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How to start owning a pet fish? | Health Slims

I want to buy a friend a pet fish after an argument to make up for it. I don?t want huge tank, just something small (well not that small, large enough for a nice fish or two to live in)

What do you recommend? how do I determine what kind of tank it needs? If you provide names of fishes and tank names I can google the images and get a better idea.

Thansk

Source: http://www.healthslims.com/how-to-start-owning-a-pet-fish.html

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Vampire on the loose in Serbia?

ZAROZJE, Serbia (AP) ? Get your garlic, crosses and stakes ready: a bloodsucking vampire is on the loose.

Or so say villagers in the tiny western Serbian hamlet of Zarozje, nestled between lush green mountain slopes and spooky thick forests. They say rumors that a legendary vampire ghost has awakened are spreading fear ? and a potential tourist opportunity ? through the remote village.

A local council warned villagers to put garlic in their pockets and place wooden crosses in their rooms to ward off vampires, although it appeared designed more to attract visitors to the impoverished region bordering Bosnia.

Many of the villagers are aware that Sava Savanovic, Serbia's most famous vampire, is a fairy tale. Still, they say, better to take it seriously than risk succumbing to the vampire's fangs.

"The story of Sava Savanovic is a legend, but strange things did occur in these parts back in the old days," said 55-year-old housewife Milka Prokic, holding a string of garlic in one hand and a large wooden stake in another, as an appropriately moody mist rose above the surrounding hills. "We have inherited this legend from our ancestors, and we keep it alive for the younger generations."

Vampire legends have played a prominent part in the Balkans for centuries ? most prominently Dracula from Romania's Transylvania region. In the 18th century, the legends sometimes triggered mass hysteria and even public executions of those accused of being vampires.

Sava Savanovic, described by the Zarozje villagers as Serbia's first vampire, reputedly drank the blood of those who came to the small shack in the dense oak tree forest to mill their grain on the clear mountain Rogatica river.

The wooden mill collapsed a few months ago ? allegedly angering the vampire, who is now looking for a new place to hang his cape.

Some locals claim they can hear steps cracking dry forest leaves and strange sounds coming from the rocky mountain peaks where the vampire was purportedly killed with a sharp stake that pierced his heart ? but managed to survive in spirit as a butterfly.

"One should always remain calm, it's important not to frighten him, you shouldn't make fun of him," said villager Mico Matic, 56, whose house is not far from the collapsed mill.

"He is just one of the neighbors, you do your best to be on friendly terms with him," he said with a wry smile, displaying garlic from both of his trouser pockets.

Some locals say it's easy for strangers to laugh at them, but they truly believe.

"Five people have recently died one after another in our small community, one hanging himself," said Miodrag Vujetic, a local municipal council member. "This is not by accident."

Vujetic, however, said that "whatever is true about Sava," locals should use the legend to promote tourism.

"If Romanians could profit on the Dracula legend with the tourists visiting Transylvania, why can't we do the same with Sava?"

Richard Sugg, a lecturer in Renaissance Studies at the U.K.'s University of Durham and an expert on the vampire legends, said the fear could be very real. Stress can bring on nightmares, which makes people's feelings of dread even worse.

"The tourists think it is fun ? and the Serbian locals think it's terrifying," he said.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/vampire-loose-serbia-140736133.html

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Major research grant for Warwick-Monash ? News ? The Boar

One of the first major research grants from the alliance between the University of Warwick and Monash University in Australia has been awarded to a joint project researching optical wireless?technology.

The Australian Research Council awarded the collaboration between Warwick?s Professor Roger Green and Monash?s Professor Jean Armstrong a Discovery Grant of $410,000?(?267,000).

The aim of the project is to develop new short-range communications systems with virtually unlimited bandwidth, which combine the convenience of wireless with the speed of optical?communications.

Optical wireless technology relies on the transmission of data through light. Now a mainstream form of radio communications, the techniques find applications in many areas, including secure wi-fi using room lighting and satellite-to-satellite links. It can also be used underwater where radio communications?cannot.

