Dragon rises out of the water in frozen Antarctic wilderness

Dragon rises out of the water in frozen Antarctic wilderness - The majestic Antarctic landscape never fails to amaze.

But the awe-inspiring wilderness offered up an unusual display for one photographer - in the shape of a dragon carved into an iceberg.

Discovered deep in the Antarctic Peninsula near Peterman Island, the shape stood out against the endless white scenery which surrounded the formation.

Stunning: The blue Antarctic sky is punctuated by the dragon-shaped iceburg

But despite the remarkable resemblance to the mythical fire-breathing creature, those lucky enough to witness the moment first hand initially saw it as a thumb.

Frolic: Seals soak up the weak rays of Antarctic sun which helped carve the extraordinary shaped in the ice

However on closer inspection the group, who spotted the shape just two weeks ago, discovered it was in fact an exact replica of a dragon.

The incredible images were taken by keen Russian snapper Kseniia Maiukova, 28, who couldn't believe her eyes as she spotted the silhouette against the infinite blue sky.

She said: ‘One evening while on a tourist trip there were seven of us on a zodiac boat in the bay surrounded by icebergs.

Rearing up: Out of the endless snowscape rises the stunning silhouette

‘There were dozens of them all around us, all of different shapes and sizes it was a really amazing view and a feeling very hard to describe with words.

‘This dragon-shaped iceberg attracted my sight from the beginning - in fact almost all seven of us noticed it at once and started to photograph it.

‘At first we thought it looked a bit like a thumb - then when we got back on land it suddenly became clear it looks exactly like a dragon.

‘I was full of emotions and will never forget this trip, it had always been my dream.’ ( dailymail.co.uk )

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Nuclear Overreactors

Nuclear Overreactors - Let's cool the political meltdown over Japan's damaged nuclear power plants - Less than a year ago, a drilling rig exploded off the coast of the United States, killing 11 workers and pouring 4 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. No natural disaster caused this tragedy. It was entirely man-made. President Obama halted deep-water drilling but lifted the moratorium less than six months later. On Friday, while fielding questions about Japan's nuclear reactors, he proudly noted that his administration, under new, stricter rules, had "approved more than 35 new offshore drilling permits."

That's how we deal with tragedies in the oil business. Accidents happen. People die. Pollution spreads. We don't abandon oil. We study what went wrong, try to fix it, and move on.

Quake-damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant in Futaba, Japan

Contrast this with the panic over Japan's reactors. For 40 years, they've quietly done their work. Three days ago, they were hit almost simultaneously by Japan's worst earthquake and one of its worst tsunamis. Not one reactor container has failed. The only employee who has died at a Japanese nuclear facility since the quake was killed by a crane. Despite this, voices are rising in Europe and the United States to abandon nuclear power. Industry analysts predict that the Japan scare, like Chernobyl, will freeze plant construction.

Let's cool this panic before it becomes a political meltdown.

Early reports said four Japanese plants were in trouble. Now it appears only two were disabled. Early reports said three employees had radiation sickness. Now we're hearing only one is sick, and even in that case, the radiation dose appears relatively low. Two reactor buildings exploded, but these were explosions of excess hydrogen, not nuclear fuel, and neither of them ruptured the inner containers that encase the reactor cores. Some radiation has leaked, but according to measurements outside the plants, the amount so far is modest. Any leak is bad, and the area of contamination, even at low rates, will probably spread. Japan needs our sympathy and our help. But let's not exaggerate the crisis.

In advanced countries like Japan and the United States, nuclear plants are built to standards no drilling rig can touch. If a sensor, cable, or power source fails, another sensor, cable, or power source is available. Containers of steel or concrete envelop the reactors to prevent massive radiation leaks. Chernobyl didn't have such a container. Three Mile Island did. That's why Three Mile Island produced no uncontrolled leakage or injuries.

