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Tuesday, December 27, 2011
South Florida man killed cross train tracks
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- South Florida authorities are investigating the death of a man who was struck by a commuter train while he was crossing the tracks.
Fort Lauderdale Police say the man was attempting to cross the CSX railroad tracks early Monday when he was struck by a southbound Tri Rail commuter train.
The man was pronounced dead at the scene. His name has not been released.
Source: http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/12/26/2562082/south-florida-man-killed-cross.html
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Did White House Put Politics Over Jobs in Solyndra Scandal?
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Source: www.moreover.com --- Monday, December 26, 2011
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Source: http://c.moreover.com/click/here.pl?r5664795149&f=378
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Monday, December 26, 2011
SaveUMFootball: Official Welcome To The U: OL Ereck Flowers, 6'6" and 320 lbs. Paperwork has been submitted to UM. Awaiting OK from NCAA Clearinghouse.
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Official Welcome To The U: OL Ereck Flowers, 6'6" and 320 lbs. Paperwork has been submitted to UM. Awaiting OK from NCAA Clearinghouse. 
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Sunday, December 25, 2011
McCoy, Browns still dazed by Harrison hit (AP)
BEREA, Ohio ? Browns linebacker D'Qwell Jackson doesn't expect Pittsburgh's James Harrison to suddenly get soft ? or stop bending the rules.
Although Harrison had to sit out one game for his illegal helmet-to-helmet hit on Cleveland quarterback Colt McCoy, who is still bothered by concussion symptoms two weeks after the head-jarring shot, Jackson believes the Steelers' heat-seeking linebacker will continue to level anyone in his path.
"Harrison is who he is and whether you fine him, you suspend him, he's not going to change," Jackson said Thursday. "That's up to the commissioner to handle it the best way he knows how."
Jackson's comments came one day after an unapologetic Harrison defended his head shot on McCoy, who has not been medically cleared to practice and will miss his second straight game Saturday in Baltimore. Harrison also said the NFL should punish the Browns for allowing McCoy to return to the game so quickly.
Jackson was stunned by Harrison's comments.
"I didn't hear that. Oh, goodness," Jackson said. "It doesn't surprise me coming from Harrison. He's one of the guys that he's going to live and die by the way he plays. I don't know what to say to it really. You hate to see guys get injured when you hit `em. I know it's a physical game, a fast, contact game. When a guy gets hurt, all bets are off. You want that guy to be OK. For him to say something like that, I got no comment for it. I'm going to leave that one alone."
McCoy, the Browns and the NFL, for that matter, are still shaking off the effects from Harrison's hit.
On Wednesday, the league announced a new policy that will require teams to have a certified athletic trainer in the press box to monitor play and help medical staffs evaluate injured players. The change was prompted by the Browns' treatment of McCoy, who was not checked for a concussion during the game and was sent back in after sitting out just two plays.
The in-game policy shift preceded former Browns running back Jamal Lewis and other retired players suing the league over brain injuries they claim have left them struggling with medical problems years after their playing days ended.
Browns coach Pat Shurmur has spent most of the past two weeks addressing McCoy's touchy situation. The second-year QB has been coming to work every day, getting checked by Cleveland's doctors and participating in team meetings before being sent home.
Shurmur was asked if the 25-year-old has been advised not to play again this season.
"Not to my knowledge, no," Shurmur said. "He's like any player who is fighting back from injury."
If McCoy is cleared to play in Cleveland's season finale, he'll be facing Harrison and the Steelers, who will visit the Browns on Jan. 1.
Last season, after Harrison knocked out Browns wide receivers Mohamed Massaquoi and Josh Cribbs with concussions, Cleveland center Alex Mack accused the linebacker of "being cheap, being dirty." Mack wouldn't go that far after Harrison's hit on McCoy, and even said Harrison had cleaned up his game.
"He's improved," Mack said. "We really weren't watching for it. I didn't know it happened in the game, so it wasn't apparent to me that anything malicious was going on."
Mack, though, said Harrison's aggressiveness is pushing the boundaries of legality. When Harrison was suspended, the league said it was because he has had five illegal hits to quarterbacks in the past three years.
Mack believed Harrison could have avoided hitting McCoy so high.
"I'd say he's playing on the very edge of the rules," he said. "You don't have to use your head. You could shove him really hard in the chest and get the job done the same way. But there's something to be said about affecting the quarterback."
Shurmur would not comment on Harrison's claim the Browns should be disciplined for their handling of McCoy's concussion. The first-year coach was also asked if he was troubled that Harrison did not seem to be getting the message that his hits won't be tolerated.
"He plays for the Steelers, I would probably comment if it were a Browns player," Shurmur said. "You see and hear a lot of things and I think it's important that we all play hard, we play physical and we try to teach our guys to play hard, play physical and play by the rules.
"At times, we're all being educated as to what the rules are. The underlying deal is safety and we've gone through that here the last couple weeks. As coaches, we are all for players' safety."
