- January
- 24
Remember the H5N1 virus, a.k.a bird flu? It swept across Asia a few years ago and was thought to be the next human pandemic. Well, just because it hasn’t, doesn’t mean we should forget about it, scientists and officials said yesterday.
Plus, we shouldn’t blame wild birds for its spread or worry they may be a reservoir for the virus, according to this expert.
Here’s a story I did almost two years ago about local researchers monitoring songbirds for the possibility of avian flu.
Posted by Mike Risinit on Thursday, January 24th, 2008 at 8:43 am |
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- January
- 21
I drove back and forth across the Tappan Zee Bridge this morning and the Hudson River was open water as far as one could see, upstream and down. Not an ice floe in sight – which isn’t unusual. 
From the state Department of Environmental Conservation: “Ice cover on the mainstem varies from year to year. A mild winter may see open water to Albany; a cold one might find ferryboats cutting through ice off Manhattan. In most years, ice is common south to the Hudson Highlands. ”
Looking back at the Hudson River Almanac from January of 2004, you would find the Hudson by the Tappan Zee was a lot more solid then than it was today.
The photo above shows large chunks of ice floating off Riverfront Green Park in Peekskill in Feb. 2004.
Here’s an eye-in-the-sky photo of the bridge last March by TJN photographer Mark Vergari. Here’s a video, too, that I found of an icebreaker plying the Hudson. 
Posted by Mike Risinit on Monday, January 21st, 2008 at 4:49 pm |
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- January
- 19
I don’t know many constellations, very few actually. So if I can find Orion, the hunter in the night sky, you can too. Three stars in a row form Orion’s belt, making it easy to spot on the southern horizon during the winter.
For us here in the northern hemisphere, Orion is a winter constellation. That’s because our nighttime view of the sky changes as the Earth orbits around the sun.
For me, Orion hangs over a field across the road from my house. As I watch Orion slide farther across the sky from week to week, I know winter is getting shorter.
Down under, Orion is a summer constellation.
Click here for a fun page that maps out various constellations.
Posted by Mike Risinit on Saturday, January 19th, 2008 at 4:31 pm |
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