We arrived in Rio at 6am and hailed a taxi to take us to our hostel in Santa Teresa. I had been warned about their driving skills but oh my god its scary. We arrived at our hostels road but the driver couldnt find the hostel and was going mental he was even explaining that it did not even excist. Coincidently this is the only hostel we have prebooked and we did it in England through STA. so it
Thursday Massada and Ein Gedi
Up early for the trip to King David's hotel in the city centre where we are to be picked up for our tour to Massada. Taxi picks us up at 7am as we know what the traffic can be like we have gone early to make sure we get there in time for 9am Taxi metered and we are off King David hotel is the most famous hotel in Israel boasting guests like Churchill Sadat Haile Selassie Gorbachev That
Carnival Magic
Well today was the day that me and Fi had been eagerley anticipating since deciding that we would go travelling. Today we had tickets for the Sambadrome and we were due to watch the carnival and on Valentines day. It is a really good day for the both of us.With the carnival not being until later on we decided we had to kill some time and there was only one thing that Fi wanted to do during the day
Dublin with my mom
Well having my mom here could only get better by us traveling to Dublin for three days. My mom not going to lie got tired of Belfast and wanted to see someother places and I thought Dublin couldnt be a better place to go. Just a quick note also which has made the trip great is while she has been here we have won two super league games in a row and one college game she is the Ulster Elk's good lu
Down up the other side down up again sleep straight up….
Another day Yet another story.At about 630pm two nights ago I was preparing to set out to travel to Cusco. This being the last leg of my South American journey I was to stop here then travel onwards to Lima where Im flying out of on Sunday. At this time I thought that I would search online to find out what time the buses were departing from Cusco to Lima..... As we all know the roads and the I
Short Piece
Kathmandu is fantastic and my job here couldn't be any better but these past 10 days have been beset by sickness and frustration. Fieldwork isn't always fun and games so it seems. The sickness was due to parasitesI must have made some malignant little internal friends during my village stay the subject of the next postI promise and they kept me in bed with a bucket nearby for some days
Day 4 Loose ends and a Stunning Memorial
After a hard day walking in the heat yesterday today i woke up feeling a tired b a little unwell and c itchy mosquito's 4 mark 0. A lazy morning was neccessary and after the Boducherala family picked up on my lack of appetite. I was given some soothing medicine for anyone in india it's called Digene and it is a miracle cure. The family even sent the housekeeper out to buy me a bottle
Beirut Lebanon Not Quite the Paris of the Middle East
Perceptions of Beirut are so deeply ingrained that to many people in the UK the city is synonymous with bombings kidnappings carjackings and bloody massacres. It's also a generic term used when arriving at a place less than perfect. It's like Beirut here is a common phrase and one I'd used myself over and over. But surely times had changed After all the terrible civil war had been over for alm
Stanley’s Off Again
Today students addressed and stuffed their envelopes with an eager to travel Stanley. He was mailed to Germany California Tennesse and California. The students were very excited to mail their envelopes in the school office Now the waiting game begins I will begin posting entries as soon as Stanley makes his return to Austin.
Baby Violet
It was 640am in Thailand when I got a message from my mom 240pm Feb 8th Seattle time. She is about 7 pounds. 51 cm. Born in the year of the ox. Her name is Violet.OH.MY.BUDDHA I'm an Uncle I was overwhelemed with joy. I was also shocked because the baby was expected to be born on Feb.14th but I guess she was too excited for life to begin Maggie and I finished up our adventurous vacation in
waiting…planning
waiting for the time to pass is so hard. still have a few months to go but weve got mostly all the stuff we need probably buy our tickets this weekend and wait to find a great deal on a lightweight and small but durable tent...and we will be ready to go. decided we will fly in to prague and explore from there. this will be only the beginning i simply can not let everyone else see the world an
Travel London
Ahh off to london again I cant wait I am leaving on the 23rd and will be in heathrow airport 24th 7.30 am. Well planning the trip this time was easy i used one website for my hotel and all the rest of my bookings i brought all the tickets for the tourist attractions in advance this time all via the website londonpics4u.com i was looking in the gallery page of londonpics4u and there is truly so
Irene’s Tree in Richmond Park
Today would have been Irenersquos birthday. In Richmond Park in south west London at midday Nellie and Monk joined together with 30 or so others to celebrate their love for Irene by planting a tree in her memory.Irene was the freest of free spirits and Monk felt that the final resting place for her ashes should reflect this and he chose the hawthorn as the tree that best symbolised Irene's bea
Downhill Skiing and country flag answers
Irsquom a skier itrsquos one of the reasons I live in the mountains. One of the most popular sports in the Olympics are the skiing events it doesnrsquot matter men women or which event they are very popular. Earlier in the week I had a chance to grab my skis and head up the mountain to watch the menrsquos downhill event from along side the course at Whistler Creeksidersquos Dave Mu
Around the World in 42 days Day 3 London
Day Three15 February 2010Location LondonHotel Premier Inn SouthwarkDay three of our global domination tour started early as I had high hopes for visiting Notting Hill. I always thought the area looked really nice when viewed on TV and in movies and figured that it was worth a visit given is proximity to us. We were out of the Hotel by 8am and arrived at Notting Hill Gate tube station less than 2
Centar Bella
Hi thereWe are specialised estetic center and would wellcome you if you are in this 'neck of the wood' and want to give somtheng nice to yourself or somone you love.In the world where the time is essential our mission is to give the Client outstanding aesthetic and cosmetic service in the time when suits you best to give you unique and unforgettable experience with results after the first treatmen
The first couple days it’s hot here down under
This summer weather had been absolutely wonderful Yes it is very hot and humid but we love it When we got through baggage reclaim we found or airport shuttle with a few Germans We brought SO MUCH stuff compared to them. They each had 1 suitcase and carryon. We had 2 suitcases a giant backpack and carryon. Oh well we stuck out as Americanshellip taking unnecessary things. It was an
Book Excerpt: Let in the Light
Patricia Livingston on looking for good in our lives.
