Hagfish eat invertebrates (animals such as worms) and are also scavengers, eating fish which are dead or dying. Hagfish have four sets of teeth on their tongue to bite pieces of flesh from its prey. They use these tongue teeth to eat. The teeth pinch together to lock onto its food, helping it tear into dead and dying fish which have sunk to the bottom of the sea, where it lives. Often, a hagfish digs into the dead fish that it is eating, removing the insides of the dead fish.
Usually, people only see hagfish when nets that sweep the sea floor are pulled up. Every fish, even the dead ones at the bottom of the sea, are brought up into the boat by the net. In some of those dead fish, hagfish are found eating. The smelly fish are dumped onto the deck of ships with the hagfish poking out from their bodies.
When hagfish are afraid, they make slime. This slime comes out of the sides of the hagfish's body. They are able to make enough slime to completely fill a two-gallon bucket. The reason such a small fish can make so much slime is because the slime comes out in strings that quickly swell up much bigger when they are in the water.Their unusual way of eating and their slime has made many people call the hagfish the most "disgusting" of all sea creatures. Although hagfish are sometimes called "slime eels," they are not eels at all.
Hagfish are usually not eaten by humans in most countries. However, meat from the inshore hagfish (a type of hagfish known as "kkomjangeo" (꼼장어) or "meokjango" (먹장어) in Korean and "Nuta-unagi" in Japanese) is a popular food in Korea.
Hagfish skin is used to make leather for wallets and belts. When this leather is sold, it is called "eel skin".
Scientists are studying hagfish slime to see if they can use it to make things. The strings of protein in hagfish slime are thin and strong, so they are a useful material. Because it is not made from oil, hagfish slime would be more environmentally friendly than the plastics that we use now.
Population (statistics)
In statistics, a population is a set of things from which samples may be drawn. This allows statistical inferences to be drawn, or estimates made of the total population. For example, if we were interested in crows, then we would sample the set of crows which is of interest. The population of crows is limited to crows that exist now or in the future. Probably, geography will be a limitation in practice. To fairly represent the whole population a sample needs to be random.
Population is also used to refer to a set of measurements or values, not only cases actually observed. Suppose, for example, we are interested in the set of all adult crows now alive in the county of Cambridgeshire, and we want to know the mean weight of these birds. For each bird in the population of crows there is a weight, and the set of these weights is called the population of weights.
Biota
A biota is a term used for all the living things at a certain time at a certain place. Examples of biota include Cambrian biota and Madagascan biota. Because it includes all the living members of a given environment, the term is used especially in ecology. A similar term is biome, which is used to refer to geographical regions and environments. Tundra, for example, is a biome.
Flora, fauna and other forms of life such as fungi are collectively called biota.
Short-tailed shearwater
The short-tailed shearwater ("Ardenna tenuirostris", formerly "Puffinus tenuirostris") is a migratory seabird of the Procellariidae family. It breeds in Tasmania and south-eastern Australia. It can also be called yolla or moonbird, and is commonly known as the muttonbird in Australia.
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BOINC
BOINC, or The Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing, is an organization that lets ordinary people use their computers to do scientific work. SETI, or Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence, is the most popular of the BOINC programs. SETI searches for radio signals from outer space that might be a sign of alien life and worlds. BOINC involves other scientific work. For example, it allows individuals to use their computer to find the structures of proteins, a cure for the disease malaria or the very structure of our galaxy, the Milky Way.
Human Rights Campaign
The Human Rights Campaign is an organization that supports the rights of gay, bi-sexual or transgender men and women in the United States. They are the largest such group in the United States, with over 750,000 members and people who support them. The HRC works to ensure that the rights of these individuals are protected and respected throughout the United States. One issue that the HRC works on is to make sure that individuals have the right to marry people of the same sex if they want.
Rachel Maddow
Rachel Anne Maddow (born April 1, 1973) is an American progressive female talk show host on the television network MSNBC, where she is the host of "The Rachel Maddow Show". She is the first openly gay host of a primetime network news series.
Secular Coalition for America
The Secular Coalition for America is an organization that supports the principle that the government should not interfere with religion nor should it promote or endorse a religious view. It is made up of humanists, atheists, agnostics, freethinkers and theists along other organizations who support these basic ideals. Member organizations include Atheist Alliance International, the Institute for Humanist Studies, the Secular Student Alliance, the Secular Web, American Humanist Association, Society for Humanistic Judaism, the Freedom From Religion Foundation, the Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers, the American Ethical Union, Camp Quest and American Atheists. The Secular Coalition for America urges Congress to support the principles of making sure the government is not promoting religion and is being neutral towards religion.
Ornette Coleman
Randolph Denard Ornette Coleman (March 9, 1930 – June 11, 2015) was an American jazz musician. He plays the saxophone, violin and trumpet. He is also a composer. He was one of the people that helped make a new jazz style called free jazz, in the 1960s. Coleman's music is also like blues music. His album "Sound Grammar" won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for music.
Coleman was born in Fort Worth, Texas. He began playing R&B and bebop music, at first on the tenor saxophone. He wanted to leave his home town so he got a job in 1949 with a traveling show. Then he played with touring R&B shows. In Baton Rouge, he was attacked and his saxophone was destroyed. After that he changed to the alto saxophone, and that is still the instrument he usually plays. He joined a band and traveled with them to Los Angeles, in California. He worked at different jobs while still trying to be successful as a musician.
From the start, Coleman played his music differently to other musicians. Some Los Angeles jazz musicians thought he was playing out of tune. In 1958 Coleman made a record called "Something Else!!!!: The Music of Ornette Coleman". Other musicians like Don Cherry, Billy Higgins, Don Payne and Walter Norris also played on the record.
Coleman was very busy in 1959. His made a record called "Tomorrow Is the Question!". He played on this ecord with a quartet. He did not play with a piano player. He started working with a record label called Atlantic Records. He made a record called "The Shape of Jazz to Come" in 1959. A music critic called Steve Huey said it was a very important jazz record. The album was different from other jazz music.
Coleman's quartet played at a jazz club in New York City. They were popular with other musicians like Leonard Bernstein and Lionel Hampton. Other musicians like Miles Davis did not like his music.
Coleman often played a plastic saxophone. He had first bought a plastic one in Los Angeles in 1954 because he could not afford a metal one. He did not like the sound of the plastic saxophone at first. Now he plays a metal saxophone.