My Weekly Reading Progress Report

4332

Kate Blagojevic, head of climate at Greenpeace UK, praised the progress on taking fossil fuels out of the energy mix, but added that it was "no time for the UK government to rest on its laurels"."Carbon emissions from our homes, farms and roads remain stubbornly high, and only a major government intervention can unblock the impasse," she said."As the Glasgow climate summit looms closer, ministers really need to up their game on tackling UK carbon emissions right across the board."
Fintan Slye, director at National Grid ESO, said: "This latest record is another example of how the grid continues to transform at an astonishing rate as we move away from fossil fuel generation and harness the growth of renewable power sources."It's an exciting time, and the progress we're seeing with these records underlines the significant strides we're taking towards our ambition of being able to operate the system carbon free by 2025."
That will need much more energy storage than is currently available.The government aims to have almost all electricity produced from low carbon sources by 2030 - and despite this week's impressive results, there's still a very long way to go.
When Britain went into lockdown, electricity demand plummeted and the National Grid responded by taking power plants off the network and the four remaining coal-fired plants were among the first to be shut down.
The National Grid Electricity System Operator (ESO) said levels of carbon pollution for each unit of electricity consumed dropped to just 39 grams of carbon dioxide - the lowest ever recorded for the grid - at 13:00 BST on Monday.It said wind power made up 39% of the energy mix, with solar at 21% and nuclear accounting for 16%.
Great Britain's electricity system was the greenest it had ever been at lunchtime on Easter Bank Holiday Monday, its operator has said.Sunny and windy weather, coupled with low demand for power, led to a surge in renewable sources of energy, National Grid Electricity System Operator said.

Britain's electricity system 'greenest ever' over Easter - BBC News

6 annotations

4260

Combinator
Bottomless 目前共有 6000 位用戶，雖然聽起來規模不大，但去年的現在他們僅擁有 750 位客人，因為疫情，他們一年內用戶數足足成長了 8 倍之多。
Bottomless 提供咖啡訂閱服務，透過專屬「磅秤」精準掌握用戶咖啡豆庫存，並自動進行下單與配送作業

訂閱制咖啡可行嗎？Bottomless獲450萬A輪募資，讓咖啡豆在「最佳時機」自動送上門 | Meet創業小聚

3 annotations

meet.bnext.com.tw

4406

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Pacific Tsunami Warning Center released a video Friday mapping every earthquake as it occurred from Jan. 1, 2001, through Dec. 31, 2015.
Those tsunami-generating quakes include the devastating 9.1-magnitude tremor in Sumatra in 2004, an 8.8 magnitude in Chile in 2010 and the 9.0-magnitude quake off Japan’s northeastern coast in 2011
with colors representing depth, and size representing magnitude

Watch 15 Years Of Earthquakes Rock The Planet | The Huffington Post

3 annotations

geology

6926

Corporations should not be allowed to make sustainable statements without data that proves production practices are sustainable. Consumers deserve transparency from corporations, and corporations should be required to show consumers their sustainable practices, without the protection of ag-gag laws. The moral requirement of corporations, who continue to pollute the environment, is firmly rooted in the necessity of sustainable practices for humanity’s long-term future. Consumers cannot and should not be the ones to take on the majority of the task. Corporations need to put their money into whether their advertising is and create actual sustainable growing practices.
There are efforts to create new declarative statements, like the Clean Label Project that aim to protect consumers from greenwashing. For instance, one of the labels is called the “Purity Award,” which “evaluates products for substances that would never be found on a product label.” Other labels through this project ensure the consumer knows that the product is not harmful. However, this perpetuates the problem because third-party organizations are giving consumers the information they expect from corporations.
There are other pending cases against Smithfield about its misrepresentations on labels. The corporation is fighting another legal challenge about whether its production practices lead to an increase in consumers’ risk for food-borne illnesses. In May 2020, the Organic Consumer Association (OCA) filed a complaint against Smithfield in D.C. Superior Court. The OCA’s complaint alleged that Smithfield plants were more likely to produce products that have salmonella than other similarly sized facilities. The complaint continues to allege that Smithfield is violating D.C. Consumer Protection Procedure Act by stating its products are the “safest” for consumers. In December 2020, the court denied Smithfield’s motion to dismiss the claim. This at least allows the court to inspect whether consumers have been misled, but without a federal statute, consumers on a national level may still have misleading advertisements.
The FTC rarely files suits about corporate greenwashing, which “is the process of conveying false impressions or providing misleading information about how corporation products are more environmentally sound”. As more and more consumers desire sustainable products, corporations have larger incentives to market toward those consumer desires.
The fundamental aspect of the law to protect consumers from misrepresentations in advertising on food focuses on profit, not the safety of the consumer. This leaves consumers with little to no legal action against companies for deceptive practices unless the consumer is injured by a defect in the product or if the product causes the consumer harm.
Federal agencies rely on several statutes for legal authority to regulate specific issues. Administrative law requires that statutes give agencies the authority to regulate certain issues under certain legal authority, and without that legal direction, the agency cannot regulate the issue.
These lagoons are full of bacteria and diseases spread by feces. For decades, Smithfield has wined that the technology to create better waste management is too expensive, while the local communities, who are mostly not white people, suffer from chronic diseases linked to the facilities. These communities are often left without legal recourse as Smithfield relies on protection from local ag-gag laws and exceptions in federal statutes.
One of those companies is Smithfield, one of the largest pork producers and biggest water polluters in the U.S. To change consumer perception, Smithfield claims to be “stewards of the environment.” The corporation makes affirmative statements that they have the “goals of reducing natural resource damage and ensuring 100% compliance, 100% of the time” in various forms of advertisements. Smithfield goes on to say that they are working on those goals by “finding innovative solutions to optimize [their] supply chain, reduce waste and improve [their] energy and water efficiency.”
Instead of the government, on any level, promulgating bans on products or production practices that are known to significantly impact climate change, the burden is placed on the consumer. There is consumer demand to find products that encourage sustainability, but the ability for consumers to find sustainable products is limited. Consumers are required to gather large amounts of information about products and how the product was produced to understand whether a product is sustainable. Often, that information is either impossible to find or includes complex verbiage that requires expensive research. Consumers are left with limited information.
In the U.S., consumers are becoming pressured into purchasing sustainable products. Generally, bans on products affect the consumer and consumer habits, like plastic bag bans, which require consumers to use reusable bags and give stores the reduced expense of purchasing plastic bags. Even though the underlying goal of those bans is to decrease plastic pollution, which is necessary, corporations are not forced to change.
Climate change is no longer something that will happen in the future – it’s happening now. Generations throughout the world are urging governments to protect not only their citizens but the citizens of the world. As Bill Gates recently said, we need “unprecedented (global) cooperation” immediately to deal with climate change. In theory, governments would ensure environmentally safe and sustainable practices in their own territory, and there would be global cooperation in this effort.

Environmental buzz words: Sustainability vs. Greenwashing | Food Safety News

11 annotations

www.foodsafetynews.com

4265

articularly for skin diseases."When we started this project, my skin was itching all over. But every time I visited the springs, I made sure I bathed in the water," she said."It's so hot when you sit there, you feel like you're burning. Then you go to the river, which is just next to the hot pool, and the water is so cold you feel like you're freezing. "By the time you leave, your body is feeling light, and since then I no longer feel itchy."
Ms Masika, whose job it is to liaise with the local people, says the community already had answers for some of the problems."For example, they know what type of vegetation should be planted at what level on the mountain. They know which ones are strong enough to be planted along the river to stop the floods."They know they are supposed to plant along the riverbank because it is food to the water god. And when the water god is fine, he doesn't cause floods. "Climate change is understood in the culture, and they have some suggestions that can help us mitigate this situation."
The Bakonzo community is made up of around one million people living on both sides of the border between Uganda and DR Congo, and their heritage could be lost as a result of climate change.
"The consequences of climate change are particularly acute at the tropics," says Richard Taylor, a geographer at University College London, who has led research on the Rwenzori Mountains."One or two degrees of warming at the Equator has a much bigger impact on climate and water budgets than one or two degrees of warming in London, Paris or New York."
During last year's floods, the water submerged hot springs and washed away the vegetation around a waterfall that was used as a place for rituals. Since then, spiritual leaders have been unable to perform those ceremonies.Other spiritual sites are getting eroded or filled up with silt and the destruction of the vegetation has weakened the banks in many areas.All this is threatening centuries-old rituals."Most likely, many of these customs will gradually became rare or they won't happen any more, because everything is shifting," Mr Musasizi says.
While science may provide an explanation for these events, the local Bakonzo culture has another way of framing them - according to their beliefs, they happen because the gods are angry."The Bakonzo have a very strong attachment to the snow and the water," says Simon Musasizi, a programme manager at the Cross-Cultural Foundation of Uganda (CCFU). "They believe that their god, Kithasamba, lives in the snow, and that the snow is actually the frozen sperm of their god."
Since then, the communities living at the foot of the Rwenzori have suffered some of the most destructive floods the area has ever seen, coupled with a pattern of less frequent but heavier rainfall.
The most visible is the rapid loss of the ice field, which shrunk from 6.5 sq km in 1906 to less than one sq km in 2003, and could completely disappear before the end of this decade, research shows.
"Now I and other people find it difficult to sustain ourselves with what we plant at home, because everything gets destroyed by floods or drought. It's either too much drought or too much rain."It's making me uncomfortable, thinking of how the next generation is going to survive this horrible situation," says Ms Masika, who now works on a project to mitigate the impact of the shifting environment.
Ronah Masika remembers when she could still see the snowy caps of the Rwenzori mountains, a Unesco World Heritage site on the border between Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.The view was stunning every time she travelled from her home in Kasese town to the Ugandan capital, Kampala - and it was not even that long ago.But now she cannot even catch a glimpse of the ice because the glacier is receding.

Uganda climate change: The people under threat from a melting glacier - BBC News

10 annotations

4392

findings are broadly in line with similar research conducted in the UK and elsewhere,
at least 200 illegal ones have sprung up in poorer districts and in the outskirts of Semarang.
plastic contamination of seafood is a global problem.
he research has found that every species tested contained some plastic particles, including fragments and fibres – tilapia were the worst with 85% seen with plastic.
research has found that every species tested contained some plastic particles, including fragments and fibres – tilapia were the worst with 85% seen with plastic.
The majority of mullet, shrimp, and milk fish tested also had plastic particles.
This comes as the city authorities in Semarang have organised a major clean-up - the main streets and rivers look largely clear of plastic waste.
microplastics
While public attention is focused on larger items like bags and bottles choking rivers and canals, there is emerging scientific concern over the long-term implications of smaller and less visible pieces known as microplastics.
aim is understand how much plastic is contained in seafood, how much of it people eat

Indonesian study into health risks of microplastics - BBC News

10 annotations

news

www.scientificamerican.com

7256

Here, as in nature, tried-and-true behaviors such as social distancing are our best tools until vaccines or treatments can be developed. But just like other animals, we have to be strategic about it.
For instance, we can now communicate disease threats globally in an instant. This ability allows us to institute social distancing before disease appears in our local community—a tactic that has saved many lives. We have advanced digital communication platforms, from e-mail to group video chats, that allow us to keep our physical distance while maintaining some social connections.
Like other animals, humans have a long evolutionary history with infectious diseases. Many of our own forms of behavioral immunity, such as feelings of disgust in dirty or crowded environments, are likely the results of this history.
The social ties of some group-living animals may be so critical that avoidance will never be favored, even when group mates are obviously sick.
the researchers said that maintaining strong and unconditional alliances with certain relatives can have numerous long-term benefits in nonhuman primates, just as in humans.
But some male guppies strongly avoided the side of the tank near the other fish, and these distancing guppies were later shown to be highly susceptible to worm infections. It makes sense that evolution would favor a strong expression of distancing behavior in those most at risk.
This prevents them from inadvertently putting the reproductively valuable colony members (the queen and “nurses” that care for the brood) at risk. The nurses also took action, moving the brood farther inside the nest and away from the foragers once the fungus was detected in the colony.
The delay between exposure and sickness allowed Stroeymeyt and her colleagues to see whether ants changed their social behaviors in the 24 hours after they first detected fungal spores in their colony but before fungus-exposed ants showed signs of sickness.
Lobsters are far from the only animals that have found the benefits of social distancing sometimes outweigh the costs. Some other creatures, in fact, have developed ways to boost the payoff by practicing social distancing strategically, in ways that protect the most valuable or vulnerable in their group.
When lobsters detect an afflicted animal, they are willing to take considerable risks to stay disease-free.
Most of these lonely lobsters, the researchers found, were infected with the contagious virus. These lobsters did not choose to den alone, the scientists suspected: they were being shunned.
Social distancing from other members of your species, even temporarily, means missing out on the numerous benefits that favored social living in the first place. For this reason, researchers have learned that complete shunning is just one approach animals take. Some social species stay together when members are infected but change certain grooming interactions, for example, whereas others, such as ants, limit encounters between individuals that play particular roles in the colony, all to lower the risk of infection.
This kind of behavior is common because it helps social animals survive. Although living in groups makes it easier for animals to capture prey, stay warm and avoid predators, it also leads to outbreaks of contagious diseases.
Yet despite how unnatural it may feel to us, social distancing is very much a part of the natural world.
The lobster’s response to disease—seen in both field and laboratory experiments—is one we have become all too familiar with this year: social distancing.
Chemicals in its urine smell different. These substances are produced when a lobster is infected with a contagious virus called Panulirus argus virus 1, and the healthy returning lobster seems alarmed.
Despite how unnatural social distancing may feel to people, it is very much a part of the natural world, practiced by mammals, fishes, insects and birds.

Animals Use Social Distancing to Avoid Disease - Scientific American

17 annotations

4417

它時刻提醒我們從以品牌的角度思考轉變為以用戶的角度思考

品質一樣的咖啡、只要半價，能擠走星巴克？怕是沒讀懂消費者的「心理活動」|經理人

1 annotation

www.managertoday.com.tw

4221

Australia’s poor recycling track record has an upside
the nation’s largest garbage company, has the potential to extract enough gas from rotting rubbish to produce electricity for as many as 80,000 homes,
A report last year by the Australian Council of Recycling showed the nation recycled just 41 percent of that waste, compared with Germany on 65 percent.
Melbourne-based Cleanaway sold 145,000 megawatt-hours of electricity to the grid from 120 million cubic meters of captured landfill gas last financial year,
Bioenergy includes gas extracted from landfill, and forestry and agricultural waste that can be burned in power stations.
But if Australia gets better at recycling, and cuts down on rubbish as it becomes a “circular economy,” gas extracted from landfill would play an even more limited role, he said.
There are quite a lot of examples from Europe where there was a waste-to-energy strategy 20 years ago, and some of those power plants simply have not enough waste anymore to burn, so they actually import waste from other countries,
Nobody can achieve sustainability without managing waste. You’ve got to manage your waste because that is a massive carbon footprint.”

Rotting Garbage Will Light 80,000 Aussie Homes - Bloomberg

8 annotations

ecology

www.bloomberg.com

8585

故意「被拒絕」也是種談判策略？先讓步的人，其實才是最後的贏家

故意「被拒絕」也是種談判策略？先讓步的人，其實才是最後的贏家|經理人

1 annotation

www.managertoday.com.tw

4367

梅根哈利接受美國名嘴歐普拉採訪：10個震撼性的細節

梅根哈利接受美國名嘴歐普拉採訪：10個震撼性的細節

1 annotation

tw.news.yahoo.com

4156

別把你的時間，拿來做無謂的瑣事！高效工作的第一步：聰明管理時間

別把你的時間，拿來做無謂的瑣事！高效工作的第一步：聰明管理時間|經理人

1 annotation

www.managertoday.com.tw

4349

而在薪酬方面，高得嚇人的薪水以及配股影響了大家的判斷能力，「配股基本上就是免費獲得的錢，不管你或你的產品表現如何，你的股利都會快速成長，」結果就是「我」變得比「我們」或是產品、用戶還要重要。
但在Google這樣的大企業哩，員工效忠的是「企業」，而非品牌，產品只不過是一個追求職涯發展的工具，不是員工的熱情、任務，或者來改變遊戲規則的東西。
為什麼我會待這麼久

在Google工作很好，但卻讓人氣到抓狂？旗下公司前CEO自白：我被「生活至上」的文化逼瘋

3 annotations

www.bnext.com.tw

4222

出現過敏反應，緊急送加護病房觀察，所幸生命徵象穩定，今天已出院。亞東醫院隨後也發出聲明稿指出，該院護理師24日上午施打後5分鐘發生心悸、皮疹的急性過敏反應，並無休克，立即給

AZ疫苗5169人接種已9件不良反應通報首例醫護嚴重過敏

1 annotation

tw.news.yahoo.com

4408

"Could we image areas not visible from space or that a rover couldn't reach? Could a helicopter scout ahead for rovers and help plot the most efficient course for the best science? Could we support future human missions with aerial capabilities?" she pondered. "Those are questions for another day, but tech demos give us the leeway to be creative and test new things."
If everything goes well, subsequent flights will get more complex. "Currently, the way that we're planning is for the first three flights to demonstrate basic capability - to hover and then to traverse, going to a longer distance down the flight zone and back again," Havard Grip, Ingenuity's chief pilot, told BBC News."If everything goes really well, we might try to stretch our capabilities. But we haven't planned that in detail."
"We are going to do our very best to capture Ingenuity in flight," said Nasa engineer Farah Alibay."We're going to be taking images, we're hoping to take video."This will be challenging, she cautioned. Both rover and helicopter function autonomously and carry separate clocks. The timing devices will need to be in sync for the photography to catch the action.
At the moment, the chopper is still attached to Perseverance, to its belly. A protective covering was released at the weekend and in the coming days the craft will be lowered to the ground.Engineers have identified a 10m by 10m area in Jezero that they're calling the "airfield".
Called Ingenuity, the 1.8kg, twin-rotor aircraft will attempt a series of short hops in Mars' rarefied air.If successful, it would represent something of a "Wright Brothers moment", says Nasa.
The US space agency says it expects now to fly the first helicopter on Mars in early April.The little chopper was carried to the Red Planet by the Perseverance rover, which made its dramatic landing in Jezero Crater just over a month ago.

Nasa to fly Ingenuity Mars helicopter in early April - BBC News

6 annotations

4278

The commission - recruited by the Scottish government from industry, trades unions and academia - says worker education and skills training will be vital.It says the great move towards low carbon must be done in co-operation with the unions.
Lang Banks, director of WWF Scotland, told BBC News: “Every new licence makes it more difficult to achieve the reductions we need and risks creating an even bigger ‘cliff edge’ for oil and gas workers.“As climate science continues to be updated, it’s entirely possible that there’s going to have to be an even quicker tail-off in oil and gas production than is currently predicted.“If we want the transition to be a fair one, then instead of wasting any more time opening up new fossil fuel reserves, efforts would be better used to more rapidly harness existing skills and direct them toward the zero-carbon industries we all need.”
He was supported by Deirdre Mitchie, chief executive of Oil and Gas UK, who told BBC News: “Ongoing exploration and production is compatible with net zero emissions – we’re pleased that the government has recognised this."
The UK Energy Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng said he would follow a different path: “Today, we are sending a clear message around the world that the UK will be a nation of clean energy.“We will not leave oil and gas workers behind in the irreversible shift away from fossil fuels. We will power the green industrial revolution, turning its focus to the next-generation clean technologies the UK needs to support a green economy.”
Mel Evans from Greenpeace said: “This is a colossal failure. The UK will make a fool of itself in the run-up to hosting the COP26 global climate talks if our energy minister signs off on new oil and gas licences that serve to rip up the Paris Agreement (the world deal to hold global temperature rise to 1.5C).“We know the government has already approved too much oil and gas extraction to meet our climate obligations under Paris, and the oil industry itself says that we’ve passed peak oil demand.”
This will include up to £10bn for hydrogen production and £3bn for a technology called carbon capture, usage and storage - where carbon emissions are either turned into other products such as plastics or buried.The government says the deal should cut pollution by up to 60 million tonnes by 2030, while also supporting up to 40,000 jobs across the supply chain.
The sector will face targets to reduce emissions by 10% by 2025 and 25% by 2027. It is also committed to cut emissions by 50% by 2030.
But ministers insist that their strategy will work. So-called "checkpoints" will be introduced that take into account domestic demand for oil and gas, projected production levels, the increase in clean technologies such as offshore wind, and the sector’s progress in cutting emissions.
More oil and gas wells are to be drilled in the North Sea, the UK government has announced.The decision has angered environmental campaigners, who say the government should refuse new licences.

UK seeks to drill more oil and gas from North Sea - BBC News

9 annotations

4383

As of Tuesday morning, Xiao Qi Ji was sleeping with her mother, according to the National Zoo Panda Cam.
The National Zoo's breeding program has mixed success due to the difficulty that giant pandas often have reproducing in captivity; for the first 20 years after the first two pandas arrived in Washington in 1972, all five cubs that Ling Ling and Hsing Hsing had died within days after birth.
Giant pandas are highly endangered animals. There were fewer than 2,000 giant pandas living in the wild in 2014, according to the World Wildlife Foundation. However, the exact number is unknown. Scientists agree that the wild panda population has rebounded since the 1970s, the first time China conducted a survey of the animal.
Xiao Qi Ji's mother, Mei Xiang, was artificially inseminated on March 22 from the cub's father, Tian Tian. The pregnancy was confirmed in an ultrasound on August 14.
The naming of the three-month-old giant panda came after five days of online voting in which over 100,000 people cast ballots, the Smithsonian Institute said in a press release announcing the name.
The National Zoo's new panda cub has a name: Xiao Qi Ji, [pronounced SHIAU-chi-ji] a Mandarin Chinese name that means "little miracle."
After five days of voting and just under 135,000 votes, the panda cub at the Smithsonians National Zoo, is now named Xiao Qi Ji (SHIAU-chi-ji), which translates as little miracle in English, Nov. 18, 2020.

National Zoo's panda cub named Xiao Qi Ji, or 'Little Miracle'

7 annotations

3882

Satellite measurement puts it at around 1,290 sq km (500 sq miles). Greater London is roughly 1,500 sq km; the Welsh county of Monmouthshire is about 1,300 sq km. That's big by any measure, although not as large as the monster A68 berg which calved in July 2017 from the Larsen C Ice Shelf on the western side of the Weddell Sea. That was originally some 5,800 sq km but has since shattered into many small pieces.
A74 broke away from the Brunt Ice Shelf, which is the floating protrusion of glaciers that have flowed off the land into the Weddell Sea. On a map, the Weddell Sea is that sector of Antarctica directly to the south of the Atlantic Ocean. The Brunt is on the eastern side of the sea. Like all ice shelves, it will periodically calve icebergs. A big berg last calved from this particular area in 1971.
The Weddell Sea's eastern side is interesting because it has not witnessed the warming effects that have been observed in its western sector, next to the Antarctic Peninsula.This situation may not last, however, with computer models suggesting there could be regular incursions of warm ocean water from the north by the century's end.
Dr Huw Griffiths from the British Antarctic Survey was thrilled to see the pictures sent back from the Polarstern."What they have found isn't shocking but it is amazing to get these images so soon after a calving event and it is definitely the largest area that will have been surveyed in this way," he commented. "Finding this kind of community this far under the ice shelf is not surprising but it is a good indication that there is a rich supply of food reaching at least 30km under the ice shelf. "This food is produced by plankton in the sunlit sea surface nearby, then dragged under the ice shelf by the currents of the Weddell Sea. These same currents will eventually move the iceberg westward around the Weddell Sea and then northwards to its doom," he told BBC News.
"In the images, numerous sessile animals can be seen attached to various small stones scattered liberally across the soft seafloor. "The majority of these are filter-feeding organisms, presumably subsisting on fine material transported under the ice over these last decades. "Some mobile fauna, such as holothurians, ophiuroids, various molluscs, as well as at least five species of fish and two species of octopus were also observed."
Over five hours, the system collected almost 1,000 high-resolution images and long sequences of video."Despite the years of continuous ice coverage, a developed and diverse seafloor community was observed," said OFOBS team-members Dr Autun Purser and Dr Frank Wenzhoefer.
But Polarstern, run by the Alfred Wegener Institute, got lucky. It was already in the eastern Weddell Sea on a pre-planned expedition when city-sized A74 split from the Brunt.And when the weather calmed last weekend, the ship slipped in behind the berg to take a look at an area of seafloor that is now free of ice cover for the first time in five decades.
Research groups frequently try to probe waters below freshly calved ice shelves, to better understand how these unique ecosystems operate. But success is not easily won.
German scientists have inspected an area of seafloor newly exposed by the calving of mega-iceberg A74 and found it to be teeming with animals.

Antarctic seafloor exposed after 50 years of ice cover - BBC News

9 annotations

4242

Those interested can submit an online adoption application here. Interested adopters wanting a meet and greet can email the Adoption Team at adopt@SAhumane.org and write “Meet and Greet” in the subject line.
At the San Antonio Humane Society, the “I Like Big Mutts and I Cannot Lie” special is offering a $25 adoption fee for large dogs that are at least 1 year old.
Appointments are still required, and guests will have to undergo temperature checks and wear masks. ADL’s campuses are located at 11300 Nacogdoches Road and 210 Tuleta Drive.
“ADL acknowledges that our large breed population can be the most challenging to find homes for,” ADL said in a news release. “Our hope with this adoptions special is to encourage the community to help support this population so we may rescue more of the abandoned, abused, and neglected pets in our community and beyond.”

San Antonio animal shelters offer free, discounted adoption fees for ‘big mutts’ during spring break

4 annotations

www.ksat.com

4339

Going forward, the team is planning to investigate muscle development and functional studies to further understand early animal evolution. “Our work is a way to put these animals on the tree of life, in some respects,” Droser said. “And show they’re genetically linked to modern animals, and to us.”
These animals likely had the genetic parts responsible for heads and the sensory organs usually found there. However, the complexity of interaction between these genes that would give rise to such features hadn’t yet been achieved. “The fact that we can say these genes were operating in something that’s been extinct for half a billion years is fascinating to me,” Evans said.
For their analysis, the researchers considered four animals representative of the more than 40 recognized species that have been identified from the Ediacaran era. These creatures ranged in size from a few millimeters to nearly a meter in length.
Kimberella were teardrop-shaped creatures with one broad, rounded end and one narrow end that likely scraped the sea floor for food with a proboscis. Further, they could move around using a “muscular foot” like snails today. The study included flat, oval-shaped Dickinsonia with a series of raised bands on their surface, and Tribrachidium, who spent their lives immobilized at the bottom of the sea.
“None of them had heads or skeletons. Many of them probably looked like three-dimensional bathmats on the sea floor, round discs that stuck up,” said Mary Droser, a geology professor at UCR. “These animals are so weird and so different, it’s difficult to assign them to modern categories of living organisms just by looking at them, and it’s not like we can extract their DNA — we can’t.”

