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Director Cagan Irmak’s Ulak will be opening soon in Turkey

Official site

Translation of the trailer from Twitch:

ULAK-The Messenger

They were 6
One betrayed
5 were left
5 were killed
And became nothing
And one day
A messenger came from the old times
They were in deep than the deepest well.
Darker than the darkest heart.
There was no hope
And one day he came from far with secrets in his bag.
Told them the story of love, belief and courage.
The believers waited as there was one more (messenger) to come.

Another crazy Turkish action film? A serious revenge flick? We shall see…

Popularity: 8% [?]

Habitat Isolation

Ever wonder about habitat isolation? Well, wonder no more!

habitat - ecological distinct area where a species “cruises”
niche - an organism’s way of life
sympatric - living together in the same habitat
allopatric - living in different habitats

There are three main methods of habitat isolation:

Microspatial habitat Isolation - members of two species occupy the same general area but their reproductive encounters are reduced, due to adaptions or preferences for ecologically different sections of the area.
Examples:
–Two species of drongo birds Dicurus ludwigii and Dicurus admilis. D. ludwigii never ventures outside the edge of the evergreen forest, while D. admilis is always in dense forest areas. The two may be 50 yards apart but will rarely interact. (Mayer 1947)
–6 species of the goldenrod Solidago are distributed along a moisture gradient on a prairie slope, thus are microspatially isolated from each other in the microhabitats created by the levels of moisture. (Werner and Platt 1976)
–the alfalfa and clover races of the pea aphid Acyrthosiphon pisum cannot effectively feed on each other’s plants, which limits their possiblity of interbreeding.

More on the pea aphid Acyrthosiphon pisum - it is a cyclical parthenogen. Parthenogenesis is when a sexual creature reproduces without mating events. The pea aphid will have10-12 asexual generations before reproducing asexually. They are host specific insects, living and breeding on the plants they eat. Acyrthosiphon pisum pisum has three races, including the clover and alfalfa races mentioned earlier. The only way to distinguish the two is their host plants. Hybrids are rare and show reduced fitness (Via et al 2000). This looks to be an example of sympatric speciation, but before we can jump to that conclusion we must look at the genetics. The races differ by five genes that affect acceptance of host and performance on host. As individuals with the “proper” alleles performed better on their host plants, and the aphids sorted themselves accordingly, this is evidence of sympatric speciation.

Macrospatial Habitat Isolation - The two taxa cannot interbreed because their habitat is allopatric (different or seperated).
Examples:
–Parasites on their hosts are very often host specific.
–Ophraella chrysomelid beetles are host specific, as larvae and adults feed on one or a few plant species, and cannot survive on the others. The fact that their host plants do not occur in the same habitat distinguishes them from the sympatric aphid races.

BOTH Macrospatial and Microspatial Habitat Isolation - this is mainly microhabitats that overlap in a parchwork fashion.
Examples:
–Crickets Gryllus pennsylvanicus and Gryllus firmus both inhabit the Eastern US, where they are allopatric. They seperate in that G. pennsylvanicus prefers loamy soils and G. firmus prefers sandy soils. At times they exist in close proximity, but still remain confined to the prefered soil type.
–Oaks Quercus gambelii and Quercus grisea follow the same pattern.

Habitat isolation is an important barrier to gene flow, and can occur even with slight variations in habitat but create situations where sympatry becomes allopatry. These barriers can be very strong, such in cases of geographic barriers. Once barriers are in place, this gives chance for more isolating barriers to arise and further differentiate the two populations.

These examples only deal with habitat isolation, they do not involve other methods of isolation.

Popularity: 9% [?]

Here is the RiffTrax Live report I promised. I went to the Memorial Day show at Cobb’s Comedy Club in San Francisco. I and my girlfriend attended, where everyone was in the dark as to the subject of the movie we would be watching. As we sat at the tables waiting to order the two drinks we were required to order (stupid minimum drink rules!) they accidentally flashed the Over the Top title screen on the screen. Now the riffers already did Over the Top, except it was a Mike only affair. This time there were all three of them, and the jokes came faster and more furious. I never even finished the solo Mike RiffTrax, and now experiencing all three of them doing it I probably never will, as I’ll be disappointed by the slower previous effort. In all a good time was had, despite the extra bill from the drinks. Had I been able to go to San Rafael I would have, but we wouldn’t have been in town. Hopefully they will be back soon, and more riffing will be riffed!

Popularity: 14% [?]

New review is up - Bratz Diamondz

One of the DTV CGI features of those horrid dolls, the movie is just as horrible. Complete with a video clip that will make your eyeballs bleed until you drown in your own blood. And you will want to!

