Saturday, August 31, 2013

Rescue Stories : Machiko

Machiko


I was driving the main road through town to meet a friend for dinner on a warm summer evening when I noticed what I thought was a large rock on the white line of the road in the opposite lane. I quickly realized that it was not a rock, but a kitten sitting right on the edge of the road. I looked at oncoming traffic and saw two tanker trucks coming in the opposite lane where the kitten was. My heart sank and I pulled over to at least take the little body off of the road and bury it. I carry gloves in my car just in case I may need them to help animals. The trucks sped by and to my amazement the kitten was still alive and had stepped back to the guardrails. I did a U turn and parked my car several yards away so as not to scare him/her away. As I approached, the kitten attempted to run into the brush so I took a dive over the guard rails and caught it! He was only about 6 - 8 weeks old and his little eyes were matted tightly shut. I put him in my car and proceeded to remove the matting from his eyes not knowing what I would find underneath. His eyes were bright and sparkly and he began to explore the car. I called my friend and said I would be late for dinner then took the kitten home and called my vet. He spent the night quarantined in a crate and after a good report form the vet, became a member of the family with three other cats and a dog. I returned the next day to search for siblings, but found none. His name is Machiko, Japanese for "fortunate one". I call him Mac and feel I am the fortunate one to be blessed with his love and presence in my life.
Frankie
Warren, PA
 
 

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Rescue Stories : Foxy's Tale



Foxy entered my life unexpectedly on the first night of 2006, a brutally cold and snowy night in New Hampshire. I opened the door to let the dog out and found a scrawny, partially frozen calico kitten clinging to the outer screen of the storm door. She weighed 2 1/2 pounds, the knobs of her spine were easy to see and her pelvic bones jutted up like the fins of a '57 Chevy.
I began feeding her immediately, barely able to snatch my fingers away in time while offering her leftover Christmas turkey. When I brought her to the vet, he prepared me as best he could by telling me that she might not make it. There was a danger that she would go into organ failure. What he didn't count on was this small cat's will to survive. She gobbled up five cans of cat food a day and at night, she would snuggle up to me for body heat. Eventually she lost part of an ear to frostbite.
When my husband returned home from Iraq, he was somewhat dismayed to discover that while the dog was happy to see him again, there was this fluffy, fat cat that stood between us, growling, hissing and refusing to let him enter the house. She's mellowed a bit over the last seven years, extending her loyalty to my spouse (after the prerequisite amount of blood had been shed on his part), reveling in the desert climes of Arizona (she doesn't miss snow at all)...but sometimes I will catch a look from her that seems to say, "I won't ever forget that night and how you saved me."
I may have opened my home and heart to her...but Foxy taught me about bravery, how to accept help with gratitude and reward it with loyalty. She proved that there are times when the only thing that stands between life and death is the will to survive. I've loved many animals...but she's the first one I've ever admired and aspired to emulate. I hope she is with me for many, many more years.
Anonymous
Mesa, AZ


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Colombia braced for nationwide protests


Students and labour unions to march in support of farmers unhappy with free trade agreements
Demonstrators and riot policemen near Bogota Colombia
Demonstrators banging on pots in support of farmers at the entrance of La Calera near Bogotá. Photograph: Jose Miguel Gomez/Reuters
Colombia's largest cities were braced on Thursday for marches by students and labour unions in support of a growing nationwide strike by miners, truckers, coffee growers, milk producers and potato farmers protesting against everything from high fuel prices to free trade agreements that farmers say have them on the brink of bankruptcy.
The protests began on 19 August, with demonstrators joining striking miners,to block some of the country's main highways using tree branches, rocks and burning tyres. At least one protester and one policeman have died in the demonstrations, dozens have been injured and more than 150 have been arrested.
The protests spread to the cities where residents banged pots in solidarity with the farmers after president Juan Manuel Santos, in a failed effort to downplay the importance of the strikes, said the "supposed national farmers' strike does not exist".
Forced to apologise for the statement, he sent out high-level officials to begin negotiating separately with the different sectors. "We recognise that the farmers' protests respond to real needs and problems. We are listening to them and offering solutions," Santos said on Wednesday night.


