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Yes, kids, science is a wonderful thing. But not nearly as wonderful as climate modeling, which can perform supernatural miracles. Honest! Climate modeling can raise the level of the oceans (even without Obama's intervention), it can burn up the planet a hundred years from now, and Shazzam! -- the models can save us again -- all without leaving your video games, and without the benefit of the real-world data that you need for boring old regular science. At least, that's what Nature -- the oldest science journal in the world, going back to Isaac Newton -- now claims. According to...

A little eight-legged pickpocket that darts around acacia trees could be the first known vegetarian spider.

NEAR BAXTER STATE PARK, Maine -The hunters discovered the first prey of the evening in a wide pond lined with spruce trees. After creeping down a rocky path, members of the group stood motionless. Then, they took aim. Click. Click. Click. Startled, the gangly moose reared its head to take in five women pointing cameras and binoculars. Then it continued munching on the pond's vegetation. The delighted group, part of a $50-a-head moose safari, climbed back into the air-conditioned Maine-ly Photos moose tour van and began searching for more of the creatures.

Boat passengers witness shark attack June 28, 2008 CHATHAM — Fourteen passengers on a seal watch boat saw a shark attack and kill a seal yesterday during a cruise to Monomoy Island. The island, which is a national wildlife refuge, is home to hundreds of seals and also a favored feeding ground of several species of sharks. Capt. Bob Littlefield is sure the shark he saw rip a seal in half yesterday afternoon was a great white. "It was a quite a bloody mess," said Littlefield, who has been a captain on Cape Cod for 32 years. Littlefield was steering...

Saw this butterfly on my Lilacs took some nice pictures. Here are a couple, the Hi-Rez pictures are much more detailed.

New York, NY (AHN) - A university study is raising eyebrows after researchers disclosed they secretly tracked the movement of 100,000 cell phone users outside the United States. Researchers at Northeastern University for six months sifted through data from cell phone towers allowing them to track the movement of mobile phone users in what they only describe as an "industrialized country." Such research, which included the cooperation from an unknown company, would be illegal in the U.S., an FCC spokesman told the AP. The study, to be published Thursday in Nature, found most people stick close to home, despite the...

Hunting can be fun, think about it, if we kill to eat or supply food for the hungry, is natural but to kill just for fun and target practice is cruel. The characters of this video are my grandchildren, mourning dove and a rare Columbian parakeet called Perija.

This is an animated video thread revealing a magnificent moment of a humming bird’s view amidst a flowerily scene, also sounds of many wild birds singing their songs. May you be blessed in viewing!

5 hours ago ROME (AFP) — The Etna volcano in Sicily rumbled back to life on Tuesday with a "seismic event" followed by a burst of ash, volcanologists said three days after minor eruptions shook the cone. A "seismic event provoking a strong explosion was recorded Tuesday at 0424 GMT (6:42 am local) in parts of the peak of the volcano," the National Geophysics and Vulcanology Institute in Sicily's Catania region said in a statement. The explosion on Etna, Europe's tallest active volcano at 3,295 metres (10,810 feet), was followed by a rain of ash on the southeast crater, "where...

A white toothed shrew found in Ireland. A recent study, soon to be published in Mammal Review, details the discovery of a mammal which has never been seen before in Ireland. The shrew, which has been spotted in Tipperary and Limerick, is only the third new mammal to be found on the island in almost 60 years. Dave Tosh, from the School of Biological Sciences at Queens University, found the greater white-toothed shrew in Tipperary and Limerick while working with University College Cork and BirdWatch Ireland. Its natural range is in parts of Africa, France and Germany and before...

“In Nature,� said Coleridge, “there is nothing melancholy.� I don’t know about that. I suppose there are lots of people who will greet American Earth: Environmental Writing Since Thoreau with joy, but both politics and temperament predisposed me against the book.[1] I had agreed to review it in a moment of weakness, but when it thumped down onto my desk—115 extracts from 101 authors in close to a thousand galley pages of almost nothing but text (“80 pages of color inserts� will be included in the finished product, the publisher assures me), melancholy is what ensued.Politics. The presence of that...

Killer dolphins baffle marine experts By Nigel Blundell Last Updated: 12:01pm GMT 25/01/2008 It's hard to visualise but the intelligent and ever-friendly dolphin can also be a determined killer. New evidence has been compiled by marine scientists that prove the normally placid dolphin is capable of brutal attacks both on innocent fellow marine mammals and, more disturbingly, on its own kind. Film taken of gangs of dolphins repeatedly ramming baby porpoises, tossing them in the air and pursuing them to the death has solved a long-term mystery of what causes the death of so many of these harmless mammals -...

