First-Ever 'True' Millipede With 1,306 Legs Discovered Deep Underground in Australia

Although the name millipede comes from Latin for "thousand feet", before now no species has been found with more than 750 legs. After the discovery of a new millipede with 1,306 legs however, this arthropod is finally living up to its name.

© Marek et al, Scientific Reports 2021 A male Eumillipes persephone.

The new species is Eumillipes persephone – emillipes translating as "true-thousand-foot", with Persephone being the Greek goddess of the underworld. The wriggly creature was found 60 meters (197 feet) underground in a mining drill hole in the Eastern Goldfields Province of Australia.

Based on the four creatures analyzed so far, E. persephone has up to 330 segments on its body, and can measure up to 0.95 millimeters (0.04 inches) wide and 95.7 mm (3.77 inches) long. This millipede has a cone-shaped head with antennae and a beak, but no eyes.



A female E. persephone with 1,306 legs. (Marek et al., Scientific Reports, 2021)

"Among the earliest animals to breathe atmospheric oxygen, and with some extinct species that grew to two meters in length, millipedes have lived on this planet for more than 400 million years," write the researchers in their paper describing the find.

"Here we report the discovery of E. persephone, the first super-elongated millipede known from Australia, and the new world record holder of the animal with the greatest number of legs."

The research team thinks this new millipede is distantly related to the species Illacme plenipes, which had set the previous record of 750 legs. This particular millipede is found in the central region of California, and despite its absurd legginess, tends to grow to a length of just 25 to 40 millimeters.

Besides having so many legs and no eyes, E. persephone is also notable for its long, thread-like appearance (similar to I. plenipes) and its uniformly pale and cream-colored exoskeleton. These characteristics help mark it out as a species distinct from others.

The long bodies, multiple segments and many legs found in both I. plenipes and E. persephone could well have evolved to enable these millipedes to push and burrow through the soil more effectively, the researchers suggest.

"This telescoping locomotion, by sliding trunk segments coupled with the thrust of the legs, propels the animal through a varied and unpredictable underground microhabitat, and the increase in leg number likely contributes more pushing power to force through small crevices and openings," write the researchers.

There are still plenty of unknowns about E. persephone – what it eats, for example, and where else it might be found – but there's already enough to go on to mark it out as its own species and establish that it is a record breaker in terms of its leg count.

The researchers say the discovery of this new millipede is more evidence of the biodiversity found deep underground in the Eastern Goldfields Province, and helps to make a strong case for the region to be protected for the future.

While conditions above ground changed significantly across thousands of years, according to the researchers, the underground habitat most probably stayed stable – cool and moist. It's possible that many more discoveries are waiting to be made.

"These underground habitats, and their inhabitants, are critically understudied, despite their ecological importance in filtration of groundwater and screening of environmental toxins," write the researchers.

The research has been published in Scientific Reports.

‘The bawdy, fertile, redheaded matriarch has kicked it’: son’s hilarious obituary goes viral

Richard Luscombe 

Some obituary notices open with the grand achievements of a life well-lived, or the tender details of a person’s passing with loved ones at their side. The death in El Paso, Texas, of Renay Mandel Corren, however, was marked in somewhat more unorthodox fashion. “The bawdy, fertile, redheaded matriarch of a sprawling Jewish-Mexican-Redneck American family has kicked it,” it read.

According to the family’s obituary published in the Fayetteville Observer, Corren, who died on Saturday at the age of 84, will be mourned “in the many glamorous locales she went bankrupt”.

They include her birthplace of McKeesport, Pennsylvania “where she first fell in love with ham, and atheism”; Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina “where Renay’s dreams, credit rating and marriage are all buried”; and Miami, Florida, “where Renay’s parents, uncles, aunts, and eternal hopes of all Miami Dolphins fans everywhere, are all buried pretty deep”.

The remarkable – and hilarious – 1,000-word obituary was written by Corren’s son Andy, and quickly went viral after it was published on Wednesday.

The tribute to a mother known fondly to her family as “Rosie” is a partly tongue-in-cheek account of a long and eventful life, liberally sprinkled with anecdotes and encounters, some of which Mr Corren admits might not even be true. But the banter represents a loving tribute to a lady they still can’t quite believe has actually died.

“Renay has been toying with death for decades, but always beating it and running off in her silver Chevy Nova,” the obituary states.

“Covid couldn’t kill Renay. Neither could pneumonia twice, infections, blood clots, bad feet, breast cancer twice, two mastectomies, two recessions, multiple bankruptcies, marriage to a philandering Sergeant Major, divorce in the 70s, six kids, one cesarean, a few abortions from the Quietly Famous Abortionist of Spring Lake, NC or an affair with Larry King in the 60s.”

It also lists her many talents: “She played cards like a shark, bowled and played cribbage like a pro, and laughed with the boys until the wee hours, long after the last pin dropped.”

“Renay didn’t cook, she didn’t clean, and she was lousy with money, too. Here’s what Renay was great at: dyeing her red roots, weekly manicures, dirty jokes, pier fishing, rolling joints and buying dirty magazines.”

She lived her final days: “Under the care, compassion, checking accounts and, evidently, unlimited patience of her favorite son and daughter-in-law, Michael and Lourdes Corren, of [the] world-famous cow sanctuary El Paso.”

Among the numerous family members she leaves behind, including children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, is her “favorite son”, namely “the gay one who writes catty obituaries in his spare time, Andy Corren, of – obviously – New York City.”

The obituary concludes with details of a planned funeral service in May next year, “a very disrespectful and totally non-denominational memorial … most likely at a bowling alley in Fayetteville.”

Meanwhile, Mr Corren says he and his five siblings have given up on receiving an inheritance. “The family requests absolutely zero privacy or propriety, none whatsoever, and in fact encourages you to spend some government money today on a one-armed bandit, at the blackjack table or on a cheap cruise to find our inheritance,” he writes.

“For Larry King’s sake: LAUGH. Bye, Mommy. We loved you to bits.”

Dutch judge: Remove tweets comparing unvaccinated to Jews


THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — A judge on Wednesday ordered Dutch right-wing populist lawmaker Thierry Baudet to take down four tweets in which he drew comparisons between coronavirus lockdown measures and the treatment of Jews under the Nazi regime, saying they “instrumentalized” the suffering of Jews.

Two Jewish organizations and a group of Holocaust survivors went to court in Amsterdam to demand the tweets be removed, describing them as “seriously insulting and unnecessarily hurtful to the murdered victims of the Holocaust, survivors and relatives.”

Among the tweets was one that called people who are not vaccinated against the coronavirus “the new Jews, the exclusionists who look the other way are the new Nazis and NSBers." NSB is the acronym for the National Socialist Movement, the Dutch branch of the Nazi party.

“The comparison you made in the contested posts goes beyond what can can be justified in the interests of robust public debate,” the judge hearing the case said. The judge's name was not immediately available.

“By equating in the messages, without any nuance, the situation of unvaccinated citizens with the fate of the Jews in the 1930s and ’40s, you make a comparison, as I said earlier, that is factually wrong and you wrongly use, in other words you instrumentalize, the human suffering of Jews in the Holocaust and the memories of them,” the judge added.

The court ordered Baudet to remove the tweets from his Twitter feed within 48 hours. If he does not, he must pay 25,000 euros ($28,000) each day that they remain online.

In a reaction on Twitter, Baudet called the judgment “Insane, incomprehensible."

"We are angry and combative. And of course we will appeal,” he tweeted.

Baudet is leader of the right-wing populist party Forum for Democracy which has five seats in the lower house of Dutch parliament.

The Jewish groups that started the civil case against Baudet welcomed the ruling, saying in a statement that it “made an important contribution to indicating the limits of the public debate.”

___

Follow all AP stories on the pandemic at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic.

The Associated Press

EU Parliament backs tough new rules to rein in U.S. tech giants
By Foo Yun Chee 1 day ago

The logos of Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - EU lawmakers voted on Wednesday to beef up draft rules to rein in U.S. tech giants, including extending the scope to their retailing activities and to their business users outside Europe, as part of their common position in forthcoming talks with EU countries.

The Digital Markets Act (DMA), unveiled by EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager last December, sets out a list of dos and don'ts for U.S. tech giants designated as online gatekeepers with fines up to 10% of global turnover for violations, a global first.

