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Fishing? In the Wekiva River near where it meets the St. Johns River

But what are all those bugs in the water? Swarms of annoying, biting, water-skimming bugs?

The millions of bugs you see on the surface of Central Florida's rivers are Giant Water Bugs (Lethocerus americanus) on the surface of the river. They were swarming near the docks. These insects are aggressive predators and will sometimes bite when molested. However, generally, they will flee from humans and/or play dead if encountered on land, before biting. In Florida they are also known as toe-biters, electric-light bugs and Alligator Fleas. Their bite is considered one of the most painful that can be inflicted by any insect though the bite causes no long term medical problem for humans.

The reflections in the water are Bald Cypress Trees (Taxodium distichum).

These predators stalk, capture and feed on aquatic crustaceans, fish and amphibians.

Electric Light Bugs

The heteropteran family Belostomatidae contains the giant water bugs. These large, predatory, aquatic insects have the largest body size among the Heteroptera. Adults of some South American species reach 4 inches in length. Individuals occur in ponds and ditches where they suspend below the surface, respiring through two abdominal appendages which act as siphons. During mating season they fly from pond to pond or pool of water. It is during these flights that these insects fly to lights in large numbers, earning their other common name, "electric light bugs". Individuals are capable of inflicting a painful bite with their strong beak, and may also pinch with their front legs. Individuals prey on aquatic insects, small fish, frogs, tadpoles, small birds, and other organisms they are able to capture. Powerful enzymes are injected into prey to kill them. Adults of Lethocerus are considered a delicacy in Asia, and are eaten both fresh and cooked.

Seven genera and approximately 60 species occur worldwide, with three genera and approximately 20 species found in North America. The following three genera containing eight species of Belostomatidae are known to occur in Florida:

Abedus Stål, 1862

Abedus immaculatus (Say)

Belostoma Latreille, 1807
Belostoma flumineum Say
Belostoma lutarium (Stål)
Belostoma testaceum (Leidy)

Lethocerus Mayr, 1853

Lethocerus (Benacus) griseus (Say)
Lethocerus americanus (Leidy) - Central Florida
Lethocerus annulipes (Mayr) - Palm Beach
Lethocerus uhleri (Montandon)

BELOW: A close up of one of these aggressive little bugs.

Alligatorweed Flea Beetle

Two introduced species thrive in Florida; Alligatorweed unintentionally released in the early 1900s, Alligatorweed Flea Beetles intentionally released to control the Alligatorweed in the 1960s before climate change accelerated

Giant Water Bugs are sometimes confused with Alligatorweed Flea Beetles (Agasicles hygrophila; above) because of the name. They look quite different but are similarly swarming insects that can bite.

Alligatorweed, Alternanthera philoxeroides (Mart.) Griseb. (Amaranthaceae), is an invasive aquatic weed native to South America that began threatening Florida’s waterways in the early 1900s. This rooted perennial herb reproduces vegetatively from stem fragments and forms dense floating mats. The floating mats impede navigation, block drains and water intake valves, reduce light penetration, and displace native species. Alligatorweed is a prohibited species in Florida.

The alligatorweed flea beetle, Agasicles hygrophila Selman and Vogt, was the first insect ever studied for biological control of an aquatic weed. The introduction of this insect into the United States was approved in 1963, but it was not successfully established on the invasive alligatorweed until 1965. The insect was first released in 1964 in California, and subsequently, in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Texas.

The first successful release in Florida was made on plants infesting the Ortega River near Jacksonville, Florida. These insects were originally obtained from the Ezeiza Lagoon near Buenos Aires, Argentina. Most of the beetles that were later released at subsequent locations were progeny (offspring) from this original population.

Alligatorweed flea beetles kill the plant by destroying its stored food and interfering with photosynthesis by removing leaf tissue. Both adults and larvae feed on the leaves of alligatorweed, often defoliating the stems. After the leaves have been consumed, the insects will then chew the epidermis (outer surface) from the stems. Feeding damage by young larvae consists of circular pits < 1 mm in diameter located on the abaxial (lower) surface of the leaf. The larvae do not chew entirely through the leaf but leave the upper surface intact. Later instars consume more leaf tissue, creating larger and more irregular feeding pits, and may feed on either side of the leaf. High flea beetle populations can decimate alligatorweed, reducing it to bare stems in a short time. From a distance, alligatorweed mats under attack appear yellow, progressing to brown until the plants collapse. Once established, this insect is capable of reducing plant populations in about 3 months.

This insect has been an extremely effective biological control agent in coastal regions of the southeastern United States. However, it was thought that the beetles could not survive exposure to winter temperatures, and populations of the insects would have to be routinely re-established in the northern inland areas by augmentative releases. But that was before climate change (global warming) accelerated and temperatures modified to the point where the insects thrive year round, feeding on whatever they can find if no alligatorweed is available.

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21 place Places You Should Visit in California

#1, Death Valley National Park.

25 Signs That Your Cat is In Pain

Tail flitching, avoiding bright areas, reaction to palpitation. . . read on.

To Touch or Not to Touch?

We'd say. . .not. That would be poison ivy.

Identification of Animals and Plants is an Essential Skill Set, and a Dying Science

The lack of field skills among biology students, even those who major in ecology is becoming abundantly clear. What happens when you can't get wikipedia on your cell phone? The ability to identify plants and animals, to recognize invasive species and to observe the impact of process such as fire on the landscape are essential.

The Most Visited National Park

If you guessed Yosemite or Yellowstone you'd be wrong. Hint, check out the photo above. Can you tell where I was in the Fall? See my blog post at this LINK.

This invasive giant snail is spreading in Florida—and bringing

nasty parasites with it

Talk about a nightmare in slow motion.

Giant African land snails (Lissachatina fulica), which abound in central and south Florida, are not only threatening to move further north, they’re hauling along some ugly passengers. The snails carry a parasitic worm that can burrow into humans and cause meningitis.

Researchers led by USGS biologist Deborah Iwanowicz collected the snails in seven of the 21 areas where Florida agriculture officials say they were concentrated in 2015. They extracted tissue samples for the study and found the rat lungworm parasite (Angiostrongylus cantonensis) in a some of the snails they captured.

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But unlike previous studies that examined a single tissue sample about the size of a pencil eraser from each snail, Iwanowicz went a step further. She insisted on taking a second sample from a different part of their large bodies.

“Collecting just one additional sample per snail increased the number of snails testing positive for the rat lungworm by 13 percent,” she said.

That spike is reason to believe that previous estimates of the parasite’s prevalence in giant snails were off. A single tissue sample taken from one part of so large an animal, she said, isn’t enough. “This allowed us to confirm that the parasite is not uniformly distributed throughout the snail,” Iwanowicz said.

The research published in the Journal of Wildlife Diseases in 2015, "Spread of the Rat Lungworm (Angiostrongylus cantonensis) in Giant African Land Snails (Lissachatina fulica) in Florida, USA" was one of the loudest warnings that something worse was piggybacking with the snails that had already taken up residence in Florida.

As giant land snails increase their range in the United States, so does the rat lungworm. The parasite wasn’t previously identified in the areas where the researchers found the snails. Infection is rarely life-threatening to humans, but anyone who picks up a snail to gawk at its awesome girth risks picking up a parasite that causes painful headaches, vomiting and a stiff neck.

Native to East Africa, the giant snails were first imported to this country as pets and educational props in 1966. A Florida invasion was halted by an all-out eradication program in the 1970s, or so officials thought. A reemergence was discovered four years ago in Miami and Fort Lauderdale.

Last year, the Florida department of agriculture went door-to-door in the Miami area as part of a vain attempt to get rid of them again. In all, 150,000 snails were found. Two properties alone were crawling with 700 snails.

Like humans, it takes two snails to make babies. But snails have skills that humans don’t. They’re hermaphrodites that can make eggs without a mate. Or a pair of females can bump into each other and one can switch sexes.

That ability sets Giant African land snails apart from hundreds of other invasive creatures crowding out native animals in Florida — Burmese pythons, Argentine tegus, Cuban tree frogs, Nile monitor lizards and lionfish, to name a few.

African land snails mature sexually in six months. They spawn at least twice a year and lay up to 400 eggs. Thousands can hatch in a year. With production like that, these giants aren’t limited to Miami or Florida.

The Sunshine State isn’t the only suitable habitat, says the U.S. Department of Agriculture Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. Virginia, Maryland, Alabama, Arizona, California, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Texas.

They’ve “expanded globally to areas such as Sierra Lion, Liberia, Ivory Coast, American Samoa, Guadeloupe, East Asia, India and Ghana,” the USGS says. “There are established populations in Hawaii.”

How can they survive in cold areas such as the Chesapeake Bay, well beyond their native tropic?

“These land snails …can withstand severe weather by going dormant for a couple months to over a year,” the USGS says.

Food isn’t much of a problem. “They are known to consume over 500 species of plants, and their range expansion could have deleterious effects on food crops and spread disease well north of the Miami area,” Iwanowicz said.

CDC ISSUES HEALTH ADVISORY

FOR FLORIDA SNAILS

A Giant African Land Snail (Lissachatina fulica). One should wash their hands thoroughly after taking a photo like this one, or better yet, put on gloves before handling Giant African Land Snails.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has issued a Health Advisory in Florida regarding Giant African Land Snails. In part the advisory says that the snails could pose a public health threat if infected with Angiostrongylus cantonensis.

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The Dirty Dozen:

12 of the Most Destructive Invasive Animals in the United States

Animals from around the world that stow away in airplanes, ships and the luggage of some smuggler become almost bulletproof when they make their way into the American wilderness as invasive species. Why? They’re new here, and they don’t have predators to keep them in check. Animals that should be afraid of a vicious predator aren’t. Invasive species eat like kings.

Living high on the hog, these marauders aren’t going anywhere. Unlike many native animals thatare disappearing from North America — vaquita porpoises, monarch butterflies, bottlenose dolphin and such — invasive species are growing faster than wildlife and game officials can manage them. In many cases, authorities have given up any hope of eradicating them.

Here are 12 of the most destructive invasive plants and animals in the United States, a dirty dozen. If it’s on this list, there’s a good chance that a government official in an office somewhere is trying to think of ways to kill it.

Burmese Pythons

(Python bivittatus)

These long, lean eating machines are terrorizing the Florida Everglades. Humans don’t have much to fear, but native animals had better watch their backs. Alligators are being knocked off their perch as the swamp’s top predator. People ask why these snakes are such a problem. Why can’t experienced hunters walk into the Everglades and kill them? Burmese pythons from Southeast Asia are so stealthy that even experts with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission have a tough time spotting them, let alone killing them. Since they were determined to be established and put the squeeze on the swamp in 2002, deer, raccoon, marsh rabbits, bobcats and possum have declined by as much as 99 percent in some cases, according to researchers for the U.S. Geological Survey.

Emerald Ash Borer

(Agrilus planipennis)

This bug’s march across the Midwest is not the kind of green movement that conserves nature. It ruins ash trees that provide durable wood used for flooring, bowling alleys, church pews, baseball bats and electric guitars. The bugs sparkle like a jewel with their glittery hide, but the nickel-sized holes they bore into trees are ugly, and the squiggly trails their larvae etch on the bark can make your skin crawl. They arrived in southeastern Michigan in 2002 from their native habitats in Russia, China and Japan. Since then, tens of millions of ash trees have been killed, and their numbers continue to grow.

Nutria

(aka River Rat, Coypu, Myocastor coypus)

The official name comes off like some kind of vitamin drink, so Louisianans came up with another that sounds more fitting: swamp rats. Nutria don’t just look like rats with long tails and orange buck teeth, they breed like them. Female nutria give birth to litters of up to 14 then go back into heat in two days. Federal wildlife officials say there’s no hope of eradicating them from Louisiana, where they were imported from South America for their fur in the 1930s and grew out of control after being released when the industry died. A Chesapeake Nutria Eradication Program is working furiously to push them off the Del Marva Peninsula and wipe them out in Maryland and Delaware. Their endless digging on the banks of rivers rips up plants by the root, causing soil to erode, destroying native habitat for everything from muskrats to crabs to juvenile fish.

European Starling

(Sturnus vulgaris)

Starlings are little birds that travel in huge packs, and they are known for wreaking havoc. Birders don’t like it, but starlings are generally regarded as pests. Every year, the Agriculture Department’s division of Wildlife Service’s kills 4 million animals identified by residents across the country as a nuisance, and starlings are targeted the most — by far. Moving in flocks that resemble small black clouds, they descend on cities, towns and mostly farms, beaks aimed at the ground in search of food. Starlings are known to swarm toward feeding cattle to steal their food, needling and harassing the bigger animals until they back off. Since their introduction to the United States by Shakespeare enthusiasts in the 1890s, they have become arguably the most successful foraging bird in the country, with a population of about 200 million.

Northern Snakehead

(Channa argus)

It’s called a snakehead. That dreadful name pretty much sums up the most feared fish in the Chesapeake Bay watershed, a sharp-tooth monster so scary that fishing tournaments are held not to eat, or fight it on the line, but solely to kill it. Snakeheads look like some weird cross between a python and an electric eel, and attempts to get large numbers of people to fish and eat it so that snakeheads don’t eat too many other creatures in the estuary have failed. Stories about how this fish from China and Korea ended up in the bay in the early 2000s vary. Some say a clueless aquarium dumped several in a tributary; others say someone carried them from a fish market. Whatever happened, female snakeheads, which are baby factories known to carry up to 100,000 eggs, took it from there and have now spread to Delaware and Virginia.

Brown Marmorated Stink Bug

(Halyomorpha halys)

Here’s a quick thought, in 10 words: A stink bug is probably in your house right now. They don’t seem to mind that you’re there. They just need a place to rest through winter and crawl out in spring to mate and make millions more stink bugs. Stink bugs annoy because they swarm and smell like cilantro, but they don’t bite or carry disease. They’re not to be confused with the growing swarm of Asian kudzu bugs in Georgia, although their behaviors are similar. Stink bugs destroy fruits and vegetables and drive up produce prices. They first showed up in Allentown, Pa., in 1998 after crawling out a cargo ship that probably stopped in China, their native land. There, stink bugs aren’t a problem because small wasps lay eggs on their backs and the babies use them for a meal as they grow. With no wasps in the mid-Atlantic, they became marauders.

Feral Hogs

(Sus scrofa)

They have razor-sharp teeth, curling tusks and are so hot tempered that they charge humans. Otherwise, feral hogs, wild pigs or big boars are just farm pigs gone wild. They’re established in 47 states, with massive populations in Texas, Florida, Georgia and North Carolina, and a growing one in Virginia. In most of those places, experienced hunters have a green light to shoot them on sight. Here’s why: They cause about $1.5 billion in damage nationwide each year. They’re also an ecological nightmare that eats turtle eggs, wild turkey eggs and quail that nest on the ground. Acorns and chestnuts that are the next generation of trees go into their stomachs. Feral pigs were introduced to the United States from ships centuries ago, but the recent population boom, state game officials and biologists say, is largely the fault of hunters who imported wild pigs to hunt year round.

Lionfish

(Pterois volitans)

Lionfish are very pretty. That ends the positive vibrations that marine biologists give this animal. They are exotic gluttons that eat everything they can stuff in their mouths, and they are destroying life on the coral reef that serves as habitat for thousands of species of other fish. That’s how they earned the name Norway rats of the Atlantic. Lionfish are native to the Pacific Ocean, but they were widely traded for their looks and were first spotted near Miami in the mid-1980s before proliferating in the Gulf of Mexico, the Atlantic and the Caribbean Sea near the turn of the century.

Norway Rats

(Rattus norvegicus)

Norway rats have lived in the United States for so long that they’re like family. They were introduced in 1775 and are now everywhere, including Alaska and Hawaii, living under various aliases, including brown rats and sewer rats. Norway rats prefer to live near humans and they like choice meats, but really a rat will eat anything — eggs, young chickens, vegetables, garbage and wood. They’re a menace known to climb trees and skitter across thin branches to kill and eat wild chicks in their nests. They’re survivors, adept at avoiding things that eat them.

Tegu

(Teiidae spp.)

Tegus look like little brown anolis lizards — on steroids. They’re muscular, fast and love eggs. They’re known to harass pets — some reports claim they have killed cats — and they invade homes. Tegus were brought to the United States as pets, and are still available for sale in some stores. They were released into the wild and have spread from the Florida Keys to the Florida Panhandle and are threatening to reach into southern Georgia. Like pythons, Florida officials have launched offensives designed to kill them. And also like pythons, those efforts have failed. There are now so many that Florida game officials have given up on the idea of eradicating them, and now only hope to manage the population.

Asian Citrus Psyllid

(Diaphorina citri)

It’s a little hard to believe, but this tiny bug may be the end of Florida orange juice. In less than a decade this little bug has killed the majority of Florida's orange trees. The Asian citrus psyllid carries a bacteria that goes by many names: huanglongbing, “yellow dragon disease” and “citrus greening.” But what people remember is that Florida orange growers, agriculturalists and academics compare it to cancer. Roots become deformed. Fruits drop from limbs prematurely and trees die. Most citrus trees in Florida, which provides 80% of the nation’s orange juice, are infected. The trees slowly die. Florida has been hardest hit, but the psyllid and disease have been detected in Georgia, Louisiana, Texas and California, which provide most of the nation’s lemons. Psyllids were first detected outside Miami in 1998 and the bacteria was discovered near there in 2005. It spread to 31 other counties within two years.

