Counting sea life, sometimes little things are big

By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID

If the Census Bureau thinks it has its hands full counting Americans, imagine what scientists are up against in trying to tally every living thing in the ocean, including microbes so small they seem invisible.

And just try to get them to mail back a form.

The worldwide Census of Marine Life has four field projects focusing on hard-to-see sea life such as tiny microbes, zooplankton, larvae and burrowers in the sea bed.

Tiny as individuals, these life forms are massive as groups and provide food that helps underpin better-known living things.

"Scientists are discovering and describing an astonishing new world of marine microbial diversity and abundance, distribution patterns and seasonal changes," said Mitch Sogin of the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass., leader of the International Census of Marine Microbes.

The Census of Marine Life, which is scheduled to be reported Oct. 4 in London, has involved more than 2,000 scientists from more than 80 nations.

The decade-long census has discovered more than 5,000 new forms of marine life. Researchers think there may be several times that many yet to be found.

Previous updates have focused on larger creatures, such as a city of brittle stars off the coast of New Zealand, an Antarctic expressway where octopuses ride along in a flow of extra salty water, the deepest comb jellyfish ever found and The White Shark Cafe, a deep Pacific Ocean site where sharks congregate in winter.

Now the researchers have turned to the tiniest of things, some of which burrow in the sea floor.

Remotely operated deep-sea vehicles discovered that roundworms dominate the deepest, darkest abyss. Sometimes, more than 500,000 can exist in just over a square yard of soft clay. Only a few different types have been studied.

There are also 16,000 or more species of seaworms. There are loriciferans, which the scientists call "girdle wearers" because of hind shells resembling a corset. And there are hundreds of types of tiny crustaceans.

"Such findings make us look at the deep sea from a new perspective," says researcher Pedro Martinez Arbizu of the German Center for Marine Biodiversity Research. "Far from being a lifeless desert, the deep sea rivals such highly diverse ecosystems as tropical rainforests and coral reefs."

Consider zooplankton, the tiny, often transparent animals that some call sea bugs. They form a vital link in the food chain.

As of 2004, scientists had identified about 7,000 species of zooplankton. Now they expect that to double when they finish analyzing all the samples collected in the marine census.

Improved techniques such as DNA analysis have helped unravel some errors along the way. DNA, of course, is the genetic code in the cells of each living creature.

Tracey Sutton of the Virginia Institute of Marine Science and colleagues led by the Smithsonian Institution's G. David Johnson used genetics to show that three types of fish thought to be different are really one.

They found that even though they look different, the Mirapinnidae (tapetails), Megalomycteridae (bignose fishes) and Cetomimidae (whalefishes) are really the same species. The tapetails are the larvae and when they grow up they become either the bignoses (girls) or the wehalefish (boys).

After studying samples taken from more than 1,000 sites, scientists concluded there may be as many as 100 times more microbe genera in the sea than they had thought. Indeed, a 2007 study in the English Channel alone yielded 7,000 new genera of microorganisms.

Genus is the category of life ranked between family and species. For example the mammal family has many genera, such as homo (humans), canis (dogs) and equus (horse).

What ocean microbes lack in size they make up for in numbers. Marine census researchers calculate there are a "nonillion" of them.

Never heard of nonillion? Well, it's a lot. It's 1,000 times 1 billion, times 1 billion, times 1 billion.

Of course no one can really envision a number like that, so the researchers turned to the popular comparison measure -- the African elephant.

A nonillion microbe cells, they say, is about the same weight as 240 billion African elephants -- or the equivalent of 35 elephants for every person on Earth.

And that's just the microbes.

http://www.mail.com/intl/article.aspx/science/0/apnews/science/20100418/u_us-sci-hard-to-see-sea-life?pageid=2&pCurr=1&pNext=2

reuse your PC

dibuat kotak surat


buat ngopi pagi-pagi


segerrrrrrrrr


buat si kecil 


dibuat pot


jadi taman mini


asbak rokok


buat Idul Adha 


Gerbang rumah

http://cuma-ingin-tahu.blogspot.com/2010/04/bagian-komputer-yang-bisa-digunakan.html

Lost Tribes Used Clever Tricks to Turn Amazon Wasteland to Farms

from Wired Science by Brandon Keim

A vast series of earth mounds on the eastern coast of South America may be living landscape fossils of a forgotten civilization’s agriculture.
People raised the mounds between 1,000 and 700 years ago in order to create cropland in terrain that is flooded for half the year, and parched for the other half. New insect ecosystems formed on the mounds, further enriching the soils and keeping them fertile for centuries, long after their human stewards had vanished. This lost agricultural system could be a model for modern farmers, according to a new study.
“Today these lands are used for cattle ranching or hunting. People think agriculture must not be possible in these areas,” said ecologist Doyle McKey of the University of Montpellier in France, co-author of a study published April 12 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “The common conception is that these areas are wastelands.”

