Sunday, June 22, 2014
'Nosferatu' Condensed Into Four Minutes
The 1922 German expressionist movie Nosferatu is a classic horror film, but it’s an hour and a half long. Of course, everyone should see it all the way through at least once,
but if you’ve seen it before, you can relive the experience by watching
this four-minute version. And, sadly, if your busy schedule and/or
attention span is too short to ever get around to watching the original,
this may be the closest you’ll ever get.
Mario Wienerroither condensed the whole movie using a few illustrative clips, and added some rather odd (and often comical) sound effects, which will be appealing to those folks, like my kids, who can hardly handle black-and-white, much less a silent film. Wienerroither calls this a “silentless film.” Don’t bother turning the lights off, as you’re more likely to laugh than to scream.
Mario Wienerroither condensed the whole movie using a few illustrative clips, and added some rather odd (and often comical) sound effects, which will be appealing to those folks, like my kids, who can hardly handle black-and-white, much less a silent film. Wienerroither calls this a “silentless film.” Don’t bother turning the lights off, as you’re more likely to laugh than to scream.
The Sleep Schedules Of 27 Of History's Greatest Minds
The science of sleep and its glorious effects on creativity,
productivity, and sanity gets a lot of press these days. That said, the
sleep habits of some of your favorite writers, musicians, and artists
may surprise you a little.The bedtimes and rising times of history's greatest minds are inventively illustrated in this infographic. It seems to debunk the myth that geniuses stay up through the wee hours working manically, and that you're more creative when you're tired - most of these 27 luminaries got a wholesome eight hours a night.
Retail In Real Time
Now THAT is a Jumbo Bag of Cheetos!
The industrial (for lack fo a better word) bag contains 3 kg or 6.6 lb of Cheetos.
But the title of the world largest Cheeto still belongs to the good ol' US of A. The golf ball-sized Cheeto currently reside in Algona, Iowa.
*If you must know, Mexico's obesity rate is now 32.8%, which is slightly higher than the 31.8% obesity rate in the United States. Mexico has overtaken the United States as the fattest country in the world.
Storseisundet
The Bridge To Nowhere
Nervous drivers (and their equally nervous passengers) beware! You
should really prepare yourselves for the sight of Storseisundet Bridge
in Norway. The road connection from the mainland Romsdal peninsula to
the island of Averøya in Møre og Romsdal county doesn't look as if it
actually connects as you drive towards it. In fact it looks very much as
if you are in for an icy bath as you plummet off its 23 meters height.However, you will be relieved to hear that this is simply something of an optical illusion. The bridge is built in such a way that from a certain angle, as you approach, it looks as it is more diving board than bridge.
A History Of Dentistry In Pictures
Man Wearing a Suit Made of Mentos Drops into a Tank of Coke
When you mix Diet Coke and Mentos candies together, an explosion results. Physicist Tonya Coffee published a paper in the American Journal of Physics explaining why this happens. New Scientist summarizes Coffee's findings:
Instead, the vigour of the jets depends on various factors that affect the growth rate of carbon dioxide bubbles.The phenomenon scales nicely. With enough Mentos and Diet Coke, you can build a rocket car. Or, like Harley Morenstein of Epic Meal Time, you can wear a full-body suit made of Mentos candy, sit over a dunk tank filled with Diet Coke, and go for a swim.
The rough, dimply surfaces of Mentos encourage bubble growth because they efficiently disrupt the polar attractions between water molecules, creating bubble growth sites. […]
"Water molecules like to be next to other water molecules, so basically anything that you drop into the soda that disrupts the network of water molecules can act as a growth site for bubbles," Coffey told New Scientist. "And if you have rough candy with a high ratio of surface area to volume, then there's more places for the bubbles to go."
Low surface tension also helps bubbles grow quickly. Measurements showed that the surface tension in water containing the sweetener aspartame is lower than in sugary water, explaining why Diet Coke creates more dramatic fountains than sugary Coke.
