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Iceland raised it quota on whale hunting Tuesday to 250 a year, a dramatic increase over past levels.

Outgoing fisheries and Agriculture Minister Einar Gudfinnsson announced the change in a news release, which didn’t provide any reasons for the increase.

“Total allowable takes of fin and minke whales for the next five years will be according to scientific recommendations of the (Icelandic) Marine Research Institute,” the ministry said.

Last year, whalers were authorized to catch nine fin whales and 40 minke whales. The International Conservation Union lists both fin whales and sei whales — but not minke whales — as endangered species.

Icelanders have been hunting whales since the days of the Vikings but halted commercial whaling in 1985 only to resume the practice in 2006.

Gufinnsson’s announcement follows suggestions by International Whaling Commission officials that Japan could be authorized to resume commercial whaling off its coast, in return for killing fewer whales for scientific research in the Antarctic.

Iceland and Norway are the only countries to authorize fishermen to hunt whales to sell for their meat. Both countries choose not to recognize IWC rules which stipulate that whales may be killed for research but not for commercial purposes.

Japan insists its whaling is solely for scientific research, though opponents claim the research expeditions are a cover for commercial whaling, because the whale meat is sold on the market.

Gufinnsson is a lawmaker with Iceland’s Independent Party, which said on Monday it had disbanded the coalition government which it had led since elections in 2007.

Ministers are due to be replaced by members of a new coalition between Iceland’s Social Democratic Alliance Party and the Left-Green movement. The coalition opposes commercial whaling, but it was not immediately clear whether it would attempt to reverse the ministry’s decision to raise whaling quotas.

A new research has suggested that rocks formed only under the extreme heat and friction during earthquakes, called pseudotachylytes, may be more abundant than previously reported.

The new research, focused on eight faults found in the Sierra Nevada in the US.

Geologists have previously debated whether these rocks are rarely produced or not based on an apparent absence in the rock record, most likely brought about by the difficulty in identifying them.

Only a small fraction of the energy released in an earthquake is consumed by seismic waves. The formation of pseudotachylytes reveals the importance of the heat generated by the earthquake process.

Pseudotachylytes form by frictional melting during co-seismic faulting at significant depths in the crust. They are not easy to identify, requiring evidence that the fault rock has passed through a melt phase.

They are generated by frictional heating of the slip surface, the melting of which may account for a significant proportion of energy released during an earthquake.

Past surveys of the Sierra Nevada, which reported an absence of pseudotachylytes, have focused on the geometry and mechanics of the faults rather than the geological details of the rock types and composition.

However, the authors of this research have reported an abundance of pseudotachylytes throughout the area.

The pseudotachylytes they describe range from easily identified to impossible to identify from field data alone.

According to the researchers, further study of pseudotachylytes will ultimately reveal more about energy partitioning during earthquakes.

Swiss police said Thursday they stumbled across a large marijuana plantation while using Google Earth, the search engine company’s satellite mapping software.

Police said they arrested 16 people and seized 1.1 tons (1.2 US tons) of marijuana as well as cash and valuables worth 900,000 Swiss francs ($780,000).

Officers discovered the hemp field in the northeastern canton (state) of Thurgau last year while investigating an alleged drug ring, said the head of Zurich police’s specialist narcotics unit Norbert Klossner.

The plantation, measuring almost two acres (7,500 square meters), was hidden inside a field of corn. But officers using Google Earth to locate the address of two farmers suspected of involvement in the drug operation quickly spotted the illegal crop.

“It was an interesting chance discovery,” said Klossner.

Prosecutor Gabi Alkalay told reporters in Zurich that she plans to complete her criminal investigation in February, after which she will formally charge the 16 suspects and ask for prison sentences for all of them.

The gang is alleged to have sold up to 7 tons (7.7 US tons) of hashish and marijuana between 2004 and 2008, with an annual turnover of 3-10 million francs a year, officials said.

A lobster thought to be about 140 years old will be returned to the ocean after briefly becoming the mascot for a New York City restaurant, an animal rights group said on Friday.

The 20-pound (9-kg) lobster was caught off the coast of Canada about two weeks ago and bought for $100 by City Crab and Seafood to become its mascot, said manager Keith Valenti.

“We bought a big lobster, started taking pictures with kids and it worked out real well,” said Valenti, adding it was a “no brainer” to return the old crustacean to the ocean.

He said a lobster’s age can be worked out from how much it weighs, with each pound counting for 7 to 10 years. Valenti said it was not uncommon for lobsters to live for more than 100 years but it was rare for them to be caught because they were generally too big for the baskets.

The group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals said it found out that the old lobster was in the restaurant’s tank when a diner called them.

