Rocío Acuña - 3º Trimestre

Ecofilm Festival se enfoca en la Biodiversidad Terrestre

Crear conciencia sobre el cuidado de la naturaleza a través de la creación cinematográfica es uno de los objetivos del Festival Internacional de Cortometrajes Ambientales, Ecofilm Festival, que ayer lanzó la convocatoria para su tercera edición que estará dedicada a la Biodiversidad Terrestre.

En esta ocasión, el encuentro fílmico que se realiza cada año a través de la Fundación Hombre Naturaleza, presidida por el cantante Emmanuel, invita a todos los interesados a participar con sus cortos en las categorías de Ficción, Documental, Animación y Campaña Audiovisual, a partir de ayer y hasta el 19 de julio próximo.

En conferencia de prensa, Emmanuel explicó que Ecofilm promueve la producción cinematográfica y el cuidado ambiental en un foro que busca el intercambio de ideas a través de una competencia, por lo que el premio para el Mejor Cortometraje Ecofilm 2013 será de un millón de pesos.

Destacó que el reto de selección de cortometrajes es cada vez mayor, pues el año pasado se recibieron más de 600 y este año esperan superar la cifra con trabajos, cuyos mensajes contribuirán a sensibilizar y promover hábitos positivos para el ambiente entre la población.

"Entre los logros que ha tenido el festival en tres años es motivar a una sociedad a hacer investigación sobre su país y descubrir la importancia de lo que Dios nos regaló, los mares, los ríos, las montañas, los litorales y la gran cantidad de especies", expresó.

Recordó que cuando iniciaron los trabajos de la Fundación Hombre Naturaleza "pensamos que el cine es un medio que se queda en el gente durante mucho tiempo y cuando las películas tienen un mensaje positivo contribuyen a formar a mejores seres humanos".

Agradeció el apoyo de todos los que contribuyen en la realización de este festival, entre ellos, la Cineteca Nacional, que será sede del encuentro; la Fundación Cinépolis, la Secretaría del Medio Ambiente, la Fundación Mexicana para la Educación Ambiental y las embajadas de los países invitados: Costa Rica, Brasil e Italia.

En su oportunidad, Juan José Guerra Abud, secretario de Medio Ambiente, señaló que el Ecofilm es un evento "con el que todos salimos ganando, y es de destacar el hecho de que los jóvenes se dediquen a indagar lo que pasa respecto al medio ambiente en México, un país megadiverso".

Finalmente, el funcionario reiteró el apoyo de la dependencia al festival y a quienes deseen participar en la competencia, ofreciendo todas las facilidades para el rodaje de sus cortometrajes.

Cabe destacar que dentro de la Competencia Nacional, el Mejor cortometraje del EcoFilm Festival 2013 recibirá un millón de pesos; mientras que las cuatro categorías (Ficción, Documental, Animación y Campaña Audiovisual) tendrán un primer y un segundo lugar con 100 mil y 50 mil pesos para cada caso.

Las bases de la convocatoria podrán consultarse en la página oficial en Internet del festival, y la fecha límite para registrar los trabajos participantes será el 19 de julio próximo.

http://www.informador.com.mx/entretenimiento/2013/446361/6/ecofilm-festival-se-enfoca-en-la-biodiversidad-terrestre.htm

Ecofilm Festival es uno de los eventos más importante que inciden sobre el cuidado de nuestro entorno, y biodiversidad. Consiste en enviar un cortometraje en una de las diferentes categorías, siempre relacionado con el cuidado de la naturaleza, y en donde habrá un ganador que se llevará una gran suma dinero.

En mi opinión es importante promover los buenos hábitos a favor de la naturaleza y la biodiversidad, y a través de cortes cinematográficos es una buena manera de llegar a todo el mundo, incluso a los más pequeños pues ellos son los que cuidarán de nuestros paisajes y animales en los años siguientes. Cuidar de lo que tenemos es importante, pues si lo destruimos, dejaremos un mundo inhabitable para nuestros hijos, nietos, etc.

