Bicycle production increased 3.2 percent in 2007, bringing the number of new bicycles manufactured to 130 million annually, according to Worldwatch Institute estimates published in the latest Vital Signs Update. Two-thirds of this production continues to take place in China, which has long been an industry leader.

More and more cities are announcing plans to launch or expand bike-sharing schemes as part of a growing effort to reduce city congestion and extend public transportation options without huge infrastructure investments. Earlier this year, Paris rolled out 20,000 bikes at more than 1,450 rental stations throughout the city—four times as many stations as subway stops. Other cities have shown similar initiative, including Copenhagen, Berlin, and, more recently, Rome and Washington, D.C.

“Spreading bicycle use goes hand in hand with sustainable transportation,” said Gary Gardner, a senior researcher for the Worldwatch Institute and the author of the Update. “It’s good for people’s health and is a low-cost way to reduce pollution.”

Many of the places with the highest cycling rates have emphasized policies that give priority to cycling, walking, and public transportation over private automobiles. These same policies have all made cycling safe, fast, and convenient.

“With the right leadership from policymakers worldwide, bicycle use could take off and become part of the solution to climate change,” added Gardner.

"All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a sprit of brotherhood", states Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR).

60 years after its adoption by the United Nations General Assembly at the Palais de Chaillot in Paris on 10 December 1948, the Declaration is ready to take a journey into space: destination the International Space Station, and more specifically, ESA's Columbus laboratory.

On Friday 7 November at the Quai d'Orsay, the French Foreign Ministry, Ms Rama Yade, state secretary responsible for foreign affairs and human rights within the French government, will officially hand over a copy of the Declaration to ESA's Director General, Jean-Jacques Dordain.

The Declaration, properly protected in space-proof packaging, is tentatively scheduled, if all goes according to plan, to reach the International Space Station following lift-off on board the Space Shuttle from the Kennedy Space Center on 14 November. It will be stored on a permanent basis inside ESA's Columbus multidisciplinary space laboratory.

"The ESA Astronaut Corps welcomes this humanitarian initiative. In recognition of the fact that human beings are at times downtrodden, the Declaration can symbolically find its place 'above' all the peoples of the world", says ESA astronaut Léopold Eyharts, who earlier took part in the launch, docking and start of operations of the Columbus laboratory during his two-month stay at the ISS in spring of this year.

The International Space Station hosts a crew of three international astronauts (soon to be six) on a permanent basis living and working in space in the interests of research and for the benefit of humanity as a whole. Together with the USA, Russia, Canada and Japan, Europe is a contributing partner in this international endeavour.

An alarming new study to be published in November in the Annual Review of Environment and Resources finds that one-third of the world’s marine fish catches are ground up and fed to farm-raised fish, pigs, and poultry, squandering a precious food resource for humans and disregarding the serious overfishing crisis in our oceans.

Lead author Dr. Jacqueline Alder, senior author Dr. Daniel Pauly, and colleagues urge that other foods be used to feed farmed animals so that these “forage fish” can be brought to market for larger-scale human consumption. “Forage fish” include anchovies, sardines, menhaden, and other small- to medium-sized fish species which are the primary food for ocean-dwelling marine mammals, seabirds (especially puffins and gulls) and several large fishes.

Currently, catches of forage fish are predominantly used in animal feed, but these species are highly nutritious and well-suited for direct human consumption.

“We need to stop using so many small ocean fish to feed farmed fish and other animals,” Alder said. “These small, tasty fish could instead feed people. Society should demand that we stop wasting these fish on farmed fish, pigs, and poultry.” Although feeds derived from soy and other land-based crops are available and are used, fishmeal and fish oil have skyrocketed in popularity because forage fish are easy to catch in large numbers, and hence, relatively inexpensive.

Entitled “Forage Fish: From Ecosystems to Markets,” the study is a product of the nine-year Sea Around Us Project, a partnership between the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and The Pew Charitable Trusts.