It is already used every day ? more simple forms of it are found in remote controls, while more complicated forms can transmit larger amounts of information around rooms and?vehicles.

Professor Green told the Boar that optical wireless technology offers strong commercial potential: ?It is very cheap as it uses devices and optics already developed for the mass market optical fibre links, which convey the internet around the world and to everyone?s local phone?exchanges.?

However, optical wireless communications are free space, meaning they do not need fibre, and this saves cost and installation?charges.

While licensing of the radio frequency spectrum is another common cost of communications, using conventional wireless communications, such as mobile phones, optical wireless frequencies and wavelengths are?free.

The grant will be based at Monash, where it will fund a postdoctoral researcher working for Professors Green and Armstrong, and for Professor Green to travel to Monash as a?co-investigator.

The two professors have worked together for some time, and initially benefited from early?investment.

Benefits of the grant will also be seen at Warwick. Professor Armstrong will travel here to work on the project, enabling the professors to plan joint research?publications.

As Professor Green is International Exchange Coordinator for the School of Engineering, two of Warwick?s undergraduates are currently enjoying the Australian climate for an academic?year.

Professor Green added: ?The grant cements my collaboration with Professor Armstrong on a research level and also on an undergraduate and teaching level quite?visibly.?

Source: http://theboar.org/news/2012/nov/30/major-research-grant-warwick-monash/

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Can a Jellyfish Unlock the Secret of Immortality?

Takashi Murai

The "immortal jellyfish" can transform itself back into a polyp and begin life anew.

After more than 4,000 years ? almost since the dawn of recorded time, when Utnapishtim told Gilgamesh that the secret to immortality lay in a coral found on the ocean floor ? man finally discovered eternal life in 1988. He found it, in fact, on the ocean floor. The discovery was made unwittingly by Christian Sommer, a German marine-biology student in his early 20s. He was spending the summer in Rapallo, a small city on the Italian Riviera, where exactly one century earlier Friedrich Nietzsche conceived ?Thus Spoke Zarathustra?: ?Everything goes, everything comes back; eternally rolls the wheel of being. Everything dies, everything blossoms again. . . .?

Yoshihiko Ueda for The New York Times

Shin Kubota at Kyoto University?s Seto Marine Biological Laboratory.

Sommer was conducting research on hydrozoans, small invertebrates that, depending on their stage in the life cycle, resemble either a jellyfish or a soft coral. Every morning, Sommer went snorkeling in the turquoise water off the cliffs of Portofino. He scanned the ocean floor for hydrozoans, gathering them with plankton nets. Among the hundreds of organisms he collected was a tiny, relatively obscure species known to biologists as Turritopsis dohrnii. Today it is more commonly known as the immortal jellyfish.

Sommer kept his hydrozoans in petri dishes and observed their reproduction habits. After several days he noticed that his Turritopsis dohrnii was behaving in a very peculiar manner, for which he could hypothesize no earthly explanation. Plainly speaking, it refused to die. It appeared to age in reverse, growing younger and younger until it reached its earliest stage of development, at which point it began its life cycle anew.

Sommer was baffled by this development but didn?t immediately grasp its significance. (It was nearly a decade before the word ?immortal? was first used to describe the species.) But several biologists in Genoa, fascinated by Sommer?s finding, continued to study the species, and in 1996 they published a paper called ?Reversing the Life Cycle.? The scientists described how the species ? at any stage of its development ? could transform itself back to a polyp, the organism?s earliest stage of life, ?thus escaping death and achieving potential immortality.? This finding appeared to debunk the most fundamental law of the natural world ? you are born, and then you die.

One of the paper?s authors, Ferdinando Boero, likened the Turritopsis to a butterfly that, instead of dying, turns back into a caterpillar. Another metaphor is a chicken that transforms into an egg, which gives birth to another chicken. The anthropomorphic analogy is that of an old man who grows younger and younger until he is again a fetus. For this reason Turritopsis dohrnii is often referred to as the Benjamin Button jellyfish.

