Clipmarks | Bees Clips

more on cows!! the four legged kind!

Wed, 27 Aug 2008 19:13:30 GMT

Cows have magnetic sense, Google Earth images indicate

The findings are "very interesting and not at all implausible," said Caltech geobiologist Joseph Kirschvink, who was not involved in the research.

Satellite images show that cattle tend to point north and south when grazing and resting.

Birds do it, bees do it, and so, apparently, do . . . cows?

No, it's not that. We're talking about sensing the Earth's magnetic field.

Similar results were found in field studies of 2,974 red and roe deer in the Czech Republic, the researchers reported today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The researchers had been studying magnetism in smaller animals and were looking for a way to extend their work to larger species.

What the benefit could be for cows, however, remains a mystery. It might help them find their way home, experts said, or perhaps it is simply a vestigial sense that is no longer used for any purpose.

thomas.maugh@latimes.com

Index Research: On The Road To Extinction

Wed, 27 Aug 2008 13:49:20 GMT

clipped by: JICWyllie

Clip Source: indexresearch.blogspot.com

A history lecturer recently said that if one doesn’t believe in ‘global warming’ one is put in the same category as those who do not believe in the Nazi holocaust. This research of summer 2008 articles is not only about global warming but also about species that have become extinct or are an endangered species.

1. Planet Earth: General; Air pollution; Biofuels; Coral Reefs; Dead Zones; Depleted Uranium Contamination; “Democracy,” Food (corn, rice, wheat, famine); Lakes (extinct: Greenland Lake: endangered Baikal); Nuclear Holocaust; Oil (Peak Oil, U.S. exploitation, The Car); Polar Ice; Rainforest; Water; Wetlands

2. Towards Extinction: General; Amphibians (frogs); Bees; Birds; Deer; Elephant; Fish (salmon, shark, sturgeon, tuna) Flora and Fauna (Lichen, Orchid); Mammals (deer, (elephant, lynx, kangaroo, mustang, polar bear, seal, tiger, whale, wolf, wolverine); Mammoth rhino), Primates (Great Ape, Homo Sapiens, Lemur, Monkey, Orangutan); Reptiles (lizard, turtle, tortoise.

Tags: environment, i-climate change, i-consequences, i-extinction

Lots of 'Bees' Nesting in the Ground? 'Wasp' Out!

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 19:10:21 GMT

clipped by: dewitte

Clip Source: www.wtop.com

Ed in Clarksville, Md., writes: "We apparently have ground bees under the ivy growing under our deck. I used a can and a half of bee and wasp killer last week to no avail; there are just too many entrance spots. Would your tarp trick work here? It would probably kill the ivy but my wife and I got stung trimming the ivy so we are anxious to control this problem."

Well, Ed-ground-nesting insects that:

1) look like bees,
2) are highly active this time of year, and
3) aggressively sting people

are almost certainly yellowjackets.

They may look like bees but are actually a type of hornet-and very dangerous. If you've got a nest in a frequently-used area, it must be destroyed.

Tags: wasp, bee, yellowjacket

More Biden Wiki Wackiness: A Whole Year Disappears

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 06:17:28 GMT

clipped by: merrie
clipper's remarks: The Friday evening version of Joe Biden's Wikipedia entry remains firmly ensconced in a Firefox tab on my desktop, so it can be compared to its current form as Obama-Biden's busy bees brush it up. I'm doing comparisons as time allows, and there isn't much of it at the moment.

What are the odds that anyone in traditional media will take any interest in the ongoing whitewash? Or is it really possible that they're participating in it?

Clip Source: newsbusters.org

One thing is quickly obvious -- a section heading for a whole year has disappeared:

You'll just loooooove what got moved to a different and less logical section of the entry, while the section "2004" went away (Note: I originally believed that the text in the "2004" section had been deleted; also see my comment below):

(The text was moved to an area before the section for the 1988 campaign. For reasons unknown, the entry now posits that Biden didn't "really" campaign in 2004, though evidence noted in my comment below indicates that he did.)

Joe Biden thought that John McCain would be perfectly qualified to be Veep on the Democratic ticket in 2004, and thus fit to serve as President if something should happen to John Kerry, his party's nominee.

Now we get to hear Joe Biden tell us why John McCain shouldn't be president.