Vestager's proposal targets Amazon, Apple, Alphabet unit Google and Facebook but the European Parliament wants to extend it to travel website booking.com, China's Alibaba and online retailer Zalando.

EU lawmakers also want the rules to apply to web browsers, virtual assistants and connected TV, adding to Vestager's list of online intermediation services, social networks, search engines, operating systems, online advertising services, cloud computing and video-sharing services.

The lawmakers' proposal would also make it easier for users to switch default settings on their services and products to rivals.

They want the Commission to do an annual report on gatekeepers, with the possibility for lawmakers to propose investigations into new services and new products.

Vestager cheered the vote.

"It sends a clear message that in our EU democracy it is not for BigTech to set the rules of the game, it is for legislators," she said in a tweet.

Lawmakers will now have to reconcile their proposal with that of EU countries and the Commission next year before the draft rules can become law.

(Reporting by Foo Yun Chee; Editing by David Gregorio)

Mining the future: Canada's high hopes to become a global critical mineral powerhouse

OTTAWA — Getting the world to net-zero emissions by 2050 will require the production of critical minerals and metals to grow sixfold over the next 30 years, the International Energy Agency declared in a report earlier this year — and it found the current pace of growth isn't even close.

 

As electric cars, wind turbines and solar panels explode in popularity, so too does demand for the minerals that make them go. Some are familiar, like nickel, lithium and cobalt, and others are known only to those who memorized the periodic table in high school, like tellurium, bismuth and molybdenum.

Canada, having promised that all the electricity it generates and the new cars that are sold in the country will be zero-emission by 2035, is among the countries driving up demand.

As one of the world's biggest producers of raw metals and minerals, Canada also wants to be filling that demand as a key link in the supply chain for rechargeable batteries.

But even as the federal government pushes a new critical minerals strategy and forges partnerships with allies to develop supply chains that seek to tamp down China's dominance in the field, Canada's position on the world stage is already slipping.

"We're starting to do what we need to do but there's a lot of missing pieces," said Pierre Gratton, president of the Mining Association of Canada.

A year ago, BloombergNEF listed Canada as the fourth most important player in the world's lithium-ion battery supply chain, based on an analysis of raw material production, manufacturing and processing, environmental protections, regulatory regimes and domestic demand.

This fall, the second iteration of that report saw Canada drop to fifth, losing ground in every category.

"We've been viewed sort of as a global leader in the past," said Gratton. "We've lost ground, though."

Canada's ranking slipped because of raw materials and environmental stewardship — the latter a key point in all the sales pitches Canada makes on the world stage.

The problem is, meeting those higher standards comes at a cost, said Gratton. Canada also has to convince buyers that the premium is worth it.

"If you care about climate, and you care about the environment, and if you care about how people are treated, including Indigenous people, then buying from Canada is the right thing to do."

China is the biggest player in the battery supply chain field, both in raw materials and value-added production. Many of the alliances Canada is part of with the United States and Europe are designed in large part to whittle away at China's dominance.

Canada, second in the world in nickel production in 2008, ranked sixth in 2020. It is also sixth for cobalt, and 10th for graphite. Production of all three declined last year.

Those elements, along with lithium and manganese, which Canada could but doesn't currently produce, are the five main components of the lithium-ion batteries that run electric cars.

More than 70 per cent of Canada's nickel is sold to make stainless steel. The nickel that makes batteries is nickel sulphate. Canada does not make it, said Gratton, but it needs to in order to be part of the battery chain.

He said that is being discussed among nickel producers and bandied about as a potential project for Ottawa's strategic infrastructure funding.

But Sarah Petrevan, policy director at Clean Energy Canada, said Canada "needs to have a strategic focus about where we can win."

"We have finite resources, and so you want to make sure that you're putting those finite resources in the place that can have the biggest impact."

Quebec, said Petrevan, has done some of that strategic work of assessing their own supply chains, trying to match what Quebec makes with new manufacturing that meets demand. At least two battery production plants are in the works now in that province.

Canada, however, has not yet done a similar assessment.

Last March, Canada identified the 31 critical minerals it can produce and that at least one of its allies wants, but little has been done with that list since.

Innovation Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne has been dropping broad hints about a major new battery-chain investment coming to Canada, though Petrevan said the dispute with the United States about electric vehicle incentives and trade barriers may be slowing that down.

