Thursday, May 31, 2012

USC Dornsife Scientific Diving: Ecosystem Monitoring in the Ngederrak Marine Conservation Area

By Jim Haw and David Ginsburg

The Rock Islands of Palau is a unique and unmistakable site. It is not uncommon to hear comparisons between this very real place and the fictional world of James Cameron's Pandora. Administratively, the Rock Islands lie in The State of Koror, the most populous of this thinly populated Republic. The Koror State Government is responsible for monitoring and regulating the use of The Rock Islands. They have defined six conservation zones for The Rock Islands ranging from General Use followed by Subsistence Fishing, through Preservation, Conservation, and Tourism, to the most restrictive management category, Special Management.

USC Dornsife students taking a heading at the start of a transect in Ngederrak. (Photo by Jim Haw)



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Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Warming gas levels hit 'troubling milestone'

WASHINGTON (AP) - The world's air has reached what scientists call a troubling new milestone for carbon dioxide, the main global warming pollutant.

Monitoring stations across the Arctic this spring are measuring more than 400 parts per million of the heat-trapping gas in the atmosphere. The number isn't quite a surprise, because it's been rising at an accelerating pace. Years ago, it passed the 350 ppm mark that many scientists say is the highest safe level for carbon dioxide. It now stands globally at 395.

So far, only the Arctic has reached that 400 level, but the rest of the world will follow soon.

'The fact that it's 400 is significant,' said Jim Butler, global monitoring director at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Earth System Research Lab in Boulder, Colo. 'It's just a reminder to everybody that we haven't fixed this and we're still in trouble.'

Carbon dioxide is the chief greenhouse gas and stays in the atmosphere for 100 years. Some carbon dioxide is natural, mainly from decomposing dead plants and animals. Before the Industrial Age, levels were around 275 parts per million.

For more than 60 years, readings have been in the 300s, except in urban areas, where levels are skewed. The burning of fossil fuels, such as coal for electricity and oil for gasoline, has caused the overwhelming bulk of the man-made increase in carbon in the air, scientists say.

It's been at least 800,000 years - probably more - since Earth saw carbon dioxide levels in the 400s, Butler and other climate scientists said.

Until now.

Readings are coming in at 400 and higher all over the Arctic. They've been recorded in Alaska, Greenland, Norway, Iceland and even Mongolia. But levels change with the seasons and will drop a bit in the summer, when plants suck up carbon dioxide, NOAA scientists said.

So the yearly average for those northern stations likely will be lower and so will the global number.

Globally, the average carbon dioxide level is about 395 parts per million but will pass the 400 mark within a few years, scientists said.

The Arctic is the leading indicator in global warming, both in carbon dioxide in the air and effects, said Pieter Tans, a senior NOAA scientist.

'This is the first time the entire Arctic is that high,' he said.

Tans called reaching the 400 number 'depressing,' and Butler said it was 'a troubling milestone.'

'It's an important threshold,' said Carnegie Institution ecologist Chris Field, a scientist who helps lead the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. 'It is an indication that we're in a different world.'

Ronald Prinn, an atmospheric sciences professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said 400 is more a psychological milestone than a scientific one. We think in hundreds, and 'we're poking our heads above 400,' he said.

Tans said the readings show how much the Earth's atmosphere and its climate are being affected by humans. Global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels hit a record high of 34.8 billion tons in 2011, up 3.2 percent, the International Energy Agency announced last week.

The agency said it's becoming unlikely that the world can achieve the European goal of limiting global warming to just 2 degrees based on increasing pollution and greenhouse gas levels.

'The news today, that some stations have measured concentrations above 400 ppm in the atmosphere, is further evidence that the world's political leaders - with a few honorable exceptions - are failing catastrophically to address the climate crisis,' former Vice President Al Gore, the highest-profile campaigner against global warming, said in an email. 'History will not understand or forgive them.'

But political dynamics in the United States mean there's no possibility of significant restrictions on man-made greenhouse gases no matter what the levels are in the air, said Jerry Taylor, a senior fellow of the libertarian Cato Institute.

'These milestones are always worth noting,' said economist Myron Ebell at the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute. 'As carbon dioxide levels have continued to increase, global temperatures flattened out, contrary to the models' used by climate scientists and the United Nations.

He contends temperatures have not risen since 1998, which was unusually hot.

Temperature records contradict that claim. Both 2005 and 2010 were warmer than 1998, and the entire decade of 2000 to 2009 was the warmest on record, according to NOAA.

___

Online:

NOAA's global monitoring lab: http://esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/

___

Seth Borenstein can be followed at http://twitter.com/borenbears



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Lost Photographs Reveal History of Greenland's Glaciers

A set of 80-year-old photographs discovered in a basement archive reveals the remarkable sensitivity of Greenland's glaciers to climate change, according to a new study that one scientist called 'glaciological research with a splash of Indiana Jones.'

The research, published online May 27 in the journal Nature Geoscience, reveals a pattern of stop-and-go melting along Greenland's southeastern coast. Aerial photographs dating back to 1931 show a period of glacier retreat between 1933 and 1943, followed by a cool period of advancing ice until 1972. More recently, most of those gains have been lost as temperatures creep upward.

'From these images, we see that the midcentury cooling stabilized the glaciers,' said Jason Box, a geographer at the Byrd Polar Research Center at Ohio State University. 'That suggests that if we want to stabilize today's accelerating ice loss, we need to see a little cooling of our own.' [Images: Greenland's Gorgeous Ice]

Early retreat

The long-lost photographs were taken during an expedition led by Danish explorer Knud Rasmussen and include aerial photos of land, sea and ice in southeastern Greenland. After expedition researchers created a map from the photographs, the glass-plate images were tucked away at the National Survey and Cadastre of Denmark and forgotten.

