Earth and Science News- Earth and Science Videos and News // Current

^#61

On Thinner Ice: New photography project provides stark proof of melting glaciers on the roof of ...

Hover your mouse into the picture to see the difference. Excerpt: "Global warming is melting 18,000 Himalayan glaciers... more

lookatmypix
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4 comments

3 days ago

^#62

A message from Dr. Vandana Shiva: help us fight for the truth

ttp://truefoodnow.org/campaigns/messagefromvandanashiv/

Have you seen this advertisement? Couched deep within the green-washed rhetoric of a recent Monsanto ad is an egregious claim:

Producing more. Conserving more. Improving farmers’ lives. That’s sustainable agriculture. And that’s what Monsanto is all about.

Oh, really?

While the mainstream media and Big Ag pundits seem all too happy to watch how Monsanto and other biotech companies spin and co-opt the term “sustainability,” we at the Center for Food Safety (CFS) are on the front lines fighting against the corporate take-over of our food, farms, and future; advocating for REAL, sustainable, solutions to the problems of the biotech industrial agriculture model.

Over the next month, CFS will be bringing you videos from some experts with whom we work closely in the trenches—Michael Pollan, Vandana Shiva, Anna Lappé, and CFS’s Executive Director Andrew Kimbrell—to help us tell you the real truth about the false claims put forth by Monsanto and other biotech companies. We’ll share with you why these leading activists support the work of the Center for Food Safety.

CFS has been fighting on your behalf since 1997. We have accomplished a lot – we’ve stopped GMO crops including wheat, rice, and alfalfa, and also dangerous pharmaceutical-producing crops. We’ve beat Monsanto in the courts, but they have the substantial resources to continue to challenge CFS; just this week, they asked for the U.S. Supreme Court to consider yet another appeal of our successful lawsuit stopping GMO alfalfa.

We can only accomplish these victories with the support of members like you. Please join Vandana Shiva in supporting our work, to raise the funds we need to continue to fight Monsanto in the courts, and to combat the twisted version of “sustainability” biotech company marketers are trying to foist on the world. We need your help, right now, to raise our goal of $100,000 this Fall — less than the amount Monsanto spent on just ONE AD on the back page of The New Yorker (about $140,000), to support our important workttp://truefoodnow.org/campaigns/messagefromvandanashiv/ Have you seen this advertisement? Couched deep within the green-washed... more

JanforGore
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3 comments

18 days ago

^#63

First sub to reach ocean's deepest point

A robotic vehicle named Nereus has made one of the deepest ocean dives ever — 6.8 miles (10,902 meters), a team of... more

sk8r408
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0 comments

6 months ago

^#64

Find DARPA's Balloons, Win $40K

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency today offered up a rather interesting challenge: find and plot 10 red weather... more

Tyrannous
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1 comment

22 days ago

^#65

no reason: a world on the verge of water bankruptcy

No reason. We decide our fate.

JanforGore
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1 comment

1 day ago

^#66

Health Care Reform: Scrap GMOs

With a growing body of new scientific evidence behind them, experts say that any acceptance of the safety of GMOs flies in the... more

NonGMOTalk
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0 comments

6 months ago

^#67

Soros: "I'm having a very good crisis"

A hedge fund manager who predicted the global credit crunch has said the financial crisis has been 'stimulating' and the... more

PatrioticAstronaut
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0 comments

8 months ago

^#68

ABRA-CADAVER -- PLASTIC PEOPLE HARDLY A MAGICAL FORM OF ENTERTAINMENT!

Bodies in a suspended state of plasticine animation. REAL human bodies. We spend big bucks to see them posed in traveling exhibits... more

sfinfgeld2
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0 comments

3 months ago

^#69

We are winning the fight against Genetically Engineered trees

Over 17,500 comments against this monstrosity of nature. Let's keep it coming!

JanforGore
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9 comments

11 days ago

^#70

Loafing Around The House In Sustainable, Biodegradable, Freshly Baked Bread Slippers!

