EN News aggregated by NLBIF from various external sources http://www.nlbif.nl/ Environment - INTER PRESS SERVICE In early July, whales from the world's largest population of humpbacks began arriving in the warm, subtropical waters off Australia's north-west coast to breed and nurse their young. [Environment - INTER PRESS SERVICE] Sun, 01 Aug 2010 00:00:00 +0000 http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=52323 http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=52323 NYT > Environment Dr. Sterling discusses the complex species interactions that could help explain the high predator to prey ratios, and describes the effort to capture, tag and recapture sea turtles as the expedition winds down. [NYT > Environment] Sat, 31 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0000 http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=b593309f0aef7b436a31315f37332639 http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=b593309f0aef7b436a31315f37332639 National Geographic News Mats of green algae have covered miles of coastline in China, creating foul odors and possibly choking life underneath the waves. Algae - China - Biology - Flora and Fauna - Bacteria [National Geographic News] Fri, 30 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0000 http://feeds.nationalgeographic.com/click.phdo?i=032a64ad23288590e19769c0afd9191e http://feeds.nationalgeographic.com/click.phdo?i=032a64ad23288590e19769c0afd9191e Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk Agony aunt and 'humanzee' Carole Jahme prepares to take audiences on an evolutionary journey in her new show at the Edinburgh Festival FringeI have devised a comic science show to mark the International Year of Biodiversity 2010, Carole Jahme Is Bio-diverse!, which premieres at this year's Edinburgh Festival.I'm taking on the role of a monkey-human hybrid in a bid to help audiences get in touch with their inner apes and understand what makes us who we are.We proudly declared ourselves Homo sapiens, meaning 'wise man', and defined mankind with the phrase, 'Man the tool-maker'. Then it was discovered that chimps also make and use tools to hunt for food.Unabashed, we instead crowed about what we presumed was our lineage's uniquely masterful ability to harness and control fire. But research on the newly discovered primate species Homo floresiensis – commonly known as 'the Hobbit' – has shown that this ape-man creature, who is anatomically closer to chimps than to us, adeptly used fire to cook food.When science forces us to compare ourselves to other primates, we prefer to separate ourselves from our cousins with an emphasis on mankind's evolved articulation. 'Man the talker', we shout now.But recent genetic research on the FOXP2 gene – a dominant gene for language found on chromosome seven – has revealed that Neanderthals shared this gene with us.Traditionally we have portrayed the Neanderthal as an inferior prototype of ourselves; the Caliban of pre-history. Yet here is genetic evidence showing that Neanderthals were as linguistically sophisticated as we are.Genetics has also revealed that we bred with them and those of us of European descent carry at least 4% Neanderthal genes. Not only were Neanderthals gossiping to us over the cave wall 24,000 years ago, but they were silver-tongued enough to guarantee that a little of them lived on in us.Analysis of chimp and human DNA has revealed how we separated from ancestral apes approximately 10m years ago. But the parallel evolving species of early ape-men and archaic apes continued to breed with each other for at least another 4m years.Not only are we modern Westerners the product of hybridised Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons, we are also the progeny of ancestral humans and ancestral chimps. One could even go so far as to suggest that we are in fact a type of evolved 'humanzee'.A recent survey has highlighted that, of the 634 species of primate, 300 are endangered and 114 are imminently threatened with extinction. Since 2010 is the International Year of Biodiversity, I'm using the medium of theatre to highlight the point.I present Carole Jahme Is Bio-diverse! as a humanzee, describing the problems of growing up as a hybrid with a chimp for a dad and a Homo sapiens for a mum. I'll be taking audiences on a comedic yet authentic simian journey to help them get in touch with the ape inside themselves, while reflecting upon what it might be like to belong to the only primate species left.Bio-genetic engineering is bravely taking us into a new world where approximated reconstructions of creatures that have gone before will be brought back to life. A chicken with teeth in place of a beak has already been bred this way to illustrate how ancestral birds had teeth before evolving beaks.Now that both the chimp and human genome have been mapped, advanced embryological technology will soon see the laboratory giving birth to a creature similar to the Hobbit. After 12,000 years this ape-man species might very well walk again. But when humanzee-like primates are breathing once more, what will we do with them? Put them in zoos?Richard Dawkins has speculated that the creation of a humanzee or the discovery of a primate cryptid 'would change everything.' According to Dawkins, if a yeti or one of the other anecdotal bipedal ape-men is ever scientifically validated, our self-image would implode.Homo sapiens are good at manipulating their environment and typically we do not leave space for others. Today's global deforestation and loss of biodiversity is stark evidence of this. It is imperative to save what we have rather than relying on future bio-engineering to create laboratory freaks of nature – however fascinating they may be.Discovery of our evolved natures can only be achieved by placing our lineage within the greater, comparative context of the order of primates. But with the loss of our closest surviving species, some of them barely hanging on with their opposable thumbs, knowledge of our rightful place will be lost for good and King Kong will become mightier in our minds as we attempt to fill our concrete emptiness.Support the International Year of Biodiversity, fight to preserve what's left and, most importantly, come to the Edinburgh Fringe to see my show.EvolutionEdinburgh festivalAnthropologyComedyZoologyBiodiversityCarole Jahmeguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds [Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk] Fri, 30 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2010/jul/30/humanzee-evolution-carole-jahme-edinburgh-festival http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2010/jul/30/humanzee-evolution-carole-jahme-edinburgh-festival