ENVIRONMENT - 'Pandas' hot to globe-trot - WORLD

 

Updated: 2012-10-18 07:44

By Wang Bowen in Washington (China Daily)

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Two dozen eager semifinalists from North America gathered in Washington on Tuesday to compete for positions as panda ambassadors, also known as Pambassadors.
All were hoping to be selected as one of three globe-trotting winners who will spread the panda conservation concept and visit Chengdu, capital city of Sichuan province and home of the pandas.

Two dozen semifinalists from North America, who are vying for positions as panda ambassadors, pose before the competition on Tuesday in Washington DC. They were scheduled to participate in a series of challenges in which their panda knowledge, physical strength, communications skills and team-working abilities would be tested. Sun Chenbei / China Daily

The 24 semifinalists were scheduled to participate in a series of challenges on Tuesday and Wednesday in which their panda knowledge, physical strength, communications skills and team-working abilities would be tested.
The 2012 Global Pambassador program - a three-month competition organized by the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding in partnership with WildAid, an organization focusing on stopping illegal wildlife trade, and the Yao Ming Foundation - aims to develop global awareness of giant panda conservation.
A total of 255,412 overseas contestants registered for the contest on Facebook, of whom 59,174 were from the United States.
After the online "PandaQuest" competition, 24 regional winners are chosen in each region, including Europe, North America, the Asia-Pacific region and the Chinese mainland. Four finalists from each region make it to the final competition in Chengdu.
The three winners will serve as Chengdu Pambassadors for one year and participate in a Global Panda Conservation Tour in 2013. They will take a unique journey into the natural habitat of wild pandas and participate in panda-release programs designed to reintroduce captive bears into the wild.
The 24 contestants all dressed in panda costumes when they appeared at a press conference on Tuesday.
Many of them identified themselves as big fans of pandas.
"Pandas are amazing, unique and beautiful creatures. They should be around forever," said Diane Cranford, a pharmacist from Los Angeles.
Lisa Fredsti, 53, a novelist, and the oldest of the contestants, has visited China frequently since 1978. Fredsti said she feels an urgency to protect them, she said. "I support panda conservation because I don't want to be the last of our kind," said Fredsti, with a serious expression on her face.
Peter Knights, founder of WildAid, said that because people can empathize so easily with pandas, they can also understand the plight of endangered species more easily.
"People just adore the panda," he said. "It has big eyes. In fact, many species have big eyes, but it has big patches that make its eyes look bigger. It is cuddly, soft, cute and essentially harmless," Knights said.
By joining hands with Chengdu Panda Base, Knights said they also want to celebrate the success of panda conservation in China.
The population of the giant pandas in the wild is estimated to be around 1,600, a sharp increase from the figure of 1,000 in the 1970s. Chengdu Panda Base, founded in 1987, started with six giant pandas rescued from the wild and, by 2008, had 124 panda births. The captive panda population has grown to 83.
"The number allows us to start to try to reintroduce the pandas to the wild. That is a success story to me," said Knights.
"The competition will reach out to the public worldwide to pass along panda knowledge and raise awareness among people who are both panda lovers and native speakers of English," said Shen Fujun, manager of the Genetics Department at Chengdu Panda Base.
Mary Kate Flannery, a university student from San Diego, has been doing a great deal of studying since entering the competition. She has learned about the daily life and nature of pandas, and she even watches San Diego Zoo Panda Cam streaming live on a computer every day. Now her entire family is following the Panda Cam. "Every day my family will ask me about this," Flannery said, grinning.
"It is an amazing opportunity, something once in a lifetime that we can't get anywhere else," said Kevin O'Brien from New York.
The 2012 Chengdu Pambassador program is building on the success of the 2010 Pambassador program, in which six finalists were chosen from more than 60,000 global conservation activists who applied online for the opportunity to become a panda caretaker in Chengdu for one month.
Contact the writer at wang.bw.irene@gmail.com

ESTILO DE VIDA - Sin arco, con hoyos - ARGENTINA

 

El footgolf es una mezcla de fútbol y golf, disciplinas que aportan potencia y precisión para conseguir un objetivo diferente: embocar la pelota en el hoyo, con el pie y en la menor cantidad de golpes posibles. Un desafío personal.

