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I feel like I just learned more about my country

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I feel like I just learned more about my country

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Vietnam has so many cool things about it but you will be blown away after you read this article.

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Are you one of those people that only think of Vietnam in terms of that 20th Century war? With these 51 interesting facts about Vietnam, explore how fascinating the country has become over the years; with beautiful scenery, amazing cuisine, and an awesome kaleidoscope of cultures that you definitely need to experience for yourself!

Vietnam's history and culture

#1. Legend has it that the peoples of this land originated from a union between an immortal Chinese princess and "The Dragon Lord of the Seas."

#2. The country's name was originally spelled as two words, Viet Nam.

#3. Their culture is a complex adaptation of Chinese, Japanese, French and American colonial influences.

#4. In 938 AD, the Vietnamese developed a trade system to exchange animal skins, ivory and tropical goods for Chinese scrolls on administration, philosophy and literature.

#5. The body of their first president Ho Chi Minh (Uncle Ho) was embalmed, and is on display in a mausoleum.

#6. Their flag consists of a golden star with five points to represent farmers, workers, intellectuals, youth, and soldiers. The red background pays tribute to the bloodshed during the wars.

Flag of Vietnam

#7. Traditional Vietnamese culture revolves around the core values of humanity, community, harmony, and family.

#8. Tet Nguyen Dan (or simply Tet) is the most important festival in Vietnam. It celebrates rebirth, and is an equivalent of the Lunar New Year.

#9. They also have a "love market" festival that is observed to commemorate a tragic forbidden love story, and to give modern day ex-lovers a chance to meet on neutral territory.

#10. Vietnamese traditional fashion is easily distinguished by the flowing robes (Ao Dai) and conical hats (Non La).

Vietnam's art and architecture

#11. Their famous Dong Son drums are a relic of the sophisticated Bronze Age culture between 500 BC and 300 AD.

#12. Water puppetry is another popular art form that dates back as far as the 11th century.

#13. Construction styles vary from traditional stilt houses and Chinese style pagodas to colonial French architecture and thin tube houses.

#14. Hoi An ancient town was a trading port from the 15th century that has endured up to date.

#15. The My Son Sanctuary is a structural display of Hindu tower temples developed over ten centuries.

#16. Hue's royal tombs are a vivid portrayal of ancient royal art, architecture, and geomancy.

#17. In religious construction, pagodas are for worship and offerings, while temples are built to honor historical figures.

#18. Thu Phap calligraphy involves "blowing beauty into every single character."

#19. Quan Ho folk songs are love duets between male and female singers considered by UNESCO to be an intangible cultural heritage of humanity, Geography and Landscape.

#20. Rice terraces are planted that way to enable the crop to grow along the steep mountainsides.

#21. Fansipan, also known as The Roof of Indochina is the highest mountain peak in the region.

#22. The Red River in the North and Mekong in the South are surrounded by extremely fertile plains on which most of the country's crops are grown.

#23. Vietnam is also home to the world's largest cave, Son Doong.

#24. The Bin Chau Hotsprings are hot enough to boil eggs.

#25. The Perfume River is so named due to the scent of the tropical flowers that fall onto the water during autumn.

Vietnam's food and cuisine

#26. The Vietnamese believe in Three Kitchen Gods or Tao Quan, who live with and observe each family's actions. They depart at the end of the Lunar Year to report their findings to Ngoc Hoan, The Jade Emperor.

#27. Their cuisine is well known for its balance of the five Asian elements; spicy, sour, bitter, salty and sweet.

#28. The principle of yin and yang is also applied in composing a meal, to provide contrasts in spiciness and temperature of the food.

29. Tiet Canh is a traditional Vietnamese dish made from fresh animal blood.

#30. When cooking a pig, the entire animal is used including the innards.

#31. Snake wine, which is made by steeping whole snakes in rice wine for their venom or essence, is commonly drunk for health, vitality and restorative purposes.

#32. Vietnam's street food culture is quite popular and considered by many to be one of the best in the world.

#33. Noodles or "pho" are the second most popular food in Vietnam, after boiled rice.

Map of Vietnam

Tourism in Vietnam

#34. Lizard fishing is one of Vietnam's most widespread hobbies.

#35. Elephant rides are another very popular local activity often enjoyed by tourists.

#36. The Dong Tam snake farm and living museum was established in 1979 and is responsible for conserving the species and finding antidotes to their venom.

#37. The tunnels of Cu Chi are a network of underground pathways that were used as a military base for the Viet Cong soldiers in their resistance of American forces.

#38. The Forbidden Purple City is a walled fortress and palace in Hue that was only accessible to the royal family and their eunuch servants.

#39. The Nine Dynastic Urns symbolize sovereignty and are each named after an Emperor.

#40. The Hoan Kien turtle is one in only four known living ones from its species.
Continue reading on the next page...

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51 Interesting Facts About Vietnam - The Fact File

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Are you one of those people that only think of Vietnam in terms of that 20th Century war? With these 51 interesting facts about Vietnam, explore how fascinating the country has become over the years; with beautiful scenery, amazing cuisine, and an awesome kaleidoscope of cultures that you definitely need to experience for yourself!

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Apparently, scientist have found signs of water on Mars, but I don't think that we can actually drink the water. Read this article for more information

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Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun and is the second smallest planet in the solar system. Named after the Roman god of war, Mars is also often described as the "Red Planet" due to its reddish appearance. Mars is a terrestrial planet with a thin atmosphere composed primarily of carbon dioxide.

Mars Planet Profile

Mars Diagrams

Facts about Mars

Mars and Earth have approximately the same landmass.
Even though Mars has only 15% of theEarth's volume and just over 10% of the Earth's mass, around two thirds of the Earth's surface is covered in water. Martian surface gravity is only 37% of the Earth's (meaning you could leap nearly three times higher on Mars).

Mars is home to the tallest mountain in the solar system.
Olympus Mons, a shield volcano, is 21km high and 600km in diameter. Despite having formed over billions of years, evidence from volcanic lava flows is so recent many scientists believe it could still be active.

Only 18 missions to Mars have been successful.
As of September 2014 there have been 40missions to Mars, including orbiters, landers and rovers but not counting flybys. The most recent arrivals include the Mars Curiosity mission in 2012, the MAVEN mission, which arrived on September 22, 2014, followed by the Indian Space Research Organization's MOM Mangalyaan orbiter, which arrived on September 24, 2014. The next missions to arrive will be the European Space Agency's ExoMars mission, comprising an orbiter, lander, and a rover, followed by NASA's InSight robotic lander mission, slated for launch in March 2016 and a planned arrival in September, 2016.

Mars has the largest dust storms in the solar system.
They can last for months and cover the entire planet. The seasons are extreme because its elliptical (oval-shaped) orbital path around the Sun is more elongated than most other planets in thesolar system.

On Mars the Sun appears about half the size as it does on Earth.
At the closest point to the Sun, the Martian southern hemisphere leans towards the Sun, causing a short, intensely hot summer, while the northern hemisphere endures a brief, cold winter: at its farthest point from the Sun, the Martian northern hemisphere leans towards the Sun, causing a long, mild summer, while the southern hemisphere endures a lengthy, cold winter.

Pieces of Mars have fallen to Earth.
Scientists have found tiny traces of Martian atmosphere within meteorites violently ejected from Mars, then orbiting the solar system amongst galactic debris for millions of years, before crash landing on Earth. This allowed scientists to begin studying Mars prior to launching space missions.

Mars takes its name from the Roman god of war.
The ancient Greeks called the planet Ares, after their god of war; the Romans then did likewise, associating the planet's blood-red colour with Mars, their own god of war. Interestingly, other ancient cultures also focused on colour - to China's astronomers it was 'the fire star', whilst Egyptian priests called on 'Her Desher', or 'the red one'. The red colour Mars is known for is due to the rock and dust covering its surface being rich in iron.

There are signs of liquid water on Mars.
For years Mars has been known to have water in the form of ice. The first signs of trickling water are dark stripes or stains on crater wall and cliffs seen in satellite images. Due to Mars' atmosphere this water would have to be salty to prevent it from freezing or vaporising.

One day Mars will have a ring.
In the next 20-40 million years Mars' largest moon Phobos will be torn apart by gravitational forces leading to the creation of a ring that could last up to 100 million years.

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Mars Facts - Interesting Facts about Planet Mars

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Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun and is the second smallest planet in the solar system. Named after the Roman god of war, Mars is also often described as the "Red Planet" due to its reddish appearance. Mars is a terrestrial planet with a thin atmosphere composed primarily of carbon dioxide.

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Reporters have found almost two hundred deceased starfish at the shore of a Perth's Beach.

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ALMOST 200 dead starfish have been found at a Perth beach after an initial report indicated there could be up to 1000.

Department of Fisheries and marine officers visited South Beach and nearby North Coogee on Monday and Tuesday.

Samples have been sent to the department's fish health unit to determine what caused the starfish to die.

No other dead aquatic animals had been seen or reported in the area, the department said in a statement on Wednesday.

People have been advised not to collect, handle or move any dead starfish.

Fisheries also advises not to swim or fish in water with large numbers of dead fish and to not collect dead fish as bait or for consumption.

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Hundreds of dead starfish wash up at beach

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ALMOST 200 dead starfish have been found at a Perth beach after an initial report indicated there could be up to 1000. Department of Fisheries and marine officers visited South Beach and nearby North Coogee on Monday and Tuesday. Samples have been sent to the department's fish health unit to determine what caused the starfish to die.

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After becoming Avenue of the Americas and Fashion Ave, now, the city rolls out its LinkNYC project, a network called Links, Third Ave include free, gigabit-speed public Wi-Fi hotspots is coming as the Connected Avenue. To develop the smart city, the Link use Qualcomm technology, support free calling, browsing and emergency services. The Links, which use Qualcomm technology, support free calling, browsing, and emergency services, serving as the foundation for the development of the smart city.

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Many products featured on this site were editorially chosen. Popular Science may receive financial compensation for products purchased through this site.

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A small and not considered planet that is floating around the planet Neptune.

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Scientists at the MRC Clinical Sciences Centre (CSC) have found out how to reawaken an entire set of inactive genes, a chromosome, that is present in every female human cell by experiment on human and mouse's cell. They've work on different stages and techniques. They need to reprogram the cell, from that, they fused the human female stem cell with a stem cell of the mouse embryo. After observing, they found out that not every gene are able to re-active, only some. Now what the scientist need to look for what is the basis of this difference, why are some sensitives and some are not.

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Most molecular biologists look at how to switch on and regulate single genes. Scientists at the MRC Clinical Sciences Centre (CSC) have gone further, and have explored how to reawaken an entire set of inactive genes, a chromosome, that is present in every female human cell.

This reactivation happens when a 'normal' cell is turned back into a stem cell. The CSC team are the first to identify the earliest changes in this process. Understanding exactly how it happens could eventually help researchers to direct it, and produce stem cells tailored for use in therapies.

Stem cells found in early development have the ability to become any one of the many types of cell that make up our bodies. Differentiation into these cell types involves a series of "decisions" by the cell until it has only one role, for example being a skin cell. Scientists are interested in reversing these "decisions" to turn specialised cells back into their stem cell state. The goal is to be able to produce a pool of stem cells, which could then be directed to develop into any type of cell, and used to replace damaged or diseased tissue.

As a cell commits to a particular role, changes are made to its DNA so that genes no longer needed for that role can be retired from use. When scientists reverse this process, using a technique called 'reprogramming', these changes need to be undone so that the genes can be turned back on. The CSC team is the first to have identified the very earliest events that occur when 'retired' genes on the X chromosome are turned back on. The findings are published in Nature Communications.

The DNA strands in each cell are organised into clusters, which are the chromosomes. There are two special chromosomes, called X and Y, which carry the information that determines sex. Every cell has two of these special chromosomes. Males have one X and one Y, while females have two Xs. Female cells only need one X, and using both would mean that an extra set of genes would be active. To avoid this, one chromosome gets randomly turned off in favour of the other. The CSC researchers explored how to turn the inactive X chromosome back on.

When the cell "chooses" an X chromosome to be turned off, it marks it with specific molecules. Some of these molecules bind to the DNA, which is wrapped up into a large coil, whilst others bind to proteins on the coil. These marks determine whether genes are turned on or not. They are called 'epigenetic' marks and are passed on to each cell's "daughters" as it divides.

To reprogram a specialised cell back into a stem cell, scientists need to remove the epigenetic marks. If some of these marks remain, the stem cell will retain a tendency to make "decisions" that may lead it to become the same type of cell that it used to be. This limits its ability to become any type of cell in the body, and so limits its potential use in medical treatments.

"We don't know exactly how to erase the previous memory, and this is extremely important if we want to use these cells again for therapy," says Irene Cantone, of the CSC's Lymphocyte Development group, and who helped to lead the research. The CSC team developed a technique that allowed them to watch what happened to an inactive X chromosome when it was woken up and readied for action. The technique involves fusing together a human female skin cell, which contains an inactive X chromosome, with a stem cell from a mouse embryo.

Fusing the cells together reprograms the skin cell towards a stem cell state. This happens because the mouse stem cell, unlike the human skin cell, contains all of the biological factors needed to reprogram a specialised cell. These factors invade the control centre, or nucleus, of the human cell and begin to adjust the epigenetic marks, allowing genes that had been retired to start afresh. The researchers constructed a timeline of these epigenetic changes. "I now have a better idea of what is needed for these genes to be reactivated," says Cantone.

A pivotal moment is when the two nuclei fuse together. By observing the changes that take place before and after the nuclei fuse, scientists can begin to work out which cellular mechanisms play a role in reprogramming the cell and reactivating the dormant X chromosome.

Cantone and colleagues have shown that two molecules, called XIST (X-inactive specific transcript) and H3K27me3, play a key role in events before the nuclei fuse. The normal role of these molecules in a skin cell is to help silence the inactive X chromosome. They coat the DNA to prevent the cellular machinery from accessing certain genes, and in doing so turn them off. The researchers showed that when the skin cell begins to be reprogrammed, these markers are lost or move away from the chromosome before genes are turned back on.

Not all genes on the silent X chromosome are woken up during this process. "What we found is that only some genes are re-activated, and many stay silent. We now need to know what is the basis of this difference. Why are some sensitive, and others not?" says Amanda Fisher, also of the CSC's Lymphocyte Development group, and a lead scientist on the study.

If scientists can understand how to reverse the biological process of gene silencing that exists inside cells, they may one day be able to produce stem cells suitable to replace damaged and diseased tissue.

The results also have relevance to diseases linked to the X chromosome, such as Duchenne muscular dystrophy, red-green colour blindness and Rett syndrome. "If we can understand how to reactivate specific genes on an inactive chromosome and in certain cells, this could lead to improved treatments in the future," says Cantone.

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stem cells; sickle cell anemia; lymphoma; epigenetics; brain tumor; lung cancer; human biology; genes

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Reawakening a sleeping giant: How to reawaken an entire set of inactive genes

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Most molecular biologists look at how to switch on and regulate single genes. Scientists have now gone further, and have explored how to reawaken an entire set of inactive genes, a chromosome, that is present in every female human cell.

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Some people may think that sugar makes your kids really hyper, but is it true? Read the article for more information.

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Yes, that's right. "Sugar does not appear to affect behavior in children," said Dr. Mark Wolraich, chief of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics at Oklahoma University Health Sciences Center, who researched sugar's effect on children in the 1990s.

Instead, parent's expectations of so-called "sugar highs" appear to color the way they view their children's behavior, Wolraich said. It's easy to see why parents make the link: Sugar is often the main attraction at birthday parties, on Halloween and other occasions when children are likely to bounce off the walls. But all that energy is due to kids being excited, not from the sugar in their systems, he said. [ Is Sugar Bad for You?]

If parents believe that sugar affects their children's behavior, "their ideas are reinforced by seeing it in those circumstances," Wolraich told Live Science.

The misconception comes from the idea that increased blood sugar levels translate into hyperactive behavior. It's true that someone with low blood-sugar levels (known as having hypoglycemia) can get an energy boost from drinking a sugar-filled drink. But it's a different story if someone has a sugary treat when he or she doesn't have low blood sugar.

"The body will normally regulate those sugars. If it needs it, it will use the energy," Wolraich said. "If it doesn't need it, it will convert it to fat for storage."

That's right - if you have a donut when your blood sugar level is already just fine, those extra sugars may be converted into fat.

Sugar high?

Much of this information comes from studies that Wolraich and other researchers did in the 1990s.

For instance, the researchers found that mothers rated their sons as more hyperactive when told that the boys had ingested sugar, even when the children hadn't done so, according to a 1994 study in the Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology. In the study, 35 boys ages 5 to 7 were given a drink containing an artificial sweetener called aspartame, which is not made of sugar, but rather of amino acids. Half of the mothers were told that their boys had received sugar.

When the researchers asked the moms about their sons' behavior, the women who were told their sons were given sugar rated their children as more hyperactive, the study found.

Moreover, the researchers also videotaped the interactions between the boys and their moms. The tapes revealed that the mothers who believed their sons had sugar stayed closer to their sons and were more likely to criticize, look at and talk to their sons than the mothers who were not told their sons had been given sugar.

"The placebo effect can be very powerful," Wolraich, who was not involved with the study, said to explain the results.

However, this study (and many others) looked only at sugar consumption at one point in time. So, Wolraich and his colleagues decided to do a longer, nine-week study. However, they still failed to find a link between sugar and hyperactivity, he said. [ Typical Toddler Behavior, or ADHD? 10 Ways to Tell]

In that 1994 study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers examined children whose parents thought they were sensitive to sugar. In all, the scientists looked at 25 preschool children, ages 3 to 5, and 23 school-age children, ages 6 to 10. Each family followed a set diet for three weeks at a time: One diet was high in sugar (sucrose), another was high in aspartame, and one was high in saccharin (a noncaloric sweetener).

The study was also double-blind, meaning that neither the families nor the scientists knew which child was on which diet at any given time.

According to cognitive and behavior tests, as well as reports from parents, teachers and researchers, "there were no significant differences among the three diets," indicating that sugar did not effect the children's intellect or behavior, the researchers wrote in the study.

Furthermore, Wolraich and colleagues published a review in 1995 in the journal JAMA that included 16 studies looking at the "sugar high" issue. This review also "found that sugar does not affect the behavior or cognitive performance of children," the researchers wrote in the study.

In fact, the statistician who worked on the 1995 paper, in which the researchers statistically combined the results from all of the studies done until then, said that, "he had never had such consistently negative results." This means that sugar consistently failed to create the fabled "sugar high," Wolraich said.
Original article on Live Science.

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Yes, that's right. "Sugar does not appear to affect behavior in children," said Dr. Mark Wolraich, chief of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics at Oklahoma University Health Sciences Center, who researched sugar's effect on children in the 1990s. Instead, parent's expectations of so-called "sugar highs" appear to color the way they view their children's behavior, Wolraich said.

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Future foods: What will we be eating in 20 years' time?

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Why insect burgers could replace the hamburger on dinner plates.

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Satisfy your curiosity with the Australian Academy of Science-verified by Australia's top scientists, it's content you can trust.

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Birds are maybe a new evolution of a dinosaur

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Birds are maybe a new evolution of a dinosaur

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It is believed that dinosaurs are extinct though there were few connections between a bird and a dinosaur. Birds lay their eggs in their nest and scientists has found a connection which a dinosaur in china was something similar.

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It looks like the page you are looking for has moved, is no longer available, or never existed.

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People produces too much carbon dioxide because of industrial factories. Scientist found out that if we use new technology to turn those carbon dioxide into chemical building blocks for other products, it would be something valuable.

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We humans emitted 35.9 metric gigatons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere in 2014, mostly from burning coal and natural gas in power plants, making fertilizer and cement, and other industrial processes. If chemists could capture carbon dioxide and turn it into chemical building blocks for other products, the way plants do, says Cornell University chemical engineer Lynden Archer, "carbon dioxide would not be a nuisance anymore, but a gift."

For years scientists have been trying to store carbon dioxide captured from exhaust flues at power plants and other emitters, mostly by injecting it deep underground. Without large subsidies, however, this expensive carbon sequestration process may not be economically viable. Injecting carbon dioxide into old oil wells to drive out more oil is one application, but it's not enough, and it's not clear it even pays, given current low oil prices. Proponents of utilizing carbon rather than storing it hope they will profit by creating something of value from this waste product. The most likely applications use the gas as a raw material for making chemical products, which could also pay off by replacing petrochemicals with something greener.

These proponents face a difficult chemistry problem. Carbon dioxide is a stable molecule, and doesn't store much energy in its chemical bonds. To use it, chemists have to add energy, often through heating, which usually requires electricity. Much of that comes from power plants that burn coal or natural gas-emitting more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, even more than was captured.

Engineers, chemists and other researchers say new technologies are changing the picture. Paul Bunje, senior scientist in the Energy and Environment group at the XPrize Foundation, hopes that awarding a big prize for a solution will stimulate a diverse group of technologists. Next Wednesday, the foundation will announce that more than 40 teams are competing to win a $20 million prize. The winner of the Carbon XPrize, to be announced in spring 2020, will sequester the most carbon dioxide into a product of greatest net value. Some teams aim to make polymers, or fuels to replace gasoline, or industrial chemicals.

In the longer term, all the different companies producing one chemical or another could make up a carbon-utilization industry that could make a difference. A problem on the scale of climate change needs multiple solutions, Bunje says.

"The question now is how can people in chemistry create new reactions, new mechanisms to use carbon dioxide as a feedstock?" says Cornell's Archer, who is also a Carbon XPrize advisory board member. This week in Science Advances, he offers one answer: a fuel cell that generates electricity while converting carbon dioxide into a commodity chemical. Archer and his student Wadji Al Sadat built a prototype reactor that combines carbon dioxide with aluminum and oxygen to produce oxalates. Oxalates are used to make acids, rust removers, fabric dyes and other industrial chemicals.

Archer is well aware of the pitfalls of trying to do environmentally friendly chemistry with carbon dioxide. "Usually you consume so much energy that it's cost prohibitive-but we get energy back," he says. "That surprised us."

The cell runs on aluminum and air. Inside, oxygen reacts with an electrode made of aluminum to form a highly reactive aluminum superoxide capable of reacting with otherwise reluctant carbon dioxide. The two react to generate aluminum oxalate. The fuel cell captures some energy from these chemical reactions, and although it requires a voltage to drive the reaction, the process appears to generate more electricity than it consumes, Archer says. Because the metal is consumed, choosing the right one is key. He settled on aluminum because it's abundant and inexpensive. And even though aluminum production emits carbon dioxide, Archer hopes his system will capture enough carbon within oxalates to offset that.

The Cornell group cautions that it doesn't fully understand the chemical reactions involved. The early version of the fuel cell uses an expensive material called an ionic liquid as the electrolyte, for example. If it plays a critical role and can't be replaced, the technology may not be viable, says Archer.

Oxalates are a niche product, as are many of the chemicals being made by startups working on carbon utilization. But some are aiming big. Skyonic's pilot plant in San Antonio, Texas, captures emissions from a cement plant and turns them into limestone and acid. Solidia Technologies sequesters carbon dioxide in concrete itself. And other companies in various stages are working on making plastics, alternative fuels and chemical feedstocks.

Without pointing fingers at any project in particular, Howard Herzog says many of those that promise to use captured carbon look a little too good to be true. Herzog is a senior research engineer at the MIT Energy Initiative and a proponent of carbon sequestration. "Carbon dioxide is spent energy," he says. Getting value out of carbon dioxide in the form of commodity chemicals or energy, without putting more energy in somewhere in the life cycle of the product, is extremely difficult. "You can't win in terms of energy. Thermodynamics tells us that," Herzog says.

Although Herzog admits that some of the companies may be profitable, he's skeptical about the potential for carbon utilization to have a significant environmental impact. He was a lead author of the 2005 IPCC Special Report on Carbon Dioxide Capture and Storage, and says the report's conclusions about carbon utilization still hold: The potential to make a dent in global emissions is small. Even if the chemical industry used carbon dioxide to make all its products-something no one thinks is likely-they couldn't sop up all the emissions.

Kendra Kuhl, co-founder of Opus 12, a startup in Berkeley, Calif., is well aware that carbon utilization won't fully solve the world's emissions problem. Opus 12 is developing an electrochemical reactor that uses novel catalysts and renewable electricity to turn carbon dioxide into polymer building blocks and other chemicals. Kuhl says Opus 12 will compete for the Carbon XPrize. And even though there is not enough demand for products to consume a large share of carbon dioxide emissions, she says that given the environmental consequences of continuing to dig up fossil fuels to feed the petrochemical industry, it's worth trying to use carbon dioxide instead. "We need a new way of doing chemistry."

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We humans emitted 35.9 metric gigatons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere in 2014, mostly from burning coal and natural gas in power plants, making fertilizer and cement, and other industrial processes.

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There are deadly cosmic snipers in space fire random out there in the universe, and they are called gamma rays. How deadly are they?

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Death From Space — Gamma-Ray Bursts Explained

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This tribe has not yet discovered fire. People weren't able to make contact with this tribe members because they were too hostile.

