The "News" thread.

[Buster's Uncle]

I've heard that Arizona javelinas will laugh at .22 shots to the head...

[Buster's Uncle]

Survival of the Funniest: Celebrating Bad Evolutionary Theory
By Michael Dhar, LiveScience Contributor  | LiveScience.com – 4 hrs ago...


Update: This festival has been postponed due to a lockdown in Boston.

A beautiful scientific hypothesis can reduce the chaos of the world to a few, simple principles. Of course, it also helps if that explanation is true. A different kind of science festival that had been scheduled for April 20, however, will celebrate exquisitely argued evolutionary hypotheses — that just happen to be hopelessly, terribly wrong.

(The festival will be rescheduled for a later date.)

The first-ever BAH! (Festival of Bad Ad Hoc Hypotheses) will treat an audience at MIT to seven lectures on internally coherent, even convincing — but ultimately hilariously absurd — explanations of evolutionary adaptation.

The event was inspired by a joke in the science-obsessed Web comic "Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal" (SMBC), which is co-sponsoring the festival, along with the comic's publisher Breadpig (also behind the science-geek comic XKCD), and the MIT Lecture Series. In the comic, a scientist imagines a prehistoric advantage to punting newborns into neighboring villages. [No Duh! The 10 Most Obvious Science Findings]

The ridiculous argument, made in absolute sincerity by the illustrated scientist, posits that infants are hairless to minimize drag, "football-shaped" to maximize puntability, and filled with soft bones to cushion the impact. Airmailing infants would have allowed early humans to spread their genes, the scientist argues to great applause, earning her a trophy of "Darwin looking doubtful."

All the hypotheses chosen for BAH! Fest will be of a similar nature, sharing ludicrous conclusions supported by careful evolutionary explanations. Many of the presentations will even reference published scientific papers and present real data, Zach Weinersmith of SMBC said. But the conclusions are all absurd, intentionally so.

In selecting presenters, BAH! Fest organizers looked for the use of real data, cleverness and artistry, parsimony and strength of defense. "Please note," the guidelines state, "Being funny is not a good defense. We want to see you actually defend your terrible, terrible theory!"

The winner of BAH! Fest, chosen by a panel of bona fide scientists, will earn a 3D-printed version of the trophy first imagined in the SMBC comic — a "depressed-looking Darwin," Weinersmith said, complete with a voice bubble admitting, "I guess so?"

Pure satire, the festival is intended, first of all, to make people laugh. But, like most good satire, the event also pokes fun at a real issue, in this case, the misuse of evolutionary theory.

The major criticism for evolutionary theorists is hyperadaptationism, "over-the-top" evolutionary ideas that try to explain too many of an organism's features as adaptations, said Hadassah Head, project coordinator for Binghamton University's Evolutionary Studies (EvoS) Program, which helped promote BAH! Fest.

Taking part in the festival "shows an awareness of the issue and the ability to joke about it and understand it," said Glenn Geher, professor and chairman of psychology at the State University of New York at New Paltz, and a member of the EvoS Consortium.

Weinersmith himself was inspired by a classic (or notorious) case of bad evolutionary theory, the aquatic ape hypothesis. First proposed in the 1940s, the theory imagines that human ancestors went through a sea-based stage, which would explain things like the species' relative hairlessness and greater ability to digest fish compared with other primates.

Despite seeming coherence, though, that theory has very little (if any) support from serious evolutionary theorists. "Clearly, it's crazy," Weinersmith said. BAH! Fest just takes that craziness to the extreme. And, serious satirical intent aside, the event has captured the enthusiasm of scientists and science fans alike.

"This is definitely the coolest project I'm ever going to be a part of," Head said.

The event sold out MIT's 450-seat auditorium, and a successful outing will likely lead to an annual or even biannual event in the future, Weinersmith said. The event is also part of the Cambridge Science Festival.

http://news.yahoo.com/survival-funniest-celebrating-bad-evolutionary-theory-113909646.html

[Rusty Edge]

I've heard that Arizona javelinas will laugh at .22 shots to the head...

Makes sense to me. Not that I have seen a javelina beyond a zoo or TV.

