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What are notable global heat and cold records for 2023?
☀️🇺🇸Hottest temperature in the Northern Hemisphere: 53.9°C (129.0°F) at Saratoga Spring, USA, July 16
❄️🇷🇺Coldest temperature in the Northern Hemisphere: -62.7°C (-80.9°F) at Tongulah, Russia, January 18
☀️🇦🇺Hottest temperature in the Southern Hemisphere: 49.5°C (121.1°F) at Roebourne, Australia, December 31
❄️🇦🇶Coldest temperature in the Southern Hemisphere: -83.2°C (-117.8°F) at Concordia, Antarctica, July 25
🔺🇸🇳Highest 2023 average temperature in the Northern Hemisphere: 32.2°C (90.0°F) at Matam, Senegal
🔻🇮🇩Highest 2023 average temperature in the Southern Hemisphere: 29.7°C (85.5°F) at Surabya AP, Indonesia
🥵A total of 175 monthly national/territorial heat records beaten or tied in 2023
🥶A total of nine monthly national/territorial cold records beaten in 2023
ℹ️Earth’s all-time record for hottest yearly average temperature was 32.9°C (91.2°F) at Makkah, Saudi Arabia, in 2010 and 2016.
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What is the most promising place for extraterrestrial life in our solar system?
🪐🌑Just two decades ago, scientists expected that the sixth largest of Saturn’s moons, Enceladus, to be a frozen ice ball.
🌑🌊However, in 2005, robotic spacecraft Cassini sent to study Saturn and its rings and moons detected plumes of water vapor and icy particles erupting from geysers on the surface, revealing the existence of a global ocean between the moon's icy shell and its rocky core ⬆️.
❗️In 2023, researchers announced that that they had found phosphorous in the ocean on Enceladus.
ℹ️Of the six elements required for life (carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, and sulfur were already found on Enceladus), phosphorus was the only one building block that astronomers had not yet detected in material from Enceladus.
‼️According to scientists, this one of the most important space discoveries of 2023 makes Enceladus the most promising place for extraterrestrial life in our solar system.
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What animals can have “virgin births”?
📍 The vast majority of animals need to breed to reproduce. However, a small subset of animals can have offspring without mating.
📍 The process, called parthenogenesis (comes from two Greek roots that literally translate to “virgin creation”), allows creatures to have so-called “virgin births.”
📍 In animals, the embryo develops from an unfertilized egg.
📍 Parthenogenesis occurs in many types of invertebrates including scorpions, nematodes, mites, water fleas, wasps, some bees, and other insects.
📍 Parthenogenesis has been observed in more than 80 vertebrate species, about half of which are fish or lizards. It’s rare that complex vertebrates such as sharks, snakes, and large lizards rely only on asexual reproduction.
❗️ In 2023, pathogenesis was for the first time recorded in a New World/American crocodile ⬆️ at a park in Costa Rica. According to researchers, this is one of the most astonishing discoveries of 2023.
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Why hibernating bears do not get blood clots?
🐻 Despite spending several months hibernating in frigid temperatures, brown bears (Ursus arctos) remain remarkably healthy. Bears rarely suffer from maladies such as blood clots, which can occur in humans experiencing only temporary bouts of immobility and can be deadly.
✍️According to a last study, a heat shock protein 47 (HSP47) helps the hibernating bears avoid dangerous clotting.
ℹ️HSP47 recruits an enzyme called thrombin that helps platelets stick together and form clots.
🐻In active bears, HSP47 helps patch up cuts and stop bleeding. But hibernating bears, which are safely snug in their dens, produce 55 times fewer HSP47 than active bears.
🤔Generally, HSP47 proteins may be a mechanism used across mammals to prevent clotting during prolonged periods of rest.
❗️Considered one of the most important in 2023, this finding can inspire fine-tuned treatments for preventing clotting in patients experiencing temporary immobility.
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What is the role of evolution in taxonomy?