McKey and a team of archaeologists, paleobiologists and soil scientists describe the earthworks, which run for 360 miles from the Berbice River to Cayenne, the modern-day capital of Guyana.
The study is part of a fast-growing body of research on the pre-Columbian world of the Amazon basin. Historians and anthropologists once thought it inhabited only by small bands of primitive hunters and gatherers, with interior jungles and coastal floodplains unable to support large-scale agriculture and complex societies. That picture no longer seems accurate.
Scientists have shown that now-vanished people transformed the Amazon, using biochar to nourish jungle soils, and moving floodplain soils to create irrigation channels and planting beds. McKey’s findings expand the range of known coastal agriculture and take an in-depth look at the beneficial ecological changes it created.
“Human engineering, if we do it cleverly, can work together with natural ecosystem engineering,” said McKey.
In addition to 100-foot-long, water-diverting berms, they identified expanses of mounds covering hundreds of acres. From the air, the mounds were too symmetrical to be natural. On the ground, soil samples returned fossilized evidence of maize, squash and manioc.
The mounds appear to have been constructed from layers of surrounding topsoil, which was shoveled out and layered like cakes. That formed the basis of the mounds, which put crops above the flood line but that was only one part of the agricultural trick.
Species of ants and termites settled in the mounds, where their colonies wouldn’t flood. Their burrowing aerated the soil, and plant matter foraged from surrounding areas enriched it further. As a result, the mounds acted like sponges for rainfall, and outsourced insect labor made them rich in key fertilizer nutrients of nitrogen, potassium and calcium. The root systems of perennial plants kept the mound structures intact, and likely did so when mounds were rotated out of production.
McKey is reluctant to speculate on how many people were supported by mound agriculture. A conservative guess based on crop yields from modern raised-bed farming experiments put the figure at one person for every two acres of farmland. That’s a very rough estimate, but enough to suggest that the farmers were not just small, family-based tribes.
More important than exact numbers is the evidence of agricultural success in a region that’s not considered suitable for modern agriculture. McKey thinks today’s farmers could learn from ancient tricks, and supplement them with modern tools.
As for the original inhabitants, little is known. They belonged to so-called Arauquinoid cultures, which emerged 1,500 years ago and vanished shortly before the arrival of Europeans. Whether they left descendants is unknown. They’re known only from a single wooden shove, some ceramic fragments and their farms.
“When people modified these ecosystems long ago, they changed the way the ecosystems work. We can use that knowledge,” said McKey.
Images: 1) Farm mounds from above and the ground./PNAS. 2) A map of northeastern Amazon coastal earthworks./PNAS. 3) Satellite and interpretive imagery of a site near Kourou, Frency Guiana/PNAS.
See Also:

• Anthropologists Find New Type of Urbanism in Amazon Jungles
• Yucatan Jungles Are Feral Maya Gardens
• Could Ants Hold the Key to Sustainable Agriculture?
• Farmer Ants Fertilize Their Gardens With Bacteria

Citation: “Pre-Columbian agricultural landscapes, ecosystem engineers, and self-organized patchiness in Amazonia.” By Doyle McKey, Stéphen Rostain, José Iriarte, Bruno Glaser, Jago Jonathan Birk, Irene Holst, Delphine Renard. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 107 No. 15, April 12, 2010.
Brandon Keim’s Twitter stream and reportorial outtakes; Wired Science on Twitter. Brandon is currently working on a book about ecological tipping points.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/04/lost-amazon-farms/

DNA Testing Finds Endangered Whale Meat in Restaurants

from Wired Science by Brandon Keim

Genetic tests of whale meat from Japanese restaurants in Los Angeles and Seoul, South Korea, have confirmed the meat is from endangered animals.
The Los Angeles bust was publicized in March, prompting a restaurant there to close, but finding the meat in South Korea was even more troubling.
“This problem may be more widespread than we originally thought,” said Scott Baker, a whale researcher at Oregon State University. The identifications are described in a paper published April 13 in Biology Letters.
Killing sei, fin and minke whales was outlawed by the International Whaling Commission in 1986, and trade in their products is forbidden by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species.
Possessing or selling whale meat is illegal in the United States. Japan and South Korea allow endangered whales caught as “bycatch” by fishermen to be sold. Japan also operates a research program that’s been criticized as scientific cover for continued whale hunts.

