Phillip's Natural World 2.0

Florida wreck kills at least 10

2012-01-30T01:09:00.002-05:00

Aerial view of massive pileup on I-75 near Gainesville where the freeway passes through the Paynes Prairie swamp which is currently smoldering.

GAINESVILLE, Fla.(AP) — A long line of cars and trucks collided one after another early Sunday on a dark Florida highway so shrouded in haze and smoke that drivers were instantly blinded. At least 10 people were killed.

When rescuers first arrived, they could only listen for screams and moans because the poor visibility made it difficult to find victims in wreckage that was strewn for nearly a mile, police said.

Authorities were still trying to determine what caused the pileup south of Gainesville on Interstate 75, which had been closed for a time before the accidents because of the mixture of fog and heavy smoke from a brush fire that may have been intentionally set. At least a dozen cars and six tractor-trailers were involved, and some burst into flames.

The wildfire that may have been responsible in part of the massive wreck started early Saturday afternoon.
Image by gatorgal via wunderblog.com.

Steven R. Camps of Gainesville said he and some friends were driving home several hours before dawn when they were drawn into the pileup.

"You could hear cars hitting each other. People were crying. People were screaming. It was crazy," he said. "If I could give you an idea of what it looked like, I would say it looked like the end of the world."

Photographs of the scene taken hours later revealed an aftermath that resembled a Hollywood disaster movie. Twisted, burned-out vehicles were scattered across the pavement, with smoke still rising from the wreckage.

Cars appeared to have smashed into the big rigs and, in one case, a motor home. Some cars were crushed beneath the heavier trucks.

Another image by gatorgal via wunderblog.com shows the genesis of the Paynes Prairie fire Saturday afternoon that likely contributed to the massive traffic pileup.

Reporters who were allowed to view the site saw bodies still inside a burned-out Grand Prix. One tractor-trailer was burned down to its skeleton, charred pages of books and magazines in its cargo area. And the tires of every vehicle had burned away, leaving only steel belts.

Before Camps hit the fog bank, a friend who was driving ahead of him in a separate vehicle called to warn of the road conditions. The friend said he had just seen an accident and warned Camps to be careful as he approached the Paynes Prairie area just south of Gainesville.

A close-up of the smoldering and burning muck and vegetation in Paynes Prairie, south of Gainesville, Florida.

A short time later, Camps said, traffic stopped along the northbound lanes.

"You couldn't see anything. People were pulling off the road," he said.

Camps said he began talking about the road conditions to a man in the car stopped next to them when another vehicle hit the man's car.

The man's vehicle was crushed under a semi-truck stopped in front of them. Camps said his car was hit twice, but he and another friend were able to jump out. They took cover in the grass on the shoulder of the road.

All around them, cars and trucks were on fire, and they could hear explosions as the vehicles burned.

"It was happening on both sides of the road, so there was nowhere to go. It blew my mind," he said, explaining that the scene "looked like someone was picking up cars and throwing them."

Authorities had not released the names of victims Sunday evening, but said one passenger car had four fatalities and a "tour bus-like" vehicle also was involved in the pileup.

At least 18 people were taken to a hospital.

All six lanes of the interstate — which runs virtually the entire length of Florida — were closed most of Sunday afternoon as investigators surveyed the site and firefighters put out the last of the flames.

The northbound lanes of I-75 were reopened around 5:30 p.m. EST, but the southbound lanes remained closed.

"Our standard operating procedure is to get the road open as quickly as possible but let's not forget we have 10 people who are not with us today," said Lt. Patrick Riordan, a Florida Highway Patrol spokesman. "So we are going to take our time assessing the situation."

It was not clear when the highway would fully reopen because part of the road melted, police said.

At some point before the pileup, police briefly closed the highway because of the fog and smoke. The road was reopened when visibility improved.

Riordan said he was not sure how much time passed between the reopening of the highway and the first crash.

Traffic was being diverted much of Sunday onto U.S. 301 and State Road 27, Riordan said.

A spokeswoman for the Florida Forest Service, Ludie Bond, said the fire began Saturday, and investigators were trying to determine whether the blaze had been intentionally set. She said there were no controlled burns in the area and no lightning.

Bond also said the fire had burned 62 acres and was contained but still burning Sunday. A similar fire nearby has been burning since mid-November because the dried vegetation is so thick and deep. No homes are threatened.

Four years ago, heavy fog and smoke were blamed for another serious crash.

In January 2008, four people were killed and 38 injured in a series of similar crashes on Interstate 4 between Orlando and Tampa, about 125 miles south of Sunday's crash. More than 70 vehicles were involved in those crashes, including one pileup that involved 40 vehicles.

The area around Gainesville, Florida is listed as experiencing
"D2 -- Severe" drought conditions as of January 24, 2012.

The area around the crash site has received less than 1.00" of rain (.92") this month which is less than 33% of average January rainfall (3.31"). December was even drier with only .52" of rain falling. The average December rainfall for this part of Florida is 2.50".

Below average rainfall is predicted for the 3-month period February - April 2012 which will worsen drought conditions over the Florida peninsula.

Very dry conditions and high temperatures are forecast to continue over the Florida peninsula for the foreseeable future as the state experiences worsening drought due in large part to La niňa conditions in the equatorial Pacific Ocean.

___

Associated Press Writer Freida Frisaro in Miami contributed to this report. Photos by The Gainesville Sun, Rob C. Witzel unless otherwise noted.

Late January Weather Heats Up

2012-01-25T02:00:00.002-05:00

Yesterday morning at 03:39 UTC, big sunspot 1402 erupted, sending a coronal mass ejection (CME) headed towards Earth.

This CME is expected to set off a solar storm on January 24 - 25. NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center is advising that high-latitude power systems may experience voltage alarms; long-duration storms may cause transformer damage. Satellite orientation irregularities may occur; possible changes in satellite drag affect orbit predictions. HF radio propagation can fade at higher latitudes. . .

. . . and the aurora borealis may be seen as low as New York, Idaho, mid-Aleutians. According to NOAA, this is the strongest solar storm since May 2005.

Read more about the solar activity at PHILLIP'S NATURAL WORLD.

RARE JANUARY TORNADO

OUTBREAK KILLS TWO

INJURES 100s in ALABAMA

The calendar says it's the coldest month of winter, but today's weather is more typical of March, as a vigorous spring-like storm system has spawned a rare and deadly January tornado outbreak. Twenty tornadoes were reported in Arkansas, Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee last night and this morning, killing at least two, injuring 100, and causing major damage. Two deaths were reported in Canter Point and one unconfirmed death in Oak Grove in Alabama, from a tornado that ripped through the area near 3:30 am EST. The deaths were the first of the 2012 tornado season.

In Clanton, about 50 miles south of Birmingham, Alabama, a separate tornado hit near 8:12 am EST this morning, trapping people in overturned trailer homes, destroying the WKLF radio studio, and toppling a 302-foot high transmission tower.

SIGNIFICANT JANUARY TORNADOES

Historically, January has been the least active month for tornadoes in the U.S. According to the Tornado History Project, during the 61-year period 1950 - 2010, 1223 January tornadoes occurred--an average of twenty per year. There have been two Januarys with no reported tornadoes--2003 and 1986. Thus far in 2012, there have been 44 preliminary tornado reports, so we are already at double the historical January average, with a week still to go in the month. NOAA's Storm Prediction Center has put Alabama and Georgia in their "Slight Risk" area for severe weather the remainder of today, so it is likely we will add a few more tornadoes to this month's tally before the outbreak is finished. January 2012 appears likely to become one of the top-five busiest months for January tornadoes in recorded history. Only four years since 1950 have had more than 50 January tornadoes:

January 1999 218

January 2008 88

January 1975 54

January 1997 50

The most recent significant January tornado outbreak occurred last year on January 1, 2011, when seven tornadoes, including two EF-3s, touched down in Mississippi, injuring two people.

The most prolific January tornado outbreak on record occurred January 21 - 22, 1999, when 126 tornadoes, including one violent F-4, hit Arkansas, Missouri, Mississippi, Louisiana, Tennessee, Kentucky, Illinois, Texas, and Alabama, killing nine people. A separate outbreak four days earlier, on January 17, spawned 22 tornadoes.

On January 7 - 11, 2008, a series of 75 tornadoes hit the U.S. This second busiest-ever U.S. January tornado outbreak hit southwestern Missouri, northwestern Arkansas and the surrounding areas the hardest. A strong supercell in northern Illinois and southeastern Wisconsin produced that region's first January tornadoes since 1967. Four people were killed, and the tornadoes did $88 million in damage. Fifteen strong EF-2 and EF-3 tornadoes were reported.

The deadliest January tornado since record keeping began in 1950 occurred on January 23, 1969, when an F-4 tornado hit a 5-county region south of Jackson Mississippi, killing 32 people.

Yesterday's deadly Clay, Alabama

tornado rated an EF-3

A damage survey by the NWS confirmed that the tornado that hit Clay, Alabama yesterday, killing two and injuring over 100, was a strong EF-3 tornado with 150 mph winds. A second EF-3 tornado with 140 mph winds touched down yesterday near Koffman, Alabama, and tore off the roof of a house and a barn. These are the only two EF-3 tornadoes of the year so far. There have been no EF-4 or EF-5 tornadoes yet. NOAA's Storm Prediction Center has placed portions of Southern Texas in their "Slight Risk" region for severe weather today, and portions of East Texas and Western Louisiana in the "Slight RIsk" region for Wednesday, and a few isolated tornadoes are possible in Texas and Louisiana over the next two days.

La Niña may be to Blame

Alabama could be in for another season of strong storms, thanks to an unusual recurrence of weather disruption known as La Niña.

A La Niña occurs when the ocean surface temperatures off the coast of Peru are colder than normal. That sets off a series of changes to weather patterns around the globe. Meteorologists believe that La Niña conditions in 2011 helped set the stage for tornadoes last spring.

Alabama state climatologist John Christy said the strong La Niña in 2010 and 2011 led meteorologists to predict that La Niña conditions would return after fading in the summer of 2011, and indeed they did. The double dip La Niña is uncommon.

"It is fairly rare but not unprecedented," Christy said.

During a La Niña, it tends to be warmer than normal in the southeastern United States. In north Alabama, it tends to be wetter. In a normal year, storms are randomly distributed across the country, but in a La Niña year, the storms tend to occur more frequently in the Ohio Valley. The southern trailing edges of those storms sweep across north Alabama, Christy said.

In south Alabama, La Niña is associated with drought. In Florida and the southern portions of Alabama and Georgia, extremely dry conditions are in place and have been since the beginning of the La Niña in 2010.

Birmingham and areas of central Alabama roughly corresponding to the east-west path of Interstate 20 lie in a transition zone between the two.

See more photos at THE BIRMINGHAM NEWS

FLORIDA HEAT CONTINUES

High temperatures in the 80°s F (27° C) continue over most of Florida and will continue for the remainder of the week. The heat is creating some dense fog in places, especially near sunrise. Needless to say, in Florida, air conditioners are running . . .

TROPICAL CYCLONE FUNSO

SLAMS MOZAMBIQUE

Earth's first major tropical cyclone of 2012 is Tropical Cyclone Funso, a Category 4 storm with 135 mph winds located in the Mozambique Channel between Madagascar and Mozambique. Conditions for intensification have been favorable over the past few days, with light wind shear of 5 - 10 knots, water temperatures of 29°C (84° F), and an eddy of high oceanic heat content with warm waters extending to great depth located under the center of the storm. Funso is expected to intensify further and have sustained winds of 145 mph by Wednesday. Fortunately, the center of the storm is expected to remain offshore as the storm moves slowly southwards. The outer spiral bands of Funso have dumped torrential rains on Mozambique the past several days, triggering floods that have killed at least twelve people. The floods have swept across the main north-south highway in the country, cutting off the capital of Maputo from the north and center of the country. Flooding from Funso was made worse by the saturated soils left by Tropical Depression Dando, whose rains caused flooding that killed ten people in the country last week.