Brown Tree Snake

(Boiga irregularis)

Brown tree snakes are not in the contiguous United States. Be happy about that. Hundreds of thousands are in Guam, a U.S. territory, and are responsible for the decimation of birds there. Birds had no reason to fear an animal that didn’t exist until it was introduced accidentally in the 1950s. Brown tree snakes are so out of control that they’re known for causing power outages when they climb utility poles. Now that many of the birds are gone, the snakes have turned their attention to native lizards. Hawaii, 3,800 miles east of Guam, is on high alert to stop the poisonous, predatory snakes native to Australia and Indonesia.

Six Major Ways Trump's Lies About Wiretapping Could Backfire

1. Turning the FBI director against him.

James B. Comey asked the Justice Department this weekend to issue a statement refuting Trump's lie that Obama ordered a wiretap, but the department did not do so, yet.

2. Prodding the White House counsel to take risks he otherwise would not.

Trump's tweets caught his top aids by surprise, and they spent the weekend trying to figure out how to respond and looking for any backup

3. Trump has become the boy that cried wolf.

The president's lies about Obama wiretapping were so indefensible that even his aides would not defend them directly.

4. Making his White House look dysfunctional and him look like a buffoon.

Trump's presidency has veered onto a road with no centerlines or guardrails. Trump's lies have deepened doubts about his judgment.

5.Emboldening conservatives to call for a full investigation.

Many congressional Republicans are already fatigued with having to defend Trump when he makes these kinds of obviously false claims, and the charges of illegal eavesdropping may prompt some to support something more aggressive than the ongoing probes by the House and Senate intelligence committees.

6. Ensuring, more broadly, that the Russian collusion connections continue to overshadow his domestic agenda.

If they have nothing to hide, why haven't they been forthcoming?

The Milky Way Galaxy with our Sun and some other features labeled.
There are 200 billion stars within 50,000 light years of Earth

How big is the universe? Could it be infinitely large? If the universe has an edge, what is beyond the edge? And if the universe had a beginning, what was going on before that?

Our experience of the everyday world does not prepare us to grasp the concept of an infinite universe. And yet, trying to imagine that the cosmos actually has a boundary does not make things any easier.

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This image depicts the extent of the Milky Way galaxy -- a spiral galaxy of at
least 200 billion stars. Our Sun is buried deep within the Orion Arm, about
26,000 light years from the center of the galaxy. Toward the center, stars are
packed together much more closely than where we live. The Sagittarius Dwarf
Galaxy is being slowly swallowed by the Milky Way.

THE VISIBLE UNIVERSE

There is an edge to what we are able to see and could ever possibly see in the universe. Light travels at 300,000 kilometers per second (186,000 miles per second). That's top speed in this universe—nothing can go faster—but it is relatively slow compared to the distances to nearby galaxies. The nearest big galaxy to our Milky Way, the Andromeda galaxy, is two million light-years away. The most distant galaxies we can now see are 10 to 12 billion light-years away. We could never see a galaxy that is farther away in light travel time than the universe is old—an estimated 14 billion or so years. Thus, we are surrounded by a "horizon" that we cannot look beyond—a horizon set by the distance that light can travel over the age of the universe.

Zooming out only 500,000 light years from the center of the Milky Way
we see that we are surrounded by several dwarf galaxies each containing
tens of millions of stars. Within 500,000 light years of Earth there are at
least 225 billion stars.

This horizon describes the visible universe—a region some 28 billion light years in diameter. But what are the horizons of a civilization that inhabits the most distant galaxies we see? And what about galaxies at the limits of their vision? There is every reason to think that the universe extends a long way beyond the part of the universe we can see. In fact, a variety of observations suggest that our visible patch may be a small fraction—maybe an infinitely small fraction—of the whole universe.

Zooming out 5 million light years from Earth there are 46 dwarf galaxies
and over 700 billion stars.

This view of the universe fits with the currently popular idea that the universe began with a vast expansion of size. The idea describes a kind of undirected energy present in the vacuum of space, called scalar fields, that somehow got channeled into a process called "inflation." By conservative estimates, the universe expanded so much during this period that something the size of an atom inflated to the size of a galaxy.

THE MULTIVERSE

100 million light years from Earth.
At this distance the Universe includes 2,500 large galaxies,
50,000 dwarf galaxies, and 200 trillion stars.

If this grand idea is correct, then the universe is larger than we ever could have imagined. But the question remains: Is there a boundary, and if so, what lies in the voids beyond? The answer, according to some cosmologists, is truly mind-boggling. If the universe sprung forth in this manner, then probably inflation has occurred in other places, perhaps an infinite number of places, beyond our horizon and outside of our time. The implication is that there are other universes, perhaps similar to ours or vastly different, each in its own space and begun in its own time.

COSMIC ACCELERATION

The Milky Way as seen from a highway in Gila Bend, Arizona, USA.

Inflation implies a vastly expanded concept of what the universe is. But the concept is also helping scientists to understand the universe we see around us. Take, for example, the recent observation that the universe is not only expanding—a fact astronomers have known for over seven decades—but also accelerating outward.

The discovery of cosmic acceleration was made by examining the light of supernovae. Astronomers believe they know the intrinsic brightness of a particular kind of supernovae, called "Type Ia," so they can calculate how far such an object must be from Earth by its apparent, or measured, brightness. They also know how fast the supernovae—and the galaxies they're in—are rushing away from us by measuring their "redshift." Redshift refers to a color shift in the light of galaxies toward the red end of the spectrum as they race away from us. The faster a galaxy is moving away, the redder its light becomes.

What astronomers look for in this combination of redshift and distance is the "growth rate" of the universe going back in time. This growth rate tells them about the gravity of all the matter in the universe—if there is a lot of matter it will slow down the growth rate over time.

MICROWAVE MESSAGES

Microwave radiation comes to us from the time in the past when the universe was a primordial fireball. We see a "surface" like we see the "surface" of the sun. We can't look into the sun (or a cloud in the sky) because of scattering of light. As with the sun and its spots, the surface of last scattering of the primordial fireball had structure caused by localized regions that were hotter or cooler, less or more dense.

The Milky Way with lotus

The most pronounced of these structures at the cosmological surface of last scattering were governed by the distance that acoustic (pressure) waves could travel in the age of the universe back then, when the universe was about a half million years old. The size of these irregularities gives us a ruler. The radiation was emitted so long ago, so far away, that it has been redshifted down to millimeter wavelengths. So now millimeter experiments determine the angular size of the clumps caused by acoustic oscillations in the cooling universe at the surface of the last scattering.

We know how big the clumps were—a couple hundred thousand light years across. The relation between their real size, their distance, and the angular size that we observe is governed by the geometry of the universe. A universe dense with matter will distort the final size one way, an empty or almost empty universe will distort another way, and the flat universe of the inflation model will produce yet a different image, which we would intuitively call undistorted. The current results are in agreement with the flat universe of inflation.

This is not the full story. The theory of inflation predicts a precise recipe of how structure would form from little things merging into big things and tells us how many little things there should be for each big thing. The observations match with expectations if the mix of energy and matter is the same as that suggested by the supernovae experiments. Inflation also solves the old controversy over the Hubble Constant, the relationship between the rate galaxies are flying apart and the distances between them. If the Hubble Constant is large then galaxies are relatively close together and the implied age of the universe is way too short if the universe has been briskly expanding.

The Milky Way as seen from Hawaii Volcanoes National Park

on the Big Island of Hawaii.

The universe cannot be younger than things in it. However, if the universe has been loitering and is now accelerating, then it is old enough and a large Hubble Constant is still possible. And we can actually make a direct measurement of the mass density of the universe by looking at the motions of galaxies that slosh in the gravitational wells of the matter. We find something that has come to be called "dark matter" there. If the universe is "flat," then this state is achieved through the sum of the mass and energy density. Measurements of gravity perturbations reveal just the needed complement of matter offsetting the repulsive energy indicated by the supernova measurements.

DARK MYSTERIES

The last couple of years have produced a remarkable convergence of evidence, all suggesting that we live in a universe with a few percent of the normal matter of our everyday experience, maybe 25% of something called "dark matter," which is a name given to hide our ignorance of what it is, and 75% of this energy that wants to push space apart—call it "dark energy." If true, then relatively recently in the history of the universe the "dark energy" has become dominant over "dark matter." During the transient dominance of dark matter, it caused the collapse into all the structure of the universe that we have come to know and appreciate.

Dark energy captivates physicists because it might provide a laboratory for the moment of creation. It may be that the present source of repulsion is quite different from the primordial situation. Certainly the energy density levels and time scales are vastly different. However, if we can understand the mechanism of the present acceleration perhaps we can get a clue about the acceleration at the first instant of our time.

So how big is the universe in the inflation model? It begs the question of what is going on at the boundaries and whether information could be communicated across universes. We suppose not. It may well be that only a tiny part of even our own universe is in our horizon, within the domain that we might hope to know.

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Spring Came Early Due to Climate Change
But Cool Down Expected in the East 2nd Week of March

After a mild winter across much of the United States, February brought abnormally high temperatures, especially east of the Rockies. Spring weather arrived more than three weeks earlier than usual in some places, and new research released Wednesday shows a strong link to climate change.

By the 2017 calendar, the first day of spring is March 20. But spring leaves arrived in mid-January in some parts of the South, and spread northward like a wave. The map above plots the date of “first leaf,” a temperature-based calculation of when vegetation that has been dormant starts to show signs of life. This year, with the exception of a few small areas, the wave has arrived much earlier than the 30-year average.

An early spring means more than just earlier blooms of fruit trees and decorative shrubs like azaleas. It can wreak havoc on schedules that farmers follow for planting and that tourism officials follow for events that are tied to a natural activity like trees blooming. Some plant species that bud early may be susceptible to a snap frost later, and early growth of grasses and other vegetation can disrupt some animals’ usual cycles of spring feeding and growth.

First leaf can vary greatly from year to year and location to location, but the general long-term trend is toward earlier springs.

The new research shows a strong link between global warming and the very warm February that helped to drive the extremely early spring this year. For the entire continental United States, February 2017 was the second warmest on record, and mean temperatures were especially high east of the Rockies: as much as 11 degrees Fahrenheit above normal.

The study, by scientists working as part of a group called World Weather Attribution, looked at the influence of climate change on the temperatures, using models of the atmosphere as it exists and of a hypothetical atmosphere with no greenhouse gas emissions and thus no human-driven climate change. They found that a warm February like the one just experienced is about four times more likely in the current climate than it would have been in 1900, before significant emissions began to change the climate.

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Sydney's Swelter Has a Climate Change Link, Scientists Say

Southeastern Australia has suffered through a series of brutal heat waves over the past two months, with temperatures reaching a scorching 113 degrees Fahrenheit in some parts of the state of New South Wales.

“It was nothing short of awful,” said Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick, of the Climate Change Research Center at the University of New South Wales, in Sydney. “In Australia, we’re used to a little bit of heat. But this was at another level.”

So Dr. Perkins-Kirkpatrick, who studies climate extremes, did what comes naturally: She looked to see whether there was a link between the heat and human-driven climate change.

How Much Warmer Was Your City in 2016

Cool, easy to use, climate change tool at the New York Times.

Recognizing Spring, Scientifically

“It’s definitely spring when I go out to sample insects from the trees and these caterpillars fall on my head,” said Emily Meineke, an entomologist at North Carolina State University. She’s referring to cankerworms, or inchworms, which hatch in early spring and dangle from nearly invisible webs attached to trees.

The tiny inchworm can cause big problems when it greets the East Coast in the spring. When the hungry caterpillars are not controlled, they can damage an area’s trees. Charlotte, N.C., has struggled with such outbreaks for at least two decades, Ms. Meineke said.

“They are targeting those young, delicious leaves,” she said. “The tree needs those to photosynthesize in the springtime.”

After the inchworms have eaten all of the leaves on a tree, they use their webs to swing to the next one like tiny Tarzans. And when they’ve had their fill, the inchworms drop to the ground from their threads and spin their cocoons.

What Spring Looks Like from Space

Bees buzzing, flowers blooming and birds singing are some telltale signs

that spring is upon us. But do you ever wonder what the season looks like from space?

This image from theMeteosat-9 satellite shows Earth on the vernal equinox, the official start of spring in the Northern Hemisphere. This year, that day fell on Sunday, March 20, as it did in this photograph taken in 2011.

The spring equinox is a point in Earth’s orbit where the sun shines directly above the Equator, creating nearly equal periods of daytime and nighttime across the globe.

“Only on the equinoxes do we get that exactly straight terminator,” said Greg Redfern, a solar system ambassador at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, referring to the line separating daylight from the darkness of night.

That line is continually shifting because Earth is tilted 23.5 degrees on its axis. “If the Earth didn’t have that tilt, we’d always have the straight-up-and-down terminator and we wouldn’t have seasons,” Mr. Redfern said.

You can see how the terminator shifts during all four seasons in this video from the Meteosat-9 satellite, which begins in September near the time of the fall equinox. As the Northern Hemisphere approaches winter, it leans away from the sun and receives less daylight — making the terminator appear slanted. After the spring equinox, the Northern Hemisphere gradually starts tilting toward the sun’s rays, making days longer and warmer.

We've Watched:

SNL Goes After Ivanka Trump Hard

and its hilarious because its true

Yet again this weekend, “Saturday Night Live” trotted out Alec Baldwin doing a Donald Trump impression for its cold open. And yet again, that wasn't even close to its harshest political sketch.

That distinction this week was reserved for “Complicit,” a faux Ivanka Trump perfume ad that is liable to really ruffle some feathers.

The basic idea is pretty clear: As an outspoken woman known to be very close to her father, she is complicit in the things Trump does — and for not doing something about them.

“She's Ivanka,” the narrator says. “And a woman like her deserves a fragrance all her own. A scent made just for her. Because she's beautiful. She's powerful. She's … Complicit.”

Shocker Alert:

Dar Adal Molested Quinn

Homeland 6:7, "Imminent Risk:

F. Murray Abraham’s CIA honcho Dar Adal is an evil whirling schemer in the episode written by Ron Nyswaner and directed by Tucker Gates.

Adal does a whole lot of dastardly things in this episode, but nothing is creepier than the revelation that he had a sexual encounter with a young Peter Quinn (Rupert Friend). We learned some seasons ago that Adal found Quinn as a teenager in dire straits and trained him to become a crack CIA assassin. But only at the end of this episode did Quinn, visibly struggling with mental and emotional anguish, confront his one-time mentor about being a “f—-ing dirty old man.”

Adal’s response is nauseating. “We’re all beautiful when we’re young,” followed by: “Fair enough. … For the record, I never forced myself on anyone.”

Quinn Shows Off His English Accent

The Best of Peter Quinn

Paul Ryan Anti-Christ by Che Rellom

Christianity and

Republicans

Breaking a 1000 post history of focusing on the natural world we're putting this brilliant political essay by Nicholas Kristof front-and-center, hoping that it is shared across America. If you think Paul Ryan is planning on stopping with gutting education and the EPA, you're in for a shock. Medicare and Social Security will be next. Medicaid is already a target of these vengeful, hateful mostly white men who claim a Christian dogma that looks like anything but what Jesus might do.

There is a deep contradiction in the ideology the Republicans have crafted over the past few years. They insist that government is an unnatural, nefarious force, in conflict with "natural" human endeavors like trade, self-interest, and profit. But of course the mechanisms of trade and profit are government mechanisms, and the means of Republican ideology are government means. And so they want to use government exactly in the way they say it should not be: as a "nanny state" to reward the virtuous (the rich) and punish the wicked (poor), to enforce the form of "natural" morality that they attribute to markets. It's a bit like saying that rules are the enemy of creativity, and then trying to write the rules that acknowledge the fact.

It's one thing for a monk, or a misanthrope, to take the position that the means and ends of government are a form of corruption. But for a politician, or a government, to take that position can only be hypocrisy. The Republicans can't admit (even to themselves, in most cases) that the purpose of dismantling the access of the poor to health care is to enrich the rich, so they blame the poor for being poor, and the government for being the government. It is probably a big part of the reason why they are perpetually so full of anger and vitriol, as people who are controlled by motivations they can't admit often are.

And Jesus Said Unto Paul Ryan

by Nicholas Kristof

for the New York Times

A woman who had been bleeding for 12 yearscame up behind Jesus and touched his clothes in hope of a cure. Jesus turned to her and said: “Fear not. Because of your faith, you are now healed.”

Then spoke Pious Paul of Ryan: “But teacher, is that wise? When you cure her, she learns dependency. Then the poor won’t take care of themselves, knowing that you’ll always bail them out! You must teach them personal responsibility!”

They were interrupted by 10 lepers who stood at a distance and shouted, “Jesus, have pity on us.”

“NO!” shouted Pious Paul. “Jesus! You don’t have time. We have a cocktail party fund-raiser in the temple. And don’t worry about them — they’ve already got health care access.”Jesus turned to Pious Paul, puzzled.

“Why, they can pray for a cure,” Pious Paul explained. “I call that universal health care access.”

Jesus turned to the 10 lepers.“Rise and go,” he told them. “Your faith has made you well.” Then he turned back to Pious Paul, saying, “Let me tell you the story of the good Samaritan.

