Cloning Christmas
Botanists in Denmark say they are using cloning technology to
create what they hope will be the perfect Christmas tree, which
they plan to mass produce.
Cloning Christmas
Botanists in Denmark say they are using cloning technology to create what they hope will be the perfect Christmas tree, which they plan to mass produce. The dream of creating millions of cookie-cutter perfect Christmas trees should become a “reality in 10 to 15 years,” said Jens Find, the chief researcher at Copenhagen’s botanical laboratory responsible for the research. Microscopic Nordmann fir tree shoots are being split in two, with one half frozen while the other is nurtured in a sterile incubator for a year before being planted outside. When the perfect specimen has been determined, a “mother plant” will be created, using the shoot fragment kept frozen in the lab to generate millions of identical trees free of aesthetic imperfections.
Meteor Impact
Thousands of villagers in China’s northwestern province of Gansu scoured a remote area in search of remnants of a fiery object that lit up the sky and caused a loud explosion. The Beijing News reported that the elderly and young children scattered across the hills outside Lanzhou in search of what experts believe could have been a 1-ton extraterrestrial object that hit the ground. The China Daily published a photograph of a farmer holding one of the large silver-colored stones believed to be from the meteorite.
Tropical Cyclone
Tropical Storm Talas formed over the warm waters of the Marshall Islands, then passed between Guam and Yap before losing force just east of the typhoon-weary Philippines. The storm was mainly a threat to maritime shipping.
Volcanoes
Northern Indonesia’s Soputan Volcano erupted for the second time in two months, spewing black smoke that rained down on villages in North Sulawesi’s Minahasa district. Vulcanologists were unable to determine if the activity was a sign that a more powerful eruption was about to occur.
• The volcano that devastated the city of Goma in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo three years ago appears to be returning to life. Scientists monitoring Mount Nyiragongo have observed an increase in activity and say the summit is glowing red at night.
Earthquakes
The Japan’s northernmost main island of Hokkaido was rocked by more strong quakes that have caused minor damage.
• Earth movements were also felt in southern Japan’s Kyushu Island, Taiwan, Indonesia’s province of Papua, northern Morocco, Portugal, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, El Salvador, central Chile and in southern and central parts of coastal California.
Monsoon Floods
Days of incessant monsoon rainfall across Sri Lanka unleashed waves of flooding that forced 625,000 people from their homes and swamped at least a million acres of paddy and farmland. The vast network of hundreds of irrigation tanks built by ancient kings overflowed, submerging fields, roads and residential areas in eastern and northern parts of the island nation. Sri Lanka has been plagued by several cycles of flood and drought in recent years.
Icy Barrier
A colony of as many as 50,000 Antarctic penguin chicks face a bleak and hungry southern summer as a nearly 1,200-square-mile iceberg blocks them from their next square meal. Penguin parents are being forced to waddle up to 110 miles round trip to get meals for their chicks, and are returning only to have eaten all of the food during the arduous journey. Iceberg B15A broke off from Antarctica in 2000 and split in two just over a year ago before becoming lodged between the mainland and a tiny island outside McMurdo Sound. The world’s largest floating object has not only cut off the penguins from their food supply of open-water krill, but may also prevent supply ships from reaching three research stations on the McMurdo Sound coast next month.
Rat War Won
A massive infestation of rats around a northern Mexican village appears to have been conquered only weeks after an army of imported cats was defeated by millions of the rodents. A network of World War II-era rat traps and the distribution of blood-thinning serum in bait left out for the rats appear to have killed more than 85 percent of the pests. A clever device that drowns the rats in a barrel was also added to the village’s arsenal by a retired Massachusetts salesman who heard of Atascaderos’ peril. Rodent infestation experts have warned the village that it will be nearly impossible to eradicate the rats, and the population will have to remain vigilant in the future to keep the rat’s numbers down.
– By Steve Newman
