Science & Technology
 

Tsunami alert system takes shape
 

by Julianna Kettlewell

Six months after the December 26 tsunami, which swept away a myriad of futures, many homes still remain crumpled and lives shattered.

But amongst the ruins a resolve is growing: next time it will be different.

Within both local communities and governments, people are working tirelessly to build a comprehensive tsunami early warning system.

There is still a long way to go but the will is rigid and, already, the distance covered is great.

"We have made a lot of progress. I think by the anniversary we will look back and think, 'My god, did we really do all that in a year?'" said Robert Owen Jones, climate change director for the Australian government.

"On 26 December there weren't any arrangements in place for the Indian Ocean. Now we have the system mapped out, we have lots of plans and money allocated by countries to develop the capabilities. There is no comparison."

The tsunami early warning system for the Indian Ocean can be seen as a two-tier operation.

Firstly, there is the hi-tech network of ocean monitoring technology, which will feed back into an international web of early warning centres. And secondly, there is the low-tech community response drill, which will take an emergency warning to every hawker on the beach.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization's (Unesco) Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) is coordinating the first tier, while individual governments, with help from the International Red Crescent, are handling the second.

Both tiers are still in the planning stages, but physical "interim" preparations - both technological and social - are already underway.

Network of centres

This week, Unesco is hosting a meeting in Paris to hammer out details for the hi-tech system, which will be shared by 27 countries around the Indian Ocean.

Each country is to set up a tsunami warning centre to receive information from the pressure gauges, seismographs and wave sensors that will survey the ocean basin. Many countries have already begun work on their centres.

"Today we have a very good number of national information centres for tsunami," said Petricio Bernal, executive secretary of the IOC. "We have 25 in all and in December 2004 we didn't have any.

"These centres are helping coordinate emergency preparedness but also warnings for the population."

Some countries have gone a step further. last Monday, Thailand opened a hi-tech national disaster centre.

The one-storey building in Bangkok is packed with state-of-the-art computer and communications equipment, which will receive information from monitoring centres in Hawaii and Japan, as well as national meteorologists, hydrologists and even the public.

"We can broadcast to all TV and radio stations in Thailand," said Col Anutat Bunnag, deputy executive director of Thailand's National Disaster Warning Centre. "Every station will switch from normal programmes to warning centre programmes, and we can send text messages to all mobile phones.

"We could warn people within 20 minutes if another tsunami took shape today." Mr Bernal is impressed with Thailand's $1.5m (œ800,000) centre. "This is a very important investment by Thailand, I think they are taking the lead," he told the BBC News website.

"The centre has the capability for analysing and broadcasting information. They have installed sirens and alarms at beach sites, which are centrally managed."

Hi-tech equipment

Although Thailand's national disaster centre is currently linked up to monitoring stations in Hawaii and Japan, this will become more localised when the arsenal of alert technology is fully installed in the Indian Ocean.

At the moment, several existing tide-gauges are being upgraded so they can fire off immediate information about wave development.

"These upgraded sea-level gauges work in real time to detect changes," said Mr Bernal. "So in other words, they are now capable of detecting the presence of a tsunami after an earthquake."

The next stage will be to install a series of pressure gauges - each worth about $300,000 (œ160,000) - which sit under the sea and monitor the weight of water on top of them.

By 2006, when the whole system should be complete, the Indian Ocean will host several million dollars' worth of equipment. However, according to Mr Owen Jones, cost should not be a stumbling block.

"There is a huge willingness and goodwill amongst donor countries to support the system and make sure it works well," he said. "So it is all coming together fairly well."

Low-tech response

As many have pointed out, all the expensive technology in the world amounts to nothing unless individual countries can prepare their sometimes remote communities. Technology might be the most expensive part of the early warning system, but taking the alert to every fisherman and beach dweller is by far the hardest.

Johan Schaar, of the International Red Crescent, says their job has been particularly tough because they are dealing with communities who are so damaged by the last tsunami that living for the present is all they can do. "In many communities, people are living in temporary shelter and they stil need to survive day to day," he told the BBC News.

"Mobilising and working through communities that are under such stress is very, very hard."

However, the damage caused by last year's tsunami was so catastrophic that a low-tech response chain has already fallen into place, driven by sheer dread. And tragically, it has already been put to the test.

In March of this year, another earthquake hit the region, killing hundreds. Although technology in the Indian Ocean was still incapable of predicting a tsunami, many coastal communities did not wait to be told. Officials were quick to spread the word in Indonesia, India, Sri Lanka and Thailand, and thousands of terrified people evacuated their homes. In the end, no tsunami materialised, but the swift response demonstrated that 26 December 2004 will not be allowed a repeat performance.

"I have just been to Sri Lanka and the response there was very good," said Mr Schaar. "The government used existing telecommunications systems and the network of police stations along the coast to warn people. It was very effective - people did evacuate fast."