 

En marzo de 2010 comenzó a practicarse en nuestro país, y actualmente se realizan más de 20 torneos anuales en las distintas provincias.

En Argentina existe un circuito nacional donde se realizan torneos todos los meses, en Buenos Aires, Mendoza, Córdoba y Rosario.

Hace unos meses, en Junio, se llevó a cabo el Primer Mundial de FootGolf en Budapest, Hungría.

 

15/10/12 - 16:43

Resulta un mix curioso, que mezcla la pasión del fútbol con un deporte de precisión como el golf. El futgolf o footgolf nació en 2009 en Holanda. “El creador fue el ex jugador profesional de futbol Michael Jansen, quien luego de una lesión que lo marginó del futbol pensó en el footgolf como un deporte para mantenerse activo.

Rápidamente, se extendió por Bélgica, Hungría, España y Alemania. En Argentina comenzó un año mas tarde, en marzo de 2010, y luego arribó a Chile, Italia, México, Grecia, USA, Puerto Rico e Inglaterra”, cuenta el Presidente de la Asociación Argentina de FootGolf, Javier de Ancizar.

Así, la propuesta es jugar al fútbol en un campo de golf. Lo que a priori puede resultar una excentricidad ya es una realidad. El footgolf se practica en un campo de golf con las mismas reglas que este deporte, pero con una salvedad: hay que introducir la pelota de futbol en un hoyo, que por obvias razones es más grande que el de la pelotita golfera (de 52 centímetros de diámetro).

Como en el golf, el objetivo es embocar la pelota en la menor cantidad de patadas o golpes posibles. Por lo tanto, hay que contar con la suficiente destreza y precisión para realizar el recorrido en menos golpes que el resto y conseguir el triunfo.

Dónde jugar
Se practica en aquellas canchas de golf que ven a esta nueva disciplina como una actividad complementaria y como una nueva fuente de ingresos.

En Argentina, existe un circuito nacional donde se realizan torneos todos los meses, en Buenos Aires, Mendoza, Córdoba y Rosario. En Buenos Aires, el costo de participar en un torneo es de 150 pesos por persona.

Se juega a 9 hoyos en formato Medal Play, juego por golpes, y una vez al año se realiza una fecha especial por equipos. También existe la posibilidad de jugar todos los viernes y sábados en Scorer Golf (en Escobar), y el costo para jugar o practicar es de 100 pesos los 18 hoyos.

Al igual que el fútbol y el golf, lo pueden practicar personas de distintas edades, hombre o mujeres.
“Desde sus comienzos, la respuesta de la gente fue más que satisfactoria. En 2010, se realizaron cinco torneos donde participaron cerca de 40 jugadores en cada uno de ellos. Actualmente, se realizan más de 20 torneos al año en cuatro provincias diferentes, donde asisten más de 90 jugadores en cada una de las fechas. Ya han jugado al footgolf más de 2.000 personas en Argentina”, agrega el Presidente de la Asociación Argentina de FootGolf.

Un deporte mundial
Hace unos meses, se llevó a cabo el Primer Mundial de FootGolf en Budapest, Hungría. Participaron 80 jugadores de ocho países diferentes: Argentina, Hungría, Holanda, Bélgica, Italia, Grecia, México y USA. Argentina, que participó con una delegación de 15 participantes, tuvo una destacada performance. Si bien los tres primeros fueron locales, los argentinos Nicolas Garcia y Diego Zayat obtuvieron el cuarto y quinto lugar respectivamente, y hubo otro argentino entre los diez primeros.
Más informaciín en: www.footgolf.com.ar

NATURE - Clever birds don't have it all - IRELAND

 

Birds with brains: great tits were set tasks to investigate if their perceived higher intelligence helps them survive in the wild. Photograph: John Quinn

 

DICK AHLSTROM

Studies show some great tits are remarkably clever when it comes to solving problems to get at food. But does this help them in the wild?

BE CAREFUL who you call a bird brain, you may be paying them a compliment. Some bird species exhibit remarkable intelligence, among them the great tit, which is a common garden bird.

