Hedwig Pöllöläinen
grrlscientist
Posts by this author
February 23, 2007
Researchers have documented 22 cases of wild chimpanzees fashioning wooden spears to poke at smaller primates sheltering in cavities of hollow branches or tree trunks. Chimpanzees have not been previously observed hunting other animals with tools.
"There were hints that this behaviour might occur,…
February 23, 2007
This quiz might be more accurate than the previous one for diagnosing your linguistic profile.
Your Linguistic Profile:
45% General American English
25% Yankee
15% Dixie
10% Upper Midwestern
0% Midwestern
What Kind of American English Do You Speak?
February 23, 2007
She seemed like any other ordinary three-month-old kitten but she wasn't. Finally, her human family noticed there was something different about her. A closer examination of the frisky feline's paws revealed that this kitten had 26 toes -- so they named her "extra".
"We counted and then recounted…
February 23, 2007
Howard Norman's new book, Devotion (NYC: Houghton-Mifflin, 2007) begins on 19 August 1985, with a fist fight between David Kozol and his new father-in-law, William Field. This fight -- which occurred for reasons that remain mysterious until nearly the end of the book -- ends up in the street where…
February 22, 2007
Tolkein is a six-year-old howler monkey who lives at the Port Lympne Wild Animal Park near Hythe in the UK. When she was just a juvenile, she developed cataracts in both eyes and became totally blind, so she was completely dependant on her keepers for her needs. There was little hope that she would…
February 22, 2007
Did you know that North America had its own species of zebra? Or that there was a wolf-like carnivorous mammal -- with hooves? And there once was a horned rodent whose corkscrew-shaped burrows are still visible today? If this sort of thing interests you then you will enjoy Donald Prothero's book,…
February 22, 2007
Tree overlooking Craters of the Moon National Park.
Image: James Neeley.
As long as you send images to me (and I hope it will be for forever), I shall continue to share them with my readership. My purpose for posting these images is to remind all of us of the grandeur of the natural world and…
February 22, 2007
Swarms of giant hornets are getting ready to invade Britain. The 1.8 inch long insects feed their young with the larvae of bees and they can destroy a nest of 30,000 honeybees in several hours. Already, they have devastated bee populations in large areas of France.
The Asian hornets, with a…
February 22, 2007
Scottish ministers have announced funding for what has been described as the world's biggest wave energy farm. The Pelamis device has been tested at the European Marine Energy Centre (Emec) on Orkney by Leith-based company Ocean Power Delivery. Scottish Power wants to commission four more at the…
February 22, 2007
The immigration debate blows up when the Pilgrims protest limitations to their rights in America. See the streaming video below the fold.
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tags: streaming video, humor, immigration debate
February 22, 2007
tags: Tasmanian Devil, cancer, Devil Facial Tumor Disease, endangered species
A healthy Tasmanian devil, Sarcophilus harrisii, is shown in this photo from Tasmania's Department of Primary Industries. Researchers estimate the wild population has fallen from 140,000 in the 1990s to 80,000 due to…
February 22, 2007
The 43rd edition of I and the Bird is now available for your reading pleasure. This blog carnival focuses on wild birds.
February 21, 2007
Rogelio Zacaula plucks an ear of corn from his field with the pride of a prospector unearthing the gold that legend says is buried in the slopes surrounding the nearby Orizaba volcano.
International corn prices driven by the burgeoning U.S. ethanol industry have soared to their highest in a decade…
February 21, 2007
Malaria is one of the top three deadliest diseases in the developing world. It is resurging worldwide because of resistance to drugs and the lack of an effective vaccine. But now, Northwestern University researchers have discovered how malaria parasites persuade red blood cells to engulf them --…
February 21, 2007
Siberian, or Amur, tiger, Panthera tigris altaica.
The photographer writes; Zeff, a 13 year-old female Amur tiger kept at Tiger Mountain [at the Bronx Zoo]. She may look like she's snarling, but this was actually the end of a yawn.
Image: Brian Switek.
