The Head of Thoth

A hunter has killed one of the Middle East's most endangered -- and symbolic -- birds

The Northern Bald Ibis (Geronticus eremita) has a long history in human culture.

Represented in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, today, it is depicted on the stamps of Algeria, Morocco, Sudan, Syria, Turkey and Yemen.

According to local legend in the Birecik district along the Euphrates River in Turkey, it was one of the first birds released from Noah's Ark as a symbol of fertility.

Along with the Sacred Ibis, the Northern Bald Ibis was believed to be the reincarnation of Thoth, the scribe of Egypt's gods, who had the body of a man and the head of an ibis.

Once, it roamed across south and central Europe, North Africa and the Middle East.

But now, this symbol of fertility is the Middle East's most critically endangered bird.

And one of them has just been illegally killed by a hunter in Saudi Arabia. Now, there are just four individuals left in the Middle East.

BirdLife International, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) have been working together on an ibis satellite-tracking project in an effort to find out more about their movements and ultimately help bring their populations back. Scientists believe that young birds are being lost somewhere along their migration route. The location where young birds go during the winter has been a mystery.

"The shooting of a young bird from such a tiny population is devastating news," said Ali Hamoud, of the Syrian Desert Commission, according to a recent BirdLife press release. "And it shows that hunting is a major threat to this species."

"Recovery of the population from this frighteningly low level is going to be exceedingly difficult," said Dr. Jeremy Lindsell, the RSPB scientist in charge of the ibis satellite-tracking project. "But everyone involved in the project believes we must do everything we can to provide hope for this culturally-important icon of the Middle East."

Noah and Thoth would likely have agreed.

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• Support BirdLife International in their efforts to prevent bird extinctions
  
• Join the Great Backyard Bird Count, a 4-day "citizen-science" project taking place across the United States starting on February 12, 2010
• Check out these 15 ways to attract birds -- and birdsongs -- into your backyard
  
• Read "What You Can Do to Help Birds" (StateOfTheBirds.org)
  
• 25 Things You Can Do to Help the Birds in Your Backyard
  
• Sign an Audubon petition urging Congress to take action on global warming based on their recent Birds and Climate report which clearly shows that climate change is affecting birds

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image: Richard Bartz

Four Degrees

Scientists now believe that four degrees of warming is "likely"

According to a new study by scientists at the Met Office, the United Kingdom's national weather service, the global average temperature will likely rise by 4°C (7.2°F) by 2060.

"Four degrees of warming, averaged over the globe, translates into even greater warming in many regions, along with major changes in rainfall," said Dr. Richard Betts, Head of Climate Impacts at the Met Office Hadley Centre.

Dr. Betts presented the new findings at "4 Degrees and Beyond," a special conference held this week at Oxford University. The conference -- a lead-up to the COP 15 United Nations Climate Change Conference, held in Copenhagen in December -- is the first of its kind to consider the global consequences of climate change beyond 2 °C.

These consequences include a rapid drying of Africa, the melting of the Arctic and flooding in India.

"Together these impacts will have very large consequences for food security, water availability and health," Dr. Betts said.

"However, it is possible to avoid these dangerous levels of temperature rise by cutting greenhouse gas emissions. If global emissions peak within the next decade and then decrease rapidly it may be possible to avoid at least half of the four degrees of warming."

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• Find out how you can help keep Antarctica cool and prevent global warming

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• Closing Off the Arctic (July 23, 2009)
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• Gone in 75 Years: Polar Bears (June 29, 2009)
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image: Arjan Almekinders

Don't Cry for Trees Argentina

Argentina has lost nearly 70 percent of its forests

The Ninth Session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCDD) is taking place in Buenos Aires through October 2. And the meeting's location was well chosen.

According to Argentina's Environmental Undersecretary Sergio La Rocca, the nation has lost almost 70 percent of its forests in the last century.

"In 100 years, we have lost between 60 and 70 percent of our forest heritage," he told reporters on Friday, according to an AFP report.

A study done by the College of Agronomics at the University of Buenos Aires (UBA) found that the highest rate of loss was in 2007, when 2.1 of the country's forests were lost in that year alone.

