Polar Bear That Starved to Death, Allegedly Due to Climate Change, in Viral Photograph

A polar bear in a file photo. (Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)

A photographer captured an image of a polar bear in the Canadian Arctic that has gone viral.

337 Whales Dead in Massive Stranding Off Chile

Off Patagonia, Chile, 337 whales were found dead, in the largest whale beaching ever recorded.

According to National Geographic, the animals were most likely sei whales, and it's not yet clear to scientists what caused the mass die-off.

The whales were first discovered in June, and scientists had planned to report their findings in a scientific journal. But the news has just been leaked in Chilean media, according to National Geographic.

The marine mammals lie in an extremely remote fjord, and that location, combined with rough seas in the area has limited researchers from the Universidad de Chile and Consejo de Monumentos Nacionales, in Santiago, to aerial observations of the carcasses, many of which have already decayed greatly.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), sei whales are "great whales" in the baleen family. They can reach 60 feet long and weigh in at 100,000 pounds. The great sea creatures are considered endangered throughout their range, which includes temperate waters in the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans.

Not much is known about their movements, and they "may unpredictably and randomly occur in a specific area, sometimes in large numbers," according to the NOAA.

A marine scientist posited to IB Times UK that the whales were likely already dead or dying when they washed ashore.

The deaths were "probably caused by individual whales being exposed to similar circumstances, leading to their death," researcher David Lusseau told the publication. "It is likely also that only a proportion of the dead whales have stranded, so this is an underestimate of the number of whales that have died in a very short event."

Next researchers will try to reach the animals on foot, racing against the fast-decaying corpses, to try to determine what killed them.

Article source: Discovery

Fossils Bones Reveal How Giraffe Got Its Long Neck

Analysis of the neck bones of an extinct member of the giraffe family reveal how today's giraffe got its exceptionally long neck.

It has long been thought that the giraffe's neck was a result of evolution, but fossil evidence had been lacking.

In a paper published in Royal Society Open Science, scientists describe the neck of a "transitional" or "intermediate" species that existed about 7 million years ago.

Two-stage process formed moon, simulations suggest

Chemicals missing from lunar rocks may be hiding under crust



OXON HILL, Md. — Rocks on Earth and the moon are nearly identical — except when they’re not. 

Oldest Polar Bear in US Dies

The oldest polar bear in the United States was put to sleep on Friday after a sudden deterioration in her condition, Philadelphia Zoo said.

Klondike, who at 34 was beyond the typical lifespan for her species, went downhill fast in the last two weeks, zookeepers said, including having difficulty standing and walking after lying down. She also recently had a urinary tract infection.

"We are very sad for this loss. Klondike was a very popular resident at Philadelphia Zoo," said Kevin Murphy, general curator.

"She received great care from her keepers and the veterinary staff during her long and very healthy life here. She will be greatly missed by our staff.

"In addition to the joy she brought guests over more than three decades, she has been an important ambassador to wild polar bears, who are increasingly threatened by climate change and resulting shrinkage of polar ice."

Philadelphia Zoo is home to an additional female polar bear, Coldilocks, who is also 34 and who arrived and lived with Klondike.

A typical lifespan for polar bears in zoos is about 24 years, according to the zoo.

Discovery

Patricia—the strongest hurricane on record—rapidly weakened to a tropical storm overnight

Hurricane Patricia made landfall on Mexico's Pacific coast last evening with sustained winds of 165 miles per hour. Between Wednesday and Friday, the storm made a sudden, hulk-like transformation from a tropical storm to a Category 5 hurricane. 

Patricia not only made it into the strongest category for hurricanes on the Saffir Simpson scale, but it became the strongest hurricane, period—or at least, the strongest one ever recorded.

 The scale tops out at 5, which describes storms with sustained winds of greater than 157 mph. Patricia’s 200-mph winds yesterday afternoon, according to some experts, would have warranted a Category 7 ranking if the scale were continuous. Abnormally warm waters in the eastern Pacific helped fuel the terrifying growth spurt. The magnitude was impressive even from space—Astronaut Scott Kelly, aboard the International Space Station, tweeted a warning (below).

But almost as quickly as it began, the storm weakened rapidly overnight and is once again Tropical Storm Patricia, with 50-mph winds. "The first reports confirm that the damage has been less than that corresponding to a hurricane of this magnitude," President Enrique Peña Nieto said in a televised message. The governor of the state of Jalisco, one of three under a state of emergency, told the New York Times that there have been no "irreparable damages" reported there so far.

