EYE  SPY NEWS

Water transport is as deadly as land vehicles. Pollution caused by ships causes around 60,000 deaths every year, according to a study by James Corbett and his colleagues of the University of Delaware, Newark, US . Ships release between 1.2 and 1.6 million tonnes of airborne particles each year from burning shipping fuel. These particles are less than 10 micrometres in diameter and include carbon, sulphur and nitrogen oxides. They enter our blood stream and eventually lead to lung or heart failure. And they would increase deaths worldwide by 40 per cent by 2012, says the team. As if cars were not enough!

Sounds like an oxymoron, doesn’t it? But it is real. A dwarf variety of elephant, which attains a maximum height of just 1.5 metres, has been discovered by the District Forest Department in the Kanyakumari wild life sanctuary. They are known as Kallaana among the local Kanni tribals, and do not inter-breed with common Indian elephants. “The department has counted 21 elephants in the sanctuary limits”, says Sundarajan, District Forest Officer.

The year 2008 might be cooler than the recent years globally. But it will still be in the list of the top 10 warmest years on record since 1850. British forecasters at the University of East Anglia predict that the global average temperatures this year would be 0.37°C above the long-term 1961-1990 average of 14°C, as compared to the 2001-2007 period with an average of 0.44°C above the 1961-90. They took into account rising atmospheric concentrations of Greenhouse Gases, solar variations, natural changes in the ocean currents, and the annual Pacific Ocean La Nina weather phenomenon (that reduces the sea surface temperature by around 0.5°C), which is expected to be strong this year. “The fact that 2008 is forecast to be cooler than any of the last seven years does not mean that global warming has gone away,” says Phil Jones, director of climate research at UEA.

What would happen if you take a fish out of water? It will die? No, not if the fish is Mangrove Rivulus (Rivulus marmoratus). This tropical killifish living in mangrove swamps across the Americas can survive out of water for months at a time! They group together in logs hollowed out by insects and breathe air through their skin instead of their gills, says Scott Taylor, a researcher at the Brevard County Environmentally Endangered Lands Programme in central Florida. And their metabolism keeps functioning. The fish may hold clues to how animals evolved over time, as they live in an environment that is similar to what existed millions of year ago, when animals began making the transition from water onto land. Hmm... nothing seems impossible these days.

Sleep more to stay in shape. This is what a recent study on the relationship between sleep duration and overweight risk for third-grade and sixth-grade children says. Researchers found that children who do not sleep enough – less than nine hours each day – were more likely to be overweight, regardless of their gender, race, socio-economic status, or quality of home environment.

“Many children are not getting enough sleep, and that lack of sleep may not only be making them moody or preventing them from being alert and ready to learn at school, it may also be leading to a higher risk of being overweight,” says study lead author Julie C. Lumeng, MD, assistant research scientist at the University of Michigan Center for Human Growth and Development. This weight gain may be a result of sleep’s effect on secretion of hormones, like leptin and grehlin, in the body.

ILLUSTRATIONS: SHYAMAL