Planetsave

When I first read the news that NASA was going to start experimenting on monkeys with radiation to study the effects of deep space travel, my heart sunk. As an anthropologist who has studied non-human primates I have seen up close the emotions, the feelings, and the physical qualities we share with our evolutionary cousins. My mind went back to shooting chimps into space, not caring if they lived or died. To cruel (and now illegal) experiments of all kinds performed on our closest living relative.

Now NASA is planing to irradiate squirrel monkeys. Scientists are particularly interested in studying how the radiation impacts the monkeys’ central nervous systems and behaviors over time. Messing with the monkeys brains. Oh great!

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If you could declare a home town of evolution it would be the Galapagos Islands. Back in 1835 a sea sick young naturalist, Charles Darwin, landed on the Galapagos to conduct a little research. That research was the genesis of Darwin’s seminal work “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection.” Darwin was inspired by the grand variety of animals filling specific niches on the islands.

Now tourism is threatening to wipe out the animals which inspired one of the most important works in all of science. This time, for once, humans are not the main bad guy in this story. Although, as often the case, humans are involved unwittingly. When humans visit the island, they don’t realize they are bringing along a stowaway. Mosquitoes. The oft-maligned disease ridden scourge of the world.

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Gliese 581 d. Such a catchy name eh? You probably have never heard of it. It is 20 light years away, but in late April 2009 new observations by the original discovery team concluded that the planet is within the habitable zone where liquid water, and therefore, life, could exist.

Some of you may have heard of SETI. SETI or Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, conducts legitimate science research, searching for extraterrestrial life by looking for some signature of its technology. For years people have been sending radio waves into space on the off chance that there will be a response. Beatles songs, TV shows, radio broadcasts have all been shot into space. Now an Australian website is letting you text into space.

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We have all been waiting for this day. Finally, shark repellent has arrived to the world… except this shark repellent is not used to save humans from sharks. No this shark repellent was made to save sharks from humans. With good reason, while only about 4 people die of unprovoked shark attacks each year, humans kill an estimated 73 million sharks each year. You do the math and tell me who is the biggest threat to whom?

Many sharks are inadvertently killed in fishing equipment used for tuna, swordfish, and other commercial fish. This is called bycatch. These unwanted sharks are often thrown back into the ocean dead, dying, or injured.

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If you missed Green iPhone Apps Reviewed Part 1: Free Apps, you can see it here. After my first batch of reviews on the free green iPhone apps, I have gotten some great suggestions on green apps. If you have any you you would like to see reviewed, you can comment here, head over to my website www.danielhohler.com, or twitter me @danielhohler. I am not a hard man to find. I have already gotten a whole new batch that people would like to hear about, so it looks like by popular demand there will be green iPhone apps part 3, so stay tuned here on planetsave.com.

iPhone apps are sweeping the nation. For those of us who own iPhones, we know just how useful a good app can be. The problem is that there are so many apps floating around, finding a really good app is like finding the proverbial needle in the haystack. However, don’t fret. I am here to pick up all of those straws of hay and tell you if indeed they are hay, or maybe just maybe, a needle. Or with less metaphor, I’ll try them and tell you if they are any good.

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For years and years, humans considered themselves the one and only makers of tools. Homo sapien literally means “wise man” because we were so intelligent that it was us humans, and us humans alone, who could even have the brain capacity to create a tool. It was considered the key feature of the genus Homo.

Well, that was until people actually decided to carefully look at other animal’s social behavior. It was not until the mid to late 1900’s that people realized “oops us humans are not the only ones to use tools.” Primatologists discovered chimpanzees creating tools for fishing termites out of their mounds, and stones for crushing nuts from their hard shell. Other researchers discovered that gorillas make beds from foliage, as well as sponges out of chewed up leaves.

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We’ve all done the elementary school math story problem: Would you rather have $10,000 right now, or a penny doubled every day for a month? Well, in the end, those of us who were greedy enough to take the $10,000 right up front ended up poorer than those who took the penny.

This problem seems silly to us though. Now what about this one. Would you rather take $1,000 right now or $4,000 three years from now? Chances are, you chose the immediate cash. Psychologists use the term ”delay discounting” to describe our inability to resist the temptation of a smaller immediate reward in lieu of receiving a larger reward later. Most people choose the smaller, more immediate reward over the larger “patience is a virtue” reward.

And no matter what the context, discounting stems from three factors: a bias for the present; uncertainty; and projected resources. We are a people who thrive on instant gratification; that’s one reason we love TV so much. It is also a contributing factor to the current economic crisis (and debt in general).

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The European Union (EU) and MTV are working together to get young people involved in the climate debate. The major entities started their “Play to Stop – Europe for Climate” campaign this month. Working with international music artists and other international celebrities, this is a major campaign to mobilize the youth around the topic of climate change, and especially for the Copenhagen Climate Conference in December.

The campaign targets 11 EU countries — Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Romania, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. The campaign will involve celebrities from the various participating countries.
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July 20th, 2009 was the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11’s historic flight to the moon, where astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first human beings to walk on the moon. 40 years ago, space flight inspired such awe that astronauts were hailed as heroes and celebrities by men, women, and children alike. 40 years later none of us, besides the most avid space fanatic, would likely to be able to name one astronaut in service today.

Despite the tragedies of Space Shuttle Challenger, and later Columbia, where the world is shocked into being reminded of the inherit dangers of sitting on 1 million gallons of rocket fuel, or re-entering the earth’s atmosphere at 1,870 miles per hour. We all see space flight as mundane because the vast majority of space flights since Apollo 11, have been mostly conducting seemingly routine scientific experiments. Now don’t get me wrong, I believe in the importance of science in space, but these experiments don’t exactly inspire awe in the general population like, oh say, a manned mission to Mars would. We also don’t have the fever of beating those damned Ruskies because they might go to space and blow us all up, which we had during the height of the cold war when Apollo 11 touched down on the lunar Sea of Tranquility.

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Most of us know the sad and destructive history of former widespread pesticide DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane for you chemists). It’s egg shell thining properties have famously taken out many a generation of bald eagle, as well as many other bird species. The once heralded solution to malaria, DDT was sprayed everywhere without a thought. This attitude of pesticide being “a-ok” lasted into the 1980’s, and lead to this most hilarious and sad poster (seen above) of two attractive young ladies having a pesticide fight. Try suggesting that one these days as a fun game for the whole family.

When environmental and health concerns were raised in the scientific community, an out cry called for the banning of DDT, and in 1972 the ban went into effect. Unfortunately for all of us, the half life of DDT is 30 years. So for those of us scoring at home, there is still almost half the DDT left floating around in our environment that was sprayed the year of the ban… 37 years ago!

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