Science Dips into Water's Mysterious "No Man's Land"
This diagram illustrates the rough boundaries of “no man’s land,”
a temperature region where supercooled water is difficult to study
because of rapid ice formation. Using SLAC’s Linac Coherent Light
Source, scientists dipped down to minus 51 degrees Fahrenheit and made
the first structural measurements of liquid water in this mysterious
region, where water’s unusual properties are amplified.
Quick, how many phases of water are there? If you answer three -
liquid, solid, and gas - you'd be wrong. There are at least
5 distinct phases of liquid water and 15 distinct phases of ice that
scientists know about, as we've told you before in our post 5 Really Weird Things About Water.Now, thanks to some fancy X-ray technology, scientists at the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have probed the structure of liquid water in a certain region of temperature and pressure where things really get weird.
According to SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory:
Despite its simple molecular structure, water has many weird traits: Its solid form is less dense than its liquid form, which is why ice floats; it can absorb a large amount of heat, which is carried long distances by ocean currents and has a profound impact on climate; and its peculiar density profile prevents oceans and lakes from freezing solid all the way to the bottom, allowing fish to survive the winter.Read more about it over at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.
These traits are amplified when purified water is supercooled. When water is very pure, with nothing to seed the formation of ice crystals, it can remain liquid at much lower temperatures than normal. The temperature range of water from about minus 42 to minus 172 degrees (see diagram) has been dubbed no man’s land. For decades scientists have sought to better explore what happens to water molecules at temperatures below minus 42 degrees, but they had to rely largely on theory and modeling.
Now the LCLS, with X-ray laser pulses just quadrillionths of a second long, allows researchers to capture rapid-fire snapshots showing the detailed molecular structure of water in this mysterious zone the instant before it freezes. The research showed that water's molecular structure transforms continuously as it enters this realm, and with further cooling the structural changes accelerate more dramatically than theoretical models had predicted.
Tests for Lyme disease aren't reliable
The discrepancies are fueling an ongoing battle over "chronic lyme disease" — a long-term illness that may or may not exist and is often treated with massive, repeated doses of antibiotics by caregivers (some doctors and some not) who often diagnose patients using the unregulated and unverified tests.
The unregulated tests may or may not be bad, Daley writes. The trouble is that we just don't know because they haven't been verified through third-party, peer-reviewed research. Essentially, people who use those tests are taking the manufacturers' or creators' word for it that they work. But in a situation where the best and most-accurate known test (the one that's been verified and is recommended by the FDA and CDC) is flawed and prone to its own misdiagnoses, you're left with a situation chock full of confusion and mistrust.
Archaeologists Discovered Remains of "End of World" Plague
A bonfire where many of the victims of an ancient epidemic in the ancient city of Thebes in Egypt were ultimately incinerated.
It's
like a plot straight out of the movies: archaeologists in Egypt have
discovered the remains of an epidemic so terrifying that it was called
the "end of the world" plague.Between 250 to 271 AD, the Roman empire was afflicted by the Plague of Cyprian - named after the bishop of Carthage St. Cyprian, an early christian writer who described the horror of the disease, which at its height killed 5,000 people a day in Rome:
This trial, that now the bowels, relaxed into a constant flux, discharge the bodily strength; that a fire originated in the marrow ferments into wounds of the fauces [mouth]; that the intestines are shaken with a continual vomiting; that the eyes are on fire with the injected blood; that in some cases the feet or some parts of the limbs are taken off by the contagion of diseased putrefaction ...Fast forward to today, when a team of archaeologists working at the Funerary Complex of Harwa and Akhimenru in modern-day Luxor (then Thebes), have uncovered bodies covered with a thick layer of lime (which the Romans used as disinfectant), kilsn where the lime was produced, as well as a giant bonfire where plague victims were incinerated.
A lime kiln built to produce enough lime disinfectant to cover
the human remains of victims from the epidemic in the ancient city of
Thebes.
