For the first time in nearly 20 years, the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo once again has Mandrills on exhibit.

The mandrills, which are the world's largest species of monkey, are housed in the zoo's Primate, Cat & Aquatics Building. There are two males and two females. The males - Dwezill and Woody - came to Cleveland from Disney's Animal Kingdom, and the two females - Zenani and Eebi - came from the Rosamond Gifford Zoo in Syracuse, New York.

The Cleveland zoo has exhibited mandrills beginning in the 1950s, but hasn't had any since 1992.

Native to the western African nations of Cameroon, Congo, Equatorial Guinea, and Gabo, mandrills are the largest species of monkey and are closely related to baboons and drills. Mature adult male mandrills feature one of the most brightly colored faces in the animal world, with a long muzzle with red and blue stripes, red nose and lips, and a yellowish beard.

If you watched the Super Bowl this past weekend from the Northeast Ohio region, you may recall seeing an intriguing commercial by the University of Akron which featured contact lens for diabetics that will change color with blood sugar levels. Researchers at U of A have been working on the diabetic lens since 2003, but they won't be ready for human use for at least three years.

The lens are currently in the prototype phase and are not approved for human use. The model in the advertisement did not actually wear the lens, and the images shown were simulated.

At best, it will be at least three years before such a lens could be made available commercially. As it is dependent upon clearing various funding and regulatory hurdles, the wait could end up being longer.

Jun Hu, an associate professor of chemistry at Akron, has been working on the sugar-sensing chemical that is key to the lens since 2003. He and his lab discovered a molecule known as a probe that binds well to sugars. In order to make it visible, they combined the probe with a dye. So, when sugar concentrations increase, the sugar binds to the probe, knocking loose the dye which will then be seen as a color change. When the sugar normalizes, the probe molecule picks the dye back up.

An infestation of hemlock trees in the state of Ohio has led the state's agriculture officials to cut down and burn invested trees. An aphid-like insect native to Asian known as the Hemlock Woolly Adelgid currently threatens eastern hemlock and Carolina hemlock in the eastern United States, and the infestation has spread to 16 states from Maine to Georgia.

The Hemlock Woolly Adelgid was first spotted in the U.S. in 1951. It was discovered in Ohio in January 2012, and at the time just five trees were infected. The state is trying to prevent it from spreading.

The Adelgid attacks of the base of the needles at the tips of branches. Systemic insecticides are applied to protect tens of thousands of hemlocks annually.

There are now 24 universities, seven institutions in both China and Japan, 20 state agencies, four federal agencies, and nine private organizations involved in the effort to combat the bugs.

Photo: An infected hemlock tree.

An air quality advisory has been issued for Thursday, February 2, 2012, for several Northeast Ohio counties due to fine particles. The advisory covers Ashtabula, Cuyahoga, Geauga, Lake, Lorain, Medina, Portage, and Summit Counties.

Fine particle levels will be "Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups" during peak hours. The fine particles, as well as a haze in the atmosphere, will result from continued accumulation of pollutants from motor vehicle exhaust and other local sources. The particles accumulate because of stagnant atmospheric conditions, presence of moisture and temperature inversion.

"Sensitive Groups" includes children, the elderly and those with breathing difficulties.

A NASA spacecraft has detected for the very first time matter from outside of our solar system. Researchers announced on Tuesday that this material has come from elsewhere in the galaxy.

The "interstellar material" was spotted by NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX), a spacecraft studying the edge of the solar system from its orbit 200,000 miles above earth.

David McComas, IBEX principal investigator and assistant vice president of the Space Science and Engineering Division at Southwest Research Institute in San Diego, said:

"This alien interstellar material is really the stuff that stars and planets and people are made of — it's really important to be measuring it."

A team of international scientists presented the new IBEX findings, which included the first detection of alien particles of hydrogen, oxygen, and neon, as well as the confirmation of previously detected helium.

NASA launched the IBEX mission in October 2008 in order to map the boundary between the solar system and interstellar space. The $169 million spacecraft was originally built for a two-year mission.

