Free Republic

Grisly fight for freedomThe picture as published in 'Ecologica Montenegrina' showing the centipede bursting out of the snake's stomach. (Pic courtesy: Ecologica Montenegrina) The picture is not for those with weak stomachs and the report itself is as creepy as its protagonist. However, if you are looking at the picture, then you may well be looking at the most famous centipede known to man. Also famous now is the Ecologica Montenegrina a hithertho Montenegro college journal of science that published the find. A viper is believed to have swallowed centipede alive. The centipede then fought back – and the paper...

A German submarine sank to its watery grave somewhere off the coast of South America in 1943. This is the exact moment it's discovered. Secrets of the Third Reich: The Ghost of U-513 The pride of the wolfpacks, German sub U-513, became a tomb for all but seven of her crew after being bombed by a U.S. patrol plane in 1943. The U-boat then vanished off the South American coast, where it was lost for more than 68 years. Now, witness the ghost ship's story through rare archival footage and interviews with U-boat vets, and follow the Brazilian entrepreneur who...

The beer will be called Bone Dusters Paleo Ale (Hardy har har [Okay, actually, "paleo ale" is pretty good]). The yeast come from the surface of one of the oldest marine mammal fossils ever discovered in the western hemisphere. The idea for the beer came from Jason Osborne, who co-directs a nonprofit dedicated to advancing paleontology and geology. A paleo beer, Osborne thought, would be a great hook to interest non-scientists in fossils. I think many non-scientists are quite interested in fossils already, but I cannot argue against a paleo beer. Will whale-fossil beer really taste that different from other...

Dogs and cats, historically, have been people's property like a couch or a toaster. But as they've moved into our houses and our hearts, courts of law have begun to treat them as something more. They can inherit your estate, get an appointed lawyer if your relatives challenge that inheritance and are protected from cruel acts. Your toaster can't do any of that. As these animals inch closer to citizen's rights, the trend is being watched with worried eyes by biomedical researchers who fear judges could extend these rights to lab animals like monkeys and rats, thereby curbing experimentation.

Q: If you could drill a tunnel through the whole planet and then jumped down this tunnel, how would you fall? Posted on August 3, 2012 by The Physicist Physicist: This is a beautiful question, in a small part because itÂ’s an interesting thought experiment with some clever math, but mostly because of all the reasons it couldnÂ’t be done and wouldnÂ’t work. Right off the bat; clearly a hole canÂ’t be drilled through the Earth. By the time youÂ’ve gotten no more than 30 miles down (less than 0.4% of the way through) youÂ’ll find your tunnel filling will...

The owners of a farm shop and tea shop were puzzled to find one of their two camels was giving birth on Thursday – as both camels are female. Andrew and Maria Henshaw had no idea that Doris the camel, which lives with its half-sister Delilah, was pregnant until it began to calve. Mr Henshaw, a farmer, who runs the Mainsgill Farm Shop near Richmond, North Yorkshire, suspects that Doris, who has not been near a male camel from more than a year, was impregnanted before she was brought from Cornwall to North Yorkshire.

Launching In a few minutes!

Explanation: This is not a scene from a sci-fi special effects movie. The green beam of light and red lunar disk are real enough, captured in the early morning hours of April 15. Of course, the reddened lunar disk is easy to explain as the image was taken during this week's total lunar eclipse. Immersed in shadow, the eclipsed Moon reflects the dimmed reddened light of all the sunsets and sunrises filtering around the edges of planet Earth, seen in silhouette from a lunar perspective. But the green beam of light really is a laser. Shot from the 3.5-meter telescope...

A prestigious research institute in France said it had lost thousands of tubes of samples of the deadly Sars coronavirus. A routine inventory check at Paris' Pasteur Institute revealed that 2,349 tubes containing fragments of the virus responsible for the deaths of 774 people in 2002 were missing, the centre named after French chemist Louis Pasteur said. The institute was quick to reassure the public and said that the contents of the missing vials had no infectious potential. They contained only part of the virus and had no ability to spread. "Independent experts referred by health authorities have qualified such...

