Vampires, no reflection

Vampires, those mystical human looking creatures, that kill their pray by sucking their blood have been studied for centuries and described differently in myths, legends, books of all sorts and even movies. Even though vampire fans have observed recurring traits described in most of those stories as being really quick, really strong but also males having a beard, females not wearing lots of make up. And that would be because vampires don't have a reflection. That is one of the trait inherited that makes them such a dangerous predator. But scientifically speaking, how is it possible that their reflection does not show up in places such as windows? First one should know the difference between a polarized light and a non natural . A natural light is a light that goes in no specific direction, it goes everywhere as normal daylight. A polarized light is the result of two perpendicular natural light, that forms a light that is concentrated in one specific direction. We have discovered while studying light that if a light arrives on a window already polarized the reflection is greatly diminished. If the vampires had cells that had the capacity two direct the light sent back at them, exactly like the sepia officinalis, then their reflection would barely be.

Pants variety grew, Animal Variety Died

A long, long time ago, actually about 100 000 000 years ago, during the Cretaceous era, suddenly a great variety of plants started appearing. Until now scientists thought that would also have increased the mammal variety of specie as it would have increased their survival chances. But actually a new study shows that animal variety declined during the great angiosperm radiation of mid-Cretaceous period. A former high school biology teacher, Grossnickle, was the first one to make this discovery. He wrote a paper on this subject called  "Mammal disparity decreases during the Cretaceous angiosperm radiation,". Here is an abstract of it:

Fossil discoveries over the past 30 years have radically transformed traditional views of Mesozoic mammal evolution. In addition, recent research provides a more detailed account of the Cretaceous diversification of flowering plants. Here, we examine patterns of morphological disparity and functional morphology associated with diet in early mammals. Two analyses were performed: (i) an examination of diversity based on functional dental type rather than higher-level taxonomy, and (ii) a morphometric analysis of jaws, which made use of modern analogues, to assess changes in mammalian morphological and dietary disparity. Results demonstrate a decline in diversity of molar types during the mid-Cretaceous as abundances of triconodonts, symmetrodonts, docodonts and eupantotherians diminished. Multituberculates experience a turnover in functional molar types during the mid-Cretaceous and a shift towards plant-dominated diets during the late Late Cretaceous. Although therians undergo a taxonomic expansion coinciding with the angiosperm radiation, they display small body sizes and a low level of morphological disparity, suggesting an evolutionary shift favouring small insectivores. It is concluded that during the mid-Cretaceous, the period of rapid angiosperm radiation, mammals experienced both a decrease in morphological disparity and a functional shift in dietary morphology that were probably related to changing ecosystems.

 Grosspeckle discovered that it is true that the great increase of food did increase the amount the number of mammals on earth but also decreased the variety of mammal species, leaving almost only small, insect eating, animals.  Most of his research was made by studying the jaws of different mammals of this time period. He also noticed that the animals with quite small jaws and bodies, were the ones that did the best during this time period, we think that those were the ancestors of the therians (also ancestor of the humans).

Animal News

New Wet suit:

Australia is very famous for its many shark attacks on surfers. In general thee surfers' wet suits never protected them from sharks and sometimes even attracted sharks since it made surfers look like seals. But the Australians have come up with a simple yet very efficient answer. They have designed a stripped wet suit. In nature, usually, animals with black and white stripes indicates that they are poisonous. These suits have been tested on humans and they worked incredibly well, the sharks wouldn't even get close to it!

An incredible memory! :

The planarian warms have an incredible capability to regrow any body part, including the brain! This is because their body  is stuffed with a huge amount of stem cells. But searchers from Tuft university discovered something something even more incredible: after being decapitated they are able to regrow a brain with all of its memory! The searchers suspect that this is possible because the memory was copied in some of the stem cells.

