Termites' powerful weapon against extermination? Their own poop

By Barbara Liston

ORLANDO (Reuters) - Scientists trying to understand why destructive wood-eating termites are so resistant to efforts to exterminate them have come up with an unusually repugnant explanation.

Termites' practice of building nests out of their own feces creates a scatological force field that Florida scientists now believe is the reason biological controls have failed to stop their pestilential march all over the world.

A nine-year study concluded that termite feces act as a natural antibiotic, growing good bacteria in the subterranean nests that attack otherwise deadly pathogens, according to the findings published this month in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

"When they make a poop, it's not like they can throw it away and say forget about this. And over the millions of years of evolution it somehow evolved to take advantage of the poop there," said Nan-Yao Su, a University of Florida entomology professor and lead scientist and co-author of the study, along with Thomas Chouvenc, a University of Florida research associate.

Su also is the inventor of the popular Sentricon termite baiting and control system, which in 1995 became the first major alternative to liquid chemical treatments.

The findings could put an end to 50 years of failed research attempts to find a species of fungi that could kill termites when introduced into nests. Research repeatedly showed that fungi killed termites in a petri dish but not in the wild, Su said.

"Nobody was able to make it work in the field, but nobody would admit it," he said.

Su's goal was to find out why biological control never worked. His research colleagues determined that Streptomyces bacteria that are found in the nests and feed on fecal matter may be producing beneficial antimicrobial compounds that protect the termites from other potentially toxic matter.

Termites, mostly the voracious Formosans, cause $40 billion worth of damage a year worldwide, eating through wood structures particularly in Japan, China and the United States, Su said.

By the time a house is infested, the underground termite nest typically is 300 feet in diameter, hosting several million termites with a biomass weight of approximately 30 pounds, the weight of a medium-sized dog.

In one example, termites took nine months to bring down a new house in Hawaii built in the 1970s inadvertently on top of an untreated termite colony, Su said.

Further research will attempt to discover a way to bypass the protective compounds to destroy the termites, and to determine whether the findings can lead to new antibiotics for humans to replace those which have become ineffective.

(Editing by David Adams and Leslie Adler)

View the original article here

Single men wash their bedsheets just 4 times a year, study says

Should single men clean their bed sheets more often? (Reuters)If you’re a single man, you may go to bed with a clear conscience but you rarely sleep on clean sheets. At least that’s according to a new study, which found that single men on average clean their bedsheets only four times a year.

In comparison, single women change their sheets every two weeks.

And while cleanliness numbers surge for married couples, it appears the credit for the median boost for guys primarily belongs to women. In fact, it may be that the men are dragging the women down, as the average washing frequency among couples is once every 2.3 weeks, with women doing 81 percent of the washing.

As “How Stuff Works” points out, the average person spends about a third of his or her entire life in bed. In other words, the old saying, “As you make your bed, so you must lie on it,” may have more meaning than originally intended.

But are these single men literally sleeping in beds of filth? Or are the women perhaps overdoing it a bit? Turns out, it mostly depends on your own standards of cleanliness.

For example, Martha Stewart recommends washing the sheets weekly, but notes that it ultimately is an issue of personal preference. The Wall Street Journal also says that weekly washes are the norm but that many go several weeks between cleanings.

For people with asthma or other allergies, clean sheets are more of a priority. That’s because sheets, and mattresses and pillowcases in particular, are excellent at accumulating dust and microorganisms that can disrupt otherwise healthy breathing patterns.

In that case, many experts recommend laying plastic covers on top of mattresses and even pillows in to keep those microorganisms from making a home inside the mattress or pillow padding.

"The conventional idea is that you might exacerbate eczema, hay fever or asthma at night, but all of these ideas are more based on conventional wisdom, not necessarily founded in experience," Euan Tovey, head of the Allergen Research Group at the Woolcock Institute of Medical Research told MSN.

"We've done research that showed that you don't get as much exposure to dust mites in bed as we once thought. Anywhere where there is dust and movement you are going to get exposure –– it's not confined to bed," he added.

According to the survey, people between the ages of 35 and 50 are the most likely to wash their bedsheets each week.

So, as Tovey said, health concerns might not be a major issues for younger sleepers. But it certainly could be an aesthetic one for younger men hoping to forge meaningful romantic relationships.