National Survey researchers were cleaning out the basement of their archives when they ran across the glass plates. They contacted Anders A. Bjørk, a doctoral fellow at the Natural History Museum of Denmark. For Bjørk, the find was a gold mine. Satellites have kept an orbiting eye on Greenland's ice since the 1970s, but measurements from before then are rare. That makes it tough to determine the ice's sensitivity to temperatures.

Bjørk, Box and their colleagues digitized the photographs and used software to compare them with images taken by the U.S. military in the World War II era and to modern satellite and aerial photographs. They found the 1933-43 ice retreat followed an unusually warm period in Arctic history. From about 1919 to 1932, temperatures in the region rose by about 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) per decade - about a half-degree Celsius cooler than today's Arctic temperature, but still a useful parallel.

Between 1933 and 1943, glaciers retreated by about 33 to 164 feet (10-50 meters) per year, the photos revealed. Glaciers that terminated on land retreated just as fast as glaciers that fed the sea. In the current period of ice loss that began in the 2000s, ocean-abutting glaciers are melting much more quickly than land-bound glaciers. It could be that the 1930s ice loss pushed glaciers back to higher elevations and stripped them of surface area, making them less vulnerable to warming temperatures.

Today, average ice loss in southeastern Greenland is 164 feet (50 meters) of retreat each year, higher than the 1930s rates. Several fast-melting glaciers, including one losing 2,910 feet (887 meters) of ice each year, are driving up the average.

A cool period

Between these periods of melt, things were looking up for Greenland's glaciers. During the 1943-72 cooling period, 60 percent of southeastern Greenland's glaciers advanced, and 12 percent stayed stationary.

The cooling was likely due in part to natural atmospheric cycles and in part to sulfur dioxide pollution. Sulfur dioxide, an industrial pollutant that is a main cause of acid rain, wrecks havoc on human health, but it also reflects sunlight away from the Earth. Atmospheric sulfur dioxide levels decreased following the Clean Air Act of 1963.

The glaciers' response to heat and cold was faster than previous studies had suggested, the researchers found, suggesting a high degree of sensitivity to air and ocean temperatures.

The ice losses of the last decade or so largely has wiped out the gains of the midcentury cool period. The current loss of ocean-terminating glaciers is a problem because it is the major contributor to sea-level rise, according to Benjamin Smith, a University of Washington researcher. Smith, who was not involved in the study, wrote an accompanying editorial in Nature Geoscience. He compares the study launched by the long-lost photos to an Indiana Jones quest.

Although recent melting has outpaced the 1930s melting, the patterns of melt are similar, Smith says.

'This indicates that the retreat in the 2000s was a typical response of the ice sheet to warmer air and ocean temperatures, and that future warming events can be expected to have similar consequences,' he wrote.

Recent images reveal that Greenland's glaciers are moving 30 percent faster than they were a decade ago.

You can follow LiveScience senior writer Stephanie Pappas on Twitter @sipappas. Follow LiveScience for the latest in science news and discoveries on Twitter @livescience and on Facebook.

Copyright 2012 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

6 Handy Mobile Apps for City Transit

The Global Innovation Series is presented by BMW i, a new concept dedicated to providing mobility solutions for the urban environment. It delivers more than purpose-built electric vehicles -- it delivers smart mobility services. Visit bmw-i.com or follow @BMWi on Twitter. You can make your way around most cities using Google public transit searches or various transit apps, but many cities now provide a list of recommended transportation apps on their websites. A handful of progressive cities even have their own official transit apps.

[More from Mashable: Branding: How to Convey Your Startup to the World]

Denver provides a list of handy third-party transportation app suggestions. Portland, Ore., has an open API and numerous third-party apps that recommend ways to get around. And New York City has a list of apps to navigate the concrete jungle.

These apps often provide real-time transit information -- such as the location of the closest bus stop with the soonest-arriving bus, or the low-down on various modes of transport to get you to your destination faster. Here are six cities with nifty transportation apps.

[More from Mashable: 10 Must-Follow Instagram Accounts for Stylish Women]


1. Los Angeles




In late 2010, the Los Angeles Department of Transportation launched an app called Go Metro. The app provides visitors and locals a way to plan across-town trips and uses GPS to identify the closest public transit station near you. Users of the app will also be alerted to news from the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

The free app is available for iPhone and Android.


2. Portland, Ore.




TriMet, the transit authority for the greater Portland area, has completely opened up its data on transit times and alerts for use by third-party app developers. TransitTimes Portland is an app for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch that takes advantage of this data to give users the city's light rail, bus and train schedules. TransitTimes allows users to plan trips throughout the Portland area and sends alerts when buses and trains are about to disembark.

If Android is more your style, then Portland Transit is the right tool for the job. Using the same open data, users can look up various bus stops by route or find stops near a certain location using the phone's GPS. The app even has handy speech-recognition capabilities that enable users to plan their trip via voice.


3. San Francisco




The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Authority partnered with Sky Highways to create the free Muni+ app. The app lets users find out when buses will arrive, locate stops closest to their location and check their Clipper card balance.

The recently launched app is available for free for iPhone and Android.


4. Denver




Denver does not have an official transportation app, but the city does promote Parkmobile on its website. The app handles parking payments and alerts you when your parking meter will expire. When you take the light rail around Denver, you can use the app to pay for parking your car at the nearest station. The app is available for iOS, Android, Windows and BlackBerry phones.


5. Ottawa




The city's official transit app for the iPhone provides maps, real-time transit updates and buses near your location. Depart from one spot most frequently? You can mark that location in your 'favorites.'

