Science Roundup: Saturn's Heat Rash, Muskrat Poop, Whale Snot, Etc.

Saturn’s heat rash - The Cassini probe has been snapping pictures of a weird aurora hovering around Saturn's north pole. From Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy blog on Discover Magazine's site: "In general, aurorae change shape as the magnetic field of a planet fluctuates and interacts with the Sun’s solar wind. But this one doesn’t really do that. It also has been seen to fill the entire polar region of Saturn’s equivalent of the Arctic...So what’s causing this weirdness? We don’t know." Awesome!

Muskrat poop makes a good antibiotic.

Fear of Climate Change Has Maldives Seeking Backup Homeland - the entire country might be under water in a few years, so they're looking for a place to relocate. The entire country.

Whale snot is a useful diagnostic tool for vets looking to assess the health of our blowhole-spouting friends. And I love this part - sometimes they gather the whale snot by flying little remote-controlled helicopters through whale blows. "The whales definitely notice the helicopter," said a researcher,
"they turn on their sides to look at it. But they don't seem bothered."

The L.A. County Sheriff's office is admitting that DNA for almost 6000 rape cases remains untested. So much for the CSI Effect. "The bad news is we have 5,635 kits in a warehouse," said a supervisor."The good news is we now know what has to be done."

Wanna serve in Obama's cabinet? In the digital age, there's a lot of potentially embarrassing information about everyone floating around, and they'd like you to provide lots of deets about your online life. "please list...each book, article, column or publication (including but not limited to any posts or comments on blogs or other websites..." Every comment or post I've ever made? That would take forever! Guess I'll have to give up my dream of being Secretary of Transportation.

FEMA Firefighters Manual Devoted Chapter to UFO Preparedness

From io9, a tip (with video) that a 1993 firefighters' manual from FEMA has an entire chapter devoted to UFO preparedness. Lots of casual, no-nonsense advice on not touching sizzling hot spaceships, helping injured little aliens out of a crashed ship, and more!

From this site, copy from that chapter:

The force field affects on the physical environment--
communication, transportation, illumination, and computerized data
storage--have already been considered. We might have added that some
physical effects have been observed at locations where UFOs have
landed-- circular patterns of crops destroyed by heat or radiation
and baking or sterilization of the soil at the site.

On a more practical basis there may be grounds for concern that
more than just the environment can be adversely affected by UFO
actions. While pursuing UFOs, military aircraft have disappeared in
mid-air, exploded, and suffered harassment. Persons on the ground have
sustained serious burns, paralysis, and "blows" from a force field,
radiated emissions, or rays and beams that have been described like
that of a "stun-gun"

Besides the possible physical effects of approaching a UFO,
e.g.. burns, radiation, etc., there may be psychological effects produced
by force fields that could induce a hypnotic state in the viewer,
loss of consciousness, memory relapse, and submission to the
occupants. Jacques Vallee, author of "The Invisible College" cautions
that we should consider psychic effects, such as space-time
distortions experienced by percipients of craft-like devices which
appear to fade away--dematerialize--and then reappear; of alien,
strange voices or thoughts that may effect involuntary changes in the
manner in which witnesses may react in such circumstances.