₦airaland Forum

rhema4u:
Just finding fun in it bro. I'm a programmer and I'm in love with technology.

Alright my bad

Native wolves had been eradicated and the forests of the eastern United States long cut down when residents of western New York first began to notice the arrival of coyotes in the 1940s.

The coyotes of the Rocky Mountains and Great Plains were lithe and quick, usually weighing less than 30 pounds. The newcomers were different.
“These things were unique,” says Javier Monzón, an evolutionary biologist at Stony Brook University in New York. They were bigger and stockier with larger skulls — all the better to kill white-tailed deer, which were making a comeback as forests began to regrow.

Indeed, scientists have since discovered these super-sized coyotes are only about two-thirds coyote. About 10 percent of their genes belong to domestic dogs and a quarter comes from wolves, with which they hybridized as they moved east north of the Great Lakes. “They’re not wolves and they’re not like pure coyotes from the West,” says Monzón, who has studied the animals’ genetics. Depending on their location, people call them brush wolves, coydogs, eastern coyotes or coywolves.

Monzón says hybridization enabled eastern coyotes to adapt quickly to fill the niche left by wolves. In fact, areas with the highest densities of deer had coyotes with the greatest proportion of wolf in their genomes. “There was a very rich resource that was waiting to be exploited,” says Monzón. “They’ve done very well here.”

A Nightmare of Our Time

Some scientists and conservationists see the coywolf as a nightmare of the Anthropocene — a poster child of mongrelization as plants and animals reshuffle in response to habitat loss, climate change and invasive species. Golden-winged warblers increasingly cross with blue-winged warblers in the U.S. Northeast and eastern Canada. Southern flying squirrels hybridize with northern flying squirrels as the southern species presses northward in Ontario. Polar bears mate with grizzlies in the Canadian Arctic along the Beaufort Sea to produce “pizzly bears.”

All of this interbreeding upsets the conventional notion of species as discrete, inviolable entities. Moreover, some scientists and conservationists warn that hybridization will degrade biodiversity as unusual species are lost to genetic homogenization.

Partly scientists fear hybrids will be less fit than organisms that have evolved in place over eons. And often that is true, but the problem solves itself over time as hybrids lose out in the competitive race for survival.
Sometimes, however, the hybrids are more fit. Gradually they outcompete distinctive strains and species, wiping out biological diversity that has evolved over millennia. Often it is a common generalist species that swamps and essentially obliterates a rare, specialized and localized species. Many biologists view such occurrences as a net loss of biodiversity.

“Hybridization is one of the overlooked but clearly very, very important causes of species’ going extinct,” says Stuart Pimm, professor of conservation ecology at Duke University. “Hybridization is a major problem. It comes from our moving species around, it comes from our changing habitat.”

Prime examples are stocked rainbow trout that cross with native cutthroat trout in the U.S. West, driving rare subspecies into ever-tinier refugia; common barred owls pushing westward to Oregon and California that cross with threatened northern spotted owls; and bobcats in northern Minnesota that hybridize with lynx, posing “an underappreciated factor limiting the distribution and recovery of lynx,” according to one study .

Fear of the common overwhelming the rare can drive conservation decisions. For example, in the southeastern United States, wildlife managers are attempting to sterilize coyotes so they defend territory against other coyotes but won’t hybridize with the critically endangered red wolf, recently reintroduced to coastal North Carolina.

Survive and Prosper

Other researchers see hybridization differently, though — as a shortcut to the kind of evolution that has benefited organisms since time immemorial. By this view, hybridization threatens some species but enables others to survive and prosper.

As scientists scrutinize genomes, the old idea of separate, radiating species — an ever-diverging tree of life — has come to be understood as more of a tangled web, says Michael L. Arnold, research professor of evolutionary genetics at the University of Georgia and the author of Evolution Through Genetic Exchange. Living things evolve into new species only to cross again and again.

Examples include hybridization between polar bears and brown bears long before modern climate change — during the most recent Ice Age, when shifting glaciers may have forced polar and grizzly bears into common regions. And gray wolves in forest regions owe their dark pelage to genes from domestic dogs — not a black lab of recent heritage, but the dogs that accompanied early humans from Asia perhaps 14,000 years ago. For that matter, humans swapped genes with Neanderthals, who survive (genetically speaking) today in Europeans.

