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Coastal Barriers Can Clean the Ocean

January 21, 2016 By Germaine Hicks Leave a Comment

"dead bird with a stomach full of plastic"

Plastic waste greatly affects animals, especially because of its bright colors that makes it resemble small fish.

Ocean pollution is one of the main concerns of environmental activists. New ways of cleaning it up are being tested, and it seems that coastal barriers can clean the ocean better than nets designed to gather the plastic from the Great Garbage Patch of the Pacific.

According to the latest research, there are around 51 trillion particles of plastic floating around in the oceans. This means over 236,000 MT of waste that is harming or killing marine animals. The Project for Ocean Cleanup proposed the deployment of special barriers that could collect the plastic waste from the areas that are most affected.

The Great Garbage Patch of the Pacific Ocean, or the trash vortex of the Pacific, is a gyre made out of marine debris particles and it can be found in the North Pacific Ocean. The area is not only made out of stray plastic but also chemical sludge and other debris that harm the marine population. Most of the birds that fly in the area are found dead with big amounts of plastic remnants in their stomachs.

Another area of high plastic pollution are the coastal areas of China and Indonesia. The countries are developing in a very fast pace and this leads to enormous amounts of waste that are discarded in the Ocean. What oceanographers propose is to mount barriers along the coastlines to prevent the debris from floating away into the ocean, thus stopping it before it could do any real harm.

Erik van Sebille and Peter Sherman are two of the oceanographers that are suggesting the coastal barriers can clean the ocean. They have ran computer simulations based on data collected from a buoy that was satellite-tracked and concluded that such a measure would help clean almost a third of the plastic debris found in the ocean.

The solution proposed by the two scientists is logical, they are only trying to eliminate the evil by cutting its roots. Because most of the polluting material is discarded near the coasts, it’s only natural that they think of a way to stop it from reaching the outer ocean and harm many sea creatures in its way.

The bad news is coastal barriers can clean the ocean only by a third. There will be plenty of plastic left in our waters to further harm marine life. The best solution would be to mount the barriers and try to collect the plastic that is already floating freely on the ocean’s surface.

Image source: www.amazonaws.com

Filed Under: Tech & Science Tagged With: china, coast line barriers, dead marine animals, Great Garbage Patch of the Pacific., Indonesia, plastic in the ocean, plastic ocean pollution, polluters

Researchers Named New Mottled Bird Specie After 15 Years

November 26, 2014 By Germaine Hicks Leave a Comment

new bird specie found

An International Group of Researchers verified the discovery of an entirely new bird specie. The bird was first spotted nearly 15 years ago in the island of Indonesia.

It is pretty rare to find such kind of bird even in the island of Indonesia. Hence, researchers took such a long time to identify the new species of bird.

Two years ago, scientists got hold of two specimen from the Central Sulawesi. The team spent nearly 3-4 weeks in the forests of Indonesia to catch the bird. Afterwards, scientists closely examined each and every aspect of the specie.

Later on, experts realized that the bird is pretty similar to another specie known as Gray Streaked Flycatcher. Therefore, researchers gave it a name similar to Gray Streaked Flycatcher. They called the new specie Sulawesi Streaked Flycatcher.

The body structure, genetics of the bird makes it distinct from the rest of the bird. It has a mottled throat and short wings that are quite difficult to find in other birds. Generally, the bird survive in an area that is full of cocoa plantation. Fortunately, the specie is safe from the dangers of annihilation.

J.Berton, a postdoctoral fellow of Princeton University expressed that scientists believe that they have identified nearly 98 percent birds of the world. Therefore, the new discovery is pretty astonishing for the researchers. Generally, the avian hotspot is considered pretty significant in terms of researcher. Thus Far, ornithologists merely studied a small part of that region.

The experts from Princeton University collaborated with researchers of Michigan State University for this particular study.  They printed the report in the latest edition of Journal PLOS One.

Filed Under: Tech & Science Tagged With: Central Sulawesi, Gray Streaked Flycatcher, Indonesia, Indonesian bird, Journal Plos One, new bird specie, Princeton University

Preterm Complications, Major Cause of Death In Infants: Study Reveals

November 17, 2014 By Germaine Hicks Leave a Comment

Preterm-birth-complications

The preterm birth complications now outrank all other reasons of death for infants. Out of more than 6.3 million deaths of infants under age five in 2013, about 1 million occurred because of preterm issues. The study was published on 17th Nov, the World’s Prematurity Day.

The recent study shows up in the Lancet medical journal. It’s a synergistic collaboration of scientists from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the World Health Organization (WHO)..

The major part of the deaths constitutes direct preterm births complications happened in the initial 28-days of life – with another 125,000 deaths happening between one month and five years.

“Throughout the last few years the extent of deaths because of preterm births has been expanding. The purpose behind this is that we don’t generally have significant intercessions set up to evade preterm births – and second, to oversee them in most groups where they happen, Dr. Andres de Francisco, interval official executive of the Geneva-based Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health, said.

