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Unless you’ve been making a superhuman effort to avoid the news recently, you’ll know that the ocean is vital to life on Earth. But why, exactly, is this the case? Here are five reasons why we need to safeguard its future. 1. It helps us breathe Phytoplankton – tiny plant-like organisms that live in the sea – are responsible for at least 50% of the oxygen on Earth. Just like land-based plants, they contain chlorophyll to capture sunlight and use photosynthesis to convert it into the energy they need, producing oxygen as a byproduct. They also consume carbon dioxide, transferring about 10 gigatonnes of carbon from the atmosphere deep into the ocean each year. 2. It helps regulate the climate The ocean absorbs huge amounts of heat from the sun. “More than 90% of the warming that has happened on Earth over the past 50 years has occurred in the ocean,” according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. That heat tends to be at its most intense nearer the equator, with the water nearest the surface warming the most. Sea currents then transport that heat around the world; north and south, towards the poles. As some of the sea water evaporates it becomes denser and heavier, due to its relatively higher salt content. That causes it to sink, taking some of the warm water deeper. Some currents are directly responsible for specific climatic effects. One example is the Gulf Stream, which takes warmer water from the Gulf of Mexico across the Atlantic to Europe. If the Gulf Stream were disrupted, much of the western part of Europe – including the UK, Ireland and France – could become colder. 3. It’s an important source of food Fish is on the menu for billions of people around the world every day. It accounts for almost 16% of all animal protein consumed globally. Of course, there’s more to seafood than fish, crustacea and other edible creatures. A range of algae and sea plants are also commonly used in cooking. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization lists sodium, calcium, magnesium, and iodine among some of the important nutrients in seaweed. Iodine deficiency has been identified as the “most prevalent and easily preventable” cause of impaired cognitive development in children. Pressure on resources and the environment have led to calls for food production and for people’s diets to change. A cow, for example, produces 2.8kg of greenhouse gas per kilo of live body weight and needs 10kg of feed for every kilo it weighs. Plus, to get just one gram of protein from cattle, you need 112 litres of water. The oceans, if properly managed and maintained, could form an important part of a more sustainable approach to feeding the planet’s growing human population. 4. Its biodiversity is incredible It’s not just a source of food. The ocean is also home to an abundance of life. While estimates on the number of species that live in the sea exist, no one knows with absolute certainty what that number is.According to the US National Library of Medicine’s National Institutes of Health, “91% of species in the ocean still await description.” That’s due in no small part to the vastness of the oceans, which cover around 70% of the planet’s surface and are up to 11,000 metres deep. The number of yet-to-be-discovered creatures living in the sea could easily run into the millions. One example of how mysterious the deep oceans can be is the coelacanth. Found in fossils and believed to be extinct, a living coelacanth was pulled out of the ocean in 1938 off the coast of South Africa. This fascinating deep-water creature could yield invaluable insights into how marine animals were able to adapt to life on land, as the way they move their fins resembles the way many four-legged creatures walk. What’s the World Economic Forum doing about the oceans? Our oceans cover 70% of the world’s surface and account for 80% of the planet’s biodiversity. We can’t have a healthy future without healthy oceans – but they’re mo...