Research shows we’re surprisingly similar to Earth’s first animals | News

5 annotations

news.ucr.edu

4446

Clean-Eating
Broccoli Salad with Almond Dressing
Avocado Chickpea Salad Sandwich
avocado will be playing the role of mayo and chickpeas will be playing the role of tuna.
Kale Quiche with Cheddar-Rice Crust
Spring Roll Bowls
Egg and Veggie Bowl

30 Clean-Eating Lunch Recipes - PureWow

7 annotations

desserts and baking

www.purewow.com

6963

Discovery Channel continues to work with nearly two dozen of the world’s most respected marine biologists and science institutions to bring brand-new, innovative shark research technology and compelling insight on some of the most unique shark species in the world.
This year, Oceana and Discovery are teaming up to help protect sharks, which are threatened by a global shark fin trade that includes fins from as many as 73 million sharks each year.

SHARK WEEK 2019 MAKES A HUGE SPLASH WITH OVER 20 HOURS OF SHARK PROGRAMMING, PREMIERING SUNDAY, JULY 28 ON DISCOVERY – Discovery, Inc.

2 annotations

movies and tv

corporate.discovery.com

4764

Traditionally, the boomerang generation – young adults who live with their parents after living alone – has been made up of people who are in their early 30s or under. But during the pandemic, many more have returned back to their parental homes – as couples or as older adults with children themselves, as well as various other setups.

Tell us: have you moved back in with your parents during the pandemic? | Housing | The Guardian

1 annotation

4385

The takeaway of the review is that "mitigating the impacts of noise from human activities on marine life is key to achieving a healthier ocean." The KAUST-led study identifies a number of actions that may come at a cost but are relatively easy to implement to improve the ocean soundscape and, in so doing, enable the recovery of marine life and the goal of sustainable use of the ocean
Using sounds gathered from around the globe, multimedia artist and study coauthor Jana Winderen created a six-minute audio track that demonstrates both the peaceful calm, and the devastatingly jarring, acoustic aspects of life for marine animals. The research is truly eye opening, or rather ear opening, both in its groundbreaking scale as well as in its immediacy.
"The deep, dark ocean is conceived as a distant, remote ecosystem, even by marine scientists," Duarte said. "However, as I was listening, years ago, to a hydrophone recording acquired off the U.S. West Coast, I was surprised to hear the clear sound of rain falling on the surface as the dominant sound in the deep-sea ocean environment. I then realized how acoustically connected the ocean surface, where most human noise is generated, is to the deep sea; just 1,000 m, less than 1 second apart!"
"This unprecedented effort, involving a major tour de force, has shown the overwhelming evidence for the prevalence of impacts from human-induced noise on marine animals, to the point that the urgency of taking action can no longer be ignored," KAUST Ph.D. student Michelle Havlik said. The research involved scientists from Saudi Arabia, Denmark, the U.S. and the U.K., Australia, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Germany, Spain, Norway and Canada.
"We all know that no one really wants to live right next to a freeway because of the constant noise," commented Halpern. "For animals in the ocean, it's like having a mega-freeway in your backyard."
Sound travels far, and quickly, underwater. And marine animals are sensitive to sound, which they use as a prominent sensorial signal guiding all aspects of their behavior and ecology. "This makes the ocean soundscape one of the most important, and perhaps under-appreciated, aspects of the marine environment," the study states. The authors' hope is that the evidence presented in the paper will "prompt management actions ... to reduce noise levels in the ocean, thereby allowing marine animals to re-establish their use of ocean sound."
"The landscape of sound -- or soundscape -- is such a powerful indicator of the health of an environment," noted Ben Halpern, a coauthor on the study and director of the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis at UC Santa Barbara. "Like we have done in our cities on land, we have replaced the sounds of nature throughout the ocean with those of humans."
A global team of researchers set out to understand how human-made noise affects wildlife, from invertebrates to whales, in the oceans, and found overwhelming evidence that marine fauna, and their ecosystems, are negatively impacted by noise. This noise disrupts their behavior, physiology, reproduction and, in extreme cases, causes mortality. The researchers call for human-induced noise to be considered a prevalent stressor at the global scale and for policy to be developed to mitigate its effects
But the soundtrack of the healthy ocean no longer reflects the acoustic environment of today's ocean, plagued with human-created noise.
A global team of researchers set out to understand how human-made noise affects wildlife, from invertebrates to whales, in the oceans, and found overwhelming evidence that marine fauna, and their ecosystems, are negatively impacted by noise. This noise disrupts their behavior, physiology, reproduction and, in extreme cases, causes mortality. The researchers call for human-induced noise to be considered a prevalent stressor at the global scale and for policy to be developed to mitigate its effects.

Healthy oceans need healthy soundscapes -- ScienceDaily

10 annotations

4390

are “getting phony-baloney psychological papers saying they’re allowed to have animals in their communities.”
prohibit discrimination in housing being provided to someone who needs a support animal as well as prohibits health care practitioners from “providing information regarding a person’s need for an emotional support animal without having personal knowledge of that person’s need for the animal.”
will define the terms “emotional support animal” and “housing provider.”

DeSantis signs bill defining term 'emotional support animal,' prohibiting discrimination

3 annotations

www.winknews.com

4578

The UK currently runs several taxes that affect carbon emissions, including Air Passenger Duty, the landfill tax and car tax.The campaign asks the chancellor to simplify the “inconsistent” pricing system by placing a charge on every tonne of CO₂ emitted in the UK. Proceeds should be used to shield the poorest from the tax changes, it said.
The petition comes after MPs on the cross-party Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) last week called on the government to add climate and nature objectives to the Bank’s mandate
The petition comes from Positive Money, a not-for-profit organisation claiming 65,000 supporters that was set up in the aftermath of the financial crisis and is funded by trusts and foundations.
The Bank responded to similar calls in January by saying that it has "an ambitious work programme on climate change, from the stress testing of the largest UK banks and insurers against climate-related financial risks through to working internationally with the central bank network for greening the financial system".
Chancellor Rishi Sunak is being urged to use the Budget to change the financial system to better protect the environment.One group wants him to impose a carbon tax and use the proceeds to protect the poor from high energy bills.A second petition is calling for Bank of England rules to encourage banks not to invest in fossil fuels.

Budget 2021: Chancellor must 'make finance green', say campaigners - BBC News

5 annotations

4498

shell house is
passive design.
low an environmental impact as possible, the house was built using local FSC timber, earth, and people’s hands – all without petrochemical materials.
this large opening lets sunlight flood into the interior while also connecting the living spaces to the great outdoors.
only 20% of the 290 m2 site.
shell house
the project, which combines traditional materials and building techniques with contemporary environmental strategies, was designed for a client looking for an unusual yet timeless home.

organic timber forms blend tono mirai's shell house into a japanese forest

7 annotations

www.designboom.com

4516

Niels Kanstrup, a Danish hunter and biologist says the ban has actually been beneficial for hunting. "I'm a conservationist," he told BBC News. "I'm a hunter, too. "I think it's a fair and sustainable way to use natural resources, but we can't have it connected with spreading poisonous heavy metals in nature."
Christopher Graffius from the British Association for Shooting and Conservation told BBC News: "We have already reduced the amount of lead being released into the environment. "And when it comes to human health, there are risk management procedures [in place]; a ban would be a knee-jerk response - it's not proportionate." But Lord Krebs said that even the threat to human health from consuming wild game shot legally with lead was a concern. "People who eat wild game regularly, particularly young children, are at risk of some adverse effects," he told BBC News. "It could affect their mental development."
Ruth Cromie from the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust told BBC News: "A lot of people are ignoring [the regulations].""And even where the law is being obeyed, it's possible for water birds to be exposed to legally deposited lead, so the issue is that the law isn't protecting birds from lead poisoning." But shooting organisations in the UK see a campaign against lead shot as a campaign against hunting.
But the WWT recently carried out tests on just over 100 ducks purchased as "locally shot" from suppliers in England and found that more than three quarters were killed using lead.
Lord Krebs, emeritus professor of zoology at the University of Oxford, and former chair of the UK Food Standards Agency, told BBC News that there was "an overwhelming body of evidence" that lead used in hunting was "a risk both to humans and to wildlife"."On that basis," he told BBC News. "The advice would be that lead shot should be phased out."
The report is a collection of research presented by experts who gathered at the Oxford Symposium on Lead ammunition last year. It includes findings from studies carried out by university academics and by conservation groups including the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust (WWT) and the RSPB.
About 100,000 wetland birds are killed every year from poisoning by discarded lead ammunition, say scientists. This is one of the conclusions of a report published on Thursday by the University of Oxford.

Lead poisons '100,000 birds annually' - BBC News

7 annotations

4568

and we should rapidly evolve to eating other forms of protein that are safer for humans, including plant-based meat alternatives and cultured meat (produced by culturing animal cells),”
massive overcrowding of animals in factory farms constitute major public health risks and that continuing these practices will only assure further crises in the future.
human-dominated ecosystem with increasingly unnatural human-animal close contact, grossly aberrant crowding of animals for human purposes,
“Although it is tempting for us to lay the blame for pandemics such as COVID-19 on bats, pangolins, or other wild species, it is human behavior that is responsible for the vast majority of zoonotic diseases that jump the species barrier from animals to humans,”
calling for an end to factory farming and live animal markets worldwide in an effort to prevent the creation and spread of zoonotic diseases such as COVID-19.

New Scientific Paper Pushes to Shut Down All Factory Farms to Stop the Spread of Diseases Like COVID-19 | VegNews

5 annotations

vegnews.com

4593

This tradition of doggy weddings has gone on for multiple years, with last year's couple being Honey and Duke. Adoptions are free during the week of the wedding
"Every heartworm positive dog will have their treatment covered in full, making it easier than ever to adopt a heartworm positive dog," the shelter posted on Facebook.
Sassy and Spero have been together since Sassy started her heartworm treatment, according to the shelter.
The event was planned by Wedding Festivals and Upstate Bridal Association, according to the shelter.
GREENVILLE, S.C. — A Carolina animal shelter hosted a canine wedding Thursday to support donations for the new Have a Heart Heartworm Treatment Fund and raise awareness to adopt shelter dogs.

Carolina animal shelter holds 'wedding' for 2 pups

5 annotations

www.wxii12.com

4447

The communities, who have yet to be consulted about the proposals, would lose control of their forests, and further timber harvesting, however sustainable, would be banned.
A proposal currently being discussed by the U.S. Senate offers the Guatemalan government $60 million to beef up security in the Mirador Basin, a part of the reserve known for its Mayan archaeological remains.
Narco-ranches contain miles of clandestine roads leading to the border, and around a hundred small airstrips that are out of sight of the authorities and out of the hands of rival gangs.
less deforestation and fewer fires, while storing more carbon than other forests, including those under government protection.
ndependent studies have shown that key species such as jaguars and their prey are still abundant in the forest concessions . “This clearly shows our compliance with the ecological requirements of forest certification,” Cuellar said.
“The forest is an economic asset to the people,” ACOFOP’s deputy director Juan Giron told me in an earlier interview. “If the person benefits from natural resources, he or she sees them as an asset.
t the heart of the community concessions is a strong collective organization, the Association of Forest Communities of Peten (ACOFOP),
The communities also benefit from long-term advice from Rainforest Alliance, an American NGO, in finding markets for forest products. These include valuable timbers such as mahogany and Spanish cedar, which despite its name is a New World tree, and several non-timber products from trees believed to have been cultivated since the time of the Mayan civilization here.
One of the rules set by the government when establishing the concessions was that communities must use the forests sustainably.
Carmelita is a century-old community, originally established as a settlement for extractors of forest products.
The communities have done a far better job of protecting the forest than they and the government have.
And grassroots organizations representing traditional forest users demanded the right to establish community forests, where they could continue harvesting timber and other forest products.
Together, they comprise one of the world’s largest and most successful community forest experiments.
Illegal cattle ranches — most of them linked to major drug cartels — have been wrecking the national parks containing the protected forests in the west of the reserve, causing some of the fastest rates of deforestation in the world.

Parks vs. People: In Guatemala, Communities Take Best Care of the Forest - Yale E360

14 annotations

e360.yale.edu

4633

The discovery shows that life can exist in environments where science suggests it should not: “There are still things that we have to learn,” Griffiths said. “There are still animals out there that can break the rules that we have written for them.”
It seems the animals attached to the boulder drifted there as microscopic larvae, and then grew into their adult forms: “life is everywhere and the environment selects the species that eventually thrive.”A future stage will be to determine if the animals are similar to those in the open ocean, or if they had evolved to live where they are now, Priscu said in an email. “[If] the organisms evolved to live beneath ice shelves, they may provide us with a molecular clock that can be used to gauge past climate driven changes in Antarctic ice.”
“All the ingredients for life exist beneath ice shelves,” said John Priscu, a professor of polar ecology at Montana State University, who has studied life under polar ice for almost 40 years but who was not involved in the latest study.
In order to survive, the organisms would have to feed on floating material from other animals or plants, because it is impossible for plants to photosynthesize in the sunless seawater. While the boulder is located about 150 miles from the ocean, the direction of the currents beneath the ice shelf suggests the nearest plant life is up to 1,000 miles away, Griffiths said.
Small mobile animals such as shrimp and crustaceans called sea fleas have been seen before beneath ice shelves, but no one expected to see stationary animals like these. “The only things you would expect to find … are things that can wander around and find food,” he said. “Whereas if you’re stuck to a rock and you’re waiting for food to come to you, then the one bit that comes past this year could go past you.”
Antarctica is ringed with more than half a million square miles of ice shelves – the Filchner-Ronne is one of the largest, covering more than 160,000 square miles – but boreholes have revealed an area of seafloor beneath them only the size of a tennis court. “It’s a huge area, but we have a tiny widow into it,” Griffiths said.
“It was a bit of a disappointment to them – they’d spent weeks getting there and it didn’t work,” said marine biologist Huw Griffiths of the British Antarctic Survey, who is the lead author of the published study. “But for [biologists], it is amazing because no one has ever seen these [organisms] before.”
They had expected the seafloor to be mud, but were dismayed when they hit a boulder, which meant they couldn’t get the intended sediment samples. But to their surprise, the camera showed colonies of “stationary” animals attached to the rock – probably sponges and related sea creatures.
“Life finds a way,” the actor Jeff Goldblum playing scientist Ian Malcolm declared in the 1993 movie “Jurassic Park.” Animal life was not what scientists were expecting to find in the pitch-black seawater beneath almost half a mile of floating Antarctic ice, but it seems to have found a way with the discovery of sea creatures living in the extreme environment.

Scientists find unexpected animal life far beneath Antarctica’s floating ice shelves

9 annotations

4078

The researchers note that one explanation could be that some individuals engage in more effective self-presentation. "Perhaps people that have greater well-being behave in ways that are more in line with their personality -- being more authentic or true to themselves," says Assistant Professor Lauren Human. In a previous study, the researchers also found evidence of this in platonic settings. Alternatively, it may be that people who are perceived more accurately come to experience greater well-being -- not necessarily that greater well-being leads to being perceived more accurately. Both are plausible, according to Human.
On average, people did see their dates' personalities accurately, but some dates were easier to read than others. "Some people are open books whose distinctive personalities can be accurately perceived after a brief interaction, whereas others are harder to read," says co-author Lauren Gazzard Kerr, a PhD student in the Department of Psychology at McGill University under the supervision of Professor Lauren Human. "Strikingly, people who report higher well-being, self-esteem, and satisfaction with life tend to make the task easier," she says.
To find answers, they invited 372 participants to partake in speed-dating events in Montreal in 2017 and 2018. Participants were asked to complete a questionnaire assessing their personality and well-being. A close friend or family member also completed a questionnaire on the participant's personality. Participants then had a series of brief, three-minute first dates; after each interaction, they rated their date's personality.
Summary: The high stakes of first dates require would-be partners to make and interpret first impressions. But, can we rely on these first impressions to accurately assess someone's personality? According to researchers, the answer is yes, although it may be more difficult than in more casual settings.

How accurate are first impressions on a first date? People who report greater personal well-being are easier to read than others -- ScienceDaily

4 annotations

4420

steel producers had “gone on a tear” leading to increased emissions
Huge swaths of north and central China have been living under a pollution “red alert” since last Friday when a dangerous cocktail of pollutants transformed the skies into a yellow and charcoal-tinted haze.
Ctrip, China’s leading online travel agent, said it expected 150,000 travellers to head abroad this month in a bid to outrun the smog. Top destinations include Australia, Indonesia, Japan and the Maldives.
Yang Xinglin, who also fled to Chongli, said she had requested time off from her job at a state-owned real estate firm so she did not have to inhale the smog.
smog had paralysed airports in Beijing and across the country’s northern industrial heartland in cities
A big part of what happened is that the steel price went up when the government started a huge wave of construction projects to stimulate the economy,” he said.

Smog refugees flee Chinese cities as 'airpocalypse' blights half a billion | World news | The Guardian

6 annotations

ecology

6325

“You get much more bang for your buck if wetland preservation and restoration are targeted,” said Nandita Basu, a professor of civil and environmental engineering, and earth and environmental sciences at Waterloo, and corresponding author of the paper. “From a policy perspective, it is dramatically more effective and efficient.”
In results published today in the journal Nature, computer modeling showed that prioritizing wetland restoration close to heavily farmed areas would remove up to 40 times more nitrogen than the current ad hoc approach.
Targeted wetland restoration in heavily farmed areas would dramatically reduce the amount of nitrogen polluting rivers, lakes and coastal areas, a new study finds.

Environmental News Network - Restoring Wetlands Near Farms Would Dramatically Reduce Water Pollution

3 annotations

4326

“As the public accounts committee recognises, the government faced significant challenges in having to rapidly procure PPE at pace in a competitive international market. Thanks to the combined effort of government, NHS, armed forces, civil servants and industry we have delivered over 8.1bn items of PPE at record speed.”
A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: “We have been working tirelessly to procure, produce and deliver PPE to over 58,000 settings, protecting our health and social care staff on the frontline of this pandemic.
The committee said the situation was particularly acute in the social care sector, which did not receive “anywhere near enough” to meet its needs.The committee criticisms over the lack of transparency around the procurement process echoed similar made by the NAO. In particular, the MPs pointed to concerns over the so-called “high priority lane”, where orders were placed with companies on the basis of recommendations from MPs or other prominent figures rather than those with expertise in the field.
“Many workers at the frontline in health and social care were put in the appalling situation of having to care for people with Covid-19 or suspected Covid-19
Overall, the committee said frontline staff in both health and social care experienced shortages of PPE, with some forced to reuse single-use items as stocks ran “perilously low”.
The committee said the episode had left the government “open to accusations of poor value for money, conflicts of interest and preferential treatment of some suppliers”, while a lack of transparency “undermines public trust in government procurement and the use of taxpayers’ money”.The committee found also that, while the government had a plan and a stockpile of PPE in place, that proved insufficient to deal with the pandemic.
“Frontline workers were left without adequate supplies, risking their own and their families’ lives to provide treatment and care,” said the committee’s chair, Meg Hillier. “We’re at a dangerous new phase of the pandemic, in our third national lockdown with no defined end in sight. The government needs to acknowledge the errors and be better prepared.”
Care homes were left exposed and vulnerable by a lack of personal protective equipment early in the pandemic, while the government’s handling of the procurement left ministers open to accusations of conflicts of interest, MPs have found.

Care homes failed by lack of PPE during UK Covid first wave, say MPs | Care workers | The Guardian

8 annotations

4436

We used to take metal containers with tight lids to buy oil. That should restart as well,” she adds.
Like Amudha using leaves to wrap her fragrant flowers in Chennai,
The ban in Tamil Nadu, home to nearly 68 million people, is part of an ambitious national campaign to rid the world’s second-most populous nation of plastic waste
By the end of last year, nearly 400 companies and manufacturing plants dealing in the banned materials were shut down
Large chains like McDonald’s are no longer providing plastic straws,” she says. “I have also stopped buying bottled water and soft drinks.”
Bans on thin plastic shopping bags are the most common regulations. State government officials are also working to reduce the manufacturing of plastic by shutting down factories and preventing import of plastic products
nearly 40 percent of the country’s plastic waste is neither collected nor recycled. It ends up polluting water supplies and soil,
In contrast, Mumbai, state capital of Maharashtra, India’s commercial nerve-center, began enforcing a ban last June that imposes tough penalties for people caught selling or buying 22 banned items,
Bans on thin plastic shopping bags are the most common regulations. State government officials are also working to reduce the manufacturing of plastic by shutting down factories and preventing import of plastic products.

Plastic bans spread in India, from Tamil Nadu to Maharashtra, with surprising winners and losers

9 annotations

metals

7398

the plight of the Somali people has been "neglected" amid an impending famine.
Somalia's Prime Minister Hassan Ali Khaire announced that 110 people had died from starvation and drought-related illness.
chronic situations tend to be neglected,"
more than 6,000 cases of cholera have been reported since early January.

UN chief: World is neglecting risk of famine in Somalia - CNN.com

4 annotations

news

edition.cnn.com

11723

除了香港和日本，原來台灣也有老師在黑板上「還原」《你的名字。》中的場景。
香港01》訪問表示，今次這幅畫作主要由她和另一名女生Kelly共同繪畫，她們特意在假期向校方申請使用課室，特意回校一共花了6小時才完成大作
Vivian和Kelly都是就讀協恩中學的中五生，年僅16歲，共同設立了facebook專頁「Illusdreamer」上載美術作品
Alice in the Wonderland》，這幅畫可以與觀眾互動，更在美術室展出了一星期讓其它同學參觀。

【多圖有片】協恩16歲女學生畫《你的名字。》黑板畫網民勁like｜香港01｜熱話｜

4 annotations

www.hk01.com

4386

Black carbon is a type particulate matter emitted largely by gas and diesel engines and coal-fired power plants. The particles effectively absorb sunlight and prevent it from being reflected into the atmosphere
Looking at more than 1,300 birds from five species that flew over the Rust Belt and were contained in natural history collections, two graduate students—Shane DuBay and Carl Fuldner from the University of Chicago—were able to tell how much black carbon, also known as soot, accumulated in bird feathers during the year it was collected
Using data from the birds, DuBay and Fuldner were able to see how black carbon levels corresponded to historical data on U.S. environmental regulations or fuel consumption

U.S. Air Pollution Was Once So Bad, Birds Turned Black

3 annotations

ecology

7848

Locals arrive at a water-collection point a day after the impact of Hurricane Maria, in Yabucoa, Puerto Rico, September 21, 2017.
.
Puerto Rico
There's a long wait for fuel, which many use to power their generators.
People wait in line to withdraw cash at a bank in San Juan, Puerto Rico, September 27, 2017.
People line up to get on a Royal Caribbean International relief boat that sails to Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, with evacuees from San Juan, Puerto Rico, September 28, 2017.

15 images show the humanitarian crisis unfolding in Puerto Rico - Business Insider

6 annotations

weather

8653

The generation of models currently being assessed for the next IPCC report, due next year, have improved dramatically over several decades. They now explicitly represent numerous forest types, and many include dynamic nitrogen cycles and improved tree mortality statistics.
as 36.7 billion tons of carbon dioxide per year — about four times as much as they do now — whereas others forecast a release of as much as 22 billion tons. That huge range of 59 billion tons far exceeds today’s annual global emissions from all sources,
Even these experiments won’t answer all questions, though. The forests studied so far are relatively monotonous — the Sydney forest is dominated by just one species, eucalyptus —whereas in some tropical forests, more than 200 tree species can mingle in a single hectare. These forests are also warm and sun-bathed year-round, pumping up growth rates.
The study outside of Sydney was one of the first carbon-fertilization experiments done in a mature forest anywhere.
Dozens of soil warming experiments in temperate and boreal forests had found increasing carbon losses, but about a third of all forest soil carbon is in the already-warm tropics.
Such experiments are expensive, time-consuming, and logistically fraught — especially in the tropics, where intense humidity and rainfall can damage equipment, as can animals.
The other Science paper, published in June, adds an explicit warning for governments and other entities hoping to fight climate change through programs to plant trees or restore forests.
While fires, droughts and other factors are playing a role, forests also seem to be switching from a period dominated by carbon fertilization to one dominated by a phenomenon known as vapor pressure deficit
Meanwhile, more careful analysis of satellite data by Boston University earth scientist Ranga Myneni and colleagues revealed that much of the greening seen in previous studies was due not to accelerated forest growth, but rather to an extensive, decades-long tree-planting initiative in China, coupled with rapid intensification of farming in China and India as growers gained access to capital and adopted fertilizer and irrigation on a wide scale.
While climate scientists roundly reject that view, many have enthusiastically promoted forests’ ability to soak up carbon. Last summer, the lead author of a much-celebrated paper called tree planting “the best climate solution available today,” though the authors later clarified that it can’t substitute for emissions reductions.
No serious scientist has argued that such “natural climate solutions” absolve countries from cutting fossil fuel emissions, but some have hoped they could at least provide crucial breathing room to head off the worst impacts of climate change.
I worry that our academic obsession with the declining sink will be misinterpreted by the public”
Higher CO2 concentrations do not necessarily accelerate forest growth, warming soils seem to emit substantially more CO2 than previously believed, and climate-driven scourges threaten to kill trees faster than they can grow, turning forests globally into sources, not sinks, of carbon.
A new generation of field experiments and computer models are tackling some of the biggest open questions around the future of forests.
Forests today absorb more than a quarter of humans’ CO2 emissions, and more than a trillion tons of carbon reside in trees and forest soil — more than twice the carbon emitted by humans since the Industrial Revolution began.
Ever since global climate change was recognized as a major threat, scientists have struggled to determine how much carbon ecosystems, and forests in particular, can soak up from the atmosphere as both carbon dioxide levels and temperatures rise.
Despite gorging on plant food in the form of CO2, the trees hadn’t managed to grow any larger, the researchers reported in April in Nature.
In 2012, carbon dioxide gas started flowing from the tubes, raising levels inside the rings to nearly 40 percent above the global average CO2 concentration of around 405 parts per million.

Will Climate Change Upend Projections of Future Forest Growth? - Yale E360

18 annotations

e360.yale.edu

4550

In a swift, abrupt change of policy that month, Beijing announced it would ban 24 types of imported waste by the end of the year.
The waste plastic industry will bear most of the brunt as it will have to sort scrap plastics and turn them into clean pellets that can be exported to China as industrial raw material.
Questions are being raised as to what the future holds for the city’s embattled and fragmented recycling industry, hit in recent years by falling prices, high costs and a lack of space and capacity.
The problem is not about money, but deep-rooted issues such as the lack of incentives for the public to recycle
There is no economic incentive for frontline recyclers to collect any more,”
Hong Kong becomes a dumping ground for US e-waste, research finds
In 2015 the mainland imported 46 million tonnes of waste – including roughly half of the world’s imports of scrap paper, plastics and copper – for reprocessing. In the first eight months of 2016, Hong Kong was the largest exporter of used plastic to the mainland, accounting for 26.7 per cent of the total.

Shift in mainland policy could spell disaster for Hong Kong recycling | South China Morning Post

7 annotations

ecology

www.scmp.com

7180

I graduated from a top university with honours, and was successful in my field,
. Social Bite is a charitable cafe chain in Scotland that invests 100% of their profits and have now started building shelters for the homeless.
I was diagnosed with a whole raft of disorders – PTSD
nothing worked. Eventually, and in suicidal desperation, I found something that did – injecting heroin.
Eventually, I ended up on the streets. Most addicts will have similar stories – they are victims of rape, child abuse, and all manner of horrors. Many lack even the barest chance to get help, or any kind of family
Last month one woman asked for a bag of crisps and a bottle of cherry coke and burst into tears when she got it. These are human beings at their lowest ebb, a little humanity can mean the world to them
but it also led to opportunities, like coming across a Hare Krishna mobile food kitchen that was being all but ignored. This was literally manna from heaven and it made them very happy to reach somebody in need
People are so close to destitution in the UK that when it stares them in the face they can easily react badly. Eight million people in the UK are one payday away from being homeless.