Titi Monkey

Titi Monkeys' Song

 This magnificent specie of monkey developed  an incredible adaptation. Biologist from the University of St.Andrews and of the University of Neuchatel have this specie for years.  They have discovered that these monkeys emit different pitch cries to indicate different type of predators and their emplacement. Christiane Casar and her team from the university of St.Andrews have tried different experiments. First they placed a stuffed Caracara (one of their predator) in a tree, that made the monkeys make a  A pitch calls. Later  the placed a stuffed Oncilla on the ground, that made the monkeys that saw it make a B pitch calls. When they switch the position of the stiffed animals around and the monkeys caracara was on the ground, the monkeys started with at least four A calls before adding B calls into the mix. If the oncilla was in a tree, the monkeys made one A call before switching to a couple of B calls. They are the fist specie of New World monkeys that developed this survival technique.
And that is how singing saves species ;)

New specie 2013: Olinguito

 It has been 35 years since we had dicovered a new carnivor specie in the Western hemisphere. But this summer, an animal that most could describe as "the cutest looking carnivore ever!" has been identified. It's name is the Olinguito. Dr Helgen. curator of mammals at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington DC, has studied over 60000 Olinguito remains. Some of those remains were discovered hundreds of yeas ago but only now were they correctly identified thanks to the new DNA identifying techniques.By studying those animals and their traits scientist were able to figure out which type of habbitate they evolved to live in and therefore were Olinguitos come from:
 

 Looking at those adorable meat and fruit eating animals make us think about how vast our planet is and how much we have yet to discover. How many species live in our days that we do not know about?

Evolution

EVOLUTION

 

Charles Darwin was 22 when he went on a boat trip around the world as a naturalist. At that time it was 1831 and in England Church was a very important, God created everything around you as it is and that is all we had to know. But while going on that trip Charles found weird looking, giant bones, shells on mountains, and animal looking bones looking like animals existing but much bigger. When he came back from his trip Charles was so amazed with all he saw that he started studying extremely hard on what he had found, and tried to find answers to all those questions floating in his mind. This is how he had the idea of the Theory of Evolution. The Theory of Evolution explains many things. The first thing that it explains is that species evolve with time to adapt with their changing environment, for the survival of the specie.  This theory states that all species come from a same common specie, as we now think are bacteria. It is like a tree, it starts with a common specie, a common trunk, and then branches of in different adaptations of those species and on and on. Some branches stop but some continue. That is caused by Natural Selection, only the species that can adapt to their environment are  able to survive. Also all animals compete to stay alive, the one that is the slowest or has a bad camouflage gets eaten by a predator, the predator that doesn't hunt well doesn't eat. Evolution happen in a specie over a long period of time. Sometimes alleles are mutated during Miosis. Most of the time does small mutation are useless, minor, but sometimes it helps a specie survive and it is passed on through generation and generations, creating a new specie. Here is a simple video to help you understand how it works.

Sciency Superheros

TERMINATOR:
In a few seconds the face of Terminator 1000, in Terminator 2 , which was shot by a air compressed gun, just goes back together. But would it be possible ? Well it would be possible on some miniature spheres on the top of the skin hold a bit of a liquid that is filled with a chemical that reacts with the material and recovers the whole and soldifies. The only inconvenient is that it only works once it is not a reusable material. But what does it have to do with real life? If scientist where able to make this type of mini spheres with a real cicatrising liquid, they would make a great pouder that could make you face look perfectly smooth and with a great tint.

New Science Technology

Buzz's Suit

In 2017 all American astronaut will be wearing this suit, very similar to the one shown on Buzz in the Toy Story movies.  The back metal part is used to make entering the space shuttle quicker. Then it is also very flexible which is usefull for the astronauts whom take samples and run while enjoying the different gravitational pull.   GO BUZZ!

The new cool technology/ video game? The Illumi Room! Instead of only having to look at your tv screen you will also have to look at the different graphics projected on the walls of the room.  The machine will use the Kinnect camera to cartography the room and a projector. Depending on the game it will also be able to give you a speed impression. It will feel like we were transported into the video game. Good luck figuring out when it is reality and when it's not! :) 

 