The New Caledonian crow is top of the leader board with its capacity to fashion tools to retrieve food, but the local great tit doesn’t do too badly when it comes to solving problems. Dr John Quinn, a specialist in animal personality and cognition, began to study the bird four years ago while at Oxford University. He and his team caught wild great tits in a nearby wood and set the birds a simple problem. If they solved it, they would get at some food.

Now a lecturer in ecology at University College Cork, Quinn had a particular purpose in mind when conducting the experiments. “We are trying to understand why we get individual variations in the birds’ cognitive ability,” he says.

They were also trying to discover whether it is “better to be brighter” – whether the birds that were able to solve the puzzle also did better generally, either reproductively or in terms of survival. “The purpose of our study was simple: to test if it was better being a problem-solver. That hadn’t been tested in the past. Do they do better or do all individuals do equally well in the end?

“It has been known for many years that relatively clever species tend to be adapted to living in more challenging environments than their less intelligent counterparts,” he said.

Another aspect of general genetic “fitness” is the number of eggs that appear in a nest. More eggs can mean more fledglings.

Quinn conducted the research while at Oxford, but moved to UCC’s school of biological, earth and environmental sciences in January. He submitted the research and it was published recently in the journal Current Biology.

The research team – including Ella Cole, who remained at Oxford, and Julie Morand-Ferron, now at the University of Ottawa – collected great tits in Wytham Wood near the college, ultimately testing 700.

The great tit is a highly successful bird. “We know they are very innovative in the wild,” he says. These are the birds that pioneered the practice of raiding home milk deliveries, pecking open foil milk-bottle caps to steal cream. “They are quite an adaptive species.”

The birds were held for one day. Each one was placed in a cage to see if it could solve a puzzle. The incentive was to acquire a juicy wax moth larva, which had been placed in a clear plastic tube and was readily visible to the bird. The prize was supported by a small platform held in place by a stick of wood. Removal of the stick caused the platform to fall to the base of the tube where the bird could get at it – and with it the larva.

Some birds solved the problem in seconds. Others took longer, some of them pecking at the stick and noting the movement of the larva before solving the puzzle. Despite these successes overall, only 40 per cent of the birds tested were able to solve the problem.

The birds were isolated from one another while encountering the test so they could not depend on “social learning”, ie acquiring the learned skills of another, Quinn says. The tested birds were then tagged with small radio transmitters and released back into the wild after their short captivity.

At this point, the experiment switched out of the lab and into the woods. The research team were able to keep tabs on the birds via their tagging system and could track how the “smart” birds performed in the wild versus the birds who were unable to solve the food puzzle.

On initial inspection, the clever birds seemed to be coping better with their environment, Quinn says. The team found the problem solvers were producing more eggs than those who had failed the test. They were also able to make use of a smaller part of the wood when foraging for food compared to the others.

They laid more eggs and these delivered more hatchlings, with clutch size an indicator of breeding fitness. “Either they were better at finding food and could lay more eggs or they could provide for the hatchlings better. That suggests they were able to exploit the environment more effectively.”

Unexpectedly, the smart birds were also more likely to abandon their fledglings, to fly away apparently without provocation and leave their nests behind with a subsequent loss of the young.
The research team put this down to a greater sensitivity on the part of these birds to the presence of humans “who they viewed as potential predators at the nest”, he suggests.

By comparison, the “bird brains” needed about twice as much foraging space in the woods to support themselves, but they were less likely to take off and leave their young behind.

This difference between the two sets of birds tended to level out breeding success. The greater number of surviving chicks produced by the non-solver birds managed to keep up with the increased number of fledglings produced by the smart birds because of their higher mortality rate. “In the end, good and poor solvers did equally well living in the wild,” Quinn says.

In this example, evolution has not favoured the birds that were able to solve the problem so there was no apparent advantage to being smart. The only advantage – as perceived by a human – was that smarter foraging meant a shorter working day in the search for food, he says.

“For me, what was amazing is that this simple problem-solving test we did in captivity predicted how well birds bred when they were released back into the wild.”

