Can Snakes Smell?

Most snakes have poor eye sight and limited hearing, but have an excellent sense of smell.  It doesn’t have a conventional nose, but they sniff with an organ at the roof of the mouth. This organ is called a Jacobson’s organ, which is found in a few lizard species. Snakes flick their tongues and collect scent particles for Jacobson’s organ. They stuck their forked tongue into a pair of holes in the Jacobson’s organ to support the sense of smell.

Photo Source: www.animalspapper.com

Sunlight Helps You Live Longer?

There is a relationship between the low vitamin D levels and deaths from heart disease. Patients with the lowest vitamin D in their blood were two times more likely to die from any cause during the next eight years than those with the highest levels of vitamin D. But largest doses of vitamin D pills or sun exposure can be dangerous and can lead to skin cancer. Low vitamin D levels may be reflected by age due to the lack of physical activity and other lifestyle factors.

Nature’s Viagara : Watermelon

Citrulline an ingredient in Watermelon,triggers the production of a compound which helps relax the body’s blood vessels, like Viagara does in a man’s body. When consumed in large volume Citrulline reacts with the body’s enzymes and is changed into Arginine, an amino acid that benefits the heart and the circulatory and immune systems. Citrulline is found in the flesh and rind of all colors of watermelon and is highest in the yellow-fleshed types.

Genome Changes With Age

Human genomes can change throughout a person’s lifespan. It’s influenced by environmental or nutritional factors. This change may explain the reasons for different deadly illnesses such as cancer which comes with age. Researchers at Johns Hopkins University found epigenetic marks on a DNA sequence which modify over the course of one’s life. The extent of such changes is similar among family members. The changes in the genomic structure can occur as a result of dietary and other environmental exposure. Epigenetics may play a role in diseases like diabetes, autism and cancer.

Photo Source: http://belle80.wordpress.com

Solar powered Hindu Temple in California.

Shree Swaminarayan Mandir,currently under construction and, scheduled to open later to this summer will get all its power from Solar. The temple and cultural center is being built in Chino Hills, California. The temple will be entirely powered by a 60 KW solar power system,which is installed by Los Angeles’ GoGreenSolar.
 In addition to the temple and cultural center, the entire 20 acre complex will include classroom, a gym, a dining hall, a snack shop, an exhibition hall, and living quarters. Hinduism is the world’s oldest living religion and is shared by about 800 million people, or approximately one-sixth the world’s population.

See Also:
Pollution a deadly Sin: Vatican.

Secret Sex Lives of Female Chimps

Female chimpanzees desire to have sex with as many males as possible. They keep their mouths shut about it, to increases their chances of luring the top chimps. Scientists at the University of St Andrews explored what the copulation calls of female chimpanzees mean. They have concluded that female chimps sometimes keep quiet during sex to prevent other females from intruding, so other female rivals don’t know what they’ve been up to.

Female Chimps produce more copulation calls when high-ranking males were around to attract them. By having sex with more males causes confusion among the male chimpanzees as to which one sired the offspring. Therefore, the males are less likely to kill any babies that might be theirs.

Photo Source: http://zebraandwildebeest.com

Fish’s Ears

Although we don’t see ears of fishes, they do have ear parts inside their heads. According to the National Wildlife Federation, fishes can pick up sounds in the water through their bodies and in the ear.
They also can sense movement in the water with the lateral lines. Interestingly, sharks have the ability to sense electricity, and genes that contribute to this sense is responsible for the head and facial features in humans. Therefore sharks and humans come down to a common ancestor back in time. Our ears evolved from fish gills.

G-8 For Controlling Global Emissions

The Group of Eight leading industrial nations agreed on halving world emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050. In the battle against global warming all major economies are called to join to eliminate the potentially dangerous rise in world temperatures. The G-8 countries include the United States, Japan, Russia, Germany, France, Britain, Canada and Italy.

Photo Source: http://president.wbcsd.org

Seals’ Navigation aid: Stars

Seals can orient themselves and navigate to some degree using the stars as a guide,according to a research by University of Southern Denmark. Researchers have discovered that seals have the ability to recognize stars and groups of stars inside a modified planetarium. Humans used star navigation for centuries when sailing across the vast oceans. Bees use earth’s magnetic filed to navigate by.

Facts about Yellowstone National Park

Yellowstone National Park was  set  as a national park in March 1872. It is known for its wildlife and geothermal features, especially Old Faithful Geyser. Watch this video for the amazing art of Mother Nature.

Tree From Christ’s Time

The oldest tree ever has been grown by scientists. The new tree was grown from a 2,000-year-old date palm excavated in Masada. The species of tree, called the Judean date, is now extinct in Israel, but scientists are hoping that this plant may help them in medicinal uses.
According to Carbon dating the seeds found at Masada are roughly the time of the ancient fortress’ siege, in A.D. 73. The seeds were found in storage rooms of Jews, and hidden from invading Romans. The Methuselah tree holds the record for the oldest seed to be germinated.

