Arctic ice cover hits historic low: scientists

Melting icebergs in the Arctic sea.

PARIS (Sept. 10, 2011) — The area covered by Arctic sea ice reached its lowest point this week since the start of satellite observations in 1972, German researchers announced on Saturday.
"On September 8, the extent of the Arctic sea ice was 4.240 million square kilometers. This is a new historic minimum," said Georg Heygster, head of the Physical Analysis of Remote Sensing Images unit at the University of Bremen's Institute of Environmental Physics.
The new mark is about half-a-percent under his team's measurements of the previous record on September 16, 2007, he said.
According to the US National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), the record set on that date was 4.1 million sq km. The discrepancy, Heygster explained, was due to slightly different data sets and algorithms.
Arctic ice cover plays a critical role in regulating Earth's climate by reflecting sunlight and keeping the polar region cool.
Retreating summer sea ice — 50 percent smaller in area than four decades ago — is described by scientists as both a measure and a driver of global warming, with negative impacts on a local and planetary scale.
It is also further evidence of a strong human imprint on climate patterns in recent decades, the researchers said.
Temperatures in the Arctic region have risen more than twice as fast as the global average over the last half century.
The Arctic ice cover has also become significantly thinner in recent decades, though it is not possible to measure the shrinkage in thickness as precisely as for surface area, the statement said.
Satellite tracking since 1972 shows that the extent of Arctic sea ice is dropping at about 11 percent per decade.
NSIDC director Mark Serreze has said that summer ice cover could disappear entirely by 2030, leaving nothing but heat-trapping "blue ocean."
The NSIDC likewise monitors Arctic ice cover on a daily basis, but has not announced record-low ice cover. Data posted on its website as of Saturday only covered the period through September 6.
By last week, it said, sea ice is almost completely gone from the channels of the Northwest Passage. The southern route — also known as Amunden's Route — was also ice free, as was the Northern Sea Route along Siberia.
But even as the thaw opens shipping lanes, it disrupts the lives and livelihoods of indigenous peoples, and poses a severe threat to fauna, including polar bears, ice seals and walruses, conservation groups say.
"This stunning loss of Arctic sea ice is yet another wake-up call that climate change is here now and is having devastating effects around the world," said Shaye Wolf, climate science director at the Center for Biological Diversity in San Francisco.
The last time the Arctic was uncontestably free of summertime ice was 125,000 years ago, during the height of the last major interglacial period, known as the Eemian.
Air temperatures in the Arctic were warmer than today, and sea level was also four to six meters higher because the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets had partly melted.
Global average temperatures today are close to the maximum warmth seen during the Eemian. — AFP

Bolivian eats insects, drinks urine after crash

LA PAZ, Bolivia (Sept. 10, 20110 — The lone survivor of a plane crash in Bolivia stayed alive by eating insects, drinking his own urine and painting an arrow in the ground with his blood to show rescuers where he was, according to an interview published in a Bolivian newspaper.
Minor Vidal told the publication La Razon that he survived for 62 hours after the crash by using skills he had learned from the Boy Scouts and while pursuing his loves of camping and fishing. Those actions included filtering water through his clothes so that he could drink it and looking for an open space by a lagoon where he waited for his rescuers.
The 35-year-old pharmaceuticals and cosmetics salesman was traveling with others on an Aerocon flight from the eastern Bolivian city of Santa Curz to Trinidad in the Amazon when the plane went down Tuesday night.
Vidal said he was seated in the back of the plane and found himself trapped amid the wreckage. He was seriously injured in the head and the ribs but remained conscious.
"The plane crashed in the night, there was fire and the smell of gasoline," he said in the interview. "At first when nothing could be seen, I heard shouts, but afterward, everything fell silent. That moment was horrible."
Eight others in the plane died in the plane crash.
After crawling out of the wreckage on Wednesday, Vidal said, he drew an arrow with his blood in the ground to indicate the direction he had walked in. He also left his shirt in another spot as a sign for his rescuers.
A navy patrol boat spotted him Friday on a river bank.
Seasonal fires set by farmers and ranchers had reduced visibility at the time of the crash. Aerocon spokesman Nelson Kinn said the plane's black box has been recuperated and sent to Brazil for analysis. — Associated Press.