Mozambique Struggles with Flooding

(CNN) -- Double-punched by two Indian Ocean storms, the southern African nation of Mozambique on Tuesday struggled with the destruction of a portion of its main national highway, cut-off communications and a reported death toll of 18, according to the nation's National Institute for Natural Disasters.

Tropical Cyclone Funso is lashing the central portion of the country, causing flooding along the Incomati River. Officials fear fuel and food shortages will start hit northern cities in Mozambique that usually get supplies via roadway from the capital, Maputo.

Funso currently has winds of 213 kph (about 132 mph), which would make it equal to a Category 4 major hurricane if located in the Atlantic, said CNN Senior Meterologist Brandon Miller. The center of circulation is in the Mozambique Channel, between central Mozambique and the island of Madagascar.

It is forecast to strengthen as it meanders south through the Mozambique Channel over the next several days, Miller said. The storm is spreading rainfall over much of Mozambique and Madagascar, and this will continue for several days as the storm is moving very slowly, Miller said.

Last week, southern Mozambique was hit by heavy rains from tropical depression Dando.

Cecilio Grachane, the chief of the National Roads Administration, expects provisional repairs will be done on the nation's critical north-south highway by Wednesday. But because of poor communication, traffic continues to move toward the place where the waters of the Incomati are overwashing the highway.

The U.S. Embassy in Mozambique said Tuesday it had received reports from two American citizens unable to travel because of a road closure. There have been no reports of Americans injured, it said.

Prime Minister Aires Ali visited the area on Sunday, urging people to not move on the road before they get clear advice on road and weather conditions. On Monday, small boats were helping move people trapped by floodwaters along the highway.

The Movene River, a tributary of the Umbeluzi, has risen substantially, limiting access to the Umbeluzi water treatment station on which Maputo relies for its water supply. Water used by residents of the capital city now has a brown color.

Fence Building Continued

2012-01-21T03:05:00.000-05:00

Ricky the Raccoon is getting quite large. The only way I know that this

is Ricky is that he doesn't make a mess of the water like all the other raccoons.

He doesn't really like the food I've been giving him . . . so I suspect he's eating elsewhere. . .

as he's looking quite fit.

FENCE BUILDING CONTINUED

We continue to replace the fence at the lake house that has

been eaten by termites. Anywhere the bottom of the fence

touched the sand the bugs devoured the cypress pickets.

We've made it to the area around the big pond which is barely visible

behind the palmettos in the photo above.

The original fence was built in place . . . with wood cut on site.

. . . so some sections are a little longer or shorter than 8-feet.

We're using pre-cut 8-foot crossbeams so we're having to

be creative with the post placement to maximize the existing posts

which were not damaged by the termites.

We run a string to try and keep the pickets more-or-less level.

The hardest part of the job is becoming removing tons of sand to make room

for the fence. . . we cannot allow the sand to come into contact with the

new fence or it too will be eaten by termites. I use 10 gallon buckets to

haul the sand a little at a time to save my back from irreparable harm.

We re-installing the old fence in the woods on the opposite side of the

property where it is not so visible. We repair or replace the most badly

damaged pickets on the old sections of fence once we get them in place.

Here the posts were about 8-feet, 6-inches apart. . .

so we installed a new post adjacent to the existing post to

accommodate our pre-cut 8-foot crossbeams. It was the

easiest possible fix. Each 4x4x8 post costs about $20.00

so we're trying to minimize using new posts.

Looking back across part of the big pond toward the work in progress.

Another shot across the island in the big pond. Keeping water in this

pond has been a challenge as we've entered our 3rd straight year of extreme drought.

A side view of the work. We cut down as few trees as possible

to make way for the new fencing. I like the trees for shade and privacy.

This side of the new fence is almost complete. . . we have about 30-feet remaining

to replace back in the woodsy part of the property.

Looking at the back of the new fence by the edge of the big pond.

A back view of the post-by-post solution to the wonky size issue we

encountered on this section.

A large view of the porch with my most delicate plants (avocados, palms, etc.) and

Ricky the Raccoon. The plants are all up on the porch to protect them

from cold weather. . . there is no cold weather but I'm leaving them where they

are -- just in case -- until the first of March. . . we never know when the warmth

my abruptly end.

To see the other renovations projects we're working on go to:

PHILLIP'S NATURAL WORLD 3.0

For science and nature photography and analysis visit

PHILLIP'S NATURAL WORLD

Lake Ellsworth Expedition

2012-01-17T02:36:00.001-05:00

Antarctic lake drilling mission edges closer

By David ShukmanEnvironment & science correspondent, BBC News

The advance party has arrived to set up vital equipment and supplies

An ambitious plan to explore a vast lake trapped beneath the Antarctic ice is a step closer to becoming reality.

An advance party has braved freezing temperatures to set up vital equipment and supplies at Lake Ellsworth.

The project by UK engineers to drill through the two-mile-thick ice-sheet is scheduled for the end of the year.

The aims are to search for signs of life in the waters and to extract sediments from the lake floor to better understand the past climate.

It is is one of the most challenging British scientific projects for years.

The task is so complex that preparations have had to be spread over two Antarctic summer seasons.

In the first phase a "tractor train" has just hauled nearly 70 tonnes of equipment from an ice runway at Union Glacier through the Ellsworth mountains to the lake site.

The Lake Ellsworth site was chosen for its relative accessibility

The journey of about 250km (155 miles) involved crossing a mix of deep snow and rock-hard ice and took three days.

“Start Quote

It is really harsh and working there with equipment means you have to use thin gloves ”

Andy Tait

Once there, a four-man team stored the equipment and "winterised" it to cope with the incredibly low temperatures to come.

Wind-blown snow is expected to partially cover the gear but GPS markers fixed to the corners of the site will help locate it again.

The area around Lake Ellsworth is notorious for its deep cold and constant winds.

Lake Ellsworth is one of more than 400 sub-glacial lakes in Antarctica and was chosen for the drilling operation because of its relative accessibility.

One of the advance team, Andy Tait of the British Antarctic Survey, now back in the UK, told me about the sheer difficultly of conditions.

"The maximum summer temperature is minus 20 and with a wind of something like 30 knots you can imagine the cold.

"It is really harsh and working there with equipment means you have to use thin gloves - it is really cold."

The equipment had to be hauled hundreds of kilometres to the lake site

But the delivery of equipment is just one part of the preparations for the drilling and sampling operation.

Key components are still being manufactured and tested before they can be shipped south.

Most challenging is the complex sampling probe which has been designed to cope with a combination of extremely high pressures and extremely low temperatures.

It must also be assembled and delivered in conditions of the highest possible sterility.

For the first time in Antarctic exploration, an investigation is being planned with cleanliness standards higher than those of most surgeries.

Because one of the key aims is to search for signs of biology in the lake waters - one of the most tantalising questions - all possibility of contamination has to be eliminated.

How scientists will reach Lake Ellsworth

1. A hot water drill will melt through the frozen ice sheet, which is up to 3km (2 miles) thick. After drilling, they will have an estimated 24 hours to collect samples before the borehole re-freezes

2. A probe will be lowered through the borehole to capture water samples

3. A specialised corer will then recover sediment from the floor of the lake through the same borehole

Watch the team's animated explation of the planned drill.

Source: Subglacial Lake Ellsworth Consortium

I watched as one team worked in a clean room at the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton.

Each hi-tech component - including the titanium sampling bottles and specially-engineered filters - has to be sterilised.

Inside the clean room where the probe is being developed and put together

And the final assembly of the 5.5m probe will take place inside a unique "tent" accessed by gloved inlets along its sides.

This November, the second phase of shipments will take place and the operation will begin in earnest.

The drilling will be carried out by a system using hot water and is expected to take three days.

Once the bore-hole is open providing access to the lake beneath the ice, the team will then have 24 hours in which to lower the sampling devices.

Computer modelling indicates that the hole will then start to re-freeze making it impossible to use.

The plan is to first lower the water sampling probe - a process that should take an hour - and then a corer to extract lake sediment.

According to Andy Tait, all eyes will be on the weather. Although many stages of the operation can be handled under cover, ideally conditions will be calm when the drilling starts.

The engineering, the planning, the science are impressively thorough - but Antarctica is the most challenging place on earth in which to work, and outcomes can never be certain.

Russian and US teams are targeting Lakes Vostok and Whillans respectively

Albino Penguin Spotted in Antarctica

2012-01-13T01:32:00.000-05:00

"White," Albino-like Penguin Found in Antarctica

Birds of a feather usually flock together—but not in the case of a rare "white" mutant penguin, spotted Monday in a chinstrap penguin colony in Antarctica. (Watch video of the pale penguin.)

The "blonde" penguin, seen at the edge of one of the South Shetland Islands (map), astonished tourists on a National Geographic Journey to Antarctica cruise, naturalist David Stephens, of the Lindblad Expeditions cruise company, wrote on his blog.

Though the penguin looks like an albino, the bird actually appears to have isabellinism, said penguin expert P. Dee Boersma of the University of Washington in Seattle.

The condition is a genetic mutation that dilutes pigment in penguins' feathers, according to a 2009 study on isabellinism published in the journal Marine Ornithology.

This results in a "uniform lightening" of a bird's dark colors, turning the animal a grayish yellow or pale brown, the study said.

(See "Three-fourths of Big Antarctic Penguin Colonies to Disappear?")

"Isabelline" Penguins Not Albino

Though they technically represent separate conditions, the terms "isabellinism" and "leucism" are sometimes used interchangeably. Leucism is a mutation that prevents any melanin at all from being produced in feathers. Albinism occurs when an animal produces no melanin at all throughout its entire body.

"Many species of penguins have a few rare individuals with this color pattern," Boersma said via email.

For instance, scientists have observed the most cases of isabellinism in gentoo penguins, which are found throughout the Antarctic Peninsula. Magellanic penguins, which live on South American coasts, seem to have the lowest incidences of the condition.

In the ocean, penguins' black backs camouflage the birds from both predator and prey swimming above, so Boersma suspects isabellinism would affect the South Shetland bird's survival, although there are no studies on the subject, she said.

More: Mutant, All-Black Penguin Found

Visit

PHILLIP'S NATURAL WORLD

for more photos

Skylight Repair 101

2012-01-12T02:31:00.002-05:00

We've been averaging $400/month (€ 314 month) electric bills
so while doing bathroom remodeling we decided to seal all the skylights in the
house and add extra insulation in the attic to see if that might lower the
monthly energy bill. The skylights were sealed over with a new roof but
were not insulated nor finished on the inside, so cool air escapes.

Sounds like an easy 2-hour project. . . NOT!
First everything has to be removed from counters and shelves and drop cloths
have to be applied everywhere. When dealing with paint or drywall there is
always a lot of dust and debris.

Next, we had to buy and cut wood so we would have a surface where we could
install the new drywall.
We used 2 x 3 x 8 pine.

The pine was measured, cut, holes drilled, and screws pre-set to
ease the overhead installation.

We drew a line 1/2" (12.7 mm) around the interior of the skylight. . .
as this is the width of the new drywall that needs to sit flush inside the hole.
The pine was installed above that 1/2" line.

R-30 insulation with no backing provides a good, thick barrier to shove into
the hole. It needs no staples or screws to stick in place. We cut the insulation slightly
larger than the hole and shoved it in. Gloves are important. . . fiberglass insulation
causes one to itch violently if it gets on the skin.

The 2 x 3s are screwed in and insulation is in the
hole. We scraped some of the ceiling texture from around
the exiting hole so that we can blend new texture across the new
drywall into the existing ceiling.