A spotted leopard was one of just six animals kept at an Ohio zoo after a highly publicezed animal escape in late 2011. Officials announced on Monday that the leopard had been euthanized after it was hit by a lowering door between two enclosures and suffered a several spinal cord injury.

The leopard, a male, was cared for at the Columbus Zoo under a state-issued quarantine order. The other five animals from the escape were two additional leopards, two primates, and a bear. The animals' owner committed suicide in October after releasing dozens of exotic animals, including bears and tigers, which were subsequently killed by authorities near Zanesville.

On Sunday morning, a zoo keeper was moving the leopard between enclosures for routine feeding and cleaning when the animal unexpectedly reversed course as the door was being lowered. The animal was struck on the neck. A zoo veterinarian attempted to use chest compressions to restart the unresponsive animal's heart.

After further examination revealed that the leopard's spinal cord had been irreversibly damaged and it could not breathe on its own, a state veterinarian on-site decided to euthanize the big cat.

Those who give into racism and prejudice might simply be dumb, according to the results of a new study that is sure to stir up some controversy.

The study found that children with low intelligence are more likely to hold prejudiced attitudes as adults. Lead researcher Gordon Hodson, a psychologist at Brock University in Ontario, said that these findings point to a vicious cycle.

The study also found that low intelligence adults tend to gravitate towards socially conservative ideologies, and those ideologies, in turn, stress hierarchy and resistance to change, attitudes that can contribute to prejudice.

Hodson said:

"Prejudice is extremely complex and multifaceted, making it critical that any factors contributing to bias are uncovered and understood."

Hodson said that earlier studies have found links between low levels of education and higher levels of prejudice, so studying intelligence seemed to be a logical next step.

Over the weekend, Indo-Asian News Service reported that a Russian scientist had published what he says is evidence of life on the planet Venus, Earth's closest neighbor in the direction of the Sun.

Leonid Ksanfomaliti, an astronomer based at the Space Research Institute of Russia's Academy of Sciences, analyzed photographs taken by a Russian landing probe during a 1982 mission to explore the planet, which is covered by heavy acid clouds.

Although Venus is roughly the same size as the Earth, their similarities end there. With a surface temperature of 894 degrees, an atmospheric pressure 92 times greater than Earth's, no water, tons of volcanos, and a thick atmosphere dominated by carbon dioxide, Venus has never been a serious target of research into the existence of extraterrestrial life.

Ksanfomaliti says that the Russian photographs depict objects resembling a "disk", a "black flap" and a "scorpion." In his article, which was published in the magazine Solar System Research, Ksanfomaliti adds:

“What if we forget about the current theories about the non-existence of life on Venus? Let’s boldly suggest that the objects’ morphological features would allow us to say that they are living.”

On Tuesday, the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo introduced one of the most unique looking prosimians, the aye-aye, making them just one of six zoos in the United States to have one on exhibit.

The aye-aye is native to the island nation of Madagascar. It is seldom seen, and is a nocturnal tree-dweller. The mammal's eerie-looking appearance has given it a bad reputation among the people in Madagascar, who consider the aye-aye to be a harbinger of bad luck and sometimes death. As a result, aye-ayes are often killed on sight. Combined with habitat loss through deforestation, the species is threatened in the wild.

The aye-ayes unique look -featuring larger eyes, ears and fingers - have been adapted to help it hunt in the dark for various insects and larvae. The aye-aye taps branches and tree trunks by listening for bugs burrowing beneath the bark, and the gnawing away the bark to use its long, skinny fingers to scoop out its snack.

An Ohio increase expert says that the state is seeing a "shocking" increase in deer ticks, which can carry Lyme disease.

Richard Gary, an entomologist with the Ohio Department of Health, says that 183 ticks submitted to his agency last year were confirmed as black-legged ticks, which are also known as deer ticks. An additional 1,830 of the ticks were found on deer heads collected from hunters by other state offices. Some were found to carry the Lyme bacteria.

Between 1989 and 2009, only 51 deer ticks were identified throughout the state.

Deer ticks are most prevalent in the Ohio's eastern and southern counties.

Information about Lyme disease is now being sent out to health professionals throughout Ohio. In 2010, there were 44 reported cases of Lyme disease in Ohio.