_____________________________________________________________________

Massive Nitrogen Pollution Accompanies China's Growth

Beijing has been battling an unwelcome, unrelenting and "very unhealthy" smog for many months, much of it made up of particulate nitrogen compounds suspended in the air. Nitrogen pollution in China has kept pace with the country's rapid growth. A study published in Nature last week finds that the rate of nitrogen pollution grew by more than half in the last 30 years.

Researchers from China Agricultural University analyzed data from across the country and found the amount of nitrogen expelled into its surroundings every year rose by 8 kilograms per hectare every year between 1980 and 2010. While most of the nitrogen still comes from waste fertilizer, the source of nitrogen pollution is shifting from agriculture to industry and transport.

One of the byproducts of this saturation is nitrous oxide, one of the most threatening global warmers along with carbon dioxide and methane.

The levels of nitrogen now seen in China are similar to the levels in Europe in the 1980s, before it implemented countermeasures to protect its environment. The deposition is also well in excess of all defined threshold limits and critical load levels, said Peter Vitousek, ecologist at Stanford University and co-author of the study.

Most of China's nitrogen pollution is in the form of ammonia compounds, the kind found in fertilizer. "In the highly productive regions of China, they are putting on often two or three times more fertilizer that a Midwestern American or European farmer would use. It is often in excess of what the crop can take up, and then that is lost to the environment," Vitousek said. "There isn't any way to use fertilizer without some loss to the environment, but in China the amount is far in excess of what's required."

Senior scientist at Woods Hole Research Center Eric Davidson said the excessive fertilizer use is inspired by the need for food security. "One of the biggest drivers of nitrogen pollution in China is that they are increasing their agricultural productivity."

'Astounding' levels of fertilization
"Food security is a very big issue in China, so the Chinese government has been subsidizing fertilizer costs, and as a result farmers in China are using fertilizer rates that are astounding," said Davidson, who is one of the authors of a recent U.N. Environment Programme report on global nutrient supply.

While ammonia compounds associated with farming were five times as prevalent as nitrogen oxides in the 1980s, they are now only twice as common in China's water, soil and air. The rise of coal plants, industrial production and motor vehicles spewing nitrogen oxides has tilted this balance. Coal consumption in China has risen more than threefold since the 1980s, and there are close to 21 times more wheels on China's roads.

The study, which divided the country into six economic regions, reveals that most areas that have the most factories and farms have nitrogen deposition rates higher than the national average. "The difference was really to separate the areas where economic development has been most rapid and where there's not," Vitousek said. "It is also to provide information to the Chinese authorities, who will have to take action regionally."

Both nitrous and ammoniacal pollutants are continuously and rapidly accumulating in China's environment and contribute to aerosol formation. Oxidized nitrogen becomes part of photochemical smog and ozone and is a major component of the infamous PM 2.5, particulate matter less than 2.5 microns in diameter that decreases visibility and is harmful when inhaled because it can penetrate deeply into the lungs.

A half-life of 100 years
"The problem with nitrous oxide is that its half-life in the atmosphere is more than 100 years. Even if we were to mitigate nitrous oxide now, we would still be paying the price for many generations to come," Davidson said.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=massive-nitrogen-pollution-accompanies-chinas-growth

The news talks about the growth of nitrogen pollution there is in China has increased in recent 30 years. The cause of this increase are the factories and agriculture, whose pollution levels exceed Europe in 1980.

From my point of view this excess can have serious pollution problems for China's population breathe polluted air because day after day end up affecting their bodies. It is necessary to reduce these levels of nitrogen in the air to make the people lead healthy lives.

___________________________________________________________________

Do Whales Have Culture? Humpbacks Pass on Behavior

Whether it's learning a new song, figuring out how to use tools to forage for food, or picking up the local customs, learning from others is an important part of life for many animals, including people.

The idea of a culture or traditions—behavior shared by an identifiable group and acquired through social learning—in cetaceans, a group including whales and dolphins, has been controversial.

But a new study finds strong evidence that a group of humpback whales(Megaptera novaeangliae) in the Gulf of Maine (map) is sharing a newly observed feeding behavior via their social networks. (See related blog: "Sharks Have Social Networks, Learn From Friends.")

