World’s First Female “Penis” Found, in Cave-Dwelling Bugs

Scientists have discovered the first female “penis” in the animal kingdom, a new study says.
Four new species of Brazilian cave-dwelling bugs have sex-reversed genitalia, so that the female uses her elaborate penis-like organ to penetrate the male’s vagina-like opening and collect his sperm. (Related: “Wild Romance: Weird Animal Courtship and Mating Rituals.”)

A female in the newfound species N. curvet (top) mates with a male. Photograph by Yoshizawa Kazunori

“There’s nothing that [this] can be compared to,” said study co-author Rodrigo Ferreira, a professor at the Federal University of Lavras in Brazil. “This elaborate female penis is completely unique.”
While there are a handful of other known species in which male genitalia are reduced and the females have penetrating organs, none are so complex or have been shown to be so structurally and functionally similar to a penis, said Ferreira, whose study was published April 17 in the journal Current Biology.
“It was a surprise for all of us,” Ferreira said. “We were completely astonished when we first saw that structure.”
Lengthy Mating
Ferreira and colleagues found the new species after scouring walls and floors of pitch-black caves in Brazil. The animals belong to the little-known Neotrogla genus, which belongs to an order of insects commonly called booklice or barklice.
Interestingly, further study in the lab revealed that each of the four new species has its own slightly different version of the female penis.
In three species, the female penis contains spines that fit species-specific pouches in the male genital chamber, while one species has a strongly curved female penis that matches a curved male chamber.

A close-up of a female penis in the species N. aurora. Photograph by Current Biology, Yoshizawa et al.

To figure out whether the female Neotrogla‘s penis-like structure actually acted like a penis, the researchers had to go back to the caves and collect mating insects. (See “Why Sea Slugs Dispose of Their Penises.“)
After observing them in the lab, the team confirmed that the insects’ female penis-like structure, called the gynosome, was indeed used to penetrate the males.
They also found that the insect couples mated for an average of about 50 hours at a stretch—an exceptionally long time among animals. “One of the couples … copulated for around 73 hours—it was really surprising,” Ferreira said. (See “Why Some Animals Mate Themselves to Death.”)
Spikes along the female penis anchored the female to the male so tightly that when the researchers tried to separate them, they inadvertently tore apart the male’s body without affecting the genital coupling, Ferreira said.
He speculated that the females might be forcibly holding on to the males for such long periods to get as much of their sperm and seminal fluid as possible.
Why Reverse Roles?
William Eberhard, an evolutionary biologist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute who was not involved in the study, said the work was “well done” and that it represented “exciting, interesting stuff.
“They’ve convinced me of the reversal of genitalic roles in this species, at least in terms of who goes inside who,” he said. (See “Barnacles Can Change Penis Size and Shape.“)
Such sex-reversed genitalia are extremely unusual, and these insects could potentially be used to test many hypotheses about sexual selection and the evolution of genitalia, he said.
For instance, scientists think that Neutrogla‘s sex-reversed genitalia may arise from a reversal in sex roles resulting from the harsh conditions in which these insects live, study co-author Ferreira noted.
The bugs live in extremely dry and dark cave environments where their food—bat guano (poop) or bat carcasses—is scarce. (See National Geographic’s cave pictures.)
That means eating enough to produce eggs can be a tough task for females without some extra nourishment, which could come from the males in the form of nutritious seminal fluid. “The female penis, in this context, is certainly a good tool for getting a nutritious resource from males,” Ferreira said.
Cave Mysteries
Ferreira has successfully bred three of the species in his lab and is planning to build special chambers to re-create the insect’s subterranean environment. Apart from studying Neotrogla‘s mating behavior in these chambers, he plans to introduce a whole community of cave species to understand the ecology of these insects.
There are likely other interesting cave species that are yet to be discovered, Ferreira added. Some projections suggest that Brazil has more than 150,000 caves, while only around 12,000 are officially known, he said.
“We have a huge country,” he said. “We have thousands of caves that are still unknown, and the animals that live in there are also unknown.”

Read More : http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2014/04/17/insects-caves-animals-sex-mating-science-brazil/

Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Made the Entire World Mourn

March 6, 2014. Colombian author Gabriel Garcia Marquez stands outside his house on his 87th birthday in Mexico City.Reuters