“A man was attacked by robbers who stripped him of clothes, beat him and left him half dead. A minister passed down this same road, and when he saw the injured man, he crossed to the other side and hurried on. So did a rich man who claimed to serve God. But then a despised Samaritan came by and took pity on the injured man. He bandaged his wounds and put the man on his own donkey and paid an innkeeper to nurse him to health. So which of these three should we follow?”

“Those who had mercy on him,” Pious Paul said promptly.

Jesus nodded. “So go ——”

“I mean the first two,” Pious Paul interjected. “For the Samaritan’s work is unsustainable and sends the wrong message. It teaches travelers to take dangerous roads, knowing that others will rescue them from self-destructive behaviors. This Samaritan also seems to think it right to redistribute money from those who are successful and give it to losers. That’s socialism! Meanwhile, if the rich man keeps his money, he can invest it and create jobs. So it’s an act of mercy for the rich man to hurry on and ignore the robbery victim.”

“How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of Heaven,” Jesus mused to himself. “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter heaven.”

“Let me teach you about love, Jesus — tough love!” Pious Paul explained. “You need a sustainable pro-business model. And you need to give people freedom, Jesus, the freedom to suffer misery and poverty.”

“The Lord God has anointed me to bring good news to the poor,” Jesus replied, emphasizing the last two words. Then he turned to a paralyzed beggar at his feet. “Stand up!” Jesus told the man. “Pick up your mat and go home.” As the man danced about joyfully, Pious Paul rolled his eyes dismissively.

“Look, Jesus, you have rare talent, and it should be rewarded,” Pious Paul said. “I have a partner, The Donald, who would like to work with you: He’d set up a lovely hospital, and the rich would come and pay for you to heal them. You’d get a percentage, and it’d be a real money-spinner. Overhead would be minimal because every morning you could multiply some loaves and fishes. You could strike it rich!”

“Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the kingdom of God,” Jesus said. “But woe to you who are rich, for you have already received comfort.”

“Oh, come on, Jesus,” Pious Paul protested. “Don’t go socialist on me again. Please don’t encourage class warfare. The best way to help the needy is to give public money to the rich. That then inspires the poor to work harder, galvanizes the sick to become healthy, forces the lepers to solve their own problems rather than kick back and depend on others. That’s why any realistic health plan has to focus on providing less coverage for the poor, and big tax benefits for the rich. When millions of people lose health care, that’s when a country is great again!”

“From everyone who has been given much,” Jesus told him, “much will be required.”

“Well, sure, this hospital would have a foundation to do some charity work. Maybe commissioning portraits of The Donald to hang in the entrance. But let’s drop this bleeding heart nonsense about health care as a human right, and see it as a financial opportunity to reward investors. In this partnership, 62 percent of the benefits would go to the top 0.6 percent— perfect for a health care plan.”

Jesus turned to Pious Paul on his left and said:“Be gone! For I was hungry and you gave me no food; I was thirsty, and you gave me no drink; and I was sick, and you did not help me.”

“But, Lord,” protested Pious Paul of Ryan, “when did I see you hungry or thirsty or sick and refuse to help you? I drop your name everywhere. And I’m pro-life!”

“Truly, I say to you,” Jesus responded, “as you did not help the homeless, the sick — as you did not help the least of these, you did not help me.”

Epilogue: Paul Ryan due to the untimely death of his father collected social security. He later attended state college on a tuition subsidized by taxpayers. He relied on two major socialistic programs to give him a helping hand. Now he criticizes and denigrates those same institutions. There is a special place for the hypocrites of the world and it is not the House of Representatives.

Ryan's beatitude: Blessed are those who have low expectations, for they shall never be disappointed.

Meanwhile

We've Read:

Anatomy of McDonald's
Priceless Assault on Trump

A Step-by-Step Guide

paraphrased from an article originally published by Abby Ohlheiser
for the Washington Post

As you can clearly see in Exhibit A above, the tweet is a reply to President Trump, and it is not very nice to him. Whoever tweeted it really wanted to make sure that a lot of people saw it, which is why it was the “pinned tweet” for this account Thursday morning before it was deleted.

[Why your viral ‘heroes’ probably shouldn’t be the Twitter accounts of brands]

“Rogue” tweets, from dubious anonymous accounts claiming to be from Trump administration staffers or from real, verified accounts of brands and government agencies, have become a favorite meme for parts of the American public who are desperately looking for signs, any sign, of institutional #resistance against the president. Which is why this McDonald’s tweet was destined to become content the moment it was born. Here is a step-by-step guide to how that happens.

Step 1: McDonald’s tweets.

At 9:16 a.m., the @McDonaldsCorp account tweets at the president: “You are actually a disgusting excuse of a President and we would love to have @BarackObama back, also you have tiny hands.” The tweet comes from the company’s corporate account; the brand account is @McDonalds.

Step 2: People see the McDonald’s tweet.

The tweet collects hundreds of retweets. This is not something a brand should tweet, although it’s pretty clear that many people sharing this one are happy it did.

Step 3: People take screen shots of the McDonald’s tweet.

The first thing you do when you see a corporate account of a major international company tweet something like this is take a screen shot. Usually they don’t stay up for long. So even as the original tweet is being retweeted, others are posting their own, more permanent records of the tweet.

If you, like me, follow a lot of people who closely follow politics, then you probably saw your feed turn into a river of images of this same tweet earlier Thursday morning.

Step 4: People meme and joke about the McDonald’s tweet.

This one was actually pretty easy to accomplish, because as it turns out, McDonald’s and Trump have a history. Snippets of this commercial become GIFs:

Others make jokes:

We have fun here on the Internet.

Step 5: McDonald’s deletes the tweet.

The tweet is deleted, but thanks to step 3, there are plenty of records.

Step 6: The tweet becomes content.

Although some outlets made their content about the tweet even before McDonald’s deleted it (congrats!), the story continues to spread even after McDonald’s gets rid of the tweet. By 10 a.m., it’s the lead story on the Drudge Report.

Step 7: We were hacked excuse breaks

We, like many outlets, reached out to McDonald’s about the original tweet. McDonald’s issued the above statement via Twitter later Thursday morning.

Terri Hickey, a spokesperson for McDonald’s, later emailed us an identical statement in response to a request for comment.

Step 8: The tweet becomes good content.

Hello! Thank you for reading.

More Reading:

What Florida will look like if sea levels rise 15 feet (5 m).

Rising Sea Levels Seen as Threat to Coastal U.S.

About 3.7 million Americans live within a few feet of high tide and risk being hit by more frequent coastal flooding in coming decades because of the sea level rise caused by global warming, according to new research.

If the pace of the rise accelerates as much as expected, researchers found, coastal flooding at levels that were once exceedingly rare could become an every-few-years occurrence by the middle of this century.

By far the most vulnerable state is Florida, the new analysis found, with roughly half of the nation’s at-risk population living near the coast on the porous, low-lying limestone shelf that constitutes much of that state. But Louisiana, California, New York and New Jersey are also particularly vulnerable, researchers found, and virtually the entire American coastline is at some degree of risk.

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Eastern United States after 9 foot (3 m) sea level rise. Miami and New Orleans no longer exist.

“Sea level rise is like an invisible tsunami, building force while we do almost nothing,” said Benjamin H. Strauss, an author, with other scientists, of two new papers outlining the research. “We have a closing window of time to prevent the worst by preparing for higher seas.”

The project on sea level rise led by Dr. Strauss for the nonprofit organization Climate Central appears to be the most elaborate effort in decades to estimate the proportion of the national population at risk from the rising sea. The papers are scheduled for publication on Wednesday by the journal Environmental Research Letters. The work is based on the 2010 census and on improved estimates, compiled by federal agencies, of the land elevation near coastlines and of tidal levels throughout the country.

Climate Central, of Princeton, N.J., was started in 2008 with foundation money to conduct original climate research and also to inform the public about the work of other scientists. For the sea level project, financed entirely by foundations, the group is using the Internet to publish an extensive package of material that goes beyond the scientific papers, specifying risks by community. People can search by ZIP code to get some idea of their own exposure.

After a 15 foot (5 m) sea level rise Miami, Key West, St. Petersburg, and Fort Myers are completely flooded.

While some coastal governments have previously assessed their risk, most have not, and national-level analyses have also been rare. The new package of material may therefore give some communities and some citizens their first solid sense of the threat.

Dr. Strauss said he hoped this would spur fresh efforts to prepare for the ocean’s rise, and help make the public more aware of the risks society is running by pumping greenhouse gases into the air. Scientists say those gases are causing the planet to warm and its land ice to melt into the sea. The sea itself is absorbing most of the extra heat, which causes the water to expand and thus contributes to the rise.

The ocean has been rising slowly and relentlessly since the late 19th century, one of the hallmark indicators that the climate of the earth is changing. The average global rise has been about eight inches since 1880, but the local rise has been higher in some places where the land is also sinking, as in Louisiana and the Chesapeake Bay region.

Sea Levels Could Rise Feet by 2050

The rise appears to have accelerated lately, to a rate of about a foot per century, and many scientists expect a further acceleration as the warming of the planet continues. One estimate that communities are starting to use for planning purposes suggests the ocean could rise a foot over the next 40 years, though that calculation is not universally accepted among climate scientists.

The handful of climate researchers who question the scientific consensus about global warming do not deny that the ocean is rising. But they often assert that the rise is a result of natural climate variability, they dispute that the pace is likely to accelerate, and they say that society will be able to adjust to a continuing slow rise.

Myron Ebell, a climate change skeptic at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a Washington research group, said that “as a society, we could waste a fair amount of money on preparing for sea level rise if we put our faith in models that have no forecasting ability.”

Experts say a few inches of sea level rise can translate to a large incursion by the ocean onto shallow coastlines. Sea level rise has already cost governments and private landowners billions of dollars as they have pumped sand onto eroding beaches and repaired the damage from storm surges.

Insurance companies got out of the business of writing flood insurance decades ago, so much of the risk from sea level rise is expected to fall on the financially troubled National Flood Insurance Program, set up by Congress, or on state insurance pools. Federal taxpayers also heavily subsidize coastal development when the government pays to rebuild infrastructure destroyed in storm surges and picks up much of the bill for private losses not covered by insurance.

For decades, coastal scientists have argued that these policies are foolhardy, and that the nation must begin planning an orderly retreat from large portions of its coasts, but few politicians have been willing to embrace that message or to warn the public of the rising risks.

Sea level rise of 18 feet (6 m).

Organizations like Mr. Ebell’s, even as they express skepticism about climate science, have sided with the coastal researchers on one issue. They argue that Congress should stop subsidizing coastal development, regarding it as a waste of taxpayers’ money regardless of what the ocean might do in the future.

“If people want to build an expensive beach house on the Florida or Carolina coast, they should take their own risk and pay for their own insurance,” Mr. Ebell said.

The new research calculates the size of the population living within one meter, or 3.3 feet, of the mean high tide level, as estimated in a new tidal data set from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. In the lower 48 states, that zone contains 3.7 million people today, the papers estimate, a figure exceeding 1 percent of the nation’s population.

Under current coastal policies, the population and the value of property at risk in that zone are expected to continue rising.

The land below the 3.3-foot line is expected to be permanently inundated someday, possibly as early as 2100, except in places where extensive fortifications are built to hold back the sea. One of the new papers calculates that long before inundation occurs, life will become more difficult in the low-lying zone because the rising sea will make big storm surges more likely.

Only in a handful of places have modest steps been taken to prepare. New York City is one: Pumps at some sewage stations have been raised to higher elevations, and the city government has undertaken extensive planning. But the city — including substantial sections of Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island — remains vulnerable, as do large parts of Long Island, Connecticut and New Jersey.

Warming Oceans are Turning Sea Stars to Goo and Killing Lobsters

Warming waters in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans have increased the prevalence of diseases that are turning sea stars to mush and killing lobsters by burrowing under their shells and causing lesions. The outbreaks are so lethal that at least one species of sea star has vanished off the coasts of Washington and Canada's British Columbia.

Changing the Chemistry of Earth’s Oceans

The oceans have always served as a sink for carbon dioxide, but the burning of fossil fuels since the beginning of the industrial revolution, especially over the last 40 years, has given them more than they can safely absorb. The result is acidification — a change in the chemical balance that threatens the oceans’ web of life.

In earth’s history, there have been many episodes of acidification, mainly from prolonged volcanic eruptions. According to a new research review by paleoceanographers at Columbia University, published in Science, the oceans may be turning acid far faster than at any time in the past 300 million years.

Changing something as fundamental as the pH of seawater — a measurement of how acid or alkaline it is — has profound effects. Increased acidity attacks the shells of shellfish and the skeletal foundation of corals, dissolving the calcium carbonate they’re made of. Coral reefs are among the most diverse ecosystems on the planet. Ocean acidification threatens the corals and every other species that makes its living on the reefs.

The authors tried to determine which past acidification events offer the best comparison to what is happening now. The closest analogies are catastrophic events, often associated with intense volcanic activity resulting in major extinctions. The difference is that those events covered thousands of years. We have acidified the oceans in a matter of decades, with no signs that we have the political will to slow, much less halt, the process.

Lethal Buzzers

6 Most Dangerous Mosquitoes

Among the planet's 3,000 mosquito species, here are a few offenders that can transmit diseases to humans, such as the Zika Virus

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Ancient Poisonous Flower Trapped in Amber is A Cousin to Strychnine

It is rare to find plant fossils intact, let alone plant fossils that go back at least 15 million years and relate to a modern pesticide. The species, Strychnos electri, can be traced to two flowers encased in amber for at least 15 million years.

Ryan Reynolds is Hilarious

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Why the U.S. East Coast Could be a Major 'Hotpspot' For Rising Seas

New Research adds to a body of evidence suggesting that a warming climate may have particularly marked effects for citizens of the country most responsible for global warming in the first place, namely, U.S. East Coasters.

More on this story: Enhanced Atlantic sea-level rise relative to the Pacific under high carbon emission rates.

The Giant Leopard Moth or Eyed Tiger Moth (Hypercompe scribonia) is a moth of the family Erebidae. It is found throughout the Americas.

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The species has a wingspan of 76 mm (3 inches). The wings of the moth are bright white with a pattern of neat black blotches. Underneath the moth is blue.

The male is almost twice as large as the female, but the easiest way to tell a female is after mating much of the patterning on her wings is rubbed off.

The caterpillar is of the "wooly bear" type, with a thick coat of black bristles (setae) and red or orange bands between its segments, which become conspicuous when the caterpillar rolls into a ball for defense.

Like the banded wooly bear, its hairs are not urticant and do not typically cause irritation.

Below: A female Giant Leopard Moth after mating. The mating ritual results in a loss of many wing scales, which can have negative effects on the moth's flight efficiency. Their mating sessions are notably long-lasting, taking more than 24 hours.

We've Read

Police Net a Butterfly Killer,

and Now He May Face Jail

The killer, a former body builder, stalked his frail victims at nature reserves, in one case clambering over a locked gate armed with a net before he chased them down, trapped them and carried them away, dead or alive.

The Butterfly, the Ant, and the Oregano Plant

It may be hard to imagine a ménage à trois, satisfactory to all parties, in which one member tries to dislodge another with a toxic gas and a third eats the offspring of the other two. But such an arrangement exists, and one of its members may even be sitting quietly in your kitchen’s spice rack.

Monarch Migration Plunges to Lowest Level in Decades

The number of monarch butterflies that completed an annual migration to their winter home in a Mexican forest sank this year to its lowest level in at least two decades, due mostly to extreme weather and changed farming practices in North America, the Mexican government and a conservation alliance report.

An Exaltation of Moths,

Much-Maligned Kin of the Butterfly

Moth events are all the rage. They are a way to dispel some of the myths about moths — that they are brown and drab, that they eat tomato plants and nibble at sweaters. Only a very few species are what might be considered by some to be pests.

Zebras in the Streets

Could They Save America from Trump?

John Oliver thinks so.

John Oliver wants to improve the news this week and he needs your help to #JustAddZebras to everything.

It seems zebras are running rampant through the streets of La Paz, Bolivia, where they can be seen hanging out in groups, interacting with drivers, and even directing traffic, and Oliver thinks its time they come to America. The cebritas, as they are known, aren’t of the equid variety—rather, they’re local volunteers dressed in full-body zebra costumes.

The back story of the movement comes from the Bolivian city of La Paz, which has a long-standing history of traffic accidents. To rectify that situation, the government introduced a very unique solution: traffic zebras.

Zebra Mocks Douchebag Awkwardly Posing in the Woods

Oliver explained that these traffic zebras, costumed men and women who dance in crosswalks to encourage traffic safety, was based on a similar program in Colombia where they used traffic mimes. “As far as it comes to having mimes roaming around your city, we can all agree — no,” said Oliver.

The program has been in place since 2010, and started with 24 traffic zebras. The number quickly expanded to more 265 costumed zebras dancing for traffic safety. “It may look like fun to people, this is a real job with strict rules,” said Oliver, noting that one of them is “never take your head off.”

Will This Wetsuit Keep Sharks Away?

And while we're talking about zebras. . .a team of Australian researchers want to protect surfers by dressing them in zebra stripes.

To understand why so many people are drawn to deadly creatures of the deep, look to the quote by the sociobiologist E.O. Wilson: “We are not afraid of predators, we’re transfixed by them … We love our monsters.”

