Pink bumped from the top spot on the Digital Songs chart by Macklemore and Ryan Lewis.
By Gil Kaufman
Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1706622/billboard-charts-fantasia-michael-buble.jhtml
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Do frogs live underground? The answer is yes, some amphibians, such as salamanders and frogs have been often reported to dwell in subterranean habitats, some of them completely adjusted to the life in darkness, and others just spending a phase of their lifecycle in an underground shelter. Up until 2010, however, no one suspected that the Mediterranean anuran frog Rana iberica - commonly known as Iberian brown frog and usually found in streams - also participates in underground adventures. A new study published in the open access journal Subterranean Biology confirms the first report of Rana iberica reproduction in a cave-like habitat, with all life stages observed in the galleries.
Serra da Estrela Natural Park is located in north-central Portugal and is the largest protected area and one of the most biodiverse regions in Portugal and the Iberian Peninsula. Several drainage galleries were created for water capture in the 1950s, even before the establishment of the boundaries of the Natural Park. It is namely in these artificial subterranean habitats that the Iberian brown frog was discovered dwelling underground by biologists.
"The unusual sighting of R. iberica motivated a series of subsequent visits that started in 2011 up until December 2012 to understand the use of this artificial subterranean habitat by this species.", explains the lead author of the study Dr. Gon?alo M. Rosa. "All life stages were observed in the gallery during the study period, particularly adults, which were observed every month of the year."
The Iberian brown frog does not only seek refuge in the drainage galleries as a sporadic visitor. During long observations, adults from the species have been noted in the galleries,often standing on the ground or in crevices, swimming underwater or even climbing up the walls. There is evidence of mating activity, and batches of eggs have been found stuck to submerged rocks in the subterranean stream. Recently hatched tadpoles were also observed, initially remaining stationary above the egg mass for about two weeks, then swimming in the streams and feeding on the dead egg mass. The galleries are used by other amphibians as well, and larvae of the fire salamander Salamandra salamandra gallaica have been recorded twice while preying on brown frog tadpoles.
The choice of the artificial drainage gallery for a habitat of the Iberian brown frog may appear odd initially. However, it seems that the animals find a refuge in the cool and humid tunnels, often containing a small stream. These artificial subterranean habitats are in fact often used as a refuge for many species. They are, for example, particularly important for the salamander Chioglossa lusitanica, an Iberian endemic of conservation concern. Scientists express their fear that such preferences for underground habitats might in fact be a sign for the ecological dangers of the dramatic climate changes experienced by the Iberian region. Monitoring the subterranean activity of various species might provide important cues for future conservation efforts.
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Rosa GM, Penado A (2013) Rana iberica (Boulenger, 1879) goes underground: subterranean habitat usage and new insights on natural history. Subterranean Biology 11: 15?29, doi: 10.3897/subtbiol.11.5170
Pensoft Publishers: http://www.pensoft.net
Thanks to Pensoft Publishers for this article.
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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/128059/The_underground_adventures_of_the_Mediterranean_frog_Rana_iberica
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The first time anyone outside of Florida?s Space Coast heard of Rep. Bill Posey, he was talking about Barack Obama?s birth certificate. It was March 2009. Posey had been in office for two months, and he was the first to propose a bill requiring presidential nominees to hand over ?documentation as may be necessary to establish that the candidate meets the qualifications for eligibility.? He was Internet-famous overnight. Stephen Colbert was asking him to prove that he, Posey, wasn?t part alligator. ?There is no reason to say that I'm the illegitimate grandson of an alligator,? said the congressman.
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Posey?s been re-elected twice since then, and on April 17, he got the chance to stare down the president?s science czar, John Holdren. Posey and fellow Republicans on the Science, Space, and Technology Committee wanted Holdren to explain why the National Science Foundation was wasting so much money from an asked-for budget of $7.6 billion.
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Posey read off titles of NSF-funded research projects. ? ?Picturing Animals in National Geographic for the years 1988 to 2008? costing $227,000,? said Posey. ? ?Kinship, Women's Labor and China's Economic Performance in the 17th to 21st Centuries? costing $267,000. ?Regulating Accountability and Transparency in China's Dairy Industry.? ? I mean, it's just hard to conceive how those are important to our national security or our national interest.?