That behavior, called lobtail feeding, was first recorded in one whale in the Gulf of Maine in 1980. Since then, 278 humpback whales—out of about 700 observed individuals that frequent the Stellwagen Bank (map) area—have employed the strategy, according to the study, published this week in the journalScience.

"I've been arguing for over a decade now that cultural transmission is important in cetacean societies," said study co-author Luke Rendell, a marine biologist at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.

Though he wasn't surprised the whales traded information, he was surprised at how strongly his data said the whales learned the new feeding strategy socially, rather than because of other factors like having a genetic predisposition to the behavior.

Humpback Hunters

Lobtail feeding is a variation on a technique called bubble-net feeding, which is used by humpbacks around the world.

In bubble-net feeding, a whale blows bubbles into a kind of net surrounding the prey, corralling them into dense schools. Then the whale lunges up through the school with its jaws wide open, scooping up mouthfuls of food. (Watch a video that shows humpbacks bubble-net feeding.)

In lobtail feeding, the humpback slaps the surface of the water one to four times with the underside of its tail before diving down and blowing the bubble net. Rendell speculates the slaps may keep its sand lance prey from jumping out of the water, away from the whale.

"The origin of this behavior was strongly associated with the collapse of herring stocks and a boom in sand lance stock," said Rendell. So he and his team suggest that lobtail feeding came about when humpbacks switched from hunting herring to catching sand lances, a type of fish.

To track the spread of lobtail feeding in the whale population, the researchers combined data on fisheries stocks with a sampling of a long-term dataset (1980-2007) on humpback whale observations. The data are compiled by trained observers from the Whale Center of New England.

Not only did the use of lobtail feeding increase with corresponding peaks in sand lance populations in the '80s, Rendell and his colleagues found that knowledge of the new feeding behavior mirrored the loose social connections among the whales.

Basically, a naive whale—an individual who didn't exhibit lobtailing behavior—was more likely to start lobtailing if it associated with a whale that did use the new technique.

Culture Debate

The new study is a good proof of concept showing scientists can use this kind of network analysis in looking at questions of traditions and social learning, saidBennett Galef, a retired professor at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada, who specializes in social learning.

But Galef, who was not involved in the study, cautioned that a behavior can spread through a population without social learning.

It could be that since these animals move around together, they just pick up the same behavior at the same time, said Galef. "That's not culture."

Experiments can home in on how information spreads throughout a population better than observational studies can, he added. But Galef acknowledges that you can't exactly bring whales into a laboratory.

Simon Reader, a behavioral biologist at McGill University in Quebec, Canada, agreed that observational studies can be problematic. For instance, it's possible there's an alternate explanation for the spread of lobtail feeding in these humpback whales, he said.

"But I think there's pretty strong evidence for social learning."

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/13/130425-humpback-whale-culture-behavior-science-animals/

The news talks about the language of whales, as these animals communicate with others of their own species through their own language.

Explains a scientist who live in small groups to develop their own language like that of humans. In my opinion I do not think humans are the only ones that we can communicate with others, as this need have we also can have animals such as humpback whales.

______________________________________________________________________

¿CÓMO SE MUEVE UN GLACIAR?

La noticia explica como se desplazan los glaciares. Los glaciares avanzan debido a que las placas de hielo se deslizan por acción de la gravedad. Por ello el movimiento es invisible a nuestros ojos, pues el hielo solo se desplaza unos 25 cm al día.
Es importante tener en cuenta y controlar el desplazamiento de los glaciares, pues a mayor movimiento podría relacionarse con una causa de aumento de la temperatura debido al cambio climático.


_______________________________________________________________________

BROTES VERDES...EN EL ÁRTICO.

El articulo habla sobre el aumento, como se observa en el mapa, del color verde debido al deshielo de los glaciares y al incremento de la temperatura es mayor en el hemisferio norte del planeta que en el hemisferio sur.
Como explica la noticia, el límite de crecimiento de árboles y plantas se ha desplazado de 400 a 700 km, por lo que en mi opinión es bastante y puede causar, además de la extinción de animales que viven a bajas temperaturas, el aumento de los océanos.