Eastern ecosystems good at storing carbon, USGS report says
Washington (UPI) Jun 26, 2013 -
Forests, wetlands and other ecosystems in the eastern United States naturally store close to 15 percent of the national emissions each year, a study finds.
The U.S. Geological Survey published a study showing eastern ecosystems can store 1.1 billion tons of carbon dioxide each year. That's about 15 percent of what the Environmental Protection Agency estimates the country emits each year ...
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Paid holidays for Chinese dissidents -- with minders
Beijing (AFP) June 26, 2014 -
As top Communist leaders gathered in Beijing, veteran Chinese political activist He Depu was obliged to leave town - for an all-expenses-paid holiday to the tropical island of Hainan, complete with police escorts.
It is an unusual method of muzzling dissent, but He is one of dozens of campaigners who rights groups say have been forced on vacation - sometimes featuring luxurious hotels besi ...
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Mideast crisis exposes failure to build democracy: official
Geneva (AFP) June 26, 2014 -
The surging crisis in Iraq and battles over democracy in Arab Spring nations have exposed the failure of the international community to help lay political foundations, a top official says.
In a wide-ranging interview, Anders Johnsson said global players have repeatedly got the recipe wrong by seeing elections as the end of a process rather than the beginning.
Johnsson, a Swede, heads the ...
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Latvia orders pig cull to stem African swine fever
Riga (AFP) June 27, 2014 -
Latvia ordered a cull of pigs and a 40-day ban on public events in its eastern district of Latgale on Friday amid an outbreak of African swine fever.
The disease was detected on Thursday evening when three wild boar were found dead by border guards near the Belarus border, the State Food and Veterinary Service said.
Tests showed two of the boar were infected with the disease, which is ha ...
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New heat stroke guidelines: cool first then transport
Washington (UPI) Jun 27, 2013 -
As summer football practices approach - and eventually late summer "two-a-days" - the National Athletic Trainers' Association (NATA) thought it was a good time to update their guidelines for preventing and treating heat stroke.
An average of 12 high school and college football players die each year on the field, but most fatalities originate on the practice field, not on game day - t ...
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US begins 'unprecedented' auction of Silk Road bitcoins
Washington (AFP) June 27, 2014 -
The bitcoin world kicked into high gear Friday as the US government began auctioning some of the virtual currency seized in an FBI investigation of dark Web bazaar Silk Road.
The US Marshals Service auction was taking place until 2200 GMT for 29,000 bitcoins - about $17 million at current rates, although bitcoin values have been highly volatile.
Bidders had to register last week with a ...
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UNDP and Iran team to save Asiatic cheetah
Tehran (UPI) Jun 26, 2013 -
Iranian environmental officials are working with the United Nations to help save the Asiatic cheetah.
Though they once roamed much of the Middle East and Asia, there are now only approximately 50 Asiatic cheetahs, all confined the northeast regions of Iran.
That's why the U.N. Development Program has begun working with Iran's Department of Environment to raise awareness of the ch ...
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Moths and other pollinators have trouble finding food amid vehicle exhaust
Seattle (UPI) Jun 27, 2013 -
For years, regulators have tried to curb car and truck exhaust to promote healthier lungs and a cleaner environment. But new research suggests vehicle fumes do more than warm the planet and encourage asthma. They also mask the smells of crops and flowers, disorienting pollinators, like moths, in search of food.
Moths, butterflies, bees, and other pollinators are attracted to the floral ...
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Scientists discover oldest reef constructed by animals
Windhoek, Namibia (UPI) Jun 27, 2013 -
Scientists say they've located the oldest animal-built reef on Earth among the dry, land-locked sands of Namibia, evidence of the first animals to barricade themselves behind hard, protective shells.
It's often said that technology mimics nature, but nearly as often, nature mimics nature. Such was the case 550 million years ago, scientists say, when coral-like creatures called Cloudina ...
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Familiar yet strange: Water's 'split personality' revealed by computer model
Princeton NJ (SPX) Jun 25, 2014 -
Seemingly ordinary, water has quite puzzling behavior. Why, for example, does ice float when most liquids crystallize into dense solids that sink? Using a computer model to explore water as it freezes, a team at Princeton University has found that water's weird behaviors may arise from a sort of split personality: at very cold temperatures and above a certain pressure, water may spontaneously sp ...
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Reorganization of crop production and trade could save China's water supply
Princeton NJ (SPX) Jun 30, 2014 -
China's rapid socioeconomic growth continues to tax national water resources - especially in the agricultural sector - due to increasing demands for food. And, because of the country's climate and geography, irrigation is now widespread, burdening rivers and groundwater supplies.
One solution to these growing problems, however, might be to reorganize the country's crop production and trade ...
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Can Coral Save Our Oceans?
Tel Aviv, Israel (SPX) Jun 30, 2014 -
Coral reefs are home to a rich and diverse ecosystem, providing a habitat for a wide range of marine animals. But the increasing acidification of ocean water is jeopardizing the calcified foundations of these reefs, endangering the survival of thousands upon thousands of resident species.
New research by Prof. Yehuda Benayahu, Dr. Zehava Barkay, Prof. Maoz Fine, and their jointly supervise ...
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Incentives as effective as penalties for slowing Amazon deforestation
Blacksburg VA (SPX) Jun 30, 2014 -
The rate of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has declined. An international team of scientists, including one from Virginia Tech, reviewed published research about policy interventions and commodity market effects, and determined that positive incentives for farmers, counties, and states can do as much to preserve forests as public policies that call for penalties.