NYT > Environment Video scenes of the latest slaughter of marine mammals in a bloody cove are interpreted very differently by different factions. [NYT > Environment] Fri, 30 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0000 http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=bc251732c0e2ec8ad5aaafbb928cfff0 http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=bc251732c0e2ec8ad5aaafbb928cfff0 Livescience.com Acid rain killed the fish, but ecosystems could thrive again. [Livescience.com] Fri, 30 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0000 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Livesciencecom/~3/CDJPl8jyosA/adirondack-lake-ecosystem-signs-of-recovery-100730.html http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Livesciencecom/~3/CDJPl8jyosA/adirondack-lake-ecosystem-signs-of-recovery-100730.html BBC News - Science & Environment The largest wildlife census of its kind conducted in Chernobyl reveals evidence of mammals declining in the exclusion zone. [BBC News - Science & Environment] Fri, 30 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/int/news/-/news/science-environment-10819027 http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/int/news/-/news/science-environment-10819027 AP Top Science News At 12:43 a.m. EDT By 2010-07-30T04:43:23Z MISSOULA, Mont. (AP) -- A federal judge has ruled that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service arbitrarily excluded 'critical habitat' that could be occupied by the elusive Canada lynx.... [AP Top Science News At 12:43 a.m. EDT] Fri, 30 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0000 http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_LYNX_HABITAT?SITE=TXCN&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_LYNX_HABITAT?SITE=TXCN&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT Yahoo! News: Science News AP - A federal judge has ruled that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service arbitrarily excluded 'critical habitat' that could be occupied by the elusive Canada lynx. [Yahoo! News: Science News] Fri, 30 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0000 http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/science/*http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100730/ap_on_sc/us_lynx_habitat http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/science/*http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100730/ap_on_sc/us_lynx_habitat ScienceDaily: Plants & Animals News An Australian scientist has discovered what could be the world's rarest coral in the remote North Pacific Ocean. The unique Pacific elkhorn coral was found while conducting underwater surveys of Arno atoll in the Marshall Islands. [ScienceDaily: Plants & Animals News] Fri, 30 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/07/100729091501.htm http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/07/100729091501.htm CBD News Headlines Few animals can live totally in the dark, and penguins are no exception. But new research shows that climate change could soon rob Adélie penguins (Pygoscelis adeliae) of the sunlight they need to survive, and that could drive them into extinction. [CBD News Headlines] Fri, 30 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=thaw-deal-climate-change-could-leav-2010-07-29 http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=thaw-deal-climate-change-could-leav-2010-07-29 CBD News Headlines Eighteen cheetahs to be imported from Iran, Namibia and South Africa more than 60 years after the species was hunted to extinction. [CBD News Headlines] Fri, 30 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jul/29/india-cheetah http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jul/29/india-cheetah CBD News Headlines The common wombat (Vombatus ursinus) is, as its name suggests, fairly common in Australia. In fact, the indigenous badgerlike mammal is often considered to be a pest. But widespread species are usually ignored because they are pervasive, and in the case of V. ursinus new research warns that the meter-long marsupials could soon be in trouble if Australians don't start paying attention. [CBD News Headlines] Fri, 30 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=road-killed-australias-common-womba-2010-07-30 http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=road-killed-australias-common-womba-2010-07-30 CBD News Headlines Protected species displaced would include water voles, bats and hedgehogs and, in addition, 94 per cent of bird species presently found there would go. [CBD News Headlines] Fri, 30 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jul/29/upper-thames-reservoir http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jul/29/upper-thames-reservoir CBD News Headlines Usually announcements of new species come from biodiverse rainforests or unexplored marine depths, but researchers have announced the discovery of nearly a dozen new species in one of Earth's most well-trodden place: France. Eleven new species have been discovered in Mercantour National Park in southern France. All the new species are insects, including one beetle, seven new aquatic invertebrate living under creek beds, and three springtails, which are soil-dwelling arthropods. [CBD News Headlines] Fri, 30 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0000 http://news.mongabay.com/2010/0729-fidenci_france.html http://news.mongabay.com/2010/0729-fidenci_france.html CBD News Headlines With 18,000 islands spanning two major bigeographic realms (and a curious outlier in Sulawesi) across an area of nearly 2 million square kilometers, Indonesia is one of the world's most biodiverse countries. It has the world's third largest extent of tropical forests, has the planet's richest coral reefs, and is home to more than 12 percent of plant and animal species. Indonesia is culturally rich as well. Its hundreds of cultures speak more than 500 languages. [CBD News Headlines] Fri, 30 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0000 http://news.mongabay.com/2010/0729-interview_meijaard.html http://news.mongabay.com/2010/0729-interview_meijaard.html CBD News Headlines MELBOURNE, Australia, Jul 30, 2010 (IPS) - In early July, whales from the world's largest population of humpbacks began arriving in the warm, subtropical waters off Australia's north-west coast to breed and nurse their young. [CBD News Headlines] Fri, 30 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=52323 http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=52323 The Independent - Frontpage RSS Feed Sometimes it dawns on you why you love your country, and I had one of those moments the other day