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How to reduce human intake of nanoplastics and microplastics?
Tap water nano/microplastics (NMPs) escaping from centralized water treatment systems are of increasing global concern, because they pose potential health risk to humans via water consumption.
Recently, researchers from China have presented evidence that boiling water can remove at least 80% of polystyrene, polyethylene, and polypropylene NMPs.
This simple boiling-water strategy has the potential for harmlessly alleviating human intake of NMPs through water consumption.
ℹ️ Scientists categorize degraded plastic waste products by size.
📌 Microplastics are tiny particles less than than five millimetres in diameter, or about the size of a sesame seed.
📌 Nanoplastics are flecks too small to be noticed by the human eye with diameters of less than a billionth of a meter or a nanometer. By comparison, a sphere with a diameter of one nanometre is as small relative to a softball as a softball is to the Earth.
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Why is 20 May World Bee Day and why is it important?
🐝🇺🇳 In 2017 the UN declared 20 May as World Bee Day ⬆️, which is now celebrated each year.
🐝 20 May was chosen because it coincides with the birthday of Anton Janša (1734-1773) ⬆️, who is considered to be one of the fathers of modern beekeeping techniques and one of the pioneers of apiculture on a global scale. Anton Janša was born in Breznica, the Gorenjska (Upper Carniola) region of modern-day Slovenia, in a family of beekeepers. Although he showed remarkable artistic talent in painting, he also decided to became a professional beekeeper.
🐝 The purpose of the international day is to acknowledge the role of bees and other pollinators for the ecosystem. People are reminded of the significance of bees in providing for the needs of humanity.
🐝ℹ️ According to the UN, three out of four crops across the globe producing fruits, or seeds for use as human food depend, at least in part, on bees and other pollinators.
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How does the Mars’s 'labyrinth of night' look like?
The hauntingly-named Noctis Labyrinthus (which means in Latin 'labyrinth of night') is a fascinating region near the equator of Mars.
Noctis Labyrinthus is home to a network of intersecting canyons, some as deep as 6 kilometers (3.7 miles), giving the region a maze-like appearance when viewed from above. The canyons were likely created by past volcanism in the nearby region of Tharsis, which would have caused the planet’s surface to arch upwards and then collapse. Dust covers most of the region, leading to its rather uniform appearance.
Noctis Labyrinthus is nestled between the colossal martian ‘Grand Canyon’ (Valles Marineris) and the tallest volcanoes in the Solar System (region of Tharsis) and stretches out for around 1190 km.
⬆️ Fly over Mars’s Noctis Labyrinthus in this video animation, based on data from the Mars Express observations of the system and created using an image mosaic built over eight orbits.
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How bioluminescence can help humanity?
🧑🏻🔬👨🏻🔬🔬 Scientists are studying the chemicals and circumstances involved in bioluminescence to understand how people can use the process to make human’s life safer.
🧬 Green fluorescent protein (GFP), found in some bioluminescent jellies, is a valuable "reporter gene" – a chemical (a gene) that biologists attach to other genes they are studying. GFP reporter genes are easily identified and measured, usually by their fluorescence. This allows scientists to trace and monitor the activity of the studied gene—its expression in a cell, or its interaction with other chemicals.
🐁 Look at these mice bred by researchers with GFP ⬆️.
🌳🔆 Bioluminescent trees could help light city streets and highways. This would reduce the need for electricity.
🌾🔆 Bioluminescent crops and other plants could luminesce when they needed water or other nutrients, or when they were ready to be harvested. This would reduce costs for farmers.
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How and why do fireflies light up?
🔅 One must have watched fireflies glowing in summer dusks and nights.
🔅 It is bioluminescence that causes them to flash every 5.5 seconds approximately.
ℹ️ Bioluminescence is light produced by a chemical reaction within a living organism. It is a "cold light" – less than 20% of the light generates thermal radiation, or heat.
🔅 Fireflies have an organic compound luciferin in their abdomen. It reacts with oxygen, calcium, and adenosine triphosphate in the presence of the enzyme luciferase to produce light. The oxygen enters their body through the trachea, a complex network of fine tubes, as they don’t have lungs. When oxygen is available the fireflies glow, and extinguish when no oxygen can be spared.
🟡 The bioluminescent color, yellow in fireflies, is a result of the arrangement of luciferin molecules.
🔅 Fireflies’ lighting up serves the following purposes:
✳️ Warding off possible predators.
✳️ Attracting mates.
✳️ Attracting prey.
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What are the major theories of emotion?
