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About The Ig® Nobel Prizes

 The Ig Nobel Prizes honor achievements that make people LAUGH, and then THINK. The prizes are intended to celebrate the unusual, honor the imaginative — and spur people's interest in science, medicine, and technology.

 Every September, in a gala ceremony in Harvard's Sanders Theatre, 1100 splendidly eccentric spectators watch the new winners step forward to accept their Prizes. These are physically handed out by genuinely bemused genuine Nobel Laureates. Thousands more, around the world, watch our live online broadcast.

 CEREMONY: The 29th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony will happen on Thursday, September 12, 2019, at Sanders Theatre, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.

 Tickets will go on sale in July exclusively from the Harvard Box Office.

 LATEST NEWS: For recent bits of Ig Nobel news, see the Ig Nobel portion of our blog.

 PAST CEREMONIES: The 28th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony happened on Thursday, September 13, 2018. Videos of this and many other past ceremonies are archived on our YouTube channel and in the web pages devoted to each individual ceremony year.

 "Last, but not least, there are the Ig Nobel awards. These come with little cash, but much cachet, and reward those research projects that 'first make people laugh, and then make them think'" — Nature

 "It's like the weirdest f-ing thing that you'll ever go to... it's a collection of, like, actual Nobel Prize winners giving away prizes to real scientists for doing f'd-up things... it's awesome."— Amanda Palmer

 Find videos and other details regarding past ceremonies on our Archive page Stay informed about upcoming Ig Nobel events�join our private E-mail list. Please enter your E-mail address here:

 The Ig Nobel Prizes are organized by the magazine Annals of Improbable Research . The ceremony is co-sponsored by the Harvard-Radcliffe Society of Physics Students and the Harvard-Radcliffe Science Fiction Association

 — Ten Ig Nobel prizes have been awarded each year since 1991. The winners page contains a complete list.

 — The Ig Archive page collects details, videos, and links from past ceremonies.

 What about the Ig Informal Lectures? — At the ceremony itself, the new winners are given only 60 seconds to explain themselves. So... two days later, on Saturday afternoon, we give them considerably more time, plus a projector, so they can explain themselves and their research more fully, and discuss details with the audience.

 — Of course! For details on how the nomination process works, please read here

 — Almost always, we contact the chosen individuals (or teams) in advance, quietly, to offer the prize and give them the option to decline this great honor. If someone declines, we simply, privately withdraw the offer. Happily, nearly everyone who is offered an Ig Nobel Prize decides to accept, and also decides to come be part of the ceremony.

 —No. We are honoring achievements that make people laugh, then think. Good achievements can also be odd, funny, and even absurd; So can bad achievements. A lot of good science gets attacked because of its absurdity. A lot of bad science gets revered despite its absurdity.

 — Yes. At every Ig Nobel Prize ceremony, genuine Nobel Laureates physically hand out the prizes, and participate in the ceremony in other ways.

 — If you have five (5) or more tickets to the Ig Nobel ceremony, your group can choose to be anand thus be officially celebrated during the event. To register as a Delegation, first obtain tickets from the Harvard Box Office. Then register with Grand Panjandrum of the Delegations Louise Sacco: (+1) 781-444-6757. The deadline for delegation registration is the Friday before each year's ceremony, but tickets usually sell out much sooner.

 If you or your organization are comfortable publicly demonstrating both a love of science and a sense of humor, we are always happy to consider volunteers, sponsors, and supporters. For more information on this, please contact us at [email protected] or (+1) 617-491-4437.

 AND you can read and respond to us via facebook, via twitter (and post with the #ignobel hashtag), our blog, and our YouTube channel.

 — The Press Clips page has links to some press reports about the Igs.

 —There are several books about the Ig Nobel Prizes and several of these have been translated into other languages. Many of the winners have written books, and many of those winners are also the subjects of books. Many of them have given TED talks, too.

 —You can watch the live broadcast each year here on the Improbable Research website, and you can watch videos of past ceremonies anytime. We present other events throughout the year and around the world that (we hope) make people laugh and then think. Find a list of our upcoming events (including the annual Ig Nobel EuroTour).

 Is there a pattern in the prizes you have awarded? — We judge nominations based on whether they make people laugh, then think. That is the only criterion. No other pattern is intended. Of course, human beings are surprisingly good at seeing (or imagining!) patterns, even in random collections of data. The company Silk created an interactive database of Ig Nobel Prize Winners, which was at one time fairly accurate. And 2010 Ig Nobel Management Prize winner Andrea Rapisarda, working independently in Italy, made an app of Ig Nobel Prize winners that is available for free on iTunes.

 Here are a few photographs and videos from past ceremonies.

 The 2009 Ig Nobel Prize winners, joined by nine amused Nobel laureates, take a bow as the ceremony concludes. Photo: Richard Baguley.

 Viliumas Malinauskus, founder of Stalin World, accepting the 2001 Ig Nobel Peace Prize. Photo: Caroline Coffman. ||||| "And the chemistry prize goes to … Volkswagen!" The announcement, made last night in a packed hall at Harvard University, was unlikely to please the car company, however. That’s because it was awarded "for solving the problem of excessive automobile pollution emissions by automatically, electromechanically producing fewer emissions whenever the cars are being tested," explained Marc Abrahams, editor of the Annals of Improbable Research .

 This isn't your typical scientific gig. In a room packed with Nobel laureates, opera singers, and whizzing paper airplanes, this could only be one event: the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony. This marks the 26th year of the contest that celebrates scientific studies that "make you laugh, and then think."

 Just like the $10 trillion prize accepted on stage by the winning scientists—it is a Zimbabwean banknote with little value as a result of hyperinflation—many of this year's studies focused on perception and deception.

 Take for example the Ig Nobel Prize–winning study of itches by a team of neurologists and psychologists at the University of Lübeck in Germany, published in PLOS ONE in 2013. The researchers injected a chemical under the skin of people's arms to cause a mild itch. The volunteers were then asked to scratch one of their arms while looking at themselves in a mirror. The catch was that the mirror and a real-time video camera controlled which arm appeared to be scratched. Sometimes the participants scratched the truly itchy arm but it looked like their nonitchy arm was being scratched, and vice versa. And surprisingly, the subjects reported significant itch relief even when they scratched the wrong arm—as long as it looked like the itchy arm was getting scratched.

 Misperception in the nonhuman world also got the Ig Nobel nod. Two studies of confused animals led by Gábor Horváth, a biophysicist at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, garnered a joint prize. The first was a study of dragonflies published in 2007 in Freshwater Biology . The mystery was why dragonflies were spending so much time on polished black gravestones in Hungarian cemeteries where the insects' prey were nowhere to be found. The females were even depositing their eggs on the stone surface where they had no chance of surviving. The answer? Polarized light. The insects detect their watery homes by looking for the polarized light that shimmers on its surface. It turns out that the black gravestones reflect similar polarized light, turning them into a literal graveyard for dragonflies.

 Then Horváth turned to the mystery of horse flies. Why do they prefer to bite dark horses over white ones? In a study published in 2010 in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B , he discovered the answer: Polarized light strikes again. Horses with pure white fur are much prized by breeders and suffer a range of maladies—including sunburn—but they have a built-in advantage. White horse fur does not reflect the characteristic polarized light that the blood-sucking insects use to find their lunch.

