vNi

Heat shimmers in the air, distorting the tan grass and gray-green, scrubby trees near a family of African elephants. They graze languidly, catching what shade they can from the sparse trees. Suddenly they all lift their heads in unison, flop their big ears forward and begin to march away, as if alerted by an inaudible air raid siren. Miles away they blend with another group.

A bull in musth—physiologically ready to mate and searching for a female—mysteriously avoids other males, but marches miles directly to a female in heat. Old Africa hands used to call both these phenomena “elephant ESP.”

A scientist studying the movements of elephants he has fitted with radio tracking collars documents the odd coordination between families of cows and calves. He repeatedly tracks two separate groups moving in unison, for hours, days and even weeks at a time. They turn together, maintaining parallel tracks miles apart. Sometimes the groups simultaneously change direction, moving directly toward each other and blending. While the elephants likely use their keen sense of smell when they can, the wind often carries odors in the wrong direction, so the scientist concludes smell alone cannot account for these coordinated movements.

Several bulls dip their dusty trunks into a water hole, in Namibia’s Etosha National Park, savoring the stark contrast to the parched air they breathe. Suddenly two look up, spread their ears wide and crunch more than half a mile through the brush to find not a female in estrus, but a pair of biologists and a Volkswagen van with a huge speaker mounted on top. The elephants, possibly taken aback, march on past. The biologists, Loki Osborn and Russel A. Charif of the Bioacoustics Research Program at Cornell University, watch with relief. They had broadcast a call recorded from a female in estrus, but neither they nor the rest of their team, videotaping in a tower near the water hole, heard a thing. The sound, below the lower threshold of human hearing, forms part of the remarkable infrasonic communication system of elephants.

Humans can hear many elephant calls, from the famous shrill trumpets to low groans. But until Katherine B. Payne of Cornell analyzed a tape she’d made of Asian elephants at Portland, Oregon’s Washington Park Zoo, no one knew that the deepest elephant sounds we hear, called grunts or rumbles, were merely the mild overtones of sounds so low and powerful they travel unhampered for miles through Asian forest. African elephants use similar signals.

Elephants live in layered societies, and like any social animal must communicate. These largest of land animals communicate with every sense: touch, taste, smell, vision and hearing. All work at close range, within a small band of elephants browsing together, or between mother and calf, or mating male and female, for example. With their long trunks, elephants can keep track of odors on the ground as they walk head up, and they routinely touch and smell each others’ bodies with their trunks.

But it was their sense of hearing that baffled early naturalists and makes long-distance communication—and therefore elephant society and mating—possible. Small groups of related adult females and their young of both sexes form the basic unit in elephant society, called a family. Females remain in families for life. The family often contains three generations, and may remain stable for decades or even centuries. Families associate with one to five other families, probably consisting of more distant relatives. These so-called bond groups in turn belong to larger groups, called clans.

William Langbauer, of the Pittsburgh Zoo, and several colleagues, including Charif, have characterized several specific infrasonic calls based on when they occur and how elephants hearing these calls react. Elephants appear to produce their extremely low-pitched sounds with a larynx similar to those of all mammals, but much larger.

When individual family members reunite after being separated, they greet each other enthusiastically, and the excitement increases with the length of time separated. They trumpet, scream and touch each other. They also use a greeting rumble, which begins at a low 18 Hz, crests at 25 Hz—just audible to humans—and falls back to 18Hz. An elephant attempting to locate its family uses the contact call, a relatively quiet low tone with a strong overtone audible to humans. Immediately after contact calling, the elephant will lift and spread its ears and rotate its head, as if listening for the response. The contact answer is louder and more abrupt than the greeting call, trailing off at the end. Contact calls and answers may continue for hours until the elephant successfully rejoins her family. At the end of a meal, when it’s time to move on, one member of a family moves to the edge of the group, typically lifts one leg and flaps her ears. She repeats a “let’s go” rumble, which eventually rouses the whole family, who then hit the road.

Unlike the highly social females, males leave their families at about 14 years of age. They travel alone or congregate in small loose groups with other males, occasionally joining a family on a temporary basis. When males come into musth, they wander widely, searching for receptive females.

Females typically come into estrus only once every four years, and then for only four days. So competition is intense, and males must have some way of finding mates from long distances. A male in musth repeats a distinctive set of calls called musth rumbles, listening for a response afterward. Males who hear this sound keep away, as bulls in musth are aggressive and dangerous. Females, however, answer with the so-called female chorus. This consists of several females answering with a call similar to the greeting rumble, but somewhat lower. Females will also give this call when a musth male joins their group or when they smell the strong urine of a musth male. A male homes in on the female chorus, hoping to find a female in estrus. After mating, the female rumbles out the post-copulatory sequence, a group of six grunts with strong overtones. She repeats this sequence several times, continuing for up to half an hour.

All of these calls serve as short-range communication in elephants. Documenting the effectiveness of long-range communication has proved technically difficult, however, even among radio-collared elephants. Despite the difficulties, says Charif, “Elephants may routinely know the whereabouts (and maybe activities) of other elephants that are several miles away from them. When a biologist in the field observes the behavior of a group of elephants, s/he may be missing a lot of subtle long-range interactions.”

A variety of theories have been proposed over the years to explain why sexual reproduction may be more advantageous than asexual reproduction, and, for that matter, why sexual reproduction even exists at all. For years everyone accepted the general proposition that sex is good for evolution because it creates genetic variety, which, in turn, is useful in adapting to constantly changing and challenging environments. But it may give organisms a very different kind of edge.
By the late 1980s, in the contest to explain sex, only two hypotheses remained in contention.

One, the deleterious mutation hypothesis, was the idea that sex exists to purge a species of damaging genetic mutations; Alexey Kondrashov, now at the National Center for Biotechnology Information, has been its principal champion. He argues that in an asexual population, every time a creature dies because of a mutation, that mutation dies with it. In a sexual population, some of the creatures born have lots of mutations and some have few. If the ones with lots of mutations die, then sex purges the species of mutations. Since most mutations are harmful, this gives sex a great advantage.

But why eliminate mutations in this way, rather than correcting more of them by better proofreading? Kondrashov has an ingenious explanation of why this makes sense: It may be cheaper to allow some mistakes through and remove them later. The cost of perfecting proofreading mechanisms escalates as you near perfection.

According to Kondrashov's calculations, the rate of deleterious mutations must exceed one per individual per generation if sex is to earn its keep eliminating them; if less than one, then his idea is in trouble. The evidence so far is that the deleterious mutation rate teeters on the edge: it is about one per individual per generation in most creatures. But even if the rate is high enough, all that proves is that sex can perhaps play a role in purging mutations. It does not explain why sex persists.

The main defect in Kondrashov's hypothesis is that it works too slowly. Pitted against a clone of asexual individuals, a sexual population must inevitably be driven extinct by the clone's greater productivity, unless the clone's genetic drawbacks can appear in time. Currently, a great deal of effort is going into the testing of this model by measuring the deleterious mutation rate, in a range of organisms from yeast to mouse. But the answer is still not entirely clear.

In the late 1980s the Red Queen hypothesis emerged, and it has been steadily gaining popularity. First coined by Leigh Van Valen of the University of Chicago, it refers to Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass, in which the Red Queen tells Alice, "[I]t takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place." This never-ending evolutionary cycle describes many natural interactions between hosts and disease, or between predators and prey: As species that live at each other's expense coevolve, they are engaged in a constant evolutionary struggle for a survival advantage. They need "all the running they can do" because the landscape around them is constantly changing.

