Rampart -- A small earthquake shook north-central Alaska on Tuesday.
The Alaska Earthquake Information Center says a magnitude-4.4 temblor struck at 4:23 a.m. about 31 miles north of Rampart and 36 miles west of Stevens Village.
The center said Tuesday it has not received any reports of the quake being felt or causing damage.
Earth Changes
Los Angeles - - The United States Geological Survey said that Los Angeles had witnessed a small earthquake of magnitude 4.4 on the Richter scale. The earthquake shook the region, at around 4am local time, or 7 are Eastern Time. It happened around 10 miles east of Los Angeles. It was said to be a shallow earthquake, as the depth of the earthquake was measured by the United Stares Geological Survey, to be around 11 miles.
The USGS also divulged that people felt the impact of the earthquake from San Diego to Santa Clarita. There have been no reports of casualties or any damage to property, as the earthquake was a small one. However the county's fire and rescue officials are still not taking things easy, and they are doing their job diligently, and surveying the area to make sure, that there are no earthquake victims who need their help.
The USGS also divulged that people felt the impact of the earthquake from San Diego to Santa Clarita. There have been no reports of casualties or any damage to property, as the earthquake was a small one. However the county's fire and rescue officials are still not taking things easy, and they are doing their job diligently, and surveying the area to make sure, that there are no earthquake victims who need their help.
© AFP/Graphic
Map showing the path of Cyclone Tomas in Fiji. Fiji's government has declared a state of disaster as the first deaths were reported in the cyclone-ravaged Pacific nation where 17,000 people have fled to evacuation centres.
Map showing the path of Cyclone Tomas in Fiji. Fiji's government has declared a state of disaster as the first deaths were reported in the cyclone-ravaged Pacific nation where 17,000 people have fled to evacuation centres.
Fiji sent naval patrol boats laden with supplies and support staff sailing for the northern islands that bore the full brunt of the storm, while Australian and New Zealand air force planes began airlifting emergency supplies to the island group.
Only one death has been reported, but the full extent of the damage has yet to be determined because communications to the hardest hit areas were cut off for days.
"It is evident that wherever (Cyclone) Tomas has struck, the damage has been overwhelming," Commodore Frank Bainimarama, Fiji's prime minister and military chief, said Wednesday as the first reports began to roll in.
© AP/NASA
This video frame grab image provided by NASA, taken in Dec. 2009, shows a Lyssianasid amphipod, which is related to a shrimp, where a NASA team lowered a video camera to get the first long look at the underbelly of an ice sheet and a curious shrimp-like creature came swimming by and then even parked itself on the cable attached to the camera.
This video frame grab image provided by NASA, taken in Dec. 2009, shows a Lyssianasid amphipod, which is related to a shrimp, where a NASA team lowered a video camera to get the first long look at the underbelly of an ice sheet and a curious shrimp-like creature came swimming by and then even parked itself on the cable attached to the camera.
Six hundred feet (183 metres) below the ice where no light shines, scientists had figured nothing much more than a few microbes could exist.
That is why a team from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration was surprised when they lowered a video camera to get the first long look at the underbelly of an ice sheet in Antarctica. A curious shrimp-like creature came swimming by and then parked itself on the camera's cable. Scientists also pulled up a tentacle they believe came from a foot-long jellyfish.
"We were operating on the presumption that nothing's there," said NASA ice scientist Robert Bindschadler, who will be presenting the initial findings and a video at an American Geophysical Union meeting Wednesday. "It was a shrimp you'd enjoy having on your plate."
"We were just gaga over it," he said of the 3-inch-long (76-millimeter, orange critter starring in their two-minute video. Technically, it's not a shrimp. It's a Lyssianasid amphipod, which is distantly related to shrimp.
Cajoling bored friends to keep playing with you is not limited to humans. A gorilla that wants to continue a game will also try to do this, and will even deliberately lose if necessary. This hints that gorillas may have "theory of mind" - the capacity to attribute mental states to others.
