SANE SCHOLAR

New technology may lead to prolonged power in mobile devices

2014-09-30T09:06:00.002-07:00

New technology may lead to prolonged power in mobile devices

Dr. Jiyoung Kim (left) and Dr. Kyeongjae “K.J.” Cho examine a wafer used to make transistors. The two created new technology that could reduce energy consumption in mobile devices and computers.

Credit: Image courtesy of University of Texas, Dallas

[Click to enlarge image]

Researchers from The University of Texas at Dallas have created technology that could be the first step toward wearable computers with self-contained power sources or, more immediately, a smartphone that doesn’t die after a few hours of heavy use.

This technology, published online in Nature Communications, taps into the power of a single electron to control energy consumption inside transistors, which are at the core of most modern electronic systems.

Researchers from the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science found that by adding a specific atomic thin film layer to a transistor, the layer acted as a filter for the energy that passed through it at room temperature. The signal that resulted from the device was six to seven times steeper than that of traditional devices. Steep devices use less voltage but still have a strong signal.

“The whole semiconductor industry is looking for steep devices because they are key to having small, powerful, mobile devices with many functions that operate quickly without spending a lot of battery power,” said Dr. Jiyoung Kim, professor of materials science and engineering in the Jonsson School and an author of the paper. “Our device is one solution to make this happen.”

Tapping into the unique and subtle behavior of a single electron is the most energy-efficient way to transmit signals in electronic devices. Since the signal is so small, it can be easily diluted by thermal noises at room temperature. To see this quantum signal, engineers and scientists who build electronic devices typically use external cooling techniques to compensate for the thermal energy in the electron environment. The filter created by the UT Dallas researchers is one route to effectively filter out the thermal noise.

Dr. Kyeongjae “K.J.” Cho, professor of materials science and engineering and physics and an author of the paper, agreed that transistors made from this filtering technique could revolutionize the semiconductor industry.

“Having to cool the thermal spread in modern transistors limits how small consumer electronics can be made,” said Cho, who used advanced modeling techniques to explain the lab phenomena. “We devised a technique to cool the electrons internally — allowing reduction in operating voltage — so that we can create even smaller, more power efficient devices.”

Each time a device such as a smartphone or a tablet computes it requires electrical power for operation. Reducing operating voltage would mean longer shelf lives for these products and others. Lower power devices could mean computers worn with or on top of clothing that would not require an outside power source, among other things.

To create this technology, researchers added a chromium oxide thin film onto the device. That layer, at room temperature of about 80 degrees Fahrenheit, filtered the cooler, stable electrons and provided stability to the device. Normally, that stability is achieved by cooling the entire electronic semiconductor device to cryogenic temperatures — about minus 321 degrees Fahrenheit.

Another innovation used to create this technology was a vertical layering system, which would be more practical as devices get smaller.

“One way to shrink the size of the device is by making it vertical, so the current flows from top to bottom instead of the traditional left to right,” said Kim, who added the thin layer to the device.

Lab test results showed that the device at room temperature had a signal strength of electrons similar to conventional devices at minus 378 degrees Fahrenheit. The signal maintained all other properties. Researchers will also try this technique on electrons that are manipulated through optoelectronic and spintronic — light and magnetic — means.
The next step is to extend this filtering system to semiconductors manufactured in Complementary Metal-Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS) technology.

“Electronics of the past were based on vacuum tubes,” Cho said. “Those devices were big and required a lot of power. Then the field went to bipolar transistors manufactured in CMOS technology. We are now again facing an energy crisis, and this is one solution to reduce energy as devices get smaller and smaller.”

Researchers from the Lam Research Corporation in California, Nankai University in China, the University of Michigan and the University of Texas at Arlington contributed to this work.

The work was funded by the Office of Naval Research and the National Science Foundation.

Mimicking brain cells to boost computer memory power

2014-09-30T09:04:00.000-07:00

Mimicking brain cells to boost computer memory power

Dr Sharath Sriram, RMIT University.

Credit: Image courtesy of RMIT University

[Click to enlarge image]

RMIT University researchers have brought ultra-fast, nano-scale data storage within striking reach, using technology that mimics the human brain.

The researchers have built a novel nano-structure that offers a new platform for the development of highly stable and reliable nanoscale memory devices.

The pioneering work will feature on a forthcoming cover of materials science journal Advanced Functional Materials (11 November).

Project leader Dr Sharath Sriram, co-leader of the RMIT Functional Materials and Microsystems Research Group, said the nanometer-thin stacked structure was created using thin film, a functional oxide material more than 10,000 times thinner than a human hair.

"The thin film is specifically designed to have defects in its chemistry to demonstrate a 'memristive' effect -- where the memory element's behaviour is dependent on its past experiences," Dr Sriram said.

"With flash memory rapidly approaching fundamental scaling limits, we need novel materials and architectures for creating the next generation of non-volatile memory.

"The structure we developed could be used for a range of electronic applications -- from ultrafast memory devices that can be shrunk down to a few nanometers, to computer logic architectures that replicate the versatility and response time of a biological neural network.

"While more investigation needs to be done, our work advances the search for next generation memory technology can replicate the complex functions of human neural system -- bringing us one step closer to the bionic brain."
The research relies on memristors, touted as a transformational replacement for current hard drive technologies such as Flash, SSD and DRAM. Memristors have potential to be fashioned into non-volatile solid-state memory and offer building blocks for computing that could be trained to mimic synaptic interfaces in the human brain.

