Japanese Garden on the grounds of the Main Botanical Garden (Russian Academy of Sciences) The Japanese Garden within the Main Botanical Garden (Russian Academy of Sciences) is one of the hottest destinations in Moscow, Russia during the early May holiday. Hundreds of people in Moscow lined up to buy tickets to the Japanese Garden to admire the cherry blossoms in full bloom in the mild sunny weather. Everyone wants to see and take pictures with the symbolic flower of the land of the rising sun. Admission to the garden for adults is about 90 thousand VND, halved for students. Children under seven years old are free to enter. The Japanese Garden is usually open to visitors from the end of April (when the cherry blossoms bloom) until the end of October. Many people can’t wait for their turn to buy tickets, choosing to watch cherry blossoms from the iron fence. For them, this does not cause discomfort. The Japanese Garden, built between 1983 and 1987, is located on the east side of the Main Botanical Garden campus (Russian Academy of Sciences). Dozens of cherry trees were shipped here from the island of Hokkaido. In addition, in the garden there are also many other representatives of the Japanese flora. During a visit to Russia in 2013, then-Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe planted the 51st cherry tree in the Japanese Garden. Seedlings are grown from the seeds of the tree first planted here by Mr. Shinzo Abe’s father, former Japanese Foreign Minister Shintaro Abe, in 1986. In its more than thirty years of existence, the Japanese Garden has become one of the distinctive centers of oriental culture. It organizes many different exhibitions, classes on calligraphy, painting, tea ceremony culture… Every year, the Japanese Garden welcomes tens of thousands of visitors. In Moscow, there are many spots to watch the cherry blossoms bloom, but the Japanese Garden attracts a large number of Russians to visit, because it is an old site and has beautiful scenery. Cherries bloom only in Moscow for about two weeks. It is this that creates excitement and crowding at the entrance to Japanese gardens.

The coral disappears? The team led by Professor Konstantin Tkachenko and his colleagues conducted a coral survey at 10 points for about 3 years (2016 – 2019). Average coral cover decreased 64.4%, of which the strongest reduction was two corals Acropora and Montipora, which are the main components of coral reefs in Nha Trang Bay, decreased by 80, respectively. 6% and 82.3%. The level of coral degradation in the above survey points is serious. On Hon Mot island, this coral has lost completely or its coverage decreased by 4-8 times. Collecting coral samples on Nha Trang Bay. Observation results, collecting analytical samples at 20 fixed points (2013 – 2019), combining the tools of mapping reefs and analyzing GIS geographic information systems for comparison with 4 decades ago show that , the total area of ​​rich and healthy coral reefs in Nha Trang Bay has decreased from 6.65km 2 before 1980 down to 0.74 km 2 in 2019. That shows, Nha Trang has lost 90% of its corals in less than 40 years. The remaining 10% of the coral communities are in two states: Some remain stable and some continue to decline, coverage ranges from 13 to 50% and species diversity is also significantly reduced. . According to Dr. Hoang Xuan Ben – Deputy Director of Nha Trang Institute of Oceanography, the results of recent research and publication (2015, 2017, 2019 and 2020) of the Institute of Oceanography on the current situation and trend of change The coral reefs in Nha Trang Bay Reserve also showed that the average coverage of hard corals in Nha Trang Bay was 22.8%. The cover of coral reefs in Nha Trang Bay can be divided into 3 groups: The group with high coverage is Hon Mun area reaching level 4 (coverage 51 – 75%); the average coverage group is Bai Bang, Hon Chong, Hon Vung and Hon Tam with the value of level 2 (10-30%) and the group with low coverage are the remaining points with the value of level 1 (less than 10%). . The assessment results at the fixed monitoring points in Nha Trang Bay showed that the monitoring points located in the strictly protected area all had a high value of hard coral coverage and remained stable over time from 2002 – 2015. Meanwhile, most of the monitoring points outside the strictly protected area have fluctuations in a downward trend. Compared with the results in 1994 (over 25 years), the average coverage of Nha Trang Bay corals is about 30%, the current coral coverage is 7.2%. The area of ​​coral reefs decreased from 754ha to 636.6ha (down 117.4ha, equivalent to 13.5%). 9 species of hard corals that are resilient Dr. Hoang Xuan Ben said that the decline of coral reefs in the bay has many causes such as: Exploiting destruction by explosives, cyanide (currently no longer available); environmental pollution (tourism activities, waste discharge, aquaculture …) altering living conditions, appearing diseased corals, outbreak of coral-eating organisms (starfishes) and local eutrophication; coral bleaching phenomenon and natural disasters (storms, floods) … However, the biggest loss of coral reefs is due to the leveling process, construction of tourism infrastructure and people in the coastal and island areas. The leveling not only loses the area of ​​the coral reef but also sends sediment into the sea, causing deposition on the reef surface, causing the coral to die. Over the past time, the Institute of Oceanography has experimented