The projection is a digital re-creation of the architecture of a building. Architectural features of buildings are often used to fantastic effect. Due to the impressive size of the projection a spectacular visual experience is guaranteed. There are no size limits whatsoever.See examples of their work below
Projection on Buildings from NuFormer Projection on Vimeo.
Frankfurt - There Is More To Life Than A Volvo from NuFormer Projection on Vimeo.
Copenhagen - The Time Is Now from NuFormer Projection on Vimeo.
Tool use in Veined OctopusI am hoping that one day, scientists will discover a species of octopus that build houses, exchange some form of money for food, goods or services, and keep crabs as pets. Still, many will continue to end up barbecued.
15 December, 2009
Veined Octopus in coconut shell shelter
Image: Roger Steene
Source: Courtesy of Current BiologyMuseum Victoria’s Julian Finn and Mark Norman have recorded the first case of tool use – sophisticated behaviour generally limited to mammals and birds – in an invertebrate.
The Veined Octopus, Amphioctopus marginatus, uses foreign objects for shelter, which is common in octopuses and is not itself considered tool use. However the Veined Octopus goes a step further and prepares, manipulates and carries coconut shells up to 20 metres to reassemble its shelter elsewhere.
Julian and Mark spent more than 500 hours diving in Indonesian waters to observe and film these animals. They watched octopuses dig out coconut shells from the ocean floor, empty shells with jets of water, stack two empty shells hollow-side up, and carry the shells in a unique gait they call ‘stilt-walking’. This series of actions are among the most complex ever recorded in an octopus.
The Veined Octopus probably evolved this behaviour using clam shells as shelter. However once humans began discarding large numbers of coconut shells, they inadvertently created a steady supply of lightweight octopus tools.
Julian and Mark’s paper ‘Defensive tool use in a coconut-carrying octopus’, was co-authored by Tom Tregenza. It was published in the journal Current Biology on 15 December.
The Deep Sea World Beyond SunlightTransparent sea cucumber, Enypniastes
From the Edge of Darkness to the Black Abyss: Marine Scientists Census 17,500+ Species and Counting
- Explorers report deep sea teeming with species that have never known sunlight;
- Describing all new species in a cup of deep seafloor mud “a daunting challenge;”
- Discovered: jumbo “Dumbo” octopod and its new-to-science cousin;
- Video captures “wildcat” tubeworm drilling for oil on ocean floor;
- Vibrant coral gardens found amid Pacific “Graveyard” of seamounts;
- En route to historic 1st global ocean Census: Oct. 2010
Census of Marine Life scientists have inventoried an astonishing abundance, diversity and distribution of deep sea species that have never known sunlight – creatures that somehow manage a living in a frigid black world down to 5,000 meters (~3 miles) below the ocean waves.
Revealed via deep-towed cameras, sonar and other vanguard technologies, animals known to thrive in an eternal watery darkness now number 17,650, a diverse collection of species ranging from crabs to shrimp to worms. Most have adapted to diets based on meager droppings from the sunlit layer above, others to diets of bacteria that break down oil, sulfur and methane, the sunken bones of dead whales and other implausible foods.
Five of the Census’ 14 field projects plumb the ocean beyond light, each dedicated to the study of life in progressively deeper realms – from the continental margins (COMARGE: Continental Margins Ecosystems) to the spine-like ridge running down the mid-Atlantic (MAR-ECO: Mid-Atlantic Ridge Ecosystem Project), the submerged mountains rising from the seafloor (CenSeam: Global Census of Marine Life on Seamounts), the muddy floor of ocean plains (CeDAMar: Census of Diversity of Abyssal Marine Life), and the vents, seeps, whale falls and chemically-driven ecosystems found on the margins of midocean ridges and in the deepest ocean trenches (ChEss: Biogeography of Deep-Water Chemosynthetic Systems).
