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Afghans get first national park
Afghanistan has established its first national park in a spectacular region of deep blue lakes separated by natural dams of travertine, a mineral deposit.
Band-e-Amir is visited by thousands of Afghans and pilgrims, though foreign tourism stalled with the increase in violence since 1979.
Declaring Band-e-Amir a park should help protect its fragile environment.
The new park is near the Bamyan Valley, where 1,500-year-old giant Buddha statues were destroyed by the Taleban.
Afghanistan's National Environmental Protection Agency (Nepa) said the creation of the park would help the region attract international tourism and obtain World Heritage Status.
"The park will draw people from Herat to Kabul to Jalalabad... to be inspired by the great beauty of Afghanistan's first national park, Band-e-Amir, " said Mostapha Zaher, Nepa's director-general.
Hand grenades
In the stillness of the high, thin air, the blue and turquoise waters are often like glass, perfectly reflecting the slopes around them, says the BBC's Alan Johnston, who has visited Band-e-Amir.
However, this quietness may be occasionally punctured by the damaging local practice of fishing by blasting the lake waters with hand grenades, he adds.
Much of the park's wildlife has been lost, according to the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS).
But recent WCS surveys show it still contains ibex, a species of wild goat, and urial, a type of wild sheep.
Other wildlife include wolves, foxes, smaller mammals and fish, and various bird species including the Afghan snow finch, which is believed to be the only bird found exclusively in Afghanistan.
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world...8013017.stm
Afghanistan has established its first national park in a spectacular region of deep blue lakes separated by natural dams of travertine, a mineral deposit.
Band-e-Amir is visited by thousands of Afghans and pilgrims, though foreign tourism stalled with the increase in violence since 1979.
Declaring Band-e-Amir a park should help protect its fragile environment.
The new park is near the Bamyan Valley, where 1,500-year-old giant Buddha statues were destroyed by the Taleban.
Afghanistan's National Environmental Protection Agency (Nepa) said the creation of the park would help the region attract international tourism and obtain World Heritage Status.
"The park will draw people from Herat to Kabul to Jalalabad... to be inspired by the great beauty of Afghanistan's first national park, Band-e-Amir, " said Mostapha Zaher, Nepa's director-general.
Hand grenades
In the stillness of the high, thin air, the blue and turquoise waters are often like glass, perfectly reflecting the slopes around them, says the BBC's Alan Johnston, who has visited Band-e-Amir.
However, this quietness may be occasionally punctured by the damaging local practice of fishing by blasting the lake waters with hand grenades, he adds.
Much of the park's wildlife has been lost, according to the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS).
But recent WCS surveys show it still contains ibex, a species of wild goat, and urial, a type of wild sheep.
Other wildlife include wolves, foxes, smaller mammals and fish, and various bird species including the Afghan snow finch, which is believed to be the only bird found exclusively in Afghanistan.
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world...8013017.stm
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Fri, May 1, 2009 - 6:08 AMVienna, Austria (SPX) Apr 27, 2009
Earth-bound tornadoes are puny compared to "space tornadoes," which span a volume as large as Earth and produce electrical currents exceeding 100,000 amperes, according to new observations by a suite of five NASA space probes.
The probe cluster, called Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms (THEMIS), recorded the extent and power of these electrical funnels as the probes passed through them during their orbit of Earth. Ground measurements showed that the space tornadoes channel the electrical current into the ionosphere to spark bright and colorful auroras on Earth.
The findings were presented during a press at the general assembly of the European Geosciences Union (EGU) in Vienna, Austria.
Space tornadoes are rotating plasmas of hot, ionized gas flowing at speeds of more than a million miles per hour, far faster than the 200 m.p.h. winds of terrestrial tornadoes, according to Andreas Keiling, a research space physicist at the University of California, Berkeley's Space Sciences Laboratory.
Keiling works on THEMIS, which was built and is now operated by UC Berkeley. The five space probes were launched by NASA in February 2007 to solve a decades-long mystery about the origin of magnetic storms that power the Northern and Southern Lights
Both terrestrial and space tornadoes consist of funnel-shaped structures. Space tornadoes, however, generate huge amounts of electrical currents inside the funnel. These currents flow along twisted magnetic field lines from space into the ionosphere where they power several processes, most notably bright auroras such as the Northern Lights, Keiling said.
While these intense currents do not cause any direct harm to humans, on the ground they can damage man-made structures, such as power transformers.
The THEMIS spacecraft observed these tornadoes, or "flow vortices," at a distance of about 40,000 miles from Earth. Simultaneous measurements by THEMIS ground observatories confirmed the tornadoes' connection to the ionosphere.
Keiling's colleagues include Karl-Heinz Glassmeier of the Institute for Geophysics and Extraterrestrial Physics (IGEP, TU) in Braunschweig, Germany, and Olaf Amm of the Finnish Meteorological Institute
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Re: In the news: 13
Mon, May 4, 2009 - 3:57 AMSan Diego CA (SPX) May 04, 2009
An expansion of wetlands and not a large-scale melting of frozen methane deposits is the likely cause of a spike in atmospheric methane gas that took place some 11,600 years ago, according to an international research team led by Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego.
The finding is expected to come as a relief to scientists and climate watchers concerned that huge accelerations of global warming might have been touched off by methane melts in the past and could happen again now as the planet warms.
By measuring the amount of carbon-14 isotopes in methane from air bubbles trapped in glacial ice, the researchers determined that the surge that took place nearly 12,000 years ago was more chemically consistent with an expansion of wetlands.
Wetland regions, which produce large amounts of methane from bacterial breakdown of organic matter, are known to have spread during warming trends throughout history.
"This is good news for global warming because it suggests that methane clathrates do not respond to warming by releasing large amounts of methane into the atmosphere," said Vasilii Petrenko, a postdoctoral fellow at University of Colorado, Boulder, who led the analysis while a graduate student at Scripps.
The results appear in the journal Science.
Scientists had long been concerned about the potential for present-day climate change to cause a thawing of Arctic permafrost and a warming of ocean waters great enough to trigger a huge release of methane that would send planetary warming into overdrive.
Vast amounts of methane are sequestered in solid form, known as methane clathrate, in seafloor deposits and in permafrost. Cold temperatures and the intense pressure of the deep ocean stabilize the methane clathrate masses and keep methane from entering the atmosphere.
Scientists have estimated that a melting of only 10 percent of the world's clathrate deposits would create a greenhouse effect equal to a tenfold increase in the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. For comparison, the warming trend observed in the last century has taken place with only a 30 percent increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide.
The research team, overseen by Scripps geoscientist and study co-author Jeff Severinghaus, collected what may be the largest ice samples ever for a climate change study. The researchers cut away 15 tons of ice from a site called Pakitsoq at the western margin of the Greenland ice sheet to collect the ancient air trapped within.
Methane exists in low concentrations in this air and only a trillionth of any given amount contains the carbon-14 isotope that the researchers needed to perform the analysis. Levels of carbon-14, which has a half-life of 5,730 years, were too high in the methane to have come from clathrates, the researchers concluded.
"This study is important because it confirms that wetlands and moisture availability change dramatically along with abrupt climate change," said Severinghaus. "This highlights in a general way the fact that the largest impacts of future climate change may be on water resources and drought, rather than temperature per se."
The burst of methane took place immediately after an abrupt transition between climatic periods known as the Younger Dryas and Preboreal. During this event, temperatures in Greenland rose 10 degrees C (18 degrees F) in 20 years. Methane levels over 150 years rose about 50 percent, from 500 parts per billion in air to 750 parts per billion.
In addition to Petrenko and Severinghaus, researchers from the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO), Oregon State University, the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research in New Zealand, the Technical University of Denmark and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation in Australia contributed to the report.
The work was supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, the Packard Foundation, the American Chemical Society, the ANSTO Cosmogenic Climate Archives of the Southern Hemisphere project and the New Zealand Foundation of Science and Technology
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Mon, May 18, 2009 - 4:55 PMA series of moderate earthquakes as strong as 5.9-magnitude shook the southern edge of the US state of Alaska Saturday off the coast of Kodiak Island, seismologists said.
The US Geological Survey reported that the strongest quake struck at 18:22 GMT in the Gulf of Alaska some 98 kilometers (61 miles) southeast of Kodiak, an island of about 14,000 people that serves as a popular eco-tourism destination.
The temblor occurred at a depth of 12 kilometers (7.5 miles) and about 560 kilometers (348 miles) southwest of Alaska's largest city, Anchorage.
Several quakes of magnitude 5.0 or higher rattled the region in the minutes and hours before the 5.9 quake.
There were no immediate reports of injuries or damage in the area from the "swarm" of more than two dozen earthquakes which occurred off Kodiak Island in recent days, an official at the USGS told AFP.
