In The News

[Stu Jackson]

Originally Posted by senormechanico

Friday Harbor has one of those phones for checking back in from Canada.

You pick it up and it says "Enter your passport number" or some such.

The DAMN PHONE HAS NO KEYPAD!!

Nobody showed up in a half hour as we got beaten against the dock from all manner of powerboats and ferries. Repeated calls got nothing.
I finally left a rather corrosive message and left.
Nothing happened.

Go to Roche instead. Much nicer, no surge on the dock. If off-season, then wait a whole 15 minutes for an officer to drive over from Friday Harbor. They're very friendly. Why? They get to get out of the office!

[Stu Jackson]

Originally Posted by GordMay

Petition calls for Montana to be sold to Canada
Ian Hammond needs your help with “Christian moms against private education: Sell Montana to Canada for $1 Trillion to eliminate the national debt”.
☞ https://www.change.org/p/christian-m...-national-debt

☞ https://www.thespec.com/news-story/9...national-debt/

Gee, like selling a boat, it takes two parties to agree, doesn't it?

[TrentePieds]

It'll never happen - they'd have to PAY US to take it ;-0)!

TP

[GordMay]

More stuff I didn't know:
Researchers have coined a new scientific term that means “excrement examined experimentally,” or, in simpler terms, the study of poop: “in fimo”.
Why, you might ask, do we need a scientifically accurate term based in Latin for the study of poop?
The answer is quite simple: because so many scientific words are based in Latin and there hasn’t been one for the experimental study of excrement, even though the scientific study of human waste is now at the forefront of biomedical research ...
... They’re quite aware of the whimsical nature of this (naming) work. Therefore, just as some scientists have fun with their naming of model organisms—such as “Dumpy” for a mutant model of the classic worm C. elegans—Bhatt and colleagues have devised a playful term for the active enzymes they extract from their in fimo samples: “poopernatant”.

☞ In Fimo: Finally a Name for the Experimental Examination of Excrement — News Room - UNC Health Care

Their proposal appears in the journal Gastroenterology.
☞ https://www.gastrojournal.org/articl...ame-1986742%2F

[GordMay]

How cold is it on Mars?
Starting Tuesday, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory is posting the high and low temperatures on Mars online, along with wind speed and atmospheric pressure from the InSight lander. To give you a rough idea of what it's registered already, on Sunday Feb 17/19 (its most recent date available) InSight recorded a high of -17° C and a low of -95° C (Hi 2° F, Low -138° F).
MARS Daily Weather Report ☞ https://mars.nasa.gov/insight/weather/

[GordMay]

Lab-grown steak could be worse for climate than flatulent cattle.
But cultured meat could be greener, if grown in an energy-efficient way, study* finds
☞ https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/c...mate-1.5026057

“Climate Impacts of Cultured Meat and Beef Cattle”
by John Lynch and Raymond Pierrehumbert
* ☞ https://www.frontiersin.org/articles...019.00005/full

[GordMay]

Great White Shark Genome Decoded
Huge Genome Reveals Sequence Adaptations in Key Wound Healing and Genome Stability Genes Tied to Cancer Protection
☞ https://nsunews.nova.edu/great-white...enome-decoded/
☞ https://phys.org/news/2019-02-great-...e-decoded.html

“White shark genome reveals ancient elasmobranch adaptations associated with wound healing and the maintenance of genome stability”
☞ https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2.../13/1819778116

[GordMay]

World's biggest bee spotted alive for the first time since 1981
Wallace's giant bee, walnut-sized, with a massive jaw and impressive wingspan, known by the scientific name Megachile pluto, is the world's largest bee species; and now we know it actually still exists.
Prior to that, there had only been two scientific reports of the species. The first was from Alfred Russell Wallace, the bee's namesake and an entomologist who independently developed the theory of evolution by natural selection at the same time as Charles Darwin. The second sighting was by American entomologist Adam C. Messer in 1981, who found six nests in the same group of Indonesian islands.
☞ https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/w...-bee-1.4673474

[senormechanico]

Originally Posted by Stu Jackson

Go to Roche instead. Much nicer, no surge on the dock. If off-season, then wait a whole 15 minutes for an officer to drive over from Friday Harbor. They're very friendly. Why? They get to get out of the office!

We usually do just that, the currents were absolutely huge and were the deciding factor.

[GordMay]

19: The True Story of the Yarnell Hill Fire
On the morning of June 30, 2013, all 20 members of Prescott, Arizona's Granite Mountain Hotshots headed into the mountains to protect the small town of Yarnell from an advancing blaze. Later that day, every man but one was dead. Through interviews with family, colleagues, and the lone survivor, a former hotshot pieces together their final hours—and the fatal choices ...
☞ https://www.outsideonline.com/192642...nell-hill-fire

Granite Mountain Hotshots: An untold story from the day 19 firefighters died
Just 600 yards away, a couple watched the fire from the relative safety of their ranch. Another 10 minutes, and the firefighters might have made it there, they say.
☞ https://www.azcentral.com/story/news...ite/674512002/

[GordMay]

Crabs that have a normal diet of plankton have been seen munching on methane-filled bacteria off British Columbia's coast, in what experts say could be their way of adapting to climate change.
Researchers with Ocean Networks Canada, an initiative of the University of Victoria and Oregon State University, discovered the snow crabs (Tanner crabs, or Chionoecetes tanneri) using other food sources, because their main meal may be disappearing with a warmer climate.
“Methane-snacking crabs suggest hedge against climate change” ~ Uvic Press Release
➥ https://www.uvic.ca/news/media/2019+...+media-release