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Meet The Forgotten Tribe That Has Not Yet Discovered Fire...

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The Sentinelese people of North Sentinel island are an "uncontacted" tribe that have not yet discovered fire and will kill anyone who steps foot on their island.

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How Weather is Making Roaches Want to Fly?

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How Weather is Making Roaches Want to Fly?

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Scientists have discovered that hot, humid weather causes cockroaches to want to fly more. Especially in underground subways and train stations, etc.

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Hot, Humid Weather Makes Roaches Want To Fly

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As if the sweat beading down your back while you wait for a train in 90 percent humidity wasn't bad enough, there's another horrific side effect to hot city summers: Roaches that are more likely to spread their demon-wings and fly.

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There is now a gaming controller that is just a thing piece of plastic that attaches to your fore arm and turns your arm into a touchpad for gaming, playing music, and scrawling notes that will appear on a computer screen.

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(Image: © Kim et al., Science 2016)

It's finally happened. Our bodies can now become one with the game controller.

A stretchy, skin-like controller created by materials scientists at Seoul National University promises to turn a forearm into a touchpad for gaming, playing music, and scrawling notes that appear on a computer screen.
RELATED: Pokémon Go: Top 10 Hazards of Augmented Reality Gaming
The team, led by researcher Chong-Chan Kim along with Jeong-Yun Sun, a professor of materials science and engineering, imagines a future where we ditch brittle electrodes for soft, biocompatible technology. No more stiff touch panels for human-computer interactions. So they got to work on a transparent hydrogel one.

They developed the panel using a hydrogel made from polyacrylamide, which is a water-soluble acrylic resin, and lithium chloride salts that act like a conductor. Electrodes on both ends of the panel create a uniform electrostatic field. Pressing on it closes the circuit, allowing the current to flow to the touch point.

Current meters at each corner pick up the signals and transmit them to a separate controller board that connects to a computer, the scientists report in the current issue of Science (abstract).
WATCH VIDEO: Why Video Games Make You Aggressive
"The epidermal touch panel is capable of detecting motions such as tapping, holding, dragging, and swiping," they wrote in their paper. By pressing the panel with one finger, the team could play music on a computer keyboard, move virtual chess pieces, write out letters, and control a video game.
RELATED: Chair Turns Your Butt into a VR Controller
While it's not the most precise touchpad -- the finger-drawn letters spelling "Hello world!" were a little shaky -- having this much control on such a tricky surface is impressive. Their advancement made me think of John Rogers' electronic tattoos, wearable sensors in the works at UC San Diego, and Zhenan Bao's electronic skin work at Stanford.

This controller is even more stretchy than I anticipated. Apparently it still operates after being stretched to more than 1,000 percent of its normal size, the team reported. Following repeated use, the material does lose some of its flexibility, possibly because a bit of the hydrogel water evaporates. Might need a special moisturizer - just like a real arm.
Originally published on Discovery News.

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Stretchy, Transparent Gaming Controller Acts Like a Second Skin

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(Image: © Kim et al., Science 2016) It's finally happened. Our bodies can now become one with the game controller. A stretchy, skin-like controller created by materials scientists at Seoul National University promises to turn a forearm into a touchpad for gaming, playing music, and scrawling notes that appear on a computer screen.

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Coding just got easier with the help of a Robot called Root. This bot can help a kid as small as five "code"

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Root the programmable robot (Photo Credit: Wyss Institute at Harvard University

Mention the word "coding, " and the first image that comes to mind is a complicated algorithm that has no relationship to the real world. It is, therefore, no wonder that most kids steer away from learning this skill that is becoming increasingly important in today's world. Now, thanks to a small robot created by researchers at Harvard's Wyss Institute, even kids as young as five, will be clamoring to program.

Root, the hexagonal robot uses a programming environment called Square that can be accessed using an iPad. It has been designed to teach coding to kids at various levels. For beginners or young children, Root is less about coding - which may not be intuitive for some - and more about problem-solving.

Kids can construct a "what "if" scenario by moving icons around on the tablet and observing the consequences of their action instantly. This simple "cause and effect" logic can be used to teach the robot to "drive" along a vertical magnetic dry-erase whiteboard and sketch with a dry erase marker. Root can also be instructed to move around the floor, draw patterns, and avoid obstacles.

Photo Credit: Wyss Institute at Harvard University

As students get more comfortable with the concept, they can "stack" commands, meaning that Root can be told to draw a race track on a whiteboard, and then multiple Root robots can be instructed to race each other. Other fun options include programming Root to go faster when driving over the color green and coming to a standstill upon sensing the color red. That's just the beginning of the possibilities - Root can also be taught to flee when it detects danger, which in this case is the beam from a flashlight, and even play "Angry Birds" on a whiteboard using real-world physics. Since multiple Roots can be utilized at the same time, the robot is the perfect classroom tool to introduce coding to young kids.

Raphael Cherney, a research associate at the Wyss Institute, believes that this novel approach to coding will ignite tremendous interest because unlike the traditional method, Root makes coding fun for even the youngest of students.

Photo Credit: Wyss Institute at Harvard University via www.techworm.net

Unfortunately, the robot, which has been successfully tested by kids in the laboratory, is not yet available for schools. Zivthan Dubrovsky, who leads the robotics platform at Wyss, says the team is looking for the right partners to help develop a curriculum, including a coding module, around this fun robot. The researchers estimate that Root will retail for about $200 USD, making it fairly affordable for anyone that wishes to learn how to code.

Resources: wired.com, theverge.com, news.harvard.edu

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Meet Root, A Robot That Teaches Kids To Code

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Mention the word "coding" and the first image that comes to mind is a complicated algorithm that has no relationship to the real world. It is, therefore, no wonder that most kids steer away from learning this skill that is becoming increasingly important in today's world.

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Getting a tattoo is a notoriously painful process but that doesn't stop all that many people from getting their skin inked.

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Luckily for them, tattoo machines have come a long way from the tools used in the past.

Smarter Every Day grabbed their slow-motion cameras and headed into to a tattoo parlor to find out how tattoos work.

Here's what they discovered.

In order for a tattoo to be permanent, ink has to get into the dermis, the tissue just underneath the outer layer of your skin, called the epidermis.

This is done by making thousands of tiny pricks in the skin. To do that, a tattoo artist uses a handheld machine that has a needle affixed to it.

The artist dips the needle in the ink, turns on the motor that moves the needle, and applies the moving needle to the skin.

The sharp needle pricks the skin quickly and repeatedly, dragging the ink clinging to it down into the dermis.

A needle can have three ends or as many as 25. Each type of needle can achieve different effects. Needles with fewer ends are used for outlining, while needles with more ends can be used for shading or coloring.

The coil machine uses a direct electrical current to move the needle. The tattoo artists steps on a foot pedal, which shoots a current into the coil, turning it an electromagnet.

The now magnetized coil pulls down the metal arm that's attached to the needle, which pushes the needle out. But as the metal arm touches the coil, another thin piece of metal loses contact with a circuit screw, breaking the current and causing the coil to lose its electromagnetic force.

The return spring pulls the metal arm back to its original place, pulling the thin piece of metal back into contact with the circuit screw and reconnecting the current that magnetizes the coil. This process happens over and over again as the tattoo artist holds the foot pedal down.

Seeing these tattoos in slow motion can undermine just how fast they work. According to a TED video, modern tattoo machines pierce the skin at a "frequency of 50 to 3,000 times per minute."

It wouldn't do much good to distribute the ink just on the epidermis because these outer skin cells are continually dying and sloughing off. The tattoo would disappear in just a few weeks. For tattoos to last a whole person's life, the machines have to pack enough punch to get the ink down into the dermis, the tissue just below the outer epidermis.

This dermis is "composed of collagen fibers, nerves, glands, blood vessels, and more," according to the video.

Once a macrophage consume an ink particle, it goes back through the lymphatic highway and brings the consumed particles to the liver for excretion. But other macrophages don't make it back to the lymph nodes. Instead, these blood cells stay in the dermis, and the ink particles they've eaten continue to remain visible.

Destin from Smarter Every Day tries out the needle to see how much it hurts. Check out the rest of the video, uploaded to YouTube.

If this gave you inspiration to get inked, choose carefully. Removing tattoos isn't as easy as you may have heard.

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Here's what's really happening to your skin when you get a tattoo

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Luckily for them, tattoo machines have come a long way from the tools used in the past. Smarter Every Day grabbed their slow-motion cameras and headed into to a tattoo parlor to find out how tattoos work. Here's what they discovered.

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Japan is known for their high-speed trains. Now they want to build a train that can blend into the surrounding.

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Maglev Train ( Photo Credit : By Saruno Hirobano via Wikimedia Commons

Japan is famous for its state-of-the-art high-speed railway system. In 2015, its Magnetic Levitation or Maglev train, which gets its name because it hovers 10 cm above the tracks, set a new speed world record of 375 mph (603km/hr). Now the innovative island nation wants to build a train that features a mirror-like exterior and blends in so well with the environment, that it will be practically "invisible."

The train, which is expected to be ready by 2018, is being built by Seibu Railway to commemorate the company's 100th anniversary. It is the brainchild of famous Japanese architect Kazuyo Sejima. The winner of the prestigious 2010 Pritzker Architecture Award, says she is excited at the prospect of creating something that will move through different environments, as opposed to designing a stationary building.

A rendering of architect Kazuyo Sejima's design for a new express train in Japan (Photo Credit SANAA architects)

The idea of developing something that will reflect the surrounding scenery is particularly exciting given that the train's 111-mile route through Japan goes through a varied landscape ranging from the mountains of Chichibu to the tall skyscrapers of Tokyo.

While the exterior of the train is slick and ultramodern, don't expect the interior to be as stark. The architect wants it to be a place "where large numbers of people can all relax in comfort, in their own way, like a living room, so that they think to themselves 'I look forward to riding that train again.'" We have a feeling that attracting passengers to ride aboard this radical "invisible" train will not be an issue!

Resources:fastcodesign.com, architectural digest.com, the guardian.com

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Japan is famous for its state-of-the-art high-speed railway system. In 2015, its Magnetic Levitation or, Maglev train, which gets its name because it hovers 10 cm above the tracks, set a new speed world record of 375 mph (603km/hr).

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As appetizing as it sounds, cockroach milk protein crystals are found to be like complete food, containing fats, sugar and essential amino acids. However, the process is not easy. Researchers has to cut through the cockroach guts getting the genes responsible for creating milk.

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While the idea of a cockroach milkshake might not exactly get your gastric juices flowing, it's a highly nutritious source of protein and it could be a valuable tool to ease our world's food production woes.

Around 10 years ago, it was discovered that the stomachs of a particular type of cockroach contain milk protein crystals. This cockroach ( Diploptera punctata ) is the only known viviparous cockroach, meaning it gives birth to live young, which is fairly bizarre for an insect. Just like mammals, they have to feed their young with a "milk" containing protein crystals , and t hese crystals were found to hold a crazy amount of protein. A single crystal is estimated to contain more than three times the amount of energy found in an equivalent mass of dairy milk.

However, as you can imagine, milking cockroaches isn't easy.

So now, an international team of scientists has developed a less demanding and potentially cheaper way to harness this cockroachy-goodness. In a new study published in July's issue of the journal International Union of Crystallography , the researchers show off their success in sequencing the genes responsible for producing the milk protein crystals in the cockroaches gut. This breakthrough means the crystals can be produced in vitro , making the mass-production of this highly nutritious supplement a possible reality.

"The crystals are like a complete food - they have proteins, fats, and sugars. If you look into the protein sequences, they have all the essential amino acids," Sanchari Banerjee, one the researchers, told the Times Of India.

As of yet, there are no plans to make this roach milk into a commercial product, though the researchers do have plans to use a yeast system to try and produce these crystals en masse. Many are speculating that soon insects could play a major part in our diet as the world struggles under the stress of conventional food production . Although, no doubt there might be a few "image problems" when it comes to marketing.

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Cockroach Milk Could Make A Nutritious Meal In The Future

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While the idea of a cockroach milkshake might not exactly get your gastric juices flowing, it's a highly nutritious source of protein and it could be a valuable tool to ease our world's food production woes. Around 10 years ago, it was discovered that the stomachs of a particular type of cockroach contain milk protein crystals.

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China is one of the top twenty most traffic jam. Chinese athorities have tried many different ways but nothing seem of work. Now Chinese engeneers have has come up with a new idea which might help reduce traffic in China.

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Photo Credit: CCTV/YouTube

To state that China has traffic issues is an understatement. A 2015 study conducted by navigation system maker TomTom revealed that the country is home to five of the top twenty most traffic congested cities in the world. Though Chinese authorities have tried to control the traffic flow with tactics that range from charging road tolls to building expressways with 50 lanes, nothing appears to be working. Now, some engineers are proposing an ingenious solution to ease the country's traffic woes - An elevated bus that glides over cars

The concept for the "straddling" or elevated bus was first introduced six years ago at the 2010 China Beijing International High-Tech Expo. However, while the idea generated a lot of excitement, the bus never became a reality due to safety concerns. Since then, Song Youzhou and his team have been working hard to perfect the design.

Photo Credit: CCTV/YouTube

The new and improved Transit Elevated Bus (TEB) that was unveiled at the 19 th China Beijing International High-Tech Expo on May 22, is a cross between a subway and a bus. Designed to run on rails, it covers two lanes. However because the bus is elevated 2-meters (6.5-feet) above the road, it allows vehicle traffic to continue flowing unabated. Retractable ramps enable commuters to board and disembark the bus at predesignated stations.

The inventors believe that with a capacity to accommodate up to 1,400 passengers at a time and a maximum speed of 60 km per hour, the TEB is a better and cheaper alternative to subways. According to Youzhou, each elevated bus will cost about $4.5 million USD or about sixteenth the price of building a new subway.

Photo Credit: CCTV/YouTube

Also, thanks to its large passenger capacity, deploying just a single TEB would be enough to replace 40 conventional buses. Besides reducing road congestion, eliminating the buses would help alleviate another big problem the country is grappling with - Pollution. That's because the TEB is powered by solar energy and electricity, not fossil fuels. Youzhou estimates that replacing 40 buses could cut fuel consumption by 800 tons, and carbon emissions, by 2,500 tons annually!

Though some critics are still opposed to the idea, officials of the coastal city of Qinhuangdao seem to be willing to give it a try. They have commissioned the TEB team to build a 12-mile track to test the innovative bus. If everything goes according to schedule, the bus will be ready for its first passengers by the end of summer!

Resources: dailymail.co.uk, abc.net.au,guardian.com, citylab.com, autoblog.com

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Can An Elevated Bus Solve China's Traffic Woes?

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To state that China has traffic issues is an understatement. A 2015 study conducted by navigation system maker TomTom revealed that the country is home to five of the top twenty most traffic congested cities in the world.

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Funny enough, shooting stars have nothing to do with stars. It's actually caused by tiny bits of dust and rocks

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Today's Wonder of the Day was inspired by Nicole from AL. Nicole Wonders, " How do shooting stars start? " Thanks for WONDERing with us, Nicole!

Star light, star , first star I see tonight. I wish I may, I wish I might, have this wish I wish tonight. Have you ever said those words while staring at the night sky?

Some people believe that if you those words after seeing a shooting star, your wish will come true. We're not sure about the of shooting stars to make dreams come true, but we do find shooting stars fascinating !

Although planets and stars are the things to see in the night sky, stars and planets aren't the only things around in space. At any moment there are bits of rocks around, too.

Some of these space rocks are as tiny as of dust, and some are as large as ! What does space dust have to do with shooting stars, you may WONDER? Well, a shooting star (or "falling star") has nothing to do with stars and everything to do with these little bits of rock.

Though they may to have the same enchanting as the stars we see in the night sky, shooting stars are actually small pieces of rock or dust, called meteoroids, hitting the Earth's atmosphere and burning up.

The and of light we see as a meteoroid streaks through the sky is called a meteor. Meteors are what people refer to as shooting stars.

So isn't a burning rock falling through space ? Not typically. Most meteoroids are only the size of a grain of sand and burn up before they ever reach the Earth.

Very rarely, a part of a meteoroid may survive the journey through our atmosphere and make its way to Earth's surface. When that happens, the piece of rock that lands on Earth is called a meteorite.

A few times a year, Earth passes through a of dust and debris a comet has left behind while orbiting the sun. This comet is called a meteor stream.

When Earth passes through a dusty meteor stream, hundreds or thousands of meteors are born. This is called a meteor shower.

Keep an eye on the sky. The next time you see a shooting star, you can exclaim "That rocks!" and really mean it.

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Today's Wonder of the Day was inspired by Nicole from AL. Nicole Wonders, " How do shooting stars start? " Thanks for WONDERing with us, Nicole! Star light, star , first star I see tonight. I wish I may, I wish I might, have this wish I wish tonight.

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Food, something we can't live without, so what will we be eating in the future. Burgers or we'll we be eating crickets.

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Makeup, something that girls love... but do they know what they're putting on their faces?
http://www.nova.org.au/people-medicine/chemistry-cosmetics

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Scientists said the new planet is most likely to have water, and scientists say it is Earth's "closest-twin".

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Scientists are preparing to unveil a new planet in our galactic neighbourhood which is "believed to be Earth-like" and orbits its star at a distance that could favour life, German weekly Der Spiegel reported Friday.

The exoplanet orbits a well-investigated star called Proxima Centauri, part of the Alpha Centauri star system, the magazine said, quoting anonymous sources.

"The still nameless planet is believed to be Earth-like and orbits at a distance to Proxima Centauri that could allow it to have liquid water on its surface-an important requirement for the emergence of life," said the magazine.

"Never before have scientists discovered a second Earth that is so close by," it said, adding that the European Southern Observatory (ESO) will announce the finding at the end of August.

The report gave no further details.

Contacted by AFP, ESO spokesman Richard Hook said he is aware of the report, but refused to confirm or deny it. "We are not making any comment," he said.

NASA has announced the discovery of new planets in the past, but most of those worlds were either too hot or too cold to host water in liquid form, or were made of gas, like our Jupiter and Neptune, rather than of rock, like Earth or Mars.

Last year, the US space agency unveiled an exoplanet that it described as Earth's "closest-twin".

Named Kepler 452b, the planet is about 60 percent larger than Earth and could have active volcanoes, oceans, sunshine like ours, twice as much gravity and a year that lasts 385 days.

But at a distance of 1,400 light-years away, humankind has little hope of reaching this Earth-twin any time soon.

In comparison, the exoplanet orbiting Proxima Centauri, if confirmed, is just 4.24 light-years away.

This is a mere stepping stone in relation to the scale of the Universe but still too far away for humans to reach in present-generation chemical rockets.

According to NASA's Godard Space Center's website, it lies 39,900,000,000,000 kilometres away, or 271,000 times the distance of Earth to the Sun.

Proxima Centauri, discovered in 1915, is one of three stars in the Alpha Centauri system, a constellation mainly visible from the southern hemisphere.

© 2016 AFP

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Scientists to unveil new Earth-like planet: report

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Scientists are preparing to unveil a new planet in our galactic neighbourhood which is "believed to be Earth-like" and orbits its star at a distance that could favour life, German weekly Der Spiegel reported Friday. The exoplanet orbits a well-investigated star called Proxima Centauri, part of the Alpha Centauri star system, the magazine said, quoting anonymous sources.

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We're making a super bug!

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This bee lives on the edge—of an active volcano

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This bee lives on the edge—of an active volcano

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There were some bees living on the edge of the Masaya volcano. It is really hot so it could protect them from most of their predators or parasites. However, because the volcano is still active, scientists are expecting that there will be less bees living there in the future.

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They call it "the kill zone." Just outside the Nicaraguan capital city of Managua, the Masaya volcano smokes as magma sloshes and bubbles near its surface. Clouds of noxious fumes and slow-cooling lava wipe out any traces of life. But when a team of scientists visited, they saw something unexpected: life. A little bee, Anthophora squammulosa, was zipping through the ash heaps looking for nectar and burrowing in a pile of volcanic debris. The find, a shock on this unforgiving mountain, makes these insects the first of their genus to be found living in volcanic ash, a rare home for any bee.

The search started when pollination ecologist Hilary Erenler was researching her main passion, neotropical butterflies. Erenler, a visiting researcher at the University of Northampton in the United Kingdom, has been traveling to Masaya since 2008 mostly on her own dime to study the behavior of colorful pollinators like the rare Godman's metalmark. But early on, she noticed the activities of another pollinator: bees.

The bees she saw nested almost exclusively in one patch of Masaya. There, temperatures climbed as high as 42°C, and an acid rain-caused by sulfur dioxide fumes from the volcano-occasionally lashed the upper reaches of the mountain. Nothing visible grew. She wondered: Why were the bees there?

Erenler launched a study with researchers and citizen scientists from around the globe. First, they wanted to figure out just how many bees were present-no simple task. She and her team battled the sweltering temperatures and wore gas masks while searching for nests. They visited the site five times over 3 years, and estimated a population of 1000 to 2000 bees. But years of observations left them with more questions, including the mystery of what the bees were eating.

A. squammulosa, like 90% to 95% of bees, is solitary. Single females dig cell-like nests nearly 30 centimeters into the side of the volcano, where they lay their eggs. They then collect pollen and nectar to deposit in the nest for the developing larva to eat after they hatch. Prior research has found that Anthophora bees are not very picky about the plants they pollinate. But when the researchers sampled the pollen from 10 females on Masaya, they were in for another surprise. Fully 99% of the pollen matched only one plant: Melanthera nivea, a tough wildflower that can survive the volcano's acid rainfall, they write this month in The Pan-Pacific Entomologist. "It's not an accident," that the bees are in such a tight partnership with this one plant, Erenler says.

The researchers think that the bees may thrive in the volcano's hellish landscape because it hosts few predators and parasites that would threaten their survival. It could also be that-because no plants live in the kill zone-their nests aren't broken up by underground roots.

The discovery "shows that bees are not only amazing organisms, but perhaps more plastic than we suppose," says Carolina Laura Morales, pollination and bee ecologist at the National Scientific and Technical Research Council of Argentina (CONICET) in Buenos Aires. Other melittologists (bee researchers) are also impressed. Bryan Danforth of Cornell University says that, as far as extremophile bees go, "this one takes the cake."

But when it comes to conservation, a bee living on a volcano may be more a cause for caution than a hopeful sign of adaptability. "Does it mean we can relax regarding bee conservation efforts?" Morales asks. "No, not at all." The species ranges from central Mexico to Nicaragua, a habitat threatened by human activities, Erenler notes. And the population living on the volcano may be under even greater threat: Not only could an errant eruption do them in, but because they are specialized to only one type of plant, if that plant dies out, the bees would be left with nothing.

The little pollinators are living life literally and metaphorically on the edge. "I'm expecting that sometime I'll go back and there will be less bees," Erenler says. It's just a matter of what will be the tipping point.

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This bee lives on the edge-of an active volcano

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They call it "the kill zone." Just outside the Nicaraguan capital city of Managua, the Masaya volcano smokes as magma sloshes and bubbles near its surface. Clouds of noxious fumes and slow-cooling lava wipe out any traces of life. But when a team of scientists visited, they saw something unexpected: life.

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Recently, there was an infant who was tested positive to zika shortly died after her birth. Also there were more than 10 babies who were born with zika but most of them were lost. Experts recommended people to be careful of mosquitoes when they travel.

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Texas Health Officials Confirm State's First Zika-Related Infant Death

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Today, health officials in Texas confirmed the first infant death related to infection with the Zika virus, according to a statement by the Harris County Health Department.

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Young sunflowers follow the sun from East to west until they grow up. This helps the plant to grow bigger and gives more advantages like having more visits from the pollinator.

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Every day, young sunflowers follow the sun like spectators at an incredibly slow tennis match. But scientists have never known why, or why the tracking stops when they become adults. Now, a new study suggests that this daily sun worship is guided by circadian rhythms during development. In a series of experiments, scientists tied down young plants to prevent them from moving or rotated them so they were facing the wrong way when the sun rose. When the plants' normal movements were thwarted, they grew far more slowly than regular sunflowers, with about a 10% decrease in both biomass and leaf area. Researchers say the rhythmic tracking helps the plants grow bigger, allowing them to add cells on whichever side is doing the "stretching": the east side during the day and the west side at night. When the sunflowers finally settle down and stop this daily tracking, their position also gives them an advantage, researchers report this week in Science. A second set of experiments showed that mature plants' permanent eastward orientation makes for warmer flower faces, which may be responsible for a large increase in pollinator visits-five times more than in mature plants that face west. Looks like following the sun is more than just a spectator sport!

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Every day, young sunflowers follow the sun like spectators at an incredibly slow tennis match. But scientists have never known why, or why the tracking stops when they become adults. Now, a new study suggests that this daily sun worship is guided by circadian rhythms during development.

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Some scientists was thought that the pools in the olympics were turned green because of the growth of algae caused by heat and lack of wind. Others believe because of imbalance in chemicals. To fix this problem

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Rio Official on the Green Pools: 'Chemistry Is Not an Exact Science'

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As the Rio 2016 Olympic water polo and diving pools remain green, a Rio official said that "chemistry is not an exact science"

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The Worst Injuries at the 2016 Rio Summer Olympics

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The Worst Injuries at the 2016 Rio Summer Olympics

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French gymnast Samir Aït Saïd broke his leg during the men’s vault qualification on Saturday.

