2014 National Toy Hall of Fame Finalists

Who knew there is a Toy Hall of Fame. It's in Rochester NY.
Original article is here

2014 National Toy Hall of Fame Finalists

The following 12 toys are finalists for 2014 induction into The Strong’s National Toy Hall of Fame. Tell us your favorite 2014 finalist.

	American Girl Dolls Created in 1986 by educator and newscaster Pleasant Rowland, the 18-inch American Girl dolls (and their accompanying books) explore America’s social and cultural history. Each doll comes with a unique narrative that fits her time period, such as Molly McIntire, who is waiting for her father to return home from World War II. In 1995 the Pleasant Company also released the My American Girl line of dolls  (originally under the name American Girl Dolls of Today) and designed them to look like their owners.
	Bubbles The origin of soap bubbles is anything but transparent. People in Europe manufactured high quality soaps by the 16th century, but no documentation exists of the first use of soap bubbles for fun. However, during the 17th century, the earliest paintings of children playing with bubbles appeared in the region of Flanders (now part of modern-day Belgium). A Chicago company called Chemtoy began selling bubble solution in the 1940s and bubbles have been popular with children ever since.
	Fisher Price Little People Fisher-Price first offered its wooden Little People in the 1959 Safety School Bus. Made of brightly painted wood and fashioned for little hands, the figures help small children imagine big adventures at the Little People school, airport, service station, amusement park, zoo, and farm. During the 1990s, Fisher-Price added arms and legs to the figures.
	Hess Toy Trucks Hess toy trucks drove onto the scene in 1964 and were among the first toys to boast working lights and realistic sounds. In the years since, the holiday favorite has included or come with a range of vehicles—such as a seafaring oil tanker, fire truck, training van, patrol car, race car, construction vehicle, transport truck with space shuttle, and helicopter. Each year, an iconic commercial jingle reminds holiday shoppers that, “The Hess truck is back, and it’s better than ever!”
	Little Green Army Men Ever since the 1930s, little green army men have occupied territories, lands, and entire make-believe nations. Molded with incredible detail and manufactured by the millions, the plastic toy soldiers have fuel kids’ imaginations, prompt their narratives, and encourage their stories of daring and heroism.
	My Little Pony Introduced in the 1980s and reintroduced in 2003, the My Little Pony line of mini horses encourages children in traditional forms of doll play—fantasy, storytelling, hair grooming, and collecting. The small pastel ponies have come in more than 1,000 varieties, all with elongated tails and manes made to be brushed. The toys peaked in popularity between 1982 and 1993—even outselling Barbie for several years.
	Operation Skill Game An industrial design student created the Operation Skill Game as a class project in 1962 and—much to his delight—it went on to be one of the most successful dexterity games of all times. The game asks players to remove small, plastic body parts from the tight recesses of Cavity Sam, the “patient” on the operating table. A nerve-wracking buzzer jolts those without steady hands.
	Paper Airplane No one knows the exact origin of the paper airplane, but Leonardo DaVinci wrote about making flying machines out of parchment as early as the 15th century. Through the years, the simplicity and play value of the paper airplane has made it an inexpensive playtime fixture. With a simple sheet of paper and some creativity, anyone can produce a toy that takes off with infinite aeronautical possibilities.
	Pots and Pans Pots and pans can do more than boil and sauté. With some imagination, these common household products become an armored helmet, a general’s hat, or a set of drums. They allow young children to develop fine motor skills, explore concepts of size and sorting, and compose musical masterpieces.
	Rubik’s Cube Invented in the early 1970s by a Hungarian lecturer, the three-dimensional Rubik’s Cube satisfies a kid’s sense of intrigue and inspires serious mathematicians. The colorful cubes can be arranged 43 quintillion (a number with six commas) ways and have inspired organized competitions across the globe. In 2014, a Canadian competitor set a world record by completing a Rubik’s Cube in 12.56 seconds.
	Slip ‘N Slide A hot summer day, a vinyl-like sheet, and a garden hose inspired the creation of the Slip‘N Slide in 1960. Wham-O, the toy company behind the Frisbee and Hula Hoop, released a formal Slip‘N Slide, refashioned out of yellow plastic, the next year.  Since then, children across America have belly-flopped onto more than nine million of these slick water toys.
	Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comic book was originally self-published by two struggling artists to satirize comic book heroes and action figures in the early 1980s. However, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles found themselves transformed into comic book and play icons, transmedia pioneers, and an enduring popular cultural sensation known as “Turtlemania”—generating toys, television shows, movies, video games, and merchandise for more than 30 years.

