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23:46:25 Isabella Rossellini, well known as a supermodel and movie star, is now making short films for mobile devices that illustrate the sex lives of dragonflies, earthworms and other creatures. But they are not like standard nature shows. http://Louis-j-sheehan-esquire.usIn these films, which she researched with the help of Wildlife Conservation Society experts, she not only details unusual aspects of the critters’ biology but also dresses up as them and mimics sex with paper cutouts. We asked Rossellini what she hopes to accomplish with the films on invertebrate love, dubbed Green Porno, which premiered May 5 on the Sundance Channel’s Web site. http://Louis-j-sheehan-esquire.us
How did you get started making these short films?
Sundance was interested in experimenting and expanding the definition of film. Sundance said, “Would you be interested in making films for the mobile?” We thought short films would be something that people would dedicate two minutes to watch, but longer would be difficult.
You call it Green Porno—what’s the story behind the name?
Sundance wanted, if possible, content that was environmental, because the channel and Robert Redford [the creative director of the network] are very dedicated to it. And then they said, “Because this is new media, can you make it flashy and funny?” Flashy to me translated into sex, so it’s great to do a very short little series about the life of bugs.
Was it hard researching the sexual behavior of bugs?
It was difficult. I was always joking with some of the scientists I called that when it comes to insects, you can go through pages and pages and pages of how their mouths work, and I kept on saying, “I want to know how the genitalia work.” There are great descriptions about mouths and not much about sex.
I read scientific books that have a lot of terminology that is hard for me to understand. So I bring it back to humans. That’s the process I tried to illustrate when I did Green Porno. I was terrified of making mistakes. I’m a very big supporter of the Wildlife Conservation Society, so I kept calling them, and their scientists are very kind.
02:45:50 “With this study, we learned two major things,” said Sushma Reddy, lead author and a fellow at The Field Museum in Chicago, Illinois. “First, appearances can be deceiving. Birds that look or act similar are not necessarily related. Second, much of bird classification and conventional wisdom on the evolutionary relationships of birds is wrong” [AFP].
Scientists believe birds, which first appeared roughly 150 million years ago, evolved from small feathered carnivorous dinosaurs. “Modern birds as we know them evolved really rapidly, probably within a few million years, into all of the forms we see. That happened 65 to 100 million years ago,” Reddy said in a telephone interview. Reddy said these quick changes have made bird evolution hard to pin down [Reuters].
The study, which appears in the journal Science [subscription required], divides birds into three major groups: land birds, like the sparrow; water birds, like the diving penguin; and shore birds, like the seagull. But in a surprising result, the genetic analysis revealed that shorebirds evolved later, which refutes the widely held view that shorebirds gave rise to all modern birds [Telegraph]. The study also suggests that distinctive lifestyles, like hunting from the air in the case of falcons and eagles, evolved several times during avian history. In another example, researchers say that flamingos didn’t evolve from other wading birds, but instead from a land-based bird that adapted to coastal living.
The bird project was part of a larger, federally funded effort called Assembling the Tree of Life, which aims to trace the evolutionary origins of all living things, from marine bacteria to domesticated corn and Australian snakes [Chicago Tribune].
02:38:47 Last May, a Siberian reindeer herder named Yuri Khudi chanced upon the world’s most intact mammoth remains, unearthed by erosion of a riverbank, and promptly turned them over to the natural history museum in the Russian town of Salekhard. The frozen woolly mammoth, named Lyuba in honor of Khudi’s wife, had died at the age of about 4 months. She is estimated to have lived between 40 thousand and 30 thousand years ago. http://louis-j-sheehaN.NET
“What makes it so special is that it is more complete and better preserved than any comparable mammoth specimens that have ever been found,” says University of Michigan paleontologist Daniel Fisher. “This is a chance to look at mammoth anatomy in its entirety.” The carcass is scheduled to visit Japan for a full-body CT scan before being moved to St. Petersburg for a detailed autopsy. http://louis-j-sheehaN.NET
Paleontologists will focus especially on the chemical and isotopic composition of Lyuba’s baby tusks. Because tusks grow in layers, like tree rings, they hold a record of the animal’s diet and health, as well as the range of temperatures and humidity through which she lived. Such data are key to understanding the environment leading up to the mass extinction that ended the mammoth’s reign. “Good specimens like Lyuba help us to understand these broad issues much more clearly,” Fisher says.
