#Your Complete Guide To White wine Infographic So you're about to order a bottle of tasty white wine!
#Why Do Cicadas Invade In Such Crazy Numbers? Magicicada is a plague unlike any other here in the northeast.
And it is a plague with a reason: emerging in absurd over-the-top biblical numbers is the cicada's bizarre--but effective--means of survival.
The Magicicada the genus of cicada that's about to blanket the northeast United states is a very odd creature.
It is in the animal kingdom a very tasty treat which is unfortunate for the cicada but not so odd.
What's odd is that it has literally no protection against getting eaten: it has a mouth
but it does not bite nor does it sting nor pierce nor scratch. It is colored a shiny black with luminous yellow/orange wings and absurdly bright crimson eyes
The cicada sits there on a tree and makes noise to attract a mate while looking shiny and obvious and defenseless and delicious.
It is an idiot bug. Literally every insectivorous animal in the northeast--songbirds carnivorous birds (hawks owls) opossums foxes cats shrews snakes spiders and even dogs--will gorge on cicadas.
Billions of them will be eaten during the one summer when this brood--Brood II--emerges from the ground.
This is a strategy called predator satiation. It's contrary to the survival strategies of almost every other animal:
it intends for a huge percentage of its population to be eaten. It doesn't care.
The idea is to overwhelm predators with numbers since the predators can only eat so many.
The only other species that practices predator satiation in the US is the salmon. Gilbert estimates that anywhere from 15 to 40 percent of this brood will be eaten
but the density of Brood II is massive. There could be up to 1. 5 million cicadas per acre so even a loss of 40 percent leaves well probably still a couple billion cicadas from this brood alone.
That said 1. 5 million per acre is very high; many areas won't have one percent that many.
Gilbert estimates that the brood will need between 3000 and 4000 cicadas per acre to swamp the predators.
So each acre will need significantly more cicadas than that to survive to breed in that area again.
The Magicicada attack is an unusual event in the northeastern ecosystem; there are very few events in the lives of flora
or fauna that occur so rarely and yet so regularly. So the ecosystem doesn't depend on the cicadas the same way some animals may rely on certain seasonal fruits
or the migrations of pollinating animals. Instead the cicadas serve as a kind of bonus or treat.
Redwing blackbirds and eastern bluebirds have been found to have much stronger and healthier broods in years that coincide with Magicicada's emergence as do mammals like foxes and raccoons.
But one of the more surprising beneficiaries are the trees. When cicadas lay eggs they use their proboscis to cut little slits in thin branches
and lay eggs in there. When the larvae hatch they simply plop down onto the ground bury themselves
and attach to the root system of the tree where they'll remain for another 17 years unseen.
there is a gene that differentiates the 17-year cicadas from the 13-year cicadas but says Gilbert we don't really have any way to see what the hell they're doing down there for 17 years.
Occasionally if too many cicadas make these slits in branches the branch can break and droop.
And the last year of the cicadas'lives underground is a bit harder on the tree
since the cicada larvae are eating more and more tree juices from the roots to get ready for their brief adulthood.
and the cicadas repay the trees. Cicadas molt when they emerge from the ground leaving behind a chitin exoskeleton clinging to trees.
That exoskeleton is very rich in nitrogen and when it eventually falls to the ground it decomposes
The bodies of the adult cicadas too if they're not eaten decompose in huge numbers making the soil from the year after a Magicicada emergence incredibly rich and fertile.
Here the writer uses a metaphor claiming cicadas are a plague so his usage of the phrase biblical numbers is appropriate.
Idiot bugs...hmmm makes you wonder. Today's magic is tomorrow's technology. uptil I looked at the paycheck
Multimedia Video Studying Birds With a Drone s Help. Video: Drones: A Booming Business? Connect With Us on Twitter Follow@NYTNATIONAL for breaking news and headlines.
Their potential usefulness particularly their ability to pinpoint hot spots and fly in thick smoke that would ground other aircraft was shown in an Alaskan fire nearly four years ago.
Global Warming is a load of dog crap. If UN'scientists'{politicians) were compelled to disclose how much money is being spent on monitoring global temperatures we'd find that it's in the hundreds of millions if not billions.
or basalt traps degassing. None of those have happened in the last 200 years. -Randomly saying a name is not proof.
so insect-based pizza may be the proteinaceous meal of choice.)Contractor has made already a chocolate printer as a proof of concept
or the ambiguous gross-sounding protein layer which could be made from milk animals or plants.
