as well as the petting-zoo layout that encourages customers to test-drive products. But Apple s success, it turns out, rests on a set of intangibles;
as it s known, this time with pointers on the elaborate etiquette of interacting with customers.
Many years later, we now know that these same genes are important in animals for the timing of cell division, the axonal growth of neurons,
But most amazingly, these genes also regulate responses to light in animals! While we don t change our form in response to light as plants do,
that mutant fruit flies that were missing some of these genes lost the ability to respond to light.
and animals is not as significant as I had believed once naively. So while not actively researching this field,
and human biology even as my own research evolved from studying plant responses to light to leukemia in fruit flies. 2. How do think people should change how they think about plants?
I don t know anyone who keeps a stuffed dog in place of a real one! But if we realize that all of plant biology arises from the evolutionary constriction of the rootedness#that keep plants immobile,
and other animals serves as one way our bodies warn us of potentially dangerous situations.
Our early human ancestors could hear a dangerous predator stalking them through the forest, while today we hear the motor of an approaching car.
Hearing also enables rapid communication between individuals and between animals. Elephants can find each other across vast distances by vocalizing subsonic waves that rumble around objects
and travel for miles. A dolphin pod can find a dolphin pup lost in the ocean through its distress chirps.
What s common in all of these situations is that sound enables a rapid communication of information and a response
For example, if a maple tree is attacked by bugs, it releases a pheromone into the air that is picked up by the neighboring trees.
This induces the receiving trees to start making chemicals that will help it fight off the impending bug attack.
For example a Venus Fly Trap needs to have two of the hairs on its leaves touched by a bug in order to shut,
a type of transgenerational memory that s also been shown recently also in animals. While the short term memory in the venus fly trap is based electricity, much like neural activity,
the longer term memories are based in epigenetics#changes in gene activity that don t require alterations in the DNA code,
Even in animals, not all information is processed or stored only in the brain. The brain is dominant in higher-order processing in more complex animals,
but not in simple ones. Different parts of the plant communicate with each other, exchanging information on cellular, physiological and environmental states.
acts like the brain does in lower animals, receiving sensory input and directing movement. Several modern-day research groups are following up on this line of research.
and tablets, says Mark Rolston of the design firm Frog, is that they re confined by a screen.
And unlike Angry Birds on your phone, Strap Game (that s the official name) will alert you
The Kindness Hack Researchers at Wharton, Yale and Harvard have figured out how to make employees feel less pressed for time:
Instead of short climbing walls, there should be towering monkey bars. Instead of plastic crawl tubes, there should be tall, steep slides.
but two new coasters#the X Flight at Six Flags Great America and Dollywood s Wild Eagle#have you hanging off the side of the track, dangling in midair.
Robo-petting etting a living animal has long been known to lower blood pressure and release a flood of mood-lifting endorphins.
or your spouse is allergic to dogs#you can t always have a pet around to improve your mental health.
but its sensors allow it to mimic the reaction of a live animal whether you give it a nervous scratch or a slow, calm rub.
It turns out that our breasts are almost like sponges, the way they can soak up some of these chemicals,
which acts like the sex hormone estrogen, may be linked to cancer and reproductive problems in animals. Most plastic products, from package wrappers to water bottles, contain BPA.
if pregnant rats are dosed with BPA, their pups will grow up with altered mammary glands in ways that predispose that animal to breast cancer later on,
#she says. A lot of people would say, A rat is a rat. It s not a human.
What do we know about humans? And we actually don t know that much. But recently a study just came out doing the same experiment
but using Rhesus monkeys and, unfortunately, the results were very, very similar. Those monkeys ended up developing mammary glands that were altered by the chemical in ways that made it more likely to get breast cancer.#
#Williams says she likes plastics and wouldn t tell her kids to stay away from Legos, but she still cautions women in their childbearing years against using an abundance of plastic products.
climate changes, strange animal die offs and the quickly moving magnetic poles. Don t forget, we re also experiencing a great culmination of cycles called the Harmonic Convergence as we line up with the Galactic center
The likely culprit in sharp worldwide declines in honeybee colonies since 2006 is imidacloprid, one of the most widely used pesticides,
which adult bees abandon their hives. The study will appear in the June issue of the Bulletin of Insectology.
because bees#beyond producing honey#are prime pollinators of roughly one-third of the crop species in the U s,
Massive loss of honeybees could result in billions of dollars in agricultural losses, experts estimate.
each yard had treated four hives with different levels of imidacloprid and one control hive. After 12 weeks of imidacloprid dosing,
all the bees were alive. But after 23 weeks, 15 out of 16 of the imidacloprid-treated hives#94%#had died.