The researchers have been using an established technique known as magnetometry, which involves systematically and rapidly scanning the landscape with small handheld instruments in order to identify localised magnetic anomalies relating to buried ancient structures. These are then mapped out with specialised computer software, providing images similar to aerial photographs, which can be interpreted by archaeologists. In antiquity, the landscape in this recent study was known as the Isola Sacra and was surrounded by a major canal to the north, the river Tiber to the east and south, and the Tyrrhenian sea to the west. At the southernmost side of...

...The contract includes a clause that Demetrius is still to be paid if the judges realize the match is fixed and refuse to reward Nicantinous the win. If "the crown is reserved as sacred, (we) are not to institute proceedings against him about these things," the contract reads. It also says that if Demetrius reneges on the deal, and wins the match anyway, then "you are of necessity to pay as penalty to my [same] son on account of wrongdoing three talents of silver of old coinage without any delay or inventive argument." The translator of the text, Dominic Rathbone,...

Explanation: Recorded on April 15th, this total lunar eclipse sequence looks south down icy Waterton Lake from the Waterton Lakes National Park in Alberta, Canada, planet Earth. The most distant horizon includes peaks in Glacier National Park, USA. An exposure every 10 minutes captured the Moon's position and eclipse phase, as it arced, left to right, above the rugged skyline and Waterton town lights. In fact, the sequence effectively measures the roughly 80 minute duration of the total phase of the eclipse. Around 270 BC, the Greek astronomer Aristarchus also measured the duration of lunar eclipses - though probably without...

Israeli archaeologists have unearthed a rare sarcophagus featuring a slender face and a scarab ring inscribed with the name of an Egyptian pharaoh, Israel's Antiquities Authority said Wednesday. The mystery man whose skeleton was found inside the sarcophagus was most likely a local Canaanite official in the service of ancient Egypt, Israeli archaeologists believe, shining a light on a period when pharaohs governed the region. "This is a really beautiful face, very serene," said Edwin van den Brink, an Egyptologist and archaeologist with Israel's government antiquities authority. "It's very appealing." Van den Brink said archaeologists dug at Tel Shadud, an...

Chelyabinsk, a large city in western Russia, was best known for producing tractors and professional hockey players until the morning of February 15, 2013, when a 19-meter-wide meteor screamed through the sky and exploded with the force of 500 kilotons of TNT. The meteor generated a fireball many times brighter than the sun, so powerful it even caused sunburns. The shock wave blew out windows and knocked residents off of their feet, injuring more than 1,200. The object was the largest to strike Earth in more than a century... Asteroids that come within 28 million miles of our planet are...

One of the oldest surviving complete Roman mosaics dating from 1,700 years ago, a spectacular discovery made in Lod in Israel, will go on show at Waddesdon Manor in Buckinghamshire, UK... from 5 June – 2 November 2014. Measuring eight metres long and four metres wide, and in exceptional condition, the Lod mosaic depicts a paradise of birds, animals, shells and fishes, including one of the earliest images of a rhinoceros and a giraffe, richly decorated with geometric patterns and set in lush landscapes.Ancient city of LyddaThe mosaic was accidentally discovered in 1996, during highway construction work in the Israeli...

The next big thing in solar energy could be microscopic. Scientists at MIT and Harvard University have devised a way to store solar energy in molecules that can then be tapped to heat homes, water or used for cooking. The best part: The molecules can store the heat forever and be endlessly re-used while emitting absolutely no greenhouse gases. Scientists remain a way's off in building this perpetual heat machine but they have succeeded in the laboratory at demonstrating the viability of the phenomenon called photoswitching. "Some molecules, known as photoswitches, can assume either of two different shapes, as if...

Your coffee maker can now brew your entire breakfast before you head out the door in the morning. Golden Valley-based General Mills has launched Nature Valley-brand oatmeal that’s made in a Keurig brewer – a machine that makes single servings of coffee, tea and other beverages using a single-serve capsule or pod (also known as a K-Cup), the Washington Post says. Here’s how it works: Hot water from the Keurig runs through flavor pods (K-Cups) and into a mug filled with Nature Valley Bistro Cups oatmeal, to be mixed with an additional packet of nuts and fruit. This is General...

Quiz Time! Today’s Problem: Chasing Daylight AUGUST 28, 2008, 12:38 PM My 11-year-old son came up with a good question the other day: Assuming a plane never had to stop to refuel, could it fly around the equator so fast that it never saw the sun set? To find out, I checked with one of my favorite online columnists: Patrick Smith, who writes “Ask the Pilot” for Salon.com. Before I reveal his reply, want to take a minute to answer the question in your head, so you can see how you did? I’ll wait right here. OK, here we go:

For a new study ranking the best jobs of 2014, jobs website CareerCast.com did some number-crunching and found — perhaps not surprisingly — that crunching numbers is a pretty good gig.With a median income of $101,360 and a 23% projected job growth rate by 2022, mathematician topped the site’s roundup of the most desirable jobs. CareerCast points to the “exponentially growing popularity of mathematics� in everything from healthcare and technology to sports and politics.“Mathematicians are employed in every sector of the economy… from Wall Street brokerages to energy exploration companies to IT R&D labs to university classrooms,” CareerCast publisher Tony...

A first of its kind US oligarchy study yielded a rather troubling discovery and the results of the study are definitely cause for concern for most Americans. The US oligarchy study was conducted by researchers from Princeton and Northwestern Universities and the study showed that the United States is not a republic in substance, but rather an oligarchy where the rich rule and the majority of Americans have virtually no impact on policy decisions, today's report from FDL explained.

Explanation: A beautiful, reddened Moon slid through dark skies on April 15, completely immersed in Earth's shadow for well over an hour. It was the year's first total lunar eclipse and was widely enjoyed over the planet's Western Hemisphere. Seen from the Caribbean island of Barbados, the dimmed lunar disk is captured during totality in this colorful skyview. The dark Moon's red color contrasts nicely with bright bluish star Spica, alpha star of the constellation Virgo, posing only about two degrees away. Brighter than Spica and about 10 degrees from the Moon on the right, Mars is near opposition and...

I used a Sony DCR-SR46 Handycam on a tripod to record the eclipse in my back yard. Unfortunately, clouds began rolling in when the eclipse was full and they messed with my cameras focus. So I wasn't able to continue recording all the way to where it returned to the full moon status. I edited out all the jumping around caused by me readjusting the camera to stay with the moon, and increased the speed of the video so I could get the final result under 2 minutes. It's not the best video, but I worked with what I had....

Video LinkThat's a great old David Attenborough video on how trees move water up to great heights. I have been doing a lot of pruning lately and have become fascinated with the plants and trees I have been working on. Some respond within a day by producing new growth.Anyway hope you enjoy this.Here is a follow on video that explains the subject in greater detail. Sort of blew my mind to the extent I could understand it. The Most Amazing Thing About Trees

CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) — In its prime, a massive steam locomotive known as Big Boy No. 4014 was a moving eruption of smoke and vapor, a 6,300-horsepower brute dragging heavy freight trains over the mountains of Wyoming and Utah. It's been silent for half a century, pushed aside by more efficient diesels, but now it's coming back to life. The Union Pacific Railroad is embarking on a yearslong restoration project that will put No. 4014 back to work pulling special excursion trains. "It's sort of like going and finding the Titanic or something that's just very elusive, nothing that we...

Casual marijuana use may come with some not-so-casual side effects. For the first time ever, researchers at Northwestern University have analyzed the relationship between casual use of marijuana and brain changes—and found that young adults who used cannabis just once or twice a week showed significant abnormalities in two important brain structures. The study’s findings, to be published Wednesday in the Journal of Neuroscience, are similar to those of past research linking chronic, long-term marijuana use with mental illness and changes in brain development. …

Academics restart work to unlock secrets of mystery medieval civilization with links to Persia on edge of the Siberian Arctic. A red-haired man was found, protected from chest to foot by copper plating [Credit: Kate Baklitskaya/Go East] The 34 shallow graves excavated by archaeologists at Zeleniy Yar throw up many more questions than answers. But one thing seems clear: this remote spot, 29 km shy of the Arctic Circle, was a trading crossroads of some importance around one millennium ago. The medieval necropolis include 11 bodies with shattered or missing skulls, and smashed skeletons. Five mummies were found to be shrouded...

