Warmed-up oceans reduce key food link – Yahoo! News
In a “sneak peak” revealing a grim side effect of future warmer seas, new NASA satellite data find that the vital base of the ocean food web shrinks when the world’s seas get hotter. And that discovery has scientists worried about how much food marine life will have as global warming progresses.
South Korea builds world’s largest garbage-fuelled power plant – Yahoo! News
South Korea has opened the world’s largest garbage-fuelled power plant and expects to reduce its imports of heavy oil by 500,000 barrels a year as a result. The 50-megawatt plant, designed to provide power to more than 180,000 households, began operating on Tuesday. It sits on a mammoth garbage dump in the city of Incheon west of Seoul, the ministry said in a statement. For fuel, it uses only the methane gas naturally generated from the decomposing garbage on the site. “It reduces greenhouse gas emissions by burning away methane and avoids buring more fossil fuel for electricity,” Park Han-Eop, an official of the ministry’s waste treatment division, told AFP.
The plant will save the country the import of 500,000 barrels of heavy oil and will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 1.37 million tonnes per year, he said.
Kids With High IQs Grow Up to Be Vegetarians – Yahoo! News
As a child’s IQ rises, his taste for meat in adulthood declines, a new study suggests. British researchers have found that children’s IQ predicts their likelihood of becoming vegetarians as young adults — lowering their risk for cardiovascular disease in the process. The finding could explain the link between smarts and better health, the investigators say.
“Brighter people tend to have healthier dietary habits,” concluded lead author Catharine Gale, a senior research fellow at the MRC Epidemiology Resource Centre of the University of Southampton and Southampton General Hospital.
Thank you Salma
Thanks Salma!
Interesting, we were discussing the last article over dinner the other day. We had 8 Yalies there–I think maybe 3 were vegetarians. But that stat might be misleading! I wonder if 3/8 vegetarian is more than the national proportion? I would imagine so…
Ah, the vegetarian article. I discussed it earlier this week with a friend who is vegan. We both shrugged off the findings. My comment then, with which he agreed, was a remark about how many great minds were alcoholics.
As I sit here typing, I have a steak sandwich and a whiskey in front of me. It made me laugh.
Thanks Salma,interesting stuff.
Matt –
There are many different paths to compassion, but a sharp intellect is certainly one of them. From compassion comes the desire to harm as little as possible, and from that place many people become vegetarians. I am not vegetarian myself, but I certainly understand why an intelligent person would become a vegetarian. I won’t bother you with details – Google can hep you there – but the raising of animals takes up a lot more resources than growing vegetables (esp. more water!) and many animals live pretty miserably in cages that are too small… etc.
And regarding alcoholics: alcoholism is a genetic affliction and an alcoholic can be very smart or very stupid or anything in between.
Cheers- o