Popularity: 9% [?]

Will be out of town at the afore mentioned riffTrax live and visiting my girlfriend, so next week’s update will be late. To make up for it, I peppered the Death Warrior review with tons of movies. Lots of crazy Turkish ninja action!

Popularity: 7% [?]

RiffTrax for Eragon has been watched. Excellent, excellent, gave that movie what it deserved! Best part was the end credits! Don’t forget to check out our take on Eragon as well.

The current RiffTrax is Glitter. Yes, Mariah Carey’s Glitter! Talk about your DEEP HURTING! Special guest riffer is Mary Jo Pehl (Pearl Forrester!) BOOTY BOOTY BOOTY BOOTY! Don’t forget to listen to the end credits on this one as well.

Next up: Predator!

In addition, RiffTrax live is this weekend, and they won’t be doing Predator, the new movie is a secret, and I will be there Monday to see the second show! Hopefully will have lots to report.

Popularity: 12% [?]

Yes, the Sims, the video game, is being made into a movie. Seriously. The Sims. The game where you pretend to be people and control them until you get bored and kill them off in creative ways (at least that is what I did…) is becoming a major movie. This may be the first game rated R for Whoo-hoo!

Fox brings ‘SIMS’ to bigscreen
Film will be a live-action version
By PETER GILSTRAP
20th Century Fox has acquired feature rights to the life simulation computer game “The SIMS” from Electronic Arts, and has set project up with Fox-based John Davis.

The five-year-old franchise is the best selling PC game in history, with worldwide sales topping 85 million, bringing in over $1.6 billion. Pic will be a live-action version.

Steve Asbell is overseeing the project for Fox with SIMS Studio head Rod Humble managing the creative property for Electronic Arts. Brian Lynch will script; story is under wraps with talent yet to be named.

“‘The SIMS has done an interactive version of an old story, which is what it’s like to have infinite power and how do you deal with it,” said Humble. “Given that that’s an old story, you can imagine how easily that would translate to traditional story telling.”

Davis’ most recent projects include “Norbit,” “When A Stranger Calls,” and “Eragon.”

Lynch scripted and helmed upcoming “Big Helium Dog,” and penned “Scary Movie 3,” and is managed by Benderspink.

Also, I hope Big Helium Dog isn’t upcoming, because that is a barely released View Askew movie from 1999, so the writer must be confused. From the description if this turns out to be just a movie watching somoene playing the game I will make my own Sims of the writer and director, then wall them up in their house so they starve and die. Then the house gets burnt down when firecrackers are set off in the kitchen.

Popularity: 8% [?]

I need to be putting some science up in this blog as I am a scientist, after all!

So to start here is a story about a virgin birth from a Hammerhead shark. Just wait until that makes it into the next Shark Attack movie!

Hammerhead Shark in Nebraska Gives Virgin Birth

Wednesday, May 23, 2007

DUBLIN, Ireland — Female sharks can fertilize their own eggs and give birth without sperm from males, according to a new study of the asexual reproduction of a hammerhead in a U.S. zoo.

The joint Northern Ireland-U.S. research, being published Wednesday in the Royal Society’s peer-reviewed Biology Letters journal, analyzed the DNA of a shark born in 2001 in the Henry Doorly Zoo in Omaha, Neb.

The shark was born in a tank with three potential mothers, none of whom had contact with a male hammerhead for at least three years.

Analysis of the baby shark’s DNA found no trace of any chromosomal contribution from a male partner. Shark experts said this was the first confirmed case in a shark of parthenogenesis, which is derived from Greek and means “virgin birth.”

Asexual reproduction is common in some insect species, rarer in reptiles and fish, and has never been documented in mammals.

The list of animals documented as capable of the feat has grown along with the numbers being raised in captivity — but until now, sharks were not considered a likely candidate.

“The findings were really surprising because as far as anyone knew, all sharks reproduced only sexually by a male and female mating, requiring the embryo to get DNA from both parents for full development, just like in mammals,” said marine biologist Paulo Prodahl of Queen’s University of Belfast, Northern Ireland, a co-author of the report.

Before the study, many shark experts had presumed that the Nebraska birth involved a female shark’s well-documented ability to store sperm for a lengthy period of time. Doing this for six months is common, while three years would be exceptional, they agreed.

The lack of any paternal DNA in the baby shark ruled out this possibility.

“We were all very skeptical about these reports, about the possibility of a so-called virgin birth in a shark, because sharks have this unusual ability to store sperm for months if not years. So this finding is new and definitely unexpected,” said Bob Hueter, director of the Center for Shark Research at the Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota, Fla., who wasn’t involved in the project.

