Hear the sound of a Jurassic cricket

A sound unheard for 165 million years. This is the song of an extinct bush cricket from Inner Mongolia. Researchers at Bristol University were able to recreate it after studying a fossil of the long silenced creature.

via The sound of a Jurassic cricket | The Proceedings of the Ever so Strange.

Listen here.

Bigfoot Spotted In Idaho?

A group of high school students may have come close to Bigfoot during a class project in the Idaho wilderness.

A dark, mysterious creature was caught on tape for a few seconds near Mink Creek before it retreated into the treeline.

“It just didn’t look human-like. I don’t know what that is, it’s not a bear, it’s not a moose or anything. It was big and bulky and black,” said the student who captured the video. He spoke to ABC News’ Idaho affiliate but did not want want to be identified on camera.

The students climbed to where they saw the potential Sasquatch and photographed the large footprints it left in the dirt.

“I’m not going to say yes it was a Bigfoot or no it wasn’t, because I don’t know., and nobody knows,” the student told the news station.

The Animal Planet show “Finding Bigfoot” plans to visit Pocatello, Idaho in June to investigate claims that Bigfoot could be in the area.

via Bigfoot Spotted In Idaho? – ABC News.

Super Insects, Thank Monsanto

… A new generation of insect larvae is eating the roots of genetically engineered corn intended to be resistant to such pests. The failure of Monsanto’s genetically modified Bt corn could be the most serious threat ever to a genetically modified crop in the U.S.

And the economic impact could be huge. Billions of dollars are at stake, as Bt corn accounts for 65 percent of all corn grown in the US.

The strain of corn, engineered to kill the larvae of beetles, such as the corn rootworm, contains a gene copied from an insect-killing bacterium called Bacillus thuringiensis, or Bt.

But even though a scientific advisory panel warned the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that the threat of insects developing resistance was high, Monsanto argued that the steps necessary to prevent such an occurrence — which would have entailed less of the corn being planted — were an unnecessary precaution, and the EPA naively agreed.

“The scientists who called for caution now are saying ‘I told you so,’ because there are signs that a new strain of resistant rootworms is emerging…[A] committee of experts at the EPA is now recommending that biotech companies put into action, for the first time, a ‘remedial action plan’ aimed at stopping the spread of such resistant insects …

The EPA’s experts also are suggesting that the agency reconsider its approval of a new kind of rootworm-killing corn, which Monsanto calls SmartStax. This new version of Bt corn includes two different Bt genes that are supposed to kill the rootworm in different ways. This should help prevent resistance from emerging, and the EPA is allowing farmers to plant it on up to 95 percent of their corn acres. But if one of those genes is already compromised… such a high percentage of Bt corn could rapidly produce insects that are resistant to the second one, too.”

There can be little doubt that genetically engineered crops are the most dangerous aspect of modern agriculture. Not only are we seeing rapid emergence of super-weeds resistant to glyphosate, courtesy of Roundup Ready crops, we now also have evidence of emerging Bt-resistant insects. Add to that the emergence of a brand new organism capable of producing disease and infertility in both plants and animals, and a wide variety of evidence showing harm to human health, and the only reasonable expectation one can glean is that humanity as a whole is being seriously threatened by this foolhardy technology. …

via First Super Weeds, Now Super Insects — Thanks to Monsanto | NationofChange.

Swedish Scientists Plan To Explore Baltic Sea UFO Crash Site

Last summer, while on a treasure hunt between Sweden and Finland, the pair and their research associates made headlines worldwide with the discovery of a 200-foot wide unidentified object at the bottom of the Baltic Sea. Now a team of oceanographers, engineers and deep sea divers will return to the site Friday, June 1, for a 6 to 10 day trip.

They want to find out once and for all what it really is.

… “We don’t know whether it is a natural phenomenon, or an object,” Lindberg, captain of the Ocean Explorer, told FoxNews.com. “We saw it on sonar when we were searching for a wreck from World War I. This circular object just turned up on the monitor.”

The discovery was a worldwide news event, covered in the popular press, the scientific press and in the blogosphere. Many speculated that the discovery was of a long-lost unidentified flying object (UFO), that crashed into the sea.

“We’ll be searching the area in a number of ways,” Lindberg explained. “We’ll use sonar to make 3D images of the bottom, the clay bottom, of that part of the sea. We’ll send down deep-sea divers too. And a camera robot. We’ll also take samples from the sea bed and measure them for toxicities and radiation.” …

via Baltic Sea UFO – Swedish Scientists Plan To Explore UFO Crash Site ~ UFOs 2012|UFO Sightings|Alien UFO Pictures|What Are UFOs|2012 Solar Strom|Mexico UFO.

We don’t read entire lines, we read the start and end

This image from the dailygrail.com today reminds me to remind you that reality is not what you think. Your mind does not work the way you think it does. You have limits you do not know. You also have abilities you do not know. Reading mixed up words is one of them. Read this: Quickly:

 

“Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.”