The recent surge in the soy market has driven forest destruction in the last decade, as Argentina leads the world in soy flour and soy oil exports, and ranks third in soy seed exports.

Following an appeal by indigenous people of the northern province of Salta, which has lost more than a quarter of its forests in the last three decades, the Supreme Court ordered a stop to the deforestation of natural forests.

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• Protect an acre of rainforest through Conservation International
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• The Rare Animals of the Amazon (June 13, 2009)
• Trade Carbon, Save Orangutans (June 8, 2009)
  
• Hey You, Get Off of My Cloud (May 30, 2009)
• Blowing Noses Into Dead, Ancient Trees (February 29, 2009)
  
• Dismembering the Earth's Heart and Lungs (January 25, 2009)

image: Separating Chile (left) from Argentina (right) in the True-color MODIS image from October 30, 2001, the Andes Mountains run the length of the western coast of South America. Although much of the snow will leave the mountains when summer arrives, many of the high peaks will retain snow year round. The portion of the Andes seen in this image includes the highest points in the range, including Aconcagua, the highest point in the western hemisphere at 22,834ft. Located at image right, roughly halfway down is Laguna Mar Chiquita, a large saltwater lake fed mostly by the Dulce River, coming in from the north. Along the northern coast of the Lake are extended wetlands, on all other sides, much of the land is used for agriculture, cattle grazing or timber. In the center of the image, two impermanent salt lakes stand out in white and light brown against the vegetation. The northernmost one, Salinas de Ambargasta (sal in Spanish="salt") appears almost totally dry, but some water remains in Salinas Grandes to the southwest. (image credit: Jacques Descloitres, MODIS Land Rapid Response Team, NASA/GSFC)

Star Light, Star Bright

It's the night sky like you've never seen before

An unprecendented, awe-inspiring image of the Earth's night sky has been recently unveiled.

Comprised of almost 1,200 photographs taken by French astrophotographer Serge Brunier, the 800-million-pixel image is the first of three super-high-resolution images of the GigaGalaxy Zoom Project, which was launched by the ESO as part of the International Year of Astronomy 2009 (IYA2009).

Brunier spent several weeks between August 2008 and February 2009 taking pictures of the night sky from observatories in Chile maintained by the European Organisation for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere (ESO).

"This 360-degree panoramic image, covering the entire celestial sphere, reveals the cosmic landscape that surrounds our tiny blue planet," according to ScienceDaily.com.

"The project allows stargazers to explore and experience the Universe as it is seen with the unaided eye from the darkest and best viewing locations in the world."

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• Learn how you can participate in the International Year of Astronomy 2009
  
• Sign a petition to add the option for US taxpayers to contribute to NASA on the IRS 1040 tax form
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• Buy a telescope from the Discovery Channel store

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image: This magnificent 360-degree panoramic image, covering the entire southern and northern celestial sphere, reveals the cosmic landscape that surrounds our tiny blue planet. The plane of our Milky Way Galaxy, which we see edge-on from our perspective on Earth, cuts a luminous swath across the image. The projection used in GigaGalaxy Zoom place the viewer in front of our Galaxy with the Galactic Plane running horizontally through the image — almost as if we were looking at the Milky Way from the outside. From this vantage point, the general components of our spiral galaxy come clearly into view, including its disc, marbled with both dark and glowing nebulae, which harbours bright, young stars, as well as the Galaxy’s central bulge and its satellite galaxies. As filming extended over several months, objects from the Solar System came and went through the star fields, with bright planets such as Venus and Jupiter. (image credit: ESO)

Keeping Their Coats On

Kim Basinger makes a plea for the furry ones

According to a press release from PETA, the leading Japanese designer Yohji Yamamoto has received a letter from Academy Award-winning actress Kim Basinger about his use of fur.

"By making the kind choice to shun fur (and fur trim, which helps to keep the cruel fur trade alive)," wrote Basinger, "you can be a leader in fashion and compassion, setting a wonderful example for the rest of the industry to follow."

"Animals trapped for their fur often suffer excruciating pain for days before trappers stomp on their chests or break their necks," according to PETA.