Earthquakes and volcanic activity are common in the area, which is part of the "Ring of Fire" where the Pacific plate of the earth's crust meets other continental plates.
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Wed, May 27, 2009 - 4:10 AMMariposa, Calif. (UPI) May 22, 2009
Climate change appears to be taking its toll on the oldest and largest firs and pines in California's Yosemite National Park, researchers said.
The number of large-diameter trees fell by 24 percent between the 1930s and 1990s in all types of forests in Yosemite, said James Lutz of the University of Washington in Seattle.
"Yosemite is one of the most protected places in the (United States). If the declines are occurring here, the situation is unlikely to be better in less protected forests," Lutz told the BBC in a story published Friday.
The decline appears linked to higher temperatures and not enough water, said Lutz and his UW research partner, Jerry Franklin.
The older, larger trees, including white firs, lodgepole pines and Jeffrey pines, are key to forest health because their canopies protect and nourish unique habitats for plants and animals.
"These large, old trees have lived centuries and experienced many dry and wet periods," Lutz said. "So it is quite a surprise that recent conditions are such that these long-term survivors have been affected
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Wed, June 3, 2009 - 8:35 PMSky watchers in the northern hemisphere have snapped the first images of this year's noctilucent clouds – silvery blue structures that are the highest clouds to form in Earth's atmosphere. This season's crop of clouds could be the biggest in years due to the lull in the sun's activity.
"Noctilucent", or night-shining, clouds float dozens of kilometres higher than other clouds, at an altitude of about 80 km. Because of their height, they can be seen glowing before sunrise or after sunset as the sun illuminates them from below the horizon.
The clouds were first seen above polar regions in 1885, suggesting they may have been caused by the eruption of Krakatoa two years before. But in recent years the clouds have spread to latitudes as low as 40°, while also growing in number and getting brighter. The reason for the clouds' spread is unclear, but some suspect it could be due to an increase in greenhouse gases. That's because the gases actually cause Earth's upper atmosphere to cool, and the clouds need cold temperatures to form.
Although the average number of noctilucent clouds has been increasing in recent decades, their abundance also seems to rise and fall with the sun's 11-year cycle of activity. The clouds thrive when the sun is quiet and spews less ultraviolet radiation, which can destroy water needed to form the clouds and can keep temperatures too high for ice particles to form.
Because the sun has been abnormally quiet in recent years, noctilucent clouds could be especially bright and numerous this summer in the Northern hemisphere. "We expect this year to be a bigger year because of lower solar activity," says Scott Bailey of Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, VA and a lead scientist for NASA's Aeronomy of Ice in the Mesosphere (AIM) spacecraft, which launched in 2007 to study the clouds. The clouds may be about twice as abundant this year as they are when the sun is at the peak of its activity, he says.
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Re: In the news: 13
Sat, June 13, 2009 - 1:28 AMHave you heard? It's in the stars. Next July we collide with Mars... Well not next July, that is just how Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby sang it in High Society.
But new predictions suggest that Earth could crash into Mars - or possibly Venus. It would be a catastrophic event but the good news is it will not happen for a few billion years.
Alternatively, a similar fate could befall Mars and Jupiter, or Mercury and Venus, according to French astronomers in research reported this week in the journal Nature.
The team, led by Jacques Laskar of Paris Observatory, ran simulations on supercomputers to calculate how the orbits of planetary orbits in the solar system will evolve.
They found that fluctuations in these elliptical paths around the Sun meant that close encounters between neighbouring planets will occasionally occur in time.
Collisions between planet-sized bodies were relatively common in the early days of the solar system. Some astronomers believe an impact with the Earth produced the Moon. Others suggest that a planetary collision produced Mercury from a much larger world, explaining its present dense nature.
But there is great order in the solar system at present and no danger of any planets colliding in the foreseeable future. There is a danger, however, of smaller asteroids or comets striking planets including the Earth.
A small asteroid struck the Sudan last year and a comet crash on Jupiter was observed in 1994, giving the giant planet a series of black eyes.
Astronomers are trying to monitor Earth-crossing asteroids big enough to do significant damage. An impact has still not been ruled out with a space rock called Apophis in 2036, although it is highly unlikely.
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Re: In the news: 13
Mon, June 15, 2009 - 4:28 PMMoscow (AFP) June 14, 2009
A volcanic eruption on a remote Russian island north of Japan has created a giant ash cloud that threatens passing airplanes, the RIA-Novosti news agency reported on Sunday, citing Russian geologists.
The eruption of Sarychev Peak on uninhabited Matua Island, part of the Kuril Islands archipelago in the north Pacific Ocean, began overnight Thursday-Friday and is still underway, the news agency said.
It has formed an ash cloud eight kilometres (five miles) high which has spread 310 kilometres to the west, Olga Shestakova, a spokeswoman for the Marine Geology and Geophysics Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, was quoted as saying.
"Information on the eruption has been sent to organisations dealing with the safety of airplanes and ships, as the ash cloud presents a threat to airplane engines and may lead to communications systems failures," Shestakova said.
Sarychev Peak is one of the most active volcanos on the Kuril Islands, a seismically active archipelago that runs northeast from Japan's Hokkaido Island to Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula.
The southernmost four islands in the archipelago are disputed between Russia and Japan, but Matua Island, where the volcano is located, is agreed to be Russian territory. It is called Matsuwa Island by the Japanese
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Re: In the news: 13
Mon, June 22, 2009 - 11:29 PMBuffalo NY (SPX) Jun 22, 2009
Modern glaciers, such as those making up the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, are capable of undergoing periods of rapid shrinkage or retreat, according to new findings by paleoclimatologists at the University at Buffalo.
The paper, published on June 21 in Nature Geoscience, describes fieldwork demonstrating that a prehistoric glacier in the Canadian Arctic rapidly retreated in just a few hundred years.
The proof of such rapid retreat of ice sheets provides one of the few explicit confirmations that this phenomenon occurs.
Should the same conditions recur today, which the UB scientists say is very possible, they would result in sharply rising global sea levels, which would threaten coastal populations.
"A lot of glaciers in Antarctica and Greenland are characteristic of the one we studied in the Canadian Arctic," said Jason Briner, Ph.D., assistant professor of geology in the UB College of Arts and Sciences and lead author on the paper. "Based on our findings, they, too, could retreat in a geologic instant."
The new findings will allow scientists to more accurately predict how global warming will affect ice sheets and the potential for rising sea levels in the future, by developing more robust climate and ice sheet models.
Briner said the findings are especially relevant to the Jakobshavn Isbrae, Greenland's largest and fastest moving tidewater glacier, which is retreating under conditions similar to those he studied in the Canadian Arctic.
Acting like glacial conveyor belts, tidewater glaciers are the primary mechanism for draining ice sheet interiors by delivering icebergs to the ocean.
"These 'iceberg factories' exhibit rapid fluctuations in speed and position, but predicting how quickly they will retreat as a result of global warming is very challenging," said Briner.
That uncertainty prompted the UB team to study the rates of retreat of a prehistoric tidewater glacier, of similar size and geometry to contemporary ones, as way to get a longer-term view of how fast these glaciers can literally disappear.
The researchers used a special dating tool at UB to study rock samples they extracted from a large fjord that drained the ice sheet that covered the North American Arctic during the past Ice Age.
The samples provided the researchers with climate data over a period from 20,000 years ago to about 5,000 years ago, a period when significant warming occurred.
"Even though the ice sheet retreat was ongoing throughout that whole period, the lion's share of the retreat occurred in a geologic instant - probably within as little as a few hundred years," said Briner.
The UB research reveals that the period of rapid retreat was triggered once the glacier entered deep ocean waters, nearly a kilometer deep, Briner said.
"The deeper water makes the glacier more buoyant," he explained.
"Because the rates of retreat were so much higher in the deep fjord, versus earlier when it terminated in more shallow waters or on land, the findings suggest that contemporary tidewater glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica that are retreating into deep waters may begin to experience even faster rates of retreat than are currently being observed," said Briner.
Right now, Jakobshavn Isbrae is draining into waters that are nearly a kilometer deep, he said, which means that its current rates of retreat - as fast as 10 kilometers in the past decade - could continue for the next hundred years.
"If modern glaciers do this for several decades, this would rapidly raise global sea level, intercepting coastal populations and requiring vast re-engineering of levees and other mitigation systems," said Briner.
Co-authors on the paper were Aaron C. Bini, formerly a master's of science candidate in the UB Department of Geology, and Robert S. Anderson, Ph.D., in the Department of Geological Sciences at the University of Colorado, Boulder.
Briner's research was funded by the National Science Foundation.
