Great apes may have 'midlife crisis', a study suggests

By Jeremy ColesReporter, BBC Nature

"What we are testing is whether the U-shaped curve can describe the association between age and well-being in non-human primates as it does in humans," psychologist and lead author Dr Alexander Weiss of the University of Edinburgh told BBC Nature.

An international team of researchers is suggesting that orangutans and chimpanzees might be going through a "mid life crises" aswell, just as humans. 
Experiments have shown that happiness and enjoying life is rich in the younger ages of apes, they tend to be unhappy while being an "adult" but return to the state of happiness again when reaching the old age. This is the known u-shaped curve, which humans also go through. 

Dr Weiss predicted and was hoping that the results would have a similar curve due to the close relationship between humans, chimpanzees and orangutans and in fact, the curve is the same. 

Testings :

The study constisted of 508 chimpanzees and orangutans from varying age levels, from zoos, sanctuaries and research centres. Zoo keepers, volunteers, researchers and caretakers who had worked with this subject for a couple of years watched the apes. They knew everything about their behaviour. The helpers had to score the animals numerically for well being and happiness on a short questionnaire. This was based on a human well being model, but made for use in non human primates. 
"Dr Weiss said that the similarities between humans, chimps and orangutans go beyond genetics and physiology. You don't have the chimpanzee hitting midlife and suddenly they want a bright red sports car. But there may be other things that they want like mating with more females or gaining access to more resources."

So in fact, chimpanzees and orangutans go through a very similar mid life crisis just as humans do. I found it really interesting to see that apes are actually that similar to us humans. No one would have thought that they tend to question their life or go crazy when they are in the middle of their lifes. But as the research showed, apes are more similar to us than we think, even on the psychological level.

Grasshoppers Change Their Tune to Stay Tuned Over Traffic Noise

A recent study shows that humans are not only responsible for climate change but also for animal behavior. A study done by Ulrike Lampe and colleagues from the University of Bielefeld, Germany, showed that the sound that grasshoppers made was affected by man-made sounds such as traffic on busy roads. Grasshoppers use the sounds to mark territory, find mates, warn off predators and other means of communication.

 Lampe collected 188 male bow-winged grasshoppers. Half of them from quite locations and the other half next to busy roads with loud traffic. They made the grasshoppers produce their sounds by exposing them to female grasshoppers. Close to 1000 recordings showed that the grasshoppers that lived near busy roads made different sounds. It was found that the grasshoppers raised the volume of the lower-frequency sounds since the traffic was making these lower-frequency sounds less audible.

This is important because traffic noise may be harmful to the grasshopper’s mating system. Lampe says that "Increased noise levels could affect grasshopper courtship in several ways. It could prevent females from hearing male courtship songs properly, prevent females from recognizing males of their own species, or impair females' ability to estimate how attractive a male is from his song."

I found this quiet shocking. I was unaware that humans had such a great impact on animal behavior. This should act as a wakeup call for us as humans and remind us that we are not the only species that belong to this planet.

Combatting Indoor Air Pollution from Downtown Cities

Combatting Indoor Air Pollution from Downtown Cities
By Allison Winter
Environmental News Network

 It is safe to assume that most people we know, including ourselves, have air conditioning. However, something we don't think about more often than not is the way air conditioning pollutes environment through circulating air. Moreover, think of buildings. Imagine that every flat has air conditioning, they all circulate air. Now, there is a building next to it. It will intake the pollution.
This is a lot more striking when you actually live in a building, like I do.

Now, a team of researchers from Concordia University thought of an environment friendly way to deal with this kind of pollution. They set up an experiment in the university lab that consisted of placing models of all kinds of buildings next to one that was polluting. They measured the amount of pollution absorbed by the buildings and looked for the place where the concentration of toxins was the highest.
According to the results, the level of pollution depended on the height of the buildings, and how far apart they were - which is actually very logical, but now there is a scientific proof.

Anyway, their plan was to place intake vents upwind of the polluter, to the wall that is more sheltered. Also, they should not be placed on roofs where they are not protected. Of course, the spaces between buildings should also be increased.
The plan will be of most use to people who start building stuff in the future, and should help in reducing pollution on the long run, but it will not make any immediate changes.

I feel that this is a very important issue that should be looked into, as a great number of people lives in cities and they are subjected to air pollution at all times. Also, once people start taking care of themselves, the environment will become less polluted.

Human Thirst Makes Earth Quake

Human Thirst Makes Earth Quake

By David Biello

scientificamerican.com

What initially interested me in this article/podcast was the unusual title. Apparently, we might be able to influence and cause earth quakes?
Last May, an earth quake hit Lorca, in Spain, killing nine people. According to an analysis published by Nature Geoscience, it happened because too much groundwater was extracted from the area.