Giants Lurking In The Drawer | The Loom
Paleontologists can make spectacular discoveries in remote badlands and deserts. But there are also things waiting to be found–or at least recognized–in the back rooms of museums. Things like giant filter-feeding fish.
The giant filter-feeding fish in this painting was discovered by Matt Friedman, a paleontologist at the University of Oxford. Friedman knows a thing or two about the treasures lurking in museum drawers. As I wrote in 2008, he showed that previously neglected fossils were actually transitional forms that track the evolution of the bizarre bodies of flatfish. Recently Friedman took a trip to the Rocky Mountain Dinosaur Resource Center in Colorado to check out some other fish fossils. While he was there, the center paleontologists asked him to take a look at a massive slab of rock they had just brought in. They knew it contained a fish that dated back to some time between 89 and 66 million years ago, but they couldn’t tell quite what sort of fish.
Clearly, the fish was big. The bony shells that encased its eyes were the size of grapefruits. The slab contained huge scimitar fins. On closer inspection, Friedman recognized that the fish belonged to an extinct lineage of fish called pachycormids. Pachycormids branched off early from other ray-finned fish and evolved into tuna-like predators. As Friedman examined the fossil, though, he found something very strange. Its jaws were toothless. Instead, Friedman found a loose set of rods, each measuring over four feet long. The fish, which Friedman dubbed Bonnerichthys, did not bite its prey. Instead, it opened its mouth wide and trapped tiny animals in bony filters in its mouth.
Today, a number of big filter feeders swim in the oceans. Among sharks and their relatives, filter feeding has evolved a few times, in forms such as manta rays and whale sharks. Baleen whales evolved filter feeding as well, and have evolved into the biggest animals ever–perhaps the biggest animals possible.
Filter-feeding sharks and whales are relative new on the scene, only appearing after the end of the Mesozoic Era 65 million years ago. During the 150-million-year Mesozoic, the oceans were home to many giant marine reptiles. Yet none of them appear to have evolved into filter feeders. Scientists have puzzled why none of them evolved to take advantage of that particular niche. Perhaps there was some constraint that blocked them from that way of life.
Bonnerichthys hinted at a different explanation. Paleontologists had previously found a few filter-feeding pachycormid dating back to a narrow time range around 160 million years. They generally dismissed these fish as a fleeting evolutionary experiment. But Bonnerichthys was another filter-feeding pachycormid living 100 million years later. Friedman began to scour museum collections for similar fish. As Friedman and his colleagues report today in Science, they found a number of new species spanning those 100 million years, which had gone unnoticed before. Instead of a dead-end experiment, the filter feeders enjoyed a 100-million year dynasty.
In other words, the filter-feeding niche wasn’t empty through the Mesozoic. It was occupied by bizarre fishes that no one had noticed before, even as their bones sat for decades in museum drawers. At the end of the Mesozoic, the pachycormids died off in the same pulse of extinctions that wiped out the big dinosaurs on land. And only then did other animals–sharks and whales–take over the filter-feeding way of life. Friedman won’t speculate further about these remarkable animals for now. He’s going to hunt through some museum collections instead.
[Update 7 pm: Deep apologies for leaving off the painting credit! Image courtesy of Robert Nicholls, http://www.paleocreations.com]
Scientists Peer Into the Brain of a Fruit Fly in Mid-Flight | 80beats
Thanks to a little technological ingenuity, we may soon get a look at what exactly is happening in the flying brain. In the journal Nature Neuroscience, Caltech researchers document how they managed to monitor the brain activity of fruit fly in flight.
“The challenge was to be able to gain access to the brain in a way that didn’t compromise the animal’s ability to fly, or to perform behavior,” said study researcher Michael Dickinson of Caltech. “We couldn’t just rip the brain out of the body and put it into a dish” [LiveScience]. Researchers have previously studied activity in the tiny brain of a living fruit fly, but only when it was restrained. Dickinson’s team created a way to look inside while the bug was flying around.
First they tethered a fly, clamping its head in place but leaving its wings free, and then they cut away a part of the brain’s covering so they could attach electrodes to neurons. Finally they induced the fly to flap its wings with a startling puff of air, and tracked it with digital cameras while the electrodes collected data.
Dickinson said the work, conducted with postdoctoral scholars Gaby Maimon and Andrew Straw, suggests at least part of the brain of the fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster) is in a different and more sensitive state during flight than when the fly is quiescent [UPI]. And, he says, they saw double the normal activity in the visual neurons. Having achieved this basic step, the team hopes to further figure out how the extra activity helps the flies see and steer while aloft.
Related Content:
80beats: Scientists Glean Secrets of Flight From Birds, Bats, and Bugs
80beats: Alcoholic Fruit Flies Don’t Know When To Say When
80beats: Model Suggests 4-Winged Dino Glided Like a Flying Squirrel
80beats: Researchers Flip Brain Cells On And Off With Light Pulses
Image: Caltech
