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English| Silent Alphabets in English Language| Curio Facts

2020-09-30T21:55:00.002+05:00

The English language is famous for having rules that don't make sense, and the rules of spelling and pronunciation are a big reason. Some letters are pronounced, some aren't, and there's no real system for figuring out when to pronounce and when not to. In fact, more than half of the letters in our alphabet (B, D, E, G, H, K, L, M, N, O, P, R, S, T, W, X, and Z) are silent in some words. And that's a conservative estimate.

Silent letters confuse English language learners of all ages, and native speakers can't even explain why they're there. It's time that we get to the bottom of this spelling and pronunciation mystery.

The English language has been written down for more than a thousand years, which means it's had plenty of time to borrow and twist around words from other languages. For example, consider Greek words like "psychology" and Japanese words like "tsunami." Because English doesn't have the Greek letter ψ (psi) or the Japanese character 津 (tsu), we have to improvise with our own alphabet and spell them out the best we can. But we don't generally use "ps" or "ts" sounds to start words in English, so instead, many people skip pronouncing them.

Other words are cognates, or linguistic relatives, of words from other languages. Knight, with its silent "k" and silent "gh," is related to the German and Dutch word "knecht," which is pronounced so fully that it almost sounds like "connect." When in doubt, a good dictionary or etymology reference can help you figure out which words have roots in German, Latin, Greek, or Japanese, which can tell you which letters might be silent.

"E" silent:

Here's something that will impress at dinner parties: Certain letters in English are "diacritic," which means they change the pronunciation of other letters even though they aren't supposed to be pronounced themselves. Think about the difference between "fat" and "fate" or "hat" and "hate" or "don" and "done." The "e" on these words is silent, but it does impact both pronunciation and meaning.

Now (think about the "n" in "señor" or the "e" in "cliché"). In English, we just use silent letters to change pronunciation and meaning.

Wild card words:

But some spellings? They were just made up. During the Renaissance, some so-called "English reformers" decided to change the spellings of some words as a nod to their fancy Latin origins. For example, the word "debt" comes from the Latin word "debitum," but the English version didn't have that silent "b" until the reformers got ahold of it. Same goes for the silent "s" in "island," since the Latin word for island is "insula." But that was just wishful thinking; "island" actually comes from the Old English "iegland." Oops!

Wish as we might, there's no simple rule to explain silent letters in the English language. It can be fun, however, to go down a Wikipedia rabbit hole and learn all the linguistic tidbits behind our strange pronunciations. We've borrowed a little here and adopted a little there, and now we have a rich tapestry of language with odd pronunciations. English learners, we're sorry.

Deforestation| Deforestation in Pakistan| Curio Facts

2020-09-28T00:13:00.005+05:00

Deforestation is the cutting out trees from the land. It is the most dangerous act as most countries in the world like Haiti are facing some serious problems which are directly related to the forestation or trees involving climate change, global warming, water crisis, fog and dust. We can reduce the risk of these all problem by just doing one thing that is “stop deforestation and start planting more trees”

PAKISTAN is the one the countries which are facing these problem(climate change, water shortage) and the reason is same “deforestation”. The universal reliable standard for a country is 20 to 25 %. A country must have forest on at least 20% of its land and unfortunately Pakistan has only 5% land cover with forest that is insufficient.

Today almost all the necessities of life are in one way or the other connected with the forest wealth .Along with glorifying the beauty of nature trees play an important role in sustaining the environment. E.g. they absorb dust, stop land erosion, make land more fertile, cause more rain,(especially in arid region) reduce intensity of the storms, and maintain temperature of the atmosphere.

Besides these natural benefits trees also have a huge impact on the economy of the country they provide timber, fire-wood, forage and medicinal plants. These help in conservation of soil fertility and thus enhance its productivity. They also provide the vital coverage to the country's water sheds and regulate supply of water. They also sustain the country's wild life and provide recreational facilities. These materials support and sustain such important industries as paper, news prints, match, plywood, hardboard, pulp rayon, sports goods and a host of cottage industries.

But there is again a bad news for us that our annual requirement of wood is about 22 million cubic feet of timber and we hardly produce 11 million cubic feet and the balance has to be imported in foreign exchange.

It is estimated that with an increase of 50,000 acres per year in future afforestation program, it will required about 100 years to raise the present meager forest area by about another 2.5 percent.

Conditions have reached this bad because not a single government of the previous took any step on the afforestation not even on stopping deforestation. Now the good news is the PTI government had planted more than billion trees in KPK in last five years and now that PTI has rule in federal and they are focusing on planting trees on the whole country and also there are some NGOs planting trees voluntarily all over the country.