Those exposed to the highest levels of the pesticide died first. The characteristics of the dead hives were consistent with CCD,
said Lu; the hives were empty except for food stores, some pollen, and young bees, with few dead bees nearby.
When other conditions cause hive collapse#such as disease or pests#many dead bees are typically found inside and outside the affected hives.
Strikingly, said Lu, it took only low levels of imidacloprid to cause hive collapse#less than
and beekeepers, alarmed at the sudden losses of between 30%and 90%of honeybee colonies since 2006, have posed numerous theories as to the cause of the collapse,
such as pests, disease, pesticides, migratory beekeeping, or some combination of these factors. In situ Replication of Honey Bee Colony Collapse Disorder,#Chensheng Lu, Kenneth M. Warchol, Richard A. Callahan, Bulletin of Insectology, June 2012 LINK Share Thissubscribedel
bees line their hives with more propolis the waxy, yellow substance seen here. Research from North carolina State university shows that honey bees self-medicate
and effort of its worker bees to collect these resins, #says Dr. Michael Simone-Finstrom, a postdoctoral research scholar in NC State s Department of Entomology and lead author of a paper describing the research.
#Wild honey bees normally line their hives with propolis, a mixture of plant resins and wax that has antifungal and antibacterial properties.
to fill in cracks in their hives. However, researchers found that, when faced with a fungal threat,
because they lined some hives with a propolis extract and found that the extract significantly reduced the rate of infection.
If you re going to chow down on popcorn, though, make sure it s the healthy kind;
Factory Farming, a Relatively Recent Disaster Cheapening our food supply in such a real way has caused also undue harm to the animals that fall victim to our twisted pricing.
Not only has meant its growth the gross suffering of animals and a huge weight on the planet,
it s also meant the onset of superbugs. According to the National Academy of Sciences roughly 70 percent of the antibiotics and other antimicrobial drugs used in the U s. are fed to farm animals
and prevent rampant disease from striking animals that are kept in filthy, stressful environments. In fact, many common bacteria (such as Salmonella, Campylobacter, Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA),
and harm to the animals we choose to consume. LINK Share Thissubscribedel. icio. usfacebookredditstumbleupontechnorati r
Angry Birds alone has had over 600 million downloads. Draw Something#was launched 6 weeks ago and already has over 20 million downloads
Over time this could evolve into vital data to feed into our global food supply. 5.)Whole Earth Animal Genealogy Project Once again, the same as#3 and#4,
With many of our newer diseases attributed to coming from animals, understanding animal genealogy may well provide us with the critical information to find a cure. 6.)Whole Earth Ownership Project Records of property ownership are buried typically in some courthouse or government filing system,
available only to people who take the time and energy to do the research. Currently there is no global repository for this type of information.
we can work on far more complicated organisms including animals and humans. 14.)Job-Mapping, Skill-Mapping Project Our jobs throughout the world are constantly changing.
trees and animals nearby, say scientists. Such noise may be harmful to some plants because of the longterm impact it has on animals that pollinate flowers
and disperse seeds. Scientists made the findings in tests near the noisy gas wells of New mexico,
The study, probed the noise preferences of different animals that feed on the seeds of the pinon pine tree.
such as western scrub jays, tended to avoid noise, while other seed-eaters, like mice, appeared to prefer foraging in noisy areas.
This difference in noise tolerance would affect the likely germination of seeds because the instinct of jays is to hide many of the seeds,
the newspaper quoted Clinton Francis, lead researcher as saying. Via Times of India Share Thissubscribedel. icio. usfacebookredditstumbleupontechnorati i
In a year, that means each person throws away almost 400 pounds of food, the weight of an adult male gorilla.
Never play with a tennis ball after its been in the mouth of a St bernard...Look, you have a great personality,
Oh give me a home where the lions do roam...There is definitely something in the water...
