Over 50 Percent Of Oceanic Shark Species Threatened With Extinction

"The first study to determine the global threat status of 21 species of wide-ranging oceanic pelagic sharks and rays reveals serious overfishing and recommends key steps that governments can take to safeguard populations. These findings and recommendations for action are published in the latest edition of Aquatic Conservation: Marine and Freshwater Ecosystems."
Scientists determined that 16 out of the 21 species of sharks that live in the oceans, get caught by fishers, and that they can get extinct really easily, because when they catch them, the catches are not regulated.
They are vulnerable to be over fished, because a lot of times they don't reach the age in which they are sexually mature and have offspring. So the population of sharks can go down easily.
"Fishery managers and regional, national and international officials have the opportunity and the obligation to halt and reverse the rate of loss of biodiversity and ensure sharks and rays are exploited sustainably." says lead author Nicholas Dulvy from the Centre for Environment.
"The current rate of biodiversity loss is ten to a hundred times greater than historic extinction rates, and as humans make increasing use of ocean resources it is possible that many more aquatic species, particularly sharks, are coming under threat," says Dulvy
So some of the solutions for this problem are to establish limits for catching them, so that the sharks can be controlled.

I really like everything about marine life, so I think that this is a problem that has to stop, because all fish and sharks are going to be extinct if this doesn't stop.
So if this doesn't stop soon, it can happen faster than anyone can think.
More other things consequences can happen because if sharks get extinct, they can stop the food chain, and then more problems will come on and on and on, so it is important that it stops.
And besides animals don't have the fault from anything, the fishers are the ones that are making mistakes sometimes not really knowing, so I think that authorities should really put an end to this.

Bloomberg Lays into Policymakers' "Political Science"

This article is about Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New york saying that pollution is growing and we must put a stop to it. He also discussed the fact that science is more important than politics. He was discussing this at the World Science Festival. He is stating that politicians have throughout history ignored sicentists waranings on many things such as the link between smoking and lung cancer. When polictics ignore science he says it is because of political science. he also believes that it is an important issue to reduce greenhouse gases.

My opinon is that we all have to start taking steps for a better future and a better life. It would be nice if politicians began listening to scientists about what is happening on our planet, after all they are the ones that do all the research and can help solve the problems.

Monkey's brain controls robot arm

In this article, the u.s.a scientific though that it could be possible to feed a monkey
with a robotic arm.
Scientists at the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University
implanted tiny electrodes into the primary motor cortex, the region of the
brain that sends electrical signals to other parts of the body to control movement.
After programming the arm to respond to certain brain activity,
the researchers were then able to train the monkeys to operate
the arm and have it reach for a treat, pick it up and bring it to their mouths.
They made the monkey learn haw to use it by first observing,
which activates his brain cells as if he were doing it.
University of Montreal researcher John Kalaska, who was not part of the research team, described in an accompanying news article the ease with which the monkeys adapted to and learned to control their robotic arms.
In the experiment the monkey learn by watching just like the scientific s thought it will be.
They say the research could lead to the development of prosthetics for people with spinal cord injuries and those with conditions such as Lou Gehrig's disease, or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.
My opinion !!!
i think this experiment is really good because if this work they could help people that need it.
they should keep researching and doing more experiments like this , that could help people.
if it works it will be really cool and people could have more possibilities to live better.

Physics in your home

No you’re not dreaming you do have physics in your home. Your DVD’s have optics, lasers and electronics. Your fireplace has thermodynamics and fluid motion. This just goes to show that everything we take for granted actually has loads of cool stuff and took a lot of time to make. Your cell phone or blackberry uses electromagnetic waves and space flight and it’s about as big as you hand. Your credit cards have electromagnetic induction. Even your bicycle has mechanics involved in making it. Yes, every single object in your house probably has physics involved in making it.

INDIANA JONES: THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL, FACT OR FICTION?