His death mourned around the globe, Gabriel Garcia Marquez is being hailed as a giant of modern literature, a writer of intoxicating novels and short stories that illuminated Latin America's passions, superstition, violence and social inequality.
Widely considered the most popular Spanish-language writer since Miguel de Cervantes in the 17th century, the Colombian-born Nobel laureate achieved literary celebrity that spawned comparisons to Mark Twain and Charles Dickens. He died at his home in Mexico City on Thursday afternoon at age 87.
His flamboyant and melancholy fictional works — among them "Chronicle of a Death Foretold," ''Love in the Time of Cholera" and "The Autumn of the Patriarch" — outsold everything published in Spanish except the Bible. The epic 1967 novel "One Hundred Years of Solitude" sold more than 50 million copies in more than 25 languages.
His stories made him literature's best-known practitioner of magical realism, the fictional blending of the everyday with fantastical elements such as a boy born with a pig's tail and a man trailed by a cloud of yellow butterflies.
"A thousand years of solitude and sadness because of the death of the greatest Colombian of all time!" Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos said on Twitter.
Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy wrote in a tweet, "Affection and admiration for the essential and universal writer of Spanish literature in the second half of the twentieth century."
The first sentence of "One Hundred Years of Solitude" has become one of the most famous opening lines of all time: "Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice."
Biographer Gerald Martin told The Associated Press that the novel was the first in which "Latin Americans recognized themselves, that defined them, celebrated their passion, their intensity, their spirituality and superstition, their grand propensity for failure."
The writer's family planned a private ceremony to mark his passing and said his body would be cremated. Mexico's government scheduled a public memorial for Monday in the art deco Palace of Fine Arts in the capital's historic center.
Colombia's ambassador to Mexico, Jose Gabriel Ortiz, suggested to reporters that the author's ashes could be divided between Mexico and Colombia but there was no official confirmation that the family has agreed to the idea.
"There will be a portion (of the ashes) in Mexico, of course, and I would like to think that another portion could be taken later to Colombia," he said. "We Colombians would like to do that tribute, to have part of his ashes resting over there."
When he accepted the Nobel prize for literature in 1982, Garcia Marquez described Latin America as a "source of insatiable creativity, full of sorrow and beauty, of which this roving and nostalgic Colombian is but one cipher more, singled out by fortune."
"Poets and beggars, musicians and prophets, warriors and scoundrels, all creatures of that unbridled reality, we have had to ask but little of imagination, for our crucial problem has been a lack of conventional means to render our lives believable," he added.
Like many Latin American writers, he transcended the world of letters. Widely known as "Gabo," he became a hero to the left as an early ally of Cuban leader Fidel Castro and a critic of Washington's violent interventions from Vietnam to Chile.
Garcia Marquez, among writers such as Norman Mailer and Tom Wolfe, was also an early practitioner of literary nonfiction now known as New Journalism. He became an elder statesman of Latin American journalism, with magisterial works of nonfiction that included the "Story of A Shipwrecked Sailor," the tale of a seaman lost on a life raft for 10 days.
Other nonfiction pieces profiled Venezuela's larger-than-life president, Hugo Chavez, and vividly portrayed how cocaine traffickers led by Pablo Escobar shredded the social and moral fabric of the writer's native Colombia. In 1994, he founded the Iberoamerican Foundation for New Journalism, which offers training and competitions to raise the standard of narrative and investigative journalism across Latin America.
"The world has lost one of its greatest visionary writers — and one of my favorites from the time I was young," U.S. President Barack Obama said.
Garcia Marquez was born in Aracataca, a small town near Colombia's Caribbean coast, on March 6, 1927. He was the eldest of the 11 children of Luisa Santiaga Marquez and Gabriel Elijio Garcia, a telegraphist and a wandering homeopathic pharmacist.
Just after his birth, his parents left him with his maternal grandparents and moved to Barranquilla to open a pharmacy. He spent 10 years with his grandmother and his grandfather, a retired colonel who fought in the devastating 1,000-Day War that hastened Colombia's loss of the Panamanian isthmus.
His grandparents' tales provided grist for Garcia Marquez's fiction and Aracataca became the model for "Macondo," the village surrounded by banana plantations where "One Hundred Years of Solitude" is set.
"I have often been told by the family that I started recounting things, stories and so on, almost since I was born — ever since I could speak," Garcia Marquez once told an interviewer.
Sent to a state-run boarding school just outside Bogota, he became a star student and voracious reader, favoring Hemingway, Faulkner, Dostoevsky and Kafka. He published his first piece of fiction as a student in 1947, mailing a short story to the newspaper El Espectador.
Garcia Marquez's father insisted he study law but he dropped out, bored, and dedicated himself to journalism.
His writing was constantly guided by his leftist political views, forged in large part by a 1928 military massacre near Aracataca of banana workers striking against United Fruit Co., which later became Chiquita. He was also greatly influenced by the assassination two decades later of Jorge Eliecer Gaitan, a galvanizing leftist presidential candidate.
He lived several years in Europe, then returned to Colombia in 1958 to marry Mercedes Barcha, a neighbor from childhood days. They had two sons, Rodrigo, a film director, and Gonzalo, a graphic designer.
After a 1981 run-in with Colombia's government in which he was accused of sympathizing with M-19 rebels and sending money to a Venezuelan guerrilla group, the writer moved to Mexico City, which was his main home for the rest of his life.
Garcia Marquez famously feuded with Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa, who punched him in a 1976 fight outside a Mexico City movie theater. Neither ever publicly discussed the reason for the altercation.
"A great man has died, one whose works gave the literature of our language great reach and prestige," Vargas Llosa said Thursday in TV interview, his voice shaking and face hidden by sunglasses and a baseball cap.
Struggling with poverty through much of his adult life, Garcia Marquez was somewhat transformed by his later fame and wealth. A bon vivant with an impish personality, he was a gracious host who animatedly recounted long stories to guests.
He spent more time in Colombia in his later years, founding the journalism institute in the walled colonial port city of Cartagena, where he kept a home.
Garcia Marquez turned down offers of diplomatic posts and spurned attempts to draft him to run for Colombia's presidency, though he did get involved in peace mediation efforts between the government and leftist rebels.
In 1998, already in his 70s, he fulfilled a lifelong dream by buying a majority interest in the Colombian newsmagazine Cambio with his Nobel prize money. Before falling ill with lymphatic cancer the next year, he contributed prodigiously to the magazine.
"I'm a journalist. I've always been a journalist," he told the AP at the time. "My books couldn't have been written if I weren't a journalist because all the material was taken from reality."

