Scientists have always thought that hot lava from exploding volcanoes were not possible in the Arctic---until now. After amazing eruptions that took place in 1999, mountains erupted from the Arctic floor. And this sparked science to make advances in technology in order to see the floor of the arctic. And what they saw brings news to the science community.

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Biological control of invasive species is notoriously fraught with risk: It's hard to know in advance if the biocontrol agent will stay nice and well-behaved, or become an even worse menace than the species you're trying to eradicate. A researcher in Florida thinks he's figured out how to get around that problem, by turning the invasive species into its own biocontrol agent using "Trojan" animals. By exposing males of many fish and amphibians to female hormones, scientists can create female animals with male chromosomes. When they mate with normal males, their offspring will be exclusively male, and over time, the population will become extinct. This isn't the first time the idea of manipulating sex ratios has been discussed, but it's the first time someone's thought of a way to do it without genetic engineering.

Source: Louis Buckley, Sex change wipes out invasive species. News @ Nature.com, July 26, 2007. Photo: The invasive cane toad, introduced in Australia to control cane beetles, is an example of biological control gone wrong.

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Grade schools across the country and around the world have taught their students that Pluto is the last and smallest planet. That is, until 2006, when the International Astronomical Union decided to take the traditional planet’s name down to a non-planet form.

The community of astronomers has been in a fit of disagreement over this conclusion since that time. And now another debate has been added to the controversy. A name has been given to tiny planets like Pluto. The public may now refer to all tiny planets that rotate around the sun on the edge of our solar system as “plutoids”.

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If you read this site, you probably value nature and biodiversity for its intrinsic worth: You want to protect it for its own sake, not human self-interest. Much of the rest of the world doesn't see things our way, though, and it's not because they're selfish. It's because they're too busy with the struggle for survival to worry about rare orchids or endemic birds. The chief scientist of the Nature Conservancy and the director of the Environmental Studies Institute argue in the October Scientific American that conservation efforts focusing on roping off biodiversity "hot spots" are doomed to failure, because they take away needed resources from the world's poorest people, thereby losing the support of the local community.

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The future for commuters may be very different during the next century. We may be moving in Jpods. Jpods are little pods that are about 205 kilograms and are suspended from an overhead rail. They can be designed to carry one to four people and their bags or luggage as well as bicycles and wheelchairs.

Jpods will travel about 48-64 km/hr and can maintain a constant speed on inclines up to 3%. Eventhough many cities already have light rail or LRT transportation systems, the new Jpods can have lines that have increased mobility and be constructed easier. They claim that government money will not be required to build the systems.

Read more about the Jpod at www.jpods.com

Photo courtesy of www.jpods.com

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At the rate that Canadians are currently producing garbage, it is likely that most of our landfills will be at capacity before your baby is a high school graduate. If only investments for their education would grow as quickly. We really have to ask ourselves if this is the kind of legacy we want our children to inherit and if, as I suspect most people would choose, we don’t want that for our children we have to find ways to prevent it. Fortunately there are some new concepts in waste management that may help us slow down or even reverse the process of our growing landfills.

The first and most obvious way to reduce garbage in our landfills is to stop producing waste. This may seem similar to saying “let’s stop living or existing at all” but really it’s easier than it sounds. Obviously there is no way to completely stop producing waste, but there are a lot of things we can do to significantly reduce it. We can reduce waste by refusing to buy products with unnecessary over packaging, we can avoid disposable and single use products and we can donate products when we are finished with them or find ways to reuse them for something else.

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Unless they’ve been living under a landfill pile for a long time, everyone is aware that the environment is in serious trouble and that changes must be made by all of us to turn this situation around and save our planet. One person can not do it alone. There are people in the world, who don’t care about what happens to the environment, but for the most part, people do care and they do want to help. The problem is that while exposure of environmental issues is at an all-time high, information about everyday things that people can do is sometimes harder to access. We need to spread this information far and wide for changes to be made.

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A long time ago humans discovered that hygiene is one of the keys to good health. People started to realize that being clean usually meant not getting sick and it was observed that doctors had a much higher rate of patient deaths when they did not wash their hands. Since then we have progressed from the idea that bathing once a year is enough to the idea that bathing at least once a day is enough and there is not a limit on how many times we can wash our hands in a day. The more the better, seems to be the policy for hand washing especially in the field of healthcare. The only question now seems to be how we should wash our hands.

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As part of a test in Phoenix, Arizona, three models of hybrid cars are being allowed to use the high occupancy lanes. Owners of Honda Insight, Honda Civic Hybrid, and the Toyota Prius vehicles will be allowed to drive in these lanes as long as they purchase new plates and a special permit. There are currently 9,000 of these hybrids registered in Arizona and the state will issue 10,000 permits on a first-come first-served basis.

Source: MSNBC, Hybrids OK'd to use carpool lane in Arizona, February 11.

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If you have interests or concerns about Genetically Modified Foods, and the future of our food supply I recommend you take ninety minutes of your time to watch "The Future of Food". The film, written & produced by Deborah Koons Garcia & Catherine Lynn Butler Genetically Modified Organisms have been a hot topic since the early 1990's. In the world of biotechnology, problems have started to crop up. Initially genetically modified organisms were thought to produce higher yields, yet the long term effects may be contrary to the original findings. genetically modified foods had become integrated into the food supply before consumers even knew they were there or what the possible health risks might be.

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