I know we’ve all been looking forward to the fourth instalment in the Indiana Jones series but some of the things they used in the movies may be shocking from a scientist’s point of view. The story for the fourth film is that archaeologist Indiana Jones and his kid helper Mut hear of an old Mayan skull that gives great power to the holder. Indy and his friend set out to find the skull, but on the way they meet a female Nazi with a violent temper. They will also encounter more Nazi’s, giant boulders, hidden traps and unfriendly native Mayans. And as I said the things they use just don’t match the Mayans, for example the stone they used for the temple is granite while the Mayans used other rock from the mountains. Also the carvings on the walls are not at all like the Mayan carvings on real temples. So if a scientist would enter the set of this film he should take a close look around.

No more thin plastic bags in china!!

This article is informing us about the amount of thin plastic bags used in China, how they damage the enviorment and what the government is doing to help or decrease the damage!

Thin plastic bags are used for everything in China!
Fruit mongers weigh everything in them, tailors stuff shirts into them, even street food vendors give their piping hot wares directly into see-through plastic bags that dont even do something to protect one's hands from being burned!
Chinese use up to three billion of this plastic bags a day! this habit picked in the 1980s of using this plastic bags for convenience is really damaging the enviorment.
In China they even have a special name for the plastic bags found flying, hanging and floating everywhere from trees to rivers: bai si wu le, or "white pollution,".
But the government has realised how this is affecting the enviorment and they have decided to do something about it:
The government is set to ban the manufacture and force shopkeepers to charge for the distribution of bags thinner than .025 millimeters thick as of June 1! This is a really dramatic change and the people of china are not happy of prepared for this, "I don't know what we'll do, what will we use!?" says a worker in the market of China!
The Chinese government is banning production and distribution of the thinnest plastic bags in a bid to curb the white pollution that is taking over the countryside. The bags are also banned from all forms of public transportation.
The move may save as much as 37 million barrels of oil currently used to produce the plastic totes! Already, the nation's largest producer of such thin plastic bags, Huaqiang, has shut down its operations!
my opinion:
I think this is a very important change and the enviorment will be so much better and it will help alot! I think this desision and change will be difficult for the people in China because they use so much this bags, and it will be a drastic change, but I also think that they will eventually find better ways and other better products, and at the end, the result will be very good for the country and the eviorment!
I think it is very good that people are finding new products that will be better for the world and that they are being more aware of this kind of things, and more aware that we need to change how we live or really bad consequences will come!!! I thaught this was a very interesting and important article , and i liked it alot!!
Maria Rubio!

More Aftershocks in China Quake Zone

This article is about another aftershock in China that happened on May 20th measuring 5.1 on the Richter scale. Many people were evacuated from buildings especially any building that was higher than three floors. There were no people hurt but officials say that they are losing food supplies very quickly. There will likely be many more aftershocks in the future. possibly one measuring 7 on the Richter scale. The Chinese governments is still not allowing outside help which is making it harder for people to find food and essentials.

My opinion is that the Chinese government needs to start thinking of their people instead of just themselves. Perhaps they should evacuate some people from the hardest hit areas and get them the things they need instead of sitting around and doing nothing. What is going to happen to the olympics?

At Ten, Dark Energy "Most Profound Problem" in Physics

Since a long time ago, physicists thought that the law of gravity was making the universe expand to slow, "But ten years ago this month the Astronomical Journal accepted a paper for publication that revealed there is a dark side of the force. "
But a new study showed that instead of the universe expands slow, is going faster.
Scientists say that this is because of the dark energy, and this force repeals gravity. But this is not all, dark energy also is 74% of the universe... but maybe when more studies are done, the results can change: "This is game-changing science," Michael Turner, a cosmologist at the University of Chicago.
This is because they just stablished the phenomenon, but they still have to prove the cause.

What I think about this, is that is so cool that they found dark energy. I mean, it's not like is necessarly something bad, but in some movies and books they always talk about a dark side of things, and many times they don't think it is true, but things that are going on are coming closer to reality every time.
I also think that if this force is against the gravity law, then new things can be done, because if this is something that is stablished, then this discovery shows that not everything is as we think it can be and as we are used too, so it is really interesting to know about this, because it gets you to think about new ways of viewing things.

by: Marcela Murillo Trujano

Death Toll May Climb in China Earthquake Aftermath

This article is about a city in China that had a huge earthquake and there were many deaths. The death toll has been estimated to become more than 50,000. The earthquake happened last Monday at 2:28 pm local time and measured 7.9 on the Richter scale. As many as 20,000 deaths have already occured and another 40,000 people are missing and probably are dead. The defence minister has ordered 101 helicopters to airlift people from devastated areas. Many schools, hospitals, roads have been hit hard. Aftershocks are devastating as well, in a high school, more than 1,000 students and teachers are dead or missing and in a middle school, 900 children are trapped because of a buiding collapse. This is the worst earthquake to hit China since 1976 when an earthquake measuring 7.5 at the epicenter, more than 240,000 people lost their lives.