© Brandon Ballengee
Since then, American artist Brandon Ballengée has found similarly deformed frogs and toads all over the world when working with the biologist Stanley Sessions from Hartwick College in Oneonta, New York state. Ballengée documents their field trips photographically. He also brings back dead specimens, which he uses to create artistic images like this one of an extra-limbed Pacific treefrog from Aptos, California.
Ballengée says he's attracted to the frogs because he finds them uncanny, almost other-worldly. To heighten this effect, he stains the frogs with dyes that turn cartilage blue, bones red and flesh translucent. He then scans them using a high-resolution scanner to produce a detailed, ghostly image. "I wanted to find a way to exhibit what I was finding without being scary or exploitative."
© USGS
Tuesday, March 16, 2010 at 11:04:00 UTC
Tuesday, March 16, 2010 at 04:04:00 AM at epicenter
Time of Earthquake in other Time Zones
Location:
33.992°N, 118.082°W
Depth:
18.9 km (11.7 miles)
Region:
GREATER LOS ANGELES AREA, CALIFORNIA
Distances:
1 km (0 miles) ENE (62°) from Pico Rivera, CA
4 km (2 miles) SE (129°) from Montebello, CA
5 km (3 miles) SSW (212°) from Whittier Narrows Rec. Area, CA
8 km (5 miles) NE (37°) from Downey, CA
10 km (6 miles) SSW (209°) from El Monte, CA
17 km (10 miles) ESE (115°) from Los Angeles Civic Center, CA
Everybody in the business knows that the Atlantic population of bluefin tuna is in worse trouble than the Pacific population, but how much worse? Well, here's one measure: Stanford University's Tag-a-Giant program is now paying $1,000 per tag to fishermen in the Atlantic and Mediterranean who return the tags after they have caught the tuna, whereas fishermen in the Pacific get only $500 for a tag. Trust the market to tell you the truth.
Another measure of the bluefin's scarcity is that two months ago, the owners of two sushi restaurants in Japan and one in Hong Kong banded together to pay $175,000 for a 513-pound bluefin tuna at Tokyo's Tsukiji fish market. The primary market for bluefin tuna is sushi, and the demand is so great that the fish are disappearing fast in both oceans.
That's why the first order of business at the CITES conference that opens in Doha, Qatar, on Saturday is a ban on the international trade in bluefin tuna. CITES, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, is the only port of call, because no other international organization can intervene in defense of a fish species. Whales have the International Whaling Commission, but for tuna, CITES is all there is.
Another measure of the bluefin's scarcity is that two months ago, the owners of two sushi restaurants in Japan and one in Hong Kong banded together to pay $175,000 for a 513-pound bluefin tuna at Tokyo's Tsukiji fish market. The primary market for bluefin tuna is sushi, and the demand is so great that the fish are disappearing fast in both oceans.
That's why the first order of business at the CITES conference that opens in Doha, Qatar, on Saturday is a ban on the international trade in bluefin tuna. CITES, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, is the only port of call, because no other international organization can intervene in defense of a fish species. Whales have the International Whaling Commission, but for tuna, CITES is all there is.
© USGS
Earthquake location
Earthquake location
Sunday, March 14, 2010 at 20:33:10 UTC
Monday, March 15, 2010 at 02:33:10 AM at epicenter
Location:
2.763°S, 83.678°E
Depth:
10 km (6.2 miles)
Distances:
1155 km (710 miles) SSE of COLOMBO, Sri Lanka
1155 km (720 miles) SSE of Kandy, Sri Lanka
1185 km (730 miles) SSE of Negombo, Sri Lanka
1365 km (850 miles) SE of MALE, Maldives
© Alexander Khvostenko
Unusually heavy precipitation and melting snows have caused the floods.
Unusually heavy precipitation and melting snows have caused the floods.
Unusually heavy precipitation and melting snows have caused a dam to give way in the village of Zhylbulak, with a population of 820 people. The vast majority of the residents were evacuated. Another dam break has occurred in the village of Kyzyl-Agash.
"On Saturday, bodies of 33 people, including 10 men, 16 women and seven children, were discovered," the ministry said in a statement.
The statement said 44 people, including 16 children, were admitted to hospital following the flood.
