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Kinetic Artist Tim Fort - The Next Generation of Domino Stacking

The Guinness World Record holder's video has more than a million hits on YouTube. Watch and be amazed and then ask yourself - could I do something like that????

If your answer is "Yes" then let's talk :) Maybe YOU could have your own video!!

http://gma.yahoo.com/video/playofday-28969271/kinetic-artist-tim-fort-s-viral-video-30403102.html

http://gma.yahoo.com/video/playofday-28969271/kinetic-artist-tim-fort-s-next-generation-of-domino-stacking-30403134.html

DC zoo hand-raising cubs after rare cheetah birth

WASHINGTON (AP) — Two cheetah cubs have a new home at the Smithsonian's National Zoo and are being raised by human hands after a risky birth last month at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute in Virginia.

The zoo offered a first look at the now healthy cubs Wednesday and hopes to place them on view to the public in the cheetah yard by the end of the summer.
Cheetahs are the fastest animals on land, but scientists said every surviving cub is critical to sustaining the species, which is threatened with extinction in the wild. These cubs are genetically valuable because their mother and father were first-time parents.
When the cubs' mother, 5-year-old Ally, gave birth to the first cub in late April, though, problems quickly developed. Ally abandoned her first cub and left him in the cold on a snowy day. Then her labor stopped, even though she had three more cubs waiting to be born.
Zoo veterinarians performed a "rare and risky" emergency cesarean section and saved one more cub, along with the cheetah mother. Two other cubs died.
"You're always sad that you couldn't save them all," said veterinarian Copper Aitken-Palmer. "But I'm thrilled that we have two, and I'm thrilled that the mom is doing well, too."

The month-old cubs don't have names yet, but their fuzzy hair already has spots identifying them as cheetahs. What would you name these adorable cubs? Explain your choice!

There's one male and one female, and they're growing fast. At feeding time, they are eager to get their bottles, clawing and chirping to get milk from their handlers. The cubs are also beginning to transition to solid foods as their teeth come in, dining on moist grocery store cat food to start.
"Because they're cubs, everything is kind of exaggerated," Aitken-Palmer. "So they have really long legs, really poufy hair on their heads. But they're pretty cute."
Zoo veterinarians only knew of two other C-sections performed on a cheetah before they tried it to save this cheetah family. One had been successful, and the cubs died in another case.
"It's very rare and it's very risky," said cheetah biologist Adrienne Crosier. "We were certainly concerned about the welfare of the mother."
When the female cub was born, she had a heartbeat but didn't breathe on her own for several hours. Both cubs and mother were in intensive care for three days.
Because cheetahs are endangered, North American zoos are trying to build a self-sustaining population. It's been estimated there are only 8,000 to 12,000 cheetahs left in the wild, Crosier said.
"Every cub that is born into this population is critical," Crosier said, "and we're only producing a fraction of the cubs that we need every year to become sustainable."

 

 

 

How Gross is Fast Food???

WHAT WOULD YOU DO?????

Teenage Boy Finds Finger in Arby’s Sandwich

Ryan Hart, a 14-year-old boy from Michigan, had a rude surprise when he bit into his Arby's roast beef sandwich. "I was like, 'that's got to be a finger,'" he told the Jackson Citizen Patriot. "It was just nasty."

Reportedly, a restaurant employee cut off her finger with a meat slicer while preparing the meal. She left her station to deal with the emergency, and other employees, who were unaware of the injury, continued to complete the order.


"Somebody loses a finger and you keep sending food out the window," said the teen's mom, Jamie Vail. "I can't believe that." She added that following the gruesome discovery, her son was "traumatized," couldn't eat or sleep, and had been prescribed medication Fox News reports.


John Gray, Arby's vice president of corporate communications, provided Yahoo! Shine with a statement saying, "Arby’s wants to reassure customers that we are committed to providing quality food in a safe and healthy environment. We are deeply concerned and apologetic to the guest involved in this unfortunate incident....An isolated and unfortunate accident occurred in a franchisee’s Jackson, Michigan restaurant in which an employee was injured. Upon learning of the incident, the franchisee’s restaurant team shut down food production and thoroughly cleaned and sanitized the restaurant. The franchisee fully cooperated with the Health Department during the investigation, and the restaurant was given the approval to remain open."


This is not the first time human remains have been found in a fast food meal but this case might be the most extreme.


A Dayton Ohio man sued Arby's in 2005 for reportedly serving him a chicken sandwich topped with a piece of human skin.


