UK Zoo Tries Vertical Farming

VertiCrop images courtesy of Valcent Products.

A zoo in the United Kingdom has come up with a novel approach to locally sourcing some of its food for animals and dealing with the challenge of limited space: vertical farming.

The Paignton Zoo in South Devon joined forces with Valcent Products (Eu) Limited to employ its VertiCrop farming system to grow some of their own produce for the animals. They have just finished planting the first crop of lettuce.

Valcent Products (Eu) states that the Paignton VertiCrop project is capable of producing 11,000 heads of lettuce every four weeks or so. That works out to over 120,000 heads a year. That’s a lot of lettuce grown and saved. The idea behind this project is to plant the greens so that the zoo can harvest fresh vegetables daily for the animals that eat them.

What a treat for the animals – fresh produce directly from the vine. Eventually the farm will have vertical plots of red chard, mizuna, mixed leaves, various herbs, edible flowers, wheat grass and barley.

The grow area at the zoo sits in a specially-constructed polytunnel using computerized controls that automate water supply, irrigation and the environment around the VertiCrops. There’s also a conveyor belt for loading and unloading plant trays.

The system is intended to be low maintenance as well as low cost. Three zoo workers were trained to look after the farm. They are expected to do so on a rotating basis; but, Valcent Products says the site can be maintained by a single team member working two hours each day.

The farming system is expected to help the zoo cut its feed bill by about £100,000 (almost US $165,440) a year.

Valcent says other benefits of VertiCrop farming include:

• Crop yields that are as much as 20 times greater than those from traditional farming.
• A 5% to 10% reduction in the water and nutrients required for growth.
• The ability to produce crops year-round in a controlled environment that can be customized for climatic regions.
• Enables farming regardless of soil conditions in almost any location.

The VertiCrop system also is to serve as a learning lab for the zoo, its visitors -- and prospective Valcent customers. The company says more than 50 of them will be touring the site in the next three months.

More information on vertical farming concepts and designs that include farming highrises is available at www.verticalfarm.com.

Steven Harper Gaffe

A bumble by the Prime Minister's Office has residents of Nunavut alternately chuckling and cringing.

A news release sent out Monday outlined Prime Minister Stephen Harper's itinerary as he began a five-day Arctic tour.

The release repeatedly spelled the capital of Nunavut as Iqualuit - rather than Iqaluit, which means "many fish" in the Inuktitut language.

The extra "u" makes a world of difference.

"It means people with unwiped bums," said Sandra Inutiq of the office of the Languages Commissioner of Nunavut.

"It's not exactly a nice term."

Whoops! How embarassing. Back to Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic for Mr. Harper. He must have been home sick the day the importance of correct spelling was discussed in the classroom.

Grandparront Post: The Babies Have Left The Nest

It turns out that the 3 amigos in the nestbox are the three amibros. There's 3 happy, healthy, males. Aren't they beautiful?

Space Junk Landing Soon in a Field Near You

All photos taken by: NASA


Millions of nuts, bolts, pieces of metal and carbon, and whole spacecraft from thousands of missions and/or launches form an orbiting garbage dump spinning around the Earth at speeds up to 22,000 mph.

In February 2009, a collision between a Russian and US satellite graphically showed the dangers of this growing mass of space junk. (Is there anywhere we won’t pollute?) Growing levels of concern regarding the possible “fallout” from this crisis have caused NASA and the European Space Agency to divert resources into monitoring space debris and researching ways to mitigate the damages. They have an eye on one day being able to safely remove this junk.

The NASA Orbital Debris Program Office estimates that 19,000 objects larger than 10 centimeters (3.94 inches) in diameter are known to exist. There are approximately 500,000 objects between 1-10 centimeters in size; and, probably in excess of tens of millions of particles smaller than 1 centimeter, say scientists.


According to one study there is an estimated four million pounds of space junk orbiting in low-Earth orbit. I always feel that studies such as this one tend to underestimate the potential dangers rather than looking at the facts and figures in realistic terms. Unfortunately, spacecraft, astronauts or spacecraft studying changes in our planet and atmosphere are now in danger of coming in contact with any of this space debris.

As usual, there’s good news and bad news. Here’s the good news: most space junk is located outside of the orbits of the International Space Station plus any space shuttles launched. The bad news: a recent NASA study forecasts a 10-fold increase in the probability of collision with debris over the next 200 years.

