Update: Stranded penguin moved to NZ zoo over health fears

After planning to let nature take its course, wildlife officials moved a stranded emperor penguin from a New Zealand beach to a zoo Friday after its health appeared to be worsening.

The young penguin had been eating sand and small sticks of driftwood, which it tried to regurgitate. First seen on a North Island beach Monday, the penguin appeared more lethargic as the week progressed, and officials feared it would die if they didn't intervene.

The rare venture north by an Antarctic species captured public imagination, and experts initially said the bird appeared healthy and well-fed and intervention was unnecessary.

They became concerned enough to step in Friday.

Three experts lifted the penguin from the beach into a tub of ice and then onto the back of a truck. The bird was docile, so they didn't sedate it for the 40-mile (65-kilometer) journey from Peka Peka Beach to the Wellington Zoo, said one of the helpers, Colin Miskelly, a curator at Te Papa, the Museum of New Zealand.

It made sense that a penguin might mistake sand for Antarctic snow, which emperors eat for hydration, Miskelly said, but he had no explanation for the bird eating wood.

Miskelly said experts at the zoo were considering sedating the penguin and putting it on an intravenous drip as they tried to nurse it back to health. Ideally, the bird would heal enough that it could be released into the wild.

Complete news.

Happy feet? Penguin steps ashore far from home

A young penguin apparently took a wrong turn while swimming near Antarctica and endured a 2,000-mile (3,200-kilometer) journey to New Zealand, the first time in 44 years that one of the creatures has been sighted here in the wild.

Christine Wilton was walking her dog Monday when she discovered the black-and-white bird.

"It was out-of-this-world to see it," she said. "Like someone just dropped it from the sky."

Wilton said the scene on Peka Peka Beach reminded her of the 2006 movie "Happy Feet," in which a young penguin finds himself stranded far from home.

The bird "was totally in the wrong place," she said.

Estimated to be about 10 months old and 32 inches (80 centimetres) tall, the Emperor penguin was probably born during the last Antarctic winter and may have been searching for squid and krill when it got lost, experts said.

Emperors are the tallest and largest species of penguin. They can grow up to 4 feet (122 centimetres) tall and weigh more than 75 pounds (34 kilograms).

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A T-shirt that charges cell phones amid blaring music!

Festival-goers can now head-bang all night long at concerts without worrying about their mobile batteries getting exhausted.

Telecom giant Orange has unveiled a prototype of a t-shirt, which uses noise-responsive technology to charge the phone. Louder the music, quicker the phone gets charged.

The futuristic garment uses an A4-size piece of piezoelectric film in a T-shirt to absorb pressure from sound waves. It converts these into an electrical charge, which it then transfers from its battery into a lead that fits most phones.

Users just need to plug their phones into the T-shirt for a quick top-up charge whenever they need it.

Complete news.

Smell-o-vision is coming to a TV

Someday in the future, your TV set will smell and it turns out that day is not that far away.

Researchers at the University of California San Diego, in collaboration with Samsung, have developed a compact device capable of generating on command thousands of aromas, according to a paper published in the scientific journal Angewandte Chemie.

The device is small enough to attach directly to the back of any TV set or to mobile phones.

The smell comes from solutions held in 10,000 tiny chambers in the device. A small electrical charge heats the solution, turning it into a gas with the desired smell, the developers claim.

The idea of smell-o-vision has been around since at least the 1950s when it was tried in movie theatres, but has never caught on with consumers.

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Scientists predict rare 'hibernation' of sunspots

For years, scientists have been predicting the Sun would by around 2012 move into solar maximum, a period of intense flares and sunspot activity, but lately a curious calm has suggested quite the opposite.

According to three studies released in the United States, experts believe the familiar sunspot cycle may be shutting down and heading toward a pattern of inactivity unseen since the 17th century.

The signs include a missing jet stream, fading spots, and slower activity near the poles, said experts from the National Solar Observatory and Air Force Research Laboratory.

The fact that three completely different views of the Sun point in the same direction is a powerful indicator that the sunspot cycle may be going into hibernation.

Solar activity tends to rise and fall every 11 years or so. The solar maximum and solar minimum each mark about half the interval of the magnetic pole reversal on the Sun, which happens every 22 years.

Complete news.

San Francisco could ban goldfish as pets

Goldfish, puppies, kittens and hamsters could be banned as pets under a bill proposed by the San Francisco Animal Control and Welfare Commission.

