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Japan halts humpback hunt

ganggang — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 14:02:50 +0000

Giving in to U.S. pressure and worldwide criticism, Japan's government on Friday announced a whaling fleet now in the Southern Ocean for its annual hunt will not kill the threatened species as originally planned. The fleet will, however, kill some 935 minke whales, a smaller, more plentiful species, and 50 fin whales.

Japan dispatched its whaling fleet last month to the southern Pacific off Antarctica in the first major hunt of humpback whales since the 1960s. Commercial hunts of humpbacks have been banned worldwide since 1966, and commercial whaling overall since 1986.

The fleet was to kill 50 humpbacks for scientific research. But the plan generated immediate criticism from environmental groups, which oppose the hunts to begin with but were outraged by the inclusion of humpbacks because they are so rare.

"Whaling issues tend to become emotional, but we hope that the discussion will be carried out calmly on the basis of scientific evidence," chief government spokesman Nobutaka Machimura said in announcing the halt.

It was a stunning turnaround for Japan.

The U.S., which currently chairs the International Whaling Commission, recently held several rounds of talks with Japan to seek a one to two year suspension of the humpback hunt.

"We applaud Japan's decision as an act of goodwill toward the International Whaling Commission," said U.S. Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez.

But he added that Washington and Tokyo still have "opposite views on research whaling."

Tokyo has staunchly defended its annual kill of more than 1,000 whales as crucial for research purposes. Japan's whaling fleet is run by a government-backed research institute and operates under an IWC clause that allow the killing of whales for scientific purposes.

Japan said it would halt the humpback hunt pending further IWC discussion.

"But there will be no changes to our stance on our research whaling itself," Machimura said. "We have made the decision for the benefit of the IWC as a whole."

The IWC — which oversees whaling activities worldwide — is to hold its next annual meeting in June.

Commercial hunts of humpbacks — which were nearly harpooned to extinction in the 20th century — were banned in the Southern Pacific in 1963, and that ban was extended worldwide in 1966.

The American Cetacean Society estimates the humpback population has recovered to about 30,000-40,000 — about a third of the number before modern whaling. The species is listed as "vulnerable" by the World Conservation Union.

Australia, meanwhile, announced this week it was launching a new push to stop Japan's annual whale hunt, including sending surveillance planes and a ship to gather evidence for a possible international legal challenge. Late Friday, Australia led some 30 other countries in lodging a diplomatic protest with the Japanese ambassador to Australia over the whaling program.

"The Australian government welcomes the announcement by Japan that it will suspend its plan to kill humpback whales this season," Foreign Minister Stephen Smith said in a statement. "While this is a welcome move, the Australian government strongly believes that there is no credible justification for the hunting of any whales."

Environmental groups also reacted with a guarded welcome.

"This is good news indeed, but it must be the first step towards ending all whaling in the Southern Ocean, not just one species for one season," Karli Thomas, who is leading a Greenpeace expedition to follow the whalers, said in a statement from on board the ship Esperanza.

Friday's announcement appeared to reflect a rift inside the Japanese government as well, between fisheries officials who argue Japan has a right to carry out the hunts and diplomats who are more concerned with the international repercussions.

Just hours before the announcement, Fisheries Agency officials said the killing of humpbacks was justified and denied the hunt would be halted.

"We do not have any intention to change our harvesting plans," said Hideki Moronuki, head of the whaling division at Japan's Fisheries Agency.

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Moronuki later said Japan had reversed course out of deference to the United States and "to avoid a situation where nations may boycott future negotiations."

Japan's six-ship whaling fleet left the southern port of Shimonoseki on Nov. 18 and is to return in April.

Chinese police dog may teach pandas to fight

ganggang — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 14:00:46 +0000

Scientists in China may use a police dog to teach pandas to fight after the first artificially bred panda released into the wild was apparently killed after a battle with other animals, local media reported on Saturday.

The Wolong giant panda breeding centre plans to have four pandas raised in captivity live with a specially trained police dog or other animals, the Chengdu Daily quoted reserve officials as saying. The officials could not be reached for comment.