Sei whale meat from The Hump in Los Angeles, purchased last October by makers of the The Cove — a documentary about Japanese dolphin hunting — proved genetically similar to meat purchased at markets in Japan during 2007 and 2008. It likely came from the same whale population. The restaurant has since closed.
Of sei, minke and fin whale meat purchased last year by the paper’s authors in an as-yet-unidentified South Korean restaurant, the fin whale matched with meat sold in Japan in 2007. It likely came from the same individual.
Baker’s team has asked the Japanese government for access to its DNA registry of research whales. If granted, it could confirm the meat’s origin in the Japanese research program. It could also implicate an unknown source, “a situation requiring urgent investigation,” write the researchers.
Images: Oregon State University/Flickr: 1) From a restaurant in Seoul, a sashimi plate containing cuts from four whale and one dolphin species; 2) A waiter serves whale at The Hump restaurant in Los Angeles.
See Also:

• How Filmmakers Used Spy Tech to Catch Dolphin Slaughter
• Sushi DNA Tests Reveal Fraud
• Whales Might Be as Much Like People as Apes Are
• Your Chilean Sea Bass Dinner Deprives Killer Whales
• Blue Whale Song Mystery Baffles Scientists

Citation: “Genetic evidence of illegal trade in protected whales links Japan with the U.S. and South Korea.” By Charles Baker, Debbie Steel, Yeyong Choi, Hang Lee, Kyung Kim, Yong Ma, Charles Hambleton, Louie Psihoyos and Robert Brownell Jr.. Biology Letters, April 13, 2010.
Brandon Keim’s Twitter stream and reportorial outtakes; Wired Science on Twitter. Brandon is currently working on a book about ecological tipping points.


http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/04/whale-meat-bust/

Air Refreshner

Walau tanaman hijau diklaim dapat memperbaiki lingkungan, namun ada beberapa tanaman yang memiliki nilai lebih. Misalnya dapat menghambat polusi, mendatangkan burung-burung, atau menunjukkan tingkat polusi udara. Berikut ini beberapa tanaman anti polusi

1.Pohon Dadap Merah





Pohon ini baik ditanam di halaman terbuka, karena bisa mengundang datangnya para burung. Soalnya berbagai jenis burung suka sekali menyantap buah si dadap merah ini.


2.Pohon Kelengkeng





Siapapun tahu betapa enaknya rasa buah kelengkeng. Namun tahukah Anda kalau pohon kelengkeng mampu meredam polusi suara. Itu sebabnya pada pabrik-pabrik yang menggunakan genset, ada baiknya menanam pohon ini di dekat genset tersebut.



3.Pohon Bungur dan Mahoni






Dikenal mampu menyerap polutan udara seperti timbal. Maka kedua pohon ini sebaiknya ditanam untuk penghijauan di kota-kota besar, dekat jalan protokol yang padat lalu lintasnya. Bukan rahasia lagi kalau kendaraan bermotor menjadi penyumbang timbal terbesar di udara.

Sebaliknya, pohon seperti akasia sebaiknya jangan dijadikan pohon jalur hijau. Mengapa? karena akasia menjadi salah satu pencetus asma. Begitu juga pohon palem yang indah bentuknya, tak begitu besar manfaatnya.


4.Bunga Warna-Warni






Tanaman yang menyegarkan mata seperti bunga berwarna-warni mampu menjernihkan pikiran kita, sehingga baik ditanam di rumah sakit agar bisa mempecepat kesembuhan pasien. Tanaman ini jelas melawan polusi jiwa.



5.Lumut

[IMG]http://i42.tinypic.com/e140p1.jpg[/I



Lumut yang menempel di batang pohon mampu mendeteksi tingkat polusi udara suatu daerah. Semakin banyak lumut menempel di sebuah pohon berarti semakin baik kualitas udara di tempat itu.


6.Tanaman Sirih Belanda (Devil’s Ivy)





Tanaman perdu yang bisa tumbuh dimana saja, termasuk di dalam pot di halaman rumah ini mampu menyerap formaldehida dan benzena. Hasilnya rumah pun lebih segar dan lega untuk bernafas.



