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POPSMan-Eating Bird - Non-Fiction
WOW!!! With a wingspan of up to three metres and weighing 18kg, the female was twice as big as the largest living eagle, the Steller's sea eagle. And the bird's talons were as big as a tiger's claws. "It was certainly capable of swooping down and taking a child," said Paul Scofield, the curator of vertebrate zoology at the Canterbury Museum. "They had the ability to not only strike with their talons but to close the talons and put them through quite solid objects such as a pelvis. It was designed as a killing machine." Its main prey would have been moa, flightless birds which grew to as much as 250kg and 2.5 metres tall. "In some fossil sites, moa bones have been found with signs of eagle predation," Dr Scofield said. New Zealand has no native land mammals because it became isolated from other continents in the Cretaceous, more than 65 million years ago. As a result, birds filled niches usually populated by large mammals such as deer and cattle. "Haast's eagle wasn't just the e
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POPSNibbled by a Boa Constrictor "As six rows of needle-like teeth pierced the skin of my forearm, I couldn't help but appreciate the power, speed and efficiency of a snake bite."
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POPStiny frozen microbe could be link to extra-terrestrial life a new bacteria that has ben named Herminilimonas glacei, found in the heart of Greenland- trapped under more than 3 km beneath the ice may hold significant clues regarding what life forms may exist on other planets- according to a team of scientists from Penn. State University
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POPSHow to Drop Out Not dropping out from school. "It's not like walking through a magic doorway -- it's like growing a fruit tree." Man do I love Ran Prieur
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POPSThe Brazilian Orkut Rule This is true to a point...but Brazilians also seem to get into a technological rut. Hence they are still using Orkut and MSN when both of these "services" are pretty much on the junk heap of their respective sectors in the rest of the world. Another example is the continued use of pirated Microsoft Windows OS's, when perfectly good and cheaper (or free) alternatives are quite available.
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POPSThe Polarization of Extremes I have to agree with the article. I sometimes take sides after reading some blogs when I normally would not. It's human nature I guess, all of us wants to be right and push our ideas to the extreme if need to, very scary. Very good article.
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POPSDANGER:Rampant Deforestation Of Species-Rich Tropical Forests
SPIEGEL: Are you saying that the greenhouse effect could even help improve biodiversity in the long term? Reichholf: Exactly. And this can also be clearly inferred from the insights of evolutionary biology. Biodiversity reached its peak at the end of the tertiary age, a few million years ago, when it was much warmer than it is today. The development went in a completely different direction when the ice ages came and temperatures dropped, causing a massive extinction of species, especially in the north. This also explains why Europe has such a high capacity to absorb species from warmer regions. It just so happens that we have many unoccupied ecological niches in our less biodiverse part of the world. Biologically speaking, we are children of the tropics. Wherever man lives, he artificially creates tropical living conditions. We do this with warm clothing, and with heated offices and homes. A tropical temperature of about 27 degrees Celsius (80 degrees Fahrenheit) prevails.
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POPSA Beautiful Elegy for the Buddhas of Bamyan Cohen is perhaps the most eloquent writer in the opinion pages of the International Herald Tribune. This is perhaps the most genuine and insightful appraisal of the War on Terror that I have seen to date.
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POPSDo we share Earth with alternative life forms? "The reason why biology’s standard tools would fail to detect an RNA-based organism is because they assume that all metabolisms must be similar to our own." “Why did life have to happen only once on Earth? There’s no real deep reason why.” "One way to find out is to try to create alternative life-forms ourselves and see how they do alongside their bacterial brethren."
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POPSAre the Oldest the Smartest? In my family I'd say it's true. My sister is the smartest by far. As the youngest I'd say that I come in a close second and then my brother, the middle child. That's my take on things though minus the standardized testing.
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POPSLooking for the Next Google Every day search connects more and more people with the products and services they need and want. The pie gets bigger, the niches become profitable enough to start a business. And there's always the dream of taking a Google-sized slice.
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POPSFabulous sea creatures from Antarctica Research such as this will enable scientists to learn how climate change drove previous evolutionary changes. If only it was possible to accurately predict the the future effects of global warming......
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POPS6 Startup Lessons For The Year 2007 A short history of startups on the Internet suggests that everything starts off with a single category, which is then naturally subdivided into more categories as the number of competitors rise. Division is a process that is unstoppable. To survive, startups must position themselves to be different, and the only way to do that today is to carve as narrow a niche as possible. The article that follows dictates the immutable laws all startups must follow for the sake of survival.
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