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Holdren wasn?t moved, but he?d heard this before?and he?d hear it again. After the hearing, committee chairman Lamar Smith of Texas sent a letter to the NSF asking what the ?intellectual merit? of this research was. Shortly thereafter, as first reported by Science magazine, Smith was drafting legislation that would require the NSF to prove that grants wouldn?t embarrass anybody. Was the research ?in the interests of the United States to advance the national health, prosperity, or welfare, and to secure the national defense by promoting the progress of science?? Could the NSF say that it was ?the finest quality, is groundbreaking, and answers questions or solves problems that are of utmost importance to society at large??
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Smith is attempting a version of the strategy used successfully by Oklahoma Republican Sen. Tom Coburn last month. By amending the continuing resolution that?s funding the government this year, Coburn managed to prohibit any funds for NSF-funded political science unless it was somehow ?promoting national security or the economic interests of the United States.? He?d tried to put the ax to NSF?s political science funds before, and failed. But that tighter definition allowed him to argue that the funds could exist, as long as they weren?t squandered.
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?Studies of presidential executive power and Americans? attitudes toward the Senate filibuster hold little promise to save an American?s life from a threatening condition or to advance America?s competitiveness in the world,? explained Coburn. ?In fact, a number of polls have been conducted over the last decade on the public?s views of the Senate filibuster.?
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Attacking government-funded social science is popular, especially on the right. Last week, Texas Republican Rep. Ted Poe and Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul introduced a bill that would change the American Community Survey, sent annually to a random selection of 3.2 million people, from mandatory to optional. If Americans didn?t want to fill it out, even if that would render it mostly useless as data, the private sector would do just fine.
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When I asked Poe to explain how that information would be collected without the Community Survey, he said, ?There are other ways to get the same information about the dynamics of business, and where to locate a business. You can do it through polling. You don?t have to force people to participate.?
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Social scientists don?t agree, but it?s difficult for them to justify their own funding in a time of severe government cutbacks. Since March 1, when Congress and the president failed to replace sequestration with anything less idiotic, the human faces of austerity have included children whose Head Start programs are being cut, older people who are going without Meals on Wheels, and?less heart-tugging?business travelers and tourists whose flights were delayed. (We fixed that last one.)
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All of those victims have infinitely more marquee value than social science professors. The new attempts to claw away at research have gone on for months, and the academics haven?t put up a compelling defense beyond one event on the Hill and the yeoman blogging of some professors like John Sides. ?Going forward,? Sides wrote after Coburn?s win, ?a coordinated lobbying effort is needed not only to roll back the restrictions on political science but to defend the NSF?s core mission as a promoter of scientific research in the public good, broadly defined.?
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So far that lobbying effort doesn?t exist. Instead, Republicans are able to challenge NSF funding in order to pursue long-term political goals without too many people noticing.
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Which goals? Well, last month the General Social Survey found that, over 40 years, the fraction of American homes containing guns had slipped from 50 percent to 35 percent. That validated one of the Democrats? gun-safety talking points?that ?gun nut? culture was new, and less legitimate than hunting culture. That gun study was funded in part by the NSF. So are studies that send scientists to measure glaciers in Greenland; so was Earth: The Operator?s Manual, a 2012 documentary about climate change, for people who don?t have the time to measure glaciers.
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Is there a private sector ready to fund science and social science if the government stops? Not yet, not really. It?s been 17 years since a Republican-backed gun bill blocked the Centers for Disease Control from collecting certain data on guns and public health. There?s a Kickstarter-ish proposal to fund this research. It?s raised less than a third of the aspirational $25,000.
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So Democrats and the administration are stuck defending NSF money in hearings that don?t get a lot of attention. Confronted by Posey, Holdren said what the academics wanted him to say. ?I think there has been many beneficial results from the research funded by NSF,? he said, ?and the social behavioral and economic sciences that have contributed, for example, to a better understanding of how our democracy works and how to make it stronger, that have contributed to making our government more efficient.?
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Posey slightly softened his tone. ?I'm not advocating we stop all the social-science study spending,? he said. ?I just think it might be appropriate that much of that be left to the private sector.? How much, though? Someone should probably conduct a study.
Source: http://feeds.slate.com/click.phdo?i=8ad79a9790fb416626c4516d0ddc914d
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"Happier, healthier,?more productive." That was the goal of mobile app Astrid, and now Yahoo is taking up the mission as it's just acquired the social productivity platform. Co-founded by a former Palantir engineer, Tim Su, AngelPad-backed Astrid says that it has four million users, who as of September 2012 logged 30 million plans on the platform.Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/DUKdGQUa5Y4/
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WASHINGTON (AP) ? Looking for a new way to get that jolt of caffeine energy? Food companies are betting snacks like potato chips, jelly beans and gum with a caffeinated kick could be just the answer.
