Articles - Science

August 6, 2009--A low-hanging sun brightens the fields around the dome of the Gran Telescopio Canarias, or GTC, the latest addition to the handful of Earth-based optical telescopes designed to study the heavens.

Crowds gathered last week on the island of La Palma in the Canary Islands--a Spanish territory--to watch Spanish King Juan Carlos inaugurate the U.S. $180-million GTC, which is co-owned by Spain, Mexico, and the University of Florida in the U.S.

Boasting a segmented mirror 34 feet (10.4 meters) wide, the GTC is the largest telescope of its kind in the world--for now. Three larger telescopes are slated for completion in 2018: The Thirty Meter Telescope, with its 90-foot (30-meter) mirror, is planned for the top of Hawaii's Mauna Kea volcano, while the 80-foot (24.5-meter) Giant Magellan Telescope will be built in the mountains of Las Campanas, Chile.

The European Extremely Large Telescope, which currently doesn't have a site selected, will boast an unprecedented 137.7-foot (42-meter) primary mirror.

Most schools should be able to stay open even if swine flu outbreaks occur again this fall, government officials said Friday as they issued recommendations for dealing with the illness when the school year starts.

Decisions about whether to close schools should be made locally, the officials said, and “should balance the goal of reducing the number of people who become seriously ill or die from influenza with the goal of minimizing social disruption and safety risks to children,” which sometimes occur when schools close.

The nation has 130,000 schools, 55 million students and 7 million staff members. Closing schools may mean that parents have to stay home or find child care, which some cannot afford. People in essential jobs, like health care, may be stuck at home during outbreaks when they are most needed. In some cases, children may wind up being left home alone or going to the mall, where they can spread the H1N1 flu virus.

Read more: Swine Flu Should Not Close Most Schools

Articles - Science

Some sea snake species, such as Hydrophis pachycercos (pictured), have evolved so that sharks and other predators can't tell whether the serpents are coming or going, Johan Elmberg and Arne Rasmussen report in a new study today in the journal Marine Ecology.

When Rasmussen on a research dive in Indonesia, said Elmberg, who was not on the dive, "he saw a venomous sea snake go head first into a narrow crevice. Then suddenly he was surprised to see the snake pull its head out, as if the snake had been able to very quickly turn around inside the crevice."

Moments later Rasmussen, a biologist with the School of Conservation in Copenhagen, Denmark, realized that the "head" was in fact the tail.

While the yellow-lipped sea krait, a nocturnal, shallow-water snake, had been "probing the reef crevice" for fish, Elmberg, an ecologist at Kristianstad University in Sweden, said, "the tail was slowly writhing back and forth, much in the same way as the head moves on a vigilant and actively searching snake."

Later, after studying 98 preserved specimens of the roughly three-foot-long (meter-long) tropical species at three European museums, the researchers concluded that all yellow-lipped sea kraits have "two headed" tail patterns.

Read more: "Two Headed" Sea Serpents Fool Attackers

Manny Pacquiao vs Miguel Cotto - Manny Pacquiao vs Miguel Cotto

Related article: Manny Pacquiao vs Miguel Cotto set for 14 Nov at Vegas?

Manny Pacquiao vs Miguel Cotto on 14 Nov at Vegas: this is gonna be a big date!

Southpaw Stance

A boxer in the southpaw stance would have his right hand and right foot forward, leading with right jabs, and following with a left hook right cross.

Alternatives

The corresponding designation for a right-handed boxer is orthodox, and is generally a mirror-image of the southpaw stance.

Strategy

Left-handed boxers are usually (but not always) taught to fight in a southpaw stance. This may give the left-handed fighter a strategic advantage because of the tactical and cognitive difficulties of coping with a fighter who moves in a mirror-reverse of the norm. However, some left-handed fighters are brought up fighting in the orthodox stance because of a widespread perception that boxing from an atypical stance (or attempting to learn to do so) would be a disadvantage to the fighter.

Read more: Manny Pacquiao vs Miguel Cotto: Southpaw vs Orthodox?