My Kira is way prettier

Miss New York, Kira Kazantsev, was crowned Miss America Sunday night.....  Third year in a row for New York.

Miss New York pulls a Pitch Perfect with a cups version of "Happy" for her talent in Miss America 2015. Credit: UPI/John Angelillo Photo via Newscom

Shocking Insight into Steve Jobs life with his kids

 Original article here

 When Steve Jobs was running Apple, he was known to call journalists to either pat them on the back for a recent article or, more often than not, explain how they got it wrong. I was on the receiving end of a few of those calls. But nothing shocked me more than something Mr. Jobs said to me in late 2010 after he had finished chewing me out for something I had written about an iPad shortcoming.

“So, your kids must love the iPad?” I asked Mr. Jobs, trying to change the subject. The company’s first tablet was just hitting the shelves. “They haven’t used it,” he told me. “We limit how much technology our kids use at home.”

I’m sure I responded with a gasp and dumbfounded silence. I had imagined the Jobs’s household was like a nerd’s paradise: that the walls were giant touch screens, the dining table was made from tiles of iPads and that iPods were handed out to guests like chocolates on a pillow.

Nope, Mr. Jobs told me, not even close.

Since then, I’ve met a number of technology chief executives and venture capitalists who say similar things: they strictly limit their children’s screen time, often banning all gadgets on school nights, and allocating ascetic time limits on weekends.

I was perplexed by this parenting style. After all, most parents seem to take the opposite approach, letting their children bathe in the glow of tablets, smartphones and computers, day and night.

Yet these tech C.E.O.’s seem to know something that the rest of us don’t.

Chris Anderson, the former editor of Wired and now chief executive of 3D Robotics, a drone maker, has instituted time limits and parental controls on every device in his home. “My kids accuse me and my wife of being fascists and overly concerned about tech, and they say that none of their friends have the same rules,” he said of his five children, 6 to 17. “That’s because we have seen the dangers of technology firsthand. I’ve seen it in myself, I don’t want to see that happen to my kids.”

The dangers he is referring to include exposure to harmful content like <adult stuff>, bullying from other kids, and perhaps worse of all, becoming addicted to their devices, just like their parents.

Alex Constantinople, the chief executive of the OutCast Agency, a tech-focused communications and marketing firm, said her youngest son, who is 5, is never allowed to use gadgets during the week, and her older children, 10 to 13, are allowed only 30 minutes a day on school nights.

Evan Williams, a founder of Blogger, Twitter and Medium, and his wife, Sara Williams, said that in lieu of iPads, their two young boys have hundreds of books (yes, physical ones) that they can pick up and read anytime.

So how do tech moms and dads determine the proper boundary for their children? In general, it is set by age.

Children under 10 seem to be most susceptible to becoming addicted, so these parents draw the line at not allowing any gadgets during the week. On weekends, there are limits of 30 minutes to two hours on iPad and smartphone use. And 10- to 14-year-olds are allowed to use computers on school nights, but only for homework.

“We have a strict no screen time during the week rule for our kids,” said Lesley Gold, founder and chief executive of the SutherlandGold Group, a tech media relations and analytics company. “But you have to make allowances as they get older and need a computer for school.”

Some parents also forbid teenagers from using social networks, except for services like Snapchat, which deletes messages after they have been sent. This way they don’t have to worry about saying something online that will haunt them later in life, one executive told me.

Although some non-tech parents I know give smartphones to children as young as 8, many who work in tech wait until their child is 14. While these teenagers can make calls and text, they are not given a data plan until 16. But there is one rule that is universal among the tech parents I polled.

“This is rule No. 1: There are no screens in the bedroom. Period. Ever,” Mr. Anderson said.

While some tech parents assign limits based on time, others are much stricter about what their children are allowed to do with screens.

Ali Partovi, a founder of iLike and adviser to Facebook, Dropbox and Zappos, said there should be a strong distinction between time spent “consuming,” like watching YouTube or playing video games, and time spent “creating” on screens.

