Hanover, Germany - A motorists' group in Germany on Monday demanded greater use of repulsive odours to keep deer off roads. Deer are scared by the smell of humans and wolves, so the decade-old German technology requires a foam containing those odours to be stuck to trees every 5 metres along the side of the road.
The noise of traffic combined with the scent deters deer from crossing the road and being killed in collisions with cars. When the road is quiet, the deer pluck up courage to run across. The Lower Saxony branch of the ADAC appealed for hunters to create more of the odour barriers, saying 2,300 people were injured or killed last year in 220,000 collisions with wild animals. A much higher number of the deer and boar perished in the crashes. The group said animal-car collisions had been reduced 80 per cent in places in Lower Saxony where the virtual barrier was employed. The blobs of polyurethane foam about the size of tennis balls have to have fresh scent repeatedly added to them.
Copyright, respective author or news agency
Save The Deers Off The Road !
Supermassive black hole batters adjacent galaxy with powerful jets
A massive black hole present at the center of a galaxy is battering a nearby galaxy with powerful jets of particles, according to latest images released by NASA.
The two galaxies are in the process of merging with each other but the smaller one has unfortunately come in the way of the jet's line that is powerful enough to destroy any planets that is positioned in its way.
Lead researcher, Dan Evans from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics said that it was the first time that such a spectacle has been witnessed. "We've seen many jets produced by black holes, but this is the first time we've seen one punch into another galaxy like we're seeing here. This jet could be causing all sorts of problems for the smaller galaxy it is pummeling", he added.
The images of these powerful jets were obtained courtesy of the Chandra X-ray Observatory owned by NASA. Latest observations show there may be supermassive black holes at the center of the two galaxies that are on the verge of merging.
Jets of particles from supermassive black holes are known to produce X-rays, gamma rays and electrons in huge quantities. These particles travel with the speed of light as well. Evans said that the so-called "Death Star" galaxy began blasting the nearby galaxy about 1 million years ago, which meant they could learn a lot from this event.
The details of this study are due to appear in a forthcoming issue of the Astrophysical Journal.
Copyright, respective author or news agency
Cheep thrills at annual Audubon bird countCheep thrills at annual Audubon bird count
By Naush Boghossian, Staff Writer
Source
A few dozen bird watchers swooped into the Valley on Saturday, peering into trees and into the blue sky above, on the lookout for the winged and the feathery.
The excursion by bird watchers with the San Fernando Valley chapter of the National Audubon Society makes the local group one of the first in the country to participate in the 108th annual Christmas Bird Count.
Audubon groups started the count Friday, and it runs to Jan. 5. The goal is to document numbers and types of birds and keep tabs on how birds are faring in a changing environment.
"We have records going back more than 100 years, and it's proven to be extremely valuable ... to track the impacts of developments and global warming," said Garrison Frost, spokesman for Audubon California.
Bird watchers get to engage in a favorite pastime and contribute to science at the same time.
Arthur Langton of West Hills, who has taken part in almost every Christmas Bird Count since its inception in the late 1950s, said what keeps him coming back is the thrill of seeing the usual collection of birds, along with those that are total surprises.
But he has noticed certain species that populated the Valley years ago are nowhere to be seen - which he attributes to development, drought and changes in the environment.
"Now you see other birds that are new, or birds that have disappeared completely because of loss of habitat," Langton said.
"Some things surprise you when they show up, and some things surprise you because they're not around."
The local bird count in the Valley divides the community into eight sections, all within a 15-mile diameter from the corner of Nordhoff Street and Balboa Boulevard. Bird enthusiasts spend all day scouring the area.
The day offers bird watchers a good test of their skills, having to identify some winged creatures by sight and others by sound.
Kris Ohlenkamp of Topanga said the highlight of his day was seeing a few unusual birds: the red-naped sapsucker, Cassin's kingbird and a marsh wren.
He caught sight of 75 species Saturday, bringing the total number of bird species he's seen this year in the United States to 486.
"It's a wow moment," Ohlenkamp said. "You see a bird you've never seen before or something you don't expect and it's really exciting. And you study up on their habitat and you go out and see it and it's a real feeling of accomplishment."
The regional bird counts done throughout the country help the Audubon Society compile data to document significant changes - not just in bird populations but also in the environment.
The society released a report last year showing steep declines in the birds people see every day - pigeons, doves and swallows.
The group also released a watch list of hundreds of birds in danger of extinction - research based on the Christmas Bird Count, Frost said.
"Birds are one of the early indicators of significant environmental change, so the bird count is about birds, but it's about more than that," Frost said.
"It's about habitat, other forms of wildlife, and ... (with) global warming, birds are among the first wildlife species that you'll start to see changes in - migration patterns change, populations rise or decline, or they move."
The Santa Clarita Valley will hold its bird count on Dec. 29. For more information, visit www.sfvaudubon.org.
