Blue Skies Leaf Bubble wallpaper

Good news in wildlife conservation is rare, Sea Turtle Baby Boom Smashes Record

Green turtles laid more than 1 million eggs last year on one of the Turtle Islands in the southern Philippines. That number of slimy turtle eggs set an all-time high since recording of nesting started in 1984.

Some 14,220 green turtle nests were found on Baguan Island in 2011, breaking the previous record of 12,311 nests set in 1995. The 2011 figures translate to 2,844 nesting green turtles and 1.44 million turtle eggs laid, according to the Philippines’ Department of Environment and Natural Resources and the conservation group Conservation International.

“1.44 million eggs is an astounding number and it presents great hope for boosting green turtle populations,” said Romeo Trono, executive director of Conservation International in the Philippines.

With an average of 90 percent hatching success and a 1 percent survival rate up to sexual maturity, the turtle baby boom in Baguan in 2011 alone could contribute 13,000 individuals to the adult turtle population, Trono said.

A female turtle lays around 100 eggs per nesting, and hatchlings emerge after 7-12 weeks.CREDIT: A.G. Saño/Conservation International

This success did come come easily. In previous years  egg harvesting for food and trade, poaching by foreign fishing fleets, illegal fishing methods and weak law enforcement contributed to the decline in the sea turtle population in the sanctuary.

Saving the turtles of the Turtle Islands is important to the overall health of the Coral Triangle, a triangular area of waters bordered by Indonesia, Malaysia and West Papua that boasts spectacular biodiversity, said Department of Environment and Natural Resources Secretary Ramon Paje.

“If the Turtle Islands are not protected, it can have serious implications to the whole region’s turtle population and marine ecosystem as a whole,” Paje said.

After emerging from their nests, hatchlings immediately make their way to sea, starting a journey that may take them right back to where they hatched, where they will then lay their own eggs CREDIT: A.G. Saño/Conservation International

Not something I would have thought about as a cause for one of the earth’s great glacial ages, Did Plants Freeze the Planet?

The first plants to colonize land didn’t merely supply a dash of green to a drab landscape. They dramatically accelerated the natural breakdown of exposed rocks, according to a new study, drawing so much planet-warming carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere that they sent Earth’s climate spiraling into a major ice age.

About 460 million years ago, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere ranged somewhere between 14 and 22 times the current level, and the average global temperature was about 5°C higher than it is now. Climate models suggest that widespread glaciations couldn’t take place at that time unless CO2 levels dropped to about eight times what they are at present, says Tim Lenton, an earth scientist at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom. (At the time, the sun was as much as 6% fainter than it is now, Lenton says, so the planet-warming effect of greenhouse gases wasn’t as strong.)

Nevertheless, during a 10-million-year-period that started about 455 million years ago, Earth experienced two major glaciations. At the time, the supercontinent Gondwana sat atop or near the South Pole, much as Antarctica does today. At the height of the ice ages, much of the supercontinent, including areas that are now Africa and South America, was smothered with ice. These glaciations may have played a large role in mass extinctions of species that had previously thrived in the shallow seas surrounding landmasses.

Scientists have long considered the two cold spells, which came on abruptly, surprising, Lenton says. The chemical weathering of silicate rocks—reactions between exposed minerals and acidic rain or with oxygen and other gases in the atmosphere—would have naturally but slowly pulled carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, forming carbonate minerals that temporarily locked away the carbon, he notes. But current geochemical models suggest that that process couldn’t have taken CO2 levels low enough to bring about the two ice ages, nor can it explain their sudden onset. “Explaining these glaciations has always been a problem,” says Charles Wellman, a paleobotanist at the University of Sheffield in the United Kingdom, who was not involved in the new work.

Now, Lenton and his colleagues suggest that the evolution of land plants may have triggered the glaciations—and they’ve got lab data to back up the idea.

It would be easy for those not able to conceptualize events that took place over the course of 10 million years to mangle this data as some kind of justification for doing nothing about the current global warming trend. Current weather trends are not natural. Even the release of captured CO2 in the sub-Arctic, while natural in the sense that some of it is due to exposed plant matter, that plant matter is being exposed for longer periods of time because of global warming. Thus “natural” events such as that are contributing to a greatly accelerated and unnatural climate cycle. We do not have 10 million years to adapt.