“We applaud the folks at City Crab and Seafood for their compassionate decision to allow this noble old-timer to live out his days in freedom and peace,” said PETA’s Ingrid Newkirk.

Researchers delving into the archives of National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth have discovered a copy of the Magna Carta in a nearby underground chamber, along with other valuable items, which were stored during the Second World War.

According to a report in the Telegraph, the cave was also temporary home to the oldest copy of the New Testament, the works of Chaucer and letters written by the kings and queens of England.

Paintings by Michelangelo, Raphael and Leonardo da Vinci were also among a treasure trove stored in the specially-built underground chamber.

The mass evacuation of precious artifacts from around the UK to Wales in the event of a war in Europe had been planned from 1933 onwards.

Within hours of the declaration of war in 1939 collections from many cultural institutions were crated up and sent by rail to Aberystwyth.

The collections of the British Museum took up 25 containers, with the material weighing more than 90 tons.

“London was bombed for 96 consecutive nights during the Blitz so the great artworks needed to be removed for safekeeping,” said Cultural historian Professor Peter Stead.

“Paintings don’t like too much light so, of course, the caves were ideal places to store them,” he added.

The secret operation came to light when staff at the National Library of Wales looked into their archives to research an exhibition of Da Vinci drawings now on display there, and found that they were amongst items to have arrived on the eve of war.

According to Medi Jones-Jackson, communications officer at the National Library of Wales, “It’s amazing to think some of the most historically important documents and artworks of our times were kept safe here in Aberystwyth.”

“The cave was built with specialized ventilation and heating systems to protect the valuable items placed inside,” he added.

It was built in to the side of a hill to avoid the risk of artifacts being hit by stray bombs dropped from planes chased away from industrial centres.

In a new study, scientists have taken a page from the social science handbook and used leading indicators of the environment to presage potential environmental disasters.

The study, by two ecologists and an economist, suggests it may be possible to use nature’s leading indicators to avert environmental disaster.

Ecosystems worldwide - lakes, ocean fisheries, coral reefs, forests, wetlands and rangelands - are under constant and escalating pressure from humans and many are on the brink of collapse, according to Stephen R. Carpenter, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of zoology and an author of the new study.

“It’s a big problem because they are very hard to predict. It is hard to get a handle on statistically,” said Carpenter of what ecologists call “regime shift,” a disastrous change in the way an individual ecosystem functions.

In the new study, Carpenter, Reinette Biggs of Stockholm University and William A. Brock, an economist at UW-Madison, used northern Wisconsin’s sport fishery as a laboratory to see if leading indicators of ecological collapse can be detected far enough in advance to avert disaster.

“The answer is ‘yes’ if the policy interventions can be swift and ‘no’ if there are delays,” said Carpenter of the study’s results.

The researchers looked at two major threats to the fishery: overfishing and habitat destruction caused by lake home-building and the loss of trees that would otherwise fall into the lake and provide habitat for sport fish.

“If you are a fish, woody habitat is perfect. It’s a place to hide and it has food. It’s like a room with a refrigerator,” said Carpenter. “But there is way less habitat in lakes with a lot of houses. We are particularly concerned about woody habitat loss,” he added.

In both the case of habitat loss and the case of overfishing, indicators of potential harm to the fishery can be detected before a breakdown in the lake ecosystem occurs, explained Carpenter.

According to Carpenter, the key to avoiding disaster is monitoring.

“We really need to be monitoring and analyzing the data from these ecosystems as a way to keep them healthy. Otherwise, by the time the problem surfaces it is too late,” he said.

It is possible to sense impending ecosystem regime shifts by carefully monitoring the changing variables that are likely to damage an environment, he added.

“The behavior of the system becomes extremely variable in the run up to change. You see a lot of variability, and right at the point of regime shift, it becomes very unstable,” Carpenter said.

What does your brain do as soon as you notice a door handle? It is already hard at work, noticing more and more details.

A simple door handle turns into a silver-plated antique-style-door-handle facing-right. Information about the handle also reaches the part of your brain responsible for planning movements, allowing you to turn the handle with your right hand and open the door.

However, this is not necessarily a simple process for the brain. For instance, how do we end up turning the door handle with our right hand, instead of with the other?

During this analysis, the brain is bombarded with a lot of irrelevant information, so it relies on a control system to filter out unnecessary information.

In the visual system, this control mechanism is known as centre surround inhibition (CSI) and it works by activating only the neurons that are required for further action.

In other words, if any extra neurons are turned on, this CSI will shut them off, so that the brain can focus on the relevant information.

Although the CSI system has been well documented it was not known if this type of control mechanism exists in the motor regions of the brain.

