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NASCAR has loud fans and even louder engines, but can it beat the "Beast Quake?"

Football, NASCAR and their rowdy, roaring crowds faced off in a head-to-head battle this year to see which sport hits highest on the seismic charts, scientists reported Dec. 18 at the American Geophysical Union’s annual meeting in San Francisco.

Seattle Seahawks football fans have stomped their way to several “earthquakes,” shaking the football stadium so hard that nearby seismometers register tremors. On Jan. 8, 2011, a 67-yard touchdown run resulted in a fan frenzy as powerful as a magnitude-2 quake, now known as the “Beast Quake.” The rambunctious fans have also set a Guinness World Record for the loudest crowd roar.
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The source of the current Ebola outbreak – which has thus far claimed 7600 lives in West Africa – has not yet been firmly established. However, the first casualty, a two-year old child in Meliandou, Guinea, lived and played with his family and friends in close proximity to a tall, hollow tree that was home to thousands of bats.
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Think of it: We are each a megalopolis – a dwelling place for trillions of microorganisms whose number, diversity and health have an enormous impact on our own. Our 10 trillion human cells actually depend upon the 100 trillion microbes colonizing our guts to extract energy from the food we eat, build our immune system, and defend us from foreign invader microbes.
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In a landmark ruling in favor of the rights of ‘non-human persons,’ a court in Buenos Aires just recognized Sandra – a 29-year old Sumatran orangutan – to be sufficiently sentient as to deserve her freedom from zoo captivity. She is the first non-human primate to be recognized as such. The ruling came in response to a writ of habeas corpus filed by the Association of Officials and Lawyers for Animal Rights (AFADA).

Paul Buompadre, a lawyer for AFADA, was quoted by La Nacion newspaper as saying, “This opens the way not only for other Great Apes, but also for other sentient beings which are unfairly and arbitrarily deprived of their liberty in zoos, circuses, water parks and scientific laboratories."
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