"On fur farms, animals spend their entire lives confined to tiny, filthy cages, where they suffer physical and psychological distress before they are poisoned, gassed, or anally or genitally electrocuted or have their necks broken."

Many of the world's leading designers have refused to use fur, including Stella McCartney, Betsey Johnson, Anne Klein, Vivienne Westwood, Comme des Garçons, Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger, Marc Bouwer, Chloé, Perry Ellis and Todd Oldham.

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• Sign a PETA letter to Yohji Yamamoto asking him to stop using fur in his designs

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image: Swift fox (credit: CBurnett)

Steel City Needs a New Nickname

The City of Bridges has built a bridge to the future. The G20 leaders meeting there this week should take note

By 1911, Pittsburgh was manufacturing about half of America's steel.

It's no surprise that the city's six-time Super Bowl champion football team, founded in 1933, is named the Steelers.

But by the late 1970s, the surging market of foreign steel forced "Steel City" into an economic slump, with widespread layoffs and mill shutdowns turning Pittsburgh into an industrial wasteland.

So, "when the White House press corps heard the G20 was to be hosted by Pittsburgh, many sniggered," according to a recent article in The Economist. "Usually such meetings are held in capitals like Beijing or London, not rustbelt cities."

It's clear that those sniggering journalists haven't been to Pittsburgh lately.

Pennsylvania's second largest city has reinvented itself for the 21st century with health care and education the twin pillars of its new economy. It is also an innovation hotspot in the fields of robotics and nanotechnology.

And it is focused on being green. A riverfront that was once dominated by factories is now lined with parks. The building hosting this week's summit is the world's first and biggest LEED-certified convention center. The Mattress Factory, the city's contemporary arts museum, is the nation's first museum to have a 100% paperless "green membership" program.

In 2007, Forbes named Pittsburgh the country's 10th cleanest. This year, The Economist named it the most livable city in the United States and 29th most livable city in the world.

The Quebecois hockey star Mario Lemieux, who played for the city's Penguins for 17 seasons, once remarked, "I didn't learn English until I came to Pittsburgh."

For the world leaders who arrive in the City of Bridges tomorrow for the G20 summit, there will be much more than a language to learn.

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• Visit Pittsburgh (Wikitravel)
• Learn about Pittsburgh's green initiatives
  
• Sign the "We Can Solve It" petition for a global treaty on climate change
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• Take the Public Agenda quiz and find out how much you know about energy

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image: CBC

Man's Best Friend Probably Began As a Meal

Dogs were likely first domesticated for their meat

One of the most comprehensive studies about the evolution of dogs has come to a startling conclusion: Wolves were probably tamed so that humans could eat them.

Led by biologist Peter Savolainen of the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, a team of Swedish and Chinese researchers looked at mitochondrial DNA of dogs around the world and discovered that there was a "single domestication event," according Nicholas Wade in an article in the New York Times.

"Considering that [domestication] involved so many wolves," says Savolainen, "this indicates that this event was important and a major part of the culture."

"There is a long tradition of eating dogs in southern China," writes Wade, "where dog bones with cut marks on them have been found at archaeological sites."

Published in the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution, Savolainen's study found that the dog first appeared 16,000 years ago, south of China's Yangtze River, descended from a local group of several hundred tame wolves.

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• Send an IDA letter urging South Korean officials to enforce existing laws to protect dogs
• Send a letter to your local Philippines ambassador urging them to increase enforcement on the illegal trade in dog meat
  

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image: Isageum

Hold That Thought About Thought

We may not be the only species that thinks about thinking

Metacognition -- commonly explained as "knowing about knowing" or "thinking about thinking" -- has long been assumed to be an ability limited exclusively to the human species.

Not necessarily so, says comparative psychologist J. David Smith of the Department of Psychology and Center for Cognitive Science at the University at Buffalo in New York, according to a recent University of Buffalo press release.

He argues that dolphins and macaques likely possess this higher level of consciousness and self-awareness.

