Indonesia's Semeru volcano erupts again, spewing ash 1 km above summit

Jakarta, (IANS): The Semeru volcano, located in Indonesia's Java, erupted again early on Monday at 03:35 a.m. local time, spewing thick grey ash up to 1 kilometre above its summit."This eruption was recorded by a seismograph with a duration of 122 seconds and a significant maximum amplitude," said Ghufron Alwi, an officer at the Semeru Volcano Observation Post.Earlier, at 01:47 a.m. local time, a similar eruption occurred with a duration of 146 seconds and an ash column height of 1 kilometre, indicating high volcanic activity in the past few hours, Xinhua news agency reported.From January until November 11, 2024, Mount Semeru has erupted 1,738 times, with volcanic activity dominated by eruption tremors, signaling continuous magma pressure beneath the surface.The Centre for Volcanology and Geological Hazard Mitigation (PVMBG) has prohibited people from conducting any activities within an 8-kilometre radius of the summit, including along the Besuk Kobokan River, which is at risk of hot ash clouds and lava flows.Authorities also warned of the potential for hot ash and lava flows to extend up to 13 kilometres from the summit, given the increasing eruption intensity. Indonesia's Semeru volcano erupts again, spewing ash 1 km above summit | MorungExpress | morungexpress....

Read More........→December 04, 2024

Tears as Malaysia-born panda cubs head to China

KUALA LUMPUR - Tearful Malaysians said goodbye to two panda cubs as authorities prepared to send them to China after years of delays because of the Covid-19 pandemic.Yi Yi and Sheng Yi -- born in 2018 and 2021 respectively -- were to be transported as part of an agreement between the two countries to send cubs born in captivity to China when they reach two years of age.The female pandas are the offspring of Xing Xing and Liang Liang, animals China loaned to Malaysia in 2014 for a decade to celebrate 40 years of diplomatic relations. They will remain in the country.Watching videos of the animals at Malaysia's National Zoo, panda lovers like 24-year-old photographer Cindy Lai gathered in hopes of catching a glimpse of the pair before their departure later in the day."It is an emotional send-off. I feel very sad since I will not be able to see the two lovely cubs," she said."I will definitely cry when they are loaded into the truck to be transported to the airport."AFP | Mohd RASFANYi Yi and Sheng Yi will be taken on a cargo flight to the Chinese city of Chengdu, an official familiar with the travel plan told AFP.A farewell ceremony attended by China's ambassador to Malaysia and Kuala Lumpur's deputy environment minister was held at the zoo."I hope that these Giant Pandas... can further promote understanding and close cooperation between...

Read More........→September 25, 2024

How Singapore Became an Unexpected Stronghold for a Critically Endangered Bird

Straw-headed bulbul – credit Michael MK Khor CC 2.0. FlickrFrom the sprawling urban city-state of Singapore comes the unlikely story of a critically endangered songbird and a dedicated group of environmentalists helping it thrive as the population collapses overseas.The straw-headed bulbul is a victim of its beautiful song, which has seen it extirpated from the wilds of Thailand, Myanmar, and Java as poachers capture it for the illegal songbird trade.But as early as 1990, conservationists, birdwatchers, and government workers in Singapore have taken action on this species’ behalf.“Whenever I hear its resonant, bubbly song, the forest seems to erupt with life,” conservationist Ho Hua Chew told Smithsonian Magazine.Because of men like Ho, the peripheral wetlands of Singapore, the offshore island of Pulau Ubin, and the large green spaces in the city state’s interior together play host to 600 straw-headed bulbuls.Nature Society Singapore, of which Ho was a member, was the first to push for nature protections on Pulau Ubin, the site of an old granite quarry, where nevertheless a concentrated population of these birds could be found.This resulted in a Nature Area designation for the island in 1993, achieved through advocacy and outreach among millions of Singaporeans.Smithsonian lists this as an early victory in the history of environmentalism...

Read More........→April 05, 2024

Saltwater crocodiles are slowly returning to Bali and Java. Can we learn to live alongside them?

 Shutterstock Brandon Michael Sideleau, Charles Darwin UniversityOn January 4 this year, a three-metre saltwater crocodile heaved itself out of the water and up the beach. Nothing unusual about that – except this croc was on Legian Beach, one of Bali’s most popular spots. The emaciated reptile later died. Only four months later, a large crocodile killed a man who was spearfishing with friends in Lombok’s Awang Bay, about 100 kilometres east of Bali. Authorities caught it and transferred it to captivity. You might not associate crocodiles with Bali. But the saltwater crocodile once roamed most of Indonesia’s waters, and attacks are still common in some regions. I have been collecting records of crocodilian attacks since 2010, as the creator of the worldwide database CrocAttack. What’s new is that they’re beginning to return to areas where they were wiped out. Does this mean tourists and residents should be wary? It’s unlikely these islands can host anywhere near the same population densities as the wide, fish-filled rivers of Australia’s tropical north. And in Bali, it’s unlikely we’ll see any crocodile recovery because of the importance of beaches to tourism and a high human population. This 4.6-metre saltwater crocodile was captured in Lombok after the fatal attack in May. Bali Reptile Rescue, CC BY-NDWhat happened...

