by Georgia Malbon

When I speak the name Jane Goodall, most of you would probably look at me like I’m mental and ask me what I’m going on about. Well… what if I told you that this supposed “Jane Goodall” I speak of is an 80 year old woman who has dedicated her whole life towards chimpanzees and saving our planet earth.

Recently Me and three other girls: Kate, Kim and Delaney got the opportunity of a lifetime as we were chosen to represent our school and attend one of Jane Goodall famous talks and eventually meet her!

When we arrived at the Aotea Theater I was so nervous to talk to her…What was I going to say? I was definitely going to embarrass myself, probably end up asking her, what her name is or something ridiculous. But I had a whole hour to worry about that.

We were finally called into the theater and the atmosphere was entrancing. I was surrounded by people just like me. People who cared about the animals, the environment and the people of this planet. While we were seated I talked to a man who actually seemed interested in what I have to say. The one thing that got me was that I was sitting in a room full of adults who don’t actually think that they’re better than me and care about my opinion.

Then she came on. Her thin strands of grey hair, a bright orange shawl covering her frail shoulders and two small stuffed toys which I soon came to learn were her famous chimpanzee (Mr. H) and the cow. She walked up to the podium and looked out at us saying “I have Hope”. At that moment I believed her.

She talked about everything from her childhood where she had such a kick ass mum who traveled to Gombe in Africa with Jane so she could study chimpanzees, even though her mum hated the outdoors. Everyday Jane would leave early in the morning and go up into the bush and sit for hours on end. She would have sometimes a close encounter with a chimp but would always come back to their camp with low spirits.

The time and funds for her project were slowly running out, when in November 1960 as she was watching two chimps she named David Greybeard and Goliath and she made an amazing discovery. David and Goliath each plucked a strand of grass and stuck it into a termite mound pull it out with a bunch of termites hanging off it and eat them one by one. Now this doesn’t sound like anything, but this was one of the steps to proving that chimps had the same characteristics as humans.

She continued to talk about her home life and going to university and then she started to talk about something very important. She started to talk about how slowly our world was slipping away from us. How more and more people were being treated as slaves for the Western Worlds benefit and how every day a small fraction of the Natural World was being lost. She said that she has hope that we (the youth of planet earth) would someday help restore the world to the way it was. One thing she said that really stuck out to me and stayed in mind was: “Why are the smartest animals on the planet killing their one and only home?”.

We as the youth of day have a lot of pressure on us to undo the bad things that our parents and grandparents did. The hole in the ozone layer can never truly be fixed and we will never in our lifetime see the blue whale population thrive. But we can make the hole in the ozone layer stop getting bigger and maybe one day our children will be able to see the blue whale population thrive. It just takes one small thing to make a change.

When her talk was over she received a standing ovation and many tears were shed because from that talk she gave every single person in that theater a small glimpse of hope.

After the talk we were taken up to a small area where she was sitting there on a small chair smiling at us all. She signed books and tickets and answered all our questions... I didn’t ask what her name was thank God. One girl asked how to get her friends and people her age to realise that there was a problem in the world. Jane replied telling us to never argue with them but to have hope that one day something inside of them will click and they will realise that they need to take action.

I hope that this article can give some of you that click. That click to make you realise that there are millions of starving people working in unrealistic conditions just so you can buy that cheap t-shirt, or similar. One small thing such as maybe spending a bit more money on a fair trade t-shirt from factory or cotton on instead of buying a cheap t-shirt that a person in Africa made and will only get paid $0.10 for.

Even things like picking up a piece of rubbish you see and putting it in the bin or planting a fruit tree in your backyard. Every single thing you do makes a difference.

Websites such www.greenpeace.co.nz give you opportunities to stand up for what you believe just by signing a petition.

Jane Goodall herself has created a program called Roots and Shoots where teenagers from all around the world can discuss the problems whether it’s cultural or environmental and come up with ways to stop those problems from happening.

Please, this world needs us to make a change and we can’t do it on our own. In the words of Jane Goodall: “This is our only home and we have to do everything in our power to save it from the brink of extinction”.

Photo by Angela Waye/Shutterstock

By Carl Engelking

Are you a person who just can’t stand broccoli? Well, your revulsion of the sprout-topped vegetable may run deeper than just stubbornness — your food preferences could be written into your genetic code.

