CDN Television: Blood Ties, Season 2

Season Two, Episode 1:  D.O.A.
Original Air Date:  October 12, 2007
A former colleague of Vicki's from the force, Paul "Dirty" Deeds hires her to find out where his body is and how he became a ghost.  The problem is Vicki is the only one who can see Paul.  Things take a turn for the truly unusual when Paul shows up apparently alive and the investigation leads toward a corrupt police officer.  Paul's body is walking around and his ghost is still working with Vicki and the only clue they have is a fondness for raw meat.

CDN Television: Blood Ties, Season 1

Season One, Episode 1 & 2:  Blood Price
Original Air Date:  March 11, 2007
Ex-police detective and current private investigator Vicki Nelson witnesses an attack and murder.  She tries chasing down the suspect but he vanishes.  Her former partner (and close friend) Mike Celluci is the officer called in to investigate.  When the girlfriend of the murder victim hires Vicki to find out what happened to him, Vicki gets more than she bargained for.  A mysterious, handsome, charming and potentially dangerous man comes into her life:  Henry Fitzroy, a 480 year-old vampire.  Henry's knowledge of the supernatural gives Vicki an extra edge to help find who murdered her client's boyfriend.

CDN Television: Blood Ties, Introduction

Shows like The Vampire Diaries and True Blood are getting a lot of attention right now because vampires are one of the hottest things in Hollywood at the moment.  Twilight cannot take the credit for that because since the very first vampire was put onto film in 1922, Hollywood has had a love affair with the supernatural creatures.  Their popularity has come and gone many times but they've always been around and will return again once they fade from this burst of attention.

There have been many shows on television that have dealt with vampires in some shape, way or form.  Shows such as Stephen King's 'Salem's Lot (originally made in 1979 and re-made in 2004), the UK's Being Human (re-made in Canada for US television in 2011) and Ultraviolet from the UK and Canada's Forever Knight all chose to depict vampires in either the traditional sense or in an updated, more scientific way.  There have even been children's shows based around the vampire legend.  Young Dracula aired for two series in the United Kingdom (and has recently been renewed for a third series) and dealt with issues many children face in a humorous and fantastical, but also realistic way.

Eastern Newfoundland's Newest Celebrity: A Pacific Coast Hummingbird

When you think of an island paradise Newfoundland, Canada might not be the first place that comes to mind, right?  I would say "island paradise" are two words that most certainly can be used to describe Newfoundland.  From the picturesque landscapes and breathtaking ocean views to the colorful charm of the capitol city, St. John's (which also just happens to be the oldest city in North America), Newfoundland has a beauty and charm a lot of other places cannot claim.

In August of 2010, the island got one more extremely rare thing to add to the already long list of attractions and beauty it's known for:  a tiny hummingbird native to the Pacific Coast.  Yes, you read that correctly.  A hummingbird in Newfoundland, Canada.  Eastern Newfoundland, to be exact.

10-Year-Old Girl Discovers Supernova

10-year-old Kathryn Aurora Gray of Fredericton, New Brunswick has become the youngest person ever to discover a supernova.  Miss Gray discovered the supernova on January 2, 2011. 

Supernova 2010lt is a magnitude-17 in galaxy UGC 3378, in the constellation of Camelopardalis.  It is about 240 million light years away from earth.  Katheryn Gray discovered the supernova from Abbey Ridge Observatory under the watchful eyes of her father, astronomer Paul Gray, and astronomer David Lane.  Supernova 2010lt is Paul Gray's seventh supernova discovery and David Lane's fourth.

Supernovas are stellar explosions that signal the violent deaths of stars several times larger than the sun.  They can be used to estimate the size and age of the universe.  Supernovas are rare.  The Chandra X-Ray Observatory found evidence of one which took place around 140 years ago in our galaxy.  Before that, the last known supernova in the Milky Way occurred around 1680.

Congratulations, Kathryn!  This might just be the start of a long and illustrious career in astronomy for young Miss Gray!

For more information:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-12110747
http://www.davelane.ca/aro/sn/sn2010lt.html

Titanic Expedition Begins and Ends After Capturing Remarkable Images

Few names spark the imagery that "Titanic" can.  The name conjures images of romance, luxury, opulence, tragedy and death.  When the Titanic struck an iceberg and sank on her maiden voyage from England to New York City ninety-eight years ago in 1912, more than 1,500 souls perished in the icy waters of the Atlantic.  Seventy-three years later, some 370 miles (600 km) south-east of Mistaken Point, Newfoundland, Dr. Robert Ballard of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute and Jean-Louis Michel of Ifremer discovered the wreckage of the Titanic 2 1/2 miles (4 km) beneath the Atlantic's surface.

The ship has always been at the center of interest for researchers.  Before Ballard and Michel discovered the ship, many wanted to do just that.  Some even wanted to raise it.  There have been several visits to the site with submersibles being dispatched to collect artifacts, video or photographs.

Ninety-eight years later, yet another expedition to the Titanic site has come and gone.  Plagued by both Hurricanes Danielle and Igor, the research expedition was conducted in two parts.  The first ended in August of 2010 when Hurricane Danielle forced the expedition to return to port in St. John's, Newfoundland.  The goal of the expedition is to document little-known areas of the wreckage before it completely disintegrates.  Their focus is the stern of the ship.  It hasn't been studied since the Titanic was discovered in 1985.  Once all danger of Danielle had passed, the expedition on the research vessel Jean Charcot returned into the cold Atlantic waters to continue their work. 

