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Most people think of zoos as safe havens for animals, where struggles such as difficulty finding food and avoiding predators don’t exist. Without such problems, animals in zoos should live to a ripe old age.
But that may not be true for the largest land animals on Earth. Scientists have known that elephants in zoos often suffer from poor health. They develop diseases, joint problems and behavior changes. Sometimes, they even become infertile, or unable to have babies.
To learn more about how captivity affects elephants, a team of international scientists compared the life spans of female elephants born in zoos with female elephants living outdoors in their native lands. Zoos keep detailed records of all the animals in their care, documenting factors such as birth dates, illnesses, weight and death. These records made it possible for the researchers to analyze 40 years of data on 800 African and Asian elephants in zoos across Europe. The scientists compared the life spans of the zoo-born elephants with the life spans of thousands of female wild elephants in Africa and Asian elephants that work in logging camps, over approximately the same time period.
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ELEPHANTS IN THE ZOOElephants in zoos aren't living on easy street, the authors of a new study suggest. When born in zoos, elephants face shorter life spans and are susceptible to a host of behavioral and physical problems.Born Free Foundation/Chris Draper
The team found that female African elephants born in zoos lived an average of 16.9 years. Their wild counterparts who died of natural causes lived an average of 56 years – more than three times as long. Female Asian elephants followed a similar pattern. In zoos, they lived 18.9 years, while those in the logging camps lived 41.7 years.
Scientists don’t yet know why wild elephants seem to fare so much better than their zoo-raised counterparts. Georgia Mason, a biologist at the University of Guelph in Canada who led the study, thinks stress and obesity may be to blame. Zoo elephants don’t get the same kind of exercise they would in the wild, and most are obese. Elephant social lives are also much different in zoos than in the wild, where they live in large herds and family groups. http://louisjsheehan.blogstream.com
Another finding from the study showed that Asian elephants born in zoos were more likely to die early than Asian elephants captured in the wild and brought to zoos. Mason suggests stress in the mothers in zoos might cause them to have babies that are less likely to survive. http://louisjsheehan.blogstream.com
The study raises some questions about acquiring more elephants to keep in zoos. While some threatened and endangered species living in zoos reproduce successfully and maintain healthy populations, that doesn’t appear to be the case with elephants. “Currently, zoos are net consumers of elephants, not net producers,” Mason says. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire.
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
egyptian explosions 5.exp.0002003 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
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Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire . MANY Israelis feel that the walls — and history — are closing in on their 60-year-old state, much as they felt in early June 1967, just before Israel launched the Six-Day War and destroyed the Egyptian, Jordanian and Syrian armies in Sinai, the West Bank and the Golan Heights. http://louis1j1sheehan1esquire.wordpress.com
More than 40 years ago, the Egyptians had driven a United Nations peacekeeping force from the Sinai-Israel border, had closed the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping and air traffic and had deployed the equivalent of seven armored and infantry divisions on Israel’s doorstep. Egypt had signed a series of military pacts with Syria and Jordan and placed troops in the West Bank. Arab radio stations blared messages about the coming destruction of Israel. http://louis1j1sheehan1esquire.wordpress.com
Israelis, or rather, Israeli Jews, are beginning to feel much the way their parents did in those apocalyptic days. Israel is a much more powerful and prosperous state today. In 1967 there were only some 2 million Jews in the country — today there are about 5.5 million — and the military did not have nuclear weapons. But the bulk of the population looks to the future with deep foreboding.
The foreboding has two general sources and four specific causes. The general problems are simple. First, the Arab and wider Islamic worlds, despite Israeli hopes since 1948 and notwithstanding the peace treaties signed by Egypt and Jordan in 1979 and 1994, have never truly accepted the legitimacy of Israel’s creation and continue to oppose its existence.
Second, public opinion in the West (and in democracies, governments can’t be far behind) is gradually reducing its support for Israel as the West looks askance at the Jewish state’s treatment of its Palestinian neighbors and wards. http://louis1j1sheehan1esquire.wordpress.com The Holocaust is increasingly becoming a faint and ineffectual memory and the Arab states are increasingly powerful and assertive.