in contemplating the fact that Britain has a full-time organisation devoted to the welfare of ponds. I may be wrong, but I simply cannot imagine that France or Germany or Italy, still less Albania, Paraguay or Ghana, has a charitable body, employing a full-time staff, which focuses entirely on the health of small bodies of standing water. [The Independent - Frontpage RSS Feed] Fri, 30 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/michael-mccarthy-big-ambitions-for-britains-small-ponds-2038892.html http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/michael-mccarthy-big-ambitions-for-britains-small-ponds-2038892.html NYT > Environment Dr. Sterling and a team of researchers are trying to understand why there is a higher biomass of predators than prey at Palmyra Atoll. [NYT > Environment] Fri, 30 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0000 http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=9fc1c4309910aed95cfcda7325685059 http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=9fc1c4309910aed95cfcda7325685059 Livescience.com Conservationists call the move premature, saying the delicate ecosystem is still in peril. [Livescience.com] Fri, 30 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0000 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Livesciencecom/~3/mFK18H0iyQc/galapagos-islands-kicked-off-international-endangered-list-100729.html http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Livesciencecom/~3/mFK18H0iyQc/galapagos-islands-kicked-off-international-endangered-list-100729.html msnbc.com: Environment Water gurgling from a well is flooding Craig Gautreaux's rice and crawfish fields, turning the farm into a wetland for migratory birds whose usual Gulf of Mexico wintering grounds are threatened by the oil spill. Oilspill - Gulf of Mexico - Bird migration - Wetland - Environment [msnbc.com: Environment] Thu, 29 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38475970/ns/us_news-environment/ http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38475970/ns/us_news-environment/ AllAfrica News: Environment Throughout Africa, oil has correlated with imperial subjugation, local authoritarianism and flagrant human rights abuses. It is now no longer in doubt that there are absolutely no guarantees that extractive activities are safe. One accident could jeopardise an entire ecosystem. It has been common knowledge in many oil-bearing communities in Africa that the discovery of oil in a local community is akin to a declaration of full-fledged war on such a community. [AllAfrica News: Environment] Thu, 29 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0000 http://allafrica.com/stories/201007291010.html http://allafrica.com/stories/201007291010.html Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk Two colonies of age-old and endangered tadpole shrimps discovered alive and well near Solway coastA field near Gretna in Dumfriesshire might not be an obvious place to find the world's oldest living creatures, but a team of scientists has done just that.Two colonies of a prehistoric shrimp that evolved when the dinosaurs ruled the Earth have been found alive and well in the Caerlaverock nature reserve on the Solway coast.The discovery has led experts to think there could be more of the little crustaceans, which are listed as endangered species, elsewhere in the area.The ancient creatures, known as Triops cancriformis or tadpole shrimps, are thought to have the oldest pedigree of any living animal. Fossil evidence suggests they have hardly changed in the more than 200m years that they have been around.Wild tadpole shrimps can grow to more than 10cm long and are remarkable in surviving three major extinctions in the Earth's history. The shrimps have an extraordinary lifecycle. They live in temporary pools of water in which they lay eggs. When the pools dry out, the adults die off, but their eggs remain dormant until the pools fill up again.Researchers at Glasgow University discovered the rare shrimps after collecting samples of mud, which were dried out and then made wet again before being placed in glass tanks. A fortnight later Elaine Benzies, a research student, noticed a tadpole shrimp swimming around in one of the aquariums. 'I hadn't expected to find it and was just going in to check on the heat and lights. It was great to see everyone in the lab gathering round and peering into the tank to look at this ancient survivor from the past,' she said.Until recently, researchers believed the ancient shrimps lived only in a single pond in the New Forest in Hampshire. Six years ago, Larry Griffin, a scientist at the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust, discovered what appeared to be an isolated colony of the creatures in a pool at Caerlaverock.'At the time it seemed that the Caerlaverock colony was a vulnerable historic outlier,' he said. 'But now that we know how this curious creature survives, we have realised that there's a good chance there are more populations out there.'Triops matures rapidly and produces hundreds of eggs in just a couple of weeks. The pond they live in may dry out, but the eggs can survive in the mud for many years. Although in the UK they are all females, they have both male and female reproductive parts, so just one egg needs to survive to regenerate a whole population.'BiodiversityAnimalsScotlandIan Sampleguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds [Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk] Thu, 29 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jul/29/rare-tadpole-shrimps-found-scotland http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jul/29/rare-tadpole-shrimps-found-scotland Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk Synthetic silks have a great future – if only scientists can unlock the chemistry of natural silkIt's tougher than Kevlar and stronger than steel, and no one really knows how to make it. Except spiders of course. And silkworms. Scientists have been trying to mimic the remarkable properties of natural silk for years, with varying success. New approaches are needed to break the deadlock, argue Fiorenzo Omenetto and David Kaplan of Tufts University in tomorrow's issue of the journal Science.Omenetto and Kaplan say reconstituted silks could have a wide range of applications, from implantable drug delivery systems to optical and electronic devices. We've all watched a spider build a web or lower itself down a delicate thread. You might even have seen a silkworm make a cocoon. It looks simple, but nothing could be further from the truth.Researchers still do not fully understand the complex chemical changes that turn silk from a concentrated protein solution inside the glands of a spider or silkworm to a high-strength extensible fibre on the outside. Though synthetic silks have been made in the lab, Omenetto says they fall short of natural silk.'We don't use synthetic silks [for hi-tech applications] because they're basically not good enough,' he said. Instead scientists use reconstituted silk extracted from silkworm cocoons. 