The major theories of emotion can be grouped into 3️⃣ categories:
♦️Physiological theories: responses within the body are responsible for emotions.
♦️Neurological theories: activity within the brain leads to emotional responses.
♦️Cognitive theories: thoughts and other mental activities play an essential role in forming emotions.
Scientists also proposed 6️⃣ main theories of emotion:
🔺Evolutionary/Darwin theory: emotions exist because they serve an adaptive role.
🔺The James-Lange theory: physical responses are responsible for emotion.
🔺The Cannon-Bard theory: people experience emotional and physiological responses at the same time, with each response acting independently.
🔺The Schachter-Singer theory: thoughts are responsible for emotions.
🔺The cognitive appraisal/Lazarus theory: brain first appraises a situation, and the resulting response is an emotion.
🔺The facial-feedback theory: emotions are directly tied to facial muscles.
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What is emotion?
Emotion is a complex state of feeling that results in physical and psychological changes that influence thought and behavior.
These complex psychological states involve 3️⃣ distinct components: a subjective experience, a physiological response, and a behavioral or expressive response ⬆️.
Emotionality is associated with a range of psychological phenomena, including temperament, personality, mood, and motivation.
Emotions can be categorized based on whether they are primary or secondary.
🔸 Primary emotions are the emotions that humans experience universally. There are different theories as to what these specific emotions are, but they often include happiness, sadness, fear, disgust, anger, and surprise ⬆️.
🔸 Secondary emotions stem from—and are variations of—primary emotions. Sometimes, we have secondary emotions in response to our primary emotions (i.e., "I'm frustrated that I'm so sad"). Secondary emotions may include frustration, pride, envy, and jealousy.
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What is the main cause of the shocking decline in Europe’s bird populations?
🐦📉🇪🇺 A study, which is considered to be one of the landmark scientific articles in 2023, revealed a shocking decline of 550 million birds across Europe over four decades.
☑️ Overall, bird numbers have fallen by 25%, the figure being almost 60% in the case of farmland bird species.
☑️ The study identifies the spread of intensive monoculture farming, driven by increased pesticide and fertilizer use, as the primary culprit.
☑️ Fertilizers and pesticides leave soil devoid of invertebrates – a vital source of nutrition for many birds, and contaminate seeds, which can eventually kill birds. Monoculture farming also generates homogeneous landscapes that lack plant diversity, offering birds neither refuge nor varied vegetation and fruit to feed on.
☑️ The study also gauged how significant climate change, urbanization and changes in forest cover have been in bird population decline across Europe.
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What are the different types of deserts?
🏜 Based on their geographical positions, and dominant weather patterns, desert ecosystems can be divided into six types.
🔴 Subtropical Deserts
are found between 15-30 degrees both to the north and south of the equator along the Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn, respectively.
🟡 Coastal Deserts
are located on the coasts of the continents found between 20-30-degree latitude, and cold ocean currents contribute to their formation.
🟣 Cold Winter/Semi-arid Deserts
are located near the edges of other deserts and in the continental dry areas.
🟠 Rain Shadow Deserts
exist near the leeward slopes of some mountain ranges. Leeward slopes face away from prevailing winds.
🟤 Interior/Inland Deserts
are found in the heart of continents and exist because no moisture-laden winds reach them.
⚪️ Polar Deserts
are located in the Arctic and Antarctic regions, and most of their water is locked in glaciers and ice sheets year-round.
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Who was the first human in space?
Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin (1934-1968) ⬆️ was a Soviet Russia pilot and cosmonaut who became the first human in space.
🚀🌐 On April 12, 1961, he orbited Earth aboard the Vostok 1 space capsule, the first-ever crewed spacecraft.
"Vostok" means "East" in Russian, as opposed to the Western world, signifying the mission's importance in the Cold War-era space race between the USA and the USSR. The crewed part of the capsule was spherical, with an inside diameter of about 2 m (7 ft). The spacecraft launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome.
In response to a statement from ground control that everything seemed to be working fine, Gagarin famously replied "Poyekhali!" — an informal phrase meaning "Off we go!" in Russian.
As a result, he became an international celebrity and received many awards, both within and outside the Soviet Union.
Gagarin was known not only for his accomplishments but also for his charismatic personality and smile ⬆️.
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How James Webb’s discovery questioned the Big Bang Theory?
🌠 In 2023, James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) discovered more than 700 ancient galaxies that could be between 370 million and 650 million years old, according to scientists, who studied the captured data. 93% of the newfound galaxies ⬆️ had never been seen before.