 But perhaps the ultimate exploration of animal confusion goes to Charles Foster and Thomas Thwaites. Foster is an ethicist and veterinarian based in Oxford, U.K.; Thwaites is a technologist based in London, and both of them have spent significant amounts of time pretending to not be humans. Foster, who wanted to better understand the nonhuman "worldview," lived for days at a time as a badger, sleeping all day and roaming the forest all night on his hands and knees hunting for earthworms to eat. The animal of choice for Thwaites was an elephant, but he deemed it too dangerous and difficult of a transformation, so he settled on being a goat.

 This required the design of prosthetic limbs and intense physical training. He spent days with goats in the Swiss Alps, chewing grass and generally trying to fit in with the herd. What did he learn from his immersive exploration of the goat world? It's crucial to have friends in the intensely hierarchical world of the herd, and Thwaites says he was lucky to have a goat "buddy." All their hard work paid off last night as they accepted their $10 trillion prizes.

 The rest of the 2016 Ig Nobel Prizes:

 REPRODUCTION PRIZE

 The late Ahmed Shafik of Cairo University, for studying the effects of wearing polyester, cotton, or wool trousers on the sex life of rats, and for then conducting similar tests with human males.

 ECONOMICS PRIZE

 Mark Avis, Sarah Forbes, and Shelagh Ferguson, for assessing the perceived personalities of rocks, from a sales and marketing perspective.

 PSYCHOLOGY PRIZE

 Evelyne Debey, Maarten De Schryver, Gordon Logan, Kristina Suchotzki, and Bruno Verschuere, for asking a thousand liars how often they lie, and for deciding whether to believe those answers.

 PEACE PRIZE

 Gordon Pennycook, James Allan Cheyne, Nathaniel Barr, Derek Koehler, and Jonathan Fugelsang for their scholarly study called "On the Reception and Detection of Pseudo-Profound Bullshit."

 LITERATURE PRIZE

 Fredrik Sjöberg, for his three-volume autobiographical work about the pleasures of collecting flies that are dead, and flies that are not yet dead.

 PERCEPTION PRIZE

 Atsuki Higashiyama and Kohei Adachi, for investigating whether things look different when you bend over and view them between your legs. ||||| Nobel winning scientists gather for 26th straight year to award the most absurd, strange and curious research of the year

 Investigations into rats wearing pants, the personalities of rocks and the truthfulness of 1,000 liars won Ig Nobel prizes on Thursday night at Harvard, where Nobel-winning scientists gathered to honor the strangest research of the year.

 2015 Ig Nobel prizes: dinosaur-like chickens and bee-stings to the penis Read more

 The ceremony, now in its 26th year, delivered a $10tn Zimbabwean bill (about 40 cents in US money) to winners. Those who traveled to Boston received their prizes from Nobel laureates: chemist Dudley Herschbach, economist Eric Maskin, Dr Rich Roberts and physicist Roy Glauber.

 As in past years, the tone of the awards show vacillated from gleeful absurdism to satire to genuine wonder at the lengths to which scientists will let their curiosity lead them.

 Egyptian urologist Ahmed Shafik, for instance, wanted to know the toll that trousers might take on male rats. He made murine trousers – covering the animals’ hind legs with a hole for the tail – in various cloths: 100% polyester, 50/50% polyester/cotton, all cotton and all wool.

 Rats that wore polyester showed “significantly lower” rates of sexual activity, Shafik found, perhaps because of the electrostatic charges created by the material. Cotton- and wool-wearing rats were relatively normal.

 Mark Avis, Sarah Forbes and Shelagh Ferguson, a team from New Zealand and the UK, won the prize in economics for a study of the personalities of rocks. The trio studied a concept called “brand personality”, or the “set of human characteristics associated with the brand” – for example wholesomeness, youth, intelligence and sophistication – by putting pictures of rocks in front of 225 Kiwi students.

 The students then decided which of 42 traits, 15 facets and five factors to apply to the rocks in question. One, Rock G, was variously described as “a big New York type businessman, rich, smooth, maybe a little shady” and “carries a black brief case, slick hair, quick thinker and quicker talker. Not a good dude though.”

 Rock I was described by one student as “a gypsy or a traveller, a hippie” and by another as “liberal, attractive and female, I saw a young person, maybe mid-30s, who was very attractive when she was younger/possibly a model. Has her own way of thinking, with a somewhat grounded confidence, enjoys organic food.”

 The third rock, Rock H, was called “modest”, “farm mechanic” and “down-to-earth”.

 The biology award went to two Britons: Thomas Thwaites, who created prosthetic limbs that let him move like and among goats, and Charles Foster, who has tried to live as a badger, an otter, a fox and a stag.

 As a badger, Foster ate worms, dug a hillside den and tried to sniff out voles. Living as an urban fox, he scavenged through trash and slept in gardens. As a goat, Thwaites infiltrated a herd in the Swiss Alps and spent three days eating grass, bleating and stumbling over rocks.

 Foster and Thwaites wrote books about their experiments, respectively Being a Beast and GoatMan.

 A coalition from the US, Canada, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands won the psychology award, for asking 1,000 liars how often they had lied over the course of their life, and rating how well they lied.

 People gradually lied more as they aged out of childhood, the study found, peaking during adolescence, and as adults lied on average twice a day. Lying decreased with age, although some prolific liars may have skewed results. The researchers also acknowledged that the liars might have been lying to them all along.

 The peace prize went to a gang of philosophers from Canada and the US who published a paper titled On the Reception and Detection of Pseudo-Profound Bullshit.

 The researchers studied how people understand gibberish that has been framed as if it means something, by creating random but grammatical sentences of buzzwords that sounded like vaguely meditative posters meant to inspire office drones or distract dental patients from the drill. Examples included “wholeness quiets infinite phenomena” and “hidden meaning transforms unparalleled abstract beauty”.

 “There is little question that bullshit is a real and consequential phenomenon,” the scientists wrote, warning that given advances in communication, “bullshit may be more pervasive than ever before”.

 They noted, for example, that Dr Deepak Chopra, an author and MD followed by millions on Twitter, once wrote: “Attention and intention are the mechanics of manifestation.”

 Their mission: “Are people able to detect blatant bullshit? Who is most likely to fall prey to bullshit and why?”

 The philosophers asked 280 students at the University of Waterloo to rate the “profoundness” of real and invented statements on a scale of one to five, and to search for meaning in those statements. Those students most “receptive to bullshit”, they found, were “less reflective, lower in cognitive ability” and more likely “to hold religious and paranormal beliefs”.

 The researchers admitted their study had limitations, writing: “Although this manuscript may not be truly profound, it is indeed meaningful.”

 A medicine prize was given to German scientists who found that if you have an itch on your left side, you can look into a mirror and scratch your right to relieve it. A perception prize was handed to two Japanese researchers who tried to learn whether bending over and looking at things between your legs changes how things appear.

 Physics awards were given to researchers from Hungary, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland, who found that white horses attract fewer horseflies and that dragonflies are fatally attracted to black tombstones. The award for literature went to a Swedish author, Fredrik Sjoberg, who wrote a trilogy about collecting flies.

