Links of the day- baby sloths, photosynthesis and self-assembling solar panels

First Link-of-the-day today is this to gallery of pictures of baby sloths from a wildlife resuce centre in Costa Rica: sloths don't generally rank highly on most people's lists of cute animals: these pictures may change your mind-

http://thestar.blogs.com/photodesk/2010/08/the-daily-beast-august-29-2010.html

Today's second link is this article reporting research into solar panels/ photosynthesis: according to the link, scientists at MIT have created a synthetic process that imitates photosynthesis. By combining phospholipids and carbon nanotubes, they have been able to produce a "self-assembling solar panel": this is an over simplification, of course, the details are here-

http://dvice.com/archives/2010/09/scientists-disc.php

Serval and Jaguar conservation, tracking turtles and the usefulness of cigarette butts- links of the day

Serval, Leptailurus serval, London Zoo. Image (copyright) Victoria Neblik 2010. All rights reserved.

Hi. Welcome to Weirdbeautiful.

The first of today's links of the day is to the African Serval Conservation Organisation's homepage - http://www.servals.org/home.htm. There is no reason for this link, other than that I think they are magnificent creatures and that, although they are much less threatened than many other big cats, it would be a crying shame if "we" were to lose them. You might think, from its markings, that the serval is a relative of the jaguar, but it is actually more closer kin to the caracal and cheetah. There's more information on servals here- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serval including information on their range, behaviour, unusually high kill-rate and the fact that the ancient Egyptians kept them domestically and worshipped them as gods.

The second link is to this piece by Elisabeth Rosenthal from the New York Times about the conservation of another big cat- The Jaguar in Costa Rica-
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/12/science/earth/12jaguar.html?pagewanted=1&ref=science

The final link is this rather odd science article about using discarded cigarette butts to protect steel pipes from rusting...(there's a reason this blog is called "weirdbeautiful")

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100513/sc_nm/us_butts


My own news is that my latest interview- a conversation with leading turtle expert Prof. John Davenport- is now on sale in Practical Reptile Keeping Magazine. Prof Davenport talks about his recent research, the difficulties of tracking turtles and the wildlife of Bermuda. Copies of the magazine are available for worldwide delivery from here- http://www.practicalreptilekeeping.co.uk/pages/main.php?nav=latest