Tuesday, August 12, 2008

6-legged deer

6-legged deer

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 10th, 2008 at 12:01 am and is filed under Animals

Teen Takes Bath At Xenia Burger King

Video: Gabrielle Enright Reports On Burger King Bath

Teen Takes Bath At Xenia Burger King

Becky Grimes, Special Projects Manager/Web Manager

POSTED: 5:33 pm EDT August 11, 2008

UPDATED: 6:12 am EDT August 12, 2008

XENIA, Ohio -- An unbelievable video is now showing on myspace and now on whiotv.com.A teenager celebrated his birthday by taking a bath in the utility sink at the Burger King in Xenia.Greene County Health Commissioner Mark McDonnell was emailed the video and is now using it as evidence.In the video, the teenager dumps water on himself using a bucket marked with the words, "sanitary solution." But McDonnell said this sink is used to clean utensils and there is nothing sanitary about what this teenager did.McDonnell said, "Any bacteria on his skin could have been deposited giving people food poisoning." And to make matters worse, the person recording the video allegedly told the Burger King manager what was happening, but she continued to count cash.Burger King Corp. was notified of the incident Monday, and is cooperating fully with the health department.

.RAW VIDEO: Teen Takes Bath At Burger King

Burger King Corp. said, "We have sanitized the sink and have disposed of all other kitchen tools and utensils that were used during the incident. We have also taken appropriate corrective action on the employees that were involved in this video.Additionally, the remaining staff at this restaurant is being retrained in health and sanitation procedures."

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Police: 'Cult' Starved Toddler Who Wouldn't Say 'Amen'

BALTIMORE — A toddler whose remains were found inside a suitcase in Philadelphia this spring was starved to death by members of a religious cult, including his mother, in part because he refused to say "amen" after meals, police said.

Ria Ramkissoon, the mother of Javon Thompson, was charged Sunday with first-degree murder in the boy's death, and Baltimore police said Monday that three other members of a group called 1 Mind Ministries have also been charged with first-degree murder. Police and Ramkissoon's family say the group is a cult.

Members did not seek medical care for Javon when he stopped breathing, and the boy died in his mother's arms, according to court documents that described police interviews with a confidential informant and two children. He would have been about 19 months old when police say adults stopped feeding him in December 2006.

Ramkissoon, 21, was being held Monday in the psychiatric ward of Baltimore's Central Booking and Intake Center, and a bail review was postponed until Tuesday. Her public defender declined comment.

The three other people charged in Javon's death — Queen Antoinette, 40, also known as Toni Ellsberry or Toni Sloan; Marcus Cobbs, 21; and Trevia Williams, who turns 21 Tuesday — were already in custody. They were arrested in May in New York City on warrants charging them with failure to appear in court in Baltimore. Those charges stemmed from a scuffle with police in a child custody dispute

No one answered the phone Monday afternoon in the office of a public defender assigned to Antoinette, Cobbs and Williams.

A fifth alleged cult member, Steven Bynum, has been charged in a warrant with first-degree murder and remains at large, police said Monday. He was believed to be in New York.

Ramkissoon's family said she should not be held responsible for her son's death.

"She had no control over that situation at all," her stepfather, Craig Newton, said Monday.

Ramkissoon's mother, Seeta Khadan-Newton, told The (Baltimore) Sun on Sunday that it wasn't her daughter's decision not to feed the boy.

"My daughter was a victim, just like my grandson," Khadan-Newton said. "Somebody made that decision to not feed that child, and my daughter had to follow instructions."

Members of 1 Mind Ministries wore all white, swore off medical care and referred to some members with titles including queen and princess, according to court documents. The group was also accused of insisting that a pregnant woman give birth without access to doctors.

Ramkissoon joined 1 Mind Ministries after Javon was born. Ramkissoon's mother last saw her in April 2006; she later sued for custody of her grandson, writing in a letter to a judge that "the cult leaders" were preventing her from contacting her daughter.

The documents show police interviewed two school-age children who had been part of the group but were taken away from members by Philadelphia police. The children told investigators that members stopped feeding Javon in December 2006, in part because the boy refused to say "amen" after dinner. Members also viewed Javon as "a demon."

Another unnamed informant told police that after Javon died, Antoinette left the boy's body in a room for more than a week, claiming "God was going to raise Javon from the dead," the documents show.