Daniel Loach, psychologist from Macquarie University, Sydney and his colleagues conducted a set of experiments to explore inhibitory mechanism in the areas of the brain involved in planning movements.

A group of participants were successively shown two door handles and had to press a left or right button which corresponded to the texture (either wood or metal) of the second handle.

Some of the pairs had both of the handles in the same orientation, in other pairs the two handles would be rotated at varying angles, said a university release.

In addition, the researchers noted which hand was used to make the response - if it was compatible or incompatible with the direction the handle was facing (for example, the right hand was compatible for handles that were facing right).

These results indicate that there is a common mechanism which acts in both perception and movement. These findings also tell us how information travels throughout the brain and how the motor system and visual system interact.

The results were published in the December issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

A team of German and American astronomers have discovered the hottest white dwarf in the Universe, using NASA’s space-based Far-Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer (FUSE).

Known as white dwarf KPD 0005+5106, it is among the hottest stars ever known with a temperature of 200,000 K at its surface.

It is so hot that its photosphere exhibits emission lines in the ultraviolet spectrum, a phenomenon that has never been seen before.

These emission features stem from extremely ionized calcium (nine-fold ionized, i.e., CaX), which is the highest ionization stage of a chemical element ever discovered in a photospheric stellar spectrum.

Stars of intermediate mass (1-8 solar masses) terminate their life as an Earth-sized white dwarf after the exhaustion of their nuclear fuel. During the transition from a nuclear-burning star to the white dwarf stage, the star becomes very hot.

Many such objects with surface temperatures around 100,000 Kelvin are known.

Theories of stellar evolution predict that the stars can be much hotter. However, the probability of catching them in such an extremely hot state is low, because this phase is rather short-lived.

Since its discovery as a faint blue star in 1985, KPD 0005+5106 attracted much attention because optical spectra taken with ground-based telescopes suggested that this white dwarf is very hot.

In addition, it belongs to a particular class of rare white dwarfs whose atmospheres are dominated by helium.

A detailed analysis of these spectra, combined with ultraviolet observations performed with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), had led to the conclusion that KPD 0005+5106 has a temperature of 120,000 Kelvin, which made it the hottest member of its class.

Although theory predicted the existence of such hot white dwarfs, the star nevertheless represents a challenge to the concepts of stellar evolution because of its composition.

The measured calcium abundance (1-10 times the solar value) in combination with the helium-rich nature of its atmosphere represents a chemical surface composition that is not predicted by stellar evolution models.

A low pressure system spinning over the Northeast provided wet conditions across the East Coast early Tuesday, while rain sprinkled the southern California coast and the Plains were clear.

Most of the mid-Atlantic states can expect a mix of rain and snow throughout the day, with parts of Pennsylvania, New York and Ohio seeing several inches of lake-effect snow, and heavy rain or a mix of rain and snow expected across most of the rest of the region.

Across New England, heavy rain was expected in Massachusetts, Connecticut and the surrounding region, while several inches of snow was expected in Maine.

A cold front associated with the storm will move across the eastern coastal regions of the Southeast, dumping some rain on the region during the early morning hours. The Southeast should clear up later and mostly sunny skies should prevail for the second half of the day.

High pressure will dominate the Plains on Tuesday, allowing clear skies to prevail across the region throughout the day.

To the west, a low pressure system located off the southern California coast will bring a rare batch of rain to the area. The rain along the coast near Los Angeles will be heavy enough to prompt flash flood watches.

The rest of the Southwest will see partly to mostly clear skies during the day. Meanwhile, a new front will begin to trek across the Northwest, bringing rain to Washington and Oregon on Tuesday.

Temperatures in the Lower 48 states on Monday ranged from a low of 1 degrees at Kremmling, Colo., to a high of 86 degrees at Falfurrias, Texas.

Heavy snow and blustery winds were forecast for the Great Lakes region and the Northeast on Tuesday, while rain was expected in the mid-Atlantic and chilly temperatures were predicted in the South.

The heaviest snow in the Great Lakes was expected to fall over Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and southeastern Michigan, and between Lake Ontario and New York’s Finger Lakes, which could get 2 to 5 inches of snow. Six to 10 inches of snow was forecast for West Virginia. Forecasters warned that whiteout conditions were possible.

Rain and snow were forecast for the mid-Atlantic and Massachusetts, and their coasts were likely to be windy.

Temperatures in the South were expected to plunge well below seasonal norms, as far south as northern Florida.

The West was forecast to remain mostly dry, though light showers were possible along the Washington coast.

Temperatures in the Lower 48 states on Monday ranged from a low of 12 degrees at Hallock, Minn., to a high of 96 degrees at Riverside, Calif.