Texas zoo: Tiger's killing of mate surprising

EL PASO, Texas ( Sept. 9) - The killing of a rare Malayan tiger by his mate caught handlers at the El Paso Zoo completely by surprise because there were no warning signs and the pair were seen playing together only hours earlier, the zoo director saidFr iday.
Seri, the 3-year-old female who was sent to El Paso from the San Diego Zoo about 15 months ago, seemed to have bonded with 6-year-old Wzui during the two-and-a-half months they were together, said Steve Marshal, the director of the El Paso Zoo.
The tigers had tried mating, and hours before Thursday's attack were seen frolicking and "being affectionate," he said.
"We did not see any indication this was coming. It took us completely by surprise, the staff is shocked," Marshal said.
A zoo visitor witnessed the attack, but Marshal declined to publicly identify the witness. He said Seri killed Wzui by chomping down on the side of his neck and choking him.
"We arrived too late," Marshall added.
Tara Harris, the conservation director at the Minnesota Zoo, said attacks such as Thursday's almost never happen.
"Tigers do fight with one another, that's not rare. But it is very rare that one would kill another, specially a female killing a male. It is an anomaly," Harris said Friday.
Wzui, who was born at the Henry Doorly Zoo in Omaha, Nebraska, and arrived in El Paso nine months ago from the Tulsa Zoo, in Oklahoma, will be cremated after a necropsy is performed. Seri will be examined for injuries before being returned to her display area, Marshal said.
When Wzui arrived at the zoo the keepers started a slow process of introduction for both animals. "It went great. It didn't take very long for them to like each other," said Marshall.
He said the zoo will revise its protocols for the introduction and cohabitation of tigers. Some zoos keep the tigers together all the time, while others only pair them during mating season.
Seri and Wzui were living together in the same area. Marshal said there are pros and cons to each approach. He said the zoo hasn't decided which approach it will take once a new mate for Seri arrives.
There is a third tiger at the El Paso Zoo, a 15-year-old female named Melor or "Meli" as the keepers affectionately call her. When Wzui arrived at the zoo it was clear they liked each other even though they were not in the same area they could see and smell each other.
"He started chuffing," Marshall said referring to a specific sound male tigers make when they like a female. However, Melor is past her reproductive age.
He was then introduced to Seri, a female just about to reach sexual maturity and liked her as well. "It was the females that did not like each other," Marshal added.
The Malayan tiger was classified as a subspecies with the help of DNA analysis in 2004. It is an endangered subspecies and it is believed that only about 500 of them remain in the wild in the Malayan Peninsula. - Associated Press

Man-eating mushroom

This picture is not related to the story.
This is posted to break the wide grey space.

Artist Jae Rhim Lee thinks that we are going about death all wrong. We dress up our deceased in their favorite outfits, embalm them with chemicals  and put them in a coffin before burying them.
The Scientist magazine, from where I adopted this story, says that Lee thinks that this type of burial reflects our desire to live an immortal life. Thus, we try to preserve the body as a symbolic act to prolong the decay.And thus she thought of another idea: try decomposition. 
In keeping with the idea, she has launched her “Infinity Burial Project” to accelerate the decaying process. Lee, who did her graduate work in visual arts program at the Massachusetts Institute of  Technology, is developing a mushroom strain that is trained to digest the tissues of the human body.She   has also designed a prototype of a burial suit that can be seeded with the mushroom’s spores.
The article, written by Jef Akst, said some scientists found the idea interesting and practical. “It’s definitely a concept that would be workable,” Akst quoted microbial econologist Scott Bates of the University of Colorado at Boulder as saying. Bates says there is no doubt that fungi can decay human flesh, citing a example the case of Mark Tatum, a patient from Kentucky who lost a portion of his face to an aggressive Mucormycosis infection in 2000. “Fungi are certainly masters at producing extracellular enzymes that are going to be involved in breaking down (organic) components.”
Starting with edible fungi such as oyster mushrooms, Lee runs a small-scale selective breeding program in her home where she collects her own discarded body tissues – hair, skin, nails, etc – and incorporates them into the culture medium for the mushrooms.The project is still in the early stages and she doesn’t yet have any data to share on how good are the fungi are at breaking down the tissues. But she hopes that by chosing the most effective strains to breed, she will evolve an efficient strain to breed.The burial suit Lee has developed is a cotton body-covering with crocheted netting into which a liquid mixture of mushroom spores an be  embedded.
In addition to helping decompose body more quickly,  Lee expects that the fungi will help break down some of the toxin in the body. She says a national biomonitoring program at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention has identified 219 toxic chemicals in the body. “It really points to the fact that our bodies are pretty toxic,” she says.
There are some concerns, however, says Glenys McGrowan of the School of Social Sciences at the University of Queensland in Australia. “Introducing a large volume of a particular species of gungus into a soil environment might have the effect of unbalancing the natural soil biota of that area,” she said in an email to the author. Indeed, the author says such accumulation of naturally occurring fungi already exists in some cemeteries.
How, for example, will the new fungi strain affect the existing soil organism when introduced into a ground in potentially high concentration in a cemetery? Also, there is the question of effectiveness. Are there fungi that can decay human bodies and could those strains be developed? Is it more effective than nature?
Then, there are religious and spiritual issues to consider, McGowan says. Lee says that her fungal method of burial could be just as meaningful as placing flowers on a casket. “The body is this daily reminder that we are mortal,” she was quoted as saying.
Want your body eaten by a mushroom?

