Word: globalization
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...answer, evident in a paper just published in the journal Global Change Biology, is that it isn't easy - but it's possible nevertheless. A team of scientists led by Stephen Thackeray, an expert on lake ecology at the United Kingdom's Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, has combed through observations of more than 700 species of fish, birds, mammals, insects, amphibians, plankton and a wide variety of plants across the U.K. taken between 1976 and 2005, and found a consistent trend: more than 80% of "biological events" - including flowering of plants, ovulation among mammals and migration of birds...
...future for U.K. species. "I want to be very careful to talk only about what we've formally tested. My feeling is that the impact will vary, but I can't say more," he says. He's even too cautious to state that these changes are necessarily evidence of global warming. "The patterns are coherent across different habitats," he says, "which would suggest a large-scale phenomenon. It would be tempting to conclude that this might be a change in climate. But we need to do further study before we can draw that conclusion, and we have to be rigorous...
...comes here in the U.S., where there are more tigers kept in private captivity then there are surviving wild animals left in the world. Few laws oversee the private ownership of tigers in the U.S., and conservationists worry that captive tigers could too easily end up fueling the illegal global wildlife trade. "There are significant loopholes in U.S. laws that can allow tigers to be exploited," says Crawford Allan, the director of TRAFFIC North America, which tracks the wildlife trade. "We don't know what's happening to them...
There are also real concerns among conservationists that some private parks in the U.S. are raising tigers specifically for the global wildlife trade. Along with bones, tiger skins are coveted as ceremonial garb in some cultures, or as decoration. (Although the international trade in tigers and tiger parts is illegal, few countries have taken steps to actually enforce the ban.) "Unless we can crack down on the illegal trade and on poachers in the wild, tigers have very little chance of survival," says Keshav Varma, the program director of the World Bank's global tiger initiative. (See a cheapskate...
...fans explain that skating on them is cathartic. We have conquered our enemy. Let's celebrate by running our blades all over it! Skating is so ingrained in Dutch DNA that fans talk about one particular race, the "Eleven-City Tour," with the sort of reverence normally shown by global soccer fans for their favorite teams. The Eleven-City Tour is a 125-mile skate over frozen lakes and canals in the northern Dutch province of Friesland. Since all the water has to be frozen at once, the race is hardly an annual event. In fact, conditions haven't permitted...