More specifically, Israel faces a combination of dire threats. To the east, Iran is frantically advancing its nuclear project, which most Israelis and most of the world’s intelligence agencies believe is designed to produce nuclear weapons. This, coupled with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad’s public threats to destroy Israel — and his denials of the Holocaust and of any homosexuality in Iran, which underscore his irrationality — has Israel’s political and military leaders on tenterhooks.
To the north, the Lebanese fundamentalist organization Hezbollah, which also vows to destroy Israel and functions as an Iranian proxy, has thoroughly rearmed since its war with Israel in 2006. According to Israeli intelligence estimates, Hezbollah now has an arsenal of 30,000 to 40,000 Russian-made rockets, supplied by Syria and Iran — twice the number it possessed in 2006. Some of the rockets can reach Tel Aviv and Dimona, where Israel’s nuclear production facility is located. If there is war between Israel and Iran, Hezbollah can be expected to join in. (It may well join in the renewed Israeli-Palestinian conflict, too.)
To the south, Israel faces the Islamist Hamas movement, which controls the Gaza Strip and whose charter promises to destroy Israel and bring every inch of Palestine under Islamic rule and law. Hamas today has an army of thousands. It also has a large arsenal of rockets — home-made Qassams and Russian-made, Iranian-financed Katyushas and Grads smuggled, with the Egyptians largely turning a blind eye, through tunnels from Sinai.
Last June, Israel and Hamas agreed to a six-month truce. This unsteady calm was periodically violated by armed factions in Gaza that lobbed rockets into Israel’s border settlements. Israel responded by periodically suspending shipments of supplies into Gaza.
In November and early December, Hamas stepped up the rocket attacks and then, unilaterally, formally announced the end of the truce. The Israeli public and government then gave Defense Minister Ehud Barak a free hand. Israel’s highly efficient air assault on Hamas, which began on Saturday, was his first move. Most of Hamas’s security and governmental compounds were turned into rubble and several hundred Hamas fighters were killed.
But the attack will not solve the basic problem posed by a Gaza Strip populated by 1.5 million impoverished, desperate Palestinians who are ruled by a fanatic regime and are tightly hemmed in by fences and by border crossings controlled by Israel and Egypt.
An enormous Israeli ground operation aimed at conquering the Gaza Strip and destroying Hamas would probably bog down in the alleyways of refugee camps before achieving its goal. (And even if these goals were somehow achieved, renewed and indefinite Israeli rule over Gaza would prove unpalatable to all concerned.)
More likely are small, limited armored incursions, intended to curtail missile launches and kill Hamas fighters. But these are also unlikely to bring the organization to heel — though they may exercise sufficient pressure eventually to achieve, with the mediation of Turkey or Egypt, a renewed temporary truce. That seems to be the most that can be hoped for, though a renewal of rocket attacks on southern Israel, once Hamas recovers, is as certain as day follows night.
The fourth immediate threat to Israel’s existence is internal. It is posed by the country’s Arab minority. Over the past two decades, Israel’s 1.3 million Arab citizens have been radicalized, with many openly avowing a Palestinian identity and embracing Palestinian national aims. Their spokesmen say that their loyalty lies with their people rather than with their state, Israel. Many of the community’s leaders, who benefit from Israeli democracy, more or less publicly supported Hezbollah in 2006 and continue to call for “autonomy” (of one sort or another) and for the dissolution of the Jewish state.
Demography, if not Arab victory in battle, offers the recipe for such a dissolution. The birth rates for Israeli Arabs are among the highest in the world, with 4 or 5 children per family (as opposed to the 2 or 3 children per family among Israeli Jews).
If present trends persist, Arabs could constitute the majority of Israel’s citizens by 2040 or 2050. Already, within five to 10 years, Palestinians (Israeli Arabs coupled with those who live in the West Bank and Gaza Strip) will form the majority population of Palestine (the land lying between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean).
Friction between Israeli Arabs and Jews is already a cogent political factor. In 2000, at the start of the second intifada, thousands of Arab youngsters, in sympathy with their brethren in the territories, rioted along Israel’s major highways and in Israel’s ethnically mixed cities.