Over the past several months, while most of the political world has been focused on the election and the ensuing struggle over the fiscal cliff, a little story appeared that is worthy of much more attention. It concerns the efforts of the British Columbia–based Haida native-American tribe to restore the salmon fishery that has provided much of their livelihood for centuries. Acting collectively, the Haida voted to form the Haida Salmon Restoration Corporation, financed it with $2.5 million of their own savings, and used it to support the efforts of American scientist-entrepreneur Russ George to demonstrate the feasibility of open-sea...

Next week, the city will celebrate its official, 2,767th birthday. According to a tradition going back to classic times, the brothers Romulus and Remus founded the city on 21 April in the year 753BC. But on Sunday it was reported that evidence of infrastructure building had been found, dating from more than 100 years earlier. The daily Il Messagero quoted Patrizia Fortini, the archaeologist responsible for the Forum, as saying that a wall constructed well before the city's traditional founding date had been unearthed. The wall, made from blocks of volcanic tuff, appeared to have been built to channel water...

Explanation: When do cloud bottoms appear like bubbles? Normally, cloud bottoms are flat. This is because moist warm air that rises and cools will condense into water droplets at a specific temperature, which usually corresponds to a very specific height. As water droplets grow, an opaque cloud forms. Under some conditions, however, cloud pockets can develop that contain large droplets of water or ice that fall into clear air as they evaporate. Such pockets may occur in turbulent air near a thunderstorm. Resulting mammatus clouds can appear especially dramatic if sunlit from the side. The mammatus clouds pictured above were...

As head of his village, Prajob Naowa-opas battled to save his community in central Thailand from the illegal dumping of toxic waste by filing petitions and leading villagers to block trucks carrying the stuff—until a gunman in broad daylight fired four shots into him. A year later, his three alleged killers, including a senior government official, are on trial for murder. The dumping has been halted and villagers are erecting a statue to their slain hero. But the prosecution of Prajob’s murder is a rare exception. A survey released Tuesday—the first comprehensive one of its kind—says that only 10 killers...

STRAITS OF MACKINAC, MI - At least one ferry service is predicting delayed trips to Mackinac Island due to ice that still covers a portion of the Great Lakes. Shepler's Mackinac Island Ferry has announced it will be starting its 2014 season later than anticipated after temporarily relocating its ferry starts to St. Ignace, rather than Mackinaw City, as a result of the ice blockages which remain in the Straits of Mackinac. "The straits have completely frozen over, except for a shipping channel," said Misty Martinchek, Shepler's group sales manager, who said all local ferries have been affected by the...

Explanation: Is there a monster in IC 1396? Known to some as the Elephant's Trunk Nebula, parts of gas and dust clouds of this star formation region may appear to take on foreboding forms, some nearly human. The only real monster here, however, is a bright young star too far from Earth to hurt us. Energetic light from this star is eating away the dust of the dark cometary globule near the top of the above image. Jets and winds of particles emitted from this star are also pushing away ambient gas and dust. Nearly 3,000 light-years distant, the relatively...

NZCLIMATE TRUTH NEWSLETTER NO 312 JUNE 4th 2013CARBON DIOXIDEThere are two gases in the earth’s atmosphere without which living organisms could not exist.Oxygen is the most abundant, 21% by volume, but without carbon dioxide, which is currently only about 0.04 percent (400ppm) by volume, both the oxygen itself, and most living organisms on earth could not exist at all.This happened when the more complex of the two living cells (called “eukaryote”) evolved a process called a “chloroplast” some 3 billion years ago, which utilized a chemical called chlorophyll to capture energy from the sun and convert carbon dioxide and nitrogen...

First Exomoon Candidate is discovered by the astronomers The scientists used an innovative technique called gravitational microlensing. The technique takes advantage of chance alignments between stars: when a foreground star passes between us and a more distant star, the closer star can act like a magnifying glass to focus and brighten the light of the more distant one. These brightening events usually last about a month. If the foreground star has a planet circling around it, the planet will act as a second lens to brighten or dim the light even more. By carefully scrutinizing these brightening events, scientists can...

