UTHealth: Rapid population decline among vertebrates began with industrialization

HOUSTON – (Dec. 15, 2016) – Rapid population decline among vertebrate species began at the end of the 19th century when industrialization was at its peak, according to researchers at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) and the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The research was recently published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “Industrialization …

Dan Zukowski – Mount Everest Climbers May One Day Climb Ice-Free

The Himalayan Mountains and Tibetan Plateau, dubbed the “Third Pole” for having the largest ice mass on Earth after the polar regions, are rapidly losing their glaciers. Eighteen percent of China’s glaciers have vanished in the past 50 years according to the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Air pollution and rising air temperatures are combining to increase glacial melt, threatening water supplies for one …

James Wilt – There Is a New Climate Change Disaster Looming in Northern Canada

Of all the climate change issues that have been melodramatically dubbed a “carbon bomb” in recent years—tar sands projects in Alberta, catastrophic wildfires in Indonesia, holes in Australia’s seagrass meadows—it seems the thawing of permafrost in the Arctic is most likely to live up to the hype. There’s a staggering amount of methane and carbon dioxide, like hundreds of gigatons …

Alex Kirby – Tibetan threat to vital water

Hours before the UN climate talks end, a warning from China’s top scientific body –  the twin influences of human activities and climate change are turning much of the Tibetan plateau into a desert. The damage is not only transforming grasslands and wetlands into sand and rock where nothing can grow. The plateau is also the source of Asia’s major …

Ken Browne – Researchers just discovered a massive body of water under China’s biggest desert

The Tarim basin in Xinjiang, China is a valley the size of Venezuela; bigger than California, New Mexico and Florida put together. On the surface it is home to Taklimakan, China’s biggest desert, but deep beneath lies a hidden ‘ocean’ that is thought to contain up to ten times more water than all the Great Lakes combined, storing more carbon …

Chinese cave ‘graffiti’ tells a 500-year story of climate change and impact on society

An international team of researchers, including scientists from the University of Cambridge, has discovered unique ‘graffiti’ on the walls of a cave in central China, which describes the effects drought had on the local population over the past 500 years. The information contained in the inscriptions, combined with detailed chemical analysis of stalagmites in the cave, together paint an intriguing …

MUSCLE SUPPLEMENTS LINKED TO CANCER RISK

A new study links taking muscle-building supplements, such as pills and powders with creatine or androstenedione, with an increased risk of testicular cancer. Moreover, says study senior author Tongzhang Zheng, the associated testicular germ cell cancer risk was especially high among men who started using supplements before age 25, those who used multiple supplements, and those who used them for years. …