Francesco Tiradritti, director of the
Italian Archaeological Mission to Luxor, told LiveScience
that his team found evidence of corpses burned or buried inside the
lime without receiving any religious rites. "They had to dispose of them
without losing any time."Usually, these kinds of stories ended up with scientists attempting to extract plague DNA from the corpses (what could possibly go wrong with that?), but Tiradritti noted, "In a climate like Egypt, the DNA is completely destroyed."
Read more about the archeological findings over at LiveScience.
When Slime Ruled
Evolutionary Pause Tied to Earth's Stuck Plates
Was this what Earth looked like during the Archean eon?
The "boring billion," the long evolutionary pause when slime
ruled the Earth, might be due to a planetary cooling-off period that
stalled plate tectonics, a new study suggests.The so-called boring billion refers to the span from 1.7 billion years to 750 million years ago when algae and microbes had the run of Earth. Why boring? The long pause comes after these single-celled creatures mastered photosynthesis, meaning they could absorb energy from the sun instead of munching rocks and metal. After that extraordinary leap, there was little evolutionary advancement for another billion years, until the first complex life emerged.
Scientists have long sought an explanation for this big hold-up. Now, researchers think they've found a possible cause: the planet itself. It turns out plate tectonics also had a boring billion, according to research presented last week at the annual Goldschmidt geochemistry conference in Sacramento, California. The findings were also published in the June 2014 issue of the journal Geology.
Study authors Peter Cawood and Chris Hawkesworth of the University of St. Andrews in Scotland looked at how the continents behaved in the past by analyzing indicators of tectonic activity such as volcanic eruptions, global glaciations and giant gold and sulfur deposits. The continents weren't the same size through time, nor did they plow across the planet at the same speed. They found the continents grew quickly on the early Earth, had a stable middle age and are now entering a midlife crisis.
"We are going from a time when you didn't destroy much crust to a time when you do," Hawkesworth said.
The transition from stability to destruction, which marks an uptick in tectonic motion, took place 750 million years ago, the same time as the emergence of complex life.
"This increase in activity could have kick-started a myriad of changes, including changes to levels of key elements in the atmosphere and seas, which in turn may have induced evolutionary changes in the life forms present," Cawood said.
Blame Earth's temperature for the fits and starts in continental speed. According to the study, on the hot, young Earth, continents grew quickly, with about 70 percent of the "scum of the Earth" forming by 3 billion years ago, the researchers said. But the mantle, the hotter layer between the crust and the core, was still too warm for modern plate tectonics to rev up. Big fragments of continents couldn't slide into the mantle at collisions called subduction zones. So when the first supercontinent formed, the plates stuck together in a massive jam for a billion years while the mantle continued to cool off.
"This represents a unique period of environmental, evolutionary and lithospheric stability," Cawood said.
While algae and microbes were whiling away the boring billion, the continents were growing a gut, adding bulk to their bottom layer as the mantle and crust continued to gradually cool, the researchers think.
Finally, about 750 million years ago, the supercontinent started to break up when tectonics shifted into overdrive. The researchers think this time period is when the mantle was finally cold enough for Earth's crustal plates to be destroyed at subduction zones. The supercontinent started to tear apart, creating new ecosystems for life to occupy.
New-found Horned Dinosaur, Mercuriceratops, Sported Some Pretty Spectacular Headgear
Who knew dinosaurs could be so frilly?
Researchers at
the Cleveland Museum of Natural History and Royal Ontario Museum in
Canada have identified a previously unknown species of horned dinosaur
after studying fossils collected in Montana and Alberta, Canada. Mercuriceratops gemini, named after the Roman messenger god Mercury, lived about 77 million years ago, during the Late Cretaceous Period. What makes this plant-eating species -- and its new genus of ceratopsian -- particularly interesting is the large frill on the back of its skull. Unlike other horned dinosaurs from the period, Mercuriceratops had a neck shield that featured two protruding "wings" much like the winglike embellishments on Mercury's helmet.