The MyTransit/MonTransport app is available for free, and it is available in French and English.


6. Singapore




Visitors to Singapore can get around easily with the transit app SG Buses. This easy-to-use app for iPhone will help you navigate your way around Singapore's extensive bus system. The app also utilizes the smartphone's GPS to show nearest bus stops along particular routes. Are you an Android user who's traveling to Singapore? Try the highly rated SBS Next Bus app that provides bus arrival times and a 'journey planner' to map out your trip.


Conclusion


With a growing number of third-party apps available for a plethora of mobile devices, cities that designate one official transit app can make finding reliable information easier for consumers. However, the demand is strong for open APIs that allow willing and capable developers to create apps -- which could potentially top current city apps in terms of efficiency and user-friendliness.

If you're into private transport, a number of other apps have made travel by taxi and town car simpler with mobile payment options and the ability to request a ride just with the tap of a button.

Does your city provide transit app recommendations or have its own app? Tell us in the comments.


Series presented by BMW i


The Global Innovation Series is presented by BMW i, a new concept dedicated to providing mobility solutions for the urban environment. It delivers more than purpose-built electric vehicles; it delivers smart mobility services within and beyond the car. Visit bmw-i.com or follow @BMWi on Twitter.

Are you an innovative entrepreneur? Submit your pitch to BMW i Ventures, a mobility and tech venture capital company.




Photo courtesy of iStockphoto, gremlin?

This story originally published on Mashable here.

Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Saving Dominican forest and an elusive songbird

SAN FRANCISCO DE MACORIS, Dominican Republic (AP) - An elusive songbird that wings its way each year from austere mountaintops of the northeastern U.S. to the steamy forests of the Caribbean has inspired the creation of what conservationists hope will be a new model for nature reserves in a country that has long struggled with deforestation.

The reserve is taking shape in a lushly overgrown former cattle ranch measuring about 1,000 acres, at the edge of a deep green forest in the Dominican Republic's rugged northeast. Conservation-minded Dominican and U.S. investors have acquired the plot as a pilot project, hoping to protect what they say is a global biodiversity hotspot that's home to dozens of threatened species.

Tentatively known as the Reserva Privada Zorzal, the government sees the reserve as a potential example, showing that such land can be put to better uses than burning down the trees to convert it to pasture, a typical approach in this Caribbean country with only about 40 percent of its forest cover left. Neighboring Haiti, which shares the island of Hispaniola, has virtually none of its forest standing.

Jesus Moreno, a Dominican businessman whose family is partially funding the reserve, says the portion of the property where most of the trees have already been removed is well-suited to low-intensity, organic agriculture. He plans to grow macadamia trees and cacao, the raw material in chocolate, while allowing the forest to regenerate, in perpetuity, on three-fourths of the holding. The country's environment minister is scheduled to inaugurate the reserve project on June 5.

'I am not trying to make this into a big business and make a lot of money,' said Moreno, whose family's ventures also include a nursery that grows macadamia trees and the country's only factory processing the nuts. 'We are trying to create a model and break the cycle of destruction.'

The concept of setting aside private land for conservation in land trusts or easements is an old one, long in use in the U.S. and elsewhere, but still rare in the Dominican Republic, a largely poor country.

Some private landowners have set aside tracts for ecotourism and nature reserves, and the government has designated more than 130 public reserves. But much of the country's forests face threats from development, agriculture and illegal timber harvesting, carving what remains into ever smaller chunks that leave species isolated and vulnerable.

In practice, the government reserves usually provide protection to endangered species in name only, said Sesar Rodriguez, the executive director of the Dominican Environmental Consortium.

Among those species at risk is the zorzal migratorio, known in English as the Bicknell's thrush. The palm-size, brownish songbird mostly comes out at dusk or dawn and, like many birds, heads south in the winter. It divides its time between the Caribbean islands and mountaintop forests in the northeastern U.S. and southern Canada that generally rise above 3,000 feet.

The bird is considered vulnerable, with an estimated fewer than 100,000 in the wild, because it occupies a narrow range of habitat that's under pressure on both sides of its migratory route, said Chris Rimmer, an ornithologist at the Vermont Center for Ecostudies who is an expert on the Bicknell's thrush and helped establish the reserve. Threats to the species in the U.S. include air pollution and loss of the conifer forest habitat from development and climate change.

It's not a high-profile species likely to spur public passions, and some bird species in the Dominican Republic are under a more dire threat, Rimmer readily acknowledges. But he and others are nonetheless devoted to the Bicknell's thrush, what he calls an 'enigmatic' bird.

'It's much bigger than just this one little migratory songbird,' Rimmer said. 'If we protect it we automatically protect all the other elements of the flora and fauna, many of which are themselves under siege.'

The Cordillera Septentrional range, a mist-shrouded cloud forest that shimmers an emerald green in the distance from the former pasture acquired for the reserve, is also considered habitat for vulnerable species such as the Hispaniolan parrot and mammals such as the Hispaniolan solenodon, a nocturnal burrower that resembles a possum with a long snout.

Rimmer, for one, has spent countless hours studying the Bicknell's thrush in the granite mountains of New England and the dense forests of the Dominican Republic, listening for its nasal, swirling call. 'It's kind of ethereal, I guess, kind of mysterious,' he said of the sound.

He and other researchers noticed that as the Dominican Republic was losing forest, female Bicknell's were being crowded out of their prime habitat by the larger males, depriving them of food they need for the journey back to North America.

He began working with the Dominican Environmental Consortium and others to find a way to expand two areas designated as protected by the government - the Loma Quita Espuela, which Moreno's father helped found, and the Guaconejo reserves.