In an article published in the September issue of Trends in Cognitive Science, Dr. Smith explains that the question of whether or not non-human animals possess metacognition has been approached by comparative psychologists "by testing a dolphin, pigeons, rats, monkeys and apes using perception, memory and food-concealment paradigms."

While Dr. Smith admits that "although the field has not confirmed full experiential parallels and this remains an open question," he argues that "there is growing evidence that animals share functional parallels with humans’ conscious metacognition."

He concludes that "metacognition rivals language and tool use in its potential to establish important continuities or discontinuities between human and animal minds."

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• Sign a Project R&R Release & Restitution for Chimpanzees in United States Laboratories petition urging Congress to pass the Great Ape Protection Act (H.R. 1326) (U.S. citizens)
  
• Volunteer with the Great Apes Project, which defends the rights of the great primates to live in liberty in their natural habitats
• Watch the trailer for The Cove and support the Save the Dolphins campaign
• Take the Food & Water Watch Anti-Triclosan Pledge to stop the exposure of the chemical to dolphins
  
• Download a BeyondPesticides.org factsheet listing products containing triclosan to stop buying products that contain this chemical harmful to dolphins
  

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image: These bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) were being fed in the Gulf of Mexico after they were washed out of their pool at the Marine Life Aquarium in Gulfport, Mississippi, by a 40-foot wave generated by Hurricane Katrina. They were rescued by the NOAA Fisheries Service. (credit: NOAA)

Seeing the Mother of Mars

The Sun will be shining brightly on one of the largest asteroids later this month

On September 1, 1804, a German astronomer named Karl L. Harding noticed something in the night sky -- an asteroid, the third one ever discovered in the asteroid belt.

An area between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, the asteroid belt contains numerous asteroids, ranging in size from the dwarf planet Ceres, which is 950km in diameter, to objects the size of a dust particle.

Harding named his discovery Juno after the Roman goddess who was the wife of the chief god Jupiter, the mother of Mars and the protector of the state. Dented by numerous collisions with other asteroids, Juno is a tough rock, being the tenth largest asteroid.

And later this month, Juno will be in a perfect position to get some light from the Sun, making it relatively viewable. It will not have this kind of brightness until 2018.

"Those who get out to a dark, unpolluted sky will be able to spot the asteroid's silvery glint near the planet Uranus with a pair of binoculars," according to a NASA press release.

"Skywatchers with telescopes can probably see Juno from now until the end of the year, but it is most visible to binoculars in late September. On or before Sept. 21, look for Juno near midnight a few degrees east of the brighter glow of Uranus and in the constellation Pisces. It will look like a gray dot in the sky, and each night at the end of September, it will appear slightly more southwest of its location the night before. By Sept. 25, it will be closer to the constellation Aquarius and best seen before midnight."

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• Sign a petition to add the option for US taxpayers to contribute to NASA on the IRS 1040 tax form
• See what's in the sky tonight
• Download the new Google Earth 5.0, which now has an interactive map of the entire surface of Mars
• Buy a beginner telescope from the Discovery Channel store ($99.00)

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image: The asteroid Juno was photographed in 2003 with a special optics system on the Hooker telescope at the Mount Wilson Observatory. The researchers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics who took the picture used varying wavelengths of light as measured in nanometers, starting with cyan and going into the infrared. (credit: Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics)

The Arctic Has a Hotseat, and Man Is Behind the Wheel

Greenhouse gases have altered thousands of years of natural Arctic cooling

According to a recent press release issued by the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR), a nonprofit consortium of research universities working with the National Science Foundation (NSF), new research indicates that "arctic temperatures in the 1990s reached their warmest level of any decade in at least 2,000 years."

The report concluded that "thousands of years of gradual Arctic cooling, related to natural changes in Earth's orbit, would continue today if not for emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases."

The Arctic warming has resulted in the dramatic loss of ice sheets that are critical to the region's fragile ecosystem. Endangered species such polar bears, wolves, caribou, musk ox, walrus and several species of seals and migratory seabirds are losing their habitat, finding it harder to locate food and dying off.

"This result is particularly important because the Arctic, perhaps more than any other region on Earth, is facing dramatic impacts from climate change," says NCAR scientist David Schneider, a co-author of the study, which was published in Science.

