Archive for the ‘Environment’ Category
Electric cigarette are smokeless, and some also call it smokeless cigarettes. The e-cigarette in contrast to the traditional burning cigarette (you know the drill: tobacco + Fire => Smoke) – Let off steam, because nothing is burning. Therefore, the User by e-cigarette (or by e-cigars and e-pipes) spared from carbon monoxide, tar and more than 60 cancer-causing additives. The nicotine is highly toxic to him here by alternative methods of helping.
The e-cigarette consists of three main parts. The replaceable battery provides the energy required from the evaporator. Depending on the model of the liquid (liquid, “Juice”) in the cartridge (depot, cartridge) vaporized by heat or ultrasound. The liquid is often based on propylene glycol and contains the flavor and nicotine. For all electronic cigarette reviews electronic cigarette comparison is a nice site that you may visit.
Components of the e-cigarette:When sucking on the mouthpiece (custodian), the control electronics, a piezoelectric element to vibrate offset so that the atomized liquid carrier and a slightly heated aerosol is generated. Only lasts as long as the resulting negative pressure by the suction, the battery power is removed, which ensures a long operating life and corresponds to approximately one pack of cigarettes. Of course, the battery can be recharged with an external charger.
Depending on the size and model of the e-cigarette are the replaceable cartridge (or tank) 60-30 conventional cigarettes.
After a month of fighting against radioactivity, the situation in the nuclear power plant in Fukushima has not been able to control quickly as expected, and the Japanese Government has finally taken what many experts already judged days or even weeks ago.
The nuclear accident is not magnitude 5, but 7, the maximum and the same as that reached the Chernobyl disaster. Read the rest of this entry »
Volcanoes, tsunamis, long and brutal winters, a completely isolated island… If you appear extreme adventures of Jesus Calleja, imagine how life was in those conditions of the inhabitants of the Kuril Islands, an archipelago that stretches from Russia to Japan.
A team of anthropologists at the University of Washington has asked and is considering what could be the most extreme place where humans have lived. In particular, it is known that settlers came to these islands on three separate occasions, first in 6000 BC and most recently in 1200 AD.
One of the project leaders, anthropologist Ben Fitzhugh, explains that “We want to identify the limits of human adaptability and the number of people with resilience, to colonize and support themselves.” Fitzhugh believes the Kuriles may offer clues to cope with natural disasters or climate change. Read the rest of this entry »
The ant red, an invasive species that plague several countries including the U.S., hidden in their DNA path expansion. An international group of researchers has put an end to secrecy, and has published the details in an article in the journal Science.
The route is as follows, according to scientists, led by Marina Ascunce, the Center for Medical, Agricultural and Veterinary Entomology in Gainesville (USA): left Argentina and came to America, settling in the south of the country for more than 90 years. From this home base they traveled to California, the Caribbean, China, Taiwan and Australia in at least nine separate invasions.
Details of the fire ant is essential to control the pest. It is estimated that the economic impact caused by this species amounts to more than six billion dollars in the U.S. only. Read the rest of this entry »
Radar seismic activity may help to predict in advance the production of a major earthquake. An article published in the journal Science has launched this possibility after based on data from the large earthquake in Izmit (Turkey) 1999.
The researchers, represented by Michel Bouchon, the CNRS in Grenoble, France, studied a series of repetitive points raised on the radar of seismic activity during the hour before the earthquake, measuring 7.6 on the Richter scale, and believe they could represent the early stages of the event.
During the earthquake in Izmit, the two plates limiting the fault is moved horizontally from one another about three meters. This sudden movement of plates occurred on the crisp crust. Bouchon’s team has identified a pattern of earlier seismic activity originating from the base of the brittle crust near the “hypocenter”, the point where the rupture started. Read the rest of this entry »
As if they had the sense arachnid of Spiderman. Some plants may be able to “anticipate” infections, which can suffer and thus trigger the immune response time.
Those responsible for the research, led by Xinnian Dong, Duke University in Durham (USA) studied the defense system of a plant of the genus of Arabidopsis, a herbaceous plant of the Brassica family have been very studied in recent years.
In particular, tested against a fungal pathogen that causes downy mildew (Peronospora sparsa), one of the most common diseases and harmful plants suffer.