Dolphin Murder on the cost of Mexico

Since january 2012 several bodies of dead dolphins were found on the beaches. But those deaths had nothing natural, three of them died being shot  as we found bullet marks on the corpses. One was found without a jaw, one found with its tail cut of, one with strange legions and finally one was found with hit in the head with a screw driver. A whole squad from the NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) is now on the case but now we already have a few ideas of whom the culpable might be the daulphins often come to sailor boats and eat their fish while in the fishing nets and the sailors from there have a history of shooting dauphin or even some throwing bombs at them. But those fisherman aren't the only copables,tourist boats feed the dolphins and the dolphins get used to it s o they go near fishing boat and get killed. Other wise the other cases of dead dolphins as the  one with the tale cut seemed to have died of natural causes and have been hurt after their death. But that still leaves one case: The screwdriver Case. This is still unsolved so better wait until the opinion of our NOAA agents to tell us what they think of this mysterious case.

Mammoth cloning

Scientist from Russia and Corea are working on recreating a Wooly Mamooth.  Wooly mammoths were one of the last breed of mammoths standing, they got extinct about 4000-5000 years ago. They are planning on recreating the mammoths by cloning its tissues using eggs from a modern indian elephant. They also might be able to find the DNA they need in the Siberian Permafrost where they have already found some fur and bone burrow that might still have living cells. They would take the nucleus from a living cell and incert it into an elephant's embryo. But while they work on cloning the Woolly Mammoth scientist Grgoriev and his team are ready to clone any fossil, with the right conditions that they find on their way.
Lets hope it doesn't go like Jurassic Park :P!

My Evil Self

From an early age, I have always been expected to show the worse of me. When I was just five my parents took me out of school “We do not like theirrrr mentality.” My mother simply explained in her Costarican accent. So, I was homeschooled all of my life, being taught that evil is the right path.

Oh how rude of me, I didn’t present myself! My name is Malusrexis junior (Evil king junior in Latin) 10^th generation of evil. Even before my birth my parents had great expectations for me, they went to the genealogist and bought all the bad genes for me, of course they were hesitating between a mutant or a genetically engineered for evil human but mutans are usually too messy and smelly so they decided on the genetically engineered possibility. The doctor, after my parents chose my stem cell genes, injected them one by one using a syringe into my mums belly, which I remember since I already have the genes of a great memory, I felt go into the different parts of my body. A few months later, here I was, the creature born to be the devil himself, and for all the evil population I was destined to be the evil master mind that would bring evil back to power.

-----------                                                                                                                                                          At the same time on the other side of Satanate City was born Mark The Good Guy, the son of two superheroes and the bringer of good, the loved one. As myself before birth he was already destined to be a Super Hero, coming from a family line of super heroes and having implanted genes of a nice person. He soon became my mortal enemy….

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So, I was brought up learning how to know wrong from right and little by little learning how to spread hatred throughout Satanate City. But I have to admit that I sometimes envied Mark and the other kids, all being friends and having fun in the park in front of my house. I would spend afternoons watching them but more especially Clara, with her long, wavy, silky beige hair and her big, clear green eyes,  extending her long thin legs while chasing others as Mark. As time passed by I started getting better at physics science and began inventing my own evil inventions, first they started quite small as “The leg that that kicks” but then developed into more complex things as “The nightmare makers” and “ The dog evilinator maker”. I soon became the evil mastermind I was destined to be.

I finally arrived at the great age of twenty five having now the corporal envelop of a man with a long crooked nose, a long, thin, bony face, two thin black eyebrows and semi-long black, greasy hair. I was as usual brainstorming on a new evil plan to be in power of Satanate City and finally beat Mark The Nice Guy. So I was looking for an idea when it just came to me, like in those ancient comic strips with the little light bulb popping out, I had the idea if the century, no even more, the idea of the millennia, I jumped to get my tools a pencil and a paper and went to work.

 After months of hard work I had finish it, “ The Evilimaker” I gasped staring at the imposing and complex metallic machinery standing in front of me. The Evilinator would be my weapon to defeat my greatest enemy and finally get the glory that I had always been awaiting.  Now I just had to wait for the lunar eclipse that would happen tomorow as I had always loved to make things more dramatic.

