This Mola Mola or Ocean Sunfish is one of the largest and stangest animals found in the sea. The Mola Mola is the world's largest bony fish. As the National Geographic video below describes it - the Mola Mola looks like a "massive swimming head." The Mola Mola can weigh up to 4,000 pounds. It can gain over sixty million times its birthweight. For more on this strange fish check out the listings on Fishbase.org, OceanLight.com and Wikipedia. The Ocean Sunfish website also has lots of facts, photos and news.



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Scientists have managed to capture an electron in motion on film for the first time. MSNBC reports that scientists used very short pulses of intense laser light called attosecond pulses and a stroboscope to film the electron.

Previously it was impossible to photograph electrons because of their extreme speediness, so scientists had to rely on more indirect methods. These methods could only measure the effect of an electron's movement, whereas the new technique can capture the entire event.

Extremely short flashes of light are necessary to capture an electron in motion. A technology developed within the last few years can generate short pulses of intense laser light, called attosecond pulses, to get the job done.

"It takes about 150 attoseconds for an electron to circle the nucleus of an atom. An attosecond is 10-18 seconds long, or, expressed in another way: an attosecond is related to a second as a second is related to the age of the universe," said Johan Mauritsson of Lund University in Sweden.

Using another laser, scientists can guide the motion of the electron to capture a collision between an electron and an atom on film.

Here's the video. The electron's movements shown in the film correspond to a single wavelength of light so the speed has been slowed down greatly so the human eye can observe the motion. The video can also be found here on the Attosecond Physics and High-Order Harmonic Generation website. See also this post on the Curious Cat blog.



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Researchers collecting specimens off Antarctica have found strange creatures. Creatures like giant sea spiders, tunicates and organisms looking like slender glass were all found. Researchers also described a strange looking fish with "funny dangling bits" around their mouth. They saw thousands of creatures and as many as a quarter them were previously undiscovered. You can see some of them in the video clip below. An article in the Telegraph also has photos of the tunicates and a giant scale worm. Last year a psychedelic octopus was discovered in the in frigid waters off Antarctica.

Unfortunately, global warming may allow sharks and crabs to come and eat many of these defenseless ocean lifeforms.

"Sharks are going to arrive in Antarctica as long as the warming trend continues, a bit more slowly than crabs - crabs are going to get there first," said Professor Cheryl Wilga of the University of Rhode Island (URI), US. "But once they do get there they are capable of eating the organisms that live there."

Professor Wilga said the arrival of sharks and shell-crushing bony fishes would lead to dramatic changes in the number and proportions of species found there.

Shrimp, ribbon worms and brittle stars are likely to be the most vulnerable to population declines.

Dr Sven Thatje of the National Oceanography Centre at the University of Southampton, UK, said animals living in shallow water in Antarctica were unique on Earth today because they evolved in a very cold environment over tens of millions of years.

Posted in Oceans

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A team of researchers from the UK's University College London (UCL) and New York's Stony Brook University have discovered the 70 million-year-old fossil of a massive dinosaur-eating frog in Madagascar. The scientists have named the frog Beelzebufo, meaning "the frog from hell."

The frog weighed 4kg and had a body length of up to 40cm. It also had a squat body, huge head and wide mouth. Professor Susan Evans, UCL Anatomy & Developmental Biology, said the frog would have been the size of a squashed beach-ball.

Evans said, "This frog, a relative of today's Horned toads, would have been the size of a slightly squashed beach-ball, with short legs and a big mouth. If it shared the aggressive temperament and 'sit-and-wait' ambush tactics of living Horned toads, it would have been a formidable predator on small animals. Its diet would most likely have consisted of insects and small vertebrates like lizards, but it's not impossible that Beelzebufo might even have munched on hatchling or juvenile dinosaurs."

The find is also interesting because it sheds new light on a debate about how the earth's land masses used to be arranged. The frog find gives credence to a theory that Madagascar was once linked to India and South America.

Professor Evans said, "Our discovery of a frog strikingly different from today's Madagascan frogs, and akin to the Horned toads previously considered endemic to South America, lends weight to the controversial paleobiogeographical model suggesting that Madagascar, the Indian subcontinent and South America were linked well into the Late Cretaceous. It also suggests that the initial spread of such beasts began earlier than that proposed by recent estimates."

