Article: African Vulutres Dying of Poison

Asian vultures have gone on a deadly downward spiral and are now being followed by their African cousins.  In the past 25 years, the African vulture's numbers have dropped by 50%.  At around this time the number of dead livestock near the area where these scavengers live soared.  The main cause of death for the vultures is being attributed to the dead livestock.  The farmers in Africa lace their dead goats with a toxic pesticide called, "Furadan" so that the hyenas and lions that eat the carcasses will die.  Although vultures range widely and travel far, they eat together, so then it only takes one per cent of cattle that need to be poisoned for it to affect the entire population of the African vulture.

Article: Most Important Gas Affecting Global Climate

one of the most important gases affecting global warming is incredibly familiar to us, it is water vapor.  Atmospheric water insulates the earth and traps heat in.  Even after years of intense study, scientists were unable to discover how strong the effect was and how large a part it played in global warming.  A Texas A&M University atmospheric scientist, Andrew Dessler and his colleagues, analyzed global water vapor and temperature for the lower atmosphere, and found that warming, driven by carbon dioxide and other gases, allows the air to hold more moisture air and this increases the amout of water vapor in the atmosphere.  This is because the carbon dioxide and other gases allow the air to hold the moisture in.

Article: Intensive Logging Created New England's Rich Wetlands

Few people now adays think of loggers as being good and helping the environment, however, in New England it is the loggers from the 18th and 19th century that are to thank for New England's rich wetlands.  Although logging destroyed the landscape, it helped out the coastline tremendously.  The wetlands that the logging created buffer the coastline from storms, keep the shore safe from pollutants, and shelter marine organisms.  There are some people who wish to turn this area back into its "natural" state from before the European settlers came, however, this would mean losing a lot of the marshland, and its benefits.  Matthew Kirwan of the US Geological Survey in Laurel, Maryland wanted to find out how old the marsh in the Plum Island  in Massachusettes is.  He did this by dating fossil plant rhizomes and found that the ones on the edge dated back to about 4000 years and the ones in the centre went back just some 200 years.  This probably means that this area was half marsh and half open-water bay.  According to historic records, the time that the half marsh half open-water shifted to full marsh, was at a time when there was an increase in logging.

Article: Good-bye Grey Skies, Hello Extra Warming

Clouds play a very large part in temperature all around the world.  Low-level clouds reflect sunlight and cool the earth, but higher level clouds trap heat inside.  So clouds could push temperatures up or down depending on how they change.  A relatively new climate model has been created and is used to simulate cloud cover, this machine is called the International Pacific Research Center Regional Atmospheric Model (iRAM).  This device helps scientist to determine what the weather will be like in a few years to come.  Researchers used this model, which mainly covers the easern Pacific and parts of South America in greater detail than the global model, to determine what the forcast will be in a years to come.  What they found was not that pretty.  According to this model, the temperature in years to come will be going up and "we will find ourselves at the higher end of [temperature] predictions," says Ralf Bennartz who helped in this research.

WikiLeaks lists Canadian sites vital to U.S.

In 2009, a cable was sent to U.S. embassies and consulates around the world.  It insructed U.S. diplomats to update an existing list of foreign sites that could seriously harm the U.S. if they were targeted by terrorists.

On the 2008 list, Canadian sites included such things as the Darlington and Pickering nuclear power plant, a number of international rail crossings and bridges, oil and gas pipelines, the James Bay hydroelectric project in Quebec, the Hibernia Atlantic undersea cable landing in Halifax, several dams, a number of mines, and several factories producing everything from missile parts to plasma to vaccines.  In the note, it stated that the order to update the list was to strengthen "national preparedness, timely response, and rapid recovery in the event of an attack, natural disaster or other emergency."  Former British foreign secretary, Malcolm Rifkind, said, "This is further evidence that [WikiLeaks has] been generally irresponsible, bordering on criminal," and that, "This is the kind of information terrorists are interested in knowing,"

                                                                                  
                                               My Opinion on WikiLeaks

I think that WikiLeaks is illegal publication of sensitive information.  If somebody commits a crime, then they should be punished.  I also agree with freedom of speech, but there is such a thing as too much freedom, especially if it's about private, governmental documents that are vital to the country's security.  If somebody hacked my computer, I could press charges or take the guy to court or whatever, so how is it different if this WikiLeaks guy hacks into computer documents that are FAR more important than mine.

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McDonalds

This advertisement is telling you that if you play monopoly at McDonalds, you are practically guaranteed to win, because it says “be you only richer.”  The word “only” is in yellow instead of red like the rest of the words, emphasising it, telling people that they will still be themselves, but they will be richer, as though it’s a guarantee.  It is not trying to sell a burger and fries, as McDonalds ads usually are, instead it is trying to sell monopoly, but if someone does play the game then they have to keep going back to get all the pieces to finish the game.  People can only get the pieces if they buy something at McDonalds.



Avon



This advertisement by Avon is showing a woman smiling, happy and holding her prettily wrapped up gift from Avon.  The message behind this ad is to try and get women to put a gift from Avon on their wish list and to get kids and loved ones to buy a gift from Avon for the women in their lives, because if they do, it will make their woman happy, smiling, beautiful and stylish and she will never look at you again with anything but love and joy.

Nike

This advertisement shows a cheetah, one of the fastest animals on earth, running.  The scene behind him is all blurred to show the speed at which he is running.  On the top of the ad, is say, “What’s the secret of speed?” and on the bottom it says, “Ask the master.”  The advertisement is saying that if you buy Nike shows, then you will be as strong, fast and powerful as the cheetah in this picture.  And the words are trying to get across that they basically asked the cheetah himself what his secret of speed is

                                                                  
  

These logos are very popular ones.  This is probably because they are short and to the point.  There aren't any words or long sentences that people have to try and remember, there are just simple pictures of the logo, some have the name of the company that produced this logo on it.