Homeless Woman Tries to Eat Baby’s Arm

Police arrested a 36-year-old homeless woman for allegedly snatching a baby boy from his stroller and slamming him into a pole, then trying to break his arm off so she could eat it, authorities said Wednesday.

Adriana Miranda was walking with her sister in downtown Los Angeles during the July 21 incident, pushing her 4-month-old son down the street when Natasha Hubbard allegedly reached into the stroller, unbelted the baby and grabbed him by the leg, swinging him overhead before slamming him into a rail, the Los Angeles Times reported.

The boy’s mother and aunt tried to fight Hubbard off, and when Miranda was finally able to grab the baby back Hubbard scratched at her and kept trying to fight.

The baby received only minor injuries and was treated for bruises and scratches.

According to the Times, Hubbard ran away but witnesses helped identify her, leading to her arrest. She was charged with aggravated assault and her bail set at $30,000. She is currently on probation for both a narcotics case and a battery case, and has been arrested for aggravated assault before.

In an interview with detectives, Hubbard confirmed she tried to break the baby’s arm off in order to eat it.

via Homeless Woman Tries to Eat Baby’s Arm | TheBlaze.com.

See “bath salts“.

Who is poisoning Afghanistan’s schoolgirls?

Hundreds of Afghan schoolchildren have been admitted to hospital in the past six weeks after falling victim to what appears to be six separate major poison attacks. Three alleged attacks have occurred in northern Takhar province in the past week alone, affecting more than 300 girls.

Some government and police officials have blamed the poison attacks on the Taliban, whose hostility to girls’ education during its hardline rule in the 1990s is well documented. Others have blamed the “enemies of Afghanistan” and hinted at the involvement of Pakistan and Iran.

Tests by the International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) and government, however, have not found any toxic substances. One international expert has said the scares have all the hallmarks of mass hysteria.

In the most recent attack, on Tuesday, 170 girls in Takhar’s provincial capital, Taloqan, were taken to hospital after falling ill and losing consciousness. Pupils blamed poisonous gas, claiming to have sniffed a noxious odour on entering their classroom at Ahan Dara Girls’ High School. Students at Bibi Haji school also blamed toxic gas for poisoning them in two separate attacks on 23 May and 27 May. Girls at another school in Takhar became ill in April and said the drinking water in their well had been deliberately contaminated.

More than 200 boys at a school in eastern Khost province also fell sick in mid-May as well as 100 girls in northern Balkh province said on 9 May. Their school said its well had been poisoned.

Symptoms have included vomiting, nausea and fainting. In all cases, most pupils who were admitted to hospital were released on the same day and no long-term damage was done.

On each occasion, the local authorities sent blood samples from poisoned students for tests and launched an investigation into the circumstances.

Gul Agha Ahmadi, a media adviser at the Ministry of Education in Kabul, told The Independent that officials were awaiting test results from the most recent poison scares but that results from tests done after the incidents in April and early May had failed to show the presence of harmful substances.

Isaf tests into the Khost incident also showed no harmful substances present. The “initial laboratory test of multiple air, water and material samples were negative for any organic compounds such as poisons or other toxic material,” an Isaf spokesman said. “Further tests continue, but at this point it is unlikely that any foreign substance caused the reported symptoms.”

Mr Ahmadi said mass hysteria could not be ruled out, because Afghan people live in constant fear of insurgent attacks and could easily imagine terrorists poisoning their drinking water.

Robert Bartholomew, a prominent sociologist, also told the AFP news agency that the poisoning scare had “the tell-tale signs” of mass hysteria.

He said, “the preponderance of schoolgirls; the absence of a toxic agent; transient, benign symptoms; rapid onset and recovery; plausible rumours; the presence of a strange odour; and anxiety generated from a wartime backdrop” all pointed to mass hysteria. As a result of having been at war for more than 30 years, half the Afghan population suffers from psychological problems, according to Bashir Ahmad Sarwari, the head of the government’s mental health department. …

via Fear in the classrooms: is the Taliban poisoning Afghanistan’s schoolgirls? – Asia – World – The Independent.

Professor cuts off adulterous wife’s lips: report

A professor who believed his young wife to be having an affair has reportedly cut off her lips in a fit of jealousy and eaten them.

“He cut off her lips and ate them,” Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet quoted an unnamed source close to the case as saying.

“He doesn’t seem to regret anything. He thinks she is the one who has offended him,” the source added.

The man, an associate professor at Sweden’s prestigious Karolinska Institute whose name was not given, was reportedly being held on suspicion of attempted murder, according to the report.

“She is of course not doing well, neither psychologically nor physically,” the woman’s lawyer Ingela Ekman Hessius told Aftonbladet.

The lawyer told the paper her client had suffered “very serious injuries. The doctors have not yet said whether they can fix this or not”.

The attacker, who has now been ordered to undergo a psychiatric evaluation, reportedly had several children from a first marriage, which had ended only weeks before he married his current wife, a much younger woman.

According to Aftonbladet, he had recently begun to suspect that she was having an affair and had allegedly decided to punish her by disfiguring her.

“He didn’t want the lips to be able to be sewn back on,” the unnamed source said, explaining why he had eaten them.

via Professor cuts off adulterous wife’s lips: report.

I find myself looking through the photos of associate professors at the Karolinska Institute, asking myself, which one of these guys would eat lips?

Supervolcanoes ‘can grow in just hundreds of years’

The largest volcanoes on our planet may take as little as a few hundred years to form and erupt.

These “supervolcanoes” were thought to exist for as much as 200,000 years before releasing their vast underground pools of molten rock.

Researchers reporting in Plos One have sampled the rock at the supervolcano site of Long Valley in California.

Their findings suggest that the magma pool beneath it erupted within as little as hundreds of years of forming.

That eruption is estimated to have happened about 760,000 years ago, and would have covered half of North America in its ash.

Such super-eruptions can release thousands of cubic kilometres of debris – hundreds of times larger than any eruption seen in the history of humanity.

Eruptions on this scale could release enough ash to influence the global weather for years, and one theory holds that the Lake Toba eruption in Indonesia about 70,000 years ago had long-term effects that nearly wiped out humans altogether.

What little is known about the formation of these supervolcanoes is largely based on the study of crystals of a material called zircon, which contains small amounts of radioactive elements whose age can be estimated using the same techniques used to date archaeological artefacts and dinosaur bones.

Zircon studies to date have suggested that the time between the formation of the enormous magma pools and the eventual super-eruptions can be measured in the hundreds of thousands of years.

Now, Guilherme Gualda of Vanderbilt University and his colleagues present several lines of evidence from the Bishop Tuff deposit at Long Valley, suggesting that the pools are “ephemeral” – lasting as little as 500 years before eruption.

Initially, the magma pools are nearly purely liquid rock, with few bubbles or re-crystallised minerals.

Over time, crystals develop, but the process stops at the point of the eruption. As a result, the characteristic development time of these crystals can also give an estimate of how long a magma pool existed before erupting.

Rather than zircon, the team’s target was crystals of the common mineral quartz.

Because the processes and timescales of quartz formation in the extraordinary underground conditions of a magma pool are well-known, the team was able to determine how long the crystals were forming within Long Valley’s supervolcano before being spewed out in the eruption.

Their estimates suggest the quartz formed over a range of time between 500 and 3,000 years.

“Our study suggests that when these exceptionally large magma pools form they are ephemeral and cannot exist very long without erupting,” said Dr Gualda.

“The fact that the process of magma body formation occurs in historical time, instead of geological time, completely changes the nature of the problem.”

At present, geologists do not believe that any of Earth’s known giant magma pools are in imminent danger of eruption …

via BBC News – Supervolcanoes ‘can grow in just hundreds of years’.

New research says spit out your gum to improve memory

Having trouble remembering phone numbers or a professor’s lecture? Try spitting out your chewing gum.

A new British study suggests that chewing flavourless gum can interfere with short-term memory.

The research, published in The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, challenges the prevailing notion that chewing gum — at least when it’s flavoured — is a performance enhancer that can boost brain power. It also provides further proof that human beings are woefully inept at completing two tasks at once.

Some argue that gum improves concentration by triggering an increase in blood flow through the brain, said lead author Michail Kozlov of Cardiff University. But his team found that an oral activity such as gum chewing can interfere with the process that’s normally used to remember verbal content.

The researchers from Cardiff University used classic short-term memory challenges, with and without gum. In one test, the volunteers were told to chew vigorously and asked to remember a sequence of randomly ordered letters, such as P, V, B, C, D, G, T. Another group repeated the experiment, but chewed naturally.

In the second test, students chewed the flavourless gum and tried to pick up the missing item in the sequence. For example, 7 is missing from this list of digits ranging 1 through 9: 28149365.

It didn’t matter whether the volunteers chewed vigorously or naturally. In both cases, “chewing has an overall adverse affect on serial recall,” researchers wrote.

Flavour, however, is a still a wild card; it’s what may contribute to the benefits of gum chewing. In a 2002 study, the first to investigate the effects of gum chewing on short-term memory, the participants chewed mint-flavoured gum and performed better on short-term word and memory tasks than those who did not chew gum.

But because chewing gum loses its flavour in several minutes — and unflavoured gum is generally unpalatable — “it seems advisable that chewing gum is only considered a performance enhancer as long as its flavour lasts,” the researchers noted. Or as long as you have money to buy more gum.

via What does gum do again? New research says spit out your gum to improve memory.