 The most surprising winner was for chemistry: the automaker Volkswagen, caught for violating US emissions law, was granted a nearly worthless Zimbabwean bill to help pay for its massive legal costs. The Ig Nobel committee said the award was “for solving the problem of excessive automobile pollution emissions by automatically, electro-mechanically producing fewer emissions whenever the cars are being tested”. ||||| Image copyright TIM BOWDITCH Image caption Mr Thwaites found that he soon developed "friends"

 A British man who lived in the Alps as a goat for three days has won one of this year's Ig Nobel prizes.

 Tom Thwaites had special prostheses made so he could walk like an animal.

 The spoof awards, which are not quite as famous as the real Nobels, were handed out during their annual ceremony at Harvard University, US.

 Other studies honoured during the event examined the personalities of rocks, and how the world looks when you bend over and view it through your legs.

 Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Thomas Thwaites: 'I tried to take a holiday from being a human being by being a goat'

 On the surface, all the celebrated research sounds a bit daft, but a lot of it - when examined closely - is actually intended to tackle real-world problems.

 And nearly all of the science gets published in peer-reviewed, scholarly journals.

 It is unlikely, though, that the German carmaker Volkswagen will appreciate the point or humour of the Ig Nobels.

 The firm has been awarded the chemistry prize for the way it cheated emissions tests.

 Image copyright AP Image caption Paper planes are all part of the fun

 Image copyright TIM BOWDITCH Image caption Mr Thwaites very nearly got into a fight

 Goat-man Tom Thwaites actually shares his biology prize with another Briton, Charles Foster, who also has spent time in the wild trying to experience life from an animal's perspective.

 Clearly, the practice is fast-becoming a national trait.

 Mr Thwaites concedes his effort was initially an attempt to escape the stress of modern living, but then became a passion.

 He spent a year researching the idea, and even persuaded an expert in prostheses, Dr Glyn Heath at Salford University, to build him a set of goat legs.

 Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Watch Thomas Thwaites in action

 Image copyright AP Image caption Charles Foster has lived variously as a badger, an otter, a deer, a fox, and a bird

 Fascinating, if a little bizarre on occasions, was Mr Thwaites' verdict on the whole venture. He developed a strong bond with one animal in particular - a "goat buddy", but also very nearly kicked off a big confrontation at one point.

 "I was just sort of walking around, you know chewing grass, and just looked up and then suddenly realised that everyone else had stopped chewing and there was this tension which I hadn't kind of noticed before and then one or two of the goats started tossing their horns around and I think I was about to get in a fight," he told BBC News.

 The American science humour magazine, the Annals of Improbable Research, is the inspiration behind the Ig Nobels, which are now in their 26th year.

 Thursday night's ceremony was reportedly as chaotic as ever, with audience members throwing the obligatory paper planes while real Nobel laureates attempted to hand out the prizes.

 Image copyright IG NOBELS Image caption A time of celebration: The 2016 Ig Nobel Prize

 The full list of winners announced at Harvard's Sanders Theatre:

 Reproduction Prize - The late Ahmed Shafik, for testing the effects of wearing polyester, cotton, or wool trousers on the sex life of rats.

 Economics Prize - Mark Avis and colleagues, for assessing the perceived personalities of rocks, from a sales and marketing perspective.

 Physics Prize - Gabor Horvath and colleagues, for discovering why white-haired horses are the most horsefly-proof horses, and for discovering why dragonflies are fatally attracted to black tombstones.

 Chemistry Prize - Volkswagen, for solving the problem of excessive automobile pollution emissions by automatically, electromechanically producing fewer emissions whenever the cars are being tested.

 Medicine Prize - Christoph Helmchen and colleagues, for discovering that if you have an itch on the left side of your body, you can relieve it by looking into a mirror and scratching the right side of your body (and vice versa).

 Psychology Prize - Evelyne Debey and colleagues, for asking a thousand liars how often they lie, and for deciding whether to believe those answers.

 Peace Prize - Gordon Pennycook and colleagues, for their scholarly study called "On the Reception and Detection of Pseudo-Profound Bullshit".

 Biology Prize - Awarded jointly to: Charles Foster, for living in the wild as, at different times, a badger, an otter, a deer, a fox, and a bird; and to Thomas Thwaites, for creating prosthetic extensions of his limbs that allowed him to move in the manner of, and spend time roaming hills in the company of, goats.

 Literature Prize - Fredrik Sjoberg, for his three-volume autobiographical work about the pleasures of collecting flies that are dead, and flies that are not yet dead.

 Perception Prize - Atsuki Higashiyama and Kohei Adachi, for investigating whether things look different when you bend over and view them between your legs.

 Image copyright Reuters Image caption Nobel Laureates Eric Maskin and Dudley Herschbach play "Tick-Tac-Toe" ("Noughts and Crosses")

 Image copyright AP

 For those who cannot abide this sort of nonsense, the real Nobel Prizes are handed out the week after next.

 Jonathan.Amos-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk and follow me on Twitter: @BBCAmos |||||

– Thursday night was the silliest night in scientists' calendars, and with winners including a man who wore prosthetic extensions to live among a herd of goats in the Alps for several days, this year's Ig Nobel awards did not disappoint. In front of a rowdy crowd, real Nobel winners handed out the awards to those who had the year's oddest research. Winners also received $10 trillion—in a single Zimbabwean banknote (US value: less than $1). Some highlights from the annual ceremony at Harvard University, which was presented by the Annals of Improbable Research: "Goat man" Tom Thwaites wore his goat legs to the awards ceremony .He tells the BBC that he gained a "goat buddy" during his time in the Alps—but there were some tense moments. "I was just sort of walking around, you know, chewing grass, and just looked up and then suddenly realized that everyone else had stopped chewing and there was this tension which I hadn't kind of noticed before and then one or two of the goats started tossing their horns around and I think I was about to get in a fight," he says. Thwaites shared the biology prize with Charles Foster, another Brit who has spent time living in the wild as, among other things, a badger, an otter, and a fox. Science reports that the medicine prize went to a team of neurologists and psychologists, who, with the help of video cameras, mirrors, and volunteers injected with a chemical that causes a mild itch, discovered that scratching the left side of your body will relieve an itch on the right side if you're looking in a mirror at the time. A Japanese team won the perception prize with a study published as "Perceived Size and Perceived Distance of Targets Viewed From Between the Legs: Evidence for Proprioceptive Theory." Their research involved bending over and looking at things from between their legs to see if they looked any different. Egyptian urologist Ahmed Shafik was posthumously awarded the reproduction prize for his research on how wearing trousers of polyester, cotton, or wool affected the sex lives of rats. The rats that wore polyester had the biggest drop in sexual activity, notes the Guardian. This year's Ig Nobel in chemistry went to Volkswagen, for "solving the problem of excessive automobile pollution emissions by automatically, electromechanically producing fewer emissions whenever the cars are being tested." (Previous Ig Nobels have gone to scientists who swallowed parboiled dead shrews and a researcher who allowed bees to sting every part of his anatomy.)