“It defies reason to drain the ocean of small, wild fishes that could be directly consumed by people in order to produce a lesser quantity of farmed fish,” said Dr. Ellen K. Pikitch, executive director of the Institute for Ocean Conservation Science and a Professor at Stony Brook University’s School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences. “Skyrocketing pressure on small wild fishes may be putting entire marine food webs at great risk.”

Forage fish account for a staggering 37 percent (31.5 million tonnes) of all fish taken from the world’s oceans each year, and 90 percent of that catch is processed into fishmeal and fish oil. In 2002, 46 percent of fishmeal and fish oil was used as feed for aquaculture (fish-farming), 24 percent for pig feed, and 22 percent for poultry feed. Pigs and poultry around the world consume more than double the seafood eaten by Japanese consumers and six times the amount consumed by the U.S. market.

Despite this large-scale extraction, few management plans have been created to guide the sustainable removal of these fish, and little is known about the role of forage fish in the marine ecosystem and how fishing impacts them. The most intensive commercial use of these fish is for farmed-animal feed, but there is also a growing demand for human fish oil supplements. In some areas of the world, especially developing countries, almost all of the small fish used as farm feed are, or once were, eaten by people. These include the Peruvian and European anchovy, capelin, Japanese pilchard, round sardinella, and European anchovy. “The use of forage fish for animal husbandry competes directly with human consumption in some areas of the world,” the authors write. Excessive removal of forage fish could also hurt populations of seabirds and marine mammals that rely upon them as food.

“We must find a better way to manage forage fisheries before we cause irreversible damage to the broader ocean environment which depends on them as a food source,” said Joshua Reichert, managing director of the Pew Environment Group. “Human beings are not the only, or necessarily, the most important consumer of these fish. Whatever people take out of the sea needs to be carefully calibrated to ensure that sufficient fish are left to sustain populations of other fish, seabirds and marine mammals which all play a major role in the healthy functioning of the world's oceans.”

This fall the Institute for Ocean Conservation Science at Stony Brook University will launch the Lenfest Forage Fish Task Force, a team of preeminent scientists and policy experts from around the world that will address this escalating environmental dilemma. The Task Force will be chaired by Dr. Pikitch and funded by the Lenfest Ocean Program. Task force members will by 2010 develop scientific approaches to sustainably manage forage fisheries using “ecosystem-based fisheries management,” which emphasizes the interconnectedness of species and habitats and breaks from traditional species-by-species management.

For decades, scientists and resource managers have known that wildfires affect forest soils, evidenced, in part, by the erosion that often occurs after a fire kills vegetation and disrupts soil structure. But, the lack of detailed knowledge of forest soils before they are burned by wildfire has hampered efforts to understand fire’s effects on soil fertility and forest ecology.

A new study led by the Pacific Northwest (PNW) Research Station addresses
this critical information gap and represents the first direct evidence of
the toll wildfire can take on forest soil layers. It draws on data from the
2002 Biscuit Fire, which scorched some 500,000 acres in southwest Oregon,
including half of a pre-existing study’s experimental plots, which had been
studied extensively before the fire. The result was a serendipitous and
unprecedented opportunity to directly examine how wildfire changes soil by
sampling soils before and after a wildfire. The study appears in the
November issue of the Canadian Journal of Forest Research.

“Losing our experiment in the fire was hard, but the opportunity to better
understand fire as a dominant ecosystem process has been very exciting,”
said Bernard Bormann, a research forest ecologist with PNW Research Station
and the study’s lead investigator. “This study, covering over 300 acres,
provided nearly 400 soil sampling points as well as extensive tree and
understory plots to use in our analysis.”

Bormann—along with study co-author and Western Washington University
professor Peter Homann and colleagues from the PNW Research Station and
Oregon State University— conducted chemical analyses on soil samples
collected before and after the fire. They found that the combustion of the
organic layer at the soil’s surface, including woody debris, caused
intense, 1,300 °F-plus temperatures, which, in turn, displaced considerable
amounts of carbon and nitrogen from the underlying mineral soil layer and
left mostly ash behind. What was more surprising to the researchers was how
these organic materials may have been lost. Some carbon and nitrogen were
lost as gases—consisting mostly of carbon dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, and
water vapor—and some in an inch of fine mineral-soil particles, which
disappeared and left behind a crust of rocks.

