Remember that mosquito DNA used in Jurassic Park?  How it was used to create the dinosaurs?

It was only a matter of time, right?



No, no...not until we cloned a dinosaur from a mosquito. 


But until we used DNA from a mosquito.

"A suspected car thief has been arrested - thanks to a DNA sample taken from blood found inside a mosquito. Police inspecting a dumped stolen car in Lapua, Finland, last June noticed a full-looking mosquito. "

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Female Mosquito

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On December 20, 2008 President-elect Obama introduced the team of men and women who will head up the nation's major scientific departments.

"Because the truth is that promoting science isn’t just about providing resources—it’s about protecting free and open inquiry. It’s about ensuring that facts and evidence are never twisted or obscured by politics or ideology. It’s about listening to what our scientists have to say, even when it’s inconvenient—especially when it’s inconvenient. Because the highest purpose of science is the search for knowledge, truth and a greater understanding of the world around us. That will be my goal as President of the United States—and I could not have a better team to guide me in this work."


Click for entire speech

But not so fast....

What about the 650 international scientists who disagree with global warming?

Now they've gone and ruined it!  I love science just as much as the next person...but come on!  I know Santa is making those reindeer fly.  And no one is going to tell me differently!

Ever wondered how Santa Claus can travel around the world in just one night on his reindeer-pulled sleigh and deliver toys to all the children?

"He exploits the space-time continuum," says Larry Silverberg, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at North Carolina State University.

Santa's magic may go far beyond merely traveling across 200 million square miles (322 million sq km) to visit hundreds of millions of homes of believing children in just one night, Silverberg said.

Continued Here

 

Portuguese Man O' War



Have you ever seen one?  Or more?  After a storm off the coast in Florida?  Floating on the surface like purple balloons?

Or the following morning, while you stroll the beach, dried up on the shore?

Portuguese Man O' War...they sting..they hurt like crazy.  I know.  I've been stung before.

Their tentacles float in the water quite far from them and tangle around your legs when you are in the water. 

So, if you are traveling over the holidays or during the winter...beware the sting.  Especially after a storm.

Portuguese Man O' Wars are swarming in huge masses....

"WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Huge swarms of stinging jellyfish and similar slimy animals are ruining beaches in Hawaii, the Gulf of Mexico, the Mediterranean, Australia and elsewhere, U.S. researchers reported on Friday.

The report says 150 million people are exposed to jellyfish globally every year, with 500,000 people stung in the Chesapeake Bay, off the U.S. Atlantic Coast, alone.

Another 200,000 are stung every year in Florida, and 10,000 are stung in Australia by the deadly Portuguese man-of-war, according to the report, a broad review of jellyfish research."

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Oh, the relief for a sting?  Amonia...no matter what its source   : )

Everyday I seem to learn about some new creature or plant on Earth, or of some scientific fact I never knew about before. That's the awesome thing about blogging. 

Just look at this "frog."  He looks more like some kind of purple goop.  Wouldn't you have loved to have been the one to stumble upon him?  What a find.

"The chubby, seven-centimetre-long, purple amphibian with a pointy snout was found hopping around in the Western Ghats, a range of hills in western India.

[...]

Its head appears too small for its body and it looks more like a squat, grumpy blob than a living creature.

But to the scientists who describe it in the journal Nature, the frog is a beautiful find because of what it tells them about Earth history.

"It is an important discovery because it tells us something about the early evolution of advanced frogs that we would not know otherwise because there are no fossil records from this lineage," says Franky Bossuyt, of Free University of Brussels, Belgium. "

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Did you know there are living fossils? 

 

Amazing!

From Wired

12 Living Fossils

 

Dolphins…

"Dolphins and certain whales are known to blow bubble rings. Two ways of creating such rings have been reported: one way is by letting a ring out of their blow hole, the other by creating a water vortex ring and blowing air in the vortex ring. "

Read about the physics behind bubble rings by dolphins and scuba divers   HERE

Pretty different from what we see at Sea World. 

Just when you thought the water was safe again.




Wired Science Amazing Animal Videos ~ HERE

"Doctors are wondering what the effect of the credit crunch will be on new year queues at genito-urinary clinics. Specialists in this area have noticed that some City workers, the first to feel the effects of recession, have suffered physically as well as financially. The pattern of graphs showing the decline in share prices could be mirrored by another showing the increase in sexually transmitted infections. Will more anxiety - induced by fear of unemployment, forced house sales, unpaid school fees and rocketing fuel bills - drive the depressed and insecure to escape grim reality with an exciting if transient affair and a visit to the clinic? "



HPV: An Unwanted Gift At Christmas

This is a British story…but there’s no denying that we have an STD problem here in the US.

