Link of the day- Sloth Documentary and Interview with Tamsin Stone

Welcome (back) to Weirdbeautiful.

Link of the day today is to this tabloid article on sloths-

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/4156134/TV-sloths-take-the-nation-by-storm-slowly.html

The article has an excellent embedded excerpt from an Animal Planet sloth documentary that is due to air on Sunday.

The other thing I want to mention is that the new issue of Small Furry Pets magazine is on sale in the UK now (and internationally by subscription)-
http://www.kelseyshop.co.uk/index.php?route=product/category&path=35_263

I have a regular interview column in this magazine- this month's interviewee is Tamsin Stone , author of the excellent pet care book "Understanding your Rabbit's Habbits". This month, it's a 6-page spread, so it's one of the longer interviewees I have done in a while.

The Arizona Desert, Bhutan's Wildlife; Pests of the Coffee Farm and Problems in science publishing

Welcome (back) to Weirdbeautiful.
 There are 4 links today-

The beauty of the Arizona Desert-
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/secret-sandstone-terrain-in-desert-captured-685193

The wildlife of Bhutan-
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/wwf-footage-of-snow-leopard-reveals-684497

and the pests and wild animals found on Costa Rica's coffee farms-
http://scientistatwork.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/09/the-problem-with-coffee-pests/?ref=science

Finally, over 5000 researchers have joined a boycott of Elsevier's journals in protest at the publisher's behaviour- specifically the way Elsevier profits by selling the rights to see scientific papers. Since the company receives the copyrights and much of the copy editing for nothing- courtessy of the scientists involved and the reviewers, the fact that they (and other academic journal publishers) charge such high prices to view those papers has long been a bone of contention. Not least since the research published was often government- or charity- funded. A fuller account is given in the IHT here-
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/14/science/researchers-boycott-elsevier-journal-publisher.html?ref=science

Links of the day- Koalas, travel photographs and the harm of spanking children

Welcome (back) To Weirdbeautiful!
Today's beautiful creature is this baby koala photographed by Erik Veland at Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary. You can find more pictures by Erik Veland on his portfolio [here]. The picture above was taken from Wikipedia, where it is listed as having a creative commons 3.0 attribution license. For details of the license, click [here]

 Today's weblinks are to an article reporting research that shows that spanking children is harmful for their long-term development and mental health-

http://health.yahoo.net/news/s/nm/spanking-kids-can-cause-long-term-harm-canada-study

And to the impressive results of National Georgraphic Traveller's annual photography competition-
http://travel.uk.msn.com/exclusives/exclusive-national-geographics-photography-competition#image=1

Link of the day: Solar Storm, Frozen sea and lion cubs

Welcome (back) to Weirdbeautiful
Today I have 4 links for you: the first three being meterological.

First is this picture of frozen waves in Romania-
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/photos/european-big-freeze-what-sub-zero-looks-like-1328270265-slideshow/#crsl=%252Fphotos%252Feuropean-big-freeze-what-sub-zero-looks-like-1328270265-slideshow%252F9-photo-1328271227.html
- one of the more picturesque consequences of the current pan-European freezing temperatures.

the second also shows frozen waves of the black sea-
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/photos/european-big-freeze-what-sub-zero-looks-like-1328270265-slideshow/#crsl=%252Fphotos%252Feuropean-big-freeze-what-sub-zero-looks-like-1328270265-slideshow%252F5-photo-1328271189.html

The link today is to more distant bad weather in the form of a solar storm that is predicted to affect The Earth's climate-
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/biggest-solar-storm-since-2005-pummels-earth-185646088.html

Finally, cute picture of the week is this lion cub from a review on the french msn homepage. The review (and the picture) relates to Disney's programme "Felins"("Cats")
http://divertissements.fr.msn.com/cinema/lhebdo-cin%c3%a9-de-la-semaine-du-01-f%c3%a9vrier#image=5