With the size of a small muscular dog, the Tasmanian Devil is the largest carnivorous marsupial in the world, only found in the Australian island state of Tasmania. It has black fur and is renowned for its disturbing call, ferocious temperament and the fact that it releases an offensive odor when stressed.

The Tasmanian Devil, also referred to simply as “the devil” is now facing extinction and was listed as an endangered species by the Tasmanian state government. The cause is a disfiguring facial cancer that kills an animal in just a few months, that decimated the island state’s wild devil population by as much as 60 percent.

The transmittable parasitic cancer causes tumors to form in and around the mouth, interfering with feeding so that an animal may starve to death. It originates from a single contagious cell that has spread through biting during fights for food or mates. However, they may be hope because David Llewellyn, Tasmanian Primary Industries Minister, said that some devils from Western Tasmania had developed antibodies to this facial tumor.

“While it is still very early days, discoveries such as this provide hope that the disease may be managed in the longer term and that devils with genetic diversity will survive it,” he said.

Photo by blather

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The Phoenix Mars Mission is a true partnership between the government, academia and the industry that was designed to study the history of water and the habitabillity potential on the Martian arctic’s ice-rich soil.

If everything goes as planned, on Sunday - May 25th, the Phoenix space craft is going to land on Mars. It will enter the Martian atmosphere at 13,000 mph and after finishing a set of events it should land on three “feet” at 5mph. Let’s hope everything will go smoothly and we’ll be able to find out more about the red planet.

If you want to be informed, this is NASA’s landing blog.

via Courier-Journal

Scientists have found the (new) oldest tree in the world. It is a 16.4 feet tall spruce, found in Fulu Mountain in the Dalarna province of Sweden, that was carbon dated by Miami researchers to be 9,550 years old.

Under the crown they’ve also found four generations of spruce remains in the forms of cones and wood produced with the same genetic material, that date back 375, 5,660, 9,000 and 9,550 years.

Though spruce trees can create exact copies or clones of themselves multiplying with their root penetrating branches, so far scientists thought it wasn’t such a survivor.

Recent studies conducted in cooperation with the County Administrative Boards in Jämtland and Dalarna showed different and Leif Kullman, Professor of Physical Geography at Umea University, to declared “Our results have shown the complete opposite, that the spruce is one of the oldest known trees in the mountain range”.

The history behind this discovery, also revealed that the tree survived because of the generally cold and dry climate, few forest fires and very few humans. It also pointed out that the ice might have disappeared earlier than thought.

“My research indicates that spruces have spent winters in places west or southwest of Norway where the climate was not as harsh in order to later quickly spread northerly along the ice-free coastal strip. In some way they have also successfully found their way to the Swedish mountains,” Leif Kullman said.

Spruces are the species that can best give us insight about climate change.

Photo credits: Leif Kullman

Did you know that with more than 1 million species, insects are the most diverse group of animals on Earth? No matter if they are living in large well-organized colonies or alone, insects are not welcome into our world because they don’t seem to match our morals, habits and most of the time, psychology. The fact that most of the times they are scary, is not a secret either. For all these reasons and probably more others, here are our picks for 5 giant insects in the whole world.

A native from Borneo, Phobaeticus kirbyi is in terms of body length, the longest insect in the world. It’s a stick-insect and the female is rumored to be over 14-inches long and as thin as a rail. The stick insects are one of the most popular insects kept as pets.

Phobaeticus kirbyi - Image by john1kor

The Goliath beetles, also known as Megasoma elephas (elephant beetle), Goliathus goliatus, and Goliathus regius have the greatest visible body mass of all insects in the world. They are part of the scarab beetle family and are found in Africa’s tropical forests or Central America (elephant beetle) where they feed with tree sap and fruits. Talking about “diet” and compared to it’s body, a Megasoma in captivity was able to eat a whole avocado fruit in just one day. When an adult Goliath beetle flies it makes a sound similar to a toy helicopter running.

Megasoma elephas - Images by 1, 2, 3, 4

Titanus giganteus (Titan beetle) is an extremely rare South American Longhorn Beetle and the largest known in the Amazon rainforest. One of the most interesting facts about these insects is that males do not eat, but fly around to mate or to find those bright lights they’re so attracted of. The Titan beetle is also famous for its incredible mandibles, capable of snapping small pieces of wood and even flesh. With its antennae extended the biggest specimen was reported to be 9-inch long.

Titanus giganteus - image source

Deinacrida heteracantha also known as the Little Barrier Island giant weta is an endangered species in New Zealand. During the day it stays hidden in different holes and only gets out at night to feed with seeds and leafs. Though it has no wings, a pregnant giant weta have been weighed in at a record 71 grams. It is the heaviest insect in the world.

Deinacrida heteracantha - Image by FroggyDew

Considered one of the largest of all beetles, Megasoma acteon also known as the Acteon Beetle, is a South American rhinoceros beetle. The males can grow up to 3.5-inch long, 2-inch wide and 1.5-inch thick making it one of the bulkiest of the abundant order of beetles.

Megasoma acteon - image source

Anyone else with entomophobia (fear of insects) now that you’ve seen these large insects ?

