May 2010 Archives

Image by goosmurf via Flickr

Earthworms form herds and make "group decisions", scientists have discovered.

The earthworms use touch to communicate and influence each other's behaviour, according to research published in the journal Ethology.

By doing so the worms collectively decide to travel in the same direction as part of a single herd.

The striking behaviour, found in the earthworm Eisenia fetida, is the first time that any type of worm, or annelid, has been shown to form active herds.

You can read more here.

TORONTO - A First Nations community in northern Ontario may be giving Loch Ness a run for its money.

Reports from the remote community a few hundred kilometres south of Hudson Bay say a strange creature was pulled from a local creek earlier this month - a creature some are calling a monster.
[...]
According to the website, two local nurses were hiking near the creek when they noticed their dog Sam sniffing something in the water.

The dog pulled the 30-centimetre-long dead creature from the water and the two women snapped some photos of it.

Image via Wikipedia

After some investigation, city inspectors realized the city water supply had been contaminated by cryptosporidium, which various testing and filtering systems had failed to detect and screen out.

The story was at the top of every local newscast for some days, and weeks later many people were still boiling water or avoiding tap water altogether. The story was tragic news for those with compromised immune systems, and was one more complication in the attempt to maintain the health and well-being of thousands of local people infected with HIV and with AIDS. For many of these, as well as others with compromised immune systems, the contamination was fatal.

The story went national, and 12 years later was still cited in national news stories and scientific studies regarding the safety of city water supplies, or of "when things go wrong". (12 years later the author still hears people say they haven't drunk Milwaukee tap water since.)

The City of Milwaukee and State of Wisconsin made numerous changes to filtration and testing procedures in an attempt to ensure such a tragedy can never happen again. One of the simplest is to incerease the frequency of testing for, and acceptable level of, turbidity (cloudiness) in drinking water.