In (way) advance of Earth Day...

I'm currently fostering a 4 month old kitten from our local MSPCA. That's her to the left, in the cone of shame. Poor little thing came to the shelter with chemical burns down her back. She has healed up pretty rapidly but is in the cone to keep her from damaging her new skin (and licking off all the triple anti-biotic ointment I have to slather her in.

I've never had a kitten before. I do have a cat, but when I adopted her, she was already a year and a half old and way past any zany kitten tricks. Having this foster has been an absolute delight (beyond her waking me up every hour on the hour because she is lonely/bored) and has taught me some of the previously unknown (to me) sides of a cat.

In today's stories, scientists and civilians alike are introduced to new or nearly/thought extinct species. I realize a kitten is neither of those things in general, but as one of the TV stations used to say "it's new to me."

A recent rash of Disney/DreamWorks movies exposed movie-goers to the cuteness of penguins. I do love me some "Happy Feet," in which, the main character, Mumble, is a penguin of a different sort. He doesn't sing to find a mate, he tap dances. However, a real, live King Penguin may be attempting to one-up the animated dear. According to Yahoo!, a National Geographic photographer spotted a "one in a zillion" all-black penguin in a species known for their formal wear.

It is also not very often someone spots a species which has been thought to be extinct for decades. But that's just what Australian Luke Pearce did, as reported by the AP. The fisheries conservation officer was out looking for a rare perch when he stumbled on a colony of yellow-spotted bell frogs, which officials thought died out 30 years ago.

And in the United States, the bald eagle was on the brink of extinction nearly 50 years ago. DDT and habitat decimation nearly did in the national symbol in the 1960s, but a series of measures, including the banning of DDT and passing the Endangered Species Act has helped the bald eagle mount a comeback. The Contra Costa Times has a nice overview story on the return of Old Baldie. : )

A long winter's nap...

As I type, the weather outside my window is disgusting. There is no other word for it. The somewhat-delightful snow of this morning has morphed into a cold, pelting sleety rain that pings off the AC unit which still droops from my office window. The sneaky wind has found it's way through the outer walls to breach my office and leave me with cold feet and fingertips.

Which is why I chose today's stories to bring a (very) brief glimpse of the light at the end of the winter tunnel - spring. It seems in this unforgiving season, scientists around the world have been discovering members of the animal kingdom which were long thought to be extinct. Most are still considered very endangered, but the fact they still exist at all is a point of celebration.

MSNBC.com seems to have collected a few of these stories. The site has a distinct article on the discovery of a rare giant turtle in Vietnam which narrowly avoided becoming soup. Long prized as an ingredient, Swinhoe's soft-shell is on the brink of extinction in the wild. However, one was spotted in a lake in northern Vietnam. A fisherman had caught it, but researchers convinced the man to eschew the large prices dangled by restaurateurs and instead, return the animal to his home.

MSNBC's John Roach also did a slideshow on eight other species which were considered extinct until recently - the Rabb's fringe-limbed tree frog, the Banggai crow, the Pyant Cheezar turtle, pygmy tarsiers, Beck's petrel, Armoured Mistfrogs, the long-billed reed warbler, and the ivory-billed woodpecker. Some of them have not been seen since the turn of the 20th century, and their reappearance has caused all sorts of excitement in the scientific and environmental communities.

(Image courtesy of MSNBC.com)

Monday morning round up...

So the little darling to the left (who refuses to look even remotely happy in pictures) is my first foster, Boogie. Yes, I know that is a horrible name for a cat (not my choice), so I've started calling her Boo or Bug, as in love-bug, since all she wants in life is to be in my lap, snoring.

I have a bunch of good stories which in no way connect to each other (much like my intro paragraph does not transition to this one), so I'm going to post an unthemed round up for today.

Henry Louis Gates, Jr. made the news yet again (he of the arrested for breaking into his own home/grabbing a beer at the White House with the president). His research for a documentary led to two South Carolina men being posthumously pardoned for a murder they were convicted of 94 years ago.