The past fortnight has seen a recurrence, albeit on a smaller scale, of such rioting. Down the road, Israel’s Jews fear more violence and terrorism by Israeli Arabs. Most Jews see the Arab minority as a potential fifth column.
What is common to these specific threats is their unconventionality. Between 1948 and 1982 Israel coped relatively well with the threat from conventional Arab armies. Indeed, it repeatedly trounced them. But Iran’s nuclear threat, the rise of organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah that operate from across international borders and from the midst of dense civilian populations, and Israeli Arabs’ growing disaffection with the state and their identification with its enemies, offer a completely different set of challenges. And they are challenges that Israel’s leaders and public, bound by Western democratic and liberal norms of behavior, appear to find particularly difficult to counter.
Israel’s sense of the walls closing in on it has this past week led to one violent reaction. Given the new realities, it would not be surprising if more powerful explosions were to follow. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire.
Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire . MANY Israelis feel that the walls — and history — are closing in on their 60-year-old state, much as they felt in early June 1967, just before Israel launched the Six-Day War and destroyed the Egyptian, Jordanian and Syrian armies in Sinai, the West Bank and the Golan Heights. http://louis1j1sheehan1esquire.wordpress.com
More than 40 years ago, the Egyptians had driven a United Nations peacekeeping force from the Sinai-Israel border, had closed the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping and air traffic and had deployed the equivalent of seven armored and infantry divisions on Israel’s doorstep. Egypt had signed a series of military pacts with Syria and Jordan and placed troops in the West Bank. Arab radio stations blared messages about the coming destruction of Israel. http://louis1j1sheehan1esquire.wordpress.com
Israelis, or rather, Israeli Jews, are beginning to feel much the way their parents did in those apocalyptic days. Israel is a much more powerful and prosperous state today. In 1967 there were only some 2 million Jews in the country — today there are about 5.5 million — and the military did not have nuclear weapons. But the bulk of the population looks to the future with deep foreboding.
The foreboding has two general sources and four specific causes. The general problems are simple. First, the Arab and wider Islamic worlds, despite Israeli hopes since 1948 and notwithstanding the peace treaties signed by Egypt and Jordan in 1979 and 1994, have never truly accepted the legitimacy of Israel’s creation and continue to oppose its existence.
Second, public opinion in the West (and in democracies, governments can’t be far behind) is gradually reducing its support for Israel as the West looks askance at the Jewish state’s treatment of its Palestinian neighbors and wards. http://louis1j1sheehan1esquire.wordpress.com The Holocaust is increasingly becoming a faint and ineffectual memory and the Arab states are increasingly powerful and assertive.
More specifically, Israel faces a combination of dire threats. To the east, Iran is frantically advancing its nuclear project, which most Israelis and most of the world’s intelligence agencies believe is designed to produce nuclear weapons. This, coupled with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad’s public threats to destroy Israel — and his denials of the Holocaust and of any homosexuality in Iran, which underscore his irrationality — has Israel’s political and military leaders on tenterhooks.
To the north, the Lebanese fundamentalist organization Hezbollah, which also vows to destroy Israel and functions as an Iranian proxy, has thoroughly rearmed since its war with Israel in 2006. According to Israeli intelligence estimates, Hezbollah now has an arsenal of 30,000 to 40,000 Russian-made rockets, supplied by Syria and Iran — twice the number it possessed in 2006. Some of the rockets can reach Tel Aviv and Dimona, where Israel’s nuclear production facility is located. If there is war between Israel and Iran, Hezbollah can be expected to join in. (It may well join in the renewed Israeli-Palestinian conflict, too.)
To the south, Israel faces the Islamist Hamas movement, which controls the Gaza Strip and whose charter promises to destroy Israel and bring every inch of Palestine under Islamic rule and law. Hamas today has an army of thousands. It also has a large arsenal of rockets — home-made Qassams and Russian-made, Iranian-financed Katyushas and Grads smuggled, with the Egyptians largely turning a blind eye, through tunnels from Sinai.
