Tornado in Los Banos, Laguna

A tornado formed in Los Banos, Laguna, Philippines on 14 August 2008 around 4 to 5 in the afternoon. Heavy clouds were present in that afternoon then residents observed a twister forming. Trees are uprooted and buildings are destroyed. When the tornado dispersed, Los Banos was wrapped with heavy rains with strong winds.

The new Noah's ark: Doomsday seed vault

Photo is taken from Svalbard News

The science community's buzz is the doomsday vault or the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. This is good and bad news at the same time. Good - because such technologies assures the world of food security in times of extreme climate and natural occurrence. Bad - because why do we have it now? Is something bound to happen?

Funded by Global Crop Diversity, the doomsday vault aimed to provide mankind with food in the event of a global catastrophe. It is built in the mountainside near Longyearbyen, in the remote Svalbard islands between Norway and the North Pole.


According to the National Geographic website:

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault or "doomsday" seed bank will store backup copies of as many as three million different crop varieties in case of a worldwide catastrophe.

The high-tech vault opens for storage in February 2008. It is going to "put an end to extinction [of] agricultural crops," said Cary Fowler, executive director of the Global Crop Diversity Trust in Rome, Italy, which is the leading force behind the project.

The mission is crucial, Fowler noted, because the stored seeds provide researchers with the raw genetic materials needed to adapt the global food supply to survive climate change as well as water and energy shortages.

Here are other articles related to the doomsday vault. Just click on the links provided.

Svalbard News
CNN
Newsscientist.com
National Geographic News