I was a hog farmer for a couple of decades. Smartest animals on four feet, with a sense of smell better than about anything but a bear ( bloodhounds are great at what they do, but they are the product of centuries of selective breeding. )

I've seen a lot of botched kills at butcherings. Hogs have hardened, curved skulls, so they can deflect tusks of other hogs when they fight.  The skulls have a layer of fat on them that helps with the deflections.  I long ago concluded that the humane approach is a temple shot.

Not practical for hunting. You should shoot them in the heart, like most anything else.  Hogs are dangerous. They work together. So like the crow's distress call, and the convergence of the murder, a hog hunter might find himself under attack while trailing a wounded animal or cleaning his kill.  They say you should carry a handgun, because hogs have been known to tree a hunter and take turns keeping him there.

American Hoggers and Lady Hoggers are cable "Reality shows " about capturing feral hogs with dogs in Texas( we're they are plentiful)  and Florida (where they are huge). At least that way they can worm them before they wind up in a foodbank.

[Buster's Uncle]

NASA Captures Monster Hurricane from Space
By Max Golembo | ABC News – 16 hrs ago...

NASA's spacecraft Cassini took this amazing colorful picture of a Saturn storm that resembles a hurricane on Earth. The center eye of the storm on Saturn is about 1,250 miles wide. That's 20 times larger than the average hurricane eye on Earth, that's the distance between Dallas and Washington, DC.

Usually, hurricanes on Earth have a small eye and much larger outer bands. But incredibly on Saturn 1,250 miles is the distance of the center eye only. The entire storm could be several thousand miles more.

As for the wind speed in the storm, usually in hurricanes the strongest wind is in the center of the storm around what is called "the eye wall" of the hurricane, and tends to get weaker as you get to the edge of the hurricane. The wind speed on the outer edge of the cloud band of Saturn's hurricane is 330 mph and the winds in the center eye are four times faster than some of the strongest hurricanes on Earth. To compare Saturn's storm to hurricanes that affected the U.S., the strongest hurricane to hit the U.S. was Camille in 1969 with winds of 190 mph.

One of the interesting facts is that usual hurricanes on Earth feed off the water vapor from the warm ocean water. That gives it the needed energy for the hurricane to develop. But on Saturn there is no body of water nearby for this storm to feed off. Instead it is feeding off of small amounts of water vapor in Saturn's hydrogen atmosphere.

Another interesting fact: Hurricanes on Earth form usually in the tropical latitudes and move north due to the forces acting on them. But Saturn's storm is located at the planet's north pole that has made it stationary with nowhere further north to go. Because of this discovery, NASA scientists believe that it could have been there for years.

Only in 2009 sun began reaching the northern Hemisphere allowing Cassini spacecraft to capture these images. This is because Saturn's seasons last nine years each, therefore their north pole is dark nine years at a time. So when the space craft first reached Saturn in 2004, the north pole was in the middle of winter.

NASA scientists will study this terrestrial hurricane-like storm because even though there are differences in size, strength and source of energy, it does carry similar characteristics such a central eye that has no clouds, counter clockwise spin in the northern Hemisphere, and high clouds circling the eye.

http://news.yahoo.com/nasa-captures-monster-hurricane-space-163255671--abc-news-tech.html

Posted here for the awesome headline.  I worry about those Monster Space Hurricanes invading...

[Unorthodox]

Mmmm meat.

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/Starving-Settlers-in-Jamestown-Colony-Resorted-to-Eating-A-Child-205472161.html

The harsh winter of 1609 in Virginia’s Jamestown Colony forced residents to do the unthinkable. A recent excavation at the historic site discovered the carcasses of dogs, cats and horses consumed during the season commonly called the “Starving Time.” But a few other newly discovered bones in particular, though, tell a far more gruesome story: the dismemberment and cannibalization of a 14-year-old English girl.

“The chops to the forehead are very tentative, very incomplete,” says Douglas Owsley, the Smithsonian forensic anthropologist who analyzed the bones after they were found by archaeologists from Preservation Virginia. “Then, the body was turned over, and there were four strikes to the back of the head, one of which was the strongest and split the skull in half. A penetrating wound was then made to the left temple, probably by a single-sided knife, which was used to pry open the head and remove the brain.”