Last June, Israel and Hamas agreed to a six-month truce. This unsteady calm was periodically violated by armed factions in Gaza that lobbed rockets into Israel’s border settlements. Israel responded by periodically suspending shipments of supplies into Gaza.
In November and early December, Hamas stepped up the rocket attacks and then, unilaterally, formally announced the end of the truce. The Israeli public and government then gave Defense Minister Ehud Barak a free hand. Israel’s highly efficient air assault on Hamas, which began on Saturday, was his first move. Most of Hamas’s security and governmental compounds were turned into rubble and several hundred Hamas fighters were killed.
But the attack will not solve the basic problem posed by a Gaza Strip populated by 1.5 million impoverished, desperate Palestinians who are ruled by a fanatic regime and are tightly hemmed in by fences and by border crossings controlled by Israel and Egypt.
An enormous Israeli ground operation aimed at conquering the Gaza Strip and destroying Hamas would probably bog down in the alleyways of refugee camps before achieving its goal. (And even if these goals were somehow achieved, renewed and indefinite Israeli rule over Gaza would prove unpalatable to all concerned.)
More likely are small, limited armored incursions, intended to curtail missile launches and kill Hamas fighters. But these are also unlikely to bring the organization to heel — though they may exercise sufficient pressure eventually to achieve, with the mediation of Turkey or Egypt, a renewed temporary truce. That seems to be the most that can be hoped for, though a renewal of rocket attacks on southern Israel, once Hamas recovers, is as certain as day follows night.
The fourth immediate threat to Israel’s existence is internal. It is posed by the country’s Arab minority. Over the past two decades, Israel’s 1.3 million Arab citizens have been radicalized, with many openly avowing a Palestinian identity and embracing Palestinian national aims. Their spokesmen say that their loyalty lies with their people rather than with their state, Israel. Many of the community’s leaders, who benefit from Israeli democracy, more or less publicly supported Hezbollah in 2006 and continue to call for “autonomy” (of one sort or another) and for the dissolution of the Jewish state.
Demography, if not Arab victory in battle, offers the recipe for such a dissolution. The birth rates for Israeli Arabs are among the highest in the world, with 4 or 5 children per family (as opposed to the 2 or 3 children per family among Israeli Jews).
If present trends persist, Arabs could constitute the majority of Israel’s citizens by 2040 or 2050. Already, within five to 10 years, Palestinians (Israeli Arabs coupled with those who live in the West Bank and Gaza Strip) will form the majority population of Palestine (the land lying between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean).
Friction between Israeli Arabs and Jews is already a cogent political factor. In 2000, at the start of the second intifada, thousands of Arab youngsters, in sympathy with their brethren in the territories, rioted along Israel’s major highways and in Israel’s ethnically mixed cities.
The past fortnight has seen a recurrence, albeit on a smaller scale, of such rioting. Down the road, Israel’s Jews fear more violence and terrorism by Israeli Arabs. Most Jews see the Arab minority as a potential fifth column.
What is common to these specific threats is their unconventionality. Between 1948 and 1982 Israel coped relatively well with the threat from conventional Arab armies. Indeed, it repeatedly trounced them. But Iran’s nuclear threat, the rise of organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah that operate from across international borders and from the midst of dense civilian populations, and Israeli Arabs’ growing disaffection with the state and their identification with its enemies, offer a completely different set of challenges. And they are challenges that Israel’s leaders and public, bound by Western democratic and liberal norms of behavior, appear to find particularly difficult to counter.
Israel’s sense of the walls closing in on it has this past week led to one violent reaction. Given the new realities, it would not be surprising if more powerful explosions were to follow. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire.
Thursday, December 25, 2008
sniff 5.sni.99987 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
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Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire . Women smell better than men, and it's not just the perfume. As is the case for many gender differences, hormones appear to be behind the general advantage women have when it comes to their ability to detect odors.http://louis4j4sheehan4esquire.wordpress.com
In a series of trials, a total of 36 volunteers tried to detect either a cherry-almond or a lemon-orange smell generated by gradually decreasing concentrations of specific chemical compounds. In initial smell-threshold tests, all participants exhibited comparable abilities to detect the odors.http://louis4j4sheehan4esquire.wordpress.com
During tests 3 months later, however, women of reproductive age showed vast improvements in their ability to detect progressively weaker odors after only a handful of exposures to those smells, say neuroscientist Pamela Dalton of the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia and her colleagues. In contrast, men failed to become more smell-sensitive, even after many exposures to the odors. The same was true for women past menopause and 8-to-10-year-old girls and boys, the scientists report in an upcoming Nature Neuroscience.
