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Bogota - Colombian rescue officials say it will take at least a week to unearth about 30 people who were buried by a landslide as they changed from one bus to another because a mountain road was blocked.
Regional disaster agency chief John Freddy Rendon says he doesn't expect any survivors from Monday's landslide between the towns of Giraldo and Canasgordas northwest of Bogota.
© UnknownThe Scottish Cairngorm hills have seen their first Winter snow in September
Summer made a particularly swift exit from the Highlands as the first sprinklings of snow paid an early visit to the north of Scotland.
The last time Britain saw a September cold snap as severe as this current one was in 2003, when much of northern England was below freezing.
Two Scottish weather stations recorded record lows: Tulloch Bridge recorded a temperature of -4.2°C, and Tyndrum -4.4°C - the coldest temperatures recorded since the two stations opened in 1982 and 1990 respectively.
For the people of the Cairngorms particularly, it was a wintry end to September.
Snow fell on the Scottish mountain range overnight, and hill-walkers had to wear their winter woolies and specialist equipment as they enjoyed blue, sun-filled skies with slippery conditions underfoot.
As usual it was the children who took best advantage with some of the earliest snowmen ever built on the Cairngorms.
© AP Photo/Lori SheplerPeople escape the record heat and enjoy the beach in Huntington Beach, Calif., as a heat wave grips Southern California, Monday, Sept. 27, 2010.
Downtown hit 113 degrees for a few minutes at about 12:15 p.m., breaking the old all-time record of 112 degrees set on June 26, 1990, said Stuart Seto, a weather specialist at the National Weather Service office in Oxnard. Temperature records for downtown date to 1877.
Electrical demand was much higher than normal for this time of year but no problems or shortages were expected on the state grid, said Gregg Fishman, spokesman for the California Independent System Operator, which controls about 80 percent of the grid.
"It's manageable. We've got the resources available," he said.
Professor Ralph Keeling of Scripps Institute is worried. In fact, he's very worried.
According to the data Keeling has meticulously collected since 1989 the world is running out of breathable air - and the rate that it's losing oxygen is now on the verge of accelerating.
Monitoring oxygen levels around the world is Keeling's job. He's very good at his job. And the data confirms that Earth's oxygen supply is dwindling.
Keeling created the famous 'Keeling Curve,' a graph that extrapolates the current trend of the oxygen depletion in the atmosphere.[1] The Cape Grim Observatory chart also depicts the ongoing depletion of breathable oxygen in the atmosphere.[2]
Less oxygen equals less life
A long time ago, the Earth was very rich in oxygen. The air contained such an abundance of the element - close to one-third of the atmosphere was oxygen - that animals and insects grew to gargantuan sizes. For instance, the ancestors of dragonflies once had four foot wingspans.
But now, due to overpopulation by humans, animals - even insect colonies - and deforestation, the oxygen in the air is become a diminishing resource.
According to the data Keeling has meticulously collected since 1989 the world is running out of breathable air - and the rate that it's losing oxygen is now on the verge of accelerating.
Monitoring oxygen levels around the world is Keeling's job. He's very good at his job. And the data confirms that Earth's oxygen supply is dwindling.
Keeling created the famous 'Keeling Curve,' a graph that extrapolates the current trend of the oxygen depletion in the atmosphere.[1] The Cape Grim Observatory chart also depicts the ongoing depletion of breathable oxygen in the atmosphere.[2]
Less oxygen equals less life
A long time ago, the Earth was very rich in oxygen. The air contained such an abundance of the element - close to one-third of the atmosphere was oxygen - that animals and insects grew to gargantuan sizes. For instance, the ancestors of dragonflies once had four foot wingspans.
But now, due to overpopulation by humans, animals - even insect colonies - and deforestation, the oxygen in the air is become a diminishing resource.
This year,as usual, the Presidents and CEOs of major banks and corporations, esteemed academics and politicians, not to mention the foreign ministers of major Western nations (to name but a few) all coagulated in June in Sitges, Spain.
As I scanned the outline of their agenda however, something very strange jumped out of the page at me, something that forced me rub my eyes and do a 'double take' and then to conclude that either this gathering of the 'great and the good' are seriously misinformed, or one of the major points that Sott.net has been pushing over the past few years had just received some official corroboration. See if you can spot it:
© Christian Kost/MPI Chemical EcologyAnts of the genus Crematogaster defend a Lima bean plant (Phaseolus lunatus) against an herbivorous insect.