The Red Queen hypothesis for sex is simple: Sex is needed to fight disease. Diseases specialize in breaking into cells, either to eat them, as fungi and bacteria do, or, like viruses, to subvert their genetic machinery for the purpose of making new viruses. To do that they use protein molecules that bind to other molecules on cell surfaces. The arms races between parasites and their hosts are all about these binding proteins. Parasites invent new keys; hosts change the locks. For if one lock is common in one generation, the key that fits it will spread like wildfire. So you can be sure that it is the very lock not to have a few generations later. According to the Red Queen hypothesis, sexual reproduction persists because it enables host species to evolve new genetic defenses against parasites that attempt to live off them.

Sexual species can call on a "library" of locks unavailable to asexual species. This library is defined by two terms: heterozygosity, when an organism carries two different forms of a gene, and polymorphism, when a population contains multiple forms of a gene. Both are lost when a lineage becomes inbred. What is the function of heterozygosity? In the case of sickle cell anemia, the sickle gene helps to defeat malaria. So where malaria is common, the heterozygotes (those with one normal gene and one sickle gene) are better off than the homozygotes (those with a pair of normal genes or sickle genes) who will suffer from malaria or anemia.

One of the main proponents of the Red Queen hypothesis was the late W. D. Hamilton. In the late 1970s, with the help of two colleagues from the University of Michigan, Hamilton built a computer model of sex and disease, a slice of artificial life. It began with an imaginary population of 200 creatures, some sexual and some asexual. Death was random. As expected, the sexual race quickly died out. In a game between sex and "asex," asex always wins -- other things being equal. That's because asexual reproduction is easier, and it's guaranteed to pass genes on to one's offspring.

Next they introduced several species of parasite, 200 of each, whose power depended on "virulence genes" matched by "resistance genes" in the hosts. The least resistant hosts and the least virulent parasites were killed in each generation. Now the asexual population no longer had an automatic advantage -- sex often won the game. It won most often if there were lots of genes that determined resistance and virulence in each creature.

In the model, as resistance genes that worked would become more common, then so too would the virulence genes. Then those resistance genes would grow rare again, followed by the virulence genes. As Hamilton put it, "antiparasite adaptations are in constant obsolescence." But in contrast to asexual species, the sexual species retain unfavored genes for future use. "The essence of sex in our theory," wrote Hamilton, "is that it stores genes that are currently bad but have promise for reuse. It continually tries them in combination, waiting for the time when the focus of disadvantage has moved elsewhere."

In the years since Hamilton's simulations, empirical support for his hypothesis has been growing. There is, first, the fact that asexuality is more common in species that are little troubled by disease: boom-and-bust microscopic creatures, arctic or high-altitude plants and insects. The best test of the Red Queen hypothesis, though, was a study by Curtis Lively and Robert Vrijenhoek, then of Rutgers University in New Jersey, of a little fish in Mexico called the topminnow.

The topminnow, which sometimes crossbreeds with another similar fish to produce an asexual hybrid, is under constant attack by a parasite, a worm that causes "black-spot disease." The researchers found that the asexually reproducing topminnows harbored many more black-spot worms than did those producing sexually. That fit the Red Queen hypothesis: The sexual topminnows could devise new defenses faster by recombination than the asexually producing ones.

It could well be that the deleterious mutation hypothesis and the Red Queen hypothesis are both true, and that sex serves both functions. Or that the deleterious mutation hypothesis may be true for long-lived things like mammals and trees, but not for short-lived things like insects, in which case there might well be need for both models to explain the whole pattern. Perpetually transient, life is a treadmill, not a ladder.

The story of the Montauk Monster began with a July 23 article in a local newspaper, The Independent. Jenna Hewitt, 26, of Montauk, and three friends said they found the creature on July 12 at the Ditch Plains beach, two miles east of the district. The beach is a popular surfing spot at Rheinstein Estate Park owned by the Town of East Hampton.

Her color photograph ran in black and white, under the headline "The Hound of Bonacville" (a take-off on the name Bonackers, which refers to the natives of East Hampton, and "The Hound of the Baskervilles" which is a book in the Sherlock Holmes series). The light-hearted article speculated that the creature might be a turtle or some mutant experiment from the Plum Island Animal Disease Center before noting that Larry Penny, the East Hampton Natural Resources Director, had concluded it was a raccoon with its upper jaw missing. The article concluded that "someone took it away... to be buried... we hope." A local newspaper quoted an unidentified woman, who claimed that the animal was only the size of a cat, and had decomposed to a skeleton by the time of the press coverage. She would not identify its location for inspection. Hewitt's father denies claims that his daughter is keeping the body's location a secret.