Afterward, Antoinette burned the boy's clothing and a mattress and placed his body in a green suitcase, which she would periodically open and spray with disinfectant to mask the odor, police claim in the court documents.

In early 2007, the group members left Baltimore for Philadelphia. They left the green suitcase and other luggage inside a shed belonging to a man they befriended while there, police said, and then relocated to Brooklyn, N.Y.

Police recovered the suitcase in April after they got a tip from the confidential informant. The remains of a small child were inside. DNA tests are pending to confirm the boy's identity.

Monday, August 11, 2008

The 2008 Perseid Meteor Shower - August 12

The 2008 Perseid Meteor Shower - August 12

Published on Jul 22, 2008 - 10:51:17 AM

By: Dr. Tony Phillips, Science@NASA

July 22, 2008 - Mark your calendar: The 2008 Perseid meteor shower peaks on August 12th and it should be a good show.

"The time to look is during the dark hours before dawn on Tuesday, August 12th," says Bill Cooke of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office at the Marshall Space Flight Center. "There should be plenty of meteors--perhaps one or two every minute."

The source of the shower is Comet Swift-Tuttle. Although the comet is far away, currently located beyond the orbit of Uranus, a trail of debris from the comet stretches all the way back to Earth. Crossing the trail in August, Earth will be pelted by specks of comet dust hitting the atmosphere at 132,000 mph. At that speed, even a flimsy speck of dust makes a vivid streak of light when it disintegrates--a meteor! Because, Swift-Tuttle's meteors streak out of the constellation Perseus, they are called "Perseids."

(Note: In the narrative that follows, all times are local. For instance, 9:00 pm means 9:00 pm in your time zone, where you live. )

Serious meteor hunters will begin their watch early, on Monday evening, August 11th, around 9 pm when Perseus first rises in the northeast. This is the time to look for Perseid Earthgrazers--meteors that approach from the horizon and skim the atmosphere overhead like a stone skipping across the surface of a pond.

The eastern sky viewed during the hours before sunrise on Tuesday, Aug. 12, 2008.

"Earthgrazers are long, slow and colorful; they are among the most beautiful of meteors," says Cooke. He cautions that an hour of watching may net only a few of these at most, but seeing even one can make the whole night worthwhile.

A warm summer night. Bright meteors skipping overhead. And the peak is yet to come. What could be better?

The answer lies halfway up the southern sky: Jupiter and the gibbous Moon converge on August 11th and 12th for a close encounter in the constellation Sagittarius: sky map. It's a grand sight visible even from light-polluted cities.

For a while the beautiful Moon will interfere with the Perseids, lunar glare wiping out all but the brightest meteors. Yin-yang. The situation reverses itself at 2 am on Tuesday morning, August 12th, when the Moon sets and leaves behind a dark sky for the Perseids. The shower will surge into the darkness, peppering the sky with dozens and perhaps hundreds of meteors until dawn.

For maximum effect, "get away from city lights," Cooke advises. The brightest Perseids can be seen from cities, he allows, but the greater flurry of faint, delicate meteors is visible only from the countryside. (Scouts, this is a good time to go camping.)

The Perseids are coming. Enjoy the show!

Meltdown In The Arctic Is Speeding Up

Meltdown In The Arctic Is Speeding Up
Scientists warn that the North Pole could be free of ice in just five years’ time instead of 60

by Robin McKie

Ice at the North Pole melted at an unprecedented rate last week, with leading scientists warning that the Arctic could be ice-free in summer by 2013.

Satellite images show that ice caps started to disintegrate dramatically several days ago as storms over Alaska’s Beaufort Sea began sucking streams of warm air into the Arctic.

As a result, scientists say that the disappearance of sea ice at the North Pole could exceed last year’s record loss. More than a million square kilometres melted over the summer of 2007 as global warming tightened its grip on the Arctic. But such destruction could now be matched, or even topped, this year.

‘It is a neck-and-neck race between 2007 and this year over the issue of ice loss,’ said Mark Serreze, of the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Boulder, Colorado. ‘We thought Arctic ice cover might recover after last year’s unprecedented melting - and indeed the picture didn’t look too bad last month. Cover was significantly below normal, but at least it was up on last year.

‘But the Beaufort Sea storms triggered steep ice losses and it now looks as if it will be a very close call indeed whether 2007 or 2008 is the worst year on record for ice cover over the Arctic. We will only find out when the cover reaches its minimum in mid-September.’