The University at Buffalo is a premier research-intensive public university, a flagship institution in the State University of New York system and its largest and most comprehensive campus. UB's more than 28,000 students pursue their academic interests through more than 300 undergraduate, graduate and professional degree programs. Founded in 1846, the University at Buffalo is a member of the Association of American Universities.
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Re: In the news: 13
Fri, June 26, 2009 - 5:54 PMCape Town (AFP) June 25, 2009
Storms, driving rain and gale force winds have battered Cape Town, leaving some 1,200 people homeless after flooding in shanty towns, South African disaster management officials said Thursday.
"We had heavy downpours and in our informal settlements we had about 600 dwellings that have been affected, leaving about 1,200 people seeking temporary shelter," disaster management spokeswoman Charlotte Powell told AFP.
Two consecutive cold fronts accompanied by storms have also affected power lines around the city, while massive swells led to two barges being wrecked out at sea.
The Cape Times newspaper reported swells peaking at 17 metres (56 feet) on Wednesday.
Twenty-five film students were stranded on Dassen Island just off the coast, while 29 hikers had to be evacuated off the popular Otter's Trail.
Powell said the flooding in informal settlements was a typical winter hazard as floods mainly occurred in low-lying areas.
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Tue, June 30, 2009 - 6:27 PMPatna, India (AFP) June 29, 2009
At least 35 people including eight children were killed after they were struck by lightning in the adjoining eastern Indian states of Bihar and Jharkhand, officials said Monday.
Around 18 people were killed late Sunday by bolts of lightning across Bihar, including six children, State Disaster Management Minister Devesh Chand Thakur said.
"The children were playing in the pre-monsoon showers when lightning struck them," Thakur told AFP from the state capital Patna.
Twelve others who were injured were hospitalised, he said.
Torrential rains accompanied by strong winds uprooted trees, damaged houses and brought down power cables across the impoverished state on Sunday night, he said.
In neighbouring Jharkhand, 17 people including two children were killed by lightning strikes, also late on Sunday night, a disaster management spokesman said in the capital Ranchi.
Lightning strikes during the June-September monsoon season are common, with villagers housed in bamboo-and-grass huts most at risk of death and injury
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Re: In the news: 13
Thu, July 2, 2009 - 9:56 PMNew research, which reconstructs the extent of ice in the sea between Greenland and Svalbard from the 13th century to the present indicates that there has never been so little sea ice as there is now. The research results from the Niels Bohr Institute, among others, are published in the scientific journal, Climate Dynamics.
There are of course neither satellite images nor instrumental records of the climate all the way back to the 13th century, but nature has its own 'archive' of the climate in both ice cores and the annual growth rings of trees and we humans have made records of a great many things over the years - such as observations in the log books of ships and in harbour records. Piece all of the information together and you get a picture of how much sea ice there has been throughout time.
Modern research and historic records
"We have combined information about the climate found in ice cores from an ice cap on Svalbard and from the annual growth rings of trees in Finland and this gave us a curve of the past climate" explains Aslak Grinsted, geophysicist with the Centre for Ice and Climate at the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen.
In order to determine how much sea ice there has been, the researchers needed to turn to data from the logbooks of ships, which whalers and fisherman kept of their expeditions to the boundary of the sea ice. The ship logbooks are very precise and go all the way back to the 16th century.
They relate at which geographical position the ice was found. Another source of information about the ice are records from harbours in Iceland, where the severity of the winters have been recorded since the end of the 18th century.
By combining the curve of the climate with the actual historical records of the distribution of the ice, researchers have been able to reconstruct the extent of the sea ice all the way back to the 13th century. Even though the 13th century was a warm period, the calculations show that there has never been so little sea ice as in the 20th century.
In the middle of the 17th century there was also a sharp decline in sea ice, but it lastet only a very brief period. The greatest cover of sea ice was in a period around 1700-1800, which is also called the 'Little Ice Age'.
"There was a sharp change in the ice cover at the start of the 20th century," explains Aslak Grinsted. He explains, that the ice shrank by 300.000 km2 in the space of ten years from 1910-1920. So you can see that there have been sudden changes throughout time, but here during the last few years we have had some record years with very little ice extent.
"We see that the sea ice is shrinking to a level which has not been seen in more than 800 years", concludes Aslak Grinsted.
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Fri, July 10, 2009 - 4:58 PMIlulissat, Greenland (AFP) July 9, 2009
One of the world's largest glaciers, on the west coast of Greenland, is shrinking at an alarming rate as a result of global warming -- with potentially dire consequences.
Ilulissat, a UNESCO-listed glacier, is shedding ice into the sea faster than ever before, according to one of Denmark's top experts on glaciology.
Andreas Peter Ahlstroem, a researcher with the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland institute, told AFP that the glacier has receded by more than 15 kilometres (10 miles) since 2001.
"Its calving rate (breaking off of ice) has never been so rapid," he said.
The Ilulissat glacier and icefjord have been on UNESCO's world heritage list since 2004 and is the most visited site in Greenland, its ice and pools of emerald-blue water admired by tourists and studied by scientists and politicians around the world.
The Danish government chose Ilulissat as the venue for recent talks with some 30 countries to discuss ways to slow global warming -- a place that Shfaqat Abbas Khan, a glacier expert from the Danish Space Centre, describes as the "most visible and striking example of climate change."
The glacier is the most active in the northern hemisphere, producing 85 million tonnes of icebergs per day, according to Khan.
He has been studying Ilulissat using satellites, GPS or through his own visits to the area and says December's UN climate change conference in the Danish capital of Copenhagen may come too late to save the glacier.
"A lot of glaciers in Greenland are melting at more or less the same pace and even with an ambitious agreement at the summit ... it will be impossible to stop this," Khan said.
The melting ice is both a consequence and a cause of global warming: ice reflects heat, as opposed to water which absorbs it and warms up the climate, thus causing more glaciers and snow to melt.
Khan explained that Ilulissat is losing more than 30 cubic kilometres (seven cubic miles) of ice a year, compared to 10 cubic kilometres in 2000 and just five in 1992.
"We should aim to at least reduce CO2 emissions and limit the damage done," he said.
A panel of UN scientists estimates that if the polar ice caps continue to melt at their current rate, sea levels could rise by between 18 and 59 centimetres (seven and 24 inches) by 2100,
But Khan says these calculations do not take into account the melting of Greenland's glaciers.
"In fact, if this thawing that we see ... was to spread across the whole island, the sea level would rise between one metre and 1.5 metres by the end of the century," he told AFP.
Greenland's glacial ice cap, which spans 1.7 million square kilometres, is not as stable as the panel suggests, he said.
"It sheds much more ice in summer than it gets from the winter snow," Khan said.
His fellow glacier expert, Ahlstroem from the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, warned that the Ilulissat glacier could recede even further and faster.
"The question is: what would happen if the warmer waters of the fjord were to filter through the glacier and further speed up the thawing process?" he asked
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Mon, July 13, 2009 - 4:37 PMBeijing (AFP) July 13, 2009
A fresh aftershock jolted China's southwest Monday, three days after an earthquake in the same area killed one person, injured hundreds and directly affected two million people, state media said.
The US Geological Survey said the magnitude 4.9 quake struck a minute after midnight (1601 GMT) and was centred 95 kilometres (60 miles) east northeast of the tourist city of Dali in Yao'an county, a mountainous area of remote Yunnan province.
The quake was recorded at a shallow depth of 10 kilometres, it said.
Official news agency Xinhua said there were no immediate reports of deaths or injuries from the aftershock, which lasted about 10 seconds.
More than to 250,000 people in several counties in Yunnan were displaced after a 5.7-magnitude quake struck Yao'an on Thursday evening.
Authorities have recorded one fatality -- a 50-year-old woman who was buried in the debris of collapsed houses and died later in hospital from serious blood loss, according to Xinhua.
The quake, which was centred on a relatively sparsely populated area 98 kilometres (61 miles) northeast of Dali, saw more than 30,000 houses collapse, Xinhua said early Monday, updating the previous figure of 18,000.
Another 625,000 were damaged, it said.
Up to 367 people were injured, including 31 critically, the report said.
Xinhua said that by Sunday rescuers had finished relocating 255,000 people considered to be in danger to tents, makeshift houses or homes of relatives.
The operation involved over 1,000 soldiers and policemen, including about 300 from neighbouring Sichuan province, who helped residents to safety, Xinhua said in a previous report.
Last year in Sichuan, nearly 87,000 people were left dead or missing when a 8.0-magnitude earthquake shook the province in China's mountainous southwest.
The deadliest earthquake to strike China in over 30 years flattened entire cities and towns, destroying schools, hospitals, homes, buildings and factories in nearly 50,000 villages.
