Home/Posts Tagged ‘scientists’
Posts Tagged ‘scientists’
Climate Change, Science & Technology, Videos & Documentaries, Jul 4th, 2012,
The recent heat waves and extreme storms in the eastern United States, the numerous wildfires in Colorado and other Western states, flooding elsewhere in the country… Since 1988 climate scientists have associated these kinds of extreme weather events, though not specific weather events, to climate change or global warming. What we’ve been seeing in different parts of the US this summer is what scientists say will occur more frequently as the planet heats up. According to Princeton University geosciences and international affairs professor Michael Oppenheimer, droughts, floods, wildfires, extreme storms and other environmental disasters are “what global warming really…
Tags: Climate change, extreme weather, floods, global warming, scientists, storms, wildfires
Science & Technology, Wildlife & Flora, Feb 21st, 2012,
Russian scientists have succeeded in regenerating an ice age plant from fruit tissue found frozen in the Siberian permafrost. A nest of Arctic squirrels containing fruit and seeds was discovered over 30 meters (100ft) underground, its contents frozen for around 32,000 years. Scientists managed to germinate an ice-age plant, similar to chickweed, from the ancient seeds. From the Guardian: The experiment proves that permafrost serves as a natural depository for ancient life forms, said the Russian researchers, who published their findings in Tuesday’s issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States. The burrows explored…
Tags: arctic, permafrost, plant, Russia, scientists, Siberia
Science & Technology, Weird Stuff, Jan 4th, 2012,
The Green Slime are coming! It sounds like a bad Cold War science fiction movie, but slime is smarter and more cunning than you think. Scientists in Japan are researching how slime molds navigate in search of food. Though slime mold has no brain, it shows signs of intelligence and can even navigate itself through a maze by organizing its cells and finding the most direct route to a food source. From the Telegraph: Humans are not the only living things with information-processing abilities. Simple creatures can solve certain kinds of difficult puzzles. If you want to spotlight the essence…
Tags: intelligence, japan, mould, scientists, slime
Climate Change, Politics, Dec 12th, 2011,
A last minute deal at COP17, the UN Climate Change Conference in Durban, South Africa, managed to secure a legally binding global treaty, even amongst those most reluctant to sign on: big polluters the US, China and India. But what does the deal entail and is it really any good? First of all, the treaty is to be signed in 2015 and enforced in 2020 – too little too late according to environmentalists and most climate scientists. But what the hell do they know? The climate ‘road map’ was the brainchild and goal of the European Union, who desperately tried…
Tags: China, climate, COP17, deal, Durban, emissions, environmentalists, India, reactions, scientists, South Africa, US
Science & Technology, Videos & Documentaries, Sep 20th, 2010,
Multinational chocolate giant Mars, working with the US Department of Agriculture and IBM, have sequenced the genome of the cocoa tree. Rather than patenting the genome, it’s been released into the public domain. Unlocking the genetic secrets of chocolate, scientists say, could revolutionize cocoa farming in the developing world, especially in West African nations. Cocoa production is severely hampered by pests and fungal diseases, which regularly cause hundreds of millions of euros in losses in West African chocolate producing nations like Ghana and the Ivory Coast as well as Brazil, the world’s second largest producer. From an article in the…
Tags: Africa, African, cacao, chocolate, code, farmers, genetic, genome, Ghana, Mars, scientists, slavery, West
Climate Change, Science & Technology, Sep 6th, 2010,
This week leading climate scientists will meet in the UK to make plans for a project with the aim of creating an international weather databank and revolutionizing the way meteorological disasters are predicted. The project will entail the creation of a global network of weather stations that give daily readings, digitizing old sea logs, gathering weather information from all countries of the world, as well as forging co-operational relationships with web companies such as Google and Galaxy Zoo. We need to answer key questions such as whether the onset of the monsoon in India will be delayed, how the frequency…
Tags: climate, extreme, project, scientists, UK, weather
Climate Change, Nature, Aug 13th, 2010,
While individual events like heat waves, cold snaps, floods and droughts cannot be attributed to man made climate change on an individual basis, scientists at the World Meteorological Association (WMO) say global warming exacerbates the intensity of recent extreme weather. The floods in China, Pakistan and Afghanistan, the heat wave and resultant wild fires in Russia and the intense rain in central Europe all point to the fact that extreme weather events have tripled since 1980. From an article by Reuters: Recent extremes include mudslides in China and heat records from Finland to Kuwait — adding to evidence of a changing…
