You facts - facts about all

The Marlee Man?

noreply@blogger.com (Giri) — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 17:15:00 +0000

60 km out of the town of Marree in South Australia, there is the figure of a man etched into the ground that is more than 4 km long. This geoglyph, popularly known as the Marree Man, is not only Australia's but also the world's biggest geoglyph, and had been created by scouring out the vegetation from the land and exposing the bar earth underneath. The main reason for this being hyped so much is that no one knows who, or why made this astounding drawing on the earth. Although there are only a few clues, a local version says that the eccentric Bardius Goldberg made this using a GPS and a bulldozer.

Tallest Man Facts

noreply@blogger.com (Giri) — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 17:13:00 +0000

The world's tallest man ever recorded in the history of mankind - Robert Wadlow, was born in Alton, Illinois, in 1918, and was 6 feet tall by the time he was even eight years old. He suffered from the disorder Gigantism that makes the lower portions of the body extremely large, while the head and torso remain at normal sizes. This is caused by a pituitary gland tumor that excretes large amounts of growth hormone, resulting in the disorder that is technically called as acromegalic gigantism. He reached a final height of 8 feet 11 inches at the age of twenty-one years, and finally died of an inflamed leg.

Underwater Hockey Facts

noreply@blogger.com (Giri) — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 17:12:00 +0000

In a bizarre version of one of the most thrilling (and tough) games - namely ice hockey - the two teams of six members each fight against each other to score a goal under 6 to 8 feet of water. The players wear fins for speed and agility, and also use masks and snorkels for air - however, for the most part; the heavy lead puck has to be maneuvered with a sort stick of about a foot long while holding your breath underwater. There are elaborate rules for this game and nationwide championships are also held regularly. You can even become a member various Underwater Hockey clubs spread all over.

Travel Back In Time?

noreply@blogger.com (Giri) — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 17:09:00 +0000

Ever since H G Wells' 'Time Machine', time travel has been the topic of science fiction and has fascinated human minds - young and old alike. However, modern say research in physics shows that this actually is not possible. Particularly after the revolution of the theory of relativity, it is known that space and time are intertwined in a complicated manner such that any body that has mass causes the space-time around it to curve so that it accommodates that body with mass. In addition, although, you can move forward and back in any of the three spatial directions, you can only move forward in time.

The Hadza People Facts

noreply@blogger.com (Giri) — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 15:01:00 +0000

What we can learn from the tribe that didn't change their hunter-gatherer existence for more than 10000 years? Living around the Lake Eyasi in Central Tanzania, The Hadza people are testimony to some of the oldest living tribal hunting gathering ways. With a population well under one thousand, the Hadza people have never known cultivation or settled live stock breeding. Not to forget those ten thousand years of their being which passed without the use of any calendar at all. Observing the hunter gatherer tribes of Africa one could mark the Hadza as the last of active hunting gathering tribes. This isolated tribe is spread over four distinct zones. West of south Lake Eyasi, an area between the span of Lake Eyasi and the Yaeda Valley swamp, in the Mbulu Highlands, and close to the town of Mang'ola. By the observing the DNA, one could not relate the Hadza with any generally known pool or tribe other than the Pygmies. Their spoken language is mostly composed of clicks, which could give them an East African link with the Khoisan tribes. This shows a complete isolation of the Hadza language, traditionally and technically both.

Jesus Christ Lizard

noreply@blogger.com (Giri) — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 15:00:00 +0000

A part of the Iguana family, the Jesus Christ lizard is known so, because of a special ability it has. Upon, seeing danger, the lizard can run on the surface of water at a break neck speed. Also, known as the basilisk, the lizard comes with well equipped with webbed hind legs. While, their tread upon water surfaces is more of an appearance, it does not usually last for more than 10-20 meters in a stretch, and in the case of older lizards, it's smaller. With very sharp toes and elongated toes, basilisks are seen scurrying around during day time. Much alike its other reptile cousins which remain active during day time. Basilisks, which grow up to a foot's length, usually do not weigh anything more than 600 hundred grams in their life span of around 8 years. The females are known to lay around 2 dozen eggs, five to eight times annually, which hatch after about three months of gestation. With an excellent camouflage to hide themselves, the new born lizards are extremely well hidden, not weighing more than 2gms.

