The Linnean Society of London is to publish a biological survey of the Yasuní National Park located in Ecuador’s Amazon basin. Studying an area of just two hectacres, a team of German scientists counted over a 100 different species. Most surprising was the find that ten different species of bats roosted in the zone. It is unclear how so many different species of bats coexist.

Unfortuntately, Yasuní is threatened by logging and oil and gas exploration.

My own personal fascination is with catepillars. I just think them amazing. In the first video, check out the one at the 1:10 mark and another at the 1:39 mark. Just amazing. In my native Colombia, I have seen so many amazing specimens. Frogs in Colombia are unbelieveable. The second video boasts a giant tree sloth that has to scurry for safety when its tree is felled by loggers.

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From the Associated Press, a report on the health of US reef systems:

From the Los Angeles Times:

Nearly one-third of the small animals that make up the most massive and elaborate structures in coral reefs face an elevated risk of extinction from global warming and various local problems, an international group of scientists reported Thursday.

The worldwide assessment of more than 700 species of corals showed that 32.8% were threatened with extinction, especially those that formed large mounds or intricate branches resembling antlers.

Coral reefs provide hiding places and a habitat for 25% of all marine life and are a major source of food for the poor and of tourist revenue in tropical countries.

Some of the threats are global, including elevated ocean temperatures that have stressed corals so much that they are “bleached” bone-white. A massive bleaching brought on by warmer waters in the 1998 El Niño resulted in a vast decline of the world’s reefs.

Corals also face excessive and destructive fishing and polluted runoff that buries them under sediment or bathes them in nutrients that fuel out-of-control growth of algae and bacteria.

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Today marks the sesquicentennial of the first public debate on the topic of evolution at the Linnean Society of London. It was an event planned in haste and set off by a letter received by Charles Darwin on 18 June 1858. The letter came from Ambon in the Ternate, a group of islands known as the Moluccas, between Sulawesi and Papua New Guinea. Writing to Darwin was a young English ornithologist named Alfred Russel Wallace who had been collecting specimens throughout the Malay Archipelago. Wallace would collect over 125,000 different specimens, over 80,000 of them beetles alone. Over a thousand of them were new to science. More importantly, Wallace noticed a distinction between the fauna of islands closer to the Asian mainland and those closer to Australia, the zoogeographical boundary now known as the Wallace line.

Recovering from a bout with malaria in 1858, Wallace took the time to write to Darwin about his observations.

The problem then was not only how and why do species change, but how and why do they change into new and well defined species, distinguished from each other in so many ways; why and how they become so exactly adapted to distinct modes of life; and why do all the intermediate grades die out (as geology shows they have died out) and leave only clearly defined and well marked species, genera, and higher groups of animals?

Darwin read Wallace’s maunscript with alarm for he had sat on his ideas (he had discussed them with others but had never set them to paper) on natural selection since his return on the Beagle in 1841. It is thus in the fortnight between 18 June and 1 July, 1858 that Darwin wrote a quick paper that together with the Wallace manuscript were presented to the Linnean Society of London.

For the next year and half, Darwin would write feverishly and in November 1859, The Origen of Species would be published. It is, without a doubt, the greatest book ever written.

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Collapse, if and when it comes again, will this time be global. No longer can any individual nation collapse. World civilization will disintegrate as a whole. Competitors who evolve as peers collapse in like manner.
– Joseph A. Tainter, The Collapse of Complex Societies, 1988

Are humans smarter than yeast? On one level, yes. We can manipulate our environment to some degree to our advantage. On another level, no. It won’t do us much good when we fall victim to a law of nature called “overshoot and collapse.”

