Kamis, 15 Juli 2010

Climate Change could Eliminate Male Species: Feminist Dream or Ecological Nightmare?

According to recent research by the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) changes in environmental conditions (however subtle) that could be caused by climate change – could have a catastrophic consequences for animals that migrate. The ZSL did the research for the United Nations Environment Programme’s (UNEP) Convention on Migratory Species (CMS) for its forthcoming report Climate change Vulnerability of Migratory Species.

We recently did an article entitled “when is a penguin a canary” about the pioneering work of Dr. Pablo Borboroglu and how penguins can act as a barometer of our oceans health. It now seems that migratory species such as whales and turtles are exceptionally vulnerable to climate change and actions necessary to be taken are addressed in a new book, Survival: Saving Endangered Migratory Species, by journalist/ environmentalist and CMS Ambassador, Stanley Johnson and co author Robert Vagg.

Migratory species are particularly threatened by climate change as they depend on different habitats to breed, feed and rest. This new report will hopefully facilitate the Conventions response in assisting migratory species, such as loggerhead turtles which migrate through British waters, in adapting to climate change – although one wonders what could be done in the event of a temperature rise that could cause whole populations to be feminized! According to experts this could happen – with the eradication of males from the species!

The ZSL Project Manager, Alyin McNamara who led the research for UNEP/CMS has said that increasing temperatures, changes in precipitation, sea level rise, ocean acidification, changes in ocean currents and extreme weather events will affect the migratory species populations including other species of turtle, the blue whale, the West African manatee and the giant catfish. She said the situation is extremely serious and that under the current “business as usual” emissions path it is hard to see how any of these species will be able to survive.

Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species (CMS)

The Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS) is an intergovernmental treaty concluded under the United Nations Environment Programme and focusing on the conservation of a wide array of endangered migratory animals and their habitats worldwide through the negotiation and implementation of agreements and species action plans. With currently 113 member countries CMS is a fast-growing convention with special importance due to its expertise in the field of migratory species. CMS provides a framework for global adaptation and mitigation to save migratory species, and facilitates implementation in over 140 countries. Key components include identifying particularly threatened habitats and species, and initiating emergency response. For further information please visit www.cms.int

For more information please contact: Veronika Lenarz, CMS Press Office, +49-(0)171-7636027

Zoological Society of London (ZSL)

Founded in 1826, the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) is an international scientific, conservation and educational charity whose key role is the conservation of animals and their habitats. The Society runs ZSL London Zoo and ZSL Whipsnade Zoo, carries out scientific research at the Institute of Zoology and is actively involved in field conservation overseas.

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Build Your Own Solar Panels - The Time is Now to Learn How



What is solar power? Solar power is energy generated from the heat or light from the sun, which can be used to produce heat, light, hot water, electricity, and cooling in a wide variety of grid-tied and off-grid applications. Each hour, the sun radiates down sufficient solar energy to power the entire world for one year. Solar panels contain solar cells, the structure of solar power. Solar power is responsible for fossil fuels such as that of petroleum and coal, as these substances are the result of large masses of decomposed plants, during their own lifetime absorbed solar energy. The fact of the matter is solar energy has been in use in various forms for millions of years. Solar energy provides electrical production by way of heat engines or photovoltaic.


Solar panels and solar panel system are components including photovoltaic grid-tie, off-grid, and solar panel kits. During the day, your solar power system is generating electricity that is directed onto the main grid, sort of like a small power station. Solar panels, also known as photovoltaic, are used to change light from the sun. They are composed of particles of energy called "photons", and change sunlight into electricity that can be used to power electrical devices. Solar panels can be used for a large variety of applications including remote power systems for cabins, cars, boats, powering equipment for telecommunications, and of course for the production of electricity by residential as well as commercial solar panel systems. Today’s solar panels are complete solar panel systems are used to power a wide array of applications.