Berlin Wall Facts

noreply@blogger.com (Giri) — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 11:22:00 +0000

Among the many agonies of the Second World War, an often repeated name is that of the Berlin Wall. It shall doubtlessly be stated that the Berlin Wall is one of the most intriguing components of the German narrative. The wall had as much an ideological construct, as a physical divide, with bare fangs of democracy on the west, and those of communism on the east. Upon its inception, the wall was a guarded stretch of barbed wires, which was supposed to keep the east to the west human migration from taking place. Although, the soreness of separation was equal on both sides of the fence. By the recorded facts, despite all odds, around five thousand people managed to cross over the wall. There were some four hundred people who either died or were injured in an attempt to crossover. The movement of reconciliation came to the wall on the 23rd of August 1989. On this day, Hungary decided to cease its border limitations with its neighbor Austria. This way, around 13000 people managed to escape en route Hungary. As a result of this build up, mobbing started at the gate of the Berlin Wall, where people started to demand an entry into West Berlin. Following this, the Berlin wall was brought down.

Mike: The Headless Chicken

noreply@blogger.com (Giri) — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 11:19:00 +0000

Miracles happen. For a five and half months old rooster, there would not really be many ways to gather dust and fame in our world. But on the 10th of September 1945, destiny had a certain way with Mike. Using a sharp axe, farmer Lloyd Olsen decided on preparing Mike for the night's supper. However, bringing the tool down did chop off the rooster, but did not prepare it for Mr. Olsen's kitchen, as the rooster, did not seem to mind the incident for more than a while, and went around pecking for food headless. Most of a chicken's reflex actions are controlled by the brain stem. Purely by freakish accident of the nature Mike's half of the brain stem and one ear remained intact. Mike received food and water through a eyedropper. Hence, was born the ordeal and legend of a headless rooster. Mike not only lived on for another eighteen months, but also went on to a healthy 8lbs from an initial 2lbs. The rooster won a place in the Guinness book of records, priced itself at $10,000, insured at another $10,000 and brought himself a manager as he tagged off to a tour to New York, LA and Atlantic City. Unfortunately it was at the end of one of these tours, when Mike passed away, leaving behind a legacy of remembrance and respect for Mike's will for survival.

Google Quantum Algorithm

noreply@blogger.com (Giri) — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 11:18:00 +0000

Several reports suggest that in the past three years Google has developed a quantum algorithm that is capable of automatically recognizing and sorting objects from videos or still images. This has been achieved by using physics that exists at the subatomic level. Several research teams have been working on the development of quantum processors that can store data as quantum bits. These qbits represent both the 0 and 1 that are used in the binary computer language simultaneously. That dual possibility state allows for much more efficient processing and information storage. To consider an example given by Google, an average computer requires 500,000 peeks to find a particular object hidden in one of a million drawers on an average. But such a quantum computer could locate the position the ball by just peeking into 1000 out of the million drawers.

Facts About France

noreply@blogger.com (Giri) — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 11:15:00 +0000

Paris, the capital city of the country France is celebrated most for the Eiffel Tower, Napoleon's tomb and Notre Dame. This city is also known as the world's fashion capital. The very popular Statue of Liberty was created in France, and gifted to the United States of America. The face of the statue is sculpted similar to the face of Isabella Eugenie Boyer, wife of the manufacturer of the Parisian sewing machine, Isaac Singer. The official language in France, French was also the official language of England for more than 300 years. The 1st of April originated as the fools day from France. When the country switched over to the Gregorian calendar people unaware of the change considered 1st April as the New Year's Day. From that day onwards the fool's day originated to mock them.