The 26-year-old suffered a grisly double break when he missed his landing — leaving his lower leg dangling at a right angle.

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When you have world-class athletes performing mind-bending feats of strength and agility, it's can only be expected that someone's going to get hurt.

Wednesday evening, while performing in the 77kg "clean and jerk" competition in the Riocentro Pavilion, Armenian weightlifter Andranik Karapetyan experienced a particularly painful injury when he dislocated his elbow while attempting to lift 195kg (429 lbs). After extending his elbow too far, his arm bent the wrong way, causing it to almost fragment under the weight.

Karapetyan, one of the favorites to medal in the event, was left screaming in pain. Trainers and medics ran on to the stage and quickly rushed him to the hospital, while audience members were left cringing and his Armenian trainers held their heads in their hands.

The 20-year old's injury was certainly made more painful by the fact that his Olympic debut was tainted by such a dissatisfying finish in his event - or, rather, failure to finish - after what had been a very strong performance overall. Karapetyan, who was in second place after completing the snatch portion of the competition, won the gold medal at the 2016 European Weightlifting Championships and earned the bronze medal in the 2015 World Weightlifting Championship.

But Karapetyan's injury is only one in a string of serious injuries and near-injuries in the 2016 Rio Olympics.

French gymnast Samir Aït Saïd broke his leg during the men's vault qualification on Saturday.

The 26-year-old suffered a grisly double break when he missed his landing - leaving his lower leg dangling at a right angle.

Earlier in the session, Saïd had earned the third highest score on the still rings- an event he holds four European Championship medals in- and was a favorite to move on to the individual all-around final. Despite exiting the Rio Olympic Arena on a stretcher, Saïd has been cheering on the French team from his hospital bed and pledged to fans that he will return to the sport, hopefully in time for the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo.

Other injuries include cyclists Richie Porte of Australia and Vincenzo Nibali of Italy, who were favorites to win and front-runners in the Tour de France. Both crashed during the Olympic road race on Saturday and came out with various injuries, including broken collarbones.

Porte stuck around in Rio to watch Wednesday's race and told reporters he was "disappointed" to be out of the Games. "I would have liked to be racing... and have finished the road race but if you've seen the crash, I think I came out of it quite lightly," he said. "Obviously, my season is over now. I've got three or four months of not doing much other than focusing on recovery. It's not the way I wanted to end the season."

Dutch cyclist Annemiek van Vleuten, who competed in the women's road race, fractured three vertebrae and suffered a major concussion after a horrific crash.

Other Olympians have had slips and falls but elected to stay in the game.

After falling and injuring his knee during his floor routine, German gymnast Andreas Toba was forced to leave the mat with only 1.366 points. In an incredible feat of strength, however, he pushed through the pain to compete on the pommel horse to earn a respectable 14.233 points.

Great Britain's Elissa Downie had a terrifying fall on her neck in the course of a tumbling pass during the women's qualification round of her floor routine. But the 17-year-old doesn't have a nearly unbroken run of success - including a silver medal in the 2016 European Championship floor routine - for nothing.

After failing to complete the floor routine and leaving the arena in a wheelchair, Downie came back to perform her two vaults as planned, earning 14.683 points for Great Britain, which ended up in fourth place for the team all-around competition at the end of the day and fifth place in the final.

Downie is currently ranked 24th in the women's individual all-around competition. The final begins today at 3pm ET.

The Olympic games are just as much about the intense sacrifice and hard work as the gold medal finishes. But here's hoping that the rest of the 2016 Rio Olympics will be less eventful injury-wise.
How to Live Stream the 2016 Rio Olympics:
NBCOlympics.com and the NBC Sports app will be live streaming coverage of the Games for pay TV subscribers via TV Everywhere. You can download the NBC Sports app to your Android TV, Apple TV, Xbox or Roku or use the iOS, Android or Windows Phone apps.

You can also live stream Olympic matches from NBC here.

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The Worst Injuries at the 2016 Rio Summer Olympics

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When you have world-class athletes performing mind-bending feats of strength and agility, it's can only be expected that someone's going to get hurt. Wednesday evening, while performing in the 77kg "clean and jerk" competition in the Riocentro Pavilion, Armenian weightlifter Andranik Karapetyan experienced a particularly painful injury when he dislocated his elbow while attempting to lift 195kg (429 lbs).

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Growing up, we most likely saw sharks as ferocious kings of the ocean with an appetite for human blood. But that's not entirely true. Despite some of this being true, there are many misunderstandings about them.

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Myth #5: Nothing eats sharks

While the largest sharks, such as tiger sharks and whale sharks, have very little to worry about from predators, the smaller sharks are not so lucky. Some shark species are incredibly small, and so they can make handy snacks for larger species. A few marine mammals, including orca whales, prey on sharks, too.

In reality, a shark's biggest threat comes from humans. The animals face extinction in every part of the ocean, predominantly because of overfishing. Demand for shark fins, for use in alternative medicine and cuisine, results in around 100 million sharks being killed every year.

Author Bio

Lindsay Dodgson, Live Science Contributor

Lindsay is a contributing writer for Live Science who enjoys covering anything about animals, the environment and new research and technologies. She currently lives in London, where she studied science journalism at City University, and she also has a bachelor's degree in Zoology. Lindsay enjoys keeping fit with boxing, reading thriller novels and would love to travel back to Africa to go on another safari. Follow her on Twitter.

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While the largest sharks, such as tiger sharks and whale sharks, have very little to worry about from predators, the smaller sharks are not so lucky. Some shark species are incredibly small, and so they can make handy snacks for larger species. A few marine mammals, including orca whales, prey on sharks, too.

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A lot of dog owners often come home from a walk, tired and sweaty. But when you look at your dog, they don't seem to be sweating at all. So how do dogs cool down?

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(Image: © Reddogs | Shutterstock.com)

On a hot summer day or after strenuous exercise, most pups let their tongues hang out of their mouths as they huff and puff or they lie outstretched on the cool floor. It's not uncommon for dogs to pant after a long run, but do they also sweat?

Dogs pant as a means of evaporative cooling: when a dog gets hot, it will open its mouth and breathe heavily. As water evaporates from the dog's tongue, nasal passages and lungs, this helps lower its body temperature.

While dogs primarily use panting to cool themselves down, they also sweat - but not where you may think, said Catherine Carrier, a veterinarian and Animal Operations Senior Manager at Covance Laboratories, a contract research facility that partners with pharmaceutical companies. [ The 10 Most Popular Dog Breeds]

Dogs actually sweat through their paws, Carrier said. In 2011, she was working with beagles in her lab, and while checking to ensure their nails were well trimmed, she noticed something peculiar in several of the dogs. Paw pads are a specialized type of skin that's heavily keratinized, to make them tough for walking on, but these dogs had paws that were damp - and in some cases, they were even dripping with sweat.

In several of the animals, this led to a great deal of pain because the skin was softer and more delicate than a normal paw pad."It's like having an open blister," Carrier told Live Science.

Carrier's research was the first to describe hyperhidrosis, or excessive sweating, in beagles.

But the sweat glands in the dogs' feet may also serve another purpose, according to Carrier.

"They do have true sweat glands in their paw pads, [but] that's not enough to cool them down," she said.

Panting cools a much greater surface area than a dog's paws would. According to Carrier, experts speculate that sweat on a dog's paw pads actually has more to do with traction than temperature. In other words, it makes their paws tackier and better at gripping the ground.

"The one thing I always tell people is a normal dog foot should smell like they just had their paws in a bag of corn chips, because they do sweat through their feet," Carrier said. "It has a salty smell."

Dogs also have sweat glands in their noses, but again, they're not necessarily for cooling purposes, Carrier said. While it remains unproved, Carrier said the thinking is that a damp nose better attracts scent molecules to the olfactory center. The canine sense of smell is famous, and its power has recently been harnessed to sniff out diabetes, cancer, and even dangerous infections like C. difficile. A 2012 research study conducted at the VU University Medical Centre in the Netherlands trained a beagle to sit or lie down when the scent of the bacterium was detected. The dog performed with impressive accuracy, correctly identifying 25 out of 30 infected samples and 265 out of 270 controls.

"In comparison studies, where they took fecal samples and did a side-by-side lab test, the trained dogs were nearly as accurate, if not better, than the test," Carrier said.
Original article on Live Science.

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(Image: © Reddogs | Shutterstock.com) On a hot summer day or after strenuous exercise, most pups let their tongues hang out of their mouths as they huff and puff or they lie outstretched on the cool floor. It's not uncommon for dogs to pant after a long run, but do they also sweat?

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Bees are more attracted to Virus-infected plants

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Bees are more attracted to Virus-infected plants

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Bumble bees like tomatoes, especially if their infected by a virus. When the plant is infected, it has a different scent which causes a difference in producing. The bees were more likely to go to infected plants than non-infected plants.

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Bumble bees have a thing for tomato plants, especially if they're harboring a destructive virus. That's the curious finding of a new study, in which researchers released the insects into spaces that contained either normal tomato plants or those infected with the cucumber mosaic virus (CMV). CMV alters the gene expression of the tomato plants it infects, stunting their growth and distorting their leaves, and it can cause severe losses of crops worldwide. It also causes the plant to emit a different scent than noninfected tomatoes, researchers report today in PLOS Pathogens. The scent appears to make a difference; the bees were more likely to visit infected plants than noninfected plants, and they spent more time buzzing around them. That preference likely keeps the virus going in tomato plants, according to a mathematical model the team developed. The team says further research could lead to ways to increase bee pollination of important crops.

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Virus-infected plants are more alluring to bumble bees

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Bumble bees have a thing for tomato plants, especially if they're harboring a destructive virus. That's the curious finding of a new study, in which researchers released the insects into spaces that contained either normal tomato plants or those infected with the cucumber mosaic virus (CMV).

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This article speaks about how dogs would rather have a belly rub from its owner than a treat when training. In a follow up test, they have set up a Y shaped maze with the dogs, the owner on one side and treats on the other. Most of the canines would rather go to their owners for a belly rub. This studyIt shows how important social interaction is to dogs.

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When training dogs, a pat on the head may be more effective than a treat. A new study suggests that most dogs respond more positively to praise than to food. Researchers scanned (pictured) the brains of 15 dogs of various breeds while presenting objects paired with rewards. For example, after the scientists showed the canines a toy car, their owners would praise them. In other tests, the researchers gave the dogs a toy horse and a piece of hot dog. The scans revealed that when praised, 13 of the dogs showed equal or greater levels of brain activity in the region that controls decision-making and signals rewards than when they received food, the scientists will report in an upcoming issue of Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience. In a follow-up test, the team set up a Y-shaped maze with the dogs' owners on one side and a bowl of treats on the other. Although most of the canines preferred to go the direction of their owner for a belly rub, the dogs that showed a greater reaction to food in the scanner consistently chose food in the maze. The scientists suggest using brain scans to determine preference could be used to improve the way service jobs are assigned to working dogs. Therapy jobs with close human contact might better suit dogs that have a higher preference for praise, whereas dogs that don't could succeed in more independent roles like search and rescue, where receiving a treat after a job well done would keep them motivated. At the very least, the study supports how important social interaction is to dogs-and provides a healthier alternative to treats, too.

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Dogs would rather get a belly rub than a treat

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When training dogs, a pat on the head may be more effective than a treat. A new study suggests that most dogs respond more positively to praise than to food. Researchers scanned (pictured) the brains of 15 dogs of various breeds while presenting objects paired with rewards.

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In many countries, they have found that some type of snails are endangered.Like in Fiji there is a unique tree snail that is endangered and scientists have been trying to find away to keep them alive.

In this article it is telling us why snails matter, basically that we need snails because its part of what makes our planet function, and they have thought snails can help us understand more about history

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Ah, snails. They're small. They're slimy. They lack the charisma of a polar bear or a gorilla. And yet just like flora and fauna all over the world, they're disappearing.

In Hawaii, a critically endangered snail called Achatinella fuscobasis has been brought into captivity to help learn how to keep them alive in the wild. In Alabama, conservation groups have petitioned to add the oblong rocksnail ( Leptoxis compacta) to the Endangered Species List. In New Zealand, a snail known only as Rhytida oconnori has found itself constrained to a habitat just one square kilometer in size. On Fiji, scientists have expressed an "urgent need" to keep the island's unique tree snails from going extinct. That fate may have already happened to three snail species in Malaysia after a mining company wiped out their only habitats, a series of limestone hills.

That's just scratching the surface. By my count, nearly 140 scientific papers about endangered snails have been published so far this year.

All of which begs the question: why does the extinction of a snail matter?

Obviously the answer to that question depends on the exact species, but we can make generalizations. Many birds, fish and other species rely on snails as important parts of their diets. Most land snail species consume fungi and leaf litter, helping with decomposition, and many are carnivores, so they help keep other species in check.

Beyond that, there's actually a lot that we can learn from snails. "From the most practical standpoint, snails have a few pretty interesting characteristics that tell us we should probably pay attention," says snail researcher Rebecca Rundell, assistant professor at State University of New York. For one thing, their shells-which they carry with them their entire lives (because they'd die without them)-are made of calcium carbonate, which provides a record of their lives. Unlike plant husks or insect exoskeletons, these shells tend to persist after a snail has died, leaving behind a valuable tool for researchers. "We can look in marine sediment and pockets of soil for evidence of past ecological communities, and thus evidence for environmental change in a particular area," she says.

Living snails can also serve as indicators when something is wrong with the environment, something we're already seeing with ocean acidification. "If snails in the ocean that make their shells, their protection, exclusively from calcium carbonate are having trouble building them, then that means the ocean is in big trouble," Rundell says.

They can provide similar clues on land, where land snails often have particularly narrow habitat requirements. "They need certain levels of moisture, shade, and decaying matter," Rundell says. "When they don't have this, they start dying off." That's just the start: if tiny land snails start to disappear, it's important to ask what might happen next. "It might give you a chance to change course," she says, "to detect subtle changes that humans might not otherwise be able to see until it is too late."

Snails also help us to answer bigger questions. "The fact that many of these land snail species have small geographic ranges and that there are many species, make them fascinating subjects for learning about how life on Earth evolved," Rundell says, adding that "scientists really rely on groups like Pacific island land snails to tell life's story."

That opportunity, however, is at risk. "We are losing snail species at an astronomical rate," Rundell says, "one that is equivalent to, if not exceeding, the worldwide rate of loss of amphibians." Most species have extremely limited ranges, making them, as she puts it, "particularly susceptible to human-induced extinction."

Meanwhile, the number of people studying snails remains relatively small. "That means we are at a big disadvantage in not only documenting land snail diversity, particularly in the tropics, but also learning from it in terms of what snails have to tell us about how life on Earth evolved," Rundell says.

Saving snails from extinction is no easy feat. For one thing, their habitats are just too easy to destroy. For another, we don't even know what it would take to keep most snail species alive in captivity, a function of their narrow microhabitat requirements. "One snail species might be feeding on hundreds of species of fungi that are unique to that particular forest," Rundell says. "It is very difficult to replicate these diets in the lab." A handful of captive-breeding efforts have been successful, but Rundell says they are labor-intensive and hard to fund.

Rundell's own work studying Pacific island snails has shown her what it would take to reverse this snail-extinction trend. "Ultimately what is most important for land snails is the human element: people working together to protect what is most unique, precious, and irreplaceable on these islands-native forest," she says. "This involves documenting what is there using a combination of field work and the study of natural history museum specimens. It also involves learning lessons from the past unchecked development such as agriculture and later urbanization, particularly in lowland tropical forests, and figuring out how we can protect as many pieces left as possible." This, she says, has the "added benefit of leaving parts of the watershed, storm protection, and forest food and medicinal resources intact for people to survive in these places."

So why does snail extinction matter? Just like everything else, snails are an important piece of the puzzle that makes this planet function. They're also a way to help us better understand how we got here-and maybe where we're going.
Previously in Extinction Countdown:

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Snails Are Going Extinct: Here's Why That Matters

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Ah, snails. They're small. They're slimy. They lack the charisma of a polar bear or a gorilla. And yet just like flora and fauna all over the world, they're disappearing. In Hawaii, a critically endangered snail called Achatinella fuscobasis has been brought into captivity to help learn how to keep them alive in the wild.

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In this article is talks about how mom dolphins whistle their signature whistle a lot more days before they give birth and there are many  theories why like maybe the moms are trying to get their baby dolphin to have their own signature sound too. They compared dolphins to humans that human babies develop a preference for their mother’s voice in the last trimester. This article basically talks about some theories about why the mama dolphin sings to their babies or well whistles, makes their signature sound.

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(Image: © vkilikov | Shutterstock.com)

DENVER - Humans aren't the only species whose members speak to their babies in the womb. Dolphin mamas appear to sing their own name to their unborn calves.

New research suggests that dolphin mothers teach their babies a "signature whistle" right before birth and in the two weeks after. Signature whistles are sounds that are made by individual dolphins, which the animals use to identify one another. Calves eventually develop their own signature whistle, but in the first few weeks of life, mothers seem focused on teaching their offspring their signature sound, the scientists said.

"It's been hypothesized that this is part of an imprinting process," Audra Ames, a doctoral student at the University of Southern Mississippi, said here on Friday (Aug. 5) at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association. [ Deep Divers: A Dolphin Gallery]

Dolphin chatter

Earlier studies had shown that mother dolphins start whistling their signature whistle much more in the days before birth, and then in the calf's first two weeks of life, Ames told Live Science. There are multiple theories about why, including that perhaps moms are trying to get babies to develop their own signature sound.

But no one had studied signature-whistle rates not only before and after birth, but also in the same dolphin mother, Ames said. She and her colleagues had the opportunity to do that in late 2012 and early 2014, when a baby dolphin named Mira was born to a 9-year-old mother at Six Flags Discovery Kingdom in Vallejo, California.

The researchers captured a total of 80 hours of recordings from the two months before and the two months after the dolphin's birth. They recorded the mom and the calf as well as the five dolphins housed with them. It was important to capture the noises of the mother's peers to understand whether the communication was exclusive to the mother-baby pair, Ames said.

Learning mom's name

The recordings showed that the increased signature-whistle production was, in fact, the purview of the mother dolphin. She began increasing her signature whistle two weeks before the birth, possibly starting the learning process while her calf was still in utero.

A seemingly related phenomenon has been observed during human pregnancies, according to Ames. "We actually do see that human babies develop a preference for their mother's voice in the last trimester," she said. "We don't know if that's something that's going on here, but it could be something similar." [ Photos: World's Cutest Baby Wild Animals]

The mother dolphin also produced her signature whistle at high rates until two weeks after the calf's birth, after which she tapered off. Interestingly, Ames said, the other dolphins in the group didn't produce their own signature whistle at very high rates during the first two weeks of the calf's life. But after mama stopped the repetitions of her own whistle, the other members of the group started producing their own whistle at higher rates.

"What the other dolphins might be doing here is remaining quiet so the calf does not imprint on the wrong signature whistle," Ames said.

Baby dolphins don't usually develop their own signature whistle until they're around the age of 2 months, with much variation in timing, Ames said. The baby's whistle tends not to be similar to the mother's or to the other dolphins in the group.

"You don't want to have a signature sound that is going to be similar to someone else you're around quite often," Ames said.

Ames and her colleagues are now studying other sounds in the mother-calf repertoire of communication, and they're studying other marine mammals such as beluga whales as well as dolphins.
Original article on Live Science.

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Mama Dolphins Sing Their Name to Babies in the Womb

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(Image: © vkilikov | Shutterstock.com) DENVER - Humans aren't the only species whose members speak to their babies in the womb. Dolphin mamas appear to sing their own name to their unborn calves. New research suggests that dolphin mothers teach their babies a "signature whistle" right before birth and in the two weeks after.

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Dogs have been know to be "Mans Best Friend" for thousands of years. But could a goat take that title soon? Research suggests that goats and dogs share similar traits when communicating with humans.

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(Image: © alexmontjohn/Flickr)

Could your next pet be a goat? New research suggests that these farm animals try to communicate with people in the same way that dogs and horses do.

In a series of experiments, researchers found that when the animals had a problem that they couldn't solve alone, the goats would gaze at a person for help. The research, published this week (July 5) in the journal Biology Letters, also showed that goats will change their actions in accordance with a person's behavior.

Goats were the first domesticated livestock species, about 10,000 years ago, according to lead author Alan McElligott of Queen Mary, University of London. [ See Photos of Heritage Livestock Vanishing Across the US]

"From our earlier research, we already know that goats are smarter than their reputation suggests, but these results show how they can communicate and interact with their human handlers even though they were not domesticated as pets or working animals," McElligott said in a statement.

To test the goats' communication skills, the researchers trained the animals to remove a lid from a box to receive a reward. The reward was then made inaccessible, and the goats' reactions toward the experimenters - who were either facing the goats or had their backs turned away - were recorded.

The researchers found that the goats would gaze toward the forward-facing person more often, and for longer periods of time, than they would with the people who had turned away. In some instances, the goats would also approach the forward-facing person before returning to the box.

"Goats gaze at humans in the same way as dogs do when asking for a treat that is out of reach, for example," study researcher Christian Nawroth, also of Queen Mary, said in the same statement. "Our results provide strong evidence for complex communication directed at humans in a species that was domesticated primarily for agricultural production, and show similarities with animals bred to become pets or working animals, such as dogs and horses."

The authors said that they hope the study will help people to better understand the ability to learn that domesticated animals like goats, dogs and horses possess, and how that affects their interactions with humans. By learning more about what drives the animals' relationships with humans, the researchers said that those working with animals might be able to make overall improvements in the animals' welfare.
Original article on Live Science.

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(Image: © alexmontjohn/Flickr) Could your next pet be a goat? New research suggests that these farm animals try to communicate with people in the same way that dogs and horses do. In a series of experiments, researchers found that when the animals had a problem that they couldn't solve alone, the goats would gaze at a person for help.

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Some lizards in the wild have green blood. They also have light green muscles and bones and a blue-green mouth.

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Why Does Why does the giraffe have such a long neck?

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Why Does Why does the giraffe have such a long neck?

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Giraffes are known to have short bodies, long necks, and straight legs. Those elements are all adapted to suit the environment better and live. But although the giraffe share common ancestors as okapi, giraffe has changed a lot of its appearance to what we see today.

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Newsela | Standing tall: Gene analysis finds clues to the giraffe's long neck

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Study of giraffe genes finds mutations that might have led to long necks and sturdy hearts

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Scientists in Argentina have unearthed a full skeleton of this new species of Terror Bird. This skeleton of a new species, is 95% complete. Giving more abilities for scientists to understand Terror Birds.

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Famed for their large hooked beaks and a presumed taste for meat, flightless phorusrhacids, also known as "terror birds," were among South America's top predators before going extinct about 2.5 million years ago. Now paleontologists have unearthed one of the most complete fossils of a phorusrhacid to date. The skeleton of the new species, dubbed Llallawavis scagliai, is approximately 95% complete, giving scientists the ability to study a terror bird's anatomy in unprecedented detail. Analyses of the well-preserved remains are already providing insights into the bird's hearing ability, scientists say.

"It's rare to find such a complete fossil of anything, let alone a bird," says Lawrence Witmer, a vertebrate paleontologist at Ohio University, Athens, who wasn't involved in the new study. "This is a very exciting find."

The fossil, which is missing only a few wing and toe bones and the tip of its stubby tail, was excavated in northeastern Argentina in 2010 from material laid down as sediment about 3.5 million years ago. L. scagliai likely lived in an open environment, possibly a grassland or a sparse forest through which small rivers flowed, says Federico Degrange, a paleo-ornithologist at the National University of Córdoba in Argentina and lead researcher on the study.

The new species of terror bird weighed an estimated 18 kilograms (about 40 pounds) and stood about 1.2 meters (4 feet) tall, Degrange's team reports in the current issue of the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. That's a moderate size for a terror bird, Degrange notes; at least one other species in the group grew more than 2 meters tall and weighed 70 kg or more.

Unlike most birds, many of the joints between bones in a terror bird's skull are typically fused, Witmer says. In this species, the joints in the birds' upper palate, as well as some of those near the beak, are much less flexible than they are in other types of birds, which may have helped them pummel their prey and more effectively rip apart carcasses.

But the most interesting information from the new fossil came from CT scans of its inner ear. The shape and orientation of the semicircular canals in that structure suggest the bird could swivel its head quickly, as it might when tracking or striking at prey, Degrange says. Moreover, he notes, analyses of the scans even provide information about the bird's sense of hearing, which was most likely limited to frequencies between 380 and 4230 hertz-approximately the same range as keys on the right half of a standard piano keyboard. That is substantially lower than the range measured for L scagliai 's closest flightless relatives, the team reports.

"That's to be expected for a large animal," says Luis Chiappe, a vertebrate paleontologist at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County in California. "The general rule of thumb is, the bigger you are, the lower the sounds you produce and hear."