Tags: change, China, climate, events, extreme, fires, flooding, floods, global, heat, Pakistan, Russia, scientists, warming, wave, weather
Politics, Pollution, Aug 6th, 2010,
Yesterday and today BP crews are attempting to securely seal the leak on the blown out oil well in the Gulf of Mexico by pumping in cement. Operation ‘static kill’ has so far been successful in halting the flow of oil into the Gulf, which began on April 20th with the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil platform. The latest effort began with BP crews pumping in special mud to stop the leak and will hopefully conclude – after the cement on top has dried – with the drilling of two relief wells. The Obama administration recently announced that around…
Tags: BP, cement, Gulf, marshes, oil, positive, scientists, seal, spill, spin, well
Climate Change, Science & Technology, Jul 30th, 2010,
A new Met Office report, compiled of several recent studies, documents what scientists consider undeniable evidence of a changing climate and warming planet. 10 indicators of global warming were incorporated in the report, including rising land and sea-surface temperatures, ocean heat, sea levels and humidity; and a reduction in Arctic sea ice, glaciers and springtime snow cover in the Northern Hemisphere. From an article in the Wall Street Journal: The State of the Climate 2009 report, published Wednesday as a special supplement to the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, was compiled by 300 scientists from 48 countries and drew…
Tags: change, climate, evidence, global, hottest, indicators, Met Office, record, report, scientists, temperatures, warming
Nature, Science & Technology, Weird Stuff, Wildlife & Flora, Jul 16th, 2010,
The history of this planet is an awesome thing to learn about and there are so many ways you can do that. You can go to a museum, read books, check out a historical reenactment event, or specialize in the hunt for fossils and other artifacts. Some people say history comes alive, but what if it never died in the first place? Australian scientists have stumbled upon an amazing find at Osprey Reef, which is part of the Great Barrier Reef. With the use of special low-light sensitive cameras, researcher Justin Marshall and his team discovered a number of prehistoric…
Tags: australia, cameras, creatures, discovery, fish, Great Barrier Reef, history, Osprey Reef, prehistoric, research, scientists
Science & Technology, Weird Stuff, Jun 21st, 2010,
Chickens are used for many things around the globe, but their main purpose has always been as a food source. Whether it’s for their meat, their eggs, or their strange helpfulness in the garden, these farmyard birds have been depended on for a long time. However, when it comes to the poultry industry, there is one oversight people probably make: the feathers. Did you know that nearly 6 billion pounds of chicken feathers are generated in the US per year? Yeah, that’s a crazy amount of feathers and they don’t really have much use once they’ve been removed from the…
Tags: biodiesel, biofuel, chicken feather meal, chicken feathers, chickens, circuit boards, poultry industry, research, scientists, study
Science & Technology, Weird Stuff, May 22nd, 2010,
Scientists in the US state of Wyoming are extracting special proteins by milking goats that have been injected with spider DNA. Spider silk is known for being extremely strong and elastic – making it very useful for certain medical and industrial applications. Randy Lewis, a professor of microbiology, heads up the team of scientists who injected a herd of goats with genes from a golden orb spider. From an article in the Toronto Sun: Because of its strength and flexibility, people are interested in spider silk for uses that range from artificial ligaments and tendons to bulletproof vests and even…
Tags: DNA, goats, Lewis, professor, Randy, scientists, silk, spider, spiders
Nature, Weird Stuff, Wildlife & Flora, May 13th, 2010,
A gray whale has been spotted in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Israel. Gray whales, thought to be extinct in the Atlantic Ocean – what to speak of the Mediterranean – are large baleen whales previously believed to only live in the North Pacific. From a BBC News report: Once, three major populations of gray (also spelt grey) whale existed: in the western and eastern North Pacific Ocean, and in the North Atlantic. However, the North Atlantic population of gray whale became extinct sometime in the 17th or 18th Century, for reasons that are not clear. Scientists are…
Tags: Atlantic, False Creek, gray, Mediterranean, north, ocean, Pacific, scientists, sighting, Vancouver, whale
Videos & Documentaries, Weird Stuff, Wildlife & Flora, Apr 29th, 2010,
On December 7th, 2008 Pansy the chimp passed away at the Blair Drummond Safari and Adventure Park in Stirlingshire, Scotland. Video of her death was filmed by park staff and later shown to scientists at the University of Stirling, who studied how the elderly female chimpanzee’s family reacted to her passing. The scientists recently published their findings in the journal Current Biology. From an article in the Independent: I decided to let the other chimpanzees in so that they could be together and she could die with dignity. It felt like the right thing to do. What followed was incredible….