'The natural fibre is put in solution and purified, the protein is extracted and essentially you go back to what is in a silkworm gland. That's the 'magic sauce' from which you can make new materials,' Omenetto explains. However, he and Kaplan predict that high-quality synthetic silks, modified for a diverse range of applications, could soon be made on an industrial scale. 'In the next few years, silk sutures, drug delivery systems and fibre-based tissue products that exploit the mechanical properties of silks can be envisioned for ligament, bone and other tissue repairs,' the pair write in Science. Follow-on applications could include degradable electronic displays and implantable optical systems for diagnosis and treatment. Omenetto believes that silk will be harvested from transgenic plants in the same way as cotton. Researchers have already created transgenic bacteria and fungi in an attempt to increase silk yields. In 1995, a team of American researchers inserted a synthetic gene for spider dragline silk into the bacterium Escherichia coli, which made the protein. In 2002, a North American team produced spider silk in mammalian cells. 'The remaining challenges are quality control and scale-up,' says Omenetto. Currently silk is harvested by boiling and separating the cocoons of the domesticated silkmoth larva, Bombyx mori, which are reared on farms. The 5,000-year-old process, known as sericulture, provides over 300,000 tonnes of silk per year to the commodity textile and medical suture industries. But the process is labour and time-intensive. 'In a synthetic form we could bypass the purification process and have control over quality and yield,' argues Omenetto. There may be other advantages. Natural silk contains the glycoprotein sericin, which causes an immune response when used in medical sutures. The sutures have to be wax-coated to eliminate this problem, but it makes them non-biodegradable. 'With purified silk you could eliminate the immune response and still maintain the mechanical properties of the silk,' says Omenetto. However, others urge caution about the prospects for artificial silk. 'There are many applications for such materials, but first we have to be able to make them to order and at reasonable cost, and here we have quite a way to go,' says Fritz Vollrath of the University of Oxford's silk research group. One of the many challenges scientists face is in their understanding of the molecular structure of silk. Silks are large proteins made from repeating sequences of amino acids flanked by specific side chains that determine the protein's chemical behaviour. Making the correct side chains in synthetic silks is essential to capture the properties of the natural fibre. Another mystery is how silk protein stays fluid at high concentrations inside the glands of spinning animals. At similar concentrations on the outside, many of the proteins aggregate, coming out of solution to form a gooey mess. Though the future looks bright for silk-based technologies, it may be some time before silkworms can weave their cocoons in peace.Biochemistry and molecular biologyChemistryBiologyMedical researchInsectsCian O'Luanaighguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds [Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk] Thu, 29 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2010/jul/28/synthetic-silk-silkworms-spider http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2010/jul/28/synthetic-silk-silkworms-spider BBC News - Science & Environment A Unesco panel votes to remove the Galapagos Islands from a 'red list' of endangered heritage sites, drawing protests from a leading conservation group. [BBC News - Science & Environment] Thu, 29 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/int/news/-/news/world-latin-america-10808720 http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/int/news/-/news/world-latin-america-10808720 Newswise: SciNews A $1.5 million National Science Foundation (NSF) multi-institutional grant - co-led by Cornell entomologist Bryan Danforth - will consolidate data from 10 natural history bee collections across the United States. [Newswise: SciNews] Thu, 29 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0000 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/NewswiseScinews/~3/b0lv8inxC_s/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/NewswiseScinews/~3/b0lv8inxC_s/ The Earth Times Online Newspaper - Environment News [The Earth Times Online Newspaper - Environment News] Thu, 29 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/news/337118,provokes-protests-summary.html http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/news/337118,provokes-protests-summary.html Wildlife and Habitat Conservation News - ENN Wild populations of the iconic Mekong giant catfish will be driven to extinction if hydropower dams planned for the Mekong River go ahead, says a new report by WWF. Current scientific information suggests the Mekong giant catfish migrate from the Tonle Sap Lake in Cambodia up the Mekong River to spawn in northern Thailand and Laos. Any dam built on the lower Mekong River mainstream will block this migration route. [Wildlife and Habitat Conservation News - ENN] Thu, 29 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0000 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/WildlifeAndHabitatConservationNews-Enn/~3/4otHBSggvH8/41596 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/WildlifeAndHabitatConservationNews-Enn/~3/4otHBSggvH8/41596 Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk Modern generations are now realising that the immediacy and intimacy of live storytelling cannot be captured by technologyAre oral traditions still relevant? Are they slowly being replaced with technology? In 1992 my son Jesse, the anthropologist Robert Bruce and I drove 400 miles in Robert's beat-up VW van across the dry landscape of southern Mexico into the Chiapas. In the Lacandon jungle, where the first rain we'd seen in two days fell on the heavy vegetation, we came to our destination – the village of Naha. Darkness had fallen as we ducked our heads to enter the main building in the village. A sight that might have been from a 1,000 years ago greeted our eyes. Everyone in the village, all clad in white cotton xikuls (tunics), sat around a fire as the 100-year-old village elder Chan K'in told stories in the peninsular Mayan language.Later that same year, my other son James and I were in Tireli, a village deep in northern Mali. There we listened raptly to Meninu and Asama, two venerated Dogon elders chosen by the village to share the epic tales of how their people came to be. Their job, they explained, was to teach anyone eager to learn.Whenever I think of oral tradition, those moments come to mind. I also remember Maurice Dennis, an Abenaki elder who worked for decades at a tourist attraction in Old Forge, NY. Cars roared by on the highway as he carved the figure of a turtle into a basswood log while relating to me the meaning of the 13 plates on its back. I remember Dewasentah, the Onondaga's head clan mother, teaching me stories 'to pass on to my grandchildren who are not listening to me right now' as we drank tea in her trading post on the reservation. Then there was Duncan Williamson, pulling me aside at the British Storytelling Festival in London to explain how similar his Scottish traveller clan animals were to those of my own Abenaki Indian people.Questions about the relevance and persistence of oral traditions are not new. In the late 19th century, trained ethnologists – not just white men and women, but also educated members of indigenous communities – began writing down 'vanishing' oral traditions. In the early 20th century, further native stories were captured by wire recorders, then movie cameras. Books and recordings, they assumed, were destined to take the place of storytellers.But oral traditions have not disappeared. Their settings may change, but their power and use remain. The image of an oral telling may be caught on paper, film or in digital format, but recordings are not the word shared live. The presence of teller and audience, and the immediacy of the moment are not fully captured by any form of technology. Unlike the insect frozen in amber, a told story is alive. It always changes from one telling to the next depending on the voice and mood of the storyteller, the place of its telling, the response of the audience. The story breathes with the teller's breath.There's a similarity of intent within oral traditions around the world. In American Indian traditions, a story has at least two purposes. The first is to entertain, ensuring it will be heard. This requires awareness and knowledge of the audience – an awareness lacking in any form of recording. Secondly, a story must convey a lesson, one directly appropriate to the needs of the listener. If an Abenaki child was behaving in a selfish manner, for example, one of our traditional tellers might decide to share with that child the story of the monster that tried to keep all of the waters for its own use, was defeated by Gluskonba and turned into a bullfrog.This is not to say that technology and the oral tradition are separated by a deep divide. Technology is neither good nor bad. It just depends on who's using it and how it's used. Humans have employed technology to hold on to stories for as long as we've had speech. Early on we carved shapes into wood or stone to create mnemonic devices. Here in the north-eastern woodlands of the US we made wampum, shell beads strung in patterns to record events. Now we have books and digital recorders.Today, many traditional storytellers around the world refer back to books where ancestral wisdom was recorded. They listen to recordings – often in indigenous languages no longer widely spoken. We've passed through a century during which many indigenous languages were wiped out or pushed to the brink of extinction. A new generation of storytellers is bridging the gap between the decades when their elders were forbidden to speak anything but a European tongue and the present by listening to those old recordings and restoring almost forgotten tongues to everyday use.During the trips I previously mentioned, my sons and I carried a digital recorder with us. Sixty years ago, Maurice Dennis visited every Abenaki elder he could find and taped their stories. Dewasentah's wall was lined with books about Indians. Today, some in our new generation of storytellers are translating stories recorded in English back into native languages – as my son Jesse is doing in Abenaki.As Chan K'in said that night in Naha, it is all related. The great trees are connected to the distant stars. We humans are part of a circle. If we imagine that we are more important than all other beings, we may be inviting disaster. If we imagine that technology can take the place of the living human presence experienced through oral tradition, then we diminish ourselves and forget the true power of stories.• This article was commissioned after the author contacted us via the You tell us page. If you have a subject that you would like Cif to cover, please visit the latest threadLanguageUnited StatesIndigenous peoplesWords and languageSocial historyJoseph Bruchacguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds [Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk] Thu, 29 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jul/29/lasting-power-oral-tradition http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jul/29/lasting-power-oral-tradition AllAfrica News: Environment The Director General of the National Forestry Authority, Frank Rutabingwa, has called on local government leaders to protect forestry reserves in their constituencies against human activity, as a means of ensuring a safe environment that contributes to sustainable development. [AllAfrica News: Environment] Thu, 29 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0000 http://allafrica.com/stories/201007290386.html http://allafrica.com/stories/201007290386.html The Economist: Science and technology Evidence that ancient mammals were dinosaurs’ preyIN DAYS gone by, many palaeontologists thought the reason the dinosaurs became extinct was that the big, lumbering reptiles were outcompeted by small, nippy mammals who ate their eggs and generally ran rings around them. This quasi-anthropocentric view, of the inevitable rise of humanity’s ancestors, took a knock when closer examination showed that dinosaurs, too, were often nimble and warm-blooded. Then it was found that the extermination was an accident, caused when an asteroid hit the Earth. Until that moment, the dinosaurs had reigned supreme and mammals were just an afterthought.Just how supreme is suggested by work carried out by Edward Simpson of Kutztown University in Pennsylvania and his colleagues. Dr Simpson’s analysis indicates that the relationship between dinosaurs and mammals was actually that of a diner to