B4U India

Money is the key to a happy marriage

Wed, 12 Dec 2007 03:21:00 -0500

Even if you aren’t the best looking of men, chances are bright that you will settle down to wedded bliss if you have a fat bank balance, says a pioneering study of the "marriage market".

The study is one of the first that provides hard evidence to the suggestions that the fairer sex is drawn not to a man’s looks, but his status, power and wealth.

Based on a historical data from 1910 of more than 20,000 American men from the turn of the century, the study found that when men are in short supply due to events such as wars, women are willing to settle for poorer partners of lesser social sway.

However, when men are in abundance, women tend to turn choosy, driving a bargain for the richest and most powerful men. This in turn, has the marriage prospects of poor-off male "drastically reduced", reveal lead researches Thomas Pollet and Daniel Nettle of Newcastle University

"Here we show that if men are abundant, this will influence the market value of their desired traits, that is, women can demand more. This aspect, namely individual decision making as a function of the mating market (local abundance or scarcity), has been relatively neglected within the literature on human mate choice," the Telegraph quoted Mr Pollet, as saying.

He states that according to the findings, when the sex ratio is equal, married men tend to have a slightly higher socio-economic status than bachelors.

"As the sex ratio increases, married men are predicted to need up two or three times the socioeconomic status of unmarried men," he said.

The study confirms a 1991 prediction by Frank Pedersen of the University of Delaware that the sex ratio has a big impact on the marriage market.

"Thus, much about the varying ethos of male and female behaviour across populations and across time could in principle be explained with reference to the sex ratio," said Mr. Pollet.

"These questions are ripe for future investigation, but our study has clearly established the more limited fact that sex ratio fluctuations in modern humans can put one sex in the driving seat and allow them to drive a hard bargain."

The study is published in the journal Biology Letters. (ANI)

Shrinking Himalayan ice fields could affect more than 500 million people on the Indian subcontinent

Wed, 12 Dec 2007 03:21:00 -0500

A new research has led scientists to speculate that the Himalayan ice fields have been gradually shrinking over the past 50 years, which could seriously affect the lives of more than 500 million people on the Indian subcontinent.

The finding was a result of the drilling of ice cores from the summit of Naimona'nyi, a large glacier 6,050 meters (19,849 feet) high on the Tibetan Plateau, last year. This particular ice field lacked the distinctive radioactive signals that mark virtually every other ice core retrieved worldwide.

This missing signal has led scientists to hypothesize that this Tibetan ice field has been shrinking, at least since the atomic bomb test half a century ago.

If this theory turns out to be true, it could foreshadow a future when these stockpiles of freshwater will dwindle and vanish, seriously affecting the lives of more than 500 million people on the Indian subcontinent.

Scientists estimate that there are some 15,000 glaciers nested within the Himalayan mountain chain forming the main repository for fresh water in that part of the world.

"There's about 12,000 cubic kilometers (2,879 cubic miles) of fresh water stored in the glaciers throughout the Himalayas," said Lonnie Thompson, university professor of earth sciences at Ohio State University. "Those glaciers release meltwater each year and feed the rivers that support nearly a half-billion people in that region. The loss of these ice fields might eventually create critical water shortages for people who depend on glacier-fed streams,” she added.

According to the research team, this massive loss of meltwater would drastically impact major Indian rivers like the Ganges, Indus and Brahmaputra that provide water for one-sixth of the world's population.

"If what is happening on Naimona'nyi is characteristic of the other Himalayan glaciers, glacial meltwater will eventually dwindle with substantial consequences for a tremendous number of people," said Thompson.

The total area of glaciers in the Tibetan Plateau is expected to shrink by 80 percent by the year 2030. (ANI)

Greenland experiencing global warming again after 90 years

Tue, 11 Dec 2007 09:57:00 -0500

Two researchers, who have reviewed old maps of Greenland, have discovered that the area is experiencing the effects of global warming again after nearly 90 years.

According to Jason Box, an Associate Professor of Geography at Ohio State University and a researcher with the Byrd Polar Research Centre, the evidence reinforces the view that glaciers and other bodies of ice are sensitive to climate change and that rising temperatures will eventually speed up the demise of theisland's ice fields, hastening sea level rise.

Ruling out the possibility of this being a one off instance, Box and undergraduate student Adam Herrington concentrated their study on three large glaciers flowing out from the central ice sheet towards the ocean – the Jakobshavn Isbrae, the Kangerdlugssuaq and the Helheim.

