In Other News

[Dauphin]

In English that would be a pepper-only pizza.

[Ming]

Woman is arrested after her pet raccoon 'Chewy' is caught smoking a meth pipe inside her car

An Ohio woman was arrested after her pet raccoon was found holding a meth pipe to its mouth in her car during a routine traffic stop.

Victoria Vidal, 55, was pulled over in Akron by a Springfield Township Police officer on Monday after it was determined that she had an active warrant and a suspended driver's license, according to a post from the department.

Upon approaching the vehicle, an officer 'made contact with the driver,' who was then detained 'without incident,' the post stated.


Victoria Vidal, 55, was pulled over by a Springfield Township police officer on Monday

'However, things took an unusual turn' when the officer returned to Vidal's car, the police department said.

According to police, 'he observed a raccoon named "Chewy" sitting in the driver's seat with a meth pipe in its mouth.'

'Chewy had somehow gotten hold of a glass methamphetamine pipe, leading officers to further inspect the vehicle,' the post continued.

The discovery prompted a search of the vehicle that turned up a significant quantity of meth, crack cocaine and three used glass pipes, police said.

Vidal, a resident of Akron, was then taken into custody.


Vidal was arrested after her pet raccoon, Chewy, was found holding a methamphetamine pipe in the driver's seat

The incident sparked outrage, and a few jokes, from commenters.

'I love raccoons and this makes me so sad. If you are a druggie don't get your pets involved and subject them to it too,' one wrote.

'Looks like Springfield just saved some money on a trained drug dog, "field trained" Chewy just got promoted to the position,' another added.

'Chewy needs a tox[icology] screen so they can add an animal cruelty charge as well. It doesn't look like this is his first time handling a meth pipe!' a third chimed in.

[Ming]

A classical drive: Road rumble strips play Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in UAE emirate of Fujairah



FUJAIRAH, United Arab Emirates (AP) — The humble road rumble strip, used around the world to alert drifting drivers to potential hazards or lane departures, can play Beethoven on a mountain highway in the far reaches of the United Arab Emirates.

For nearly a kilometer (a half mile) along the E84 highway — also known as the Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Road — motorists in the right-hand lane coming into the city of Fujairah can play Ludwig van Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony where the rubber meets the road.

“The ‘Street of Music,’ of course, is an art project that exists in some countries ... but we wanted this project to be in our country,” said Ali Obaid Al Hefaiti, the director of Fujairah Fine Arts Academy, which recently wrapped up the project in collaboration with local authorities.

“I think that the project is focused on spreading the art culture. The combination of music in our lives and our normal lives,” he added.

For drivers coming into Fujairah, the rumble strip initially looks like a larger, rectangular version of the dash lines separating the three-lane highway. That’s until you hit the first block, and the grooves of the road combine with the speed of the vehicle to make music.

Driving over each block sounds out the best-known parts of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony — the final movements known commonly as the tune “Ode to Joy,” or in its more modern form, the official anthem of the European Union. Al Hefaiti recommended motorists hit the blocks at around 100 kph (60 mph) to get the tune just right.

The road has become a social media sensation, bringing visitors to one of the lesser-known emirates in the UAE along its eastern coast with the Gulf of Oman.

Drivers have been spotted slowing down to experience the musical road as they come into the city. Passers-by can get the same effect from standing on the side of the road, though motorists often come in quickly.

The concept isn’t new — there have been so-called “singing shoulders” deployed in other countries including across the Persian Gulf in Iran. But Al Hefaiti believes this is the first one in the Arab world. Beyond it going viral, Al Hefaiti thinks it will bring classical music into everyday life and “raise awareness about the importance of art culture.”

As for why an Emirati fine arts school picked a European composer born in the 18th century to represent Fujairah, Al Hefaiti said that he always encourages his students to explore different cultures.

[Broken_Erika]

Chimps are sticking grass and sticks in their butts, seemingly as a fashion trend

The new phenomenon appears to be a fresh spin on an old fad of wearing grass in the ear

A group of chimpanzees in Zambia have resurrected an old fashion trend with a surprising new twist.

Fifteen years after a female chimpanzee named Julie first stuck a blade of grass into her ear and started a hot new craze among her cohort at the Chimfunshi Wildlife Orphanage, an entirely new group of chimps at the refuge have started doing the same thing.

"We were really shocked that this had happened again," Jake Brooker, a psychologist and great apes researcher at Durham University in England, told As It Happens host Nil Kӧksal.

"We were even more shocked that they were doing their own spin on this by also inserting the grass and sticks in a different orifice."

The chimps, he says, have been putting blades of grass and sticks into their ears and anuses, and simply letting them dangle there for no apparent reason.

The study, published in the journal Behaviour last week, sheds new light on how social-cultural trends spread and change among our primate cousins, much like they do among humans.
They learned it from us. Some of it, anyway


In fact, the researchers suspect the chimps learned the behaviour from people — the ear part, that is.

