"These tiny, toxic particles creep into your body, affecting your lungs and your heart," said Younan, a preventive medicine research associate at the Keck School of Medicine. Tiny pollution particles called particulate matter 2.5 (PM2.5) -- 30 times smaller than a strand of hair -- are extremely harmful to your health, according to Diana Younan, lead author of the study. A new study linking higher levels of air pollution to increased teenage delinquency is a reminder of the importance of clean air and the need for more foliage in urban spaces, a Keck School of Medicine of USC researcher said. The data was adjusted for gender, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, neighborhood socioeconomic characteristics and neighborhood quality. "Many affordable housing developments are built near freeways. Many scientists suspect PM2.5 causes inflammation in the brain or somehow travels directly into the brain and messes with neural network connections, resulting in the observed bad behaviors." The study, published on Dec. 13 in the Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, suggests that ambient air pollution may increase delinquent behavior among 9- to 18-year-olds in urban neighborhoods in Greater Los Angeles. They computed each participant's residential address and used mathematical modeling to estimate the ambient PM2.5 levels outside each home.
Now...this is simply bizarre. You mean to tell me that I could have been using the environment to get myself out of trouble? Where was this article like 7 years ago! To be fair, this article is a bit of a stretch...and fails to take other factors into account. However, it is by far the most interesting article I have read in a while; the implications could be linked to mental disorders as well. However, the population being 9-18 year olds in URBAN Los Angeles neighborhoods would discourage any inferences about ALL teenagers. In order to make this statistically significant, one would have to do studies and tests in MULTIPLE areas in the county, and people of all age groups. Next time I mouth off in Mr. Hollister's class, I can't want to blame my poor behavior on the pollution outside...or rather, everywhere!
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That Deer Is Eating My Tree! (https://www.livescience.com/61116-mule-deer-are-eating-pando.html)12/7/2017 Pando, the world's largest living organism — and possibly its oldest — is being destroyed by the voracious appetite of mule deer. Also known as the trembling giant, Pando is a colony of quaking aspen that spans 106 acres (43 hectares) of south-central Utah. Because of an explosion of deer in the area, new sprouts from Pando are eaten before they have a chance to mature, and the venerable organism is at risk of dying out altogether. It's essentially a forest of one tree, Rogers said. It's very, very desirable to these herbivores," Rogers said. "If we had a community of 50,000 people and every one of them was over 80 years of age, we wouldn't have a very sustainable community," Rogers said. "It's really actually not a big number that are chronically feeding on that area," Rogers said. "The system is not replacing itself; it's highly out of balance," said Paul Rogers, an ecologist at Utah State University and the director of the Western Aspen Alliance. Rogers is working with several different agencies and interest groups to find ways to save Pando that everyone can live with. Finally, there are cabins near Pando, and one campground is located within the grove itself, Rogers said. The problem has been going on for decades, Rogers said. Meanwhile, the older stems are almost all between 110 and 130 years old, which is about the typical life span of individual quaking aspen stems, Rogers said.
Maybe this is a good time to take up hunting...or maybe it isn't. This is a moral dilemma for scientists, because if one values all nature equally, then it would be environmentally ethical to let nature take its course; However, if one values the rarity/oldness of the natural species, then they would o there best to remove the deer. Be it by poison, guns, or adding predators to the environment, anything should be done to save these trees. This is the worlds OLDEST living organism...I think the world can do without a few mangy deer...wouldn't you agree? The deer will not go extinct because they are eradicated from an area...but the Pando is a once in a WORLD kind of thing. |
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