A worker sorts artificially cultivated freshwater pearls at a pearl production factory in Zhuji, Zhejiang province, Sept. 6, 2011. Zhuji aims to become an international production and distribution hub for artificially cultivated freshwater pearls. The city... now supplies... 30 percent of the global market with pearl products. (Lang Lang/Reuters).From a photoessay about daily life in China at The Big Picture.
Scientists thought butterflies were deaf until 1912 when the first butterfly ears were identified. Only in the past decade or so have researchers examined the anatomy and physiology of butterfly ears, which they are finding to be quite diverse and present in several butterfly species.Text from Live Science (more info there and at the J. Exp. Biol. publication). Photo via animals, animals, animals (original source uncredited). A macro view of the ear structure is posted at MSNBC.
The latest discovery was made with the blue morpho butterfly (Morpho peleides), which dazzles with its bright-blue wing coloration when it flits about in its native Central and South America... In the new study, Kathleen Lucas of the University of Bristol in England and her colleagues were interested in the odd-looking hearing membrane that sits at the base of the blue morpho's wing. The tympanal membrane, as it is called, is oval-shaped with a dome at its center that kind of resembles the yolk at the center of a fried egg, Lucas said...
Taken together, the vibrational and nerve recordings suggest this butterfly can distinguish between different pitches, though further research is needed to confirm this ability.
In Italy, all cargo containers carrying scrap metal get checked for radiation, by hand, before they’re allowed off the docks. At Voltri, this job falls to Montagna, a 49-year-old independent consultant certified as an expert in radiation detection by the Italian government. By the time he arrived that morning, longshoremen had gathered eleven 20-foot-long, 8-foot-wide containers from across the terminal, relying on manifests to determine which ones needed to be scanned. The boxes were lined up in two neat rows near the terminal’s entrance...Note that they only check the containers whose manifests mention scrap metal. If you finish reading the story at Wired, you may be interested in relevant prior posts here, here, and here.
Montagna, dressed in a polo shirt, jeans, and an orange safety vest, grabbed his radiation monitor — a tan Ludlum Model 3 about the size of a toaster. He plugged in a heavy sensor wand and set the device on the ground 20 yards away from the containers. The Model 3 emits a high-pitched beep every time it detects a radioactive particle; Montagna turned it on, and the meter’s needle swung hard to the right, burying itself past the maximum reading of 500,000 counts per minute. Instead of its usual staccato chirps, the machine was whining continuously and frantically...
As he stood in the morning sun listening to that sound, Montagna realized that one of the containers in front of him held a lethal secret. But was that secret merely a slow-motion radioactive industrial accident — or a bomb, one that could decimate the Italian city’s entire 15-mile waterfront? Montagna ran back to his car to get a less sensitive detector. He didn’t give much thought to protection; at those radiation levels, he would have needed lead armor 5 inches thick to stand within a couple of feet of the source for very long. Montagna took the new meter and walked up to the sealed boxes, circling each one in turn. Halfway down the second row, a crimson 20-footer with “TGHU 307703 0 22G1" emblazoned in white on its side jerked the dials. As he passed a few feet from the box’s left side, Montagna was absorbing radiation equivalent to six chest x-rays per minute...
"This photo provided by the New England Aquarium in Boston shows a rare calico lobster that could be a 1-in-30 million, according to experts. It was caught off Winterport, Maine, and was discovered by Jasper White’s Summer Shack and is being held at the New England Aquarium for the Biomes Marine Biology Center, a science center in Rhode Island."
"A camel covered with elaborate patterns waited to be judged in a camel haircut competition at an annual festival in Bikaner, Sunday."
Amateurs pump 120,000 balls a year into a watery grave. Pros competing at the Players Championship have dumped nearly 500 balls into the drink since 2003 alone....The approach, btw, is not from the side with the causeway, but from the upper left side of the photo. More at the link.
For a hole and a tournament that purports to be serious, you wouldn't think such additional gimmickry would be necessary. Tiger Woods, for one, thinks the 17th hole is already a bit much, at least positioned where it is, as the next-to-last hole of each round. "I think it's a perfect eighth hole or something like that," he said this week. But not great as part of the finishing run, where a single unpredictable gust of wind or surge of adrenaline can cost a player two strokes minimum.
He has a point. It's hard to imagine the U.S. Golf Association allowing the 17th to stand as the penultimate hole at a U.S. Open. It can seem like a made-for-television hole, a novelty act for fans.
When you examine the 17th more closely, however, it's not nearly the carnival act its popularity suggests. None of the three elements that make it so fearsome—the wind, when it blows, the water in your face and the pressure of competition—are what you'd call gimmicks. All are elemental components of the game. The difference is their unique combination, all coming to bear on a single shot. But the hole's length, officially 137 yards but often shorter, keeps the risk-reward ratio in balance...
Jerusalem, Israel: An Ultra-Orthodox Jew swings a chicken over his head during the Kaparot ceremony in the Mea Shearim neighbourhood. The Jewish ritual is supposed to transfer the sins of the past year to the chicken, and is performed before the Day of Atonement, or Yom Kippur.In this next photo, from Orange News, via Arbroath -
Town Hall officials have asked priests to bless all the manhole covers in their town to stop them being stolen by scrap metal thieves. Councillors in Lodz, Poland, replaced all 4,000 of the town's manhole covers after the new ones had been blessed at a church service to keep them safe.I'm not going to offer commentary except to emphasize that I'm not mocking (and I'll delete disrespectful commentary). Events like these, which elicit derision from nonbelievers, serve to demonstrate how powerful religion can be in the minds of those who are committed to their faith.
The first known Spanish daguerrotype was taken on 18 november 1839, and this was also the first known photo of Madrid. However, the most common photographic genre from the beginning was the portrait, with a strongly Spanish peculiarity since the very first Spanish plates, which would continue with the glass negatives and photo prints as well: the photo portraits of dead children...
In Spain, the first professional daguerrotypists announced their services, such as Mattey did in the 3 April 1856 edition of Diario de Barcelona, offering to “go to the home of the deceased persons to take their photographic portraits, imbued with the expression of life and in the desired position”.