Overall Winner; Stickman — the Vicissitudes of Chron's
This image is part of a series called Stickman — the Vicissitudes of Crohn’s. Its images are based around the character Stickman, a proxy or alter ego of the artist, who suffers from Crohn’s disease. He is made of sticks rather than bones and references the associated symptoms of weight loss, the body’s fragility following a flare-up, and the abrupt, transformative nature of Crohn’s disease. Spooky Pooka/Wellcome Images)
The Wellcome Image Awards

The Wellcome Image Awards are the British medical research charity Wellcome's most eye-catching celebration of science, medicine and life. Now in their 20th year, the Awards recognise the creators of informative, striking and technically excellent images that communicate significant aspects of healthcare and biomedical science. Those featured are selected from all the new images acquired by Wellcome Images during the preceding year. The judges are experts from medical science and science communication. Whatever you do, please don't forward any news of these awards to The Trumpholes, he might decide to executive order them out of existence.

The Julie Dorrington winner: Intraoccular lens 'iris clip'

The Julie Dorrington Award is presented for outstanding photography in a clinical environment. Named after one of the founders of the Wellcome Images clinical collection, this Award honors Julie's contribution to Wellcome and to the clinical photography profession and the service it provides to medicine and medical education.The image shows how an iris clip, also known as an artificial intraocular lens (IOL), is fitted onto the eye. An iris clip is used to treat conditions such as myopia (nearsightedness) and cataracts (cloudiness of the lens). This particular patient, a 70-year-old man, regained almost full vision following his surgery. Mark Bartley, Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust/Wellcome Images)

#breastcancer Twitter connections

This is a graphical visualization of data extracted from tweets containing the hashtag #breastcancer. Twitter users are represented by dots, called nodes, and lines connecting the nodes represent the relationships between the Twitter users. Eric Clarke, Richard Arnett and Jane Burns, Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland/Wellcome Images)

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Brain-on-a-chip

Neural stem cells have the ability to form all the different cell types found in the nervous system. Here, researchers are investigating how neural stem cells grow on a synthetic gel called PEG. After just two weeks, the stem cells (magenta) produced nerve fibers (green). These fibers grew away from the cell due to chemical gradients in the gel, teaching researchers about how their environment affects their structural organization. Researchers have devised ways of growing miniature organs on plastic chips, which they hope can be connected to represent the human body. This could be used to accurately predict the effectiveness and toxicity of drugs and vaccines and remove the need for animal testing in medical research. Collin Edington and Iris Lee/Massachusetts Institute of Technology/Wellcome Images)

Pigeon thermoregulation

All animals possess unique variations in their anatomy that help them adapt to their environment. The Grey Parrot Anatomy Project was established to create technology that allows the world to study the anatomy of any animal. BriteVu, a novel contrast agent developed during the project, allows researchers to see the entire network of blood vessels in an animal, down to the capillary level. The blood supply just below the Pigeon’s skin helps it control its body temperature through a process known as thermoregulation. Scott Echols, Scarlet Imaging and the Grey Parrot Anatomy Project/Wellcome Images)

Surface of a mouse retina

The retina, located at the back of the eye, contains light-sensitive cells responsible for converting light into electrical nerve signals that the brain can process. As a result of aging or injury, the retina can lose this function, causing vision loss. This image was created by digitally stitching together over 400 images to form one large image to show the entire surface of a mouse retina. Gabriel Luna, Neuroscience Research Institute, University of California, Santa Barbara/Wellcome Images)

The Placenta Rainbow

The Placenta Rainbow highlights differences in mouse placental development that can result from manipulation of the mother’s immune system. These placentas are from mice with genetically different immune systems, and have been stained for three proteins. Blue represents the nucleus, where DNA is stored and controlled; blood vessels are stained in red; and trophoblasts, the first cells to form in the developing embryo, are stained in green. The range of colors indicates the significant effects that differences in a mother’s immune system can have on placental development. Such techniques could help us understand and identify ways to treat complications that arise during human pregnancies. Suchita Nadkarni, William Harvey Research Institute, Queen Mary University of London/Wellcome Images)

Developing Spinal Cord

Our spines allow us to stand and move, and they protect the spinal cord, which connects all the nerves in our body with our brain. The spinal cord is formed from a structure called the neural tube, which develops during the first month of pregnancy. This series of three images shows the open end of a mouse’s neural tube, with each image highlighting (in blue) one of the three main embryonic tissue types. Researchers are studying mouse neural tubes to try to prevent the problems that can occur with neural tube development, such as spina bifida, in which the bones of the spine and the spinal cord do not form correctly. Gabriel Galea, University College London/Wellcome Images)

Cat Skin and blood supply

A polarized light micrograph of a section of cat skin shows hairs, whiskers and its blood supply. Blood vessels were injected with a red dye called carmine dye (here appearing black) to visualize the capillaries in the tissue, a newly developed technique at the time. Fine hairs (yellow), thicker whisker (yellow) and blood vessels (black) are all visible. Whiskers, unlike normal hair, are touch receptors, each containing a sensory organ called a proprioceptor. When a cat’s whiskers touch something, or feel vibrations in the air from a moving object, signals are sent from them to the brain to provide spatial awareness. Whiskers are therefore both a valuable hunting and survival tool. David Linstead/Wellcome Images)

A healthy mini-pig eye

On this 3D model of a healthy mini-pig eye, the dent on the right-hand side of the image is the pupil, the opening that allows light into the eye. The blood vessels shown are bringing energy and food to the muscles surrounding the iris, which controls the amount of light entering the eye. Peter M. Maloca/Christian Schwaller/Ruslan Hlushchuk/Sebastien Barre/Wellcome Images)

Zebrafish eye and neuromasts

The scientists are using a Gal4 reporter fish to study a gene expressed in the lens of the eye (the red circle in the middle of the image) the head, and cells called neuromasts (the red dots). Neuromasts form a special mechanosensory system in fish that responds to surrounding water movements and is therefore essential for a variety of behaviors, from schooling to avoiding predators. This fish’s nervous system has also been labeled for study, and is shown in blueish-green. Ingrid Lekk and Steve Wilson/Wellcome Images)

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12 Reasons Baseball Will be Great in 2017

Read: Ben Reiter's THE NEW TESTAMENT

"O.K., it happened, baseball finally reached the crescendo it had been building toward for 108 years—so now what? It's a year one A.C. (After Cubs), and time to reset the story lines, stars and style that will kick off the game's new era. Here are 17 reasons baseball will stay great in 2017 (and beyond). No, the Cubs aren't going away—can someone please find a flaw in Kris Bryant?—but the place to start is the living, breathing blend of Mantle and Mays in our midst. Those who know Mike Trout best can take it from here. . .

1. Mike Trout

At 25 the Angels' centerfielder has won two American League MVP awards, in 2014 and '16, and could easily own five. (he has three second place finishes.) Last fall FanGraphs writer August Fagerstrom determined that Trout had just completed the ninth-best five-year stretch, by Wins Above Replacement (WAR), of any position player in history.

2. The 3000th Hit

Good Field, Good Company

One of the era's best two-way players is about to join a select crowd

Adrián Beltré is one of the greatest defensive third basemen of all-time second only to Brooks Robinson in defensive runs saved and fielding runs-but he's also a force on offence. Almost 38 and coming off another strong season. Beltré is just 48 hits away from joining the only 30 other players to have 3,000 hits.

3. The 600th Homer

The Angels' Other Future Hall of Famer is on the Verge of History

The Big Contract (10 year, $240 million) set expectations for Albert Pujols impossibly high, obscuring the fact that he is still a very productive hitter. After clubbing 40 home runs in 2015 and 31 last year, he's siting at 591-and will almost certainly become just the 9th member of the 600 home run club this season.

4. Drought Busters 2.0

A Quest Called Tribe

After falling one win short, the Indians added one big bat, designated hitter Edwin Encarnación now they like their chances—a lot

5. The New Super Relievers

Fireman in the Hole

these high-impact bullpen arms are ready to take on bigger, more flexible roles; Brad Brach (Orioles), Chris Devenski (Astros), and David Phelps (Marlins)

6. The Bronx Renaissance

The Long Game

Gary Sánchez's homer binge was a blast—and a sign that the Yankees are back to building the right way

7. The Fun Bunch

After Big Papi, The little things

For the Red Sox, Winning—and joy—are in the details

8. If You Rebuild it. . .

Brave New World

Atlanta is rebooting its farm system—without punting on the present

9. The New Face of Baseball

Born to Win

A ring, an MVP, honors at every level. The perfect family, the high school sweetheart... those eyes. Is the Kris Bryant story too good to be true? No. And dentistry's loss was the budding Cubs dynasty's gain.

10. Power Surge

Home Runs are Back

What's behind the sudden return of the long ball?

11. The Fan Experience

Up Close And Personal

12. ETA: Right Now

Andrew Benintendi, Boston Red Sox, LF

Baseball's best entry class—GO! 1971 (Brett, Rice and Schmidt)? '85 (Bonds, Larkin, Smoltz)? 2005 (Braun, Gordon, Rulo, Zimmerman)? Those years saw a ton of future stars drafted or signed to their first pro contracts. The next great year in the conversation is 2015: Less than two years after turning pro, several members of that class have already made their presence felt.

The Giant Leopard Moth (Hypercompe scribonia)

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This female somehow got into the house. I put her on a reminder card and carried her back outside. I was able to identify her sex by the missing wing scales. She had likely recently mated, losing some wing scales in the process.

This specimen I found on the fence, kind of disoriented by a cool breeze. She had just laid hundreds of eggs. Click on the photo to enlarge.

The sex act in this species takes up to 24 hours during which time the male and female are constantly attached. During mating sessions, the wings of the male cover most of the female's abdomen, and this can sometimes lead tup to loss of wing scales. An extreme example is pictured below.

We've Read:

Police Net a Butterfly Killer,
and now He May Face Jail Time
The killer, a former body builder, stalked his frail victims at nature reserves, in one case clambering over a locked gate armed with a net before he chased them down, trapped them and carried them away, dead or alive.

The Butterfly, the Ant, and the Oregano Plant
It may be hard to imagine a ménage à trois, satisfactory to all parties, in which one member tries to dislodge another with a toxic gas and a third eats the offspring of the other two. But such an arrangement exists, and one of its members may even be sitting quietly in your kitchen's spice rack.

Monarch Migration Plunges to Lowest Level in Decades
The number of monarch butterflies that completed an annual migration to their winter home in a Mexican forest sunk this year to its lowest level in at least two decades, due mostly to extreme weather and changed farming practices in North America, according to the Mexican government and a conservation alliance report.

An Exaltation of Moths
Much-Maligned Kin of the Butterfly
Moth events are all the rage. They are a way to dispel some of the myths about moths—that they are all brown and drab, that they eat tomato plants and nibble on sweaters. Only a very few species are what might be considered to some to be pests.
We've Watched:

Just Add Zebras
John Oliver Uses Dancing Zebra Footage to Make "Painful" News More Bearable
"I think it's pretty clear, with things in America the way they are now, we need these zebras like never before," said Oliver. He provided 24 minutes of a zebra in front of a green screen dancing, reading the newspaper and being generally silly, encouraging viewers to add the footage to "painful moments" with the hashtag #JustAddZebras

. . . And The Internet Responded

Best of Just Add Zebras

Florida Phlox (Phlox floridana) is currently peaking in areas where there has been some rainfall

The big difference between California and Florida wildflower seasons is that Florida's season lasts virtually year round. If Florida were to receive adequate moisture there would always be wildflowers in bloom. That moisture has been largely missing for the past decade as climate change has made Florida's climate hotter and drier a situation not dissimilar to climate change in California.

Bidens alba (Spanish Needles, Beggarticks) bloomed all winter where there was moisture

California's recent break from 5 years of drought has brought a superbloom of epic proportions. So for this April, California wins. However, check back in May. By May it is typically so hot and dry in California that all but the hardiest of wildflowers will have died off, while Florida's rainy season may be just beginning, bringing with it an explosion of blooms.

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Gaillardia in full bloom

Earlier-than-normal blooming of spring wildflowers in Florida is occurring more often, but this year stands out because some wildflowers are blooming nearly a month earlier than expected. The influence of extremely warm weather all winter and into spring was probably greatest in North Florida. Like February, March has been dryer and warmer than normal, which would speed up the time when mid- or late-spring wildflowers bloom, such as Black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia hirta) and Blanketflower (Gaillardia pulchella). Already these species are in full bloom along the east coast.

Lyre Leaf Sage started blooming in late February

This also means that now is not too soon to be looking for wildflowers that normally would bloom in late April, such as Blue-eyed grass (Sisyrinchium spp.), Lanceleaf tickseed (Coreopsis lanceolata), Southeastern sneezeweed (Helenium pinnatifidum), Lyreleaf sage (Salvia lyrata), and Spiderwort (Tradescantia ohiensis). The remainder of the spring weather is forecast to be hotter and drier than normal.

Venus Looking Glass (Triodanis biflora)

In Central and South Florida, temperatures are expected to be above normal in April (as they were in March), with hotter than normal temperatures the remainder of spring. While rain is forecast to be below normal throughout spring, NOAA predicts that drought conditions will persist in a large portion of south Central Florida and are likely to develop in South Florida (see U.S. Seasonal Drought Outlook).

Elderberry (Sambucus nigra, ssp. canadensis) blooming this week at the Circle B Bar Reserve

Despite the heat and dry flowers are finding enough moisture from evening dew and occasional fog to bloom especially in ditches, near canals, and anywhere else that scant moisture is found.

Where to find wildflowers

in Central Florida

Given that outlook, the best places to see native wildflowers will be naturally moist areas, especially in April and May. Look for two of the showiest and most common wildflowers in moist sites — Leavenworth’s tickseed (Coreopsis leavenworthii) and Black-eyed Susan (in North Florida, it tends to occur in drier locations). Because March was warmer than normal, look for typical April and May bloomers a few weeks earlier than you otherwise would. For instance, Leavenworth’s tickseed and Black-eyed Susan are already blooming.

Bidens laevis (Burmarigold or Smooth Beggartick)

A good place to view showy stands of wildflowers that prefer moist sites is at the Circle B Bar Reserve on the northwest shore of Lake Hancock in Polk County (near Lakeland). A walk through the miles of trails at Circle B Bar last weekend revealed plenty of wildflowers blooming but there was also plenty of evidence of the ongoing drought as many normally wet areas were completely dry and cracked.

Because March was hotter than normal, Prairie iris (Iris hexagona) and Duck potato (Sagittaria spp.) are already flowers. If you get lucky, you might even spot the bright reddish spikes of the Leafless beaked orchid (Sacoila lanceolata).

Red Buckeye (Aesculus pavia) is in bloom across North Florida near streams and wetlands.

Not near an area with naturally moist conditions? Head toward the coast. Blanketflower and Beach sunflower (Helianthus debilis) are showy native wildflowers that thrive in dry, sandy conditions. They can be bloom at any time of the year in South Florida, and typically start by early to mid-spring in the Panhandle. In Central Florida they already are in full bloom. Presumably they're able to extract enough moisture from sea spray to thrive and put on a magnificent flower show.

Pinxter (Mountain Azalea, Rhododendron canescens) abloom along the Rainbow River

The Science of Wildflowers

Blooming is dependent on a complex interaction of genetics (that is, the “blueprint” of how the plant is expected to perform) and the environment — mainly day length, temperature and soil characteristics, the most important of which is moisture. The influence of these environmental factors varies among wildflower species. To make this issue a bit more complex, the previous year’s weather can influence wildflowers the next year, especially those that reseed. Weather can affect seed dormancy; dormant seeds do not germinate until the factor(s) causing dormancy have been alleviated, which could take several months or more. Wildflowers producing a high level of dormant seed may not yield a good stand of plants the following year.

There's not much water in the St. Johns River Marshes, but its enough for these stands of 8-foot tall Swamp Sunflowers (Helianthus angustifolius)

Click it, don't pick it!

Many of our native wildflowers reproduce only by seed. Picking a flower reduces the ability of that plant to reproduce and for that population of wildflowers to sustain itself. Instead, use wildflowers in your yard or in containers. Seed packets are available in the Florida Wildflower Foundation Flower Shop and from the Florida Wildflower Seed and Plant Growers Association. Florida native wildflower seed packets also may be available at native plant garden centers.

More reasons not to pick wildflowers:

Picking the flowers of any endangered or threatened species is illegal in Florida. For details, see Florida Statute 581.185 Preservation of native flora of Florida. Though under the current far-right Republican administration in Florida, environmental rules and statues are virtually meaningless as they are so widely ignored.

Meanwhile in California

Spring flowers have had a tough go of it the past few years in California. The climate isn't the most hospitable, and the gods had been stingy with rain in recent years. But this is the year that everything changed. Thanks to extra precipitation and some luck, the show is well worth seeing.

Some places are already reaching peak. The recent sight of hillsides turned orange and purple in Lake Elsinore's Walker Canyon caused a traffic jam on the 15 Freeway as drivers stopped to gawk at spring lowers, some exiting their vehicles to get a closer look.

Given everything wildflowers go through simply to survive—some bloom from seeds dormant for 50 to 100 years—they deserve our attention, if only to applaud the struggle for the beauty of it all.

Some of the best places to see the blooms:

Anza-Borrego Desert Park

This state park is the place to be right now to see wildflowers that have been popping since late-March. Thanks to above-average rainfall this season, this out-of-the-way desert spot southeast of Temecula is having the best showing in 20 years.

Go now if you want to see the superbloom that's filling the desert with low-lying carpets of yellow and greened-up fields streaked with purple and white flowers. It will only last until mid-April.

