Stolen hot dog statue returned to WVa restaurant owner
THE owner of a West Virginia restaurant that was heavily damaged by fire has his coveted hot dog statue back.
The “Wienerman” statue was stolen from the Dairy Winkle in Campbells Creek during a break-in sometime after the Jan. 11 fire, the Kanawha County Sheriff’s Office said in a news release.
A tip led deputies to a location where the statue was found undamaged. It was returned to restaurant owner Kerry Ellison, the statement said.
Investigators have not identified a suspect and are seeking information about the theft.
The short statue depicts a hot dog licking its lips and holding a bottle of mustard while pouring a bottle of ketchup on its head.
Ellison hopes to reopen the restaurant later this year.
Swedish govt moves to get rid of permits needed for dancing
Sweden’s center-right coalition government wants to cut red tape when it comes to dancing by abolishing a decade-old requirement for restaurants, nightclubs and other venues to obtain permits before they let patrons shimmy and sway.
The proposal made Thursday means that venues no longer would need a license to organize dances. Instead, as a general rule, they would only have to register with the police, which can be done verbally and does not cost anything.
Applying for a permit incurs a fee of at least 700 kroner ($67) for the establishment. As it is now, owners can lose their liquor and business licenses if police officers come by and find out that a venue did not have authorization to let patrons dance.
“It is not reasonable for the state to regulate people’s dance,” Justice Minister Gunnar Strömmer said in a government statement. “By removing the requirement for a dance permit, we also reduce bureaucracy and costs for entrepreneurs and others who organise dances.”
Swedish media outlets welcomed the move to abolish the dance permits, which have been called outdated and moralistic.
The government proposed having the change take effect on July 1, although it requires parliamentary approval.
Forest lizards genetically morph to survive life in the city
Lizards that once dwelled in forests but now slink around urban areas have genetically morphed to survive life in the city, researchers have found.
The Puerto Rican crested anole, a brown lizard with a bright orange throat fan, has sprouted special scales to better cling to smooth surfaces like walls and windows and grown larger limbs to sprint across open areas, scientists say.
“We are watching evolution as it’s unfolding,” said Kristin Winchell, a biology professor at NYU and main author of the study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
As urbanisation intensifies around the world, it’s important to understand how organisms adapt and humans can design cities in ways that support all species, Winchell said.
The study analyzed 96 Anolis cristatellus lizards, comparing the genetic makeup of forest-dwellers to those living in Puerto Rico’s capital, San Juan, as well as the northern city of Arecibo and western city of Mayaguez. Scientists found that 33 genes within the lizard genome were repeatedly associated with urbanization.
“You can hardly get closer to a smoking gun!” said Wouter Halfwerk, an evolutionary ecologist and professor at Vrije University Amsterdam who was not involved in the study.
He said he was impressed that the scientists were able to detect such a clear genomic signature of adaptation: “The ultimate goal within the field of urban adaptive evolution is to find evidence for heritable traits and their genomic architecture.”
Winchell said the lizards’ physical differences appeared to be mirrored at the genomic level.
“If urban populations are evolving with parallel physical and genomic changes, we may even be able to predict how populations will respond to urbanization just by looking at genetic markers,” she said.
The changes in these lizards, whose lifespans are roughly seven years, can occur very quickly, within 30 to 80 generations, enabling them to escape from predators and survive in urban areas, Winchell added. The larger limbs, for example, enable them to run more quickly across a hot parking lot, and the special scales to hold onto surfaces far more smooth than trees.
“They can’t dig their claws into it. ... (Or) squirrel around to the backside,” she noted.
The scientists chased after dozens of lizards for their study, catching them with their hands or using fishing poles with a tiny lasso to snag them.
The study focused on adult male lizards, so it’s unclear if females are changing in the same way or at the same rate as males, and at which point in a lizard’s life the changes are occurring.
Halfwerk, whose own research showed how one frog species changed its mating call in urban areas, said scientists should look next for possible constraints on the evolutionary response and how morphology relates to mating behavior.
“Ultimately, to cash in on adaptive traits for survival, they need to lead to higher reproduction,” he said.