Frizzle chickens

 

A Frizzle is a type of chicken with feathers that curl outwards, rather than lying flat as in most chickens. While many consider the Frizzle to be an entirely separate breed, it is not. Chickens from all breeds may have a frizzled appearance. It is a variety within breeds, some with clean legs and others with feathering on the legs.Genetically, the frizzled gene is a dominant trait. As a result of its unusual look, Frizzles are primarily exhibition birds, and are included in the Standard of Perfection.

Frizzle Chickens Background & Appearance.

The Frizzle is thought to have originated in Southern Asia around 300 years ago, but the history is a little sketchy as some Frizzles were documented to have been kept in Europe in the 17th century.

This breed of chicken is generally regarded as an exhibition breed, the bantam variety being much more popular than the larger type. In fact the larger bird was virtually extinct, until a group of breeders set up an intensive program to promote them, they are still considered rare today.

One look at a Frizzle Chicken and you’ll understand how it got it’s name, the strange feathering curls towards the head and is even and as tight as posible. Frizzles are full breasted and have short erect bodies. Large tails and long wings complete the picture.

Frizzles come in a range of colours, the commonest being white, black,blue, buff and silver-grey. Less common colours being columbian, black-red, duckwing, cuckoo, spangle, brown-red, pile and spangle.

Beak colour is denoted by the plumage colour, with some white and some yellow. The curly feathers also get a category either frizzled, over-frizzled or flat-coated.

Caring For Frizzle Chickens.

Frizzles are hardy birds, which develop quickly and can be left to free roam, but if you want to keep them in a run, then ensure you have a top on it or they may escape.

If you live in a particularly wet area, and get a lot of rain, then your frizzles should be kept indoors, as their feather formation doesn’t tolerate  particularly wet weather. You should also make sure your drinkers don’t allow the birds feathers to become wet, as the wet curly feathers become a magnet for dirt and shavings etc.

A great breed for keeping pet chickens, but if you have toddlers, don’t let them run around the pen or your chooks will become nervous.

If you are considering breeding Frizzle Chickens,  then introduce new strains to your girls, as breeding from the same strain year upon year will result in birds with weak and sparse feathers.

Newly hatched chicks appear to be normal feathered when they hatch, but don’t worry, the feathers soon start to grow and curl outwards.

Frizzle Chickens, Egg Laying & Broodiness.

It is worth mentioning at this point, that a lot of breeders and chicken fanciers, don’t recognise frizzles as a breed, (except in the UK where it is a show breed) but a feather type. Therefore a lot of crossbred frizzle strains abound. So dependant on where you get your birds, egg laying and egg colouration can differ quite a lot.

Generally true bred Frizzles lay quite well and produce a cream or tinted medium egg. If your ‘frizzles’ are cross bred with Cochins or Australorps for instance, then the egg laying/colour could follow those breeds. It’s best to check with the breeder you get your chicks or eggs from as to the exact strain.

 

20-Meter Sea Level Rise, Five Million Years Ago

July 21, 2013 — Global warming five million years ago may have caused parts of Antarctica's large ice sheets to melt and sea levels to rise by approximately 20 metres, scientists report today in the journal Nature Geoscience.
The researchers, from Imperial College London, and their academic partners studied mud samples to learn about ancient melting of the East Antarctic ice sheet. They discovered that melting took place repeatedly between five and three million years ago, during a geological period called Pliocene Epoch, which may have caused sea levels to rise approximately ten metres.
Scientists have previously known that the ice sheets of West Antarctica and Greenland partially melted around the same time. The team say that this may have caused sea levels to rise by a total of 20 metres.
The academics say understanding this glacial melting during the Pliocene Epoch may give us insights into how sea levels could rise as a consequence of current global warming. This is because the Pliocene Epoch had carbon dioxide concentrations similar to now and global temperatures comparable to those predicted for the end of this century.
Dr Tina Van De Flierdt, co-author from the Department of Earth Science and Engineering at Imperial College London, says: "The Pliocene Epoch had temperatures that were two or three degrees higher than today and similar atmospheric carbon dioxide levels to today. Our study underlines that these conditions have led to a large loss of ice and significant rises in global sea level in the past. Scientists predict that global temperatures of a similar level may be reached by the end of this century, so it is very important for us to understand what the possible consequences might be."
The East Antarctic ice sheet is the largest ice mass on Earth, roughly the size of Australia. The ice sheet has fluctuated in size since its formation 34 million years ago, but scientists have previously assumed that it had stabilised around 14 million years ago.
The team in today's study were able to determine that the ice sheet had partially melted during this "stable" period by analysing the chemical content of mud in sediments. These were drilled from depths of more than three kilometres below sea level off the coast of Antarctica.
Analysing the mud revealed a chemical fingerprint that enabled the team to trace where it came from on the continent. They discovered that the mud originated from rocks that are currently hidden under the ice sheet. The only way that significant amounts of this mud could have been deposited as sediment in the sea would be if the ice sheet had retreated inland and eroded these rocks, say the team.
The academics suggest that the melting of the ice sheet may have been caused in part by the fact that some of it rests in basins below sea level. This puts the ice in direct contact with seawater and when the ocean warms, as it did during the Pliocene, the ice sheet becomes vulnerable to melting.
Carys Cook, co-author and research postgraduate from the Grantham Institute for Climate Change at Imperial, adds: "Scientists previously considered the East Antarctic ice sheet to be more stable than the much smaller ice sheets in West Antarctica and Greenland, even though very few studies of East Antarctic ice sheet have been carried out. Our work now shows that the East Antarctic ice sheet has been much more sensitive to climate change in the past than previously realised. This finding is important for our understanding of what may happen to the Earth if we do not tackle the effects of climate change."
The next step will see the team analysing sediment samples to determine how quickly the East Antarctic ice sheet melted during the Pliocene. This information could be useful in the future for predicting how quickly the ice sheet could melt as a result of global warming.