This excerpt is from the abstract of a scientific paper so the language is typical science jargon, Manuka honey inhibits the development of Streptococcus pyogenes biofilms and causes reduced expression of two fibronectin binding proteins

Streptococcus pyogenes (group A Streptococcus; GAS) is always of clinical significance in wounds where it can initiate infection, destroy skin grafts and persist as a biofilm. Manuka honey has broad spectrum antimicrobial activity and its use in the clinical setting is beginning to gain acceptance with the continuing emergence of antibiotic resistance and the inadequacy of established systemic therapies; novel inhibitors may affect clinical practice. In this study, the effect of manuka honey on S. pyogenes (M28) was investigated in vitro with planktonic and biofilm cultures using MIC, MBC, microscopy and aggregation efficiency. Bactericidal effects were found in both planktonic cultures and biofilms, although higher concentrations of manuka honey were needed to inhibit biofilms. Abrogation of adherence and intercellular aggregation was observed. Manuka honey permeated 24 h established biofilms of S. pyogenes, resulting in significant cell death and dissociation of cells from the biofilm. Sublethal concentrations of manuka honey effectively prevented the binding of S. pyogenes to the human tissue protein fibronectin, but did not inhibit binding to fibrinogen. The observed inhibition of fibronectin binding confirmed by a reduction in the expression of genes encoding two major fibronectin-binding streptococcal surface proteins, Sof and SfbI. These findings indicate that manuka honey has potential in the topical treatment of wounds containing S. pyogenes.

The sentence in bold pretty much says it. Using honey, specifically the honey from made from bees foraging on manuka flowers, can kill on one type of bacteria and prevented other bacterial infections. As most of us have read over thee last decade or more, hospital bacterial infections have evolved ( evolution in real measurable time) resistance to antibiotics. Wound healing can thus take longer and in some case progress to the point where they never quite heal as they should. It has been known by way of folk medicine for years that honey has healing or more appropriately antibacterial properties. That science is proving this down to the exact honey may mean a lot fewer infections, and infections that heal faster and better.

Precipitous declines in formerly common mammals in Everglades National Park have been linked to the presence of invasive Burmese pythons, according to a study by Davidson Associate Professor of Biology Michael Dorcas and colleagues published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The study, the first to document the ecological impacts of this invasive species, strongly supports that animal communities in the 1.5-million-acre park have been markedly altered by the introduction of pythons within 11 years of their establishment as an invasive species. Mid-sized mammals are the most dramatically affected, but some Everglades pythons are as large as 16 feet long, and their prey have included animals as large as deer and alligators.

“The magnitude of these declines underscores the apparent incredible density of pythons in Everglades National Park and justifies the argument for more intensive investigation into their ecological effects, as well as the development of effective control methods,” said Dorcas, lead author of the study and author of the 2010 book Invasive Pythons in the United States.

He continued, “Such severe declines in easily seen mammals bode poorly for the many species of conservation concern that are more difficult to sample but that may also be vulnerable to python predation.”

The most severe declines, including a nearly complete disappearance of raccoons, rabbits and opossums, have occurred in the remote southernmost regions of the park, where pythons have been established the longest. In this area, populations of raccoons dropped 99.3 percent, opossums 98.9 percent and bobcats 87.5 percent. Marsh and cottontail rabbits, as well as foxes, were not seen at all.

In a comparison of ecological devastation by invasive exotic species  scientist Robert Reed noted that it took 30 years for the brown treesnake, an introduced species, to be implicated in the complete extinction of mammals and birds on the island of Guam. While it appears that it has only taken 11 years since biologists noted the increased presence of pythons to see their link with severe mammal declines. While there is little chance that raccoons will become extinct, the snakes show a real threat to the opossum – America’s only marsupial and to foxes and bob cats. The snakes have the advantage of what could be called native animal naivete. These same animals are aware of and avoid native snakes and other predators well enough to maintain their numbers. They are not aware of how to deal with pythons.

Cheap, Sustainable Water Filter Made from Seeds and Sand

“The idea is that as long as people have [ordinary] sand and Moringa seeds, they can clean water,” said Stephanie Velegol, a chemical engineer who is leading the Penn State research. Moringa trees are common in many water-stressed regions of Asia, Africa and South America, and one mature tree can produce as many as 15,000 seeds. “We always wanted a sustainable approach,” Velegol told InnovationNewsDaily. She and her colleagues published their research in November, in the journal Langmuir.

