JetLib News

Source: King’s Quest III Remake Released

Source: Saudi Students In US Seek Segregation By Gender On Facebook

Beetle B. writes “According to Saudi Arabia’s leading English newspaper, Arab News, online newspapers, blogs and forums will now need to register with the Ministry of Information and Culture for licenses to operate, according to new regulations that the ministry announced Saturday it is to introduce. Abdul Aziz Khoja, minister of information and culture, said that the system is “in line with the development moves that the media sector is witnessing.” He added that the rules do not include any clauses restricting freedom of speech and that the ministry is eager to ensure there is transparency. He also said that the rules will be made open to improvement in the future.”

Source: Saudi Arabia Requiring License For Online Media

beetle496 writes “One of the things Microsoft has done well for many years now (since they got called on the carpet about Windows 95) is providing compatibility with assistive technology used by the blind. Their current push is for a set of APIs called User Automation. Many of us in the field have remained skeptical of the early promises, especially those related to cross-platform compatibility. The news that Microsoft is now backtracking is disappointing, but hardly surprising. It looks like IAccessible2 is the way to go.”

Source: Microsoft Backtracks On Accessibility In Windows Phone 7

Beetle B. writes “Benoit Mandelbrot has passed away at the age of 85. I first learned of the Mandelbrot set while reading Arthur C. Clarke’s The Ghost From The Grand Banks. Soon after, I got hold of the best fractal generation software of the day — Fractint — and ran it for long periods of time on my XT, exploring the beautiful world that Mandelbrot, among others, had opened up for me. That it was only on a 4-color CGA did not deter me!”

Source: Benoit Mandelbrot Dies At 85

Beetle B. writes “Do Google search results contradict your religious views? Tired of getting pornographic results and worried you’ll burn in Hell for it? Are you Christian? Try SeekFind — ‘a Colorado Springs-based Christian search engine that only returns results from websites that are consistent with the Bible.’ Muslim? Look no further: I’m Halal. Jewish? Jewogle is for you. NPR ran a story on the general trend of search engines cropping up to cater to certain religious communities. I wonder how many other ‘filtered’ search engines exist out there to cater to various groups (religious or otherwise) — not counting specialized searches (torrents, etc).”

Source: The Advent of Religious Search Engines

A certain species of dung beetle has been crowned the world’s strongest insect. A male Onthophagus taurus can pull 1,141 times its own body weight — the equivalent of a 70-kilogramme (154-pound) person being able to lift 80 tonnes, the weight of six double-decker buses [AFP]. That power comes in handy not just to roll up a few extra dung-balls, but also to protect mates and stave off potential rivals.

Chronicling the insect’s amazing strength in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, scientists Rob Knell and Leigh Simmons explain that the beetle’s amazing strength is connected to his sex life. These female dung beetles dig tunnels beneath choice pieces of dung in which to lay their eggs. If another male enters a tunnel already occupied by a rival, then the dung beetles duke it out, each male using his immense strength in an attempt to push the other out. Usually, the male that guards the tunnel repeatedly mates with the female inside.

In the study, scientists calibrated the males’ strength by gluing a cotton thread to the beetles’ hard wing-cases, stringing the thread across a pulley, and tying it to a miniature bucket, to which they added drops of water [ScienceNOW]. The dung beetle’s coronation as the world’s strongest insect steals the thunder from the rhinoceros beetle, which can lift up to 850 times its own weight.

The weaker males in this brawny insect community aren’t entirely out of luck, as nature has endowed them with other survival advantages. Knell added that some male dung beetles are smaller and weaker, but do not have to fight for female attention due to their “substantially bigger testicles”. “Instead of growing super strength to fight for a female, they grow lots more sperm to increase their chances of fertilizing her eggs and fathering the next generation” [AFP].

Image: Alex Wild. Two male dung beetles fight for supremacy. 

Source: The Mightiest Mite: Dung Beetle Is Crowned World’s Strongest Bug

Male animals often use their horns to fight over females, but at least one species’ females use their horns to fight over excrement.

The species, no surprise, is the dung beetle. Unlike many of the animals we usually associate with elaborate horns, antlers, or other head weaponry—in which the male has the most impressive set—dung beetle females have horns that put the male version to shame. The reason, says a new study in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, is that females must battle one another for that precious manure. Nicola Watson and Leigh Simmons of the University of Western Australia, Perth, pitted female dung beetles (Onthophagus sagittarius) against each other in a race for dung – a valuable resource that provides nutrients for their eggs. Matched for body size, females with bigger horns managed to collect more dung and so provide better for their offspring [New Scientist].

Dung beetles aren’t the only species whose females grow horns: Small antelopes called duikers, for instance, have them for self-defense or territorial struggles. But the beetle horns are special, Stankowich says. Female duiker horns generally look like the males’, but female dung beetles grow another type of horn altogether [Science News]. Thus, the researchers argue, the female beetle horns (on the right in the image) aren’t some kind of crossover from the kind of horns that the males grow (left), but rather an independently evolved feature. And, they say, finding out that a feature like this evolved for female reproductive competition rather than defense against predators is exceedingly rare.

You might think there’d be enough poop to go around, and that fighting over it wouldn’t be necessary. However, there’s a distinct advantage toward getting the very best dung to make the balls in which the beetles lay their eggs. “Dung loses its usability quickly, so they have to seize it fast,” says Watson. Female beetles have been found to steal dung, raid other brood balls, and replace existing eggs with their own [New Scientist].

Image: Sean Stankowski

Source: Female Dung Beetles Evolved Elaborate Horns to Fights for the Choicest Poop

Turns out we’ve got two projects in turning our ’67 VW Beetle into an electric vehicle — a conversion and a big restoration. One’s going better than the other.

Source: Our DIY Electric Car Slowly Comes Together

Arvisp writes with the news of a recently discovered antifreeze molecule in an Alaskan beetle that departs from most commonly identified natural antifreeze. “‘The most exciting part of this discovery is that this molecule is a whole new kind of antifreeze that may work in a different location of the cell and in a different way,’ said zoophysiologist Brian Barnes, director of the University of Alaska Fairbanks Institute of Arctic Biology and one of five scientists who participated in the Alaska Upis ceramboides beetle project. Just as ice crystals form over ice cream left too long in a freezer, ice crystals in an insect or other organism can draw so much water out of the organism’s cells that those cells die. Antifreeze molecules function to keep small ice crystals small or to prevent ice crystals from forming at all. They may help freeze-tolerant organisms survive by preventing freezing from penetrating into cells, a lethal condition. Other insects use these molecules to resist freezing by supercooling when they lower their body temperature below the freezing point without becoming solid.”

Source: New Antifreeze Molecule Isolated In Alaskan Beetle