07:40:54 Under the proposed deal, Florida will pay $1.75 billion for United States Sugar, which would have six years to continue farming before turning over 187,000 acres north of Everglades National Park, along with two sugar refineries, 200 miles of railroad and other assets.
It would be Florida’s biggest land acquisition ever, and the magnitude and location of the purchase left environmentalists and state officials giddy. http://louis1j1sheehan1.blogspot.com
Even before Gov. Charlie Crist arrived to make the announcement against a backdrop of water, grass and birds here, dozens of advocates gathered in small groups, gasping with awe, as if at a wedding for a couple they never thought would fall in love. After years of battling with United States Sugar over water and pollution, many of them said that the prospect of a partnership came as a shock.
“It’s so exciting,” said Margaret McPherson, vice president of the Everglades Foundation. “I’m going to do cartwheels.”
The details of the deal, which is scheduled to be completed over the next few months, and does not require legislative approval, may define how long the honeymoon lasts. Previous acquisitions took longer to integrate than initially expected and because United States Sugar’s fields are not all contiguous, complicated land swaps with other businesses may be required.
The purchase will be paid for with bonds and from fees already added to water bills. But if the price goes up or environmental remediation enters the picture, the state could have to renegotiate or find other money.
The fate of the company’s 1,900 workers also remains in question and some former company executives have suggested that the state is overpaying, bailing out a company burdened with debt, a troubled new sugar mill and a lawsuit from former employees who said they were bilked out of retirement money.
Company officials said the deal would amount to $350 a share, after taxes and other obligations were paid, a premium over two previous offers of $293 per share that the company had dismissed as inadequate.
The accusations and concerns, however, did not dampen the mood. Even as workers from the mill in Clewiston tried to get a handle on their futures, and some cried foul, Mr. Crist emphasized the land’s environmental value.
He said the deal was “as monumental as the creation of the nation’s first national park, Yellowstone.” Declining to provide details of how the state arrived at the price of $1.7 billion, he said it was a terrific bargain.
“I can envision no better gift to the Everglades,” he said, “the people of Florida and the people of America — as well as our planet — than to place in public ownership this missing link that represents the key to true restoration.”
The impact on the Everglades could be substantial. The natural flow of water would be restored, and the expanse of about 292 square miles would add about a million acre-feet of water storage. That amount of water — enough to fill about 500,000 Olympic size swimming pools — could soak the southern Everglades during the dry season, protecting wildlife, preventing fires, and allowing for a redrawing of the $8 billion Everglades restoration plan approved in 2000.
It would essentially remove some of the proposed plumbing. Many of the complicated wells and pumps the plan relied on might never have to be built, water officials said, because the water could move naturally down the gradually sloping land.
Kenneth G. Ammon, deputy executive director of the South Florida Water Management District, which would assume control of the land, said it would be a “managed” flow-way, with reservoirs and other engineered mechanisms to control water flow. David G. Guest, a lawyer for Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund, joked that he might have to go to blows to keep the area all natural.
“This is about putting it back to the way it was in the 1890s,” Mr. Guest said. “What will happen is that if you come back here in 20 years, it will look indistinguishable from the way it looked before the white man arrived.”
The future challenges will probably intersect with the land’s more recent history. Since 1931, United States Sugar has farmed the area, using fertilizers that have often released phosphorous into the water. The legacy of its efforts could prove hidden at first, like pollution found during other environmental cleanup efforts. http://louis1j1sheehan1.blogspot.com
The company has long denied that its efforts severely damaged the land, and executives said that the sale would benefit the Everglades, and shareholders.
“It’s dollars and cents and the right thing to do,” said Robert H. Buker Jr., the company’s president, in an interview after the announcement. “If I had to go out I’d rather — all of us would rather it went out to make the state of Florida better.”
The company will face some hurdles. The lawsuit involving former employees will not disappear but will probably include fewer plaintiffs, said Curtis Miner, one of the workers’ lawyers. Some, like Randy Smith, 57, who cashed out last year at $194 a share after 25 years with the company, said Tuesday’s deal only proved that he did not receive his fair share.
“I got ripped off pretty good,” he said.
Those most affected though will be current workers, and they could decide whether the purchase goes through. United States Sugar took its stock off the public market in 1983 to create an employee stock ownership plan, so technically the company is owned by the workers.