❗️ If the conclusion about the age of these galaxies is correct, this discovery questions and revolutionizes the Big Bang Theory and modern cosmology saying that galaxies need much more time to grow from “nothing”.
ℹ️ Some experts believe that the model of a cyclic oscillating universe may provide answers to these new questions. The main thermodynamic argument against this model has been that entropy, contained in black holes, should accumulate from cycle to cycle. But recent studies demonstrate that the continuous accumulation of entropy from cycle to cycle pertains to the surface of the big black hole without violating the second law of thermodynamics.
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What is the leading explanation for how the universe began?
💥The Big Bang Theory is the leading explanation for how the universe began.
💥It is the idea that the universe began as just a single point, then expanded and stretched to grow as large as it is right now—and it is still stretching.
💥This idea belongs to a Belgian astronomer Georges Lemaître (1894-1966).
💥⚛️🌠☄️This theory says that at the very beginning the universe was just hot, tiny particles mixed with light and energy. As everything expanded and took up more space, it cooled down. The tiny particles formed atoms, which over lots of time came together to form stars and galaxies. The first stars created bigger atoms and groups of atoms. That led to more stars being born. At the same time, galaxies were crashing and grouping together. As new stars were being born and dying, then things like asteroids, comets, planets, and black holes formed.
💥According to the theory, the universe could be 13.8 billion years old.
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Why do plants have different leaves?
🍃 Everything about a leaf — from the size, the thickness, the smoothness to its vein structure and segmentation — is part of its function. Each of these characteristics is an adaptation or optimization that helps leaves fulfill its main purpose, which is photosynthesis, as well as absorb sunlight, distribute water, regulate heat loss, avoid pests, etc.
🍀 Scientists say that the two major factors that influence leaf shape are evolutionary history and environment.
🌱 Plants from the same species can have very different-looking leaves in different climates.
🌿🌐 Researchers have found correlations such as latitude and shape (closer to the equator=simpler leaves), temperature and teeth (colder climate=more teeth), and moisture and size (wetter environment=larger leaves).
☘️🧬 Scientists have also identified a genetic mechanism responsible for leaf diversity that may offer new tools to help plants withstand different climate conditions.
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What are the different parts of a plant?
🌱🍀🌿 Broadly, plants have 2️⃣ organ systems:
🟤 The Root System that covers the underground parts of a plant and includes the roots, tubers, and rhizomes.
🟢 The Shoot System that consists of parts found above the ground, such as leaves, stems, flowers, and fruits.
A typical diagram of a plant body consists of 3️⃣ parts:
🟫 Roots, that lie below the surface of the soil. The top part of a root (root apex) is covered by a covering known as root cap.
🟩 Stems, found above the ground and are structurally divided into nodes, the regions where leaves are found, and internodes, the areas in-between the nodes.
🍃 Leaves, each having specialized functions and mostly found above the ground and attached to the stem.
A flowering plant also contains:
🌷🌼🌺 Flowers, the most colorful and attractive parts of a plant,
and
🍓🫑🍅 Fruits, the ripened ovary found in flower after fertilization.
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What is the largest vessel ever built?
❗️ Prelude FLNG ⬆️ is the largest floating facility ever built.
📌 It is a floating liquefied natural lake gas (FLNG) platform. Despite its ship-like appearance, it is not in the strictest sense a boat as it needs to be towed to its destinations.
📌 Prelude FLNG measures 488 m (1,601 ft) long, about 30 m longer than the Seawise Giant, and 74 m (243 ft) wide.
📌 The ship has a deck longer than four soccer fields and storage tanks that would fill 175 Olympic-sized swimming pools.
📌 At full load, it displaces more than 600,000 tons.
📌 More than 6,700 Horsepower thrusters are used to position the facility and 50 million liters of water are used every hour for cooling the LNG.
📌 The Prelude is now stationed over a gas field off the north coast of Western Australia.
📌 Annually, the facility can produce enough natural gas to power annually a city the size of Hong Kong.
📌 According to analysts, its price could be up to $12.6 billion.
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What are some amazing facts about bees, honey and beekeeping?
🐝 Bees have existed for more than 100 million years.
🐝 Though bees have jointed legs, they do not possess anything like a kneecap, and therefore do not have knees.
🐝 Bees have 2 stomachs – one for eating, and one for storing nectar and processing it into honey.
🐝 Bees have five eyes.
🐝 Honey bees are fab flyers. They fly at a speed of around 25km per hour and beat their wings 200 times per second.
