Damn Interesting † World's first venomous crustacean found in WA The blind "remipede" poisons its prey with a similar kind of venom to that found in rattlesnakes, the BBC reports. The venom contains a complex cocktail of poisons, including a paralysing agent, which breaks down a prey's body tissue, allowing the remipede to suck out a kind of liquid meal from its victim's exoskeleton. The deadly crustacean can also be found in underwater caves of the Caribbean and Canary Islands and usually spends its time feeding on other small animals. Dr Bjoern von Reumont from the Natural History Museum in London detailed the discovery in the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution. "This is the first time we have seen venom being used in crustaceans and the study adds a new major animal group to the roster of known venomous animals," he wrote. CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story mistakenly identified the remipede as a crab. Source: BBC, Natural History Museum Author: Natasha Lee, Approving editor: Nick Pearson
Collectors Club OMG Facts - Your Mind. Blown. Odd News Around The World s Best Photos of caseless Flickr Hive Mind is a search engine as well as an experiment in the power of Folksonomies. All thumbnail images come directly from Flickr, none are stored on Flickr Hive Mind. These photos are bound by the copyright and license of their owners, the thumbnail links take to you to the photos (as well as their copyright and license details) within Flickr. Because some other search engines (Google, etc.) index parts of Flickr Hive Mind, you may have been led here from one of them. Flickr Hive Mind is a data mining tool for the Flickr photography database, allowing search by: tags(keywords); Flickr photography groups; Flickr users, their contacts, and favorites; free text; the Flickr Explore algorithm for interestingness.
Weird Worm - Weird and Bizarre Security comparison: Android versus Apple -- ScienceDaily Smartphones are big business, prompting fierce competition between providers. One major concern for consumers is whether a smartphone will keep their private data safe from malicious programs. To date, however, little independent research has been undertaken to compare security across different platforms. Now, Jin Han and co-workers at the A*STAR Institute for Infocomm Research and Singapore Management University have conducted the first systematic comparison of the two biggest operating systems in mobile software1 -- Apple's iOS and Google's Android. The two companies take markedly different approaches to security. Apple famously maintains complete control over iOS security, promising that all applications are thoroughly screened before release and security patches are smoothly applied across all their phones. Android, in contrast, displays everything that an application will need to access so that users can decide themselves whether to go ahead with an installation.