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Chamerion angustifolium (L.) Holub

[Colorado, USA]

Jimmy Kimmel sends a message to the Anti-Vaccine movement.

He invited some real medical professionals to address the issue of the anti-vaccine movement, watch the full clip here.

Faience Star Amulet

Egypt, New Kingdom, Dynasty 18, reign of Amenhotep III, ca. 1390–1353 B.C. 

Excavated at the Palace of Amenhotep III, Malqata, Thebes, Upper Egypt, MMA excavations, 1911–12.   H. 1.7 cm (11/16 in)

 Source: Met Museum 

Me in my house welcoming you with excitement

2,000-Year-Old Killer Whale Geoglyph Found in Peru Desert

Archaeologists rediscovered a giant geoglyph of a killer whale, etched into a desert hillside in the remote Palpa region of southern Peru, after it had been lost to science for more than 50 years.

The 230-foot-long (70 meters) figure of an orca — considered a powerful, semimythical creature in ancient Peruvian lore — may be more than 2,000 years old, according to the researchers.

They said it may be one the oldest geoglyphs in the Palpa region, and older than those in the nearby Nazca region, which is famous for its vast collection of ancient ground markings — the Nazca Lines — that include animal figures, straight lines and geometrical shapes.

Archaeologist Johny Isla, the head of Peru’s Ministry of Culture in Ica province, which includes the Palpa and Nazca valleys, explained that he saw a single photograph of the orca pattern for the first time about four years ago. He’d seen it while researching studies of geoglyphs at the German Archaeological Institute in Bonn. Read more.

More good news from this nightmare in which we are living…

Trump Poised to Shrink Two National Monuments

Trump is expected to eliminate nearly 85 percent of Bear Ears National Monument in southeastern Utah, cutting more than 1 million acres from its current boundaries. He’s also set to halve the nearly 1.9-million-acre Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument (E&E News PM, Nov. 30).

The move is being praised by Republicans who have long argued that the Antiquities Act—the 1906 law that allows presidents to set aside public land—is being used unlawfully to lock up tracts of federal land. On the other side, Democratic allies have vowed to take any monument reductions to court.

Scientists who have studied the region, especially Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, say redrawing its boundaries could be detrimental to scientific research and discoveries.

“The monument has been demonstrably a very, very important scientific laboratory to learning and understanding on many realms,” said Mike Scott, a retired U.S. Geological Survey researcher.

Scott and his colleagues have spent time in Grand Staircase-Escalante studying how different management policies and activities on rangelands—there are many different kinds across the ecologically diverse monument—affect the health of those ecosystems. Rangeland activities include anything from how grazing affects soil quality to the health of different soil types.

As climate change brings warmer, drier conditions, understanding how to keep soils and grassland ecosystems healthy in arid landscapes is crucial to avoid desertification, Scott said. Grand Staircase-Escalante has been “a really critical living laboratory,” he said.

The Evolution of Multicellular Life

BOMBTURBATION

Yes, it’s your new word for the day and a real phenomenon studied by today’s geoscientists – bombturbation.

Essentially, it reflects the change in a geomorphologic surface due to bombing. Whether by cannon balls or A-bombs, whenever the surface of the Earth is blown up, there is a tendency to create craters. Bombturbation was initially applied to the disturbance of soil due to warfare (Hupy and others 2006): a bomb or some sort of artillery explosion excavates a crater, ejecting soils out into a surrounding rim of mixed material. Bombing can have the effect of creating entirely new geomorphological environments as seen in photos of Omaha Beach (#37 at http://tinyurl.com/nyhdu8), US Civil War Battlefields (http://tinyurl.com/kamaebd), or as in the present photo, the Nevada nuclear test site.

Keep reading

How 100 Years of Dog Breeding Changed These Popular Breeds.