Mercuriceratops
gemini (center) compared to horned dinosaurs Centrosaurus (left) and
Chasmosaurus (right), also from the Dinosaur Park Formation of Alberta,
Canada.
"The butterfly-shaped frill, or neck shield, of Mercuriceratops
is unlike anything we have seen before," Dr. David Evans, curator of
vertebrate paleontology at the Royal Ontario Museum and a co-author of a
new paper on the discovery, said in a statement. "Mercuriceratops shows
that evolution gave rise to much greater variation in horned dinosaur
headgear than we had previously suspected."The ornate embellishments on the heads of horned dinosaurs served not only as protection but also as a means of identifying other members of the species. So it's likely that Mercuriceratops stood out among other dinos of the era, which may have given males of of the species an evolutionary advantage in finding a mate.
The first fossil of the Mercuriceratops specimen, an oddly shaped skull bone, was uncovered in north-central Montana in 2007. It was moved to the Royal Museum in Ontario. In 2012 another unusual skull bone was found in Alberta. It wasn't until some time later that Dr. Michael Ryan, the curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History and the lead author of the paper, noticed that the two skull fragments were nearly identical.
Map indicating locations where Mercuriceratops gemini skull fossils
were discovered.
Once the team compared the
fossils, they realized the specimens were from the same type of dinosaur
-- one unlike any other species known to science. 
Mercuriceratops
gemini skull fossils from the right side of the frill.
The paper on Mercuriceratops was published in the journal Naturwissenschaften.They're Back!
Endangered Fish Spawns in Grand Canyon
An adult razorback sucker fish.
After returning to the
lower Colorado River in 2012 after a 22-year absence, the endangered
razorback sucker fish is now spawning in Grand Canyon National Park,
scientists announced today (June 18).
Biologists discovered larval razorback suckers in April and May at nine spots along the iconic Colorado River, which is home to several critically endangered fish species found nowhere else in the world.
"Razorback suckers continue to surprise us in Grand Canyon
[National Park]— first with the discovery of adults after 20 years of
absence, and now with spawning within the park," Brian Healy, fisheries
program manager for the national park, said in a statement. "We're all
hoping to see evidence that these larval fish survive to adulthood in
the coming years."
The razorback sucker was one of the biggest suckers swimming in the
Colorado River before the Glen Canyon Dam was built in the 1960s.
Growing up to 3 feet (1 meter) long, with a distinctive bony keel on its
back, the fish disappeared from the stretch of river flowing through
the Grand Canyon in 1990. The dam chilled the river and starved it of
sediment, changing the habitat for native species. The introduction of
non-native fish species also hurt locals such as the razorback and
humpback chub.
The razorback sucker was placed on the national endangered species list in 1991 and Colorado's endangered species list in 1979.
Until now, the only remaining wild razorback population was found in
Lake Mead National Recreation Area, according to the U.S. Department of
the Interior. An ongoing recovery program stocked rivers in Colorado and
Utah with young, hatchery-raised razorbacks.
Razorback suckers being released into Havasu National Wildlife Refuge's Beal Lake.
The discovery of an adult
fish in the Grand Canyon in 2012 sparked hope that the razorbacks could
return to the lower Colorado River.
This March, biologists released nine adult razorbacks within Grand
Canyon National Park, downstream of Lava Falls (river mile 180). Each
fish carried a sonic tag, and in April, the scientists located several
of the fish, as well as tagged fish that had migrated upstream from Lake
Mead.
"This exciting news
suggests that Grand Canyon is becoming a significant basin-wide haven
for the endangered fishes in the Colorado River," Lesley Fitzpatrick, a
biologist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said in a statement.
While scientists don't know why the razorback has returned, in the past
two years, river conditions have become more favorable for spawning.
