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The pink fairy armadillo wishes you a happy New Year.

So, I am sure, would R.P. Lesson.

[via Scientific Illustration]

Guardian is taking a closer look at some of the strangest living things from one of the most peculiar places on Earth:

In the first ever expedition to explore and take samples from the “Dragon Vent” in the south-west Indian Ocean, remotely operated submarines spotted yeti crabs, sea cucumbers and snails living around the boiling column of mineral-rich [...]

PhysOrg has something new for fearful flyers to obsess over. The further an airline is from its break-even point – either losing money or making a healthy profit – the safer it is to fly:

“The accident risk went down as they got further away from their financial goals in either direction,” said Peter Madsen, assistant professor of organizational leadership [...]

Next thing you know, they’re going to be showing up in our back yards. But Past Horizons says the last Neanderthals were about 8,000 years younger than we thought:

Remains found near the Arctic Circle in May 2011 are characteristic of the Mousterian culture and have recently been dated at over 28,500 years old, which is more than 8,000 [...]

Not rice the cost of which is blood (I mean, not as in “blood diamonds”) but rice that PopSci says actually grows human blood:

HSA is important for treatment of a wide array of maladies, including severe burns, liver cirrhosis and hemorrhagic shock, and it’s a key ingredient in drug and vaccine tests. But its primary source is donated human [...]

From the New York Public Library Digital Gallery.

Best wishes for a well-garlanded Yuletide.

SONG: “Rocket Africa.” (To download: double right-click & “Save As”)

ARTIST: grant.

SOURCE: Based on “One man’s mission to put Ugandans in space”, CNN, 4 Oct 2011, as used in the post “From your back yard to outer space. (With you on board!)”.

ABSTRACT: I thought the African Space Research Program really needed an anthem. So [...]

NASA’s gotten downright cozy with that cute little planetoid:

NASA’s Dawn spacecraft has sent back the first images of the giant asteroid Vesta from its low-altitude mapping orbit. The images, obtained by the framing camera, show the stippled and lumpy surface in detail never seen before, piquing the curiosity of scientists who are studying Vesta for clues about the [...]

Science Daily dwells on a bizarre reversal of the usual order of things:

…[I]n an unprecedented predator-prey role reversal, a certain group of ground beetle larvae are able to lure their amphibious would-be predators and consume them with almost 100% success.
…
According to the researchers, larvae of the genus Epomis combine a sit-and-wait strategy with unique movements of their antennae and [...]