Fires in the Amazon rainforest have captured attention worldwide in recent days. Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who took office in 2019, pledged in his campaign to reduce environmental protection and increase agricultural development in the Amazon, and he appears to have followed through on that promise. The resurgence of forest clearing in the Amazon, which had decreased more than 80% following a peak in 2004, is alarming for many reasons. Tropical forests harbor many species of plants and animals found nowhere else. They are important refuges for indigenous people, and contain enormous stores of carbon as wood and other organic matter that would otherwise contribute to the climate crisis. Some media accounts have suggested that fires in the Amazon also threaten the atmospheric oxygen that we breathe. French President Emmanuel Macron tweeted on Aug. 22 that “the Amazon rain forest — the lungs which produces 20% of our planet’s oxygen — is on fire.” The oft-repeated claim that the Amazon rainforest produces 20% of our planet’s oxygen is based on a misunderstanding. In fact nearly all of Earth’s breathable oxygen originated in the oceans, and there is enough of it to last for millions of years. There are many reasons to be appalled by this year’s Amazon fires, but depleting Earth’s oxygen supply is not one of them. Oxygen from plants As an atmospheric scientist, much of my work focuses on exchanges of various gases between Earth’s surface and the atmosphere. Many elements, including oxygen, constantly cycle between land-based ecosystems, the oceans and the atmosphere in ways that can be measured and quantified. Nearly all free oxygen in the air is produced by plants through photosynthesis. About one-third of land photosynthesis occurs in tropical forests, the largest of which is located in the Amazon Basin. But virtually all of the oxygen produced by photosynthesis each year is consumed by living organisms and fires. Trees constantly shed dead leaves, twigs, roots and other litter, which feeds a rich ecosystem of organisms, mostly insects and microbes. The microbes consume oxygen in that process. Forest plants produce lots of oxygen, and forest microbes consume a lot of oxygen. As a result, net production of oxygen by forests — and indeed, all land plants — is very close to zero. Oxygen production in the oceans For oxygen to accumulate in the air, some of the organic matter that plants produce through photosynthesis must be removed from circulation before it can be consumed. Usually this happens when it is rapidly buried in places without oxygen — most commonly in deep sea mud, under waters that have already been depleted of oxygen. This happens in areas of the ocean where high levels of nutrients fertilize large blooms of algae. Dead algae and other detritus sink into dark waters, where microbes feed on it. Like their counterparts on land, they consume oxygen to do this, depleting it from the water around them. Below depths where microbes have stripped waters of oxygen, leftover organic matter falls to the ocean floor and is buried there. Oxygen that the algae produced at the surface as it grew remains in the air because it is not consumed by decomposers. This buried plant matter at the bottom of the ocean is the source of oil and gas. A smaller amount of plant matter gets buried in oxygen-free conditions on land, mostly in peat bogs where the water table prevents microbial decomposition. This is the source material for coal. Only a tiny fraction — perhaps 0.0001% — of global photosynthesis is diverted by burial in this way, and thus adds to atmospheric oxygen. But over millions of years, the residual oxygen left by this tiny imbalance between growth and decomposition has accumulated to form the reservoir of breathable oxygen on which all animal life depends. It has hovered around 21% of the volume of the atmosphere for millions of years. Some of this oxygen returns to the planet’s surface...

Although environmental pollution continues to become an escalating problem, more consumer awareness regarding this concern is leading to a push for offenders to clean up their act. Here, we explore the three environmental areas pollution affects the most and what is being done to curb its effects. Air Pollution Air pollution refers to the presence of gaseous and solid particles that get dissolved in the air due to the burning of fossil fuels, chemicals from factories, ozone and even natural sources like dust and pollen. Some pollutants have adverse health effects when inhaled and can cause poisonings, cancer and other diseases. One major concern when it comes to air pollution is the growing concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) that is present in our atmosphere. Carbon dioxide is released from the combustion of coal, gasoline and most other materials, and it is a major contributing cause to global climate change due to its ability to trap heat within the atmosphere in what’s known as the greenhouse effect. The Environmental Protection Agency has put air quality standards in place that companies must adhere to, such as caps on the number of pollutants that can be released into the air and fuel-efficiency standards for modern vehicles. Over time, we can hope that these limits begin to curb this growing problem. Water Pollution Similarly to air pollution, water pollution is the contamination of bodies of water due to human activities. Since water is quickly becoming more scarce, reducing the effects of water pollution is a very important issue. Polluted water can seep into underground water tables and reservoirs and have a detrimental effect on the health of those exposed to the pollutants. Pollutants can also affect farmed fish, making them incredibly toxic. Common water pollutants include heavy metals such as lead and mercury, bacteria from sewage treatment plants and even dangerous medications that are flushed down the toilet. Many electrical companies are worried about their effect on the water and the long-term ramifications of current power models, and they have begun implementing environmental practices to reduce the pollution caused by their industries. One way average Americans can help reduce this problem is by recycling products that contain dangerous chemicals, such as light bulbs, ink cartridges, and batteries, instead of throwing them out. Not flushing medications into the sewer system and reducing the use of harsh cleaning chemicals can also help to significantly reduce water pollution in the long run. Soil Contamination Also known as land pollution, soil contamination occurs when toxic chemical waste is dumped into the ground instead of being properly disposed of. These chemicals can leech into nearby underground water reservoirs and be carried far away, affecting the health of people a long way away from the original dumping site. Although many environmental regulations have been put into place to reduce these unethical practices, accidental leaks of oil and other substances can and do still happen. We’re all part of the environment, and our environmental choices can make a difference. It’s important to both educate ourselves in order to become better environmental stewards as well as putting pressure on our government and bad corporate actors in order to reduce the negative effects that pollution can have on our planet.

