☆Let us Create Hopeful Future☆ Let's Create a Peaceful World where People are Safe and Conflict free 世界の人口増大に伴って、世界的な大きな課題となってきた食料問題の解決方策及び国際的な雇用創出の増大を目的として、大規模な浮体式洋上構造物上において、世界中の市民の参加による共同組織体制を創生し、地球の約70%の表面積の海洋を有効に利用して、自然再生循環系（Sustainable)の新しい産業・経済体系を創生させるプロジェクト構想を公海の海上に構築する。
例えば、国際的な教育施設も洋上構築物に併設し、洋上での大規模な農林産物・牧畜・水産物の栽培や洋上太陽光発電や洋上風力発電等のプロジェクト等を構築・発展させる。
青年達の夢と希望を世界的な規模に拡げながら、国際的な協力で、希望のある未来のために、平和で、紛争のない、安寧な世界を創って行きましょう。
ノアの箱舟を創ろう Let us Create the Super Ocean-Floating-Structures such as the Noah's ark.
ノアの箱舟を創ろう
Let us Create the Super Ocean - Floating - Structures such as the Noah's ark.
Wired Science visits The Rainforests of the World exhibit at the California Academy of Sciences, where a vibrant snapshot of life from across the globe is on display in a greenhouse dome.
カテゴリ: 科学と技術
タグ: wired science greenhouse bio dome rainforests of the world CAS environment animals plants madagascar costa rica
February 2, 2010 Fury as giant Belo Monte Amazon rainforest dam is approved by Brazil
(Michael Friedel / Rex)
The dam could provide electricity to 23 million homes but critics say that the flooding of 500sq km of rainforest will force the displacement of indigenous peoples such as the Xinguano, above
Hannah Strange
Brazil has approved the controversial construction of a giant hydroelectric dam in the heart of the Amazon, defying a 20-year protest by indigenous and environmental campaigners who say that the project will devastate the surrounding rainforest and threaten the survival of local tribes.
The Belo Monte project on the Xingu river, an Amazon tributary, was started in the 1990s but abandoned amid widespread protests at home and abroad. The rock star Sting led a campaign against the plan with tribal leaders, and revisited Brazil in November last year to urge the Government to consider the impact of deforestation on greenhouse gas levels and global warming.
The $17billion (£11billion) dam in the northern state of Pará will be the world’s third-largest and could provide electricity to 23million homes, a supply that the Government says is vital to the country’s economic growth. Critics argue that the flooding of 500 sq km of rainforest will damage fish stocks and wildlife and force the displacement of indigenous peoples.
Carlos Minc, the Environment Minister, said on Monday that the land flooded would be a fraction of the 5,000 sq km originally planned. “The environmental impact exists but it has been weighed up, calculated and reduced,” he said. “Not one Indian on indigenous land will be displaced.”
RELATED LINKS
Fine balance of energy and environment
The tribe that stood their ground
Sold down the river: tribe's home to be a valley of the dammed
However, groups on land not demarcated as tribal territory — a distinction often labelled a get-out clause by indigenous campaigners — still stand to lose their homes. Mr Minc said that they would be compensated. Indigenous groups complain that they were not properly consulted over the project, which Megaron Tuxucumarrae, a chief of the Kayapo tribe, said would destroy the environment that his people had taken care of for millennia. “We are opposed to dams on the Xingu, and will fight to protect our river,” he said.
The state-run company Eletrobrás is said to be eyeing the project, but a contract has not yet been awarded. The winning company will have to spend $803million on measures to minimise its impact and resettle an estimated 12,000 people.
Critics said that the Government had underestimated the potential impact in its attempt to meet political ends in an election year. Even within the Government, the project has been so contentious that in November two senior officials from Ibama, Brazil’s environmental agency, resigned, citing political pressure.
With general elections looming in October, the Government is under pressure to deal with energy infrastructure problems that resulted in large swathes of the country, including São Paolo and Rio de Janeiro, being plunged into darkness in November.
Engineering experts have questioned the efficiency of the 11-gigawatt dam, which would be outstripped in size only by China’s Three Gorges and Itaipu on the Brazil-Paraguay border.
