A New Level of Ineffectual Douchebaggery?
I hope that this is a very good joke.
volvo, swarming locusts for safety
Volvo is working on technology that applies the swarming patterns of locusts to automobile safety.
Rind’s research at the Insect Vision Laboratory focuses on the behavioral patterns of locusts in flight and how it is that millions of them can swarm without hitting each other. Turns out the bugs’ visual input is transmitted directly to their wings, seemingly bypassing the brain in what Rind calls the Locust Principle. Volvo engineers first heard of Rind’s work in 2002 and set to work trying to adapt the Locust Principle to cars.
The work hinged on developing an algorithm that would mimic the insect’s ability to send visual stimuli directly to its wings, then applying it to a vehicle’s computerized safety features. Easier said than done. “As it turns out, the locust processing system is much more sophisticated than the hardware and software currently available,” Ekmark says. “In the end, technology was no match for nature.”
belly up
A species of large bees does the wave to protect itself from wasps.
Giant honeybees (Apis dorsata), native to southern and Southeast Asia, are nearly an inch (2.5 centimeters) long, about twice the size of Western honeybees. When faced with a threat, hundreds or even thousands of giant honeybees will all rotate their abdomens in a split second to create an iridescent effect that seems to startle and confuse wasps, which hunt giant honeybees for food.
Scientists have observed this behavior before but never understood its purpose. But now researchers have determined that shimmering is triggered by approaching wasps, and serves to drive them away.
“If you think of people doing the Mexican wave in football stadiums, it takes several seconds, even 10 seconds or longer for that wave to come around the football stadium,” Kastberger said. “The horizontal span of a honeybee nest can well reach 2 meters [6.5 ft]. Such a wave in honeybees only takes 800 milliseconds. The topic of my further expeditions is to find out how they communicate so quickly.”
Lovely Moth
I saw this creature out back today. Haven’t looked it up yet to see what it’s called.
eyes of the beholder
I think flies are cute.
thankfuly not a poop scooper
A lost exterminator survived on bugs:
A weary-looking Rosmulder told reporters that he found some relief from hunger at a giant termite mound. “I just hit the top of the termite nest off and got stuck into them,” Rosmulder said.
“Termites don’t taste too bad,” he said at a news conference in the southwestern Australian mining town of Laverton.
Rosmulder was suffering from dehydration but otherwise in “surprisingly good condition,” Western Australia state police Sgt. Graham Clifford said. He said the insects and termites provided Rosmulder a bit of moisture and some protein.
“He kept eating what he used to kill,” Clifford said.
neural calculus
Worms do a type of calculus in order to find food.
Worms calculate how much the strength of different tastes is changing - equivalent to the process of taking a derivative in calculus - to figure out if they are on their way toward food or should change direction and look elsewhere, says University of Oregon biologist Shawn Lockery, who thinks humans and other animals do the same thing.
Bees get sick?
Mystery Bug at London Natural History Museum
The London Natural History Museum, with 28 million insect species in its collection, is having a hard time identifying an insect that has shown up in its own gardens.
The almond-shaped insect, about the size of a grain of rice, was first seen in March 2007 on some of the plane trees that grow on the grounds of the 19th century museum, collections manager Max Barclay said Tuesday.
Within three months, it had become the most common insect in the garden, and it was also spotted in other central London parks, he said.
How much for that dead mosquito in the window
A Chinese man sells dead mosquitoes online.
Nin sells his mosquito corpses for six yuan — about 45p — each. His ad reads: “Truly killed by human hands. Can be used for science studies, decoration, and collection.”
A Visiting Insect
Anyone recognize this creature?
Dear clusterflock
What’s a pissant?
brazilian beetle microprocessors
Optical computing requires a crystalline substance efficient enough for the manipulation of photons in three dimensions. Diamonds have the correct molecular structure but are too dense. For years, researchers have attempted to create a crystal that mimics the properties of diamonds without the density. The scales of a Brazilian beetle perfectly mimic the molecular configuration needed for optical computing.
Bartl said that optical computer chips won’t actually run on beetle scales. Instead he plans to use the scales as a mold, replacing chitin with semiconductor material.
“Optical computers could do in a second what now takes days or weeks,” said Bartl. “And we’re providing the materials.”
it’s only — a year — a-way!
Y’all. We’re a year away from clusterflockstock.
Aluminum Casts of Ant Colonies
This picture doesn’t do it justice, but Walter Tschinkel has made some incredible casts of ant colonies that he digs out and displays. See here for more details from an ABC program. Cindy and I saw this on the Sunday CBS Morning show. I would like to own one of those things!
Giant Leopard Moth
Here’s the moth Mia and I took from caterpillar to flight (and no, a bird didn’t get this one as soon as we let it go, as happened with a Luna moth at her school). It was lovely as a caterpillar, too–covered with black bristly hairs and showing vivid red bands between its body segments. Here’s how the Peterson First Guides book on Caterpillars describes the moth:
“The adult moth is very striking, with its 3-inch wingspan, white and black spotted forewings, and metalic blue abdomen with orange markings. It is eastern but more common in south Texas.”
insect cyborgs
I love the layers of creepy. DARPA turns fifty. Dick Cheney is brought in to blow out the candles. And DARPA’s latest technology: raising real insects filled with electronic circuitry, which could be guided using GPS technology to specific targets via electrical impulses sent to their muscles. These half-bug, half-chip creations — DARPA calls them “insect cyborgs” — would be ideal for surveillance missions.