🐝 Each bee has 170 odorant receptors, which means they have one serious sense of smell! They use this to communicate within the hive and to recognise different types of flowers when looking for food.
🐝 There are just three types of honey bees: queens, workers and drones.
🐝 Worker bees are the smallest of the three types of honey bees, growing to just 10-15mm when mature. Drones are about 50% bigger, reaching 15-17mm as adults, and queens are the largest — almost twice the size of worker bees — 18-20mm at maturity.
🐝 The average worker bee lives for just five to six weeks.
🐝 The queen can live up to five years. She is busiest in the summer months, when she can lay up to 2,500 eggs a day.
🐝 If the queen bee dies, workers will create a new queen by selecting a young larva (the newly hatched baby insects) and feeding it a special food called “royal jelly“. This enables the larva to develop into a fertile queen.
🐝 Bees communicate by dancing. To share information about the best food sources, they perform their ‘waggle dance’. When the worker returns to the hive, it moves in a figure-of-eight and waggles its body to indicate the direction of the food source.
🐝 Bees also communicate within the hive by releasing chemicals called pheromones. As workers groom and feed hive members, they pass on these pheromones that indicate the health of the hive.
🐝 The queen bee releases her own distinct pheromone called Queen Mandibular Pheromone, or QMP.
🐝 Every bee colony has its own distinct scent, or pheromones, so that members can identify each other.
🐝 Honey bees are generally not aggressive — they’ll only attack when the believe their hive is threatened.
🐝 While bee venom is more deadly than cobra venom, it would take more than 3,800 bee stings to kill the average human male.
🐝 Bees navigate using the sun as we would a compass, and because they can see polarized light, are able to find their way even on cloudy days. There is some evidence that bees are also sensitive to the earth’s magnetism and may use it to navigate as well.
🐝🍯 One bee has to fly about 120,000 km – three times around the globe – and gather nectar from two million flowers to make about 450 grams of honey.
🐝🌺🌼🌸 A honey bee visits 50 to 100 flowers during a collection trip.
🐝🍯 During its lifetime, the average bee will make only 1/12th of a teaspoon of honey.
🍯 Honey is 25% sweeter than sugar.
🍯 Honey has antiseptic properties and was historically used as a dressing for wounds and a first aid treatment for burns and cuts.
🍯 The natural fruit sugars in honey – fructose and glucose – are quickly digested by the body. This is why sportsmen and athletes use honey to give them a natural energy boost.
🐝 The practice of beekeeping dates back at least 4,500 years.
🐝 Ancient peoples believed that bees were created from the carcasses of dead animals.
🐝 Ancient Egyptians believed bees to be the tears of the sun god, Ra.
🐝 Honey bees and honey are mentioned in different ancient texts, e.g. in Sanskrit texts.
🐝 Honey bees are the only insect that produces food consumed by humans.
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Why Greenland is rising?
Greenland has been gradually rising since the last ice age 12,000 years ago, its frozen coat of water trickling slowly into the sea. But recent data reveals this melting has been significantly speeding up.
Researchers found that in roughly the last decade Greenland's bedrock has risen up to 20 centimeters, which is a rate of about 2 meters per century.
According to scientists, this land uplift observed these years cannot be solely explained by the natural post-ice age development.
While glaciers around Greenland's periphery make up just 4 percent of the island's ice cover, they're responsible for almost 15 percent of its ice loss, which is causing an even greater rise in some areas than the loss of the main Greenland ice sheet ⬆️.
ℹ️ Such process is called elastic rebound – the previously compressed earth, now liberated from surrounding weight, relaxes into its more naturally expanded shape like a squashed pillow released to take up more volume
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Why is May 7 important for the development of radio?
🔘At the end of the 19th century, several scientists went head-to-head in the race to invent the radio.
🔘Italian physicist Guglielmo Marconi (1874-1937) is largely known as the ”father” of radio, but other researchers were ahead of him here. Serbian American scientist Nikola Tesla (1856-1943) has many proponents as the inventor of radio, while in England the credit is given to Oliver Lodge (1851-1940), who, according to some sources, in 1894 invented his model of radio waves receiver.
📻🇷🇺But if you ask anyone in Russia who invented radio, the answer will be: Alexander Popov ⬆️
On May 7, 1895 (this would be after Lodge but before Tesla and Marconi), Popov demonstrated a radio receiver ⬆️ to the Russian Physical and Chemical Society.
Today, in St. Petersburg, there is the A.S. Popov Central Museum of Communications.
Since 1945, every 7 May Russia celebrates Radio Day.
