BREMERTON, Washington: A river otter attacked a child at a Seattle-area marina, dragging the youngster from a dock and into the water before the mother rescued her child, wildlife officials said.
The child was pulled underwater and resurfaced after a few moments during the encounter Thursday at 9:30 a.m. at the Bremerton Marina in Kitsap County, Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife officers said in a press release.
The otter continued to bite and scratch as the mother pulled the child out of the water. The animal chased them as they left the dock, wildlife officials said. The child was treated at a hospital.
“We are grateful the victim only sustained minor injuries, due to the mother’s quick actions and child’s resiliency,” said Fish and Wildlife Sgt. Ken Balazs. “We would also like to thank the Port of Bremerton for their quick coordination and communication to their marina tenants.”
Officers trapped the otter and took it to a disease diagnostic lab for testing, including for rabies, the release said. The agency did not respond to questions Saturday about test results.
River otters are common throughout Washington and can be found in fresh and saltwater habitats, officials said. Encounters with humans are rare, with six occurring in the past decade, they said. River otters can be territorial and “like any wildlife, are inherently unpredictable,” officials said.
A river otter attacks a child at a Seattle-area marina
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A river otter attacks a child at a Seattle-area marina
- River otters can be territorial and “like any wildlife, are inherently unpredictable,” officials said
Duo wins Physics Nobel for key breakthroughs in AI
- The pair will receive their prize, consisting of a diploma, a gold medal and a $1 million cheque, from King Carl XVI Gustaf in Stockholm
STOCKHOLM: American John Hopfield and British-Canadian Geoffrey Hinton won the Nobel Prize in Physics on Tuesday for pioneering work in the development of artificial intelligence.
The pair were honored “for foundational discoveries and inventions that enable machine learning with artificial neural networks,” the jury said.
“This year’s two Nobel Laureates in Physics have used tools from physics to develop methods that are the foundation of today’s powerful machine learning,” the Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences said in a statement.
Hopfield, 91, a professor at Princeton University, was spotlighted for having created “an associative memory that can store and reconstruct images and other types of patterns in data.”
The jury said Hinton, a 76-year-old professor at the University of Toronto, “invented a method that can autonomously find properties in data, and so perform tasks such as identifying specific elements in pictures.”
“I’m flabbergasted... I had no idea that could happen,” Hinton told reporters via a phone interview as the winners of the award were announced in Stockholm.
The pair will receive their prize, consisting of a diploma, a gold medal and a $1 million cheque, from King Carl XVI Gustaf in Stockholm on December 10, the anniversary of the 1896 death of scientist Alfred Nobel who created the prizes in his last will and testament.
Last year, the Nobel Prize in Physics went to France’s Pierre Agostini, Hungarian-Austrian Ferenc Krausz and Franco-Swede Anne L’Huillier for research using ultra quick light flashes that enable the study of electrons inside atoms and molecules.
The Nobel season continues this week with the announcement of the winner, or winners, of the chemistry prize on Wednesday — followed by the much-anticipated prizes for literature on Thursday and peace on Friday.
The Economics Prize winds things up on Monday, October 14.
Awarded since 1901, the Nobel Prizes honor those who have, in the words of prize creator and scientist Alfred Nobel, “conferred the greatest benefit on humankind.”
Netflix series explores women’s dreams in the body-slamming world of Japanese pro wrestling
- The Netflix series tells the story of Dump Matsumoto, a real-life wrestling legend from the 1980s who grew up poor with an abusive father
TOKYO: “The Queen of Villains” is a typical coming-of-age tale about a young woman’s road to empowerment and self-discovery — except it all takes place in the body-slamming, arm-twisting world of Japanese professional wrestling.
The Netflix series, which began airing last month, tells the story of Dump Matsumoto, a real-life wrestling legend from the 1980s who grew up poor with a father who was often absent or abusive.
Matsumoto grew up angry, she said, and went on to create in her wrestling persona a ferocious, almost camp villain character, known in the sport as a “heel,” complete with outlandish Kabuki-like facial makeup, chains, sticks and a grotesque scowl. She loomed large as a symbol of fearless and defiant womanhood.