The proposed ban is meant to discourage "impulse buys" of pets that sometimes end up at shelters. Goldfish, guppies and other tropical fish were added to the list because of the "inhumane suffering of fish" and the way the fish are harvested.

It causes animal suffering. Whole reefs and ecosystems are being exploited for whatever might be marketable or sellable.

Complete news.

GPS puts car into a lake

A rental car's GPS directed a motorist and her two colleagues into a lake.

Three young women escaped the sinking Mercedes-Benz SUV after the vehicle's GPS directed them down a boat launch and into the Mercer Slough in Bellevue, Washington.

The driver thought she was on a road while following her GPS unit just after midnight, but she was actually heading down the boat launch. The road was dark and the driver crashed the SUV into the water in Mercer Slough Nature Park.

Complete news.

Walking mango tree

An old mango tree has become the pride of this Gujarat village, not merely because of its age - which, according to the villagers, is over a thousand years - but also because of its ability to 'walk'.

Ask any villager in Sanjan Bandar in Bulsar district of south Gujarat, and he will insist that the mango tree in late Vali Ahmed Achchu's farmland has moved about 200 metres from its original place in more than two centuries and is continuing its 'walk'.

The mango tree (Mangifera Indica), which finds mention in the list of 50 heritage trees of Gujarat, has several unique features not seen elsewhere.

Its branches grow parallel to the ground from the main stem. Roots develop from a part of the branch that touches the ground, which develops in the form of a stem and the original stem dries off, he points out.

The branch keeps on growing parallel to the ground from the new stem and new roots appear in the same pattern. 'This process has continued for several hundred years, perhaps over a thousand years.

Data collected by forest officials and information handed down through generations of villagers indicate that the mango tree may have been planted by early Parsi settlers about 1,300 years ago.

Complete news.

World's Smallest Dinosaur

A new fossil discovery could be the world's smallest known dinosaur — a feathered, birdlike creature that lived more than 100 million years ago and grew no more than 15.7 inches (40 centimeters) long.

The fossil, a tiny neck bone found in the southern U.K., is a mere quarter-inch (7.1 millimeters) in length. It belongs to an adult dinosaur that lived in the Cretaceous period 145 million to 100 million years ago, reported University of Portsmouth paleozoologist Darren Naish in the August issue of the journal Cretaceous Research.

That would put the animal in the running for world's tiniest dino, a title currently held by Anchiornis, another birdlike dinosaur that lived in what is now China 160 million to 155 million years ago.

Complete news.

Japan scientist synthesizes meat from human feces

It's being called the "poop burger". Japanese scientists have found a way to create artificial meat from sewage containing human feces.

Somehow this feels like a Vonnegut plotline: population boom equals food shortage. Solution? Synthesize food from human waste matter. Absurd yes, but Japanese scientists have actually discovered a way to create edible steaks from human feces.

Mitsuyuki Ikeda, a researcher from the Okayama Laboratory, has developed steaks based on proteins from human excrement. Tokyo Sewage approached the scientist because of an overabundance of sewage mud. They asked him to explore the possible uses of the sewage and Ikeda found that the mud contained a great deal of protein because of all the bacteria.

The researchers then extracted those proteins, combined them with a reaction enhancer and put it in an exploder which created the artificial steak. The “meat” is 63% proteins, 25% carbohydrates, 3% lipids and 9% minerals. The researchers color the poop meat red with food coloring and enhance the flavor with soy protein. Initial tests have people saying it even tastes like beef.

Inhabitat notes that “the meatpacking industry causes 18 percent of our greenhouse gas emissions, mostly due to the release of methane from animals.” Livestock also consume huge amounts of resources and space in efforts to feed ourselves as well as the controversy over cruelty to animals. Ikeda’s recycled poop burger would reduce waste and emissions, not to mention obliterating Dante’s circle for gluttons.

The scientists hope to price it the same as actual meat, but at the moment the excrement steaks are ten to twenty times the price they should be thanks to the cost of research. Professor Ikeda understands the psychological barriers that need to be surmounted knowing that your food is made from human feces. They hope that once the research is complete, people will be able to overlook that ugly detail in favor of perks like environmental responsibility, cost and the fact that the meat will have fewer calories.

(Source)

Bald eagle or jet propelled

This bald eagle may look like it is jet propelled - but it's actually been photographed as an airplane flies in the distance. In a once-in-a-lifetime shot, the engines' exhaust trails appear as if they are billowing out of the bird's talons as it soars through the air. The extraordinary moment was captured on camera by Pam Mullins close to her home in Prince Rupert, British Columbia, Canada.