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Tue, July 14, 2009 - 11:55 PMJakarta (AFP) July 13, 2009
A strong 6.4-magnitude earthquake struck Indonesia's remote eastern Sumba island Monday but there were no immediate reports of damage or injuries, seismologists said.
The quake struck at 7:52 pm (1052 GMT) with an epicentre 107 kilometres (67 miles) northwest of the main island town of Waingapu, the Indonesian Meteorology and Geophysics Agency said.
It was measured at a depth of 86 kilometres.
Widyanto, an official from the agency, said from Waingapu there appeared to be no damage or injuries in areas near the epicentre.
"People panicked and ran out of their homes. But so far, we have not received reports of casualties or damage to buildings," he said.
The United States Geological Survey measured the quake at a magnitude of 6.1.
Indonesia was the nation worst hit by the earthquake-triggered Indian Ocean tsunami in December 2004 that killed more than 220,000 people, including over 168,000 people in Indonesia's Aceh province and Nias island.
Indonesia sits on the Pacific "Ring of Fire", where the meeting of continental plates causes high volcanic and seismic activity.
Nearly 700 homes as well as office buildings, schools and health clinics were damaged when a 7.2-magnitude quake struck the remote Talaud Islands in North Sulawesi province in February.
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Wed, July 15, 2009 - 5:32 AMA tsunami warning has been issued for Lord Howe Island and parts of Tasmania following a 7.9 magnitude earthquake off the west coast of New Zealand's south island.
The earthquake hit at 7.22pm (AEST).
'''Lord Howe Island'''
The Australian Bureau of Meteorology said: "For low-lying coastal areas there is a threat of major land inundation, flooding dangerous waves and strong ocean currents for several hours."
"People in affected areas are strongly advised by the Lord Howe Island police to go to higher ground or at least 1km inland.
"For all threatened areas, people are advised to get out of the water and move away from the immediate waters edge. "
'''Tasmania'''
The bureau said: "Threatened areas extend from Northern Tip of Flinders Island to Low Rocky Point including Bicheno, Derwent Estuary, Eddystone Point, Flinders Island, Hobart, Low Rocky Point, Maatsuyker Island, Maria Island, Orford, Scamander, St Helens, Storm Bay and Channel, Swansea, Tasman Island and Wineglass Bay."
"Possibility of dangerous waves, strong ocean currents and some localised overflow onto the immediate foreshore for several hours from 09:30 pm (AEST) tonight.
"Although major evacuations are not required, people are advised to get out of the water and move away from the immediate water's edge."
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Re: In the news: 13
Mon, July 20, 2009 - 4:58 PMLongest Solar Eclipse of the 21st Century
Continue counting and don't stop until you reach 399 one-thousand.
Did that feel like a long time? Six minutes and 39 seconds to be exact. That's the duration of this week's total solar eclipse--the longest of the 21st century.
The event begins at the crack of dawn on Wednesday, July 22nd, in the Gulf of Khambhat just east of India. Morning fishermen will experience a sunrise like nothing they've ever seen before. Rising out of the waves in place of the usual sun will be an inky-black hole surrounded by pale streamers splayed across the sky. Sea birds will stop squawking, unsure if the day is beginning or not, as a strange shadow pushes back the dawn and stirs up a breeze of unaccustomed chill.
Right: A totally eclipsed sunrise in Antarctica. Credit and Copyright: Fred Bruenjes of moonglow.net. [more]
Most solar eclipses produce this sort of surreal experience for a few minutes at most. The eclipse of July 22, 2009, however, will last as long as 6 minutes and 39 seconds in some places, not far short of the 7 and a half minute theoretical maximum. It won't be surpassed in duration until the eclipse of June 13, 2132.
The path of totality cuts across many large cities. The shadow will linger over Shanghai, the largest city in China, for six full minutes, giving 20 million residents a lengthy and stunning view of the sun's ghostly corona. Other large cities in the path of totality include Surat, Vadodara, Bhopal, Varanasi, Chengdu, Chongqing, Wuhan, Hefei, Hangzhou. The population of each numbers in the millions, making this possibly the best-observed solar eclipse in human history.
The eclipse is extra-long because of a lucky coincidence, made possible by the elliptical shape of planetary orbits. On July 22nd, Earth happens to be near its farthest point from the sun. A small sun means the Moon can cover it longer. At the same time, the Moon will be near its closest point to Earth. A large Moon covers the sun longer, lengthening the eclipse even more.
The leisurely pace of the eclipse could have a transformative effect on witnesses. Total eclipses have been known to turn ordinary folk into life-long "eclipse-chasers" willing to spend thousands of dollars and travel tens of thousands of miles to feel the Moon's cool shadow and behold the sun's pale atmosphere just one more time. A few extra minutes of wonder will intensify this effect to an unknown degree.
Live webcasts of the eclipse--not the next best thing to being there, but the only substitute available to many readers--may be found at the website of the San Francisco Exploratorium.
Let the counting begin.
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Re: In the news: 13
Fri, July 31, 2009 - 4:39 AMJuly 31, 2009: Earth is entering a stream of dusty debris from Comet Swift-Tuttle, the source of the annual Perseid meteor shower. Although the shower won't peak until August 11th and 12th, the show is already getting underway.
Don't get too excited, cautions Bill Cooke of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office. "We're just in the outskirts of the debris stream now. If you go out at night and stare at the sky, you'll probably only see a few Perseids per hour."
This will change, however, as August unfolds.
"Earth passes through the densest part of the debris stream sometime on August 12th. Then, you could see dozens of meteors per hour."
For sky watchers in North America, the watch begins after nightfall on August 11th and continues until sunrise on the 12th. Veteran observers suggest the following strategy: Unfold a blanket on a flat patch of ground. (Note: The middle of your street is not a good choice.) Lie down and look up. Perseids can appear in any part of the sky, their tails all pointing back to the shower's radiant in the constellation Perseus. Get away from city lights if you can.
There is one light you cannot escape on August 12th. The 55% gibbous Moon will glare down from the constellation Aries just next door to the shower's radiant in Perseus. The Moon is beautiful, but don't stare at it. Bright moonlight ruins night vision and it will wipe out any faint Perseids in that part of the skyThe Moon is least troublesome during the early evening hours of August 11th. Around 9 to 11 p.m. local time (your local time), both Perseus and the Moon will be hanging low in the north. This low profile reduces lunar glare while positioning the shower's radiant for a nice display of Earthgrazers.
"Earthgrazers are meteors that approach from the horizon and skim the atmosphere overhead like a stone skipping across the surface of a pond," explains Cooke. "They are long, slow and colorful—among the most beautiful of meteors." He notes that an hour of watching may net only a few of these at most, but seeing even one can make the whole night worthwhile.
The Perseids are coming. Enjoy the show.
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Re: In the news: 13
Tue, August 4, 2009 - 6:00 PMProblem: you’re a fungus that can only flourish at a certain temperature, humidity, location and distance from the ground but can’t do the legwork to find that perfect spot yourself. Solution: hijack an ant’s body to do the work for you—and then inhabit it.
A paper, to be published in The American Naturalist’s September issue, explores the astounding accuracy with which this fungus compels ants to create its ideal home.
The Ophiocordyceps unilateralis fungus infects Camponotus leonardi ants that live in tropical rainforest trees. Once infected, the spore-possessed ant will climb down from its normal habitat and bite down, with what the authors call a "death grip" on a leaf and then die. But the story doesn’t end there.
"The death grip occurred in very precise locations," the authors write. All of the C. leonardi ants studied in Thailand’s Khao Chong Wildlife Sanctuary had chomped down on the underside of a leaf, and 98 percent had landed on a vein. Most had: a) found their way to the north side of the plant, b) chomped on a leaf about 25 centimeters above the ground, c) selected a leaf in an environment with 94 to 95 percent humidity and d) ended up in a location with temperatures between 20 and 30 degrees Celsius. The researchers called this specificity "remarkable."
In other words, the fungus was transported via the zombie ant to its prime location. To see just how important this accuracy is to the fungus, the researchers identified dozens of infected ants in a small area of the forest. Some of the ants were moved to other nearby heights and locations, and others were left to sprout spores just where they had died.
Those ants that were left where O. unilateralis directed them grew normal, healthy hyphae (fungal threads) within several days, but those that had been moved never did.
"I cannot think of another example [of adaptive behavioral changes] as specific as this one," Edward Levri, who has studied behavioral changes in parasite hosts but was not involved in this study, wrote in an e-mail. "The fact that infected individuals all die in a 'lock-jawed' position, at 25 centimeters above ground, mostly on the north side of the tree is amazing and suggests that multiple behaviors and possibly multiple manipulatory physiological mechanisms may be required by the parasite."