Irish Elk Facts

noreply@blogger.com (Giri) — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 11:15:00 +0000

Megaloceros, popularly known as the Irish Elk has been misnamed for the species is neither elk nor Irish. This is the name of an extinct deer species, the largest ever. The Irish Elk was as tall as seven feet up till its shoulder and its antlers were spread up to twelve feet. The evolution of this giant deer species took place in the glacial periods while the Pleistocene Epoch was on. The species became extinct because it failed to adapt to the subarctic conditions that existed in the final glaciations or the marked change that took place post the retreat of the sheet of ice. The last deer of the species died almost 11,000 years ago in Ireland.

Tooth Implanted Into His Eye

noreply@blogger.com (Giri) — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 11:14:00 +0000

Martin Jones, an Englishman had lost his power of vision and remained blind for almost a decade. He has now regained his power of vision. This has been accomplished by implanting a piece of tooth in his eye. The tooth that was implanted was a canine tooth which is also known as the "eyetooth". A living canine was pulled out of Martin Jones' own mouth. They then placed a man-made eye lens into its base and placed it under the lid of his eye and let the tissue grow over the canine. Also a lit flap of his skin was taken from his mouth and implanted over the tooth in his eye which later had access to its own supply of blood. The doctors then cut a hole in the cornea that permitted light to enter the eye. This very procedure gave six hundred people the power of vision.

Living, Breeding Mice Grown From Skin Cells

noreply@blogger.com (Giri) — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 11:28:00 +0000

Cells from flakes of skin have grown into living, breeding mice, through a bit of biotechnological wizardry.

This feat helps confirm that reprogrammed adult cells, considered a potentially convenient source of stem cell therapies, share the shape-changing powers of embryonic stem cells.

The goal was to create an animal made entirely from reprogrammed cells, and to confirm that reprogrammed cells “are as good as embryonic stem cells,” said Beijing National Stem Cell Bank director Qi Zhou, co-author of the study published Thursday in Nature.

Much more research is needed to meet the second of Zhou’s criteria, but fulfilling the first is remarkable enough. Just three years ago, it would have been inconceivable.

That’s when Japanese stem cell biologists Shinya Yamanaka and Kazutoshi Takahashi described how four development-regulating genes (carried by viruses into the adult cells of mice) transformed those cells into something very much like an embryonic stem cell.

Embryonic stem cells are able to become any tissue type in the body. Scientists and doctors hope they’ll someday be used to regrow lost limbs and rejuvenate diseased organs. For now, those miracle cures are years, if not decades, away. But even if the cures materialize, embryonic stem cells are difficult to produce. They could end up being rare and expensive.

So when the mouse cell-reprogramming trick was replicated with cells taken from humans, turning skin flakes into brain and bone and muscle cells, scientists rejoiced. A flood of research followed. Hardly a week now goes by without news of improvements to the methods, which tended to result in cancer-prone tissues, or of reprogrammed cells being coaxed into yet another type of tissue.

But at this early date, despite all the progress, many questions still remain. The reprogrammed adult cells, known as induced pluripotent stem cells or iPS cells, are still far more experimental than embryonic stem cells. Their ultimate medical viability is uncertain. It’s not even absolutely clear whether iPS cells can truly become any cell type, or just many of them.

The mice grown by Zhou’s team, described in a study published Thursday in Nature, don’t answer all these questions, but they’re a powerful demonstration of the cells’ flexibility.

“It gives us hope for future therapeutic interventions,” said Fanyi Zheng, a Shanghai Institute of Medical Genetics cell biologist.

Zhou and Zheng’s team reprogrammed mouse skin cells, then injected them into embryos designed to contain double sets of chromosomes. Though these embryos’ original cells couldn’t survive for more than a few days, they provided a jump-start to the reprogrammed cells, which grew as though they were part of a normal embryo.