The research, which was supported by an Australian Research Council Discovery grant, was a collaboration between members of the Functional Materials and Microsystems Research Group and Professor Dmitri Strukov from the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Where humans, animals and robots meet

2014-09-30T09:00:00.000-07:00

Where humans, animals and robots meet

A "mixed swarm" is composed of humans, animals and robots.

Credit: Image courtesy of IMDEA Networks Institute

To meet our everyday needs in an increasingly multifaceted technological world is a challenge that pushes researchers to find innovative tools using a multidisciplinary approach. We inhabit a globalized planet, made up of complex systems, where domains such as communications, business, healthcare, energy or transportation converge, interact and integrate. In this context, a thriving technology trend applies the concept of animal swarms or swarming to the development of complex systems that bridge the gap amongst disciplines as dissimilar as biology, robotics or networking.

The idea behind "swarm technology" is to create a system consisting of a group of heterogeneous elements (such as robots) and organize them, so that they interact (with each other and with the environment), and cooperate, in order to be able to perform tasks or solve problems of practical relevance that are outside their individual capabilities. Thus, from the combination of individual (even simple) agents emerges a more "intelligent" global outcome. The swarm combines physical control of individual entities with integration of their sensor data analysis and communication capabilities to achieve a cooperative system able to accomplish complex goals in a synergic manner. Monitoring, surveillance, mapping, tracking, disaster management and entertainment are a few of the potential applications of swarm technology.

IMDEA Networks Institute and ETH Zürich have signed a collaboration agreement for research and development on this area. The SWARMIX* project aims to lay the foundations for the design, implementation, and adaptive control of heterogeneous multi-agent systems that are composed of humans, animals, and robots. These systems, known as "mixed swarms," will work in cooperation to solve distributed tasks that require a wide diversity of sensory-motor and cognitive skills.

The aim of this project is to provide each component of the mixed swarm with a high level of autonomy, in order to allow it to fully exploit its own unique skills and abilities. At the same time, it will set up close bidirectional interactions and information flows between all system components in order to ensure overall synergistic cooperation. The main novelty of SWARMIX lies in the joint integration of a possibly large number of humans, animals, and robots in tight cooperation as one single networked system with distributed control.

24 Men Who Should Be Banned From Texting

2014-09-29T23:33:00.001-07:00

24 Men Who Should Be Banned From Texting

1. This guy who needs to double check before hitting send.

Via tolive-eternally.tumblr.com

2. This fancy dad.

Via nevergiveup283to140.tumblr.com

3. This guy who just realized he had a qwerty keyboard.

Via rmkloserville.tumblr.com

4. This guy who is getting used to his new phone.

Via hilarious-ecards.tumblr.com

5. This cold and callous individual.

Via epicfail.com

6. This creepazoid.

Via epicfail.com

7. This straight boy.

Via justanaveragebear.tumblr.com

8. Jakey who loves fruit.

Via believeinyourdreamsxo.tumblr.com

9. This dad who needs to turn his autocorrect off.

emmymad.tumblr.com

10. Will, who thought he was having a conversation about asking out a girl.

Via epicfail.com

11. This dad who was shut down hard.

Via enviousmonsters.tumblr.com

12. This guy who should’ve just said, “How far you in line?”

Via brassknucklelovin.tumblr.com

13. This Don Juan.

Fail Text! @Failtext

No chill
3:35 AM - 08 Sep 14
Reply
Retweet
Favorite

14. The guy in the first picture.

Via epicfail.com

15. This charming Casanova.

16. This guy who unfortunately doesn’t waste any time.

17. Cole, who really, REALLY, wants to make this sext thing happen.

18. The mirror man.

Via cheezburger.com

19. This guy who likes acute girls.

Via cheezburger.com

20. Emily’s boyfriend.

Via reddit.com

21. This dad who can’t seem to get his voice text to work.

Via reddit.com

22. Uncle Mark, who loves cap locks and hyphens.

Via reddit.com

23. This husband who is trying to keep the mystery alive.

Via reddit.com

24. This dude who isn’t afraid to keep it real.

Via reddit.com

At least there are some men out there who know how to perfectly text. So, kudos to them!

Via reddit.com

19 Mind-Blowing Facts About Life In Other Countries

2014-09-29T23:27:00.003-07:00

19 Mind-Blowing Facts About Life In Other Countries

1. In the Netherlands, school finishes at midday on Wednesdays.

It’s intended so parents can spend more time with their primary school-aged children. Many employers allow parents to go home at midday on Wednesdays.

2. A widely believed urban legend in South Korea is “fan death,” i.e., that sleeping in a closed room containing a running electric fan will kill you.

gregbem.com

Believers attribute fan death to hypothermia or asphyxiation, allegedly caused by the fan.

3. In Bhutan, wearing seatbelts in a car is considered dangerous.

Residents fear belts will trap them in their vehicles if their cars fall off one of the country’s plentiful 20,000-plus mountains.

4. In Slovakia, it’s custom for boys to pour water over girls and whip them on Easter.

On Easter Monday in Slovakia, it’s tradition for boys to pour water over girls and whip them lightly with braided willow branches that have ribbons attached, in an event called šibačka. (The whipping is usually done lightly and symbolically.)

