Melbourne designer's vision for a water-smart citymelbourne--Rapid climate change and an increasing need for water conservation has compelled a Melbourne designer to create'Equilibrium,
However, the scientists say this does not harm the animals, but simply shows the transfer of the plasmids is a success. Dr. Stefan Moisyadi,
It's just a marker to show that we can take a gene that was not originally present in the animal
We can make those enzymes a lot cheaper in animals rather than a factory that will cost millions of dollars to build.
but the experiments herald the technique's success in future goals of introducing beneficial genes into animals
and if current methods to create these types of animals can be improved, we can all reap the benefits.
New school designs learn from zoos, museums, wine and naturearchitects working in the education sector may be the zaniest innovators around.
I like this zoo-school featured on George lucas's Edutopia: Minnesota's School of Environmental Studies (SES) is an optional high school in Apple Valley, Minn.
Kids penned up in HGA's zoo school Other schools are based on museum planning, as described in this article in Museum magazine.
Even the workers at the Archives, the animals'temporary caretakers, have completed a biodiversity training to educate them on the importance of the sheep.
and even a crowdsourced multimedia campaign with visions for Mexico of the Future  which includes submissions such as a solar panel on every house  and respect for flora and fauna.
While creating more habitats for animals and insects, the gardens also act as insulation. Â During the winter they keep in heat
and raise animals for food--chickens, bees, et cetera. Another aspect of the study is to  work on a standard lease agreement that can be used by various city departments with vacant land to make it easier to lease those spaces for community gardens.
The Institution of Captivityirus Braverman didn't grow up visiting zoos. Braverman's first zoo experience wasn't until adulthood,
when her daughter dragged her to the Buffalo Zoo. An associate professor of law at the  University at Buffalo, State university of New york, Braverman found herself flooded with questions.
But mainly, she wondered, how does this work? In her new book, Zooland: The  Institution  of Captivity, Braverman explores the evolution of zoos,
debates between pro-and anti-zoo advocates and the'performance'of zoos. Below are excerpts from our recent interview.
How did you come to write a book about zoos? It didn't just come to me as an idea for a book.
 It was a lengthy process. I grew up in Jerusalem. Where I grew up,
the zoo wasn't as much of a strong institution as it is today in the United states . I don't have any memories from my childhood of zoos.
For me, when my older daughter was old enough to drag me to the Buffalo Zoo,
it was my first encounter with a zoo. I came to it with thoughts like,
What is this? and Why are so many people standing in line? and Why are we looking at the animals?
The emotions were pretty strong. It's fascinating to see these animals, but there are feelings of Why are we staring at them?
Everything I've seen people debate was powerful for me that first time with my daughter.
 I come to the zoo and everything is manifested clearly: the importance of nature, the relationship between nature and the city, how different laws shape this place.
what was going on behind the scenes of the zoo. Â My focus wasn't animals.
I was never into animal rights. It was mostly, How is this performance possible? What has to  happen behind the scenes to make this institution in the middle of the city possible?
The zoo director took us for a tour. I was asking her questions and we decided to have another interview.
It started with the Buffalo Zoo. I started interviewing her staff. It was like a snowball.
But it wasn't just people from zoos. I interviewed  animal welfare activists, scientists from other organizations.
You came to the subject of zoos as an outsider. How did that give you a unique perspective?
I think if I'd have known how big of a war it is between pro-zoo and anti-zoo people,
At the zoo I was going into a different war. As an outsider, I was able to say,
Some zoo people were wary and didn't respond. Who am I coming from the outside and asking these questions?
She's grown up at the zoo. You can trust her. I had to build that trust from scratch.
You mentioned zoo lovers and zoo haters. Why do we have such strong opinions about zoos?
It's interesting how deep the relationship to animals is. It's unique in American culture.
This is a generalized statement, of course. Animals, especially dogs and cats, are part of the family. The relationship toward the wild is important in American culture:
the wilderness and the frontier. First it was to conquer the frontier. Then it shifted into language of conservation and preservation.
 These relationships, to animals and to the wild, shape the relationship of Americans to the zoo.
The zoo is in the city, so animals are hosted by us. But they're also wild animals.
They're these creatures that are almost magical. They have this power over us. My students go through American children's books to see what an important role animals have.
 Children are raised with animals as their heroes. The treatment of animals becomes important to people.
