We Speak For Earth
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ikenbot CWL -
mohandasgandhi Mohandas Gandhi -
realcleverscience Real Clever Science -
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perscientiamlibertas A Matter of the Most Pleasant Fraternal Confidence
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.
Fresh water accounts for only 2.5% of Earth’s water, yet it is vital for human civilization. What are our sources of fresh water? In the first of a two part series on fresh water, Christiana Z. Peppard breaks the numbers down and discusses who is using it and to what ends.
Lesson by Christiana Z. Peppard, animation by Jeremy Collins.
View full lesson: http://ed.ted.com/lessons/how-polarity-makes-water-behave-strangely-christina…
Water is both essential and unique. Many of its particular qualities stem from the fact that it consists of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen, therefore creating an unequal sharing of electrons. From fish in frozen lakes to ice floating on water, Christina Kleinberg describes the effects of polarity.
Lesson by Christina Kleinberg, animation by Alan Foreman.
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
Lawrence Krauss argues for differential pay scales for teachers with advanced training in science and math to accommodate the free market.
America is facing a higher education bubble. Like the housing bubble, it is the product of cheap credit coupled with popular expectations of ever-increasing returns on investment, and as with housing prices, the cheap credit has caused college tuition’s to vastly outpace inflation and family incomes. Now this bubble is bursting.
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.
Project Bumblebee (Conservation and Citizen Science)
In the late 1990′s, bee biologists started to notice a decline in the abundance and distribution of several wild bumble bee species in North America. Five of these species (western bumble bee, rusty patched bumble bee, yellowbanded bumble bee and the American bumble bee) were once very common and important crop pollinators over their ranges. Franklin’s bumble bee was historically found only in a small area in southern Oregon and northern California, and it may now be extinct.
The dramatic decline in wild populations of these five species occurred about the time that a disease outbreak was reported in populations of commercially raised western bumble bees, which were distributed for greenhouse pollination in western North America. The timing of this suggests that an escaped exotic disease organism may be the cause of this widespread loss…
(read more: The Xerces Society)
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What You Can Do to Help Bumblebees:
1. Download our new publication: Conserving Bumble Bees. Guidelines for Creating and Managing Habitat for America’s Declining Pollinators. See this link for more information on what is covered in the guidelines.
2. The Xerces Society has collaborated with the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center to create a list of plants that are attractive to bumble bees. If you are interested in planting flowers in your garden or on your land to attract bumble bees, please consider using this valuable resource.
3. We are collecting data on bumble bee nesting habits. Please visit this site for more information and to fill out our bumble bee nest survey.
(photos: Johanna James-Heinz and Derrick Ditchburn)
(via scinerds)
