Clipmarks | Nature Clips

Clueless Smugglers find 'Gold' Is Uranium

Wed, 08 Oct 2008 08:56:25 GMT

Clueless smugglers find 'gold' is uranium

All that glisters is not gold. In some cases it is depleted uranium.

Three Chinese men found this out when they came across a lump of shiny metal in a scrapyard in Bishkek, in neighbouring Kyrgyzstan, last year.

The men smuggled the 274kg (604lb) object across the border and into China and hid it in the home of the father-in-law of one of the men in the westernmost Xinjiang region.

One thing puzzled them. At night, a report on a local government website said, “they were surprised that, when the lights went out, the treasure sparkled and glittered”.

the men decided to take a chip thousands of miles to Beijing to ask scientists

experts looked at the lump and swiftly determined that it was a radioactive material.

the law states that only those who deliberately smuggle nuclear materials may be subject to punishment and it was clear that the three men were entirely clueless about true nature of their “treasure”.

Dolphins

Sun, 12 Oct 2008 23:53:39 GMT

clipped by: Kelika
clipper's remarks: Love this photo!

Clip Source: www.darkroastedblend.com

Jumping Dolphins!

(in cooperation with National Geographic magazine)

Tags: dolphins, nature, photo

What Is a Strength?

Sat, 11 Oct 2008 12:18:54 GMT

clipped by: einbar

Clip Source: puimun.elfwood.com

Clip Source: personaldevelopment.suite101.com

scientists point out that the pre-existing nature of strengths can be seen in an evolutionary sense as part of the natural selection process of human survival.

Though humans no longer are faced with the same survival challenges, the special abilities that allowed early humans to thrive and develop translate to strengths promoting high performance today.

Linley summarizes this evolutionary perspective this way, "...modern strengths can be understood as reconfigurations and re-combinations of the many thousands of adaptive solutions that came about through human evolution, and that exist across all human beings." Adaptive solutions to the obstacles of early human survival therefore form the basis for modern-day strengths.

Random Events provide a person with circumstances and situations requiring solutions. Addressing these situations allows a person to grow latent strengths and extend existing strengths to previously untouched areas of accomplishment.

Swimming Tigers

Sat, 04 Oct 2008 21:35:48 GMT

clipped by: Kelika

Clip Source: www.darkroastedblend.com

White Bengal Tiger named Odin is six years old and 10 feet long from tail to nose. Odin lives at a Zoo in Vallejo, California, near San Francisco - and he likes to swim.

Lee Munro is his trainer; he says tigers are the most powerful swimmers out of all land-dwelling animals. The ferocious face he makes while diving is actually meant to close his nostrils to stop the water from going into his nose. For South-East Asia tigers it's just a good way to cool down.

Tags: nature, photos, tigers

Colorado's Fall Foilage

Sun, 12 Oct 2008 21:28:27 GMT

clipped by: Kelika

Clip Source: www.latimes.com

Colorado’s spectacular fall colors draw photographers and visitors from around the world. In fact, the most difficult decision might be deciding where to see the show.

Tags: nature, photos

Nature loss 'dwarfs bank crisis'

Sat, 11 Oct 2008 12:33:55 GMT

clipped by: vk2yoc
clipper's remarks: It's only money, could be worse, we could lose our planet.

Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

The global economy is losing more money from the disappearance of forests than through the current banking crisis, according to an EU-commissioned study.

The figure comes from adding the value of the various services that forests perform, such as providing clean water and absorbing carbon dioxide

"It's not only greater but it's also continuous, it's been happening every year, year after year," he told BBC News.

"So whereas Wall Street by various calculations has to date lost, within the financial sector, $1-$1.5 trillion, the reality is that at today's rate we are losing natural capital at least between $2-$5 trillion every year."

The greatest cost to western nations would initially come through losing a natural absorber of the most important greenhouse gas.

