Posts tagged news
Posts tagged news
News release from the University of Southern California:
Humans may not be the only ones who aid their friends when they’re hurt. Mice may do it, too, as shown by a new research study led by scientists at the Keck School of Medicine of USC published recently in Science.
Scientists have been trying to understand why social mammals appear to help injured members of their species. There are numerous factors that determine empathetic behavior and social bonding in mammals, said Li Zhang, the principal investigator of the study and professor of physiology and neuroscience at Keck School of Medicine. “But this study is the first time we’re seeing a first responder-like behavior in mice.”
The study shows that mice tend to help other mice they know are unconscious. Their response ranges from gentle sniffing and grooming to more forceful actions such as mouth or tongue biting, before finally escalating to pulling the tongue out of the unconscious mouse.
Okay is that last one really a first-aid technique or has that mouse just been watching too many Tom & Jerry cartoons
Sheena Goodyear for CBC Radio about some body horror (but good) surgery I’ve never heard of before:
[Brent] Chapman, who is blind in both eyes, is one of three Canadians undergoing osteo-odonto keratoprosthesis (OOKP) — or as it’s more commonly known, tooth-in-eye surgery — at a B.C. hospital this week.
It involves removing a patient’s tooth, usually the canine, installing a plastic optical lens inside it, and then implanting the whole thing into the eye.
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Why a tooth? Because teeth have dentine, which is the hardest substance the body produces, making it the ideal casing to bridge the plastic lens and the patient’s eye, says Dr. Greg Moloney, an ophthalmologist and surgeon at Mount Saint Joseph Hospital in Vancouver.
Squick warning for the article: there are two photos that might be a little icky, one of a bloody tooth that’s been drilled through and one of the final result of an eye after the procedure
Lianne Kolirin and Esha Mitra for CNN:
An Indian man has been awarded damages in a legal case against the country’s biggest movie theater chain after he complained that it showed too many commercials before a movie.
Abhishek M R, a 31-year-old lawyer from the southern city of Bangalore, decided to take action against the PVR INOX chain after he was forced to cancel work calls because the movie overran the scheduled finish time.
In a case brought before Bangalore’s District Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission, he claimed that his time was wasted and that he suffered “mental agony” as a result of the 25 minutes of commercials that preceded a 2023 screening of the film “Sam Bahadur.”
Watching any advertising generally causes me mental agony so I see where this guy’s coming from
News release from La Trobe University of Melbourne, Australia:
A beloved Australian bird best known for its stunning tail and powers of mimicry may have a cunning hidden talent.
New research has revealed the superb lyrebird to be a resourceful farmer, creating micro-habitats to host and fatten its prey before returning later to feast.
Scientists from La Trobe University observed the ground-dwelling birds working to create habitats suitable for their diet of worms, centipedes and spiders.
HELL yeah bird farmers
Olivia Ferrari for Live Science:
The reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone National Park in the 1990s had a cascading effect that benefited the entire ecosystem, a new study finds.
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The new study, published Jan. 14 in the journal Global Ecology and Conservation, used 20 years’ worth of data, collected from 2001 to 2020, regarding willow shrubs (Salix) along streams in Yellowstone. The researchers looked at willow crown volume — the total space occupied by a shrubs’ branches, stems and leaves. Measuring crown volume enabled the researchers to calculate the shrubs’ overall biomass: the amount of organic material available at the plant level of the food web, and the energy that will be passed on through the food web when animals eat these plants.
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The analysis found a 1,500% increase in willow crown volume along streams over the study period, demonstrating a major recovery of these shrubs. The study links this significant willow shrub recovery to a reduction in elk browsing, probably influenced by the return of predators to the region, which enabled willows to grow back in some areas.
Now, I’m not saying a wolf commissioned this study, but I am saying this is exactly what you’d expect the conclusion to be if a wolf commissioned this study
Reuters summary of a Financial Times report I can’t read because I sure as hell don’t have a subscription:
Citigroup erroneously credited $81 trillion, instead of $280, to a customer’s account and took hours to reverse the transaction, a “near miss” that shows up the bank’s operational issues it has sought to fix, the Financial Times reported on Friday.
The error, which occurred last April, was missed by a payments employee and a second official assigned to check the transaction before it was cleared to be processed the next day, FT said, citing an internal account and two people familiar with the event.
A third employee caught the error one-and-a-half hours after the payment was processed and the transaction was ultimately reversed several hours later, FT said.
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There were 10 near misses of $1 billion or more at Citi last year, down from 13 the year before, according to an internal report seen by the FT. Citi declined to comment to FT on this report.
Let him who has never mistyped 280 as 81,000,000,000,000 cast the first stone, as the saying goes
Charlotte Graham-McLay for the AP:
The owners of an island volcano in New Zealand where 22 tourists and local guides died in an eruption had their criminal conviction for failing to keep visitors safe thrown out by a judge on Friday.
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The case hinged on whether the company — which granted access to the volcano to tourism operators and scientific groups, for a fee — should have been in charge of safety practices on the island under New Zealand’s workplace health and safety laws. Anyone in charge of a workplace must ensure management of hazards and the safety of all there, including at entry and exit points.
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In Friday’s written ruling, Justice Simon Moore ruled the company did not have a duty under the relevant law to ensure that the walking tour workplace was without risks to health and safety. He agreed with the company’s lawyers that the firm only granted access to the bare land through permits — and should not have been legally considered an entity that managed or controlled the workplace.
As part Hawaiʻian, there’s a truly deep part of me that bristles mightily at the idea of owning a volcano
The world’s oldest dated rune stone, a landmark discovery revealed in 2023, is just one piece of a larger, nearly 2,000-year-old slab, new research has found. Now, scientists in Norway are working to reassemble the ancient puzzle, a process that’s starting to shed light on who carved the mysterious runic writing and what the words mean.
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Archaeologists who originally unearthed the oldest known rune stone in 2021 while investigating an ancient grave site in eastern Norway found the large piece covered with traces of runes. But as the fieldwork continued, the researchers uncovered additional sandstone fragments, some bearing similar runic inscriptions, in other nearby graves.
The broken pieces appeared to fit together, with some of the runic script from one stone continuing onto another, and the scientists realized the fragments were all once part of a single stone. The research team published the new findings in the February 3 issue of the journal Antiquity.
Excited to find out that someone broke the tablet because some kid just wrote something vulgar on it
A team of environmental scientists at Duke University, working with colleagues from the University of New South Wales, the University of Queensland and the University of California, has found that green staghorn coral around Heron Island (part of the Great Barrier Reef) are more likely to survive warming water temperatures if hoof-clawed crabs live in the near vicinity.
Let’s go crabs
The ʻalalā is a species of crow found only on the Hawaiian Islands, one that holds an important place in Native Hawaiian culture. When it was clear decades ago that the chatty, intelligent birds were heading toward extinction, they were brought into captivity as a last resort. They went extinct in the wild in 2002.
The species has held on thanks to a breeding program, but returning them to the wild has been challenging. A group released on Hawaii’s Big Island was preyed upon by hawks. In captivity, the crows have become accustomed to human care, making it harder for them to survive in the wild.
Now, five young ʻalalā have been released in a remote forest of Maui, an environment free of hawks. A team of biologists and wildlife officials is monitoring them with the hope that this time, the crows endure and thrive.
Birds