A confession - I am partial to the occasional cup of hot chocolate. However, I rarely spend any time at all, thinking about the journey the chocolate undertook to make its way into my cup. Echoes of a much longer and much, much older chocolate expedition caught my attention this week. Researchers announced they had discovered theobromine a chocolate marker in the shards of ceramic drinking cylinders unearthed at the Chaco Canyon settlement in New Mexico.
If you're a big cat fan and like them rare and little seen, then the Acinonyx jubatus hecki - the Saharan Cheetah is for you. Only about 250 of the graceful cats roam the Sahara desert and vast savannas of Algeria, Niger, Mail, Bukina-Faso and Togo. Naturally, scientists got all het up when four of the graceful felines were immortalized in camera traps set by a combined team fromZoological Society of London, Office du Parc Nationale de l'Ahaggar and the Universite de Bejaia. http://www.wcs.org/353624/wcs_seeing_spots_in_the_sahara Image: Farid Belbachir/ZSL/OPNA, Wildlife Conservation Society
Australia's recent spate of shark attacks has me even more confused than I am normally. You see. according to George Burgess the director of the International Shark Attack File based at the University of Florida, shark attacks dropped in the U.S. in 2008 as the recession kicked in. Burgess pointed to fewer people holidaying at the beach for economic reasons. The U.S. accounts for two-thirds of shark attacks world-wide so their dip saw shark attacks fall to their lowest level in five years. Now contrary to U.S. experience, Australia has experienced three shark attacks in 18 days. Is Australia less severely impacted by the recession than the U.S? Is our economy more resilient than the U.S.? Or is this yet another case of causality gone astray in search of a headline? More likely, perhaps shark attacks have nothing to do with economics and everything to do with the distribution of surfer dudes, the banning of commercial fishing in Sydney Harbour, climate and lifestyles! http://news.ufl.edu/2009/02/19/shark-attacks/ Image: George Burgess, director of the International Shark Attack File, University of Florida
What do you get when you combine an Indian and a Belgian biologist? Answer - a frog finding frenzy in the leafy forests of India's Western Ghats region! Proving that instant gratification doesn't come easy in the frog world, biologists Biju and Bossuyt spent 10 long years of field studies in the Ghat. From 2005 through to 2008, Biju and Bossuyt have added 18 new species to India's frog tally.
This month they published their discovery of 12 new frog species! In the process, they rediscovered the Travancore bullfrong (Philautus travancoricus) previously considered lost to science, having not been sighted for over 100 years. The Ghats, renowned for their biological diversity are under threat from clearing for plantations and housing. http://www.linnean.org/index.php?id=428 Image: 1. Philautus akroparallagi, 2. New species, S. Bihu, www.frogindia.org
If anyone doubts how history continues to haunt us, you only have to consider the fate of the tropical Isla de Vieques off Puerto Rico. Twenty one miles long and 5 miles wide, it was once part of the Spanish Virgin Islands. In 1948 the U.S. navy arrived and nicked 70% of the island. In 1977 the Navy scuttled the hulk of the former USS Killen, a WWII Fletcher class destroyer. The Killen had been used as a guided missile target ship from 1961 - 1969. Indeed the area was used as a What wasn't well known was the Killen was also a target in Operation Hardtack a series of nuclear bomb tests carried out in the Pacific in 1958.
The electronic age is going to be hell for historians. Paper records have a reassuring physicality and a surprising ability to endure, despite damp, fire and dusty neglect. Nor are they subject to capricious changes in industry formatting standards. Barack Obama's battle with bureaucracy to retain his Blackberry is well known. He is America's first truly digital President. While his speeches may be recorded for posterity, and the commentariate's take on his policy may live on thanks to YouTube, the digital divide poses problems of its own.
While CafeCuriosity has been off exploring what triggers tourists' curiosity, an expedition to Columbia's Tacarcuna area of the Darian (a biological 'hot spot') near the Panama border has found curiosities of its own. Better known for its notoriously anti-curiosity drug cartels and endemic violence, the wild Darian region proved to harbor 10 amphibian species believed to be new to science
Is this an echo of the UK finance sector? A 250-year-old Lucombe oak toppled over last weekend and died of old age. First planted in the 1760's by William Lucombe, the oak was the centerpiece of Phear Park in Exmouth. With a mighty girth of 26ft (rivalling some banker's expense accounts), it was the biggest of its kind in the world. The echoes of the finance sector do not end there, East Devon district gardeners now have to clean up the mess and decide what to do with the shattered trunk! Like the banking foiasco, the size of the problem dwarfs the human scale! All is not lost however acorns from the oak were collected last year. One of the oak's germinated protegy may yet replace it. If only the banking sector proves to be as easy to revive! Image: APEX, www.exmouthjournal.co.uk
OK, time for a confession. I'm one of those sad creatures who anthropomorphize their cars (and motor bikes for that matter). My much-loved Ducati SSD900 was the 'Beast'. He (it was definitely a he) was big, black, fast and bad! My Jaguar (The Boy) was a refined old gentleman, all refined leather and wood, while the Alfa Spider (The Toy) was all flash (and limited go). My current car a Chrysler 300C is all squat power - a 5.7l V8 will do that for you. I love its angry growl when i turn the ignition and the way it snaps my head back when I put my foot down on Sheik Z Road. I get when Now a team Florida State have established that car design imbues our vehicles with a discernible personality all of their own and in the process, proved once and for all that academics really do need to get out more. Now researchers have long asserted that we gain 90% of our information from faces. It seems evolution has configured our brains to examine faces to detect threats, assess social relationships and intuit emotions and personality traits. This explains why I always thought my Alfa Spider was 'hot'! http://www.fsu.com/pages/2008/11/26/cars_have_personality.html Image: 1. Alfa Spider, author, 2. Chrysler 300C, www.autoexpress.co.uk
Time for a confession. while I quite like dogs - particularly big boofy dogs, I'm basically a cat person. For years I put that foible down to cats like independence and general insouciance. Thanks to the U.s. National Science Foundation and some ex-Duke dudes, I realize its really because cats are curious and creep up on objects of interest. According to the study; 'Dogs Chase Efficiently, But Cats Skulk Counterintuitively', cast have just trashed the assumption by biologists that natural selection is all about energy efficiency. Here I was admiring my cats' ability to sleep 20 hours a day (2 hours play, 2 hours snacking) when in reality they were following their evolutionary path to success! While dogs are all balanced if bouncy kinetic energy, cats have traded off efficiency in exchange for the ability to slink along before pouncing on an unsuspecting cloth mouse and give it a good pummeling. Dogs like humans, have a gait that reduces their muscular workload by 70% while your cat manage only 37% at best. This explains why cats operate in short bursts and need so much sleep to recharge the batteries - here I was putting it down to pure laziness! So te next time your feline has their paws up, remember they're only skulking counterintuitively! http://news.duke.edu/2008/12/catwalk.html Image: Seti demonstrating counterintuitive skulking!, David Rymer, 2008
