A fire at 106 W. Sherman in Williams took the life of 74-year old
Virginia N Docherty. Fire crews responded to the fire at approximately 6:45 pm. The fire is still under investigation.
Daily Archives: January 17, 2014
Kindergarten teacher accused of removing female student’s shirt
MESA, Ariz. — A Mesa kindergarten teacher was arrested Wednesday and booked for 25 counts of indecent exposure and one count of child abuse stemming from an incident in his classroom.
Thomas Washburn, 54, teaches kindergarten at Adams Elementary School in Mesa where the incident occurred on Wednesday.
The victim, a 6-year-old female, was in class with 24 classmates.
Washburn was reportedly upset and shouting in the class causing the victim to hide her face in the top of her shirt.
The victim’s mother described her daughter as “developmentally delayed” due to being born prematurely.
Read more and see video at AZFamily
Comedians Tend to Have Psychotic Personality Traits
Creative types tend to be a little crazy, right? Psychologists have now found that comedians actually demonstrate a lot of the same characteristics as people with bipolar disorder or schizophrenia.
As one of the researchers on the study, Gordon Claridge, told the Guardian,
“The creative elements needed to produce humour are strikingly similar to those characterizing the cognitive style of people with psychosis – both schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.”
Study participants included more than 500 comedians, 350 actors (a career considered creative but not necessarily funny), and 800 non-creative types, as a control. They came from the U.K., Australia, and the U.S.
Each participant filled out a survey [doc] asking about various feelings and experiences he or she had had. The questions were designed to identify psychotic traits in people who don’t have mental illness: traits such as anti-social behavior, belief in telepathy, and difficulty in organizing one’s thoughts.
Read more at Discover
Female Sea Snails No Longer Growing Penises Thanks to Ban on Toxic Chemical
Ships in the 1960s were often coated in a chemical called TBT to prevent sea critters like snails from clinging to the hull. After researchers found that the toxic chemical caused female sea snails to grow penises (alongside equally frightening effects in other species) the stuff was banned in 2008. Now, six years later, things are starting to look up for the snails.
Fed Up With Fouling
Ship builders have long struggled with the problem of fouling, whereby mollusks and barnacles hitch onto a hull, causing boat damage and creating drag that drives up fuel costs. Starting in the 1960s, a chemical called tributyltin (TBT) was painted on ships to keep them free from aquatic hitchhikers. It was toxic and therefore did the trick, as described in a 2002 report [pdf] from the International Maritime Organization:
As a biocide in anti-fouling paint, it proved extremely effective at keeping smooth and clean the hulls of ships and boats. And when it was introduced into anti-fouling paints, it was considered less harmful than biocides used in anti-fouling systems at the time: such as DDT and arsenic.
But as the chemical began to leach off the ships and accumulate in marine environments, especially around shipping ports, scientists started seeing negative effects on aquatic plants and animals.
Shellfish and sea snail populations were hit especially hard. Female whelks, for example, started growing penises and vas deferens (the tubes that directs sperm from the testes). This left the snails sterile—a condition called “imposex.” In Australia in 2004, for example, between 43 and 100 percent of snails studied were found to be imposex.
Read more at Discover