As long as you send images to me (and I…
February 21, 2007
Today, I read a story in the latest issue of New Scientist that discussed how human activities are driving evolution of animals in dramatic and often unexpected ways. In effect, we have turned earth into a large uncontrolled evolutionary laboratory.
Biologists are struggling to understand what is…
February 21, 2007
Can one be religious while simultaneously claiming to be an ardent atheist? This is what Sam Harris manages to accomplish in his rant, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason by Sam Harris (New York: WW Norton & Co., 2004, 2005).
Throughout much of this simplistic argument…
February 21, 2007
I think I've posted this before, but thought that some of you might not have seen it yet. This video shows how 6 feet of DNA is packaged into the microscopic nucleus of a cell and also how DNA is replicated.
February 20, 2007
What is it about email that causes an otherwise civilized person to write and send an offensive, rude or downright mean message to someone else? That is the question that John Suler, a psychologist at Rider University in Lawrenceville, N.J., addressed in his 2004 paper published in CyberPsychology…
February 20, 2007
Snow leopard, Panthera uncia.
The photographer writes; [This is] one [of] two young female snow leopards (twins) born a few months ago at the [Bronx] zoo. At the moment they're still being kept with their mother.
Image: Brian Switek.
As long as you send images to me (and I hope it will be for…
February 20, 2007
Asia is being swamped with an epidemic of counterfeit drugs and the problem is spreading. Malaria medicines have been particularly hard hit; in a recent sampling in Southeast Asia, 53 percent of the antimalarials bought were fakes. But conterfeit antibiotics, tuberculosis drugs, AIDS drugs and even…
February 20, 2007
This is a video of wild chimps using stone tools to crack open nut shells so they can get at the nutmeats inside. Most of the chimps have a baby sitting next to them, learning about the reward to be had after crushing the nut with a rock.
February 19, 2007
The oceans are filled with phytoplankton: microscopic plants that are vital to the marine ecosystem because they form the base of the marine food chain. Phytoplankton cannot be seen with the naked eye but from space, satellite images show phytoplankton forming enormous green swirls hundreds of…
February 19, 2007
Swedish researchers claim that it may be possible to read a person's personality by analyzing their irises. They studied 428 people and correlated iris patterns with warm-heartedness and trust or neuroticism and impulsiveness. The researchers looked at crypts (pits) and contraction furrows (lines…
February 19, 2007
Advocates against genetically modified (GM) crops in Britain are calling for trials of GM potatoes this spring to be halted after releasing more evidence of links with cancers in laboratory rats. Alan Simpson, a Labour MP and green campaigner, said the findings, which showed that lab rats developed…
February 19, 2007
Red-necked wallaby, Macropus rufogriseus frutica.
The photographer writes; Apparently wallabies are very, very cool with people. There was a paved path with gates at either end which wound through an area that had wallabies merrily hopping from one end to the other, casual as you please, munching…
February 19, 2007
There is some good news on the battle against scientific illiteracy: Americans know more about basic science today than they did two decades ago. Perversely, this increasing knowledge is tempered by a growth in the belief in pseudoscience such as astrology and visits by extraterrestrial aliens.
In…
February 19, 2007
Winter Wren, Troglodytes troglodytes.
Image source: Lincoln Karim, Pale Male.
Birds in Science
Scientists have successfully tested their ability to identify and DNA "barcode" entire assemblages of species -- the prelude to a genetic portrait of all animal life on Earth (original article). They…
February 19, 2007
"The brain is soft," writes Katrina Firlik in her book, Another Day in the Frontal Lobe (NYC: Random House, 2006). "Some of my colleagues compare it to toothpaste but that's not quite right. Tofu -- the soft variety, for those who know tofu -- may be a more accurate comparison." So begins the…
February 18, 2007
Wild-type mouse embryo 9.5 days post coitum. To assess the effect of targeted cubilin knockdown on blood vessel formation, embryos were immunolabeled with anti-PECAM-1, an endothelial cell marker. Cubilin-deficient embryos display developmental retardation and do not advance morphologically…