David Newbold Appointed CFO at Greystar Resources

July 7, 2010 By Leave a Comment

VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA, Jul 06 (MARKET WIRE) —
Greystar Resources Ltd. (the “Company”) (TSX: GSL)(AIM: GSL) is
pleased to announce the appointment of David Newbold as Chief Financial
Officer (CFO) of the Company effective August, 2010. David, a citizen of
the United Kingdom, has Canadian permanent resident status but will serve
as an international consultant to the Company until pre-employment
clearances are received. Newbold will relocate in August to Vancouver,
British Columbia and assume the role of CFO.

David is a UK chartered accountant with over 36 years of international
experience in mining and finance. He holds a B.Sc. in Mathematics from
the University of East Anglia, United Kingdom. David spent eleven years
(1995-2006) at Placer Dome Inc. where he held positions of increasing
responsibility including Senior Vice President, Commercial; Senior Vice
President Strategy, Placer Dome America; President & CEO, Zaldivar Copper
Mine; and Senior Vice President and CFO, Placer Dome Latin America. Prior
to Placer Dome David spent several years at Outokumpu holding various
finance positions. David most recently was a consultant to companies
assisting them with their overseas business development and mining
investment opportunities.

Steve Kesler, President and CEO of Greystar commented, “We are
delighted to have David join Greystar. David’s experience in the finance
and development of large scale mining projects, particularly in Latin
America, will immediately strengthen the Greystar management team. David
will lead the effort to secure the finance for the Angostura gold and
silver project.”

Greystar also announces that Geoff Chater has stepped down as
Vice-President Corporate Development to return to his consulting
business. Mr. Chater will continue to support the Company as a consultant
and will work closely with Steve Kesler, on current and future
initiatives.

Steve Kesler commented, “Geoff has done a tremendous job for
Greystar initially as a director and consultant and then taking on an
executive position to develop the Company’s relationship with investors.
We look forward to continuing to benefit from his consulting services and
wish him every success in developing his business.”

About Greystar Resources Ltd.

Greystar Resources Ltd. is a precious metals exploration and development
company that is currently completing a feasibility study on its wholly
owned, multi-million ounce Angostura gold-silver deposit in northeastern
Colombia. A positive prefeasibility study announced on March 25, 2009
envisions average annual production at Angostura of 511,000 ounces of
gold and 2.3 million ounces of silver over a 15 year mine life.

Forward-Looking Statements

Certain statements in this news release are “forward-looking”
within the meaning of Canadian securities legislation. They include
statements about the estimated annual production from the Angostura
Project.. Forward-looking statements are necessarily based upon a number
of estimates and assumptions that, while considered reasonable by the
Company, are inherently subject to significant business, economic,
competitive, political and social uncertainties and other contingencies.
Many factors could cause the Company’s actual results to differ
materially from those expressed or implied in the forward-looking
statements. These factors include, among others, conclusions or
realization of mineral resources, the actual results of exploration
activities, possible variations in ore grade or recovery rates,
fluctuations in the price of gold and silver, risks relating to
additional funding requirements, political and foreign risks, production
risks, environmental regulation and liability, government regulation as
well as other risk factors set out under the heading “Risk
Factors” in the Annual Information Form dated March 26, 2010 which
is available on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. Investors are cautioned not to
put undue reliance on forward-looking statements due to the inherent
uncertainty therein.

Neither the Toronto Stock Exchange nor the AIM Market of the London Stock
Exchange has reviewed and neither accepts responsibility for the adequacy
or accuracy of this news release.

Contacts:
Greystar Resources
Geoff Chater
(604) 614-7830
info@greystarresources.com
www.greystarresources.com

Renmark Financial Communications Inc.
John Boidman
Investor Relations Contact
(514) 939-3989 or (416) 644-2020
jboidman@renmarkfinancial.com

Renmark Financial Communications Inc.
Dan Symons
Investor Relations Contact
(514) 939-3989 or (416) 644-2020
dsymons@renmarkfinancial.com
www.renmarkfinancial.com

NCB Stockbrokers Limited
Christopher Caldwell
London NOMAD Contact
+44 (0) 20 7071 5200
christopher.caldwell@ncb.ie

Copyright 2010, Market Wire, All rights reserved.

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Regular aspirin use raises risk of Crohn”s disease by 5 times

May 4, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Washington, May 4 (ANI): People who take aspirin regularly for a year or more could be increasing their risk of developing Crohn”s disease, says a new study.

The study by University of East Anglia (UEA) will be presented for the first time at the Digestive Disease Week conference in New Orleans.