"Would you want to be invited into a bed of somebody who hadn't washed it for months?" Tovey asked.

View the original article here

China graft buster orders staff to ditch their VIP cards

BEIJING (Reuters) - China's top anti-corruption official has demanded his staffers ditch their VIP cards, commonly given out by Chinese businesses to grant access to discounts or exclusive services, state media said on Monday, as part of the country's push to defeat graft.

VIP cards in China can offer everything from cheap deals at massage parlors to free gifts in department stores and preferential seating at popular restaurants, and hence offer countless opportunities for abuse by corrupt officials and businesspeople.

"Although membership cards are small (objects), they reflect big problems of working style," the official Xinhua news agency cited Wang Qishan, head of the ruling Communist Party's anti-corruption bureau, as saying at a meeting.

Officials and employees working in disciplinary and supervisory departments should discard all their VIP cards by June 20 and follow this order "seriously and earnestly", the report added.

This campaign is a way for graft-busters to act by example for other party members by showing they have high standards, Wang said.

"The demands of the campaign are not onerous, but they have to be followed and are totally doable," he added. "Men of honor need to show that they are honorable."

Since becoming Communist Party boss in November, and president in March, Xi Jinping has made battling pervasive corruption a top theme of his administration, warning the problem is so severe it could threaten the party's survival.

A major theme of that fight has been an austerity drive that has emptied top-end restaurants and dented the sale of expensive food and drink, as the party tries to allay criticism of the extravagant lifestyles of some officials.

However, there has been little apparent progress to get officials to publicly disclose their assets, and the party has given no indication it will allow the establishment of a fully independent judicial body to tackle corruption.

(Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Kim Coghill)

View the original article here

Bold bear cubs show off their balancing act on residential fence

A pair of bear cubs with acrobatic skills were spotted walking along the top of a residential fence in Washington state.

According to a report from Seattle's KING5.com, Snoqualmie Ridge resident Colin Davis saw the bears and took a few photos of their tightrope-like act.

"I was amazed they were able to walk on the fence," Davis told KING5.com. "I thought they would hop off, but they kept going."

[Related: Grizzly bear puts camera in its mouth]

Davis told KING5.com that he's become accustomed to seeing bears wander near his neighborhood, but never while it's light outside.

So what prompted the morning jaunt?

Davis' theory, according to KING5.com: The irresistible smell of bacon may have inspired the bears to come over for a visit. Davis said a neighbor was cooking breakfast with his door open.

Nobody was hurt, despite the neighborhood being full of kids. "They could have easily crossed paths," Davis said.

Still, Davis said he's OK with the bears because the area is their home, too.

“I have no problem with nature out here. I love it, it’s part of the reason we moved out here,” Davis told KING5.com. “We see deer all the time, all different animals. You don’t expect to see the bears, but it’s their neighborhood.”

View the original article here

Chinese wonder why their tourists behave so badly

By Li Hui and Ben Blanchard

BEIJING (Reuters) - From faking marriage certificates to get honeymoon discounts in the Maldives to letting children defecate on the floor of a Taiwan airport, Chinese tourists have recently found themselves at the center of controversy and anger.

Thanks to microblogging sites in China, accounts of tourists behaving badly spread like wildfire across the country, provoking disgust, ire and soul-searching.

While in the past such reports might have been dismissed as attacks on the good nature of Chinese travelers, people in the world's second-largest economy are starting to ask why their countrymen and women are so badly behaved.

"Objectively speaking, our tourists have relatively low-civilized characters," said Liu Simin, researcher with the Tourism Research Centre of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

"Overseas travel is a new luxury, Chinese who can afford it compare with each other and want to show off," Liu said. "Many Chinese tourists are just going abroad, and are often inexperienced and unfamiliar with overseas rules and norms."

When a story broke recently that a 15-year-old Chinese boy had scratched his name into a 3,500-year-old temple in Egypt's Luxor, the furor was such that questions were even asked about it at a Foreign Ministry news briefing.

"There are more and more Chinese tourists travelling to other countries in recent years," ministry spokesman Hong Lei said on Monday.

"We hope that this tourism will improve friendship with foreign countries and we also hope that Chinese tourists will abide by local laws and regulations and behave themselves."

Other incidents have attracted similar anger, including that of a mother who let her children defecate on the floor of Kaohsiung airport in Taiwan, just meters (feet) from a toilet. She did put newspaper down first.