ℹ️ Evolution is a progressive change that proceeds through genetic variation, natural selection, and genetic drift.
Through evolution, living things evolve to thrive and adapt to the ever-changing environment. A certain group of organisms can evolve so markedly that they diverge into different groups within the group, forming new species.
ℹ️ The process of the formation of new species is called speciation.
📌Modern taxonomy describes evolutionary links.
📌A taxonomic group must always refer to a set of organisms that descended from the same ancestor, at some point in evolutionary history. Species within the same genus all share a common ancestor. The same goes for each genus within one family and so on.
📌According to modern taxonomists, taxonomy is nowadays so intertwined with evolutionary theory, that it can be difficult to delineate when a researcher's "doing taxonomy" and when they're "doing evolutionary biology".
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How many ranks in modern taxonomy?
The process of placing or grouping organisms in different taxonomic groups is known as the taxonomy hierarchy. These levels, also called taxonomic ranks, formed a structure similar to the ladder or pyramid ⬆️.
The modern taxonomic classification system has 8️⃣ main levels
🔺Domain – highest level constitutes three domains of life: Eukaryota, Archaea, and Bacteria.
🔺Kingdom – the second level constitutes seven kingdoms: Animalia, Plantae, Monera, Fungi, Chromista, Protozoa, Archaea.
🔺Phylum – a group of related classes: 109 Phyla in all kingdoms.
🔺Class – a group of related orders: 108 classes in animals.
🔺Order – a group of related families: the total number ranges from 420-450.
🔺Family – a group of related genera (data can vary in different sources)
🔺Genus – a group of related species (data can vary in different sources)
🔺Species – a group of similar organisms (data can vary in different sources)
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Who contributed to modern taxonomy?
Here are some researchers who made important contributions to taxonomy.
Andrea Cesalpino (1519-1603) ⬆️, an Italian researcher and philosopher, is often considered to be the first-ever taxonomist in history. He described more than 1500 species of plants in his writings ⬆️. The largest families of plants known as Asteraceae and Brassicaceae, classified by him, are still used today.
Augustus Rivinus (1600-1656), a German physician and botanist, developed a method of better ways of classifying plants and introduced the category of order.
The English naturalist John Ray (1627-1705) produced more complex classification and described details of around 18,000 plants.
In France Joseph Pitton de Tournefort (1656-1708) defined and classified 9000 species in 698 genera.
ℹ️ The development of taxonomy is sometimes credited to more sophisticated optical lenses, which allowed the morphology of organisms to be studied in much greater detail.
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Who were ancient taxonomists?
ℹ️Taxonomists are researchers/biologists who analyze the relationship among organisms and aggregate them into groups.
Examples of earlier taxonomy are shown on ancient Egypt’s walls about medicinal plants by early Egyptian taxonomists ⬆️.
Aristotle (384-322 BC)⬆️, ancient Greek polymath, was able to classify organisms for the first time and then grouped them into two major categories, i.e., plants and animals. Several groups of animals proposed by him, such as Anhaima, Enhaima, sharks, and cetaceans, are still used to this day. Anhaima includes animals with no blood (now referred to as invertebrates), and Enhaima - animals with blood (vertebrates).
Theophrastus (371-287 BC)⬆️ was Aristotle’s student and is often called the “Father of Botany”. He continued the classification process and mentioned 500 plants and their uses in his book, Historia Plantarum. Some plant groups, such as Cornus, Crocus, and Narcissus, can be traced back to his findings.
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Why are orbital resonances important for science?
Orbital resonances are the source of both stability and chaos, depending sensitively upon parameters and initial conditions.
Orbitally resonant systems are extremely important to find because they tell astronomers about the formation and subsequent evolution of the planetary system.
Planets around stars tend to form in resonance but can easily have their orbits thrown around, e.g. after a close encounter with a passing star.
As a result, only one percent of all the multi-planet systems stay in resonance, according to researchers.