his lunch. ... [The Economist: Science and technology] Thu, 29 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.economist.com/sciencetechnology/displaystory.cfm?story_id=16690705&fsrc=rss http://www.economist.com/sciencetechnology/displaystory.cfm?story_id=16690705&fsrc=rss AllAfrica News: Environment The UNESCO World Heritage Committee meeting slated for July 25 August 3, commenced seating with deliberations on new outstanding natural cultural places that will make the list of world heritage sites. [AllAfrica News: Environment] Thu, 29 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0000 http://allafrica.com/stories/201007290317.html http://allafrica.com/stories/201007290317.html Africa News latest RSS headlines - The Africa News.Net The partnership between people and the ancestors of today's donkeys was sealed by mobile, pastoral people who recruited animals to help them survive the harsh Saharan landscape in northern Africa some 5,000 years ago, according to genetic investigators. [Africa News latest RSS headlines - The Africa News.Net] Thu, 29 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.theafricanews.net/story/665786 http://www.theafricanews.net/story/665786 ScienceDaily: Plants & Animals News Scientists have mapped and analyzed global biodiversity patterns for over 11,000 marine species ranging from tiny zooplankton to sharks and whales. [ScienceDaily: Plants & Animals News] Thu, 29 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/07/100728131707.htm http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/07/100728131707.htm ScienceDaily: Plants & Animals News The world’s oceans are host to an enormous diversity of drifting, microscopic organisms, known as plankton. How this biodiversity has arisen has puzzled biologists for decades. An international team of researchers has now succeeded in elucidating how new planktonic species are formed, providing an explanation for the large biodiversity seen today. [ScienceDaily: Plants & Animals News] Thu, 29 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/07/100729075013.htm http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/07/100729075013.htm ScienceDaily: Plants & Animals News In a finding that says much about the people who lived in northern Africa 5,000 years ago, scientists believe domestication of the donkey was achieved by nomadic people responding to the growing borders of the Sahara. Scientists also determined the endangered African wild ass is the living ancestor of the modern donkey and found hints that one strain of African wild ass thought to be extinct may still be alive. [ScienceDaily: Plants & Animals News] Thu, 29 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/07/100728131717.htm http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/07/100728131717.htm ScienceDaily: Plants & Animals News A new article reveals for the first time that microscopic marine algae known as phytoplankton have been declining globally over the 20th century. Phytoplankton forms the basis of the marine food chain and sustains diverse assemblages of species ranging from tiny zooplankton to large marine mammals, seabirds, and fish. [ScienceDaily: Plants & Animals News] Thu, 29 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/07/100728131705.htm http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/07/100728131705.htm CBD News Headlines Researchers have confirmed that cheetahs (Acinonyx jubatus) and African wild dogs (Lycaon pictus) have become essentially extinct in Cameroon. [CBD News Headlines] Thu, 29 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0000 http://news.mongabay.com/2010/0728-hance_cameroon.html http://news.mongabay.com/2010/0728-hance_cameroon.html CBD News Headlines As the world begins to pay closer attention to the importance of preserving biodiversity, more has emerged about the Middle East's wild side. [CBD News Headlines] Thu, 29 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.greenprophet.com/2010/07/28/25408/insects-wadi-wurayah-dubai/comment-page-1/ http://www.greenprophet.com/2010/07/28/25408/insects-wadi-wurayah-dubai/comment-page-1/ CBD News Headlines New book claims western-style schemes to protect animals damage the environment and criminalise local people [CBD News Headlines] Thu, 29 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jul/29/wildlife-conservation-projects-more-harm http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jul/29/wildlife-conservation-projects-more-harm CBD News Headlines Nepal and India on Thursday signed a joint resolution to join hands to conserve biodiversity including tigers, and strengthen ecological security in the trans-boundary region. [CBD News Headlines] Thu, 29 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.nepalnews.com/main/index.php/news-archive/19-general/7937-nepal-and-india-join-hands-for-biodiversity-conservation-on-world-tiger-day.html http://www.nepalnews.com/main/index.php/news-archive/19-general/7937-nepal-and-india-join-hands-for-biodiversity-conservation-on-world-tiger-day.html National Geographic News The Obama administration’s first lease sale in the 87-year-old petroleum reserve on the North Slope leaves sanctuary for caribou and geese. Petroleum - Business - Energy - Oil and Gas - Alaska North Slope [National Geographic News] Wed, 28 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0000 http://feeds.nationalgeographic.com/click.phdo?i=5e36e816d854bf562dd2bb03a6b2cf27 http://feeds.nationalgeographic.com/click.phdo?i=5e36e816d854bf562dd2bb03a6b2cf27 AllAfrica News: Environment Vast portions of Madagascar's unique biodiversity could be lost - possibly forever, and at incalculable cost to ordinary Malagasy and the world - by the continued suspension of environmental funding in response to an ongoing political crisis, says a new report by the US Agency for International Development (USAID), the main environmental donor. [AllAfrica News: Environment] Wed, 28 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0000 http://allafrica.com/stories/201007281064.html http://allafrica.com/stories/201007281064.html Sci-Tech Today Despite their tiny size, plant plankton found in the world's oceans are crucial to much of life on Earth. They are the foundation of the bountiful marine food web, produce half the world's oxygen and suck up harmful carbon dioxide. They also are declining sharply. Worldwide phytoplankton levels are down 40 percent since the 1950s, according to a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature. The probable cause is global warming, which makes it hard for the plant plankton to get vital nutrients, researchers say. The numbers are both staggering and disturbing, say the Canadian scientists who did the study and a top U.S. government scientist. 