Thailand plans to launch its first environmental satellite in November to help officials survey natural resources, cope with disasters and even fight drug trafficking, an official said.
The Theos satellite, whose name stands for Thailand Earth Observation Systems, has been under study and construction for two years, according to Thai space official Charnchai Peanvijarnpong, AFP reported.
“The satellite will help us predict the chances of droughts or floods,“ said Charnchai, who is deputy director of Geo-Informatics at the government’s Space Technology Development Agency.
The satellite will be able to monitor food crops but will also help counter-narcotics officials keep an eye on production of opium poppies and other illicit crops, he said.
“It will help state officials in suppressing illegal logging and drugs trafficking, while estimating the size of a number of other crops,“ Charnchai said.
The project cost about six billion baht (179 million dollars). Work on Theos was done in cooperation with European space company EADS Astrium, he said.

A view of Indian Ocean

Huge haze clouds over the Indian Ocean contribute as much to atmospheric warming in Asia as greenhouse gases and play a significant role in the melting of the Himalayan glaciers, according to a study published.
Unmanned measuring devices were sent into the haze pollution, known as Atmospheric Brown Clouds, over the Indian Ocean in March 2006 near the island of Hanimadhoo to measure aerosol concentrations, soot levels and solar radiation, Seattlepi.nwsource.com reported.
Researchers concluded that the pollution--mostly caused by the burning of wood and plant matter for cooking in India and other South Asian countries--enhanced heating of the atmosphere by around 50 percent and contributed to about half of the temperature increases blamed in recent decades for the glacial retreat.
Veerabhadran Ramanathan said his team’s research shows the brown clouds are an additional factor in the melting of glaciers, along with overall global warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions.
Until this study, published in the journal Nature, scientists believed the brown clouds mostly deflected sunlight, cooled the atmosphere and did not contribute much to the effects of global warming. But Ramanathan said their observations show particles also absorbed sunlight and warmed the atmosphere much more than previously believed.
“All we are saying is that there is one other thing contributing to atmospheric warming and that is the brown cloud,“ said Ramanathan, a chief scientist at the University of California San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, Calif.
Scientist have expressed concerns the Himalayan glaciers will melt entirely and the rivers will run dry for months at a time, fed only by annual rains like the monsoon that sweeps across the subcontinent every summer.
Melting is exacerbated by India’s and China’s fast-growing, coal-fed economies. Scientists say the glaciers are melting at a rate of up to 49 feet a year and predict they could shrink even more with temperatures projected to rise as much as 11 degrees by 2100.
While much of the melting has been blamed on global warming, Ramanathan said the new findings offer another way to tackle the problem of the melting glaciers. He said he was hopeful the findings would spur regional governments to step up efforts to replace wood-burning stoves, for example, with solar-powered cookers and biogas plants that capture methane and carbon dioxide emissions and convert them to fuel.

In response to increasing concern about the environmental state of the planet, many tourists are opting for holidays that give a little back, writes Guy Hobbs.
Grey travelers opt for greener holidays Faced with increasingly disturbing revelations of the damage that travel is doing to our planet, it is little wonder that people are beginning to question the way they spend their holiday time, wrote Telegraph.co.uk.
Eco holidays now include anything from monitoring marine life in Mozambique to looking after elephants in Thailand.
Off-setting carbon emissions, carefully choosing a carrier, and even avoiding air travel where possible are all ways that we, as tourists, can reduce the harmful effects of tourism.
But for many, simply reducing the negative impact of their holiday is not enough. There is a way to have an enjoyable holiday, whilst also making a positive contribution to the environment and helping to preserve the world’s endangered habitats and species of wildlife for generations to come.
As the issue of ’saving the planet’ climbs the international agenda, more and more people are combining their holidays with conservation initiatives worldwide.
Holidays offering the chance to help the environment have been growing in popularity for many years and in 2006, around 40,000 philanthropic Britons set off on volunteering holidays.
As the world faces its greatest biodiversity crisis and increasing numbers of species of flora and fauna become extinct, people of all ages and backgrounds are swapping lazing on a beach for two weeks of protecting elephants in Thailand, monitoring giant Amazonian river otters, working with orangutans in Sumatra or helping to maintain cloud forest in Ecuador.
This type of holiday is ideal for anyone who has ever wanted to volunteer abroad, but never quite found the time. Traditionally volunteering overseas has meant quitting your job and renting out your house, but a growing number of charities and travel operators are offering experiences that last from just a few days to a month. Everybody from high-flying businessmen to young-at-heart grandparents can take a life break and make a real difference, without putting their life on hold.

