Chad Clark's Open Journal

1) Grand Prairie junior-high teacher found new dinosaur species.

The Globe and Mail article reads:

  It has been more than three decades since Al Lakusta noticed giant ribs
  poking out of an embankment during a fall hike along Pipestone Creek,
  southwest of Grand Prairie, Alta.
  
  ...
  
  Yesterday, University of Alberta paleontologist Philip Currie and his
  colleagues finally announced that Mr. Lakusta had in fact discovered a
  new species, a vegetarian the size of a rhinoceros with a frill on the
  back of its skull and one or more long, stumpy horns sprouting from the
  front.
  
  At a ceremony last night, the scientists told a surprised Mr. Lakusta,
  now 66 and retired, that they are naming the beast after him. The
  Pipestone creek dinosaur will henceforth be known as Pachyrhinosaurus
  lakustai.
  
  After the initial discovery, Mr. Lakusta secured the necessary permits to
  start digging.  ...  After he had dug for about 18 months, though, the
  permits were not renewed. He said provincial officials told him only
  professionals could do the job.  ...  Paleontologist Dr. Currie, the
  former head of dinosaur research at the Royal Tyrrell Museum in
  Drumheller, said he first saw the bones in the 1970s and knew they were
  important. But at the time, he says, there was little funding and few
  paleontologists actively collecting dinosaur fossils.

2) Cell phone camera microscope attachment.

A Berkeley team has built a 5-50X magnifying attachment for cell phone
cameras.  The intended use is to allow pictures to be taken in rural areas
and sent to an urban lab for analysis.

Details and pictures are on the Berekely web-page.

1) 120 million year old ant discovered.

The Reuters article reads:

  German biologists have discovered a new species of ant they believe is
  the oldest on the planet
  
  ...
  
  Researchers from Karlsruhe's Natural History Museum found the
  3-millimeter-long insect in the Amazon rainforest in 2007
  
  ...
  
  Resembling a miniature wasp, the insect is like no other ant, and
  probably dates back 120 million years, making it the oldest still
  inhabiting the earth, Verhaagh said. The scientists used DNA samples from
  its front leg to establish its likely age.

1) Drug advertising does not seem to be very effective.

The Canadian Press article reads:

  The analysis, by researchers from Harvard Medical School and the
  University of Alberta, looked at Canadian sales data for three drugs that
  were heavily advertised in the United States, ads which Canadians
  watching U.S. television would have seen.
  
  The researchers found no evidence of a spike in sales for two of the
  drugs after the TV ads started to run. There was a marked increase in
  sales for a third drug but the effect was short-lived.
  
  ...
  
  The study was published Tuesday in the British Medical Journal's online
  edition. The authors say it is the first to actually test for evidence of
  an impact of drug ads by using what's called a control group.
  
  ...
  
  Direct-to-consumer drug advertising is illegal in most countries around
  the world, including Canada.
  
  ...
  
  Currently, Health Canada allows drug makers to advertise the name of a
  drug without stipulating what it is for, or advertise about a medical
  condition, while urging sufferers to seek medical help.

1) It seems bats die from the low air pressure around wind turbines.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7581990.stm reads:

  The Calgary team collected carcasses of hoary and silver-haired bats
  killed at a wind farm in south-western Alberta.
  
  Examinations showed that fewer than half had external injuries that could
  have been caused by collision.
  
  But about 90% had internal haemorrhaging, most notably in the chest
  cavity, a condition that puts pressure on the lung and can be fatal.
  
  The idea is that the pressure around a rotating turbine blade is lower
  than in the surrounding air. A bat flying into the low-pressure zone
  finds its lungs suddenly expanding, bursting capillaries in the
  surrounding tissue which then becomes flooded with blood.

2) Cattle tend to align north-south.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7575459.stm reads:

  Have you ever noticed that herds of grazing animals all face the same
  way?
  
  Images from Google Earth have confirmed that cattle tend to align their
  bodies in a north-south direction.
  
  Wild deer also display this behaviour - a phenomenon that has apparently
  gone unnoticed by herdsmen and hunters for thousands of years.
  
  ...
  
  The researchers surveyed Google Earth images of 8,510 grazing and resting
  cattle in 308 pasture plains across the globe.
  
  ...
  
  The researchers also recorded the body positions of 2,974 wild deer in
  277 locations across the Czech Republic.
  
  Their fieldwork revealed that the majority of grazing and resting deer
  face northward. About one-third of the deer faced southward.

1) Top 10 most-visited sites as reported by Netcraft.

From http://toolbar.netcraft.com/stats/topsites

  Rank     Site
   1       http://www.google.com
   2       https://www.google.com
   3       http://mail.google.com
   4       https://mail.google.com
   5       http://www.google.co.uk
   6       http://www.google.it
   7       http://www.google.de
   8       http://www.foxnews.com
   9       http://www.google.fr
  10       http://www.google.pl