Lifeboat Foundation

When you’re deployed to Iraq and your stomach starts to gak, diarrhea.

O.,o circa 2007.

The scales of the Arapaima, an Amazonian freshwater fish that can weigh up to 440 pounds, possess all the best attributes of a bulletproof vest, but the elements are better integrated into one solid piece combining imperviousness and flexibility, researchers say. The Air Force is funding a study of the fish for potential body armor development.

This armored BMW X5 is a bombproof fortress on wheels.

The fossilised skulls of dinosaur embryos that died within their eggs about 200m years ago, have been digitally reconstructed by scientists, shedding new light on the animals’ development, and how close they were to hatching.

The rare clutch of seven eggs, some of which contain embryos, was discovered in South Africa in 1976, with the developing young found to be a species of dinosaur called Massospondylus carinatus.

The plant-eaters were ancestors of sauropod dinosaurs like diplodocus and, as fully-grown adults, would have walked on two legs, measured about five metres from nose to tail, and had long necks with small heads.

LONDON might be 3,000 years older than previously believed.

Just a few hours later, Trump tweeted it was his decision — not that of state governors — of when states should re-open.

:oooooo.

A technique developed by Purdue University scientists could allow doorknobs and other metal surfaces to be modified in a way that would kill bacteria on contact.

Continue reading “Laser etching could make metal surfaces kill bacteria instantly, new study suggests” »

Underwater explorers found a 150-foot-long (45 meters) siphonophore — a translucent, stringy creature that, like coral, is made up of smaller critters — living in a submarine canyon off the coast of Australia. It’s “seemingly the largest animal ever discovered,” they said.

Every individual siphonophore is made up of many little “zooids,” which each live lives that are more similar to animals we’re used to talking about, albeit always connected to the larger colony. Zooids are born axsexually, and each one performs a function for the siphonophore’s larger body, according to a research article published in the journal Developmental Dynamics in 2005. Linked together in long chains, the colonies were already known to reach lengths of up to 130 feet (40 m) according to the Monterey Bay Aquarium — though each siphonophore is only about as thick as a broomstick.

The new, record-setting siphonophore was one of several discoveries made by a team aboard the research vessel Falkor while exploring deep-sea canyons near Australia’s Ningaloo Coast.