The authors also examined the impact of the fungus on an ant in the Polyrhachis genus and found that not all of the behaviors carried over. "The fact that infection by this parasite in another ant species results in some behavioral change, but results in less optimal behavior for the parasite, points to the idea that this parasite has evolved to manipulate this specific host," noted Levri, who is an assistant professor of biology at Penn State Altoona.
www.scientificamerican.com
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Re: In the news: 13 / Earthquake 7.1 on the Richter scale shakes Tokyo
Mon, August 10, 2009 - 6:16 AMMark Willacy reported this story on Monday, August 10, 2009 18:46:00
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MARK COLVIN: Japan is the most earthquake prone country on the face of the planet and overnight the Japanese got another sizeable shake.
A tremor measuring 7.1 on the Richter scale jolted Tokyo. The quake rattled buildings and forced the suspension of train services.
Although there were no reports of major damage or injuries it's brought new warnings that the world's most populous urban environment is woefully underprepared.
Seismologists say the chances of a major earthquake striking at the heart of the Japanese capital within the next few decades are 70 per cent and they say if so, thousands will die.
Mark Willacy reports from Tokyo.
MARK WILLACY: There's a legend here in Japan that this shaky archipelago teeters precariously on the back of a mythical catfish. The monster is kept from writhing around by the Shinto God of the Earth who has pinned the fish's head with a granite stone.
But occasionally he wriggles loose, jolting Japan and reminding everyone that they live in the world's most earthquake prone nation.
And overnight the leviathan broke free yet again, rocking Tokyo for almost a minute.
(Hiroaki Yoshii speaking)
"Tokyo is sitting on three plates," says Professor Hiroaki Yoshii, the anti-disaster manager at Tokyo Keizai University.
"From time to time these plates move and spring back. Then once in every 150 years or so a colossal tremor shakes Tokyo," he says.
Last night's quake had a magnitude of 7.1. Its epicentre was 300 kilometres south-west of the capital.
(Sound of earthquake simulator)
In an earthquake simulator on the back of a truck in northern Tokyo a group of local residents gets to experience what it's like to ride out a massive tremor.
(Junichi Takahashi speaking)
"This is the first time I've experienced such a large quake," says 23-year-old Junichi Takahashi. I was scared. If a really big earthquake did happen I would not be able to keep calm."
And that's the fear of authorities. The scenarios suggested by some seismologists and disaster planners are sobering - more than 10,000 dead, hundreds of thousands injured, millions needing evacuation, more than a trillion dollars in damage.
(Hiroaki Yoshii speaking)
"It will be the worst economic calamity in world history," says Professor Hiroaki Yoshii of Tokyo Keizai University.
(Sound of earthquake drill)
Every year on the anniversary of the 1923 Great Kanto earthquake which struck Tokyo and Yokohama killing 140,000, massive drills are held to ready the population for the next big tremor.
Tetsuo Kabe is a senior anti-disaster specialist at Tokyo's Fire Department.
(Tetsuo Kabe speaking)
"We can never say our preparations will be enough," says fire officer Kabe. "We have to continue readying ourselves for the next large earthquake. We should never be complacent," he says.
The last big tremor to cause mass casualties struck Kobe in western Japan 14 years ago killing 6,500 people.
The odds of an even bigger quake hitting Tokyo are shortening by the year.
This is Mark Willacy in Tokyo for PM
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Re: In the news: 13 /
Tue, August 11, 2009 - 6:44 PMPort Blair, India (AFP) Aug 11, 2009
A huge 7.6 magnitude earthquake struck off the Andaman Islands in the Indian Ocean on Tuesday, triggering panic as people fled their homes amid initial warnings of a possible tsunami.
A tsunami alert issued for India, Myanmar, Indonesia, Thailand and Bangladesh was later cancelled by the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center of the US National Weather Service.
"Sea level readings indicate that a significant tsunami was not generated," the centre said.
The police control centre in Port Blair, the main town of India's Andaman Islands, said there were no immediate reports of any major damage or casualties.
The quake hit at 1:55 am (1955 GMT Monday) around 263 kilometres (163 miles) north of Port Blair, and was around 33 kilometres (20.2 miles) deep.
The Andamans were badly hit by the 2004 Asian tsunami which was triggered by an earthquake off the Indonesian island of Sumatra and sent giant waves crashing into countries around the Indian Ocean.
"It was very frightening. Everything started shaking and people were running out of their homes," said Mrinal Sarkar, a villager in Diglipur in the northern Andamans.
"People are afraid to go back inside," Sarkar told AFP.
Mild tremors from the quake were felt 1,190 kilometres away in the eastern Indian port city of Chennai.
India's national tsunami warning centre said it had detected no sign of any abnormal surge in sea levels.
"We haven't issued any tsunami warning so far," said Ravichandra Vedula, an official with the Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services in the southern city of Hyderabad.
"We are monitoring all data on water levels and no anomaly has been observed. Everything is normal," Vedula told AFP.
The epicentre was also around 364 kilometres southwest of the Irriwaddy Delta region of Myanmar which was devastated by a huge cyclone in May last year that left more than 138,000 people dead.
Thailand's National Disaster Warning Centre, which was set up after the 2004 tsunami, said it was monitoring events.
"We have been warned about the quake and are watching the situation. We have not yet issued an alert, we are still watching developments," an official at the centre said.
The 2004 tsunami killed more than 220,000 people, most of them in the northern Indonesian province of Aceh. Thousands of people were also killed in Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Thailand and India.
The Andaman and Nicobar Islands are some of India' most eastern pieces of territory. More than 350,000 people live in the territory flanked by the Andaman Sea and the Bay of Bengal, and it comprises some 572 islands.
The Andaman Sea area witnesses frequent earthquakes caused by the meeting of the Indian plate with the Burmese microplate along an area known as the Andaman trench.
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Re: In the news: 13 / Powerful quakes strike Japan, India
Wed, August 12, 2009 - 9:18 PMTokyo (AFP) Aug 11, 2009
Powerful earthquakes just over 10 minutes apart rattled Japan and India on Tuesday, triggering panic on fears of a tsunami in the Andaman Islands and injuring more than 100 people southwest of Tokyo.
The unrelated quakes struck in the early hours, shutting down Japanese bullet train services and a nuclear power plant and causing a landslide that closed a major highway near the Japanese capital.
A 43-year-old woman was found dead after the tremor, buried under a pile of books, said a prefectural police official in Shizuoka, west of Tokyo. "We are investigating whether her death is related to today's earthquake," he said.
At least 110 people were injured, mostly by falling objects such as television sets, including three who were hospitalised in serious condition, prefectural government officials and police said.
The Japanese tremor registered a strong magnitude of 6.4, while the quake off the Andaman Islands in the Indian Ocean was a huge 7.6, according to the US Geological Survey.
Panic-stricken islanders fled their homes, fearing a repeat of the enormous Asian tsunami that devastated the Andamans in 2004 and killed around 220,000 people in the region as a whole.
"It was very frightening. Everything started shaking and people were running out of their homes," said Mrinal Sarkar, a villager in Diglipur in the northern Andamans. "People are afraid to go back inside."
But a tsunami alert issued for India, Myanmar, Indonesia, Thailand and Bangladesh was later cancelled by the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center of the US National Weather Service.
The emergency services control centre in Port Blair, the main town of the Andaman Islands, said there were no reports of casualties and property damage had been limited to cracks in some buildings on northern islands.
S.N. Jha, who heads the Andaman Islands' Disaster Management Committee, said emergency services had been put on alert across the territory within minutes of the earthquake being felt.
"In the end there was some panic in Northern Andaman, but there have been no reports of any serious damage to property or loss of life," Jha said.
The quake hit at 1:55 am (1955 GMT Monday) around 263 kilometres north of Port Blair, and was around 33 kilometres deep. Mild tremors were felt 1,190 kilometres away in the eastern Indian port city of Chennai.
The Japanese quake struck at 5:07 am (2007 GMT Monday) in Suruga Bay on the Pacific coast 170 kilometres southwest of Tokyo at a depth of 26.8 kilometres.
It shook buildings, threw objects from supermarket shelves, and jolted people from their sleep in Tokyo and areas southwest of the capital.
Japan's Meteorological Agency, which measured the quake at a revised 6.5, said there was no risk of a tsunami after initial waves raised the ocean surface by about 40 centimetres (16 inches) at Omaezaki, Shizuoka.
A large landslide triggered by the quake damaged a highway in the prefecture at Makinohara, causing long traffic jams.
Early warnings that the nearby Typhoon Etau could compound the damage by bringing heavy rains to the quake-hit region did not materialise when the typhoon veered east, heading away from the Japanese coast.
