Hey all.
There has been a shift in the schedule so my little segment in on Sundays no. I am posting early as I am going out to BBQ elk burgers and hang with friends.
Enjoy...
Six years ago the area around Samboja in Borneo was like much of the world's tropical rainforest: denuded. The trees had been cut for timber, the land burnt, and in place of what should be some of the richest biodiversity on the planet were thousands of acres of grass.
But from this ruined landscape a fresh forest has been grown, teeming with insects, birds and animals, and cooled by the return of moist clouds and rain. It is a feat that has been hailed by scientists and offers hope for disappearing and ruined rainforests around the world.
The secret was to use more than 1,300 species of local tree and a fertiliser made with cow urine, says Dr Willie Smits, the Indonesian forestry expert who led the replanting. 'The place became the scene of an ecological miracle, a fairytale come true,' says Smits, who has written a book about the project.
In the Southwest U.S., biologists are talking about returning beavers to rivers they once inhabited in order to fight droughts — which are expected to get worse as the globe warms. Beaver dams create great sponges that store lots of water.
Estonia has first NATIONAL CLEAN UP DAY!!
Tens of thousands of Estonians scoured fields, streets, forests and riverbanks on Saturday to amass tonnes of rubbish in the Baltic state's first national clean-up.
Using Google maps from the Internet and Global Positioning technology to locate junk, people collected every kind of garbage from tractor batteries to plastic bottles and paint tins and ferried it, often in their own vehicles, to central dumps.
The campaign, which aimed to collect up to 10,000 tonnes of rubbish, was organized by Internet entrepreneurs.
A surge in public bicycle rental programs is giving cycling a shot in the arm in a growing number of cities around the world. Copenhagen, Berlin, and other municipalities in Europe have offered public bikes for several years, but Paris took the concept to a new level last year when it made 20,000 bikes available in its inaugural effort. Some 100,000 Parisians are now subscribers.
Dwarf Cloud Rat sighted after 112 years
The greater dwarf cloud rat was thought to live in the canopies of tall trees in the Philippines, but the last sighting of one was 112 years ago. Now it has been found again.
One of the rodents was found in Mt. Pulag National Park in the Philippines.
The fist-sized mammal has dense, soft, reddish-brown fur, a black mask around large dark eyes, small rounded ears, a broad and blunt snout, and a long tail covered with dark hair.
Recording and preserving tree DNA
he New York Botanical Garden may be best known for its orchid shows and colorful blossoms, but its researchers are about to lead a global effort to capture DNA from thousands of tree species from around the world.
The Bronx garden is hosting a meeting this week where participants from various countries will lay the groundwork for how the two-year undertaking to catalog some of the Earth's vast biodiversity will proceed.
The project is known as TreeBOL, or tree barcode of life. As in a similar project under way focusing on the world's fish species, participants would gather genetic material from trees around the world.
A section of the DNA would be used as a barcode, similar to way a product at the grocery store is scanned to bring up its price. But with plants and animals, the scanners look at the specific order of the four basic building blocks of DNA to identify the species.
RIverside CA installs anti theft bike parking...go look.
Cyclists in Riverside, California will soon be able to enjoy greater peace of mind when locking their bikes around town, thanks to the installation of 12 BikeLid systems at the Riverside and Corona Metrolink stations. The somewhat odd-looking BikeLids are certainly not as attractive as other systems we've seen, such as the Cyclepod, the Slim, or the bike tree, but they are made from a polyethylene shell that is reinforced with steel and is "attached by a spring-loaded hinge to a steel bike guide/frame. The Bikelid bolts to any ground surface, from earth to concrete." What's more, the company claims that the basic unit "is made from up to 90% industrial plastic waste materials (when supplies are available) and recycled steel." The unit is 100% recyclable. Oh, and a bicycle has yet to be stolen from beneath a Bikelid!
Oklahoma Bioenergy Center (OBC), a state-initiative championed by Gov. Brad Henry, secured land to enable the planting of more than 1,100 acres of production-scale demonstration fields for cellulosic energy crops, such as switch grass and sorghum to contribute to the United States' bioenergy effort. Planting will take place within the next 45 days.
The critical piece of this effort is 1,000 acres of switch grass which will be planted near Guymon, Okla. in the state's panhandle. This switch grass field will be the first of its size anywhere in the world focused on biomass production. Additional acreage of sorghum and switch grass will be planted near Chickasha and Maysville in central Oklahoma
FIRST TESLA STORE OPENS IN SANTA MONICA!!! Dude, CA always gets all the cool stuff. hehe
Another milestone for Tesla Motors, the maker of the Tesla Roadster Electric Car: Their Santa-Monica store has opened its doors yesterday. It should soon be followed by one in Silicon Valley.
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