Whales help reduce carbon dioxide

Research by Trish Lavery at Flinders University has shown that by feeding in deep waters and defecating in surface waters, whales cycle iron and other nutrients to where they can be used for photosynthesis, helping absorb carbon dioxide. The research has been published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society and re-published in the popular magazine Scientific American and been the subject of radio and television news reports. Even the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society quickly publicized the news with an editorial praising whale excrement.

In other whale news, the German magazine Spiegel Online has an article on whaling, with an accompanying photo gallery, and TIME magazine has had some commentary on the issue as it is recently in the news. Australia is taking Japan to the World Court and Japan is starting its northern hemisphere whaling season.

Worldmapper

Worldmapper is an interesting site, especially for students, teachers, and people who are interested in the world. They have created about 700 maps which display information in a visual, map form. The sizes of countries are distorted to show various kinds of information in a proportional way. This map shows the number of elderly people in the country.

© Copyright 2006 SASI Group (University of Sheffield) and Mark Newman (University of Michigan).

Other maps show distribution patterns of food, goods, resources, work, income, wealth, health, education, poverty, violence, cause of death, age of death, communication, religion, language, and other measurable qualities. This site also allows you to download high-resolution images, PDFs, Excel or OpenDoc data spreadsheets, and other resources under a Creative Commons license.