A "jogging flower" creeping away from trouble:

The humble sea lily (Endoxocrinus parrae) is an ocean animal closely related to the starfish, sea cucumber and sea urchin. With a ring of feathery fingers and a stalk 50 centimeters long, it resembles an ocean garden flower. And it has a sophisticated method for avoiding danger as caught in the video after the jump which shows a sea lily crawling slowly across the ocean floor on its fingers, dragging its broken stem behind it.The video was discovered by Tomasz Baumiller of the University of Michigan and Charles Messing of Nova Southeastern University's Oceanographic Center in Florida, both in the US, from archive footage captured over the last decade. It was presented at a meeting of the Geological Society of America on 16 October.


Other footage and photographs captured suggest that the sea lily makes its ocean floor dash to escape the attentions of sea urchins, which have been seen lurking on the sea bed behind the traveling sea lilies – "It's the lizard's tail strategy", Baumiller says. "The sea lily just leaves the stalk end behind. The sea urchin is preoccupied going after that, and the sea lily crawls away."

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Global Warming May Cause Kidney Stone Cases To Rise:

In a new study, researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center and UT Dallas, have predicted that Global warming may increase the number of people affected by kidney stones.The researchers predicted that by 2050, higher temperatures will cause an additional 1.6 million to 2.2 million kidney-stone cases, representing up to a 30 percent growth in some areas.

"This study is one of the first examples of global warming causing a direct medical consequence for humans," said Dr. Margaret Pearle, professor of urology at UT Southwestern and senior author of the paper, which appears in today's issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Kidney stones are excruciatingly painful hard deposits of minerals and salts that can form in the kidneys that tend to be more common in hot climates, with dehydration a key risk factor for the condition.

Kidney stones currently are most common in the southeastern United States, but this "kidney stone belt" is forecast to grow to the northward and westward, the researchers wrote in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Researchers have found that people who live in warmer regions have a higher rate of developing kidney stones compared to people who live in other regions.

This is caused by the fact that sweating removes fluid from the body, increasing salt concentration in urine. Not drinking enough water and other fluids or losing too much fluids through dehydration more likely in hotter climates can leave one's urine with higher concentrations of substances that can form kidney stones.

The fear is that by the year 2050, global warming may progress to the point where there is a great spike in the number of kidney stone cases. The annual cost in the United States of treating kidney stone cases could increase by 2050 by about $1 billion per year i.e. 25 percent more than current levels.

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Can We Predict Volcanic Eruptions?

Today there are many active volcanoes worldwide .Is there anything we have so that we can predict how and when they will erupt?
Its a very important question, as the world population grows, many and many people live in the potentially dangerous volcanic areas.Volcanic eruptions continue--as they have throughout most of geologic time--posing ever-greater threats to life and property.
Mt. Rainier looms over the Seattle/Tacoma area, endangering a population of more than three million people.Tungurahua Volcano, near the town of Banos and the larger city of Ambato, is an active volcano in the Eastern Cordillera of Ecuador's Andes Mountains. Approximately 20,000 people live in the area below the volcano.
The Chaiten volcano in southern Chile has been erupting .It's last eruption was 9000 years ago.
It is pumping quite a bit of ash onto the atmosphere. In fact it has a thin trail from it's point of origin across the continent and over the Atlantic.More than 4,000 people have already fled.
Another million people living in the Naples area are threatened by Mt. Vesuvius' continued unrest. Rather the predictions can be performed by the volcanologists as they can use some proper toolkits aur techniques like measuring vapours for the particular volcano but if that could be possible then why should thousands of lives destroy ??
The need for planning is urgent because the life is in danger.

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Check your Mental Health ::

Hopefully the above mental picture will make you laugh.However there is a story behind this
picture .The slogan was originally devised by Ann Lander to draw the attention of her audience.
So do u think that all of ur three closest friends are cool and nice?????.....lolz.
I was going through some stuffs and i found that pic and thought that it should be quite gud to be posted.Sometimes humour plays a very important role to convey any message to the public.

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Orkut Founder is ready to Marry his Boyfriend

It is not still official ,but the rumours are coming in that the orkut founder Orkut Buyukkokten is all set to marry with his boyfriend Derek Holbrook .
Orkut Buyukkokten(right) , Derek Holbrook(left) and their lovely friend Marissa Mayer is shown in this frienly looking picture.
Marisa Ann Mayer is the Vice President of Search Product and User Experience at American search engine company Google . She acts as a gatekeeper for their product release process, determining when or whether a particular Google product is ready to be released to users. She has become one of the public faces of Google, providing a number of press interviews and appearing at events frequently to speak on behalf of the company.

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Tips for Taking Great Baby Pictures

Babies are such beautiful creatures that you want to capture every new movement and every smile that comes along. (Even if that smile is attached to a smelly gas bubble!).

These tips are from Alexis Dawes who is a real mom and working for the parents to portrit their babies in a very efficient way that it looks really great .She also run the website to ease the parents regarding with the photography where she teaches parents how to take better pictures of their little one.

However the problem many parents have is that their lack of good photography skills can translate into pictures that are too dark, too bright, blurred, out of focus, uncentered, and so on.

If so, don't worry. These problems are easily fixable. An album full of mishaps can quickly be transformed by following these 4 tips...

• When taking pictures of babies lying on their backs, stand directly over them and shoot straight down.

take a solid color baby blanket and place it on the floor in a bright, sun filled room. When you are ready to take a picture , put baby on the blanket, and adjust it around baby, making sure not to put baby directly in the sunlight. Then get on your knees right over baby, aim straight down and snap away.

This technique will allow you to center the camera properly and you'll get some great close-up shots. The natural sunlight will often give you just enough light so your picture isn't too dark or too bright.

• Capture a range of emotions.

Smiling babies are cute. But so are crying babies and pouting babies and messy babies and sleeping babies.

Be sure to take pictures of your little one in all phases of his or her emotion filled life. You'll be amazed at how truly beautiful they are in non-traditional picture taking situations.

• Make bath time picture time.

While there are some babies who don't like water, most love it. They often become very expressive in the bath tub - laughing, cooing and splashing. So bath time often becomes a great opportunity to capture a few precious shots of your little one.

• If you use a disposable camera, choose a good one.
  

Choice of camera is one of the most important thing for the better photography.If you use a low quality disposable camera then it might discourage you as it can give to very horrible photographs as i used to have .

I learned a good lesson that camera should be of good quality.

Kodak Max HQ disposable camera is a proper choice. It's one of the more pricey disposable cameras. However the quality is fantastic in comparison to other disposables .

You can usually buy them inexpensively on eBay. Popular retailers like Target and Wal-Mart also run sales on them quite frequently.

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