sagan|sense

bullshit-bullsharks:

Easily one of the most, if not the most, endangered canids in the world lives in Africa. Not the Africa with lush jungles, vast deserts and bountiful grasslands.. But Ethiopia, where the highlands contain Ethiopian wolves (Canis simensis). As of January 2012, there are less than 500 individuals remaining. Their biggest threats range anywhere from human encroachment to diseases carried by domesticated dogs.

Like the grey wolf, they’ve retained quite a few characteristics with their ancestors. They have a pack mentality, and only the alpha males & females breed within the pack.. Although the alpha female often does breed with males out side of the pack. Putting all sneaking around aside, pack members all pitch in to help raise pups. 

Days start off greeting members of the pack. They reform bonds and other various social interactions in order to maintain that close pack relationship. Then, they continue with protecting their large territory. If they do encounter others of their kind, the patrol does not all of a sudden turn out into a full blown war.. Instead, they’ll resolve the situation with a series of yelps, barks and howls. 

Hunting is the next big part in daily life. They don’t hunt in packs because, quite frankly, there isn’t big enough prey to make it worth while. They’re lone hunters, patrolling for rodents that would make a delicious meal. Mole rats, for instance, seem to be on the top of their menu. Once a rat is discovered, the wolf will edge forward on it’s stomach to remain unnoticed. When the prey looks away, they bunny hop to close in space.. Or rush in short bursts. Then they lunge, and more often the prey makes a speedy escape so they have to either frantically chase their food in circles, or dig ‘em out of a hole. Returning to the den that contains their precious pups, pack members will routinely return throughout the day to regurgitate some of their food for the young. A ‘nanny’ often watches the days events with the pups. 

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Cheetahs with radio Collars to track them. Na’an ku se Carnivore Conservation Research Project is focused on conserving the land, cultures and wildlife of Namibia and rescuing cheetahs, leopards and brown hyena who are threatened by an ever-shrinking habitat. The project, supported by Colchester Zoo, recently released a cheetah named Boris back in to the wild with a fitted radio collar that transmits GPS co-ordinates to the project to assist them in tracking his movements. The collar has helped the project identify that Boris has moved into areas where livestock farming is prevalent causing some anxiety amongst some local farmers. Fortunately, Boris ignored the goats and sheep and instead hunted springbok. The co-ordinates indicate that Boris prefers mountain bases, going against what most would have expected of a lone male

Photograph: Action For The Wild/Rex Features

(Source: Guardian, via cog-nito)

astrotastic:

Brian Cox

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This Week for Spaceflight & Space Exploration

Picture 1: Dream Chaser on its first captive carry flight. Credit:

Picture 2: SNCSpaceShipTwo durings its test flight on May 4, 2011. Credit: Clay Observator

While SpaceX stole the headlines with their Dragon spacecraft making the first private cargo run to the International Space Station, they weren’t the only commercial space company to make great strides for the future. “This has been an incredible couple of weeks for the companies in the commercial spaceflight industry,” said former astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria, who is now president of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation. “Our members are working toward a common goal of opening spaceflight up to the public and expanding NASA’s reach, which will create high-tech jobs in the U.S. while building innovative technology that will improve life on Earth. The SpaceX achieved a historic first, and in just the ten days while they were in orbit, many other companies hit milestones or announced new initiatives.”

For example, on May 29 the Sierra Nevada Corporation completed a milestone for its Dream Chaser program with a captive carry flight test, marking the successful beginning of a flight test program that will continue this summer.

“The successful Captive Carry flight test of the Dream Chaser full scale flight vehicle marks the beginning of SNC’s flight test program; a program that culminates in crewed missions to the International Space Station for NASA,” said former astronaut Steve Lindsey. Lindsey joined SNC in 2011 to run Dream Chaser’s flight operations, and his resume includes service as an Air Force test pilot, a five time Space Shuttle Commander and Pilot, and Chief of NASA’s Astronaut Office.

Captive carry testing provided SNC with an early opportunity to evaluate and prove hardware, facilities and ground operations in preparation for approach and landing tests scheduled for later this year.