Building your own solar power system sound intimidating but is actually easier than you think. The richest source of fuel in our whole solar system is the sun. The first thing to consider in learning how to build a solar panel is whether you live in the northern or southern hemisphere. With of the huge cost of putting out thousands of dollars to contractors to purchase and mount solar panels some people are learning how to build solar panels themselves so that they can save money and still do their part for the environment and for their own self-reliance. Doing research on the Internet the DIY’er can read up on how to build solar panels from expert scientific journals and others that have build their own energy efficient solar panels for only a few hundred dollars. Decreasing income, global warming and still growing cost of energy, now more than ever people are looking to build solar panels and wind power generators as a means for a solution.
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Selasa, 13 Juli 2010

Biofuels Come a Cropper


As American farmers reap the corn-ethanol bonanza and new ventures chase more efficient ethanol feedstocks, two troubling studies reported in “Science” magazine say that all forms of biofuels will result in higher CO2 emissions
than petroleum.
Earlier analyses based comparative ratings on the full production cycle -- from growing a crop to its ethanol conversion to its final burning -- and concluded that, while corn-ethanol might emit somewhat less than gasoline, other plants such as sugar cane and switchgrass might cut emissions by as much as 85%. But the “Science” studies factor in the carbon cost of land conversion to raise those crops, and come up with the disturbing conclusion that vastly more CO2 will be released into the atmosphere than were we to continue to use gasoline. The problem is this: the accelerating demand for raising crops for both food and fuel worldwide will lead to millions of acres to be cleared, ranging from grasses to mature forests. Whether suddenly from burning or gradually from decomposition, the biomass on that land will release the stored CO2 that funded its growth. Then comes the lost opportunity of how much CO2 that biomass would have absorbed thereafter by its continued existence, especially woodlands that are still growing.

The combined release of CO2 at the outset and the sacrificed “carbon uptake” thereafter creates what the studies call a “carbon debt”. For a biofuel crop to make sense, it must repay that debt in the course of its repeated plantings by the CO2 emissions it saves compared to oil. Until that
payback, a biofuel will have led to the emission of more CO2 than the fossil fuel it replaced.
Long Term Debt The question: how long do different feedstocks on different types of converted land take to cancel their debt?
The answer: the carbon debts incurred are enormous. The studies say that scores of years and even centuries are needed to break even, depending on the crop and the type of land put to the plow. When land use change is added on the debit side of the ledger, most crops result in much higher emissions than oil, especially across the next 30 years, the span during which the studies
assume we will be using biofuels before moving on to a non-agricultural-based fuel.
One study found, for example, that even if it only displaced central U.S. grassland, corn grown for ethanol would take 93 years before it overcame the carbon debt of land use change with its lower carbon emissions compared to gasoline.
The other study, which used globe-spanning agricultural models to assign crops to land to meet projected demands, calculated that were corn to replace forest, the sequestered carbon loss is about 330 to 630 times the amount the field will pay back each year, the variance depending on the type of forest and whether it is still growing.

Most findings are much worse when natural land cover is replaced by the much reduced CO2 take-up of field crops. An insurmountable 319 year debt is left behind when Brazil’s rain forests are leveled to produce soybeans for biodiesel. The rain forests slashed in Indonesia in the race to produce palm oil as fuel leave behind an astonishing 423 year debt. There are few bright spots. One is Ethanol from Brazilian sugarcane. Its extraordinary productivity could pay back its land use debt in only four years, if tropical grazing land is used. Elsewhere, as in the United States,
the studies strongly advise that (1) only abandoned agricultural lands, or land retired under U.S. programs, be planted, and with perennials, and (2) otherwise, biofuels must be produced only from waste that would yield its CO2 anyway, and to no purpose, such as municipal waste, wood chips, and agricultural discard.
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Jumat, 25 Juni 2010

The Once King, The Once Comodo Dragon Park !

What doyou thing abaout my post today ?? Some Jokes ? No ! It`s real. The Comodo Dragon Park. Here the post, you can found any place in The International Comodo Dragon Park.



