Mind boggling facts, infos and useful links you wish and need to know.
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Fish throws away its genes as it grows
Published on 2009-06-25 05:53:00
Whether it's its extraterrestrial looks or status as a "living fossil," there's always been something fishy about the sea lamprey. Now scientists have added another oddity to the creature's repertoire: The lamprey jettisons 20% of its genome during development.Jeramiah Smith of the University of Washington, Seattle, first suspected something strange while piecing together the sea lamprey's genetic sequence. The postdoctoral fellow and his colleagues tried labeling live lamprey cells using a tech
The Most Lifeless Place in the Ocean
Published on 2009-06-23 06:00:00
Scientists have discovered what may be the least inhabited place in the ocean.The seafloor sediments in the middle of the South Pacific have fewer living cells than anywhere else measured, a new study found.Oceanographer Steven D’Hondt of the University of Rhode Island and colleagues took a boat out to the middle of the ocean and collected cores, or cylindrical samples of sediment, from the bottom of the sea about 2.5 to 3.7 miles (4 to 6 km) deep.They found about 1,000 living cells in each cu
The secrets of ant sleep revealed
Published on 2009-06-22 07:22:00
Queen ants dozily dream, while worker ants are forced to get by taking power naps, the first study of the sleeping habits of ants has revealed.Queen fire ants fall into relatively long, deep sleeps and kip for an average of nine hours every day.By contrast, workers sleep just half as much and get to rest by taking hundreds of short power naps.This division of rest may help explain why queens live for years, while worker ants typically only live for months.It also ensures that enough worker ants
Tattooed teen suing over 56 facial stars
Published on 2009-06-21 03:55:00
A BELGIAN teenager said she would sue a tattoo parlor which she claims covered half her face with stars while she was asleep, a report claims.Kimberley Vlaeminck, 18, was left sporting 56 black stars of various sizes on the left side of her face, from nose to ear and brow to chin.The young housewife said she had gone to the tattoo parlour in the western town of Courtrai and asked for three small stars on her face."I wanted him to tattoo on just three little points but he suggested three stars sa
What is WAP?
Published on 2009-06-20 21:13:00
WAP - short for Wireless Application Protocol - is technology which allows you to access basic information on the internet from your mobile phone. This includes e-mail and information such as sport, traffic and news.WAP is the name for the most popular type of mobile internet services.It can be useful because if you are out and about you can still keep up-to-date with your e-mail, the latest news, sport, event guides and more.So, let's say you want to check the football scores or see who has won
Secret cities of the Indus
Published on 2009-06-20 04:37:00
A civilization that has disappeared even from legendEven in ruins, the ancient cities of Indus Valley (now in Pakistan) look better planned than most modern cities in the Indian sub-continent. Indeed, they recall the symmetry of modern American towns, with regular grids of streets, brick buildings and sewers for sanitation.The archaeologists who uncovered the Indus Valley ruins early in 1900s realized they had stumbled on an original culture, contemporary with ancient Sumer and Egypt (around 240
Practical genius has often gone unrewarded
Published on 2009-06-19 20:51:00
There is a compelling fascination in the magic moment at which an original idea crystallizes in someone's head and a new invention is born. Sometimes the moment comes after months or years spent searching for a solution to a clearly-defined problem; in other cases a need is perceived and in answer provided for it almost simultaneously. But a flash of inspiration does not necessarily bring a happy or a prosperous future. For many gifted inventors, legal wrangles over patents have soured the origi
The deadly traps laid by carnivorous plants
Published on 2009-06-17 01:38:00
The usual order of events in nature is that plants manufacture their own food through photosynthesis, while animals either eat plants or other animals. But more than 500 plant species are exceptions to this order: they eat animals. All grow in soil or water that contains little or no nitrogen, an element vital for plant growth, and animals provide that missing nourishment.Pitcher plants, for example, a family of climbing vines found throughout the tropics of the Old World, grow pitcher- or urn-s