When The West Was Really Wild
Soon after humans crossed the Bering land bridge into North America some
13,000 years ago, almost 75 percent of the continent’s large mammals (those
weighing more than 45 kilograms) disappeared (color). One of the goals of
Pleistocene rewilding is to restore some of these species or close proxies to the
American West. For example, the same species of lion and cheetah that once
lived in North America survive today in Africa; the African or Asian elephant
could substitute for the extinct mammoth; and Bactrian camels might stand
in for the extinct Camelops.
COPYRIGHT 2007 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, INC.
Just in time for Christmas: Cloned cats that glow
by Reuters
A team lead by Kong Il-Keun, an animal cloning expert at Gyeongsang National University, said the cats would be used for genetic research.
The cats do not glow in the dark, but their ears, noses and other places where fur cover is minimal give off a red glow when hit with the ultraviolet light.
This picture taken under ultraviolet light in a dark room shows a cloned Turkish Angola cat, right, whose genes were modified with a fluorescent protein, giving it a red fluorescent glow. A normally cloned cat of the same variety, at left, appears green in the ultraviolet light. Choi Byung-gil, Reuters
The cats were born earlier this year, but the results of the procedure were only made public by the Ministry of Science and Technology this week.
Kong is a pioneer in South Korean in cat cloning.
South Korea, once a world leader in cloning and human embryonic stem cell studies, suffered a major setback after two papers on human embryonic stem cells by once acclaimed scientist Hwang Woo-suk were found to be based on faked data.
© The Calgary Herald 2007
Wikipedia Competitor Being Tested by Google
By MIGUEL HELFT
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/15/technology/15web.html?ref=business
SAN FRANCISCO — Google is testing a new Web service intended to become a repository of knowledge from experts on various topics, one that could turn into a competitor to Wikipedia and other sites.
If it attracts a following, the service could accelerate Google’s transformation from a search engine into a company that helps create and publish Web content. Some critics said that shift could compromise Google’s objectivity in presenting search results.
The service, called Knol, which is short for knowledge, would allow people to create Web pages on any topic. It is designed to include features that permit readers to submit comments, rate pages and suggest changes. However, unlike Wikipedia, which allows anyone to edit an entry, only the author of a “knol,” as the pages in the service would be called, would be allowed to edit. Different authors could have competing pages on the same topic.
Google said that a main idea behind the project was to bring attention to authors who have expertise on a particular topic.
“Somehow the Web evolved without a strong standard to keep authors’ names highlighted,” Udi Manber, vice president for engineering at Google, wrote in an announcement of the test Thursday evening on a Google corporate blog. “We believe that knowing who wrote what will significantly help users make better use of Web content.”
Mr. Manber said the goal of Knol was to cover all topics, from science to medicine to history, and for the articles to become “the first thing someone who searches for this topic for the first time will want to read.”
That is often the role played by Wikipedia pages, which frequently turn up at or near the top of results presented by Google and other search engines.
“I think Google is looking at the growth of sites like Wikipedia, that aggregate knowledge, and feels it has to play in that space,” said Danny Sullivan, a search expert and editor of the Web site Search Engine Land.
Several other services have taken different approaches in their efforts to become repositories of knowledge on various topics. They include Yahoo Answers, Squidoo, Mahalo and About.com, which is owned by The New York Times Company.
Despite the existence of these services, as well as countless free tools for experts and ordinary people alike to share what they know online, Mr. Manber said Google thought many people who possessed useful knowledge did not publish it “because it is not easy enough to do that.”
Google declined to make Mr. Manber or anyone else available to discuss Knol, saying the project was an experiment that like many Google tests, might never be opened to the public.
While many technology analysts and bloggers noted that Knol appeared to be a direct competitor to Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales, that site’s founder, shrugged off the potential challenge.
Mr. Wales said that Google’s service would encourage competing, opinionated articles on any topic, whereas Wikipedia strived for objectivity and had a single article per topic that represented the collective knowledge of its authors.
“I’m looking forward to seeing what it ends up looking like,” Mr. Wales said.
Knol and Wikipedia would be different in other ways. While Wikipedia is a not-for-profit and ad-free endeavor, Knol has a more commercial bent: Authors could choose to have Google place ads on their pages and would get part of the revenue.
“At some point, Google crosses the line, where they are not only a search engine, but also a content provider,” Mr. Sullivan said. Technically speaking, he said, authors, not Google, would create Knol pages. “But it matters how it appears,” he said. “I do a search on Google, I go to some place that Google hosts and I also find Google ads.”
What’s more, Mr. Sullivan said, Google’s goal of making Knol pages easy to find on search engines could conflict with its need to remain unbiased. Google already carries content generated by users in a variety of services, including YouTube, the photo storage site Picasa and Blogger.