The BBC and National Geographic also have stories on the ancient frog predator.

Photo source: Stony Brook University

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The Associated Press has released this 1957 promotional video of Disneyland's House of the Future. You can also see an article on the Disney's House of the Future here. The AP says Disneyland is set to unveil a new "House of the Future" this May in partnership with Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard. There's another old Disney House of the Future video here on YouTube.



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The Associated Press is reporting in the video below that endangered Loggerhead Turtles having been washing up on beaches in the UK and Ireland. These younger Loggerhead turtles may have been carried across the Atlantic Ocean by the Gulf Stream. Residents are being advised not to put the turtles back into the water becasue the colder water can be a shock to their system. Wildlife officials in the UK are attempting to collect the turtles in the hopes that they can be rehabilitated and eventually returned to the ocean.

Loggerhead turtles are protected by international treaties and agreements as well as national U.S. laws. The NOAA fisheries website has a detailed entry on Loggerhead turtles. Wikipedia's entry includes links to more Loggerhead resources.



Posted in Animals

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A rare string of powerful February tornadoes killed dozens of people and destroyed homes and businesses in the Mid-South. Wikipedia has been keep track. Currently, they show over fifty tornadoes in four states: Alabama, Arkanas, Kentucky and Tennessee. The death toll stands at 59. On Deadline has some links including this one that shows damage in the hard hit Union University.

You can read some of the reports filed by the National Weather Service here and here. As you can see here and on the chart on the above right the early outbreak has put 2008 way above the norm for this time of year.

This Nightly News video show footage of some of the damage and investigates why some people didn't know these deadly tornadoes were on the way.



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A new school in Chicago - The Latin School of Chicago - is opening with an impressive green roof from American Hydrotech. The green roof atop the Latin School is among a growing number of schools nationally that have incorporated green roofs into their building designs. The 5,500-square-foot green roof combines a high-performance waterproof membrane with lightweight green roof technology. The green roof is also accessible to students and faculty as a learning environment.

"The plantings will be fully established in about a year and I'm excited to see what the classes can fully do with it," Deb Sampey, middle school director, says. "Its first connection with the curriculum will probably be with our 8th grade and high school astronomy classes. But classes might also come up here for creative writing projects and just sit in this space and be inspired on a beautiful day."

More details about the green roof were described in a press release:

The multiple components of the Latin School green roof include a waterproofing membrane, insulation, and drainage/moisture retention elements, which are all part of a Garden Roof Assembly supplied by American Hydrotech, Inc. Hydrotech, founded in 1977 and based in Chicago, is a leader in the development, production and distribution of premium waterproofing and related construction products. Last year, the company?s green roof for the Ballard Library in Seattle, Washington, was included in the American Institute of Architects (AIA) Top 10 Green Projects of 2006.

The Latin School's new green roof, in addition to its aesthetic qualities, offers multiple environmental benefits. Plants on the roof work to keep the structure's temperature down, save on heating and cooling costs, reduce stormwater runoff, extend the useful life of the roof and reduce the urban heat island effect.

"Chicago is at the forefront of the green roof movement in the United States and the Latin School is now an active participant in this movement," says Edward J. Jarger, regional manager of American Hydrotech. "We're very pleased the school selected our Garden Roof technology and we anticipate this will become a model for other schools nationwide."

Founded in 1888, The Latin School of Chicago serves a diverse community of 1,101 students in junior kindergarten through twelfth grade from Chicago and the surrounding suburbs. The school worked with the award-winning architectural firm of Nagle Hartray Danker Kagan McKay Penney to design a building that is in keeping with the feel of the neighborhood while providing first-class educational amenities and sound green design. In addition to the green roof, the building provides significant green space, including private gardens on the ground level. Recycled materials were used throughout the building when feasible and specially-treated windows and sunshades have been installed to reduce the building's use of natural resources to heat and cool the facility.

Green buildings are a growing trend. Eventually there will be many buildings that have green roofs. There will even be green skyscrapers that behave more like an ecosystem than an environmentally-unfriendly steel fortress.

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