🔭That’s why astronomers observe planetary systems around stars that are believed to harbour planets in resonance.
⬆️ Such a rare star system with 6️⃣ exoplanets has been recently discovered with an architecture unchanged for billions of years. This star, HD110067, lies 100 light-years away in the northern constellation of Coma Berenices, is the brightest known system with 4️⃣ or more planets.
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Why do women need more sleep than men?
According to a study, men need 7-8 hours of sleep where women need 8-10 hours that leads to different circadian rhythms and to more sleep for women.
The sleep cycles are similar, but cortisol goes down and melatonin goes up sooner in women than men.
The interaction between circadian phase and time asleep was significant for sleep efficiency, in that the circadian disruption of sleep became stronger as sleep progressed.
While a person sleeps, their hormone levels are being replenished, and when a woman is deprived of sleep it can mess with cycles that take place within the female body that don’t happen for men.
Another study found that for women, poor sleep is strongly associated with psychological distress, and greater feelings of hostility, depression and anger. In contrast, these feelings were not associated with the same degree of sleep disruption in men.
ℹ️ As per studies, women require about 20 minutes more sleep than men.
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Do you know these amazing facts about camels?
✍️ Old-World species of camels (genus Camelus) are part of the Camelidae family, which include two other South American genera with two species each, Lama (llama, guanaco) and Vicugna (alpaca, vicuña). While nowadays there are no camelids in North America, scientists suppose that all members of the Camelidae family originated in North America.
✍️ In addition to their humps, camels have other ways to adapt to their environment. They have a third, clear eyelid and two rows of long lashes that protect their eyes from blowing sand. They can also shut their nostrils during sand storms.
✍️💧 Camels can survive a 40 percent weight loss and then can drink 113 liters (30 gallons) of water in just 13 minutes. Their bodies rehydrate faster than any other mammal.
✍️🩸 Camels have oval-shaped red blood cells that help continue blood flow during times when water is scarce, and a special type of antibodies lacking the light chain, besides the normal antibodies found in other species.
✍️🌡 Though many people think that camels only live in hot climates, they do well in temperature ranges from minus 29 degrees C (20 degrees F) to 49 degrees C (120 degrees F).
✍️ Humans first domesticated camels between 3,500–3,000 years ago. It is thought that the Bactrian camel was domesticated independently from the Dromedary sometime before 2500 B.C.E. and the Dromedary between 4000 B.C.E. and 2000 B.C.E.
✍️🇷🇺Wild Bactrian camels (Camelus ferus) were discovered in 1878 by Nikolai Prejevalsky, a Russian geographer who explored Mongolia and Tibet.
✍️🧬 For many years, the wild Bactrian (Camelus ferus) was thought to be a subspecies of the domestic Bactrian. However, in recent years, DNA analysis confirmed that Camelus ferus was a separate species with three more chromosome pairs than the domestic Bactrian.
✍️🇦🇺 A substantial feral population (originally domesticated but now living wild) estimated at up to 700,000 lives in central parts of Australia.
✍️ Camels can run at 40 kph (25 mph) for long periods. They have a natural pacing gait, moving both legs from the same side of the body at the same time.
✍️ Camels are known for spitting on people. In fact, the animals are throwing up the contents of their stomach along with spit. This is a defense tactic when the animals feel threatened.
✍️🎦 Camels make a rumbling growl that was one of the noises used to create Chewbacca's voice in the "Star Wars" movies.
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What is the world’s largest “current” iceberg?
☑️ The iceberg, named A23a, is the world's largest iceberg for a moment.
☑️ It is about 400 meters (1,312 feet) thick, and almost 4,000 square kilometers (1,544 square miles) in area.
☑️ A23a broke off from the Antarctic coastline in 1986 and became grounded in the Weddell Sea, and is now on the move for the first time in 37 years, according to recent satellite images ⬆️.
