Dear fuagf, Possibly a non sequitur to stars and supernovae; however everything seems to be connected on one level or another. I perused-read in the Bellingham, WASHINGTON STATE newspaper that a species of avian bird is coming back. I tried to comment, but I up until now have refused to join any corporate social medium site to comment. Here's the text: LEADBETTER POINT, WASH. — A tiny shorebird that nearly went extinct is making a comeback thanks to a $150 million habitat restoration effort.
The Longview Daily News reports (http://is.gd/XrexPy ) officials in Washington counted a record high 67 western snowy plovers in their last count in January. Oregon and Washington together, which are counted as a single recovery unit by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, had more than 250 breeding pairs this year.
Researchers found 28 nests on the Long Beach Peninsula this year compared to 10 last year.
A biologist for the Willapa National Wildlife Refuge cautions to not plan a celebration yet, because numbers fluctuate over time.
But wildlife official say the work to improve about 250 acres of the plovers' habitat has also helped other species, including elk, deer, raptors and a type of flowering plant that has not been seen in this state in 60 years.
Fish and Wildlife plans to add another 200 acres to that amount over the next 10 years.
My comment WAS going to be simple without any individual ad hominem attacks.
WE MUST HAVE RESPECT FOR ALL LIFE, EVEN FOR POISONOUS SPECIES LIKE SOME Homines sapientes.
Although I have never lived in Bellingham, some of my tribe have gone to college there. And after reading the following article, I would like trying to spend my last days there near Bellingham in Whatcom County next to the border with British Columbia, Canada.
Owner of Blaine inn offers pot tours - but no toking allowed.
BLAINE — Pot tourists can learn about the medical and recreational sides of the marijuana industry in Whatcom County during four-hour tours that begin this month.
Bob Boulé, owner of Smuggler’s Inn Bed and Breakfast in Blaine, is launching the tours for guests of the inn. Tours cost $175 per person. Participants must be 21 years old.
The point of the tours is to learn, not to get high.
“It’s not a party type situation at all,” Boulé said. “What we’re trying to do is get people who are interested, who have a need to learn more. We’re stressing the educational part.”
The inn has a 38-foot stretch limo that can seat 14 people.
Boulé said he was launching the tours because he had received a number of queries, including from people who wanted to change the pot laws where they live.
“We were getting calls from other states and countries trying to find out more,” he said. “These people are also looking at if it’s successful in this state, would they be able to take that knowledge and those connections back to their state about changing things.”
So far, Washington is just one of two states to legalize recreational marijuana. And it’s among the 23 states to allow medical marijuana; the District of Columbia also has approved medical pot.
Tour-goers will learn about recreational and medical pot, including meeting local growers and going to local retail pot stores; hydroponics supplies; edibles; and glass blowers, who make paraphernalia such as pipes and bongs.
Recreational pot growers are just getting going in Whatcom County, so that portion of the tour may focus on medical growers for now.
“It’s the recreational people who don’t have enough supply to do the tour type thing. They could if the tours are small, but if I brought in 14 people it could be a little overwhelming for them,” Boulé explained.
In August, state regulators told tour bus companies that state law and federal safety regulations banned consuming or otherwise using marijuana on their vehicles.
The Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission issued the notice after a number of transportation companies applied for permits to offer marijuana-themed services. Charter companies that don’t comply will lose their state permit.
The commission currently regulates three charter companies in the state that offer marijuana tours. They are Good & Goods, doing business as The Original Cannabus; Ride the Cannabus; and Kush Tourism. None are based in Whatcom County.
But those regulations apply to larger charters, not Boulé’s smaller limo service.
Still, Smuggler’s Inn is licensed as a non-smoking facility, and the non-smoking rule extends to transportation for guests.
That means, for example, that tour-goers won’t be able to smoke marijuana in the limo or inside their rooms at the inn, but they will be able to consume their edibles in those locations. As for lighting up, they’ll be able to do that at designated outdoor areas on inn property.
Book a tour by calling Boulé at 360-332-1749.
Reach Kie Relyea at 360-715-2234 or kie.relyea@bellinghamherald.com.