Much is still unknown about the circumstances of this grisly meal: Who exactly the girl researchers are calling "Jane" was, whether she was murdered or died of natural causes, whether multiple people participated in the butchering or it was a solo act. But as Owsley revealed along with lead archaeologist William Kelso today at a press conference at the National Museum of Natural History, we now have the first direct evidence of cannibalism at Jamestown, the oldest permanent English colony in the Americas. “Historians have gone back and forth on whether this sort of thing really happened there,” Owsley says. “Given these bones in a trash pit, all cut and chopped up, it's clear that this body was dismembered for consumption.”

It’s long been speculated that the harsh conditions faced by the colonists of Jamestown might have made them desperate enough to eat other humans—and perhaps even commit murder to do so. The colony was founded in 1607 by 104 settlers aboard three ships, the Susan Constant, Discovery and Godspeed, but only 38 survived the first nine months of life in Jamestown, with most succumbing to starvation and disease (some researchers speculate that drinking water poisoned by arsenic and human waste also played a role). Because of difficulties in growing crops—they arrived in the midst of one of the worst regional droughts in centuries and many settlers were unused to hard agricultural labor—the survivors remained dependent on supplies brought by subsequent missions, as well as trade with Native Americans.

By the winter of 1609, extreme drought, hostile relations with members of the local Powhatan Confederacy and the fact that a supply ship was lost at sea put the colonists in a truly desperate position. Sixteen years later, in 1625, George Percy, who had been president of Jamestown during the Starving Time, wrote a letter describing the colonists’ diet during that terrible winter. “Haveinge fedd upon our horses and other beastes as longe as they Lasted, we weare gladd to make shifte with vermin as doggs Catts, Ratts and myce…as to eate Bootes shoes or any other leather,” he wrote. “And now famin beginneinge to Looke gastely and pale in every face, thatt notheinge was Spared to mainteyne Lyfe and to doe those things which seame incredible, as to digge upp deade corpes outt of graves and to eate them. And some have Licked upp the Bloode which hathe fallen from their weake fellowes.”

Despite this and other textual references to cannibalism, though, there had never been hard physical evidence that it had occurred—until now. Kelso’s team discovered the girl’s remains during the summer of 2012. "We found a deposit of refuse that contained butchered horse and dog bones. That was only done in times of extreme hunger. As we excavated, we found human teeth and then a partial human skull," says Kelso.

Kelso brought them to Owsley for a battery of forensic tests, including microscopic and isotope analysis. “We CT scanned the bones, then replicated them as virtual 3D models and then put them together, piece by piece, assembling the skull,” Owsley says. Digitally mirroring the fragments to fill in the missing gaps allowed the team to make a 3D facial reconstruction despite having just 66 percent of the skull.

The researchers used this reconstruction, along with the other data, to determine the specimen was a female, roughly 14 years old (based on the development of her molars) and of British ancestry. Owsley says the cut marks on the jaw, face and forehead of the skull, along with those on the shinbone, are telltale signs of cannibalism. "The clear intent was to remove the facial tissue and the brain for consumption. These people were in dire circumstances. So any flesh that was available would have been used," says Owsley. "The person that was doing this was not experienced and did not know how to butcher an animal. Instead, we see hesitancy, trial, tentativeness and a total lack of experience."

He’s probably one of the researchers best qualified to make this judgment. As one of the country’s most prominent physical anthropologists, he’s analyzed many cannibalized skeletons from ancient history, and as an accomplished forensic investigator who works with the FBI, he’s also worked on much more recent cases, such as one of the victims of 1980s serial killer and cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer. In total, he estimates that he’s examined more than 10,000 bodies during his career, oftentimes people who were killed in tragic circumstances, including victims of 9/11 and journalists who were kidnapped and murdered in Guatemala. Most of his time, though, is spent working on more inspiring cases, such as the 9,000-year-old “Kennewick Man” discovered in Washington State, and the mysterious remains of ancient Easter Islanders. “I love the moments when you come up with something that you're just totally in awe of," he told Smithsonian magazine when he was named one of “35 Who Made a Difference.” “Something that gives you an overwhelming sense of wow!”