'It's concerning because phytoplankton is the basic currency for everything going on in the ocean,' said Dalhousie University biology professor Boris Worm, a study co-author. 'It's almost like a recession ... that has been going on for decades.' Half a million datapoints dating to 1899 show that plant plankton levels in almost all the world's oceans started to drop in the 1950s. The biggest changes are in the Arctic, southern and equatorial Atlantic and equatorial Pacific oceans. Only the Indian Ocean is not showing a decline. The study's authors said it is too early to say that plant plankton is on the verge of vanishing. Virginia Burkett, the chief climate change scientist for the U.S. Geological Survey, said plankton numbers are worrisome and show problems that cannot be seen just by watching bigger more charismatic species like dolphins or whales. 'These tiny species are indicating that large-scale changes in the ocean are affecting the primary productivity of the planet,' said Burkett, who was not involved in the study. When plant plankton plummet, as they do during El Nino climate cycles, sea birds and marine mammals starve and die in huge numbers, experts said. 'Phytoplankton ultimately affects all of us in our daily lives,'... [Sci-Tech Today] Wed, 28 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.sci-tech-today.com/story.xhtml?story_id=74524 http://www.sci-tech-today.com/story.xhtml?story_id=74524 Livescience.com New map shows where ocean species dwell. [Livescience.com] Wed, 28 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0000 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Livesciencecom/~3/UfROsua2ZQw/warmer-waters-threaten-ocean-biodiversity-100728.html http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Livesciencecom/~3/UfROsua2ZQw/warmer-waters-threaten-ocean-biodiversity-100728.html Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk Numbers of phytoplankton - the microscopic organisms that sustain the marine food chain - are plummeting as sea surface temperatures risePhytoplankton might be too small to see with the naked eye, but they are the foundations of the ocean food chain, ultimately capturing the energy that sustains the seas' great beasts such as whales.A new study though has raised the alarm about fundamental changes to life underwater. It warns that populations of these microscopic organisms have plummeted in the last century, and the rate of loss has increased in recent years.The reduction – averaging about 1% per year – is related to increasing sea surface temperatures, says the paper, published tomorrow in the journal Nature.The decline of these tiny plankton will have impacted nearly all sea creatures and will also have affected fish stocks.Phytoplankton provide food – by capturing energy from the sun – and recycle nutrients, and because they account for approximately half of all organic matter on earth they are hugely important as a means of absorbing carbon.'This decline will need to be considered in future studies of marine ecosystems, geochemical cycling, ocean circulation and fisheries,' add the paper's authors, from Dalhousie university in Nova Scotia, Canada.The researchers looked at measurements of ocean transparency and tested for concentrations of chlorophyll, which gives large numbers of phytoplankton a distinctive green sheen. They said that although there were variations in some areas due to regional climate and coastal run-off, the long-term global decline was 'unequivocal'.The Nature article comes as climate scientists published what they said today was the 'best ever' collection of evidence for global warming, including temperature over land, at sea and in the higher atmosphere, along with records of humidity, sea-level rise, and melting ice.Marine lifeOceansClimate changeClimate changePlantsMicrobiologyJuliette Jowitguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds [Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk] Wed, 28 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jul/28/phytoplankton-decline-nature http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jul/28/phytoplankton-decline-nature Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk Fifteen per cent of people produce natural repellent and are rarely bitten, research showsTall men and large women are prime targets for midges, according to researchers who surveyed people at Loch Ness, in the Scottish Highlands.Scientists at Aberdeen University and Rothamsted Research, based in Hertfordshire, questioned 325 participants and spectators at a 120km (75ml) duathlon on the shores of the loch in September 2008. Each was asked if they had been bitten and, if so, how many times.Tall men and overweight women were statistically more likely to get bitten, the research showed. Midges tend to fly well above head height so, when they descend on groups of people, they are more likely to land on tall men first.The survey found some evidence that women with a large body mass index were also favoured by midges, perhaps because they produce more of the chemicals, such as carbon dioxide and lactic acid, that attract the insects. It is likely that overweight men are just as much at risk of midge bites, but there were too few in the survey to stand out.The researchers confirmed a previous intriguing finding – that some people seem to be unattractive to midges. They found 15% were rarely bitten, and the impunity ran in families, suggesting a genetic link.'People who don't get bitten produce natural repellents that are extremely effective,' said James Logan, an entomologist who worked on the survey.The tests showed those who were spared midge attacks produced a specific mixture of two chemicals, geranylacetone and methylheptenone.'The chemicals work together. If you mix them in the right ratio, you get a fantastic repellent,' Logan said.The natural repellent is so effective that the scientists have teamed up with an Asian company to release it as a product to deter mosquitoes, midges and ticks.InsectsHealthZoologyChemistryIan Sampleguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds [Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk] Wed, 28 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jul/28/midges-tall-men-overweight-women http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jul/28/midges-tall-men-overweight-women Newswise: SciNews Like giant canaries in a coal mine, whales reflect the health of their environment. Now, the Bioacoustics Research Program at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, in partnership with NOAA, is placing marine recording units