Japan's plants were designed to withstand quakes and tsunamis, but not a combination of this magnitude. At the affected facilities, the quake knocked out the primary cooling systems, and the tsunami wiped out the backup diesel generators. Then a valve malfunction thwarted efforts to pump water into one of the reactors. Everything that could go wrong did.

Despite this, the reactor containers have held firm. The explosions around them have blown outward, relieving pressure, as designed. Meanwhile, plant operators, deprived of their primary and secondary power sources for cooling the cores, have tapped batteries and deployed alternate generators. To relieve pressure, they've released vapor. And in some cases, they've pumped seawater and boric acid into the reactors, destroying them to protect the public. Cooling systems are back online at two previously impaired reactors, and a backup pump has averted cooling problems at a third plant.

The reactor where the crisis began, Fukushima Daiichi Unit 1, is one of Japan's oldest. It was two weeks from its 40-year expiration date when the quake hit. Similar plants in the United States have been upgraded to ensure that in the event of power failure, water can still be pumped in to cool them. And nuclear plants are indisputably getting safer. Since 1990, worker radiation exposure and automatic reactor shutdowns worldwide have declined by a factor of three. According to an analysis last year by the Nuclear Energy Agency of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, plants being constructed by today's standards are 1,600 times safer than early nuclear plants, in terms of the predicted frequency of a large radiation leak. Even if a reactor core is damaged, as in Japan, the NEA report notes that today, "the probability of a release to the environment is about ten times less than that of core damage," thanks to improvements in fuel, circuits, and containment.

If Japan, the United States, or Europe retreats from nuclear power in the face of the current panic, the most likely alternative energy source is fossil fuel. And by any measure, fossil fuel is more dangerous. The sole fatal nuclear power accident of the last 40 years, Chernobyl, directly killed 31 people. By comparison, Switzerland's Paul Scherrer Institute calculates that from 1969 to 2000, more than 20,000 people died in severe accidents in the oil supply chain. More than 15,000 people died in severe accidents in the coal supply chain—11,000 in China alone. The rate of direct fatalities per unit of energy production is 18 times worse for oil than it is for nuclear power.

Even if you count all the deaths plausibly related to Chernobyl—9,000 to 33,000 over a 70-year period—that number is dwarfed by the death rate from burning fossil fuels. The OECD's 2008 Environmental Outlook calculates that fine-particle outdoor air pollution caused nearly 1 million premature deaths in the year 2000, and 30 percent of this was energy-related. You'd need 500 Chernobyls to match that level of annual carnage. But outside Chernobyl, we've had zero fatal nuclear power accidents.

That doesn't mean we can ignore what has happened in Japan. Precisely because nuclear accidents are so rare, we have to study them intensely. Each one tells us what to fix in the next generation of power plants. The most obvious mistake in Japan was parking the diesel generators in an area low enough to be flooded by a quake-driven tsunami. The batteries that backed up the generators weren't adequate, either. They lasted only eight hours, and power outage fallback plans at U.S. reactors are even shorter. Moreover, this is the second time an advanced nuclear facility has had to vent radioactive vapor (Three Mile Island was the first). Maybe it's time to require filtration systems that scrub the vapor before it's released.

Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut says we should "put the brakes" on nuclear power plant construction until we figure out what went wrong in Japan. Rep. Ed Markey of Massachusetts wants a moratorium on new reactors in "seismically active areas" while we study the problem. That's fine. But let's not block construction indefinitely while we go on mindlessly pumping oil. Because nuclear energy, for all its risks, is safer. ( slate.com )

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Japan Finds Plutonium at Stricken Nuclear Plant

Japan Finds Plutonium at Stricken Nuclear Plant - Plutonium found in soil at the crippled Fukushima nuclear complex heightened alarm on Tuesday over Japan's protracted battle to contain the world's worst atomic crisis in 25 years.

Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO) said the radioactive material — a by-product of atomic reactions and also used in nuclear bombs — had been found in soil in five places at the plant, hit by an earthquake and tsunami on March 11.

