Bamboo-Munching Giant Panda Also Has a Sweet Tooth
Reuters
by Will Dunham
21 hours ago
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Giant pandas eat plenty of veggies, but apparently they like dessert, too.
Scientists studying the endangered black-and-white bears said on Thursday that while pandas almost exclusively eat bamboo, which contains only tiny amounts of sugars, they showed a strong preference for natural sweeteners in an experiment.
The researchers also examined panda DNA and found a match to the same "sweet receptor" gene that humans possess that underpins their ability to taste sugars.
Sweeter foods like fruit may have been part of the natural diet of pandas before human activities helped drive the animals into their current mountainous habitat where those foods are scarce, the researchers said.
"Giant pandas love sweets," said behavioral geneticist author Danielle Reed of the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia, who led the study published in the journal PLOS ONE.
(http://media.zenfs.com/en_us/News/Reuters/2014-03-27T212853Z_1_CBREA2Q1NO800_RTROPTP_2_SCIENCE-PANDAS.JPG)
Giant pandas Tian Tian (L) and Mei Xiang snack on bamboo at the Washington National Zoo in this January 16, 2002 file photo. REUTERS/Hyungwon Kang/Files
"We are a bit surprised. However, given the anecdotal evidence that they like apples, sweet potato and so on in captivity, we are not completely surprised," added Monell molecular biologist Peihua Jiang, another of the researchers.
Pandas, the rarest species of bear, reside primarily in bamboo forests high in the mountains of western China. Understanding what type of food pandas prefer may help determine what nutrients can be used to supplement bamboo in their diet as part of efforts to conserve them, Jiang said.
The study was conducted as part of long-term research aimed at understanding how taste preferences and diet selection are affected by taste receptor genes.
The researchers wondered if pandas were able to taste sweet stuff because while pandas are plant eaters, their ancestors were meat-eaters. Many strict carnivores have lost their sweet-tasting receptor gene, called Tas1r2, and show no preferences for sweet-tasting compounds.
For instance, their previous research showed that any type of cat, from house cats to tigers, cannot taste sweets and, thus, do not like them.
Their experiments involved eight giant pandas at the Shaanxi Wild Animal Rescue and Research Center in China. The youngest was 3 years old and the oldest was 22.
The bears were given two bowls of liquid and permitted to drink for five minutes. One was filled with plain water. The other contained water mixed with one of six natural sugars: fructose, galactose, glucose, lactose, maltose and sucrose.
The pandas liked all the sugar solutions better than plain water, especially fructose and sucrose. "They often emptied the bowl containing sugary solution," Jiang said.
The researchers then did the same tests with five artificial sweeteners, but the pandas were far less interested in those.
Pandas previously lived in lowland areas, but human activities like agriculture, forest destruction and development exiled them to their current mountain terrain.
"We cannot travel back in time to understand what animals ate before their habitats were disturbed by mankind. But we can look at their DNA and their taste preferences and make inferences about their ancient diet," Reed said.
"Giant pandas' ancient diet may have included more foods than just bamboo - perhaps fruits, hence the sweet tooth. It may be that bamboo is an every-day food for giant pandas, but when sweeter foods are available they go for them," Reed added.
(Reporting by Will Dunham; Editing by David Gregorio)
Your Font is Showing: Student Comes Up with Plan to Save U.S. Big Bucks
Change type style on government documents and use less ink
By Mike Krumboltz, Yahoo News
10 hours ago
The Sideshow
Politicians on both sides of the aisle like to talk about cutting costs in Washington. But few, if any, have ever come up with an idea as simple as the one recently proposed by 14-year-old student Suvir Mirchandani.
Change the font.
Suvir's story was recently reported on CNN.com. The Pittsburgh-area student began his quest by trying to think of ways to save his school district a few bucks. After examining different handouts provided by teachers in different classes, he noticed that the fonts varied and some seemed to require a lot more ink than others.
Suvir, whom we hope got extra credit for his impressive work, discovered that the most commonly used letters on handouts seemed to be r, a, e, o and t. Armed with that information, he set to work looking at how different fonts treated each letter, CNN reports. Suvir found that of the fonts he tested, Garamond (named after Claude Garamond, the original designer of the typeface) would require the least amount of ink and could save his school district as much as $21,000 per year.
Helvetica who?
But that isn't all. Suvir reached out to the Journal of Emerging Investigators (JEI), "an open-access journal that publishes original research in the biological and physical sciences that is written by middle and high school students."
Workers at the journal were reportedly impressed by Suvir's work and asked him to apply his findings to the entire United States government. Now we really hope he got extra credit.
After tracking down what the government is estimated to spend on ink per year ($467 million), Suvir found that that Uncle Sam could save around $136 million per year by switching to Garamond exclusively. In addition, he found state governments that made the change could pull in $234 million in savings, according to CNN's report.
So is the government going to make the switch? Gary Somerset, PR manager for the U.S. Government Printing Office, praised Suvir's works as "remarkable," according to CNN, but he also said the government is focusing its reduction efforts on getting things on the Web.
Suvir's entire article can be found here.
Pro tip: If you do need to print it out, do yourself a favor and check font settings first.
The New York Times
Tamer Breed of Backyard Rodeo Finds Itself Endangered
By JOHN ELIGON
MARCH 28, 2014
(http://static01.nyt.com/images/2013/11/03/us/video-backyard-rodeo/video-backyard-rodeo-videoSixteenByNine540.jpg)
VIDEO|3:13 Credit KC McGinnis
A Backyard Rodeo: Informal rodeos held by farmers were once standard entertainment in Iowa. Now they are a rarity, but the Sandburr ranch hopes it can grow the tradition.
DEEP RIVER, Iowa — The tiny cube of a room with walls made of pine is where Sharon Widmer spreads chocolate frosting over brownies, and where the scent of her spicy chili warms the air. It is where one woman talks about finding someone to clean her garage for $21 and another discusses soda can fund-raising drives.
But peek outside the large window of this cozy cubicle, and the scene is rowdy. Horses gallop on an arena of dirt, cowboys and cowgirls flip goats on their backs and tie their hooves, and riders twirl ropes overhead before trying to lasso runaway calves. Spectators yell things like, “Push her! Push her!” and “Bring it home!”
Widmer’s Rock ’N Roll Arena, nestled here in the rolling plains of central Iowa, represents a dying breed of rodeo in this state and beyond — one held in a family’s backyard.
There are many small rodeo events on rural patches throughout the country, but backyard rodeos like the one on the Widmers’ ranch separate themselves with a blend of competition and camaraderie. Here, the charm of sipping hot chocolate while exchanging friendly banter is as important as how fast someone can rope a calf.
(http://static01.nyt.com/images/2014/03/27/sports/RODEO-ss-slide-8272870/RODEO-ss-slide-8272870-jumbo.jpg)
Credit KC McGinnis
View Slide Show | 10 photos: The Last Family Rodeos
“It’s somebody’s home,” said Mitzi Fleming, who brought her 12-year-old daughter, Grace, and 8-year-old son, Chance, here from Bloomington, Iowa, to compete on a frigid morning late last year. “They’re welcoming in their home. That’s what’s unique.”
She pointed to the fresh, homemade concession-stand offerings as one example of the difference between an event like this and a larger rodeo.
“It’s not like you’re buying a Little Debbie,” she said.
Rodeo enthusiasts in Iowa say they remember a time when they did not have to drive far to find a neighbor hosting a rodeo. But as the cost of livestock and feed has increased, and as liability concerns have made insurance a necessity for home rodeo organizers, many people folded their backyard operations because of the expense.
After more than two decades of hosting rodeos on his farm in east-central Iowa, Wayne Fisher closed his operation about three years ago. The number of entrants started dwindling — in the 1990s, about 50 bull riders would enter each event; that number plummeted to about 15 in his rodeo’s final years. His life got busier, Mr. Fisher, 44, said, his parents grew too old to help with the events and the risk of lawsuits grew too great for him to continue.
“It’s a sad thing,” he said. “It teaches kids a lot of stuff. Not just rodeo, either — camaraderie. Everybody competes themselves, individually. They build a lot of friendships.”
The 20,000-square-foot indoor arena that Ms. Widmer and her husband, Neil, spent $200,000 to build hosts mostly grade-school age competitors. Many of them need a boost to get into the saddles. Backyard rodeos, which have smaller entry fees and cash prizes than more formal competitions, are often a child’s introduction to the sport. They are low pressure, yet still allow participants to experience the suspense of competition.
“It allows little kids to learn and sharpen their skills,” said Clay Snakenberg, 15, a high school freshman from Ottumwa, Iowa, who competes in calf roping (trying to lasso a calf with a rope while riding a horse) and other events. “If they participated in a circuit event, they would more than likely be discouraged and quit.”
Just over an hour to the east of the Widmers’ ranch is the Sandburr Arena, in Lisbon, Iowa, where Tim Moore and his family have hosted open-air rodeos on their land since 2010. The Widmers and the Moores are among the last known Iowa families to host rodeos at their homes. They are often called jackpots, because the entry fees are placed into a pot that is awarded to the winners.
Ms. Widmer, 58, fell in love with rodeo nearly three decades ago when she attended a competition, and she still competes regularly in the summer. She worked for a traveling rodeo show and then started her own event-production company that included putting on rodeo competitions.
The Widmers built the enclosed arena in 2006 to give people a place to keep their rodeo skills sharp during the winter — their last competition of the season is scheduled for next month. It also is a place for the family to spend quality time. Their daughter, Camarie, 22, who was just 5 days old when she was taken on a horse for the first time, is an elite rodeo rider and teaches young people how to ride.
“It still makes me just smile when I get out there,” Sharon Widmer said from the toasty cubicle that her husband built in the corner of the arena that serves as concession stand, warming room and announcer’s booth during competitions.
Out on the dirt, where it is so cold that steam rises from the scattered manure, Grace, the 12-year-old from Bloomington, rocks into the saddle of her brown-and-orange spotted appaloosa, Applejack. She bites down on one end of a curled rope while threading the other end through a loop on her jeans. She leans over and eyes the white goat tethered at the other end of the barn. She is ready for action.
Grace may be giggly and red-faced, but she rides with a professional’s aplomb.
Applejack gallops toward the goat and as he closes in, Grace whips her right leg over the horse’s torso. She springs down to the dirt, landing next to the goat. Then, seemingly in a single motion, she flips the bleating animal onto its back, squeezes its four hooves together and binds them with the rope.
The announcer broadcasts her time over the loudspeakers: 14.59 seconds, easily one of the fastest. Grace knows this competition is more about practice than winning, yet she shrugs.
“I’m just a little frozen,” she said. “I’m a little slow today.”
A version of this article appears in print on March 29, 2014, on page A12 of the New York edition with the headline: Tamer Breed of Backyard Rodeo Finds Itself Endangered.
Million Jars of Peanut Butter Dumped in New Mexico
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. March 28, 2014 (AP)
By JERI CLAUSING Associated Press
Nearly a million jars of peanut butter are being dumped at a New Mexico landfill to expedite the sale of a bankrupt peanut-processing plant that was at the heart of a 2012 salmonella outbreak and nationwide recall.
Bankruptcy trustee Clarke Coll said he had no other choice after Costco Wholesale refused to take shipment of the Sunland Inc. product and declined requests to let it be donated to food banks or repackaged or sold to brokers who provide food to institutions like prisons.
"We considered all options," Coll said. "They didn't agree."
Costco officials did not return telephone calls seeking comment. But court filings indicate the product was made with $2.8 million worth of Valencia peanuts owned by Costco and had been sitting in the warehouse since the company shut down and filed for bankruptcy last fall.
After extensive testing, Costco agreed to a court order authorizing the trustee to sell it the peanut butter. But after getting eight loads, Costco rejected it as "not merchantable" because of leaky peanut oil.
Coll said "all parties agreed there's nothing wrong with the peanut butter from a health and safety issue," but court records show that on a March 19 conference call Costco said "it would not agree to any disposition ... other than destruction."
So instead of selling or donating the peanut butter, with a value estimated at $2.6 million, the estate is paying about $60,000 to haul the 950,000 jars of nut butter — or about 25 tons — to the Curry County landfill in Clovis, where public works director Clint Bunch says it "will go in with our regular waste and covered with dirt."
The last of 58 truckloads was expected Friday, the same day Golden Boy Foods of Canada was to close on its $26 million purchase of the plant.
Sunland made peanut butter under a number of different labels for retailers like Costco, Kroger and Trader Joe's, along with products under its own name. But the plant was shut down in September 2012 after its products were linked to 41 salmonella cases in 20 states.
It later reopened for about five months, but shut down last October after the company's Chapter 7 bankruptcy filing.
Sunland processed Valencia peanuts, a sweet variety of peanut unique to the region and preferred for natural butters because it is flavorful without additives.
Sonya Warwick, spokeswoman for New Mexico's largest food bank, declined to comment directly on the situation, but she noted that rescued food accounted for 74 percent of what Roadrunner Food Bank distributed across New Mexico last year.
"Our fleet picks up rescued food from hundreds of locations weekly and brings it back to the food bank," she said. "Before distributing it, volunteers help label, sort or repack it for distribution to partner agencies across the state.
"Access to rescued food allows us to provide a more well-rounded and balanced meal to New Mexicans experiencing hunger."
Mother Spends a Week Baking My Little Pony Cake the Size of a Shetland Complete with 26kg of Icing, 86 Eggs and 32 Boxes of Rice Krispies...and it Fed 900 People!
- Maria Young, 29, constructed 4ft 3in My Little Pony cake for daughter
- Spent £160 on ingredients and it contained 250,000 calories
- Weighed 50kg, measured 13 hands high and 4ft 7in from edible nose to tail
- Maria learned all her baking skills from TV shows
By BIANCA LONDON
PUBLISHED: 06:35 EST, 25 March 2014
UPDATED: 09:44 EST, 25 March 2014
A very dedicated mother granted her daughter's wish for a 'birthday cake big enough to ride' by spending a week making her a life-size My Little Pony birthday cake - standing 4ft 3in tall.
Maria Young, 29, constructed the mammoth pink pony from 26kg of icing, 86 eggs and 32 boxes of Rice Krispies.
It was presented at daughter Emily's eighth birthday party - and ended up feeding 900 people after she took the leftovers to school.
(http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2014/03/25/article-2588768-1C8CA51D00000578-937_634x764.jpg)
My BIG pony! Emily 8, Logan 9 and Brooke 3, were treated to a life-size pony cake by mother Maria Young
(NOTE: This is one of many large pictures shown. See the article for the rest.)
Maria spent £160 on ingredients and the colossal cake contained 16 roasting tins of sponge and 250,000 calories.
The mother-of-three has only been baking for a year after her son Logan, nine, demanded a dinosaur cake for his birthday.
She said: 'I'm not a baker, I'm just a mad mother. Last year my son asked me to make a standing-up dinosaur cake and it ended up at 2ft 3in.
