Scuttlebutt Pipeline

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The nerd within me is rejoicing and doing a happy dance that is most definately defying the laws of gravity right now. But with this kind of news can you blame me:

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil - The skeleton of what is believed to be a new dinosaur species — a 105-foot (32-meter) plant-eater that is among the largest dinosaurs ever found — has been uncovered in Argentina, scientists said Monday.

Scientists from Argentina and Brazil said the Patagonian dinosaur appears to represent a previously unknown species of Titanosaur because of the unique structure of its neck. They named it Futalognkosaurus dukei after the Mapuche Indian words for “giant” and “chief,” and for Duke Energy Argentina, which helped fund the skeleton’s excavation.

read the rest…

I’m not exactly thrilled to hear that the new dinosaur’s name includes the company that helped to fun the dig, to me that just screams of commercialism to an awful extent though. Other than that, I’m thrilled by this new discovery and I can’t wait to read and hear what new information this find could yield. The archaeological record has so many gaps and holes in it, but with each new piece we get that much clearer of a picture.

A fireball fell from the sky and slammed into southern Peru over the weekend, creating a huge crater that emitted a sickeningly smelly gas, local authorities said. More than 600 villagers fell ill, the Peruvian radio network RPP reported Tuesday.

Video reports from the scene, near the remote Andean village of Carancas along Peru’s border with Bolivia, showed what appeared to be a 100-foot-wide (30-meter-wide), 20-foot-deep (6-meter-deep) impact crater with a bubbling pool of water at the bottom.

Authorities said that the crater was made Saturday by a falling meteorite. Agence France Presse quoted a local official, Marco Limache, as saying that “boiling water started coming out of the crater, and particles of rock and cinders were found nearby.”

Limache told RPP that the gases emanating from the crater caused nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, headaches and stomach pain — so much so that authorities were considering calling a state of emergency. The newspaper La Republica reported that seven policemen became ill and were taken to a hospital.

(full article

To be frank I don’t understand why authorities are considering declaring this an emergency, it clearly already is one. Honestly, the moment authorities first responded and began falling ill the officials should have stepped up and taken measures to protect their people. Something unknown falls from the sky and upon visiting the site people fall dangerously ill. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that, hey, that could because of what fell out of the sky, and hey, having people living near it right now without any knowledge of what is causing the problem is a very bad thing.

Common sense truly isn’t so common anymore.

LANSING, Mich. - A state forensics scientist who said she tested her husband’s underwear for DNA to determine if he was cheating on her has been fired.

Ann Chamberlain of Okemos testified in a March 7 divorce hearing that she ran the test last September on the underwear of Charles Gordon Jr. Asked by his attorney what she found, she answered: “Another female. It wasn’t me.”

She said during another hearing that she ran the test on her own time with expired chemicals that were set to be thrown away.

The Michigan State Police, which oversees the Lansing forensics laboratory where Chamberlain worked, announced Tuesday that it had fired her effective Aug. 16 after conducting an internal investigation into violations of department administrative policy.

State police policies dealing with the care and use of property state that “department supplies, materials or equipment shall not be used for any non-duty or non-department purpose.”

Chamberlain could not immediately be located for comment. A phone listed for Ann Chamberlain in Okemos was disconnected.

The 33-year-old scientist received an award for Outstanding Contribution to the Michigan State Police Biological Services in 2006 for her research and method development in embryonic/fetal DNA recovery, according to Forensic Science Consultants Inc., which lists her among the forensic scientists it employs.

Source

The sad thing is, I can’t help but to wonder what the outcome would have been if it had been the other way around. If it had been a man testing his wife’s fidelity would the fuss have been made? Would they have fired him? I can’t help but to speculate but a part of me highly suspects that had it been a man this would have been swept under the rug and laughed about on coffee breaks. Perhaps I’m far too cynical and mistrusting.

Textbooks are not cheap and in a time when schools just aren’t getting the funding they need, every penny counts. Free Biology Book is, you guessed it, a free biology textbook that is available online. The book strives to explain and teach all biology topics in over 1800 “question and answer” scenarios. I like the idea of having textbook available online free of charge and accessible to all students, but I can’t help but wonder if some of the answers and explanations are a bit too condensed for some students. Regardless, this remains a resource that all students should bookmark and return to for assistance in their academic careers.

Official Statement:

Authors Publish Innovative Biology Textbook Online and For Free

Biology teachers and students worldwide can now use a complete and real (ISBN assigned) Biology textbook published online by the authors. All of the 636 pages of the book is online.

The “Free Biology Book” (www.freebiologybook.com) is a full Biology textbook encompassing all Biology subjects for secondary education: Biochemistry, Cell Biology, Microbiology, Zoology, Physiology, Embryology, Botanics, Genetics, Evolution, Ecology and Diseases. Each of such Biology subjects is divided in several and well-organized chapters.

The main attraction of the online book is the way the content is exposed, each chapter made of a logical sequence of questions and answers. From the beginning to the end of the Q&A sequence, the text goes from introductory issues to deeper explanation of the chapter topic. It is then very easy to learn Biology reading the “Free Biology Book” (www.freebiologybook.com) since the knowledge is built question by question in small blocks of content.

Another innovation of the project is that it does not directly show illustrations. Instead, for each chapter the reader is suggested to click on links that open Google Images pages that show lots of pictures about what is being studied.

The intention of the authors, both are medical doctors, that published their real book online and for free is to allow students and teachers throughout the world to have access to a complete online Biology book. Students can use it at home or school and teachers can even take it as guideline to build their Biology courses.

I guess my nerd colors are showing here, but when I stumbled upon this article today I just had to share it with everyone:

MOSCOW (Reuters) - The discovery of a baby mammoth preserved in the Russian permafrost gives researchers their best chance yet to build a genetic map of a species extinct since the Ice Age, a Russian scientist said on Wednesday.

“It’s a lovely little baby mammoth indeed, found in perfect condition,” said Alexei Tikhonov, deputy director of the Russian Academy of Science’s Zoological Institute, which has been taking care of the mammoth since it was uncovered in May.

“This specimen may provide unique material allowing us to ultimately decipher the genetic makeup of the mammoth,” he told Reuters by telephone.

The mammoth, a female who died at the age of six months, was named “Lyuba” after the wife of reindeer breeder and hunter Yuri Khudi who found her in Russia’s Arctic Yamalo-Nenetsk region.

She had been lying in the frozen ground for up to 40,000 years, said Tikhonov.

The hunter initially thought the mammoth was a dead reindeer when he spotted parts of her body sticking out of damp snow.

When he realized it was a mammoth, scientists were called in and transported the body to regional capital Salekhard, where she is now being kept in a special refrigerator.

(Full Article)

This is unbelievably huge and I’m tingling with excitement over the overwhelming amount of information that this baby could yield. Makes me wish I was a part of it and working on that team.