“Flipping for Food: The Use of a Methane Seep by Tanner Crabs (Chionoecetes tanneri)” ~ by Sarah Seabrook et al.
➥ https://www.frontiersin.org/articles...019.00043/full

[GordMay]

“Top 10 Design Flaws in the Human Body” ~ By Chip Rowe
“From our knees to our eyeballs, our bodies are full of hack solutions.
The Greeks were obsessed with the mathematically perfect body. But unfortunately for anyone chasing that ideal, we were designed not by Pygmalion, the mythical sculptor who carved a flawless woman, but by MacGyver. Evolution constructed our bodies with the biological equivalent of duct tape and lumber scraps. And the only way to refine the form (short of an asteroid strike or nuclear detonation to wipe clean the slate) is to jerry-rig the current model. “Evolution doesn’t produce perfection,” explains Alan Mann, a physical anthropologist at Princeton University. “It produces function.”
With that in mind, I surveyed anatomists and biologists to compile a punch list for the human body, just as you’d do before buying a house. Get out your checkbook. This one’s a fixer-upper.
1. An unsound spine
Problem: Our spines are a mess. It’s a wonder we can even walk, says Bruce Latimer, director of the Center for Human Origins at Case Western Reserve University, in Cleveland. When our ancestors walked on all fours, their spines arched, like a bow, to withstand the weight of the organs suspended below. But then we stood up. That threw the system out of whack by 90 degrees, and the spine was forced to become a column. Next, to allow for bipedalism, it curved forward at the lower back. And to keep the head in balance—so that we didn’t all walk around as if doing the limbo—the upper spine curved in the opposite direction. This change put tremendous pressure on the lower vertebrae, sticking about 80 percent of adults, according to one estimate, with lower back pain.
Fix: Go back to the arch. “Think of your dog,” Latimer says. “From the sacrum to the neck, it’s a single bow curve. That’s a great system.” Simple. Strong. Pain-free. There’s only one catch: To keep the weight of our heads from pitching us forward, we’d need to return to all fours ...”
More ➥ https://getpocket.com/explore/item/t...the-human-body

[StuM]

Originally Posted by GordMay

Crabs that have a normal diet of plankton have been seen munching on methane-filled bacteria off British Columbia's coast, in what experts say could be their way of adapting to climate change.
Researchers with Ocean Networks Canada, an initiative of the University of Victoria and Oregon State University, discovered the snow crabs (Tanner crabs, or Chionoecetes tanneri) using other food sources, because their main meal may be disappearing with a warmer climate.
“Methane-snacking crabs suggest hedge against climate change” ~ Uvic Press Release
➥ https://www.uvic.ca/news/media/2019+...+media-release

“Flipping for Food: The Use of a Methane Seep by Tanner Crabs (Chionoecetes tanneri)” ~ by Sarah Seabrook et al.
➥ https://www.frontiersin.org/articles...019.00043/full

Interesting article with the usual "climate change tag" misrepresented.


Nowhere does it say that this is a change in diet. It just identifies a previously unrecognised food source for the crabs which they have probably been using for as long as crabs and seeps have existed



The paper doesn't say "because their main meal may be disappearing". The paper's obligatory climate reference is:


"Climate change is predicted to reduce the total input of photosynthetic production to the deep sea, with direct impacts on the biomass of deep-sea fauna"

The first paragrah of the second link is a classic mis-representation to popularise the paper by stressing that little climate change quote in the summary.


"Tanner crabs observed feasting at a bubbling methane seep on the deep seafloor in the northeast Pacific Ocean may be developing a way to adapt to climate change, says a marine ecologist "



No, they may have always had that food source.

[GordMay]

Like most scientists, the authors seem to accept that climate warming is an established fact.
You’re welcome to disagree.
However, it’s irrelevant to their “discovery” of the, previously unknown, Tanner Crab’s ability to use methane as a food source.
Whether the crabs did it in response to climate change, or not, the author’s observation that:

... the ability for non-seep organisms to use chemosynthetic production as a trophic subsidy could have implications as we seek to spatially manage ecosystems in a way that promotes sustainable and productive ocean environments. This study provides the first evidence of seep derived food sources contributing to the diet of commercially exploited non-seep species, highlighting the potential importance of these environments for providing a provisioning ecosystem service...
... While we may still debate whether seeps act as oases in the deep, this study makes it clear that certain lines of evidence could under-represent the role of seeps and highlights the potential for seeps to act as critical oases to non-seep endemic fauna in the future...

remain new knowledge, with a possibly welcome implication.

[GordMay]

“Donald Trump Shot”
A Minnesota sheriff says a dog named Donald Trump wasn’t shot and killed over a political rivalry, despite false claims circulating on social media that have spurred “violent threats” against some county residents.
The Jackson County Sheriff’s Office concluded the person who shot Donald Trump the dog Sunday was “legally protecting their livestock” on private property. The shooter has not been identified.
More ➥ https://torontosun.com/news/weird/do...8-ba0690fb2a92

My apologies to, both, those who were dismayed & distressed at the title, and to those who were disappointed in the body of the report.