Mr. Buker said he expected the workers would approve the deal because of the money they could make. But at a meeting with workers in Clewiston on Tuesday, opinions seemed mixed. Some workers said they were angry they were left out of the loop. As recently as Tuesday morning, bosses told them that rumors of a sale were not true.
They had a lot of questions: Why sell now? What would happen when the state took over? Would the mill still run? Would there be jobs? What would happen to Clewiston, the tiny town that has relied on United States Sugar since the 1930s?
Mr. Buker tried to respond. He said it was a good deal, that wage earners would receive a year’s pay as severance; that salaried workers would get two years. And he said that the company had no choice but to sell because the state had the upper hand, and could have pushed them off the land with laws, rather than with $1.7 billion dollars.
For many — both workers and environmentalists — it was all still hard to believe. “You got to hear it three times,” said Chris Harris, 36, a United States Sugar foreman, after the meeting. “It sinks in but...”
His voice trailed off and he looked away. The company had seemed to be growing, revamping its mill. A new tower went up just last week. At the time, Mr. Crist was being lambasted by environmentalists for abandoning his opposition to drilling offshore for oil and natural gas. At least for some on Tuesday, all was forgiven.
“Offshore drilling is a mouse,” said Mr. Guest, of Earthjustice. “the Everglades is an elephant.”
20:22:40 Our National Academy of Sciences and its counterparts in a dozen other nations issued a joint statement today calling on world leaders to “to limit the threat of climate change” by weaning themselves off of their dependence on fossil fuels. They also called for a move to sustainable resource use – which, as we all know, would not include the continued full-throttle mining of finite, millions-of-years-old coal, oil, and natural gas. http://Louis-j-sheehan-esquire.us
The academies that issued the request for action are known as the G8 (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States) plus 5 (the largest developing countries: China, India, Brazil, Mexico, and South Africa). These science academies represent some nations that do not yet work together on discussing, much less tackling, climate change.
One might argue that their message is just another “duh” moment. Who doesn’t think that we should live within our means, that we should stop warming a planet that is already suffering from a low-grade fever, and that we should make a transition to less polluting fuels? In fact, what makes this succinct, two-page statement interesting, I believe, is that it doesn’t just tell us to conserve and bite the bullet, but that it also essentially implores governments to invest in research with an eye to the long view – at the same time studying what can reasonably be attacked now.
For instance, it urges all countries to:
– improve not only their predictions of climate-change repercussions at global, national and local levels, but also to begin exploring means for affordably adapting to those repercussions at all government levels
– develop incentives to get their populations to move toward less-carbon-intensive fuels
– target research into greenhouse-gas-reduction strategies and -energy technologies
– and support the G8+5 governments to – no later than next year – to set a timetable, to commit the funding, and to coordinate plans for building a significant number of demonstration plants to capture, store, and sequester carbon.
The new statement also argues that research could point the way towards developing a stable climate via such things as reforestation and “geoengineering technologies.” Such measures “would complement our greenhouse gas reduction strategies,” it said.
The document didn’t spell out what those geoengineering measures might be, so I asked for clarification from Michael Clegg, Foreign Secretary of the NAS, here in Washington.
“These are essentially engineering approaches to soaking up carbon dioxide,” he explains. “One suggestion that has been made in the past, for example, is the so-called fertilization of the oceans with iron. But none of this has been looked at very carefully from a scientific perspective,” he notes. “So what the statement commits is to organize a conference to look more carefully at some of these possibilities to see whether they’re plausible – whether any of them offer solutions.”
Such a conference could occur within the next 18 months, Clegg says, although he adds that no actual dates have been discussed. http://Louis-j-sheehan-esquire.us
The timing of the new statement by the academies is not random. It’s one of a series that have been developed, starting in 2004, to help shape discussions at the summer meeting of the G8 powers.
I asked what the new short document was likely to achieve that, for instance, the recent book-length tomes by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have not. “This basically complements the IPCC work, which is actually cited in the document,” he said. Since catalyzing action sometimes requires years of persistent and consistent prodding, he said it’s important to keep such pivotal issues “in front of the global community.”
