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Charles Darwin's Birthday Feb 12th
February 12, 2012 07:10 AM - Laura Sutherland, ARKive.org
Sunday 12th February 2012 marks what would have been Darwin’s 203rd birthday, so we have decided to take a look back at the life of the father of evolutionary biology, Charles Robert Darwin. Quite possibly the most famous biologist in history, Darwin was born on February 12th 1809 in Shrewsbury. His father was a doctor and Charles looked to be following in his footsteps when he enrolled at the University of Edinburgh to study medicine in 1825. However neither medicine nor theology, which he later studied at Cambridge, was able to captivate the young Darwin as much as his passion for natural history — which can only be seen as a good thing for the advancement of science!
Wolves return, will they be hunted in National Parks?
February 11, 2012 08:06 AM - Elizabeth Shogren, NPR
Gray wolves were taken off the endangered species list in Idaho and Montana last year and put under state control. But they're still on the list in neighboring Wyoming. That's because Wyoming has been the most aggressive about wanting to kill wolves.
Wild Lions Live in Constant Fear
February 10, 2012 04:38 PM - Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News
Some lions in the wild now live within a "landscape of fear" as a result of threats posed by humans. Lions have drastically changed the way they behave and perceive their environment because of new, numerous and deadly clashes with humans, according to a new study, published in the Journal of Applied Ecology.
Volkswagen's Chattanooga Plant Gets LEED-Platinum Certification
February 10, 2012 08:48 AM - Editor, Sustainablebusiness.com
Volkswagen's Chattanooga, Tennessee facility has achieved the world's first LEED-Platinum green building certification for an automotive manufacturing plant. The $1 billion production facility makes the 2012 Passat.
Call for new indicators of sustainable development
February 10, 2012 08:39 AM - T.V. Padma, Science and Development Network
The world must develop different indicators on sustainable development that are not biased against developing countries, a major conference has heard. Bharrat Jagdeo, former president of Guyana, said current assessments and rankings use indicators such as access to potable water and sanitation, or malaria levels, which automatically rank developed countries higher.
The Decline of Wild Salmon
February 10, 2012 08:12 AM - Andy Soos, ENN
The Chinook salmon, Oncorhynchus tshawytscha, is the largest species in the pacific (Oncorhynchus) salmon family. Other commonly used names for the species include King salmon, Quinnat salmon, Spring salmon and Tyee salmon. Chinook are an anadromous fish native to the north Pacific Ocean and the river systems of western North America ranging from California to Alaska. Scientists have found that only about ten percent of the fall-run Chinook salmon spawning in California's Mokelumne River are naturally produced wild salmon. A massive influx of hatchery-raised fish that return to spawn in the wild is masking the fact that too few wild fish are returning to sustain a natural population in the river. The study, published in the online journal PLoS ONE, highlights the danger of relying on ordinary census techniques to evaluate the health of wild salmon populations and their habitats. Most hatchery fish in California are unmarked and therefore undetectable in population surveys. For this study, the researchers were able to identify hatchery fish by using a novel technique to detect traces of a hatchery diet preserved in the ear bones of adult fish.
World's biggest offshore wind farm officially connected to the Grid
February 10, 2012 07:44 AM - Click Green Staff, ClickGreen
The world's biggest offshore wind farm was officially opened today after record-fast construction in the middle of the Irish Sea. The 102 turbines of the two connected Walney wind farms cover an area of 73 square-kilometres and were formally connected to the National Grid in a ceremony today. With a capacity of 367.2MW, the huge project can provide low-carbon, green electricity to 320,000 homes. The generating capacity of each turbine, supplied by Siemens Wind Power, is 3.6MW, and the rotor diameter of the turbines is 107m for Walney 1 and 120m for Walney 2, with a maximum height of 150m from sea level to blade tip.
Himalayan Ice melt less than thought
February 10, 2012 07:04 AM - Miguel Llanos, msnbc.com
Estimates from satellite monitoring suggest the melt rate from the Himalayas and other high-altitude Asian mountains in recent years was much less than what scientists on the ground had estimated, but those monitoring the satellite data warn not to jump to the skeptical conclusion. The region's ice melt from 2003-2010 was estimated at 4 billion tons a year, far less than earlier estimates of around 50 billion tons, according to the study published Wednesday in the peer-reviewed journal Nature.
Marguerite Bay Glaciation
February 9, 2012 02:24 PM - Editor, ENN
Marguerite Bay or Margaret Bay is an extensive bay on the west side of the Antarctic Peninsula, which is bounded on the north by Adelaide Island and on the south by Wordie Ice Shelf, George VI Sound and Alexander Island. A new paper reports glacial geological data that provide evidence for the timing of ice-sheet retreat and thinning at the end of the last glaciation (~10,000 years ago) in Marguerite Bay. The length of time that rock outcrops have been exposed was dated which allow dating of the thinning of the ice sheet, and the record from seabed sediments. This then allows the determination of how the ice sheet retreated across the continental shelf. The dating shows a surprising pattern. About 9,600 years ago, the ice in Marguerite Bay appears to have thinned very quickly indeed, an observation that turns out to be consistent with several other datasets from the same area (ice-shelf collapse histories, raised beaches and lake sediment cores).
Sturgeon Thunder
February 9, 2012 11:24 AM - AndySoos, ENN
A giant among Wisconsin's inland freshwater fishes, the bottom dwelling lake sturgeon is a living fossil - a relic from the Middle Ages of fish evolution. This ancient species made its first appearance about 100 million years ago in the Upper Cretaceous period of the Mesozoic era, just about the time that the dinosaurs made their abrupt exit from Earth's ever-changing stage. Today the lake sturgeon retains many primitive characteristics that have been lost or modified in other modern-day fishes. Research into the mysterious sounds that lake sturgeon produce resumes in April, or whenever the water warms to a temperature conducive for fish spawning, which is the best time to experience sturgeon thunder. In spring, Ron Bruch, a biologist with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, and Chris Bocast, an acoustic ecologist with the UW Sea Grant Institute, will conduct additional biological examinations and collect detailed field recordings of the infrasonic sounds of this ancient fish.