The New york times reported insects appearing early and increased pollen allergies in some states. The state of Michigan sustained $500 million in fruit crop damage after an April frost destroyed the early flowerings of trees according to the U s. Geological Survey.
Flowers blooming birds migrating and deciduous trees re-leafing are all examples of phenology measures.
I have observed many more birds this year. The early spring meant fewer birds went hungry. My backyard sounds like a jungle.
We also had lots of weeds this year and last. So the question is was the early spring a problem for nature or for people?
So an earlier blooming season for plants may not necessarily mean an earlier end to hibernation to pollinators.
Now the sound of birds has been replaced by a constant sizzling and the smell of scorched feathers...
Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries. Is that better?@@Raynre You're welcome to some of our spring here on the Canadian prairies.
and liquid oxygen in his XR-5k18 rocket engine powering its Lynx suborbital spaceplane will emit much less in the way of aromatic hydrocarbons than traditional kerosene-based rocket fuel.
so the photo almost looks fake with the black shadows within the plume. Xcor you're not the problem. you're also not even near the only source.
Previously the team conducted this entire process including a technique called somatic cell nuclear transfer in monkeys.
Those monkey embryo clones always died before they could grow into adult monkeys. While nuclear transfer breakthroughs often lead to a public discussion about the ethics of human cloning this is not our focus nor do we believe our findings might be used by others to advance the possibility of human reproductive cloning Shoukhrat Mitalipov the clone research's lead scientist said in a statement.
All we are are animals. Nothing more. Human beings have tried always to personify EVERYTHING and frankly I have had enough of it.@
or killing cockroaches if you follow the logic: Embyonic Stemcells are people. Do not try
Either that or you're like a hydra and can reproduce by budding?@@D#I think you fail to understand what science is.
There is no tail which which would catch radar as well and it's propelled by an integrated jet engine not an exterior propeller.
and has the radar signature of a mosquito. Even the Romulans were detectable with a tacheon particle beam.
ONE NASA MONKEY OUTER SPACE SHOT FOR THE MOON AND REMOTE ORBIT LUNAR FLIGHT SPLASH DOWN FOR J f k. & JOHN GLENN ONE STALIN GORBACHAVE SPUTNIK!
A BERLIN NAZI OLD GESTAPO HITLER'S GOEBBIL FACIST RAT NAZI FACT! AND FOR FEMA MONSANTO OR BLACKWATERS GUILLOTEENSFOUND or suspect in UNITED STATES!
guilty or not kings and queen's every leader! that know's the term opec!
Nazi JOHN BOEHNER Old pomp. ugandas rome fiat dicks. on kissinger wolf blitzerall pissed for fiat hans blix youthen nazi's!
fir only from 2001 9-11. and for only willy brown got shell no pest strip's!@.
Why Are There No Native Monkeys In North america? The infamous Mystery Monkey of Tampa an escaped rhesus macaque was captured back in October.
The rhesus macaque is not a rare monkey; it's adapted to human society better than most can survive on all kinds of foods
and can live in most any kind of hot-weather environment. And yet the Mystery Monkey captured the nation's attention.
A monkey! On the loose! In Florida! So cool! And it got us wondering: why aren't there monkeys all over the United states?
We've got tropical zones in the Florida keys and the Caribbean hot grasslands in the deep south humid swamps in Louisiana and South Florida.
Why don't we have any wild monkeys here? I spoke to Dr. John Flynn a paleontologist
and expert on mammalian evolution at the American Museum of Natural history to find out why the US is stuck with lame squirrels and pigeons and stuff rather than cool monkeys.
In terms of modern primates that's a true observation he said. But 50 million years ago there were primates here.
It turns out there are lots of reasons why the ancient primates that inhabited what is now the United states--and even Canada!
--no longer call those areas home. Primates came to the New world (meaning North and South america) from we think Africa.
As improbable as it sounds scientists think early primates crossed the Atlantic ocean and landed on the shores of both continents tens of millions of years ago probably on some kind of vegetation raft.
That's how most plants and animals get to isolated islands --which The americas were at the time.