It sure is getting chilly outside, and as the temperatures plunge, the majority of us head to the stores in search of a dandy new... more

sfinfgeld2
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1 comment

11 days ago

^#71

Tamiflu and Swine Flu Vaccine Patient Comments of permanent and serious side effects.

Please spread the word. More and more of us are not falling for this scam.

CarolynGillis
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19 comments

22 days ago

^#72

Is Tobacco the Next Anti-HIV Weapon?

The tobacco plant could soon redeem itself in the eyes of public health experts, say scientists who are producing huge amounts of... more

Anyother
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0 comments

8 months ago

^#73

Transparent metal hints at nature of planets' cores

Transparent aluminium, a sci-fi material brought to 20th century Earth by the crew of The Enterprise in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, turns out to exist after all - if you see in X-rays.

To create this exotic state of matter, researchers at the FLASH facility in Hamburg, Germany, took a thin piece of aluminium foil and blasted it with an X-ray laser that can generate about 10 million gigawatts of power per square centimetre.

At standard temperature and pressure, solid aluminium is a lattice of ions, with a sea of free electrons in between. The FLASH beam had enough energy to knock an electron out of each ion and set it free, while the photon got absorbed in the process.

Normally in a solid metal, another electron will instantly take the place of the missing one. Flash is so powerful that it can rip an electron out of every atom before others have a chance to replace them. With one electron removed, the remaining electrons around each ion settle into a different configuration, becoming too tightly bound for the laser to remove.

That means the X-ray photons can't be easily absorbed, and they fly straight through the material, making the previously opaque aluminium transparent to X-rays.

This state doesn't last long, though. Within fractions of a nanosecond, the energy pumped into the electrons is delivered to the ions, and the ions fly apart violently. "As soon as you make it, the stuff blows up," says Justin Wark of the University of Oxford.

But for an instant, Wark and his team can create a new state of matter that is as dense as ordinary solid matter, but extremely hot. "That is the sort of matter you would get towards the centre of a giant planet," says Wark.

The team hopes to study the properties of this hot, dense matter using new, more powerful lasers such as the Linac Coherent Light Source at Stanford, California. These lasers produce higher-energy X-rays that could probe the structure of the new material and measure its properties – perhaps providing some insight into the heart of Jupiter and the other giant planets.Transparent aluminium, a sci-fi material brought to 20th century Earth by the crew of The Enterprise in Star Trek IV: The Voyage... more

SoundBigfoot
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0 comments

4 months ago

^#74

Waiter, This Wine Is Made In China!

It seems everything these days from an iphone to a pair of H&M linen trousers is made in China... And now there gonna be... more

matlaroche
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2 comments

8 months ago

^#75

Spinal cord device helps Parkinson's disease

Researchers have developed a spinal cord stimulator which has rodents with parkinsons move more easily. "We see an almost... more

stewgame
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0 comments

8 months ago

^#76

Zombies are Eco Friendly

Reduce. Reuse. Reanimate. ha!!! Who says there isn't humor in the environmental movement?

leahl
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12 comments

10 months ago

^#77

No fanfare for China's Three Gorges Dam

As the water level in the reservoir on the Yangtze River approaches its final height of 175 meters, criticism of China's Three Gorges Dam continues.
The completion of Three Gorges is being met with little fanfare, unlike the elaborate celebrations Beijing staged 12 years ago to mark the diversion of the Yangtze on the spot of the future massive dam, Inter Press Service reports.

In China, critics are saying filling of the dam is worsening the drought already affecting the Yangtze's delta. And Chinese diplomats are being met with skepticism in their efforts to promote hydropower across Asia and Africa.

To construct Three Gorges -- the world's largest and most expensive dam -- 1,350 villages were submerged and 1.3 million displaced from their homes. The dam has a capacity of 18,000 megawatts of electricity.

The dam's original cost, when approved in 1992, was estimated at $8.3 billion. That figure has now risen to $27 billion by Beijing's estimate, while other predictions slate the final cost at $88 billion.