To make the antibacterial sand, Velegol’s team crushed Moringa seeds and mixed them with water. After an hour, the team members poured off the water onto some ordinary sand, discarding the solid bits of Moringa. After another hour, they rinsed the sand and found its grains now had active, antibacterial protein from Moringa seeds tightly stuck on their surfaces.

They also found the Moringa-ed sand could now kill E. coli bacteria in water.

Some hurdles remain in working out the bugs of this promising system. They need to test for effectiveness in filtering out other bacteria besides E.coli and the old seed residue itself starts to grow bacteria after 24 hours.

 How Did Whales Evolve?

In 1832, a hill collapsed on the Arkansas property of Judge H. Bry and exposed a long sequence of 28 of the circular bones. He thought they might be of scientific interest and sent a package to the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia. No one quite knew what to make of them. Some of the sediment attached to the bone contained small shells that showed that the large creature had once lived in an ancient sea, but little more could be said with any certainty.

Bry’s donation was soon matched, and even exceeded, by that of Judge John Creagh from Alabama. He had found vertebrae and other fragments while blasting on his property and also sent off a few samples to the Philadelphia society. Richard Harlan reviewed the fossils, which were unlike any he had seen before. He asked for more bones, and Creagh soon sent parts of the skull, jaws, limbs, ribs, and backbone of the enigmatic creature. Given that both Creagh and Bry said they had seen intact vertebral columns in excess of 100 feet in length, the living creature must have been one of the largest vertebrates to have ever lived. But what kind of animal was it?

An illustration of German-born fossil collector Albert Koch's "Hydrarchos" as it appeared on display. From Fowler, O.S. 1846. The American Phrenological Journal and Miscellany, Vol. 8. New York: Fowler & Wells

It was not uncommon at the time of these inland whale fossil discoveries to be thought of as dinosaurs or reptiles. In 1839  paleontologist Richard Owen, in a very careful examination of the unique teeth showed that they had to belong to some kind of mammal.

A startling discovery made in the arid sands of Pakistan announced by University of Michigan paleontologists Philip Gingerich and Donald Russell in 1981 finally delivered the transitional form scientists had been hoping for. In freshwater sediments dating to about 53 million years ago, the researchers recovered the fossils of an animal they called Pakicetus inachus. Little more than the back of the animal’s skull had been recovered, but it possessed a feature that unmistakably connected it to cetaceans.

Cetaceans, like many other mammals, have ear bones enclosed in a dome of bone on the underside of their skulls called the auditory bulla. Where whales differ is that the margin of the dome closest to the midline of the skull, called the involucrum, is extremely thick, dense, and highly mineralized. This condition is called pachyosteosclerosis, and whales are the only mammals known to have such a heavily thickened involucrum. The skull of Pakicetus exhibited just this condition.

 Colored  Scanning  Electron Micro- graph  (SEM)  of  mitochondria and smooth endoplasmic reticulum in an    ovarian granulosa – lutein  cell.

Via here Flying People Spotted Over New York City…Film At Nine

In a recent publicity venture for their new movie “Chronicle”, 20th Century Fox enlisted the help of viral marketing agency Thinkmodo to design and execute a rather unique campaign element that surely caused several doubletakes over the New York City skyline.

Who knows if this stunt will help sell movie tickets. The reaction to the flying “people” is an interesting study in mass psychology.

Little River Between Mountains wallpaper

Heart of silk – Max Planck scientists use silk from the tasar silkworm as a scaffold for heart tissue

Of all the body’s organs, the human heart is probably the one most primed for performance and efficiency. Decade after decade, it continues to pump blood around our bodies. However, this performance optimisation comes at a high price: over the course of evolution, almost all of the body’s own regeneration mechanisms in the heart have become deactivated. As a result, a heart attack is a very serious event for patients; dead cardiac cells are irretrievably lost. The consequence of this is a permanent deterioration in the heart’s pumping power and in the patient’s quality of life.

In their attempt to develop a treatment for the repair of cardiac tissue, scientists are pursuing the aim of growing replacement tissue in the laboratory, which could then be used to produce replacement patches for the repair of damaged cardiac muscle. The reconstruction of a three-dimensional structure poses a challenge here. Experiments have already been carried out with many different materials that could provide a scaffold substance for the loading of cardiac muscle cells.