However, there were several factors that were not taken into consideration when the problem of 21st century space junk was first forecast. There was absolutely no account made for the fact that space exploration would accelerate. The predictions were made on no increase in space expeditions. The current predictions were also made prior to the 2007 intentional destruction of a Chinese weather satellite.

The Chinese ASAT test deposited more than 2,300 pieces of debris larger than 10 centimeters into some of the most heavily-used orbits where the world’s weather and climate monitoring satellites reside.

The satellite breakup and resulting debris cloud was “the most prolific and serious fragmentation in the course of 50 years of space operations,” according NASA’s Nicholas Johnson, Chief Scientist for Orbital Debris.

“There is an emerging consensus among the technical community that simply preventing creation of new debris is not going to be enough,” said Brian Weeden, Technical Consultant for the Secure World Foundation.

Weeden says that up until now, the debris mitigation process has been focused mainly on the technical aspects, but more and more attention is now being paid to the legal dimensions of space debris. A first step towards this end was the recent establishment of the United Nations Space Debris Mitigation guidelines.

“At some point we will need to actively remove debris from orbit. Fortunately, new studies are showing that removing as few as five or six objects per year could stabilize the debris population over the long term,” said Weeden.

“The big question right now,” added Weeden, “is which objects to remove first and what is the best method to do so.”

Who You Calling A Birdbrain?

They obviously have a better class of pigeon Down Under in Australia.

Instead of pecking around on the filthy pavements among cigarette butts, chewing gum and other human litter, they prefer to sip clean, fresh water and go to great lengths for a bath.

The trio pictured here, in Brisbane, Queensland, appear to have worked out a clever system of subverting the water fountain built by humans for humans to their own selfish pigeon purposes.

Cool: drink: As one pigeon sucks up water (left), another stands on the lever (right) and the third keeps watch.

After surreptitiously waiting for the fountain to be free, the instigator of the group jumps on the lever and pushed it down to fill up the bowl. While another kept watch, the third member of the group splashed in to get a little personal time. When it had drunk its fill and cleaned its feathers, the third pigeon nonchalantly hopped up to the handle to let his friends have a chance.

The three birds continued their bathing ritual for ten minutes, entertaining passers-by in Post Office Square, in Brisbane's bustling business district.

Pigeons, unlike other birds who need to hold their heads back in order to swallow, use their beak like a straw.

Though they aren't very popular in some parts of the world and are even referred to as rats of the sky, pigeons are considered among the most intelligent of all the bird species. Just look at this neat little scam these three have pulled off time and time again.

They have just finished having a few drinks and a spa treatment AND they stuck the City of Brisbane with the water bill!

Kudos to the photographer who knew a great shot when he saw it!

Cave Complex Found Under Giza Pyramids?

Reprinted courtesy: Discovery News

An enormous system of caves, chambers and tunnels lies hidden beneath the Pyramids of Giza, according to a British explorer who claims to have found the lost underworld of the pharaohs.

Populated by bats and venomous spiders, the underground complex was found in the limestone bedrock beneath the pyramid field at Giza.

"There is untouched archaeology down there, as well as a delicate ecosystem that includes colonies of bats and a species of spider which we have tentatively identified as the white widow," British explorer Andrew Collins said.

Collins, who will detail his findings in the book "Beneath the Pyramids" to be published in September, tracked down the entrance to the mysterious underworld after reading the forgotten memoirs of a 19th century diplomat and explorer.

"In his memoirs, British consul general Henry Salt recounts how he investigated an underground system of 'catacombs' at Giza in 1817 in the company of Italian explorer Giovanni Caviglia," Collins said.

The document records that the two explored the caves for a distance of "several hundred yards," coming upon four large chambers from which stretched further cave passageways.

With the help of British Egyptologist Nigel Skinner-Simpson, Collins reconstructed Salt's exploration on the plateau, eventually locating the entrance to the lost catacombs in an apparently unrecorded tomb west of the Great Pyramid.

Giovanni Caviglia: Caves at Giza
A drawing by Giovanni Caviglia showing the caves beneath the Sphinx. British researchers based their exploration on an account by consul general Henry Salt who documented his investigation of an underground system of "catacombs" at Giza in 1817.

Indeed, the tomb featured a crack in the rock, which led into a massive natural cave.

