Scientists still don't know why hundreds of baby southern right whales are turning up dead around Patagonia, a decade after observers first saw signs of the worst die-off on record for the species, according to the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS). With no evidence of infectious diseases or deadly toxins in whale tissue samples, scientists are scrambling to determine a cause of death. Some are even pointing a finger at blubber-eating birds. The whales come to the peaceful Atlantic bays around Peninsula Valdes along Argentina's Patagonian Coast to give birth and raise their young. At least 605 dead right whales have been counted in the region since 2003, WCS officials say. Of those, 538 were newborn calves. Last year, the mortality event was especially severe, with a record-breaking 116 whale deaths, 113 of them calves. Despite extensive investigations, researchers have not been able to pinpoint why so many of those calves have been washing up dead at the region's remote beaches.

Chinese health officials announced on Monday that four more people have died from the H7N9 bird flu virus. The virus has now killed 31 and infected 131 mostly along China's eastern coast. Three of the deaths occurred in the eastern coastal provinces of Jiangsu and Zhejiang and one death occurred further inland at Anhui. No details have emerged concerning the new victims. In addition to recent deaths, the Chinese government is reporting two new confirmed H7N9 cases in the southeastern coastal province Fujian, located across the straits from Taiwan where the virus has infected one person who is said to be recovering.

An apple a day used to keep the doctor away, at least according to folk wisdom. But not any more - unless it's organically grown. Apples top the list of foods contaminated with pesticides, says the Environmental Working Group (EWG), an environmental health research and advocacy organization, in its annual report called "The Dirty Dozen™." The listing of foods that may have toxic levels of pesticides is part of the group's Shopper's Guide to Pesticide in Produce, which draws its data from tests conducted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Even after washing, more than two thirds of the tens of thousands of food samples tested by the agencies showed pesticide residues. The most contaminated fruits were apples, strawberries, grapes, peaches and imported nectarines. Among vegetables, the most contaminated were celery, spinach, sweet bell peppers, cucumbers, potatoes, cherry tomatoes and hot peppers. The contamination levels varied significantly between different foods. Potatoes had a higher total weight of pesticides than any other food crop. A single grape tested for 15 different pesticides. So did sweet bell peppers.

A group of farm laborers who chose to seek shelter from the suffocating smoke of a California wildfire last week were terminated for taking a break. At least 15 workers at Crisalida Farms in Oxnard, California, found themselves struggling to breathe last week as the Camarillo Springs wildfire blackened the sky with smoke and ash. The blaze damaged more than a dozen houses, threatened 4,000 homes, and burned a store of highly toxic pesticides that caught fire at an agricultural property. Located just 11 miles south of the fire, workers at the Southern California strawberry farm had a difficult time breathing as they laboriously worked in the fields. Their boss had warned them that taking a break would compromise their jobs, and they were faced with a dilemma. "The ashes were falling on top of us," one of the workers told NBC LA. "[But] they told us if we leave, there would be no job to return to."

A sinkhole measuring nearly 85 meters wide and 15 meters deep engulfed three houses in a town outside Russia's fifth-largest city Nizhny Novgorod as some residents of the small village were slumbering. One of the houses in the town of Buturlino was completely demolshed. Residents managed to escape the building a few minutes before it literally collapsed like a house of cards on Wednesday night. "I just barely left the house as everything around started to collapse," Aleksey Ionychev told Russia's Channel One.

A mystery in Quincy continues to deepen. Who is flying around the city from dusk to dawn, for the past ten days or so? "It's frightening, not just weird, but frightening," said one resident of the Wollaston section. It's not the state or local police doing the flying, and the FAA is giving out little information, even to city officials. "It's frustrating, it really is," says City Councillor Brian Palmucci about his conversation with the FAA. "I specifically asked, 'Is it a law enforcement flight? Can we tell people that?' He said 'no we can't tell you that.' Well then I asked that when folks call me can I at least tell them that it is something that they shouldn't worry about, it's something they shouldn't be concerned with. He said, 'I can't tell you that.'" Sources tell WBZ that the aircraft is not a drone, that it is manned, and FAA spokesman Jim Peters said, "we have to be very careful this time" concerning information. Even the Mayor has been kept in the dark. "We're as frustrated as our constituents," said Mayor Tom Koch, "we'd like to be able to give our citizens some answers, but we don't have any answers."