☑️ It is unclear why the iceberg is suddenly on the move again after 37 years, but scientists believe that it has probably shrunk enough in size to lose its grip on the seafloor as part of the natural growth cycle of the ice shelf.
ℹ️ A23a has held the “largest current iceberg” title several times since the 1980s, occasionally being surpassed by larger but shorter-lived icebergs, including A68 (around 175 km long, 50 km wide, 5,800 sq.km in area) in 2017 and A76 (around 170 km in length, 25 km wide and 4,320 sq.km in area) in 2021.
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What gives unique sensory properties to animals?
Cryptochromes (CRYs) are a structurally conserved but functionally diverse family of proteins that can confer unique sensory properties to organisms.
They are:
▫️found in a variety of organisms
▫️often involved in light-controlled biological processes
▫️responsible for circadian rhythms.
🪱E.g., the marine bristle worm Platynereis dumerilii ⬆️, employs a special Cry protein designated L-Cry to distinguish between sunlight and moonlight as well as between different moon phases. This is essential for the worms to synchronize their reproduction to the full moon phase via an inner monthly calendar, also called circalunar clock.
🐤In migratory birds, researchers tried to learn more about an unusual eye protein called CRY4, which is part of a class of cryptochromes. Scientists found that birds have evolved a mechanism that enhances their ability to respond to light, which can enable them to sense and respond to magnetic fields ⬆️.
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Where is the head on a starfish?
For centuries, naturalists have puzzled over what might constitute the head of a sea star, commonly called a "starfish."
Sea stars begin life as larvae with a bilateral body plan, but instead of displaying bilateral symmetry, adult sea stars—and related echinoderms, such as sea urchins and sea cucumbers—have a five-fold axis of symmetry without a clear head or tail ⬆️
In a new study, researchers used a variety of high-tech molecular and genomic techniques to understand where different genes were expressed during the development and growth of sea stars ⬆️
The “head” of a starfish, the researchers found, is not in any one place. Instead, the headlike regions are distributed with some in the center of the sea star as well as in the center of each limb of its body. No part of the sea star ectoderm expresses a “trunk” genetic patterning program, suggesting that sea stars are mostly headlike.
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What are some interesting temperature highlights of October 2023?
According to climatologists,
🌡 🗓 October 2023 was the warmest October on record globally, with an average surface air temperature of 15.30°C, 0.85°C above the 1991-2020 average for October and 0.40°C above the previous warmest October, in 2019.
🌡🌏 The global temperature anomaly for October 2023 was the second highest across all months in the ERA5 dataset, behind September 2023.
🌡🌊 The average sea surface temperature for October over 60°S–60°N was 20.79°C, the highest on record for October.
🌡 The month as a whole was 1.7°C warmer than an estimate of the October average for 1850-1900, the designated pre-industrial reference period.
ℹ️ ERA5 is the latest climate reanalysis produced by European researchers. All the reported findings are based on computer-generated analyses, using billions of measurements from satellites, ships, aircraft and weather stations around the world.
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What are 2023 remarkable climate highlights?
🔴 2023 is confirmed as the warmest calendar year in global temperature data records going back to 1850.
🌐 2023 had a global average temperature of 14.98°C, 0.17°C higher than the previous highest annual value in 2016.
🔴 2023 was 0.60°C warmer than the 1991-2020 average and 1.48°C warmer than the 1850-1900 pre-industrial level.
🔴 Almost each month in 2023 was warmer than the corresponding month in any previous year.
🌐🌊 Global average sea surface temperatures (SSTs) reached record levels for the time of year from April through December.
🇦🇶 Antarctic sea ice reached all-time minima in February 2023 and record low extents for the corresponding time of the year in 8 months.
🔥 A large number of extreme events (heatwaves, floods, droughts and wildfires) were recorded across the globe. Estimated global wildfire carbon emissions in 2023 increased by 30% with respect to 2022 driven largely by wildfires in Northern America.