More pictures.

Extraordinary x-rays

Think of a typical x-ray, and a picture of a human ribcage or broken arm might come to mind. However, since its discovery in 1895, x-ray technology has also been used to capture stunning images of plants, animals, and medical miracles. From beautiful to creepy, LIFE.com has collected some of the most extraordinary x-rays of all time.

Wet cell phone rescue

Did you just drop your cellphone in water? Follow these steps:

Step 1: Do NOT turn on the phone

Why do water and smartphones not mix? Because the water shorts out your smartphone's electrical circuits. So whatever you do, don't turn it on to check to see if it still works.

Step 2: Pull out the battery and SIM card

You want to remove anything removable: Pull out the battery, the SIM card and the memory card, if your phone has one. As long as that battery's in there it's providing power to your phone, and that's what you need to stop immediately.

Some phones, like the iPhone, don't have a removable battery. Unfortunately, you'll just have to skip this step and hope for the best if you dunk one of them.

Step 3: Freshwater rinse

Did you drop your phone in salt water? The salt can corrode your device. So after you pull out the battery and SIM card, immerse your phone in fresh water to rinse out the salt.

Continue reading.

12 most beautiful lakes in the world

These 12 lakes go to all the right extremes—highest, deepest, clearest—and showcase nature at its most spectacular. Soak up the views from a boat, a cable car, a trailhead, or a castle tower.

Lake Malawi

Home to 1,000 species of fish—estimated to be more than anyplace on earth—Lake Malawi (also called Lake Nyasa) is Africa's third largest lake at 363 miles long and up to about 50 miles wide in spots. Located in a depression 2,300 feet below sea level, it's positioned at the crossroads of Malawi, Mozambique and Tanzania, and supports hundreds of local villages with its rich underwater stock (which is, unfortunately, gradually being depleted due to over-fishing). The lake's southern portion—as well as a bordering nub of wildlife-rich land, Cape Maclear—represents the world's first freshwater national park; it was also named a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1984. A star of the waters here is the mbuna, a native freshwater fish known for eating directly from people's hands. Bring your snorkel gear—as beautiful as the scenery is, the best part about Lake Malawi is what's swimming beneath you in the crystal clear water.

Peyto Lake

Peyto Lake

Alberta's Lake Louise is the famous one, on all the postcards and posters. But Louise's sister lake 29 miles north along Icefields Parkway, a two-laner that winds 142 miles through the Canadian Rockies, is even more picturesque. Thanks to glacial rock flour that flows in when the ice and snow melt every summer, the waters of Banff National Park's Peyto Lake are a brilliant turquoise more often associated with warm-weather paradises like Antigua and Bora-Bora. For the most dramatic views of the 1.7-mile-long stunner, encircled with dense forest and craggy mountain peaks, pull into the lot at Bow Summit, the parkway's highest point, and follow the steep hike to the overlook.

Readmore.

Solar-powered bikini

It’s a bikini which needs to be custom ordered, handmade and can take more than 80 hours to create.

The Solar Bikini is a high-tech bathing suit that can charge your MP3 player or other small devices while you relax in the sun.

The bikini doesn’t weigh any more than a regular bathing suit even with 40 solar cells attached, although the price tag is heavy: It sells for $500 and $1,500 at SolarCoterie.com.

Read more.

Giant rat blamed for deadly attacks on children in South Africa

The rat has been blamed for a series of attacks on South Africa's squalid townships.

The monster rodents are as big as cats are thought to have killed two babies in the townships, The giant rats grow up to three-foot including their tails - and have front teeth over an inch long.

Three-year-old Lunathi Dwadwa was killed as she slept in her parent's shack in a slum outside Cape Town this week.

Another baby girl died in a similar rat attack, on the same day, but this time in the Soweto township near Johannesburg.

Complete news.

The most embarrassing and loving dad

A father waves his high school son off to school in 170 different daily costumes. A High school pupil has suffered a year more mortifying that most as his dad waved goodbye to the bus.

Dale Price dressed in a different costume each morning, all 170 of them.

Mr Price said treating the daily send-off like a one-man Halloween party was his unique way of "saying I love you" to his son Rain, 16.

Rain, of American Fork, Utah, thought everything was fun when his dad stepped out on the front lawn for his first day of school, dressed quite normally. It all changed the next morning.

Heads turned as Rain's dad donned a San Diego Chargers helmet to wave goodbye on day two, sparking the beginning of a wild trend that has turned him into a local celebrity. Mr Price has since emerged as a mermaid, a Mariachi, a bride, a clown, and even Little Red Riding Hood to name just a few of the 170 costumes he donned during his son's school year.