Last spring's federal budget promised $9.6 million over three years for a battery minerals centre of excellence within the Department of Natural Resources, but nothing has happened yet. Nearly $37 million was also promised for federal research on advancing critical battery mineral processing and refining.

Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson is expected to make both a priority early in the new year.

For his part, Gratton said Canada needs to also encourage more production in general. The Liberals made an election promise to double the mineral exploration tax credit and he hopes to see that in the next budget.

"We don't just need to sort of redirect existing production to battery metals, we also need more production," he said. "And you're only going to get that through new discovery."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 16, 2021.

Mia Rabson, The Canadian Press

PUTSCH PLOTTERS

Congressman Jim Jordan sent plans for Capitol attack to Mark Meadows

Richard Luscombe 

The Ohio congressman Jim Jordan has been identified as the Republican who sent a message to Donald Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows the day before the deadly 6 January US Capitol riots outlining a plan to stop Joe Biden – the legitimate winner of the presidential election – from reaching the White House.

The House select committee investigating the insurrection has been looking at numerous messages sent to Meadows on and around that day, many of which were from Trump supporters urging the then-president to call off a mob of his supporters as they ransacked the Capitol building.

Meadows, whose role in events has become a central plank of the investigation, and who provided many of the messages to the committee, is facing possible contempt of Congress charges for withdrawing his cooperation.

Jordan, a staunch Trump ally whom Republicans originally wanted to sit on the committee, forwarded a text message to Meadows on 5 January, one of the congressman’s aides has confirmed, containing details of the plot to block Biden.

The message was sent to Jordan by Joseph Schmitz, a former US defense department inspector general who outlined a “draft proposal” to pressure vice-president Mike Pence to refuse to certify audited election returns on 6 January.

A portion of the message was shown by Democratic committee member Adam Schiff on Tuesday. It read: “On January 6, 2021, Vice-President Mike Pence, as president of the Senate, should call out all electoral votes that he believes are unconstitutional as no electoral votes at all.”

The plotters falsely believed Pence had the constitutional authority to reject the election results and allow rival slates of electors from Republicans in states that Biden won to decide the outcome. Pence refused to do so, and has since been castigated by Trump and his allies.

Jordan was one of five Republicans rejected from serving on the committee by Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker who instead appointed Trump critics Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger. Some commentators say the move “saved” the committee’s integrity.

The panel has accelerated its inquiries in recent days and weeks, issuing dozens of subpoenas, interviewing more than 300 witnesses and reviewing more than 30,000 documents as it attempts to tie Trump to the events of 6 January.

A clearer picture has emerged of the involvement of Trump loyalists, including senior Republican party officials such as Jordan, in the coup attempt, with questions swirling this week particularly over the role of Meadows.

Trump’s former chief of staff is revealed to have received numerous messages on the day of the riot from Republican politicians, Fox News television personalities such as Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, and the president’s son Donald Trump Jr.

The text from Trump Jr was succinct. “We need an Oval address. He has to lead now. It has gone too far and gotten out of hand. He’s got to condemn this shit asap.”

Meadows replied: “I’m pushing it hard. I agree.”

Schiff, a California Democrat who led the prosecution in the Senate at Trump’s second impeachment in January, has argued that Meadows was at the heart of the pressure campaign on Pence, and voted for him to face contempt charges for his refusal to explain it.

“You can see why this is so critical to ask Mr Meadows about,” Schiff said during the committee’s presentation on Tuesday.

“About a lawmaker suggesting that the former vice-president simply throw out votes that he unilaterally deems unconstitutional in order to overturn a presidential election and subvert the will of the American people.”

A new approach finds materials that can turn waste heat into electricity

Jan-Hendrik Pöhls, 

McCall MacBain Postdoctoral Fellow, 

Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology,

 McMaster University 

The need to transition to clean energy is apparent, urgent and inescapable. We must limit Earth’s rising temperature to within 1.5 C to avoid the worst effects of climate change — an especially daunting challenge in the face of the steadily increasing global demand for energy.

Part of the answer is using energy more efficiently. More than 72 per cent of all energy produced worldwide is lost in the form of heat. For example, the engine in a car uses only about 30 per cent of the gasoline it burns to move the car. The remainder is dissipated as heat.

