The sleepy baby cat falls asleep in the basketPhoto by Sherry Jackson

Beautiful cute white cat with pretty eyes

Pretty and cute young white Persian cat in ping background

In the Japanese art of paper folding, a series of folds can make the same sheet of paper into a ballerina or baby elephant. But try unfolding the baby elephant and making it into a ballerina. It’s like trying to make a neuron from a kidney cell. Epigenetics, it turns out, isn’t much different from this old Japanese art: Each fold, or epigenetic crease, both limits and permits further potential folds in a way that mirrors how epigenetic changes seal a cell’s fate.

Well girls, I said I was going to pursue a purebred cat but keep my heart open for a rescue.  I guess God had plans for that because I just brought home a new kitten.  It’s going to be some work for awhile, but definitely worth it.

I have been watching craiglist and there was an ad for a free kitten.  I’m pretty horrified by what she’s been through.  It’s like on Black Beauty when the squire Gordon says, “Only ignorance, it’s the worst kind of wickedness.”   From what I can tell…

A new species of yeast has been discovered deep in the Amazon jungle. Biologist have identified novel characteristics of Candida carvajalis sp. nov.

A new report from WWF has shown that the Government must not give the green light to new big coal-fired power stations, such as Kingsnorth, in order to test small scale Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) projects, or the new technology will actually raise UK carbon emissions instead of lowering them.

“Building a new power station on the scale of Kingsnorth with CCS technology covering only a small portion of its output, will raise the country’s carbon emissions by millions of tonnes,” says Keith Allott, Head of Climate Change at WWF-UK. “A much smarter way of demonstrating the technology is to use an existing station that would be running anyway – this would actually reduce our emissions, and would also avoid locking us in to a new generation of polluting coal stations if it turns out that CCS too difficult or expensive

CCS aims to reduce emissions from burning coal and gas by capturing CO2 and then transporting it to underground storage sites. As yet the process has not been proven on a commercial scale. However in April the Government proposed that it will fund up to 4 demonstrations to test different carbon capture technologies. In order to help the Government make the right decisions on how it will test CCS, WWF commissioned IPA Energy + Water Economics to compare the potential impact that demonstrating the technology on an existing or a new coal fired power station could have on the power sector’s CO2 emissions.

The report shows that if the technology is tested at the 300MW scale proposed by the UK Government, on a brand new coal power station of 1,600MW (the size of those proposed at Kingsnorth in Kent, or Tilbury in Essex), then overall emissions from the power sector could increase by 32 million tonnes CO2 between 2014 and 2025. This is roughly equivalent to running an extra 4.5 coal fired power plants for a whole year.

By comparison, fitting carbon capture to an existing power station, such as Scottish Power’s plant at Longannet, would reduce emissions by 14.5 million tonnes of CO2 over the same period – equivalent to the emissions saved by switching off two coal fired power stations for a year. 1

The absence of strict conditions requiring a full-scale retrofit of carbon capture to cover the entire capacity of power plant within a set timeframe, mean that a single new coal plant with partial CCS could still pump nearly 250 million tonnes of CO2 into the air during its 40 year lifetime.

“If the proposed new plants at Kingsnorth in Kent or Tilbury in Essex get built with only a small level of carbon capture, then 80% of the total emissions from these plant could still end up in the atmosphere” says Keith Allott, “Technical problems with CCS – or claims of excessive cost – mean that there is a real possibility that retrofitting an entire power station would prove unfeasible and unattractive to power companies further down the line. This is why a safety net, such as an Emissions Performance Standard, which places a limit on emissions from power plant must be in place from the outset”

An Emissions Performance Standard (EPS) would set a legally enforceable limit on the emissions emitted by any power station, which could be further tightened in future. It would therefore ensure that any demonstration project must ultimately lead to full scale CCS, and make absolutely clear than any coal plant outside the demonstrations – eventually including existing coal stations – will also face full CCS costs.

“The power sector is responsible for more than 30% of the UK’s CO2 emissions, and around 70 per cent of this comes from burning coal,” said Keith Allott, Head of Climate Change at WWF-UK. “The Committee on Climate Change has advised the Government that the power sector should be almost completely carbon-free by 2030. But if current proposals for a new generation of largely unabated coal-fired power stations are approved, it would present a huge challenge to the UK’s prospects of meeting emission reduction targets and any aspirations to continue to show global leadership in tackling climate change.”

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1. These 3 proposals – Kingsnorth in Kent, Tilbury in Essex and Longannet in Scotland – are currently all being considered by the UK Government as potential carbon capture demonstration projects.

The way we live in the UK is leading to environmental threats such as climate change, species extinction, deforestation, water shortages and the collapse of fisheries. WWF’s One Planet Future Campaign is working to help people live a good quality of life within the earth’s capacity. For more information visit www.wwf.org.uk/oneplanet jsargent@wwf.org.uk

Jo Sargent, tel: 01483 412 375, Mobile: 07867 697 519 , email:

Planning to hit the road with your favorite four-legged friend over Memorial Day weekend or this summer? Travel by car is often the mode of transportation chosen by pet owners, and one that many pets thoroughly enjoy….

The reason for “THAT” look….. Rupert was denied going out into the garden on his harness. It was raining, he is not amused…

Tom pictures, the cat owner is one of my colleague, Mr. Fadzli. The cat pictures were taken at his house in Semenyeh, Selangor, Malaysia.