Los rinocerontes son recuerdos vivientes de la megafauna prehistórica que una vez abundaba sobre la Tierra. La amenaza de la extinción se cierne sobre ellos.
La cacería furtiva, el comercio de los cuernos y la destrucción de hábitat son los principales culpables de que estos grandes mamíferos estén al borde de la desaparición.
Una especie ya se ha extinguido en 2010, el rinoceronte de Vietnam. Sólo quedan cinco especies de rinocerontes y una de ellas, el rhinoceronte de Borneo ha sido reducido a 30 ejemplares y de los rinocerontes blancos norteños de Africa hay 7 ejemplares.
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Si Ud. desea saber más y colaborar en la conservación de los rinocerontes, por favor visite la siguiente página. Hacer click AQUI.
"Childhood pneumonia, college mononucleosis --those were nothing compared to
this... I spiral into a deep darkness... I cannot come back up; I cannot reach
my body". With those words, and an experience familiar to those who suffer from
chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), Elisabeth Tova Bailey's The Sound of a Wild
Snail Eating begins.
Bailey's poetic prose is more than an account of illness, it is also the
remarkable natural history of a individual snail. It is an account of change,
of survival, and of adaptation. When a friend brings her a snail from the
woodlands nearby, the small gift opens a novel world -- and a mysterious life --
that before went unnoticed. Confined to her bed, Bailey observes the snail as it
explores, seeks shelter, gives birth, and relates to its miniature world. Within
its flower pot or terrarium, the snail becomes a companion and a catalyst for
new questions and exploration.
The author compiles
a rich body of knowledge about snails, blending scientific knowledge with
literary accounts. The snail's world, though often unnoticed, is rich and
fascinating. For instance, a snail's brain has between 50,000 and 100,000 giant
neurons. Snails find their way through their world much like Helen Keller,
relying on smell and touch. They use their slime as a Teflon highway, a surface
to enable effortless and silent locomotion. The snail's world, though foreign,
is amazingly intricate and unique.
After experiencing years of full life of working, gardening, sailing, and
hiking, the author's new life with chronic fatigue syndrome was as undesired as
it was foreign. She describes life with CFS vividly. Orthostatic intolerance
limits movement and isolates: "Offices, stores, galleries, libraries and movie
theaters are not made for horizontal people". Post-exertional costs are incurred
for routine activities once taken for granted. She writes that "holding and
reading a book for any length of time involved levels of strength and
concentration that were beyond me".
Realizing her snail is similarly confined, the author takes interest in the
environment that she provides for it. A woodland terrarium is prepared for the
snail, a place for the snail to explore and live comfortably. Yet, a reader
wonders: Is a bed, a table, some white walls, and a water pitcher a stimulating
environment for a human? The author herself speaks of being "trapped inside a
stark, white box", unable to fully enjoy a window, hear pleasing sounds, or
enjoy sunlight. Just as the snail requires stimulation in its environment, so,
too, does she.
Before she was ill, Bailey was not very aware of what a snail's world was
like; it seemed small and inconsequential. CFS is equally inconspicuous to
the healthy public. The author recalls those who found her "disappearance from
work and social circles inexplicable." Like snails in the woodlands, she also
becomes invisible: "I was simply homebound, like a snail pulled into its
shell. But being homebound in the human world is a sort of vanishing."
Snails lack many senses. Their vision is poor, and they cannot hear. As if
to make up for the missing senses, snails develop other senses, such as an acute
sense of smell. As CFS creates severe physical and mental exhaustion, the mind
seeks imagination and contemplation. The author remarks, "When the body is
rendered useless, the mind still runs like a bloodhound along well-worn trails".
The mind creates new trails as well. As authentic proof of those trails,
chronic fatigue syndrome has produced its share of skilled authors. Hillary
Johnson's Osler's Web and Laura Hillenbrand's Seabiscuit are
substantiation of this lineage of powerful pens. In my home, both these books
sit on a bookshelf. When I see these books, I am reminded of courage, of
survival, and of the human spirit. Elisabeth Tova Bailey's The Sound of a
Wild Snail Eating now rests beside their works, in a growing corner -- my a
Hall of Fame of CFS authors.
Bailey speaks of survival as spurred by a "specific focus.. a hope balanced
on the edge of possibility". Possibility and hope are fuels that help those with
chronic fatigue syndrome survive. Possibility and hope also conspire to create
powerful prose. And Elisabeth Tova Bailey's book is powerful prose, a
masterpiece of natural history that cuts through disease, environmental
concerns, and sociological questions to find a uniquely beautiful voice.