Snow leopards, Asiatic lions, Gangetic dolphins and wild buffaloes are among Indian wildlife species that are “gravely endangered,“ the government has warned.
Existing conservation measures for 14 rare species were inadequate, the Environment Ministry said in the agenda for a forthcoming meeting of the National Board for Wildlife, a copy of which was seen by Reuters. “With mounting demographic pressures, there are today a number of species which are gravely endangered, whose long-term survival can only be ensured if a determined effort is undertaken to initiate specific recovery plans,“ it said.
Other threatened species include the great Indian bustard, Malabar civet, pigmy hog, white winged wood duck, Andaman teal and the hangul, also know as the Kashmir stag.
Experts say increasing human interference such as development, encroachment and destruction of habitat, as well as poaching, are the main threats to the animals, which populate areas from the Himalayas to the Andaman and Nicobar islands.
The animals now often exist in isolated populations and authorities say its difficult to employ general conservation measures used on high profile species such as tigers and elephants as the needs and habitats of the animals are different.
“The isolation of animal species due to fragmentation of habitats reduces relict populations to unviable levels, leading to local extinctions,“ said the ministry.
India is the last bastion of the Asiatic lion, yet the big cats are now only found in the Gir landscape in the western state of Gujarat.
Considering the serious threats from epidemics or other natural disasters that could lead to extinction, the ministry says measures such as relocation of some of the lions to another sanctuary should be employed.

Two men fishing near IranÕs Bandar Turkaman, Golestan province

The rise in temperature in the Alps has put several plant species at risk.

Climate change is causing wild mountain flowers to move to higher altitudes and probable extinction, a study shows.
The rise in temperature in the Alps has put several plant species at risk.
Plants monitored in the Italian Alps have climbed 1,400ft in the last 48 years in response to a 1.5 C rise in temperature, reported Telegraph.co.uk.
All 52 separate plant species studied were found to have migrated upwards--by an average of 80ft per decade.
Researchers from the European Native Seed Conservation Network said 800 European plant species faced extinction, with mountain flowers most at risk as they climbed in search of cooler temperatures.
Plants at risk include the edelweiss, the Alpine clover and the yellow coltsfoot.
Researchers at Italy’s University of Pavia found coltsfoot had climbed from 8,530ft to 9,940ft in the Italian Alps.
Dr Gilberto Parolo said: “Some species had already reached the top of the mountain and this means that the only place for them, as our climate continues to warm, is extinction.“

Geologists have discovered 1.43 billion-year-old fossils of deep-sea microbes in ancient black smoker chimneys unearthed in a Chinese mine, providing more evidence that life may have originated on the bottom of the ocean.
The chimneys are 1 billion years older than similar fossils previously discovered and are nearly identical to the archaea--and bacteria-harboring structures found on sea beds, reported Xinhua.
“These are remnants of the oldest living types of life forms on the planet,“ said Timothy Kusky, a geologist at Saint Louis University and co-author of a new study that describes
the fossils.
Kusky said that the fossils offer “tantalizing suggestions“ that life developed near deep-sea hydrothermal vents and not in shallow seas, as other evidence hints.
Black smoker chimneys develop at submerged openings in the Earth’s crust that spew out mineral-rich water as hot as 752 degrees Fahrenheit (400 degrees Celsius). Bacteria that don’t depend on sunlight or oxygen move into the fragile chimneys that grow around the vents and feed on the dissolved minerals.
“Some people like to call it life in extreme environments. These bacteria pretty much live on a different planet compared to conditions we live in,“ Kusky said.
The chimneys can grow more 50 feet (15 meters) tall, but retrieving even a modern chimney sample is extremely difficult, as they’re fragile and can crumble when touched.
“This discovery offers scientists valuable on-land samples for geological and geo-biological research,“ Kusky said, noting that some of the fossils he unearthed measure 3 feet in length.
The age and size of the chimneys, Kusky said, will help scientists understand how ancient hydrothermal vent growth and the development of life on the sea floor might be interconnected.

Scientists from Moscow Zoo have found that not only human beings steal things, but animals also do that.
Animal thieves act the same as human--they hide their intentions, because they fear of open conflict with the victim, according to Russia-ic.com.
Animals usually steal food, nest material, and sometimes cubs and mating partners. Interesting fact--animals sometimes steal not for daily bread. Some male flies steal presents for females from other males--they pretend to be a female fly ready for mating, then just grab the present and fly away as fast as they can.
Scientists found out that thieves are usually old and large insects, and small and young ones prefer finding presents themselves. Lazyness rules insect world as well as human world.
As for stealing mating partners, this is common for sea bears. Young higher apes like to steal cubs, but 30 percent of little apes die due to inappropriate care. Thieves are afraid of the victim catching and killing them, that is why theft still is a rare bird in animal kingdom.

Pregnant women who consume a chemical found in everyday plastic products such as food containers and water bottles could be putting their unborn children at risk of developing cancer and other diseases when they reach adulthood.
Exposure within the womb to bisphenol A (BPA), a chemical used in the production of plastics, caused changes linked with diseases such as obesity, cancer and diabetes, according to studies by a team from Duke University Medical Centre, North Carolina, reported Bubblejam.net.
The results of the study in the lab of Dr Randy Jirtle, funded by the US National Institutes of Health and the Department of Energy, are published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in a paper which calls for the risks of the chemicals to be reassessed.
The Duke team studied the response of a strain of rodents known as agouti mice.
Normally, these mice tend to be slender and brown but when the mouse mothers received BPA, the team noted a statistically significant increase in the number of their offspring born with a yellow coat-- just over half, compared with 35 percent of controls.
Previous studies have shown that yellow agouti mice are at a much greater risk for diabetes, obesity and cancer.
“The fact that the mice fed BPA had a yellow coat and likely would grow to be obese as adults demonstrates that this single substance had a system-wide effect,“ said Dr Dana Dolinoy, one of the team.