Boston.com posted both the above and the following story on a Utah high school marching band that overcame personal grief to sweep the awards at the Rocky Mountain Marching Band Tournament. American Fork High School band lost its woodwinds instructor in a fatal bus crash just days before taking top honors. Heather Christensen grabbed the bus wheel when she noticed the driver had passed out; the bus crashed, killing Christensen, but all the students were unhurt.

Last week MSNBC reported on the potential discovery of a Leonardo da Vinci painting. Bought for $19,000 at an auction in 2007, what was thought to be a sketch by a 19th century German artist has been called the first da Vinci discovered in over 100 years. Da Vinci used his hands liberally when working, and analysis done by a Canadian forensic firm has proven there is a da Vinci fingerprint on this piece of art.

And finally, a blog on TIME's website reported on the first US reunion of the (living members of the) Monty Python comedy group in 40 years. Apparently, the show started a little slowly, with the actors a little uncomfortable with direct contact with the audience, but it picked up steam and the jokes started flying. I wish I had seen the program; I started watching Monty Python movies and sketches in middle school. It may have been my first taste of British humor, and it definitely left an impression. To this day, single lines from sketches like "The Spanish Inquisition" and "The Cheese Shop," not to mention from "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" and "Life of Brian" make me smile.

Lost and found...

Hello, hello. I know I've been MIA for the last few days, and I apologise. A visit with the parents meant very little time (thankfully) for the Internet. But I'm back at work now and digging myself out from under my cascading inbox.

The articles I found this morning have theme of reclamation attached to them. In two cases species have been reclaimed from extinction and in the third, certain death. Cheery, eh?

Yahoo! News posted a story on the breeding of species of ladybugs found by amateur scientists in Colorado and Oregon. Entomologist John Losey launched The Ladybug Project last year to find out why once-plentiful native species of ladybug had all but disappeared. He recruited people all over the country, including a lot of children, to go out and look for nine-spotted, two-spotted and transverse ladybugs. The entomologists-in-training were instructed to take photos of these creatures and send the pics, along with where they were taken, back to Losey. He and his colleagues traveled to Colorado and Oregon to collect the ladybugs for breeding. Happily for fans of this particular insect (myself included), the ladybugs are thriving in captivity, and Losey hopes to conduct studies to sort out why they declined.

The AP, hosted on Google News, reported on the unexpected discovery of a specie of turtles thought to be extinct. Scientists from the Wildlife Conservation Society who braved torrential rain, leeches and the dictatorial government of Burma/Myanmar to examine the Rakine Yoma Elephant Sanctuary discovered five turtles from a breed declared extinct over 100 years ago due to extreme over-hunting. One of the scientific names for this specie is Arakan, but the way-more-fun name is Pyant Cheezar - a local moniker that translates to "turtle who eats rhinoceros feces."

Peachygreen.com posted on the bobcat and fawn who became fast friends after each was rescued from the Jesusita fire in Santa Barbara, Calif. The bobcat kitten, starved and very dehydrated, was found first and placed with the fawn only after the rescuers realized they didn't have a large enough cage for the little deer. Apparently the bob-kitten went straight over to the fawn, and the pair snuggled under a desk for hours. The photos on this post are flat-out ADORABLE.

(Photo courtesy of examiner.com)

Mankind's continual leaps forward...

Living with three physicists (and spending time with their equally science-y friends) definitely left a mark.

As outlined in a previous post, I am just not a left-brain person. I rely on gut feelings and intuition and have very little patience for having to examine every little fact before reaching a conclusion. Yes, occasionally this gets me into trouble (hello, my first apartment in Boston), but usually I make out okay.
Still, I suppose daily exposure to the squiggles and letters that make up physics has left with me a lingering attraction for the more technical side of life.

MSNBC reports on the MIT PhDs who created robotic fish, which can look for pollutants and inspect submerged things like pipelines by mimicking the swimming motions of real fish. These fake fish are sleek and easy to maneuver with just 10 parts and one motor; they are much more likely to be able to go places other, more bulky underwater vehicles can't.