The Food and Drug Administration is closely watching the marketing of these foods and wants to know more about their safety.
The FDA said Monday it will look at the foods' effects on children in response to a caffeinated gum introduced this week by Wrigley. Alert Energy Gum promises "the right energy, right now."
The agency is already investigating the safety of energy drinks and energy shots, prompted by consumer reports of illness and death.
Michael Taylor, FDA's deputy commissioner of foods, said Monday that the only time FDA explicitly approved the added use of caffeine in a food or drink was in the 1950s for colas. The current proliferation of caffeine added to foods is "beyond anything FDA envisioned," Taylor said.
"It is disturbing," Taylor said in an interview with The Associated Press. "We're concerned about whether they have been adequately evaluated."
Taylor said the agency will look at the potential impact these "new and easy sources" of caffeine will have on children's health and will take action if necessary. He said that he and other FDA officials have held meetings with some of the large food companies that have ventured into caffeinated products, including Mars Inc., of which Wrigley is a subsidiary.
Wrigley and other companies adding caffeine to their products have labeled them as for adult use only. A spokeswoman for Wrigley, Denise M. Young, said the gum is for "adults who are looking for foods with caffeine for energy" and each piece contains about 40 milligrams, or the equivalent amount found in half a cup of coffee. She said the company will work with FDA.
"Millions of Americans consume caffeine responsibly and in moderation as part of their daily routines," Young said.
Food manufacturers have added caffeine to candy, nuts and other snack foods in recent years. Jelly Belly "Extreme Sport Beans," for example, have 50 mg of caffeine in each 100-calorie pack, while Arma Energy Snx markets trail mix, chips and other products that have caffeine.
Critics say it's not enough for the companies to say they are marketing the products to adults when the caffeine is added to items like candy that are attractive to children. Major medical associations have warned that too much caffeine can be dangerous for children, who have less ability to process the stimulant than adults. The American Academy of Pediatrics says caffeine has been linked to harmful effects on young people's developing neurologic and cardiovascular systems.
"Could caffeinated macaroni and cheese or breakfast cereal be next?" said Michael Jacobson, director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, which wrote the FDA a letter concerned about the number of foods with added caffeine last year. "One serving of any of these foods isn't likely to harm anyone. The concern is that it will be increasingly easy to consume caffeine throughout the day, sometimes unwittingly, as companies add caffeine to candies, nuts, snacks and other foods. "
Taylor said the agency would look at the added caffeine in its totality ? while one product might not cause adverse effects, the increasing number of caffeinated products on the market, including drinks, could mean more adverse health effects for children.
Last November, the FDA said it had received 92 reports over four years that cited illnesses, hospitalizations and deaths after consumption of an energy shot marketed as 5-Hour Energy. The FDA said it had also received reports that cited the highly caffeinated Monster Energy Drink in several deaths.
Agency officials said then that the reports to the FDA from consumers, doctors and others don't necessarily prove that the drinks caused the deaths or injuries but said they were investigating each one. In February, FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg again stressed that reports to the agency of adverse events related to energy drinks did not necessarily suggest a causal effect.
FDA officials said they would take action if they could link the deaths to consumption of the energy drinks, including forcing the companies to take the products off the market.
In 2010, the agency forced manufacturers of alcoholic caffeinated beverages to cease production of those drinks. The agency said the combination of caffeine and alcohol could lead to a "wide-awake drunk" and has led to alcohol poisoning, car accidents and assaults.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/fda-investigate-added-caffeine-foods-205546269.html
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May 1 (Reuters) - Post position for Saturday's 139th Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs after Wednesday's draw (listed as barrier, HORSE, jockey, trainer) 1. BLACK ONYX, Joe Bravo, Kelly Breen 2. OXBOW, Gary Stevens, D. Wayne Lukas 3. REVOLUTIONARY, Calvin Borel, Todd Pletcher 4. GOLDEN SOUL, Robby Albarado, Dallas Stewart 5. NORMANDY INVASION, Javier Castellano, Chad Brown 6. MYLUTE, Rosie Napravnik, Tom Amoss 7. GIANT FINISH, Jose Espinoza, Tony Dutrow 8. GOLDENCENTS, Kevin Krigger, Doug O'Neill 9. OVERANALYZE, Rafael Bejarano, Todd Pletcher 10. PALACE MALICE, Mike Smith, Todd Pletcher 11. ...