Edward Vanden Berghe, who manages OBIS (Ocean Biogeographic Information System), the Census’ inventory of marine life observations, notes that, unsurprisingly, the number of records in the database falls off dramatically at deeper depths (see animation at http://coml.org/press-releases-2009) – a function of the dearth of sampling done in the deep sea.
However, Dr. Vanden Berghe reports that OBIS today records 5,722 species for which all recorded observations are deeper than 1,000 meters (~.62 miles) and 17,650 species for which all recorded observations are deeper than 200 meters, the depth where darkness stops photosynthesis.
Scientists working on the deep-sea Census number 344 and span 34 nations.
By the time the 10-year Census concludes in October, 2010, the five deep-sea projects will have collectively fielded more than 210 expeditions, including the first ever MARECO voyage in October-November this year, to explore the Mid-Atlantic Ridge south of the Equator, a scientific collaboration between Russia, Brazil, South Africa and Uruguay.
Each voyage is hugely expensive and challenged by often extreme ocean conditions and requirements that have kept the remotest reaches of Neptune’s realm impenetrable until recently.
While the collective findings are still being analyzed for release as part of the final Census report to be released in London on October 4, 2010, scientists say patterns of the abundance, distribution and diversity of deep-sea life around the world are already apparent.
Our male, “Chook”, was born in 1979 and has been at Adelaide Zoo since 1991.Awesome, worth visiting Adelaide Zoo to see Chook, and the two new pandas (after they arrive).
During winter lyrebirds sing and dance as part of an elaborate courtship display. About 80% of Chook’s song consists of expert mimicry. Here is list of some of the sounds Chook makes.
Bird sounds
Laughing Kookaburra
Regent honeyeater
Yellow tailed black cockatoo
Flock of rainbow lorikeets
Eastern whipbird
King Parrot
Marpie Lark
Australian Magpie
Noisy Miner
Red Wattlebird
Blackbird
Pied Currawong
Bush Stone-Curlew
Other sounds
Electric drill
Handsaw
“Hello Chook”
Chainsaw
Water drops
Truck reversing
Post-mix drink being poured
2 way radio chatter
Every day, tonnes of excess food is thrown away, wasted, even though much of it is perfectly edible. Every day, OzHarvest tries to do something about that contradiction. It collects at least some of the extra food and delivers it to charities that can make good and immediate use of it.I cringe when I see or know of food being wasted. This is such a logical solution, that it's a wonder why it took so long.
Albanian Custom Fades: Woman as Family ManIn such a patriarchal society (as it was then), I wonder whether the personal sacrifices were worth the advantages of living as a man. Still, despite such inequality, it was rather ironic that women could prove that they were equal to men by emulating them.
By DAN BILEFSKY
Published: June 25, 2008
KRUJE, Albania — Pashe Keqi recalled the day nearly 60 years ago when she decided to become a man. She chopped off her long black curls, traded in her dress for her father’s baggy trousers, armed herself with a hunting rifle and vowed to forsake marriage, children and sex.
Pashe Keqi, 78, took an oath of virginity when she was 20 to become the family patriarch after her father’s death in a blood feud. Photo by Johan Spanner for The New York Times
For centuries, in the closed-off and conservative society of rural northern Albania, swapping genders was considered a practical solution for a family with a shortage of men. Her father was killed in a blood feud, and there was no male heir. By custom, Ms. Keqi, now 78, took a vow of lifetime virginity. She lived as a man, the new patriarch, with all the swagger and trappings of male authority — including the obligation to avenge her father’s death.
She says she would not do it today, now that sexual equality and modernity have come even to Albania, with Internet dating and MTV invading after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Girls here do not want to be boys anymore. With only Ms. Keqi and some 40 others remaining, the sworn virgin is dying off.
“Back then, it was better to be a man because before a woman and an animal were considered the same thing,” said Ms. Keqi, who has a bellowing baritone voice, sits with her legs open wide like a man and relishes downing shots of raki. “Now, Albanian women have equal rights with men, and are even more powerful. I think today it would be fun to be a woman.”
