We Speak For Earth
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ikenbot CWL -
mohandasgandhi Mohandas Gandhi -
realcleverscience Real Clever Science -
socialuprooting Social Uprooting -
abstractnerd Abstract Nerd -
perscientiamlibertas A Matter of the Most Pleasant Fraternal Confidence
[Trigger Warning: Animal Cruelty] Shocking Photos: PETA’s Secret Slaughter of Kittens, Puppies
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is an organization that publicly claims to represent the best interest of animals — indeed their “ethical treatment.” Yet approximately 2,000 animals pass through PETA’s front door every year and very few make it out alive. The vast majority — 96 percent in 2011 — exit the facility out the back door after they have been killed, when Pet Cremation Services of Tidewater stops by on their regular visits to pick up their remains. Between these visits, the bodies are stored in the giant walk-in freezer PETA installed for this very purpose. It is a freezer that cost $9,370 and, like the company which incinerates the bodies of PETA’s victims, was paid for with the donations of animal lovers who could never have imagined that the money they donated to help animals would be used to end their lives instead. In fact, in the last 11 years, PETA has killed 29,426 dogs, cats, rabbits, and other domestic animals.
Fragile Namibian Deserts ‘Damaged’ By Mad Max Film Crew
Say it aint so! One of my favorite deserts and landscapes on the whole world has apparently been maimed. The people behind the upcoming Mad Max film are undergoing a lot of criticism from Namibian environmental groups who are accusing the makers of the film of damaging the ecosystems of this precious desert that’s already undergoing stress from climate change.
The movie was being filmed in an area that was recently named as the Dorob National Park. Parts of it are designated for tourism, while others are set aside for particular species of endangered animal and plant life. The extremely dry environment in the desert makes any changes in the ecosystem extremely perilous — less than 10mm of rain falls on the Namib Desert every year, and it can take decades for small lichens and mosses to build up where condensation occurs during fog. It is alleged that the Mad Max film crew damaged areas which are meant to be protected from human activities, threatening lizards, geckos, chameleons and “the rare lithops cactus”.
Jon Henschel, an ecological scientist hired by the Namibian Coast Conservation and Management (Nacoma) Project to study the damage the environment suffered from the film crew, found that parts of the desert until now untouched by vehicles had been driven over, leaving tracks — in one area a “ploughing device” had been used. Even worse, to try and level the tracks as they left, the crew had dragged nets across the ground, ripping out small plants.
Recent Global Warming Slowed by Volcanoes
Global average temperatures have been rising in recent years, but not as much as they might have, thanks to a series of small-to-moderate-sized volcanic eruptions that have spewed sunlight-blocking particles high into the atmosphere. That’s the conclusion of a new study, which also finds that microscopic particles derived from industrial smokestacks have done little to cool the globe.
Between 2000 and 2010, the average atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide — a planet-warming greenhouse gas — rose more than 5%, from about 370 parts per million to nearly 390 parts per million. If that uptick were the only factor driving climate change during the period, global average temperature would have risen about 0.2°C, says Ryan Neely III, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Colorado, Boulder. But a surge in the concentration of light-scattering particles in the stratosphere countered as much as 25% of that potential temperature increase, he notes.
According to satellite data, a measure of the light-scattering ability of the stratospheric particles, called aerosols, rose on average between 4% and 7% each year between 2000 and 2010. (The more incoming sunlight is scattered back into space, the stronger the cooling effect.) But researchers have strongly debated the source of those aerosols, Neely says. While many teams have suggested that the aerosols came from small-to-mid-sized volcanic eruptions, a few others have proposed that they originated in Asian smokestacks. Their rationale: Emissions of sulfur dioxide in India and China grew about 60% during the decade, and atmospheric convection associated with the region’s summer monsoon provides a way for watery droplets containing that gas to reach the stratosphere then diffuse around the world.
In lakes and streams, fish and insects can help protect aquatic plants that gobble up greenhouse gas
Climate scientists note that Earth will suffer excessive warming if levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere get much higher. That’s why scientists have been looking for ways to encourage living organisms to act like a sponge, mopping up and storing much of that carbon dioxide. These carbon-storing species include trees, grasses and algae.
The Microbial Communities of the Future
The world, it turns out, is getting warmer. The extent and precise contours of climate change may never be forecastable, but many scientists are working to test the repercussions of a warmer atmosphere, in order to both inform policy discussions and instigate difficult discussions about adaptation strategies.
Nicholas Bouskill, an ecologist at the University of California at Berkeley, is one such scientist. Through a carefully designed study of jungle floor patches in Puerto Rico, Bouskill and his team are hoping to determine how the microbial make-up of soil changes in response to repeated periods of dryness. “These locations are likely to experience changes in the magnitude of rainfall, with increased drought and longer dry periods,” he writes in a recent edition of the ISME Journal.
It wasn’t necessarily clear how a drier environment would impact the microbial community since soil moisture is a double edged sword: Too much of it, and the diffusion of important gases in and out of the soil is limited; too little, and nutrients might not reach the microbes in sufficient quantities. So how, and how quickly, might soil-based microbial communities change in response to less water? Bouskill sought answers by tracking diversity shifts in plots of soil cut off from rain throughfall for the first time and those experiencing a second artificial drought.
Dolphins Team Up to Rescue Injured Companion
Everybody’s favourite cetacean just got a little more lovable. For the first time, dolphins have been spotted teaming up to try to rescue an injured group member. The act does not necessarily mean dolphins are selfless or can empathise with the pain of their kin, however.
Kyum Park of the Cetacean Research Institute in Ulsan, South Korea, and colleagues were surveying cetaceans in the Sea of Japan in June 2008. They spent a day following a group of about 400 long-beaked common dolphins (Delphinus capensis).
