FEAST OR FAMINE

New Scientist (April 28, 2012) says that NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office at the Marshall Space Flight Centre in Huntsville, Alabama, is looking for meteors. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration ( NASA ), an agency of the United States government, wants fragments of a meteorite that exploded over northern Canada and the US state of Nevada on Sunday morning, April 22, 2012. Meteorites are bits of a meteor that enters the Earth’s atmosphere and strikes land. Although many meteors can be seen, meteorites are rare because they tend to burn up in the atmosphere before they reach Earth, or fragments splash into the sea. The meteor that exploded over Canada created a sonic boom, which indicates that it must have remained intact within 16 kilometres from the Earth’s surface. This increases the likelihood that some of it hit land. Finding fragments of meteorites can provide scientists with crucial information about their chemical composition and that of...

The Canberra Times announced that koalas—the iconic Australian marsupial—are expected to be listed as a threated species in parts of the country from Monday April 30 due to declining numbers. Northwest of Sydney in Gunnedah Shire, known for its abundance of native wildlife such as kangaroos, echidnas, and koalas, research has shown that koala numbers have declined by 75% since 1993. A survey of koalas in the Shire indicated an estimated 15,000 koalas in 1993, and that recent numbers were now between 500 and 2,000. However, in this area, koalas are not expected to be granted protection. The protection status of koalas is determined by advice from the national Threatened Species Scientific Committee. The committee next convenes on April 30. The new ruling will be published next week but, based on current data, is likely to list koalas in southeast Queensland as endangered, and koalas east of the Great Dividing Range in New South Wales as vulnerable. If animals are listed...

  Always swim between the red and yellow flags – that’s the message of Surf Life Saving Australia (SLSA) – because if the lifesavers can’t see you, they can’t save you. Australia has six states and two territories – only the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) is landlocked. The rest have a coastline with magnificent beaches. In fact, there are 11,876 beaches in Australia. The Surf Life Saving Australia has 310 local surf lifesaving clubs, which means that much of the coastline is not monitored by surf lifesavers. However, most popular swimming and surfing beaches are patrolled by official and volunteer lifesavers. The SLSA has over 700 paid lifeguards across Australia – one of the largest memberships in the world. However, the SLSA also has the largest volunteer movement in Australia, with most beaches patrolled by volunteers. In 2010-2011 SLSA had 158,806 members, of which 43.7% were female (a 3% increase on the previous year). Of these members 44,323 ...

  ANZAC Day is commemorated on April 25 each year. It is the anniversary of the landing on Gallipoli in 1915 – the first major military action fought by Australian and New Zealand forces during the First World War. However, it is the also a day to remember all Australians and Kiwis who served and died in all wars, conflicts, and peace-keeping operations. Ceremonies are held in towns and cities across the nation to acknowledge the service of all veterans and existing soldiers. In Canberra, the ceremonies are held at the Australian War Memorial. The Commemorative Ceremony for Torres Strait Islanders   is also held on ANZAC Day after the dawn service at the First Nations memorial plaque. ANZAC is the acronym for Australian and New Zealand Army Corps. The soldiers of the corps were known as ANZACs. The spirit of the ANZACs was courage and friendship (which is referred to as mateship). Australia had only been a federal Commonwealth for 13 years before war commenced...

New Scientist (21 April 2012) writes that strong warnings have proven to be effective in saving lives during America’s tornado season. During the 2011 tornado season in America’s Midwest, the National Weather Service (NWS) found the residents waited for visible signs of the threat before responding. In other words, they didn’t believe the warnings until they saw the destruction. Tornado warnings in the past used the following communications: “You should activate your tornado action plan and take protective action now.” In the first half of April (i.e. in the past two weeks), there have been over 100 tornadoes in the US Midwest, which has been the most severe tornado strike this year. However, the death toll of 6 people has been very low compared with other years. This appears to be a result of the change in disaster warning communications. After research about how people respond to warnings, the National Weather Service in America tried new warnings this year. In...

New Scientist (21 April 2012) reveals that the Karakoram glaciers grew slightly between 1999 and 2008, according to satellite data. The Karakoram is a large mountain range next to the Himalayas. Scientists (geologists) and mountaineers compare photographs and satellite images taken over a period of many years, and even centuries, to detect evidence of glacial activity. Glaciers are masses of ice surging down wide mountain passes into the sea. A 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report raised the concern that Himalayan glaciers may be shrinking and may even disappear by 2035. However, the new study found that ice is stable in the Karakoram Mountains, a northern range of the Himalayas. Dirk Scherler of the University of Potsdam in Germany, in his study of the Himalayan glaciers (Nature Geoscience, 23 January 2011), indicated that an estimated 65% of the glaciers observed were shrinking, but in Karakoram 58% of the studied glaciers were stable or...