Read More : http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2014/04/19/gabriel-garcia-marquez-death-mourned-throughout-world/

Mexican Capital Shooked by 7.2 Magnitude Earthquake

People who were participating in a Holy Week procession stop and pray after a strong earthquake jolted Mexico City, Friday, April 18, 2014. A powerful magnitude-7.2 earthquake shook central and southern Mexico but there were no early reports of major damage or casualties.

Officials say captain fled the boat when hundreds of passengers were asked to wait to be rescued.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake at about 9:30 a.m. (10:30 a.m. EDT; 1430 GMT) was centered on a long-dormant fault line northwest of the Pacific resort of Acapulco, where many Mexicans are vacationing for the Easter holiday.
It was felt across at least a half-dozen states and Mexico’s capital, where it collapsed several walls and left large cracks in some facades. Debris covered sidewalks around the city.
Around the region, there were reports of isolated and minor damage, such as fallen fences, trees and broken windows. Chilpancingo, capital of the southern state of Guerrero, where the quake was centered, reported a power outage, but service was restored after 15 minutes.
In Acapulco, 59-year-old Enedina Ramirez Perez was having breakfast, enjoying the holiday with about 20 family members, when her hotel started to shake.
“People were turning over chairs in their desperation to get out, grabbing children, trampling people,” the Mexico City woman said. “The hotel security was excellent and started calming people down. They got everyone to leave quietly.”
The quake struck 170 miles (273 kilometers) southwest of Mexico City, where people fled high-rises and took to the streets, many in still in their bathrobes and pajamas on their day off.
“I started to hear the walls creak and I said, ‘Let’s go,’” said Rodolfo Duarte, 32, who fled his third-floor apartment.
Mexico City Mayor Miguel Angel Mancera said there were small power outages from fallen transformers but officials were working to restore the service.
The USGS initially calculated the quake’s magnitude at 7.5, but later downgraded it to 7.2. It said the quake was centered 22 miles (36 kilometers) northwest of the town of Tecpan de Galeana, and was 15 miles (24 kilometers) deep.
Friday’s quake occurred along a section of the Pacific Coast known as the Guerrero Seismic Gap, a 125-mile (200-kilometer) section where tectonic plates meet and have been locked, meaning huge amounts of energy are being stored up with potentially devastating effects, said USGS seismologist Gavin Hayes.
The last large quake that occurred along the section was a magnitude-7.6 temblor in 1911, Hayes said.
He said scientists will be watching the area more intensely because moderate quakes such as Friday’s can destabilize the surrounding sections of seismic plate and increase the chance of a more powerful temblor.
The USGS says the Guerrero Gap has the potential to produce a quake as strong as magnitude 8.4, potentially much more powerful than the magnitude-8.1 quake that killed 9,500 people and devastated large sections of Mexico City in 1985. The 1985 quake was centered 250 miles (400 kilometers) from the capital on the Pacific Coast.
Mexico City itself is vulnerable even to distant earthquakes because much of it sits atop the muddy sediments of drained lake beds that quiver as quake waves hit.
Miriam Matz, 45, gathered her suitcases and her teenage daughter to temporarily move out the apartment in the Morelos housing towers in downtown Mexico City where she has lived for five years, after brickwork and concrete slabs fell off the side of the 15-story tower, and long snaking cracks appeared on some walls during Friday’s earthquake.
The sidewalk in front of the building was littered with bits of brick, glass and smashed concrete, and the area was roped off with yellow police tape.
Authorities have not forced residents to evacuate, but Matz said she would leave for safety’s sake.
“We are going to spend a night or two at my sister’s house, in case there are any aftershocks,” she said.

Read More : http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/earthquake-shakes-mexican-capital/2014/04/18/a3ca3a5e-c706-11e3-b708-471bae3cb10c_story.html

The Ship-Breakers

Photograph by Mike Hettwer : Muhammed Ali Shahin explains the dangers of shipbreaking in Bangladesh.

 

In Bangladesh men desperate for work perform one of the world’s most dangerous jobs.

 

I had been warned that it would be difficult to get into Bangladesh’s shipbreaking yards. “It used to be a tourist attraction,” a local man told me. “People would come watch men tear apart ships with their bare hands. But they don’t let in outsiders anymore.” I walked a few miles along the road that parallels the Bay of Bengal, just north of the city of Chittagong, where 80 active shipbreaking yards line an eight-mile stretch of the coast. Each yard was secured behind high fences topped with razor wire. Guards were posted, and signs warned against photography. Outsiders had become especially unwelcome in recent years after an explosion killed several workers, prompting critics to say the owners put profits above safety. “But they can’t block the sea,” the local said.
So late one afternoon I hired a fisherman to take me on a water tour of the yards. At high tide the sea engulfed the rows of beached oil tankers and containerships, and we slipped in and out of the deep shadows cast by their towering smokestacks and superstructures. Some vessels remained intact, as if they had just arrived. Others had been reduced to skeletons, the steel skin cut away to reveal their cavernous black holds.
We drifted alongside barnacle-encrusted hulls and beneath the blades of massive propellers. I read off names and flags painted on the sterns: Front Breaker (Comoros), V Europe (Marshall Islands), Glory B (Panama). I wondered about cargoes they had carried, ports where they had called, and crews that had sailed them.
The life span of such ships is roughly 25 to 30 years, so most of these likely had been launched during the 1980s. But the rising cost to insure and maintain aging vessels makes them unprofitable to operate. Now their value was contained mostly in their steel bodies.
Nearly all the demolition crews had left work for the day, and the ships stood silent, except for the gurgling in their bowels and the occasional echo of metal clanking. The air hung heavy with the odor of brine and diesel fuel. Making our way around one hull, we heard laughter and came upon a group of naked boys who had swum out to a half-submerged piece of wreckage and were using it as a diving platform. Just beyond the line of ships, fishermen were casting their nets for schools of tiny ricefish, a local delicacy.
Suddenly a shower of sparks rained down from the stern several stories above us. A head appeared over the side, then arms waving vigorously. “Move away! We’re cutting this section,” a man yelled down at us. “Do you want to die?”