“Altogether, we documented losses of more than 10 tons per acre of carbon
and between 450 to 620 pounds per acre of nitrogen,” Bormann said. “The
loss of topsoil and combustion of organic materials together led to losses
that are higher than most previous estimates.”

The loss of topsoil and carbon from soil can negatively affect a range of
processes, Bormann said, including nutrient retention and water
infiltration. In the absence of special nitrogen-fixing plants, which are
capable of converting atmospheric nitrogen into nitrogen compounds for
growth, losses of nitrogen in the order of what he and his colleagues
documented would require at least a century to be reversed.

Equally disconcerting is the role these released organic materials might
have on the atmosphere, especially in the face of a warming climate. The
burning of soil by wildfire may contribute to global warming, in the short
term, by releasing carbon as a greenhouse gas and, in the long term, by
reducing soil productivity through losses of organic matter and nutrients.
With less productive soils, Bormann said, a forest will not grow as quickly
nor reabsorb as much carbon as before a burn—a process critical to
mitigating the accumulation of atmospheric carbon, which traps heat in the
atmosphere and can, thus, raise temperatures.

“Our findings suggest that forest managers should carefully consider the
effects of wildfire on soils when planning to reduce fuels, suppress future
fires, and help trees and habitat recover after fire,” Bormann said.

Indians from the Enawene Nawe tribe in the Brazilian Amazon occupied and shut down the site of a huge hydroelectric dam on Saturday, destroying equipment, in an attempt to save the river that runs through their land.

The Enawene Nawe say the 77 dams to be built on the River Juruena will pollute the water and stop the fish reaching their spawning grounds. Fish is crucial to the Enawene Nawe’s diet as they do not eat red meat. It also plays a vital part in their rituals.

‘If the fish get sick and die so will the Enawene Nawe,’ said one member of the tribe.

Companies led by the world’s largest soya producers, the Maggi family, are pushing for the construction of the dams. Soya baron Blairo Maggi is also the governor of Mato Grosso state.

The Enawene Nawe number only five hundred, and live in one village in large communal houses around a central square. They were first contacted in 1974 by Jesuit missionaries. They chose for many years to have very little interaction with the outside world, but threats to their land have led them to campaign vigorously for their rights.

A new report from the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CDB) and partners warns that an upsurge in hunting bushmeat—including mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians — in tropical forests is unsustainable and that it poses serious threats to food security for poor inhabitants of forests in Africa, who rely largely on bushmeat for protein.

The authors of the report call on policymakers in the region to develop policies protecting endangered species, while allowing sustainable hunting of "common" game, since there is no clear substitute available if common wild meat sources were to be depleted.

According to the report, large mammal species are particularly vulnerable. Many – such as elephants, gorillas and other primate species - have already become locally extinct, while fast reproducing generalist species that thrive in agricultural environments—such as duikers or rodents—may prove more resilient. The report makes an urgent appeal for a coordinated policy response to the crisis at the local, national and international levels, but warns that blanket bans on hunting and trade that don't discriminate between specific local contexts and species are bound to fail.

Researchers estimate that the current harvest of bushmeat in Central Africa amounts to more than 1 million tonnes annually—the equivalent of almost four million head of cattle. Bushmeat provides up to 80 percent of the protein and fat needed in rural diets in Central Africa, according to the report.

"If current levels of hunting persist in Central Africa, bush meat protein supplies will fall dramatically, and a significant number of forest mammals will become extinct in less than 50 years," said Robert Nasi of CIFOR, an author of the report.

The report, "Conservation and Use of Wildlife-Based Resources: The Bushmeat Crisis," was published by CBD and CIFOR, one of 15 centers supported by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). It also includes major contributions from the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) and the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS).

The report sums up the latest state of knowledge on this controversial issue and makes a strong case for developing a regulated and legalized bushmeat industry to ensure that the poorest forest-dwellers can continue to access this vital source of protein and livelihoods, but in a more sustainable way.