In a famous 2005 hoax, a Las Vegas woman found a human finger in Wendy's chili but police later discovered she had cooked her husband's colleague's finger (which he had lost in a work accident) and slipped it into the bowl herself.


An Albany-area man allegedly found a bloody bandage in the crust of his Pizza Hut pie in 2011.


Also in 2011, Texan woman found blood on her French fries while eating at a Houston-area Crackle Barrel.

The largest single-shot photo of Earth ever taken.

Check out a time-lapse video of Earth's norther hemisphere taken by Elektro-L

This image is a single-shot taken from 22,369 miles away by Russian weather satellite Elektro-L No.1.

The colors on the 121-megapixel photo are quite different from the ones on NASA's photos of Earth. To capture the image, the satellite combines visible and infrared wavelengths of light. Infrared light is used to see plants, which is why the parts of the Earth that would normally be green are seen as rusty brown.

Meet meow!!

The Guinness world record for the heaviest cat is 47 pounds, but that Guinness stopped taking entrants, fearing that owners were fattening up their house kitties just to get in the record books.

When Santa Fe shelter workers saw Meow, their question was: How on Earth did this cat get so fat? Was the critter some latent freak of the nuclear tests done in the Roswell desert?
“At first we heard that the old woman had fed it only hot dogs, but that wasn’t true,” Martin told The Times. “We think she was sedentary and sat in front of her TV feeding the cat. He probably just ate everything in sight.”

Would you give Meow a home???

Who is Gideon Sundback?

Check out today's Google Doodle to learn more about this electrical engineer with the Universal Fastening Co.

Can you list 10 things that his genius has improved????

Guaranteed To Make You Think!!

Put on your thinking cap and see how many of the following you can solve!!

1. Use the numbers 20, 10, -4, -2, and -1, and the signs +, -, x, and / to obtain the HIGHEST and the LOWEST numbers possible. All numbers and operations MUST be used once for each problem, and the answers MUST be integers!
2. Find four consecutive ODD integers whose sum is -80 (you must show me your equation too).
3. A standard deck of cards contains 52 cards - four groups (2 black suits and 2 red suits) of 13 cards. Each suit contains an ace, king, queen, jack, and the numbers 10 thorugh 2. Assuming the deck has been shuffled - find the porbability of drawing the following cards (express your answer in simplest form)
• A red card
• A king
• A queen or a jack
• An even number
• The 7 of hearts
• A prime number
4. Palindromes are numbers, words, phrases, or sentences that are read the same from left to right as from right to left. For example: (words) RADAR, BOB, DAD, (phrase) A MAN A PLAN A CANAL PANAMA, (sentence) MADAM I'M ADAM, (numbers) 22, 303, 1991.
• Find two palindromes whose sum is a palindrome.
• Find two palindromes whose difference is a palindrome.
• Do you think it is always true that if the sum of two palindromes is a palindrome, their difference is also a palindrome? Explain!
• Create a phrase or sentence that is a palindrome.
5. Secret codes & ciphers - a cipher is a secert system of writing in which every letter is replaced by a symbol. Can you decipher the following cipher???
• 20-23-15    9-19    20-8-5    15-14-12-25    5-22-5-14    16-18-9-13-5

Which problem was most challenging for you? Why? What strategy did you use to meet the challenge??

Cat-sized African rats survive in Florida

It is the largest rat in the world, growing to be as big as a raccoon and weighing up to 4kg (8.8 pounds). The African Giant Pouch rat, also known as the Gambian pouch rat, is a nocturnal pouched rat native to Africa. Gambian pouch rats have been found in Florida's Grassy Key despite efforts to eradicate them. Officials worry that the voracious rats might wipe out some crops and upset the delicate ecological balance if they manage to reach the Florida mainland. The African species first appeared on Grassy Key, Florida in 1999 after eight rats escaped from a local exotic pets breeder. The rats primarily eat fruit and grains but have been known to also eat insects, crabs and snails. Ecologists worry that they will harm crops in Florida.

The rats are trained for the tuberculosis (TB) detection program at Sokoine University in Morogoro Tanzania, and to locate inert anti-personnel mine in southern Mozambique. Also, mine detecting Gambian giant pouch rats (Cricetomys Gambianus) work in mine fields near Vilancoulos in southern Mozambique.

 

What is your opinion of these unique creatures?