Read More........→October 30, 2023

Japan starts discharging treated water into the sea : Regulation & Safety

The process for releasing the ALPS-treated water (Image: Tepco)Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) announced it has begun releasing treated water currently stored at the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant into the ocean. The operation - expected to take up to 30 years to complete - is being closely monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).At the Fukushima Daiichi site, contaminated water - in part used to cool melted nuclear fuel - is treated by the Advanced Liquid Processing System (ALPS), which removes most of the radioactive contamination, with the exception of tritium. This treated water is currently stored in more than 1000 tanks on site. The total tank storage capacity amounts to about 1.37 million cubic metres and all the tanks are expected to reach full capacity in late 2023 or early 2024.Japan announced in April 2021 it planned to discharge treated water stored at the site into the sea over a period of about 30 years.On 22 August, the government announced that it had decided to request Tepco begin preparations for the release of ALPS-treated water into the sea.On the same day, the company transferred a very small amount of ALPS-treated water - about 1 cubic metre - to the dilution facility using the transfer facilities. This water was then diluted with about 1200 cubic metres of seawater and...

Read More........→October 12, 2023

Earthquake footage shows Turkey’s buildings collapsing like pancakes. An expert explains why

 Mustafa Karali / AP Mark Quigley, The University of MelbourneA pair of huge earthquakes have struck in Turkey, leaving more than 3,000 people dead and unknown numbers injured or displaced.The first quake, near Gaziantep close to the Syrian border, measured 7.8 in magnitude and was felt as far away as the UK. The second occurred nine hours later, on what appears to be an intersecting fault, registering a magnitude of 7.5.Adding to the devastation, some 3,450 buildings have collapsed, according to the Turkish government. Many of the modern buildings have failed in a “pancake mode” of structural collapse.Why did this happen? Was it simply the enormous magnitude and violence of the quake, or is the problem with the buildings?Thousands of years of earthquakesEarthquakes are common in Turkey, which sits in a very seismically active region where three tectonic plates constantly grind against one another beneath Earth’s surface. Historical records of earthquakes in the region go back at least 2,000 years, to a quake in 17 CE that levelled a dozen towns.The East Anatolian Fault zone that hosted these earthquakes is at the boundary between the Arabian and Anatolian tectonic plates, which move past each other at approximately 6 to 10 mm per year. The elastic strain that accumulates in this plate boundary zone is released by intermittent...

Read More........→February 08, 2023

First element discovered in Asia named ‘nihonium’, after Japan

Kyushu University professor Kosuke Morita, head of a team of scientists who discovered element 113, points to the superheavy synthetic element on a periodic table at a news conference at the RIKEN institute''s research centre in Wako, Saitama Prefecture, Japan, in this photo taken by Kyodo on June 9, 2016. Reuters TOKYO: Japanese scientists behind the discovery of element 113, the first atomic element found in Asia — indeed, the first found outside Europe or the United States — have dubbed it "nihonium" after the Japanese-language name for their country. "I believe the fact that we, in Japan, found one of only 118 known atomic elements gives this discovery great meaning," said Kosuke Morita, a university professor who led the discovery team from the RIKEN Nishina Center for Accelerator-Based Science. "Another important meaning is that until now, all the elements in the periodic table have been discovered in Europe and the United States," he told a news conference on Thursday. "There has not been a single atomic element found in Asia, Oceania or Africa." Element 113 was first found in 2004, and the number refers to its atomic number, or the number of protons in the nucleus of the atom. It does not exist naturally and has had to be synthesised. Though the element was publicly recognised by the International Union...

Read More........→November 18, 2016

China launches spacecraft in longest-ever manned mission

The Shenzhou 11 astronauts are Jing Haipeng, who is flying his third mission, and 37-year-old Chen Dong. The Shenzhou 11 mission took off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center on the edge of the Gobi Desert in northern China. China launched a pair of astronauts into space Monday on a mission to dock with an experimental space station and remain aboard for 30 days in preparation for the start of operations by a full-bore facility six years from now. The Shenzhou 11 mission took off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center on the edge of the Gobi Desert in northern China at 7:30 a.m. (2330 GMT) aboard a Long March-2F carrier rocket. It will dock with the Tiangong 2 space station precursor facility within two days, conduct experiments in medicine and various space-related technologies, and test systems and processes in preparation for the launching of the station's core module in 2018. Space program commander-in-chief Gen. Zhang Youxia declared the launch a success at 7:46 a.m. (2346 GMT). Defense Minister Fan Changlong then read a congratulatory message from President Xi Jinping calling for China's astronauts to explore space "more deeply and more broadly." Premier Li Keqiang and propaganda chief Liu Yunshan visited the Beijing control center to congratulate staff. It is the sixth time China has launched astronauts into space...

