Let me step out of claiming responsibility for this one. It turns out bats developed flight first, and echolocation later. DUH! Everyone already knew that, despite the attempts by a few morons to try to say “Buh?” as to which came first. This isn’t a chicken/egg situation, there is no reason to have echolocation if you ain’t flying. Plus, many larger bats don’t have echolocation. They never did. So there really wasn’t a debate here, but I guess SOMEONE just wasn’t convinced. But screw him, the debate is over.

Now we can have fun imagining what kind of bad movie would be spawned thanks to this extinct bat. Onychonycteris – Silent Terror! The “true” story of prehistoric bats asleep in a cave awakened by teenage spelunkers and crazed to kill. Only when brave teen Jimmy and his Sheriff father send hundreds of roaches with alka-seltzer glued to their backs into the cave is the day saved, as the bats soon explode after eating them. Starring Corin Nemic, Vanessa Angel, and someone randomly from Buffy/Angel.

Missing link shows bats flew first, developed echolocation later

The discovery of a remarkably well-preserved fossil representing the most primitive bat species known to date demonstrates that the animals evolved the ability to fly before they could echolocate.
The new species, named Onychonycteris finneyi, was unearthed in 2003 in southwestern Wyoming and is described in a study in the Feb. 14 issue of the journal Nature, on which University of Michigan paleontologist Gregg Gunnell is a coauthor along with researchers from the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York, the Royal Ontario Museum in Canada and the Senckenberg Research Institute in Germany. A cast of one of the two known specimens is on permanent display in the U-M Exhibit Museum of Natural History’s Hall of Evolution.

“There has been a longstanding debate about how bats evolved, centering around the development of flight and the development of the sonar system they use to navigate and hunt for prey,” said Gunnell, an associate research scientist at the U-M Museum of Paleontology. “The three main theories have been that they developed the two abilities together, that flight came first, or that sonar came first. Based on the specimen described in this paper, we were able to determine that this particular animal was not capable of echolocating, which then suggests that bats flew before they developed their echolocation ability.”

Bats represent one of the largest and most diverse orders of mammals, accounting for one-fifth of all living mammal species. The well-preserved condition of the new fossil permitted the scientists to take an unprecedented look at the most primitive known member of the order Chiroptera.

“When we first saw it, we knew it was special,” said lead author Nancy Simmons of AMNH. “It’s clearly a bat, but unlike any previously known. In many respects it is a missing link between bats and their non-flying ancestors.”

Dating the rock formation in which the fossil was found put its age at 52 million years. Onychonycteris was not the only bat alive at the time—fossils of Icaronycteris, a more modern bat that could echolocate, are found in the same formations.

A careful examination of Onychonycteris’s physical characteristics revealed several surprising features. For example, it had claws on all five of its fingers, whereas modern bats have, at most, claws on only two digits of each hand. The limb proportions of Onychonycteris are also different from all other bats—the hind legs are longer and the forearm shorter—and more similar to those of climbing mammals that hang under branches, such as sloths and gibbons.

The fossil’s limb form and the appearance of claws on all the fingers suggest that Onychonycteris may have been a skilled climber. However, long fingers, a keeled breastbone and other features indicate that Onychonycteris could fly under its own power like modern bats. It had short, broad wings, which suggest that it probably could not fly as far or as fast as most bats that came after it. Instead of flapping its wings continuously while flying it may have alternated flapping and gliding while in the air. Onychonycteris’s teeth indicate that its diet consisted primarily of insects, just like that of most living bats.

“We don’t know what the initial incentive was to take to the air,” Gunnell said. “My thought is that these bats probably were commuters at first—developing the ability to fly allowed them to travel to a particular place to feed, then fly back to their nesting area.” Eventually, selective pressures likely favored the development of more sustained and agile flight, allowing bats to hunt on the wing.