Now after reading this article its our responsibility plant atleast four trees at your home, street, anywhere you want to sustain the future of our kids.

Alpha, bravo charlie| How did we come up with these names| Curio Facts

2020-09-24T22:44:00.001+05:00

Alpha, bravo charlie. How did we come up with these names???

We've all used a phonetic alphabet, even if we didn't realize it at the time. Whether you were on the phone with the dentist's office or the cable company, you've probably used a version of one to make sure your name is spelled correctly. "It's Sam," you shout into the receiver. "S as in sad, A as in Adam, M as in mouse." Maybe you just pluck words from the sky — anything to prevent 'Sam' from becoming 'Fan' or 'Ham' for the umpteenth time.

For the servicemen and women who first used spelling alphabets back in the early 1900s, however, the difference between "M as in metro" and "C as in coca" was a life or death distinction.Imagine you're on the radio, trying to warn soldiers of a mustard gas attack. You'd want to make sure they heard "mustard," not "custard."

R is as Roma or Roger or Romeo:

Just so we're clear, there's an official version of the NATO alphabet, which is used all around the world. "S as in salamander" is not standard, and neither are most of the words you probably use when making an appointment to you doctor. You've got the time to think about words that start with "S" when scheduling your annual cleaning, but when lives are on the line, you want everybody using one go-to word for each letter in the alphabet.

According to NATO — the North Atlantic Treaty Organization — the phonetic alphabet we use today became official in 1956. It's now the universal phonetic alphabet, and this is how it goes:

Alfa, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo, Foxtrot, Golf, Hotel, India, Juliett, Kilo, Lima, Mike, November, Oscar, Papa, Quebec, Romeo, Sierra, Tango, Uniform, Victor, Whiskey, X-Ray, Yankee, Zulu

Before that, though, the phonetic alphabet went through a few practice runs. In 1927, the International Telegraph Union (ITU) created a spelling alphabet for communication via telegraph. Through the start of WWII, most commercial airlines used these ITU code words to communicate. That alphabet featured names of cities, so to spell 'Sam,' you'd say, "Santiago, Amsterdam, Madagascar."

The ITU alphabet wasn't standard in the rest of the English-speaking world, however. During World War I, the British Royal Navy used a spelling alphabet that began "Apples, Butter, Charlie" while infantrymen said "Ack, Beer, Charlie" instead.

The many spelling alphabets became complicated when the United States joined the war. Together, the Allied Forces created a new spelling alphabet called "Able, Baker." Now, to spell 'Sam,' you'd say, "Sugar, Able, Mike." Easy enough, but confusion persisted. Spanish and French speakers still had a problem recognizing these words. As a fix, in 1951, the International Air Transport Association developed a spelling alphabet that more closely resembles the one we now use.

Lots of other spelling alphabets have existed, but those are the main English-speaking ones.

What a journey these letters have been on!

Some bits of NATO alphabet shorthand could be fun to use in text speak. Who wouldn't want to type "Bravo Zulu" as code for 'good job' or "Charlie Mike" for 'keep moving forward?' But some linguists and phone-users today think it's time to either retire or update the official NATO alphabet. Dan Nosowitz of "Atlas Obscura" noted recently that the NATO alphabet is confusing, and no one actually memorizes it. That's not because it's no longer needed — Nosowitz argues that voice quality on phone calls has decreased with the spread of cell phones, and we might actually benefit from a standardized spelling alphabet. It's just that the one we have now is really flawed.

But Nosowitz and the scientists he talked to don't have a good solution. It's hard to find words that speakers of all languages can pronounce and recognize, and it's even harder to convince people to memorize the order of 26 words and have them on the tip of the tongue. So it seems we're stuck with the hodge-podge we have. Fingers crossed that the dentist will understand you.

Failure| Failure Could Be The Reason Of Your Success| Curio Facts

2020-09-21T22:56:00.000+05:00

Your failure could be your success next time:

Today I am going to tell you the most wierd thing you will ever hear and what's that, its how remembering your past will help you to get succeed.

Think about the last time when you came up short in something or you lost someone you cared about, no don't tell me how it went wrong and what happened I know it's not your fault. Just realize for a second what amount of pain you felt that moment, what was you thinking when you were about to see your whole world upside down. Realizing that pain is like feeling it again with the same intensity. Right? And yet exposure to those feelings might be the secret staving off the next failure.

