Iconic singer and songwriter Neil Young has had an honor bestowed upon him that is not received by many musicians -- his own spider.
An East Carolina University biologist, Jason Bond, discovered a new species of trapdoor spider and opted to call the arachnid after his favorite musician, Canadian Neil Young, naming it Myrmekiaphila neilyoungi.
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| ©REUTERS/Johannes Eisele
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| Singer and director Neil Young poses during a photocall to present his Film "Deja Vu" in Berlin February 8, 2008.
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"There are rather strict rules about how you name new species," Bond said in a statement.
"As long as these rules are followed you can give a new species just about any name you please. With regards to Neil Young, I really enjoy his music and have had a great appreciation of him as an activist for peace and justice."
When you try to remove adhesive paper from a surface, you inevitably get a pointy flap, while what you want is to remove the entire piece. A team from the Laboratoire de physique et mécanique des milieux hétérogènes (CNRS/ESPCI/Universités Paris 6 and 7), collaborating with the University of Santiago in Chile and with MIT, has explained the physics behind this frustrating experience. The work is published in
Nature Materials, and could be used in testing the mechanical properties of very fine adhesive film used in industry.
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| ©E.Hamm, USACH
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| System used in controlled tear experiments: the tab is pulled at constant speed and the experiment is performed with films with different adhesive and mechanical properties.
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Recently we praised the latest sci-fi blockbuster
Iron Man for including
so many real-world technologies.
It makes a change, since all too often Hollywood's use of science involves shocking blunders: including
spaceships making whooshing noises in
Star Wars to the journey to the centre of the Earth in
The Core.
So, to give credit where it's due, we have picked out five more sci-fi films that go against the grain, and contain some accurate, plausible science. They may not be completely realistic, but they get it right when it matters most.
Be warned: this article inevitably contains a number of spoilers.
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| ©Stéphane Guisard (ESO)
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| Green flash at top of solar image
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Cerro Paranal, home of ESO's Very Large Telescope, is certainly one of the best astronomical sites on the planet. Stunning images, obtained by ESO staff at Paranal, of the green and blue flashes, as well as of the so-called 'Gegenschein', are real cases in point.
Astronomers have started monitoring about a million massive stars to see if any suddenly vanish, seemingly without a trace. Such a disappearing act would support a theory that some massive stars simply implode when they die, rather than exploding in brilliant supernovae or gamma-ray bursts.
As a massive star ages, it accumulates iron in its core. Eventually, this iron core grows so massive that it is crushed by its own gravity, forming a black hole.
Seventeen Alaska and Canada Natives have been linked by DNA to an ancient man whose remains were found in 1999 in a glacier.
Among the first to be notified last week was Juneau resident Fernando Rado, who found out on Thursday, May 1, he is one of them.
Rado was one of 250 Native people tested for a DNA match in a project sponsored by the Champagne and Aishihik First Nations and Sealaska Heritage Institute.
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| ©Siim Sepp/Creative Commons ShareAlike
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| Some magnetite is produced by bacteria on Earth
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A miniature detector could pick out magnetic rocks on Mars that might harbour telltale signs of ancient life.
The instrument could select rocks that contain a magnetic compound - magnetite - that is also produced by bacteria on Earth. The rocks could then be brought back to Earth for closer examination.
Alan Boyle
MSNBCThu, 08 May 2008 14:49 UTC
Images from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter are providing an advance peek at what the
Phoenix Mars Lander will be running up against when it lands near the planet's north pole later this month: The spacecraft will be coming down in the middle of a spring thaw, and based on the
pictures released this week, there just might be some Martian mini-tornadoes swirling through the scene.
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| ©NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS
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Arrows highlight two dust devils whirling
across the landing area for the Phoenix
Mars Lander, as seen from above by the
Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Click on
the image for a larger version.
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Bacteria that cause the bubonic plague may be more virulent than their close relatives because of a single genetic mutation, according to research published in the May issue of the journal Microbiology.
"The plague bacterium Yersinia pestis needs calcium in order to grow at body temperature. When there is no calcium available, it produces a large amount of an amino acid called aspartic acid," said Professor Brubaker from the University of Chicago, USA. "We found that this is because Y. pestis is missing an important enzyme."
Bubonic plague has killed over 200 million people during the course of history and is thus the most devastating acute infectious disease known to man. Despite this, we are still uncertain about the molecular basis of its extraordinary virulence.
Comment: There is another take on what caused "Black Death", which is backed up by substantial evidence, considering serious problems with original explanations of the disease spreading rate.
From
New Light on the Black Death: The Cosmic Connection
[T]he Black Death, one of the most deadly pandemics in human history, said to have killed possibly two thirds of the entire population of Europe, not to mention millions all over the planet, probably wasn't Bubonic Plague but was rather Death By Comet(s)!
Oh yeah! That's far out, isn't it?
Maybe not. Baillie has the scientific evidence to support his theory and his evidence actually supports - and is supported by - what the people of the time were saying: earthquakes, comets, rains of death and fire, corrupted atmosphere, and death on a scale that is almost unimaginable.[...]
Baillie sums up the problem as follows:
The Black Death of 1347 was believed to be the third great outbreak of bubonic plague; a plague that is traditionally spread by rats and fleas. The previous instances were the Plague of Athens in 430 BC and the plague at the time of Justinian which arrived into Constantinople in AD 542. The Plague of Athens was described by Thucydides, while the Justinian plague was described by Procopius, among others. [...]
It is generally believed that the plague hit an already weakened population in Europe. [...]
At its most basic, the problem is with those rats and fleas. For the conventional wisdom to work there have to be hosts of infected rats and they have to be moving at alarming speed - you would almost have to imagine infected rats scuttling every onward (mostly northward) delivering, as they died, loads of infected fleas. The snags with this scenario are legion. For example, there are no descriptions of dead rats lying everywhere (this is explained by suggesting that either the rats were indoors, or people were so used to dead rats that they were not worth mentioning; though if they were indoors how did they travel so fast?) It did not seem to matter whether you were a rural shepherd or cleric or a town dweller, both were infected. Yet strangely with this very infectious disease some cities across Europe were spared. Moreover, these rats must have been happy to move to cool northern areas even though bubonic plague is a disease that requires relatively warm temperatures. Then, when there are water barriers, these rats board ships to keep the momentum going. (Baillie)
Comment: There is another take on what caused "Black Death", which is backed up by substantial evidence, considering serious problems with original explanations of the disease spreading rate.
From New Light on the Black Death: The Cosmic Connection
[T]he Black Death, one of the most deadly pandemics in human history, said to have killed possibly two thirds of the entire population of Europe, not to mention millions all over the planet, probably wasn't Bubonic Plague but was rather Death By Comet(s)!
Oh yeah! That's far out, isn't it?
Maybe not. Baillie has the scientific evidence to support his theory and his evidence actually supports - and is supported by - what the people of the time were saying: earthquakes, comets, rains of death and fire, corrupted atmosphere, and death on a scale that is almost unimaginable.[...]
Baillie sums up the problem as follows: