Q: Can it be too cold to snow?
A: It can snow at any temperature below freezing. It snows at the South Pole, where the temperature is rarely above minus 40 degrees. In more hospitable climates, however, it doesn't snow much when the temperature falls below about minus 4 degrees. When moist air cools, it starts producing snow before it gets that cold. By the time the temperature drops to minus 4 degrees, the snow has already fallen and the air is dry. The clouds that remain are made of ice crystals, and these don't produce much snow. California Institute of Technology.
Q: How do meteorologists calculate wind chill?
A: The National Weather Service's wind chill chart, equation and calculator can be found at http://www.weather.gov/om/windchill/index.shtml. National Weather Service
http://www.thecourier.com/Opinion/columns/2011/Feb/JU/ar_JU_022111.asp?d=022111,2011,Feb,21&c=c_13

New Zealand, at one end of the Pacific Ring of Fire, is a geologically active zone that causes earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. Its largest city, Auckland, is built over a dormant volcanic field whose last eruption created an 850-foot cone that dominates the city's harbor. Its second-largest city, Christchurch, sits about 80 miles east of the Alpine Fault, where tectonic plates are sliding past each other and pushing up the Southern Alps, which form the spine of the country's South Island. The Wall Street Journal February 25, 2011

Rhonda Kimmel's 11-year-old West Highland terrier, Maxx, goes with her everywhere—to the mall, restaurants and even to the bank. What gives Maxx entree to places normally off-limits to canines and other animals is the embroidered, purple vest he sports. It says: "Therapy Dog Maxx." Maxx is a lot of things, including well-behaved, and he is a faithful companion. What he is not, however, is a therapy dog or a service dog, and Ms. Kimmel is not disabled. Still, Ms. Kimmel says the vest, which she purchased online, no questions asked, makes people think otherwise, so they don't object to Maxx. "They know they are not supposed to ask," Ms. Kimmel says, alluding to the federal law that protects people with service animals from inquiries about the nature of their disability. Beginning March 15, the Americans With Disabilities Act will only recognize dogs as service animals. The new regulations include a provision that says the public must accommodate, where reasonable, trained miniature horses as well. the new rules do little to get rid of the fakers. "If people are clever and they have a well-behaved dog, they know just what to say to get their dog on board," says Toni Eames, president of the International Association of Assistance Dog Partners. "Or they can get a friendly psychologist to write a note." It's risky for businesses to deny access to people accompanied by service dogs—even if they think they are pretending to be disabled—because if suspicions prove to be unfounded, a business could face civil penalties of up to $55,000 for violating a person's civil rights. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703652104576122461180284204.html

The Great Black Swamp was a glacially caused wetland in northwest Ohio. Although much of the area to the east, south, and north was settled in the early 19th century, the difficulty of traveling through the swamp delayed its development by several decades. The Great Black Swamp was Ohio's last frontier, and beginning in the 1840s, it took several generations of determined farmers to drain it and make it the rich, flat farmland of today. The Ohio Railroad Company attempted to lay tracks over the muddy swamp in the 1830s and 1840s. After the project got underway, parts of the railroad began disappearing into the mud, including the track and equipment on board. Around the 1850s the state of Ohio began an organized attempt to drain the swamp for agricultural use and ease of travel. James B. Hill, living in Bowling Green, Ohio, in the mid-19th century, made the quick drainage of the Black Swamp possible with his invention of the Buckeye Traction Ditcher. Hill's ditching machine laid drainage tiles at a record pace. The development of railroads and a local drainage tile industry are thought to have contributed greatly to drainage and settlement of this once uninhabitable “Forbidden Zone”. In the 1850s, 140 railroads were planned in Ohio, but only 25 of them were ever built. In 1853, the canal transported its own demise: iron for rail lines. http://www.acyhs.org/ACYHS_CDSTL.php
A serious problem for using canals for transportation is that they froze early and thawed late.

