Saturday, March 12, 2016

Daily 2 Cents: Is The 'Night Stalker' Back? -- Cruisin' For 'Nessie' -- Scientist Grow Velociraptor Leg...on a Chicken

Is The 'Night Stalker' Back?

Crypto researcher David Weatherly posted the following on his blog Two Crows Paranormal:

Recently, I've received a curious report out of the Four Corners region involving a strange creature. I'll be posting more details on the case as they become available, but so far, the bare bones of the account reminds me of a previous incident covered by Crypto Four Corners...

...The crew from C4C dubbed this thing the "night stalker" due in part to its nocturnal visits. While many people assumed that this was some type of Sasquatch encounter, there are too many aspects to the case that don't line up with a typical Sasquatch.

On September 25, 2012 I posted the encounters at The 'Night Stalker': Terrible Being Torments Family:

JC and his team were contacted on Friday 9/21 in reference to a series of disturbing incidents occurring at a residence in the Four Corners area of New Mexico. The family had experience loud clawing sounds and indiscernible growls coming from outside their home. The daughter has also endured clawing outside her bedroom window as well as unexplained activity within the home. She woke to claw marks on her back and has noticed items moved in her bedroom. There have been several attempts to confront this being but in each instance it has eluded the efforts...

Continue reading at The 'Night Stalker': Terrible Being Torments Family...there are several images and a video link available. Watch David's blog for possible updates.

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Cruisin' For 'Nessie'

A Loch Ness cruise trip company has invested £1.4 million in a new luxury vessel.

It is hoped ‘Nessie’ hunters from across the world will flock to the Highlands after Cruise Loch Ness hope to have increased the odds of spotting the monster by commissioning a cutting-edge £1.4 million catamaran, designed to optimise passengers’ view of the famous Loch Ness.

Family run business Cruise Loch Ness, which is located at Fort Augustus in the Highlands, has given the green light for Australian-based vessel designer Incat Crowther to commission the vessel.

Construction of the catamaran for Cruise Loch Ness, which achieved its prestigious 5-star award from the Scottish Tourist Board in September 2015, is now underway at Exeter Fabrication in England.

The specially-designed catamaran boasts superior features such as monster-sized windows on the main deck, to optimise ‘Nessie’ spotting opportunities. Meanwhile the upper deck will be open at the sides, but covered above, meaning passengers won’t be forced to come inside in bad weather. Toilets and a bar will feature on the main deck.

The vessel will be powered by a pair of Volvo D9 MH main engines. Producing 313kW per side, these powerful engines are capable of propelling the vessel to speeds over 20 knots, whilst being extremely fuel-efficient at the same time.

The cutting-edge catamaran will be able to carry a total of 220 passengers, almost doubling Cruise Loch Ness’s current largest vessel capacity, which can take a total of 120 passengers.

The catamaran will hit the waves of Loch Ness in April 2017.

The vessel was commissioned following a dramatic rise in consumer demand after the family-run company saw a 20 per cent increase in passenger numbers in 2015, compared with the previous year.

Funding for the catamaran has come in the form of a business loan from the Clydesdale Bank as well as profits from the sale of an older vessel by Cruise Loch Ness.

Managing director Ronald Mackenzie said: “We’ve been experiencing year on year improved consumer trends, and 2015 was phenomenal for us. The Chinese market proved very lucrative in 2015 and we hope to see that continue.

“The idea of the catamaran has been floating about for a couple of years, but the time just feels right to take a leap. We felt if we didn’t do it now, we might have to turn away business in the future, and we certainly don’t want to do that.

“It’s a very exciting for all of the Cruise Loch Ness team. We have a great relationship with the Clydesdale Bank and could not have done it without that support.

“We did have a look around at the second hand boat market – but nothing was geared up to the ‘Nessie’ hunting standards that we want. This new catamaran is being custom-built to give tourists a unique experience whilst they are cruising the Loch.

“We hope the vessel will increase tourist numbers, and therefore increase visitors to the Highlands,which is great news for the economy as a whole.” - £1.4 million super catamaran to join hunt for ‘Nessie’

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Scientist Grow Velociraptor Leg...on a Chicken

This just in from the what-could-possibly-go-wrong department: Scientists from the Universidad de Chile, headed by Joâo Botelho, genetically manipulated chickens so that they would grow up with legs like dinosaurs. They apparently did not notice the major premise of the latest Jurassic Park movie, because this really looks like someone in a lab coat thought “Let’s make a creature grow up to express more velociraptor-like traits and just see what happens.”

But that’s not even the crazy part. The crazy part is that to do this, the researchers didn’t insert genes from any organism. They just silenced a gene the chickens already had.

Now, they didn’t build a chicken that looks like someone just cut-and-pasted a leathery green raptor leg onto it — but it’s close enough for government work. You see, chickens have a detached and diminished fibula. It’s the tiny pin-like (not a coincidence: fibula is Latin for pin) bone we hate in chicken legs. Suppressing one of the genes responsible for the differences between raptors and chickens — in this case, it’s a gene called Indian Hedgehog which is important to bone development — resulted in chickens that develop a full-length, tubular fibula connected at the ankle. They ended up with chickens possessed of bone structure that matches the lower leg anatomy of a raptor. Read more at Scientists tweak genes and grow a dinosaur leg on a chicken