Over the past decade India recycled more ships, but Bangladesh led in deadweight tonnage, meaning the biggest vessels generally ended up on its beaches. China and Turkey enforce more safety measures than the others and take steps to reduce the environmental impact.

Source: IHS Maritime

Oceangoing vessels are not meant to be taken apart. They’re designed to withstand extreme forces in some of the planet’s most difficult environments, and they’re often constructed with toxic materials, such as asbestos and lead. When ships are scrapped in the developed world, the process is more strictly regulated and expensive, so the bulk of the world’s shipbreaking is done in Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan, where labor is cheap and oversight is minimal.
Industry reforms have come in fits and starts. India now requires more protections for workers and the environment. But in Bangladesh, where 194 ships were dismantled in 2013, the industry remains extremely dirty and dangerous.
It also remains highly lucrative. Activists in Chittagong told me that in three to four months the average ship in Bangladeshi yards returns roughly a one-million-dollar profit on an investment of five million, compared with less than $200,000 profit in Pakistan. I called Jafar Alam, former head of the Bangladesh Ship Breakers Association. He denied that profit margins were that high. “It varies by ship and depends on many factors, such as the current price of steel,” he said.
Whatever the actual profits, they are realized by doggedly recycling more than 90 percent of each ship. The process begins after a ship-breaker acquires a vessel from an international broker who deals in outdated ships. A captain who specializes in beaching large craft is hired to deliver it to the breaker’s yard, generally a sliver of beach barely a hundred yards wide.
Once the ship is mired in the mud, its liquids are siphoned out, including any remaining diesel fuel, engine oil, and firefighting chemicals, which are resold. Then the machinery and fittings are stripped. Everything is removed and sold to salvage dealers—from enormous engines, batteries, generators, and miles of copper wiring to the crew bunks, portholes, lifeboats, and electronic dials on the bridge.
After the ship has been reduced to a steel hulk, swarms of laborers from the poorest parts of Bangladesh use acetylene torches to slice the carcass into pieces. These are hauled off the beach by teams of loaders, then melted down and rolled into rebar for use in construction.
“It sounds like a good business until you consider the poison that is soaking into our land,” says Muhammed Ali Shahin, an activist with the NGO Shipbreaking Platform. “Until you’ve met the widows of young men who were crushed by falling pieces of steel or suffocated inside a ship.” At 37 Shahin has been working for more than 11 years to raise awareness about the plight of the men who toil in these yards. The industry, he says, is controlled by a few powerful Chittagong families who also hold stakes in the ancillary businesses, including the steel rerolling mills.
Shahin insists he’s not blind to his country’s desperate need for the jobs shipbreaking creates. “I do not say shipbreaking must stop entirely,” he says. “But it must be done cleaner and safer with better treatment for the workers.”
His criticism isn’t reserved just for Bangladeshi ship-breakers. “In the West you don’t let people pollute your countries by breaking up ships on your beaches. Why is it OK for poor workers to risk their lives to dispose of your unwanted ships here?”
In the sprawling shantytowns that have grown up around the yards, I met dozens of the workers about whom Shahin is most concerned: the men who cut the steel and haul it off the beaches. Many had deep, jagged scars. “Chittagong tattoos,” one man called them. Some men were missing fingers. A few were blind in one eye.
In one home I meet a family whose four sons worked in the yards. The oldest, Mahabub, 40, spent two weeks as a cutter’s helper before witnessing a man burn to death when his torch sparked a pocket of gas belowdecks. “I didn’t even collect my pay for fear they wouldn’t let me leave,” he says, explaining that bosses often intimidate workers to keep silent about accidents.
He points to a photo in a small glass cabinet. “This is Jahangir, my second oldest brother,” Mahabub says. Jahangir went to work at 15, after their father died. “He was a cutter in the Ziri Subedar yard and was fatally injured there in 2008.” He and his fellow workers had been cutting a large section for three days, but it wouldn’t fall. During a rainstorm they took shelter beneath the piece, and it suddenly gave way.
The third brother, Alamgir, 22, is not home. He had been assisting a cutter when he fell through a hatch on a tanker, plunging about 90 feet into the hold. Miraculously, enough water had seeped into the bottom to break his fall. One of his friends risked his own life to shinny down a rope and pull him out. Alamgir quit the next day. Now he serves tea to the managers in the yard’s office.
The youngest brother, Amir, 18, still works as a cutter’s helper. He is a wiry boy with smooth, unscarred skin and a nervous smile. I ask if he’s scared by his brothers’ experiences. “Yes,” he says, smiling shyly as if unsure what to say next. As we talk, a thunderclap shakes the tin roof. Another boom follows. I look outside, expecting to see the onset of one of Bangladesh’s famously violent monsoons, but the sun is shining. “It’s a large piece falling from a ship,” says the boy. “We hear this every day.”

By Peter Gwin

Read More : http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2014/05/shipbreakers/gwin-text

12 Dead in Historic Tradegy on Mount Everest

A team descends through the "popcorn" in the Khumbu Icefall.