This test is considered a gold standard of pluripotency: Because the original double-chromosomed cells are doomed, the embryo can only become an adult if the added stem cells turn into every necessary cell type. Embryonic stem cells passed this test a decade ago. Now iPS cells have, too.

From 1,500 engineered embryos, the researchers ended up with 27 mice. The mice have since reproduced, as have their offspring.

“They have shown that iPS cells can satisfy the most stringent criteria of pluripotency,” said George Daley, a Harvard Medical School stem cell biologist who was not involved in the study.

But Daley and other researchers stressed that passing the test doesn’t mean reprogrammed cells and embryonic stem cells are equivalent.

“Here’s another way in which these cells are functionally similar to [embryonic stem cells], but it’s not to say that they’re identical,” said Sean Morrison, director of the University of Michigan’s Center for Stem Cell Biology. There may be things that can only be done with iPS cells, and things that could be done more effectively with embryonic stem cells, he said.

Many researchers also suspect there are subtle differences between reprogrammed cells derived from different sources. A reprogrammed skin cell, for example, may not behave identically to a reprogrammed muscle cell.

“Many questions about the efficiency and fidelity of the process remain,” said Daley.

Zhou and Zheng’s team hasn’t yet analyzed why some embryos succeeded while most failed. Because conducting their experiment with human cells and embryos would be considered immoral, analysis is needed to identify telltale signs of future flaws to determine which human cells are safest for reprogramming.

World’s First Self-Irrigating Desert Plant Discovered

noreply@blogger.com (Giri) — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 11:25:00 +0000

A desert plant has apparently figured out how to water itself.

Ecologists had been puzzling over the desert rhubarb for years: Instead of the tiny, spiky leaves found on most desert plants, this rare rhubarb boasts lush green leaves up to a meter wide. Now scientists from the University of Haifa-Oranim in Israel have discovered that ridges in the plant’s giant leaves actually collect water and channel it down to the plant’s root system, harvesting up to 16 times more water than any other plant in the region.

“It is the first example of a self-irrigating plant,” said plant biologist Gidi Ne’eman, a co-author on the paper published in March in Naturwissenschaften, a German journal of ecology. “This is the only case we know, but in other places in the world there might be additional plants that use the same adaptions.”

The desert rhubarb grows in the mountainous deserts of Israel and Jordan, where there’s only about 75mm of rainfall each year. Even during the rainy season, the region’s light rainfalls often don’t penetrate the rocky soil of the desert. Plants with large leaves and a deep root system, like the desert rhubarb, typically can’t survive in such an arid climate.

But when the researchers measured the plant’s water absorption during a light rain, they discovered that water infiltrated the soil 10 times deeper around the desert rhubarb then in surrounding areas. Upon closer examination, scientists discovered deep grooves around the plant’s veins, which are coated in a waxy cuticle that helps channel water down to the root.

“Even in the slightest rains,” the researchers wrote, “the typical plant harvests more than 4,300 cubic centimeters of water per year and enjoys a water regime of about 427 millimeters per year, equivalent to the water supply in a Mediterranean climate.”

New Class of Black Holes Discovered

noreply@blogger.com (Giri) — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 11:23:00 +0000

Only two sizes of black holes have ever been spotted: small and super-massive. Scientists have long speculated that an intermediate version must exist, but they’ve never been able to find one until now.

Astrophysicists identified what appears to be the first-ever medium-sized black hole, pictured in an artist’s rendition above, with a mass at least 500 times that of our Sun. Researchers from the Centre d’Etude Spatiale des Rayonnements in France detected the middling hole in a galaxy about 290 million light-years from Earth.

The discovery may shed some light on the origins of super-sized black holes like the one at the center of our own galaxy. These astral heavyweights top out at several million to several billion times the mass of the Sun, but their origin remains a mystery.