“Just as I wouldn’t dream of limiting how much time a kid can spend with her paintbrushes, or playing her piano, or writing, I think it’s absurd to limit her time spent creating computer art, editing video, or computer programming,” he said.

Others said that outright bans could backfire and create a digital monster.

Dick Costolo, chief executive of Twitter, told me he and his wife approved of unlimited gadget use as long as their two teenage children were in the living room. They believe that too many time limits could have adverse effects on their children.

“When I was at the University of Michigan, there was this guy who lived in the dorm next to me and he had cases and cases of Coca-Cola and other sodas in his room,” Mr. Costolo said. “I later found out that it was because his parents had never let him have soda when he was growing up. If you don’t let your kids have some exposure to this stuff, what problems does it cause later?”

I never asked Mr. Jobs what his children did instead of using the gadgets he built, so I reached out to Walter Isaacson, the author of “Steve Jobs,” who spent a lot of time at their home.

“Every evening Steve made a point of having dinner at the big long table in their kitchen, discussing books and history and a variety of things,” he said. “No one ever pulled out an iPad or computer. The kids did not seem addicted at all to devices.”

Selfie - Rosetta Spacecraft with asteroid background

BBC News, original article here

Rosetta takes 'selfie' ahead of landing site selection

The Rosetta spacecraft has sent a hauntingly beautiful picture of itself from deep space. It was taken with the CIVA camera situated on Rosetta's landing craft known as Philae. The image was taken on 7 September from a distance of about 50km from the comet seen at the top of the picture. It shows the edge of the spacecraft and one of its 14m-long solar wings glistening in sunlight against the blackness of space. Faint details of the spacecraft's protective blanket, the ridges of one of the solar wing's supports can be seen clearly as can the wiring and hinges on the wing itself.

At the top of the picture is Comet 67P also known as Churyumov-Gerasimenko with each of its distinct lobes visible.

Five possible landing sites were chosen last month. They were selected because they appeared to be relatively flat and smooth. But as the spacecraft has neared the comet, its rocky jagged surface which can be clearly seen in this picture has come sharply into focus.

 

Latest pictures show that the comet has jagged cliffs and prominent boulders, making landing even more precarious than had been thought last month when five potential landing sites were chosen.

Spinosaurus part 2 - I wonder who took this great picture?

This article from a UK newspaper, here. This article includes the story of how they recently started finding fossils. Unique story.

Fossil remains found in Morocco add to evidence that huge meat-eating Spinosaurus spent most of its time in water

Spinosaurus, the only known dinosaur adapted to life in water, swam the rivers of north Africa 100m years ago. Image from the October issue of National Geographic. Illustration: Davide Bonadonna/University of Chicago/Natural History Museum, Milan

The largest predatory dinosaur ever found terrorised the water more than the land, according to remarkable fossils dug up in the Moroccan Sahara. The bones show that the meat-eating Spinosaurus spent most of its time in water, making it the first known dinosaur to have adopted a semi-aquatic lifestyle. It had small nostrils far back on its crocodile-like skull which allowed it to breathe when its head was partially submerged. It had stubby legs, long feet and large, flat claws, leading experts to suspect it had webbed feet. The teeth are not the sharp steak-knife weapons seen in land predators, but conical ones better suited to impaling soft prey such as fish.

“The animal we are resurrecting today is so bizarre, it is going to force dinosaur experts to rethink many things they thought they knew about dinosaurs,” said Nizar Ibrahim, a palaeontologist at Chicago University. “So far, Spinosaurus is the only dinosaur that shows these adaptations.
An adult spinosaurus weighed up to 20 tonnes and reached 15 metres long, making it longer than the largest tyrannosaurus rex specimen. In the water, much of the beast would have been submerged, save for the two-metre sail on its back.

Many experts have long believed that spinosaurus lived in water, based on studies of its anatomy and habitats. The idea was boosted by Chinese scientists who found that spinosaur teeth carried the chemical signature of a marine diet.

Spinosaurus was first identified from bones dug up in the western desert of Egypt in 1911. The bones, dated to 95m years ago, were described by the German palaeontologist Ernst Stromer, but were destroyed when the RAF accidentally bombed Munich’s state palaeontology museum in April 1944.
The latest analysis comes after researchers brought together Stromer’s surviving notes, old museum specimens, and new spinosaur fossils found in 97m-year-old cliff sediments known as the Kem Kem beds in the Moroccan Sahara.

