Monday 25thMay, winner "Marky"

Wind turbine noise suspected of killing 400 goats

TAIPEI (Reuters) - Late-night noise from spinning wind turbines on an outlying island of Taiwan may have killed 400 goats over the past three years by depriving them of sleep, an agricultural inspection official said on Thursday.

After the eight turbines were installed in the notoriously windy Penghu archipelago in the Taiwan Strait, a neighbouring farmer reported that his goats had started dying, Council of Agriculture inspection official Lu Ming-tseng said.

"If noise at night can keep people awake, then it could also keep the goats awake, and when the wind kicks up it makes a louder noise," Lu said.

Agricultural authorities would make tests to rule out any other causes of death, Lu said, adding that if the giant power-generating turbines proved to be at fault, Taiwan Power had promised to compensate the farmer.

Mark 4points
Jimmy 3points
Luke 2points
Beck 1point

Monday 18th May, winner "Jimmy Hopkins"

Daniel Joyce of Stockton whose car alarm went off along with some of his neighbours' for no apparent reason

THE truth is out there!

Or at least a group of baffled drivers hope it is following a morning of motoring mystery in Stockton.

Residents on Leam Lane, Bishopsgarth, woke last Wednesday to find their cars' electrical systems behaving oddly.

And confused driver Daniel Joyce contacted the Gazette in the hope we would get to the bottom of the problem. "It was early in the morning and a lot of people were having problems starting their cars," said Daniel, 21, who drives a Citroen Saxo.

"The central locking wouldn't work on mine so I opened it manually but then the engine wouldn't start.

"I ended up pushing it around the corner and as soon as I got it away from the street it would work."

The puzzling problem is believed to have been caused by some form of radio, electric or satellite signal interfering or blocking the signal that some car keys send to the engine.

Each key emits different frequencies, explaining why cars on the street were affected in different ways.

Daniel added: "It's a bit of a strange one but it's cost people money for tow trucks and if it's going to happen regularly it could be a problem."

Other drivers on the street were also affected, including Bernard Dambrosil, whose Land Rover alarm began wailing at about 6am.

He said: "I opened the car door and the alarm went off. Then I couldn't start the car so I had to call a tow van. It's been checked over but there's nothing wrong with it."

Neighbour Geoff Saysell says his Hyundai Accent was also affected by the puzzling problem.

The 53-year-old said: "The central locking on my car wouldn't work so I had to open the door manually. The alarm went off so I had to get under the bonnet and physically disconnect it. I work at Wilton and when I got there the locking worked fine."

And it wasn't just cars which were affected. Val Nixon had problems when she tried to open up her newsagent's. Val told the Gazette: "The remote wouldn't work for my shutters - they wouldn't go up or down.

"I had to call out an engineer and I'm expecting a bill of up to about £300. I didn't know about the car problems until two days later."

Some believe the problem could be connected to a change in satellites at the University Hospital of North Tees. But NHS Trust spokeswoman Claire Young denied they were the cause.

She said: "It sounds like a mystery. Obviously we need to be careful with these things ourselves because we have a lot of sensitive equipment."


Jimmy: 4points
Mark: 3points
Matty: 2points
Chris: 1point

Wednesday 11th May, winner "Jimmy Hopkins"

Freaks Survive Because They Are Strange


If a blue jay sees a normal-looking salamander, it will eat it. But if the same bird sees a freak, it may let it go.

University of Tennessee researcher Benjamin Fitzpatrick says this discovery, which his team reports in the open access journal BMC Ecology, suggests why rare traits persist in a population.

Predators detect common forms of prey more easily, the scientists figure. The majority that share a common look are always on the dinner menu, while oddballs are left to reproduce.

"Maintenance of variation is a classic paradox in evolution because both selection and drift tend to remove variation from populations," Fitzpatrick explained today. "If one form has an advantage, such as being harder to spot, it should replace all others. Likewise, random drift [genetic change that occurs by chance] alone will eventually result in loss of all but one form when there are no fitness differences. There must therefore be some advantage that allows unusual traits to persist."

The researchers placed a selection of food-bearing model salamanders into a field for six days, with striped models outnumbering the unstriped by nine to one, or vice versa. On test days, the numbers were evened out. In each case, Blue Jays were more likely to attack the models that had been most prevalent over the previous six-day period.

"We believe that the different color forms represent different ways of blending in on the forest floor," Fitzpatrick said. "Looking for something cryptic takes both concentration and practice. Predators concentrating on finding striped salamanders might not notice unstriped ones."

4points Jimmy Hopkins
3points Willy Weageman
2points Peter Tamblynesque
1point Luke Hansell

Monday 4th May, winner "Peter Tamblyn"

Man pays $1k for freak 'kiwi fruit'

By New Zealand correspondent Kerri Ritchie

Posted Tue May 5, 2009 10:11am AEST
Updated Tue May 5, 2009 10:55am AEST
TV still of a Kiwi-shaped Feijoa fruit

Choice: The Kiwi-shaped feijoa

* Video: Kiwi-shaped fruit fetches $784 (ABC News)

A New Zealand man has paid $NZ1,000 for a piece of fruit shaped like the country's national symbol, a kiwi.

Auckland mum Shavon Green found the freak-of-nature feijoa in her backyard.

"There were a couple of legitimate, regular feijoas and then there was this little fella that looked just like a kiwi," she said.

Her son was going to take the fruit in for show and tell, but then the Green family decided to put it up for auction on the internet.

A Christchurch businessman bid $NZ1,000 ($780) on the condition that half of the money go to charity.

Ms Green is now keeping her eyes peeled for more odd-shaped pieces.

"Someone said to me I better check my pear tree - I might find a partridge," she said.

The businessman plans to preserve the feijoa.