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The crack appears like a miniature Grand Canyon up close. (Photo: Randy Becker/Facebook) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A dramatic crack has suddenly formed in the foothills of Wyoming's Bighorn Mountains that measures an impressive 750 yards long and 50 yards wide. It was discovered recently by surprised backcountry hunters who travel frequently to the area in search of game. First reported by SNS Outfitter & Guides, a hunting company, on their Facebook page, the mammoth chasm appeared over the course of just a couple of weeks. It's an impressive example of just how quickly very large geological events can occur under the right...

Every summer while preparing for long weekends at our family cabin in the north woods of Minnesota, we'd face the same dilemmas. What food should we bring? Is SPF 50 sunscreen enough protection? And, most importantly, which mosquito repellent should we buy? If we picked the wrong kind, we'd be opening ourselves up to evenings of constant swatting by the campfire and nights of uncontrollable itching. Protection from the unofficial state bird, the mosquito, was not something to take lightly. However, while itchy limbs might be annoying, Minnesotans don't have much to worry about from mosquitoes, except for the occasional...

Beagles named Hercules, at left, and Tiangou are the world’s first gene-edited dogs. =============================================================================================================================== Man’s best friend is now his newest genetic engineering project. Scientists in China say they are the first to use gene editing to produce customized dogs. They created a beagle with double the amount of muscle mass by deleting a gene called myostatin. The dogs have “more muscles and are expected to have stronger running ability, which is good for hunting, police (military) applications,” Liangxue Lai, a researcher with the Key Laboratory of Regenerative Biology at the Guangzhou Institutes of Biomedicine and Health, said in an...

Rather than let the herds drown or starve, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game opened the season on Thursday, giving hunters the go-ahead to start harvesting herds found on drifting ice floes in waters adjacent to Nunivak and Nelson islands.

A couple of days ago, there was a quite successful thread here entitled Top Physicist Freeman Dyson: Obama 'Took the Wrong Side' on Climate Change. As an admirer and follower of Professor Dyson, I enjoyed it greatly, and posted several items on it. That thread got me interested in Dyson once again, and in looking for Dyson material I found this remarkable lecture on YouTube. I believe it is worth anyone's time to listen to in its entirety. At a little more than an hour in length, it is a bit long for one sitting, but I am sure most...

An Oregon farmer won the annual 42nd Half Moon Bay pumpkin weigh-off on Monday, when his gourd clocked in at just shy of a ton. Steve Daletas' pumpkin weighed 1,969 pounds, which means he'll take home about $11,000 and his wife will get to remodel their kitchen in Pleasant Hill, Oregon, he joked, downplaying the role he had in his big win. "Maybe we were in the right spot," Daletas said, noting that Oregon isn't suffering from the severe drought that California has over the last four years. "I feel good." Ron and Karen Root from Citrus Heights, California who...

The United States is home to the most obese population in the Americas, Asia and Europe, has the fattest kids by a wide margin and is tops in poor health for teenagers, according to the latest measure of well-being from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. In its "How's Life 2015?" report released Tuesday, the United States is also among the nations with underperforming students and second in murders and assaults. But the U.S. shines when it comes to personal wealth and even the number of rooms in our homes, said the organization that charts the personal and economic...

Hip college students and grown folks alike are scratching their clover-laden heads wondering who got the idea to walk around with Frances Hodgson Burnett’s Secret Garden sprouting from their tresses. “I think this comes more from Western culture,” one student told the Times. “It’s fun, but I guess it’s also about protecting the environment, to show that you care about nature,” a peddler of the green headgear offered (which is interesting considering the country is one of the biggest polluters of out planet). But probably the best explanation came from a 24-year-old medical student, who best sums up how the...

On Monday night, Ricardo Antonio Lopez-Campos, 27, of Marina, robbed a medical marijuana vendor and ordered some cannabis. Unfortunately for the robber, the vendor required that the purchaser show a copy of his identification and medical marijuana certification to them before agreeing to the transaction. Lopez-Campos then complied with the request and sent his own identification to the victim. Then, he proceeded with the armed robbery and took marijuana from the victim. Officers were able to quickly identify Lopez-Campos and were able to locate him within a very short time. He was booked into the Monterey County Jail. The stolen...