In biological terms, overshoot and collapse is the tendency of any population to grow exponentially, at x per cent a year, until said population overshoots its resources (land, food and water) and then collapses. A few factors can keep a population in check, predation for example. We don’t have any. There’s no one keeping us in check. There aren’t enough great whites, burmese pythons or siberian tigers on the planet to make .001% dent in our numbers. Normal predation rates of say zebras by lions are more in order of 5% per year. That is out of a herd of 100 zebras, 5 will fall prey to lions in any given year. Lions are the primary predators for zebras but zebras have other secondary predators such as hyenas, crocodiles, leopards, wild dogs and cheetahs. Even a pyhton can take a colt now and then. Humans are not on any one’s lunch menu as a regular item. Blue plate special very now and again. So we are prone to overshoot and collapse tendencies. We have done it before and are headed that way again. Talk to any Anastazi lately? How about a Mayan? But those were localized collapses affecting human populations in a very small area. The next one will be global because the problem is now global.

Exponential growth rates tackle doubling of any factor. To determine how fast something will double, 70 divided by the rate of growth will provide the answer. For example, a country growing at 2% a year will double in size in 35 years — 70/2 = 35. A country growing at 7% (70/7 = 10) will double in ten years. I’ll point this out since I do not have any children and I am an evolutionary dead-end but the likelihood of a human overshoot and collapse by 2030 is approaching 100%. The current population growth rate is 1.14%. It doesn’t sound like much does it? Now do the math (70/1.14). 61 years. That means that in 2068, the population of the planet should hit 13 billion. It won’t becuse society should begin to collapse when another biological law kicks in — carrying capacity.

Carrying capacity is the supportable population of an organism, given the food, habitat, water and other necessities available within an ecosystem is known as the ecosystem’s carrying capacity for that organism. Most biologists and energy specialists put that number somewhere between eight and nine billion. Exceed carrying capacity and collapse ensues.

So it is important to look at our economic model in these terms. We are a sowing the seeds of our own destruction.

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The story begins at Harrod’s in London in 1969 in an odd tale of man and beast. Here’s the full story from the Daily Mail. The brief version is a young gay couple in London buy the lion, the cub becomes the mascot of the Sophistocat furniture shop in Chelsea, consumed £30 (1969 British sterling pounds) a week in food, and was beloved by all in Chelsea. A year of this and Christian is no longer a 35 pound cub but a young 185 pound male lion on his way to becoming a 600 pound plus behemoth. The situation was clearly untenable. At this point, the young gay couple approach lion expert and naturalist George Adamson of Born Free fame. This is the conclusion:

George Adamson and his wife Joy often talked about the mysterious, apparently telepathic communication skills of lions - particularly between lions and men.

Both believed that lions were possessed of a sixth sense and George was convinced that a scientific explanation would one day be found.

And here, it seemed, was the proof.

“Christian stared at us in a very intense way,” says Rendall. “I knew his expressions and I could see he was interested. We called him and he stood up and started to walk towards us very slowly.

“Then, as if he had become convinced it was us, he ran towards us, threw himself on to us, knocked us over, knocked George over and hugged us, like he used to, with his paws on our shoulders.

“Everyone was crying. We were crying, George was crying, even the lion was nearly crying.”

“The lionesses were far from pleased. There was a lot of growling and spitting,” continues Rendall.

“‘George said: ‘This isn’t safe - we’d better go.’ So we each put a hand on Christian’s back and he walked with us back to camp.”

The reunion party went on all night and into the morning. Leaving his exhausted companions to go to their beds, Christian returned to his pride.

“We watched him go back to the two lionesses, who were not at all happy with this man, smelling of nicotine, whisky and humans,” says Rendall.

“He just walloped the two of them with his paw, then collapsed.”

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Here is the Friday, June 27th, 2008 edition of interesting reads and events from around the world.

UN 2008 Report on the Narcotics Trade
The U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) published its annual report on the world’s narcotic trade. Most alarmingly, Afghan opium poppy cultivation grew 17% last year, continuing a six-year expansion of the country’s drug trade and increasing its share of global opium production to more than 92%, according to the report. Afghanistan also increased its marijuana production. Still, it is the opium poppy that is most worrisome as the Taliban use the profits from that trade to finance its insurgency. In Colombia, coca cultivation rose by 27% in 2007, though coca leaf and cocaine production were concentrated in just 10 of the country’s 195 municipalities again in areas tied to the FARC insurgency. More from Reuters.

