Friday, October 30, 2009 LONDON: Sharks abandon their young pups as soon as they're born. But far from being cold-hearted mothers, scientists have shown for the first time that they provide their pups with super-sized livers to live off while they learn to hunt.Researchers from Bangor University made the finding after trawling through shark data records from KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa spanning over 30 years. 'We found this really just by chance. We plotted liver mass against body mass and there was a massive peak in the really young sharks. There was an obvious pattern of the liver being used up,' says Nigel Hussey, who led the research. The huge livers, which make up around 20 per cent of the pups' body mass, are packed with fats and probably keep them going in the first months of their lives, say the researchers. Once the sharks are fully grown and get better at hunting, the livers make up just six per cent of their body mass.Until now, researchers hadn't looked in detail at how shark mothers invest in their young.
BAGHDAD: Nearly 500 U.S. Army combat engineers who specialize in clearing roads of explosives started shifting to southern Afghanistan."We are probably going to be the beginning of the influx you are going to see to Afghanistan," Lt. Col. Kevin Landers, commander of the Fort Carson, Colo.-based 4th Engineer Battalion, said as crews packed crates and cleaned vehicles for the flight to Kandahar.Obama has ordered 17,000 more U.S. soldiers and Marines to Afghanistan to bolster the 38,000 American troops already battling the resurgent Taliban."We are going to take this footprint out of Iraq," said Landers, whose battalion received word of its reassignment last month just after taking command of clearing roads in Baghdad of bombs and debris.
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