These results raise the possibility that female sex hormones act in ways that boost sensitivity to familiar odors, according to Dalton's group. Having a nose for smells may confer reproduction-related benefits, such as helping women forge close relationships with children and mates and the ability to detect poisons in food while pregnant, the researchers theorize.
Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire . Women smell better than men, and it's not just the perfume. As is the case for many gender differences, hormones appear to be behind the general advantage women have when it comes to their ability to detect odors.http://louis4j4sheehan4esquire.wordpress.com
In a series of trials, a total of 36 volunteers tried to detect either a cherry-almond or a lemon-orange smell generated by gradually decreasing concentrations of specific chemical compounds. In initial smell-threshold tests, all participants exhibited comparable abilities to detect the odors.http://louis4j4sheehan4esquire.wordpress.com
During tests 3 months later, however, women of reproductive age showed vast improvements in their ability to detect progressively weaker odors after only a handful of exposures to those smells, say neuroscientist Pamela Dalton of the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia and her colleagues. In contrast, men failed to become more smell-sensitive, even after many exposures to the odors. The same was true for women past menopause and 8-to-10-year-old girls and boys, the scientists report in an upcoming Nature Neuroscience.
These results raise the possibility that female sex hormones act in ways that boost sensitivity to familiar odors, according to Dalton's group. Having a nose for smells may confer reproduction-related benefits, such as helping women forge close relationships with children and mates and the ability to detect poisons in food while pregnant, the researchers theorize.
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
bruno 3.bru.010010 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
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Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire . The 16th-century Italian philosopher (and former Catholic priest) Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake for a stubborn adherence to his then unorthodox beliefs—including the ideas that the universe is infinite and that other solar systems exist. Art historian Ingrid Rowland vividly recounts Bruno’s journey through a quickly changing Reformation-era Europe, where he managed to stir up controversy at every turn. http://louis7j7sheehan7esquire.wordpress.com Having a habit of calling schoolmasters “asses,” Bruno was jailed in Geneva for slandering his professor after publishing a broadsheet listing 20 mistakes the man had made in a single lecture. http://louis7j7sheehan7esquire.wordpress.com
Bruno’s adventures in free thought ended when the Roman Inquisition declared him “an impenitent, pertinacious, and obstinate heretic,” to which he characteristically replied, “You may be more afraid to bring that sentence against me than I am to accept it.” In 1600 the inquisitors stripped Bruno naked, bound his tongue, and burned him alive. At least his universe survived. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire .
Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire . The 16th-century Italian philosopher (and former Catholic priest) Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake for a stubborn adherence to his then unorthodox beliefs—including the ideas that the universe is infinite and that other solar systems exist. Art historian Ingrid Rowland vividly recounts Bruno’s journey through a quickly changing Reformation-era Europe, where he managed to stir up controversy at every turn. http://louis7j7sheehan7esquire.wordpress.com Having a habit of calling schoolmasters “asses,” Bruno was jailed in Geneva for slandering his professor after publishing a broadsheet listing 20 mistakes the man had made in a single lecture. http://louis7j7sheehan7esquire.wordpress.com
Bruno’s adventures in free thought ended when the Roman Inquisition declared him “an impenitent, pertinacious, and obstinate heretic,” to which he characteristically replied, “You may be more afraid to bring that sentence against me than I am to accept it.” In 1600 the inquisitors stripped Bruno naked, bound his tongue, and burned him alive. At least his universe survived. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire .
Thursday, December 4, 2008
experiments 44.exp.8 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
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Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire . Whatever troubles climate change might bring to the world's other species, rising carbon dioxide in the atmosphere could be the best thing yet for poison ivy. http://louis9j9sheehan.blog.com
An outdoor experiment mimicking the carbon dioxide rise predicted for this century found that poison ivy vines grew more than twice as much per year as they did in unaltered air, says Jacqueline E. Mohan, now of the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass. That growth streak is nearly five times the increase reported for some tree species in other analyses.
More bad news: The jolt of carbon dioxide also boosted the most-toxic forms of poison ivy's rash-raising oil, Mohan and her colleagues report in the June 13 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. http://louis9j9sheehan.blog.com
"It's a sobering example that rising carbon dioxide can favor pests and weeds, those plants we'd least like to see succeed," comments climate-change ecologist Bruce Hungate of Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff.
People burning fossil fuels release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. As the atmosphere gains carbon dioxide and other so-called greenhouse gases, it traps more of the sun's heat.
Biologists have wondered whether this carbon boost might work as aerial fertilizer for plants. Earlier lab experiments found plants growing exuberantly with extra carbon dioxide, but these tests provided abundant water and nutrients.
For more-realistic tests, researchers have set up treetop-high pipes that blow either regular air or extra carbon dioxide over landscape patches in various ecosystems around the world. For 6 years, Mohan and her colleagues monitored poison ivy and the other plants growing within circles of such pipes in a pine forest monitored by researchers of Duke University in Durham, N.C.
The poison ivy vines thrived with about 50 percent extra carbon dioxide, showing extra photosynthesis and more-efficient water use.
These vines produced the same concentration of the toxic oil urushiol as the plain-air vines did. However, for the poison ivy receiving extra carbon dioxide, about 20 percent of the oil was in chemically unsaturated forms, whereas the plain-air ivy produced 15 percent unsaturated urushiol. The unsaturated forms are more likely to provoke painful skin reactions in people.
Other studies have suggested that vines may be big winners in a high–carbon dioxide future, says Mohan. Vines don't spend much of their carbon harvest on trunks or other supports, so the carbon windfall can go directly into new leaves, which collect yet more carbon and sunlight.
An increased abundance of vines, which can choke out trees, could change forest dynamics, Mohan says.
Forest honeysuckle vines increase their growth in air that's high in carbon dioxide, says Rich Norby, who directs a pipe-circle experiment at Oak Ridge (Tenn.) National Laboratory. However, he predicts that even poison ivy's gangbuster growth will eventually hit some limit, such as available sunlight.
The pipe-circle experiments can't mimic all the factors influencing plants in real forests. Mohan protected her experimental poison ivy plants from white-tailed deer and other browsing animals, notes plant physiologist Hendrik Poorter of Utrecht University in the Netherlands. Yet plants growing in abundant carbon dioxide typically have low protein content, so Poorter speculates that animals might actually eat more of them to get adequate nutrition.
Bigger, more-toxic poison ivy is a serious concern, says Paul Beggs of Macquarie University in Australia. It's another factor to add to his tally of the extra misery that climate change might bring to people with allergies. For example, certain pollen counts are likely to go up, so allergy seasons could drag on longer, he says.
Mohan had never developed a rash from poison ivy before she started the study. "I get it now," she says.
Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire . Whatever troubles climate change might bring to the world's other species, rising carbon dioxide in the atmosphere could be the best thing yet for poison ivy. http://louis9j9sheehan.blog.com
An outdoor experiment mimicking the carbon dioxide rise predicted for this century found that poison ivy vines grew more than twice as much per year as they did in unaltered air, says Jacqueline E. Mohan, now of the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass. That growth streak is nearly five times the increase reported for some tree species in other analyses.
More bad news: The jolt of carbon dioxide also boosted the most-toxic forms of poison ivy's rash-raising oil, Mohan and her colleagues report in the June 13 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. http://louis9j9sheehan.blog.com
"It's a sobering example that rising carbon dioxide can favor pests and weeds, those plants we'd least like to see succeed," comments climate-change ecologist Bruce Hungate of Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff.
People burning fossil fuels release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. As the atmosphere gains carbon dioxide and other so-called greenhouse gases, it traps more of the sun's heat.
