While most of us are well aware of the extent of the loss of glacial ice in both Greenland and the Antarctic, new findings from a composite of satellite surveys have discovered that the volume of ice loss has been so dramatic in Western Antarctica that it has changed the region’s gravitational constant.
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In a growing movement around the world, an increasing number of governments are banning dolphinariums, and the capture and display of cetaceans for entertainment purposes in their countries, with many citing the inherit intelligence and sensitivity of these creatures as the reason behind these moves.
The first country to issue such a ban was Bolivia: in 2009, the government there made history by instituting the world’s first ban on the keeping of animals in circuses and other venues for public performance, of which included captive cetaceans. In the following years, similar bans were enacted by Chile, Costa Rica, Croatia, Cyprus, Greece, Hungary, India, Nicaragua, Slovenia, and Switzerland.
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Linda Moulton Howe reports that the Principal Investigator for the Dawn space probe mission sent to the asteroid Ceres, Christopher Russell, Professor of Geophysics and Space Physics at UCLA cannot discuss the new high resolution images from Ceres because they have been embargoed by the science journal Nature. He may not discuss the images until after the journal publishes its article about them.
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A Canadian Optometrist has developed a bionic lens as a replacement for a patient’s own natural lenses that he claims would help the recipient see three times better than 20/20 vision.
Dr. Garth Webb, an optometrist and CEO of Ocumetics Technology Corp., says that the surgery required to replace the patient’s lens with the new ones would be an eight-minute procedure, involving injecting the curled-up lens into the patient’s eye with a syringe.
"If you can just barely see the clock at 10 feet, when you get the Bionic Lens you can see the clock at 30 feet away," according to Webb. While the lenses have yet to undergo clinical trials, Webb feels that they will be available to the public in two years.
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