Tags: chimpanzees, chimps, death, grief, keywords: chimp, mortality, Pansy, scientists
Climate Change, Nature, Science & Technology, Mar 29th, 2010,
A new report, which will become available today in the journal Environmental Science & Technology, argues that human activity has affected the planet in such consequential and lasting ways that a new geological age should be declared: the Anthropocene. Officially the planet is still in the Holocene age, an interglacial period within the current ice age, which includes the entire span of human civilization up to the present time. The Holocene began some 12,000 years ago. From an article in the Toronto Star: Scientists behind the report say that in just two centuries, humans have wrought such vast and unprecedented…
Tags: age, Anthropocene, Environmental Science & Technology, era, geological, Holocene, human, planet, scientists
Science & Technology, Mar 4th, 2010,
Last Saturday’s deadly earthquake in Chile may have slightly shortened the day and affected the position of the Earth’s axis, according to NASA scientists. The quake measured 8.8. on the Richter scale and is estimated to have shifted the Earth’s axis by 2.7 milliarcseconds (8 cm or 3 in) and shortened the length of the day by 1.26 microseconds (millionths of a second) according to an article from Bloomberg. So much land was moved during the earthquake that it may have significantly changed the Earth’s distribution of mass enough to affect such changes. Previous earthquakes have had a similar effect,…
Tags: axis, Chile, Earth, earthquake, NASA, quake, scientists, shift, shifted
Climate Change, Politics, Feb 15th, 2010,
Physicist and climate historian Dr. Spencer Weart offers a historical and cultural perspective on the current debate about climate science – specifically, how it might be viewed by the historians of the future. As a history graduate and lover of futurism, this imagined perspective naturally piqued my interest. What stand out in Weart’s social history of the climate wars are the observations concerning the public’s loss of respect vis-à-vis the scientific community. This erosion of political capital came from the diversification of authority in terms of scientific information: we got our info about the climate from politicians, journalists, economists and…
Tags: climate, debate, future, historian, history, media, Politics, science, scientific, scientists, Spencer, Weart
Nature, Science & Technology, Wildlife & Flora, Feb 4th, 2010,
Last week it was reported that a group of researchers intended to investigate the Japanese whaling in the Antarctic seas. In particular, they wanted to see if the whales could be studied without killing them; which could be viewed as a challenge to Japan, since they claim they have to hunt and kill hundreds of whales per year, all for the sake of “scientific research”. The researchers deployed from Wellington, New Zealand on Tuesday. Nearly 20 scientists from Australia, France and New Zealand are part of the 6 week expedition, where they will study the whales, their food, and how…
Tags: 6 week expedition, Antarctica, Japanese whale hunting, New Zealand, non-lethal whale research, Ross Sea, scientists, whale research
Climate Change, Science & Technology, Wildlife & Flora, Jan 27th, 2010,
Research by scientists in the U.S. state of Wisconsin is pointing to some surprising evidence concerning greenhouse gases. But this is not exactly a study on climate change: the research is an attempt to find out how rising greenhouse gas emissions will affect local forests in about 50 years time. So far, results show that plants ‘eat’ more when exposed to higher levels of carbon dioxide, giving the trees a thicker canopy with larger leaves. However, increases in another greenhouse gas – ozone (O3) – showed rises in mortality, disease and insect attacks among the trees. First the ozone pollution…
Tags: carbon dioxide, forest, greenhouse gas, greenhouse gases, National Geographic, ozone, research, scientists, Wisconsin
Climate Change, Nature, Videos & Documentaries, Jan 17th, 2010,
As a follow-up to last weekend’s post on U.S. scientists’ call for an end to mountaintop removal coal mining, here is a short video report from the Discovery Channel: Scientists Seek Ban on Mountaintop Mining Mountaintop mining causes permanent damage to the environment and exposes people to serious health risks, says a new report by a leading group of scientists. Jorge Ribas reports. by Graham Land Additional resources: New York Times Dot Earth – Scientists Reject Mountaintop Mining Methods Discovery News – Earth
Tags: channel, coal, mining, mountaintop, removal, Science & Technology, scientists
