Poop, scoop and hang: The doo-doos and don’ts of dealing with your dog’s droppings
“Would you hang your kid’s dirty diaper on a shrub in your backyard?” asks Janice Palmer, a retired biology teacher and volunteer who plants native trees and shrubs in Sherwood Park. “It’s crap, for God’s sake, and it’s plastic in a natural area. It’s unsanitary, it’s unsightly and it’s disrespectful of other park users and it’s disrespectful of nature.”
We can’t do this. Can you? Students stretch during a training session at a gymnastic course at Shenyang Sports School in Shenyang, Liaoning province, China. Some 60 students, between the ages of 6 to 15, undergo a nine-year gymnastics program which includes foundation courses and gymnastic training courses at Shenyang Sports School, and those who are outstanding may be selected to join the national team.
George Clooney arrested at Sudanese embassy protest in Washington
George Clooney has been arrested at Sudan’s embassy in Washington during a protest against the country’s blockade of humanitarian aid. Clooney, his father Nick and other anti-Sudan activists ignored three police warnings to leave the embassy grounds today and were led away to a Secret Service van in plastic handcuffs. (Photo: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters; Win McNamee/Getty Images)
NASA’s Kepler telescope finds 26 new planets
Kepler, NASA’s planet-hunting space telescope, has found 11 new planetary systems, including one with five planets all orbiting closer to their parent star than Mercury circles the Sun, scientists said on Thursday.
The discoveries boost the list of confirmed planets outside the Earth’s solar system to 729, including 60 found by the Kepler team. The telescope, launched in space in March 2009, can detect slight but regular dips in the amount of light coming from stars. Scientists can then determine if the changes are caused by orbiting planets passing by, relative to Kepler’s view.
Kepler scientists have another 2,300 candidate planets awaiting additional confirmation. (Photos/illustrations by NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech; University of Toulouse; Reuters/AFP/Getty Images)
‘Billion-euro home’ built out of shredded bills in Ireland
An unemployed Irish artist has built a home from the shredded remains of 1.4-billion euros ($1.82 billion), a monument to the “madness” he says has been wrought on Ireland by the single currency, from a spectacular construction boom to a wrenching bust.
Frank Buckley built the apartment in the lobby of a Dublin office building that has lain vacant since its completion four years ago at the peak of an ill-fated construction boom, using bricks of shredded euro notes he borrowed from Ireland’s national mint.
“It’s a reflection of the whole madness that gripped us,” Buckley said of what he calls his “billion-euro home.”
“People were pouring billions into buildings now worth nothing,” he said. “I wanted to create something from nothing.” (Photos: Cathal McNaughton/Reuters)
i hope this is the last year forever and ever
SpaceX will be first private company to embark on mission to International Space Station
SpaceX will fly its Dragon capsule on an unmanned mission to the International Space Station in February, marking the first-ever bid by a private company to dock at the orbiting lab, NASA said Friday.
The fly-by and berthing mission are scheduled for February 7, 2012, the U.S. space agency said in a statement. (SpaceX/Chris Thompson)
NASA telescope finds first inhabitable ‘super-Earth’ planet outside our solar system
In another step toward finding Earth-like planets that may hold life, NASA said Monday the Kepler space telescope has confirmed its first-ever planet in a habitable zone outside our solar system.
French astronomers earlier this year confirmed the first rocky exoplanet to meet key requirements for sustaining life. But Kepler-22b, initially glimpsed in 2009, is the first the US space agency has been able to confirm.
Confirmation means that astronomers have seen it crossing in front of its star three times. But it doesn’t mean that astronomers know whether life actually exists there, simply that the conditions are right.
Such planets have the right distance from their star to support water, plus a suitable temperature and atmosphere to support life.
“We have now got good planet confirmation with Kepler-22b,” said Bill Borucki, Kepler principal investigator at NASA Ames Research Center.
“We are certain that it is in the habitable zone and if it has a surface, it ought to have a nice temperature,” he told reporters.
