105647484
submission
brindafella writes:
Land Iguanas (Conolophus subcristatus) have returned to Galápagos' Satiago Island after feral cats, dogs, rats, pigs, goats, and donkeys, were eliminated. The iguanas were noted by Charles Darwin in his 1835 voyage in HMS Beagle, but ferals out-competed the iguanas in around 1840. Now, they have been returned.
105645774
submission
brindafella writes:
Kevin Bird is a tinkerer. He has built the world's largest wooden pendulum clock, 6m high, as a passtime. Building it has taken 15 years, using local hardwoods. His town of Nannup, Western Australia, around 250km south of the state capital, Perth, will now get a clocktower and museum to this engineering marvel.
105645452
submission
brindafella writes:
An Australian snake catcher has helped a wild Carpet Python (Morelia spilota) infested with over 500 paralysis ticks (Ixodes holocyclus). The snake went into a backyard swimming pool in an attempt to drown the ticks. It was removed to the local Currumbin Wildlife Hospital where vets removed 511 adult ticks; immature ticks still under the snake's scales will be treated with medicines.
105643636
submission
Thelasko writes:
embers of the "yellow vests" protest movement have vandalised almost 60% of France's entire speed camera network, the interior minister has said.
Christophe Castaner said the wilful damage was a threat to road safety and put lives in danger.
The protest movement began over fuel tax increases, and saw motorists block roads and motorway toll booths.
Some protesters feel speed cameras are solely a revenue-generating measure which takes money from the poor.
105641272
submission
kbahey writes:
Traditionally, large satellites are configured on the ground for specific tasks that cannot be changed after launch, even if market demands evolve.
A new satellite scheduled to be launched soon, will change all that: its coverage, bandwidth, power and frequency can all be altered in orbit.
The 3.5 tonne spacecraft will be operated by Paris-based telecom operator Eutelsat, in a R&D partnership with the European Space Agency (ESA), with manufacturer Airbus acting as the prime contractor.
A company official stated that the satellite "will bring unprecedented flexibility to our customers, allowing for in-orbit payload re-configuration and taking customisation to a new level, while also opening the way to a paradigm shift in the manufacture of telecommunications satellites".
105640986
submission
sciencehabit writes:
Humanity’s most far-flung spacecraft, NASA’s 41-year-old Voyager 1, has poked a hole in a long-shot theory of dark matter. Some theorists have argued that the mysterious, unseen stuff, which makes up 85% of the universe’s matter, could consist of countless black holes lingering from the big bang. But Voyager 1, which launched in 1977 and slipped out of the solar system 6 years ago, sees no signs of such hordes, a pair of theoretical physicists reports. The data don’t kill the idea that dark matter is black holes entirely, however, as Voyager 1 can detect only tiny black holes.
105614420
submission
brindafella writes:
Science has revealed the story of one Black Hole, that devoured a star in a "tidal disruption event" and left just enough star outside for a close-orbiting White Dwarf star to get very excited. The dwarf star circles the black hole every 131 seconds just outside the event horizon, near the innermost stable circular orbit (ISCO). It is causing a bright X-ray flash as it screams through the trail of the devoured star; and that shows the black hole is spinning at 50% the speed of light.
105613930
submission
brindafella writes:
The jaw bone of a woman who died around 1000-1200AD has specks of precious lapis lazuli (mineral) in the plaque of her teeth. This indicates that this woman would have licked the brush used in preparing precious illuminated manuscripts at the women's monastery in Dalheim in western Germany. The study by researchers from German-based Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History and Britain's University of York showed that women, as well as men, were part of the production of the valuable manuscripts.
104253216
submission
brindafella writes:
Veterinary scientists from Viena have shown that Goffin's cockatoos can do an excellent job of remaking cardboard into tools to get rewards. This follows on from earlier experiments with the New Caledonian crow, that can select tools for its purposes. So, birds are definitely not "bird-brained".
103639860
submission
brindafella writes:
Earthquakes are telling scientists more about the core of the Earth, specifically that it is squishier than previously thought (by about 2.5%.) Associate Professor Hrvoje Tkali & Thanh-Son Phm of the Australian National University have made sense of data collected by seismographs around the world, to put new numbers on the density and pressure of the core. In Science magazine, they show that the pressure is 167.4 ± 1.6 GPa in Earth’s center. For reference, standard atmospheric pressure us 101,325Pa so the centre of the Earth is around 61million times this pressure, but still 2.5% lower than expected.
102850828
submission
brindafella writes:
Imagine being able to remember things that happened in your second week of life. For people with
"highly superior autobiographical memory" (H-SAM), remembering (almost) everything you have seen, heard, felt, and most importantly how you felt about that, can bring fond and foul memories. 28-year-old Rebecca Sharrock has such a memory.
She also lives with autism and obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), as do many people with H-SAM. So, Sharrock has memorized all the Harry Potter books, because readng them to herself at bedtime would mean keeping her eyes open to read; it's easier to just remember them as she goes to sleep.
Sharrock has volunteered to have her memory abilities studied by scientists.
102842996
submission
schwit1 writes:
State Auditor Suzanne bump is blasting the oversight process at the Registry of Motor Vehicles after an audit found that the agency issued 1,905 driver’s licenses to state residents after they had died — 97 percent of which were still active — stressing that addressing the issue must be its “top priority.”
“The failure to prevent individuals from obtaining identification under the names of deceased people creates a significant public safety risk to the Commonwealth,” Bump said in a statement. “Fixing this problem must be a top priority for the RMV. Recent upgrades to the computer systems at the RMV provide it with more tools; now the agency must use them in conjunction with the data sources at its disposal to address this problem.”
In addition to fixing the issue with licenses being issued in dead peoples’ names, Bump is also calling on the agency to “improve its oversight of disability parking placards” after the audit found that the RMV had processed more than 10,000 requests for disability parking placards from state residents who were already dead.
102030402
submission
brindafella writes:
Airport security in Australia's second largest city, Melbourne, has been called into question after reports that fellow travellers have been taking items (notably, women's handbags) off the pickup area; the owners have been stopped for extra attention because a medical device has tripped the alarm. The report lists: knee and hip replacements, a pacemaker, and an insulin pump. Meanwhile, staff assume that the person taking the item is its owner.
A thief needs both temptation and opportunity.
There are also calls for private screening / pat-down areas for older passengers, where their baggage can be taken with them.
101934288
submission
brindafella writes:
The Fields Medal for mathematics has been awarded at the 2018 International Congress of Mathematicians held by the International Mathematical Union. The winners are: Akshay Venkatesh (Australia), Alessio Figalli (Italy), Caucher Birkar (Iran), and Peter Scholze (Germany). The Fields Medal is awarded at the ICM held every four years, to up to 4 mathematicians who are under 40 years old. All four winners are professors.
101425672
submission
brindafella writes:
A Chinese businessman has fallen to his death while holidaying with family in southern France during a work trip. The chairman of China's HNA Group, Wang Jian, was in Bonnieux, a hill town in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region in southeastern France, and fell 15m from a wall while having his picture taken by members of his family. His injuries led to his death. The Chinese government shut down the story on internal media sources.
