Just Some Lesser Known Facts About Octopuses You Guys Might Like.

Date Idea: binge watch all the Free Willy movies

Scientists need your help looking at photos of adorable penguins. Seriously

"We can't do this work on our own."

Guys, this is not a drill. Antarctic scientists need you to study photos of penguins to help them figure out how climate change is affecting these stumpy little flightless birds.

Scientists from the UK have installed a series of 75 cameras near penguin territories in Antarctica and its surrounding islands to figure out what’s happening with local populations. But with each of those cameras taking hourly photos, they simply can’t get through all the adorable images without your help.

“We can’t do this work on our own,” lead researcher Tom Hart from the University of Oxford told the BBC, “and every penguin that people click on and count on the website - that’s all information that tells us what’s happening at each nest, and what’s happening over time.”

The citizen science project is pretty simple - known as PenguinWatch 2.0, all you need to do is log on, look at photos, and identify adult penguins, chicks, and eggs in each image. Each photo requires just a few clicks to identify, and you can chat about your results in the website’s ‘Discuss’ page with other volunteers.

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The tardigrade genome has been sequenced, and it has the most foreign DNA of any animal

Scientists have sequenced the entire genome of the tardigrade, AKA the water bear, for the first time. And it turns out that this weird little creature has the most foreign genes of any animal studied so far – or to put it another way, roughly one-sixth of the tardigrade’s genome was stolen from other species. We have to admit, we’re kinda not surprised.

A little background here for those who aren’t familiar with the strangeness that is the tardigrade – the microscopic water creature grows to just over 1 mm on average, and is the only animal that can survive in the harsh environment of space. It can also withstand temperatures from just above absolute zero to well above the boiling point of water, can cope with ridiculous amounts of pressure and radiation, and can live for more than 10 years without food or water. Basically, it’s nearly impossible to kill, and now scientists have shown that its DNA is just as bizarre as it is.

So what’s foreign DNA and why does it matter that tardigrades have so much of it? The term refers to genes that have come from another organism via a process known as horizontal gene transfer, as opposed to being passed down through traditional reproduction.

Horizontal gene transfer occurs in humans and other animals occasionally, usually as a result of gene swapping with viruses, but to put it into perspective, most animals have less than 1 percent of their genome made up of foreign DNA. Before this, the rotifer – another microscopic water creature – was believed to have the most foreign genes of any animal, with 8 or 9 percent.

But the new research has shown that approximately 6,000 of the tardigrade’s genes come from foreign species, which equates to around 17.5 percent.

“We had no idea that an animal genome could be composed of so much foreign DNA,” said study co-author Bob Goldstein, from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “We knew many animals acquire foreign genes, but we had no idea that it happens to this degree.”

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Ancient ‘otter bear’ may have popped clams off rocks like a bottle opener

By Sid Perkins

A creature that roamed the coasts of the Pacific Northwest about 20 million years ago may have had a feeding style like no other mammal, a new study suggests.

Kolponomos is known only from two bearlike skulls, jawbones, and some toe bones found a few decades ago, so scientists aren’t sure where it fits on the carnivore family tree or even what it really looked like (one artist’s idea is seen above).

Rather than having cheek teeth that could shear meat, as many carnivores do, Kolponomos’s molars were similar to the flattened, low-crowned teeth that otters use to crush their shelled prey—yet the creature lived long before anything similar to modern-day otters evolved.

Now, a new analysis using the same sort of computer software that engineers employ to analyze bridges and aircraft parts suggests that Kolponomos may have collected its shelly prey in a unique way…

(read more: Science Magazine/AAAS)

illustration by Roman Uchytel

A Deep Sea Squid Cares for Her Eggs

In recent years, submersibles have allowed scientists to explore the lives of deep-sea animals in ways that were not possible before. One of the many exciting discoveries was that a mother of the deep-sea squid species Gonatus onyx broods her eggs by holding them in her arms, a behavior that had never been previously reported for squids.

This shocking discovery was the first time scientists had evidence of parental care in squids. In 2012, a team of researchers led by Stephanie Bush, reported finding another species of deep-sea squid that broods eggs, Bathyteuthis berryi, suggesting that this form of parental care may be a common solution to a reproductive problem for deep-sea squids.

Watch a video about this amazing deep-sea discovery:

http://ow.ly/ZS9jc

(via: Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute)

The intricacies involved in launching a shuttle off the ground and successfully completing its mission is no doubt a meticulous task. Every move made during a launch is calculated and deliberate, nothing is left for chance.

On that note, having watched a couple of historic shuttle launches, this peculiar behavior caught my eye: the orbiter always faced the earth! ( The orbiter is the plane part of the shuttle)

Why do shuttles orient belly up ?

Protection against space debris

Upon entering the atmosphere, most space debris burn up. But out in space, without the protective blanket of our atmosphere, the space shuttle is exposed to all sizes and shapes of space debris ( also man-made ).

The space shuttle’s belly is designed to take up intense heat and pressure so that the shuttle doesn’t fall apart when it re-enters the atmosphere, and therefore best suited for taking hits from flying space junk

The Sun

Do you remember the heat-resistant space shuttle tiles that I posted about a couple of weeks back?

Putting the spacecraft with it’s bottom to the Sun it is these heat-resistant tiles on the bottom that are most exposed to the full power of the Sun.

This keeps the astronauts safer and cooler than they would be otherwise.

To maneuver

Wait, space shuttles maneuver in flight ? Yup ! For each mission the shuttle must be launched at a certain angle in order to accomplish the prescribed task.

Since the launch pad is fixed i.e you cannot change its angular orientation, the shuttle must perform the maneuver during the ascent in order to orient itself with the trajectory.

This maneuver is known as the Roll maneuver and is performed at a point about one minute or so after the launch.

The Atlantis performing a roll maneuver

Communication

Well, I think this thought might have already crossed your mind.

The belly down position assists in communication with the ground and allows instruments within the cargo bay to be pointed back towards Earth, which is required for many of the experiments carried within the bay.

Home, Sweet Home !

The reason why the shuttle’s cargo bay faces towards the earth has some psychological benefit as well.

The crew of the crew are given the spectacular views of our home planet glorifying the magnificence of its existence, rather than staring at the cold, dark void of space that lies afar.

A starfish walking back to the water.

Big sister drops to her knees to show affection to newborn Photo by James Irwin

the bajau laut are some of the world’s last true sea normads, living as they have for centuries almost entirely in the waters of the coral triangle (said to contain 75% of the world’s coral species) on long boats known as lepa lepa.

hunters of fish, pearls and sea cucumbers, the bajau people free dive to depths of 20 meters, hold their breath for up to three minutes, and spend up to 60% of their time in the water submerged - the equivalent of a sea otter. it is a common practice amongst bajau people to intentionally burst their ear drums at an early age to deal with the problem of equalizing.

as photographer james morgan explains, “traditional bajau cosmology - a syncretism of animism and islam - reveals a complex relationship with the ocean, which for them is a multifarious and living entity. there are spirits in currents and tides, in coral reefs and mangroves.” the bajau people, for example, will not spit in the ocean.

in the last few decades, increasingly depleted fish stocks and government efforts have forced many to settle permanently on land and abandon a life of self sufficiency known as cari laut, or ‘searching the ocean’. a dwindling few, however, still choose to live the majority of their lives at sea.