The most important fossil was a partial skeleton that had apparently found its way from a local fossil collector to a museum in Milan. Ibrahim said he had seen the fossils on a trip to Italy and realised they looked familiar. The sighting led him on an unlikely journey.

In 2008, Ibrahim was in Erfoud, a town near the border with Algeria, and had been approached by a man carrying a cardboard box. In it were spinosaur tail spines. Ibrahim was convinced they belonged to the same fossil as the remains in Milan. He set about tracking the man down to find out where the fossils had been excavated and to repatriate the remains to Morocco.

Workers grind the rough edges off a life-sized reconstruction of the Spinosaurus skeleton. Spinosaurus will be the subject of an exhibition at the National Geographic Museum in Washington DC, opening on Friday. Photograph: Mike Hettwer/University of Chicago/Natural History Museum of Milan

Ibrahim knew nothing about the man other than that he had a moustache, which did little to boost his hopes of success. But after much searching he had a stroke of luck. “We were in a cafe in Erfoud and I saw my dreams going down the drain. I thought we were never going to find the guy. But at that very moment … a person walked past our table. I caught a glimpse of his face and immediately recognised it. It was the man we were looking for.”

He took them to where he had found the spinosaur fossils. There, Ibrahim and his colleagues discovered more spinosaurus remains, including teeth, and vertebrae and pieces of jaw.
Now desert, the Kem Kem beds were once criss-crossed with rivers teeming with car-sized coelacanths, seven-metre-long sawfish, giant lungfish, sharks and several species of crocodile-like predators. It was the wrong place for a swim but bountiful for a fearsome spinosaur.

Inspecting the bones, researchers found neurovascular openings on the spinosaur snout, which are thought to have harboured pressure sensors to detect movement of prey in the water. They also found bad news for the makers of Jurassic Park III which features a villainous spinosaur walking on its hind legs. The animal’s centre-of-gravity was too far forward to balance that way, the researchers claim. Instead, the beast seems to have walked on all fours, making it the only meat-eating dinosaur known to do so. Details of the findings are reported in the journal Science.

Paul Barrett, a dinosaur expert at the Natural History Museum in London, said the evidence for spinosaurs living a semi-aquatic life was compelling before the latest fossils were described. But he added that if the latest collection of bones belonged to a single animal they were hugely valuable because other spinosaur remains are so scant.

“I really want to know how confident they are that all the bones belong to same specimen,” he said. Fossils are often sold piece by piece, so confirming the provenance of the remains is particularly important. “The only person who saw it in the ground is the fossil dealer,” Barrett said.

Spinosaurus will star in a new exhibition at the National Geographic Museum in Washington DC, opening on Friday. It will feature in a National Geographic/NOVA special, airing at 9pm on PBS on 5 November.

Stonehenge - the circle just keeps getting larger and always more mysterious

Original article here

Envisioning an even bigger Stonehenge: New maps reveal 17 previously unknown structures at the site of the British monument

By Sarah Kaplan September 12 at 7:16 AM

Though Stonehenge now stands by itself in an empty field in southern England, new maps show that the iconic stone circle was once part of a sprawling complex of prehistoric monuments. (Courtesy of Geert Verhoeven/LBI for Archaeological Prospection & Virtual Archaeology)

Today, the word “Stonehenge” evokes an image of an eerie stone circle standing alone on a windswept plane.

But new digital maps show the prehistoric monument didn’t always look that way. Those 24-foot-tall, 90,000-pound blocks we still find so impressive were actually part of a much larger complex of shrines — including an even-larger “super henge” nearly half a kilometer in diameter.

Using magnetometer readings, ground-penetrating radar surveys and 3D lasar scans, researchers were able to map 17 previously unknown structures that were once neighbors to Stonehenge. (Courtesy of Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Archeological Prospection and Virtual Archeology)

The maps, which were published Wednesday, were composed using magnetometer measurements, ground-penetrating radar surveys and 3D laser scans by researchers at the Stonehenge Hidden Landscapes Project. “It was like a large archaeological, geophysical circus come to town,” says project co-leader Vincent Gaffney, an archaeology professor at the University of Birmingham. “We had tractors pulling magnetometers, bikes, everything.”