Hewitt and her friends were interviewed on Plum-TV, a local cable television show.Alanna Navitski, an employee of Evolutionary Media Group in Los Angeles, California, passed a photo of the creature to Anna Holmes at Jezebel, claiming that a friend's sister saw the monster in Montauk. Holmes then passed it along to fellow Gawker Media website Gawker.com which gave it wide attention on July 29 under the headline "Dead Monster Washes Ashore in Montauk".

Cryptozoologist Loren Coleman at Cryptomundo first coined the name the "Montauk Monster" on July 29, 2008. The moniker was disseminated globally on the Internet in the following days. Photographs were widely circulated via email and weblogs, and the national media picked up on it raising speculation about the creature. The potential urban legend stature of the Montauk Monster was noted by Snopes.

Speculation in published reports included theories that the Montauk Monster might have been a turtle without its shell—even though a turtle's shell cannot be removed without damaging the spine—a dog, a raccoon, or perhaps a science experiment from the nearby government animal testing facility, the Plum Island Animal Disease Center. The creature's appearance was believed to have been altered through immersion in water for an extended period before coming to rest on the shore, making it difficult to identify.

William Wise, director of Stony Brook University's Living Marine Resources Institute, interpreted the photo along with a colleague; they deemed the creature a fake, the result of "someone who got very creative with latex." Wise discounted the following possibilities:

* Raccoon. ("The legs appear to be too long in proportion to the body.")
* Sea turtle. ("Sea turtles do not have teeth")
* Rodent. ("Rodents have two huge, curved incisor teeth in front of their mouths.")
* Dog or other canine such as a coyote. ("Prominent eye ridge and the feet" don't match.)
* Sheep. (Sheep don't have sharp teeth).

On August 1st, Gawker published pictures and X-ray images of a water rat, an Australian rodent with several similarities to the Montauk Monster, such as the "beak", tail, feet, and size. On the same day, Jeff Corwin appeared on Fox News and claimed that upon close inspection of the photograph, he feels sure the "monster" is merely a raccoon or dog that has decomposed slightly. This was backed up by Darren Naish, a British paleontologist, who examined the images and agreed that, if real, the creature was a raccoon. Naish says that "claims that the limb proportions of the Montauk carcass are unlike those of raccoons are not correct", and on his blog he furnishes an illustration of an intact raccoon corpse drawn over the corpse in the photograph.

On August 5, Fox Channel's Morning Show repeated speculation that the beast is a decayed corpse of a capybara, even though capybaras do not have tails. The next day, the same program reported that an unnamed man claimed that the animal's carcass had been stolen from his front yard.

It was suggested that the monster may have been a viral marketing campaign for The Secret Saturdays, a Cartoon Network television series featuring a group of cryptozoologists.

A modern umbrella is made by a hand-assembly process that, except for a few critical areas, can be done by semi-skilled workers. Choices of materials and quality control occur throughout the manufacturing process. Although a well-made umbrella need not be expensive, almost every purchasing decision impacts directly upon the quality of the final product.

Collapsible rain umbrella that telescope into a length of about a foot is the most recent innovations in umbrellas. Though mechanically more complicated than stick umbrellas, they share the same basic technology. Among the differences between a stick umbrella and a collapsible umbrella is that the collapsible uses a two piece shaft that telescopes into itself, and an extra set of runners along the top of the umbrella. This section will focus on the manufacture of a stick umbrella.