Frozen Planet

The ends of the Earth! Penguins, icebergs, Polar Bears, below zero temperatures, and more! Now, thanks to the Discovery Channel, you can travel to this frozen wilderness and experience first hand its beauty & unique qualities.




Streaming video by Ustream
 
Watch penguins zoom through the water at speeds of 24 mph - live via penguin cam.

Live video from your Android device on Ustream

See Penguins turn to a life of crime as they become rock thieves; struggling to build the perfect nest in this barren land.

Play the Criminal Penguin game and see how skillful you would be at building a rock nest!

http://dsc.discovery.com/tv/frozen-planet/criminal-penguins-game/#mkcpgn=emdsc2

Tell us - what amazes you about this white wonderland???

Learn a new word!

Scroll to the bottom of the Blog and visit "Word Ahead"! Find a new word - what word did you add to your vocabulary today? What's it mean? can you use it in a sentence? Have fun with WORDS!!!!

What's YOUR Dream??

Meet, Ian Purkayastha, 19-year-old “Truffle Dealer”

In the digital age, most of today's young, hot-shot entrepreneurs are working in the world of high tech, specifically in social networking. Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter co-founders Biz Stone and Evan Williams come to mind.

Then there's Ian Purkayastha, a 19-year old international businessman who's "networking" the old-fashioned way — face to face -- and making a big splash selling and promoting one of the world's most ancient and low-tech products: Truffles. To be sure, there aren't billions to be made in truffles, at least not yet. But truffles are by far the most-expensive ingredient in the culinary world, fetching up to $5000 per pound for the most desired varieties.Truffles may be used in the world's top restaurants but there's nothing fancy about the truffle business. Truffles are subterranean fungi typically harvested in the wild or from specially planted groves

with the aid of trained pigs or, more recently, dogs. It's a dirty business, literally and figuratively: Truffles must be dug up and, especially in Europe, the black market for high-end truffles really is "black": dealers have been known to kill their rival's dogs.

Enter Purkayastha who, at age 15, fell in love with foraging for wild mushrooms in the woods of Arkansas, where he's originally from. Soon thereafter, he tried truffles and it was love at first bite. Purkayastha was so taken with the truffles he ordered some from a French distributor so he could cook with them at home. That might have been the end of the story — a kid with a sophisticated palate and an usual hobby — except that Purkayastha also has an entrepreneurial spirit.

After selling some of his truffle stash to local chefs to help pay for his shipments, Purkayastha realized he had an opportunity to combine two of his greatest passions: truffles and sales.

Watch the video to find out more about this incredible young man - who is living his dream!!!

 

"It sounds cliché and corny but I had a dream and made it happen by working hard," he says. Remember, Purkayastha has done all this before the age of 20 and yet manages to stay grounded, humble and mature well beyond his years. When most of his peers can't pry themselves away from the computer screen, or are living at home because they can't find work, Ian Purkayastha is thriving in a rarified world — and eating very well.

So...what's YOUR dream??? You're not that much younger than Ian was when he started out seeing his dream become a reality!! If you could - what would your dream job be? remember - YOU CAN MAKE IT HAPPEN!!!

Monster Titanoboa Snake Invades New York

New York commuters arriving at Grand Central Station will soon be greeted by a monstrous sight: a 48-foot-long, 2,500-pound titanoboa snake.


The good news: It's not alive. Anymore. But the full-scale replica of the reptile -- which will make its first appearance at the commuter hub on March 22 -- is intended, as Smithsonian spokesperson Randall Kremer happily admitted, to "scare the daylights out of people" -- actually has a higher calling: to "communicate science to a lot of people." The scientifically scary-accurate model will go a long way toward that: If this snake slithered by you, it would be waist-high and measure the length of a school bus. Think of it as the T-rex of snakes.


This newly discovered species, known as titanoboa (yes, the words "titan" and "boa" are in there), which lived 65 million years ago, is about to have its close-up. The New York City appearance is promoting an exhibit at the Smithsonian Institute's National Museum of Natural History in D.C. opening on March 30, which ties in to a TV special on the Smithsonian Channel called, what else, "Titanoboa: Monster Snake." The two-hour program airs April 1.


Remains of the titanoboa were first discovered in a Colombian coal mine in 2005. One of the researchers specializing in the Paleocene era, the time after the death of the dinosaurs, was Jonathan Bloch. A vertebrate paleontologist from University of Florida's Museum of Natural History, the scientist led multiple expeditions, along with Carlos Jaramillo of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. The team collected remains from the mine, which resulted in the find. Together with ancient-snake expert Jason Head of the University of Nebraska, they named the world's largest snake Titanoboa.