Rigged Test:

Everybody knows how it feels when you lose someone or you get failed in life. And nobody wants to return back to that feeling. But according to a new study from Ohio State University, lingering in that state of mind might be the key to avoiding it in the future. They performed an experiment in which candidates were tasked with online shopping of Kitchen blender with specific characteristics. If they could find the blender with every features scientist were asking for, they would win a cash prize. Before they found out half of the candidates were asked to write their feelings about win or loss and the other half were asked to write down their thought about the task. But it was all a set-up. No matter how cheap the subjects' blenders, the scientists always "found" another one costing $3.27 less. Everybody loses! In the final step of the experiment, the subjects were asked to try one more task.

To remind them of the deal-hunting task they had so recently failed, half of the subjects were tasked with finding the best deal on textbooks (as a control, the other half faced the unrelated task of picking out a book for a friend). Apparently, the sting of an emotional memory had an effect. The subjects who focused on their emotions after their previous failure ended up spending 25 percent more time on average looking for low-priced textbooks than those who only reflected on their thoughts.

What does it all show?

According to researchers it shows its important not only to dwel to that feeling intellectually but also returning back to that feeling emotionally. In other words, all of the participants were given the chance to reflect on their failures, but only those who were forced to really feel their feelings actually demonstrated a renewed commitment to not fail this time.

Dwelling only on their thoughts is more likely to make people rationalize why mistakes weren't their fault, and that probably has something to do with that disparity.

The benefits of failure are well-documented: Many scientific discoveries have been made only because an experiment "failed" and that is considered as failure because it didn't produce the expected results. And as psychology researcher Jon Jachimowicz notes in the Huffington Post, failure is a necessary step on the road to self-improvement and letting a fear of failure stop you will only result in fewer successes.

Most of us who fail in relationship stay scared of getting into a new relationship for the rest of our lives but I think we should step forward and go for the new relationships. This time you won't get failed because you know what went wrong last time, what did you do to screw it up.

Glaciers| Okjokull glacier| Curio Facts

2020-09-19T23:38:00.000+05:00

Okjokull glacier

OK is the shield volcano in Iceland situated in the west of the ice land. The volcano was once topped by the glacier name OKjokull but now disappeared completely from its place.

Climate change is the biggest problem the planet earth is facing recently and the cause is we humans. Burning of fossil fuels, smoke releases more gasses in the atmosphere which traps the sunlight in the atmosphere and results the rise in temperature of the earth. This rise of the temperature is causing the melting of the giant glaciers including Antarctica (a whole continent).

The okjokull glacier of the Iceland is one of the victims of the climate change. In 1890 the area of the volcano OK which was covered by the ice was 16 square km but in 2012 it remained only 0.7 square km. According to a 2017 report from the University of Iceland the island loses about 11 billion tones of ice per year.

100 officials of Iceland held funeral for the lost glacier recently on august 2019 showing their wariness that how badly the climate change can affect their country.

The ceremony included the unveiling of a plaque honoring the melted glacier, which is now called just “Ok,” minus the Icelandic word for glacier, according to the Associated Press.

The funeral was a long time coming: Icelandic geologist Oddur Sigurðsson predicted the glacier extinction about a decade ago.

Organizers described the plaque as “a letter to the future” that warns all glaciers could follow Okjokull to extinction within the next 200 years, according to Sky News.

The words on the plaque read, “This monument is to acknowledge that we know what is happening and what needs to be done. Only you know if we did it.”

The plaque also includes the amount of carbon dioxide measured in the atmosphere last May, a record-breaking 415 ppm CO2.

The two NASA photos attached are of the OKjokull glacier in different times, one taken in 1986 (left) and the other in August of this year (right), show how the glacier has become a mere ghost of its former self

Pakistan| Worst Economic Condition of Pakistan in 2019| Curio Facts

2020-09-18T23:29:00.004+05:00

One of the reasons Pakistan is in such poor financial state and has to go around with a begging bowl is that major projects are not completed under the original scheduled timeline. There are many reasons for this, which include change of government, lack of funding and continuity. Work started on Khanpur Dam in 1965; the dam was completed 18 years later in 1983 but it took another 11 years before water from Khanpur Dam could be supplied to Rawalpindi in Islamabad.

Work on the Lowari Tunnel was started in 1975 by Mr Bhutto but due to lack of funding the work was stopped. It is said that since Bhutto had started the project Gen Zia did not want to continue with the project. After an over 40 year delay it was finally completed in 2017, much to the relief for the people of Chitral. The foundation stone for the M-1 Motorway was laid in 1992.

Work was started by a Turkish company in 1999 but were “expelled from the site” in 2001 by the then Chairman NHA due to slow place of work. The Turkish company went for arbitration in an international court and won the case.

The M-1 Motorway Project was finally completed in 2008, whereas the Turkish company would have completed the project by 2002 if they had not been expelled. Work on the New Islamabad Airport started in 2006 and should have been completed by 2012-13. Instead it was opened in May 2018, five years late and at double the original cost.