Technological advances in healthcare are reported on both MSNBC and CNET; the US and Japan have created robot doctors and nurses, respectively. Last night, I saw a preview for a movie called "Surrogates" where robots take over and seem to basically replace humans in every day living. In the case of Robo-ER here, thankfully only the Japanese seem bent on professional domination.

The "Chungbot," named after Brooke Army Medical Center's Dr. Kevin Chung, has allowed the doctor to check on patients from as far away as Iraq. The doc-bot is a five-foot tall, motorized robot is controlled by a joystick and laptop and wirelessly transmits images between the screen mounted on its "body" and Chung's laptop. This technology allows Chung to be able to see his patients and instruct another medical staff member who is there with the patient to do the hands-on care.

The Japanese have created a robot nurse to lift elderly patients from wheelchairs and beds, and, as CNet's opening paragraph says best, "naturally, it looks like a teddy bear." The bear can lift up to 134 pounds and apparently has a cuddly face to make it look less scary to the patients. It was created to help combat the problem of the workforce shrinking in proportion to the population aging.

The story on Switched.com makes me chuckle just at the premise - six mice boarding the international space station as invited guests. The tone of the Switched blog post is so perfect, I'm not even going to try to compete.

Lastly, Newsweek's website has a photo gallery nearly 100 years in the making. Court photographer Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii traveled all over Mother Russia taking photographs at Czar Nicholas II's behest. Prokudin-Gorskii took three consecutive photos of every subject - one each with separate red, green and blue filters - and melded them through a process of his own devising in a specially fitted railway car. The result were a wide range of photos of Russia's people, architecture, technology and environment in living color. But it took the advent of digital imaging to be able to restore them.

(Photo courtesy of CNET)

Four-legged and furry...

As most of you know, I volunteer at a local humane society to satisfy my jones for having a dog while living in a no-pet apartment building. But for the last couple of weekends a bridal shower and moving house have kept me occupied on the weekends. As a result, I found myself ogling a dog park this morning on the way to work. About six or seven people were out with about as many dogs, tossing sticks and balls or just having a cuddle. I really wanted to pull over and go play too, but I soldiered on, to the relief, I'm sure, of both my boss and a bunch of pet-owners who would have found my dog-less presence suspicious. 

While at the shelter, I'm constantly amazed at the intellectual abilities of the dogs there. The fact our pits are among the smartest (while family favorites like labs and retrievers are the dumbest) is usually one of the selling points I use when talking to dubious visitors (or my mother). Recently I went through training, so I could start clicker training with the dogs. That's basically when you use a little metal clicker to get animals to get used to the following process: clicker sound ->good behavior -> cookie. 

My enthusiasm for animal intelligence is usually treated with the verbal pat on the head, but now Yahoo! News has published  story to back me up. Stanley Coren, a leading dog expert at the University of British Columbia found that dogs have the overall intelligence of a two year-old human in terms of language and have better math and socializing skills than three to four year -olds. 

The dog in the following story used his intelligence to save a boy's life (thanks, Michelle, for passing this along). The Segovias took in a stray dog initially for a day, but when no one claimed him, he stayed and became somewhat attached to Yolanda Segovia's 10 and 21 year-old sons. Her elder son suffers from severe Down Syndrome. One afternoon while Yolanda was outside, the dog came crashing through the screen barking up a storm. Raelee the dog led her back to the elder son's room, where he was having an epileptic seizure. Segovia's neurologist said the young man would have died if no one had found him. (The story on pawnation.com is the third one down...)

Some people think pets are just dumb animals, but I think that dog and the cat in this next story might go a little ways to disproving that. The photo from today's post is of Casper, a 12 year-old British cat who has caught the No. 3 bus at 10:55 a.m. once a day for four years. According to the Daily Telegraph, Casper hops on at the stop in front of his house and rides the whole 11-mile circuit before being deposited back at his stop. He has become such a regular that drivers in the company are told to look out for the little one, making sure he gets off at the right stop in his advanced age. Apparently Casper gets on and likes to curl up in the back seat during the ride.

Wondering at Nature...