PHOTOGRAPH BY ANDY BARDON, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

The worst accident in the history of Everest mountaineering occurred this morning at approximately 6:30 (Nepal time) on the south side of the world's highest peak. Twelve Sherpas are reported dead, with at least three missing and several injured. The Sherpas were killed in the notorious Khumbu Icefall by an avalanche that fell from the hanging glaciers along the West Shoulder.

According to eyewitness accounts, the avalanche swept across the Khumbu Icefall at about 19,000 feet (5,800 meters), in an area called the "popcorn field," so named for the huge blocks of ice spraying across the snow. The Sherpas were ferrying loads for the client climbers when the accident occurred. (Read "Mount Everest's Deadliest Day Puts Focus on Sherpas" in National Geographic magazine.)

 
Ang Kaji Sherpa was one of 12 climbing guides killed Friday in an avalanche on Mount Everest. He was working with a team of elite Sherpa, who were setting up ropes to prepare the way for their clients to follow in the days to come. In 2012 he served as a guide for of the National Geographic/The North Face expedition to Everest and was the first member of that team to reach the summit.

Every year, over 300 climbers attempt Everest by the standard Southeast Ridge route pioneered by Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay in 1953. For every one climber, typically a client who has paid up to $50,000 to attempt Everest, there are at least two Sherpas carrying loads.

The Khumbu Icefall, stretching from 18,000 to 19,000 feet (5,500 to 5,800 meters), lies just above base camp on the Nepal side of 29,035-foot (8,850-meter) Mount Everest. Anyone who wants to climb Everest from the south side (the standard route up the north side, in China, is via the North Col route) must pass through the Khumbu Icefall.

Because the Khumbu is so dangerous, guides try to reduce the number of trips through this gauntlet for paying clients, which increases the number of times a working Sherpa, portaging tents, food, ropes, and most important, oxygen for the climbers, must pass through this danger zone.

Whereas a paying climber may pass through the Khumbu only six to eight times while climbing Everest—going up and down for acclimatization—a Sherpa can easily make the mortal trek 30-40 times in a season.

Friday's avalanche happened at 19,000 feet (5,800 meters) in an area known as the "popcorn field."

NG STAFF. SOURCE: GERMAN AEROSPACE CENTER

"It's such a horrific tragedy," said Conrad Anker, world-renowned mountaineer and the leader of the North Face/National Geographic expedition that climbed Everest via the Southeast Ridge in 2012.

"Most Dangerous Place in the World"

"It was just a matter of time," explains Anker. "The Khumbu is probably the most dangerous single place in the climbing world. You can just sit at base camp during the day and watch avalanches roar down right over the climbing route. It scares everyone."

Crossing through the Khumbu is usually done at night via headlamp, between 2 a.m. and 5 a.m. This is when the ice blocks and the hanging glaciers are most stable and avalanches least likely. During the day, as the sun warms the mountain, the hanging glaciers begin to avalanche, and the ice in the Khumbu starts to crumble.

"Sherpas bear the real burden of climbing Mount Everest," states Anker. "They're the ones who take the biggest risks."

One of the dead is Ang Kaji Sherpa, who was one of the strongest Sherpas on the 2012 North Face/National Geographic Everest expedition. Kaji, father of six, was a veteran of over half a dozen expeditions to Everest. In 2012, he was the first person to summit Everest that spring and put up the climbing ropes for all the subsequent climbers. When he came down from that summit bid in 2012, he was greeted with enormous applause, but humble and smiling, he simply said he “wasn’t that tired.” Later in the expedition, when the Nat Geo team members first arrived in the Death Zone at 26,000 feet (7,900 meters), Kaji ran around hand-delivering hot bowls of steaming soup.

A climber steps across a bridge of aluminum ladders lashed together above a crevasse in the Khumbu Icefall.

PHOTOGRAPH BY ANDY BARDON, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

The Sherpas, an ethnic group of 80,000 in Nepal that moved south from the Tibetan plateau some 300 years ago, have been used as labor on mountaineering expeditions since the very beginning. Genetically adapted to high altitude, Sherpas are stronger, faster, and naturally fitter above 23,000 feet (7,000 meters), where most Western climbers begin using bottled oxygen. Sherpas have also been dying on Everest from the very beginning—on the first serious attempt of Everest, in 1922, seven Sherpas died in an avalanche.

Although statistically a client climber is more likely to die attempting the summit on Everest, a Sherpa is more likely to die in the Khumbu Icefall.

"It's essentially a game of Russian roulette," says Anker. "There is nowhere to run, nowhere to hide."

Passage through the Khumbu Icefall is so notoriously dangerous that sometimes guides simply stop their expedition if the icefall is deemed too dangerous. In the spring of 2012, Russell Brice, owner and operator of Himalayan Experience, the largest and most successful Everest guiding operation in the world, halted his expedition because he felt the Khumbu and the avalanches were simply too dangerous, particularly for his Sherpas. (Read "Maxed Out on Everest" in National Geographic magazine.)
Currently, the mountain is shut down for rescue operations. The confirmed dead are Dorjee Sherpa, Ang Chiring Sherpa, Mingma Sherpa, Ningma Sherpa, Ang Kaji Sherpa, Pasang Karma Sherpa, Lakpa Tenzing Sherpa, Chiring Wankchu Sherpa, Wangele Sherpa, Khem Dorjee Sherpa, Furwa Temba Sherpa, and Aasamn Tamang Sherpa. Their bodies are being removed from the mountain.