“Diversity driven by hybridization — it’s an evolutionary phenomenon,” says Arnold.

Jim Mallet, a Harvard evolutionary biologist, has discovered that Heliconius butterfly species in the Amazon rainforest, far from significant human interference, have freely crossed with related species. The payoff? Acquisition of bright, distinctive colors to warn birds that the butterflies contain cyanide. The butterflies’ defense works only if the birds recognize it.

“It’s not just those color pattern genes,” says Mallet. “It’s going on all over the genome. When you have that level of fluidity, just estimating who got what from where is becoming really difficult,” says Mallet.

Scientists who view hybridization as a driver of evolution and biodiversity say it even has a role to play in future conservation. Rather than try to protect rare species, such as the red wolf, from hybridization at all costs, biologists should consider the advantages of “the potential adaptive benefits from genomic transfers,” Arnold says.

Opponents of hybridization “might argue it’s less fit if it’s a hybrid,” says Arnold. “My argument would be, well, maybe it’s more fit. They would argue that hybridization is destroying biodiversity. And I would argue that maybe it’s not. Maybe it’s adding to it.”

The coywolf is as good an example as any — a combination of coyote stealth and wolf robustness that has helped it adapt to a rapidly changing landscape.
This more tolerant view of hybridization has already scored one huge conservation success story. Faced with an isolated and severely inbred population of Florida panthers, wildlife managers in the state reinvigorated the population by releasing eight female cougars of a different subspecies captured in Texas. Opponents of the move were concerned that hybridization between subspecies would destroy what was unique about the Florida panther. But the infusion of new genes saved the population.

Scientists and conservationists shouldn’t reflexively try to enforce distinctions between species and subspecies, says Arnold. “I really don’t like this idea of purity, because if we really push that to its nth degree, we are a hybrid. So we need to get rid of us.”



www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/coydogs-and-lynxcats-and-pizzlies-oh-my

What's with all the technophobes on Nairaland?

Keep being backward while the rest of the world leaves you behind.

Simple truth.

vowiski:
Normally, I don't reply people like you who seek abnormal relevance.

But I will try to educate you even when I don't have that time, so next time you don't embarrass yourself thinking you are making a point.

On the second line of the article.. Reuters is clearly cited. Which of course is the originating source.

At the tail end of the article, Reuters is adequately credited.

If you want me to put the Reuters link here, then you must be living in a paradise that doesn't exist!

This is my last and final reply to you.

Oh! I get it, it's clickbait, Mr normal relevance this is the wrong way to beg for traffic.

Oh and also if you got the news from Reuters then it obviously isn't exclusive, please eat a dictionary.

vowiski:
Your type are all over Nairaland. People who can't read be looking for credible source. If you read, you won't ask such a derogatory question.

The source i'm speaking of is a well known, trusted website or blog carrying this rumor not your little blog, everybody knows that if this is real then you got it from some other website, and the least you can do is to credit this information to the original author.
And you even tagged it "Exclusive" making it even less reliable.

Where did you get this your news ooo! nawa. Credible source

My friend slap yourself with a dictionary before coming here to embarrass the nation.

Walkopet:
[size=20pt]LOL.....ONLY IN AKWA IBOM[/size]

One of the most boring state in this country.

lol, Nigerian pastors and their latent stüpidity.

Lion just dey him own dey taste him food person call am friendship.

This isn't an issue for people that have gone cashless.

Children born by Cesarean section may be more likely to develop chronic diseases later in life, warns new research. The study, published in British Medical Journal, is calling for further research to understand why cesarean-born children have a higher risk of developing obesity, asthma, and diabetes.

A Cesarean section —also known as a C-section—is an operation where a surgeon makes a cut in the woman’s abdominal wall and uterus to deliver a baby. C-sections are sometimes performed in medical emergencies to save the baby and/or the mother’s life. Dubbed by the media as ‘too posh to push,’ a growing number of women—including high-profile celebrities—are now choosing to have a C-section. The rate of C-sections in the U.S. is more than double what the World Health Organization (WHO) recommends. The ‘medically necessary’ target is 10% to 15%, but the U.S. rate stood at 32.7 percent in 2013.