Small black holes, between three and 20 times the mass of the sun, are created when big stars collapse and leave behind a gravitational pull strong enough to block nearby light rays. Researchers have speculated that super-massive black holes result from the successive fusion of many smaller black holes. But without finding evidence of a medium-size hole, it was a tough theory to prove.

“The existence of such intermediate-mass black holes is in dispute,” the French scientists wrote Wednesday in Nature, “and though many candidates have been proposed, none are widely accepted as definitive.”

The new discovery is the most convincing evidence to date that medium black holes exist. Using the European Space Agency’s XMM-Newton X-ray space telescope, the researchers identified a radiation source that gives off X-rays 260 million times brighter than the radiation of the Sun.

Called “Hyper-Luminous X-ray Source 1,” the structure sits on the edge of galaxy ESO 243-49. Because of the source’s physical characteristics and the pattern of its radiation, the researchers conclude it must be a black hole more than 500 times the mass of the sun: not too big, not too small, and the first of its kind.

New Class of Black Holes Discovered

noreply@blogger.com (Giri) — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 13:54:00 +0000

Modified Mosquitoes May Be Anti-Malaria Allies

noreply@blogger.com (Giri) — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 13:53:00 +0000

Although saddled with a lousy public image, mosquitoes have immune systems that actually kill 80 to 90 percent of the malaria parasites that enter the insect’s bodies, a new study says.

The discovery is part of an international effort to create a new generation of malaria treatments.

Genetically modified, malaria-fighting mosquitoes or even antibodies injected into humans and “fed” back to mosquitoes could someday be more effective at slowing the disease than today’s simple mosquito nets, researchers say.

Triple Threat to Malaria

Malaria-parasite populations are lower when the parasites are inside mosquitoes, so some experts think it may be more effective to attack malaria inside the insects—before it enters human hosts.

Understanding how the mosquito immune system fends off malaria is an important part of bringing such a plan to fruition.

Now researchers say they’ve worked out the mechanism that drives one of the mosquitoes’ defenses.

Three proteins in mosquito blood form a complex that “binds to a malaria parasite and punches holes through its membrane,” destroying the layer that protects the parasite and holds all its important parts together, said Imperial College London biologist George Christophides, who co-authored the report, published in the April 10 issue of the journal Science.

Previously researchers had identified the three proteins and noticed that one of them seemed similar to microbe-killing proteins in other animals and in humans.

How It Might Work

A mosquito-up approach to malaria control is feasible in the long term, researchers say. There are a couple of ways it could work.

In one scenario, scientists could create genetically modified mosquitoes, granting their immune systems pumped-up malaria-killing abilities.

The key would be to find a genetic drive mechanism—some factor that would give the new, malaria-fighting genes a selective advantage and help them spread quickly through wild mosquito populations via breeding, said Gregory Lanzaro, director of the Vector Genetics Lab at the University of California, Davis.

No one has figured this out for mosquitoes yet. But the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is already testing a similar concept in blood-sucking assassin bugs as a way to stop the spread of deadly, difficult-to-cure Chagas disease, Lanzaro said.

The other option would be to develop antibodies that can fight the parasites’ early, mosquito-dwelling forms—and “feed” the antibodies to the insects via human blood.

Mosquito immune systems don’t produce antibodies on their own. And by the time the parasites reach humans, they have matured and found ways to hide out from human antibodies, said Marcelo Jacobs-Lorena, professor of molecular microbiology and immunology at the Johns Hopkins Malaria Research Institute in Baltimore.

But if we vaccinate humans with antibodies that target mosquito-stage malaria, those antibodies could be passed on to the mosquitoes when they feed on treated human blood, Jacobs-Lorena said.

Combined with a second, protective vaccine, this could be a real possibility, he said.

“There’s a partially effective vaccine that protects humans that’s being tested,” Jacobs-Lorena said. “Neither it, nor the transmission-blocking vaccine would be 100 percent effective, but the combination may work.”