Preterm birth complications are a global issue, he added.

“We have countries in Africa, for instance – Nigeria – or in Asia – India and Pakistan – that have tremendously high numbers of children that are dying due to preterm births. Anyhow, this is not just an issue in developing nations. This is additionally an issue that affects developed nations, too.”

India really beat the rundown, emulated by Nigeria, Pakistan, the DRC, China, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Ethiopia, Angola and Kenya. Specialists caution the Ebola flare-up in West Africa raises the danger of preterm complications in the affected countries.

The ascent in deaths from preterm birth complications really harmonizes with a staged decrease in the overall death rate of kids under five.

“Mortality is declining by around 3.9% every year, which is an extremely noteworthy decline of mortality – and it’s because of a ton of interventions that we have in stock, including reducing the mortality because of contagious ailments, for example, pneumonia, diarrhea and malaria, among others,” he said.

A portion of the intercessions credited for the death rate decrease include vaccines, bed nets, antibiotics, anti-malarial and HIV treatments.

Yet Dr. de Francisco said the death rate for preterm children has declined by a much diminutive rate of 2% a year. The major reason, he says, is an absence of sufficient intercessions. Furthermore, at this moment, it’s not clear what the best intercessions are, besides addressing obesity, HBP and hypertension.

Moreover, the study said generally its not fully recognized what triggers preterm labor – and about 50% of preterm births happen impulsively.

“This is why, reason for mortality needs to be contemplated significantly and in much more concentrated way. Since if we don’t know the reasons – if we don’t know the factors – pregnancy is going to end in a preterm birth. Furthermore this needs to be the center of escalated research,” de Francisco said.

An intensive research amounting $250-million is getting underway through four noteworthy activities: the Global Coalition to Advance Preterm Birth Research; the March of Dimes; the University of California at San Francisco’s Preterm Birth Initiative; and the Global Alliance to Prevent Prematurity and Stillbirth.

“If we support these research programs, in the following five years or so, we will be able to have intercessions that are going to help the lessening of mortality in these little children,” he said.

 

Filed Under: Health Tagged With: Africa, Angola, Asia, Bangladesh, de Francisco, Ethiopia, Global Alliance to Prevent Prematurity, Global Coalition to Advance Preterm Birth Research, HIV, Indonesia, Kenya, malaria, morality rate, Pakistan, premature babies, Preterm birth, Stillbirth, the March of Dimes, the University of California at San Francisco's Preterm Birth Initiative

Indonesian Cave Paintings: May Be Among the Oldest Known!

October 9, 2014 By Brian Galloway Leave a Comment

indonesian-cave

Have you ever seen the Indonesian Cave Paintings before? Well, nothing is more striking than the blank stone surface to instigate the common urge to make art.

A team of researchers have discovered several hand and animal paintings in 7-limestone caves on the Indonesian Island of Sulawesi, which they believed to be most primitive European Cave Art, as reported in ‘Nature’ journal on Wednesday.

Up till now, the oldest cave painting discovered yet is about 40,800-year-old red disk from El Castillo, in northern Spain.

Moreover, some of the human origins archaeologists stated that, the latest results were fantastic and at the same time unexpected too. Sulawesi’s cave art, which was firstly portrayed in the era of 50s and formerly been, sacked as no more than 10,000 years old.

Nicholas Conard, an archaeologist at the University of Tübingen in Germany stated in his email, “this is really good news, and the only astonishing thing is not that similar findings would be present somewhere else, but rather that it has been so hard to find them till now.”

“The recent findings actually make sense. It supports a primitive exploitation of modern humans eastward to Southeast Asia and Australasia, and so having art of a similar age is logical too,” Eric Delson, a paleoanthropologist at Lehman College of the City University of New York says.

Team of researchers from Australia and Indonesia (authors of new study), used uranium decay method in order to date the substance that covers the wall paintings, a mineral called calcite, formed by water flowing through the limestone in the cave. However, the art beneath is probably older than the crust.

Two lead authors of the study, Maxime Aubert and Adam Brumm at Griffith University in Queensland, Australia inspected 12 metaphors of human hands and two symbolic animal depictions at the cave sites.

The most primitive images, with the age of 39,900 years are believed to be the oldest known stenciled outlines of human hands in the world, researchers claimed.

In addition, a painting of an animal named as pig deer, of the species babirusa was seemed to be of around 35,400 years-old. The researchers said that, this is amongst the earliest dated symbolic depiction worldwide, if not the earliest one.

Another painting of a rhinoceros from Chauvet Cave in France is around 35,000 years old, though some archaeologists have inquired about that estimate.

Certainly, one of the most famous rock art in the Sulawesi region was developed by the Australian Aborigines, modern humans who arrived almost 50,000 years ago. However, not any of the surviving rock art is older than 30,000 years.