'I told Emily she could have one this year and she asked for a My Little Pony one and she said she wanted it as tall as her. It actually ended up taller.'
The cake is constructed around a wooden frame which was then packed with sticky Rice Krispies moulded to form the legs, neck and head.
The body was then built up with several layers of sponge cake with blueberry flavoured cream filling and the whole model was then smothered in pink icing.
Maria's finished masterpiece weighed 50kg, measured 13 hands high and 4ft 7in from edible nose to tail.
Delighted Emily nicknamed the cake 'Pinkie Pie' but the handful of friends at her birthday part barely made a dent in the sweet treat.
So she shared it with her neighbours and took the leftovers to school - and in total 900 people enjoyed a slice.
Delighted Emily, of Dorking, Surrey, said: 'I love it. It's even bigger than I imagined it would be.'
Maria lives with husband Wayne and their three children, Emily, Logan and three-year-old Brooke.
She has no formal baking or sculpture training and instead uses techniques she's seen on television to craft her mammoth cakes.
However, she has no plans to take on such a huge project again.
She said: 'I told her she could have whatever cake she wanted. Serves me right I suppose. She asked for a 'pony cake big enough for me to ride'.
'I saw all these American TV shows where people bake massive cakes and I just thought "it can't be that hard".
'I just make it up as I go along. But I'm pleased it's all over. Now I can get to sleep before midnight.'
(http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/624_351/images/live/p0/1w/g6/p01wg6hj.jpg)
Hideo Tsurumaki was there in 2011 when a tsunami devastated his hometown in the Shizuoka Prefecture of Japan. With this disaster as his inspiration, the designer, who started his career at Suzuki Motor, set about creating a car that could carry its occupants to safety in the event of sudden flooding. The fruit of his labour, the Fomm Concept One, is a four-seat electric car that floats. A personal watercraft-style handlebar controls acceleration, braking and steering, and when afloat, a “water-jet generator” provides propulsion. Despite its seaworthiness, the Concept One is not a true amphibious vehicle. Tsurumaki insists that the car is good for “one disaster event” before requiring maintenance. The company expects to commence production of the Concept One in Thailand by September 2015, priced at about $9,000. (Photo: Fomm Corporation)
That's true about cats. I've never had a cat that like sweets, even fruits (bananas ;goofy; ), but most liked salty things like butter, peanut butter, and Chex mix crumbs. My current cat will run away from mayonnaise.These researchers never met my cats. I had a couple of them who loved Swiss rolls. Another cat loved canteloupe.
Yahoo! News | Odd News
Bird Attack Knocks Tooth Out of Man’s Mouth (with video)
By Will Lerner
On May 1, we told you about a California woman who was dealing with hundreds of birds flying into her house . Strange goings-on with birds continue this week, with multiple bird attacks in the town of Channelview, Texas. As KHOU 11 News reports, one of the bird attacks was so severe that Benny Hines, a trucker, fell down, lost a tooth, and was knocked unconscious.
Benny Hines was outside the Chrome Shop, a business that provides accessories for 18-wheelers, when a bird swooped down and started to attack him. Mr. Hines told KHOU, “I took off my cap and started waving them away. All of a sudden it was more than one bird. The more I tried to fight them off, the worse it got. It was like why were they after me, you know?"
Lonny Siegler, the Chrome Shop’s owner, told KHOU, “We got some kamikaze birds…He was running, I mean running…All of a sudden that bird hits him, and he went flying.” In security video provided by Mr. Siegler, you can see Mr. Hines desperately trying to get away from the birds. One bird hit Mr. Hines, and he went tumbling down to the ground. A witness, Jennifer Zavala, said that he had, “open gash wounds, bloody. It’s awful.” Mr. Hines would lose a tooth from the incident and was knocked unconscious.
It was not reported as to what kind of bird they are, and nobody is completely sure why Mr. Hines would be attacked by them, but KHOU does present a possible reason. For the past few days there has been a baby bird in the business’s parking lot. It cannot fly yet, so perhaps the adult birds are trying to protect it. Mr. Siegler says that one day later, he had one bird come after him. As for Mr. Hines, he’s out of the hospital and back on the road, saying, “They had to put some stitches on my face.”
(http://l.yimg.com/os/publish-images/news/2014-05-09/5ba9b910-d797-11e3-ba8e-83d4bfa75149_birdattack.gif)
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/oddnews/bird-attack-knocks-tooth-out-of-man%E2%80%99s-mouth--with-video--163630712.html (http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/oddnews/bird-attack-knocks-tooth-out-of-man%E2%80%99s-mouth--with-video--163630712.html)
Video Captures Family Cat Saving California Boy From Dog Attack
Reuters
By Jennifer Chaussee
May 14, 2014 5:42 PM
(Reuters) - A California child pulled from his bike by an attacking dog was saved by his family's cat on Tuesday, which quickly rushed in and attacked the dog, a video posted on YouTube showed on Wednesday.
The video, which quickly spread on the Internet, shows a young boy playing on a driveway in Bakersfield, when a dog lunges at his leg, grabs hold of it with his jaws and drags the boy off of the bike. (YouTube video: http://r.reuters.com/hyt39v (http://r.reuters.com/hyt39v))
A dark cat swiftly hurls itself onto the dog and chases it down the driveway and away from the child before a woman runs to help the boy. Local media reported the video was from multiple security cameras and shows graphic pictures of the bite wounds sustained by the boy.
“Thankfully, it wasn’t worse," his father, Roger Triantafilo, wrote in posting the video. "My son is fine."
Bakersfield police said the attacking dog, identified as an 8-month-old Labrador-Chow mix, had been surrendered by its owner’s family after the Tuesday afternoon attack and was in quarantine and would ultimately be euthanized.
Police spokesman Sergeant Joseph Grubbs said the dog's owners, who live in the same neighborhood as the boy, said the dog did not like children or bicycles. He did not identify the owner by name.
The Triantafilo family could not be reached for immediate comment.
http://news.yahoo.com/video-captures-family-cat-saving-california-boy-dog-214201515.html (http://news.yahoo.com/video-captures-family-cat-saving-california-boy-dog-214201515.html)
(video)
Across Egypt, 1 question today: What time is it?
Associated Press By LAURA DEAN
May 16, 2014 12:16 PM
CAIRO (AP) — Egypt's sudden flip to daylight saving time Friday had everyone asking the same question: What time is it?
The decision to move clocks ahead one hour, now putting the country seven hours ahead of New York, saw computers and mobile phones showing the wrong time. Worried employees at Cairo International Airport made sure to make announcements and scurried to help passengers, though the flights appeared calm during the day.
Worshippers also showed up early or late at mosques across the country for Friday prayers. However, Muslim prayer times depend on the sun — not clocks — and the call to prayer echoed across Cairo just like normal.
Egypt's military-backed interim government announced its decision in May to move clocks ahead as a power-saving measure. Though Egypt first implemented daylight saving time in 1988, it too got ousted following the 2011 revolt that toppled autocrat Hosni Mubarak.
The decision also had an effect on faith. The holy Muslim month of Ramadan, which sees the faithful fast during the day and eat after sunset, has cycled into the long daylight hours of the summer months for the coming years.
This daylight saving time period will last until Ramadan starts next month, then will resume afterward until September.
However, some see the time changes as just another trouble for Egypt, following a tumultuous year that saw Islamist President Mohammed Morsi overthrown by the military following protests by millions against his administration.
Alaa el Din, a 50-year-old devout Muslim and agricultural engineer from Cairo's Faisal neighborhood, summed up the confusion over Egypt's political situation and its clock chaos succinctly when asked the time Friday: "Your time or my time?"
Iowa City Cites 74M-Year-Ago Meteor For Well Woes
Associated Press
May 16, 2014 7:39 PM
MANSON, Iowa (AP) — A small central Iowa city is having a big problem drilling a new well, and the reason could date back millions of years.
Manson has failed three times to drill for a new steady water supply. The difficulty apparently is due to a meteor that struck an estimated 74 million years ago, creating what is known as the Manson impact crater. Geologists believe the meteor caused a catastrophic explosion that burned up everything within 130 miles, although there now is no evidence of the impact.
Underground, however, remnants of the meteor remain, and they are causing headaches for drill engineers, according to the Fort Dodge Messenger (http://bit.ly/1jlZUyB (http://bit.ly/1jlZUyB) ).
To improve the chances of success in the city's fourth drilling attempt, the city hired Aquetech Innovation, a company in nearby Fort Dodge that uses satellite imagery to determine well sites.
"When the meteor hit, it blew out all the natural formations," said Lanny Rosenquist, a geologist and owner of Aquetech. "It destroyed all the natural geology. Over in Fort Dodge you get certain layers; over here you don't hit those layers. Everything's mixed up."
Rosenquist said satellite imagery shows markers that can indicate aquifers.
After an analysis, the company started drilling near an auto parts store. If that spot doesn't work, there are two other options on opposite ends of town.
Mayor Dave George said it should be clear by Wednesday if current drilling has succeeded.
Although the meteor created an inconvenience for the city of 1,700 people some 80 miles northwest of Des Moines, George contends it somehow improved the water's taste by removing minerals that make nearby well water harder.
"Manson has naturally soft water," George said. "It's a little harder to get to, but it's worth it."
___
Information from: The Messenger, http://www.messengernews.net (http://www.messengernews.net)
Mukashimukashi, karera wa sonogo zutto shiawase ni kurashimashita.
The New York Times
Science
Mice Run for Fun, Not Just Work, Research Shows
By JAMES GORMAN
MAY 20, 2014
If an exercise wheel sits in a forest, will mice run on it?
Every once in a while, science asks a simple question and gets a straightforward answer.
In this case, yes, they will. And not only mice, but also rats, shrews, frogs and slugs.
True, the frogs did not exactly run, and the slugs probably ended up on the wheel by accident, but the mice clearly enjoyed it. That, scientists said, means that wheel-running is not a neurotic behavior found only in caged mice.
They like the wheel.
Two researchers in the Netherlands did an experiment that it seems nobody had tried before. They placed exercise wheels outdoors in a yard garden and in an area of dunes, and monitored the wheels with motion detectors and automatic cameras.
They were inspired by questions from animal welfare committees at universities about whether mice were really enjoying wheel-running, an activity used in all sorts of studies, or were instead like bears pacing in a cage, stressed and neurotic. Would they run on a wheel if they were free?
(http://static01.nyt.com/images/2014/05/19/multimedia/science-wheel-running/science-wheel-running-videoSixteenByNine600.jpg)
Now there is no doubt. Mice came to the wheels like human beings to a health club holding a spring membership sale. They made the wheels spin. They hopped on, hopped off and hopped back on.
“When I saw the first mice, I was extremely happy,” said Johanna H. Meijer at Leiden University Medical Center in the Netherlands. “I had to laugh about the results, but at the same time, I take it very seriously. It’s funny, and it’s important at the same time.”
Dr. Meijer’s day job is as a “brain electrophysiologist” studying biological rhythms in mice. She relished the chance to get out of the laboratory and study wild animals, and in a way that no one else had.
She said Konrad Lorenz, the great-grandfather of animal behavior studies, once mentioned in a letter that some of his caged rats had escaped and then returned to his garden to use running wheels placed there.
But, Dr. Meijer said, the Lorenz observation “was one sentence.”
For the experiment, the wheels were enclosed so that small animals could come and go but so that larger animals could not knock them over. Dr. Meijer set up motion sensors and automatic video cameras. Several years and 12,000 snippets of video later, she and Yuri Robbers, also a Leiden researcher, reported the results. They were released online Tuesday in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
Gene D. Block, chancellor of the University of California, Los Angeles, was not involved with the paper but knows Dr. Meijer and had seen the wheel set up in her garden. He said the study made it clear that wheel-running is “some type of rewarding behavior” and “probably not driven by stress or anxiety.”
Mice accounted for 88 percent of the wheel-running events, and spent one minute to 18 on the wheel. The other animals each accounted for less than 1 percent. Frogs, though there were very few, were seen to get on the wheel, get off and get back on.
Russell Foster, a circadian rhythm researcher at Oxford University, said he read the paper and sent it out to other scientists on behalf of the Proceedings and was delighted when peer reviews from other scientists were positive.
Marc Bekoff, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Colorado who is active in the animal welfare movement, said in an email that he thought the paper did show that wheel-running could be a “voluntary activity,” but that mice in labs may be doing more of it because of the stress of confinement.
“Wild bears will often pace back and forth,” he wrote, “but in captivity, the rate of doing it seems to be greatly heightened.”
As to why the mice, frogs or perhaps even slugs run, or move, on the wheel, Dr. Meijer said she thought that “there is an intrinsic motivation for animals, or should I say organisms, to be active.”
Huda Akil, co-director of the Molecular and Behavioral Neuroscience Institute at the University of Michigan, who has studied reward systems, said: “It’s not a surprise. All you have to do is watch a bunch of little kids in a playground or a park. They run and run and run.”
Dr. Akil said that in humans, running activates reward pathways in the brain, although she pointed out that there are innate differences in temperament in all sorts of animals, including humans. Rats that do not like to run can be bred. And plenty of people do all they can to avoid jogging, cycling and elliptical machines.
Presumably, the same is true of wild mice. While some were setting the wheel on fire with their exertions, others, out of camera range, may have been sprawled out on the mouse equivalent of a lounge chair, shaking their whiskers in dismay and disbelief.
A version of this article appears in print on May 21, 2014, on page A3 of the New York edition with the headline: Mice Run for Fun, Not Just Work, Research Shows.
Superstitions Collide: Full Moon Rises on Friday the 13th
By Stephanie Pappas, Live Science Contributor
June 12, 2014 10:39am ET
(http://i.livescience.com/images/i/000/067/141/iFF/supermoon-full-moon.jpg?1402583096)
The June full moon, called the Strawberry Moon, occurs on Friday the 13th. Here a full moon climbs its way to the top of the Washington Monument, Sunday, June 23, 2013. Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls View full size image: http://i.livescience.com/images/i/000/067/141/original/supermoon-full-moon.jpg?1402583096 (http://i.livescience.com/images/i/000/067/141/original/supermoon-full-moon.jpg?1402583096)
This month, the full moon falls on Friday the 13th.
Freaky? Nah, probably not.
Despite many myths, the full moon does not actually embolden criminals, bring about births or make people mad, studies show. And while Friday the 13th superstitions may be well entrenched, there's nothing particularly special about a full moon falling on this date.
This Friday's full moon will be the lowest in the sky this year, however, since it will occur so close to the summer solstice. You can watch this freaky full moon rising in a live webcast on Live Science, beginning at 9:30 p.m. EDT tonight (June 12). [Gallery: Fantastic Photos of Full Moons: http://www.livescience.com/15048-gallery-full-moon.html (http://www.livescience.com/15048-gallery-full-moon.html)]
Strawberry Moon
The June full moon is nicknamed the "Strawberry Moon," a moniker that goes back to the Algonquin Native American tribe, according to the Farmer's Almanac. June is strawberry season, and the full moon would have traditionally coincided with the harvest. (It's sometime called the Honey Moon because of all the weddings in June. GWB)
The June full moon is frequently the one nearest to the summer solstice, which falls on June 21 this year. Because of a neat bit of galactic geometry, this means the full moon on Friday will be the lowest in the sky of any in 2014.
