Under the constant watch of environmental conservation groups for more than two decades, the fruit bat with a wing span of almost 6 feet wide has faced numerous odds to recover its numbers which now stand at a remarkable 22,000, according to a newly released research finding.

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The discovery of a 90% intact fossil preserved in a slab of rock at a site in Laioning Province in Inner Mongolia, heightens the notion that tiny-bodied, carnivorous bipedal dinosaurs are closely related to and most certainly evolved into birds.

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Indigenous rights groups and Indian tribes researchers in Brazil now believe the uprooting may be a recipe for renewed inter-tribal conflicts over the resource that may suck governments of both nations into a row over the other’s responsibility in the affair, Reuters reports.

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The material is a computerized lab creation that combines electrically conductive plastic with several metals including molybdenum and titanium. It overcomes the two major roadblocks involved in capturing solar energy: taking in all energy from sunlight and producing easily-capturable electons. Thus, the new material may have the potential to revolutionize how manufactured solar cells obtain energy from the sun.

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Researchers in Germany are trying to understand the connection between weather conditions and human emotion.

Stress is part of day-to-day life and we can attribute it to lots of things, including the weather. If you feel irritable or stressed for missing your daily walk on a rainy afternoon when it’s just supposed to be cool, you are probably very right in blaming the weather. However, a new study suggests that as a rule of thumb the weather really might give us more to grumble about than to be happy about.

A research team at Humboldt University in Berlin, Germany claim in a study published in the October issue of the Emotions journal that temperature, wind, and sunlight all have an effect on negative moods, with sunlight seemingly playing a significant role on how tired people said they were.

On the other hand, temperature, wind, sunlight, precipitation, air pressure, and how long the days were had no significant effect on positive moods, contrary to conventional wisdom.

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Philips, promotes the innovative street lighting concept as an ecological street light pole. The pole adapts its shape to capture the maximum source energy from sun and wind during daytime, using this energy during the night for illumination.

Depending on weather conditions, it can alternate between solar and wind modes.

Employing ‘flower mechanics’, the Light Blossom opens its petals to collect solar energy on sunny days and reorients them upwards to harness wind energy on cloudy days which, in turn, powers the lighting pole at night.

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Made from cowhide or anything from braided grass to discarded wood pieces or old sandals, the condom is not a sheath but a home made contraption that is designed to get in between the buck’s belly and the doe’s genitalia thus preventing mating.

In the absence of modern breeding methods in remote districts of Kenya mainly inhabited by Maasai herdsmen, the traditional condom, or olor in the local language, is secured under the belly with a rope or elastic strap.

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“Sometimes it falls upon a generation to be great. You can be that generation” - Nelson Mandela, Make Poverty History rally, Trafalgar Square, London, UK, February 2005

What makes a political leader to be great? What makes a generation to be great? To think of it, one word defines it - sustainability. Would this, then, be a moral issue or an economic issue?

Does the world’s population today — both older and younger segments — understand the social dilemma that the next generation of leaders just on the threshold of global influence find themselves in?

Yes, next generation of leaders. Because we can no longer hedge our hopes and beliefs and inspirations on leaders who are stuck in the time warp of old politics.

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‘Intelligent’ elephants in Africa are getting tech-savvy and are using cellphone text messages to report their own encroachment on farms in a novel experiment local conservationists believe will help avoid human-wildlife conflict.

Rangers at a wildlife conservancy in Kenya are getting accustomed to blips on their phones each time an elephant attempts to cross a virtual ‘fence’ that triggers an automatic text signal using Google Earth software.

AP reports that SIM cards on elephants’ global positioning system (GPS) collars beam messages to rangers on duty whenever they approach the “geo-fence” that mirrors the 90,000 acre Ol Pejeta Conservatory’s boundaries. The rangers then use spotlights to frighten the elephants back inside the protected area.

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Scientists have uncovered life in a South African gold mine, 2.8 kilometers (1.7 miles) beneath the surface of the earth. In this dark but hot ecosystem, a single biological species derives power not from the sun but from elements produced by uranium’s radioactive decay.

Remarkably, it is the first ecosystem ever found having only one biological species. In utter darkness, total isolation, with no oxygen, and in 60-degree-Celsius heat (140 degrees Fahrenheit), the cave-dwelling, rod-shaped bacterium, Desulforudis audaxviator survives.

Trajectories of evolution have fitted the bacterium with the genes necessary to exist under a variety of different conditions. One such adaptation is the ability to survive by fixing nitrogen and carbon directly from the environment.

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Eco-consciousness in many intimate relationships of the boy-and-girl type can be snobbish, Jeanette says, because the lovers who probably kissed on a garden sidewalk for the first time unknowingly tend to outdo each other while emphasizing their green credentials. This is the thrust of her musings:

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This may be remarkable because what is causing them to diverge are adaptations to their vision as animals and plants try to cope with increased pollution and the effects of climate change. The change is also happening without geographical isolation, which was thought to be a precursor for evolution.

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Weird or wacky, you might say, but rumor actually has it that Snopes.com might soon bring down this link that debunked the long suspected (was it an urban legend until the Ig Nobel Prize?) but now confirmed sperm killing effects of the famous Coca Cola soft drink.

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Having compared the harmful methane gas produced by sheep, cows and other domesticated animals through belching and flatulence, Professor Ross Garnaut contends kangaroo meat is a safer alternative for the environment.

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In so doing, they will be working with the best scientific minds to grow the seaweed in plastic tubes of seawater that will be fed with carbon dioxide captured from thermal power stations in a project called Mambo spearheaded by Italy’s Union of Biodiesel Producers.

A plant will be built at a coastal location in southern Italy in as little as two years and should be producing biodiesel from seaweed five years from now.

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This will involve the setting up of crop banks and seed vaults, so to speak, in developing countries that depend on staples such as corn and rice, to tap on their valuable ’sustainability traits’ as a way of conserving the diversity of the world’s food crops.

In attempts to boost food security, crops from banana to sweet potato will be screened to identify material that plant breeders can use to produce varieties adapted to conditions associated with climate change.

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The ancient rocks were found in Northern Quebec, along the Hudson’s Bay coast, 40 km south of Inukjuak in an area known as the Nuvvuagittuq greenstone belt.

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A chemical equator - an atmospheric line - discovered by scientists suggests the existence of a 50 kilometer-wide boundary between polluted air of the Northern Hemisphere and the largely uncontaminated atmosphere of the Southern Hemisphere.

In a model, the red that represents high levels of carbon monoxide present in the air in the Northern Hemisphere gives way to blue that reflects clean air of the South; in between, a white-colored ‘chemical equator’ separates them.

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That is, if the US Congress helps him by trashing George Bush’s deal with India before he can sign it into law. And the urgency means it is a critical time for both Washington and New Delhi. This might be easy if there’s no deal before the November presidential elections.

Here are the stakes: India seeks out partners to co-develop its nuclear energy potential, worth about US$ 80 billion. By 2032 the government plans to quadruple total generating capacity, to 700 gigawatts, with nuclear accounting for 63,000 megawatts.

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The anaconda is a wave energy converter device made of a giant rubber tube which may hold the key to producing cheaper, sustainable electricity from the energy in sea waves.

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