In all these cases public money was wasted and benefits that were to accrue to the people did not as the projects were delayed. In national projects where, besides taxpayers’ money, foreign loans are taken to build these projects it is imperative that the completion dates are followed strictly. One of the reasons for the huge foreign debt is the projects were not paying back in time.

This leads me to the Reko Diq copper and gold mine project. Initial discussions were held in 1993. Even 26 years later the nation has not been able to get any benefit from its national resource at Reko Diq. Instead we are stuck with a fine of $6 billion which is growing with every passing day as we have to pay interest on the fine.

It is hoped that work at the mine is resumed without delay to reduce financial loss to the people of Pakistan.

Appendix Reasons | Hows Actually To b in you | Curio Facts

2020-09-16T22:44:00.000+05:00

Your appendix actually has a reason to be in you.

I am not here to support any theory of evolution, you know everyone has his own point of view. But according to Darwin, humans have been evolving for millions of years, and as a result, we have a few spare parts. Some people have a tiny hole in front of their ears, and we all still have the same muscles monkeys use to move their ears around — except ours don't do anything. The appendix has long been at the top of that list of obsolete traits, but new research from Midwestern University says your appendix probably has a function after all.

When most people think of evolution, they imagine that famous "monkey to man" image, where an organism evolves to be more complex as time goes on. But that's not always the case, or even the rule. Animals are just as likely to lose features through evolution as they are to gain them.

Take the whale, for example. Its ancestors grew legs and emerged from the water, only to return and lose them again. But some traits keep coming back: the eye, wings, and legs, for example (unless you're a lizard—over and over, different lizards have lost their limbs to become more snake-like). The fact that those features evolved multiple times tells scientists that they're pretty useful,

evolutionarily speaking. When an organism loses a trait for it never to be seen again, that suggests that it didn't provide much of a benefit. That's the approach Midwestern University researchers took for the 2017 study they published in the French scientific journal Comptes Rendus Palevol. They examined the evolution of 533 mammal species over 11 million years to find points where the appendix had emerged as a new trait or disappeared entirely. To support the common belief that the tiny organ is just a vestigial feature with no real benefit, the researchers would expect to see it evolve only a handful of times and disappear pretty regularly. But that's not what they found. Instead, the appendix appears to have evolved between 29 and 41 times, but only disappeared 12 times. It's clear that the appendix serves some purpose.

How do i live without you?

The leading theory about the appendix is that it supports the immune system. The study backs this up: Where they found an appendix, they also found lymph tissue, which is an essential part of the immune system and can aid in the growth of healthy gut bacteria. Other studies have shown that people without an appendix are more likely to suffer from bacterial infections than people with theirs intact.

Of course, that mysterious organ does its fair share of damage, too. A quarter-million people come down with the painful and sometimes life-threatening condition of appendicitis every year, and the standard treatment is to remove the appendix completely. Most people live a long, healthy life after an appendectomy, however, which could mean that other parts of the immune system pick up the pace to make up for its absence.

Global Warming | Earth’s Atmosphere | Curio facts

2020-09-15T23:32:00.000+05:00

Global warming is the rise in the average temperature of the earth’s atmosphere. The earth’s atmosphere always acts as a greenhouse to capture the sun’ and then this bounce back into the atmosphere at night time but our atmosphere contains carbon dioxide, methane, and other gases that trapped that energy and restrict it from going back into the space. Due to this process earth’s temperature is rising and that is not good for planet earth as it is destroying natural water bodies on the globe. Curio facts

One of the largest known victims of the global warming is Antarctica.

Melting of ice in Antarctica tripled in last 5 years and that is increasing sea level.

The accelerating ice loss adds half a foot to the sea level rise that was already expected in this century, increasing the flooding risks for coastal communities.

Between 1992, when detailed satellite measurements started, and 2012, Antarctica lost about 76 billion tons of ice per year. But since 2012, that rate has tripled to about 219 billion tons of ice loss per year.

Ice Regrew in Past, But Took Thousands of Years

Earth is dynamic it continuously changes but rate of happening of the processes is different in different regimes same goes with global warming This is not the first time the global warming happening Some studies found a surprising pattern of ice sheet retreat and advance in West Antarctica during the past 10,000 years.

As the heavy ice melted rapidly at the end of the last ice age, the land beneath rebounded. The mountains grew higher, colder and snowier, and underwater mountains offshore also rose up, creating new anchor points for floating shelves that blocked the glaciers flowing from land and enabled them to build up temporarily again, even during the post-ice age warm-up.

That could happen again, but not fast enough to help coastal communities facing the threat of sea level rise in the coming decades.