Yet the publication of ?Reversing the Life Cycle? barely registered outside the academic world. You might expect that, having learned of the existence of immortal life, man would dedicate colossal resources to learning how the immortal jellyfish performs its trick. You might expect that biotech multinationals would vie to copyright its genome; that a vast coalition of research scientists would seek to determine the mechanisms by which its cells aged in reverse; that pharmaceutical firms would try to appropriate its lessons for the purposes of human medicine; that governments would broker international accords to govern the future use of rejuvenating technology. But none of this happened.

Some progress has been made, however, in the quarter-century since Christian Sommer?s discovery. We now know, for instance, that the rejuvenation of Turritopsis dohrnii and some other members of the genus is caused by environmental stress or physical assault. We know that, during rejuvenation, it undergoes cellular transdifferentiation, an unusual process by which one type of cell is converted into another ? a skin cell into a nerve cell, for instance. (The same process occurs in human stem cells.) We also know that, in recent decades, the immortal jellyfish has rapidly spread throughout the world?s oceans in what Maria Pia Miglietta, a biology professor at Notre Dame, calls ?a silent invasion.? The jellyfish has been ?hitchhiking? on cargo ships that use seawater for ballast. Turritopsis has now been observed not only in the Mediterranean but also off the coasts of Panama, Spain, Florida and Japan. The jellyfish seems able to survive, and proliferate, in every ocean in the world. It is possible to imagine a distant future in which most other species of life are extinct but the ocean will consist overwhelmingly of immortal jellyfish, a great gelatin consciousness everlasting.

Nathaniel Rich is an author whose second novel, ??Odds Against Tomorrow,?? will be published in April.

Editor: Jon Kelly

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: November 29, 2012

An earlier version of this article misstated the title of Charles Darwin?s classic book on the subject of evolution. It is ?On The Origin of Species,? not ?On the Origin of the Species.?

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/02/magazine/can-a-jellyfish-unlock-the-secret-of-immortality.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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How native plants and exotics coexist

ScienceDaily (Nov. 30, 2012) ? When people hear about exotic plants invading a new environment, there is usually a negative connotation, according to biology faculty member Matthew Heard in an article published in the journal Ecology Letters. They often think of plants like kudzu, Chinese privet, or Japanese honeysuckle, whose thuggish behavior can push out the native plants in their backyard or local parks.

While this worse case scenario can happen, it isn't always the case, said Heard, who wrote his Ph.D. dissertation at Brown University on how native and exotic plants coexist along the coasts of Rhode Island and Massachusetts.

"It turns out that in many places, native and exotic plants can actually live together," Heard said. "And this means that exotic plants aren't inherently bad like many people think, but it also means that it is important to figure out what is driving this balance between these two groups."

In his paper, Heard notes that there has been little experimental fieldwork conducted to determine what factors allows native and exotic plants to live side by side. While there have been many potential explanations tossed out, it turns out that just being different is the main reason that they can actually coexist together.

"Basically, we found that exotics plants grow more and can essentially out-compete natives, which normally is a problem. But in these communities there are also insects, which prefer to eat exotic plants instead of natives and can keep their growth in check. As a result, native plants, which are less susceptible to these insects can thrive even when exotic plants that are better competitors are nearby," said Heard.

How long this precarious balance will remain is unknown, but for now it isn't just the case of exotic species being problematic. Instead it's the story of how differences between two groups of plants allow them to survive along side each other.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Brown University.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

Journal Reference:

Matthew J. Heard, Dov F. Sax. Coexistence between native and exotic species is facilitated by asymmetries in competitive ability and susceptibility to herbivores. Ecology Letters, 2012; DOI: 10.1111/ele.12030

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/~3/QqPp4FLxDq8/121130110702.htm

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