How Alcohol Changes the Brain ... Quickly
Published on 2009-06-15 22:56:00
In the name of science, eight men and seven women drank alcohol through a straw while lying in an MRI scanner, presumably not all together, to see what would happen.It went to their heads. Quickly, the researchers say.Only 6 minutes after consuming an amount of alcohol equivalent to three beers — leading to a blood alcohol level of 0.05 to 0.06 percent, which impairs driving ability — changes had already taken place in the brain cells.For one thing, the brain begins to run on the sugar in al
The gross Science of a cough and a sneeze
Published on 2009-06-14 22:24:00
Like people, coughs come in all shapes and sizes. They can be deep or shallow, long or short, or forced or stifled.Scientists who study the ways we cough and sneeze are shedding light on how viruses like influenza spread.[With swine flu now declared pandemic, health officials say the best ways to prevent the spread of the virus is to wash your hands and cover your mouth when you cough or sneeze. Same advice holds for the common cold.]The coughTo follow the evolution of cough, scientists use elab
The fastest, the slowest, the highest birds
Published on 2009-06-13 22:06:00
In the same way that human speed and endurance records are constantly being broken, so too the animal world's fastest, slowest and highest continues to change as naturalists discover previously unknown facts. For instance, it was widely accepted among naturalists that the white-throated spinetail swift of northeast Asia and Japan was the world's fastest bird, reaching speeds of up to 150 km/h (95 mph). But researchers have fitted speedometers to the legs of the peregrine falcon and discovered th
The human iPod: Derek Paravicini
Published on 2009-06-12 23:26:00
Derek Paravicini is blind and severely disabled yet can master any song after hearing it once... What is his secret?Thirty years ago, Derek Paravicini was within a heartbeat of death. No other baby born in the Royal Berkshire Hospital 14 weeks prematurely had ever survived. His twin sister was dead at birth.When Derek came along a few minutes later, the doctor presumed that he, too, could not possibly live. And yet, and yet... just when his mother Mary Ann had given up hope, she heard the fainte
The vanished race
Published on 2009-06-11 22:24:00
About 15000 Indians from all over the USA live in New York City. But where now are the people whose ancestors were the city's first inhabitants?Two surviving groups of Indians do have a connection with Manhattan. They are the Delaware, who now live, after enforced migration, over 2000 km (1250 miles) away in Oklahoma, Wisconsin and Ontario; and the Ramapough, a community living on the order of New York and New Jersey, direct descendants of Manhattan's original inhabitants. When the Dutch first
How can you make a phone call on the internet?
Published on 2009-06-11 05:26:00
There are two ways to make a phone call over the internet - computer to computer and computer to phone.Making calls over the internet is great because it's so much cheaper than calling using your regular phone and often free.Now you can call that cousin in Germany and talk all day!Phone calls over the internet use a system called 'VOIP' or Voice Over Internet Protocol.What you'll need to make a callTo make a phone call over the internet you'll need a microphone, speakers, a sound card and an int
Lifeguards of the deep
Published on 2009-06-10 22:41:00
When Adam Maguire and his two friends Jason Maloney and Bradley Thompson went surfing at Halftide Beach, in New South Wales, early in January 1989, they found themselves in exhilarating company. For an hour or more, a school of dolphins played with them in the surf, riding in on the waves towards the beach.But then the dolphins became agitated, splashing and turning in the water, and making loud clicking and whistling noises. It was then that Adam saw the fin of a shark speeding towards him thro
The serious side of speaking backwards
Published on 2009-06-10 10:03:00
Anybody can painstakingly read words backwards, but how many can do it by ear? Professor Andrew Levine discovered his talent for speaking backwards in 1959 when, as a teenager watching the news on television, he admired the skill of the interpreters accompanying Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev on his visit to the United States. Levine was keen to try his own hand at interpreting, so, as he turned every English word he heard back to front.Word gameAmusements of this kind are not uncommon in child
How did 100,000,000 women disappear?