Drywall is cut and measured to fit. A utility knife does the cutting then it
breaks easily.

With a few adjustments the drywall is ready to cover the skylight hole

The new drywall is screwed into place with an electric screwdriver.
Some adjustments are made to make certain the drywall is flush with the
existing ceiling (screwing in and backing out screws until you can run
your hand across the surfaces and they are relatively smooth).

Drywall tape is applied around the seams so that the new plaster will not crack
at the seams.

A layer of joint compound is applied. Were this a smooth surface we would have
let it dry. . . then sanded, then applied another coat, then sanded, then dried. . .
as the ceiling surface is textured we had more room to be artistic with the application
of joint compound. Quite a bit of it ended up on the applicator. . . more on the floor.

One skylight completely sealed. Now the entire ceiling has to be primed, and then
repainted as it will never match. There is no final photo to show because the ceiling is not yet painted.
Allow another week for that work to be accomplished.

In one bathroom we decided that the old exhaust fan had to go along with the skylight. . .
add $130 (€102) and another couple days to the project.

To see some of the bathroom remodel photos go to PHILLIP'S NATURAL WORLD 3.0
that work is ongoing. We hope to be finished with the bathrooms by the end of January.

Billion Dollar Weather Disasters of 2011

2012-01-05T02:10:00.000-05:00

Somalia Drought

A remarkable onslaught of extreme weather events during 2011 caused a total of 32 weather disasters costing at least $1 billion worldwide. Five nations experienced their most expensive weather-related natural disasters on record during 2011--Thailand, Australia, Colombia, Sri Lanka, and Cambodia. According to insurance broker AON Benfield'sNovember Catastrophe Report, the U.S. was hit by no less than seventeen punishing multi-billion dollar extreme weather disasters in 2011. Brazil experienced its deadliest weather-related natural disaster--a flash flood that killed 902 people in January, and the Philippines had its second deadliest flood ever, when Tropical Storm Washi killed over 1200 people in December.

TOP 10 WEATHER EVENTS OF 2011

The top 10 weather events based on their impact to society and meteorological significance are listed below. Damage estimates and death tolls for the 2011 disasters were mostly taken from AON Benfield's November Catastrophe Report, and records for damages and death tolls from disasters in previous years was taken from the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED.)

1) East Africa drought and famine: over 30,000 dead
The deadliest weather disaster of 2011 was a quiet one that got few headlines--the East African drought in Somalia, Kenya, and Ethiopia. On July 20, the United Nations officially declared famine in two regions of southern Somalia, the first time a famine has been declared by the UN in nearly thirty years. Almost 30,000 children under the age of five were believed to have died of malnutrition in Somalia this summer, and the total death toll of this great drought is doubtless much higher. East Africa has two rainy seasons--a main "long rains" of March - June, and the "short rains" of October - November. The "short rains" failed in the fall of 2010, and when the main "long rains" in spring 2011 also failed, it brought one of the worst droughts in recorded history. It was the driest 12-month period on record at some locations in East Africa. Damage assessments from the drought are not yet available, but it would not be a surprise if the drought of 2011 was the costliest weather-related natural disaster on record for Somalia, Ethiopia, and Kenya.

2) Thailand flooding: most expensive natural disaster in Thai history
Heavy monsoon and tropical cyclone rains from July through October, enhanced by La Niña conditions, led to unprecedented flooding that killed 657 people and caused Thailand's most expensive natural disaster in history. Damages are now estimated at $45 billion by re-insurance company AON Benfield. This is 18% of the country's GDP. Hurricane Katrina cost the U.S. about 0.7% of its GDP, so the Thailand floods can be thought of as a disaster 25 times worse than Katrina for that country. The floodwaters this year have hit 83% of Thailand's provinces, affected 9.8 million people, and damaged four million structures and approximately 25% of the nation's rice crop. Thailand is the world's largest exporter of rice, accounting for 30% of the global total, and the flood has helped trigger an increase in world rice prices in late 2011.

3) Queensland, Australia flooding: most expensive natural disaster in Australian history
Heavy rains from December 2010 through January 2011, enhanced by La Niña conditions and record-warm ocean temperatures, led to unprecedented rains and flooding that killed 35 people and did $30 billion in damage. This was 3.2% of Australia's GDP, and five times more costly than the nation's previous most expensive natural disaster, the 1981 drought ($6 billion). Rainfall in Queensland and all of eastern Australia in December 2010 was the greatest on record, and the year 2010 was the rainiest year on record for Queensland.

4) Columbia floods: most expensive natural disaster in Colombia's history
Heavy rains in Colombia reached their peak in late April, triggering floods that killed 116 and did $5.85 billion in damage (2% of their GDP), making it the most damaging natural disaster in Colombia's history. Colombia's previous most expensive weather disaster occurred just last year, when the heaviest rains in 42 years of record keeping occurred. Floods and landslides killed 528, did $1 billion in damage, and left 2.2 million homeless in 2010. Colombia's most expensive natural disaster prior to 2011 was the $1.9 billion in damage from the January 25, 1999 earthquake, according to CRED.

5) Tropical Storm Washi: second deadliest weather disaster in Philippine history
Tropical Storm Washi hit the southern Philippine island of Mindanao as a tropical storm with 45 - 55 mph winds, crossing the island in about eighteen hours on December 16. Washi was unusually wet, as the storm was able to tap a large stream of tropical moisture extending far to the east, and drew moisture from an area where sea surface temperatures were nearly 1°C above average--one of the top five warmest values on record. Washi's rains fell on regions where the natural forest had been illegally logged or converted to pineapple plantations, and the heavy rains were able to run off quickly on the relatively barren soils and create devastating flash floods. Since the storm hit in the middle of the night, and affected an unprepared population that had no flood warning system in place, the death toll was tragically high. At least 1249 people perished, and 79 people are still listed as missing. The only deadlier storm ever to hit the Philippines was Tropical Storm Thelma on November 5, 1991, which killed 5956 people.

6) Brazil flash flood kills 902: deadliest natural disaster in Brazil's history
Brazil suffered its deadliest natural disaster in history on January 11, when torrential rains inundated a heavily populated, steep-sloped area about 40 miles north of Rio de Janeiro. Flash floods and mudslides from the heavy rains have claimed 902 lives, including at least 357 in Nova Friburgo and 323 in Teresópolis. Rainfall amounts of approximately 300 mm (12 inches) fell in just a few hours in the hardest-hit regions. Damage estimates are $1.2 billion, making it the most damaging storm in Brazil's history, and third most damaging natural disaster, behind the $2.3 billion and $1.7 billion price tags of the 1978 and 2004 droughts. The previous deadliest flood in Brazilian history was a January 23, 1967 flood that killed 785 people.

7) April 25 - 28 Super" tornado outbreak kills 321 in the U.S.
On April 25 - 28, 2011, a massive tornado outbreak clobbered the Midwest and Southeast U.S. with 343 tornadoes. Now called the April 2011 Super tornado outbreak, it was the largest and most damaging tornado outbreak in U.S. history. The tornadoes caused 321 deaths, with 240 of those occurring in Alabama. The deadliest tornado of the outbreak, an EF-5, hit northern Alabama, killing 78 people. Several major metropolitan areas were directly impacted by strong tornadoes including Tuscaloosa, Birmingham, and Huntsville in Alabama and Chattanooga, Tennessee, causing the estimated damage costs to soar. The outbreak caused more than $7.3 billion insured losses and total losses greater than $10.2 billion.

8) Southern U.S./Northern Mexico drought: $10 billion in damage, and rising
Drought and excessive heat created major impacts across Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Arizona, southern Kansas, western Louisiana, and northern Mexico. Texas endured its driest 1-year period on record, and rainfall in much of northern Mexico was the lowest since record keeping began in 1941. Texas had the hottest summer ever recorded by a U.S. state, and Oklahoma had the hottest month (July) any U.S. state has ever recorded. The total direct losses to crops, livestock and timber are estimated at $10 billion, but are expected to continue to rise as the drought continues into 2012. Record fires across the region caused an additional $1 billion in damage.

9) Pakistan floods: 2nd most expensive weather disaster in Pakistani history
Heavy rains during the July through September monsoon season triggered devastating flooding that killed 456 and did $2 billion in damage (1.1% of GDP) in Pakistan. It was the second most expensive weather-related disaster in Pakistan's history, behind the $9.5 billion price tag of the 2010 floods (5.5% of GDP.)

10 (tie) Hurricane Irene: most damaging tropical cyclone of 2011
The most damaging tropical cyclone on the globe during 2011 was Hurricane Irene, which plowed through the Bahama Islands as a Category 3 hurricane with 120 mph winds before striking North Carolina as a Category 1 hurricane with 85 mph winds on August 27. Most of Irene's damage occurred after it made landfall on Long Island, New York as a tropical storm with 65 mph winds, when torrential rainfall triggered extreme flooding in the Northeast U.S. More than 7 million homes and businesses lost power during the storm. Irene caused at least 45 deaths in the U.S., and ten in the Caribbean and Bahamas. Damage is estimated at $7.3 billion.

10 (tie) May 22 - 27 Joplin, Missouri tornado outbreak
A violent EF-5 tornado carved a ½ – ¾ mile-wide path of devastation through Joplin, Missouri on May 22, killing 158, and causing $3 billion in damage. Huge sections of the town virtually obliterated, and damage from the tornado was so severe that pavement was ripped from the ground. It was the largest death toll from a U.S. tornado since 1947, seventh deadliest tornado in U.S. history, and the most expensive tornado in world history. The six-day outbreak spawned 180 tornadoes in the central and southern states, killed 177, and did $9.1 billion in damage.

OTHER NOTABLE WEATHER DISASTERS IN 2011

1) Sri Lanka: Heaviest rains in nearly a century of record keeping triggered a 1-in-100 year flood in January that killed 43 and did $500 million in damage--the costliest weather-related disaster in Sri Lanka's history. Renewed rains February 1 - 10 caused flooding that killed 18 and cost an additional $450 million--the second most costly natural disaster in Sri Lanka's history.

2) Heavy rains in September and October in Cambodia triggered flooding that killed 250 and did $521 million in damage--by far the most expensive natural disaster in Cambodian history. The previous most expensive disaster was the $160 million cost of floods in July 2000.

3) El Salvador: Heavy rains from Tropical Depression 12-E in October triggered flooding that killed 140 in Central America and caused $900 million in damage to El Salvador (4.2% of GDP). This is the 2nd most expensive weather-related disaster in El Salvador's history, behind the $939 million price tag of their Nov. 7, 2009 flood.

4) China: June floods in China killed 239, doing $6.65 billion in damage, the 10th most damaging weather-related disaster in Chinese history.

5) China: September floods killed 101 and did $4.25 billion in damage.

6) U.S.: Greatest flood on the Lower Mississippi River on record caused $4 billion in damage.

7) China: A drought in Northern China during January through April cost $2.7 billion.

8) Denmark: Severe flooding on July 2 - 3 caused $1 billion in damage, the 3rd most expensive weather-related disaster in Danish history.

Visit

PHILLIP'S NATURAL WORLD

for more photos

Florida Fireworks, Smoke, and Cold

2012-01-02T13:38:00.000-05:00

Fireworks explode overhead as heavy smoke envelops the area on New Year's Eve. The smoke is apparent across the Florida peninsula as extremely dry conditions continue.

The smoke is visible in this image at a local bike trail as the sun struggles to shine through.

Smoky conditions make for some nice sunset images, anyway.

More fireworks exploding overhead. I was using 30-second exposures to capture the fireworks. The tallest of these trees are about 80-feet tall (24 m) . . . and I still couldn't get all of the fireworks into frame. I guess some of the fireworks were shooting 1,000 feet (304 m) overhead.