The emphasis on low-frequency hearing is very interesting, Witmer says, because it may suggest something about how the birds tracked prey. "Low frequencies tend to propagate across long distances with little attenuation."

But in recent years, some scientists have proposed that not all terror birds were good hunters. This suggests that the members of some species may have spent a good fraction of their time scavenging carcasses rather than chasing prey. By measuring the proportions of various carbon and nitrogen isotopes in terror bird fossils, researchers could better assess the birds' dietary habits, Chiappe says. In particular, they could get a better idea about where in the food chain the terror birds' main sources of nutrition were coming from. "I'm surprised that no one has done a careful study of such isotopes yet," he notes.

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Famed for their large hooked beaks and a presumed taste for meat, flightless phorusrhacids, also known as "terror birds," were among South America's top predators before going extinct about 2.5 million years ago. Now paleontologists have unearthed one of the most complete fossils of a phorusrhacid to date.

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South America's biggest fresh water fish have been caught and harpooned from fishermen. The Arapaima have been traditionally fished for a 1000 years by Amazonian Communities. But, overfishing has caused these large fish to disappear.

http://www.livescience.com/47326-amazon-fish-faces-extinction.html

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(Image: © Sergio Ricardo de Oliveira)
This story was updated at 11:00 am ET on Aug. 15.
Measuring 10 feet (3 meters) long and weighing in at more than 400 pounds (180 kilograms), it's hard to imagine that the arapaima, the largest fish in the Amazon River basin, could ever go missing. But these huge fish are quickly disappearing from Brazilian waterways, according to a new study.

A recent survey of fishing communities in the state of Amazonas, Brazil, found that the arapaima is already extinct in some parts of the Amazon basin. In other parts of the Amazon, its numbers are rapidly dwindling.

However, the researchers also uncovered some good news: In communities where arapaima fishing is regulated, the species is actually thriving, giving the researchers hope that conservation of the species is still possible. [ Photos of the Largest Fish on Earth]

Commonly known as pirarucu, arapaima ( Arapaima gigas) are the largest freshwater fish in South America. They possess an uncommon quality for fishes- the ability to breathe air. This feat is made possible by a primitive lung, which arapaima possess in conjunction with a gill system that allows them to breathe underwater. The fish developed this function because they typically live in oxygen-poor waterways, according to the Tennessee Aquarium, which is home to several arapaima.

But while this supplemental breathing technique helps the fish survive in its native habitat, it also makes the arapaima much easier to catch, according to the researchers.

"Arapaima spawn on the edges of floodplain forests and come to the surface to breathe every 5 to 15 minutes, when they are easily located and harpooned by fishers using homemade canoes," said Caroline Arantes, a doctoral student in wildlife and fisheries science at Texas A&M University in College Station, who helped conduct the study.
Fishy policies
Of the five known species of arapaima, three have not been observed in the wild in decades, according to study co-author Donald Stewart, a professor with the State University of New York at Syracuse's College of Environmental Science. Stewart said that all five species dominated fisheries in the Amazon just a century ago.

A commercially important species, arapaima are traditionally fished by local Amazonian communities, a practice that's largely unregulated, the researchers said. To find out how this lack of regulation might be affecting the giant fish, the researchers interviewed local fishers operating within a 650-square-mile (1,683 square kilometers) floodplain in northwestern Brazil.

In 19 percent of the 81 communities surveyed, the arapaima was found to be already extinct. And the giant fish's numbers are depleted, or approaching extinction, in 57 percent of the communities surveyed. In 17 percent of the communities, the fish were deemed "overexploited," according to the researchers.

"Fishers continue to harvest arapaima regardless of low population densities," said study leader Leandro Castello, an assistant professor of fisheries at Virginia Tech's College of Natural Resources and Environment, in Blacksburg.

But the blame for the arapaima's dwindling numbers doesn't just fall on local fishing communities. Policymakers in Brazil may also be responsible, the researchers suggest. Government officials in the region tend to follow a "bioeconomic" line of thinking, which may have doomed the arapaima, the researchers said. [ Amazon Expedition: An Album]

"Bioeconomic thinking has predicted that scarcity would drive up fishing costs, which would increase price and help save depleted species," Castello said. "If that prediction were true, extinctions induced by fishing would not exist, but that is not what has happened."
Fishing down
What is happening in the Amazon River basin is in line with something Castello and his colleagues call the "fishing-down" theory. This idea helps explain how large, high-value, easy-to-catch fish - such as the arapaima - can be fished to extinction.

In communities where arapaima are scarce, local fishers stop hunting the fish in traditional ways, such as with a harpoon. However, this doesn't mean fishers aren't killing arapaima; they're simply killing them in a different way.

These fishers use gill nets to harvest smaller fish, including juvenile arapaima. While local fishers don't necessarily catch the smaller arapaima on purpose, by "fishing down" they still end up killing the fish and further depleting the arapaima population.

But there is a bright side to this sad fish tale, according to study co-author David McGrath, a researcher with the Earth Innovation Institute in San Francisco. In communities that have implemented fishing rules, such as imposing a minimum capture size for arapaima and restricting the use of gill nets, the density of arapaima is 100 times higher than in places where no such rules exist.

"These communities are preventing further arapaima extinctions," McGrath said.

Unfortunately, only 27 percent of the communities surveyed have management rules in place for fishing arapaima. One community that does manage these fish, Ilha de São Miguel, banned the use of gill nets two decades ago. It now has the highest arapaima densities in the region, the researchers found.

But regulations like those implemented by the community of Ilha de São Miguel are not common in floodplain regions, Castello said. These areas, he explained, suffer from widespread illegal fishing, a fact that he worries could lead to fishing-induced extinctions for other Amazonian species.
Fixing the situation
Part of the problem, Castello said, is a lack of economic alternatives for the fishers who survive on the commercial trade of threatened fish species. But the researchers said their findings demonstrate that it's possible to save the arapaima from extinction without jeopardizing local food supplies.

"Fisheries productivity in Ilha de São Miguel is also the highest in the study area," Castello said. "Cast nets are allowed because they are much more selective, yet they yield abundant fishes for local consumption, so food security for the community is not compromised."

This bodes well for both fish and fishermen, said the researchers, who believe that spreading the fishing practices of Ilha de São Miguel to other areas of the Amazon could bring this unique species of fish back from the brink.

"Many previously overexploited arapaima populations are now booming due to good management," Castello said. "The time has come to apply fishers' ecological knowledge to assess populations, document practices and trends, and solve fisheries problems through user participation in management and conservation."

The results of the study were published online today (Aug. 13) in the journal Aquatic Conservation: Freshwater and Marine Ecosystems.
Editor's Note: This story was updated to reflect that the arapaima's ability to breathe air is uncommon, but not unique.

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Amazon's Biggest Fish Faces Threat of Extinction

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(Image: © Sergio Ricardo de Oliveira) This story was updated at 11:00 am ET on Aug. 15. Measuring 10 feet (3 meters) long and weighing in at more than 400 pounds (180 kilograms), it's hard to imagine that the arapaima, the largest fish in the Amazon River basin, could ever go missing.

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What Do Mosquitos Find Attractive About You?

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What Do Mosquitos Find Attractive About You?

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There’s science behind those who gets more mosquito bites than usual, like blood types and how much you breathe. A study has found out mosquitos uses something called maxillary palp to pick up on the carbon dioxide people breathe out, meaning mosquitos are more attracted to those who just exercised and adults. They’re also especially attracted to those of the blood type O because of a particular sugar was found to attract more mosquitos, although that wouldn’t matter once they picked their target.

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There is always one. That person who, no matter what, always comes back from spending a warm summer evening sitting outside covered in mosquito bites. While there is some evidence to suggest that people are really bad at knowing whether or not they are the unlucky ones, there are things that can increase your likelihood of getting bitten. Although there is lots of anecdotal evidence from people about what influences the little critters to bite, from eating garlic to having "sweet" blood, there are some aspects that have been proven by science to genuinely increase your chances.
Blood Type
Unfortunately, not all of the causes are something you can actually do something about. Take blood type, for example. One study has found that while those who have blood type O coursing through their veins are more likely to get a less than friendly visit from a mosquito than other blood types, they're only more attractive to the insects when compared with those with blood type A. They found that a particular sugar found in blood type O was attractive to the mosquitoes, though once a mosquito has picked its target, it's unlikely blood type will make much difference.
Carbon Dioxide
Another thing that we all have to do is breathe, and this isn't great if you're trying to avoid the pesky little biters. When homing in on their target, all mosquito species will use something called a maxillary palp to sense the carbon dioxide you're exhaling. Mixed with the host's body odor and both molecules have been found to induce a take-off and sustained flight of the insects. It is for this reason that people who breathe out more, including larger people and adults, tend to get bitten more than those who exhale less.

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5 Things That Make You Attractive To Mosquitoes

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There is always one. That person who, no matter what, always comes back from spending a warm summer evening sitting outside covered in mosquito bites. While there is some evidence to suggest that people are really bad at knowing whether or not they are the unlucky ones, there are things that can increase your likelihood of getting bitten.

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(Image: © Steve Heap | Shutterstock.com)

When the water in Rio's Olympic outdoor diving pool turned bright green yesterday, people were baffled about what could have turned the water such an unusual hue. Some suggested that the green came from oxidized copper in the pool's pipes, but others wondered whether urine was the culprit.

Now, Olympic officials are saying that extensive testing shows that a chemical imbalance caused by too many people using the water was the reason for the color change, the New York Times reported.

A sudden decrease in the alkalinity in the pool was the main reason for the color change, Mario Andrada, a Rio 2016 spokesman, said Wednesday morning, according to the Times.

Previously, the Rio 2016 Local Organizing Committee said that algae was the offender, according to CNN.

Algae could have proliferated because of too much heat and a too little wind in the venue, CNN reported. Tests showed that the vivid green water doesn't pose a health risk to athletes, the committee said in a statement, according to CNN. [ In Living Color: A Gallery of Stunning Lakes]

The show goes on

Events in the Maria Lenk Aquatics Centre are expected to continue as planned, the Rio 2016 Local Organizing Committee said in a statement.

Athletes and fans alike reacted to the green color on Tuesday (Aug. 9) with puzzlement. Tom Daley, who won a bronze medal in synchronized diving for the United Kingdom earlier this week, tweeted "Ermmm...what happened?!"

However, the games went on, with athletes diving into the green water. On Tuesday evening, Olympic officials tweeted, "The water quality at the Maria Lenk Aquatics Centre was tested and there were no risks for the athletes. We are investigating the cause."

Olympic officials plan to test the pool's chemical levels more regularly than before, Rio spokesman Mario Andrada told USA Today. Andrada also said the pool would be blue again today (Aug. 10), but that's not yet the case, according to Gizmodo.

Moreover, the green pool now has company: The water in the Olympic polo pool is turning green, too, Gizmodo reported, and several polo games are scheduled for today and tomorrow.
Editor's note: This story has been updated as more information about the pool's color change has become available. Original article on Live Science.

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Olympic Mystery: Why Did Rio's Diving Pool Turn Green?

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(Image: © Steve Heap | Shutterstock.com) When the water in Rio's Olympic outdoor diving pool turned bright green yesterday, people were baffled about what could have turned the water such an unusual hue. Some suggested that the green came from oxidized copper in the pool's pipes, but others wondered whether urine was the culprit.

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In Rio right now they are having competitions, with every country aiming for the gold medal. Recently the Rio diving pools, have been turning green. In this website, science proves it why.

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(Image: © Steve Heap | Shutterstock.com)

When the water in Rio's Olympic outdoor diving pool turned bright green yesterday, people were baffled about what could have turned the water such an unusual hue. Some suggested that the green came from oxidized copper in the pool's pipes, but others wondered whether urine was the culprit.

Now, Olympic officials are saying that extensive testing shows that a chemical imbalance caused by too many people using the water was the reason for the color change, the New York Times reported.

A sudden decrease in the alkalinity in the pool was the main reason for the color change, Mario Andrada, a Rio 2016 spokesman, said Wednesday morning, according to the Times.

Previously, the Rio 2016 Local Organizing Committee said that algae was the offender, according to CNN.

Algae could have proliferated because of too much heat and a too little wind in the venue, CNN reported. Tests showed that the vivid green water doesn't pose a health risk to athletes, the committee said in a statement, according to CNN. [ In Living Color: A Gallery of Stunning Lakes]

The show goes on

Events in the Maria Lenk Aquatics Centre are expected to continue as planned, the Rio 2016 Local Organizing Committee said in a statement.

Athletes and fans alike reacted to the green color on Tuesday (Aug. 9) with puzzlement. Tom Daley, who won a bronze medal in synchronized diving for the United Kingdom earlier this week, tweeted "Ermmm...what happened?!"

However, the games went on, with athletes diving into the green water. On Tuesday evening, Olympic officials tweeted, "The water quality at the Maria Lenk Aquatics Centre was tested and there were no risks for the athletes. We are investigating the cause."

Olympic officials plan to test the pool's chemical levels more regularly than before, Rio spokesman Mario Andrada told USA Today. Andrada also said the pool would be blue again today (Aug. 10), but that's not yet the case, according to Gizmodo.

Moreover, the green pool now has company: The water in the Olympic polo pool is turning green, too, Gizmodo reported, and several polo games are scheduled for today and tomorrow.
Editor's note: This story has been updated as more information about the pool's color change has become available. Original article on Live Science.

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Olympic Mystery: Why Did Rio's Diving Pool Turn Green?

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(Image: © Steve Heap | Shutterstock.com) When the water in Rio's Olympic outdoor diving pool turned bright green yesterday, people were baffled about what could have turned the water such an unusual hue. Some suggested that the green came from oxidized copper in the pool's pipes, but others wondered whether urine was the culprit.

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(Image: © Michigan Department of Natural Resources)

A South American fish with uncannily human-like chompers has been unexpectedly showing up on Michigan anglers' hooks.

The fish are red-bellied pacus ( Piaractus brachypomus) and are piranha relatives, though their diet is mostly vegetarian. Pacus are popular with aquarium owners for their unusual square teeth that look remarkably human -rather disturbingly so, in fact. But recently, pacus have been sighted in places where they shouldn't be: Lake St. Clair and Port Huron in southeastern Michigan, where three pacus were caught during the month of July.

The pacus were almost certainly introduced into the lakes by former owners who kept them as pets, according to a statement released Aug. 9 by the Michigan Department of Natural Resources (DNR). [ Photos: The Freakiest-Looking Fish]

Pacus are native to the Amazon and Orinoco river basins and flood plains. Their flattened bodies resemble those of their sharp-toothed piranha cousins, but their own distinctive teeth are used for crushing seeds and nuts. Pacus can grow to be about 35 inches (89 centimeters) in length, and pet owners may be dismayed to find that their exotic pet can outgrow its tank, which can prompt them to release the fish in the wild, according to the DNR.

Warm temperatures are vital to the pacus' survival, so they are unlikely to become established as an invasive species in Michigan's seasonally cold waters. However, releasing pets in the wild is not only harmful to the animals and likely to result in their death, but could have severe implications for native wildlife and ecosystems, DNR officials said in the statement.

Pacus have been found in Michigan waters before, but this is the first time that people have caught three of them in one week, according to Nick Popoff, a biologist with the Fisheries Division at the DNR. Popoff told Live Science that it's possible the three fish came from a single tank that was dumped in a public access site.

"Pacus' temperature requirements are tropical, and Michigan is not a tropical state," Popoff said. "They're not going to be able to survive our winters, so we don't consider them invasive. We're concerned with this because it highlights the issue of pet owners releasing their pets into the wild."

Goldfish have also been released into Michigan lakes by their owners, but unlike the pacu, they survive year-round and are successfully breeding.

"We have reproducing populations of goldfish in Lake Erie and Lake St. Claire." Popoff explained. "They're an example of an aquarium disposal over time that has created a naturally reproducing population of non-native fish."

In addition to Michigan, at least 26 other states in the U.S. have reported pacu captures in the wild, the DNR said.

"Invasive species are extremely damaging - to Michigan, the Great Lakes, even globally. But the message here is more about individual responsibility," Popoff told Live Science. "Releasing that fish into the wild - you're killing it, even if you don't think you are."

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'Vegetarian Piranhas' With Human-Like Teeth Found in Michigan Lakes

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(Image: © Michigan Department of Natural Resources) A South American fish with uncannily human-like chompers has been unexpectedly showing up on Michigan anglers' hooks. The fish are red-bellied pacus ( Piaractus brachypomus) and are piranha relatives, though their diet is mostly vegetarian.

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Piranhas are vicious sharp toothed fishes that lives in the amazon, but in michigan lakes there was a vegetarian piranha. There tooth wasn't as sharp and was like human tooth.

http://www.livescience.com/55753-fish-with-human-like-teeth-in-michigan.html

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Introduction

It's now legal to use marijuana to treat certain medical conditions in 25 states, but the Food and Drug Administration has still not approved the marijuana plant as a treatment for any disease or health issue. That's because there haven't been enough large studies of the drug to show that its benefits outweigh the risks in patients who use it, said the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). And in order to gain approval, researchers also need show that marijuana is safer or more effective than existing treatments for certain conditions.

Nevertheless, scientists have good reason to think that the marijuana plant could be useful in treating a number of medical conditions. The active ingredient in marijuana, delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), has been shown to increases appetite and reduces nausea. Another chemical in marijuana, cannabidiol (CBD), may decrease pain and inflammation and help with muscle-control problems, according to NIDA. Both THC and CBD belong to a group of chemicals called cannabinoids.

Live Science has rounded up the promising evidence that medical marijuana may help people with certain conditions. Here's what we found:

Nausea and vomiting in cancer patients

Cancer patients who undergo chemotherapy may develop nausea and vomiting as a side effect of their treatment. A 2015 analysis of three studies involving cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy found that nausea and vomiting completely stopped in 47 percent of patients using cannabinoids (THC or CBD), while the symptoms completely stopped in only about 20 percent of those who took a placebo. Another study, of 15 cancer patients who both took THC orally and smoked marijuana, found that most patients experienced reduced nausea and vomiting, compared to when they didn't receive these drugs.

Another study, of 600 cancer patients, found that the compound nabilone (a synthetic form of THC) was better at preventing nausea and vomiting than were several existing anti-nausea medications. However, more studies are needed to determine whether smoking marijuana works better than newer types of anti-nausea medications for this purpose, a 2016 review said.

Pain in patients with multiple sclerosis

(Image credit: Medical marijuana via Shutterstock)

Marijuana may reduce feelings of burning, tingling or numbness, as well as pain from muscle spasms, in patients with multiple sclerosis (MS), according to a 2014 review study. The study found strong evidence that oral cannabis extract, which is a pill made from CBD, or a combination of THC and CBD, can help with these symptoms, the researchers said. However, not enough studies have been conducted to determine whether smoking marijuana helps with symptoms of MS, the review found.

Chronic pain in patients with cancer

A small study of 36 cancer patients found that 10 milligrams of THC produced pain-relieving effects comparable to those of taking 60 mg of the opiate codeine. Another study of a drug called nabiximols (brand name Sativex), which is a "marijuana mouth spray" that contains both THC and CBD, found that low and medium doses of the spray had better pain-relieving effects than a placebo. This result was found in cancer patients with pain who had not been helped by taking opioid drugs. However, very few studies have looked at the benefits of smoked marijuana for treating pain in cancer patients.

Nerve pain

A 2010 study looked at 23 patients who had neuropathic pain (which is pain caused by damage to nerves) after trauma or surgery. The study found that those who smoked marijuana reported they had less pain and slept better than those who were given a placebo. A 2013 study of 39 people found that vaporized cannabis reduced neuropathic pain in patients who had not been helped by other treatments.

Epilepsy

A 2015 study examined whether a daily dose of cannabis extract could help people with severe epilepsy who had not been helped by previous treatments. The study included 137 people who ranged in age from toddlers to adults. It found that the number of seizures that participants experienced declined by 54 percent over a 12-week period. Still, the study did not include a "control group" of participants who didn't take the drug, so it's not clear if the results were due to a placebo effect, the researchers said.

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Healing Herb? Marijuana Could Treat These 5 Conditions

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It's now legal to use marijuana to treat certain medical conditions in 25 states, but the Food and Drug Administration has still not approved the marijuana plant as a treatment for any disease or health issue.

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Marijuana is a drug as you all know it but did you know it could also treat these 5 conditions? In 25 American states Marijuana has been approved for medical uses.

http://www.livescience.com/55750-medical-marijuana-conditions-treat.html

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The sea temperature is related to the spread of vibrios which can cause illness including a fatal disease called cholera. Research found out that from the North Sea and North Atlantic Ocean from 1958 to 2011, number of germs increased when the water temperature went higher. You might want to avoid eating raw seafood or going into water without covering your cuts.

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Study Shows Warming Oceans Are Making People Sicker

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A new study shows for the first time that a warming trend in sea surface temperature is "strongly associated" with the spread of vibrios, a bacteria that can make humans sick.

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A newly discovered species of red songbird has almost gone vanished from the Galapagos Islands.

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(Image: © Copyright Alvaro Jaramillo)

A newly discovered species of brilliant red songbird has almost certainly already vanished from its home in the Galápagos Islands, in what is the first known songbird extinction on the island chain in modern times.

Using genetic techniques, researchers recently learned that the Galápagos vermilion flycatcher was once at least two species: Pyrocephalus nanus, which is still found across most of the island chain, and Pyrocephalus dubius, which hasn't been seen since 1987 but used to live only on San Cristóbal Island. That island lends the extinct bird its common name, the San Cristóbal Island vermilion flycatcher.

Unfortunately, P. nanus, still known as the Galápagos vermilion flycatcher, is now also in decline, said study researcher Jack Dumbacher, the curator of ornithology and mammalogy at the California Academy of Sciences (Cal Academy) in San Francisco. [ Flycatcher Gone: Photos of an Extinct Galápagos Native]

"Maybe this is a call to arms so we can figure out what the problem is on the other islands," Dumbacher told Live Science.

Genetic exploration

The instigator of the research was Alvaro Jaramillo, a senior biologist at the San Francisco Bay Bird Observatory and a birder who sometimes leads tours to the Galápagos. He'd noticeddifferences in the vermilion flycatcher populations on the islands, as well as the disappearance of the birds from San Cristóbal Island. But scientists still lumped all of the Galápagos birds into the same species.

The Cal Academy has the largest collection of Galápagos songbirds in the world, including vermilion flycatchers caught on an expedition in 1905 and 1906.

"Every specimen that's in the collection is not only an example of that species, but also that time and place," Dumbacher said. Previously, researchers sampled the bodies of the birds in the collection to date the arrival of avian pox on the islands (around 1900, probably carried by someone's pet canary).

By genetically sampling the DNA from the toe pads of the birds, the researchers were able to discover a new species, years after its extinction.

"The genetics were very clear that the San Cristóbal Island vermilion flycatcher was very distinct from nanus," Dumbacher said. There was even some genetic evidence that the living group, the Galápagos vermilion flycatcher, might also be split into two species, but the researchers elected not to push the data into controversial territory, Dumbacher said.

What was perhaps most surprising to the team was that the Galápagos birds descended from a common ancestor nearly as old as the common ancestor of vermilion flycatcher species back on the Ecuadorian mainland. The researchers had expected to find that the island birds descended from the mainland birds; instead, they found the two populations to be sister groups, Dumbacher said.

Threatened island ecosystem

The San Cristóbal Island vermilion flycatcher and the Galápagos vermilion flycatcher also show subtle differences in size, coloration and song, Dumbacher said. Though no one has looked systematically for the San Cristóbal bird for many years, rumors of its extinction are probably true, he said - the island is populated and developed, and there are many invasive species, like rats, that threaten native bird populations.

Another threat to Galápagos birds is Philornis downsi, an introduced parasitic fly that hatches in bird nests and sucks the blood of nestlings, killing them. Avian pox or avian malaria may also have contributed to the loss of the San Cristóbal Island vermilion flycatcher.

"We may never know exactly what it was that wiped them out," Dumbacher said. But the discovery, published online in May in the journal Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, could spur a new interest in Galápagos songbird conservation, he said.

"Maybe that's the silver lining in this story, that there are other populations that can still be saved," Dumbacher said.
Original article on Live Science.

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Newfound Galapagos Bird Species Already Went Extinct

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(Image: © Copyright Alvaro Jaramillo) A newly discovered species of brilliant red songbird has almost certainly already vanished from its home in the Galápagos Islands, in what is the first known songbird extinction on the island chain in modern times.

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What is the most hard working feature can you think of?

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What is the most hard working feature can you think of?

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Do you think that our brain go completely offline when you're sleeping? Absolutely not. In fact, the brain develops a special system when the rest of your body is resting. The two main systems are: SWS which is called the deep sleep, and eye movement. These two systems happen to us when we're dreaming. Depends on our situation in dreaming.The more tense your dream is, the faster you roll you're eyes. But it happens differently to many other people and also depends on their constitution.

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John Peever, director of the Systems Neurobiology Laboratory at the University of Toronto, and Brian J. Murray, director of the sleep laboratory at the Sunnybrook Health Sciences Center, respond: The function of sleep has mystified scientists for thousands of years, but modern research is providing new clues about what it does for both the mind and body.

