Lighted Towers and Flying Birds

According to a cellular-news.com article, more than 6 million birds are killed every year by the 84,000 communication towers across North America. The tallest 1.9% of these towers account for 71% of these avian mortalities. Researchers have found that birds particularly circle towers with solid red lights, causing them to run into the cables propping the tower up. Towers with blinking red lights, on the other hand, seem to cause fewer deaths. A study estimates, therefore, that replacing steady-burning lights with blinking lights on only the tallest towers (the roughly 4,500 towers greater than 150 meters tall) could reduce bird fatalities from communication towers by about 45 percent, or about 2.5 million birds.

Tallest Tower Title Returning to Lower Manhattan

By Monday, the rising steel frame of the new One World Trade Center is expected to surpass the Empire State Building in height. When completed, at 1,776-feet and 104 floors, the new skyscraper will be 408 feet taller than the Twin Towers previously occupying the site (a 408-foot broadcast antenna will top the structure). The new building will also surpass the 1,451-foot Willis Tower (formerly Sears Tower) in Chicago to become the tallest in the Western Hemisphere. The tallest building in the world is the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, at 2,717 feet.

Beneficial Brain Freeze?

According to a UPI article, "brain freeze" (like the kind you get when eating a cold beverage or dessert too quickly) may lead to potential migraine headache therapies. Researchers at the National University of Ireland and Harvard Medical School induced common brain freeze pain in 13 healthy volunteers so the effects could be studied.  They found that the pain was brought on by a rapid increase in blood flow through a major blood vessel in the brain -- the anterior cerebral artery, and subsided again once blood flow was restricted.  Therefore, the thought is that blood flow control techniques might be devised to treat migraines in a similar fashion.

Happy Birthday Fenway Park!

100 years ago, on April 20, 1912, Fenway Park hosted its very first baseball game, in which the Boston Red Sox hosted the New York Highlanders (who became the Yankees). It was one of three new concrete-and-steel parks to open in 1912, joined by Navin Field in Detroit and Redland Field in Cincinnati. The Red Sox won that game 7-6 in extra innings. Today, though, the Yankees belted five home runs — three over the Green Monster — to handily defeat the Red Sox, 6-2, in a centennial re-match.

I visited Fenway for the first time in my life last summer and, although not a Boston fan, am proud to have experienced one of the true shrines of baseball. Today, it is the oldest professional baseball stadium and has been sold out in 718 consecutive games dating back to 2003, which is the best streak in baseball history.  Chicago’s Wrigley Field is the only other ‘classic’ park remaining.   If you're interested, earlier this week, Mike Lopresti wrote an enjoyable USA Today article taking the perspective of Wrigley Field's potential resentment of all the Fenway fanfare.

Hot Enough For Ya?

Way back on September 13, 1922, a meteorological station in El Azizia, Libya, recorded a temperature of 136° F (57.8° C). As such, it has long been regarded as the hottest place on Earth. Death Valley, California, was the previous title holder with a very close second place measurement of 134° F (56.6° C) on July 10, 1913. A recent UPI article, however, reports that new research by a University of Montana team using data from the U.S. Geological Survey's Landsat satellites found that, in 2005, the Lut Desert in Iran reached a blistering 159.3° F (70.7° C). That's more than 22° F (12° C) warmer than the official air temperature record from Libya.