It s not quite the proverbial butterfly flapping its wings creating a hurricane across the world,
#Insects have Personalities too, research on novelty-seeking honey bees indicates Some honey bees, too, are more likely than others to seek adventure.
A new study in Science suggests that thrill-seeking is limited not to humans and other vertebrates.
researchers report The findings offer a new window on the inner life of the honey bee hive,
for example) to serve their queen. Now it appears that individual honey bees actually differ in their desire
Could insects also have personalities?##Robinson and his colleagues studied two behaviors that looked like novelty-seeking in honey bees:
scouting for nest sites and scouting for food. When a colony of bees outgrows its living quarters,
the hive divides and the swarm must find a suitable new home. At this moment of crisis, a few intrepid bees#less than 5 percent of the swarm#take off to hunt for a hive.
These bees, called nest scouts, are on average 3. 4 times more likely than their peers to also become food scouts, the researchers found.
There is a gold standard for personality research and that is if you show the same tendency in different contexts,
but their willingness or eagerness to go the extra mile#can be vital to the life of the hive.
People are trying to understand what is the basis of novelty-seeking behavior in humans and in animals#
and responding to reward in vertebrates. To test whether the changes in brain signaling caused the novelty-seeking,
and other vertebrates has parallels in an insect, #Robinson said. One can see the same sort of consistent behavioral differences
#The findings also suggest that insects, humans and other animals made use of the same genetic toolkit#in the evolution of behavior,
Cats 1) Drink water instead of soda. And drink tap water, not bottled water. Soft drinks don t contribute much to your body beyond chemicals and empty calories,
#Smart Fur allows robo-pets to gauge owners emotions A piece of smart fur can tell the difference between pets, scratches or even the breath of a human owner.
If pets can have positive effects on their owners emotions would a robot pet be able to do the same?
At the University of British columbia a robo-bunny has been developed that can mediate its users emotions,
The robo-bunny also has a pulse and can stiffen or relax its ears. But for now, users of the robo-bunny need to be wired up to biometric sensors for the rabbit to sense the user s emotional state
and react. You can t seriously expect kids to be wired up with sensors while they re using this,
a professor of computer science at UBC and the leader of the lab in which the bunny was developed.
vaguely reminiscent of a furry Star trek tribble#can tell the difference between a pet, a scratch, even a breath,
Imagine a cat that, instead of biting you when you scratch it too hard rolls over and purrs.
The one thing a robot can do that s different from an animal is truly be in the service of its owner
We see a huge market for food,#Hu Tiger#Tao, a postdoc at Tufts University told Co. Exist.
#New legless amphibian found in India An adult Chikilidae, a new species of legless amphibian known as a caecilian, with eggs and hatchlings.
and mistaken by villagers as a deadly, miniature snake. But this legless amphibian s time in obscurity has ended,
thanks to an intrepid team of biologists led by University of Delhi professor Sathyabhama Das Biju.
Over five years of digging through forest beds in the rain, the team has identified an entirely new family of amphibians called chikilidae endemic to the region but with ancient links to Africa.
The chikilidae is a caecilian, the most primitive of three amphibian groups that also include frogs and salamanders.
We hope when the locals see the name, and their language, being used across the world,
More industrial pollutants, more pesticides and more people occupying more land may mean a world of trouble for a creature that can be traced to the earliest vertebrates to creep across land.
#with animals disappearing before they are known ever, he said. We don t even know what we re losing.#
#Amphibians are particularly vulnerable, and have declined drastically in recent decades. The same sensitivity to climate and water quality that makes them perfect environmental barometers also puts them at the greatest risk
caecilians and frogs vastly more than any other scientist in India and estimates 30-40 percent of the country s amphibians are yet to be found.
along with co-researchers from London s Natural history Museum and Vrije University in Brussels, brings the number of known caecilian families in the world to 10.
the frogs. Only 186 of the world s known amphibious species are compared caecilians with more than 6, 000 frog species a third
of which are considered endangered or threatened. Even people living in northeast Indians misunderstand the caecilians, and rare sightings can inspire terror and revulsion,
with farmers and villagers chopping them in half out of the mistaken belief that they are poisonous snakes.