Italian researchers studying the genetic basis of food cravings have discovered 17 genes related to liking specific foods including dark chocolate, artichokes, bacon, coffee and of course broccoli. Additionally, in separate studies the team also discovered genes linked with salt perception and metabolizing certain types of food. 

Together, the series of studies bolsters a branch of research called nutrigenetics, which focuses on understanding the way our genes affect our choice of foods and our body’s ability to process these foods. Researchers believe the studies could contribute to personalized diets that make healthy foods tastier by catering to people’s preferences.

If the Genes Fit The research team from the University of Trieste and the Burlo Garofolo Institute for Maternal and Child Health in Italy performed genome-wide association studies (GWAS) to locate the specific genes responsible for certain food preferences. A GWAS identifies genetic variants within snippets of DNA, harvested from blood or cheek swabs, that are linked to certain traits in groups of individuals.

More than 2,300 Italian subjects, and 1,700 from other European countries and Central Asia, participated in the study, and they were asked how much they liked 42 different foods.

Seventeen genes showed significant associations with food preferences. The researchers found genes that reflected people’s affinity for:

• Artichokes (three genes)
• Bacon
• Broccoli (two genes)
• Coffee
• Chicory
• Dark Chocolate
• Blue Cheese
• Ice Cream
• Liver
• Oil or Butter on Bread
• Orange Juice
• Plain Yogurt
• White Wine
• Mushrooms

Interestingly, none of these 17 genes encoded a taste or smell receptor — the obvious candidates for influencing our appetites. Thus, researchers don’t yet know why variants of these genes would impact our favorite foods.

Customized Diets In a second study, more than 900 healthy adults participated in a similar test to find the genetic link to enjoying the flavor of salt. Researchers discovered a specific gene encouraging people to consume more salt, which in turn could represent a risk factor for development of hypertension and salt intake.

Nicola Piratsu, the studies’ lead author, told New Scientist that their work should lead to the design of meals, or cooking methods, that are customized for people’s genetic profiles. If people don’t like the taste of spinach, it could be prepared in a different way or ingredients could be added to mask the flavor.

By Stephen Messenger

Researchers studying snow leopard populations high in the Himalayas have announced the accidental discovery of a cat previously unknown to Nepal -- a majestic little cat that's at home in the highest mountain range on Earth.

The small feline, about the same size as a domestic house cat, was caught on film by various camera traps between 13,000 and 15,000 feet above sea level. On 11 occasions between 2012 and 2013, the cat was spotted prowling the rocky mountainside at night in search of food.

“The automatic cameras installed for the monitoring of snow leopards tracked a new species of cat which is hitherto unknown to conservationists working in the Nepal,” said Bikram Shrestha, coordinator of the Snow Leopard Conservancy program.

“It has no Nepali name for it is completely a new animal to the country. We came to know the new animal to be Pallas’s cat after comparing photographs with similar species found in other parts of the world.”

Other populations and subspecies of Pallas’s cat can be found throughout central Asia; they are all listed under the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Conservationists are encouraged by the discovery, adding that this early evidence may only be the tip of the iceberg.

“Other areas in Nepal also have the possibility of Pallas´s cat,” says Shrestha. “So, an in-depth study is needed regarding this new species.”

Acidic Ocean Eating Away at 'Sea Butterflies' Off West Coast
By Miguel Llanos

Acidic waters along the West Coast are dissolving the shells of tiny sea snails that are a food source for salmon, herring and other fish, scientists reported Wednesday, and conditions are worse than they expected. Caused by increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the ocean’s growing acidity threatens not just to the creatures at the bottom of the food chain, but seafood-eating higher life forms such dolphins, whales and humans.

Oceans absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and scientists know that human emissions of CO2 from fossil fuels have added to the natural cycle, upsetting ocean chemistry by making them more acidic. Compounding that effect along the West Coast is the fact that some pre-industrial CO2 at deeper levels is seasonally churned up towards the surface, adding to the acidic mix, in a process known as upwelling.

Sensing that pteropods, more commonly known as sea butterflies, might be vulnerable to that acidity, scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration took samples off the West Coast and reported their findings in a peer-reviewed scientific publication, the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

“We can indicate the human influence by looking at the shells from the offshore regions that are not impacted by the upwelling,” lead author and NOAA scientist Nina Bednarsek told NBC News. “There, we see up to 30-40 percent increase in shell dissolution from the pre-industrial times.”

