inkycircus

Bird brained

WHERE THE HELL AM I? WHO MOVED MY COUNTRY? (PHOTO: WILDTHING)
This website has been a bit feathery lately, in the past week alone we've had lost albatrosses and hovering vultures, and now we've got a disorientated Magellanic penguin. This little creature managed to get impressively lost while on the prowl for snacks, wandering over 3000 miles too far north from his home in Chile and beaching up in Peru. Peruvian conservationists fear that the new arrival will be scorned by the local Humboldt penguin population, adding discrimination to his list of woes (which include an injured wing and entirely understandable disorientation). So once said penguin has rested and healed, the plan is to return him to his home forthwith.

Via Yahoo! News.

Beware: low-flying vultures ahead

IS THAT A TASTY ROTTING CORPSE I SEE? YUMMY. (PHOTO: BUGDOG)
How often have you had your plans shelved by the threat of low-flying vultures? Most likely, not all that often. Unless you're fond of building crime-scene simulation body farms which most of us probably don't do all that much. The farms provide an environment where decomposition of dead bodies can be studied by forensic scientists. But Texas State University have had to put their plans to make a body farm on hold, after a local airport claimed the vultures attracted by the cadavers would endanger the aircraft. Suprisingly enough, people living nearby weren't all that happy with the idea of body farm either. Rotting corpses wouldn't exactly enhance the neighbourhood or raise the value of your property. Mark Hendricks, a university spokesman had this to say "There's a lot of people who don't want it their backyard, and that's certainly understandable, it's a controversial project, there's no doubt about it."

Lonely, I am so lonely...

Everybody knows that dating is difficult. Even in a city teeming with millions of people it can seem like the biggest task in the world to find one you actually want to go out with. But at least there are plenty of fish in the sea, all you have to do is catch one. Not so for Albert the lonely Albatross. Blown off course in 1967, poor Albert has been looking for a lady friend for nearly 40 years. Albatrosses live for up to 70 years so it's not too late yet, but if he doesn't find a mate soon then the nearby gannets will be in trouble. In desperation, poor Albert has been seen cosying up to these birds, despite them being significantly smaller than him. Sadly he's likely to die alone, as all the likely love candidates are where he's supposed to be, 8,000 away in Argentina. Unless anyone knows of another Albatross in the Outer Hebrides that is...

Squashed tomatoes and stew

Today is Sir David Attenborough's 81st birthday. There was a fair bit of fuss and fanfare last year when he turned 80, including a Radio 4 programme, and a vote on the nation's favourite Attenborough moment (the winner was the delicious lyrebird clip in case you're wondering). No fuss this year, probably just a lot of cake and maybe even a nice cup of tea. Happy Birthday Sir David.

How to pick a headline

In today's list of 'Most Popular' stories on BBC News (as you will see from the screenshot above) is a story with the headline "Star dies in monstrous explosion". When I first noticed it, my mind immediately jumped to an entirely understandable (I feel) conclusion. Despite my interest in all things science, as I clicked on the link to read more, I was already speculating as to which famous person had died, and what had happened to them. Was it an actor? A singer? Some other flavour of celebrity? And how bad was the accident that the explosion would be described as monstrous? But once the page had loaded, I don't mind admitting that my first feeling was of deflation. No tragic Hollywood death today. Just a boring old star exploding to make a supernova. But once I was there, I decided to stay around to read about the explosion of SN 2006gy, the biggest supernovae ever. And about the star in the Milky Way called Eta Carinae that could at some point explode too, creating a truly spectacular light show. If it were to go bang, "it would be so bright that you would see it during the day, and you could even read a book by its light at night". So whatever my motives in clicking on that link, I'm glad I did. Which reiterates the key importance of a catchy (and maybe even slightly ambiguous) headline for any news story.

(PS - I console myself by thinking that it's reasonably unlikely I was the only person to make this mistake. Even though space and star stories always catch the attention, they aren't usually quite so high up in the most popular list...)

The sound of silence

If you live in a big city like London, you have to get reasonably good at ignoring sound. I usually don't realise how loud my city is at night until I go somewhere that's extremely quiet, and I only notice when I can't sleep because it's too quiet. To truly keep out the sounds of the night in a city, you need to double or even triple glaze your window, which is fine really, it's not so expensive and it doesn't look that bad. But if the team from the Fraunhofer Institute for Structural Durability and System Reliability LBF in Darmstadt, Germany , could figure out a way to make their noise canceling window device commercially viable, they could have a huge city rat client base on their hands. The device is a piezoelectric patch which detects sound-generated vibration and then vibrates at a phase that cancels out the sound. Before I can get my silent night, though, the team need to make the patch transparent, minimize the cost of maintenance, and boost the effectiveness of the patch against intermittent noises - which could take a while. Good job I've just invested in some ear plugs.

ABC News Australia. (PHOTO: LOCOSTORM)

Toad's eye view

OH YEAH, I'VE SEEN SOME THINGS. (PHOTO: KS)
We humans think we're really brainy and intelligent, but animals have a nasty habit of upstaging us. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology were dead proud of themselves for being clever and doing a sonar scan of Loch Ness, and what did they find? No Nessie (yet), but a common toad, pootling about on the bottom of the Loch. 98 metres down. MIT said "it did not expect to come across the amphibian so far down". I'll bet they didn't -  that's quite the deep toad. I bet he could tell you a thing or two about the mysterious Loch Ness monsters...

What's in a name? A lot apparently.

SEE WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU CALL YOUR DAUGHTER ANNA? FLAKY.
A newborn baby girl represents a whole world of potential. Will she grow up to be a rocket scientist? A nail technician? A doctor? A trophy wife? Who knows. But a new study shows that the name you choose to bestow on your daughter could affect her choice of career and whether or not she'll follow the path of enlightenment to a career in science.

If you give her a daft name she'll obviously suffer years of playground taunting and CV angst. Says the author of the study Professor Figlio "If you want to give your child a name that connotes low status, then you need to be aware of the consequences." Indeed. But it goes further than that. Give her a fluffy girly name and she's less likely to go into brainy subjects like science. Whether that's because she views herself as a ditzy dink or because everyone else thinks she's a flake because of her name isn't clear. Either way, a flaky name is a Bad Thing. Professor Figlio has even drawn up a list of names he thinks are the biggest obstacles to a young girls career because of their silly soppy femininity. Sarah. Emma. Anna. Nuff said.

Original story in the Daily Mail.

Stephen Hawking is lucky

Steven Hawking got to go on a free flight in the vomit comet last week, and got to experience zero gravity for around about 4 minutes. Zero Gravity, the company that runs the plane trips that let you be weightless, waived their $3750 fee, and let paralysed Professor Hawking float free of his wheelchair and see what it would be like to go up in space. I have to say that I'm quite jealous. But also quite interested to note that it's so (relatively) cheap to experience zero-g. Might have to save up for that someday.

Via BBC News. Photo entitled "Stephen Hawking in the wine section" by Kevin has a camera.

Stop it with the formulas

Another day, another 'science' formula. Sigh. Wrapping your discovery about "cellular structures comprising networks of gas-filled bubbles separated by liquid" under the heading of 'scientists discover formula that predicts how the head on a pint of beer after pouring' is lame. I've said it before and I'll say it again. Enough with the formulas. The formula for the best bacon sandwich just the other day, the formula for the best Christmas cracker, the formula for the best football commentator voice, the formula for a perfect marriage, the formula for the perfect sand castle, even the formula for the perfect formula. It's madness I tell you.