in the Gulf to listen to whales and document the state of that oil-threatened ecosystem. [Newswise: SciNews] Wed, 28 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0000 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/NewswiseScinews/~3/e_XF1q1Cm3I/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/NewswiseScinews/~3/e_XF1q1Cm3I/ Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk The UK government's rejection of a damning Commons report on homeopathy leaves Martin Robbins baffled and depressedThe government has released its eagerly anticipated response to the Science and Technology Committee's Evidence Check on Homeopathy and, incredibly, it's even worse than I thought it would be. The verdict is 'business as usual', with the main recommendations of the committee ignored in a fog of confusion and double-think.You get a sense of this confusion very early on, with lines like: 'given the geographical, socioeconomic and cultural diversity in England, [policy on homeopathy] involves a whole range of considerations including, but not limited to, efficacy.' I actually have no idea what this means – do medicines work differently in Norfolk from the way they work in Hampshire? The report doesn't elaborate.As expected, the word 'choice' features heavily in the government's response:There naturally will be an assumption that if the NHS is offering homeopathic treatments then they will be efficacious, whereas the overriding reason for NHS provision is that homeopathy is available to provide patient choice ... if regulation was applied to homeopathic medicines as understood in the context of conventional pharmaceutical medicines, these products would have to be withdrawn from the market as medicines. This would constrain consumer choice and, more importantly, risk the introduction of unregulated, poor quality and potentially unsafe products on the market to satisfy consumer demand.'So we can't regulate these products as medicines because they'd end up being banned, but we'll let them be called medicines anyway? It gives me a headache just trying to think down to the level of the person who wrote this stuff.The report accepts that there's no evidence that homeopathy works, but apparently this shouldn't be a barrier to it being distributed via the NHS because not handing out medicines that don't work might infringe the freedom of patients to choose things that don't work. What makes this even more absurd is that they concede that:In order for the public to make informed choices, it is therefore vitally important that the scientific evidence base for homeopathy is clearly explained and available. He [the government's chief scientific adviser] will therefore engage further with the Department of Health to ensure communication to the public is addressed.'So the government is planning to launch a public information campaign against homeopathic treatments at the same time as it continues to fund those treatments through the NHS. In this glorious mess of a policy the government has come up with something so brain-meltingly stupid that even the satirical brain of Armando Iannucci (The Thick of It, In the Loop) would struggle to match it.What I find so frustrating is this dedication to a form of 'consumer choice' that is absolutely anything but. If I walk into a pharmacist looking for a packet of condoms, and I'm given the choice between a packet of Durex and a sock, it isn't a choice, it's just a pointless piece of confusion that's going to lead to lots of people having really uncomfortable sex, and a localised population explosion.Another feature worth picking up on is the way in which responsibility for these decisions has been passed down the line, allowing alternative medicine to fall conveniently into various regulatory gaps. The government doesn't believe that the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) has time to waste on a review of homeopathy, while the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has made its guidelines flexible enough to allow many homeopathic products a free pass, for reasons that are still unfathomable to me.In this regulatory vacuum the government's response repeatedly delegates responsibility for making decisions on the use of homeopathy to primary care trusts, yet these are set to be abolished in the next few years, which will dump responsibility onto individual GPs.The General Medical Council's guidance to GPs on the issue of alternative medicine is woolly at best (and the the council has ignored my requests to clarify it). The GMC states that 'we are not in a position to advise doctors about the suitability or otherwise of particular treatments as our remit does not extend to collecting, analysing or disseminating clinical information' and basically leaves it to GPs' own judgement about whether or not a treatment is in the best interests of a patient.Given that some GPs are practising homeopaths, this is a not a thrilling prospect.Before the election I put questions on science policy to all the main parties on behalf of the Guardian. The Conservatives told me that it would be 'wholly irresponsible to spend public money on treatments that have no evidence to support their claims'. The Liberal Democrats stated that they would actively seek a full review of complementary and alternative therapies and that, '[if] Nice's advice was that the treatment did not perform better than placebo, then of course it should not be supported by the NHS.'Both parties made a commitment to evidence-based medicine on the NHS. Both parties have performed screeching U-turns on the subject at the first hurdle, ignoring pledges made in writing only three months ago. What should they do now? As a near namesake of mine once said, I'd make a suggestion, but they wouldn't listen. No one ever does. It's all very depressing.Science policyMedical researchHomeopathyHealthMartin Robbinsguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds [Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk] Wed, 28 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/jul/27/choice-fetish-homeopathy-policy http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/jul/27/choice-fetish-homeopathy-policy ScienceDaily: Plants & Animals News Though much effort and many resources have been expended to protect the endangered giant panda, research by an international team of scientists shows that much suitable panda habitat is outside the nature reserves and areas where the panda is reported to live. [ScienceDaily: Plants & Animals News] Wed, 28 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/07/100728111721.htm http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/07/100728111721.htm