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Newspaper

US: Man Dies After Being Strangled by Pet Snake in Nebraska

Margery A Beck
The Associated Press
Thu, 10 Jun 2010 15:00 UTC
A suburban Omaha man has died after being strangled by his 9-foot, 25-pound pet boa constrictor, authorities said Thursday. Cory Byrne, 34, of Papillion died Wednesday night at a local hospital, just hours after police and paramedics pried the snake from around his neck, police said.

Byrne had been showing the snake to a friend when it wrapped around his shoulders and neck and squeezed, Sarpy County Attorney Lee Polikov said.

An officer was called to Byrne's apartment near downtown Papillion around 5:40 p.m. The officer found Byrne on the ground with the snake still around his neck.

Paramedics soon arrived and helped get the snake off Byrne and into a cage.
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Bug

Tiny Insect Brains Capable of Huge Feats


PhysOrg
Fri, 11 Jun 2010 10:00 UTC
Image
© Doekele StavengaA male hoverfly, Eristalis, attempting to woo a female (feeding from the flower) with his impressively controlled hovering flight.
Insects may have tiny brains the size of a pinhead, but the latest research from the University of Adelaide shows just how clever they really are.

For the first time, researchers from the University's Discipline of Physiology have worked out how insects judge the speed of moving objects.

It appears that insect brain cells have additional mechanisms which can calculate how to make a controlled landing on a flower or reach a food source. This ability only works in a natural setting.

In a paper published in the international journal Current Biology, lead author David O'Carroll says insects have well identified brain cells dedicated to analysing visual motion, which are very similar to humans.
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Binoculars

Dingoes, Like Wolves, Are Smarter Than Pet Dogs

Lin Edwards
PhysOrg
Fri, 11 Jun 2010 08:00 UTC
Image
© PhysOrgDingo
Studies in the past have shown that wolves are smarter than domesticated dogs when it comes to solving spatial problems, and now new research has shown that dingoes also solve the problems well.

The dingo is considered a "pure" prehistoric dog, which was brought to Australia tens of thousands of years ago by the Aborigines. While they have in the past been associated with humans, they have adapted to surviving "wild" in the Australian outback. The dingo lies somewhere between the wolf, its ancient ancestor, and the domestic or pet dog, and has cognitive differences between the two. There has been little research done on dingoes, even though studies would aid in the understanding of the evolution of dogs, and it was unknown whether the dingo was more "wolf-like" or "dog-like".

Researchers in South Australia have now subjected the Australian dingo (Canis dingo) to the classic "detour task," which has been used by previous researchers to assess the abilities of wolves (Canis lupus) and domestic dogs (Canis familiaris) to solve non-social, spatial problems.
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Cloud Lightning

US: Lightning Hits Teen Girl, Horse at Connecticut Farm

Ronald DeRosa
The Register Citizen
Fri, 11 Jun 2010 03:00 UTC
A teenage girl is apparently in fair condition Thursday afternoon after being struck by lightning while horseback riding at a Goshen farm.

The girl was riding a horse at Pie Hill Farm when she was struck during a thunderstorm that swept the region, and is reportedly "okay," said Marcy Grambo, owner of the 28-acre horseback riding and boarding facility.

"I received a text message from her mother that she's going to be fine," Grambo said. "I'm glad she's okay."

Grambo said the girl is a minor, and, as such, declined to give her name or state where she was from. She boards her horse at the farm, Grambo said.
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Cow Skull

Gulf Leak Estimate Now Closer To 1 Million Gallons Per Day: New Study

Joel Achenbach and Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post
Fri, 11 Jun 2010 08:31 UTC
Pick a number: 12,600 barrels . . . 20,000 . . . 21,500 . . . 25,000 . . . 30,000 . . . 40,000 . . . 50,000. Scientists put every one of those numbers in play Thursday as they struggled to come up with a solid estimate of how much oil is gushing each day from the black geyser at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico.

The one scientific certainty: It's a lot -- and more than some of the same scientists thought just a couple of weeks ago. It's so much that the crews trying to siphon it to the surface are going to need a bigger boat.