He noted that sharks have been on Earth longer than other species higher up the evolutionary chain that have also demonstrated this ability, such as lizards and birds.

The report’s other co-author, Mahmood Shivji of the Guy Harvey Research Institute in Dania Beach, Fla., said the finding explained growing numbers of reports of mystery, male-free shark births in captivity.

Shivji said the research “may have solved a general mystery about shark reproduction,” because it suggests that sharks can “switch from a sexual to a non-sexual mode of reproduction.”

But he said this was not necessarily a positive ability because baby sharks produced only by the mother suffer from “reduced genetic diversity.”

Genetic diversity makes living creatures better able to adapt to threats, such as disease.

Remember that recently a female Komodo Dragon had a virgin birth as well, proving that their species could also. No word on if the komodo was a gigantic mutant komodo or if it fought a cobra.

Female Komodo Dragon Has Virgin Births

By Jeanna Bryner, LiveScience Staff Writer

posted: 20 December 2006 01:03 pm ET

Maybe females could live without males, at least for Komodo dragons. These behemoths of the reptile world can produce babies without fertilization by a male, scientists recently discovered.

Currently at London’s Chester Zoo, one mother-to-be named Flora [image] is waiting for her eight offspring to hatch, each one the result of a process called parthenogenesis–or a virgin conception.

“Parthenogenesis has never been documented in Komodo dragons before now, so this is absolutely a world first,” said co-researcher Kevin Buley of Chester Zoo.

No sperm needed

Parthenogenesis, in which an unfertilized egg develops to maturity, has been found in 70 species of vertebrates, including captive snakes and a monitor lizard species. In most of these reptile cases, this process is their only method of reproduction.

In some whiptail lizards, males have become somewhat of an accessory, and all individuals are female. The type of asexual reproduction in whiptail lizards generates all-female offspring.

The Komodo dragon, turns out, can do both: they can reproduce sexually or asexually depending on their environmental conditions. At most zoos, females live alone and are kept separate from other dragons.

Magic dragon

In May of this year, Flora laid 25 eggs, of which 11 were viable. The zookeepers knew Flora had played both mom and pop as soon as they confirmed her eggs were fertile. That’s because Flora had never come into contact with a male dragon while at the zoo.

Three of the developing eggs collapsed during incubation, providing embryonic material for testing this theory. The zoo staff worked with Phillip Watts of Liverpool University to carry out genetic analysis of the collapsed eggs.

“This paternity test confirmed that all the genetic material in the eggs had come from Flora and that she was indeed both the mother and the father of the developing eggs,” Buley told LiveScience.

Egg-cellent

Both males and females carry out meiosis in which cells divide to form the respective sex cells, sperm or egg. In females, meiosis produces four egg-progenitor cells, one of which becomes the egg while the other three typically get reabsorbed by the female’s body. For Flora, one of the extra cells acted like a surrogate sperm and fertilized the egg cell, explained Buley.

The one-parent event resulted in offspring containing the same genetic material as their mother. Flora’s infant dragons will not be her clones, however, because there is genetic shuffling going on during the egg production stage, Buley said.

For instance, not all copies of genes are identical and each gene has an alternate form. If a person has two “alleles” for blond hair she would show a head of sunny hair, but if one allele was for blond and the other for dark brown, the person could show up a brunette. The same shuffling process occurred in the Komodo dragon babies.

Family affairs

With the ability to reproduce without male mates, Komodo females could potentially found an entirely new colony on their own. “Theoretically, a female Komodo dragon in the wild could swim to a new island and then lay a fertile clutch of eggs,” Buley said.

The downside is that all hatchlings resulting from this type of parthenogenesis are males. “These would grow up to mate with their own mother and therefore, within one generation, there would potentially be a population able to reproduce normally on the new island,” Buley explained.

In the long-term this Oedipus-like practice could lead to health problems associated with inbreeding, as the entire colony would have such low genetic diversity.

The results also have implications for captive-breeding programs that have sprouted to ensure the survival of the threatened lizards. Fewer than 4,000 Komodo dragons are thought to remain in the wild, residing on just three islands in Indonesia.

Scientists wonder if the act of keeping males and females separate could cause them to switch from sexual to asexual reproduction, which could lead to decreased genetic diversity.

The discovery is detailed in the Dec. 21 issue of the journal Nature.

Popularity: 8% [?]

New review is up: DOA Dead of Alive

Complete with movie clip and lots of photos as the film is mostly visual.

Popularity: 8% [?]