The tradition of the sworn virgin can be traced to the Kanun of Leke Dukagjini, a code of conduct passed on orally among the clans of northern Albania for more than 500 years. Under the Kanun, the role of a woman is severely circumscribed: take care of children and maintain the home. While a woman’s life is worth half that of a man, a virgin’s value is the same: 12 oxen.
The sworn virgin was born of social necessity in an agrarian region plagued by war and death. If the family patriarch died with no male heirs, unmarried women in the family could find themselves alone and powerless. By taking an oath of virginity, women could take on the role of men as head of the family, carry a weapon, own property and move freely.
They dressed like men and spent their lives in the company of other men, even though most kept their female given names. They were not ridiculed, but accepted in public life, even adulated. For some the choice was a way for a woman to assert her autonomy or to avoid an arranged marriage.
“Stripping off their sexuality by pledging to remain virgins was a way for these women in a male-dominated, segregated society to engage in public life,” said Linda Gusia, a professor of gender studies at the University of Pristina, in Kosovo. “It was about surviving in a world where men rule.”
Taking an oath to become a sworn virgin should not, sociologists say, be equated with homosexuality, long taboo in rural Albania. Nor do the women have sex-change operations.
Known in her household as the “pasha,” Ms. Keqi said she decided to become the man of the house at age 20 when her father was murdered. Her four brothers opposed the Communist government of Enver Hoxha, the ruler for 40 years until his death in 1985, and they were either imprisoned or killed. Becoming a man, she said, was the only way to support her mother, her four sisters-in-law and their five children.
Ms. Keqi lorded over her large family in her modest house in Tirana, where her nieces served her brandy while she barked out orders. She said living as a man had allowed her freedom denied other women. She worked construction jobs and prayed at the mosque with men. Even today, her nephews and nieces said, they would not dare marry without their “uncle’s” permission.
When she stepped outside the village, she enjoyed being taken for a man. “I was totally free as a man because no one knew I was a woman,” Ms. Keqi said. “I could go wherever I wanted to and no one would dare swear at me because I could beat them up. I was only with men. I don’t know how to do women’s talk. I am never scared.”
When she was recently hospitalized for surgery, the other woman in her room was horrified to be sharing close quarters with someone she assumed was male.
Being the man of the house also made her responsible for avenging her father’s death, she said. When her father’s killer, by then 80, was released from prison five years ago, Ms. Keqi said, her 15-year-old nephew shot him dead. Then the man’s family took revenge and killed her nephew. “I always dreamed of avenging my father’s death,” she said. “Of course, I have regrets; my nephew was killed. But if you kill me, I have to kill you.”
In Albania, a majority Muslim country in the western Balkans, the Kanun is adhered to by Muslims and Christians. Albanian cultural historians said the adherence to medieval customs long discarded elsewhere was a byproduct of the country’s previous isolation. But they stressed that the traditional role of the Albanian woman was changing.
“The Albanian woman today is a sort of minister of economics, a minister of affection and a minister of interior who controls who does what,” said Ilir Yzeiri, who writes about Albanian folklore. “Today, women in Albania are behind everything.”
Some sworn virgins bemoan the changes. Diana Rakipi, 54, a security guard in the seaside city of Durres, in west Albania, who became a sworn virgin to take care of her nine sisters, said she looked back with nostalgia on the Hoxha era. During Communist times, she was a senior army officer, training women as combat soldiers. Now, she lamented, women do not know their place.
“Today women go out half naked to the disco,” said Ms. Rakipi, who wears a military beret. “I was always treated my whole life as a man, always with respect. I can’t clean, I can’t iron, I can’t cook. That is a woman’s work.”
But even in the remote mountains of Kruje, about 30 miles north of Tirana, residents say the Kanun’s influence on gender roles is disappearing. They said erosion of the traditional family, in which everyone once lived under the same roof, had altered women’s position in society.