 Flooding and mudslides continue to be a concern as the storm moves northeast, but let's hope it's finished blowing us away with its stats.

On Earth

Battle of the Ants Which is the most notorious ant species on earth?

Do you think you could win a fight with an ant?

Ants are very small. Ants seem innocuous. But what if you were confronted by an ant that was known to act, well, a little crazy?

What if you realised that the ant could bite? And not only bite, but inflict so much pain upon you that it would feel like your skin was on fire?

Visit BBC to read this wonderful article. You will be amazed!

Aspirin trial to examine if it can stop cancer returning

The world's largest clinical trial to examine whether aspirin can prevent cancers returning has begun in the UK.

About 11,000 people who have had early bowel, breast, prostate, stomach and oesophageal cancer will be involved.
Uncertainty about the drug's possible anti-cancer qualities has led to fierce medical debate in recent years.
If it is proven to work, scientists say it would be "game-changing", by providing a cheap and effective way to help more patients survive.
During the study, funded by the charity Cancer Research UK and the NIHR - the research arm of the NHS - patients will take a tablet every day for five years.

'Toughest experiences'

Researchers will compare groups of patients taking different doses of aspirin with people taking dummy (placebo) pills and check for any recurrences of cancer.
Dr Fiona Reddington from Cancer Research UK said: "The trial is especially exciting as cancers that recur are often harder to treat so finding a cheap and effective way to prevent this is potentially game-changing for patients."

The trial will run across 100 UK centres, involving patients who are having or have had treatment for early cancer, and will last up to 12 years.
But scientists warn that aspirin is not suitable for everyone and should not be used without medical advice.
Taking the drug every day comes with a serious health warning as it can cause side effects such as ulcers and bleeding from the stomach, or even the brain.

Clear proof sought

Prof Ruth Langley, lead investigator on the trial, said: "There's been some interesting research suggesting that aspirin could delay or stop early stage cancers coming back but there's been no randomised trial to give clear proof.

"The trial aims to answer this question once and for all.
"If we find that aspirin does stop these cancers returning, it could change future treatment - providing a cheap and simple way to help stop cancer coming back and helping more people survive."
Alex King, 51, who was diagnosed with breast cancer in December 2009 and has been given the all-clear, said: "Having cancer was one of the toughest experiences of my life.
"Any opportunity to reduce the chance of cancer coming back is incredibly important so patients can rest more easily."
Many people are already prescribed daily, low-dose aspirin as a heart drug.

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Crocodiles sleep with one eye watching

Crocodiles can sleep with one eye open, according to a study from Australia.

In doing so they join a list of animals with this ability, which includes some birds, dolphins and other reptiles.
Writing in the Journal of Experimental Biology, the researchers say the crocs are probably sleeping with one brain hemisphere at a time, leaving one half of the brain active and on the lookout.

New Research Shows Individual Brain Activity Is As Unique As Fingerprints

These brain “connectivity profiles” alone allow researchers to identify individuals from the fMRI images of brain activity of more than 100 people, according to the study published October 12 in the journal Nature Neuroscience.

“In most past studies, fMRI data have been used to draw contrasts between, say, patients and healthy controls,” said Emily Finn, a Ph.D. student in neuroscience and co-first author of the paper. “We have learned a lot from these sorts of studies, but they tend to obscure individual differences which may be important.”

Finn and co-first author Xilin Shen, under the direction of R. Todd Constable, professor of diagnostic radiology and neurosurgery at Yale, compiled fMRI data from 126 subjects who underwent six scan sessions over two days. Subjects performed different cognitive tasks during four of the sessions. In the other two, they simply rested. Researchers looked at activity in 268 brain regions: specifically, coordinated activity between pairs of regions. Highly coordinated activity implies two regions are functionally connected. Using the strength of these connections across the whole brain, the researchers were able to identify individuals from fMRI data alone, whether the subject was at rest or engaged in a task. They were also able to predict how subjects would perform on tasks.

Finn said she hopes that this ability might one day help clinicians predict or even treat neuropsychiatric diseases based on individual brain connectivity profiles.

Data for the study came from the Human Connectome Project led by the WU-Minn Consortium, which is funded by the 16 National Institutes of Health (NIH) Institutes and Centers that support the NIH Blueprint for Neuroscience Research and by the McDonnell Center for Systems Neuroscience at Washington University. Primary funding for the Yale researchers was provided by the NIH.

Publication: Emily S Finn, et al., “Functional connectome fingerprinting: identifying individuals using patterns of brain connectivity,” Nature Neuroscience (2015); doi:10.1038/nn.4135

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