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What are the earliest known fortresses in the world?
❗️In 2023, researchers have learned that the earliest known fortresses in the world were built by Neolithic hunter-gatherers around 6000 B.C. in the taiga of western Siberia (modern Russia🇷🇺).
✔️Archaeologists have long been aware that Indigenous people in the region lived in fortified settlements defended by palisades, banks, and ditches, but believed such sites dated to no earlier than the early Iron Age, around 1000 B.C.
✔️New radiocarbon dating of 20 fortified taiga settlements ⬆️ showed that the earliest sites were built some 8,000 years ago, making them the earliest scientifically dated examples of such fortresses in the world.
ℹ️ According to scientists, during the Neolithic period, the number of people living in the taiga zone of western Siberia increased dramatically due to newly mild climatic conditions, and the Indigenous people lived in fortresses because they could be attacked by their neighbors at any moment.
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What is the mission that reached the dark side of the moon?
🇮🇳🚀Launched in July 2023 ⬆️, India's Chandrayaan-3 moon lander was the first mission to reach the lunar south pole – an unexplored region where reservoirs of frozen water are believed to exist.
✅ Although the spacecraft went dormant after two weeks of the landing, it did what it was supposed to do -- successfully detected lunar surface sulfur and demonstrated the moon's soil as an effective insulator.
❗️ According to scientific community, the success of Chandrayaan-3 is one of the biggest science stories of 2023.
🚀💰🫰The mission showed the world that not only is India a major player in space, but that a moon lander can be launched successfully for $75m, which is much cheaper than most other countries’ budgets for a moon mission.
🌌 Scientists believe that this accomplishment, marked by diversity, cost-effectiveness, and eco-friendly technology, hints at a transformative era in space exploration on the horizon.
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Can Artificial Intelligence create images as realistic as photos?
🔺 An artificial intelligence (AI) image generator from text is an AI-powered tool that takes a text prompt, processes it, and creates an image that best matches the description given in the text prompt.
❗️ℹ️ AI image generation is completely different from sourcing. While image-sourcing tools can be used to search and download existing images, an AI image generator creates entirely new images that do not exist in reality.
🔺 The idea of generating images from text using AI has been around for several decades. But the recent advancements in the field of text-to-image generation have made it possible to develop more sophisticated tools that are able to create high-quality images with different art styles. This has opened up a world of possibilities for anyone working with visual content.
⬆️ Look at these hyperrealistic images created using latest versions of AI image generators.
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Why the biological species concept can be riddled with controversy?
✍️In biology, species is defined as the lowest taxonomic rank consisting of organisms that share common characteristics and generally are capable of reproducing to produce fertile offspring.
❗️Recognized by Charles Darwin, the “species problem” is that many organisms do not fit into this definition ⬇️
✔️Asexual organisms have only one parent, so they do not reproduce with each other.
✔️Some organisms can reproduce with similar species.
✔️There can be significant morphological variation between the sexes and even individuals of the same species, making it a very subjective way of classifying life.
Although modern technologies, like genetic analysis, help today’s taxonomists to classify species, all these “rule breakers” make it difficult to clearly define the concept until now.
ℹ️The word species is derived from a Latin word “specere”, which means “to look”, “kind”, “appearance”, “form” (of something).
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Who is the “father of modern taxonomy”?
The Swedish botanist, physician, and zoologist Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778) ⬆️, also known as Carl von Linné or Carolus Linnaeus, is often called the “father of modern taxonomy”.
With his major works Species Plantarum in 1753, and Systema Naturae 10th Edition in 1758 ⬆️, he revolutionized modern taxonomy.
His works implemented a standardized binomial naming system for animals and plants, which proved to be an elegant solution to a chaotic and disorganized taxonomic literature. He not only introduced the standard of class, order, genus, and species, but also made it possible to identify plants and animals from his book, by using the smaller parts of the flower.
Thus the Linnaean system was born.
