Making Science More Better For You on 09/24/07

How you gonna keep’em down on the farm once they’ve tasted that special sauce?

Apes Blamed For Crime Spree

South Africa's crime problem has taken a new twist.
A gang of baboons is being blamed for a series of break-ins.

The chacma baboons, which live wild in the Cape peninsula, have been raiding people's homes for food and causing thousands of pounds in damage.

"People here are getting very angry," Dr Peter Kirsh said, as a baboon strutted along the street beneath his balcony.

"They get into the kitchens, they know where the fridge is, they open it and take everything, and then they defecate everywhere."

"I put these bars on my windows," John Lourens says, gripping the metal. "But still, the next thing I knew I had a baboon in my living room."

The residents say the "invasions" happen almost daily and claim the baboons are aggressive as they search for food. (Sky News)

Next thing you know, they'll be surfing the Internet for chimp porn.

Headline of the day
“Saying "I'm hungry," man rips off duck's head inside hotel lobby”
(Pioneer Press/The Obscure Store)

The Police described him as “allegedly drunk.”

BY DAVE ORRICK/ Pioneer Press

He ripped the head off a live duck inside a hotel lobby.

That's the accusation St. Paul police made early Saturday against a 26-year-old Denver man staying at the Embassy Suites Hotel in downtown St. Paul.

The hotel's spacious lobby atrium features an ornamental pond that at one point contained eight domesticated ducks.

Shortly before 2:35 a.m., Scott D. Clark, who had told hotel employees he was in town on business, chased a duck across the area and cornered it, according to St. Paul police Sgt. John Wuorinen.

"He was allegedly drunk," Wuorinen said Saturday as he read a police report of the incident.

As a hotel security guard and others watched, Clark grabbed the bird and "ripped its head from its body," the police report said.

Clark turned to onlookers and said: "I'm hungry. I'm gonna eat it," said Wuorinen, quoting from the report.

Security guards detained Clark until police arrived. He spent Saturday night in the Ramsey County Jail on suspicion of felony cruelty to animal and was scheduled to appear before a judge Monday morning. Police said they were not aware of Clark having any criminal record.

Clark declined a request for a jailhouse interview Saturday.

An assistant manager at the hotel, at 175 E. 10th St., said the hotel was conducting its own investigation of the incident and declined to comment further.

In town on business? And just what kind of business would that be? And will the hotel send him a duck bill?


Wait until you get this baby on the highway…

According to the BBC, broadband speeds in the UK are much slower than advertised by internet service providers, a study by Computeractive magazine has found.

Some 3,000 readers took part in speed tests and 62% found they routinely got less than half of the top speed advertised by their provider.

It is the latest in a series of questions over the way net firms advertise broadband services.

Regulator Ofcom said it was aware of the issue and was "investigating".

Testing times

The figures were gathered from more than 100,000 speed tests that the 3,000 respondents carried out to build up a picture of their average net-browsing speed on ADSL lines.

Statistics about net users in the UK show that half of current broadband users receive ADSL services that should run at speeds between one and four megabits per second (mbps).

The other 50% are on deals offering up to eight mbps but the tests revealed that, in reality, very few achieve the top speeds.

"This problem has been building for a while with a growing gulf between what is advertised and what is delivered," said Paul Allen, editor of Computeractive.

"The adverts often have super-fast broadband in huge lettering with the "up to" clause in very small print," he said.

"Users who have taken the test were surprised at the size of the gulf," he added.

Some 28% of the 3,000 respondents who took the ADSL speed test found that they received less than a quarter of their maximum advertised bandwidth.

While consumers may currently not notice their sluggish connections, this could change thinks Mr Allen.

"Previously it has not been a massive issue but in the coming year we are entering the net TV age and video content is bandwidth-hungry," he said.

Mr Allen called on regulator Ofcom to provide an independent speed test to anyone who has signed up to receive broadband.

Speaking for the telecommunications watchdog, a spokesman said: "We are looking at this issue. It is not a huge driver of complaints but it has come on to our radar screen."

"It's about the difference between the headline rate and the rate received," he said.

The spokesman said Ofcom was working with the net industry and other organisations such as Which to investigate the extent of the problem and what can be done about it.

"Once we have carried out this work we will assess what options might be available to tackle it," he said. The results of the investigation would be made available in the "near future", said the spokesman.

You mean consumers are getting techno-speak instead of what they pay for? Shocking.



Natural selection is based on shiny things. That's why God invented the Corvette.

Biologists Expose Hidden Costs Of Firefly Flashes: Risky Balance Between Sex And Death

Science Daily — A new study by biologists at Tufts University has discovered a dark side lurking behind the magical light shows put on by fireflies each summer. Using both laboratory and field experiments to explore the potential costs of firefly courtship displays, the biologists have uncovered some surprising answers.


The research, to be published in the November 2007 issue of American Naturalist revealed that it's energetically cheap for fireflies to produce their distinctive flash signals, but that flashier males are more likely to end up on the dinner table.

On summer evenings, male Photinus fireflies lift off into the air to broadcast their bioluminescent flashes in search of females. Females perched in the grass sit and admire passing males and, if they're interested, will flash in response. Previous research on many different firefly species has shown that females respond more readily to males that give longer flashes, as well as those with faster flash rhythms. This female choice favors firefly males that produce more conspicuous flashes.

"Since females so clearly prefer the flashier males, one thing that's been puzzling scientists is what's keeping these males from evolving longer and longer, faster and faster flashes," says Sara Lewis, professor of biology at Tufts and leader of the research team that included postdoctoral researcher William Woods and two undergraduate students. In theory, there might be some hidden costs to more conspicuous flashes, but what are they"

In the field, predatory fireflies were attracted significantly more often to the fake firefly signals compared with non-flashing but otherwise identical controls. In addition, when flash signals were more frequent, they were much more likely to attract predators. So even though more conspicuous flash signals provide male fireflies with an evolutionary leg up in terms of attracting females, they also have a potentially fatal downside because they are more likely to attract predators in search of their next meal.

You know the type. Shirt open at the thorax, gold chains, bad rug.