This pup underwent quite the transformation.

Obie the dachshund, from Portland, Oregon, first made headlines in 2012 when heweighed a startling 77 pounds and his new owner set out on a quest to help him lose more than half of that. Nora Vanatta, a certified veterinary technician who rescued him from his previous owners, put him on a strict diet and exercise regimen. It worked and Obie now clocks in at a healthy 23 pounds. To celebrate, Vanetta has released a 2015 calendar chronicling the pups journey.

I feel blessed to be involved in Obies rehab and hope he can be an inspiration to any person or animal trying to lose weight, Vanetta told the Telegraph. It is so important to introduce pups and kids to a healthy lifestyle and food choices as early as possible.

Getting Obie down to a healthy size was no easy task. The pups previous owners, an elderly couple, fed him human food with the intention of spoiling the dog, The Oregonian reported. When Vanetta rescued him, Obie had a great deal of adjusting to do.

He was eating only people food before, so it took a little bit of a transition to get him on dog food, Vanatta told the Today show in June. Now [he has] two meals a day, a couple snacks and lots of exercise.

In addition to a revised diet, which now includes vegetables, and an exercise regimen, the dachshund also underwent surgery last April to remove the excess skin that was leftover from slimming down.

He is a star representation of a perfect body condition, Dr. Leilani Alvarez, a veterinarian and director of a rehabilitation and fitness service told the Today show.

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Obese Dachshund sheds 50 pounds, poses for hot dog calendar

LONDON, Dec. 18 (UPI) -- Energy power Shell said Thursday it was shedding some of its business interests in Norway to better focus on competitive downstream operations in Europe.

Finnish fuels company ST1 acquires parts of the Norwegian downstream operations from Shell for an undisclosed sum. The company also takes a joint interest in Shell's aviation business in Norway.

Shell said the measure includes a special retail license agreement to ensure the brand remains "highly visible" in the Norwegian market.

"The deal will have no impact on Shell's other businesses in Norway," the Dutch company said in a statement.

The decline in crude oil prices, nearly half of their June value, has forced some energy companies to streamline their portfolios to cope with the market stress. In October, Shell Chief Executive Officer Ben van Beurden said "the volatility in our industry" underlined the importance of keeping a tight hold on costs and spending.

The Finnish company operates Shell's retail fuel stations in Finland and Sweden. Shell said the sale to ST1 follows divestments elsewhere in the European and Scandinavian markets as it tries to cut costs in the bear market for crude oil.

"The sale is consistent with Shell's strategy to concentrate its downstream footprint on a smaller number of assets and markets where it can be most competitive," it said.

2014 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Any reproduction, republication, redistribution and/or modification of any UPI content is expressly prohibited without UPI's prior written consent.

Photos: The Year in Review

Notable deaths of 2014

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By Sivan Hirsch-Hoefler and Cas Mudde December 19 at 12:00 PM

A contractor walked in August 2003 through Clippinger Chevrolet in West Covina, Calif., where Earth Liberation Front members allegedly vandalized more than 120 sport utility vehicles. (AP File Photo)

In 2004, John Lewis, deputy assistant director of the FBI Counterterrorism Division, declared in testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee: the FBIs investigation of animal rights extremists and ecoterrorism matters is our highest domestic terrorism investigative priority. To most Americans this statement, if it had been given serious attention by the U.S. media, would have come as a surprise. Having been bombarded with articles and public warnings about jihadist terrorism ever since 9/11, the average American would not have expected the primary domestic terrorist threat to come fromgroups such as the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) and Earth Liberation Front (ELF), which are largely unknown to the broader public. In fact, the statement would have likely stunned most academic scholars of political violence and terrorism, who until recently have devoted little attention to the phenomenon of ecoterrorism.

In a recent article in Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, we assessed the phenomenon of ecoterrorism, both in the United States and globally, by categorizing the types of the actions of the Radical Environmentalist and Animal Rights (REAR) movement, assessing their relative importance within the broader arsenal of actions of the whole movement, and evaluating them on the basis of a clear definition of ecoterrorism.