Despite Onychonycteris’s resemblance to animals that came after it, its skull lacks features in and around the ear seen in bats that use echolocation to navigate and hunt. The structure of its feet and ankles, which include a special, spur-like bone that likely supported a tail membrane, led the researchers to conclude that Onychonycteris had the broad tail that modern bats use to capture prey in flight, but that the structure probably was used as an airfoil to aid maneuvering. Without echolocation, Onychonycteris likely had to make do with visual, olfactory, or passive audio cues to hunt.

“It finally gives us an answer,” Simmons said. “Flying evolved first, echolocation second.”

Source: University of Michigan

I’ve been using viruses for batteries for years! About time these people catch up. My H5N1-powered laptop is what I’m using to post this! Forget going green, I went viroid! But soon these viruses will mutate and infect people, turning them into walking batteries. And then the walking batteries are going to get all uppity when I try to use them to jumpstart my car or Frankenstein monster, and demand special rights from the government. Then we’ll have a big debate over if viruses are alive or not, followed by the government granting special access to SARS to kill off as many people it wants under the guise of free speech. So I say “Up yours, viruses!” Dr. Mobusu will not play your games, I got a few games of my own. And viruses are not allowed. You couldn’t move the little scotty dog over to Park Place anyway.

Viruses may be the new batteries
Tracy Staedter
Discovery News

Tuesday, 2 May 2006

Genetically manipulated viruses could replace standard lithium-ion batteries, packing two to three times more energy than other batteries, researchers say.

The virus batteries could be thin, transparent, and lightweight, according to a US study published online recently in the journal Science by Professor Angela Belcher of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and team.

Because less material is devoted to packaging, more of the battery is used just for generating power.

“What we’re trying to do is have all of the mass and volume be used for the purpose it is to be used for, which is to power the device,” says Belcher.

The researchers say such a battery should last as long as conventional batteries. And it could power anything from microelectronics, including chemical and biological sensors, ‘lab on chip’ devices, and security tags to larger items such as mobile phones, computer displays and even electric cars.

Building batteries, like building anything, requires assembly. The smaller the battery, the more challenging that is.

Current manufacturing techniques involve arranging nanoparticles, nanotubes, or nanowires on surfaces using expensive, high-temperature methods.

Belcher and her team decided to capitalise on biology’s inherent knack for organising microscopic structures and apply it to battery technology.

Viruses acting like wires?

To make the viruses work like conducting wires, the scientists genetically altered the organisms so that proteins on their surfaces would be attracted to metal particles, including cobalt and gold.

Four different solutions went into the battery component: a negatively charged polymer, a positively charged polymer, negatively charged viruses, and charged particles, or ions, of cobalt.

The scientists spread the negatively and positively charged polymer solutions onto a glass slide in alternating layers. Next, they dipped the slide into a solution containing millions of the altered viruses.

The wire-like viruses automatically spread themselves evenly across the slide, as they have a natural tendency to slightly repel each other.

When the slide was dipped into the ion solution, proteins on the surface of the viruses attracted the metal ions, causing the organisms to become, essentially, conducting wires.

And because viruses naturally replicate, scientists say that growing more to make many batteries shouldn’t be hard.

“All you do is grow them in a bigger fermenter and you’re done. Once you do, there’s no roadblock to scale up to industrial level production,” says Brent Iverson, professor of chemistry and biochemistry at the University of Texas at Austin.

Building anodes and cathodes

When the polymer solution dries, it becomes a transparent anode, the battery’s positively charged terminal.

A piece of film about 10 centimetres by 10 centimetres contains about a billion conducting viruses.

Belcher and her team are working next to produce the negatively charged cathode with the viruses and believe they will have a working prototype in about two years.

