Tectonic plate collisions help biodiversity

This video is called Coral Reefs HD IMAX: Coral Reef Adventure.

From New Scientist:

Marine life loves a tectonic collision

* 19:00 31 July 2008
* NewScientist.com news service
* Nic Fleming

Today’s marine biodiversity “hotspots” weren’t always so hot, say researchers.

A review of fossil records and molecular evidence found the zones with the greatest variety of fish, molluscs and corals have shifted according to the movement of tectonic plates over three distinct periods during the last 50 million years.

During the late Middle Eocene, 39 to 42 million years ago, the greatest number of families of species existed in seas off southern Europe, northern Africa, and the eastern shore of Arabia.

Between 16 and 23 million years ago – the early Miocene – there were two main maritime hotspots: one covering the Middle East and the coast of north western India, and a region centred around the Philippines and northern Australia.

Since then, the Indo-Australian Archipelago (IAA) has been the most biologically diverse marine environment on Earth.

Temperature role

“There have always been assumptions that a hotspot has always been there and it is an area that produces its own diversity,” says David Bellwood, professor of marine biology at the James Cook University, Townsville, Queensland, Australia. In fact, hotspots can come and go.

The team studied the latest fossil evidence for the first occurrence and rate of DNA changes in large benthic foraminifera – amoeba-like, single-celled, sea-bed-dwelling animals with calcium carbonate shells.

Their prevalence has been shown to correlate with overall diversity in tropical marine environments. They also looked at the fossil records for mangroves, coral reefs, molluscs and cowrie-like gastropods.

They concluded that sea temperature, one of the traditional causes of biodiversity, plays a contributory rather than a primary role.

New habitats

“Temperature is certainly facilitating diversity, but if it was only temperature in the Eocene, you would have really high diversity in modern Africa,” says lead author Willem Renema of the Natural History Museum in Leiden, the Netherlands.

“We realised these are distinct locations where you have major complex collisions between continents.”

At the early phase of collision, Renema says, a lot of new and different habitats are created, such as rocky and sandy shores, and deep and shallow basins, all of which can accommodate a lot of different species.

The current IAA hotspot lies in the region of convergence between the Eurasia, Australia and the Pacific/Philippine Sea plates.

Journal reference: Science (DOI: 10.1126/science.1155674)

See also the biodiverse life at the vents of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, where tectonic plates are colliding.

Strange Life Found in Deepest Ocean. The giant amoebas are adapted to live in the extreme conditions of the Mariana Trench: here.

Tropical biodiversity in danger: here.

Related articles

• Diverse coral reef yields many new species despite threat of silver mine (science.nbcnews.com)
• New species found in threatened New Guinea lagoon (summitcountyvoice.com)
• Coral reef research highlights big drop in growth rates (summitcountyvoice.com)
• New marine species discovered in Madang Lagoon (asopa.typepad.com)
• New Marine Species Discovered in Papua New Guinea (natureworldnews.com)
• East Timor conservation (dearkitty1.wordpress.com)
• Tikina prepares for reef survey (fijitimes.com)

United States Raging Grannies for peace

From The Republican Journal (Waldo, Maine, USA):

Raging Grannies Sing For peace, Generations To Come

by Eliza Duggan

BELFAST, Maine – In the heat and humidity of midday, an anti-war group of over-50-year-old activists known as the Raging Grannies sang just outside the Celtic Festival on Sunday, July 20. After the weekly Sunday protest on the corner of Main Street and High Street, nine grandmothers marched down Main Street to the waterfront to sing. Their uniforms included black T-shirts that read “I’m a Raging Granny,” aprons and large sunhats.

The grandmothers – the Raging Grannies – say they are focused on the welfare of America. “We’re concerned about generations to come,” says Nancy Galland.

In order to express their frustration with “war and American imperialism,” the Raging Grannies sing in protest, especially of the war in Iraq. They also write pamphlets to distribute their message.

Many of their songs are sung to well-known tunes like “Auld Lang Syne.” The Grannies used the tune “My Bonny Lies over the Ocean,” and charged the lyrics with political fervor:

“The Bushies lied over and over;
They all lied to you and to me;
The Bushies lied over and over;
Oh, bring back democracy!”

Raging Grannies is an international group that originated in 1987 in Victoria, British Columbia. It began as a club of women between the ages of 52 and 67 protesting the presence of U.S. warships and submarines in their waters, which they said posed threats to the environment.

The concept of using their “innocent” roles as grandmothers to fight for causes they believed in spread to the United States, where there are now more than 50 grandmother groups.

As Raging Grannies member Cathy Mink declared, “Outrage is our message!”

Jane Sanford and Margaret Laing co-founded the Belfast branch of the Raging Grannies. They debuted in March to commemorate the sixth year of the Iraq War. They meet once a week to rehearse songs and discuss politics.