According to Czech Mate Diary: “If you were one of the first houses the mob visited, you were lucky: The guys are still kind of sober, kind of polite and kind of mellow. You let them into the living room – or better – just a hallway, give them some refreshments, offer them more vodka and let them “spank” you. If they still have their egg baskets, you would also stuff couple of eggs in them and if you are lucky they leave afterwards.”

5. Nodding means “no” in Bulgaria.

reddit.com

Shaking your head means yes.

6. In Norway, graduating high school students attend a russefeiring where they wear colored overalls, rent buses or vans, and party for 17 days straight.

The partying starts on April 20 and ends on May 17, which is Norwegian Constitution Day. People spend HUGE amounts of money on busses for the event. Here’s a Reddit AMA about it.

7. Blood type is a huge deal in Japan.

In Japanese culture, your blood type supposedly determines much about your personality. (Read more about the history of this belief here.) Articles about celebrities will list their blood types, and you can buy condoms tailored to your blood type. Dating someone with a complementary blood type is considered an efficient way to find your match.

8. A sizeable number of New Zealanders go out in public barefoot.

Sounds pretty great tbh.

9. You have to pay for a license to watch TV in Britain.

Since April 1, 2010, the annual license fee for households has been £145.50 for color TVs. Revenue from it funds the BBC.

10. Most people don’t drink the tap water in Hong Kong.

It’s safe to drink, but residents consume over 1 million bottles of bottled water per day.

11. You have to pay for every ketchup and mayonnaise packet at McDonald’s in Italy.

12. Voting is mandatory in Brazil.

Voting is compulsory for citizens between 18 and 70 years old. (Non-voters are subject to small fines.)

13. Many Icelanders believe in the existence of elves.

A 2007 study found that 37% of Icelanders said elves possibly exist, 17% found their existence likely, and 8% found it definite. Recently, plans to build a new road in Iceland had to be diverted due to elves “living” in its path.

14. Canada sells milk in bags.

15. At a Dutch birthday party, you congratulate all of the guests, except the person who’s having the birthday.

So you would shake the hand of the boyfriend at a birthday party for his girlfriend and say, “Gefeliciteerd!” (“Congrats!”) on your girlfriend’s birthday.

16. Swedes put kebab on their pizza.

17. In India, the car horn is as important as the gas pedal.

Most drivers don’t have or check side mirrors, and just honk when they want to make a turn.

18. Switzerland has one of the highest gun ownership rates in the world.

This is in part due to the country’s conscripted militia, as men between 20 and 30 keep government-issued weapons in their homes. But according to NPR, firearm deaths in Switzerland are just one-seventh the rate of that in the United States.

19. In the U.S., over 1 million people flock to Times Square each year to stand in the freezing cold for eight hours just to watch a ball slowly descend.

People who go often wear diapers, because there are no bathrooms available. The rest of the country regards them as “idiots.”

Believe It or Not Strange Unbelievable

2014-09-27T05:10:00.000-07:00

Believe It or Not Strange Unbelievable

The US Secret Service,tasked with protecting the president as created by Abraham Lincoln on the day he was assassinated !

The word Scientist was coined in 1833 ! Before this ,scientists used to call themselves as nature's philosophers!

Until 1911, clocks at French railway stations were set 5 minutes fast so travelers would not miss their trains !920-180

You will be amused to know that in April 1910, in France ,kissing was banned on railway platforms because it caused delays.

Do you know the upper limit of the speed at which Heinz tomato ketchup can drip out of its bottle to 0.028mph (about 1 km/day). If it comes out any faster, it is rejected.

The sandwich is named after John Montagu ,who was the 4th Earl of Sandwich, who started a craze for eating of slice beef between 2 slices of toast.

Dolphins can develop diabetes !

The human brain runs on the same amount of power as a low-powered light bulb !

Rats laugh when tickled !

In 1925,a monkey was tried & convicted for smoking a cigarette in the US !

The National Anthem of Spain has no words !

High heels were originally made for men !

DOG TV is a new television channel created exclusively for digs to watch !

In Thailand,it is illegal to go in public without wearing an underwear !

There are more than 1200 species of venomous fish -more than venomous snakes and all other venomous vertebrates combined.

Tian Hao -a hair stylist from Xian Shaanxi,China,cuts his customers hair with his eyes closed!

New born babies can see only in Black & White!

Footgolf is a new sport where players kick a soccer ball into holes on a golf course !

Betty Lou,85 years old of Mich ,USA and 76 years old Delores Viola ,reunited in 2012, discovering that they were sisters saparated by adoption 76 years earlier!

The BUSCH GARDENS,a theme park in Tampa,Fla,USA,allows its visitors to play a tug-of-war match with a tiger!

THE SAME CAFE,in Denver ,Cola,USA ,has no fixed prices.All of its patrons are allowed to decide to pay whatever they feel appropriate & affordable for them for their cup of coffee!

Rope Climbing was an Olympic Sport until 1932 !

The total known population of Mountain Gorillas in the world is less than a thousand!

The cities of Windsor ,Ontario ,Canada and Datroit,USA celebrate each other's National Holidays

James Simpson of Anna Maria Island,Fla,USA had his wallet returned to him in April 2011,48 years after he had lost it !

