In the past few years, the Amazon rainforest in Peru’s Ucayali region has been hit by two severe droughts, one in 2005 and another in 2010. These dry spells could become more frequent as temperatures in the tropical North Atlantic Ocean continue to rise and as thousands of square kilometers of forest are burnt to make way for farming.
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A new study indicates that the megadrought that struck the Amazon in 2010 devastated millions of hectares of rainforest, shedding a new light over the debate over the effects of recent climatic events.
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Brazilian and British scientists have been examining the heavy smoke plumes from wildfires in the Amazon, gathering data, to understand how the burning of biomass in South America is affecting the local weather and air quality. This might help close crucial gaps in climate models about how the process changes the Earth’s radiation balance.
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If you’ve got massive amounts of historical data to backup and have had trouble finding a low cost storage solution, then you should check out Amazon Glacier.
Read more @ Technabob
Polyurethane is one of the most commonly used plastics in different types of products, but it’s also one that takes an extremely long period of time before it can be broken down. A team of students from Yale discovered a fungus that has a healthy appetite for all things made out of polyurethane, which includes garden hoses, shoes, seats and more.
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TechCrunch’s MG Siegler claims he got his hands on a pre-production version of the much anticipated Amazon Kindle tablet. Will it be on your holiday wishlist? The 7-inch tablet is clearly set to compete with Barnes & Noble’s Nook, but will it compete with the iPad 2?
Read more @ Technabob
If you’re getting yourself mentally ready to hit the crowds this week for this year’s Black Friday sales, don’t forget to check out the latest apps that will help in this task. Pen and paper are so last generation when it comes to checking out where to go and for double-checking prices while you’re shopping…there are apps for that now!
Great article over at the New Yorker over the impact of the iPad and the Kindle in the publishing world. Although I have thousands of ebooks, I prefer having real books. I will never pay $10 for an ebook, but I will gladly pay $10 for a paperback, or even $20-30 for a hardcover 1st edition. {via kottke}
I wondered how long it would take for someone to hack the Amazon Kindle in order to play games. Unfortunately, from what I’ve seen, the games don’t look all that cool on that monochrome e-ink screen.
I initially skimmed this and didn’t read it through, but it kept coming up from a variety of sources, so I decided to read Jason Snell’s review in its entirety. If you read through the gratuitous positive impressions, you get the feel of the device. The productivity apps aren’t completely fleshed out, but the screen is apparently extremely good, just what you’d expect.
It’s not a laptop-replacement device, but it makes it easy to consume media, although, at least for now, it won’t be as easy to use to read magazines and newspapers as the Kindle 2. If this gets fixed, which it probably will, it will make the iPad a serious contender for anyone wanting an eBook reader.