This startling loss of Arctic sea ice has major meteorological, environmental and ecological implications. The region acts like a giant refrigerator that has a strong effect on the northern hemisphere’s meteorology. Without its cooling influence, weather patterns will be badly disrupted, including storms set to sweep over Britain.

At the same time, creatures such as polar bears and seals - which use sea ice for hunting and resting - face major threats. Similarly, coastlines will no longer be insulated by ice from wave damage and will suffer erosion, as is already happening in Alaska.

Other environmental changes are likely to follow. Without sea ice to bolster them, land ice - including glaciers - could topple into the ocean and raise global sea levels, threatening many low-lying areas, including Bangladesh and scores of Pacific islands. In addition, the disappearance of reflective ice over the Arctic means that solar radiation would no longer be bounced back into space, thus heating the planet even further.

On top of these issues, there are fears that water released by the melting caps will disrupt the Gulf Stream, while an ice-free Arctic in summer offers new opportunities for oil and gas drilling there - and for political disputes over territorial rights.

What really unsettles scientists, however, is their inability to forecast precisely what is happening in the Arctic, the part of the world most vulnerable to the effects of global warming. ‘When we did the first climate change computer models, we thought the Arctic’s summer ice cover would last until around 2070,’ said Professor Peter Wadhams of Cambridge University. ‘It is now clear we did not understand how thin the ice cap had already become - for Arctic ice cover has since been disappearing at ever increasing rates. Every few years we have to revise our estimates downwards. Now the most detailed computer models suggest the Arctic’s summer ice is going to last for only a few more years - and given what we have seen happen last week, I think they are probably correct.’

The most important of these computer studies of ice cover was carried out a few months ago by Professor Wieslaw Maslowski of the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. Using US navy supercomputers, his team produced a forecast which indicated that by 2013 there will be no ice in the Arctic - other than a few outcrops on islands near Greenland and Canada - between mid-July and mid-September.

‘It does not really matter whether 2007 or 2008 is the worst year on record for Arctic ice,’ Maslowski said. ‘The crucial point is that ice is clearly not building up enough over winter to restore cover and that when you combine current estimates of ice thickness with the extent of the ice cap, you get a very clear indication that the Arctic is going to be ice-free in summer in five years. And when that happens, there will be consequences.’

This point was backed by Serreze. ‘The trouble is that sea ice is now disappearing from the Arctic faster than our ability to develop new computer models and to understand what is happening there. We always knew it would be the first region on Earth to feel the impact of climate change, but not at anything like this speed. What is happening now indicates that global warming is occurring far earlier than any of us expected.

Part of Olympic display altered in broadcast

Some aerial footage of fireworks digitally created months in advance

NBC

The Beijing Times reported that part of the elaborate Olympic opening ceremonies display broadcast to the world were actually done digitally in 3-D computer graphics.

Fireworks over the Olympics pyrotechnics erupted when it was learned that part of the elaborate display broadcast to the world in the opening ceremony was altered, done digitally in 3-D computer graphics.

While the dramatic fireworks display actually happened as portrayed on television, members of the Beijing Olympic Committee said it was necessary to replace live video with computer-generated imagery because the city’s hazy, smoggy skies made it too difficult to see, according to The Beijing Times, which first reported the story.

Committee members also said they were concerned that the helicopter pilot who would have flown overhead to film the fireworks would have been “at risk by making him try to follow the firework route,” according to a quote from a committee member reported in a Daily Telegraph story.

NBC broadcasters Matt Lauer and Bob Costas made mention of the alteration as it aired.

"You’re looking at a cinematic device employed by Zhang Yimou here," Lauer said. "This is actually almost animation. A footstep a second, 29 in all, to signify the 29 Olympiads."

Costas responded, "We said earlier that aspects of this Opening Ceremony are almost like cinema in real time. Well this is quite literally cinematic."

It took planners almost a year to create the 55-second sequence which appeared to be more than two dozen footprints amidst fireworks in the sky, said Gao Xiaolong, head of the visual effects team for the ceremony, in the Daily Telegraph story.

Even those at the city’s new Bird’s Nest National Stadium, where the Olympics are being held, viewed the computer-generated footage from their seats as they watched on the stadium’s giant television screens, said Britain’s Sky News in a story.

