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POPSMercury and Autism The controversy rages on. A recent study said that because the mercury levels found in people's blood with and without autism were basically the same, there was no link. But, as this clip suggests, the place to be testing mercury levels isn't in the blood, but in the tissue.
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POPSSperm Whale Classified Carbon Neutral Prior analysis of whale carbon dioxide emissions attributes 25 percent of carbon dioxide emissions total to the animals in the Southern Ocean region. Subsequent computation lowers the whales’ carbon dioxide emissions estimate to 0.3 percent, which is equivalent to 17 million tons of carbon a year. Lavery and team explain that there are low levels of iron in the Southern Ocean, and the sperm whales each contribute about 10 grams of iron to the surface. Since the iron comes from the whales’ waste material, it takes the form of liquid plumes, effectively acting as a fertilizer and encouraging growth of plankton. Depending on the exact values and environmental conditions, sperm whales can then be classified “either a net carbon sink or as carbon-neutral,” Discovery writes.
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POPSSF piers being invaded by sea lions More: There are specific authorized measures, and Hyde Street covered all bases, consulting nearly a dozen agencies and marinas, and gaining federal approval for action. At last month's meeting of the Fisherman's Wharf Waterfront Advisory Group, Dolphin Club President Ken Coren was encouraged by the port's plans: "These are formidable animals. ... Once they are established, they are not going away." Marine Mammal Center Executive Director Jeff Boehm confirms that sea lion populations are up statewide. The causes are uncertain, but he says Hyde Street is going about controlling the situation "as they should be, with appropriate passive and obstructive tools." Even with federal approval, Prince is mildly apprehensive about the growing attention. One comment he got last week was that "the problem isn't sea lions, but that the planet is infested with humans."
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POPSEndangered Bird Becomes Internet Sensation: Sirocco the Kakapo Hits the Big Time Sirocco was featured in a recent BBC series entitled "Last Chance To See," profiling some of the thousands of species of animals in the world that are threatened with extinction, mostly due to human incursion and our effects on wild habitat. A report last summer by the International Union for Conservation of Nature asserts that "nearly one third of amphibians, more than one in eight birds and nearly a quarter of mammals are threatened with extinction." As the Kakapo Conservation website reminds us, "6 billion people on earth; only 124 kakapo." Not a good ratio, and one repeated thousands of times over, around the world. Sirocco is named for a warm Mediterranean wind. Let's hope he wafts into human conscience with a renewed sense of wonder for the amazing and gorgeous creatures on this planet, and a reminder of our responsibility for them.
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POPSUC Berkeley scientists unveil skeleton that shares chimp, human features More: she is not "the missing link," a transitional creature between today's chimps and humans. This concept has been abandoned: We did not evolve from living champs or apes, but shared a common ancestor. Nor is she this long-sought "last common ancestor." That's because she's too young; chimps and humans are thought to have diverged between 5 million and 10 million years ago. Then we went our separate ways, each taking different evolutionary trajectories. But she's important because she is the closest we have come to this unfound "last common ancestor." She belonged to a new type of early hominid that was neither chimpanzee nor fully human.
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POPS‘Immuno-Sterilization’ In Humans Fayrer-Hosken’s invention has been successfully tested and found to be effective on all mammals, including the African elephant, although the potential long-term side effects are still being compiled. Is it just a coincidence that Novartis’ “swine flu” vaccine product information circular, section 8.1, includes this warning paragraph: “Animal reproduction studies have not been conducted with this — . It is also not known whether the vaccine can cause fetal harm when administered to a pregnant woman, OR CAN AFFECT REPRODUCTION CAPACITY.” (Emphasis added.) Is a depopulation plan plausible? Yes. Is it likely? These days, who knows...