Fossils have been recovered of early primates in Texas a whopping 43 million years ago the oldest primate fossil ever found in North america.
But the continents looked very different then compared to now; most importantly North and South america were completely different islands.
The Isthmus of panama which we now refer to as Central america didn't appear until much later by which time the climate on both Americas was very different from when the primates first landed there.
and the primates evolved and diversified to take advantage of that. Then the planet began to cool
Many of the flora and fauna that had populated the planet during the Eocene just couldn't survive in the new colder world.
This event is called the Grande Coupure--occurring about 33.9 million years ago it was a mass extinction of animals in
which most of the world's creatures (aside from a precious few like the Virginia opossum and the dormouse) were unable to adapt to the new climate
It hit the primate family especially hard. In the New world the primate population shrunk significantly.
Any primate living in say the Great lakes region simply went extinct unable to cope with the new Wisconsin winters.
In South america the primates contracted to the region around the equator. But even the hottest southernmost parts of North america--then still detached from South america--were too chilly or otherwise inhospitable for the North american Primates.
The few places where they maybe could have survived like the Florida keys and the islands of the Caribbean were inaccessible.
Sure monkeys could have survived in Aruba if they had arrived at just the right time. But the chances of getting there on some kind of float the way primates had come over from Africa so many millions of years before were slim
and the Earth was cooling rapidly. There are some primate fossils from the Caribbean; Some monkeys have gotten to some of the Caribbean islands
and gone extinct says Dr. Flynn. Another collection of random events and they might have survived but not this time.
The specific type of primate that survived is called the Platyrrhines. The Platyrrhines or New world monkeys says Dr. Flynn are all arboreal.
They live in tropical forests; they're specialized for that kind of habitat. So the monkeys we now know which live in the warmer
and more forested parts of South and Central america are all the survivors of the cooling planet.
They lucked out and ended up in the one section of the New world that could suit them.
And there they stayed adapting and evolving. Then 3 million years ago the Isthmus of panama formed connecting North and South america and separating the Atlantic from the Pacific oceans.
A few species--Dr. Flynn specifically named the various species of spider monkey--were hardy enough to move north along the isthmus
Too dry and too sparsely forested for a New world monkey to traverse. Why haven't they moved further north?
Well the Platyrrhines are not especially adaptable animals. Unlike the macaque and other Old world monkeys--or even non-primates like the raccoon or fox--they need trees they need heat
and they need moisture. Push them too far north and they simply won't survive. There's a distinct climate zone division in southern Mexico--no Mexican monkey can make it on the northern side.
Primates are often intelligent but that doesn't translate into adaptability. Think of the mountain gorilla restricted to a few populations in forested Central africa unable to live anywhere else.
Adaptability is often a sign of intelligence but intelligence in a species is no guarantee of adaptability.
The recurring answer to the question of why there are no monkeys in the US is how would they get here?
Other animals and probably humans passed over the Bering Land Bridge from Russian into Alaska
but the Bering Land Bridge appeared only 20000 years ago--long after the planet had cooled to
when that latitude would be deathly cold for a monkey. The only way you could get to North america would be polar routes
Even the most extreme monkeys don't get to the super high latitudes so the continent was effectively sealed off.
Monkeys can certainly survive in North america. The Mystery Monkey of Tampa is proof enough of that.
But for them to survive here they have to get here--the monkeys that were here the Platyrrhines aren't the ones to survive in a place like Tampa.
It's actually possible that a Platyrrhine could maybe give it a go in the Caribbean or the Florida keys the most tropical environments north of Mexico but:
Macaques could make it but it would take someone bringing them here--and that's exactly
what happened in the case of the Mystery Monkey which was part of a troupe of macaques released by some lunatic tour boat operator known as Colonel Tooey who thought the macaques would make for a better Jungle Cruise.
This is a true story. Florida is weird. Short of a whole bunch of determined crazies monkeys that would survive in North america don't have the means to get here.
Could the scourge of climate change lead to a friendly neighborhood monkey in Brooklyn? Anything is possible in evolution says Dr. Flynn.
So no monkeys in the near future. But if the temperature keeps rising I'll keep an eye out my window just the same.
Very interesting but the real reason we don't have monkeys is bananas. We don't have bananas.
