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The future is here and this is not a butterfly on your wall, as Israeli drones are getting tiny. Their latest project – a butterfly-shaped drone weighing just 20 grams - the smallest in its range so far – can gather intelligence inside buildings. ­The new miniscule surveillance device can take color pictures and is capable of a vertical take-off and hover flight, just like a helicopter, reports the daily Israel Hayom. Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) says this may come in handy in ground clashes, when a soldier would merely take it out of a pocket and send behind the...

I only had a few minutes to get out today, made a short ride through the county arboretum.

A butterfly species equipped with tiny ears on its wings can distinguish between high and low pitch sounds, possibly as a way to listen in on nearby birds, new research suggests. Scientists thought butterflies were deaf until 1912 when the first butterfly ears were identified. Only in the past decade or so have researchers examined the anatomy and physiology of butterfly ears, which they are finding to be quite diverse and present in several butterfly species. The latest discovery was made with the blue morpho butterfly (Morpho peleides), which dazzles with its bright-blue wing coloration when it flits about in...

Monarch butterflies have fascinated biologists for a long time. A 3,000-mile road trip in even the most comfortable car would prove daunting to many humans, but these beautiful insects can migrate that same distance every year from Canada to a specific grove of fir trees in Mexico each fall. The next generation of monarchs can then travel back to Canada in the spring. Scientists are investigating the tools that these tiny flying creatures use to achieve this feat. One leading monarch researcher has discovered an important reason why the butterflies’ antennae are vital for successful navigation...

The Butterfly Nebula from Upgraded Hubble Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble SM4 ERO Team Explanation: The bright clusters and nebulae of planet Earth's night sky are often named for flowers or insects, and NGC 6302 is no exception. With an estimated surface temperature of about 250,000 degrees C, the central star of this particular planetary nebula is exceptionally hot though -- shining brightly in ultraviolet light but hidden from direct view by a dense torus of dust. Above is a dramatically detailed close-up of the dying star's nebula recorded by the newly upgraded Hubble Space Telescope. Cutting across...

Butterfly brilliance Dual diffraction gratings produce two colour signals by Jonathan SarfatiPublished: 1 January 2009(GMT+10) Photo Wikipedia Blue morpho Photonic structures in butterflies Some butterflies, such as the blue morpho (Morpho menelaus) of South America and the male mountain blue don (Papilio ulysses) of northern Australia are known for their brilliant iridescent blues. But their spectacular colours are not caused by pigments but by their scales forming a diffraction grating.1 These are evenly-spaced ridges or grooves that break up white light into all its component colours, but at a given angle, destructive interference cancels out all out except for the...

Flitting with disaster BY DAVE BARRY (This classic Dave Barry column was originally published Oct. 14, 2001.) A very important issue that we all need to be concerned about is global warming, and we will get to that shortly, but first we need to discuss what happened the other night in my kitchen. It began when I was in the bedroom, flossing my teeth (I keep my teeth in the bedroom). Suddenly my wife burst in and said: ''There's a bat in the kitchen!'' A snappy comeback line would have been: ''No, thanks! I already ate!'' But snappy comebacks are...

Saw this butterfly on my Lilacs took some nice pictures. Here are a couple, the Hi-Rez pictures are much more detailed.

Habitat Destruction May Wipe Out Monarch Butterfly MigrationA monarch butterfly gathering nectar from a swamp milkweed flower. (Credit: iStockphoto/Willie Manalo) ScienceDaily (Apr. 5, 2008) — Intense deforestation in Mexico could ruin one of North America’s most celebrated natural wonders — the mysterious 3,000-mile migration of the monarch butterfly. According to a University of Kansas researcher, the astonishing migration may collapse rapidly without urgent action to end devastation of the butterfly’s vital sources of food and shelter. “To lose something like this migration is to diminish all of us,” said Chip Taylor, KU professor of ecology and evolutionary biology. “It’s so...

Two environmental groups are trying to force the Interior Department to make a preliminary finding on whether a rare southern New Mexico butterfly should be listed under the Endangered Species Act. Santa Fe-based Forest Guardians and Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity sued Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne on Jan. 3 in federal court in Washington, D.C., to force him to make a decision on the Sacramento Mountains checkerspot butterfly — which the federal government previously proposed as an endangered species. The butterfly, with a 2-inch wingspan, is checkered with white and deep orange squares separated by black bands. It exists only...

FALCON HEIGHTS, Texas - A tiny green butterfly not seen in the United States in more than 70 years likes the new butterfly garden at Falcon State Park, experts said. Berry Nall of Falcon Heights took a photograph of his find on Monday, posted it on his Web site and asked members of an online mailing list to help him identify it. "I tried to get as many pictures as I could, but it took off," Nall said. The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department informed him that he had taken a picture of a telea hairstreak butterfly. "I knew something...

