Chinstrap penguins on Zavodovski Island in Antarctica down by two-thirds since 2011, probably due to climate crisis
The world’s largest penguin colony has declined by two-thirds since 2011, most likely because of the climate crisis, a study has revealed.
Scientists said the rapid demise of chinstrap penguins on Zavodovski, the northernmost of the South Sandwich Islands in Antarctica, increased the risk of a wider ecosystem collapse.
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As well as books, the new facility in Colorado offers hundreds of kits to connect people with the natural world. We asked five of the first visitors what they thought of it
Mark Fink knows exactly why he opened the first public nature library in the US. “There are a lot of barriers for people to access nature here. We want people to learn about the birds and the plants in their own back yard and to appreciate that you don’t need a three-day camping trip in the mountains to experience nature.”
The library offers people in Colorado’s Adams county the opportunity to borrow books and equipment to help them to engage with the natural world – for free.
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Guardian reporters Jonathan Watts and Gabrielle Canonanswered your question climate and extreme weather, from what to expect this winter in the UK to the increasing risk of natural disasters
funkymentalist asks: Unrelated to El Niño, what is the likelihood of the AMOC (Atlantic meridional overturning circulation) shutting down?
Jon says: I don’t think these two things are unrelated. Everything is affected by climate breakdown. And both El Niño and the slowdown of AMOC are related to the staggeringly huge amounts (see this article on zettajoules which I also referred to above) of extra energy that the oceans are being forced to absorb as a result of greenhouse gas burning.
Quick refresher for any readers who are unfamiliar with this topic: “Amoc, or the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation, is a system of ocean currents that brings heat into the northern Atlantic. Warm surface water from the tropics flows north and releases its heat in the subpolar Atlantic, south of Greenland and west of Britain and Ireland. Then it cools and sinks to a depth of between 2,000m to 3,000 metres before returning south as a cold current. Amoc is one of our planet’s largest heat transport systems, moving the equivalent of 50 times the human energy use, and it has a particularly strong impact on the climate in Europe, affects the ocean’s CO2 uptake and oxygen supply, as well as rainfall patterns in the tropics.”
Gaby says: The name “El Niño” actually harkens back to long before forecasters used the phenomenon to track global weather patterns. Fishermen off the coast of South America began to track unusually warm water that would show up every few years right around Christmas - thus “The Little Boy” referring to the Christ child in Spanish. Scientists adopted the name, and added “La Niña” as its counterpart (when sea surface temperatures cool), and together they became ENSO - the El Niño Southern Oscillation. This year, though, feel free to call it “El Monstruo Gordo!” It’s going to be a big one.
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Teenagers Eva Wishart and Emily Smith launch project to breed and release 250 of the tiny animals by September
Children in Devon are being invited to become “citizen captive breeders”, rearing harvest mice at home for release into the wild to help revive endangered nature.
Wild Pets, a new conservation project launched by two 14-year-old friends, is seeking 20 Devon-based children to rear hundreds of mice after the duo’s own successful restoration efforts.
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‘Techno-optimism’ may lead to reliance on unproven solutions at expense of societal changes needed
Scientists who believe technology will largely solve the problems caused by the climate crisis are less likely to engage in civic action on the issue, according to a study.
The report from the London School of Economics found they are 23% less likelyto sign petitions or take part in protests than peers who doubt that technology is the answer. They are also 18% less likely to make high-impact lifestyle changes, from reducing flights to changing to a vegan or vegetarian diet.
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Research has shown that colourful and patterned species are the subject of more studies, and receive more conservation funding
Large and beautiful butterflies attract far more attention than species that are smaller and dull. Now a new study has shown that this bias towards beauty results in the boring butterflies being overlooked in conservation programmes.
To understand the link between beauty and conservation, researchers surveyed more than 21,000 people from more than 100 countries, asking them to look at photos of European butterflies and rate their beauty on a scale of 1 to 10 based on their first impression. The results, which are published in Current Biology, reveal that larger more colourful and patterned butterflies, like the yellow swallowtail, were consistently rated more attractive than the smaller, less conspicuous brownish species, such as the alpine grayling. That bias also extended into scientific research, with more studies on attractive species, and more funding and resource going into conservation of showier species.
