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Climbing group buys Index wall

INDEX - A group of rock climbers announced Friday that they've raised enough money to buy the Index Lower Town Wall.

The Washington Climbers Coalition stepped up to purchase the rock climbing wall after a private landowner considered selling the property to a quarry.

Space-based detector could find anti-universe

GENEVA (Reuters) – A huge particle detector to be mounted on the International Space Station next year could find evidence for the anti-universe often evoked in science fiction, physicists said on Wednesday.

Speaking as the 8.5-tonne Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) machine was being loaded into a huge U.S. Air Force cargo plane at Geneva airport, they said the 20-year research program would bring a huge step forward in understanding the cosmos.

Astonishing Octopus Is Master of Disguise

By peering into the genes of the mimic octopus, which has the mind-boggling ability to shift its color and shape to impersonate anything from sea snakes to stingrays, scientists are now uncovering the evolutionary steps it took to become a master of disguise.

The eight-legged "oracle" known as Paul the Octopus recently made international headlines with its amazingly lucky forecasts during the World Cup. But the most jaw-dropping octopus might actually be the Indonesian mimic octopus (Thaumoctopus mimicus).

When the circus came to Everett ... in 1910

EVERETT — Thousands of families are expected to line up in downtown today to watch a traveling circus billed as “The Greatest Show on Earth.”

So, too, did folks who lived here 100 years ago.

Historian David Dilgard unearthed a playbill for Barnum & Bailey's visit to Everett on Aug. 17, 1910.

A century ago, Everett was a frontier town, a clearing in a dense wilderness populated mainly with loggers and laborers.

The circus playbill is a window into what entertained Everett residents then and how much — or maybe how little — things have changed.

From outer space, a new dilemma for old-growth forests

WASHINGTON — A new study using laser pulses shot from satellites has found that the world's tallest forests are those along the Pacific Northwest coast.

Though the findings shouldn't shock anyone who grew up in the region, they offer another indication of how important these ancient trees eventually could become.

The temperate forests of Douglas fir, Western hemlock, redwoods and sequoias that stretch from northern California into British Columbia easily reach an average height of more than 131 feet. That's taller than the boreal forests of northern Canada and Eurasia, tropical rainforests and the broadleaf forests common in much of the United States and Europe . The only forests that come close are in Southeast Asia , along the southern rim of the Himalayas and in Indonesia , Malaysia and Laos .

As scientists try to unravel the mystery of missing carbon, increasing attention is focused on these forests.

Heavy Drinkers Outlive Nondrinkers, Study Finds

One of the most contentious issues in the vast literature about alcohol consumption has been the consistent finding that those who don't drink actually tend to die sooner than those who do. The standard Alcoholics Anonymous explanation for this finding is that many of those who show up as abstainers in such research are actually former hard-core drunks who had already incurred health problems associated with drinking.

But a new paper in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research suggests that - for reasons that aren't entirely clear - abstaining from alcohol does actually tend to increase one's risk of dying even when you exclude former drinkers. The most shocking part? Abstainers' mortality rates are higher than those of heavy drinkers.

NC farm produces emerald shaped into massive gem

RALEIGH, N.C. – An emerald so large it's being compared with the crown jewels of Russian empress Catherine the Great was pulled from a pit near corn rows at a North Carolina farm.

The nearly 65-carat emerald its finders are marketing by the name Carolina Emperor was pulled from a farm once so well known among treasure hunters that the owners charged $3 a day to shovel for small samples of the green stones. After the gem was cut and re-cut, the finished product was about one-fifth the weight of the original find, making it slightly larger than a U.S. quarter and about as heavy as a AA battery.

Remains of Ancient Feast to Honor Dead Shaman Discovered

Prehistoric leftovers of a feast 12,000 years ago at an apparent shaman's gravesite have been unearthed in what is now Israel. Archaeologists say the ritual might be the first clear evidence of feasting in early humans, a sign of the kinds of increasingly complex societies that proved crucial to the dawn of agriculture.