A Japanese man who admitted to smuggling endangered butterflies into the United States and attempted to sell them was sentenced Monday to 21 months in federal prison. Hisayoshi Kojima, 57, of Kyoto, Japan also was ordered to pay more than $37,000 in fine and restitution, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Johns. Kojima was arrested last August at Los Angeles International Airport as part of an undercover investigation by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Prosecutors said he brought rare butterflies collected from all over the world into the United States and sold them to investigators posing as interested buyers. They...

LONDON (Reuters) - Scientists said on Wednesday they have created a distinctive red and yellow butterfly in the laboratory by interbreeding two different species in a way similar to what they believe has occurred in nature. The laboratory hybrid is nearly identical to a wild species of butterfly in Colombia known as Heliconius heurippa. "We recreated the evolutionary steps that may have given rise to Heliconius heurippa, a hybrid butterfly species, in the lab," said Jesus Mavarez, of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama City, Panama. Animal hybrids are thought to be very rare because they are less able...

A German cannibal is taking legal action to stop the release of the horror film "Butterfly: A Grimm Love Story," which he claims is based on his life. Keri Russell ("Felicity") stars as a graduate student researching imprisoned cannibal Simon Grobeck (Thomas Kretschmann). Russell is drawn into Grobeck's world and becomes obsessed with the Internet cannibal community. "Butterfly" is scheduled for a March 9 release in Germany. But not if Armin Meiwes, who was sentenced to eight-and-a-half years in prison for eating a man he met over the Internet, has his way. In a statement Monday, Meiwes's lawyer, Harald Ermel,...

When scientists developed an efficient device for emitting light, they hadn't realised butterflies have been using the same method for 30 million years. Fluorescent patches on the wings of African swallowtail butterflies work in a very similar way to high emission light emitting diodes (LEDs). These high emission LEDs are an efficient variation on the diodes used in electronic equipment and displays. The University of Exeter, UK, research appears in the journal Science. In 2001, Alexei Erchak and colleagues at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) demonstrated a method for building a more efficient LED. Most light emitted from standard...

AN UNUSUAL butterfly which disappeared from the Lothians 150 years ago after a series of cold summers has been attracted back by warmer weather. The wall butterfly, which is occasionally found south of the Border, but has not been seen in Scotland since the 1860s, was spotted by a wildlife enthusiast on Traprain Law in East Lothian. Alistair Graham, 46, who spotted the insect on the hill while he was out with his camera last week, did not immediately realise that it was a rare species. "It looked fairly ordinary because it's a light brown colour like a lot of...

While "navigation" systems in automobiles are a fairly new (and still costly) innovation, monarch butterflies have managed for millennia to navigate their way for a distance of some 3000 miles (4800 kilometers) each fall from Canada to Mexico (and vice-versa in the spring) without losing their way. The phenomenon of long-range bird migration is a well-known one, but not in the insect world. Also, among birds their migration route is a round-trip one, which they make more than once in their lifetimes, while for the monarch it is strictly a one-way trip for each butterfly. How do these creatures do...

Muhammad Ali asked Congress on Thursday to create a U.S. Boxing Commission, saying oversight by the federal government is needed to protect boxers from exploitation and injury. Ali's testimony before a congressional panel was read by his wife, Lonnie Ali, because he suffers from Parkinson's disease. As she spoke, he sat in a seat next to her, trembling -- one of the symptoms of Parkinson's. "Reform measures are unlikely to succeed," Ali said, "unless a U.S. Boxing Commission is created with authority to oversee a sport that still attracts a disproportionate number of unsavory elements that prey upon the hopes...

Broward election staff rechecks mailings on absentee ballots By Buddy Nevins Political Writer Posted February 25 2004 Broward County Elections Supervisor Brenda Snipes has ordered her employees to double-check each absentee ballot before it is sent out after a handful of voters reported this week they got the wrong ballot for the March 9 election. Seven voters in Davie, Cooper City and Hallandale Beach told the elections office they got ballots for the wrong city, out of 5,939 mailed. Those errors prompted new safeguards on the mailing of ballots, said deputy elections supervisor Gisela Salas.

<p>WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. - Elections officials in Palm Beach County, where voters were confused by a controversial "butterfly" ballot in the hotly contested 2000 U.S. presidential election, declared a test of new touch-screen voting machines a success on Sunday.</p> <p>The electronic voting machines were put before voters at 21 sites on Saturday. Elections officials said 3,810 people used them to cast votes in a mock election that asked voters to choose their favorite patriotic landmark, patriotic song and to decide whether the words "under God" should be in the Pledge of Allegiance.</p>

www.frontpagemag.com       Return to normal view How The Left Undermined America’s Security By David Horowitz FrontPageMagazine.com | February 18, 2002     While the nation was having a good laugh at the expense of Florida’s hanging chads and butterfly ballots, Mohammed Atta and Marwan al Shehhi were there, in Florida, learning to drive commercial jetliners [and ram them into the World Trade Center towers]. It will take a novelist to paint that broad canvas properly. It will take some deep political thinking to understand how the lackadaisical attitude toward government and the world helped leave the country so unready for...