Driving this machinery across the field surrounding Stonehenge, archaeologists were able to “see through” the ground to detect traces of what once had been. Those traces appear as smudges on the landscape, looking more like microscope images of amoebas than the remains of a giant stone shrine.

Magnetometers like the one being driven here by a member of the Stonehenge Hidden Landscapes Project team are used to “see through” the ground to detect traces of ancient structures that once stood there. - of Geert Verhoeven/LBI for Archaeological Prospection & Virtual Archaeology)

But Gaffney says that the use of multiple technologies let his team “squeeze the majority of information that is available” out of the landscape. And from a series of grainy images, archaeologists were able to reconstruct 17 distinct structures spanning an area the size of 1,250 soccer fields.

Among the new finds are prehistoric pits that form “astronomical alignments,” a timber structure predating Stonehenge in which bodies of the dead were ritually “defleshed” (creepily, the term means exactly what you think it does) and of course, the “super henge” at nearby Durrington Walls, believed to be the largest stone circle in the world.

The discoveries should change the way we think about the area around Stonehenge, Gaffney says. Far from an isolated monument amid a desolate landscape, the maps paint a picture of a bustling complex, complete with ponds, boundary ditches, and smaller sub-chapels clustered around the main stone circle. He envisions the area as part of an ancient procession route — one to which England’s prehistoric residents might have flocked 4,000 years ago.

But largest gathering for which the magnetometers found archaeological evidence is a bit more recent. “During the free festivals of the 1980s, people dropped bottle caps everywhere,” Gaffney says, laughing. “It’s just a mass of little metal specks with the magnetometers.”

“But how do you see crowds like that in a period when people didn’t drop metal like that? The place could have been heaving and you’d never know,” he added.

If only prehistoric people drank beer.   {Funny ending, I wonder what prehistoric people actually drank? Probably something fermented...}

Spinosaurus part 1 - First ever evidence of a swimming, shark-eating dinosaur

Wow, there's a whole bunch of new dinosaur discoveries!!! That's exciting! Yes, were are definitely going to see this at the museum!!  Original article here.

When it wasn't putting T. rex to shame, the dinosaur Spinosaurus spent its time swimming -- and chowing down on sharks.

Until now, scientists didn't have any proof that there were swimming dinosaurs. There were some marine reptiles prowling the seas, to be sure, but paleontologists couldn't find fossils that put dinosaurs in the water.

New fossil evidence published Thursday in Science changes that, and the  Spinosaurus aegyptiacus is breaking records left and right. It's now the largest predatory dinosaur to have ever roamed the planet — nearly 10 feet longer than the largest T. rex specimen — although the carnivore was still dwarfed by some of its plant-eating contemporaries. But more importantly, Spinosaurus has the distinction of providing our first ever evidence for a semi-aquatic dinosaur.

Spinosaurus was discovered in the Sahara more than a century ago by German paleontologist Ernst Freiherr Stromer von Reichenbach, but all of his fossils were destroyed during World War II.
When a partial skeleton was uncovered in the Moroccan Sahara -- in a place once home to a massive system of rivers full of all sorts of sharks and other predators  -- scientists had a new clue that there was something fishy about the massive dino.

In addition to revealing a record-breaking length, digital modeling of the skeleton suggested a whole fleet of aquatic adaptations. Tiny nostrils, placed far back on the middle of the dinosaur's skull, presumably allowed it to breathe as it swam at the surface. It also had openings at the end of its snout that are reminiscent of ones in crocodiles and alligators. In the modern animals, these openings house receptors that let them sense movement in the water.

Huge, slanted, interlocking teeth seem perfectly shaped to catch fish, and hook-like claws would have been ideal for catching hold of slippery prey under the water. Big, flat feet (perhaps even webbed) would have been well-suited to paddling water or stomping through mud, and some unusually dense limb bones (more like those seen in penguins than those found in other dinosaurs, the researchers report) would have allowed it to keep itself under the water, instead of floating.