"We explored the caves before the air became too thin to continue. They are highly dangerous, with unseen pits and hollows, colonies of bats and venomous spiders," said Collins.

According to Collins, the caves -- which are tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of years old -- may have both inspired the development of the pyramid field and the ancient Egyptian's belief in an underworld.

"Ancient funerary texts clearly allude to the existence of a subterranean world in the vicinity of the Giza pyramids," Collins told Discovery News.

Indeed, Giza was known anciently as Rostau, meaning the "mouth of the passages."

This is the same name as a region of the ancient Egyptian underworld known as the Duat.

"The 'mouth of the passages' is unquestionably a reference to the entrance to a subterranean cave world, one long rumored to exist beneath the plateau," Collins told Discovery News.

Collins' claim is expected to cause a stir in the Egyptological world.

Zahi Hawass, chief of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, has dismissed the discovery.

"There are no new discoveries to be made at Giza. We know everything about the plateau," he stated.

But Collins remarks that after extensive research, he found no mention of the caves in modern times.

"To the best of our knowledge nothing has ever been written or recorded about these caves since Salt's explorations. If Hawass does have any report related to these caves, we have yet to see it," Collins said.

Newly-Released Satellite Photos Tell Truth Regarding Global Warming

Graphic images that reveal the devastating impact of global warming in the Arctic have been released by the US military. The photographs, taken by spy satellites over the past decade, confirm that in recent years vast areas in high latitudes have lost their ice cover in summer months.

The pictures, like the one below, were kept secret by Washington during the presidency of George W Bush; but, were declassified by the White House in mid-July. President Barack Obama is currently trying to spur Congress and the American public to take action to halt catastrophic climate change caused by rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

One particularly striking set of images - selected from the 1,000 photographs released – is the image below. If you click on the bottom right-hand corner of photo, it will enlarge. These satellite photos include views of the Alaskan port of Barrow. The one taken in July 2006 shows the arctic sea ice very close to the shoreline; while, the one taken in July 2007 shows the sea ice has retreated at an alarming rate.

Satellite images of polar ice sheets taken in July 2006 and July 2007 showing the retreating ice during the summer. Photograph: Public Domain.

These images demonstrate how global warming is changing the Arctic. More than a million square kilometres of sea ice - a record loss - were missing in the summer of 2007 compared with the summer of 2006. Nor has this loss shown any sign of recovery. The ice cover for 2008 was equally non-existent in 2007, and 2009 looks like it shaped up equally lacking.

"These are one-metre resolution images, which give you a big picture of the summertime Arctic," said Thorsten Markus of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Centre. "This is the main reason why we are so thrilled about it. One-metre resolution is the dimension that's been missing."

The disappearing sea ice could cause hunters like polar bears to starve because they no longer have the ice platforms necessary from which to hunt. The missing sea ice is sea ice that is not reflecting solar energy back into the atmosphere. This causes the water level to warm, melting more Arctic ice, raising the sea levels and exposing more of the ocean to warming which melts more Arctic ice, raising the sea levels on and on ad nauseum until so much destruction has occurred there is no longer any hope of survival. The phenomenon of the Arctic Sea warming threatens to set off runaway heating of the planet according to climatologists.

The latest revelations have triggered warnings from scientists that they no longer have the funds to keep a comprehensive track of climate change. Mid-July 2009, the head of the US's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Professor Jane Lubchenco, gave this warning: "Our primary focus is maintaining the continuity of climate observations, and those are at great risk right now because we don't have the resources to have satellites at the ready and taking the kinds of information that we need," said Lubchenco, an Obama appointee. "We are playing catch-up."

Even before this, however, scientists had sounded a warning claiming that the USA was blinding itself to climate change by cutting funds to the environmental satellite programs run by NOAA and NASA. The National Academy of Sciences should have put the USA on notice that the environmental satellite network was at risk of collapse.

As if on cue, to prove the point, in February, 2009, a NASA satellite carrying instruments to produce the first map of the Earth's carbon emissions crashed near Antarctica only three minutes after lift-off. The satellite would have measured carbon emissions at 100,000 points around the planet every day, providing a wealth of data compared to the 100 or so fixed towers currently in operation in a land-based network.