ℹ️World Radio Day is marked annually on February 13.
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Where are most bioluminescent organisms found?
🌊 Although a lot of people know about fireflies, not everyone is aware that most bioluminescent organisms are found not on land but in the ocean. These bioluminescent marine species include fish, bacteria, and jellies.
🔵🟢Most marine bioluminescence is expressed in the blue-green part of the visible light spectrum. Also, most marine organisms are sensitive only to blue-green colors, being physically unable to process yellow, red, or violet colors.
🔆 Sometimes, rare bioluminescent dinoflagellate ecosystems are illuminating warm-water lagoons at night.
ℹ️ There are almost no bioluminescent organisms in freshwater habitats, and most scientists point to 2️⃣ reasons for that:
🔹freshwater habitats have not been around as long as marine habitats and, in terms of evolution, they do not yet have the biodiversity of oceans
🔹freshwater habitats are often murkier, and deepwater species use other adaptations to live in this environment
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What emotion can lead to better results when tackling tricky tasks?
😡 While often perceived as a negative emotion, anger can also be a powerful motivator for people to achieve challenging goals in their lives, according to a research.
😡 To better understand the role of anger in achieving goals, scientists conducted a series of experiments involving more than 1,000 participants and analyzed survey data from more than 1,400 respondents.
😡 Across all the experiments, anger improved people's ability to reach their goals compared with a neutral condition in a variety of challenging situations.
😡 These findings demonstrate that anger increases effort toward attaining a desired goal, frequently resulting in greater success.
✍️ Overall, the results suggest that:
✔️ emotions that are often considered negative (such as anger) can be useful and particularly effective in some situations
✔️ a mix of positive and negative emotions promotes well-being.
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How universal emotions are described?
During the 1970s, psychologist Paul Eckman (1934-) identified 6️⃣ basic emotions that he suggested were universally experienced in all human cultures.
Happiness
tends to be the one that people strive for the most and is often defined as a pleasant emotional state that is characterized by feelings of contentment, joy, gratification, satisfaction, and well-being. It is often expressed by smiling or speaking in an upbeat tone of voice and a relaxed stance. The realities of what actually contributes to happiness can be complex and highly individualized.
Sadness
is often defined as a transient emotional state characterized by feelings of disappointment, grief, hopelessness, disinterest, and dampened mood. It can be expressed by crying, dampened mood, lethargy, quietness, withdrawal from others.
Fear
is a powerful emotion that can also play an important role in survival. It can increase heart rate, cause racing thoughts, or trigger the fight-or-flight response. It can be a reaction to actual or perceived threats. Some people enjoy the adrenaline rush that accompanies fear in the form of watching scary movies, riding roller coasters, or skydiving. Some people may be more sensitive to fear and certain situations or objects may be more likely to trigger this emotion.
ℹ️ The fight-or-flight response, also known as the acute stress response, refers to the physiological reaction that occurs when in the presence of something mentally or physically terrifying. This response is triggered by the release of hormones that prepare your body to either stay and deal with a threat or to run away to safety.
Disgust
can be triggered by a physical experience, such as seeing or smelling rotting food, blood, or poor hygiene. Moral disgust may occur when someone sees another person doing something they find immoral or distasteful.
Anger
can be characterized by feelings of hostility, agitation, frustration, and antagonism towards others. It can be expressed with facial expressions like frowning, yelling, or violent behavior. Like fear, anger can play a part in your body's fight or flight response.
Surprise
is usually quite brief and is characterized by a physiological startle response following something unexpected. This type of emotion can be positive, negative, or neutral. Surprise is another type of emotion that can trigger the fight or flight response.
✍️ Eckman later added a number of other emotions to his list but suggested that unlike his original six emotions, not all of these could necessarily be encoded through facial expressions. Some of the emotions he later identified included:
Amusement
Contempt
Contentment
Embarrassment
Excitement
Guilt
Pride in achievement
Relief
Satisfaction
Shame
❗️ In everyday language, people often use the terms emotions, feelings, and moods interchangeably, but they actually mean different things.
📌 Emotions are reactions to stimuli, but feelings are what we experience as a result of emotions.
📌 An emotion is normally quite short-lived, but intense.
📌 Emotions are also likely to have a definite and identifiable cause.
📌 Feelings are influenced by our perception of the situation, which is why the same emotion can trigger different feelings among people experiencing it.
📌 A mood can be described as a temporary emotional state.
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How much does the human’s immune system weigh?
📌 An average individual’s immune system consists of approximately 1.8 trillion cells, a new research has found.