The drama at the six-reactor facility has compounded Japan's agony after the twin disaster left more than 28,000 people dead or missing in the devastated northeast.

"I apologize for making people worried," Sakae Muto, vice-president of under-pressure TEPCO, said at a briefing around midnight in Tokyo. Yet he stressed the traces of plutonium-238, 239 and 240 were not dangerous and work would not be stopped.

"It's not at the level that's harmful to human health."

Officials scan people for radiation, 60 km west of the nuclear power plant in Fukushima prefecture, in Koriyama on March 18, 2011

Muto said the readings were similar to those found in the past in other parts of Japan due to particles in the atmosphere from nuclear testing abroad.

TEPCO said it was unclear where the plutonium was from, though it appeared two of the five finds were related to damage from the plant rather than from the atmosphere.

Experts believe that at least some of the plutonium may have come from spent fuel rods at Fukushima or damage to reactor No. 3, the only one to use plutonium in its fuel mix.

The United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said the find was expected due to known fuel degradation.

Containment Breached

Japan's own nuclear safety agency was concerned at the plutonium samples, whose levels of radioactive decay ranged from 0.18 to 0.54 becquerels per kg.

"While it's not the level harmful to human health, I am not optimistic. This means the containment mechanism is being breached so I think the situation is worrisome," agency official Hidehiko Nishiyama was quoted as saying by Jiji news agency.

The plutonium discovery, from samples taken a week ago, was the latest bad news from the Fukushima plant, where engineers are resigned to a struggle of weeks or possibly months to re-establish cooling systems vital to control of the reactors.

On Monday, TEPCO said highly radioactive water had been found in concrete tunnels that extend beyond one reactor.

Fires, blasts and leaks have forced engineers to stop work at times, including at the weekend when radiation spiked to 100,000 times above normal in water inside reactor No. 2.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said a partial meltdown of fuel rods inside the reactor vessel was responsible.

The crisis, the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl in 1986, has already contaminated vegetables and milk produced in the area, as well as the surrounding sea.

Apocalyptic Scenes

With Japan's towns and villages on the northeast coast reduced to apocalyptic landscapes of mud and debris, more than a quarter of a million people are homeless. The event may be the world's costliest natural disaster, with estimates of damage topping $300 billion.

The environmental group Greenpeace said its experts had confirmed dangerous radiation of up to 10 microsieverts per hour in Iitate village, 40 km (25 miles) northwest of the plant.

It called for the extension of a 20-km (12-mile) evacuation zone. "It is clearly not safe for people to remain in Iitate, especially children and pregnant women, when it could mean receiving the maximum allowed annual dose of radiation in only a few days," Greenpeace said in a statement.

In most countries the maximum permissible annual dose for radiation workers is 50 millisieverts, or 50,000 microsieverts, according to the World Nuclear Association Industry body.

Tens of thousands of people have been evacuated from a 20 km (12 mile) radius around the plant and people within a radius extending a further 10 km have been told by the government to stay indoors or, better still, leave too.

Beyond the evacuation zone, traces of radiation have been found in tap water in Tokyo and as far away as Iceland.

The U.S. government said tiny traces of radiation believed to be from Japan were being detected by sensors round the nation, but were "far below levels of public health concern".

Japanese officials and international experts have generally said the levels away from the plant were not dangerous for human beings, who in any case face higher radiation doses on a daily basis from natural sources, X-rays or flying.

Leadership Problems

Facing a long and uncertain operation, TEPCO sought outside help from firms including Electricite de France SA and Areva SA, a French government minister said.

Japan is also seeking American help, said Robin Grimes, head of the center for nuclear engineering at Imperial College in London. "Each country has its own expertise."

Mark Prelas, a professor of nuclear engineering at University of Missouri in the United States, warned against overreaction to the fast-moving events in Japan.

"It's worth remembering that millions of Americans in the west of the country would have been exposed to tiny traces of plutonium during the above-ground bomb tests prior to the 1960s," he said.