Crohn”s disease is characterized by inflammation and swelling of any part of the digestive system. This can lead to debilitating symptoms and requires patients to take life-long medication. Some patients need surgery and some sufferers have an increased risk of bowel cancer.

Though there are likely to be many causes of the disease, previous work on tissue samples has shown that aspirin can have a harmful effect on the bowel.

To investigate this potential link further, the UEA team followed 200,000 volunteers aged 30-74 in the UK, Sweden, Denmark, Germany and Italy. The volunteers had been recruited for the EPIC study (European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition) between 1993 and 1997.

The volunteers were all initially well, but by 2004 a small number had developed Crohn”s disease. When looking for differences in aspirin use between those who did and did not develop the disease, the researchers discovered that those taking aspirin regularly for a year or more were around five times more likely to develop Crohn”s disease.

The study also showed that aspirin use had no effect on the risk of developing ulcerative colitis – a condition similar to Crohn”s disease.

“This is early work but our findings do suggest that the regular use of aspirin could be one of many factors which influences the development of this distressing disease in some patients,” said lead researcher Dr Andrew Hart of UEA”s School of Medicine.

“Aspirin does have many beneficial effects, however, including helping to prevent heart attacks and strokes. I would urge aspirin users to continue taking this medication since the risk of aspirin users possibly developing Crohn”s disease remains very low – only one in every 2000 users, and the link is not yet finally proved.” (ANI)

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Documentary films violate animals” right to privacy

April 30, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Washington, April 30 (ANI): Wildlife documentary filmmakers may be denying animals their right to privacy, claims a new research.

Dr Brett Mills from the University of East Anglia in his study ”Television wildlife documentaries and animals” right to privacy” analyses the ”making of” documentaries that accompanied the BBC wildlife series Nature”s Great Events (2009).

Mills, a senior lecturer in the School of Film and Television Studies, said: “The aim of the research is to encourage debate, especially within the contemporary environmental context where it is now commonplace for us to question the impact of human movement and behaviour around the globe.

“In addition, though, perhaps there is an argument for some species, in some circumstances, not to be filmed. At the moment it seems that such arguments are never put forward.”

He added: “This is an important debate for two reasons. Firstly, wildlife documentaries are usually seen as important pieces of public service broadcasting, and it”s therefore worth us thinking about the ethical contexts within which such productions exist.

“Secondly, such documentaries are the key way in which many people ”encounter” a range of species from all over the globe, and so they therefore contribute to how we think about other species and human/animal interactions. By exploring what wildlife documentaries do, and how they do it, I hope to contribute to environmental debates at a time when the global effects of human behaviour are rightly under scrutiny.”

He claims the use of sophisticated aerial technology to film animals, for example, is justified because it does not disturb them, yet the question of whether it is appropriate to film animals in this way is not raised.

Mills added: “It might at first seem odd to claim that animals might have a right to privacy. Privacy, as it is commonly understood, is a culturally human concept. The key idea is to think about animals in terms of the public/private distinction. We can never really know if animals are giving consent, but they often do engage in forms of behaviour which suggest they”d rather not encounter humans, and we might want to think about equating this with a desire for privacy.

“When confronted with such ”secretive” behaviour the response of the wildlife documentary is to read it as a challenge to be overcome with the technologies of television. The question constantly posed by wildlife documentaries is how animals should be filmed: they never ask whether animals should be filmed at all.

“Human notions of privacy which rest on ideas of location or activity are ignored in terms of animals. It doesn”t matter what an animal does, or where it does it, it will be deemed fair game for the documentary.”

Distinctions between the public and private are enshrined within broadcasting regulations, with privacy placed within ethical categories of human rights. Central to broadcasters” relationship with its public is that in order to be filmed, the public must first offer their consent. If they don”t, broadcasters must not infringe privacy unless there is a pressing justification to do so.

Mills concluded: “While never made explicit, such regulations assume that such ethics are applicable to humans only. The ethical standards applying to wildlife programmes are predominately predicated on ensuring that ”audiences should never be deceived or misled by what they see or hear”, that is the ”contract with the viewer” is prioritised over the rights of the animals. In doing so, an assumption is made here about the differences between humans and animals, which have been at the heart of debates over animal rights and the ethical treatment of animals for millennia.

“The environmental and educational aspects of wildlife documentaries are assumed to trump ethical concerns about animals” privacy. It is an impressive piece of ethical manipulation, whereby privacy, so enshrined within the concepts of rights for humans, becomes merely a ”realm” which documentary makers can enter, justifying their actions as ones for the benefit of the very species whose rights are being moralised away.”