Death Valley National Park

California 190 takes you right through the heart of Death Valley. The ride from Panamint Springs to Stovepipe Wells is amazing. While there take the Hike Death Valley 2017 Challenge (#hikedeathvalley)

Antelope Valley Poppy Reserve State Natural Reserve

The east end of the park is covered with poppies and patches are starting to fill in around other areas. Other flowers such as goldfields, lupine, and lacy phacelia are also creating a mosaic of color that changes daily. The bloom will last until sometime in April. All depends on when and how hot and dry the weather turns.

Chino Hills State Park

Chino Hills is unique in that it provides refuge for both biodiversity and solitude to the visitors who enjoy their outdoor experiences. There is no other location in the LA Basin where people can drive a short distance and be swept away with scenic vistas, hike, bike or ride a horse on over 9-0 miles of trails. At 14,102 acres the park is managed as an open space habitat where all plant and animal life are protected.

The state earned the slogan "Golden" because of the golden poppy fields that cover hillsides each spring.

The California poppy, the state flower since 1903, remains one of the most beloved wildflowers around.

You'll find them along roadsides north and south of LA, but hot temperatures may end the show soon.

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Swing.Cat

Paris à l'heure des croissants

Bridge of Love, Paris

S'assoir et avant la cohue, juste regarder l'aube pointer

Driving by l'Arc

Montmarte. Nocturnes parisiens.

Quai sur La Seine

Esta tarde Paris tenía aires de verano

Petits matins d'hiver sont fini

Place Saint Sulpice

—paraphrased from WIRED, Alpha Chemistry, Chelsea Leu and "Don't Blame the Batteries for Every Lithium-ion Explosion" by Tim Moynihan, March 19, 2017

An elusive, bizarre-looking wading bird of the southern coasts, the Roseate Spoonbill (Platalea ajaja) uses its odd bill to strain small food items out of the water. Its bright pink coloring leads many Florida tourists to think they have seen a flamingo.

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Very common in parts of the southeast until the 1860s spoonbills were virtually eliminated from the United States as a side-effect of the destruction of wader colonies by plume hunters. The birds began to re-colonize Texas and Florida early in the 20th century. Still uncommon and found in few local spots, they are vulnerable to degradation of feeding and nesting habitats, and this year in Florida, to drought. The colony normally found on the east coast at the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge is missing because most of the marshes and mud flats that this bird needs to survive have gone completely dry in that area.

Though their faces look more like black vultures' they are in the family of Ibises and Spoonbills.

These wading birds are found primarily in coastal marshes, lagoons, mudflats, and mangrove keys. They forage in shallow water with muddy bottoms, in both salt and fresh water, including tidal ponds, coastal lagoons, extensive inland marshes, and swamps.

In Florida Roseate Spoonbills nest primarily in red mangroves. Further west along the Gulf Coast they can be found nesting in willows or on coastal island in low scrub, including mesquite and salt cedar.

Its kind of hard to get a photo of of one of these guys with their head up. They forage by wading in shallow, muddy water, sweeping their bill from side to side with mandibles slightly open, detecting prey by feel.

Their diet consists of small fish such as minnows and killifish, also shrimp, crayfish, crabs, aquatic insects (especially beetles), mollusks, and slugs. They also will eat plant material including roots and stems of sedges.

In Florida spoonbills breed mainly during winter. In Texas they breed in spring. They nest in colonies. At the beginning of breeding season, entire flocks may suddenly fly up for no apparent reason, and circle the area. In courtship the male and female must interact aggressively, later they will perch close together, while presenting sticks to each other, and cross and clasp bills.

The nest sites in red mangroves are usually 5-15- above ground or water. The nest, built mostly by the female with material brought by the male, is a bulky platform os ticks, with deep a deep hollow in the center lined with twigs and leaves.

The spoonbill's pink color is diet-derived, consisting of the carotenoid pigment canthaxanthin. Another carotenoid, astaxanthin, can also be found deposited in flight and body feathers. The colors can range from pale pink to bright magenta, depending on age and location.

The images containing my copyright were made this week at the Circle Bar B Reserve not far from Disney World, LegoLand, Lakeland and the City of Auburndale on the shores of Lake Hancock. If you decide to go to check out the flock of spoonbills at the Circle Bar B, be sure to take hydration, sunscreen, hat, long sleeves and pants, closed-toe shoes. . .etc. as it is a primitive trail park and there are plenty of sharp and biting creatures therein. I found the spoonbill flock very close to the main parking area on a recent afternoon though the pond where I found them will surely be dry by this writing, and the birds will move to where there is water. Note: I wasn't looking for spoonbills, I was in search of very large alligators. I found those too.

Unlike herons, spoonbills fly with their necks outstretched. They alternate groups of stiff, shallow wingbeats with glides.

We've Read:

Lithium-Ion Batteries:

Fired up, and Ready to Blow

Lithium Cobalt Oxide

To store or release energy in a slim, efficient Li-ion power pack, lithium ions ping-pong between two electrodes: a sheet of lithium cobalt oxide and a sheet of graphite. When you charge your new drone (or smartphone or laptop or hoverboard), electrons flowing in from the outlet help lure lithium ions out of the LiCoO₂, which then migrate to the graphite electrode and wait to be released—along with electrons (energy!)—later. Within the Li electrode, cobalt and oxygen form sturdy layers of octahedrons, which keep the molecule from collapsing as ions enter and exit. But at high temperatures that edifice can crumble, contributing to a very combustible situation.

Graphite

A mineral form of pure carbon, best known as the writey part in pencils. Graphite forms the second electrode, and the lithium ions lodge within it as the battery charges. Then, when you turn on your MacBook, those ions get pulled out of the graphite to journey back to the lithium cobalt oxide, a process that produces the electricity to let you browse Insta—we mean respond to all those work emails.

Polypropylene

A thin slab of this plastic keeps the electrodes apart. The separator, as it's called, is perforated with micron scale holes to let Li ions pass through. It's often to blame if your phone becomes a smoking inferno—faulty separators can let the electrodes touch, triggering a process known as thermal runaway. That can quickly generate huge amounts of heat (up to 1,700° F) and pressure, causing the flammable substances present to burst into flames.

Ethylene Carbonate

This clear, flammable, organic solvent helps shuttle ions back and forth. IF a malfunctioning battery heats up enough (say, from a bad separator), the hot liquid can escape the case, react with oxygen in the air, and kaboom!

Lithium Hexafluorophosphate

A white powdery substance that's dissolved into the ethylene carbonate, LiPF₆ just sort of floats around in the battery, supplying additional lithium ions to speed up charging and discharging. This compound is not flammable. But it does burn skin on contact.

We're Following:

Since it seems Donald Trump knows a lot more about Russia than he ever let on during the campaign, we decided to find out a little bit about Russia ourselves, from looking at some of their social media platforms. We found that they are adept at website building, twitter, instagram, facebook, etc. Putting aside the scary prospect that the President was colluding with Russia to influence the 2016 election results, we found this group of blogs, websites and instagram accounts to be kind of interesting. Who knew? Surfing Russia. Note. We have no idea what type of cameras were used though the photos appear to be high quality.

@surfingrussia

photos ©Tania Elisarieva

@taniaelisarieva

Surf Holidays Russia

Surf Holidays Russia Blog

@surfholidays

photos ©Tania Elisarieva

@taniaelisarieva

Where's the Beach?

Rising Seas with Surfers on the Florida East Coast

The Daytona Beach skyline is in the background.

Geoengineering, providing methods to offset climate change by applying scientific fixes rather than changing old, bad habits, may have found its moment.

The Snowpiercer Scenario is dark and gloomy. Chris Evans bad.

Remember "Snowpiercer"? Another one of Chris Evans' attempts at serious acting, wherein he never takes off his shirt? Ok. We can barely remember it either.

Chris Evans better.

In the incoherent sci-fi thriller by the Korean director Bong Jooh-ho, an attempt to engineer the climate and stop global warming goes horribly wrong. The planet freezes. Only the passengers on a train endlessly circumnavigating the globe survive. Those in first class eat sushi and quaff wine. People in steerage eat cockroach protein bars.

Chris Evans better still. . .

OK. Got your attention now, back to geoengineering the planet to save us from the radical right wing deniers that have taken over Washington.

Scientists must start looking into this. Seriously.

News about the climate has become alarming over the the last few months. In December 2016, startled scientists revealed that temperatures in some parts of the Arctic had spiked more than 35°F (+20°C) above their historical averages. In March 2017, others reported that sea ice in the Arctic had dropped to its lowest level on record. A warming ocean has already killed large chunks of Australia's Great Barrier Reef. And the bad news keeps coming.

Severe bleaching in 2016 on the northern Great Barrier Reef affected even the largest and oldest corals, like this slow-growing Porites colony. Photo: Terry Hughes et al./Nature

Realistically, the odds that thes process could be slowed, let alone stopped, by deploying more solar panels and wind turbines seemed unrealistic even before the current climate denying, science hating, administration took power in Washington. It is even less likely now that the new government has gone to work undermining President Barack Obama's strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Harvard's Solar Geoengineering Research Program Forum

That is where engineering the climate comes in. Last month, scholars from the physical and social sciences who are interested in climate change gathered in Washington to discuss approaches like cooling the planet by shooting aerosols into the stratosphere or whitening clouds to reflect sunlight back into space, which may prove indispensable to prevent the disastrous consequences of warming.

A research plane surveying ice thickness in the Arctic in August 2016. Much of the ice in the region appears to be thinner than normal. Photo: Esther Horvath.

Aerosols could be loaded into military jets, to be sprayed into the atmosphere at high altitude. Clouds at sea could be made more reflective by spraying them with a fine saline mist, drawn from the ocea.

The world's immediate priority may be to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to meet and hopefully exceed the promises made at the climate summit meeting in Paris in December 2015. But as Janos Pasztor, who heads the Carnegie Climate Geoengineering Governance Initiative has said, "The reality is that we may need more tools even if we [were to] achieve those goals."

The carbon dioxide that humanity has pumped into the atmosphere is already producing faster, deeper changes to the world's climate and ecosystems than were expected not long ago. Barrin gsome technology that could pull it out at a reasonable cost—a long shot for the foreseeable future, according to many scientists—it will stay there for a long time, warming the atmosphere further for decades to come.

The cruise ship Crystal Serenity, anchored outside Nome, Alaska, in August, before its inaugural voyage through the Northwest Passage. The trip would not have been possible before climate change led to diminished sea ice coverage. Photo: Mark Thiessen/AP

The world is not cutting emissions fast enough to prevent global temperatures from spiking into dangerous territory, slashing crop yields and decimating food production in many parts of the world, as well as flooding coastal cities while parching large swaths of the globe, killing perhaps millions of mostly poor people from heat stress alone.

Our commitments are being abandoned by the current administration

Meanwhile the single largest factor in climate change—global population growth—is a taboo subject to most politicians. As such global population growth continues to spiral out of control as religious conservatives of all faiths take over governments from the Middle East to North America. Family planning is a thing of the past for the foreseeable future, climate change be damned. Demographers have argued that cultural and religious factors cause high fertility in the developing world where large populations can least afford more mouths to feed. A sign of the times, the April 5, 2017 Washington Post headline screams "More births expected for Muslims than Christians Worldwide."

Our commitments are being abandoned by the current administration

Solving the climate imperative will require cutting greenhouse gas emissions down to zero, ideally in this century, and probably sucking some out. But solar geoengineering could prove a critical complement to mitigation, giving humanity time to develop the political will and the technologies to achieve the needed decarbonization.

With the new conservative administration in Washington pushing the United States, the world's second-largest emitter after China, away from its mitigation commitments, geoengineering looks even more compelling.

"If the United States starts going backwards or not going forward fast enough in terms of emissions reductions, then more and more people will start talking about these options," said Mr. Pasztor, a former United Nations assistant secretary general on climate change.

Our commitments are being abandoned by the current administration

While many of the scholars gathered in Washington expressed misgivings about deploying geoengieneering technologies, there was a near-universal consensus on the need to invest more in research—not only into the power to cool the atmosphere but also into the potential side effects on the atmosphere's chemistry and on weather patterns in different world regions.

While it is know that solar radiation management can cool the atmosphere, fears tha tfield research would look too much like deploymnet have so far limited research pretty much to computer modeling of its effects and small-scale experiments in the lab.

Our commitments are being abandoned by the current administration

Critically, the academics noted, the research agenda must inclde an open, international debate about the governance structures necessary to deploy a technology that, at a stroke, would affect every society and natural system in the world. In other words, geoengineering needs to be addressed not as science fiction, but as a potential part of the future just a few decades down the road.

Arguments against geoengineering iare in some ways akin to those made against genetically modified organisms and so-called Frankenfood. It amounts to messing with nature. But there are more practical causes for concern about the deployment of such radical technology. How would it affect the ozone in the stratosphere? How would it change patterns of precipitation?

Moreover, how could the world agree on the deployment of a technology that will have different impacts on different countries? How could the world balance the global benefit of a cooling atmosphere against a huge disruption of the monsoon on the Indian subcontinent? Who would make the call? Would the United States agree to this kind of thing if it brought drought to the Midwest? Would Russia let it happen if it froze over its northern ports?

Our commitments are being abandoned by the current administration.

Geoengineering would be cheap enough tat even a middle-income country could deploy it unilaterally. Some scientists have estimated that solar radiation management could cool the earth quickly for as little as $5 billion per year or so. What if the USA were to unilaterally decide to focus efforts to combat climate change on geoengineering alone?

That wouldn't work in the end. If greenhouse gases were not removed from the atmosphere, the world would heat up in a snap as soon as the aerosol injections were turned off. Still, the temptation to combat climate change on the cheap while continuing to exploit fossil fuels could be hard to resist for the current administration in Washington which has promised to revive cola and shown little interest in global diplomacy.

Scott Barrett, an environmental economist from Columbia University who was at the meeting in Washington, said, "The biggest challenge posed by geoengineering is unlikely to be technical, but rather involve the way we govern the use of this unprecedented technology."

These ethical considerations should be taken into account in any research program into managing the rays of the sun. Perhaps researchers should refrain from taking money from an American administration that denies climate science, to avoid delegitimizing the technology in the eyes of the rest of the world.

People should keep in mind the warming by Alan Robock, a Rutgers University climatologist, who argued that the worst case from the deployment of geoengineering technologies might be nuclear war.

Geoengineering plans could have unintended side effects

But it would be a mistake to halt research into this new technological tool. Geoengineering might ultimately prove to be a bad idea for a variety of reasons. Further research could resolve those possibilities.

The best way to think of th eoptions ahead is as offering a balance of risks. On one side of the scale are whatever pitfalls geoengineering might bring. They might be preferable to the prospect of radical climate change. Thinking in terms of delirious sci-fi fantasies, the trade-off won't necessarily be between cockroach protein bars and some happy future of cheap, renewable energy. It is more likely to pit cockroach treats against some dystopian, broiling world.

Now back to Chris Evans' insistence on taking on serious acting roles where the shirt doesn't come off. New rule. The shirt comes off Chris. You were blessed with what 99% of the population wishes they had and you are from today forward required to show it. Thanks. The Management.

This post was paraphrased, edited, and some paragraphs were deleted and added, from "To Curb Global Warming, Science Fiction May Become Fact," by Eduardo Porter. A version of the original article appears in print on April 5, 2017, on Page B1 of the New York edition of The New York Times with the headline: "Plant-Cooling Technology May Be Earth's Only Hope."

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SUPERBUGS

Do Seas Make Us Sick?

Surfers may have the answer

The Surfer Biome Project is a unique effort to determine whether routine exposure to the ocean alters the microbial communities of the body, and whether those alterations might have consequences for surfers—and for the rest of us.

Deadly, Drug-Resistant 'Superbugs' Pose Huge Threat, W.H.O. Says

The World Health Organization is warning that a dozen antibiotic-resistant "superbugs" pose an enormous threat to human health. The WHO is urging hospital infection-control experts and pharmaceutical researchers to focus on fighting the most dangerous pathogens first. Above, Acinetobacter baumannii, a group of drug-resistant bacteria commonly found in soil and water. The WHO rated research on this and two other pathogens as "critical priority."

Infection Raises Specter of Superbugs Resistant to All Antibiotics

American military researchers identified the first patient in the USA to be infected with bacteria that are resistant to all known antibiotics. The case raises the specter of superbugs that could cause untreatable infections, because the bacteria can easily transmit their resistance to other germs that are already resistant to additional antibiotics. The resistance can spread because it arises from loose genetic material that bacteria typically share with one another.

Deadly CRE Germs Linked to Hard-to-Clean Medical Scopes

Difficult-to-clae medical scopes inserted down the throat might be infecting patients with deadly drug-resistant bacteria. Five infections were reported in one hospital (Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center). The germs are known as CRE, which stands for carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae. They are resistant to all known antibiotics.

Ethnobotany

Could Ancient Remedies Hold the Answer to the Looming Antibiotics Crisis?

Drugs of the future might come from the past: botanical treatments long overlooked by Western medicine. Ethnobotany is a historically small and obscure offshoot of the social sciences, focused on the myriad ways that indigenous peoples use plants for food, shelter, clothing, art and medicine. Within this already-tiny field, a few groups of researchers are now trying to use this knowledge to derive new medicines.

