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Archive for July, 2009

Collar saves dog from 70ft cliff fall

Jul 31

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A dog has escaped certain death after his collar snagged on rocks when he fell from a 70ft cliff.dog

Golden Retriever Mac was chasing a rabbit along a coastal path on the Isle Of Wight when he plunged over the cliff edge.

Fortunately, to the relief of the canine’s owner Margaret Sills, Mac’s collar became caught on the cliff face, saving his life.

“If he hadn’t been wearing one he would have just free-fallen all the way and there’s no way he could have survived,” Sills, 65, told The Daily Telegraph.
chinadaily.com

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‘Landmark’ study suggests fishing stocks can rebound

Jul 31

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It shows catch quotas, ocean zoning, and different fishing gear is helping to restore fisheries and their ecosystems.

By Peter N. Spotts

Three years ago, a team of marine scientists looked at the global problem of overfishing and came to the grim conclusion that by 2048, populations of all the fish that people around the world eat will have collapsed.

Now, some of those same scientists have joined others to compile a new, more hopeful assessment: Overfishing remains a critical problem, but in some parts of the world, conservation efforts appear to be paying off.

The results suggest that broader use of a small kit of management tools could put global fisheries back on a path to sustainability.

“This is a watershed,” says marine ecologist Boris Worm, one of the lead scientists on the new study and leader of the team that came to the more-pessimistic conclusion in 2006. The new study “shows clearly what can be done not only to avoid further fisheries collapse but to actually rebuild fish stocks” and their ecosystems. Moreover, it represents a baseline scientists and managers can use to gauge progress, he says.
csmonitor.com

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97-year-old sinks hole-in-one A retired restaurant owner fulfills his lifelong dream of making a hole-in-one.

Jul 31

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Missing dog Muffy found after nine years

Jul 30

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Just like Lassie the adventurous collie dog, a scruffy pet named Muffy will finally return home after a nine-year, 2000km (1250 mile) odyssey down the east coast of Australia.

The terrier-cross (or “bitsa” as her type of cross-breed is more affectionately known) was last seen by her owners on the Gold Coast in Queensland in 2000 ago when she took off from a friend’s house one day and never came back.

The Lampard family had given her up for dead and even replaced her with a Rottweiler named Jack, who died of cancer four months ago.

Incredibly, earlier this month, Muffy was discovered in Melbourne, Victoria, by the RSPCA, who had been tipped off by a good Samaritan concerned about a sickly looking, flea-ridden dog living in decrepit surroundings in a suburban backyard.
Times Online

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White Roofs Catch on as Energy Cost Cutters

Jul 30

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By FELICITY BARRINGER

SAN FRANCISCO — Returning to their ranch-style house in Sacramento after a long summer workday, Jon and Kim Waldrep were routinely met by a wall of heat.30degrees2_395

“We’d come home in the summer, and the house would be 115 degrees, stifling,” said Mr. Waldrep, a regional manager for a national company.

He or his wife would race to the thermostat and turn on the air-conditioning as their four small children, just picked up from day care, awaited relief.

All that changed last month. “Now we come home on days when it’s over 100 degrees outside, and the house is at 80 degrees,” Mr. Waldrep said.

Their solution was a new roof: a shiny plasticized white covering that experts say is not only an energy saver but also a way to help cool the planet.
NY Times

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Pet cat catches the daily bus

Jul 30

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A pet cat has caught the same bus regularly for four years.

Casper, which is 12 years old, boards the No3 service at 10.55am from outside his home in Plymouth, Devon, and travels the entire 11-mile route before returning home about an hour later.PD*30349648

On the route, the cat passes an historic dockyard and naval base, a city centre, several suburbs and the city’s red light district.

He has been making the journey for so long that all First Bus drivers have now been told to look out for him to ensure he gets off at the right stop.

Susan Finden (corr), 65, a care worker who is Casper’s owner, said: “Casper has always disappeared for hours at a time but I never understood where he was going.

“I called him Casper because he had a habit of vanishing like a ghost. But then some of the drivers told me he had been catching the bus.
Telegraph

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Charities help dress women for success

Jul 29

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Nonprofits recognize the power of clothing in boosting women’s confidence

By Jessica Abramson
NBC News

When she opened her eyes in a hospital bed, Pansy Dones saw a man she had never seen before. As he held her hand, he said, “We’re survivors.”090723-dress-11a.hmedium

It was Sept. 11, 2001. Dones, an IT assistant who worked across the street from the World Trade Center towers, emerged from the Fulton Street subway station and knew immediately that something was wrong.

“It got dark. You heard things crumbling. You couldn’t see. Everybody was scrambling,” said Dones.
MSNBC

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EPA reconsiders lead-monitoring plans foiled by Bush White House

Jul 29

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By Brendan Borrell

The EPA announced this week that it was reconsidering plans to beef up its airborne lead monitoring network in response to a petition from environmental and health groups.

In May 2008, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency tightened limits on airborne lead by a factor of 10 and announced an expansion of its shrinking surveillance network to cover 259 power plants,ASARCO_Smelter smelters and other facilities emitting half a ton of lead per year. Such a monitoring program was deemed necessary to ensure that all communities meet the EPA’s stricter standards.

But less than two days before the final rule was to be announced on October 17, the White House Office of Management and Budget pressured EPA to reduce its plans to include only facilities that emitting a ton or more of lead per year.
Scientific American

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Blue M&M dye may mend broken backs

Jul 28

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The food dye that gives blue M&M’s their colour can help mend spinal injuries, researchers say.m&m

The compound Brilliant Blue G blocks a chemical that kills healthy spinal cord cells around the damaged area – an event that often causes more irreversible damage than the original injury.

BBG not only reduced the size of the lesion but also improved the recovery of motor skills, tests on rats showed.
Telegraph

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Yawn Detector Would Warn Sleepy Drivers

Jul 27

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By LiveScience Staff

Researchers are developing an in-car system to detect yawns and alert drivers before they nod off and kill somebody.

Aurobinda Mishra of Vanderbilt University and colleagues in India (Mihir Mohanty of ITER, in Orissa and Aurobinda Routray of IIT) describe a computer program that can tell when you are yawning and could prevent road traffic accidents, they say.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that at least 100,000 road crashes are caused by driver fatigue each year.
LiveScience

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