavior, and a mystical anthropocentric universe where it is the observations of humans that determine reality. Although the implications of the latter can be easily dismissed as New Age-like metaphysical nonsense, the debate over the existence of hidden variables in quantum theory remained a subject of serious scientific debate during the 20th century.

Based upon our everyday experience, well explained by the deterministic concepts of classical physics, it is intuitive that there be hidden variables to determine quantum states. Nature is not, however, obliged to act in accord with what is convenient or easy to understand. Although the existence and understanding of heretofore hidden variables might seemingly explain Albert Einstein’s “spooky” forces, the existence of such variables would simply provide the need to determine whether they, too, included their own hidden variables. Quantum theory breaks this never-ending chain of causality by asserting (with substantial empirical evidence) that there are no hidden variables. Moreover, quantum theory replaces the need for a deterministic evaluation of natural phenomena with an understanding of particles and particle behavior based upon statistical probabilities. (more)

Firenze, Italia -- I regard spirituality as an intensely private matter . While I often have great personal respect for people of faith as well as the wisdom to be derived from religious thought, there is no place for the supernatural in science. What I define as spirituality, beyond the superficial observance of calendars and rituals, that comes closest to traditional conceptions of a soul is that part of you that can't helped but be moved by the dedication of people to life, work, and art undertaken as part of their faith. My personal list of spiritual places in this world would include the humanistic Pantheon in Paris, and the chairs in front of Newton's tomb at Westminster Abby where, for a good part of my life, I made an annual December pilgrimage to reflect on the year past over the "quod mortale fuit Isaaci Newtoni" and the achievements of others honored in scientist's corner.

…

If I had to pick one place that to me is incredibly moving to me, however, it would be Firenze. Although better known for its treasures of art and architecture, Florence portrays passion for the fusion of art and science like no other city in the world. (read more)

In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001,...  U.S. officials asserted that Iraq's proven development and use of weapons of mass destruction made Iraq a potential source of those weapons for terrorists who could then use them against U.S. or other Western targets. 

During the 1980s Iran-Iraq War, Hussein ordered the use of chemical weapons against Iranian forces, and additionally used chemical weapons against civilians in rebellious areas of Iraq. .. After Iraqi forces were expelled by U.S. led western coalition forces during the Persian Gulf War, as a part of the agreements that prevented the occupation of Iraq and allowed Hussein to remain in power, Hussein agreed to destroy all weapons of mass destruction and forsake the future development of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. Over a period of twelve years, 17 specific United Nations Security Council resolutions, weapons inspection programs, and economic sanctions against Iraq failed to secure Hussein's full compliance with U.N. resolutions and assure the international community that Iraq had indeed disposed of weapons of mass destruction and abandoned programs to develop new weapons of mass destruction. 

Hussein, in an effort to bolster his strong-man image that helped maintain his power in Iraq and influence in the region, played cat and mouse with international inspection teams. Fearing it would make him weak and vulnerable, Hussein refused to give up the appearance that his regime still might control weapons of mass destruction... Hussein's obstruction, pretense, and posturing resulted in highly polarized Western intelligence assessments of his warfare capacity and willingness to use WMD's... Hussein played a dangerous bluff -- bet on the lives of the Iraqi people -- that was ultimately called when the United States invaded and deposed him from power....

Addendum I: U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair's "Iraq War speech" to Parliament ... March 18, 2003. Addendum II:  A brief overview of the immediate aftermath of the invasion of Iraq. 
(read more)