Have you heard about the Titanic,the ship? Do you know it took USD 7 million to make the ship but to make the movie about it ,approximately USD 200 million was spent !

On Feb 5,1958 , a nuclear bomb was dropped into the sea off the coast of Georgia,USAafter a mid year collision of air planes ,and its location is still known after so many years later!

Dolphins can develop diabetes !

Scientists disagree on the reasons of 'why we slip on the ice' !

World Weird Days

World Turtle Day :it is celebrated on May 23 .In 1990 the American Tortoise Rescue decided to red letter May 23 as a day to educate people on dangers faced by these reptiles.Many people dress up like turtles on this day and march in busy places like gardens and shopping malls.

World Sleep Day :it is celebrated on every third Friday of March .A recent study conducted in 2011,found that 93% of people surveyed felt sleep-deprived ,so wouldn't we want more such days..

International Left handers Day :It is celebrated on August 13th of every year.Considering that there are over 700 million southpaws in the world,we should have a special day for them.

Geek Pride Day :it is celebrated on May 25th .ASC-066The no. of geeks are growing in the world.So why not give these smartphones obsessed geeks/nerds/dorks a day of their own!.

From the very start, tiffany manager, Charles Lewis tiffany uk sy0-301 dumps was an inventor not merely throughout jewelry style and design but the way it turned out ray bans aviators purchased and also made sure this there is a CompTIA sy0-301 dumps thing for sy0-301 exam everybody, regardless of whether it turned out a new parasol for 10 or a new precious stone brooch for 1000.

These lamps are now Testking 200-120 antiques and can go for millions of US dollars. Because original tiffanys uk lamps are so incredibly expensive
One particular brand that frequently makes the fashion trend is .

It is reported that almost everybody realizes swarovski bangles 642-661 cisco online that blue could be the best token color of elegant and time-honored tiffany heart necklace for your beloved ones.

Basically, you will never be stressed out. There is not a swarovski jewelry onine reason that you should suffer from the same old tiffany heart earring.

You are eager to find a piece of unique fashion tiffany jewelry swarovski crystal pendant that shows off your style and originality.

If you still dont have any great gift ideas for this swarovski bracelet price Christmas season, buy a gife of tiffany rings is just the right one you may want CCNA 200-120 dumps latest.

If it is for others, it will likely to be certain designer the series ray ban sunglasses uk accessories. Many will tiffany bracelet for its online store thas an antique.

Zale is actually among North swarovski bracelet price Americas biggest shops within diamonds, pearl in addition to coloured rock, swarovski bangles online in addition to platinum happens to be, chains, for example btiffany uk sale jewellery.

Piercing Pagoda has grown from Cisco 642-902 exam your solitary sell tiffany co jewellery area with a sequence with above 820 kiosks today satisfying consumers over the INDIVIDUALS and also Puerto Rico featuring a customizable precious metal tiffany & co.

Additionally it is the leading edge stone jeweler in the us. In excess of tiffany & co hundred Jared outlets offer diamond tiffany jewellery uk and unfastened expensive diamonds1Y0-259.

Whitehall Mall within Whitehall, Pennsylvania, within 1969. This btiffanys uk specific venture turned successful tale whenever women of all ages from world wide. engagement rings tiffany web emerged with their not function with regard to ear piercing. Piercing . CCNP 642-902 exam.

Why-How-When Facts

2014-09-27T05:06:00.000-07:00

Why-How-When Facts

Why do we dance when we are controlling pee?
It happens to each one of us. Sometimes our bladder gets full & there is urgent need to pee ,we sometimes are not able to go to washroom due to some reasons .Then we find ourselves either humming or hoping from one foot to other .It happens because when message of taking urgent action and the reality that situation does not allow us to do that - goes to the brain ,it gets translated into several rhyming displacement behaviors. That results into humming or some other amusing action. But do you know that remaining calm & still can help you to control longer.

Why do mosquitoes bite some people not other?
Mosquitoes (females) find their pray with help of sight & smell. A female mosquito antennae has about 72 types of odour receptors, out of which 27 can recognise chemicals found in human sweat. These chemicals are octenol, nonanal & carbon-dioxide. The people having higher level of these chemicals in their sweat are bitten more by mosquitoes as they can find the smell of these chemicals easily to which their receptors are tuned.

Why do we have leap years ?
The no. of days in a year are based on no. of days taken by the Earth to complete one orbit around the Sun. It takes slightly more than 365 days, it is actually 365.256 .So it is about 1/4th day more every year.To keep it simple , these quarter days are added & after every 4 years ,we have one extra day in the year. These years re known as leap years.

Why do birds never crash into each other ?
Most of large birds fly in a V formation (also known as echelon) .It helps them to improve efficiency and avoid collisions.In fact echelon are rarely perfect Vs and mostly are J shapes.In ether shape,each bird of the flock gets the best possible view of the bird in front so that it can maintain a safe distance.