US Television, Beast Legends, Episode 1.1 "The Kraken"

Beast Legends
Season One, Episode One, The Kraken
Original Air Date:  Thursday, September 9, 2010

I've got to say, I love stuff like this.  I've always had a fascination with mythology and legend.  When a television show comes along that looks to take myth & legend and build upon it with biological facts I've got to check it out.

Beast Legends is a new six-part documentary series currently being aired on the SyFy Channel.  The goal of the show is to take legendary creatures and bring them to life using state-of-the-art computer graphics.  Behind those computer graphics is old fashioned research, planning, animation and hard work.  The investigative team consists of five individuals who bring a unique eye and imagination to each project.  Steve Leonard is an adventurer and veterinary surgeon.  Francis Manapul is a very talented comic book artist.  Kathryn Denning (anthropologist, archaeologist & associate professor, York University, Canada) is a Legend Specialist.  Scott Edwards (Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University) is a biologist.  Mike Paixao is an animator skilled at bringing anything to life using a computer.

Massive Ice Island Breaks Off From Greenland Glacier

Scientists announced this past Friday that on Thursday, August 5, 2010 a massive island of ice four times the size of Manhattan broke off from one of the two main glaciers belonging to Greenland.  This is the biggest event of this kind in almost 50 years.  The massive island of ice will enter the Nares Straight between Greenland and Canada.  The ice island is as thick as half the height of the Empire State Building and has an area of 100 square miles. 

Andreas Muenchow, a professor of ocean science and engineering at the University of Delaware said he expected a portion of ice to break off from the Petermann Glacier but he didn't believe the portion would be so large.  The glacier was one of the two largest remaining glaciers in Greenland and had been growing in size for seven or eight years. 

Muenchow says the fresh water in the island could keep the Delaware or Hudson Rivers flowing for more than two years or keep all public tap water in the United States flowing for 120 days.

Questions have been raised as to whether or not global warming has played a hand in the breaking off of this massive chunk of ice.  As records of the sea water around the glacier have only been kept since 2003, Muenchow said, "Nobody can claim this was caused by global warming.  On the other hand, nobody can claim that it wasn't."

This isn't the first chunk of ice to break off Greenland this year.  In July, a piece of ice roughly one-eighth the size of Manhattan island fell from Greenland's Jakobshaven Isbrae glacier.

Muenchow speculates the ice island could do one of three things:  fuse to land, break up into smaller pieces or slowly move south and block shipping routes.

For more information and to see a photograph of the ice island, you can check out this article at ouramazingplanet.com.

For further information about the ice that fell from the Jakobshaven Isbrae glacier, and to see photos from NASA, you can read this article.

Newly Discovered Dinosaur: Mojoceratops

Paleontologist Nicholas Longrich, a postdoctoral associate at Yale University discovered and named the dinosaur after the heart-shaped frill around its head.  After a round of beers with some colleagues, Longrich decided upon the name "Mojoceratops".  The name was thought of to be a joke, at first, but the name stuck even though Longrich tried to come up with a more serious name.  The dinosaur's full and official name is Mojoceratops perifania.

Mojoceratops belongs to the chasmosaurine ceratopsid family and was a plant eater roughly the size of a hippopotamus.  Chasmosaurine ceratopsid's are characterized by elaborate frills on their skulls.  It lived around 75 million years ago in the Late Cretaceous period, some 10 million years before the Triceratops, Mojo's more well-known cousin.  It is related to another dinosaur species found in Texas in the United States but Mojoceratops lived only in the Canadian provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan.  It walked the earth for a mere 1 million years before dying out.

Longrich made his discovery by researching dinosaur fossils in American and Canadian museums.

Read this article for more information about this new dinosaur with a cool name and to see a picture of its frilled skull.

500 Million Year Old Mollusk Identified

It was discovered in British Columbia, Canada and looks like a cross between a shrimp and cartoon alien but it is actually one of the world's oldest and most primitive cephalopods. 

It's name is Nectocaris pteryx pushes the origins of cephalopods back at least 30 million years making them one of the longest lasting animal groups on Earth.  Cephalopods include modern octopi, squids and cluttlefish.

Martin Smith, a paleobiologist at the Royal Ontario Museum's Department of Natural History told Discovery News "modern cephalopods display a quite astonishing intelligence, and I like to think that Nectocaris may have been the smartest critter in the Cambrian sea."

Smith and his colleague, Jean-Bernard Caron studied at least 91 Nectocaris fossils found from the Burgess Shale, located in Yoho National Park near Field, British Columbia.  Thanks to the exceptional preservation of soft-bodied animals Burgess Shale is known for, the paleobiologists were able to get an idea as to what primitive cephalopods looked like.

Nectocaris did not have a hard shell contrary to what most scientists had thought for decades.  According to Smith, "shells evolved much later, probably in response to increased levels of competition and predation in the Late Cambrian."

Nectocaris was approximately 2 inches long, quite small by modern cephalopod standards, and swam using its large lateral fins.  It could accelerate to high speeds by using a nozzle-like funnel to squirt out water.  It was kite-shaped and flat from top to bottom with large, stalked eyes and a long pair of grasping tentacles. 

Other scientists have wondered why Nectocaris lacked such cephalopod features as a ring of tentacles around the mouth, a beak and a radula.  According to Smith, he and Caron were able to identify some possible mouthparts but that they weren't well preserved for them to describe in detail.

Highlights from the Royal Ontario Museum's Burgess Shale collection will go on display in its future Peter F. Bronfman Gallery of Early Life.  They will also be able to be seen on the Virtual Museum of Canada Burgess Shale website which will be launched in the spring of 2011.

For more information on this interesting mollusk and to see an artists rendition of what Nectocaris would have looked like you can read the MSNBC.com Technology and Science article and find further information in the Vancouver Sun's Technology section.