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POPSHeartbreaking Nature Story We know that whales are intelligent. Whether they are self aware is another matter. Yet, there is something very poignant about this story.
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POPSNude Is Not Lewd Many women worry that nudity might be mistaken for availability. Many men worry that nudity might become too stimulating. People worry too much. Nothing is more natural than the naked body. Throw of those old duds and get yourself a proper tan next summer! Feel the wind under your...wings! *LOL* Nudity is cool and it lessens the laundry load too. Be natural, be brave, be stark raving nude once in a while! It's very liberating. Oh... and if your American? Don't fret. ;) Being unclothed is not illegal on Federal lands, says the National Park Service. It is one of our Constitutional rights according to a federal court decision (Williams vs Hathaway 400F Supp.122 {D.Mass.1975}) The law says it's okay, God says it's okay....chuck it!! There's no excuse!! :lol: Clip Song *giggle*
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POPS'bizarre mix of mammal, bird and reptile, with very complex sexuality' The fact that the animal has five X and five Y chromosomes is "the weirdest thing about a very weird animal," said Ewan Birney, a co-author on the paper, based at the European Bioinformatics Institute, near Cambridge. "In theory it means there are 25 possible sexes, though in practice that doesn't happen."
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POPSLab Freaks Gone Wild? “What was once only science fiction is now becoming a reality, and we need to ensure that experimentation and subsequent ramifications do not outpace ethical discussion and societal decisions.
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POPSEaten by trees The beauty of running are the things you pass by as you run along. You get to see things that you don’t notice as you drive by in a car. You may have run the same route 50 times but you find yourself seeing something different each time. I ran by a tree than had grown over a fence and it got me to thinking, there are probably some cool picture of things “swallowed” by trees.
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POPSThreat To Medicines From Plant Extinctions The world's most widely-used cancer drug, is Paclitaxel, which is derived from the bark of several species of yew tree. Its complex chemical structure and biological function has so far made it impossible to produce artificially. ----- 80 per cent of the global population - rely on traditional plant-based medicine as their primary form of healthcare. -----
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POPSHUMMERS: End of the Road?! {& pics} "Let's just say they're not selling like they used to," says Neil Kopit, director of marketing at Criswell Hummer, a dealership in Maryland. Sales of the Hummer H1's successor, the slightly smaller H2, were down 27% in 2007 on the previous year, and GM, which had come to rely on its sales of what the industry terms "large vehicles", has announced the closure of four SUV-manufacturing plants in the US, Canada and Mexico. Nor is the decline confined to Hummers, or to America. British registrations of 4x4 vehicles fell by more than 18% last month, it was reported yesterday. The drop is part of a Europe-wide collapse in the gas-guzzler market: as a proportion of cars sold in France and Spain in the first half of this year, SUVs fell by 50% and 35% respectively. ... Guardian
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POPSWildlife in the DMZ: Vanishing rainforest of the Congo basin 1, The demilitarised zone (DMZ) separating South and North Korea is home to over 1,000 plant species and rare animals. The DMZ Forum is a lobby group promoting the idea of turning the area into a nature reserve. 2. The forest is the world's biggest after the Amazon. Now Britain and Norway have created a £108m fund to help protect it from logging and reduce carbon dioxide emissions. The Congo basin forest is home to around 50 million people in six countries including Cameroon, Central Africa Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, and Congo-Brazzaville. The Congo basin forest is twice the size of France and exceeded in size only by the Amazon. It is estimated that logging - much of it illegal - destroys an area the size of 25,000 football pitches every week. The UN estimates that at present rates two-thirds of the forest will have vanished by the year 2040.
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POPSDublin Zoo: Nature's Way is Best Way I was reminded of this while visiting last week. I'm a member and had been informed of this in our newsletter. In the brand new extensive Zoo area, two new caves have been born. I love visiting my relatives with my grandchild.
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POPSGermany bans chemicals linked to honeybee devastation The company says an application error by the seed company which failed to use the glue-like substance that sticks the pesticide to the seed, led to the chemical getting into the air. Bayer spokesman Dr Julian Little told the BBC's Farming Today that misapplication is highly unusual. "It is an extremely rare event and has not been seen anywhere else in Europe," he said. Clothianidin, like the other neonicotinoid pesticides that have been temporarily suspended in Germany, is a systemic chemical that works its way through a plant and attacks the nervous system of any insect it comes into contact with. According to the US Environmental Protection Agency it is "highly toxic" to honeybees.
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POPSOil Shortage a myth? "The bad news is that by underestimating proven oil reserves we have been lulled into a false sense of security in terms of environmental issues, because it suggests we will have to find alternatives to fossil fuels in a few decades," said Dr Pike. "We should not be surprised if oil dominates well into the twenty-second century. It highlights a major error in energy and environmental planning – we are dramatically underestimating the challenge facing us," he said. Jeremy Leggett, author of Half Gone, a book on peak oil, is not convinced that Dr Pike is right. "The flow rates from the existing projects are the key. Capacity coming on stream falls fast beyond 2011," Dr Leggett said. "On top of that, if the big old fields begin collapsing, the descent in supply will hit the world very hard."
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POPSThe Real Antartic Explorer Hero: Tom Crean
"Crean is portrayed, telling of his life and adventures, in a one-man play titled Tom Crean, Antarctic Explorer, written and performed by Aidan Dooley. The play premièred in New York in 2003, and has toured around the world, including a run Off-Broadway in the summer of 2007 at New York's Irish Repertory Theatre." "Crean is commemorated in at least two place names: Mount Crean (2550 m) in Victoria Land, and the Crean Glacier on South Georgia. He is also remembered in the 2001 TG4 Documentary 'Ciarraíoch san Oighir' (A Kerryman in the Ice)." "Crean saw service in the WW1, and retired from the navy in 1920. He married and opened up a small pub called "The South Pole Inn." Throughout his life, Crean remained an extremely modest man. When he returned to Kerry, he put all of his medals away and never again spoke about his experiences in the Antarctic" These medals did cause him some grief when Black&Tans turned over his public house. They uncovered them and concluded he'd stolen
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POPSBulldoze then claim Ancient Village never existed! In 2003 all the townships ranked among the eight poorest areas of Israel. But of the newly built communities around Beer Sheva, with their predominantly Jewish populations, two were in the top five wealthiest areas of the country. However, the seven townships to which it wants the Bedouin to move are already overcrowded and have poor living conditions - in stark contrast to the new communities being built nearby for Israelis relocating to the Negev.