In a cave above a creek in the Galilee region of northern Israel, scientists discovered the body of a petite, elderly, disabled woman, most probably a shaman, in 2005. As they continued to excavate, they found the woman apparently was intentionally laid to rest in a specially crafted hollow between the remains of at least 71 Mediterranean tortoises, as well as with seashells, beads, stone tools and bone tools. In a separate pit nearby, they also found bones of at least three wild, extinct cattle known as aurochs.

NASA Puts Historic Image Collections on Flickr

Three compilations of historic NASA images have been released on The Commons on Flickr, the fruit of a collaborative effort between Flickr, NASA and the Internet Archive.

Although all of the photographs in these sets have been available to the public via NASAimages.org since 2008, NASA on The Commons allows the photographs to be tagged, annotated and given keywords. It also widens the opportunities to share and embed these photographs, ultimately increasing overall awareness of the NASA archives.

Mushroom hunter "massacre" claims 18 lives in Italy

MILAN (Reuters) – At least 18 mushroom-lovers have been killed in accidents while hunting for their favorite fungi in the mountains and forests of northern Italy.

Mountain rescuers say eager mushroom seekers are abandoning safety procedures as they don camouflage and hunt in darkness to protect coveted troves, la Repubblica newspaper reported on Sunday.

Errant golf swing sets course on fire

So you think that you're the world's worst golfer? With all due respect, your swing -- crappy as it may be -- has never set off a raging inferno like the one to the right. The golfer who did this has asked that his name be withheld, and with good reason. He'd never hear the end of it ("You're really on fire today, Larry!") But we do know these facts: It happened at the Shady Canyon Golf Course in Irvine on Saturday, when the guy hit a ball into the rough. On his second swing, he hit a rock, causing a spark that lit the dry grass. Eventually, 150 firefighters were called to the scene.

Will Fried Beer Take the Prize at the State Fair of Texas?

China has xiaolongbao, succulent steamed dumplings that burst with a small flood of rich pork and crab broth when you sink your teeth into them. Texas has deep fried beer.

It took Mark Zable three years to develop the recipe – he won’t divulge the secret for successfully frying a liquid – but his entry is among eight vying for glory at the Sixth Annual Big Tex Choice Awards. For the past five years, scores of hopefuls have entered their recipes for everything from deep fried butter to deep fried lattes, as well as deep fried peaches and cream and chicken-fried bacon, in an all-out effort to capture the crown at the State Fair of Texas.

Zable’s creation featuresDeep fried beer beer – Guinness, to be specific – secured away in a ravioli-like envelope of pretzel dough. The whole concoction is then deep fried for about 12 to 15 seconds and – voila! – you have yet another source for alcoholic input.

Denny wrote:Heavy Drinkers Outlive Nondrinkers, Study Finds

One of the most contentious issues in the vast literature about alcohol consumption has been the consistent finding that those who don't drink actually tend to die sooner than those who do. The standard Alcoholics Anonymous explanation for this finding is that many of those who show up as abstainers in such research are actually former hard-core drunks who had already incurred health problems associated with drinking.

But a new paper in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research suggests that - for reasons that aren't entirely clear - abstaining from alcohol does actually tend to increase one's risk of dying even when you exclude former drinkers. The most shocking part? Abstainers' mortality rates are higher than those of heavy drinkers.

I'll drink to that.

Diesels greener than battery cars, says Swiss gov report

Swiss boffins have mounted an investigation into the largely unknown environmental burdens of electric cars using lithium-ion batteries, and say that the manufacturing and disposal of batteries presents no insurmountable barriers to electric motoring. However, their analysis reveals that modern diesel cars are actually better for the environment than battery ones.

The revelations come in a new report issued by Swiss government research lab EMPA, titled Contribution of Li-Ion Batteries to the Environmental Impact of Electric Vehicles. The Swiss boffins, having done some major research into the environmental burdens of making and disposing of li-ion batteries - to add to the established bodies of work on existing cars - say that battery manufacture and disposal aren't that big a deal. However, in today's world, with electricity often made by burning coal or gas, a battery car is still a noticeable eco burden: