environmental studies

Thursday, February 28, 2008

Baraka movie

Baraka is an incredible nonverbal film containing images of 24 countries from 6 continents, created by Ron Fricke and Mark Magidson, with music from Michael Stearns and others. The film has no plot, contains no actors and has no script. Instead, high quality 70mm images show some of the best, and worse, parts of nature and human life. Timelapse is used heavily to show everyday life from a different perspective. Baraka is often considered a spiritual film.
Baraka is an ancient Sufi word, which can be translated as "a blessing, or as the breath, or essence of life from which the evolutionary process unfolds." For many people Baraka is the definitive film in this style. Breathtaking shots from around the world show the beauty and destruction of nature and humans. Coupled with an incredible soundtrack including on site recordings of The Monks Of The Dip Tse Chok Ling Monastery.
Baraka is evidence of a huge global project fueled by a personal passion for the world and visual art. Working on a reported US$4 million budget, Ron Fricke and Mark Magidson, with a three-person crew, swept through 24 countries in 14 months to make this stunning film.One of the very last films shot in the expensive TODD-AO 70mm format, Ron Fricke developed a computer-controlled camera for the incredible time-lapse shots, including New York's Park Avenue rush hour traffic and the crowded Tokyo subway platforms.

Friday, February 22, 2008

Turtles

Sea turtles are large, air-breathing reptiles that inhabit tropical and subtropical seas throughout the world. Their streamlined bodies and large flippers make them remarkably adapted to life at sea. Sea turtles range in size from the smallest, Kemp's Ridley, measuring just 24 inches and weighing between 77 and 100 pounds, to the leatherback which can reach 4 to 8 feet in length and weigh from 650 to 2,000 pounds. Females must come ashore to lay their eggs in the sand; therefore, all sea turtles begin their lives as tiny hatchlings on land. Sea turtles are generally solitary creatures that remain submerged for much of the time they are at sea, which makes them extremely difficult to study. They rarely interact with one another outside of courtship and mating. When it is not nesting season, sea turtles may migrate hundreds, even thousands of miles. Sea turtles can sleep at the surface while in deep water or on the bottom wedged under rocks in near-shore waters.

Turtles make good pets. Though dogs and cats are a much more preferred pet, turtles make very good economic exotic pets. One of the main reasons that turtles make good pets is that they are mainly indoor animals and add to the beauty of a home. Many turtle keepers try their hand at a land-based turtle. Some start out with one, often wild-caught box turtles (though such aren’t the best choice). Some believe a land-based turtle will be lower-maintenance or ‘simpler’ than an aquatic (no canister filter!). Some like the ‘look’ of the land-based turtles (most are more dome-shaped than aquatics), or have heard tortoises have a reputation for being more ‘personable’ than most aquatics, some bordering on affectionate (although no one should buy a turtle if such would be a ‘deal breaker;’ reptiles are typically solitary creatures without much social repertoire). A few may like a vegetarian pet (in which case you’re looking for a tortoise).

for info go on google typehttp://www.lifesabeachstore.com/article_seaturtles.aspx

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Biological Terrorist Attacks

A new technology to clean the blood of victims of radiological, chemical and biological terrorist attacks is being developed jointly by Argonne National Laboratory, the Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute and The University of Chicago Hospitals.

In addition to cleaning biological and radiological toxins from blood, the technology shows promise for delivering therapeutic drugs to targeted cells and organs. The technology uses components approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and a novel approach to magnetic filtration.

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 in New York City immediately focused attention on national and personal security. They also raised many questions about environmental safety.

When the World Trade Center towers collapsed, the dust that blanketed Lower Manhattan contained a mixture of asbestos, lead, glass fibres, and concrete dust, among other substances. The fires at the site produced emissions of pollutants including particulate matter, which can affect the lungs, and potentially carcinogenic pollutants such as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and dioxins.

Mini project #5

Please look at those picture, and think of them for a second, Do you think if you had got the opportunity to help Haiti, and the citizens would you help them?; so many people are dying for no reason. what would you do to help if you were a family member of those people who are dying?

This is a good illustration of how the left has abandoned all pretense of rationality. Marchers have taken to the streets in both Washington and New York to blame whatever has gone wrong in Haiti on President Bush, who has become, for the Democrats, the universal source of all evil in the world.
In the photo below, marchers in New York allege that President Aristide was "kidnapped" and that "Haiti's Blood is on Bush's Hands."

Haiti's blood is on the President's hands, presumably, because Bush waited too long to intervene, and should have helped Aristide by sending Marines to fight the rebels. Well, that makes a certain amount of sense if your concern is mostly about preserving Aristide's government, not about American interests. But wait--the third sign says "U.S. and French Troops Out of Haiti." If we took our troops out of Haiti, the rebels would be unopposed and would slaughter Aristide's allies and Aristide himself, should he try to return. Hard to discern a coherent policy there.

The August 20 soccer massacre in the Grande Ravine neighborhood is illustrative of both the Haitian police's brutality and the futility of trying to reform the Haitian government by feeding it guns and money. On that day, police accompanied by machete-wielding civilians attacked a soccer crowd of thousands, shooting or hacking to death at least six and as many as thirty spectators. Our tax dollars were at both ends of the killing. The soccer game was sponsored by a USAID program, to promote peace in the neighborhood. The U.S. also sponsors the killers, the Haitian National Police, by providing guns and weapons despite a consistent history of police killings over the last eighteen months. When the House of Representatives passed Rep. Barbara Lee's resolution to block arms transfers on June 28, the State Department responded by announcing on August 9 that it would send $1.9 million worth of guns and other equipment to the police, before the elections and presumably before the Senate could vote on the resolution.
There has been much discussion about whether Fanmi Lavalas, Haiti's largest and most popular party, will participate in the upcoming elections. The party's official position has been that the current high level of political repression makes fair elections impossible. Because the international community appears eager to place its seal of approval on elections in November, no matter how unfair, the party is faced with a dilemma. It can either risk legitimizing a patently unfair process by participating in it, or it can refuse to participate and let electees who do not represent the Haitian people run the country for the next 2-5 years. This is truly a choice of two evils, and the fact that the party chooses one over the other does not make either less evil.

Aid workers say that up to 1,500 people are still missing in the Haitian village of Mapou, one of the areas worst affected by Caribbean flooding. Tonnes of aid were airlifted to Mapou on Sunday, but rescue workers say they are struggling to reach survivors in other remote areas.Continuing rain is also hampering their efforts.At least 2,000 people are known to have died or disappeared in severe flooding in Haiti and the Dominican Republic.On Saturday an earthquake of magnitude 4.4 struck the border area between the two countries, compounding problems further.

Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Superfund

This picture represented, Haiti, 1959, (for Aristide, Stan Goff, "The U.S. military mission in Haiti, to train the troops of noted dictator Francois Duvalier, used its air, sea and ground power to smash an attempt to overthrow Duvalier by a small group of Haitians aided by some Cubans and other Latin Americans."

e-Waste and Environmental Health
According to the SVTC, a lack of data complicates our understanding of the potential health effects from exposure to e-wastes. Ultimately, e-waste poses the most direct health risks when it degrades and the internal chemicals are released to the environment. Lead and mercury are highly potent neurotoxins, particularly among children, who can suffer IQ deficits and developmental abnormalities at very low levels of exposure. Cadmium, a toxic metal found in circuit boards, is listed by the EPA as a "probable human carcinogen," and also produces pulmonary damage when burned and inhaled. Hexavalent chromium, also used in circuit boards, has been found to produce lung and sinus tumors when inhaled at high doses.

Thursday, February 7, 2008

Mandarins are a gold mine for hillside farmers.

ORE's program is designed to increase the number of commercial trees by nursery production of seedlings and by top-grafting the sour orange trees which grow in abundance throughout the countryside. ORE has selected the varieties which demonstrated the highest crops revenues: Clementine, Mandarine de Jacmel, Tangelo, and sweet oranges such as Washington Navel and Valencia

(Zaboka ak Pen) Avocado and bread, have long been staple foods for the rural community.

choquette avocado in fruit

Avocado is one of the highest calorie fruits. It is high in protein, vitamins and other nutrients and is a major part of the peasant's diet when in season. So in addition to creating a viable commercial industry, and protecting the environment, expanding the avocado season will also be of tremendous benefit to the nutrition of the rural population. Haiti traditionally produces excellent avocados: they are an excellent source of nutrition and hold an important place in the local market. However, the local varieties are so diverse that it is impossible to collect homogenous fruits for industrial purposes, as required by export markets.

The most popular mango most Haitian eat. wich is FRANSIQUE

Mangos represent the largest percentage of the tree population throughout Haiti. It was recently estimated by USAID that there are 10 million mango trees growing in Haiti. However, only about 10% of the existing trees are the Mme Francique commercial variety.

The biotech industry says genetically modified seeds will help to feed the world’s growing population, but critics charge so-called Terminator and Traitor seeds will only add to the world’s hunger problems. Indigenous farmers in Haiti cultivate crops from seeds passed down from generation to generation. Biotech critics say widespread use of some genetically modified seeds will hurt farmers in developing countries.

Genetically altered foods in Haiti

Wednesday, February 6, 2008

Endangered Animals in Haiti

The Haitian Solenodon

One reason why the solenodon was unknown to science for so long is that it is nocturnal in its habits, an effect of this being it's highly developed senses of hearing, smell and touch. Also, they are not very numerous, so their influence in an ecosystem is practically nil. During day hours, the hide in their burrows, trees and hollowed-out logs or in caves, remaining hidden from view. When they do come out, they run on their toes with a stiff ungainly waddle, following an erratic almost zigzag course. The local people claim that solenodons never run in a straight line. Moreover, when a solenodon is alarmed and tries to put on speed it is as likely as not to trip over its own toes or even tumble head-over-heels.

Dying out in the midst of plenty:
Solenodons eat a wide variety of animal and plant foods, such as insects, worms and small invertebrates generally, as well as small reptiles. I hey also eat roots, fruits and leaves. They root in the ground with their long snouts, dig with their stout claws or rip open rotten logs. Solenodons in captivity have been seen to bathe often and to drink only when bathing. Perhaps the long snout makes any other way difficult. For animals with such habits there is no shortage of food but solenodons are be coming. more and more rare. This is partly

Haitian solenodon; this primitive insectivore is still present in areas of stony forest in the northeastern area of Haiti.
due to their slow rate of breeding. The female may have two litters a year of 1-3 young but she has only two teats in an unusual position¤almost on the buttocks!

http://www.geocities.com/cuyaya/solenen.html