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That question is a long way from being answered, but a study published recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences takes a small step in that direction. A team of researchers used 22 years' worth of carefully accumulated measurements of hardwood forests in and near the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, in Edgewater, Md., to show that their growth has accelerated significantly. On average, the stands were expanding at a rate of two extra tons of mass per acre per year, by the end of the study - the equivalent of a single two-foot-diameter tree...
...virgin; it's been cleared for agriculture at various times, and then allowed to regrow in patches. The result: individual stands of similar trees ranging from about 225 years old to just five. "You could do this experiment by measuring a single stand of trees as long as possible," says Parker, "but a scientific career lasts only a few percent of the life of a tree." This way, he explains, you have a snapshot of the same forest at different ages...
Local 630, based in Long Beach, has 400 carpenters in the field with Oltmans when business is strong, says Sorbel, the union's top man on the Vernon project. "We are trying to keep our core guys, 125 to 150 men, busy. But there is no work out there." Miles Davy, a burly asphalt subcontractor, says there have been massive layoffs across all sectors of the construction trades. "I've had to let go men I have known for years. Grown men crying in my office. It's the saddest thing I've ever done." (See pictures of the recession...
...three U.S. personnel killed in Koto, when a New York City court convicted Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani scientist, of the attempted killing of U.S. personnel after she had been captured in Afghanistan. The verdict triggered an outpouring of rage across the Pakistani media and political class, which has long championed Siddiqui as a victim of alleged American brutality...
China has long used pandas as a friendly gesture in diplomacy, and they may be China's most compelling ambassadors as the country clashes with the U.S. on many issues, including trade, human rights and Internet security...