"This study provides us with a long-term record that reveals how greenhouse gases from human activities are overwhelming the Arctic's natural climate system."

"Because we know that the processes responsible for past Arctic amplification are still operating, we can anticipate that it will continue into the next century," says Gifford Miller of the University of Colorado at Boulder, a member of the study team. "Consequently, Arctic warming will continue to exceed temperature increases in the rest of the Northern Hemisphere, resulting in accelerated loss of land ice and an increased rate of sea level rise, with global consequences."

The arctic has a hotseat, and clearly man is behind the wheel. Perhaps it's time to shift gears -- into reverse.

GET INVOLVED

• Adopt a polar bear for $20 from Defenders of Wildlife to help in their efforts to get Congress to pass the Udall-Eisenhower Wilderness Act which would permanently protect the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
  
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• Sign the Polar Bear Central petition to curb global warming (open to all)
  
• Sign a Defenders of Wildlife letter urging your representative to take just 5% of the anticipated revenue from new global warming cap-and-trade legislation to safeguard wildlife and ecosystems from the effects of global warming (US citizens only)
• Analyze and reduce your impact on the environment with the National Grid Floe

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image: Claire Parkinson and Nick Digirolamo, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

Chimp Trauma

About a thousand captive chimpanzees are trapped in labs across the United States

"Regis, born in a lab, was only 2 years old when he was treated for his first stress-related injury — he had chewed his finger nail completely off," Regis, fearful if left alone, suffers severe anxiety attacks in which he nearly stops breathing."

A new study co-authored by Dr. Theodora Capaldo, the president of the New England Anti-Vivisection Society's (NEAVS) Project R&R: Release & Restitution for Chimpanzees in U.S. Laboratories, further "documents the severe emotional trauma chimpanzees suffer as a result of laboratory use and confinement," and "underscore[s] the ethical implications for the practices of cross-fostering nonhuman primates and their use in research."

"Developmental Context Effects on Bicultural Post-Trauma Self Repair in Chimpanzees" was published in the September issue, Vol 45(5), of the American Psychological Association journal Developmental Psychology.

But there is hope. A federal bill, the Great Ape Protection Act, has been introduced to the U.S. Congress. If passed, the bill would, according to the non-profit animal welfare group In Defense of Animals, "end unbearable anguish" for the approximately 1,000 chimpanzees currently languishing in American laboratories.

Dr. Capaldo says, "Chimpanzee research must stop if we are to end the suffering caused by decisions -- both scientifically flawed and ethically unjustifiable -- to use them as living test tubes."

GET INVOLVED

• Sign a Project R&R Release & Restitution for Chimpanzees in United States Laboratories petition urging Congress to pass the Great Ape Protection Act (H.R. 1326) (U.S. citizens)
  
• Volunteer with the Great Apes Project, which defends the rights of the great primates to live in liberty in their natural habitats
• Sign a PETA petition urging President Obama to ban military trauma exercises on animals
• Support the Fauna Foundation chimp sanctuary

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image: chimpanzee Regis (credit: Fauna Foundation via Project R&R)

A Line in the Sand

More and more of Africa is turning into a desert. Perhaps building a huge wall will stop it

In 2007, the United Nations Economic and Social Council issued a report about the problem of desertification in Africa, defining it as "a process of land degradation in arid, semi-arid and dry sub-humid areas, resulting from various factors, including climatic variations and human activities ... [which] manifests itself through soil erosion, water scarcity, reduced agricultural productivity, loss of vegetation cover and biodiversity, drought and poverty."

The report states that "both drought and desertification influence water availability, which is projected to be one of the greatest constraints to economic growth in the future."

Magnus Larsson has a possible solution. At the TED Global conference in Oxford this summer, the Swedish architect proposed "DUNE: Arenaceous Anti-Desertification Architecture," a bold plan to solidify sand dunes between Mauritania and Djibouti, essentially creating a 6,000-kilometer wall of sand across the Sahara in an attempt to stop the growth of the desert.

His plan calls for the use of Bacillus pasteurii, a bacteria commonly found in wetlands, to bind grains of sand together.