“Whether natural or artificial in origin, all of the tested fibres had serious disadvantages,” says Felix Engel, Research Group Leader at the Max Planck Institute for Heart and Lung Research in Bad Nauheim. “They were either too brittle, were attacked by the immune system or did not enable the heart muscle cells to adhere correctly to the fibres.” However, the scientists have now found a possible solution in Kharagpur, India.

At the university there, coin-sized disks are being produced from the cocoon of the tasar silkworm (Antheraea mylitta). According to Chinmoy Patra, an Indian scientist who now works in Engel’s laboratory, the fibre produced by the tasar silkworm displays several advantages over the other substances tested. “The surface has protein structures that facilitate the adhesion of heart muscle cells. It’s also coarser than other silk fibres.” This is the reason why the muscle cells grow well on it and can form a three-dimensional tissue structure. “The communication between the cells was intact and they beat synchronously over a period of 20 days, just like real heart muscle,” says Engel.

Despite these promising results, clinical application of the fibre is not currently on the agenda. “Unlike in our study, which we carried out using rat cells, the problem of obtaining sufficient human cardiac cells as starting material has not yet been solved,” says Engel. It is thought that the patient’s own stem cells could be used as starting material to avoid triggering an immune reaction. However, exactly how the conversion of the stem cells into cardiac muscle cells works remains a mystery.

On can imagine the scene. Some crazy bleeding heart wildlife biodiversity activists waving their signs. The usual chorus of scientifically illiterate anti-conservation zealots regurgitating the same tiresome epitaphs at the protesters. For what. For trying to save the silkworms that might some day save the ignorant zealots that see no value in nature.

Ecology Center issues non-lead wheel weight info

The Non-Lead Wheel Weight Legislation packet was unveiled today by The Ecology Center. The Ecology Center is a leading group behind the lead-based wheel weight debate.

The group will circulate the packet through state legislatures throughout the first quarter of 2012. The Ecology Center expects the packet to make a significant impact with the issue of lead-based wheel weights.

The Ecology Center says that lead wheel balancing weights remain one of the largest ongoing uses and releases of lead into the environment in the United States. The vast majority of vehicles in the U.S still have lead-based wheel weights.

Internationally, the use of lead wheel weights has been banned in the European Union since 2005. In the U.S., the EPA has yet to implement any regulation of lead-wheel weight use.

However, to date seven states (Minnesota, Maine, Washington, Illinois, New York, Vermont and California) have implemented policies to phase-out the use of lead wheel weights.

I did not realize those little weights were among the biggest contributors to lead being introduced into the environment. Two other sources are the use of lead sinkers on fishing line, and lead shot in shotgun shells are also a source. In all three instance the lead ends up in the water supply via runoff or in soil where it leeches into either aquifers or nearby rivers and lakes. Children can end up ingesting it directly, but lead also makes its way into the diets of fish and wildlife.

A Plea for Southern Treasures. Among the natural national treasures under threat are a four-lane highway that threatens the Chilowee Mountain area, the site of Ocoee Lake in Tennessee. A 10,000-acre refuge north of Atlanta called Dawson Forest in Georgia. Dawson basin is threatened by coal ash ponds and by the water withdrawals by power plants, hydroelectric damns and reservoirs. The North Carolina Piedmont is currently in good shape for an area east of the Mississippi. That may change as permits for new fracking projects are approved. The Savannah National Wildlife Refuge in South Carolina is threatened by plans to dredge the Savannah River in order to make it deep enough attracting the larger container ships. The increased saltwater brought about by the dredging would destroy about 10 percent of the freshwater marsh. It might also be the tipping point for losing two species.  On the outer edge of the Great Smoky Mountains, in the Cherokee National Forest the Chilhowee Mountain is under threat by the revived plans to build a highway between Chattanooga and Asheville, which are already connected by Interstates 75 and 40. The Chesapeake bay has been under threat and severely degraded for decades. It once teamed with so much sea life that it supported hundreds of full-time watermen. Now it supports dozens. The Farm Bureau and the National Association of Home Builders have filed suit to challenge pollution control measures which were making slow progress in the bay’s recovery. The Virginia Uranium Inc is also putting pressure on to remove uranium mining restrictions. Even a tiny uranium pollution incident could spoil the Bay but drinking water for over a millions residents. Last but not least all the mountain tops in Virginia and Tennessee. That’s right. Mining companies are pushing for so many mountain top removal permits to get at coal reserves that the mountain areas in those two states could end up looking like some horrific landscape in a science fiction movie.