The pandas would learn how to protect themselves by observing the dog, increasing their chances of survival when they were eventually released into the mountainous wilds of the far western province of Sichuan.

The world's first artificially bred panda to be released, a 5-year-old male named Xiang Xiang, was found dead in the snow early this year after less than 12 months out of captivity.

Scientists believe he fell from a high place after getting into a fight with wild pandas or other animals over food or territory.

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China is now preparing to release a second batch of up to four artificially bred pandas. Many or all would be females, which may be less prone to becoming involved in fights.

Breeding pandas through artificial insemination and introducing them to the wild is an important part of China's efforts to save the species, which is now estimated to number between 1,000 and 2,000 in the wild.

Pandas chosen for release undergo years of training. Adult pandas need to spend up to 16 hours a day foraging and eating bamboo and almost all the remaining time resting or sleeping, making them vulnerable in harsh environments.

To boost captive pandas' low fertility rates and weak sexual desire, China has even resorted to showing them videos of other pandas mating.

New Species Found in Mysteriously Diverse Jungle

ganggang — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 13:59:22 +0000

This Behind the Scenes article was provided to LiveScience in partnership with the National Science Foundation. Chris Austin’s fieldwork takes him to some of the most inaccessible places on Earth in the pursuit of knowledge about the diversity of the world’s amphibians and reptiles. He serves as assistant curator of Herpetology and assistant professor of Biological Science at the Louisiana State University Museum of Natural Science and Department of Biological Science. This story relates some of the trials, tribulations, and triumphs of field work in remote New Guinea.

The island of New Guinea, located just south of the equator and north of Australia, is the world’s largest and tallest tropical island. New Guinea’s steamy lowland jungles give way to montane moss forests, cloud forests, alpine grasslands and finally tropical glaciers that cap the mountain peaks that exceed 16,400 feet (5,000 meters).

The myriad habitat zones, packed into an area one-tenth the size of the United States, harbor some of the most diverse and exquisite life on Earth: from kangaroos that live in trees to lizards with green blood.

The diversity of life on the island is so varied it has been called megadiverse and it is so vast and unspoiled it has been identified as one of the world’s five High Biodiversity Wilderness Areas.

One of the mysteries about New Guinea’s megadiversity is that it is thought to be relatively new. The main mountain range that provides the diversity of habitat types is only 5 million years old, a geologic and evolutionary blink of an eye. How the high levels of diversity arose in New Guinea in such a short evolutionary time scale is what I am trying to figure out.

Flying into the jungle

In order to collect data to address this question I led a small expedition into the pristine lowland rainforest area of the Sepik Basin in north central New Guinea. Along with me are CJ Hayden (a PhD student in my laboratory), Chris Dahl (an honors student at the University of Papua New Guinea), and Jim Anaminiato (a researcher at the Papua New Guinea National Museum).

The extremely limited road system in Papua New Guinea means that we flew to our destination. I chartered a little single engine Cessna to fly us into a small grass airstrip near the Gedik river, a northern tributary of the Sepik river. The Sepik is the longest river on the island and possibly the largest uncontaminated drainage system in Australasia with a catchment of approximately 30,900 square miles (80,000 square kilometers).

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At this location we conducted a survey of amphibians and reptiles, identifying what species occur in this part of the island as well as trying to discover species new to science. We collected genetic material that we will use to examine fine-scale patterns to better understand the underlying processes that have been responsible for generating so much diversity in such a short biological time scale.

Working day and night

Herpetological fieldwork is neverending. We worked in the day collecting lizards and snakes and we worked by night collecting frogs.

Frog collections and identifications add an additional level of difficulty. Many frog species are distinguished by male mating calls. Therefore, working on frogs requires extreme patience and stealth as well as specialized recording equipment in order to collect, identify, and describe frogs. With the help of Tano, the village elder, and many eager young men to help us in the field, we conducted a survey of the primary rainforest that surrounds the village.