Homeless in Britain: ‘I graduated with honours – and ended up on the streets’ | Cities | The Guardian

8 annotations

government

6303

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Dozens of Syrians choked to death after a suspected chemical attack struck the rebel-held suburb of Douma,
The attack appeared to break the will of Douma’s rebels, who agreed on Sunday to a deal with the government to hand the area over and be bused to another area outside government control in the country’s north.
Douma is the last remaining town in the area still controlled by rebels, and the Syrian government has vowed to retake it.
The United States government said it was working to verify whether chemical weapons had been used. A new, confirmed chemical attack in Syria would pose a dilemma for President Trump, who ordered military strikes on a Syrian air base after a chemical attack last year to punish Mr. Assad but has more recently said he wanted to get the United States out of Syria.
“The Assad regime and its backers must be held accountable, and any further attacks prevented immediately,” a State Department spokeswoman, Heather Nauert, said in a statement. Ms. Nauert noted a sarin gas attack in April 2017 in northwestern Syria that the United States and the United Nations blamed on the Syrian government.
The agreement was celebrated at the time, but multiple chemical attacks since then have been blamed on the Syrian government, raising questions about how effective the agreement wa

Dozens Suffocate in Syria as Government Is Accused of Chemical Attack - The New York Times

6 annotations

government

7336

You have to attend an all-day class, take a written exam and pass a shooting-range test with a mark of at least 95%.
Your criminal record is checked and police look for links to extremist groups. Then they check your relatives too - and even your work colleagues. And as well as having the power to deny gun licences,
They are the first nation to impose gun laws in the whole world and I think it laid down a bedrock saying that guns really don't play a part in civilian society."
Japan has one of the lowest rates of gun crime in the world. In 2014 there were just six gun deaths, compared to 33,599 in the US. What is the secret?
The result is a very low level of gun ownership - 0.6 guns per 100 people in 2007, according to the Small Arms Survey, compared to 6.2 in England and Wales and 88.8 in the US.
The moment you have guns in society, you will have gun violence
Japanese police officers rarely use guns and put much greater emphasis on martial arts
If you have too many police pulling out guns at the first instance of crime, you lead to a miniature arms race between police and criminals
policemen never carry weapons off-duty, leaving them at the station when they finish their shift.
One bullet shell was unaccounted for - one shell had fallen behind one of the targets - and nobody was allowed to leave the facilities until they found the shell
There is no clamour in Japan for gun regulations to be relaxed, says Berteaux. "A lot of it stems from this post-war sentiment of pacifism that the war was horrible and we can never have that again,
peace is always going to exist and when you have a culture like that you don't really feel the need to arm yourself or have an object that disrupts that peace."

How Japan has almost eradicated gun crime - BBC News

12 annotations

crime

8908

"Knowing what this region is doing at this early age will tell us a bit more about how the human brain can develop the ability to read and what may go wrong," Saygin said. "It is important to track how this region of the brain becomes increasingly specialized."
The goal is to learn how the brain becomes a reading brain, she said. Learning more about individual variability may help researchers understand differences in reading behavior and could be useful in the study of dyslexia and other developmental disorders.
"Our findings suggest that there likely needs to be further refinement in the VWFA as babies mature," Saygin said. "Experience with spoken and written language will likely strengthen connections with specific aspects of the language circuit and further differentiate this region's function from its neighbors as a person gains literacy."
"The VWFA is specialized to see words even before we're exposed to them," Saygin said. advertisement googletag.cmd.push(function() { deployads.push(function() { deployads.gpt.display("adslot-mobile-bottom-rectangle") }); }); "It's interesting to think about how and why our brains develop functional modules that are sensitive to specific things like faces, objects, and words," said Li, who is lead author of the study. "Our study really emphasized the role of already having brain connections at birth to help develop functional specialization, even for an experience-dependent category like reading."
The VWFA is next to another part of visual cortex that processes faces, and it was reasonable to believe that there wasn't any difference in these parts of the brain in newborns, Saygin said.
"We found that isn't true. Even at birth, the VWFA is more connected functionally to the language network of the brain than it is to other areas," Saygin said. "It is an incredibly exciting finding."
"That makes it fertile ground to develop a sensitivity to visual words -- even before any exposure to language," said Zeynep Saygin, senior author of the study and assistant professor of psychology at The Ohio State University.
Analyzing brain scans of newborns, researchers found that this part of the brain -- called the "visual word form area" (VWFA) -- is connected to the language network of the brain.
Humans are born with a part of the brain that is prewired to be receptive to seeing words and letters, setting the stage at birth for people to learn how to read, a new study suggests. Analyzing brain scans of newborns, researchers found that this part of the brain -- called the 'visual word form area' (VWFA) -- is connected to the language network of the brain.

Humans are born with brains 'prewired' to see words: Study finds connections to language areas of the brain -- ScienceDaily

9 annotations

4329

Shop less, mend more
Water is a significant part of the problem. Textile manufacturing uses huge amounts of water, much of which gets flushed into waterways laden with contaminants such as bleaches, acids, inks and dyes
Technology can help to make smarter choices. The free Good On You app rates mainstream brands based on publicly available info, while Baptist World Aid Australia’s annual Ethical Fashion Report grades companies on labour rights and the possibility of exploitation in their supply chain
Extend your wardrobe’s lifespan by mending
The solution lies in buying less and choosing better quality items that are made as ethically as possible. But how to tell good brands from bad? Our guide to ethical fashion navigates the conundrum.
But a word of caution when it comes to donating clothes. The ABC’s War on Waste survey of 36,700 people found 82% of respondents had donated clothes, yet only 53% had ever purchased secondhand clothing. With supply outstripping demand, and charities overwhelmed by mountains of crappy fast fashion items that can never be on-sold, non-profits have essentially become our dumping ground. Yet another reason to support secondhand stores while winding back our fast fashion addiction.

Shop less, mend more: making more sustainable fashion choices | Life and style | The Guardian

6 annotations

clothing

7582

"Combining post-Covid economic investment to accelerate the change to a zero-carbon world gives us real hope that we can limit global heating to the all-important 1.5C temperature increase. "Warming above that will lead to increasingly severe impacts on the planet and its people and could kick start feedbacks in the climate system that could lead to runaway climate change."
But to keep to the 2C goal, the level of ambition in the Paris agreement needs to be tripled. To keep under 1.5C, that ambition needs to increase five-fold."The life raft that we have is a green recovery," said Dr Kat Kramer from Christian Aid.
"The year 2020 is on course to be one of the warmest on record, while wildfires, storms and droughts continue to wreak havoc," said Inger Andersen."However, Unep's Emissions Gap report shows that a green pandemic recovery can take a huge slice out of greenhouse gas emissions and help slow climate change. I urge governments to back a green recovery in the next stage of Covid-19 fiscal interventions and raise significantly their climate ambitions in 2021."
"It will be practically and politically impossible to close the emissions gap if governments don't cut the carbon footprint of the wealthy and end the inequalities which leave millions of people without access to power or unable to heat their homes."
"The UNEP report shows that the over-consumption of a wealthy minority is fuelling the climate crisis, yet it is poor communities and young people who are paying the price," said Tim Gore, head of climate policy at Oxfam, and a contributing author to the report.
Switching to renewable electricity by households could curb carbon by around 1.5 tonnes per capita, while embracing a vegetarian diet would save around half a tonne of carbon on average.
But for the richest 1%, it would mean a dramatic reduction."The wealthy bear the greatest responsibility in this area," Unep executive director Inger Anderson wrote in a foreword to the report. "The combined emissions of the richest 1% of the global population account for more than twice the combined emissions of the poorest 50%.""This elite will need to reduce their footprint by a factor of 30 to stay in line with the Paris Agreement targets," she wrote.
The global top 10% of income earners use around 45% of all the energy consumed for land transport and around 75% of all the energy for aviation, compared with just 10% and 5% respectively for the poorest 50% of households, the report says.
The study, compiled by the UN Environment Programme (Unep), underlines the chasm between the level of emissions consistent with keeping temperatures down and what's happening in the real world.
The world's wealthiest 1% account for more than twice the combined carbon emissions of the poorest 50%, according to the UN.

Climate change: Global 'elite' will need to slash high-carbon lifestyles - BBC News

10 annotations

4520

Governments that can afford stimulus packages have an opportunity right now to invest in clean energy and public transport,
In the next 15 years, the authors predict this worst-case scenario will result in a further 2,500 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions, which is nearly 3 trillion pounds of coal burned.
Plus, as investments for low-carbon technologies dry up, both in the private and public sector,
In this scenario, COVID-19 is much more widespread, deadly and persistent, causing a much longer global recession.
If it takes much longer for the pandemic to subside, the impacts on energy innovation could be significant.
"Thus, COVID-19 would be a relatively short-lived shock to the world economy,"
While the study is focused specifically on the US, the team says their findings can apply to much of the developed world.
"If that were to continue it could significantly set back the push toward a clean energy future."
But if the viral threat continues unabated, even if just for a single year, it will cause a persistent global recession,
but new research focused on the United States suggests that won't come close to outweighing the fatality of this virus. In all likelihood, the environmental benefits of the global health crisis will be short lived.
Measures to contain the global pandemic have caused our global carbon emissions to plummet, and some think this unprecedented event might actually help us to tackle climate change.

Don't Get Too Excited About a 'Green Revolution' Thanks to The Pandemic. Here's Why

11 annotations

www.sciencealert.com

4233

One of the biggest problems remains lax gun storage which is difficult to address because it is hard to quantify and hard to enforce.
For the first 10 months of this year, 804 children, aged 0-11 were killed or injured, as were 750 teenagers, aged 12-17, according to the data.
The CDC used to survey how Americans kept their loaded, unlocked guns in their homes in an annual telephone survey that asked 400,000 adults about various health risks. The data found that an estimate 1.5 million children lived in such homes. The CDC stopped the questioning in 2004
A child is killed every other day as a direct result of an accidental shooting, whether self-inflicted or at the hands of another child or an adult
this is such a horrible patter that continues and that more action is needed.”
Most of the shootings occurred at the children’s homes, with handguns legally owned by adults for self-protection.

Accidental shootings kill one American child every 48 hours – report — RT America

6 annotations

children

www.rt.com

7201

Giant gathering by Tony Wu
Wildlife Photographer of the Year prize
Sir Michael Dixon, the director of the Natural History Museum, said: “Brent’s image highlights the urgent need for humanity to protect our planet and the species we share it with.”
The prestigious Wildlife Photographer of the Year award has been handed to a photojournalist who captured a criticially endangered black rhino lying dead with its horn cut off.
Contemplation by Peter Delaney
the species has faced renewed poaching in recent years despite conservation efforts.

Rhino without its horn wins Wildlife Photographer of the Year prize - The i newspaper online iNews

6 annotations

large animals

inews.co.uk

7962

In September 2016, almost 50 years of constant breeding and conservation, the giant panda was removed from the endangered species list
once upon a time, the humble alligator was on the verge of extinction, thanks to the popularity of its skin as material for shoes, jackets, and bags.
South Africa’s white rhino went from discovery to near-extinction in just 75 years.
But in 1885, 20 remaining white rhinos were discovered in a remote location in Kwazulu-Natal. They were protected and bred for more than a hundred years, and there are now a robust 20,000 white rhinos in the wild.
In the 1970s, however, when it was discovered that there were only about 140 left, the grizzly was placed on the Endangered Species List in 1975
Now, there are around 1200 wandering around Yellowstone and the Rocky Mountain West—and about 50,000 in the world
The Siberian tiger—the biggest cat in the world, native to Russia, China and Korea—was heavily hunted until the mid-1940s, when Russia finally banned killing tigers
The island fox, which is endemic to California's Channel Islands, suffered a 90 percent population decrease in the 1990s, when pesticide use wiped out bald eagles on the islands
the monkeys' numbers dwindled to around 200 after 93 percent of the rainforest was cut and cleared.
the wood stork’s population has dropped by 90 percent since the 1930s, landing it on the endangered species list in.
There is only one true kind of wild horse left on the entire planet—and that’s Przewalski’s horse.
Today there are about 50 animals. With such small numbers, they're still considered endangered.

8 Animals That Are No Longer Endangered | Mental Floss

12 annotations

large animals

mentalfloss.com

5022

We urgently need the government to form a comprehensive plastic action plan. Banning all plastic bags and single-use packaging would be a good start, but we need to go way beyond that. Plastic production has to be reduced,
In one study, 95% of all adults tested in the US had known carcinogenic chemical bisphenol A in their urine. In another, 83% of samples of tap water tested in seven countries were found to contain plastic microfibres. A study published last week revealed plastics contamination in more than 90% of bottled-water samples, which were from 11 different brands. And earlier this year the River Tame in Manchester was found to have 517,000 particles of plastic per cubic metre of sediment – that’s nearly double the highest concentration ever measured across the world.
The more researchers look, the more they find in the human body.
plastic is now in what we eat, drink and breathe, and constitutes a significant and growing threat to human health.
If we can breathe in these micro- and nano-sized particles and fibres, the scientists conjecture, they are likely to get into the human bloodstream, lung tissue and breast milk

The plastics crisis is more urgent than you know. Recycling bottles won’t fix it | John Vidal | Opinion | The Guardian

5 annotations

chemicals industry

7371

, both of which highlighted plastic global pollution as the most urgent problem facing our planet
Only 9% of all plastic waste ever produced has been recycled.
An officer at the Uganda Wildlife Education Centre displays a tortoise whose shell was deformed after it was rescued from some plastic string
The week in plastic - in pictures
Birds search for plastic delicacies at a landfill site in Aceh, Indonesia.

The week in plastic - in pictures | Environment | The Guardian

5 annotations

ecology

7377

The stress of war has led to increased bedwetting, self-harm, suicide attempts and aggressive behaviour among many children,
71% of interviewees said that children were increasingly suffering from frequent bedwetting and "involuntary urination" - symptoms of toxic stress and post-traumatic stress disorder
48% of adults said they had seen children who had lost their ability to speak or begun to suffer from speech impediments
Toxic stress can disrupt the development of the brain and other organs and increasing the risk of addiction

Syrian children in state of 'toxic stress', Save the Children says - BBC News

4 annotations

children

7216

Centuries of domestication have unintentionally yet radically reshaped dogs' eyebrow anatomy, making their faces easily readable to people.
When meeting a person’s gaze, dogs often raise their inner eyebrow muscle to make their eyes look larger and more appealing.
There’s no evidence that dogs move this [eyebrow] muscle intentionally, but it creates an exaggerated movement that for us means ‘dog,’”

‘Puppy dog eyes’ evolved so dogs could communicate with us

3 annotations

4770

Climate change means the Greenland ice sheet is melting at a phenomenal rate, but hunter Julius Nielsen is still able to build an igloo.

How to build an igloo (when the climate is changing) - BBC Ideas

1 annotation

www.bbc.co.uk

4419

"We need a little baby to learn from Najin and Fatu how to behave as a northern white rhino. So that brings us under quite a lot of time pressure, and we hope that we can start with the first transplantation attempts at the end of this year," Hildebrandt said.
White rhinos typically live to between 30 and 40 years old, Live Science previously reported. Najin is already 31 and, while she is in good health now, Hildebrandt does not know how long she will last. Her daughter Fatu is in her early 20s.
Conservationists want to implant these embryos into southern white rhino surrogates, which will hopefully give birth to northern white rhino offspring in approximately 16 months. Once the babies are born, the surrogate mother will be kept at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy with the two remaining northern white rhinos so the calf can grow up with them. This placement needs to be done while Najin and Fatu are still alive.
Decades of poaching for its horn have left the northern white rhinoceros (Ceratotherium simum cottoni) on the brink of extinction, according to the World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF). The two females left, Najin and her daughter Fatu, live at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy in central Kenya.
"It's not scientific exercise, it is really a conservation approach with very ambitious, very new technologies," Dr. Thomas Hildebrandt, head of the BioRescue project and a professor at the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research in Germany, told Live Science.
Two northern white rhino embryos have been created in a lab, bringing fresh hope that the animal could be saved from extinction.The two new viable embryos add to the existing stash of three, bringing the total number of viable embryos to five, BioRescue, an international consortium working to save the northern white rhino, announced in a statement on Jan. 14.

More northern white rhino embryos created in lab | Live Science

6 annotations

4458

Because there are only two known specimens of B. nana, it's hard to draw any hard conclusions about this sexual dynamic. And scientists still don't know how endangered these wee creatures are. But because the rainforests of Madagascar face a significant threat from encroaching human activities — like deforestation and agriculture — these teensy lizards are likely in danger, too, the researchers wrote. Without significant conservation efforts, the world's smallest reptiles could easily slip through our grasp.
"[This] revealed an interesting pattern: The smallest species often have the proportionally largest genital sizes," study co-author Mark Scherz, a herpetologist at the University of Potsdam in Germany, wrote in a blog post.
Surprisingly, this is not an unusual trait among the world's tiniest lizards, the researchers wrote. Genital length among related chameleons ranges anywhere from 6.3% to 32.9% of the male's total body length, with an average of 13.1% over 52 species, the team found. (Other animals have much greater genital-to-body-size ratios, including ducks, whose genital length can equal their body length, and barnacles, whose genitals can be eight times longer than their bodies, the researchers noted).
"Given that the general body plan of reptiles is rather similar to that of mammals and humans, it is fascinating to see how miniaturized these organisms and their organs can get," lead study author Frank Glaw, a herpetologist at the Bavarian State Collection of Zoology in Munich, told Live Science in an email.
Meet Brookesia nana, an extremely tiny species of chameleon from the rainforests of northern Madagascar. Researchers recently described one male and one female of the species in a study published Jan. 28 in the journal Scientific Reports, and they were stunned by the male's particularly wee dimensions. Measuring just half an inch (13.5 millimeters) from snout to cloaca (that's the multipurpose hole reptiles use for both excretion and reproduction), the fully grown male is the smallest adult reptile ever described

World's smallest reptile fits on your fingertip | Live Science

5 annotations

4525

“I welcome the announcement by the government. It’s well overdue that we’re investing and putting funding back into drug and alcohol services but we have to be realistic about the bigger picture that we’re going to have to face in a year or two or five years from now.“The current approach isn’t working. Criminalising doesn’t work. We have to offer a harm prevention approach. Access to drug testing, access to safe injecting facilities. There’s a really strong evidence base globally, the solutions are already there.”
“What we need is an end of the criminalisation of people who use drugs – reducing stigma, resulting in more people accessing treatment if they need it – and support for the safe supply of prescribed drugs to replace illicit use, as well a scaling up of a range of harm reduction initiatives, like overdose prevention centres.”
Niamh Eastwood, director of the charity Release, a national centre of expertise on drug policy, said: “While of course funding for treatment is welcomed, this is a drop in the ocean compared to the cuts that the sector has suffered after ten years of austerity … It is more than disappointing that the rhetoric from No 10 and the Home Office continues along the failed ‘tough on drugs’ criminal justice approach, when we know, from the evidence, that drug policy reform needs to be implemented to achieve the best outcomes.
Ministers have pledged to provide naloxone, which reverses breathing difficulties brought about by opioid use, to “every heroin user in the country that needs it”.
The government has announced a package of funding to tackle drug misuse including £80m for treatment services, although experts have said the investment is “a drop in the ocean” compared with cuts suffered by the sector in the last 10 years.

New funding to tackle drug misuse 'a drop in the ocean', say experts | Drugs | The Guardian

5 annotations

4415

More than 40% of images taken are what are referred to as “bad” wildlife selfies: photos that feature someone hugging, holding or inappropriately interacting with a wild animal
behind the scenes animals are kept in cruel conditions with many dying soon after being snatched from their natural habitat
Wildlife tourism in Latin America is extensive. Research by the charity found that more than half of 249 attractions it looked at online offered direct contact with wild animals. It was particularly concerned at the use of sloths as “props” in photos. According to the charity, the animal is particularly vulnerable to human interaction and there is “good reason to believe” that most sloths being used for tourist selfies don’t survive beyond six months of this treatment.
Steve McIvor, CEO at World Animal Protection said: “The wildlife selfie craze is a worldwide phenomenon fuelled by tourists, many of whom are unaware of the abhorrent conditions and terrible treatment wild animals can endure to provide that special souvenir photo.”
Research by World Animal Protection in Brazil and Peru has revealed rise in photos with wild animals on Instagram
with a 292% increase in the number of images posted to Instagram from 2014 to present

'Wild animal selfies': charity condemns trend following Amazon investigation | Travel | The Guardian

6 annotations

animal welfare

7576

Ohanian has shared dozens of photos on social media of the city from before – and after
Al-Madina Souq, a trading market that has stood the test of time since as early as the 14th century, have been ruined
The ancient city’s stunning Citadel, which dates as far back to the middle of the third millennium BC and is considered to be one of the oldest and largest castles in the world, has also suffered significant damage
It’s easy to imagine what a stay in the Carlton Citadel Hotel might have been like.
show how the ancient city has changed

Aleppo: Chilling photos show how the ancient city has changed since the Syrian conflict started | The Independent

5 annotations

tourist facilities

www.independent.co.uk

14341

According to data from the Igarapé Institute, a Brazilian think-tank, 43 of the 50 most murderous cities in the world last year, and eight of the top ten countries, are in Latin America and the Caribbean.
In both 2015 and 2016, El Salvador was the world′s most violent country,
Acapulco, a beach resort on Mexico′s Pacific coast, recorded 108 homicides per 100,000 people last year, placing it second behind San Salvador.
The middle of the list is dominated by Brazil
In America, the only rich country on this list, a spike in homicides has propelled two more cities, Detroit and New Orleans, to join St Louis and Baltimore, which also figured on last year′s list.

Daily chart: The world’s most dangerous cities | The Economist

5 annotations

www.economist.com

13421

whale and dolphin hunts
The group Sea Shepherd, which campaigns against fishing practices it considers barbaric, recorded the images over a period of months.
They documented a series of so-called whale drives, in which the Faroese government says around 1,200 whales and 500 dolphins were killed
Large numbers of locals get involved with the process, and can each claim a portion of the meat afterwards. These are pilot whales
This year's hunting season was a big one. Some 1,700 animals were killed, in 2017, compared to around 800 on an average year.
At the end the meat was packaged up. Most of it is shared out in the Faroese community, but some can be bought in stores as well.
Sea Shepherd has opposed the hunts for years and has previously tried to physically stop the process with its own ships.
volunteers went to the Faroe Islands and posed as tourists to take photographs of the hunts with the hope of securing adverse media coverage. One wrote this about what he saw:
"As the pilot whales were driven to the shoreline by the small boats the intensity of the thrashing bodies grew. Hooks were sunk into the blowholes and the whales were dragged onto the shore in a sadistic game of tug of war.

Whale and dolphin hunts in Faroe Islands photographed by campaigners - Business Insider

9 annotations

large animals

7431

some are finding hope through education.
Ghazipur landfill, 70 acres of trash in Delhi, India, provides a hunting ground for seven-year-old Zarina, who salvages items to sell.
In a poor country run by a government that seems to have little will to protect girls, the wisest thing they can do is try to escape the station in which they were born. Amid all the threats, school can be their only refuge. Education is a challenge because of the fees
Sierra Leone’s ministry of education banned pregnant girls from attending school. The intent of the policy, which was formalized by the government in 2015, is to prevent them from influencing their peers and to protect them from ridicule.
Sierra Leone’s ban on pregnant girls in school “is a knee-jerk, old-fashioned morality, and it’s the wrong statement to make,

For These Girls, Danger Is a Way of Life

5 annotations

unrest and war

8164

Women, carrying their belongings, hoping to be evacuated from a rebel-held sector of eastern Aleppo,
An airport security guard wearing a mask to protect himself against air pollution at the Beijing Capital International Airport.China's capital is shrouded by heavy smog.

Week in Pictures: From Berlin attack to China pollution - Al Jazeera English

2 annotations

sex

www.aljazeera.com

4731

"Ultimately, the impacts of climate change will be felt via the extremes, and not averaged changes." "Unfortunately, we can expect more years to look like 2020 - and worse - as global temperatures creep higher."While 2021 is likely to bring a similar story of losses from extreme events, there is some sense of optimism that political leaders may be on the brink of taking steps that might help the world avoid the worst excesses of rising temperatures. "It is vital that 2021 ushers in a new era of activity to turn this climate change tide," said report author, Dr Kat Kramer, from Christian Aid."With President-elect Biden in the White House, social movements across the world calling for urgent action, post-Covid green recovery investment and a crucial UN climate summit hosted by the UK, there is a major opportunity for countries to put us on a path to a safe future."
"Just like 2019 before it, 2020 has been full of disastrous extremes," said Dr Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick, from the Climate Change Research Centre at the University of New South Wales in Australia."We have seen all this with a 1C of global average temperature rise, highlighting the sensitive relationship between average conditions and extremes."
Researchers say that the influence of climate change on extreme events is strong and likely to continue growing.
Europe also saw significant impacts when Storm Ciara swept through Ireland, the UK and several other countries in February. It resulted in 14 lives being lost and damages of $2.7bn.
"We saw record temperatures in the Arabian Sea and Bay of Bengal, straddling between 30C-33C," said Dr Roxy Mathew Koll, a climate scientist at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology in Pune."These high temperatures had the characteristics of marine heat waves that might have led to the rapid intensification of the pre-monsoon cyclones Amphan and Nisarga," he said in a comment on the Christian Aid study. "Amphan was one of the strongest cyclones ever recorded in the Bay of Bengal during the pre-monsoon season."
China suffered even greater financial damage from flooding, running to around $32bn between June and October this year. The loss of life from these events was much smaller than in India.
While the world has been struggling to get to grips with the coronavirus pandemic, millions of people have also had to cope with the impacts of extreme weather events. Christian Aid's list of ten storms, floods and fires all cost at least $1.5bn - with nine of the 10 costing at least $5bn.
Against a backdrop of climate change, its study lists 10 events that saw thousands of lives lost and major insurance costs.