Today, every plant or animal name published before 1753 or 1758, respectively, is called "prelinnaean" and is thus not valid. Also early names published by Linnaeus himself are "prelinnaean".
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How classification system of all matter and life was viewed in the European middle ages?
Medieval thinkers of Europe took account of organisms’ classification on a philosophical and theological basis.
The classification systems used then were Aristotelian systems, including the Scala Naturae (the Great Chain of Being/Existence), a nature ladder used to order organisms in one unit.
The concept of the Great chain of being/existence was viewed by medieval thinkers of Europe, e.g. by Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), as an immutable order given by God.
In the hierarchy of the Great chain of existence, God is at the top, above the angels. Angels, like God, are wholly spirits, have no physical body, and are therefore immutable. Underneath is man, composed of both spirit and matter. They are not permanent in nature as they change and disappear. Below are animals and plants. At the bottom is the mineral matter of the earth itself.
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How scientists are classifying life?
✅ It is taxonomy that is essential to classify living organisms into different groups and subgroups.
✅ In simple words, the definition of taxonomy is a branch of science that deals primarily with the description, identification, nomenclature, and classification of organisms.
✅ The term “taxonomy” was developed from two Greek words, “taxis,” meaning arrangement, and “nomia,” meaning distribution or method.
✅ There are in fact different definitions of taxonomy, and based on them, taxonomy is considered a sub-branch of systematics or a synonym of the latter term. It is also thought that biological nomenclature is either a part of taxonomy or a unit of systematics.
ℹ️ Systematics is the consideration to identify the taxonomy of organisms and their nomenclature, classification based on their natural relatedness, and the analysis of variation and evolution among the taxa.
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What is meant by orbital resonance?
Two celestial bodies are in orbital resonance if their orbital periods can be expressed as a ratio of two integers.
It is caused by the changing gravitational forces of bodies which go round each other.
Orbits are usually ellipses, not circular, and as a satellite goes round a planet or two stars go round each other, the gravitational forces can change, sometimes hugely. Also, the planets and stars are usually not spherical. They spin, and vary in their degree of oblateness. This also changes the forces on an orbiting body.
For example, two planets, both orbiting a parent star, are said to be in a 2️⃣:1️⃣ resonance when one of the planets takes approximately twice as long to orbit the star as the other planet ⬆️.
In our own Solar System, Neptune and Pluto are in resonance (in this case 3️⃣:2️⃣), as are many moons of Saturn and Jupiter.
ℹ️ The area of mechanics, which is used for these studies, is called celestial mechanics.
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Who sleep better: women or men?
💤 In a new study, researchers unveiled insights into the sleep health of middle-aged and older adults in Canada 🇨🇦, identifying social determinants that contribute to disparities in sleep satisfaction, efficiency, and duration.
❗️🚹😴🚺 The study revealed that men report sleeping better than women, and women report lower sleep satisfaction and efficiency compared to men. This disparity persisted across different sociodemographic backgrounds.
👵👨🦳 Contrary to previously held beliefs, the study found that sleep actually improves with age - older adults (aged 65 and above) reported better overall sleep health compared to people from 45 to 65 years old.
💰🏡 Socioeconomic factors like income level and homeownership also had an impact on sleep. Higher socioeconomic status also emerged as a significant predictor of better sleep health. Individuals with higher income levels, those who are retired and homeowners reported better sleep quality.
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How many camel species are there?
Camels are mammals with long legs, a big-lipped snout and a humped back.
There are 2️⃣ extant species of camels:
🐪
the Dromedary or Arabian Camel, Camelus dromedarius, which has a single hump, gets up to about 2 m (6.5 ft.) tall at the shoulder, has a body length of about 3 m (10 ft.) and weighs 400 to 600 kg (880 to 1,325 lbs.).
It can be found in North Africa and the Middle East, and exists today only as a domesticated animal.