In fact, the chikilidae is harmless, and may even be the farmer s best friend feasting on worms
and insects that might harm crops, and churning the soil as it moves underground. Much remains to be discovered in further study
Biju said, as many questions remain about how the creatures live. So far, Biju s team has determined that an adult chikilidae will remain with its eggs until they hatch,
forgoing food for some 50 days. When the eggs hatch, the young emerge as tiny adults and squirm away.
and may help the chikilidae gauge light from dark as in other caecilian species. DNA testing suggests the chikilidae s closest relative is in Africa with the two evolutionary paths splitting some 140 million years ago
#Cow collar texts ranchers when animals are sick or in heat Even cows can benefit from having a mobile device.
monitoring the health of their animals and prevent accidental deaths. The Silent Herdsman collar will track the movements of the cow using the same type of sensors found in Wii devices.
if their animals are in heat, going into labor or in distress. Researchers also hope to determine which movements the sensor will pick up to determine
plans to upgrade its Dragon freighter and Falcon 9 rocket to fly crew as well. Sierra nevada is developing a winged vehicle called the Dream Chaser that resembles a miniature space shuttle.
Like Boeing s spaceship, it too would launch aboard Atlas 5 rockets, which are manufactured and sold by United Launch Alliance, a Boeing-Lockheed martin partnership.
and spread on a glass substrate that s covered in a forest of zinc oxide nanowires and titanium dioxide sponges.#
#Road Runoff Spurring Spotted salamander Evolution A female spotted salamander gravid with eggs in route to her breeding pool.
Spotted salamanders exposed to contaminated roadside ponds are adapting to their toxic environments, according to a Yale paper in Scientific Reports.
This study provides the first documented evidence that a vertebrate has adapted to the negative effects of roads apparently by evolving rapidly Salamanders breeding in roadside ponds are exposed to a host of contaminants from road runoff.
These animals are growing up in harsh environments where they face a cocktail of contaminants,
#Brady found that salamanders in roadside ponds have higher mortality, grow at a slower rate
In roadside ponds, only 56 percent of salamander eggs survive the first 10 weeks of development,
the surviving salamanders may develop a genetic advantage over their counterparts living in woodland ponds.
The salamanders that survive year after year in the roadside ponds appear to have adapted to the harsh conditions.
The animals that come from roadside ponds actually do better#substantially better#than the ones that originate from woodland ponds
That animals adapt to human activities is not altogether new. For example, fish have begun to mature at smaller sizes in response to commercial fishing.
salamanders are just bystanders to human activities. This suggests that the majority of species, which are targeted not specifically for human use,
#Brady observed the development of the salamanders in 10 ponds#five roadside and five woodland#at Yale Myers Forest and in the town of Willington, both in northeastern Connecticut.
Although the commentary might seem straight out of the Journal of Ideas That Will Never Fly,
hits the liver more directly and can cause more damage#in laboratory rodents, anyway. Some researchers,
and technological development in general#hen clearly a less high-tech approach would be just as or even more effective#s just delusional.
1.)Mood-Driven Chameleon Wear Yes, most people will go out of their way to avoid having their clothing overtly display their emotional state.
Think of this as a wearable CAT scan system with variable-adjust focal point settings zoom powers down to a near-nano scale,
nano-netting will provide a fibrous support structure that is visually non-intrusive but capable of keeping out insects, birds,
and other unwanted animals. The density of the netting can be adjusted to match specific requirements.
Parrot officially unveiled the follow-up to its popular quadrocopter at CES AR Drone 2. 0 Flying Drones
Auquaponics Tech For those of you not familiar with the term, aquaponics is a sustainable food production system that combines traditional aquaculture (raising aquatic animals such as fish, crayfish,
or swarms, inspired by the behavior observed in social insects, called swarm intelligence. So far no swarmbots have made their way to CES. 25.
#Parasitic flies attack honeybees turning them into zombies Zombie#fly parasite causing decline of honeybee population.
A pile of dead bees was supposed to become food for a newly captured praying mantis. Instead, the pile of bees ended up revealing a previously unrecognized suspect in colony collapse disorder a mysterious condition that for several years has been causing declines in U s. honeybee populations,
which are needed to pollinate many important crops. This new potential culprit is a bizarre and potentially devastating parasitic fly that has been taking over the bodies of honeybees (Apis mellifera) in Northern California.