Researchers reviewed the current evidence that linked infants delivered by C-section to chronic disease. This included observational studies and large clinical trials. Researchers were ‘concerned’ with what they found.
"It is clear that cesarean-born children have worse health, but further research is needed to establish whether it is the cesarean that causes disease, or whether other factors are at play,” said study author Jan Blustein, from New York University's Wagner School, in a statement .

She added: "Getting definitive answers will take many years of further research. In the interim, we must make decisions based on the evidence that we have. To me, that evidence says that it is reasonable to believe that cesarean has the potential for long-term adverse health consequences for children."

Blustein suggests that the research is not “widely known” and calls for a change in the information distributed to clinicians and patients. With the effective dispersal of these findings, Blustein hopes midwives and patients can “weigh the risks and benefits” so they can make an informed choice on elective C-sections.


www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/study-suggests-newborns-delivered-caesarean-have-higher-risk-developing-chronic

The practice of ritualistic mortuary cannibalism used to be common amongst the Fore peoples of Papua New Guinea. When a member of the tribe died, the women in the village used to dismember and prepare the body, which was then eaten. They would often feed bits of the brain to the children and elderly.
It was this custom of eating the brain of the deceased that is thought to have caused the epidemic in the 1950s of “human mad cow disease,” known as kuru, within the Fore peoples. Now, scientists have identified a genetic mutation that likely helped to protect the Fore against developing the illness, a type of prion disease caused by misfolded proteins. This specific mutation was also shown to protect against all other forms of prion disease, such as Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD).

“This is a striking example of Darwinian evolution in humans, the epidemic of prion disease selecting a single genetic change that provided complete protection against an invariably fatal dementia,” John Collinge from
University College London, who co-led the work, told
Reuters .

The word ‘kuru’ is derived from the Fore language meaning “shaking death ,” and the disease belongs to a class of progressive neurodegenerative diseases that includes the so-called “mad cow disease” bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) and variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD). They are caused by a specific type of infectious protein called ‘ prions .’ These are misshapen proteins that accumulate over time, forming clusters in the brain and irreparably disrupting it. Often this leads to lethal damage.

When exploration of Papua New Guinea intensified during the 1950s, an epidemic of kuru was found to be spreading through the population of the southern Fore peoples, infecting around 2% of the population. As soon as symptoms began, mainly identified through uncontrollable shaking, sufferers had around 6-12 months to live. The prion can, however, incubate within the body for up to 40 years.

Previous studies had identified that if a certain amino acid – codon 129 – in the prion-forming protein was swapped for another, then people were less susceptible to the disease. After studying the Fore peoples, Collinge found that they also have a another mutation, this one at codon 127. In this new study, published in Nature , he discovered that the replacement of the amino acid glycine with valine at codon 127 makes transgenic mice completely resistant to both kuru and CJD.

It’s thought to work by preventing the protein from folding, and thus causing the disease, and could have implications for how we treat not only CJD, but also other neurodegenerative diseases. When BSE infected beef in Britain in the 1990s, there were fears that tens of thousands of people would be infected. So far, only 177 people have died of the disease, though it’s thought that up to one in every 2,000 people might be incubating it.

“Thirty thousand people are silently carrying the disease and we don't know whether they will carry on carrying the disease without developing symptoms or go on to develop the disease,” Collinge told BBC News .

www.iflscience.com/brain/tribe-evolved-response-eating-human-brains

It's not a newly discovered animal, it's a sculpture.

lol, DVD rewinder, anybody that buys that deserves it.

I need a girlfriend, apply within.

You'll still need the pin to use those services.

niceguy7:
Nice buh always crashing!!!!

Yes it's unstable, it crashed for me when I tried to log in to my Firefox account.

If you found Mozilla’s OS efforts curious, though not quite enough to buy a Firefox phone or try flashing a ROM on an old Android, here’s a painless way to try out the HTML5-based OS. It’s called b2gdroid, a reference to Boot2Gecko, the basis of Firefox OS.
https://cdn.gsmarena.com/pics/15/06/b2gdroid/gsmarena_000.jpg

It’s a 65MB APK that puts a sort-of working, mostly complete implementation of the Firefox OS experience.
It replaces your launcher and adds an on-screen Home button (hardware buttons don’t work well). It comes with several of its own apps and you can even go on the Marketplace and download an app. I tried a game, which worked, though everything is pretty laggy (on a Snapdragon 800 device, so there’s room for improvement).