It is well known that we like gigantic animals here, as well as teeny-weeny ones. In this case we have another example of a gigantic animal: Beelzebufo ampinga, the frog from Hell! Literally! Beelzebufo are breed in Level 4 of Hell for use in torturing souls. As you probably know, there are occasional escapes from Hell, where souls, demons, and horrible monsters escape and run rampant upon the world. The Jersey Devil, Mothman, Rush Limbaugh, all monsters from Hell that are still loose on the Earth this day. And now it is evident that some of the Beelzebufo escaped long ago and died, their fossilized remains being found by human scientists who quickly lump them into modern phylogenies. Which is probably for the better, because if the public was aware of the massive leak of nasty things from Hell, they would panic like there’s no tomorrow. Unless they are like me, and prepared to deal with minions of the darkness. If someone tries to sick these Beelzebufo on me, I’ll be dining on frog legs for a month! MuHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

Giant Frog Jumps Continents, May Have Eaten Baby Dinosaurs

ScienceDaily (Feb. 19, 2008) — A giant frog fossil from Madagascar dubbed Beelzebufo or ‘the frog from Hell’ has been identified by scientists from UCL (University College London) and Stony Brook University, New York. The discovery of the 70 million year-old fossil frog, of a kind once thought unique to South America, lends weight to a new theory that Madagascar, India and South America were linked until late in the Age of Dinosaurs.

The new frog resembles living Horned toads (ceratophryines or ‘pac-man frogs’) in having a squat body, huge head and wide mouth. With a body length (not counting the legs) of up to 40 cm — longer than a rugby ball – and a weight of around four kilos (10 pounds), it is more than twice the size of its largest living relatives.

The fossil, published in the journal PNAS, enters the Malagasy history books alongside meat-eating dinosaurs, plant-eating crocodiles and giant snakes, all very different from the present day animals of Madagascar.

Professor Susan Evans of the UCL Department of Cell & Developmental Biology says: “This frog, a relative of today’s Horned toads, would have been the size of a slightly squashed beach-ball, with short legs and a big mouth. If it shared the aggressive temperament and ‘sit-and-wait’ ambush tactics of living Horned toads, it would have been a formidable predator on small animals. Its diet would most likely have consisted of insects and small vertebrates like lizards, but it’s not impossible that Beelzebufo might even have munched on hatchling or juvenile dinosaurs.

“Madagascar has a mainly endemic frog fauna whose history has generated intense debate, fueled by recent phylogenetic studies and the near absence of a fossil record. Our discovery of a frog strikingly different from today’s Madagascan frogs, and akin to the Horned toads previously considered endemic to South America, lends weight to the controversial paleobiogeographical model suggesting that Madagascar, the Indian subcontinent and South America were linked well into the Late Cretaceous. It also suggests that the initial spread of such beasts began earlier than that proposed by recent estimates.”

Beelzebufo ampinga vs. the largest known living Malagasy frog, Mantydactylus ampinga. Guess which one would be dinner?

I work with floating spheres all the time, they are useful for storing tools and doing repair work on large robots, as well as feeding dangerous mutated pets. Who doesn’t like spheres? Just some sphere-hating fools, that’s who! Fools! Spheres are the future of the world. They have no corners, thus no wasted space and dust accumulation! It is the perfect containment system. Thanks to their flying mobility, they are the perfect attack platform, as they have no forward or reverse. It is 360 degrees of death in all directions! MuHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!

Link

Floating Robotic Spheres: From the Millennium Falcon to the ISS

Bill Christensen

Technovelgy.com Fri Jun 9, 9:01 AM ET

In 1999, MIT engineering Professor David Miller showed Star Wars on the first day of class. During the scene where Luke Skywalker practices his light saber against a seeker remote, Miller stood up and said “I want you to build me some of those.”

On May 19, 2006 from 10:30am-1:30pm CST Miller’s dream (not to mention that of George Lucas and about a zillion Star Wars fans, including me) became at least partly reality. The SPHERES mini-satellite, a tiny (eight-inch diameter) remote-controlled device, flew in the
International Space Station (ISS). SPHERES stands for Synchronized Position Hold Engage and Reorient Experimental Satellites. Flight Engineer Jeff Williams “piloted” the SPHERES unit in three dimensions for the first time around the pressurized Destiny module.

According to
NASA, the demonstration tested the basics of formation flight and autonomous docking that should be useful in future multiple spacecraft formation flying. The long-range plan for SPHERES is to test flying in formation with a set of mini-satellites.