Incidentally the two footnoted links in the 2004 picture both work (here and here).

McCain is a headlined article at MSNBC with no text:

Tags: joe biden, wikipedia entry edits

The Biden media whitewash has begun

Sun, 24 Aug 2008 21:53:30 GMT

clipped by: n2sooners

Clip Source: newsbusters.org

The Friday evening version of Joe Biden's Wikipedia entry remains firmly ensconced in a Firefox tab on my desktop, so it can be compared to its current form as Obama-Biden's busy bees brush it up. I'm doing comparisons as time allows, and there isn't much of it at the moment.

Amazing. Where did 2004 go?

You'll just loooooove what got deleted:

Now we get to hear Joe Biden tell us why John McCain shouldn't be president.

Incidentally the two footnoted links in the 2004 picture both work (here and here).

But, "oddly enough," all that remains of the footnote relating to McCain is a headlined article at MSNBC with no text:

What are the odds that anyone in traditional media will take any interest in the ongoing whitewash? Or is it really possible that they're participating in it?

Tags: biden, obama, msm, wikipedia, whitewash, politics, election

Macaques make democratic decisions

Fri, 22 Aug 2008 16:08:48 GMT

clipped by: Mohir
clipper's remarks: Whether or not the individual monkeys were successful in getting the rest of the group to follow them didn't seem to relate to their age, sex or status. "Even the children can get the group moving," says Cédric Sueur, a graduate student who worked on the study with Petit.
The style of decision-making most frequently documented in the animal kingdom is dictatorial. In mountain gorillas, for example, the obedient tribe will follow the dominant male silverback. Horses, mongooses and wolves also follow despotic leaders. But theories are emerging which suggest that mammals who make democratic decisions may have an evolutionary edge because they can pool the experience of each group member.

Clip Source: www.newscientist.com

Ants and bees are well known for their collective decision-making. Now the first evidence is rolling in to back up the theoretical models that mammals such as monkeys and deer can also reach decisions in a democratic way.

[Video]

Odile Petit of the National Centre of Scientific Research in Strasbourg, France, studied Tonkean macaques native to Indonesia. For four months, she filmed two groups of 10 and 22 animals in an enclosed park.

Petit noticed that a group's motivation to move always began with a single animal. It would advance 1 to 5 metres, glance back, and wait. Other animals then followed, eventually drawing in the whole group. Rarely, two monkeys might try to pull the group in opposing directions - one aiming for food, and the other for rest, for example. The remaining macaques then started to line up behind their chosen leader. To avoid splitting the troop, the group always ended up following the majority vote,

Tags: democracy, animals, animal behavior, monkey

Wall Street's Racket Has Gone Too Far, and We're Going to Pay the Heavy Price

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 20:06:24 GMT

clipped by: Spiritualmonkey

Clip Source: www.alternet.org

Personally, my theory has been that the specter of peak oil pretty clearly implies the inability of industrial economies to continue producing real wealth in the customary way. In the face of this, either consciously or at a more mystical level, the worker bees in banking recognize that, in order to maintain their villas in the Hamptons, money has to be loaned into existence some other way (than in the service of industrial productivity).

The important part of this is that the money is gone. What makes matters truly eerie is that the "bubble" in suburban houses has occurred at exactly the moment in history when the chief enabling resource for suburban life -- oil -- has entered its scarcity stage.

This has all failed now because the racket went too far.

The logical conclusion of all this is not what the American public wants to hear: We have become a much poorer society and are now faced with the unavoidable task of making major changes in how we live.

Tags: economics, wall street, money, peak oil, the long emergency, housing

EPA Protecting Pesticides Not Bees

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 02:16:12 GMT

clipped by: klippety
clipper's remarks: More politics warping science; suing for information? Why do we not have a public debate? Like a Democracy?

Clip Source: www.commondreams.org

Lawsuit Seeks EPA Pesticide Data

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is refusing to disclose records about a new class of pesticides that could be playing a role in the disappearance of millions of honeybees in the United States, a lawsuit filed Monday charges.

The Natural Resources Defense Council wants to see the studies that the EPA required when it approved a pesticide made by Bayer CropScience five years ago.

The environmental group filed the suit as part of an effort to find out how diligently the EPA is protecting honeybees from dangerous pesticides, said Aaron Colangelo, a lawyer for the group in Washington.