The REAR movement is a highly diverse, international network with an unknown number of activists and supporters worldwide. Cells can be found in at least 25 (mostly Western) countries. While radical environmentalists such as the ELF and Earth First! are more broadly focused on the entire ecosystem, radical animal rightists like the ALF and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) are concerned more narrowly with sentient beings. Still, they regularly collaborate and claim joint responsibility for actions. Despite the diversity of ideas and ideologies, there are three main characteristics that all activists and groups share: an uncompromising position, status as a grassroots organization and direct action. In many ways, the REAR movement is best described as an idea; it is a collectivity in the most limited and virtual sense.

A recent publication shows that radical environmentalists and animal rights activists have been responsible for 1,069 criminal acts in the United States between 1970 and 2007 (see below). The authors categorize three actions as assassinations (0.3%), 44 as armed assaults (4.1%), 55 as bombings/explosions (5.1%), 933 as facility attacks (87.3%), 30 as unarmed assaults (2.8%) and four as unknown (0.4%).

As no cross-national dataset for criminal acts of the whole REAR movement exists, and even national dataset are lacking in most countries, we developed an original global dataset of criminal acts of the radical animal rights movement in the period 2003-2010. Given that animal rights activists are responsible for the vast majority of criminal acts of the broader REAR movement, and have a roughly similar pattern of activities as environmentalist activists, the findings should be largely representative of the broader REAR movement.

Following previous research, the dataset was constructed on the basis of the information posted on the website of Bite Back magazine, which is both internally and externally seen as the news magazine about the radical animal rights movement worldwide. The information on the website is mostly provided directly by activists themselves. Given that the media are highly selective in their coverage of these kind of actions, and law enforcement does not systematically collect data in most countries, this imperfect dataset is the best available to date.

We counted a total of 5,578 criminal actions by radical animal rights activists worldwide. Most actions took place in the United Kingdom (994), Sweden (769), Italy (458), the United States (446), and Germany (379). Using a slightly elaborated categorization, we counted 247 acts of arsons (4.4%), 0 assassinations (0%), 3,695 of vandalism (66.2%), 808 house visits (14.5%), 690 animal liberations (12.4%), 80 bombs (1.4%), and 58 cyber crimes (1%).

The question which of these actions constitutes terrorism obviously depends upon the definition used. There has been much discussion among scholars about a working definition of terrorism, and many different ones have been offered. We argue that terrorism goes beyond mere political violence; terrorists terrorize. Essential to terrorism is a psychological process based on the power of fear, more specifically fear for the physical wellbeing of (a subset of) the population. Consequently, we define terrorism as a strategy that employs the threat or use of force or violence to instill fear in (a subset of) the population with the ultimate aim of achieving political goals. In the case of ecoterrorism, these political goals are the ending of environmental destruction and animal rights abuse.

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Monkey Cage: Ecoterrorism: threat or political ploy?

Best Plastic Sheds
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1B8-F9aK1bQ Best Plastic Sheds Cheap Garden Sheds http://www.cheapgardensheds.org.uk have a massive range of garden sheds and ...

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Handmade Christmas Memorials for Grave Sites, Cemetery Memorials - Ricks Sheds
Looking for Handmade Christmas Memorials. We make them right here at Rick #39;s Outdoor Furniture in Aston Pa - (610) 494-SHED Visit: http://outdoorfurniture.rickssheds.com/blog/christmas-memorials-a ...

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NEW DELHI: Picking holes in the environment management by Indian railways, Comptroller and Auditor General of India has found there were no specific instructions by the Railway Board for installation of Effluent Treatment Plant (ETP) at workshops, sheds and production units of railways.

Sludge from ETPs was disposed off in open area leading to contamination of ground water, CAG in its latest report said.

CAG has suggested workshops, production units and sheds need to take effective steps for proper disposal of ETP sludge as per guidelines issued by Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) to prevent contamination of ground water.

