::: Da Me En :::
[soundcloud url="http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/29713772"] Track: The Bug - London Zoo - S.k.e.n.g.
This is the perfect song to accompany my new friend infrared Polar Bear.
About my new friend, i found this polar bear jpeg while reading about scientific research regarding the tracking of said bears and how hard they are to see as they are camouflage but also because they do not leak heat and can't be tracked that way either.
Quote:
"Everyone knows that polar bears are furry and cute, but few know that sometimes they can also be invisible.
While still an ME undergrad at Berkeley, Jessica Preciado plumbed the icy depths of a question that already had the whole natural science community buzzing.
A few years ago, scientists doing an aerial census of the polar bear population in the arctic encountered a problem. The polar bears being counted were hard to spot because their white fur blended into the snow. Scientists decided to use infrared, heat sensing technology for the survey, but found that curiously, the polar bears became invisible. Scientists could see the eyes, nose and breath, but not the bear.
“Everyone got really excited about this, particularly the military because it could have ramifications for creating infrared camouflage in cold climates,” says Preciado.
The excitement calmed when it was hypothesized that the reason for the invisibility was the polar bear’s deep layers of blubber and fur, which trap body heat below their skins, making the polar bears’ surface temperatures the same as the snow.
As an undergrad working in Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Preciado decided to further pursue a mystery that the scientific world so quickly shrugged off.
“Infrared detection functions not only by surface temperature, but also by the radiative properties of hair and skin. The last time people measured the radiative properties of polar bear hair was 50 years ago, and now we have much better equipment,” she says.
Preciado took advantage of the advanced light-source technology at LBNL (one of the few in the country) to take a closer look at polar bear hair procured from the San Francisco Zoo. “Not many people have access to the technology they need to measure something this small, I was lucky to have the advanced light-source telescope so close,” she adds."
Original Article: http://coe.berkeley.edu/engnews/fall02/3S/polarbear.html
HE SCARY!!
...and I appreciate the pre brostep dubstep...