Here's how it works: The Earth rotates on a tilted axis; in June — summer in the Northern Hemisphere — the North Pole is tilted about 23.5 degrees toward the sun, while the South Pole is tilted 23.5 degrees away from the sun. On the solstice, the sun reaches its farthest point north of the equator.
Full moons happen when Earth's satellite is opposite the sun; that's why viewers on Earth see the entire face of the moon illuminated. Thus, when the full moon is directly opposite the sun when our host star appears at its highest point, the moon is at its lowest point with respect to the equator. That's why winter full moons rise higher above the horizon than summer full moons.
Moon Myths
June's moon reaches its fullest point at 12:11 a.m. EDT (0411 GMT) on Friday, June 13. Of course, this means that for people in the Central, Mountain and Pacific time zones in the United States, this full moon isn't a Friday the 13th full moon at all: It technically falls on June 12.
Friday the 13th full moons occur sporadically. The last one fell on Aug. 13, 2011. The next Friday the 13th full moon will be on Aug. 13, 2049.
Even those who live in the Eastern time zone should not stress over the confluence of the full moon with Friday the 13th. Contrary to myth, the full moon does not affect human behavior or health. For example, a 1985 review published in the journal Psychological Bulletin tracked hospital admissions, psychiatric disturbances, homicides and other crime over several months and found no uptick in any of those variables around the time of the full moon.
Alas for heavily pregnant women, a 2001 study in the Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society looked at about 70 million births in the United States and found no link between the phase of the moon and labor starting. So don't expect to finish your pregnancy just because the moon is full.
Studies have also shown that other phenomena, including seizures, crime and heart surgery outcomes, have no link to the full moon.
Pet owners might want to avoid walking their black cats under the full moon on Friday, however. One 2007 study of pet injuries published in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association found that emergency vet visits for cats were 23 percent higher on days around the full moon. (Dog visits spiked 28 percent on those days.) Researchers speculated that people might use the extra light of the full moon to stay out after dark with their pets, perhaps boosting the likelihood of injury.
Editor's Note: If you have an amazing moon or general science photo you'd like to share for a possible story or image gallery, please contact managing editor Jeanna Bryner at LSphotos@livescience.com.
Follow Stephanie Pappas on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science.
You have to go aaaaall the way back to June 13th, 1919 to find a Full Moon that fell on a Friday the 13th in the month of June. This will next occur on June 13th, 2098.
Harvard Has a Book Bound in Human Skin...Your Move, Yale
By Elizabeth Palermo, Live Science Contributor
June 06, 2014 10:25am ET
(http://i.livescience.com/images/i/000/066/930/original/human-skin-bound-book.jpeg?1402064420)
Harvard recently announced a somewhat unsettling fact about one of the books in its library collection — it's bound in human skin.
Houghton Library, the university's repository for rare books and manuscripts, confirmed Wednesday (June 4) that its copy of Arsène Houssaye's "Des destinées de l'ame" (Destinies of the Soul) is without a doubt swathed in the hide of a human being.
The discovery was not entirely shocking to conservators and scientists at Harvard, who were privy to a strange note left inside the book by its original owner, Ludovic Bouland. A friend of Houssaye's, Bouland was a doctor and bibliophile who received the book as a gift in the mid-1880s and, according to the note he left behind, proceeded to bind it with skin from the unclaimed body of a female mental patient who had died of a stroke. [15 Weird Things Humans Do Every Day, and Why]
The note, originally written in French and here translated by Harvard, reads: "This book is bound in human skin parchment on which no ornament has been stamped to preserve its elegance. By looking carefully you easily distinguish the pores of the skin. A book about the human soul deserved to have a human covering: I had kept this piece of human skin taken from the back of a woman. It is interesting to see the different aspects that change this skin according to the method of preparation to which it is subjected. Compare for example with the small volume I have in my library, Sever. Pinaeus de Virginitatis notis which is also bound in human skin but tanned with sumac."
Despite this fairly straightforward clue, it wasn't until yesterday that scientists at Harvard confirmed that Bouland's bizarre choice of material wasn't a hoax. Using several different methods, including peptide mass fingerprinting and a type of liquid chromatography, the researchers concluded with 99 percent certainty that the binding is of human origin.
The peptide mass fingerprinting technique used by researchers required that microscopic samples be taken from various locations on the binding, the Houghton Library blog reports. The technique, which identifies proteins by identifying the masses of their peptides and then matches that with proteins in a database, helped to reveal the source of the binding material.
Bill Lane, director of the Harvard Mass Spectrometry and Proteomics Resource Laboratory, and Daniel Kirby, of the Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies at Harvard, said that the PMF from "Des destinées de l'ame" matched the human reference sample and clearly eliminated other common parchment sources, like sheep, cattle and goat.
"However, although the PMF was consistent with human, other closely related primates, such as the great apes and gibbons, could not be eliminated because of the lack of necessary references," the researchers said in their results.
To rule out other primates, the researchers further analyzed samples from the binding using the liquid chromatography chemical analysis. This method allowed them to determine the order of amino acids in the samples' peptides and further revealed that the binding was almost certainly human.
"The analytical data, taken together with the provenance of "Des destinées de l'ame," make it very unlikely that the source could be other than human," Lane said in a statement.
This discovery marks the first time that one of Harvard's rare books was determined to be bound in human skin. Two other tomes that were believed to share this strange distinction have since been tested, and they are bound in something less controversial — sheepskin.
But as an earlier blog post from Harvard's Houghton Library explains, the practice of binding books in human skin isn't as unusual as it may sound. The term for this outdated practice is anthropodermic bibliopegy, and it originated in the 16th century.
According to the blog post's author, Heather Cole, an assistant curator of modern books and manuscripts at the Houghton library — starting in the 1500s, the confessions of criminals were occasionally bound in the skin of the convicted. The bodies of executed criminals were also donated to science, the author notes, the skins distributed to tanners and bookbinders. But perhaps most noteworthy for today's bibliomaniacs, it would seem that at one time requesting to be memorialized in the form of a book was actually considered normal.
..., but more they believe that full moons bring out the weird.
'Pastafarians' fail to win recognition in Austriahttp://news.yahoo.com/pastafarians-fail-win-recognition-austria-190839559.html (http://news.yahoo.com/pastafarians-fail-win-recognition-austria-190839559.html)
AFP
June 12, 2014 3:08 PM
(http://l1.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/NeEyCRKBungwkwjbuDSX1w--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7Zmk9ZmlsbDtoPTUxMjtweW9mZj0wO3E9NzU7dz03Njg-/http://media.zenfs.com/en_us/News/afp.com/ad5c0c0832e2ddf0a4727049be1a1aa151dc04d6.jpg)
ople arrive in costume, including one of the 'Flying Spaghetti Monster' during a rally on October 30, 2010 in Washington, DC (AFP Photo/Chip Somodevilla)
Vienna (AFP) - Pastafarianism, a movement set up partly to ridicule organised religion, has failed to win official recognition from Austria's religious authority.
The Kultusamt authority ruled Wednesday that the "Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster" was not a proper "Church" because it is not a Christian religious community.
The organisation was founded in the United States to poke fun at religious dogma and to campaign against the teaching of creationism in schools, and now has chapters in several other countries.
The Flying Spaghetti Monster is a satirical deity "worshipped" by the church's adherents, who are called "Pastafarians".
It first appeared in a 2005 open letter written by student Bobby Henderson to the Kansas Board of Education in protest over its decision to teach Intelligent Design in schools.
Henderson argued his belief that the monster created the universe was no less valid than Intelligent Design, a form of creationism, as both theories had no scientific merit.
In Austria the group made headlines in 2011 when one of its adherents, Niko Alm, won the right to be pictured on his driving licence with a pasta strainer on his head.
Alm has since become a lawmaker for the NEOS opposition party in the Austrian parliament, although last weekend he stepped down as the party's spokesman on religious affairs.
The chapter's "Upper Macarono" Philip Sager said in a statement he regretted the Kultusamt's decision but said that he could not comment further because he had not been informed officially of the ruling.
Cat's cradle: Pet Perches Atop Investigating Cop
Associated Press
June 24, 2014 10:10 PM
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — The cat. In the bathroom. On the officer's shoulders?
Nope, not a game of "Clue." But police say one orange tabby wanted to be closely involved when officers responding to a burglary report searched the cat's home in southeast Portland.
Sgt. Pete Simpson says police were called Monday afternoon when a woman returned home from work to find her house burglarized. When police entered the home to search for a suspect, Officer Sarah Kerwin noted broken glass on the floors of the basement and a bathroom.
Because the resident cat was walking around on the floor, the officer picked up the cat to make sure it didn't step in the glass. The cat happily climbed onto Kerwin's shoulders and stayed there as police finished searching the house.
No burglar was found.
(http://l2.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/xlKtDQL43sQtWP7vTqQYeA--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7Zmk9ZmlsbDtoPTU0NTtweW9mZj0wO3E9NzU7dz01ODU-/http://media.zenfs.com/en_us/News/ap_webfeeds/aeeb313ac8e30918580f6a706700eeac.jpg)
In this June 23, 2014 photo provided by the Portland Police Bureau Officer, Sarah Kerwin is seen with a cat in Portland, Ore. Sgt. Pete Simpson says police were called when a woman returned home from work to find her house burglarized. When police entered the home to search for a suspect, Kerwin noted broken glass on the floors of the basement and a bathroom. Kerwin picked up the cat to make sure it didn't step in the glass. The cat happily climbed onto Kerwin's shoulders and stayed there as police finished searching the house. (AP Photo/Portland Police Bureau) .
Bah, happens about once a year.
New research with New Caledonian crows has demonstrated that they perform as well as 7- to 10-year-old children on cause-and-effect water displacement tasks.
We know that crows are capable of some pretty complex problem solving. Earlier this year, we saw a crow figure out how to complete an eight-step puzzle to retrieve food, demonstrating the supreme reasoning capability of corvids.
That crow, however, had already been shown each of the steps. Not in order -- the crow put them together on its own, which is still a highly impressive feat -- but it knew which items triggered which effects. Now, it seems, that crows are capable of figuring out at least one of the steps: how to get water from a tall glass.
To you or me, the solution seems simple: drop rocks into the glass to raise the water level. One would not usually expect a bird to be able to figure this out, but -- as has been demonstrated in the past by Sarah Jelbert at the University of Auckland-- crows can. Moreover, they can differentiate between a floating object and a sinking one, and can tell the difference between sand and water.
New research, conducted by a team of researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara led by Corina Logan, has shown that they can distinguish between water volumes, too.
Using New Caledonian crows caught in the wild, the team presented them with two volumes of water, one in a wide beaker of water, the other in a narrow one. Both beakers were the same height. However, unlike Jelbert's research -- where the crows were given enough stones to succeed in raising the water level to a desired height no matter which vessel they chose -- Logan's team only gave them enough for one.
"When we gave them only four objects, they could succeed only in one tube -- the narrower one, because the water level would never get high enough in the wider tube; they were dropping all or most of the objects into the functional tube and getting the food reward," Logan said. "It wasn't just that they preferred this tube, they appeared to know it was more functional."
The other test, called the U-tube test, involved sets of tubes. One set is connected by a hidden mechanism; when stones are dropped in one tube, water rises in the other. The other set of tubes is unconnected, so dropping stones in one produces no result in the other. Each set of tubes is colour-coded so that the test subject can differentiate between them.
While children aged 7 to 10 can figure out the simple rules, children aged 4 to 6 cannot; and, when Jelbert tried it with her crows, they failed. Logan decided to re-attempt the test, moving the beakers farther apart -- and one of the crows, a six-month-old nicknamed Kitty, figured it out.
"We don't know how she passed it or what she understands about the task," Logan said, "so we don't know if the same cognitive processes or decisions are happening as with the children, but we now have evidence that they can. It's possible for the birds to pass it."
The full paper, "Modifications to the Aesop's Fable Paradigm Change New Caledonian Crow Performances", can be read online in the journal PLOS One.
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0103049 (http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0103049)
Toot Sweet! Brit Fires 16-Foot Fart Machine at FranceFart@France-Building/Testing the BIGGEST valveless pulsejet ever made (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9PMD8fcvAk#ws)
LiveScience.com
By Laura Geggel, Staff Writer August 1, 2014 7:59 AM
An English plumber welded an enormous fart machine, drove it to the White Cliffs of Dover and blasted it at France.
"Did you hear anything or did you not?" he asked after calling a woman across the English Channel in Calais, France, on July 24, according to a YouTube video of the fart machine. Her answer? Yes.
Colin Furze has a reputation for constructing eccentric creations, including the world's fastest baby stroller last year after the birth of his son.
The 34-year-old inventor went on holiday this week and didn't have time to talk about his machine, but Live Science still took a whiff at how this inventor broke wind.
The idea came to him from YouTube commenters, he said in a video. "People always say, 'I'd hate to live next to you. You make too much noise!' And it's fair to say I do make a bit of noise."
Inspired, Furze decided to make a valveless pulsejet — the loudest machine he's ever assembled. He decided to annoy not just his neighbors but also the French, his country's neighbor to the south.
"I'm going to make the biggest pulsejet I've ever made, and I'm going to take it down to the White Cliffs of Dover [along the English coastline], point it toward France, see if they can listen," he said.
He fashioned a U-shaped pulsejet, describing it as an engine that wastes most of its energy on heat and noise. Once the pulsejet is ignited with a mixture of air and fuel such as gas, a series of pressure waves pulse back and forth in the long tubes, creating a deafening noise.
In fact, the engine is similar to a U-shaped organ pipe, said Adam Bruckner, a professor of aeronautics and astronautics at the University of Washington in Seattle, who was not involved with the project.
"The way it works is that when you initiate a combustion by mixing some fuel — it could be propane or gasoline sprayed into it — it burns suddenly and makes pressure waves that go out in both directions," Bruckner told Live Science. "What you hear are the pulses of pressure waves coming out of the engine."
Toward the end of World War II, Germany used pulsejets to power the Nazi V-1 flying bombs against England. But pulsejets are incredibly loud, and they're so inefficient that few people use them anymore, Bruckner said.
"These things are really better at making noise than producing anything useful for a serious engine, [such as] for aircraft for producing thrust," Bruckner said.
But noise is what Furze wanted. To make the fart machine look realistic, Furze built a 16-foot (5 meters) "massive bum to stick it behind," he said in the video. He then rallied his fans to meet him at the White Cliffs of Dover, where he warned the French, yelling, "We will fart in your general direction."
Furze lit the fuel and a thunderous blare ensued. Two phone calls confirmed that people on the other side of the channel heard the blasts, but a video taken near the French Coast provided less definite results.