The first test flight consisted of a series of 10-15 pre-planned maneuvers lasting up to 10 minutes each. Once the appropriate software was loaded on the controlling laptop, the satellite began a set of pre-programmed maneuvers to test attitude control, station keeping, re-targeting, collision avoidance and fuel balancing. The mini-satellite is manuevered using compressed carbon dioxide gas thrusters.

Although the SPHERES mini-satellites are not equipped with blasters or lasers, the SPHERES device is designed to be a testbed for trying out experimental software to control clusters of satellites; it should be easy to add them.

The next step in the official testing is to tuck additional SPHERES units onto shuttle flights to test formation flying. The second satellite is scheduled to launch to the station on STS-121 in July 2006. The third will be launched on STS-116.

But will they be able to create someone with seven fathers and one mother? The first step has been achieved, with the creation of a two mother, one father embryo. These embryos were not allowed to develop so the freak children that would be born do not exist yet. But soon we will have them to make fun of on the schoolyard! MuHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

Actually, this whole story is presented as a big lie. It is NOT a three-parent embryo, it is a two parent embryo with mitochondria from a third woman. That doesn’t make her a mother in the slightest! It’s just more sensational journalism written by reporters who once took a biology class in 1974 but sure know how to write headlines that look like B-Movie plots. That may sell papers, but it makes America dumber. No wonder the Soviets are way ahead of us in the space race! The scientist in the news story even seems annoyed at how the reporter is getting it wrong. It all proves my theory that news reporters are the dumbest people on the planet. They are also the most influential (behind drunken slut celebrities.) Therefore, my new plan to take over the world is to breed dumber and dumber reporters who are under my control, and will brainwash the public into being complete idiots. I call my plan Fox News!

Embryos created with DNA from 3 people

By MARIA CHENG, AP Medical Writer

LONDON – British scientists say they have created human embryos containing DNA from two women and a man in a procedure that researchers hope might be used one day to produce embryos free of inherited diseases.

Though the preliminary research has raised concerns about the possibility of genetically modified babies, the scientists say that the embryos are still only primarily the product of one man and one woman.

“We are not trying to alter genes, we’re just trying to swap a small proportion of the bad ones for some good ones,” said Patrick Chinnery, a professor of neurogenetics at Newcastle University involved in the research.

The research was presented at a scientific conference recently, but has not been peer-reviewed or published in a scientific journal.

The process aims to create healthy embryos for couples to avoid passing on genes carrying diseases.

The genes being replaced are the mitochondria, a cell’s energy source, which are contained outside the nucleus in a normal female egg. Mistakes in the mitochondria’s genetic code can result in serious diseases like muscular dystrophy, epilepsy, strokes and mental retardation.

In their research, Chinnery and colleagues used normal embryos created from one man and one woman that had defective mitochondria in the woman’s egg. They then transplanted that embryo into an emptied egg donated from a second woman who had healthy mitochondria.

The research is being funded by the Muscular Dystrophy Campaign, a British charity.

Only trace amounts of a person’s genes come from the mitochondria, and experts said it would be incorrect to say that the embryos have three parents.

“Most of the genes that make you who you are are inside the nucleus,” Chinnery said. “We’re not going anywhere near that.”

So far, 10 such embryos have been created, though they have not been allowed to develop for more than five days. Chinnery hoped that after further experiments in the next few years the process might be available to parents undergoing in-vitro fertilization.

“If successful, this research could give families who might otherwise have a bleak future a chance to avoid some very grave diseases,” said Francoise Shenfield, a fertility expert with the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology. Shenfield was not connected to the Newcastle University research.

Similar experiments have been conducted in animals in Japan, and has already led to the birth of healthy mice who had their mitochondria genes corrected.

Shenfield said that further tests to assess the safety and efficacy of the process were necessary before it could be offered as a potential treatment.

A bill to allow the procedure to be regulated as a therapy for couples — once it is proven to work — is expected to be discussed in Britain’s House of Commons in March.