Stranger Pings: Weird Noise Coming from Arctic Seafloor By Kacey Deamer, Staff Writer

Credit: Incredible Arctic

A mysterious "pinging" noise is emanating from the seafloor in one of Canada's northernmost territories, and officials have yet to identify the source.

The sound has been heard in recent months in the Fury and Hecla Strait, a channel of water in the Nunavut region of Canada. The Canadian Department of National Defence was informed of the strange noises and investigated the ping's origin, to no avail, reported the CBC.

According to internal correspondence obtained by the CBC, the department did not immediately rule out submarines, but did not consider the vessels a likely cause of the sounds, either. [What's That Noise? 11 Strange and Mysterious Sounds on Earth & Beyond]

A military patrol aircraft was sent to investigate the area on Tuesday (Nov. 1), reported The Guardian. In a statement to the British newspaper, department spokeswoman Ashley Lemire said various multisensor searches in the area, including a 1.5-hour acoustic search, failed to detect any anomalies.

"The crew did not detect any surface or subsurface contacts," Lemire told The Guardian. "At this time the Department of National Defence does not intend to do any further investigations."

Hunters in the remote Arctic hamlet claimed the "pinging" sound is driving wildlife away, and the CBC reported that the Nunavut legislature discussed the mysterious sea noise last month.

Legislative assembly member George Qulaut told the CBC that the mysterious sound's potential effect on wildlife is concerning.

"That passage is a migratory route for bowhead whales, and also bearded seals and ringed seals. There would be so many in that particular area," Qulaut said, recalling his own days of hunting there. "This summer, there were none."

Locals have different theories for the pinging, the CBC reported, but no source has been confirmed. One theory blamed a mining company that has operated nearby, but the company said it doesn't have equipment in the water. Some locals also suggested Greenpeace could be behind the sound, scaring wildlife away from the hunting ground. However, a spokesperson for the environmental organization denied these allegations.

This isn't the first mysterious noise that the Canadian government has been called in to investigate. For years, a low rumbling known as the "Windsor Hum" has plagued residents of Windsor, Ontario. As of yet, research into that noise has failed to establish its origin.

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The Electoral College: Why 270 Is the Magic Number for Clinton and Trump By Stephanie Pappas, Live Science Contributor

Voters line up to cast their ballots on Super Tuesday March 1, 2016 in Fort Worth, Texas.

Credit: Ron Jenkins/Getty Images

Today (Nov. 8), the 2016 presidential election votes will be tallied and the winner announced — barring any vote count snafus or an Electoral College tie.

As the election of 2000 proved, the Electoral College can make all the difference in the outcome of a presidential race. So how does it work?

When you cast your vote for Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump, you're not actually picking one man or the other. You're voting for his electors, a group of people (usually selected by the political parties) who, in turn, cast their votes for their candidates. Each state gets one elector for each of its representatives in the House of Representatives, plus two for its Senators.  

Because House representation is based on population, so is the Electoral College. With 55 electoral votes, California has the most of any state. The least-populated states, including Wyoming, Alaska and the Dakotas, get three electors each, as does the District of Columbia.

That makes for a total of 538 electors in the Electoral College. Candidates need 270 votes to win the presidency.

In most states, the winner of the popular vote takes all of the Electoral College votes in that state. But Maine and Nebraska allocate their electoral votes proportionally, meaning their electoral votes can be split. [Election Day 2016: A Guide to the When, Why, What and How]

The history of the Electoral College

Barack Obama won the 2012 election against Mitt Romney with both the popular vote (51.1 percent) and Electoral College votes (332). But the result of the electoral system is that sometimes the winner of the popular vote does not end up winning the presidency. It happened in 2000, when Al Gore took the popular vote with 50,999,897 supporters to George W. Bush's 50,456,002. But Bush took the Electoral College with 271 votes (after a tough battle over vote counts in Florida), while Gore had 266.

In 1876, Rutherford B. Hayes lost the popular vote to Samuel J. Tilden, but squeaked by in the Electoral College by one vote to win the presidency. Likewise, Benjamin Harrison had more than 90,000 fewer votes than Grover Cleveland in 1888, but he pulled far ahead in the Electoral College, gaining 233 votes to Cleveland's 168 (fewer Electoral College votes were available then).