WASHINGTON - There's more to the recent dramatic and alarming thawing of the Arctic region than can be explained by man-made global warming alone, a new study found. Nature is pushing the Arctic to the edge, too. There's a natural cause that may account for much of the Arctic warming, which has melted sea ice, ice sheets and glaciers, according to a study published Thursday in the journal Nature. New research points a finger at a natural and cyclical increase in the amount of energy in the atmosphere that moves from south to north around the Arctic Circle. But that...

These experts believe that global warming is a natural phenomenon, and they point to reams of data they say supports their assertions. These conclusions are in sharp contradiction to those of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which reached its conclusions using largely similar data. The UN body of about 3,000 experts, including several renown US scientists, jointly won the award with former US vice president Al Gore for their work to raise awareness about the disastrous consequences of global warming. In mid-November the IPCC adopted a landmark report stating that the evidence of a human role...

It is a strange and disorienting panorama that Rabbi E. E. Dessler, the celebrated Jewish thinker (1892-1953) asks us to ponder: a world where the dead routinely rise from their graves but no grain or vegetation has ever grown. The thought experiment continues with the sudden appearance of a man who procures a seed, something never seen before in this bizarre universe, and plants it in the ground. The inhabitants regard the act as no different from burying a stone, and are flabbergasted when, several days later, a sprout pierces the soil where the seed had been consigned, and eventually...

An odd new species of bacteria discovered in one of the most extreme environments on Earth could be a new tool in the fight against global warming. In a paper published this week in the journal Nature, University of Calgary biologist Peter Dunfield and his colleagues describe a methane-gas-gobbling micro-organism they found in an area of low-level volcanic activity in New Zealand known as Hell's Gate. It's the hardiest methane-eater known to date, Dunfield said, making it a likely candidate for reducing methane emissions from landfills, mines, industrial wastes, geothermal plants and other sources of global warming. Hell's Gate hot...

BALI, Indonesia - More than 3,000 flying foxes dropped dead, falling from trees in Australia. Giant squid migrated north to commercial fishing grounds off California, gobbling anchovy and hake. Butterflies have gone extinct in the Alps. While humans debate at U.N. climate change talks in Bali, global warming is already wreaking havoc with nature. Most plants and animals are affected, and the change is occurring too quickly for them to evolve. "A hell of a lot of species are in big trouble," said Stephen E. Williams, the director of the Centre for Tropical Biodiversity & Climate Change at James Cook...

SIERRA VISTA — There may not have been a Sierra Vista Holiday Parade on Saturday, but there sure was a show of a different sort. Mother Nature blew in late Friday night and early Saturday morning and left her mark through a variety of damage, from toppled trees to a trampoline on top of a roof to air conditioners and coolers blowing off roofs to awnings being twisted by the wind to scattered holiday yard decorations. The wind ripped a portion of the roof off a home in the 4900 block of South Santa Aurelia. And 35-foot-tall Modesto ash crashed...

A recent AP news report has concluded, after compiling the results of numerous studies over the years, that there is a strong and disturbing link between severe child abuse and non-traditional family environments. In the article' words: "[Scholars and caseworkers] note an ever increasing share of America's children grow up in homes without both biological parents, and say the risk of child abuse is markedly higher in the nontraditional family structures."  Examples of "nontraditional family structures" include: o  Children living in homes with unrelated adults (these children are "50 times more likely to die inflicted injuries as children living with biological parents"); and...

The reddening sky of Upper Galilee appears to darken in the late afternoon as around half a billion birds flee the European winter and flock to northern Israel in waves. The protected site in the Hula Valley is the busiest migration crossroads in Africa. Israeli ornithologists follow the flocks, keen not to miss out on the rare spectacle. At this time of year, more than 400 known bird species will cross the fertile region, pausing to rest for several days before heading off to find their winter homes in Africa. In a magical sight, the air fills with thousands of...

Not all children can harness the full goodness of their mother’s milk. Does breast-feeding a child boost its brain development and raise its intelligence? Only if the child carries a version of a gene that can harness the goodness of breast-milk, say researchers. The results add to the ‘nature versus nurture’ debate over intelligence, by showing how the two effects can interact. The question of whether people are born intelligent or made intelligent by their environment has been debated for decades. Research with identical twins separated at birth has shown that both genetics and rearing conditions are important in determining...