Natural monkeys and Neanderthals primates do not like the cold. It is only the alien-(Gods as they were referred by the local folk
and exploit the primates and inventing modern man to really exploit the primates for their own purpose as the alien foreign folk visited Earth.
The Caribbean does have primates. the island of Trinidad has a fairly large population. And what physical separation is there between North
Why couldn't the monkeys just walk to North america like any other animal and adapt along the way?
And it is definitely possible for monkeys to adapt to cold. en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Golden snub-nosed monkeythey seem to do very well living in Atlanta Chicago and DC...
Even the cold monkeys cant navigate the WARM areas to get to the COLD areas. that is why animals die off the habitat they are in dies offi've seen quite a few.
There's a breeding colony of 3500 rhesus monkeys on a SC sea island. They're owned by the NIH
They actually do carry a virus that's harmless to monkeys but 80%fatal to humans!
Google monkey island sc if you don't believe it. monkeyisland...Historically the island has been uninhabitited due to its location and distance from the mainland.
Originally the monkey colony now located on Morgan Island was located in La Parguera Puerto rico at the Caribbean Primate Research center (Klopchin 2). According to the CDC (Center for disease control
and Prevention) there were incidents of the free-ranging monkeys escaping while infected with the herpes B virus
. Although the herpes B virus is not harmful to the monkeys once transmitted to a human the virus infection has an almost 80%fatality rate (Shemcreeks).
when the monkeys became overpopulated. Puerto rico was alarmed by this and South carolina stepped in to offer an island for research.
South carolina offered uninhabited Morgan Island for the monkeys to be housed. In 1979 over 1400 animals were relocated to Morgan Island (Klopchin 2)..http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Morgan island south carolinamr. george---it mentioned that possibly primates possibly crossed the atlantic in some type of boat
--i disagree--at one time there werent any massive oceans there must have been large seas between the continents---during the cooling period of earths formation steam was settled developing
when earth was starting to be formed. the primates were able to leave africa and cross the world travelling around the sea between africa and north america coming to our part of
. but before thenprimates just migrated from africa to here walking around the sea. even camels were here. there bones have been found in tucsonarizona;
they migrated also travelling around the sea. in south america there are drawings on cliffs of animals that existed in africa
and one in the southern hemisphereand the animals leaving africa for south america could have travelled around a sea in the southern hemisphere. mr. george-i forgot to mention that
when the primates came to the united states they discovered there werent bananas here so they didnt stay
and develop or wed have monkeys today in the united states. Can we blame global warming on those little North american monkeys in their monkey boats?
If anyone is interested actually in some answers about primates I'm a primatologist-in-training inquire
Beating the dead horse again Pinatubo's eruption ejected enough particulates to cool the globe for a couple years.
@Moose-brightness is a technical astronomical term used to define the the power output of an object so the term itself makes sense in this context.
@Moose Billisarius; No experiments have proven that the speed of light is not a constant for particles.
You need more than vegetables for sustenance like grains protein fat (vegetable or animal) and basically calories
As Moose says You can't simply tell a 15-30yo-aged male to eat potatoes and beans.
and moose there is a great new study on New Study Finds Nothing That Will Actually Convince You To Change Your Lifestyle So Just Forget I l
Small's study comes after a few years of research into mice rats and fruit flies have found that the animals are able to sense nutrition independently of taste.
Over and over researchers have engineered genetically lab animals not to be able to taste sweetness and yet over time the animals learn to prefer mixtures containing real sugar instead of artificial sweetener.
Over time animals learn to prefer mixtures containing real sugar instead of artificial sweetener. You can't genetically engineer a person not to be able to taste so Small
and her research team instead had people drink artificially flavored drinks. Some of the drinks were calorie-free
while others contained maltodextrin a carbohydrate that people can't taste but still has calories.
People are still working out the exact mechanisms in mice much less people. Still Small thinks it makes evolutionary sense.
All of these brain circuits evolved millions of years ago in animals that lacked consciousness but still needed to incorporate fuel she says.
and can't settle their brains sufficiently to concentrate on walking the dog without simultaneously texting and listening to their ipods.
