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Blue Planet

Scaly-foot gastropods: the iron-armored snails of the Indian Ocean

Alexandru Micu
ZME Science
Thu, 27 Aug 2015 19:03 UTC
iron snail deep sea vents
© hs.fi
Chrysomallon squamiferum, the iron snail. It even has a "mail skirt" covering its foot.
The Iron Snail lives on volcanic vents, two miles under the sea, all thanks to its spectacular armor

It's hard to believe anything can be alive thousands of feet below the Indian Ocean where thermal vents effectively boil the water. Yet even in the most inhospitable conditions, life has a way of creeping in. Such is the case of chrysomallon squamiferum, a snail-like creature which may very well sport the best armor in the animal kingdom.

Better known as the scaly-foot gastropod, the C. squamiferum is a species of deep-sea, hydrothermal-vent snail. It only lives in the deep-sea hydrothermal vents of Indian Ocean, from around 2,400 metres (1.5 mi) to 2,800 metres (1.7 mi) deep. The first scaly-foot gastropods were found at the Kairei hydrothermal vent field on the Central Indian Ridge in 2001, living on the bases of black smokers. These are places on the bottom of the sea where tectonic plates move apart from each other, allowing magma to heat and cause water to boil, that have risen to form a chimney-like structure.

Subsequent specimens were found just north of the Rodrigues Triple Point, in Solitaire field off the coast of Mauritius in the Central Indian Ridge and Longqi (aka. Dragon) field, southwest of the Indian Ridge.
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Ladybug

In biology, incredible Intelligent Designs that amaze, amuse, and entertain


Evolution News
Mon, 11 May 2020 05:24 UTC
A flea beetle
© Beatriz Moisset / CC BY-SA.
A flea beetle
A parade of amazing designs from the living world has passed through these pages over the years, and it shows no sign of stopping. Here are some entertaining examples from recent news.

Jump Like a Flea, Beetle

Flea beetles, or Alticini, are high-jump champions among the coleopterans (beetles) in the insect world. There are some 9,900 species of flea beetles, a "hyper-diverse group" that inhabits environments from deserts to rainforests all over the world. The Pensoft blog shows a picture of one, saying, "Exceptional catapulting jump mechanism in a tiny beetle could be applied in robotic limbs."
The fascinating and highly efficient jumping mechanism in flea beetles is described in a new research article in the open-access journal Zookeys. Despite having been known since 1929, the explosive jump — which is also the reason behind the colloquial name of this group of leaf beetles — has so far not been fully understood. [Emphasis added.]

Comment: And we're somehow meant to believe (by the neo-Darwinsists) that all these ingenious and higly advanced biological-technological designs found in nature somehow formed as a result of "random mutation" or happy accidents that came of a need to fulfill an ability?! What a load of huey!

If scientists are doing so much work in just trying to understand and replicate the mechanisms listed in the above article, wouldn't it then make sense that some higher form of intelligence had a hand in creating the 'blueprint' for these abilities - and somehow introducing these forms and capabilities into the environment? The probablity being literally astronomical that what we're seeing just formed "on its own".

Watch this entertaining scientist explain the probabilty involved:



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Magnify

Many published psychology experiments lack evidence of validity, study finds

Virginia Commonwealth University
Science Daily
Thu, 30 Apr 2020 00:00 UTC
lack evidence
An examination of nearly 350 published psychological experiments found that nearly half failed to show that they were based on a valid foundation of empirical evidence, suggesting that a wide swath of psychological science is based on an "untested foundation."

The study -- conducted by David Chester, Ph.D., a psychology professor at Virginia Commonwealth University, and Emily Lasko, a psychology doctoral student at VCU -- focuses on the practice of experimental manipulations, in which psychologists induce specific mental states, such as giving research participants insulting or complementary feedback to manipulate how angry they feel.

To conduct these experimental manipulations in a scientifically valid way, researchers must first establish whether their manipulations actually affect the intended psychological variable (for example: make people feel angry) and not other closely related variables (for example: make people feel sad). However, the extent to which psychologists actually examine the validity of their manipulations remains unknown.