 

Source:http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/07/130721161502.htm

Milky Way's black hole pulling in gas cloud

July 19, 2013, An ill-fated gas cloud has begun a close encounter with the monstrous black hole at the center of the Milky Way, a fresh set of observations reveals. Astronomers don’t expect the cloud to emerge intact, resulting in an unprecedented view of our galaxy’s largest black hole feasting on its prey.

In December 2011, astronomers identified the gas cloud, called G2, and found that its orbit would bring it perilously close to the Milky Way’s central black hole by mid-2013. Nineteen months ago, the immense gravity of the black hole, which weighs in at about 4.3 million times the mass of the sun, was already squeezing and stretching the gas cloud as if it were pasta dough.
Now images captured in April with the Very Large Telescope in Chile show that the leading edge of G2 has whipped around the black hole’s far side. “The line of sight is such that the gas cloud is falling away from us toward the black hole,” says Stefan Gillessen of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, Germany. “Some material swung by the back side of the black hole and is now flying toward us.”
“If you think of the cloud as a roller coaster train, the first carriage has already swung by the black hole,” Gillessen says. “The main part of the train is still in approach.”
The gas cloud is whizzing through space at up to 3,000 kilometers per second, 100 times the speed at which Earth orbits the sun and a whopping 1 percent of the speed of light. In just a few months, the black hole has not only accelerated the cloud to those speeds, but reversed the motion of the front side a full 180 degrees. The findings will appear in an upcoming Astrophysical Journal.
Gillessen and his team also found that the black hole has stretched G2 to twice its length last year. As a result, the researchers predict that the bulk of the cloud won’t make its closest approach to the black hole until early next year. When that happens, telescopes around the world will point at the galactic center to capture the drama.
Dimitrios Giannios, an astrophysicist at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind., does not expect G2 to survive its encounter with the galaxy’s central black hole.  The cloud will probably fade from view in coming months as it continues to stretch out, he says. But its remnants might gradually get funneled into the black hole within a few decades, culminating in a rare bright display as they approach the point of no return. “It would be a last echo of the death of this cloud,” he says.

Source: http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/351747/description/Milky_Ways_black_hole_pulling_in_gas_cloud

Microchips That Mimic the Brain

 

July 22, 2013 — Novel microchips imitate the brain's information processing in real time. Neuroinformatics researchers from the University of Zurich and ETH Zurich together with colleagues from the EU and US demonstrate how complex cognitive abilities can be incorporated into electronic systems made with so-called neuromorphic chips: They show how to assemble and configure these electronic systems to function in a way similar to an actual brain.

No computer works as efficiently as the human brain -- so much so that building an artificial brain is the goal of many scientists. Neuroinformatics researchers from the University of Zurich and ETH Zurich have now made a breakthrough in this direction by understanding how to configure so-called neuromorphic chips to imitate the brain's information processing abilities in real-time. They demonstrated this by building an artificial sensory processing system that exhibits cognitive abilities.

