Your daily 'thing to be afraid of'

[CougarKing]

When one can of Raid just isn't enough...

Yahoo News

6,000 Venomous Spiders Force US Couple From Dream Home

IB Times – Sat, Oct 11, 2014

A US couple were forced to abandon their dream home after it was overrun by thousands of venomous spiders.
Brian and Susan Trost fled their $450,000 (£280,000) Missouri home in the upmarket suburban neighbourhood of Weldon Spring after it became infested with up to 6,000 brown recluse spiders.

The couple bought the home overlooking two golf holes at Whitmoor Country Club in 2007, and soon began noticing the poisonous spiders appearing around their home. In one incident, Susan Trost narrowly dodged a spider falling from the ceiling while she was in the shower.

(....SNIPPED)

 

[Kirkhill]

See your spiders....

Raise you a leech

Backpacker had 3-inch-long leech living up her nose
Doctors spent half an hour removing the leech which backpacker says was "as long as my forefinger and as fat as my thumb"

Miss Liverani, originally from Glasgow, told the Sunday Mail: "Two weeks before I came home from Asia, I started having nosebleeds but I'd fallen off a motorbike so thought I'd burst a blood vessel.

"After I got home, the nosebleeds stopped and I started seeing something sticking out of my nostril. I just thought it was congealed blood from the nosebleeds.

"I tried to blow him out and grab him but I couldn't get a grip of him before he retreated back up my nose.
"When I was in the shower, he would come right out as far as my bottom lip and I could see him sticking out the bottom of my nose.
"So when that happened, I jumped out of the shower to look really closely in the mirror and I saw ridges on him. That's when I realised he was an animal.”

....

Link

And what's a good story without pictures?

 

[daftandbarmy]

Man survives being shot by hunting partner, mauled by grizzly bear near Fernie
The pair was hunting at around 9 a.m. when the bear attacked, according to a B.C. Ministry of Environment news release.
David Fairbanks, a spokesman for STARS air ambulance, said the man, 56, was not only mauled, but also shot by his hunting partner who was trying to neutralize the animal.
The incident took place in the bush about nine kilometres south of Fernie.
Conservation officers and other first responders rushed to the scene. The victim was driven out of the forested area on an ATV and flown by helicopter to a Calgary hospital in stable condition. The officers remained at the attack site to investigate the incident.
Grizzly encounters near Fernie are common, particularly in the nearby Flathead Valley, where there are more than 150 of the bears -- one per 15 square kilometres -- according to the city’s tourism website.
Sunday’s attack comes one year after a group of hunters in Fernie were attacked by a mother grizzly bear who became defensive of her cub. In that attack, the bear bore down on one hunter, pushing him about six meters down a steep trail near the peak of Proctor Mountain. The man used his bear spray and the grizzly retreated, but then went after the other hiker. One of the men pulled out a gun and shot the bear at close range. Both men in that case were treated and released.
More recently, Calgary hunter Rick Cross was killed last month by a grizzly bear in Kananaskis Country when he came upon a female with her cub. It was ruled a defensive attack because of the cub and a freshly killed deer carcass in the area.
In May, a 59-year-old Washington state hunter was shot and killed during a bear hunt in northern B.C.
U.S. resident Shirley Cooper told the Longview Daily News that her husband, Jeff Cooper, had been hunting a grizzly bear with two guides at the time of his death. He had wounded the bear, then tracked the bear down the next morning with help from the guides. It was then that the bear charged and everyone in the party fired their guns. A lone bullet struck Cooper.
Dave Tyreman, a spokesman for North District RCMP, said at the time that police were investigating the man’s death, which happened about 112 kilometres south of Houston.
Mounties could not immediately be reached for an update on that investigation.
http://www.vancouversun.com/technology/Hunter+hospital+after+grizzly+bear+attack+near+Fernie/10285381/story.html

 

[Good2Golf]

D&B, to make sure I'm getting this right, the thing to be afraid of is hunting partners with lousy aim?

