Woman finds very clean snake in her washing machine.

A TERRIFIED mother of two spent a sleepless night in her Exeter home — after finding a large snake in her washing machine.Wendy Foley made desperate calls to the police and RSPCA— but was told she would have to wait before someone could come and take it away.Mrs Foley, 51, who lives at Farm Hill, Exwick, with her sons Tom, 18, and Ed, 21, discovered the snake curled up on her wet washing inside the machine. She thinks it probably crawled in when the door was open and survived a wash.She said: “The washing had been through a full cycle and was ended, so I was going to take it out and put more washing in.”I opened the glass door at the front and I saw something. I took it to be part of a pair of jeans and then I wondered if it was a toy snake that children use.”But then it poked its tongue out at me. It was horrible and quite big. It was just sitting there on the washing. I don’t know if it had been through the complete cycle or not. I screamed and screamed — I was terrified.”

via A TERRIFIED mother of two spent a sleepless night in her Exeter home — after finding a large snake in her washing machine..

Archaeologists discover biggest rat that ever lived: Weight of about 6 kilograms (over 13 lb)

Archaeological research in East Timor has unearthed the bones of the biggest rat that ever lived, with a body weight around six kilograms.

The cave excavations also yielded a total of 13 species of rodents, 11 of which are new to science. Eight of the rats weighed a kilogram or more.

“East Indonesia is a hot spot for rodent evolution. We want international attention on conservation in the area,” CSIRO’s Dr Ken Aplin says.

“Rodents make up 40 per cent of mammalian diversity worldwide and are a key element of ecosystems, important for processes like soil maintenance and seed dispersal. Maintaining biodiversity among rats is just as important as protecting whales or birds.”

Carbon dating shows that the biggest rat that ever lived survived until around 1000 to 2000 years ago, along with most of the other Timorese rodents found during the excavation. Only one of the smaller species found is known to survive on Timor today.

“People have lived on the island of Timor for over 40,000 years and hunted and ate rats throughout this period, yet extinctions did not occur until quite recently,” Dr Aplin says.

“We think this shows people used to live sustainably on Timor until around 1000 to 2000 years ago. This means extinctions aren’t inevitable when people arrive on an island. Large scale clearing of forest for agriculture probably caused the extinctions, and this may have only been possible following the introduction of metal tools.” …

via Archaeologists discover biggest rat that ever lived: Weight of about 6 kilograms (over 13 lb).

‘Meteorite’ lands on cricket pitch during county match

When two spectators standing on the boundary at a cricket match saw an object hurtling down from the sky, their first instinct might have been to applaud.

However Jan Marszel, 51, and Richard Haynes, 52, were not witnessing a six, but an extremely rare meteor strike.

The rock, a few inches long and believed to be up to 4.5 billion years old, broke in two when it hit the ground in front of them close to the pitch.

The pair – both Sussex members – were sitting square of the wicket watching the England player Luke Wright bat with Monty Panesar when they spotted the black, five-inch rock hurtling towards them.

Mr Marszel, an IT consultant, said: “We were sitting at the boundary edge when all of a sudden, out of a blue sky, we saw this small dark object hurtling towards us.

“It landed five yards inside the boundary and split into two pieces.

“One piece bounced up and hit me in the chest and the other ended up against the boundary board.

“It came across at quite a speed – if it had hit me full on it could have been very interesting.”

The pair have kept the seemingly extraterrestrial pieces of rock for posterity and said they would be happy for experts to examine them.

Retired Mr Haynes, said: “We were quietly supping our pints, both looked up at the same time and saw a black object coming towards us – we didn’t know what it was.

“If it had come from the other direction we might have suspected someone had thrown it, but we saw it come in straight over the ground from quite a way out – it was definitely a meteorite.” …

via ‘Meteorite’ lands on cricket pitch during county match – Telegraph.

‘Pristine’ Earth impact crater discovered

Scientists say a meteoric impact crater found in the remote Egyptian desert may be the best-preserved ever found on Earth.

The Kamil crater is pristine, unlike most Earth impact sites that are partially or severely eroded, and maintains much of its structure, including the rays of ejected material thrown from the crater when the space rock hit, SPACE.com reported Thursday.

“This crater is really a kind of beauty because it’s so well preserved that it will tell us a lot about small-scale meteorite impacts on the Earth’s crust,” Luigi Folco, meteorite curator at the Museo Nazionale dell’Antartide in Siena, Italy, said. “It’s so nice. It’s so neat. There is something extraordinary about it.”