Torrential rains from the typhoon had earlier caused at least 13 deaths from flooding and landslides in western Japan.
The quake caused power failures in 9,500 households, utility officials said, while Central Japan Railway Co. suspended Shinkansen bullet trains in the quake-hit region before resuming the services several hours later.
A strong earthquake had also hit central Japan late on Sunday. Around 20 percent of the world's most powerful quakes strike the country, which is located at the intersection of four tectonic plates.
The Andaman Sea area also witnesses frequent earthquakes caused by the meeting of the Indian plate with the Burmese microplate along an area known as the Andaman trench.
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Re: In the news: 13 / Powerful quakes strike Japan
Thu, August 13, 2009 - 4:54 PMTokyo (AFP) Aug 13, 2009
A strong earthquake hit central Japan, including Tokyo, at 07:49 am (2249 GMT) Thursday, the Japan Meteorological Agency said.
The quake rocked buildings in the Japanese capital, but no damage was immediately reported in the city
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Re: In the news: 13 /
Mon, August 31, 2009 - 4:51 PMBeijing (AFP) Aug 30, 2009
Six farmers were killed in eastern China Sunday when the hut they were sheltering in during a storm was struck by lightning, state media reported.
Another farmer in the hut was injured and taken to hospital, the Xinhua news agency quoted local officials in Anhui province as saying.
The accident happened during a heavy rainstorm in the village of Qiaodong, around 650 kilometres (400 miles) northwest of Shanghai, Xinhua quoted officials from the county government as saying.
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Re: In the news: 13 /
Tue, September 1, 2009 - 4:05 PMSt. John's, Canada (SPX) Sept 01, 2009
The world's last remaining "pristine" forest - the boreal forest across large stretches of Russia, Canada and other northern countries - is under increasing threat, a team of international researchers has found.
The researchers from Memorial University of Newfoundland in Canada, University of Adelaide in Australia and the National University of Singapore have called for the urgent preservation of existing boreal forests in order to secure biodiversity and prevent the loss of this major global carbon sink.
The boreal forest comprises about one-third of the world's forested area and one-third of the world's stored carbon, covering a large proportion of Russia, Canada, Alaska and Scandinavia.
To date it has remained largely intact because of the typically sparse human populations in boreal regions. That is now changing says researchers and co-authors Associate Professor Ian Warkentin, Memorial University, Associate Professor Corey Bradshaw, University of Adelaide, and Professor Navjot Sodhi, National University of Singapore.
"Historically, fire and insects have driven the natural dynamics of boreal ecosystems," says Associate Professor Warkentin. "But with rising demand for resources, human disturbances caused by logging, mining and urban development have increased in these forests during recent years, with extensive forest loss for some regions and others facing heavy fragmentation and exploitation."
"Much world attention has focused on the loss and degradation of tropical forests over the past three decades, but now the boreal forest is poised to become the next Amazon," says Associate Professor Bradshaw, from the University of Adelaide's Environment Institute.
The findings have been published online in Trends in Ecology and Evolution in a paper called 'Urgent preservation of boreal carbon stocks and biodiversity'. The findings include:
+ Fire is the main driver of change and increased human activity is leading to more fires. There is also evidence that climate change is increasing the frequency and possibly the extent of fires in the boreal zone.
+ Few countries are reporting an overall change in the coverage by boreal forest but the degree of fragmentation is increasing with only about 40% of the total forested area remaining "intact".
+ Russian boreal forest is the most degraded and least "intact" and has suffered the greatest decline in the last few decades.
+ Countries with boreal forest are protecting less than 10% of their forests from timber exploitation, except for Sweden where the figure is about 20%.
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Re: In the news: 13 /
Wed, September 2, 2009 - 4:16 PMThe death toll from a powerful earthquake in Indonesia, which killed at least 42 people and forced thousands to flee buildings, is likely to rise, government agencies said early on Thursday morning.
The 7.0 magnitude quake shook buildings in the capital Jakarta on Wednesday afternoon and flattened homes in villages closer to the epicenter in West Java.
Reuters reporters at the scene early on Thursday morning saw many damaged houses, as well as makeshift tents and shelters on the streets and in fields.
"They have taken refuge not only because their houses were ruined, but also because they fear there will be aftershocks," said local official Obar Sobarna. There were about 5,000 people taking refuge in the area, he added.
At least 42 people were killed and more than 300 people injured, the government said. Officials said about 1,300 houses were damaged although local media put the number at 3,500.
Another 42 people were missing, presumed dead, after the quake triggered a landslide in the district of Cianjur, about 60 miles south of Jakarta, said Priyadi Kardono, spokesman for the National Disaster Mitigation Agency.
Kardono told Reuters the death toll could be much higher as scores of houses and offices had collapsed or suffered severe damage. Some areas near the epicenter could not be contacted for several hours, and communications were slow to recover.
"Communications with the coastal areas were completely cut, so we don't know the conditions there," Kardono said.
"No reports have come from those areas, although we assume those were the most affected ones. It's possible the death toll could grow higher."
The health ministry said it was sending medical teams to the affected areas in West Java. State news agency Antara reported that villagers were clearing rubble from collapsed buildings to try to find survivors and bodies.
QUAKE-PRONE
Indonesia's 17,000 islands are scattered along a belt of volcanic and seismic activity known as the Pacific "ring of fire," one of the most quake-prone places on earth.
More than 170,000 Indonesians were killed or listed missing after a 9.15 magnitude earthquake off Indonesia's Aceh province on Sumatra triggered a tsunami in December 2004. A total of 230,000 people died in affected Indian Ocean countries.
Indonesia's seismology agency put the magnitude of Wednesday's quake at 7.3 with the epicenter 142 km (88 miles) southwest of Tasikmalaya, in West Java.
"Many houses are flattened to the ground," said Edi Sapuan in Margamukti village, not far from Tasikmalaya. "Only the wooden houses remain standing. Many villagers are injured, covered in blood."
"We ran as soon as the quake hit. Then five minutes later my house collapsed," Edi told Reuters.
The quake was felt as far away as Surabaya, Indonesia's second-largest city, about 500 km (300 miles) northeast of Tasikmalaya, and on the resort island of Bali, about 700 km (420 miles) to the east.
Indonesia's main power, oil and gas, steel, and mining companies with operations in West and Central Java island closest to the quake's epicenter said they had not been affected and suffered no damage.
At least 38 people were injured in Jakarta, a health ministry official said. Buildings shook and thousands of people streamed onto the streets from office and apartment blocks, residents in Jakarta said.
"The chandelier started moving and it started shaking really strong," said Jakarta resident Victor Chan, who lives in a 34th floor apartment. "It lasted quite long. I was really scared and rushed downstairs."
"Everything was shaking and my neighbor shouted 'quake, quake'," said Nur Syara, from the 31st floor of the same building. "You could hear the walls creaking. I lay down on the floor. I was scared things would collapse."
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Re: In the news: 13 / Rare turtle seen in wild for first time: conservation group
Tue, September 8, 2009 - 5:20 PMBangkok (AFP) Sept 7, 2009
Scientists working in a remote Myanmar forest discovered one of the world's rarest turtle species in the wild for the first time, a conservation group said Monday.
The "critically endangered" Arakan forest turtles were thought to be extinct until 1994, when conservationists found a few specimens in captivity in a Chinese food market, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS).
Five of the animals, which measure less than a foot in length, have now been found by a team from the society which was working in a sanctuary in military-ruled Myanmar, it said.
"We are delighted and astonished that this extremely rare species is alive and well in Myanmar," said Colin Poole, WCS director of Asian programmes.
"Now we must do what we can to protect the remaining population."
He said Asian turtles -- highly sought after as food -- were being "wiped out" by poachers for the illegal wildlife trade.
Before 1994 the last known record of the Arakan forest turtle was of a single animal collected by a British army officer in 1908, it said.
The scientists found the latest examples in a Myanmar sanctuary that "contains thick stands of impenetrable bamboo forests and is rarely visited by people", the statement said.
They also came across rare yellow tortoises and Asian leaf turtles -- two other threatened species.
The Arakan forest turtles, which have light brown shells with black mottling, are locally known as "Pyant Cheezar" which means "turtle that eats rhinoceros faeces".
The society noted however that the name is a "tad timeworn" since the Sumatran rhinos that once lived in the area disappeared 50 years ago, due to overhunting.
It recommended several steps to ensure the turtles remain protected in the sanctuary, such as the establishment of permanent guard posts on roads leading in and out of the park to thwart poachers
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Re: In the news: 13 /
Mon, September 14, 2009 - 10:34 PMHamilton, Canada (SPX) Sep 14, 2009
The smell of recent death or injury that repels living relatives of insects has been identified as a truly ancient signal that functions to avoid disease or predators, biologists have discovered.
