Basque photographer Mikel Uribetxeberria is trying to say something. His work dubbed Animalia, is all about the effort animals have to make in switching places with the humans. Somehow trapped in a hotel room or the subway, the amazing creatures are all bored, peaceful and not happy to see the what the human wild is all about.

It’s the abnormal situation that makes these beautifully-honed images subtly state that animals should be let in their natural environment. It could be a manifesto against those who use animals in their “getting rich” projects. Both art and a scream for help is what makes the message almost perfect. Thank you Mikel Uribetxeberria. [via StyleCrave]

How about going swimming with a killing machine – the American Alligator?

American Alligator

Well if you’re up to it, then you should first consider these facts about that ferocious predator.

And 10: The American alligator has to be in a good mood and have a good attitude says Sean Manning.

“How you feeling Skalie? You wanna go for a swim? Naked?”

psy·cho·path – n.   A person with an antisocial personality disorder, manifested in aggressive, perverted, criminal, or amoral behavior without empathy or remorse.

PETA wants the NFL to require the ‘psychopath’ Michael Vick to undergo psychiatric evaluations and brain scans before letting him back on the field. Hmmm…

Michael Vick

Now, I don’t buy into anything Vick did, the dog fighting and such. Gosh, if I had my way, I’d do away with the entire NFL, NBA and MLB. Paying criminals ungodly sums to play seems psychopathic to me. But, then the only thing worse than a man asking for $200 million to play a game is somebody willing to pay him that much and others willing to pay to watch him play.

But, PETA is a case of the pot calling the kettle black if I ever saw it before. Consider these posts -

Three Topless PETA Demonstrators outside KFC

Japanese Star, Aya Sugimoto, Poses Nude for PETA

15 Hot (Women) Celebrities that Posed Nude for the Planet

Topless Activists Protest Bear Skin with Bare Skin

Who is being criminal, perverted, amoral and antisocial in this picture?

Okay…both Michael Vick and the PETA folks.

Researchers from the Australian Museum, Sydney; the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, the University of Tokyo and the Natural History Museum, Chiba, Japan believe they have solved the puzzle of three seemingly different fish. One fish is all males, another all female and the third all juveniles. The missing link – they’re all the same fish, and they change as they mature.

The fish live in deep water thousands of feet below the surface pretty much by themselves, which makes me wonder, why do we care about what fish are doing there and how much money is wasted trying to find out. But, that’s another issue.

The cetomimidae is a type of whalefish and it’s presence has been known about since the 19th century, but only the female type.

Although their skeletons indicated the three were related, there were so many differences no one could believe they were the same fish. The researchers linked the fish through comparative anatomical study and by obtaining fresh samples and by their DNA.

The fish live within 600 feet of the surface, but as adults they descend thousands of feet into the dark ocean. Meanwhile, the researchers are asking for more money to study things that will make no difference to the rest of the world.

So, about solving the missing link thing. Man and monkey – they’re the same.

More about the whalefish.

In 2006 the world saw a major hurricane that caused arguable the greatest damage to human wealth in the history of mankind. United States bore the brunt of anger and venom unleashed by Hurricane Katrina and while people who have been struck by the tragedy are still recovering from it, rest of the world is seriously starting to ponder about tropical storms, hurricanes and typhoons.

What are typhoons?

Image courtesy of ruei_ke

While all of the just differ in name because as a race we still are unable to come to common conclusions, typhoons are just intense tropical storms that occur in the northwestern Pacific Ocean. That line is demarcated by the International Date Line and the equator. The word typhoon seems to have many origins and all of them date back to ancient Greece and the Greek god of winds- Typhon. Subsequently different languages and nations across the planet have adopted different altered versions of the name.

A tropical cyclone is classified as a typhoon when formed in the North-West Pacific region, measures above 10 on Beaufort scale and has wind speeds of above 55 mph. In short, it is a scary, wet windy depression that causes immense destruction if and when it does hit land in full fury.

What causes Typhoons?

Image courtesy of PhillipC

What causes typhoons is a question that has been puzzling the best scientific minds across the planet since long and while we do have substantial understanding of the basic conditions that facilitate a typhoon, exact reasons still are unknown.

Warm water surface is the basic reason for the formation of the low pressure area. Warm waters surrounded by cold conditions inevitably create low pressure and unstable atmosphere above them. Water temperatures of at least 26.5 °C (79.7 °F) are needed down to a depth of at least 50 meters to start a typhoon.

Next is the abundant supply of water around the eye of the storm, ensuring that high humidity will fuel the typhoon constantly helping it grow in size. This is a giant that needs to feed constantly on water. Typhoons also need to maintain a distance of at least 5 degrees north of the equator to sustain and develop. Considering all the conditions needed for their formations, one would imagine that typhoons and tropical cyclones would be a rare occurrence. But off late, that seems not to be the case. Why is it so?

Impact of global warming on typhoons

So by now the general school of thought is that the petty environmentalists are willing to blame global warming for everything and anything that changes in the world climate pattern. The fact though is that whether you like it or not, growing carbon emissions and global warming are having significant impact on formation of typhoons.

The basic condition for a typhoon to come alive is warm waters and with growing global temperature and melting polar ice caps, that would not be too hard to find in years to come. This along with irregular weather patterns and dry drought conditions on land increase chances of typhoons.

According to a UN report, tropical cyclones will grow both in number and intensity in the coming century because of variant global climate patterns caused by both human and natural causes. With no known and proven method to tackle typhoons (except evacuation when a warning is issued), one can expect more scenarios like Hurricane Katrina if our luck goes bad and more of these hit land. Let’s just hope they stay away from heavily populated areas…

Overpopulation Facts

Population explosion is modern world’s bottleneck towards progress with each and every problem that majority of the planet faces today finding roots in the excess mouths that we need to feed.