Beaches and sandbars have reappeared along the Colorado River since the
U.S. Department of the Interior began a series of massive floods in 2012 that are designed to rebuild habitat along the sediment-starved river.
Giant bullfrogs invade Vancouver Island
Catch of a 2-foot-long American bullfrog fuels concern
about the spread of the invasive species; 'They're eating everything
that will fit into their mouth'
Russ Schut, who was fishing in tiny Sproat Lake with a worm and bobber, hauled in the 2-foot-long American bullfrog and released it—after posing for a photograph—without knowing that it belonged to an invasive species that threatens native critters.
Because they’re not native to the Canadian southwest and have few natural predators, such as alligators, water snakes, and kingfishers in their native American southeast, some of the bullfrogs are growing to abnormally large sizes.
(American bullfrogs are the largest North American frogs and typically grow to about 7 inches, and weigh up to 1.5 pounds.)
“They’re big and voracious,” Gail Walin, of the Invasive Species Council of British Columbia,” told the Alberni Valley Times.
“And when you’ve got a species like that, that can basically out-eat some of the native species; it will take away the forage that native species would use and at times they can be aggressive on other smaller-sized, earlier life-cycle frogs.”
Stan Orchard, a Victoria-based bullfrog hunting contractor, told Canada’s National Post: “They’re eating salamanders and garter snakes and hatchling turtles … songbirds that come down to the water’s edge to drink, baby ducks, waterfowl … everything that will fit into their mouths.”
Walin believes that American bullfrogs might have been first introduced in or near Sproat Lake, at the south end of Vancouver Island, about five years ago. They’ve since been documented as far north as the Campbell River, about 150 miles from Port Alberni.
However, Orchard recalled a local sighting in 1989. As a herpetologist for the Royal B.C. Museum, he was sent to investigate reports of swimmers being frightened by tadpoles “the size of golf balls with big long tails on them.”
The University of Victoria is studying the rate of the bullfrogs’ spread. Walin theorized that they were first introduced by people emptying their aquariums, unaware of the environmental consequences.
“Whether it’s the plants in the aquarium, or the turtles, or the frog, they’re probably not native, and they can easily become established and take over the native population,” Walin said.
According to National Geographic, American bullfrogs can lay as many as 20,000 eggs, with tadpoles sometimes reaching lengths of 7 inches. A group of bullfrogs is called an army, or colony.
The voracious amphibians feed largely at night, ambushing prey by lunging with their powerful hind legs.
Though native to the American southwest, they now range throughout the continuous U.S., as far north as Canada and as far south as Mexico and Cuba. Their presence also has been documented in Europe, South America, and Asia.
So it seems that Vancouver Island is not likely to rid itself of the pesky frogs anytime soon. On the bright side, frog-gigging prospects are looking up.
Russ Schut poses with massive bullfrog.
The recent catch of an enormous bullfrog in a remote Vancouver Island
pond has fueled concern that the voracious amphibians are spreading
unchecked across the British Columbia island’s landscape.Russ Schut, who was fishing in tiny Sproat Lake with a worm and bobber, hauled in the 2-foot-long American bullfrog and released it—after posing for a photograph—without knowing that it belonged to an invasive species that threatens native critters.
Because they’re not native to the Canadian southwest and have few natural predators, such as alligators, water snakes, and kingfishers in their native American southeast, some of the bullfrogs are growing to abnormally large sizes.
(American bullfrogs are the largest North American frogs and typically grow to about 7 inches, and weigh up to 1.5 pounds.)
Generic photo of an American bullfrog
“And when you’ve got a species like that, that can basically out-eat some of the native species; it will take away the forage that native species would use and at times they can be aggressive on other smaller-sized, earlier life-cycle frogs.”
Stan Orchard, a Victoria-based bullfrog hunting contractor, told Canada’s National Post: “They’re eating salamanders and garter snakes and hatchling turtles … songbirds that come down to the water’s edge to drink, baby ducks, waterfowl … everything that will fit into their mouths.”