David Rollo, professor of biology at McMaster University, found that corpses of animals, from insects to crustaceans, all emit the same death stench produced by a blend of specific fatty acids.
The findings have been published in the journal Evolutionary Biology.
Rollo and his team made the discovery while they were studying the social behavior of cockroaches. When a cockroach finds a good place to live it marks the site with pheromone odours that attract others. In trying to identify the precise chemicals involved, Rollo extracted body juices from dead cockroaches.
"It was amazing to find that the cockroaches avoided places treated with these extracts like the plague," says Rollo. "Naturally, we wanted to identify what chemical was making them all go away."
The team eventually identified the specific chemicals that signaled death. Furthermore, they found that the same fatty acids not only signaled death in ants, caterpillars, and cockroaches, they were equally effective in terrestrial woodlice and pill bugs that are actually not insects but crustaceans related to crayfish and lobsters.
Because insects and crustaceans diverged more than 400-million years ago it is likely that most subsequent species recognize their dead in a similar way, that the origin of such signals was likely even older, and that such behaviour initially occurred in aquatic environments (few crustaceans are terrestrial).
"Recognizing and avoiding the dead could reduce the chances of catching the disease, or allow you to get away with just enough exposure to activate your immunity," says Rollo. Likewise, he adds, release of fatty acids from dismembered body parts could provide a strong warning that a nasty predator was nearby.
"As explained in our study, fatty acids-oleic or linoleic acids-are reliably and quickly released from the cells following death. Evolution appears to have favoured such clues because they were reliably associated with demise, and avoiding contagion and predation are rather critical to survival."
The generality and strength of the phenomenon, coupled with the fact that the fatty acids are essential nutrients rather than pesticides, holds real promise for applications such as plant and stored product protection or exclusion of household pests.
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Re: In the news: 13 /
Tue, September 22, 2009 - 12:47 AMA strong 6.1-magnitude earthquake struck the remote Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan Monday, killing at least ten people and damaging monasteries and other buildings, state-run media reported.
"Ten people were killed of which three victims are of Indian origin," Bhutan Broadcasting Service, the country's national radio reported Monday night.
The three Indians died after they were hit by falling boulders in the eastern district of Samdrup Jongkhar and their bodies have been handed over to Indian authorities in Bhutan.
Seven people died after buildings collapsed in two regions east of the capital Thimpu, an official at the government's disaster management unit said.
Bhutan's home minister Lyonpo Minjur Dorji said officials are coordinating with the district authorities to help those affected.
According to the US Geological Survey, which initially put the quake at 6.3-magnitude before revising down, the epicentre was located just inside Bhutan's border with India, 180 kilometres (115 miles) east of Thimpu, at a shallow depth of 7.2 kilometres.
Dorji said three people were injured in Munggar and some buildings had caved in, most of which were made of mud and stone.
The quake sent boulders down hillsides in eastern Bhutan, blocking roads to remote, hilly regions, he added. Homes and monasteries were also damaged.
"There are reports of landslides in some areas and power and telecommunications networks have been disrupted in eastern districts of Bhutan," Dorji said.
The Bhutanese newspaper Kuensel reported online that monasteries and other buildings had been damaged in Munggar.
Sherab Tenzin, district magistrate of Munggar, told AFP by telephone shortly after the quake struck that many of the mud and stone buildings in the area showed signs of damage, but there was no widespread destruction.
Teams of police and rescue personnel were moving out across the region to assess the damage, he said.
The tremors were also felt in the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka and in Lhasa, the capital of the Chinese region of Tibet, according to Chinese state media.
Strong tremors lasting up to 20 seconds were felt 125 kilometres away in Guwahati, the capital of India's northeastern state of Assam, where nervous residents ran into the streets.
Cracks appeared in several buildings in the city but there was no serious damage, witnesses said.
Home to just over 600,000 people and wedged in remote hills and mountains between India and China, Bhutan held its first democratic elections for a new parliament and prime minister in March last year.
The country had no roads or currency until the 1960s and allowed television only in 1999. It also famously uses the principle of 'Gross National Happiness', and not common economic indicators, to measure national well-being.
Most of its largely Buddhist population live by subsistence farming, animal husbandry and forestry.
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Re: In the news: 13 /
Sun, September 27, 2009 - 6:00 AMResearchers have discovered an unusual kind of meteorite in the Western Australian desert and have uncovered where in the Solar System it came from, in a very rare finding published in the journal Science.
Meteorites are the only surviving physical record of the formation of our Solar System and by analysing them researchers can glean valuable information about the conditions that existed when the early Solar System was being formed. However, information about where individual meteorites originated, and how they were moving around the Solar System prior to falling to Earth, is available for only a dozen of around 1100 documented meteorite falls over the past two hundred years.
Dr Phil Bland, the lead author of today's study from the Department of Earth Science and Engineering at Imperial College London, said: "We are incredibly excited about our new finding. Meteorites are the most analysed rocks on Earth but it's really rare for us to be able to tell where they came from. Trying to interpret what happened in the early Solar System without knowing where meteorites are from is like trying to interpret the geology of Britain from random rocks dumped in your back yard."
The new meteorite, which is about the size of cricket ball, is the first to be retrieved since researchers from Imperial College London, Ondrejov Observatory in the Czech Republic, and the Western Australian Museum, set up a trial network of cameras in the Nullarbor Desert in Western Australia in 2006.
The researchers aim to use these cameras to find new meteorites, and work out where in the Solar System they came from, by tracking the fireballs that they form in the sky. The new meteorite was found on the first day of searching using the new network, by the first search expedition, within 100m of the predicted site of the fall. This is the first time a meteorite fall has been predicted using only the data from dedicated instruments.
The meteorite appears to have been following an unusual orbit, or path around the Sun, prior to falling to Earth in July 2007, according to the researchers' calculations. The team believes that it started out as part of an asteroid in the innermost main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. It then gradually evolved into an orbit around the Sun that was very similar to Earth's. The other meteorites that researchers have data for follow orbits that take them back, deep into the main asteroid belt.
The new meteorite is also unusual because it is composed of a rare type of basaltic igneous rock. The researchers say that its composition, together with the data about where the meteorite comes from, fits with a recent theory about how the building blocks for the terrestrial planets were formed. This theory suggests that the igneous parent asteroids for meteorites like today's formed deep in the inner Solar System, before being scattered out into the main asteroid belt. Asteroids are widely believed to be the building blocks for planets like the Earth so today's finding provides another clue about the origins of the Solar System.
The researchers are hopeful that their new desert network could yield many more findings, following the success of their first meteorite search.
Dr Bland added: "We're not the first team to set up a network of cameras to track fireballs, but other teams have encountered problems because meteorites are small rocks and they're hard to find in vegetated areas. Our solution was quite simple - build a fireball network in a place where it's easy to find them. The Nullarbour Desert is ideal because there's very little vegetation and dark rocks show up really easily on the light desert plain.
"It was amazing to find a meteorite that we could track back to its origin in the asteroid belt on our first expedition using our small trial network. We're cautiously optimistic that this find could be the first of many and if that happens, each find may give us more clues about how the Solar System began," said Dr Bland.
The researchers' network of cameras takes a single time-lapse picture every night to record any fireballs in the sky. When a meteorite falls, researchers can then use complex calculations to uncover what orbit the meteorite was following and where the meteorite is likely to have landed, so that they can retrieve it.
Adapted from materials provided by Imperial College London
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Re: In the news: 13 /Tonga earthquake triggers tsunami threatening Tonga, Samoa and Fiji
Tue, September 29, 2009 - 9:12 PMA major 7.9-magnitude earthquake that struck off the Tonga islands region early Friday triggered a tsunami threatening Tonga, Samoa and Fiji.
The quake, which hit at 6.17 am local time (1817 GMT), was centred 130 miles south-southeast of the Tongan capital Nuku'Alofa and 300 miles southeast of Ndoi Island, Fiji.
It struck at a depth of 6.2 miles, the US Geological Survey said.
Spectacular volcano eruption - new video A tsunami warning was issued by the Hawaii-based Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre for Tonga, Niue, Kermadec Islands, American Samoa, Samoa and Fiji.
"An earthquake of this size has the potential to generate a destructive tsunami that can strike coastlines in the region near the epicentre within minutes to hours. Authorities in the region should take appropriate action in response to this possibility," the centre said.
Local radio stations in Tonga broadcast warnings that a tsunami was possible and that people should move away from coastal villages, but police cited locals who said no big wave had been reported.
Niua Kama, a police spokesman, said residents did not appear to take the warning seriously.
"People are out on the roads, laughing at the warning," he told The Associated Press. "They are not moving from the coast" even though there had been "a strong warning of a tsunami. Police have not taken any action at this stage."