The cosmic hunt for Fast Radio Bursts just got a surprising new twist
By Rachel Feltman March 2 at 1:19 PM
One of the mysterious signals repeated, suggesting it might come from a pulsar like this one – but much stronger, and beyond our own galaxy. (EPA/NASA/Chandra X-ray Observatory)
Now some scientists are questioning whether the signal used to track down the galaxy associated with the FRB was actually related to the radio burst at all. And this new study adds another possible point of contention: Based on the apparent age of the galaxy pinpointed in the first study and the strength of the radio burst, researchers had suggested a collision of massive stars as the cause of the mysterious signal.
But massive collisions don't repeat – and now it seems apparent that FRBs can and do.
"I don’t think the final nail is in the coffin on that," Jason Hessels, corresponding author of the latest study, told The Post in reference to the other team's research."There are more observations that need to be done, but it seems less convincing than it did last week." It is possible, he and other experts said, that there is more than one kind of FRB out there – some sent out by massive crashes in space, and others coming from different, more sustainable sources.
Harvard University’s Edo Berger .. http://scholar.harvard.edu/eberger/home , who is a co-author on an as-yet-unpublished paper .. http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2016/02/29/that-blast-of-radio-waves-produced-by-colliding-dead-stars-not-so-fast/ .. that sets out to refute the supposed FRB origin, was more blunt: "Essentially I would say that the whole rationale behind the paper has gone away within about two or three days of when it was published," he told The Post, explaining that he believes the signal described in that paper has lasted too long to be associated with an FRB, and is likely some other space phenomenon they stumbled upon by accident.
Evan Keane, an astronomer with the Square Kilometer Array Organization who led the first study, told The Post that he won't comment on the particulars of Berger's takedown until it's reviewed by other scientists and published in a journal. But Keane and Berger agree on one thing: The latest paper is the real deal.
"My initial thoughts on the paper are that it is quite exciting, and as it is repeating it is clearly not due to a 'one off’ event, like (say) a supernova, or merger of two objects; they would only happen once," Keane told The Post in an email. He wasn't surprised or concerned about implications for his own findings, since scientists have floated the idea of multiple FRB origins before, "but it is clearly excellent to see the repetition, and so clearly," he said.
The findings stem from a discovery made in November, when McGill University Ph.D. student Paul Scholz was working with FRB data from the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico, which is the largest of its kind. After months of gathering and analyzing more data from the same spot in the sky, Scholz, Hessels and their colleagues showed several bursts with properties consistent with those of an FRB first detected in 2012.
"This one I think is a really great result," Berger said. "It's a great clue for what might be causing this. It’s not a one off thing, it’s a stable system that can be active again and again and again."
What might that stable system be? The scientists suggest a super-powerful neutron star. These stellar zombies are the remnants of huge stars gone supernova. They're just on the cusp of becoming black holes, with just barely enough pressure in their cores to keep them from collapsing into oblivion. That makes them the densest stars in the universe, and scientists have a lot to learn about their behavior.
Such an origin would bring the FRB mystery full circle, Hessels explained: Scientists first found FRBs just over a decade ago when searching for pulsing neutron stars .. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulsar .. (or pulsars) inside the Milky Way.
"They came across this signal that didn't quite fit with what we knew," Hessels said. The distance implied by the properties of these signals placed them outside the realm of neutron stars inside the galaxy.
"So these new findings could suggest some kind of very extreme pulsating neutron star, spinning very fast, with a strong magnetic field. . . beyond what you'd find with one in our own galaxy. It would have to be a very rare type of source," Hessels said.
As with last week's paper, more work is needed to confirm these findings – and it will take even more detections to determine whether FRBs have one source or many. Pinpointing the exact location of the sources of multiple FRBs is vital in puzzling out their true origins. Three highly sensitive FRB-detecting instruments are set to open this year .. http://www.nature.com/news/mysterious-radio-burst-pinpointed-in-distant-galaxy-1.19441 , so it's possible that FRBs won't be mysterious for too much longer.
"That could be a month from now or it could be five years from now," Berger said.
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