HUMMINGBIRDS - AMAZING PHOTOS
submitted by Dave Knorr
This is something I have never
seen before, or ever even heard of. This lady lives in a
Hummingbird fly zone. As they migrated, about 20 of them were in
her yard. Just for a lark, she took a little red dish and
filled it with sugar water and this
is the result.
After 250 Years of Classifying Life,
90 Percent
Remains Unknown
11/13/07 Live Science:
Most people can tell the
difference between some types of
berries, or bugs or trees, but
much of the planet's life
remains unnamed and unseen.
"We live, in short, on a
little-known planet. When
dealing with the living world,
we are flying mostly blind,"
Wilson said. "When we try to
diagnose the health of an
ecosystem, such as a lake or a
forest, in order to save and
stabilize it we are in the
position of a doctor trying to
treat a patient, knowing only 10
percent of organs."
http://www.livescience.com/history/
Aquatic Insect Bling
Caddis fly larvae usually form manufacturing sheaths by spinning
silk with sand, minerals, plant particles, and bits of bone they
find in their aquatic environments. French artist Hubert Duprat
collects the larvae, carefully strips their shells, and then puts
them in aquaria filled with stuff like pearls, rubies, gold, and
diamonds. The larvae make new coverings out of these materials.
http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/25/duprat.php
NASA's Return to the Moon Trailer
To
promote NASA's plan to return to the
moon, the space agency created a dramatic short video
that plays just like the trailer for a Hollywood sci-fi blockbuster.
The comet is exploding and its coma, a cloud of gas
and dust illuminated by the sun, has grown to be bigger
than the planet Jupiter. The comet lacks the tail
usually associated with such celestial bodies but can be
seen in the northern sky, in the constellation Perseus,
as a fuzzy spot of light about as bright as the stars in
the Big Dipper.
The alarm was first
sounded last autumn, but has now hit half of all American states.
The West Coast is thought to have lost 60 per cent of its commercial
bee population, with 70 per cent missing on the East Coast.
CCD
has since spread to Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, Italy and
Greece. And last week John Chapple, one of London's biggest
bee-keepers, announced that 23 of his 40 hives have been abruptly
abandoned.
Other apiarists have
recorded losses in Scotland, Wales and north-west England, but the
Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs insisted:
"There is absolutely no evidence of
CCDin the UK."
The implications of the spread are alarming. Most of the world's
crops depend on pollination by bees. Albert Einstein once said that
if the bees disappeared, "man would have only four years of life
left".