Our expedition has been a great success. In about two weeks we documented 79 species of snakes, lizards, and frogs representing 40 genera from 11 families. This includes at least 10 species I believe are new to science. In addition to our scientific pursuits I’m very interested in the conservation of the fauna and flora of this wonderful island.

At the end of the field season, complications arose for our scheduled airplane pick up. Via a static filled satellite phone conversation with our airbase I learned the plane was in need of repair to its single propeller and we could either choose to leave two days early or wait two weeks until the small Cessna would be back from repair. Through static filled Aussie idiom, the expatriate pilot assures me that the propeller is ‘quite functional’. Given that our survey work was close to complete I decided for the group to leave two days early on the shoddy propeller.

San Diego panda makes her public debut

ganggang — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 13:57:57 +0000

San Diego's most popular resident finally met her fans, up close and personal: Giant panda cub Zhen Zhen made her public debut Saturday at the San Diego Zoo.

People were lined up when the zoo's gates opened at 9 a.m. and the 17-pound, black-and-white cub was waiting at the Giant Panda Research Station's "classroom" exhibit for them. That's where Zhen Zhen remained for the next two hours.

The 4-month-old's public premiere "went very well," Zoo spokesman Andrew Circo said. "We weren't sure how much interest there'd be, since we have four pandas," he said. "But a lot of people came out to see her."

Since her birth on Aug. 3, Zhen Zhen, whose name means "precious" in Chinese, has been living in a den out of the public view. Zhen Zhen, however, has been visible to the world via camera on the zoo's Web site.

Zhen Zhen will have two hours of public playtime daily during her first week, Circo said.

The cub will spend more time outside as her stamina increases, said Kathy Hawk, the zoo's senior panda keeper. As she gets older, she'll start spending nights outside if zookeepers can't lure her down from her tree perches when it gets dark.

On Friday, as Zhen Zhen was introduced to the media, the cub appeared unperturbed by visitors oohing and aahing. But Hawk said the amount of time Zhen Zhen spends in the public eye will depend on her mother's response.

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"She takes her cues from her mother," Hawk said, "so as long as Bai Yun is fine, she'll be fine."

Zhen Zhen could be spotted Saturday afternoon via Web cam doing what any 4-month-old would do after an exciting morning — taking a nap.

Whales may have evolved from raccoon-sized creature

ganggang — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 13:55:04 +0000

In the search for a missing evolutionary link to modern whales, scientists have come up with an unlikely land cousin -- a raccoon-sized creature with the body of a small deer.

Prior molecular studies have proposed the hippo as the closest land relative of today's whales, but researchers reporting in the journal Nature on Wednesday suggest a four-footed creature from India known as Indohyus, which probably hid in water in times of danger.

Scientists have long known that whales had ancestors that walked on land. Now a team lead by Hans Thewissen of Northeastern Ohio Universities Colleges of Medicine and Pharmacy have pieced together a series of intermediate fossils that trace the whale's evolutionary journey from land to sea.

Thewissen and his team studied the structure and composition of hundreds of fossils of Indohyus, which is part of the larger group known as raoellids. Raoellids lived at about the same time as the earliest whales -- about 50 million years ago.

Thewissen's team found key similarities in the skull and ear that suggest a link to cetaceans, a family that includes whales, dolphins and porpoises.

Indohyus, for example, had an outside layer that was much thicker than similarly sized mammals.

This is something typically seen in slow-wading mammals. They found further evidence in the chemical make-up of Indohyus' teeth, which resembled those of other aquatic animals.

This suggests the small, stocky Indohyus spent a lot of time in the water.

Scientists had assumed whales descended from land-dwelling carnivores, and made their way to sea to feed on fish.

"Clearly, this is not the case. Indohyus is a plant eater, and clearly is aquatic," Thewissen said in a statement.

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The researchers believe Indohyus gradually spent more time in the water, either for protection or while feeding, and the dietary shift came later.

"Cetaceans originated from an Indohyus-like ancestor and switched to a diet of aquatic prey," the researchers wrote.