The study has been published in the current issue of Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies. (ANI)

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Humans are too stupid to prevent climate change, says scientist

March 30, 2010 By Leave a Comment

London, March 30 (ANI): James Lovelock, a globally respected environmental thinker and independent scientist, has said that humans are too stupid to prevent climate change.

According to a report in The Guardian, Lovelock said that humans are too stupid to prevent climate change from radically impacting on our lives over the coming decades.

This statement follows a tumultuous few months in which public opinion on efforts to tackle climate change has been undermined by events such as the climate scientists’ emails leaked from the University of East Anglia (UEA) and the failure of the Copenhagen climate summit.

“I don’t think we’re yet evolved to the point where we’re clever enough to handle a complex a situation as climate change,” said Lovelock in his first in-depth interview since the theft of the UEA emails last November.

“The inertia of humans is so huge that you can’t really do anything meaningful,” he said.

One of the main obstructions to meaningful action is “modern democracy”, he added.

“Even the best democracies agree that when a major war approaches, democracy must be put on hold for the time being. I have a feeling that climate change may be an issue as severe as a war. It may be necessary to put democracy on hold for a while,” he said.

Lovelock believes that the world’s best hope is to invest in adaptation measures, such as building sea defences around the cities that are most vulnerable to sea-level rises.

He thinks only a catastrophic event would now persuade humanity to take the threat of climate change seriously enough, such as the collapse of a giant glacier in Antarctica, such as the Pine Island glacier, which would immediately push up sea level.

“That would be the sort of event that would change public opinion,” he said.

“Or a return of the dust bowl in the mid-west. Another Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report won’t be enough. We’ll just argue over it like now,” he added.

Lovelock, who 40 years ago originated the idea that the planet is a giant, self-regulating organism – the so-called Gaia theory, added that he has little sympathy for the climate scientists caught up in the UEA email scandal.

He said he had not read the original emails.

“I felt reluctant to pry”, but that their reported content had left him feeling “utterly disgusted,” he said.

“Fudging the data in any way whatsoever is quite literally a sin against the holy ghost of science,” he added. (ANI)

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Former oil boss to lead inquiry into ‘climategate’ scandal

March 23, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Washington, March 23 (ANI): In an ironical turn of events, a former oil boss will lead the latest inquiry into the ‘climategate’ scandal over the science of man made global warming.

According to a report in the Telegraph, Lord Oxburgh, former non-executive chairman of Shell, will head up a team of leading scientists looking at claims that fossil fuels cause global temperatures to rise.

The new inquiry will look into the mountains of research by the University of East Anglia”s Climatic Research Unit (CRU).

The university is the leading institution for climate change research and has influenced government policy around the world.

But the theft of thousands of emails cast doubt on the science in a scandal known as ‘climategate’.

Skeptics claim that the emails show scientists were wiling to manipulate the data to show global warming.

Already, there are various ongoing inquiries into the behaviour of the scientists involved and legal implications.

But Lord Oxburgh is leading the first inquiry to look at the science being discussed in the emails.

Lord Oxburgh trained as a geologist and has been chief scientific adviser for the Ministry of Defence and Rector of Imperial College and chairman of the Lords Select Committee on Science and Technology.

Climate skeptics questioned whether Lord Oxburgh, chairman of the Carbon Capture and Storage Association and the wind energy company Falck Renewables, was truly independent because he led organisations that depended on climate change being seen as an urgent problem.

Andrew Montford, a climate-change skeptic who writes the widely-read Bishop Hill blog, said that Lord Oxburgh had a “direct financial interest in the outcome” of his inquiry.

Lord Oxburgh has said that he believes the need to tackle climate change will make capturing carbon from power plants “a worldwide industry of the same scale as the international oil industry today”.

The university appointed Lord Oxburgh, a geologist and former chairman of the Lords Select Committee on Science and Technology, after consulting the Royal Society, of which he is a fellow.

Professor Trevor Davies, the university’s pro-vice-chancellor for research, said that the university had been aware of Lord Oxburgh’s business interests but believed that he would lead the panel of six scientists “in an utterly objective way”.

“The shadow hanging over climate change and science more generally at present makes it a matter of urgency that we get on with this assessment. We will undertake this work and report as soon as possible,” Lord Oxburgh said. (ANI)

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Computers now better at lip-reading than humans

September 10, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Washington, Sept 10 (ANI): A new study has revealed that computers are better at lip-reading than humans – a finding that could lead to novel methods of lip-reading training for the deaf and hard of hearing.