Ancient Tales for modern tests| Curio Facts

2020-09-14T22:11:00.001+05:00

What do kids and crows have in common?

Every child is familiar with Aesop's Fables for their lessons on morality. It turns out that the ancient tales aren't just good life advice they're also handy cognitive tests. Scientists have used one particular fable over and over to see if animals have a sense of cause and effect. Some pass with flying colors, but others, not so much.

Ancient Tales for modern tests:

If you're not familiar, Aesop's Fables are a collection of morality tales - 725 of them, to be exact — dating back to at least ancient Greece. In each one, an animal faces a human-like situation where its decisions inevitably teach some practical lesson about life.

In "The Crow and the Pitcher," a crow is about to die from thirst when it happens upon a pitcher used to pour water. It dunks its beak into the pitcher and found that there was hardly any water in it. The little water that was there was too far down inside the vessel for the crow to reach it. Suddenly, the crow has a stroke of genius and drops a small pebble into the pitcher. Then another and another. It drops so many pebbles that eventually the water level is high enough to reach its beak, and the crow finally quenches its thirst. The moral of the story? Little by little does the trick.

Scientists love this fable because it's a great illustration of cause and effect.

Rook, Check mate:

It's probably not surprising that the first animal scientists thought to try this test on was a crow. Well, a rook, to be precise, which is a bird in the same family as crows.

Around 2009, University of London comparative psychologists Nathan Emery and Christopher Bird set out to determine if these birds could actually achieve what Aesop's crow did. They gave each of four rooks a clear plastic tube that had a worm floating near the bottom, next to a pile of stones. The amount of water and the sizes of the stones varied among the birds. Two solved the problem on their first try, two others gave up before trying again, but all eventually were able to drop enough stones in the tube to get the worm.

Since then, scientists have used this test in myriad ways. They tested young children (only children aged 5 and older performed as well as the birds). They tested a different species of crow (they passed easily). They tried using objects of different sizes and densities, tubes of different volumes. Over and over, members of the crow family proved that they could pass this essential test of cause and effect.

In 2017, University of Wyoming researchers decided to use another wily animal: the raccoon. They didn't quite measure up to the crows, but the researchers thought that wasn't necessarily a sign they weren't as intelligent. Only two of seven raccoons figured out that they could pick up stones and drop them in the water to get a treat. A third, however, did something that shows a different kind of intelligence. "During final trials, Raccoon 22 innovated a unique solution by gripping the inner rim of the apparatus with her forepaws and, while rocking her body back and forth, overturned the entire apparatus and retrieved the reward," the researchers wrote. Raccoon 22 is our spirit animal

Kitchen Sponge| How often you should change it| Curio Facts

2020-09-12T22:15:00.002+05:00

How old is that sponge you're using to clean your dishes, to wipe down your counters and to sop up spilled messes

Boy, it truly is an all-purpose tool, isn't it?

If you can't remember, it's probably time to toss it and use a new one. That's because, according to the first comprehensive study on the topic, your kitchen sponge is disgusting. And the only way to fix that is by throwing it out and start with the fresh one

Can you smell what your sponge is cooking?

For a study published in the Nature journal Scientific Reports, researchers led by Markus Egert of Furtwangen University in Germany sequenced the microbial DNA in 14 used kitchen sponges to figure out exactly what kind of bacterial situation they had on their hands. They also tagged breeding microbes with fluorescent markers so they could watch them using special imaging techniques.

They hit the motherlode: Out of more than 223,000 DNA sequences, the sponges came back with 362 different types of bacteria. In fact, they found that a single cubic centimeter could be packed with more than 5x10 raise power 10 bacteria.

Most of the bacteria weren't harmful. The samples were dominated by the bacteria Moraxellaceae, which is found all over human skin and kitchens. It's responsible for the sour smell of laundry

But some of the bacteria were harmful. Five of the 10 bacteria most commonly found in the sponges were potential pathogens. Even worse, those nastier bacteria were found in higher percentages in sponges that had been regularly sanitized. That makes sense when you think about it: If popping a sponge in the dishwasher or microwave kills 99 percent of the bacteria festering within it, that remaining 1 percent is by definition the toughest bacteria on the sponge — and now it's free to take over.

So now that you're thoroughly grossed out by that moist little rectangle moldering by the sink, what do you do about it?

The obvious but the difficult option is to stop using sponges altogether.