In the early twentieth century, a farmer decided that he needed to improve the agriculture on his ranch in Nevada. He figured that a well needed to be dug to bring water and nutrients to the soil above. He lived in a barren desert and the water stored deep beneath the Earth’s crust would have provided a more sustainable crop for this harsh and dry area. He knew that a well with ample water was needed to supply bountiful crops. What he didn’t know was what was waiting for him deep below the soil. He began to dig a deep...

Unlike ales, lager beers differ little in flavor. But now, by creating new crosses among the relevant yeasts, Kevin Verstrepen, PhD, Stijn Mertens, and their collaborators have opened up new horizons of taste. The research is published in the September 25 Applied and Environmental Microbiology, a journal of the American Society for Microbiology. The relative uniformity of flavor among lagers turned out to result in significant part from a lack of genetic diversity among the yeasts. Genetic studies showed that lager yeasts had resulted from just two crosses between the parent yeasts, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, and S. eubayanus. The problem was...

Archaeologists in Israel have uncovered evidence of early cereal cultivation at a 23,000-year-old site in Galilee, effectively doubling the timespan humans are believed to have practiced farming.

The odds drivers will file a claim from hitting a deer, elk or moose are 1 in 169, according to the latest numbers from State Farm.

Robots have taken up residence at some small- and medium-sized dairy farms across the country, providing reliable and more efficient labor and helping the businesses remain viable. Plus, farmers say, the milking technology makes for happier, more productive cows. Dairy operations here and abroad have used robotic milkers for more than a decade. But with more manufacturers and dealerships emerging the U.S., the number of smaller farms in Iowa with the technology has doubled over the last two years, from roughly 20 to more than 40, and family farms in the Northeast also are plugging in. The cost of not...

One man was killed and another was injured Wednesday morning after being buried under 1,300 pounds of hay at a farm in the West Valley, according to the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office. The accident happened around 9 a.m. at a farm located near Harquahala Valley and Courthouse roads. Officer Christopher Hegstrom said four men were independently contracted to remove a large tarp that was placed over a stack of hay bales measuring approximately eight bales high, eight bales deep and 15 bales long. While removing the cover, the front bales tumbled over and one man was crushed underneath the pile,...

An alternative medicine conference has ended in chaos in Germany after dozens of delegates took a LSD-like drug and started suffering from hallucinations. Broadcaster NDR described the 29 men and women “staggering around, rolling in a meadow, talking gibberish and suffering severe cramps”. Tests on their blood and urine revealed they had all taken hallucinogenic drug 2C-E, which is known as Aquarust in Germany and has been illegal there since the end of last year.

Surrender on weekly bin collections! Ministers axe pledge to bring back seven-day rubbish rounds because they are 'very expensive' Despite years of promises and £250million investment, plan was scrapped Scheme was supposed to encourage town halls to reinstate weekly rounds But sources confirmed there would be 'no new bin initiatives' last night Critics have slammed ministers for breaking a 'clear promise' to voters Despite years of promises and a £250million investment, ministers have concluded their bin promise cannot be met Despite years of promises and a £250million investment, ministers have concluded their bin promise cannot be met A Tory pledge...

The global map of tree density at the square-kilometer pixel scale. Credit: Crowther, et al A new Yale-led study estimates that there are more than 3 trillion trees on Earth, about seven and a half times more than some previous estimates. But the total number of trees has plummeted by roughly 46 percent since the start of human civilization, the study estimates. Using a combination of satellite imagery, forest inventories, and supercomputer technologies, the international team of researchers was able to map tree populations worldwide at the square-kilometer level. Their results, published in the journal Nature, provide the most comprehensive...

After much anticipation, the Chicago Botanic Garden on Saturday night announced that Spike is not expected to bloom.

As s a young naturalist growing up in the Deep South, I feared kudzu. I’d walk an extra mile to avoid patches of it and the writhing knots of snakes that everyone said were breeding within. Though fascinated by the grape-scented flowers and the purple honey produced by visiting bees, I trembled at the monstrous green forms climbing telephone poles and trees on the edges of our roads and towns. Introduced from Asia in the late 19th century as a garden novelty, but not widely planted until the 1930s, kudzu is now America’s most infamous weed. In a few decades,...