Monthly Archives: January 2008

Africa’s Biggest Mammals Key to Ant-plant Teamwork

January 20, 2008 – 4:58 pm

From ScienceDaily.
Throughout the tropics, ants and Acacia trees live together in intricate interdependent relationships that have long fascinated scientists.
Now researchers are reporting that in Africa, this plant-insect teamwork depends on the very antagonist it is intended to ward off: Africa’s big browsing mammals.
Researchers report that elephants, giraffes and other large plant-eaters spur Acacias to “hire” [...]

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SimCity Goes Open Source as Micropolis

January 16, 2008 – 1:03 am

From ars technica.
Will Wright’s original SimCity has now gone open-source under the GNU General Public License. Though the name and some code have been changed due to EA’s requirements, the core of the title remains intact and is now open for the public. This follows the inclusion of SimCity into the OLPC project.
Originally written in [...]

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Japanese Children Cellphone Obsession

January 13, 2008 – 8:43 pm

From Google news.
Young Japanese people are evolving a new lifestyle for the 21st century based on the cellphones that few are now able to live without.
They are using their phones to read books, listen to music, chat with friends and surf the Internet — an average of 124 minutes a day for high school girls [...]

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Turtle Conservation in Solomon Islands

January 7, 2008 – 12:06 am

From The Nature Conservancy.
Neither British colonists nor Christian missionaries nor government entities could tamp down conflicts among tribes in this remote South Pacific island nation. But when turtles started disappearing, the local people finally started talking.
The Solomon Islands, a remote Pacific archipelago strung southeast of Papua New Guinea, are probably best known as the site [...]

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Books Read in 2007

January 1, 2008 – 12:01 am

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini.
The Last Town on Earth by Thomas Mullen.
The Children of Húrin by J.R.R. Tolkien.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J. K. Rowling.
Related: The Deathly Hallows and The Tale of The Three Brothers.
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho.
Warrior of the Light by Paulo Coelho.
Miracle in the Andes by Nando Parrado, [...]

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