The two groups of chimps who display the behaviour don't have any contact with each other. But they do share some of the same human caretakers.

And those caretakers, the study notes, reported that they sometimes use match sticks or blades of grass to clean their ears when working at the animal sanctuary.

The chimps, Brooker says, "have potentially copied it from a human who was walking by the enclosure, or one of the caregivers who was just going about their daily lives."

"Like with all cultures, things change over time and they get refined and new quirks and new traditions pop up," he said.
Chimpanzee influencers


In this case, the team traced the "new quirk" to a male chimp named Juma, who seems to have originated the grass-in-butt variation.

From there, the study shows, it spread rapidly to most of his groupmates within a week.

The same thing happened to Julie's group. She started putting grass in her ear in 2010, and pretty soon, seven other chimps were doing the same.

The phenomenon even continued after Julie died in 2013. The researchers observed Julie's group again for this new study, and found that two chimps, including Julie's son, were still wearing grass in their ears.

Much like humans, Brooker says the chimps appear to be willing to suffer for the sake of fashion.

"You see when they're learning this behaviour that it's quite uncomfortable," he said of the ear grass. "They shake their head and they rub the ear a little bit as if they're trying to get used to it."

Once they adjust, he says, they appear largely unbothered. He likened it to people getting their ears pierced.

"There's not a clear benefit that wearing earrings really brings, but some kind of social cultural reason," he said. "I feel like it's similar with the grass in the ear."

It's an apt comparison, says Julie Teichroeb, a primatologist at the University of Toronto who wasn't involved in the study.

"It just looks like an earring, you know, like a fashionable way to present yourself," she said.
'They spend a lot of time looking at each other's butts'


And as for Juma's grass-in-butt variation?

Teichroeb says it's possible they're doing it to make themselves more attractive to potential mates. Females, in particular, she noted, display a swelling on their rear ends to indicate when they're receptive to a little hanky panky.

"They spend a lot of time looking at each other's butts," she said. "So it's kind of not surprising maybe that they were innovating this way to sort of decorate their butts."


Cultural differences are common among primates, and other animals too, but they often boil down to different methods of accessing food and other resources.

Because the Chimfunshi chimps have human caretakers who feed them, Teichroeb says they may have more free time to develop purely social trends.

"We think of, like silly, little pointless cultural ideas that spread amongst people," she said.

"Learning that animals have these kinds of same, pointless little behaviours that become fads and become viral, I think it really shows how closely related we are to them, how much kinship we actually share."

Brooker says it reminds him of the orcas who have recently been spotted wearing salmon on their heads like a hat — a behaviour last reported in the '70s.

"It re-emerged 40 years later, like flared jeans," Brooker said.

In that case, scientists also theorize the trend could be related to an abundance of food after many years of scarcity.

• Chimpanzee moms play with their kids — even when they're hungry and tired

• How do male chimps ask for sex? It depends on their local dialect

Weird as this study was, Brooker says it's only the second most surprising behaviour he's observed in chimpanzees.

The most surprising, he says, was when he happened upon two male chimps engaging in "post-conflict fellatio."

"The chimpanzees always give me something new to pique my interest," he said.
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens...butt-1.7583207

[BeBMan]

[Ming]

US Army deploys plastic coyotes attached to mini four-wheelers


‘Coyote Rovers’ are the Army’s low-tech solution to ‘problematic’ birds. Image: US Army

Sometimes, high-tech solutions aren’t the best way to solve a problem. The US Army apparently came to that realization recently while exploring new methods to deter birds and other “problematic wildlife” from air bases. The military initially considered using Boston Dynamics’ dog-like Spot robot to scare off the intruders, but they quickly realized it wasn’t fast enough to effectively shoo the critters away.

A far more effective—and affordable—solution presented itself in the form of three life-sized plastic coyote decoys mounted on top of toy-sized autonomous vehicles. These cyborg watch dogs , set to make their debut at naval air bases sometime in the future, have a fitting name: “Coyote Rovers.”

“It all comes down to scare tactics…”, the US Army Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC) wrote in a Linkedin Post earlier this year. ERDC posted a photo of the rovers on a lawn with the Navy’s Blue Angels fighter jets in the background.

Small birds can cause big problems
Damage from wildlife is a major concern for the military. In 2014, four Air Force servicemen were killed after a flock of Canadian geese reportedly flew through their helicopter’s windshield, knocking the pilot and copilot unconscious. Another bird then hit the helicopter’s nose and disabled its stabilization system, ultimately sending it crashing down. That wasn’t a one-off incident. In just the 10-year period between 2007 and 2016, the US Air Force reported 45,440 wildlife strikes that collectively led to $251 million worth of damages. The Air Force has even dedicated an entire team called The Bird/wildlife Aircraft Strike Hazard (BASH) tasked with mitigating these disturbances. That team has previously used hawks to ward off seagulls and helped design a radar system that reports potential bird strike intensity levels.

