54.23 knots: World Speed Sailing Record

Photo by Steb Fisher.

Australian Macquarie Speed Sailing Team with their wonderful boat Macquarie Innovation (formerly known as Yellow Pages Endeavour) has crushed this friday the World Speed Sailing Record powering down the 500m Sandy Point course at an average speed of 50.43 knots. With only 24 knots of wind, Macquarie Innovation managed to reach a whopping maximum speed of 54.23 knots (100km/hr) and became the first sailing boat in the world to complete an official 500m run in excess of 50 knots.

Brullie and the progress in froggish surgery!

Brullie the giant bullfrog with its wound on the hind leg sewn with nine stitches
Photo: MILLER/MACLEAN

It was just a few days ago when I tell you the story of a frog whose two forelegs were both put in a cast to heal from bilateral fractures. I was quite (nicely) surprised to see this effort from human to alleviate the sufferings of a poor amphibian. Today I've happily discovered that in South Africa some people have one even further and a vet have operated a Giant Bullfrog to put a inch-long metal pin in his shattered lower leg in order to fix its broken bone.
Brullie, this was the name of the Bullfrog, was found by Anne Mearns after being bitten by a dog that probably had dug up it from its underground hibernation.
Brullie remained unconscious after the vet rubbed a tiny dose of watered-down dog anaesthetic into his porous skin. The surgeon then opened the damaged limb to insert the tiny steel rod over the snapped right leg bone. His scaly skin was later sewn back together with nine stitches to allow the wound to heal. The following x-rays show the state of Brullie's leg before and after the unique operation:



Photo: MILLER/MACLEAN

Now it's just a matter of time for the metal false leg to merge with his actual bones, and then he'll hopefully be as good as new.

AmphiCoach: The coach that turns into a boat

Wow! This is a good idea... a Coach that turns into a boat could be the best to organize tours: Tourist can have coach tours and cruise in the same trip without even leaving their seats on the coach... Imagine a tour through London or Paris streets that suddendly enter Thames or Seine... or some mediterranean archipelago where you can travel the streets of an island and then cruise to another one!



The idea man is the scotsman George Smith but the AmphiCoach is based on Malta



The aluminum 50-seater vehicle can glide on fresh or seawater. On the road it can travel up to 70mph while in the sea it can reach 8 knots. AmphiCoach can simply drive into the sea where the wheels retract into the hull and an air-piston begins powering the boat across the waves.



If you want one, it costs £280,000 but you'll probably have to queue up because orders have already come from ten countries



Further info here

North & South: two little penguins back to the wild

North and South are the two Little Penguins that you see in these pictures. They were released last week back into the wild following a stay at Sydney's Taronga Zoo wildlife hospital.



As you can understand by the pictures one of the two, North, enjoyed the stay very much as he was very reluctant to leave her carer, veterinarian Amy Twentyman, as she pushed him towards water



The two penguins had been rescued from beaches nearby Sydney. North had been found trapped in seaweed at Terrigal, north of Sydney on Christmas day, while South was found two months later looking unwell on Cronulla beach south of the city (so this explains their nicknames).



It was fairly common to rescue penguins at this time of year, when they moult their feathers because this is a very delicate moment: they are not waterproof until they grew a new coat of feathers so they can't go in the water at that time and are very easy preys for predators like foxes.



Little Penguins are known with many other names: Fairy Penguins because of their tiny size, Little Blue Penguins, or just Blue Penguins, owing to their indigo-blue plumage, and they are called Kororā in Māori. Their habitat is the souyh coast of Australia and New Zealand but they have been sighted even in Namibia and Chile.



They are the smallest species of penguin being just 43 cm (16 in) tall!



In the end North overcame is reluctance and followed his friend South in the sea.

A leopard stuck in a well

©EPA

In India, near the Sonaigali village in Guwahati city a hungry leopard looking for food tumbled itno a well and got stuck in the muddy water.


©EPA

People from the village were shocked to find the big angry cat when they went to the well in the morning to collect water.


©EPA

Forest ranger came and tranquillized the leopard which was becoming increasingly angry. A veterinarian went dowin into the well and carried out the creature that was than brought to a local zoo.


©EPA

Canadian Flag Global Warmed

The famous Maple Leaf of the Canadian flag converted in a Pineapple. Another creative approach to the Greenpeace global warming awareness campaigns

Advertising Agency: Harold Zea & Associates
Creative Director / Copywriter: Felipe Ponce de Leon
Art Director / Illustrator: Giovanni Alvis
Photographer: Slide Depot
Published: 2008

Discovered a new species of frog: It's smaller than a dime!

