2010年7月14日星期三

Congrats Melvin,Timothy and Siong Juun..Finally they have their beloved girlfriend..

Congrats Melvin,Timothy and Siong Juun..
Finally they have their beloved girlfriend..
Especially Timothy..
He had surprised me..
I think many people will feel surprise also when heard this news..
But i feel that it is good for him..
This is the new starting for him..
Having a girlfriend maybe can make him to become more mature..
Everyone have the same chance to get the true love..
It is fair to everyone..
He is the one also..
Although i know that there are many people dont like him,he still is my friend..
There are not many prefects have his semangat pengawas..
Even my semangat is not more than him also..
He had always done a good job..
Dont judge the book by its cover..
He has his own good side to attract the girls also..
So for me,i feel glad to listen to this news..
Let me talk about my another friend,Siong Juun..
Although sometimes i dont like his attitude,sometimes i argue with him,sometimes i talk bad about him,he is one of my good friend..
We had being in the same class three years already,3A12 until 5A12..
He always zat me also..
So every times i dont like him to disturb me..
When he is in the relationship with Caster Woo that time,honestly i feel shocked also..
Because i thought he will focus on his study..
Study put in the first place..
But he had surprised me..
I feel that he is a good guy..
Although his mouth always talk the sweet things to girl and very talkative,he is a serious guy also..
When he have a project to do or an activity to organise,he definitely responsible on it and manage to do it as well..
So i trust that he is a responsible guy..
Having a pretty girlfriend is the best award for him..
Siong Juun,when you marry that time,dont forget to invite me to come ah..Haha..
Every relationship need some patience to maintain it..
I hope they will maintain their relationship with their girlfriend until forever..
For me,by right now,i wont think about this kind of things..
Because there are still got many things i havent do yet..
Especially STPM..
It will affect my future and my whole form 6 life..
So i cannot fail my exam..
Hope i can get a good result gua..

2010年7月4日星期日

Moa






The moa were eleven species (in six genera) of flightless birds endemic to New Zealand. The two largest species, Dinornis robustus and Dinornis novaezelandiae, reached about 3.7 m (12 ft) in height with neck outstretched, and weighed about 230 kg (510 lb).

Moa are members of the order Struthioniformes (or ratites) although some sources also recognise these as the separate order Dinornithiformes. The eleven species of moa are the only wingless birds, lacking even the vestigial wings which all other ratites have. They were the dominant herbivores in New Zealand forest, shrubland and subalpine ecosystems for thousands of years, and until the arrival of the Māori were hunted only by the Haast's Eagle. All species are generally believed to have become extinct by 1500 AD, mainly due to hunting by Māori.

The moa's only predator was the massive Haast's Eagle—until the arrival of human settlers.

The Māori arrived sometime before A.D. 1300, and all moa genera were soon driven to extinction by hunting and, to a lesser extent, forest clearance. By about A.D. 1400 all moa are generally thought to have become extinct, along with the Haast's Eagle which had relied on them for food. Recent research using carbon-14 dating of middens strongly suggests that this took less than a hundred years; rather than the period of exploitation lasting several hundred years which had been earlier believed.

Some authors have speculated that a few Megalapteryx didinus may have persisted in remote corners of New Zealand until the 18th and even 19th centuries, but the view is not widely accepted. Some Māori hunters claimed to be in pursuit of the moa as late as the 1770s. Whalers and sealers recalled seeing monstrous birds along the coast of the South Island, and in the 1820s a man named George Pauley made an unverified claim of seeing a moa in the Otago Region of New Zealand. An expedition in the 1850s under Lieutenant A. Impey reported two Emu-like birds on a hillside, on the South Island, and an 1861 story from the Nelson Examiner told of three-toed footprints measuring 36 centimetres (14 in) between Takaka and Riwaka, found by a surveying party, and finally in 1878 the Otago Witness published an account from a farmer and his shepherd.