Read More : http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/04/140418-everest-avalanche-sherpa-killed-mountain/

Most Earth-Like Planet Yet, Discovered By Kepler Telescope

This artist's depiction shows Kepler-186f,
an Earth-size world in the "habitable zone" of a red dwarf star.

Red sunshine, seas, and maybe aliens? Scientists analyzing data from NASA's Kepler Space Telescope today report the closest thing yet to another Earth, a world in a habitable orbit around a red dwarf star some 493 light-years away.

Launched in 2009 with the goal of finding another Earth, the $600-million Kepler spacecraft has discovered more than 960 planets orbiting nearby stars. Half a dozen of those seem to be rocky, like Earth, and have orbits in the habitable zone around their star—but the newly discovered world, named Kepler-186f, is the closest in size to Earth.

"This is a first, validated Earth-size planet in the habitable zone of another star," says study lead author Elisa Quintana of the SETI Institute and NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California. The discovery of the planet was reported today in the journal Science and in a space agency press briefing. (Related: "Motherlode of Alien Worlds Revealed by Space Telescope.")

See interactive: Hundreds of Exoplanets,
a Handful Right for Life

One of five planets orbiting a red dwarf star (called Kepler 186), Kepler-186f is 1.1 times wider than Earth. That means it's almost certainly a rocky planet too. The researchers estimate its mass is 1.5 times that of Earth's.

The new planet's orbit, meanwhile, places it at the "Goldilocks" distance from its star—not too hot or too cold for liquid water to exist on its surface. The origin of life on Earth required liquid water, notes study co-author Stephen Kane of San Francisco State University.

"This is an historic discovery—the first Earth-size planet found in the habitable zone around its star," says pioneering planet hunter Geoff Marcy of the University of California, Berkeley, who was not on the discovery team. "This is the best case for a habitable planet yet found."

The planet's red dwarf star is only about half as big as the sun, making it cooler and dimmer. But Kepler-186f is on a tighter orbit than Earth is, taking only 130 days to circle its star. Though it receives less warmth from its sun than Earth does from its own, the discovery team says, it would still be warm enough to prevent seas from freezing—provided it has an atmosphere that provides a substantial greenhouse effect.

"This planet basks in an orange-red glow from that star, much as we enjoy at sunset," Marcy says, by email. "The temperature on the planet is likely cool, similar to dawn or dusk on a spring day."

Crowded Claims

"Sounds like a great planet to visit, if we could figure out how to travel there," says MIT astronomer Sarah Seager, by email. But amid the excitement, she and planetary scientist Alan Boss, author of The Crowded Universe: The Search for Living Planets, caution that other discoveries have led to similar claims in recent years.

Since 1995, astronomers have detected nearly 1,700 worlds orbiting nearby stars, using a variety of detection methods. About a half dozen claims of bigger Earth-size (or still larger "super-Earth") planets orbiting in habitable zones around red dwarfs have been made in recent years, Boss says. "Still, it once again proves what Kepler can do."

The next closest thing to Kepler-186f has a width 1.4 times that of Earth, Quintana says. According to Seager, a planet whose diameter is less than 1.75 Earths is likely to be rocky.

The Kepler report looks particularly reliable because of the spacecraft's track record. It detects planets that dim the light from their stars as they pass in front of them. Such transits, Quintana says, are observable only in the roughly one percent of planetary systems whose orbits can be seen edge on from Earth.

When transits occur regularly, their frequency allows scientists to calculate the distance at which a planet is orbiting a star. The amount of starlight dimming—typically on the order of 0.1 percent—is a measure of the planet's size.

Such searches are most sensitive to closer-in stars, because fewer days of observations are required to see repeated transits. That explains why the newly discovered planet's four closer-in siblings had been spotted earlier by the space telescope. "They relied on only two years of data," Quintana says. With so many planets in the system, it's likely to be stable over billions of years.

Tickets on Hold

Whether a life-friendly atmosphere exists on Kepler-186f depends on a bevy of factors besides having the right orbit. "We see planets in our own solar system—Venus but also Mars—that are Earthlike but where things didn't work out," Kane says.

On Venus, a runaway greenhouse climate has cooked the surface to temperatures that would melt lead. On Mars, the lack of a strong magnetic field has allowed the solar wind to strip away much of the planet's atmosphere. A magnetic field would be particularly important for a planet orbiting a red dwarf, because such stars tend to release strong flares that would sterilize the planet.

"Just because a planet is in the habitable zone doesn't mean it is habitable," Quintana says. "This is sort of a first step."

However, Kane argues that the greater mass of Kepler-186f makes it more likely than Mars to have an interior heated by radioactivity and stirred by the motion of fluids. Such motions are required to power a dynamo that generates a protective magnetic field as well as volcanoes, whose eruptions would help replenish a life-friendly atmosphere. The planet's mass would also give it enough gravity to hold on to that atmosphere.

"The other big question is whether it has water, delivered by comets or some other means," Kane says. "Any place with liquid water is a natural place to look for life."

Unfortunately, Kepler-186f is likely too dim and far away to be seen directly with any telescope now in operation, or even with NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, scheduled for launch in 2018.

"In reality we cannot know if the planet is actually habitable. We need to get a sense of the atmosphere and its greenhouse effect," Seager says. "Not possible for this particular planet, as it is too distant from Earth for follow-up observations."

Kepler's Chase

The latest Kepler discovery came from a trove of star observations that the spacecraft made before a reaction wheel in its steering system failed last year, hobbling the mission. A reduced "K2" mission was announced in March.

