Chad Clark's Open Journal : 2008-10-04

1) Grand Prairie junior-high teacher found new dinosaur species.

The Globe and Mail article reads:

  It has been more than three decades since Al Lakusta noticed giant ribs
  poking out of an embankment during a fall hike along Pipestone Creek,
  southwest of Grand Prairie, Alta.
  
  ...
  
  Yesterday, University of Alberta paleontologist Philip Currie and his
  colleagues finally announced that Mr. Lakusta had in fact discovered a
  new species, a vegetarian the size of a rhinoceros with a frill on the
  back of its skull and one or more long, stumpy horns sprouting from the
  front.
  
  At a ceremony last night, the scientists told a surprised Mr. Lakusta,
  now 66 and retired, that they are naming the beast after him. The
  Pipestone creek dinosaur will henceforth be known as Pachyrhinosaurus
  lakustai.
  
  After the initial discovery, Mr. Lakusta secured the necessary permits to
  start digging.  ...  After he had dug for about 18 months, though, the
  permits were not renewed. He said provincial officials told him only
  professionals could do the job.  ...  Paleontologist Dr. Currie, the
  former head of dinosaur research at the Royal Tyrrell Museum in
  Drumheller, said he first saw the bones in the 1970s and knew they were
  important. But at the time, he says, there was little funding and few
  paleontologists actively collecting dinosaur fossils.

2) Cell phone camera microscope attachment.

A Berkeley team has built a 5-50X magnifying attachment for cell phone
cameras.  The intended use is to allow pictures to be taken in rural areas
and sent to an urban lab for analysis.

Details and pictures are on the Berekely web-page.