Another reason we have strong feelings about it is the conservation movement. Â Zoos have changed a lot Once,
they were places where animals were captured and chained. Now, they're there to promote and conserve animals.
 Zoo lovers focus on conservation as a way to care for these animals. How would my child know what a gorilla was
if my child couldn't see it? So why would my child want to save a gorilla in the wild
if they don't know what it is? That's what zoo lovers say. Zoo haters take the same perspective of romanticizing nature
and say, This is not the way to teach my child how to love animals. They can't see how they run and hunt.
They can't experience them in the wild. Zoo haters will say, Those are almost plastic animals.
They're the undermining of what animals in the wild are. What kind of monkeys are those that don't know how to peel a banana?
There are strong emotions on both sides. Why did zoos shift their mission from entertainment to conservation?
It's a combination of factors. From the perspective of zoo professionals, zoos have undergone dramatic changes since the 1970s and 1980s.
One aspect is the move from entertainment to conservation. There are other interconnected elements that have changed.
For example, the  larger shift within the public toward conservation was led and inspired by legal changes.
All these laws come into force that prohibit anyone from taking animals from the wild without special permits.
 Zoos cannot take their animals from the wild. They needed to come up with a different way of obtaining those animals.
At the same time the laws changed the education of zoo professionals changed. Â A lot of them are coming with a strong education in conservation
and they believe this should be the central mission of zoos. Zoos had to find ways to create animals without taking them from the wild.
How do you do that? You have to manage them. I was shocked at the sophisticated level of management that had to take place for this enterprise to survive.
The zoos in North america, I'm talking about the 225 accredited zoos, for the purpose of managing these wild animals,
they act as one body. They have committees and volunteers from each zoo that run the population of all the zoos.
 There's this closed system. All the gorillas are managed as if they are one community. They are one Zooland,
which is why I chose that title for the book. They decide together  which gorilla will mate with which gorilla.
They decide which one will transfer and how many new gorillas they want to have. Which gorillas are the most important to us for genetic reasons?
 They have to calculate in complex computer programs the genetics of each animal and get them together.
If zoos don't comply, they risk not getting accredited. It's such a sophisticated form of management.
Zoos aren't regulated by many federal and state laws, but they're governed by their own standards.
What are some of those standards? A lot of the laws that could pertain to zoos don't.
 Zoos have managed, through intense lobbying, to convince legislators they're more equipped to manage their institutions.
They had to do a lot of self-regulating, industry regulations. Some claim that's not good enough, but zoos have detailed standards.
They're not binding. They'll be kicked out of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums perhaps,
but they  could still continue to function as zoos. They just won't be accredited and won't be part of this Zooland.
 The industry standards pertain to the small portion of zoos that are accredited in North america.
It's about 10 percent. Â It's only those elite zoos that want to abide by them
in order to function like this. The standards include everything from the temperature of the gorilla enclosure,
how a transfer container needs to be built, how big the moat should be, how big the enclosure should be,
what happens when an animal needs to be trained. There are hundreds of pages of guidelines for keepers to follow
What's the future of zoos? The zoos don't stand independently. They're deeply connected to notions of wilderness.
Global warming and the destruction of natural habitats are affecting the role of zoos. Zoo professionals want to see zoos taking more of a part in leading the conservation movement.
This would be the natural evolution. Â Zoos are becoming the reservoir for animals in the wild at the same time nature is changing.
In a way, natural reserves are becoming more managed for the sake of survival. Â The sophisticated programs zoos have developed to manage small populations in zoos are becoming more relevant as populations are getting smaller in the wild.
Zoo professionals are in communication with people in the field about how to manage rhinos that are becoming extinct.
 Zoos and conservationists have to work together for the sake of sustaining some of the populations we once knew in nature.
Maybe in several generations our children will not know lions and gorillas and rhinos. Prominent leaders in the zoo world are trying to see how they can move zoos to take a larger part in this movement of survival of both animals and habitats.
Photo, top: Irus Braverman Photo, bottom: An elephant eating breakfast at the Safari Zoo in Ramat Gan, Israel/By Irus Braverman
Q&a: Is Whole Foods Market spearheading a new form of advertising? Vadan Less and Jacob Ellenberg, cofounders of Dark Rye.
