Death of Yellow-cedar
Yellow-cedar, a culturally and economically valuable tree in southeastern Alaska and adjacent parts of British Columbia, has been dying off across large expanses of these areas for the past 100 years. But no one could say why—until now. The cause of tree death, called yellow-cedar decline, is now known to be a form of root freezing that occurs during cold weather in late winter and early spring, but only when snow is not present on the ground. When present, snow protects the fine, shallow roots from extreme soil temperatures. The shallow rooting of yellow-cedar, early spring growth, and its unique vulnerability to freezing injury also contribute to this problem. Yellow-cedar decline affects about 60 to 70 percent of trees in forests covering 600,000 acres in Alaska and British Columbia.
Women’s death
1,000 women die every day due to pregnancy or childbirth, or one woman every 90 seconds. Ninety-nine percent of these deaths occur in the developing world, 90 percent in Africa and Asia. A handful of complications account for 80 percent of these maternal deaths—severe bleeding, infections, high blood pressure, obstructed labor, and unsafe abortion—and the bulk of these deaths are preventable.
Big Brother watching you
March 1st, 2012 onwards Google officially kicks off their new privacy policy that is anything but private. We gave you a heads up more than a month ago — heck, George Orwell tipped us all off more than 60 years ago — so don’t say we didn’t warn you when your search results all of a sudden seem to be one step ahead of you. If you’re less than thrilled about Big Brother watching you, how about a round of applause for Mozilla CEO Gary Kovacs who just unveiled a new Firefox add-on that lets you watch Big Brother right back. It’s called Collusion, a visualization tool that helps you see all the various websites tracking your browsing trail while surfing the Web.