Biologists have wondered whether this carbon boost might work as aerial fertilizer for plants. Earlier lab experiments found plants growing exuberantly with extra carbon dioxide, but these tests provided abundant water and nutrients.
For more-realistic tests, researchers have set up treetop-high pipes that blow either regular air or extra carbon dioxide over landscape patches in various ecosystems around the world. For 6 years, Mohan and her colleagues monitored poison ivy and the other plants growing within circles of such pipes in a pine forest monitored by researchers of Duke University in Durham, N.C.
The poison ivy vines thrived with about 50 percent extra carbon dioxide, showing extra photosynthesis and more-efficient water use.
These vines produced the same concentration of the toxic oil urushiol as the plain-air vines did. However, for the poison ivy receiving extra carbon dioxide, about 20 percent of the oil was in chemically unsaturated forms, whereas the plain-air ivy produced 15 percent unsaturated urushiol. The unsaturated forms are more likely to provoke painful skin reactions in people.
Other studies have suggested that vines may be big winners in a high–carbon dioxide future, says Mohan. Vines don't spend much of their carbon harvest on trunks or other supports, so the carbon windfall can go directly into new leaves, which collect yet more carbon and sunlight.
An increased abundance of vines, which can choke out trees, could change forest dynamics, Mohan says.
Forest honeysuckle vines increase their growth in air that's high in carbon dioxide, says Rich Norby, who directs a pipe-circle experiment at Oak Ridge (Tenn.) National Laboratory. However, he predicts that even poison ivy's gangbuster growth will eventually hit some limit, such as available sunlight.
The pipe-circle experiments can't mimic all the factors influencing plants in real forests. Mohan protected her experimental poison ivy plants from white-tailed deer and other browsing animals, notes plant physiologist Hendrik Poorter of Utrecht University in the Netherlands. Yet plants growing in abundant carbon dioxide typically have low protein content, so Poorter speculates that animals might actually eat more of them to get adequate nutrition.
Bigger, more-toxic poison ivy is a serious concern, says Paul Beggs of Macquarie University in Australia. It's another factor to add to his tally of the extra misery that climate change might bring to people with allergies. For example, certain pollen counts are likely to go up, so allergy seasons could drag on longer, he says.
Mohan had never developed a rash from poison ivy before she started the study. "I get it now," she says.
Monday, November 24, 2008
wild horses 88.hor.2 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
Madeleine Pickens, wife of the eccentric billionaire tycoon T. Boone Pickens, wants to ride to the rescue of a beleaguered national icon. The wild horses that have been an emblem of the wide-open American West for centuries more recently became a major headache for the federal government, which routinely removes some of the horses from 1o Western states to prevent overpopulation and protect grazing land. But as the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) holding facilities grew crowded, federal officials gingerly announced that they were considering a euthanasia program to cull the herds at their facilities and contain costs.http://louissheehan.bravejournal.com/
Pickens, a racehorse breeder and lifelong animal lover, said she was horrified when she learned about the problem. “There’s got to be a way to bypass [the BLM] — why does it have to be Washington to solve the problem?” said Pickens, who, along with her husband, airlifted 800 cats and dogs stranded by Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and brought them to California for adoption [Washington Post]. Pickens approached BLM officials and suggested an alternative: She would buy 1 million acres of rangeland somewhere in the West, and convert it into a permanent retirement home for the roughly 30,000 homeless and unwanted horses.http://louissheehan.bravejournal.com
Pickens says she envisions a refuge that’s open to the public, where tourists could sleep in log cabins or tepees to get a taste of the frontier experience. “You shouldn’t be coming to this country to see Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck,” she said. “We are more than that. We are a country that was formed on horseback and we should enjoy it, not slaughter it” [Dallas Morning News].http://louissheehan.bravejournal.com
The wild horses and burros would be sterilized, Pickens said, so they wouldn’t contribute further to the overpopulation problem, and additional animals rounded up by the BLM could gradually be brought in to the refuge. About 33,000 horses still make their homes on the range, but the BLM hopes to bring that number down to about 27,000. Tom Gorey, a bureau spokesman, said the agency welcomes her offer. “Right now we couldn’t be more pleased with her interest and we hope that materializes so that we can get many of these horses out of holding,” he said. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire.