7.Kembang Sepatu






Mampu menyerap nitrogen sehingga membuat paru-paru kita jadi lega. Namun jangan sekali-sekali menanam bunga kembang sepatu di dekat ruang Radiografi. Tanaman ini berfungsi meneruskan radiasi sehingga berbahaya bagi orang di sekitar tempat radiografi tersebut.


8.Sansevieria






Kalau kembang sepatu berfungsi melanjutkan radiasi, tidak demikian dengan tanaman sansevieria ini. Sansevieria mampu menyerap 107 jenis racun, termasuk polusi udara, asap rokok (nikotin), hingga radisi nuklir, sehingga cocok dijadikan penyegar. Oya, kaktus juga bisa menghambat radiasi.



9.Pohon Trembesi






Mampu menyerap karbondioksida dalam jumlah yang besar, sehingga sangat disarankan untuk ditanam sebagai pohon penghijauan. Namun trambesi membutuhkan lahan yang cukup luas.

Read more: http://haxims.blogspot.com/2010/04/tanaman-tanaman-anti-polusi.html#ixzz0l9ecujYG
Under Creative Commons License: Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives

houses that made of junk

I'll translate this post latter. Promise.

Setiap kali kita berpikir tentang tempat berlindung, dari konstruksi untuk tempat tinggal, kita butuh mempercantiknya dengan yang terbaik yang kita punya. Tapi kebanyakan dari kita tidak memiliki sumber daya maupun dana untuk mewujudkan cita-cita kita, mengapa kita tidak menggunakan barang2 yang tidak berguna? Saya berbicara tentang barang yang biasanya kita anggap sebagai sampah: lebih spesifik, botol-botol plastik. Menggunakannya secara konstruktif, pencipta memiliki gaya tertentu. rumah yang cukup menantang batas pemikiran pada umumnya yang terjangkau dan berkelanjutan.

Di sini kami telah mendaftarkan beberapa dari mereka, yang dengan mengagumkan membuat tempat tinggal luar biasa dari daur ulang. yakin akan sangat senang tinggal disini:

• Eco-tec’s casa ecológica (Ecological House)

Spoiler for .:

Quote:

Menggunakan sekitar 8.000 botol PET, EcoTec menciptakan ecológica casa yang dibangun di Honduras. Atap "hidup" (atap hijau) yang terbuat dari tanah dan wilayah insulates rumah lebih baik dibanding atap konvensional. Beratnya 30 ton metrik . Ketika basah, 102 meter persegi (m2) atap hidup. ecológica casa memiliki dinding botol PET untuk mendukung berat tsb.

• New Schoolhouse di Guatemala dibangun dari 6.000 botol plastik

Spoiler for .:

Quote:

Pemanfaatan kembali sebanyak 6.000 botol plastik menjadikan sebuah sekolah inovatif di Guatemala. Laura Kutner relawan dari Peace Corps menggunakan sampah plastik sebagai bahan konstruksi dan mengisi botol plastik dengan tas belanja, tas chip, dan sisa lainnya. Sungguh Inspiring dan inovatif

• Mexican House terbuat dari plastik dan botol kaca

Spoiler for .:

• Serbian House take in 13,500 of them, seeks a place in the Guinness Book of Records

Spoiler for .:

Quote:

Tomislav Radovanovic, profesor matematika Serbia dari pusat kota Kragujevac, telah menciptakan rumah seluas 60sq meter ini. Bekerja selama lima tahun, Radovanovic memanfaatkan botol plastik sebagai mayoritas dalam konstruksi. hanya fondasi yang beton

• Argentina membangun rumah menakjubkan dari 1200 botol PET dan 1300 karton Tetra Pack

Spoiler for .:

Quote:

Alfredo Santa Cruz mencari dukungan keluarganya untuk membuat rumah impiannya. Belum puas dengan hasilnya, ia menawarkan 'kursus gratis tentang konstruksi dengan bahan daur ulang (dengan bayaran hanya untuk biaya perjalanan dan tempat tinggal)' sehingga orang lain bisa mengikuti apa yang telah dijalankan dengan sempurna. sungguh mulia ya orang ini, salut

• Bottle House pada Seattle’s Music and Art Festival

Spoiler for .:

Quote:

Sebuah kubah matahari tembus yang terbuat dari ratusan daur ulang botol kosong adalah bukti positif dari seniman Jasmine Zimmerman's. Tidak mirip rumah, kubah matahari akan tumbuh vegetasi. Setelah festival berakhir, rumah ini akan melakukan perjalanan ke berbagai tempat.