Scientist Amit Lal and his team insert mechanical components into baby bugs during “the caterpillar and the pupae stages,” which would then allow the adult bugs to be deployed to do the Pentagon’s bidding. “The HI-MEMS program is aimed at developing tightly coupled machine-insect interfaces by placing micro-mechanical systems inside the insects during the early stages of metamorphosis,” DARPA says. “Since a majority of the tissue development in insects occurs in the later stages of metamorphosis, the renewed tissue growth around the MEMS will tend to heal, and form a reliable and stable tissue-machine interface.” Such bugs “could carry one or more sensors, such as a microphone or a gas sensor, to relay back information gathered from the target destination.”
School of Life
Mia is in the first grade at a little Montessori school in our area. Last Fall, one of her classmates found a cocoon on the playground. The cocoon was taken into the classroom, and was determined to be that of a luna moth. The children built an appropriate habitat for the cocoon, made a calendar to mark off the days until the moth emerged, and waited patiently for Spring. And one day last week, the children came to class to find, not the cocoon, but the moth! It was incredibly beautiful. The children fed it in its habitat for a few days to ensure that it was strong and healthy before releasing it into the wild.
Yesterday was the big day for the moth’s release. The children opened the door to the habitat and watched the moth as it flew away. It fluttered around the flowers and trees in front of the classroom, then a bird swooped down and ate it.
solitary bees, 3
There are so many things I want to tell you I’d rather show you I wish I could. If I could open a doorway and allow us to go back to where I was at various times in my life — I’d like to take you there to show you some things, you know? I wish I could show you. Or at least tell it to you in a way that would make it real for you. I hope you’ll allow me to do that. To make it real in some way. To shape your understanding of me so that you have some familiarity with who I’ve been; with who I am rather than your inevitable impressions of our current circumstances — Can you hold on a minute?
“You can find solitary bees in two places: where they feed and where they make their burrows. To find them feeding, look on the earliest blossoms, such as willow, shadbush, or cherry. The bees are generally smaller than honeybees, dark black with a few white or light yellow hairs over their bodies. You can also find the bees by looking for their burrows, which are made in bare earth or sand, especially where it is packed, such as along roads or paths. They are most often in the sun.”
There’s something beautiful about that, I think. I was just reading about it today. It reminds me of Hamlet. You know that play? It’s remarkable. I think I could read it twenty times and still get something out of it. It rewards diligent attention.
“The burrows are the diameter of a pencil and have excavated earth piled up around them to the height of an inch.”
He closes the book, a thumb in it to mark his place.
He thinks better of it and opens it again.
I’m sorry. Do you want something to drink?
Tied to the bed, eyes wide open, she nods at him.
12 million bees shut down California Highway
The headline pretty much says it all:
With an estimated 440 bee hives smashed on the side of the highway, and millions of stressed-out bees buzzing wildly and looking for victims, disaster was thankfully averted by a group of beekeepers who happened upon the accident. Once their hives were re-assembled on another flatbed, the tiny insects made a bee-line for the shelter and, sweet ending in sight, began to bee-have themselves once again.
Swarm of Bees in the Meeting About New Postage Rates
The swarm of bees that coordinates all of the direct mail marketing didn’t pay any attention in the meeting. They were distracted by the sodas and juice that had been set out as refreshments.
The Fifth Beetle
A new species of beetle that appears as if wearing a tuxedo has been named in honor of the late rock ‘n’ roll legend Roy Orbison and his widow Barbara.
Nuking a cockroach
The crazy guys from Discovery’s Mythbusters, will test the old rumor that cockroaches would be the only living thing to survive a nuclear (did I say that right?) catastrophe.
“But will the roaches grow really, really large?”
That, my friend, is the correct question.
–link
Giant Spider Web In Texas: Aliens Say They Did It
Phil Spector, ditched by UFOs again
Wills Point, TX — The discovery of a huge spider web in Lake Tawakoni State Park last week led to a heated debate as to its origin, but the mystery has been solved. A non-human spokescreature representing The Space People claimed the sticky phenomenon to be the work of that elusive yet famous super-intelligent race of alien beings.
“Of course it was us,” the bizarre life-form remarked to reporters, assisted by a new touchscreen Apple iTranslate device. “If you would just forget your tinfoil hats and pay attention, you would have figured it out.”
“That’s me being sarcastic,” the alien added, “I just learned snarky cynicism this week. I love this planet!”
fly larvae shelled in bling
Caddis fly larvae usually form manufacturing sheaths by spinning silk with sand, minerals, plant particles, and bits of bone they find in their aquatic environments. French artist Hubert Duprat collects the larvae, carefully strips their shells, and then puts them in aquaria filled with stuff like pearls, rubies, gold, and diamonds. The larvae make new coverings out of these materials.