“There, we see up to 30-40 percent increase in shell dissolution from the pre-industrial times.”

“Our future projection shows a 50 percent increase of dissolution by 2050 if we continue by 'business-as-usual' scenario” in terms of CO2 emissions, she added.

“White lines on the surface” of sampled shells indicated a problem, NOAA scientist and study co-author Richard Feely told NBC News, and microscopic examination confirmed that the shells were indeed severely dissolved.

The region between northern Washington and central California showed the highest rate of pteropods with dissolving shells, 53 percent of all sampled, the researchers stated.

"We did not expect to see pteropods being affected to this extent in our coastal region for several decades," NOAA oceanographer and study co-author William Peterson said in a statement issued by NOAA.

Researchers two years ago reported that pteropods off Antarctica were seeing dissolved shells, but the West Coast study is the first to show that the snails -- which grow to a half inch in size -- are being impacted in significant fishing areas.

"Dissolving coastal pteropod shells point to the need to study how acidification may be affecting the larger marine ecosystem."

"Dissolving coastal pteropod shells point to the need to study how acidification may be affecting the larger marine ecosystem,” Bednarsek said in the NOAA statement.

Acidification has become a big issue in Washington state, where scientists last year found that the oyster industry was seeing large losses to acidification. The state earlier this year created the Washington Ocean Acidification Center to study which other marine species were being impacted and how to deal with it.

"We do know that organisms like oyster larvae and pteropods are affected by water enriched with CO2,” Feely said in the NOAA statement. “The impacts on other species, such as other shellfish and larval or juvenile fish that have economic significance, are not yet fully understood."

First published May 1st 2014, 9:27 am
http://www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/acidic-ocean-eating-away-sea-butterflies-west-coast-n94001

Cosmic rays bombard Earth’s atmosphere, creating the unstable isotope carbon-14. This isotope lets scientists learn the ages of once-living specimens from long ago. Image via The Cosmic Story of Carbon-14 by Ethan Siegel, via Simon Swordy (U. Chicago), via NASA







Radiocarbon dating uses carbon isotopes. Radiocarbon dating relies on the carbon isotopes carbon-14 and carbon-12. Scientists are looking for the ratio of those two isotopes in a sample. Most carbon on Earth exists as the very stable isotope carbon-12, with a very small amount as carbon-13.

Carbon-14 is an unstable isotope of carbon that will eventually decay at a known rate to become carbon-12.

Cosmic rays – high energy particles from beyond the solar system – bombard Earth’s upper atmosphere continually, in the process creating the unstable carbon-14. Carbon-14 is considered a radioactive isotope of carbon. Because it’s unstable, carbon-14 will eventually decay back to carbon-12 isotopes. Because the cosmic ray bombardment is fairly constant, there’s a near-constant level of carbon-14 to carbon-12 ratio in Earth’s atmosphere.

Organisms at the base of the food chain that photosynthesize – for example, plants and algae – use the carbon in Earth’s atmosphere. They have the same ratio of carbon-14 to carbon-12 as the atmosphere, and this same ratio is then carried up the food chain all the way to apex predators, like sharks.

But when gas exchange is stopped, be it in a particular part of the body like in deposits on bones and teeth, or when the entire organism dies, the ratio of carbon-14 to carbon-12 begins to decrease. The unstable carbon-14 gradually decays to carbon-12 at a steady rate.

And that’s the key to radiocarbon dating. Scientists measure the ratio of carbon isotopes to be able to estimate how far back in time a biological sample was active or alive.

Adapted from EarthSky in
FAQs | Earth | Human World on Jan 17, 2014

If everyone on Earth stood shoulder-to-shoulder, they would occupy an area roughly the size of Los Angeles — about 500 square miles. Now imagine if every single one of them jumped. Together. All at the same time. What would happen?

The answer? Basically squat. Humans — even in exceptionally large numbers — are small fry relative to the Earth (in the latest installment of his What If? series, XKCD's Randall Munroe explains that Earth outweighs humans by a factor of over ten trillion); but as this highly entertaining video from vsauce makes clear, sometimes the physics behind the question is more interesting than the answer itself. Let Michael Stevens run you through the physics of global-population-sized jumps, including a cameo by none other than Felicia Day!

[Via Bad Astronomy]