Daca unii scriu despre cine pe cine injura, care ce a mai scris si de care s’a mai luat, ce trafic are si de unde, majoritatea debiteaza idiotenii despre sport si alte asemenea ocupatii neolitice , macar eu sa va mai ti’u la curent cu ceva stiinta.

Massive black hole enters the record books

Astronomers have found the biggest stellar black hole so far, a monster with a mass 15.65 times that of our Sun, lurking in a nearby spiral-shaped galaxy.
The find, located in a galaxy called Messier 33, has an even bigger companion — a close-orbiting star that is 70 times the mass of the Sun, according to an investigation led by Jerome Orosz of San Diego University, California.

Black holes are among the most powerful forces in the Universe. They are believed to be concentrated fields of gravity which are so powerful that nothing, not even light, can escape them.

Stellar black holes derive from the collapse of stars, but typically range from about three to 14 or 15 solar masses. [Read more...]

Miss Universe praised for rejecting fur

An animal rights group said Wednesday it was sending flowers to Miss Universe, Riyo Mori of Japan, after she pledged to stop wearing fur.
Mori told AFP on Tuesday that she would no longer wear fur after a protest campaign by the US-based international People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA).

“We’re elated with this news and are so happy that she’s showing her beauty on the inside as well as the outside,” said PETA Asia-Pacific campaigner Ashley Fruno.

“We’ll be sending her a bouquet of flowers to show her our gratitude.”

She said the group would target more celebrities and was trying to get in touch with South Korean pop superstar Rain over complaints that he wears fur.

“Miss Universe is certainly setting a good example, so we hope that others will follow,” Fruno said.

[Read more...]

Eat a Killer: Snake dines safely with strategic delays

An Australian snake feeds on dangerous frogs by striking them with venom and then backing off long enough for the frogs’ defense chemicals to degrade, say researchers.
The floodplain death adder (Acanthophis praelongus) even has different waiting times for each of two frog species, report Ben Phillips and Richard Shine of the University of Sydney. For the less dangerous frog, which exudes a nontoxic but entrapping goo, the snake waits about 10 minutes. For the frog carrying a lethal dose of toxin, the snake waits 42 minutes as the toxin loses its power.

“Snakes, despite the fact that they’ve got this tiny little pea-size brain, are clearly capable of recognizing what kind of frog they’ve bitten,” says Shine.

He and Phillips first saw the snake behavior during a recent project in Australia’s northern floodplains when they fed captured adders their usual diet of local frogs.

Testing an example of an easily edible species, the researchers offered adders rocket frogs (Litoria nasuta). An adder that strikes one of these frogs swallows it immediately, say the researchers.

Adders struck at marbled frogs (Limnodynastes convexiusculus) but, about a third of the time, released them immediately. As their defense mechanism, marbled frogs secrete mucus that binds leaves and twigs into a big clot on an attacker. Shine, who’s had his fingers glued together when trying to measure marbled frogs, says “it’s ridiculously difficult to wash off.”

In tests, Phillips and Shine found that the stickiness of the mucus declined by two-thirds if they let it sit 10 minutes—the typical time that adders wait before eating a marbled frog. [Read more...]