This is devastating news and I am sure that if the Chinese government would allow outside help, people would be found more quickly and survivors would also get the help they need now instead of later.

Good night, Sloth

Scientist Niels Rattenborg of the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Seewiesen, Germany, did an study with sluggish bears. He took some of this animals from their trees, so he could put a mini battery recorder for sloths in a lab.
The device allows monitoring of electrical impulses from the brain, but instead of keeping the animals in the lab, they put them outside, to know more about their lives.
What happened was that they sticked them in their hairs, and 3 days later they took the devices away and check all the results.
“I think this is the first to really do sleep in free-roaming animals — that’s what makes the paper interesting,” says evolutionary neuroscientist Paul Manger of the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. The approach holds promise since miniaturization and data retrieval technologies are improving so rapidly, he adds.
This is something that is really interesting, because you can check animals in a lab and know results about them, but when they are in their natural environment things change, so you can actually know how animals act when there are predators near to them.
Even though this helps, animals can feel different when they have something stick in their heads, but the study says that at first the sloths were stressed out because of the device but later they went back to normal and that they didn't sleep a lot, they just sleep 20% of the day, and that is what humans normally sleep.
One interesting thing that was found out with this study, was that while this animals were sleeping it seemed like they were chewing something, so maybe they were dreaming about eating leaves.

From this article I have different opinions.
First I think that for understanding the behavior of animals it's something good to do, because we will have more information about the way they act with other animals of their kind and to see how similar or different their behavior can be with other animals and even humans.
But another opinion that I have is not that good, because I think that animals can feel different when they have something stick in their heads, because they are not used to it so it's not normal to them, their mood can change, they can act weird or rare because of the device, it might seem like it doesn't affect them, but they don't know what is going on, and maybe this particular device don't hurt them but later they can be some that would damage them and I don't think this is a good thing to do , because you are interfering with their natural way of living, and animals have feellings too.

Marcela Murillo Trujano

Earthquake in China, horrible disaster!

This article is informing us about the earthquake that occurred in China this Monday, and the consequences of it:
It was a 7.9 magnitude earthquake, that killed thousands of people, and thousand are still missing! This has been the country’s worst earthquake in three decades! So far, 11,921 people have died!
The worst part of this disaster is that this earthquake hit the hardest in remote areas of china (not in the cities), and there is millions of people in this area with desperate need of help but this areas remain inaccessible to rescuers, due to the remoteness and difficulty of the mountainous terrain, this is a huge problem that is causing more and more deaths!
This quake, that lasted several minutes, has collapsed buildings in cities and towns across the province as well as cracking buildings in the capital city, where thousands of people have been spending the night out of doors in fear of aftershocks the people are terrified and don’t know what to do.
More than 26,000 have been injured and at least 9,400 remain trapped in such levelled buildings.
Rescuers and troops worked without stopping and have been saving thousand of lives.
"It's a nightmare. It's a tragedy," said Zhao Mu, a student in university.

My opinion:
I am glad I read this article about this because I did not know about all this tragedy that is happening in China, I think this is so sad and it is terrible, I think that the worst part of it is that people in cities are receiving so much help, (and it is very good that they are receiving it), but the parts that need more help and have been destroyed the most are the ones where the rescuers cant get access to, and people there should be so desperate, I cant imagine how they must feel to be in such a disaster and now one being there with the necessary equipment to help them now! In the article it said that this is a natural disaster with a huge magnitude and that something like this had not been seen in so long, I really think that all this huge and horrible disasters that are happening in the world are due to global warming, there have been so many natural disasters lately and if the global warming situation does not get better, I think we are going to have natural disasters like this earthquake in China and other places often, and we are going to see the consequences and suffer so much! I am really glad I read this article because now I am more aware of what is happening in the world and more aware that we need to change our way of living or the consequences will be HUGE!
Maria Rubio.