Read More........→October 17, 2016

Quantum Computing With Time Travel

Credit: Adapted from npj Quantum Information, doi:10.1038/npjqi.2015.7 (2015) Why send a message back in time, but lock it so that no one can ever read the contents? Because it may be the key to solving currently intractable problems. That's the claim of an international collaboration who have just published a paper in npj Quantum Information. It turns out that an unopened message can be exceedingly useful. This is true if the experimenter entangles the message with some other system in the laboratory before sending it. Entanglement, a strange effect only possible in the realm of quantum physics, creates correlations between the time-travelling message and the laboratory system. These correlations can fuel a quantum computation. If the universe allows 'open timelike curves', particles travelling back in time along them could help to perform currently intractable computations. Even though such curves don't allow for interaction with anything in the past, researchers writing in npj Quantum Information show there is a gain in computational power as long as the time-travelling particle is entangled with one kept in the present. Around ten years ago researcher Dave Bacon, now at Google, showed that a time-travelling quantum computer could quickly solve a group of problems, known as NP-complete, which mathematicians have lumped...

Read More........→December 11, 2015

Isro's PSLV-C28 successfully places 5 British satellites in orbit

The Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) on Friday successfully launched five British commercial satellites aboard its PSLV-C28 launch vehicle from its space port in Sriharikota, marking its heaviest commercial mission ever. ISRO's workhorse Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle PSLV-C28, in its 13th flight, placed the five satellites, including three identical DMC3 optical earth observation satellites, in sun synchronous orbit about 20 minutes after lift-off at 9.58 PM from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota. The three DMC3 satellites, each weighing 447 kg, were launched into a 647 km sun-synchronous orbit (SSO) using the high-end version of PSLV (PSLV-XL). ''It's been a wonderful mission… an extremely successful mission,'' a beaming ISRO chairman Kiran Kumar said from the Mission Control Centre. The three identical DMC3 optical earth observation satellites were built by Surrey Satellite Technology Limited (SSTL) of the United Kingdom. The PSLV-C28 also carried two auxiliary satellites from the UK, viz, CBNT-1, a technology demonstrator earth observation micro satellite built by SSTL, and De-OrbitSail, a technology demonstrator nano satellite built by Surrey Space Centre. PSLV-C28 will be the ninth flight of the launch vehicle in 'XL' configuration. With the overall lift-off mass of 1,440 kg of the five satellites,...

Read More........→July 19, 2015

Solar-powered plane breaks solo flight record

The solar-powered aircraft, Solar Impulse, flying from Japan to Hawaii, on the most perilous leg of a round-the-globe bid, has beaten the record for the longest solo flight, organisers said yesterday. They admitted though that veteran Swiss pilot Andre Borschberg was exhausted after over four days of continuous flying, which made the final 24 hours of flight particularly challenging. The plane was set to land this morning local time at Kalaeloa Airport on the main Hawaiian island of Oahu, some 20 miles (30 kilometers) west of Honolulu. By 7:30pm GMT (1am IST, Friday) on Thursday, Solar Impulse 2 had traveled 86 per cent of the way to the tropical US state, after flying 7,075 kilometers. However, it was in the process of crossing a cold front that required careful navigation on the part of Borschberg, which would significantly increase stress levels for the 62-year-old. Borschberg had so far flown over 97 hours easily beating the previous longest solo endurance flight undertaken in 2006. The Japan to Hawaii trip was expected to take 120 hours. The Swiss aviator was napping for only 20 minutes at a time so as to maintain control of the pioneering plane and has on the plane a parachute and life raft, in case he needed to ditch in the Pacific. The experimental solar-powered aircraft left Japan around 6pm GMT (11:30pm IST) on Sunday...