Herrington, who co-authored the paper, spent weeks in the university's libraries and archives, scouring the faded, dusty books that contained the logs of early scientific expeditions, looking primarily for photos and maps of several of Greenland 's key glaciers.

"These three glaciers are huge and collectively, they drain as much as 40 percent of the southern half of the ice sheet. All three have recently increased their speed as the temperature rose," Box said.

"I must have paged through more than a hundred such volumes to get the data we needed for this study," Herrington said.

Box said that the Kangerdlugssuaq, at 3.1 miles (5 kilometres) wide is as wide as New York's Manhattan Island.

Digging through the old data, Herrington found a map from 1932 and an aerial photo from 1933 that documented how, during a warm period, the Kangerdlugssuaq Glacier lost a piece of floating ice that was nearly the size of New York 's Manhattan Island.

"In 2002 to 2003, that same glacier retreated another 3.1 miles (5 kilometres), and that it tripled its speed between 2000 and 2005."

The fact that recent changes to Greenland's ice sheet mirrors its behavior nearly 70 years ago is increasing researchers' confidence and alarm as to what the future holds.

Recent warming around the frozen island actually lags behind the global average warming pattern by about 1-2 degrees C but if it fell into synch with global temperatures in a few years, the massive ice sheet might pass its "threshold of viability" – a tipping point where the loss of ice couldn't be stopped.

"Once you pass that threshold," Box said, "the current science suggests that it would become an irreversible process. And we simply don't know how fast that might happen, how fast the ice might disappear."

Greenland 's ice sheet contains at least 10 percent of the world's freshwater and it has been losing more than 24 cubic miles (100 cubic kilometres) of ice annually for the last five years and 2007 was a record year for glacial melting there.

The report was reported at this week's annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco. (ANI)

ExoplanetsÃ¢â‚¬â„¢ Ã¢â‚¬Å“twilight zonesÃ¢â‚¬Â may be germane for harbouring life

Tue, 11 Dec 2007 09:57:00 -0500

NASA scientists say that rocky planets beyond the solar system, called exoplanets, may support life.

The researchers say that exoplanets may rock back and forth to create large swathes of ‘twilight zones ‘with temperatures suitable for life.

Gravitational tugs with the other orbiting objects often cause exoplanets to settle into trajectories in which they always show the same face to their hosts.

Due to this characteristic of exoplanets, they are believed to be bad candidates for life. Scientists believe that the hemisphere facing the planets’ host stars would roast, while the dark side would freeze.

However, Anthony Dobrovolskis of NASA Ames Research Center in California has now created a computer model that suggests that the case is not the same always.

He says that exoplanets can rock to and fro if they travel on elongated or eccentric orbits, and thus create a 'twilight zone' that could be hospitable to life.

According to him, the Moon also experiences a similar rocking motion and shows the same face to Earth, taking the same amount of time to rotate around its axis as it does to circle our planet once.

But since the Moon's path around the Earth is not perfectly circular, its orbital speed is sometimes faster or slower than its rotational speed.

Dobrovolskis says that it is the difference between the two motions that causes the Moon to rock slightly.

"If you're standing on the Moon, you'll see the Earth rock back and forth a little bit," New Scientist magazine quoted Dobrovolskis as saying.

He believes that exoplanets experience pronounced rocking motions on very elongated orbits, and may have much more temperate climes than previously thought.

Dobrovolskis says that "there is no permanent day or permanent night side anymore" if the planet rocks by 90 degrees or more.

"The whole thing becomes a twilight zone," he adds.

Dobrovolskis says that his results may have implications for attempts to directly observe new worlds.

He suggests that astronomers look for planets the temperatures of which are relatively even all across their surfaces, not just for planets sporting one very hot and one very cold hemisphere. (ANI)

"Night shining" clouds above Polar Regions may be partly due to global warming

Tue, 11 Dec 2007 09:52:00 -0500

Observations from a NASA satellite has led researchers to suggest that the phenomenon of clouds shining in the night 50 miles above the polar regions, may be partly due to global warming.

Known as noctilucent or "night-shining" clouds, they are visible by night because they are so high above the Earth that they are illuminated by sunlight, while the ground below is in darkness.

Though scientists have been keeping tabs on the clouds for about 27 years through a series of solar-watching satellites, NASA's AIM (Aeronomy of Ice in the Mesosphere) satellite is part of the first mission devoted to studying the clouds exclusively.

AIM observed these clouds during the first season of its operations, when it confirmed a long-held suspicion that a summertime radar phenomenon observed at the polar regions was due to signals bouncing off ionized ice crystals in the upper atmosphere.

Researchers believe that these clouds are more numerous and denser than expected due to changes in Earth's climate.

"These clouds are changing in ways that we don't understand. They appear more frequently than in the past and form at lower altitudes, which, may be due to a buildup of carbon dioxide in the lower atmosphere," said AIM principal investigator Jim Russell. "The gas traps heat and leaves the upper mesosphere colder than normal," he added.

The scientists also believe that a difference of just 5 degrees Fahrenheit has profound effects on the clouds' structure and motion. "A small change in temperature is causing a dramatic change in cloud behavior," Scott Bailey, deputy principal investigator for AIM, told Discovery News.

Scientists are most surprised after seeing so much variation in these clouds.

"It's the changes day-to-day that really surprised us," said Bailey. "Even from orbit to orbit, we can see differences in the behavior of the clouds," he added.

Analysis of the chemical composition of the clouds is under way. (ANI)

Global warming will hit worldÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s protected areas severely, warns study

Tue, 11 Dec 2007 09:52:00 -0500

A new study has indicated that global warming is going to affect the world’s protected areas so severely, that in some cases, the resulting environments will be virtually new to the planet.

Presented at the UN climate change talks in Bali, Indonesia, the study says that more than half the world's protected territory is vulnerable to impacts of climate change, with some regions facing the disappearance of current climatic conditions by 2100 or a transition to conditions not found on Earth in the previous century.

"We previously assumed that if the land is protected, then the plants and animals living there will persist," said Sandy Andelman, lead author of the study and CI's (Conservation International) vice president who heads the Tropical Ecology Assessment and Monitoring (TEAM) network. "But, that may be wishful thinking," she added.

According to the study, countries where 90 percent or more of the total protected territory has climate conditions that will disappear globally or be transformed to novel climates are Benin, Bhutan, Bolivia, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guyana, Ivory Coast, Mexico, Niger, Rwanda, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Swaziland, Togo, Uganda and Venezuela.

With millions of people living in these countries, maintaining the health of protected areas and the biological diversity they contain is crucial to the availability of fresh water, food, medicines and other life-sustaining benefits of nature.

Another startling finding of the study is that climate change will cause increased extinctions of species unable to adapt to altered climatic conditions, and substantial changes to the natural ecosystems.

The study also identified "refuge" countries where protected areas face minimal risk from climate change, including Botswana, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Libya, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritania, Mozambique, Myanmar, Namibia, Saudi Arabia, Sierra Leone and Somalia.

Ensuring the adequate protection of nature reserves in these countries will provide baseline information to help understand the dynamics of biological diversity relatively unaffected by climate change.

"We urgently need to better understand how climate change will affect life on Earth so we can develop solutions, and to do that we need consistent data about long-term trends at a very large scale," said Andelman. (ANI)

Arsenic contamination of water has no universal solution

Tue, 11 Dec 2007 09:52:00 -0500

University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers have found that arsenic contamination of drinking water does not have a universal solution.

Madeline Gotkowitz, a hydrogeologist at the Wisconsin Geological and Natural History Survey, says that his team’s recent work on arsenic-tainted wells shows that appropriate treatment varies depending on the source of the contamination.

According to the researcher, naturally occurring arsenic in rocks is usually associated with sulfur or iron-rich minerals, where it poses no threat to groundwater.

However, drinking water that has released from mineral form into groundwater through geochemical or biological processes, and has been chronically exposed to arsenic, may increase the risk of skin lesions and several cancers.

Gotkowitz says that arsenic associated with sulfide minerals in rock can be released by the weathering effects of oxygen-rich environments, while arsenic bound to iron oxides can be released by iron-reducing bacteria that thrive in low-oxygen conditions.

"There is different geochemistry in different (areas). That makes it a harder nut to crack. ... People might have a similar symptom - arsenic in their water - but there are different solutions because the geologic environment is quite different," she says.

In rural areas, routinely disinfected with chlorine bleach to control pathogenic and other bacteria. While bleach should kill off arsenic-producing bacteria, it also creates high-oxygen environment that may enhance release of additional arsenic from the rocks.

Gotkowitz and UW-Madison geologists Eric Roden and Evgenya Shelobolina evaluated the impact of chlorination on bacteria and arsenic levels in Wisconsin wells.

