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The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online (or Darwin Online) began in 2002 to assemble in one scholarly website all of Darwin's published writings and unpublished papers. It does not cover his unpublished letters which were already the focus of the Correspondence of Charles Darwin.
Darwin Online is the largest and most widely used Darwin resource ever created. More copies of Darwin's works have been downloaded from Darwin Online than were published in Darwin's lifetime or in the whole of the 19th century.
The site contains over 74,000 pages of searchable text and 182,000 electronic images. It contains at least one exemplar of all known Darwin publications, reproduced to the highest scholarly standards, both as searchable text and electronic images of the originals. The majority of these have been edited and annotated here for the first time.

Cave rocks reveal past climate changes.

Stalagmites have been sampled from caves in China and other caves from all over the world. Split into half, stalagmites reveal banding like an agate. The layers of calcite indicate periods of wet and dry weather and changing contents of trace elements. The bands are annual growth rings like in a tree and reveal ages of up to 100'000 years. The University of Minnesota researcher Hai Cheng measures uranium and thorium contents and reconstructs a weather and climate history. Photo shown here were taken by Hai Cheng who grew up in China, but now is a research scientist in the Department of Geology and Geophysics at the University of Minnesota.
Ref.: Ancient cave rocks reveal impact of climate change by Stephanie Hemphill

Cave gives clues to China's history.
In an article published in Science, the researchers say the stalagmite, found in Wanxiang Cave, China, told of strong and weak monsoon periods, which coincided with the rise and fall of several Chinese dynasties.
"....weak and consequently dry monsoon periods coincided with the demise of the Tang (618-907), Yuan (1271-1368) and Ming (1368-1644) dynasties."
"We have demonstrated that the cave records correlate well with many records, including the little ice age in Europe; the temperature changes in China and Northern Hemisphere and major solar variability."
Ref.: ABC Science : Cave gives clues to China's history.

Mount Etna Erupts

Etna eruptions 2006

Mount Etna is one of the most active volcanoes in the world and is in an almost constant state of eruption. The volcano dominates the landscape of NE Sicily. Etna has created a beautiful landscape and has great ecological interest.
Ein Deutscher Fotograf stirbt auf dem Ätna. Thomas Reichert ist am Aetna ums Leben gekommen.
Thomas Reichert, a hobby volcanologist and photographer, died at the Etna volcano 32 years old. Many of his magnificent pictures can be seen on Flickr. See Fotostream von Thomas Reichart on Flickr.
Here are two films on Etna eruptions in 2006 by Thomas Reichert:

Canadian oil-sand mines stuck as crude price plummets - Times Online

Canadian oil-sand mines stuck as crude price plummets: "Canada's once booming oil sands industry is cooling fast as the plunging oil price undermines investment. More than US$60 billion (£41 billion) worth of projects to extract oil from the bitumen-rich sands of northern Alberta have been delayed in the past three months, according to a study of industry figures by The Times."...............read article

The Athabasca Oil Sands (or Athabasca Tar Sands) are large deposits of bitumen and extremely heavy crude oil, located in northeastern Alberta, Canada.

Picture: Syncrude Canada Ltd.

A Recent History of Oil Prices.

A Recent History of Oil Prices. - Scitizen: "On September 15 the $100 psychological barrier was again broken, but in reverse, when the price fell below $100 for the first time in seven months. On October 11 there occurred a massive crash in the value of global equities, with a barrel of oil falling by 10% to $77.70. In consequence of further economic slowdown the price continued to slide and today (December 4, 2008) it is trading at around $45 a barrel. Rather than the $200 predicted last summer some analysts are now predicting a $20 barrel sometime during 2009. I must stress, however, that even if this does happen it will be a short-lived event, because the facts of geological limits to production, increased production costs to obtain more difficultly recovered oil and that demand is still rising (demand is simply rising less steeply during this economic recession, but it is still in the ascendant)."..........read the original article