Complete news.

Chinese teen sells kidney to buy iPad 2

A teenager in China's Anhui province has sold his right kidney to buy an iPad 2. His mother, who knew nothing of his plans, now hopes to hunt down the criminals who disabled him.

Seventeen-year-old Xiao Zheng had been dreaming of a new iPad 2 for a while, but the price was beyond his means.

Zheng found an agent ready to buy his kidney and travelled to Hunan province in central China to undergo surgery in a local hospital. With the 22,000 yen ($3,900) he was paid, Zheng bought a new iPad 2 and iPhone and then returned home.

'Xiao Zheng returned home with a computer and a new Apple phone. We do not have the money for such expensive gadgets. At first, he did not want to tell me where he got that much money from. Later he confessed he had sold his right kidney to buy these things,' this mother told the channel.

Complete news.

WHO says cell phone use can cause brain cancer

Using a mobile phone may increase the risk of certain types of brain cancer in humans and consumers should consider ways of reducing their exposure, World Health Organisation (WHO) cancer experts.

A working group of 31 scientists from 14 countries meeting at the WHO's International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) said a review of all the available scientific evidence suggested cell phone use should be classified as "possibly carcinogenic".

The classification could prompt the U.N. health body to look again at its guidelines on mobile phones, the IARC scientists said, but more research is needed before a more definitive answer on any link can be given.

Complete news.

Top ten myths about the brain

1. We use only 10 percent of our brains.
This one sounds so compelling—a precise number, repeated in pop culture for a century, implying that we have huge reserves of untapped mental powers. But the supposedly unused 90 percent of the brain is not some vestigial appendix. Brains are expensive—it takes a lot of energy to build brains during fetal and childhood development and maintain them in adults. Evolutionarily, it would make no sense to carry around surplus brain tissue. Experiments using PET or fMRI scans show that much of the brain is engaged even during simple tasks, and injury to even a small bit of brain can have profound consequences for language, sensory perception, movement or emotion.

True, we have some brain reserves. Autopsy studies show that many people have physical signs of Alzheimer’s disease (such as amyloid plaques among neurons) in their brains even though they were not impaired. Apparently we can lose some brain tissue and still function pretty well. And people score higher on IQ tests if they’re highly motivated, suggesting that we don’t always exercise our minds at 100 percent capacity.

2. “Flashbulb memories” are precise, detailed and persistent.
We all have memories that feel as vivid and accurate as a snapshot, usually of some shocking, dramatic event—the assassination of President Kennedy, the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger, the attacks of September 11, 2001. People remember exactly where they were, what they were doing, who they were with, what they saw or heard. But several clever experiments have tested people’s memory immediately after a tragedy and again several months or years later. The test subjects tend to be confident that their memories are accurate and say the flashbulb memories are more vivid than other memories. Vivid they may be, but the memories decay over time just as other memories do. People forget important details and add incorrect ones, with no awareness that they’re recreating a muddled scene in their minds rather than calling up a perfect, photographic reproduction.

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Woman weds ninth time to find soul mate

A woman in Britain, in search of a perfect soul mate, has married for the ninth time as all her previous attempts failed miserably. 

The longest of 56-year-old Pat Higgins' marriages lasted five years and the shortest just five days. She spent 8,000 pounds (over $13,000) on her eighth wedding, which lasted just two months.

This time Pat has married a boy who is 32 years junior to her. Mark Sanderson is a supermarket worker.

Interestingly, Pat is seven years elder than Mark's mother and had been married three times before her groom was born.

And despite her earlier attempts at securing wedded bliss, Pat vowed: "This time it's forever."

(Source)

Dal Lake to have a floating post office

Department of Posts planned to open a floating post office on the Dal Lake in Srinagar to enhance tourists' influx in the Valley.

The post office will work round the week and it will have all the facilities.

The special feature of this post office is that one will get a special design (special cancellation letter) while posting a letter.

Inside the post office, there will be special services for attracting the tourists in the form of picture post cards, special stamps, and they can also send letters, parcels and many other services. It will be more or less like a tourist shop where they can buy variety of things.

Complete news.

Astronomers launch search for alien life on 86 possible Earth-like planets

Astronomers at the University of California, Berkeley are aiming a radio telescope to detect signals of alien life on 86 possible Earth-like planets.

The search began on Saturday, May 8, when the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope - the largest steerable radio telescope in the world - dedicated an hour to eight stars with possible planets.

