Rare Animal-Shaped Mounds Discovered in Peru

For more than a century and a half, scientists and tourists have visited massive animal-shaped mounds, such as Serpent Mound in Ohio, created by the indigenous people of North America. But few animal effigy mounds had been found in South America until University of Missouri anthropology professor emeritus Robert Benfer identified numerous earthen animals rising above the coastal plains of Peru, a region already renowned for the Nazca lines, the ruined city of Chan Chan, and other cultural treasures."The mounds will draw tourists, one day," Benfer said. "Some of them are more than 4,000 years old. Compare that to the effigy mounds of North America, which date to between 400 and 1200 AD. The oldest Peruvian mounds were being built at the same time as the pyramids in Egypt."

Benfer identified the mounds, which range from five meters (16.5 feet) to 400 meters (1,312 feet) long in each of the six valleys he surveyed in coastal Peru. The mounds pre-date ceramics and were probably built using woven baskets to carry and pile up rock and soil.Like the Nazca lines, which include a series of giant animal outlines drawn on the ground to the south, the animal mounds were best observed from a higher vantage point. Google Earth images of the mounds revealed the shapes of birds, including a giant condor, a 5,000 year-old orca, a duck, and a caiman/puma monster seen in bone and rock carvings from the area.

Putting Information and Technology into Work for Transport."The finding of animal effigy mounds where there were none before changes our conception of early Peruvian prehistory," Benfer said. "That they probably represent the Andean zodiac is also a new find. A controversial interpretation of some Nazca figures as representations of the zodiac is supported by these mounds."Benfer suggested the structures may have been built as terrestrial manifestations of constellations the ancient Peruvians saw in the stars above. The mounds not only represented the stars, they aligned with them. So far, Benfer has found astronomical orientations at every giant mound.

Putting Information and Technology into Work for Transport

Johann Sigurdson, CEO of Aero-Equis Inc. started his technology presentation at the Animal Transportation Conference, held March 18-21, with a great introduction on how human beings can get so easily confused with all the information that is being pushed into our brains all the time, and especially the huge amount of misinformation in our information age.He used a wonderful quote to make his point: "A fact that has been known for a long time and has wide geographic acceptance is usually wrong." He is using more high-tech methods to make the information that is coming in easier to access and utilize successfully.

He said that there are no standards or consumer specifications for the minimum space requirements for all the different types and orientations of trailers, nor for the amount of headroom for a specific sized horse. The way the pull bar is attached to the mainframe, the type of materials (wood, plastic, fiberglass, steel, aluminum, etc.), the flooring, the footing used in a trailer, the emergency escapes (for humans), and numbers of windows for ventilation...none of that is determined by anyone except the manufacturer in consumer trailers.

Then he got to the point of the talk: That manufacturers are putting trailers out there based on what consumers think they want, and they don't know what is best because there has not been any research and development, crash testing, or basic gathering of crash data for any horse trailers (check back for my presentation in an upcoming blog for the first treatment of some of that data on 800 wrecks).

Fiberglass Planters Ideal Way to Add Beauty To Our Residential Spaces

Planting trees, shrubs, flourishingplants etc, on the ground they take a lot of space and often times can be boring to look at. Thanks to container gardening that allows you to maximize your space. This is as well the best alternative to make your garden more eye- catching and enticing. You can pick from the usual pots made of either terra cotta or plastic, to customized windowboxes. Homeowners or residential owners prefer residential planters to embellish their interior and exterior areas. But before you make a choice, always check its advantages and disadvantages. Example, pots made of terra cotta may not be fairly blown away on a breezy day but it eats up much water.

Thus, you need to water the plants more often or otherwise your plants will wilt. Pots made of plastic on the other hand, tends to snap over time. Consequently, rubbing off the soil from the container and maintaining your plant hydrated will be a challenge since there is nothing in the container will hold the water.It is easy for garden enthusiast, engineers and designers to use big planters made of fiberglass because they are weightless and they are very stunning to look at. There's a wide selection of planters that can be manufactured depending to your specification, you choose the size, design, shape or color.

One of the top class selection preffered is the Bowl-shaped fiberglass planter which looks elegant and can fit with plants and flowers both for indoor and outdoor designs.Storm debris can be dangerous to livestock, officials warn. The beauriful shape of the bowl will put a class A rating to your interior o exterior architectural design. An ugly and dull lobby of your garden will give a dramatic and high toned ambience by simply putting these appealing planters. It will make the setting ideal to be calm and chill. Putting these fiberglass planters to any part of your garden will be more attractive to the eye and improve architectural ideas.

Storm debris can be dangerous to livestock, officials warn

Insulation and plastic spread by Sunday's tornados may not mix well with livestock.Several calls have indicated that insulation and plastic is spread over an area where cattle are located in Lincoln County."If an animal eats enough small pieces of insulation in hay or other feed, it could bind together and create a large mass of insulation that could block the digestive tract and cause serious, even fatal, problems. We sometime see these types of blockages if cattle consume twine or net wrap or plastic bag material."

"Fiberglass has no toxic chemical properties. However, any indigestible foreign material eaten by cattle can cause blockage in the digestive system," Randy Saner, University of Nebraska-Lincoln Extension Educator said. "That means the risk associated with intestinal obstruction would likely be associated with the size of the insulation swallowed or the size of the animal consuming it. Which means a calf, lamb or goat could have problems with a small piece of insulation that would not affect a large cow.

As a result, Saner is generally recommending that producers pick up pieces of insulation and plastic in their fields and discard forage from a field area that is heavily contaminated with plastic and fiberglass."Small pieces of fiberglass that cause forage to only be lightly contaminated pose a low risk to cattle and livestock," Saner said.

Insulation, plastic present livestock health hazard

Several calls have indicated that insulation and plastic is spread over an area where cattle are located in Lincoln County. “Fiberglass has no toxic chemical properties," said Randy Saner, University of Nebraska-Lincoln Extension Educator.“Small pieces of fiberglass that cause forage to only be lightly contaminated pose a low risk to cattle and livestock,” said Saner.

"However, any indigestible foreign material eaten by cattle can cause blockage in the digestive system," Saner said. "That means the risk associated with intestinal obstruction would likely be associated with the size of the insulation swallowed or the size of the animal consuming it. Which means a calf, lamb or goat could have problems with a small piece of insulation that would not affect a large cow."

“If an animal eats enough small pieces of insulation in hay or other feed, it could bind together and create a large mass of insulation that could block the digestive tract and cause serious, even fatal, problems. We sometime see these types of blockages if cattle consume twine or net wrap or plastic bag material,” according to Saner.As a result, Saner is generally recommending that producers pick up pieces of insulation and plastic in their fields and discard forage from a field area that is heavily contaminated with plastic and fiberglass.