In perhaps the most unusual electoral vote incident, John Quincy Adams lost both the popular vote and the electoral vote in 1824, yet still managed to become president. Neither Adams nor his opponent, Andrew Jackson, got a majority of electoral votes — at that time, 131. So the decision went to the House of Representatives, who awarded the race to Adams. Adams quickly made the Speaker of the House, Henry Clay, his Secretary of State, prompting Jackson to accuse the two of a "corrupt bargain."

This year's electoral race

Because of the largely "winner-takes-all" electoral system, candidates focus their energies on states that are likely to go either way — swing states. You won't see many campaign stops in reliably Republican Texas in the last hours of the campaign, for example, but swing state Colorado could be crawling with candidates.

Several political analysts have said that while Clinton has several pathways in the Electoral College map to the White House, Trump has just one, and in this winning scenario North Carolina is key. "If Secretary Clinton wins North Carolina, there really is no path for Donald Trump to win the presidency," said Scott Falmlen, the former executive director of the North Carolina Democratic Party, as reported by Politico.

On Monday (Nov. 7), in addition to North Carolina, Clinton visited three other important states: Pennsylvania, Michigan and Pennsylvania,according to ABC News.

According to Politico, this year's swing states are: Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin. That's a lot of electoral votes that could swing one way or another. 

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Teen Use of Opioids Linked to Marijuana By Rachael Rettner, Senior Writer

                       www.splensizy.blogspot.com

Credit: Joshua Resnick | Shutterstock.com

Teens who take opioid painkillers without a prescription also often use cannabis, according to a new study.

Researchers analyzed information from more than 11,000 children and teens ages 10 to 18, in 10 U.S. cities. Participants were asked whether they had usedprescription opioids in the past 30 days, and whether they had ever used cannabis.

Overall, about 29 percent of the teens said they had used cannabis at some point in their lives. But among the 524 participants who said they had used prescription opioids in the past 30 days, nearly 80 percent had used cannabis.

The findings show that among young opioid users, the prevalence ofcannabis use is high, said Vicki Osborne, a doctoral student in epidemiology at the University of Florida. Osborne presented the study Oct. 31 at the meeting of the American Public Health Association in Denver.

Among teens who said they used opioids without a prescription (meaning they obtained the drugs through a friend, family member or other avenue), about 88 percent had used cannabis, compared with 61 percent of those who did have a prescription for the opioids they used. [Mixing the Pot? 7 Ways Marijuana Interacts with Medicines]

The study also found that the teens who reported having used alcohol or tobacco in addition to opioids were much more likely to use cannabis as well. Of the participants who had used opioids, those who also reported recent alcohol use were nearly 10 times more likely to have used cannabis, compared with those who didn't use alcohol recently. And those who currently smoked tobacco were 24 times more likely to have used cannabis than those who were not tobacco users, the study found.

Efforts to prevent young people who use opioid painkillers from also using cannabis should target those who use alcohol and tobacco, Osborne said. Efforts should also target males, who were more likely to report using cannabis than females were, she said.

Interventions should also target young people who use opioids without a prescription, Osborne said. Even though such use of opioids among youth is not as high as it is among adults, the proportion of youth using opioids without a prescription is still concerning, she said.

The researchers plan to study the data further, and look at when young people start using cannabis versus when they start using opioids, Osborne said.

Previous studies have found that legalizing medical marijuana actually appears to lead to a reduction in opioid use among adults. However, Osborne said the new findings among youth may be different from those in adults, because even in states that have legalized the use of marijuana, the drug is still illegal for teens to use.

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Buhari has not asked us to hike pump price, says NNPC

 

The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) says there is no plan to increase the price of premium motor spirit (PMS) above N145.
The corporation said there was no time it met with President Muhammadu Buhari to push for a hike in the pump price to N150 per litre.
“NNPC is not empowered statutorily to tinker with the pricing template of petroleum products as erroneously reported in some dailies,” it wrote on Twitter.
“The price adjustment in NNPC downstream facilities from N141 – N145/l is still within the price brand of the N135 – N145/l approved by the PPPRA.
“NNPC assures marketers and motorists of its readiness to continue to be the supplier of last resort and ensuring energy security for Nigeria.
“NNPC also wishes to confirm the availability ‎of over 1.6 billion litres of PMS In-country that would last 45 days consumption.
“There was no time NNPC met the President to push for a hike in the pump price of petrol to N150 per litre.”

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