Water and Exercise

Our bodies are made up of over 75% water. We all know that without water, there is no life. In fact we can only live 3 days without it. However, water has been replaced in most diets by soft drinks and other sugar sweetened refreshments. However, water is a healthier and more necessary drink that leads to better health and longetivity.

Your personal need for water can vary due to exercise, temperature and weight. Studies have shown that over 2/3’s of adults do not get enough water on a daily basis. By simply drinking water regularly you can replenish your body and keep it well-hydrated and functioning at maximum efficiency. Read more

Neville Spiteri: Breath is life, and we owe it to the oceans

The Blu is a global mission to create an ocean on the web as a shared media experience. It is a beautiful interactive online world, where every species and habitat is a unique work of art created by digital artists and developers from around the world. The Blu is a geo-social web application, where people connect across the Internet and explore a vast ocean on the web.

The Blu is not a game, animated movie, or a social media site. Having said that, it does fuse elements from all three media types into a new form of entertainment. Inspired by artistic expression and the global collaborative potential of the Internet, the Blu is the first example of what we refer to as “globally shared media and storytelling”.

Read more

The Baltic Sea: Deadly Heat

Using public transport on hot summer days can be a nuisance, as can waiting for a fan or an A/C technician to arrive. But we are not the only ones not adapted for unusually long periods of heat. Nature’s creatures of temperate latitudes suffer from the sweltering summers even more.

The severe heat waves of the summer of 2010 took their toll across the Northern Hemisphere. While people in Russia tackled a spate of forest fires, the Mediterranean was invaded by the poisonous jellyfish Rhopilema nomadica Galil. The largest concentration of these sinister creatures was registered off the coast of Israel. New species of toxic jellyfish were discovered in the Black Sea off the Turkish and Bulgarian coasts. Poisonous jellyfish were also found off the Ussuri coast in the Sea of Japan, where over a hundred people were stung by highly venomous jellyfish Gonionemus vertens in the Russian town of Artyom.

The reason for the abnormal heat is global warming, due to which the average temperature of the Oceans is rising gradually year after year. Read more

Blue-Green Algae: Challenge Accepted

The more phosphorus there is in the Baltic, the more active blue-green algae are. They bloom over wide areas, consuming all the oxygen, and turning large parts of the seabed into dead zones. Fish and other living things of the Baltic Sea suffer from the heavy impact of the algae.

The biomass of the blue-green algae in their blooming period is shown in the figure below. For example, in August 2010, in order to export all the algae from the Gulf of Finland, one would need 200,000 fully loaded ten-ton trucks!

Scientists are panicking: little time remains before the changes in the unique ecosystem of the Baltic Sea become irreversible. The Baltic subspecies of the gray seal are already under threat of extinction, as well as the Baltic subspecies of the ringed seal and various species of fish and birds. Read more

Most tap water polluted by dirty municipal infrastructure

As the United States becomes a nation of 300 million, the country’s older cities face the reality of overpopulation, crumbling infrastructures, and the health concerns raised by both, especially those related to the availability of fresh water.

Eric Goldstein, a spokesman for the Natural Resources Defense Council, has stated that the water distribution systems of cities such as Chicago, Denver, Philadelphia and New York are in urgent need of repair.

The antiquated water delivery systems in these cities are comprised of nearly 1 million miles of piping, mostly made of iron. As the iron pipes corrode, clean water flowing through them becomes contaminated with rust. Over time the pipes also rupture, causing not only water loss, but the introduction of pollutants and diseases from the ground.

“Investigations conducted in the last five years suggest that a substantial proportion of waterborne disease outbreaks, both microbial and chemical, are attributable to problems within distribution systems,” said the National Research Council in a report released in December for the Environmental Protection Agency. Read more