Surprisingly, even icons for my Android apps showed up in the launcher and you can use them as usual. They won’t show up in the Recent apps list though and hide Firefox OS’ on-screen button. Also, the custom notification area conflicts with Android’s notification area.

It’s not ready for prime time, not even close. The phonebook didn’t load the contacts from Android and the dialer wouldn’t dial. Support for microSD storage seemed off as well. By the way, x86 phones (i.e. Intel Atom powered ones) are not supported yet.

Still, this is an interesting glimpse of a way to break free from Google-controlled smartphones, without having to build custom hardware like Mozilla is currently doing.
Here are some random screenshots from around b2gdroid:

https://cdn.gsmarena.com/pics//15/06/b2gdroid/gsmarena_001.jpg

[img]http://people.mozilla.org/~fdesre/b2gdroid/screenshot.png[/img]

https://cdn.gsmarena.com/pics//15/06/b2gdroid/gsmarena_007.jpg


You can download it from here: http://people.mozilla.org/~fdesre/b2gdroid/

A Chinese surgeon who has performed nearly a thousand head transplants on mice wants to test the procedure on monkeys. Dr. Xiaoping Ren hopes his research could one day be used on human patients, but critics have dismissed the study as “ridiculous.”

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), who followed Ren during the 10 hour surgery, reported that after the mouse received its new head, it was able to move and open its eyes, but died shortly after. Ren has been performing the procedure since 2013, testing different techniques to help the mice survive longer than their current record—one day. Ren told the WSJ that he hopes a monkey receiving the transplant could “live and breathe on its own, at least for a little while.”

Ren and his team connected the donor and recipient circulatory systems using tiny tubes to allow oxygenated blood to flow from the rodents' brains to their new bodies. The primate surgery would be far more complex, however, where researchers would be attempting to attach small amounts of the monkeys' spinal nerve fibers. According to Wired UK , this may not be the first time a monkey head transplant has been on the table. Robert J. White reportedly had his finger almost bitten off when he was able to successfully transplant one monkey’s head onto another’s body.

Despite the name, a head transplant should probably be described as a ‘body transplant’ as it’s the head receiving a new donor body. Some researchers, incuding Ren, suggest these transplant surgeries could revolutionize modern medicine as bodies damaged by disease or injury could be replaced, allowing the donors to live healthy and more fulfilling lives. But even if the procedure becomes technically feasible, whether or not patients would be able to overcome the psychological burden of living in someone else's body is a serious issue that must be considered.
“We want to do this clinically, but we have to make an animal model with long-term survival first,” Ren told the WSJ. “Currently, I am not confident to say that I can do a human transplant.”

For the time being, there’s probably no need to lose your head over this research, with bioethics professor Arthur Caplan, from New York University , telling the WSJ: “The whole idea is ridiculous.” Critics also question whether animals should be used in this type of research. It’s unlikely the procedure will be tested in the U.S. or U.K. anytime soon, which probably contributed to Ren’s decision to move his research from the University of Cincinnati in Ohio to China's Harbin Medical University.

There are a number of challenges Ren will have to overcome, such as keeping the brain oxygenated for long periods of time and preventing the immune system from rejecting the new head. Earlier this year, Italian neurosurgeon Sergio Canavero announced his plans to complete the first human head transplant within two years, but many scientists remain skeptical of the likelihood of these procedures becoming successful or legal in the near future.

www.iflscience.com/brain/frankenstein-doctor-performed-head-transplants-mice-says-monkeys-are-next

mizcyn:
Touching, nothing like a mothers love, wish I could have done same for my son, but I wasn't there , never knew death was lurking. Miss you boogie , you would have been one on Wednesday, love you much

wow! that's so touching

https://img-9gag-fun.9cache.com/photo/avgYWbE_460s_v2.jpg
True story.

lol

MissTechy:
why

You were the one that made the video, that crack on such a new phone, abomination.

MissTechy:
Lol okay sir = did you watch the drop test video?

Yes I did, I'm not happy.

MissTechy no more drop tests abeg, I dey use God beg you.