I had to point the camera skyward to get all of the fireworks into frame.

This one kind of looks like a palm tree.

The warmth of New Year's is fading away as arctic cold heads for Florida.

At this hour the first of the cold fronts has passed over the Florida peninsula. The second, much colder front approaches. This weather is fairly typical for the Florida peninsula based on the 30-year average of such occurrences.

Visit

PHILLIP'S NATURAL WORLD

and

PHILLIP'S NATURAL WORLD III

for more photos.

New Island in Red Sea

2011-12-28T02:59:00.000-05:00

December 23, 2011

October 24, 2007 (no land between Haycock Island and Rugged Island)

An eruption occurred in the Red Sea off the coast of Yemen in December 2011. According to news reports, fishermen witnessed lava fountains reaching up to 30 meters (90 feet) tall on December 19. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra and Aqua satellites observed plumes on December 20 and December 22. Meanwhile, the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) on NASA’s Aura satellite detected elevated levels of sulfur dioxide, further indicating an eruption.

The sulfur dioxide plume (blue-green) from eruption in the vicinity of Jebel at Tair off Yemen, December 19, 2011

The activity in the Red Sea included more than an eruption. By December 23, 2011, what looked like a new island appeared in the region. The Advanced Land Imager (ALI) on NASA’s Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) satellite captured these high-resolution, natural-color images on December 23, 2011 (top), and October 24, 2007 (bottom). The image from December 2011 shows an apparent island where there had previously been an unbroken water surface. A thick plume rises from the island, dark near the bottom and light near the top, perhaps a mixture of volcanic ash and water vapor.

Small plume from new eruption in the vicinity of Jebel Zubair.

The volcanic activity occurred along the Zubair Group, a collection of small islands off the west coast of Yemen. Running in a roughly northwest-southeast line, the islands poke above the sea surface, rising from a shield volcano. This region is part of the Red Sea Rift where the African and Arabian tectonic plates pull apart and new ocean crust regularly forms. Another island that is part of the archipelago -- Jebel Zubair -- last erupted in 1824.

Winter Birds of Florida

2011-12-27T01:59:00.001-05:00

So far this has been an extremely warm Florida winter. There are countless birds, everywhere. These are a few that I've identified recently. Read more about the causes of our warm winter at "Arctic Oscillation Results in Warm Winter."

The only thing that seems to be flourishing better than the birds are the insects and rodents. It is difficult to be outside due to the biting flies and mosquitoes. Cooler air is promised for later in the week, but nothing like what we experienced the past two Decembers and January.

ABOVE: A Pine Warbler (Dendroica pinus). He is distinguished from other warblers by his white wing bars. He's quite small, maybe 5-5½" (13-14 cm).

ABOVE: A Yellow-Bellied Sapsucker (Sphyrapicus varius). Note the longish white wing patch and red forehead patch. This bird is 8-9" (20-23 cm).

ABOVE: A Tufted Titmouse (Parus bicolor). This bird has a distinctive voice. . . a clear, whistled chant: peter, peter, peter, or here, here, here. Titmice feed on insects, seeds, and berries. Note that red leaves in Florida this time of year generally indicate sprouting trees. Our spring is well under way.

ABOVE: Ruby-Crowned Kinglet (Regulus calendula). Tiny at 4" (10 cm) this bird is in the family Sylviidae (Gnatcatchers and Kinglets).

ABOVE: The plentiful Red-Winged Blackbird (Agelaius phoeniceus).

ABOVE: A Red-Tailed Hawk (Buteo jamaicensis). We have one that dominates the cul-de-sac in Deltona and another in Debary that ranges over about 200 acres and rests atop the 90' power poles.

ABOVE: An Osprey (Pandion haliaetus). I've seen many, many fewer of these birds this winter as the lakes have virtually vanished. They primarily eat fish.

ABOVE: A House Finch (Carpodacus mexicanus). Originally this bird only resided in Mexico and the southwestern USA. It was introduced to eastern North America in 1940. They have become naturalized and quickly spread throughout the eastern USA. From the original small number of birds released on Long Island, NY in 1940, they are now estimated to total a staggering 1.4 billion individual birds ranging from the Hawaiian Islands across North America.

ABOVE: A Carolina Chickadee (Poecile carolinensis). Audubon named this bird while he was in South Carolina. The curious, intelligent Carolina Chickadee looks very much like a Black-capped Chickadee, with a black cap, black bib, gray wings and back, and whitish underside. Carolina and Black-capped chickadees hybridize in the area where their ranges overlap, but the two species probably diverged more than 250,000 years ago. They are tiny 4-5" (12-14 cm).

ABOVE and BELOW: The plentiful Northern Cardinal (Cardinalis cardinalis). I have three pair of these in Deltona who spend hours eating what remains of the last crop of sunflower that bloomed last December.

BELOW: Likely a Brown Thrasher (Toxostoma rufum). These birds are plentiful but hard to spot. They spend a lot of time foraging in leaves in our woods.

8 Recycled Christmas Trees

2011-12-20T12:32:00.002-05:00

Made of bicycle parts.

Made of 5-gallon water bottles

Made of beer bottles

Made of condoms

Made of farm equipment

Made of hard drives

Made of scrap metal

Made of lobster traps

Visit

PHILLIP'S NATURAL WORLD

for more photos

Kilauea Volcano

2011-12-19T02:26:00.000-05:00

Small streams of lava cascade over the sea cliff
click on the images for a larger view

The current lava flow from Pu‘u ‘Ō‘ō flowing down the pali (high plain of mesa) and traversing the coastal plain, reached the ocean late last week. The ocean entry point is within the Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, near its eastern border. Today, numerous small streams of lava were cascading over the sea cliff, and lava entering the water was starting to build a small delta.

Lava flowing over the sea cliff, reaching the new lava delta.

See more natural world photos at

PHILLIP'S NATURAL WORLD

Chandelier Plants

2011-12-16T02:34:00.003-05:00

Kalanchoe is a genus of at least 125 tropical succulents that are naturalized on the Florida peninsula. Most are shurbs but some can reach impressive heights up to 18 feet (6 m).

ABOVE and BELOW: The bloom of one of the Chandelier Plants (Kalanchoe delagoensis). In Florida, all of the species of Kalanchoe bloom around the start of winter (Dec. 21-22). The blooms should last for months, but at our latitude they generally are quickly killed by frost.

This year the weather remains warm and the plants are starting to put out these dramatic blooms. Most of the year they look like little more than sticks.

ABOVE: Someone gave me one leaf of this variety. I now have hundreds. I think this is one of the most spectacular of the species found here. I believe this could be Kalanchoe blossfeldiana (or Madagascar widow's-thrill). Our flora is quite similar to that found on the island of Madagascar. I only have one of these that has managed to put out a bloom in all the years I've had them. The past few years frost came early and killed off any blooms that were trying to emerge.

Plantlets emerge from all the joints on the leaves of this species. . . making it quite invasive with other conditions are right (warm, moist).

ABOVE and BELOW: Kalanchoe pinnata or Bryophyllum pinnatum. Also known as "Cathedral Bells" this is our most abundant Kalanchoe immigrant. This plant is indestructible. These specimen are about 4-feet tall as they prepare to bloom as winter approaches. Each leaf of this variety can result in 50 new plants.

This plant is also known as the "Air Plant," "Life Plant," "Luck Plant," "Miracle Leaf," and the "Goethe Plant." It is a succulent native to Madagascar. It is distinctive for the profusion of miniature plantlets that form on the margins of its leaves, a trait it has in common with the other members of the Kalanchoe genus.

All Kalanchoes are in the Crassulaceae family (Stonecrop family).

BELOW: Close up of the plantlets that form on every leaf. As the leaf hits the ground, a new plant emerges.

Some Kalanchoe species contain cardiac glycosides which can cause cardiac poisoning, particularly in grazing animals in the plants native range. In South Africa the resultant animals disease is known as krimpsiekte (shrinking disease).

Fire and Lights

2011-12-15T02:33:00.003-05:00

A plane created a comet-like streak in the sky on this long, over-exposed look at the Christmas lights. The crescent moon in the background appears full due to the 60-second exposure. Those are 5-gallon pickle jars filled with LED lights atop tall 4x4 poles.

The neighbor burned a huge pile of my debris tonight.

The lights with the fire in the background.

10 Least Crowded Places on Earth

2011-12-14T02:42:00.003-05:00

An indigenous walrus-hunting camp brings signs of life to sparse slopes in Greenland. The self-governing Danish island is among the least densely populated major areas on earth.

GREENLAND

Three times the size of Texas, Greenland is mostly covered by Earth's second largest ice cap. Not surprisingly, its 58,000 inhabitants cluster in coastal communities.

A wandering albatross has plenty of room to spread its wings in the Falkland Islands, a U.K. terriroty off South America that has housed a British naval garrison since 1833.

FALKLAND ISLANDS

With slightly less land than Connecticut, the archipelago is home to only about 3,000 people.

About ten times as many people visit the islands each year as live in the Falklands -- a popular ecotourism stop, particularly for Antarctica-bound cruises.

With roughly three million people living in a country nearly the size of Alaska, Mongolia averages fewer than two people per square kilometer (1/2 mile).

MONGOLIA

Most of Mongolia's population is in urban areas, since development in Mongolia's vast deserts and grazing lands is hindered in part by drought and dust storms, leaving those parts of the country nearly as empty as they were in Genghis Kahn's time.

Green fields such as these near Laayoune are a rarity in Africa's Western Sahara region. Only 0.02 percent of the land is arable in this former Spanish territory, which has been disputed since the 1970s and remains split between the government of Morocco and the Polisario Front.

WESTERN SAHARA

Similar in size to Colorado, the Western Sahara is home to only about half a million people, largely clustered on the coast.

Squirrel monkeys may be more numerous than people in French Guiana.

FRENCH GUIANA

The French overseas territory is about the size of South Carolina yet harbors fewer than 200,000 people -- only about tow and a half for every square kilometer.

French Guiana is mostly tropical forests and there are still some native peoples living in remote locations. Its not easy to improve infrastructure in Guiana because of the landscape.

The desert is reclaiming buildings in Kolmanskop, a Namibian ghost town that was once home to a working diamond mine.

NAMIBIA

Namibia is about the size of Texas and Louisiana combined and home to about 2.1 million people, but vast stretches of its arid landscape are extremely uncrowded. The country features an enlightened approach to natural resources and was the first in the world to mandate environmental protection in its constitution.

Cradle Mountain-Lake St. Clair National Park in Tasmania is one of many Australian areas well-protected from human pressures.

AUSTRALIA

Australia is almost the size of the United States lower 48 states, and there's certainly no shortage of people living in the country -- almost 22 million. However, most Australians live in the coastal communities that ring a massive and relatively empty interior.

With no ice in sight, swimmers enjoy the Myvatan Nature Baths, warmed by Iceland's vast volcanic underground.

ICELAND

The island country is about the size of Kentucky but home to roughly 300,000 people, in part because glaciers cover more land than in all of mainland Europe.

Iceland is home to a relatively homogenous population with few significant recent migrations. Population densities are only about three people per square kilometeer.

Along a creek in South America's Suriname otters have stripped the vegetation to mark their territory. . . and humans are unlikely to trespass.

SURINAME

Uninhabitated tropical rain forest covers most of this former Dutch colony which is about the size of the U.S. state of Georgia and home to fewer than 500,000 people.

Camels compete for a meal at a former oasis -- now overtaken by desert -- in Mauritania.

MAURITANIA

The country as about 3.2 million people who live mostly in cities or along the Senegal River. . . close to water resources.

Visit

PHILLIP'S NATURAL WORLD

for more photos

Frankincense & Myrrh

2011-12-10T02:57:00.006-05:00

A small Boswellia sacra (Frankincence) plant at Miniatree Garden in Tuscon.