📌 In a 73-kilogram man in his 20s, those immune cells collectively weigh about 1.2 kilograms or 2.6 pounds – which is about the same as one pineapple, or six hamsters.
📌 A female adult weighing 60 kilograms would probably have around 1.5 trillion immune cells, adding to a total of 1 kilogram. A child aged 10 years would have slightly fewer again: 1 trillion immune cells, weighing 600 grams.
ℹ️ Lymphocytes make up 40% of the total number of immune cells and 15% of their mass. Similarly, neutrophils account for comparable proportions. Notably, macrophages constitute 10% of immune cells but contribute nearly 50% of the total cellular mass due to their large size.
✍️ This knowledge gives an integrative quantitative view of the immune system and facilitates the development of models.
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What are some key characteristics of different deserts?
🔴 Subtropical Deserts are the hottest of all deserts.
Temperature: Reaches above 50°C during the day, which decreases very sharply during the night, owing to low humidity.
Yearly rainfall: Quite scarce, as the weather could be so extreme that raindrops evaporate before reaching the ground. Inland areas of Sahara receive less than 1.5 cm rainfall, which is one of the driest places on the planet.
Soil type: Coarse-textured and rocky with no subsurface water.
Plants that grow here: Mainly shrubs and small trees which are adapted to prevent loss of moisture; examples include creosote bush, mesquite tree, yuccas, ocotillo, sotol, ephedras, and agaves.
Animals found here: Nocturnal, and mainly carnivorous, animals here hide during hot daytime hours, becoming active during the night-time when it gets colder. Examples include mammals, insects, reptiles, arachnids.
Examples of subtropical deserts: Sahara desert in Africa is the largest of all subtropical deserts. Some other deserts of this group include the Kalahari Desert of Southern Africa, and the Tanami Desert of Northern Australia.
🟡 Coastal Deserts are characterized by cold winters and relatively long and warm summers.
Temperature: Between 13-24°C during summer, with maximum range being about 35°C. During winter, it stays around 5°C or lower.
Annual rainfall: About 8-13 centimeters, which is more, compared to both the subtropical and coastal deserts.
Soil type: Fine-textured with a high content of salt and other nutrients.
Plants that grow here: Those growing here have roots that are close to the surface to absorb rainwater. Examples include saltbush, buckwheat bush, little leaf horsebrush, black sage, and Chrysothamnus.
Animals found here: Mammals, amphibians, birds, reptiles, and insects.
Examples of coastal deserts: The Atacama Desert in South America (driest place in the planet), the Namib Desert, and The Western Sahara desert of Africa.
🟣 Cold Winter/Semi-arid Deserts are characterized by long dry summer and mild, wet winters.
Temperature: Between 21-27°C in summer, which can go up to 38°C; evenings are cooler by about 10 degrees. During winter, the temperature ranges between 2-4°C, which can go down to 40°C.
Annual rainfall: Between 2-4 cm in average.
Soil type: Sandy, fine-textured with loose rock fragments and low salt content
Plants that grow here: Mainly, cactus, as well as creosote bush, bur sage, whitethorn, mesquite, lyceums, and jujube. The leaves of cacti are transformed into spines to reduce loss of water.
Animals found here: Mammals, insects, reptiles and birds. During day time, these animals hide in the shadows of shrubs or in the burrows to protect themselves from intense heat.
Examples of cold winter deserts: Gobi desert in Central Asia, Patagonian desert in Southern America.
⚪️ Polar Deserts are characterized by long cold winters and short warm summers. Winter witnesses relatively higher rainfall than summer.
Temperature: Ranges between 21-26°C (during summer), and between 2-4°C in winter.
Yearly rainfall: Between 15-26 cm in average
Soil type: Salty and contains silt. Soil is porous, where the alluvial fan is found.
Plants that grow here: Mostly algae, lichens, and some fungi. Short grasses, birches, willows, and mosses might grow in moist areas.
Animals found here: Mammals, birds, few amphibians, reptiles and insect species.
Examples of Polar deserts: The Antarctic, which covers 14.2 million square kilometers (5.5 million square miles), is the world’s largest polar desert and the world's largest desert.
The second-largest polar desert is the Arctic.
ℹ️ Deserts are arid ecosystems that receive fewer than 25 centimeters (10 inches) of precipitation a year.
ℹ️ Deserts cover about one-fifth of the total land area on earth.
ℹ️ Gobi desert can be also classified as a rain shadow and an inland desert.
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How many words for space explorers?