Climate change: Extreme weather causes huge losses in 2020 - BBC News

8 annotations

4441

Big Issue founder John Bird has raised concerns this could be “the worst winter for over two decades” for homelessness
Being on the street wore me down. I slept in car parks, where boy racers threw rubbish at me. You wake up freezing, with no public toilets open. I lost weight; I lost all communication with my friends. I had a nervous breakdown.
A lot of people think homelessness can never happen to them, but it can, in the blink of an eye.
between 2010 and 2016, the number of people sleeping rough in England rose by 134%.
– people are losing their flats because of universal credit, domestic violence, not being able to afford the mortgage; it could be anything

Homelessness: ‘People think it can never happen to them, but it can, in the blink of an eye’ | Society | The Guardian

5 annotations

children

7654

China, Indonesia and India have brought the largest numbers of people out of poverty since the crisis.
The poor in Greece saw the largest income drop—an average of 10% per year. Other countries where the incomes of the poorest 40% fell were Croatia, Ireland, Israel and Latvia.
But keeping up the momentum will be difficult
Since 2008, too, the proportion of people in extreme poverty population has fallen steadily
In general, poverty can be reduced through higher overall GDP growth or by better distributing the economic gains
There won’t be enough growth to reach the end of poverty goal by 2030 even with very optimistic trajectories of growth
today, over half of the world’s poorest live in sub-Saharan Africa, a region which has struggled to improve

World Bank Poverty and Shared Prosperity report: Over 1 billion people have been lifted out of poverty since 1990, but the next billion will be harder — Quartz

7 annotations

disease

qz.com

14027

“It’s just going to take a lot of planning, and of course, trial and error,” Martinez said. “It is a little bit draining sometimes to try and make everything — the community — a better place and healthy and be committed to the organization and to our patients first and foremost, so we just try and tell people, ‘Wear your mask, wash your hands.’”
But with the CDC recommendation to watch people for 15 minutes after they receive a vaccine for adverse responses to it, Martinez said, a drive-through approach would be risky. Staff would have to try to keep an eye on patients through windshields, then rush into the gravel parking lot with a crash cart and epinephrine if someone had an allergic reaction. They’d considered erecting an insulated tent, but given the prioritization of elderly, potentially frail or vulnerable patients who wouldn’t do well in the winter weather, the private medical information elicited by the questions preceding a vaccine, and the need to have emergency equipment on hand, they decided to book people for 20-minute appointments inside the clinic. Now, they’re on standby for the second doses, getting “slammed with calls” from people wanting to get in line, and helping people who rushed to pop-up clinics in one town sort out how to get their second dose on time.
Atwater’s conversations with locals suggest that pattern may carry over to the new vaccines. “There’s a lot of people who are just saying, ‘Oh, I’m not getting that,’” she said. “We hear a lot of, ‘That? No, no, not until there’s more testing done on it.’”
Kim Atwater, who owns two pharmacies in rural New Mexico towns, decided that for now, it doesn’t make sense to order doses of the vaccines. “We don’t have refrigeration facilities to keep it,” she said. “We’re just a very, very small community.”
Rural communities often run short on resources, whether it’s cold storage facilities or a population of retired nurses and doctors to tap to help administer vaccines, he added. The geography can also compound the disparities in access that affect racial minorities.
The Rural Policy Research Institute at the University of Iowa found 750 counties nationwide with no partnership pharmacies, and another 334 with just one such pharmacy. The majority of states have at least one county without a partnership pharmacy, and large swaths of Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Texas, and smaller chunks of Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah, reported no partnered pharmacies. “We need to be alert to the fact that it’s not as simple as thinking you’ve got a contract with 19 franchises and that’s going to cover the nation because Walgreens and CVS are everywhere — well, no they’re not,” said Keith Mueller, director of the Rural Policy Research Institute. “It doesn’t mean you can’t figure out a way. It just means you have to get to the next level of planning.”
The bigger challenge Tichy sees is that once a vaccine vial is opened, staff have just six hours to use all five or 10 doses it contains. “It’s a precious resource,” he said, “You don’t want to just give it to two people and have to throw out the rest of the contents. You want to get five people vaccinated.”
Purchasing super-cold storage equipment is costly and demands a higher-voltage outlet, said Eric Tichy, vice chair of supply chain management for the Mayo Clinic. Stock of that equipment — particularly of the size that would be appropriate for smaller pharmacies and clinics — is also simply sold out. That may leave many of them leaning on Pfizer’s container and dry ice refills. With 237 vaccines in development on the World Health Organization’s list of candidates, the future will likely include vaccines that tolerate warmer temperatures. Johnson & Johnson is expected to release information later this month on a candidate that needs only refrigerator storage and a single dose. “A lot of people are focused on that one,” Tichy said. “Especially for worldwide distribution, that’s a big deal.”
The messenger RNA technology used to develop the two vaccines that have received approval in the U.S. so far — one developed by the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer and German drugmaker BioNTech and one by the biotechnology startup Moderna — requires that they both be kept cold. The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine needs to be kept at a temperature between –112 and –76 degrees Fahrenheit, while Moderna’s lasts longest if kept between -13 F and 5 F.
“Think about a person who needs to drive one hour for a shot, then do the same 20 days later for a second shot,” said Diego Cuadros, a professor of health geography and disease modeling at the University of Cincinnati. “If it’s a person who maybe doesn’t think this is too important, or has some misperception or misinformation about vaccines, this is going to be extremely challenging.”
“Just trying to keep up and stay alert of what new things are coming down the line is pretty critical,” said Jessica Martinez, a Mora Valley nurse. Rural clinics face unique challenges in getting highly perishable vaccines to residents who often live many miles away. “We’re kind of out here on our own,” she said.
Shortly after the package arrived, clinic staff received an email explaining that this “ancillary convenience kit” was a test of the system designed to transport SARS-CoV-2 vaccines from the state’s warehouse to Mora and other rural communities across the state. While this package contained supplies for administering the vaccine — syringes, needles, alcohol swabs, and more — the real challenge would occur the following week. That’s when 100 doses were scheduled to be delivered, and the clinic’s staff would have 30 days at most to administer the doses before they spoiled.
One afternoon this past December, a package arrived at Mora Valley Community Health Services in northern New Mexico. The rural clinic, which serves a county of 4,521 people, is nestled beside a pasture with a flock of chickens and a few goats. A mile up the road sits the town of Mora — a regional hub just big enough for a trio of restaurants, two gas stations, and a single-building satellite office for a nearby community college.

Rural communities grapple with COVID-19 immunization rollout — High Country News – Know the West

13 annotations

www.hcn.org

3812

"How they respond to the climate crisis, how they respond to the Covid crisis, is really going to chart an entirely new pathway. And so in many ways, it is this moment of choice," said Cassie Flynn from UNDP."And what we wanted to do with the people's climate vote is to bring people's voices to that decision making, to bring people's voices to the climate debate."
"When it comes to demographics, something that we saw very clearly was that there is a high correlation between a level of education and belief in the climate emergency. The more educated you are, the more likely you are to believe that there is a climate emergency," said Cassie Flynn."And this is really, really powerful, because it doesn't matter where you're from, it doesn't matter your age, education really, really is important."
The least-favoured options for tackling climate change in this survey were a plant-based diet, with only 30% of respondents believing it to be the best.
Top four policies to tackle climate change:Conserve forests and land (54%) Use solar, wind and renewable power (53%)Climate friendly farming techniques(52%)Investing more money in green businesses and jobs (50%).
For people over the age of 60, this dropped to 58%. "People are scared, they are seeing the the wildfires in Australia and California, they're seeing the category five storms and in the Caribbean, they are seeing flooding in in Southeast Asia," said Cassie Flynn, strategic adviser to the UNDP."And they're looking around them and they're saying, this is a real problem. We have to do something about this."
Across all countries, 64% of participants saw climate change as an emergency, requiring urgent responses from countries. The margin of error was +/- 2%.
The poll, called the "People's Climate Vote", has been organised by the United Nations Development Programme in conjunction with Oxford University.The organisers distributed poll questions through adverts in mobile gaming apps across 50 countries, between October and December last year.
Despite the pandemic, almost two thirds of people around the world now view climate change as a global emergency.That's the key finding from the largest opinion poll yet conducted on tackling global warming.

Climate change: Biggest global poll supports 'global emergency' - BBC News

8 annotations

4415

Some jobs at Brunelle’s plant were moved out of state and others went overseas, he said. Brunelle lost his position, which paid him $70,000 a year.
But having worked for eight companies since he was 18, Brunelle has now been without a full-time job for about eight months. His 50th birthday came and went in May. He tries to stay cheerful, but he’s tired, and he voted for Donald Trump.
It is with the support of voters such as Brunelle, who feel belittled rather than empowered by globalisation,
David Brunelle.
But then Water Star was bought by Tennant, a commercial cleaning company from Minnesota, which wanted the technology for its floor scrubbers. Brunelle lost his job.
Brunelle is a smart man. He knows the arguments in favor of globalisation,
In the long term, maybe it is good for the world economy,” he said. “But we have to go down for the rest of them to go up. And it hurts.”

Jobless, jaded, and voting for Trump in Ohio: 'He’ll be different, in some way' | US news | The Guardian

7 annotations

politics

3776

Mr. Paladino described the outcry over the video as “insane,” noting that everyone at the party was aware of the risk and, as far as he knew, nobody who attended had contracted the virus.“That we have to feel like we have something to be ashamed of because we chose to celebrate the holiday in a perfectly ordinary way is crazy,” he said.
“As long as we are abiding by all the laws and all the safety precautions,” Ms. Oppedisano recently told The New York Times, “I don’t understand why we can’t just conduct our business.”
The restaurant’s website said that the banquet room can hold up to 160 people. The video shows a smaller crowd, though it is not clear if the party met the state’s capacity limit at the time.Bill Crowley, a spokesman for the State Liquor Authority, confirmed on Tuesday that the authority was investigating Il Bacco. Mr. Crowley said that the state has suspended 279 liquor licenses for violations of coronavirus-related regulations.
Thomas Paladino, Ms. Paladino’s son and her campaign strategy director, said that the restaurant and the club took precautions, like providing hand sanitizer and taking temperatures at the door.“We’re not the mask police,” Mr. Paladino said on Tuesday. “We’re all grown adults, and if somebody chooses to put a mask on, they can put a mask on.”
“There will be significant fines for this incident, and we’re looking at both the group that held the event and the establishment that hosted it,” said Mitch Schwartz, a spokesman for the mayor. “There will continue to be consequences for putting New Yorkers at risk.”
“In early December we held a small gathering observing all the Covid guidelines in place at the time,” said a statement on the club’s Facebook page on Tuesday. “Every attendee was told to wear a mask and everyone either had one when entering or was given one.”
“Covid conga lines are not smart, that’s my official position,” Mr. Cuomo said at a press briefing on Tuesday. “Why you would do an unmasked conga line in the middle of a Covid pandemic, whatever your political persuasion, defies a logical explanation.”
More than a dozen people shimmied through a glitzy banquet room in Queens earlier this month, forming a conga line during a holiday party thrown by a local Republican club. Coronavirus cases were spiking around the country, and it was days before Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo closed indoor dining in the city.
Footage of revelers dancing without masks at a Republican club’s holiday event has led to an investigation of the venue, a popular Italian restaurant.

Queens Republicans Under Fire for Maskless ‘Covid Conga Line’ Party - The New York Times

9 annotations

www.oceanographicmagazine.com

4410

the Red Sea, marking the first time that whale sharks had been tracked by satellite from Djibouti to the Red Sea. We suspect that the poor water conditions in the Gulf of Tadjoura led these two young sharks to go in search of better feeding opportunities.
One shark remained in the area where he was tagged and would stay there after we had left the country.
We were ultimately able to deploy only four of our six satellite tags, saving the others for next season.
we would tag an amazing three whale sharks before returning for breakfast.
Two weeks of heavy rain had inundated the city, and runoff from the volcanic hills heavily silted the water in the Gulf. Our local partners noted that whale sharks had not been seen for some time, likely because the water conditions had altered the plankton web.
Our main research goal this year was to place satellite tags that would allow us to track whale shark movements and behaviour for up to six months.
When the team is not ‘whale-sharking’, there is time to relax on board, dive or snorkel the pristine reefs, enjoy the delicious meals turned out from the tiny ship kitchen, and get to know the diverse group of shark lovers that join the expedition.
Depending on the studies planned, the primary researchers may obtain tissue samples for genetics (my own specialty) or place satellite tags for remote tracking of the sharks.
At anchor in the Gulf of Tadjoura for a week at a time, each day is divided by three outings to find and document whale sharks.
Our team has been investigating the secrets of these sharks for 15 years. I began studying the whale sharks of Djibouti in 2012, initially with the Marine Conservation Society Seychelles, and since 2017 have managed the project as part of an international team of researchers
This country hosts the youngest whale sharks of any known site, with an average size of just four metres, with some individuals as small as two metres
We know these juvenile whale sharks visit certain feeding aggregations on a recurring basis, and some sharks visit multiple different sites within a year. Less is known about what the sharks do when they are away from coastal feeding areas. Some move just offshore into deep water, some undertake regional migrations, while others may migrate across or between oceans.
We are here for the whale sharks, the largest living shark, which can reach 20m in length. Whale sharks are slow growing; they do not reach maturity until they are eight to nine metres and perhaps 25 years of age.
Sharks, dolphins, sea turtles, manta rays and a multitude of reef fish make their home in these waters

Understanding whale sharks: From Djibouti to the Red Sea - Oceanographic - Oceanographic

14 annotations

4460

"The study showed positive and negative affect worked together, not as opposites," Saling said. "Respondents who simply stayed busy during lockdown reported an increase in both positive and negative emotions. "This heightened emotionality will tend to shift you away from activity in general and towards meaningful activity."
"Extreme emotions are not necessarily a good thing," she said. advertisement googletag.cmd.push(function() { deployads.push(function() { deployads.gpt.display("adslot-mobile-bottom-rectangle") }); }); "Emotions are a mechanism to make you change your behaviour. "But when you're doing what you love, it makes sense that you feel more balanced -- simply keeping busy isn't satisfying."
Although participants reported feeling more positive emotions while doing novelty 'meaningless' activities like binge watching TV, they also felt more negative emotions -- they felt unhappy just as much as they felt happy. But when substituting activities enjoyed before lockdown -- like dining with friends -- for a virtual alternative, their positive and negative emotions were more subdued.
Co-lead researcher Dr Lauren Saling from RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia said while novelty lockdown activities -- like baking or painting -- have their place, trying to continue what you enjoyed before lockdown can be more rewarding. "Busyness might be distracting but it won't necessarily be fulfilling," she said. "Rather, think about what activities you miss most and try and find a way of doing them."
New research shows people who pursue meaningful activities -- things they enjoy doing -- during lockdown feel more satisfied than those who simply keep themselves busy.

Study shows meaningful lockdown activity is more satisfying than busyness: New research shows doing mindless busywork during lockdown will leave you unsettled and unsatisfied -- ScienceDaily

5 annotations

4285

“We have said we need to see strong clinical evidence,” said Nadra Ahmed, executive chairman of the National Care Association, which represents independent care operators. “We need to have absolute confidence if someone is coming out of hospital having been Covid-positive that they are no longer infectious.”
The policy had been to send Covid patients to designated “hot” care homes where infection spread could be limited and to prevent a repeat of last spring’s epidemic in care homes, which was partly fuelled by hospital discharges. But a target to set up 500 such homes has been missed, leaving only 2,533 beds available.An NHS document sent to some care providers says: “We are now advising that for some within this group, it will be appropriate for them to move directly to a care home from hospital … because we now know they do not pose an infection risk to other residents in a care home.”
But the plan has generated controversy, with patient groups voicing unease about its impact. Lucy Watson, chair of the Patients Association, said: “This is a dire situation, in which the NHS often has no good options available. Discharging patients early from hospital is likely to be one of few options open to the NHS to manage the scale of the current need.“However, early discharge can often cause problems that result in harm to the patient and the need to re-admit them. Care by volunteers in hotels is not an adequate substitute for proper hospital care. But at a time when hospitals are overwhelmed by critically ill patients and striving to prevent loss of life on a large scale, clearly they will be making desperate choices.”
An LHG spokesperson added: “The patient group the NHS is seeking to accommodate at this stage are recovered or recovering from Covid and who are medically fit for discharge, and thus do not require specialist medical supervision or specialist care, but can’t yet return home. This frees up NHS bedspace and capacity and is relatively easy for hotels to accommodate.”
LHG said its hotels could provide beds for at least 5,000 patients facing early discharge, including 1,500 in London. LHG’s chief executive, Meher Nawab, said: “We will be looking to roll this solution out across our hotels to provide hospitals with a lifeline at this critical time.”
NHS England, as well as bosses of hospitals under the most extreme pressure, are having detailed discussions about implementing the “home and hotel” option for what a senior NHS source said would involve “thousands” of patients. It is part of their efforts to create “extra emergency contingency capacity” once other options, such as doubling or tripling critical care capacity and using the emergency Nightingale field hospitals, have been exhausted, sources said.
Record levels of sickness absence in the health service and its central role in the government’s mass vaccination drive led NHS sources to warn that few staff will have time to deliver significant care at private homes or hotels once patients are discharged.But they said patients will not be asked to leave hospital early if they are still medically at risk, so they should need mainly light-touch care. “This is for patients who don’t need to be in a hospital bed but still need to be in a protected environment,” said one official.
A spokesperson said: “To create capacity in the hospital to care for the high number of patients requiring admission, we have partnered with a local hotel to temporarily accommodate mainly homeless patients who are ready to safely leave hospital and will benefit from further support from community partners.”
Under the “home and hotel” plan, patients discharged early into a hotel will receive help from voluntary organisations such as St John Ambulance and the British Red Cross, armed forces medical personnel and any available NHS staff.
Hospital chiefs in England intend to start discharging patients early on a scale never seen before, as an emergency measure to create “extra emergency contingency capacity” and stop parts of the NHS collapsing, senior sources said.
Thousands of hospital patients are to be discharged early to hotels or their own homes to free up beds for Covid-19 sufferers needing life-or-death care, the Guardian has learned.

Hospital patients to be sent to hotels to free up beds for critical Covid-19 cases | Hospitals | The Guardian

11 annotations

4262

American isn't the first airline to update its policies to align with the DOT. On December 29, Alaska Airlines announced that it will no longer accept emotional support animals.
The DOT rule was also prompted by an increase in service animal complaints from passengers with disabilities, misbehavior by emotional support animals, a lack of clarity around the definition of "service animal" and disruptions caused by "requests to transport unusual species of animals onboard aircraft," according to the DOT.
Animals that previously traveled as emotional support animals may travel as carry-on or cargo pets, the airline said."We're confident this approach will enable us to better serve our customers, particularly those with disabilities who travel with service animals, and better protect our team members at the airport and on the aircraft," said Jessica Tyler, president of cargo and vice president of airport excellence for American, in a news release.
American says on January 11, when the new DOT rule comes into effect, it "will no longer authorize new travel for animals that do not meet that definition, such as emotional support animals."
American Airlines says it will no longer allow emotional support animals starting next week.The change matches a new Department of Transportation regulation that says airlines aren't required to treat emotional support animals as service animals.

American Airlines changes rules for emotional support animals | CNN Travel

5 annotations

www.cnn.com

4273

"The older, slower sports are starting to be pushed out, baseball in particular," he said. "Maybe that's the stigma that greyhound racing has as well? It's old. It's done. It's seen its time."
"Dog racing, as a whole, hasn't adapted much to new entertainment options," Abarbanel said. "Even compared to horse racing, which has had similar struggles to attract new customers, dog tracks have not managed major change."
Even without the work of animal activists like GREY2K, the Humane Society and the late singer Doris Day, dog racing has been losing at the bottom line with gamblers for years.In Florida, dog tracks fetched $135.9 million in wagers in fiscal year 2019-20, a 29-percent drop from the $191.5 million bet in the previous 12 months. It was the eighth consecutive year of greyhound wagering on the decline. Florida dog tracks took in $265 million in bets in 2011-12, almost double the action they took in during the most recently completed term.With Florida soon to be gone from the dog-race world, West Virginia is poised to become the nation's leading greyhound jurisdiction. The Mountaineer State accepted $124.8 million in wagers at its two dog tracks in 2019.In Iowa, the state's lone dog track took in $2.3 million in live and simulcast greyhound action through the end of November this year. That's on pace for a third consecutive year of decline.In Arkansas, there was $14.2 million in live wagers on dog racing in 2019, the lowest handle in 10 years of data provided by that state's Department of Finance and Administration. That 2019 figure also marked the third consecutive year of decline.
Animal rights activists have long opposed greyhound racing, saying the dogs live in cramped quarters and suffer from difficult work conditions."Anything with an animal component to it is going to have a difficult time surviving in this society that we are becoming," said Rooney, theorizing that dog racing, horse racing and the rodeo could someday go the way of the circus. "We are being more sensitive to, whether real or imagined, the feelings of animals and how they're treated."
mps._execAd("boxinline",0,2,false);“It’s horrible. It’s very sad," Gartland said of the sport's decline. "I’ve had people in this industry I’ve watched cry over these past couple of months."In the late 1980s, there were more than 60 dog tracks in operation in the U.S., with action in Connecticut, Colorado, Arizona, Wisconsin, Idaho, Kansas, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Oregon, Vermont and New Mexico, according to the association."It’s no secret, dog racing has been on the decline for several years now," said Palm Beach Kennel Club president Patrick Rooney Jr., whose family has owned the track since 1969. "Dog racing was not long for this world."
mps._execAd("boxinline",0,1,false);"I hate to say it, I hate to even think about it," Gartland said. "It may be five years down the road, it may be 10 years down the road, but it's definitely a possibility."
"Florida was the mecca (of dog racing), the base, the largest state with the most tracks," Humane Society Florida Director Kate MacFall told NBC News recently, celebrating her state's role in the sport's decline. "Now this industry has withered."
A little more than 25 months ago, state voters overwhelmingly approved Amendment 13, outlawing greyhound races, starting in 2021, and issuing what could amount to a national death sentence for the century-old U.S. sport.
The dog racing "mecca" of Florida ran its final greyhound contests Thursday night as the gambling mainstay strides closer to its potential demise across America.

Dog days of Florida come to an end, with total demise of U.S. greyhound racing within sight

9 annotations

4508

The condition occurs when the lowest parts of the brain are found below the base of the skull. The study also revealed that children with unusually large heads are four times more likely to be diagnosed with Chiari 1 malformation than their peers with normal head circumference.
About one in 100 children has a common brain disorder called Chiari 1 malformation, but most of the time such children grow up normally and no one suspects a problem. But in about one in 10 of those children, the condition causes headaches, neck pain, hearing, vision and balance disturbances, or other neurological symptoms.

Environmental News Network - Common Brain Malformation Traced to Its Genetic Roots

2 annotations

3991

This means that when Nasa receives the message from Perseverance that it has engaged the top of the atmosphere, the mission will already have been dead or alive on planet's surface for several minutes. The robot will be recording its descent on camera and with microphones. The media files will be sent back to Earth after landing - assuming Perseverance survives.
When Perseverance senses contact, it must immediately sever the cables or it will be dragged behind the crane as the cradle flies away to dispose of itself at a safe distance.The sequence looks much the same as was used to put Nasa's last rover, Curiosity, on the surface of Mars 12 years ago. However, the navigation tools have been improved to put Perseverance down in an even more precisely defined landing zone.
As the capsule plunges deeper into the Martian air, it gets super-hot at more than 1,000C - but at the same time, the drag slows the fall dramatically.By the time the supersonic parachute deploys from the backshell of the capsule, the velocity has already been reduced to 1,200km/h.
With a distance on the day of 209 million km (130 million miles) between Earth and Mars, every moment and every movement you see in the animation has to be commanded by onboard computers. It starts more than 100km above Mars where the Perseverance rover will encounter the first wisps of atmosphere.
The sequence of manoeuvres needed to land on Mars is often referred to as the "seven minutes of terror" - and with good reason.
The US space agency (Nasa) has released an animation showing how its one-tonne Perseverance rover will land on Mars on 18 February.

Nasa's Mars rover and the 'seven minutes of terror' - BBC News

6 annotations

4359

mothers often slice the ends of hot dogs into the splayed legs of an octopus, adding eyes from tiny pieces of dried seaweed.
Japan's charaben culture
The answer, it seems, lies in the heritage of a cuisine that has for centuries been eaten with the eyes as much as the mouth.
Tomomi Maruo is considered the queen of "charaben" -- charater bento boxes. Over the past 13 years, she has become renowned for her realistic portrayals of famous figures, such as Barack Obama, in the boxes.
One way for mothers to express love for their children is with the daily bento box.
why has kawaii cuisine taken off in Japan -- and why do adults embrace the trend as much as children?
Today, kawaii has been well integrated with the traditional aesthetic codes that guide the presentation of all Japanese cuisine -- small separated portions, contrasts of color and shape, and reminders of the season.
In Japanese culture, emotions are often not openly expressed, and while it's possible to say "I love you", to many it just feels awkward
Considered the queen of charaben in Japan, Tomomi Maruo has been honing her craft for 13 years. She runs character bento classes and posts how-to videos on her YouTube channel, where Maruo has about 3,000 followers.

The power of cute in Japanese food culture - CNN.com

9 annotations

children

edition.cnn.com

8707

Additionally, Professor Talley called on the health and medical sector to play its part. "Australia's health sector should commit itself nationally to zero net carbon emissions by 2040 in line with the National Health Service in the UK, preferably with the states and territories responsible for implementing evidence-based interventions," he said. "Reducing unnecessary medical tests and procedures will serve to reduce carbon emissions, health care costs and harmful outcomes. Research funded by the NHMRC and the Medical Research Futures Fund should guide better ways to efficiently reduce the carbon footprint of Australia's health care services."
"Australia has an obligation under the Paris Agreement to submit enhanced nationally determined contributions by the end of 2020," he wrote. "We recommend that the Australian Government agree to a target of a 50% reduction in carbon emissions by 2030, which is what is likely required to limit global warming below 1.5°C."
"Australia's leading medical and nursing bodies have recognized climate change as a health emergency," wrote Professor Talley. "Governments of states and territories have committed to zero net carbon emissions by 2050, with climate change adaptation plans incorporating the health sector and investment in renewable energy."
"Key to this success was the valuing by governments of science and data to guide decision making. "The pandemic forced politicians from across the Australian political divide to prioritize the evidence and expertise of the medical, scientific and public health communities over the voices of conservative commentators, business leaders and politicians," wrote Professor Talley.
Laureate Professor Nicolas Talley AC, a world-renowned neurogastroenterologist and Editor-in-Chief of the Medical Journal of Australia said in an editorial, published today, that Australia's response to COVID-19 had been "strong and effective."