This loose-knit group eventually found land owned by the family of an elderly doctor that was just a few miles west of the Loma Quita Espuela reserve, prime habitat for the thrush and near the country's cacao-growing center of San Pedro Macoris, a combination of factors that seemed perfect for a blend of profit and preservation, said Charles Kerchner, an American working as a project manager for the consortium. Part of the land was still an active cattle ranch, the rest already in various stages of regrowth and some had been left untouched for so long that it had become fairly healthy secondary growth forest - not virgin, by any means, but not bad.

Most of the money for Reserva Privada Zorzal came from the Eddy Foundation of Willsboro, New York, and Moreno's family, which previously owned a controlling stake in the Helados Bon chain of ice cream stores in the Dominican Republic and neighboring Haiti, Kerchner said.

Danneris Santana, a vice minister in the natural resources ministry, said about a dozen new private reserves are in process of getting approval under regulations that were updated last year. Moreno and others involved in the zorzal project say several landowners in the vicinity of their site are close to adopting similar plans.

'While it's great that we are doing (the Zorzal reserve), it's an isolated project and we need others to protect their land as well,' Kerchner said.

Much will depend on the economic viability of the effort. Besides the macadamia and cacao, Kerchner said they are looking for other sustainable uses of the surrounding forest, such as honey production and high-end chocolate.

The Dominican Republic is already a producer of organic cacao in the fertile hills around San Francisco de Macoris and has a growing macadamia nut crop, but the country is not a significant global supplier of either commodity. Most of the world's cacao comes from Africa and Indonesia; Hawaii and Australia are the main producers of macadamia nuts.

The backers of the project expect to allow public access but the plans are not yet defined. The property is more than an hour's drive along a bone-jarring road from the nearest town.

'To be a sustainable business, we need to get value from this forest,' Kerchner said.

Huge Ancient Civilization's Collapse Explained

The mysterious fall of the largest of the world's earliest urban civilizations nearly 4,000 years ago in what is now India, Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh now appears to have a key culprit - ancient climate change, researchers say.

Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia may be the best known of the first great urban cultures, but the largest was the Indus or Harappan civilization. This culture once extended over more than 386,000 square miles (1 million square kilometers) across the plains of the Indus River from the Arabian Seato the Ganges, and at its peak may have accounted for 10 percent of the world population. The civilization developed about 5,200 years ago, and slowly disintegrated between 3,900 and 3,000 years ago - populations largely abandoned cities, migrating toward the east.

'Antiquity knew about Egypt and Mesopotamia, but the Indus civilization, which was bigger than these two, was completely forgotten until the 1920s,' said researcher Liviu Giosan, a geologist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. 'There are still many things we don't know about them.' [Photos: Life and Death of Ancient Urbanites]

Nearly a century ago, researchers began discovering numerous remains of Harappan settlements along the Indus River and its tributaries, as well as in a vast desert region at the border of India and Pakistan. Evidence was uncovered for sophisticated cities, sea links with Mesopotamia, internal trade routes, arts and crafts, and as-yet undeciphered writing.

'They had cities ordered into grids, with exquisite plumbing, which was not encountered again until the Romans,' Giosan told LiveScience. 'They seem to have been a more democratic society than Mesopotamia and Egypt - no large structures were built for important personalitiess like kings or pharaohs.'

Like their contemporaries in Egypt and Mesopotamia, the Harappans, who were named after one of their largest cities, lived next to rivers.

'Until now, speculations abounded about the links between this mysterious ancient culture and its life-giving mighty rivers,' Giosan said.

Now Giosan and his colleagues have reconstructed the landscape of the plain and rivers where this long-forgotten civilizationdeveloped. Their findings now shed light on the enigmatic fate of this culture.

'Our research provides one of the clearest examples of climate change leading to the collapse of an entire civilization,' Giosan said. [How Weather Changed History]

The researchers first analyzed satellite data of the landscape influenced by the Indus and neighboring rivers. From 2003 to 2008, the researchers then collected samples of sediment from the coast of the Arabian Sea into the fertile irrigated valleys of Punjab and the northern Thar Desert to determine the origins and ages of those sediments and develop a timeline of landscape changes.

'It was challenging working in the desert - temperatures were over 110 degrees Fahrenheit all day long (43 degrees C),' Giosan recalled.

After collecting data on geological history, 'we could reexamine what we know about settlements, what crops people were planting and when, and how both agriculture and settlement patterns changed,' said researcher Dorian Fuller, an archaeologist with University College London. 'This brought new insights into the process of eastward population shift, the change towards many more small farming communities, and the decline of cities during late Harappan times.'

Some had suggested that the Harappan heartland received its waters from a large glacier-fed Himalayan river, thought by some to be the Sarasvati, a sacred river of Hindu mythology. However, the researchers found that only rivers fed by monsoon rains flowed through the region.

Previous studies suggest the Ghaggar, an intermittent river that flows only during strong monsoons, may best approximate the location of the Sarasvati. Archaeological evidence suggested the river, which dissipates into the desert along the dried course of Hakra valley, was home to intensive settlement during Harappan times.

'We think we settled a long controversy about the mythic Sarasvati River,' Giosan said.

Initially, the monsoon-drenched rivers the researchers identified were prone to devastating floods. Over time, monsoons weakened, enabling agriculture and civilization to flourish along flood-fed riverbanks for nearly 2,000 years.

'The insolation - the solar energy received by the Earth from the sun - varies in cycles, which can impact monsoons,' Giosan said. 'In the last 10,000 years, the Northern Hemisphere had the highest insolation from 7,000 to 5,000 years ago, and since then insolation there decreased. All climate on Earth is driven by the sun, and so the monsoons were affected by the lower insolation, decreasing in force. This meant less rain got into continental regions affected by monsoons over time.' [50 Amazing Facts About Earth]

Eventually, these monsoon-based rivers held too little water and dried, making them unfavorable for civilization.

