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Moderator Posts: 21945 |
Earth's spin axis shifted by melting ice sheets and changes of water on land http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-04-09/earth's-spin-axis-shifted-by-melting-ice-sheets/7310482 | |
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Member Posts: 4499 |
I hope this doesn't provoke some loonies to say that we should correct the Earth's wobble and axis tilt by redistributing or using up large volumes of water on land. | |
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Member Posts: 7839 |
Or exploding a few Nukes to stop the wobble. | |
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Member Posts: 4499 |
So that's the reason that Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump are fans of nuclear bombs. It all makes sense now. | |
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Moderator Posts: 21945 |
Yes, they are both masters of spin.
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Member Posts: 4499 |
Very droll (but clever). | |
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Member Posts: 4499 |
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-04-11/frogs-facing-extinction-need-15-million/7312636 Frog researchers estimate it would cost $15 million to save the seven most endangered species of frog in Australia from extinction. Frogs are extremely important for humans and the natural environment. These are just a few of their important roles:
Predators and prey in the ecosystem They play an important role in consuming insects and are an important food source for birds, snakes, and other animals throughout the food web. Pest control They help control insects that may be agricultural pests or carry diseases such as West Nile virus Medicine Frogs have been used extensively in medical research, and many Nobel prizes in medicine and physiology have involved frog studies. The chemical compounds found in the skin secretions of frogs and toads are being studied for their human benefits – everything from non-addictive pain killers to cancer cures.
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Moderator Posts: 21945 |
$15 million seems a good deal. How would they spend that money ? They couldn't eradicate feral cats for that money, which I presume eat a lot of frogs. | |
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Member Posts: 7839 |
SpaceX's unmanned Dragon cargo ship, carrying lettuce seeds, lab mice and an inflatable pop-up room, has arrived at a crowded International Space Station (ISS) where six spacecraft are now docked. Four Russian spaceships — two Progress cargo carriers and two Soyuz capsules which ferry astronauts — are docked at the space station, along with Orbital ATK's Cygnus cargo ship and SpaceX's Dragon. | |
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Member Posts: 4499 |
Actually, feral cats don't appear to eat a lot of frogs in Australia. I think that's because the frogs are normally found in habitats that cats have difficulty accessing and the seasonal variation in the activity of most frog species. Adults of most species of Australian frogs tend to spend most of the year aestivating and are active only when conditions are right for breeding (e.g. availablity of water pools, right environmental temperatures, availability of food, etc). Some frogs aestivate by burrowing into the moist layer of the soil or sheltering in rock crevices, caves, under thick leaf litter, in or under logs etc. and remain inactive for most of the year. The main causes of the decline in frog populations in Australia are invasion of the chytrid fungus (as mentioned in the article), global warming, habitat degradation (e.g. pollution, weed invasion, siltation of breeding ponds) and habitat destruction (rermoval of breeding ponds, clearing of aquatic vegetation in and around these ponds, and increased frequencies of bushfires in areas where frogs aestivate or search for food. The seven most endangered species of Australian frogs are now restricted to very small geographical ranges, many of them occurring in and around a few isolated ponds or streams. Therefore, it is a matter of controlling the threats at those sites. Because these sites are very specific, rather than widespread, the cost of frog species recovery is minimised. Many frog species seem to be relatively easy to breed and raise in captivity. Therefore, numbers can be built up quite quickly through the establishment of captive breeding colonies under controlled conditions (e.g. in zoos or in specialised research facilities). But researchers also collect the eggs from natural breeding ponds and rear them in captivity, thus increasing the survival rate of the eggs and tadpoles. Some Australian frog species (e.g. Green and Golden Bell Frog) that have been bred and/or raised in captivity have been introduced successfully into natural habitats that are protected from the above-mentioned threats to frogs. The two most difficult threats to manage, though, are chytrid fungus and global warming (increased UV radiation). Chytrid fungus is a very nasty pathogen for frogs. It is a