Francisco Hernández, an electrical engineer and joint co-ordinator of a group of 40 specialists who analysed the project, said that the dam would generate little electricity during the three to four-month dry season. Describing it as a scheme of “doubtful engineering viability”, he said Belo Monte was an extremely complex project “that would interrupt the flow of water courses over an enormous area, requiring excavation of earth and rocks on the scale of that carried out for digging the Panama Canal”.
Up to 70 dams, roads, gas pipelines and power grids worth more than $30billion are to be built to tap the region’s raw materials and transport agricultural products.
The announcement drew a furious reaction from environmental groups around the world. Aviva Imhof, the campaigns director of International Rivers, described it as a “foolish investment”, and said that by investing in energy efficiency, Brazil could cut demand by 40 per cent over the nextdecade and save $19billion. “The amount of energy saved would be equivalent to 14 Belo Monte dams,” she said.
Fiona Watson, research director of the UK-based Survival International, said the dam would be a catastrophe for indigenous people. “The Brazilian Government has driven through the dam with a cavalier disregard to indigenous peoples’ rights,” she said. “Development in Brazil comes at an unacceptable price — the destruction of whole tribes.”
Scientists put up with all sorts of discomfort for the sake of curiosity. At a mosquito lab at Queen Mary University London, some of the mosquitoes have to be fed on fresh blood (the malaria researchers' blood). Neuroscientists at the lab I used to work at were constantly taking part in each others pain, drug or gas experiments. But, a study that came out yesterday in Nature, involving the gradual decomposition of fish has got to have been one of the worst.
In order to work out how different tissue structures in ancient fish would have changed during decomposition (and before fossilisation) the team observed the gradual rotting of lamprey fishduring a period of six months.
"When we set-up the experiments we had difficulty finding an out of the way room where any smells would be less potentially disruptive to the rest of the building," says Mark Purnell, who led the research. "Shortly after we started the work a nearby lecture theatre had to be evacuated because of unbearably bad smells thankfully it turned out to have nothing to do with us."
Thankfully too, the grim experiment has thrown up some interesting results. The study suggests that neglecting the effect of decay prior to fossilisation may have lead many fossils to be misinterpreted. Previously, a common assumption among palaeontologists was that as specimens decayed, they lost defining characteristics in a fairly random order. Purnell and his team found that in the case of fish, they tended to lose their most recently evolved characteristics first.
Effectively, as fish decay they are shunted back down the tree of life into an earlier phase of the species' evolution. "As they decayed the more primitive characteristics became more prominent," says Purnell.
The finding is particularly relevant to the interpretation of chordates — fish that lived about half a billion years ago, and featured a characteristic rod-like support structure, which was a precursor to the backbone. With no bone structures to rely on, palaeontologists are dependent on tissue which is vulnerable to decay. The latest study places new stricter boundaries on the extent to which these fossils can be interpreted. A fossil may look primitive, but researchers will now have to also consider the possibility that the fish was just very, very rotten.
TrackBack
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d83451586c69e20120a83ae3a9970b
Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Old rotten fish:
Comments
You can follow this conversation by subscribing to thecomment feed for this post.
オランダの研究財団Foundation for Fundamental Research on Matter(FOM)が主催する物理学会議『Physics@FOM』には、多様な分野から聴衆が集まっていたため、村山氏はあまり詳細には分け入らず、問題の要点を伝え、聴衆の興味をそそることに重きを置いた。暗黒物質(ダークマター)や宇宙のインフレーションなど、宇宙についてこれまでに分かっている事柄を駆け足で語る村山氏の話に、筆者も興味をそそられた。
Andre Rieu's performance at the season finale of the Australian Dancing with the Stars!
カテゴリ: 音楽
タグ: dancing with the stars andre rieu johann strauss orchestra An der schönen blauen Donau On Beautiful Blue Danube waltz Johann Strauss Viennese Lehár Kálmán Mozart tenors Bach Bizet Bolero Callas Carreras Chopin Domingo Grieg Lehar Morricone Orff Ouverture Titanic Phantom of Opera Radetzky Il Divo Pavarotti
