Word: sunlight
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SOUTH ASIA No Silver Lining to This Cloud A thick brown haze hangs in the air over South Asia, scientists working for the U.N. Environment Program reported. The brown cloud, made of smoke and carbon monoxide that cause respiratory illnesses, suppresses up to 15% of the sunlight falling on it. The haze is altering the winter monsoon, cutting rainfall over northwestern Asia by between 20% and 40%, while increasing it farther east - which may explain this summer's exceptionally heavy monsoon in Bangladesh, Nepal and northeast India. But the cloud is not just a regional problem, the scientists stressed. East...
...rise from straw huts, and eagles hover on thermals far below. Those who undertake the climb midweek will, more likely than not, have the summit to themselves. Few experiences can match sitting aloft and alone on Mount Ramelau, enjoying a good Portuguese red with crackers, while watching shards of sunlight pierce the clouds, illuminating the valley below. "God lives up there," the policeman in Hatu Buliko had told me before I began the climb. He's probably right...
...Adams' subjects are vast, ancient and rocky. His images of plants are delicate and detailed. In Trailside, near Juneau, Alaska (1947), briar leaves displaying every vein and dewdrop form a pattern with flowers and grass. Aspens, Northern New Mexico (1958) shows one small tree, its leaves drenched in sunlight, against a backdrop of grey stems and deep shadows. It's almost worth spending all your time at the show gazing at one such image...
While their hardiness was a big surprise, the microbes' ability to eat hydrogen, sulfur, manganese and other chemicals--a process known as known as chemoautotrophy--was a revelation. Until then, all living systems were thought to depend on photosynthesis, using sunlight as a primary energy source. (Even cave-dwelling or deep-water creatures who never see the sun eat organic matter that ultimately originates from photosynthesis.) But if life could thrive without even indirect contact with sunlight, the amount of potentially habitable real estate on the planet would expand considerably...
...wide rock scoring a bull's-eye lengthened from 1 in 60,000 to 1 in 75,000 as astronomers continually recalculated its orbit. If the lump of space rock did hit the earth it could wipe out a continent, throw up dustclouds that would block sunlight for months and quickly take humankind to the brink of extinction. So plan accordingly. RUSSIA Lost Young Men The Helsinki Federation, an international human-rights organization, accused the Russian military of a campaign of executions in Chechnya aimed at reducing the breakaway republic's male population. The Federation alleged that around...