Owsley speculates that this particular Jamestown body belonged to a child who likely arrived in the colony during 1609 on one of the resupply ships. She was either a maidservant or the child of a gentleman, and due to the high-protein diet indicated by his team’s isotope analysis of her bones, he suspects the latter. The identity of whoever consumed her is entirely unknown, and Owsley guesses there might have been multiple cannibals involved, because the cut marks on her shin indicate a more skilled butcher than whoever dismembered her head.

It appears that her brain, tongue, cheeks and leg muscles were eaten, with the brain likely eaten first, because it decomposes so quickly after death. There’s no evidence of murder, and Owsley suspects that this was a case in which hungry colonists simply ate the one remaining food available to them, despite cultural taboos. “I don’t think that they killed her, by any stretch,” he says. “It's just that they were so desperate, and so hard-pressed, that out of necessity this is what they resorted to.”

Kelso’s team of archaeologists will continue to excavate the fort, searching for other bodies that might help us learn about the conditions faced by some of the country’s first European colonists. This might be the first specimen that provides evidence for cannibalism, but Owsley is pretty sure there are more to come. Percy’s letter also describes how, as president of the colony, he tortured and burned alive a man who had confessed to killing, salting and eating his pregnant wife—so the remains of this woman, along with other victims of cannibalism, may still be waiting to be found underground. “It’s fairly convincing, now that we see this one, that this wasn’t the only case,” he says. “There are other examples mentioned here and there in the literature. So the only question is: Where are the rest of the bodies?”



Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/Starving-Settlers-in-Jamestown-Colony-Resorted-to-Eating-A-Child-205472161.html#ixzz2S9Ko25Zd
Follow us: @SmithsonianMag on Twitter

Nifty mutilated skull pics at link. 

Saw this on the local news last night. 

"Cool"

-hEt gives me disturbed glance. 

[Buster's Uncle]

Teen Girl Expelled, Charged With a Felony After Science Experiment Goes Awry
Takepart.com – 10 hrs ago...

 
Science experiments don't always go the way they are intended. This, a 16-year-old Florida teenager knows all too well.

This week, Kiera Wilmot went to school and mixed some household chemicals in a tiny 8-ounce water bottle. It looked like a simple chemistry project but then the top popped off when a small explosion occurred.

Wilmot, who is in good standing as a student, said it was an accident. The Bartow High School principal told a local television station that the teen made a “bad choice” and called her a a good kid who has never previously been in trouble.

“Honestly, I don't think she meant to ever hurt anyone,” Principal Ron Pritchard told a Tampa Bay television station. “She wanted to see what would happen [when the chemicals mixed] and was shocked by what it did. Her mother is shocked too.”


In another era, Wilmot may have gotten scolded and sent back to class. But in this age of zero-tolerance policies, Wilmot is in deep trouble. She was arrested on Monday morning after the incident and charged with possession and discharge of a weapon on school property and discharging a destructive device.

In turn, she was expelled and will finish her high school years in an expulsion program.

“This situation is a poignant example of the absurdity of zero tolerance and the over-use of police intervention in schools” Dr. Kathleen Nolan, the author of Police in the Hallways: Discipline in an Urban High School and a lecturer at Princeton’s Program in Teacher Preparation, told TakePart.

“Tragically, this young woman, all because of what appears to have been misguided curiosity, now faces expulsion and felony charges, which could negatively impact her future opportunities and alter the course of her life,” she said. “The policies are particularly pernicious for African Americans and other young people of color as research shows these groups are disproportionately targeted by zero-tolerance policies and subject to harsher treatment once involved in the criminal justice system.”

Zero-tolerance policies in schools began in 1994 after Congress required states to adopt laws that guaranteed one-year expulsions for students who brought firearms to school. In order for states to receive federal funding, leaders had to adopt these laws. All 50 states did so.


“The criminal justice paradigm, under which zero tolerance operates, strips educators of decision-making powers and discretion,” Nolan said. “It forces otherwise caring and thinking adults to respond to incidents in unthinking and often destructive ways.”

Earlier this year, a 5-year-old Pennsylvania girl was suspended from kindergarten after she told another girl she was going to shoot her with a Hello Kitty toy gun that blows soapy bubbles. School officials told the girl’s parents she made a 'terrorist threat.'

Honor students have often been expelled or suspended for such infractions as having possession of a bottle of soda mixed with a few drops of alcohol or having pain relievers such as Midol and Tylenol, or even cough drops. Other students have ended up in serious trouble for bringing antiques that contain tiny knives to school for show and tell.