Why do ears ring sometimes ?
Ringing of ears is also known as Tinnitus (Latin for ringing).Loud noises like music ,fireworks damages hair cells in the inner ear.The ends of these hair cells get broken due to high level of noise.These hair cells are responsible for taking messages to the brain ,but once they are damaged they false signals to the brain causing ringing sound.These usually grow back in 24 hours.Tinnitus can also be caused by ear infections.
Why hair turns grey ?
The root of every hair is surrounded by a tube of tissue that is called hair follicle. This follicle has a certain number of pigment cells,these cells keep producing a chemical called melanin.This is responsible for giving color to the hair -be it black,black,blonde or brown.As the age passes ,several of these pigment cells die Less pigment cells are not sufficient to produce enough melanin .Due to less melanin ,hair become more transparent in color like grey ,silver or white.
Following a earliest world war and the tiffany jewellery uk deco time period, girls have been dont viewed for you to adhere to stiff ray ban wayfarer public CompTIA sy0-301 exam program code and also exhibitions.
these lamps are made with a quality en par to that of original tiffany stores uk lamps.

Since its foundation, it has gained popularity by CCNP 642-902 exam emphasizing on quality for items that it provides,just for the swarovski silver bracelet price btiffany & co jewelry.

It is reported that almost everybody realizes that cisco 642-661 blue could be the best token color of elegant and time-honored btiffany necklaces for your beloved ones.

Basically, you will never be stressed out. There swarovski silver bracelet price is not a reason that you should suffer from the same old tiffany silver earrings.

It is especially true of bdiscount tiffany jewelry, swarovski drop tear crystal perhaps one of the more popular types of jewelry that is available.

Search on the internet, you can find all swarovski heart pendant these pieces of tiffany wedding rings at reasonable prices as well as in good quality.

Browse through our buying tiffany charm bracelet tips to get an insight into buying the right jewelry.
I thought this was produced through CompTIA sy0-301 exam tiffany and co engagement rings not one but two United states silversmiths by using hardly btiffanys uk any budget within 1832 and also the company appeared to be established within 1878.

Jared could be the foremost sequence with jewelry superstores. Cisco 350-001 tiffany earrings dumps Its also the key precious stone tiffany jewellery uk tiffany and co uk in the usa. Above 100 Jared retailers sell swarovski bangle sale expensive jewelry and also free precious gems.

Jared may be the major cycle associated with cheap tiffany tiffanys and co jewellery superstores.

Additionally it is the leading swarovski bangle sale 350-001 exam edge stone jeweler in the us. In excess of hundred Jared outlets offer diamond jewelry and unfastened expensive tiffany jewellery diamonds.

Because 1916, Kay Jewelers, by using its btiffany ray ban sunglasses sale stores uk headquarter within Ohio, is growing from one particular retailer to more than eight hundred from coast to coast. Microsoft 70-410 vmware vcp-510.

Funny Mind Blowing Facts

2014-09-27T05:03:00.000-07:00

Funny Mind Blowing Facts

Cuteness and softness inspires aggression which is why we often squeeze things which we find cute or soft .Examples:Teddy bear,cheeks of a small baby .

The atomic bomb that was detonated over Nagasaki ,Japan,by the United States on 9 August 1945 was code-named 'Fat Man'.

Do you know why chocolates melt in your mouth? It is because melting point of a chocolate is slightly below your body temperature so as soon as you put chocolate in your mouth ,it reaches its melting point.

Do you know there is a world record even for the tennis balls held in a dog's mouth ! Current world record for the no. of tennis balls held in a dog’s mouth is 5.

Did you have a piggy bank when you were small? Do you know the name Piggy banks come from a clay called pygg from which jars were made for saving money in old times.

Girls' favorite Barbie doll's full name is Barbie Millicent Roberts.

The most common wake-up call time is seven am.

Why do many girls prefer pink? The obvious answer can be that it is just a cultural thing -baby girls are normally dressed in pink and the preference develops from there. But recent research gives few interesting facts. It speculates that evolution may have led females to prefer reddish colors ,this gives them edge in many areas like selecting riper reddish fruits,to find healthy pink faces more attractive to choose as a partner.

Whether plastic takes 500 years to decompose? But plastic bags have been around only from 1957, then how we know the years it takes to decompose?Fact is polythene can be easily degraded by UV rays but plastic bages are quickly buried & they don't get UV light. Also the bacteria & fungi have harder time to digest these ,as they are yet to evolve to get used to this unnatural material.

It is said that Alexander the Great,Julius Caesar,Genghis Khan,Napolean,Mussolini and Hitler all suffered from ailurophobia i.e.the fear of cats.

Hitler dreamed of becoming an artist .He applied twice to the Vienna Academy of Art in 1907 and 1908 but was denied entrance.He left the school at age of 16 and struggled to make living as a painter in Vienna.

The Chinese word for solar eclipse is shih ,meaning to eat.In ancient China ,people used to beat drums during eclipse time to scare off the 'heavenly dog'which they believed was about to eat the sun.

Science of kissing is called philematology. A kis uses 34 facial and 112 postural muscles.Between 10 million and 1 billion bacteria are exchanged in one kiss.

The oceans cover almost three quarters of the earth .If all the ice in glaciers & ice sheets melt, ,the sea level would rise by about 80 meters,about the height of a 26 story building

The term aeronautics originated in France,and was derived from Greek word for ' air' and to 'sail'.

Bhutan was the first country to introduce a silk stamp.

Wheat is the most widely grown cereal in the world.