Craters this well preserved are usually only seen on the moon or Mars, where there are fewer environmental and atmospheric processes to erode and eventually destroy them, he said.

The 148-foot-wide crater was first spotted in Google Earth satellite photos by Italian researchers.

Scientists think it was caused by the impact of an iron meteorite about 4.3 feet in diameter traveling at 7,920 mph, SPACE.com reported.

via ‘Pristine’ Earth impact crater discovered.

Cow gives birth to triplets of different breeds

Holstein Friesian cow Coco delivered three healthy calves without any assistance, which is a one-in-105,000 chance.

Even more rarely, two of the calves are from the Belgian Blue Cross breed and the third is a Charolais Cross.

Owner Anthony Gothard, 37, who runs a dairy farm at Stoke St Gregory, Somerset, said this is because Coco was inseminated using a ”concoction” of different bulls.

He said: ”We were really surprised because we’d never seen it.

”There’s three generations on the farm now and my grandfather came out to see them because he’s never experienced it before.

”But what’s quite uncanny as well as they’re two different breeds of calf.

”Because we artificially inseminate our cattle we sometimes use a concoction of different bulls in the insemination.

”On rare occasions you might get a pare of twins where one is one breed and one another.

”What we’ve got here is two Belgian Blue Cross calves, and one Charolais Cross, which makes it even more amazing.” …

via Cow gives birth to triplets of different breeds – Telegraph.

World’s Stocks Controlled by Select Few

A recent analysis of the 2007 financial markets of 48 countries has revealed that the world’s finances are in the hands of just a few mutual funds, banks, and corporations. This is the first clear picture of the global concentration of financial power, and point out the worldwide financial system’s vulnerability as it stood on the brink of the current economic crisis.

A pair of physicists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich did a physics-based analysis of the world economy as it looked in early 2007. Stefano Battiston and James Glattfelder extracted the information from the tangled yarn that links 24,877 stocks and 106,141 shareholding entities in 48 countries, revealing what they called the “backbone” of each country’s financial market. These backbones represented the owners of 80 percent of a country’s market capital, yet consisted of remarkably few shareholders.

“You start off with these huge national networks that are really big, quite dense,” Glattfelder said. “From that you’re able to … unveil the important structure in this original big network. You then realize most of the network isn’t at all important.”

The most pared-down backbones exist in Anglo-Saxon countries, including the U.S., Australia, and the U.K. Paradoxically; these same countries are considered by economists to have the most widely-held stocks in the world, with ownership of companies tending to be spread out among many investors. But while each American company may link to many owners, Glattfelder and Battiston’s analysis found that the owners varied little from stock to stock, meaning that comparatively few hands are holding the reins of the entire market.

“If you would look at this locally, it’s always distributed,” Glattfelder said. “If you then look at who is at the end of these links, you find that it’s the same guys, [which] is not something you’d expect from the local view.”

Matthew Jackson, an economist from Stanford University in Calif. who studies social and economic networks, said that Glattfelder and Battiston’s approach could be used to answer more pointed questions about corporate control and how companies interact.

“It’s clear, looking at financial contagion and recent crises, that understanding interrelations between companies and holdings is very important in the future,” he said. “Certainly people have some understanding of how large some of these financial institutions in the world are, there’s some feeling of how intertwined they are, but there’s a big difference between having an impression and actually having … more explicit numbers to put behind it.”

Based on their analysis, Glattfelder and Battiston identified the ten investment entities who are “big fish” in the most countries. The biggest fish was the Capital Group Companies, with major stakes in 36 of the 48 countries studied. In identifying these major players, the physicists accounted for secondary ownership — owning stock in companies who then owned stock in another company — in an attempt to quantify the potential control a given agent might have in a market. …

via World’s Stocks Controlled by Select Few | LiveScience.

I’d be willing to bet that most people have never heard of Capital Group Companies.

The Capital Group Companies is one of the world’s largest investment management organizations with assets of around one trillion USD under management. It comprises a group of investment management companies, including Capital Research and Management, American Funds, Capital Bank and Trust, Capital Guardian, and Capital International. As measured by assets under management, Capital rivals Fidelity Investments, a figure the company will not confirm because it eschews publicity.^[1] The firm was founded in 1931 by Jonathan Bell Lovelace. – CGC

People Begin Living Without Electricity and Water in California

YouTube – People Begin Living Without Electricity and Water in California.

KGB did bug Profumo and Keeler pillow talk to steal nuclear secrets

The KGB planted bugs to eavesdrop on John Profumo’s pillow talk with Christine Keeler, according to newly released top-secret files.

