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by ANDREI HARMSWORTH - Sunday, November 16, 2008

. Batten down the hatches – bitch fight on the way

.It looks like Madonna has younger, blonder competition for her New York Yankee pal Alex Rodriguez
Yes, man eater Kate Hudson – who changes boyfriends as fast as her fashion frocks – was allegedly spotted warming up to A-Rod at a glamour bash in Miami over the weekend

The pair reportedly got to know each other rather well at the star studded opening of the new Fontainebleau Hotel.
The married sport star reportedly entertained the You, Me and Dupree actress, 29, at a private table as they watched Mariah Carey's sing-song together on the South Beach.
Helpful spies claim: 'Hudson had her arms completely wrapped around A-Rod's waist and every time he leaned over to talk to anyone she would pull him back toward her.
.'They were laughing and giggling all night
Little wonder Aunty Madge, 50, sent along best buddy Gwyneth Paltrow to keep a watchful eye on her good friend.
Paltrow, 36, reportedly enjoyed an Italian lunch with the A-Rod, 33, at Scarpetta during the day but must have gone off duty once the show started

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Sunday, November 16, 2008

Secret is in Whale Shark poo


Whale sharks are elusive creatures hidden in our vast oceans, so you can imagine how excited a scientist was when he saw one doing a poo

Catching the excrement of the world's biggest fish was 'scientific gold', said Dr Mark Meekan, because it holds many clues to its feeding habits.
The messy moment, caught on camera for the first time, has already revealed the filter-feeders visit Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean to feast on its brief but vast red crab migration

. But little else is known about them, hence Dr Meekan's year-long quest to find out more
As well as following them around with a plastic bag, the researcher tagged six young male whale sharks and tracked them via satellite.
It showed the creatures travelling hundreds of kilometres each month – and also demonstrated not bad at shaking off a tail.
At one point, Dr Meekan tracked one discarded tag via Google Earth to the hut of a fisherman in West Timor
'We really needed to get the GPS trac­ker back. It held valuable information on where the shark had been,' he said.
'By cross-referencing its signal with Google Earth, I was able to give the search team really detailed instructions, like “turn right after the football pitch”.
'The fisherman was a bit surprised when one of my PhD stud­ents turned up but we got the tag back.'
Whale sharks are found in warm seas and grow to about twice the size of a great white shark but are listed as vulnerable to extinction because of fishing
Follow Dr Meekan's exploits tomorrow night at 8pm on BBC2

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Sunday, November 16, 2008

LA devastated by fires

. At least 10,000 people have fled wildfires in California which have des­troyed more than 800 homes

.Six firefighters and at least 13 resid­ents have been injured as flames fuelled by near hurricane-force winds burned for a fourth daySome 67sq km (26sq m) of land has been devastated, leading governor Arn­old Schwarzenegger to declare states of emergency in three counties

. The worst single blaze destroyed more than 450 mobile homes at Oak Ridge in the San Fernando Valley
'I can't even read the street names because the street signs are melting,' said Capt Steve Ruda of the Los Ang­eles Fire Department. No deaths were reported but dogs were brought in yesterday to search the rubble.
'These used to be out-of-the-ordin­ary fires, once-in-a-career kind of fires. Now they're every year,' said Capt Leonard Grill, a 20-year veteran of Riverside County Fire Department

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Sunday, November 16, 2008

? A great ape deep in thought, perhaps the animal world's answer to Rodin's The Thinker

This and other photographs pictured above are just some of the amateur shots submitted to an international photo competition.
The second annual Sony World Photography Awards pits against each other amazing pictures taken from around the globe

The awards are open to both professional and amateur snappers, who will compete for the $5000 prize. There are nine amateur categories, from natural history to music, and fashion to sport.
The Professional Awards will see photographers compete over twelve categories.
The professionals will also be submitting their portfolios in the hope of being selected for a fully-funded project to document the rainforests of the world, announced as part of the awards' partnership with The Prince's Rainforest Project.
On top of the $5000, the overall winner will be flown to Cannes, receive two nights accommodation in a luxury hotel, and receive VIP tickets to the award ceremony.
The deadline for submissions to the competition, which is free to enter, is December 31. the winner will be announced on March 17, 2009. To enter, go to

برای مشاهده محتوا ، لطفا وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید

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By Will Dunham Will Dunham –
Tue Nov 18, 6:32 pm ET

...Reuters – This undated handout photo shows a creature called a pygmy tarsier, believed for the eight decades to

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – On a misty mountaintop on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, scientists for the first time in more than eight decades have observed a living pygmy tarsier, one of the planet's smallest and rarest primates.
Over a two-month period, the scientists used nets to trap three furry, mouse-sized pygmy tarsiers -- two males and one female -- on Mt. Rore Katimbo in Lore Lindu National Park in central Sulawesi, the researchers said on Tuesday.
.They spotted a fourth one that got away
The tarsiers, which some scientists believed were extinct, may not have been overly thrilled to be found. One of them chomped Sharon Gursky-Doyen, a Texas A&M University professor of anthropology who took part in the expedition.
"I'm the only person in the world to ever be bitten by a pygmy tarsier," Gursky-Doyen said in a telephone interview.
"My assistant was trying to hold him still while I was attaching a radio collar around its neck. It's very hard to hold them because they can turn their heads around 180 degrees. As I'm trying to close the radio collar, he turned his head and nipped my finger. And I yanked it and I was bleeding."
The collars were being attached so the tarsiers' movements could be tracked.
Tarsiers are unusual primates -- the mammalian group that includes lemurs, monkeys, apes and people. The handful of tarsier species live on various Asian islands.
As their name indicates, pygmy tarsiers are small -- weighing about 2 ounces (50 grammes). They have large eyes and large ears, and they have been described as looking a bit like one of the creatures in the 1984 Hollywood movie "Gremlins."
They are nocturnal insectivores and are unusual among primates in that they have claws rather than finger nails.
They had not been seen alive by scientists since 1921. In 2000, Indonesian scientists who were trapping rats in the Sulawesi highlands accidentally trapped and killed a pygmy tarsier.
"Until that time, everyone really didn't believe that they existed because people had been going out looking for them for decades and nobody had seen them or heard them," Gursky-Doyen said.
Her group observed the first live pygmy tarsier in August at an elevation of about 6,900 feet.
"Everything was covered in moss and the clouds are right at the top of that mountain. It's always very, very foggy, very, very dense. It's cold up there. When you're one degree from the equator, you .expect to be hot. You don't expect to be shivering most of the time. That's what we were doing," she said
(Editing by Sandra Maler)