The risk of a core meltdown had receded, he added, and hopefully water pumps would be restarted in the next couple of weeks to get the reactors into a safe "cold shutdown" stage.

"The eventual clean-up still looks like it should be easily manageable," he added.

The crisis has put huge pressure on TEPCO, which has been criticized for safety lapses at the plant and a slow response to the disaster. Its boss Masataka Shimizu has barely been seen.

Prime Minister Naoto Kan, leading Japan during its worst crisis since World War Two, has been similarly low-profile.

Even though Japan's culture stresses group efficiency over individual charisma, many are unhappy and a weekend poll suggested two-thirds of people felt Kan was not showing leadership.

"The characters involved are too weak to take decisive actions," said Jesper Koll, analyst at JP Morgan Securities. ( cnbc.com )

READ MORE - Japan Finds Plutonium at Stricken Nuclear Plant

Ancient mammals had modern teeth

Ancient mammals had modern teeth. Suggests that furry ancestors were more diverse than previously thought. The fossils of an ancient creature resembling a small opossum and equipped with modern-looking teeth suggest our furry ancestors were far more diverse in the age of dinosaurs than previously thought.

"The story of the earliest mammals is a story of their teeth," said study team member Zhe-Xi Luo, a paleontologist at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh. "By tracing their evolution in the rich fossil record of the Mesozoic, we can understand how these cutting and grinding teeth evolved over and over again."

Mark A. Klingler / Carnegie Muse

The new Jurassic mammal had strong limb bones, likely for digging, and could feed on insects and plants. Here it's portrayed as foraging among ginkgo leaves and the scattered shells of arthropods on the shore of a shallow freshwater lake

Dubbed Pseudotribos robustus , the creature was discovered in 165 million-year-old lakebeds corresponding to the Jurassic Period in Northern China. It measured about 5 inches (12 centimeters) in length and weighed between 20 to 30 grams (.04 to .07 pounds). The animal likely fed on worms and insects and lived above ground, although it had strong limbs and would have been capable of "power digging," scientists say.

What surprised scientists, however, were the animal's teeth. They resembled the "tribosphenic" teeth of modern mammals, which can both slice and grind. Psuedotribos had "pseudo-tribosphenic" teeth that are superficially similar to tribosphenic teeth except that the positions of the cutter and grinder are flipped.

Paleontologists previously thought tribosphenic teeth evolved once before spreading to all mammals. But a 2001 study by Luo and colleagues suggested tribosphenic molars in monotremes, whose living descendents include the platypus, evolved separately from those of marsupial and placental mammals.

The new fossil lends further support to the idea that similar dental structures for cutting and grinding evolved several times in mammalian evolution.

Under natural selection, organisms descending from different ancestors can evolve similar structures and similar adaptations to suit a common purpose. This is called convergent evolution.

"The pseudo-tribosphenic teeth and the true tribosphenic teeth are great examples of convergent evolution and a great manifestation of how dental and feeding adapationa can be achieved by different lineages of mammals," Luo said. (livescience.com )

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Mustang is American wild horses

Mustang is American wild horses. Millions of wild horses, known as mustangs, once roamed North America. Today, just a fraction of that number are left, most in the American Southwest. In her new book Mustang, Deanne Stillman celebrates wild horses and warns that they are threatened by human activity.

American wild horses (mustangs)

The wild horse, or mustang, from the Spanish word for stray animal, is a symbol of freedom for many Americans.

The mustang has become an icon. The name and imagery were even used to market a classic American car.

In the 1800s, millions were rounded up and shipped to the western U.S. states.

Deanne Stillman has chronicled their story in her book Mustang.

"They were shipped back to Europe in tin cans," she noted. "There is a demand there for horse meat, and also at the beginning of the 20th century, there were a number of wars being fought all over the world, and the horses were shipped to the front lines in all of those wars, including our own, [during] World War I."