“Flabbergasted” NASA Scientists
“Flabbergasted” NASA scientists said on Thursday that Martian soil appeared to contain the requirements to support life, although more work would be needed to prove it. The full report in Reuters.

Gazprom Pushing Natural Gas for Cars in Europe
Deutsche Welle reports that the Russian energy giant Gazprom wants to set up a network of service stations across Europe for cars fuelled by natural gas. Gazprom controls a quarter of the world’s gas reserves.

North Korea Destroys Its Cooling Tower at Its Main Atomic Reactor
North Korea destroyed the most visible symbol of its nuclear weapons program Friday, blasting apart the cooling tower at its main atomic reactor in a sign of its commitment to stop making plutonium for atomic bombs. More on this story from the Associated Press:

Thai PM Sunaravej Survives No Confidence Vote
Thailand’s prime minister and seven of his Cabinet ministers held off a parliamentary challenge Friday as street protesters demanded the coalition government’s resignation. The BBC has the full report.

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Cross-posted from The Global Sociology Blog. My post, my topic choice, my snark!

Via the UK Guardian:

“Cuba has approved what is believed to be the world’s first registered lung cancer vaccine and is offering it to Cuban and foreign patients in its hospitals.

The therapeutic vaccine CimaVax EGF extends life with few side effects, and is another step in Cuba’s expertise in biotechnology. It was unveiled on Monday at Havana’s centre of molecular immunology.

It has been shown to boost survival rates by an average of four to five months, and in some cases much longer. It does not prevent lung cancer. Unlike chemotherapy, CimaVax EGF is said to have few side effects because it is a modified protein which attacks only cancer cells.

“It’s the first such vaccine registered in the world,” said Gisela González, who headed the project begun in 1992. The drug is in various clinical trials, some in Canada and Britain, and is expected to be approved next in Peru.

Several companies had been licensed to market the vaccine, but it will be made in Cuba, said González. It has been approved for trial in the United States but use there is at least two years away, she added.”

The cost of the treatment has not been set yet.

Cuba’s self-reliance is borne of Fidel Castro’s early admonishment that:

“The future of our homeland must be that of men of science.”

and of the necessity of brought on by a crippling US embargo that imperils the heatlh and well-being of ordinary Cubans has led to creation of one of the world’s most vibrant and socially progressive bio-technology sector. Unable to import some of the medicines it needed, Cuba began making its own generic drugs through reverse engineering. From there sprang a state pharmaceutical industry and later, a biotechnology offshoot. Cuba now produces over 80% of the types of drugs and medicines used by its 11 million people.

The Cuban healthcare strategy is rather straightforward. The government develops the drugs and vaccines according to the demands of Cubans. It then tests them and dispenses them across the population through a network of neighborhood family doctors, polyclinics, and hospitals. However, successful development does not always ensure an adequate supply.

Beginning in 1992, Cuba committed itself to investing 1.5% of GDP annually into scientific research. A total of $1 billion between 1992 and 1996 went toward creating a no-frills, centralized version of Silicon Valley, the Western Havana Scientific Pole. A remarkable investment for a country in the midst of an energy crisis, a food crisis (the average Cuban lost 20 lbs between 1992 and 1998), and a general economic collapse.

At the Western Havana Scientific Pole, scientists at 52 institutes are researching vaccines and therapies for AIDS and Alzheimer’s, among others. There are some cooperation agreements - for product sales, joint ventures, contract manufacture and research - with entities in Latin America, China, Europe, the former Soviet Union, and Australia. Cuba has over filed applications for 500 patents around the world. And while the US has granted Cuba 24 patents, the embargo has so far prevented Cuba from selling any of the products in the United States. Now it seems the embargo not just takes Cuban lives but American ones as well.

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It’s the Summer Solstice in the Northern Hemisphere and the Winter Solstice in the Southern Hemisphere (we don’t discriminate on the basis of hemisphere here). Those in southern climes can take solace in that the days will start to get progressively longer. Male emperor penguins can take solace that their mates are heading back with bellies full for the soon to hatch chicks. Here in the Northern Hemisphere, it is a day for major celebrations especially in northern Europe.