Individuals can write letters and send e-mails, but that has only limited impact. There are state level organizations and national organizations to join. When those organization act, politicians know they represent thousands, sometimes tens of thousands of citizens.

Climate Deniers Hit New Low With Vicious Attacks on Scientists

The climate deniers are kicking puppies now.

That was my reaction when I heard that Katharine Hayhoe was being deluged with hate mail after stories surfaced that she had written a chapter on climate change for Newt Gingrich’s upcoming book, a chapter quickly dropped when conservative commentators began making a big fuss about it. Similar attacks have been leveled against MIT scientist Kerry Emanuel following his speech at a forum for Republicans concerned about climate change. The “frenzy of hate” he’s received include threats to his wife.

Anyone who has ever listened to Hayhoe would be as sickened as I was over the vitriolic attacks she has endured in the past week. Being both a climate scientist and an evangelical Christian, Hayhoe speaks to faith communities, explaining the science of climate change in easy-to-understand language and also offering the spiritual perspective on global warming: What would Jesus do about climate change?

That is one way to win. Intimidate the people who speak the truth so that people who already have tremendous wealth and power can have even more of the same.

Stunning Images of Rare Albino Hummingbird: Big Pic

These shots of an extremely rare albino ruby-throated hummingbird were photographed by two Virginia teenagers and two preteens: Marlin Shank, 16, Shaphan Shank, 14, Darren Shank, 12 and Allen Shank, 9.

The Shank brothers spotted the rare bird with their father Kevin Shank, who runs Nature Friend Magazine with his wife Bethany.

These photos are stunning, well worth the seconds it takes to click over.

The answer to Friday’s science question: Name five basic functions of the human kidney in two to ten words each.

1. excretion of waste products, water-soluble toxic substances and drugs. This process is easily disrupted or even shut down by toxins in drinking water or food. Even trace amounts can, over time, lead to kidney disease and failure.
2. regulation of the water and salt content of the body

3. retention of substances vital to the body such as protein and glucose. One of the effects of diabetes is the stress on kidneys’ by accumulation of glucose.

4. maintenance of pH balance. Humans and all mammals for that matter have a very narrow range of tolerance for acid-base balance or pH in their blood stream.

5.  endocrine function. The kidneys accomplish some of their functions via endocrine hormone coordination.

Situated in shallow clear water, most coral reefs are visible to satellites that use passive remote sensing to observe Earth’s surface. But coral reefs are complex ecosystems with coincident coral species, sand, and water all reflecting light. Dustan found that currently orbiting satellites do not offer the spatial or spectral resolution needed to distinguish between them and specifically classify coral reef composition. So instead of attempting to classify the inherently complex coral ecosystem to monitor their health, Dustan has instead started to look for change—how overall reflectance for a geographic location varies over time.

Dustan uses a time series of Landsat data to calculate something called temporal texture¬—basically a map showing where change has occurred based on statistical analysis of reflectance information. While Dustan cannot diagnosis the type of change with temporal texture he can establish where serious changes have occurred. Coral communities have seasonal rhythms and periodicities, but larger, significant changes show up as statistical outliers in temporal texture maps and often correlate with reef decline.

The Landsat data confirm quantitative field study of coral health at Carysfort reef. Between the first field study in 1974 and over the next twenty-five years  coral had declined 92 percent. That decline is due to several factors environmental stress factors , including pollution, culminating with diseases that kill the weakened coral.

Dustan tested this work in the U.S. because he had a robust study site and because prior to 1999 coverage of reefs outside of the U.S. was spotty. With the Landsat 7 launch in 1999 a new global data acquisition strategy was established and for the first time the planet’s coral reefs were systematically and regularly imaged, greatly increasing our knowledge of reefs.

Carysfort Reef is located in the eastern portion of the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, offshore of Key Largo. Credit: NOAA

Larger image. Carysfort is just to the west of where the map reads Atlantic Ocean.

Reef environments provide habitat for hundreds of fish species including the butterflyfish shown here in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. Credit: Chris Huss.

Larger image.

Spiders Hunt Prey With Unique Vision Traits

Jumping spiders, which hunt by pouncing on their prey, gauge distances to their unsuspecting meals in a way that appears to be unique in the animal kingdom, a new study finds.