Early in the crisis, BP and the federal government repeatedly said that the Deepwater Horizon well was spewing about 5,000 barrels (210,000 gallons) a day into the gulf. But the new estimates, released Thursday by government-appointed scientists, show that the well most likely produces 5,000 barrels before breakfast.
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Bizarro Earth

Gulf Oil Spill 'Could Go Years' If Not Dealt With

F. William Engdahl
Financial Sense Editorials
Thu, 10 Jun 2010 08:14 UTC
The Obama Administration and senior BP officials are frantically working not to stop the world's worst oil disaster, but to hide the true extent of the actual ecological catastrophe. Senior researchers tell us that the BP drilling hit one of the oil migration channels and that the leakage could continue for years unless decisive steps are undertaken, something that seems far from the present strategy.

In a recent discussion, Vladimir Kutcherov, Professor at the Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden and the Russian State University of Oil and Gas, predicted that the present oil spill flooding the Gulf Coast shores of the United States "could go on for years and years ... many years." 1

According to Kutcherov, a leading specialist in the theory of abiogenic deep origin of petroleum, "What BP drilled into was what we call a 'migration channel,' a deep fault on which hydrocarbons generated in the depth of our planet migrate to the crust and are accumulated in rocks, something like Ghawar in Saudi Arabia."3 Ghawar, the world's most prolific oilfield has been producing millions of barrels daily for almost 70 years with no end in sight. According to the abiotic science, Ghawar like all elephant and giant oil and gas deposits all over the world, is located on a migration channel similar to that in the oil-rich Gulf of Mexico.
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Binoculars

Volcano Expert Warns of Another Icelandic Eruption

Emma Pryer
Express.co.uk
Fri, 11 Jun 2010 07:49 UTC
Image
© J. AleanAksja
A volcano expert warned yesterday that another Icelandic eruption could be imminent, raising the prospect of summer holiday flight chaos.

Dr Hazel Rymer has been monitoring a volcano called Askja 180 miles north of Eyjafjallajokull - the volcano that caused a complete shutdown of most of Europe's airspace in April.

She says it is showing increasing signs of seismic activity. Her team from the Open University in London and volunteers from environmental charity Earthwatch have noticed changes in the "plumbing system" beneath the mountain.

Dr Rymer said: "New magma is accumulating. This is what happens before an eruption, but a critical amount needs to accumulate and we cannot say what that is. We can't predict when an eruption will occur - it could be next week or next year."
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Cow Skull

New estimate: Up to 40,000 barrels a day was coming from BP well


CNN
Thu, 10 Jun 2010 22:56 UTC
Scientists now estimate the leaking BP oil well in the Gulf of Mexico was releasing 20,000 to 40,000 barrels -- or 840,000 to 1.7 million gallons -- per day through last week, the head of the U.S. Geological Survey said Thursday.

The scientists' previous estimate was 12,000 to 19,000 barrels per day.

The new estimate is of the well's flow rate prior to BP's cutting of the damaged riser pipe extending from the well's blowout preventer last week, U.S. Geological Survey Director Marcia McNutt said. After BP cut the riser on June 3, it placed a containment cap over the preventer's lower marine riser package to capture some of the leaking oil.
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Cloud Lightning

Oil Guru: The Real Nightmare Will Be When A Hurricane Picks Up The Oil And Paints The Gulf Coast Black

Joe Weisenthal
Business Insider
Mon, 07 Jun 2010 20:46 UTC
Don't watch this video of oil guru Matthew Simmons on Dylan Ratigan if you're in the US and you're about to go to sleep.

The Houston energy banker and author of Twilight in the Desert says we basically have two options: Let the well run dry (taking 30 years, and probably ruining the Atlantic ocean) or nuking the well. Barring those things, the best move would be to use supertankers to suck up as much oil as possible ahead of hurricane season, when the oil will be picked up, and will paint the Gulf Coast black. (via TheOilDrum)
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Umbrella

US: Heavy rains cause flooding in Marysville, Washington

Katya Yefimova and Debra Smith
HeraldNet
Thu, 10 Jun 2010 17:32 UTC
flooding
© Elizabeth Armstrong / The Herald

A powerful storm of rain and hail that struck parts of Snohomish County late Wednesday afternoon flooded buildings, clogged storm drains and slowed traffic.

In Marysville, water rose up to two feet in some areas, seriously damaging the Marysville Public Works Building on Columbia Avenue, city spokesman Doug Buell said.

Maintenance crews worked to clear water from major city intersections, as flooding disrupted traffic.

Dale Ticer, who lives above the Cedarcrest Golf Course, had to find another route home after crews closed 84th Street NE. He said he could see a stream of water rushing down the hill.

"It was just a flood of water pouring down," Ticer said.
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