 

[ohhenry5150]

Crazy people like this nurse who killed 38 of her patients because she found them or their relatives annoying!

http://www.news.com.au/world/europe/nurse-killed-38-patients-she-found-annoying/story-fnh81p7g-1227089486979

" A NURSE was arrested for killing as many as 38 patients because she found them or their relatives annoying, police said.
Daniela Poggiali, a 42-year-old resident of the Italian town of Lugo, was taken into custody over the weekend and booked for the alleged slaying of 78-year-old patient Rosa Calderoni, who died from an injection of potassium.
Calderoni had been admitted to the hospital with a routine illness before she died unexpectedly.
Tests showed she died with a high amount of potassium, which can provoke cardiac arrest, in her bloodstream, according to the Central European News.
Her death triggered an investigation, which found that 38 others had died mysteriously while Poggiali was on duty, the news agency reported.
One of Poggiali’s fellow nurses described her as a "cold person but always eager to work", according to CEN.
Another one of Poggiali’s colleagues said the accused nurse was once reported for giving powerful laxatives to patients at the end of her shift to make work tougher for nurses working after her "

 

[Haggis]

Another one of Poggiali’s colleagues said the accused nurse was once reported for giving powerful laxatives to patients at the end of her shift to make work tougher for nurses working after her "

That's a pretty crappy thing to do.

(sorry.... couldn't resist) :sorry:

 

[cupper]

D&B, to make sure I'm getting this right, the thing to be afraid of is hunting partners with lousy aim?

Or bears that take human shields. :nod:

 

[daftandbarmy]

D&B, to make sure I'm getting this right, the thing to be afraid of is hunting partners with lousy aim?

AND very cunning bears who know exactly when to put a human between them and a bullet  ;D

 

[CougarKing]

BEHOLD...the Goliath Spider!!!!

;D

Yahoo News/Live Science

Goliath Encounter: Puppy-Sized Spider Surprises Scientist in Rainforest

By Tanya Lewis | LiveScience.com – Sat, 18 Oct, 2014

Piotr Naskrecki was taking a nighttime walk in a rainforest in Guyana, when he heard rustling as if something were creeping underfoot. When he turned on his flashlight, he expected to see a small mammal, such as a possum or a rat.
"When I turned on the light, I couldn't quite understand what I was seeing," said Naskrecki, an entomologist and photographer at Harvard University's Museum of Comparative Zoology.
A moment later, he realized he was looking not at a brown, furry mammal, but an enormous, puppy-size spider.
Known as the South American Goliath birdeater (Theraphosa blondi), the colossal arachnid is the world's largest spider, according to Guinness World Records. Itsleg span can reach up to a foot (30 centimeters), or about the size of "a child's forearm," with a body the size of "a large fist," Naskrecki told Live Science. And the spider can weigh more than 6 oz. (170 grams) — about as much as a young puppy, the scientist wrote on his blog.

(...SNIPPED)

 

[daftandbarmy]

People, easily way more scary. At least houses have an excuse:

What’s Scarier, Haunted Houses or Haunted People?

http://www.wired.com/2014/10/geeks-guide-haunted-houses/

 

[cupper]

The World Squirrel Conspiracy just got a lot scarier!

How Arctic ground squirrels use steroids to bulk up for winter
U of T research team discovers how they avoid nasty side effects

http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/how-arctic-ground-squirrels-use-steroids-to-bulk-up-for-winter-1.2824755

Rodents pumped up on steroids run wild across the Canadian tundra each summer. Now, new research has uncovered how they do it without succumbing to nasty side effects like "roid rage."

In the summer, Arctic ground squirrels of both sexes have levels of testosterone and other "male" steroid hormones or androgens in their blood that are 10 to 200 times that of other ground squirrels.

University of Toronto Scarborough biologist Rudy Boonstra says that's because the groundhog-like rodents need to bulk up with muscle in order to survive winter hibernation in their deep-frozen Arctic burrows. In fact, the animals can increase their muscle mass by 30 per cent in the weeks before their eight-month annual hibernation with the help of androgens produced in huge quantities by the adrenal glands on their kidneys.

But a nagging question remained.

"How do they get the benefits but not pay the costs? There are enormous costs to humans taking synthetic steroids," said Boonstra, citing problems such as a depressed immune system and mood disturbances such as "roid rage" – angry, aggressive and sometimes violent outbursts. Other side effects in humans can include high blood pressure, heart problems, liver problems, shrunken testicles and infertility.