For two consecutive days last week, the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the earth's atmosphere exceeded 402 parts per million (ppm,) higher than at any time in at least the past 800,000 years, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Carbon dioxide levels tend to peak in May, which means that they are likely to rise even more. According to an article in Mashable, a news and tech website, the latest figures "put humans into uncharted territory." Just last month, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a damning report that illustrated the growing dangers of...

BBC America Series Premiere: Saturday, April 19th at 10/9c From Star Wars to 2001: A Space Odyssey, and from Jurassic Park to Doctor Who, each program is packed with contributors behind these creations and traces the developments of Robots, Space, Invasion and Time. Narrated by Mark Gatiss, Doctor Who writer, actor, and co-creator of the BBC’s Sherlock, the series determines why science fiction is not merely a genre… for its audience it’s a portal to a multi-verse – one that is all too easy to get lost in... Home | About the show | Episode Guide | Photos | Videos

What’s even more dubious than claims of catastrophic warming? Claims that scientists know what to do about it.The IPCC released a report warning that unless a “rapid shift� to green energy is undertaken, we’re all going to die…or, something.And even that may not be enough. The group is saying that we “might even need to enlist controversial technologies that remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.�We’ll get started right away on those gigantic atmospheric scoops to remove all those offensive greenhouse gases.It’s more of the same from the IPCC, with a little more hysteria to get our juices flowing.USA Today: “There...

It was thought to have built by King Offa in the 8th century as border between England and Wales But even though it has been part of the British landscape for centuries, the ancient Offa's Dyke may have to be renamed, after archaeologists discovered it could have been completed 200 years before the great Anglo Saxon leader was born. Experts used radiocarbon dating on the 177-mile dyke and revealed it could have been constructed as early as the 4th century... The group behind the project said it is a 'tremendously exciting discovery' which challenges the accepted history of the ancient...

Explanation: Why is Saturn partly blue? The above picture of Saturn approximates what a human would see if hovering close to the giant ringed world. The above picture was taken in 2006 March by the robot Cassini spacecraft now orbiting Saturn. Here Saturn's majestic rings appear directly only as a thin vertical line. The rings show their complex structure in the dark shadows they create on the image left. Saturn's fountain moon Enceladus, only about 500 kilometers across, is seen as the bump in the plane of the rings. The northern hemisphere of Saturn can appear partly blue for the...

He wrote of 'colonisation of the moon and near-moon space'. In the next 50 years, manned flights are unlikely beyond 'the space between Venus and Mars'. But 'it is quite possible to speak about exploration of Mars, flights to asteroids and flights to Mars'. The essential first step as a base for research and experiments was the moon, said Rogozin, who is in overall charge of Russia's space and defence industries, and was recently targeted for EU and US sanctions over the Ukrainian crisis. 'The moon is not an intermediate point in the race,' he wrote in official daily Rossiiskaya...

Officials at NASA and SpaceX were working through the weekend to see whether they could still safely rocket a cargo capsule to the International Space Station on Monday, despite the failure of one of the backup computers in the system that helps dock the pod in space. While workers continued to prepare for a Monday afternoon launch, NASA said a final determination would likely come Sunday afternoon. The deployment of 5,000 pounds of supplies to the space station by SpaceX’s unmanned Falcon 9 rocket has already been delayed a month because of other technical issues. NASA said Saturday that engineers...

The National Archeological Excavation Center has found more evidence of the existence of the Sailendra civilization, believed to have prospered during the 7th century in Ngreco hamlet, Kesongo village, Tuntang district, Semarang regency, Central Java. Previously, a team found pieces of bricks, artifacts and a jaladwara waterway segment, while recently it discovered a foundation believed to have been used for a temple structure. A jaladwara was a water sewage system commonly found in bath houses during ancient times. The tip of the jaladwara is usually the shape of a dragon’s head. The finding is strengthened by the discovery of soil...

