MAC SOFTWARE
Posted by on under microbes, undies, garments, flora, butt, clothes | 
When you go out and buy new clothing, it is a very good idea to wash those new garments before wearing them. Or, maybe wear hazmat-undies....Posted by on under article in der spiegel, stone age ancestors, neolithic ancestors, rotten piece, spiegel, arts and letters, bloodstream, crops, alcohol, brain, love |
The wonderful Arts and Letters Daily points to an article in Der Spiegel: Did our Neolithic ancestors start to grow crops in pursuit of... beer? Imagine: a hairy Stone Age-r picks up a rotten piece of fruit and munches. "As alcohol entered the bloodstream, the brain started sending out a new message—whatever that was, I want more of it!"...Posted by on under north carolina wildlife resources, venus flytrap, butcher knives, coastal carolina university, green swamp, internatial, shallow roots, north carolina wildlife, washingt, spos, dirty hands, gps device, gadd, poachers, private lands, clumps, last winter, s |
The most famous of carnivorous plants, the Venus flytrap, is surprisingly rare in the wild. The plant is only found on the 100-mile-long wet pine savannas on the edge of South and North Carolina. And apparently, there are only 150,000 of them out there. And according to James Luken, a botanist at Coastal Carolina University, that population is in danger from development and poaching, among other threats. From Smithsonian (Wikimedia Commons image): In and around North Carolina’s Green Swamp, poachers uproot them from protected areas as well as private lands, where they can be harvested only with an owner’s permission. The plants have such shallow roots that some poachers dig them up with butcher knives or spoons, often while wearing camouflage and kneepads (the plants grow in such convenient clumps that flytrappers, as they’re called, barely have to move). Each pilfered plant sells for about 25 cents. The thieves usually live nearby, though occasionally there’s an international connection: customs agents at Baltimore-Washington International Airport once intercepted a suitcase containing 9,000 poached flytraps bound for the Netherlands, where they presumably would have been propagated or sold. The smuggler, a Dutchman, carried paperwork claiming the plants were Christmas ferns... There have been some victories: last winter, the Nature Conservancy replanted hundreds of confiscated flytraps in North Carolina’s Green Swamp Preserve, and the state typically nabs about a dozen flytrappers per year. (“It’s one of the most satisfying cases you can make,” says Matthew Long of the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission, who keeps a sharp eye out for hikers with dirty hands.) Gadd and others are pushing for stronger statewide protections that would require collection and propagation permits. Though North Carolina has designated the flytrap as a “species of special concern,” the plant doesn’t enjoy the federal protections given to species classified as threatened or endangered... Recently, Luken and other scientists used a GPS device to check on wild flytrap populations that researchers had documented in the 1970s. “Instead of flytraps we’d find golf courses and parking lots,” Luken says. “It was the most depressing thing I ever did in my life.” Roughly 70 percent of the historic flytrap habitat is gone, they found. "The Venus Flytrap's Lethal Allure" Previously:Venus Fly trap time-lapse video Secrets of the Venus Flytrap Carnivorous plant photo gallery...Posted by on under maria miglietta, nature network, caribbean waters, mangini, life stage, tropical marine, jellyfish, mother nature, oceans, andrea, globe, photo, peter schuchert |
Photo from Peter Schuchert's incredible Hydrozoa Directory The Turritopsis nutricula is known as the "immortal jellyfish" because even once sexually mature, it can revert back to its polypoid stage, its first life stage. And then rinse and repeat. Again and again. From Mother Nature Network: Because they are able to bypass death, the number of individuals is spiking. They're now found in oceans around the globe rather than just in their native Caribbean waters. "We are looking at a worldwide silent invasion," says Dr. Maria Miglietta of the Smithsonian Tropical Marine Institute. "The world's only immortal animal" (Thanks, Andrea Mangini!) In the end, there can be only jellyfish...Posted by on under hangover cures, excessive drinking, hair of the dog, reas, hangovers, medical problem, drug abuse, doctors, blog, science |
I saw that headline in my RSS feed and was immediately intrigued. Sadly, the answer is, "Nobody knows." But it's a sad answer with an interesting reason behind it. Turns out, hangover cures are one of those things that have never gotten much attention from science, according to the Good, Bad and Bogus blog. And, apparently, that's because doctors view hangovers as a complication of excessive drinking, rather than a medical problem in, and of, itself. Treating hangover is controversial because there's already a cure, according to an editorial in Current Drug Abuse Reviews: Don't drink so much....
