Earth ChangesS


Roses

Bees survive better at small farms than commercial ones

John Sullivan
Times Herald-Record
Mon, 04 May 2009 07:17 UTC
The mysterious bee colony collapses have not impacted every beekeeper in the same way.

"We had one of the largest die-offs this winter, but I had one of my best years," said Chris Harp, a beekeeper on Plains Road, who said the plight of the bees has dramatically increased his business, as well as the number of students coming to his farm to learn about beekeeping.

Harp claims to have lost only 10 percent to 15 percent of his colonies, compared with 36 percent or more for beekeepers across the country. He attributes the high survival rate to a smaller, more intimate operation that allows him to tend more closely to his insects' needs, he said.
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Bell

US: Bat Illness Spells Trouble For Farmers

Jenny Jones
Daily News-Record
Mon, 11 May 2009 18:10 UTC
Harrisburg, Virginia - Although they are largely misunderstood, bats are considered among the most beneficial animals in the United States.

So the recent discovery of a rapidly spreading fatal disease called White-Nose Syndrome in Virginia bats, possibly including those in Endless Caverns near New Market, has biologists and elected officials scrambling to save the small-winged mammals.

The syndrome takes its name from the ring of white fungus that often appears on infected bats' snouts and other body parts. Bats infected with the disease also typically have low body fat, dehydration and demonstrate abnormal behavior.

Scientists don't know what's causing the disease that has wiped out hundreds of thousands of bats since first showing up in the northeast about three years ago. They also don't know how the disease is spread or how to stop it from infecting more bats, which, in most cases, are disease resilient.
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Meteor

Arizona, US: City feels shake of minor quake


The Daily Courier
Sat, 09 May 2009 09:16 UTC
A firefighter in Black Canyon City said the National Weather Service in Flagstaff reported a mild earthquake in the town, located 54 miles southeast of Prescott on the Yavapai County/Maricopa County border, late Friday night, although no homes or buildings received damage and no one suffered injuries.

Black Canyon Fire Department firefighter/paramedic Shawn Smith said he and four other firefighters were on duty around 11 p.m. Friday when the quake, which reportedly registered at 3.1 on the Richter scale, occurred three miles underground about 10 miles north of Black Canyon City near Sunset Point.

"We were sitting in recliners and noticed a little shake," Smith said. "It felt like somebody hit the building (at the fire station) and kind of sounded like if our guys were to jump off one of the top bunks and run around a little bit. It probably carried on for a few seconds and stopped."
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Bizarro Earth

Chaitén Volcano In Southern Chile: Historic Volcanic Eruptions Significantly Underestimated, Ash Fallout Analysis Shows


Science Daily
Sun, 10 May 2009 20:48 UTC
Image
© Oxford UniversityAsh and steam rising from the Chaiten lava dome, shortly after a small earthquake.
A study into ash fallout from the biggest volcanic eruption in almost 20 years has shown that the impact of past eruptions is likely to have been significantly underestimated as so much of the evidence quickly disappears, Oxford University scientists report.

The study focuses on the Chaitén volcano in southern Chile that began to erupt explosively on 2 May 2008. For six days afterwards the volcano pumped huge volumes of ash high into the atmosphere before its activity began to decline to a low intensity eruption still going on today.

With emergency funding from the UK's Natural Environment Research Council, a team of scientists from the University of Oxford was quickly dispatched to map out the distribution of ash from the eruption and to study its impacts on the local environment, in collaboration with Argentinian scientists.
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Bug

Flight Of The Bumble Bee Is Based More On Brute Force Than Aerodynamic Efficiency


Science Daily
Sun, 10 May 2009 20:44 UTC
Image
© Richard BomphreyHigh-speed cameras capture the bumblebee's 'brute force' approach to flight.
Brute force rather than aerodynamic efficiency is the key to bumblebee flight, Oxford University scientists have discovered.

In recent years scientists have modelled how insect wings interact with the air around them to generate lift by using computational models that are relatively simple, often simplifying the motion or shape of the wings.