In the Florida case, Kelly Welch, a Villanova University criminal justice professor, said the story is “just another example of schools handling normal acts of juvenile misbehavior with extraordinarily harsh measures that more closely resemble the exclusion inherent to criminal justice rather than restorative discipline in school.”

Some schools, however, have started to realize the negative effects of such harsh discipline for non-violent infractions. Policies, in turn, are changing.

Last month, the Buffalo, New York school district voted to say goodbye to zero-tolerance policies that result in suspensions. Instead, the district will focus more on intervention and prevention, conflict resolution, counseling referrals and restorative justice.

In Fresno, Calif., the school district’s superintendent has decided to focus funding toward district-wide restorative justice programs.

This week, in Louisiana, the state House Education Committee approved a bill to counter zero tolerance and allow educators more flexibility in disciplinary measures.

“There must be a way for schools to address violations of school policies that do not have the harmful effects of criminalizing students,” Welch said. “Research shows that students who have been expelled and charged with felonies have a much greater likelihood of receiving a diminished education going forward, and may also have more encounters with the criminal justice system.”

http://news.yahoo.com/teen-girl-expelled-charged-felony-science-experiment-goes-050006336.html

[Unorthodox]

Zero-tolerance policies in schools began in 1994

I graduated in 94. 

Coincidence? 

[Buster's Uncle]

No.

[Unorthodox]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/10035542/Haunted-house-used-to-train-Chinas-SWAT-teams.html

Haunted house used to train China's SWAT teams
A haunted house in Wuhan, China, is being used by police for the psychological training of their prospective SWAT teams.
 
Xia Zhigang, a police instructor, said the new facility was intended to beef up "officers born in the 1980s and 1990s [under the one-child policy], single children who were spoiled by their families."  By Malcolm Moore, Beijing
12:29PM BST 03 May 2013
9 Comments
For China's elite police cadets, it is the ultimate test of their psychological pluck.

Left alone in the dead of night in an abandoned driving school, the prospective SWAT teams are expected to show they can remain calm even in the face of the paranormal.

"After only three steps, my flashlight shone on a skeleton," wrote a journalist from the Wuhan Evening News who was permitted to test run the new haunted house training centre.

"Suddenly the wind started howling and there was lightening. I saw another skeleton hanging in the middle of the pouring rain.

"On my left, the screams of a baby shocked me. Then I heard a woman weeping, and then giggling. When I turned, a female corpse with long hair and dressed in white was hanging from a tree".

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Xia Zhigang, a police instructor, said the new facility was intended to beef up "officers born in the 1980s and 1990s [under the one-child policy], single children who were spoiled by their families."

"The house generates tension, fear, the inability to concentrate and improves psychological balance," he explained.

"This house was going to be demolished but we thought even the directors of horror movies could not find such a perfect spot," he added.

Recruits are allowed a one-minute study of the layout of the 27-room building before entering armed only with a flashlight. The goal is to battle past the "atmosphere of terror" into the control room and turn off the apparitions.

Oh, this is light weight stuff, let me have a crack at creating the house...

[Buster's Uncle]

Flying car crashes outside elementary school
By Eric Pfeiffer, Yahoo! News | The Sideshow – 22 hrs ago

An image of the Maverick during one of its successful test flights (Maverick)

The flying car has long tantalized the imaginations of people everywhere. And a recent successful test flight by a Massachusetts company came with the promise that their prototype could go on sale to the public beginning sometime in 2014.

But another company’s airborne vehicle had a much different experience on Friday, when their flying car crashed into a tree just outside a Canadian elementary school.

The Globe and Mail reports that the flying car, dubbed the Maverick, is produced by a company in Florida.

Police spokesman Gord Molendyk told the paper that the two passengers inside the flying car were injured in the crash but are expected to recover. No one else was hurt in the incident, which reportedly occurred just before 9am, local time.

The Maverick is far different than the other flying car that made headlines last month. Instead, this vehicle is more like a dune buggy with a parachute and giant fan attached to the back of the vehicle.

And while this particular flight did not end well, the company that produces the Maverick has in fact conducted a number of successful test flights. They've chronicled several of these flights on their website and they are fascinating to watch.