For those expecting rice and corn to be the only food prices to reach record levels, we have news. Chicken meat is going to be sold for more money this year because food companies noted sharply higher production costs. With oil and grains breaking record after record, there is nothing that can be done but to increase the prices, said Chief Executives from the two largest US companies.

Corn, which is a major feedstock, reached a record $6.5 a bushel this year because of high demand from food companies and the bio-ethanol industry. Chicken producers are concerned because they haven’t been able to increase their prices at the same rate their costs soared.

“We have attained some (higher) pricing but not at the same pace as our inputs have increased, especially in chicken. The lag of higher priced corn is just now coming through the products that we are taking to market,” Richard Bond, chief executive at Tyson Foods Inc, said on Thursday. The first solution producers will take, is to cut production 3 to 4 percent to generate the higher prices needed to cover costs.

Now I really wonder if anyone will listen to Jeffrey D. Sachs, who said that the African farmers are one of the solutions to the spiraling food prices, or if any will turn vegetarian if the chicken is going to be very expensive.

Silicon photovoltaic panels are the most expensive solar installations at the moment but things are about to change because IBM claimed they have the technology to reduce the cost of harnessing the Sun’s energy for electricity, down to $2 / W.

The company announced in a press release on Thursday, that using a large lens that concentrates power to around 2300x, they managed to capture a record 230 Watts on a square centimeter of solar cell which was later converted into 70 Watts of usable electric power. The main problem with such a power concentration is cooling down the silicon cell but I guess IBM engineers are experts in doing it, though not for photovoltaics.

“Specifically, the IBM team used a very thin layer of a liquid metal made of a gallium and indium compound that they applied between the chip and a cooling block. Such layers, called thermal interface layers, transfer the heat from the chip to the cooling block so that the chip temperature can be kept low.”

If IBM’s technology turns out to be true and the company is able to cool the solar cell efficiently, concentrated photovoltaic systems may become the cheapest type of solar energy available on the market. This would be a very big step in going mainstream, don’t you think?

Everywhere online and on TV there are news about the cyclone in Burma, the earthquake in China and many other natural disasters that cause thousands of deaths every year and leave behind even more refugees. How can we solve this problem? How can we help all those people?

Andrew Leinonen seems to have it all figured out. He especially designed an airship concept covered in solar panels that can be used in rescue operations. It can be flown into a disaster area to provide all the needed power to the rescue effort.

Considering the size of this thing (20 m long), it can produce up to 125 kWh per day which is more than enough to power 25 shallow water pumps and provide clean water for some 12,000 people. Or it could keep 400 medical refrigerators on.

In order to do all these, the solar airship must be anchored and needs its own power box. Another important aspect of this flying rescuer is that it can fly autonomously to simplify the operations. Though it’s just a concept design, it sure seems useful except when rescue operations are being deterred by storms and bad weather.

via EcoGeek

photo by vr2006

With 1.8 million cars counting for 75-percent of the air pollution, Madrid is one of Spain’s most polluted cities. Recently the City Hall announced that their official vehicles will “turn green” by 2011 using clean fuels like bio-diesel, ethanol, natural gas or even running on electricity. Madrid also joined the BEST (BioEthanol for Sustainable Transport) European project to promote the use of ethanol in cars and is going to make agreements with taxi companies to offer them road tax discounts if they will turn green, too.

Such decisions could make people realize that something has to be done if we want a cleaner air. We can start with our cars.

via AutoBlogGreen

When you build a playground for you children, the first obvious thing you think of is that it should be safe for them to play there. A family from Anchorage, Alaska, built an outdoor playground for their two sons but they missed out on one thing, the nearby bears.

“They finished building it on Saturday evening, and the following morning, as mom was about to wake up the boys and have them go out to play in their new play center, this is what she saw from the upstairs window.”

Alaskan Playground

With just a hand full of birdseed every Venice tourist in the historic St. Mark’s Square is able to gather around an avalanche of pigeons.

photo by Dimitry B

Vendors in the area used to sell corn to visitors which enjoyed what seemed to be the most entertaining activities in the plaza. They are now out of jobs, because a municipal ordinance have put a ban on selling and distributing food for the pigeons, from May 1st. Fines for ignoring this decision start from 50 Euro ($77).

One of the vendors, obviously furious about the decission said that this may put an end to a century old tradition and this would be like “removing Rialto or the Bridge of Sighs.” There is truth in his words, but the ban has real motives. The pigeons are eating away at the city’s marble statues, the buildings and the delicate mosaics on the façade of St. Mark’s Basilica, by pecking at small gaps to reach for scraps of food that were blown inside. Cleaning and restoring these monuments is not cheap and a study estimated that each Venetian taxpayer is paying up to 275 euros for the repairs.

In the meanwhile, tourists continued to feed the birds, and if birdseeds where not available, they used potato chips and bread sticks. “Word is” that pigeons really enjoyed changing their diet, in fact they really enjoyed it.

There are over 130,000 pigeons in Venice’s historic center and Sergio Lafisca, the Venice health expert responsible for the Department of Prevention said this led to a 40 times higher rate than the optimal concentration per square kilometer. “Even locusts are cute on their own, but then read what the Bible says about invasions,” he said.

Here is a small picture gallery of St Mark’s Square (Piazza San Marco) with Basilica di San Marc and the pigeons.

Image copyright : 1, 2, 3