fungus that requires moisture and is spread through the vegetative growth of fungal filaments and dispersal of water-borne spores. It is not known how or when the chytrid fungus invaded Australia, but appears to have reached here in the early 1980s, and probably came from South and Central America. It was probably introduced into Australia by people visiting wetlands in the Americas, the fungal spores becoming attached to their footware or cloting, and those same people visiting Australian wetlands. The fungus grows on the skin of frogs and eventually breaks it down, causing lesions or harm to larger skin surface areas. Therefore, infected frogs can lose their ability to breath through the infected skin areas. But if lesions in the skin occur, the fungus (and other pathogens) can invade the frog's body, at which point the frog is likely to die. Therefore, research into this problem has focused on increasing the resistance of Australian frogs to the chytrid fungus (i.e. selectively breeding frogs that have skin which is more resistant to fungal attacks) and altering the frogs' natural environments to make it less suitable for the fungus. The latter approach appears to be quite encouraging. The chytrid fungus doesn't like salty water, even at very diluted levels. Some early research in especially constructed breeding ponds and in some natural ponds have shown that by altering the salinity of the water at concentrations that don't affect or harm frogs or other components of the environment that they depend on, is enough to control the fungus. So that is the area that the research is being focused right now. The other area that benefits from funding is education of the public about threats to frogs and the things they can do to reduce those threats. For instance, it is now standard practice for scientists visiting wetlands to clean their footwear by standing in a bucket or tray of disinfectant immediately before and after moving into or out of a wetland. At an increasing number of wetlands, environmental management authorities provide buckets of disinfectant and scrubbing brushes at entrances and exits for the public to use. | |
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Moderator Posts: 21945 |
Thanks for taking the time to write such a comprehensive answer Tardy. We can all do with some knowledge accumulation ! | |
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Member Posts: 16431 |
I'll second that. It is so much more than the snippets we get on the News, and gives us a much greater understanding of what is happening and how and why. | |
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Member Posts: 7839 |
World tiger population increases for first time in 100 years, conservation data shows. Sounds like good news to me ! http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-04-11/global-tiger-numbers-increase-for-the-first-time-in-100-years/7317322 | |
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Member Posts: 16431 |
Yes, that must be the best news of the day! Re the clip on News Breakfast, I'd love to have been on the other side of the glass beside him or her. | |
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Moderator Posts: 21945 |
So would I, but they are not your average pussy cat ! | |
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Member Posts: 7839 |
Scientists have for the first time scanned the brains of people using LSD and found the psychedelic drug frees the brain to become less compartmentalised and more like the mind of a baby. That is like Groovey & Far Out Man. Timothy Leary was onto to something, dig out those Pink Floyd, Jefferson Airplane and Greatful Dead LP's. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-04-12/brain-scans-show-how-lsd-mimics-mind-of-a-baby/7318442 | |
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Member Posts: 7839 |
Stephen Hawking, Mark Zuckerberg to launch Nano Spacecraft Breakthrough Starshot into deep space. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-04-13/breakthrough-starshot-aims-to-launch-tiny-spacecraft-deep-space/7321588 | |
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Moderator Posts: 21945 |
It's probably more efficient to build better telescopes than to send spacecraft beyond the solar system. The information that telescopes gather travel at light speed, unlike spacecraft that travel much slower. But telescopes aren't really sexy are they ? | |
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Member Posts: 7839 |
It will be much better once they build that first TARDIS ! | |
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Member Posts: 4499 |
There also seems to be a difference in cost. The Hubble Telescope cost US$2.5 billion, whereas SMH says the Nano Spacecraft would cost US$130 million. Admittedly, there would be a greater risk of failure in sending a Nano Spacecraft to another galaxy (if one was launched), so is it really cost-effective? I think the real value of a Nano Spacecraft, though, is that the new technology used would probably be valuable for other things in our lives, too. | |
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