Brian Jacques, the author of the bestselling Redwall series, died on February 5. Hugely popular with children from the publication in 1986 of Redwall, the first in the lengthy sequence, Jacques's books were among those that they needed no adult guidance to find; they latched on to them hungrily and then shared them with friends. Written in a flowing, flowery prose, the simply structured stories tell of the epic struggles between the good inhabitants of Redwall Abbey and its surrounding Mossflower countryside, and the bad invaders who must be kept at bay. Jacques's vividly created imaginary world is entirely anthropomorphic; mice supported by voles, badgers, hares and other peaceable creatures live in a world of harmony within the confines of the abbey and the nearby countryside. Led by the good Abbot Mortimer, the abbey's mission is to keep the world peaceful and ordered. The combination of a completely imagined world full of domestic detail – especially the kind of institutional feasts later made familiar at Hogwarts – with a strongly created mythology to underpin them, big-scale plots and Jacques's rolling prose quickly turned Redwall into a leading international brand in children's books. Worldwide sales exceeded 20m copies, and spin-offs included maps and family trees to increase the sense of reality. Jacques tried other kinds of stories, including The Castaways of the Flying Dutchman (2001) and its sequels, before returning to the Redwall world. Delivering milk to the Royal school for the blind in Wavertree, Liverpool, brought Jacques into contact with the pupils, and it was for them that he first told the Redwall stories. The needs of this first audience encouraged Jacques to describe his newly created world as vividly as possible; wisely, he retained the same detail and drama when the stories were written down. Their quality was recognised by a former English teacher, Alan Durband, who sent them to a publisher without telling Jacques and secured him a contract.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/feb/08/brian-jacques-obituary

Could beetles, dragonfly larvae and water bug caviar be the meat of the future? As the global population booms and demand strains the world's supply of meat, there's a growing need for alternate animal proteins. Insects are high in protein, B vitamins and minerals like iron and zinc, and they're low in fat. Insects are easier to raise than livestock, and they produce less waste. Insects are abundant. Of all the known animal species, 80% walk on six legs; over 1,000 edible species have been identified. And the taste? It's often described as "nutty." The vast majority of the developing world already eats insects. Will Westerners ever take to insects as food? It's possible. We are entomologists at Wageningen University, and we started promoting insects as food in the Netherlands in the 1990s. Many people laughed—and cringed—at first, but interest gradually became more serious. In 2006 we created a "Wageningen—City of Insects" science festival to promote the idea of eating bugs; it attracted more than 20,000 visitors. Over the past two years, three Dutch insect-raising companies, which normally produce feed for animals in zoos, have set up special production lines to raise locusts and mealworms for human consumption.
See more plus a recipe at: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703293204576106072340020728.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

Abigail Kawananakoa has been on a decades-long treasure hunt—a bid to recover silverware, lamps, rare furniture and other assorted objects from her family's former home. This 84-year-old is a princess—a descendant of the royal family that ruled the former nation of Hawaii more than a century ago, presiding from graceful Iolani Palace in downtown Honolulu. But much of the 19th-century palace's custom-made furniture, oil paintings and other treasures disappeared after January 1893, when a small band of businessmen overthrew the monarchy. Palace bounty has trickled in from some unlikely places. In 1987, a California couple bought a pretty porcelain plate for fifty cents at a community college swap meet in Huntington Beach, Calif. After seeing a television program about Iolani Palace, they realized the plate, with its royal insignia, had come from the palace's French Pillivuyt china service. They donated it in 2007. A group of Iowa eighth graders learned from their teacher that a small mahogany table in the palace actually belonged to the state of Iowa, which had received it as a gift from an Iowa resident and then lent it back to the Hawaiians. The kids, calling themselves the Give 'Em Back their Table Committee, began a campaign in 1999 to persuade the Iowa government to permanently give the table back to the palace. Iowa transferred legal ownership in 2000, and the table is now a permanent addition to King David Kalakaua's library, according to the palace. About half of the palace's contents remain at large. Palace staffers and volunteers say that even today they know where a number of items are after spotting them in private homes. Some owners refuse to give stuff back, they say; others do so anonymously.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704013604576104611711914484.html