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At least 20 injured as police, protesters clash in Colombian capital

Souce:Xinhua Publish By Updated 30/08/2013 7:05 pm i

At least 20 people were injured and some stores damaged here on Thursday in clashes between riot police and demonstrators gathering at central Bolivar Square to show support for striking farmers.
Local media reported that as many as 30,000 people, including more than 20,000 university students, began the protest three days ago at the square to support a nationwide farmers strike. The clashes broke out as several groups of young demonstrators attacked the police.
At least 20 people, including protesters as well as policemen, were injured as the police tried to disperse the crowd with tear gas, stun grenades and water cannons, local media said.
In a related development, supporters of the farmers also clashed with riot police trying to remove roadblocks and waterworks pipes placed by demonstrators on the South Highway to Bogota.


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Friday, August 30, 2013

Twelve-Year-Old Devon Melton's Garage Sale For His Mother Goes Viral



Still of Devon Melton - Fox 2 Now, http://aka.ms/devonmelton
A 12-year-old boy from Ferguson, Mo., has blown us away with his courage and sacrifice.
Devon Melton's mother, Christina Craig, was recently diagnosed with breast cancer and his parents are struggling with the financial burden of her illness.


I overheard her talking on the phone," Devon told KTVI. "I just asked her are you ok, because her tears were running down her face. She said she was failing me as a parent because she's always sick, and I had to help."
That's when Melton decided to step in.
He got the idea of holding a garage sale, but he didn't have much of his own to give away. So he began reaching out to potential donors on Craiglist's 'Free' section with a moving email that soon went viral.
He wrote:
Hi this is Devon. I am the one that messaged you on Craigslist. My mom is amazing she and my dad take care of my two brothers, me and my sister. She has breast cancer and I heard her crying one day after she had her surgery. I thought she was hurt so I went to her door. I heard her say I’m losing everything because I am sick. We are about to lose our home, electric, gas and dad lost his job..I went to my preacher and asked how can I help. He said to do a garage sale. I went to every house on my road getting donations for the garage sale..
My mom deserves the best and I want to help her because she helps everyone. Even with her sick she still works at the food pantry at our church. She says people have to eat and God blessed us to be part of a ministry that can feed people. I just wish it was mom’s turn to be blessed with a timeout like she says she needs. I hope we can get things together and I can really help my mom.
The post inspired a slew of donations from Craigslisters. KTVI reports that he's received over 200 emails from people wanting to help and has recently had to expand the sale to a bigger location.
He's raised $120 so far, and plans to continue holding the sale until all the donations are sold.
"I can give up a couple of my things and.. put the hard work in," he told KDSK. "She takes care of me, so I thought I should take care of her for once."


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Archaeologists Unearth 10,400-Year-Old hunter-gatherer settlements in the Bolivian Amazon: the site of Isla del Tesoro

Archaeologists Unearth 10,400-Year-Old Settlements in Bolivia

Aug 29, 2013 by Sci-News.com

An international team of scientists from Switzerland, Australia, Germany and the United States has discovered remains of three hunter-gatherer settlements in the western Amazon.

This map shows location of three hunter-gatherer settlements in the Bolivian Amazon: the site of Isla del Tesoro – SM1, a site west of the Mamoré River – SM2, a site east of Trinidad – SM3 (Lombardo U et al).
This map shows location of three hunter-gatherer settlements in the Bolivian Amazon: the site of Isla del Tesoro – SM1, a site west of the Mamoré River – SM2, a site east of Trinidad – SM3 (Lombardo U et al).

Their study, reported in the open-access journal PLoS ONE, focuses on a region in the Bolivian Amazon thought to be rarely occupied by pre-agricultural communities due to unfavorable environmental conditions.
Hundreds of ‘forest islands’- small forested mounds – are found throughout the region. Their origins attributed to termites, erosion or ancient human activity.
The team reports that three of these islands are shell middens, mounds of seashells left by settlers more than 10,000 years ago. Samples of soil from these mounds revealed a dense accumulation of freshwater snail shells, animal bones and charcoal forming the middens.


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Thursday, August 29, 2013

Permian Mass Extinction Paved Way for the Rise of Mammals and Intelligent Life. Replay of Ancient "Greenhouse World"?

