Category: habitats – Page 93
This collection contains the THREE novels by INGERSOLL LOCKWOOD that have surprised the world of the XXI century. This author wrote over 120 years ago, during the 1890‘s, these three novels, in which the characters are first, a kid, whose name was Baron Trump, and his Master is Don; and a separate novel about a president who resides in 5th avenue, New York, in a tower with his name, who surprisingly wins an election…The Baron Trump novels recount the adventures of the German boy Wilhelm Heinrich Sebastian Von Troomp, who goes by “Baron Trump”, as he discovers weird underground civilizations, offends the natives, flees from his entanglements with local women, and repeats this pattern until arriving back home at Castle Trump. Chris Riotta noted in Newsweek that Baron Trump’s adventures begin in Russia, and also mentioned another book of Ingersoll’s, The Last President, in which the president’s home city of New York is riven by protests against a rigged presidential election. Jaime Fuller wrote in Politico that Baron Trump is “precocious, restless, and prone to get in trouble”, often mentions his massive brain, and has a personalized insult for most people he meets. These novels, and some of its phrases and situations, really make people wonder if there are authors who have a window to the future, true prophets like Verne and his “From Earth to the Moon”, Poe with his Arthur Gordon Pim (a story that occurred with names and last names 50 years later); and Robertson in Futility or the Wreck of the Titan, a novel about the wreck of the Titanic, with locations, names and descriptions, written 20 years! before the actual events.
On the frontlines of the Ebola response are local Congolese workers with temporary job contracts. They are often driven into this work by economic necessity, as well as a desire to help.
Belinda Landu, a tall 28-year-old with long hair who radiates confidence, was making a meager living as a tailor in capital city Kinshasa before the outbreak. While visiting her mother in Beni last August, she spotted an advertisement for a health promoter. Today, she’s passionate about her role: decontaminating the houses of confirmed Ebola patients. “I want to stop the spread of the epidemic,” she said. “My family understand I work here to help people. If we get Ebola people will help us too.”
When she arrives at the scene of a recent diagnosis, Landu changes into a full protective outfit, including a full plastic bodysuit, mask, hairnet, gumboots, and both latex and rubber gloves, and begins the slow process of covering everything — inside and outside a house — with a chlorinated spray. Locals gather around to stare at her. They’re often terrified, she says, though she tries to be kind — speaking to them before she starts, and even stopping to play soccer with children after she changes out of her outfit.
Is anybody home? Astronomers have pinpointed two planets orbiting a nearby star that meet pretty much every requirement for supporting life. They’re almost exactly the same mass as the Earth, they are billions of years old (which means life could have had time to evolve), and they’re orbiting their star at a distance that would support things like water flow and habitable temperatures.
CRISPR genome editing is one of the most significant, world-changing technologies of our era, allowing scientists to make incredibly precise cut n’ paste edits to the DNA of living organisms. Now, one synthetic biologist from NASA plans to make it as accessible as a home science kit, so you can bio-hack yeast and bacteria on your kitchen bench.
A new superconducting magnet has briefly sustained an astonishing 45.5 tesla magnetic field intensity. For comparison, your flimsy fridge magnets have about 1 percent of a single tesla.
The measurement, achieved by researchers at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory (MagLab) at Florida State University resets the bar on what’s possible in direct current magnetic fields, exceeding the previous limit by half a tesla.
MagLab already houses the world’s strongest continuous magnet, a hybrid that relies on pairing an insanely cold superconductor with a more typical electromagnet to operate.
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A team of researchers with the Royal Botanic Gardens in the U.K. and Stockholm University has found that plant extinctions over the past two and a half centuries have been more extensive than previous estimates suggested. In their paper published in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution, the group describes their exhaustive study of plants and which have gone extinct, and what it might mean for future plant life.
In recent years, botanists have estimated that fewer than 150 plant species have gone extinct in modern times—most due to human activities. In this new effort, the researchers have found that the real number is closer to quadruple such estimates—they found 571 plants that have gone extinct since 1753. That was the year that famed botanist Carl Linnaeus published his Species Plantarum—a collection of all known plant species at that time. The researchers also claimed that approximately three species of plants have gone extinct on average each year since 1900—a rate that they note is approximately 500 times the natural rate of plant extinction. The group came to these conclusions using information from a database started back in 1988 by workers at the Royal Botanic Gardens who have had the goal of adding every known plant on the planet. Since that time, over 330,000 plant species have been added.
The researchers also created a map showing where the extinctions have occurred, noting that most are in the tropics and on islands. The map also highlights some interesting hotspots as well, such as South Africa, Australia, India and Hawaii. They add that the main culprit is habitat destruction, though some have also suffered from being too popular with humans—the Chile sandalwood tree, for example, was harvested for its exotic aroma.
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