Climate change demands same leadership as COVID-19, and Australia is failing

5 annotations

phys.org

4405

Dhaka has a population in excess of 14 million and has recently been hit by major floods caused by heavy rains and an insufficient storm drainage system.
Dangerous: Workers are often surrounded by cockroaches, and have no masks to protect him from the poisonous fumes
one of the world's least desirable jobs.
Dhaka City Corporation, has to unblock the city's sewer lines without any proper safety equipment.
Despite a rise in the number of deaths of manhole workers, they go into the manholes without any protective gear

Bangladesh sewer cleaner has to dive into liquid filth | Daily Mail Online

5 annotations

sex

www.dailymail.co.uk

5067

In one photograph taken near Roatan, an island off the coast of Honduras, a diver grimaces as he prepares to enter the water
plastic gets broken down into microscopic particles that enter the food chain when plankton and fish eat them.
‘It is thought that 90 per cent of sea birds have ingested some sort of plastic, and there are many examples of turtles and whales mistaking plastic for food.
A sea of plastic

Caribbean oceans are choked by plastic bottles and rubbish | Daily Mail Online

4 annotations

ecology

www.dailymail.co.uk

7993

"While the CO2 drop is unprecedented, decreases of human activities cannot be the answer," says Co-Author Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, founding director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. "Instead we need structural and transformational changes in our energy production and consumption systems. Individual behavior is certainly important, but what we really need to focus on is reducing the carbon intensity of our global economy."
The researchers also found strong rebound effects. With the exception of a continuing decrease of emissions stemming from the transportation sector, by July 2020, as soon as lockdown measures were lifted, most economies resumed their usual levels of emitting CO2. But even if they remained at their historically low levels, this would have a rather minuscule effect on the long-term CO2 concentration in the atmosphere.
"Largely because of working from home restrictions, transport CO2 emissions decreased by 40 % worldwide. In contrast, the power and industry sectors contributed less to the decline, with -22 % and -17 %, respectively, as did the aviation and shipping sectors. Surprisingly, even the residential sector saw a small emissions drop of 3 %: largely because of an abnormally warm winter in the northern hemisphere, heating energy consumption decreased with most people staying at home all day during lockdown periods."
"What makes our study unique is the analysis of meticulously collected near-real-time data," explains lead author Zhu Liu from the Department of Earth System Science at Tsinghua University in Beijing. "By looking at the daily figures compiled by the Carbon Monitor research initiative we were able to get a much faster and more accurate overview, including timelines that show how emissions decreases have corresponded to lockdown measures in each country. In April, at the height of the first wave of Corona infections, when most major countries shut down their public life and parts of their economy, emissions even declined by 16.9 %. Overall, the various outbreaks resulted in emission drops that we normally see only on a short-term basis on holidays such as Christmas or the Chinese Spring Festival."
An international team of researchers has found that in the first six months of this year, 8.8 percent less carbon dioxide was emitted than in the same period in 2019 -- a total decrease of 1551 million tonnes. The groundbreaking study not only offers a much more precise look at COVID-19's impact on global energy consumption than previous analyses. It also suggests what fundamental steps could be taken to stabilize the global climate in the aftermath of the pandemic.
While the ongoing coronavirus pandemic continues to threaten millions of lives around the world, the first half of 2020 saw an unprecedented decline in carbon dioxide emissions -- larger than during the financial crisis of 2008, the oil crisis of the 1979, or even World War II.

Biggest carbon dioxide drop: Real-time data show COVID-19's massive impact on global emissions -- ScienceDaily

6 annotations

4506

These successes “provide living proof that the world can set, and meet, ambitious biodiversity targets,” Jane Smart, global director of its biodiversity conservation group, said in a statement.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature also found some glimmers of hope. The European bison, the largest land mammal in Europe, is showing signs of recovery, with its population in the wild growing from 1,800 in 2003 to more than 6,200 in 2019. The species was reintroduced to the wild in the 1950s and has been the focus of long-term conservation campaigns in the decades since. There are now 47 free-ranging European bison herds, according to the organization, with the largest numbers found in Poland, Belarus and Russia.
“Failure to do so will inevitably result in a wave of extinctions happening on our watch,” he said in the statement. “We must seize the moment to stop that from happening.”
In the group’s update, a total of 316 species of sharks, rays, skates and chimaeras are now classified as “threatened,” or at risk of extinction in the wild. All of the world’s freshwater dolphin species are also now threatened with extinction, according to the assessment.
mps._execAd("boxinline");“These findings are sadly predictable,” Andy Cornish, head of the World Wide Fund for Nature’s shark and ray conservation program, said in a statement. “Twenty years have passed since the international community recognized the threat of overfishing through the International Plan of Action for Sharks. Yet, obviously, not nearly enough has been done to halt the overfishing that is pushing these animals to the brink of extinction.”
Thirty-one animal and fish species have been declared extinct and more than 300 species of sharks and rays are now threatened with extinction, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, which published a report Thursday.

More than 300 shark, ray species threatened with extinction, new report finds

6 annotations

4484

Bilayer solar cell based on the organic semiconductor copper(I) thiocyanate (CuSCN) provides a new platform for exciton diffusion studies. (Photo Credit: © 2020 KAUST)
“So typically, we need to blend two semiconductors, a so-called electron donor and an electron acceptor, to efficiently generate free charges,” explains Yuliar Firdaus. “The donor and acceptor materials penetrate into one another; maximizing the exciton diffusion length— the distance the exciton can travel before recombining and being lost— is crucial for optimizing the organic solar cell’s performance.
An electron is one part of this pair; the other is its positively charged equivalent, called a hole. Excitons are electrically neutral, so it is impossible to set them in motion by applying an electric field. Instead the excitons "hop" by a random motion or diffusion. The dissociation of the excitons into charges is necessary to create a current but is highly improbable in an organic semiconductor.
Understanding how particles travel through a device is vital for improving the efficiency of solar cells. Researchers from KAUST, working with an international team of scientists, have now developed a set of design guidelines for enhancing the performance of molecular materials.

Environmental News Network - Guiding the Way to Improved Solar Cell Performance

4 annotations

4492

Dr Andrea Rodriguez Martinez, the lead author of the study from Imperial's School of Public Health, added: "Our findings should motivate policies that increase the availability and reduce the cost of nutritious foods, as this will help children grow taller without gaining excessive weight for their height. These initiatives include food vouchers towards nutritious foods for low-income families, and free healthy school meal programmes which are particularly under threat during the pandemic. These actions would enable children to grow taller without gaining excessive weight, with lifelong benefits for their health and wellbeing."
Professor Majid Ezzati, senior author of the study from Imperial's School of Public Health said: "Children in some countries grow healthily to five years, but fall behind in school years. This shows that there is an imbalance between investment in improving nutrition in pre-schoolers, and in school-aged children and adolescents. This issue is especially important during the COVID-19 pandemic when schools are closed throughout the world, and many poor families are unable to provide adequate nutrition for their children."
The team say the most important reason for this is the lack of adequate and healthy nutrition and living environment in the school years, as both height and weight gains are closely linked to the quality of a child's diet.
The research team explain the analysis also revealed that, in many nations, children at age five had a height and weight in the healthy range defined by the World Health Organization (WHO). However, after this age, children in some countries have experienced too small an increase in height, and gained too much weight, compared to the potential for healthy growth.
The study also assessed children's Body Mass Index (BMI) -- a measure of height to weight ratio, which gives an indication of whether a person has a healthy weight for their height. The analysis found that 19-year-olds with the largest BMI were found in the Pacific islands, Middle East, USA and New Zealand. The BMI of 19-year-olds was lowest in south Asian countries such as India and Bangladesh. The difference between the lightest and the heaviest BMIs in the study was around 9 units of BMI (equivalent to around 25 kg of weight).
The largest improvements in average height of children over the 35-year period were seen in emerging economies such as China, South Korea and some parts of southeast Asia. For example, 19-year old boys in China in 2019 were 8 cm taller than in 1985, with their global rank changing from 150th tallest in 1985 to 65th in 2019. In contrast the height of children, especially boys, in many Sub-Saharan African nations has stagnated or reduced over these decades.
There was a 20 cm difference between 19-year-olds in the tallest and shortest nations -- this represented an eight-year growth gap for girls, and a six-year growth gap for boys. For instance, the study revealed that the average 19-year-old girl in Bangladesh and Guatemala (the nations with the world's shortest girls) is the same height as an average 11-year-old girl in the Netherlands, the nation with the tallest boys and girls.
The study, which used data from 65 million children aged five to 19 years old in 193 countries, revealed that school-aged children's height and weight, which are indicators of their health and quality of their diet, vary enormously around the world.
A new global analysis has assessed the height and weight of school-aged children and adolescents across the world. The study revealed that school-aged children's height and weight, which are indicators of their health and quality of their diet, vary enormously.

Poor nutrition in school years may have created 20 cm height gap across nations -- ScienceDaily

9 annotations

4398

Expect Bentley to also speak up on behalf of the charity’s service users when needed, which she sees as an “absolutely crucial” part of her role. The Samaritans work closely with policy and decision makers in government, drawing on the charity’s “rich insight” into the issues and the difficulties that people are facing. But where Bentley thinks something is at odds with advancing good mental health, she says “then it’s equally our responsibility to respectfully point that out”.
Bentley is co-vice chair at the National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO) and believes the charity sector has had to “swiftly embrace digital in a way that maybe we weren’t doing so well before”. She lauds Samaritans’ “agility” on this front. “We need to keep our foot on that pedal of progress so that we can make sure services continue to be very relevant for people.”
Volunteers answered more than a quarter of a million emails, up 37% on the year before and the self-help app has been downloaded 30,000 times. Volunteers tell her that this may partly be due to people lacking private space during lockdown. But Bentley believes that it also shows that the way people access services is evolving, notably younger people who “want to engage in a different way”.
Nevertheless, the charity provided support to 1.2 million people, in the six months from 23 March to 23 September. “We’ve received a similar number of calls to the same period last year, but we are seeing more people accessing our services online,” says Bentley.
Since March, Bentley says staff have been “entirely focused” on dealing with the pandemic. A self-help app was launched in response to the pandemic, along with a support line for NHS workers in England and Wales and a support service for health, care, emergency and key workers across Great Britain.
A lot of the contacts are from people feeling lonely, anxious, or distressed, rather than suicidal, who need to express themselves freely and be heard. “What we hope is that that will help somebody not getting to a point where they are considering taking their own life. Our ultimate aim is to reduce and stop suicide, but it’s not about waiting for somebody to be at that crisis point before support is offered.”
“One of the things that is a worry is that of those people who do take their lives, many of them were not in touch with any mental health services. And we know that people are waiting too long to access services. So, mental health concerns are significant.”
“One of the things that is a concern is that what we do know, based on history, is that in times of recession the rate of suicides tends to rise. So we need to be mindful of where we’re at in the country … particularly as a result of coronavirus and the financial impact,” she points outs.
Perhaps surprisingly, early figures for England from real-time surveillance published last month by the National Confidential Inquiry into Suicide and Safety in Mental Health found “no evidence of the large national rise in suicide, post lockdown, that many feared”. But it warned that the early figures could change over time and that it is “too soon to examine the full long-term impact of economic adversity on mental health and suicide”.
A survey with the charity’s listening volunteers offers a window into the impact of Covid on the national psyche: one in five calls over the past six months were from people who were specifically concerned about Covid, though volunteers surveyed suggest that the pandemic has affected every caller to some extent, with worries about isolation, mental ill-health, family and unemployment the most common concerns.
“Just because somebody considers taking their own life, it is not inevitable that they will take their own life. That’s why it’s important that there are services like Samaritans where people can phone; not just because they’re feeling suicidal, but if they’re feeling troubled, distressed or concerned, they will find somebody who will listen, in a very real and meaningful way without judgment.”
Being listened to without judgment is a “an extraordinarily powerful thing”, says Julie Bentley, the new chief executive of Samaritans, the suicide prevention charity.

Julie Bentley: 'Samaritans' services have been crucial during the pandemic' | Mental health | The Guardian

12 annotations

4172

Kaunang believes that, while the charity has not experienced a drop in demand, the reasons for the increase in food aid has changed as the pandemic rolls on. “It’s not about people shielding any more and being isolated, it’s about hardship,” she said. “It’s the gap between universal credit, the hole in the ground, and all different kinds of people losing their jobs.”
Michelle Welch, 59, the project manager of Compassion Foodbank in Mosside, Manchester, has noticed an increase in families turning to her services as a result of the five-week wait for universal credit payments. “It’s hard to see people like this. Last Friday we had a mother come in who’d been told about our food bank. She [had] never used one before and felt quite embarrassed.Advertisement“It’s hard to ask for that help but she’s glad that she came and got some help. You do get people coming in crying. Quite heartbreaking at times,” she added.
Abiola turned to a debt management company to help her but soon had bailiffs on her doorstep. “I didn’t talk to anyone about my debts. At one point we had to downsize to a one-bedroom home so that I could minimise my expenses that way.” Finally she found help with the charity Christians Against Poverty. “I’ve managed to get my debts under control now. I thought my financial problems were something shameful, and I felt so isolated.”
Wilson, who has been diagnosed with schizophrenia and depression, said he has found it a “very strange time” getting back on his feet during the pandemic. “All these people are losing their jobs and benefits; it makes this lockdown a living hell,” he explains. “Staying inside is tough on the brain cells.”
He is one of a growing number of people to have experienced extreme poverty in recent years, according to research by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. The charity found that even before the pandemic, destitution – defined as an inability to afford two or more of shelter, food, heating, lighting, weather-appropriate clothing, or basic toiletries over the past month – had rapidly grown in scale and intensity.
Initially unable to get a council flat due to debt, he found a privately rented flat but was receiving threatening letters and calls about his debts. “I was getting debt collectors knocking on my door everyday. I made a payment plan with the help of Christians Against Poverty and spent two years paying it back.

Extreme poverty blights even the lives of those who work | Poverty | The Guardian

6 annotations

4314

“For 15 years, the Arctic Report Card has helped NOAA fulfill its mission of providing the scientific information our nation needs to better understand how climate change is affecting the Arctic and weather around the globe,” said retired Navy Rear Adm. Timothy Gallaudet, Ph.D., deputy undersecretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere at NOAA, who led the news conference. “Our ability to meet the challenges and opportunities of an Arctic region in transition depends on how well we can observe and predict the pace and scale of these changes.”
Compiled by 133 scientists from 15 countries, the 2020 report card tracks environmental indicators to inform decisions by local, state and federal leaders confronting a rapidly changing climate and ecosystems.
The Arctic Report Card is an annual compilation of original, peer-reviewed environmental observations and analyses of a region undergoing rapid and dramatic alterations to weather, climate, oceanic, and land conditions.
OAA’s 15th Arctic Report Card catalogs for 2020 the numerous ways that climate change continues to disrupt the polar region, with second-highest air temperatures and second-lowest summer sea ice driving a cascade of impacts, including the loss of snow and extraordinary wildfires in northern Russia.

Environmental News Network - Sea Ice Loss and Extreme Wildfires Mark Another Year of Arctic Change

4 annotations

4374

Previously, researchers thought that when microparticles got stuck, they generally stayed there, which limited understanding of particle spread.
The study, published in Science Advances on November 13, reveals that microplastic particles get stuck when traveling through porous materials such as soil and sediment but later break free and often continue to move substantially further.
Now a Princeton University study has revealed the mechanism by which microplastics, like Styrofoam, and particulate pollutants are carried long distances through soil and other porous media, with implications for preventing the spread and accumulation of contaminants in food and water sources.
Plastic pollution is ubiquitous today, with microplastic particles from disposable goods found in natural environments throughout the globe, including Antarctica

Environmental News Network - Plastic Pollution Is Everywhere. Study Reveals How It Travels

4 annotations

4488

"It was a beautiful and unique organism," said lead author Mike Ford, a NOAA Fisheries scientist. The tentacles appeared to touch the seafloor, but it's unclear if it was somehow anchored to the bottom.
The NOAA team named the translucent animal Duobrachium sparksae. It's a ctenophore, popularly known as a comb jelly. Not to be confused with jellyfish, comb jellies are ethereal, gelatinous and carnivorous denizens of the deep.
"It's unique because we were able to describe a new species based entirely on high-definition video," said NOAA Fisheries scientist Allen Collins in a statement Nov. 20.
Scientists like to get their hands on things when possible, especially when describing new animal species. A team of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration researchers, however, embraced a hands-off approach when it came to a surprising underwater find: a new species of comb jelly.

Scientists discover 'beautiful and unique' gelatinous sea animal - CNET

4 annotations

www.cnet.com

4527

"The coal business is going up in smoke," because it costs more to run most of today's coal plants than it does to build new renewable plants from scratch, he will tell the BBC."We must forge a safer, more sustainable and equitable path", the UN chief will conclude.
As well as pressing for action on the climate crisis, he will urge nations to tackle the extinction crisis that is destroying biodiversity and to step up efforts to reduce pollution. We face, he will say, a "moment of truth".
The impact is already being felt around the world."Apocalyptic fires and floods, cyclones and hurricanes are the new normal," he will warn."Biodiversity is collapsing. Deserts are spreading. Oceans are choking with plastic waste."
"The science is clear," Mr Guterres will tell the BBC, "unless the world cuts fossil fuel production by 6% every year between now and 2030, things will get worse. Much worse."
Here's what Mr Guterres will demand the nations of the world do:Put a price on carbonPhase out fossil fuel finance and end fossil fuel subsidiesShift the tax burden from income to carbon, and from tax payers to pollutersIntegrate the goal of carbon neutrality (a similar concept to net zero) into all economic and fiscal policies and decisionsHelp those around the world who are already facing the dire impacts of climate change
The objective, says the UN secretary general, will be to cut global emissions by 45% by 2030 compared with 2010 levels.
Mr Guterres will say that every country, city, financial institution and company "should adopt plans for a transition to net zero emissions by 2050". In his view, they will also need to take decisive action now to put themselves on the path towards achieving this vision.
In a speech entitled State of the Planet, he will announce that its "central objective" next year will be to build a global coalition around the need to reduce emissions to net zero.
"Nature always strikes back, and is doing so with gathering force and fury," he will tell a BBC special event on the environment.
"Our planet is broken," the Secretary General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, will warn on Wednesday.Humanity is waging what he will describe as a "suicidal" war on the natural world.

Humans waging 'suicidal war' on nature - UN chief Antonio Guterres - BBC News

10 annotations

4510

"It's a good sign," Calderan said. "This was an area that was particularly hard hit by whaling, and it is really encouraging that we're starting to see whales there again."
The increase in blue whales around South Georgia comes after BAS research indicating the population of humpback whales in the region has also increased — like blue whales, humpbacks were all but driven to extinction by industrial whaling
I think we may well be seeing evidence of site fidelity to certain feeding areas, which would be an explanation for why [blue whale] numbers started recovering in the wider Antarctic, but has taken longer to recover at South Georgia," Calderan said.
The near-extinction of blue whales around South Georgia in the early 20th century may have resulted in the loss of their "cultural memory" of the abundance there of Antarctic krill — tiny swimming crustaceans found in huge swarms in the Southern Ocean and the only food of blue whales.Knowledge of whale feeding grounds may be passed on from mother whales to their calves. "There was a cultural memory, maybe, of animals that used to come to South Georgia that was lost because they were wiped out," Calderan said. "They couldn't pass on the knowledge of the feeding grounds because there weren't any of them left."
According to Calderan's study, more than 42,000 blue whales were killed around South Georgia between 1904 and 1971, most of them before the mid-1930s. "In the early 1900s, South Georgia waters thronged with blue whales; within a little over 30 years, they were all but gone," the researchers wrote."It was just a matter of luck that they weren't wiped out altogether," Calderan said. "By the end of whaling, it was estimated that blue whale populations were 0.15% of their pre-whaling levels. They couldn't have hung on much longer."
The island is about 2,500 miles (4,000 kilometers) from the coast of Antarctica, but it is situated within the Antarctic convergence — the hydrological boundary between the cold waters around Antarctica and the warmer waters farther north.It's now only inhabited by people for a few months every summer, but South Georgia had a prominent role in the history of Antarctic exploration.
The scientists, she said, were amazed to find numerous blue whales in a region where they were once eradicated — — 38 sightings on the surface over a few weeks, comprising a total of 58 individual whales, along with many acoustic detections by "sonobuoys" equipped to monitor underwater whale songs.
Calderan, a research fellow at the Scottish Association for Marine Science (SAMS), is the lead author of a study into the resurgence of blue whales near South Georgia published Thursday (Nov. 19) in the journal Endangered Species Research.
"We've had indications in previous years that there might be more blue whales starting to come back to South Georgia," marine mammal ecologist Susannah Calderan told Live Science. "But we were very favorably surprised by quite how many we did see this year."
The critically-endangered blue whale — the largest animal known to have ever existed — has returned to the waters near the remote island of South Georgia near Antarctica, almost 100 years after the mega-mammal was nearly made extinct by industrial whaling.

Antarctica's blue whales return to South Georgia a century after they were nearly wiped out | Live Science

10 annotations

4511

capital investment in California has plummeted over the past five-plus decades. According to an analysis done by the ASCE, the state spent 20 cents of every tax dollar on infrastructure in the 1950s and '60s. By the 1980s, that had dropped to five cents.

Can Trump’s plan restore America’s crumbling infrastructure? - The Globe and Mail

1 annotation

geology

beta.theglobeandmail.com

11274

Penguins are threatened by pollution, bycatch and climate change. Introduced species, such as dogs, carry diseases that can spread to penguins as well, and cats pose a threat as predators
Penguins are threatened by pollution, bycatch and climate change. Introduced species, such as dogs, carry diseases that can spread to penguins as well, and cats pose a threat as predators
This is the only penguin species found north of the equator and in the Galápagos.
Endangered

Galápagos Penguin | Species | WWF

4 annotations

large animals

www.worldwildlife.org

4830

As for human sleep? Raizen said the most important thing is for people to listen to their bodies and get as much sleep as they feel they need — which is about eight hours for most folks but might be as few as five and as many as 11.
Along those lines, it's important to remember that some differences in observed sleep might not be what they seem. Just because a house cat sleeps for 18 hours a day doesn't mean it needs all that sleep to function, Raizen said. Some sleep is probably a matter of convenience — done when it's not safe for an animal to be out and about, when food availability is low or simply because there's nothing else to do.
One idea is that sleep in mammals has to do with body size and diet, according to a 2005 study in the journal Nature. Across many studies of mammalian sleep, scientists have observed that less sleep is correlated with larger body sizes, and this correlation is stronger and more extreme among herbivores than it is among carnivores.
"This difference in sleep amounts has been used for arguments against a core function of sleep," Raizen said. How could sleep be so important if an animal like an elephant is perfectly functional with only two hours while a typical human needs quadruple that?
"A brown bat that sleeps 20 hours a day you'd think would be a genius," Raizen said, speaking to the idea that sleep is meant to serve learning and memory. Likewise, a 2017 study published in the journal PLOS One found that elephants sleep for an average of only two hours a night, but it's known elephants are intelligent animals with very good memories.
Raizen said scientists have identified relationships between sleep and animal function — certain kinds of sleep can increase a critter's ability to fight off illness or consolidate memories. Yet these associations don't necessarily describe the ultimate purpose of sleep and can be misleading.
Though constantly studied, sleep is one of the great mysteries modern science hasn't completely cracked. "We really don't know what sleep is for," Dr. David Raizen, associate professor of neurology at the University of Pennsylvania's Perelman School of Medicine, told Live Science.
These slumberous scenes may make folks wonder why these other mammals seem to be getting so much more sleep than humans. Do they actually need more sleep? Are they just sleeping because they can? Should humans be sleeping more, too?
A dog snoring away the afternoon on the living room floor. Walruses snoozing belly-up on a beach. Lions sprawled out on the Serengeti. A hippo dozing on a mudbank.

Why do some animals sleep so much? | Live Science

9 annotations

4427

He hopes that humanity won't have to see those effects for itself anytime soon. Some astronomers think they've picked up signs that Betelgeuse, a red giant star in the constellation Orion, might be on the verge of collapsing and going supernova. And it's only 642.5 light-years from Earth, much closer than Vela. "We can hope that's not what's about to happen because Betelgeuse is really close," he said.
But Brakenridge believes that the question is worth a lot more research. "What keeps me going is when I look at the terrestrial record and I say, 'My God, the predicted and modeled effects do appear to be there.'"
He found that of the eight closest supernovas studied, all seemed to be associated with unexplained spikes in the radiocarbon record on Earth. He considers four of these to be especially promising candidates. Take the case of a former star in the Vela constellation. This celestial body, which once sat about 815 lightyears from Earth, went supernova roughly 13,000 years ago. Not long after that, radiocarbon levels jumped up by nearly 3% on Earth -- a staggering increase.
To test the hypothesis, Brakenridge turned to the past. He assembled a list of supernovas that occurred relatively close to Earth over the last 40,000 years. Scientists can study these events by observing the nebulas they left behind. He then compared the estimated ages of those galactic fireworks to the tree ring record on the ground.
To test the hypothesis, Brakenridge turned to the past. He assembled a list of supernovas that occurred relatively close to Earth over the last 40,000 years. Scientists can study these events by observing the nebulas they left behind. He then compared the estimated ages of th
Brakenridge and a handful of other researchers have had their eye on events much farther from home. "We're seeing terrestrial events that are begging for an explanation," Brakenridge said. "There are really only two possibilities: A solar flare or a supernova. I think the supernova hypothesis has been dismissed too quickly."
"There's generally a steady amount year after year," Brakenridge said. "Trees pick up carbon dioxide and some of that carbon will be radiocarbon."
The results are far from conclusive, but they offer tantalizing hints that, when it comes to the stability of life on Earth, what happens in space doesn't always stay in space. advertisement googletag.cmd.push(function() { deployads.push(function() { deployads.gpt.display("adslot-mobile-middle-rectangle") }); }); "These are extreme events, and their potential effects seem to match tree ring records," Brakenridge said.
To study those possible impacts, Brakenridge searched through the planet's tree ring records for the fingerprints of these distant, cosmic explosions. His findings suggest that relatively close supernovas could theoretically have triggered at least four disruptions to Earth's climate over the last 40,000 years.
"We see supernovas in other galaxies all the time," said Brakenridge, a senior research associate at the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR) at CU Boulder. "Through a telescope, a galaxy is a little misty spot. Then, all of a sudden, a star appears and may be as bright as the rest of the galaxy."
Massive explosions of energy happening thousands of light-years from Earth may have left traces in our planet's biology and geology, according to new research by University of Colorado Boulder geoscientist Robert Brakenridge.
Massive explosions of energy happening thousands of light-years from Earth may have left traces in our planet's biology and geology, according to new research.

Tree rings may hold clues to impacts of distant supernovas on Earth -- ScienceDaily

12 annotations

4460

According to the Vegan Society, there are now at least 542,000 vegans in the UK; 10 years ago, that figure was about 150,000.
Tesco has said that demand for vegan and vegetarian products has grown 40% in the past year alone
. At four locations in London, there’s an astonishingly good Mexican joint called Club Mexicana, which sells “fish” tacos and pulled jackfruit burritos – jackfruit is native to south India and has a texture that resembles pulled pork.
He says their surf-and-turf – vegan barbecue ribs and tofu scampi – is very popular.
Tsouni Moss, who runs the popular vegan Instagram account Yes, It’s All Vegan

Hail seitan! How vegan food got down’n’dirty | Life and style | The Guardian

5 annotations

vegan

8693

World's plastic waste will exceed 12 billion tons by 2050
, the volume increased from 1.5 million tons of plastic in 1950, up to 300 millions tons of plastic in 2016.
large volume of the plastic produced is single-use, used for products such as carrier bags, drinking straws and food packaging
many types of plastic are easy to recycle and, if processed correctly, can offer just as many possibilities as virgin plastic.
UK studio Studio Swine used the material to create furniture and decorative objects, while Australian designer Brodie Neill worked with it create what he calls "ocean terrazzo".
A new generation of sustainably minded designers is pioneering ways of using recycled plastic as a raw material,
Huge quantities of it are either in landfill or in the oceans, in clusters the size of countries, such as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

Recycled plastic "will soon be the only choice" say designers

7 annotations

chemicals industry

www.dezeen.com

7703

the animals of Hwange national park in Zimbabwe faced desperate water shortages.
animals rely on an artificial supply of water developed in the 1920s. But since the early 2000s, Zimbabwe’s government has let pumps and pipes slide into disrepair.
Alerted by the predictions of drought, the Victoria Falls-based Bhejane Trust started drilling and setting up solar-powered boreholes in the park in May last year.
Now the trust operates and maintains a network of 34 boreholes, in collaboration with the parks authority, GroupElephant.com and the Conservation & Wildlife Fund
According to the PWMA, at least 80 elephants died of drought-related causes in 2012. Many more animals have died in Hwange’s drought, including 620 Cape buffaloes that died in 2015 alone.
In May this year, the parks authority advertised for prospective buyers “with the capacity to acquire and manage wildlife” to buy animals from the country’s 10 national parks to ease pressure on water resources. PWMA spokeswoman Caroline Washaya-Moyo did not respond to a request for an interview on the Hwange wildlife water security problem.