Read More........→July 05, 2015

Nobel Prize for Physics 2014

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize in Physics for 2014 to (1) Isamu Akasaki: Meijo University, Nagoya, Japan and Nagoya University, Japan (2) Hiroshi Amano  Nagoya:  University, Japan (3) Shuji Nakamura: University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, USA. “for the invention of efficient blue light-emitting diodes which has enabled bright and energy-saving white light sources. --> The invention of an energy source that lights up our computer and/ormobile phone screens and holds promise to brighten up the quality of life of over 1.5 billion people around the world, has been awarded the Nobel prize for physics 2014.--> The laureates were rewarded for having invented a new energy-efficient and environment-friendly light source — the blue light-emitting diode (LED). --> According to the committee, the laureates' inventions revolutionized the field of illumination technology. --> As about one fourth of world electricity consumption is used for lighting purposes, the LEDs contribute to saving earth's resources. Materials consumption is also diminished as LEDs last up to 100,000 hours, compared to 1,000 for incandescent bulbs and 10,000 hours for fluorescent lights. --> When Isamu Akasaki, Hiroshi Amano and Shuji Nakamura produced bright blue light beams from...

Read More........→October 08, 2014

India's Mars mission Q&A: what will Mangalyaan discover?

.. India becomes fourth nation to celebrate reaching Mars – and the first to manage it on first attempt India's Mars Orbiter Mission spacecraft has shared its first images of Mars after entering the red planet's orbit on its very first attempt. The country's space agency became the fourth to successfully put a satellite in orbit around Mars – and the first to manage it on its first try. Prime Minister Narendra Modi called for a national day of celebration as it began circling Mars. The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) later uploaded a picture (above) of the planet on its Mars Orbiter twitter account with the caption: "The view is nice up here." The image, which was taken from a height of 7,300km, was printed out and presented to Prime Minister Modi, who had previously joked that the mission's budget was lower than the sci-fi film Gravity, starring Sandra Bullock. The Mars Orbiter Mission – known as Mangalyaanor or Mom – has been lauded for its relatively low price tag – just £45m, less than the cost of a Premier League footballer. The satellite will study the Martian atmosphere from orbit and will not land on the surface of the planet, says the Daily Telegraph. The Mars Orbiter Mission joins the US's Maven satellite in orbit around Mars. Maven, which is also studying the atmosphere, reached the red planet...

Read More........→September 26, 2014

Exotic Birds Endemic to The Philippines

The Philippines is home to some of the world’s most exotic birds. With more than 600 bird species to choose from including several species of hornbills, colorful fruit doves, rare parrots and fascinating eagles and owls — its really fun to explore and learn more about these beautiful and unique birds. Here is a list of 12 exotic birdsendemic to this “bird-paradise” country. Each country has its own unique variety of birds native to its geographical location. The Philippines is home to some of the world’s most exotic birds, too. It is believed that 185 of these species can be found only in the Philippines. Sad to say, these birds are faced with the threat of eventual death, as of deforestation & human threat. Let me show you to some of the Philippines exotic-birds "Handsome sunbird" by Llimchiu at en.wikipedia. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Commons. .. Handsome Sunbird The Handsome Sunbird:  Sunbird The Handsome (Aethopyga bella) is found only in the Philippines. It is one of the smallest sunbirds. Handsome songbirds inhabit subtropical or tropical moist lowland forests and subtropical or tropical moist mountain habitat. They maybe seen singly or in pairs frequenting flowering & fruiting trees. About 254 mm total length, they feed on nectar...

Read More........→May 23, 2014

Obama: China and India carbon emissions could leave US “underwater”

. Barack Obama has warned that “we’ll be four feet underwater” if China and India end up consuming energy like the USA. The US President’s remarks, made at a Democrat fundraiser in Seattle, reflect concerns that the world’s top emerging economies hold the key to preventing dangerous levels of climate change. Scientists say that if greenhouse gas emissions continue to soar, warming temperatures around the world could lead to melting ice-caps at the north and south poles, resulting in sea levels rising 26-82cm by 2100.(…). Source: Article, Image Courtesy: http://mespoliticalrant.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/obama-reading-letter.jpg...

Read More........→January 24, 2014

World's Amazing Talking Birds

some people want a pet that they can exercise and play with, and some people want a pet that will help keep them warm at night. Still other people want a companion -- an animal that will be an unquestioning, faithful friend through thick and thin. That's all good for them, but there are those of us who want a companion that we can talk to. We want a voice at the end of a long work day welcoming us home with, "Hello, darling, how was your day?" For people who wish to have that type of companion in the form of an animal, a talking bird fits the bill very nicely. However, not just any talking bird will do. Some birds speak quietly, while others will scream at the top of their lungs. The type of bird one chooses must be paired suitably with the environment in which one lives. That is, house or apartment, metropolitan or suburban. At any time of day. But, perhaps you live in the countryside and the only audio comfort that needs to be taken into consideration is your own. In that case, you will need to decide how much noise you can handle through the day. All talking birds are great fun to have as companions, but some are better at verbalizing and enunciating their words than others. Some species have better memory than others and are able to store hundreds, even thousands of words into their little bird brains. Then there are...

Read More........→November 30, 2013