As I have stated before, I do not enjoy "roughing it," but I am still capable of being sufficiently awed by the forces of nature. Some of my favorite photos come from the genius Ansel Adams. I do love me a good view of the countryside after tramping up hundreds of stairs to the top of whatever tower/cathedral/really tall building is handy. The stone I stole from the Cliff Walk in Rhode Island reminds me, among other things, of the power of the waves and the time it took for that rock to become so smooth. 

I do recall one incident sophomore year of college where I was more confused than cowed by Nature, however. I remember being woken out of a dead sleep in my East Coast dorm room without a clue why. I was more peeved than anything else since it was before I had to get up to go to work. Later at the tennis camp where I taught I found out what had woken me up was a low magnitude earthquake. 

I'm not sure if this next story really qualifies as good news, but it isn't bad news unless you're a Kiwi or Aussie who really hates the other nationality. A 7.8 earthquake has moved the island of New Zealand one foot closer to Australia and actually enlarged NZ, as one side of the country moved farther than the other. I guess what does qualify as good news is that despite it being the biggest tremor in the world so far this year, it caused relatively little structural damage and no injuries. 

Yahoo! seems to be the go-to story site today. I just realized all three of my stories are from there... Attached to the earthquake story was a little article on a new contest to name the seven natural wonders of the world. Two years ago, New 7 Wonders held a contest to name the seven man-made wonders that produced the following list: the Roman Colosseum, the Great Wall of China, the Taj Mahal, the Lost City of Petra in Jordan, the Christ the Redeemer statue in Brazil, Macchu Picchu in Peru, and the Pyramid at Chichen Itza in Mexico. For the new contest, there are 28 finalists which people can vote on by phone or the Internet. The winners will be announced in 2011. 

The photo belongs to an AP story hosted on Yahoo! News. The popular seals who sleep and play in a cove in La Jolla have been granted legal protection from being forcibly ejected from the area. A couple years ago, some idiot, ahem, the disgruntled swimmer mentioned in the article filed suit because s/he wanted to swim in the cove and not share it with the seals. This ruling also prevents some poor soul from suffering the indignity of having to walk down the beach with a loudspeaker blaring the sound of dogs barking (to scare away the seals) accompanied by one of San Diego's finest (to ward off attacks from pro-seal demonstrators.)

This is why I had so many stuffed animals as a child...

When I was little I LOVED stuffed animals. I toted one everywhere with me, and I always wanted one more. I remember one photo where my bed is so covered in stuffed animals there isn't room for a four or five year-old me to get in it. Even today I need to remind myself I am 27 years old and do not need that stuffed penguin from the aquarium or that teddy bear from Stieff in Berlin (I wanted to be a teddy bear collector when I grew up according to my pre-school diploma.). 

When I was in Berlin, I opted for the Knut t-shirt with an image of the polar bear, furry in the same way "Pat the Bunny" is instead of a stuffed bear. But I made sure we stopped at Knut's enclosure at the zoo. I had heard the Berlin Zoo may not keep him for much longer, and I wanted to see him while I was there. Fortunately, I saw in the news yesterday, via the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, that Knut is staying in Berlin! The zoo ponied up $600,000 for him, and he gets to stay in his home.

The New York Daily News had a story yesterday about one of my other favorite animals. I have absolutely no idea why, but I love turtles. Love them. I was fascinated by the giant ones swimming in the coral reef tank at the Boston aquarium. Apparently runways at JFK were taken over by 78 terrapins who had climbed out of local waters looking for a place to mate. They were scooped up by Port Authority workers and loaded into a truck to be returned to the bay. I can't help but think perhaps someone should have called the Department of Natural Resources, but at least no turtles were lost. After all the crappy flight delays I've had, I probably wouldn't mind a cute one. : ) 

Finally, the Daily News (usually not one of my favorite papers - too florid) has my last link for the week. As a corollary to the turtle story, the paper linked to a multimedia gallery of the 87 cutest animals in the animal kingdom. In the interest of thorough journalism, I went through all 87 photos to report on who actually was the cutest. However, I ended up with a five-way tie, so I'll just post the link and let you go through it yourself. : ) 

Tuesday morning roundup...