The Komodo National Park is a national park in Indonesia located near the Lesser Sunda Islands in the border region between the provinces of East Nusa Tenggara and West Nusa Tenggara. The park includes the three larger islands Komodo, Rinca and Padar, as well as numerous smaller ones, and a total area of 1817 km² (603 km² of it land). The national park was founded in 1980 in order to protect the Komodo dragon. Later it was dedicated to protecting other species, including marine species. The islands of the national park are of volcanic origin. About 4000 people live within the park. In 1991 the national park was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The Komodo dragon is believed to be descended from this species and evolved to its present from over four million years ago. Komodo dragon is known for a long lived and the largest reptilian species with an estimated life expectancy of over 50 years in the wild life. The largest recorded specimen was 3,13 meters in length and was undoubtedly a male as the females rarely exceed than 2,5 meters in length. An approximate weight for an adult Komodo is 70 kilograms. The Komodo is a stealth predator which lies motionless and camouflaged. Prey species for the dragon on Komodo Island include deer,boar,wild buffalo,the maleo bird,snakes,reptiles and small mammals. On Rica,monkeys and wild horses are often become the constitute preys,as well as goats. The Komodo is typically a communal feeder and many numbers of dragon may arrive at the site of the carcass.


The Komodo dragon (Varanus komodoensis) is a species of lizard that inhabits the islands of Komodo, Rinca, Flores, and Gili Motang in Indonesia. A member of the monitor lizard family (Varanidae), it is the largest living species of lizard, growing to an average length of 2 to 3 metres (6.6 to 9.8 ft) and weighing around 70 kilograms (150 lb). Their unusual size is attributed to island gigantism, since there are no other carnivorous animals to fill the niche on the islands where they live, and also to the Komodo dragon's low metabolic rate. As a result of their size, these lizards dominate the ecosystems in which they live. Although Komodo dragons eat mostly carrion, they will also hunt and ambush prey including invertebrates, birds, and mammals.


Mating begins between May and August, and the eggs are laid in September. About twenty eggs are deposited in abandoned megapode nests and incubated for seven to eight months, hatching in April, when insects are most plentiful. Young Komodo dragons are vulnerable and therefore dwell in trees, safe from predators and cannibalistic adults. They take around three to five years to mature, and may live as long as fifty years. They are among the rare vertebrates capable of parthenogenesis, in which females may lay viable eggs if males are absent.




Komodo Dragon
Varanus komodoensis
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Reptilia
Order: Squamata
Family: Varanidae
Genus: Varanus
Species: V. komodoensis

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Sabtu, 19 Juni 2010

"Hubble" The Incredible Space Binoculars

Hubble Space Telescope in April this 20-year-old managed to expand our vision of the universe and create a new mystery.

For those whose knowledge of science gained little by little from the media, astronomy seemed on the rise. And it is true.

We managed to create a consensus about how the universe continued to expand our highway to create a variety of galaxies, stars and planets through the dense heat that began 14 billion years ago.

We can put the whole solar system into one big scenario that continues to grow until the time of Big Bang-an era when all the stars hotter than the center and add the time scale for a few seconds.

Only within the last ten years we can know that a large number of "world" turns out to exist in orbit other stars.

The current technique is not sensitive enough to find a planet similar to Earth, but the planets that had known so far-mostly in size like Jupiter or Saturn, which is a giant planet in our solar system-can be considered the largest in the system other planets as interesting as our planetary system.


Hubble Images "butterfly nebula" shows the final stages of a star
If there is life on Mars, that life would be very primitive.


hubble] But if the planets are orbiting stars recently discovered that it could contain the biosphere as complex as Earth's biosphere, and may also be occupied by the intelligence of living creatures?

This question can now be answered seriously.

Currently there are efforts to find a transmission that may be "the product of a single creature."

These projects are financed independently: their difficulty in obtaining funding from the government because the topic is burdened by the relationship "convoluted" with UFOs and so forth.

Even if we then can not understand the results of that study, we will be able to learn that the "intelligence" is not solely owned and is in the human skull, but there are also elsewhere.
Looking into the past

Now we expand again the views of our universe. Our galaxy, with hundreds of billions of stars, together with millions of other galaxies captured by large telescopes.