Published on 2009-06-07 23:11:00
Two researchers crunching population statistics have confirmed an unsettling reality. Siwan Anderson and Debraj Ray noticed the ratio of women to men in developing regions and in some cultures is suspiciously below the normIn India, China and sub-Saharan Africa, millions upon millions of women are missing. They are not lost, but dead: victims of violence, discrimination and neglect.A University of British Columbia economist is amongst those trying to find them – not the women themselves, who a
Software 'gives children a voice'
Published on 2009-06-06 22:31:00
Scientists claim to have developed the first technology of its kind to allow children with communication problems to converse better.How was school today?' is software to help children with disabilities such as cerebral palsy communicate faster.The system is the result of a project between computing scientists from the Universities of Aberdeen and Dundee, and Capability Scotland.Pupils from Corseford School in Renfrewshire were first to trial it.Dr Ehud Reiter, from the University of Aberdeen's
How can you hide where you have been online?
Published on 2009-06-06 21:49:00
You might want to keep your surfing habits private or make your computer even more secure - whatever the reason - you can easily hide where you have been online using some simple web browser functions.Whenever you go online, you leave a trail of information about yourself and the websites you've seen. Protecting your privacy can help hide where you have been and prevent people stealing your personal information.For example, if you do your banking online, are looking for that perfect birthday sur
What are temporary internet files?
Published on 2009-06-06 21:31:00
Temporary internet files are copies of all the web pages, pictures and other files you look at in your browser which are then stored on your hard disk.They're there to save you from having to download a web page everytime you go back to it.So, if you click the 'Back' button page now the page will come pretty speedily from your disk rather than have to be downloaded from the WebWise server in London.Up-to-dateTemporary internet files help speed up your surfing of the web but there are times when
The duck that astounded Paris
Published on 2009-06-06 05:37:00
In 1738, Jacques de Vaucanson presented duck to the Royal Academy of Sciences in Paris. Like any duck, this one rose upon its legs, threw its neck to the right and left, plumed its wings, made gurgling noises, played in the water with its bill, took food from people's hands and occasionally excreted. But this duck was completely mechanical.Unfortunately, Vaucanson's duck no longer exists, only the description and drawings of it he published. The gilded-copper duck 'digested' food, but only after
Can a Nuclear Blast Alter Earth's Rotation?
Published on 2009-06-05 05:59:00
Nuclear bombs are humankind's most powerful weapon, but their destructive impact would unlikely alter the spinning of the Earth on its axis.One way to see this is to compare the energy of a nuclear blast to that of the rotational motion of the Earth. The largest nuclear bombs have an explosive energy of several tens of megatons, or about 10^17 Joules, whereas the Earth's rotational energy is around 10^29 Joules.So even if all the force of a nuclear explosion was used to push the Earth in a parti
Get out of town!
Published on 2009-06-05 05:03:00
The citizens - that is the free men of ancient Athens - were proud of their equality, so what happened when some citizens threatened to become more equal than others?Democracy was frequently jeopardized by the development of factions and vendettas in the Assembly. Professional politicians (called 'orators' or 'demagogues') were charismatic men who often inspired great personal loyalty. It followed that there were sometimes bitter arguments between rival supporters. If feuds were allowed to becom
What does 404 error mean?
Published on 2009-02-16 06:05:00
404 is an error message that means that the page you asked for has moved or been deleted, or that you have typed the address incorrectly.Basically, it's netspeak for telling you that you have taken a wrong turning.There are some easy things you can do to try and find your way to the page you want.What it looks likeThe 404 error can sometimes look a little different.Sometimes it will say "404: page not found" or sometimes it will give a nicer reply, in plain English like "The page cannot be found
How a mummy was prepared
Published on 2009-02-13 05:41:00
Investigation of mummies over the years has shown that techniques and the level of skill changed during the period mummification was practiced - from about 2800 BC until the Arab invasion of about AD 640. The technique was at its most successful around 1000 BC, when the High Priests of Amon (king of the gods) were all-powerful - at the time Solomon and David were on the throne of Israel.The process took 70 days, as described by Herodotus, the Greek historian, writing about 450 BC. There were, he