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Javier E

The Panda Factories - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...-breeding-death-captivity.html

china propaganda zoo

shared by Javier E on 16 Oct 24 - No Cached
  • from the beginning, zoos saw panda cubs as a pathway to visitors, prestige and merchandise sales.On that, they have succeeded.
  • Today, China has removed more pandas from the wild than it has freed, The Times found. No cubs born in American or European zoos, or their offspring, have ever been released. The number of wild pandas remains a mystery because the Chinese government’s count is widely seen as flawed and politicized.
  • Because pandas are notoriously fickle about mating in captivity, scientists have turned to artificial breeding. That has killed at least one panda, burned the rectum of another and caused vomiting and injuries in others, records show. Some animals were partly awake for painful procedures. Pandas in China have flickered in and out of consciousness as they were anesthetized and inseminated as many as six times in five days, far more often than experts recommend.
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  • Breeding in American zoos has done little to improve genetic diversity, experts say, because China typically sends abroad animals whose genes are already well represented in the population.
  • Yet American zoos clamor for pandas, and China eagerly provides them. Zoos get attention and attendance. Chinese breeders get cash bonuses for every cub, records show. At the turn of the century, 126 pandas lived in captivity. Today there are more than 700.
  • Kati Loeffler, a veterinarian, worked at a panda breeding center in Chengdu, China, during the program’s early years. “I remember standing there with the cicadas screaming in the bamboo,” she said. “I realized, ‘Oh my God, my job here is to turn the well-being and conservation of pandas into financial gain.’”
  • Kimberly Terrell, who was director of conservation at the Memphis Zoo until 2017, said, “There was always pressure and the implication that cubs would bring money.” She noted that zoo administrators insisted on inseminating its aging female panda every year, despite concerns among zookeepers that it was unlikely to succeed. It never did.
  • “The people who actually worked day to day with these animals, who understand them best, were pretty opposed to these procedures,” she said. The zoo said its breeding efforts followed all program requirements.
  • The Times collected key documents and audiovisual materials from the Smithsonian archives and supplemented them with materials obtained through open-records requests. The trove, which spans four decades, includes medical records, scientists’ field notes and photographs and videos that offer crucial evidence of breeding procedures, side effects and the conditions in which pandas were held.
  • They show that the riskiest techniques happened in the program’s infancy, but that aggressive breeding continued at the National Zoo and at other institutions for years. A panda in Japan died during sperm collection in 2010. Chinese breeding centers, until recently, separated cubs from their mothers to make the females go back into heat.
  • This panda proliferation has prompted debates among zoo workers and scientists over whether it is ethical to subject animals to intensive breeding when they have no real prospect of being released into the wild. But those discussions have largely played out privately because researchers and zookeepers said that criticizing the program could hurt their ability to work in the field.
  • when a species is on the verge of extinction, conservationists sometimes make a last-ditch effort to save it.
  • with pandas, zoo administrators take chances again and again simply to make more cubs, while keeping the grimmest details from the public.
Brian DeGraaf

Here Is Where - In Search of America's Great, Forgotten History - 0 views

www.hereiswhere.org/...Here_Is_Where.html

history landmarks historical markers historical markers waymarking snarfing

shared by Brian DeGraaf on 29 Aug 09 - Cached
  • Brian DeGraaf on 29 Aug 09
     
    "HERE IS WHERE is an all-volunteer initiative created by the Legacy Project to find and spotlight little known and unmarked historic sites throughout the United States. These sites relate to events that changed the course of history and represent a wide range of individuals-from explorers, pioneers, inventors, scientists, activists, and people of faith, to artists, writers, musicians, builders, and athletes. HERE IS WHERE is a grass roots campaign, and the Legacy Project encourages Americans across the country to seek out and recommend their own favorite spots. The larger mission of this effort is to promote the importance of preserving historic sites and to foster a passion for history itself."
Chilirlw Glitch