The research team from University of East Anglia compared the performance of a machine-based lip-reading system with that of 19 human lip-readers.

They found that the automated system significantly outperformed the human lip-readers – scoring a recognition rate of 80 per cent, compared with only 32 per cent for human viewers on the same task.

Unlike the traditional approach to lip-reading training, where viewers are taught to spot key lip-shapes from static (often drawn) images, the new video-based training system significantly improved their ability to lip-read monosyllabic words.

“This pilot study is the first time an automated lip-reading system has been benchmarked against human lip-readers and the results are perhaps surprising,” said the study’s lead author Sarah Hilder.

“With just four hours of training it helped them improve their lip-reading skills markedly.

“We hope this research will represent a real technological advance for the deaf community,” she added.

“This research confirms how difficult the vital skill of lip-reading is to learn,” said Agnes Hoctor, campaigns manager at the RNID.

“We would welcome the development of video-based or online training resources to supplement the teaching of lip-reading.

“Hearing loss affects 55 per cent of people over 60 so, with the ageing population, demand to learn lip-reading is only going to increase,” Hoctor added.

The findings were presented at the eighth International Conference on Auditory-Visual Speech Processing. (ANI)

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Man-made volcanoes may cool Earth by reflecting sunlight back into space

August 30, 2009 By Leave a Comment

London, August 30 (ANI): The Royal Society in London seems to be convinced that man-made volcanoes can help stave off climate change, as it is backing research into simulated volcanic eruptions that will spray millions of tons of dust into the air to cool the Earth.

This week, the society will call for a global programme of studies into geo-engineering, which can help devise new ways to manipulate the planet’s climate to counteract global warming.

It believes that pouring sulphur-based particles into the upper atmosphere may help keep the planet cool.

Ken Caldeira, an earth scientist at Stanford University, California, and a member of a Royal Society working group on geo-engineering, said that dust sprayed into the stratosphere in volcanic eruptions could cool the Earth by reflecting light back into space.

“If I had a dollar for geo-engineering research I would put 90 cents of it into stratospheric aerosols and 10 cents into everything else,” Times Online quoted Caldeira as saying.

The intervention by the Royal Society comes amid tension ahead of the United Nations-sponsored climate talks in Copenhagen in December to agree global cuts in carbon dioxide emissions.

The Royal Society’s decision to take geo-engineering seriously is a measure of the desperation felt by scientists about climate change.

Brian Launder, a professor at Manchester University, who is also on the working group, recently said that without CO2 reductions or geo-engineering “civilisation as we know it will end within our grandchildren’s lifetime”.

“The only rational scheme is to reduce the sunlight reaching Earth and to reflect back more of it,” he said.

The society’s report is expected to draw partly on research by Tim Lenton, professor of earth sciences at the University of East Anglia, who has just completed the first big comparison of different forms of geo-engineering.

“We estimate that 1.5-5m tons of sulphate particles could be released (artificially) into the stratosphere each year on a recurring basis. This is quite a small amount, which makes it potentially economically viable, but it could reduce global temperature rise by up to 2C,” said Lenton. (ANI)

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Scientists find Salmonella’s weakness

May 25, 2009 By Leave a Comment

London, May 25 (IANS) Scientists seem to have found the achilles heel of a food poisoning pathogen like salmonella – its weakness for glucose. This discovery could provide a new way to vaccinate against Salmonella, or lead to vaccine strains to protect against other disease-causing bacteria, including superbugs.

“This is the first time that anyone has identified the nutrients that sustain Salmonella while it is infecting a host’s body,” said Arthur Thompson from the Institute of Food Research in Britain.

The nutrition of bacteria during infection is an emerging science. This is one of the first major breakthroughs, achieved in collaboration with Gary Rowley at the University of East Anglia.

Salmonella bug infects around 20 million people worldwide every year, of whom about 200,000 die annually. It also infects farm animals and salad vegetables.

During infection, Salmonella bacteria are engulfed by immune cells designed to kill them. But instead, the bacteria multiply. The bacteria must acquire nutrients to replicate and thus, the scientists focused on glycolysis, the process by which sugars are broken down to create chemical energy.

They constructed Salmonella mutants unable to transport glucose into the immune cells they occupy and unable to use glucose as food. These mutant strains lost their ability to replicate within immune cells, rendering them harmless

“Our experiments showed that glucose is the major sugar used by Salmonella during infection,” said Thompson.