I slept soundly the same night, after months of work I was exhausted and slept at least 12 hours. When I finally woke up I had a weird feeling in my stomach. Was it what I ate yesterday? No it was not that, I didn’t know what but there was something wrong. I looked around my house but saw nothing but then it came to me and I panicked. I ran through the hall to my laboratory, swung the door open and almost fainted, there were my piece of art, my complex machinery had stood was only a small paper left. I went to go read it:

I thought I would become crazy, all of those our trying to find the right genes to make the perfect evil mignon, not to smart but powerfull and evil. The hours spent of finding the way to shut down normal genes and inssering artificial working evil one instead. And after having found the serum, the energy it took me to come up with the machine that would have such an advanced radar that it could detect every single person wanted and shoot the seringe at them when they were in the shooting radius ( meaning the whole town, outside of buildings). And now it was all gone, stolen by an unknown idiot that probably didn’t even know how it worked.  I couldn’t let him do that, I could let that person get all the glory, I had to find him first.

For hours I just stayed infront of my desk thinking…. Who could this be? How could he have stolen it? Helicopter probably, there was already an open roof for the radar of my machine. Where could he hide it? Where could he use it? My building was the highest in town and the only one with an open roof. “Of course..” I jumped out of my seat, ran out of my house, got into my car, turned the motor on and went into the air. Destination? The old stadium.

The old stadium was on top of the hill about 6 kilometers from the city, it had been closed for at about five years because expert said it was badly built and that one day it might fall down. When arrived in front of the old stadium I found the front door strangely open. When I stepped into the cold entrance hall all I could here was small and distant squeal of rats and the sound of my own footsteps one the hard and dusty floor. But as I got close to the open area of the arena I started hearing a conversation, it was to far away so I silently ran to hide myself behind a chair at the first row. I took a pick at the center if the court. There stood two shadowy figures in the darkness of the night, one of a tall and large shouldered person, the other skinny of about 1.70m sitting and folded over itself.

“You shouldn’t have came here, darling!” the first one said with an almost crazy tone in his voice.

“How dare you!” The other answered with her strong but trembling voice

“Why? Don’t you like this new side to me? The Master of Evil! It’s a shame! To rune such a pretty face…” he took her face into his palms, ”But you shouldn’t have followed me. So, oh well!” He raised his hand and slapped her as hard as he could. As her face jerked to the side a ray of moonlight lightened her face. “CLARA!!”  I screamed, I screamed as hard as I could.

“Oh, Malusrexus, I have been expecting you” He turned his face towards me and I almost had a shock while seing his square face, it couldn’t be, it couldn’t be…. “Mark the Nice Guy” I said under my breath. He didn’t here me and continued, “ Clara, don’t be rude and say hello to our guest” She turned her bloody and bruised face towards me as I looked at her with questioning eyes. “ Why?” I asked him. He laughed, “ Why?! You didn’t think I would forever be the perfect guy forever did you? Living always to serve others and boringly undoing your evil skims? My life has always been boring, getting all I want when I want it, being the best at everything, even having the prettiest girls without even wanting them.” Clara looked shameful and humiliated. “All I had to do is stay alive, which, no offense to you guy, wasn’t very difficult.”He continued in a bored tone, “ So I decided to put a bit of spice into my life and see how it would be to see everybody serve me for once.” At this point I was ready to jump up at his throat. As I trieD to grab my gun in my jacket, Mark already had a weird type of gun with a needle at the end pointed at Clara.

“Not that fast. Did you know that Metaldehyde is a poison that when put into the blood, kills you very slowly. First the victim will vomit, then will suffer of tremors of the arm, later have delirium, followed by cramps, convulsion, unconsciousness and only 3-4  days later comes the end of the suffering as the victim slowly dies.” Mark simply explained.

“Don’t listen to him Malusrexus, he wants to use all of us as his evil mignons using your invention. He would rule and many peoples would die.” Clara looked at me as I couldn’t stop from being gladly surprised that she knew my name. But whaterver she told me my decision was and would have always been obvious.

“What do you want me to do?” I answered darkly.

“First, show me how the machine works, then we’ll see what use I can make of you.”

He pushed Clara out of her chair, and pushed her in front of him as he made me sign to follow him in direction of the other side of the court where, in the shadow, stood the magnificent but now horrifying machine.