It is not exactly sure whether the quake was going to happen anyway because of other factors, and the human action only made it happen sooner, or it was caused mostly by it.
In any case, it is baffling how much impact our actions have on nature.

What happened in Spain is something that cannot be just shrugged off. People tend to ignore global warming, for example, or extinction of certain species, because they can't see that kind of damage. That is not the case qith an earth quake - people died. Action should be taken to reduce behavior that is harmful to Earth.

The Battle Against Badgers

Badger Battle Erupts in England
by Geoff Brumfiel
ScientificAmerican.com

As part of a recent governmental campaign, England has introduced a policy where farmers and hunters will kill large amounts of Badgers. Badgers can carry a strain tuberculosis (TB) that can easily be transferred directly or indirectly to cattle, causing a major issue for farmers. In addition, this disease is transferable to humans through the milk of infected cattle. If this problem is not controlled, than the government predicts that they will lose 1 billion pounds to the issue within the next ten years. This is an extremely controversial issue, because many animal rights activists are furious with the plans to kill a large amount of the species. Studies conducted show that killing 70% of the population in large areas would reduce Bovine TB by about 16%. One issue concerning the strategy is the unknown Badger population in England. Since they are very common animals, and the largest predators in the country, it is impossible to estimate exactly how many animals would have to be killed to amount to 70% of the population.  Jack Reed, who is spokesman for the Badger Trust claims that the percentage "doesn't sound terribly meaningful to [him]" since it is still a relatively small reduction. The Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs released a new plan in July of 2011, aimed at completely eliminating Bovine TB. They focused on increasing surveillance and security on farms, as well as their "science-led policy" of hunting Badgers in areas greatly effected by the disease. The Governments in Wales and Ireland are also working to eliminate this serious issue, through snare-trapping campaigns and immunizations of the animals. 

I think Bovine TB is a very serious issue and needs to be combated, but I think there are other ways to do it rather than killing a large amount of animals. I agree with Jack Reed that a 16% TB reduction among cattle isn't a sufficient amount to justify the slaughter of around 70% of an animal population. They could add more security to cattle ranches, to prevent badgers from coming into contact with the cows, as well as conducting more frequent checks for the disease. Also, I think it is worth making an attempt to immunize badgers or cattle, so that they cannot catch or spread TB. However, I do agree that farmers should be able to shoot badgers if they see them on their property in order to protect their cattle and therefore their business. The mass reduction of England's main predator species could wreak havoc on the local ecosystems, throwing the food webs out of order because several species would loose their main predator. Overall, I think other methods of TB repression should be attempted before they kill massive amounts of Badgers. 

India: Nearly 300 elephant deaths in Orissa

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-20150702

About 300 elephants have suffered death in Orissa, India over the past couple years.
Most of the deaths were caused by electricity wires hanging from the electric path so the elephants got an electric shock and died.
But deaths were also caused by poising from farmers, trying to protect their fields. Elephants were running through their crops and damaging it. The farmers tried to stop this by spraying poison on their fields.
Some elephants were also poached, people are hunting them, which is not very ethical.
This is a serious problem in india, because elephants are becoming extinct. It is also very unusual because elephants are worshipped by a large amount of people there, so the sinking number of elephants has caused a serious conflict between people killing the elephants and people trying to protect nature and the animals.
Members from the forest, envorinment and energy departments are trying to fight against these procedures and trying to stop the deaths.

River Floods Predicted Using New Technology

Science dAILY

october 29th, 2012

            Scientists have devised a new solution to provide real-time predictions of floods caused by climate change and human activities. The RAMWASS research project devised a tool that was able to measure and predict the dangers of potential flood in specific river zones. The system uses a combination of environmental data from satellites, sensors and information from the ground to render a 3-D model result of the flood with maps of water speeds, flows and elevations. It also provides risk maps and flood times. The results are available online with the use of a system developed by CIMNE and are accurate to the minute. This helps with emergency situations especially when conditions of a flood are known to change instantly. The system offers protection at a low cost. This allows for places to be evacuated potentially days in advance and reduced flood losses and deaths. It can help governments and funding agencies to test “what-if” situations that may cause harm to people and public or private property.

            I believe this is an essential part of emergency predictions. The techniques used today to predict flash floods are primitive. Climate change is progressing and human activity is potentially to blame. This new technology allows us to monitor emergency situations that are caused by environmental factors, climate change and human activity. It allows areas that may be destroyed to be evacuated in advance and to prevent floods from escalating to emergency-floods. It also allows governments and other companies to simulate potential emergency situations and plan ahead to avoid them entirely.