🐫
the Bactrian camel, Camelus bactrianus, which has two humps, grows to a shoulder height of 1.8-2 m (6-6.5 ft.), has a body length of 3 m (10 ft.), and normally weighs 600 to 1,000 kg (1,320 to 2,200 lbs.) when fully grown.
It lives in Central Asia.
Most Bactrians are also domesticated animals, but there are still about 1000 wild Bactrian camels in the Gobi Desert in China and Mongolia.
ℹ️ The name camel comes to English via the Greek κάμηλος (kámēlos) from the Hebrew gamal or Arabic Jamal.
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Can artificial materials become magnetic?
🧲The most commonly known forms of magnetism are ferromagnetism (the spins of all the electrons in a material point in the same direction) and its weaker version – paramagnetism (the electron spins point in random directions).
🧲Exploring properties of moiré materials (experimental materials made by stacking two-dimensional sheets of molybdenum diselenide and tungsten disulfide with a lattice structure containing electrons) scientists discovered a new form of magnetism.
🧲Initially the material exhibited paramagnetism, but as researchers added more electrons to the lattice, it showed a shift, becoming ferromagnetic.
❗️The existence of this alternate “kinetic magnetism” has been theoretically predicted for decades but not previously observed in solid materials.
🌡For this experiment, the material had to be cooled down to a fraction above absolute zero, and the phenomenon will be investigated more closely at higher temperatures.
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What is the brain’s surprising reaction to “all-nighters”?
Most people who have pulled an all-nighter are familiar with that “tired and wired” feeling. Although the body is physically exhausted, the brain feels slap-happy, loopy and almost giddy.
The exact mechanisms in the brain that lead to these effects have remained poorly understood.
In a new study, researchers induced mild, acute sleep deprivation in mice and then examined their behaviors and brain activity. Not only did dopamine release increase during the acute sleep loss period, synaptic plasticity also was enhanced - literally rewiring the brain to maintain the bubbly mood for the next few days.
While researchers do not fully understand why acute sleep deprivation is somehow activating to an organism, they suspect evolution is at play.
This discovery provides insights into the mechanisms of fast-acting antidepressants and may guide future drug development.
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How many Types of Symmetry in Biology?
✍️ Symmetry in biology refers to the correspondence of body parts, in size, shape, and relative position, on opposite sides of a dividing line or distributed around a central point or axis.
There are 3️⃣ main types of symmetry in animals ⬆️
✅ Spherical, rare in animals and found mainly in Protozoa (e.g., Volvox, Heliozoa, and Radiolaria) and in eggs and early embryos of some animals.
✅ Radial, found in some sponges (Sycon), Coelenterates (Hydra, jellyfish), echinoderms (e.g.,starfish).
✅ Bilateral, found in many invertebrates, e.g., annelids arthropods, etc., and all vertebrates. It is strongly associated with cephalization.
Scientists also distinguish
✔️ Biradial Symmetry, found in organisms with morphological features (internal or external) of both bilateral and radial symmetry. e.g, sea anemones.
☘️🌱🌸🌻 Plants exhibit often both radial symmetry and bilateral symmetry, which has a lot to do with pollination strategy.
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Why temperature anomalies are so important?
📌A temperature anomaly is the difference from an average, or baseline, temperature.
📌The baseline temperature is typically computed by averaging 30 or more years of temperature data.
📌Anomalies are measured by the number of degrees that the temperature varies from the average and can be:
➕positive (the observed temperature is warmer than the baseline)
and
➖negative (the observed temperature is cooler than the baseline)
📌The anomalies are due to land-ocean-atmosphere processes that dynamically determine the weather and climate.
📌Anomalies are used to measure global surface temperature instead of absolute temperature because:
✔️absolute estimates are challenging to obtain and are uncertain
✔️anomalies describe how climate is changing over larger areas and over time more clearly.
❗️The world has been showing a frightening abundance of positive anomalies in the past decade, which means the world is getting warmer.
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