Food 4 Thought 1

Food for Thought ~
"Inquiring Minds want to Know ... "

	They say that the Average Person uses only 3% of their Brain
	Well, I don’t know how they qualify "Average Person", but here are a few little tid-bits, that just may provide some "Food for Thought"

Did You Know?

Keeping You Informed

Environmental – Hole in the Ozone over the South Pole

1998 – 10.9 million sq. miles ~ 1999 – 9.8 million sq. miles ~ 2000 – 11.5 million sq. miles

	Bacteria brought back to life after 250 million years ~ Oct. 18 — In what sounds like something out of "Jurassic Park," bacteria that lived before the dinosaurs and survived Earth’s biggest mass extinction have been reawakened after a 250-million-year sleep in a salt crystal, scientists say.
Read the complete Associate Press Story at the below Link:
http://www.msnbc.com/news/478195.asp?bt=nm&btu=http://www.msnbc.com/tools/newstools/d/news_menu.asp

USA Immigration ~ H-1B Visas

Shark deaths off Florida a mystery ~ Usual suspects don’t appear to be the cause

Oct. 18 — Several hundred dead sharks have been washing up on beaches along the Gulf of Mexico, and officials are baffled by what’s causing their deaths. With no hard evidence to guide them, scientists are testing the sharks’ tissue to see if it holds clues that will help solve the mystery.

DISEASED SEAS? Another theory is that seas have become such a toxic mess that diseases are becoming more common, affecting species at different times and on different scales.
Bruce McKay, a senior researcher for the nonprofit group SeaWeb, acknowledges that fish die-offs might be natural events, but he feels the litany of incidents over the last two years suggests otherwise. Writing recently in the journal Sea Technology, McKay cited these examples:

* More than 70 dead bottlenose dolphins were found dead along Florida’s far west coast last year.
* 225 harbor porpoise carcasses were found along mid-Atlantic shores earlier last year.
* An estimated 300 gray whales died along Pacific shores.
* California sea otters and Pacific Northwest orcas continued their mysterious decline.
* A large-scale sea urchin die-off occurred in Maine waters.
* Disease plagued lobsters in Long Island Sound.
* Black abalone off southern California have been decimated by withering syndrome, and red abalone is now being affected.
* New diseases have been noticed in Alaskan fur seals, California sea otters, and Florida manatees.
* Green sea turtles in Hawaii and Florida are suffering from a disease characterized by grotesque external tumors. Virtually unheard of before 1985, it recently appeared in loggerhead and olive ridley sea turtles in the Caribbean.
* Coral diseases are substantially reducing reef cover and biodiversity in parts of the Florida Keys. Disease was found at 26 of 160 monitoring stations in 1996. By 1998, 131 stations had diseased coral while the number of species affected rose from 11 to 31. New coral diseases have emerged there as well.
* The first reported epidemic of mycobacterium-induced sores in wild striped bass has hit the Chesapeake Bay. This disease is usually found in fish farms, McKay noted.

Read the complete MSN Story at the below Link: http://www.msnbc.com/news/478079.asp

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