A very big asteroid with its own little moon is going to zip past Earth tonight (May 25) — close enough that, with some preparation and a decent telescope, amateur astronomers may spot it blotting out the stars. This moon-and-asteroid system, called 1999 KW4, is made up of two rocks. The big one is about 0.8 miles (1.3 kilometers) wide, according to NASA, and shaped like a spinning top. The smaller one is more elongated and stretches 0.35 miles (0.57 km) along its longest dimension. It points lengthwise toward its much larger twin. Together, the asteroid and its minimoon will pass Earth at such a strange, steep angle that NASA called them “the least accessible ... for a spacecraft mission of any known binary near-Earth asteroid.” But that doesn’t mean they aren’t interesting to look at. The two asteroids will pass closest to Earth at 7:05 pm EDT (1105 GMT), when they’ll be just 3,219,955 miles (5,182,015 km) from the planet’s surface. That’s more than a dozen times the distance between the Earth and the moon in its orbit around our planet, and much too far for the space rocks to pose any threat. In fact, this is the fourth approach the binary asteroids have made toward Earth since they were discovered in 1999, and not the closest. This is not the first time, according to EarthSky, that astronomers plan to make radar images of these asteroids as they pass. Back on May 25, 2001, according to NASA, the asteroids passed about 6.7% closer to Earth than they will this time, at a distance of 3,005,447 miles (4,836,798 km). Seventeen years from now, on May 25, 2036, the rocks will pass 55.2% closer to Earth, at a distance of just 1,443,511 miles (2,323,106 km) — again, posing no threat worth worrying about. These big rocks have been frequent flyers in our planet’s neighborhood for a long time. “1999 KW4 approaches within 0.05 AU of Earth several times each century,” NASA’s report on the object said. “This trend exists from at least [the year] 1600 [to] 2500.” [Black Marble Images: Earth at Night] “AU” refers to “astronomical units,” a unit equal to the distance between Earth and the sun. So 0.05 AU is equal to one-twentieth the distance between Earth and sun, or about 4,650,000 miles (7,480,000 km). The two asteroids have passed even closer to Earth, without incident, several times a century since William Shakespeare was writing, and they will continue to do so until this article is at least 500 years old. EarthSky reported that during the space rocks’ closest approach, they’ll be most visible in the Southern Hemisphere, appearing as fast-moving shadows against stars in the constellation Puppis. The two asteroids will remain visible for several days, though, according to EarthSky. North American asteroid hunters may spot the objects near the constellation Hydra on the evening of May 27. NASA said that its Planetary Defense Coordination Office will continue to closely monitor the asteroids.