A number of nations, businesses and global organisations are beginning to direct funds into forest conservation, and there are signs of a trade in natural ecosystems developing, analogous to the carbon trade,

Tips for boosting your mood regardless of the situation

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 19:32:34 GMT

clipped by: pcmkrfn

Clip Source: www.dumblittleman.com

Wearing your favorite sweater

Baking a cake

Listening to Monty Python songs

Walking outside

The beauty of nature

Your friends

Reading a novel

Tidying up / decluttering

Taking a bath

Being grateful

Eye Colour

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 21:22:25 GMT

clipped by: JohnWaterman

Clip Source: www.colourlovers.com

Some of the most amazing colors can be found in the eyes of the creatures looking back at us. Here’s a gallery of some of mother nature’s remarkable gazes.

Scientists confirm shark's ‘virgin birth’

Sat, 11 Oct 2008 10:29:18 GMT

clipped by: tabsey
clipper's remarks: Interesting anti-extinction ability.

Clip Source: www.msnbc.msn.com

RICHMOND, Va. - Scientists have confirmed the second case of a "virgin birth" in a shark.

In a study reported Friday in the Journal of Fish Biology, scientists said DNA testing proved that a pup carried by a female Atlantic blacktip shark in the Virginia Aquarium & Marine Science Center contained no genetic material from a male.

The first documented case of asexual reproduction, or parthenogenesis, among sharks involved a pup born to a hammerhead at an Omaha, Neb., zoo.

"This first case was no fluke," Demian Chapman, a shark scientist and lead author of the second study, said in a statement. "It is quite possible that this is something female sharks of many species can do on occasion."

The aquarium sharks that reproduced without mates each carried only one pup, while some shark species can produce litters numbering in the dozen or more. The scientists cautioned that the rare asexual births should not be viewed as a possible solution to declining global shark populations.

Tags: nature

Almost Gone

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 16:37:48 GMT

clipped by: arifsali
clipper's remarks: The International Union for Conservation of Nature has released its Red List of the world's most threatened plants and animals. Here's a look at some of the animals on the verge of extinction

Clip Source: www.time.com

Greater Bamboo Lemur

Clip Source: www.time.com

Celebes Crested Macaque

Clip Source: www.time.com

Lowland Gorilla

Clip Source: www.time.com

Madagascar Fish Eagle

Clip Source: www.time.com

Vancouver Island Marmot

Clip Source: www.time.com

Black Rhino

Clip Source: www.time.com

Iberian Lynx

Clip Source: www.time.com

Mindoro Dwarf Water Buffalo

Clip Source: www.time.com

Baiji Dolphin

Clip Source: www.time.com

Siberian Crane

Tags: nature, animals, pictures

Discovery Of 'Broken Symmetry' At Subatomic Level Earns 2008 Nobel Prize In Physics

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 17:36:03 GMT

clipped by: Silkweaver
clipper's remarks: It has proved to be extremely useful, and Nambu’s theories permeate the Standard Model of elementary particle physics. The Model unifies the smallest building blocks of all matter and three of nature’s four forces in one single theory.

The spontaneous broken symmetries that Nambu studied, differ from the broken symmetries described by Makoto Kobayashi and Toshihide Maskawa. These spontaneous occurrences seem to have existed in nature since the very beginning of the universe and came as a complete surprise when they first appeared in particle experiments in 1964.

It is only in recent years that scientists have come to fully confirm the explanations that Kobayashi and Maskawa made in 1972. It is for this work that they are now awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics. They explained broken symmetry within the framework of the Standard Model, but required that the Model be extended to three families of quarks. These predicted, hypothetical new quarks have recently appeared in physics expe

Clip Source: www.sciencedaily.com

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for 2008 with one half to Yoichiro Nambu, of the Enrico Fermi Institute at the University of Chicago, "for the discovery of the mechanism of spontaneous broken symmetry in subatomic physics,"

and the other half jointly to Makoto Kobayashi, of Japan's High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (KEK) and Toshihide Maskawa, of the Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics (YITP) at Kyoto University, "for the discovery of the origin of the broken symmetry which predicts the existence of at least three families of quarks in nature."

