Human albinism

Connie Chiu, Asian fashion model.

African boy with albinism.

Human eye. Rare case of complete lack of pigment, the eyes appear rather purple (red) than the usual blue or grey.

In another than the so called "Caucasian race" the look of person with albinism is very strange (probably only in my bigoted opinion of backyard European). I never have seen or even thought how these people look.

The albinistic people generally have pale skin, blond hair and light colour eyes. The eyes occasionally appear red due to the underlying retinal blood vessels showing through where there is not enough pigment to cover them. In humans this is rarely the case, as the human eye is quite large and thus produces enough pigment to lend opacity to the eye. However, there are cases in which the eyes of an albinistic person appear red or purple, depending on the amount of pigment present.

(My personal opinion is that albino is one of the prettiest colour variations)

Source: Wikipedia

New proofs Homo floresiensis is separated species

Latest findings confirm the theory that H. floresiensis (also being called Hobbits around the web) is indeed separated from H. sapiens species. Recent study of 40 H. floresiensis teeth compared to 450 from other Homo species, concluded that their teeth are different enough and have characteristics which place them closer to H. erectus, which from his side could be their ancestor.

Facial reconstruction of H. floresiensis Credit: BBC.co.uk

Facial reconstruction of H. floresiensis Credit: Hominin evolution

The background in short: since the remnants of these diminutive people were found 12 years ago, there were two major competing hypotheses. First is that we are dealing with completely new species in the genus Homo and the second is that we simply found odd variation or deformity, rather then different branch in our evolutionary tree. In my opinion its more likely to think of these people as separated from ours taxonomic clade. The differences are simply too many and it doesn't look very plausible that there were  individuals, who survived until adulthood in the hostile prehistoric environment with such serious condition as microcephali (or any other seriously impairing conditions, which produce similar deformations and small brain).

H. floresiensis were small species in the genus Homo, which means that they are related to us in similar fashion Tigers are related to Lions or Leopards. Two of the most distinctive characteristics are the small size, height being around 0.9-1.1m and weight around 25kg, which measurements are outside the range of human height and weight (possibly closest are the remnants of some island people found in the South Pacific ocean) and small brain, which with estimated 380cm3 is rather in the range of chimpanzee then human, which is several times bigger. And even more fascinating, the brain to body ratio is just above that of the great apes. There were found indication of fire and tool use, which suggest the species were actually well advanced and probably had pretty high cognitive capability. The age of the bones range between 13,000 and 74,000 years, which is pretty long time span for group of creatures living in isolation and may have some serious implications in the evolution and the changes occurring in them. And last, but may be most curious is that on the island Flores were the bones were found the folk tales about Ebu Gogo (something like forest creatures, translated as "Grandmother Glutton") are more prevalent, which may be indication that H. floresiensis probably survived until recent historic times and there may be more rich and recent remnants of them.

Reconstruction of H. floresiensis with contemporary animals Credit: © National Museum of Nature and Science, Tokyo

The last thing is making me think of the possibility of organising expedition to the island and trying to find more, before it is destroyed or lost. Also if these things were found on this specific island there is good chance that there is more on the other islands in the region. Now why looking for this? Well, as somebody said we as species are very lonely and we not only managed to wipe out most of the species in our biome, but even most of the information is lost. I think we can learn a lot about ourselves if we can find who were our cousins, what happened with them, how they were related to us and how we dealt with them.

Very unlikely, but just imagine, how cool is going to be if we even manage to find alive our cousins...

Read more and sources:
Scientific American
Wikipedia
Hominin evolution
BBC
Livescience
The Guardian

Thanks for reading.

Largest eagle

This is very difficult question. There are different features to compare. Possibly as average the heaviest and most powerful eagle is the Harpy Eagle. The record for this species is a captive female, "Jezebel", weighed 12.3 kg (26 lb), but the average weight for the females is about 7.5 kg (16.5 lb).