Human population might be growing at a geometric rate, but the fact remains that the planet is not going to expand and grow new land to create space and produce resources for more individuals. In such a situation common sense demands that we bring population to a stable figure that stops putting pressure on the supply chain.

Image courtesy of adriansalamandre

Solutions …

But good news is apparently on the way with recent report released by Lester R. Brown, President of Earth Policy Institute claiming that the world population is starting to reach a figure of stability. With the chaos and multitude of overpopulation problems caused in the last half century, it is about time we had some sanity around. But this by no means indicates we are out of troubled waters.

According to the report countries like Japan, Russia, Germany, and Italy will see a decline in population while nations like USA and China will see a stable population that might decline slightly in the later half of the century.

But there is an important third group of nations like Ethiopia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Uganda, which would end up doubling their population by 2050. While UN projects world population anywhere in-between 9.2 to 10.8 billion by 2050, it would be interesting to see where nations like Brazil and India rank on such a list. Because … 201 million couples across the globe today are still deprived of birth control measures making it impossible to bring order at the present rate.

For the situation to develop, we need to understand that providing family planning options, creating awareness and giving incentives is essential. While things seem just in control as of now, they could quickly and easily spiral out of control if the global community does not act soon. Time for us to wake up to the population facts and its overwhelming impact!

Source: ENN

Just a simple look over New York’s Governors Island and it would be hard to imagine that the decaying coast guard structures would be soon transformed into arguably the greenest eco-park on the planet. But that is exactly what West 8, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, and Rogers Marvel Architects are set out to do by 2012.

Taken up prestigiously by the State of New York, the project will give the world a breathtaking recreational center home to a stunning Marine Exploration Center that consists of a set of off-shore “programmed structures” including a coastal plant greenhouse, marine life tank, vertical reef, and two restaurants. Add to it the unreal floating structures that will emerge like giant bubbles on the waves and a restaurant on an artificial island that will look at Lady Liberty and this will be an exhilarating trip for both the young and the old.

While one part of the island is going green with marine ventures, the other side will sport artificial hills that will look as natural as any. This half of the island is to encourage activities like trekking and cave exploration. The best part is the wooden complimentary bikes crafted by the designers that will be handed out to the visitors of the island to go across the new eco-park.

This is arguably the best investment New York City has made in sometime, isn’t it?

[DesignBoom via Inhabitat]

Tapping into to wind energy as a clean source of power is an option that is quickly growing popularity thanks to inventive designers who are creating new and more acceptable designs for wind turbines.

This has seen a sudden and healthy growth in the number of wind turbines used across the globe, but what about maintaining them and checking for defects from time to time? That is a task far more difficult considering that not many would be willing to throw themselves at the opportunity of climbing up these sharp blades. But, developers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Factory Operation and Automation are creating a volunteer who will gladly do it for you.

RIWEA is an automated rope climbing robot that will merrily crawl up both on shore and off shore wind turbines to check for any defects. The inspection system has an onboard infra-red radiator that emits waves and a high resolution thermal camera that will capture the images and check for defects. A similar ultra sound emitter and detector are also integrated as an additional system for finding flaws in metals with greater accuracy.

Considering that 60% of all wind turbines in US today need overhauling and the fact that none of us are willing to climb any steep rods, RIWEA is a convenience that we could urgently use! [via The BioEnergy Site]

Sing along with me, “You light up my life.”

I love an electric storm. Of course, I love them when they are “over there” and not “over here.” I can remember standing in a plain in the Midwest of the United States enthralled by the show. A couple of years ago I took some friends to Glacier Point in Yosemite National Park. We sat eating a Japanese bento and watched an electric/lightening storm march across the Valley. Absolutely breathtaking.

So, what do we know about lightening and electric storms?

1. They occur as a result of other storms – thunderstorms, volcanic eruptions, and dust storms.
2. Bolts can travel at 60,000miles/sec (220.000km/h) – imagine the guy with the stop watch trying to measure that!
3. Temperature of bolts can reach 30,000C (54,000F) – That’ll cook your egg in no time, eh?
4. There’s an estimated 16 million electric storms every year.
5. The chances of being struck by lightening in America – 1 in 576K. I live in San Jose, abt 1 million. There’s two people running around who have been hit by lightening. About one in 2.3 million die.
6. Scientists don’t know how lightening forms.
7. There are at least 14 kinds of lightening – Elves, Sprites, Blue Jets, to name a few.
8. You can be confused by the supposed physics behind lightening here or here.
9. Doc did NOT really harness a lightening bolt in Back to the Future.

Or you can just enjoy the show … and in my case, appreciate the lightening Maker.

Check out an amazing gallery of electric storm pictures, after the break. It’s quite stunning!

(more…)

Pollution seems to be having more adverse effects than once thought and with each passing day one is finding new ways and means in which it destroys life and causes harm both to humans and animals.

However, this is something that will concern all the guys across the planet. New findings suggest that if water pollution continues at the rate it is going and if the rivers continue to become a cocktail of chemicals, then fertility problems in guys could only start growing!

It’s no new fact that the female sex hormone estrogen found in contraceptive pills, is causing the feminization of fish and in some cases can lead to male fish changing sex. Researchers now believe that Anti-androgens, which are found in a number of medicines including cancer treatment drugs and pesticides used in agriculture, could have the same impact on humans – though not to an extent where it could change our sex. Found in most of the English rivers, they could have a serious effect on fertility of men as they have tendency to block the male hormone.

While this will not be the singular source for growing infertility in men, a long list of chemicals that were previously though to be ‘not too harmful’ could be causing more damage than before, so better get yourself some clean water guys … Clean Water!

Source: TheTelegraph
An amazing image by crazscout