“I gave it my all to be evil,” Matsumoto said.
A hefty woman with a friendly smile, Matsumoto makes a point even now to adamantly deny that she was ever a nice person or acknowledge that many people in Japan, especially women, love her.
“I still beat people up in matches. I stuck forks in them and made them bleed,” she said, adding, “All the people who pretend to be good are the truly evil ones.”
“The Queen of Villains” follows the friendship between Matsumoto and Chigusa Nagayo of the popular wrestling tag team known as the Crush Gals. Nagayo served as an adviser, trainer and choreographer for the series’ dramatized wrestling scenes.
Japanese professional wrestling fans still talk about the matches between Matsumoto and the Crush Gals, including the ones they fought in the US
The actresses in the series spent two years training for their roles. They gained weight and muscle, and learned techniques like the “giant swing,” in which a wrestler grabs her opponent’s legs and moves in a dizzying circle, or the “flying knee kick,” which involves a jump and kick to the body while airborne.
The trick in professional wrestling is to execute the punches and body slams convincingly but in a controlled way to avoid serious injuries. A wrestler also must know how to fall properly.
One key fight scene took a month to film as the actors went over each move, again and again.
“Dump played a role to be hated by the entire nation,” said Yuriyan Retriever, a professional comedian who stars as Matsumoto in the series.
“Previously, there was a limit, maybe even unintentionally, beyond which I couldn’t go. But when I played Dump, all those emotions had to come out and be expressed,” she said.
She felt like she was no longer playing a role, she said, but that she had become Dump Matsumoto.
“It’s frightening to be hated, and I don’t think anyone wants to be hated,” Retriever said.
“When I finished a cut, I was crying. And my body was shaking. I can’t express it in words, but I understood all the pressures Dump must have felt.”
The series not only presents a women-beating-the-odds story against a backdrop of sexism and abusive management but it also captures the postwar period of the Showa-era in a way that feels authentic. The scenes used thousands of extras, many of them serious wrestling fans.
Some viewers say the real-life wrestling was more intense than the dramatized version in the new series.
Rionne McAvoy, an Australian filmmaker who as a professional wrestler was hit with a stick by Matsumoto, said: “The actors often fail to capture the intensity, grit and charisma required for these roles.”
But for most viewers, it’s real enough and heartbreaking.
“This is an eternal but emotional story portraying ordinary girls who passionately pursued a dream, found friendship and also themselves,” director Kazuya Shiraishi said.
“It gave me a chance to reflect on my own 15-year filmmaking career, what I truly want to be, what kind of films I want to make. I just wanted to tell their story, which is also everyone’s story.”
Police chase koala through Sydney train station
SYDNEY: A wayward koala led police on a low-speed, early morning chase through a Sydney train station, video released on Tuesday showed, surprising commuters in the city.
Video provided by Transport for New South Wales showed the koala ambling through Casula station on Friday, around 34 km (21 miles) south-west of the city’s central business district.
The video showed the koala checking out an elevator before opting to descend a stairway.
Trains in the area were ordered to slow as the koala — a normally reclusive species and one of Australia’s best-loved animals — came dangerously close to the platform edge.
The marsupial eventually hopped the station fence after police officers were dispatched to chase it away from the tracks.
“All passengers, great and small, are reminded to stay behind the yellow line,” Transport for New South Wales said in a statement.
Koala are listed as vulnerable to extinction in the state.
Don’t expect human life expectancy to grow much more, researcher says
- Women continue to live longer than men and life expectancy improvements are still occurring — but at a slowing pace, the researchers found
- The researchers focused on eight of the places in the world where people live the longest — Australia, France, Hong Kong, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Spain and Switzerland
NEW YORK: Humanity is hitting the upper limit of life expectancy, according to a new study.
Advances in medical technology and genetic research — not to mention larger numbers of people making it to age 100 — are not translating into marked jumps in lifespan overall, according to researchers who found shrinking longevity increases in countries with the longest-living populations.
“We have to recognize there’s a limit” and perhaps reassess assumptions about when people should retire and how much money they’ll need to live out their lives, said S. Jay Olshansky, a University of Illinois-Chicago researcher who was lead author of the study published Monday by the journal Nature Aging.