World History : HyperHistory - 2 views

www.hyperhistory.com/...a.html

history timeline maps

shared by Chilirlw Glitch on 11 Jul 09 - Cached
David Hilton liked it
  • Chilirlw Glitch on 24 Feb 10
     
    World History : HyperHistory Online navigates through 3 000 years of World History with links to important persons of world historical importance; civilization timelines; events and facts; and historical maps"> World History, history,worldhistory, Great Depression, Medieval History, Middle Ages, Free, Information, Online, Buy Chart, millennium, World Cultures, world history chart, Einstein, andreas, world war, education, civilization, timeline, chronology, synchronoptic, timetable, timetables, rulers, writers, discoverers, scientists, philosophers, art
puzznbuzzus

Some Interesting Health Facts You Must Know. - 0 views

1. When you are looking at someone you love, your pupils dilate, and they do the same when you are looking at someone you hate. 2. The human head is one-quarter of our total length at birth but on...

health quiz facts

started by puzznbuzzus on 15 Feb 17 no follow-up yet
David Hilton

Center for History of Physics - American Institute of Physics - 0 views

www.aip.org/history

physics chemistry science astronomy documents archives sources primary sources einstein scientists

shared by David Hilton on 28 Jun 09 - Cached
  • David Hilton on 28 Jun 09
     
    This is a collection of sources and archive material maintained by the American Institute of Physics "to preserve and make known the historical record of modern physics and allied sciences". How inter-disciplinary!
David Hilton

Einstein Archives Online - 0 views

www.alberteinstein.info

science einstein physics archives sources primary sources scientists nuclear

shared by David Hilton on 07 Jul 09 - Cached
  • David Hilton on 07 Jul 09
     
    Extensive primary sources related to Albert Einstein.
Javier E

Opinion | The Republican Climate Closet - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...republicans-environment.html

gop conservatives climate change politics

shared by Javier E on 12 Aug 19 - No Cached
  • the 2015 subsidies were part of a much larger, must-pass budget bill. So was the 2018 tax credit for burying emissions. But with Republicans in full control of Congress, you can bet those measures would not have gotten through unless senior people in the party had wanted it to happen.
  • he looked me in the eye.“We know this problem is real,” he said, or words to that effect. “We know we are going to have to do a deal with the Democrats. We are waiting for the fever to cool.”
  • He meant the fever in the Republican base, then in full foaming-at-the-mouth, Tea Party mode. Denial of climate change was an article of faith in the Tea Party, and lots of Republican officeholders who had been willing to discuss the problem and possible solutions just a few years earlier had gone into hiding
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  • The fever never really cooled, of course. It transmuted into the raging xenophobia and nativism that put Donald Trump in the White House
  • What the fellow told me that day still holds true: Lots of Republicans know in their hearts that this problem is real
  • Certainly, some Republicans seem to believe that scientists are engaged in a worldwide conspiracy to cook the books on climate change. But they’re not all that crazy. And you can see this in the way that bits and pieces of sensible climate policy keep sneaking through Congress.
  • As long as nobody in those red districts back home is really watching, Republican members of Congress will adopt low-key measures to help cut emissions. They especially like ones that offer additional benefits, like building up the tax base in rural communities, as wind and solar farms do.
  • they tell you the political situation may not be quite as hopeless as it looks. Lurking below the surface of our ugly politics is, I believe, a near consensus to do something big on climate change.
  • Even if Democrats take Congress and the White House in 2020 and push forward an ambitious climate bill in 2021, they are likely to need at least a handful of Republican votes in the Senate
  • We ought to hope for more than that. The policy will be more durable if it passes Congress with substantial bipartisan majorities, as all of our landmark environmental laws did.
  • the Republicans — some of them, at least — are starting to sense political risk in continued climate denial. Their constituents, battered by the fires and torrential rains and the incessant rise of tidal flooding, are knocking on the closet door.
  • Frank Luntz, the pollster who wrote a scurrilous memorandum 17 years ago counseling Republicans to obfuscate the science of climate change, is among those who have come around
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