We suggest a regular replacement of kitchen sponges. For example, on a weekly basis. Next time you find yourself giving a sponge the sniff test, remember the old adage: When in doubt, throw it out

Appendix| A doctor had to remove his own appendix| Curio Facts

2020-09-11T22:43:00.003+05:00

Picture this: You are 27 years old and on an expedition in Antarctic to build a soviet base in early 1960’s and suddenly you feel stabbing, nausea causing pain in right side of your midsection. You know for sure it’s a sign of acute appendicitis. And the good news is you are a doctor. Wait, you are the only doctor and the ship which is supposed to take you back home isn’t going to return soon. That’s a terrible and horrifying news right?

Let me tell you the nightmare scenario you just pictured was the reality for a Russian surgeon Leonid Rogozov while he was on the sixth Antarctic expedition to build a base at Schirmacher Osis. He was in life and death situation and he realized that the only person who could perform the surgery was himself. His son Vladislav told the story to BBC in an interview that he had to open his own abdomen to take his intestines out. He didn’t know at that time if it was possible for a human to do that. Even beyond the considerable personal costs he had to think there were also political risks. The surgeon had to get approval from authorities to perform surgery.

How did it go?

Rogozov assigned different tasks to his colleagues. They handed him instruments, held up mirror and made sure no one else get fainted. Vladislav noted that Dr was ready for every outcome. Rogosov even administered his own local anesthetic and performed his entire two hour surgery without losing his consciousness. He finally found the source of his pain. He wrote in his diary “Finally here it is, the cursed appendage! With horror I noticed the dark stain at its base. That means just a day longer it would have burst. But, it didn’t. “

What a courageous man he was.

Finally his self-surgery was a success. According to BBC he returned home and his unfortunate medical issue became the fodder for Soviet propaganda. Rogonov was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor and was even compared to the first man in the space, Yuri Gagarin.

But you know what the most impressive part of the story is he went to work just a week later..

Teeth cleaning in old days| Dental Hygiene| Curio Facts

2020-09-10T22:25:00.000+05:00

How people use to clean there teeth in old days?

Dental hygiene has come a long way since the days of wine-soaked toothpicks and the urine mouthwash once thought to disinfect mouths and whiten teeth.

Some of the earliest tooth-cleaning artifacts archaeologists have found are ancient toothpicks, dental tools, and written tooth care descriptions dating back more than 2,500 years. Famous Greek doctor Hippocrates was one of the first to recommend cleaning teeth with what was basically a dry toothpaste, called a dentifrice powder.

Ancient Chinese and Egyptian texts advised cleaning teeth and removing decay to help maintain health. Some of the early techniques in these cultures included chewing on bark or sticks with frayed ends, feathers, fish bones, and porcupine quills. They used materials like silver, jade, and gold to repair or decorate their teeth

People in the Arabian Peninsula, North Africa, and the Indian subcontinent traditionally cleaned their teeth with chew sticks made from the Salvadora persica tree. They're called miswak. Europeans cleaned their teeth with rags rolled in salt or soot.

Believe it or not, in the early 1700s a French doctor named Pierre Fauchard told people not to brush. And he's considered the father of modern dentistry! Instead, he encouraged cleaning teeth with a toothpick or sponge soaked in water or brandy.

In the late 1700s, Englishman William Addis was the first to sell toothbrushes on a large scale. He got the idea after making a toothbrush from bone and animal bristles while in prison.

Before modern-day toothpaste was created, pharmacists mixed and sold tooth cream or powder. Early tooth powders were made from something abrasive, like talc or crushed seashells, mixed with essential oils, such as eucalyptus or camphor, thought to fight germs. Their flavors came from oils of cinnamon, clove, rose or peppermint. Many contained other chemicals such as ammonia, chlorophyll, and penicillin. These ingredients fight the acid-producing bacteria that can cause tooth decay and bad breath.

By the 1900s, children of immigrants to the U.S. were taught oral hygiene as a way to help "Americanize" them and their families. Factories examined and cleaned their workers' teeth to keep them from missing work due to toothaches.

Daily tooth brushing became more common thanks to World War II, when the American army required soldiers to brush their teeth as part of their daily hygiene practices. The first nylon toothbrush was made in 1938, followed by the electric toothbrush in the 1960s.

Nowadays, there are dozens of kinds of tools and potions to help keep your mouth healthy. As a professor of dental hygiene, I believe it's most important to clean your mouth daily.

Dinosaurs| Flying Reptile equal in size to a Giraffe| Curio Fatcs

2020-09-07T20:42:00.000+05:00

Think about the biggest flying animal you've ever seen. Let's see — geese are pretty big, and despite their reputation, swans can get to be terrifyingly huge. And albatrosses — aren't those massive? Of course, there are always ostriches, but those can't fly.

But Quetzalcoatlus could. And that thing was as tall as a giraffe.