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Do we really understand about our cell phones?

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Do we really understand about our cell phones?

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Do you really think toilets are the dirtiest thing in your daily life? No. Actually......

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People check their cell phones constantly and all of that handling can make your phone really gross. Here's the truth about what's living on your phone and how to clean it. Produced by Grace Raver. Original reporting by Kevin Loria.

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The last breath you take of your body before death your brain stops working. Around a year later the body will decompose almost completely.

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Definitely. Phobias are well known as our fear and what we afraid of based on what we experience. But do you know that we can develop certain phobia from these many types of fear: The specific phobia and irrational fears...etc? These types of phobias in general, can be harmful to you.For example, maturity of people might get phobias from insects , based on what they had experienced with , but others can be scared of planes, bloods, needles... We all have phobias, based on our situations and environment.What phobias can also be called as:psychological symptoms and disorders, that may harm us mentally. Fortunately, phobias can be cured. In the exposure therapy, we are engaged, faced with our fear in order to get over our own phobia.

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Advertisement

Katherina K. Hauner, a postdoctoral fellow at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, answers:

Under normal circumstances, fear triggers a natural fight-or-flight response that allows animals to react quickly to threats in their environment. Irrational and excessive fear, however, is typically a maladaptive response. In humans, an unwarranted, persistent fear of a certain situation or object, known as specific phobia, can cause overwhelming distress and interfere with daily life. Specific phobia is among the more prevalent anxiety disorders, affecting an estimated 9 percent of Americans within their lifetime. Common subtypes include fear of small animals, insects, flying, enclosed spaces, blood and needles.

For fear to escalate to irrational levels, a combination of genetic and environmental factors is very likely at play. Estimates of genetic contributions to specific phobia range from roughly 25 to 65 percent, although we do not know which genes have a leading part. No specific phobia gene has been identified, and it is highly unlikely that a single gene is responsible. Rather variants in several genes may predispose an individual to developing a number of psychological symptoms and disorders, including specific phobia.

As for the environmental component, a person may develop a phobia after a particularly frightening event, especially if he or she feels out of control. Even witnessing or hearing about a traumatic occurrence can contribute to its development. For instance, watching a devastating airplane crash on the news may trigger a fear of flying. That said, discerning the origin of the disorder can be difficult because people tend to do a poor job of identifying the source of their fears.

Our understanding of how and why phobias crop up remains limited, but we have made great strides in abating them. Exposure therapy, a form of cognitive-behavior therapy, is widely accepted as the most effective treatment for anxieties and phobias, and the vast majority of patients complete treatment within 10 sessions. During exposure therapy, a person engages with the particular fear to help diminish and ultimately overcome it over time. An individual might, for example, look at a photograph of the dreaded object or become immersed in the situation he or she loathes. Fortunately for those plagued by irrational fears, we can treat a phobia rapidly and successfully without necessarily knowing its origin.

This article was originally published with the title "Why Do We Develop Certain Irrational Phobias?" in SA Mind 25, 1, 74 (January 2014)

doi:10.1038/scientificamericanmind0114-74a

ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)

Read This Next

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Why Do We Develop Certain Irrational Phobias?

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Katherina K. Hauner, a postdoctoral fellow at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, answers: Under normal circumstances, fear triggers a natural fight-or-flight response that allows animals to react quickly to threats in their environment. Irrational and excessive fear, however, is typically a maladaptive response.

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This car was first presented in the 2016 Geneva Motor Show. It was made by an Arabian (specifically Dubai) company called Devel. The company claims that it has 5000 bhp and will reach 560km/h, but the low cost of a million dollars are starting to question the car's integrity.

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This is the Devel Sixteen, and it might be the king of lofty statistics. Its Dubai-based backers are claiming it'll use a 5,000-horsepower V16 and will reach a top speed of 348 miles per hour. The sprint to 62 mph will take just 1.8 seconds. Sounds great, right? So, what's the problem?

Everything. To put in perspective the absurd engineering undertaking that would be this car, it's worth pointing out that it took Volkswagen, one of the world's largest automakers, years to reliably squeeze 1,000 horsepower from an 8.0-liter, quad-turbocharged W16 in the Bugatti Veyron, without requiring a Formula One-style engine teardown after each outing. It took several more years to generate an extra 200 horsepower, on top of that. Oh, and each Veyron was sold at a massive, multi-million-dollar loss.

Then there are the physics of traveling at 350 mph (at that speed, you're covering almost two football fields every second), and the fact that there are only a very small handful of places on the planet where those speeds are possible. But the problems are actually far more simple than that, as Emirates 24/7 points out - there are no road-legal tires available that can handle that speed.

Incredulity about its performance aside, we must say, this is a striking car. With no shortage of inspiration from the likes of the Lamborghini Veneno and Pagani Huayra on the exterior, and a healthy dose of Koenigsegg in the cabin, the Sixteen looks like the marriage of a Le Mans Prototype and a modern hypercar. Also, the back end looks like it has afterburners, which is awesome.

We love the idea of wild and crazy engineering projects as much as the next group of gearheads, but there's so much here that seems impossible that it's hard to view the Devel Sixteen as anything more than an elaborate joke or ruse. Take a look below for a walk-around of the car from Shmee150.

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Devel Sixteen debuts in Dubai with alleged 5,000 hp and 350-mph top speed

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This is the Devel Sixteen, and it might be the king of lofty statistics. Its Dubai-based backers are claiming it'll use a 5,000-horsepower V16 and will reach a top speed of 348 miles per hour. The sprint to 62 mph will take just 1.8 seconds. Sounds great, right? So, what's the problem?

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A garden was only watered once in 50 years

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A garden was only watered once in 50 years

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The Daily Mail has a really cool feature on David Latimer and his soon to be 55-year-old bottle garden.

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Ecosystem In Bottle Only Watered Once In 50 Years

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The computer seems to be able to create every color we can imagine, but the colors you see on a computer is different from real life. For example, the yellow on a lemon works in that it absorbs all light wavelengths except for yellow, which is reflected onto your retina. In your retina, you have cone cells. 1 of them is good for blue, another is good for green, and the last one is good for red. Yellow has a little of red and green, so your brain perceives yellow. A computer monitor can only display RGB (Red, Green, Blue). It displays those colors so tiny that you can't notice it individually, so you see a bit of red and a bit of green. Your brain thinks that that's what yellow is, so it displays yellow. (Watch Video until 2:18)

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A famous well known person named  Isaac Newton have found the concept of the rainbow band that creates from a triangular  pieces of glass when hits the sunlight. Colors likes red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet light were born.The concept of rainbows were created after a rainstorm that combined with air and atmosphere that filled with the rain drops.When sunlight passes, the light split the arc of colors and create a beautiful rainbow. Fun fact there is a double rainbow.

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Today's Wonder of the Day was inspired by Keen from AL. Keen Wonders, " Can you ever reach the end of a rainbow? " Thanks for WONDERing with us, Keen!

What is sunshine? When we see the of the Sun streaming through the windows, it appears colorless. Even though we can't see it, this "white" is actually made up of many different colors of . Each of these colors has a different wavelength.

In 1666, the famous scientist Isaac Newton discovered that if sunlight passed through a triangular piece of glass called a prism, the white would split into a of colors. This of colors was made up of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, , and violet . These are the colors of the rainbow in order. Some people remember them by the name ROY G. BIV.

The "birth" of a after a rainstorm works in a similar way. After it rains, the in the atmosphere is filled with raindrops. Each raindrop acts like a tiny prism. If sunlight passes through raindrops at just the right angle, the is split into an of colors with red on the outside of the and violet on the inside.

The most brilliant displays occur when part of the is still dark with rainclouds and the viewer is in a sunny spot facing the Sun. This creates a very bright and vivid against the darkened background.

Sometimes it is possible to see a second or "double rainbow." This is caused by a double reflection of sunlight inside the raindrops. The double reflection causes the colors of a second to arrange in the opposite order of the colors on a .

Secondary rainbows are fainter than rainbows for two reasons. First, the double reflection allows more to escape. Second, a double arcs above the rainbow, which means it is spread out over a greater area of sky.

If you're hoping to find a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, you may be disappointed to find out there is no real end of the rainbow. This is because rainbows do not actually exist in a particular location in the sky. A rainbow's depends on the location of the and the of the Sun.

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Today's Wonder of the Day was inspired by Keen from AL. Keen Wonders, " Can you ever reach the end of a rainbow? " Thanks for WONDERing with us, Keen! What is sunshine? When we see the of the Sun streaming through the windows, it appears colorless.

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Pluto is a dwarf planet which revolves around the sun just like all the other planets in our solar system. It is about half the size of the US. It takes 248 years on Earth for Pluto to revolve around the Sun once + Pluto's orbit is tilted and in an oval shape.

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Pluto is a dwarf planet in our solar system.

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Will These Mass Shootings come to an End? Maybe

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Will These Mass Shootings come to an End? Maybe

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Recently there have been a lot of cases of mass shootings and many lives have been lost from these shootings. An 18 year old named Kai Kloepfer, he is designing a special gun with an advanced fingerprint scanner, if the scanner receives a fingerprint the scanner would look if it matches the Gun's owner fingerprint then the user is free to fire. If it doesn't match though the trigger for the weapon is locked.

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To say that gun control is a complex topic in American culture is a massive understatement, but there's one point we can probably all agree on: Fatal accidents involving firearms are heartbreaking tragedies and any measure we can take to try to reduce or eliminate them is something we as a society need to consider. That said, 18 year-old Kai Kloepfer has a plan that could help end them for good.

In the second installment of Uproxx's Webby-nominated series Luminaries, we introduce you to Kloepfer and his quest for safer firearms. Kai is currently developing an advanced fingerprint sensor that's outfitted on the grip of a gun. When you pick up the gun, it scans the user's fingerprint and if it's a match with the gun owner's, the user is free to fire. If the fingerprint does not match, the trigger locks. The sensor is designed to prevent children from picking up a misplaced weapon and discharging it - a problem that's unfortunately far too common today - but it could also help to reduce the number of shootings that take place via illegally obtained firearms.

Kloepfer is entirely self-taught, having studied engineering on the internet and from simply taking things apart and rebuilding them. In fact, this project started as a high school science project. But thanks to infinite curiosity, sheer determination and a willingness to explore, Kloepfer may be able to pull off something no one has quite yet perfected.

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Has This 18-Year-Old Created The World's Safest Gun?

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To say that gun control is a complex topic in American culture is a massive understatement, but there's one point we can probably all agree on: Fatal accidents involving firearms are heartbreaking tragedies and any measure we can take to try to reduce or eliminate them is something we as a society need to consider.

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Occasionally, small pieces of space rock called meteorites survive their journey through Earth's atmosphere crashing down onto Earth's ground. But exactly how often does meteorites hit Earth?

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Pieces of natural space debris - typically rocky shards of comets or asteroids - occasionally survive their journeys through Earth's atmosphere and strike the ground, but how often does an event like this actually occur?

While large impacts are fairly rare, thousands of tiny pieces of space rock, called meteorites, hit the ground each year. However, the majority of these events are unpredictable and go unnoticed, as they land in vast swathes of uninhabited forest or in the open waters of the ocean, Bill Cooke and Althea Moorhead of NASA's Meteoroid Environments Office told Space.com.

In order to understand meteorite impacts on Earth, it is important to know where the chunks of rock come from. Meteoroids are rocky remnants of a comet or asteroid that travel in outer space, but when these objects enter Earth's atmosphere, they are considered meteors. [ Photos: Fireball Drops Meteorites on California]

Most (between 90 and 95 percent) of these meteors completely burn up in the atmosphere, resulting in a bright streak that can be seen across the night sky, Moorhead said. However, when meteors survive their high-speed plunge toward Earth and drop to the ground, they are called meteorites.

The Perseid meteor shower - one of the most popular meteor showers of the year - is expected to put on a particularly breathtaking show Aug. 11 and 12, when the Earth passes through the trail of debris created by Comet Swift-Tuttle. However, viewers should not expect to find any meteorites lying on the ground after this spectacular meteor shower.

" Perseids come from Comet Swift-Tuttle and are very fragile, being an ice-dust mix," Cooke said. "They are not strong enough to survive passage through the atmosphere at 132,000 mph (212,433 km/h) and so never produce meteorites - they are totally vaporized by the time they make it to 50 miles (80 km) altitude." [ Perseid Meteor Shower 2016: When & How to See It]

Unpredictable catastrophes

Most meteorites that are found on the ground weigh less than a pound. While it may seem like these tiny pieces of rock wouldn't do much damage, a 1-lb. (0.45 kilograms) meteorite traveling upward of 200 mph (322 km/h) can fall through the roof of a house or shatter a car windshield.

When the Grimsby meteorite landed in Ontario, Canada in 2009, for example, it broke the windshield of an SUV. In another incident, meteorites crashed into the back end of a Chevy Malibu in Peekskill, New York, in 1992, Cooke and Moorhead said. Thankfully, no one was injured during these events.

However, the pieces of rock falling from the sky are not even the greatest concern regarding meteor impacts, Cooke said.

"What causes the most damage is the shock wave produced by the meteor when it breaks apart in [Earth's] atmosphere," Cooke said. "So, you don't have to watch for the falling rocks - you have to worry about the shockwave."

For example, the Chelyabinsk meteor - an asteroid the size of a six-story building that entered Earth's atmosphere in February 2013 over Russia - broke apart 15 miles (24 km) above the ground and generated a shock wave equivalent to a 500-kiloton explosion, Cooke said. It injured 1,600 people.

(Image credit: Qingzhu Yin, Univ. California-Davis)

Another major collision was the Tunguska meteorite, which was larger than Chelyabinsk and 10 times more energetic. The meteorite exploded over the Tunguska River on June 30, 1908, and flattened 500,000 acres (2,000 square km) of uninhabited forest. Because of its remote location, the event is an example of a meteorite that would have gone undetected had it not been so large, Cooke and Moorhead explained.

Generally, astronomers are unable to predict meteorite impacts, largely because meteoroids traveling in outer space are too small to detect. However, even large meteorite events that originate from asteroids, which can be tracked in space, are unpredictable.

Fortunately, between 90 and 95 percent of meteors don't survive the fall through the Earth's atmosphere to produce meteorites, Moorhead explained. This is because most meteorites are believed to come from comets, which are more fragile than asteroids.

"Only those meteoroids that happen to be made of stronger material produce meteorites," she said. For example, " if the [meteoroid] is a chunk of an asteroid, instead of a chunk of a comet, it's likely to be a little denser, a little stronger and more likely to produce a meteorite."

Also, if the meteor is approaching Earth at a slower speed, the rock will likely survive its collision with Earth's atmosphere, Moorhead added. In other words, the meteor will not burn up completely, and some remnant meteorites will fall to the ground.

"We actually get a few meteorites from the moon and Mars," Moorhead said. "These [meteorites] are actually chucks of the moon and Mars that have been blown off those planets by impacts and then spent a long time in space before finally hitting Earth as a meteorite."

Although predicting these events is nearly impossible, there are a couple different ways in which researchers can measure how many meteorites fall to the Earth. For example, in uninhabited areas like the Sahara Desert or atop glaciers in Antarctica, it is fairly easy to find meteorites on the ground and date them based on the amount of weathering they've experienced, Moorhead explained. Because these areas are largely undisturbed, the meteorites that lie there provide scientists with a general idea of how many of the space rocks might have hit the Earth over a period of time.

While skywatchers will not be able to hunt for meteorites after this week's Perseids meteor shower, the dazzling trail left behind by Comet Swift-Tuttle will provide spectacular light show, which can best be seen in clear skies of the Northern Hemisphere on the nights of Aug. 11 and 12.
Follow Samantha Mathewson @Sam_Ashley13. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

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Pieces of natural space debris - typically rocky shards of comets or asteroids - occasionally survive their journeys through Earth's atmosphere and strike the ground, but how often does an event like this actually occur? While large impacts are fairly rare, thousands of tiny pieces of space rock, called meteorites, hit the ground each year.

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Do you ever wonder how big is space and how many planet are there beside just earth and other planet we have founded

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I'm just going to warn you, this is a controversial topic. Some people get pretty grumpy when you ask: how many planets are in the Solar System? Is it eight, ten, or more?

I promise you this, though, we're never going back to nine planets... ever.

When many of us grew up, there were nine planets in the Solar System. It was like a fixed point in our brains.

As kids, memorizing this list was an early right of passage of nerd pride: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto.

But then in 2005, Mike Brown discovered Eris, an icy object thought to be about the same size as Pluto, out beyond its orbit.

That would bring the total number of planets to ten. Right? There's no turning back, textbooks would need to be changed.
In order to settle the dispute, the International Astronomical Union met in 2006, and argued for, and against Pluto's planethood. Some astronomers advocated widening the number of planets to twelve, including Pluto, its moon Charon, the Asteroid Ceres, and the newly discovered Eris.

In the end, they changed the definition of what makes a planet, and sadly, Pluto doesn't make the cut:

Here are the new requirements of planethood status:

A planet has to orbit the Sun. Okay fine, Pluto does that.

A planet needs enough gravity to pull itself into a sphere. Okay, spherical. Pluto's fine there too.

A planet needs to have cleared out its orbit of other objects. Uh oh, Pluto hasn't done that.

For example, planet Earth accounts for a million times the rest of the material in its orbit, while Pluto is just a fraction of the icy objects in its realm.

The final decision was to demote Pluto from planet to dwarf planet.

But don't despair, Pluto is in good company.

There's Ceres, the first asteroid ever discovered, and the smallest of the dwarf planets. The surface of Ceres is made of ice and rock, and it might even have a liquid ocean under its surface. NASA's Dawn mission is flying there right now to give us close up pictures for the first time.

Haumea, named after the Hawaiian goddess of fertility, is about a third the mass of Pluto, and has just enough gravity to pull itself into an ellipsoid, or egg shape. Even though it's smaller, it's got moons of its own.

Makemake, a much larger Kuiper belt object, has a diameter about two-thirds the size of Pluto. It was discovered in 2005 by Mike Brown and his team. So far, Makemake doesn't seem to have any moons.

Eris is the most massive known dwarf planet, and the one that helped turn our definition of a planet upside-down. It's 27% more massive than Pluto and the ninth most massive body that orbits the Sun. It even has a moon: Dysnomia.

And of course, Pluto. The founding member of the dwarf family.

Want an easy way to remember the eight planets, in order? Just remember this mnemonic: my very excellent mother just served us noodles.

For all you currently writing angry tweets to Mike Brown, hold on a sec. Changing Pluto's categorization is an important step that really needed to happen.

The more we discover about our Universe, the more we realize just how strange and wonderful it is. When Pluto was discovered 80 years ago, we never could have expected the variety of objects in the Solar System. Categorizing Pluto as a dwarf planet helps us better describe our celestial home.

So, our Solar System now has eight planets, and five dwarf planets.

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How Many Planets are in the Solar System? - Universe Today

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I'm just going to warn you, this is a controversial topic. Some people get pretty grumpy when you ask: how many planets are in the Solar System? Is it eight, ten, or more? I promise you this, though, we're never going back to nine planets... ever.

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Do you ever wonder how small a atom compare to you?

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Names are sometimes easy to forget, but why? While talking to the other person, your brain is too focused on doing it normal routine instead of remembering names, like how you talk, how you move...etc.

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Why is it so hard to remember someone's name? 7 TRICKS to REMEMBER names: https://youtu.be/jVUgl_va6IE Subscribe (It's free!): http://bit.ly/10kWnZ7 GET THE BOOK: http://asapscience.com/book/ Written by Mitchell Moffit and Greg Brown Instagram and Twitter: @whalewatchmeplz and @mitchellmoffit Clickable: http://bit.ly/16F1jeC and http://bit.ly/15J7ube AsapINSTAGRAM: https://instagram.com/asapscience/ Facebook: http://facebook.com/AsapSCIENCE Twitter: http://twitter.com/AsapSCIENCE Tumblr: http://asapscience.tumblr.com Vine: Search "AsapSCIENCE" on vine!

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When you are talking to your friend, you might think he/she is now, but they're actually from the past. Everything you see now is from the past.
The farther the item, the longest the past.

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The partially eclipsed sun sets over Island Lake north of Duluth, Minn. on May 20, 2012. Credit: Jim Schaff

The Universe is a magic time window, allowing us to peer into the past. The further out we look, the further back in time we see. Despite our brains telling us things we see happen at the instant we view them, light moves at a mere 300,000 kilometers per second, which makes for a really weird time delay at great distances.

Let's say that you're talking with a friend who's about a meter away. The light from your friend's face took about 3.336 nanoseconds to reach you. You're always seeing your loved ones 3.336 nanoseconds into the past. When you look around you, you're not seeing the world as it is, you're seeing the world as it was, a fraction of a second ago. And the further things are, the further back in time you're looking.

The distance to the moon is, on average, about 384,000 km. Light takes about 1.28 seconds to get from the moon to the Earth. If there was a large explosion on the moon of a secret Nazi base, you wouldn't see it for just over a second. Even trying to communicate with someone on the moon would be frustrating as you'd experience a delay each time you talked.

Let's go with some larger examples. Our sun is 8 minutes and 20 seconds away at the speed of light. You're not seeing the sun as it is, but how it looked more than 8 minutes ago.

On average, Mars is about 14 light minutes away from Earth. When we were watching live coverage of NASA's Curiosity Rover landing on Mars, it wasn't live. Curiosity landed minutes earlier, and we had to wait for the radio signals to reach us, since they travel at the speed of light.

When we look out into space, we're also looking back into time. Just how far back can we see?

When NASA's New Horizons spacecraft reaches Pluto next year, it'll be 4.6 light hours away. If we had a telescope strong enough to watch the close encounter, we'd be looking at events that happened 4.6 hours ago.

The closest star, Proxima Centauri, is more than 4.2 light-years away. This means that the Proxima Centurans don't know who won the last US Election, or that there are going to be new Star Wars movies. They will, however, as of when this video was produced, be watching Toronto make some questionable life choices regarding its mayoral election.

The Eagle Nebula with the famous Pillars of Creation, is 7,000 light-years away. Astronomers believe that a supernova has already gone off in this region, blasting them away. Take a picture with a telescope and you'll see them, but mostly likely they've been gone for thousands of years.

The core of our own Milky Way galaxy is about 25,000 light-years away. When you look at these beautiful pictures of the core of the Milky Way, you're seeing light that may well have left before humans first settled in North America.

A Hubble Space Telescope image of Proxima Centauri, the closest star to Earth. Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA

And don't get me started on Andromeda. That galaxy is more than 2.5 million light-years away. That light left Andromeda before we had Homo Erectus on Earth. There are galaxies out there, where aliens with powerful enough telescopes could be watching dinosaurs roaming the Earth, right now.

Here's where it gets even more interesting. Some of the brightest objects in the sky are quasars, actively feeding supermassive black holes at the cores of galaxies. The closest is 2.5 billion light years away, but there are many much further out. Earth formed only 4.5 billion years ago, so we can see quasars shining where the light had left before the Earth even formed.

The Andromeda Galaxy. Credit: Adam Evans

The cosmic microwave background radiation, the very edge of the observable Universe is about 13.8 billion light-years away. This light left the Universe when it was only a few hundred thousand years old, and only now has finally reached us. What's even stranger, the place that emitted that radiation is now 46 billion light-years away from us.

So crack out your sonic screwdrivers and enjoy your time machine, Whovians. Your ability to look out into space and peer into the past. Without a finite speed of light, we wouldn't know as much about the Universe we live in and where we came from. What moment in history do you wish you could watch? Express your answer in the form of a distance in light-years.

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The Universe is a magic time window, allowing us to peer into the past. The further out we look, the further back in time we see. Despite our brains telling us things we see happen at the instant we view them, light moves at a mere 300,000 kilometers per second, which makes for a really weird time delay at great distances.

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Buddha's skull was found in a shrine that was reportedly found in China. It was reported to be from a long time ago, during the Song Dynasty

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(Image: © Photo courtesy of Chinese Cultural Relics)

Archaeologists have discovered what may be a skull bone from the revered Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama. The bone was hidden inside a model of a stupa, or a Buddhist shrine used for meditation.

The research team found the 1,000-year-old model within a stone chest in a crypt beneath a Buddhist temple in Nanjing, China. Inside the stupa model archaeologists found the remains of Buddhist saints, including a parietal (skull) bone that inscriptions say belonged to the Buddha himself.

The model is made of sandalwood, silver and gold, and is covered with gemstones made of crystal, glass, agate and lapis lazuli, a team of archaeologists reported in an article published in the journal Chinese Cultural Relics.

Inscriptions engraved on the stone chest that the model was found in say that it was constructed during the reign of Emperor Zhenzong (A.D. 997-1022), during the Song Dynasty. Also inscribed on the stupa are the names of people who donated money and material to build the model, as well as some of the people who constructed the model. [ See Photos of the Model Stupa Holding Buddha Remains]

While the inscriptions say that the skull bone belongs to the Buddha, it is unknown whether it really does come from him. In the journal article, archaeologists didn't speculate on how likely it is. The bone is being treated with great respect and has been interred in the modern-day Qixia Temple by Buddhist monks.