The mutant strains still stimulate the immune system, and the scientists have filed patents on them which could be used to develop vaccines to protect people and animals against poisoning by fully virulent salmonella, said an East Anglia release.

The next stage of the research will be to test whether the mutants elicit a protective immune response in mice.

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Now, lip-reading computer to interpret different languages

May 2, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Washington, Apr 30 (ANI): In a breakthrough study, researchers from University of East Anglia (UEA) have developed a novel computer, which can distinguish between different languages.

The researchers hope that the discovery could have practical uses for deaf people, for law enforcement agencies, and in noisy environments.

Lead researchers Stephen Cox and Jake Newman of UEA’s School of Computing Sciences developed the novel system by statistical modelling of the lip motions made by a group of 23 bilingual and trilingual speakers.

The study showed that the computer was able to identify which language was spoken by an individual speaker with very high accuracy.

These languages included English, French, German, Arabic, Mandarin, Cantonese, Italian, Polish and Russian.

“This is an exciting advance in automatic lip-reading technology and the first scientific confirmation of something we already intuitively suspected -that when people speak different languages, they use different mouth shapes in different sequences,” said Prof Cox.

“For example, we found frequent ‘lip-rounding’ among French speakers and more prominent tongue movements among Arabic speakers,” he added.

The researchers would be conducting further studies to make the system more robust to an individual’s physiology and his or her way of speaking. (ANI)

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Now, lip-reading computer to interpret different languages

April 22, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Washington, Apr 22 (ANI): In a breakthrough study, researchers from University of East Anglia (UEA) have developed a novel computer, which can distinguish between different languages.

The researchers hope that the discovery could have practical uses for deaf people, for law enforcement agencies, and in noisy environments.

Lead researchers Stephen Cox and Jake Newman of UEA’s School of Computing Sciences developed the novel system by statistical modelling of the lip motions made by a group of 23 bilingual and trilingual speakers.

The study showed that the computer was able to identify which language was spoken by an individual speaker with very high accuracy.

These languages included English, French, German, Arabic, Mandarin, Cantonese, Italian, Polish and Russian.

“This is an exciting advance in automatic lip-reading technology and the first scientific confirmation of something we already intuitively suspected -that when people speak different languages, they use different mouth shapes in different sequences,” said Prof Cox.

“For example, we found frequent ‘lip-rounding’ among French speakers and more prominent tongue movements among Arabic speakers,” he added.

The researchers would be conducting further studies to make the system more robust to an individual’s physiology and his or her way of speaking. (ANI)

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African lark may soon become extinct

April 16, 2009 By Leave a Comment

London, April 16 (ANI): A recent survey has found that just a few hundred of the African larks survive in Ethiopia, which indicates that the endangered bird might soon become extinct.

According to a report by BBC News, if and when it happens, it may be the first recorded bird extinction on the African continent, and it would not be the last.

“This imminent extinction reflects a wider social and political crisis that is repeated throughout Africa,” said zoologist Claire Spottiswoode of the University of Cambridge, who led a survey of the bird’s habitat and published her findings in the journal Animal Conservation.

The Sidamo lark (Heteromirafra sidamoensis) is an enigmatic species, and one of the most ancient types of lark known anywhere.

The birds inhabit a very small pocket of grassland within the Liben Plain of southern Ethiopia. Discovered by scientists in 1968, the bird was only seen once in the following 25 years.

“If we lose this species then we lose an important ancestral link in the evolution of the entire radiation of lark species,” said Dr Spottiswoode.

Dr Spottiswoode surveyed the Liben Plain with colleagues from the Ethiopian Wildlife and Natural History Society, Birdlife International and the University of East Anglia.

They found that the Sidamo lark lives within a single patch of grassland of just 35 square kilometres.
Bush encroachment and agriculture has damaged the lark’s unique habitat.

That compares to a range of 760 square kilometers estimated by Birdlife International just last year, though that was a rough guess based on the best information available at the time.

“The Liben Plain has recently much diminished in size owing to bush encroachment and crop planting. Much of the remaining grassland is too degraded for the species to exist in it,” said Dr Spottiswoode.

Worse, the survey revealed that a maximum of 358 Sidamo Larks remain.

More likely, between 90 and 250 of the birds survive. “Even the lower value might be optimistic,” according to the authors of the study.

They have recommended to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) that it upgrades to the bird’s status to “critically endangered”.

To save the bird from imminent extinction, conservationists have recommended the creation of small plots in which cattle could graze. That would stop damage to the grassland and maintain the grass cover required by breeding females.

