Olgui

Last Tasmanian Tiger, Thylacine, 1933

From the page: "HELP RESCUE CAGED MOON BEARS

Please sign this petition to be sent to the Chinese, Vietnamese and Korean Governments

Thousands of Moon Bears across China and Vietnam are imprisoned in cages no bigger than their own bodies enduring the agony of different bile extraction methods."

[Please sign this petition] From the page: "SAVE SPANISH BEARS
Local government and a construction company are threatening the continued, precarious survival of the Cantabrian brown bear or Oso pardo Cantábrico (Ursus arctos arctos), already catalogued as in danger of extinction in Spain. An unsustainable project to build a ski resort in an important corridor of access for the last remaining bears in the region of San Glorio in the Cordillera Cantábrica mountains of N.Spain may be given approval. Relatively low altitude and regular windy conditions would ensure the need for water-draining, artificial snow machine use. The local population will not get rich on the occasional weekend of piste skiing a year whilst destroying habitat of bear, capercaillie, marsh fritillary and apollo butterflies, among others of the area's natural wildlife and beauty - it's main attraction."

Monster Storm Eye on Saturn
From the page: NASA's Cassini spacecraft has seen something never before seen on another planet -- a hurricane-like storm at Saturn's south pole with a well-developed eye, ringed by towering clouds.
The "hurricane" spans a dark area inside a thick, brighter ring of clouds. It is approximately 8,000 kilometers (5,000 miles) across, or two thirds the diameter of Earth.

Image right: A swirling hurricane-like vortex at Saturn's south pole, where the vertical structure of the clouds is highlighted by shadows.
Image credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Image left: A view of the hurricane-like vortex from a different wavelength.
Image credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute/University of Arizona

Giant Snails invasion in Barbados


From the page: "A breed of giant, ravenous snails that first appeared in Barbados five years ago has thrived on the tropical island, destroying crops and prompting calls for the government to eliminate the slimy pests".

"The snails, which are about the size of a human hand, are known to consume as many as 500 different plants and their mucous can transmit meningitis and other diseases." :(

Thanks to Gracious ^_^
Photo thanks to wildlifeactiongroup

Mercury Transit the Sun on November 8
(Live webcast)


From the page: On November 8, 2006, Mercury will slowly slide across the face of the sun during an event known as a transit. A transit of Mercury is relatively rare--there are only about a dozen in a century.

The Exploratorium's Live@ crew will be at the Kitt Peak National Observatory, and, with the Kitt Peak staff, will Webcast the transit: a live five-hour telescope-only feed beginning at 11:00 am PST.

The transit will take place from 11:12 a.m. PST until 4:10 p.m. PST and will be visible from the Pacific, the Americas, eastern Asia, Australia, and New Zealand, although some locations will not be able to see the entire transit. Because of Mercury's diminutive size, the transit cannot be seen with the unaided eye, but it can be viewed with a telescope (with the proper filter) or with a homemade optical projector

Image © Exploratorium, The museum of science, art and human perception
(Palace of Fine Arts, San Francisco)

Viral fossil resurrected
From the page: In a controversial study, researchers have resurrected a retrovirus that infected our ancestors millions of years ago and now sits frozen in the human genome. Published online by Genome Research this week, the study may shed new light on the history of these genomic intruders, as well as their role in tumors. Although this particular virus, dubbed Phoenix, is a wimpy one, some argue that resuscitating any ancient virus is inherently risky and that the study should have undergone stricter reviews.

Retroviruses have the ability to make DNA copies of their RNA genomes and incorporate these into the host's genome. If this happens in a germ cell, the copy can be passed on to future generations. Indeed, the human genome is littered with the remnants of such human endogenous retroviruses (HERVs). So far, researchers had been unable to recover a complete, functional HERV from a human genome however; part of the reason, they assumed, was that mutations accumulated over the millennia had rendered such viruses dysfunctional.

image: Electron microscopy pictures show how the Phoenix virus, when infecting human cells, forms particles at the cell membrane.

Credit: Dewannieux et al., Genome Research

More Than 100 New Species Discovered In Hawaiian Islands
From the page: A three-week scientific expedition to French Frigate Shoals in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Marine National Monument returned to Honolulu on Sunday with the discovery of many new species and a better understanding of marine biodiversity in the Hawaiian Archipelago.

An all-star team of world-renowned taxonomists (biologists specializing in identifying and naming organisms) and an experienced support crew collected and photographed many species that they cannot identify and are thought to be new species to science. The expedition found several potentially new species of crabs, corals, sea cucumbers, sea squirts, worms, sea stars, snails, and clams. Many other species were found that are known from other areas but have never been recorded from French Frigate Shoals, the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, or even the Hawaiian Archipelago. From this expedition, well over a hundred new species records will likely be identified for French Frigate Shoals.

Image: This crab was collected during a three-week expedition to the Northwestern Hawaiian Island National Monument. (Credit: Joel Martin, NHMLAC, NOAA)