Sound of a Wild Snail Eating can be purchased from Amazon.com.
This
is one Vietnamese festival that makes even non animal lovers
cringe.
Every year, at a village
near Hanoi, a pig is brutally chopped into two so that people can smear
banknotes with its blood in the belief that it would bring
luck.
Photo By
KHAM/REUTERS
Farmer Nguyen Hung Truc waves
battle flags as he portrays Doan Thuong, an anti-royal military general who
lived in 13th century, during a festival at the Nem Thuong village in Bac Ninh,
about 40 km (25 miles) north of Hanoi, January 28, 2012.
Organized by
the villagers, the festival is held on the sixth day of the first month of the
lunar calendar to worship the village's deity Doan Thuong.
Every year,
thousands of people from the village and nearby villages will gather to smear
the blood of the pig on their banknotes in the belief that it would bring luck
in the new year. The festival is known as the most brutal in the country and is
condemned by many, including some who called on the government to stop the
festival.
Photo By
KHAM/REUTERS
Villagers play traditional
music as they take part in a festival at the Nem Thuong village in Bac Ninh,
about 40 km (25 miles) north of Hanoi, January 28, 2012.
Photo By
KHAM/REUTERS
A pig is carried around the
village during the festival...
Protest-letter to
the Government of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam
To whom it may
concern
I wish to express my deep concern about animal cruelty
being conducted in the name of tradition in Vietnam.
On 28th of January
2012 - like every year - citizens at Nem Thuong village have celebrated their
cruel festival during which a pig is brutally chopped into two. Every year,
thousands of people from the village and nearby villages gather to smear the
blood of the pig on their banknotes in the belief that it would bring luck in
the new year. The festival is known as the most brutal in your country and is
condemned by many, including some who called already on your government to stop
the festival.
No one can adequately explain why these practices are
carried out year after year – except to say they are "traditional". This however
is not a valid argument to continue these practices.
I urge the
Government of Vietnam to abolish the above practice for the following
reasons:
1. It hurts the animals – contrary to what many believe,
animals suffer tremendously before and during such festivals.
2. It
hurts us - cruelty against animals harms society as a whole; it signals and
normalizes insensitivity in children who can become numb to the suffering of
living beings. It is also known to influence certain people to commit violence
to other humans.
3. It is bad for tourism - as tourists are abhorred by
such practices, the festival will have an adverse effect on tourism, an industry
which provides the country with much-needed financial returns. Those foreigners
who experience or come to know of this practice leave Vietnam confused and with
a heavy heart, rather than uplifted by its paradoxical beauty and
friendliness.
I implore you to end these violent practice and help
Vietnam move towards a truly peaceful country in keeping with its international
image.
I trust that you will support these measures (which are becoming
more widespread around the world) and thus promote non-violent cultural
practices in Vietnam. Until such a time, however, I regret that it will be
necessary to boycott Vietnam both as a tourist and by way of commerce and to
encourage others to participate in a boycott as well.
Yours
sincerely,
.....................................................................
please
sign with your name and address
INSTRUCTIONS: Please
copy and paste the above text (or chose you own words) and send it to the
Government of the Socialist Republic
of Vietnam using their contact form
on their website: http://www.vietnam.gov.vn/portal/page/portal/English/contact You can also send an email to the embassy of Vietnam in your
country, or to your country's embassy in Vietnam. Email addresses can easily be
found using the following online portal: http://www.embassyworld.com/embassy/Vietnam/vietnam.htm
Airborne cooking by-products
from frying beef (hamburgers), pork (bacon strips) and soybean-based food
(tempeh burgers) were collected, extracted, tested for mutagenicity and
chemically analysed. The fumes generated by frying pork and beef were
mutagenic, with 4900 and 1300 revertants/g of food cooked, respectively. No
mutagenicity was detected in fumes from frying tempeh burgers.
Bacon fried to a well-done but
non-charred state was eight times more mutagenic in a microsuspension
Ames/Salmonella test (TA98 with S-9) than hamburgers and about 350 times more
mutagenic than tempeh burgers.
Among food samples cooked to a
well-done, non-charred state, bacon strips had almost 15-fold more mass (109.5
ng/g) than that of the beef, whereas no heterocyclic amine (HCA) was detected
in the fried tempeh burgers. 2-Amino-1-methyl-6-phenylimidazo[4,5-b]pyridine
(PhIP) was the most abundant HCA, followed by
2-amino-3,8-dimethylimidazo[4,5-f]quinoxaline (MeIQx) and
2-amino-3,4,8-trimethylimidazo[4,5-f]quinoxaline (DiMeIQx).