The scientific name for rice is 'Oryza sativa'.

The German Shepherds bite humans more than any other breed of dog.

Less than 3% of all water of earth is fresh water (usable for drinking) and of that amount,more than two-thirds is locked up in ice caps and glaciers.

The paper used for U.S. bills (currency notes) is not made from trees.Rather these contain 75% cotton & 25% linen.

South Africa is also called Rainbow Nation ,it has eleven official languages.

The word 'atom ' comes from the Greek word atomos ,which means 'indivisible'.

The Noisy serpent was the original name of vacuum cleaner.

The Velocipede - was the original name of bicycle.

Did you know that Cherophobia is a fear of fun.

Coca Cola was originally green.

In 1681,the last dodo bird died

In developed countries, a person spends two weeks of his life-time waiting at traffic red-lights on an average.

There are more than 6 million parts in Boeing Jet 747-400

Blackheads are one of the common manifestations of acne vulgaris-a human skin disease

There are 37 airports with paved runways and another 34 with unpaved runways in Nigeria.

The Balley Bridge is the highest in the world .It is located in the Ladakh valley between Dras and Surus rivers in the Himalayan mountains.

89% of avalanche victims are men and most are between the ages of 20 and 30.

Earth-Water Interesting Amazing Facts

2014-09-27T05:01:00.000-07:00

Earth-Water Interesting Amazing Facts

Earth Facts –The Blue Planet

Earth is referred to as the Blue Planet. Why? Because from space, the oceans combined with our atmosphere make our planet look blue. .

It is the only planet whose name has not been derived from the Roman or Greek mythology? The name has originated from the 8th century Anglo Saxon word- Erda. This means ground or soil .

More than 80% of the earth's surface is volcanic.

The Sun is 333,000 times as large as our earth.
Only 11 percent of the earth's surface is used to grow food. .
70% of the Earth’s surface is covered in water.
Planet Earth rotates around the Sun at approximately 1000 miles per hour.
The Earth is like a great big magnet,so it pulls everything towards it. This pulling force of earth is called gravity. .
Earth doesn’t take 24 hours to rotate on its axis.It’s actually 23 hours, 56 minutes and 4 seconds.
A year on Earth isn’t 365 days .It’s actually 365.2564 days. It’s this extra .2564 days that creates the need for leap years.
Earth has 1 moon and 2 co-orbital satellites .
Oceans occupy nearly 71 percent of the surface of earth .
Ten percent of the earth's surface is covered by ice .
The deepest part of the Earth is Pacific Ocean , it is called the Mariana Trench. It is deeper than Mount Everest is high! .
Earth is the third planet from the Sun. This is also the fifth largest planet in the entire solar system.Earth is the only planet known to have life. .
The air on earth consists of around 78 percent nitrogen with 21 percent oxygen. This air also contains 1 percent of other ingredients.
The temperature of the earth's interior increases by 1 degree every 60 feet down.
It takes eight and a half minutes for light to get from the sun to earth.
Geology is the study of the rocks that form the planet’s surface. Geologists examine rocks to find out about the history of the Earth and how Earth was formed.
Mount Everest is the highest mountain on Earth and its peak is 8848 meters above sea level. And amazingly it is gaining height
April 22 ,every year is celebrated as Earth Day.April 22 is the first official day of Spring in the Northern hemisphere and of Fall in the Southern hemisphere and was chosen to be Earth Day for this reason
The Earth’s atmosphere is composed mainly of nitrogen (77%), oxygen (21%), argon (.93%), and carbon dioxide (0.03%).
Earth has 3 layers,Crust (upper part),Mantle(middle part) & Core (inner-most part),out of these Crust is the lightest.
Seismometer is the device with which earth-quackes is measured.Richter scale shows intensity of earth-quake -that is how strong the waves are on seismometer.
Antartica is world's longest glacier.
The Earth's equatorial circumference (40,075 km) is greater than its polar circumference (40,008 km..
The highest recorded temperature on Earth is 136°F (58°C) in Libya in 1922..
The lowest recorded temperature on Earth is -128.6°F (-89.6°C) in Antarctica in 1983.
One fifth of land surface is covered by deserts
Astronomy is study of outer space , a person who works in this field is known as astronomer.
Nicolaus Coppenicus was ,the astronomer, who first realized that earth moves round the sun.