The dinosaur's skeletal shape indicates that it would have been a strange sight to us on land. The Spinosaurus's center of gravity was pushed forward by its long neck, so it was almost certainly impossible for it to walk on two legs. In fact, the Spinosaurus's legs and pelvis are quite like those seen in early whales -- much better for paddling than for walking. Like whales, these dinosaurs probably evolved from land-dwelling ancestors to become semi-aquatic.

Skull reconstruction of Spinosaurus aegyptiacus showing discovered bones in blue. (Image by Davide Bonadonna, Ibrahim et al., Science/AAAS)

 

Scientists aren't quite sure how Spinosaurus moved when it left the water -- which it must have done, at the very least, to lay and nest eggs. Spinosaurus didn't have the kind of limbs that scientists would expect in a four-legged animal, but it also couldn't have balanced on its hind legs for very long.
"I think that we have to face the fact that the Jurassic Park folks have to go back to the drawing board on Spinosaurus," co-author and University of Chicago paleontologist Paul Sereno said in a teleconference held by Science on Wednesday. "It was not a balancing, two-legged animal on land. It would have been something very peculiar."

This isn't to say that Spinosaurus wouldn't have been an impressive sight on land. "It would have been a fearsome animal. There's no question about it, you would not want to meet this animal on land," Sereno said. "But it was not gallivanting across the landscape."

While paleontologists continue to puzzle over how the Spinosaurus managed to walk, you can visit a life-size skeletal replica of the creature at the National Geographic Museum in Washington. The exhibit will run Sept. 12th through April 12.

Newly discovered dinosaur, Dreadnoughtus, takes title of largest terrestrial animal

 Another great article from the WashPost

Scientists have discovered the fossilized remains of a new long-necked, long-tailed dinosaur that has taken the crown for largest terrestrial animal with a body mass that can be accurately determined.
Measurements of bones from its hind leg and foreleg revealed that the animal was 65 tons, and still growing when it died in the Patagonian hills of Argentina about 77 million years ago. “To put this in perspective, an African elephant is about five tons, T. rex is eight tons, Diplodocus is 18 tons, and a Boeing 737 is around 50 tons,” said study author and paleontologist Kenneth Lacovara at Drexel University. “And then you have Dreadnoughtus at 65 tons.”

Dreadnoughtus, meaning “fears nothing,” is named after the impervious early 20th century battleships. Although it was a plant-eater, a healthy Dreadnoughtus likely had no real issues with predators due to its intimidating size and muscular, weaponized tail.

(PhyloPic/Lacovara et. al/Boeing/Campione/Evans/Benson et. al)

 

But its enormous bulk also had a downside. Based on the width and strength of its skeleton, toppling over would likely spell death for such a heavy animal. “If you look at its really big ribs, there's no way they're going to withstand 65 tons of weight on top of them,” he said. “It would have been a catastrophic event in the life of a Dreadnoughtus if it fell over.”

“How do you come up with a body size that is so enormous when you're a terrestrial animal?” said Luis Chiappe, director of the National History Museum of Los Angeles's Dinosaur Institute, who was not involved in the study. “You need to have a structural design that allows you to support a body like that, and you have to be potentially adapted to eat 24 hours a day, nonstop, with a minimal amount of sleep.”

The study was published online Thursday in Scientific Reports.

Lead researcher Kenneth Lacovara holds a toe bone. (Meeri Kim)

 

On the first day of the 2005 field season in southern Argentina, Lacovara spotted a little lump of bone sticking out of the ground. It was maybe the 20th fossil he had found that day, so he didn't think much of it. As he kept digging, he realized it was a massive dinosaur femur that stretched over six feet long.
Lacovara still wasn't all that thrilled — isolated bones are found all the time — until more and more pieces started popping up. By the end of that first day, he had added a tibia, a fibula and a half dozen tail vertebrae to his collection.

“At that point, I'm pretty excited,” he said. “But I had no idea that we were going to walk away with 130 bones.”

The huge creature also had a smaller companion, which Lacovara and his colleagues also dug up. Both got caught in quicksand, which is how their bones became so well-preserved.

“This is clearly a spectacular find, and I know what it takes to collect these things,” said Chiappe. “It's grueling work.”

The skeleton of Dreadnoughtus schrani is remarkably complete for a dinosaur of this size — over 70 percent of the bones were dug up, excluding the head. Typically these long-necked, long-tailed dinosaurs (called sauropods) have tiny skulls, so those bones tend not to survive. For instance, Dreadnoughtus's was probably about the size of a horse's head.