Stone chest inscription

(Image credit: Photo courtesy of Chinese Cultural Relics)

Discovered beneath the Grand Bao'en Temple, the stupa model - which is 117 centimeters tall and 45 cm wide (nearly 4 feet by 1.5 feet) - was stored within an iron box, which, in turn, was stored within a stone chest.

An inscription found within the stone chest was written by a man named Deming about 1,000 years ago, saying that he is "the Master of Perfect Enlightenment, Abbot of Chengtian Monastery [and] the Holder of the Purple Robe" (as translated by researchers in the journal article). He tells the story of how the Buddha's parietal bone came to China. [ Photos: 1,700-Year-Old Buddhist Sculptures Found in Shrine]

Deming wrote that after the Buddha "entered parinirvana" (a final death that breaks the cycle of death and rebirth), that his body "was cremated near the Hirannavati River" in India. The man who ruled India at the time, King Ashoka (reign 268-232 B.C.), decided to preserve the Buddha's remains, which he "divided into a total of 84,000 shares," Deming wrote. "Our land of China received 19 of them," including the parietal bone, he added.

The parietal bone was kept in a temple that was destroyed about 1,400 years ago during a series of wars, Deming wrote. "The foundation ruins ... were scattered in the weeds," Deming wrote. "In this time of turbulence, did no one care for Buddhist affairs?"

Emperor Zhenzong agreed to rebuild the temple and have the Buddha's parietal bone, and the remains of other Buddhist saints, buried in an underground crypt at the temple, according to Deming's inscriptions. They were interred on July 21, 1011 A.D., in "a most solemn and elaborate burial ceremony," Deming wrote.

Deming praised the emperor for rebuilding the temple and burying the Buddha's remains, wishing the emperor a long life, loyal ministers and numerous grandchildren: "May the Heir Apparent and the imperial princes be blessed and prosperous with 10,000 offspring; may Civil and Military Ministers of the Court be loyal and patriotic; may the three armed forces and citizens enjoy a happy and peaceful time ..."

Buddha burial

The parietal bone of the Buddha was buried within an inner casket made of gold, which, in turn, was placed in an outer casket made of silver, according to the archaeologists. The silver casket was then placed inside the model of the stupa.

The gold and silver caskets were decorated with images of lotus patterns, phoenix birds and gods guarding the caskets with swords. The outer casket also has images of spirits called apsaras that are shown playing musical instruments.

The parietal bone of the Buddha was placed within the gold inner casket along with three crystal bottles and a silver box, all of which contain the remains of other Buddhist saints.

Engraved on the outside of the model are several images of the Buddha, along with scenes depicting stories from the Buddha's life, from his birth to the point when he reached "parinirvana," a death from which the Buddha wasn't reborn - something that freed him from a cycle of death and rebirth, according to the Buddhist religion.

Impact in China

A large team of archaeologists from the Nanjing Municipal Institute of Archaeology excavated the crypt between 2007 and 2010; they were supported by experts from other institutions in China.

Although the excavations received little coverage by Western media outlets, they were covered extensively in China. Chinese media outlets say that, after the parietal bone of the Buddha was removed, Buddhist monks interred the bone and the remains of the other Buddhist saints in Qixia Temple, a Buddhist temple used today. The Buddha's parietal bone and other artifacts from the excavation were later displayed in Hong Kong and Macao.

When the bone traveled to Macao in 2012, the media outlet Xinhua reported that "tens of thousands of Buddhist devotees will pay homage to the sacred relic," and that "more than 140,000 tickets have been sold out by now, according to the [event organizer]."

An article detailing the discoveries was published in Chinese in 2015 in the journal Wenwu, before being translated and published in Chinese Cultural Relics.
Original article on Live Science.

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Ancient Shrine That May Hold Buddha's Skull Bone Found in Crypt

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(Image: © Photo courtesy of Chinese Cultural Relics) Archaeologists have discovered what may be a skull bone from the revered Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama. The bone was hidden inside a model of a stupa, or a Buddhist shrine used for meditation.

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There happens to be a new theory on why the gravity of planet earth explaining why gravity is so weak.

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Mark Garlick/Science Photo Library

Something is seriously wrong with gravity, and nobody's quite sure why.

The problem is that gravity is too weak. Out of the four fundamental physical forces in the universe-gravity, electromagnetism, the strong force, and the weak force-gravity is by far the weakest. It's so weak that, for instance, a pair of tiny magnets can easily overcome the gravitational pull of the entire Earth.

There's no particular reason why gravity should be so much weaker than the other forces. Physicists have attempted to explain this discrepancy in a number of ways, from complex theories like string theory to philosophical ideas like the anthropic principle, which answers the question of why gravity isn't stronger by arguing that no one would be around to ask the question if it were.

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But that's not enough for a group of physicists who have developed an alternative theory to explain gravity. Their theory involves decaying particles and the Higgs boson.

The Higgs boson, discovered in 2012, is thought to be directly correlated to the strength of gravity. The more mass in the Higgs boson, the stronger gravity would be for all matter in the universe. So essentially, the question "Why is gravity so weak?" is the same as, "Why doesn't the Higgs boson have more mass?"

The new theory attempts to answer that question by arguing that after the Big Bang, a bunch of different Higgs bosons were created, each with a different mass. The Higgs bosons with large masses were unstable, so they decayed and broke apart into smaller Higgs bosons.

Over time, all the heavier Higgs bosons decayed into lighter and lighter versions, until only the lightest possible kind of Higgs boson was left. That extremely light Higgs boson is the one the LHC discovered in 2012.

It's a pretty outlandish theory, but it's one that can actually be tested by studying the Cosmic Microwave Background. The CMB is a remnant of the Big Bang, light that is finally reaching us from some 13.8 billion years ago. By studying the CMB closely, scientists can discover clues about what happened in the early years of the universe and possibly determine whether this new theory about gravity is right.

Unfortunately, we will need to wait a few years for the next generation of telescopes-like the James Webb Space Telescope -to be launched before we find the answer. But until then, we can only wait and enjoy the very weak gravity that we've got.

Source: New Scientist

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New Theory of the Higgs Boson Could Explain Why Gravity Is So Weak

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Mark Garlick/Science Photo Library Something is seriously wrong with gravity, and nobody's quite sure why. The problem is that gravity is too weak. Out of the four fundamental physical forces in the universe-gravity, electromagnetism, the strong force, and the weak force-gravity is by far the weakest.

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University of Pennsylvania political science Professor Diana Mutz didn’t start out to test the powers of the fictional wizard against the real aspiring overlord. Mutz found that reading Potter was associated with more supportive attitudes to Muslims and homosexuality. When interviewed, Mutz's participants were asked how they felt about Donald Trump... “Because Trump’s political views are widely viewed as opposed to the values espoused in the Harry Potter series,”

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As outbreaks of violence produce reprisals and political leaders advocate inflaming the situation over calming it, it may seem like only magic can save us from ourselves. Wizardry may not be the only path, but a new study indicates that it could be useful, with people who read the tales of Harry Potter being less likely to be sympathetic to presidential candidate Donald Trump.

University of Pennsylvania political science Professor Diana Mutz didn't start out to test the powers of the fictional wizard against the real aspiring overlord. Instead, in 2014 she tested attitudes to religious and sexual minorities, torture, and the death penalty against Potter reading. Mutz found that reading Potter was associated with more supportive attitudes to Muslims and homosexuality.

Mutz followed up on her participants this year, asking them to rate their feelings about Donald Trump from 1 to 100.

"Because Trump's political views are widely viewed as opposed to the values espoused in the Harry Potter series," Mutz writes in a paper to be published in Politics and Political Science (preprint here), "exposure to the Potter series may play an influential role in influencing how Americans respond to Donald Trump."

Such a relationship is certainly hard to test. People who are sympathetic to Trump's authoritarian politics might be less likely to read fantasy, or perhaps fiction in general. Likewise, the reputations of the books as promoting values of tolerance and non-violence may influence who chooses to read them.

Nevertheless, Mutz concludes that reading Potter does indeed act as a patronus against Trump. "Each [Potter] book that a person has read lowers their evaluation of Donald Trump by roughly 2- 3 points," she wrote.

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People Who Read Harry Potter Books Are less Likely To Support Donald Trump

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As outbreaks of violence produce reprisals and political leaders advocate inflaming the situation over calming it, it may seem like only magic can save us from ourselves. Wizardry may not be the only path, but a new study indicates that it could be useful, with people who read the tales of Harry Potter being less likely to be sympathetic to presidential candidate Donald Trump.

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In 2001, two US senators and a few media organizations were sent envelopes containing Anthrax spores. This resulted in the death of five people and 17 more infected. There is also weapons grade Anthrax and if that fell into the wrong hands, it could result in catastrophe.

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In September 2001, when the US was still reeling from the notorious 9/11 terrorist attacks, two US Senators and various media organisations were sent letters containing spores from the bacterium Bacillus anthracis, the cause of the disease Anthrax. The malicious mail resulted in the deaths of five people, the infection of 17 others and an investigation between the FBI and the US Postal Inspection Service that spanned almost 7 years.

Bacillus anthracis is a rod-like bacterium which can, upon entering the body, bring about the acute disease known as Anthrax. The endospores (spores) of the bacterium can lay dormant for years, but become activated and multiply after coming into contact with a host. Once contracted, the symptoms of the disease are dependent on the route by which the bacteria entered the body. However left untreated, the disease can ultimately kill the host.

The mailed anthrax spores were accompanied by misleading letters suggesting the attack was motivated by religion, though the prospect of terrorist groups, that were already at the forefront of the country's mind, were soon discounted. It was soon concluded that a likely source of the anthrax, which was of the Ames strain, had been maintained by the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID). Suspicion fell on Dr Bruce Ivins, who had been a researcher at the facility. Whilst in this position, Ivins had created and maintained this particular spore-batch, suspected to have been the batch used in the anthrax attack. With suspicions supported by an array of incriminating circumstantial evidence, investigators called upon a team of scientific experts to establish whether there was a link between Ivins' own anthrax and the mailed anthrax.

Traditional forensic techniques were used in the examination of the spore powder and the letters and envelopes, including fingerprinting, and hair and fibre analysis, though this did not lead to any major breakthrough. A suite of analytical techniques was employed to ascertain various facts regarding the anthrax. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) were used to identify the size, shape and quality of the anthrax spores, as well as provide a profile of the chemical elements within the spores. SEM and TEM are microscopy techniques which employ a focused beam of electrons which interacts with the atoms of the sample, allowing it to be visualised. They can be coupled with energy-dispersive X-ray (EDX) spectroscopy to provide elemental analysis. The physical and chemical characteristics of the spores allowed investigators to presume that the anthrax was not weapons-grade, but it was of a concentration and quality similar to that used in bio-defence research.

Inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectroscopy (ICP-OES), a technique based on the emission of photons from substances, was used to provide further details of the elemental composition of the spore powder. Furthermore, gas chromatography mass spectrometry (GC-MS) was employed to characterise the spores. Experts at the Center for Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (CAMS) were called upon to analyse the anthrax spores and establish their relative age. Accelerator mass spectrometry turns a sample, which has been converted into solid graphite by the analyst beforehand, into ions and accelerates these ions to high kinetic energies before conducting mass analysis to detect C 14 (and potentially other isotopes depending on the work) to estimate the age of a sample. The analyses carried out on the samples in this instance determined that the mailed anthrax has been produced within 12 months of the attack, narrowing down the possible sources and suspects.

But perhaps the biggest breakthrough in the case came from a newly developed DNA fingerprinting technique which allowed investigators to conclude that the blend of anthrax spores created by Ivins in the lab was identical to that used in the attack, though how unique this "genetic signature" was has been somewhat debated. The US Justice Department later concluded that Ivins was solely responsible for the preparation and mailing of the deadly spores, claiming that he believed the scare would resurrect his anthrax vaccine program. Ivins later died from an overdose, deemed to be a suicide.

The case of Dr Ivins and the anthrax letters is a great example of how different analytical techniques can be drawn together to work in perfect harmony, utilising their individual powers to find out everything there is to know about a sample. In this case the array of techniques used allowed investigators to discover what the spores looked like and what they were composed of, their concentration and quality, and even how old they were. Armed with this information, investigators could home in on the source of the anthrax spores and the man behind the attack.
References
Centre for Infectious Disease Research and Policy. FBI says it easily replicated anthrax used in attacks.

US Department of Justice (2010). Amerithrax Investigative Summary. Darby, PA: DIANE Publishing.

Washington Post. FBI investigation of 2001 anthrax attacks concluded; U.S. releases details. [online] Available: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/19/AR2010021902369.html

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Forensic Case Files: Bruce Ivins and the Anthrax Attacks

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In September 2001, when the US was still reeling from the notorious 9/11 terrorist attacks, two US Senators and various media organisations were sent letters containing spores from the bacterium Bacillus anthracis, the cause of the disease Anthrax. The malicious mail resulted in the deaths of five people, the infection of 17 others and an...

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Researchers found that water fleas prepared for battle by growing armor to deal with specific enemies.

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(Image: © Dr. Linda Weiss)

Water fleas prepare for battle by growing armor that's customized to specific enemies, new research finds.

Tiny Daphnia species develop impressive protective structures as they mature, including pointy tail spines and tough helmets. Now, researcher Linda Weiss of Ruhr-University Bochum in Germany and her colleagues have found the neurotransmitters that help water fleas customize their bodies in response to the chemical cues in their watery environments.

"Dopamine, in particular, appears to code neuronal signals into endocrine [hormone] signals," Weiss said in a statement.

Daphnia is a genus comprising many species of the tiny crustaceans known as water fleas. Most are less than 0.2 inches (5 millimeters) long, and look much like translucent versions of the land-based fleas that give them their nickname. [ Tiny Grandeur: Stunning Photos of the Very Small]

When juvenile Daphnia molt and develop a mature exoskeleton, they mold their bodies based on the chemicals they encounter in the water. The water fleas use appendages called antennules to detect scents and chemicals left by predators (fish, for example, or the upside-down swimming insects called backswimmers). They then develop armor defenses in response to the threats they expect to face.

"These defenses are speculated to act like an anti-lock key system, which means that they somehow interfere with the predator's feeding apparatus," Weiss said. "Many freshwater fish can only eat small prey. So, for example, Daphnia lumholtzi grows head and tail spines to make eating them more difficult."

(Image credit: Dr. Linda Weiss)

Weiss and her colleagues have found the intermediary steps that make this transformation occur. The antennules create brain signals when they detect chemical cues, which in turn cause the release of the neurotransmitter dopamine. Dopamine, in turn, cues the release of juvenile hormones that promote growth in particular body regions.

The same juvenile hormones promote growth in many other arthropods, Weiss said, which suggests that this developmental pathway is a widely shared way for crustaceans and insects to respond to environmental conditions.

Little Daphnia can also act as a canary in a coal mine for water quality, Weiss said. Understanding how water fleas change in response to chemical cues "will help in our understanding of the composition and population dynamics of freshwater ecosystems," Weiss said. "As freshwater is one of the most important resources on Earth, it is important to study the communities it holds."

Weiss will present her findings, which have yet to be published in a peer-reviewed journal, today (July 6) at the annual meeting for the Society for Experimental Biology in Brighton, England.
Original article on Live Science.

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Armor Up! Water Fleas Grow Helmets and Spines for Battle

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(Image: © Dr. Linda Weiss) Water fleas prepare for battle by growing armor that's customized to specific enemies, new research finds. Tiny Daphnia species develop impressive protective structures as they mature, including pointy tail spines and tough helmets.

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The Humpback anglerfish lives in the dark depths of the ocean where the water there is at an freezing temperature and where food is scarce the Humpback anglerfish has a different way of mating. When the male finds the female the male bites into the females skin and then their blood vessels are as one, after this happened the male no longer needs to hunt for food. The female can hunt the food for him, while the female is hunting the male on the other hand is producing sperm to reproduce.

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You've tried touch screen on your mobile devices but how about touch skin?

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You've tried touch screen on your mobile devices but how about touch skin?

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This SkinTrack Technology makes ur arm into a smart watch. It may sound freaky but it's one more step to the future. First, it starts with touch screen, to touch skin, then to mind control.

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Photo Credit: Carnegie Mellon University via Gerard Laput

Controlling and interacting with content on a smartphone or tablet is a relatively easy task given their large screens. However, the same is not true for smartwatches, which are proving to be more of a fashion statement than a piece of useful technology. Now, a group of researchers from the Human-Computer Interaction Institute's Future Interfaces Group (HCII) at Carnegie Mellon University is trying to change that with an invention that transforms the arm into a touchpad.

This is not the first time scientists have tried to create such technology. However, previous "skin to screen" approaches have been clunky, requiring the use of things like interactive textiles and projector/camera combinations. SkinTrack, in contrast, requires users to wear just a ring and their favorite smartwatch. According to HCII team member Yang Zhang, "it (SmartTrack) is not obtrusive; watches and rings are items that people already wear every day."

Playing Angry Birds (Photo Credit: Carnegie Mellon University/Gierad Laput)

The ring uses high-frequency electrical signals to communicate with the watch and transfer the controls from the tiny screen onto the surface of the arm. Though the technology behind SkinTrack may be complicated, its usefulness is easy to comprehend.

With SkinTrack, a person can use their smartwatch to do everything they would on a tablet or computer. That means they can scroll through lists, look for directions, and even make a call by shifting the dial pad onto the back of the hand. Even cooler applications include doodling on skin and seeing the image appear on the smartwatch, or controlling apps like Facebook and Snapchat from the arm "touchpad." SkinTrack can also be used to play games, allowing fans to continue with their favorite hobby, without missing a beat. The technology also recognizes hotkey commands. Users can simply trace "N" on their hand to open a news app or "S" to silence a phone call.

Transferring App control to arm (Photo Credit: Carnegie Mellon University/Gierard Laput)

Zhang, who unveiled SkinTrack on May 10, at the Association for Computing Machinery's Conference on Human Factors in Computing, that took place in San Jose , CA, says that while the technology is safe for humans, it does have a few limitations. The biggest one is keeping the ring powered for extended periods of time.

Additionally, the signals also become less responsive if used constantly. That's because SkinTrack still has a hard time deciphering things like body sweat and the arm's constant motion.

Doodling on the smartwatch (Photo Credit: Carnegie Mellon University/ Gierad Laput)

Nevertheless, the technology does appear to be a plausible avenue to improve the usability of wearable devices without compromising style. However, if SkinTrack is widely adopted, its implications in social settings will be interesting, to say the least. Is a person scratching his/her hand or being unsocial and doodling on his smartwatch?

Resources: eurekaalert.org,technologyreview.com,cmu.edu, wired.com.

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SkinTrack Technology Transforms Your Arm Into A Smartwatch Touchpad

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Controlling and interacting with content on a smartphone or tablet is a relatively easy task given their large screens. However, the same is not true for smartwatches which are proving to be more of a fashion statement than a piece of useful technology.

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Meteor Dagger Made In The 14th Century BCE

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Meteor Dagger Made In The 14th Century BCE

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When King Tutankhamun died at the age of 19, a dagger was placed along in his tomb. New scientific study confirmed that the dagger included substances not found on Earth.

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Newsela | Iron dagger in King Tut's tomb fell out of the sky - sort of

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Did the first americans sidestep the Glaciers?

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Did the first americans sidestep the Glaciers?

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If you ask most people, they might say the first people came to america by crossed land connecting Alaska and Siberia and made their way between melting glaciers at the end of the last ice age. Scientists had agreed, until recently when they found DNA tests that suggests that humans made the journey to the Americas as early as about 15,000 years ago, and they passed the Glaciers.

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Ask any schoolkid how the first people came to the Americas, and you might get some version of the following: They crossed a spit of land connecting Alaska and Siberia and made their way south between melting glaciers at the end of the last ice age. Until recently, science agreed. But mounting evidence has shown that the dry land exposed by the melted route-known as the ice-free corridor-may not have been passable until long after humans had already settled the Americas. So when did it become a viable route for people? Using ancient DNA, along with the remains of pollen, plants, and animals collected from lake sediments, a new study has an answer: about 12,600 years ago. This suggests that the earliest humans to make their homes in the New World, including people from the Clovis civilization, must have taken a very different route.

"This is a really neat and pioneering study," says Stephen Jackson, a paleoecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey's Southwest Climate Science Center in Tucson, Arizona, who was not involved in the work. Because this is the first study to take into account both so-called environmental DNA (eDNA) as well as more traditional types of data, he says, "we stand to learn a good deal more about how to interpret our records."

Scientists have long thought that humans traveled across a region knowns as Beringia, a now-submerged area in the Bering Sea that was dry land during the lower sea levels of the last ice age. What humans did next has always been a big question. Until recently, most researchers thought that the ice-free corridor (see map) was the most likely route south, once the glaciers began melting 14,000-15,000 years ago. For years, those dates fit the timing of the Clovis people, big game hunters thought to have inhabited the lower 48 about 13,000 years ago. But in the past decade, scientists have discovered even earlier settlements, revealing that humans made the journey to the Americas as early as about 15,000 years ago. The key question, says Eske Willerslev, a paleoecologist at the University of Copenhagen and a co-author of the study, is when the ice-free corridor really became viable for humans to cross it. At about 1500 kilometers long, large animal game would be essential to making the journey, he says.

To see into the corridor's past, the new study looked at pollen, plant, and animal fossils from nine sediment cores taken from two lakes near what was thought to have been the narrowest bottleneck in the corridor-the last part to open. The modern lakes are the remnants of a giant prehistoric lake, known as glacial Lake Peace, which covered much of the area between the retreating glaciers. From the cores, the scientists also extracted eDNA-DNA lingering in the soil from, for example, plant leaves, rootlets, animal feces, urine, or even skin cells. Because DNA is electrically charged, it can bind to sediment particles, helping to preserve it from degradation over time.

Taken together, these data paint a detailed picture of the ecology of the corridor as it transitioned from icy wasteland to fertile forest. For about 700 years after the ice retreated, there was scant evidence of any life, Willerslev says. Then, about 12,600 years ago, steppe plants like aromatic sagebrush appeared, followed soon after by animals such as woolly mammoth, bison, and jackrabbits. By about 12,400 years ago, forests of Populus trees-such as aspen and poplar-began to dominate, after which elk and moose arrived. About 11,600 years ago, the region transformed again into a boreal forest of spruce and pine trees.

But this opening and flourishing occurred too late for the migrating humans who arrived in the Americas about 15,000 years ago, the authors report online today in Nature. It was even too late for the Clovis people, who arrived about 13,000 years ago, they say.

Instead, Willerslev says, both pre-Clovis and Clovis peoples may have taken the so-called coastal route, which would have taken them down along the western coast of North America, a much-discussed path with scant hard data to support it. He says he hopes to use eDNA to hunt for evidence of their passage. "The idea is that there was a land bridge a few thousand years earlier than the formation of the ice-free corridor," he says. "That land is now covered by ocean, but there are some islands believed to be part of that route. It would be interesting to go and look for cores and try to do the same exercise there."

Other recent evidence supports the idea that the earliest human migrants to the Americas-the pre-Clovis people-didn't enter through the Canadian corridor. For example, a recent study of mitochondrial DNA in northern and southern populations of bison separated by the corridor suggest the passage opened up slightly earlier than the present study posits- 13,000 years ago instead of 12,600 years ago. In terms of that timing, "it's a pretty subtle difference," says Duane Froese, a geoscientist from the University of Alberta, Edmonton, in Canada, and a co-author of that study.

But when it comes to estimating the opening of the ice-free corridor, the devil may be in those details-in part because the slightly earlier opening suggested by the bison mitochondrial DNA would have allowed the Clovis people to take it. Willerslev questions the reliability of using just one organism to record environmental history. But Froese points to several other fragments of data from the region that suggest the corridor was habitable earlier: a 13,700-year-old fragment of a poplar tree and a 13,100-year-old bison found near the bottleneck.

Jackson notes that the eDNA evidence is powerful and fills in many gaps left by conventional paleoecological data. For example, certain trees- Populus is a particularly well-known example-are poorly represented in the pollen record, even when they were certainly present. eDNA offers a detailed snapshot of local flora and fauna that passed through a particular location, from bison stepping into the lake to pikefish swimming in it. But, Jackson adds, eDNA paleoecological research is still new, and there remain lingering questions about how eDNA is represented in sediments and what exactly the data mean.

Froese is optimistic. "It's great from a science point of view that we don't completely agree," he says of his team's work and Willerslev's. "I hope this will be good impetus for future research."

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Ancient DNA suggests the first Americans sidestepped the glaciers

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Ask any schoolkid how the first people came to the Americas, and you might get some version of the following: They crossed a spit of land connecting Alaska and Siberia and made their way south between melting glaciers at the end of the last ice age. Until recently, science agreed.

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Was Jason Bourne's Amnesia Really Real? 

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Was Jason Bourne's Amnesia Really Real? 