The superability boils down to seeing green, the researchers found.

There are several different visual systems that organisms use to accurately and reliably judge distance and depth. Humans, for example, have binocular stereovision. Because our eyes are spaced apart, they receive visual information from different angles, which our brains use to automatically triangulate distances. Other animals, such as insects, adjust the focal length of the lenses in their eyes, or move their heads side to side to create an effect called motion parallax — nearer objects will move across their field of vision more quickly than objects farther away.

However, jumping spiders (Hasarius adansoni) lack any kind of focal adjustment system, have eyes that are too close together for binocular stereovision and don’t appear to use motion parallax while hunting. So how are these creatures able to perceive depth?

Researchers in Japan have now discovered that the arachnids accurately sense distances by comparing a blurry version of an image with a clear one, a method called image defocus.

Jumping spiders have four eyes densely packed in a row: two large principal eyes and two small lateral eyes. The spider uses its lateral eyes to sense the motion of an object, such as a fly, which it then zeros in on using its principal eyes, Akihisa Terakita, a biologist at Osaka City University in Japan and lead author of the new study, explained….

Note the four little beads on the spider's head are its eyes

In one college lab we were divided up into small groups where our assignment consisted of building a terrarium of local plant and animal life. I caught a couple small spiders that were jumping around on the sandy shore of a local lake. In addition to packing the terrarium we were supposed to identify and write up as much as we could about every living thing in the little ecological worlds that now existed in our tanks. So to get a better look at the spiders we placed them in a covered culture dish so we could get a close look under a stereo microscope. Getting a good look at the eyes of our spiders was a fascinating discovery. Seeing pictures and video is great, but not quite up to the experience of seeing the spider’s unique anatomical features up close.

Grape seed extract kills head and neck cancer cells, leaves healthy cells unharmed

Nearly 12,000 people will die of head and neck cancer in the United States this year and worldwide cases will exceed half a million.

A study published this week in the journal Carcinogenesis shows that in both cell lines and mouse models, grape seed extract (GSE) kills head and neck squamous cell carcinoma cells, while leaving healthy cells unharmed.

“It’s a rather dramatic effect,” says Rajesh Agarwal, PhD, investigator at the University of Colorado Cancer Center and professor at the Skaggs School of Pharmaceutical Sciences.

It depends in large part, says Agarwal, on a healthy cell’s ability to wait out damage.

“Cancer cells are fast-growing cells,” Agarwal says. “Not only that, but they are necessarily fast growing. When conditions exist in which they can’t grow, they die.”

Grape seed extract creates these conditions that are unfavorable to growth. Specifically, the paper shows that grape seed extract both damages cancer cells’ DNA (via increased reactive oxygen species) and stops the pathways that allow repair (as seen by decreased levels of the DNA repair molecules Brca1 and Rad51 and DNA repair foci).

Fascinating news, but the usual caveat; let’s consult with our doctors before we go off on some self administered cancer treatment. Thus far they have only tested this treatment on cell lines and mice.

Peninsula cooter Pseudemys peninsularis is a species of freshwater turtle. native to the Florida peninsula. very attractive fresh water turtles. If they fell safe in a relatively undisturbed area they enjoy a nice bask in the sun. In an otherwise great data base, I could not find them in the Online Turtle Taxonomic Literature Database and PDF Library.

This week’s science question: Name the five basic functions of the human kidney in two to ten words each. Unless I forget I’ll post the answers Monday.

Mountain Cliff Fall wallpaper

I just checked my archives and this blog is going to be six years old in March with over 1885 posts and over 2.3 million visitors and counting ( thanks for dropping by). That’s also a lot of wallpapers. As much as I like doing them I’ve decided to scale back posting the wallpapers to Monday, Wednesday and Friday. I will still be posting pictures, graphs and plan to continue putting up more videos. So it’s not like there will not be plenty of nature and science eye candy to enjoy.

They’ve Done It Again: An Albatross Chick

To the delight of scientists, a pair of lovers returned to Hawaii this year for what might turn out to be an annual sojourn. The two birds are endangered short-tailed albatrosses, and for the second time in the species’ recorded history, they nested there, producing a chick on American soil.

Most short-tailed albatrosses breed on a volcanic island in Japan, and scientists hope they are seeing the beginning of a new breeding colony that could help ensure the species’ survival in the event of a catastrophic eruption.