Recovering even a tiny fraction of that lost energy would have a tremendous impact on climate change. Thermoelectric materials, which convert wasted heat into useful electricity, can help.

Until recently, the identification of these materials had been slow. My colleagues and I have used quantum computations — a computer-based modelling approach to predict materials’ properties — to speed up that process and identify more than 500 thermoelectric materials that could convert excess heat to electricity, and help improve energy efficiency.

Making great strides towards broad applications

The transformation of heat into electrical energy by thermoelectric materials is based on the “Seebeck effect.” In 1826, German physicist Thomas Johann Seebeck observed that exposing the ends of joined pieces of dissimilar metals to different temperatures generated a magnetic field, which was later recognized to be caused by an electric current.

Shortly after his discovery, metallic thermoelectric generators were fabricated to convert heat from gas burners into an electric current. But, as it turned out, metals exhibit only a low Seebeck effect — they are not very efficient at converting heat into electricity.

SOVIET SCIENCE

In 1929, the Russian scientist Abraham Ioffe revolutionized the field of thermoelectricity. He observed that semiconductors — materials whose ability to conduct electricity falls between that of metals (like copper) and insulators (like glass) — exhibit a significantly higher Seebeck effect than metals, boosting thermoelectric efficiency 40-fold, from 0.1 per cent to four per cent.

This discovery led to the development of the first widely used thermoelectric generator, the Russian lamp — a kerosene lamp that heated a thermoelectric material to power a radio.

Are we there yet?

Today, thermoelectric applications range from energy generation in space probes to cooling devices in portable refrigerators. For example, space explorations are powered by radioisotope thermoelectric generators, converting the heat from naturally decaying plutonium into electricity. In the movie The Martian, for example, a box of plutonium saved the life of the character played by Matt Damon, by keeping him warm on Mars.

Despite this vast diversity of applications, wide-scale commercialization of thermoelectric materials is still limited by their low efficiency.

What’s holding them back? Two key factors must be considered: the conductive properties of the materials, and their ability to maintain a temperature difference, which makes it possible to generate electricity.

The best thermoelectric material would have the electronic properties of semiconductors and the poor heat conduction of glass. But this unique combination of properties is not found in naturally occurring materials. We have to engineer them.
Searching for a needle in a haystack

In the past decade, new strategies to engineer thermoelectric materials have emerged due to an enhanced understanding of their underlying physics. In a recent study in Nature Materials, researchers from Seoul National University, Aachen University and Northwestern University reported they had engineered a material called tin selenide with the highest thermoelectric performance to date, nearly twice that of 20 years ago. But it took them nearly a decade to optimize it.

To speed up the discovery process, my colleagues and I have used quantum calculations to search for new thermoelectric candidates with high efficiencies. We searched a database containing thousands of materials to look for those that would have high electronic qualities and low levels of heat conduction, based on their chemical and physical properties. These insights helped us find the best materials to synthesize and test, and calculate their thermoelectric efficiency.

Read more: Researchers invent device that generates light from the cold night sky – here's what it means for millions living off grid

We are almost at the point where thermoelectric materials can be widely applied, but first we need to develop much more efficient materials. With so many possibilities and variables, finding the way forward is like searching for a tiny needle in an enormous haystack.

Just as a metal detector can zero in on a needle in a haystack, quantum computations can accelerate the discovery of efficient thermoelectric materials. Such calculations can accurately predict electron and heat conduction (including the Seebeck effect) for thousands of materials and unveil the previously hidden and highly complex interactions between those properties, which can influence a material’s efficiency.

Large-scale applications will require themoelectric materials that are inexpensive, non-toxic and abundant. Lead and tellurium are found in today’s thermoelectric materials, but their cost and negative environmental impact make them good targets for replacement.

Quantum calculations can be applied in a way to search for specific sets of materials using parameters such as scarcity, cost and efficiency. Although those calculations can reveal optimum thermoelectric materials, synthesizing the materials with the desired properties remains a challenge.

A multi-institutional effort involving government-run laboratories and universities in the United States, Canada and Europe has revealed more than 500 previously unexplored materials with high predicted thermoelectric efficiency. My colleagues and I are currently investigating the thermoelectric performance of those materials in experiments, and have already discovered new sources of high thermoelectric efficiency.