The topless showgirl and model’s KGB lover also persuaded her to question Profumo, Britain’s Minister of War, about Britain’s nuclear arsenal, the files reveal.

The reports claim that the Russians obtained ‘a lot of information’ which threatened to undermine Western security, contradicting the long-term view that the affair did not damage UK security and that no secrets were leaked to Russia.

And the files also reveal details of society dinner parties descending into debauched orgies, with, on one occasion, a naked Government Minister acting as a waiter.

Unknown to Profumo, his lover Keeler was also involved with the spy Yevgeni Ivanov, a naval attache at the Soviet embassy in London.

The affair’s exposure in 1963 led to Profumo’s resignation and rocked Prime Minister Harold Macmillan’s Government.

The FBI files, declassified under the US Freedom of Information Act, reveal Keeler confessed Ivanov asked her to obtain information about the movement of Britain’s nuclear warheads and that the operation led to Profumo being a ‘blackmail victim’.

The files suggest the US, during delicate negotiations between Macmillan and President John F. Kennedy on the sale of the Polaris missile to the UK, feared defence secrets had been compromised.

The US took the affair so seriously, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover hand-delivered a note to US Attorney General Robert Kennedy, JFK’s brother, warning of the risks.

via KGB did bug Profumo and Keeler pillow talk to steal nuclear secrets | Mail Online.

The healing effects of forests

“Many people,” says Dr. Eeva Karjalainen, of the Finnish Forest Research Institute, Metla, “feel relaxed and good when they are out in nature. But not many of us know that there is also scientific evidence about the healing effects of nature.”

Forests – and other natural, green settings – can reduce stress, improve moods, reduce anger and aggressiveness and increase overall happiness. Forest visits may also strengthen our immune system by increasing the activity and number of natural killer cells that destroy cancer cells.

Many studies show that after stressful or concentration-demanding situations, people recover faster and better in natural environments than in urban settings. Blood pressure, heart rate, muscle tension and the level of “stress hormones” all decrease faster in natural settings. Depression, anger and aggressiveness are reduced in green environments and ADHD symptoms in children reduce when they play in green settings.

In addition to mental and emotional well-being, more than half of the most commonly prescribed drugs include compounds derived from nature – for example Taxol, used against ovarian and breast cancer, is derived from yew trees, while Xylitol, which can inhibit caries, is produced from hardwood bark.

Dr. Karjalainen will coordinate a session on the health benefits of forests at the 2010 IUFRO World Forestry Congress in Seoul. “Preserving green areas and trees in cities is very important to help people recover from stress, maintain health and cure diseases. There is also monetary value in improving people’s working ability and reducing health care costs.” she says.

via The healing effects of forests.

Fossil Jaw Could Be From World’s Oldest Known Dog

Every dog has its day, but that day took more than 14,000 years to dawn for one canine. A jaw fragment found in a Swiss cave comes from the earliest known dog, according to scientists who analyzed and radiocarbon-dated the fossil.

Dog origins remain poorly understood, however, and some researchers say that dog fossils much older than the Swiss find have already been excavated.

An upper-right jaw unearthed in 1873 in Kesslerloch Cave, located near Switzerland’s northern border with Germany, shows that domestic dogs lived there between 14,100 and 14,600 years ago, say archaeology graduate student Hannes Napierala and archaeozoologist Hans-Peter Uerpmann, study coauthors at the University of Tübingen in Germany.

“The Kesslerloch find clearly supports the idea that the dog was an established domestic animal at that time in central Europe,” Napierala says.

Researchers have also found roughly 14,000-year-old dog fossils among the remains of prehistoric people buried at Germany’s Bonn-Oberkassel site.

Older fossil skulls recently identified by other teams as dogs were probably Ice Age wolves, Napierala and Uerpmann argue in a paper published online July 19 in the International Journal of Osteoarchaeology. That includes a 31,700-year-old specimen discovered more than a century ago in Belgium’s Goyet Cave and reported in 2009 to be the oldest known dog.

Paleontologist Mietje Germonpré of the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences in Brussels, who directed the analysis of the Goyet fossil, stands by his conclusions. “The Kesslerloch dog is not the oldest evidence of dog domestication,” he says.

Numerous wolf fossils lie near alleged dog remains at Kesslerloch Cave and Goyet Cave, raising doubts about whether either site hosted completely domesticated animals, remarks archaeologist Susan Crockford of the University of Victoria in British Columbia. She regards the Swiss jaw as an “incipient dog” in the early stages of domestication from wolves.

via Fossil Jaw Could Be From World’s Oldest Known Dog | Wired Science | Wired.com.