Madeleine Pickens, wife of the eccentric billionaire tycoon T. Boone Pickens, wants to ride to the rescue of a beleaguered national icon. The wild horses that have been an emblem of the wide-open American West for centuries more recently became a major headache for the federal government, which routinely removes some of the horses from 1o Western states to prevent overpopulation and protect grazing land. But as the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) holding facilities grew crowded, federal officials gingerly announced that they were considering a euthanasia program to cull the herds at their facilities and contain costs.http://louissheehan.bravejournal.com/
Pickens, a racehorse breeder and lifelong animal lover, said she was horrified when she learned about the problem. “There’s got to be a way to bypass [the BLM] — why does it have to be Washington to solve the problem?” said Pickens, who, along with her husband, airlifted 800 cats and dogs stranded by Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and brought them to California for adoption [Washington Post]. Pickens approached BLM officials and suggested an alternative: She would buy 1 million acres of rangeland somewhere in the West, and convert it into a permanent retirement home for the roughly 30,000 homeless and unwanted horses.http://louissheehan.bravejournal.com
Pickens says she envisions a refuge that’s open to the public, where tourists could sleep in log cabins or tepees to get a taste of the frontier experience. “You shouldn’t be coming to this country to see Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck,” she said. “We are more than that. We are a country that was formed on horseback and we should enjoy it, not slaughter it” [Dallas Morning News].http://louissheehan.bravejournal.com
The wild horses and burros would be sterilized, Pickens said, so they wouldn’t contribute further to the overpopulation problem, and additional animals rounded up by the BLM could gradually be brought in to the refuge. About 33,000 horses still make their homes on the range, but the BLM hopes to bring that number down to about 27,000. Tom Gorey, a bureau spokesman, said the agency welcomes her offer. “Right now we couldn’t be more pleased with her interest and we hope that materializes so that we can get many of these horses out of holding,” he said. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire.
Monday, November 17, 2008
mummy
http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire. Around 5,000 years ago, a lone hunter trekking through Europe's Tyrolean Alps ate his final two meals. First, he munched on wild cereals, goat meat, and a few flowering plants. Later, the man partook of red deer meat and possibly more cereals. Then he died in a rocky basin, where his frozen, naturally mummified body was discovered in 1991.http://Louis-j-sheehan-esquire.us
The ancient culinary sendoff of the so-called Tyrolean Iceman has emerged from an analysis of food remains in his colon and intestines. Researchers directed by Franco Rollo of the University of Camerino in Italy extracted DNA and tested it for similarities to DNA from a variety of modern plant and animal species.http://Louis-j-sheehan-esquire.us
Other genetic evidence identified pollen residue in the hunter's colon. This material, probably unintentionally ingested by breathing or by drinking water, indicates that he made his last journey through a heavily forested area, Rollo and his colleagues report in an upcoming Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The scientists theorize that rival hunters killed the Iceman; he has an arrowhead imbedded in his left shoulder.http://Louis-j-sheehan-esquire.us
Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire. Around 5,000 years ago, a lone hunter trekking through Europe's Tyrolean Alps ate his final two meals. First, he munched on wild cereals, goat meat, and a few flowering plants. Later, the man partook of red deer meat and possibly more cereals. Then he died in a rocky basin, where his frozen, naturally mummified body was discovered in 1991.http://Louis-j-sheehan-esquire.us
The ancient culinary sendoff of the so-called Tyrolean Iceman has emerged from an analysis of food remains in his colon and intestines. Researchers directed by Franco Rollo of the University of Camerino in Italy extracted DNA and tested it for similarities to DNA from a variety of modern plant and animal species.http://Louis-j-sheehan-esquire.us
Other genetic evidence identified pollen residue in the hunter's colon. This material, probably unintentionally ingested by breathing or by drinking water, indicates that he made his last journey through a heavily forested area, Rollo and his colleagues report in an upcoming Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The scientists theorize that rival hunters killed the Iceman; he has an arrowhead imbedded in his left shoulder.http://Louis-j-sheehan-esquire.us
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