Kenya’s lions could vanish within 10 years

Posted on August 20, 2009 by Rashid Faridi

Kenya has been losing 100 lions a year for the past seven years, leaving the country with just 2000 of its famous big cats, says the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) — which concludes the country could have no wild lions at all in 20 years. Conservationists have blamed habitat destruction, disease and conflict with humans for the population collapse.

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Mekong Delta may be inundated

Posted on August 20, 2009 by Rashid Faridi

More than a third of the Mekong Delta in Vietnam, where nearly half of the country’s rice is grown, will be submerged if sea levels rise by 1 meter (39 inches),  environment ministry predicted.

A sea level increase of that magnitude would also inundate a quarter of Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam’s biggest city and home to more than 6 million people, according to the extreme scenario, outlined in the newspaper Tuoi Tre .Environmental scientists have long listed Vietnam, with its lengthy coastline and vast swathes of low-lying ground, as one of the most vulnerable countries on earth to climate change.

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Particles As Tracers For Milky Way’s Most Massive Explosions

Posted on August 20, 2009 by Rashid Faridi

Astronomers recently observed a mysterious flux of particles in the universe, and the hope was born that this may be the first observation of the remnants of “dark matter”.Several independent studies recently discovered a mysterious flux of electrons and positrons in the universe. Several theories were presented that suggested that these particles arise from the decay of “dark matter” – the hypothetical material that is believed to influence the rotation of galaxies. Dark matter is one of the most challenging questions in astrophysics. An international research group with members from the University of Gothenburg has now published new results showing that the mysterious flux actually arises from exploding stars.

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No Matter How Well You Model it, Humans are to Blame

Posted on August 19, 2009 by Rashid Faridi

New research appearing in the online issue of the Proceedings of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory scientists and a group of international researchers found that climate model quality does not affect the ability to identify human effects on atmospheric water vapor. Since atmospheric water vapor is an important driver of temperatures and rainfall, the results of this study will help convince skeptics that man’s impacts are causing at least part of the problem.

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