Local, national and regional trade in bushmeat has become a significant part of the informal sector's "hidden economy." Overall, international trade in wild animal products has an estimated value of US$3.9 billion. For West and Central Africa alone, the estimates range from $42 to $205 million a year. Yet, these statistics are still largely ignored in official trade and national policies regulating forest policy.

The report notes that it is important to make a clear distinction between commercial entrepreneurs, who engage in what they know to be an illicit activity, and poor rural people, for whom bushmeat represents both animal protein and a cash-earning commodity.

"If local people are guaranteed the benefits of sustainable land use and hunting practices, they will be willing to invest in sound management and negotiate selective hunting regimes," said Frances Seymour, Director General of CIFOR. "Sustainable management of bushmeat resources requires bringing the sector out into the open, removing the stigma of illegality, and including wild meat consumption in national statistics and planning."

"Reframing the bushmeat problem from one of international animal welfare to one of sustainable livelihoods—and part of the global food crisis—might be a good place to start," she added.

Wildlife is also adversely affected by the industrial extractive sector - logging, mining and oil drilling, for example – as these activities directly facilitate hunting through road construction and/or the provision of transportation for hunters. Salaried employees and their extended families that live in company camps or near the timber concessions are a major source of local demand for – and supply of – bushmeat.

European consumers are also partly responsible. Apart from the direct demand for bushmeat products from expat communities, European demand for African timber exports helps to drive this local timber extraction – both legal and illegal.

The report recommends that the local and international timber industry work with NGOs, local communities, and governments to develop forest policies and management plans that incorporate wildlife concerns, rather than focusing just on timber and other forms of natural resource extraction. Such plans should include conservation education, an agreed system of law enforcement, development of alternative protein supplies and an intensive monitoring program. If designed and applied appropriately, this will not only serve to enhance wildlife conservation, but will ultimately benefit the private sector and local communities as well.

According to the authors, the so-called bushmeat crisis is the focus of many conservation organizations, whose advocacy for a "crackdown" on the trade has fostered confusion and misunderstanding about the links between hunting, wildlife trade, livelihoods, and ecosystems.

Most people in tropical forests hunt, the report notes, and meat sales within the local village can be significant—including up to 90 percent of the catch sold in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Such figures counter the conventional wisdom of many conservation groups that suggests banning all commercial sales of bushmeat will deliver a win-win solution for both conservation and the poor.

The report advocates a more secure rights regime as the key to any solution. "Only if the local hunter is bestowed with some right to decide what, where and how he may hunt—as well as the knowledge to understand the consequences of his decisions—will he embrace his responsibility to hunt sustainably," Nasi said.

The report emphasizes that it is of critical importance to craft a specific, tailored approach for different cases and species, while also recommending that policymakers look to other renewable resource sectors, such as fishing and logging, for clues on how to develop a sustainable management strategy for bushmeat.

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Over 1,000 Congolese army troops and their families – a total of 6,000 people – have left Virunga National Park and moved outside the protected area in an effort to reduce human presence in the area and preserve the flora and fauna of Africa's oldest national park, also a World Heritage Site.

The decision to re-deploy the army troops – about 10% of the total number in North Kivu - came after intense negotiations between Virunga National Park Director Emmanuel de Merode and General Vainqueur Mayala, the army's commanding officer for the conflict-ridden province.

“De-militarizing Virunga National Park remains our greatest and most difficult challenge. The Congolese National Army has taken the first step, which represents a major breakthrough at a time when the threats to the park have never been greater,” said de Merode.

“The occupation of Rwindi park station was strategic,” said Colonel David Kitenge of the 8th Military Region. “We had to have a strong presence at Rwindi and other nearby stations to safeguard the main road north of Goma, and to prevent attack by the FDLR and the Mai Mai rebels. Today we wish to support the Congolese Wildlife Authority in their efforts. Human populations, of all kind, are detrimental to environmental conservation.”