"No ETP was provided in 60 per cent of the units test checked. In eight workshops and sheds, where ETP was provided, sources of effluents were not connected to the ETP," it said.

Railways is the single largest user of both energy and water in the country. Conservation of energy and water is essential to avoid wastage.

A review was taken up to assess the performance of 138 workshops, sheds and six production units in addressing the environmental impact of its operations or maintenance activities and measures adopted for conservation of energy and water.

CAG also found that monitoring of air quality along with the provision of pollution control equipment was inadequate.

"Air pollution control equipments such as wet scrubber, fume extractors, dust collectors were not provided in 69 per cent workshops and sheds test checked," it said.

Pollution control equipments in two production units Chittaranjan Locomotive Works in Chittaranjan and Diesel Locomotive Works in Varanasi were not maintained in working condition.

Monitoring of implementation of the recommended safety measures was done only in 12 per cent of the workshops and sheds test checked.

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CAG blames railways for ground water contamination

December 17, 2014

Image Credit: Thinkstock

John Hopton for redOrbit.com Your Universe Online

Those working in the field of history will often point out that it is not as glamorous as the Indiana Jones movies make it, and for a PhD student digging the remnants of ancient food from teeth excavated on Easter Island, that is certainly the case. Indiana Jones and the Hardened Plaque does not have the ring of a box office smash, but hardened plaque, also known as dental calculus, is helping us to understand the diets of the fascinating ancient culture that gave us the world famous stone heads.

The study concerns whether or not palm was part of the diet of natives of Easter Island, known locally as Rapa Nui. Biological anthropologists Monica Tromp, a University of Otago, New Zealand, PhD student, and Idaho State Universitys Dr. John Dudgeon conducted a previous study which suggested that palm was part of Easter Islanders diets. But this was confusing because no other archaeological or ethnohistoric evidence supports palm having a dietary role on Rapa Nui. Rather, evidence suggests that palm became extinct soon after colonization in the thirteenth century.

The latest study points to the traces of palm in the calculus being from the environment that food was grown in, rather than from the food itself. Such a finding will impact the study of dental calculus worldwide.

Thirty teeth from burials excavated in the early 1980s were analysed, and the results were published in the Journal of Archaeological Science. This included identifying starch grains in the dental calculus after removing and decalcifying the plaque from each tooth. Ms Tromp and Dr Dudgeon identified starch grains that were consistent with modern sweet potato, while none of the grains showed any similarities to banana, taro or yam, or other starchy plants that are posited to be part of the diet.

The researchers then tested modern sweet potato skins grown in sediment similar to that of Rapa Nuis and found that as tubers grow, their skins appear to incorporate palm phytoliths from the soil. They found that the vast majority of phytoliths (plant microfossils) embedded within the calculus were from palm trees.

So this actually bolsters the case for sweet potato as a staple and important plant food source for the Islanders from the time the island was first colonised, says Ms Tromp. She adds that plaque is an excellent target for looking at the plant component of ancient diets as microfossils become embedded in dental calculus throughout a persons life. You can get a good idea of some of the plant foods people were eating, which is not an easy task. It is particularly difficult when assessing the role of plants in Oceanic diets because of the scarcity of plant remains.

On a related note, it was reported in October that the use of sweet potatoes on Rapa Nui is evidence of ancient interaction between people from the isolated Pacific island and natives of South America. It is thought that Easter Islanders may have sailed to South America some time between 1300 and 1500, long before Europeans arrived.

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Ancient dental plaque sheds light on Easter Islanders' diets

RosettaStudyShedsLightonBirthofOceans
Direct measurements of the water contained on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko by the Rosetta spacecraft suggest that it was asteroids that brought most of th...

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108 Ambulances limited to sheds with negligence of government officials - Warangal
People from Warangal district are in concern with no facilities of 108 ambulance services with the negligence of government. The officials says that this is due to lack of diesel the vehicles...

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Winter walk talking about sheds, habitat, lichens

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