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Allendale, Northumberland: On a hot autumn day, I see rosemary beetles here for the first time. This could be a problem for many thriving plants
This year there have been several firsts in my garden: old lady, vestal and blood-vein moths attracted to the light trap; hummingbird hawk-moths, normally occasional, feeding summer-long from verbena and buddleia; and it’s a painted lady year – a once-a-decade event, these high-flying insects migrating from Africa through successive generations. Southerly winds and heatwaves have added to the species visiting my North Pennine garden.
Now, in a herb bed, I spot something less welcome. Among the resinous leaves of rosemary is a gleaming beetle, its elytra striped in purple and green, scintillating like lustreware. It’s not something I’ve seen before, but I immediately know what it means. Rosemary beetle, Chrysolina americana, is a Mediterranean species with no natural predators in the UK. It is shimmering and beautiful – but can reduce plants of the Lamiaceae family to bare sticks and cause them to die back. This includes my favourites: lavender, sage, thyme – and rosemary.
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Inquest under way into why President Lula’s success in curbing Amazon deforestation has not led to success at polls
More fire, more ash, more crime, more death. And a globally important ecosystem driven ever more rapidly towards a point of no return. That is the prospect for the Amazon rainforest for at least the next four years if Flávio Bolsonaro holds on to the lead he established this week in the first round of Brazil’s presidential election.
This appears to be of far more concern to the outside world than to voters in Latin America’s biggest, richest and most biodiverse nation.
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A mix of natural disasters could all befall the state at once as it finds itself in the crosshairs of the climate phenomenon
On a cloudless autumn afternoon, sunlight sparkled on the water that had quietly swallowed a busy intersection to the north of San Francisco, as the surrounding rush-hour traffic slowed to a painful crawl.
There were no crashing waves or storm surges to blame for the flood. Marin county was one of many areas up and down the California coast affected by high tides last week, as parts of the Pacific swelled with excess warmth.
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Wendy Wales and Tony Lonergan’s four-year fight over MACH Energy’s Mount Pleasant coalmine went all the way to the high court
When Wendy Wales and Tony Lonergan and a few of their neighbours in the New South Wales Hunter region decided to take on the expansion of a local coalmine, people thought they were “crazy” to engage in the David and Goliath battle.
“When we started this, people thought we were crazy – a little community group taking on a billion-dollar coal company, arguing that the climate harm from burning this coal is our problem too,” Wales says.
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Nedavno objavljena studija sugerira da mlađe žene u postmenopauzi kojima je izvršena procijena na krhkost kostiju i žene s visokim rizikom od osteoporoze i prijeloma zbog krhkosti kostiju mogu konzumirati manje kalcija nego što se preporuča.
Od 2012. godine, 6. listopada se obilježava Svjetski dan cerebralne paralize. Radi se o inicijativi koja, na globalnoj razini, različitim aktivnostima nastoji podići svijest o cerebralnoj paralizi, životima osoba koje s njom žive te izazovima s kojima se suočavaju one i njihove obitelji. Ovaj dan prilika je za podsjećanje da cerebralna paraliza nije samo medicinska dijagnoza, već stanje koje kroz cijeli život može utjecati na kretanje, komunikaciju, samostalnost, obrazovanje, rad, zdravlje i sudjelovanje u društvu. Naime, potrebno je kontinuirano raditi na tome da osoba s cerebralnom paralizom ne bude definirana svojim ograničenjima, nego prepoznata kroz svoje sposobnosti, interese, prava i osobne ciljeve.
Jednostavan test urina koji su osmislili istraživači sa Stanford Medicine i VA Palo Alto Health Care System može dijagnosticirati ljude s rakom mokraćnog mjehura preciznije od trenutnih standardnih metoda. Test također omogućuje liječnicima ne samo da procijene odgovor raka na liječenje, već i da predvide hoće li imunoterapija ili kemoterapija vjerojatno biti najučinkovitiji za svakog pacijenta.