Investigators continue to try to determine what led to the death of a high school senior found dead in a north Houston hotel room Saturday morning following MacArthur's prom.Authorities identified that girl as 17-year-old Jacqueline Gomez. They say her boyfriend realized she wasn't breathing Saturday morning when he woke up at the Hyatt Hotel off the North Sam Houston Parkway. Investigators are now trying to determine what led to her death.From those staying at the hotel Friday night, the MacArthur prom seemed like any other affair; a celebration and memories made."It seems nice," said hotel visitor Michael Block. "It put me back to when I was in the 12th grade."It was at the after party that things got out of hand."You can imagine if you have ever attended a high school prom what goes on there," said Det. Mike Miller with HPD homicide. "This is no exception."On Saturday morning, police got a frantic call from a teenage boy, saying Gomez, his girlfriend, was not breathing in their 8th floor room."There was an indication that there was alcohol in the room," said Det. Miller. "Of course, prescription painkillers is something we're looking at as well."Hotel guest Kyren Block, 17, was staying in a room down the hall. He's here from San Antonio for a basketball tournament."We knocked on the door to see if anything was going on, but they didn't answer," he said.No answer, but Block says he could hear the partying going all night from that room."The boyfriend, at this point, is being completely honest with us and we have no reason to believe that he at all contributed to this death," said Det. Miller. "But in my line of work, you have to be absolutely sure."Another prom, one for Aldine High School, went on at the same hotel Saturday night. We spoke with some students who said this tragic event will make them think twice about what they'll do at and after prom. ||||| Teen girl found dead in hotel after Aldine ISD prom

 Photo: Family Photo Image 1 of / 3 Caption Close Image 1 of 3 Jacqueline Gomez, 17, MacArthur High School. She was found dead the day after her prom. Jacqueline Gomez, 17, MacArthur High School. She was found dead the day after her prom. Photo: Family Photo Image 2 of 3 Jackie Gomez Jackie Gomez Photo: Courtesy Of Leandra Mendez. Image 3 of 3 Jackie Gomez Jackie Gomez Photo: Courtesy Of Leandra Mendez. Teen girl found dead in hotel after Aldine ISD prom 1 / 3 Back to Gallery

 Jacqueline Gomez was excited for prom, showing her friends her dress, asking advice on how to do her nails and getting ready for a night of celebration.

 But something went wrong. The 17-year-old's body was found just before 11 a.m. Saturday in a room at the Hyatt Hotel at 425 N. Sam Houston Parkway E, where Aldine ISD's MacArthur High School held its prom the night before.

 Gomez and her date spent the night of prom at the hotel, 15 miles north of downtown. According to police, the next morning, her date called 911 and told dispatchers Gomez wasn't breathing.

 Rescue crews found her body, police said.

 Gomez's friends are still trying to process the loss of their friend they had just celebrated with.

 "It's shocking," said classmate Leandra Mendez, 19, who was with her at prom Friday. "I can't believe it. I mean, really, I can't believe it.

 Talking about dresses

 The girls spent the week leading up to the party talking about their dresses and all the details that go with prom.

 Gomez confided to her friends that she planned to spend the weekend with her date - believed to be a former classmate - at the hotel, news that worried Mendez and friend Justice Gonzalez, 17.

 "Me and Justice were telling her, 'Please don't go,' " Mendez said.

 On Friday, she arrived around 8 p.m., wearing a light-colored dress speckled with silver sequins. She'd gotten her nails done, and her hair made up, hanging off of one side.

 "Everything was going well, she was sitting at the table with us," Gonzalez said.

 Gomez, a tall, slim, dark-haired girl, had struggled with school as a sophomore, Mendez said. But she'd had made it through her senior year, and was planning to take classes starting this summer at Lone Star College to become a pharmacy technician.

 She spent a lot of her time working at the Kroger's on Aldine Mail Route Road in the store's pharmacy, Mendez said.

 'Loved working'

 "She loved working, she always loved working," Mendez said of Gomez, whom she described as "very outgoing, smart, very loud, never shy."

 Around 11 p.m. Friday, Gomez left to go up to the hotel room.

 "I told her right before left - she left early - I told her, 'Come here,' " Gonzalez said. She whispered in her friend's ear: " 'Just please be safe, Jackie.' And I gave her a hug, and she left."

 Police said they are awaiting autopsy results, but that there were no signs of trauma and that her date has been cooperative.

 "The boyfriend stated to us they had been drinking alcohol prior to going to sleep," said Jodi Silva, an HPD spokeswoman. A detective told a TV news reporter they were also looking into whether prescription painkillers were involved.

 Aldine ISD officials could not be reached for comment. ||||| Female student found dead after prom at Hyatt Hotel in north Houston

 HOUSTON – The Block family, in town for a basketball tournament, stayed at the Hyatt in north Houston Friday night, while the MacArthur prom was well under way.

 “It seemed nice. Put me back to when I was in 12th grade. But I hate to hear that. That’s sad,” said Michael Block, in town from San Antonio.

 They would never have thought the night would take a tragic turn for 17-year-old Jacqueline Gomez, a MacArthur High School student, whose prom night would be her last.

 “She then stayed overnight in the hotel. In the morning hours, the person that was with her found her deceased in her bed. We are not sure at this hour what the cause of death is,” said Det. Mike Miller, with the HPD Homicide Division.

 Police said they found alcohol and prescription pain killers in the hotel room. They also told KHOU 11 News that the girl’s boyfriend had called 911. They took him in for questioning, only to shed light on what happened.

 “He was there. He knows everything, so we’re just continually wanting to find out what happened and everything,” said Miller. “We have no reason to believe he contributed to her death.”

 Kyren Block and his family were staying just a few doors down from some of the MacArthur High School students.

 “Like I said you could hear it all the way down the hallway. They were yelling,” said Block.

 Others staying at the hotel had no idea what had happened.

 “The girls had on beautiful gowns, you know chiffon-looking gowns. They looked really nice. I watched them come in. Yeah that’s very tragic,” said Donald Burton, a hotel guest.

 Homicide detectives are still investigating and trying to find out what took the 18-year-old’s life.

 KHOU 11 News learned that Gomez worked at the Kroger grocery store just down the street from MacArthur High School. She was just two weeks away from graduation.

 “My heart sank, I hoped it really wasn’t her. I didn’t want to believe it,” Bibiana said.

 Her close friends Bibiana and Antonio now only have pictures to remember their friend by.

 “She was an amazing girl,” Bibiana said.

 “She liked helping out everybody,” Antonio added.

 For now the MacArthur senior’s friends and family are struggling to cope with her loss. They’re telling KHOU 11 News they want answers. They want to know what exactly happened to her and why.

 If you would like to help her family pay for funeral services, click here. |||||

Write a summary.

– A teenage girl celebrated her prom night by partying in a hotel room with her date, and ended up dead the next morning—possibly from a mix of alcohol and prescription painkillers, KHOU reports. Jacqueline Gomez, 17, was excited about her MacArthur High School prom in Houston, showing her dress to friends and asking for advice on doing her nails, reports the Houston Chronicle. And once the event at a Hyatt Hotel was over, she went upstairs with her date. "I told her right before left—she left early—I told her, 'Come here,'" said a friend, who whispered in her ear: "'Just please be safe, Jackie.' And I gave her a hug, and she left." A woman staying down the hall tells ABC13 she heard partying in the room all night and knocked on the door "to see if anything was going on, but they didn't answer." The next morning, Jacqueline's date frantically called 911 saying she wasn't breathing. He later told police they had been drinking, and police suspect painkillers were involved too. "We have no reason to believe that he at all contributed to this death," said a detective. "But in my line of work, you have to be absolutely sure." A friend of Jacqueline's said her "heart sank" when she heard the news: "I hoped it really wasn't her. I didn't want to believe it. She was an amazing girl."