"The bit of video that I've been shown is basically quite a lot of wind noise, so you can't really take anything from it," Furze said. "But I do have two people who said they clearly hear a kind of a muffled mumbling coming over the water."
Whether the noise hit its intended audience depends on a number of factors, including atmospheric conditions, wind speed and direction, and temperature, Bruckner said.
"For example, back in 1883, the volcanic eruption that happen in Krakatoa near the island of Sumatra was supposedly heard in Chile thousands of miles away," Bruckner said. "But that was a much bigger explosion."
OCEANPORT, N.J. — She looked like nothing out of the ordinary, just another platinum blonde in baggy shorts hanging out at the miniature golf course. But in the rarefied, close-knit, hypercompetitive world of professional miniature golf, Olivia Prokopova is nothing short of legendary.
“Olivia? There’s no fear in her,” said Rick Alessi, 57, a municipal heavy-equipment operator from Erie, Pa., who is to compete against her in the 2014 United States Open Miniature Golf Tournament that begins here on Friday. “She just loves the game.”
There are many unusual things about Prokopova, beyond the fact that last year she swept the sport’s three top competitions — the United States Open, the Master’s and the world championships — for an unprecedented triple crown in miniature golf.
In a sport dominated by middle-aged American men, she is foreign, 19 years old, “and she’s a gal,” said John Forbes, the manager of the Bluegrass Miniature Golf Course, the elegantly landscaped spot, free of plastic clowns and windmills, where the tournament is to take place.
While few people have heard of the top players, or indeed, any of the players at all, Prokopova is a serious celebrity back in her native Czech Republic. She has been the subject of a book and a documentary. She has corporate sponsors, her own website and her own line of light jackets.
With many tournaments awarding top prizes in the mid three-figures, no one is going to get rich playing miniature golf. Yet for Prokopova it is virtually a full-time endeavor. She practices for 8 to 12 hours a day, every day, except Wednesdays, when she does schoolwork from 3 to 8 p.m.
She is one of the few foreigners competing on the American circuit and the only one, it appears, to travel with an entourage. It consists of one or both of her parents; sometimes her brother; and Ales Vlk, 39, a buff employee of her father’s miniature golf course-building company back home, who functions as nutritionist, masseur, motivational coach, physical therapist and training partner.
In the United States, where many people think of miniature golf as something you might do after getting drunk and exhausting other entertainment options, being a world-class competitor might not seem like such a big deal. In truth, it is not hard to be a professional miniature golf player here: all you have to do is join the US ProMiniGolf Association, for $25.
“You can declare yourself a professional and pay the fee, so literally anyone can do it,” said Brad Lebo, a 53-year-old dentist from Pennsylvania, who won the United States Open in 2010.
Similarly, among the many advantages for potential entrants to the United States Open, besides the $3,500 first-place prize, is that there is no need to qualify.
“You just pay your entry fee,” said Carol Newman, the tournament director. Competitors in the top division pay a $100 entry fee. “We tell them what’s going on and who’s playing, and then they decide what they can handle.”
About half the competitors at the Open, she said, are likely to be amateurs who live nearby in New Jersey and who just happen to enjoy playing. Some talented Bluegrass employees might compete, too. “Chris, who’s blowing the course right now, shoots a 35, and it’s a 40-par course,” Newman said, pointing toward a young man using a leaf blower to blast debris off the course.
Professional miniature golf certainly suffers from a lack of respect. “I get a mixed bag of comments,” said Lebo, who reckons he has won 105 tournaments in his career, for a total of about $9,000 in prize money. “People I play golf with are either intrigued, or they mock me hysterically.”
Increasingly, competition-grade miniature golf courses differ from the kind of course that most Americans think of — fewer gnomes, dragons and pirates stalk the professional circuit than in the old days. Newer-built courses instead feature a series of AstroTurf putting greens that look sober and almost respectable. They are sculpted to be tricky, with variations in the elevation and pitch of the greens. That adds an extra degree of difficulty, making skill more important than luck.
Professional players should be able to sink their shots in either one or two strokes per hole. Players can gain an edge by mapping out, in their heads or on paper, exactly how to hit their second shot, depending on where the first shot falls. That is where Prokopova shines.
“She’s not that much better than the others; she just practices more,” said Bob Detwiler, president of the US ProMiniGolf Association.
There is another way to put that. “There’s always an infinite amount of information to learn, and Olivia’s work ethic is extremely good,” said Lebo, interviewed as he tried to come to grips with the pesky sixth hole at Bluegrass. (He had put together an elaborate set of diagrams of every conceivable shot from every conceivable position at each hole that he planned to consult during the competition.) “She sometimes goes to places seven weeks in advance and charts out the course, and that gives her a big advantage.”
Even people devoted to the sport find this behavior extreme. “It’s kind of amazing that these guys take this so seriously,” Forbes said.
Curiously enough, miniature golf is not particularly popular in the Czech Republic, Prokopova said. But her string of international successes has turned her into a bona fide national superstar.
In an interview at the course, she and her team tried to explain just how famous she is.
“She has been on television, in the newspapers,” Vlk said. “She has twice met the president of the Czech Republic. Seventeen thousand people in a square applauded her.”
Prokopova proved an elusive interviewee. She speaks only basic English, and a Russian interpreter had been provided so that Vlk, who speaks Czech and Russian, could relay the questions to her. But she tended to refer queries about things as simple as her height and her golfing philosophy to her father, Yan Prokop. That added another layer of complexity because the burly, chain-smoking Prokop, who spent much of the interview talking excitedly and banging messages into his two cellphones, speaks no English at all.
But a picture gradually emerged. Prokopova has been playing miniature golf since she was 3 years old, she said. Because there is so little money in it, she relies on fees from exhibitions and on corporate sponsors. “My mum and my dad must also give me money,” she said.
She sometimes finds it lonely. “Because I play all the time, I haven’t got many friends, but I like the players here — they are like my second family,” she said. “I’ve been coming here since I was 7 years old, and I know everyone.”
She trains so intensely that she has had operations on a wrist and on both knees. She would not reveal her training methods — “It’s our secret, how we practice,” she said — but did allow that she takes 14 vitamin and herbal supplements a day, and that “I have to eat light food before I play, or else I can’t bend down and pick up the ball.”
She was the picture of modesty. “I haven’t got any talent; I just practice every day,” she said. Explaining her approach, she punched some words into Google Translate and then read aloud what appeared on her phone. “Diligence,” she said.
How we'd cover Ferguson if it happened in another countryhttp://www.vox.com/2014/8/15/6005587/ferguson-satire-another-country-russia-china (http://www.vox.com/2014/8/15/6005587/ferguson-satire-another-country-russia-china)
Vox
Updated by Max Fisher on August 15, 2014, 11:40 a.m. ET @Max_Fisher max@vox.com
How would American media cover the news from Ferguson, Missouri, if it were happening in just about any other country? How would the world respond differently? Here, to borrow a great idea from Slate's Joshua Keating, is a satirical take on the story you might be reading if Ferguson were in, say, Iraq or Pakistan.
(http://cdn0.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/655080/453643372.0.jpg)
Reporters surround Ferguson Police Chief Thomas Jackson (Scott Olson/Getty Images)
FERGUSON — Chinese and Russian officials are warning of a potential humanitarian crisis in the restive American province of Missouri, where ancient communal tensions have boiled over into full-blown violence.
"We must use all means at our disposal to end the violence and restore calm to the region," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in comments to an emergency United Nations Security Council session on the America crisis.
The crisis began a week ago in Ferguson, a remote Missouri village that has been a hotbed of sectarian tension. State security forces shot and killed an unarmed man, which regional analysts say has angered the local population by surfacing deep-seated sectarian grievances. Regime security forces cracked down brutally on largely peaceful protests, worsening the crisis.
"we can and should support moderate forces who can bring stability to America"
America has been roiled by political instability and protests in recent years, which analysts warn can create fertile ground for extremists.
Missouri, far-removed from the glistening capital city of Washington, is ostensibly ruled by a charismatic but troubled official named Jay Nixon, who has appeared unable to successfully intervene and has resisted efforts at mediation from central government officials. Complicating matters, President Obama is himself a member of the minority sect protesting in Ferguson, which is ruled overwhelmingly by members of America's majority "white people" sect.
Analysts who study the opaque American political system, in which all provinces are granted semi-autonomous self-rule, warned that Nixon may seize the opportunity to move against weakened municipal rulers in Ferguson. Missouri's provincial legislature, a traditional "shura council," is dominated by the opposition faction. Though fears of a military coup remain low, it is still unknown how Nixon's allies within the capital will respond should the crisis continue.
Now, international leaders say they fear the crisis could spread.
"The only lasting solution is reconciliation among American communities and stronger Missouri security forces," Chinese President Xi Jinping said in a speech from his vacation home in Hainan. "However, we can and should support moderate forces who can bring stability to America. So we will continue to pursue a broader strategy that empowers Americans to confront this crisis."
Xi's comments were widely taken as an indication that China would begin arming moderate factions in Missouri, in the hopes of overpowering rogue regime forces and preventing extremism from taking root. An unknown number of Kurdish peshmerga military "advisers" have traveled to the region to help provide security. Gun sales have been spiking in the US since the crisis began.
Analysts warn the violence could spread toward oil-producing regions such as Oklahoma or even disrupt the flow of American beer supplies, some of the largest in the world, and could provide a fertile breeding ground for extremists. Though al-Qaeda is not known to have yet established a foothold in Missouri, its leaders have previously hinted at assets there.
Though Missouri is infamous abroad for its simmering sectarian tensions and brutal regime crackdowns, foreign visitors here are greeted warmly and with hospitality. A lawless expanse of dogwood trees and beer breweries, Missouri is located in a central United States region that Americans refer to, curiously, as the "MidWest" though it is nearer to the country's east.
It is known among Americans as the home of Mark Twain, a provincial writer from the country's small but cherished literary culture, and as the originator of Budweiser, a traditional American alcoholic beverage. Budweiser itself is now owned by a Belgian firm, in a sign of how globalization is transforming even this remote area of the United States. Analysts say some american communities have struggled as globalization has pulled jobs into more developed countries, worsening instability here.
violence could spread to oil-producing regions such as Oklahoma or even disrupt the flow of American beer supplies
Locals here eat a regional delicacy known as barbecue, made from the rib bones of pigs, and subsist on traditional crafts such as agriculture and aerospace engineering. The regional center of commerce is known locally as Saint Louis, named for a 13th century French king, a legacy of Missouri's history as a remote and violent corner of the French Empire.
Though Ferguson's streets remained quiet on Friday, a palpable sense of tension and uncertainty hung in the air. A Chinese Embassy official here declined to comment but urged all parties to exhibit restraint and respect for the rule of law. In Moscow, Kremlin planners were said to be preparing for a possible military intervention should political instability spread to the nearby oil-producing region of Texas.
Russia Kindly Asks Bulgarians to Stop Painting Over Their Soviet Monumentshttp://www.thewire.com/global/2014/08/russia-kindly-asks-bulgarians-to-stop-painting-over-their-soviet-monument/378844/ (http://www.thewire.com/global/2014/08/russia-kindly-asks-bulgarians-to-stop-painting-over-their-soviet-monument/378844/)
The Atlantic Wire
Polly Mosendz Aug 20, 2014 3:44PM ET / Global
(http://cdn.thewire.com/media/img/upload/wire/2014/08/20/AP11061705597/lead_large.jpg)
Sculptures of Soviet soldiers, part of the World War II Soviet Army monument, painted by an unknown artist in the image of Santa Claus, Superman and Ronald MacDonald are seen in central Sofia, Bulgaria, Friday, June 17, 2011. ((AP PHOTO/OLEG POPOV))
The Monument of the Soviet Army in Sofia, Bulgaria has, once again, been vandalized. The monument, which depicts a number of USSR soldiers during the Second World War, has been vandalized several times in the past and Moscow would really like it to stop.
(http://cdn.theatlantic.com/newsroom/img/posts/2014/08/AP831457546540/558de2ddd.jpg)
(AP Photo/Valentina Petrova)
In 2011, it was painted look like pop culture icons like Superman, Ronald MacDonald, and Santa Claus. In 2013, it was painted pink with graffiti letters reading, "Bulgaria apologizes," in order to "mark the anniversary of the Prague Spring," according to the Associated Press. In February, it was painted with the colors of Ukraine's flag:Quote(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BhKFp4CCAAAFf1Q.jpg)
(https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/419577554530758656/Ek1Bh21U_normal.jpeg) Julian Popov @julianpopov
Follow
The controversial Monument of the Soviet Army in Sofia in the colours of the #Ukrainian flag this morning.
7:06 AM - 23 Feb 2014
12 Retweets 5 favorites
Reply Retweet
This week, it was painted red. (Though obviously not by the same people who repainted one of Moscow's tallest buildings yesterday.) The statue was painted overnight on August 17. Officials didn't specify how bad the damage was, only that the red paint was "in several places." Russia's Foreign Ministry issued this statement to ITAR-TASS, "In connection with the outrageous act of vandalism, a note of protest was promptly lodged with the Bulgarian Foreign Ministry with a demand for taking measures to prevent such incidents in the future, bringing those responsible for breaching the law to justice and putting the grave and the monument in order."
Considering some of the soldiers were previously painted to look like American brand mascots, a bit of red paint seems minor.
I stumbled over a better shot of the first paint job, where you can see Wolverine, The Joker and Robin - can anyone identify any others?QuoteRussia Kindly Asks Bulgarians to Stop Painting Over Their Soviet Monumentshttp://www.thewire.com/global/2014/08/russia-kindly-asks-bulgarians-to-stop-painting-over-their-soviet-monument/378844/ (http://www.thewire.com/global/2014/08/russia-kindly-asks-bulgarians-to-stop-painting-over-their-soviet-monument/378844/)
The Atlantic Wire
Polly Mosendz Aug 20, 2014 3:44PM ET / Global
(http://cdn.thewire.com/media/img/upload/wire/2014/08/20/AP11061705597/lead_large.jpg)
Sculptures of Soviet soldiers, part of the World War II Soviet Army monument, painted by an unknown artist in the image of Santa Claus, Superman and Ronald MacDonald are seen in central Sofia, Bulgaria, Friday, June 17, 2011. ((AP PHOTO/OLEG POPOV))
The Monument of the Soviet Army in Sofia, Bulgaria has, once again, been vandalized. The monument, which depicts a number of USSR soldiers during the Second World War, has been vandalized several times in the past and Moscow would really like it to stop.