with restoring corals in Nha Trang Bay, has identified 9 recoverable hard corals with a survival rate of over 60%, the average growth rate from 0. , 4 – 6.5mm / month. This result brings certain effects, contributing to minimizing adverse impacts on coral reefs, improving reefs by increasing coral cover, increasing sustainable attachment prices for corals. To restore and create a stable environment for the development of the reef biome. However, compared with other recovery areas in Vietnamese waters such as Ly Son, Binh Dinh, and Con Dao, the survival rate of the recovered corals in Nha Trang Bay is not high. Some of the causes are identified such as: coral damage, competition between species, environmental quality changes due to indirect activities from humans and other factors such as dynamic mode, coral. wounded at the cuts. Therefore, the province needs a comprehensive assessment to have a solution to this problem. VL

Chinese paleontologists have found ancient insects, snakes, ancient birds and even dinosaur tails in fossil Burmese amber. Thanks to the special preservative properties of amber, these fossils have retained their original shape after 100 million years. One of the dinosaur feathers discovered in the amber piece was damaged by chewing and the markings are similar to the feathers of modern birds with parasitic lice. Feather is one of the types of “special impurities” preserved in Burmese amber, including neck feathers and insect feathers. Not long ago, two pieces of feathered amber from Myanmar attracted paleontologists because through microscopic observations, the researchers noticed some ancient bugs in the feathers. Although these bugs are small and hard to see, paleontologists have found that they have unique and striking habits. The newly discovered insect is named Mesophthirus engeli, revealing the early makeup of the lice ancestor. Mesophthirus engeli has no wings and a body similar to a lice. The team found that they chewed very vigorously through the marks of a dinosaur’s fur. A team of researchers from the Capital Education University of China, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Capital Medical Science University, the National Museum of Natural History, and the Russian Academy of Sciences studied the studies. Small insects preserved in amber and discovered this particular beetle. Archaeologists have named this tiny insect Mesophthirus engeli with the genus “Mesophthirus” from the Greek word and the name “engeli” is dedicated to Michael S. Engel, a famous paleontologist. Americans, in recognition of his outstanding contributions to the study of ancient insects. The earliest appearing fur-eating insect was thought to be Megamenopon rasnitsyni. The lice fossils were unearthed in Germany 44 million years ago, according to Chungkun Shih, study author at the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum of Natural History. Researchers also found evidence of Jurassic and Cretaceous parasitic parasites 66 to 201 million years ago. This ancient bug was very small with a length of less than 0.2 mm, so researchers had to use an electron microscope to see its shape. Mesophthirus engeli looks very much like today’s lice, but it has a larger head with black dot-like eyes on the sides and two tentacles with three long spines on top of the head. Mesophthirus engeli can be said to possess a body “three rings as one”, with the head, chest and abdomen equally wide, six feet short, with claws and long spines at the end, can be grasped. This finding suggests that the insect’s feathering behavior has originated at least in the mid Cretaceous period. Although it looks like a lice, the Mesophthirus engeli species is far different from modern lice and lice. Hence, paleontologists established a new ancient taxon of insects – Mesophagous caterpillars. Compared with the body, the mouth of Mesophthirus engeli is very large and strong, two large jaws are serrated, capable of chewing very strongly. In addition, the researchers also found that in the amber pieces containing these ancient bugs all had the presence of feathers and they all existed signs of damage: broken niches formed near the body. feathers and feathers are also broken. The marks of damaged feathers resemble those left by a feather-eating bug after chewing on the feathers. And obviously, the culprit of these traces was none other than the Mesophthirus engeli species. The origin and early evolution of the hairy trait in insects is inherently ambiguous due to the lack of records of Mesozoic fossils – the period of tectonic, climatic and progressive activities. chemical. Blood-sucking insects were found during the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods, but dinosaur fur-eating insects have not been previously reported. The discovery of this ancient feather-eating beetle is of great significance, because it has pushed the history of feather-eating insects to 55 million years, because before the discovery of this beetle, the earliest feather-eating insect. is known to mankind in the Kainozoic era 44 million years ago. Thus, the discovery of Mesophthirus engeli filled the gap in the early evolution of a feather-eating insect. Mesophthirus engeli lived in the Cretaceous period 100 million years ago, this is also an important period of diversity and differentiation of primitive birds and feathered dinosaurs, it can be said that this is also the setting stage. parasitic relationship between feathering insects and their host.