"The idea is to go beyond roads," Maverick's Raymond Siebring said in an interview last year. "We'll be using it to fly medical supplies and humanitarian aid in places that roads don't reach."

After gaining momentum on a runway of about 3,00 feet, the fan and parasail then combine to life the vehicle off the ground. It needs about an equal distance to safely land.

Molendyk told the paper that after the Maverick took after, it attempted to gain velocity but crashed into a fence and several trees before coming to rest.

In an email sent to the website Jalopnik, reporter described how the Maverick’s inventors intend to use their unique vehicle:

“From what I know, pilot Ray Sebring designed the car to be used in 3rd world countries for missionaries. The idea is when the road ends, they put up the "Wing" and fly until there is road again.”

Maverick’s website describes their vehicle as: “The Maverick LSA design has been developed as an easy-to-operate – air, land, and snow craft. It is intuitive and safe to fly, drive and maintain by people in frontier areas of the world enabling them to use this unique vehicle in missions and humanitarian applications – in the world “beyond roads.”

Though, for the time being, they may have to ignore the final line from Doc Brown in “Back to the Future.” Because it would seem that where they are going, they do in fact, need roads.

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/flying-car-crashes-outside-elementary-school-015247415.html

[Unorthodox]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/12/debra-farinella-steal-cemetery-decorate-home_n_3262477.html?ncid=edlinkusaolp00000003

Police say a 57-year-old central Florida woman is a grave robber who stole nearly 150 items that she used to decorate her home.

Statues, lights, planters, decorations and other trinkets pilfered from Mount Peace Cemetery in St. Cloud were allegedly adorning the home and yard of Debra Farinella, the Orlando Sentinel reported.

In all, the middle-aged tomb raider is accused of taking 146 pieces from the burial spots, according to WFTV.

"She was not very particular," said Officer Chad Durham, spokesman for the St. Cloud Police Department, to WOFL. "She would take them from baby gravesites, as well as adult gravesites."

A tipster gave police a description of a suspect and a partial license plate number. Police eventually located Farinella, who claimed that she bought the cemetery mementos at a yard sale, the Sentinel reported.

She's been charged with grand theft and petty theft, according to the Osceola County Sheriff's office.

Victims are encouraged to contact the St. Cloud Police Department to reclaim stolen goods, WKMG said.

video in link. 

Honest question.  What typically happens to the little trinkets left at gravesides?   

[Geo]

They return to dust? (when left alone)

[Buster's Uncle]

The exploding bottle girl not guilty...

No charges for teen after explosion at Fla. school
Associated PressBy TAMARA LUSH | Associated Press – 1 hr 39 mins ago...

 
A central Florida teenager who was accused of igniting a chemical explosion on school grounds — and who became the subject of a grassroots social media campaign on her behalf — will not face criminal charges, authorities said Wednesday.

Polk County State Attorney Jerry Hill wrote in a statement that the case against 16-year-old Kiera Wilmot has been dismissed, but that she must complete a diversion program.

The teen was arrested April 22 and faced possible felony charges after school administrators reported she combined toilet bowl cleaner and aluminum foil in a bottle, and the resulting gas blew the cap off the plastic bottle, according to the police report. The explosion happened outside, before school started, and no one was injured.

Kiera told Bartow police she was doing a science experiment, but science teachers said they had no knowledge of an experiment.

"Based upon the facts and circumstances of the case, the lack of criminal history of the child involved, and the action taken by the Polk County School Board, the State Attorney's Office extended an offer of diversion of prosecution to the child," Hill said in the statement. "The child and her guardian signed the agreement to successfully complete the Department of Juvenile Justice Diversion Program."

Details about the program aren't public record because Kiera is a juvenile.

The teen's arrest launched an outcry on social media by people who thought the arrest was unfair and heavy-handed.

Nearly 200,000 people signed an online petition protesting her arrest, and her name trended on Twitter for a few days. Several heavily trafficked websites wrote about her case, saying that she shouldn't face felony charges for a science experiment gone bad — and that an arrest in the case sent the wrong message to budding scientists. Other columnists felt that Kiera was treated harshly because she is black — and that a white student doing a similar experiment wouldn't have been handcuffed and arrested.