©Alessandro Catenazzi

In southern Peruvian part of the Andes mountains, in the upper Cosnipata Valley, near Cusco, a new species of frog has been discovered by some scientists in the leaf litter of a cloud forest between 9,925 and 10,466 feet (3,025 and 3,190 meters).


©Alessandro Catenazzi

The discovery was not so easy as the frog is the smallest ever found in the Andes and one of the smallest in the world!
The Noblella Pygmea females grow to 0.49 inch (12.4 millimeters) at most. Males make it to only 0.44 inch (11.1 millimeters).
As you can see in the pictures it means that they are smaller than a dime!


©Alessandro Catenazzi

Amother interesting aspect of the new found species is that females hatch only two eggs, a small number for a frog (frogs usually hatch up to hundreds of eggs), and each egg is nearly a third the size of the adult!


©Alessandro Catenazzi

Their reproductive cycle that doesn't rely on water (the frog watch over and keep moist its two eggs, in the leaf litter, until they hatch into froglets) seems also to have protected them from the terrible deadly chytrid fungus, which has killed frogs and salamanders around the world in recent years.


©Alessandro Catenazzi

You can see other picture of this tiny frog in the website of Alessandro Catenazzi, Post-doctoral Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley


The habitat of the Noblella Pygmea: High-elevation cloud forest in Manu National Park, Cusco, Peru
©Alessandro Catenazzi

If it were you in that sandwich you wouldn't be laughing at all!

Ah AH! It makes me laugh.. there's nothing I can do about it...

Advertising Agency: Arnold
Chief Creative Officer: Pete Favat
Creative Director: Chris Edwards
Art Director: Kristen Landgrebe
Copywriter: Pete Harvey
Producer: Sean Vernaglia
Assistant Producer: Jaime Guild
Project Manager: Kasey Fechtor
Business Affairs: Kim Stevens
Human Nature: Rich Santiago
Account Service: Gary Steele, Catherine Ellefson, and Dan Gross
Production Company: Station Film
Production Company Producer: Tom Rossano
Director: Brendan Gibbons
Cinematographer: Jo Willems
Editorial Company: Accomplice
Editor: Collin Cameron
Back in the Day Music Company: Audio Socket
Music Title: “Back in the Day”
Music Company: Pulse Music
Music Title: “Singing Fish”
Recording Studio: Soundtrack Boston
Recording Engineer: Mike Secher
Launch Date: March 2009

Breaking the ice pack with a nuclear submarine

getty images

This picture provided by the US Navy on March 24, 2009 shows Los Angeles-class submarine USS Annapolis on the surface of the Arctic Ocean after breaking through three feet (1m) of ice on March 21, 2009 during Ice Exercise (ICEX) 2009. Annapolis and the Los Angeles-class submarine USS Helena are participating in ICEX 2009. With the support from the University of Washington Applied Physics Laboratory, ICEX 2009 enables the Submarine Force to operate and train in the challenging and unique environment that characterizes the Arctic region. One of the experiments consists infact in test the submarine capability of breaking the ice pack in case of emergency.


getty images

Exxon Valdez: 20 years after the ecological disaster the oil is still there

The Exxon Valdez bleeding oil on 23rd March 1989

Three days ago it was the 20th anniversary of one of the worst environental disasters: the infamous oil spill of the Exxon Valdez in Alaska. Sadly experts say that two decades after that tragedy huge quantities of oil still coat Alaska's shores with a toxic glaze.

Of the 11 million gallons of crude oil that bled from the stranded tanker on the night of March 23, 1989, more than 21,000 remain, tucked into isolated coves and underneath the sand.

In its first toxic sweep, the Exxon Valdez oil spill killed about 250,000 seabirds, 4,000 sea otters, 250 bald eagles, and more than 20 orcas, according to the conservation group WWF.

Some images of the disaster from 20 years ago:

Gray Whale Succumbs to Exxon Valdez Oil Spill, Latoucha Island, Alaska (John Gaps III / AP)


The Exxon Valdez bleeding oil on 23rd March 1989


The exxon Valdez towed away from the site of the ecological disaster


A seabird covered with oil on on 23rd March 1989


Crews use high-pressured hoses to blast oil-covered rocks on Naked Island, Alaska, on April 21, 1989, about a month after the Exxon Valdez tanker ran aground.
An 11,000-person crew removed much of the oil from the beaches until 1994, when government officials decided to end the clean-up effort.

The situation today:
As you can see in the images below, in the area hit by the oil spill, it's still very easy to find crude oil just below the superficial stones:




Further info in this National Geographic article