In fact, he notes, the current document “is kind of a continuation of the effort that we’ve made over the last four years in these G8 academies statements.” The 2004 statement focused on climate issues, and the one a year later argued that climate change not only was occurring but also could be attributed mostly to human activities. Last year, the academies’ G8 statement noted that “Our present energy course is not sustainable,” so cleaner fuels should be introduced.
“In the past,” Clegg adds, “these statements by the G8-plus-5 academies have actually gotten some serious treatment in the governmental discussions at the G8 meetings. And some of the text has ended up in the last year or two in the G8 communiqués.”
By the way, you might have noticed that my blogs have had a lot of climate entries lately. Believe me, I’m not seeking them out. They’re just raining down on me. Climate seems to be the topic of the season, if not the year or even the century.
The good news, if there can be good news in what seems to be cascading climate catastrophes, is that countries seem to be reluctantly acknowledging that action, even if costly, must begin imminently. The questions now are: What type of actions should we consider, how should we budget for them, how far will existing technologies get us, and how aggressively do we have invest in research on next-gen technologies?
So, expect to see plenty more climate entries. This is where the action is and likely will remain throughout the foreseeable future.
07:50:23 Female bedbugs can lay up to five eggs in a day and 500 during a lifetime. The eggs are visible to the naked eye measuring 1 mm in length (approx. two grains of salt) and are a milky-white tone. The eggs hatch in one to two weeks. The hatchlings begin feeding immediately. They pass through five molting stages before they reach maturity. They must feed once during each of these stages. http://louis1j1sheehan1.blogspot.com
At room temperature, it takes about five weeks for a bedbug to pass from hatching to maturity. They become reproductively active only at maturity. http://louis1j1sheehan1.blogspot.com
In most observed cases a small, hard, swollen, white welt may develop at the site of each bedbug bite. This is often surrounded by a slightly raised red bump and is usually accompanied by severe itching that lasts for several hours to days. Welts do not have a red spot in the center such as is characteristic of flea bites. In other cases, it is observed that welts first appear upon the inccessant scratching that is triggered by the bite, and seem like a mosquito bite that increases in size upon scratching. Later, however, the welts subside but tend not to disappear like those from mosquitos, and persist for up to several weeks. This usually depends on the person's skin type, environment and the species of bug.
Some individuals respond to bed bug infestations and their bites with anxiety, stress, and insomnia. [11] Individuals may also get skin infections and scars from scratching the bedbug bite locations.
Most patients who are placed on systemic corticosteroids to treat the itching and burning often associated with bed bug bites find that the lesions are poorly responsive to this method of treatment. Antihistamines have been found to reduce itching in some cases, but they do not affect the appearance and duration of the lesions. Topical corticosteroids, such as hydrocortisone, have been reported to expediently resolve the lesions and decrease the associated itching. [12]
Bed bugs seem to possess all of the necessary prerequisites for being capable of passing diseases from one host to another, but there have been no known cases of bed bugs passing disease from host to host. There are at least twenty-seven known pathogens (some estimates are as high as forty-one) that are capable of living inside a bed bug or on its mouthparts. Extensive testing has been done in laboratory settings that also conclude that bed bugs are unlikely to pass disease from one person to another. [13] Therefore bedbugs are less dangerous than some more common insects such as the flea. However, transmission of trypanosomiasis (Chagas disease) or hepatitis B might be possible in appropriate settings. [14]
The salivary fluid injected by bed bugs typically causes the skin to become irritated and inflamed, although individuals can differ in their sensitivity. Anaphylactoid reactions produced by the injection of serum and other nonspecific proteins are observed and there is the possibility that the saliva of the bedbugs may cause anaphylactic shock in a small percentage of people. It is also possible that sustained feeding by bedbugs may lead to anemia. It is also important to watch for and treat any secondary bacterial infection.
01:59:27
01:55:51 Colony Collapse Disorder (or CCD) is a poorly understood phenomenon in which worker bees from a beehive or Western honey bee colony abruptly disappear. While such disappearances have occurred throughout the history of apiculture, the term 'Colony Collapse Disorder' was first applied to a drastic rise in the number of disappearances of Western honey bee colonies in North America in late 2006.[1]
European beekeepers observed a similar phenomenon in Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain,[2] and initial reports have also come in from Switzerland and Germany, albeit to a lesser degree.[3] Possible cases of CCD have also been reported in Taiwan since April 2007.[4]
The cause or causes of the syndrome are not yet well understood. Proposed causes include environmental change-related stresses,[5] malnutrition, pathogens (i.e., disease[6] including Israel acute paralysis virus[7][8]), mites, pesticides such as neonicotinoids or imidacloprid, and genetically modified (GM) crops with pest control characteristics such as transgenic maiz
Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
18:01:36 Some shark populations in the Mediterranean Sea have completely collapsed, according to a new study, with numbers of five species declining by more than 96 percent over the past two centuries.
