Possible change in coyote behavior?

http://www.lohud.com/article/20100626/NEWS02/6260362/-1/newsfront/Coyotes-maul-6-year-old-girl-in-Rye

The article above is about an attack on a child, who was playing outside with other children. She was the smallest of them. Her mother was not far away.  And everybody is okay now. Well, except for the coyotes. The behavior of the coyotes in selecting a victim in full view of other people is cited as  evidence the coytoes were rabid. I wonder. It sounds like the coyotes used standard hunting behavior, in isolating the weakest member of a herd. To me this sounds more like coyotes have become more savvy in dealing with human society. Not a good sign in a society which overreacts and may, if this turns out to be a trend, a shift in coyote behavior, may turn out to signal a start for rabid human behavior as a society tries to eliminate a threat in their surroundings, a threat they may not be able to evaluate in terms of the larger welfare of the planet. I mean, coyotes eat a lot of rats. Eliminate the coyotes, sterilize the cats, and then try to poison what's left. Not a good  game plan or evidence of human intelligence. But perhaps I am unduly pessimistic.

Gold worn by Irish Kings found in dumpster

My kind of story: thieves tell the police where they dumped a 4000 year old necklace, but there is not much time to retrieve it before it is compacted.
http://www.irishcentral.com/news/4000-Year-Old-necklace-found-in-dumpster-97144989.html

Heck, maybe I had better copy most of the article here in case the link stops working. Story dated June 25, 2010.

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A gold lunula from Coggalbeg, Co. Roscommon

A 4,000 year old necklace is in The National Museum of Ireland  after it was found in a dumpster.

Worn by early kings the necklace, called a lunala, and discs were worn by the early kings of Ireland. It is thought to day from between 2,300 and 1,800 BC.

In March 1945 it was found in Coggalbeg, County Roscommonby farmer Hubert Lannon. He found it in a bog while he was cutting turf and kept it in his home.

Two years later he passed the necklace on to a local chemist Patrick Sheehan, in Strokestown, who kept the priceless piece of history in his shops' safe. There it remained until February 2009 when two thieves grabbed the safe during a burglary.

In March this year two men pleaded guilty for the burglary and were given three year suspended sentences. Working with the police curators from the National Museum’s Irish Antiquities Division found out that the jewelry along with other documents and papers from the Sheehan’s safe had been left in a dumpster in Dublin.

By the time the police had received this information they literally had hours to locate the dumpster before the trash would be collected. The detectives who waded through a dumpster of trash to find the delicate jewelry, which weighs just 78 grams, were rewarded on the retrieval of the treasures.

The three pieces, the necklace and two discs, are thought to be one of the most important archaeological discoveries for many years. As the Museum director Pat Wallace said himself “There is a whole lot of conjoined freaks of good luck to make it possible.”

Fern Can Remove Arsenic from Soil

Quoting from the Science Daily article (which quotes the original source, the journal Plant Cell)
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/06/100608183044.htm


A particular fern can process  "100 to 1,000 times more arsenic than other plants. Jody Banks, a professor of botany and plant pathology, and David Salt, a professor of horticulture, uncovered what may have been an evolutionary genetic event that creates an arsenic pump of sorts in the fern.

"It actually sucks the arsenic out of the soil and puts it in the fronds," Banks said. "It's the only multi-cellular organism that can do this..."It stores it away from the cytoplasm so that it can't have an effect on the plant."

...

Salt said the gene that regulates arsenic tolerance could be a duplicate of the other that has changed slightly to give itself a new function.

"The fact that it has these two genes could be a sign of evolution," Salt said. "One of the thoughts of gene evolution is that one copy could continue to do what it has always done, while the duplicate can develop another function."

The plant might have evolved to accumulate arsenic, Banks and Salt theorized, as a defense against animals or insects eating them...."

AND a few other tidbits that caught my eye

Biochemists have shown that air pollution inhibits the distance that flower's fragrances can travel. Scent molecules usually travel easily in the air, but pollutants break them apart...

AND one kind of cancer protects from another kind:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/06/100607165730.htm