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Indonesians use Koran to teach environmentalism

Tue, 06 May 2008 18:52:18 GMT

clipped by: arifsali
clipper's remarks: Whatever works!

Sitting cross-legged in the dirt beneath a canopy of jungle vegetation, Nasruddin Anshory, with his Koran open in front of him, was telling a group of visitors about their ordained responsibility to protect the environment.

"As a Muslim," he said, "you have to do something."

His visitors were a mix of people from universities and mosques all over the island of Java, seeking to broaden their understanding of Islam. Off to the side were several students from Gajah Mada University nearby, eagerly taking notes in preparation for their dissertations, all of which will focus on promoting conservation through Islam.

Nasruddin founded Ilmu Giri, an Islamic school devoted to environmentalism, five years ago. But in the past couple of years, as global awareness of climate change and related problems has increased, interest in the school has swelled.

Tags: environment, muslims, islam, quran, indonesia

World food prices may worsen Burmese disaster

Tue, 06 May 2008 17:20:52 GMT

clipped by: arifsali

Clip Source: www.newscientist.com

As the scale of the disaster in Burma caused by Cyclone Nargis starts to emerge, relief agencies and rich countries are lining up to provide emergency aid. But with agencies already hit hard by soaring food prices, and Burma's own rice crop devastated, it is not clear where the relief will come from.

Nargis hit Burma on Saturday, bringing with it a reported oceanic storm surge more than 3 metres high, which is said to have destroyed some low-lying towns. The storm wreaked havoc throughout the heavily populated delta of the Irrawaddy River in the south, and hit the country's largest city, Rangoon.

Burma's military dictatorship today revised its earlier estimate of several hundred killed and admitted that at least 22,000 are dead – with thousands still missing. Many more people have been made homeless by the disaster.

"We have a major humanitarian catastrophe in our hands,"

Tags: burma, disaster, food

First zero-carbon city to rise out of the desert

Tue, 06 May 2008 17:19:38 GMT

clipped by: arifsali

Clip Source: environment.newscientist.com

One of the world's largest oil producers has begun construction on the first zero-carbon city, powered entirely by renewable energy.

Officials from Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, touted plans for a $22 billion development known as the Masdar Initiative at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), in Cambridge, US, in on 5 May.

"This is going to create huge business and research opportunities to get beyond where we are today," says Khaled Awad, of the government-owned Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company.

UAE is the third-largest oil exporting country in the world and sits on 10% of the planet's known oil reserves. Awad, however, sees the city, which will house an alternative energy research institute, as an investment in alternative energies that will eventually replace oil.

"For Abu Dhabi to maintain its market share in energy, it must develop other forms of energy," he says.

Tags: environment, middle east

Sabre-toothed 'bear' terrorised early humans

Tue, 06 May 2008 17:18:14 GMT

clipped by: arifsali

Clip Source: www.newscientist.com

A sabre-toothed cat that sported the fearsome teeth of felines also had the body and gait of a bear, making it a "super-predator".

So says a team led by Stephen Wroe at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia, which found that the ferocious marsupial lion (Thylacoleo carnifex) shared the same super-predator body plan as Smilodon fatalis, North America's ice age sabre-tooth cat.

Wroe and his team compared the skulls, teeth and body proportions of seven extinct mammalian predators with those of 22 living species, in a bid to better understand how the extinct animals behaved.

They found that five of the extinct species fell reasonably neatly into known predator groups. Two sabre-toothed cats sit well with modern- day felines, for instance, leading the team to conclude that they probably occupied a similar ecological niche. Smilodon and Thylacoleo didn't fit into any group but they did have a lot ...

Tags: history, humans, animals

Second genetic link to weight and obesity found

Tue, 06 May 2008 17:10:05 GMT

clipped by: arifsali

Clip Source: www.ox.ac.uk

New genetic variants that influence fat mass, weight and risk of obesity have been uncovered via an international investigation led by Oxford and Cambridge researchers.

A study of 90,000 people from seven countries found that these variants map close to a gene called MC4R. Mutations in this gene are the most common genetic cause of severe familial obesity and it is already known that rare, highly disruptive variants in the MC4R gene are responsible for very severe, genetic forms of obesity. The collaboration has now uncovered more common variants that affect more people.

The team, whose research is published in Nature Genetics, found that two copies of these genetic variants resulted in an average increase in weight of about 1.5 kg.

It's not just genes though - lifestyle contributes to body mass, too

Tags: science, obesity, research