If it weren for the fine print, you â â¢d never know the two were connected.
that had never been seen before in animals. By the end of June there were at least 132 confirmed cases,
Smartplanet spoke with Dr. Richard Webby, Director of the World health organization Collaborating Center for Studies on the Ecology of Influenza in Animals and Birds at St jude Children's Research Hospital.
But has shown it any human-to-human transfer (as opposed to the typical animal-to-human transfer?
Through the whole infectious course the animals can be unprotected wandering around That's pretty serious.
We're trying to cram thousands of animals together, and to gain more and more land. We need to scale up processes such as growing plants
and animals that are by their own nature inefficient. Focusing on the constituents of the food,
and our fellow animals and plants, who are at risk of dying out. are worried we enough about saving human civilization to make this time scale, the Anthropocene, more than a mere speck in the geologic time scale?
What won survive are many of the animals we care about, and our civilization. And that is what we are talking about
spotting early warning signs that the animal isn't feeling so well. Intervene as necessary.
In an ecosystem, assemblages of plants and animals are linked together by a common thread: the sharing of nutrients, the transfer of energy from sunlight to plants and then to animals,
and the recycling of all the elements needed to ensure the survival of the next generation of those living within the boundaries of that geographically defined area.
and improvise rapidly just like a"real"animal or insect brain. The project has been funded by the Engineering and Physical sciences Research Council with a £1m grant,
"The prospect of a robotic animal that's as mentally capable as the thing it's trying to mimic might seem exciting,
Community-managed groups working with people, animals and plants. We represent nearly 200 city and school farms, more than 1, 000 community gardens,
three animals at city farmwe are registered a charity which supports, represents and promotes community-managed farms, gardens,
Community-managed groups working with people, animals and plants. We represent nearly 200 city and school farms, more than 1, 000 community gardens,
No part of the animal is wastedthis giveaway is courtesy of Hare & Hart, a leather company that uses only the by-products of the meat industry in Argentina in their leather shorts, jackets, shirts & scarves.
so that no part of the animal is wasted. Additionally, we believe that the people involved in creating our collection should also be treated with consideration and fairness,
In 1952 The british Nobel zoologist Peter Medawar proposed that aging is the simple result of the failure of natural selection to maintain fitness in older animals with declining fertility.
wherein a gene may promote fitness in young fertile animals (and thus be selected for) but become a liability late in life leading to a subsequent decline in fitness.
Dr predicted that he should be able to select populations of long-lived animals by simply selecting for reproductive longevity.
More recent studies in animals show potent antidiabetic activity. Published studies have shown also that pterostilbene is a potent anticancer compound.
The animal is doing well the Royan Research Institute said on Wednesday. The Iranian government has set itself the goal of becoming a pioneer in science and technology in the middle East by 2025.
With the cloning of animals advances in medical research are connected, including the production of antibodies against various diseases,
Under pressure from animal welfare groups, fast-food giant Mcdonald, major meat-processor Hormel and others recently agreed to end the use of tightly-confining pens at their suppliers pig farms.
The Humane Society of the United states and other animal-welfare groups consider them cruel because the birds have little room to move
while not necessarily creating idyllic living conditions for these animals by any means, would be significant advancements,
"to make changes that may not ultimately be in the best interests of either animals, producers or consumers.
Zhang said ingredients such as crushed corn would be blended with the solid Orgacids in the animal feed at his farm
The idea is to find a way to create the meat without the animal by growing it directly.
because cows are among the least efficient animals at converting the food they eat into food for humans."
researchers could make products from more exotic animals.""We could make panda meat, I'm sure we could,
or animals for the paper we use every day. This policy will have a particularly important impact in Indonesia,
Welfare issues It is recognised widely that sending animals overseas to slaughter is not the only welfare problem.
good nutrition and veterinary care have a much greater impact over the animals'lifetime. However, live export is a welfare issue that we can fix,
and many have been disturbed deeply to see how some of the animals that they so attentively nurtured are treated after they ve left their property.
These welfare problems are not just the multiple stresses that animals are exposed to during the export process
and slaughter process after the animals have arrived at their destination port. Regulatory authorities also have little control over practices on the ships:
In other animal-risk situations, such as abattoirs, government inspectors are present: the same should be true on live export boats.
The animals manure came back as fertilizer. On these fields, the researchers still used herbicides and pesticides,
Grazing ruminant animals, like cattle and sheep, also contribute significantly to climate change. Commentsview/Create comment on this paragraphhere, too,
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