No
2-amino-9H-pyrido[2,3-b]indole (A alpha C) was detected in the food samples
fried at about 200 degrees C, although it was present in the collected airborne
products. The total amounts of HCAs in the smoke condensates were 3 ng/g from
fried bacon, 0.37 ng/g from fried beef and 0.177 ng/g from fried soy-based
food.
This study indicates that
cooks are potentially exposed to relatively high levels of airborne mutagens
and carcinogens and that long-term sampling inside restaurants and kitchens may
be warranted in order to assess the potential risk of prolonged exposure.
Las compañías de biotecnología están empeñadas a reestructurar el genoma de cuanto organismo caiga en sus manos. Se supone que los organismos modificados genéticamente beneficiarán a toda la humanidad en general y la prensa pagada por intereses económicos nos venden esa utopía.
Pero lo que pocas veces los medios de comunicación nos cuentan es los efectos negativos sobre la salud y el medio ambiente. No nos dicen claramente que en definitiva las plantas transgénicas (ej., maíz Bt) son organismos resistentes a herbicidas (Roundup Ready), los cuales son nocivos para los humanos y demás seres vivos.
En otras palabras, la producción de los alimentos transgénicos requiere el uso intensivo de productos agroquímicos, incluyendo herbicidas. Cuando consumimos maíz transgénico, por ejemplo, también comemos herbicidas. Así de claro.
Las plantas transgénicas más ampliamente cultivadas son algodón (Gossypium spp.), la soja (Glycine max), el arroz (Oryza sativa), el maíz (Zea mays) y la canola (Brassica napus).
El siguiente reportaje nos informa sobre los alimentos transgénicos y las implicaciones de su consumo en la salud humana y su efecto en el medio ambiente:
Disclaimer:
the posting of stories, commentaries, reports, documents and links (embedded or
otherwise) on this site does not in any way, shape or form, implied or
otherwise, necessarily express or suggest endorsement or support of any of such
posted material or parts therein.
We have countless of miracles right in front of our own faces wherever we care to look at on this beautiful planet. All we have to do is open out hearts and pay more attention to our surroundings. And behold them!!
One of these miracles is the aeronautical display of thousands of starlings (Sturnus vulgaris) flying up and down like a single entity and yet separate before they settle for the night on Ot Moor in England (Video 1).
Video 1. Starlings on Ot Moor.
Thoughout the year and especially during Spring starlings gladen our souls with their melodious tunes (Video 2).
Video 2. Starling singing.
The Ecological Services of Starlings
Starlings are considered pests but this kind of thinking is totally wrong. New research is proving that these birds are very beneficial to farmers as excellent biological control agents. They are insectivores (Fig 1).
Figure 1. Starling (Sturnus vulgaris) with load of insects. Source: RSPB.
More than 57% of the annual food of adult starlings is composed of animal matter including insects, spiders, snails and other invertebrates picked up in the fields in the United States (Kalmach, 1928). In other parts of the world the intake of animal matter is much higher. For instance in New Zealand starlings consume up to 90% animal foods while only 10% consists of cereal and weed seeds. The study revealed the insect orders Coleoptera and Lepidoptera to be most important (Coleman, 1972,1977). Fruit farmers see starlings as a nuissance. Nevertheless fruits such as cherries form 2.66% of the starlings annual diet, but this consumption is restricted to June and July when it forms 15-17%, as pointed out by some researchersin the United States. The value of the insect-feeding habits of starlings outweigh by far their fruit-feeding habits. In some areas of the United States farmers have discovered this fact and are now attracting starlings to their properties by placing nesting boxes in trees and fence poles. This way these birds can control the insects in the plantations. The ecological services of starlings (Sturnus vulgaris) as biological control agents are very important and what is more they are free of charge to us! Read more...
Starlings are disappearing in Europe Starlings are in trouble throughout the European Union including the UK. They are declining at an alarming rate. It is estimated that 40 million starlings have disappeared from this continent since 1980. In the UK, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) has launched an important research project to find out the reasons behind the starlings decline. You can help by contacting the RSPB here. Environmental pollution is most likely the culprit of their population crash. Whatever is affecting them in the end will affect us as well.
The author compiles
a rich body of knowledge about snails, blending scientific knowledge with
literary accounts. The snail's world, though often unnoticed, is rich and
fascinating. For instance, a snail's brain has between 50,000 and 100,000 giant
neurons. Snails find their way through their world much like Helen Keller,
relying on smell and touch. They use their slime as a Teflon highway, a surface
to enable effortless and silent locomotion. The snail's world, though foreign,
is amazingly intricate and unique. 