John Hafernik a biology professor at San francisco State university, had collected some belly-up bees from the ground underneath lights around the University s biology building.
And the invaders had led somehow the bees from their hives to their deaths. A detailed description of the newly documented relationship was published online Tuesday in PLOS ONE.
The team performed a genetic analysis of the fly and found that it is the same species that has previously been documented to parasitizie bumblebee as well as paper wasp populations.
That this parasite hasn t previously been reported as a honeybee killer came as a surprise
given that honeybees are among the best-studied insects of the world, #Hafernik said. We would expect that
if this has been a long-term parasite of honeybees, we would have noticed.##The team found evidence of the fly in 77 percent of the hives they sampled in the Bay Area of California,
as well as in some hives in the state s agricultural Central Valley and in South dakota. Previous research has found evidence that mites, a virus, a fungus,
or a combination of these factors might be responsible for the widespread colony collapse. Read more about colony collapse disorder in our feature Solving the Mystery of the Vanishing Bees.#
#And with the discovery that this parasitic fly has been quietly killing bees in at least three areas,
it might join the list of possible forces behind colony collapse disorder. Parasitic fly larva emerging from a dead bee s neck.
Courtesy of John Hafernik The parasitic fly lays eggs in a bee s abdomen. Several days later, the parasitized bee bumbles out of the hives often at night on a solo mission to nowhere.
These bees often fly toward light and wind up unable to control their own bodies. After a bee dies, as many as 13 fly larvae crawl out from the bee s neck.
The bees behavior seems similar to that of ants that are parasitized and then decapitated from within by other fly larvae from the Apocephalus genus
. When we observed the bees for some time the ones that were alive we found that they walked in circles, often with no sense of direction,#Andrew Core,
a graduate student who works with Hafernik and a co-author on the new paper, said in a prepared statement,
describing them as behaving something like a zombie.#(#Read about other parasites that turn their hosts into zombies in the article Zombie Creatures.#
#Bees from affected hives and the parasitizing flies and their larvae curiously also contained genetic traces of Nosema ceranae, another parasite,
This double infection suggests that the flies might even be spreading these additional hive-weakening factors.
whether infected bees are leaving the hive willingly or getting kicked out in the middle of the night
and where the flies are finding the bees in which they lay their eggs. We assume it s
because we don t see the flies hanging around the bee hives#Hafernik said. But it s still a bit of a black hole in terms of where it s actually happening.#
#Most of the parasitized bees found so far have been foraging worker bees, but even if other groups of bees within a hive are not becoming infected,
a decline in the number of foragers in a hive could have a large impact on a hive as a whole.
Models of colony dynamics suggest that significant loss of foragers could cause rapid population decline and colony collapse,
Hafernik and his colleagues hope that the simple way they made their discovery will enable professional and amateur beekeepers to collect vital samples of bees that leave the hive at night#with a light trap
If the parasitic fly is just starting to infect honeybee populations, this could be an important move,
especially given the newly prevalent mobile commercial hives, which mean that honeybees and their ailments are on the move in much greater numbers than ever before.
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#Guerrilla Grafters: Turning public trees into fruit-bearing trees Money doesn t grow on trees,
and the vermin they might attract in the form of rats. Depending on the species you re using,
as a six-year old boy named Falcon had gotten somehow trapped inside a small weather balloon that was flying over the Midwest.
or bird damage that leaves most apples somewhat marginalized. They may be perfectly good on the inside,
I love animals; I am a vegetarian because I hate plants.##A. Whitney Brown..9.)Top 10 Photos-January 23, 2011 When spies attempt to infiltrate the ranks of PETA,
6.)Top 10 Photos February 7, 2011 Today s couch potatoes have a way of turning every disaster into a spectator sport I saw the movie, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and
I didn t see any tigers or dragons. And then I realized why: they re crouching and hidden.#
and vegetables Marriage is like putting your hand into a bag of snakes in the hope of pulling out an eel.#
I hope some animal never bores a hole in my head and lays its eggs in my brain,
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