Andromeda, the closest large galaxy to us is two million light years away. The stars orbit in one piece tilt.

Several hundred other nearby galaxies-which berjarang about 300 million light years-has been mapped in detail.

And while we explore space further, we explore farther into the past (because the light emitted is now shining on us since a long time): we feel is that the universe is now the same as when I was younger and more close together.

Now we can look further back.
Hubble nasa

Hubble's three-dimensional map of the stars and galaxies forming substances

Among the pictures that were taken by the Hubble Space Telescope's most impressive is a photograph which shows a small cloud, measuring less than one hundredth of a region that can reach a full moon.

If viewed with a medium-sized telescope, this collection will seem completely empty.

But the telescope is very sensitive remote is successfully demonstrated hundreds of light-dim light rdup one billion more than the stars that can be seen with the naked eye.

However, every ray of light is a dim galaxy, with hundreds of light-years wide, which seemed small and dim because of the long distance from the earth.

There is a large span of time that separates us with the isolated galaxies.

Their views when they have just formed: we look to the past, more than 90% of the time to the Big Bang.
Early

These remote galaxies has not set itself on "the propeller" which rotates with the stable like Andromeda.

Some consist mainly of glowing gas that spread that has not fused into a star.

If we observe Andomeda, sometimes we wonder if there are other beings who are also our attention.

IMPORTANT DISCOVERY of Hubble
NASA's Hubble

* In answering the main purpose of the mission, Hubble determines the universe around 13.7 billion years old - and later confirmed by other instruments.
* Ability to mendteksi supernova Hubble's discovery that helps dim alams universe expansion velocity increases.
* Hubble is one of two telescopes that take pictures of the planet that orbits a star directly stated - This historic picture was published in November 2009.
* Hubble succeeded in determining the size of the first direct dark substances in space in three dimensions.

Maybe there was.

But there is certainly no living creatures in remote galaxies. Stars they do not have enough time to convert pure hydrogen into carbon, oxygen and silicon atom-types that are needed by planets and life.

But what about the future? Six million years from now, when the sun no longer shines, the galaxies will be more and more spread out, and much fainter because the population is also aging, and the gas produced is important for forming new stars goes down.

But what will happen after that?

One surprising discovery is aided by the Hubble telescope shows that the galaxies are spread in the velocity increases, due to the influence of a mysterious power.

Therefore, estimates of the future situation of the most telling is the universe will continue to grow, and become more empty, darker and colder.

We can predict the fate of later life: life could be extinct, but on the other side of life can reach a level of dominance that could affect the entire universe.

The second possibility is a science fiction story, but can not be regarded as a mere fantasy because it only takes less than one billion years to create natural selection determines the change from multi-cellular organisms first became Earth's present biosphere (including humans).

Then how about the beginning?

One small part of the early history of the universe is still shrouded in mystery, because the current environment-the density, temperature and so-very difficult to break through the simulation in the laboratory.

Here we are entering a situation where the theory-makers could only speculate.

One of my favorite magazine cover showing a red circle with the description reads "at the age of the Earth billions of billion billion seconds - actual size."

Popular theory says that our universe is "raised" from a small circle of very dense, and because of the influence of the split power of the universe that is more powerful than the power that makes the galaxy more dispersed now.

In the last two decades, managed to expand the vision of the Hubble telescope of our universe - after, as usual in science, this progress raises a new mystery that will be a challenge for astronomers in the future and make the party more interested in the universe want to know.
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Kamis, 17 Juni 2010

The Beauty of Bali With Seven Beach

Bali is a tourist who is recognized by the whole world would be natural beauty and cultural richness that is very thick, Balipun beach is one of the 10 best beaches in the World, where and what are the most beautiful beach dibali this?

Padang Bai




Coast port of Padang Bai crossing is located in Bali - Lombok namely Padang Bai, the beach is maintained cleanliness and beauty. For anglers and divers (Ena) is very like the coast of this. Because even if the port is adjacent to the marine biota but still very well preserved. But be careful if you want to dive here, sometimes the current is very strong.