In the last two years, beekeepers have reported unexplained losses of hives - 30 percent and upward - leading to a phenomenon called colony collapse disorder. Scientists believe that the decline in bees is linked to an onslaught of pesticides, mites, parasites and viruses, as well as a loss of habitat and food.

Computer model of bees probes the hive mind

Sun, 17 Aug 2008 20:46:55 GMT

clipped by: Mohir
clipper's remarks: Thenius believes the foragers may be picking up clues about the quality of sources from their interactions with receivers. If some foragers have found a bountiful new source, the receivers have more work to do, so average unloading times across all foragers increase. This delay might suggest the existence of a better nectar source than the one a given forager has been visiting. Similarly, receivers are sometimes already half-full from another bee's nectar when a new forager arrives, so a forager needs to unload to more than one receiver. If this occurs more frequently, it may also suggest that a richer nectar source has been found.
To test this hypothesis, Thenius's team built a computer simulation of a hive containing 5000 independent virtual bees. Each forager started out visiting one of two different flower patches, but would switch destinations if it had to wait too long to be unloaded or was being serviced by too many receivers.

Clip Source: www.newscientist.com

GIVEN a choice between two different flower beds, how can honeybees hunting for nectar be sure they've chosen the best patch? A new computer model may provide the answer, as well as insights into the workings of a "hive mind" that could be used to guide swarms of robots.

Within a bee colony, two different types of bee handle nectar: foragers go out to collect it from flowers, and receivers unload it from the foragers and store it in honeycomb. The forager then leaves the hive to hunt for more.

Different foragers from a single hive visit more than one separate source of nectar - so how can an individual forager be sure it's going to the best one? While bees can communicate with each other using complicated waggle dances, "these only show where a source is - not how good it is", says Ronald Thenius of the University of Graz in Austria.

Tags: bees, computers, hive, mind

Låtlista indiegympa

Sat, 16 Aug 2008 16:36:10 GMT

clipped by: purken
clipper's remarks: Något att använda själv kanske?

Clip Source: indiegympa.se

Låtarna!

Igår slog vi rekord, över 90 personer studsade omkring på taket. Det var tokroligt! Tack alla som var där, ni var grymma. En del av er har frågat efter låtlistan, så här kommer den:

Pulp - Common People, The Kills - Cheap and Cheerful, The Concreates - Seems Fine, Josie Cotton - Johnny, Are You Queer?, Hästpojken - Andas, Hell On Wheels - The Soda, Lykke Li - I’m Good, I’m Gone, Kings of Convenience - I’d Rather Dance With You, Florence Valentin - 16 ton, Dexy’s Midnight Runners - Come on Eileen, The Lucksmiths - T-Shirt Weather, Feist - I Feel It All (Escort remix), Chordettes - Lollipop, Leo Sayer - You Make Me Feel Like Dancing, Laakso - High Drama, The Boy Least Likely To - Monsters, Michael Jackson - Thriller, The Bees - End of The Street, Nationalteatern - Kåldolmar & kalsipper

Det kan hända att vi byter ut lite låtar till nästa gång, vi får se. De här är i alla fall vad ni studsat runt till i sommar än så länge.

'Flexi-bee' could pre-empt varroa mite.

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 02:22:35 GMT

clipped by: pokkets
clipper's remarks: Of course there is the honey, but there is also the critical role bees play in pollination, particularly crop fertilization. The loss of honey bee populations has the potential to have a devastating effect in many crops that at the moment we take for granted.
There are two suggestions. One is to prevent the mite laying by altering a chemical released by the bees. The other disrupts the life cycle of the mite. It doesn't have to be either/or, both approaches need to be tried, in addition to further suggestions.
The main thing we have to worry about taking into account our record of 'fixing' problems in nature (we don't seem to be that good at it)
Is that our efforts don't further endanger the bee populations
At the moment however, if we do nothing we will lose the bees.
There is the possibility, that bees will develop their own resistance to the mite naturally. Selective breeding may be an option.
I would be more inclined to listen to a beekeeper than a geneticist,.

Clip Source: www.abc.net.au

Anna Salleh

A honey bee with a varroa mite on its back - the mites cause death and disease in bee colonies

Dr Max Whitten

at CSIRO, says Australia is expected any day to succumb to the varroa mite, which is implicated in the devastating Colony Collapse Disorder that has decimated US hives.