 

Geologist Winston Seiler with a few of the thousands of dinosaur
tracks found at the Arizona-Utah border.
Photo Credit: By Nicole Miller -- University Of Utah Via Associated Press




Is it a brontosaurus stomping ground? 

Or a watering hole for a large crowd of brachiosaurus? 

Nobody knows yet, but the place on the border of Arizona and Utah is filled with over 1000 dinosaur footprints.  Is it for real? 

Or a very well planned out trick? 

The earth there is prime for it to have really happened. 

But to have gone undiscovered this long?

I'm a dinosaur enthusiast....how about you?

I hope it is real.

Read about it at National Geographic   HERE

18-yr old rocket casing found in Australia

EVERYONE knows I’m a Lost fan.  And Lost wouldn’t be lost if it weren’t for aviation.  Why, one of the main characters, who has been rescued from the island that was his home for several months, spends his weekends flying in hopes of repeating the crash that made him “lost” in the first place!

But Lost isn’t the only movie or show that features aviation that’s been a hit with me. How about the original Tarzan The Ape Man?  The plane crashing in the jungle…with an infant onboard, raised by apes.  He grows up to fall in love with the beautiful Jane.  Not trying to make “apes” the feature, but you can’t forget that King Kong, while on top of the Empire State building was attacked by a plane.

And then there’s Top Gun, with Tom Cruise, or Cliff Hanger with Sylvester Stallone.  Or Apocalypse Now with Marlon Brando, Memphis Belle or A Bridge Too Far.

Can’t forget Airplane!,    Planes, Trains and Automobiles, or Home Alone. 

I know, some of these movies have aviation touching them only for a short period of time, while others have them as the main focus.  But it was important just the same.  The movie wouldn’t have gotten where it was supposed to be without aviation.  Just like we wouldn’t be where we are today without it. 

Just think where we have come and how quickly since 1903 when the Wright Bros. had their first success.

Aviation.com recognizes that and has put together what they believe are the Great Innovations In Aviation....

Take a look…what do you think?  

Mug shot of Michael Jackson



Oh, not that type of artificial nose…too bad, Michael.

Actually, that's artificial noses for scientific purposes....to help mankind.

" Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) scientists said Monday they have moved closer to creating "artificial noses," after finding a way to mass-produce smell receptors in a laboratory.

Artificial noses could one day replace dogs that sniff out drugs and explosives, and could have numerous medical applications including identifying diseases that have distinct odors, according to Shuguang Zhang, associate director of MIT's Center for Biomedical Engineering and senior author of a study on the subject.

"Smell is perhaps one of the oldest and most primitive senses, but nobody really understands how it works," said Zhang.

"It still remains a tantalizing enigma."

In seeking to recreate smell, the MIT RealNose project seeks to recreate the most complex and least-understood of the five senses. "


Read the complete article HERE

The Best Science Images of 2008 have been announced by the National Science Foundation and the journal Science.  The awards are given for “images that employ modern technology to visualize complex scientific topics."

Below is an Honorable Mention photo in all its glory…





Honorable Mention, Photography: "Squid Suckers: The Little Monsters That Feed the Beast"

You can view more images from 2008, along with winners from past years at National Geographic

HERE

U.S. Satellite Vanguard  Photo U.S. Navy

On December 6, 1957, hot on the heels of Sputnik, the United States Navy readied the first American satellite, Vanguard, for launch. The grapefruit-sized device lofted 3 feet from Earth before it exploded. Press and public jeered, dubbing it “Flopnik.” (“The exact cause is classified,” says the crisp narrator in a vintage video [below] of the attempt.) A red-faced U.S. government redoubled their efforts. Within a year and a half, Vanguard’s replacement took the first measurements of Earth’s upper atmosphere and its successor, Vanguard II, the first scan of Earth’s clouds. Meanwhile, NASA, the agency charged with managing this new technology, was born.

 

The science project that some feared might end the world has encountered some problems.

 This Is Really Huge

Of course, problems were to be expected.  But this will only fuel the fire for those who continue to worry about the approach of an impending doomsday.

The Hadron Collider will be shut down for two months after just opening .