In the history of baffling Christmas presents, none may be stranger than the three gifts of the Magi: gold, frankincense and myrrh. The gold, in traditional interpretations, represented God’s splendor and power. The frankincense, burned for purification, suggested divinity. Myrrh, a funereal spice, prefigured the crucifixion and the anointing of the dead.

Thus the holiest plant of the Christmas season may be a raggedy shrub with peeling bark that seems to grow best in the most inhospitable of climates. Boswellia sacra is better known as the Frankincense Tree. The shrub’s gum resin is one of the biblical gifts that the wise men bestowed on the infant Jesus.

Until recently, Americans who wished to cultivate their own frankincense could only hope for another biblical house call. Marc Hachadourian, who manages the Nolen Greenhouses at the New York Botanical Garden, describes frankincense seed as hard to find and harder still to grow.

“In horticulture, there are a few plants that we joke about that have a miserable life,” he said. “Boswellia is only happy in its native environment. And even then, it’s not as happy as it could be.”

Flowers and branches of the Boswellia sacra tree, the species from which most frankincense is derived.

In the Frankincense family (Burseraceae) there are 19 species of the genus Boswellia Roxb. ex Colebr. Five or six of these species are endemic to the island of Socotra, Yemen, a Unesco World Heritage site, near the mouth of the Gulf of Aden, which has a ban on botanical exports. The island is very isolated and through the process of speciation, a third of its plant life is found nowhere else on earth. Other Boswellia reside in the anarchic hinterlands of Yemen and Somalia.

Boswellia sacra is not much of a looker. The paired leaves appear small and crinkled. But the exfoliating bark is something else again: ocher and papery, like a sheet of baking parchment scorched in the oven.

Some appreciate the plant less for its beauty than its deeper botanical riddles. It is said one can predict rain from the swelling of the nodes along the branches. When the barometric pressure drops, Boswellia take every opportunity to grow, flower, and to set seed.

Harvesters slash the trunk with a hatchet and collect the dried beads of sap. Researchers in Eritrea, writing in the Journal of Applied Ecology, observed that frequent resin-tapping in another Boswellia species (B. papyrifera) lowered the number of seeds and lessened their viability.

Accounts from the ancient world make frankincense sound like a cross between aspirin, penicillin, Xanax and Viagra, with a touch of duct tape and magic.

Burning Frankincense

When cut, a white bead of sap forms at the wound. Egyptians, according to “Plants of Dhofar,” believed this to be “the sweat of the gods, fallen to earth.”

The aroma hints at cypress and citrus and maybe witch hazel. But at the same time, it seems like nothing else in the American garden or forest.

Tips for Growers

If you want to grow Boswellia sacra at home it helps to have a desert in the backyard. Failing that, the best place to start might be Jason Eslamieh’s book, “Cultivation of Boswellia: Sacred Trees of Frankincense” (A Book’s Mind; $33).

Gardeners across the sunbelt — in Orlando, Houston, Phoenix, Los Angeles — may be able to keep Boswellia outdoors year round. When the temperature falls below 40° (4½° C.) for a day or two, Boswellia drops its leaves. In colder weather, the plant quickly dies. Given a choice, it doesn’t like to be confined to a pot.

Pumice is the preferred soil medium, if you can find it. Some gardeners have had luck substituting Turface MVP (a baseball diamond supplement) and Oil-Dri absorbent (a garage cleaner). Make sure to change the soil every year or two, lest a buildup of salts and minerals starts to poison the pot.

It is possible to grow Boswellia under lights. But it’s easier to shut the plants down for the winter on a shelf in the bedroom.

Myrrh (Commiphora myrrha)

The other plant-gift of the Magi is a rangy assemblage of vicious thorns, called myrrh (Commiphora myrrha). Also a member of the Frankincense family, Myrrh is probably harder to cultivate outside its native range. Myrrh is native to Oman, Yemen and the Horn of Afrida (Djibouti, Ethiopia, Somalia, and Northeast Kenya). It only grows at an altitude of between 800-4,000 feet above sea level (250-1300 m), with a yearly mean rainfall of about 9-11 inches (230-300 mm) in thin limestone soils.

Commiphora myrrha or Myrrh

Technically, myrrh is the aromatic oleoresin of a number of small, thorny tree species of the genus Commiphora, which grow in dry, stony soil. An oleoresin is a natural blend of an essential oil and a resin. Myrrh resin is a natural gum.

When a tree wound penetrates through the bark and into the sapwood, the tree bleeds a resin. Myrrh gum, like frankincense, is such a resin. When myrrh is harvested the gum becomes hard and glossy. The gum is yellowish, and may be either clear or opaque. It darkens deeply as it ages, and white streaks emerge.

Myrrh was so valuable in acient times that it was equal in weight value to gold. During times of scarcity, its value rose even higher.

Frankincense tree facing uncertain Future

Ecologists have warned that the production of the fragrant resin could decline by half over the next 15 years.

The festive fragrance is produced by tapping the gum of trees in the Boswellia genus.

The findings, based on a study carried out in Ethiopia, have been published in the Journal of Applied Ecology.

"There are several reasons why [the tree species Boswellia papyifera] it is under threat," explained co-author Frans Bongers, an ecologist at Wageningen University in the Netherlands.

"The forests that remain are declining because the old individuals are dying continuously, and there there no new individuals coming into the system. That means that the forests are running out of trees."

"In places like Oman and Yemen, it is being cut down systematically. Now, in Ethiopia, it is being cut down as land is being turned over to agriculture."

The small trees, which generally reach a height of no more than five metres (16ft), grows in steepy, rocky habitats, providing cover for other plant species.

A SENSE OF FRANKINCENSE

Frankincense is an oily gum resin from 16 different species of tree of the Boswellia genus
Incense extracted from the resin is used in religious rituals, but has also been investigated for its medicinal properties. It is believed to be an anti-inflammatory
The name frankincense is derived from the old French "franc encens", meaning pure incense

Each year, up to about 3kg of resin can be tapped from an individual tree. After about five years of tapping, management techniques suggest that the tree should be rested for a similar period in order to maximise future yields.

The genus Boswellia, overall, is generally classified as Vulnerable as a result of habitat fragmentation and poor levels of rejuvenation, explained Prof Bongers.

"If the tree germinates, then there is a small plant coming out of the ground, but then in the next dry season it goes down again because it is too dry," he told BBC News.

Rachel WebsterCurator of botany, Manchester Museum

Frankincense is tapped extensively wherever theBoswellia trees grow. Its high value comes mainly from the fact that it is used extensively in religious rituals, particularly in the Islamic, Hebrew and Christian religions.

The species focused on in this study, Boswellia papyrifera, grows in African drylands. It grows in arid areas so any small, deleterious change could have quite devastating effects on the regeneration of the trees.

In this case, it appears to be either fire or over-grazing, but with the general pressures of people and trees depending on the same land, trees tend to lose.

If these trees did disappear, it would be a great loss to the local people who tap the trees to sell the resin and to the ecosystem it grows in.

"Then in the wet season it comes up again. Yet in the next dry season it goes down again. That happens for a number of years, and we don't know how many years this happens - we know that it is at least six years.

"But it may be 10 years and we do not know what triggers what makes it come up above ground forever - maybe it is some sort of reserve, some sort of starch in the soil or root system.

"We are measuring this but we do not have real data, so it is complicated to manage the seedlings."

Prof Bongers added that the encroachment of more opportunistic tree species was also affecting the long-term survival of the frankincense forests.

"In the landscape, these tree has been the dominant species. That is why we can call it a frankincense forest, just like we can refer to beech woodlands in the UK," he said.

"In these woodlands, 80% of the individuals are frankincense trees. Yet some areas at the verges of the distribution of the species, there are other species coming in.

"What we are seeing at the verges of the populations we are following is that that the frankincense trees are phasing out and other species are coming in.

"All the young individuals in the forests are from other species, such asAcacia. We just see the forests running out of frankincense - other species are taking over."

'Alarming' decline

The study examined 13 two-hectare plots, which involve monitoring more than 6,000 trees and collecting more than 20,000 measurements.

Using this data, the team modelled the fate of the species, and found the current levels of frankincense production is set to halve in the next 15 years.

"Current management of Boswellia populations is clearly unsustainable," Prof Bongers warned.

"Our models show that within 50 years, populations of Boswellia will be decimated, and the declining populations mean frankincense production is doomed. This is a rather alarming message for the incense industry and conservation organisations."

He added that tapping the trees for the valued resin was unlikely to be the main cause of the decline. Instead, there were a number of other things affecting the long-term future of the trees.

"Frankincense extraction is unlikely to be the main cause of population decline, which is likely to be caused by burning, grazing and attack by the long-horn beetle, which lays its eggs under the bark of the tree.

In the areas they studied, the team found that older trees in the population were not being replaced because few Boswellia seedlings survived to become saplings.

"The number of fires and intensity of grazing in our study area has increased over recent decades as a result of a large increase in the number of cattle, and this could be why seedlings fail to grow into saplings. At the same time, a large proportion of trees we studied died after being attacked by the long-horn beetle," Prof Bongers observed.

In order to ensure future rejuvination, he suggested that areas should be set aside for up to a decade so young Boswellia trees can become established.

Awesome views of the Pu‘u ‘Ō‘ō cone and crater

2011-12-08T11:35:00.003-05:00

Close view of the Pu‘u ‘Ō‘ō crater. Incandescent spatter cone stands above fume rising from the main vent area. Lava is still erupting in the lava pond, marked by the smooth shiny surface behind the spatter cone, but the level appears to have stabilized overnight.

View looking southwest of the Pu‘u ‘Ō‘ō cone and crater. The fume sources on the northeast flank (lower left) mark the path of the lava tube that is feeding flows on the pali. The vent feeding the tube is the fuming area near the crater rim (center); an active circular lava pond is immediately behind the vent. The pond began to take shape and become slightly elevated above the crater floor in the past couple of days after lava began erupting in the crater on Saturday (12/5), quickly filling a depression in the east part of the crater. On the far west edge of Pu‘u ‘Ō‘ō is a vent (fuming) that erupted many small flows last week.

Lava spilling down the steep pali this morning formed many small channels and 'a'ā flows. Many such flows were visible on the pali overnight.

Pāhoehoe flows spreading on the coastal plain about 0.6 km from the base of the pali. When visited this morning, the flows had spread out considerably as they filled in low areas of the coastal plain. The leading edge of the flows were about 2.5 km from the ocean.

Check out the USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory Image Archive for more photos.

click on any image to enlarge

Visit

Phillip's Natural World

and

Phillip's Natural World III

for more natural world news

Massive Iceberg

2011-12-08T01:33:00.001-05:00

In March 2000, an iceberg calved off the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica. Named B-15, it measured roughly 275 by 40 kilometers (170 by 25 miles). The iceberg subsequently broke into pieces, the largest of which was named B-15A. In October 2003, the new iceberg, B-15J broke off from B-15A.

Although a fraction of the size of the original Connecticut-sized iceberg, B-15J still measured roughly 35 kilometers (22 miles) long in mid-November 2011. By then, it was floating in the southern Pacific Ocean, about 2,400 kilometers (1,500 miles) east-southeast of New Zealand. On November 25, 2011, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured this natural-color image of B-15J and a smaller iceberg, B-15Y.

Smaller icebergs, many of them shaped like slivers, float around B-15J and B-15Y on November 25. The MODIS image acquired 11 days earlier shows B-15J and B-15Y still together in one mass, but also shows crevasses, or cracks, along which the icebergs would split.

References
National Ice Center. (n.d.). Current Antarctic Iceberg Positions. Accessed November 30, 2011.
National Ice Center. (2011, November 23). Antarctic Icebergs, Ross Sea East, B15J, B15Y. Accessed November 30, 2011.