Members of BASH have been working with research wildlife biologists for the past five years on the Coyote Rover project. Some air bases, according to an Army Times report, had previously used real dogs to ward off wildlife but found that they could be unpredictable. The team’s early tests using the Spot robot failed because the high-tech robot couldn’t charge the pesky wildlifethem at fast enough speeds. Birds and other wildlife simply weren’t scared when Spot approached them. In some cases, the animals still wouldn’t move even after the quadruped bumped into them.

“What we found out quickly was, because it had such a slow approach speed, that it did more of just pushing animals out of the way once it finally got close enough to them, than it did really scaring them off,” ERDC research wildlife biologist Jacob Jung told Army Times.

Low tech, lower costs, better results
The Coyote Rover is comparatively low-tech. The rovers themselves are four-wheeled unmanned vehicles manufactured by Traxxas X-Maxx, a company better known for producing radio-controlled cars. The coyote decoys attached to them were reportedly sourced from a forestry supplier. Though simple in appearance, the rover can reach speeds of up to 20 miles per hour. That pace, combined with the silly-looking coyote doll, is apparently realistic enough to spook nearby animals. In total, the Coyote Rover units reportedly cost between $2,500 and $3,000. A single Spot robot, by contrast, reportedly costs $74,500.

Though still technically prototypes, ERDC says it has already successfully demonstrated the rovers’ capabilities in demonstrations held at Naval Air Stations Whiting Field and Pensacola in Florida and Fort Campbell in Kentucky. Researchers are also looking to improve future iterations of the coyote bots by adding in machine learning capabilities that should allow them to autonomously navigate to and from charging stations.

ERDC also sees potential roles for the coyotes beyond airfields. Shea Hammond, a research biologist focused on Robotic Characterization of Battlefield and Operational Environments for ERDC, told Army Times she believes the rovers could one day be used to remotely identify species of birds and other wildlife in deployed areas. They could even be deployed at locks and dams across the country that are maintained by the Army Corps of Engineers.

For now though, the Coyote Rover unit is limited to scarecrow duty.

[BeBMan]

Paw Patrol?

[Broken_Erika]

Man wearing heavy metallic necklace dies after being sucked into MRI machine

A 61-year-old man has died after he was sucked into a Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) machine at a medical centre while he was wearing a heavy metal necklace.
The man, who has not been identified, entered a room at Nassau Open MRI in Westbury, on New York's Long Island, without permission as the MRI machine was running, Nassau County Police Department said.
A patient at the facility told local media her husband was the one who died. She said she had called him into the room after she had a scan on Wednesday.
Officials say the incident "resulted in a medical episode" and the man was taken to the hospital, where he died on Thursday. MRI machines use a strong magnetic field to produce detailed images.

Patients are typically asked to remove metal items and change out of their clothes before undergoing MRI scans or going near the machine.
"The male victim was wearing a large metallic chain around his neck causing him to be drawn into the machine, which resulted in a medical episode," said Nassau County Police Department, which is investigating the incident.
Though police have not named the victim, Adrienne Jones-McAllister told local television station News 12 Long Island that it was her husband, Keith, who died.
"He waved goodbye to me and then his whole body went limp," she said tearfully.
Ms Jones-McAllister told the outlet she was getting an MRI on her knee and asked her husband to come in to help her get up afterwards. She said he was wearing a 20lb (9kg) chain with a lock that he used for weight training.
"At that instant, the machine switched him around, pulled him in, and he hit the MRI," she said.
Ms Jones-McAllister said the technician had tried to pull her husband away from the machine.
"I'm saying, 'Could you turn off the machine?" she told the outlet. "Call 911. Do something. Turn this damn thing off!'"
The BBC has contacted Nassau Open MRI for comment.
According to the US Food and Drug Administration, MRI machines have magnetic fields that will attract magnetic objects of all sizes - keys, mobile phones and even oxygen tanks - which "may cause damage to the scanner or injury to the patient or medical professionals if those objects become projectiles".
In 2001, a six-year-old boy died of a fractured skull at a New York City medical centre while undergoing an MRI exam after its powerful magnetic force propelled an oxygen tank across the room.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2n39dvp0po

[SlowwHand]

That sucks.

[-Jrabbit]

You'd think there would be protocols...

[Dauphin]

You'd think there would be protocols...

Article indicates it was unauthorised access. Unclear if the husband ignored protocols or they weren't clearly signposted. Normally there are multiple big signs saying 'no entry' and 'danger / strong magnets', etc.

[SlowwHand]

I can't even wear a non-metallic gold St. Christopher necklace.

[Broken_Erika]

New 'POO' acronym for Toronto transit fare inspectors causes stir online

n a move to crack down on fare evasion, the Toronto Transit Commission rebranded their fare inspectors as Provincial Offences Officers — or POO. Social media users have some thoughts about the new acronym.

https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/video/9.6843146