(2007-10-29) — With the success of last week’s simulated news conference on the California wildfires by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), mid-level bureaucrats at the disaster-relief agency have reportedly initiated plans to stage “natural” disasters as well. The imitation news briefing, which featured FEMA employees pretending to be genuine journalists, was “just a test run for the more ambitious pilot program of engineered catastrophes designed to help even out the work flow during the year,” according to one unnamed source inside the agency. “Due to the unreliable nature of floods, wildfires, tornadoes and blizzards,” the source said, “FEMA employees...

Science Daily — In a molecular tour de force, researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have provided an exquisitely detailed picture of natural selection as it occurs at the genetic level. Writing Oct. 11, 2007 in the journal Nature, Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator Sean B. Carroll and former UW-Madison graduate student Chris Todd Hittinger document how, over many generations, a single yeast gene divides in two and parses its responsibilities to be a more efficient denizen of its environment. The work illustrates, at the most basic level, the driving force of evolution."This is how new capabilities arise and new...

"The heart of man is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: Who can know it?" -Jeremiah 17:9 I. "The heart of man is desperately wicked." In considering this, we have no need to refer to any particular sins; II. We may, in the Second place, consider this, -- the deceitfulness of man's heart; "It is deceitful above all things;" III. "He that trusteth in his own heart is a fool" for who that is wise would trust one whom he knows to be "desperately wicked?" 1. The most eminent of the ancient Heathens have left us many testimonies of...

Double Helix Nebula Do you believe the root cause of human behavior is the result of an individual’s genetics or is behavior a product of an environment? Is there a gene that makes us ask, “why?” or is curiosity about interacting with our environment and having access to good answers? In determining the success or failure of an individual in their environment, we now know the “nature versus nurture” debate is bunk. The question is misleading. It implies the influence of nature can be isolated and subsequently separated from the influences of nurture. The entire purpose of the “nature...

MISSION — When firefighters arrived, they found a man covered in bees. “They were on him head to toe,” said Elias Saldivar, the Alton fire chief. His firefighters pulled the man away, suffering stings on their faces as they fought off attacks. “The coat and pants only cover so much,” the chief said of his firefighters’ protective clothing. Rescuers separated 57-year-old Paul Lee Campton from the bees, but it was too late. Campton, a disabled man who uses a walker, died Thursday at Mission Regional Medical Center after being stung more than 1,000 times. The attack happened about 6 p.m....

My six nights up a tree, by Crocodile George By Barbie Dutter in Sydney Last Updated: 11:49am BST 15/08/2007 An Australian cattle rancher has told how he spent seven days up a tree looking down into the jaws of two hungry crocodiles after stumbling into a swamp crawling with the reptiles. 'I knew they were looking' David George, 53, was knocked unconscious after falling from his horse during a bush-burning operation in north Queensland. Dazed and bleeding after coming round, he remounted his horse hoping it would take him home. Instead it took him to a swamp criss-crossed by crocodile...

"A Cheshire, Connecticut, woman strangles a rabid raccoon to protect her children." (video report)

'Utterly cared for': Minister writes of finding peace, link to God in nature http://www.southbendtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070726/Lives/707260476/1047/Lives http://tinyurl.com/2uf995 Jul 26, 2007 CHRISTINE COX Tribune Staff Writer John Lionberger, a United Church of Christ minister and religious author, admits there are times when he is tempted to not believe in God. "Faith just isn't a head thing at all. I could talk myself out of God just in a heartbeat," he says in a telephone interview. "But if I listen to my heart, I think that's the truer voice. That's the grounded voice. I guess, the ancient voice." It's a voice he didn't hear...

Hooking youth: Fishing is a pathway to nature for America's children http://www.abqtrib.com/news/2007/jun/06/commentary-hooking-youth/ http://tinyurl.com/2pcycu Mamie Parker Wednesday, June 6, 2007 Waters, long-coursed downstream, press on me still. The lunges of memorable fish linger in the eddies of my mind. Bright waters beckon this private vice of mine, fishing. And my recollections, no matter how old, always have the tenor of springtime, when all things are new. Fishing fixes me to places where I really feel alive. As a young girl and even today the experience carries a vestige of adventure and wildness - an escape from the artifices of man. As...

What Does The Decline In Hunting Mean For America's Kids? http://fieldandstream.blogs.com/news/2007/06/what_does_the_d.html http://tinyurl.com/2azh4n June 18, 2007 “I like to play indoors better,” a fourth grader told Richard Louv, “because that’s where the electrical outlets are.” In his bestselling 2005 book, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder, journalist and author Louv argues that never before has a generation of children been so separated from the natural world. The consequences, he says, can be seen in trends such as increases in obesity, stress, and psychiatric disorders among our kids. With the declining number of outdoorsmen indicated by the...