(http://cdn.theatlantic.com/newsroom/img/posts/2014/08/AP831457546540/558de2ddd.jpg)
(AP Photo/Valentina Petrova)
In 2011, it was painted look like pop culture icons like Superman, Ronald MacDonald, and Santa Claus. In 2013, it was painted pink with graffiti letters reading, "Bulgaria apologizes," in order to "mark the anniversary of the Prague Spring," according to the Associated Press. In February, it was painted with the colors of Ukraine's flag:Quote(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BhKFp4CCAAAFf1Q.jpg)
(https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/419577554530758656/Ek1Bh21U_normal.jpeg) Julian Popov @julianpopov
Follow
The controversial Monument of the Soviet Army in Sofia in the colours of the #Ukrainian flag this morning.
7:06 AM - 23 Feb 2014
12 Retweets 5 favorites
Reply Retweet
This week, it was painted red. (Though obviously not by the same people who repainted one of Moscow's tallest buildings yesterday.) The statue was painted overnight on August 17. Officials didn't specify how bad the damage was, only that the red paint was "in several places." Russia's Foreign Ministry issued this statement to ITAR-TASS, "In connection with the outrageous act of vandalism, a note of protest was promptly lodged with the Bulgarian Foreign Ministry with a demand for taking measures to prevent such incidents in the future, bringing those responsible for breaching the law to justice and putting the grave and the monument in order."
Considering some of the soldiers were previously painted to look like American brand mascots, a bit of red paint seems minor.
---
;lol
Agreed. I decided after I posted that it was supposed to be Wonder Woman in back - but I can't think of anyone who wears all yellow...
The Reverse-Flash?
KFC fried-chicken keyboard: It's finger-clicking goodhttp://news.yahoo.com/kfc-fried-chicken-keyboard-finger-191533685.html (http://news.yahoo.com/kfc-fried-chicken-keyboard-finger-191533685.html)
CNET CBS
By Amanda Kooser September 5, 2014 3:15 PM
(http://l2.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/xFeGM0ebo9Vik21n.BM6pw--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7cT04NQ--/http://media.zenfs.com/en-US/homerun/cnet.cbs.com/ab6f59ce7c950c10ff3ede7237653ca0)
This is complete madness. KFC Japan
Have you ever gazed at your keyboard and thought, "Wow, that looks good enough to eat"? Probably not. That's because you don't own a KFC fried-chicken keyboard. Yes, such a miracle does exist, but only if you're fortunate enough to live in Japan and get onboard with the chicken giant's Twitter promotion that will select a winner to become to the proud owner of the deep-fried-style peripheral.
As far as fast-food-chain publicity stunts go, this is quite an original one. The keyboard is covered with little raised models of various cuts of fried chicken on each key. The only easily readable letters are the "K," "F," and "C" from the company's name. Colonel Sanders shows up in a couple of places. His face appears down where the Windows button normally sits on a PC keyboard, and a mini-Colonel figurine stands sentry where the escape key usually is.
There's also a miniature bucket and soft drink in the upper right-hand corner. It would help to be an accomplished touch typist to use this keyboard, because hunting and pecking would require squinting past the drumsticks and thighs to make out the small embossed letters on each key.
This melding of greasy, poultry-based food with a computer input device doesn't just call it a day with a keyboard. There are more wonders left to discover. The promotion also involves a drumstick-shaped mouse with a scrolling wheel on the top (it actually looks more like a diseased sweet potato than a chicken part). The drumstick theme continues with a USB drive. To complete the look, KFC Japan also created some screw-on drumstick earrings, so the lucky winners can fashionably match the keyboard.
There's no word on whether the keyboard will coat your fingers with oil for realism or if it will smell like a deep fryer. The biggest issue is not that the keys look uncomfortable to type on, but rather that every other keyboard in the world will now pale in comparison to the sheer magnificence that is the fried-chicken keyboard.
(http://l.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/Gs.dz7FFrvsGh.JSQl7HZw--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7cT04NQ--/http://media.zenfs.com/en-US/homerun/cnet.cbs.com/26a9cc4002c67e2eca602a5f1b5feae7)
This is supposed to look like a drumstick. KFC Japan
(Via Kotaku)
SLADE, Ky. (AP) — Rescue crews say an Ohio man who was camping with friends in central Kentucky's Red River Gorge is recovering after falling from a cliff while sleepwalking.
Powell County Emergency Management told WKYT-TV (http://bit.ly/1puqDGb (http://bit.ly/1puqDGb)) that the group had set up camp near Grey's Arch Trail and the man's friends called for help after realizing that he was missing in the middle of the night.
Wolfe County rope technician John May told the station the Cincinnati man, whose name wasn't released, fell about 60 feet early Thursday and landed in an area with several large boulders.
He called it a "miracle" that the man survived. May said the camper suffered a head injury, a dislocated shoulder and a fractured leg, but he's expected to make a full recovery.
___
Information from: WKYT-TV, http://www.wkyt.com (http://www.wkyt.com)
The Royal Canadian Air Force has quietly turned to an unusual source for spare parts to keep its venerable search-and-rescue airplanes flying: a museum.
The Citizen has learned that, in July 2012, air force technicians raided an old Hercules airplane that is on display at the National Air Force Museum of Canada because they needed navigational equipment for a similar aircraft still in use.
The revelation highlights the difficulties military personnel have increasingly faced in keeping Canada’s ancient search-and-rescue planes flying after more than a decade of government promises to buy replacements — with no end in sight.
The air force museum is on Canadian Forces Base Trenton and boasts a large collection of military aircraft that have been retired and subsequently placed on display.
Among them is an E-model C-130 Hercules transport aircraft that entered service in 1965 and was used in a variety of roles before being retired in 2010 and given to the museum the following year.
Museum curator Kevin Windsor said classified equipment is typically taken off the display aircraft, but otherwise the museum tries to keep the aircraft as close to operational as possible to give visitors an authentic experience.
It was during his Windsor’s second week on the job that the search-and-rescue squadron at CFB Trenton contacted the museum’s executive director, retired lieutenant-colonel Chris Colton, to see if they could go through the Hercules.
In particular, Windsor said, they were looking for two inertial navigation units that they could take from the museum’s airplane and install in one of their H-model Hercules, which range in age from 20 to 40 years.
“They sort of called (Colton) up and said ‘Hey, we have these two INUs that we can’t use. Do you have any on yours?’ ” Windsor said. “Some of the parts are interchangeable. They just kind of got lucky on that.”
The INUs work in conjunction with two GPS units to provide the Hercules’s main navigation system, RCAF Capt. Julie Brunet said in an email. “These high value and essential systems allow long non-stop flights to be able to provide better response time to any search-and-rescue mission.”
Once air force technicians confirmed the museum’s Hercules still had its navigational units, it only took about half an hour to get them out.
“They’re two boxes, maybe a little bit smaller than a computer printer,” Windsor said. “They’re not huge things. They just sort of popped the cords and away they went.”
Auditor General Michael Ferguson raised concerns last spring that the federal government’s search-and-rescue capabilities are in danger of crumbling, in part because the air force’s eight Hercules and six Buffaloes are on their last wings.
The airplanes are used to respond to thousands of emergencies across the country every year.
Defence Department officials were also told in a secret briefing last year that the military had been forced to “purchase spare parts from around the world” to ensure the “continued airworthiness” of the air force’s 47-year-old Buffalo airplanes.
Defence Minister Rob Nicholson’s office defended the air force’s decision to ask a museum for parts to keep its search-and-rescue planes flying.
“The RCAF took the initiative to remove these functional, perfectly good parts and use them effectively,” spokeswoman Johanna Quinney said in an email. “It was a sound decision, helping to ensure the long-term viability of the aircraft.”
But former head of military procurement Dan Ross said it’s “embarrassing” that the air force has to “cannibalize old stuff that’s in museums” to keep its planes flying.
And retired colonel Terry Chester, national president of the Air Force Association of Canada said it’s “indicative of a larger problem, which is maintaining a fleet of older aircraft and having to become increasingly creative in ways to make that happen.”
Officials were warned back in February 2012 that spending extra money to extend the lives of the Hercules still being used for search-and-rescue “is an evil necessity” because of delays in obtaining replacements, according to documents obtained by the Citizen.
Successive Liberal and Conservative governments have promised to replace the Hercules and Buffalos starting in 2002, but it remains unclear when new aircraft will actually materialize.
In 2005, the Defence Department was accused by some companies of rigging requirements for the new search-and-rescue airplane so that one specific aircraft, the Italian C-27J Spartan, would win. That prompted the new Conservative government to send the project back to the drawing board.
More recently, internal documents show, military officials had hoped to release a request for proposals from aerospace companies in early 2013, with new aircraft flying by 2017.
Instead, the Conservative government has ordered extensive consultations with industry as part of its revamped defence procurement strategy. While the government says this is essential for getting the purchase right, it has also pushed back the timeline yet again.
Public Works spokeswoman Annie Trepanier said in an email Friday that the government now hopes to release a request for proposals either later this year or in early 2015.
That would likely mean no replacement until at least 2018, during which time the Hercules and Buffalo will need to remain in service.
CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — A falcon in New Hampshire has undergone eye surgery to remove cataracts and has received new synthetic lenses.
Banner, a 4-year-old falcon, lost its sight and hasn't been able to fly or hunt for the past two years. On Monday, a team at Capital Veterinary Emergency Services in Concord removed the cataracts and put in artificial lenses in the hour-long procedure.
The Concord Monitor reports (http://bit.ly/1DUMvpn (http://bit.ly/1DUMvpn)) I-Med, a Canadian ophthalmology supply manufacturer, donated the 6-milimeter-wide lenses. Dozens of people in Montreal, California, Ohio, Germany and Abu Dhabi were involved in their design. A surgeon and veterinary ophthalmologist donated their time for the operation.
Banner's owners, Nancy and Jim Cowan of the New Hampshire School of Falconry in Deering, say it's the first time this surgery has been done on a falcon.
Banner will need anti-inflammatory eye drops for a few weeks to make sure her eyelids don't become too irritated by the sutures in her corneas.
"When we first started looking for help, we heard a lot of anecdotal, 'well it can't be done,'" Jim Cowan said.
Nancy Cowan held Banner on her glove as he shook a leather tassel a few feet away. He smiled when Banner turned toward it.
"You can see something all right," he said. "You can see something."
"We were somewhat saddled with our unexpected guest, who in the early hours of the morning quickly became the mane event of the night shift. ... At neigh point did the horse pose a risk to security."
That is probably the best example of British humor we have seen in a while.
There's public transport in Dubai? :scratch:And wild beavers in England!
BUTTE, Mont. — Once routinely trapped and shot as varmints, their dams obliterated by dynamite and bulldozers, beavers are getting new respect these days. Across the West, they are being welcomed into the landscape as a defense against the withering effects of a warmer and drier climate.
(http://static01.nyt.com/images/2014/10/28/science/28BEAV/28BEAV-superJumbo.jpg)
In Washington State, beavers are being trapped and relocated to the headwaters of the Yakima River. Credit Manuel Valdes/Associated Press
Beaver dams, it turns out, have beneficial effects that can’t easily be replicated in other ways. They raise the water table alongside a stream, aiding the growth of trees and plants that stabilize the banks and prevent erosion. They improve fish and wildlife habitat and promote new, rich soil.
And perhaps most important in the West, beaver dams do what all dams do: hold back water that would otherwise drain away.
“People realize that if we don’t have a way to store water that’s not so expensive, we’re going to be up a creek, a dry creek,” said Jeff Burrell, a scientist with the Wildlife Conservation Society in Bozeman, Mont. “We’ve lost a lot with beavers not on the landscape.”
For thousands of years, beavers, which numbered in the tens of millions in North America, were an integral part of the hydrological system. “The valleys were filled with dams, as many as one every hundred yards,” Mr. Burrell said. “They were pretty much continuous wetlands.”
But the population plummeted, largely because of fur trapping, and by 1930 there were no more than 100,000 beavers, almost entirely in Canada. Lately the numbers have rebounded to an estimated six million.
Now, even as hydroelectric and reservoir dams are coming under fire for their wholesale changes to the natural environment, an appreciation for the benefits of beaver dams — even artificial ones — is on the rise.
Experts have long known of the potential for beaver dams to restore damaged landscapes, but in recent years the demand has grown so rapidly that government agencies are sponsoring a series of West Coast workshops and publishing a manual on how to attract beavers.
“We can spend a lot of money doing this work, or we can use beavers for almost nothing,” Mr. Burrell said.
Beavers are ecosystem engineers. As a family moves into new territory, the rodents drop a large tree across a stream to begin a new dam, which also serves as their lodge. They cover it with sticks, mud and stones, usually working at night. As the water level rises behind the dam, it submerges the entrance and protects the beavers from predators.
This pooling of water leads to a cascade of ecological changes. The pond nourishes young willows, aspens and other trees — prime beaver food — and provides a haven for fish that like slow-flowing water. The growth of grass and shrubs alongside the pond improves habitat for songbirds, deer and elk.
Moreover, because dams raise underground water levels, they increase water supplies and substantially lower the cost of pumping groundwater for farming.
And they help protect fish imperiled by rising water temperatures in rivers. The deep pools formed by beaver dams, with cooler water at the bottom, are “outstanding rearing habitat for juvenile coho salmon,” said Michael M. Pollock, a fish biologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Seattle, who has studied the ecological effects of beaver dams for 20 years.
Restoration is not usually as simple as bringing beavers in; if left unchecked, they can do serious damage. Here in Butte, for example, beavers constantly dammed a creek where it ran through a culvert under a pedestrian walkway, flooding nearby homes and a park.
Enter the “beaver deceiver.” Beavers have evolved to respond to the sound of running water by trying to stop it, because their survival depends on a full pond. (A Yellowstone National Park biologist reported that when he briefly kept a beaver in his basement with plans to reintroduce it to a local stream, it kept frantically clawing at its cage to reach the sound of a flushing toilet.) So local officials installed the deceiver, a large wooden frame covered with stout metal mesh that blocks beavers’ access to the culvert but allows water to keep flowing. Even if they try to dam up the box, the water will still flow, and eventually they give up and move on.
Meanwhile, big, prized cottonwoods and other trees are being wrapped in wire or covered with paint that contains sand to prevent beavers from gnawing them.
In some other places, humans are building beaver dams minus the beavers. On Norwegian Creek, a tiny thread of a stream that flows through the rolling grassy hills on a cattle ranch near Harrison, Mont., volunteers came together recently to build a series of small structures from willow branches to slow the flow of water that had been eroding the banks to a depth of 10 feet or more. In just a year the stream bed has risen three feet, Mr. Burrell said, and in a couple more years it could be entirely restored at virtually no cost.
New dams, even natural ones, can have unintended consequences. Julian D. Olden, an ecologist at the University of Washington, has studied new beaver ponds in Arizona and found that they were perfect for invasive fish such as carp, catfish and bass to displace native species.
“There’s a lot of unknowns before we can say what the return of beavers means for these arid ecosystems,” he said. “The assumption is it’s going to be good in all situations,” he added. “But the jury is still out, and it’s going to take a couple of decades.”