"With this type of thinking is it any wonder Black and Latino Children are under-represented in Science Fairs," wrote DNLee, a biologist and popular blogger for the Scientific American website. "If everyone around you has the idea that only legitimate science experiments are those sanctioned and prescribed to students, then when are students expected to explore independent authentic science interests? In Bartow, Florida, I guess the answer is no."

Brian Haas, a spokesman for the state attorney's office, said the massive online support for Kiera had nothing to do with the decision not to prosecute.

"Not one bit," Haas said. "It's certainly something we were aware of. We looked at this like we would any other case involving a juvenile. We don't evaluate and make decisions on our cases based on what's being said on the Internet."

Kiera's attorney, Larry Hardaway, said on Wednesday that the teen and her mother are relieved — but that they are still negotiating with the Polk County School Board regarding Kiera's academic future.

Hardaway said that Kiera is worried that people at the school think she's a "terrorist" and is eager to clear her name there, as well.

After the incident, she was suspended for 10 days. She has been attending classes at an alternative school in the district.

Bartow High School Principal Ron Pritchard earlier had recommended her expulsion for a year, based on the district's Code of Conduct.

That recommendation was put on hold until the criminal allegations against her were resolved. School officials said the case will go before a School Board hearing officer now that the criminal proceedings are completed.

"We look forward to resolving all of the issues," Hardaway said.

http://news.yahoo.com/no-charges-teen-explosion-fla-school-232335649.html

[Unorthodox]

toilet bowl cleaner and aluminum foil, eh?


Thinking less 'science experiment' and more 'I saw this on youtube'.

[Buster's Uncle]

The Mystery of the Immaculately Conceived Baby Anteater
By Jen Doll | The Atlantic Wire – Fri, May 17, 2013..

 
Staffers at a zoological conservation center in Greenwich, Conn., are very confused — as are the rest of us — because their female giant anteater, Armani, has managed to conceive a baby, apparently without the presence of a male anteater.

It all started in August, writes Lisa Chamoff for Greenwich Time. Armani, an anteater at the LEO Zoological Conservation Center, had given birth to anteater baby girl Alice. Alice's father, Alf, was kept away from Armani and Alice because male anteaters have a bad history of committing infanticide. And then one April morning, a zoo staffer entered Armani's abode and found ... another baby. Chamoff explains, "The sudden appearance of little Archie was a surprise, to say the least. The gestation period for anteaters is six months. Armani and Alf had not been back together long enough to do what they needed to do to put the cycle of life into gear a second time."

Hypotheses began to fly about the conservation center and beyond. Some people thought it was "immaculate anteater conception" (though probably no one really thought that). Or that "Alf had somehow gotten the keys to Armani's pen one night in October." Another explanation has been posited by the founder and director of the center, Marcella Leone, who believes that Archie "might have been a case of delayed implantation, when fertilized eggs remain dormant in the uterus for a period of time." Anteater-similar mammals like sloths and armadillos have demonstrated delayed implantation — and yet, still, there is mystery: "some experts say they've never seen a second embryo implant after a mammal has just given birth," and that such a thing would be unlikely in giant anteaters.

The anteater experts themselves are at a loss. "Dr. Margarita Woc-Colburn, an associate veterinarian at the Nashville Zoo, which has one of the largest collections of giant anteaters in the country, said some scientific papers have mentioned the scenario in which an animal's body pauses a pregnancy until environmental conditions are right," writes Chamoff. Stacey Belhumeur, a Tucson, Arizona, zookeeper and species survival plan coordinator for the North American population of giant anteaters, suspects that the baby's origins are far simpler, though. "My guess is they thought they had him separated ... We've had animals breed through fences." Leone says her anteater charges should not have been sharing a fence line at the time that this pregnancy would have occurred — but were they? Was this a case of delayed implantation? Or is it something far more miraculous?

Unfortunately, unless the anteaters themselves 'fess up, there appears to be no way to prove what actually happened. It's an anteater mystery for the ages.

*The photo above is of the Smithsonian National Zoo's giant anteater, Maripi, and her son, Pablo. Pablo was not conceived under mysterious conditions.

http://news.yahoo.com/mystery-immaculately-conceived-baby-anteater-140155441.html