Ten percent of Americans over the age of 65 have Alzheimer’s. That means that over 5.5 million older Americans are battling this debilitating disease that can eventually make people unable to recognize even their closest loved ones. Another estimated 200,000 people under the age of 65 are fighting early-onset Alzheimer’s. The good news is that some exciting developments are underway in the study of this disease. Passive Immunotherapy Scientists understand that the brain’s immune system works differently than the immune system of the rest of the body. They also know that this system is slower to react in seniors. Scientists have promising results when they give seniors monoclonal-antibody infusions to attack the plaque that builds up in their brains. Removing plaque is something the immune system would have taken care of when they were younger. While tests with an injectable form of this treatment had to be stopped in 2002, using an infusion seems to be holding out promise. Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnagi.2014.00114/full THC Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) is the main component of the cannabis plant. While there is no indication as of yet that THC will cure Alzheimer’s, there is some evidence that THC may slow down the progression of the disease. While the researchers initially tried to use THC for reducing the amyloid-beta protein that causes plaque buildup in the brain, they discovered that eliminating those proteins produces many adverse results. Instead, researchers are now experiencing limited success with using THC to neutralize free radicals and reduce inflammation in the brain, which may help slow down the disease. Source: https://www.assistedlivingcenter.com/marijuana-stop-alzheimers/ Insulin Research at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City suggests that insulin and other drugs for diabetes may protect the brain against Alzheimer’s. The research shows that changes in RNA markers that are usually present in Alzheimer’s patients were only present 25 percent of the time for those who took insulin. That discovery is exciting because it opens up new pathways for research into how Alzheimer’s affects the brain instead of all the focus being on plaque buildup in the brain. Source: https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-11/tmsh-dmm103118.php Supplementation Researchers at Cambridge University discovered a significant amount of people who consumed fish oil regularly showed fewer signs of Alzheimer’s. Specifically, those taking a supplement containing macular carotenoids, lutein, meso-zeaxanthin, and zeaxanthin had slower progression in their disease compared to those receiving carotenoids alone. The researchers were surprised by their findings, and Cambridge University has funded more research into this exciting development. Alzheimer’s disease research is now being approached from many new directions, giving the world renewed hope for effective treatments and, ultimately, a cure. Source: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/reviews-in-clinical-gerontology/article/omega3-fatty-acids-cognitive-impairment-and-alzheimers-disease/18F6133E1041EC6C7DCC32BFC2556ADF What Continues the Same While there are a multitude of exciting advancements in the fight against Alzheimer’s, somethings will continue to stay the same. For example, there will still be a continued push for people at risk for Alzheimer’s to stimulate their brain, as well as take up regular exercise. It is also still recommended that people skip smoking and cut back on any heavy drinking. While most of the people in the United States have cut back on smoking, there is still a significant number of people who drink. In fact, about 86.4 percents of Americans who are 18 years or older have reported that they drank at some point in their lifetime. This easily turns into a dependency for a lot of people, especially if they use alcohol to “self-medicate” or due to peer pressure. While there may ...

HELENA, Mont. (AP) — About 66 million years after two dinosaurs died apparently locked in battle on the plains of modern-day Montana, an unusual fight over who owns the entangled fossils has become a multimillion-dollar issue that hinges on the legal definition of “mineral.” The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last week that the “Dueling Dinosaurs” located on private land are minerals both scientifically and under mineral rights laws. The fossils belong both to the owners of the property where they were found and two brothers who kept two-thirds of the mineral rights to the land once owned by their father, a three-judge panel said in a split decision. Eric Edward Nord, an attorney for the property owners, said the case is complex in dealing with who owns what’s on top of land vs. the minerals that make it up and addresses a unique question of mineral rights law related to dinosaur fossils that no court in the country has taken up before. His clients own part of a ranch in the Hell Creek Formation of eastern Montana that’s rich with prehistoric fossils, including the Dueling Dinosaurs whose value had been appraised at $7 million to $9 million. Lige and Mary Ann Murray bought it from George Severson, who also transferred part of his interest in the ranch to his sons, Jerry and Robert Severson. In 2005, the brothers sold their surface rights to the Murrays, but retained the mineral rights, court documents said. At the time, neither side suspected valuable