XCOR Aerospace announced on May 24th that their liquid oxygen piston pump is now ready for reusable spaceflight. XCOR engineers have successfully and repeatedly pumped liquid oxygen at flow rates required to supply the Lynx suborbital vehicle’s main engines, completing a key technical milestone. XCOR is now ready for main propulsion integration into the Lynx flight weight fuselage.

Excalibur Almaz announced on May 27th that it plans to launch spacecraft to space stations they will place in orbit around the moon. Using proven Russian legacy hardware, Excalibur Almaz plans to create a transport system between Earth, low-Earth orbit, and the Moon. EA is now seeking partners, investors, and customers for this next generation space transportation system.

Virgin Galactic announced on May 30th that its suborbital spacecraft, SpaceShipTwo, along with its carrier aircraft, WhiteKnightTwo, have been granted an experimental launch permit from the Federal Aviation Administration. This launch permit will allow the vehicle’s manufacturer, Scaled Composites, to continue forward with the flight test program towards rocket-powered test.

Moon Express announced on May 30th that it has acquired Next Giant Leap, LLC in the first team acquisition event of the $30M Google Lunar X PRIZE. The NGL acquisition by Moon Express will leverage and carry forward the substantial work done by NGL and its corporate partners.

Blue Origin announced on May 31st the successful completion of a System Requirements Review of its orbital Space Vehicle on May 15-16 which will help Blue Origin finalize its vehicle design. The review assessed the Space Vehicle’s ability to meet safety and mission requirements, and evaluated the technical readiness of the design, the concept of operations, the feasibility of project development plans, and planned verification activities. The review also included results from recently completed wind tunnel tests of the biconic shape, validating the vehicle’s aerodynamic design, stability and cross-range.

Hey, remember that one time when 90% of all life on Earth got wiped out?

I don’t either. But it’s a good thing it happened because otherwise none of us would be here to… not remember it. Still, the end-Permian Extinction — a.k.a. the Great Dying — was very much a real crisis for life on Earth 252 million years ago. It makes the K-T extinction event of the dinosaurs look like a rather nice day by comparison, and is literally the most catastrophic event known to have ever befallen Earthly life. Luckily for us (and pretty much all of the species that have arisen since) the situation eventually sorted itself out. But how long did that take?

The Permian Extinction was a perfect storm of geological events that resulted in the disappearance of over 90% of life on Earth — both on land and in the oceans. (Or ocean, as I should say, since at that time the land mass of Earth had gathered into one enormous continent — called Pangaea — and thus there was one ocean, referred to as Panthalassa.) A combination of increased volcanism, global warming, acid rain, ocean acidification and anoxia, and the loss of shallow sea habitats (due to the single large continent) set up a series of extinctions that nearly wiped our planet’s biological slate clean.

Exactly why the event occurred and how Earth returned to a state in which live could once again thrive is still debated by scientists, but it’s now been estimated that the recovery process took about 10 million years.

Research by Dr. Zhong-Qiang Chen from the China University of Geosciences in Wuhan, and Professor Michael Benton from the University of Bristol, UK, show that repeated setbacks in conditions on Earth continued for 5 to 6 million years after the initial wave of extinctions. It appears that every time life would begin to recover within an ecological niche, another wave of environmental calamities would break.

“Life seemed to be getting back to normal when another crisis hit and set it back again,” said Prof. Benton. “The carbon crises were repeated many times, and then finally conditions became normal again after five million years or so.”

“The causes of the killing – global warming, acid rain, ocean acidification – sound eerily familiar to us today. Perhaps we can learn something from these ancient events.”

– Michael Benton, Professor of Vertebrate Palaeontology at the University of Bristol

It wasn’t until the severity of the crises abated that life could gradually begin reclaiming and rebuilding Earth’s ecosystems. New forms of life appeared, taking advantage of open niches to grab a foothold in a new world. It was then that many of the ecosystems we see today made their start, and opened the door for the rise of Earth’s most famous prehistoric critters: the dinosaurs.

“The event had re-set evolution,” said Benton. “However, the causes of the killing – global warming, acid rain, ocean acidification – sound eerily familiar to us today. Perhaps we can learn something from these ancient events.”

The team’s research was published in the May 27 issue of Nature Geoscience. Read more on the University of Bristol’s website here.

expose-the-light:

Satire & Animals by Ricardo Martinez

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thescienceofreality:

astrotastic:

Carl Sagan

Well hello there, handsome.