👨🚀👩🚀 Today, there a few terms defining space explorers/pilots, astronaut and cosmonaut being the most popular.
Cosmonaut
👨🚀🚀🌌 When the Soviet Union announced the first human’s space flight of Yuri Gagarin, the whole world got to know the word cosmonaut, which was used to differentiate him from American astronauts.
The term cosmonaut (космонавт in Russian) is derived from two Greek words: “kosmos,” meaning universe, and “nautes,” meaning sailor. A cosmonaut is therefore effectively an individual who sails the universe.
According to experts, in the 1930s this word was introduced by Ary Sternfeld (1905-1980), a Soviet space exploration pioneer of Jewish and Polish origin, who also invented the word cosmonautics.
Cosmonaut was first used in literature in a science fiction novel “The new Planet” by a Soviet Russian writer Victor Saparin (1905-1970).
Astronaut
👨🚀🚀🌠 The word astronaut is similar to cosmonaut and is in fact older. While both incorporate the word “nautes” for sailor, astronaut contains “astron,” meaning star. Thus, astronauts are known as star sailors.
It was the British writer Percy Greg (1837-1889) who coined the word in 1880. Inspired by the stories of the mythical Argonauts, in his novel Across the Zodiac: The Story of a Wrecked Record he named a spaceship the Astronaut. The novel introduces the concept of apergy, an anti-gravitational energy that powers the spacecraft. In the book, the Astronaut flies to Mars with a real astronaut on board.
👽 Another interesting fact is that the Greg's book contains what was probably the first alien language in any work of fiction. So it also provides the first the first translation from and into an alien language.
❗️ Astronaut and cosmonaut are job titles and achievements.
Taikonaut
👨🚀🚀🇨🇳 As China emerged as a significant economic and military power in Asia, it started its own space program. The Chinese space explorers are known as ‘Taikonauts’. ‘Taiko’ in Chinese means space and the literal meaning of the word ‘taikonaut’ is space sailor.
Vyomanaut
👨🚀🚀🇮🇳 India is another country with an impressive up-and-coming space program.
A person who travels in space for the Indian space program is called vyomanaut. The Greek word "nautes" for sailor is combined with the Sanskrit word for sky.
Spationaute
👨🚀🚀🇫🇷 France also sends people into space and chooses to use the French word spationaute for their title. This word is a French take on the Latin word “spatium” for space and the Greek “naut” for sailor.
ℹ️ The word astronautics was coined by Robert Esnault-Pelterie (1881-1957), a French aircraft designer and spaceflight theorist.
👏🌐 American or Russian, Astronaut or Cosmonaut, these brave man and women have been a key part in pushing the human race further into space. Many of the experiments they have conducted are contributing to learning more about space, our place in the universe and our future in the solar system.
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Why is Science and Technology Day celebrated on April 10?
🗓 👨🏻🔬🇦🇷 Since 1982, every April 10, the Day of Science and Technology is celebrated in honor of the Argentine scientist Bernardo Houssay (1887-1971) for his discoveries in Physiology and Medicine, particularly in the role of the pituitary gland in the regulation of the amount of sugar in the blood, through the metabolism of carbohydrates.
This date was established by Unesco in honor of the birth of the Argentine scientist born on April 10, 1887.
Bernardo Houssay was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1947, being the first Latin American to receive the Nobel Prize in Science.
Today, Houssay’s discoveries continue to be an example for researchers around the world to continue working on the advancement of science as a means to improve the quality of life of all human beings, since technology undoubtedly plays a fundamental role in all our societies.
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Is it possible that the Big Bang never happened?
There some alternatives to the Big Bang Theory.
☑️ The Steady State universe posits the continuous creation of matter throughout the universe to explain its apparent expansion. This type of universe would be infinite, with no beginning or end.
☑️ The Eternal Inflation theory says that after the Big Bang, the universe expanded rapidly during a brief period called inflation that never stopped. A vast complex of all universes that could have different physical laws is called the multiverse.
☑️ The Oscillating model of the universe involved an endless series of Big Bangs, followed by Big Crunches. The modern cyclic model involves colliding "branes" (a "membrane" within a higher-dimensional volume called the "bulk").
☑️ Implications found in quantum gravity and string theory suggest a universe may be a flat hologram projected onto the surface of a sphere, or a completely digital simulation running on a vast computer.
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How does a desert plant pull moisture from the air?
🔸 When it comes to eking out a living without much water, some desert plants can grow deep-reaching roots to get a drink from far underground.
