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TOKYO, Japan (AFP) — A Japanese zoo celebrated the first birth of a baby panda in five years Monday, with the tiny cub small enough to fit in the palm of a human hand. Eleven-year-old mum Shin Shin gave birth just before noon, officials at Tokyo’s Ueno Zoo said in a statement. Pandas are born pink, hairless and weigh around 100 grams — so small it can be difficult to determine their sex. “There have […]
by Michel Viatteau Agence France Presse RUSKIE PIASKI, Poland (AFP) — An elderly woman leans over to smell a lush flowerbed of lavender in sprawling gardens surrounding an imposing early 20th-century palace in a pastoral corner of eastern Poland. Slowly a smile lights up her face, erasing her previous stony expression — she suffers from paranoid schizophrenia which often renders her emotionless. The sudden burst of happiness is one of the benefits of horticultural, or […]
VIRGINIA, United States (Reuters) — Technology company Draper has revealed the latest steps toward fusing technology with animals, releasing a behind-the-scenes look at its DragonflEye project which aims to influence the behavior of dragonflies. Researchers from Draper and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at the Janelia Research Campus have been developing a technology based on optrodes which would enable them to control the flight path of dragonflies. The optrodes, sometimes known as optical fibers, can […]
PENRYN, United Kingdom (Reuters) – The African penguin joins the list of species said to be threatened by climate change – and overfishing. Researchers from the United Kingdom and South Africa say penguin numbers in the Benguela upwelling ecosystem have halved in just 30 years. The sardines and anchovies they feed on have moved eastwards, due to changes in water temperature and salinity. Scientists tagged juvenile penguins and found them traveling fruitlessly to their old […]
TRINCOMALEE, Sri Lanka (Reuters) — Sri Lanka Navy personnel and local residents helped around 20 beached whales back out to sea on Wednesday (May 31), a day after Cyclone Mora passed over the Indian Ocean island nation. The whales, which beached themselves repeatedly near the village of Sampur in the district of Trincomalee on the country’s northeastern coast, were pushed back into deeper waters by sailors from the nearby naval base and villagers. Large pods […]
CINCINNATI, United States (Reuters) — Fiona, a 270-pound (122.5 kilograms) hippopotamus, made her debut at the Cincinnati Zoo in Ohio on Wednesday (May 31). But Fiona wasn’t always this heavy. NBC reports that five months ago, she only weighed 29 pounds after being born six weeks prematurely. She made her first public appearance to journalists on Wednesday – and Fiona did not disappoint. But she’s not yet ready to appear in front of the general […]
SYDNEY, Australia (AFP) — Faceless fish and other weird and wonderful creatures, many of them new species, have been hauled up from the deep waters off Australia during a scientific voyage studying parts of the ocean never explored before. The month-long journey off the country’s eastern seaboard has been surveying life lurking in a dark and cold abyss that plunges four kilometers (2.5 miles) below the surface, using nets, sonar and deep-sea cameras. Chief scientist […]
TOKYO, Japan (Reuters) — Scientists in Tokyo have replaced a ladybird beetle’s outer wing casing with an artificial see-through one, to better observe its complex folding mechanism. Assistant Professor Kazuya Saito, the lead researcher, said he was impressed with the speed with which the ladybird beetle or the ladybird can both deploy its wings for flight and store them when landing and walking. “The amazing thing about an insect’s wing is that it isn’t just […]
PARIS, France (AFP) — Under a dual onslaught of global warming and localized urban heating, some of the world’s cities may be as much as eight degrees Celsius (14.4 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer by 2100, researchers warned Monday. Such a temperature spike can have dire consequences for the health of city-dwellers, robbing companies and industries of able workers, and putting pressure on already strained natural resources such as water. The projection is based on the worst-case-scenario […]
LUND, Sweden (Reuters) — Giving brief electric shocks to fresh herbs before drying them could vastly improve the taste of dried herbs. So say food technologists and biologists at Sweden’s Lund University. Food technology researcher Federico Gomez has conducted experiments with basil leaves and found leaves dried after short electric shocks tasted and smelled almost as good as fresh. Basil leaf pores are naturally closed once they go through the drying process, but Gomez posited […]
SYDNEY, Australia (Reuters) — Sydney’s Taronga Zoo welcomed the arrival of an Asian elephant calf on Friday (May 26), the first to be born there in nearly seven years, according to a statement. The unnamed male calf weighed in at 130 kilograms and was standing within five minutes of the birth, zoo staff confirmed. The zoo said that the latest arrival will be a second for mother Pak Boon, who delivered a female calf named […]
HENDERSON ISLAND, United Kingdom (Reuters) — One of the world’s remotest islands has been polluted with the highest density of plastic garbage, scientific research finding shows. Although located more than 5,000 kilometres (3,106 miles) from the nearest major population centre, the uninhabited Henderson Island has an estimated 37.7 million pieces of plastic, according the to the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies (IMAS) at the University of Tasmania. Dr. Jennifer Lavers, IMAS researcher and lead […]
