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Cats recognise their owners' voices but don't care
JAMES VINCENT
Any cat owner will tell you that although they are sometimes kept as pets, felines are beholden to no one.
A new study from the University of Japan has confirmed this, showing that although pet cats are more than capable of recognising their owner’s voice they choose to ignore them - for reasons that are perhaps rooted in the evolutionary history of the animal.
Carried out by Atsuko Saito and Kazutaka Shinozuka, the study tested twenty housecats in their own homes; waiting until the owner was out of sight and then playing them recordings of three strangers calling their names, followed by their owner, followed by another stranger.
The researchers then analysed the cats’ responses to each call by measuring a number of factors including ear, tail and head movement, vocalization, eye dilation and ‘displacement’ – shifting their paws to move.
When hearing their names’ being called the cats displayed “orientating behaviour” (moving their heads and ears about to locate where the sound was coming from) and although they showed a greater response to their owner’s voices than strangers’, they declined to move when called by any of the volunteers.
more
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/cats-recognise-their-owners-voices-but-never-evolved-to-care-says-study-8966580.html
Small Black Holes Are Deadlier Than Previously Thought
There’s a black hole in a galaxy 22 million light-years away that’s incredibly bright and energetic. Astronomers naturally assumed it was a supermassive black hole. But new observations show it’s actually quite tiny — throwing many conceptions of what we thought we knew about these things completely out the window.
Black holes come in two types, possibly three. Or four. We’ve got our supermassive black hole variety, the kind you might find at a galaxy’s core. As its name would suggest, these things are absolutely huge, weighing in at about a billion times the mass of our Sun. At the other side of the spectrum are stellar mass black holes, objects with a mass comparable to that of our Sun. Then there’s mid-sized black holes, or intermediate mass black holes (IMBH), at about 10 to 100 times the mass of our Sun. Astronomers also think there are “middleweight” black holes out there, weighing in anywhere from 20,000 to 90,000 times the sun’s mass — but more observations are need to confirm these findings.
Small black holes are known for their high-energy X-rays, while larger black holes give off low-energy X-rays. Also known as hard and soft X-rays, these emissions are caused not by the black hole itself, but by the rapidly accelerating mass of matter swirling around it. So, the lower the X-ray energy, the bigger the black hole.
Tiny But Powerful
Which leads us to the strange black hole in question, M101 ULX-1. This thing is giving off low-energy X-rays and insanely bright illumination — flares that are 100 times brighter than usual, thus designating the system an ultraluminous X-ray source (known as ULX). Ordinary stellar black holes can’t emit flashes that bright — at least not unless it’s consuming mass at an unexpectedly higher rate.
more
http://io9.com/small-black-holes-are-deadlier-than-previously-thought-1473180132
Second Planetary System Like Ours Discovered
A comparison between our solar system and a second planetary system: KOI-351.
A team of European astronomers has discovered a second planetary system, the closest parallel to our own solar system yet found. It includes seven exoplanets orbiting a star with the small rocky planets close to their host star and the gas giant planets further away. The system was hidden within the wealth of data from the Kepler Space Telescope.
KOI-351 is “the first system with a significant number of planets (not just two or three, where random fluctuations can play a role) that shows a clear hierarchy like the solar system — with small, probably rocky, planets in the interior and gas giants in the (exterior),” Dr. Juan Cabrera, of the Institute of Planetary Research at the German Aerospace Center, told Universe Today.
Three of the seven planets orbiting KOI-351 were detected earlier this year, and have periods of 59, 210 and 331 days — similar to the periods of Mercury, Venus and Earth.
But the orbital periods of these planets vary by as much as 25.7 hours. This is the highest variation detected in an exoplanet’s orbital period so far, hinting that there are more planets than meets the eye.
Read more: http://www.universetoday.com/106759/second-solar-system-like-ours-discovered/
Walmart Has Enough to Give Workers a Happy Thanksgiving
By Elizabeth DiNovella
Black Friday is disturbing on so many levels. I hate to watch those commercials that use a 1970's era home movies aesthetic while advertising the store will be open Thanksgiving Day. Seriously?
What’s worse than sitting through the Black Friday commercial onslaught is the realization that I, as a taxpayer, am subsidizing the biggest retail chains as they pay their workers such paltry sums. These wages are so low that too many of these employees end up on food stamps or Medicaid.
I do not have a problem with a strong safety net. It should be bigger and stronger, as far as I’m concerned. But I do have a problem with the billionaire Waltons relying upon our social services to wiggle out of better wages and full-time hours for their workforce.
According to a study released by Congressional Democrats this year, Walmart can cost communities hundreds of thousands of dollars as their employees use public-assistance programs.
more
http://www.progressive.org/walmart-has-enough-to-give-workers-a-happy-thanksgiving
T-day Toons
I wish all DUers a happy Thanksgiving! If you are stuck at work today, I hope everything goes smoothly there, and if you are stuck with Fox-addled relatives, I hope they mind their manners.
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