Also, such massive giants tend to leave only fragments of their skeleton behind, making their weight hard to pin down. In general, the smallest circumference of the humerus and femur tend to correlate well with an animal's weight, so paleontologists use this method for estimation.

So there may be more massive dinosaurs out there than Dreadnoughtus, but their masses can't be accurately calculated without those particular bones. The previous contender for biggest land animal with a mass that could be determined by bone circumference was another Argentine titanosaur called Elaltitan lilloi first described in 2012. It was estimated at 47 tons.

To look for hints of age, Lacovara and his colleagues looked for any traces of bone growth. As the animal gets older, parts of the skeleton will fuse together, and its bone growing cells will morph from fluffy to flat.

“With Dreadnoughtus, there's no indication that there was any cessation or slowing of growth [in the bones],” he said. “When it died at 65 tons, it was growing fast, which is kind of scary.” Titanosaurs, a subgroup of sauropods that includes Dreadnoughtus, are thought to grow rapidly and reach full adult size in only 20 or 30 years. But surprisingly, their eggs are not overly large. The largest dinosaur eggs found have been about the size of a soccer ball.

“The hatchling from an egg the size of a football is not very big,” said Chiappe. “But in two decades, the hatchling would grow to become an enormous animal the size of two, three school buses put together.” Chiappe, who has worked in Patagonia for a number of years and is originally from Argentina, discovered a large sauropod hatchery in 1997 that served as evidence that these dinosaurs laid eggs and huddled together in large nesting colonies. “I would imagine [Dreadnoughtus] would have had a very similar nesting behavior: the congregation of hundreds or thousands of 60-ton females gathering together to nest in a lost valley somewhere,” he said.

The researchers have a whopping 10 Dreadnoughtus papers in the pipeline, four of which are already written, that take the analysis a step further. One of the upcoming studies looks at the dinosaur's locomotion through robotic and computer simulations, using 3D scans of the bones that are publicly available for free download along with the current study. “Kids are going to be able to download the Dreadnoughtus bones and play with them,” said Lacovara.

Scientists unearth the tail, with neural spines to the left and chevrons to the right. (Lacovara)

BP’s ‘gross negligence’

BP’s ‘gross negligence’ caused Gulf oil spill, federal judge rules

 Original post is here

A federal judge in New Orleans on Thursday ruled that BP’s “gross negligence” and “willful misconduct” had caused the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 and that the company’s “reckless” behavior made it subject to fines of as much as $4,300 a barrel under the Clean Water Act.
The ruling by District Court Judge Carl Barbier means that the government can impose penalties nearly four times as large as it could if BP were not found guilty of gross negligence.

The ruling could open up the company to fines as much as $17 billion. BP has set aside $3.5 billion for potential Clean Water Act fines and has noted that in previous oil spill cases, the government and the courts have imposed penalties far lower than the maximum. Nonetheless, the price of BP shares tumbled nearly 6 percent on the news.

BP issued a statement Thursday saying that it “strongly disagrees with the decision issued today.”
“The law is clear that proving gross negligence is a very high bar that was not met in this case,” the company said. “BP believes that an impartial view of the record does not support the erroneous conclusion reached by the District Court.”

Nut Price Spikes Stoke Nutella Shortage Fears

Original Article here from August 19, 2014

It's not time to start stockpiling little jars of chocolate but poor weather in Turkey has sent hazelnut prices surging 60 percent to their highest levels in 10 years. That's unbottled speculation that Ferrero Rocher, the largest global buyer of hazelnuts, could be under pressure, especially with pricing and availability of its signature spread, Nutella. Hazelnut crops are currently estimated at around 520,000 tons, as much as 280,000 tons below initial estimates. "It’s difficult to know whether the fears of a Nutella shortage are overblown, but it is certainly feasible to expect extra pressure on supply in view of ongoing strong demand and a much smaller crop in Turkey, due to frost damage to the bloom in March," said Julian Gale, Food News deputy editor. "I don’t know whether Ferrero has enough contracts to weather fluctuations like this." Speculators in Turkey can fuel increases, added Gale, by holding back stock or exaggerating weather concerns. The company did not return multiple calls and emails seeking comment.

- Ben Popken