Water relief for 8,000 thirsty elephants neglected by Zimbabwe | Environment | The Guardian

6 annotations

large animals

5808

Mumbai produces the fifth most waste of any megacity, and last year Bloomberg reported it was “being buried under a mountain of its own trash”. The city of over 18 million people produces 11,000 metric tonnes of trash per day
In 2011, Mexico City closed its largest dump, causing trash to pile up at illegal dumping sites and be left out on the street,
Among global megacities, Mexico City generates the most trash after the New York region
The third biggest waste producer among megacities is Tokyo
the regions have similar population sizes of just over 20 million and 21 million people respectively, but GDP per capita is three times higher in the US.
how can Tokyo be rated the third most wasteful city? This is the tricky thing about measuring wastefulness
Japan is very densely populated, and so it lacks the space that the US and China have to throw their garbage in landfills. Instead, they have adopted hyper-aggressive recycling programmes to cut down on waste. Tokyo, which strives to be a zero-waste city, is no exception.
as income rises, people just cycle through more consumption patterns in general
Mumbai produces 11,000 tonnes of trash per day, Cairo feeds garbage to pigs and China’s waste is growing twice as fast as its population
Chinese cities don’t recycle, meaning that their waste output could be cut in half, as it has been in neighbouring Taiwan.
. Jakarta, for example, is one of the world’s fastest growing cities and many of its residents are in the habit of dumping their household items in the nearest waterway
The US is the world’s biggest producer of trash in absolute terms, generating 624,700 metric tonnes per day, which is 2.58kg/capita. That’s considerably more than many other rich countries
US’s 25 largest cities are Houston, Cleveland, Atlanta, Tampa and Indianapolis, in that order.

Which is the world’s most wasteful city? | Cities | The Guardian

13 annotations

agriculture and forestry

www.huffingtonpost.com.au

4357

use renewable energy to power their facilities. Beyond that, they can cut back sharply on water and chemical use;
From the pesticides poured on cotton fields to the washes in which denim is dunked, making 1kg of fabric generates 23kg of greenhouse gases on average
Kirsten Brodde of Greenpeace also notes that H&M has eliminated toxic per- and polyfluorinated chemicals from its lines (
shopper will move on from wearing a consciously green T-shirt to viewing other kinds of clothing as the trappings of planetary destruction.
A handful of brands encourage customers to recycle old clothes by returning them to stores. But almost all apparel today is made of a mix of materials—very often including polyester. Separating them out is difficult

Garb age: Looking good can be extremely bad for the planet | The Economist

5 annotations

www.economist.com

4072

5 Yemen
7 Syria
34 Nepal
30 South Korea
41 Indonesia
51 Gaza

55 Incredible Photos Of Girls Going To School Around The World

6 annotations

school

7443

Our rapidly growing delivery culture is a challenge, says Tim Anderson, head of transport at the Energy Saving Trust. “It’s easy to go online and buy things cheaply
We have the concept of ‘free’ delivery, which is a selling point for retailers, but it’s not really free in the sense of what it costs them and what it costs in environmental terms.”
we should be more patient and consolidate orders into one delivery at a time

Delivery disaster: the hidden environmental cost of your online shopping | News | The Guardian

3 annotations

4759

Although we should caution against jumping to conclusions until a clear link between the new coronavirus and illegally traded species is firmly established, the unregulated nature of illegal trade in wildlife and the absence of any veterinary controls makes it a threat to human health.
The first is maintaining political momentum to support international cooperation and strengthen political will to address illegal wildlife trade at the national level.
Key legal challenges include weak regulatory frameworks, especially light penalties that do not deter perpetrators, and weak monitoring and enforcement frameworks.
Examples include smuggling of wildlife, export of hazardous waste in manner that does not respect environmental standards, illegal logging, or illegal fishing. Whether an act or an omission will result in criminal penalties is a decision made by each country.
They pose a threat to sustainable development and challenge the achievement of the sustainable development goals (SDGs), such as SDG 14, life below water, SDG 15, life on land, and SDG 16, peace, justice and strong institutions.
As well, significant revenue is derived from wildlife crime and results in economic losses for legitimate businesses while depriving governments of tax revenue.
I strongly believe that wildlife crimes deserve as much attention as other crimes.
The World Wildlife Crime Report found that along with threatening endangered species, wildlife crimes and exploitation of nature can promote climate change as well as negatively impact public health because of zoonotic disease transmissions.

A new report looks at the illegal trade of plants and animals

8 annotations

www.unenvironment.org

4442

Or it could be that Lulu did not want her child to endure the endless pain and suffering of captivity."
This bottlenose dolphin knows both the freedom of living in the open ocean and the hopelessness of being trapped inside an aquarium's tiny pool. That may be why she just did something unthinkable,
she had been handed a sentence that was arguably even worse — to spend the remainder of her life breeding and performing as a living exhibit in the Nagoya aquarium.
We may never know for certain the rationale behind Lulu's actions, but regardless, the death rate among infant dolphins is much higher in captivity. That's reason enough to empty the tanks
Though the exact cause of the newborn dolphin's death is unclear, Laura Bridgeman, from the International Marine Mammal Project, says that captivity itself is likely to blame — raising the possibility that it was an act of mercy on the part of Lulu, knowing what awaited her.

Mother Dolphin Kills Her Own Baby To Spare Her A Life In Captivity

5 annotations

birds

www.thedodo.com

4800

Eyewitness video released by PETA Asia shows that the two “stars” of the show—a chimpanzee named Miya and a dog named Dongdong—were beaten into performing
This is just another example of animals being exploited and abused in China and Thailand
A new reality TV show called We Are Friends
a common sign of distress and anxiety in animals who are held captive and forced to perform.
Animals don’t choose to become actors.

'We Are Friends' Reality Show on Blast for Beating Animals | PETA

5 annotations

pets

www.peta.org

7289

End users do not know that they should dispose of their obsolete EEE separately or how or where to dispose of their e-waste. Additionally, informal e-waste recyclers often lack the knowledge about the hazards of unsound practices;
f discarded electronics in East and Southeast Asia jumped almost two-thirds between 2010 and 2015,
spontaneous combustion sometimes occurs at open dumping sites when components such as batteries trigger fires due to short circuits.
"Open burning and acid bath recycling in the informal sector have serious negative impacts on processers'
new UN research shows.
the average increase in e-waste across all 12 countries and areas analyzed—Cambodia, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam—was 63% in the five years
The average e-waste generation per capita in the region was approximately 10 kg in 2015, with the highest generation found in Hong Kong (21.7 kg), followed by Singapore (19.95 kg) and Taiwan, Province of China (19.13 kg).
According to the report, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan have a head-start in the region in establishing e-waste collection and recycling systems
There were large differences between nations on the per capita scales, with Cambodia (1.10 kg), Vietnam (1.34 kg) and the Philippines (1.35 kg) the lowest e-waste generators per capita in 2015.
Consumers, dismantlers and recyclers are often guilty of illegal dumping, particularly of "open dumping", where non- functional parts and residues from dismantling and treatment operations are released into the environmen
These processes are not only hazardous for the recyclers, their communities and the environment, but they are also inefficient, as they are unable to extract the full value of the processed products.
Asia as a whole accounts for the majority of EEE sales and generates the highest volume of e-waste, estimated at 16 million tonnes in 2014. However, on a per-capita basis, this amounts to only to 3.7 kg per inhabitant, as compared to Europe and the Americas, which generate nearly four times as much per capita—15.6 kg per inhabitant.
Hong Kong and Singapore, meanwhile, do not have specific e-waste legislation. Instead, the governments collaborate with producers to manage e-waste through a public-private partnership

E-waste in East and Southeast Asia jumps 63 percent in five years

13 annotations

ecology

phys.org

12945

the post-2020 EU vision of forest-based climate mitigation may be hampered, and the additional carbon losses from forests would require extra emission reductions
Satellite imagery further reveals that the average patch size of harvested area increased by 34 per cent across Europe, with potential effects on biodiversity, soil erosion and water regulation.
However, the increasing demand for forest services and products, driven by the bioeconomy, poses challenges for sustainable forest management.
forests account for approximately 38% of the total land surface1.
Forests provide a series of ecosystem services that are crucial to our society

Abrupt increase in harvested forest area over Europe after 2015 | Nature

5 annotations

www.nature.com

4323

benefited from having fewer vehicles on the road,”
From the perspective of wildlife and road mortality, the timing of the pandemic couldn’t have been better.
The pandemic forced him to reduce his research effort, but it also raised new questions about whether the stay-at-home orders would have an effect on the mortality of reptiles and amphibians.
Hallisey had been using a computer model to predict where and when large roadkill events may occur, based on environmental conditions — for example, most amphibians migrate at night when it rains — and the location of roads near wetlands. He then visited those areas at the appropriate times to see how many survived the crossing and how many were killed.
We have a lot of wildlife in Rhode Island and high road density and high traffic volume, so it’s probably a major contributor to population declines for certain species,”
Scott Goodwin, the animal control officer in North Smithfield who disposes of an abundance of road-killed animals every year,
believes there was a decrease in the number of deer struck by vehicles during the peak months when most Rhode Islanders were staying home.
“This is the biggest conservation action that we’ve taken, possibly ever,
The study noted that about 1 million wild creatures typically die on U.S. roads every day, so it’s likely that tens of millions escaped a crushing death.
45 percent fewer wild animals were killed by vehicles in Maine compared to the previous mont
That is the conclusion of a study by scientists at the Road Ecology Center at the University of California, Davis.
As automobile travel declined following stay-at-home orders during the first months of the coronavirus pandemic, so too did the vehicle-related mortality of the nation’s wildlife.

Study Finds Pandemic Lockdown Spared Millions of Animals from Roadway Deaths — ecoRI News

12 annotations

www.ecori.org

4491

If you have information about these dump sites or see someone dumping tires or other debris in the Cherokee National Forest, notify the Unaka Ranger District at 423-638-4109.
Dumping on national forest land is a Class B Misdemeanor and punishable by a fine not more than $5,000 for an individual and $10,000 for an organization, or imprisonment for not more than 6 months.
“They also pose an increased risk for forest fires.
Two areas of the Unaka Ranger District in Washington County — off Horse Cove Gap and Ramsey Creek Road south of Johnson City — have been used to illegally dispose of about 300-500 tires each.
Two forested areas in Washington County have been identified as illegal dump sites, according to a USDA Forest Service news release issued Monday.

2 illegal National Forest dump sites found in Washington Co. | Crime | johnsoncitypress.com

5 annotations

www.johnsoncitypress.com

4237

KA is a textbook example of the kind of supplier that should have been explicitly excluded from the supply chains of any global brand committed to a No Deforestation, No Peat, No Exploitation policy,”
He said he suspected KA was behind the lawsuits, noting that locals couldn’t afford the cost of litigation.
the 1,000 hectares of burned land has been left abandoned and unmonitored. This has allowed outsiders to encroach into the area and claim the land as their own, according to Nurul.
Nurul said the company twice blocked a team sent by the environment ministry to assess the value of the company’s assets.
In July 2019, KA challenged the court’s auction order by filing a lawsuit at a different district court, which now has jurisdiction over the company’s area.
She said Cargill is working together with Permata Hijau to collect traceability data and hold a training workshop on traceability for Permata Hijau’s suppliers.
Among these is an immediate review of the protocol for traceability documentation, and better handling of suspended or noncompliant suppliers.
An online petition has been launched to demand Nestlé and Mars intervene to protect the Leuser Ecosystem from conflict palm oil.
RAN called on Nestlé and Mars to publish a permanent no-buy policy for KA and immediately suspend sourcing from Permata Hijau and other suppliers such as Cargill if they fail to suspend sourcing from Permata Hijau.
Nestlé and Mars are two global brands that have been repeatedly exposed for sourcing conflict palm oil grown at the expense of the peatlands in the Leuser Ecosystem,” RAN said.
Ninety-two palm oil mills operate within 40 kilometers (25 miles) of the Leuser Ecosystem, according to an analysis by Chain Reaction Research.
He said that in response to the investigation, Permata Hijau had ceased all commercial relationship with KA effective June 10.
“Permata Hijau’s policy and supplier code of practice [since 2017] claim that it requires its suppliers to comply with No Deforestation, No Peatland and No Exploitation practices,”
largely blackballed by palm oil buyers with commitments to not deforest, clear peatlands, or exploit communities and workers
2015, a local court ruled KA liable for the fires; the Supreme Court upheld the ruling and ordered the company to pay a then-unprecedented 366 billion rupiah (about $26.5 million at the time) in fines and damages.
That was the finding from an investigation by the U.S.-based campaign group Rainforest Action Network (RAN) into the activities of Indonesian oil palm grower PT Kallista Alam (KA).

Palm oil from Indonesian grower that burned forest is still being sold

16 annotations

news.mongabay.com

4479

Anti Forest Destruction, estimates the deforestation as a result of the project will result in 8.84 trillion rupiah ($615 million) worth of lost ecosystem services.
Conservationists say the coal road doesn’t have to go through the forest. The South Sumatran provincial government’s assessment committee last year ordered the company to have the road skirt the forest, using an existing road network
Another potential impact would be an increase in human-wildlife conflict, said Mangarah Silalahi, chief executive of REKI.
The target is to restore these degraded areas to their previous forested state, thus preventing them from being permanently turned into palm plantations or smallholder farmland.
cutting a road through the forest could devastate the ecosystem
For decades, the expansion of oil palm plantations and incursion of illegal loggers ate away at the forest. But today the road project is the single biggest threat to this patch of biodiverse forest in central Sumatra.
but their efforts had already been rendered effectively useless by then, thanks to the environment ministry’s approval for a road to be built — and forest cleared — to serve nearby coal mines.
This was our first time planting trees right in a forest,” said Rifai, 14. The planting site is part of a 10-hectare (25-acre) swath of the Harapan forest that was razed by illegal loggers last September.

Indonesia approves coal road project through forest that hosts tigers, elephants

8 annotations

news.mongabay.com

4451

A new open water beluga whale sanctuary has been built in Iceland with the support of Merlin Entertainments and the SEA LIFE Trust
Building this new sea sanctuary will help provide jobs in the aftermath of the pandemic and increase tourism, as well as provide a better life for the dolphins, according to Sosnowski.
The closure of the park because of the coronavirus pandemic has had a huge impact on the park and the local economy.
a sea sanctuary is a humane compromise which will allow the animals to live in the ocean and have a lot more autonomy, whilst still ensuring they are looked after and fed by caregivers.
Together, the two groups came up with an idea for a semi-open sea enclosure in Coffs Harbour. A netted sanctuary will house the three dolphins, as well as rehabilitate injured sea life.
said that the two groups both “agree on the wellbeing of the dolphins.”
Terry Goodall
Action for Dolphins has lobbied against the park for many years. The Sydney Morning Herald reports that the group once sued the park in federal court.
the park is working with Action for Dolphins to create a new sea sanctuary for the dolphins.

Dolphin Park and animal rights activists work on sea sanctuary | blooloop

9 annotations

blooloop.com

4156

In September Sea Shepherd caught 15 vessels filled with thousands of sharks, using gill nets to land-internationally protected endangered species
Recent shark hunts by China-based Pingtan Marine Enterprise have highlighted the need for independent monitoring by NGOs, said Sea Shepherd

Sea Shepherd accuses China’s Pingtan of illegal shark hunts | Undercurrent News

2 annotations

large animals

www.undercurrentnews.com

11129

Destruction of the ozone, global warming conditions and the infringement on habitat from solid-waste facilities all impact animals.
The most common are synthetic chemicals, oil, toxic metals and acid rain.
DDT, a pesticide that was widely applied between the 1940s and 1960s, mainly for mosquito abatement, is one example of a synthetic chemical known to be highly destructive to animal
Oil spills affect wildlife in oceans instantly, with a very large death toll.
The affects of these metals vary. Neurological damage, liver damage, muscle atrophy and failure to reproduce are just a few of the physical affects of metals. These toxic metals also affect plant life, which affects the animals' food and habitat.

Pollution's Effects on Animals

5 annotations

ecology

sciencing.com

4375

This summer has already brought extreme heat waves, oil spills caused by thawing permafrost, and raging forest fires — what next before we finally act on climate?”
With fires becoming a yearly occurrence in Siberia, Grigory Kuksin, wildfire unit head at Greenpeace Russia, said that it’s paramount to take action to combat climate change.
Most likely, it [2020] will enter the top five or even top three most burned years since the beginning of the century,” he said.
The loss of biodiversity is another concern. “Excessively frequent fires lead to a simplification of the structure of forest landscapes, the loss of fire refugia, and a radical transformation of the historical dynamics of taiga ecosystems,” Yaroshenko said.
“Growing areas of forest fires are transforming entire regions of boreal forests from net sinks of carbon dioxide to net sources of carbon dioxide,”
The fires are also releasing large volumes of carbon dioxide into the air, which is believed to contribute to the thawing of permafrost and the melting of Arctic ice.
According to a recent update on the website of Russia’s Federal Forest Agency, personnel were fighting 129 active fires across the region as of July 21.
5% of the burning forests in Siberia, Yaroshenko said.
While Russian authorities are working to extinguish some of the fires, they’re only focused on about 5% of the burning area, according to Yaroshenko: “95% of the registered area of forest fires are fires that no one extinguishes at all — fires in the so-called ‘control zones,’
Photos from the ground or from drones provide a better understanding of what is visible in space images, but they cannot cover even one [large] fire, but only its edge or part of it,”
Since 2000, Krasnoyarsk has experienced a 9.8% decrease in its tree cover, according to data compiled by Global Forest Watch.
Since the start of 2020, it’s estimated that fires have burnt through 20 million hectares (49 million acres) of the Russian landscape, which is an area bigger than Greece, and about 10.9 million hectares (27 million acres) of forest, according to Greenpeace International.
This year, the fire season started early in Russia after an unusually hot winter and spring, which led to extreme temperatures in remote Siberian towns.
This week, Greenpeace International released a series of dramatic photos revealing megafires burning in the Krasnoyarsk region of Siberia, Russia.
It’s estimated that fires have burnt more than 20.9 million hectares of land in Russia, and 10.9 million hectares of forest, since the start of 2020.

Photos show scale of massive fires tearing through Siberian forests

15 annotations

news.mongabay.com

4578

Pictures of Craig and the man, called Mark, embracing each other in Nottingham city centre on October 14, have gone viral with more than 500,000 people viewing and sharing it across the world.
Craig Wells, 36, was in a restaurant with his wife and three children when he spotted the man walking past the window with just socks on his feet.
He couldn't quite believe it but he burst into tears and said 'thank you'. A few people in the restaurant saw what had happened and came out and took pictures of us.
"I asked him what size foot he was and he said 'nine why?' I told him I was the same size and took my trainers off and gave them to him.
What I do want is people to recognise that Love is the greatest gift we have been given. It was given to us freely and freely we should give it away.

Barefoot homeless man breaks down in tears when Good Samaritan gives him £120 trainers - Mirror Online

5 annotations

footwear

www.mirror.co.uk

8074

new research was spurred by the discovery in 2016 of the first bacterium that had naturally evolved to eat plastic, at a waste dump in Japan.
The mutant enzyme takes a few days to start breaking down the plastic – far faster than the centuries it takes in the oceans
create mutant enzyme that eats plastic bottles
The structure of the enzyme looked very similar to one evolved by many bacteria to break down cutin, a natural polymer used as a protective coating by plants. But when the team manipulated the enzyme to explore this connection, they accidentally improved its ability to eat PET.
Industrial enzymes are widely used in, for example, washing powders and biofuel production, They have been made to work up to 1,000 times faster in a few years,
Enzymes are non-toxic, biodegradable
there is strong potential to use enzyme technology to help with society’s growing waste problem,” said Oliver Jones, a chemist at RMIT University in Melbourne,

Scientists accidentally create mutant enzyme that eats plastic bottles | Environment | The Guardian

7 annotations

ecology

7812

Yet Dairy Queen, Hooters Asia, IBM, Johnnie Walker, Oman Air, Peroni Brewery, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Ripley’s Believe It Or Not!, and many other companies sponsored the cruel tournament this year.
Breaking eyewitness footage shows elephants who were forced to participate in Thailand’s cruel King’s Cup Elephant Polo Tournament being repeatedly struck and gouged with bullhooks—sharp steel-tipped rods resembling fireplace pokers—and their ears being violently yanked
The only way to make elephants tolerate having humans riding around on their backs for polo games or any other reason is to “break” them.
Their complex emotional states and multifaceted relationships are left in tatters. Using these endangered animals in silly spectacles is shameful.
Elephants are highly social beings who thrive in matriarchal herds, protecting each other, caring for their babies, and traveling many miles a day. They experience joy, sadness, and fear. Their rituals of mourning over the deaths of family members rival any that humans have developed.

BREAKING! Elephants Beaten With Bullhooks for Thailand's Annual King's Cup Elephant Polo Tournament

5 annotations

large animals

www.petaasia.com

7845

These groups are asking for funding to be made flexible for scientists who have had to shut down their labs because of COVID-19, and are advocating for continued investment in the sciences in the post-pandemic future.
Now, it expects to end the fiscal year with a balanced budget — mainly because most registrants didn’t cancel after learning that the conference would be moved online (registration fees remain the same, but the period for early-bird rates was extended for several weeks).
But unlike the CNS, some societies depend on the profits from their meetings to finance other activities
The CNS is now making plans for its 2021 meeting, which is scheduled to take place in San Francisco next March. “I think everyone is eager to be able to attend physical meetings again, but we imagine a new future for our society and its annual conference,”
Still, many scholarly societies have managed to rapidly shift activities such as conferences online — a move that has some benefits and might yield lasting change.
The pandemic has meant that more than 25 of these in-person meetings have had to be cancelled, postponed or moved online — and similar changes may be necessary for the rest of the gatherings planned for 2020 and early 2021.
Larger societies with more diverse sources of income are better positioned to weather the costs of cancelled conferences
Another small organization in the United States, the 2,500-member Society for the Study of Evolution (SSE), and two other similar-sized societies, ended up owing tens of thousands of dollars for cancelling their joint annual conference
Organizations are trying to weather the cost of cancelling meetings while grappling with the long-term effects that the pandemic could have on their activities and on the research community.
The society runs its meeting on a break-even basis — so this would have put the society’s operating budget in jeopardy for the next one or two years, says Anne Grauer, president of the AAPA, a volunteer-run society with about 2,200 members.

How scientific societies are weathering the pandemic’s financial storm

10 annotations

www.nature.com

4582

Not only is this causing more flooding, but it has the potential to damage the city’s drainage, piping and sewerage systems.
Others megacities have demonstrated that this is possible. Tokyo managed to stop land subsidence 40 years ago. Other cities, such as London, have cleaned their rivers not just of visual garbage but also invisible pollutants
more people are actually leaving Jakarta than arriving
Traffic is the most visible problem
Average spending on routine transportation, meanwhile, has risen to between 15% and 35% of income. In cities such as London and Singapore, it is between 5% and 8%
What is not visible is even worse: the city is sinking. Land subsidence is happening at a rate of 3cm per year in some parts of the city, 20cm in others
the issue for Jakarta isn’t its 9.6 million residents – it is the 3.5 million commuters. Governing this city is no longer about managing places, but flows

Jakarta at 30 million: my city is choking and sinking – it needs a new Plan B | Cities | The Guardian

7 annotations

programming languages

5004

In August, some of the last doctors still working in the city’s eastern quarters wrote a letter to President Obama pleading for help in stopping the targeted bombardment of hospitals by forces backing President Bashar Assad.
Last month, there were 42 attacks on medical facilities in Syria, 15 of which were hospitals

A conversation with the last female doctor in Eastern Aleppo - VICE News

2 annotations

welfare

news.vice.com

9629

felt really small and powerless after the results of the election,” Elderkin said. “I wanted to remind my daughter
Elderkin’s latest napkin art features inspiring women past and present ― from Susan B. Anthony to Lucille Ball to Michelle Obama.
A Rhode Island mom is empowering her 9-year-old daughter with some awesome napkin art.

Mom’s Napkin Art Empowers Her Daughter Every Day At Lunch | The Huffington Post

3 annotations

movies and tv

m.huffpost.com

7006

Impact hubs are one of the many unsung heroes operating in the social enterprise world. Describing themselves as ‘part innovation lab, part business incubator and part community centre’,
The hubs themselves are social enterprises, with users paying membership for access to office space and business services
We want to help those enterprises with potential to succeed to scale their impact and ensure that the social sector doesn't have to keep re-inventing the wheel.”
the first hub appeared only ten years ago in Islington, North London. They now have 7,000 members in 82 hubs operating in 49 countries around the world.

Impact hubs help social enterprises scale up into Europe | The Social Enterprise Magazine - Pioneers Post

4 annotations

www.pioneerspost.com

4295

One of the most significant spaces where people can lower their environmental impact is their diets — and trying plant-based seafood is a great place to start.
With so many other foods out there, people who have the privilege to choose their food do not need to eat fish.
Fish can feel pain just like land animals, such as dogs, cats, cows, pigs, and chickens. Once caught, fish are typically left in trawling nets or tossed onto ice where they will slowly freeze or suffocate to death.
A 2018 landmark study out of the University of Oxford found that a vegan diet is the single most significant lifestyle choice individuals can make to benefit the environment
A 2013 poll conducted on behalf of NPR surveyed 3,000 Americans about seafood purchasing habits.
what gives humans the right to take fish from the oceans at all? If humans drastically reduced the rate at which they commercially take fish from the oceans
the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC), the Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC), the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch, Naturland, and Best Aquaculture Practices. Each group has different standards for fisheries to qualify to use its label on packaging,
However, it’s important to remember than like any other industry, the fishing industry exists primarily for economic reasons — most major fisheries are probably more concerned with making a profit than they are with protecting the oceans.
“Consider social and economic outcomes for fishing communities, prevent overfishing, rebuild depleted stocks, minimize bycatch and interactions with protected species, and identify and conserve essential fish habitat.
When seafood packaging claims its contents are certified sustainable, it means that the fish were declared as sustainably caught by either an organization, private company, or government agency.
It’s estimated that as much as 40 percent of global marine life catch is bycatch, according to Oceana. It’s also estimated that trawlers can catch up to 20 pounds of bycatch for each pound of fish.
Animals caught as bycatch typically wind up dead, either due to getting tangled in fishing nets,
in unfathomable amounts of plastic entering the oceans, and it almost always results in bycatch.
Most fish are caught from the ocean using trawling methods, which use large nets to collect sea animals
or is sustainable seafood just a form of greenwashing, aka a marketing term to make customers feel better about eating aquatic animals?
But the long list of problems in the fishing industry are enough to make any environmentalist wonder: What does sustainable seafood actually mean?
and even leading some scientists to predict that we will have more plastic than fish in the ocean by 2050 — meaning now is a critical time to look at the human consumption of sea animals.