SICENCE - Harvard scientists suggest moon made from earth - INDIA

A new theory put forward by Harvard scientists suggests the moon was once part of the earth that spun off after a giant collision with another body.

In a paper published on Wednesday in the journal Science, Sarah Stewart and Matija uk said their theory would explain why the earth and moon have similar composition and chemistry.

The earth was spinning much faster at the time the Moon was formed, and a day lasted only two to three hours, they said.

With the Earth spinning so quickly, a giant impact could have launched enough of the Earth's material to form a moon, the scientists said in an explanation published on a Harvard website. www.fas.harvard.edu/~planets/sstewart/Moon.html

According to the new theory, the Earth later reached its current rate of spinning through gravitational interaction between its orbit around the Sun and the Moon's orbit around Earth.

The scientists noted that their proposition differed from the current leading theory, which holds that the Moon was created from material from a giant body that struck the Earth.

Stewart is a professor of earth and planetary sciences at Harvard, and uk, an astronomer and an investigator at the SETI Institute, which supports research into the search for extraterrestrial life. The latter was conducting post-doctoral research at Harvard.

SCIENCE - Saturn's rings shine in new NASA photo - WORLD

 

Stunning ... NASA's Cassini spacecraft's photo of Saturn. Photo: NASA

 

A stunning new image taken by NASA's Cassini spacecraft shows off the southern side of Saturn and the planet's iconic ring system.

The near-infrared photo was taken from 14 degrees under the ringplane, researchers said, and looks toward the unlit side of the planet's rings. Cassini was about 2.9 million kilometres from Saturn, the second-largest planet in the solar system, at the time.

The 504 km-wide Enceladus, one of more than 60 moons that orbit the planet, can also be seen in the image. Despite being covered in ice, many researchers say Enceladus has one of the best chances in the solar system of hosting life beyond Earth, due to a large ocean of water that is thought to sit below the ice. It also generates a large amount of internal heat, thought to power geysers that erupt at the southern polar regions. The geysers were discovered by Cassini in 2005.

The $US3.2 billion Cassini mission launched in 1997 and has been studying Saturn since it arrived at there in 2004. The craft will study the ringed planet until at least 2017, and possibly beyond that.

In 2005, the Huygens lander touched down on Saturn's largest moon, Titan, and relayed the first photos ever from its surface.

Titan is often described as being more like a planet than a moon. It is the only other body in the solar system with a dense, nitrogen-dominated atmosphere aside from Earth. For this reason, some scientists believe that it, too, may be able to support life.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/technology/sci-tech/saturns-rings-shine-in-new-nasa-photo-20121002-26w5i.html#ixzz288xD2o4K

SOCIEDAD - Los recién nacidos distinguen idiomas y generan conceptos - URUGUAY

Pediatría. Expertos demuestran que no nacen con el cerebro "en blanco"

Los bebés tienen una vida mental secreta. Cada vez son más los estudios que sugieren que son capaces de conceptualizar, explorar, imaginar y distinguir vocablos e idiomas. Y lo más sorprendente es que lo hacen desde que nacen.

En el siglo XVII, el filósofo inglés John Locke pensaba que el cerebro de los bebés era una pizarra en blanco y que las destrezas que caracterizan a los humanos se adquirían con posterioridad.

Recientes investigaciones destierran aquella idea y prueban la existencia de capacidades innatas. Los bebés son más inteligentes de lo que se pensaba: llegan equipados con la capacidad de desarrollar pensamiento abstracto o conceptos como la causalidad, de atribuir intencionalidad, de comprender una matemática y una geometría rudimentarias, y hasta de distinguir fonemas.

"Este es uno de los más grandes cambios de paradigma de la ciencia contemporánea", dice Mariano Sigman, director del Laboratorio de Neurociencia Integrativa de la Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales de la Universidad de Buenos Aires (UBA).

Claro, averiguar qué está pasando en la cabecita de esas irresistibles criaturitas no es sencillo. Como es imposible preguntarles, los investigadores utilizan herramientas co-mo la "permanencia de la mirada" (los bebés miran durante más tiempo lo que les interesa) o registros del ritmo de succión del chupete y de la actividad eléctrica del cerebro.