A mystery in Quincy continues to deepen. Who is flying around the city from dusk to dawn, for the past ten days or so? "It's frightening, not just weird, but frightening," said one resident of the Wollaston section. It's not the state or local police doing the flying, and the FAA is giving out little information, even to city officials. "It's frustrating, it really is," says City Councillor Brian Palmucci about his conversation with the FAA. "I specifically asked, 'Is it a law enforcement flight? Can we tell people that?' He said 'no we can't tell you that.' Well then I asked that when folks call me can I at least tell them that it is something that they shouldn't worry about, it's something they shouldn't be concerned with. He said, 'I can't tell you that.'" Sources tell WBZ that the aircraft is not a drone, that it is manned, and FAA spokesman Jim Peters said, "we have to be very careful this time" concerning information. Even the Mayor has been kept in the dark. "We're as frustrated as our constituents," said Mayor Tom Koch, "we'd like to be able to give our citizens some answers, but we don't have any answers."

A meteor exploded over Japan terrifying dozens people in the early morning of May 6, 2013. An amateur photographer captured spectacular images of the blast which were then posted on the Internet. The space rock disintegrated in the atmosphere releasing a noisy boom over Saitama Prefecture, near Tokyo. The celestial event took place at 3.58 a.m. local time and a video footage shows the meteor appearing as a fast moving fireball whose intensity gradually increases. The first snaps were uploaded by an eyewitness on the blog Sonotaco.jp before spreading across the social networks.

When most people go on trips abroad, they tend to collect photos or souvenirs, but Miley Cyrus' mementos are a bit more sinister. The star returned home from her stay in London with a ghost story, which probably shouldn't come as a surprise, considering the long and turbulent history of the city. But the specters that chose to manifest in front of the Cyrus family sound like a particularly creepy bunch. "It was seriously so terrifying. It used to be an old bakery and they turned it into an apartment building, and I was having really crazy dreams and really scary things," Cyrus told Elle U.K. Apparently the ghosts weren't satisfied with just haunting the singer's dreams though. "And one night my little sister - it sounds crazy to tell you - but, she was standing in the shower and all of a sudden I hear her scream. I run in there and the water had somehow flipped to hot but it was still... It wasn't like the water had just changed, the knob had turned but she hadn't turned it and it was burning her. She was really red."

If you're headed to an important meeting or big date, it's probably a good idea to make sure you don't stink. Don't burden your friends or family members with the heinous job of sniffing your parts, enlist a robot. Japanese company CrazyLabo teamed up with Kitakyushu National College of Technology to build a robot that looks like a bulldog and another shaped like a woman's head. The dog robot sniffs your feet, generating one of four responses depending on how bad the odor. If it's particularly bad, the robot loses consciousness. If your feet smell okay, the robot will nuzzle up to you. The female head (named "Kaori," which can translate as "aroma," "fragrance" or simply "smell") does something similar. Exhale onto its face, and it will produce an answer: "Good, like citrus," "Yuck! You have bad breath," "No way! I can't stand it!" and "Emergency taking place!" (These translations are a bit rough). Both bots use a commercial odor sensor that picks up on certain chemicals in exhaled breath or emitted by feet. Certainly it's good for a few laughs, though for my part, the robot dog is less creepy than breathing into a woman's disembodied head. Source: The Asahi Shimbun / FarEastGizmos

Do you lie about your personal information when you shop? Most Americans do. In fact, American consumers hide their personal details and intentionally falsify information when asked for it by websites, services and mobile app providers, research from the California-based nonprofit Customer Commons found. Less than 10 percent of those surveyed always accurately disclose the personal information requested of them, including items such as names, birth dates, phone numbers, or ZIP codes. Among those who do withhold information, more than 75 percent won't give out their mobile telephone number, while 58 percent refuse to give out their email addresses. Nearly half of those surveyed don't provide their real identity. In addition, 14 percent give out erroneous employment information.

Results from dead swans could take two weeks It could take up to two weeks to identify the cause of death of 32 swans found at New Lake, Dunganaghy. The swans were sent to the Department of Agriculture's Regional Veterinary Laboratory in Sligo for analysis. A spokesperson for the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine told Donegal Now that the samples had only arrived on Tuesday. He said it was still too early to say what had caused the multiple deaths. "It will probably take about 10 to 14 days to really understand what happened to them," he said. Meanwhile members of the public are advised not to touch any dead birds they come across.