Today, there are just 36,000 wild horses and burros on U.S. government lands. Others have been rounded up in response to complaints from ranchers, angry that the animals graze on their land.

There also have been random shootings, illegal acts that spurred Stillman to get involved in the issue.

The horse came from North America, where it thrived in the last Ice Age. Stillman notes that ancient horse remains have been found at the La Brea tar pits in Los Angeles.

Deanne Stillman author of Mustang

"During that period, those horses were living right here at the famous tar pits, along with the mastodon and sloth and many other mammals of that period," she added.

Horses died out in the Americas, but were reintroduced by the 16th century Spanish, and became part of the Western lore of the American cowboy.

"Those horses opened up the New World, really," she explained. "Without them and without the horse, we have no America."

In 1971, U.S. President Richard Nixon signed a law protecting wild horses and burros, but the animals' advocates, including Deanne Stillman, say they still are under threat, and that the animal needs protection.

In July, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill to restore protections for the wild mustang. The measure is called the ROAM Act, which stands for Restoring Our American Mustangs. A companion bill has been introduced in the Senate. If it passes, the two bills need to be reconciled before being sent to the president to sign into law.

U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has urged Congress to create new preserves for the wild horses. ( voanews.com )

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The bat lady

The bat lady. Americans and many other people around the world are celebrating Halloween on Saturday. Part of the fun is watching scary movies in which bats often play a big role. But their defenders say bats are actually shy and gentle animals that provide many benefits to mankind.

The bat lady

Leslie Sturges

Leslie Sturges loves bats.

So much so that she has converted her house into a shelter for bats in need of care. With the help of her husband, Rich, and a team of volunteers, Leslie operates Bat World NOVA, the Northern Virginia chapter of Bat World Sanctuary, a U.S. group dedicated to ending the unnecessary killing of bats.

"We have a tendency to treat them very badly because they're small, dark and nocturnal and we don't understand them," Leslie says, "So I think if people understood them more, there'd be a lot more tolerance for bats. They do so much for us."

Sherry Keen is Leslie's apprentice and a volunteer at Bat World NOVA. She helps Leslie nurse and rehabilitate injured bats. Sherry says that a typical rescue situation starts with a desperate phone call from someone who discovers a bat in the house. She says, like any other injured or wild animal, a bat may react unpredictably in a rescue effort, and the safety of the rescuer is of paramount importance.

"We reiterate over and over again: never touch it with bare hands," Sherry said.

Their bad reputation and myths about bats

Bat

Leslie thinks that the bat's bad reputation is due in part to their depiction in Hollywood movies. "You know they land on people and they bite them and they suck all their blood out -- and that's just an impossibility and it doesn't happen," Leslie asserts, "and it's never happened but it's sort of cemented in the public mind that this is what bats do and it's totally wrong."

In addition to her rehabilitation work, Leslie also conducts education programs, aimed at teaching people, particularly children, about the many benefits that bats have to offer.

A colony of 150 big brown bats can protect farmers from up to 33 million or more corn rootworms each summer, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and a single little brown bat can catch more than 1,200 insects in one hour. Sherry believes teaching children about bats is the best way to spread the good news about them.

The benefits of educating people about bats

"If we can start them young, a lot of times the kids can start educating their parents," Sherry said.

Teaching them, among other things, that bats are not blind. Most can see as well as humans. Nor are bats flying mice. In fact there is evidence that bats may be more closely related to humans than to mice.

"Another myth is that all bats carry disease. Bats are actually very clean animals," Leslie says, "They groom constantly. They groom each other. They're very gentle animals."

Leslie believes that it's important that people get involved with bat rescue on a global scale but advises those who are interested to first check local wildlife regulations. Further information can be found at the Bat World Sanctuary web site. Leslie stresses, however, that the number one thing that people can do for bats is to leave them alone.

And Sherry offers this bit of advice. "Help us save them," she says, "Don't kill them. Be good to them.". voanews.com

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