'The Harappans were an enterprising people taking advantage of a window of opportunity - a kind of 'Goldilocks civilization,' Giosan said.

Eventually, over the course of centuries, Harappans apparently fled along an escape route to the east toward the Ganges basin, where monsoon rains remained reliable.

'We can envision that this eastern shift involved a change to more localized forms of economy - smaller communities supported by local rain-fed farming and dwindling streams,' Fuller said. 'This may have produced smaller surpluses, and would not have supported large cities, but would have been reliable.'

This change would have spelled disaster for the cities of the Indus, which were built on the large surpluses seen during the earlier, wetter era. The dispersal of the population to the east would have meant there was no longer a concentrated workforce to support urbanism.

'Cities collapsed, but smaller agricultural communities were sustainable and flourished,' Fuller said. 'Many of the urban arts, such as writing, faded away, but agriculture continued and actually diversified.'

These findings could help guide future archaeological explorations of the Indus civilization. Researchers can now better guess which settlements might have been more significant, based on their relationships with rivers, Giosan said.

It remains uncertain how monsoons will react to modern climate change. 'If we take the devastating floods that caused the largest humanitarian disaster in Pakistan's history as a sign of increased monsoon activity, than this doesn't bode well for the region,' Giosan said. 'The region has the largest irrigation scheme in the world, and all those dams and channels would become obsolete in the face of the large floods an increased monsoon would bring.'

The scientists detailed their findings online May 28 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Copyright 2012 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Sanofi, Novo, Lilly shape up for big insulin fight

LONDON (Reuters) - Competition is ramping up in the multibillion-dollar market for long-lasting insulins, with Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly lining up new products that could trump Sanofi's top-seller Lantus.

Worldwide, Lantus has some 80 percent of the market for long-acting, or basal, insulins used to treat diabetes and the product had sales of around $5 billion last year. Now rivals are closing in.

Denmark's Novo has a new insulin called Tresiba, or degludec, that is awaiting a U.S. approval decision by July 29 and could also get a green light in Europe in the second half of the year.

And Lilly's new long-acting insulin LY2605541, though still some years from reaching the market, is already causing a stir after signs in mid-stage Phase II clinical tests it may help patients lose weight.

If confirmed in later trials, that could give it a unique selling point against other therapies for controlling type 2 diabetes, a disease that is closely linked with obesity.

'Even modest - but real - weight loss could be a major commercial advantage over other basal insulins,' Mark Schoenebaum, an industry analyst at ISI Group, said.

At the same time, Lantus faces indirect competition from so-called GLP-1 drugs like Byetta and Bydureon from Amylin Pharmaceuticals, Victoza from Novo and several others still at the development stage.

More details on the changing landscape for diabetes treatments will emerge when scientists and doctors discuss progress at the American Diabetes Association annual meeting from June 8 to 12.

LANTUS SLOWDOWN

Tim Anderson of Bernstein believes Lantus revenues, which grew 20 percent a year over 2007-11, will slow to an annual rate of 6.5 percent from 2012-16 - and from 2015 onwards sales of the drug are likely to go into decline, assuming generic 'biosimilars' arrive around then.

Consensus forecasts also predict annual Lantus sales continuing to rise to just under $7 billion by 2015 before declining thereafter, according to Thomson Reuters Pharma data.

Sanofi is working to defend its business by developing an improved, longer-lasting formulation of Lantus and a Lantus plus GLP-1 combination product.

But Novo Chief Executive Lars Sorensen believes his firm can turn the tables on Sanofi, although he is prepared for a lengthy battle. He told Reuters last year it would probably take until 2014 or 2015 before Tresiba was in a position to capture the bulk of new patients going on to basal insulins.

Ending Sanofi's 10-year dominance would be a major coup for Novo, whose existing long-acting insulin Levemir has failed to seriously dent the French drugmaker's grip on the market.

Tresiba, however, may have little time in a duopoly with Sanofi's Lantus before Lilly enters the ring with LY2605541, according to Tim Race of Deutsche Bank. Phase III clinical data for the Lilly drug is expected in 2013, suggesting it will be snapping at Tresiba's heels.

International drugmakers are competing fiercely in the type 2 diabetes market as the number of people with the disease worldwide continues to grow rapidly.

Diabetics typically start out on oral medicine but often need to move on to insulin injections to regulate their blood-sugar levels.

One side-effect of taking insulin can be hypoglycemia, when sugar levels become dangerously low. A key selling-point for the new products from Novo and Lilly is that they cause fewer such 'hypos'.

(Editing by Helen Massy-Beresford)



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Saturday, May 26, 2012

Slow progress since Earth Summit 20 years ago

Twenty years after the Earth Summit in Rio pledged to save the environment for future generations, observers and policy makers agree swifter action is required to avert climate catastrophe.

But even as new warnings were issued this week of impending disaster -- more severe droughts, disease spread and land-effacing sea level rises -- climate negotiators gathered in Bonn continued to bicker over procedure.

'Let's consider climate change like you are in a car trying to stop before reaching a ledge. We are applying the brakes but we are still far away from decelerating enough not to fall from the ledge,' Wael Hmaidan, director of activist group Climate Action Network, told AFP on the sidelines of the talks which ended Friday.

On Thursday, climate researchers said the planet could warm by more than 3.5 degrees Celsius (6.3 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2100 if countries do not raise their game.

The UN's target is a 2 C (3.6 degree Fahrenheit) limit on warming from pre-industrial levels for manageable climate change.