Nature calls even without cell phones http://www.cumberlink.com/articles/2007/05/23/editorial/editorial/daily876.txt http://tinyurl.com/3dmegu By The Sentinel, May 23, 2007 Last updated: Wednesday, May 23, 2007 11:16 AM EDT One of the drawbacks of the highly technological society we've created is the sedentary lifestyle it has inspired. When so much of your information gathering, communication and entertainment is centered around staring into a screen - not to mention the vast majority of most people's work duties - the amount of time we spend mostly motionless adds up quickly. Naturally, we're teaching this new non-active lifestyle to our children, whether intentionally or not. Look at all the...

A cousin to the well-known black widow spider, brown widow spider, is increasingly being spotted in Louisiana, bug experts say. The spiders are generally found in tropical areas but were reported along the Mississippi Gulf Coast last year. Entomologists with the Louisiana State University AgCenter say the spiders likely migrated from Florida through commercial imports of plants, food, building materials, or furniture. LSU entomologist Dennis Ring is advising Louisiana residents to wear gloves, long-sleeved shirts and long pants when working outdoors, especially in areas that don't get a lot of human activity. Though less aggressive than the black widow, "its...

Local catfish found to be missing genitalia By Allison M. Heinrichs TRIBUNE-REVIEW Wednesday, April 18, 2007 Dan Volz noticed something missing as he dissected channel catfish caught in the water off Point State Park -- their genitalia. "It was kind of like a streak of tissue, and we couldn't tell whether it was male or female," said Volz, a University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health professor who is leading a project to test local fish for contaminants. About 25 percent of the catfish Volz dissected couldn't be categorized as male or female. Extract from fish caught in Western...

MOSCOW (Reuters) - The Amur tiger, the world's biggest wild cat, has pounced back from the brink of extinction to hit its highest population level for at least 100 years, the WWF said on Thursday. For generations hunters have tracked down and killed the tigers as trophies, for their brilliant gold and black fur or for the perceived healing qualities its crushed bones bring to traditional Chinese medicines. By the 1940s the sub-species had nearly died out and there were only around 40 surviving Amur tigers in its natural habitat in the frozen wilds of the Russian Far East. Environmentalists...

Don't click on this pic! Go to the link below the title (Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife), hit the orange button sorta in the middle of the page that says "View Cam Live." When that comes up, you can switch between cams by using the dropdown list that says "View Another Live Cam!" Our cams are: EagleCam1 - Kent EagleCam2 - Kent EagleCam3 - Kent NEW! Let me know if you have any problems.

The movement to reconnect children to the natural world has arisen quickly, spontaneously, and across the usual social, political, and economic dividing lines. Read Richard Louv's article about this crucially important groundswell in the March-April 2007 issue of Orion. Then tell us what you think, and share what's happening in your school, neighborhood or town to get kids back to nature.

....A Rockledge man bitten by a pygmy rattlesnake demanded Thursday that the retail giant do something to protect customers from the poisonous reptiles that are somehow slithering into its garden centers. John Page, 41, whose right pinkie was mangled by an 18-inch snake at a Brevard County Wal-Mart in November, said he never fathomed being attacked while buying potted plants. But what he found even more startling, Page said, was that it has happened to at least seven other Wal-Mart shoppers nationwide, and the giant retailer is doing nothing to protect people. .......Page, an air-conditioning salesman, said he was putting...

Natural oils gave young boys breasts 22:00 31 January 2007 NewScientist.com news service Andy Coghlan Three young boys grew breast tissue after exposure to lotions and shampoos containing lavender or tea tree oil, researchers say. It is not uncommon for boys to develop breast tissue during puberty or just after, but the boys affected by the plant oils were aged four, seven and 10. The natural oils may be “gender-bending” chemicals mimicking effects of the female hormone, oestrogen, the findings suggest. The boys were otherwise normal, and lost the breast tissue within months of discontinuing use of the products. Researchers...

Students fight over who will put up no-fighting poster first at college By Fareed Farooqui KARACHI: Six students were injured in a row between two student organisations, the Islami Jamiat-e-Talba (IJT) and Pakhtoon Students Federation (PSF), at the Dawood Engineering College of Science and Technology Saturday on a second day of campus violence. Clashes between some of the IJT and PSF activists have been going on for the past one week in various colleges of Karachi. On Saturday morning, the students fought over a poster urging students not to fight on campus. According to reports, the fight was over who...

