Video: At 800 Pounds and 45 Feet Long, The Largest-Ever Paper Airplane Takes Flight Arturo Valdenegro, 12-year-old Tucson resident, made paper aviators everywhere look minuscule by comparison last week. In the skies over the Sonora desert in Arizona, the Pima Air & Space Museum launched the biggest paper airplane ever constructed--a paper airplane based on Valdenegro's design--into the sky, accelerating it to speeds topping 100 miles per hour before it came crashing down (as paper airplanes do). The plane, aptly named Arturo's Desert Eagle, weighed 800 pounds and stretched 45 feet long with a 24-foot wingspan. The museum constructed it out of falcon board, a kind of corrugated cardboard, as part of its Giant Paper Airplane Project, the goal of which is to generate interest in aviation and engineering among young people. Arturo designed and folded his plane for the competition, winning top honors in a fly-off sponsored by the Pima museum. [LA Times]
The Gross Society Seeing only its title, a prospective reader might guess this essay is about our nation’s epidemic of obesity. Or could it be a sarcastic observation on the evolution of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society? Might it be a jeremiad about the gross (i.e., offensive and disgusting) ways we waste and over-consume natural resources, or a comment on current television trends? There’s plenty to be said on all those scores. No, the definition of gross I have in mind is “exclusive of deductions,” as in gross profits versus net profits. Here’s my thesis: As a society, we are entering the early stages of energy impoverishment. President Obama did some crowing in his most recent State of the Union address, where he touted “More oil produced at home than we buy from the rest of the world—the first time that’s happened in nearly twenty years.” While these gross numbers appear splendid, when you look at net things go pear-shaped, as the British say. Right now that’s exactly what is happening.
Climate Vulnerability Monitor 2012 - DARA “This second edition of the Climate Vulnerability Monitor is the splash of cold water we desperately need to awaken us from our climate change complacency.” Robert Glasser, Secretary-General of CARE International The Climate Vulnerability Monitor 2nd Edition reveals that climate change has already held back global development and inaction is a leading global cause of death. Harm is most acute for poor and vulnerable groups but no country is spared either the costs of inaction or the benefits of an alternative path. Commissioned by the world’s most vulnerable countries and backed by high-level and technical panels, the new Monitor estimates human and economic impacts of climate change and the carbon economy for 184 countries in 2010 and 2030, across 34 indicators. Watch the videos and view the photo gallery of the global launch of the Climate Vulnerability Monitor 2nd Edition, Sept 26th, Asia Society, New York > Use the worldmap to browse data by country or compare countries
Catalogue of Life - 3rd February 2012 :: Search all names Shutdown of 150th coal plant reminder that so-called 'war on coal' must not be war on coal workers Last week, it was all smiles at Beyond Coal when the retirement was announced of the giant, much-protested Brayton Point Power Station in Somerset, Massachusetts. That's the 150th U.S. coal-powered generating plant to go that route since the beginning of 2010. It's the largest remaining coal-burner supplying electricity in New England. There is little doubt that the shutdown is good news for the planet. But what will happen to the 240 workers at Brayton Point? Only believers in a devil-take-the-hindmost society can deny that there is a matter of justice here. Van Jones told an interviewer in 2008: I think it's important that we be respectful of all the contributions that have been made by all workers. President Barack Obama on June 25, 2013, said: We’re going to need to give special care to people and communities that are unsettled by this transition—not just here in the United States but around the world. The brilliant writer and activist Jeremy Brecher recently wrote: Got that?
Alaska on the edge: Newtok's residents race to stop village falling into sea | Environment What is a climate refugee? The immediate image that comes to mind of “climate refugees” is people of small tropical islands in the Pacific or of a low-lying delta like in Bangladesh, where inhabitants have been forced out of their homes by sea-level rise. The broader phenomenon is usually taken to be people displaced from their homes by the impact of a changing climate – although the strict definition of a refugee in international law is more narrow including people displaced by war, violence or persecution, but not environmental changes. With climate change occurring rapidly in the far north, where temperatures are warming faster than the global average, the typical picture of the climate refugee is set to become more diverse. Sea ice is in retreat, the permafrost is melting, bringing the effects of climate change in real time to residents of the remote villages of Alaska. "I dream about the water coming in," she said. In the dream, Warner climbs on to the roof of her small house. 1 of 20
Search FishBase Associated Journal Publish in our journal partner Acta Ichthyologica et Piscatoria the results of your primary research on fishes about growth, weight-length relationships, reproduction (maturity, fecundity, spawning), food and diet composition, introductions and range extensions for faster subsequent entry in (2011 impact factor: 0.547). Indexed Journal Cybium (publisher: SFI, Société Française d’Ichtyologie) For journal editors: Would you wish that your journal were indexed in FishBase, please contact our librarian. References Citing FishBase How to cite FishBaseTo give due credit to the original authors, please cite data taken from FishBase by Main Ref. and/or Data Ref. of the respective record. Cite FishBase itself asFroese, R. and D. DisclaimerFishBase present information on fishes as correctly as possible. Copyright This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License.
Movements without leaders: What to make of life on an overheating planet The history we grow up with shapes our sense of reality -- it’s hard to shake. If you were young during the fight against Nazism, war seems a different, more virtuous animal than if you came of age during Vietnam. I was born in 1960, and so the first great political character of my life was Martin Luther King, Jr. I had a shadowy, child’s sense of him when he was still alive, and then a mythic one as his legend grew; after all, he had a national holiday. As time went on, I learned enough about the civil rights movement to know it was much more than Dr. Which is why it’s a little disconcerting to look around and realize that most of the movements of the moment -- even highly successful ones like the fight for gay marriage or immigrant’s rights -- don’t really have easily discernible leaders. It’s true, too, in the battle where I’ve spent most of my life: the fight to slow climate change and hence give the planet some margin for survival. A Movement for a New Planet What the Elders Said
The Burning Question | A book by Mike Berners-Lee and Duncan Clark | We can't burn half the world's oil, coal and gas. So how do we quit?