"We decided to go back to the insect itself and use smoke, a wind tunnel and high-speed cameras to observe in detail how real bumblebee wings work in free flight," said Dr Richard Bomphrey of the Department of Zoology, co-author of a report of the research published this month in Experiments in Fluids. 'We found that bumblebee flight is surprisingly inefficient - aerodynamically-speaking it's as if the insect is 'split in half' as not only do its left and right wings flap independently but the airflow around them never joins up to help it slip through the air more easily.'
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Bizarro Earth

US: Rare 3.1 Earthquake Shakes Central Arizona


KPHO.com
Sun, 10 May 2009 20:11 UTC
Image
© US Geological Survey
A rare magnitude 3.1 earthquake shook central Arizona late Friday night, the U.S. Geological Survey said.

It occurred at 11:07:31 p.m. and was centered about 31 miles southeast of Prescott near Bumble Bee, seismologists said.
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Bizarro Earth

Earthquake Magnitude 6.1 Off Coast Of Ecuador


US Geological Survey
Sun, 10 May 2009 18:02 UTC
Image
© US Geological Survey
Date-Time

* Sunday, May 10, 2009 at 01:16:10 UTC

* Saturday, May 09, 2009 at 07:16:10 PM at epicenter

Location 1.405°N, 85.228°W

Depth 23.9 km (14.9 miles)

Distances 500 km (310 miles) SSE of Isla del Coco, Costa Rica

550 km (340 miles) ENE of Puerto Baquerizo Moreno, Galapagos

710 km (440 miles) WNW of Guayaquil, Ecuador

945 km (590 miles) S of SAN JOSE, Costa Rica
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Bizarro Earth

Mystery worms turn on northwest China herdsmen

Kirby Chien
Reuters
Fri, 08 May 2009 15:44 UTC
Beijing - An invasion of unidentified worms has forced 50 herdsmen and their families from their grassland homes, taking 20,000 head of livestock with them, in northwest China's Xinjiang region, state news agency Xinhua said Friday.

The worms are packed up to 3,000 per square meter and chew through the grasslands like lawnmowers, leaving only brown soil in their wake, Xinhua said.

The agency described it as the worst plague in three decades in Usu, about 280 km (175 miles) west of the Xinjiang capital Urumqi.

Local experts could not identify the 2-cm (1 inch) long, thorny green worm with black stripes and samples had been sent to Xinjiang Agricultural University, Xinhua said.
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Cloud Lightning

As deaths mount in Brazil flooding, more rain is forecast


CNN
Fri, 08 May 2009 02:21 UTC
Brazil floods May 2009
© unknownFloodwaters reach almost to the tops of some homes in Piaui state in Brazil.

Rio De Janeiro -- The death toll from flooding that has covered large parts of Brazil continued to rise Friday, with the government reporting seven new fatalities, bringing the total to 38.

The rain-induced floods left nearly 800,000 people displaced, according to the Brazilian civil defense agency.

Rain has fallen steadily in some parts of the country for more than two weeks and is forecast to continue for another 10 days. World Vision, a relief agency working in Brazil, predicted it could take 30 days for flood waters to recede.

Communities in 10 states have been swamped by the floods, though most of the fatalities have occurred in the country's northeast, officials said.
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Sun

Solar cycle will be weakest since 1928, forecasters say

Rachel Courtland
New Scientist
Fri, 08 May 2009 00:46 UTC
Image
© NASA/Goddard Space Flight CenterThe sun is thought to have reached the lowest point in its activity in December 2008, but the new solar cycle has gotten off to a slow start. This week, however, two active regions (bright regions in upper-left corner) - whose knotty magnetic fields often coincide with eruptions and flares - appeared on the far side of the sun. One of NASA's twin STEREO probes snapped this image.
The sun's new solar cycle, which is thought to have begun in December 2008, will be the weakest since 1928. That is the nearly unanimous prediction of a panel of international experts, some of whom maintain that the sun will be more active than normal.

But even a mildly active sun could still generate its fair share of extreme storms that could knock out power grids and space satellites.

Solar activity waxes and wanes every 11 years. Cycles can vary widely in intensity, and there is no foolproof way to predict how the sun will behave in any given cycle.

In 2007, an international panel of 12 experts split evenly over whether the coming cycle of activity, dubbed Cycle 24, would be stronger or weaker than average.
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