NASA Earth Observatory image created by Jesse Allen, using data provided courtesy of the LANCE/EOSDIS Rapid Response team. Caption by Michon Scott.

Visit

PHILLIP'S NATURAL WORLD

for more photos

Antarctica's Graham Land

2011-12-07T12:18:00.000-05:00

The inclined equatorial orbit of the International Space Station (ISS) limits astronauts to nadir views of Earth—looking straight down from the spacecraft—between approximately 52 degrees North latitude and 52 degrees South. However, when viewing conditions are ideal, the crew can obtain detailed oblique images—looking outwards at an angle—of features at higher latitudes, such as Greenland or, in this image, Antarctica.

While the bulk of the continent of Antarctica sits over the South Pole, the narrow Antarctic Peninsula extends like a finger towards the tip of South America. The northernmost part of the Peninsula is known as Graham Land, a small portion of which (located at approximately 64 degrees South latitude) is visible at the top left in this astronaut photograph.

Off the coast of Graham Land to the north-northwest, two of the South Shetland Islands—Livingston Island and Deception Island—are visible. Both have volcanic origins, and active volcanism at Deception Island has been recorded since 1800. (The last verified eruptive activity occurred in 1970.) Closer to the coastline of Graham Land, Brabant Island (not part of the South Shetlands) also includes numerous outcrops of volcanic rock, attesting to the complex tectonic history of the region.

The ISS was located over the South Atlantic Ocean, approximately 1,800 kilometers (1,100 miles) to the northeast when this image was taken. This long viewing distance, combined with the highly oblique angle, accentuates the shadowing of the ground and provides a sense of the topography similar to the view you get from an airplane. It also causes foreshortening of features in the image, making them appear closer to each other than they actually are. For example, the distance between Livingston and Deception Islands is approximately 20 kilometers (12 miles).

Astronaut photograph ISS029-E-41836 was acquired on October 4, 2011, with a Nikon D3 digital camera using a 1200 mm lens, and is provided by the ISS Crew Earth Observations experiment and Image Science & Analysis Laboratory, Johnson Space Center. The image was taken by the Expedition 29 crew.

Visit

PHILLIP'S NATURAL WORLD

for more photos

Patterns in Nature

2011-12-06T01:56:00.000-05:00

Crocodiles are often hunted illegally for their hides, which are used in shoes, handbags, and belts. The American crocodile (Crocodylus acutus) population is threatened with extinction.

Ocean waves leave behind patterns in the sand.

Rough outer skin on a cantaloupe melon (Cucumis melo var. cantalupensis) appears to be a maze or labyrinth.

Native Americans taught colonists to grown indigenous corn (Zea mays), which included varieties of yellow corn that are still popular as food. Corn kernels can also be red, blue, pink or black, as well as banded, spotted, or striped.

Lichens are a combination of two organisms, most often composed of fungus and algae. They grow on soil, rocks, and tree bark. Squamulose lichens are tightly clustered and slightly flattened pebble-like units.

Mango (Mangifera indica) leaves have a leathery texture and can grow up to 12 inches (30 centimeters) long. Mature leaves are dark green with a complicated network of veins. When the leaves are young, they are usually red or purple. Mangifera is a genus of flowering plants in the cashew family, Anacardiaceae. The family contains approximately 69 species, with the most well-known being the Common Mango.

The mushroom coral (Fungia spp.) uses its colorful mouth to feast on adult jellyfish. Unlike reef-building corals, mushroom corals -- amount the world's biggest polyps at up to 12 inches (30 centimeters) wide -- live as individuals.

The full fan of the male peaflow's (Pavo cristatus or Pavo muticus) tail feathers accounts for more than 60 percent of the bird's total body length. The luminous feather "eyes" consist of blue, gold, red, and other hues. The large train is used in mating rituals and courtship displays.

A Zebra's (Equus zebra) skin is black: only its fur is distinctively striped. The zebra's patterns are as unique as fingerprints -- no two are exactly alike -- although each zebra species has its own general pattern.

Microscopic views of ocean jasper reveal a universe of colors. Most jasper is red, green, brown, or yellow and is often polished and used in jewelry.

The Stapelia grandiflora plant produces a star-shaped bloom ranging in size from 6 to 24 inches (14.2 to 61 centimeters) wide. It emits a nasty scent which attracts egg-laying flies. Commonly referred to as the Carrion Plant, Starfish Flower, or Starfish Cactus, though not related to cacti. The common names derive from the flower's odor and the plant's appearance.

Visit

PHILLIP'S NATURAL WORLD

for more photos

Winter Scenes Redux

2011-12-04T02:21:00.000-05:00

Its been sunny and quite warm in Florida the past week. Temperatures were in the low 80°s F. (27° C.) today.

Above, a shot of a birch (Betula spp.) in with some pines. . . looking at a grey sky. There aren't many birch at this latitude but where they do occur they are generally small to medium-size trees or shrubs. This is likely an American Dwarf Birch (Betula grandulosa).

The Sandhill Cranes (Grus canadensis) are around. . . sometimes in large numbers. We had to stop to get a few of them to move out of the road this afternoon.

There are also many American Black Vultures (Coragyps atratus) around. They are pretty amazing. I can throw a couple eggs out in the yard and they come from miles around to investigate. . .and then pose for the camera. They especially like dog food. I wonder what's really in it?

Australia's Murray River

2011-12-04T01:13:00.001-05:00

Australia’s iconic Murray River, beloved for the red gum forests that line its banks and the prized Murray cod that ply its waters, is suffering big time from the high demands placed upon its finite flows and the decade of dryness that presaged the climate disruption to come.

In late November, Australia’s Murray Darling Basin Authority (MDBA) released its long-awaited draft plan to restore the health of the river while also preserving the vast farm economy that depends upon it. Spanning 14 percent of Australia’s territory, the Murray-Darling basin yields 39 percent of the country’s agricultural output.

This draft plan is the next step in one of the boldest efforts at water reform taking place in the world today.

The basin plan attempts to address a big question: Can healthy rivers and productive agriculture co-exist side-by-side in water-stressed regions? If so, how?

After years of drought that drained the over-tapped Murray dry before it reached the sea, the Australian government called in 2007 for the development of a new plan to better manage the river. The idea was to better balance human and nature’s needs for water – to restore river flows, wetlands and floodplains while sustaining agriculture and rural communities at the same time.

To do this, the just-released MDBA plan proposes to reduce diversions from the river by 2,750 gigaliters (726 billion gallons) per year, or 11.5 percent of the river’s annual average flow. The MDBA maintains that nearly 40 percent of these savings have already been achieved through voluntary buybacks of water entitlements and infrastructure upgrades that have taken place since 1995.

As a result, the amount of “new” water needed to restore the river to health amounts to just 1,468 gigaliters (388 billion gallons) per year. And this target volume could drop even further, the MDBA says, if new knowledge gleaned between now and 2015 suggests that smarter river management alone can improve the Murray ecosystem.

Unfortunately, this fuzzy math doesn’t match up with the best science. The MDBA guidance issued in October 2010 indicated that scientists had determined that a minimum of 3,000-4,000 GL per year was needed to restore the Murray ecosystem to health.

Moreover, in a review of the MDBA plan’s “environmentally sustainable level of take” for the river, a panel of scientists assembled under CSIRO, Australia’s national science agency, concluded that the modeling results for 2800 GL per year of cutbacks do not meet “several of the specified hydrologic and ecological targets.” The plan also ignores likely climate impacts and the reduced flows they are likely to bring.

Yet even the softer diversion cuts in the current proposed plan appear unacceptable to the irrigation industry. No sooner was the ink dry than irrigators began decrying the proposed 2,750 gigaliters in cutbacks, claiming they will cost the region dearly in jobs, crop production and farm revenues.

For their part, environmental groups are pushing back, stressing that the river needs more water to stand even a chance of returning to health. The Australian Conservation Foundation, a national environmental group based in Melbourne, is calling onAustralia’s water minister to instruct the MDBA to consider a plan that returns 4,000-5000 gigaliters to the Murray ecosystem.

Become a Spy

2011-12-03T01:37:00.001-05:00

Government Communications Headquarters, a British spy agency, is using a game to recruit.

Go Online, Beat a Puzzle and Become a British Spy

By JOHN F. BURNS

LONDON — Psst! Wanna be a spy?

Back in the cloak-and-dagger days of secret intelligence work, Britain’s espionage agencies liked to recruit in the ivied colleges of Oxford and Cambridge, even if that brought them some of the most notorious turncoats of the 20th century, men like Kim Philby and other Cambridge spies who handed atom bomb secrets to the Soviet Union in the 1940s and 1950s before defecting to Moscow.

In the Internet age, the spy catchers have been forced to go digital, democratic and, old-timers might say, outright pop. Their latest whiz, causing a buzz on the Internet — and stirring a torrent of Web chat among people identifying themselves as hackers — is an online cryptographic puzzle that promises a fast track to recruitment as spies for those who solve it before the challenge expires on Dec. 11.

According to traffic on Twitter, Facebook and scores of other Web sites, at least 50 people have solved the puzzle since it was posted unobtrusively last month. To all but practiced cryptographers, it looks baffling: a rectangular display of 160 letters and numbers, grouped in twos in blue against a black background, under the overline, “Can you crack it?” Beneath it, a digital clock ticks down the seconds left until the competition closes.

The agency that posted the puzzle at www.canyoucrackit.co.uk is one of the oldest, and, espionage experts say, most successful eavesdropping organizations anywhere, Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ, located in a vast doughnut-shaped building surrounded by huge satellite dishes in parkland near Cheltenham, 120 miles west of London.

Helped by a hand-in-glove relationship with its American counterpart, the National Security Agency, which provides access to data downloaded from a pervasive network of American spy satellites, GCHQ can hack into phone calls, e-mails and computers virtually anywhere in the world. With language experts speaking everything from Amharic to Kazakh and 70 tongues besides, it has played a crucial role in cracking some of the biggest terror plots against the West in recent years.

Once decrypted, the agency’s online puzzle, through a process experts call steganography, yields a hidden message in the form of a keyword. Those who enter the keyword are led to a Web address, where they are greeted with a congratulatory note. It is signed by a group calling itself Cyber Security Specialists, a newly formed unit within the British agency that is responsible for combating the cyberespionage threat that British officials have listed alongside terrorism, organized crime, and drug and weapons smuggling among the nation’s biggest security threats.

“So you did it,” says the congratulatory message. “Now this is where it gets interesting. Could you use your skills and ingenuity to combat terrorism and cyberthreats? As one of our experts, you’ll help protect our nation’s security and the lives of thousands.” Those interested are then invited to submit a formal job application, leading to interviews for a total of 35 jobs next spring.

Some skeptics, believing there is nothing particularly innovative in the new world of spycraft beyond updated technologies, have noted that recruiting techniques used by the World War II code-breaking agency that was GCHQ’s predecessor included presenting candidates, many of them from Oxford and Cambridge, with cryptographic crossword puzzles. Other skeptics on the Internet have dismissed the GCHQ puzzle as too easy.

One cyberenthusiast, Dave Neal, writing on the Web site theinquirer.net, dismissed the puzzle as “not cool, and not very professional.” He said that he and others working with him at the Web site “asked GCHQ if this was a hoax.”

The spy agency has insisted it is not. A spokesman described the puzzle as a follow-up on unusual methods it has used in the past to reach potential computer-age recruits who might escape traditional methods, which have included discreet advertisements in high-end magazines and newspapers. The newer tactics have included posting video content and downloadable information about the agency on the Web, and cyberpuzzles on popular video games like Call of Duty and Assassin’s Creed.