Shrubs should also be removed, while a limit should be placed on crops expanding further into the bird’s range. (ANI)

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Internet can warn of potential ecological disasters

March 20, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Washington, Mar 20 (ANI): Researchers at Stockholm Resilience Centre at Stockholm University and the University of East Anglia have suggested that the Internet could be used as an early warning system for potential ecological disasters.

Ecosystem services such as water purification and food production are of fundamental importance for all planetary life.

However, these are threatened by sudden changes in ecosystems caused by various pressures like climate change and global markets.

Collapsing fisheries and the irreversible degradation of freshwater ecosystems and coral reefs are examples that have already been observed. Averting such ecosystem changes is of vital importance.

Despite improved ecosystem monitoring, early warnings of ecological crisis are still limited by insufficient data and gaps in official monitoring systems.

Now, researchers Victor Galaz, Beatrice Crona, Vrjan Bodin, Magnus Nystrvm and Per Olsson, and Tim Daw from the School of International Development at UEA, have explored the possibilities of using information posted on the Internet to detect ecosystems on the brink of change.

“Information and communications technology is revolutionizing the generation of and access to information. Systematic ‘data mining’ of such information through the Internet can provide important early warnings about pending losses of ecosystem services,” said lead author Dr Galaz.

Daw said: “If we look at coral reefs, for example, the Internet may contain information that describes not only changes in the ecosystem, but also in drivers of change, such as global seafood markets”.

The research is published in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment. (ANI)

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Amazon could shrink by 85 percent due to global warming

March 12, 2009 By Leave a Comment

London, March 12 (ANI): A new research has predicted that global warming will have a devastating effect on the Amazon rainforest, shrinking it by 85 percent if there is a rise of 4 degree Celsius in the temperature.

According to a report in the Guardian, the research, by some of Britain’s leading experts on climate change, shows that even severe cuts in deforestation and carbon emissions will fail to save the emblematic South American jungle.

Up to 85 percent of the forest could be lost if spiraling greenhouse gas emissions are not brought under control, the experts said.

But, even under the most optimistic climate change scenarios, the destruction of large parts of the forest is “irreversible”.

“The impacts of climate change on the Amazon are much worse than we thought,” said Vicky Pope, of the Met Office’s Hadley Centre, which carried out the study.
As temperatures rise quickly over the coming century the damage to the forest won’t be obvious straight away, but we could be storing up trouble for the future,” Pope added.

Tim Lenton, a climate expert at the University of East Anglia, called the study, presented at a global warming conference in Copenhagen, a “bombshell”.

“When I was young, I thought chopping down the trees would destroy the forest, but now it seems that climate change will deliver the killer blow,” he said.

The study used computer models to investigate how the Amazon would respond to future temperature rises.

It found that a 2C rise above pre-industrial levels, widely considered the best case global warming scenario and the target for ambitious international plans to curb emissions, would still see 20-40 percent of the Amazon die off within 100 years.

A 3C rise would see 75 percent of the forest destroyed by drought over the following century, while a 4C rise would kill 85 percent.

“The forest as we know it would effectively be gone,” Pope said.

“A temperature rise of anything over 1C commits you to some future loss of Amazon forest. Even the commonly quoted 2C target already commits us to 20-40 percent loss,” said Chris Jones, who led the research.

“On any kind of pragmatic timescale, I think we should see loss of the Amazon forest as irreversible,” he added.

According to Tony Juniper, an environmental campaigner, “There really is no time for delay. Governments must cooperate to cut industrial emissions while at the same time halting deforestation, otherwise we’ll have a mass extinction and a global warming catastrophe.” (ANI)

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Rural communities in England show ‘green’ heating oil to be a viable option

February 9, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Washington, Feb 9 (ANI): Local schools and homes in the small Georgian town of Reepham in Norfolk, England, are taking part in a groundbreaking 12-month trial that shows environmentally friendly renewable heating oil is a viable option for people.

The renewable fuel being used in the trial, which is led by the University of East Anglia (UEA), is sustainable biodiesel manufactured from used vegetable oil and tallow by Argent Energy Ltd of Scotland.

The biodiesel is stored in Norfolk and blended with conventional heating oil by Pace Fuelcare of King’s Lynn, which delivers the fuel to the properties.

Fuel blends are being trialled that are equal or lower in carbon footprint than natural gas.

Partners in the pioneering project are UEA’s Low Carbon Innovation Centre, Norfolk County Council, local entrepreneur Andrew Robertson of Clean Energy Consultancy, and the two bodies that represent the oil heating industry in the UK and Ireland – the Oil Firing Technical Association (OFTEC) and the Industrial Commercial Energy Association (ICOM).