The researchers found that in wells with arsenic levels only moderately above the accepted standard, the presence of iron-reducing bacteria was associated with higher arsenic concentrations. They also noted that disinfection of such wells with chlorine adequately removed bacteria and reduced arsenic levels in the short term.

Besides, it was also noted that chlorination did not increase arsenic release from the surrounding rocks, indicating that oxidation of the rocks is not an important source of arsenic in that case.

Similar effects were seen in areas with a relatively high water table, where aquifers are exposed to less oxygen.

Based on their findings, the researchers came to the conclusion that disinfection was an effective way to control pathogenic bacteria, and that it might also limit arsenic release in wells.

"It's not like there's going to be an easy solution, but there are some basic indicators," Gotkowitz says.

She further said that under low-oxygen conditions or where water levels were high, "you might want to try to control those types of bacteria as a way to improve well water quality."

The researcher, however, insists that chlorine treatment may not be appropriate in all environments, as the oxidizing properties of bleach may pose more of a concern in arsenic-affected regions with lower water tables and wells drawing from aquifers highly contaminated with arsenic are unlikely to benefit from localized treatment.

The results were presented at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco. (ANI)

Pygmies' short life spans may be behind their small size

Tue, 11 Dec 2007 09:52:00 -0500

A new study suggests that the smaller life spans of pygmies across the world might be a reason as to why they are smaller in size than average humans.

The research suggests that brief life spans put evolutionary pressure on pygmy women to stop growing and to start giving birth sooner. As a result of this, the energy that should normally be expended on growth gets spent on reproduction at a younger age.

"The idea is that (pygmies) have to stop growing earlier, because when you start reproducing—at least for women—all the energy you would put in growth is put into reproduction," the National Geographic quoted Andrea Migliano, the lead author of the study and a postdoctoral fellow at Clare College, Cambridge, in the United Kingdom, as saying.

"You have to choose—either you grow or you reproduce," she added.

Reported online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Migliano's study contradicts the age-old belief that pygmies' small stature is due to environmental factors like poor nutrition.

Migliano said that she could not agree with the suggestion of malnutrition because some of the world’s tallest people—such as Kenya's Maasai and Samburu—also typically suffer from poor nutrition.

She instead proposed that an evolutionary process woven into pygmies' genetic structure was the reason behind their stature. She also said that pygmies’ stature would not change even if they were subjected to less stressful environment.

Migliano and her colleagues studied two populations of pygmies in the Philippines, the Aeta and the Batak.

The communities studied have high mortality because the populations are ravaged by easily preventable diseases like measles and chicken pox.

Migliano revealed that poor diets make them more vulnerable to illness.

So far, theories similar to her hypothesis have been used to explain the difference between other kinds of mammals like elephants and mice.

"The broad variation in size across mammals goes with extreme variation in the pace of life histories—little-bitty ones live fast and die young, and big ones live slowly and die old," said Kristen Hawkes, an anthropologist at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City who edited Migliano's paper.

"Links between body size and life history have been applied to species changes over time within our lineage, but (Migliano) is the one who's taken this theory to look at within-species variation among living people," Hawkes added.

Since Migliano's theory proposes that pygmies are proof of how Homo sapiens continue to evolve, it is unlikely to go down well with creationists and proponents of intelligent design.

Migliano, who said she had already gotten some criticism for putting her theory forward, said: "There is this idea that evolution should not apply for humans."

She also revealed that she was working with the Government of the Philippines to improve pygmies' living conditions.

"I am sure we are still adapting to our environment. But saying we are adapting to our environment doesn't say that the pygmies are fine. They are adapting to the worst situation in the world," she said. (ANI)

B4U India

Money is the key to a happy marriage

Shrinking Himalayan ice fields could affect more than 500 million people on the Indian subcontinent

Greenland experiencing global warming again after 90 years

ExoplanetsÃ¢â‚¬â„¢ Ã¢â‚¬Å“twilight zonesÃ¢â‚¬Â may be germane for harbouring life

"Night shining" clouds above Polar Regions may be partly due to global warming

Global warming will hit worldÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s protected areas severely, warns study

Arsenic contamination of water has no universal solution

Pygmies' short life spans may be behind their small size

ExoplanetsÃ¢â‚¬â„¢ Ã¢â‚¬Å“twilight zonesÃ¢â‚¬Â may be germane for harbouring life