We're Losing the Race Against Antibiotic Resistance, but There's Also Reason for Hope

A century ago, the top three causes of death were infectious diseases. More than half of all people dying in the USA died because of germs. Today, they account for a few percent of deaths at most.

At around 15,000 acres (23.5 miles², 61 km²) Lake Harris comes in at number 9 of Florida's Top 10 Lakes (graded by size). Despite being 9th on the list I recently described Lake Harris (above) as being 'sublime.'

At nearly 66,000 square miles, Florida is the 22nd largest state in the union. However, only about 53,000 square miles of that space is land and even less is dry land. Over one-fifth of it is water. Florida holds 3 million acres of lakes—7,700 of them greater than 10 acres in size—and 12,000 miles of rivers and streams. Combined, the 10 largest Florida lakes would cover an area of nearly 685,000 acres (1070 miles², 2772² km). And the largest of them is the fourth largest natural lake—second largest freshwater lake—in the United States.

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#1 Big Water
Lake Okeechobee

Coming in at number one on our list, near the southern tip of Florida lies its largest lake, Lake Okeechobee. The name Okeechobee is a combination of the Hitachi words oki—water—and chubi—big. And “Big Water” certainly describes this massive body that covers 448,000 acres—or about 700 miles², 1813 km²—of surface area. The body of water is what's left of an ancient, shallow sea known as the Pimlico Sea, and it's still relatively shallow, averaging about 9 feet deep (3 m).

Florida Paleogeography. The "Lake Worth" Period. 150-100,000 years ago. The Pimlico Sea has inlets to the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico. Cape Sable is forming. Offshore keys are also forming.

#2 Lake Welaka

Lake George

The second largest lake in Florida, Lake George, is by no means small, but at 46,000 acres (72 miles², 186 km²) it is about 1/10th the size of Lake Okeechobee. This 12-mile long by 6-mile wide central Florida lake is on the border of Ocala National Forest and is the largest lake on the St. Johns River. The name Lake Welaka is taken from "Welaka" (meaning "chain of lakes"), the name for the St. Johns River in the language of the Timucua, who inhabited Florida prior to European aggression.

Lake George is one of our favorites because it is mostly inaccessible, mostly bordering the Ocala National Forest and the Lake George Conservation Area, and remains quietly unchanged since the first Europeans visited in 1596. Also it is pretty close to home, located mostly in northwestern Volusia County (near Daytona and Ormond Beaches). Lake George used to be number three, but number two was bumped down the list in recent years because of massive agricultural development that rendered a third of (currently #5) the lake dry land.

# 3 Behind the Dam

Lake Seminole

The third largest of Florida’s lakes is the artificial Lake Seminole, a reservoir also known as the Jim Woodruff Reservoir near the junctures of the Florida, Georgia and Alabama state lines. The lake is split down the middle as the state line separating Florida and Georgia runs north-south through its midsection where the Chattahoochee and Flint Rivers used to flow south to meet the Apalachicola River. This 37,500-acre (58 miles², 151.7 km²) body of water was created by the closure of the Jim Woodruff Dam on the Chattahoochee and Flint rivers. The lake, northwest of Tallahassee, is largely used for hydroelectric power production and recreation.

#4 Lake Kissimmee

Fourth on the list is Lake Kissimmee in central Florida just below Walt Disney World. This 35,000-acre (55 miles², 141 km²) recreational lake connects the seventh largest lake, Lake Tohopekaliga, to the north and Lake Okeechobee to the south through a series of rivers and canals.

A portion of the C-38 canal, finished in 1971, is has now been backfilled to restore the Kissimmee River floodplain and Lake Kissimmee to a more natural state. Now if it would only rain.

C-38 = Environmental Devastation

The ditching and canalization of the Kissimmee in the late 1960s in response to 1947's active hurricane season (flooding) led to devastating environmental impacts across hundreds of thousands of acres of marshlands that subsequently dried and died, and helped lead to the polluting of Lake Okeechobee with nitrogen and phosphorous. The river's length was reduced by half as it was straightened by digging a canal (the C-38) due south, destroying everything to the east and west of the lakes and river. Since 1992 restoration efforts have been pursued to attempt to return the Kissimmee to its natural state.

This is a really flattering image of Lake Apopka. In real-life the waters are a pea green color and the once-world-renowed bass fishing lake is virtually a dead zone

#5 Dead Zone

Lake Apopka

At over 30,000 acres (47 miles², 121 km²), Lake Apopka near Orlando in central Florida is currently the fifth largest Florida lake. Also fed by the St. Johns River, this once great bass fishing lake is considered one of the most polluted large lakes in the United States.

Agricultural development on the lake's north side led to the ditching and drying of the lakes purifying marshes. Runoff of fertilizers caused the lake to live in a state of perpetual algae blooms which killed off the fish, other plant life, etc. Restoration efforts are underway but the largely treeless north shore "swamps" of Lake Apopka have a long, long way to go to return to what they once were.

Meanwhile massive development in gnawing away at the eastern and northern shore of Lake Apopka as the Western Beltway (superhighway) of Orlando is constructed into once pristine bear preserve and agricultural lands. With the beltway comes more housing developments, more strip malls, more crap, more fertilizer, more pollution.

It doesn't look good for Lake Apopka at this point. Perhaps there will be a terrifically rainy summer some time soon that will help to flush the lake of its toxins and slow the construction on its shores. . . but as the past 7 rainy seasons have shown Floridians. Climate change is real and it is affecting our rainfall (reducing rainfall) and contributing to the ongoing severe drought in Florida.

#6 Our People Died There

Lake Isokpoga

Only slightly smaller, at nearly 28,000 acres (43.7 miles², 113.3 km²), Lake Isokpoga—a Seminole word meaning “our people died there”—is the sixth largest lake. The lake is very shallow with an average depth of about 4 feet (a little over 1 m deep), making it dangerous for all but shallow draft boats.

Fishing Capital of the World

Bass Fishing Lakes

Rounding out the top 10 are Lake Tohopekaliga in Kissimmee, Crescent Lake in the northwest, Lake Harris near Leesburg, Orange Lake in north central Florida, and East Lake Tohopekaliga (a close #11), south of Orlando. These large lakes all feature large mouth bass. The shear abundance of these and other bass species in Florida’s lakes partially account for the boast that Florida is the fishing capital of the world. The World Fishing Network, in fact, includes seven of these large lakes—Lake George, Lake Harris, Crescent Lake, Lake Tohopekaliga, Lake Okeechobee, Lake Kissimmee and, despite its shallow depth, Lake Istokpoga—on its top 10 list of bass fishing lakes.

#7 We Will Gather Together Here

Lake Tohopekaliga

Seventh on the list is Lake Tohopekaliga. Located at the headwaters of the Everglades, this lake is renowned for its bass fishing and natural beauty. Lake Toho's native name means "we will gather together here." It is the primary inflow of Shingle Creek, which rises in Orlando. It covers 22,700 acres (35.5 miles², 91.9 km²) and spans 42 miles in circumference. Known for its bass fishing and bird watching this lake south of Kissimmee.

#8 Crescent Lake

15,960 acres (25 miles², 64.6 km²)

Located in Putnam and Flagler counties in northeast central Florida the lake is about 13 miles long and 2 miles wide. It connects to the St. Johns River by way of Dunn's Creek. The tidy little town of Crescent Lake is on the west side of the lake and remains largely unspoiled by development.

Lake Harris is one of my favorite stops when traversing the state. It remains quaint and largely unspoiled despite the development that is occurring all around the lake. Part of its luck in escaping the fates of some of Florida's other large lakes is that it is deep and on higher terrain, fed by multiple springs and lakes and the communities directly on its shores are old and built out.

#9 Lake Harris

13,788 acres (21.5 miles², 56 km²)

Lake Harris primarily receives inflow, at its southwestern shore from the Palatlakaha River which originates from the Clermont Chain of lakes to the south. Other inflowing rivers include Helena Run, and outflow from many small springs in Yalaha.

Lake Harris' depth is much greater than Lake Okeechobee to the south with many deeper holes and ledges. The lake is surrounded by sandhills and cypress trees. This is the part of Florida known as the 'Central Florida Ridge'. This region of Florida has the highest elevations in Central Florida, reaching 312' above sea level. Compared to the rest of Florida, which is relatively flat, it is quite hilly.

Two views of Orange Lake. The lake is plagued by floating "islands" of plants. One such island seen in the image below. Also the shores are choked with plants. This is all due to reduced rainfall and increased pollution with fertilizers and septic tank runoff.

#10 Orange Lake

At 12,550 acres (19.6 miles², 50.8 km²) Orange Lake is the largest lake in the North Central Region of Florida. The lake averages only 5.5 feet deep with a maximum depth of 12 feet. In a normal year water levels fluctuate an average of 2 feet. A dam (weir) on Highway 301 controls outflows from the lake.

+1 East Lake Tohopekaliga

The lake covers an area of 11,968 acres (18.7 miles², 43.4 km²), and for now this lovely lake north of St. Cloud comes it at #11 on our list. East Lake Toho is the primary inflow of Boggy Creek, which rises in the Orlando International Airport property at 70 feet (21 m) above sea level. East Lake Toho and Lake Toho are linked by a 3 mile long canal called the "St. Cloud Canal." Why you ask? Guess. . . flood control for more development.

Lake Minnehaha

2,411 acres (3.8 miles², 9.7 km²)

The Clermont Chain of Lakes

These lakes are home to some of the biggest largemouth bass in Florida with 10 pounders being caught regularly during the spawn. Speckled perch (crappie), blue gills, and redear sunfish (shellcracker) are also abundant.

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Lake Louisa

3,634 acres (5.7 miles², 14.7 km²)

West of Orlando around the town of Clermont are eleven special lakes with red to tea-colored water known as the Clermont Chain of Lakes. Their combined area totals almost 7,000 acres (11 miles², 28 km²). Located in ancient rolling sandhills (this was once oceanfront property) these lakes are known by scientists as the Palatlakaha Chain of Lakes.

Lake Louisa is the largest and southernmost of the lakes. The lakes and their connecting waterways are known for their quality and are considered outstanding Florida waters.

The Green Swamp

110,000 acres (171 miles², 445 km²)

The Green Swamp

The Green Swamp, which lies to the southwest of the lakes is the primary source of water for these lakes. As water flows slowly north through the wetlands of the Green Swamp, decaying vegetation dissolves in the water and forms a mild acid, tannic acid, which gives these waters their tea color. It is not harmful to humans or to the fish and wildlife which make these waters their home.

The hills which surround these lakes were formed thousands of years ago when they were sand dunes along what we now know as the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico. Although far inland now, at one time ocean waves broke on these hills.

Clermont Chain of lakes has several public boat ramps. One is on Lake Minneola (fee charged) north of SR 50 in Clermont. Another is a FWC ramp just north of Lake Louisa on Hull Road. One can also put in canoes or kayaks at the State Park on the south side of Lake Louisa or at the boat ramp on Crooked River.

Water levels are normal most of the time, so access should not be a problem at either ramp. For those preferring to fish from shore, there is a fishing pier on Lake Minneola. Most of the chain has tea-colored water, but Lake Minneola (1,888 acres) is relatively clear. All lakes on the Clermont Chain of lakes are Fish Management Areas, so a fishing license is required per state law.

Bluegill and redear sunfish (shellcracker) are biting on worms and crickets around shoreline vegetation and cypress trees. Both species will continue to spawn in these areas throughout the summer during the new and full moon phases, and fishing success peaks during these periods.

Channel catfish action is good on live, dead or prepared baits in deep offshore areas of lakes Minneola, Minnehaha, and Louisa. Largemouth bass can be caught casting or trolling crankbaits in offshore areas or on plastic worms early and late in the day along grassline edges.

The lakes contain a primary cover of Kissimmee grass, eel grass, lily pads, reeds and bulrushes. This is home to some of the biggest largemouth bass in Florida with 10 pounders being caught during the spawn on a regular basis. Speckled perch (crappie), blue gills, and redear sunfish (shellcracker) also abound in the chain.

The Clermont Chain of lakes included in the Chain

their sizes are guesstimates as they are stated differently

on different resources.

Lake Minneola (1,888 acres)

A neck separates Lake Hiawatha from Lake Minneola, the 3rd largest lake in the chain and the deepest at around 18 feet (6 m) on average with parts close to downtown Clermont approaching 30 feet (10 m) deep. Minneola is also the most developed lake with city around its south and eastern sides. The Palatlakaha River flows out of Crystal Cove on its northwest shore. There is a public boat ramp and swimming area on Waterfront Park.

Lake Minnehaha (2,298 acres)

A short river connects Lake Susan to Lake Minnehaha, the 2nd largest lake in the chain. Minnehaha averages 14 feet in depth with areas over 18 feet (6m) deep. Suburban housing encroaches on the north and eastern sides of Lake Minnehaha. Only the northwest corner of the lake remains in its more-or-less natural state.

From Lake Minnehaha a neck connects it to Lake Palatlakaha which is undeveloped except for a mobile home park on its eastern shore. A canal connects Lake Palatlakaha to Lake Hiawatha, also mostly undeveloped.

Lake Winona (64 acres)

In Clermont, Winona is on a peninsula separating Minneola from Minnehaha, its connected to Minnehaha by a canal which is of similar depth with deeper areas (maybe 18 feet deep).

Lake Louisa (3,634 acres)

The largest lake in the chain is shallow and flat bottomed at around 10 feet (3 m). It features Lake Louisa State Park on its southern shore. The rest of the lakeshore is developed with suburban subdivisions. Two creeks ("Little Creek" and "Big Creek" flow through the park and into the lake as its primary water source. The creeks originate in the Green Swamp. From the north end of Lake Louisa flows Crooked Creek into Lake Susan, a small lake (81 acres) with a similar depth to Lake Louisa surrounded by swampland. There is a public boat ramp on Crooked Creek.

Lake Palatlakaha (102 acres)

Lake Hiawatha (49 acres)

Wilson Lake (32 acres)

Lake Susan (81 acres)

Crescent Lake (122 acres)

Located in a suburb of South Clermont, the lake is connected to Lake Minnehaha via Lake Hattie and Lake Williamee through a canal connecting the 4 lakes. Crescent Lake has a bay at its south end, Crescent Cove, separated by a private island. Hattie Lake is round-shaped and has 3 private community boat ramps. Williamee is mostly shallow and plant covered.

Cook Lake (21 acres)

Cherry Lake (401 acres)

Cherry Lake averages 10 feet deep and has rural development on its northern shore.

Northern Chain

Further north and technically located in the town of Groveland, the Palatlakaha River is lined with 8 lakes. Hunt and Cook lakes are undeveloped and surrounded by swampland. Lake Lucy (346 acres) and Lake Emma (173 acres) are surrounded by rural development and sandy hills. Lucy is around 10 feet deep while Emma is deeper (14 feet). Hart Lake is separated from the Palatlakaha River by a dike with a water level control dam. After Heart Lake the Palatlakaha River flows to Lake Harris.

The Clermont chain of lakes is one of Florida’s most recreational polished lake systems in Florida. Fishers will find channel catfish and speckled perch to be quite plentiful. Sunken trees and dredge holes in the lakes make great fishing attractors, providing what some claim to be “some of the best largemouth bass fishing in the world.” These attractors are marked on most lakes by buoys, which should help to foster a pleasant experience even for the novice fisherman.

For the water-sports enthusiast, the Clermont chain of lakes are the place to be. Throughout the water skiing community, Clermont is known as the 'Wakeboarding Capital of the World.' The Wakeboarding Camp, a year-round school devoted entirely to the instruction of wakeboarding, is located on Lake Minneola.

Fishing and Jumping off the 561 Bridge between Lake Minnehaha and Lake Palatlakaha are favored pursuits by locals.

Wildlife enthusiasts will enjoy the plentiful birds and bugs found in abundance in and around these lakes.

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What If?

Cross Into the Imaginary Zone

edited by Adam Duerson and Jacob Feldman

What if. Those two little words cut to the heart of what we love about sports. They keep us riveted even after al losing season (or nine of 'em in a row, bless you, Browns fans.) They're about hope and vindication; they allow us to dream up dynasties and wipe away mistakes. What if. . . explores the most compelling (realistic) conjectures and the coulda-woulda-shoulda0-been turning points with the most expansive ripple effects.

A few of our favorite "What ifs" from this feature piece: What if Drew Brees had passed his Dolphins physical? What if Cancer had beaten Lance Armstrong? What if Donald Trump had bought the Bills? and What if Tiger Woods had chased his Navy Seals dream?

Banish the Man Boobs With This Workout

Use a pair of 15- or 20-pound dumbbells and do each pair of exercises as a superset.

Beginning with exercise 1 A, do as many reps as you can in 30 seconds. Rest for 30 seconds

Next, do exercise 1B, completing as many reps as you can in 30 seconds, and then rest for 30 seconds. That's 1 round. Complete 4 rounds of superset 1, then rest 2 minutes before moving on to superset 2 for 4 rounds.

Add these supersets to your workout routine 2 or 3 times a week.

SUPERSET 1

1A. Lying Supported Neutral-Grip Dumbbell Row.

Grab a pair of dumbbells and lie chest-down on a 45° incline bench. Let your arms hang straight down, palms facing each other. Row the dumbbells to the side of your chest by bending your elbows and squeezing your shoulder blades. Pause and lower the weights.

1B. Dumbbell Goblet Box Squat.

