Churning of Earth’s molten interior behind sea level changes

Posted on August 22, 2010 by Rashid Faridi

An Australian expert has said that the churning of the Earth’s molten interior may have played a vital role in sea level change over the past two to 20 million years. Geophysicist Dietmar Muller from University of Sydney said that the levels vary because of natural processes on Earth on timescales from thousands to hundreds of millions of years. In the past they have been more than 120 metres higher than present day levels. “The reality is we live on a dynamic planet — even in the absence of human-induced warming, sea levels would still change dramatically because it’s been doing it for a very long time,” ABC Science quoted Muller as saying. “This paper points this out, controlling and taming the planet is to some extent a futile exercise. “If you want to develop intelligent responses [to climate change] we need to identify our own contributions to sea level change from natural fluctuations,” he said. While the causes of long and very short term (less than 2 million years) changes in sea level are well understood, Muller suggested there are also cycles of change on intermediate timescales of between 2 and 20 million years. Another research led by Kenni Petersen from Aarhus University has also shown sea levels may change at a regional scale due to heat from below the Earth’s crust forcing sea floors to rise. Professor Kurt Lambeck of Australian National University said Petersen’s research is “likely to be an important part of our understanding of long-term sea level change”. But he said these sorts of changes are of “no consequence on the human timescale.” “What’s important is the rate of change, which is now several millimetres per year, several orders of magnitude more than in has been in the past,” he said. The findings were published in the journal Science.

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Chilika Lake

Posted on August 21, 2010 by Rashid Faridi

Chilika is a shallow, brackish-water, lake on the eastern coast of Orissa. This lake which is the largest in the subcontinent, is roughly pear shaped and varies in its extent in the dry and wet seasons between about 560 and 1100square kilometres and is about 32 km wide at its broadest. It has been formed due to the silting action of the Mahanadi river, which drains into the northern end of the lake, and the northerly currents in the Bay of Bengal, which have formed a sandbar along the eastern shore leading to the formation of a shallow lagoon.

The lake is divided into an outer channel with a narrow neck leading into the sea and the main body of the lake with a muddy bottom rich in organic matter. Nalaban, one of the biggest islands, is a 10km marsh which is submerged during the four or five monsoon months, but is a major feeding and roosting habitat during winter for over a hundred species of migratory birds, which arrive in October from their temperate breeding grounds.

These birds include a few species of flamingos, over a dozen species of ducks, and several migratory birds. Due to the varying degrees of salinity in different parts of the lake, the fauna is interestingly diverse, with a variety of animals adapting to a marine or riverine existence to survive in different parts of the lake. Animal life recorded in the lake ranges from planktonic microorganisms to a vast variety of fish, which together sustain the migratory birds population in winter. A few estuarine turtles and snakes are found here along with species of dolphins, otters and several rodents, bats and sloth bears on the hills. Around 158 species of fishes and prawns have so far been recorded. In 1917, a rare reptile, the limbless skink (a type of lizard) was discovered for the first time in the loose soil of the Barakudia island.

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Astronomers Use Galactic Magnifying Lens to Probe Elusive Dark Energy

Posted on August 21, 2010 by Rashid Faridi

An international team of astronomers using gravitational lensing observations from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has taken an important step forward in the quest to solve the riddle of dark energy, a phenomenon which mysteriously appears to power the Universe’s accelerating expansion.

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Rethinking Human Behavior: Are We More Like Animals than We’d Like to Think?

Posted on August 20, 2010 by Rashid Faridi

Guest Post by Angelita Williams

Whenever we study the earth, its processes, and its inhabitants, we are tempted to think of ourselves, humans, as separate from our environment. We focus on our roles as observers because common knowledge tells us that we are somehow above it all.

Evolutionary psychology, a relatively new branch in psychology, rethinks human behavior based on how we are, at the end of the day, very much driven by animal instincts, although these instincts may manifest themselves in strikingly different ways in our modern world.

To give an example of this somewhat new train of thought–in which man is observed as completely integrated into his environment and not standing apart from it–is a proposed refashioning of the famous pyramid of human behavior, Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. The pyramid is considered a universal standard that is taught in schools throughout the world. But, as a recent Miller-McCune article reports, we may have it all wrong.

Dr. Douglas Kendrick recently published an article in the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science. In it, he argues that the lofty-sounding “self-actualization” that tops Maslow’s pyramid should be removed altogether and replaced with the much more humdrum human activity of “parenting”. Kendrick also suggests that sex is not an “immediate physiological need” as Maslow had said, equating sex to the need for food and water, but is rather embedded in our deepest instinct to reproduce.

Although it may be a bit depressing to think of our behavior as simply animal, Kendrick cautions that this is a misinterpretation of his work and of evolutionary psychology in general. When asked about what the point is of a human’s extraordinary capacity for creativity and innovation, Kendrick notes:

“You could argue that a peacock’s display is as beautiful as anything any human artist has ever produced…And yet it has a clear biological function [to attract a mate]. To connect it to its biological roots does not explain it away.”

Kendrick says of the notion of self-actualization: ““What has produced those feelings of competiveness? Why do people follow them? That has to do with mating…Self-actualization is not a fundamental goal in itself.”

In other words, even though our most basic animal drives aren’t necessarily made apparent in our daily lives, they still exist and express themselves in increasingly complex ways as we evolve.

Kendrick’s suggestions on the revised pyramid are, of course, the product of mere speculation. But it’s certainly something to think about as we ponder our place and function on this planet.

By-line:

This guest post is contributed by Angelita Williams, who writes on the topics of online college courses.  She welcomes your comments at her email Id: angelita.williams7 @gmail.com.

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