Climate change-induced changes in snowfall patterns could imperil two billion people who rely on melting snow for their water supply — and developing countries must work to protect citizens from these variations, researchers say.

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It's big. It's cold. And it's melting into the world's ocean.

It's Zachariae Isstrom, the latest in a string of Greenland glaciers to undergo rapid change in our warming world. A new NASA-funded study published today in the journal Science finds that Zachariae Isstrom broke loose from a glaciologically stable position in 2012 and entered a phase of accelerated retreat. The consequences will be felt for decades to come.

The reason? Zachariae Isstrom is big. It drains ice from an area of 35,440 square miles (91,780 square kilometers). That's about 5 percent of the Greenland Ice Sheet. All by itself, it holds enough water to raise global sea level by more than 18 inches (46 centimeters) if it were to melt completely. And now it's on a crash diet, losing 5 billion tons of mass every year. All that ice is crumbling into the North Atlantic Ocean.

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"Hemos encontrado que el nivel al que una persona está en forma, tiene una relación más fuerte con la actividad física, seguido por el género y la temporada. Esto significa que los adultos mayores que están en forma, son más activos que los que no lo están, las mujeres fueron más activas que los hombres y la actividad física fue mayor en los meses más cálidos del año. Además, se encontró que la educación superior se asoció con una mayor actividad física para los hombres, pero no para las mujeres. Entre otros resultados interesantes, encontramos que las correlaciones ambientales y sociales, como el apoyo social y la situación de vida, no se asociaron con la actividad física entre los ancianos ", dicen los dos primeros autores del estudio, Hallgeir Viken y Nils Petter ASPVIK, candidatos de doctorado en la Universidad Noruega de Ciencia y Tecnología (NTNU por sus siglas en inglés).

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Even the most accomplished naturalist can find it difficult to tell one species of plant from another or accurately decide which genus a small insect belongs to. So when a new specimen arrives at a museum, finding the right name from existing records can sometimes prove difficult. In turn, that can lead to specimens being given the wrong name – which can prove problematic for biologists.

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"We found that fitness level had the strongest association with physical activity, followed by gender and season. This means that fit older adults were more active than the unfit, females were more active than males and physical activity was higher in the warmer months of the year. In addition we found that higher education was associated with higher physical activity for males, but not for females. Among other interesting results, we found that the social environmental correlates, such as social support and living situation, were not associated with physical activity among the elderly", says the two first authors of the study, Hallgeir Viken and Nils Petter Aspvik, PhD candidates at NTNU.

In the study newly published in the Journal of Aging and Physical Activity, researchers from the K.G. Jebsen Center for Exercise in Medicine - Cardiac Exercise Research Group (CERG) and the Department of Sociology and Political Science at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) Norway have examined how background factors (correlates) are associated with overall physical activity among older adults.

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Scientists have long known that birds are feeling the heat due to climate change. However, a new study of a dozen affected species in the Western Cape suggests their decline is more complex than previously thought -- and in some cases more serious.

According to the study, published in Conservation Physiology, by scientists from the Percy Fitzpatrick Institute at the University of Cape Town and Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, there could be several reasons why birds are being negatively affected by human-made climate change.

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