Article:

Pressure is building on the Metropolitan police to expand their phone-hacking inquiry to include a notorious private investigator who was accused in the House of Commons on Wednesday of targeting politicians, members of the royal family and high-level terrorist informers on behalf of Rupert Murdoch's News International.

 Guardian inquiries reveal that the former prime minister Tony Blair is among the suspected victims of Jonathan Rees, who was involved in the theft of confidential data, the hacking of computers and, it is alleged, burglary. According to close associates of Rees, he also targeted:

 • Jack Straw when he was home secretary, Peter Mandelson when he was trade secretary and Blair's media adviser Alastair Campbell;

 • Prince Edward and the Countess of Wessex, and the Duke and Duchess of Kent, all of whom are said to have had their bank accounts penetrated, and Kate Middleton when she was Prince William's girlfriend;

 • The former commissioner of the Metropolitan police, Sir John Stevens, and the current assistant commissioner, John Yates, who later supervised the failed phone-hacking inquiry for 19 months;

 • The governor and deputy governor of the Bank of England, whose mortgage account details were obtained and sold.

 Rees, who worked for the Mirror Group as well as the New of the World, is also accused of using a specialist computer hacker in July 2006 to steal information about MI6 agents who had infiltrated the Provisional IRA. According to a BBC Panorama programme in March, Rees was commissioned by Alex Marunchak, then the News of the World's executive editor, to hack the information from the computer of Ian Hurst, a former British intelligence officer in Northern Ireland who had stayed in contact with several highly vulnerable agents. Marunchak has denied the allegations.

 The Guardian has previously identified other suspected targets of Rees, including Eric Clapton, Mick Jagger, George Michael, Linford Christie, Gary Lineker, Richard Madeley and Judy Finnigan, and the family of the Yorkshire Ripper, Peter Sutcliffe.

 None of these cases has been officially confirmed or even investigated. With many of them, it is not yet clear precisely what form of surveillance Rees and his agency, Southern Investigations, were using. Answers may lie in the "boxloads" of paperwork the Metropolitan police are believed to have seized from Rees.

 But the Labour MP Tom Watson told the prime minister on Wednesday the head of the Operation Weeting inquiry into the News of the World's investigator, Glenn Mulcaire, had told him that it may be beyond its terms of reference to investigate this evidence.

 "Prime minister, powerful forces are attempting a cover-up," Watson said. "Please tell me what you intend to do, to make sure this doesn't happen."

 While Glenn Mulcaire worked for the News of the World as a full-time employee from 2001, Rees worked freelance for the Mirror Group and the News of the World from the mid 1990s. His agency was earning up to £150,000 a year from the News of the World alone. In 1999, he was arrested and sentenced to seven years for conspiring to plant cocaine on a woman so that her husband would get custody of their children.

 After his release in May 2004, the News of the World continued to hire him under the editorship of Andy Coulson, who went on to become David Cameron's media adviser. Rees's targets during this period included Prince William's then girlfriend, Kate Middleton.

 On Wednesday, a News International spokesperson said: "It is well documented that Jonathan Rees and Southern Investigations worked for a whole variety of newspaper groups. With regards to Tom Watson's specific allegations, we believe these are wholly inaccurate. The Met police, with whom we are co-operating fully in Operation Weeting, have not asked us for any information regarding Jonathan Rees. We note again that Tom Watson MP made these allegations under parliamentary privilege."

 Scotland Yard is believed to have collected hundreds of thousands of documents during a series of investigations into Rees over his links with corrupt officers, and over the 1987 murder of his former business partner, Daniel Morgan. Charges of murder against Rees were dismissed earlier this year.

 Daniel Morgan's brother, Alastair, who has been gathering information for a book, told the Guardian he was aware from his own investigations and from material revealed in court hearings that the Metropolitan police was holding "boxloads" of evidence on Rees's activities. Guardian inquiries suggest that this paperwork could include explosive new evidence of illegal news-gathering by the News of the World and other papers.

 According to journalists and investigators who worked with him, Rees exploited his position as a freemason to make links with masonic police officers who illegally sold him information on targets chosen by the News of the World, the Sunday Mirror and the Daily Mirror. One close contact, Det Sgt Sid Fillery, left the Metropolitan police to become Rees's business partner and added more officers to their network. Fillery was subsequently convicted of possession of indecent images of children.

 Some police contacts are said to have been blackmailed into providing confidential information. One of Rees's former associates claims that Rees had compromising photographs of serving officers, including one who was caught in a drunken coma with a couple of prostitutes and with a toilet seat around his neck. Rees claimed to be in touch with corrupt Customs officers, a corrupt VAT inspector and two corrupt bank employees.

 An investigator who worked for Rees claims he was commissioning burglaries of public figures to steal material for newspapers. Southern Investigations has previously been implicated in handling paperwork which was stolen by a professional burglar from the safe of Paddy Ashdown's lawyer, when Ashdown was leader of the Liberal Democrats. The paperwork, which was eventually obtained by the News of the World, recorded Ashdown discussing his fears that newspapers might expose an affair with his secretary.

 The Guardian has confirmed that Rees also used two specialist "blaggers" who would telephone the Inland Revenue, the DVLA, banks and phone companies and trick them into handing over private data to be sold to Fleet Street.

 One of the blaggers who regularly worked for him, John Gunning, was responsible for obtaining details of bank accounts belonging to Prince Edward and the Countess of Wessex, which were then sold to the Sunday Mirror. Gunning was later convicted of illegally obtaining confidential data from British Telecom. Rees also obtained details of accounts at Coutts bank belonging to the Duke and Duchess of Kent. The bank accounts of Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York, are also thought to have been compromised.

 The Guardian has been told that Rees spoke openly about obtaining confidential data belonging to senior politicians and recorded their names in his paperwork. One source close to Rees claims that apart from Tony Blair, Straw, Mandelson and Campbell, he also targeted Gaynor Regan, who became the second wife of the foreign secretary, Robin Cook, the former shadow home secretary, Gerald Kaufman; and the former Tory minister David Mellor.

 It is not yet known precisley what Rees was doing with these political targets, although in the case of Peter Mandelson, it appears that Rees obtained confidential details of two bank accounts which he held at Coutts, and his building society account at Britannia. Rees is also said to have targeted his brother, Miles Mandelson.

 Separately, for the News of the World, Glenn Mulcaire was hacking the voicemail of the deputy prime minister, John Prescott, Straw's successor as home secretary, David Blunkett, the media secretary, Tessa Jowell, and the Europe minister, Chris Bryant. Scotland Yard has repeatedly refused to reveal how many politicians were victims of phone hacking, although Simon Hughes, Boris Johnson and George Galloway have all been named.

