Florian Eggers is part of the new series “The Ocean Researchers” on TV Agder. He was part of last week’s episode, presenting his research in Landvik-lake!

“The Ocean Researchers” is one of the most exciting communications projects we’ve ever worked on, says communication Espen Bierud by IMR station in Flødevigen. – I can not think of a better way for most people, and children and youth in particular, to learn about the exciting research we do in the ocean.

New research published Wednesday in the journal Nature reaffirms that key regions of the globe that have been a source of major climate worry to researchers — such as the Amazon rainforest and the forests of the global north — are exquisitely sensitive to swings in climate. And it also identifies some new and similarly vulnerable ecosystems that will bear very close watching.

“Understanding how ecosystems are going to respond to climate variability is an important feature that we still don’t have a lot of information on,” said Alistair Seddon, the study’s lead author and a biologist at the University of Bergen in Norway. “And so what our study is doing is providing that perspective at a global scale.” Seddon published the study with researchers from the University of Oxford and the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew in the UK.

Read the rest of the article with Alistair Seddon in Washington post

Also picked up in

• UiB: https://www.uib.no/aktuelt/95899/kartlegger-klodens-klimaf%C3%B8lsomhet also in English http://www.uib.no/en/news/95898/mapping-world-climate-sensitivity
• NRK viten: http://www.nrk.no/viten/har-kartlagt-jordas-klimafolsomhet-1.12806361
• Huston Chronicle: http://www.houstonchronicle.com/about/article/Scientists-just-found-out-where-the-Earth-is-most-6837659.php
• NZ herald: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/weather/news/article.cfm?c_id=10&objectid=11591591

Researcher states that the dangers of overfishing are overly exaggerated, and that we can harvest significantly more from the Oceans than we do today.

International researchers have estimated that 32M tons of non-reported fish is harvested from the oceans annually. Daniel Pauly at University of British Columbia in Vancouver fears that false fisheries statistics will impact governments’ ability to make good decitions in terms of management, and calls out for better catch registration.

But Professor Jeppe Kolding at the University of Bergen believe all the talk about the dangers of illegal, unregulated and unreported fishing is greatly exaggerated. He believes on the contrary that there is much more to be gained from the sea than it is done today.

– If one looks all human consumption today as a whole, we only gather two percent of what we consume from the the ocean. We can pick out much much more, which will be very important in terms of the population growth that is expected in the coming decades, says Kolding NRK.

Read the rest of the article on NRKs webpages

You are a guinea pig!

Producers sell their cosmetics labeled paraben free and bottles that are BPA free. But the replacement compount can be just as bad or even worse!

Every summer Forbrukerrådet publishes tests on what sunscreens that contains hormone disrupting compounds or that can cause allergies. Hormone disruptive compounds get extra attention, and the knowledge about these has greatly increased in the past years.

Read the rest of the article in BT-innsikt, written by BIO316 studentents Marie Nohre, Margrete Fagereng and Martha Sæstad Endresen.

Ragnhild completed her MSc at BIO in 2009 before continuing on a PhD in 2010. Her research shows that cod only have visual pigments for blue and green light, and has through evolution lost genes for detecting UV and red light and is thus colorblind for these types of light.

Read more in Haugesunds Avis and a more extensive Q&A in Morgenbladet’s column “The Doctor Answers“.