On other hand as heaviest eagle often is cited (Wikipedia) to be the Steller's Sea Eagle. There was reported (unverified) wild female Steller's Sea Eagle with weight 12.7 kg (28 lb), but on average, females weight from 6.8 to 9 kg (15 to 20 lb).

The Philippine Eagle has the largest wingspan, average weighs about 7 kg (15.5 lb), that may mean that is a little bit lighter than the species above.

The Crowned Eagle also often is regarded as most powerful eagle. Is smaller than all above but he can lift in the air up to four times his weight.

Source: Wikipedia

Airbus A380 crosswind test

Very interesting video of landing and take-off in strong cross-winds by Airbus A380, the largest passenger airliner.

Prince Igor’s Campaign

Other favourite paint "Prince Igor’s Campaign", 1942 Nicholas Roerich. The subject is the Tale of Igor’s Campaign.

Source: Roerich Family

Deadliest USSR sniper

Many people think that is Vasily Zaytsev, but there is other man Fyodor Okhlopkov. Zaytzev had 242 verified kills and Okhlopkov 429 confirmed kills. For Zaytsev the real number may be much higher, some argue it might have been as many as 400, but the same is true as well for Okhlopkov, who is on other hand Yakut and often overlooked for that reason. Despite him ethnics he had typical Russian name.

Sukhoi Su-47 Berkut

The Sukhoi Su-47 Berkut is an experimental supersonic jet fighter developed by Sukhoi Aviation Corporation. A distinguishing feature of the aircraft is its forward-swept wing.

Source: Wikipedia

Most powerful explosion ever

Tsar Bomba was the largest, most powerful nuclear weapon ever detonated. Developed by the Soviet Union, the bomb had a yield of about 50 megatons of TNT. The bomb was tested on October 30, 1961 in Novaya Zemlya, an island in the Arctic Sea. The subsequent mushroom cloud was about 60 km high (nearly seven times higher than Mount Everest) and 30–40 km wide. Atmospheric focusing caused blast damage up to 1,000 km away.

Source: Wikipedia

El Condor Pasa

On the video we can see an instrumental interpretation of the group "Espiritu Andino". It is an old South American folk song. The lyrics in Quechua:

Kuntur phawan (Yaw kuntur)

Yaw kuntur llaqtay urqupi tiyaq
maymantam qawamuwachkanki,
kuntur, kuntur
apallaway llaqtanchikman, wasinchikman
chay chiri urqupi, kutiytam munani,
kuntur, kuntur.

Qusqu llaqtapim plazachallanpim
suyaykamullaway,
Machu Piqchupi Wayna Piqchupi
purikunanchikpaq.

Golden Eagle vs Red Fox

Golden Eagle (Aquila chrysaetos) fight Red Fox (Vulpes vulpes). Here are series of shots of this encounter. The winner is likely to be the Eagle. The photo is taken on February 22nd 2006 South Finland, by ©Pekka Komi.


In this case the Eagle despite of the brave attack is in trouble. Generally is likely in encounter between the two animals to win the Eagle, but the Fox also have great possibility for success.

Source: Tarsiger

F-22 Raptor

F22 Airshow Demo - Free videos are just a click away
The F-22 Raptor is a fifth generation fighter aircraft. It is claimed by several sources to be the world’s most effective air-superiority fighter.

PETMAN - First Wallking Robot With Human Gait

Boston Dynamics are again on the cutting edge on the technology. Apparently they developed the first robot with human-like gait. The most surprising thing to me was the engine, which sounds like something with internal combustion. They are managing to integrate side by side the near impossible human-like gait with fairly not high technological combustion engine. It looks like BigDog, with which apparently share same technology.

