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Killer dolphins baffle marine experts By Nigel Blundell Last Updated: 12:01pm GMT 25/01/2008 It's hard to visualise but the intelligent and ever-friendly dolphin can also be a determined killer. New evidence has been compiled by marine scientists that prove the normally placid dolphin is capable of brutal attacks both on innocent fellow marine mammals and, more disturbingly, on its own kind. Film taken of gangs of dolphins repeatedly ramming baby porpoises, tossing them in the air and pursuing them to the death has solved a long-term mystery of what causes the death of so many of these harmless mammals -...

WASHINGTON - There's more to the recent dramatic and alarming thawing of the Arctic region than can be explained by man-made global warming alone, a new study found. Nature is pushing the Arctic to the edge, too. There's a natural cause that may account for much of the Arctic warming, which has melted sea ice, ice sheets and glaciers, according to a study published Thursday in the journal Nature. New research points a finger at a natural and cyclical increase in the amount of energy in the atmosphere that moves from south to north around the Arctic Circle. But that...

These experts believe that global warming is a natural phenomenon, and they point to reams of data they say supports their assertions. These conclusions are in sharp contradiction to those of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which reached its conclusions using largely similar data. The UN body of about 3,000 experts, including several renown US scientists, jointly won the award with former US vice president Al Gore for their work to raise awareness about the disastrous consequences of global warming. In mid-November the IPCC adopted a landmark report stating that the evidence of a human role...

It is a strange and disorienting panorama that Rabbi E. E. Dessler, the celebrated Jewish thinker (1892-1953) asks us to ponder: a world where the dead routinely rise from their graves but no grain or vegetation has ever grown. The thought experiment continues with the sudden appearance of a man who procures a seed, something never seen before in this bizarre universe, and plants it in the ground. The inhabitants regard the act as no different from burying a stone, and are flabbergasted when, several days later, a sprout pierces the soil where the seed had been consigned, and eventually...

An odd new species of bacteria discovered in one of the most extreme environments on Earth could be a new tool in the fight against global warming. In a paper published this week in the journal Nature, University of Calgary biologist Peter Dunfield and his colleagues describe a methane-gas-gobbling micro-organism they found in an area of low-level volcanic activity in New Zealand known as Hell's Gate. It's the hardiest methane-eater known to date, Dunfield said, making it a likely candidate for reducing methane emissions from landfills, mines, industrial wastes, geothermal plants and other sources of global warming. Hell's Gate hot...

BALI, Indonesia - More than 3,000 flying foxes dropped dead, falling from trees in Australia. Giant squid migrated north to commercial fishing grounds off California, gobbling anchovy and hake. Butterflies have gone extinct in the Alps. While humans debate at U.N. climate change talks in Bali, global warming is already wreaking havoc with nature. Most plants and animals are affected, and the change is occurring too quickly for them to evolve. "A hell of a lot of species are in big trouble," said Stephen E. Williams, the director of the Centre for Tropical Biodiversity & Climate Change at James Cook...

SIERRA VISTA — There may not have been a Sierra Vista Holiday Parade on Saturday, but there sure was a show of a different sort. Mother Nature blew in late Friday night and early Saturday morning and left her mark through a variety of damage, from toppled trees to a trampoline on top of a roof to air conditioners and coolers blowing off roofs to awnings being twisted by the wind to scattered holiday yard decorations. The wind ripped a portion of the roof off a home in the 4900 block of South Santa Aurelia. And 35-foot-tall Modesto ash crashed...

A recent AP news report has concluded, after compiling the results of numerous studies over the years, that there is a strong and disturbing link between severe child abuse and non-traditional family environments. In the article' words: "[Scholars and caseworkers] note an ever increasing share of America's children grow up in homes without both biological parents, and say the risk of child abuse is markedly higher in the nontraditional family structures."  Examples of "nontraditional family structures" include: o  Children living in homes with unrelated adults (these children are "50 times more likely to die inflicted injuries as children living with biological parents"); and...

The reddening sky of Upper Galilee appears to darken in the late afternoon as around half a billion birds flee the European winter and flock to northern Israel in waves. The protected site in the Hula Valley is the busiest migration crossroads in Africa. Israeli ornithologists follow the flocks, keen not to miss out on the rare spectacle. At this time of year, more than 400 known bird species will cross the fertile region, pausing to rest for several days before heading off to find their winter homes in Africa. In a magical sight, the air fills with thousands of...

Not all children can harness the full goodness of their mother’s milk. Does breast-feeding a child boost its brain development and raise its intelligence? Only if the child carries a version of a gene that can harness the goodness of breast-milk, say researchers. The results add to the ‘nature versus nurture’ debate over intelligence, by showing how the two effects can interact. The question of whether people are born intelligent or made intelligent by their environment has been debated for decades. Research with identical twins separated at birth has shown that both genetics and rearing conditions are important in determining...