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In 2002, a movie called the Bourne Identity the protagonist, Jason Bourne wakes up having been shot, and unconscious. In the movie, he forgets everything about himself and his past. Some things he didn't forget such as speaking different languages, being able to drive, and to fight. Now this type of Amnesia is real. It's called "organic" Amnesia

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In 2002's "The Bourne Identity," our protagonist wakes up having been shot and plucked, unconscious, from the Mediterranean on to a fishing boat with no memory of who he is or how he got there. From there, the movie franchise follows Jason Bourne as he recovers memories of past events and rediscovers his identity.

But, although Bourne's amnesia at the start of the first film in the series is profound (and profoundly important to the unfolding story), we quickly learn that there are some things Bourne does remember from his past. For example, how to speak multiple languages, how to drive and how to fight. All of these are complex motor tasks that he learned before he was shot and fell in to the water.

This aspect of Bourne's amnesia is actually quite accurate. For people with "organic" amnesia (where neurological memory loss is typically due to damage to the medial temporal lobes in the brain), memory for skills and habits is intact, even though other memories are lost. There is truth to the cliché that you never forget how to ride a bicycle.
Different memories are affected in different ways
Memory investigators make a distinction between declarative memory and procedural memory. Amnesia affects these types of memories in different ways.

Declarative memory includes anything you can "declare" or talk about. For instance, remembering that Paris is the capital of France, or that you had cereal for breakfast today, or that you have to take your allergy medicine tomorrow morning. While these types of memories are different in other, important ways, you are able to think or talk about the content of the memory and have an explicit awareness that you are remembering in each example. It is these declarative memories that are most affected by amnesia.

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What The Bourne Films Get Right And Wrong About Amnesia

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In 2002's "The Bourne Identity," our protagonist wakes up having been shot and plucked, unconscious, from the Mediterranean on to a fishing boat with no memory of who he is or how he got there. From there, the movie franchise follows Jason Bourne as he recovers memories of past events and rediscovers his identity.

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Apparently, one Moon isn't enough for Earth so we'll give it 2.

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Apparently, one Moon isn't enough for Earth so we'll give it 2.

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Earth has thought to only have one moon for years and years until this day. Scientists have discovered a secret Moon that lurks around Earth.

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Photo Credit: Youtube scre

Always wished we had a second Moon? Then you are in luck! NASA scientists from the Planetary Defense Coordination Office (PDCO) on Mount Haleakala in Maui, Hawaii recently discovered a small asteroid that they believe has been looping Earth for at least a century. But despite its unwavering loyalty to our planet, the researchers have no intention of calling it a moon. Instead, they refer to the asteroid, which has been dubbed 2016 H03, as a "quasi-moon" or "near-earth companion."

That's because while the asteroid that is believed to be between 120-ft.(40m) - 300-ft.(100m) in size loops around Earth, its orbit is around the sun! However, since its path closely mimics that of Earth's, 2016 H03 moves in sync with our planet. According to the researchers, it takes the asteroid 365.93 days (just 16.6 hours longer than Earth) to orbit the sun.

Photo Credit: NASA.Gov (YouTube screen capture)

The scientists say that 2016 H03 spends half its orbit closer to the sun, than Earth. As a result, it zips past our planet during the initial part of the year. This pattern reverses in the latter half as the asteroid drifts away from the sun causing it to lag behind Earth. However, thanks to the Earth's gravitational pull, 2016 H03 never wanders more than about 40 million kilometers (about one-hundred times the distance of the moon) from our planet. This same effect also prevents the asteroid from getting closer than 14 million kilometers (about thirty-eight times the distance of the moon) to Earth. As Paul Chodas, the manager of PDCO that monitors asteroids and comets that get too close to Earth says, the quasi-moon is caught in a "little dance with Earth."

This is not the first time the Earth's gravitational pull has dragged in a companion. About a decade ago, an asteroid dubbed 2003 YN107 had displayed a similar orbital pattern. However, it appears to have disappeared, at least from the observable vicinity. But NASA researchers say that will not happen with 2016 H03, which they believe is much more 'locked-on' to our planet. According to their calculations, this near-earth companion will remain Earth's "dance partner" for at least another century, if not more.

Photo Credit: Paul Chodas, JPL

While discovering the quasi-moon is certainly exciting, what is even more so, is that 2016 H03 could be an attractive destination for the first ever "Near-Earth Object" space mission. That's because the scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) believe we could reach the asteroid in about 65 days. This means that astronauts could theoretically complete the entire mission in as little as 145 days - Something JPL researchers believe could be feasible in the near future. So watch out 2016 H03, humans may soon be making their way to examine you up close!

Resources: NASA.gov, slate.com

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Guess What? Earth Has A Second (Mini) Moon!

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Always wished we had a second Moon? Then you are in luck! NASA scientists from the Planetary Defense Coordination Office (PDCO) on Mount Haleakala in Maui, Hawaii recently discovered a small asteroid that they believe has been looping Earth for at least a century.

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You maybe thinking that you know a lot about stars and our sun. Well, with this website you can learn that our sun is actually GREEN AND BLUE.

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Every star you see in the night sky is bigger and brighter than our sun. You can't see millions of stars on a dark night. Red hot and cool ice blue - NOT! Stars are black bodies. There are no green stars. Our sun is a green star. Our sun is a dwarf star. You can see 20 quadrillion miles, at least. Black holes don't suck.
1. Every star you see in the night sky is bigger and brighter than our sun. Of the 5,000 or so stars brighter than magnitude 6, only a handful of very faint stars are approximately the same size and brightness of our sun and the rest are all bigger and brighter. Of the 500 or so that are brighter than 4th magnitude (which includes essentially every star visible to the unaided eye from a urban location), all are intrinsically bigger and brighter than our sun, many by a large percentage. Of the brightest 50 stars visible to the human eye from Earth, the least intrinsically bright is Alpha Centauri, which is still more than 1.5 times more luminous than our sun, and cannot be easily seen from most of the Northern Hemisphere.
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2. You can't see millions of stars on a dark night. Despite what you may hear in TV commercials, poems and songs, you cannot see a million stars ... anywhere. There simply are not enough close enough and bright enough. On a really exceptional night, with no Moon and far from any source of lights, a person with very good eyesight may be able to see 2000-2500 stars at any one time. (Counting even this small number still would be difficult.). So the next time you hear someone claim to have seen a million stars in the sky, just appreciate it as artistic license or exuberant exaggeration - because it isn't true!

3. Red hot and cool ice blue - NOT! We are accustomed to referring to things that are red as hot and those that are blue as cool. This is not entirely unreasonable, since a red, glowing fireplace poker is hot and ice, especially in glaciers and polar regions, can have a bluish cast. But we say that only because our everyday experience is limited. In fact, heated objects change color as their temperature changes, and red represents the lowest temperature at which a heated object can glow in visible light. As it gets hotter, the color changes to white and ultimately to blue. So the red stars you see in the sky are the "coolest" (least hot), and the blue stars are the hottest!

4. Stars are black bodies. A black body is an object that absorbs 100 percent of all electromagnetic radiation (that is, light, radio waves and so on) that falls on it. A common image here is that of a brick oven with the interior painted black and the only opening a small window. All light that shines through the window is absorbed by the interior of the oven and none is reflected outside the oven. It is a perfect absorber. As it turns out, this definition of being perfect absorbers suits stars very well! However, this just says that a blackbody absorbs all the radiant energy that hits it, but does not forbid it from re-emitting the energy. In the case of a star, it absorbs all radiation that falls on it, but it also radiates back into space much more than it absorbs. Thus a star is a black body that glows with great brilliance! (An even more perfect black body is a black hole, but of course, it appears truly black, and radiates no light.)

5. There are no green stars. Although there are scattered claims for stars that appear green, including Beta Librae (Zuben Eschamali), most observers do not see green in any stars except as an optical effect from their telescopes, or else an idiosyncratic quirk of personal vision and contrast. Stars emit a spectrum ("rainbow") of colors, including green, but the human eye-brain connection mixes the colors together in a manner that rarely if ever comes out green. One color can dominate the radiation, but within the range of wavelengths and intensities found in stars, greens get mixed with other colors, and the star appears white. For stars, the general colors are, from lower to higher temperatures, red, orange, yellow, white and blue. So as far as the human eye can tell, there are no green stars.

6. Our sun is a green star. That being said, the sun is a "green" star, or more specifically, a green-blue star, whose peak wavelength lies clearly in the transition area on the spectrum between blue and green. This is not just an idle fact, but is important because the temperature of a star is related to the color of its most predominate wavelength of emission. (Whew!) In the sun's case, the surface temperature is about 5,800 K, or 500 nanometers, a green-blue. However, as indicated above, when the human eye factors in the other colors around it, the sun's apparent color comes out a white or even a yellowish white.

7. Our sun is a dwarf star. We are accustomed to think of the sun as a "normal" star, and in many respects, it is. But did you know that it is a "dwarf" star? You may have heard of a "white dwarf," but that is not a regular star at all, but the corpse of a dead star. Technically, as far as "normal" stars go (that is, astronomical objects that produce their own energy through sustained and stable hydrogen fusion), there are only "dwarfs," "giants" and "supergiants." The giants and supergiants represent the terminal (old age) stages of stars, but the vast majority of stars, those in the long, mature stage of evolution (Main Sequence) are all called "dwarfs." There is quite a bit of range in size here, but they are all much smaller than the giants and supergiants. So technically, the sun is a dwarf star, sometimes called "Yellow Dwarf" in contradiction to the entry above!

8. Stars don't twinkle. Stars appear to twinkle ("scintillate"), especially when they are near the horizon. One star, Sirius, twinkles, sparkles and flashes so much some times that people actually report it as a UFO. But in fact, the twinkling is not a property of the stars, but of Earth's turbulent atmosphere. As the light from a star passes through the atmosphere, especially when the star appears near the horizon, it must pass through many layers of often rapidly differing density. This has the effect of deflecting the light slightly as it were a ball in a pinball machine. The light eventually gets to your eyes, but every deflection causes it to change slightly in color and intensity. The result is "twinkling." Above the Earth's atmosphere, stars do not twinkle.

9. You can see 20 quadrillion miles, at least. On a good night, you can see about 19,000,000,000,000,000 miles, easily. That's 19 quadrillion miles, the approximate distance to the bright star Deneb in Cygnus. which is prominent in the evening skies of Fall and Winter. Deneb is bright enough to be seen virtually anywhere in the Northern hemisphere, and in fact from almost anywhere in the inhabited world. There is another star, Eta Carina, that is a little more than twice as far away, or about 44 quadrillion miles. But Eta Carina is faint, and not well placed for observers in most of the Northern hemisphere. Those are stars, but both the Andromeda Galaxy and the Triangulum Galaxy are also visible under certain conditions, and are roughly 15 and 18 quintillion miles away! (One quintillion is 10^18!)

10. Black holes don't suck. Many writers frequently describe black holes as "sucking" in everything around them. And it is a common worry among the ill-informed that the so-far hypothetical "mini" black holes that may be produced by the Large Hadron Collider would suck in everything around them in an ever increasing vortex that would consume the Earth! "Say it ain't so, Joe!" Well, I am not Shoeless Joe Jackson, but it ain't so. In the case of the LHC, it isn't true for a number of reasons, but black holes in general do not "suck."

This not just a semantic distinction, but one of process and consequence as well. The word "suck" via suction, as in the way vacuum cleaners work, is not how black holes attract matter. In a vacuum cleaner, the fan produces a partial vacuum (really, just a slightly lower pressure) at the floor end of the vacuum, and regular air pressure outside, being greater, pushes the air into it, carrying along loose dirt and dust.

In the case of black holes, there is no suction involved. Instead, matter is pulled into the black hole by a very strong gravitational attraction. In one way of visualizing it, it really is a bit like falling into a hole, but not like being hoovered into it. Gravity is a fundamental force of Nature, and all matter has it. When something is pulled into a black hole, the process is more like being pulled into like a fish being reeled in by an angler, rather than being pushed along like a rafter inexorably being dragged over a waterfall.

The difference may seem trivial, but from a physical standpoint it is fundamental.

So black holes don't suck, but they are very cool. Actually, they are cold. Very, very cold. But that's a story for another time.
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Bottom line: Here's a collection of 10 unexpected, intriguing facts about the stars of our universe - including our sun - that you probably didn't know!

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Top 10 cool things about stars | EarthSky.org

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Every star you see in the night sky is bigger and brighter than our sun. You can't see millions of stars on a dark night. Red hot and cool ice blue - NOT! Stars are black bodies. There are no green stars. Our sun is a green star.

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Many people have a fear of sharks but there isn't a real need to be afraid of them. Every year at least one million people die in car crashes and in 2004 only 61 people were attacked by sharks. Humans aren't as fatty and delicious at seals or other animals in the water. Sharks simply spit us out

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Despite two highly publicized shark attacks last month along the U.S. coast, at least one scientist says it's safe to go back in the water.

In fact, he points out that you're actually in more danger on the way to the beach.

"There are millions of people in the water at any given moment of the day," said John McEachran of Texas A&M University. "When you consider all of the people in the water at the same time, the number of shark attacks is very, very remote."

Every year across the globe, nearly one million people die in automobile accidents. More than 42,000 of those deaths occur in the United States.

Shark attacks resulting in deaths occur much less frequently than car wrecks, but they get much more publicity.

"Shark attacks are like airplane crashes," said McEachran. "The vast majority of airplane trips are safe, but when a crash occurs, it gets big headlines."

According to the International Shark Attack File, in 2004 there were only seven shark related deaths worldwide. That number was even smaller in 2003 and 2002, when four and three deaths were recorded respectively.

Should you get to the beach safely, there are still plenty of bigger risks to your health than a shark attack.

"A greater percentage of beachgoers are injured by jellyfish, stingrays, or hardhead and gafftop fishes, which have poisonous spines," McEachran said. "They are more likely to cause harm than a shark."

Even peanuts, McEachran says, are a greater threat to humans than sharks. About 90 people die worldwide each year from allergic reactions to eating peanuts.

There's a better chance you'll win the lottery than be bitten by a shark. [ Other Odds of Death]
You're not dinner
Should you be bitten by a shark, it's not just bad luck for you. Sharks don't really like eating humans. They'd rather snack on a seal or sea lion - something with higher fat and energy content. We're too bony.

"Sharks don't eat humans," shark exert Peter Kimley of the University of California, Davis told LiveScience. "They spit out humans. Humans aren't nutritious enough to be worth the effort."

But most sharks don't have very good vision, and sometimes objects like buoys and people look similar to a seal - a shark's favorite meal.

"A human being of course, close to the surface, does a pretty good job looking like a seal, and one on a surfboard does an even better job," George Burgess, curator of the International Shark Attack File told LiveScience. "It's not like they're out there saying ?let's try to find a human today.'"

Most often, sharks spit people out after carrying them underwater for a ways. Because their eyesight isn't very good, they need to feel objects over with their mouths to decide whether they want to eat them or not.

Humans are usually spat out. Unfortunately, by that time they've either drowned or have bled to death.
How to avoid a shark
The best thing to do when you see a shark is move away, experts say. Move swiftly but calmly - sharks are attracted to splashing. If the shark is already swimming at you, no need to go quietly. Just get away.

If a shark bites you, try to get away before it takes you under for too long. Hit it on the snout, head, and eyes, and it may let you go.

Not all the blame for shark attacks falls on the beasts.

Attacks are more frequent in summer months, Burgess said, because "both sharks and humans have seasons where they want to be in the water at the same time."

Sometimes sharks bite because people provoke them, either by putting food in the water or grabbing one as it swims by. Other times, it's just because someone is in the wrong place at the wrong time. Surfers often unknowingly put themselves in one of these wrong places. The good breaks they crowd around are often created by seamounts on the ocean floor, which are popular feeding areas for sharks.

While the number of shark attacks and deaths is still much lower than car wrecks, attacks have been climbing steadily.

"Decade to decade you find that the number of shark attacks has continued to rise," Burgess said. "This is largely because the human population and interest in water activities has grown."

So what's the prudent course?

"If you use some good common sense in the water, you should be fine," said McEachran. "To put your mind at ease, go to a beach that has lifeguards. They should be looking for possible sharks."
Related Stories Back in the Water? "We swam every year at the ocean -- never been afraid of sharks like we are now. We're beach lovers. We can't stay away. We're just a lot more cautious now."
-- Celia Page, a teacher from Waycross, Ga., who was in the water with her 3-year-old daughter last week after two shark attacks along the Gulf Coast left one teen dead and another with a severed leg.
"We're still going to have a nice vacation but I don't really think I'll get back in the Gulf or the ocean again. It's their domain out there."
-- Heather Black, of Owensboro, Ky., who was visiting Cape San Blas, Fla. with her husband last week.

-- Associated Press
By the Numbers
Unprovoked shark attacks worldwide in recent years:

Shark attackes by species since the year 1,580:

Credit: International Shark Attack File
Image Gallery

Great White Sharks

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The Science of Shark Attacks and How to Avoid Them

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Despite two highly publicized shark attacks last month along the U.S. coast, at least one scientist says it's safe to go back in the water. In fact, he points out that you're actually in more danger on the way to the beach.

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In the deep waters of the Marianas, scientists spotted a ghostly transparent fish.

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(Image: © NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research)

A living, swimming "ghost fish" has been seen live for the first time ever.

The fish, part of the family Aphyonidae, was caught on camera during an ongoing National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) exploration by the ship Okeanos Explorer. The exploration centers on the deep ocean at Mariana Trench Marine National Monument, a protected area spanning 95,216 square miles (246,608 square kilometers) east of the Philippines.

The secretive fish was swimming along a ridge 8,202 feet (2,500 meters) down, according to NOAA. The animal is about 4 inches (10 centimeters) long, with translucent, scale-less skin and eerie, colorless eyes. No fish in the family Aphyonidae has ever been seen alive before. [ See Photos of Spooky Deep-Sea Creatures]

"This is really an unusual sighting," Bruce Mundy, a NOAA fishery biologist said in a video released by the agency.

Aphyonidae is a family in the order Ophidiiformes, which also contains bottom-dwelling cusk eels of the Ophidiidae family. The deepest-dwelling fish ever found, Abyssobrotula galatheae, was a cusk eel. It was trawled from the Puerto Rico Trench at a depth of 27,460 feet (8,370 m).

Most of the specimens ever found in the Aphyonidae family were accidentally caught during trawling or dredging operations, Mundy said.

"There has been a big debate about whether these are pelagic, living up in the water column, or whether they're associated with the bottom, like this one is," he said. The observation of the ghostly fish flitting along the ocean bottom doesn't settle the question, he said, but provides the first evidence to suggest that these fish are bottom-dwellers.

"Our interns think that this fish looks like Falkor, a dragon from 'The Neverending Story,'" Shirley Pomponi, the leader of the biology science team of the deep-water exploration project, said in the NOAA-released video.

The NOAA expedition is part of a larger three-year project to explore the little-studied Pacific marine national monuments. Dives ended on July 8, with webcams streaming at NOAA.gov. For some biologists, though, the trip has already paid off.

"Some of us working with the fish have a wish list, you know, sort of a bucket list of what we might want to see, and a fish in this family is probably first on this list for a lot of us," Mundy said. "This is just remarkable."
Original article on Live Science.

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(Image: © NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research) A living, swimming "ghost fish" has been seen live for the first time ever. The fish, part of the family Aphyonidae, was caught on camera during an ongoing National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) exploration by the ship Okeanos Explorer.

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Sleep Deprivation Affects Your Brain and Health

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Sleep Deprivation Affects Your Brain and Health

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If you stay away for more than 24 hours, you would have a hard time doing simple things, your brain would start to get weaker, so will your health.

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Sleep deprivation hits some brain areas hard

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Brain scan study reveals hodgepodge effects of sleep deprivation.

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Pickles, bread, yogurt, wine, beer, and cheese all have one thing in common, they are all fermented. When fermenting food, you create growth of "good" microorganisms in it. It may require special ingredients and carefully controlled conditions (temperature and pH). After fermenting it, the microorganisms help preserve the food and change its flavor and texture in interesting ways.

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Exploratorium: the museum of science, art and human perception

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What do pickles, bread, yogurt, wine, beer, and cheese have in common?

All of these foods are made by fermentation. When you ferment a food, you encourage growth of "good" microorganisms in it, while preventing growth of spoilage-causing microorganisms. Doing this successfully may require special ingredients and carefully controlled conditions, such as temperature and pH. By eating spoilage-sensitive parts of the food, and releasing chemicals as a by-product, the microorganisms help preserve the food, and change its flavor and texture in interesting ways.

Here's a brief look at how fermentation is used to make different foods:

Pickled Vegetables. The vegetable is soaked in a salt brine, allowing the growth of bacteria that eat the vegetable's sugars and produce tart-tasting lactic acid.

Wines. Yeasts, added to crushed grapes, eat the grapes' sugars and produce alcohol.

Breads. Yeasts, added to dough, digest sugars (derived from starches in dough) and produce carbon dioxide, causing the dough to rise.

Cheeses. Milk bacteria digest the milk sugar lactose and produce lactic acid, which acts with the added enzyme rennet to curdle the milk. The cheesemaker drains off the whey and compacts the curds, which various microbes then ripen into a mature cheese.

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Science of Pickles: Fermentation and Food | Exploratorium

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What do pickles, bread, yogurt, wine, beer, and cheese have in common? All of these foods are made by fermentation. When you ferment a food, you encourage growth of "good" microorganisms in it, while preventing growth of spoilage-causing microorganisms. Doing this successfully may require special ingredients and carefully controlled conditions, such as temperature and pH.

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How long can Greenland Sharks live up to?

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How long can Greenland Sharks live up to?

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Greenland sharks are able to live up to 400 years. The only animal able to beat that is a clam, which can live up to 500 years. Researchers figured out the sharks'  age by dating the eye lenses of sharks that have been caught. After some time, they become very slow and almost blind.

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Greenland Sharks Can Live To 400 Years Old

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In 1997, a sound called the Bloop was heard in the Pacific. The sound was low but loud, so loud, in fact, two stations 5,000km apart heard it. It is the sound that sounds like"Bloop", the name of it. It is one of the sound NOAA(National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) has recovered.

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The Bloop: A Mysterious Sound from the Deep Ocean | NOAA SOSUS

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Greenland sharks can live up to how many years?

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Greenland sharks can live up to how many years?

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This flower is one of the biggest flower in the world and the smelliest.

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Common snowdrop

Common snowdrops ( Galanthus nivalis) are among the first spring blooms, decorating woodlands, meadows, and gardens with a carpet of white.

Read about common snowdrop

Pomegranate

Pomegranate ( Punica granatum) is the crown jewel of the fruit world, associated with different cultures and civilizations worldwide.

Read about pomegranate

Turmeric

For thousands of years, turmeric ( Curcuma longa) has played a key role in many dishes, medicinal remedies, and cultural practices.

Read about turmeric

Kew Gardens

Princess of Wales Conservatory

Travel the world through ten different climate zones in the Princess of Wales Conservatory.

Explore

Kew Gardens

Arboretum

Take a wander through our vast garden of trees - a living collection that reflects the changes of the seasons.

Explore

Kew Gardens

Rock Garden

Experience this dramatic valley carved through the landscape with cascading waterfalls.

Explore

A world-famous living plant collection

Our magnificent scientific collection contains plants from tropical, temperate, arid and alpine climates. Our expert horticulturalists grow them both in our gardens and in controlled conditions within glasshouses and nurseries.

What is a living plant collection?

A living collection is what sets a botanic garden apart from a park or public garden.

It is a group of plants grown especially for research, conservation, education purposes or ornamental display.
Read about our Living Collections

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Common snowdrop Common snowdrops ( Galanthus nivalis) are among the first spring blooms, decorating woodlands, meadows, and gardens with a carpet of white. Read about common snowdrop Pomegranate Pomegranate ( Punica granatum) is the crown jewel of the fruit world, associated with different cultures and civilizations worldwide.

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The umeboshi is a sour food, it is advice to eat the fruit with rice. Even though the umeboshi is the sourest food, it has some benefits for your health.

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Capsaicin Molecule is a type of molecule, responsible for the heat in peppers. Capsaicin interacts with the sensory neurons which is why when we eat spicy food, we can feel the burning and painful sensation.

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About the Capsaicin Molecule
The chemical compound capsaicin (8-methyl-N-vanillyl-6-nonenamide) is the active component of chile peppers. . Capsaicin and several related compounds are called capsaicinoids and are produced as a secondary metabolite by chile peppers, probably as deterrents against herbivores. Pure capsaicin is a hydrophobic, colorless, odorless, crystalline to waxy compound.

The Capsaicin molecule (shown below) is the main capsaicinoid in chile peppers, followed by dihydrocapsaicin. These two compounds are also about twice as potent to the taste and nerves as the minor capsaicinoids nordihydrocapsaicin, homodihydrocapsaicin, and homocapsaicin. The molecular formula for capsaicin is C18H27NO3.

