In this undated image released from the National Taiwan Ocean University, a new species of crab

National Taiwan Ocean University professor Ho Ping-ho says the crab resembles the species living in the areas around Hawaii, Polynesia and Mauritius. But it has a distinctive clam-shaped shell about 1 inch (2.5 centimeters) wide, making it distinct.

Wang Chia-hsiang ,Taiwanese crab specialist confirmed Ho’s finding.

On Tuesday , Ho’s team found two female crabs of the new species last June off the coast of Kenting National Park, known for its rich marine life. The crabs died shortly thereafter, possibly because the water in the area was polluted by a cargo ship that ran aground.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com

RSSFEEDSNOW.COM:- http://www.rssfeedsnow.com

Related posts

• No related posts.

NASA’s new planet-hunting telescope has found two mystery objects that are too hot to be planets and too small to be stars.

The Kepler Telescope, launched in March, discovered the two new heavenly bodies, each circling its own star. Telescope chief scientist Bill Borucki of NASA said the objects are thousands of degrees hotter than the stars they circle. That means they probably aren’t planets. They are bigger and hotter than planets in our solar system, including dwarf planets.

According to Jon Morse, head of astrophysics for NASA, the universe keeps making strange things stranger than we can think of in our imagination.

The new discoveries don’t quite fit into any definition of known astronomical objects, and so far don’t have a classification of their own. Details about the mystery objects were presented Monday at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Washington.

For now, NASA researcher Jason Rowe, who found the objects, said he calls them “hot companions.” How hot? Try 26,000 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s hot enough to melt lead or iron.

There are two leading theories for what the objects might be and those theories cover both ends of the cosmic life cycle:

_Rowe suggests they are newly born planets. New planets have extremely high temperatures, and in this case Rowe speculates they might be only about 200 million years old.

_Ronald Gilliland of the Space Telescope Science Institute says they could be white dwarf stars that are dying and stripping off their outer shells and shrinking.

The primary focus of the Kepler telescope’s three-year mission is to find out how common other planets — especially Earth-like planets — are in the universe. To do that, it is scanning a small chunk of the sky, about one four-hundredth of the night sky with more than 150,000 stars to look for planets.

The telescope in just six weeks found its first five confirmed planets, slightly more than astronomers expected from such a quick search. There are hundreds of other candidates that need confirmation.

The five planets are all much larger than Earth, much closer to their stars than Earth is to the sun, and way too hot for life, Borucki said. A couple of these planets are close to 3,000 degrees.

“Looking at them is like looking at a blast furnace,” Borucki said. “Certainly, no place to look for life.”

One of the newly discovered planets is so airy that “it has the density of Styrofoam,” Borucki said.

“There’s going to be all kinds of weird stuff out there,” said Alan Boss of the Carnegie Institute of Washington, who wasn’t part of the research. “This is an unparalleled data set. The universe really is a weird place. It’s fantastic.”

(Source: http://news.yahoo.com)

RSSFEEDSNOW.COM:- http://www.rssfeedsnow.com

Related posts

• No related posts.

But for most of the people, it will be just a full pie in the sky- a full moon Thursday night. Simply, it’s a second full moon in the sky in month. Actually the color doesn’t matter at all?

As the calendar is designed on the basis of lunar cycle (29.5 days), there’s only one full moon in one month. But once every 2-1/2 years, those extra half days add up to two full moons in a month.

So where does the name come from?

According to NASA’s website, the term blue moon was “used in much the same way we use the term ‘harvest moon.’ There were twelve names for full moons, one for each month, and the name blue moon was used in years which had 13 full moons.”

Sky and Telescope Magazine erroneously wrote in 1943, that the second full moon in any calendar month was called a blue moon. The label stuck and is still used today.

According to CNN, it’s relatively rare that a blue moon would fall on New Year’s Eve. The last time that happened was 1990. Even more rare – there were two blue moons in 1999, one in January and one in March. That happens only about four times a century.

It’s not where the expression “once in a blue moon” comes from. This phrase is believed to have originated in 1883 after the eruption of Indonesia’s Mount Kratatoa, according to NASA. The volcano put so much dust in the atmosphere that the moon actually looked blue in color. The event was deemed so unusual the phrase “once in a blue moon” was coined.

