Enforce ban on smoking and alcohol - NATA chief

by Ananda KANNANGARA

The ban imposed on the sale of tobacco related products and alcohol at places in close proximity to schools and other educational institutions must be strictly enforced by the law enforcement officers, Chairman, National Authority on Tobacco and Alcohol (NATA),Prof. Carlo Fonseka said.

He told the Junior Observer that a number of complaints regarding the using of cigarettes and alcohol by schoolchildren in the country are received by the Authority.

He said that it was the duty of not only school principals and teachers but also parents as well as elders to be vigilant on the behaviour of children.

"On the other hand, most schoolchildren could easily get used to cigarettes and alcohol as they are freely available at shops and wayside kiosks close to schools.

He added that the sale of these items must also be banned from being sold near temples, churches, kovils and mosques.

Quoting statistics Prof. Fonseka said that in the last century over 100 million people including children all over the world died due to tobacco related diseases.

He warned that if the already imposed law on tobacco control is not monitored by the authorities, considering it as a urgent need ,it could have a dangerous impact on the lives of the future generation of the country.

Extinction rate at its highest today

Experts warn it is the worst since dinosaurs vanished:

NAGOYA, Japan - The world cannot afford to allow nature's riches to disappear, the United Nations said recently at the start of a major meeting to combat losses in animal and plant species that underpin livelihoods and economies.

The United Nations says the world is facing the worst extinction rate since the dinosaurs vanished 65 million years ago, a crisis that needs to be addressed by governments, businesses and communities.

"We are destroying life on Earth," Achim Steiner, Head of the U.N. Environment Program, said at the opening of a two week meeting in Nagoya, central Japan last month.

The two-week meeting aims to prompt nations and businesses to take sweeping steps to protect and restore ecosystems such as forests, rivers, coral reefs and the oceans that are vital for an ever-growing human population.

These provide basic services such as clean air, water, food and medicines that many take for granted, the United Nations says, and need to be properly valued and managed by governments and corporations to reverse the damage caused by economic growth.

More resilient ecosystems could also reduce climate change impacts, such more extreme droughts and floods, as well as help fight poverty, the world body says.

Scientists warn that unless people start doing more to protect species, extinctions will spike and the intricately interconnected natural world will be damaged with devastating consequences.

They estimate that the Earth is losing species at 100 to 1,000 times the historical average and warn that's pushing the Earth toward its sixth big extinction phase, the greatest since the dinosaurs were wiped out 65 million years ago.

"We're on the verge on the major extinction spasm," said Russ Mittermeier, president of Conservation International and a field biologist who has spent decades studying primates and reptiles. "Healthy ecosystems are the underpinnings of human development." Mittermeier said that in his field, of the 669 different kinds of primates, 49 percent are threatened, largely because of habitat destruction and hunting.

"That's indicative of a real extinction risk," he said. Delegates from nearly 200 countries are being asked to agree to new 2020 targets after governments largely failed to meet a 2010 target of achieving a significant reduction in biological diversity losses.

Assassin bug lures spiders by mimicking prey

Scientists have described how a species of insect lures spiders by mimicking prey caught in webs.

Assassin bugs plucked the web's silk threads that replicate the vibrations of a fly or other insect, causing the fooled spider to head towards the bug.

Once within reach, the bug slowly tapped the spider with its antennae before lunging and stabbing the lured arachnid with its sharp snout.

The findings appear in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

The team from Macquarie University, Australia, said the behaviour - known as aggressive mimicry - was one of two strategies employed by the bug (Stenolemus bituberus) to trap its prey. The other involved "stalking" spiders, where the assassin bug slowly approaches the unsuspecting victim until within striking range.

The researchers, Drs Anne Wignall and Phil Taylor, explained that the bug exploited web-building spiders' use of vibrations to detect and locate its prey. "However, reliance on vibratory cues and predictable responses leaves web-building spiders vulnerable to predators that aggressively mimic prey stimuli to gain control over their behaviour," they wrote.

In their study, the pair set out to compare the responses of spiders to the presence of prey in their webs with the arachnids' response to the assassin bugs' behaviour. "Other vibrations in spider webs include mates and debris, and these were potential models for aggressive mimicry," they observed.

"Hence, we also compared spider behaviour in response to courting males and leaves falling into the web."

In their results, the team noted that there were "significant differences" to the various sources of vibrations.

They found that the spiders did not tend to respond to leaves falling on the webs, and female spiders responded to males by "entering a characteristic copulatory position".

But how spiders responded to the bugs was extremely similar to how the spiders responded to prey, they observed. "To a spider, the vibrations generated by bugs resemble small or exhausted prey.

"The responses of spiders to prey in the web were occasionally characterised by a direct and rapid approach towards prey without pause (reaching it within one second)."

But, they explained: "This response was.. observed towards bugs or other sources, and may be elicited by the presence of higher frequency and amplitude vibrations in the struggles of prey." However, spiders can be a formidable opponent for the assassin bug if they move quickly across the web to the potential predator.

"We have observed bugs being counter-attacked, killed and eaten by the spider they were hunting," they added. "This risk may be considerably increased when the spider approaches rapidly and without pause.

"Bugs, hence, appear to aggressively mimic a broad class of prey-like vibrations that are effective at soliciting approaches but are also unlikely to elicit highly aggressive, dangerous responses." -BBC