The region remains volatile, aftershocks reverberate and many experts believe another devastating tsunami may not be so far away. "People are scared about the possibility of another earthquake and they are very much on their toes," said Mr Schaar. "There is a great risk that this could happen again soon.

"But we can be confident that people would react differently today."

(BBC)

Albinism in snakes

As more and more snakes are bred, the concept and the definition of the word "albino" has changed.

When albino snakes first began being bred, back in the 1970s, one of the pioneer snake breeders and a man eminently qualified to speak on this particular subject, Dr Bernard Bechtel published his opinion that it would be better to refer to "albino" snake as "amelanistic." Of course, "amelanistic" means "without melanin." From that, most people began to define albinos as snakes that were without melanin.

Of course, amelanistic is an apt description of tyrosinase-negative albinos, most often called "t- albinos" or "normal albinos." For those of you who are lost here by all the references to "t" this and "t" that, the "t" stands for "tyrosinase." Tyrosinase-negative albinos have a defect in the gene that supplies the blueprint for the manufacture of an enzyme called "tyrosinase."

Back when the world was young and we all were seeing albinos for the first time, t-negative albinos were pretty much all that were recognized.

Tyrosinase is an enzyme that catalyzes the first two steps in the creation of melanin. Step one takes the amino acid "tyrosine" and turns it into a compound called "dopa" and step two turns dopa into dopaquinone.

The dopaquinone, itself an opaque black compound, is then taken through a multi-step process with each step being regulated and catalyzed by a different enzyme, until finally the end result is the opaque and inert black pigment we all think of as melanin.

A t- albino does not have functional tyrosinase and therefore it is not able to initiate the manufacture of black melanin. But it turns out that dopaquinone is also a precursor building block in the creation of other pigments as well.

There are a number of other tyrosine-based melanin-related pigments that are not created in the absence of tyrosinase. Most "melanin-related pigments" are not well known and few have names. An example of one that has been identified is "phaeomelanin."

Phaeomelanin is the melanin that gives blood pythons their red color. [That's why t+ albino blood pythons are called "red-albinos."

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Albino snakes galore!
 

by Bharatha Malawaraarachchi

For the first time, ten Albino Cobras (pure white) have been born at the National Zoological garden, Dehiwala marking a significant event in the history of the Zoo.

"This is an Albino condition of the normal cobras," a Zoological Gardens spokesman told the Daily News adding that this condition develops when the recessive genes dominate in cobras.

According to K.E. Abeysiriwardena, the Zoo's Curator who counts 18 years experience in the field says this female cobra had laid 21 eggs out of which 12 offspring came out. Later two had died and 10 others are now in good health.

The parent snakes of these offspring are also white. They have been brought to the Zoo three years back after being caught at a shrub jungle in Piliyandala. "This is their first offspring. If the parent cobras are 100 per cent white, the off-spring also become white," he added.

Abeysiriwardena says Piliyandala is well-known for this kind of snakes and similar types have been found from that area.

NSF study reveals new crabs

A national survey carried out by the National Science Foundation has uncovered 16 hitherto unknown species of freshwater crabs in Sri Lanka. Most of the new species inhabit the rainforests of the island's south-western lowlands, while some are found at altitudes above even Nuwara Eliya. This brings the national total of freshwater crabs to 51 species, all of which are endemic (found nowhere else in the world).

"Sri Lanka's freshwater crabs are now probably one of the best known groups of animals in the country," Rohan Pethiyagoda, the project's leader told the Daily News.

"We have more species here than in all of India, which is 50 times the size of Sri Lanka, but that could be because not much exploration has taken place on the other side of the Palk Straits. However, Sri Lanka's crab diversity is exceptional even when compared with well explored Asian countries, such as Malaysia, Thailand and Taiwan."

The national Science Foundation also funded the team to make the first conservation assessment of freshwater crabs in Sri Lanka, data from which will be fed into IUCN, the World Conservation Union's, Red List of Threatened Species.

The study revealed that while there was no evidence that any freshwater crabs had become extinct, several are on the verge of extinction and could disappear unless early conservation action are taken.

"Most of these crabs live outside the protected area network and have no economic value," according to Mohomed Bahir, a crab expert who conducted the study, "and so protective legislation alone will not help them. We need to think of making local communities aware of these animals so that they will not allow their habitats to be altered.

Although they are known as 'freshwater crabs', many of these species do not actually live in water, but among wet rocks and soil, and in the case of one species, in tree holes. So they need a lot of conservation attention."

The Red List assessment shows that 23 species are Critically Endangered, 8 Endangered and a further 6 Vulnerable, suggesting that extinctions are likely unless urgent conservation measures are implemented.

The NSF is expected formally to bring the study's results to the attention of the Department of Wildlife Conservation so that a conservation plan can be developed.

Pethiyagoda and Bahir are now planning a Sinhala-language Field guide to the freshwater crabs of Sri Lanka, to be published next October, so as to help build awareness among students and nature lovers. The scientific papers on the study are expected to be officially released on June 30.