Dr. Aubert said in an announcement issued by Griffith University, Sulawesi dates confront the long apprehended view about the origins of cave art in a flare-up of human creativity centered on Western Europe about 40,000 years ago.

Instead, the artistic vividness required developing the realistic portrayals of horses and other animals much later at famous sites such as Chauvet and Lascaux in France might have predominantly deep roots within the human ancestry.

In contrast, Wil Roebroeks, a specialist in human origins studies at Leiden University in the Netherlands, wrote “it’s too early to predict the discovery’s deeper implications. Though, rock art was a major part of the cultural range of settling modern humans, from Western Europe to southeast and beyond, or whether such practices developed separately in various regions, is anonymous.”

“I long argued for what I call polycentric mosaic modernity, which actually depicts analogous cultural innovations happening in different contexts with the stretching of contemporary Homo sapiens around the globe and displaced archaic hominins,” Dr. Conard, of Tübingen University stated.

He further stated that, “One would anticipate diverse regions in order to have idiosyncratic signatures and to put in to the story in their own way.”

Additionally, Dr. Delson, of CUNY said, “I would probably favor the idea that art came as part of the ‘baggage’ of Homo sapiens since they spread into Eurasia. As we all know that the most of the cultural features once thought to have developed in western Eurasia in fact occurred far earlier in Africa.”

Dr. Aubert and Dr. Brumm stated in their report, “It is not possible that the rock art appeared separately around the same time and at almost both ends of the spatial distribution of early modern humans. Though, the alternative situation is that the first Homo sapiens broadly practiced cave painting to leave Africa tens of thousands of years earlier.”

If this is true (which Australian-Indonesian team anticipated), then we can forecast future discoveries of human hands depictions, symbolic art and other forms of image-making dating to the earliest period of the worldwide diffusion of our species.”

 

Filed Under: Tech & Science Tagged With: Cave Paintings, Dr. Aubert, Dr. Brumm, Dr. Delson, El Castillo, European Cave Art, Indonesia, Island of Sulawesi, Leiden University in the Netherlands, Nicholas Conard, Northern Spain, Wil Roebroeks

WWF Report Shows How The Last 40 Years Affected The Population Of Wildlife: Report

September 30, 2014 By Rebecca McGhee Leave a Comment

wildlife-affected-in-40-years

According to the recent reports of WWF (World Wide Fund), the population of fish, birds, mammals, amphibians and reptiles chop down by 52% within 1970 to 2010, which believes to be far faster than ever thought.

On the other hand, the report of conservation group’s Living Planet, published every 2 years, stated that, the demands of human kinds are increased by 50%, which seems more than that the nature bears, trees felled, ground water pumped, CO2 emissions increased more than the Earth can bear (Reuters).

Ken Norris (Director of Science at the Zoological Society of London) stated, “This huge damage is not foreseeable, though the outcome of the way we choose to live.”

Moreover, the report stated that we can still cope with this situation if politicians and businesses took the right actions to save nature.

International Director of WWF, General Marco Lambertini stated, “It’s quite vital that we grab the opportunity in order to develop a sustainable future where people could live and prosper in harmony with nature.”

He further stated that we can’t preserve the nature by only protecting wild places, though it’s also about conservation of the humanity’s future, indeed, our only way to survive.

The major declines were in tropical regions, especially Latin America, report results on the populations of vertebrate wildlife discovered. WWF, which believes to be a “Living Planet Index”, is relying on the trends in 10,380 populations of 3,038 mammal, bird, reptile, and amphibian and fish species.

WWF told, the average 52% decline is much larger than the previously published reports, partially because these studies has based on more readily accessible information from Europe & North-America. According to the same report published 2 years back, stated the decline of 28% within 1970 to 2008.

Certainly, the worst decline was believed to be amongst the population of fresh water species, which is declined to 76% till 2010. On the other hand, marine and terrestrial decline is by 39%.

The report stated that, the major reason for the decline in populations happened due to the loss of natural habitats, exploitation due to hunting and fishing and most importantly due to climate change.

In order to measure the variation between the statistics of different countries experimental impact, the report gauged that how large an ‘ecological footprint’ each one had and how much productive land and water area, or “bio-capacity”, each country accounted for.

Furthermore the report revealed that Kuwaitis followed by Qatar and UAE had seems to be the largest ecological footprint so far, as they are consuming and wasting more resources as compared to any other nation.

The report stated, “ If everyone on this planet have the same footprint as of Kuwait & Qatar resident, then we probably need 4.8 planets and if we lived similar to an USA resident, then we need 3.9 planets.”

Some poorer countries such as India, Indonesia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo also had ecological footprint that seems fine with the planet’s ability to absorb their demands.

Filed Under: Tech & Science Tagged With: Amphibians, biodiversity, birds, CO2, Democratic Republic of Congo, Earth, fish, India, Indonesia, Ken Norris, Kuwait, Living Planet Index, mammals, Marco Lambertini, population, Qatar, reptiles, USA, wildlife, World Wide Fund, WWF

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