With a bitter feeling I walked him through the different steps to make the machine works.  After a few moments, when I had finished my explanations, I stepped back towards Clara.

“No you stay away from her.” Said mark not even looking at us. “ Now lets start the party!”

He first clicked on the 10 buttons to fill the 100 000 miniature needles, of the stem cells. Then he pressed the yellow and green button for the preparation of the launching of the needles. And finally pressed the huge, circular, red button….

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At the same time on the other side of the city. Lily was ready to go to work, she grabed her purse and coat and stepped in the autumn wind. At the same moment, she let out a little squeek of pain, as she felt something pointy enter the side of her neck, as she passed her hand along her neck she took out a little needle, totally transparent with no apparent purpous to it as it had no blood or liquid in there. After few minutes she decided to continue her way to go to the hospital while thinking about the strange event that had just happened to her.

-------

After thirty minutes Mark had started realizing what was happening as none of his mignons had followed their instinct to come towards their master. He was right to start feelling that way as I had indeed made him click the green button which was really the button to cancel the filling of the seringes.

“  Whatever you did Malusrexus, you’re going to pay for it” He pressed, his gun 3 times and as the needles filled with poison went in direction of Clara I pushed her to the side and took her spot. I felt the needles go through my skin the first one in my arm the other inmy neck and the third one in my forehead. I heard a great “ Noo..” Behind me but everything was so blurry and painfull that I didn’t even know who I was with. Then I herd a gun fire. The pain was excrutiating, I felt as if somebody had plented hundreds of small spikes into my arms over and over again, and I felt sick, so sick. I felt myself being dragged, but wasn’t sure if it was death dragging me or if it was just me hallucinating. I felt as dough life and death had a tug of war using all their most painfull instruments on me. I screamed over and over again telling them to end that, telling them to let me be with my ancestors. But they didn’t want to leave me alone. Until one moment where life just let go of me and let me slide of, as if I was going down a waterfall, I thought of my loved ones more specially Clara, hoping for her to be ok and then it went dark.

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Why were my eyelids so heavy, it was death it shouldn’t be hurtfull to wake up. With great effort I opened my eyes. In front of me stood a blurry face with a pale skin and long wavy hair. Clara?

“ It worked, of thank god it worked!” She said half crying half laughing.

I was in a bed in the middle of a great big white room with many machines and tubes, after a few seconds I relized it was a laboratory. Next to me, on my right stood Clara, but more strangely, ten meters behind her stood…. ME!?  Exept this time I was on the floor, sleeping with a face as white as a sheet of paper.

“Clara?”

“Yes it’s me , it’s  me” She took my face between her hands and kissed my forehead. Suddenly I felt a great wave of heat and energy in my body and attempted to jump out of my bead to run in circles. Sadly at the moment I tried to stand up I patheticly fell down. Clara directly grabbed me and put me back on the bed.

“ You need to rest”

“ Wait, at least tell me what happened”

“Ok, but quickly…” She explained me everything, how after I took the poison, she shot Mark’s leg so that he couldn’t run away anymore. The police came to get him and after that she brought me to the laboratory where she took care of me as I was screaming in pain, but was also trying to improve the secret cloning machine there. After she passed a couple of phone calls to my parents she knew that I was soon going to die so she cloned me but replacing by infected blood with one the one of my parents and family that she succeeded in finding. My old self died being replaced by me. The end. ‘

“It’s soo romantique dady!” Said Lucia

“Can you please read it to us again tomorrow night” Exclaimed George.

“Again! Ok but now you need to go to sleep” Malusrexus turned the kids’room’s light off and went down to his room. “ They wanted to here our story again”

“ They really love it.” Clara said.

“ But there is one thing I never understood, how did you know me before everything happened?”

“ Lets say  your not a very good spie.” She said with a big smile on her face. Malusrexus  turned the light off ready for tomorrow to be a continuation of his beautifull life.

THE END

Bibliography

"Toxicology." Toxicology. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Jan. 2013.

Dictionary.com. Dictionary.com, n.d. Web. 20 Jan. 2013.

"STEM CELLS." Stem Cells. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Jan. 2013.