Notes: The Browns placed safety T.J. Ward on injured reserve with a sprained foot. Ward started eight games in his second NFL season. He was injured on Dec. 6 at Houston and the team was confident he would get back. Shurmur said Ward, who had 38 tackles, will not need surgery. ... CB Joe Haden (thigh) and WR Massaquoi (foot) returned to practice and are expected to play against the Ravens. ... WR Jordan Norwood will also miss Saturday's game with a concussion sustained last week in Arizona. WR Rod Windsor was signed off the practice squad.
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Saturday, December 24, 2011
Weird wildlife: Real animals of Antarctica
Ask anyone to name an Antarctic land animal, and chances are the response will be, "penguin." Try again, says David Barnes, a scientist with the British Antarctic Survey.
"Penguins aren't really residents on land. All the species except for one ? emperor penguins ? spend most of their lives at sea," Barnes told OurAmazingPlanet.
"And likewise the other sea birds go north during Antarctica's winter," he added.
It turns out that the usual suspects ? penguins, seals ? don't actually live on the continent. They just visit.
"In order to see Antarctica's resident land animals, you have to have a microscope," Barnes said.
And one look reveals an outlandish cast of characters more suited to Lewis Carroll's fiction than a Disney movie, both in name and ability. The continent's natives ? rotifers, tardigrades and springtails, collembola and mites ? possess a bizarre array of physiological tools to survive on the coldest, windiest, highest and driest continent on Earth.
In addition, evidence is mounting that these weird Antarctic animals are remnants of a bygone age, the only survivors of a vanished world ? something once thought nearly impossible.
"The take-home message is that we think our animals survived the last ice age," said biologist Byron Adams, a professor at Brigham Young University.
Petite pachyderms
The largest of the continent's land animals, the so-called "elephants of Antarctica," are the collembola, or, as they are more commonly known, springtails. Unlike the majority of their neighbors, they are visible to the naked eye.
"They look like insects ? a little bit like an earwig," said Ian Hogg, a freshwater ecologist and associate professor at New Zealand's University of Waikato. "But they're a lot cuter than earwigs," Hogg added.
Typically under a millimeter long, the tiny, six-legged arthropods are similar to insects, but more primitive, and likely resemble the ancient ancestors of modern-day insects,? Hogg said. They live under rocks near coastal areas, and survive on a diet of fungus and bacteria. Hogg has found them as far south as 86 degrees latitude.
Although springtails are found all over the planet, those that live in Antarctica have a few tricks to survive the brutal conditions. They can slow down their metabolism to save energy, "and when it gets close to winter, they start to produce glycerol, which lowers their freezing point," Hogg said.
But even springtails can succumb in harsh Antarctic conditions. "If they get too cold they'll freeze solid, and that's the end of them," Hogg said.
They're aliiiive
Yet for Antarctica's most abundant land animal, tiny nematode worms, freezing is not fatal ? it's more like a neat party trick.
The hardy worms are one of the most abundant creatures on Earth, and in Antarctica's simple ecosystems, they are king.
"They're the rulers of the continent," said BYU's Byron Adams. "As far as animals go, you're more likely to find a nematode than anything."
The worms may be tiny ? a real whopper is almost as long as a dime is thick, Adams said ? but they have the combined biological powers of a MacGyver and a Lazarus.
First, the worms employ inventive physiological processes to stave off the effects of the extreme cold.
Like springtails, Antarctica's nematodes can lower their freezing point. They also have a mechanism to protect their cells from the dangers of frozen water, allowing them to survive in temperatures well below freezing.
Inside a cell, ice can be deadly. "Imagine a drop of water," Adams said. "It's smooth and round. When that turns into ice, it turns into a ninja-star type of thing, with all these sharp points. That causes the cells to burst ? it kills the cell," he said. This same process causes frostbite and its nasty effects. As cells die, tissue is destroyed.
To prevent this, nematodes produce proteins that act as packing peanuts, surrounding the sharp-edged ice crystals with tiny cushions to protect the cells from rupture and ensuing death.
When conditions get too dry (the worms require moisture to function), the worms have the ability to drop into a death-like state of suspended animation from which they can revive many months, even decades, later, when conditions improve.
"They pump all the water out of the bodies until they're dried out like a little Cheerio," Adams said ? a process similar to freeze-drying. The worms then literally just blow around in the wind until water returns ? often, not until the following summer, when melt from glaciers creates freshwater streams around the continent.
"When the water comes back, the nematodes suck the water back into their bodies and they're re-animated ? they come back to life," Adams said.
The strategy is not unique to Antarctica. Nematodes that live in hot, dry deserts do the same thing, he added.
It's still not clear just how long the worms can survive in this state, but nematodes have reawakened after 60 years in freeze-dried mode.
For all their toughness, the nematodes may have reason to envy one of their Antarctic colleagues ? tardigrades ? which are similarly rugged, yet have one thing nematodes just haven't got: good looks.
Brawny beauties
"They're really cute," Adams said.
Tardigrades look a bit like a bear crossed with a sweet potato. In fact, they look huggable ? a rare quality among microscopic animals. They have chubby bodies and eight legs, from which curved, bear-like claws protrude.