These strange hillocks might be the work of gophers, termites, or something else entirely
(http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/1280_640/images/live/p0/29/hw/p029hwgy.jpg)
Mima mounds, mima mounds everywhere (Credit: Morgan Davis, CC by 2.0)
Standing in a native prairie near the city of Olympia, Washington, the view resembles an expanse of giant grass-covered bubble wrap. Broad, metre-high hillocks stand in formation, in line but not touching, across more than 600 acres of land, providing an oasis of green in the otherwise shrub-infested grasslands.
These humps are called mima mounds and they're believed to have dominated the landscape for thousands of years. Charles Wilkes, a US naval officer and explorer, thought they were ancient Indian burial mounds when he first encountered them in 1841, but when he ordered his men to dig up three mounds they found no bones, only a "pavement of round stones". Native American legends say a falling star dropped them like pebbles onto the earth and modern day urban myths say they are the work of aliens.
Over the last 150 years, the explanations have become less fanciful but no more conclusive. Mima mounds continue to mystify natives and scientists alike.
While the mima mounds in Washington draw tourists in hordes, they're far from unique — similar formations exist in other US states and on every continent except Antarctica. They are known as hogwallow mounds in California and Oregon, prairie mounds in New Mexico and Colorado, and pimple mounds in the southeastern states. The South Africans call their sandy hill-like features "heuweltjies", or little hills, and the Brazilians call the places they occur "campos de murundus", or mound fields.
So when is a mound a mima mound?
"Mima mound refers to very specific features that we find in the western US, one or two metres high, about seven to 10 metres wide, very circular, very symmetrical and when you find them there are thousands of them," says Emmanuel Gabet, a geomorphologist at San Jose State University in California.
Scientists call other larger, broader, flatter, less circular and more dispersed mounds mima-like mounds.
No mere curiosity, these puzzling mounds create their very own ecosystem. In the western US, for example, fresh water pools known as vernal pools collect between them, allowing a variety of endemic animals and plants to thrive.
On the plains of South Africa, millions of mima-like mounds that cover a vast area are home to distinctive flaura and fauna. "If you consider that many of our landscapes here are very nutrient-poor, you have these landscapes that are occupied by the mima mounds that are relatively nutrient-rich," says Michael Cramer, a biologist at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. "So they are a really important part of the ecosystem."
(http://Birth of a Hummock)
But while scientists agree on the ecological importance of the mounds, they don't necessarily agree on their origins. Multiple theories have been proposed, including earthquakes, glacial flooding, gas venting, whirlpools, and the shrinking and swelling of clays. Some suggested causes have persisted since the late 19th century, such as the idea that gophers or termites created them or that they are formed by the accumulation of wind-blown sediments around clumps of vegetation.
"One of the challenges with mima mounds is that, in many cases they are actually very old, and that makes it very difficult to work out what might have been going on," Cramer says. Scientists estimate that some of the mounds could be as much as 30,000 years old with an undisputed slow growth rate that presents a challenge for traditional field experiments.
"The difficulty here is thinking of a way to test any of these ideas," says Cramer. "What experiments are you going to be doing? What are the measurements that you should be taking to determine whether it is actually gophers or termites or plants that are causing these mounds?"
It's a problem that Gabet decided to try to overcome from the comfort of his desk. Rather than heading to the fields to observe the mounds grow at glacial speed, he created a computer model to create a virtual "mima mound world". His starting point was a study by George W. Cox of San Diego State University in 1987. Cox believed that pocket gophers — burrowing rodents that weigh less than a quarter of a pound (100g) and sport fur-lined "pockets" in their cheeks — were pushing soil uphill to create the mounds. To test the theory he seeded the soil with metal tracers in a mima mound field in San Diego. Using a metal detector, Cox found that the soil moved uphill. Assuming gophers were doing the moving, this implied they were purposefully building them.
Gabet used information from Cox's study, building information about soil conditions and gopher behaviour into his model. "It basically simulates the gophers searching for the nearest high spot and then pushing of the soils towards that high spot," he says.
Gabet then pushed the "time machine button", sat back, and watched what would happen in the decades and centuries to come. "The first time I ran it, the mounds were starting to emerge. I was just stunned."
The mounds built by the digital gophers bore a striking resemblance to the real thing in terms of height, width and spacing, Gabet says. But why would animals that typically only leave piles of earth in their wake bother with such a giant construction project?
"The idea is that the gophers are more likely to build up these habitats where the soil would be less saturated," says Sarah Reed, an environmental scientist at the University of California, Berkeley.
Gophers are half blind and avoid going above ground because of the threat posed by predators, Reed says. But as landscapes age the habitable soil layer becomes thinner and the foundational layer hardens to the point where, when it rains, the topsoil becomes saturated. This leaves the soil levels in which the gophers live without sufficient oxygen.
"These gophers spend 99% of their lives underground so they are very easily affected by any changes in the soil," Reed says. The theory is they build up the mounds to get above the water table.
Hard Work
Faced with skeptics who suggested gophers were incapable of summoning the energy to build the humps, Reed designed a model to estimate how much energy it would take for one of them to dig through the soil and push it uphill to create a mound. She then balanced this effort against its energy intake. "I found from an energetic perspective it is entirely feasible," she says.
Gabet is certainly confident the mystery is solved. "The gold standard for any scientific theory is: Does it match the facts and the observations?" And so far the gopher theory does that at least on the west coast, according to Gabet. "So I feel like we've nailed it, but as far as mounds forming elsewhere, it could be other burrowing animals or it could be a plant-based theory."
Where does that leave those trying to explain similar features in other, gopher-less places? In drier climates the prevailing theory has been that termites build them, much like the African Macrotermes termite species that build large conical structures up to nine metres high.
"These termites do different things in different environments," says Joe McAuliffe, an ecologist and research director at the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix, Arizona. "Sometimes they'll build very small conical nests no more than a metre high, almost as hard as concrete. It is a protective because all kinds of animals, including aardvarks, will have them as their dinner."
It was a theory Cramer didn't question until he went on a tour of the mima-like mounds near Cape Town. "I noticed that there were quite big rocks on the surface of the mounds," he says. "It was kind of hard to explain how the rocks would get onto these mounds courtesy of a termite."
McAuliffe is also skeptical because the amount of soil in a mima-like mound two meters high and 30 metres wide would be immense. "It is massive and how could, even over thousands of years, a colony of termites move that amount of soil into a central place?" he asks.
Interest piqued, Cramer then developed a hypothesis based on earlier research done in the US and inspired by the regular pattern of the mounds in the landscape. His idea was that individual plants, or clumps of plants, spread their roots and drained the surrounding soil of water and nutrients. As the plants competed for resources, the emerging landscape was one of vegetation clumps at regular intervals — not so close to run dry of water or nutrients, but close enough to make best use of the soil's assets.
These plants spurred the creation of nutrient-rich islands surrounded by barren soil that encouraged tall, thick vegetation and attracted opportunistic animals such as termites and porcupines. According to Cramer, one of two processes might then be responsible for the formation of mima-like mounds: as the wind whips across the desert, the plants either protect their island from erosion, leaving a standing butte-like mound, or they capture wind-blown sediment which accumulates over time.
McAuliffe believes in the latter theory. "The dense, tall vegetation reduces wind velocity and causes the windblown it is carrying to drop," McAuliffe says. "So that occurs over hundreds and thousands of years and you eventually have a two metre high little hill."
And rather than discounting the termites, McAuliffe believes they play a critical role in the process by bringing in plant nutrients and helping to build up the vegetation. "You have to go past some critical point where you can have a flush of vegetation so the wind breaks are there," he says. "So termites probably do play a very important role in how this whole thing gets moving."
Cramer, with his colleagues at the University of Cape Town, plans to investigate where stone layers occur in the mounds as an indication as to whether the mounds have been deposited by the wind or not, and also to look more closely at what causes their regular spacing.
"One of the questions that we are wrestling with is what actually drives that spacing," Cramer says. "Is it just competition between plants or is there more to it?"
One Solution Fits All?
So could the vegetation-wind theory be behind North America's mima mounds too?
"Hills of dirt are a fairly generic feature and part of the confusion comes about from trying to state that all these different types of features are formed by the same process," Gabet says. "So the ones found on other continents, those are probably not strictly mima mounds."
But other researchers believe mound-like formations across the globe at least partially share common causes.
"I think there is more than one thing going on, and in particular I think there is an interplay between erosion and deposition," Cramer says. "I think those two things might play out differently in different circumstances, but I am pretty convinced that vegetation patterning is at the heart of it."
And while Reed is a strong believer in the gopher hypothesis, she recognizes it is far from proven.
"Part of the intrigue of the mima mounds is the controversy," she says. "There has been more than a century of controversy, and I don't think there is enough evidence to immediately stop the controversy at this point in time."
(http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/78986000/jpg/_78986753_beaver2.jpg)
Beavers living on the River Otter in Devon could be allowed to remain in the wild if free of disease.
The government had intended to capture six beavers, test for disease and re-home them in captivity.
It is unclear where the beavers came from, but campaigners say they should be allowed to stay.
The government has now indicated that the beavers could be tested near the river and released if disease-free.
In October, environmental charity Friends of the Earth, launched a legal challenge over the government's claim that the beavers were non-native, could be diseased, and should be removed.
It is believed the group, including three juveniles born this year, are the only wild beavers in England.
'Positive Steps'
A spokeswoman for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) said: "Our priority has been to ensure humane treatment for the beavers while safeguarding human health, so we'll be testing the beavers close to the River Otter which will be better for their welfare than moving them elsewhere.
(http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/78986000/jpg/_78986751_beaverdamage.jpg)
"We have a licence to capture the beavers, which we need to do to test them humanely for the disease EM (Echinococcus multilocularis) which has the potential to be very harmful to human health should it become established in the UK."
She said that the government agency Natural England was "expected to make a decision soon" on an application by Devon Wildlife Trust for the beavers to be released if clear of the disease.
FoE campaigner Alasdair Cameron said: "These are positive steps in the right direction, but until this issue is resolved, we will continue to make the case for these beavers to remain free."
A wild population of more than 150 animals has established itself on the River Tay in Perthshire, in the east of Scotland, while a smaller official trial reintroduction project has been taking place in west Scotland over the past few years.
Hippo jumps from moving truck in Taiwan, startling localshttp://news.yahoo.com/hippo-jumps-moving-truck-taiwan-startling-locals-080719580.html (http://news.yahoo.com/hippo-jumps-moving-truck-taiwan-startling-locals-080719580.html)
AFP 16 hours ago
(http://l.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/Fec4Vyof2RypJnE2cOv2Uw--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7Zmk9ZmlsbDtoPTY0MTtpbD1wbGFuZTtweW9mZj0wO3E9NzU7dz05NjA-/http://media.zenfs.com/en_us/News/afp.com/Part-HKG-Hkg10131426-1-1-0.jpg)
An injured hippo lies on the ground after it jumped from a truck in Miaoli county, Taiwan, while being transported to a farm (AFP Photo/Ashley Kuan)
A hippo that panicked while being transported by truck in Taiwan jumped from the vehicle, breaking a leg and causing confused residents to report spotting a dinosaur on the loose.
Television footage showed the enormous animal lying on the road with a white fluid oozing from its eyes after it jumped through a truck window and landed on a parked car before falling onto the road on Friday.
The sound of the collision startled people nearby who flocked to see the animal and contacted the police in central Miaoli county.
One woman was quoted by the United Daily News as saying that she ran out of her house after hearing the crash and thought she saw "a dinosaur" lying on the road.
The truck driver was quoted by the newspaper as saying that he saw the hippo "flying out" of the vehicle after getting spooked during the drive.
The injured animal, named "A Ho" after the Chinese name for hippo Ho Ma, lay on the road for a few hours before being put into a cargo container and taken back to its farm in central Taichung city, officials said.
Taiwanese authorities said Saturday that the animal's owner could face a fine of up to Tw$75,000 (US$2,400) for violating animal protection laws after the hippo suffered a broken leg and damage to its teeth.
Local media said the hippo was a star attraction at its farm and had even appeared in a popular television soap opera several years ago.
Coca-Cola pulls Twitter campaign after it was tricked into quoting Mein Kampfhttp://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/feb/05/coca-cola-makeithappy-gakwer-mein-coke-hitler (http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/feb/05/coca-cola-makeithappy-gakwer-mein-coke-hitler)
#MakeItHappy campaign, which used an automatic algorithm to turn negative tweets into pictures of happy things, was hijacked by Gawker
The Guardian
Nicky Woolf in New York Thursday 5 February 2015 10.58 EST
(http://i.guim.co.uk/static/w-620/h--/q-95/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2014/8/20/1408533379347/Coca-Cola-bottles-012.jpg)
(http://i.guim.co.uk/static/w-620/h--/q-95/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2014/8/20/1408533379347/Coca-Cola-bottles-012.jpg)
For a couple of hours on Tuesday morning, Coca-Cola’s Twitter feed was broadcasting big chunks of Adolf Hitler’s text. Photograph: Wilfredo Lee/AP
Coca-Cola has been forced to withdraw a Twitter advertising campaign after a counter-campaign by Gawker tricked it into tweeting large chunks of the introduction to Hitler’s Mein Kampf.
For the campaign, which was called “Make it Happy” and introduced in an ad spot during the Super Bowl, Coke invited people to reply to negative tweets with the hashtag “#MakeItHappy”.
The idea was that an automatic algorithm would then convert the tweets, using an encoding system called ASCII, into pictures of happy things – such as an adorable mouse, a palm tree wearing sunglasses or a chicken drumstick wearing a cowboy hat.
In a press release, Coca-Cola said its aim was to “tackle the pervasive negativity polluting social media feeds and comment threads across the internet”.
But Gawker, noticing that one response had the “14 words” white nationalist slogan re-published in the shape of a dog, had other ideas.
The media company’s editorial labs director, Adam Pash, created a Twitter bot, @MeinCoke, and set it up to tweet lines from Mein Kampf and then link to them with the #MakeItHappy tag – triggering Coca-Cola’s own Twitter bot to turn them into cutesy pictures.
The result was that for a couple of hours on Tuesday morning, Coca-Cola’s Twitter feed was broadcasting big chunks of Adolf Hitler’s text, albeit built in the form of a smiling banana or a cat playing a drum kit.
The bot made it as far as making Coke tweet the words “My father was a civil servant who fulfilled his duty very conscientiously” in the shape of a pirate ship with a face on its sails – wearing an eyepatch – before Coca-Cola’s account stopped responding.
By Wednesday, the campaign had been suspended entirely. In a statement to AdWeek, a spokesperson for Coca-Cola said: “The #MakeItHappy message is simple: the internet is what we make it, and we hoped to inspire people to make it a more positive place. It’s unfortunate that Gawker is trying to turn this campaign into something that it isn’t.”
The statement concluded: “Building a bot that attempts to spread hate through #MakeItHappy is a perfect example of the pervasive online negativity Coca-Cola wanted to address with this campaign.”