(2007-10-29) — With the success of last week’s simulated news conference on the California wildfires by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), mid-level bureaucrats at the disaster-relief agency have reportedly initiated plans to stage “natural” disasters as well. The imitation news briefing, which featured FEMA employees pretending to be genuine journalists, was “just a test run for the more ambitious pilot program of engineered catastrophes designed to help even out the work flow during the year,” according to one unnamed source inside the agency. “Due to the unreliable nature of floods, wildfires, tornadoes and blizzards,” the source said, “FEMA employees...

Science Daily — In a molecular tour de force, researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have provided an exquisitely detailed picture of natural selection as it occurs at the genetic level. Writing Oct. 11, 2007 in the journal Nature, Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator Sean B. Carroll and former UW-Madison graduate student Chris Todd Hittinger document how, over many generations, a single yeast gene divides in two and parses its responsibilities to be a more efficient denizen of its environment. The work illustrates, at the most basic level, the driving force of evolution."This is how new capabilities arise and new...

"The heart of man is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: Who can know it?" -Jeremiah 17:9 I. "The heart of man is desperately wicked." In considering this, we have no need to refer to any particular sins; II. We may, in the Second place, consider this, -- the deceitfulness of man's heart; "It is deceitful above all things;" III. "He that trusteth in his own heart is a fool" for who that is wise would trust one whom he knows to be "desperately wicked?" 1. The most eminent of the ancient Heathens have left us many testimonies of...

Double Helix Nebula Do you believe the root cause of human behavior is the result of an individual’s genetics or is behavior a product of an environment? Is there a gene that makes us ask, “why?” or is curiosity about interacting with our environment and having access to good answers? In determining the success or failure of an individual in their environment, we now know the “nature versus nurture” debate is bunk. The question is misleading. It implies the influence of nature can be isolated and subsequently separated from the influences of nurture. The entire purpose of the “nature...

MISSION — When firefighters arrived, they found a man covered in bees. “They were on him head to toe,” said Elias Saldivar, the Alton fire chief. His firefighters pulled the man away, suffering stings on their faces as they fought off attacks. “The coat and pants only cover so much,” the chief said of his firefighters’ protective clothing. Rescuers separated 57-year-old Paul Lee Campton from the bees, but it was too late. Campton, a disabled man who uses a walker, died Thursday at Mission Regional Medical Center after being stung more than 1,000 times. The attack happened about 6 p.m....

My six nights up a tree, by Crocodile George By Barbie Dutter in Sydney Last Updated: 11:49am BST 15/08/2007 An Australian cattle rancher has told how he spent seven days up a tree looking down into the jaws of two hungry crocodiles after stumbling into a swamp crawling with the reptiles. 'I knew they were looking' David George, 53, was knocked unconscious after falling from his horse during a bush-burning operation in north Queensland. Dazed and bleeding after coming round, he remounted his horse hoping it would take him home. Instead it took him to a swamp criss-crossed by crocodile...

"A Cheshire, Connecticut, woman strangles a rabid raccoon to protect her children." (video report)

'Utterly cared for': Minister writes of finding peace, link to God in nature http://www.southbendtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070726/Lives/707260476/1047/Lives http://tinyurl.com/2uf995 Jul 26, 2007 CHRISTINE COX Tribune Staff Writer John Lionberger, a United Church of Christ minister and religious author, admits there are times when he is tempted to not believe in God. "Faith just isn't a head thing at all. I could talk myself out of God just in a heartbeat," he says in a telephone interview. "But if I listen to my heart, I think that's the truer voice. That's the grounded voice. I guess, the ancient voice." It's a voice he didn't hear...

Hooking youth: Fishing is a pathway to nature for America's children http://www.abqtrib.com/news/2007/jun/06/commentary-hooking-youth/ http://tinyurl.com/2pcycu Mamie Parker Wednesday, June 6, 2007 Waters, long-coursed downstream, press on me still. The lunges of memorable fish linger in the eddies of my mind. Bright waters beckon this private vice of mine, fishing. And my recollections, no matter how old, always have the tenor of springtime, when all things are new. Fishing fixes me to places where I really feel alive. As a young girl and even today the experience carries a vestige of adventure and wildness - an escape from the artifices of man. As...

What Does The Decline In Hunting Mean For America's Kids? http://fieldandstream.blogs.com/news/2007/06/what_does_the_d.html http://tinyurl.com/2azh4n June 18, 2007 “I like to play indoors better,” a fourth grader told Richard Louv, “because that’s where the electrical outlets are.” In his bestselling 2005 book, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder, journalist and author Louv argues that never before has a generation of children been so separated from the natural world. The consequences, he says, can be seen in trends such as increases in obesity, stress, and psychiatric disorders among our kids. With the declining number of outdoorsmen indicated by the...