Vocabulary In the News : Red Celery!!

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Florida company unveils red celery

MIAMI | Sat Oct 16, 2010 11:59am EDT

MIAMI (Reuters) - A Florida-based U.S. produce company is looking to titillate the eye and the taste buds by offering a new red-colored celery to give a "colorful crunch" to salads and dips.

Celery producer Duda Farm Fresh Foods unveiled the celery variety, to be sold under the brand name Celery Sensations, at the U.S. Produce Marketing Association's annual Fresh Summit Trade Show in Orlando, Fla. on Saturday.

The company said its researchers developed the milder-tasting red salad vegetable by cross-pollinating an existing green commercial variety with an old-world heritage celery root, or celeriac variety, whose original heirloom seed could be traced back to Eastern Europe.

"It has the same great crisp, fresh flavor as regular celery," Duda Farm Fresh Foods' President Dan Duda said in a statement.

(Reporting by Pascal Fletcher; Editing by Stacey Joyce)

Taken from : http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE69F0VC20101016

Vocabulary In the News: Newfound Bird is Bald

http://www.livescience.com/animals/090729-bald-bird.html

By Clara Moskowitz, LiveScience Staff Writer

posted: 29 July 2009 09:00 pm ET

Scientists have discovered a rare new bird species with a bald head.

The creature, dubbed the bare-faced bulbul, was found in Laos, and is the only known bald songbird in mainland Asia.

It's also the first time in over 100 years that a new Asian species of bulbul bird has been uncovered.

"To find a new bird species is very rare these days," said Peter Clyne, assistant director for Asia Programs at the Wildlife Conservation Society in New York. "It's not like we're finding new species of birds every year. This is certainly a highly newsworthy event."

The chrome-domed songbird was discovered by Wildlife Conservation Society scientists Will Duckworth and Rob Timmins and Iain Woxvold of the University of Melbourne as part of a project funded by a mining company, Minerals and Metals Group, that operates in the region.

The bare-faced bulbul lives in the sparse trees and sun-bleached karst limestone of the Laos lowlands.

"Its apparent restriction to rather inhospitable habitat helps to explain why such an extraordinary bird with conspicuous habits and a distinctive call has remained unnoticed for so long," Woxvold said.

About the size of a thrush, the new bird has olive green feathers on its back and a light-colored breast. Its large dark eyes dominate its bald pink face.

"Whenever you come across a bird that's bald, it's a prominent characteristic," Clyne told LiveScience. "Usually, but not always, it's thought to play some kind of a role in communication between the sexes."

The researchers describe the bird's call as a "series of whistled, dry bubbling notes."

The researchers describe the new species, whose official name is Pycnonotus hualon, in the latest issue of the Oriental Bird Club's scientific journal Forktail.

Vocabulary In the News: Wolves to the Rescue in Scotland (ScienceNOW)

 

Wolves to the Rescue in Scotland

By Constance Holden
ScienceNOW Daily News
22 July 2009

No wolves have trod the Scottish Highlands for more than 250 years. Meanwhile, the local red deer, with no natural predators, have been grazing the hillsides bare, and there's been talk in Scotland about the possibility of bringing wolves back. Now a U.S.-Australian research team is arguing that wolves would be a good way to restore the ecology--not just by reducing the numbers of deer but also because they would significantly change deer behavior by creating a "landscape of fear."

Scientists headed by Adrian Manning of the Australian National University in Canberra have been studying the effects of the reintroduction of wolves into Yellowstone National Park in the northwestern United States, which occurred in the 1990s. The purpose was "mostly to get the wolves back as native species," says William Ripple, a professor of forest ecosystems and society at Oregon State University in Corvallis. But there was an unforeseen bonus: Not only did the elk population go down, but there have been "major ecological effects," Ripple says. The elk now steer clear of areas where they perceive risk from wolves, leading to the regrowth of aspens, willows, cottonwood trees, and berry-producing shrubs. That in turn has supported the resurgence of beaver and bird populations.

In Scotland, says Ripple, "we want to broaden the discussion not just to the intrinsic value of the wolves but to the ecological effects." The red deer have been nipping Scots pines in the bud, so now the pine population has some trees as old as 300 years but no young trees. The deer have also laid waste to the birch population. In a paper in press in Biological Conservation, the same team that studied Yellowstone recommends that a large-scale experiment be carried out, perhaps on an island, to see if the highlands could support a population of Canis lupus. Ripple says the Scottish red deer are the same species that in Yellowstone Park are called elk, and the wolf in question is the same gray wolf.

Such an experiment is a "sensible idea" in the opinion of Timothy Coulson, a population biologist at Imperial College London. It would require a lot of land--at least 1300 square kilometers, he says. The average wolf needs about 260 square kilometers to roam in. And "to draw solid conclusions, ideally you need two or three packs of wolves"--a couple of dozen individuals--as well as many hundreds of deer. Nonetheless, says Coulson, "My guess is, were wolves to be introduced in Scotland, we would see similar effects" to those in Yellowstone.

Wolves to the Rescue in Scotland -- Holden 2009 (722): 2 -- ScienceNOW

Vocabulary In the News: For Small Town, Luck Be a Ladybug

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VOCABULARY

a ladybug	a small insect that has a round red or yellow body with small black spots on it
a swarm	a large group of insects flying or moving together a swarm of bees/flies/ants
an affiliate	an organization or company that is connected with or controlled by a larger group
to keep a close eye	(idiomatic) to look after something or someone very carefully Will you keep a close eye on things until I get back?
to spot	to notice someone or something He was spotted by the local police and had to leave quickly.
to disclose	to give information to people, especially information that was secret Most of the people interviewed requested that their identity not be disclosed.
to escort	to go somewhere with someone in order to be certain that they arrive at the right place She escorted him to the front door.
to crawl	if an insect crawls, it moves forwards using its legs Ants were crawling all over the cheese.
bark	(uncountable) the hard substance that covers a tree
to mate	if one animal mates with another, or if two animals mate, they have sex
to handle	to take action in order to deal with a difficult situation The government was criticized for how it handled the situation.