The Obama administration has already taken steps to tackle America's flagging scientific lead. The president's economic recovery plan allotted $170m US (£100m) to help close the gaps in climate modelling. The NOAA is seeking an additional $390m in its 2010 budget to upgrade environmental satellites, and help make data more available to researchers and government officials.

Go Green - Pee in the Shower

We in the western world have always had an aversion to our own bodily fluids. We seem to take the attitude that if it leaves our body we must dispose of it with the same care and disgust as we would toxic waste.

If only we were so careful about what we allow into our bodies. Or, possibly, realizing what we put in, we are loathe to deal with anything that comes out.

There has been a grassroots movement for many years that takes the slogan:

"If it's yellow - let it mellow. If it's brown - flush it down."

I can hear you all going "eeewwwww" at the thought of not flushing after every urination; but, urine is sterile even after exiting the body. There are no health hazards to not flushing after every urination and every flush saved is 3.5 gallons of water that can be used elsewhere. Due to the world-wide shortage of water, it is our duty to be responsible with the water we have.

Don't forget that the treated water that comes out of our taps for drinking is the same treated water that is diverted to your toilet. We have no ability to separate drinking water from toilet water; and as a result, treat many billions gallons of water that could be used for cooking and drinking flushing them literally down the toilet.

However, a similar type of conservationism is being promoted by a Brazilian environmental group.

The spots urge citizens to save water — by urinating in the shower.

The group, SOS Mata Atlantica, estimates that each household in Brazil could conserve 1,157 gallons of water annually by avoiding one flush a day. The total population of Brazil is 188 million. The potential water savings here is enormous.

The humorous spots, which are narrated by children, feature cartoon drawings of people from all walks of life — a basketball player, trapeze artist and even an alien — urinating in the shower.

The ads wrap with: "Pee in the shower! Save the Atlantic rainforest!"

Donna Duberg, assistant professor of clinical laboratory science at St. Louis University says, "It's fine because urine is sterile. We have no bacteria or viruses in our urine, which is why if patients aren't feeling well, we can culture it. Plus, water from the shower and toilet end up in the same sewer line."

The following video shows one of the ads (in Portuguese) with "colour" commentary from the newscaster (in English).



Comments, readers? Thanks to K for the story lead.

The Little Shop of Horrors Revisited

All photos taken by co-discoverer Stewart McPherson

The Little Shop of Horrors. A cult classic among movie buffs about a plant shop and the man-eating pitcher plants in the back room.

Pitcher plants have long fascinated mankind with their ability to digest meat. Most pitcher plants are like the “Venus Flytrap” of our youth that trapped and ate flies. As a child, I watched in amazement as the plant snapped its leaves shut when something landed on them and wondered how they could digest meat. The kind of stuff nightmares could be made of.

At a time when new species seem to be discovered at a fantastic rate, another new species of pitcher plant has been discovered in the highlands of the central Philippines. This newly-discovered giant carnivorous plant is among the largest of all pitchers with enough size to catch rats as well as the traditional insects.

The botanists who discovered the plant have named it after the British natural history broadcaster David Attenborough.

The newly discovered giant pitcher (Nepenthes attenboroughii).

They published details of the discovery in the Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society earlier this year.

Rumours of this new species of pitcher plant first began in 2000 after two Christian missionaries attempted to scale Mount Victoria. Mount Victoria is not generally accessible to the public without special permission owing to the difficulty of the ascent. There is no designated route (or route of any kind) to the summit, and, as such, it is necessary to ascend the mountain by walking up river-beds prone to flash flooding. Attempts to reach the peak have resulted in a number of deaths.

With little preparation, our intrepid missionaries attempt to climb the mountain becoming lost for 13 days before being rescued from the slopes. However, they returned with tales of a never-before-seen large carnivorous pitcher plant.

That pricked the interest of three exceptional botanists. They are natural history explorer Stewart McPherson of Red Fern Natural History Productions, Poole, Dorset, UK; independent botanist Alastair Robinson, formerly of the University of Cambridge, UK; and, Volker Heinrich, of Bukidnon Province, the Philippines.

All three are pitcher plant experts and are no strangers to travelling to remote locations in the search for new species. So in 2007, they set off on a two-month expedition to the Philippines, which included an attempt at scaling Mount Victoria to find this exotic new plant.

Big enough to drown a rat.