Coca-Cola is not the only company to have noticed pervasive negativity online. Twitter chief executive Dick Costolo wrote in an internal memo to staff that he was embarrassed by the company’s failure to deal with online trolls.
“We suck at dealing with abuse and trolls on the platform and we’ve sucked at it for years,” reads the memo, which was obtained by the Verge on Wednesday.
“I’m frankly ashamed of how poorly we’ve dealt with this issue during my tenure as CEO. It’s absurd. There’s no excuse for it. I take full responsibility for not being more aggressive on this front. It’s nobody else’s fault but mine, and it’s embarrassing.
“We’re going to start kicking these people off right and left and making sure that when they issue their ridiculous attacks, nobody hears them.”
Coca-Cola is not the first corporate Twitter user to run into trouble over an automated bot created for advertising purposes. In November 2014, the New England Patriots were forced to apologise after an automatic bot was tricked into tweeting a racial slur from the official team account.
Mariuana for pets? Since when do other species react the same way as humans to 'recreational' drugs?I'd suspect the catnip growers might object as well.
Is there a hallucinogen for dogs, or are they inherently nuts?
In a saner world, where science and the law meshed more precisely, a case like Firstenberg v. Monribot would have been dead on arrival in court. But that is not what happened.
Earlier this month, five years after the lawsuit was filed, the New Mexico Court of Appeals upheld a lower court’s ruling that Arthur Firstenberg, an outspoken opponent of wireless technology, could not seek $1.43 million in damages from his neighbor, Raphaela Monribot, for damaging his health by using her iPhone and a Wi-Fi connection.
The electromagnetic signals that go from cellphone to cellphone and computer to computer lie quietly on the spectrum between radio broadcast waves and the colors of light. From the perspective of science, the likelihood of the rays somehow causing harm is about as strong as the evidence for ESP. But the law proceeds by its own logic, in which concepts like evidence and proof take on meanings of their own. This case in New Mexico shows how two of civilization’s great bodies of thought — the scientific and the legal — can make for an uneasy mix.
Mr. Firstenberg and Ms. Monribot, the record shows, were once on good terms. He had hired her in 2008 to cook for him, and after she left for Europe, he rented and then purchased her small house in a densely populated old neighborhood in Santa Fe, N.M. When she returned to town, she moved into a house adjacent to the one he owned.
It was there, Mr. Firstenberg would claim, that she became the cause of his suffering. Dizziness, nausea, amnesia, insomnia, tremors, heart arrhythmia, acute and chronic pain — all because she insisted on using her cellphone, computers and other ordinary electronic equipment.
Her dimmer switches and compact fluorescent bulbs emitted their own painful rays. The fact that the two houses shared the same electric utility connection, Mr. Firstenberg argued, intensified the effect.
A self-described sufferer of a medically unrecognized condition called electromagnetic hypersensitivity, he was already known in Santa Fe for his unsuccessful effort to block the installation of Wi-Fi in the city library and other public places.
When I heard that Mr. Firstenberg, who lives a couple of miles from me, was filing a tort claim seeking damages for what amounted to electromagnetic trespassing, I assumed the case would be quickly dismissed. Instead, in 2010, it entered the maze of hamster tubes that make up the judicial system.
In an exchange of emails, he declined to be interviewed about the case, saying that reporters should focus instead on what he believes are grave dangers posed by electromagnetic radiation. But except for a few obscure experts who quote one another’s discredited research, the consensus of science is that the health risks are most likely nonexistent.
Unlike X-rays and gamma rays, the radiation emitted and received by wireless devices is far too low in frequency to shake apart the molecules in living cells. Only at extremely intense exposures, like those inside a microwave oven, can the waves cause harm by generating heat.
It is not impossible that low, “subthermal” levels of the waves might disturb cellular chemistry in less obvious ways, but the evidence isn’t there. Double-blind studies of people who consider themselves electrosensitive have found no relationship between the onset of their symptoms and the presence of electromagnetic fields.
Showing skepticism from the start, District Judge Sarah Singleton denied Mr. Firstenberg’s request for a preliminary injunction, ruling that he was “unlikely to prevail on the issue of causation.” If only the locomotive had stopped there.
The judge also denied Ms. Monribot’s motion to dismiss the case entirely, calling instead for an evidentiary hearing to consider “in depth proof and argument on the validity of both sides’ experts.”
The result, in retrospect, was like the comedian John Oliver’s “statistically representative climate change debate” in which three critics of human-caused global warming were pitted against 97 scientists who considered the evidence overwhelming. Any debate over the scientific legitimacy of electrosensitivity would be even more lopsided.
In 2012, after two more years of claims and counterclaims, depositions and cross-examinations, days of hearings and pages of affidavits, the court was persuaded in its circuitous way of what science already knew: Mr. Firstenberg had no case. His expert witnesses, consisting of a holistic doctor and a consulting psychologist on neurotoxicity, were ruled unqualified and his evidence scientifically unreliable. And so came a summary judgment against him.
About a week ago, after the Court of Appeals upheld the decision, I stopped by the office of Ms. Monribot’s lawyer, Christopher Graeser, with a tape measure. The files for the case sat in boxes on a table. Piled together, the pages would reach more than six feet high.
Court costs, not counting lawyers’ fees, had come to almost $85,000, or more than $1,000 an inch. Because of what the court described as Mr. Firstenberg’s “inability to pay,” the bill went instead to Ms. Monribot’s landlord’s insurance company — as if someone had slipped on an icy sidewalk, or pretended to.
Mr. Graeser and another lawyer, Joseph Romero, represented her pro bono, writing off an estimated $200,000 in legal fees. Lindsay Lovejoy, the lawyer for Mr. Firstenberg, said he wasn’t free to discuss their arrangement.
Mr. Firstenberg represented himself for the appeal. The next stop may be the New Mexico Supreme Court. After all, Mr. Graeser said, the plaintiff had “suffered no real disincentive to doing it again.”
A version of this article appears in print on March 24, 2015, on page D3 of the New York edition with the headline: Science, Lost in a Legal Maze.
The other day I saw a video of a bear family more or less 'chasing' tourists at some bridge in Yellowstone Park, with a guy in the background yelling "RUN" over and over.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OrnHISGqi0&feature=player_embedded (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OrnHISGqi0&feature=player_embedded)
The other day I saw a video of a bear family more or less 'chasing' tourists at some bridge in Yellowstone Park, with a guy in the background yelling "RUN" over and over.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OrnHISGqi0&feature=player_embedded (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OrnHISGqi0&feature=player_embedded)
By/ Elizabeth Palermo/ Livescience.com/ August 7, 2015, 10:18 AM/
Wasp turns spider into web-building zombie slave before killing it
A wasp larva kills its spider host once the host has completed its web-building tasks.
/Keizo Takasuka
/ Shares / 22
Tweets /Stumble /Email More + Like a mindless zombie controlled by a menacing overlord, the spider scampers back and forth, reinforcing its silky web. Not long from now, the subservient arachnid will be dead, its web transformed into a shelter for the spawn of the creature that once controlled it, according to a new study.
No, this isn't science fiction; it's the somewhat terrifying (but very real) tale of the orb-weaving spider Cyclosa argenteoalba and the parasitic wasp Reclinervellus nielseni, two species that carry out a strange relationship in Hyogo prefecture, Japan.
Together, the wasp and the spider provide a perfect example of host manipulation -- an ecological process in which one species (the parasite) and its young (the parasitoids) manipulate the behaviors of another species (the host) to their advantage. [Zombie Animals: 5 Real-Life Cases of Body-Snatching]
Just how a parasite turns its host into a zombielike slave varies from species to species, and sometimes, researchers aren't sure what the mechanism is that makes a host do its parasite's bidding. That's the case for the orb-weaving spider and parasitic wasp of Japan. Researchers in that country want to find out how R. nielseni controls C. argenteoalba. Does it use a neurotoxin, or perhaps some kind of hormone?
But to solve that mystery, scientists first need to answer another question: What, exactly, does the wasp make the spider do?
Walking dead
The manipulative relationship between the wasp and the spider begins when a female wasp attacks the orb weaver in its web. She deposits her egg onto the back of the spider's abdomen but doesn't kill it. Firmly attached to the spider, the egg develops into a larva, which eventually does kill its host, but not before the spider serves it as a slave throughout the early stages of development, said Keizo Takasuka, a postdoctoral fellow at Kobe University's Graduate School of Agricultural Science in Japan and lead author of a new study exploring the relationship between R. nielseni and the orb weaver. [Watch the Zombie Slave Spider Do the Wasp's Bidding (Video)]
Over the past several years, Takasuka has headed to the Shinto shrines of Hyogo prefecture to collect spiders enslaved by the parasitic larvae of R. nielseni.
Parasitic wasp larvae on spider host
/Keizo Takasuka
"I looked for already-parasitized spiders in shrines ... because the spiders prefer to construct webs particularly in artificial structures and stone materials," Takasuka told Live Science in an email. He's not sure why the spiders prefer the shrines, but he said these arachnids can also be found in other habitats.
In the lab, Takasuka and his colleagues observed the behaviors of the parasitized spiders -- mainly the precise way in which the arachnids built their webs -- and then compared this behavior with that of orb-weaving spiders that weren't controlled by parasitoids.
The zombie slave spiders tended to build a particular kind of web, one that was quite different from the webs created by parasitoid-free spiders, the researchers found. First, the parasite-ridden spiders took apart their old webs (some even abandoned them altogether), and then they started building new ones that resembled the web an orb weaver would build if it were about to molt, or shed its exoskeleton (something spiders do in order to grow).
Meet the soul-sucking dementor wasp
Rest in peace
Known as a "resting" web, the pre-molting web is distinct from the spiral-shaped web the spider usually weaves to catch prey. When molting, the spider is soft-bodied, vulnerable and unable to eat. So it stays huddled in the center of the resting web, which has no "capture" areas to snag prey but is instead outfitted with fibrous thread decorations (FTDs), which are strands of silk meant to make the web stand out. [Goliath Birdeater: Images of a Colossal Spider]
You might think that spiders would want to keep their webs inconspicuous, but a molting spider's web is under constant threat from flying birds and other, larger animals. If the web is visible to these animals, they will be less likely to crash into it, and the spider will be more likely to survive the molting process. With that in mind, the spider adorns its home with extra strands of ultraviolet (UV) light-reflecting silk, which passersby are not likely to miss.
The resting web, a safe haven during times of transformation, is the perfect place for a wasp larva to transition into the pupal phase (the stage of transformation in which the insect envelopes itself in a cocoon). An orb weaver's resting web can keep its occupant safe for about two days, which is how long it typically takes the spider to molt. But a web that lasts only two days isn't going to cut it for R. nielseni, which needs to remain ensconced in the spider's web for at least 10 days once it has wrapped itself up in a cocoon.
"[The] cocoon web has to endure falling debris, the elements and animal strikes for a long time -- at least four to five times longer than [a] resting web," Takasuka said.
That's why R. nielseni doesn't just direct its host to build a resting web; it instructs the spider to build a superstrong resting web, one chock-full of reinforced threads that hold the web -- and the wasp-filled cocoon at its center -- in place for long stretches of time, the researchers found.
Using a tensile machine, Takasuka and his colleagues tested the breaking forces (how much force a material can handle before breaking) of the radius and frame silks used to construct a so-called "cocoon" web and found that they were at least 2.7 times greater than the breaking forces of the silks that made up both the orb and the resting webs of C. argenteoalba.
Horrifying hormones
When a zombie spider is finished doing its parasitoid's bidding, it returns to the center of the web, but its ordeal is far from over. With its UV light-reflecting, reinforced shelter in place, the wasp larva no longer needs the spider, so it slaughters it. After chucking the spider's corpse off the web, the larva spins itself a comfy cocoon and hunkers down for nearly two weeks to complete its metamorphosis.
The parasitic wasp's ability to manipulate its host in such a specific and subtle way is not unique. In Costa Rica, another parasitic wasp, Hymenoepimecis argyraphaga, ups the horror by depositing its eggs inside of its host arachnid (Plesiometa argyra), which builds a cocoon-worthy web before being consumed from the inside out by larvae.
And, in Brazil (as well as other countries), there are fungi that infect many species of ants, turning these insects into a host of zombies. The ants climb to the highest point they can find and then die as fungal stalks shoot through their skulls, dispersing the fungus' spores into the wind.
In the case of the fungi-entranced ants, scientists know that the fungi actually release a cocktail of chemicals into the ants' brains, inducing them to do the fungi's bidding. But entomologists are still actively studying the ways that wasps and other insect parasites might control their hosts.
The peacock spider's adorable dance moves will captivate you
Takasuka suspects that, in the case of R. nielseni and C. argenteoalba, the mechanism controlling the spider's web-strengthening preferences is somehow related to the hormone that is naturally released in the spider just before molting. This hormone is what motivates the spider to start building a resting nest. In the near future, Takasuka hopes to study the chemicals present in the larvae to determine how those chemicals might be related to the resting-web hormone and others.
The researchers' study was published Aug. 5 in The Journal of Experimental Biology.
.
Zombies are about brain eating....
Storm Unleashes Record Rainfall Across Southern California
A September storm brought rain to Southern California ahead of the Tuesday morning drive
By Jonathan Lloyd and Crystal Egger
A storm system unleashed its biggest volume of rainfall Tuesday morning, threatening to disrupt the morning commute and cause flooding. Tony Shin, Kim Baldonado and Anthony Yanez report for the NBC4 News at Noon on Tuesday, Sept. 15, 2015. (Published Tuesday, Sept. 15, 2015)
A low-pressure system that began approaching the Southland Monday unleashed its biggest volume of rainfall Tuesday morning, threatening to disrupt the morning commute and cause some flooding, National Weather Service forecasters said.
Morning downpours caused havoc on freeways and streets. The 710 Freeway was closed in both direction in the Bell area due to flooding and an overturned big rig blocked traffic on the 210 Freeway in Pasadena.
As dawn neared, moderate to heavy rain was falling on L.A. County and parts of Ventura County, the NWS reported. Rainfall rates were generally between a fourth and a third of an inch per hour, a statement said, enough for the largest single-day rainfall total so far this year in downtown Los Angeles.
"We'll see widespread, modrate to heavy rain," said NBC4 forecaster Crystal Egger. "It's a good soaking."
Record rainfall was reported for several locations in Los Angeles and Ventura counties. Downtown LA reported 1.75 inches and 1.28 inches were reported at LAX, setting records for the date.
Tuesday marked the third-wettest calendar day in any September since records began in 1877, according to the National Weather Service.
The heavy overnight rain caused ponding of water on streets and freeways ahead of the morning commute, with local flooding of low-lying areas and intersections. Heavy downpours may cause minor mud and debris flows in and around the recent burn areas.
The system's main band of rain will hover over the region until around noon. Some showers are expected Wednesday morning, followed by a sunny afternoon.