Walin believes that American bullfrogs might have been first introduced in or near Sproat Lake, at the south end of Vancouver Island, about five years ago. They’ve since been documented as far north as the Campbell River, about 150 miles from Port Alberni.
However, Orchard recalled a local sighting in 1989. As a herpetologist for the Royal B.C. Museum, he was sent to investigate reports of swimmers being frightened by tadpoles “the size of golf balls with big long tails on them.”
The University of Victoria is studying the rate of the bullfrogs’ spread. Walin theorized that they were first introduced by people emptying their aquariums, unaware of the environmental consequences.
“Whether it’s the plants in the aquarium, or the turtles, or the frog, they’re probably not native, and they can easily become established and take over the native population,” Walin said.
According to National Geographic, American bullfrogs can lay as many as 20,000 eggs, with tadpoles sometimes reaching lengths of 7 inches. A group of bullfrogs is called an army, or colony.
The voracious amphibians feed largely at night, ambushing prey by lunging with their powerful hind legs.
Though native to the American southwest, they now range throughout the continuous U.S., as far north as Canada and as far south as Mexico and Cuba. Their presence also has been documented in Europe, South America, and Asia.
So it seems that Vancouver Island is not likely to rid itself of the pesky frogs anytime soon. On the bright side, frog-gigging prospects are looking up.
Saturday, June 21, 2014
The Daily Drift
Carolina Naturally is read in 200 countries around the world daily.
Celebrate the Longest day today ... !
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Today in History
| 217 BC | Carthaginian forces led by Hannibal destroy a Roman army under consul Gaius Flaminicy in a battle at Lake Trasimenus in central Italy. | |
| 1314 | The Scots, under Robert the Bruce, defeat Edward II's army at Bannockburn. | |
| 1377 | Richard II, who is still a child, succeeds his grandfather, Edward III. | |
| 1667 | The Peace of Breda ends the Second Anglo-Dutch War as the Dutch cede New Amsterdam to the English. | |
| 1675 | Christopher Wren begins work on rebuilding St. Paul's Cathedral in London after the Great Fire. | |
| 1791 | The French royal family is arrested in Varennes. | |
| 1834 | C. H. McCormick patents the first practical reaper. | |
| 1862 | Union and Confederate forces skirmish at the Chickahominy Creek. | |
| 1863 | In the second day of fighting, Confederate troops fails to dislodge a Union force at the Battle of LaFourche Crossing. | |
| 1887 | Britain celebrates the golden jubilee of Queen Victoria. | |
| 1900 | General Arthur MacArthur offers amnesty to Filipinos rebelling against American rule. | |
| 1908 | Mulai Hafid again proclaims himself the true sultan of Morocco. | |
| 1911 | Porforio Diaz, the ex-president of Mexico, exiles himself to Paris. | |
| 1915 | Germany uses poison gas for the first time in warfare in the Argonne Forest. | |
| 1919 | Germans scuttle their own fleet at Scapa Flow, Scotland. | |
| 1939 | Baseball legend Lou Gehrig is forced to quit baseball because of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis–a disease which wastes muscles. | |
| 1942 | German General Erwin Rommel captures the port city of Tobruk in North Africa. | |
| 1945 | Japanese forces on Okinawa surrender to American troops. | |
| 1948 | Dr. Peter Goldmark demonstrates his "long-playing" record. | |
| 1958 | A federal judge allows Little Rock, Arkansas to delay school integration. | |
| 1963 | France announces it will withdraw from the NATO fleet in the North Atlantic. | |
| 1964 | Three civil rights workers disappear in Meridian, Mississippi. | |
| 1982 | John Hinkley Jr. is found not guilty by reason of insanity for attempting to assassinate President Ronald Reagan. | |
| 1995 | The U.S. Senate votes against the nomination of Dr. Henry W. Foster for Surgeon General. |
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