Another part of the feeling that the modern human is misplaced in urban society comes from the realization that people are still genetically close not only to the Romans and the seventeenth-century Europeans but to Neandertals to the ape ancestors Holland mentions and to the small bands
Then the thinking goes the animals were subject to the forces of nature. Those in the desert got better at resisting the sun
Although we can admire a stick insect that seems to flawlessly imitate a leafy twig in every detail down to the marks of faux bird droppings on its wings
or a sled dog with legs that can withstand subzero temperatures because of the exquisite heat exchange between its blood vessels both are full of compromises jury-rigged like all other organisms.
The insect has to resist disease as well as blend into its background; the dog must run
and find food as well as stay warm. The pigment used to form those dark specks on the insect is also useful in the insect immune system
and using it in one place means it can't be used in another. For the dog having long legs for running can make it harder to keep the cold at bay
since more heat is lost from narrow limbs than from wider ones. These often conflicting needs mean automatic trade-offs in every system
if you are a fish but not a terrestrial biped. The paleontologist Neal Shubin points out that our inner fish constrains the human body's performance
when a frog or a monkey looked down at itself pronounced itself satisfied and said Voilã Â I am done.
Our bodies therefore reflect a continuously jury-rigged system with echoes of fish of fruit fly of lizard and mouse.
Humans were tweak from the natural primate to better interface with our alien over lord or GODS.
Which one could survive escaping from a wild animal (we still have these by the way? Just try it
Even anti-evolutionists have to realize that humans were not always here so it entirely possible that we may die out like every other smart ape.
Look at how quickly we bred a poodle from a wolf. Now imagine how we transformed the dreaded tiger
and the ferocious lion by culling the most dangerous maneaters from their gene pool for thousands upon thousands of years.
So my guess is today's predators are a pale shadow of their ancient kin
which prowled the darkened forests of the night made all the more dark by the poor diets of our ancestors.
Its not like squirrels are hoarders or foxes or ravens...or many other animals that demonstrate distinctly Human qualities.
It fit nice with your myth of the gods but doesn't quite stand up to the scientific method.
Yes you most correct many animals hord to get by for a season for NEED. Humans go way way beyond need and that is obvious to all. 12 Actually
Yes humans horde more than any animal but It is quite logical to do so if they want to have the best chance of survival.
and the excessive hording is a sign that we humans DNA have been tweak from the natural primate and no longer natural to this world.'
#Honeybees May be Dying Off Because They're Eating Inferior Honey Substituteshoney is good for you and it's a nice natural substitute for sweeteners like table sugar or high-fructose corn syrup.
For this reason bees are hired often out by the hive to pollinate farmers'fields. That means they are exposed to a wide range of pesticides meant to ward off other insects.
But honeybees throughout North america have been dying by the millions for a decade now often simply disappearing from their hives never to return.
The phenomenon now known as colony collapse disorder has many possible culprits from pathogens to pesticides.
I've been seeing articles about micro robots the size of flies great invention. How about manufacturing them by the zillions
Micro robots versus the bugs! Heck you could even use them for pollination!..If the bee disappeared off the face of the earth man would only have four years left to live...
Corn soybeans and all other Midwestern crops with GMO'S counterparts are self pollinating-hives are introduced not.
Once the bees have malnutrition ANYTHING could kill them easily. how bout we get one hive that only has gmo flowers
Our government office in charge being run by the person responsible for this assures that this is not going to go well for U s as to the honey not being feed left to the hives;
Hey@Popsci is the#mysteryanimal a baboon? And then I might say if you think that's a baboon perhaps you are the baboon!
But probably not because this is a positive environment and all guesses are welcome and also this is not a very common animal so guess whatever you want!
The first person to get it right wins! We'll retweet the answer from@Popsci and also update this post
Your dumb kids who thought that was a baboon! Update: And the winner is...Seth Rosenthal who for the second week in a row correctly guessed the mystery animal first!
This creature is a gerenuk Litocranius walleri a species of antelope native to the dry brush and scrubland of East Africa.
The gerenuk is called also the long-necked giraffe though it is not closely related to the giraffe.
In fact it's the only member of its genus so it's not that closely related to any other species
The gerenuk's identification with the giraffe comes from both its long neck and its feeding habits.
--so it stands up on its super-muscled hind legs reaches its long neck up and can plug leaves off the acacia tree that gazelles
But it's not a huge animal only reaching about 41 inches tall. There are an estimated 95000 gerenuks in the wild;
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