Scramjet

noreply@blogger.com (Giri) — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 12:46:00 +0000

A scramjet (supersonic combustion ramjet) is a variation of a ramjet distinguished by supersonic combustion. At higher speeds, it is necessary to combust supersonically to maximize the efficiency of the combustion process. Projections for the top speed of a scramjet engine (without additional oxidiser input) vary between Mach 12 and Mach 24 (orbital velocity). The X-30 research gave Mach 17 due to combustion rate issues. By way of contrast, the fastest conventional air-breathing, manned vehicles, such as the U.S. Air Force SR-71, achieve approximately Mach 3.4 and rockets from the Apollo Program achieved Mach 30+.

Like a ramjet, a scramjet essentially consists of a constricted tube through which inlet air is compressed by the high speed of the vehicle, a combustion chamber where fuel is combusted, and a nozzle through which the exhaust jet leaves at higher speed than the inlet air. Also like a ramjet, there are few or no moving parts. In particular, there is no high-speed turbine, as in a turbofan or turbojet engine, that is expensive to produce and can be a major point of failure.

A scramjet requires supersonic airflow through the engine, thus, similar to a ramjet, scramjets have a minimum functional speed, about Mach 7-8. Thus scramjets require acceleration to hypersonic speed via other means. A hybrid ramjet/scramjet would have a lower minimum functional Mach number, and some sources indicate the NASA X-43A research vehicle is a hybrid design. Recent tests of prototypes have used a booster rocket to obtain the necessary velocity. Air breathing engines should have significantly better specific impulse while within the atmosphere than rocket engines.

However, scramjets have weight and complexity issues that must be considered. While very short suborbital scramjet test flights have been successfully performed, perhaps significantly no flown scramjet has ever been successfully designed to survive a flight test. The viability of scramjet vehicles is hotly contested in aerospace and space vehicle circles, in part because many of the parameters which would eventually define the efficiency of such a vehicle remain uncertain. This has led to grandiose claims from both sides, which have been intensified by the large amount of funding involved in any hypersonic testing. Some notable aerospace gurus such as Henry Spencer and Jim Oberg have gone so far as calling orbital scramjets “the hardest way to reach orbit”, or even ’scamjets’ due to the extreme technical challenges involved. Major, well funded projects, like the X-30 were cancelled before producing any working hardware.

History of biology

noreply@blogger.com (Giri) — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 16:02:00 +0000

The history of biology traces the study of the living world from ancient to modern times. Although the concept of biology as a single coherent field arose in the 19th century, the biological sciences emerged from traditions of medicine and natural history reaching back to ancient Egyptian medicine and the works of Aristotle and Galen in the ancient Greco-Roman world. This ancient work was further developed in the Middle Ages by Muslim physicians and scholars such as al-Jahiz, Avicenna, Avenzoar, Ibn al-Baitar and Ibn al-Nafis. During the European Renaissance and early modern period, biological thought was revolutionized in Europe by a renewed interest in empiricism and the discovery of many novel organisms. Prominent in this movement were Vesalius and Harvey, who used experimentation and careful observation in physiology, and naturalists such as Linnaeus and Buffon who began to classify the diversity of life and the fossil record, as well as the development and behavior of organisms. Microscopy revealed the previously unkn

own world of microorganisms, laying the groundwork for cell theory. The growing importance of natural theology, partly a response to the rise of mechanical philosophy, encouraged the growth of natural history (although it entrenched the argument from design).

Over the 18th and 19th centuries, biological sciences. such as botany and zoology became increasingly professional scientific disciplines. Lavoisier and other physical scientists began to connect the animate and inanimate worlds through physics and chemistry. Explorer-naturalists such as Alexander von Humboldt investigated the interaction between organisms and their environment, and the ways this relationship depends on geography—laying the foundations for biogeography, ecology and ethology. Naturalists began to reject essentialism and consider the importance of extinction and the mutability of species. Cell theory provided a new perspective on the fundamental basis of life. These developments, as well as the results from embryology and paleontology, were synthesized in Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection. The end of the 19th century saw the fall of spontaneous generation and the rise of the germ theory o

f disease, though the mechanism of inheritance remained a mystery.

