Syzdekistan

After a flawless landing, Mars Phoenix Lander has begun to send back images from the martian arctic. The first images were engineering images to look at parts of the lander such as the landing legs, the unfurled solar arrays, and to test the cameras and computers. So far everything looks great and after several days […]

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This afternoon, the Mars Phoenix Lander will land in the martian arctic to study martian water. The landing will be a harrowing one — due to the heavy lander and delicate instruments they will not be using the airbag landing that the rovers used a few years ago. Mars Phoenix lander will land completely autonomously […]

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I snapped this picture of a male vermillion flycatcher last week. Vermillion flycatcher’s are arguably one of the prettiest birds in Southern Nevada and they are quite rare. They like to nest in mature mesquite woodlands. This one was photographed near Moapa Nevada near the headwaters of the Muddy River.

Here is a picture of aphids […]

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I’m peripherally involved with this project to study the breeding success of burrowing owls in the urban areas in the Las Vegas Valley. As natural areas become more and more urbanized, understanding how wildlife functions in urban areas is very important. And burrowing owls are very cute.

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Wouldn’t be fun to live in a place where the dominant land animal is a crab?

Nice article on coconut crabs on Daily Kos tonight.

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Looking at the USGS earthquake maps, there hasn’t been any 3+ magnitude earthquakes near Reno since last week. It looks like the seismicity is slowing down. There was a 5.4 in northwest California, however.
And yes, it would be crazy not to get earthquake reports from the USGS via RSS.

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I don’t even know what to make of the recent earthquakes near Reno. The typical pattern is to have a large earthquake followed by a series of smaller aftershocks or a “swarm” of earthquakes where all the earthquakes are about the right size (like the recent swarm off of the coast of Oregon). This pattern […]

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The crew of the Soyuz capsule that landed in Kazakhstan hundreds of kilometers (miles) off-target after an unexpectedly severe descent was in serious danger, a Russian news agency reported Tuesday. Normal reentries of the Soyuz use the bottom of the capsule somewhat like a wing and “fly” the capsule. A ballistic descent is essentially straight […]

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I just found this fascinating tale of evolution in action. Researchers in 1971 placed a species of lizards on a small Croatian island where they did not previously exist. After 36 years of neglect due to war and polictical turmoil, scientists returned to the island. The native lizards to the island had been eliminated and […]

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After years of promising not to discuss work after hours but always failing, botanists at Hampshire College’s Agricultural Studies Farm Center told reporters yesterday they have finally made a pledge to ban any and all talk of plants during drinks this Friday.
read more | digg story

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