I cambiamenti climatici, con le ondate di calore e l’aumento delle temperature, gli eventi meteorologici estremi come alluvioni e siccità aumentano i rischi per la salute e il benessere umano. Oltre ai danni diretti, gli impatti influenzano l’alimentazione, l’approvvigionamento di acqua ma anche la diffusione di malattie, tramite vettori come le zecche e la zanzara tigre asiatica che aumentano il rischio di insorgenza di patologie quali la malattia di Lyme, l’encefalite da zecche, la dengue e la febbre del Nilo occidentale. Secondo l’OMS tra il 2030 e il 2050 il cambiamento climatico potrebbe causare circa 250.000 ulteriori morti l’anno per malnutrizione, malaria, diarrea e stress da calore. A livello globale, il numero di disastri legati al clima è più che triplicato dal 1960. Questi disastri si traducono in oltre 60.000 morti, principalmente nei paesi in via di sviluppo.

Oggi è la Giornata mondiale delle foreste

Sabato 25 marzo alle 20,30 l’Ora della Terra per ricordare a tutti che sul clima dobbiamo agire ora, domani sarà troppo tardi

Acqua, foreste, clima: quella appena iniziata è una settimana importante al livello globale con celebrazioni di temi chiave della salute degli ecosistemi del pianeta. Il 21 e 22 marzo, le due date che l’ONU  ha indetto per celebrare con Giornate globali le Foreste e l’Acqua,  sono in realtà profondamente unite ‘sotto il segno del clima’.

Queste date sono per il WWF un’occasione per riflettere sullo stretto legame che unisce  gli ambienti forestali e le risorse idriche del nostro pianeta. Quando distruggiamo le foreste intacchiamo pesantemente il loro importante ruolo nel ciclo dell’acqua e nei sistemi idrogeologici,  rafforziamo la portata e l’intensità delle alluvioni, dei dissesti idrogeologici, dei processi di desertificazione e dei periodi con forti siccità. E’ come una delicata catena che, se spezzata, produce devastazioni con un effetto domino sia su scala locale (disastri ambientali) sia su scala globale (cambiamento climatico). E sono proprio la deforestazione e la degradazione degli ambienti forestali responsabili globalmente di circa il 20% delle emissioni di gas serra.

Quest’anno Earth Hour ha un testimonial d’eccezione: il vincitore dell’ultimo Festival di Sanremo Francesco Gabbani che ha realizzato un simpatico video messaggio a sostegno del prossimo evento globale, Ora della Terra-Earth Hour che si terrà in tutto il mondo il prossimo 25 marzo. Sulle note di Occidentali’s Karma Gabbani invita tutti a spegnere simbolicamente per un’ora le luci.

Qui il video (da Facebook) di Francesco Gabbani per Earth Hour

La Scimmia Nuda, tornata alla ribalta con il brano di Gabbani è il titolo del libro culto scritto nel 1967 dall’etologo e zoologo inglese, Desmond Morris (circa 10 milioni di copie vendute), in cui descive la specie umana in chiave etologica ed evoluzionistica. La scimmia nuda in questo caso è la specie umana, vista con lo sguardo dell’etologo. E viste le conseguenze del riscaldamento globale sugli ecosistemi, sulle specie e soprattutto sulle salute umana, continuando su questa strada, la ‘Scimmia Nuda’ rischia di estinguere se stessa.

Greenhouse gases: First it was cows -- now it's larvae!

During the day, the Chaoborus spp hide in the sediment where dissolved methane is transferred into their gas sacs. Using the buoyancy from the methane, they float to the lake surface at night to feed on zooplankton. At the surface, the methane in the gas sacs is dissolved back into the water.  Chaoborus spp is a small fly species that is found all over the world (except in Antarctica). The insect spends one to two years of its life cycle under water in a larval state, in lakes no deeper than 70 metres. Larvae spend the day in lakebed sediment and rise to the surface at night to feed. They are equipped with air sacs that they can adjust to alter their depth in the water so as to migrate upwards and downwards.

Hautala uutiskuva_500

Of all pets, cats are often considered the most difficult ones to medicate. Very small minitablets with flavours or flavour coatings can help cat owners commit to the treatment and make cats more compliant to it, while making it easier to regulate dosage and administer medication flexibly. In her dissertation, Jaana Hautala, MSc (Pharmacy), is seeking solutions for facilitating the medication of cats. In order for the oral medication of pets to succeed, the animal must enjoy the taste of the medicine and find it appealing. Palatability is essential both in acute cases and in the treatment of chronic illnesses which require regular, constant medical treatment. Successful treatment of pets is also necessary to ensure the health and wellbeing of humans, communities and the environment.

Leucauge venusta suspended from its web. Photo: Dimitar Dimitrov

For the first time biologists have made a full family tree of the world's spiders, giving us knowledge about venoms that can be useful in medicine. And we might be able to develop silk just as good as the spider's. They may make you cringe in horror, or they may intrigue you. Some even have them as pets. Regardless of how you judge them, spiders are a plentiful and widespread group of animals. They have been around for 400 million years, count 45 000 species, and crawl around on nearly every terrestrial habitat in in the world. For long, researchers have tried to unlock the secrets to their evolutionary history, striking diversity and success.

Nature_ecology_Micah_Dunthorn_480

Tropical rainforests are one of the most species-rich areas on earth. Thousands of animal and plant species live there. The smaller microbial protists, which are not visible to the naked eye, are also native to these forests, where they live in the soils and elsewhere. A team of researchers formed by Micah Dunthorn, University of Kaiserslautern, examined them more closely by analyzing their DNA. They discovered many unknown species, including many parasites, which may contribute to the stability of rainforest ecosystems. These results have now been published in the scientific journal "Nature Ecology and Evolution".

Caption: : iStock by GettyImages. Photographer: reubenheydenrych

The silence of an immense desolate land in which to search for reverberations coming from the time at which everything began. The Simons Observatory will be built in the Chilean Atacama desert at an altitude of several thousand metres for the purposes of studying primordial gravitational waves which originated in the first instants of the Big Bang. The SISSA research group led by Carlo Baccigalupi and Francesca Perrotta will take part in this prestigious international project which will lead to the realization  of an ultra-modern telescope project. Their role will involve studying and removing ‘signal contaminants’, emissions from our galaxy and other astrophysical objects which interfere with the analysis and study of primordial gravitational waves.

Artist's impression of an evaporating protoplanetary disc. Image:NASA/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle (SSC)

Stars don’t have to be massive to evaporate material from around nearby stars and affect their ability to form planets, a new study suggests. Newly formed stars are surrounded by a disc of dense gas and dust. This is called the protoplanetary disc, as material sticks together within it to form planets. Stars of different shapes and sizes are all born in huge star-forming regions. Scientists know that when a protoplanetary disc around a relatively small star is very close to a massive star, the larger star can evaporate parts of the protoplanetary disc.

“Conservation genomics to the rescue, saving the pink pigeon #seqthepinkpigeon” is a research project led by the Earlham Institute (EI) and the University of East Anglia in partnership with PacBio. By voting to save the pink pigeon – we also hope to increase survival for other threatened species. Earlham Institute is one of just five finalists and only UK entry selected by a scientific committee to win a PacBio SMRT Sequencing grant. As part of the 2017 Plant and Animal SMRT Programme. EI, in collaboration with the UEA, EnvEast and partners are aiming to save the pink pigeon from its diminishing population on the island of Mauritius. This would be the first endangered bird species to be sequenced by the Pacific Biosciences Iso-Seq method; the potential project will identify immune system genes and their variants which enable the unique species’ survival from a disease humans unwittingly introduced to the island.