Those initial results strongly suggest that further quantum computations can pinpoint the most efficient combinations of materials to make clean energy from wasted heat and the avert the catastrophe that looms over our planet.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Jan-Hendrik Pöhls does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

A Couple Just Gave Away Their Property For Free To Help Save Grizzly Bears In BC

A couple from Bella Coola, B.C., just donated their riverfront property to Nature Conservancy of Canada to protect the thriving wildlife in the area.

© Provided by Narcity

Morgan Leet 

The generous couple, Harvey and Carol Thommasen, bought their property a few years ago and wanted to make it a bird sanctuary, but have now chosen to give it away to help keep it safe.

The beautiful property, which is in the traditional, unceded territory of the Nuxalk Nation, spans 122 hectares and is now called the Snowshoe Creek Conservation Area, according to a press release from the Nature Conservancy of Canada.

Iris Siwallace, a councillor for the Nuxalk Nation said in the release that the area "could be destroyed by extractive industries such as logging and mining," which is why they worked with the couple and the NCC to help protect it.

The couple made the donation in the hopes of preserving all of the amazing wildlife there, which would be threatened by these industries.

They are now able to maintain a "thriving rainforest, floodplain and riverside habitat that supports an abundance of wildlife and plant diversity," said the release.

Grizzly bears are known to roam the area, as well as 15 different species that have been put on the federal Species at Risk Act. This includes wolverines, which are listed as a special concern in SARA's Schedule 1.

The area is within the Bella Coola Valley, which as a whole has an amazing amount of grizzly bears. There are actually so many that tourists will travel there to take grizzly watching tours, especially during the season when the salmon is running through.

Harvey Thommasen | Nature Conservancy of Canada

"Carol and I donated this land to the Nature Conservancy of Canada mostly to help forest birds, whose populations have declined by 30 per cent since the 1970s," said Henry Thommasen.

It will also "provide a secure travel corridor for animals like deer, grizzly bear and other large mammals moving through the Bella Coola Valley," he added.

Harvey Thommasen | Nature Conservancy of Canada

Not only is the land home to these animals, but it is also stunning.

The SEC wants to crack down on corporate insiders' big stock sales
prosen@insider.com (Phil Rosen) 

Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler. 

Evan Vucci/Associated Press

The SEC unanimously proposed an amendment to insider-trading rules that cover so-called 10b5-1 plans.

The new rules are meant to bring more transparency to the market and crack down on insider-trading abuses.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren and others have long been vocal in calling out the SEC to make changes to 10b5-1 plans.

The Securities and Exchange Commission proposed changes to insider-trading regulations that would limit how corporate executives — who are often privy to non-public information — can sell shares of their own companies.

Currently, executives are allowed to schedule stock sales days ahead of their actual execution, under so-called 10b5-1 plans. When they were conceived two decades ago, the plans were supposed to allow execs to sell stock without being accused of insider trading.

Morgan Stanley data showed that insiders at more than half of S&P 500 companies have enacted 10b5-1 plans, and doing so has grown increasingly popular. But critics say the plans have been abused, allowing insiders to dump shares ahead of big company moves or announcements. In addition, there's no requirement for executives to disclose they have such plans.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren and others have called on the SEC to overhaul 10b5-1 plans, claiming corporate chiefs can bag profits with privileged knowledge that everyday retail traders don't have, and that it undermines public confidence in the market.

SEC Chair Gary Gensler acknowledged the problems in a press release Wednesday. "Over the past two decades, we've heard concerns about and seen gaps in Rule 10b5-1 — gaps that today's proposal would help fill."

Under the amendments to Rule 10b5-1 that the SEC unanimously proposed, company insiders would have to wait about four months between scheduling a trade and shedding their stock.

The proposed amendments also would prohibit overlapping trading plans and limit single-trade plans to one per year. Additionally, executives would be required to attest that they were not aware of any non-public information when they made plans for trades.

The SEC will now seek public comment before finalizing its proposals.

Freakish fish with transparent head captured in mind-blowing viral video
Joshua Hawkins 

© Provided by BGR barreleye fish in the ocean

Researchers with the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute have captured video of a fish that can see through its own head. It’s known as a barreleye fish and has rarely been seen in the past.