“Stunned viewers thought they were watching the string of fireworks filmed from above by a helicopter,” said SkyNews.com. “ But in reality they were watching a 3-D graphics sequence that took almost a year to produce.”

There were some real fireworks going on outside the stadium. But the footprint display was “inserted into the coverage electronically at exactly the right moment,” the Daily Telegraph said.

“Meticulous efforts were made to ensure the sequence was as unnoticeable as possible,” the newspaper reported Xiaolong as saying. “They sought advice from the Beijing meteorological office as to how to recreate the hazy effects of Beijing’s smog at night, and inserted a slight camera shake effect to simulate the idea that it was filmed from a helicopter.”

Slide show

Emotional Moments
Olympians experience a world-record-breaking day 3.

more photos

“Seeing how it worked out, it was still a bit too bright compared to the actual fireworks,” Xiaolong said in comments that appeared in the Daily Telegraph. “But most of the audience thought it was filmed live — so that was mission accomplished.”

Because the only organization in control of all Olympics footage is Beijing Olympic Broadcasting, the feed went out to everyone broadcasting the event, including NBC, which has exclusive rights in the United States to show the games. NBC's online coverage is being delivered by the MSN Network, NBCOlympics.com on MSN. (Msnbc.com is a joint venture of Microsoft and NBC Universal.)

During Friday night’s opening ceremony, the network averaged 34.2 million viewers, making it the biggest television event since the Super Bowl, according to the Associated Press.

The network has been criticized itself for the 12-hour tape delay in showing the opening ceremonies, which it did because of the time difference between China and the United States, driving some viewers to other Web sites around the world to see the event live.

Sunday, August 10, 2008

Bees join hunt for serial killers

By Jennifer Carpenter
Science reporter, BBC News

The team's bees were identified with small numbers

The way bumblebees search for food could help detectives hunt down serial killers, scientists believe.

Just as bees forage some distance away from their hives, so murderers avoid killing near their homes, says the University of London team.

This "geographic profiling" works so well in bees, the scientists say future experiments on the animals could now be fed back to improve crime-solving.

The team's work is reported in the Royal Society journal Interface.

"We're really hopeful that we can improve the model for criminology," Dr Nigel Raine, from Queen Mary, University of London (QMUL), told BBC News.

Understanding how bees are recruited to flowers is much easier than understanding the complex thoughts of a serial murderer

Dr Nigel Raine

The scientist is working with colleagues Steve Le Comber and Kim Rossmo, a former detective in the US, to tag bees with tiny coloured numbers and follow them from their nests to flower patches.

The researchers' analysis describes how bees create a "buffer zone" around their hive where they will not forage, to reduce the risk of predators and parasites locating the nest. It turns out that this pattern of behaviour is similar to the geographic profile of criminals stalking their victims.

"Most murders happen close to the killer's home, but not in the area directly surrounding a criminal's house, where crimes are less likely to be committed because of the fear of getting caught by someone they know," Dr Raine explained.

Food importance

Understanding the geographic profiles of animals is interesting to biologists as it helps them predict the locations of important feeding grounds, and knowing these areas will inform more effective conservation measures.

This approach works well for very different creatures, from bees and bats to great white sharks.

How bee foraging can help police

But what is more unusual is that models used to describe bee foraging can be applied back to human behaviour, the researchers say.

Instead of using information about the distribution of flowers visited by bees to explain the insects' behaviour, criminologists' models will use details about crime scenes, robbery locations, abandoned cars, even dead bodies, to hone the search for a suspect.

"Bees have much simpler brains and so understanding how bees are recruited to flowers is much easier than understanding the complex thoughts of a serial murderer," Dr Raine said.

More broadly, the London-based team hopes its work will lead to a better understanding of how one of the most familiar animals in nature goes about its daily business.

"Bees are hugely important to ecosystems and also important to humans," Dr Raine told BBC News.

"Bees' pollination 'services' account for about one in three mouthfuls of food that we eat as humans. They pollinate a huge diversity of our fruit and vegetable crops.

"If we don't know how bees forage then we don't really understand pollination, and that is quite detrimental to how we feed ourselves; which is becoming an increasing problem with bigger populations."

Dr Raine's team is also using tiny Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags - the same technology used to track stock in warehouses or supermarkets - to monitor the movements of bees.

The miniature tags are glued to the backs of the insects to record their movements in and out of the hive.

The team has also been attaching radio tags to find out more about bee behaviour.

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