Hiding amid the existing Kepler observations, Kane says, are more unconfirmed "candidate" planets orbiting stars as big as the sun, at distances similar to Earth's 93-million-mile (150-million-kilometer) distance from the sun.

"There are still a lot more Kepler 'habitable zone' worlds out there to find," Kane says. "Almost certainly this is not the last one."

Follow Dan Vergano on Twitter.

Read More : http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/04/140417-earth-planet-kepler-habitable-science-nasa/

Expert advice can explain, address child's hair loss

When we think of a person who suffers from hair loss, the first image that comes to mind is probably an older male. But children are often plagued by hair loss as well despite their young age.

Children with hair loss may gradually develop bald spots or lose their hair entirely. Understandably, parents may panic the second they realize their child is losing his or her hair, but it’s important to stay calm and avoid scaring your child and yourself.
“It may be difficult for them, but I ask parents not to consult ‘Dr. Google’ on this one,” advises Elk Grove-based dermatologist Dr. Robert Polisky. “They will be very alarmed looking at some of the more extreme cases they see.”

Before parents assume the worst, consult with a dermatologist to determine the cause of the hair loss. Hair loss occurs for many reasons – genetics, vitamin deficiency and stress are just a few contributing factors.
Causes of hair loss in children
Alopecia: Alopecia areata is the most common form of alopecia in which round patches of hair completely fall out. It is technically an autoimmune disorder, meaning the body's own immune system attacks the hair follicles, but it’s not a serious one, according to Polisky. Additionally, the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases estimates that the hair grows back completely in 95 out of 100 cases. Traumatic alopecia may be causes by constant pulling of the hair from tight braids, barrettes or ponytails.
Anagen effluvium: Hair loss is a common side effect of chemotherapy treatment for cancer. Typically, the hair grows back within a few weeks or months of stopping treatment.
Folliculitis: This is inflamed hair follicles, sometimes with a deep bacterial infection, and can be treated with antibiotics or medicated shampoo.
Hair anomaly: Disorders of this type are not common, says Polisky. They present as very breakable and twisted hairs, some are called pili torti.
Hormones: Thyroid disease, both hyperthyroidism and hypothyroidism, can cause hair loss.
Infancy: Some infants manifest triangular hair loss patches. Others may initially have a full head of hair, but will lose it. These issues can be congenital.
Telogen effluvium: This is the shedding of hair some months after a traumatic health event, such as a very high fever, hospitalization, or shock. Telogen effluvium causes the hair to go into one phase as it is not essential to survival and is shed later in a wave. Luckily, it grows back in a few months.
Tinea capitis: Also called “ringworm of the scalp,” tinea capitis is a fungal infection of the hair that can take many forms leading to hair loss. It can look like a large infected oozy area, called a kerion, or it can be very flaky and irregular, says Polisky.
Trichotillomania: Often shortened simply to “tric,” this disorder is hair loss from repeated urges to pull or twist the hair until it breaks off. Symptoms usually begin before age 17, and is often a result of obsessive-compulsive disorder. It can also be triggered or made worse by anxiety, depression or a stressful event. Polisky warns that parents are often completely unaware that their child is pulling his or her hair out.
Effect on children
“The emotional impact of hair loss on children varies greatly,” explains Dr. Lily Uihlein, pediatric dermatologist at Loyola Center for Health in LaGrange Park and Burr Ridge. “For some children, hair loss can lead to fear, anxiety, low self-esteem, and depression; other children may not bothered by their hair loss.”
Though some kids may not be troubled by the hair loss itself, the way a child’s peers treat them can be much different. Your child’s doctor may recommend seeing a counselor to deal with his or her feelings. But, most importantly, stay positive.
Minimizing the visibility of the hair loss may help some kids who are self-conscious. Hats, changes in hair style, headbands or wigs may be helpful.
“Some children, particularly younger ones, may not be aware of the hair loss or its cosmetic implications,” Uihlein adds. “However, children are usually able to sense when their parents are concerned and may become more self-conscious and anxious about their hair loss.”

—Lisa Schryver, Brand Publishing Writer

Read More : http://www.chicagotribune.com/brandpublishing/embassy-studio/chi-expert-advice-can-explain-address-childs-hair-loss-20140313,0,1010080.story

Tiger's record chase slipping away?