The stick umbrella will usually begin its life as a shaft of either wood, steel, or aluminum, approximately 3/8 inch (.95 centimeter) thick. Fiberglass and other plastics are occasionally used, and in fact they are common in the larger golf umbrella. Wood from various types of ash trees, including Rowan wood from Asia, is among the popular choices for a sturdy wood shaft. While wood shafts are made using standard wood-shaping machines such as turning machines and lathes, metal and plastic shafts can be drawn or extruded to the proper shape.

The ribs and stretchers are assembled first, usually from "U" shaped or channeled steel or other metal. Ribs run underneath the top or canopy of the umbrella; stretchers connect the ribs with the shaft of the umbrella. The ribs are attached to the shaft of the umbrella by fitting into a top notch—a thin, round nylon or plastic piece with teeth around the edges, and then held with thin wire. The stretchers are connected to the shaft of the umbrella with a plastic or metal runner, the piece that moves along the shaft of the umbrella when it is opened or closed.

Next, the ribs and stretchers are connected to each other with a joiner, which is usually a small jointed metal hinge; as the umbrella is opened or closed, the joiner opens or closes through an angle of more than 90 degrees.

There are two catch springs in the shaft of each umbrella; these are small pieces of metal that need to be pressed when the umbrella is slid up the shaft to open, and again when the umbrella is slid down the shaft for closing. Metal shafts are usually hollow, and the catch spring can be inserted, while a wood shaft requires that a space for the catch spring be hollowed out. A pin or other blocking device is usually placed into the shaft a few inches above the upper catch spring to prevent the canopy from sliding past the top of umbrella, when the runner goes beyond the upper catch spring.

The cover or canopy of the umbrella is hand sewn in individual panels to the ribs. Because each panel has to be shaped to the curve of the canopy, the cover cannot be cut in one piece. Panels are sewn at the outer edges of the ribs, and there are also connections between the ribs and the panels about one-third of the way down from the outer edge of the canopy. Each panel is cut separately from piles of materials called gores; machine cutting of several layers at once is possible, although hand-cutting is more typical. The typical rain umbrella has eight panels, although some umbrellas with six panels (children's umbrellas and parasols usually have six panels) and as many as twelve can occasionally be found. At one point, the number of panels in an umbrella may have been an indication of quality (or at least of the amount of attention the umbrella maker paid to his product). Today, because of the quality of the material available to the umbrella maker, the number of panels is usually a matter of style and taste rather than quality.

The fabric used in a good-quality umbrella canopy is usually a nylon taffeta rated at 190T (190 threads per inch), with an acrylic coating on the underside and a scotch-guard type finish on the top. The coating and finish are usually applied by the fabric supplier. Fabric patterns and designs can be chosen by the manufacturer, or the manufacturer might add his own patterns and designs using a rotary or silk screening process, especially for a special order of a limited number of umbrellas. Similarly, other fabrics besides nylon might be used according to need or taste; a patio umbrella attached to an outdoor table does not have to be lightweight and waterproof as much as a customer might want it to be large, durable, and attractive.

The tip of the umbrella that passes through the canopy can be covered with metal (a ferrule) that has been forced over and perhaps glued to the tip, or left bare, depending on the desire of the manufacturer. The handle is connected to the shaft at the end of the process, and can be wood, plastic, metal, or any combination of desired ingredients. Though handles can be screwed on, better-quality umbrellas use glue to secure the handle more tightly.

The end tips of the umbrella, where the ribs reach past the canopy, can be left bare or covered with small plastic or wood end caps that are either pushed or screwed on, or glued, and then sewn to the ends of the ribs through small holes in the end caps.

Finally, the umbrella is packaged accordingly and sent to customers

• CSICOP article on spontaneous human combustion
• "Spontaneous Human Combustion" - from the Skeptic's Dictionary
• A BBC article describing the experiment
• Article on causes of spontaneous human combustion including history.
• Spontaneous Human Combustion an Anomalies Study.
• Spontaneous Human Combustion or SHC from SpookyFiles.
• Matthew Alice's Straight from the Hip column on spontaneous human combustion
• Article on causes of spontaneous human combustion including history
• Pardon Me, While I Burst Into Flames