Paul Hare from German policy research group Climate Analytics said the gap between countries' promised interventions and the reality was 'getting bigger.'

And the International Energy Agency said CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion reached a new high last year, providing 'further evidence that the door to a 2 deg C trajectory is about to close.'

The Earth Summit had yielded the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, which in turn led to the Kyoto Protocol binding 37 rich nations to curbing greenhouse gas emissions.

'I would say that the climate negotiations at their twentieth anniversary are definitely moving in the right direction, but not at the speed and not at the scale' required, UN climate chief Christiana Figueres said in Bonn.

Scientists who monitor progress under the name Climate Action Tracker (CAT) say warming of 3.5 deg C could cause many plant and animal species to die out, deserts to expand and agricultural production to plummet.

They say the scenario can be avoided if governments raise their commitments considerably, and fast -- cutting fossil fuel subsidies and boosting renewable energy production.

'The only thing that is creating the gap is a lack of political will,' said Hmaidan.

Alden Meyer, director of strategy and policy with the Union of Concerned Scientists, said climate change posed the greatest threat to the well-being of people and ecosystems 20 years after the Rio conference.

'It is not too late to address this threat, but scientists tell us the window for effective action is rapidly closing. Without much more ambitious action now, we will be condemning our children and grandchildren to suffer the consequences of truly dangerous levels of climate change.'

Countries agreed at UN climate talks in Durban, South Africa last December to draft a new climate pact by 2015.

Due to take effect from 2020, it should bind all countries to greenhouse gas emission cuts.

But gathered in Bonn for the past 11 days, negotiators tasked with laying the groundwork for the new deal got stuck in procedural bickering as battle lines were redrawn between rich nations and some in the developing world over apportioning responsibility for tackling global warming.

'The now-predictable drama and upheavals at the United Nations climate treaty talks underscored the precarious state of multilateral efforts to reach a new agreement to protect the world's climate,' observed the Environmental Defense Fund.

Fast-growing economies like China and India, fearing emission cuts may slow their development engines, insist the developed world, which polluted more for longer, should bear a greater mitigation burden.

But the West and small countries most threatened by climate change are eager for the emerging polluters to step up to the plate.

Even as countries hurled accusations at one another in Bonn, all agreed on one thing: 'it is getting very late', in the words of EU climate commissioner Connie Hedegaard.

Some progress has been made as the world prepares for the Rio+20 summit on sustainable development next month and the next round of UN climate talks in Qatar in December.

Twenty years ago, when United States climate negotiator Jonathan Pershing attended the Earth Summit 'we met in a room for the entire world that was the size of the room here', he said -- gesturing at a press conference room in Bonn.

'The most recent meeting than we had in Durban, we had 10,000 people and we had global coverage and we had heads of state.'

Every major economy in the world has now made a commitment to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, Pershing pointed out.

'I think the world is recognising how much damage could be caused but also the importance of acting.'



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Friday, May 25, 2012

Is China poor? Key question at climate talks

BONN, Germany (AP) - Another round of U.N. climate talks closed without resolving how to share the burden of curbing man-made global warming, mainly because countries don't agree on who is rich and who is poor.

China wants to maintain a decades-old division between developed and developing countries, bearing in mind that, historically, the West has released most of the heat-trapping gases that scientists say could cause catastrophic changes in climate.

But the U.S. and Europe insisted during the two-week talks that ended Friday in Bonn that the system doesn't reflect current economic realities and must change as work begins on a new global climate pact set to be completed in 2015.

'The notion that a simple binary system is going to be applicable going forward is no longer one that has much relevance to the way the world currently works,' U.S. chief negotiator Jonathan Pershing said.

Countries like Qatar and Singapore are wealthier than the U.S. per capita but are still defined as developing countries under the classification used in the U.N. talks. So is China, the world's second largest economy.

Finding a new system that better reflects the world today, while also acknowledging the historical blame for greenhouse gas emissions, is the biggest challenge facing the U.N. process as it seeks a global response to climate change.

'That is a fundamental issue,' said Henrik Harboe, Norway's chief climate negotiator. 'Some want to keep the old division while we want to look at it in a more dynamic way.'

The U.N. climate talks are based on the premise that industrialized countries must take the lead on climate change by committing to reducing emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. They are also expected to provide money to help poor countries grow in a sustainable way and to protect the most vulnerable nations from rising sea levels, droughts and other consequences of a warming world

Disputes on how to categorize countries going forward was behind much of the procedural wrangling that slowed down the talks in Bonn. Delegates failed to agree on an agenda until the last day, leaving most of the work for a bigger summit in Qatar in November.

A separate dispute between developing countries delayed the appointment of officials to steer the talks. That stalemate was also unlocked on the last day.

The slow pace frustrated climate activists who fear that there won't be enough political will to rein in emissions to avoid dangerous levels of warming in coming decades.

'The talk here doesn't match the action that science says is required,' said Mohamed Adow, senior climate change adviser at Christian Aid.

China's lead negotiator Su Wei told The Associated Press that the proposed new deal, which would have binding commitments for all countries after 2020, must be based on the principle of 'common but differentiated responsibility' enshrined in previous climate agreements.

'That means we still would continue the current division between developed and developing countries,' Su said.

He said China is still a developing country because if you look at wealth per capita, it barely makes the world's top 100. More than 100 million Chinese live below the poverty line, which Beijing has defined as about $1 a day.

Still, Western officials say China's fast-growing energy needs and rising emissions mean it can no longer be off the hook in climate negotiations.

'We need to move into a system which is reflecting modern economic realities,' EU negotiator Christian Pilgaard Zinglersen said.

In the early 1950s, China accounted for just 2 percent of global emissions while the U.S. accounted for more than 40 percent, according to Climate Analytics, a climate research group based in Potsdam, Germany.