dinosaur fossils were buried on the ranch, court records said. A few months later, amateur paleontologist Clayton Phipps discovered the carnivore and herbivore apparently locked in battle. Imprints of the dinosaurs’ skin were also in the sediment. A dispute arose in 2008 when the Seversons learned about the fossils — a 22-foot-long (7-meter-long) theropod and a 28-foot-long (9-meter-long) ceratopsian. The Murrays sought a court order saying they owned the Dueling Dinosaurs, while the Seversons asked a judge to find that fossils are part of the property’s mineral estate and that they were entitled to partial ownership. It had wider implications because the ranch is in an area that has numerous prehistoric creatures preserved in layers of clay and sandstone. Paleontologists have unearthed thousands of specimens now housed in museums and used for research. But fossils discovered on private land can be privately owned, frustrating paleontologists who say valuable scientific information is being lost. During the court case, the Dueling Dinosaurs were put up for auction in New York in November 2013. Bidding topped out at $5.5 million, less than the reserve price of $6 million. A nearly complete Tyrannosaurus rex found on the property was sold to a Dutch museum for several million dollars in 2014, with the proceeds being held in escrow pending the outcome of the court case. Other fossils found on the ranch also have been sold, including a triceratops skull that brought in more than $200,000, court records said. The 9th Circuit decision on Nov. 6 overturned a federal judge’s 2016 opinion that fossils were not included in the ordinary definition of “mineral” because not all fossils with the same mineral composition are considered valuable. “The composition of minerals found in the fossils does not make them valuable or worthless,” U.S. District Judge Susan Watters of Billings wrote. “Instead, the value turns on characteristics other than mineral composition, such as the completeness of the specimen, the species of dinosaur and how well it is preserved.” U.S. District Judge Susan Watters of Billings wrote. “Instead, the value turns on characteristics other than mineral composition, such as the completeness of the specimen, the species of dinosaur and how well it is preserved.” The Seversons had appealed, arguing previous court cases determined that naturally occurring materials that have some special value meet the definition of minerals. Attorneys for the Murr...

The clouds in Xinjiang China fell to the ground! The truck drivers are afraid to move forward(due to the water vapor in the cloud being too heavy). This natural phenomenon is very rare. The clouds in Xinjiang China fell to the ground! The truck drivers are afraid to move forward(due to the water vapor in the cloud being too heavy).This natural phenomenon is very rare pic.twitter.com/B3alndxMkG — Ken Rutkowski (@kenradio) September 26, 2018 The post Clouds in Xinjiang China ‘fall to the ground’ appeared first on DAPULSE.

Think back to your earliest memory. What age were you in it? If its under two, you’re not alone. In a recent survey, 40 percent of people say they remember events earlier than age two. But here’s the problem: Most memory researchers argue that its essentially impossible to remember anything before those terrible twos. So what gives? Understanding how and why our brains form memories in the first place might convince you that if you’re in that 40 percent, perhaps your memory is a fictional one after all. That number comes courtesy of a recent study out this week in the journal Psychological Science, which sought to understand when most people have their first memories and what they’re about. . The researchers asked 6,641 U.K. residents to describe in writing their first recollection and the age they were in that memory. They then used that data to figure out how many of these first impressions were real. Aside from interviewing friends and family (who might also have false memories), it’s difficult to determine whether a memory is real or not. Instead, the psychologists operated on the assumption—albeit an assumption backed by a lot of research—that people can’t remember anything before about age two. Based on that cutoff, 38.6 percent of the first memories in this dataset were fictional. Most of those were dated to somewhere between ages one and two, but 893 people claimed they could remember being less than one year old. Why are researchers so quick to dismiss those first couple years of life thoughts? There’s a lot of research that suggests it’s all made up. It might seem dismissive to assume that these memories are false, but memory researchers have good reason to conclude that people aren’t truly remembering being a baby. Research on infantile amnesia, the official term for the phenomenon in which we forget things that happened to us as babies and young children, has shown that it’s close to impossible to retain declarative memories at that young age. Babies can obviously remember other, nondeclarative things because they learn how to walk and talk—both of those are reliant on retaining some kind of information—but a declarative memory happens in a separate part of the brain. We store nondeclarative or implicit memories all over our brains. The cerebellum and basal ganglia, which are areas of the brain located towards the base involved generally in voluntary movement, help you learn motor skills, for example. Declarative or explicit