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How to help Haiti earthquake victims
January 15th, 2010Sinking deltas threaten millions of lives
September 21st, 2009deltas are sinking, increasing the flood risk faced by hundreds of millions of people, scientists report.
Damming and diverting rivers means that much less sediment now reaches many delta areas, while extraction of gas and groundwater also lowers the land.
Rivers affected include the Colorado, Nile, Pearl, Rhone and Yangtze.
About half a billion people live in these regions, the researchers note in the journal Nature Geoscience.
They calculate that 85% of major deltas have seen severe flooding in recent years, and that the area of land vulnerable to flooding will increase by about 50% in the next 40 years as land sinks and climate change causes sea levels to rise.
Lena river delta (NASA)
Most of the world’s major river deltas are sinking, increasing the flood risk faced by hundreds of millions of people, scientists report.
Damming and diverting rivers means that much less sediment now reaches many delta areas, while extraction of gas and groundwater also lowers the land.
Rivers affected include the Colorado, Nile, Pearl, Rhone and Yangtze.
About half a billion people live in these regions, the researchers note in the journal Nature Geoscience.
They calculate that 85% of major deltas have seen severe flooding in recent years, and that the area of land vulnerable to flooding will increase by about 50% in the next 40 years as land sinks and climate change causes sea levels to rise.
Image of a single molecule captured for the first time
August 28th, 2009
Image of a single molecule
The detailed chemical structure of a single molecule has been imaged for the first time, say researchers.
The physical shape of single carbon nanotubes has been outlined before, using similar techniques – but the new method even shows up chemical bonds.
Climate change opens up a Northeast passage in the Arctic
August 24th, 2009
Arctic Northeast Passage
Two German ships set off on Friday on the first commercial journey from Asia to western Europe via the Arctic through the fabled Northeast Passage – a trip made possible by climate change. Niels Stolberg, president and CEO of Bremen-based Beluga Shipping, said the Northern Sea Route will cut thousands of nautical miles off the ships’ journey from South Korea to the Netherlands, reducing fuel consumption and emissions of greenhouse gas.
Jellyfish stir up the ocean as they move
July 30th, 2009Jellyfish help to stir up the ocean as they move, researchers have found.
Using a green dye, scientists showed how the animals’ umbrella-shaped bodies were a key factor in this mixing.
The distribution of heat, nutrients and chemicals helps maintain the marine environment and has an important influence on global climate. Reporting in the journal Nature, the researchers said that marine animals of many shapes and sizes contributed to ocean turbulence.
Jellyfish stir up the ocean as they move
Jellyfish help to stir up the ocean as they move, researchers have found.
Using a green dye, scientists showed how the animals’ umbrella-shaped bodies were a key factor in this mixing.
The distribution of heat, nutrients and chemicals helps maintain the marine environment and has an important influence on global climate. Reporting in the journal Nature, the researchers said that marine animals of many shapes and sizes contributed to ocean turbulence.
First animals evolved in lakes, not oceans, claims study
July 28th, 2009
Neoproterozoic Doushantuo Formation
Evidence for life on Earth stretches back billions of years, with simple single-celled organisms like bacteria dominating the record. When multi-celled animal life appeared on the planet after 3 billion years of single cell organisms, animals diversified rapidly.Conventional wisdom has it that animal evolution began in the ocean, with animal life adapting much later in Earth history to terrestrial environments.
Now a UC Riverside-led team of researchers studying ancient rock samples in South China has found that the first animal fossils in the paleontological record are preserved in ancient lake deposits, not marine sediments as commonly assumed.
…
“We know that life in the oceans is very different from life in lakes, and, at least in the modern world, the oceans are far more stable and consistent environments compared to lakes which tend to be short-lived features relative to, say, rates of evolution,” said Martin Kennedy, a professor of geology in the Department of Earth Sciences who participated in the research. “Thus it is surprising that the first evidence of animals we find is associated with lakes, a far more variable environment than the ocean.”
Why is “unlearning” an incorrect fact so hard?
July 28th, 2009Why is it that once you learn something incorrectly (say, 7 X 9 = 65), it seems you never can correct your recall?
—J. Kruger, Cherry Hill, N.J.Cognitive psychologist Gordon H. Bower of Stanford University answers:
Identifying, correcting and averting our memory errors are part of a cognitive process called memory monitoring. Incorrect associations can be tough to change, but we can use techniques to retrain our brain.
When strong habits impede our ability to acquire a desired new habit or association, we experience a common phenomenon known as proactive interference. Wrong associations appear in common spelling errors such as “wierd” for “weird” and “neice” for “niece.” Persistent mistaken connections also can cause embarrassing errors, such as calling a man’s second wife by the name of his first. Interference is stronger the more previous wives you’ve had to deal with, and it is more difficult to overcome the stronger the habits are.
Cat’s purr manipulates owners
July 27th, 2009Karen McComb, a researcher from the University of Sussex, was inspired by her own cat, Pepo, who continually woke her up in the mornings with an “insistent and rather annoying” purr that reliably motivated her to get up and feed him.
Unlike regular, low frequency purring, further study revealed that this “solicitation purr” contained an embedded sound with a similar frequency to a baby’s cry; a sound that humans have an inherent bias to respond to.
She and her colleagues played recordings of these purrs to human volunteers, who found them to be “more urgent and harder to ignore” than regular purring. Cats have a vocal way of manipulating their owners into doing their bidding, according to a study.
Cat's purr manipulates owners
Source: How your cat’s purr manipulates you, BBC News, July 13 2009
