The announcement of the discovery of a new bird comes with a twist: It's a white-eye, but its eye isn't white. Still, what this new bird lacks in literal qualities it makes up for as one of the surprises that nature still has tucked away in little-explored corners of the world.
Ornithologists, including one from Michigan State University, describe for science a new species of bird from the Togian Islands of Indonesia -
Zosterops somadikartai, or Togian white-eye, in the March edition of
The Wilson Journal of Ornithology.
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©Agus Prijono
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An artist's rendering of Zosterops somadikartai, or Togian white-eye
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A moderate earthquake of magnitude 5.7 shook the hilly southern Mexican state of Chiapas on Thursday, but no injuries or serious damage were reported.
The earthquake was centered off Mexico's southern Pacific coast, 60 miles (100 km) west of the city of Tapachula at a depth of 49 miles (79 km), the U.S. Geological Survey said.
David Ljunggren
ReutersThu, 13 Mar 2008 13:27 UTC
Although Canada is one of the snowiest countries in the world, a series of violent "snow rage" incidents reveal that even the locals have their limits.
XinhuaWed, 12 Mar 2008 11:14 UTC
Wellington -- An earthquake measuring 6.5 on the Richter scale hit the South Pacific Island nation of Vanuatu on Wednesday, the U.S. Geological Survey reported.
Ankara, Turkey - A moderate earthquake shook a small Turkish town near Istanbul but the
The quake on Wednesday had a preliminary magnitude of 4.8 and was felt in Istanbul and other nearby towns.re were no immediate reports of injuries or damage.
Some people have likened the Earth to a relatively small lifeboat wheeling in an incredibly vast sea of outer space. If they also think that the sinking of the Titanic was a sad disaster, they will be heartbroken over the tragic devastation when this sort of occurrence happens on a planetary scale...
Recently, I read an article about the death of birds, bats, bees and butterflies across the world [1]. It didn't surprise me. Indeed, we can add to the list ever so many other species, also, heading towards extinction, including Asian elephants, frogs, toads, assorted big cats, polar bears, penguins, tunas, coral, vultures, chimpanzees, apes and dolphins. Indeed, the list goes on and on. Shockingly, there is, seemingly, no end to it.
Comment: Emily Spence is right that our planet is in great peril, but she misses the one main reason why this is so: the promotion of
psychopathic thinking and behavior in our societies by psychopathic individuals in positions of influence, who for power, control and gain have been destroying the planet. And our only hope? To learn as much as we can about this disease, so we can eliminate its manifestation in ourselves, but also to be able to distinguish the psychopathic individuals and prevent them from advancing their destructive for all, plans.
Snakes don't eat fugu, the seafood delicacy prepared from blowfish meat and famed for its poisonous potential. However, should a common garter snake wander into a sushi restaurant, it could fearlessly order a fugu dinner.
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©Edmund Brodie III
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Some garter snakes (Thamnophis sirtalis ) have evolved the ability to eat super-toxic newts (Taricha granulosa) in the Pacific Northwest.
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Wellington, New Zealand - Most days, Moko the bottlenosed dolphin swims playfully with humans at a New Zealand beach. But this week, it seems, Moko found his mojo. Witnesses described Wednesday how they saw the dolphin swim up to two stranded whales and guide them to safety.
Nicola Scafetta and Bruce J. West
Physics TodayWed, 12 Mar 2008 19:30 UTC
The causes of global warming - the increase of approximately 0.8ยฑ0.1 ยฐC in the average global temperature near Earth's surface since 1900 - are not as apparent as some recent scientific publications and the popular media indicate. We contend that the changes in Earth's average surface temperature are directly linked to two distinctly different aspects of the Sun's dynamics: the short-term statistical fluctuations in the Sun's irradiance and the longer-term solar cycles. This argument for directly linking the Sun's dynamics to the response of Earth's climate is based on our research and augments the interpretation of the causes of global warming presented in the United Nations 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report
1.
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©Physics Today
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Global surface temperature (GST) anomaly. The green curve is the difference between the measured GST and the time average of GST between 1890 and 1910; it emphasizes the observed warming since 1900. The GST anomaly data are low-pass filtered to remove any volcanic signal and smoothed to stress the 11-year modulation (black curve). Two alternative PSS constructions5 are shown that use a TSI proxy reconstruction until 1978 and two alternative TSI satellite composites after 1978. (Data for the red curve are from http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk and http://www.acrim.com and for the blue curve are from http://www.pmodwrc.ch.)
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Comment: Emily Spence is right that our planet is in great peril, but she misses the one main reason why this is so: the promotion of psychopathic thinking and behavior in our societies by psychopathic individuals in positions of influence, who for power, control and gain have been destroying the planet. And our only hope? To learn as much as we can about this disease, so we can eliminate its manifestation in ourselves, but also to be able to distinguish the psychopathic individuals and prevent them from advancing their destructive for all, plans.