memories also involve multiple brain areas, but there’s one that plays a more crucial role: the hippocampus. Damage to the hippocampus will destroy explicit memories like your autobiographical ones—anything that’s a memory about yourself—but not implicit recollections. People with hippocampal damage can’t tell you much about their own lives (sometimes they can’t form new memories either), but they can still ride a bike. During infancy and early childhood, the hippocampus is the site of a lot of new neuronal growth. This is crucial for brain development—you essentially have to learn how to learn, and that involves growing new cells to store new memories. But in the process of spawning new neurons, old ones get shoved aside. Sometimes the set of cells where a specific memory has been stored gets cut off, or the chunk of cells gets separated, thus destroying it. So it’s not so much that we can’t form memories when we’re young as that they quickly get lost in the shuffle. In studies of human babies, psychologists found that 18-month-old infants could remember an event for up to 13 weeks. Babies as young as two months can retain memories for 24 hours. But it’s not until 20-24 months of age that the hippocampus is mature enough to store memories for much longer than that, even if it can technically stash them in the first place—kids just forget faster. Because of this hippocampal maturing, we can’t really retain a memory from before roughly age two, and indeed this most recent study is in agreem...

During the early hours of Jan. 31, there will be a full moon, a total lunar eclipse, a blue moon and a supermoon. None of these things is all that unusual. What is rare is that they’re happening all together on one day. What makes the moon look full? Like Earth, half the moon is illuminated by the sun at any one time. The moon orbits Earth, and as a result we see different amounts of the lit-up side. A full moon occurs when we see its entire lit-up side. This occurs every 29.5 days, when the moon is directly opposite the sun relative to Earth. Jan. 31 will be our next full moon in the lunar cycle. How and where to see the super blue blood moon of 2018 What’s a lunar eclipse? The moon’s orbit is tilted by about 5 degrees relative to Earth’s orbit. So, most of the time the moon ends up a little above or below the path Earth follows as it revolves around the sun. But twice in each lunar cycle, the moon does cross into our planet’s orbital plane. If that crossing corresponds to a full moon, the moon will pass into Earth’s shadow, resulting in a total lunar eclipse. Since the moon needs to be behind Earth, relative to the sun, to become overshadowed, a lunar eclipse can happen only on a full moon. To see the phenomenon, you need to be on the night side of Earth; this eclipse will be visible mostly in Asia, Australia, the Pacific and North America. But don’t worry if you miss it: Lunar eclipses happen, on average, a couple of times a year. The next one visible in North America will occur on Jan. 21, 2019. A blue moon that looks red When a lunar eclipse happens, the moon appears to darken as it moves into Earth’s shadow, which is called the umbra. When the moon is all the way in shadow, it doesn’t go completely dark; instead, it looks red because of a process called Rayleigh scattering. The gas molecules of Earth’s atmosphere scatter bluer wavelengths of light from the sun, while redder wavelengths pass straight through. This is why we have blue skies and red sunrises and sunsets. When the sun is high in the sky, red light passes straight through to the ground while blue light is scattered in every direction, making it more likely to hit your eye when you look around. During a sunset, the angle of the sun is lower in the sky, and that red light passes directly into your eyes while the blue light is scattered away from your line of sight. In the case of a lunar eclipse, the sunlight that makes it around Earth passes through our atmosphere and is refracted toward the moon. Blue light is filtered out, leaving the moon looking reddish during an eclipse. On top of it all, the Jan. 31 full moon is also considered a blue moon. There are two different definitions of blue moon. The first is any time a second full moon occurs in a single month. Because there are 29.5 days between full moons, we usually end up with only one per month. With most months being longer than 29.5 days, it occasionally works out that we have two full moons. We already had one on the first of January, and our second will be Jan. 31, making it a blue moon. The second definition of a blue moon says it is the third full moon in a season in which there are four moons, which happens about every 2.7 years. We’ll have only three this winter, so the Jan. 31 full moon won’t be blue by this definition. Stargazers will need to wait until May 18, 2019, for a blue moon that fits this older, original definition. A supersize supermoon Finally, this will also be a supermoon. The moon’s orbit is not perfectly circular, which means its distance from Earth varies as it goes through a cycle. The closest point in its orbit is called the perigee. A full moon that happens near perigee is called a supermoon by some. This happened with our full moon on Jan. 1, and it will happen again on Jan. 31. Its proximity makes it seem a little bit bigger and brighter than usual, but that’s the extent of its effects on Earth. The distinction is usually hard to notice unless you’re looking at two pictu...