“Women and men are now almost the same,” said Caca Fiqiri, whose aunt Qamile Stema, 88, is his village’s last sworn virgin. “We respect sworn virgins very much and consider them as men because of their great sacrifice. But there is no longer a stigma not to have a man of the house.”
Yet there is no doubt who wears the trousers in Ms. Stema’s one-room stone house in Barganesh, the family’s ancestral village. There, on a recent day, “Uncle” Qamile was surrounded by her clan, dressed in a qeleshe, the traditional white cap of an Albanian man. Pink flip-flops were her only concession to femininity.
After becoming a man at the age of 20, Ms. Stema said, she carried a gun. At wedding parties, she sat with the men. When she talked to women, she recalled, they recoiled in shyness.
She said becoming a sworn virgin was a necessity and a sacrifice. “I feel lonely sometime, all my sisters have died, and I live alone,” she said. “But I never wanted to marry. Some in my family tried to get me to change my clothes and wear dresses, but when they saw I had become a man, they left me alone.”
Ms. Stema said she would die a virgin. Had she married, she joked, it would have been to a traditional Albanian woman. “I guess you could say I was partly a woman and partly a man,” she said. “I liked my life as a man. I have no regrets.”
New Genus of Self-Destructive Palm found in Madagascar
PRESS RELEASE
Published 17 January 2008
A gigantic palm that flowers itself to death has been discovered in Madagascar. This previously unknown genus is entirely new to science and has been named Tahina spectabilis, which is Malagasy for "blessed" or "to be protected", and is also one of the given names of Anne-Tahina Metz, the daughter of the discoverer of the palm.
The palm has a huge trunk which towers over 18m high and enormous fan leaves which are 5m in diameter – the most massive palm ever to be found in Madagascar. It has an unusual and spectacular lifecycle; growing to dizzying heights before the stem tip converts into a giant terminal inflorescence and bursts into branches of hundreds of tiny flowers. Each flower is capable of being pollinated and developing into fruit and soon drips with nectar and is surrounded by swarming insects and birds. The nutrient reserves of the palm become completely depleted as soon as it fruits and the entire tree collapses and dies a macabre death.
Xavier Metz, a Frenchman who manages a cashew plantation nearby, and his family were walking in a remote area of north-western Madagascar when they stumbled across the giant palm with its huge pyramidal flowering structure sprouting out of the tip. They had never seen anything like it before and their photographs soon reached John Dransfield, co-author of the Field guide to the Palms of Madagascar and an Honorary Research Fellow of Kew, who was astonished when he saw material and images of the tree.
“I could hardly believe my eyes when I saw the images posted on the web,” he says. “The palm appeared superficially like the Talipot palm of Sri Lanka, but that had never been recorded for Madagascar. Clearly this was going to be an extremely exciting discovery and I just couldn’t wait to examine specimens in detail.”
When material of the palm collected by John’s Malagasy student Mijoro Rakotoarinivo finally reached the Herbarium at the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, the details of the flowers and inflorescence branches immediately suggested it was a new, undescribed species and genus with an affinity to the palm tribe Chuniophoeniceae. Leaf fragments were sent to the Jodrell Laboratory at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew for DNA analysis, where John’s conclusion was confirmed, that the palm was not just a new species but an entirely new genus within the tribe Chuniophoeniceae. There are only three other known genera in this tribe, Nannorrhops in Arabia, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan, Kerriodoxa in southern Thailand and Chuniophoenix in Vietnam, southern China and Hainan. The palm is from an evolutionary line not previously known to exist in Madagascar.
“The tribe has an extraordinary distribution and it is very difficult with current knowledge to explain how it could ever have reached Madagascar” says Dr Dransfield.
He travelled out to meet Xavier and Nathalie Metz - who had discovered the palm. It was concealed at the foot of a limestone outcrop in the rolling hills and flatlands of the Analalava district. This area has eight dry months a year and a mean annual temperature of 27ºC. The palm grows in deep fertile soil at the foot of the limestone hill in ground that is seasonally flooded. He was astonished that this enormous palm had never been discovered before and concluded that the life-cycle must be unusually long for this extremely rare flowering and death sequence to have never been detected. The palm is so massive that it can even be seen in Google Earth.