Mammoth crocodile captured in Philippines

By JIM GOMEZ
Associated Press


MANILA, Philippines — What a croc!

Its mighty snout wrapped tightly with ropes, a one-ton, 20-foot saltwater crocodile was captured and put on display in a town in the southern Philippines — one of the biggest such reptiles to be caught in recent years.

But shed no crocodile tears for this colossal captive.

"Lolong," as it has been nicknamed, is about to become the star attraction of an ecotourism park — unless it is upstaged by an even larger reptile that may be still be on the loose.

Residents of Bunawan township celebrated when they captured the croc, with about 100 people pulling the feared beast from a creek by rope, then hoisting it by crane onto a truck. While the beast was safely tied up, they examined its teeth, claws and stubby legs with fascination.

Their party may have been premature, however.

After the 20-foot (6.1-meter) reptile was caught over the weekend, authorities said Tuesday an even bigger crocodile may still be lurking in creeks of the remote region in Agusan del Sur province.

The scaly skinned Lolong — which tips the scales at 2,370 pounds (1,075 kilograms) — is estimated to be at least 50 years old. Wildlife officials were trying to confirm whether it was the largest such catch in the world, said Theresa Mundita Lim of the government's Protected Areas and Wildlife Bureau.

It was captured alive after a three-week hunt, easing some fears among the locals. A child was killed two years ago in the township by a crocodile, and a croc is suspected of killing a fisherman who has been missing since July. Last month, residents saw a crocodile killing a water buffalo.

The party thrown after Lolong's capture "was like a feast, so many villagers turned up," said Mayor Edwin Cox Elorde.

Wildlife official Ronnie Sumiller, who has hunted "nuisance crocodiles" for 20 years and led the team that captured Lolong, said another search was under way for the possibly larger croc that he and residents have seen in the town's marshy outskirts.

"There is a bigger one, and it could be the one creating problems," Sumiller told The Associated Press by telephone from Bunawan, about 515 miles (830 kilometers) southeast of Manila.

"The villagers were saying 10 percent of their fear was gone because of the first capture," Sumiller said. "But there is still the other 90 percent to take care of."

Backed by five village hunters he trained, Sumiller has set 20 steel cable traps with an animal carcass as bait in nearby vast marshland and along the creek where Lolong was caught.

Sumiller said he found no human remains when he induced the captured crocodile to vomit.

Residents of the farming town of about 37,000 people have been told to avoid venturing into marshy areas alone at night, Elorde said.

Guinness World Records lists a saltwater crocodile caught in Australia as the largest crocodile in captivity, measuring 17 feet 11.75 inches (5.48 meters). Saltwater crocodiles can live for more than 100 years and grow to 23 feet (7 meters).

A website for a park called Action Adventure in North Myrtle Beach, S.C., says it is home to Utan, "King of the Crocs," which it bills as the largest crocodile in the United States, measuring more than 20 feet. Park officials did not immediately respond to telephone calls or email requests for information about their crocodile.

Elorde said he plans to make Lolong "the biggest star" in a planned ecotourism park.

Philippine laws strictly prohibit civilians from killing endangered crocodiles, with violators facing up to 12 years in prison and a fine of 1 million pesos ($24,000).

The world's most endangered freshwater variety, crocodylus mindorensis, is found only in the Philippines, where only about 250 are known to be in the wild.

About 1,000 of the larger saltwater type, or crocodylus porosus, like the one captured in Bunawan, are scattered mostly in the country's southern swamplands, wildlife official Glen Rebong said.

Environment Secretary Ramon Paje said the enormous crocodile was captured because it was a threat to the community. He added the reptiles remind that the Philippines' remaining rich habitats need to be constantly protected.

Crocodiles have been hunted in the Philippines by poachers hoping to cash in on the high demand in wealthy Asian countries for their hide, which is coveted for products ranging from bags and shoes to cellphone cases.