Birds Die At State Building Because Of Mother Nature
NBC-kxan.com
5 Mar 2007
Area: Texas, USA
More than 50 birds were found in the courtyard at the Texas Department of Aging and Disability building. Employees were notified immediately, and the area was blocked for about two hours while the Austin Fire Department's HazMat Team and Animal Control checked the courtyard to make sure there wasn't a public health threat and to remove the dead birds.
After investigating, Texas Parks and Wildlife officials said it's just Mother Nature at work. "It's not uncommon for cedar wax wings to gorge on a brush and other kinds of fruit-bearing bushes," said Tom Harvey with the parks and wildlife department. "If they do that, they develop a natural toxicity, like block alcohol poisoning."
Push for Open Access to Research
BBC News
28 Feb 2007
Internet law professor Michael Geist takes a look at a fundamental shift in the way research journals become available to the public.
Last month five leading European research institutions launched a petition that called on the European Commission to establish a new policy that would require all government-funded research to be made available to the public shortly after publication. That requirement - called an open access principle - would leverage widespread internet connectivity with low-cost electronic publication to create a freely available virtual scientific library available to the entire globe. Despite scant media attention, word of the petition spread quickly throughout the scientific and research communities. Within weeks, it garnered more than 20,000 signatures, including several Nobel prize winners and 750 education, research, and cultural organisations from around the world.
In response, the European Commission committed more than $100m (£51m) towards facilitating greater open access through support for open access journals and for the building of the infrastructure needed to house institutional repositories that can store the millions of academic articles written each year. The European developments demonstrate the growing global demand for open access, a trend that is forcing researchers, publishers, universities, and funding agencies to reconsider their role in the creation and dissemination of knowledge. For years, the research model has remained relatively static. In many countries, government funding agencies in the sciences, social sciences, and health sciences dole out hundreds of millions of dollars each year to support research at national universities.
Chronic Wasting Disease Plan under Development
SOPnewswire
05 Mar 2007
Area: Virginia, USA
The National Park Service is developing a plan and environmental assessment to respond to the potential threat of chronic wasting disease (CWD) to white-tailed deer. The purpose of the plan is to develop a range of strategies for the detection of and initial response to chronic wasting disease in white-tailed deer in Shenandoah, since the disease has been detected near the park and may threaten park resources (CWD has not been detected in Shenandoah National Park or in Virginia, but has appeared in West Virginia within a 60 mile radius of several national parks). The plan will also serve as a template environmental planning document for other National Park Service units in the eastern United States. CWD is in the family of diseases known as the transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSE) or prion diseases.
It is a self-propagating neurological disease that affects captive and free-ranging deer, causing brain lesions that result in progressive weight loss, behavioral changes, and eventually death in affected animals. There is currently no evidence that the disease is transmissible to humans or domestic livestock. Presenting at the meeting will be the park superintendent and personnel from the NPS Environmental Quality and Biological Resource Management Divisions. After the presentations, the open house format will include a series of stations and posters for the public to view and read more about the planning process and chronic wasting disease.
Related Articles
Threats to Coral Include Warmer Water, PollutionSt. Petersburg Times
5 Mar 2007
C Krueger
Photo courtesy of St. Petersburg Times
Two species of coral are considered threatened as the vital organisms face more danger than ever.
Walter C. Jaap, a St. Petersburg marine ecologist, vividly recalls the reefs off the Florida Keys he saw during research dives in the 1970s: Thousands of chocolate brown and golden corals teeming with fish. Snapper, goatfish and grunts darting into thickets of the darker colored elkhorn coral to escape predators like barracudas. Other fish finding refuge by swimming into the golden staghorns.
These gardens of coral covered 40 to 50 percent of the reefs that Jaap and fellow scientists visited. But when he returned to monitor them from 1996 to 2005, the coral cover had dropped to 7.2 percent. "It's pretty barren," said Jaap, now a consultant after retiring from the state Fish and Wildlife Research Institute. Last year the National Marine Fisheries Service declared elkhorn and staghorn coral to be threatened species. They were the first corals to be listed in such danger.
Countering Multi-Billion Dollar Illegal Wildlife Trade Focus of Government-Backed Global Coalition
U.S. Department of State - Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs
10 Feb 2007
Measures Include Combating Poaching, Training of Customs Officers to Consumer Awareness
A new global initiative to fight the US$10 billion illegal trade in wildlife was launched today on the international stage. The Coalition Against Wildlife Trafficking (CAWT) aims to counter the poachers, smugglers and dealers whose activities threaten the very existence of many endangered animals. The Coalition -- an alliance of governments, conservation groups, industry and scientists - plans to boost wildlife enforcement, reduce consumer demand for illegally traded wildlife and catalyze high-level political support to end the illegal trade. Claudia McMurray, Assistant Secretary at the United States Department of State, said at the launch in Nairobi, Kenya: "Wildlife is a precious resource to people of all countries.
It is also an important asset in many developing countries generating income through activities such as tourism". "In Kenya, where we are making this announcement, the country earns around US$700 million a year in tourism revenues much of which is focused on preservation of wildlife and its habitat," she added. "Kenya has developed a good system of anti-poaching and enforcement of wildlife-related laws and treaties. But there are many developing countries that urgently need assistance to counter the threats - threats that are undermining the international target to reduce the rate of biodiversity loss by 2010 agreed at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in 2002," said Ms. McMurray.
Public Engagement Key to Animal Health Research
Science (Posted by scidev.net)
02 Mar 2007
Epidemics are no longer really localised; global travel leaves people and animals everywhere at risk whenever uncontrolled infectious diseases strike a region. The problem is exacerbated by the daunting gap between advanced technology for detecting outbreaks and the capability of developing countries to apply this data to effective action and policy. The key is better public engagement, says Jakob Zinsstag in this Science editorial. A recent (24–26 January) animal health conference in Hinxton, United Kingdom, indicated that public involvement improves the interaction between international scientists and local and national authorities, making for far more effective disease control measures.
Journal Article(s) of Interest
Highly Pathogenic H5N1 Avian Influenza: Entry Pathways into North America via Bird Migration [free full-text only]
PLoS One. 2007 Feb 28;2(2): e261 [Epub ahead of print]
A Peterson et al.
The Spread of Prions through the Body in Naturally Acquired Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathies [online abstract only]
The FEBS Journal. 2007 Feb;274(3):588-605.
M Beekes and P McBride
No comments:
Post a Comment