LENGUAJE.

Uno de los pioneros en este campo de investigación, Jacques Mehler, mostró que al nacer ya existen ciertos procesos perceptivos que funcionan con especificidad hacia el lenguaje. Por ejemplo, los bebés distinguen si se les habla en su lengua natural o con frases invertidas. Reaccionan distinto.

"Uno de los experimentos clásicos", explica Sigman desde la UBA, "es pasarles una grabación con voces en castellano que de repente empiezan a hablar en japonés. Típicamente se ve que los bebés se sorprenden mucho".

Sigman descubrió algo notable: a los tres meses, cuando se les habla, en el cerebro de los bebés se activa el área de Broca. "Como es la región vinculada con la producción del lenguaje, nuestra hipótesis es que aunque no esté hablando, el bebé ya lo está produciendo internamente".

La investigadora chilena Marcela Peña Garay, de la Pontificia Universidad Católica de Santiago de Chile, está entre los que sostienen que los bebés vienen equipados con un aparato cognitivo que les permite identificar características importantes para la especie.

"Por ejemplo", ilustra, "aunque un bebé viva con un perro no aprende a ladrar, y por más que escuche el timbre del celular no reproduce estos sonidos sino el lenguaje de sus padres o cuidadores".

CON POCOS DÍAS.

En otro trabajo publicado en Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, la científica francesa Veronique Izard pudo comprobar, en recién nacidos de dos días, que estos discriminan la cantidad de sonidos que escuchan y los asocian con la misma cantidad de elementos presentes en una imagen.

"Se les hacía escuchar AAAA y se les mostraban cartones con cuatro u ocho figuras de colores", relata. "Los bebés miraban durante más tiempo la imagen con una cantidad de figuras que coincidía con el número de sonidos que habían escuchado."

Otro indicio de que ya vienen equipados con los rudimentos de la matemática surge de un experimento que consiste en agregar tres pelotitas en una caja en la que ya hay dos. Si en lugar de cinco aparecen ocho, los bebés se sorprenden.

Peña y su equipo observaron también las reacciones de un grupo de bebés de entre dos y cuatro días de vida mientras distintos locutores repetían la sílaba BA. Usando electroencefalograma y potenciales evocados (es decir, el registro de las modificaciones producidas en el sistema nervioso del niño en respuesta a una estimulación), pudieron constatar que reconocían la sílaba aunque las voces de la cinta cambiaran.

John Ohala, de la Universidad de California en Berkeley, propone que hay una tendencia a asociar las vocales abiertas con los objetos grandes y las cerradas con los pequeños. "Nosotros hicimos escuchar a los bebés palabras con i -vocal cerrada- y con a -vocal abierta-, mientras les mostrábamos un objeto pequeño y uno grande", cuenta Peña. Efectivamente, miraban más hacia el objeto pequeño cuando la vocal era i y hacia el grande cuando era a ".

Según Sigman, los antiguos dogmas "fueron demolidos experimentalmente". "Como afirma una científica de la Universidad de Berkeley, los bebés son pequeños científicos: son expertos en sacar mucho de muy poco".

LO QUE SÍ NACEN SABIENDO

Empáticos desde chicos

A las pocas horas de vida extrauterina los bebés se ponen a llorar si escuchan una grabación con llantos de otros bebés. También se sorprenden si vienen oyendo hablar en la lengua de su entorno, por ejemplo el castellano, y de un momento para otro alguien habla en otro idioma.

Capacidad matemática

Si se les hace escuchar 4 sílabas y luego les muestran imágenes prefieren las que tienen la misma cantidad.

Con claves geométricas

Los bebés pueden estimar cantidades y distinguir entre más y menos. Además usan claves geométricas para orientarse en el espacio tridimensional.

"Hablan" pero no lo expresan

Los científicos demostraron que aunque los pequeños no lo expresen en voz alta, desarrollan el lenguaje en su cerebro. Lo demostraron con estudios que miden la actividad del cerebro después de los tres meses.

Si escuchan AAAA y les muestran cartones, los bebés fijan más la vista en las imágenes que tienen 4 objetos."