Varroa sucks the "blood" of the bee and makes it more susceptible to disease.

He says we should engineer a bee, which has a gene for resistance to varroa

The concept is to take a gene whose product will prevent the mite from completing its life cycle

some bees, even those of the same species

are naturally resistant to varroa

Professor Ben Oldroyd from the University of Sydney says

it relies on the unlikely situation in which resistance relies on a single gene.

it might be better to do this a different way

scientsts believe that the varroa mite lays eggs on bees in response to a chemical signal from the bees.

it would be useful to identify this chemical signal and then knock out the gene responsible for it.

Singing for Sex

Sun, 10 Aug 2008 21:25:07 GMT

clipped by: Imnclady

Clip Source: www.cnn.com

Singing for sex and other fishy sounds

WASHINGTON (AP) -- It's not exactly Tony serenading Maria in "West Side Story," but for all their homeliness toadfish also sing to attract mates.

OK, singing may be a stretch; it's more of a hum.

The sounds of whales and dolphins are well known, but most people don't realize fish also make sounds

The whole nervous system basis that led to speech originated in fish hundreds of millions of years ago, he said.

parts of the nervous system that generate sounds are easiest to study in these fish,"

One is the hum in which the male sings to attract the female to his nest. Bass characterized it as like the drone of bees or a motor running.

The second type is a threat sound, more of a grunt or growl, to protect nesting territory.

Tags: washington, study, science, sex, brain

Giant Smelly Flower Sex Show Attracts Voyeurs

Fri, 08 Aug 2008 18:14:00 GMT

clipped by: zizzy

Clip Source: uk.reuters.com

It's one of the world's largest flowers, it stinks of rotting meat or rancid cheese and looks very much like a giant penis

The Amorphophallus Titanum -- literally "the giant strangely shaped penis" -- has been attracting big crowds at the National Botanic Garden of Belgium on the outskirts of Brussels.

The rare phallus-like flower that springs from the plant only survives about 72 hours and its timing is completely unpredictable

It's there for a short time, it's glamorous, it's big, it produces something special

Also known as Corpse Flower, it releases a strong smell to attract pollinators, thought to be sweat bees.

Thousands queued to see -- and smell -- the 1.6 meter tall specimen on Thursday.

Visitors compared the smell to rotten fish, others to rotten meat or old cheese.

"It smells like a mix of rotten fish and rotten meat. It's quite impressive!" said visitor Frederic Lebreux.

"I don't know, maybe like a Camembert," said Rachel Kaiembe. Continued...

Giant smelly flower puts on sex show in Belgium

Fri, 08 Aug 2008 16:51:06 GMT

clipped by: amgumen

Clip Source: news.yahoo.com

It's one of the world's largest flowers, it stinks of rotting meat or rancid cheese and looks very much like a giant penis.

The rare phallus-like flower that springs from the plant only survives about 72 hours and its timing is completely unpredictable, said Gert Ausloos, head of education at the garden.

Also known as Corpse Flower, it releases a strong smell to attract pollinators, thought to be sweat bees.

Thousands queued to see -- and smell -- the 1.6 meter tall specimen on Thursday.

Visitors compared the smell to rotten fish, others to rotten meat or old cheese.

"It smells like a mix of rotten fish and rotten meat. It's quite impressive!" said visitor Frederic Lebreux.

First discovered in 1878 in western Sumatra, the plant was first cultivated in Europe at the Royal Botanic Garden, Kew, in London in 1889. Because of its appearance, Victorian women were kept from viewing it.

Corpse Flower in Bloom

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 18:49:35 GMT

clipped by: falconz
clipper's remarks: It always draws a big crowd. Who would have thought rotten meat would be an attraction?

Clip Source: www.reuters.com

The Amorphophallus Titanum -- literally "the giant strangely shaped penis" -- has been attracting big crowds at the National Botanic Garden of Belgium on the outskirts of Brussels.

The rare phallus-like flower that springs from the plant only survives about 72 hours and its timing is completely unpredictable, said Gert Ausloos, head of education at the garden.

Also known as Corpse Flower, it releases a strong smell to attract pollinators, thought to be sweat bees.

Tags: plants