"There are many details left to explore in this story: political, practical, ethical, financial. My design is fraught with many challenges," he said, according to a BBC News story.

"However, it's a beginning, it's a vision; if nothing else I would like this scheme to initiate a discussion."

GET INVOLVED

• Analyze and reduce your impact on the environment with the National Grid Floe
• Join the Greenpeace "Energy [R]evolution"
• Sign the "We Can Solve It" petition for a global treaty on climate change

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image: "Dust storm over West Africa. A large, swirling mass of dust, visible on the left portion of the image, is blowing from the Western Sahara into the Atlantic Ocean. The islands at the top of the image are a part of the Canary Islands, a possession of Spain. The landmass on the right side of the image is North Africa, including the territory and country of Western Sahara (currently under the control of Morocco) and Mauritania, respectively. Dust storms occur when very strong winds carry sand from the erg, or sand dune deserts, of the Sahara. Dust storms are a naturally occurring phenomenon and may “fertilize” the oceans and even the Amazon rain forest by carrying and depositing minerals over great distances. However, they are often exacerbated by agriculture practices that contribute to soil erosion- a process called desertification." (credit: NASA)

Plight of the Penan

The Penan are fighting for their forests -- and their lives

There is a battle underway in the jungles of Sarawak, one of two Malaysian states on the southeast Asian nation of Borneo. It is between a hunting-gathering people known as the Penan tribe and industrial loggers.

According to a recent AFP news story, women and young girls from the tribe have been raped by workers from the logging camps.

"The investigation prompted calls from the National Human Rights Commission for the government to take action against the perpetrators, who could face up to 20 years in jail and whipping if convicted of rape," according to the story.

The report comes on the heels of protests mounted last month by the Penan tribe in the form of road blockades in an attempt to stop the logging, which is destroying the rainforest ecosystem on which they -- and countless plants and animals -- depend. Many of the protesters were armed with spears and blowpipes.

"The Penan have been struggling for more than twenty years against the logging companies that operate on their land with full government backing," according to the non-profit tribal people rights group Survival International.

"In areas where the valuable trees have been cut down, the companies are clearing the forest completely to make way for oil palm plantations."

GET INVOLVED

• Write a letter to the Chief Minister of Sarawak raising you concerns for the Penan tribe
  
• Protect an acre of rainforest through Conservation International
• Donate to the Rainforest Action Network
• Take these seven steps to help save the Amazon rainforest

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• Lost World (September 9, 2009)
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• Trade Carbon, Save Orangutans (June 8, 2009)
  
• Hey You, Get Off of My Cloud (May 30, 2009)
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• Dismembering the Earth's Heart and Lungs (January 25, 2009)

image: Survival International

Hubble Captures a Butterfly

The images taken by the newly refurbished Hubble Space Telescope are amazing

This week at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C., Senator Barbara A. Mikulski, a Democrat from Maryland, officially unveiled striking new images taken by the completely renovated Hubble Space Telescope, including "colorful, multi-wavelength pictures of far-flung galaxies, a densely packed star cluster, an eerie 'pillar of creation,' and a 'butterfly' nebula," according to September 9 NASA press release.

Sen. Mikulski, chairwoman of the Commerce, Justice and Science Appropriations Subcommittee that funds NASA, was a strong proponent of the funding of the mission by the crew of the Space Shuttle Atlantis last May to repair Hubble.

Currently in its full phase of science observation in a low orbit around Earth, Hubble has provided a slew of remarkable images, most notably the Hubble Deep Field, a series of images taken from a tiny section of the constellation Ursa Major that reveal a slice of almost the entire history of time after the Big Bang.

But Hubble's time is coming to and end. In 2013, NASA will launch its replacement, the James Webb Space Telescope, which will carry a mirror six times bigger than our current orbiting eye on outer space.

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• View the new images taken by Hubble
  
• Sign a petition to add the option for US taxpayers to contribute to NASA on the IRS 1040 tax form
• See what's in the sky tonight
• Buy a beginner telescope from the Discovery Channel store ($99.00)

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• Hubble's Last Stand (May 24, 2009)
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• Captured on Film: The Personification of Dread (March 13, 2008)
• Kepler and the Gate to the Black Forest (February 15, 2009)
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image: "Butterfly Emerges from Stellar Demise in Planetary Nebula NGC 6302. This celestial object looks like a delicate butterfly. But it is far from serene. What resemble dainty butterfly wings are actually roiling cauldrons of gas heated to more than 36,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The gas is tearing across space at more than 600,000 miles an hour -- fast enough to travel from Earth to the moon in 24 minutes. A dying star that was once about five times the mass of the Sun is at the center of this fury. It has ejected its envelope of gases and is now unleashing a stream of ultraviolet radiation that is making the cast-off material glow. This object is an example of a planetary nebula, so-named because many of them have a round appearance resembling that of a planet when viewed through a small telescope. The Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3), a new camera aboard NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, snapped this image of the planetary nebula, catalogued as NGC 6302, but more popularly called the Bug Nebula or the Butterfly Nebula. WFC3 was installed by NASA astronauts in May 2009, during the servicing mission to upgrade and repair the 19-year-old Hubble telescope." (credit: NASA)

Farewell from Christmas Island

Eleventh hour attempts to save Australia's rarest mammal have failed

The Christmas Island pipistrelle bat (Pipistrellus murrayi) is down to its last days on Earth. There are less than 20 of them left, all living under a piece of bark on a dead tree on the Australian island that lends this "microbat" its name.

Last-ditch efforts to capture the bats for a breeding program have failed, writes John Platt in Scientific American.

"We know that it's been in decline for some time and we knew the action the Government was taking was coming late," said Michael Roach of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), according to ABC News Australia.

"Those bats have faced such a range of pressures, a whole range of introduced species and severe habitat degradation, that it really was a last-ditch effort," he said.

"While WWF recognises the Government's intention to take a more proactive and holistic approach to conservation of Christmas Island, I think [Australian Environment Minister] Mr Garrett must realise that ecosystems are made up of species and as species go extinct, so inevitably will ecosystems and all the services and functions they perform for human benefit."

"Australia already has the worst mammal conservation record of any country," writes Kathy Marks in The Independent. "Of all the species lost over the past 200 years, nearly half have been Australian. They include the Tasmanian Tiger, or thylacine, which died out in the 1930s."

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• Support the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Countdown 2010 to save the world's biodiversity
• Support the World Wildlife Fund (WWF)
  
• Sign a petition to the United Nations to show your support of biodiversity

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• Last Days for the Leatherbacks (September 5, 2009)
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• Exclusive Interview with Francois Hugo, Founder, Seal Alert-SA (July 15, 2009)
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Image: Common pipistrelle (Pipistrellus pipistrellus), a relative of the Christmas Island pipistrelle (credit: Mnolf)

Lost World

Dozens of previously unknown creatures have been found deep inside a volcanic crater

Mount Bosavi is an extinct volcano in the Southern Highland province of the Pacific island of Papua New Guinea whose last eruption occurred 200,000 years ago.

Today, it is the site of a "lost world" that has just been discovered by a team of scientists from America, Britain and Papua New Guinea, and is the subject of the new BBC documentary "Lost Land of the Volcano."

"Fanged frogs, grunting fish and tiny bear-like creatures" were among the over 40 previously unrecorded species found 9,200 feet (2,800 meters) deep in Mount Bosavi's crater, according to the Guardian UK.

The find included "16 species of frog, at least three new species of fish, 20 species of insect and spider and one new species of bat," according to Times Online. A massive vegetarian rat three feet (82 cm) in length and weighing more than three pounds (1.5 kg), provisionally named the Bosavi woolly rat, is believed to live nowhere else in the world but the crater.

According to the Guardian UK, "The discoveries are being seen as fresh evidence of the richness of the world's rainforests and the explorers hope their finds will add weight to calls for international action to prevent the demise of similar ecosystems. They said Papua New Guinea's rainforest is currently being destroyed at the rate of 3.5% a year."