What Is Sustainably-Sourced Seafood?

17 annotations

www.greenmatters.com

4734

"Future subsidies should seek to promote the recovery of the many carbon
Since Chile's native forests are more carbon dense and biodiverse than plantations, the subsidies failed to increase carbon storage, and accelerated biodiversity losses.
"In light of global enthusiasm to plant a trillion trees, it's important to reflect on the impact of past policies,"
mass-tree planting efforts: subsidies designed to encourage private landowners to plant trees.
A closer look reveals faults in the optimistic plans. For example, nearly 80 percent of commitments to the Bonn Challenge involve planting monoculture tree plantations or a limited mix of trees that produce products such as fruit and rubber rather than restoring natural forests.
So it makes sense that tree-planting as a solution has gained traction in recent years with ambitious commitments
"If policies to incentivize tree plantations are poorly designed or poorly enforced, there is a high risk of not only wasting public money but also releasing more carbon and losing biodiversity,"
Nature Sustainability, reveals how efforts such as the global Trillion Trees campaign and a related initiative (H. R. 5859) under consideration by the U.S. Congress could lead to more biodiversity loss and little, if any, climate change upside
Campaigns to plant huge numbers of trees could backfire,

When planting trees threatens the forest

9 annotations

phys.org

4101

an entire home in Webster, New York now resembles a block of ice.
Last week’s snow storm was so bad that some 200,000 individuals lost power due to hurricane-force winds.
John Kucko posted photos and video of the home that’s located on the shore of Lake Ontario. The images have since gone viral, racking up hundreds of views, shares and comments.
an entire home in We

What 5 Days Of Wind And Freezing Temps Along Lake Ontario Can Do | The Huffington Post

4 annotations

fishing

3988

Wefood, which sell produce at prices 30 to 50 per cent lower than they would normally cost, has enjoyed such tremendous popularity in Copenhagen
The project draws long line of both eco-conscious shoppers and individuals with limited budgets
food waste supermarket
The supermarket is part of a Government initiative to reduce food waste in Denmark.
Every year more than 700,000 tonnes of food are wasted in Denmark. After being open just six months, WeFood has received over 40 tonnes of food that would have otherwise been destroyed.
Earlier this year, France has passed a law banning supermarkets from throwing away or spoiling unsold food.

World's first food waste supermarket so popular it has to open second branch after 9 months | The Independent

6 annotations

retail

www.independent.co.uk

10726

If you head over to the Union Square station in Manhattan, you’ll encounter a wall of post-its, which serve as love notes addressed to the United States of America.
According to BuzzFeed, more than 1,500 notes were placed on a subway station wall.
While the “Subway Therapy” project has existed for a while, the post-its and notes are a new addition providing New Yorkers and anyone with something to say an outlet to get their message out.
Subway Therapy” project has existed for a while, the post-its and notes are a new addition providing New Yorkers and anyone with something to say an outlet to get their message out.

People Cope With Election By Posting Love Notes To America

4 annotations

politics

elitedaily.com

5757

Rock Band developer Harmonix Music Systems has always focused on building for odd new platforms
founded in 1995 by a pair of MIT Media Lab students
They stripped the five-note system down to three notes, vastly simplifying the beats that players had to match
After attaching a motion controller to a standard Harmonix guitar peripheral and putting on the Rift, players would see a five-lane "note highway" with beats to hit at specific moments, layered over a concert scene. "It feels great to stand on stage with a screaming crowd in front of you

How Harmonix put Rock Band into a virtual reality world | The Verge

4 annotations

guitar

www.theverge.com

3596

Animals that can do basic arithmetic show us that some really are capable of understanding the terms they use and the connections between them.
Numerical abilities have been identified in many different species, most prominently chimpanzees.
Alex was able to do more than simply mimic human sounds. Providing the right word when asked, “How many?” required him to understand the connections between the numerical amount an
In order to test Alex’s arithmetic capabilities, Pepperberg would show him a set of objects on a tray, and would ask, “How many?” for each of the objects.
Alex was able to reliably provide the answer for amounts up to six.
One example of non-human animals demonstrating a wide range of arithmetical capabilities is the work that Irene Pepperberg did with African grey parrots
So if a parrot is able to tell us the color of different objects, that does not necessarily show that the parrot understands the meanings of those words
Understanding “rabbit” involves understanding “animal,” as well as the connection between these two things.
understanding the meaning of a word requires understanding both the meaning of many other words and the connections that exist between those words.
denying that talking parrots and signing gorillas are demonstrating anything more than clever mimicry
Many types of birds, most famously parrots,
and gorillas and chimpanzees have been taught to communicate using sign language.
Some philosophers have gone so far as to argue that creatures that lack a language are not capable of being rational, making inferences, grasping concepts, or even having beliefs or thoughts.
So, what is it that makes us so different from other animals?
have pointed to our linguistic abilities.

Animals That Can Do Math Understand More Language Than We Think

15 annotations

singularityhub.com

4547

Healthy seagrasses provide a source of opportunities to mitigate climate change, adapt to future changes, build resilience and offer multiple additional societal benefits.
Seagrasses are among the least protected coastal ecosystems and often face cumulative pressures from coastal development, nutrient run-off and climate change
Seagrass meadows are of fundamental importance to nature and people. They contribute to community well-being, whether through food security from fish production, improved quality of water filtered by seagrasses, protection of coasts from erosion, storms and floods, or carbon sequestration and storage.

Out of the Blue: The Value of Seagrasses to the Environment and to People | UNEP - UN Environment Programme

3 annotations

www.unenvironment.org

3958

Pithovirus sibericum,
The melting permafrost also presents a serious and costly threat to infrastructure, risking mudslides and damage to buildings, roads and oil pipelines.
buried 70 years before but uncovered by melting permafrost.
In 2016 a child died in Russia's far northern Siberia in an outbreak of anthrax
The thawing of the permafrost also threatens to unlock disease-causing bacteria and viruses long trapped in the ice.
releasing the carbon that it holds as carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane, gases which have a greenhouse warming effect on the planet
Locked into the permafrost is an estimated 1.7 trillion tonnes of carbon in the form of frozen organic matter
is a time bomb threatening health and the environment, and risks speeding up global warming.
Melting permafrost

As Permafrost Melts It's Unleashing Ancient Viruses, Carbon - And Now Fuel Spills

9 annotations

www.sciencealert.com

4590

transitive inference
But some animals can make judgments not just through their own direct interactions but by observing other animals and making inferences about where those would-be opponents stand in the hierarchy.
Winners are more likely to be aggressive in future conflicts while losers are less likely to meet aggression with aggression or pick a new fight.
Biologists say these battles can have a lasting impact on the combatants called winner effects and loser effects
how animals make aggression decisions because different types of information can underlie different kinds of aggression strategies," she said in the article.
Hobson says animals such as monk parakeets seem to understand where they fit in a dominance hierarchy and pick their fights accordingly. This high-level social information helps animals improve or maintain their status.
Elizabeth Hobson says some animals make the call based on a sophisticated understanding of social standing and their place in it.

Twitter fight: Birds use social networks to pick opponents wisely | EurekAlert! Science News

7 annotations

eurekalert.org

4564

free day use again later this fall to celebrate National Public Lands Day, Sept. 26, and on Veteran’s Day, Nov. 11
all who are interested in public lands, the National Forests, and reconnecting children to the outdoors.
Mark Twain National Forest is set to offer free day-use
For the last 12 years there has been an inclusive, nationwide effort, called GO Day, focusing on a single day when people would be inspired and motivated to get outdoors.

Get Outdoors Day on Mark Twain National Forest | Ozark Radio News

4 annotations

www.ozarkradionews.com

4575

“Bad actors will try to take advantage with more illegal logging, mining, clearing, and poaching.”
In Indonesia, primary forest loss declined for the third year in a row.
Brazil was responsible for more than one-third of the total reported figure. Under President Jair Bolsonaro's anti-environmental policies, deforestation of the Amazon through clear-cutting appears to be on the rise.
Since 2000, the world has lost about 10 percent of its tropical tree cover.
Data recorded by the environmental research group World Resources Institute and the University of Maryland revealed the global loss of old-growth, or primary, tropical forest -- 9.3 million acres, an area nearly the size of Switzerland -- was about three percent higher than in 2018 and the third-largest loss since 2002.

Destruction of tropical forests worldwide increased in 2019, study shows | Fox News

5 annotations

www.foxnews.com

4509

"We do have historical precedents," WRI's Seymour said. Poverty and a lack of enforcement drove up deforestation after the Asian financial crisis in the late 1990s, she noted.
If governments put into place good policies and enforce the law, forest loss goes down. But if governments relax restrictions … forest loss goes up."
The chocolate industry has pledged to reduce deforestation for cocoa cultivation, a major crop in West Africa, and the governments have signed forest carbon deals with the World Bank.
More tentative good news comes from West Africa
Colombia also saw a steep drop in the loss of primary forest last year, after two years of increases.
According to satellite imagery analyzed by the University of Maryland and WRI, Brazil alone lost 1.4 million hectares of mature forest in 2019,
The United Nations set a goal of ending deforestation by 2020, "but we seem to be going in the wrong direction," WRI Distinguished Senior Fellow Frances Seymour said.
WASHINGTON - A soccer field every 6 seconds.

Forest Losses Increased in 2019 to Third-Largest This Century | Voice of America - English

8 annotations

www.voanews.com

4409

the plastic pandemic moves far beyond coconuts or any other stubbornly wrapped consumable. We’re becoming familiar with the eye-popping statistics. A garbage truck worth of plastic empties into the ocean every minute. Worldwide, humankind produces over 300 million tons of plastic each year,
A garbage dump site near Taihu Lake, Jiangsu province, China. On Jan. 1, 2018, the country closed its borders to several types of imported waste.
It means we need
I’ve distilled 10 years of plastic worrying, coconut rampages and dumpster diving into my new book, Turning the Tide on Plastic.
. To the traditional mantra of the 3Rs ― reduce, reuse and recycle ― I’ve added five more directives: record, replace, refuse, refill and rethink. My strategy makes recycling the last resort.
It means we needn’t wait for plastic-chopping enzymes to be deployed or miraculous recycling solutions or even for our trash to be blasted into space. It means we must become the front line of resistance. Given the plastic that we plow through on a weekly basis (likely 20-50 plastic items every week that we could easily do without, or swap with a reusable or more easily recyclable alternative, according to my research), we can make a significant dent in our own plastic footprint almost immediately. All you need is a strategy.

What You Can Do To Beat Plastic Pollution | HuffPost

6 annotations

chemicals industry

7673

最近日本網站gooランキング就請網民投票選出10大最失望的伴手禮。
10大最失望手信投票結果
京都八ツ橋・生八ツ橋
7：京都府八ツ橋・生八ツ橋
3：東京香蕉蛋糕
2：愛知縣ういろう

日網友投票　最失望的日本手信竟然是......｜即時新聞｜生活｜on.cc東網

6 annotations

tourist destinations

hk.on.cc

4139

Officially, you’re still not allowed to have fun,” said Jason Clampet, the co-founder of the travel news site Skift.com, referring to the 12 acceptable categories of travel to Cuba
Many trips qualify as “people-to-people” trips under the educational exchange category, which independent travelers to the island can now pursue.

Is It Easy to Visit Cuba? Travel Experts Weigh In - The New York Times

2 annotations

travel

www.huffingtonpost.com.au

6263

we have witnessed the tragedy of Borneo and Sabah from a heart-wrenchingly close proximity.
Palm oil plantations are expected to encroach even further on what little habitat there is left for many critically endangered species and experts believe many more species will soon be extinct in the wild.
I learn that poachers often don't kill the animals before beginning the gruesome task of hacking off their tusks. Nor do they do so afterwards -- the elephants are instead left to die slow and painful deaths.
pygmy elephants are often killed by angry plantation owners after the animals have strayed from protected reserves into the palm oil plantations or crops that eclipse enormous areas which used to be part of their habitat, to eat the valuable fruit the palm oil is harvested from.
the lone monkey looks like the last surviving sailor clinging to the mast of a sinking ship
the animal as the proboscis monkey -- an endangered species of which there's only about 7,000 left in the wild.
massive deforestation since the 1960s under the timber and palm oil industries has drastically reduced native jungle to such an extent the primary rainforest is now threatened.

On The Brink Of Extinct: Borneo And The Tragedy Of Deforestation

7 annotations

unrest and war

7376

A
team
They focused on the south side of the Vatnajökull ice cap, which covers about 7,700sq km of land.
A t
A team from Scotland
Thousands of images were taken, often of over
A team from Scotland and Iceland compared photographs taken in the 1980s with present-day drone images.

Images reveal Iceland's glacier melt - BBC News

7 annotations

unrest and war

4536

the northern Indian Ocean is fringed by land, limiting the ability of species to move northwards into cooler habitat as waters become warmer.
they help provide up to 50% of our oxygen, combat climate change and sustain fish stocks.
whales feed, poo, migrate, and dive between the surface and the ocean depths (known as the ‘whale pump’), circulates essential nutrients throughout the ocean
we need more whales in the ocean to help combat the impact of climate change.

Climate Change - Whale & Dolphin Conservation USA

4 annotations

large animals

us.whales.org

4662

difference between a hour and five. If conditioned to, they can predict future events, such as regular walk times.
It could be because they speak the same language, roughly 250 words and gestures in fact.
Petting a dog and gazing into their eyes releases oxytocin (i.e the “love hormone”) not only for you, but for them as well.
ogs have wet noses because it helps to absorb scent chemicals

23 Amazing Facts About Dogs You Probably Didn't Know

4 annotations

dogs

www.thedrakecenter.com

4758

Harpursville, New York will also be moved to a barn where she'll be provided with senior care. Giraffes typically live up to 25 years in the wild and even more in captivity. Zookeepers were concerned that having another baby might negatively impact April's health.
The giraffe went viral, and understandably so.
Their gestation period is 15 months — six month longer than human's — and they often give birth to babies as big as six feet tall and as heavy as 100 to 150
has declined from 36 to 40 percent. There were just 96,000 giraffes in the wild in 2016.

April the giraffe is going on birth control

4 annotations

large animals

mashable.com

4773

It has long been thought that koalas get all the hydration they need from the leaves they eat, but now researchers have found that they will use artificial water stations throughout the year and for longer periods in hot months.
climate change also poses a problem, as the leaves from eucalyptus trees, which provide most of a koala’s diet, look set to become drier and less nutritious.
While koalas are tree-dwelling, nocturnal animals, Mella and her colleagues found they were even coming to the ground stations during the day.

Thirsty koalas need bowls of water to survive increasingly hot climate | New Scientist

3 annotations

pets

www.newscientist.com

4882

large carnivores need to eat 60 percent more than anyone had realized. Turns out they are high-energy beasts, burning through 12,325 calories a day
Polar bears rely almost exclusively on a calorie-loaded diet of seals
In the late spring, the ice is breaking up sooner and forming later in the fall, forcing bears to burn huge amounts of energy walking or swimming long distances to get to any remaining ice.
polar bears aren’t made for walking,
The farther the bears have to travel to get on the ice to hunt the more weight they lose. Eventually they start losing muscle, hurting their chances of hunting success, which can lead to a downward spiral. Bears are also doing a lot more swimming as the sea ice declines, said Derocher.

Polar Bears Are Starving Because of Global Warming, Melting Sea Ice, Study Shows

5 annotations

hunting and shooting

4628

Tent cities are now so common that advocates are campaigning to make them semi-permanent settlements of micro-housing. But is this a genuine solution or merely a quick fix?
In December 2014, the city of San Jose shut down what was then America’s largest homeless camp — a shantytown that stretched for sixty-eight acres along Coyote Creek where a few hundred men and women were living in tents, shacks, treehouses, and adobe dugouts.
Indeed, mass encampments, with fifty or more residents, have become increasingly common across America. Since the turn of the millennium, more than three dozen cities have accommodated camps of this scale for a year or more. 1
Little wonder that homeless people in New York have sometimes sought shelter underground. Some of the most tenacious — and out of sight — homeless colonies in New York are located in the rail and subway tunnels that crisscross the metropolis. Journalist Jennifer Toth’s account of the “mole people,” first published in the mid ‘90s, remains relevant

Tent City, America

4 annotations

law, govt and politics

placesjournal.org

4599

Red-lipped Batfish
Found on the Galapagos Islands, this fish is actually a pretty bad swimmer, and uses its pectoral fins to walk on the bottom of the ocean
Goblin sharks inhabit around the world at depths greater than 100 m (330 ft), with adults found deeper than juveniles. Given the depths at which it lives, the goblin shark poses no danger to humans
Found in Chile, they are known for their extremely painful stings, hence the common name cow killer or cow ant. Black and white specimens are sometimes known as panda ants due to their hair coloration resembling that of the Chinese giant panda
It is a large, presumably aquatic, caecilian amphibian with a broad, flat head and a fleshy dorsal fin on the body.
Their strange appearance still poses many questions to scientists.
this small tenrec is the only mammal known to use stridulation for generating sound – something that’s usually associated with snakes and insects
As this hawk-moth feeds on flowers and makes a similar humming sound, it looks a lot like a hummingbird
You could find it in warm waters of the oceans, as it floats on the surface because of a gas-filled sac in its stomach
The local fishermen were really worried about the safety of their testicles when they had to get in the water
spends 80% of its time searching for food.

21 More Weird Animals You Didn’t Know Exist | Bored Panda

11 annotations

large animals

www.boredpanda.com

4771

The intelligence of elephants is comparable to primates (and in some instances, elephants give humans a run for the money). Meanwhile, their dexterous trunks allow them to use tools to draw on paper. The distinction, however, lies in whether the elephant is painting on a whim or has been trained to do so. As you probably have guessed, the latter is most often the case.
elephants can undergo extreme discomfort in the training process, and that it detracts from their quality of life as they are forced to paint the same picture repeatedly.
But not all elephants are taught to paint to entertain tourists or for monetary gain
According to the project's website, the training process is stimulating and based on positive reinforcement, and part of the group's mission is to educate elephant trainers about how to safely and carefully train domesticated elephants

Can elephants really paint? | MNN - Mother Nature Network

4 annotations

large animals

www.mnn.com

4661

Pipes are now being replaced and officials say the water is safe, but residents still worry, drink bottled water and doubt their elected leaders.
Lead from the city’s old pipes leached into the water, causing alarmingly high lead levels in the blood of many residents
As the state of Michigan tells it, the water in Flint now meets federal standards. Levels of lead and copper are down.
By now, 15 people who worked in state and local government roles have been charged with crimes in Flint’s crisis.

Flint’s Water Crisis Started 5 Years Ago. It’s Not Over. - The New York Times

4 annotations

law, govt and politics

4461

Globally, 844 million people lack access to clean water
Women and children are worst affected — children because they are more vulnerable to diseases of dirty water and women and girls because they often bear the burden of carrying water for their families for an estimated 200 million hours each day.
2018: Worldwide, 2.1 billion people still live without safe drinking water in their homes and more than 892 million people still have no choice but to defecate outside.
Every day, more than 800 children under age 5 die from diarrhea attributed to poor water and sanitation.
Our average cost for World Vision to bring clean water to one person in Africa is $50.
World Vision’s goal is that by 2030 all communities located within our development areas worldwide will have access to clean water, adequate sanitation, hand-washing facilities, and menstrual hygiene facilities, as well as hygiene promotion and behavior change.
2017: World Vision now reaches one new person every 10 seconds with clean water. In June, World Vision drills its 1,500th borehole well since 2003 in Mali.
2030: 50 million people — everyone, everywhere we work — have access to clean water and sanitation.

Global water crisis: Facts, FAQs, and how to help | World Vision

8 annotations

children

www.worldvision.org

4991

Botswana, long considered a safe haven for elephants in Africa, has "a significant elephant-poaching problem," according to a conservationist group that carried out an aerial wildlife survey in the country.
Elephants Without Borders said it witnessed a spike in the number of elephant carcasses found in northern Botswana which show "obvious signs" of poaching, according to the final results of the survey, which has been seen by CNN
But Chase, the lead author of the report, told CNN that Elephants Without Borders confirmed 94 freshly poached carcasses using helicopters and found 157 in total.
But the country is expected to lift the ban and allow the canning of elephant meat as pet food, after a recommendation from Cabinet ministers.
"I don't -- for one second -- think that President Masisi or the government of Botswana will allow elephant culling in Botswana and to can elephant meat for pet's food," Chase said of last week's proposal by Cabinet ministers.
"Our communities must begin to benefit directly from our rich wildlife heritage -- sustainable hunting, some argue, is the solution to fostering an ethos of long-term conservation among communities who live with these intimidating five-ton animals."

Botswana elephant poaching a significant problem, conservation group says - CNN

6 annotations

large animals

www.cnn.com

4735

Populations are in decline as the demands of nearby Mexico City have led to the draining and contamination of much of the waters of the Xochimilco Lake complex. They are also popular in the aquarium trade, and roasted axolotl is considered a delicacy in Mexico, further shrinking their numbers. They are considered a critically endangered species.
has the rare trait of retaining its larval features throughout its adult life.
axolotls differ from most other salamanders in that they live permanently in water
reaching up to a foot in length, although the average size is closer to half that.
surviving up to 15 years on a diet of mollusks, worms, insect larvae, crustaceans, and some fish.

Axolotl | National Geographic

5 annotations

5091

commercial activities like mining and soy production were also involved.
forests are also a critical tool to fight climate change.
cutting—removing large patches of forest indiscriminately—caused the highest loss of forest cover overall.
But without wildfires, forest loss was up by roughly 13 percent. That has implications for climate change as well as other environmental concerns,
four million acres of primary forest was lost in Brazil alone
helping
according to data compiled by research group Global Forest Watch and analysts at the University of Maryland.
forests are also a critical tool to fight climate change. Large swaths of forest like the Amazon rainforest are carbon sinks
forests are also a critical tool to fight climate change. Large swaths of forest like the Amazon rainforest are carbon sinks, helping suck excess carbon emissions from the atmosphere.

Map shows the millions of acres of Brazilian Amazon rain forest lost last year

9 annotations

6578

first zero-emissions hydrogen train
provides an alternative to the country’s 4,000 diesel cars currently in circulation in Germany.
The train operates using a hydrogen fuel tank, stored on the roof of the vehicle, that in turn powers a fuel cell to produce electrical energy

World's first zero-emissions hydrogen train to go into service in Germany

3 annotations

energy

www.telegraph.co.uk

6774

On today’s factory farms, animals are crammed by the thousands into filthy, windowless sheds and stuffed into wire cages, metal crates, and other torturous devices
Most won’t even feel the warmth of the sun on their backs or breathe fresh air until the day they’re loaded onto trucks headed for slaughterhouses.
Antibiotics are used to make animals grow faster and to keep them alive in the unsanitary conditions
t factory farms’ widespread use of antibiotics can lead to antibiotic-resistant bacteria that threaten human health.

Factory Farming: The Industry Behind Meat and Dairy | PETA

4 annotations

pets

www.peta.org

7629

. Deposits on plastic drinks bottles and a levy on takeaway cups are a start. They tackle the problem at the sharp end, and make us more aware of the costs of our habits.
ake-out coffee and bottled water symbolise both the luxury and the waste of the early 21st century.
Greenpeace estimates that as much as half of the plastics Britain sends to China will be unacceptable.
Friday, MPs on the environmental audit committee – which last month called for a deposit scheme for plastic bottles – produced another shocking report about the impact of take-out coffee cups. They want a 25p levy applied to the 2.5bn cups used each year to pay for the recycling, which is possible but complex. And if that fails, then the MPs suggest throwaway cups should be banned altogether.

The Guardian view on recycling: throwaway economy is not cost-free | Editorial | Opinion | The Guardian

4 annotations

ecology

7442

Get the recipe: Relish Tray with D.I.Y. Eggs
2. Everyone Needs a Back-Pocket Appetizer
Get the recipe: Cacio e Pepe Chips
appetizers are the place to get creative. Here are my guidelines to ensure that the annual eating marathon starts out on the right

Here Are 7 Easy Steps To Thanksgiving Appetizer Greatness | Huffington Post

4 annotations

desserts and baking

5953

a bomb dropped from a helicopter hit the entrance of a hospital supported by the medical aid group in the rebel-held town of Latamneh in Hama province on Saturday.
The health authority of opposition-held parts of Hama blamed the attack on Syrian government warplanes.
The attack killed an orthopedic surgeon, leaving nearly 120,000 people with only two such doctors, it added.
A joint inquiry for the United Nations and the global chemical weapons watchdog has previously accused government forces of toxic gas attacks. The Syrian government has repeatedly denied using such weapons during the six-year-old war.

Air strikes hit hospital in Syria's Hama last week: MSF | Reuters

4 annotations

welfare

www.reuters.com

6564

The film follows the members of Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently (RBSS), journalists who have spent the last few years trying to document the repression and brutality in their home country.
the act of reporting has put their lives in danger, with ISIS calling for the murder of reporters
City of Ghosts” is focused not on the news, but on the people who risk everything to spread it.
Heineman finds a fascinating perspective on the unfolding tragedy, and finds heroes in an unexpected place
City of Ghosts” and “Cries From Syria,” both of which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival this weekend,
Last Men in Aleppo” premieres on Monday, and its subjects, the White Helmets or Syrian Defense League, are mentioned in both “City of Ghosts” and “Cries From Syria”

Reviews: 'City of Ghosts' and 'Cries From Syria' Showcase Heroes, Victims

6 annotations

movies and tv

www.thewrap.com

8072

Those in the 90th percentile now enjoy 54 percent more wealth than they did in 1989
Trump supporters tend to be men who lack college degrees, a group that has been on the losing end of the economy. The CBO report backs that up.
Those at the median have just 4 percent more wealth than in 1989, while the poorest have 6 percent less
the richest families have average wealth of about $4 million. The poorest now have debts that far outweigh their assets:
About 8 out of 10 registered voters who support Trump say life for people like them has gotten worse during the past 50 years, according to a new Pew Research Center poll.
While total wealth in the U.S. doubled between 1989 to 2013, only the richest Americans saw their fortunes rise

27 years of economic pain for most Americans - CBS News

6 annotations

family and parenting

www.cbsnews.com

6514

Lebanon is heavily affected by the protracted civil war in next-door Syria. One quarter of Lebanon’s population is now made up of refugees from Syria, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)
selling flowers is the reality of a poverty they were born into: a method of generating an income for their families while also being exploited by middlemen and traffickers they may or may not be related to.
Some 1,500 children are reportedly working the streets in Beirut alone according to the International Labor Organization (ILO), a number that, in reality, is thought to be at least twice as much

The Harsh Reality Of Young Syrians Vending For Their Livelihood

3 annotations

legal issues

www.buzzfeed.com

6361

most of them are in equally depressing conditions.
Dubbed "the saddest bear in the world," Pizza was trapped in a gaudily painted blue concrete cell in a shopping mall, with few toys, no sunlight and only a tiny pool to swim in.
David Foster, a supporter of Humane Society International, which is one of the many groups working to help Pizza, traveled to China and decided to visit the zoo for himself. What he saw left him shocked, he said
But while his story's a sad one, he's far from the only inmate at the shopping-mall-slash-zoo.
The whales have only a few feet to swim on either side
Grandview is home to hundreds of other animals, including Arctic foxes, wolves, walruses, belugas — who do notoriously poorly in captivity
The first sign of inadequate animal husbandry is that of a Myna bird in a cage so small it cannot even stretch its wings, let alone fly,
Once you enter the area of the beluga whales it all changes much more drastically," Foster said. "I physically took a step back at the pitiful sight of beluga in a tank so small they were almost physically longer than it was tall."
Their miniscule and dirty tank is only 2.5 times their body length and not even wide enough to stretch fully.

