Smithsonian.com

Male bees don’t have time, or frankly care, to stop and smell the flowers. They don’t frolic among the daisies, foraging for food. Their sole purpose in life is to mate with the queen. Then they die.

Now, Professor Hugh Robertson of the University of Illinois and his colleagues have figured out how males do it, in a paper to be published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.  (more…)

The baiji, a Chinese river dolphin declared functionally extinct last year, was reported to have been seen on August 19, according to the AP.

Scientists searched last December for the dolphin and found none. They declared the species functionally extinct, meaning there might be some alive but not enough to prevent extinction.

The problems that led to the declaration, pollution and river traffic, have not been dealt with. So even if the sighting is confirmed, the overall outlook is grim.The sighting simply offers hope the species is still alive–not that it has anything close to a good chance of surviving. For that, the dolphins habitat needed to have been cleaned up decades ago.

People in quieter houses may live longer. A new report by the World Health Organization says that chronic noise, including traffic, is causing heart disease that leads to premature deaths.

The WHO has a working group called the “Noise Environmental Burden on Disease” that has researched the subject since 2003. Essentially, noise causes stress hormones to circulate through the body. Those stress hormones (which, by the way, circulate even when you’re asleep) can encourage stress-related health risks like strokes, high blood pressure–even heart attacks.  (more…)

The symbol of the United States, the stately Bald Eagle, was de-listed as “endangered” this week. The large bird now has an estimated 10,000 breeding pairs in the lower 48 states, and will be monitored for the next five years to ensure it doesn’t need to be put back on the list.

The bald eagle is just one of many formerly endangered animals being de-listed, to the consternation of many conservationists. The Department of the Interior issued a new interpretation of the Endangered Species Act in March that basically said no animal is “endangered” if any population of it thrives in any part of the United States.  (more…)

Americans are fond of saying that they are #1, which is the smallest number there is.

Just a heads-up, America: Not only are you shorter than the Polish, but we just found out you’re gonna die younger than folks in Jordan and pretty much everyone else–41 other countries, to be exact.

Anyone up for a quick round of mini-golf?