Bloch admitted that when the team was first collecting the skeletons of Titanoboa, he didn't immediately understand what he had found until he returned to the lab. With the help of his students, he was able to identify the fossils as snakes, just much, much bigger than the ones of today. He described the enormous vertebrae as "sort of like if you saw a mouse skull the size of rhino skull."


The predator, which is related to a boa constrictor but actually behaved like an anaconda, lived in water and fed on fish, other titanoboas, and crocodiles (very, very large crocodiles).


If this sounds like Hollywood's next blockbuster, Bloch noted that this time around, truth is actually bigger than fiction: The predator from the movie "Anaconda," for one, is not as big as titanoboa. "This is really an example where reality and the past have exceeded the imaginations of Hollywood"


Watch the short video clip below and then tell us- what do you think of Titanoboa?? Why do you think it disappeared 65 million years ago?? Do you plan on watching the TV special?? I know that I do :)

http://news.yahoo.com/video/us-15749625/28688824

ELO Comments Wanted

This is for those dedicated, after school students who spent time today investigating the blog! What do you think?? How did you spend your time?? Tell me at least one thing that you learned today!!

Creative Writing with a Scientific Flair

I am sooo excited to see your finished products!! I hope you have FUN with this project - make it your own creative creation - ready to share with the class on Monday, March 5th. Use the resources found in the Activity #4 section of the document to help with ideas, pictures, additional information, etc!! You will have to click "download" to make the resource links active in this document.

Everybody Has A Question - What's Yours??

Have you asked a question today? What did you do with it?

Did it take you somewhere new? Did it bring you here?

The Google Science Fair is an online science competition seeking curious minds from the four corners of the globe. Anybody and everybody between 13 and 18 can enter. All you need is an idea.

Geniuses are not always A-grade students. We welcome all mavericks, square-pegs and everybody who likes to ask questions. Simply upload your project here to win some life changing prizes.

Everyone has a question. What’s yours?

Check out this site and get started! This year's deadline to enter the online Science Fair is April 12th!

http://www.google.com/events/sciencefair/index.html

Wintery Friends

We may not have a lot of snow this winter - but this little creature loves the snowy weather! What's your BEST time for completing this month's puzzle??

The Color of Health

What do a poison arrow frog, a copperhead snake, and your dinner plate have in common? A strange question for sure - but the answer is - they are colorful! What we eat makes a big difference in our energy levels, our mood, and even our self-esteem. When we choose foods rich in protective factors (such as fruits and vegetables) we are also doing something positive for our health and well being.
Nature has given us a “rule of thumb”. Many of the very chemicals that make foods good for us are the ones that give them color, turning blueberries blue, spinach green and carrots deep orange. For optimum health, scientists say, “eat a rainbow of colors”. “Your plate should look like a box of Crayola crayons”.

So...what color is YOUR food?? Travel through the following Powerpoint to find out about the phytochemicals found in fruits and vegetables and the benefits of eating these foods as part of a balanced diet! Don't forget - when you get to the end of the PowerPoint you will find an E-quilt. Click on each "word box" and travel to a site where you can find out even more about "The Color of Health"

What color is your food

View more presentations from plippy.

Happy Chinese New Year!!

The Year of the Dragon

The first day of the 2012 Chinese New Year is on January 23, 2012 in China's time zone. This day is a new moon day, and is the first day of the first Chinese lunar month in the Chinese Lunar Calendar system. The exact new moon time is at 15:40 on 23-Jan-12 in China's time zone.


The Year 2012 is the 4709th Chinese year. The Chinese believe that the first king of China was the Yellow King (he was not the first emperor of China). The Yellow King became king in 2697 B.C., therefore China will enter the 4709th year on January 23, 2012. Also, the Chinese Year uses the cycle of 60 Stem-Branch counting systems and the Black Water Dragon is the 28th Stem-Branch in the cycle. Since (60 *78) + 29 = 4709, therefore 2012 is the Water Dragon year, which is the 4709th Chinese Year.

Learn more by clicking on the middle box and each word box in the E-quilt below.

Chinese new year

View more presentations from plippy.

Football Fun 2012

Have some football fun! Learn about players, teams, past NFL tributes and future possibilities. To get started - click on"Download" found at the bottom of this post and have fun!!! Oh - don't forget to vote for your SuperBowl champion in the survey found on the right side of the blog!