Source: Boston Dynamics

Wingsuit flying

Another item in my list of hobbies for when I'll be rich.
From Wikipedia: "Wingsuit flying is the sport of flying the human body through the air using a special jumpsuit, called a wingsuit, that shapes the human body into an airfoil which can create lift. The wingsuit creates the airfoil shape with fabric sewn between the legs and under the arms. It is also known by the public as a birdman suit or squirrel suit.

A wingsuit can be flown from any point that provides sufficient altitude to glide through the air, such as skydiving aircraft or BASE jumping exit points.

The wingsuit flier wears parachute equipment designed for skydiving or BASE jumping. The flier will deploy the parachute at a planned altitude and unzip the arm wings, if necessary, so he/she can reach up to the control toggles and fly to a normal parachute landing."

"[The]amount of lift and drag although most wingsuits have a 2 to 1 ratio. This means that for every foot they drop, they go 2 feet forward." Also "glide ratios of 2.5:1 are commonplace" and "A typical skydiver's terminal velocity in belly to earth orientation ranges from 110 to 140 mph (180–225 km/h). A wingsuit can reduce these speeds dramatically. An instantaneous velocity of -25 mph (-40 km/h) has been recorded." Here is not clear what exactly is the maximum speed along the main vector of movement, if it is 40km/h should be reasonable to think that will be developed way to safe landing without parachute. However there are attempts to sort this problem out.

Source: Wikipedia, Video demonstration off, around, and over cliffs in Norway

Largest Athropod - part II

(Photo and article courtesy of Dick Allen)

Just I thought I sorted out this problem and this one pop up. It was caught 1926 in Maine and had weight of 23.36kg (51.5pound) and total length of 1.28m (50.5in) or 83.8cm (33in) nose to tail. Amazing beast.

Sources: Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

See more: The American lobster - largest arthropod recorded

Exoskeleton from Lockheed Martin

The name of this thing is Human Universal Load Carrier (HULC™). It is powered exoskeleton and should help soldiers, fire-fighters and etc. There are several similar project and I'll post something about them soon. For now it looks like not bad approximation to the creation of true Iron Man :).

Smartest animal

This is really difficult question. There've been several attempts to order the smartest animals, but always there is big controversy. The firs problem is to define the meaning of the word "smart" or "intelligent", we can say for our propose that this is what we, the humans use to do, inventing tools, learning things, finding relations, speech, art and etc. In my personal opinion most valuable is the creating of things (tools) without previous (or at least not similar) experience. So far probably one of the smartest animals out there is the rook (Corvus frugilegus), and the reason is this article. I'll bet on them instead of the New Caledonian crows because, they have not instincts and previous experience of using and making hooks and pins.

The big question is how to distinguish the intelligence, conscience and thinking, what is the particular quality unique for the humans, where finishes the animal (or machine in the case of robots and programs) and begins the human, if very smart animal is more intelligent then human (child, old, mental disable) will this make the animal human and the human animal. I'll keep looking for answers.

See more: BBC (best of the articles with 3 short videos for illustration), Daily Mail, Science Daily

KOBIAN: Emotional Humanoid Robot

Here is the next step toward true humanoid robot (I mean indistinguishable without proper examination. It was presented by Atsuo Takanishi (Takanishi Laboratory), research organization NEDO and Japanese-Italian project RoboCasa.

The American lobster - largest arthropod recorded

An American lobster (Homarus americanus) is probably the heaviest specimen of arthropod ever recorded. According to the Guinness World Records, the largest lobster was caught 1977 in Nova Scotia, Canada, and weighed 20.15 kg (44.4 lb). It measured in estimation around 1.07 m (3.9 ft) along the body. On the picture is supposed to be this specimen, I can't find the origin of the photo, but it was said in several websites to be Nova Scotia's lobster.

Source: Wikipedia

Honda Develops Brain-Machine Interface Technology

Honda, ATR and Shimadzu jointly develop brain-machine interface technology enabling control of a robot by human thought alone. Exciting future we will have.

Wild Boar chasing Leopard

Sometimes the prey chase the predator.