Whitney Houston a legend – Cowell

Los Angeles - Pop legend Whitney Houston, who was found dead on Saturday, was the vocal star of a generation whose soaring voice broke records and inspired millions of fans before substance abuse sent her on a downward spiral. "She was a legend. These people don't come around often," British television host and producer Simon Cowell, of American Idol and Britain's Got Talent fame, told CNN television. "No one could sell a song like Whitney." "I am absolutely devastated by this news. I'm so sad for her," said Cowell, known for his normally rough edges. "She was undoubtedly one of the greatest superstars of all time. One of the greatest voices, you know, in our lifetime we're likely to ever hear," Cowell said. "And to hear this news, it's really, really upset me." - SAPA

Why zebras evolved their characteristic black-and-white stripes has been the subject of decades of debate among scientists. Now researchers from Hungary and Sweden claim to have solved the mystery. The stripes, they say, came about to keep away blood-sucking flies. They report in the Journal of Experimental Biology that this pattern of narrow stripes makes zebras "unattractive" to the flies. They key to this effect is in how the striped patterns reflect light.

"We started off studying horses with black, brown or white coats," explained Susanne Akesson from Lund University, a member of the international research team that carried out the study. "We found that in the black and brown horses, we get horizontally polarised light." This effect made the dark-coloured horses very attractive to flies. It means that the light that bounces off the horse's dark coat - and travels in waves to the eyes of a hungry fly - moves along a horizontal plane, like a snake slithering along with its body flat to the floor.

Dr Akesson and her colleagues found that horseflies, or tabanids, were very attracted by these "flat" waves of light.

"From a white coat, you get unpolarised light [reflected]," she explained. Unpolarised light waves travel along any and every plane, and are much less attractive to flies. As a result, white-coated horses are much less troubled by horseflies than their dark-coloured relatives.

Horseflies prevent the animals they bite from grazing, as well as carrying blood-borne diseases

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