Water Facts –The Blue Life
Have you ever thought about floating ice in a glass of water, glaciers floating in oceans? And ice is solid! From what we know about matter, a solid should sink in liquid as solid molecules are denser than liquids, so why does not the ice, which is solid form of water does not sink in its liquid form. This is a unique quality of water. Its solid form is 9% less dense than its liquid form.
Although 70% of earth’s surface is 1y0-a25 covered by water ,but total water on the surface of earth makes up just 0.025 % of earth’s total mass i.e. 25/100,000ths of the stuff of the earth.
Pure water is so pure that one can’t even 70-646 drink it. It tastes very bland & due to its solvent properties, it would absorb all the minerals from your tongue & your mouth would feel dry So few minerals are added back to water by water-producing companies so as to make it tastier & safe for your drinking.
See free 70-640 education videos on Earth ,Solar System & many more by clicking here Science Learning for 6-12 years old kids
The two-liter bottle of a cola requires five liters water to produce.
Water exists in almost every substance ,you eat or drink. Percentage of water in few items Milk-90%,Bread-30%, Meat-75%,Egg-73%,Cucumber-95%,Lettuce -95%,Tomato-95%,Potato-75%.
Water exists in a fourth form too, despite it being so vast & important, it is never mentioned outside scientific circles .The vast quantity of water is locked in the rock deep in the Earth’s mantle ,in a layer about 410 kilometers below your feet.
All the water on Earth came from space in exactly the form is in now i.e. H2O.
Every hour, the Earth’s oceans are evaporating 50 cubic kilometers of water into the air (13 trillion gallons).
Just the leaves from a single acre of trees might send eight thousand gallons of water up into the air in a day, which is enough to fill a normal swimming pool.
A normal toilet uses 6-8 liters of water for one time use, so if you flush five times a day ,that means 30-40 liters of water being used by one person just for flushing toilets in a day.
According to WHO, 1.8 million children die every year, either from lack of water or from diseases they get from not-so-pure drinking water. That no. is too high, in other words, it is 5000 children a day.
Agriculture, producing food for us, uses two thirds of all the water people use.
Do you know microwave cook/heat your food due to water only? Yes, water molecules inside a cup of coffee or a potato, can spin 1 billion times a second, in response to the microwaves. This spinning motion causes heat, which cooks the surrounding food.
Popcorn in a microwave pops when the 14 % of each kernel that is water, inside a corn grain, vaporizes into steam and expands the grain.
You can use internet, your computer, your iPhone because of water only. These all are made by micro-chips, they are so tiny & pathways on them are of nano-size, even a slight impurity won’t let these microchips to function properly, so these microchips are cleaned by using pure water as water takes away all the impurities from path-ways due to its solvent properties.

Plants Fruits Botany Interesting Facts

2014-09-27T05:00:00.000-07:00

Plants Fruits Botany Interesting Facts

Do you know that an average strawberry has about 200 seeds. And it is the only fruit that bears its seeds on the outside.

Do you know that largest flower in the world is the titan arums.The size of each flower is about 10 feet high and 3 feet wide i.e. even bigger than an elephant.

Do you know that an average pomegranate have more than 1000 seeds.

The tiniest tree in the world is Dwarf Willow ,its size is about two inches.It is found in Greenland.

Most of the flowers have patterns of lines on their petals.This act as guide for insects to move towards the glands which produce nectar.Generally these glands are at the base of the petals. Some of the flowers display these patterns in the UV Rays they reflect. Unlike humans, the insects have ultraviolet vision. These insects see these nectar guides, whereas we only see plain-colored petals.

Cabbage has 91% water.

Apple is 25% air, that is why it floats on water.

Tomato and the potato are the two vegetables which are grown in largest quantities in the world. But Onion is the most widely used vegetable i!The onion is used in in more dishes than any other vegetable in most no. of countries?

Apple,Onions & potatoes have same taste, don’t believe it.Here is the test: Pinch your nose & taste all 3 ,find any difference?
Do you ever wonder what causes tears in eyes while cutting onions!It is the sulfuric acid present in onion ,which creates itching in the eyes & causes tears.But if you chill the onions enough,effect of sulfuric acid goes down drastically.
The oldest trees in the world :California Bristlecone pines and Giant Sequoias are regarded as the oldest trees and have been known to live 4000 to 5000 years.
Carrots were originally purple in color.
When an insect touches the hairs of a Venus Fly Trap it triggers the plant to close, trapping its victim before killing and dissolving it in acid.
Elephant grass in Africa is named after elephants as it is about 4.5 meter high and even elephants can hide in this grass
The Baobab tree in Africa is an amazing plant.It is known for its water storage capacity in it trunk.It can store 1000 liters to 120000 liters of water in its swollen trunk.
Cutting onions releases a gas which causes a stinging sensation when it comes into contact with your eyes. Your body produces tears to dilute the irritant and remove it from your eyes.
The first diesel engine ran on peanut oil.
The study of plants is a branch of Biology.
84% of a raw apple and 96% of a raw cucumber is water. Cucumber skin is its most nutritious part
Rice paper isn’t made from rice but from a small tree which grows in Taiwan.
Trees get about 90% of their nutrition from the atmosphere (carbon dioxide, etc), and only about 10% from the soil.