Kolorektalni karcinom jedan je od najčešćih karcinoma u svijetu, a do polovice pacijenata razvije metastaze na jetri tijekom bolesti. Za te pacijente operacija, ponekad u kombinaciji s lokalnim ablativnim liječenjem, glavna je potencijalno kurativna opcija. Međutim, rizik od recidiva raka ostaje visok.
Izgleda da svakodnevno konzumiranje oraha utječe na raspoloženje, uz mjerljive promjene u metabolitima povezanim sa serotoninom i onima koji potječu iz crijeva, pokazuje nova studija.
Putem procesa poznatog kao autofagija, stanice smještaju deformirane proteine i drugi stanični otpad u biološke spremnike kako bi ih razgradile na njihove molekularne građevne jedinice. Autofagija služi sprječavanju nakupljanja otpadnih tvari koje uzrokuju oštećenje stanica. Smanjenje učinkovitosti ovog procesa stanične reciklaže smatra se jednim od obilježja starenja te se povezuje s mnogim bolestima povezanima s dobi, uključujući rak, kardiovaskularne bolesti, dijabetes i neurodegeneraciju.
Svaka dodatna šetnja do škole, igra nogometa u parku ili odlazak u trgovinu mogli bi imati veći utjecaj na mentalno zdravlje adolescenata nego što se prvotno mislilo, pokazalo je novo istraživanje koje je pratilo tisuće adolescenata u SAD-u.
Nova studija je pokazala da su abnormalne razine vitamina B12 na oba kraja spektra povezane s prijelomima kosti nakon 50. godine života, što sugerira da je taj odnos složeniji od samog nedostatka.
Nedavna studija istraživala je povezanost između crijevne mikrobiote, promjena metabolizma stolice i raka jednjaka korištenjem naprednih metabolomskih pristupa i sekvenciranja gena 16S ribosomske RNA (rRNA). Znanstvenici su otkrili karakteristične obrasce crijevne mikrobiote i stotine promijenjenih metabolita u stolici kod osoba s rakom jednjaka, pri čemu se metabolizam lipida ističe kao ključni potpis.
Australski znanstvenici ispituju nove kombinacije antibiotika za liječenje uporne bakterijske vaginoze, nakon što su došli do važnog otkrića da se to stanje prenosi spolnim putem. Bakterijska vaginoza najčešće je vaginalno oboljenje kod žena reproduktivne dobi, a uzrokovano je gubitkom zdravih vaginalnih bakterija i prekomjernim rastom drugih bakterija, što narušava prirodnu ravnotežu vaginalnog mikrobioma.
Deep in the mountains of Palawan, Conservation International scientists are capturing what few people ever see: the secret lives of the Philippines’ rarest species.
At Maido — the Lima restaurant recently crowned the best in the world — one of the star dishes is paiche, a giant prehistoric river fish.Its journey to the table begins on a small family farm deep in Peru’s Amazon.
“Jane Goodall forever changed how people think about, interact with and care for the natural world,” said Daniela Raik, interim CEO of Conservation International.
Conservation International’s Neil Vora was selected for TIME’s Next 100 list — alongside other rising leaders reshaping culture, science and society.
Climate change is happening. And it’s placing the world’s reefs in peril. What can be done?
After decades of negotiation, the high seas treaty is finally reality. The historic agreement will pave the way to protect international waters which face numerous threats.
The Amazon rainforest, known for lush green canopies and an abundance of freshwater, is drying out — and deforestation is largely to blame.
The ocean is engine of all life on Earth, but human-driven climate change is pushing it past its limits. Here are five ways the ocean keeps our climate in check — and what can be done to help.
In a grueling and delicate dance, a team led by Conservation International removes a massive undersea killer.
They say a picture is worth a thousand words. These pictures might be worth even more. An initiative featuring the work of some of the world’s best nature photographers raises money for environmental conservation.