In the late morning they noticed that about 12 dolphins were swimming very close together. One female was in difficulties: it was wriggling and tipping from side to side, sometimes turning upside-down. Its pectoral flippers seemed to be paralysed.
Life raft
The other dolphins crowded around it, often diving beneath it and supporting it from below. After about 30 minutes, the dolphins formed into an impromptu raft: they swam side by side with the injured female on their backs. By keeping the injured female above water, they may have helped it to breathe, avoiding drowning (see video, above).
After another few minutes some of the helper dolphins left. The injured dolphin soon dropped into a vertical position. The remaining helpers appeared to try and prop it up, possibly to keep its head above the surface, but it soon stopped breathing, say the researchers. Five dolphins stayed with it and continued touching its body, until it sank out of sight.
“It does look like quite a sophisticated way of keeping the companion up in the water,” says Karen McComb at the University of Sussex in Brighton, UK. Such helping behaviours are only seen in intelligent, long-lived socialanimals. In most species, injured animals are quickly left behind.
For the love of pod
While it may seem selfless to help an injured fellow, McComb says the helper dolphins might get some benefit. Rescuing the struggling dolphin could help maintain their group, and thus control of their territory. Furthermore, if the group contains close relatives, protecting those relatives helps the dolphins preserve their shared genes.
The simple act of working together could also bond the group more strongly. “It makes a lot of sense in a highly intelligent and social animal for there to be support of an injured animal,” McComb says.
The act of helping also seems to suggest that the dolphins understand when others are suffering, and can even empathise: that is, imagine themselves in the place of the suffering dolphin. But while this is possible, McComb says the helping behaviour could evolve without the need for empathy.
There have been reports of single dolphins helping others, generally mothers helping their calves, but no cases of groups of dolphins working together to help another. Dolphins have also been seen interacting with the corpses of dead dolphins, which some researchers interpret as a form of mourning.
Journal reference: Marine Mammal Science, doi.org/kbb
For Your Consideration: Anti-Drone Hoodie
The anti-drone hoodie which can make its wearer invisible to spies in the sky
Those concerned about the conspiratorial machinations of the state surveillance infrastructure can now swap their tin-foil hats for a more fashion conscious accessory.
A New York-based artist has designed an ‘anti-drone hoodie’ stitched from metallised material used to counter the infra-red cameras that spy drones use to spot people on the ground. It is part of a line of high-tech ‘Stealth Wear’ that can thwart cameras and block tracking signals, which has been unveiled in London this week.
Also on offer is a pouch for carrying mobile phones made from a special ‘attenuating fabric’ which blocks the signal so it can’t be tracked or intercepted by the authorities. And there is also a shirt designed with an x-ray shielding print in the shape of a heart which is intended to protect the wearer’s heart from damaging x-ray radiation.
Artist Adam Harvey, who collaborated with fashion designer Johanna Bloomfield to come up with the range, said the pieces are intended to provoke a debate about the increasing ubiquity of surveillance across society. A landmark Freedom of Information lawsuit by the Electronic Frontier Foundation last year forced federal authorities to reveal there are at least 63 active drone sites around the U.S. The unmanned planes – some of which may have been designed to kill terror suspects – are being launched from locations in 20 states and flying spy sorties across American soil.
Most of the active drones are deployed from military installations, enforcement agencies and border patrol teams, according to the Federal Aviation Authority. In the UK police forces including Merseyside Police have trialled the use of remote-controlled drones to replace helicopters to conduct surveillance that would usually be undertaken by helicopters.
It was this increased use of military-style surveillance technologies in civilian environments that inspired the 31-year-old artist to come up with with the clothing line. ‘Military technology is coming home from the war,’ Mr Harvey told Slate. ‘These pieces are designed to live with it, to cope with it — to live in a world where surveillance is happening all the time.’ He came up with the range, which also includes an anti-drone scarf, primarily as an exercise in provocative conceptual art, but the garments will also be manufactured for sale to the public.
However, due to the expensive materials used in the design of the clothing, they are unlikely to go on sale in your local Primark anytime soon. Mr Harvey, who hasn’t yet pinned down the retail prices for his garments, jokes that his target demographic is the ‘fashionably paranoid market’. The counter-surveillance Stealth Wear range is on display from today at the Primitive boutique in Great Portland Street in West London, until January 31.
Bass Reeves, one of the first African Americans to become a Deputy U.S. Marshal west of the Mississippi River, could have been an inspiration for Quentin Tarantino’s fictional character Django.
Reeves, who was born a slave, arrested 3,000 felons, killed 14 men and was never shot throughout his 32-year career as a federal lawman.
The fearless solider was born into slavery in 1838 in Crawford County, Arkansas, and eventually broke from his owner, George Reeves, to live among the Creek and Seminole Indians.
During his time with them, he learned their customs and languages and became an adept territorial scout.
Reeves later procured his own land in Van Buren, Arkansas, where he married his wife, Nellie Jennie, built an eight-room house with his bare hands, and raised ten children as the first black settler in the region.
He became a Deputy U.S. Marshal in 1875 at the age of 38, after ‘Hanging Judge’ Isaac C. Parker was made the federal judge of Indian Territory. Under President Ulysses S. Grant, Parker appointed Confederate Army General James Fagan a U.S. Marshal and ordered him to hire 200 deputies. Among them was Reeves.
Fagan knew of the former slave, his ability to negotiate Indian Territory and his ability to speak their languages, and so Reeves was named the first black Deputy Marshal west of the Mississippi.
In that role he was authorized to arrest both black and white outlaws.