To figure out how Arctic ground squirrels sidestepped those problems, Boonstra turned to his colleagues Kaigo Mo and Douglas Ashley Monks in the Department of Psychology and Cell Systems Biology at the University of Toronto Mississauga.

Mo and Monks tested samples of muscle and lymph nodes (part of the immune system) from 13 Arctic ground squirrels collected by Boonstra at a ranch near Whitehorse, Yukon, at the time of year when they would be bulking up for hibernation. The samples were compared to those from Columbian ground squirrels captured near Barrier Lake, Alta.

Using a technique called Western blotting, the researchers found that Arctic ground squirrels had four times as many androgen receptors in their muscle compared to Columbian ground squirrels. The receptors allow the muscle to detect and respond to androgens by increasing their growth.

Neither kind of ground squirrel had many androgen receptors in their lymph nodes. That meant that their lymph nodes couldn't really "see" the androgens circulating in their blood.

In contrast, humans see and respond to androgens throughout their bodies, resulting in all kinds of negative side effects when they take anabolic steroids.

In other words, Boonstra said, the Arctic ground squirrels have "jerry-rigged their genetic system in a certain way" so that when they are getting ready to hibernate, their muscle sees and responds to the steroids, but the rest of their body generally does not.

The team published their results in the journal Biology Letters this week.

Boonstra said his research suggests that the reason Arctic ground squirrels evolved this unique ability to bulk up on steroids is they are the only mammal known to hibernate in frozen ground – other hibernating mammals keep their winter burrows just below the frost line, where the temperature hovers close to zero all winter.

Arctic ground squirrels, which range from Hudson Bay to Alaska, live on the tundra, where it's impossible to dig through the permafrost to a layer of soil that never freezes.

"It's like concrete," Boonstra said.

The squirrels' burrows can get as cold as -23 C while they're hibernating, forcing them to burn huge amounts of energy to keep their body temperature above freezing. Under those conditions, fat alone can't generate enough energy in the form of glucose to keep their brain and heart alive.

"And so what they do is they burn muscle."

While Arctic ground squirrels have made this possible by evolving a neat way to tolerate rampant steroid use, Boonstra doesn't think it's a trick that humans could or should learn.

"I think the salient point from the perspective of humans is you do not have the

genetic machinery… so don't take the bloody stuff," he said. "You're not an Arctic ground squirrel."​

​

 

[daftandbarmy]

This REALLY scares me:

B.C. legislature guards to be armed with guns

http://www.timescolonist.com/news/local/b-c-legislature-guards-to-be-armed-with-guns-1.1526391

 

[cupper]

This REALLY scares me:

B.C. legislature guards to be armed with guns

http://www.timescolonist.com/news/local/b-c-legislature-guards-to-be-armed-with-guns-1.1526391

I'd only start worrying when they start arming them with crossbows and trebuchet. Then you know the world has gone to crap.

 

[a_majoor]

You know, this could explain an awful lot of what is going on in the world...

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/virus-that-makes-humans-more-stupid-discovered-9849920.html

Virus that 'makes humans more stupid' discovered

A virus has been discovered that affects cognitive abilities in healthy people
BEN TUFFT  Sunday 09 November 2014

A virus that infects human brains and makes us more stupid has been discovered, according to scientists in the US.

The algae virus, never before observed in healthy people, was found to affect cognitive functions including visual processing and spatial awareness.

Scientists at Johns Hopkins Medical School and the University of Nebraska stumbled upon the discovery when they were undertaking an unrelated study into throat microbes.

Surprisingly, the researchers found DNA in the throats of healthy individuals that matched the DNA of a virus known to infect green algae.

Dr Robert Yolken, a virologist who led the original study, said: “This is a striking example showing that the ‘innocuous’ microorganisms we carry can affect behaviour and cognition.

“Many physiological differences between person A and person B are encoded in the set of genes each inherits from parents, yet some of these differences are fuelled by the various microorganisms we harbour and the way they interact with our genes.”

Of the 90 participants in the study, 40 tested positive for the algae virus. Those who tested positive performed worse on tests designed to measure the speed and accuracy of visual processing. They also achieved lower scores in tasks designed to measure attention.

