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TLD continues his cosmological journey.
Gentle readers, it is going to be a busy couple of weeks, therefore blogging has taken a back burner temporarily. Please enjoy these brilliant videos from the Living Dinosaur about Science and our Universe. If I have time, I will add more posts to fill the gaps in my usual posting schedule.
I’m sure they don’t mind, they just need to bloop around being all penguin-y while our scientists study their habits and habitat. :)
By counting penguins in images taken from space, scientists estimate the population of emperor penguins was around 595,000 in 2009 — roughly double previous estimates of between 270,000 and 350,000, reports a study led by the British Antarctic Survey.
Emperor penguins, which stand as tall as a six-year-old child, breed and spend much of their lives on sea ice that is expected to melt significantly in coming decades.
“But it’s very hard to predict how this will affect emperor penguin numbers if you don’t have an idea of how many there are in the first place,” Fretwell said.
Previously, it had been very difficult to get an accurate count of emperor penguins because the birds breed in such harsh, remote areas during the Antarctic winter, and it’s hard for scientists to get there, Fretwell said.
The recent satellite count located four previously unknown colonies, and two or three others that had been thought to exist, but had never been located. The results show that colonies exist all the way around the Antarctic coastline, not just in certain areas where researchers had found previously known colonies.
Technology rocks, I really cannot imagine having to actually go to Antarctica and counting these fellows by hand. Full marks to the biologists who did so before we went all spy cam on our penguin friends.
Every wonder how many clues you needed to uniquely solve a Sudoku puzzle? Watch and find out :)
As usual Sociological Images is chock-full of interesting articles. I was intrigued by the title of this post and decided to reproduce it in part here for the benefit of my readership. While you are there, check out the article on how cheerleading outfits are shrinking over time.
“You might be surprised to learn that at its inception in the mid-1800s cheerleading was an all-male sport. Characterized by gymnastics, stunts, and crowd leadership, cheerleading was considered equivalent in prestige to an American flagship of masculinity, football. As the editors of Nation saw it in 1911:
…the reputation of having been a valiant “cheer-leader” is one of the most valuable things a boy can take away from college. As a title to promotion in professional or public life, it ranks hardly second to that of having been a quarterback.*
Indeed, cheerleading helped launch the political careers of three U.S. Presidents. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Franklin Roosevelt, and Ronald Reagan were cheerleaders. Actor Jimmy Stewart was head cheerleader at Princeton. Republican leader Tom DeLay was a noted cheerleader at the University of Mississippi.”
Head over to SI and read the whole thing.
I’m writing this a week ago, but I’ll watch this again today as it is just that interesting.
bleatmop
Mystro
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