Liberians drop rice for spaghetti
Standing behind the wooden counter of his roadside restaurant, Emmanuel Biddle heaps piles of Liberian-style bolognese onto the plates of customers.

Ghost luxury hotels, half-built and rotting in the desert
Ecomostri abbandonati nel deserto del Sinai
With images by Sabine Haubitz and Stefanie Zoche of Haubitz+Zoche, the show looks at "the concrete skeletons of five-star hotel complexes" abandoned on Egypt's Sinai Peninsula. They are resorts that never quite happened, then, with names like Sultan's Palace and the Magic Life Imperial. This makes them "monuments to failed investment."

Politically correct names given to flu viruses
World Health Organization standardizes nomenclature, but experts say GPS sample locations should be given.
The system is now more politically correct. It avoids the “stigmatizing labelling of clades by geographical reference”, according to the WHO. In 2006, when scientists assigned the name 'Fujian-like virus' to a vaccine-resistant strain of H5N1 that spread across Asia, China objected strongly to the name. Government officials argued that the southeastern Chinese province of Fujian was tainted by association as the virus spread.

Beetle tree kill releases more carbon than fires
Canada’s beetle infestation is turning some forests into carbon sources.
An infestation of beetles could convert large swathes of Canadian forests to carbon sources rather than sinks, a new study suggests.
Fuelled by warmer winter weather, mountain pine beetles have swept through the conifers of British Columbia, killing trees in an estimated 74,000 to 94,000 square kilometres of forest.
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/48108/story.htm

Gooey Origin of Human Placenta Revealed (vecchia 13 aprile)
The gooey thing, which looks like a big, red kidney, is rather reptilian in its ancestry, new research suggests.
"The placenta is this amazing, complex structure and it's unique to mammals, but we've had no idea what its evolutionary origins are," said researcher Julie Baker, a molecular biologist at Stanford University in California.
Now Baker and her colleague have discovered that the inner lining of eggs laid by the distant ancestors of all mammals could be the origin of the placenta, and the whole setup evolved as mammals employed leftover reptilian-like genes. A better understanding of all this could shed light on pregnancy and disorders linked to it, the researchers say.

Bugs Use Plants as Telephones
That's the underground half of a conversation between bugs on a mustard plant. Scientists have discovered the insects below and above use the plant like a chemical telephone. When a subterranean insect takes up residence below a plant, it settles in to feast on the plant's roots. In order to alert leaf-eating insects of the "no vacancy," the underground insect sends a chemical warning signal through the plant leaves, so the leafeaters are alerted that the plant is occupied.
http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/253695

India's Forest Law Leaves Women Feeling Cut Out
India's land rights act enacted Jan. 1 was considered a major milestone for tribal and forest - dwelling communities. But women's activists say it fails to protect the property rights of women, some of whom are forming collectives to hold on to land.