Bird flu spreads in US, but risk to people 'low'
Miami (AFP) April 22, 2015 -
Bird flu is spreading among wild birds, chickens and turkeys across much of the United States but health authorities said Wednesday there is a low risk of people getting sick.
Since December 2014, cases of the highly pathogenic H5 avian influenza virus have spread through 16 states in the midwestern and western parts of the country, as well as some parts of Canada, infecting nearly seven mil ...
more
First carbon auction to help Australia meet pledge: government
Sydney (AFP) April 23, 2015 -
Australia Thursday said its plan to pay polluters to reduce carbon emissions blamed for climate change was off to a good start and would help the nation become a "world leader" in meeting pledges to tackle greenhouse gases.
The conservative government axed a controversial tax on greenhouse gas emissions last year as part of an election pledge, replacing it with a so-called "direct action" pl ...
more
Japan PM office drone may have been there days: reports
Tokyo (AFP) April 23, 2015 -
A small drone bearing traces of radioactivity that was found on the roof of the Japanese prime minister's office may have been there for days, reports said Thursday.
Staff at the official residence - known as "the Kantei" - discovered the 50-centimetre (20-inch) craft on top of the five-storey structure in central Tokyo Wednesday morning.
A plastic bottle with the internationally-recog ...
more
Hong Kong leader assails 'uncivilised' critics
Hong Kong (AFP) April 23, 2015 -
Hong Kong's chief hit back at "uncivilised" critics on Thursday after he was booed and heckled by local residents as he tried to promote a newly unveiled, Beijing-backed plan for leadership elections in 2017.
The roadmap for the city's first ever public vote for its chief executive was announced on Wednesday. It conforms to a controversial ruling from Beijing stipulating that candidates must ...
more
Canada will match other industrialized nations' CO2 cuts: PM
Ottawa (AFP) April 23, 2015 -
Canada will set a target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions that will be "similar" to those of other industrialized nations, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Thursday after the country published higher historical emissions data.
The new target, he said, would be announced in May.
"It's unlikely our targets will be exactly the same as the United States, but they will be targets of si ...
more
Fast access to CryoSat's Arctic ice measurements now available
Paris (ESA) Apr 23, 2015 -
ESA's ice mission has become the first satellite to provide information on Arctic sea-ice thickness in near-real time to aid maritime activities in the polar region. Marking five years in orbit just last week, CryoSat is the first mission to deliver complete maps of Arctic sea-ice thickness - a key indicator of global climate change and of the state of the Arctic itself.
The satellite carr ...
more
Life's building blocks recreated under space-like conditions
Moffet Field CA (SPX) Apr 23, 2015 -
Researchers have reproduced a wide array of building blocks for life in a prebiotic scenario involving meteorites and the solar wind. They began with formamide, a simple organic compound that's ubiquitous in the universe. Formamide has been detected in galactic centers, star-forming regions, interstellar space, as well as comets and satellites.
They then added meteorite powder as a catalys ...
more
SPoRT disaster response team provides imagery for Illinois tornadoes
Washington DC (SPX) Apr 23, 2015 -
On April 9, 2015, severe thunderstorms produced several reports of damaging wind, hail, and tornadoes - including one particularly strong (EF-4) long-track tornado across north-central Illinois.
A satellite image from Landsat 8 of the track, taken the day after the storm, was able to help gauge the damage.
As part of an ongoing NASA Applied Sciences: Disasters funded project, the SPo ...
more
Amazon rainforest losses impact on climate change
Edinburgh UK (SPX) Apr 24, 2015 -
Human activity has removed more than one-tenth of trees and plants from the Amazon rainforest since the 1960s, a study shows. Widespread removal of trees has contributed to a rise in the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, increasing the potential impact of climate change, researchers say.
Deforestation of the Amazon accounted for 1.5 per cent of the increase in carbon dioxide leve ...
more
Earthquake 'super-cycle' patterns on the Garlock fault
San Francisco CA (SPX) Apr 24, 2015 -
A new look at slip rate data and geologic evidence for ancient earthquakes on the central Garlock fault suggest that seismic activity along the fault may be controlled in part by "super-cycle" changes in strain that occur on thousand-year timescales.
The findings are part of an increasing body of evidence that suggests there may be large-scale coordination of earthquakes in time and space, ...
more
Magma intrusion is likely source of Columbia-Ecuador border quake swarms
San Francisco CA (SPX) Apr 24, 2015 -
The "seismic crisis" around the region of the Chiles and Cerro Negro de Mayasquer volcanoes near the Columbia-Ecuador border is likely caused by intruding magma, according to a report by R. Corredor Torres of the Servicio Geologico Colombiano and colleagues presented at the annual meeting of the Seismological Society of America (SSA).
The intruding magma appears to be interacting with the ...
more
Ability to identify 'killer' bees a boon to the honeybee industry
Sydney, Australia (SPX) Apr 24, 2015 -
A genetic test that can prevent the entry of 'killer' bees into Australia and their spread around the world has been created by researchers at the University of Sydney and their collaborators at York University in Canada.
"Having a tool that can identify desirable and undesirable bee subspecies will be of value to breeding and conservation programs throughout the world. Pollination of crop ...
more
Flameproof falcons and hawks
Montreal, Canada (SPX) Apr 24, 2015 -
A Cooper's hawk, found in Greater Vancouver, is the most polluted wild bird that has been found anywhere in the world. A team of Canadian researchers made this startling discovery while analyzing liver samples from birds of prey that were discovered either injured or dead in the Vancouver area.
The levels of polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) in the contaminated Cooper's hawk were 196 ...
more
Large heads, narrow pelvises and difficult childbirth in humans
Vienna, Austria (SPX) Apr 24, 2015 -
The size of the neonatal skull is large relative to the dimensions of the birth canal in the female pelvis. This is the reason why childbirth is slower and more difficult in humans than in most other primates. Scientists from the Universities of Oslo and Vienna, identified adaptations in the morphology of the human body, which were unknown so far. The results of this new study appeared in the cu ...
more
To predict disease researchers ask if plant neighbors are relatives
Panama City, Panama (SPX) Apr 24, 2015 -
Disease is an invisible hand, shaping plant communities across the globe and determining the outcomes of environmental change, weed invasions and agriculture and forestry management strategies. Whether or not a disease devastates a plant community depends on how related the plant species are and on how many individual plants of each species are present, according to research from the Smithsonian ...
more
Humans' ancestors had tentacles
Moscow, Russia (SPX) Apr 24, 2015 -
The famous Vitruvian Man, which was drawn by Leonardo da Vinci, pictures the canon of human's proportions. However, humans have become bilaterally symmetric not at once. There are two main points of view on the last common bilaterian ancestor, its appearance and the course of evolution.
It is likely that the ancestor of Bilateria appeared at the end of the Vendian period which is the last ...
more
Scientists urge moratorium after Chinese 'edit' human embryos
Miami (AFP) April 23, 2015 -
Global scientists on Thursday renewed calls to halt controversial research to genetically edit human embryos after a Chinese team published details of a breakthrough attempt in this new frontier in science.
First reported by Nature News on Wednesday, the paper by Junjiu Huang, a gene-function researcher at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, and colleagues appears in a little known online j ...
more
Oceans worth $24 trillion, but sea change needed to save them says WWF
Geneva (AFP) April 23, 2015 -
The world's oceans are awash in riches, with output rivalling that of some of the world's largest economies, but over-fishing, pollution and climate change are rapidly eroding those resources, WWF warned Thursday.
In a new report, the conservation group said oceans each year generate goods and services worth at least $2.5 trillion, while their overall value as an asset is worth 10 times that ...
more
Thousands evacuated as Chile volcano roars back to life
Puerto Varas, Chile (AFP) Apr 24, 2015 -
Southern Chile was on alert Thursday after the Calbuco volcano erupted for the first time in half a century, lighting up the night sky with spectacular bursts of volcanic lightning and lava, and forcing some 5,000 people to evacuate.
Authorities declared a state of emergency, sent in the army and evacuated a 21-kilometer (13-mile) radius around the volcano after the twin eruptions - the fi ...
more
Lavrov: Charges against Gazprom are baseless
Moscow (UPI) Apr 23, 2015 -
Charges from the European Commission that energy company Gazprom abused its market position are "absolutely inadmissible," Russia's foreign minister said.
Markets rules in the Europe discourage energy companies from controlling both transit arteries and the reserves they carry. Margrethe Vestager, the European commissioner in charge of competition policy, said Gazprom was "abusing its d ...
more
Chinese smartwatch makers say clock ticking for Apple
Shenzhen, China (AFP) April 23, 2015 -
The Apple Watch goes on sale on Friday but Chinese factories are already churning out cheaper alternatives, to the delight of local consumers.
"Our product has all the functions Apple Watch has, and even surpasses them," said Zheng Yi, founder of a firm whose electronic watches can make phone calls, browse the Internet and play movies.
His profits may lag behind the US tech giant, but Zh ...
more
Petrobras tries to move past darkest hour
Brasilia, Brazil (UPI) Apr 23, 2015 -
Brazilian state-owned oil company Petroleo Brasileiro aims to move past a "sad chapter" after taking a massive loss in a graft scandal, its top executive said.
The company known also as Petrobras said in its first audited statement in nearly a year it was writing off around $17 billion, of which $2.1 billion was due to alleged graft.
Aldemir Bendine, the company's top executive, ...
more
Price plunge brings hardship to Canada oil sands El Dorado
Fort Mcmurray, Canada (AFP) April 23, 2015 -
Sky-high salaries once attracted thousands of workers to this small city in the heart of Canada's oil sands.
But after crude prices plunged, Fort McMurray is lamenting a brief golden age.
From June 2014 to January, the price of a barrel of oil shed half its value.
Several drilling projects were deemed no longer viable and put on hold. Some 20,000 oil sands workers were laid off. ...
more
21 dead in China coal mine flood: official
Beijing (AFP) April 23, 2015 -
A total of 21 Chinese coal miners were killed after a shaft they were working in flooded with water, an official told AFP Thursday, the latest incident in the loosely-regulated industry.
Water from a "ground-level reservoir" flooded the mine in Datong in the northern province of Shanxi, where 247 people were working, the official Xinhua news agency said, citing China's work safety regulator. ...
more
Crude oil rises along with Middle East tensions
New York (UPI) Apr 23, 2015 -
Lingering tensions in and around the Middle East lifted crude oil prices in early Thursday trading as the EU issued a key barometer of government debt.
Fighting continued in Yemen despite a Saudi announcement that its pan-Arab military campaign had transitioned from a military campaign to one aimed at finding a political solution to a crisis that grew out of the so-called Arab Spring de ...
more