News of some exploitation DVDs coming to America (even though they aren’t even being released in Japan! For once it pays to be in Region 1)

1970s sex and violence trilogy comes to DVD
Author: Keith Aiken
Source: Media Blasters, Inc.
Special Thanks to Richard York, Oki Miyano, and Anthony Romero

Half-breed Rica was born under a very bad sign. Her mother was raped by American GIs and Rica was the result. Rica herself was raped by Hirose, one of her mother’s johns, at an early age. Scarred for life from Day One, Rica was practically raised with a knife in her hand and hate in her heart for all men!

Soon Rica is mixed up in a world of trouble, running with gangs, scrapping with hoodlums and excelling in the ways of the underworld. But no matter how many times she ends up in jail or gets manhandled by thugs, nothing can stand in the way of her ultimate goal: Revenge! –Plot synopsis for RICA

Media Blasters has acquired rights to Toho’s RICA series, and will be bringing all three films to DVD. The first movie, RICA (Konketsuji Rika, aka RIKA THE MIXED-BLOOD GIRL, 1972), will go on sale August 14, with street dates for RICA: LONELY WANDERER (Konketsuji* Rika: Hitoriyuku Sasuraitabi, 1973) and RICA: JUVENILE’S LULLABY (Konketsuji Rika: Hamagure Komoriuta, 1973) to be announced.

Made at the height of “pinky violence” fever in Japan, RICA was produced by Office 203 and the Modern Movie Association, and released theatrically by Toho on November 26, 1972. The film was based on the manga by Taro Bonten (who has a cameo role in the movie). The screenplay was written by Kaneto Shindo, who is famous in Japan for such films as THE TALE OF GENJI (Genji Monogatari, 1951), CHILDREN OF HIROSHIMA (Gembaku no Ko, 1952), LUCKY DRAGON NO. 5 (Daigo Fukuryu-Maru, 1959), BLACK LIZARD (Kurotakage, 1962), THE WHALE GOD (Kujiro Gami, 1962), MANJI (1964), ONIBABA (1964), and DEATHQUAKE (Jishin Retto, 1980).

More English materials for RICA. © 1972 Toho Co., Ltd.

RICA was directed by Ko Nakahira. A graduate of Tokyo University, Nakahira joined Shochiku has an assistant director in 1948, then moved to Nikkatsu 1954. He made his directorial debut with CRAZED FRUIT (Kurutta Kajitsu, 1956) and primarily focused on social commentary and action films such as TEMPTATION (1957), FLESH IS WEAK (1957), THE GIRLS AND THE STUDENTS (1960), HE AND I (Aitsu to Watashi, 1961), THESE YOUNG PEOPLE: BAD AND TERRIBLE (1962), BRIGHT SEA (Hikaru Umi, 1963), WHIRLPOOL OF FLESH (Onna no Uzu to Fuchi to Nagare, 1964), and THE DEVIL’S LEFT HAND (1966).

Lead actress Rika Aoki followed the RICA series with STUDENT GANGSTER (Gakusei Yakuza, 1974), but apparently retired from acting by the mid-1970s. The supporting cast includes Ryuhei Uchida (THE HUMAN CONDITION II, THE THIRTEEN ASSASSINS, CONFLAGRATION), Masumi Muneta, Fuminoro Sato, Taiji Tonoyama (THE TALE OF GENJI, GATE OF HELL, HOGS AND BATTLESHIPS, ONIBABA, STRAY DOG), Mizuho Suzuki (SUBMERSION OF JAPAN, PROPHECIES OF NOSTRADAMUS, BULLET TRAIN, GODZILLA 1985), and Urufu Ohtsuki (BRAIN 17).

According to reports, Toho’s international division screened RICA at a handful of theaters in the United States. The film quickly faded into obscurity, and the upcoming Media Blasters release is the first time it will be available on DVD.

Rather than release RICA as part of their ‘Tokyo Shock’ DVD line (as was the case with most of their Toho DVDs), Media Blasters has decided to make the film the first Japanese title from the company’s ‘Exploitation Digital’ label. Media Blasters feels that RICA’s subject matter is more in line with Exploitation Digital’s “sleazy Euro” titles like DIVINE EMANUELLE and PORNO HOLOCAUST than other Toho movies like ATRAGON, FRANKENSTEIN CONQUERS THE WORLD, and GOYOKIN.

RICA (1972)
Exploitation Digital’s First Japanese Film!
2.35:1 Anamorphic
Japanese Mono with English Subtitles
Release Date: 8/14/2007

EXTRAS:
Photo Gallery
Trailers for the RICA Trilogy- RICA, RICA: LONELY WANDERER, RICA: JUVENILE’S LULLABY

* “Konketsuji” was a derogatory Japanese term for Amerasians.

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