Rain arrived early in Southern California. Crystal Egger has forecast details for Tuesday Sept. 15, 2015. (Published Tuesday, Sept. 15, 2015)
"By 11, 12 o'clock, everything presses east and we'll start to see higher accumulations in the mountains and foothills," Egger said.
Los Angeles County is generally expected to see between two-tenths and a half-inch of rain from this weather system, which is attributed to a low- pressure system combined with moisture from former tropical cyclone Linda, an NWS statement said, slightly reducing Monday's volume projections.
The system is also expected to produce high winds, including gusts of 50 miles per hour in the Antelope Valley.
We're rather abruptly having nippy mornings in western North Carolina. I'm actually wearing pants as I type this.I certainly hope BUncle normally wears clothing while at home . . . I hope by "pants" you mean full length dress or casual pants. I imagine the standard clothing involves shorts of some variety.
What is happening around the country, and world, with regards to the weather? What weather events or preparations are occuring in your area? How does it feel to see Fall arriving in the Northern Hemisphere on September 23?
“Generally speaking, real life uniformed female police officers do not wear short skirts and low-cut shirts,” a furious mother has fumed on Facebook in an open letter to Party City that’s going viral.
Urging the store to stop selling “sexualized” Halloween costumes for young girls, Lin Kramer’s Sept. 14 post explained that she was “appalled” by the options available to her 3-year-old daughter on Party City’s website when she browsed their Toddler Costumes category.
STORY: Most Popular Halloween Costumes in 2015
“While Halloween costumes are undoubtedly about ‘make-believe,’ it is unfathomable that toddler girls and boys who might be interested in dressing up as police officers are seeking to imagine themselves in the incongruent way your business apparently imagines them,” she blasted. “Toddler girls are not imagining and hoping that they will grow up to become a ‘sexy cop’…Please, Party City, open up your view of the world and redesign your marketing scheme to let kids be kids, without imposing on them antiquated views of gender roles.”
Party City responded to the note, but not in the way Kramer had hoped. The company deleted her letter, as well as the comments on it, and blocked her from posting on their page in the future.
STORY: Kids’ 31 Halloween Looks in 31 Days, by Mom, Are Amazing
Not that the mom is deterred. “In so doing,” she noted in a follow-up comment on Facebook, “they ignited the passion of people who already had an interest in seeing *this* particular change happen.” (Party City did not respond to request for comment from Yahoo Parenting, nor did Kramer). Kramer’s hope in sharing her concern, she told The Huffington Post, is that “others will be encouraged to pause and critically think about what they are seeing — and accepting — from retailers.”
This retailer, however, is standing by its merchandise — and the manner in which they market it. “Nothing we carry is meant to be offensive,” reads a statement from Party City issued to the Huffington Post on Sept. 25, the same day that the company explained in a Facebook comment that Kramer’s original note was deleted against their corporate policy by an employee since let go. “We expect parents to be as involved in their children’s costume selections as they are in selecting their everyday wardrobe, and we encourage parents to shop with their children. We supply the types of products that our customers, and specifically parents, demand.”
The policewoman costume that Kramer calls out, they noted, is “one of our most popular costumes.”
But do Halloween duds really matter all that much in the end? Child development specialist Dr. Robyn Silverman tells Yahoo Parenting that a limited, sexist range of costume options does impact kids’ ideas, if only for that one day.
“When girls are repeatedly shown ‘girls costumes’ that provide short skirts, tight tops, and fishnets, they can begin to believe that this is the only acceptable way for a girl to dress on Halloween,” explains the body image expert and author of Good Girls Don’t Get Fat: How Weight Obsession Is Messing Up Our Girls And How We Can Help Them Thrive Despite It. “Girls should have a range of choices and choose whatever feels right to them whether it’s more traditionally ‘girly’ or more gender neutral. A greater range of choices that are marketed towards both girls and boys would make it easier for parents who are trying to get their girls to see that they can be whatever they want to be.”
If parents don’t approve of the options that they see, though, Silverman says they should simply take action: “Thankfully, there are many more choices for girls [than exist in big box stores like Party City] through other smaller or niche companies, from more realistic police officers and firefighters to female Presidents of the United States.”
The lasting message that kids receive about gender roles ultimately depends on mom and dad. “Parents do need to be strong and talk to their girls, even at younger ages, about media literacy and advertising,” Silverman says. “You can say, ‘There are many costumes to choose from and even if a boy is shown on the front, these costumes can be for a boy or girl.’” It’s not as easy as if both sexes were depicted on the costume’s container and marketing displays, she admits, “but as the trusted source in your daughter’s life, your words still matter.”
That’s a takeaway Kramer is counting on. “I look forward to one day sharing with my daughter this story,” she wrote on Facebook about her costume crusade, “of how I genuinely tried my very best to make this world a better place for her.”
(Photos: Party City).
Please follow @YahooParenting on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest. Have an interesting story to share about your family? Email us at YParenting (at) Yahoo.com.
Reichgott knows a moth may be even less appealing than a sea lily, so the organization sent out emails reminding members and others that moths are butterflies without the bright colors that fly at night, not the daytime.
Moths have a frenulum, which is a wing-coupling device. Butterflies do not have frenulums. Frenulums join the forewing to the hind wing, so the wings can work in unison during flight.
'Mystery Science Theater 3000' is officially coming back, but there's still work to do
By Sandra Gonzalez
23 hours ago
LOS ANGELES — One week after Mystery Science Theater 3000 host Joel Hodgson launched an effort to bring back the show via Kickstarter, fans have answered his call and raised more than $2 million that will fund three new episodes of the show.
But there's still work to do, says the former host.
See also: 'Mystery Science Theater 3000' creator hoping for a Kickstarter-funded comeback
In an exclusive interview with Mashable, Hodgson opens up about reaching that first goal and talks about what comes next.
MASHABLE: First off, congratulations. Did you anticipate how quickly the first goal would be reached?
JOEL HODGSON: Oh, man. I have nothing to compare it to. I've never done a Kickstarter before, but it's been amazing and I'm just really grateful and happy. This is just the first goal. The real goal is to get to $5.5 million, but it shows what the fans are capable of doing in a few days.
Absolutely. But $5.5 million is a pretty big goal, considering Veronica Mars raised $5.7 million. Are you feeling good about your chances of getting there?
You know, I think so. For some reason I believe we're going to do it — and I don't know if that's being naive, but I guess I just assumed that we'd do it. I don't know, it's so uncertain. It's very weird but pretty exciting, too.
So you mentioned on the Kickstarter page that this has been percolating in your brain for awhile now — and admitted you had some legal issues with the rights for the show. How much time passed between your official OK and you launching the Kickstarter?
It seems like it's been about three months since they kind of shored it all up, and while we were doing that, we were wondering how to proceed. So planning the Kickstarter coincided with the MST deal, and we've been talking about that and working on that in earnest for the last two years.
During those two years, TV has changed a lot. We've seen a lot of nostalgia-based revivals. Were you worried at all that you'd miss that wave?
Well, yeah. I'm happy it seems to be a trend right when we're emerging. It's not by design, but it's really just lucky that that is happening at the same time, because we've been talking about this and working on it so long. So it's just kind of a coincidence. ... It's weird; it seems that once Mystery Science Theater closed, it got more famous than it ever was. And I think it's because people said we can just kinda look at it as this whole body of work. There's a lot you can explore. If you like it, you can binge on it for months and months.
graphicMST3k
A graphic explaining the various Kickstarter goals set by the MST3K team.
Image: MST3K Kickstarter
So we have three episodes happening for sure. Tell me about the vision for those, and what your goal is with them. You've said you want them to be reinventions.
Yeah, this is not a revival show. There's a little bit of a misunderstanding there — I think because there were only two hosts, [people think] there's this finite universe of MST3K. I'd always hoped it'd keep being refreshed, with new hosts and new people playing the robot. So that's kind of the idea — bringing in new people to be the hosts, people to do the new robot, a new Mad. But also, having said that, we're going to invite the original cast too to be there as a resource and to do cameos and also write. It's like Doctor Who.
Tom Servo and Crow — will they be back?
Absolutely, yeah. They're like C3PO and R2D2; they're the ones who keep living through it.
Or the Tardis.
They play the Tardis, yeah.
The RiffTrax guys [former MST3K host and writer Michael J. Nelson, Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett] have said they're not involved with this — but will they be invited back on a creative level?
Oh, yeah. You know, the idea is once we are funded and we know we have the money, we can go out and really make offers and we'll know schedules. I really want them to be involved. Individually, they're so much a part of the story of Mystery Science Theater. It's really important they're invited back. So yeah, I'm really into that, and I know how important it is to fans, too. I think that's the best way to proceed with something new — to go, 'Hey, we don't want to forget the past. We don't want to forget how it got here.'
You've mentioned that you plan to stick to the look that people know but also bring it up a notch. Tell me about your plans to evolve the look of it.
Well, they were a couple of things built into Mystery Science Theater that worked really good, and that is that it appears to be a live document of a day in time. I was really careful about that; I didn't want to do a lot of post-production on the show. I wanted all the effects to be in camera, and we're seen a lot of that come around, with [the way] J.J. Abrams [did] Star Wars.
People are sort of on the other end of [the argument] that seeing everything is the best way to tell a story; sometimes just having a really solid world you're in works really good. So I want to stick with that. I don't want to go too far out with that. But I also don't want to arrest the look of Mystery Science Theater and kind of stick with what we were doing in the '90s, which at the time was really provocative. I think we can move it along a little bit further. I'm not sure if I can, but I'd like to try.
The thing I think will really protect it is that everything has to be done live. No matter what we do, it will have its own kind of charm.
In terms of the movies you're picking: I know you said it's going to be a mix of older and newer movies, but what are your early thoughts on what the balance will be for the first three?
Well, it's one of those issues that's so out of my control that I don't feel like I can really [talk about it]. This is how Mystery Science Theater has always worked. We get what we can and do the best with what we got. That's going to be true for this, too. I think out of the 12 episodes, I maybe feel like there are three we got for sure. The rest we're in the process of acquiring. So I can't even speculate about it and how they'll be arranged and what the movies will be at this point.
As for the delivery of the actual episodes: Where are you imagining these will live?
We're open to a lot of things; it's not like we're not imagining this as a web series, unless you count House of Cards as a web series. It's like the next season of a well-established TV show, and whether it goes to a broadcast or online platform, I don't know. We just kind of want to find the best home for it.
The thing I'm most interested in is that I don't just want it to get siloed away. I want people to be able to find it, like so many people found Mystery Science Theater back in the day. I know the fans who are funding these episodes will get to see these shows no matter what, but where it will end up is one of the key things.
What are the benefits of finding a home for it on Netflix, for example, versus just putting it out on YouTube and letting people see it?
Well, to me, one thing that's really cool about a platform is that they'll promote it; you know what I mean? They'll get it to more people and get the word out and we won't have to rely completely on a street team. More people are going to discover it on television or a big digital platform than if it's just on YouTube. That's kind of the idea.
[We want] someone who's enthused about it as we are, and wants to promote it and get it out there. In some ways, Mystery Science Theater has a lot of fans, but it's never been famous. Maybe now it's supposed to be.
So now that you've crossed one goal, what's your message to fans?
It's really just "thank you." Thank you so much for what you're doing. And more than anything, it's, "Let's keep going." We'll get it there.
Mystery Science Theater has always been dependent on the fan base, going back to "Keep Circulating the Tapes." We just need them now to get us to this next level, hopefully. Now we say, "Keep Circulating the URL."
This interview has been edited for clarity and condensed.
Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.
PerdyI'm waiting for the cardinals to come around here. We get lots of them.
If I need something like that, life or death - I'll just die at those prices.
My niece (6) just found out she'll be needing one. Cashews...
My niece (6) just found out she'll be needing one. Cashews...
That's an allergy that makes sense to me, because the shrubby tree they come from is poisonous, or at least contains a compound similar to poison Ivy.
I'm glad I looked that up to confirm. I've never had an issue with cashews or poison oak, but as it turns out, cashews are bad for people who get the type of kidney stones I do. Good thing to know!
If I need something like that, life or death - I'll just die at those prices.
Signed the petition. Paid to send letters to my 3 members of Congress. http://www.petition2congress.com/20720/stop-epipen-price-gouging (http://www.petition2congress.com/20720/stop-epipen-price-gouging)
I estimate I have given more than 100K injections, and I don't mind needles, but I don't think it's safe for kids to be drawing and self-administering injections during a life threatening emergency.
Those children that need it need the epipens.
NBC Nightly news did a story. The company is run by a US Senator's daughter, and moved to The Netherlands.
I guess I'm a believer in The Constitution and our government, and have been most of my life.
Politicians vary , but they are people too, and every one is different. But in this case, I don't care whether my representatives act out of hopes for re-election, concern for children, or contempt for the opposition party senator whose daughter is responsible, so long as they act. I predict 2 out of 3 will take a stand on this one.
"Expired" April 2016.
Guess I need to call the ENT's office tomorrow.
Well, the wife and I have discussed this, and think it's more a matter of being prescribed the pens as a CYA by the doctor/malpractice insurance than a genuine need. I think we'll let this slide until and when the doctor brings it up again.
Well, I guess you can get a bottle and syringe much more affordably, buy that doesn't mean a kid could do that safely.
After several driving delays and a huge gas shortage scare we finally arrived in Marfa past dinner time at night … From our kids’ perspective, Marfa’s big draw, of course, are the Mystery Lights, a Texas version of Alaska’s aurora borealis. To make things interesting I brought a professional digital camera and a tripod and took time-lapse images of the Marfa Lights from the observation deck where everyone normally sees them. If you look at my un-doctored photos [see below], you will notice a red light surrounded by other brighter lights. All appear to be around the same size but what’s interesting is that the white lights surrounding the red one clearly have some movement. For the record, I don’t believe there’s anything magical or alien-related to the lights but I do find them interesting, especially knowing that many experts and some documentaries have studied them and no one knows what to say they are.
Well, apparently, the Marfa Lights have not been around all that long, after all. The earliest accounts come from a rancher named Robert Ellison in 1883. However, upon closer inspection, it appears that there is no actual record that Robert Ellison ever saw such a thing. There are reports from his descendants that Ellison said he saw lights, but there is no written record, not even when he wrote his memoirs about his life in the region in 1937. Curious that he would leave that out. Apparently, all evidence that the lights existed prior to the arrival of automobile highways in the region is purely anecdotal.
… mysterious lights seen just above the horizon every night.
Try the overlooks at mile posts 310 (Brown Mountain Light overlook) and 301 (Green Mountain overlook) and from the Brown Mountain Overlook on North Carolina Highway 181 between Morganton, North Carolina and Linville, North Carolina. Additionally, good sightings of the [Brown Mountain] Lights have been reported from the top of Table Rock, outside of Morganton, North Carolina. One of the best vantage points, Wisemans View, is about 4 miles from Linville Falls, North Carolina. The best time of year to see them is reportedly September through early November.
“Female love of beauty has got nothing to do with functionality: it is pure aesthetic evolution”