By working closely with the oil heating industry, the project can demonstrate that every aspect of fuel supply and boiler operation is compatible with the renewable fuel, and the industry will be able to define clear standards for the use and supply of renewable heating oil.

“This is a major initiative in developing lower-carbon heating options for millions of properties, especially in rural areas, which depend on oil-fired heating,” said project manager Dr Bruce Tofield, of UEA’s Low Carbon Innovation Centre.

“We are very pleased indeed to be able to combine UEA’s expertise on renewable fuels with expertise from across the industry to create a unique project that can demonstrate with total confidence the utility of renewable heating oil,” he added.

Around 30 properties in the North Norfolk town (including both the primary and the secondary school) and elsewhere in the county are taking part in the trials, which started in December last year.

“The children are enthusiastic about cutting carbon emissions and we have energy monitors for each class,” said Lisa Cook, head teacher at Reepham Primary School. “They are genuinely thrilled to be taking part in such a significant experiment,” she added.

According to Jeremy Hawksley, director general of OFTEC, “Having a liquid biofuel that is interchangeable with domestic heating oil means that around 1.9 million households in the UK and Ireland will be able to use renewable technology to heat their homes, with very few modifications to their existing heating systems.” (ANI)

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Rural communities in England show ‘green’ heating oil to be a viable option

February 9, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Washington, Feb 9 (ANI): Local schools and homes in the small Georgian town of Reepham in Norfolk, England, are taking part in a groundbreaking 12-month trial that shows environmentally friendly renewable heating oil is a viable option for people.

The renewable fuel being used in the trial, which is led by the University of East Anglia (UEA), is sustainable biodiesel manufactured from used vegetable oil and tallow by Argent Energy Ltd of Scotland.

The biodiesel is stored in Norfolk and blended with conventional heating oil by Pace Fuelcare of King’s Lynn, which delivers the fuel to the properties.

Fuel blends are being trialled that are equal or lower in carbon footprint than natural gas.

Partners in the pioneering project are UEA’s Low Carbon Innovation Centre, Norfolk County Council, local entrepreneur Andrew Robertson of Clean Energy Consultancy, and the two bodies that represent the oil heating industry in the UK and Ireland – the Oil Firing Technical Association (OFTEC) and the Industrial Commercial Energy Association (ICOM).

By working closely with the oil heating industry, the project can demonstrate that every aspect of fuel supply and boiler operation is compatible with the renewable fuel, and the industry will be able to define clear standards for the use and supply of renewable heating oil.

“This is a major initiative in developing lower-carbon heating options for millions of properties, especially in rural areas, which depend on oil-fired heating,” said project manager Dr Bruce Tofield, of UEA’s Low Carbon Innovation Centre.

“We are very pleased indeed to be able to combine UEA’s expertise on renewable fuels with expertise from across the industry to create a unique project that can demonstrate with total confidence the utility of renewable heating oil,” he added.

Around 30 properties in the North Norfolk town (including both the primary and the secondary school) and elsewhere in the county are taking part in the trials, which started in December last year.

“The children are enthusiastic about cutting carbon emissions and we have energy monitors for each class,” said Lisa Cook, head teacher at Reepham Primary School. “They are genuinely thrilled to be taking part in such a significant experiment,” she added.

According to Jeremy Hawksley, director general of OFTEC, “Having a liquid biofuel that is interchangeable with domestic heating oil means that around 1.9 million households in the UK and Ireland will be able to use renewable technology to heat their homes, with very few modifications to their existing heating systems.” (ANI)

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Pakistan and Bangladesh’s economies will suffer most as global warming imperils fisheries

February 7, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Washington, Feb 7 (ANI): A new study has identified Pakistan and Bangladesh as some of the countries that are most economically vulnerable to the effects of global warming on fisheries.

The study, by a team of scientists at the WorldFish Center, the University of East Anglia, Simon Fraser University, the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science, the University of Bremen, and the Mekong River Commission, is the first to identify individual nations that are “highly vulnerable” to the impact of climate change on fisheries.

It determined that with climate change threatening to destroy coral reefs, push salt water into freshwater habitats and produce more coastal storms, millions of struggling people in fishery-dependent nations of Africa, Asia and South America could face unprecedented hardship.

The authors of the report examined 132 national economies to determine which are the most vulnerable, based on environmental, fisheries, dietary and economic factors.
ountries that need the most attention, they said, are those where fish play a large role in diet, income and trade, yet there is a lack of capacity to adapt to problems caused by climate change, such as loss of coral reef habitats to the bleaching effects of warmer waters and lakes parched by an increase in heat and a decrease in precipitation.