“Code-cracking skills are vital to secure the very best talent and to support the GCHQ mission in its fight against cyberthreats,” the spokesman told The Daily Telegraph. “Our target audience is not typically attracted to traditional advertising methods. Their skills may be ideally suited to our work, and yet they may not understand how they could apply them to the working environment.”

Many computer experts writing for British newspapers and Web sites suggested that the spy agency’s message, at least implicitly, was that it was looking for accomplished hackers, a community that has been bruised lately in the backwash from the scandal enveloping Rupert Murdoch’s newspaper empire.

The agency, in listing the qualifications it requires of recruits, said it would accept only British citizens and would rule out anyone who had engaged in illegal hacking. But some of its other specifications suggested that it might not look askance at candidates who have trodden close to the legal line. While saying it was looking for “good people” with a strong sense of fairmindedness, it also emphasized the value of a buccaneering spirit.

“In a game where our adversaries operate with no known rules and unknown boundary lines, you will be exploring the possibilities and inventing the seemingly impossible,” the agency said on its Web site.

Those pressing the agency to lift its game have included Prime Minister David Cameron, whose government has noted GCHQ’s past inability to recruit and retain “a suitable cadre of Internet specialists,” partly because its entry salaries — averaging about $48,000, far less than what private companies offer for the same skills — are uncompetitive. William Hague, the foreign secretary, said recently that the government was the target of as many as 600 attacks on its computer systems every day.

But judging by the response to the spy agency’s puzzle, the government faces an uphill struggle, partly because in the community of hackers, government itself is uncool, if not the enemy. One hacker going by the name Ady who entered a comment on the BBC’s Web site urged the agency to “stick to employing upper-class twits from Oxford and Cambridge.” Hackers, called “hobbyists” in the post, know that “governments are not really the sort of people you want to get involved with,” Ady said.

Another contributor put the government’s problem — finding hackers to combat hackers — in a nutshell. “Hire Gary McKinnon,” the person wrote, referring to a Scottish hacker accused of intruding into nearly 100 Pentagon computer networks a decade ago. He is fighting extradition to the United States for what American officials have described as “the biggest military computer hack of all time.”

Exercise Benefits the Brain

2011-12-02T11:03:00.005-05:00

By GRETCHEN REYNOLDS

Does exercise strengthen your brain while it builds muscle?

To learn more about how exercise affects the brain, scientists in Ireland recently asked a group of sedentary male college students to take part in a memory test followed by strenuous exercise.

First, the young men watched a rapid-fire lineup of photos with the faces and names of strangers. After a break, they tried to recall the names they had just seen as the photos again zipped across a computer screen.

Afterward, half of the students rode a stationary bicycle, at an increasingly strenuous pace, until they were exhausted. The others sat quietly for 30 minutes. Then both groups took the brain-teaser test again.

Notably, the exercised volunteers performed significantly better on the memory test than they had on their first try, while the volunteers who had rested did not improve.

Meanwhile, blood samples taken throughout the experiment offered a biological explanation for the boost in memory among the exercisers. Immediately after the strenuous activity, the cyclists had significantly higher levels of a protein known as brain-derived neurotrophic factor, or BDNF, which is known to promote the health of nerve cells. The men who had sat quietly showed no comparable change in BDNF levels.

For some time, scientists have believed that BDNF helps explain why mental functioning appears to improve with exercise. However, they haven’t fully understood which parts of the brain are affected or how those effects influence thinking. The Irish study suggests that the increases in BDNF prompted by exercise may play a particular role in improving memory and recall.

Other new studies have reached similar conclusions, among both people and animals, young and old. In one interesting experiment published last month, Brazilian scientists found that after sedentary elderly rats ran for a mere five minutes or so several days a week for five weeks, a cascade of biochemical processes ignited in the memory center of their brains, culminating in increased production of BDNF molecules there. The old, exercised animals then performed almost as well as much younger rats on rodent memory tests.

Another animal study, this one performed by researchers in the Brain Injury Research Center at the University of California, Los Angeles, and published in September in the journal Neuroscience, showed that if adult rats were allowed to run at will for a week, the memory center of their brains afterward contained more BDNF molecules than in sedentary rats, and teemed with a new population of precursor molecules that presumably would soon develop into fully functioning BDNF molecules.

Perhaps the most inspiring of the recent experiments is one involving aging human pilots. For the experiment, published last month in the journal Translational Psychiatry, scientists at Stanford University School of Medicine asked 144 experienced pilots ages 40 to 65 to operate a cockpit simulator three separate times over the course of two years.

For all of the pilots, performance declined somewhat as the years passed. A similar decline with age is common in all of us.

Many people find it more difficult to perform skilled tasks — driving an automobile, for instance – as they grow older, says Dr. Ahmad Salehi, an associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford and lead author of the study.

But in this case, the decline was especially striking among one particular group of men. These aging pilots carried a common genetic variation that is believed to reduce BDNF activity in their brains. The men with a genetic tendency toward lower BDNF levels seemed to lose their ability to perform complicated tasks at almost double the rate of the men without the variation.

While the pilot experiment wasn’t an exercise study, it does raise the question of whether strenuous exercise could slow such declines by raising BDNF levels, thereby salvaging our ability to perform skilled manual tasks well past middle age.

“So many studies have shown that exercise increases levels of BDNF,” says Dr. Salehi. While he notes that other growth factors and body chemicals are “upregulated” by exercise, he believes BDNF holds the most promise.

“The one factor that shows the fastest, most consistent and greatest response is BDNF,” he says. “It seems to be key to maintaining not just memory but skilled task performance.”

Dr. Salehi plans next to examine the exercise histories of the pilots, to see whether those with the gene variant, which is common among people of European or Asian backgrounds, respond differently to workouts.

In people who have the variant and less BDNF activity, “exercise is probably even more important,” he says. “But for everyone, the evidence is very, very strong that physical activity will increase BDNF levels and improve cognitive health.”

Visit

PHILLIP'S NATURAL WORLD

and

PHILLIP'S NATURAL WORLD III

Late November Sunsets

2011-11-30T01:04:00.006-05:00

I don't get up very early in the day, so sunset comes very early for me in late November (around 5:00 pm, lately). It is generally dramatic in mostly cloud-free skies.

We are deep into Florida's dry season as December approaches. . .though it is kind of hard to tell the difference the past few years as persistent drought has meant that year round the skies are mostly cloud free.

Below: A late November Sunflower (Helianthus annus) attracts a bee.

One nice change is that the temperatures are a little cooler this week, in the 70°s F. (21°-24° C.). Some trees lose their leaves in Florida, but most still appear mostly green, for now. We've not yet had any frost that would cause the trees to color or lose the bulk of their leaves. Those that are mostly bare are so-devoid of leaves due to the very short daylight hours (not cold weather).

There is some moisture in the lakes and swamps from summer storms that occurred far to our south in late summer. That water slowly moves north in Florida. No measurable rain has fallen in November.

Below: A flock of Sandhill Cranes (Grus Canadensis) return to their winter home. Some of the cranes stay year-round now. Why they no longer migrate is only now being studied. Climate change is one likely cause.

Below: A painted sky. Some high cirrus clouds make for a dramatic sunset.

Below: A row of cypress trees in the late afternoon light.

There was a little mist a couple days ago as a cold front swept through Florida, but it didn't amount to any measurable rainfall. Historically these would be the days when we would be experiencing heavy fog and rainy cold fronts. That has not happened for a couple of winters.

NOAA's Climate Prediction Center forecasts the drought to worsen as we move further into our dry winter season.

Visit

PHILLIP'S NATURAL WORLD

and

PHILLIP'S NATURAL WORLD III

for more photos

Strange Hurricanes in Pacific

2011-11-23T20:10:00.003-05:00

Above: GOES-West satellite image of Hurricane Kenneth taken at 11 am EST November 22, 2011. Image: NOAA Visualization Lab.

The Eastern Pacific's late season surprise, Hurricane Kenneth, is falling apart nearly as fast as it intensified. Kenneth, now a Category 1 hurricane with 90 mph winds, was a powerful Category 4 storm with 145 mph winds yesterday, and was by far the strongest hurricane to appear so late in the year in either the Eastern Pacific or Atlantic Oceans. Kenneth is moving over colder water and into a region with higher wind shear, and will continue to deteriorate over the next few days. Kenneth is not a threat to any land areas.

The 2011 Eastern Pacific hurricane season: a strange one
Hurricane season officially ends next week on November 30 in both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, and it is likely that we won't see any more named storms in either basin. It was a strange hurricane season in the Eastern Pacific, but in the opposite sense of the Atlantic's strange season. The 2011 Eastern Pacific hurricane season featured a well below-average number of named storms--eleven (fifteen is average). However, all but one of these storms reached hurricane strength, the highest proportion of hurricanes in a single season ever recorded. Six of the hurricanes became intense hurricanes, double the normal. An average Eastern Pacific hurricane season has 15 named storms, 8 hurricanes, and 3 intense hurricanes. It is common for an Eastern Pacific hurricane season to have fewer named storms than usual during a La Niña year, like this year. It is unusual to have so many hurricanes and intense hurricanes in a La Niña year. The only La Niña years to record so many intense hurricanes in the Eastern Pacific were 1971 and 1985 (six and eight intense hurricanes, respectively.) The strongest Eastern Pacific storm of 2011 was Hurricane Dora, which topped out as a Category 4 hurricane with 155 mph winds. The deadliest cyclone was Tropical Depression 12-E, which made landfall near the Mexico/El Salvador border on October 13. At least 105 people died in Central America due to TD 12-E's flooding rains. El Salvador recorded an astonishing 1.51 meters (4.96') of rain in a ten-day period due to TD 12-E and its remnants.

Visit

PHILLIP'S NATURAL WORLD

Strongest Ever November Hurricane

2011-11-23T02:28:00.006-05:00

Hurricane Kenneth has intensified into an impressive Category 4 storm with 145 mph winds in the Eastern Pacific. Kenneth is by far the strongest hurricane to appear so late in the season in the Eastern Pacific; the previous record was held by Hurricane Winnie of December 5, 1983, a Category 1 storm with 90 mph winds.

There has not been an Atlantic hurricane as strong as Kenneth this late in the season; the latest of the seven November major hurricanes in the Atlantic was Hurricane Kate of November 21, 1985 (120 mph winds). Since 1949, here have been just three named storms that have formed in the Eastern Pacific after November 18. These three storms were an unnamed tropical storm on November 27, 1951; Tropical Storm Sharon on November 27, 1971; and Hurricane Winnie on December 5, 1983.

Kenneth is over 27°C (80.6°F) waters and under light wind shear of 5 - 10 knots, so could conceivably intensify further. However, I expect the storm has peaked, since it's tough for a hurricane to get much stronger than Kenneth's current intensity with ocean temperatures so close to the 26.5°C hurricane formation threshold. Satellite loops show an impressive storm with a large eye, good symmetry, and plenty of upper-level outflow. The relative lack of spiral bands and large, thick eyewall may qualify Kenneth to be a rare breed of hurricanes known as "annular". Annular hurricanes are a subset of intense tropical cyclones that are significantly stronger, maintain their peak intensities longer, and weaken more slowly than average tropical cyclones. The latest SHIPS model output indicates that Kenneth has passed the initial screening step to be considered an annular hurricane. Only 4% of all hurricanes are annular hurricanes.

Unnamed tropical storm from September 2 brings the Atlantic's 2011 tally to 19
Re-analysis has shown that a tropical disturbance that formed between Bermuda and Nova Scotia on September 2 briefly attained tropical storm status, according to an article posted yesterday by Ken Kaye at SunSentinel.com, quoting NOAA's lead seasonal hurricane forecaster Gerry Bell. The addition of the unnamed tropical storm to the record books brings this year's tally of named storms to nineteen, tying 2011 with 2010, 1995, and 1887 as the 3rd busiest year for tropical storms. Only 2005 and 1933 had more named storms since record keeping began in 1851. An average season has just eleven named storms. Here's my blog entry from September 2 on the unnamed tropical storm:

A well-organized low pressure system with a surface circulation but limited heavy thunderstorm activity due to high wind shear is 450 miles south of Halifax, Canada. This disturbance, (94L), is headed northeast out to sea, and is being given a 60% chance of developing into a tropical depression by NHC. 94L is under a high 25 - 30 knots of wind shear, but this shear is expected to fall to the moderate range, 10 - 20 knots, by Saturday morning. However, sea surface temperature will fall from 27°C today to 25°C Saturday morning underneath 94L, and the storm will have a very short window of time to get organized enough to get a name. At this point, it's really a subjective judgement call on whether or not 94L is already a tropical storm.

In addition, the Atlantic has gained one more hurricane for the year, as Nate (pictured above on September 9, 2011 in the Bay of Campeche) was upgraded to a hurricane in post-season analysis. Nate hit Mexico's Bay of Campeche coast near Veracruz on September 11 as a weak tropical storm. The storm killed five people and caused minor damage near Veracruz. Nate brings this year's tally of hurricanes to seven, one hurricane above average.

Invest 99L in the Atlantic moving over colder waters
In the Atlantic, Invest 99L, an extratropical storm in the middle Atlantic that is generating tropical storm-force winds, has moved over colder waters of 24°C (75°F) and is looking less tropical than yesterday. The storm is moving northeastwards out to sea and over even colder waters, and is not a threat to any land areas.

Visit

PHILLIP'S NATURAL WORLD

New Record Holder for Latest Hurricane

in the Season to Strike U.S. Coastline

Thanks to evidence found as part of the Atlantic hurricane database reanalysis project,

there is a new record holder for the latest hurricane in a season to ever to strike the

United States coastline.

The new record is Hurricane Kate, which struck the Florida panhandle on November 21,

1985, as a Category 2 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale.

The old record was held by a Category 1 hurricane which struck southwest Florida on

December 1, 1925.

During the last several years, meteorologists at NOAA’s National Hurricane Center and

NOAA’s Hurricane Research Division have been reanalyzing historic hurricanes, using

today's analysis techniques to reassess the track and peak winds of these cyclones.

As part of the reanalysis effort, new observations were obtained that showed that the

December 1, 1925, system did not reach hurricane intensity, and the system was

officially downgraded to a tropical storm.

For more about the Atlantic hurricane database reanalysis project, please see:

http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/data_sub/re_anal.html

Aging and Senescent Cells

2011-11-22T01:39:00.007-05:00

CELL SUICIDE: A subdermal fat layer, middle, in a mouse purged of sensecent cells. These mice can run much longer and have larger fat deposits.

By NICHOLAS WADE

Until recently, few people gave much thought to senescent cells. They are cells that linger in the body even after they have lost the ability to divide.

But recently, in what could be a landmark experiment in the study of aging, researchers at the Mayo Clinic reported that if you purge the body of its senescent cells, the tissues remain youthful and vigorous.

The experiment was just in mice, and it cleared the cells with a genetic technique that cannot be applied to people. Like all critical experiments, it needs to be repeated in other labs before it can be accepted with confidence.

But the startling result is plausible because it ties together an emerging body of knowledge about senescent cells. And it raises the possibility that attacks on the cells might postpone the diseases of aging and let people live out more of their life span in good health.

Senescent cells were discovered 50 years ago in a classic experiment by the biologist Leonard Hayflick. He found that human cells cultured in glassware do not multiply indefinitely, as was then assumed, but can divide only 50 or so times before lapsing into senescence.

But the finding was not followed up for many years; researchers assumed that it was something that occurred only in the laboratory, or that even if cells did become senescent in the body, there were too few to make a difference.

Only in the last few years have researchers come to realize that senescent cells do occur naturally and that they play central roles in both cancer and aging.

Simple organisms live short lives and do not need cell division. More complex animals live longer because their tissues are renewable. In humans, the cells lining the gut are renewed every five days. Red blood cells last 120 days. Even bone cells slowly turn over, with the result that the entire skeleton is renewed every 10 years or so.

But the price for renewable tissues is cancer: If cells are capable of division, any damage to their control systems can lead to unconstrained growth. The body has therefore evolved two major systems to curb the risk of cancer — cell senescence and cell death.

Both systems are set in motion by illicit cell divisions, like those caused by a virus; by damage to DNA; or by activation of tumor-causing genes. Senescence can also be caused when cells run out of telomeres, the caps at the end of the chromosomes that get shorter at each cell division. This route to senescence, discovered in the 1990s, underlies the process observed by Dr. Hayflick.

Cells thrown into senescence do not divide again but hang about in tissues until they are cleared by the immune system. In cell death, a cell is forced to set off a built-in suicide mechanism.

Researchers do not yet understand why there are two systems, or how the body chooses whether to assign a damaged cell to senescence or to death. But a benefit of senescence is that suspect cells can continue to perform vital functions, said Daniel Peeper, an expert on senescence at the Netherlands Cancer Institute in Amsterdam. Moles, for instance, are collections of senescent cells that continue to produce melanin and defend the skin from ultraviolet rays.

Senescent cells thus seem to be a benign byproduct of the body’s defense against cancer. But researchers have developed growing suspicions of a less benign aspect: the cells’ culpability in aging.

Senescent cells accumulate throughout life, probably because the immune system sweeps them away less efficiently as a person ages. Larger and flatter than normal cells, they are especially common in tissues showing signs of aging, like arthritic knees or the plaque in the arteries.

And despite being termed senescent, the cells are very active: They convert themselves into factories that churn out 100 different kinds of growth factors, along with cytokines, the inflammatory agents that stimulate the immune system. The evolutionary reason for this activity may be to provoke the immune system to attack patches of premalignant and malignant cells.

But the process turns out to have some untoward side effects.

As it happens, many aging tissues show signs of chronic inflammation, which can foster age-related diseases, including arthritis,Alzheimer’s and cancer. The relationship between aging and inflammation has so far been a mystery. “Does aging drive inflammation, or does something else cause chronic inflammation, which in turn drives aging?” Judith Campisi of the Buck Institute for Age Research asked in a review in the journal Cell last year.

The Mayo Clinic researchers, a team led by Jan M. van Deursen and Dr. James L. Kirkland, have come up with a clear and dramatic answer to this question in a mouse study: It’s the senescent cells that inflame the tissues and cause them to age.

Senescence is induced in most cells by the activation of two genes, known as p53 and p16-INK4a, that are the guardians and enforcers of proper cell division. When they detect any damage in the cell’s controls, they force it into either senescence or death.

The role of p16-INK4a is to block the cell from dividing. The Mayo team genetically engineered a strain of mice in which whenever a cell became senescent by switching on its p16-INK4a gene, it also primed a cell suicide device. The Mayo team used a special drug to activate this device and clear the mice of all their senescent cells.

The researchers showed that mice purged of senescent cells could run much longer on a treadmill, had larger fat deposits — fat disappears from the skin as people age, causing wrinkles — and developed cataracts much later. Much the same effect was seen in a second experiment, in which dosing did not start until the mice were middle-aged, except that cataracts that had already formed could not be reversed.

The experiment “strongly suggests that accumulation of senescent cells does contribute to aging, and they show that by eliminating senescent cells they could delay premature aging,” Dr. Peeper said.

The finding was made in a strain of mice that age fast and usually die of heart arrhythmia. So despite their healthier tissues, the mice purged of senescent cells died at the usual age of heart problems. Dr. van Deursen’s team is now testing to see whether normal mice will live longer when purged of senescent cells.

The treatment was started when the normal mice were a year old, and they have now been treated for five months. Next month they will run treadmill tests to see if they are in better shape than a comparison group of untreated mice, Dr. van Deursen said.

The genetic method used to purge mice of senescent cells cannot be used in people. Instead of trying to remove senescent cells from elderly people, Dr. Peeper believes, it may be more effective to identify which of the factors that the senescent cells secrete are the source of their ill effects and to develop drugs that block these factors.

But Dr. van Deursen thinks it would be better to go after the senescent cells themselves. In his view it should be easy enough by trial and error to find chemicals that selectively destroy senescent cells, just like the targeted chemicals now used to treat certain kinds of cancer. And unlike the cancer cells, which proliferate so fast that they soon develop resistance, the senescent cells cannot replicate, so they should be easy targets.

Several companies and individuals have already approached the Mayo Clinic to explore developing such drugs. “They think it’s possible, and they are very enthusiastic,” Dr. van Deursen said. “So I can guarantee that there will be initiatives to find drugs that kill senescent cells and mimic the system that we have developed in the mouse.”

Suppose such drugs are developed and retard aging of the tissues in humans just as the mouse experiments suggest can be done. Would people live forever?

The answer is no, Dr. van Deursen says, because many other kinds of damage are incurred by DNA and proteins in cells throughout the body. But the senescent cells make the situation much worse with their inflammatory hormones.

“If you remove the senescent cells you improve things considerably, but you can’t reverse the process or completely stop the aging because it has other causes,” Dr. van Deursen said. “Personally I think we can slow aging down, and over time we will become more and more successful.

“Aging is a fate that no one can escape, but now we can maybe intervene a bit.”

NORMAL Fat ebbs during again when senescent cells remain. Research raises the possibility that attacks on the cells could postpone diseases of aging.

Visit

PHILLIP'S NATURAL WORLD

Nyamulagira Volcano Erupts

2011-11-20T01:31:00.008-05:00

Above: A ranger stands guard in front of the

65-story lava fountain at Nyamulagira volcano.

Nyamulagirara and Nyiragongo, Congo

Two eruptions caught a lot of people's attention this week (and that doesn't include the on-again now off-again activity at El Hierro) - the first was the new fissure eruption at Nyamulagira in the Congo. Advertised as a tourist destination by the Congolese government (but not exactly in the friendliest of locations), the eruption was definitely impressive as the video of the event shows - plenty of fire fountains and lava flows.

The NASA Earth Observatory image of the eruption clearly shows the new lava flow right next to an older lava flow from the same rift system on Nyamulagira. However, a wider shot of the area seen on November 12 by the EO-1 satellite also gets a glimpse at the persistent lava lake at Nyamulagira's neighbor, Nyiragongo- or check out this November 15 image that captures both volcanoes as well.

Visit

PHILLIP'S NATURAL WORLD

Phillip's Natural World 2.0

Florida wreck kills at least 10

Late January Weather Heats Up

Fence Building Continued

Lake Ellsworth Expedition

Antarctic lake drilling mission edges closer

Related Stories

“Start Quote

How scientists will reach Lake Ellsworth

More on This Story

Related Stories

Share this page

Albino Penguin Spotted in Antarctica

"White," Albino-like Penguin Found in Antarctica

Skylight Repair 101

Billion Dollar Weather Disasters of 2011

Florida Fireworks, Smoke, and Cold

New Island in Red Sea

Winter Birds of Florida

8 Recycled Christmas Trees

Kilauea Volcano

Chandelier Plants

Fire and Lights

10 Least Crowded Places on Earth

Frankincense & Myrrh

A SENSE OF FRANKINCENSE

More on This Story

Related Stories

Awesome views of the Pu‘u ‘Ō‘ō cone and crater

Massive Iceberg

References

Antarctica's Graham Land

Patterns in Nature

Winter Scenes Redux

Australia's Murray River

Become a Spy

Go Online, Beat a Puzzle and Become a British Spy

By JOHN F. BURNS

Exercise Benefits the Brain

Late November Sunsets

Strange Hurricanes in Pacific

Strongest Ever November Hurricane

Aging and Senescent Cells

By NICHOLAS WADE

Nyamulagira Volcano Erupts

Nyamulagirara and Nyiragongo, Congo