NY Earthquake, Blossoms, and Clever Dogs

The Statue of Liberty is a great place to get a view of New York City, but last Friday, cameras on top of the statue gave people a slightly unusual view while a natural event was happening.

"Today’s 4.8 magnitude quake making history in our area, the strongest since 1783..."

"A rare earthquake on the East Coast leaving residents rattled tonight..."

"...the 4.8 magnitude quake hit New Jersey this morning..."

Movement three miles below the Earth’s surface was causing an Earthquake, surprising everyone…

[the Earth rumbles] "…what was that…"

"...are we having an earthquake?"

"I thought it was a train, personally, and then it just kept going… I was scared, I’ve never felt one before, because I grew up in New York, and we don’t really have them often."

New York City isn’t located in an area where earthquakes usually happen—only three similar earthquakes have happened here  in the last 300 years. The quake reached 4.8 on the Richter scale, which is used to measure how powerful an earthquake is. Luckily, this earthquake wasn’t too powerful. No one was hurt, and only a few buildings close to where the earthquake started were damaged.

Every year in Washington DC, over 2,000 cherry blossom trees burst into color. People travel for miles to enjoy this beautiful event, but the blossom doesn't usually stay for long, so visitors use predictions to make sure they get to the city for 'peak bloom'.

This is when 70 percent of the trees have blossomed. Peak Bloom normally happens in late March but this year was different. The National Park Service (which helps look after the trees) predicted it would happen on March 23rd, but on March 17th, nearly a week early, peak bloom was announced. This was the earliest date in over 20 years. The team thinks that peak bloom happened much earlier because temperatures in January and February were warmer than usual, providing the trees with the warmth they needed to flower.

After peak bloom, temperatures cooled off. The cool air helped the flowers to stay on the trees, and meant the bloom period lasted longer than usual too! Meaning everyone got a chance to enjoy the sight and smell of the blossom.

Scientists in Hungary have discovered that Dogs might actually understand the names of their favorite toys, like balls and frisbees! To test their theory, they carried out an experiment. They first placed sensors on the heads of 18 different dogs, which measured signals in the dogs’ brains. Next, the dog's owner said the name of an object before showing the same object, or something different.

“Look, Joel! A ball!”
”Look, Joel! A frisbee!”

Researchers observed that there was different brain activity depending on whether or not the item matched what the owner had called out. By investigating further, they discovered that when the dog heard the name of an object they would activate a mental representation, or memory, of the object. This indicated to the scientists that dogs do, in fact, understand and recognize the names of objects. This is the first research of its kind to reveal evidence of this brain activity in dogs, and now scientists are keen to find out if other animals might do the same!

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