"New research suggests that climate change led to the collapse of the most splendid imperial dynasty in China’s history and to the extinction of the Maya civilisation in Central America more than 1,000 years ago. There has never been a satisfactory explanation for the decline and fall of the Tang emperors, whose era is viewed as a highpoint of Chinese civilisation, while the disappearance of the Maya world perplexes scholars. Now a team of scientists has found evidence that a shift in monsoons led to drought and famine in the final century of Tang power. The weather pattern may also...

Fort Meade beekeeper David Adams is facing a mysterious plight shared by his counterparts in Pennsylvania, Georgia, North Carolina and elsewhere: Their bee colonies are being decimated at an alarming rate, and the cause is unknown. Starting in mid-August, Adams lost a third of his 900 hives within the course of a few weeks. The seemingly healthy colonies just disappeared, he said, echoing reports from beekeepers across the country. "It's become a serious problem for beekeepers, myself included," said Adams of Adams Honey & Pollination. "We're on the ropes." The phenomenon, termed "Fall Dwindle Disease," is discussed in a preliminary...

WOW! I find this LIVE CAM of an African Waterhole to be quite interesting. It is nighttime now but you can still see a few things like bright flying moths. In the daylight in a few hours big animals should appear. Right now lots of insects chirping.

World's Forests Rebounding, Study Suggests James Owen for National Geographic News November 13, 2006 Forests are branching out across the planet anew, raising hopes that an end to deforestation may be in sight, a new study claims. The study suggests that deforestation is not as drastic as it once was and that forests are recovering in many countries. The researchers say that over the past 15 years the amount of woodland has increased in 22 of the world's 50 most forested nations. China and the U.S. have achieved the greatest overall forest expansion, the team says, while tree cover has...

Back in 1902, a scientist examining the smooth, grapefruit-size brain of a manatee remarked that the organ's unwrinkled surface resembled that of the brain of an idiot. Ever since then, manatees have generally been considered incapable of doing anything more complicated than chewing sea grass. But Hugh, a manatee in a tank at a Florida marine laboratory, doesn't seem like a dimwit. When a buzzer sounds, the speed bump-shaped mammal slowly flips his 1,300 pounds and aims a whiskered snout toward one of eight loudspeakers lowered into the water. Nosing the correct speaker earns him treats. Hugh is no manatee...

On 18 November 2004, Isabelle Chuine and co-workers published a research paper on global warming. The paper appeared in Nature, the world's most highly-regarded scientific journal. And it gathered some publicity. Chuine et al. claimed to have developed a method for estimating the summer temperature in Burgundy, France, in any given year back to 1370 (based on the harvest dates of grapes). Using their method, the authors asserted that the summer of 2003 was the warmest summer since 1370, in Burgundy. I had been following global warming studies only as a disinterested outside spectator (and only occasionally). Someone sent me...

The U.S. Forest Service has not developed national guidelines to assess the risks communities face from wildfires and is unable to ensure that the most important fire prevention projects are funded first, an independent government audit has found. And while the majority of catastrophic wildfires occur in the West, nearly 58 percent of the total acres treated in fiscal year 2004 were in the southeastern states, the report said. "The Forest Service cannot clearly identify the level of risk to communities from wildfire," it said. "It cannot demonstrate to stakeholders its accomplishments in reducing those risks with the funds provided."...

By the 1960s, American institutional psychiatry was a very large elephant caught in a seemingly inexhaustible growth spurt. “Nothing of human concern is really outside psychiatry,” proclaimed Dr. Karl Menninger, the profession’s unofficial dean. “So in one sense I have no hobbies. They are all part of my work.” This was to be the beginning of a golden age in psychiatry’s relationship with the American public. Psychoanalysis was busily remaking psychiatry after its own image—a new medicine born equally of natural and spiritual sciences. Practitioners were more than mere medics, they were soul doctors. The profession, as one practitioner predicted,...

As if the West Nile-toting mosquito isn't enough to worry Mississippians, add the poisonous Latrodectus geometricus to the state's list of creepy-crawly creatures. Dr. Jerome Goddard, entomologist with the Mississippi Department of Health, said the poisonous Brown Widow spider that is a cousin to the well-known Black Widow, is now calling the Mississippi Gulf Coast home. "The tropical Brown Widow spider .... has recently been captured in many locations along the Mississippi Gulf Coast,"Goddard said in a news release Tuesday. He said his office has been receiving many phone calls reporting buildings and grounds heavily infested with this type of...