STRIKING ACCORD: China and India both wrote fashionably late letters to the U.N. climate secretariat on Tuesday, offering their vague approval of the Copenhagen Accord that was reached amid chaotic climate talks in December. The nonbinding accord is already much weaker than originally intended, and after breezing past the Jan. 31 endorsement deadline, India's and China's careful, qualified letters did little to raise hopes of reaching a binding global climate treaty in 2010. While more than 100 countries have agreed to be "associated" with the accord, China and India didn't even concede that much — India says it "stands by the contents of the accord," while China simply sent a one-sentence message saying the U.N. "can proceed to include China in the list of Parties included in the chapeau of the Copenhagen Accord." Some have seen the letters as a sign China and India are distancing themselves from the deal, although Jairam Ramesh (pictured), India's environment minister, told parliament Tuesday that "Our decision to be listed ... will strengthen our negotiation position on climate change." Also on Tuesday, European commissioner for climate change Connie Hedegaard said a binding treaty at this year's summit in Mexico is unlikely, adding that a 2011 meeting in South Africa is a more practical target. (Sources: Associated Press, Guardian, BusinessWeek, Financial Times)

 

JAWS AND REFLECT: The Maldives will outlaw all shark fishing in its territorial waters, creating a vast shark sanctuary that could lend momentum to international efforts aimed at stopping the global free-fall of shark populations. The Indian Ocean island chain joins Palau, a Micronesian state in the Pacific, to become the second nation on Earth offering such blanket protection for its sharks. The move is partly an economic necessity, since the value of the Maldives' shark trade has fallen more than 80 percent in the last 12 years as the number of sharks have dwindled. A study last year also found that one living gray reef shark was worth $3,300 a year to the Maldives' tourism industry, while a fisherman would get a one-time value of $32 from the same shark. But beyond economics, the larger issue is ecology — after outliving the dinosaurs, up to 30 percent of all shark species are now threatened with extinction, largely due to overfishing to meet demand for shark fins in China. Many sharks have had trouble rebounding from these declines, since they mature slowly and only have a few pups at a time. "If we don't leave enough in the water, they won't recover," a shark expert with the Pew Environment Group tells the New York Times. The Maldives' shark-fishing ban will take effect July 1. (Source: New York Times)

 

GOOGLE BIKE MAPS: Until now, Google Maps has been limited to helping drivers, mass-transit riders and adventurous walkers navigate city streets, but beginning today the search-engine giant will also offer its satellite-powered omniscience to cyclists in 150 U.S. cities. While bike-trip sites already exist, many bicycling advocates hope the Google name will add clout to the technology, and may help attract more novice or infrequent cyclists to two-wheeled transportation. "This is the next move in what we think mapmaking should be," a Google official tells the Chicago Tribune. "Streets are not just for cars." At maps.google.com/biking, users can enter their starting point and destination just as with previous map tools, and will be presented with routes, itineraries and estimated travel times — and to account for all the variation in how fast different people pedal, the step-by-step biking directions factor in trip length, changes in elevation and even fatigue. The new feature also includes recommended cycling routes and maps that show bike trails, on-street bike lanes and bike-friendly roads. (Sources: Chicago Tribune, Wired)

 

UNSCRAMBLED EGGS: Australian scientists have extracted DNA from the fossilized eggshells of several extinct birds, including avian giants such as the moa and the elephant bird, in a scientific breakthrough that may pave the way toward recreating the genomes of birds that have been wiped out by human overhunting. Along with the moa and elephant bird — which were hunted to extinction in the late 1800s and early 1700s, respectively — the researchers also successfully mined DNA from an extinct Australian owl, a New Zealand duck and a 19,000-year-old emu. They first had to reduce these ancient eggshells to powder, then extracted DNA using lab chemicals and amplified it with "polymerase chain reaction," or PCR, which is often used by forensic scientists. While the feat was a world first, the scientists caution that "the point was proof of principle, to show that it can be done," and that they have no intention of reviving the birds à la Jurassic Park. "We think, like the mammoth, that it will be possible to do extinct genomes using fossil eggshell," one of the researchers tells AFP. "But it is a huge leap to imagining we can clone an extinct species. Personally I think it is unethical to recreate a species that is extinct." (Source: Agence France-Presse, BBC News)

 

NEED FOR SEED: The world's farmers spend a total of about $36 billion every year to buy new crop seeds, especially those with popular genetic traits like drought- or pest-resistance — traits that can't be passed on among generations of crops due to the gene-mixing effects of sexual reproduction. But plants that reproduce asexually, such as dandelions or poplar trees, don't have this problem since they essentially just clone themselves, passing on all their genetic traits into their seeds unadulterated. In a study published in the journal Nature, a Mexican researcher reports how he has moved a step closer to turning sexually reproducing plants into asexually reproducing ones — potentially eliminating the need for farmers to buy new seeds every season. "Agricultural companies and farmers around the world have a tremendous interest in this method," says the study's lead author. "It would allow them to simplify the labor-intensive cross-hybridization methods they now use to produce hearty seeds with desirable traits." (Source: ScienceDaily)

 

— Russell McLendon