Chester and Lasko investigated 348 psychological manipulations included in peer-reviewed studies. They found that roughly 42% of the experiments were paired with no validity evidence, and that the remaining psychological manipulations were validated in ways that were extremely limited.
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Blue Planet

Mass death of elephant sized sloths poses murkey mystery

Jeanne Timmons
Gizmodo
Sat, 09 May 2020 19:45 UTC
La Brea Tar Pits
© Martin Tomasz
Students make protective plaster wrappings for asphalt-preserved giant sloth bones at the Tanque Loma tar pit locality in southwestern Ecuador.
Death might have taken weeks; it might have been days. But when it struck, it struck ruthlessly.

Some 20,000 years later, the fossils of these enormous creatures would be found by chance. Many of the bones were disarticulated and had the type of gouges paleontologists would interpret as traces of trampling by other creatures after they had died. Something catastrophic caused 22 giant ground sloths — many the size of modern elephants — to perish at the same time and in the same place. In a paper published this month, researchers describe what they think led to the sloths' demise.

The remains of these giant ground sloths — as well as those of an ancient horse, deer, pampathere, and gomphothere — were found in the Santa Elena Peninsula in Ecuador. Fifteen of the giant ground sloths were adults; the rest were subadults and juveniles, a couple of them so tiny that they might have been newborns or even fetuses.

Comment: There is another theory that, even if it may not explain the demise of the sloths investigated above, it may explain the sudden and near total extinction of our planet's megafauna; see Pierre Lescaudron's Volcanoes, Earthquakes And The 3,600 Year Comet Cycle for details.

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Evil Rays

The brave new world of Bill Gates and Big Telecom

Robert F. Kennedy
Children's Health Defense
Fri, 08 May 2020 00:01 UTC
5G surveillance
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. wrote last week about Malibu police's ticketing Point Dume surfers $1,000 apiece for using the ocean during the quarantine. Was this merely an appalling police judgment at which we will laugh post-quarantine? Or does anyone else feel that this is the first wave of compliance and obedience training for something more permanent? Are powerful state and corporate entities using the current crisis to remove basic rights, and intensify pressures to promote vaccines and surveillance? Does anyone else feel the suffocating darkness of tyranny descending on our nation? And finally, does anyone share my dread that Bill Gates — and his long-time associate Tony Fauci — will somehow be running our Brave New World?

Imagine a world where the government doesn't need police officers to apprehend those surfers or ticket you when you violate social distancing with your girlfriend. Suppose that computers discover your beach trip by tracking your movements using a stream of information from your cell phone, your car, your GPS, facial recognition technology integrated with real-time surveillance from satellites, mounted cameras, and implanted chips. Desk-bound prosecutors or robots will notify you of your violation by text while simultaneously withdrawing your $1,000 penalty in cryptocurrency from your payroll account. Welcome to Bill Gates' America. It's right around the corner.

Comment: See also:

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Blue Planet

Microorganisms in parched regions extract needed water from colonized rocks

University of California, Irvine
Phys.org
Mon, 04 May 2020 12:00 UTC
Microorganisms
© David Kisailus / UCI
Microorganisms in green colonize gypsum rock to extract water from it. Johns Hopkins and UCI researchers ran lab experiments to understand the mechanisms of survival for these cynanobacteria, confirming that they transform the material they occupy to an anhydrous state.
In Northern Chile's Atacama Desert, one of the driest places on Earth, microorganisms are able to eke out an existence by extracting water from the very rocks they colonize.

Through work in the field and laboratory experiments, researchers at the University of California, Irvine, as well as Johns Hopkins University and UC Riverside, gained an in-depth understanding of the mechanisms by which some cyanobacteria survive in harsh surroundings.

The new insights, published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, demonstrate how life can flourish in places without much water in evidence — such as Mars — and how people living in arid regions may someday derive hydration from available minerals.

Comment: See also: And check out SOTT radio's:

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Cassiopaea

Electrical activity in living organisms mirrors electrical fields in atmosphere

Tel Aviv University
Phys.org
Tue, 05 May 2020 12:00 UTC
lightning
© CC0 Public Domain
Most electrical activity in vertebrates and invertebrates occurs at extremely low frequencies, and the origin — and medical potential — of these frequencies have eluded scientists. Now a Tel Aviv University study provides evidence for a direct link between electrical fields in the atmosphere and those found in living organisms, including humans.

