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Magellanic penguins rehabilitated with the help of the International Fund for Animal Welfare are released back into the sea in the CNN video below. The IFAW has been covering the story in its animal rescue blog here. The post here discusses 399 seats booked on a flight for the penguins. This was the largest ever release of penguins in South America. The story began when many juvenile magellanic penguins washed up on the Brazilian coast. It is good that there was happy ending for many of these penguins.

Embedded video from CNN Video




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The National Geographic reports that this super crisp photograph of Jupiter was captured using a new computer-assisted process and a 27-foot telescope in Chile. The sharp image shows “features as small as 180 miles (300 kilometers) across.” The project’s leader Frank Marchis calls it a “new form of adaptive optics.”



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Everyone loves Hubble’s spectacular images but when these images first arrive at Earth they are black and white. A year later they glow with a rainbow of colors thanks to experts like Zolt Levay. Levay works for about a year to assign colors and create the final mosaic out of 48 seperate pictures. Levay also helped to create the terrific HubbleSite.org website. Read more here.

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Below is a video of a crab hitching a ride of a jellyfish. The iReport entry says the video was shot 30 miles southwest of Sanibel Island in the Gulf of Mexico. (via Twang of the Voice and Boing Boing)

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This is image of Hurricane Ivan taken from space on Sept. 15, 2004. Ivan had estimated winds of 135 mph at the time. The Boston Globe has a collection of impressive hurricanes from space photos here take by NASA.



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Reuters reports that biologists discovered a species of ant living in the Amazon that they believe has been around for 120 million years. The ant species is blind, subterranean and predatory. German biologists believe it is the oldest ant species on the planet

Researchers from Karlsruhe’s Natural History Museum found the 3-millimeter-long (0.118 inch) insect in the Amazon rainforest in 2007, and hope it will shed light on the early evolution of ants.



“It’s by far the most spectacular find of my 26-year career,” said museum biologist Manfred Verhaagh on Tuesday.



Scientists from Karlsruhe originally found an unidentified species of ant of a similar type in the Brazilian rainforest in 2003. However, due to an accident in the laboratory, the insect dried up, making further research impossible, Verhaagh said.



Last year a separate team from the museum’s research body was in the forest investigating fungus when they stumbled upon the tiny insect, and named it “Martialis heureka”.

The ant discovery is yet another reason why the Amazon rainforest needs to be preserved. Sciam says the scientists hope it will help lead to more information about how ants have evolved over time.



Photo Credit: Christian Rabeling, the University of Texas at Austin



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The aftermath of Hurricane Ike is starting to set in. Thousands of people have been rescued along the southeast Texas coast after they were inundated by Hurricane Ike’s powerful surge. KHOU, Chron.com and the Galveston Daily News are working hard to keep locals informed. The video from MSNBC explains how many of those who remained in Galveston during Hurricane Ike are now leaving because they city has become temporarily uninhabitable. There are no lights, no food and no running water and power may not return to the island for several weeks.

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Hurricane Ike is a monster storm with hurricane force winds that extend out 120 miles and tropical winds force that extend out 275 miles. Ike is forecast to become a Category 3 storm before landfall but the surge is expected to be larger than a typical Category 3 storm because of Hurricane Ike’s immense size. One thing that is certain about Hurricane Ike is that it will impact a large of large areas including some big metropolitan centers. Houston and Galveston will be hit very hard by Hurricane Ike. The surge will be devastating along the coast including Galveston and all along the southeast Texas coast and parts of the Louisiana coast. People living along parts of the coast have been
warned that they face certain death if they do not evacuate.



Cities like Austin, Dallas and Shreveport will also experience strong winds and heavy rain. There will be widespread power outages in Houston and if the impact path does not change there could be some long delays restoring power. There will also be power outages throughout north and east Texas. The current forecast even has Hurricane Ike as an extratropical depression near Detroit and then on into Canada so other U.S. cities may experience some fairly strong winds from Ike.



Below are some resources providing coverage and information about Hurricane Ike.



Main Resources



National Hurricane Center
| Wunderground Tropical Weather
| Weather.com Tropics
| Accuweather Hurricane Center
| FEMA



Local News Websites



Houston Chronicle
| Dallas Morning News
| Galveston County Daily News
| KHOU (Houston)
| TXCN
| WFAA
| KTRK (Houston)
| Click2Houston
| MyFox Houston
| Austin Statesman
| Shreveport Times



Live Streams



Live News Camera Hurricane Center
| KHOU Live
| Click2houston
| MyFoxHoustonLive
| KTRK Live



Maps



Google Maps Galveston
| Google Maps Houston
| IbisEye.com
| Skeetobite Weather
| Stormpulse.com Tracking Maps
| Texas Population Map
| Weather.com Current Buoy Wave Height
| Chron.com Ike Wind Map



Statellite Images



NHC Satellite Images
| Wunderground Satellite
| Weather.com Ike Satellite



Radar



NOAA Gavelston Radar
| Wunderground Galveston Radar
| Intellicast Galveston Radar



Energy/Oil Impact



Bloomberg Energy Prices
| Energy Impacts of Hurricane Ike
| Gulf Coast Offshore Oil Platform Maps
| The Oil Drum



Other Tools



Houston Winds by Zip Codes
| Surge forecast
| Tides and Currents (NOAA)



Blogs



Dr. Jeff Masters
| SciGuy
| TXCN Storm Chaser blog
| WFAA Blog



Videos



YouTube Ike
| iReport Ike
| Blinkx Hurricane Ike



Twitters



@Hurricanes
| @chronhurricane
| @dfw_ike
| @trackingike
| @gulfcoastlines
| @kstaweather
| @IkeLatest
| @Hurricane_Ike
| @RedCross
| #ike Twitter Search



Other Microblogs



@hurricanes on Plurk
| Hurricane Ike Plurk Search
| @hurricanes - Identi.ca
| @hurricanes - friendfeed
| @hurricanes - Rejaw
| Hurricane Friendfeed Room



Check back for periodic updates to the resource list. You can follow us on Twitter at @hurricanes
and at @science for general science news.



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Here’s a video showing flatworm’s penis fencing. Flatworms have both male and female sex organs and they fight to determine who gets to be the male and who gets to be the female. The winner of the fight is the flatworm that is able to pierce the other flatworm with one of its penises. You can read a little more about it here on PBS.org.

During penis fencing, each flatworm tries to pierce the skin of the other using one of its penises. The first to succeed becomes the de facto male, delivering its sperm into the other, the de facto female. For the flatworms, this contest is serious business. Mating is a fight because the worm that assumes the female role then must expend considerable energy caring for the developing eggs.

Posted in ____



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New Scientist reports that an object in the Kuiper belt named 2008 KV42 is orbiting the Sun backwards. The article says some comets can have retrograde orbits but this object does not appear to be a comet.

Researchers led by Brett Gladman of the University of British Columbia first spotted the maverick object in May. Observations suggest it is about 50 kilometres across and travels on a path that takes it from the distance of Uranus to more than twice that of Neptune (or between 20 and 70 astronomical units from the Sun, with 1 AU being the Earth-Sun distance).



Its orbit appears to have been stable for hundreds of millions of years, but astronomers say it may have been born elsewhere. “It’s certainly intriguing to ask where it comes from,” says Brian Marsden of the Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts.



Gladman says it was probably born in the same place as Halley-type comets. These comets also travel on retrograde or highly tilted orbits ? lasting between 20 and 200 years, but they come closer to the Sun.

Astronomers don’t believe the object nicknamed Drac originated in Kuiper Belt. Here’s a video showing 2008 KV42’s orbit. You can also read more about Drac here on Universe Today.

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