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It may look like a gremlin, but this tiny animal is actually a pygmy tarsier, recently rediscovered in the forests of Indonesia.

The 2-ounce (57-gram) carnivorous primate had not been seen alive since the 1920s.

That was until researchers on a summer expedition captured, tagged, and released three members of the species (including this individual, above).

"Everyone's always talking about pygmy tarsiers," said lead researcher Sharon Gursky-Doyen, a professor at Texas A&M University.

"There have been dozens of expeditions looking for them—all unsuccessful. I needed to go and try to see for myself if they were really there or if they were really extinct," added Gursky-Doyen, whose research was funded in part by the National Geographic Society's Conservation Trust.

Once relatively abundant among the mossy, forested mountain slopes of Lore Lindu National Park in central Sulawesi, the pygmy tarsier population may have shrunk when logging in the 1970s destroyed its habitat, Gursky-Doyen said.

The nocturnal creatures rely on darkness to avoid predation. However in fragmented forests, the canopy lets in more moonlight, exposing the small animal to birds and other predators as it leaps from tree to tree.

Gursky-Doyen said she hopes the find will inspire the Indonesian government to protect the species and its habitat.

"[The] government needs to figure out a compromise between people and animals living in Lore Lindu."

nationalgeographic

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Scientists from the US and Russia have pieced together 80% of the species' genome, using DNA samples of
hair preserved from two mammoths mummified from the ice age.

They hope the ground-breaking development will be a step closer in bringing back the vast beasts from extinction, by inserting their genes into a modern-day elephant.

Professor Stephan Schuster, a leading member of the research team from Pennsylvania State University, said the find would allow scientists to retrieve the genetic information that was believed to have been lost when the mammoth died out.

He added it may "bring an extinct species that modern humans have missed meeting by only a few thousand years."
But there may be setbacks, as thousands of years of frozen ice has caused the genetic material to be degraded.

The team also faces the challenge of telling apart intact DNA samples from damaged ones.

It is possible to be fooled into thinking samples contaminated with DNA from fungi and micro-organisms originate from a mammoth.

It's hoped the research can help explain why woolly mammoths became extinct, unlike elephants, their closest living relative.

Dr Jeremy Austin from the Australian Centre for Ancient DNA, at the University Of Adelaide added: "Currently we only have a partial mammoth genome, with a sizeable number of errors in the genetic code.

"It's a bit like trying to build a car with only 80% of the parts and knowing that some parts were already broken."

Those hoping to visit a woolly mammoth theme park any time soon may be in for quite a wait...

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Iran's Karim Bagheri (right) celebrates after scoring a goal against the United Arab Emirates during their Asian zone Group 2 World Cup qualifying football match in Dubai. Group co-leaders Iran's plans of getting full points against UAE was dashed when they were held to a 1-1 draw by the hosts.

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STS-126 astronaut Steve Bowen and Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper (out of frame) worked to clean and lubricate part of the station's starboard Solar Alpha Rotary Joints (SARJ) and to remove two of SARJ's 12 trundle bearing assemblies. The spacewalkers also removed a depleted nitrogen tank from a stowage platform on the outside of the complex and moved it into Endeavour's cargo bay. They also moved a flex hose rotary coupler from the shuttle to the station stowage platform, as well as removing some insulation blankets from the common berthing mechanism on the Kibo laboratory.

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by JO STEELE - Thursday, November 20, 2008


A parrot, not on the phone

... Missing - one cockatiel. Answers to the name of Smokey. Literally

An escaped parrot has been reunited with his owner after squawking his name down the phone to confirm his identity
Fugitive Smokey was found in a park by Sue Hill, who tracked down his owner's phone number and called to check the cockatiel was indeed his

She spoke to David Edward's wife, who asked her to hand the phone over to the parrot. Right on cue, he began chirping: 'Smokey, Smokey!'
'It was very funny. That was the first time the bird had spoken and it was then I was sure he belonged to them,' Mrs Hill said.
Smokey did a disappearing act from Mr Edwards' house in Wrexham on Saturday.
The next day, he landed on Mrs Hill's shoulder while she was out walking in a park 3km (two miles) away. 'He was very friendly and just stayed there,' she said. In a bid to return the lost bird, she phoned several local vets and eventually found one who had been contacted by a worried Mr Edwards.
'I couldn't believe it when Sue contacted us to tell us she had found him. We were delighted,' the grandfather said.
'He has his own character and says phrases such as "Hello Smokey", "Smokey-Cokey" and "What's that?" he added