The study's findings may change established notions about electrical activity in living organisms, paving the way for revolutionary, new medical treatments. Illnesses such as epilepsy and Parkinson's are related to abnormalities in the electrical activity of the body.

"We show that the electrical activity in many living organisms — from zooplankton in the oceans, to sharks and even in our brains — is very similar to the electrical fields we measure and study in the atmosphere from global lightning activity," explains Prof. Colin Price of TAU's Porter School of the Environment and Earth Sciences, who led the research for the study, published in the International Journal of Biometeorology on February 8.

Comment: See also: The Body Electric: Ancient wisdom, Modern science

And check out SOTT radio's:

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Galaxy

A mystery solved? Fast Radio Burst detected within Milky Way

Andy Briggs
Earthsky
Mon, 04 May 2020 06:56 UTC
Artist’s concept of an eruption on a magnetar. The Fast Radio Burst detected in our galaxy may be associated with these sorts of eruptions.
© NASA Goddard Visualization Studio.
Artist’s concept of an eruption on a magnetar. The Fast Radio Burst detected in our galaxy may be associated with these sorts of eruptions.
Fast Radio Bursts are very mysterious bursts of radio waves - perhaps just a thousandth of a second long - coming from all over the sky. This new discovery of one in our own galaxy is a stunner!

Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) are short, intense bursts of radio waves lasting perhaps a thousandth of a second, coming from all over the sky and of unknown origin. In a shock discovery that could help to solve one of astronomy's greatest mysteries - on April 28, 2020 - astronomers used an Astronomer's Telegram to announce a Fast Radio Burst originating from inside our Milky Way galaxy. That's a first. All other FRBs have been extragalactic, that is to say outside our galaxy. Even more importantly, the astronomers think they've also identified the source of the burst.

Explanations have ranged from neutron stars to supernovae to the inevitable aliens.
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Bad Guys

Darwinism, Totalitarianism, and the Lockdown

Michael Egnor
Evolution News
Thu, 07 May 2020 16:21 UTC
hannah arendt
© Loslazos / CC BY-SA
Hannah Arendt died in 1975 and was buried on the campus of Bard College
As we live through the coronavirus lockdown, some surprisingly diverse sources — from The New Yorker to Tucker Carlson — have begun referring their audiences to an alarming word: "totalitarianism." In this context, journalist and activist Masha Gessen, writing in The New Yorker, recommends the work of Hannah Arendt, for her "complicated and precise descriptions of isolation, solitude, and loneliness." The reference is apt, and worth exploring, not least because of Arendt's insights linking totalitarian ideology with Darwinism.

Hannah Arendt was the leading philosopher of totalitarianism in the 20th century. Her writing, especially The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), is always interesting and relevant, and her insights into totalitarianism are chillingly accurate. She explicitly links totalitarian ideology to Darwinism — naming Darwin often as a cornerstone of modern totalitarianism. She distinguishes between different forms of government, as a function of the set of predicates by which a nation is governed. Some governments rule by deontological rules — theocracies that use the Ten Commandments, etc. Some rule by positive law — written laws established by legislation. Some rule by tyranny — the arbitrary rule by the opinions of one or a few individuals. Each of these has its advantages and disadvantages.

Comment: See also:

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Jupiter

Beautiful high-res images of Jupiter reveal secrets of its wild storms

Michelle Starr
Science Alert
Fri, 08 May 2020 16:53 UTC
jupiter weather
© International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA M.H. Wong & team/Mahdi Zamani
Jupiter in the infrared spectrum
Jupiter is not a serene place. The giant planet is wracked with tempestuous storms, wide bands of roiling cloud that encircle the entire globe, extending to depths many times thicker than the atmospheric distance between Earth and space.

The gas giant's wild weather is so different from what happens on Earth that astronomers have struggled to understand it. But we just got another piece of the puzzle - in the form of breathtaking, near-infrared and optical images, taken using the powerful Gemini Observatory and Hubble Space Telescope.

The Gemini near-infrared images capture thermal radiation glowing through the clouds from Jupiter's interior. When combined with Hubble's optical images taken within hours of the Gemini ones, scientists can piece together the internal and external activity.

The high-resolution images reveal that regions of cloud that appear darker in optical images actually glow the most brightly in infrared, indicating those regions have little to no cloud compared to the lighter bands.
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