Odd News

[Denny]

Taxi Plows Into, Displaces Pike Place Pig

SEATTLE -- Rachel, the beloved brass pig that has greeted Pike Place Market visitors for 25 years, suffered a setback Saturday morning when a taxi cab ran into the Pike Place Market.

The cab knocked the 550-pound piggy bank off its stand and onto its side, plowed through construction fencing and entered a portion of the market that is currently undergoing renovation.

[Denny]

Plant or Animal? Mysterious Fossils Defy Classification

Strange fossils, including some that could be predecessors to modern animals, found in China shed new light on the evolution of large, complex organisms, and indicate that they may have diversified earlier than thought.

Researchers believe that the rocks containing these fossils, found in southern Anhui Provence, date between 635 million and 580 million years ago. The new types of organisms discovered in them include two that are fan-shaped, as long as 2 inches (5 centimeters), and resemble seaweed, as well as three other new types of organisms that are difficult to classify as animal or plant.

"Some of my colleagues are more leaning toward the animal interpretation," said study researcher Shuhai Xiao, a professor of geobiology at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. "But my personal view is that we still don't know what they are."

[mutepointe]

Watch this video in large size format.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0v2xnl6L ... r_embedded

[Denny]

Boy missing cerebellum stymies medical experts

Three-year-old Chase Britton is a medical enigma. Born without a cerebellum, Chase is able to perform activities that have long been thought to be controlled by the cerebellum. Chase can walk, ride a bike, manipulate a pencil ... all of this upends conventional medical thinking. He "needs" a cerebellum to do these things, and he doesn't have one.

Chase's parents, Heather and David Britton, learned their son's cerebellum was missing when he underwent an MRI at age 1. "'He has the MRI of a vegetable,' one of the doctors said to us," Heather Britton said in an AOL news interview.

[Whistlin' Will]

"'He has the MRI of a vegetable,' one of the doctors said to us," Heather Britton said in an AOL news interview.

How insulting.

[fearfaoin]

Boy missing cerebellum stymies medical experts

They say that kids especially can reroute
neural pathways that get damaged or are
missing. Maybe they'll find he just has a
pseudo-cerebellum somewhere else in his
brain. Hope the kid doesn't end up feeling
like a lab rat. He'll certainly be studied
heavily throughout his life.

[crookedtune]

Doesn't add up. You don't just lose a cerebellum that was "clearly present in utero". I'd find new doctors.

[Denny]

To a Mosquito, You Are the Stinkiest Species

You may think you give off less odor than your dog, but to some species of mosquito, you're the smelliest game in town.

It's long been known that some mosquitoes are tiny human-seeking missiles, homing in on the odor of our sweat. The species that transmits malaria(Anopheles gambiae), and the species that spreads dengue and yellow fever (Aedes aegypti), are particularly people-centric. According to a new editorial published in the journal Trends in Parasitology, this may be because humans give off unique scents not seen elsewhere in the animal kingdom. [Infographic: Where and Why You Stink]

"The unique composition of human sweat appears to explain its tantalizing effect on anthropophilic mosquitos," wrote researchers Renate Smallegange, Niels Verhulst and Willem Takken, who study mosquito-host interactions at Wageningen University in The Netherlands. ("Anthropophilic" means "human-loving," though few victims of the mosquitoes' bites appreciate the affection.)

[Denny]

Ancient Peruvian site forces experts to re-think past

LIMA (AFP) – Archeologists have discovered a group of ancient tombs in the mountainous jungle of southeastern Peru they say is as important as the discovery of the lost city of Machu Picchu.

The tombs belonging to the Wari culture were found on the jungle-covered eastern slope of the Andes in Cuzco department at a long-abandoned city thought to be the last redoubt of Inca resistance to Spanish colonial rule.

The Waris, a pre-Inca civilization, had an enormous cultural impact in the Andean region between 600 and 1200. The Inca empire (around 1400 to 1532) was the largest pre-Columbian empire in the Americas.

"It is an impressive Wari find in the Cuzco jungle that opens a new chapter on archaeological research and forces us to re-write history," said Juan Garcia, the cultural director for the Cuzco region, as he announced the discovery late Wednesday.

[Denny]

Epic Megadrought Struck 16,000 Years Ago

An expansive megadrought that parched ancient Africa and southern Asia about 16,000 years ago was one of the most intense and far-reaching dry periods in the history of modern humans, new climate research indicates.

The drought hit almost all of southern Asia and most of the African continent. During the drought, Africa's Lake Victoria — the world’s largest tropical lake and the source of the Nile — dried out, as did Lake Tana in Ethiopia and Lake Van in Turkey. And monsoons from China to the Mediterranean brought little or no rain.

By looking at climate records, including samples of ancient sediments taken from Lake Victoria and Lake Tanganyika in Tanzania, the researchers pegged the timing of the megadrought to the peak of a 3,000-year period when icebergs and their meltwater surged into the North Atlantic. This change in the ocean, which occurred as the last ice age came to a close, appears to have had effects at the tropics, the researchers write in the Feb. 25 issue of the journal Science.

[s1m0n]

You may think you give off less odor than your dog, but to some species of mosquito, you're the smelliest game in town.

Mosquitos might like the smell of me, but they LOVE the smell of my sister. Tee hee.

[jileha]

According to a new editorial published in the journal Trends in Parasitology, this may be because humans give off unique scents not seen elsewhere in the animal kingdom. [Infographic: Where and Why You Stink]

The author probably won't be considered for the Pulitzer...

[osage59]

urp

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/0 ... 30502.html#

[Denny]

France creates virtual copy of threatened caves

Expert divers have teamed up with top scientists to chart the Cosquer caves, a complex of huge caverns housing almost 200 stunning prehistoric paintings that can only be reached by diving deep into the Mediterranean off the coast of Marseilles.

The caves, were discovered by Henri Cosquer, a local diver in 1985. To reach them he had to swim 37m down to the undersea cave entrance off the calanques outside Marseilles, then along a 175m tunnel, which eventually rose above sea level.

To his amazement, once in the open air he found dozens of pristine paintings between 18,000 to 27,000 years old.

[dwest]

France creates virtual copy of threatened caves

Expert divers have teamed up with top scientists to chart the Cosquer caves, a complex of huge caverns housing almost 200 stunning prehistoric paintings that can only be reached by diving deep into the Mediterranean off the coast of Marseilles.

The caves, were discovered by Henri Cosquer, a local diver in 1985. To reach them he had to swim 37m down to the undersea cave entrance off the calanques outside Marseilles, then along a 175m tunnel, which eventually rose above sea level.

To his amazement, once in the open air he found dozens of pristine paintings between 18,000 to 27,000 years old.

I would just drill and blast a hole from the top and put in an elevator. I realize en plein air is popular with the French but why do they always seem to take it to extremes?