In the early 20th century, the rediscovery of Mendel’s work led to the rapid development of genetics by Thomas Hunt Morgan and his students, and by the 1930s the combination of population genetics and natural selection in the “neo-Darwinian synthesis”. New disciplines developed rapidly, especially after Watson and Crick proposed the structure of DNA. Following the establishment of the Central Dogma and the cracking of the genetic code, biology was largely split between organismal biology—the fields that deal with whole organisms and groups of organisms—and the fields related to cellular and molecular biology. By the late 20th century, new fields like genomics and proteomics were reversing this trend, with organismal biologists using molecular techniques, and molecular and cell biologists investigating the interplay between genes and the environment, as well as the genetics of natural populations of organisms.

Olympics Facts

noreply@blogger.com (Giri) — Tue, 26 May 2009 04:44:00 +0000

Modern Olympic Games were created in 1894, by a French educator Baron Pierre de Coubertin. However, Olympic Games date back to 776 B.C when they were celebrated as a religious festival. Around 393 A.D games were canceled because they represented pagan festival and celebration of the Greek God Zeus. Ancient Greek athletes performed naked that is why today we have the word gymnasium, "gymnos" in Greek means naked. The five interconnected Olympic rings represent the five significant continents of the world: Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe and Oceania. China won the most gold medals at the 2008 Beijing Games and today's gold medals are silver covered with a thin coat of gold.

Earwigs Facts

noreply@blogger.com (Giri) — Tue, 26 May 2009 04:39:00 +0000

Earwigs (Order Dermaptera) are small bugs that got their name from the myth that they climb into people's ears and therein lay their eggs or tunnel into the brain. Earwigs also have two penises! Both are larger than it's body and if it needs the second one just in case one of them snaps off! "It's an interesting phenomenon," says Mike Siva-Jothy of the University of Sheffield, UK. He thinks there must be some evolutionary advantage to the earwig's "unusually long" and fragile organs.

New Fossil Links Humans, Lemurs?

noreply@blogger.com (Giri) — Tue, 26 May 2009 04:30:00 +0000

May 19, 2009—Meet “Ida,” the small “missing link” found in Germany that’s created a big media splash and will likely continue to make waves among those who study human origins.

In a new book, documentary, and promotional Web site, paleontologist Jorn Hurum, who led the team that analyzed the 47-million-year-old fossil seen above, suggests Ida is a critical missing-link species in primate evolution (interactive guide to human evolution from National Geographic magazine).

(Among the team members was University of Michigan paleontologist Philip Gingerich, a member of the Committee for Research and Exploration of the National Geographic Society, which owns National Geographic News.)

The fossil, he says, bridges the evolutionary split between higher primates such as monkeys, apes, and humans and their more distant relatives such as lemurs.

“This is the first link to all humans,” Hurum, of the Natural History Museum in Oslo, Norway, said in a statement. Ida represents “the closest thing we can get to a direct ancestor.”

Ida, properly known as Darwinius masillae, has a unique anatomy. The lemur-like skeleton features primate-like characteristics, including grasping hands, opposable thumbs, clawless digits with nails, and relatively short limbs.

“This specimen looks like a really early fossil monkey that belongs to the group that includes us,” said Brian Richmond, a biological anthropologist at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., who was not involved in the study, published this week in the journal PLoS ONE.

But there’s a big gap in the fossil record from this time period, Richmond noted. Researchers are unsure when and where the primate group that includes monkeys, apes, and humans split from the other group of primates that includes lemurs.

“[Ida] is one of the important branching points on the evolutionary tree,” Richmond said, “but it’s not the only branching point.”