 The succesful hacking of a computer belonging to the former British intelligence officer Ian Hurst was achieved in July 2006 by sending Hurst an email containing a Trojan program which copied Hurst's emails and relayed them to the hacker. This included messages he had exchanged with at least two agents who informed on the Provisional IRA – Freddie Scappaticci, codenamed Stakeknife; and a second informant known as Kevin Fulton. Both men were regarded as high-risk targets for assassination. Hurst was one of the very few people who knew their whereabouts. The hacker cannot be named for legal reasons.

 There would be further security concern if Rees's paperwork confirmed strong claims by those close to him that he claimed to have targeted the then Metropolitan police commissioner, Sir John Stevens, who would have had regular access to highly sensitive intelligence. Sir John's successor, Sir Ian Blair, is believed to have been targeted by Glenn Mulcaire, although it has not been confirmed that Mulcaire succeeded in listening to his voicemail. Assistant commissioner John Yates was targeted by Rees when Yates was running inquiries into police corruption in the late 1990s. It appears that Yates did not realise that he himself had been a target when he was responsible for the policing of the phone-hacking affair between July 2009 and January 2011.

 Targeting the Bank of England, Rees is believed to have earned thousands of pounds by penetrating the past or present mortgage accounts of the then governor, Eddie George, his deputy, Mervyn King, who is now governor, and half-a-dozen other members of the monetary policy committee.

 According to police information provided to the Guardian in September 2002, an internal Scotland Yard report recorded that Rees and his network were engaged in long-term penetration of police intelligence and that "their thirst for knowledge is driven by profit to be accrued from the media".

 Operation Weeting has been investigating phone hacking by the News of the World since January. The paper's assistant editor, Ian Edmondson, chief reporter, Neville Thurlbeck, and former news editor James Weatherup have been arrested and released on police bail.

 On Wednesday, A police spokesman said: "[We] can confirm that since January 2011 the MPS [Metropolitan police service] has received a number of allegations regarding breach of privacy which fall outside the remit of Operation Weeting. These allegations are currently being considered." ||||| Kate Middleton 's account was accessed in 2005, when she was the girlfriend of Prince William , by Jonathan Rees, a private investigator who once worked for the News of the World, it was alleged.

 Other high-profile individuals said to have been targets for Mr Rees, who was cleared of murder earlier this year, include Tony Blair, Jack Straw, the Duke and Duchess of Kent and John Yates, the Metropolitan Police assistant commissioner who once headed the phone hacking inquiry.

 The allegations were made after Mr Rees was named by Tom Watson MP. He told the House of Commons yesterday that Scotland Yard had evidence against the investigator but have said it falls outside the scope of their investigation.

 Detectives at Scotland Yard are understood to have been in touch with the Duchess of Cambridge to warn her that her bank details may have been accessed.

 On Wednesday night the Met confirmed it had received “a number of allegations” and the force was considering investigating.

 It is understood that the reason the allegations fall outside the scope of the investigation, codenamed Operation Weeting, is because they do not relate to phone hacking, but other forms of illegal intrusion.

 A St James’s Palace spokesman said they were unable to comment.

 In March this year, Mr Rees was cleared of the murder of Daniel Morgan, who was found with an axe in his head in a pub car park on March 10, 1987.

 After his acquittal, it was disclosed that Mr Rees, who was a private investigator for Southern Investigations — the company established by Mr Morgan, had worked for a number of media outlets.

 In 1999, Mr Rees was sentenced to seven years in prison for conspiring to plant cocaine on a woman.

 After his release in May 2004, the News of the World hired him under the editorship of Andy Coulson, who went on to become David Cameron’s media adviser.

 It is in the following year that Mr Rees is alleged to have accessed the Duchess of Cambridge’s bank account details.

 Last night, Mr Rees’s solicitor did not respond to enquiries from The Daily Telegraph.

 A Met spokesman added: “Since January 2011 the Metropolitan Police has received a number of allegations regarding breach of privacy which fall outside the remit of Operation Weeting.

 “These allegations are currently being considered.”

 A spokesman for News International, the News of the World’s parent company, said: “It is well documented that Jonathan Rees and Southern Investigations worked for a whole variety of newspaper groups.

 “With regards to Tom Watson’s specific allegations, we believe these are wholly inaccurate. The Met Police, with whom we are co-operating fully in Operation Weeting, have not asked us for any information regarding Jonathan Rees.

 “Tom Watson MP made these allegations under parliamentary privilege.” |||||
What is a summary?

– The News of the World hacking scandal just got even more royal: Kate Middleton was a victim. But it was her bank account, not her phone, that was hacked, so the incident falls outside Operation Weeting, Scotland Yard’s phone hacking investigation. Middleton’s account was allegedly accessed in 2005 by Jonathan Rees, a private detective who had worked for Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World tabloid, the Telegraph reports. Rees also targeted Tony Blair and other high-profile victims, a member of parliament told the House of Commons yesterday. The MP wants the phone hacking inquiry expanded, and the Metropolitan Police force is considering investigating the new allegations. Rees was hired by NOTW first in the 1990s and again in 2004, after serving prison time for a drug conspiracy charge, but the tabloid’s parent company notes that Rees worked for a number of other newspapers as well. Click for much more on Rees’s alleged crimes in the Guardian.


Here is a news article: Image: Ger Dekker / Flickr Creative Commons

 As twilight descends, nocturnal bat species rouse from their daily resting places to feed, creating spectacular clouds as they pour out of caves en masse. But look closer at Jamaican fruit bat colonies as they emerge from sinkhole caves in Cuba, and you may catch a glimpse of a concurrent macabre ritual: As the bats erupt from the cave, a deadly curtain of Cuban boas hangs in their path, aiming to snatch the winged creatures mid-flight.

 That’s right—these snakes coordinate their attacks, and the result is terrifying.

 Vladimir Dinets, a research assistant professor at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, was guiding a bird- and mammal-watching tour through Desembarco del Granma National Park, Cuba, when he first noticed the cavern-hunting snakes. Intrigued by the bold behavior, he decided to take a closer look.

 The boas involved could all be found basking near the cave’s entrance during the day, while the bats slumbered in an adjacent chamber separated by a narrow passage. As daylight faded, some of the snakes would move from their warm nooks into the passageway.

 There, they would dangle their serpentine bodies from the ceiling, ready to strike as bats flew past. Other snakes would take up similar hunting positions as dawn approached, catching the bats as they returned. During each potential feeding opportunity, Dinets dutifully recorded the position of the snakes as well as their hunting success, or lack thereof.

 “There is an old dogma stating that reptiles are mostly solitary and stupid. My finding is just one of many recent discoveries challenging it.”

 After 8 days of records, Dinets concluded the snakes coordinated their hunts, and published his results in the Animal Behavior and Cognition. The first boa would pick its place. Then, when the next slithered up, it would position itself in near the first. And if a third snake joined in, it would hang with the others, too. Dinets considered that the snakes might all just prefer the same areas of the passage, but no snake chose the same segment twice during the entire study, suggesting coordination, not similar taste in locale.

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 And that coordination paid off—boas were significantly more likely to capture a meal if they hunted together. “Visual observations suggested that most bats were able to avoid flying near boas when there were one or two boas present, but with three boas present the bats had to fly either within striking distance from one of them (often colliding with the boas) or very low above the passage floor,” Dinets explained in the paper.