Today China's share of global emissions exceeds 25 percent, while the U.S. share has fallen toward 20 percent.

China and its supporters reject blame for stalling the climate talks, saying it is the U.S. and other developed nations that are unwilling to live up to their obligations to cut carbon emissions.

The U.S. refused to join the only binding accord to limit emissions - the 1997 Kyoto Protocol - partly because it didn't include China.

Seyni Nafo, spokesman for a group of African countries in the climate talks, noted that the U.S. also said that joining Kyoto would harm the U.S. economy. Years later, the U.N. climate effort still has little support in the U.S. Congress, which includes outspoken climate skeptics.

'We are hoping that they will get on board this time, which is not a given,' Nafo said.

Brazil leader vetoes parts of law opening up Amazon

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff Friday vetoed parts of a new forestry code that environmentalists say would lead to further deforestation in the Amazon, home to the world's largest collection of plants and animals.

'The president of the Republic decided in favor of carrying out diverse vetoes and modifications to the draft law that deals with the forestry code,' government lawyer Luis Inacio Adams told a news conference.

The overhaul of the 1965 forestry law approved by Congress a month ago had been seen as a victory for a powerful agri-business lobby after years of feuding with environmentalists.

But it is embarrassing for Brazil less than a month before it hosts the Rio+20 summit on sustainable development.

Rousseff removed 12 controversial articles and made 31 modifications to the bill which was to be published Monday in a special executive measure that enters into effect immediately, although it will have to be ratified later by the Congress.

Environment Minister Izabella Teixeira said that in vetoing parts of the bill the government was seeking to ensure that there was no loss of areas of the Amazon and protected sensitive ecosystems.

She said the government also acted to prevent amnesties for those who had illegally cleared areas in the past, to preserve small landowners, and hold timber producers responsible for protecting the environment.

The text to be published Monday maintains the obligation to protect 80 percent of the forest in rural areas of the Amazon and 35 percent of the sertao, or arid hinterland of northeastern Brazil.

But it eases restrictions for small landowners who face difficulties in recovering illegally cleared land.

The veto shows that Brazil 'is a country determined to protect the environment while continuing to produce food,' Texeira said.

But environmentalists who had pushed for a full veto were not pleased.

'Brazilian and world public opinion sees a country which continues to play with the future of its forests,' said Maria Cecilia Wey de Brito, of the Brazilian branch of the conservation group WWF.

'We view the announcement of a partial veto with concern because we feel that a large part of the points most harmful for the environment have been maintained and only a few removed. In addition the veto will have to go through a Congress dominated by the agribusiness sector,' said Raul do Vale of the Socioenvironmental institute (ISA).

On Thursday the government was handed a petition calling for a full veto with more than two million signatures collected online from dozens of countries.

The new law has provoked fierce clashes between environmentalists and supporters of farmers and ranchers over how to regulate the country's vast but vulnerable wilderness.

Brazil is a major beef and soybean producer, and with international crop prices high and in many cases rising, farmers are keen to cash in.

The bill approved by Congress a month ago defines what part of the forest landowners in the Amazon and other large ecosystems are responsible for protecting.

It shows the two faces of Brazil: on the one hand, a giant agricultural producer and exporter with nearly 28 percent of its territory under cultivation, and on the other an environmental powerhouse with forests covering 60 percent of its territory.

Agriculture Minister Jorge Alberto Mendes Ribeiro said the presidential veto ensured that the code reconciles the interests of both the environmentalists and the powerful agribusiness sector.

The decision comes only weeks before Brazil hopes to champion sustainable development at the June 20-22 Rio+20 summit that will be attended by 115 world leaders and 50,000 participants.



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Brazil president vetoes parts of law opening up Amazon

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff has decided to veto parts of a new forestry law that environmentalists say would lead to a wave of deforestation in the Amazon, a senior official said Friday.

'The president of the Republic decided in favor of carrying out diverse vetoes and modifications to the draft law that deals with the forestry code,' government lawyer Luis Inacio Adams, said at a news conference.

The overhaul of the 1965 forestry law approved by Congress a month ago had been seen as a victory for a powerful agri-business lobby after years of battling with environmentalists, but it is embarrassing for Brazil less than a month before it hosts the Rio+20 summit on sustainable development.

Environment Minister, Izabella Teixeira, said that in vetoing parts of the bill the government was seeking to ensure that there is no reduction in those areas of the Amazon and other sensitive ecosystems that are protected.

She said the government also acted to prevent amnesties for those who had illegally cleared areas in the past, to preserve small landowners, and hold producers responsible for protecting the environment.

The 12 line item vetoes and 31 modifications to the bill approved by Rousseff were to be published Monday as a special executive measure that enters into effect immediately, although it will have to be ratified later by the Congress.

The new law has provoked fierce clashes between environmentalists and supporters of farmers and ranchers over how to regulate the country's vast but vulnerable wilderness.

The bill approved by Congress a month ago defines what part of the forest that landowners in the Amazon and other large ecosystems are responsible for protecting.

It shows the two faces of Brazil: one the one hand, a giant agricultural producer and exporter with nearly 28 percent of its territory under cultivation, and on the other an environmental powerhouse with forests covering 60 percent of its surface.

The pace of deforestation in Brazil has declined from 27,000 square kilometers (10,425 square miles) a year in 2004 to a little over 6,000 square kilometers (2,300 square miles) in 2011.



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Climate pact process stumbles as countries bicker

Less than six months after the world agreed to craft a new climate pact by 2015, negotiations stumbled at a crucial preparatory phase on Friday as rich and poor countries butted heads.