It's a rainy Tuesday morning on what my friend Joel and I have termed the longest week of the month. I'm more than a little sleepy and just a tad lazy, so I'm going to stick with a relatively random group of links today. I just really don't have the energy to find a theme or common thread beyond the obvious. I'll try harder tomorrow, I promise. 

Yahoo! had a story up yesterday about a man who bought a ledger for $200 that may contain the original formula for Dr. Pepper and now stands to make $50,000-$70,000 from auction. Personally I think the whole history aspect of finding a nearly 130 year-old book with such significance is cooler than the making a huge profit thing, but that may just be me.

Continuing in the food vein for a second, gourmetretailer.com gave a nod to the slowly recovering economy. The site noted retail sales in general rose in the last few months (excluding auto sales). Anytime the economy stays in the black, even if it's only by another percentage point, it's a good thing. 

I could be completely wrong about this since I did not pay much attention to the rest of the world as a child, but I could swear the Summer and Winter Olympics both used to occur every four years. I have no idea why I continue to cling to this thought, but a story I saw yesterday reminded me the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver are coming up. Canada has chosen its first Olympic torch-bearer for the Games. Ironically it's a man whose wife applied to be a torch-bearer for the 1988 Games and didn't get picked (Calgary Herald). 

And finally, May 3-9 is Be Kind to Animals week. The American Humane Association has been celebrating the relationship between animals and humans and trying to reach out to the community on this subject since 1915. Businesswire.com had a press release on the six children from around the country who won the AHA's "Be Kind to Animals Kid" contest for their efforts in volunteering and helping homeless animals. 

The Benton Courier had a story on kindness towards both humans and animals. Two women helped return a man's beloved dog who went missing in Arizona after the pair took a trip from Arkansas. Not only did they rescue the dog from being euthanized, they paid for his plane fare back to Arkansas when they found out the dog's owner couldn't afford it. 

Image from perpetualkid.com

Like Animals...

That is the crux of Rex Harrison's impassioned plea on behalf of animals as Dr. Doolittle in the 1967 eponymous film. His point is that animals are wonderful creatures capable of so much, and yet humans treat them as little more than beasts (while often acting beastly themselves). While I do not claim to be able to talk to animals in a coherent manner (not matter how much I coo at my cat), I do believe they are able to tell us a great deal if we'd just listen. In the following stories I found, animals play a big role in either helping out humans or bringing out the humanity in them. 

App.com tells of a Chihuahua that quite literally saved its owner's life when the pair got lost on a walk in the woods and was forced to sleep outdoors. The dog kept the woman from hypothermia by sleeping on her legs. (app.com)

This short video from ABC 7 in North Dakota shows a pair of men who, in the midst of trying to combat the Red River flooding, took time to save a squirrel being swept away on an ice floe. Squirrels are everywhere and people often don't give them a second thought, particularly in the middle of a crisis. So it's a nice thought these two men would save a small little furry guy in addition to their neighbors' homes. 

KXLY.com reports on another incident that would make Dr. Doolittle proud. In Washington state, the ice on the lakes is finally thawing for spring. Unfortunately that is something a moose didn't bank on while taking a walk through the woods. A 911 call from neighbors brought in animal rescue, which worked very hard to pull the animal to shore. Through these people's efforts, it looks like the moose will make it. : ) 

A bipedal dog named Faith has conquered her birth defect to become an inspiration to wounded soldiers and now helps find unwanted pets homes. Born to a chow bred for fighting, Faith has learned to walk on her hind legs - the only ones she has. Now she tours military bases to brighten the days of soldiers who have been wounded in combat. (mineralwellsindex.com)

One little PS... The photo above is of Legend a pit bull/American bull dog mix who lived at the shelter where I volunteer for quite some time. The shelter is not no-kill, so as time continued to go I was very worried about my little-big guy. But in some good news of my own, I came in one day to find a note "from" Legend saying he'd been adopted and now lived in Vermont.