Both coastal and landlocked countries in Africa, including Malawi, Guinea, Senegal and Uganda, four Asian tropical countries-Bangladesh, Cambodia, Pakistan and Yemen-and two countries in South America, Peru and Colombia, were identified as the most economically vulnerable to the effects of global warming on fisheries.

Overall, of the 33 countries that were considered highly vulnerable, 19 are already classified by the United Nations as “least developed” due to their particularly poor socioeconomic conditions.

The world’s fisheries provide more than 2.6 billion people with at least 20 percent of their average annual per capita protein intake, according to the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

The “highly vulnerable” countries identified in the WorldFish study, which was funded by the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development (DFID), produce 20 percent of the world’s fish exports (by value).

The researchers note that these countries should be a priority for adaptation efforts that will allow them to endure the effects of climate change and maintain or enhance the contribution that fisheries can make to poverty reduction.

According to Edward Allison, director of policy, economics and social science at WorldFish and the research paper’s lead author, economically, people in the tropics and subtropics likely will suffer most, because fish are so important in their diets and because they have limited capacity to develop other sources of income and food. (ANI)

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Tadpoles could help fight cancer

January 30, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Washington, Jan 30 (ANI): The humble tadpole could provide the key to developing anti-skin cancer drugs, say researchers at the University of East Anglia (UEA).

The scientists have identified a compound which, when introduced into Xenopus Laevis tadpoles, blocks the movement of the pigment cells that give the tadpoles their distinctive markings and which develop into the familiar greenish-brown of the adult frog.

It is the uncontrolled movement and growth of pigment cells (melanophore) in both tadpoles and humans that causes a particularly dangerous form of skin cancer.

By blocking the migration of these cells, the development and spread of cancerous tumours can potentially be prevented.

The study has been published in the Cell Press journal ‘Chemistry and Biology’.

The study has identified for the first time an effective new man-made MMP (metalloproteinase) inhibitor, known as ‘NSC 84093′.

“This is an exciting advance with implications in the fight against cancer,” said lead author Dr Grant Wheeler of UEA’s School of Biological Sciences.

“The next step is to test the compound in other species and, in the longer term, embark on the development of new drugs to fight skin cancer in humans,” the expert added.

The species Xenopus Laevis (South African clawed frog) is more closely related to humans than one might expect. It only diverged from man 360 million years ago and has the same organs, molecules and physiology. (ANI)

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Global warming has caused Earth’s seasons to arrive 2 days earlier

January 22, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Washington, Jan 22 (ANI): A new study has brought to the fore another adverse effect of global warming, suggesting that it has led to Earth’s seasons to arrive 2 days earlier than before.

The study, by scientists from the University of California, Berkeley, and Harvard University, has determined that not only has the average global temperature increased in the past 50 years, but the hottest day of the year has shifted nearly two days earlier.

Just as human-generated greenhouse gases appear to the be the cause of global warming, human activity may also be the cause of the shift in the cycle of seasons, according to Alexander R. Stine, a graduate student in UC Berkeley’s Department of Earth and Planetary Science and first author of the report.

Stine and his team based their study on a publicly available database of global surface temperature measurements over both land and ocean from 1850 to 2007 that was compiled by the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit in the United Kingdom.

Using non-tropical data only, the team found that, while land temperatures in the 100-year period between 1850 and 1950 showed a simple pattern of variability, with the hottest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere around July 21, temperatures in the period 1954-2007 peaked 1.7 days earlier.

Although the cause of this seasonal shift, which has occurred over land, but not the ocean, is unclear, the researchers said that the shift appears to be related, in part, to a particular pattern of winds that also has been changing over the same time period.

This pattern of atmospheric circulation, known as the Northern Annular Mode, is the most important wind pattern for controlling why one winter in the Northern Hemisphere is different from another.

The researchers found that the mode also is important in controlling the arrival of the seasons each year.

According to Stine, whatever the cause, current Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) models do not predict this phase shift in the annual temperature cycle.

Temperatures at any given time of the year can be very different on land than over the ocean, and a change in the strength and direction of the winds can move a lot of heat from the ocean onto land, which may affect the timing of the seasons, he added.

“However, this seems to be only a partial explanation, because the relationship between this pattern of circulation and the shift in the timing of the seasons is not strong enough to explain the magnitude of the seasonal shift,” said Stine. (ANI)

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