At least one aspect of Ida is unquestionably unique: her incredible preservation, unheard of in specimens from the Eocene era, when early primates underwent a period of rapid evolution. (Explore a prehistoric time line.)

“From this time period there are very few fossils, and they tend to be an isolated tooth here or maybe a tailbone there,” Richmond explained. “So you can’t say a whole lot of what that [type of fossil] represents in terms of evolutionary history or biology.”

In Ida’s case, scientists were able to examine fossil evidence of fur and soft tissue and even picked through the remains of her last meal: fruits, seeds, and leaves.

What’s more, the newly described “missing link” was found in Germany’s Messel Pit. Ida’s European origins are intriguing, Richmond said, because they could suggest—contrary to common assumptions—that the continent was an important area for primate evolution.

Teotihuacan, Mexico

noreply@blogger.com (Giri) — Sun, 17 May 2009 19:19:00 +0000

Teotihuacan is an enormous archaeological site in the Basin of Mexico, containing some of the largest pyramidal structures built in the pre-Columbian Americas. Apart from the pyramidal structures, the archaeological site of Teotihuacan is also known for its large residential complexes, the so-called “street of the dead”, and its colorful well-preserved murals.

Teotihuacan was, at its apogee in the first half of the 1st millennium CE, the largest city in the pre-Columbian Americas. During its zenith it may have had more than 100,000 inhabitants placing it among the largest cities of the world in this period. The civilization and cultural complex associated with the site is also referred to as Teotihuacan or Teotihuacano. Although it is a subject of debate whether Teotihuacan was the center of an empire, its influence throughout Mesoamerica is well documented; evidence of Teotihuacano presence, if not outright political and economic control, can be seen at numerous sites in Veracruz and the Maya region. The ethnicity of the inhabitants of Teotihuacan is also a subject of debate and possible candidates are the Nahua, Otomi or Totonac ethnic groups. Often it has been suggested that Teotihuacan was in fact a multiethnic state.

The city and the archaeological site was located in what is now the San Juan Teotihuacán municipality in the State of México, Mexico, approximately 40 kilometres (25 mi) northeast of Mexico City. The site covers a total surface area of 83 km² and was made a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987, and is one of the most visited archaeological sites in Mexico.

Black Hole Facts

noreply@blogger.com (Giri) — Thu, 14 May 2009 21:03:00 +0000

When the star ten times more massive than our own Sun, explodes (Supernova) it leaves behind the strangest phenomenon in the Universe. The Black Hole. After explosion what is left behind is heavy core of subatomic particles, a Neutron Star. It can be very small, but with enormous density. Scientists calculated that approximately one teaspoon of Neutron Star would weight around billions of tons. The gravitational pressure of this highly dense object is so large that it can bend fabric of time and space. This theory is based on Einstein's proposition that space and time are woven together in a flexible fabric. Massive objects like Sun warp the fabric of space and time and pull smaller objects like Earth. Very large Neutron Star can warp time and space fabric so much that it could create a hole where gravity is so strong that not even light could escape. Black Holes are pulling everything around them closer to the center of the hole. In some sense black holes are creators of the galaxies since they are pulling planets and stars towards the spiral center. Each galaxy has a Black Hole and occasionally galaxies collide together because of the gravitational pull from the larger black holes. It is expected that in 5 billion years Andromeda galaxy will collide and endeavor our Milky Way galaxy.

Lorem Ipsum Facts

noreply@blogger.com (Giri) — Thu, 14 May 2009 20:56:00 +0000

Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry's standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. Contrary to popular belief, Lorem Ipsum is not simply random text. It has roots in a piece of classical Latin literature from 45 BC, making it over 2000 years old. Lorem Ipsum comes from sections 1.10.32 and 1.10.33 of "de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum" (The Extremes of Good and Evil) by Cicero, written in 45 BC. This book is a treatise on the theory of ethics, very popular during the Renaissance. The first line of Lorem Ipsum, "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet..", comes from a line in section 1.10.32.