Human Aging Gene Found In Flies

Scientists funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) have found a fast and effective way to investigate important aspects of human aging.
Scientists have discovered a gene in fruit flies that means flies can now be used to study the effects aging has on DNA. This is something really important because it can help find out solutions for things like aging at cellular.
Scientists also made an experiment, they were studying a disease that helps understand normal aging. What happens is if one gene changes, it means that then people will age quickly.
This can be test in flies, but there are still not results for developing this genes in human bodies, but if it works it can be very helpful to know more about human beings and a new way of discovered and preventing diseases, and changes with humans.
Dr Robert Saunders from The Open University added: "This work shows for the first time that we can use the short-lived fruit fly to investigate the function of an important human aging gene. We have opened up the exciting possibility of using this model system to analyse the way that such genes work in a whole organism, not just in single cells.”
This gene is known as WRN.

I think that it is really interesting to see how animals can be so similar to human beings, because I think this is not the first time that some kind of cells or genes are find in humans and animals, and with this, there are more chances to get to know why or how diseases can be cured, without experimenting with humans, it can be try in animals, even though sometimes I think that shouldn't be done either because animals are alive too and they can suffer as humans can, but in animals like flies, I think it's ok because there are a lot of them and they reproduce fast, and testing in them, can save lives, and help in science to make new discoveries.

Marcela Murillo Trujano

Spider named after canadian singer

wow...-_-


This must be one of the gobstopping thing I have seen this week. A spider...named after a canadien singer. This particular article is related to the study of insects and so this is why i am posting it. Other from the name of this creature, I was interested to see what kind of spider it was. The article I read was more mesmerized that it was named after a famous singer than that they actually found a new species of spider. The article did not mention anything about, if it is poisenous or any such information. The only thing they were interested in was the singer. I was disappointed.. but it is an interesting thing to read about. I would research this spider and tell you all the information, but all the articles say the same thing. It is not really information on the spider, it is a biography of the singer. I may be over reacting, and the only reason they don't say anything is beacuse there is no information, but from now on, when i read an article, I hope is sticks to the point (as I have not done) instead of sidetracking.

Platypus genome reveals links between reptiles, mammals

Scientist still don’t know what to do about the duck billed platypus it is a mammal that lyes eggs. They are saying that they are understanding this animal a bit better now after this genome. A time of scientist form the universities of Ornithorhynchus is comparing the platypus with other mammals so they mite find something. They are saying that the platypus appears as an animal looks. Francis Collins, the director of the U.S.-based National Human Genome Research Institute said comparing the platypus and other animals will help us understand our self’s better. They found out that the platypus contains about the same number of protein-coding genes like other mammals they approximately 18,500 protein-coding genes and it shares about 80% of its genes with other mammals. But the scientist where interested in the deferents. With matching the platypus genes with other mammals they found out that it was the crossroads between early mammal-like reptiles and of the other mammals we see today. They did a genetic analyzing and found out that it had slimmer portion milk genes that is just one of its many slimmer genes. They found out that males can give venom through the hind legs and it is slimmer to reptiles but independently. It was published form the newspaper company journal Nature and people on the time came from United States, Australia, England, Germany, Israel, Japan, New Zealand and Spain.

I like this project:

Because they found out that the platypus is one of the few animals that are between reptiles and mammals. So they can now find more about the genes of it and of us because if they find out enough of the genes they can find out more about us humans that would revolve to a new area of understanding us humans.

Scientists Build Nano Hot Rods

This article is about university students making a way to mace microspic nanobots. They will be able to help people in their drugs and cleaning water from distant lands. A nanomachine is a small device that is less than one micron in size (one millionth of a meter). They hope that they will be able to help target the delivery of drugs in the system to the proper places. For example, if a patient has cancer the drugs would be directed to the cancer cells. The only problem is that the nanomachines aren't very fast. So more research needs to be done so that imporvements can be done to the machines. There has been money awarded to do more research on these tiny bots.