'Saddest' Polar Bear Isn't Only Animal Going Crazy At Nightmare Zoo

9 annotations

zoo

www.thedodo.com

4537

If we look below the surface, we can find common ground with those we perceive as most different to ourselves.
Danish TV Ad
As TV2’s video “All That We Share“ opens, Danes file quietly onto a soundstage, stepping into outlined areas on the floor — areas meant to define them.
However, a man begins to ask questions
People begin to step out of their so-called defining boxes.

This Danish TV Ad Is What The World Needs To Remember Now More Than Ever | The Huffington Post

5 annotations

movies and tv

m.huffpost.com

4412

A rare goose-beaked whale that repeatedly beached on a Norwegian shore was so ill that it had to be euthanized — and experts soon found out why.
30 plastic bags and other garbage packed in its stomach.
The plastic — as well as candy wrappers, smaller bread bags and other garbage— was discovered during the necropsy,
Lislevand said he believes the animal was in serious pain for a long time.

Beached Whale Found With 30 Plastic Bags Crammed In Its Belly | The Huffington Post

4 annotations

large animals

m.huffpost.com

11701

Almost a year and a 180 résumés later, and nothing. "Rejection after rejection," Smith said. A man can only take so much. "These last 10 months, I've lost my faith in humanity, in God, in life,” Smith said. "There were many times when shotguns looked very tempting."
Smith decided to at least make it to the new year. When he went on ksl.com to look for jobs, he saw a story KSL did on a Utah company giving suits to homeless people to help them feel confident during job interviews.
"I didn't think it would happen to me, and it did, and I owe them so much," Smith said. It's the first success story for this project.

Homeless man lands job after receiving donated new suit for interview | KSL.com

3 annotations

job search

www.ksl.com

8017

中国每年需要投资约2万亿元人民币，来让河水达到可用的标准、减轻在政治上不受欢迎的空气污染、并缓解土壤污染这一潜伏的问题。
中国公民有越来越大的意愿动员起来走上街头。
大规模的抗议活动在中国是不同寻常的，尽管城市中产阶级居民日益反对可能有损当地房地产价值以及污染附近社区的工业项目。
这些专家担心，这座工厂会污染大庆的空气和水供应。大庆市位于黑龙江省，是中国首座大型油田的所在地，中国最大的石油生产商中国石油天然气集团公司(CNPC)在该市居主导地位。

大庆民众抗议上马铝加工厂项目 - FT中文网

4 annotations

www.ftchinese.com

3880

The Bahamas are famous for sun, sand—and swimming pigs.
Veterinarians who visited the site found large quantities of sand in the deceased animals’ stomachs, which Bethune says may have been caused by a recent influx of visitors throwing small amounts of food on the beach.
The pigs have been on the island so long, they are used to foraging for natural food,” Bethune says. The pigs would only go the beach for an occasional treat.
According to that ranking, dolphin tourism and shark cage diving, both popular in the Bahamas, have negative impacts on wildlife.
with the increase in tourism, the pigs are relying on humans more than ever.
We found their natural source of water had dried up, so there wasn’t much fresh water on their island to drink,
We believe it’s a combination of factors that lead to the death of the pigs.”
The swimming pigs have populated the island for decades, but their actual origin is somewhat of a mystery.

This Is What Really Killed The Famous Swimming Pigs

8 annotations

swimming

6950

17 個人，100 分鐘，7 袋垃圾，6 個天燈。
每年施放天燈，媒體就會熱烈報導天燈垃圾佔據山頭、當地都沒做好環保，但實際上真的是這樣嗎
媒體敘述的並不相符。而且遊客帶來的垃圾更是不容小覷，絕對不下於天燈帶來的汙染
里長無奈的說：「你覺得觀光客來到十分鐵道支線遊玩，吃的、喝的、買的，所創造出來的垃圾，跟那些燈座回收後，殘留的油宣紙比起來。哪個對環境的影響更大？
一時氣憤，發起去平溪十分淨山撿天燈的活動
共有 3x 位網友報名，當天早上現場有 17 位熱心的朋友到場參與
當地的居民老奢，每天凌晨 5am 就會起床，展開他們「回收」天燈的工作
過年時所施放的大量天燈，當地居民大約在 3 天後，就完成了天燈的回收。但這部分並沒有被媒體報導
到底是天燈問題嚴重，還是垃圾問題嚴重，我想我們會非常堅定的告訴你，「垃圾」
這些不實事求是的後果，很可能一輩子不會發現我自以為事的在做對的事情，而其實根本是跟風起舞，一起扭曲事實
問題不在天燈上，而是在亂丟垃圾的問題上

「天燈重創環境」的報導對還錯？他親自上山拍照追蹤才發現輕信了媒體 | BuzzOrange

11 annotations

buzzorange.com

9258

“Two out of five of Shanghai’s landfills are already filled today. The other three would definitely be full by now if it wasn’t for them.
An informal recycler pushes his tricycle in Shanghai, China.
A 2015 report found that China was responsible for one-third of all plastic waste polluting the world’s oceans.
The World Bank has estimated that China’s solid waste production will more than double to 500 million tons annually by 2025.
Shanghai Daily reported in 2015 that the city’s residents were generating some 22,000 tons of garbage per day, at least 40 percent of which was being incinerated. Experts say the waste problem in China is getting worse every year.
Chinese authorities have begun to make domestic waste management a priority. Last year, China told the World Trade Organization that it would no longer be accepting 24 categories of imported waste from other nations, sending shockwaves across Europe and North America,
“For years, there have been no government recycling trucks or recycling bins in the city. There are no trash sorting sites either ― so everything gets dumped into one truck and incinerated or brought to a landfill,” said Huang, who rode in garbage collection trucks managed by the city government as part of her research
What’s known about the informal recycling sector in Shanghai is that individual collectors like Mr. Wang bring their items either to a recycling market, where they’ll be further sorted, or to an industrial recycling plant, where the recycling of the materials actually takes place. What is not transparent is who runs these recycling plants and whether these facilities and their owners are following legal practices that are sound for human health and the environment.

What Happens When One Of The World's Biggest Cities Doesn't Recycle | HuffPost

8 annotations

ecology

7643

out of every 10 people on the planet live in areas where air pollution breaches official safety limits
Heart attacks, strokes and lung cancer can all be caused by the particles, known as PM2.5 and PM10,
The worst countries in the world for air pollution deaths
Ambient air pollution alone kills around 3 million people each year
Only one person in 10 lives in a city that complies with the WHO air quality guidelines.
The worst countries in the world for air pollution deaths
The worst countries in the world for air pollution deaths

Health of more than 90% of world’s population affected by air pollution ‘emergency’, WHO says | The Independent

7 annotations

ecology

www.independent.co.uk

6674

in the world’s most polluted capital city
the country’s capital was suffering a health emergency
called PM2.5 – can include carcinogenic chemicals such as lead, arsenic, cadmium and mercury. Levels of PM2.5 in Delhi on Tuesday reached 710 micrograms per cubic metre
Delhi as the world’s most polluted capital, with air quality levels worse than Beijing.
Levels of airborne pollutants are off the scale in parts of India’s capital
concentrations of fine pollutants smaller than 2.5 micro-metres – tiny enough to evade the body’s natural filters and permeate the blood-brain barrier.
Delhi’s air quality is extremely poor for most of the year due to road dust, open fires, vehicle exhaust fumes, industrial emissions and the burning of crop residues
about 2.5 million Indians die each year from pollution, the highest number in the world

Delhi doctors declare pollution emergency as smog chokes city | World news | The Guardian

8 annotations

ecology

7536

They can call it sport, charity or even conservation but it’s just another cruel circus with animals controlled by bullhooks for human entertainment.
The elephants forced to play polo each year are still controlled with bullhooks – a sharpened metal hook jabbed into the skin. No matter how gently the bullhook may be used with an animal in the arena, at some point it had to be established as a negative reinforcer to be effective.
Bangkok hosted the annual King’s Cup, an elephant polo competition with the publicly stated aim of raising money for conservation.
we must never lose sight of the fact that these animals were not born to perform

Elephants playing polo at “conservation” event sends all the wrong messages

4 annotations

large animals

www.animalsasia.org

6972

biologist Rannveig Magnúsdóttir, who works for the Icelandic Environment Association, told the Iceland Review Online. “I think our cousins in Norway and Scotland laugh at the fact that they can sell Icelanders ice.”
while the imported ice may look cheaper on your grocery bill, there are hidden costs to the environment
Iceland Imports Ice
the ships emit green house gases,” she said.
according to the Grapevine, the imported ice can be up to 40 percent cheaper than ice cubes made in Iceland

Iceland Imports Ice; and It's Cheaper Than 'Homegrown' | The Weather Channel

5 annotations

weather.com

6640

In Taipei, activists will now turn their attention to influencing how legislators interpret the ruling and what that means for same-sex couples and families.
Taiwan’s Constitutional Court on Wednesday ruled in favor of allowing same-sex marriage
the first place in Asia to legalize same-sex unions
Over the past year, religious groups mobilized against marriage equality, claiming that same-sex marriage threatens children and families
“Without a doubt, Taiwan is walking in front of other Asian countries on this,” said Ying Xin, executive director of the Beijing LGBT Center

Taiwan on track to become the first country in Asia to legalize same-sex marriage - The Washington Post

5 annotations

social institution

www.washingtonpost.com

8856

golf course took three years to make and drew much ire
Today, the Olympic Village has turned into a ghost town
Rio Olympics
Time and again we have seen Olympic hosts promise that the billions of dollars spent on the two-week spectacle would have a lasting effect on the local economy
because there is nobody to pay the energy bill.
One practice pool has turned orange
Quite symbolically, this set of Olympic rings is half covered.
Seats have been pried from the stands.
The media center was recently demolished and is now a health hazard.
Craziest of all, the Olympics were only six months ago.

Rio Olympic venues are abandoned just 6 months after the games - Business Insider

10 annotations

olympics

japan-magazine.jnto.go.jp

8363

How do you throw away a cup of coffee in San Francisco?
San Francisco turns food waste into nutrient-rich and profitable compost.
You take the lid off and put it in the recycle bin. The soiled cup goes in the compost bin.
By comparison, only three of Arizona’s 10 largest cities offer any sort of curbside compost collection, and those programs prohibit residential food waste in the bins.
Eight years ago, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed the Mandatory Recycling & Composting Ordinance. Among other things, it requires everyone, from residents to tourists, to separate their trash into one of three bins: recycling, landfill and compost.
The law requiring food waste to be composted is part of San Francisco’s aggressive goal to hit zero waste by 2020. In other words, in less than three years, the city wants all of its waste to be recycled or composted, rather than sent to landfills.
The Ferry Building’s Big Belly trash cans are color-coded (black for landfill, blue for recycle and green for organics) and labeled in English, Chinese and Spanish. Large posters on the front show what can be thrown in each bin.
Making compost on an industrial scale is a Rube Goldberg machine of shredding, moisture monitoring and aeration. In San Francisco, it’s done at facilities outside the city limits. Before the process starts, the organic materials go through a series of screenings to weed out contaminants.
Recology sells compost by the cubic yard and keeps the profits. Prices start at about $9 a yard, according to Reed.
San Francisco residents pay less per month for their recycle and compost bins than they do for their landfill bins. It’s a financial incentive to encourage participation, Rodriguez said.
Of that, about 650 tons per day is compost and 625 tons is recyclables, he said, making San Francisco one of the only cities in America where curbside composting has surpassed recycling.

San Francisco's mandatory composting law turns food waste into profit

11 annotations

ecology

www.azcentral.com

7991

This interactive map shows why renewables and natural gas are taking over the US - Vox

energy

www.vox.com

11006

櫻花羊羹
紅色食用色素將以白扁豆為原料的白餡染成粉紅色，再以大菜凝固成四方體的櫻花羊羹。有些會混入了鹽漬櫻葉或櫻花，有些則有兩層味道。
櫻花乾甜點
乾甜點是將混入了大米粉及砂糖等東西的材料倒入模具中成形，然後將它烘乾的和甜點。春天時會有櫻花花瓣及花蕾等形狀的乾甜點登場

品嚐櫻花甜點，感受日本春天 | 日本最新動態電子雜誌

4 annotations

8352

waste management
the Nordic nation uses the best quality waste-to-energy (WTE) conversion procedure to ensure that the waste that is generated is recycled into energy that is used to distribute electricity and heat to a large percentage of households
Each Swede produces just over 500 kg or half a ton of household waste every year
Sweden imports garbage from neighbouring European nations, amounting to about eight hundred thousand tons of trash from the UK, Italy, Norway, and Ireland to ensure that their power plants stay up and running.
Waste incineration provides heat corresponding to the needs of 810,000 homes, around 20 per cent of all the district-heating produced.
Norway pays Sweden to take the waste off their hands, while Sweden gets a regular supply of electricity and heat.

Sweden has a thing or two to teach the world about waste management | catchnews

6 annotations

music

www.catchnews.com

14854

As the Atlantic continues to heat up, the trend is widely expected to be towards more powerful and wetter storms, so that Matthew might seem like pretty small beer when looked back on from the mid-century.
it will see a rise in the frequency of the most powerful, and therefore more destructive, variety
This view was supported recently by Kerry Emanuel, a hurricane scientist at MIT, who pointed to Matthew as a likely sign of things to come.
huge volume of rain dumped by tropical cyclones, leading to severe flooding, may also be linked to earthquakes
convincing evidence for a link between typhoons barrelling across Taiwan and the timing of small earthquakes beneath the island. T
During the summer monsoon season, prodigious quantities of rain soak into the lowlands of the Indo-Gangetic plain, immediately to the south of the mountain range, which then slowly drains away over the next few months. This annual rainwater loading and unloading of the crust is mirrored by the level of earthquake activity,
rainfall also influences the pattern of earthquake activity in the Himalayas, where the 2015 Nepal earthquake took close to 9,000 lives,
In high mountain ranges across the world from the Caucasus in the north to New Zealand’s southern Alps, longer and more intense heatwaves are melting the ice and thawing the permafrost that keeps mountain faces intact, leading to a rise in major landslides.
one of the key places to watch will be Greenland,
a staggering loss of 272bn tonnes of ice a year over the last decade
future ice loss may trigger earthquakes of intermediate to large magnitude

How climate change triggers earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanoes | World news | The Guardian

11 annotations

geology

www.huffingtonpost.com.au

10614

Surging sea levels
Far fewer species
Millions more living in poverty
Far less sea ice in the Arctic Ocean

6 Things Children Born This Year Will Experience In Their 20s | HuffPost Australia

4 annotations

energy

7289

沙塵暴的發源地位於甘肅、寧夏和內蒙古交界處的戈壁南緣
地區的沙漠呈現擴大之勢
測量PM10（直徑不大於10微米的顆粒物）的空氣質量指數高高徘徊在900到999
中國的政策制定者已嘗試各種方法來抗擊從不斷擴張的戈壁刮來的沙塵
999是空氣質量指數應用給出的讀數上限。世界衛生組織(WHO)的指南建議，該指數不應高於50
數十年的濫砍濫伐和過度放牧是造成該地區沙漠化的罪魁禍首
煤炭開采和發電站也是肇因
綽號“綠色長城”的防護林帶。這條在中國北方種植起的防護林帶最終將綿延4500公里、包含1000億棵樹

北京遭遇沙塵暴空氣質量指數爆表 - FT中文網

8 annotations

big5.ftchinese.com

5511

revealing that three-quarters of 276 national parks are experiencing an earlier onset of spring
Biological invasions are a really big deal in the national
the onset of spring is earlier than 95 percent of the historical range
one of the invasive species that park staff struggle with most is buffelgrass.
The purpose of the current report is to give staff at individual parks a sense of how climate change is affecting their sites

Climate Change Is Causing Earlier Springs in National Parks

5 annotations

tourist destinations

blogs.discovermagazine.com

7167

the worst areas are in dark red
Billions of data points are collected daily
AirVisual also launched a "Node" air quality monitor this year that informs people about the air quality both inside and outside their homes. It won a French award for start-ups
the greatest concern is about a form of pollution called PM2.5, referring to particles smaller than 2.5 micrometers — so small that they can travel through the lungs and into the bloodstream
This three-dimensional interactive world map, produced by an award-winning French start-up company based in Beijing

This stunning world map shows the awful state of air pollution - The Washington Post

5 annotations

ecology

www.washingtonpost.com

6740

The visualization linked to the screenshot above shows just how dramatic the downward trend in Arctic sea ice volume has been since 1979.
The first image, captured by the Terra satellite in 2014, shows extensive snow cover around Alaska’s Brooks Range (to the left), and sea ice forming offshore. The second image, from the Aqua satellite in 2016, shows the same region — mostly snow- and ice-free.
The chart at right compares the evolution of Arctic sea ice extent during 2007, 2012 and 2016. This year is plotted in red.
Why has Arctic sea ice been growing so slowly in the past couple of weeks? Once again, Scambos says warm ocean temperatures are probably implicated. And it looks like that relatively warm sea surface may be having an effect on the air temperature above it:
In fact, the Arctic overall has been warming faster than any other region on Earth, thanks to emissions of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere

Arctic sea ice trends near a record low for this time of year - ImaGeo

5 annotations

weather

13716

IKEA has revealed it will be using solar powered electric rickshaws as its chosen form of delivery vehicle in india.
the electric rickshaws will be charged at their store using 4,000 solar powers installed on the building’s roof with the excess electricity used to provide electricity for lighting and other uses inside the store
ndi

IKEA's first india store will use solar powered electric rickshaws for deliveries

3 annotations

racism

www.designboom.com

6957

Your debt to income ratio wouldn’t be much higher than 30 percent after taking the mortgage (although lenders may give loans even if it is as high as 43 percent).
It should be a priority if you meet these criteria:
The longevity of a home has a lot to do with the materials you use inside for countertops, walls and flooring. If you plan on handing it down to your children and getting years of use, you may want to use engineered hardwood instead of solid, granite or quartz countertops.
– You plan on staying in the same area for at least a couple of years.

Everything Millennials Need To Know About Buying Their First Home

4 annotations

careers

elitedaily.com

4293

PETA’s eyewitness footage tells another story. Take a look at the way hens really live on a farm that supplies eggs to Nellie’s—which are “certified humane
A veterinarian who viewed the footage stated, “In my opinion, these escape portals are ‘window-dressing’ that allows the producer to designate this production system as ‘cage-free’ and ‘free-range’ without any substantial improvement in the quality of the hens’ lives.”
Even though the birds weren’t kept in cages, they still had only a little more than a square foot of space each. Such restricted space prevents chickens from performing natural types of behavior, such as extending their wings, stretching their necks for foraging activities, and properly roosting and resting.
Even though Nellie’s claims that the chickens “roam where they please” and “have easy access to the outdoors,” that access was severely restricted on this farm. Hens could get outside only through small hatches and had to risk pushing past many other frantic or socially dominant birds who were also attempting to go out

Chickens Crammed Inside Shed on 'Free-Range' Farm - PETA Investigations

4 annotations

agriculture and forestry

investigations.peta.org

7004

the new poll found that 67% of Americans favored a nationwide assault weapons ban, a rate that rose steadily over the last five years. In 2013, just 56% of voters said they supported an assault weapons ban.
If you think Americans are largely unmoved by the mass shootings, you should think again," Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll, said in a statement
A new Quinnipiac poll released Tuesday found that two-thirds of American voters support stricter gun laws, reaching the highest level in the poll's history.

New poll shows support for stricter gun control is at an all-time high - Business Insider

3 annotations

government

7733

How Your Consumption Habits Impact Wildlife
maps could be useful for finding the most efficient ways to protect critical areas
study published in Nature Ecology & Evolution.
The resulting maps can tell which countries and which commodities, threaten species at the various hotspots,
The U.S. also has high biodiversity footprint in southern Spain and Portugal, due to their impacts on threatened fish and bird species.
consumption in Japan is driving threat hotspots in Southeast Asia, and around Colombo and southern Sri Lanka, where threats are linked to tea, rubber and other manufactured goods sent to Japan.
Once you connect the environmental impact to a supply chain, then many people along the supply chain,

This Map Shows How Your Consumption Habits Impact Wildlife Thousands of Miles Away

7 annotations

ecology

www.ecowatch.com

15249

When Craig Reucassel last year stood atop a giant pile of freshly picked Queensland bananas – edible yet destined to rot because they didn’t meet supermarkets’ bizarre cosmetic requirement
The IHE Delft institute for water education for example, estimates about 1600 litres of water is needed to grow just one kilo of wheat in Australia – discard the bread that wheat turns into, and that water has been spent for nothing.
Shoppers can help to halt the madness by embracing “ugly” food. Woolworths offers the cheaper “odd bunch” range,
Here’s our guide on how to help.
rotting food in landfill gives off greenhouse gases, further harming the environment.
Small businesses are also popping up to rescue ugly yet edible produce,

Embrace 'ugly' fruit and compost: cutting back on food waste | Life and style | The Guardian

6 annotations

ecology

7360

"The full magnitude of risks of ingesting microplastics are yet to be fully investigated,"
A study, in the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution, says the creatures may be swallowing hundreds of tiny bits of plastic a day.
Whale sharks feeding in the Sea of Cortez off Mexico's Baja Peninsula, which is an important breeding ground, are estimated to ingest under 200 pieces of plastic per day.
, toxin exposure through plastic ingestion could affect many biological processes, such as growth and reproduction,
Studies have shown chemicals associated with plastics in the bodies of whale sharks and fin whales
Fin whales in the Mediterranean Sea are thought to be swallowing closer to 2,000 microplastic particles per day.
The researchers say there have been reports of 800kg of plastic found in the carcass of a stranded whale in France and another in Australia

Plastic pollution: Scientists' plea on threat to ocean giants - BBC News

7 annotations

large animals

7382

devastating floods in Pakistan, pangolin smuggling in Thailand, wildflowers in bloom across the Atacama Desert in Chile, and much more.
An aerial view shows buses parked close together after dropping Muslim pilgrims off near Mount Arafat,
Flowers bloom at the Huasco region of the Atacama desert, 600 km north of Santiago, Chile,
Smoke and flames rise during clashes between joint forces of Iraqi army and Shi'ite Popular Mobilization Forces fighting Islamic State militants in Tal Afar,
Pakistani commuters travel on a flooded street following heavy rainfall in Karachi, Pakistan, on August 31, 2017.
A man carries Buthaina Muhammad Mansour, believed to be four or five years old, rescued from the site of a Saudi-led airstrike that killed eight of her family members in Sanaa, Yemen, on August 25, 2017.

Photos of the Week: 8/26–9/1 - The Atlantic

6 annotations

www.theatlantic.com

8122

One of the most striking of the 40 indicators assessed by the researchers was a huge increase in the number of people over 65 exposed to extreme heat.
The impacts of climate change are not limited to poorer nations, said Dr Toby Hillman, at the Royal College of Physicians, but also affect developed nations like the UK. He said air pollution kills about 40,000 in the UK each year
Heatwaves are affecting many more vulnerable people and global warming is boosting the transmission of deadly diseases such as dengue fever, the world’s most rapidly spreading disease
The findings, published in the Lancet journal, come from researchers at 26 institutions around the world,
This rose by 125 million between 2000 and 2016 and worries doctors because older people are especially vulnerable to heat.
Dengue is also known as “breakbone fever” due to the pain it causes and infections have doubled in each decade since 1990, now reaching up to 100m infections a year now.
70,000 deaths that resulted from the 2003 heatwave in Europe looked small compared to the long-term trends: “We were alarmed when we saw this.”
hotter and more humid weather was increasingly creating conditions in which it is impossible to work outside. In 2016, this caused work equivalent to almost a million people to be lost, half in India alone.
Patients queue for treatment following an outbreak of dengue fever in Bhopal, India this month. Photograph: Sanjeev Gupta/EPA
Nearly 700,000 persons have been internally displaced in Somalia as a result of the drought and food crisis, reports say. Photograph: Peter Caton/Mercy Corps

Climate change already bringing disease, air pollution and heatwaves | Environment | The Guardian

10 annotations

disease

7788

health
We asked Andy Bellatti — a registered dietitian and the cofounder of Dietitians for Professional Integrity — for advice about which "health foods" are actually not worth eating.
When you juice fresh fruits and veggies, you remove their fiber
By themselves, almonds are protein powerhouses. But by volume, a typical glass of almond milk is only about 2% almonds and contains almost no protein.
So if you're looking for a truly healthy alternative, opt for soy, skim, or low-fat milk.
Bottled water is not cleaner or healthier than most tap water in the US
92% of the America's 53,000 local water systems meet or exceed federal safety standards and are at least as clean and often cleaner than bottled water.
No one needs to detox. Unless you've been poisoned,
coconut oil has a whopping 12 grams of saturated fat and just 1 gram of healthy fat. Experts suggest avoiding saturated fats because they've been linked with high cholesterol and a risk of Type 2 diabetes.

Healthy food misconceptions and myths

9 annotations

disease

6795

翠玉パフェ
茶々セット
パフェとそば又はうどんのセットです。パフェは次の４種からお選びいただけます。宇治パフェ・白玉パフェ・ほうじ茶パフェ・玄米茶パフェ。

都路里のメニュー｜茶寮都路里

3 annotations

beverages

www.giontsujiri.co.jp

5586

one of the world's biggest pulp mills which started production on Indonesia's Sumatra island
giant Asia Pulp and Paper (APP) was sourcing raw materials mostly from trees grown on drained peatlands, where haze-belching fires occur every year
Vast areas of peatland, which store carbon, have been drained in recent years using networks of canals to convert them into plantations for trees to produce pulp and palm oil.
Huge fires erupt on and around plantation land every year on Sumatra, much of it in peat.

One of the World’s Biggest Pulp Mills Is Devastating Indonesia's Environment - Seeker

4 annotations

news

www.seeker.com

7403

pigs are social, playful, protective animals who bond with each other, make nests, relax in the sun, and cool off in the mud.
Pigs have been documented showing empathy for other pigs who are happy or distressed
Pigs have very long memories. Dr. Stanley Curtis, formerly of Penn State University, put a ball, a Frisbee, and a dumbbell in front of several pigs and was able to teach them to jump over, sit next to, or fetch any of the objects when asked to, and they could distinguish between the objects three years later.
Pigs have been known to save the lives of others, including their human friends
, a pig who saved a young boy from drowning; Spammy, who led firefighters to a burning shed to save her calf friend Spot; and Lulu, who found help for her human companion, who had collapsed from a heart attack. A pig named Tunia chased away an intruder, and another, named Mona, held a fleeing suspect’s leg until the police arrived.

The Hidden Lives of Pigs | PETA

5 annotations

movies

www.peta.org

7392

In the first year of this program, we reduced growth in our vacation liability—the cost of time off
and some of our business managers asked us to reconsider the program.

Why I'll Keep Paying Employees To Take Vacation | The Huffington Post

2 annotations

business and industrial