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POPSMan-Eating Bird - Non-Fiction
WOW!!! With a wingspan of up to three metres and weighing 18kg, the female was twice as big as the largest living eagle, the Steller's sea eagle. And the bird's talons were as big as a tiger's claws. "It was certainly capable of swooping down and taking a child," said Paul Scofield, the curator of vertebrate zoology at the Canterbury Museum. "They had the ability to not only strike with their talons but to close the talons and put them through quite solid objects such as a pelvis. It was designed as a killing machine." Its main prey would have been moa, flightless birds which grew to as much as 250kg and 2.5 metres tall. "In some fossil sites, moa bones have been found with signs of eagle predation," Dr Scofield said. New Zealand has no native land mammals because it became isolated from other continents in the Cretaceous, more than 65 million years ago. As a result, birds filled niches usually populated by large mammals such as deer and cattle. "Haast's eagle wasn't just the e
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POPSJapanese Town Starts Dolphin Hunt Under Global Spotlight
The film shows angry confrontations between residents and the lead activist, Ric O'Barry, who in the 1960s trained dolphins for the US hit television show "Flipper" but now argues the animals should be free to roam the oceans. The film won numerous international prizes, including the Sundance Festival's audience award, and last month led the Australian city of Broome to announce it would cancel it sister-city relationship with Taiji. "Dolphins are a large-brain creature," O'Barry, 69, told AFP during a recent return visit to Japan. "They are highly intelligent, they are self-aware, like gorillas and humans. I nursed them, I watched them give birth. "And for me, to kill them, is extremely, extremely..." He paused, then simply added: "I don't see the purpose." In Taiji, where about 3,700 people live, the global uproar stirred by "The Cove" has met with equal incomprehension -- and anger. Amid the raging controversy, Taiji's fishermen started their annual hunt Wednesday, catc
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POPSGood news in Taiji btw... john lilly, psychopharmacologist turned LSD-prophet who went into exile and became the founder of inter-species communications and was the focus of the 70s movie, 'day of the dolphin.' in his fabulously important late 1960s book, 'metaprogramming the human biocomputer,' he posed a thesis which has been largely accepted by the biological sciences community. called 'the 9 configurations,' he showed that the 1st config is a single-celled organism with a single command in its program and no way to change. as we come up the ladder to evermore complex organisms, we reach creatures; then creatures which can learn; then we arrive at the 9th configuration, including man, which can not only learn how to learn BUT CAN CHANGE THEIR PROGRAM, not only as a group but as individuals. lilly believed, as i and many others, that psychedelic agents can play a crucial role in the process of seeing and changing the buggy programs.
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POPSDolphin Murdered by thousands Animal cruelty is animal cruelty, just as cruelty to people is cruelty to people. Some would exclude banning or protesting certain human practices out of respect to cultural difference. My answer is although some sub-cultures still believe it is ok to enslave others, or that forcing sex on women and children or permissible - the global culture will no longer tolerate such practices. Killing, slaughtering dolphins just because you can and have done so is no longer acceptable global behavior!
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POPSGrowth of Ocean ‘Garbage Patch’ Alarms Experts Nope, it’s not going away. It’s the smallest pieces that are of most concern, the “bite-sized” pieces that are interacting with the food chain: bottlecaps, bags and wrappers. Plastic sea trash doesn't biodegrade and often floats at the surface, coming from overflowing sewage systems and then drift thousands of miles. The sheer quantity of plastic that accumulates in the North Pacific Gyre, a vortex formed by ocean and wind currents and located 1,000 miles off the California coast, has the scientists worried about how it might harm the sea creatures there. Plastics have entangled birds and turned up in the bellies of fish, and one paper cited by the NOAA estimates 100,000 marine mammals die trash-related deaths each year. Only humans are to blame for ocean debris. Only humans can do something about it.
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POPSMercury Contamination Growing The EPA said this year that it intends to issue new rules under the Clean Air Act to control air emissions of mercury from coal-fired power plants. The 2nd paragraph that I clipped from the article really turned on a light for me as we (humans) are not the only ones that eat fish. Bears eat fish too. :(
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