Capsaicin molecule structure

Capsaicin molecule
What happens at the molecular level to the Capsaicin molecule?
The burning and painful sensations associated with capsaicin result from its molecular interaction with sensory neurons. The Capsaicin molecule, as a member of the vanilloid family, binds to a receptor called the vanilloid receptor subtype 1 (TRPV1). TRPV1 is a nonselective cation channel that may be activated by a wide variety of exogenous and endogenous physical and chemical stimuli. The best-known activators of TRPV1 are: temperature greater than 43°C; acidic conditions; capsaicin, the pungent compound in hot chilli peppers; allyl isothiocyanate, the pungent compound in mustard and wasabi. The activation of TRPV1 leads to a painful, burning sensation. Its endogenous activators include: low pH (acidic conditions),

First cloned in 1997, TRPV1 is an ion channel-type receptor. TRPV1, which can also be stimulated with heat, protons and physical abrasion, permits cations to pass through the cell membrane and into the cell when activated. The resulting depolarization of the neuron stimulates it to signal the brain. By binding to the TRPV1 receptor, the capsaicin molecule produces similar sensations to those of excessive heat or abrasive damage, explaining why the spiciness of capsaicin is described as a burning sensation.

With chronic exposure to capsaicin, neurons are depleted of neurotransmitters. This leads to reduction in sensation of pain and blockade of neurogenic inflammation. If capsaicin is removed, the neurons recover.

The TRPV1 ion channel has subsequently been shown to be a member of the superfamily of TRP ion channels, and as such is now referred to as TRPV1 (Previously referred to as VR1). There are a number of different TRP ion channels that have been shown to be sensitive to different ranges of temperature and probably are responsible for our range of temperature sensation. Thus, capsaicin does not actually cause a chemical burn; it causes only the sensation of one.
Where is Capsaicin found in peppers
Capsaicin is present in large quantities in the placental tissue (which holds the seeds), the internal membranes and, to a lesser extent, the other fleshy parts of the fruits of plants in the genus Capsicum. The seeds themselves do not produce any capsaicin, although the highest concentration of capsaicin can be found in the white pith of the inner wall, where the seeds are attached.
What is the solubility of capsaicin
Capsaicin is a nonpolar molecule, and is therefore hydrophobic. The capsaicin molecule has a long hydrocarbon tail. The chain allows it to bind very strongly with its lipoprotein receptor. Capsaicin is soluble in alcohol, but very little in water.
Effects of Capsaicin
Because of the burning sensation caused by capsaicin when it comes in contact with mucous membranes, it is commonly used in food products to give them added spice or "heat" (piquancy). In high concentrations, capsaicin will also cause a burning effect on other sensitive areas of skin. The degree of heat found within a food is often measured on the Scoville scale.

It is common for people to experience pleasurable and even euphoriant effects from ingesting capsaicin. Folklore among self-described "chileheads" attributes this to pain-stimulated release of endorphins, a different mechanism from the local receptor overload that makes capsaicin effective as a topical analgesic. In support of this theory, there is some evidence that the effect can be blocked by naloxone and other compounds that compete for receptor sites with endorphins and opiates.
How to Neutralize Hot Foods in the Mouth
Capsaicin is an alkaloid oil, which cannot be neutralized in water - which is why drinking a glass of ice water to try and drown out hot food is unsuccessful.

Dairy products can reduce the heat of Capsaicin. A glass of milk or some yogurt. is one antidote that can be used if you have had too much spicy food. Dairy product work because one of proteins in dairy, called casein, helps break the bonds capsaicin forms on your nerve receptors .

Capsaicin can also be neutralized by alcohol but the amount of alcohol in a beer may not be substantial enough. . A study in the 1990 edition of the "Journal of Physiology and Behavior" found that drinks with five percent ethanol did not work any better than cool water at neutralizing peppers' heat. Higher concentrations of ethanol can be effective but should be served on ice since warm alcohol can increase the burn.

Fatty food can also bind with the capsaicin and help relieve the pain. Think Avocado s... used to cut the spice in guacamole.
Similar Molecules
Other molecules with shapes similar to capsaicin have similar though less dramatic effects. For example the piperine molecule, the active compound in black pepper, is responsible for that spice's mild heat. Similarly, zingerone is responsible for the heat of gingerroot. The molecules of both substances have shapes similar to capsaicin.
About the Scoville Scale
The Scoville scale is the measurement of the pungency (spicy heat) of chile peppers or other spicy foods reported in Scoville heat units (SHU). a function of capsaicin concentration. The scale is named after its creator, American pharmacist Wilbur Scoville. His method, devised in 1912, is known as the Scoville Organoleptic Test..

The Scoville scale is an empirical measurement dependent on the capsaicin sensitivity of testers and so is not a precise or accurate method to measure capsaicinoid concentration, however, capsaicin concentration can very roughly be estimated as ~18µM/SHU.

What are the Best Hot Sauces?

Altogether, the category includes literally thousands of brands that generate well over $240 million in annual sales. Hot Sauce Production is the 8th Fastest Growing Industry In The Country.

Cholula sauce --Cholula hot sauce is a brand is manufactured in Chapala, Jalisco, Mexico, and licensed by José Cuervo.

Ingredients: Water, peppers (arbol and piquin), salt, vinegar, spices and xanthan gum, a natural thickening agent. The sauce contains no artificial ingredients or preservatives. Nutrition facts at 5g (1 tsp): calories 0.0, protein 0.0 g, total carbohydrate 0.0 g, total fat 0.0 g, sodium 85 mg.

Scoville scale - 3,600

Many consider Cholula to be in the top 5 hot sauces.

Sriracha sauce is a hot sauce made by Huy Fong Foods, California, in 1980 by Chinese-Vietnamese founder David Tran. It is also known as rooster sauce because of the rooster prominently featured on its label.

Ingredients: chile, sugar, salt, garlic, distilled vinegar, potassium sorbate, sodium bisulfite and xanthan gum.

Sriracha chile sauces are made from ripe red jalapeño chile pepper. The company formerly used serrano chiles but found them difficult to harvest.

Scoville scale -- 1000-2500

Sriracha hot sauce is often considered to be the best hot sauce around.

Frank's RedHot -- Aged cayenne peppers, vinegar, water, salt, garlic powder (product label, 2009) Very popular with Chicken Wings. -- Scoville - 499

Tabasco Original --Tabasco sauce was first produced in 1868 by Edmund McIlhenny, a Maryland-born former banker who moved to Louisiana around 1840. --The original red variety of Tabasco pepper sauce measures 2,500-5,000 SHU on the Scoville scale -- The tabasco pepper is a variety of chile pepper species Capsicum frutescens. Scoville scale 30,000-50,000 for tabasco pepper.Tabasco is the world's leading hot sauce brand.
Layering flavors of chile for enhanced tastes
While the heat in black pepper comes from the molecule piperine, and all the chile heat is from the molecule capsacian, the flavor in chile's come from the fruit of the pepper. Many chefs include both black pepper and cayenne pepper to a dish to give a more rounded heat and flavor profile. But also adding combinations of different chile peppers will make a different.

While white pepper tastes hotter than black it has less flavor since the fruit portion of the pepper is removed.

The popular hot sauce Chulula uses both arbol pepper (subtle smokey flavor) and Pequin pepper (Pequin peppers are very hot, often 13-40 times hotter than jalapeños on the Scoville scale (100,000-140,000 units). Flavor is described as citrusy, smoky (if dried with wood smoke), and nutty) in their sauce.

Espelette Pepper -Great Flavor with less heat?

A lot of chefs are now starting to use espelette pepper instead of cayenne for seasoning. This pepper from a region in France has great flavor with only a scoville of 4000.

AOC espelette peppers are cultivated in the following communes: Ainhoa, Cambo-les-Bains, Espelette, Halsou, Itxassou, Jatxou, Larressore, Saint-Pée-sur-Nivelle, Souraïde, and Ustaritz. It is harvested in late summer and, in September, characteristic festoons of pepper are hung on balconies and house walls throughout the communes to dry out.

The pepper only attains a maximum grade of 4,000 on the Scoville scale and therefore considered only mildly hot. It can be purchased as festoons of fresh or dried peppers, as ground pepper or purchased in many outdoor markets in France. It is worth seeking out.

References and Readings

How to Neutralize Hot Foods in the Mouth Big List of Peppers
Taste Test: A Guide to Black Pepper Power-ranking the 10 best hot sauces on Earth Capsaicin Technical Fact Sheet
Science of Hot Sauce and Chili from Science of Cooking -- Minnesota State University

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About the Capsaicin Molecule The chemical compound capsaicin (8-methyl-N-vanillyl-6-nonenamide) is the active component of chile peppers. . Capsaicin and several related compounds are called capsaicinoids and are produced as a secondary metabolite by chile peppers, probably as deterrents against herbivores. Pure capsaicin is a hydrophobic, colorless, odorless, crystalline to waxy compound.

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What is it inside the Eye of 'Super Typhoon'? 

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What is it inside the Eye of 'Super Typhoon'? 

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NASA's Earth Observatory just released three images of the 'Super Typhoon' taken by three different instruments to show the height, wind speed, directions, and temperature of the vortex. The first instrument that was used to take the first image is called Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR), this is used by the scientists to calculate the height of the cloud. For the second image, it was for calculating the directions and speed of the wind near the ocean, based on the roughness of the water. The instrument was used for this was a RapidScat. The last image was taken by a Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS). This instrument can notice things like a wide range of electromagnetic radiation, from microwaves to infrared, visible and ultraviolet light. From that, it allows it to directly or indirectly measure temperature, how much radiation is reflected by the planet's surface, photosynthesis activity and levels of airborne particles.

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(Image: © Joshua Stevens and Jesse Allen, NASA Earth Observatory, data from NASA/GSFC/JPL, MISR Team)

The swirling mass of white clouds, the placid eye of the storm: Satellite imagery has become common enough that it's easy to envision the whorl of a typhoon as seen from space. But that mental picture likely doesn't include such details as the relative air temperatures, or just how strong the wind is blowing.

NASA's Earth Observatory recently released satellite images, taken with three different instruments, of Super Typhoon Nepartak as it raged over the Philippine Sea before making landfall in Taiwan on July 8. The images include visualizations of the height, direction, wind speed and temperature of the vortex, which sustained winds at 113 knots (130 mph or 210 km/h).

The first of the images shows the range of the Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR), an instrument launched in 1999 aboard Terra, a school-bus-size satellite that is considered the flagship of NASA's Earth Observing System (EOS). Multiple cameras at different angles provide depth cues, allowing scientists to calculate information such as the height of clouds. [ Hurricanes from Above: Images of Nature's Biggest Storms]

MISR has been used for a variety of purposes, such as collecting information on wildfires, volcanic plumes and dust storms across the globe.

(Image credit: Joshua Stevens, NASA Earth Observatory, RapidScat data from JPL)

A second image shows the direction and speed of wind near the ocean surface, based on the roughness of the water. That data comes from the RapidScat instrument aboard the International Space Station.

(Image credit: Jeff Schmaltz and Joshua Stevens, NASA, LANCE/EOSDIS MODIS Rapid Response)

The thermal image came from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aboard the Aqua satellite. The MODIS instrument can detect a wide range of electromagnetic radiation, from microwaves to infrared, visible and ultraviolet light. And that flexibility allows it to directly or indirectly measure temperature, how much radiation is reflected by the planet's surface (albedo), photosynthesis activity and levels of airborne particles (aerosols).

Nepartak began as a tropical depression on July 2, eventually building to the wind speeds that qualified it for "super typhoon" status. It killed two people and injured 72 in Taiwan before moving to Fujian Province, China, where it killed six and left eight missing.
Original article on Live Science.

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NASA Peers into the Eye of a 'Super Typhoon' (Photo)

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(Image: © Joshua Stevens and Jesse Allen, NASA Earth Observatory, data from NASA/GSFC/JPL, MISR Team) The swirling mass of white clouds, the placid eye of the storm: Satellite imagery has become common enough that it's easy to envision the whorl of a typhoon as seen from space.

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Jelly beans are well known for their weird flavors: vomit, earwax, dirt, and boogers. Although weird products are made, many people still take the risk into trying them. It's all about curiosity. It motivates us to experience pain with no gain.

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Newsela | When curiosity leaves a bad taste in your mouth

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Parents always say that you have to have more than 6 hours of sleep, are you over sleeping, or under sleeping? This video will tell you how much sleep you actually need.

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The Bloop: The Mysterious Pacific Sound.

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The Bloop: The Mysterious Pacific Sound.

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The Bloop was a sound that was discovered in 1997. The NOAA(National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) picked up the sound that was so low, two stations 5,000km apart heard it.

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The well known Mantis Shrimp is famous for it's violent way of hunting and their fascinating eyes. The normal human eye proceed of three color receptors to see a range of colors, although mantis shrimps has twelve color receptors which allows them to see colors beyond out wonder, and lately scientists had discover that they managed to perfect an eye roll to see the world in a better and clearer perspective. Not only the eyes roll, but they can also in large itself or separate them to see in other directions.

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The bizarre and violent mantis shrimp has many awestruck fans on land. Part of the appeal is its ridiculous strength and creative hunting technique: Its club-like claws accelerate at the speed of a .22-caliber bullet, enough to dismember crabs and other prey. But if the shrimp misses its target, it likely wins anyway: Its powerful punch essentially boils the surrounding water into vapor bubbles. The bubbles create heat, light and a forceful sound when they implode and collapse. That usually finishes the job.

On the less gruesome side, mantis shrimp have some of the most remarkably advanced eyes on the planet. Humans eyes have three types of color receptors that allow us to see a full spectrum of colors. But mantis shrimp eyes have 12 of these receptors, meaning they see colors beyond our wildest dreams.

But as of this week, scientists have another reason to gawk at mantis shrimp eyes: In a paper published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications, researchers described how mantis shrimp roll their eyes-sometimes separately-to improve their ability to see. It's a skill unlike just about every other animal on Earth.

"We have known for a while that mantis shrimp see the world very differently from humans," Nicholas Roberts, an optical mechanics researcher at the University of Bristol and author on the study said in a statement. "Intuitively, a stable eye should see the world better than a mobile one, but mantis shrimp seem to have found a different way to see more clearly."
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The feature is almost unique among animals, according to the paper, and "each eye may also move largely independently of the other." Mantis shrimp are able to see the polarization of light. They see with, presumably, far less glare and distortion, and the eye roll is key in "maximizing the polarization contrast between an object of interest and its background," the researchers write. "This is the first documented example of any animal displaying dynamic polarization vision, in which the polarization information is actively maximized through rotational eye movements."

According to the researchers, understanding these mechanics could "prove useful for developing bio-inspired technology in the field of polarization cameras and image processing," helping make cameras that more effectively manage glare and color-distortion issues.

And if researchers can figure out how the mantis shrimp manages to process two separate streams of visual information from its two separately rolling eyes-something the researchers point to as a major, unanswered question-that might lead to new, high-performance sight systems for underwater robots.

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Mantis shrimp have perfected the eye roll to see things we can't imagine

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The bizarre and violent mantis shrimp has many awestruck fans on land. Part of the appeal is its ridiculous strength and creative hunting technique: Its club-like claws accelerate at the speed of a .22-caliber bullet, enough to dismember crabs and other prey.

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In 1960 there were about 2,000 northern rhinos roaming around. Skip to 1984 and there are only 15 left, today there is only 5 and out of that 5 there is only one male who is under 24 hour armed surveillance. The 42 year old male named Sudan, is guarded from poachers for 24 hours there are also 4 female Northern White Rhinos, but Sudan being the only male, he has to be protected from poachers to save the species.

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In 1960, there were over 2,000 northern white rhinos roaming the Earth. In 1984, there were just 15. Today there are only five, including just one male, and he's under around-the-clock armed surveillance to protect him from poachers.

The 42-year-old rhino, named Sudan, is guarded all day and night by a team of armed rangers at Ol Pejeta Conservancy in central Kenya. The conservancy houses three of the last five remaining northern white rhinos, but Sudan, being the only male, must be defended in order to save the species from extinction.

Rhino poaching is on the rise across Africa. In South Africa alone, poachers killed 1,215 rhinos last year, an increase of over 20% from 2013. The rhino's horn can sell for as much as $75,000 (£50,275) per kilogram (horns weigh roughly 1 to 4 kilograms) when they're ground into dust and sold on the black market in China. And in Vietnam, a growing myth that ingesting the horn can cure cancer has made them worth over $100,000 (£67,000) per kg. In 2006, a single horn was worth only $760.

Ol Pejeta has preemptively cut off Sudan's horn to make him less appealing to poachers. Although the horn, which is made of keratin (the same protein in human finger nails), will eventually grow back.

Sudan's two female counterparts, Fatu and Najin, are also protected by guards at Ol Pejeta. The two other known females are in zoos in the Czech Republic and San Diego. Sudan became the only male left on Earth when a 44-year-old named Angalifu died of old age at the San Diego zoo last year.

Conservationists implanted the rhinos with radio transmitters and, according to CNN, send incognito rangers into nearby towns to gather intel on poachers.

The conservancy, which is normally funded by tourism, has raised over £43,000 ($64,000) in crowdfunding for the team of rangers. The conservancy says that misconceptions about Ebola have led to sharp declines in tourism to Kenya, even though the country has had no cases and is further from West Africa than many European countries.

Ol Pejeta is also home to 23 black rhinos, another species that is critically endangered.

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The last male northern white rhino on Earth is under 24-hour armed guard

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In 1960, there were over 2,000 northern white rhinos roaming the Earth. In 1984, there were just 15. Today there are only five, including just one male, and he's under around-the-clock armed surveillance to protect him from poachers. The 42-year-old rhino, named Sudan, is guarded all day and night by a team of armed rangers at Ol Pejeta Conservancy in central Kenya.

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The Democratic People's Republic of Korea has announced a five-year plan to launch more advanced satellites into orbit by 2020, as well as an unmanned mission to the Moon, all under the command of supreme leader Kim Jong Un. Scientists have said that with the technology that North Korea has, it is ambitious. However, they said that it is far from impossible...

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North Korea is taking time out of their busy schedule of military antagonism, synchronized dance routines, and human rights abuse to explore space.

The Democratic People's Republic of Korea have announced a five-year plan to launch more advanced satellites into orbit by 2020, as well as an unmanned mission to the Moon, all under the command of supreme leader Kim Jong Un.

"We are planning to develop the Earth observation satellites and to solve communications problems by developing geostationary satellites. All of this work will be the basis for the flight to the moon," Hyon Kwang Il, director of the scientific research department of North Korea's National Aerospace Development Administration, told the Associated Press (AP).

To date, the US is still the only country to have placed a man on the Moon. There have also been unmanned lunar missions carried out by the Soviet Union, European Space Agency, Japan, India, and China.

In terms of North Korea's technological power, these plans are ambitious. However, experts are saying that it's far from impossible.

The totalitarian east Asian state currently has two satellites in orbit. The first was launched in 2012. In February, North Korea another satellite, the Kwangmyongsong 4, or Brilliant Star 4.

As astrophysicist and satellite expert Jonathan McDowell told , considering the rate of progress between the first satellite launches of both the US and USSR and their moon missions, it's not crazy to suggest that North Korea could do the same in a short window of time. Despite the economic sanctions that have piled up against them, the hermit kingdom is as brazenly confident as ever.

Hyon Kwang-il added: "Even though the US and its allies try to block our space development, our aerospace scientists will conquer space."

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North Korea Announce Plans For Moon Missions And To 'Conquer Space'

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North Korea is taking time out of their busy schedule of military antagonism, synchronized dance routines, and human rights abuse to explore space. The Democratic People's Republic of Korea have announced a five-year plan to launch more advanced satellites into orbit by 2020, as well as an unmanned mission to the Moon, all under the command of supreme leader Kim Jong Un.

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It absorbs light and is resistant to water. One touch and it will lose its magic. Vantablack is the darkest material in the world that we know of. The most high-end brands are chomping at the bit to get a manufacturable version of the mind baffling material. Take a look into the world of a material that light cannot penetrate

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In the Antenna wing of the Science Museum in London, a bronze bust of a man sits behind a wall of glass. The face, which belongs to BBC presenter Marty Jopson, isn't very big-maybe 6 or 7 inches tall. It's highly textured, and light catches in its rivets and dimples. Aside from the playfully upturned edges of Jopson's mustache, there's nothing particularly remarkable about this bust. But next to it sits an identical bust that absolutely boggles the mind. It looks like someone has cut a hole in the air in the shape of Jopson's head, leaving only a gaping, empty blackness. The texture of the face disappears into a velvety mass; only from the side is it possible to tell that the bust has any dimension at all.

This visual magic is the work of Vantablack, the darkest material ever made by man. The ominously named coating, which absorbs virtually all light, was created by British company Surrey NanoSystems to help eliminate stray light in satellites and telescopes. It has since gathered a rabid following of artists, designers, and other curious creatives desperate to get their hands on the stuff. But despite its popularity, there's still a lot of confusion about what this mysterious material actually is and how it can be used. mental_floss recently spoke with Surrey NanoSystem's Steve Northam to find out about all things Vantablack; here's what we learned.

1. IT'S NOT ACTUALLY A COLOR.

Let's get technical for a minute. Color, as we humans know it, is the result of the way light is reflected off of an object and into our eyes. Different light frequencies translate into different colors. Vantablack isn't a color, but a material. It's made of a "forest" of tiny, hollow carbon tubes, each the width of a single atom. According to the Surrey NanoSystems website, "a surface area of [1 centimeter squared] would contain around 1000 million nanotubes." When light hits the tubes, it's absorbed and cannot escape-which means that actually, Vantablack is the absence of color.

2. YOU CAN'T BUY IT.

Because it's not a pigment or a paint, you can't just buy a bucket of it and dip a brush in and slather it onto your walls. The nanotubes that make up Vantablack must be grown in the Surrey NanoSystems lab using a complicated (and patented) process involving several machines, a few layers of different substances, and some extreme heat. From start to finish, applying Vantablack to an object can take up to two days, according to Northam. "I had an inquiry yesterday asking how much would it cost for a kilo of Vantablack pigment," Northam says. "First of all, I can't sell you a bucket of Vantablack, but if I could, I don't think there'd be much on the planet that would be more expensive." He says that, ounce for ounce, Vantablack is a lot more expensive than both diamond and gold.

3. IT DOESN'T FEEL THE WAY IT LOOKS.

"One of the things that people often say is 'Can I touch it?'" Northam says. "They expect it to feel like a warm velvet." Though Vantablack does have a sort of soft, velvety look to it, Northam says that doesn't translate to physical sensation. When you touch Vantablack, it just feels like a smooth surface. That's because the nanotubes are so small and thin, they simply collapse under the weight of human touch. Here's how Northam describes it: "Imagine you have a field of wheat, and instead of the wheat being 3 or 4 feet high, it's about 1000 feet tall. That is the equivalent scale that we're talking about for nanotubes. The reason they work is they're very, very long compared to their diameter. It will stay upright and not blow away in the wind, but if you then try and land a plane on it, you'll make a dent." So, Vantablack is pretty susceptible to damage, which is why it can't yet be applied to unprotected surfaces like cars or high-end gowns-one brush of a hand and the material would lose its magic.

4. IT HAS ALMOST NO MASS.

While Vantablack is sensitive to touch, it's super robust against other forces, like shock and vibration. This is due to the fact that each carbon nanotube is individual, and has almost no mass at all. Plus, most of the material is air. "If there's no mass, there's no force during acceleration," Northam says. This makes Vantablack ideal for protected objects that might have to endure a bumpy ride, like a space launch, for example.

5. IT COULD HAVE A NUMBER OF USES BEYOND ITS ORIGINAL APPLICATION.

The material was originally designed for super technical fields, like space equipment, where its ability to limit stray light makes it ideal for the inside of telescopes. But it could be applied in more everyday objects if the conditions are right. Northam says Surrey NanoSystems has already been approached by a handful of luxury watchmakers interested in incorporating Vantablack into their wrist candy, and high-end car manufacturers want to use it in their dashboard displays for stunning visual appearance. Northam says they also have a few smartphone makers knocking on their door.

Artists are also clamoring to get their hands on Vantablack and make some crazy, mind-boggling works of art. But for now, much to the chagrin of thousands of creatives, only one artist is allowed to work with the material, and that's sculptor Anish Kapoor. Surrey NanoSystems gave Kapoor the exclusive rights to using Vantablack in "creative arts," which Northam says translates into anything that's meant to be observed purely as a work of art. He says the company will continuously reassess this agreement, but as Vantablack is still such a new material, it makes sense that they'd want to have some control over how it's being used. "I do understand that people would wanna get their hands on this stuff," Northam says. "But I suspect many would not want to pay the prices for it."

6. IT WILL BE A WHILE BEFORE IT'S USED ON CLOTHES.

Vantablack could take the "little black dress" to a whole new level if it can successfully be applied to fabric without compromising its physical properties. Northam says the company is working with fabric, but Vantablack's foray into fashion is probably a long way off. "I wouldn't be surprised if at some point we see something along the lines of a black dress," he says, optimistically, "but we won't see people walking down the street in it any time soon."
All images courtesy of Surrey NanoSystems.

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6 Facts About Vantablack, the Darkest Material Ever Made

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In the Antenna wing of the Science Museum in London, a bronze bust of a man sits behind a wall of glass. The face, which belongs to BBC presenter Marty Jopson, isn't very big-maybe 6 or 7 inches tall. It's highly textured, and light catches in its rivets and dimples.