The MBARI researchers managed to capture video of the barreleye fish earlier this month. The video was captured thousands of feet below the surface of Monterey Bay, off California. According to the institute, this is one of only nine times that it has managed to spot the species.

Footage of the barreleye fish is rare

© Provided by BGR a barreleye fish swims in the ocean

Looks at the barreleye fish are rare, MBARI says. When it managed to spot the fish, the institute’s remotely operated vehicle (ROV) was cruising at around 2,132 feet. The researchers were exploring the Monterey Submarine Canyon. The canyon is one of the deepest found on the Pacific coast (via Live Science).

Thomas Knowles, one of the senior aquarists at the Monterey Bay Aquarium told Live Science that he immediately knew what he was looking at. He says that he saw it in the distance at first, and it was very small. Despite the size, though, the fish was unmistakable.

Knowles also says that the control room buzzed with excitement as the ROV camera brought the barreleye fish into focus. In the video that MBARI shared, you can see how the barreleye fish’s eyes glow bright green in the light from the ROV. It’s a striking sight, especially against the calm blue of the ocean.
Eyes that see through a translucent head

Part of what makes the barreleye fish so intriguing is the way its eyes literally see through its forehead. The eyes can be moved straight ahead or directly up. There are two dark-colored capsules that sit in front of the eyes, too. These capsules act as the fish’s sense of smell.

Barreleye fish can be found in their natural habitat from the Bering Sea to Japan and in Baja California. Because they are found in the ocean’s “twilight zone”, which is roughly 650 to 3,300 feet, there’s no real number on just how many barreleyes there are in the world. MBARI has been getting lucky with its discoveries lately. Just earlier this month it captured footage of a massive phantom jellyfish.

Another scientist with MBARI told Live Science that they encounter barreleye fish less commonly than other twilight zone fish. Other fish found in these areas include the lanternfish and bristlemouth.

The post Freakish fish with transparent head captured in mind-blowing viral video appeared first on BGR.

Click here to read the full article.

Rare monstrous-looking fish washes ashore on San Diego beach

Lynn Chaya 

A rare deep-sea creature was discovered washed ashore on Swami’s Beach in Encinitas, San Diego last week, the third incident of its kind in the past year.

© Provided by National Post

Lifeguards on duty alerted local scientists when a strolling surfer stumbled upon the 33 centimetre fish, said David Huff, a marine safety sergeant with the city of Encinitas. The pristine specimen was handed over to the collection manager of marine vertebrates at UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Ben Frable.

“I first found out about anglerfish from an educational video game on Windows ’95 back in elementary school, so it’s pretty exciting,” said the collection manager.

Scientifically known as Himantolophus sagamius, the Pacific footballfish, a rare species of anglerfish, swims between 300 and 1,500 metres beneath the surface. This particular species inhabits deep waters beyond the sun’s reach, the scientist said. The dangling bioluminescent light on top of its head acts as a lure to attract prey into its razor sharp tooth-filled mouth.

Frable said that only 31 anglerfish specimens are known to exist worldwide and the fish has never been observed in the wild. Curiously, however, the creature has has made three appearances on the shores of Southern California in the last year alone.

“It is pretty amazing that we’ve had three just in the past year and in Southern California alone because before that, the last time it happened in California, at least that we were aware of, that somebody saw and brought to scientists was 20 years ago today,” said Frable.

Jay Beiler, the man who stumbled upon the same species on Black’s Beach just a few weeks prior, told NBC “it’s the stuff of nightmares.”

Very little information has been collected due to its rarity, bewildering scientists. Basic data such as the fish’s diet, its reproduction systems or why they’ve been coincidentally washing ashore in Southern California are unknown.

“Unfortunately, we don’t really know why. We have such little information and so few data points that we can’t really make a determination,” Frable said.

“I’m chatting with colleagues who study coastal oceanography, talking to other colleagues that work on anglerfishes and other fish, and we’re having a little chat trying to figure out, to come up with any ideas. But with these three data points, we can’t really draw any conclusions.”

The deep-sea creature will be preserved in a jar of alcohol and stored with two million other fish specimens at the Scripps Institute.