Though scientists agree there is no doubt that moa are extinct, there has been occasional speculation—since at least the late 1800s, and as recently as 2008—that some moa may still exist, particularly the rugged wilderness of South Westland and Fiordland. Cryptozoologists and others reputedly continue to search for them, but their claims and supporting evidence (such as of purported Moa footprints or blurry photos) have earned little attention from mainstream experts, and are widely considered pseudoscientific.

Experts contend that moa survival is extremely unlikely, since this would involve the ground-dwelling birds living unnoticed in a region visited often by hunters and hikers.

While the rediscovery of the Takahē in 1948 (after none had been seen since 1898), showed that rare birds may exist undiscovered for a long time, the Takahē was rediscovered after its tracks were identified—yet no reliable evidence of moa tracks has ever been found. The Takahē is also a much smaller bird.

A 2010 episode of the paranormal television program Destination Truth featured a search for the giant moa.

2010年7月3日星期六

Quagga






The quagga (Equus quagga quagga) is an extinct subspecies of the Plains zebra,which was once found in great numbers in South Africa's Cape Province and the southern part of the Orange Free State. It was distinguished from other zebras by having the usual vivid marks on the front part of the body only. In the mid-section, the stripes faded and the dark, inter-stripe spaces became wider, and the rear parts were a plain brown. The name comes from a Khoikhoi word for zebra and is onomatopoeic, being said to resemble the quagga's call. The only quagga to have been photographed alive was a mare at the Zoological Society of London's Zoo in Regent's Park in 1870.

The quagga lived in the drier parts of South Africa, on grassland. The northern limit seems to have been the Orange River in the west and the Vaal River in the east; the south-eastern border may have been the Great Kei River. It was hunted for its meat and hide, and is one of the many victims of modern mass extinction.

The quagga was originally classified as an individual species, Equus quagga, in 1778. Over the next 50 years or so, many other zebras were described by naturalists and explorers. Because of the great variation in coat patterns (no two zebras are alike), taxonomists were left with a great number of described "species", and no easy way to tell which of these were true species, which were subspecies, and which were simply natural variants.

Long before this confusion was sorted out, the quagga had been hunted to extinction for meat, hides, and to preserve feed for domesticated stock. The last wild quagga was probably shot in the late 1870s, and the last specimen in captivity, a mare, died on August 12, 1883 at the Artis Magistra zoo in Amsterdam. Because of the confusion between different zebra species, particularly among the general public, the quagga had become extinct before it was realized that it appeared to be a separate species.

The quagga was the first extinct creature to have its DNA studied. Recent genetic research at the Smithsonian Institution has demonstrated that the quagga was in fact not a separate species at all, but diverged from the extremely variable plains zebra, Equus burchelli, between 120,000 and 290,000 years ago, and suggests that it should be named Equus burchelli quagga. However, according to the rules of biological nomenclature, where there are two or more alternative names for a single species, the name first used takes priority. As the quagga was described about thirty years earlier than the plains zebra, it appears that the correct terms are E. quagga quagga for the quagga and E. quagga burchelli for the plains zebra, unless "Equus burchelli" is officially declared to be a nomen conservandum.

After the very close relationship between the quagga and surviving zebras was discovered, the Quagga Project was started by Reinhold Rau in South Africa to recreate the quagga by selective breeding from plains zebra stock, with the eventual aim of reintroducing them to the wild. This type of breeding is also called breeding back. In early 2006, it was reported that the third and fourth generations of the project have produced animals which look very much like the depictions and preserved specimens of the quagga, though whether looks alone are enough to declare that this project has produced a true "re-creation" of the original quagga is controversial.

DNA from mounted specimens was successfully extracted in 1984, but the technology to use recovered DNA for breeding does not yet exist. In addition to skins such as the one held by the Natural History Museum in London, there are 23 known stuffed and mounted quagga throughout the world. A twenty-fourth specimen was destroyed in Königsberg, Germany (now Kaliningrad), during World War II.