There are between eight and 10 members in the Belfast chapter, and they are eager to “dress up and rail against authority,” as Laing put it.

The Grannies also stage appearances at the WERU Full Circle and Common Ground Country fairs, and are willing to sing at any event free of charge. Anyone more than 50 years old, grandmother or not, can become a member.

Record profits for ExxonMobil oil

This video from the USA is called Exxon Mobil Corp.

From AFP news agency today:

Surging oil prices helped US energy giant ExxonMobil to a 14 percent jump in quarterly net profit to 11.68 billion dollars in results Thursday short of most forecasts on Wall Street.

The earnings set another record for ExxonMobil, which has been the world’s most profitable publicly traded firm and a magnet for criticism in Washington over policies toward big oil companies.

See also here. And here.

Crisis, what crisis? for at least some people. This, however, will not stop ExxonMobil capitalists joining in with the chorus of Shell capitalists and other capitalists, clamoring for less well off people to “tighten their belts” because of bad times …

Exxon funded global warming denial for years. Yesterday, in an astonishing U-turn, it called for the imposition of green taxes: here.

US telecommunications giant Verizon demands job and benefit cuts: here.

Government report shows sharp fall in US economic growth: here.

US unemployment rate rises to four-year high: here.

Mars’ moon Phobos photographed

This video is called H344-Mars Express 2.

From the BBC:

Europe’s Mars Express spacecraft has returned some remarkable close-up images of the Red Planet‘s Phobos moon.

The probe passed just 93km from the rock on 23 July, allowing its High Resolution Stereo Camera to take extremely detailed pictures.

Potato-shaped Phobos is 27km in its longest dimension and is thought to be a captured-asteroid or a remnant of the material that formed the planets.

The new images include portions of the moon not previously photographed.

They also show clearly the satellite’s famous grooves.

How these were generated is not entirely understood. Some scientists believe they have been gouged out by material thrown up from the surface of Mars by space impacts.

Other researchers think they could have resulted from the surface regolith, or soil, slipping into internal fissures.

The images are sure to provide new insights. At their best, the pictures have a resolution of 3.7m per pixel.They will also assist the Russians in their planning of the Phobos-Grunt mission. Launching next year, this venture will try to place a spacecraft on the moon to gather samples for return to Earth.

PHOBOS – MARTIAN MOON

Measures 27 x 22 x 18km; could be a captured asteroid
Orbits less than 6,000km above Mars; slowly falling inwards
First high-res probe images taken by Mariner 9 in 1971
Dedicated Soviet probes, Phobos 1 & 2, were lost
Its 10km-wide Stickney crater records huge impact

See also here.

NEW MARS PICTURES: Water Ice Exposed by Meteor Strikes: here.

California planetarium: here.

Forty years since the first Moon landing: here.

Fake Dutch “moon rock” in museum: here.

ScienceDaily (Feb. 17, 2010) — Mars Express has just began a series of flybys of Phobos, the largest moon of Mars. The campaign will reach its crescendo on 3 March, when the spacecraft will set a new record for the closest pass to Phobos, skimming the surface at just 50 km. The data collected could help untangle the origin of this mysterious moon: here.

Comets, not asteroids, to blame for moon’s scarred face: here.

Halley’s Comet Likely Seen By Ancient Greeks: The ancient Greeks probably saw Halley’s comet in 466 B.C.: here.

Mars’s mysterious elongated crater: Orcus Patera is an enigmatic elliptical depression near Mars’s equator: here.

Mars rovers mark seven years on the planet’s surface: here.

Stardust spacecraft gives second glimpse of comet Tempel 1: here.

Live fish, shrimps, caught at record depth

This video is called The Blue Planet – Deep Sea Pt.1.

From the BBC:

Live fish caught at record depth

By Anna-Marie Lever
Science and Nature reporter, BBC News

A live deep-sea fish has been caught at a record depth of 2,300m on the hot vents of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.

Three shrimp species were also pulled to the surface, researchers report in the journal Deep-Sea Research.

Scientists have engineered a new device that allows recovery of live animals under their natural pressure at greater depths than previously achieved.

Next they hope to be able to transfer the animals into an experimental lab to study their normal biology.

“Pressurised recovery has been around for the past 30 years, but this is the deepest fish-capture under pressure – the previous record was 1,400m. This is also the first time pressurised capture has occurred at a hydrothermal vent,” said Dr Bruce Shillito, marine biologist at the Universite Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris, France.

The shrimp species were caught at 1,700m (5,600ft; Mirocaris fortunata and Chorocaris chacei) and 2,300m (7,500ft; Rimicaris exoculata) at two vent fields, Lucky Strike and Rainbow, on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.