Humans’ bodies contain trillions of bacteria, viruses and fungi. Most are harmless, but the findings of this research show that there some microbes can have a detrimental impact on cognitive functions, while leaving individuals healthy.

The study’s findings were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

 

[Tibbson]

See your spiders....

Raise you a leech

Link

And what's a good story without pictures?

There is no way thats a leach.  It looks nothing like my brother in law.

 

[OldSolduer]

There is no way thats a leach.  It looks nothing like my brother in law.

Good one......

I am afraid of further direction from Ottawa......

 

[daftandbarmy]

Kayakers stalked by hammerhead shark for two miles

Two friends had some unwelcome company while kayaking off Florida

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/northamerica/usa/11230400/Kayakers-stalked-by-hammerhead-shark-for-two-miles.html

 

[cupper]

I'd be very afraid. There are certain times when chocolate is necessary to ward off the evil demons that try and possess the better half when the moon is full. >

The world’s biggest chocolate-maker says we’re running out of chocolate

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/11/15/the-worlds-biggest-chocolate-maker-says-were-running-out-of-chocolate/?hpid=z4

There's no easy way to say this: You're eating too much chocolate, all of you. And it's getting so out of hand that the world could be headed towards a potentially disastrous (if you love chocolate) scenario if it doesn't stop.

Those are, roughly speaking, the words of two huge chocolate makers, Mars, Inc. and Barry Callebaut. And there's some data to back them up.

Chocolate deficits, whereby farmers produce less cocoa than the world eats, are becoming the norm. Already, we are in the midst of what could be the longest streak of consecutive chocolate deficits in more than 50 years. It also looks like deficits aren't just carrying over from year-to-year—the industry expects them to grow. Last year, the world ate roughly 70,000 metric tons more cocoa than it produced. By 2020, the two chocolate-makers warn that that number could swell to 1 million metric tons, a more than 14-fold increase; by 2030, they think the deficit could reach 2 million metric tons.

The problem is, for one, a supply issue. Dry weather in West Africa (specifically in the Ivory Coast and Ghana, where more than 70 percent of the world's cocoa is produced) has greatly decreased production in the region. A nasty fungal disease known as frosty pod hasn't helped either. The International Cocoa Organization estimates it has wiped out between 30 percent and 40 percent of global coca production. Because of all this, cocoa farming has proven a particularly tough business, and many farmers have shifted to more profitable crops, like corn, as a result.

Then there's the world's insatiable appetite for chocolate. China's growing love for the stuff is of particular concern. The Chinese are buying more and more chocolate each year. Still, they only consume per capita about 5 percent of what the average Western European eats. There's also the rising popularity of dark chocolate, which contains a good deal more cocoa by volume than traditional chocolate bars (the average chocolate bar contains about 10 percent, while dark chocolate often contains upwards of 70 percent).

For these reasons, cocoa prices have climbed by more than 60 percent since 2012, when people started eating more chocolate than the world could produce. And chocolate makers have, in turn, been forced to adjust by raising the price of their bars. Hershey's was the first, but others have followed suit.

Efforts to counter the growing imbalance between the amount of chocolate the world wants and the amount farmers can produce has inspired a bit of much needed innovation. Specifically, an agricultural research group in Central Africa is developing trees that can produce up to seven times the amount of beans traditional cocoa trees can. The uptick in efficiency, however, might be compromising taste, says Bloomberg's Mark Schatzker. He likens the trade-off to other mass-produced commodities.

Efforts are under way to make chocolate cheap and abundant -- in the process inadvertently rendering it as tasteless as today’s store-bought tomatoes, yet another food, along with chicken and strawberries, that went from flavorful to forgettable on the road to plenitude.

It's unclear anyone will mind a milder flavor if it keeps prices down. And the industry certainly won't mind, so long as it keeps the potential for a gargantuan shortage at bay.

It's a good thing I will be in Hershey for a conference this coming week. Will have to stock up.

 

[daftandbarmy]

Grandfather burned alive, trapped in industrial oven

Future son-in-law accidentally trapped Alan Catterall in industrial oven used to manufacture kayaks, switching it on to 280C and burning grandfather alive

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/11243569/Grandfather-burned-alive-trapped-in-industrial-oven.html

 

[Nfld Sapper]

And boys and girls that is why you use the Lockout-tagout .......