As a specialist in prehistoric underwater archaeology, Dr Jonathan Benjamin looks at rising sea levels differently from most people and his fascination with this global phenomenon began when as a PhD candidate at Edinburgh University he came across the work of the Danish archaeologists Anders Fischer and Søren H Anderson. In the 1970s and 1980s, Fischer and Anderson recovered some of the most well preserved material ever seen from sites such as the 6,500-year-old settlement at Tybrind Vig. This was the first submerged settlement excavated in Denmark and from 1977 was the scene of intensive archaeological activity. Lying 300m from...

Known as Vada Volaterrana, it has been identified as a key port system located in present-day Tuscany, Italy, used anciently by the Romans of the city of Volaterrae (today's Volterra) for the import and export of trade goods throughout the Mediterranean. The main harbor was located north of the mouth of the Cecina river, at S. Gaetano di Vada... The ancient city of Volterra, or Volaterrae, which was served by the Vada Volaterrana port system, was first settled by the Etruscans in the 8th century B.C.E. During the succeeding centuries the village had developed into a major city with power...

Researchers at Cambridge University, U.K. finds that after agriculture’s emergence in Central Europe starting around 5300 BC, bones of those living in the Danube River valley became progressively less strong, pointing to a regressive decline in human mobility and loading... Research by Alison Macintosh, a PhD candidate in Cambridge University’s Department of Archaeology and Anthropology, finds functional adaptation in postcranial skeletal morphology in response to prolonged cultural and behavioural change across ~6150 years of agriculture in Central Europe (~5300 cal BC to 850 AD)... Dr. Ron Pinhasi of the University College in Dublin, Ireland, notes that colonization of Europe by...

Twelve boats, dating from 2,500 BC to the 11th century AD, along with other Viking artifacts have been discovered in Lough Corrib in Connemara, County Galway. Archaeologists have used radiocarbon dating to establish that one of the boats dates from 2,500 BC. Other items that were found include several battle axes and other weapons... The 4,500-year-old log boat settled into the mud when it sank and was covered over time. A mixture of organic sediment and lake water assisted in the preservation process. Even the seats in the boats are preserved... The oldest of the vessels is the Annaghkeen log...

...archaeologists at the University of York are challenging the traditional view that Neanderthal childhood was, in Hobbesian terms, difficult, nasty, brutish and short, fraught with continual fear and danger of violent death... The research team say there is evidence that Neanderthals cared for their sick and injured children for months and often years. A study of child burials, meanwhile, reveals that the young may have been given particular attention when they died, with generally more elaborate graves than older individuals. Neanderthal groups, believed based on fossil findings to have ranged throughout Europe, Asia Minor and into central Asia, were typically...

Archaeologists have uncovered the earliest evidence of the presence of humans in Scotland with an assemblage of over 5,000 flint artefacts which were recovered in 2005-2009 by Biggar Archaeology Group in fields at Howburn, South Lanarkshire. Subsequent studies have dated their use to 14,000 years ago. Prior to the find, the oldest evidence of human occupation in Scotland could be dated to around 13,000 years ago at a now-destroyed cave site in Argyll, northwest Scotland. Dating to the very earliest part of the late-glacial period, Howburn is likely to represent the first settlers in Scotland. The flint tools are strikingly...

Explanation: Aloha and welcome to a breathtaking skyscape. The dreamlike panoramic view from March 27 looks out over the 10,000 foot summit of Haleakala on Maui, Hawai'i. A cloud layer seeps over the volcanic caldera's edge with the Milky Way and starry night sky above. Head of the Northern Cross asterism, supergiant star Deneb lurks within the Milky Way's dust clouds and nebulae at the left. From there you can follow the arc of the Milky Way all the way to the stars of the more compact Southern Cross, just above the horizon at the far right. A yellowish Mars...

Although fruit and vegetables do occasionally find their way aboard the ISS via resupply missions (to the delight of the crew) researchers are moving one step closer to actually having a vegetable garden in orbit. On Monday, April 14, NASA’s Veg-01 experiment will launch to the ISS aboard a SpaceX Dragon capsule to test the in-flight viability of an expandable plant growth chamber named “Veggie.” In development for several years, Veggie is now getting its chance to be space-tested with the launch of the SpaceX-3 resupply mission. Veggie uses clear collapsible “pillows” as miniature greenhouses, inside which plants can be...