Theories about the evolution of whales have been evolving themselves, and it may take years before there is a consensus.

Scientists find fossil of enormous bug

ganggang — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 08:21:47 +0000

By THOMAS WAGNER, Associated Press Writer Wed Nov 21, 7:54 AM ET

LONDON - This was a bug you couldn't swat and definitely couldn't step on. British scientists have stumbled across a fossilized claw, part of an ancient sea scorpion, that is of such large proportion it would make the entire creature the biggest bug ever.

How big? Bigger than you, and at 8 feet long as big as some Smart cars.

The discovery in 390-million-year-old rocks suggests that spiders, insects, crabs and similar creatures were far larger in the past than previously thought, said Simon Braddy, a University of Bristol paleontologist and one of the study's three authors.

"This is an amazing discovery," he said Tuesday.

"We have known for some time that the fossil record yields monster millipedes, super-sized scorpions, colossal cockroaches, and jumbo dragonflies. But we never realized until now just how big some of these ancient creepy-crawlies were," he said.

The research found a type of sea scorpion that was almost half a yard longer than previous estimates and the largest one ever to have evolved.

The study, published online Tuesday in the Royal Society's journal Biology Letters, means that before this sea scorpion became extinct it was much longer than today's average man is tall.

Prof. Jeorg W. Schneider, a paleontologist at Freiberg Mining Academy in southeastern Germany, said the study provides valuable new information about "the last of the giant scorpions."

Schneider, who was not involved in the study, said these scorpions "were dominant for millions of years because they didn't have natural enemies. Eventually they were wiped out by large fish with jaws and teeth."

Braddy's partner paleontologist Markus Poschmann found the claw fossil several years ago in a quarry near Prum, Germany, that probably had once been an ancient estuary or swamp.

"I was loosening pieces of rock triathlon guide uniforms guide with a hammer and chisel when I suddenly realized there was a dark patch of organic matter on a freshly removed slab. After some cleaning I could identify this as a small part of a large claw," said Poschmann, another author of the study.

"Although I did not know if it was more complete or not, I decided to try and get it out. The pieces had to be cleaned separately, dried, and then glued back together. It was then put into a white plaster jacket to stabilize it," he said.

Eurypterids, or ancient sea scorpions, are believed to be the extinct aquatic ancestors of today's scorpions and possibly all arachnids, a class of joint-legged, invertebrate animals, including spiders, scorpions, mites and ticks.

Braddy said the fossil was from a Jaekelopterus Rhenaniae, a kind of scorpion that lived only in Germany for about 10 million years, about 400 million years ago.

He said some geologists believe that gigantic sea scorpions evolved due to higher levels of oxygen in the atmosphere in the past. Others suspect they evolved in an "arms race" alongside their likely prey, fish that had armor on their outer bodies.

Braddy said the sea scorpions also were cannibals that fought and ate one other, so it helped to be as big as they could be.

"The competition between this scorpion and its prey was probably like a nuclear standoff, an effort to have the biggest weapon," he said. "Hundreds of millions of years ago, these sea scorpions had the upper hand over vertebrates — backboned animals like ourselves."

That competition ended long ago.

But the next time you swat a fly, or squish a spider at home, Braddy said, try to "think about the insects that lived long ago. You wouldn't want to swat one of those."

Greenhouse gases rising faster than UN forecasts: report

ganggang — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 13:33:59 +0000

SYDNEY (AFP) - Greenhouse gas emissions are rising faster than worst-case predictions by the United Nations' top climate change body, said a new Australian report issued Thursday.

The report by the independent Climate Institute found emissions were rising faster than forecast by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), with possibly devastating effects.

"Greenhouse emissions are rising faster than the worst-case IPCC scenarios," it said.

The UN body may be "underestimating the risks of adverse impacts due to increased warming during this century," it said, meaning events previously considered relatively unlikely were now more likely.

A recent assessment by the IPCC used material published up to mid-2006, it said, but many important new observations had been published since.