Scientists of the Max Planck Institute in Jena, Germany, have discovered that the production of extrafloral nectar is light dependent. They have shown that the plants are able not only to distinguish between day and night, but also to adapt their nectar secretion to current light conditions by using a special photoreceptor, the phytochrome.
Phytochrome probably influences the regulation of a special enzyme that binds the plant hormone jasmonic acid (JA) to the amino acid isoleucine (Ile). The emerging JA-Ile molecule affects the secretion of extrafloral nectar in such a way that the plant's defense against herbivores is most effective whenever herbivory is most likely - or, more precisely, during the day. (PNAS Early Edition)
Plants have to continuously defend themselves against herbivores to survive and reproduce. They do this directly by producing toxic substances, such as nicotine, or indirectly, by calling their enemies' enemies for help. An example of an indirect defense is the release of volatile substances that attract predatory insects or parasitoids and guide them to their prey; for example, predatory wasps or bugs are led to a caterpillar that is feeding on a plant.
© MSU's Big Sky InstitutePhil Doepke, left, and Leif Christofferson prepare to launch a Remotely Operated Vehicle into Yellowstone Lake for an MSU study. Doepke is a National Park Service employee. Christofferson is the biodiversity manager for the Diversa Corporation
A colony of moss, worms and various forms of shrimp flourishes in an area where the water is inky black, about 90 degrees Fahrenheit, and a cauldron of nutrients, gases and poisons, the researchers reported in the September issue of Geobiology.
The vent is close to 100 feet below the surface of Yellowstone Lake and a third of a mile offshore in the West Thumb region. The worms and shrimp live among approximately two feet of moss that encircles the vent.
"This particular vent seemed unique relative to all other active vents thus far observed in the lake in that it is robustly colonized by plants," the researchers wrote.
© John PallisterCinder cones in Harrat Lunayyir.
A swarm of thousands of earthquakes that struck the corner of Saudi Arabia nearest to Egypt in 2009 helped reveal that the area is unexpectedly volcanically active, scientists now report.
The seismic readings that researchers managed to collect from these quakes could help predict when volcanoes might erupt in the future, investigators added.
Scientists had largely thought northwest Saudi Arabia was quiet, geologically speaking. Few earthquakes and few volcanic eruptions have been recorded there in the past millennium.
However, between April and June 2009, more than 30,000 earthquakes struck an ancient lava field there named Harrat Lunayyir, with 19 earthquakes of magnitude 4 or greater striking at the swarm's peak on May 19, including a magnitude 5.4 quake that fractured walls in the town of Al Ays. Sensors even suggested that a volcanic eruption was possible. Alarmed, the Saudi Arabian government then evacuated 40,000 people from the region.
© AlamyIt's a bug's life: an Australian plague locust
Australia's Darling river is running with water again after a drought in the middle of the decade reduced it to a trickle. But the rains feeding the continent's fourth-longest river are not the undiluted good news you might expect. For the cloudbursts also create ideal conditions for an unwelcome pest - the Australian plague locust.
The warm, wet weather that prevailed last summer meant that three generations of locusts were born, each one up to 150 times larger than the previous generation. After over-wintering beneath the ground, the first generation of 2010 is already hatching. And following the wettest August in seven years, the climate is again perfect. The juveniles will spend 20 to 25 days eating and growing, shedding their exoskeletons five times before emerging as adults, when population pressure will force them to swarm.
It is impossible to say how many billions of bugs will take wing, but many experts fear this year's infestation could be the worst since records began - 75 years ago. All that one locust expert, Greg Sword, an associate professor at the University of Sydney, would say was: "South Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria are all going to get hammered."
© The Daily Telegraph
NSW Primary Industries Minister Steve Whan has released the footage of the locusts near Walgett, taken during the first aerial surveillance mission of the plague season.
Mr Whan said there were now 102 confirmed locust reports across NSW, with aircraft on Wednesday detecting the insects in 16 locations near Walgett.
"What we've seen from the footage is supersized bands of locusts, more than three kilometres long, eating fodder and crops in northern NSW," Mr Whan told reporters at NSW Parliament on Thursday.
"This has confirmed our prediction that the northwest will be the first front in the battle against the locust plague.