During the late Cretaceous era, in the waning years of the dinosaurs' reign over the planet, a giant reptile soared through the sky with a wingspan as long as a city bus. Quetzalcoatlus needed all that surface area to stay aloft because it might have weighed about 550 pounds (249 kilograms) — more than a mountain gorilla, and last we checked, gorillas don't fly. On the ground, Quetzalcoatlus would walk on four "legs," standing approximately 10 feet (3 meters) at the shoulder with a long, stiff neck topped by a skull measuring another 10 feet. In short, these things cut an impressive figure.

But how does something like this live? It's difficult to imagine.

Did they nest in trees and cliffs like modern birds, or roam the plains like giraffes when they weren't flying?

Or maybe they didn't spend much time on the ground at all, opting instead for a lifetime of transoceanic flights like the albatross

The sad fact is, not a lot remains of these delicately-boned behemoths, so their lifestyle is likely to remain a mystery for the foreseeable future. At least we can be sure that they flew, right?

Flier flier, pants on fire

Yes, we were heartbroken to learn that there are, in fact, some paleontologists who think that Quetzalcoatlus was just too heavy to get off the ground. Its ancestors might have flown, goes this line of thinking, but like the ostrich, this former flier traded the skies for sheer bulk. But don't think this argument is over just yet. Other estimates place the creature at a substantially lighter weight — even as low as about 154 pounds (70 kg) — which would be plenty small enough to be carried by those giant wings. After all, modern flightless birds like emus and penguins don't have much in the way of wings, but Quetzalcoatlus had no such deficiency. Since they survived for more than 130 million years with the same massive wingspan, they were probably using it for something.

Earth's Magnetic North Pole Keeps Moving Towards Siberia at a Mysteriously Fast Pace| Curio Facts

2020-09-06T23:28:00.004+05:00

Our planet is restless, and its poles are wandering. Of course, the geographic north pole is in the same place it always was, but its magnetic counterpart – indicated by the N on any compass – is roaming towards Siberia at record-breaking speeds that scientists don't fully comprehend.

It's worth stating that while the pace is remarkable, the movement itself isn't. The magnetic north pole is never truly stationary, owing to fluctuations in the flow of molten iron within the core of our planet, which affect how Earth's magnetic field behaves.

"Since its first formal discovery in 1831, the north magnetic pole has travelled around 1,400 miles (2,250 km)," the NOAA's National Centres for Environmental Information (NCEI) explains on its we bsite

"This wandering has been generally quite slow, allowing scientists to keep track of its position fairly easily."

That slow wander has quickened of late. In recent decades, the magnetic north pole accelerated to an average speed of 55 kilometres (34 miles) per year.

The most recent data suggest its movement towards Russia may have slowed down to about 40 kilometres (25 miles) annually, but even so, compared to theoretical measurements going back hundreds of years, this is a phenomenon scientists have never witnessed before.

"The movement since the 1990s is much faster than at any time for at least four centuries," geomagnetic specialist Ciaran Beggan from the British Geological Survey (BGS) told FT.

"We really don't know much about the changes in the core that's driving it."

While researchers can't fully explain the core fluctuations affecting the north pole's extreme restlessness, they can map Earth's magnetic field and calculate its rate of change over time, which helps us to predict how it may be distributed in the future.

A system is being developed called the World Magnetic Model (WMM), a representation of the field that powers everything from navigational tools like GPS to mapping services and consumer compass apps, not to mention systems used by NASA, the FAA, and the military, among other institutions.

Despite is importance, the WMM's powers of foresight – like the magnetic north pole itself – are not set in stone, and the readings need to be updated every five years to keep the model accurate.

"Provided that suitable satellite magnetic observations are available, the prediction of the WMM is highly accurate on its release date and then subsequently deteriorates towards the end of the five-year epoch, when it has to be updated with revised values of the model coefficients," the NCEI explains.

That's the point we're up to now, with the bodies that maintain the WMM – the NCEI and the BGS – having finally updated the model last week.

The refresh actually comes a whole year ahead of schedule due to the unusual speed with which the magnetic north pole has been drifting, meaning that the WMM's predictions have deteriorated faster than usual this cycle, despite the recent slowdown.

While the speed fluctuations seem crazy, it's actually a more moderate range of pole movement than has happened in Earth's history: when the magnetic poles move far enough out of position, they can actually flip, something that happens every few hundreds of thousands of years.

There's no telling for sure when that might happen next, but if and when it does happens, it could have serious implications for humanity.

In the meantime, the new WMM data is good until 2025, and rest assured, no imminent flipping is predicted for now.

Jupiter| NASA Solar System Exploration Discovery| Curio Facts

2020-09-05T22:20:00.001+05:00

Jupiter was smacked by baby planet in its early history.