These included the fact that decreases in ice cover in the Arctic Ocean were taking place 30 years earlier than predicted by scientific models, it said, with a new summer minimum for Arctic sea ice set in 2007.

At this rate an ice-free Arctic Ocean could exist earlier than dates previously forecast by the models, which see it as a possibility some time between 2050 and 2100, it said.

It warned that sea antiques art baby items books cell phones PDAs level rises could reach up to 1.4 metres by the end of the century, much higher than forecast by the UN.

The ability of the land and oceans to absorb carbon dioxide was declining, and although the UN had anticipated this, the observed changes were faster than predicted, the report said.

"This paper suggests that there exists evidence that the IPCC process may have led to an underestimation of the risk of greater warming and that the impacts of climate change are occurring more rapidly than previously projected," the report added.

The report was prepared by Graeme Pearman, the former head of atmospheric research at Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Research Organisation (CSIRO).

Crab season begins despite oil spill

ganggang — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 13:31:12 +0000

By TERENCE CHEA, Associated Press Writers 1 hour, 52 minutes ago

SAN FRANCISCO - The Dungeness crab season opened as scheduled Thursday amid health concerns by anglers who wanted all fishing banned as cleanup continues on last week's oil spill.

Despite the request to suspend all commercial and sport fishing for at least 2 1/2 weeks, the state announced Wednesday that only the San Francisco Bay and three miles of Pacific coast, from Point Reyes to San Mateo County, would be closed.

The closure does not affect most of the Dungeness crab fishery because the delicacy is frequently caught more than three miles offshore, though fishermen fear even one contaminated crustacean could hurt the entire market.

"This is an absolute disaster," said Larry Collins, vice president of the San Francisco Crab Boat Owners Association. "We're all stunned. It's absolutely irresponsible."

Miles of beaches remain closed after the freighter Cosco Busan struck the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge in heavy fog on Nov. 7, spilling 58,000 gallons of oil into the bay.

The investigation into the cause of the crash hit a snag when Chinese crew members of the Hong Kong-based cargo ship refused to speak with federal investigators. Some crew members had previously spoken to the Coast Guard, but new criminal and civil investigations have apparently led the crew to hire lawyers and refuse interviews, said National Transportation Safety Board member Debbie Hersman.

The NTSB could subpoena the crew members.

Federal prosecutors string best strollers guide swimming tingge televisions guide are conducting a criminal probe into the spill, and the governor also has promised an investigation. Officials have ruled out mechanical error and are focusing on the actions of the pilot and crew.

The Coast Guard revealed Wednesday that some drug and alcohol tests taken by crew members were conducted outside the legal time limits. Federal law requires all crew members to be tested for alcohol within two hours of an incident and for drugs within 32 hours.

Capt. John Cota, who was guiding the ship, was tested within the legal time frames for drugs and alcohol, and tested negative, Rear Adm. Craig Bone said.

Meanwhile, the Coast Guard replaced the commander overseeing the response to the spill.

At a Senate hearing in Washington, Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Thad Allen said Capt. Paul Gugg will assume oversight of the response from Capt. William Uberti, who will remain the Coast Guard commander for the bay region.

"Given the concerns ... about what may or may not have happened, we thought it was best at this time to bring in a new incident commander for this particular response," Allen said.

The Coast Guard has been criticized for a lapse of several hours between when officials knew the spill was 58,000 gallons — not 140 gallons as initially reported — and when that information was made public.

Allen told lawmakers the Coast Guard will review its own response, including whether its emergency plan for the bay is adequate. The process will include the city of San Francisco, the state of California and others.

Two state lawmakers said Wednesday they had been told by workers from one of the three companies hired by the ship's owners for the cleanup that there were not enough trained responders in the area when the accident happened, which may have allowed the slick to spread.

The slick continued to worry crabbers as they prepared to lay out their traps.

Many of the fishermen who requested the fishing ban will harvest anyway because they worry that if they wait, their competitors will haul away all the crab, said Zeke Grader, executive director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Association.