The exact date of each solstice changes by a few days each year - this is largely a consequence of our calendar system where we count years of 365 or 366 days, but the Earth takes 365.256 days (the sidereal period) to complete one orbit of the Sun. The exact orbital and daily rotational motion of the Earth, such as the ‘wobble’ in the Earth’s axis (precession), also contributes to the changing solstice dates.

The solstices occur because the rotation axis of the Earth is tilted by an angle of 23.5 degrees from the vertical. If the Earth’s rotation was at right angles to the plane of its orbit around the Sun, there were be no solstice days and no seasons. Around 21 June, the Sun is at its most northerly declination (+23.5 degrees). This corresponds to the northern summer solstice and marks the longest day of the year for northern hemisphere observers. In contrast, this is the date of the southern winter solstice and marks the shortest day of the year for southern hemisphere observers. Six months later, the Sun is at its most southerly declination (-23.5 degrees) and the solstices are reversed in each hemisphere.

The exact time of the soltice varies each year as well. In 2008, the soltice occurs on June 21, at 00:00 UT. Universal time (UT) is simply the number of hours, minutes, and seconds which have elapsed since midnight (when the Sun is at a longitude of 180°) in the Greenwich time zone. In 2009, the soltice will occur at 05:47 UT June 21, 2009.

Here’s a QuickTime Movie showing the Earth’s wobble through one year.

And from the Los Angeles Times, a look at solstice celebrations around the world.

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Cross-posted from The Global Sociology Blog.

Ha! I knew it! But now, I have the science to support it! Via Lifescience.com,

“Evolutionary biologists claim that sociality is what has made humans such a successful species. We are masters at what anthropologists and others call “social intelligence.” We recognize and keep track of hundreds of relationships, and we easily distinguish between enemies and friends.

More important, we run our lives by social calculation. A favor is mentally recorded and paid back, sometimes many years later. Likewise, insults are marked down on the mental score card in indelible ink. And we are constantly bickering and making up, even with people we love.

Sarcasm, then, is a verbal hammer that connects people in both a negative and positive way. We know that sense of humor is important to relationships; if someone doesn’t get your jokes, they aren’t likely to be your friend (or at least that’s my bottom line about friendship). Sarcasm is simply humor’s dark side, and it would be just as disconcerting if a friend didn’t get your snide remarks.

It’s also easy to imagine how sarcasm might be selected over time as evolutionarily crucial. Imagine two ancient humans running across the savannah with a hungry lion in pursuit. One guy says to the other, “Are we having fun yet?” and the other just looks blank and stops to figure out what in the world his pal meant by that remark. End of friendship, end of one guy’s contribution to the future of the human gene pool.”

So it’s more about the people who “get it”, who might then become part of one’s in-group versus the people who don’t, those who remain outside, the out-group. The stronger one’s in-group, of course, the stronger the evolutionary advantage as one can activate these links for survival.

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From Agence France Presse

“Jellyfish are an excellent bellwether for the environment,” explains Jacqueline Goy, of the Oceanographic Institute of Paris. “The more jellyfish, the stronger the signal that something has changed.”

As a scuba diver, the health of the world’s oceans is of paramount importance to me. No doubt, we should all care about the health of our oceans for they nourish us and sustain the equilibrium of the world’s climate. And it is increasingly clear that we are impacting them beyond the human capacity for repairing them.

Two centuries worth of data shows that jellyfish populations naturally swell every 12 years, remain stable four or six years, and then subside.

2008, however, will be the eighth consecutive year that medusae, as they are also known, will be present in massive numbers.

The over-exploitation of ocean resources by man has helped create a near-perfect environment in which these most primitive of ocean creatures can multiply unchecked, scientists say.

“When vertebrates, such as fish, disappear, then invertebrates — especially jellyfish — appear,” says Aguilar.

The collapse of fish populations boost this process in two important ways, he added. When predators such as tuna, sharks, and turtles vanish, not only do fewer jellyfish get eaten, they have less competition for food.

For more on the world’s oceans, please visit: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Cousteau Society.

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