The Congolese army – also known as FARDC - has approximately 10,000 troops in North Kivu that are stationed throughout the province. Rwindi, a main park station in the center of Virunga some 130km north of Goma, had been the army’s headquarters in the area since December 2007, when violence in the region escalated. This deployment operation, that does not affect the occupation of the Gorilla Sector by rebels loyal to dissident General Laurent Nkunda, also included the removal of over 200 troops in Vitshumbi, on the southern shores of Lake Edward .

The entire operation took 3 days and required additional trucks and funds for fuel. The total cost of $10,000 was covered by World Wildlife Fund, at the request of the Congolese Wildlife Authority (ICCN). WWF is one of the conservation groups operating in Virunga to support ICCN.

Virunga National Park , which borders on Uganda and Rwanda and covers 8,000km2, is often used as a hideout and an operating base by armed groups, including the FDLR and the Mai Mai.

Portland, OR– Medical students who attend racially and ethnically diverse medical schools say they are more prepared to care for patients in a diverse society, a new study in the current issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association finds. The study is the first of its kind to examine the link between medical school diversity and educational benefits.

Dr. Somnath Saha of the Portland VA Medical Center and colleagues examined whether the proportion of minority students within a medical school made a difference in whether students said they felt prepared to care for diverse patient populations; their attitudes about access to health care; and plans to care for patients in areas that are traditionally underserved by the health care system. The researches defined diversity as the proportion of students from different racial and ethnic backgrounds, as well as the degree to which the medical schools promoted interracial interaction. They excluded data from historically black and Puerto Rican medical schools, where minority groups comprise the majority of students.

The survey of more than 20,000 graduating medical students from 118 medical schools found that white students who attend racially diverse medical schools said they felt better prepared than students at less diverse schools to care for racial and ethnic minority patients. They are also more likely to endorse access to adequate health care as a right. However, the researchers found no association between the diversity of a medical school and whether white students intended to provide care in underserved areas.

“Diversity matters when it comes to training the next-generation of medical leaders,” said Saha, an associate professor at the Oregon Health and Science University and a former Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Generalist Physician Faculty Scholar. “Students who train in diverse medical schools are better prepared to meet the needs of our diverse population.”

Many medical schools have policies and programs to achieve racial diversity and increase the numbers of American American, Latino and Native American students, who are underrepresented in the physician workforce. These policies have come under scrutiny in recent years as being unnecessary and discriminatory. However, Saha and colleagues argue that racial and ethnic diversity in medical education are key components of creating a physician workforce that can best meet the needs of a rapidly increasing diverse population, and help end racial disparities in health care. The study lends support to U.S. Supreme Court decisions that racial diversity in the student body is associated with measurable, positive educational benefits, they write.

The study also found that student body diversity is necessary, but not sufficient by itself for all students to realize the educational benefits of diversity. Medical schools must actively promote positive interaction among students from different backgrounds, as well as have a critical mass of minority students, to achieve the full educational benefits of diversity.

Heavy fighting between DR Congo's army and rebels erupted at 3.30am today around the Gorilla Sector in Virunga National Park, according to Emmanuel de Merode, Director of Virunga National Park for the Congolese Wildlife Authority.

Mortar and grenade fire have been exchanged non-stop all day between the army and the rebels, the reverberrations of which can be heard in the park and the Gorilla Sector. De Merode said at present there was no intention to evacuate the Rangers but that if the situation worsened they would leave the park station that is in close proximity to the fighting.

"This latest escalation of the conflict undermines our efforts to resume our work in the Gorilla Sector. It is almost 1 year to the day since this conflict started, but we are as determined as ever to get back in. It is critical that we know the status of the mountain gorillas," said de Merode.

Fighting between rebels, loyal to dissident General Laurent Nkunda, and the army has been ongoing in this area for 1 year , but the situation had calmed in recent months following January peace talks between armed groups in eastern DRC. Rangers however have been unable to patrol the Gorilla Sector for 12 months.