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• Protect an acre of rainforest through Conservation International
• Donate to the Rainforest Action Network
• Take these seven steps to help save the Amazon rainforest

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• The Trees of the Maya (July 29, 2009)
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• Hey You, Get Off of My Cloud (May 30, 2009)
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• Dismembering the Earth's Heart and Lungs (January 25, 2009)

image: The ERS-1 SAR scene represents about 100 by 100 km and was acquired by Alice Springs (Australia) on orbit 4255 on 9 May 1992 at 00:42 hours UTC and processed by ESA/ESRIN. The image centre is located at 6-00 south and 143-10 east. The scene consists mainly of tropical rain forest of central Papua. The prominent concentric feature near the upper right corner suggests a heavily eroded volcanic cone, with a caldera, open towards the south. It is Mount Bosavi, rising more than 2000m above the surrounding plain. The ERS-1 SAR uncovers huge lava flows running eastsoutheastwards. It seems that at least three different effusive activities can be distinguished, with lava flows one running on top of the previous one. On the surface of the most recent lava flow small ring craters, holes and long cracks, some of several hundred meters, and one of 2 km of diameter are visible; they may have been the result of explosions of trapped gas. Flow patters quite similar to those found on glaciers can be observed. There is a further volcanic feature near the lower right corner, with lava flows that are short and concentric. The mountain ranges to the north are made of limestone. The drainage runs parallel to the lava, the Hegidio River in the north, Guari and Kanuwe in the south. With the exception of some small settlements visible as bright spots especially along the rivers, no human activities (plantations, logging, etc.) is visible. (credit: ERS Data Utilization Section, European Space Agency/ESRIN)

Retreat at Îles Kerguelen

France's largest glacier is quickly disappearing

In Ursula LeGuin's 1966's sci-fi novel Rocannon's World, there is a city called "Kerguelen" on the planet "New South Georgia."

Kerguelen is also a French territory composed of about 300 islands in the southern Indian Ocean named after Breton navigator Yves-Joseph de Kerguelen de Trémarec, who discovered the archipelago in 1772.

Also known as Desolation Island, the Îles Kerguelen is home to feral cats, feral sheep and the Cook Glacier, which is melting at an alarming rate.

"Over the last 40 years, the Cook ice cap has thinned by around 1.5 meters per year, its area has decreased by 20%, and retreat has been twice as rapid since 1991," according to a recent press release by France's National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS).

While the scientists admit that human activity may not be the sole cause of the glacier's accelerated melting, it is clear that anthropogenic global warming has played a major role over the last four decades.

In LeGuin's book, a young woman leaves her planet to find a family heirloom, but due to relativistic time dilation, what was a quick trip from her perspective translates to many years back home, where she returns to find her husband dead and her daughter an adult.

If greenhouse gas-emitting human activity is not reduced soon, future generations may have to leave our home planet in search of more than just heirlooms.

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• Sign the "We Can Solve It" petition for a global treaty on climate change
• Sign a petition supporting a Kolahoi Accord to save Kashmir's glacier
  

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• Atlantis Rising (July 12, 2009)
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• Raul Grijalva Should Be the Next Secretary of the Interior (December 6, 2008)
• Michael Pollan Should Be the Next Secretary of Agriculture (November 18, 2008)
• Save Kolahoi, Save Kashmir (October 28, 2008)

image: Christmas Harbour, Kerguelens Land, copper engraving 200mm x 130mm, by George Cooke, dated 1811 (The Maritime Gallery, Kent, England)

The Korean Taste for Dog

The Korean appetite for dog meat is huge. And the way the animals are dispatched is hell on Earth.

According to a recent report by the non-profit animal welfare organization In Defense of Animals (IDA), "two million South Korean dogs are electrocuted, strangled, or bludgeoned to death each year. Then they're boiled, skinned, browned by a torch, chopped up and eaten."

The sale of dog meat has been banned in the country since 1984. But it is hardly enforced -- up to 30% of Koreans have tasted the flesh of "man's best friend."

GET INVOLVED

• Send an IDA letter urging South Korean officials to enforce existing laws to protect dogs

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• Taiwan's Typhoon Dogs (August 17, 2009)
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image: IDA