The fact that our world does not behave perfectly symmetrically is due to deviations from symmetry at the microscopic level.

As early as 1960, Yoichiro Nambu formulated his mathematical description of spontaneous broken symmetry in elementary particle physics. Spontaneous broken symmetry conceals nature’s order under an apparently jumbled surface.

Tags: physics, particle physics, nobel prize, quarks

Beached Jellyfish

Sat, 11 Oct 2008 19:54:43 GMT

clipped by: putipuf

Clip Source: www.thinking-picture.com

Tags: nature

Planet's loneliest bug revealed

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 18:34:41 GMT

clipped by: arifsali

Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

A bug which lives entirely on its own and survives without oxygen in complete darkness underground has been discovered in South Africa.

Desulforudis audaxviator, or bold traveller as it is known in English, relies on water, hydrogen and sulphate for its energy.

Because it gets by without oxygen, it could offer clues as to whether life exists on other planets.

The loneliest living species known to science was found inside a gold mine.

The rod-shaped bacterium was found 2.8km (1.74 miles) beneath the surface of the Earth in Mponeng's Driefontein mine near Johannesburg, living in complete isolation, total darkness and 60C (140F) heat.

The find represents the first known ecosystem with a single biological species, scientists say.

It was identified in DNA extracted from water-filled cracks in the mine.

Tags: nature, bug, oxygen

Why nature can't be reduced to mathematical laws

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 14:04:36 GMT

clipped by: Mohir
clipper's remarks: If so, then even perfect knowledge of the physics at one level would be inadequate for understanding organisation at higher levels. This conjecture has been debated ever since.
Now Mile Gu at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, and colleagues, claim that it may be possible to prove Anderson's idea. They studied a basic mathematical model called the Ising model, which is often used to study how magnetism arises in iron and other materials from the collective organisation of their atoms.
Using the model, the team focused on whether the pattern that the atoms adopt under various scenarios, such as a state of lowest energy, could be calculated from knowledge of those forces. They found that in some scenarios, the pattern of atoms could not be calculated from knowledge of the forces - even given unlimited computing power. In mathematical terms, the system is considered "formally undecidable".

Clip Source: www.newscientist.com

ONE of the grand aims of science is to explain every aspect of nature in terms of simple, fundamental laws - but is this possible? A team of physicists claims to have found a hint that some things simply cannot be computed, and that nature could be more than the sum of its parts.

The idea of reductionism, a key tool in science for centuries, holds that everything in nature can ultimately be understood by gaining knowledge of its constituent parts. The laws of fluid flows, for example, can be derived from the deeper laws of atomic and molecular motion, which in turn follow from quantum physics.

In 1972, physicist Philip Anderson pointed out that there could be a problem with this approach. Anderson suggested that some systems may be more than the sum of their parts. He championed "emergence" - the notion that important kinds of organisation might emerge in systems of many interacting parts, but not follow in any way from the properties of those parts.

Tags: nature, physics, laws, complexity, emergence

Bloated Financial Sector

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 08:44:53 GMT

clipped by: davboz

Clip Source: www.tcsdaily.com

Democrats are pulling off a propaganda coup. They opposed reasonable regulation of Fannie and Freddie, and imposed CRA regulation that contributed significantly to the growth of unsustainable subprime mortgages. Now, they blame all problems on Bush-Cheney and "deregulation" and promise that the bailout is the first installment of a massive re-regulation of unspecified nature.

There is some truth to the attack, in that the feds watched the development of an opaque and fragmented system of mortgages and derivatives without finding out what was going on. The SEC also dropped the ball with respect to the investment banks, according to its own IG. But it is unclear why the solution is an increase in the power of institutions that were inept in the exercise of their existing power. There is a serious argument that what is needed is transparency and clearinghouses so that the market can work, not new micromanagement.