This sector - known as the Mikeno Sector - was attacked repeatedly in 2007 during which 10 mountain gorillas were killed. It was attacked in January 2007, when two Silverbacks were killed. An adult female was executed in June 2007 and in July 2007, 5 were massacred causing an international outcry. In September a dead infant female was found in the hands of alleged traffickers.

Some 1,100 Wildlife Rangers protect the National Parks of Eastern Congo, a region affected by a 10-year civil war and current political instability. These parks are home to mountain gorillas, chimpanzees, forest elephants and rhinos. The Rangers have remained active in protecting these parks, four of which have been classified as World Heritage Sites by UNESCO.

Mountain Gorillas are critically endangered, with only 700 remaining in the world, about 380 in the Virunga Volcanoes Conservation Area (shared by DRC, Rwanda and Uganda ) and 320 in the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, Uganda. Despite the conflict in the region, their decline had been reversed up until January 2007 thanks to international support and courageous conservationists coupled with the popularity of gorilla-watching tourism. At September 2007 there were 72 habituated Mountain Gorillas in DR Congo.

The Congolese Wildlife Authority (ICCN) and its Rangers work throughout the country to protect the National Parks of Congo and their wildlife from poachers, rebel groups, illegal miners and land invasions. Over 150 Rangers have been killed in the last 10 years protecting the 5 parks of eastern DRC, and Rangers worked throughout the civil war without receiving a salary.

Virunga National Park, Africa ’s oldest national park (established in 1925) and a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1979, is home to 200 of the world’s mountain gorillas. Formerly known as Albert National Park, Virunga lies in eastern DR Congo and covers 7,800 square kilometers.

Oxygen is constantly leaking out of Earth’s atmosphere and into space. Now, ESA’s formation-flying quartet of satellites, Cluster, has discovered the physical mechanism that is driving the escape. It turns out that the Earth’s own magnetic field is accelerating the oxygen away.

The new work uses data collected by Cluster from 2001 to 2003. During this time, Cluster amassed information about beams of electrically charged oxygen atoms, known as ions, flowing outwards from the polar regions into space. Cluster also measured the strength and direction of the Earth’s magnetic field whenever the beams were present.

Hans Nilsson, Swedish Institute of Space Physics, headed a team of space scientists who analysed the data. They discovered that the oxygen ions were being accelerated by changes in the direction of the magnetic field. “It is a bit like a sling-shot effect,” says Nilsson.

Having all four Cluster spacecraft was essential to the analysis because it gave astronomers a way to measure the strength and direction of the magnetic field over a wide area. “Cluster allowed us to measure the gradient of the magnetic field and see how it was changing direction with time,” says Nilsson.

Before the space age, scientists believed that Earth’s magnetic field was filled only with particles from the solar wind, the constant sleet of particles that escapes from the Sun. They thought this formed a large cushion that protected the Earth’s atmosphere from direct interaction with the solar wind.

“We are beginning to realise just how many interactions can take place between the solar wind and the atmosphere,” says Nilsson. Energetic particles from the solar wind can be channelled along the magnetic field lines and, when these impact the atmosphere of the Earth, they can produce aurorae. This occurs over the poles of Earth. The same interactions provide the oxygen ions with enough energy to accelerate out of the atmosphere and reach the Earth’s magnetic environment.

The Cluster data were captured over the poles with the satellites flying at an altitude of anywhere between 30,000 and 64,000 kilometres. Measurements taken by earlier satellites during the 1980s and 1990s showed that the escaping ions were travelling faster the higher they were observed. This implied that some sort of acceleration mechanism was involved and several possibilities were proposed. Thanks to this new Cluster study, the mechanism accounting for most of the acceleration has now been identified.

At present, the escape of oxygen is nothing to worry about. Compared to the Earth’s stock of the life-supporting gas, the amount escaping is negligible. However, in the far future when the Sun begins to heat up in old age, the balance might change and the oxygen escape may become significant. “We can only predict these future changes if we understand the mechanisms involved,” says Nilsson.

For now, Cluster will continue collecting data and providing new insights into the complex magnetic environment surrounding our planet.