Legian and Seminyak Beach




It is located on the northern beaches of Kuta beach has the same atmosphere of Kuta beach, but beaches at Legian and Seminyak Kuta beach differentiating with cleanliness and the atmosphere is not so crowded. Legian and Seminyak Beach is a favorite place of my sunset pictures, because the atmosphere of the sunset each day is never the same and very unique.

Dreamland Beach.




This beach is very popular tourist foreign tourists, white sand stretches very wide. Coral reefs and beaches adorn this large, one white sand beach in Bali is very beautiful and exotic. Only love access to this place was kind of hard because they have to enter the luxury housing complex and a very steep downward path, so be careful dikala rainy season.
Sanur Beach



Sanur and the surrounding areas and one region's first tourism development in Bali, we can feel the atmosphere of the village with peace than in other coastal regions. Since large scale renovation Sanur Beach today turned into a very beautiful beaches and friendly. Number of activities and areas that are resort2 Sanur Beach Sanur makes a decent alternative beach visit.

Amed and Tulamben Beach





Amed and Tulamben Beach are adjacent coast, almost like a second character of this beach. But the Amed coast is still virgin and not a lot of domestic tourists who come here dating. Tulamben beach is very loved by the Diver who want to dive here. Because here there is a sunken U.S. warships and not too deep. So that this beach is one of the exotic beaches in Bali,

Lovina Beach





The famous beach is located north of the island of Bali, the characters here is slightly different sand beach sand beach bali lainnnya because his black. Also very famous in this Lovina Beach is every morning we could watch a bunch of Fish Dolphin - Dolphins are playing on this beach, to see dolphins dolphins we can rent fishing boats can be ordered dihotel or directly to the fishermen. Do not forget to bring a telephoto lens and wide, because it could have dolphins dolphins suddenly appeared beside you.

Candi Dasa Beach





East of Bali Island and two trips from Denpasar you will meet well-known tourist area of Candi Dasa, and the beauty of the coast is very intriguing. Many activities can be done at this beach, one of which is snorkelling and diving you can do here.
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Rabu, 16 Juni 2010

Launching Car, Indonesian Student Work.


Three teams from the Faculty of Machine Technology and Aeronautics (FTMD) ITB follow the Shell Eco-Marathon, a race the design, engineering, and building energy-efficient vehicles. The race was held on 8 until July 10, 2010 at the Sepang International Circuit, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Rector of ITB, Prof.. Dr. Launch vehicle Akhmaloka Shell Eco-Marathon on Monday, ITB, (26/04/10) at the East Hall of ITB. At this launch, also attended by Djoko Suharto, Vice Chairman of the Board of Trustees (MWA) ITB lecturers at the same time, Hasanuddin Z. Abidin, Deputy Rector of Communication, Information, and Partnerships, Darwin Silalahi, Country Chairman of PT Shell Indonesia, and the team members.

Championship design, design, and build vehicles by Shell began in 1985 in Europe, and is held every year in America and Europe. In 2010, the Shell Eco-Marathon held in Asia. The winner of this championship is the team with the most efficient vehicle in the use of energy. That is, can travel the farthest distance with the least energy.

"The energy crisis is a crucial issue today," said Akhmaloka, in his speech at the launch of the Shell Eco-Marathon Vehicle ITB. "Now, all are competing in energy conservation and the search for alternative energy. In the eyes of Indonesia, ITB position in the development of energy-efficient vehicles is critical. I am pleased and proud of the students and the faculty adviser, resulting in a real work in dealing with the problem of energy crisis . I hope these creations become a trigger for other students to excel. "

All three teams are competing in competitions such as origin, the concept of urban category, and HEAVeEXIA and Eagles, the futuristic prototype categories. At the press conference, Ananta, a member of the team, revealed that its participation in this competition based on his interest in the automotive and the desire to practice the theory of college into the real work. In addition to the academic experience to practice the material, claiming the team members get other benefits, such as the ability to interact with others, emotional control, cooperation, and project management.
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