Photographer Susan Mullally took portraits of homeless people who are part of The Church Under the Bridge in Waco, Texas. In each picture of the collection called What I Keep, the subject is holding an object that means something to them, and tells why. In the portrait shown, Vietnam veteran Tindall Herndon keeps his hat to remind him of fallen brothers-in-arms. Link -via Metafilter

Some animals eats algae and incorporates the algae's chlorophyll into its own body. According to Sidney K. Pierce of the University of South Florida in Tampa, the sea slug Elysia chlorotica no longer has to, because it has incorporated enough of the plant's genes into its own DNA to manufacture chlorophyll in its own body!

The slugs can manufacture the most common form of chlorophyll, the green pigment in plants that captures energy from sunlight, Pierce reported January 7 at the annual meeting of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology. Pierce used a radioactive tracer to show that the slugs were making the pigment, called chlorophyll a, themselves and not simply relying on chlorophyll reserves stolen from the algae the slugs dine on.

“This could be a fusion of a plant and an animal — that’s just cool,” said invertebrate zoologist John Zardus of The Citadel in Charleston, S.C.

Microbes swap genes readily, but Zardus said he couldn’t think of another natural example of genes flowing between multicellular kingdoms.

It looks like the tree of life has some spots where it merges as well as branches. Link

(image credit: Nicholas E. Curtis and Ray Martinez)

(YouTube link)

A collaborative art film from a group called Hydra, Homunculus pits "little men" against each other. This is the stuff nightmares are made of. -via Everlasting Blort

Remember when you were a kid and you pulled a string to make a toy do something? Well, I do! Now that principle can charge your batteries. The YoGen hand-held charger was displayed at the Consumer Electronic Show (CES) in Las Vegas, where its developers showed how a pull of a string will recharge your phone battery.

A 5 Watt charge can be generated with a very easy pull of the string. It doesn't matter how fast or slow you pull, the same charge is generated. And I'm told it gives the same charge as if you were plugging into a wall, so 1 minute of pulling is equal to the same amount of talk time you'd get after 1 minute of wall charging, or about 5 minutes of talk time. It's intended as a solution for quick emergency charging.

YoGen also demonstrated a foot-powered charger for laptops. Link -via Digg

We looked forward to the promise of video phone calls for fifty years, but now that they are here, no one wants to actually use them. The hassle of dressing up or cleaning the room for a phone call only explains part of it. Joel Stein captures the exact reason why video phone calls never caught on, despite the availability of Skype.

...Skype breaks the century-old social contract of the phone: we pay close attention while we're talking and zone out while you are.

As soon as you begin to talk, I feel trapped and desperately scan the room for tasks I can do to justify the enormous waste of time that is your talking. I wash dishes, I file receipts, I read news sites, I make little fake suicide faces to my wife Cassandra about how much I want to hang up that cause her to yell "Joel, I need you now" in a really unconvincing way that I've asked her not to do, but I still can't stop making the suicide faces. In desperate times, when I am on my cell phone in the middle of nowhere, I will pace. The only other time I pace is when I stub a toe or burn myself. But when I start talking, I assume that you are sitting perfectly still, rapt.

Link -via Digg

(image credit: John Ueland/TIME)

(YouTube link)

These folks in South Carolina have another innovative use for heavy equipment. You don't need a lake and a boat to go skiing! -via Buzzfeed

Sal Esposito of East Boston has been summoned for jury duty. He just might be excused for being a cat, but so far he is expected to serve. Sal's owners Guy and Anna Esposito think his name may have been pulled from census records, where he was listed as a pet.

Anna filed for Sal’s disqualification of service. However, the jury commissioner was unmoved and denied the request.

Sal’s service date at Suffolk Superior Court is set for March 23. Anna said that if the issue isn’t cleared up by then, she will simply have to bring the cat to court.

Link -via Digg

Today's Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss is a lot of fun, especially for someone like me who spent decades connecting audio-video equipment professionally. I'm sure you will enjoy it, too! Can you identify ten different types of connecting cables, both old and new? Good luck; I scored 80%. Link

While people all over the world are marking the 75th anniversary of the birth of Elvis Presley, we would like to give a big shout out to a treasure who is still with us -University of Cambridge professor emeritus Stephen Hawking, who turns 68 years old today.

Born on the 300th anniversary of Galileo's death, Hawking is a theoretical physicist who is regarded as one of the most intelligent men alive. He has published numerous papers and books on the nature and origin of the universe, the best known being A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes. Hawking also had a miniseries on PBS in 1997, Stephen Hawking's Universe, as well as a long list of TV and movie appearances. He is renowned for making difficult concepts comprehensible to the average reader or viewer.

Hawking has amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig's Disease, which has taken his ability to move or speak under his own power. He uses a speech synthesizer to communicate. Still, Hawking has been heard singing at least three times on Neatorama, in A Glorious Dawn, I Love the World, and in this lecture.

Among Hawking's degrees, honors, and other accomplishments is the awesome fact that he is the only person ever to play himself in any Star Trek film or series.

Happy Birthday, Professor Hawking!

Unusually cold temperatures in southern Florida are causing a novel problem -falling iguanas. Iguanas are an invasive species in Florida due to pet owners abandoning the lizards. When the temperature falls below 40 degrees, they automatically begin to hibernate and fall out of the trees they live in. Ron Magill of Miami Metrozoo has a warning for those who find the iguanas.

"I knew of a gentleman who was collecting them off the street and throwing them in the back of his station wagon, and all of a sudden these things are coming alive, crawling on his back and almost caused a wreck," Magill said.

The stories of "kamikaze iguanas" plummeting from trees were urban legends in Florida, but now have a plausible explanation. Link (with video)

Learn about the different species of big cats as you enjoy photographs by zoo photographer and "cat whisperer" Akishin Vyacheslav. Shown is a leopard with startling blue eyes. Link -via Digg

Maybe writers aren't aware how their copy inspires a "Duh!" reaction. Or maybe they are trying to entertain us to make up for a boring story. Either way, these headlines and newspaper clips are funny enough to ensure a long life on the internet. Link

Police in Cheshire, England are investigating the case of a man who installed a camera in a fitting room at the Asda department store. Finding him should be easy as he left crucial evidence behind. A police spokesman said,

"The device was placed in a light fitting and was in place for 30 minutes before being discovered by staff.

"Unfortunately for the man he did not turn off the camera while placing it in situ and forensic examination of the data card shows an image of him while doing this."

Link -via Arbroath

Male flies have penises covered with spines and hooks. To figure out what the purpose of those spines are, researchers Michal Polak and Arash Rashed removed the spines to see what would happen.

Their spines are too small to cut off by hand. So the duo used a laser instead, wielding the light with such surgical precision that they could cut off a third of each millimetre-long spine, or the entire structure.

They found that a partial shave did nothing, but the full treatment significantly reduced the odds of the males mating with females.

The conclusion is that the fly's penis hairs act as Velcro, to grasp the female long enough to inject sperm. Now you know. Link -via Treehugger

Previously at Neatorama: 30 Strangest Animal Mating Habits.

Photo manipulated at Speechable.

You might have noticed that Neatorama went away for a while today and came back minus a few posts. The site suffered a system crash, at the worst possible time -when Alex is out of town and has no computer access. Luckily, our talented staff of tech wizards were able to restore the site using a slightly older saved version, which did not include most of today's posts. We will try to get those reposted as soon as possible. Let your friends and neighbors know that Neatorama is back online!