Nearly one in three commercial honeybee colonies in the United States died or disappeared last winter, an unsustainable decline that threatens the nation's food supply. Multiple factors - pesticides, fungicides, parasites, viruses and malnutrition - are believed to cause the losses, which were officially announced today by a consortium of academic researchers, beekeepers and Department of Agriculture scientists. "We're getting closer and closer to the point where we don't have enough bees in this country to meet pollination demands," said entomologist Dennis vanEngelstorp of the University of Maryland, who led the survey documenting the declines. Beekeepers lost 31 percent of their colonies in late 2012 and early 2013, roughly double what's considered acceptable attrition through natural causes. The losses are in keeping with rates documented since 2006, when beekeeper concerns prompted the first nationwide survey of honeybee health. Hopes raised by drop in rates of loss to 22 percent in 2011-2012 were wiped out by the new numbers.

ExxonMobil's pipeline spilled thousands of barrels tar sands crude, Arkansas Attorney General warns of nauseating conditions in area - , staff writer Five weeks after ExxonMobil's Pegasus pipeline ruptured and spewed thousands of barrels of tar sands oil in Mayflower, Arkansas, residents are stuck "on their own" as they suffer from health problems following noxious black cloak that enveloped their neighborhood. "Both the subdivision and the cove look more like construction sites than neighborhoods," Arkansas Attorney General Dustin McDaniel said at a press conference on Tuesday of the cove area of Lake Conway. "There's heavy equipment everywhere, much of it contaminated with oil as it goes down roads and through people's yards."

Pittsylvania, Co., VA - The Department of Game and Inland Fisheries has been bombarded with reports of dead bird sightings throughout the Southside. Most of the birds were found Tuesday in Danville and Pittsylvania County. Barbara Scott was shocked when her business's parking lot became a graveyard for more than 100 birds. "That freaked me out," said Scott, manager of Penny-Wise Cleaners. Scott says first she noticed feathers stuck to the front door, before she learned that was just the start. "I was thinking this was crazy. How in the world did the bird fly into the door is what I was thinking," said Scott. The Department of Game and Inland Fisheries received several reports of dead birds littering that parking lot and a number of others throughout Danville and Pittsylvania County. "It's kind of a rare occurrence for song birds to end up being found dead from a natural incident," said Dan Lovelace, Department of Game and Inland Fisheries. Still, Lovelace suspects the deaths can be attributed to the strong storms mixed with the bird's migration patterns. "This time of year, the warblers and other birds are migrating at night so it's a good chance it is a weather related phenomena," said Lovelace. Lovelace explains they have no reason to believe the deaths were caused by a toxin and at this point, people should not be concerned. "I feel better but there still there is the question of why, how?" said Scott. While most of the birds have now been cleaned up from the lot, Scott just hopes this will never happen again. After all, she says it can't be good for business. Lovelace collected several birds from different locations and sent them to a lab to be tested. He says he cannot know the exact cause of death until he gets those results back.

Pittsylvania, Co., VA - The Department of Game and Inland Fisheries has been bombarded with reports of dead bird sightings throughout the Southside. Most of the birds were found Tuesday in Danville and Pittsylvania County. Barbara Scott was shocked when her business's parking lot became a graveyard for more than 100 birds. "That freaked me out," said Scott, manager of Penny-Wise Cleaners. Scott says first she noticed feathers stuck to the front door, before she learned that was just the start. "I was thinking this was crazy. How in the world did the bird fly into the door is what I was thinking," said Scott. The Department of Game and Inland Fisheries received several reports of dead birds littering that parking lot and a number of others throughout Danville and Pittsylvania County. "It's kind of a rare occurrence for song birds to end up being found dead from a natural incident," said Dan Lovelace, Department of Game and Inland Fisheries. Still, Lovelace suspects the deaths can be attributed to the strong storms mixed with the bird's migration patterns. "This time of year, the warblers and other birds are migrating at night so it's a good chance it is a weather related phenomena," said Lovelace. Lovelace explains they have no reason to believe the deaths were caused by a toxin and at this point, people should not be concerned. "I feel better but there still there is the question of why, how?" said Scott. While most of the birds have now been cleaned up from the lot, Scott just hopes this will never happen again. After all, she says it can't be good for business. Lovelace collected several birds from different locations and sent them to a lab to be tested. He says he cannot know the exact cause of death until he gets those results back.

