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news @ nature.com The number of known species of the mouse lemur, the world’s smallest primate, has increased by 25% with the description of three new species, bringing the total to 15. Mouse lemurs are wide-eyed nocturnal animals that scamper around the forests of Madagascar, an island that harbors a tremendous diversity of wildlife. : [...]

livescience Areas that researchers have declared the most polluted in the world are typically little known even in their own countries. Yet they in total afflict more than 10 million people, experts reported today. The kinds of pollution in these areas not only lead to cancers, birth defects, mental retardation and life expectancies approaching medieval [...]

bbc United Nations negotiations on fisheries have ended without a global ban on trawling methods which destroy coral reefs and fish nurseries. Conservation groups and some governments had argued for a ban on bottom-trawling, which drags heavy nets and crushing rollers on the sea floor. Negotiators could only agree on a limited set of precautionary [...]

theoceanproject.org During drive hunts, migrating pods of dolphins and other small whales are first panicked and confused by loud banging, then herded, by the hundreds, into shallow coves and butchered, one by one, by fishermen. Every year, some 20,000 small cetaceans of several species, some of which are endangered, including bottlenose dolphins, striped dolphins, spotted [...]

Associated Press Animal and plant species have begun dying off or changing sooner than predicted because of global warming, a review of hundreds of research studies contends. These fast-moving adaptations come as a surprise even to biologists and ecologists because they are occurring so rapidly. At least 70 species of frogs, mostly mountain-dwellers that had [...]

climateark.org Global carbon emissions are now growing by 3.2% a year, according to results presented at an Earth science conference in Beijing on 9 November. That’s four times higher than the average annual growth of 0.8% from 1990-99. : The result is not particularly surprising — there have been many reports of countries missing their [...]

Associated Press If the sun warms the Earth too dangerously, the time may come to draw the shade. The “shade” would be a layer of pollution deliberately spewed into the atmosphere to help cool the planet. This over-the-top idea comes from prominent scientists, among them a Nobel laureate. The reaction here at the U.N. conference [...]

www.whoi.edu By Jerry McManus, Associate Scientist and Delia Oppo, Senior Scientist Geology and Geophysics Department Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution The short history of modern oceanographic observations—less than a century’s worth, really—doesn’t give us a long track record to evaluate how the ocean’s circulation has operated and changed in the past. Nor does it give us [...]

msnbc The world’s oceans are becoming more acidic, which poses a threat to sea life and Earth’s fragile food chain, German researchers told delegates at a U.N. conference on climate change. Oceans have already absorbed a third of the world’s emissions of carbon dioxide, one of the heat-trapping gases blamed for global warming, leading to [...]

reuters Climate change is melting a legendary ice field in equatorial Africa and may soon thaw it out completely, threatening fresh water supplies to hundreds of thousands of people, a climate expert said on Thursday. The fabled, snow-capped Rwenzori mountains — dubbed the “Mountains of the Moon” in travel brochures — form part of the [...]