Fishermen will not be able to unload crabs in San Francisco, but they can still deliver their catch to buyers in Half Moon Bay or Bodega Bay, officials said.

Steve Martarano, a spokesman for the state Department of Fish and Game, said the department consulted with all sectors of the fishing industry before deciding which areas should be closed.

"All of us were concerned about the human health issue," Martarano said. "There was a wide range of opinion, and we took everything into consideration."

___

Associated Press writers Scott Lindlaw in San Francisco and Erica Werner in Washington contributed to this report.

Low-Carb Diet May Slow Prostate Tumor Growth

ganggang — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 13:30:19 +0000

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TUESDAY, Nov. 13 (HealthDay News) -- In mice, a low-carbohydrate diet slowed prostate tumor growth, possibly because fewer carbohydrates leads to a drop in insulin production, U.S. researchers say.

"This study showed that cutting carbohydrates may slow tumor growth, at least in mice. If this is ultimately confirmed in human clinical trials, it has huge implications for prostate cancer therapy through something that all of us can controls, our diets," lead researcher Dr. Stephen Freedland, a urologist at Duke University Medical Center, said in a prepared statement.

Previous studies linked insulin and a related substance called insulin-like growth factor (IGF) with the growth of prostate tumors in mice. Freedland and his colleagues theorized that reducing levels of these substances might slow prostate tumor growth.

They compared tumor growth in mice eating either a low-carbohydrate diet; a low-fat but high-carbohydrate diet; or a Western diet high in fat and carbohydrates.

Mice fed the low-carbohydrate diet had the smallest tumor size and longest survival, the team found.

""Low-fat mice had shorter soccer guide software guide spinning guidesurvival and large tumors , while mice on the Western diet had the worst survival and biggest tumors. In addition, though both the low-carb and low-fat mice had lower levels of insulin, only the low-carb mice had lower levels of the form of IGF capable of stimulating tumor growth," Freedland said.

The study is published in the Nov. 13 online edition of the journal Prostate.

Freedland is currently organizing a clinical trial to examine the impact of a low-carbohydrate diet on prostate tumor growth in men.

Breast milk content may affect child's obesity risk

ganggang — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 13:26:55 +0000

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Mothers who breast feed and have high levels of a protein secreted by lipids in their milk may be increasing the risk that their child will be overweight, German researchers report.

Dr. Maria Weyermann of The German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg and her colleagues found that a child's likelihood of being overweight by age 2 rose with the amount of adiponectin in his or her mother's milk.

The significance of these findings remain unclear, Dr. Matthew W. Gillman and Dr. Christos S. Mantzoros, Harvard Medical School, Boston, point out in an editorial accompanying the study, because infants may not be able to absorb the adiponectin contained in breast milk.

Also, they add, high levels of adiponectin in adults actually reduce heart disease and diabetes risk, making it "counterintuitive" that high levels would contribute to excess weight in children.

The jury silver guide skateboarding guide skin care is still out on whether nursing does protect children from becoming overweight, Weyermann and her team add.

The researchers investigated how breast-feeding might influence obesity risk by looking at adiponectin and another protein secreted by fat cells, leptin, which regulates appetite as well as the body's use of energy from food.

Adiponectin is involved in metabolism of fats and sugars. The fetus and placenta produce both proteins at high levels, the researchers point out, raising the possibility that they play a role in fetal development.

The levels of both proteins were measured in the breast milk of the mothers of 674 children when the infants were six weeks old. Among the children who were breast-fed for at least six months, obesity risk rose in tandem with breast milk adiponectin levels. However, leptin levels showed no association with whether or not a child would be overweight.

"Our data provide evidence that the possible protective effect of breast-feeding against childhood obesity might depend, at least in part, on low levels of breast milk adiponectin," Weyermann and her team write.

More research is needed before it's possible to determine the health implications of the research, if any, Gillman and Mantzoros add. "The best advice remains that all women should strive to breast-feed their children for at least 12 months, with the first 4- to 6- months consisting of exclusive breast-feeding."

SOURCE: Epidemiology, November 2007.