Is There a Future in Solar Boats?

One of the highlights of this year's World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi was a tour of Planet Solar's incredible solar powered yacht — the Turanor. The largest solar powered boat ever to set sail, the Turanor is on the final leg of a round-the-world tour, the first time anyone has managed to sail around the world powered entirely by solar energy. The massive 8.5 ton boat comfortably carries a crew of a half dozen or so with plenty of room to host a dockside party for 100. It cruises comfortably at 5 knots but is capable of double that speed on particularly good days as it cuts through the waves with its knife-like design. Most impressive the boat can can store as much as 3 days worth of sailing power in a huge rack of lithium ion batteries thus allowing it to sail in the dark of night without a hitch. The price of the boat is somewhere close to 20 million dollars.

Light At Night Not A 'Bright' Idea

 

 According to the article natural nighttime light is healthier than harsh artificial light — especially LED (light-emitting diodes) white light, which suppresses the brain's night time production of Melatonin needed to regulate our biological clocks, behavior and health. White LED light (which is actually blue light on the spectrum) is emitted at short wavelengths of between 440-500 nanometers. The study showed that this type of light suppresses the body's production of Melatonin five times more than the orange-yellow light given off by traditional high-pressure sodium (HPS) bulbs. Metal halide bulbs, often used for stadium lighting, suppress Melatonin at a rate more than three times greater than the HPS bulb. So next time you buy your lightbulbs you might want to check what type they are before you buy them.

2011 was the driest year on record in Texas

2011 was the driest year on record in Texas, according to the National Weather Service. It was also the second-hottest ever. The weather service said the average rainfall in Texas in 2011 was 14.89 inches. The previous record of 14.99 inches of average rainfall was set in 1917.The average temperature in 2011 was 67.2 degrees. The warmest year on record was 1921, when the average temperature was 67.5 degrees, the weather service said.The prolonged Texas drought is to blame for devastating agriculture and livestock losses, estimated in the billions of dollars. The historic drought has killed as many as half a billion trees, not including those that died in wildfires that scorched some 4 million acres in 2011, the Texas Forest Service has reported.

Study Finds Warming Arctic Decimating Harp Seal Populations

Scientists from Duke University and the International Fund for Animal Welfare have conducted a study of the harp seal in northern Canada. Harp seals, the cute and cuddly creatures, have long been hunted for their prized furs. To add to their struggle, the thinning ice is playing havoc with their breeding ground. Female seals depend on stable winter ice to give birth and feed their young in peace. Forced to go to ice closer to land, the baby seals are sitting ducks for arctic predators and human hunters. The seal pups are being forced to fend for themselves before they are ready. As a result, their populations are dropping catastrophically.  Something has to be done befor it is to late.

Woolly mammoth to be brought back to life in five years

The woolly mammoth, which became extinct 10,000 years ago, will now be brought back to life from a cloned bone marrow within five years, scientists have claimed. Scientists from Russia's Sakha republic's mammoth museum and Japan's Kinki University will launch a joint research in 2012 in a bid to recreate the giant animal, the Daily Mail reported citing Kyodo News. The researchers say it may be possible to clone a woolly mammoth after they found a well-preserved bone marrow in a thigh bone recovered in Siberia. What i think about this is that if they can clone a mammoth just by using  a bone than they could clone almost anything know.

Fishing trends threaten marine predators

Current fishing trends are making iconic marine predators such as sharks, tuna, swordfish and marlin increasingly rare, Canadian researchers say.  Half of the North Atlantic and North Pacific waters under national jurisdiction have experienced a 90 percent decrease in the populations of top predators since the 1950s, researchers from the University of British Columbia report in the journal Marine Ecological Progress Series. Exploitation of marine predators started in coastal areas of northern countries, and then expanded to the high seas and to the southern hemisphere, they said. So in the future these problems can truly affect the growth of fish in those areas that are bieng affected.

 

Cleverer than a child of four, the birds who can read your mind

Birds intelligence in fact rivals that of apes who, along with crows, are able to do tasks that three and four-year-old children have difficulty with. The Aesop’s fable experiment was designed to see if corvids,the family of birds that includes crows, jays, ravens and jackdaws, have causal reasoning  the awareness that one event leads to another. According to the results they did and they also showed that they were good tool users. What is amazing about this is that these birds are not natural users of tools in the wild, so this is not a skill that natural selection has crafted over the centuries. Yet another experiment has shown that birds have  what is called ‘theory of mind’  in short, the ability to see the world from another bird’s point of view. All this experiments are showing more and more how these birds can actualy be put on the top of the list when it comes to smart animals.