 While the snakes coordinated with one another, it’s not quite accurate to say they hunted in a “pack” like wolves, as that implies a social aspect that Dinets didn’t see. “I saw no evidence of direct communication,” he told Gizmodo. “They just take each other’s positions into account.”

 Still, coordination to maximize hunting success is practically unknown in reptiles (crocodilians and monitor lizards are notable exceptions). “There is an old dogma stating that reptiles are mostly solitary and stupid,” said Dinets. “My finding is just one of many recent discoveries challenging it.”

 Intriguingly, this isn’t the first cave where serpents have been observed hunting bats mid-flight. Writer, ecologist, and wildlife photographer Neil Losin and his colleagues have observed a similar strategy among snakes in Puerto Rico. “We saw up to 8 boas hunting at the same time, and it’s certainly quite a ‘gauntlet’ for the bats to run,” he said. But he and his team only observed and filmed—they didn’t perform quantitative science to determine if the boas were coordinating their hunting.

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 There’s also the famous Cavern of Serpents near the village of Kantenmo, Mexico, where tourists flock to see snakes snatch bats as they exit for the evening. Again, no one has looked closely for coordination. But given the number of examples of this style of cavern feeding, “it is possible that coordinated hunting is not uncommon among snakes,” Dinets said. “But it will take a lot of very patient field research to find out.”

 Update 5/26: Herpetologists have been reacting to this study on social media, and not everybody’s convinced by the author’s conclusions. David Steen, wildlife ecologist at Auburn University Museum of Natural History, took to Facebook to dispute the idea that the boas are coordinating their attacks, arguing that such behavior is difficult to prove without a controlled experiment. Red Steen’s reaction and Dinets’ responses here.

 Christie Wilcox is a science writer, author of Venomous: How Earth’s Deadliest Creatures Mastered Biochemistry, and all around biology nerd. Follow her on Twitter. ||||| 150 SHARES Share Tweet

 Snakes, although as social as birds and mammals, have long been thought to be solitary hunters and eaters. A new study from UT shows that some snakes coordinate their hunts to increase their chances of success.

 Vladimir Dinets, a research assistant professor of psychology, observed the Cuban boa—the island nation’s largest native terrestrial predator—in bat caves for the study.

 Many Cuban caves shelter large bat colonies, and in some of them small populations of boas regularly hunt the bats as they fly out at dusk and return at dawn. Dinets noticed that the boas hung down from the ceiling of the cave entrance and grabbed passing bats in midair. He found that if more than one boa was present, the snakes coordinated their positions in such a way that they formed a wall across the entrance. This made it difficult or impossible for the bats to pass without getting within striking distance of at least one boa.

 Such group hunts were always successful, and the more snakes were present, the less time it took each to capture a bat. But if there was only one boa, it sometimes failed to secure a meal.

 These findings were recently published open-access in the journal Animal Behavior and Cognition.

 To date, only a handful of snakes have been observed to hunt in groups, and coordination among them—or among any other group-hunting reptiles—has never been proven, Dinets said.

 Only a few of the world’s 3,650 snake species have ever been observed hunting in the wild, so very little is known about snakes’ diverse hunting tactics.

 “It is possible that coordinated hunting is not uncommon among snakes, but it will take a lot of very patient field research to find out,” Dinets said.

 He added that observing the Cuban boa, although an amazing spectacle, is becoming increasingly difficult since only the most remote caves still have boas. The boas are being hunted for food and possibly pet trade.

 “I suspect that if their numbers in a cave fall, they can’t hunt in groups anymore and might die out even if some of them don’t get caught by hunters,” Dinets said. “A few of these caves are in national parks, but there’s a lot of poaching everywhere.”

 —

 CONTACT:

 Lola Alapo (865-974-3993, lalapo@utk.edu)

 Vladimir Dinets (vdinets@utk.edu) |||||
A summary of this is?

– Time to nix that belief you've been clinging to that snakes are "mostly solitary and stupid," Vladimir Dinets tells Gizmodo. The University of Tennessee researcher has found one particular Caribbean species that apparently hunts together. Dinets' study in the Animal Behavior and Cognition journal details his research on Chilabothrus angulifer, or the Cuban boa, which Tennessee Today notes is the country's largest resident predator on land and which apparently hunts fruit bats in sinkhole caves in a coordinated way. Dinets observed the snakes for eight days in the caves of Desembarco del Granma National Park, where he had noticed they would hang from the ceiling near the entrance at dawn and dusk, ready to pounce when the bats flew in and out of the caves. But it wasn't just random positioning. The snakes hunkered down in close proximity to each other, in seemingly strategic locations, so when the bats tried to pass, they were trapped by a "hissing, snapping curtain" of boas, as ScienceAlert puts it. What signified coordination and not just a shared preference for one location: No snake positioned itself in the same "segment" twice. Dinets also notes that one to three snakes were present for each hunt; only two boas failed to catch a bat, and both were hunting solo. When successful, it took one boa an average of 19 minutes to catch a bat, but three only 6.7 minutes. What's unclear is how rare this is: There are 3,650 snake species, but the natural hunting habits of just a handful have been studied. "It will take a lot of very patient field research to find out" if others hunt like this, too. (Here's how boa constrictors actually kill their victims.)


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 Embed Strong Storm Slams Into Texas Triggering Water Rescues, Flash Floods 2:43 autoplay autoplay Copy this code to your website or blog

 A freight train overturned on waterlogged tracks Saturday morning in Texas as heavy rains pounded the region for a third straight day — with remnants of Hurricane Patricia threatening to keep a large part of the state under a flash flood watch.

 One person, a man walking his dog in San Antonio, was missing as a result of the floods, authorities said.

 Patricia was downgraded Saturday to a tropical depression after making landfall in Mexico Friday evening. But many parts of Texas were still expecting significant rainfall.

 A train overturned in floodwaters in Navarro County, Texas. NBC News

 Houston Mayor Annise Parker warned that 8 to 10 inches of rain were expected overnight.

 In addition, Houston, Corpus Christi, and other portions of southeast Texas were under a tornado watch until 10 p.m. CT, according to the Weather Channel.

 Two train crew members were rescued after a Union Pacific train derailed around 3:30 a.m. local time in Navarro County south of Dallas, officials told NBC Dallas-Fort Worth. Union Pacific spokesman Jeff DeGraff told the station that one locomotive and several rail cars were partially submerged, but no one was injured.

 Both crew members "swam to high ground" and were pulled out by a high-water rescue team, DeGraff said.

 The 64-car train was en route from Midlothian to Houston when it got caught in floodwaters, which have closed major highways throughout North Texas.

 Related: Hurricane Patricia to Intensify Heavy Rains in Texas, 10M Under Flood Watch

 The train remained on its side on Saturday, about 4 miles north of Corsicana, as authorities waited for the water to recede before attempting to right it and remove it from the tracks.

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 Eric Myers, emergency management coordinator for Navarro County, told NBC News the tankers contained cement. He said that the county had received 20 to 21 inches of rainfall in the past 24 hours, and said authorities had performed 72 swift water rescues.

 Interstate 45 near Corsicana was closed for several hours Friday night, creating traffic backups that were miles long.

