Initially, a virgin birth, also known as parthenogenesis, was thought to be triggered by extreme situations; it was only documented among captive animals, for example, perhaps by the stress, or isolation. A way to continue the bloodline when all other options had gone, when there was no other choice.
Not necessarily. It now appears that some virgin females produce offspring even in the presence of males.
In Photos: 48 Hours Under Siege by Islamic State Militants In Kobane →
On December 19, VICE News entered the besieged Syrian Kurdish city of Kobane with the help of smugglers and the Syrian Kurdish militia, known as the People's Protection Units (YPG). The city was preparing to enter its 100th day of fighting a fierce siege by the Islamic State (IS). Fighters with IS had been pushed back by a combination of US airstrikes and heavy artillery from a small contingency of Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga fighters. Surrounded by IS on three sides, and a Turkish military hostile to Kurdish forces on the fourth, Kobane has become a symbol of resistance for those fighting IS. YPG fighters now estimate they control approximately 75 percent of the city, and US military sources say over 1,000 IS militants have been killed.
How a firefly lights up: Researchers reveal the secrets of the incredible 'lantern' structure the insects use to glow →
Fireflies used rapid light flashes to communicate.
This 'bioluminescence' is an intriguing phenomenon that has many potential applications, from drug testing and monitoring water contamination, and even lighting up streets using glow-in-dark trees and plants.
Fireflies emit light when a compound called luciferin breaks down.
We know that this reaction needs oxygen, but what we don't know is how fireflies actually supply oxygen to their light-emitting cells.
Using state-of-the-art imaging techniques, scientists from Switzerland and Taiwan have determined how fireflies control oxygen distribution to light up their cells.
Do Higher Taxes Make Us Work Less? →
There are reasons to think that taxes, unless they reach very high levels, don’t have a big effect on how much people work.
First, most jobs, even part-time jobs, require a minimum number of hours per week. Few people are likely to quit working entirely because of taxes.Second, when you tax people, they are poorer, and they need to work more to maintain their standard of living. University of Michigan economists Matthew Shapiro and Miles Kimball find that this almost entirely cancels out the disincentive, leaving total labor supply about the same. Of course, that’s bad, because people enjoy leisure. But the flip side of it is that if people do actually reduce their work to avoid taxes, they enjoy their time off.
When you look out at the world, you see lots of circumstantial evidence that taxes don’t have a crushing effect on the labor supply. For example, in a recent blog post at the NYT’s Upshot, Neil Irwin reports that countries with higher taxes and more generous welfare systems also tend to have a higher share of the population in the labor force: ...
Also, if you look at the U. S.'s past, you see that although taxes have come down over time, people are not working more than they used to.
The Islamic State is failing at being a state →
Initial reports suggested ISIS/ISIL/IS was picking up the slack where the Iraqi state had failed: garbage services, water, etc. That may have been the case, briefly, or only in certain areas...
Slick Islamic State videos depicting functioning government offices and the distribution of aid do not match the reality of growing deprivation and disorganized, erratic leadership, the residents say. A trumpeted Islamic State currency has not materialized, nor have the passports the group promised. Schools barely function, doctors are few, and disease is on the rise.
In the Iraqi city of Mosul, the water has become undrinkable because supplies of chlorine have dried up, said a journalist living there, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect his safety. Hepatitis is spreading, and flour is becoming scarce, he said. “Life in the city is nearly dead, and it is as though we are living in a giant prison,” he said.
In the Syrian city of Raqqa, the group’s self-styled capital, water and electricity are available for no more than three or four hours a day, garbage piles up uncollected, and the city’s poor scavenge for scraps on streets crowded with sellers hawking anything they can find, residents say.
How solar power and electric cars could make suburban living awesome again →
Personally-owned (or rented) solar panels, plus electric vehicles... I think this will be a winning formula going forward (not for everyone, of course; we don't all live in sunny areas). It would avoid a current glaring problem with electric vehicles: electricity generation is still heavily based on burning coal. The biggest obstacle to this move? Obstinate electricity companies that are afraid of solar and wind, and currently fighting interested citizens in court and in several states' legislatures.
Fast food consumption is out of control—and it could be blunting children’s brains →
Researchers at Ohio State University used data from a nationally representative sample of some 11,700 children to measure how fast food might be affecting their performance in class. The study measured how much fast food the children were eating at age 10, and then compared the consumption levels to test results in reading, math, and science three years later.
What they found is that even small increases in the frequency with which the students ate fast food were associated with poorer academic test results. Habitual fast food eaters—those who ate fast food daily—saw "test score gains that were up to about 20 percent lower than those who didn’t eat any fast food."
The connection held true even after the researchers took into account more than a dozen other factors about the children's habits and backgrounds that might have contributed to the association between fast food consumption and poorer academic performance, including fitness, broader eating habits, socioeconomic status, and characteristics of both their neighborhood and school.
The Booming Economy vs. The Struggling Middle Class →
The key point, however, is not that the ratio doubled but why. Corrected for inflation, the median wealth of upper-income families has doubled since 1983, from $318,000 to $639,000. By contrast, the median wealth of middle-class families has stagnated during that period--$94,000 in 1983, $96,000 today. To be sure, middle-class wealth increased to $158,000 between 1983 and 2007 but the Great Recession reversed that gain, and the middle class has not participated significantly in the stock market surge that began in mid-2009.
While we should welcome the increased pace of job creation and early signs of wage gains, the middle class is unlikely to regain a sense of security until the nest eggs of average families reclaim the ground they have lost since the onset of the Great Recession.