🔸 But one dry-adapted plant turns to another source to gain moisture: the air.
🔸 Spindly shrubs called athel tamarisks (Tamarix aphylla) draw salty water from the soil and excrete the salt from their leaves ⬆️. Then, at night, these crystals allow them to collect water from the air.
🔸 Researchers found that this salt contained at least ten different materials, which together allowed it to pull water from the air at low humidities. One of these components was lithium sulfate, which could gather water at the lowest humidities.
🔸 These natural salts are likely to be environmentally safe, and identifying them could help engineers improve practices for pulling moisture from the air in water-strapped regions.
ℹ️ This finding is considered one of the most promising discoveries in 2023.
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What are the functions of each part of a plant?
Here are the key functions of each part of a plant.
🟤 Roots
☑️ Absorbing water and minerals from the soil
☑️ Storing food for future use
☑️ Producing plant growth hormones
☑️ Anchoring the plant firmly to the soil and providing support
☑️ Developing new plants from the roots of the old plant (vegetative reproduction)
🟢 Stems
✔️ Providing strength and support to buds, flowers, leaves, and fruits
✔️ Storing food mainly in the form of starch
✔️ Transporting food, water, and minerals to all parts of the plant body
✔️ Developing new plants from the stem of the old plant (vegetative reproduction)
🍃 Leaves
✅ Making food for the plant with the help of sunlight, carbon dioxide, and water through photosynthesis
✅ Helping in reproduction such as in Bryophyllum, a group of sprout leaf plants
✅ Helping in evaporation from the aerial parts of the plant by transpiration
Apart from these main functions, leaves of some plants are modified to form tendrils, that help in climbing (e.g., pea plant) or spines, helping in protection (e.g., cactus). Some leaves may turn fleshy to store food (e.g., onion plant).
🌺 Flowers
🔺 Helping in the sexual reproduction of plants
🔺 Stimulating pollination in plants and fertilization of the ovule
ℹ️🌸 A flower contains 4️⃣ main parts:
a) Sepals: Green parts of a flower found below the petals that protect flower buds from injury.
b) Petals: Colorful parts of a flower found above the sepals that help in pollination.
c) Stamens: Consists of an anther and a filament. They are the male reproductive part of a plant producing male sex cells or spermatia.
d) Carpel: Consists of stigma, style, and ovary. They are the female reproductive part of a plant producing female sex cells or ovules.
🥔🍓🥦 Fruits
🔸 Protecting the growing seeds
🔸 Helping in the dispersal of seeds and thus in plant reproduction
❗️ Thus although each part of a plant has its specific functions, they all work in combination to provide distinct advantages in plant growth and survival.
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What could play a unique role for the emergence of life on Earth?
🌋⚡️A new study says that lightning strikes hitting volcanic eruptions ⬆️ could play a crucial role in producing high levels of nitrogen, thereby facilitating the birth of the earliest life forms.
Nitrogen, a fundamental element for life on Earth, when combined with lightning, reacts with oxygen to form nitrogen oxide, which then gets released into the soil, creating a fertile ground for life to emerge and thrive.
The researchers analyzed samples from ancient volcanic sites and found that the substantial amounts of nitrates found were of atmospheric origin, suggesting that these essential life-giving elements were delivered by lightning, not derived from the volcanic eruptions themselves.
The phenomenon of volcanic lightning, which typically occurs at the eruption’s onset, was observed in two key areas: near the ground within ash clouds and higher up in the plume of volcanic smoke that reaches the stratosphere.
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What is the longest and the heaviest self-propelled ship in history?
🚢 The supertanker TT Seawise Giant (also known as Oppama, Happy Giant, Jahre Viking, Knock Nevis, and Mont) is the longest and the heaviest self-propelled ship in history ⬆️.
🚢 Built in 1979 at the Oppama shipyard in Japan, it was originally delivered as the Happy Giant oil tanker.
🚢 After undergoing an extensive jumboization process in 1988-1989 in Hong Kong, the ship had
📍a capacity of 564,763 tons deadweight (DWT)
📍a length overall of 458.45 m (1,504.1 ft), longer than the height of many of the world's tallest buildings and 100 meters longer than the longest active cruise ship currently
📍a draft of 24.611 m (80.74 ft)
📍46 tanks
📍31,541 m2 (339,500 sq ft) of deck space
📍a rudder of 230 tons
📍 a propeller of 50 tons.
🚢 When fully loaded, her 25 meter/81 foot draft was too deep for the ship to safely navigate the relatively shallow waters.
The vessel was scrapped in 2010.
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