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/9-old-helps-nab-home-invaders-135632795.html
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May 1, 2013 ? An interdisciplinary team of researchers has created the first digital cameras with designs that mimic those of ocular systems found in dragonflies, bees, praying mantises and other insects. This class of technology offers exceptionally wide-angle fields of view, with low aberrations, high acuity to motion, and nearly infinite depth of field.
Taking cues from Mother Nature, the cameras exploit large arrays of tiny focusing lenses and miniaturized detectors in hemispherical layouts, just like eyes found in arthropods. The devices combine soft, rubbery optics with high performance silicon electronics and detectors, using ideas first established in research on skin and brain monitoring systems by John A. Rogers, a Swanlund Chair Professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and his collaborators.
"Full 180 degree fields of view with zero aberrations can only be accomplished with image sensors that adopt hemispherical layouts -- much different than the planar CCD chips found in commercial cameras," Rogers explained. "When implemented with large arrays microlenses, each of which couples to an individual photodiode, this type of hemispherical design provides unmatched field of view and other powerful capabilities in imaging. Nature has developed and refined these concepts over the course of billions of years of evolution." The researchers described their breakthrough camera in an article, "Digital Cameras With Designs Inspired By the Arthropod Eye," published in the May 2, 2013 issue of Nature.
Eyes in arthropods use compound designs, in which arrays of smaller eyes act together to provide image perception. Each small eye, known as an ommatidium, consists of a corneal lens, a crystalline cone, and a light sensitive organ at the base. The entire system is configured to provide exceptional properties in imaging, many of which lie beyond the reach of existing human-made cameras.
The researchers developed new ideas in materials and fabrication strategies allowing construction of artificial ommatidia in large, interconnected arrays in hemispherical layouts. Building such systems represents a daunting task, as all established camera technologies rely on bulk glass lenses and detectors constructed on the planar surfaces of silicon wafers which cannot be bent or flexed, much less formed into a hemispherical shape.
"A critical feature of our fly's eye cameras is that they incorporate integrated microlenses, photodetectors, and electronics on hemispherically curved surfaces," said Jianliang Xiao, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at University of Colorado Boulder and coauthor of the study.
"To realize this outcome, we used soft, rubbery optics bonded to detectors/electronics in mesh layouts that can be stretched and deformed, reversibly and without damage."
The fabrication starts with electronics, detectors and lens arrays formed on flat surfaces using advanced techniques adapted from the semiconductor industry, said Xiao, who began working on the project as a postdoctoral researcher in Rogers' lab at Illinois. The lens sheet -- made from a polymer material similar to a contact lens -- and the electronics/detectors are then aligned and bonded together. Pneumatic pressure deforms the resulting system into the desired hemispherical shape, in a process much like blowing up a balloon, but with precision engineering control.
The individual electronic detectors and microlenses are coupled together to avoid any relative motion during this deformation process. Here, the spaces between these artificial ommatidia can stretch to allow transformation in geometry from planar to hemispherical. The electrical interconnections are thin, and narrow, in filamentary serpentine shapes; they deform as tiny springs during the stretching process.
According to the researchers, each microlens produces a small image of an object with a form dictated by the parameters of the lens and the viewing angle. An individual detector responds only if a portion of the image formed by the associated microlens overlaps the active area. The detectors stimulated in this way produce a sampled image of the object that can then be reconstructed using models of the optics.
Over the last several years, Rogers and his colleagues have developed materials, mechanics principles and manufacturing processes that enable classes of electronics that can bend, twist, and stretch like a rubber band. This device technology has been used in fields ranging from photovoltaics, to health/wellness monitors, to advanced surgical tools and digital cameras with designs of the mammalian eye.
"Certain of the enabling ideas build on concepts that originated in our labs a half dozen years ago," Rogers remarked. "Ever since, we have been intrigued by the possibility of creating digital fly's eye cameras. Such devices are of longstanding interest, not only to us but many others as well, owing to their potential for use in surveillance devices, tools for endoscopy, and other applications where these insect-inspired designs provide unique capabilities."
The other co-lead authors of the paper are Young Min Song, Yizhu Xie, and Viktor Malyarchuk, all of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Co-authors include Ki-Joong Choi, Rak-Hwan Kim and John Rogers at Illinois; Inhwa Jung of Kyung Hee University in Korea; Zhuangjian Liu of the Institute of High Performance Computing A*star in Singapore; Chaofeng Lu of Zhejiang University in China and Northwestern University; Rui Li, of Dalian University of Technology in China; Kenneth Crozier of Harvard University; and Yonggang Huang of Northwestern.
The research was funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the National Science Foundation.
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Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/strange_science/~3/NbaqFGdyeWc/130501131949.htm
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