(Source: http://news.yahoo.com)

RSSFEEDSNOW.COM:- http://www.rssfeedsnow.com

Related posts

• No related posts.

Japanese researchers have succeeded in producing goldfish whose beating hearts can be seen through translucent …

The transparent creatures are part of efforts to reduce the need for dissections, which have become increasingly controversial, particularly in schools.

“You can see a live heart and other organs because the scales and skin have no pigments.”

“You don’t have to cut it open. You can see a tiny brain above the goldfish’s black eyes.”

The joint team of researchers at Mie University and Nagoya University in central Japan produced the “ryukin” goldfish by picking mutant hatchery goldfish with pale skin and breeding them together.

“Having a pale colour is a disadvantage for goldfish in an aquarium but it’s good to see how organs sit in a body three-dimensionally,” Tamaru told AFP.

The fish are expected to live up to roughly 20 years and could grow as long as 25 centimetres (10 inches) and weigh more than two kilograms (five pounds), much bigger than other fish used in experiments, such as zebrafish and Japanese medaka, Tamaru said.
Meanwhile another group of researchers who announced in 2007 they had developed see-through frogs said they planned to start selling the four-legged creatures, whose skin is transparent from the tadpole stage.

“We are making progress in their mass-production. They are likely to be put on the market next year,” said Masayuki Sumida, professor at the Institute for Amphibian Biology of Hiroshima University.
Sumida said see-through tadpoles and adult frogs would be available in the first half of next year in Japan for laboratories and schools and as pets, with a price tag expected to be below 10,000 yen (110 dollars) each.

He also wants to sell the creature abroad.
Animal rights activists have pressed for humane alternatives to dissections, such as using computer simulations.

Sumida’s team produced the creature from rare mutants of the Japanese brown frog, or Rena japonica, whose backs are usually ochre or brown. Two kinds of recessive genes have been known to cause the frog to be pale.

While goldfish are easier to keep, frogs are higher forms of life and therefore preferable for experiments, Sumida said.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com
RSSFEEDSNOW.COM:- http://www.rssfeedsnow.com

Related posts

• No related posts.

This undated image provided by the Monterey Bay Aquarium, shows the endangered Kootenai River white sturgeon. …

On Thursday, The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service declared that attempts over the past two years to save the endangered Kootenai River white sturgeon had failed.

The prehistoric sturgeon, characterized by its large head and armor-like scales, can reach 19 feet long and top 1,000 pounds.

An isolated population of the species lives along a stretch of the Kootenai that passes through Montana, northern Idaho and southern British Columbia. Fewer than 500 of the bottom-feeding behemoths survive — and it’s been 35 years since they successfully spawned.

The problem is Libby Dam, a hydroelectric facility in Montana run by the Army Corps of Engineers that serves power markets in the Pacific Northwest. When the dam went up in 1974, it stopped periodic flooding of Bonners Ferry, Idaho — but also high water flows that triggered the sturgeon to move upriver and spawn.

After years of litigation, the federal government agreed to alter how it runs the dam and more closely mimic historical water flows. That hasn’t worked, and fisheries officials and the Corps now say they plan to spill more water over the dam next spring.

It could be one of the last chances to stave off disaster for the massive fish: Biologists say it could be on track for extinction within the next decade unless a fix is found.

Even with the increased spillover from the dam, the Kootenai River would rise to less than half its historical levels.

White sturgeon also are found in the Columbia River, but the Kootenai population is genetically distinct after being isolated since the last Ice Age. There are 24 species of sturgeon worldwide; most are threatened with extinction.

The plan to save the fish in the Kootenai came out of a 2008 settlement with an environmentalists who sued the federal government for failing to take action.

Since the mid-1990s, Idaho’s Kootenai Tribe of Indians has stocked the river with thousands of hatchery-raised sturgeon in an attempt to fill the vacuum created as older fish die off.

To satisfy the requirements of the Endangered Species Act, the fish would have to reproduce naturally before the species is considered recovered.

It’s not known if the ploy will work. And because it takes 20 or 30 years for white sturgeon to mature and reproduce, the older fish will likely be gone before researchers find out.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com

RSSFEEDSNOW.COM:- http://www.rssfeedsnow.com

Related posts

• No related posts.