The Crozet islands is located halfway between the southern tip of Africa and Antarctica. One of the islands in the archipelago, named Île aux Cochons, is home to the largest colony of king penguins on earth. The king penguin is the second largest penguin species on earth after the emperor penguin. The last time scientists counted the population there was an estimated population of 2,000,000 of the 3 foot tall highly specialized birds. Reviewing satellite images and other photographic evidence, Antarctic scientists report that the colony has collapsed to a population of only 200,000. This is significant because the Île aux Cochons represents one third of the earth’s King Penguin population. These birds do not make a nest on the treeless island, instead they “lay one egg at a time and carry it around on their feet covered with a flap of abdominal skin, called a brood patch”.
The University of Vienna describes the conditions on which this particular penguin requires for survival. Hint, they are not flexible.
King penguins are in fact picky animals: in order to form a colony where they can mate, lay eggs and rear chicks over a year, they need tolerable temperature all year round, no winter sea ice around the island, and smooth beach of sand or pebbles. But, above all, they need an abundant and reliable source of food close by to feed their chicks. For millennia, this seabird has relied on the Antarctic Polar Front, an upwelling front in the Southern Ocean concentrating enormous amounts of fish on a relatively small area. Yet, due to climate change, this area is drifting south, away from the islands where most King penguins currently live. Parents are then forced to swim farther to find food, while their progeny is waiting, fasting longer and longer on the shore. This study predicts that, for most colonies, the length of the parents’ trips to get food will soon exceed the resistance to starvation of their offspring, leading to massive King penguin crashes in population size, or, hopefully, relocation.
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A huge colony of king penguins on the Île aux Cochons in 1982
The giant antenna rises from the desert floor like an apparition, a gleaming metal tower jutting 16 stories above an endless wind-whipped stretch of Patagonia.
The 450-ton device, with its hulking dish embracing the open skies, is the centerpiece of a $50 million satellite and space mission control station built by the Chinese military.
The isolated base is one of the most striking symbols of Beijing’s long push to transform Latin America and shape its future for generations to come — often in ways that directly undermine the United States’ political, economic and strategic power in the region.
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Our correspondent went to the deserts of Patagonia to examine how China secured its new base, a symbol of its growing clout in the region.
Spinning objects are hypnotic and fascinating, as last year’s fidget-spinner craze overwhelmingly demonstrated. But even the fastest fidget spinner trails the new reigning champion of fast-whirling objects: a tiny dumbbell that can rotate 60 billion times per minute.
It’s enough to make your head spin.
Spin doctors — er, researchers — recently created the nanoscale rotor and levitated it in a vacuum, blasting it with lasers to set it spinning. Their research, described in a new study, could help reveal how different substances respond under extreme conditions and how friction behaves in a vacuum, Tongcang Li, an assistant professor of physics and astronomy, as well as electrical and computer engineering, at Purdue University, said in a statement.
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Researchers at Purdue University have levitated a nanoparticle in vacuum and driven it to rotate at high speed, bringing them one step closer to figuring out the properties of vacuum and quantum mechanics.Vincent Walter / Purdue University
At least seven people were still missing in Shasta County, California, as the monstrous Carr Fire continued to grow Sunday, authorities said.
Sixteen people had been reported missing, but nine of those were found safe, according to Shasta County Sheriff Tom Bosenko, who spoke at a Sunday news conference.
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Redding Police Sgt. Todd Cogle said, “We’re finding that there are a lot of communication issues” making it hard to locate residents.
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“We spoke with several people who left their cell phones at their residences and in this day and age people don’t remember people’s phone numbers,” Cogle said.
Rachael Pomerleau, 40, had taken opioids before, having had procedures like wisdom teeth removal and gallbladder surgery.
But during the tumultuous two years that her children, now ages 7 and 8, were born, opioids took over her life, she told HuffPost. She was put on bed rest as a result of complications with the pregnancy of her daughter. A few months after her daughter’s birth, she became pregnant with her son. This time, her back and abdominal pain grew so severe that doctors prescribed Vicodin followed by Percocet during her pregnancy ― which wasn’t an unusual prescription for pregnant women at the time, prior to the onset of the opioid epidemic.
“It hurt so bad,” she said. “There were times when I could hardly walk without being in pain.”
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Erin Schumaker/HuffPost
Rachael Pomerleau, 40, was prescribed opioids in a medical setting. Her years of addiction have included homelessness, loss of custody of her children and struggles to get the resources she needs.
Two years, or roughly a million news cycles ago, give or take. The FBI’s original Trump-Russia investigation got underway in the summer before the 2016 campaign, though the public wasn’t really aware of it then. (In contrast to the extremely public FBI investigation of Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server, the bureau followed protocol and never publicly acknowledged that Donald Trump’s presidential campaign was under investigation for its ties to a hostile foreign government.)
The little reporting on the probe at the time underplayed the gravity of the investigation. Not long before the election, The New York Times said in a piece titled “Investigating Donald Trump, F.B.I. Sees No Clear Link to Russia,” that investigators had not “found any conclusive or direct link between Mr. Trump and the Russian government.”
It wasn’t until long after Trump’s election that then-FBI Director James Comey in March 2017 publicly confirmed the bureau’s investigation of connections between Trump associates and the Russian government. The Times later admitted that its pre-election story “gave an air of finality to an investigation that was just beginning” and buried the key fact of the investigation into the Trump campaign’s Russia ties.
Special counsel Robert Mueller, center, is looking into Russian interference in the 2016 election. It’s been alleged that Russian President Vladimir Putin wanted to tip the scales toward a Donald Trump victory.
Thousands of people are fleeing wildfires in California, while on the other coast, residents in the mid-Atlantic are bracing for a new round of torrential storms and potential flooding on Thursday.
A dangerous heat wave will bring triple-digit temperatures to much of the Southwest and parts of the western United States through Friday. High temperatures could reach up to 110 degrees in inland cities and up to the mid-120s in desert areas, forecasters say.
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More than 30 million people on the West Coast — from Washington state to the California-Mexico border — are under a heat advisory or watch Thursday as a strong ridge of high pressure blocks any major cold fronts or low pressure systems from pushing through the area, CNN meteorologist Haley Brink said.
Everybody knows Yelp can help you find a great restaurant for dinner. Now, it can also tell you its health score (but do you really want to know?!). Here’s what else you need to know to Get Up to Speed and Out the Door.
Film and Writing Festival for Comedy. Showcasing best of comedy short films at the FEEDBACK Film Festival. Plus, showcasing best of comedy novels, short stories, poems, screenplays (TV, short, feature) at the festival performed by professional actors.
Our correspondent went to the deserts of Patagonia to examine how China secured its new base, a symbol of its growing clout in the region.
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James' World 2 