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Even tourists will want to buy an Octopus card. Octopus cards are Hong Kong's version of London's Oyster cards, and can even be used to pay for convenience store purchases and the like. Adult Octopus cards will run you $150 including a $50 deposit, but they'll charge you $7 for returning it less than three months after you bought it. You'll also enjoy a discount on MTR trains by using it.

Bats often make people think of vampires, creatures of the night, and Halloween. Beyond the myth and folklore, bats are one of the most important groups of animals.

Bats are mammals that belong to the order Chiroptera (ky-rop-tera), which means, "winged hand". The wings or hands of a bat have very long finger bones covered by a strong skin. Bats are the only mammals that can fly. Like all mammals, they are "warm-blooded", have bodies covered with fur, and nurse their young (pups) with milk.

Nearly all bats are helpful animals. In fact, tropical rainforests could not survive without bats. Bats are responsible for controlling pest insect populations, pollinating flowers, and dispersing seeds.

One unique feature of bats is their modified forelimbs, which support a wing membrane (patagium). The basic elements of the mammalian limb are present in bats, although the relative sizes of most bones and muscles differ from those of nonflying mammals. The most elongated parts of the limb are those of the hand (metacarpal bones) and fingers (phalanges). The primary functions of these bones in bats is to provide support for the patagium and control its movements.

Numerous blood vessels and nerves are present throughout the wing membrane. Bats also have five unique muscles present in the patagium, and use additional muscles in the chest and back to move the wings up and down.

The most obvious difference between bird wings and those of bats is that bird wings are made of feathers, not a skin membrane. Birds have an elongated arm, but do not have elongated fingers like bats. Additionally, the muscles used in both the upstroke and downstroke are found in the chest of birds, while the upstroke muscles are on the back in bats (Fenton, 1983).

For more than two centuries this policy enabled Japan to enjoy stability and a flowering of its indigenous culture.

During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Japan became a regional power that was able to defeat the forces of both China and Russia.

The economy experienced a major slowdown starting in the 1990s following three decades of unprecedented growth, but Japan still remains a major economic power, both in Asia and globally.

Vampire bats, the only mammals to feed exclusively on blood, including human blood, recognize their prey by the sound of its breathing.

Vampire bats feed on the same prey over several nights

bats use breathing sounds to identify their prey in the same way as humans use voice to recognise each other.

On December 13, 2007, former Senate majority leader George Mitchell (D-Maine) released a report to the commissioner of baseball stating that the New York Yankees' starting pitcher, Roger Clemens, and others, had illegally used performance enhancing substances during their major league baseball careers. Clemens, also known as "The Rocket," is a seven-time Cy Young Award winner and has been strongly considered for the Baseball Hall of Fame; however, Mitchell's report has damaged his reputation. The report has also hurt the careers of those around him, including his then-fitness trainer, Brian McNamee. McNamee testified against Clemens and reported that he had personally injected Clemens with steroids, testosterone, and human growth hormone. Clemens has vehemently denied these allegations, stating that he has never tested positive for these substances and is merely a victim of slander and attack. While Clemens's alleged use of steroids has garnered a high level of media attention, it is only a small part of the performance enhancing drug controversy.

A year after Apple Computer Inc. launched its iTunes Music Service, the online music industry is selling songs by the millions

Customers at three of the leading online services – iTunes, Musicmatch Inc.’s Musicmatch Downloads and RealNetworks Inc.’s Rhapsody – buy about 10 times as many singles as they do albums. Offline, people buy 50 times more CDs than singles.

music lovers buying a few 99-cent singles instead of $15 CDs.

The western portion of Prince William Sound was the most heavily oiled in 1989 and oil on some beaches remains a serious concern for residents of the Sound who use these areas.

The remaining 1,100 miles of oiled shoreline were considered to have light to very light oiling. Crews visiting beaches in 1993 found hundreds of sites that contained substantial oil deposits.

A 1992 National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) study* estimated that a great majority of the oil evaporated, dispersed into the water column or degraded naturally.

Born on January 4, 1809, Coupvray, France, Braille was accidentally blinded in one eye at the age of three. Within two years, a disease in his other eye left him completely blind.

Captain Charles Barbier invented sonography, or nightwriting, a system of embossed symbols used by soldiers to communicate silently at night on the battlefield. Inspired by a lecture Barbier gave at the Institute a few years later, the fifteen-year-old Braille adapted Barbier's system to replace Haüy's awkward embossed type, which he and his classmates had been obliged to learn.

In his initial study, Braille had experimented with geometric shapes cut from leather as well as with nails and tacks hammered into boards. He finally settled on a fingertip-sized six-dot code, based on the twenty-five letters of the alphabet, which could be recognized with a single contact of one digit. By varying the number and placement of dots, he coded letters, punctuation, numbers, diphthongs, familiar words, scientific symbols, mathematical and musical notation, and capitalization. With the right hand, the reader touched individual dots and, with the left, moved on toward the next line, comprehending as smoothly and rapidly as sighted readers. Using the Braille system, students were also able to take notes and write themes by punching dots into paper with a pointed stylus which was aligned with a metal guide.

Teachers at the Royal Institute taught French Sign Language (FSL). In 1816, an American educator of the deaf, Thomas Gallaudet (1787-1851), returned to the United States after studying the French techniques at the Royal Institute.

ASL is not the only form of sign language. Fingerspelling is one method in which hand-shapes (representing letters) are used to spell out each word of the English language while speaking. It is an unpopular method of communication and is tiring to use and interpret.

It gained widespread infamy after the March 24, 1989 oil spill in which the tanker, captained by Joseph Hazelwood and bound for Long Beach, California, hit Prince William Sound's Bligh Reef and spilled an estimated 10.8 million US gallons (40.9 million liters) of crude oil.

This has been recorded as one of the largest spills in U.S. history and one of the largest ecological disasters.

At the time of the spill it was employed to transport crude oil from the Alyeska consortium's pipeline terminal in Valdez, Alaska, to the lower 48 states of the United States.

Some may be trained to help, but really it's in these beloved companions' nature to save us in ways big and small.

The selfless action of two dogs in Winona, Minn., gripped the nation recently.

Dogs see the best in us