"The Three Gorges dam is a model of the past," said Peter Bosshard, the policy director of California-based International Rivers, an organization whose mission is "to protect rivers and the communities that depend on them," Inter Press reports.

"There are smarter ways of generating energy and managing floods than by building outdated mega-projects," said Bosshard.

By blocking the flow of the Yangtze, its ecosystem has been altered to the extent that rare river species of dolphin and sturgeon are now facing extinction. Commercial fisheries along the Yangtze as well as off the river's mouth in the East China Sea have declined. And landslides, pollution of freshwater supplies and a greater risk of earthquakes are among the side effects of the dam.

In September 2007 government officials admitted, "If preventive measures are not taken, there could be an environmental collapse."

Pan Jiazheng, hydrologist with the Chinese Academy of Engineering, maintains that water is the only renewable energy source in China that can be developed on a large scale.

"Developing hydropower is the only viable way to make a dent in China's consumption of coal," Pan told Inter Press. "Those who argue that hydropower is not a clean energy have to ask themselves whether there is any other task more urgent for China's clean development than burning less coal."

Despite domestic and foreign criticism of Three Gorges, China is actively seeking to build hydropower projects in countries ranging from Cambodia to Pakistan to Nigeria.

"It is quasi-science to believe that hydropower equals green energy," said Zheng Yisheng, who researches environment and development at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. "You can't see rivers just as a source of energy and choose to ignore their ecological function as ecosystems. People need energy but they need a place to live, too."As the water level in the reservoir on the Yangtze River approaches its final height of 175 meters, criticism of China's... more

JanforGore
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6 comments

19 days ago

^#78

'Hobbit' Skull Study Finds Hobbit Is Not Human

In a an analysis of the size, shape and asymmetry of the cranium of Homo floresiensis, Karen Baab, Ph.D., a researcher in the... more

sergio80
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6 comments

10 months ago

^#79

Artificial uterus could save grey nurse shark from extinction

Plenty of species have been observed eating their own young. Still other species see their young competing for resources, so only the strongest survive. But the grey nurse shark (Carcharias taurus) takes it a step further: its young have a tendency to eat each other, in utero.

You read that right.

As grisly as it may seem, this reproductive system worked just fine for the grey nurse for millions of years. Until, that is, the rise of modern fishing techniques.

Now, grey nurse sharks are dying faster than they can breed, the victims of drift nets and other commercial by-catch. In Australia, scientists estimate there are just 500 to 1,000 grey nurse sharks left, down from several thousand in the 1980s.

But Nick Otway of the New South Wales Department of Primary Industries has an idea to boost that population. For the last three years, he's researched building an artificial womb that would keep grey nurse pups from eating each other.

Here's how it works in nature: A pregnant grey nurse shark can carry up to 40 embryos in each of its two wombs. When they get large enough, they turn on each other, eating their womb-mates until only one pup is left in each uterus. Under normal conditions, this would create a stable shark population that rarely shrinks or grows.

Otway proposes removing the young before they get to the cannibalistic stage and raising them in artificial uteruses, described as "tubes within tanks." There, they would receive a steady food supply, so they would not need to eat each other, and they would be released nine to 12 months later. Otway told the Sydney Morning Herald in 2006 that "If we can raise about 40 pups a year it will start bringing up the grey nurse population."

It's not an easy process. Otway told the Australian Broadcasting Company that the artificial wombs would need to mimic the environment inside the mother sharks, such as composition of fluids, bacteria, food composition, and temperature, as well as how these factors change through the course of the pregnancy. The scientists also need to master surgical techniques to remove the embryos from the mother and place them into the sterile artificial uteruses.

Will the idea work? Otway and his team successfully tested it last year on dwarf wobbegong sharks (Orectolobus ornatus), a non-endangered species that also raises live pups in its womb. (Although the wobbegong pups tend to eat each other after birth.) Otway has said it could still be years before this technique is perfected, or even tested on a grey nurse.Plenty of species have been observed eating their own young. Still other species see their young competing for resources, so only... more