Accompanied by three guides, the team hiked through lowland forest, finding large stands of a pitcher plant known to science called Nepenthes philippinensis, as well as strange pink ferns and blue mushrooms which they could not identify.

Unidentified blue fungi.

As they closed in on the summit, the forest thinned until eventually they were walking among scrub and large boulders

"At around 1,600 metres above sea level, we suddenly saw one great pitcher plant, then a second, then many more," McPherson recounts. "It was immediately apparent that the plant we had found was not a known species."

"The plant is among the largest of all carnivorous plant species and produces spectacular traps as large as other species which catch not only insects; but, also rodents as large as rats," says McPherson.

The team also encountered another pitcher, Nepenthes deaniana, which had not been seen in the wild for 100 years. The only known existing specimens of the species were lost in a herbarium fire in 1945.

As if this wasn’t enough to keep the botanists reeling, on the way down, the team came across a striking new species of sundew, a type of sticky trap plant, which they are in the process of formally describing.

1,100 Threatened California Desert Tortoises Under Threat From Army

Photo: Desert tortoise. Credit: Rachel Wilson.

The desert tortoise (Gopherus agassizii) is a species of tortoise native to the Mojave and Sonoran deserts of the southwestern United States and northern Mexico.

During the 1920s, there were 1,000 California desert tortoises per square mile in the Mojave Desert. Within only 70 years, in 1990, the desert tortoise was listed as a threatened species through the US Fish and Wildlife Endangered Species Act.

The tortoises' decline is due primarily to loss of habitat caused by uncontrolled cattle grazing on the delicate desert grasses that are the base of the tortoise diet. The desert tortoise is an herbivore. Grasses form the bulk of its diet; but, it also eats herbs, annual wildflowers; and, new growth of cacti, as well as their fruit and flowers.

Much of the tortoise’s water intake comes from moisture in the grasses and wildflowers they consume in the spring. Without an adequate moisture intake in the spring, the tortoise may not live to see the next spring. A large urinary bladder can store over forty percent of the tortoise's body weight and enables the tortoise to go a year without water if they have had adequate access to the moisture-bearing grasses that sustain it over the year.

Currently, the tortoises' main survival danger is raven predation on hatchlings and the upper respiratory disease syndrome (URDS) which is believed to have been introduced into the wild population in the early 1980's.

As it prepares to expand training operations at Ft. Irwin in the Mojave Desert, the U.S. Army is again proposing to move more than 1,100 threatened California desert tortoises -- an unprecedented number of an endangered species that has not fared well during previous relocations.

Moving desert tortoises is not always successful. In fact, it can be downright unsuccessful most of the time. The Army relocated more than 600 of the animals last year; but, had to suspend the $8.7-million program after the first phase. Officials noted high mortality rates among the newly-relocated tortoises.

About 90 animals were found dead from suspected coyote predation. However, Clarence Everly, natural and cultural resources program manager at Ft. Irwin, is quick to point out that only one animal died during the actual physical relocation.

Ninety tortoises dead out of 600 relocated is still approximately a loss of one in seven animals. No matter how they died whether in the actual relocation or as a result of the relocation, one in seven animals is inexcusable in any relocation effort – especially one where the animals are already a threatened species.

The sheer numbers of tortoises proposed to be moved in this latest operation, beginning next spring through 2012, alarms conservationists.

"Nothing's ever been done on this scale before," said Ileene Anderson, a biologist with the Center for Biological Diversity, who says a total of 252 tortoises have died in the translocation area. "Every time the animals recognize that they don’t know where they are, they have some built-in mechanism that tells them to head for home and they make a break for home." Read their press release here.

This homing instinct is so strong that in the last move, some tortoises traveled up to five or six miles to get back to their home range, Anderson said.

In their infinite wisdom, the army wants to relocate the already stressed tortoises to a drought-ravaged area of the western Mojave where even more stress will be placed on these animals.

The desert tortoise population is already declining fast; it doesn't need this new problem. "Desert tortoise populations in some areas have declined by as much as 90% since the 1980s and the Mojave population is listed as threatened. It is unlawful to touch, harm, harass or collect wild desert tortoises." Unless you are the Army, it would seem.

Following is a video of a Desert Tortoise in the wild.



Army-produced video update of relocation:



A video from AnimalResQ (the other side of the story):



Want still more information? Desert Tortoise Survival Alliance