There were no immediate reports of injuries or damage.
The quake occurred near fault lines in the Pacific "Ring of Fire", where continental plates in the earth's crust meet and earthquakes and volcanic activity are common.
www.telegraph.co.uk -
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Re: In the news: 13 /
Fri, October 9, 2009 - 2:00 AMFeeding Earth's expected population of nine billion by 2050 will need a switch in eating habits and farming practices if inequalities and environmental overload are to be avoided, French researchers said on Wednesday.
Teams from two institutes sketched projections for what could happen over the next four decades as the world's population swells by around 2.5 billion.
The statistical basis for their study was food production between 1961 and 2003, a period that included the "green revolution" of rice production that especially benefited Third World countries.
The researchers put forward one scenario that followed historical trends in food output and use of land in an open-market manner.
Under this projection, production would grow by 2050 thanks to intensive farming.
However, the movement towards meat production would also accelerate, inequalities between the nutritionally rich and nutritionally poor would widen, and environmental issues -- as today -- would only be addressed after they have become a problem.
A rival scenario sees low-intensivity, sustainable farming where meat or fish would account for around 500 calories in an average daily intake of 3,000 per person, or around 15 percent of the diet compared with 17 percent in 2003.
Meat farming requires large inputs. Every calorie of meat produced by a cow or sheep requires seven calories of grass and other vegetation. For chickens and pigs, the ratio is one to four.
Achieving the goal of 3,000 calories per head would entail a cut of around quarter in daily intake in rich countries today and a corresponding rise in sub-Saharan Africa.
Two factors would help the fight to feed the billions, the institutes said.
One is the big gains that can be made from fighting waste. Globally, more than a third of food produced each day is lost in the fields, in processing plants and distribution.
Another is the growing preponderance of the elderly.
By 2050, "the average age of the world's population will have increased by 10 years. When a population ages, the calorific needs fall," Marion Guillou, president of the National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA), said.
The report, co-written with the Agricultural Research Centre for International Development (CIRAD), cautioned that achieving the second scenario would require market regulation and protection for the growing of staple foods in poor countries
TerraDaily Express - October 08, 2009 -
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Re: In the news: 13 /
Mon, October 19, 2009 - 2:37 PMNASA Science News for October 19, 2009
Caused by debris from Halley's Comet, the 2009 Orionid meteor shower peaks on Wednesday, Oct. 21st, and forecasters say it could be an unusually good show.
science.nasa.gov/headlines...ionids.htm
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Re: In the news: 13 /
Sun, November 22, 2009 - 11:36 PMBogota Nov 21, 2009
A thousand people were evacuated and traffic was stopped after the Galeras volcano erupted in southern Colombia without causing casualties, officials said Saturday. The locals were taken to shelters in Pasto, the capital of Narino department on the border with Ecuador, after authorities put the volcano -- the most active in Colombia -- on red alert to signal an imminent or ongoing eruption. Some 9,000 people live in the vicinity of the volcano, which erupted at 8:37 pm Friday (0137 GMT Saturday), will be forced to leave their homes and seek refuge in temporary accommodations if the alert is prolonged, the Colombia Institute of Geology and Mining (Ingeominas) said. Narino Government Secretary Fabio Trujillo, whose office coordinates volcano prevention, evacuation and relief efforts, told local radio that traffic restrictions would be imposed on the highway linking Pashto -- 920 kilometers (570 miles) -- to localities close to Galeras. The eruption caused ashfall in Pashto and surrounding villages, according to local media. A 1993 eruption of Galeras, which rises in the Andes mountain chain to an altitude of 4,270 meters (14,029 feet), killed nine people, including six scientists who had descended its crater to take gas samples. Ingeominas says the volcano was reactivated in 2004 and causes about 19 earthquakes per year. Authorities said they are continuing to monitor the nearby Huila volcano, on orange alert, where sizeable volcanic activity also has been detected in recent weeks. Huila, at some 5,363 meters (17,595 feet), last erupted in November 2008, killing 10 people
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Re: In the news: 13 /
Tue, December 8, 2009 - 3:00 PMDec. 8, 2009: Make hot cocoa. Bundle up. Tell your friends. The best meteor shower of 2009 is about to fall over North America on a long, cold December night.
"It's the Geminid meteor shower," says Bill Cooke of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office. "and it will peak on Dec. 13th and 14th under ideal viewing conditions."
A new Moon will keep skies dark for a display that Cooke and others say could top 140 meteors per hour. According to the International Meteor Organization, maximum activity should occur around 12:10 a.m. EST (0510 UT) on Dec. 14th. The peak is broad, however, and the night sky will be rich with Geminids for many hours and perhaps even days around the maximum.
What's going on? Jupiter's gravity has been acting on Phaethon's debris stream, causing it to shift more and more toward Earth's orbit. Each December brings a deeper plunge into the debris stream.
Meteor expert Peter Brown of the University of Western Ontario (UWO) says the trend could continue for some time to come. "Based on modeling of the debris done by Jim Jones in the UWO meteor group back in the 1980s, it is likely that Geminid activity will increase for the next few decades, perhaps getting 20% to 50% higher than current rates."
A 50% increase would boost the Geminids to 200 or more meteors per hour, year in and year out. "That would be an amazing annual display," says Cooke.
Moreover, says Brown, "the proportion of large, bright Geminids should also increase in the next few decades, according to Jones' model." So the Geminids could turn into a "fireball shower."
Brown cautions that "other models of the debris stream come to different conclusions, in some cases suggesting that Geminids will decrease in intensity in the coming decades. We understand little about the details of the formation and evolution of Phaethon's debris despite many years of efforts."
Recent trends favor a good show. Enjoy the Geminids!
science.nasa.gov
Right: A flurry of Geminids in Dec. 2008 recorded by an all-sky camera at the Marshall Space Flight Center. In the movie, note the circular halo that forms around the Moon as it arcs across the sky; that is caused by ice crystals in high clouds. [more]
Cooke offers this advice: "Watch the sky during the hours around local midnight. For North Americans, this means Sunday night to Monday morning."
Researchers are interested to see what the Geminids do in 2009. The shower has been intensifying in recent decades and they wonder if the trend will continue.
Geminids are pieces of debris from a strange object called 3200 Phaethon. Long thought to be an asteroid, Phaethon is now classified as an extinct comet. It is, basically, the rocky skeleton of a comet that lost its ice after too many close encounters with the sun. Earth runs into a stream of debris from 3200 Phaethon every year in mid-December, causing meteors to fly from the constellation Gemini: sky map.
When the Geminids first appeared in the late 19th century, shortly before the US Civil War, the shower was weak and attracted little attention. There was no hint that it would ever become a major display.
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Re: In the news: 13
Tue, December 15, 2009 - 8:31 AMhow many afghanis are visiting it?
I'm guessing near none.
I just don't have a mental picture of Afghanistan as a place where people who live in mud and stone huts will travel to a place where there are lots more stones and mud. -
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Re: In the news: 13
Wed, December 16, 2009 - 2:05 AMLegaspi, Philippines (AFP) Dec 15, 2009
Tens of thousands of villagers in the Philippines fled their homes on Tuesday as one of the nation's most active volcanoes spewed lava and sent ash plumes high into the sky, authorities said.
Soldiers and police marshalled the evacuation from the so-called "danger zone" around the foothills of Mayon volcano, amid concerns a big eruption could occur at any moment.
"After the series of ash puffs and ash explosions of 1,000 metres (high), we cannot rule out a major explosion," Cedric Daep, the head of the disaster relief operations in the eastern Bicol region, told reporters.
Daep said the authorities aimed to evacuate nearly 50,000 people from villages within eight kilometres (five miles) of the volcano by Thursday.
The Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology raised the alert level for Mayon to three on Monday after lava was seen dripping from the crater, and evacuations began immediately.
Level three means an eruption is likely in the very near future. The scale runs from one to five, with five meaning an eruption is occurring.
However the volcanology institute also said Mayon could yet calm down without an eruption.
Mayon, which sits above a farming area about 330 kilometres (200 miles) southeast of Manila, has erupted 48 times since records began, claiming thousands of lives.
After the most recent eruption in August 2006, huge deposits of volcanic ash were left on its slopes. When typhoon Durian hit the same area in December of that year, it caused a landslide of volcanic ash that killed over 1,000 people.
In 1814, more than 1,200 people were killed as the lava buried the town of Cagsawa.
However the 2,460-metre (8,070-feet) volcano remains a popular tourist attraction, and is famous for its perfect cone.
The Philippines is part of the so-called Pacific "Ring of Fire" that is known for its volcanic activity. The Philippine volcanology institute lists 22 active volcanoes in the country.
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