August 28, 2013

Permian Mass Extinction Paved Way for the Rise of Mammals and Intelligent Life

Dinogorgon_923_600x450
The first mammals arose in the Triassic period, more than 225 million years ago, including small shrew-like animals such as Morganucodon from England, Megazostrodon from South Africa and Bienotherium from China. They had differentiated teeth (incisors, canines, molars) and large brains and were probably warm-blooded and covered in fur – all characteristics that stand them apart from their reptile ancestors, and which contribute to their huge success today.
However, new research suggests that this array of unique features arose gradually over a long span of time, and that the first mammals may have arisen as a result of the end-Permian mass extinction - which wiped out 90 per cent of marine organisms and 70 per cent of terrestrial species.
Mass extinctions are seen as entirely negative. However, in this case, cynodont therapsids, which included a very small number of species before the extinction, really took off afterwards and were able to adapt to fill many different niches in the Triassic - from carnivores to herbivoresm,” said Dr Marcello Ruta, lead author and evolutionary palaeobiologist from the University of Lincoln.
"During the Triassic, the cynodonts split into two groups, the cynognathians and the probainognathians," added
co-author Dr Jennifer Botha-Brink of the National Museum in Bloemfontein, South Africa. "The first were mainly plant-eaters, the second mainly flesh-eaters and the two groups seemed to rise and fall at random - first one expanding, and then the other. In the end, the probainognathians became the most diverse and most varied in adaptations, and they gave rise to the first mammals some 25 million years after the mass extinction."


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August 06, 2013

EcoAlert: Replay of Ancient "Greenhouse World"? -- Dramatically Altered Coral Reefs & Marine Life

2009_01_24_5073-mod-closeup-antarctica-scotia-sea-birds

If history's closest analog is any indication, the look of the oceans will change drastically in the future as the coming greenhouse world alters marine food webs and gives certain species advantages over others. For the past million years, atmospheric CO2 concentrations have never exceeded 280 parts per million, but industrialization, forest clearing, agriculture, and other human activities have rapidly increased concentrations of CO2 and other gases known to create a "greenhouse" effect that traps heat in the atmosphere. For several days in May 2013, CO2 levels exceeded 400 parts per million for the first time in human history and that milestone could be left well behind in the next decades. At its current pace, Earth could recreate the CO2 content of the atmosphere in the greenhouse world in just 80 years.
Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego, paleobiologist Richard Norris and colleagues show that the ancient greenhouse world had few large reefs, a poorly oxygenated ocean, tropical surface waters like a hot tub, and food webs that did not sustain the abundance of large sharks, whales, seabirds, and seals of the modern ocean. Aspects of this greenhouse ocean could reappear in the future if greenhouse gases continue to rise at current accelerating rates.
The researchers base their projections on what is known about the "greenhouse world" of 50 million years ago when levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere were much higher than those that have been present during human history. Their review article appears in an Aug. 2 special edition of the journal Science titled "Natural Systems in Changing Climates."
In the greenhouse world, fossils indicate that CO2 concentrations reached 800-1,000 parts per million. Tropical ocean temperatures reached 35º C (95º F), and the polar oceans reached 12°C (53°F) -- similar to current ocean temperatures offshore San Francisco. There were no polar ice sheets. Scientists have identified a "reef gap" between 42 and 57 million years ago in which complex coral reefs largely disappeared and the seabed was dominated by piles of pebble-like single-celled organisms called foraminifera.
"The 'rainforests-of-the-sea' reefs were replaced by the 'gravel parking lots' of the greenhouse world," said Norris.
The greenhouse world was also marked by differences in the ocean food web with large parts of the tropical and subtropical ocean ecosystems supported by minute picoplankton instead of the larger diatoms typically found in highly productive ecosystems today. Indeed, large marine animals -- sharks, tunas, whales, seals, even seabirds -- mostly became abundant when algae became large enough to support top predators in the cold oceans of recent geologic times.


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Modern Mobility: Car-Sharing Gears Up in German Cities

