Positive TV is delighted to be working in association with The Resurgence Trust for The Resurgence Talks.
Recorded live at 42 Acres, London on 25 April 2018. Dr Rupert Sheldrake: a biologist and author of more than 85 scientific papers and 12 books, shares his wisdom and knowledge on science and spirituality. Focusing on meditation as a treatment for depression and anxiety, he explores the science behind it.
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Towards the end of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series, the dolphins abandon Earth for another dimension with the farewell message: “So long, and thanks for all the fish.”
While the intelligence of many whale and dolphin species has been attested for decades, a comprehensive study suggests that collectively they may be even brighter than we thought. So perhaps the scenario imagined by Douglas Adams is not as fantastic as it sounds.
Some of the animals turn out to be so good at co-opting humans and other species that one has to wonder what else they are plotting. Whales and dolphins appear to have followed an evolutionary course that is remarkably similar to humans’, with stable, close-knit tribes giving rise to their own languages and cultures and fostering ever bigger and more sophisticated brains.
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What”s next for the energy generation? We won”t keep you in suspense!
Were his story set today, though, Cervantes might have to change things up a bit: the monsters the self-styled knight battles might be set in the sky. Soon, in the airs above Fairbanks, Alaska, a wind turbine will be launched. It will use helium to hover above the ground, obviating the need for poles—and, for that casino matter, for land. The massive balloon will be, Gizmodo reports, the world”s first floating commercial wind turbine.
Three scientists have won the Nobel Prize for medicine or physiology after discovering how cells precisely transport material.
James Rothman and Randy Schekman, both from the US, and Thomas Sudhof, from Germany, shared the prize.
They found the way “vesicles” act like a fleet of ships transporting their goods to the exact destination.
It is crucial for the way the brain communicates, the release of hormones and parts of the immune system.
A newborn horse in Virginia has scientists celebrating, and not just because she’s cute. The still-unnamed filly isn’t a regular domesticated horse — she’s a Przewalski’s horse, a formerly extinct species deemed the last true wild horse on Earth. She’s also the first of her kind born via artificial insemination, a milestone seven years in the making.
Przewalski’s horses (pronounced “sheh-val-skee”) were declared extinct in the wild 44 years ago, wiped out from their native China and Mongolia by hunting, habitat loss and livestock encroachment. Fourteen survived in zoos, and thanks to conservationists, they had enough offspring to begin reintroduction in the 1990s. Those horses then reproduced in the wild, and in 2008 the species was upgraded from extinct to endangered.
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Researchers say that the recent spell of warm weather has seen a rapid increase in jellyfish blooms around Britain’s coasts.
The long, cold spring meant there were very few reports before June.
The Marine Conservation Society (MCS) now says several species including the Lion’s Mane are being reported in rapidly growing numbers.
This particular species has a powerful sting and scientists are advising people not to touch them.
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These maps show the levels of biodiversity down to an incredibly granular level, and hopefully can help conservationists get the most bang for their buck (by focusing on places other than the Amazon).
If your goal is to protect species variety (biodiversity), it helps to have a fine-grained picture. A map showing data for an area 100 by 100 kilometers tells you some useful things about the state of population. But it might miss an awful lot.
“Such a coarse scale of analyzing the data causes many problems,” says Clinton Jenkins, a research scholar at North Carolina State. “For instance, a grid cell 100 kilometers across could include multiple Andean Mountain ranges within Colombia, yet we know many species occur only at one or another range, and often only at particular elevations within the mountains.”
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Ten years ago the Iberian lynx was nearing extinction but today, thanks to an imaginative conservation programme that has brought hunters, farmers and the tourist industry under its wing, its numbers have tripled from 94 to 312.
“We can”t claim victory yet but now there is hope,” said Miguel Ángel Simón, the director of the programme for the recovery of the lynx in Andalusia, southern Spain. Only five years ago the animal was classified as critically endangered.
Distant Quakes Trigger Tremors at U.S. Waste-Injection Sites
This post excerpts the releases for two new important articles in the journal Science. The first is “Enhanced Remote Earthquake Triggering at Fluid-Injection Sites in the Midwestern United States” (subs. req’d). The second is a review article, “Injection-Induced Earthquakes” (subs. req’d) by U.S. Geological Survey geophysicist William Ellsworth. The first release, from Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, explains:
Project aims to understand distribution and severity of mystery disease causing Britain’s oak trees to ‘bleed to death’
A mystery disease causing Britain’s oak trees to “bleed to death” has prompted a £1.1m research effort to identify the cause.
The government-funded project aims to understand the distribution and severity of acute oak decline (AOD), a fast-acting disease than can bring about the death of an oak tree within 3-10 years of infection. AOD, first observed in the 1980s, is affecting several thousand oak trees across East Anglia, the Midlands and south-east England, but scientists do not know what is causing it. Thousands of trees are estimated to be affected.
The frenzy over kale has turned from foodie buzz to eater roar. Around the country everyone is talking about kale. As a physician, nothing could please me more. Kale represents an important lesson for all us eaters about the power of food choices to transform our health. Sure, let’s disclose my bias right away. My new book 50 Shades of Kale (Harper/Wave 2013,) co-authored with Chef Jennifer Iserloh, is just out. It is a gorgeous tribute to our muse kale and at its core a food prescription aimed to improve your brain health.
So what’s all the kale hype about?