Mark Hayward, a University of Texas researcher not involved in the study, called it “a valuable addition to the mortality literature.”
“We are reaching a plateau” in life expectancy, he agreed. It’s always possible some breakthrough could push survival to greater heights, “but we don’t have that now,” Hayward said.
What is life expectancy?
Life expectancy is an estimate of the average number of years a baby born in a given year might expect to live, assuming death rates at that time hold constant. It is one of the world’s most important health measures, but it is also imperfect: It is a snapshot estimate that cannot account for deadly pandemics, miracle cures or other unforeseen developments that might kill or save millions of people.
In the new research, Olshansky and his research partners tracked life expectancy estimates for the years 1990 to 2019, drawn from a database administered by the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research. The researchers focused on eight of the places in the world where people live the longest — Australia, France, Hong Kong, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Spain and Switzerland.
The US doesn’t even rank in the top 40. But is also was included “because we live here” and because of past, bold estimates that life expectancy in the US might surge dramatically in this century, Olshansky said.
Who lives the longest?
Women continue to live longer than men and life expectancy improvements are still occurring — but at a slowing pace, the researchers found. In 1990, the average amount of improvement was about 2 1/2 years per decade. In the 2010s, it was 1 1/2 years — and almost zero in the US
The US is more problematic because it is harder hit by a range of issues that kill people even before they hit old age, including drug overdoses, shootings, obesity and inequities that make it hard for some people to get sufficient medical care.
But in one calculation, the researchers estimated what would happen in all nine places if all deaths before age 50 were eliminated. The increase at best was still only 1 1/2 years, Olshansky said.
Eileen Crimmins, a University of Southern California gerontology expert, said in an email that she agrees with the study’s findings. She added: “For me personally, the most important issue is the dismal and declining relative position of the United States.”
Why life expectancy may not be able to rise forever
The study suggests that there’s a limit to how long most people live, and we’ve about hit it, Olshansky said.
“We’re squeezing less and less life out of these life-extending technologies. And the reason is, aging gets in the way,” he said.
It may seem common to hear of a person living to 100 — former US President Jimmy Carter hit that milestone last week. In 2019, a little over 2 percent of Americans made it to 100, compared with about 5 percent in Japan and 9 percent in Hong Kong, Olshansky said.
It’s likely that the ranks of centenarians will grow in the decades ahead, experts say, but that’s because of population growth. The percentage of people hitting 100 will remain limited, likely with fewer than 15 percent of women and 5 percent of men making it that long in most countries, Olshansky said.
Nobel Prize in medicine honors two Americans for discovery of microRNA
- The Nobel Assembly said Monday that their discovery is “proving to be fundamentally important for how organisms develop and function”
STOCKHOLM: The Nobel Prize in medicine was awarded Monday to Americans Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun for their discovery of microRNA, a fundamental principle governing how gene activity is regulated.
The Nobel Assembly said that their discovery is “proving to be fundamentally important for how organisms develop and function.”
Ambros performed the research that led to his prize at Harvard University. He is currently a professor of natural science at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. Ruvkun’s research was performed at Massachusetts General Hospital and the Harvard Medical School, where he’s a professor of genetics, said Thomas Perlmann, Secretary-General of the Nobel Committee.
Perlmann said he spoke to Ruvkun by phone shortly before the announcement.
“It took a long time before he came to the phone and sounded very tired, but he quite rapidly, was quite excited and happy, when he understood what, it was all about,” Perlmann said.
Last year, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine went to Hungarian-American Katalin Karikó and American Drew Weissman for discoveries that enabled the creation of mRNA vaccines against COVID-19 that were critical in slowing the pandemic.
The prize carries a cash award of 11 million Swedish kronor ($1 million) from a bequest left by the prize’s creator, Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel.
The announcement launched this year’s Nobel prizes award season.
Nobel announcements continue with the physics prize on Tuesday, chemistry on Wednesday and literature on Thursday. The Nobel Peace Prize will be announced Friday and the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences on Oct. 14.
The laureates are invited to receive their awards at ceremonies on Dec. 10, the anniversary of Nobel’s death.