Idaho To Drive Wolves To Point Of Extinction

House of Mystery © DC Comics. Art © Bernie Wrightson

Idaho's governor said Thursday he will support public hunts to kill all but 100 of the state's gray wolves after the federal government strips them of protection under the Endangered Species Act.

Gov. C.L. “Butch'' Otter told The Associated Press that he wants hunters to kill about 550 gray wolves. That would leave about 100 wolves, or 10 packs, according to a population estimate by state wildlife officials. The 100 surviving wolves would be the minimum before the animals could again be considered endangered.

“I'm prepared to bid for that first ticket to shoot a wolf myself,'' Otter said earlier Thursday during a rally of about 300 hunters. The hunters, many wearing camouflage clothing and blaze-orange caps, applauded wildly during his comments.

Suzanne Stone, a spokeswoman for the advocacy group Defenders of Wildlife in Boise, said Otter's proposal would return wolves to the verge of eradication. “Essentially he has confirmed our worst fears for the state of Idaho: That this would be a political rather than a biological management of the wolf population,'' Stone said. “There's no economic or ecological reason for maintaining such low numbers. It's simple persecution.'' link from Live Science.com

Where’s Larry Talbot when you need him…?

New SETI Search Looks For Warring Aliens

Capt. Victory © Estate of Jack Kirby

Do extraterrestrials sweep their skies with radar to scan for incoming missiles?

If so, Avi Loeb of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, thinks he can find the radio signals leaked from warring alien civilizations.

Loeb believes he can detect the leaked signals by piggybacking his search on a new generation of radio telescopes designed to study low-frequency radio emissions in the distant, infant universe.

He and his colleagues hope to test the theory with the Mileura Wild-Field Array currently under construction in Australia and is slated to start operations in 2008.

In its current configuration, the array will be sensitive to any Earth-like civilizations that may exist on a planet orbiting one of about a thousand stars up to 30 light-years away, Loeb said. link

And the war rages on...:

New Life Forms Found In Arctic Ocean

Aquaman © DC Comics

Artic Ocean researchers have discovered a new group of microscopic organisms, which they have baptized "picobiliphytes": pico because of their extremely small size, measured in millionths of a meter, bili because they contain biliproteins, highly fluorescent substances that transform light into biomass, and phyte meaning they are plants.

The discovery came from carefully analyzing DNA sequences belonging to vast communities of micro-organisms living in the ocean. "There was one group of sequences that just didn't line up with any of the known groups," explains Dr. Lovejoy. "In fact, the divergence of this group from known organisms is as great as the difference between land plants and animals," adds the scientist. link

Picobiliphytes: A Marine Picoplanktonic Algal Group with Unknown Affinities to Other Eukaryotes. 2006. F. Not et al. Science 315: 253-255.

Picobiliphytes Will Rock You!:

New Species of Catfish Named After Batman

Ichthyologist Pablo Lehmann, of the Pontificia Universidade Catolica do Rio Grande do Sul, has named the species Otocinclus batmani in a paper in the current volume of the journal Neotropical Ichthyology. It has a dark marking on its tail resembling the Batman logo.



"The name batmani, alludes to Bob Kane's hero Batman of the comic adventures, which had a bat shape for his symbol, referring to the single W- or bat-shaped vertical spot on the caudal fin", wrote Lehmann.

The new species was discovered from the Rio Pure in Colombia and two creeks draining into the Rio Amazonas near Iquitos in Peru. Like other members of the genus, this species is small, with most of the type specimens collected measuring just under 4cm long. link

Otocinclus batmani, a new species of hypoptopomatine catfish (Siluriformes: Loricariidae) from Colombia and Peru. 2006. P.A. Lehman. Neotropical Ichthyology, 4(4): 379-383.

Hypothetical "God Particle" Closer To Discovery

LSH © DC Comics

The hypothetical Higgs boson, often dubbed the "God particle", is fundamental to our understanding of the Universe but has yet to be detected.

The Higgs boson has been proffered to explain the mystery of why other particles have mass, and forms the missing piece in the puzzle that is the Standard Model - the current theory used to describe the fundamental nature of matter.

For years, researchers have been searching the sub-atomic "soup" created when particles are smashed together in colliders - but no sign of the Higgs has been seen. In obtaining a more precise predicted mass for the Higgs, the particle's existence can be confirmed or ruled out within two to three years, scientists believe.

The calculation has been done by making the finest measurement to date of the mass of another elementary particle, one that is well known, the W boson. The W boson is the carrier of weak nuclear force, one of the fundamental forces in nature, and its mass is believed to be linked to that of the Higgs'.

"And if we don't find it, it is going to be back to the drawing board for particle physics." link

Belated Birthday Wishes To Tom Bagley

Art © Tom Bagley

Tom's art at Gigposters.com

Tom's music in Forbidden Dimension

Hey, Isn’t that Jackson Phibes himself singing?

Vaughn Bodé’s 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea: Part 6

Back in the 60’s Vaughn Bodé illustrated a number of classics that had been rewritten for “reading challenged” kids. The books were published by Frank E. Richards and sold exclusively to schools.

Because these books are almost impossible to find at reasonable prices I’ll be posting all the illos from the best book of the bunch, “Jules Verne’s ’20,000 Leagues Under The Sea” in eight installments.

Read: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8

All art © the estate of Vaughn Bodé