The Canberra Times reported a minor earthquake near Canberra, the capital of Australia, which shook residents awake at 5:09am on Friday, April 20, 2012. The quake measured 3.7 on the Richter Scale with its epicentre about 40 kilometres west of the Australian Capital Territory (ACT), halfway between Canberra and Tumut. Geoscience Australia received reports of the quake from people in Yass in the north (65 kilometres from Canberra), Batlow in the west (70 kilometres away), Clyde Mountain in the east (139 kilometres away), and Gordon in the south (25 kilometres away). Emergency services received a few telephone calls, but no damage had been reported. Canberra is generally not susceptible to earthquakes, although moderate seismicity occurs north of the capital near Gundaroo (44 kilometres from Canberra). There have only been four earthquakes in the region over the past decade, with the largest tremor recorded of magnitude 4.2 in February 1988. Photo: Seismogr...

New Scientist (21 April, 2012) has published an article on the price of wealth. Michael Bond states that money changes our behaviour in subtle ways. While there has been much research on class and wealth, recent research has focused on the relationship between money and the way wealthier people relate to other people. Dacher Keltner at the University of California, Berkeley, researched the link between wealth and empathy. He was interested in why financially disadvantaged people seemed to be more generous whereas wealthy Wall Street bankers appeared self-interested and disconnected from their community. So he designed a series of experiments with Michael Kraus to test whether people from different social backgrounds really did interact differently. They found that less-privileged participants in their study were more expressive that signaled engagement, while wealthier participants were more aloof. With further experiments, they revealed that participants with more prestig...

If someone pays you an act of kindness, then someone deserves an act of kindness from you without asking for anything in return. The kindness can be returned to the person who was kind to you, or to someone else, known or unknown to you. Neither the giver nor the receiver needs to know each other – it can be a random act of kindness. It does not necessarily involve money – it can involve giving time to help someone in need. The global Pay it Forward Day this year will be held on Thursday, April 26. Last year, participants paid it forward in 35 countries. This year the aim is to inspire over three million acts of kindness around the world. Acts of kindness can include helping a neighbour, tidying the landing of your neighbour’s apartment, taking a cake to someone at work, buying someone’s coffee, helping a person carry their groceries, baby-sitting for a friend, and so on. The idea is to make a positive difference in someone’s life and for it to have a ripple effect of good dee...

Walking a labyrinth can be a way of finding peace within. The winding paths of a labyrinth, from the outer to the centre, and the time spent in finding your way, can be a metaphor for life. The  photograph shows me walking the hedged labyrinth at the Aleksandre Chavchavadze House in Kaveli, Georgia. A labyrinth is a patterned design, usually printed on the ground or floor of a building. The difference between a maze and a labyrinth is that a maze is a complex design with a choice of paths and directions, whereas a labyrinth has a single, non-branching path which leads to a centre. Therefore a labyrinth is not designed to be difficult to navigate. In fact, a labyrinth has no dead ends. Originating in medieval times, there has been a resurgence of interest in them, and many video games depict mazes and labyrinths. Found all over the world, they are often constructed in theme parks and gardens for entertainment and to keep people occupied. Labyrinths are often used in hos...

The Mistress (2011) commences in Birmingham, England, in 2000 and concludes in 2112, a hundred years into the future. Unusual in its timeframe, with most of the action from 2000 to 2003, and twelve years later in 2015, its title belies the depth of the novel. Muriel Stent is a thirty-seven year old French and German translator working for Agenor PLC when she begins a relationship with a forty-one year old married pilot, Franz Hausler, a year after they first meet in England. Everyone knows about it: her work colleagues, his work colleagues, his family, and even her mother. Muriel justifies the relationship by saying that Franz is “in the process of separating.” The only one who doesn’t know is Franz’s wife, Rebecca, a laboratory researcher ten years older than her husband. From the first sentence, the reader knows that “this is the story of a man who left his mistress and went back to his wife.” What Muriel doesn’t know is that Rebecca has her own secret. A...

On April 7 an avalanche hit the remote, inhospitable Siachen Glacier in the northern Himalayan area of disputed Kashmir between India and Pakistan, with as many as 124 Pakistani soldiers and 11 civilians feared dead. The soldiers were believed to have been in the main building when the avalanche struck at six o’clock in the morning, burying them under 70 feet of snow. The glacier is 78 kilometres long amid the mountainous region near the city of Skardu. India controls the majority of the Siachen Glacier itself, including the Saltoro Ridge passes, whereas Pakistan controls the lower territory southwest of Saltoro Ridge. Avalanches in the Siachen region are relatively common. Soldiers based there are trained in avalanche survival and rescue. However, the massive avalanche is believed to have covered a large area in a location thought to be relatively safe. The rescue mission includes hundreds of soldiers, five military helicopters, search dogs, bulldozers, engineers, and medi...

The Canberra Times today posted an article in defence of Canberra, in response to decades of criticism as a city, and as a capital. Next year, in 2013, is the 100 th anniversary of Canberra’s establishment. The planning for its celebrations commenced years ago. Yesterday at the National Press Club, Robyn Archer, the creative director of the Centenary of Canberra, called for the media to reverse the constant negative references to Canberra in preparation for its birthday. More specifically, she called for the media to separate Canberra and its 360,000 residents from the federal government, the city of the nation’s parliament and politicians. She was referring to the comments of Canberra as an irritant, a bully, or even a “force of evil.” She said Canberrans have become apologetic about living in the capital. Part of the problem, Archer said, was that the criticism was generational. “This generation and older is still wondering whether there could h...