By Thomas Hüetlin
Photo Gallery: Cars for Co-Consumers 
Maurice Weiss/ DER SPIEGEL
As collaborative consumption becomes increasingly mainstream, many young Germans are starting to see vehicle ownership as inconvenient and old-fashioned. Keen to keep up, the auto industry is turning to car-sharing.
Imagine a road trip that starts on a narrow backstreet in Rome, bathed in the rosy light of dawn. Visualize driving along roads lined with pine trees, past hill-top villages, motoring from the ocean to snow-capped mountains. Then on to Paris, London, and finally to the green hills of Scotland, stretched out before you like a giant golf course.
ANZEIGE
Own a car, and live the dream. Climb into a cozy interior, as familiar and comfortable as your own living room. Then head out into the great unknown in search of adventure, away from everyday life, all your senses thrilling at the grand vistas, the freedom and the speed.
Matthias Lorenz-Meyer freezes these images on his computer screen with a click of his mouse. His trip from Rome to Edinburgh lasted three weeks, and required two tanks of gas. But the vehicle didn't belong to him. It belonged to Ford. He was paid handsomely for the journey -- the film was a commercial. He sold his own car, a Renault Twingo, last year. "I'm glad I got rid of it," he says. "It was a drag."
Lorenz-Meyer is an advertising model and Internet entrepreneur, not a dropout or a fanatic. He is one of the many Germans under 40 living in cities who are both a puzzle and a worry to the auto industry. The reason? They no longer care about owning their own vehicles.
In Germany, the home of the automobile and where the auto industry is still a key sector of the economy, this is almost akin to a betrayal.
Around 46 percent of people living in the capital Berlin manage without their own vehicle. In New York, the figure is as high as 56 percent. Urban residents who still have vehicles don't use them very often, either. In Munich, the average vehicle is in use for just 45 minutes a day. The rest of the time it's just sitting there costing money in insurance, tax, depreciation and probably parking fees.
Many residents of larger cities see owning their own vehicle as something they can do without, as annoying excess baggage. Vehicle sales have dropped dramatically among the target customers of tomorrow. The purchasers of new vehicles are getting older. Since 1995, the average age has risen from 46 to 52.
For young people, other things matter more. "Young people today want to be mobile, and a cell phone gives them completely different possibilities when it comes to a vehicle," says Michael Kuhndt, head of the Wuppertal Institute Collaborating Center on Sustainable Consumption and Production (CSCP).
In the old days, the automobile was something everyone had to have. It symbolized independence and adulthood. These days, young people are geographically and virtually mobile, for which they need a mobile phone. A vehicle doesn't help them travel to Honduras, New Zealand or Vietnam.
"Mobile phones really open up the possibilities for living in various parts of the world," says Kuhndt. "Young people think of automobiles as too heavy, too much of a burden."
Fighting Back
The auto industry, unwilling to lose its young customers, is fighting back with car-sharing -- hoping to restore interest in the automobile with an alternative payment system. Mercedes, through its subsidiary car2go, supplies Smarts in Munich, Hamburg, Cologne, Berlin and elsewhere. BMW supplies Mini Coopers, BMW 1 Series and X1s through its DriveNow program. Citroën offers the electric C-Zero through Multicity. And the German railway company Deutsche Bahn offers various models through its Flinkster system, from Fiat 500s to Volkswagen Golfs.
Usage is generally calculated on a time basis: 29 euro cents a minute with car2go, 28 cents with Multicity, 31 cents a minute with DriveNow. Customers register with one or more firms, pay a registration fee and receive an electronic chip by post. Via a smartphone app, they can find out where the closest vehicle is. When they finish their journey, they park, get out and go. The bill is then sent by email to their phone. It's an uncomplicated service that clearly works: At the end of 2011, Germany had around 260,000 registered car-sharers; at the beginning of 2013, there were already more than 450,000.
According to figures published by the Fraunhofer Institute, the number of automobiles in Germany will halve by 2050. "The cities are green, pleasant places to live, pedestrian- and cyclist-friendly; there are ample car-sharing parking spots and cycle stations at every larger transport hub," say the authors of the study "A sustainable transport vision for Germany." Even in the United States -- the No. 1 energy consumer among industrial nations -- one shared car will replace at least eight private passenger vehicles in the future, according to calculations by the study's authors.
Car-sharing is part of a social trend in which consumers prefer to share certain items with each other rather than own them. Smartphones make this possible, allowing individuals to move around the modern city and get whatever they need at different points during the day.
The trend reflects the flexibility of new lifestyles and careers. For Internet entrepreneur Matthias Lorenz-Meyer, the smartphone forms the center of his existence. For Constanze Siedenburg, graphic designer and spokesperson for the Green Party on school and sports policies in Berlin's Pankow district, life revolves around her local area and family, but as a road user she has much in common with Lorenz-Meyer. She too has sold her car and now drives vehicles that don't belong to her. The lifestyle choices of both the happily single Internet entrepreneur and the environmentally-aware mother of two illustrate what mobility in major Western cities could look like in the years to come.


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