• Bolivian bottle house

Spoiler for .:

Quote:

Beberapa aktivis lingkungan muda di Bolivia mengumpulkan sekitar 25.000 botol plastik dan membangun rumah dari botol itu dalam waktu enam bulan. Mengisi botol dengan pasir dan diperkuat dengan baja dan semen, yang menciptakan dinding yang kuat. rumah botol yang pertama selesai di Warnes, di provinsi timur Santa Cruz. Kelompok fanatik tsb berencana untuk membangun sepuluh rumah lagi. salut, msh muda dah hebat

sumber : kaskus.us

Read more: http://haxims.blogspot.com/2010/04/berbagai-rumah-yang-terbuat-dari-jutaan.html#ixzz0l9TW2QI0
Under Creative Commons License: Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives

Study: Tests show illegal whale meat trade in Asia

By JEFF BARNARD
mail.com

DNA testing of whale meat from a restaurant in Seoul, South Korea, indicates that some of it came from Japan, scientists said Wednesday, offering evidence of an illegal international trade in whale meat from Japan's scientific whaling program.

Scientists from Oregon State University's Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport performed the tests as part of a project monitoring sources of whale meat offered for sale since 1993.

The peer-reviewed study appeared in Wednesday's edition of the journal Biology Letters.

The study comes as the International Whaling Commission is considering legitimizing limited commercial whaling as a way of controlling it. Environmentalists fear that could open the door to more illegal trade.

Japan's annual whale hunt is allowed by the commission as a scientific program, but opponents call it a cover for commercial whaling, which has been banned since 1986. Japan hunts hundreds of mostly minke whales, which are not an endangered species. Whale meat not used for study is sold for consumption in Japan, but international sales are banned.

The South Pacific Whale Research Consortium in New Zealand estimates 3,000 whales are killed for their meat each year.

"Since the international moratorium, it has been assumed that there is no international trade in whale products," said Scott Baker, associate director of OSU's Marine Mammal Institute and lead author of the study, in a written statement. "But when products from the same whale are sold in Japan in 2007 and in Korea in 2009, it suggests that international trade, though illegal, is still an issue."

The International Whaling Commission meets again starting May 29 in Morocco and will consider allowing 1,400 gray whales to be hunted over the next decade.

Douglas DeMaster, the U.S. delegation's deputy commissioner, said an advisory panel is developing recommendations on resolving the stalemate between nations over commercial whaling.

President Barack Obama's administration is waiting to see the recommendations before taking a position, but DNA testing and an international registry of whale meat DNA, as suggested by the authors of the study, would be key to enforcement of controls on international trade, DeMaster said.

The study looked at 13 pieces of mixed whale meat sashimi purchased from an unnamed restaurant in Seoul, South Korea, during two visits in 2009. Four were from an Antarctic minke whale, four from a sei whale, three from a North Pacific minke whale, one from a fin whale and one from a Risso's dolphin.

The species echoed those taken by Japan's scientific whaling program, particularly the Antarctic minke whale, Baker said. To settle the question, he has asked Japan for access to records from the whaling program.

"It basically confirms these products are leaking out of the scientific whaling operating in Japan," said Steve Palumbi, professor of biology at Stanford University and director of the Hopkins Marine Station at Monterey, Calif.

"That's really important because although people have been very worried about scientific whaling, because there's not much science involved, the other part of it is those whales are supposed to be for domestic consumption only," added Palumbi, who was not part of the study. "Any international movement of them is prohibited."

The authors said it was unlikely that the sei whale, the Antarctic minke whale and the fin whale came from bycatch from South Korean fishermen, which is legal. No sei whales have been reported as bycatch in 13 years of records submitted by South Korea to the International Whaling Commission, the study said. The Antarctic minke whale is not found in the Northern Hemisphere.

Testing showed the fin whale meat likely came from the same fin whale offered for sale at a Japanese market in 2007, which the scientists also tested.

The study also detailed DNA testing of whale meat that led The Hump sushi restaurant in Santa Monica, Calif., to close last month. The restaurant and a sushi chef were charged with illegally selling an endangered species product.

Taryn Kiekow, staff attorney for Natural Resources Defense Council, said the group is "very worried" that even limited commercial whaling would open the door to illegal trade in whale meat.

------

Associated Press Writer Noaki Schwartz in Los Angeles contributed to this report.