“This loss of top predators could hold serious implications for the entire marine ecosystem, greatly affecting food webs throughout this region,” said the lead author of the study, Francesco Ferretti, a doctoral student in marine biology at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia.
Particularly troubling, the researchers said, were patterns indicating a lack of females of breeding age, which are essential if populations are to recover even with new conservation measures.
“Because sharks are long-lived and slow to mature, they need fully grown females to keep their populations reproductively healthy,” said Heike K. Lotze, a study author who is at Dalhousie.
The study is scheduled for publication in the journal Conservation Biology and was posted on Wednesday at lenfestocean.org by the Lenfest Ocean Program, a private group in Washington that paid for the research.
The study focused on five species for which there were sufficient records to chart a long-term trend — hammerhead, blue and thresher sharks and two types of mackerel sharks. The Mediterranean is home to some 47 shark species, and similar declines are presumed to have occurred in many of them.
Sharks take years to reach sexual maturity and, unlike most other fishes, produce small numbers of young, making them particularly vulnerable to overfishing. Populations have declined worldwide, but experts say the Mediterranean — bordered by many countries with diverse rules and fished intensively for centuries — has had bigger losses of sharks and other large predatory fish, including tuna.
The region’s long-term decline was revealed by sifting decades of catch records and other scattered sources of data, which showed that over time the Mediterranean ecosystem had been utterly transformed. With top-tier predators removed, the populations of other fish and invertebrates have shifted drastically.
In November, the International Union for Conservation of Nature warned that more than 40 percent of shark and ray species in the Mediterranean were threatened with extinction because of intense fishing pressure. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
23:43:30 Bees are adapted for feeding on nectar and pollen, the former primarily as an energy source, and the latter primarily for protein and other nutrients. Most pollen is used as food for larvae.
Bees have a long proboscis (a complex "tongue"
that enables them to obtain the nectar from flowers. They have antennae almost universally made up of thirteen segments in males and twelve in females, as is typical for the superfamily. Bees all have two pairs of wings, the hind pair being the smaller of the two; in a very few species, one sex or caste has relatively short wings that make flight difficult or impossible, but none are wingless. http://louis1j1sheehan1.blogspot.com
The smallest bee is the dwarf bee (Trigona minima), about 2.1 mm (5/64" long. The largest bee in the world is Megachile pluto, which can grow to a size of 39 mm (1.5". Member of the family Halictidae, or sweat bees, are the most common type of bee in the Northern Hemisphere, though they are small and often mistaken for wasps or flies.
The best-known bee species is the Western honey bee, which, as its name suggests, produces honey, as do a few other types of bee. Human management of this species is known as beekeeping or apiculture.
Bees are the favorite meal of Merops apiaster, the bee-eater bird. Other common predators are kingbirds, mockingbirds, bee wolves, and dragonflies.
21:35:55 The origin of the eukaryotic cell was a milestone in the evolution of life, since they include all complex cells and almost all multi-cellular organisms. The timing of this series of events is hard to determine; Knoll (1992) suggests they developed approximately 1.6 - 2.1 billion years ago. Some acritarchs are known from at least 1650 million years ago, and the possible alga Grypania has been found as far back as 2100 million years ago. [2] Fossils that are clearly related to modern groups start appearing around 1.2 billion years ago, in the form of a red alga.
Biomarkers suggest that at least stem eukaryotes arose even earlier. The presence of steranes in Australian shales indicates that eukaryotes were present 2.7 billion years ago.
rRNA trees constructed during the 1980s and 1990s left most eukaryotes in an unresolved "crown" group (not technically a true crown), which was usually divided by the form of the mitochondrial cristae. The few groups that lack mitochondria branched separately, and so the absence was believed to be primitive; but this is now considered an artifact of long-branch attraction, and they are known to have lost them secondarily.Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
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