Day: February 6, 2024

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Shots – Health News : NPR

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A genetically modified purple tomato can now be raised by home gardeners : Shots – Health News : NPR

As home gardeners in the U.S. page through seed catalogs and pick out their favorite heirlooms, there's a new seed that has never been available to them before: a tomato the color of a concord grape with plum-colored flesh. It looks otherworldly, maybe Photoshopped. But it's not.

This nightshade is purple because its creators at Norfolk Plant Sciences worked for about 20 years to hack color genes from a snapdragon flower into the plant. The genes not only provide pigment, but high levels of anthocyanin, a health-promoting compound.

This dusky fruit, named the Purple Tomato, is the first genetically modified food crop to be directly marketed to home gardeners – the seeds went on sale Saturday. Last year, a handful of small farmers started growing and selling the tomatoes, but until now, genetically modified foods were generally only available to commercial producers in the U.S.

ScienceAlert

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More And More Hermit Crabs Are Wearing Trash as a Home Instead of Shells : ScienceAlert

Land hermit crabs have been using bottle tops, parts of old light bulbs and broken glass bottles, instead of shells.

New research by Polish researchers studied 386 images of hermit crabs occupying these artificial shells. The photos had been uploaded by users to online platforms, then analyzed by scientists using a research approach known as iEcology.

Of the 386 photos, the vast majority, 326 cases, featured hermit crabs using plastic items as shelters.

At first glance, this is a striking example of how human activities can alter the behavior of wild animals, and potentially the ways that populations and ecosystems function as a result.

Love, musk is in the air for New England furbearers! — Furbearer Conservation

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Love, musk is in the air for New England furbearers! — Furbearer Conservation

While Valentine’s Day has come and gone for folks in the Northeast, its safe to say romance, and in this case, gland secretions, still linger in the March air for many of the region’s wildlife populations.

Being in the wildlife control industry, mid-February tends to signal a spike in my phone usage and “windshield time” with calls of pungent odors in the crisp night air and depredation issues on livestock with Tasmanian-devil-like pandemonium. It spells an important milestone time of year for two prominent members of the mammalian super-family Musteloidea - specifically the striped skunk (Mephitis mephitis) and the American mink (Neovison vison). Why the sudden spike in activity during this time of year? Breeding season of course!

Phil Ochs – Crucifixion (Live)

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As I noted last night, this is a powerful song that brought Senator Bobby Kennedy to tears when he heard Phil Ochs preform it in the mid-1960s. Even more then a half century later, it's an incredibly powerful song about the death of John F. Kennedy and other great leaders.