The first thing I considered when I learned that Tiger Woods had withdrawn from the upcoming Masters Tournament wasn't that the event would suffer from the absence of its four-time champion.
Sure, it's a big deal for the game that Tiger won't play in Augusta next week, but the Masters is bigger than any one player.
Instead, I began to wonder how this latest injury, which will keep Woods out of his first Masters in 20 years, is a setback that could severely hurt his chances of breaking Jack Nicklaus' record of 18 major championships.
Nicklaus' record is all that keeps Tiger playing. It's not to win FedEx Cups or to break Sam Snead's mark of 82 career PGA Tour wins or to amass more millions in earnings.
Nicklaus' record alone holds our attention.
This was supposed to be a special year in the majors for Tiger -- one that was sure to end his six-year winless drought in these events.
Woods had won six of his 14 majors on 2014's major courses. Even with the incredible depth in the game, it was a good bet that Tiger was going to win on at least one of these courses.
Now nothing is certain about his season of majors.
The back surgery this week is just one more calamity to derail Tiger's path to Jack in a long line of injuries and personal trials over the past several years.
How is Tiger going to beat kids nearly half his age with a bad back?
It's a shame.
Can you imagine if Henry Aaron got to 550 home runs and injuries kept him from reaching Babe Ruth's all-time record of 714? Or if Pete Rose had been kicked out of baseball nearly 1,000 hits shy of Ty Cobb's record?
Wouldn't it put a small blemish on one of the greatest sports stories of all time if Tiger couldn't complete the fairy tale and best Nicklaus? Wouldn't Tiger getting to 19 majors complete that wonderful arc that started with his 12-shot win at the 1997 Masters?
This injury and absence from Augusta has to scare the hell out of Tiger. How many more majors does he have to realistically be a top contender?
It's very presumptuous to think that Tiger would have won next week at Augusta. He had three victories last year going into Augusta and didn't break 70 in a tie for fourth. At the next three majors, his play was uninspired.
Withdrawing from the Masters just renders a win that was doubtful in the first place merely impossible to achieve because he's not in the field to create buzz about what he will do.
No need now to get your hopes up that he will do something miraculous to win his fifth green jacket.
For Tiger, Nicklaus' record must now feel like a very difficult climb at this point in his career. He turns 39 in December, and no matter what you do in terms of diet and exercise, the body continues to age.
But the good news is that when Tiger is healthy and in the field, he has at least a chance of competing. What's for sure is that he can't break the record if he is not healthy enough to play.
The game is at its best when he is competing at his best in the majors, and even better when he is winning these tournaments.
Down the line, what we may remember most about this time is not whether Tiger broke Nicklaus' record, but everything that he went through to try to do it.
After all the injuries that he has struggled through over the years, it's likely that whatever befalls him in his remaining days on tour will be borne out of great struggle and some pain.

 Read More : http://espn.go.com/golf/masters14/story/_/id/10709978/tiger-woods-record-chase-slipping-away-golf

Chile earthquake: 6 dead, almost a million evacuated

SANTIAGO, Chile

  Hundreds of thousands of people evacuated from Chile's low-lying coastal areas returned home Wednesday morning after authorities called off a tsunami alarm as damage from a massive overnight earthquake seemed mostly limited.

The major earthquake, with a magnitude 8.2, struck off the coast of northern Chile on Tuesday, killing six and triggering a tsunami that pounded the shore with 7-foot waves.

Officials said the dead included people--a firefighter among them--who were crushed by collapsing walls or were killed by heart attacks.
Angamos, a key copper exporting port in northern Mejillones, escaped major damage, but workers were evacuated as a precaution, port union leader Enrique Solar told Reuters.
The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake was shallow at 12.5 miles below the seabed and struck about 950 miles from the capital, Santiago. The most heavily affected area appeared to be the mining port of Iquique near the Peruvian border.
The country's president, Michelle Bachelet, declared parts of Chile's north a disaster zone, promising troops and police reinforcements to maintain order while damage was repaired after landslides blocked roads.Authorities were evaluating the full extent of damage.
Bachelet was scheduled to visit the affected areas later Wednesday.
Over 900,000 people were evacuated from the coastline along Chile. Many still have fresh memories of a deadly February 2010 quake and tsunami that struck the country's central-southern regions fresh in its memory.
An unusually large number of tremors that preceded Tuesday's quake unnerved residents, who emptied beaches, rushed to buy emergency rations, and prepared for an eventual evacuation.
"The government of Chile has been working hard to improve the awareness of people living along the coast to the threat from tsunamis and on what to do if one is approaching," said Steven Godby, an expert in disaster management at Nottingham Trent University in Nottingham, England.

"Several tsunami drills have taken place since the (earthquake and) tsunami that killed an estimated 500 plus Chileans in February 2010, and recent earthquakes in the region have helped to keep the threat firmly in people's minds," he added.
High alertIquique is a key port, close to Chile's main copper mines. The area has been on high alert in recent weeks after an unusual number of tremors, and a series of aftershocks further frayed nerves in the early hours Wednesday.
Seismic Chile has strict tremor-proof construction regulations and most residents stay calm during quakes, which helps to limit harm.
State-owned miner Codelco and other major copper companies reported no harm to workers or mines and said operations in northern Chile were normal. Still, the massive Collahuasi mine evacuated workers so they could be with their families.
History of quakes
Much of Chile's coast borders the oceanic Nazca tectonic plate, which is being pushed under the continental South American plate, creating a geologic hot spot responsible for the creation of the Andes mountains.
That pressure can produce earthquakes greater than magnitude 9, the same class of temblor that caused the 2004 Sumatra and 2011 Japan tsunamis.
Southern Chile produced the most powerful earthquake on record, a magnitude 9.5 temblor in 1960 which killed thousands around the city of Valdivia and brought tsunamis to Hawaii, Japan, the Philippines and the U.S. West Coast. A magnitude 8.8 earthquake in southern Chile killed 524 people and destroyed 220,000 homes in 2010.
Swarms of earthquakes off the northern coast, including a magnitude 6.7 shaker that struck March 16, preceded Tuesday's temblor.
But one earthquake expert who has studied the area warned Tuesday that the quake was unlikely to have relieved the enormous pressures that have built up along the massive fault, which he said had not broken in that area since 1877.
"It's probably not big enough to have released all of the energy that had been stored up along that locked plate boundary for the last 140 years or so," said Rick Allmendinger, a Cornell University professor of Earth and atmospheric sciences. "Is this the big one for that area? Or was it a foreshock to a presumably even bigger earthquake?"

Read More : http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-chile-earthquake-20140402,0,5625672.story