Turns out Earth isn't the only planet that got smacked by a big object . New measurements suggest that a long ago, a small world slammed into mighty Jupiter.

Our solar system was a shooting gallery 4.5 billion years ago, and new evidence from Jupiter suggests that it suffered a huge blow early in its history.

The giant of the solar system got a big shock, a new study says, when Jupiter slammed head-on into another planet that was still forming. The study was led by Shang-Fei Liu, a former postdoctoral researcher at Rice. What's even stranger is we can still see evidence of that possible collision from spacecraft today. The Juno spacecraft — a fairly recent visitor from NASA — found that the core of Jupiter is larger and less dense than what mathematical calculations suggest.

"This is puzzling," said study co-author Andrea Isela, an astronomer at Rice University, in a statement. "It suggests that something happened that stirred up the core, and that's where the giant impact comes into play."

While it sounds improbable, we have evidence suggesting something similar also happened elsewhere in the solar system. In fact, it happened to Earth. The leading theory for how our moon formed suggests that a Mars-sized object crashed into our planet early in the solar system's history. While the collision nearly annihilated Earth, our planet survived, and the fragments eventually coalesced into the moon we see today

Clearly, the solar system used to be a more dangerous place before it settled into the more stable configuration of eight planets circling the sun that we know today. But it's not without its dangers: There still are asteroids, comets, and other small worlds orbiting in different directions than the planets, like a car hurtling the wrong way down a NASCAR track

While civilization could be wiped out by some of these worlds, it's unlikely. That's because the biggest objects are already in stable orbits or have been destroyed or flung far away over the eons. (Another reason you shouldn't lose any sleep over civilization killers is that NASA hasn't found any after decades of searching. The agency and its partners are still scanning the skies today, just in case.)

Jupiter's and Earth's early chaotic histories were just one stage of the billiard ball environment that swept through the solar system. Roughly four billion years ago, what astronomers call the "late heavy bombardment" had swarms of small bodies pummeling the worlds in our solar system. Evidence on our world was swept away by wind, water, and volcanic erosion, but Earth's moon still carries the scars.

Dreams: Want To Remember More of your Dreams - Curio Facts

2020-09-01T15:34:00.002+05:00

Dreams whether they involve falling from the top of the building, crying on the death of beloved ones or running away from the clown who haunts you. Sometimes it’s the most painful thing to remember and sometimes it fun. Why is that some people seem to always remember their dreams and other don’t.

Dreams are still mysterious to scientists and dreamers alike, but researchers reveal that there could be some fundamental differences between those who remember their dreams and those who don’t.

1. Their Gender:

Researchers aren’t sure why is that, but Harvard psychology professor Dr. Deirdre Leigh Barrett told Mental Floss in 2018 that women tend to recall their dreams more often than men. Dream recall tends to peak in 20’s and then it drops off as you get older.

2. Then It's Their Personality:

More psychologically minded people, more practical and externally focused people tend to have higher dream recall.

According to an article in “On the Brain” from Harvard Medical School, those who fall asleep and wake up slowly are more likely to remember their dreams. A regular dreaming period occurs when a sleeper enters REM sleep which is a dream ready phase that happens with the physiological changes in the blood pressure, breathing and heart rate. Near the end of REM, the body prepares to wake up through the sleep stages again. Those who wake up towards the end of REM phase are more likely to remember their dream.

If you want to remember your dreams, there is still a hope for you to do that. Scientists think some simple tricks would help you to increase recall rate of your dreams. In 2017, Harvard Medical School professor and sleep expert Robert Stickgold said, “I would predict that 80 percent people who initially said they never dream would say they do now”.

Here Are Three Main Things He Recommended:

1. Drink three full glasses of water, but not bear or wine as they suppress REM and then go to sleep. You will wake more frequently, that could help you remember your dreams.

2. Put dreams on your to do list. Repeat the phrase “I am going to remember my dreams” three times before going to sleep. Your brain likes to work on important things before sleep, and this habit list your dreams as priority.

3. Wake up slowly! The worst thing you can do is wake up, turn to your partner or any person near to you at that moment and say, “I just had the coolest dream”. Do that, and you might forget it forever. Instead, stay half asleep replay your dreams as best as you can. Replaying it will help you to store the memory differently, so you’ll remember it for a long time.

4. If those methods don’t help you try to sleep more. The most important part of dreaming is being asleep. The longer you sleep, the more SEM time you have, and the more chances you will dream and remember. Don’t forget that REM gets longer through the night, so if you are sleeping 4 hours instead of eight, you are missing 80 percent of the REM time that could get you a dream. Try waking up late.