Archive for the ‘England’ Category

Not all diet plans are nutritious and safe. U.S. News rankings rate each diet’s healthiness

There are some very successful diets on the market - but weight lost doesn’t always equal health gained. That new diet that took inches off your waistline could be harming your health if it locks out or severely restricts entire food groups, like carbs, or relies on supplements with little scientific backing, or clamps down on calories to an extreme.

“People are so desperate to lose weight that it’s really weight loss at any cost,” says Madelyn Fernstrom, founding director of the UPMC-University of Pittsburgh Medical Center Weight Management Center and author of The Real You Diet. And when that desperation sets in, says Fernstrom, “normal thinking goes out the window.” Who cares if the forbidden-foods list is longer than War and Peace? Pounds are coming off. You’re happy. But your body might not be. Read the rest of this entry »

With the surge in New Age belief systems and more people than ever turning to psychics and spiritual mediums – in this article we examine the role of more traditional approaches to spirituality.

Religion may be defined as a system of belief and ethical orientation which are premised on an understanding of human beings as other – or more than their purely physical identities.  Religion  and  its rituals – acts of prayer, meditation and celebration awake or reinforce a personal and communal sense of our connection to Ultimate Truth.

In various and complex ways religion has been both an agent of environmental domination and paradoxically repositories of ecological wisdom. Read the rest of this entry »

Species has lost half its population and 69% of its habitat through deforestation in the past 25 years

The Sumatran elephant has been placed on the list of critically endangered species after losing half of its population in a single generation, prompting calls from conservation groups for emergency measures to halt the destruction of its habitat.

Deforestation is seen as the primary reason for the collapse in numbers in Indonesia, which until recently was seen alongside India and Sri Lanka as one of the last great refuges for elephants in Asia. The animal is now at risk of becoming extinct within decades. Read the rest of this entry »

China began Wednesday streaming live video footage of its pandas around the world via webcam in an attempt to boost awareness of conservation efforts for its beloved but endangered animal ambassadors.

High-definition cameras are set to feature pandas in two reserves at the Bifengxia Panda Center near Ya’an city in China’s southwestern Sichuan province, the media non-profit Explore.org and China Conservation and Research Center for the Giant Panda said in a statement. Read the rest of this entry »

Biodiversity loss is probably a challenge that is often ignored as climate change looms. Currently the world is losing species at a rate that is 100 to 1000 times faster than the natural extinction rate, further, it is currently seeing the sixth mass extinction.

The previous mass extinction occured 65 million years ago, and was caused by ecosystem changes, changes in atmospheric chemistry, impacts of asteroids and volcanoes. For the first time in history, the current extinction is caused by the competition for resources between a single species Homo sapiens and all others. Read the rest of this entry »

Secretary Vince Cable has confirmed that he will announce the location of the government’s £3bn Green Investment Bank (GIB) this month, after 32 towns and cities including Edinburgh, Cardiff and Milton Keynes bid to host the bank’s headquarters.

The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills has confirmed  that it has now closed bids for towns and cities that wish to host the bank, which is expected to funnel up to £15bn of private funds into low-carbon projects such as offshore wind farms, waste management facilities, and energy efficiency programmes. Read the rest of this entry »

Drought and new Three Gorges Dam blamed as fishers forced to seek other work and freight trade comes to a halt
For visitors expecting to see China’s largest freshwater lake, Poyang is a desolate spectacle. Under normal circumstances it covers 3,500 sq km, but last month only 200 sq km were underwater. A dried-out plain stretches as far as the eye can see, leaving a pagoda perched on top of a hillock that is usually a little island. Wrapped in the mist characteristic of the lower reaches of the Yangtze river, the barges are moored close to the quayside beside a pitiful trickle of water. There is no work for the fisheries. Read the rest of this entry »

Two years ago, scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., released a study claiming that inconsistencies between satellite observations of Earth’s heat and measurements of ocean heating amounted to evidence of “missing energy” in the planet’s system.

Where was it going? Or, they wondered, was something wrong with the way researchers tracked energy as it was absorbed from the sun and emitted back into space?

An international team of atmospheric scientists and oceanographers, led by Norman Loeb of NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., and including Graeme Stephens of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., set out to investigate the mystery. Read the rest of this entry »