Scientists discovered a new set of defense genes that are influenced by the circadian regulator, called the circadian clock-associated 1 (CCA1). Scientists believe that CCA1 helps plants to develop an immune response time, allowing them to prepare for the infection during the morning, when the fungus usually spreads its spores. Read the rest of this entry »
In 1979 the British chemist James Lovelock published his famous book, Gaia, a new Look at life on Earth, which deployed the basis of his hypothesis, called Gaia hypothesis, which proposed the existence of super-organism of the same name composed of earth and all that is including the biosphere. All these elements according to Lovelock are articulated in a cybernetic system, that is, self-regulated, which tends to maintain the proper conditions to continue to exist, which means preserving all those elements.
Life, therefore, in their interaction with other mechanisms of Gaia (cycles geological, chemical, atmospheric etc) seeks the permanence of the conditions that allows them to develop, on the understanding that this is not a conscious entity, and its operation based on a series of automatic self-regulatory processes of negative feedback (ie, operating offsetting changes in composition, temperature, etc. that may not prove harmful to the balance of the set).
This first book was the first of a series, some written in collaboration with Lynn Margulis, who developed the hypothesis that, regardless of its validity, has led to a whole new field of research, Earth System Science, within which they have made significant advances in our understanding of planetary dynamics. On the other hand, the concept of Gaia has served as the basis for many ideological movements of all kinds ranging from environmentalism to mysticism.
The hypothesis itself, however, has been the subject of scientific debate since its publication, and has come to merit serious objections to many of its main lines of argument. Peter Ward, a paleontologist at the University of Washington and prolific author of popular science books has been one of the most active opponents of the theory of Lovelock, which finally has systematically tried to contest his book The Medea Hypothesis: Is life on Earth ultimately self-destructive?. The title was chosen in opposition to Lovelock, against Gaia, protective mother and bountiful, Ward chose Medea, another character from Greek mythology who was the wife of Jason and, spiteful, eventually killing the children born with him.For the analysis of Ward’s life shows that, far from being a regulator of the planet and lead author of “homeostasis” (maintenance of appropriate conditions) that preaches Lovelock, is biocidal and, ultimately, suicidal, and will responsible for their own demise. Read the rest of this entry »
A frog who lost his teeth and then recovered, thanks to an evolutionary mechanism that is surprising to scientists. Guentheri is Gastrotheca or toothed marsupial frog. He lives in the forests of Colombia and Ecuador, and is the only one that has teeth in both upper and lower jaw.
This amphibian contradicts the law of irreversibility. Raised by the Belgian paleontologist Louis Dollo said that the features lost during the evolutionary process can not be recovered.
However, a team of scientists, led by John Wiens of Stony Brook University in New York (USA) has shown that marsupial lower gear teeth lost more than 230 million years, to return them to recover in the last 20 million years. In reaching this conclusion, combining data from fossils and DNA sequences with new statistical methods. The frog uses these lower teeth to catch their prey. Read the rest of this entry »
Animals may act more quickly and make decisions more accurate when part of a group than when alone. This is demonstrated by an article published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
In reaching this conclusion, the researchers, a team from the Department of Biological Sciences, University of Sydney (Australia) directed by Ashley Ward performed the following experiment. Put mosquito fish (Gambusia affinis) in a simple maze Y-shaped mirror with a predator hiding in one arm of the maze, and compared with the behavior in the same situation of different groups of four, eight and sixteen fish.
The authors tracked the movements of fish as they traveled by any of the two possible paths. The lone avoided the predator fish in a little over half of the trials. The greater the group, the proportion of fish that chose the right path increased, reaching almost 90%. Read the rest of this entry »
These insects are vital to the functioning of ecosystems worldwide reduce the impact of humans. They are essential for the ecological balance of the nature and they are threatened. Several studies show the decline of butterflies worldwide. In Europe, one third of the 435 known species has declined in population. And it could be worse in the future because of climate change or attacks on their habitat. Scientific and ecologists demand therefore more measures of protection and conservation for these beings of so beautiful color.
Threatened butterflies in Europe
Butterflies are much more than a beautiful and delicate insects. Like the bees, also at risk, their role in pollination is essential for the survival of the flowers and plants, and by extension, humans. As a key link in the food chain, its disappearance would unbalance the ecosystem. In some parts of the world even serve food for the local population, such as maguey worms in Mexico and can not forget the benefits that silkworms have provided for centuries. Read the rest of this entry »