Some have suggested ancient technology glassified these Indus Valley ruins but electricity is a more plausible explanation. Mesopotamia and the Fertile Crescent region are thought to be the "birthplace" of civilization and the central focus for human culture dating back to the beginning of recorded history. No one knows for sure just how old the generalized composite that we call "society" really is - both because of archeological deficiencies and because of radiometric disconformity - but one of the oldest sites is located in the Indus Valley of Pakistan and appears to date from around 3000-2500 BCE. There are many ways to date ancient artifacts and there are just as many ways to interpret the results from those techniques. It is not the purpose of this paper to address the difficulties inherent with using carbon 14, tree-rings, stratigraphic distribution, or any other methodology when attempting to place artifacts or habitations within a chronological sequence. Other articles have addressed those issues, as well as previous Picture of the Day discussions about radioactive decay rates and how external, ionizing sources can change isotope ratios. There is one intriguing aspect to Mohenjo-Daro that sets it apart from most ancient ruins. It is the one anomaly among several at the site that has caused some researchers to suggest that there might have been forces unleashed in the past that are comparable to modern weapons. Walls, pottery and other items found in the city have been turned into a kind of ceramic glass, indicating that they were exposed to thermal energy equivalent to 1500 Celsius. Evidence of ionizing radiation has also been found in some burial sites.

Mexico's Popocatepetl volcano has spewed ash over several towns in the central state of Puebla, just 55 kilometers (35 miles) southeast of Mexico City, but the country's capital was spared. The volcano blew a huge stack of smoke that went 3,200 meters (10,500 feet) skyward late Tuesday, but surrounding residents were not in danger, said Jesus Morales, Puebla's civil protection director. A three-centimeter (one-inch) thick carpet of ash covered nearby towns, forcing people to wear masks. The National Disaster Prevention Center said Wednesday that ash also fell in the state capital of Puebla. The 5,452-meter (17,900-foot) high Popocatepetl is Mexico's second highest peak after the Citlaltepetl volcano.

In fossil remnants of iron-loving bacteria, researchers of the Cluster of Excellence Origin and Structure of the Universe at the Technische Universitaet Muenchen (TUM), found a radioactive iron isotope that they trace back to a supernova in our cosmic neighborhood. This is the first proven biological signature of a starburst on our Earth. The age determination of the deep-drill core from the Pacific Ocean showed that the supernova must have occurred about 2.2 million years ago, roughly around the time when the modern human developed. Most of the chemical elements have their origin in core collapse supernovae. When a star ends its life in a gigantic starburst, it throws most of its mass into space. The radioactive iron isotope Fe-60 is produced almost exclusively in such supernovae. Because its half-life of 2.62 million years is short compared to the age of our solar system, no supernova iron should be present on Earth. Therefore, any discovery of Fe-60 on Earth would indicate a supernova in our cosmic neighborhood. In the year 2004, Fe-60 was discovered on Earth for the first time in a ferromanganese crust obtained from the floor of the equatorial Pacific Ocean. Its geological dating puts the event around 2.2 million years ago. So-called magnetotactic bacteria live within the sediments of Earth's oceans, close to the water-sediment interface. They make within their cells hundreds of tiny crystals of magnetite (Fe3O4), each approximately 80 nanometers in diameter. The magnetotactic bacteria obtain the iron from atmospheric dust that enters the ocean. Nuclear astrophysicist Shawn Bishop from the Technische Universitaet Muenchen conjectured, therefore, that Fe-60 should also reside within those magnetite crystals produced by magnetotactic bacteria extant at the time of the supernova interaction with our planet. These bacterially produced crystals, when found in sediments long after their host bacteria have died, are called "magnetofossils."

A meteor has been spotted travelling across the night sky by people in many parts of England and Wales. Sightings of the celestial body were reported on Twitter in areas such as Cornwall, Hampshire, Lancashire, south Wales and Worcestershire. Suzy Buttress, of Basingstoke, described witnessing the meteor as a "once in a lifetime thing". Space scientist Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock said the phenomenon was likely to have been debris from Halley's Comet.