Photo Source: www.israelnationalnews.com

CO2 emission can be reduced by 1 Billion Tonnes: HP

Some of the solutions described in HP’s white paper include “Low Carbon IT Solutions,” that identifies the potential to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.

• Smart cooling and its use in the design of data center facilities that reduce energy usage and greenhouse gas emissions from commercial premises.
• Innovation in telepresence and videoconferencing that enable improved virtual collaboration to reduce the environmental impacts of international travel. HP’s use of this technology is expected to save approximately 20,000 international trips and at least 32,000 tonnes per year of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e).
• Flat panel displays and Laptops, increases workplace flexibility to reduce energy consumption from non-critical travel.

No evidence of Water in Mars

The tests conducted so far by Phoenix on Martian soil, didn’t show any indications of water. During the past couple of days tests had been carried out on soil sample from Mars surface. Phoenix lander had collected samples from two digging sites named Dodo and BabyBear. The mysterious, unidentified white material exposed in the trench is still visible. Over the coming days, scientists will instruct Phoenix to heat the sample to 1000°C (1800°F). This will vaporize minerals that might be chemically bound to H2O, CO2 or SO2 and then use instrumentation to measure the vented gases. The twin Mars Exploration Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, have already found indications of water on previous missions.

Other Species Can Learn Foreign Language

There are nine species of honeybees found worldwide and they do different type of dances as their “language” to tell each other the location of a tasty flower or nesting site.

The study leader Shaowu Zhang of The Australian National University mentioned that the duration of the waggle dances differs from species to species.

The research team mixed two species of honeybees, Asian and European together in a hive, and trained one species to fly to a feeder. The untrained species were able to identify the dances of by the trained cousins and interpret where the feeder was.

This study proved that these honeybees can learn to translate each others’ languages very effectively.

Hydrogen Fuel Stations.

Honda FCX Clarity is a zero emission sedan, which runs on hydrogen and electricity, emits only water and none of the noxious fumes believed to induce global warming. Limited number of cars will be leased to Southern Californians, which costs $600/month on a three year lease. Many automobile manufacturers have already begun developing hydrogen powered cars, BMW Hydrogen 7,Daimler AG — F-Cell,Focus FCV and GM HydroGen3 are some of them. But the main issue is the lack of hydrogen fuel stations. National Hydrogen Association developed a hydrogen fueling station database, this database contains only US and Canadian stations. Fuelcells.org has compiled a list of Hydrogen fuel stations which can be found here.

Clean the air as you drive

BMW unveiled a hydrogen-powered 7-series sedan which emits very low amount of Carbon Monoxide, in last month’s AE Congress in Detroit. The engine breaks down and converts carbon monoxide, essentially cleaning the air as it is driven. This green sedan of BMW features a six-liter hydrogen combustion engine. Car’s emissions are so low that they are undetectable by standard emissions tests.

Salt Water In Mars

Scientist have proved that Mars once had water, but they are still debating if the water was suitable to support life. After studying salt deposits left behind on the planet’s surface, Tosca and his colleagues state that the planet’s water would have been too salty for the organisms. Mars lost most of its surface over time and left with arid and cold desert. But it had been friendlier once. The origins of life on Earth is much easier than an acid pH and high salinity environment in Mars. It may be the reason why it might not have worked so well for the evolution of life on Mars.

Photo Source: www.daviddarling.info

Acid Rain Problem

Acid rain problem has not gone away. Acid rain is produced by the emissions of power plants throughout the Northeast of America, which declines the sugar maples and red spruce in the region. The soils are continuing to get worse, and levels of calcium ions in the soil had halved throughout the region while aluminum ions had doubled. Humans are replacing a nutrient by a toxic substance.

Last moments of Human

Renowned scientist Sir Martin Rees, a Royal Society Research Professor at Cambridge and Britain’s Astronomer Royal believes humans have only a 50% chance of making it through just the next century alone. In the book Our Final Hour, Rees argues aside from climate change humans are still in far greater danger from the potential effects of modern technology and our own inexplicably destructive natures than we commonly realize. Rees seems to think that the man-made disasters like engineered viruses, nuclear terrorism, and even a take-over by super-intelligent machines, are just as significant, if not more, of a threat to our long-term survival.

Humans Can Predict The Growler’s Body Size

Few animal listeners do not get the basic ‘back off’ message of a dog growl. A study done by Anna Taylor and her colleagues, states that the depth of the growl provides humans with the greatest cue. According to the study humans are “hardwired” to predict body size of the formants. We are better at predicting the body size of dogs than the body size of other humans by using vocalizations as the clue.

Photo Source: www.dogbreedinfo.com