Corrientes is a city in Argentina. It is the capital city of the province of Corrientes, on the eastern shore of the Paraná River, and about 1,000 km from Buenos Aires. According to the census of 2001, the city had 328,689 people.
As the provincial capital, Corrientes is the most important city in the province, being an economical center, and holds the authorities and governmental institutions.
The annual average temperature is 20 °C, with maximum and minimum averages of 33 °C and 10 °C, respectively. The annual rainfall is around 1,200 mm.
Emerald ash borer
The emerald ash borer ("Agrilus planipennis" or "Agrilus marcopoli") is a shiny green beetle native to Asia. It made its way into the United States by accident and has since been spread to eleven states and to the border with Canada.
The beetle is an invasive species, and a serious pest which destroys ash trees. It has killed at least 25 million ash trees so far and threatens to kill most of the ash trees throughout North America.
Adults lay eggs in crevasses in the bark. Larvae burrow into the bark after hatching and consume the living tissue of cambium and phloem. This causes death within two years. The average emerging season for the emerald ash borer is early spring to late summer. Females lay around 75 eggs, but up to 300 from early May to mid-July. The borer's life cycle is estimated to be one year in southern Michigan but may be up to two years in colder regions.
Huge efforts have been made to slow down its spread, but nothing has worked so far. Parasitoid wasps from Asia are being released, and a fungus which kills insects is being tried.
Ratite
The ratites are a group of medium to large birds, most of which are flightless. Most of them, including the largest (moas and elephant birds) are now extinct.
Unlike other flightless birds, the ratites have no keel on their sternum. In a flying bird the sternum anchors the wing muscles.
Most parts of the former super-continent Gondwana have ratites, or did have until the fairly recent past. Their closest living relatives are the tinamous of South America.
The classification used here includes all ratites in the order Struthioniformes, but not the tinamous. This may change in future.
It was once thought that ratites were all one monophyletic group, which evolved together in Gondwana in the Upper Cretaceous. Then they evolved in their separate ways as Gondwana split up, and the parts drifted apart. The parts became the modern southern continents, plus Africa and the Indian subcontinent.
However, modern gene analysis conflicts with this. DNA analysis shows that the ratites diverged from one another too recently to share a common Gondwanian ancestor. However, all analyses show that rheas (South America) and the living Australasian/Oceanian ratites "are" monophyletic.
Recent analysis of twenty nuclear genes suggests that the flighted tinamous cluster within the ratite lineage. The timamids are the sister group of the Australo-Pacific ratites.
If so, this would make 'ratites', as a whole, paraphyletic rather than monophyletic. Since tinamous are weak fliers, this raises interesting questions about the evolution of flightlessness in this group. If timamous are inside the ratite lineage, then ratites evolved flightlessness at least three times. Re-evolution of flight in the tinamous would be an alternative explanation, but that has no precedent in bird evolution, while loss of flight is commonplace.
Tinamous are ratites. Therefore, ratites are a group of medium to large birds, most of whom are flightless, with the exception of the tinamous. The ratites evolved flightlessness more than once. The similarities between Ostriches and the Australo-Pacific ratites is due to convergent evolution.
New Britain
New Britain is the largest island in the Bismarck Archipelago (named for Otto von Bismarck) of Papua New Guinea. It is separated from the island of New Guinea by the Dampier Strait, and from New Ireland by the St. George's Channel. The main towns of New Britain are Rabaul/Kokopo and Kimbe.
Gosford
Gosford is a city on the Central Coast of New South Wales, Australia, approximately 80 km north of the Sydney central business district. Gosford is the 18th largest local government area in Australia with a total resident population of 158,157.
Airlie Beach, Queensland
Airlie Beach is a town in the Whitsunday Region of Queensland, Australia. At the 2006 census, Airlie Beach had a population of 2,751. The greater Whitsunday region had a population of approximately 31,000.
Agama
Agama is a genus of lizards. It contains at least 31 species across Africa, where they are the most common lizard.
They can be found in many sizes, from 5 inches to a foot in length and a wide variety of colors. One of the best known species is the red-headed rock agama ("Agama agama"), widespread in sub-Saharan Africa.
Hurricane Luis
Hurricane Luis was one of the most powerful storms of the very active 1995 Atlantic hurricane season. Even though Luis was strong it was still only the second strongest storm in 1995, the strongest was Hurricane Opal. Hurricane Luis was the strongest storm to hit the Leeward Islands since Hurricane Hugo in 1989. From August 22 to September 1 Humberto, Iris, Jerry, Luis, and Karen were active at the same time. Most of the places damaged by Luis were damaged only a week earlier by Hurricane Iris, except for the United States and Newfoundland (Canada) and most of the islands would be damaged again less than two weeks later by Hurricane Marilyn.
The early stages of Luis's formation is track back to a tropical wave that moved off of Africa on August 26. The next day it became Tropical Depression Thirteen near Cape Verde. It reached Tropical Storm status on the 29th and was named Luis. It reached hurricane status on August 30 and reach category 4 strength on September 2. The next day Luis reached it's highest winds of 150 mph making it a Category 4. Luis continued west and crossed over Barbuda late on September 4. At this time Luis came very close to Antigua, St. Barthelemy, St. Martin and Anguilla. Luis turned northwest and while it was 150 miles to the north of Puerto Rico Luis weakened to a category 2 hurricane, after being a major hurricane for a week. Luis kept slowly weakening and headed to the northeast. While Luis was offshore of Newfoundland he caused a wave more than 98 feet tall. Luis made landfall in eastern Newfoundland on September 11 while a category 1. That same day Luis became extratropical and died near Greenland.
These were the places impacted by Hurricane Luis. Many of the Island Countries were affected by Hurricane Iris a week before; many would also be affected by Hurricane Marilyn only ten days later.
Luis caused a lot of damage in Antigua and Barbuda because it made landfall in that country. In Antigua about 50% of houses were either destroyed of damaged. In Barbuda nearly 70% of houses were either destroyed of damaged. The government of the country spent about $350 million in U.S. Dollars to fix the damage.
In Bermuda winds were reported up to 46 mph. However, there was no damage or people killed in Bermuda. On September 11 a ship called Queen Elizabeth 2 got caught in the 98 foot wave that Luis caused. The ship was not damaged but it arrived late in New York.
The only Providence in Canada affected by Luis was Newfoundland.
In Newfoundland, Luis killed one person and caused about $500,000 in damage. Luis dropped 2.4 to 4.7 inches of rain while it passed over Newfoundland on September 11.
In Dominica, larges waves from Hurricane Luis caused one fisherman to get killed. Hurricane Luis caused about $47 million in damage to the island nation.
St. Martin, a small island was hurt most by Luis. Luis did not strike St. Martin, but it was hurt most by Luis because he caused 9 people to get killed and $1.8 billion in damage.