“Ever since we started work on the palms of Madagascar in the 1980s, we have made discovery after discovery – new species and new genera – but to me this is probably the most exciting of them all,” says Dr Dransfield. “Most particularly it represents an evolutionary line not previously known from the island and one with a highly paradoxical distribution. Coupled with the great scientific interest of the palm is the fact that it is such an amazingly spectacular species and with such an unusual life cycle. In a way discovering this palm is every bit as significant from a biological point of view as when the extraordinary Aye-aye lemur was first discovered.
“With less than a hundred individuals, this new palm presents significant challenges to conservationists, especially as the habitat seems so limited and flowering and fruiting of such a rare occurrence. We have very few opportunities to manage regeneration at the site or to disseminate it to botanic gardens in Madagascar and elsewhere. In a way the palm highlights the conservation challenges for all palms in Madagascar, many of which are seriously threatened with extinction mostly through habitat loss.”
Madagascar is home to more than 10,000 plant species and 90% of Madagascar’s plants occur nowhere else in the world. The country has a highly diverse palm flora with over 170 known species, all but six of which are endemic. Scientists predict that there are less than 100 individuals of this palm in Madagascar. Only 18 percent of Madagascar’s native vegetation remains intact and a third of Madagascar’s primary vegetation has disappeared since the 1970s.
Dr Dransfield had long talks with Xavier and Nathalie and local people from a nearby village to discuss how they thought the palm could be conserved. They worked together to set up a village committee to take control of the conservation of the palm and a patrol to protect the area it was found in. They are currently working with Kew and the Millennium Seed Bank to develop a method of selling seed to raise income for the villagers and to distribute the palm as widely as possible to botanic gardens and growers around the globe.
JOHN DRANSFIELD fls, MIJORO RAKOTOARINIVO, WILLIAM J. BAKER fls, ROSS P. BAYTON, JACK B. FISHER fls, JAMES W. HORN, BRUNO LEROY, XAVIER METZ (2008)This is significant scientifically, which is exciting.
A new Coryphoid palm genus from Madagascar
Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society 156 (1), 79–91.
doi:10.1111/j.1095-8339.2007.00742.x
A new Coryphoid palm genus from Madagascar
JOHN DRANSFIELD FLS (1), MIJORO RAKOTOARINIVO (2), WILLIAM J. BAKER FLS (1), ROSS P. BAYTON (1), JACK B. FISHER FLS (3), JAMES W. HORN (3), BRUNO LEROY (4) and XAVIER METZ (5)
(1) Herbarium, Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, Richmond, Surrey TW9 3AE, UK
(2) Kew House, Lot 11 J 131 B, Ambodivoanjo, Ivandry, Antananarivo, Madagascar
(3) Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden, 11935 Old Cutler Road, Coral Gables, Miami, FL 33156, USA
(4) c/o Mme Helimino, Société Fraise, BP 28 Antananarivo, Madagascar
(5) VERAMA Cashew Estate/Groupe UNIMA, BP93-401 Mahajanga, Madagascar
Abstract
Tahina J.Dransf. & Rakotoarinivo, gen. nov. (Arecaceae) is described as a new genus from north-western Madagascar, with a single species T. spectabilis J.Dransf. & Rakotoarinivo, sp. nov.Tahina is included within tribe Chuniophoeniceae of subfamily Coryphoideae, based on the strictly tubular imbricate rachilla bracts, the flowers grouped in cincinni with tubular bracteoles, and the stalk-like base to the corolla. This position is corroborated by evidence from plastid DNA. Lamina anatomy is discussed in detail, and similarities with and differences from the other members of Chuniophoeniceae are discussed. Based on the ecological characteristics of the single locality, predictions are made on where else it may occur in Madagascar. © 2008 The Linnean Society of London, Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society, 2008, 156, 79–91.
