För mindre än två veckor sedan begärde Krims parlament att halvön ska bli en del av Ryssland. Samtidigt utsågs en föga populär politiker till ny premiärminister för Krim. Men flera av dem som sägs ha röstat för besluten var inte på plats i parlamentet.

sciencehabit writes "Whether we realize it, African elephants are listening to us. The pachyderms can tell certain human languages apart and even determine our gender, relative age, and whether we're a threat, according to a new study. The work illustrates how elephants can sometimes protect themselves from human actions. The work may be helpful in preventing 'human-elephant conflicts where the species co-exist,' says Joshua Plotnik, a behavioral ecologist at Mahidol University, Kanchanaburi, in Thailand. For instance, elephants might be deterred from entering farmland or encouraged to stick to the corridors designed for their use. 'The trouble is elephants are too smart to be fooled by us for long.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

KentuckyFC writes "One of the more ambitious projects at the South Pole is the Askaryan Radio Array, a set of radio antennas under the ice that will listen for the tell tale signals of high energy neutrinos passing by. This array will eventually be over a thousand times bigger than the current largest neutrino detector: Icecube, which monitors a cubic kilometer of ice next door to the planned new observatory. But there's a problem. How do you supply 24/7 power to dozens of detectors spread over such a vast area in the middle of the Antarctic? The answer is renewable energy power stations that exploit the sun during the summer and the wind all year round. The first of these stations is now up and running at the South Pole and producing power. It is also helping to uncover and iron out the various problems that these stations are likely to encounter. For example; where to put the batteries needed to supply continuous power when all else fails. The team's current approach is to bury the battery to protect it from temperature extremes. That works well but makes maintenance so difficult that scaling this approach to dozens of power stations doesn't seem feasible. That's a problem for the future but for the moment, green power has finally come to the white continent."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Våren har kommit tidigt i år, till fästingarnas och mördarsniglarnas förtjusning. Onormalt tidig är den i de norra delarna av landet. Man ska dock räkna med att vädret kan slå om och bjuda på vinterliknande väder ett tag till. - Det är för tidigt att skruva av vinterdäcken, säger Martin Hedberg, meteorolog på vädertjänsten Klart.se.  

Polisen utreder misstänkt sabotage sedan flera tunga föremål placerats ut på järnvägsspåret utanför Örebro.

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