Stand 4 to 6 inches forward of a knee-high bench or box. Cup the end of a dumbbell with both hands and hold it vertically in front of your chest, your elbows pointing down.

Keeping your back naturally arched, push your hips back, bend your knees, and squat. Sit on the bench for a moment. Keeping your heels pressed into the ground, stand back up.

SUPERSET 2

2A. Dumbbell 1½ Pushup.

Grasp the handle of a dumbbell in each hand and assume a pushup position with your arms straight. Your hands should be about shoulder-width apart, and your body should form a straight line from head to ankles.

Bend your elbows and lower your body until your chest nearly touches tthe floor. Pause, and then push yourself halfway back up.

Pause again, then lower your body back to the floor. Push yourself all the way back up to the starting position, and repeat.

2B. Dumbbell Skier Swings.

Holding a pair of dumbbells at arm's length next to your sides, stand with your feet hip-width apart and your knees slightly bent.

Without rounding your lower back, bend at your hips as you simultaneously swing your arms backward.

Now explosively thrust your hips forward and raise your torso until you're standing upright, while allowing your momentum to swing the weights up to chest level. (Don't actively lift the weight). Swing back and forth for the duration of your set.

I always wear shades of blue and grey or blue and black to match my hair and eye color. It also makes choosing an outfit for a day out photographing the world much easier, not a lot of thought goes into it as my closet is full of varying shades of blue to black. Here I sit high above Lake Minnehaha on the 561 bridge, enjoying a stiff breeze out of the east and watching locals jump from the bridge into the neck connecting Lake Minnehaha to Lake Palatlakaha.

Meanwhile, try these 7 Style Tricks to Hide the Man Boobs

1. Compression shirts. Hint, not too tight, just enough to smooth things out a bit.

2. Hide Big Issues with Small Patterns. Think of it as camouflage. Small- or medium-scale patters that don't feature a lot of color contrast work best. Thing gray-and-black plaids, or small blue checks on a darker blue background.

3. Think Thick. Wearing thicker fabrics or several layers of clothing is a great way to hide your lumps and bumps.

4. Find the Right Fit. Don't think baggy is better. A proper fit is best.

5. Turn Down the Contrast. Minimize the color contrast between upper and lower halves of your body. Don't wear a dark shirt with khaki pants. It will make you look shorter and wider at the hips. However, the same dark shirt with dark slacks will de-emphasize your waistline and boost your altitude. Head-to-toe monochromatic dressing can be as slimming as it is elegant.

6. Watch out for White. When you wear white or light colors, everything looks bigger. Matching your shirts choices to your eye or hair color is sharp-looking.

7. Slim Down with Pinstripes. Most suits are naturally slimming because their uniform color and texture creates and unbroken vertical line from neck to toes. Narrow pinstripes do this most efficiently.

Earth Day 2017 takes on special meaning and importance as a regressive regime in Washington attempts to dismantle generations of scientific progress. The March for Science is the first step of a global movement to defend the vital role science plays in our health safety, economies, and governments.

The March for Science champions robustly funded and publicly communicated science as a pillar of human freedom and prosperity. We unite as a diverse, nonpartisan group to call for science that upholds the common good and for political leaders and policy makers to enact evidence based policies in the public interest.

The March for Science is a celebration of science. It's not only about scientists and politicians; it is about the very real role that science plays in each of our lives and the need to respect and encourage research that gives us insight into the world.

Nevertheless, the march has generated a great deal of conversation around whether or not scientists should involve themselves in politics. In the face of an alarming trend toward discrediting scientific consensus and restricting scientific discovery, we might ask instead: can we afford not to speak out in its defense?

There is no Planet B. Join the #MarchForScience.

ORLANDO MARCH FOR SCIENCE

In Orlando the March for Science will be held around Lake Eola, in downtown. Traffic will be killer because of crumbling infrastructure (I-4, ahem, how many $billions did regressive Florida Gov Scott refuse for improvements of I-4? It was $2.4 billion in 2011 alone), so arrive early. Check out the official event page for Orlando's March for Science (March for Science, Orlando, April 22, 2017). Rally begins at 10:00 am in the field at E. Robinson St. and N. Eola Drive. March beings at 11:00 am.

Earth Day 2017's Campaign

Environmental and Climate Literacy

Education is the foundation for progress. We need to build a global citizenry fluent in the concepts of climate change and aware of its unprecedented threat to our planet. We need to empower everyone with the knowledge to inspire action in defence of environmental protection.

Environmental and climate literacy is the engine not only for creating green voters and advancing environmental and climate laws and policies but also for accelerating green technologies and jobs.

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In Honor of Earth Day

Our First National Park

“Our national heritage is richer than just scenic features; the realization is coming that perhaps our greatest national heritage is nature itself, with all its complexity and its abundance of life, which, when combined with great scenic beauty as it is in the national parks, becomes of unlimited value.” — George Wright, Joseph Dixon, and Ben Thompson, Fauna of the National Parks of the United States (1933)

Established in 1872, it was the first national park in the United States, and perhaps the world. Its geological and biological wonders have led international groups to declare it a world heritage site and a biosphere reserve. Yellowstone National Park captures the spirit and purpose of the National Park Service, blending modern and ancient human history with nature in its raw complexity.

Covering 3,468 miles² (8983 km²) in Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana, Yellowstone National Park is larger than the states of Delaware and Rhode Island. It is a place of superlatives, sheltering the oldest and largest bison herd in the United States and the largest supervolcano on the planet.

The Operational Land Imager (OLI) on the Landsat 8 satellite acquired a natural-color image of Yellowstone. In the images above, the Landsat data have been overlaid on a digital elevation model created with data from the ASTER instrument on NASA’s Terra satellite. The model gives a three-dimensional sense of the landscape. The photograph below from the National Park Service shows a section of Yellowstone Canyon.

Most of the landscape here is the product of intense volcanic activity in the not-too-distant past. Two eruptions between 1.2 million and 600,000 years ago each ejected more than 1,000 cubic kilometers (240 cubic miles) of molten material, making them two of the largest volcanic eruptions in Earth’s geologic record.

The region is pockmarked with several calderas, many of them now filled with lake water. The volcanic plumbing beneath the park is still active, giving energy to more than ten thousand hot springs, mud pots, terraces, and geysers—most famously, Old Faithful.

The Yellowstone, Snake, and other rivers have cut deep channels and canyons through the volcanic deposits over thousands of years. The rugged, mountainous terrain gives rise to at least 290 waterfalls taller than 5 meters (15 feet). The largest is the Lower Falls of the Yellowstone, where water drops 94 meters (308 feet).

Much of the park is covered by subalpine forests, mostly lodgepole pine. Sagebrush steppe, alpine meadows, and grasslands also provide food and habitat for more then 360 species. The most charismatic are the elk, bighorn sheep, and bison, which run in some of the largest wild herds in the world. Grizzly bears and wolves also make homes in the park, a relative rarity in the lower 48 United States.

Humans have enjoyed the fruits of this land for at least 11,000 years. Digging through more than a thousand sites, archaeologists have found evidence of the Clovis people and other Native American tribes. Tools and arrowheads made of rock from Yellowstone’s Obsidian Cliff have been found throughout the park, but also throughout wide swaths of North America, suggesting an ancient trade in these tools created in Yellowstone.

In the summer of 1988, fires caused by lightning and humans consumed vast stretches of Yellowstone. An estimated 793,000 of the park’s 2,221,800 acres burned in that brutal summer. You can view a time-series of images showing the evolution of the park after the fires in World of Change: Burn Recovery in Yellowstone.

Related Reading

National Park Service (2016) Yellowstone National Park. Accessed April 16, 2016.

NASA Earth Observatory (2012, January 4) Fire and the Future of Yellowstone.

NASA Earth Observatory (2011, December 8) Satellites Track Yellowstone’s Underground Heat.

NASA Earth Observatory (2008, November 30) Old Faithful.

NASA Earth Observatory (2005, September 5) Yellowstone Lake, Wyoming.

We've Read

Scientists and Activists Look Beyond the March for Science

Scientists and science advocates are expected to fill the streets of more than 500 cities across the world on Saturday in support of scientific research, which thas increasingly come under attack, especially from the regressive regime in Washington.

Severe Drought Grips Florida

Groundwater conditions as reported by the United States Geological Survey (USGS) as of Wednesday, April 12th indicate groundwater levels for most observing locations are less than 25% of normal. River and Stream Flow conditions reported by the USGS show the majority are reporting levels much below normal, or less than 25% of normal.

River Piracy

Climate Change Reroutes a Yukon River in a Geological Instant

In the blink of a geological eye, climate change has helped reverse the flow of water melting from the Kaskawulsh Glacier in Canada's Yukon, a hijacking that scientists call "river piracy." This term refers to one river capturing and diverting the flow of another, a process that would ordinarily take thousands of years—or more—happened in just a few months.

Much of the meltwater from the glacier normally flows to the north into the Bering Sea via the Slims and Yukon Rivers. A rapidly retreating and thinning glacier—accelerated by global warming—caused the water to redirect to the south, and into the Pacific Ocean.

Climate Change Threatens to Strip the Identity of Glacier National Park

What will they call this place once the glaciers are gone? A century ago, this sweep of mountains on the Canadian border boasted some 150 ice sheets, many of them scores of feet thick, plastered across summits and tucked into rocky fissures high above parabolic valleys. Today, perhaps 25 survive. In 30 years, there may be none.

The Florida Senate seems to finally get it. I know how crazy that sounds. A bunch of conservative Republicans finally understand something about the environment? Maybe they do.

Florida Senate lawmakers have passed one of the most carefully crafted bills yet to ensure the health of the Everglades. As environmentalists, water-dependent businesses, economists and tourists know, so much depends upon the health of the River of Grass, including South Floridians’ access to clean water, the state’s economic vitality, indeed, the well-being of the state itself.

This is not an overstatement.

Image: Greg Lovett

Florida desperately needs a reservoir south of Lake Okeechobee. For too long, the state has blithely allowed water released from the lake to flow to the coasts, and out to sea, an unconscionable waste of this precious resource. Just as bad, pollutants in that water have created massive algae blooms that, literally, have raised a stink in estuaries and along beaches, threatening to ruin the entire ecosystem around Lake Okeechobee and the Everglades.

The reservoir will serve two vital purposes. First, it will store the billions of gallons of water currently being dumped into the sea. Second, it will feed needed water to the Everglades to keep them hydrated.

Image: Mac Stone

Roseate Spoonbills Send Warning Signs About the Florida Everglades

Now, the House, scheduled to take up the issue in committee this week, must realize what’s at stake, too. Those lawmakers should recognize a good deal when it sees one. Ultimately, they can be leaders who acknowledge just how beneficial the Senate’s bill will be for the state, or they can be obstructionists and pick it apart, load it up with needless amendments and torpedo far more than just a bill.

Senate President Joe Negron was a leader. Coming into the session he made creating a reservoir south of Lake Okeechobee a priority and put his political muscle behind it. More important, he listened, addressed sugar industry and residents’ concerns and urged compromise — a seemingly long-forgotten principle in the Legislature.

Image: Judylynn Malloch

The state Senate overwhelmingly approved a compromise version of Senate Bill 10, originally introduced by Sen. Rob Bradley. It calls for state-owned land, in addition to sugar-industry property, to be used for the reservoir. It also allows the state to negotiate with private landowners. This mix of properties should put to rest claims that the state is simply conducting a “land grab.”

The bill wisely anticipates some job loss as private commercial properties are taken off line to create the reservoir. There is money in the bill for job training and infrastructure projects to employ displaced workers.

Read Florida Senate Bill 10/2017 Here

Follow the Progress of Florida Senate Bill 10/2017 Here

The state and federal governments will split the $2.4 billion cost. (For perspective, The U.S. Corps of Engineers has spent at least $500 million since 2007 on stopgap measures to shore up the 143-mile dike.) The feds consistently have come through for Everglades restoration, and Florida’s lawmakers in the U.S. House and Senate must hammer home the point that the Everglades are a national treasure.

During the past year, evidence of the challenge has been most stark. Record rainfall raised Lake Okeechobee’s water to alarming levels, with the Herbert Hoover Dike under threat. Gov. Rick Scott declared an emergency in St. Lucie and Martin counties, Negron’s political back yard. By that time, there was little else Scott could do. Months later, South Florida is suffering through another crippling drought and all that "extra" water is gone, dumped into the sea.

But regressive Governor Scott himself had thwarted an optimistic proposal developed by his predecessor, Charlie Crist, to buy sugar property to create the reservoir. The governor, too, should show himself to be a leader, and get behind this current effort and push. I know, that sounds oxymoronic when talking about the Florida Governor, but he should. Could he? Does he have the capacity to accept that he was wrong before and do the right thing now? Probably not. But he should.

The Senate has done its job — well. Now, House lawmakers, and the governor, must do theirs.

Florida Senate OKs Lake Okeechobee Reservoir Bill; What about the Florida House?

The Senate passed a bill to build a reservoir south of Lake Okeechobee to curb discharges to the St. Lucie and Caloosahatchee rivers. With a 36-3 vote, the Senate sent the bill to the House were some members have criticized Republican Senate President Joe Negron's plan to store 100 billion to 120 billion gallons of water that gets wastefully dumped into the sea when Lake Okeechobee's level is high. The reservoir would send that much-needed water into the Everglades and Florida Bay.

Audubon Florida: The Everglades Agricultural Area Reservoir Project

Florida's coastal waters are experiencing an unprecedented ecological collapse. Storing water south of Lake Okeechobee in the Everglades Agricultural Area (EAA) will provide an outlet for water being discharged to fragile coastal estuaries while concurrently holding water that can be sent south to Florida Bay.

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Kuki Gallmann, 'I Dreamed of Africa' Author, is Shot in Kenya

Over the past few days, Mrs. Gallmann, one of Kenya’s most famous conservationists and the author of the best-selling book “I Dreamed of Africa,” sent me a flurry of increasingly distressed text messages. Heavily armed pastoralists had invaded her ranch in northern Kenya and were edging closer and closer to her house.

“Pokot militia openly carrying firearms,” she wrote in one message. (The Pokot are an ethnic group in northern Kenya.) “Not just herders. Group of armed men without livestock. 13 firearm spotted.”

A few days later, she sent another message that said, “2 Arsons by herders and shooting reported.” She added in a separate bubble: “Fire ongoing.”

The trees that make Southern California shady and green are dying. Fast.

The trees that shade, cool and feed people from Ventura County to the Mexican border are dying so fast that within a few years it’s possible the region will look, feel, sound and smell much less pleasant than it does now.

“We’re witnessing a transition to a post-oasis landscape in Southern California,” says Greg McPherson, a supervisory research forester with the U.S. Forest Service who has been studying what he and others call an unprecedented die-off of the trees greening Southern California’s parks, campuses and yards.

Climate Change Drives Human Migration

Climate change is not equally felt across the globe, and neither are its longer term consequences. This map overlays human turmoil — represented here by United Nations data on nearly 64 million “persons of concern,” whose numbers have tripled since 2005 — with climate turmoil, represented by data from NASA’s Common Sense Climate Index. The correlation is striking. Climate change is a threat multiplier: It contributes to economic and political instability and also worsens the effects. It propels sudden-onset disasters like floods and storms and slow-onset disasters like drought and desertification; those disasters contribute to failed crops, famine and overcrowded urban centers; those crises inflame political unrest and worsen the impacts of war, which leads to even more displacement. There is no internationally recognized legal definition for “environmental migrants” or “climate refugees,” so there is no formal reckoning of how many have left their homes because climate change has made their lives or livelihoods untenable. In a 2010 Gallup World Poll, though, about 12 percent of respondents — representing a total of 500 million adults — said severe environmental problems would require them to move within the next five years.

Florida Drought Intensifies

Dry pattern to worsen drought, brush fires across Florida into May

Relentless dry weather will worsen drought conditions and exacerbate brush fires plaguing Florida for the foreseeable future.

Photo: Bears Ears National Monument

Trump Attempts to Unmake National Monuments

Its time to say enough is enough!

Using the now infamous Executive Order pen, Trump issues a new order calling into question two decades of National Monument designations. His target are National Monuments in Utah, some of the finest landscapes in the world populated by some of the most regressive environment haters that ever walked the planet.

Presidents of both parties have invoked their executive authority under the 1906 Antiquities Act to provide safeguards for federal lands and waters. But some of these moves — including Barack Obama’s designation of the 1.35 million-acre Bears Ears National Monument in December and Bill Clinton’s 1996 declaration of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, both in Utah, have sparked fierce criticism from Republicans.

Members of Utah’s congressional delegation started lobbying Trump shortly after his November win to take unilateral action to undo the designation for Bears Ears, which they said should have been protected instead through legislation.

Lake Weohyakapka (aka "Lake Walk-in-Water"). Idyllic? Yes, in principle. But it is also swarming with blind mosquitoes. Not just swarms, but mega-swarms of phenomenal numbers of blind mosquitoes. Located south of Tiger Lake and west of Lake Kissimmee, 10 miles east of Lake Wales, this 7,528-acre (11.7 miles², 30.5 km²) lake is one of Florida's best kept fishing secrets. The lake has been quietly and consistently churning out magnificent catches of largemouth bass, in large part due to the ample bass bait (blind mosquitoes and their larvae).