Embarrassment over the behavior of some Chinese tourists has reached the highest levels of government, which has tried to project an image of a benign and cultured emerging power whose growing wealth can only benefit the world.

"TERRIBLE RACKET"

This month, Vice Premier Wang Yang admonished the "uncivilized behavior" of certain Chinese tourists, in remarks widely reported by state media and reflecting concern about how the increasingly image-conscious country is seen overseas.

"They make a terrible racket in public places, scrawl their names on tourist sites, ignore red lights when crossing the road and spit everywhere. This damages our national image and has a terrible effect," Wang said.

The central government has reissued guidelines on its main website on what it considers acceptable behavior for tourists, including dressing properly, queuing up and not shouting.

To be sure, the influx of newly wealthy Chinese travelling around world has bought economic benefits widely welcomed in many countries, and many tourists are well-behaved and respectful.

More than 83 million Chinese tourists travelled overseas last year, and Chinese expenditure on travel abroad reached $102 billion in 2012, the highest in the world according to the U.N. World Tourism Organization.

By 2020, about 200 million Chinese are expected to take an overseas holiday every year.

Criticism of bad behavior has in the past been leveled at American, Japanese and Taiwanese tourists, when they were also enjoying new wealth and going abroad for the first time.

Eventually, experts say, the criticism will fade.

"Travelling is a learning experience for tourists," said Wang Wanfei, a tourism professor at Zhejiang University. "They learn how to absorb local culture in the process, and get rid of their bad tourist behavior."

(Editing by Robert Birsel)

View the original article here

Gerbils strut their stuff at New England pageant

BEDFORD, Mass. (AP) — The American Gerbil Society's annual pageant brought dozens of rodents scurrying to New England this weekend for a chance to win "top gerbil."

The Bedford competition called for agility demonstrations in which the gerbils must overcome obstacles and race to the end of a course. Breeders of the small animals vie for coveted ribbons based on body type and agility.

"A male gerbil should be a good, strong, hefty-looking gerbil," said Libby Hanna, president of the American Gerbil Society. "If you are going to think of it in human terms, you might think of a football player — somebody who's big, thick neck, nice, strong-looking male gerbil."

An ideal female gerbil will have a more streamlined appearance that even humans covet, she said.

"So she would be strong and athletic-looking — not really scrawny, but slim," said Hanna, who serves as a judge in the show. "I usually use a figure skater as my mental image or gymnasts — so obviously a gymnast is not necessarily a big, big woman, but she's gonna be strong, muscular and athletic."

The Friday-Saturday show drew gerbil enthusiasts and breeders from around the country and culminates in the presentation of champion and breeder certificates.

Fourteen-year-old Sarah Kaden from Bordentown, N.J., thinks gerbils have great personalities.

"Even though they are so little, they are very different from each other and they smell a lot less than my brother's hamsters," she said Friday.

That sentiment is not surprising since the small, furry and inquisitive creatures look cute when they nibble on their food, stand on their hind feet or scurry around their environment.

Gerbils are perfect pets for modern families as they don't require to be taken out for a walk, could easily fit in a small apartment and their tanks only need to be cleaned about once a week.

Still, some people freak out when they visit friends and see gerbils in the home.

"I've had a couple of people come to my house that actually didn't know that I had gerbils. They were sort of freaked out, but I just told them that it was OK, they stay in their tanks, there was nothing to worry about," said Diane Nott who traveled from Elyria, Ohio, to compete in the show.

Gerbils thrive in desert habitats and their growing popularity as pets led authorities in California and Hawaii to make it illegal to keep them since the weather there would make it possible for escaping animals to flourish in wild colonies that would damage crops and native plants.

At the New England show, each animal undergoes a health check. Inspectors look at the whiskers, teeth and mouths and check to ensure the rodents have no runny noses, bugs, loss of fur on their tails or other signs of health problems.

Donna Anastasi of Waltham got hooked on gerbils after buying them for her daughters when they were younger.

"Anyone can buy a $12 gerbil and get into the sport of gerbil showing or gerbil agility," said Anastasi, who is also vice president of the American Gerbil Society. "It's very fun ... easy and affordable and something you can do with your kids."

___

Rodrique Ngowi can be reached at www.twitter.com/ngowi

View the original article here