Like nematodes, these algae-eating water beasts can "freeze-dry" themselves, and have even survived a trip into low-Earth orbit.
"It was quite surprising to me that exposure to the vacuum of space, with its extreme desiccating effect, did not affect survival at all," said Ingemar J?nsson, a professor at Sweden's Kristianstad University, in an email. J?nsson orchestrated the tardigrade space trip aboard a European Space Agency craft in 2007.
Where'd you come from?
The two remaining major Antarctic residents are mites ? tiny arachnids that live alongside springtails under rocks ? and rotifers, microscopic, slinky-like creatures that dwell alongside nematodes and tardigrades in more moist environments. Although there are many species of each, it's astonishing to essentially be able to count the land animals of an entire continent on one hand.
And although these extreme organisms use a range of biological stunts to survive in Antarctica, they can't live in the ice itself, and it was long accepted that the animals were fairly new arrivals.
"The dogma is that in the last glacial, the continent was totally covered with ice and there was no life," Adams said. "That would mean that all the organisms that live there had to have moved back there since the last glacial maximum ? in the last 12 (thousand) to 20 thousand years." That's when retreating ice would have exposed bits of land fit for habitation.
"The problem with that is almost all the animals we find in Antarctica are indigenous to Antarctica," he said. "They're not found anywhere else in the world, and they're not closely related."
Genetic evidence suggests that the continent's residents must have stuck it out through the last glacial maximum. That, in essence, they've been there since 100,000 years ago, when the planet began to cool.
This, along with geological evidence, is changing some of the accepted thinking. Now many Antarctic scientists think the continent wasn't entirely icebound during the last glacial maximum. "We think that there were areas that were exposed, and that these animals survived in little pockets ? and once the ice sheets receded, they expanded their range."
Essentially, the crushing cold and lack of moisture killed off the continent's more delicate beasts, and left behind only the hardiest. With almost no competitors for the limited resources, Antarctica's tiny animals were suddenly the smartest guys in the room, able to move out and take over the continent.
Tense future
Even as researchers are learning more about the past of Antarctic wildlife, they are using the continent's residents to peer into the future.
"What is really fascinating about working in Antarctica, is that we can look at the effect of climate change on a single species in the soil," said Diana Wall, a soil ecologist at Colorado State University who has studied Antarctica's tiny animal life for more than two decades.
"We can't do that with a single species anywhere else ? the communities are so complex," she said.
Hogg agreed. "Antarctica is such a simple system. The springtails are the biggest things you have to worry about," he said. "And the changes down there happen much more quickly than they will in more temperate latitudes, so it makes it a really fascinating place to look at these changes and how things might respond."
The continent serves as a pristine, natural laboratory, Adams said.
"If you take a sample from a beach in Florida, and you get an anomalous reading, it could be due to anything" he said. "Where we're working in Antarctica, we don't have any of those variables."
Ironically, because Antarctica has no native human population (along with the inevitable environmental footprints we leave behind), it's one of the best places on Earth to study how changing climate will affect the places people do live, Adams said.
"Someone might say, 'Well, springtails aren't very exciting animals,'" Hogg said. However, he added, studying them and their Antarctic neighbors, which all play a role in cycling nutrients through the environment, can help illuminate how ecosystems closer to home might change with the climate.
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More science news from MSNBC Tech & Science
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"It can help us learn about agricultural systems and the places that we care about and rely on for our daily well-being," he said
"It's very appealing to those of us who are trying to get to the bottom of the fundamentals of the relationship between biodiversity and climate change," Adams said. "This is the one place where we can do these experiments in a natural system."
Reach Andrea Mustain at amustain@techmedianetwork.com. Follow her on Twitter @AndreaMustain. Follow OurAmazingPlanet for the latest in Earth science and exploration news on Twitter @OAPlanetand on Facebook.
? 2011 OurAmazingPlanet. All rights reserved. More from OurAmazingPlanet.
Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45766560/ns/technology_and_science-science/
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Internet Changes How We Remember
Head Lines |
Mind & Brain
See Inside
See Inside
Knowing we can retrieve facts online later alters memory
?| December 24, 2011
Four years ago Columbia University psychologist Betsy Sparrow turned to her husband after looking up some movie trivia online and asked, ?What did we do before the Internet?? Thus, Sparrow set out to investigate how Google, and all the information it proffers, has changed how people think. Four psychology experiments later Sparrow has her answer, which was published in Science this past August. ?[The Web] is an external memory storage space, and we make it responsible for remembering things,? she says.
In one of Sparrow?s experiments she presented two groups of undergraduates with trivia statements. Individuals in one group, who were told they could retrieve the information later on their computer, had worse recall than subjects in the other group, who knew in advance they could not do so. Together with the rest of her results, this finding suggests that Internet users have learned to remember how to find a fact rather than the fact itself.
Does this mean the Web is dumbing us down? Certainly not, she says: ?Memory is much greater than memorizing.? Our brain may simply be adapting to present circum?stances, Sparrow points out. ?We?re in an Internet world.?
Source: http://rss.sciam.com/click.phdo?i=114dbfbb836d2c15b41f23a1300a3067
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