Dr Shillito explains: “At depths of over 1,000m, it is difficult to recover animals alive. Catching with no pressure is as good as catching dead. Fish are the most fragile – even a fisherman with a 100m line will probably reel in a catch whose gas bladder is in its mouth.”

Although the fish caught by the team was a zoarcid (Pachycara saldanhai) and had no gas bladder, it was sensitive to full decompression.

Video about this is here.

Liquid on Saturn moon discovered

This video is called Cassini – Titan; a simulation based on real radar images.

From the Australian Broadcasting Corporation today:

Scientists discover liquid on Saturn moon

US space scientists say liquid has been discovered on the surface of Titan, the largest moon of the planet Saturn.

Instruments on the Cassini space probe established the presence of liquefied ethane gas and a large lake on Titan.

Earth is the only other body in the solar system to have fluid on its surface.

Saturn’s smog-ridden moon Titan bears a striking resemblance to Earth despite its alien environment, a study has revealed: here.

Long-lived Titan lakes are boon to life: here.

Bush’s warmongering pseudo feminism exposed

This video from the USA says about itself:

Why do the images from Abu Ghraib prison that showed young women smiling, giving thumbs-up, while abusing naked Iraqi prisoners fascinate us? How can they maintain at their trials that they did it “just for fun”? Is the military using women as weapons of war? Kelly Oliver, W. Alton Jones Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University, discusses these issues at the Feb. 6 [2008] Thinking Out of the Lunch Box.

From Feminist Law Professors blog in the USA:

Kelly Oliver, “Women as Weapons of War: Iraq, Sex, and the Media” …

Focusing specifically on the US campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq, Oliver analyses contemporary discourse surrounding women, sex and gender and the use of women to justify America’s decision to go to war.

[US Rightist] O’Reilly falsely claimed “nobody died” at Abu Ghraib.

Bush threatens to veto equal pay for women: here.

Expensive oil saves Canadian deep-sea fish

From The Globe and Mail in Canada:

OCEAN TRAWLING HIGH FUEL COSTS

Threats to trawling give one species of deep-sea fish unintended protection

CHRISTOPHER POLLON

Special to The Globe and Mail

July 31, 2008

High fuel costs and the rise of the Canadian dollar are crippling British Columbia’s ocean trawling industry, with the unintended effect of protecting one of the province’s least known and most vulnerable deep-sea fish.

The species is the longspine thornyhead, a type of rockfish that has adapted to the crushing water pressure and near-zero-oxygen environment found a kilometre below the surface. Harvested by bottom trawlers primarily off the west coast of Vancouver Island, these fish can survive five months between meals, live up to 50 years, and possess eyeballs so unusually bulbous and leering that fishermen refer to them as “idiotfish.”

“B.C.’s bottom-trawl fisheries are among the best managed in the world, but this is not one of them,” says fisheries analyst Scott Wallace of the David Suzuki Foundation who has been calling for a moratorium on the longspine thornyhead harvest since March. “This is a case where high fuel prices have achieved conservation gains faster than anything else.”

Thornyheads are caught by a fuel-intensive fishing method known as bottom trawling, in which a weighted net is dragged along the ocean floor. Fishing for longspine thornyheads is particularly sensitive to fuel prices because of the need to run an onboard freezer (which requires a separate engine), and the need for longer tows because the fish are not concentrated in dense schools.

Biggest profits ever for Shell oil

This video says about itself:

Iraq Government Approves $17 Billion Gas Project with Royal Dutch Shell and Mitsubishi.

31 July 2008.

And this video says about itself:

The world’s oil giants Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total and BP are set to return to Iraq more than 35 years after Saddam Hussein nationalised production in the country’s biggest oil deal since the invasion.

From Dutch NOS TV:

Record profits again for Shell

Shell has never had such big profits as during the past six months. The corporation has said so in its report on the past six months.

Profits rose 8 per cent. From 14.5 billion US dollars in the first six months of 2007 to 15.7 billion US dollars this year. Those are profits of 60,000 US dollars per minute.

Shell profits have mainly rosen because of rising oil prices.

Shell and tar sands: here.

Crisis, what crisis? for at least some people. This, however, will not stop Shell capitalists joining in with the chorus of other capitalists, clamoring for less well off people to “tighten their belts” because of bad times …

Prehistoric animal bones discovered in Chilean caves

This video is called Discoverychile in San Pedro de Atacama, Atacama Desert.

From LiveScience:

Scientists exploring caves in the bone-dry and mostly barren Atacama Desert in Chile stumbled upon a totally unexpected discovery this week: water.

They also found hundreds of thousands of animal bones in a cave, possibly evidence of some prehistoric human activity.

The findings are preliminary and have not been analyzed.

The expedition is designed to learn how to spot caves on Mars by studying the thermal signatures of caves and non-cave features in hot, dry places here on Earth.