A short-tailed albatross with its newborn chick. Photo- Pete Leary/U.S.F.W.S.A

It’s a little scary that a good-sized volcanic eruption could wipe out the short-tailed albatross (or Steller’s Albatross, Phoebastria albatrus) species. Until the turn of the 20th century there were millions of short-tailed albatrosses. A small population was rediscovered of about 40 individuals. While they are still not up to the millions yet, that small population discovered on a Japanese island has grown to 3,000 individuals. A precarious success story, but one conservationists can take pride in.

Amazon rainforest mapped in unprecedented detail

Scientists record Amazon’s structure and biodiversity by bouncing laser beams off forest 400,000 times per second.

“[It's] the critical information that’s missing for managing these systems, for conserving them and for developing policy to better utilise the Amazon basin as a resource, while still protecting what it has in terms of its biological diversity.”

As well as measuring how the forest ecosystem is responding to the 2010 Amazon drought – the worst ever recorded – the technology accurately monitors deforestation and degradation, and has revealed unexpectedly high levels of biodiversity in high forest on the Andean rim of the Amazon basin.

The data could prove critical to the United Nation’s Redd (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) initiative, which will be the biggest future source of funding to protect the planet’s tropical forest.

The programme is designed to compensate tropical countries for reducing deforestation and forest degradation.

The still photo just doesn’t do justice to the detail, but there is one at the link for those who might be interested.

Fluidi Electric scooter taxi

French designer Arthur Kenzo, focusing on a concept of a new electric scooter taxi called “Fluidi”, a name inspired by the fundamental idea of flow and safety at the base of the project. Arthur Kenzo, in collaboration with a team of five students, has developed with creativity, based on a model of scooter with cabin, this new mean of transport with futuristic shape and design, which due to its small size and an aluminum structure, allows quick and agile movements even in the chaotic city streets, with attention to the environment and reduced consumption. Small dimensions that don’t affect the interior space, in fact they allow you to carry, comfortably and safety, a passenger and all his luggage, functioning as taxi, or use the entire space available for the carriage of goods of various kinds.

An interesting addition to a new way of thinking about getting around in urban and highly congested suburban areas using a minimal amount of energy.

Sadly the media who are supposed to serve as unbiased watchdogs Has Not Given Equal Time to Those Opposing Keystone Pipeline

A Media Matters analysis shows that as a whole, news coverage of the Keystone XL pipeline between August 1 and December 31 favored pipeline proponents. Although the project would create few long-term employment opportunities, the pipeline was primarily portrayed as a jobs issue. Pro-pipeline voices were quoted more frequently than those opposed, and dubious industry estimates of job creation were uncritically repeated 5 times more often than they were questioned. Meanwhile, concerns about the State Department’s review process and potential environmental consequences were often overlooked, particularly by television outlets.

Pro-Pipeline Voices Were Quoted More Frequently

All But Two Major News Outlets Quoted More Pipeline Supporters Than Opponents. With the exceptions of USA Today and the Los Angeles Times, every news outlet included in this study quoted or hosted more people in favor of the pipeline than opposed.

BROADCAST: Among the broadcast networks, 79% of those quoted or interviewed were in favor of the pipeline. NBC and ABC did not quote anyone opposed.

CABLE: On Fox News, 66% of those quoted or hosted were in favor and 13% were opposed. CNN featured 54% in favor and only 14% opposed. MSNBC was the most balanced, with 38% in favor and 31% opposed.

PRINT: Of those quoted by the major newspapers, 45% were in favor of the pipeline and 31% were opposed. The New York Times was the most balanced, quoting 35% in favor and 27% opposed. The Wall Street Journal was the least balanced, with 52% in favor and 21% opposed.

Op-Eds/Editorials Supporting Keystone XL Outweighed Those Opposed. The editorial boards of the Washington Post, USA Today, and the Wall Street Journal have come out in favor of the Keystone XL pipeline. Those three newspapers published 16 op-eds or editorials supporting the pipeline and only one opposed.

The media, by way of their bias toward the pipeline are doing a disservice to the public by perpetuating the myth that the XL will be a great job creator. Congress also has its biases, with Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) having invested in XL stocks.

For those that stop by here in the morning, enjoy some inspiration to get off to a positive start, Together We Can – Wildlife Music Video Celebrating the Biodiversity of Our World