I find that this is a great idea because it could help people that are dying across the oceans and would just help with clean water. Also, it would help with drugs as well. If we gave trillions of these nanobots across the ocean it would be so helpful.

Quake Shakes Tokyo

Japan's capital was hit Thursday morning by a nearby 6.8-magnitude earthquake that injured two and left some 2,100 residents in the dark.
Japan was rocked by a series of earthquakes thursday about 100 miles (160 kilometers) from Tokyo that injured two, cut off power to some 2,100 homes, and left the country on high alert for possible aftershocks. The largest quake hit at 1:45 a.m. local time in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of the Ibaraki Prefecture and measured 6.8 on the Ritcher Scale.
No major damage has been reported, and the two injuries are not believed to be serious. Highway officials lowered the speed limit as a precaution, although they had not detected any cracks in roads from the quake, which struck offshore at a depth of 25 miles (40 kilometers), according to the United States.
In mi opinion
I think that this is a very serious natural disaster that oviosly can't be controled, but what we can do is to send money or food to all this people that got homeless.

Skeletons found near Plains of Abraham

This article is about two nearly intact human skeletons discovered near the Plains of Abraham last winter date back to the 19th century or earlier.
Construction workers found the bones last February while breaking ground for new washroom facilities on the plains, a natural plateau outside Quebec city's fortified walls.
Archeologists confirm the remains belong to a teenaged boy and an older woman.
the bones of the teen ege boy are in perfect conditions, the team of archeologists hired by the National Battlefields Commission to investigate the bones.
It's the first time a burial site has been discovered on the plains. There are no official records of any burial grounds in the park, where British troops confronted the French in the 1759 Battle of Quebec.
mi opinion
in my opinion i think that is really cool thet is the first time they had find this kind of stuff in Quebec, and that they should keep searching about this because with this kinds of stuff we can learn more about the past and think more like our ancestors.

In the Plains of Abraham two skeletons were found by to drain pipes when they were digging into the ground. The skeletons were of a teenage boy and they think her mother. They think they were buried in the 19^th century which a long time ago was so they probably will not fined the killer. The construction workers found them why making a new washroom for the homeowner, the police think that they weren’t murdered but they died and got buried in two coffins, the construction head has never seen anything like this. What do I think of this? I think it is good that they found the bodies because maybe someone was looking for them or something else, but I think this story is kind of gross.

Ryan

Connections to an untethered future

The new Iphone from apple is a great new invention because it has all kinds of features like a phone and music, games, videos, internet, GPS system, text messages and a touch screen and more on it. But you can’t get this awesome apple feature for cheap, this cost 600$ dollars. They say that it changes how people monitor the world. The inventor of this Iphone is Marin Solijacic from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Why would you by this? It is better then carrying all those features around when you can carry it in one. Why would I buy one? Because they are really cool and a good piece of machinery too. What do I think of this? I think it is an awesome idea and apple is making tons of money off of it and there other things they are selling, so yes I think it is a good idea.

Ryan

Climate change claims caribou calves: study

Fewer caribou are being born and dieing in west Greenland because of warming. That what a US biologist said. Penn State biology professor Eric Post started to collect data in 1993 and found out that the timing of food and birth and don’t correspond any more and that roughly 75 per cent mange to get to adulthood. They are going to translate the publish meant in and it is going to get publish at 12, 2008 July. When the babies are born and they go look for food the plants are starting to grow and then most of them can’t grow next year again and scientists call this a "trophic mismatch." In the winter the caribou dig in the snow where they find lichens and then in spring they switch to grassing and growth of willows, sedges, and flowering tundra herbs. Now that the birth rate increases they go to the areas where there is plenty of food for them. But now they nodes that there plant that they eat are already peeking it doesn’t depend on day light it depends on heat and if it hotter they grow faster so the caribou don’t have nothing more to eat. There is some miss matches already with some Dutch brides and there food is caterpillar prey that’s the same thing like by the caribou. It is happing so often now that you could say that it is like a eye blink that some thing like that happens.

What I don’t like about this:

That Clemet change is killing more and more animals. That these miss matches are happening so fast that more things will change faster then we will expect. That will mean the caribou cloud die out ore the plant that they are eating rate now and that goes for almost every animal.