"The challenge now ...
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Bizarre parasite from the Jurassic
Bonn, Germany (SPX) Jun 30, 2014 -
Around 165 million years ago, a spectacular parasite was at home in the freshwater lakes of present-day Inner Mongolia (China): A fly larva with a thorax formed entirely like a sucking plate. With it, the animal could adhere to salamanders and suck their blood with its mouthparts formed like a sting. To date no insect is known that is equipped with a similar specialised design. The international ...
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How repeatable is evolutionary history?
St. Louis MO (SPX) Jun 30, 2014 -
Writing about the weird soft-bodied fossils found in the Burgess Shale in the Canadian Rockies, paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould noted that of 25 initial body plans exhibited by the fossils, all but four were quickly eliminated. If we rewound the tape, he asked, and cast the dice once more, would the same four body plans be selected? He thought it unlikely.
We can't repeat the Burgess Shal ...
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Natural resources worth more than US$40 trillion must be accounted for
Norwich, UK (SPX) Jun 30, 2014 -
Governments and companies must do more to account for their impact and dependence on the natural environment - according to researchers at the University of East Anglia. New research published in the journal Nature Climate Change reveals that although some companies like Kering, a group which includes Puma and Gucci, are leading the way, more needs to be done to foster a sustainable green econom ...
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Study links Greenland ice sheet collapse, sea level rise 400,000 years ago
Corvallis OR (SPX) Jun 30, 2014 -
A new study suggests that a warming period more than 400,000 years ago pushed the Greenland ice sheet past its stability threshold, resulting in a nearly complete deglaciation of southern Greenland and raising global sea levels some 4-6 meters. The study is one of the first to zero in on how the vast Greenland ice sheet responded to warmer temperatures during that period, which were caused by ch ...
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We Can Eliminate the Major Tornado Threat in Tornado Alley
Philadelphia PA (SPX) Jun 30, 2014 -
The annually recurring devastating tornado attacks in US Tornado Alley raise an important question: Can we eliminate the major tornado threat in Tornado Alley? Some people may claim that such a question is beyond imagination as people are powerless in facing violent tornadoes.
However, according to Professor Rongjia Tao's recent publication in IJMPB, human beings are not powerless on this ...
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Straw albedo mitigates extreme heat
Los Angeles CA (SPX) Jun 29, 2014 -
Wheat fields are often tilled immediately after the crop is harvested, removing the light-coloured stubble and crop residues from the soil surface and bringing dark bare earth to the top. Post-harvest tilling is a widely practised and common management technique in Europe. However, ploughed fields can have a negative effect on the local climate during a heat wave.
This effect was addressed ...
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Are Fish Near Extinction?
Tel Aviv, Israel (SPX) Jun 30, 2014 -
"An end to seafood by 2050?" "Fish to disappear by 2050?" These sensational media Are Fish Near Extinction?s were the result of a 2010 report by the United Nations Environment Program, declaring that over-fishing and pollution had nearly emptied the world's fish stocks. That scarcity portends disaster for over a billion people around the world who are dependent on fish for their main source of p ...
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ADS unveils multi-satellite Direct Receiving Station for GeoNorth
Fairbanks, AK (SPX) Jun 26, 2014 -
Airbus Defense and Space and its client GeoNorth have inaugurated the first commercially available multi-satellite Direct Receiving Station (DRS) in the world, set to give a host of new markets quick access to both high-resolution and very high-resolution optical and radar satellite imagery.
The DRS in Fairbanks, Alaska, will give GeoNorth the unparalleled capability of priority tasking th ...
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ADS unveils multi-satellite Direct Receiving Station for GeoNorth
Fairbanks, AK (SPX) Jun 26, 2014 -
Airbus Defense and Space and its client GeoNorth have inaugurated the first commercially available multi-satellite Direct Receiving Station (DRS) in the world, set to give a host of new markets quick access to both high-resolution and very high-resolution optical and radar satellite imagery.
The DRS in Fairbanks, Alaska, will give GeoNorth the unparalleled capability of priority tasking th ...
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SSTL announces the successful launch of KazEOSat-2
Guildford, UK (SPX) Jun 26, 2014 -
Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd (SSTL) has announced the successful launch of KazEOSat-2, a medium resolution Earth observation satellite for the Republic of Kazakhstan. The spacecraft was launched into a 630km sun-synchronous orbit on board a DNEPR rocket from Yasny in Russia.
Following confirmation of separation from the launch vehicle, the ground station at the newly built satellite ope ...
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Scientists say decaying dark matter might be responsible for x-ray emission
Cambridge, Mass. (UPI) Jun 25, 2013 -
Dark matter is everywhere. According to astronomers, it makes up some 80 percent of all matter in the universe. But since it doesn't absorb or emit light, scientists have never seen dark matter. They don't even know what it is exactly.
But a recent spike of x-rays originating from 70 different galaxy clusters has some scientists excited at the off chance it's a signal from decaying dark ...
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Scientists say decaying dark matter might be responsible for x-ray emission
Cambridge, Mass. (UPI) Jun 25, 2013 -
Dark matter is everywhere. According to astronomers, it makes up some 80 percent of all matter in the universe. But since it doesn't absorb or emit light, scientists have never seen dark matter. They don't even know what it is exactly.
But a recent spike of x-rays originating from 70 different galaxy clusters has some scientists excited at the off chance it's a signal from decaying dark ...
more