New approach: simulating biological neurons
Most approaches in neuroinformatics are limited to the development of neural network models on conventional computers or aim to simulate complex nerve networks on supercomputers. Few pursue the Zurich researchers' approach to develop electronic circuits that are comparable to a real brain in terms of size, speed, and energy consumption. "Our goal is to emulate the properties of biological neurons and synapses directly on microchips," explains Giacomo Indiveri, a professor at the Institute of Neuroinformatics (INI), of the University of Zurich and ETH Zurich.
The major challenge was to configure networks made of artificial, i.e. neuromorphic, neurons in such a way that they can perform particular tasks, which the researchers have now succeeded in doing: They developed a neuromorphic system that can carry out complex sensorimotor tasks in real time. They demonstrate a task that requires a short-term memory and context-dependent decision-making -- typical traits that are necessary for cognitive tests. In doing so, the INI team combined neuromorphic neurons into networks that implemented neural processing modules equivalent to so-called "finite-state machines" -- a mathematical concept to describe logical processes or computer programs. Behavior can be formulated as a "finite-state machine" and thus transferred to the neuromorphic hardware in an automated manner. "The network connectivity patterns closely resemble structures that are also found in mammalian brains," says Indiveri.
Chips can be configured for any behavior modes
The scientists thus demonstrate for the first time how a real-time hardware neural-processing system where the user dictates the behavior can be constructed. "Thanks to our method, neuromorphic chips can be configured for a large class of behavior modes. Our results are pivotal for the development of new brain-inspired technologies," Indiveri sums up. One application, for instance, might be to combine the chips with sensory neuromorphic components, such as an artificial cochlea or retina, to create complex cognitive systems that interact with their surroundings in real time.

Source:http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/07/130722152705.htm  

Facebook for Molecules

Social media has expanded to reach an unlikely new target: molecules. Scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have created networks of molecular data similar to Facebook's recently debuted graph search feature. While graph search would allow Facebook users to find all their New York-living, beer-drinking buddies in one quick search, the NIST-designed networks could help scientists rapidly sift through enormous chemical and biological data sets to find substances with specific properties, for example all 5-ring chemicals with an affinity for enzyme A. The search approach could help speed up the development of new drugs and designer materials.

The NIST team will present their research at the upcoming American Crystallographic Association Meeting, held July 20-24 in Honolulu.
Choosing the Right Words
Molecules don't maintain their own online profiles, so a key challenge for the NIST research team was to develop a standard language for scientists to describe their research subjects. For example, one research group may describe a material's properties as glassy while another team might use the word vitreous, even though the two words have the same meaning, explained Ursula Kattner, a researcher in the Materials Science and Engineering Division at NIST.
One approach to the problem could be to define a standard set of words, but NIST scientists opted for a more flexible approach that could evolve with time. The search language they developed is similar to Indo-European languages like Sanskrit and Latin, which use short roots to build words based on a set of rules, said Talapady Bhat, a research chemist at NIST who has been leading the effort to develop a shared vocabulary for NIST's scientific databases. He gives the example of the Sanskrit word "yoga," which is based on the roots "Y(uj)," which means to join, "O," which means creator, God, or brain, and "Ga," which means motion or initiation. Similarly, scientists could take the three simple root words "red," "laser," and "light," and combine them into a single compound word "red-laser-light" that conveys a new concept. Using the root and rule-based approach will mean that scientists who know the roots can figure out the meaning of unfamiliar terms, and it also gives scientists flexibility to develop easily understandable new terms in the future.
The NIST team has already applied their root-based vocabulary rules to the chemical structures in PubChem, a "monstrous database" of millions of compounds and chemical substances, to the world wide protein data bank (PDB), and to specific NIST-based databases, said John Elliot, a biophysicist and another member of the team. While the scientific databases haven't reached a Facebook-like level of more than a billion users, they are actively used by many scientists in the NIST community and beyond.
Graphing Relationships
Once the preliminary vocabulary was established, the NIST team also worked to categorize the descriptions of molecules and scientific experiments in a hierarchical fashion that would allow a search to return comprehensive, yet precise results. A common problem with many search approaches is that they get too many results, said Elliot. Elliot described his team's approach as similar to the problem of locating the Doritos in a large Walmart store. "First you find the grocery market section, then the next level of hierarchy is snacks, after which you go to the chips section, and then you'll quickly know if they have Doritos or not," said Elliot. "So even if a store has a million products, you can find out if they have your product really quickly." The team said the hierarchical approach could also guide scientists who need to pick out key words to index in their research papers.
Organizing the huge amounts of data generated by science is a big challenge, the team said, but it has potentially huge payoffs. Effective graph searches could allow scientists to rapidly identify chemical structures and properties that are needed for the development of new drug agents or advanced materials (such as high efficiency jet turbines or flexible solar cells), results more than worthy of a Facebook like.

More Information: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/07/130718161358.htm