“Blind mosquitoes” is Southern slang referring to several species of aquatic midges that are somewhat mosquito-like in appearance, however they lack scales on the wings and do not bite, suck blood, or carry diseases. "Blood Worms" is another colloquial term for the larvae stage of midges. "Sand Flies" are midges too, but they are blood-suckers in the family Ceratopogonidae (biting midges). In Florida sand flies are often referred to as "no-see-ums." These insects are often confused and all are currently swarming. Strong southwesterlies are causing temperatures to soar and sending the swarms of insects toward east central Florida.

Blind mosquitoes are occurring in massive swarms and have become a nuisance very early due to extremely hot and dry conditions which have concentrated pollutants in waterways feeding the insects' explosive growth. Recently, unbelievable swarms of blind mosquitoes have emerged from the St. Johns River and lakes all along the central peninsula of Florida from Okeechobee in the south to Orange Lake in the north.

Phillip on the shore of Lake Weohyakapka. While making this image I managed to get blind mosquitoes in my socks, shirt, shorts. . . mouth, ears. . .everywhere.

Blind mosquitoes are insects in the family Chironomidae. They are often referred to as aquatic midges since their immatures (larvae and pupae) live in water. Their occurrence and survival in certain polluted waters often indicates pollution of aquatic habitats. They are important to man only when they emerge in such large numbers that they become a nuisance and they are important to fishermen because they are food for all fish found in Florida lakes.

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Blind Mosquito Breeding Sites

Blind mosquitoes are one of the most common and abundant organisms in natural and man-made water systems. In Florida, the larvae are abundant in small and large natural lakes, wastewater channels, sewage oxidation and settling ponds, and residential-recreational lakes.

Surveys of larval infestations in central Florida has revealed larval populations of >4500 ft² on the bottom of certain lakes. It is the midges emerging from these breeding areas that cause a variety of nuisance and economic problems. The problem blind mosquitoes in Florida are, Chironomus crassicaudatus, and Chironomus decorus, Goeldichironomus holoprasinus as well as certain species of Tanytarsus. These species usually breed in polluted water 3-12 feet deep.

Aquatic Midge Life Cycle

Aquatic midge has four stages in its life cycle. These stages are the egg, larvae, pupae, and adult. The eggs are laid in a mass on the surface of the water. Depending on the species, each mass may contain from 10 to 3,000 eggs enclosed in a gelatinous substance. These egg masses may become attached to twigs and other debris found along the shore of lakes, streams, or rivers. Those egg masses not attached to objects will sink to the bottom where the eggs hatch into larvae in 2 to 7 days.

After hatching, the larvae feed on the gelatinous material for about 2 days and then leave the mass.

Blood Worms

In Florida Bloodworms are generally smaller than the Glycera (genus) worm pictured above, but they function in more or less the same horrific fashion. Blind Mosquito larvae are bloodworms for a time and during that time they are catnip for bass.

On the second or third day after hatching, the larvae leave the mass, burrow into the mud and, by using salivary secretions, bind small substrate particles into tubes or tunnels in which they live. The tubes may also be composed of silk-like threads. Most larval tubes have an opening at each end to allow the larvae to feed. Water is circulated within the tube by a rapid undulating motion in order to extract oxygen and food.

They do kind of look like something a zombie would enjoy. Every so often you hear a story in the news where these guys have invaded some municipal water supply. Not surprising when you consider how many are in Florida's lakes. Anyway, they don't stay this way long. The entire lifespan of a Blind Mosquito is about 2 weeks, so from Bloodworm to Blind Mosquito to dead bug or fish food occurs over a very short period of time.

The larvae spend most of its time undulating rapidly within the tube to circulate water. From the water the larvae extract oxygen and food. The larvae feed on suspended matter in the water and organic matter in the mud

After the first molt, the larvae of most aquatic midges take on a pink color that gradually darkens into a deep red. These are sometimes referred to as "blood-worms." Depending on the water temperature, the larval stage can last from less than 2 to 7 weeks.

Hiking the southwest side of Lake June-in-Winter (State Park) south of Sebring, also swarming with blind mosquitoes. Much larger (and shallower) Lake Istokpoga is nearby (to the east). It appeared that the 3,726 acre, 5.8 mile², 15 km² lake was down at least 5 vertical feet and the shoreline had receded many hundreds of feet from its normal elevation. Perfect conditions for blind mosquitoes to breed.

In general bloodworms are any type of larvae that can be found in rivers, lakes and ponds. They get their common name from their bright red color and are used all over the world as fish food or bait. In the wild, almost every fish species eats blood worms or other larvae, which means even the pickiest eaters should usually take the bait.

The larvae transform into pupae while still in the tubes and remain there for about 3 days. The pupae then leave the tube and actively swim to the surface. A few hours later, the adult aquatic midge emerges. The emerging adults usually swarm at night to mate. They do not feed and, consequently, only live for about 3 to 5 days. The entire life cycle of the aquatic midge is usually completed in 2 weeks. However, it is not uncommon for the life cycle to take longer.

Lake Hatchineha in Osceola County south of Poinciana where blind mosquitoes are currently present in very large numbers.

Importance

The importance of blind mosquitoes as pests has increased during the past 20-30 years due to creation of new midge producing habitats close to residences (canals, retention ponds), deteriorating water quality which is more suitable for breeding midges, and increasing desire of humans to live close to lakes and rivers.

Residents close to blind mosquito breeding areas experience severe nuisance and economic problems. Blind mosquitoes can emerge in phenomenal numbers between April and November. Often humans have to cease outdoor activity since the adult midges can be inhaled or fly into the mouth, eyes, or ears.

9,638 acre, 15.06 mile², 39 km² Lake Monroe is very shallow today as brutal hot temperatures and zero rainfall continue. Lake Monroe is bordered by one of the nation's busiest superhighways, I-4, to the north, Debary to the northeast, Deltona to the east, and Sanford to the west.

During hot, summer days, midges fly to cool shady places. At night they are attracted to lights around houses and businesses. When large numbers are present, they stain paint, stucco and other wall finishes. Automobiles become soiled, and headlights and windshields get covered with dead midges.

The bodies which are mashed to painted surfaces cause permanent staining. Also, blind mosquitoes will fly indoors as doors are opened and closed. Problems indoors such as ruining laundry and staining indoor walls, ceilings, draperies and other furnishings cause severe annoyance for residents.

Blind mosquito Chronomus crassicaudatus

Where midges are prevalent, spider webs and spiders abound. Accumulations of dead midges and webs require residents to frequently wash and maintain homes and businesses. The dead midges have a smell similar to rotting fish as they decay. The smell persists in damp weather, even after the insects have been removed.

Blind mosquitoes are an important component of the food chain in a lake. Fish utilize the larvae as food. Lakes where aquatic midges breed are often our best fishing lakes.

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Packing for the Zombie Apocalypse

Photographer Allison Stewart shoots the contents of people's "bug-out bags."

Photographer Allison Stewart has been documenting the contents of "bug-out bags," the stuff their owners deem necessary to deal with various types of emergencies. The Bags' contents project what people fear—war, martial law, natural disaster—and how they intend to cope. For some buggers its as simple as pills and a bottle of tequila; for others, a carefully planned pack of food and supplies to last a few days. They range from the off the shelf and Homeland Security kits to off-grid survivalist bags and pet emergency packs.

The Evolution of Zombies

Picnicking in the Land of the Walking Dead

Touring the Land of the Walking Dead

Hiking the Land of the Walking Dead

The Walking Dead: For Sale

Securing the Land of the Walking Dead

Halloween in Manhattan

Erythrina: Coral Bean

From the Greek erythros, meaning red;

flowers and seeds are red in most species

These strikingly beautiful plants are in bloom this month and though their numbers are now few in Florida they are sticking out from the drought-parched landscape with bright red flowers and green-bean-like fruit which will become just as red as the flowers if they survive to ripen. Largely forgotten or ignored today, the plants are historically important to Florida and other areas in their range. They are also important to ecologists because of all their evolutionary adaptations. First their striking red color is a warning to many predators, same thing for their red seed. Second, they are wicked thorny. Even brushing up against these plants can leave you bloodied. Third, they are chock full of chemicals (more on that below).

I set out on a mission to find as many of these plants as I could to photograph as they are rapidly disappearing in Florida. I was able to find 6 individuals in a variety of habitats around Central Florida that are pictured here. They ranged from the Kissimmee River Prairie in the south to Gemini Springs in the north and Highland Hammocks in the west. Sadly, I only found 6 plants. Each located far from any others. I collected seeds from around the plants and will attempt to grow a few new Coral Bean Trees.

When Linnaeus created the genus Erythrina in 1753, he knew three American species. Now there are 112 species known, with 12 species in Asia, 32 in Africa, and almost 70 in the Americas. Neither Linnaeus nor his predecessors, who had studied these plants in the American wilds, had any idea that they were as important in American cultures as they were. Nor could they have guessed the research that would go into studying the chemicals in them from the 1930s into the early 1970s.

The research push during World War II began with studies done by Boris Krukoff, one of the few botanists in history to become wealthy. During his study of curare, Krukoff found that Erythrina was one of its sources. Then it was discovered that the seeds of some Erythrina contain alkaloids with a curare-like action. Since curare was an important muscle relaxant during surgery, another source was considered potentially useful. Finally, it was learned that chemicals in Erythrina (erythroidine, erysodine) have tertiary bases, not quaternary bases like curare alkaloids, and that they were not as useful as some had hoped.

Further research revealed that Erythrina contains many potent chemicals, including more than 30 different alkaloids. The Florida species, Erythrina herbaceae, containes erysopine, erysothiopine, erysothiovine, erysovine, erythrinine, erythroresin, the emetic coralin, erythric acid, and hypaphorine.

In the Southeast USA, E. herbacea is known by a number of different colloquial names including cardinal spear, Cherokee bean, coral bean (plant, tree), and red-cardinal flower. Several other names applied to it elsewhere reflect the red color, including alabarda de cardenal (cardinal's saddle, Spain), colorín (color of life, Tamaulipas to Oaxaca, Mexico), corolillo (little red one), imortelle (immortal), and Korallenstrauch (coral bush, German). Louisiana is the exception in the USA, where the plants are called cry baby tree and mamou (mamma) because the nectar is so abundant the trees "weep."

Erythrina herbacea is sometimes called the eastern coral bean to distinguish it from E. flabelligormis, the western coral bean. The southeastern species ranges from the coastal Carolinas to Florida, west to Texas and Arkansas, then in Tamaulipas, San Luis Potosí, Hidalgo, Puebla, Veracruz, Oaxaca, and Chiapas. Erythrina flabelliformis grows from Arizona and New Mexico south through Baja, Sonora, Chihuahua, Sinaloa, Durango, Zacatecas, Jalisco, Michoacán, San Luis Potosí, Pueblo, and Morelos. Erythrina americana, a third species in Erythrina ranges in Mexico from Veracruz to Hidalgo, Distrito Federal, Puebla, Chiapas, and Yucatán. Common names of the tree are so intertwined that people may not distinguish among them.

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In Mexico these species have long been intimately tied to daily and religious life. The young flowers are eaten cooked like string beans. The most common preparation is breakfast cooked with eggs. The flowers are considered pectoral, and the roots sudorific and diaphoretic. Leaves are emmenagogue, and a decoction of the flowers is used to treat pulmonary disorders. Juice from the stem is used to treat scorpion stings. The wood is soft and light, and is used for corks, carvings of saints, masks, and similar items. The bar, in addition to giving a yellow dye, is astringent, and it has been used to reduce fever, relieve dysentery (bloody diarrhea), and treat eye inflammation.

Mexicans call the seeds either colorín, patrol (from Náhuatl patolli, banner), or sometimes patrol colorín (red banner, Tamaulipas). Seeds are, or at least were, used in a game resembling dice called patol. The Maya name for the seeds was tze-te (poison), and the plants are discussed in the Popul Vuh, a text that recounts the origins of those people. The name tze-te is usually equated with the Spanish name árbol de pito. The Zapotec called these seeds bi-chilla (lucky fruit) or bzaa tutze (bean poison). Their red color was synonymous with toxicity among the ancient and modern Zapotecs. It was these red beans and the game patol that the Zapotecs and presumably the Maya and Aztecs used to predict the future.

In the Southeastern USA it is thought that the seeds of E. herbacea were once an item of commerce among Native Americans. The plant was used among Florida natives to treat "Horse Sickness," "Deer Sickness," and "Dog Sickness." The horse was a historical addition to the animals in the Americas, so the other two illnesses must be more ancient. One of the ingredients in the remedy for Horse Sickness was ground Erythrina seeds, either dried or green. At times, scrapings from the roots were dried and powdered as a substitute. This powder was added to some material from other plants, made into a decoction, and ingested. Variations were made for Deer and Dog Sickness.

In spite of Alice Micco Snow's obvious extensive knowledge of plants used by the Seminoles, Erythrina is not among those she listed in her seminal book with SE Stans, "Healing Plants. Medicine of the Florida Seminole Indians," University of Florida Press, 2001. That absence may reflect shifting knowledge. In addition to Erythrina's medicinal and societal uses they were also important plants in a religious context in the past, but they have now become either unimportant or relegated to food or some other secular application.

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The Guardians of the Galaxy Workout

Workout 1

THE WARMUP

Treadmill - 10 min at 5.0 speed.

Pullups
Sets: 3
Reps: 5

Pushup
Sets: 3
Reps: 10

Squat
Sets: 3
Reps: 15

THE WORKOUT

Lat pulldowns
Sets: 6
Reps: 140lbsx20, 150lbsx15, 185lbsx15, 15, 12, 12

Dumbell rows
Sets: 5
Reps: 80lbsx20, 90lbsx15, 100lbsx12, 12, 12

Barbell curls
Sets: 75lbsx15, 15, 15, 15, 15, 65lbsx10 (5 push ups after each set)

Dumbbell concentration curls
Sets: 3
Reps: 25lbsx10, 10, 9

Ab Circuit
Situps
Crunches
Side Crunches

Workout 2

Five rounds

800-meter run
15 cleans (95lbs)
10 bench press (205 lbs)
5 box jumps (30" box)
Overall Progress

In 5 Months:

Maximum Pull Ups went from 7 to 30

Maximum Deadlift went from 225 to 315

Mile run time went from 8:30 to 5:50

We're so accustomed to seeing Chris Pratt as a bona-fide action star, it's almost tough to remember he first came to fame as a chubby goofball. Before he was a motorcycle-riding velociraptor trainer in Jurassic World, and before he was a universe-saving superhero in Guardians of the Galaxy—both epic summer blockbusters, by the way—Pratt was Andy Dwyer, the marshmallowy man-boy who fell into a pit on Parks and Recreation.

So what changed? Pratt got shredded. For his star (and star-making) turn as Peter Quill, Pratt dropped more than 60 pounds in six months. He combined a carefully calculated diet plan from nutritionist Phil Goglia, an intense training regimen designed by personal trainer Duffy Gaver, and sheer hard work, he chiseled out a ripped physique you see in the selfie that lit up the Internet.

Gaver trained Pratt for five months, starting with 4-6 sessions a week in February 2013. Pratt would even do extra workouts on his own if he felt up to it.

"Chris' athleticism is amazing. He is incredibly disciplined and his work ethic is phenomenal," says Gaver. "He isn’t the client you have to push; he's the type of client you have to pull down. If you were to walk into the gym when he was training, you would have thought for sure you’ve got a guy getting ready for the NFL Combine."

Gaver says the first two months were bodybuilding-type workouts, the next two months were equal parts bodybuilding and conditioning, and the last month was mainly conditioning consisting of cardio circuits, swimming, mountain biking, and faster timed sessions. The conditioning workouts often contained a treadmill/rower circuit mixed in with weight lifting or calisthenics. In terms of goals, Pratt had knew exactly how he wanted to look.

"He wanted more muscle, to be much leaner, and to be more fit," says Gaver. "He wanted to do justice to the role."

Check out how Pratt got in otherworldly shape with these upper body and conditioning workouts—and for more on Pratt and his journey to becoming Star-Lord, read the cover story in the July/August issue of MEN'S FITNESS.

'Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2' debuts as second-biggest opening of the year

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Review: 'Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2' has that familiar feeling, maybe too much of it

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Kurt Russell, 'the most famous cult actor in the world,' plays, well, a planet in 'Guardians' sequel

Director James Gunn talks mom rock and why Led Zeppelin missed the cut for his ‘Guardians 2’ mix

What to expect from Disney’s new ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ ride

With Summer have come the Lady Bugs (or Ladybirds; family Coccinellidae) despite the persistent and unrelenting drought some of the insects manage to survive.

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These whimsical-looking predators are plentiful on the citrus, ferns, vegetables, and sunflower trees.

Coccinellids are typically predators of Hemiptera such as aphids and scale insects, though larvae and eggs of their own species can also become prey when alternative food sources are scarce.

Members of the subfamily Epilachninae are herbivores and can be very destructive agricultural pests. Introduced species of Coccinellidae (such as Harmonia axyridis or Coccinella septempunctata in North America) out-compete and displace native Coccinellids and become pests in their own right.

The main predators of Coccinellids are birds, but they are also the prey of frogs, wasps, spiders, and dragonflies. Their bright colors discourage some predators from making them a meal. This phenomenon is called aposematism and works because predators learn by experience to associate certain prey phenotypes with a bad taste.

Another defense is known as reflex bleeding. With reflex bleeding an alkaloid toxin is exuded through the joints of the bug's exoskeleton, triggered by mechanical stimulation (such as a predator attack).