 Elsewhere in Texas, heavy rainfall was causing power outages and flight delays. In San Antonio, emergency responders were searching for a man who was swept away Saturday around 3 a.m. local times (4 a.m. ET), The Associated Press reported. The man fell into a flooded drainage ditch while trying to pull his dog back.

 The dog was found, but firefighters had to suspend the search for his owner due to the weather.

 Strong thunderstorms dropped more than 7 inches of rain across Dallas-Fort Worth, NBC Dallas-Fort Worth reported, with flash flood watches and warnings in effect in many places until Sunday.

 The remnants of Patricia — which made landfall Friday evening in southwestern Mexico as a Category 5 storm — are expected to reach Texas by Saturday night and exacerbate the flooding, forecasters said.

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 "It should start to move out Sunday night, but East Texas is going to still be in the rain Sunday night, even Monday," Jon Rowe, senior meteorologist for The Weather Channel, told NBC News. "There will be some lingering rain showers even by Tuesday."

 The heaviest of the rain should be done by Sunday night, he added, "but they're going to have flooding problems in South and East Texas at least through tomorrow."

 Hundreds of flights were canceled or delayed on Thursday and Friday at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. The airport got 3.24 inches of rain on Friday alone — a daily record. ||||| DALLAS (AP) — A powerful storm system rumbled through Texas on Saturday, flooding roads and causing a freight train to derail as parts of the state braced for the remnants of Hurricane Patricia to arrive.

 A Dalls Fire Rescue responder makes his way over to a stalled vehicle to check on the driver still inside on Friday, Oct. 23, 2015, in Dallas. The vehicle stalled after the road quickly flooded during... (Associated Press)

 A bicycle and walking path is flooded by White Rock Lake after heavy rain fall soaked the region Friday, Oct. 23, 2015, in Dallas. Residents braced for more rain this weekend from other storms that could... (Associated Press)

 Cameron County Precinct 1 employees Chon Garcia and Rene Murillo begin filling sandbags at the Precinct 1 Warehouse, Friday, Oct. 23,2015, in Brownsville,Texas, in anticipation of flooding due to Hurricane... (Associated Press)

 A driver attempts to navigate through high water on Northwest Highway during a heavy rain fall Friday, Oct. 23, 2015, in Dallas. The driver who was unharmed, abandoned the vehicle on the road when emergency... (Associated Press)

 Cameron County Precinct 1 employees Felipe Mendez and Isais Almaguercleaned culverts along Vermillion Rd., in Precinct 1, Friday, Oct. 23, 2015, in Brownsville,Texas, in anticipation of flooding due to... (Associated Press)

 Storms clouds move over during the second practice session for the Formula One U.S. Grand Prix auto race at the Circuit of the Americas, Friday, Oct. 23, 2015, in Austin, Texas. The second practice session... (Associated Press)

 A stop sign stands almost completely submerged after heavy rains on a roadway into White Rock Lake Friday, Oct. 23, 2015, in Dallas. Residents braced for more rain this weekend from other storms that... (Associated Press)

 Many parts of Texas, including some of its biggest cities, were under flash flood watches through Sunday or Monday. The remnants of Patricia, which was downgraded to a tropical depression and was expected to reach northern Mexico by Saturday night, may add to the rain falling in South and Central Texas, said Jesse Moore, a National Weather Service forecaster in Fort Worth.

 The storm system already moving through Texas dumped nearly two feet of rain on parts of the state since Friday, causing flooding that blocked several major roadways.

 Galveston County Judge Mark Henry on Saturday issued a voluntary evacuation for Bolivar Peninsula, just northeast of Galveston Island, after forecasters predicted that the area would get 8 to 12 inches of rain and tides that are 4 to 5 feet high.

 The judge warned that residents who don't leave might find themselves cut off from emergency services as the heaviest winds and rains come ashore. The storm was expected to reach the area by around 6 p.m. Saturday.

 "Elderly residents and people with medical conditions should make plans to leave the area before dark," Henry said.

 County spokeswoman Brittany Rainville said there were buses waiting to evacuate people, but no one had yet shown up to leave as of early Saturday afternoon. She said about 4,000 people live on the peninsula.

 In San Antonio, a man walking his dog before dawn early Saturday was swept into a flooded drainage ditch and disappeared, fire officials said. Firefighters searched for two hours but had to stop due to bad weather. They planned to resume as soon as possible. The dog is safe.

 A driver in the Central Texas town of Temple heading to work Saturday morning was saved after he was able to get out of his car that was floating in floodwaters and grabbed a tree. Temple police say the man called 911 from his cellphone to summon help. Firefighters retrieved him and walked him to safety.

 A Union Pacific freight train derailed before dawn on Saturday near Corsicana, about 50 miles south of Dallas, because a creek overflowed and washed away the tracks, said Jeff DeGraff, a railroad spokesman. The two crew members swam to safety and nobody was hurt, he said.

 "They (crew) escaped the train after it stopped and swam to high ground," DeGraff said. "A Navarro County rescue team was able to get in and pull them to safety, they are back safe on dry ground."

 One locomotive and several rail cars loaded with gravel went into the water and were partly submerged, DeGraff said. He had no specifics on how many cars derailed because crews couldn't reach the site due to flooding.

 Authorities on Saturday morning reopened a section of Interstate 45 near Corsicana that was closed overnight due to flooding, backing up traffic for 12 miles. Moore said that since Friday morning, Corsicana has received 18 inches of rain and Powell has received 20 inches.

 Flight tracker flightaware.com reported that about 100 Saturday flights had been canceled at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.

 A flash flood watch was in effect for the Waco, Austin, San Antonio, Corpus Christi, Laredo and Brownsville areas through Sunday morning, according to the National Weather Service. The flash flood watch for Dallas and Fort Worth was lifted Saturday afternoon.

 Forecasters say Houston and Galveston remain under a flash flood watch through Monday morning, with possible coastal flooding concerns.

 Patricia was the most powerful hurricane on record in the Western Hemisphere and made landfall Friday along Mexico's Pacific Coast as a Category 5 storm. It quickly lost power as it moved inland and appeared to have caused remarkably little damage.

 ___

 Associated Press writer Diana Heidgerd contributed to this report.

 ___

 This story has been corrected to reflect that Patricia is no longer considered a tropical storm and has been downgraded to a tropical depression. |||||

– Two crew members had to be rescued when flooding in Texas overturned a 64-car Union Pacific freight train on its way to Houston early Saturday morning, NBC News reports. Navarro County, where the train was derailed around 3:30am local time, had received nearly 2 feet of rain in 24 hours, and more was expected with what's left of Hurricane Patricia heading into the area. According to the AP, a creek overflowed and washed away the train tracks. "[The crew] escaped the train after it stopped and swam to high ground," a Union Pacific spokesperson tells the AP. "A Navarro County rescue team was able to get in and pull them to safety. They are back safe on dry ground." Despite several rail cars and a locomotive ending up partially underwater, no injuries were reported in the train crash, NBC reports. The train—which is carrying cement or gravel—was still on its side hours later, with crews waiting until water levels drop before they attempt to remove it. After three days of heavy rains, Navarro County has carried out five dozen water rescues. According to the AP, only one person is missing so far in the recent Texas flooding. A man walking his dog in San Antonio fell into a flooded draining ditch and was swept away. His dog was later found safe.