The colossal dish will gather 24 hours of data on each of the planets, which have been selected from a list of 1,235 planets identified by NASA's Kepler space telescope.

The Green Bank telescope will stare for about five minutes at stars in the Kepler survey that have a candidate planet in the star's habitable zone-that is, the planet has a surface temperature at which liquidater could be maintained.

Complete news.

World’s Smartest Kid

At 2 years and 4 months old, Elise becomes the youngest member ever of the high IQ fraternity Mensa.

Not only does Elise know her shapes, but the London resident also can count in Spanish. But her favourite thing to do is recite world capitals. She knows 35 of them, including Paris, Tokyo and Washington D.C.  

Little Elise's IQ is an astonishing 156. Compare that to Albert Einstein's 160, and you realize just how smart Elise really is considering she still has so much to learn.

Complete news.

Nike : The Winged Goddess of Victory

Nike is the winged goddess of victory according to Greek mythology. She sat at the side of Zeus, the ruler of the Olympic pantheon, in Olympus. A mystical presence, symbolizing victorious encounters, Nike presided over history's earliest battlefields. A Greek would say, "When we go to battle and win, we say it is Nike” The Nike 'Swoosh' embodies the spirit of the winged goddess who inspired the most courageous and chivalrous warriors at the dawn of civilization.

More information is available on Nike’s website.

Cats and dairy products

Despite the prevalent thought that cats love milk, most are not able to digest it well. Just like people, cats can be lactose intolerant.  Lactose intolerance is a condition that occurs when the body is unable to digest a sugar, known as lactose, which is naturally found in milk and dairy products. Cats often develop symptoms of lactose intolerance when they eat dairy products. To digest lactose, a milk sugar, the feline digestive systems must contain the enzyme lactase.

While kittens are able digest milk, this is due to the undeveloped digestive system of the young kitten. Some cats can handle the occasional bowl of milk with no problems, while other cats may have severe reactions to dairy products. The cause of this disparity is most likely due to slight genetic differences between cats.

When adult cats eat milk or cheese, many of them will develop lactose intolerance symptoms such as gas, bloat, upset stomach, abdominal pain, cramps, vomiting and loose bowel movements. The most common symptom of lactose intolerance in cats is diarrhoea.

Toy tiger triggers major police alert in England

A Life-size toy tiger caused chaos in Britain when panicked villagers called the cops after they spotted what they thought was a man-eating beast in a field.

Armed officers and a police helicopter were sent out to catch the white tiger in Hedge End, in the south of England.

Specialist staff from nearby Marwell Zoo also attended to advise and potentially tranquilise the wild animal.

A nearby golf course was evacuated and plans were put in place to close the nearby M27 motorway if necessary in case the tiger moved in that direction.

But as police officers carefully approached the "wild animal" they realised it was not moving and the helicopter crew, using thermal imaging equipment, realised there was no heat source coming from it.

The tiger then rolled over in the down draft and it was at that point it became obvious it was a stuffed life-size toy.

Complete news.

Ants defend their host tree

Ants fend off competing plant species by marking their host tree with chemical signals in the depths of tropical rainforests.

The ants inhabit hollow channels inside the tree and aggressively fight off any invaders, including other plants. Yet how these ants recognise their host tree compared to other plants has not been studied.

It has been found that the ants distinguish between their host trees and encroaching species through recognition of the plant's surface waxes.

More about the study.

Fraud-proof passports and banknotes

Scientists here have developed a new substance that can be used to prevent forging of passports and banknotes.

Scientists have developed pigment-free polymer materials, virtually opening the way to new, tamper-proof passports and banknotes.

The polymers do not use pigments but instead exhibit intense colour due to their structure, similar to the way nature creates colour for beetle shells and butterfly wings.

The chemistry involved in making the polymers renders it very difficult for fraudsters to copy, ideally suiting the polymers for use on passports or banknotes.

Complete news.

Man tries to board train with his pony

A man tried to buy a ticket to board a train with his pony. He took the pony to the platform and tried to get on.

The pony owner wanted to travel from on a Aviva Trains Wales service from Wrexham to Holyhead in Wales on May 15.

He was refused but still he took the animal onto the platform and tried to get on the train, arguing with rail staff.

He walked away, into a lift with the pony, across a bridge over the tracks and down onto the northbound platform.

When the train arrived the man boarded, and tried to pull the pony on after him.  A conductor stepped in to repeat that horses are not allowed on trains.

Complete news.