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thescienceofreality:

I’ve gotten a similar ask before, which I will copy & paste below, and be adding to. I’m making this rebloggable because I’m sure it will be useful for those of you who need good sources besides just Google/Wikipedia, but don’t know where to look! I compiled a list of good and reliable sites to get information, and constant news update, not only for super science geeks but beginners as well. We’ll start with simple things first.

This list contains basic sites that you’ll definitely want to add to your bookmarks.

•  This is a list of annual meteor showers on Stardate.org.
•  Current Moon Phases. 
• Astronomy on Knoji.
• Web Syllabus from Dept. of Physics & Astronomy from the University of Tennessee. 
• Hubble Telescope site.
• NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day.
• Astronomy.com - A wonderful magazine online.
•  Science Daily’s Astronomy News.
•  A free Introduction to Cosmology.
•  NASA Science Astrophysics site.
•  NASA Science directory.
•  European Southern Observatory online.
•  European Space Agency online.
•  Science Daily’s Astrophysics News.
• Astronomy Cast online.

A list of more ‘educational’ sites. [x]

• A great site from Cornell University’s Astronomy department. Just enter a keyword, or question in the search box, for an easy to understand definition or answer at Ask an Astronomer.
• Astronomy Picture of the Day: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
• AP of Day (Archives): http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/archivepix.html
• Earth and Sky: http://www.earthsky.com/
• StarDate: http://stardate.utexas.edu/
• Violence in the Cosmos: http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/guidry/violence/index.html
• Search Violence in Cosmos: http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/guidry/violence/search_violence.html
• The Nine Planets: http://seds.lpl.arizona.edu/nineplanets/nineplanets/
• Planetary Pictures: http://seds.lpl.arizona.edu/nineplanets/nineplanets/picturelist.html
• SEDS Galaxy of Images: http://www.seds.org/galaxy/
• SEDS Messier Catalog: http://seds.lpl.arizona.edu/messier/
• Views of the Solar System: http://www.hawastsoc.org/solar/homepage.htm
• Abrams Skywatcher’s Diary: http://www.pa.msu.edu/abrams/diary.html
• Sky Events: http://www.kalmbach.com/astro/astronomy.html
• Sky & Telescope Bulletin: http://www.skypub.com/news/news.shtml
• Space Calendar: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/calendar/calendar.html
• Astronomy Lecture Notes: http://www.astronomynotes.com
• Network Resources: http://www.hq.eso.org/online-resources-paper/rrn.html
• Dewey Decimal: http://www.tpl.toronto.on.ca/TRL/astronomy/index.html
• AstroWeb: http://fits.cv.nrao.edu/www/astronomy.html
• The Astronomy Cafe: http://www.theastronomycafe.net
• Astronomy Homework Help: http://members.aol.com/gca7sky/astrohelp.htm
• Astr Pict of Day Education Links: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/lib/edlinks.html
• Marshall Space Sciences Home Page: http://science.msfc.nasa.gov
• Hubble Space Telescope Public Information: http://oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/
• STARBASE: http://www.ph.surrey.ac.uk/astrophysics/

Happy exploring & expanding. If you need any help, or have any questions, my ask is always open!

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wakenbac0n:

Fringe Science

This listing is for the entire series of Fringe science experiment inspired iconography art prints. “Warning: An Experiment of Great Importance in Progress.” Collect all your favorite Fringe science posters and show your friends and family that you believe in the future.

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(Source: have--not, via brookesierra)

Nikola Tesla

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(Source: livi-s, via scinerds)

fuckyeahmolecularbiology:

After neoplastic transformation, cancer cells infiltrate local tissues and initiate metastatic programs by trafficking through a stromal extracellular matrix (ECM) dominated by cross-linked networks of type I collagen (seen in blue), the major extracellular protein found in mammals.  To negotiate this structural barrier, cancer cells have been proposed to use either protease-dependent or protease-independent invasion schemes.

Full Research Article Here.

(via scinerds)

motherjones:

letsdolaunch:

GZA of Wu-Tang Clan to release a science inspired album: “Dark Matter”

“There’s no parental advisory, no profanity, no nudity,” he said. “The only thing that’s going to be stripped bare is the planets.”

Yup.

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