Showing posts with label Hermeniimonas glacei and Neatorama. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hermeniimonas glacei and Neatorama. Show all posts

Tuesday, December 27, 2011

This Too I Did Not Know - Daft Punk


I was loading Campaign Leo 2011 contributions to my Excel file - just one of the many exciting and challenging activities in the action-packed world of Catholic high school fund-raising - and I got flummoxed with eye and brain fatigue; both organs display wildly spinning odometers.

I took a break after reading the enclosed note -

"Take me off the list. I didn't attend Leo - you have the wrong
Jim Dolan Class of 19$%."

I took a stroll up to the second floor all quiet. Should be it's 4 AM. Back at the computer . . .nah. I linked to Neatorama.com ,a great science and stuff website and read about a man who lived with Turkeys for a year - TV Movie?

Naturalist Joe Hutto embarked on a unique, once-ina-a-lifetime scientific project that became much more than just science: he lived as a turkey for a year.

Joe explains his life as a turkey in this interview with New Scientist:

Q- You lived with wild turkeys in rural Florida for over a year. How did it all begin?
A- I had been experimenting with the imprinting phenomenon - in which young animals become attached to the first moving object they encounter - for years, with many types of birds and mammals. Wild turkeys are difficult to come by, so when I lucked upon some wild turkey eggs I decided: OK, this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

Q- These turkeys regarded you as their mother. Was that a lot of responsibility?
A -It was, because wild turkeys are precocial - they are born fully alert and ambulatory and don't stay in the nest. They have to imprint at birth so they know who mum is, and they can't be left alone at all. I realised that if I was going to do this project then it was going to be a 24-hour-a-day commitment, which I was willing to do.

Q -What did being their mother mean in practice?
A -I had to be with them before daylight so that when they flew down from the roost their mother was there waiting, and I had to remain with them until after dark. If I tried to leave before it was completely dark they would fly down and try to follow me, and then they were left on the ground, where they were vulnerable to snakes or weasels.

Q- Was your research scientific?
A- It started out as a science project but it became more than that to me. I found it impossible to avoid a very personal involvement, so a certain scientific empiricism and detachment was immediately lost in the process.



I wonder if Joe started to open his yap heaven-ward during rain storms after a few months, when his feathered-kinfolk took to drink.

I also learned that Canadians are the world's hardest working people -not Mexicans as I have always believed - based up the World Holiday Index.




But I was really intrigued toe learn that geeks make helmets to honor the Euro-Trash musicians -Daft Punk. I needed further research and went to the Web World Cliff's Note Wikipedia.



Daft Punk are an electronic music duo consisting of French musicians Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo (born February 8, 1974) and Thomas Bangalter (born January 3, 1975).[1][2][3] Daft Punk reached significant popularity in the late 1990s house movement in France and met with continued success in the years following, combining elements of house with synthpop.[1][2][4] The duo is also credited with producing songs that are considered essential in the French house scene. They were managed from 1996 to 2008 by Pedro Winter (Busy P), the head of Ed Banger Records.[5] Early in the group's career, the band members were strongly influenced by groups such as The Beach Boys and The Rolling Stones. Bangalter and de Homem-Christo were originally in a band called Darlin', which disbanded after a short period of time, leaving the two to experiment musically on their own.


Daft Punk - cool name, but no Sam and Dave.

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Jurassic Genes Awakened! Rip Van Winkle Micro-Bugs Are Back!


Now, that's a nap! From the wonderful science site Neatorama (click me post title) it is reported that bacteria Hermeniimonas glacei asleep at the bottom of a Greenland glacier have been told 'Get Your Ass, Up and Do Something! It's Nice Out!'


The new bacteria species was found nearly 2 miles (3 km) beneath a Greenland glacier, where temperatures can dip well below freezing, pressure soars, and food and oxygen are scarce.

"We don’t know what state they were in," said study team member Jean Brenchley of Pennsylvania State University. "They could’ve been dormant, or they could’ve been slowly metabolizing, but we don’t know for sure."

Dormant would mean the bacteria were in a spore-like state in which there’s not a lot of metabolism going on, so the bacteria wouldn’t be reproducing much. It’s possible the bacteria could have been slowly metabolizing and replicating. [...]

To coax the bacteria back to life, Brenchley, Jennifer Loveland-Curtze and their Penn State colleagues incubated the samples at 36 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) for seven months, followed by more than four months at 41 degrees F (5 degrees C).

The resulting colonies of the originally purple-brown bacteria, now named Herminiimonas glaciei, are alive and well. "We were able to recover it and get it to grow in our laboratory," Brenchley said. "It was viable."

Jeanna Bryner of LiveScience has the fascinating story: Link