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Life has never been easy for just-hatched Magellanic penguins, but climate change is making it worse, according to a decades-long study of the largest breeding colony of the birds. The chicks are already vulnerable to predation and starvation. Now, the study at Punta Tombo, Argentina, found that intense storms and warmer temperatures are increasingly taking a toll. "Rainfall is killing a lot of penguins, and so is heat," said P. Dee Boersma, a University of Washington scientist and lead author of the study. "And those are two new causes." Climate scientists say more extreme weather, including wetter storms and more prolonged periods of heat and cold, is one impact of a climate that is changing because of emissions of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. While monitoring the penguin colony, Dr. Boersma and her colleagues also documented regional temperature changes and increases in the number of days with heavy rains. The study, which is being published online Wednesday in the journal PLoS ONE, is one of the first to show a direct impact of climate change on seabirds. Most studies have looked at how warming temperatures affect animals indirectly, by altering predation patterns or food supplies. William J. Sydeman, senior scientist at the Farallon Institute in California, who was not involved in the research, said the study linked changes in climate, which occur on a scale of decades, to the daily scale of life in the colony. "That's a unique contribution," he said. The colony at Punta Tombo, in a temperate and relatively dry region about midway along Argentina's coast, is home to about 200,000 breeding pairs of the penguins, which are about 15 inches tall as adults. Dr. Boersma has been working there since 1982, with long-term support from the Wildlife Conservation Society. For this study, the researchers compiled data on nearly 3,500 chicks that they meticulously tracked by checking nests once or twice a day throughout the six-month breeding season, w

Biomass for energy often mean plant base material although can equally apply to both animal and vegetable draw from material. Biomass is actually a biological material derive form living or recently living organisms. Biomass chemical composition is carbon based and is composed of a mixture of organic molecules containing hydrogen, usually including atoms of oxygen, often nitrogen and also small quantities of other atoms, including alkali, alkaline earth and heavy metals, metals are often found in functional molecules such as the porphyrins which include chlorophyll which contains magnesium. There are five basic categories of material of biomass such as: *Virgin wood- from forestry, arboriculture activities or from wood processing. *Energy crops- high yield crops grown specifically for energy applications *Agricultural residues- residues from agriculture harvesting or processing * Food waste- from food and drink manufacture, preparation and processing, and post-consumer waste *Industrial waste and co-products- from manufacturing and industrial processes. The question is how are we going to use this biomass as a fuel for boilers? But what is a boiler in the first place? A boiler is defined as "a closed vessel in which water or other liquid is heated, steam or vapor is generated, steam is superheated, or any combination thereof, under pressure or vacuum, for use external to itself, by the direct application of energy from the combustion of fuels, from electricity or nuclear energy." Let us then go back to the previous question, how are we going to use this biomass as fuel for boilers. Nowadays, the prime sources of energy in the world are oil, coal and natural gas. But these natural sources of energy has their end too, unfortunately it is already anticipated that within the next 40-50 years these sources of energy will deplete. Worst is, it is also expected that from these sources lies consequences due to their emissions such as

The thought could be scary, knowing how much toxins you inhale everyday. Through the help of technology European researchers are gearing up to monitor thousands of people. Smartphones are given away to record the chemicals to which they are exposed every day. Exposome, the term used by European Commission to study the effects of environmental exposures to human health. It was then hope that the four-year studies will benefit public health in ways that genome research so far has not. Exposone could reveal a warning or warnings of environmental health issues for use. "There's been too much emphasis on genetic factors, which contribute relatively little to disease compared with environmental factors," says Martyn Smith, a toxicologist at the University of California, Berkeley, who is participating in the newly funded Exposomics project. Paolo Vineis, an environmental epi¬demiologist at Imperial College London, leads the €8.7-million project. Some studies do not always succeed like the Genome-wide association studies, in which scientists search for genetic variants linked to disease. They have failed to fully explain why some people are more susceptible than others to chronic diseases, such as type 2 diabetes. The new study will work this way, subjects will carry smartphones equipped with sensors to measure exposures, and their blood will be analyzed to monitor molecular changes. The majority of the participants are already concerned in other long-term health studies. In order to understand the triggers for conditions such as heart disease, asthma and lung cancer, goal is to look for biomarker differences between people walking through areas with low air pollution and those exposed to urban fumes. The idea is to differentiate the difference the toxins will cause the human health basing on their environment. Vineis's exposomics approach has already exposed gene-expression signatures that connect people's leukaemia risk with their exposure to heavy me

Advocates of alternative energy have sustained that on a global rate, increasing energy consumption is connected to the renewed hostile extraction of natural resources from Africa to reach the target increasing demand in North America, Europe and the BRICS countries namely: Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. They compete that despite of the growing demand for energy, more than 1.6 billion people has no electricity and about 2.4 rely only on fuel wood. According to the Executive Director, ERA/FoEN, Dr. Godwin Ojo, the event was conceived to deepen understanding of energy issues. It is the effort to find substitute to this irregularity that the Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria (ERA/FoEN) working in concert with over 50 civil societies, community groups and energy experts organized the Africa Alternative Energy Transition forum recently. Ojo said the event that attracted participants from across Africa was organised to coincide with the Global Month of Action on Energy by a coalition of Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, Actionaid, International Rivers, 350.org, and some other international Non-governmental Organisations (NGOs) to reclaim power by resisting dirty and harmful energy and affirming the need for transition from fossil fuels to renewable sources of energy. He said in Nigeria, about 70 percent of the population depend solely on fuel wood for energy, a development, which has put the country in the ranking of the countries with the highest deforestation rate. He stated that the country is said to be losing 3.5 percent of her forest annually. "The rising energy demand is also leading to violent resource conflicts at the site of extraction. The energy expansions to dirty energy frontiers and technologies such as coal, shale gas fracking, or energy from biofuels have deleterious consequences on farmers and fragile ecosystems. "It is also important to note that the newly released Intergovernmental Panel on C