The concluding session of an already troubled 11-day haggle in Bonn ran into delays as countries clashed over who will chair the long negotiations, which aim at a post-2020 deal to roll back greenhouse-gas emissions.

'The window of opportunity is very slowly closing down on us,' conference chairwoman Sandea de Wet warned delegates at what was supposed to be a final meeting but was postponed for several hours.

The world is divided between developed and developing nations on apportioning responsibility for curbing global warming.

Fast-growing countries like China insist the West, which has been polluting more for longer, should shoulder more of the mitigation burden.

The latest dispute concerns the leadership of a group known by its initials ADP -- for ad-hoc talks on the so-called Durban Platform.

The ADP will lead the process agreed in South Africa last December to draft a new pact binding all nations, not just rich countries as is the case now.

China and its allies want India to chair the ADP, on the grounds that it is the Asia-Pacific bloc's turn to steer a subsidiary body under the UN Framework Convention for Climate Change (UNFCCC).

The other candidates are Norway and the Caribbean state of Trinidad and Tobago.

'This is a sad state of affairs,' South African climate ambassador Nozipho Joyce Mxakato-Diseko told delegates as she announced that for the first time since the UNFCCC was created 20 years ago, a lack of consensus may force an election to be held.

'All parties have confirmed to me they do not want to go this way, it is not in the culture of this structure, consensus is the norm,' she said.

An EU delegate informed the gathering that informal corridor talks had flagged a possible settlement, and asked for more time to explore the options.

On Wednesday, Europe warned the process was in danger of floundering, and participants accused China of blocking the ADP negotiating process.

The Asian giant responded Thursday that it was the United States, Europe and other rich states that were applying the brakes, trying to 'evade legally binding commitments' by shifting the focus away from already existing emission targets to as yet undefined commitments under the Durban Platform.



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Thursday, May 24, 2012

Rousseff under pressure to veto Brazil's new forest code

Activists on Thursday said they handed Brazil's president a petition with nearly two million signatures urging her to veto a new forestry code that could result in increased Amazon rainforest deforestation.

The bill would open huge areas of the country to farming if they were illegally logged before July 2008, and would allow farming along environmentally sensitive riverbanks.

President Dilma Rousseff has until Friday, less than one month before the Rio+20 UN summit on sustainable development, to veto the controversial measure.

The bill has support from Brazil's powerful agribusiness sector.

Avaaz, a global activist group concerned with issues of climate change, human rights and poverty, said the government was handed a petition with nearly two million signatures collected online from dozens of countries.

'Veto everything, Dilma,' said more than 150 environmental groups and several other representatives of Brazil's Bar Association, the Catholic Church, small farmers as well as politicians and even former environment ministers.

Avaaz spokeswoman Regina Tavini said Rousseff however did not receive the petitioners.

The activists called for a festive vigil from late Thursday until the president announces her decision.

The bill was initially intended as a bid to rein in unfettered logging and increase protection of Brazil's forested areas, which play a key role in reducing greenhouse gases.

But farm-based economic interests prevailed, and the bill was reshaped to ease restrictions that have been in place since 1965 and are credited with curbing deforestation.

Brazil is a major beef and soybean producer, and with international crop prices high and in many cases rising, farmers are keen to cash in.

A government source said Rousseff plans to veto part of the bill approved by Congress a month ago, removing any amnesty for those who logged illegally in the past and restoring protection of environmentally sensitive areas such as riverbanks.

More than 60 percent of Brazil's 8.5 million square kilometers (3.3 million square miles) are jungles and forests, but two thirds of it is either privately owned or its ownership is undefined.

In the sprawling Amazon River basin region, the existing law requires that as much as 80 percent be kept as woodland.

The proposed reform threatens 690,000 square kilometers (some 266,000 square miles) of vegetation, which would prevent Brazil from reaching its goal of reducing deforestation by 80 percent, according to Climate Observatory, a network of 26 groups set up in 2002 to promote civil society participation on climate change issues.



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Global warming winner: Once rare butterfly thrives

WASHINGTON (AP) - Global warming is rescuing the once-rare brown Argus butterfly, scientists say.

Man-made climate is threatening the existence of many species, such as the giant polar bear. But in the case of the small drab British butterfly, it took a species in trouble and made it thrive.

It's all about food. Over about 25 years, the butterfly went from in trouble to pushing north in Britain where it found a veritable banquet. Now the butterfly lives in twice as large an area as it once did and is not near threatened, according to a study in Friday's issue of the journal Science.

Decades ago, the brown Argus 'was sort of a special butterfly that you would have to go to a special place to see and now it's a butterfly you can see in regular farmland or all over the place,' said study co-author Richard Fox, an ecologist at Butterfly Conservation, a science and advocacy group in the United Kingdom.

Global warming helping the brown Argus is unusual compared to other species and that's why scientists are studying it more, said study co-author Jane Hill, a professor of ecology at the University of York.

Biologists expect climate change to create winners and losers in species. Stanford University biologist Terry Root, who wasn't part of this study, estimated that for every winner like the brown Argus there are three loser species, like the cuckoo bird in Europe. Hill agreed that it's probably a three-to-one ratio of climate change losers to winners.

As the world warms, the key interactions between species break down because the predator and prey may not change habitats at the same time, meaning some species will move north to cooler climes and won't find enough to eat, Root said.

'There are just so many species that are going to go extinct,' Root said.

What makes the brown Argus different is that it found something new to eat, something even better than its old food, the less common rockrose plant, Hill said. The new food is a geranium and it is more widespread.

'It's almost like the whole of the buffet is now open to it,' Hill said.

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Online:

Science: http://www.sciencemag.org

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Seth Borenstein can be followed at http://twitter.com/borenbears



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