More than 300 wild reindeer were killed after being struck by lightning in Norway, in what government officials say was an unusually deadly event. It’s not uncommon for wildlife to be killed by lightning strikes, but what made this storm so deadly? Most lightning deaths that occur in groups are due to the ground current, John Jensenius, a lightning safety expert from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told The Verge. “First, there’s a direct strike — this is what most people think of when they think of lightning — that hits the tree or maybe the ground nearby,” Jensenius said. “The energy then spreads along the ground surface, and if you’re anywhere near that lightning strike, you absorb it and get shocked.” The lightning current travels up one leg and down another, Jensenius said, so animals are more vulnerable because their legs are more spread out — the ground currents travel more easily in their bodies. A total of 323 reindeer, including 70 calves, were killed during a lightning storm on Friday (Aug. 26), according to the Norwegian Environment Agency. Of the 323 reindeer killed, five were euthanized because of their injuries, agency officials said. The animals may have died from huddling together during the storm. Credit: Havard Kjotvedt/Norwegian Environment Agency he animals were found in Hardangervidda, a national park that is home to an estimated 10,000 wild reindeer, Europe’s largest herd. As herd animals, reindeer typically travel together in large groups. Kjartan Knutsen, a spokesman for the Norwegian Environment Agency, told The Associated Press that reindeer tend to stay very close to each other in bad weather, which could explain how so many were killed at once. Though it is not uncommon for reindeer and other wildlife to be killed by lightning strikes, the agency said this is the deadliest known event to date. Samples were collected from the fallen animals as part of a national survey to test for chronic wasting disease (CWD) — a nervous system disease found in deer and elk that results in brain lesions — according to the Norwegian Environment Agency. Normally, the agency would leave the dead animals where they fell and let nature take its course, but given concerns over the spread of CWD, agency officials said they are waiting for the test results before a final decision is made. Original article on Live Science. The post More Than 300 Reindeer Killed By Lightning: Here’s Why appeared first on DAPULSE.

Later this year NASA is planning to send a spacecraft to explore the bennu asteroid. But what you maybe don’t know is that the exploration agency is planning to send artwork that you submit with it on a chip. Thats right if you are a lover of space exploration and you want to send your artwork on this one in a lifetime opportunity you just have to submit it by Sunday, March 20, 2016 at 11:59 pm PDT or when capacity of the drive that will carry submissions to space is reached But as you might know… you won’t be the only one who wants to send something on this journey. So you should submit you artwork or as provided by NASA, “A submission may take the form of a sketch, photograph, graphic, poem, song, short video or other creative or artistic expression that reflects what it means to be an explorer,” as soon as possible, since already around 442,000 names have been submitted in a previous campaign called “message to bennu”. You can submit through Twitter and Instagram. Check out the complete guidelines on NASA’s #WeTheExplorers site. If you are planning to submit… Just mention the hashtag #WeTheExplorers when you post your artwork to Twitter (mention @OSIRISREx) or Instagram (@OSIRIS_REX). Submissions will be accepted until Sunday, March 20, 2016 at 11:59 pm PDT or until the hard drive fills up. The post Want Your Artwork In Space? appeared first on DAPULSE.