The averaged size tree can provide enough wood to make 170,000 pencils.
The world’s tallest tree is a Sequoia (or California Redwood) in California; it is more than 360 feet tall.
The world’s oldest living tree is thought to be in Sweden. Its root system has been growing for 9,550 years. Now that’s old!
An average size tree produces enough oxygen in one year to keep a family of four breathing.
A method used to verify the age of a tree is to count the rings in the tree’s trunk.
A cluster of bananas is called a hand and consists of 10 to 20 bananas, which are known as fingers. The word 'banan' is Arabic for finger.
The very first type of aspirin, or pain killer and fever reducer came from the tree bark of the willow tree.
Apples, not caffeine or tea , are more efficient at waking you up in the morning.
Chocolate is a food made from cacao beans.
Mango is called king of the fruits.
Because bananas are easy to digest and are very nutritious, they are the first fruit offered to babies.
Strawberries are the only fruit which grows seeds on the outside.
A cucumber is a fruit not a vegetable. Why? Because it has seeds in the centre.
Leaving skin on potatoes is healthier as all vitamins are in the skin.
Eating a lot of onions will make you sleepy, as it acts as a sedative.
Bananas contain a natural chemical which can make a person happy.
Watermelon is considered a good gift to give a host in Japan and China.
The original Ketchup did not have any tomatoes,the primary ingredient was fish brine mixed with herbs.The roots of ketchup are traced back to China, with a sauce they called ke-tsiap.
Petals are usually colorful, and they attract insects and birds that help with pollination.
Do you know the rose family of plants, in addition to flowers, gives us apples, pears, plums, cherries, almonds and peaches .
The largest single flower is the Rafflesia or “corpse flower”. They are generally 3 feet in diameter with the record being 42 inches.
A notch in a tree will remain the same distance/height from the ground as the tree grows.
Trees lower air temperature by evaporating water in their leaves.
Have you heard a mushroom called Death Cap ?It looks like a harmless mushroom but it contains poison & can kill a human being with in 6 hours of eating due to kidney & liver failure.
The water hyacinth is the world's fastest growing water plant & world's biggest water plant is Amazon lily ,its floating leaves grow up to 6 feet.
Dendrochronology is the science of calculating a tree’s age by its rings.Rings in the stem of a tree can tell the age of a tree.
Tree rings not only tell us age of the tree but they can also tell us about environmental events, including volcanic eruptions.
Cricket bats are made of a tree called Willow & base-balls bats are made out of wood of tree called Hickory.
The broadest trees around the world are the Baobab trees in Africa & the Sequioa trees in North America, their trunks are so large that a good sized apartment can be housed in there!
The first certified botanical garden was founded by Pope Nicholas III at the Vatican in 1278 AD.
Wood sorrel is plant which has two flowers ,one to attract bees to spread its pollen & other to make seeds.
The world's fastest growing plant is Burma's giant bamboo it can grow 17 centimeter in a day.

7 Continents Interesting Fun Facts

2014-09-27T04:56:00.000-07:00

7 Continents Interesting Fun Facts

1st few General facts

The seven continents are the seven main land areas on the Earth. Some are joined to each other, and some are completely surrounded by water. Some continents have a lot of countries, but others have only a few.
Erin Ate Nine Sticky Apricots At Aprils. If you can remember this mnemonic device called an acrostic then it is easy remember all Continents names as the first letter of each word corresponds with the first letter of a continent. These continents are: Europe, Asia, North America, South America, Australia, Antarctica, Africa!
Interestingly the names of all the continents end with the same letter with which they start.
It is believed that in past ,all continents were joined, this land area was called Pangaea .This area started to break up & got divided into 7 parts ,so today we have 7 continents .These continents are still moving away or moving close to each other. This is called continental drift or plate tectonics theory. For example Europe & North America are said to be moving 7 cm apart every year
Asia - Interesting Facts
It is the largest continent .It covers one-third of earth’s surface.
Also it is the biggest in terms of population in the world. Half of the world population lives here. World’s two most populous countries, China & India are in this continent.
It has 30% of world land area & 60% of population
It is the birth place of great religions – Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, Christianity
It is also the place of great ancient civilizations- Chinese, Harrapan
According to one estimate 9 of 11 Global Growth Generators countries came from Asia driven by population and income growth

It is the home of the 10 highest mountain peaks in the world. Mount Everest , the highest mountain in the world is here only .
Major Animals of Asia - Reticulated Pythons,Tiger,Panda , Yaks, Indian Rhinoceroses .
Africa Continent - Interesting Facts
It is the second largest continent.
It is also called Dark Continent as for long time not much was known about this continent due to its difficult inhabitable terrain.
It is the home of the Nile ,the longest river in the world.
It is also the home of the Sahara, the largest desert in the world.
In the Sahara desert,the Tree of Tenere was the only tree around for 250 miles , until in 1973 ,a truck driver crashed into it and uprooted it.
The equator passes through the middle of Africa continent ,so it receives direct sunlight throughout the year. So it has hot climate throughout the year. World’s hottest place Ethiopia is also in Africa continent.
Africa is very rich in minerals.Ninety five percent of the worlds’s diamonds and more than 50% of the world’s gold comes from Africa.
Africa is said to be the place where 1st humans lived.
66% of world's chocolate comes from Africa.
Africa is considered to be the place where the first human lived and learned to use tools.
Major Animals of Africa-Elephant, Addax ,Lion,Cheetah,Zebra,Giraffe,Egyptian mongooses .
Australia - Interesting Facts
Australia is the largest island (island is a place which is surrounded by water from all sides).It is also the smallest continent in the world. It is also known as “island continent”.
Australia continent has only one country ,which is Australia itself.It lies entirely south of the equator and is called land down under.
The name Australia comes from the Latin word australis which means Southern, it seems it was named as Southern place because it lies entirely south of equator. Today the full official name of Australia is Commonwealth of Australia.

Two thirds of Australia is flat desert.
Australia is home of three unique animals: platypus ,mammal that lays eggs, the kangaroo,which carries its young in a pouch,the emu ,a large bird that does not fly.
Australia's Great Barrier Reef is the world's largest coral reef,it is made up of coral deposits & is about 2000 kilo meters long
Australia is also known for its various type of Eucalyptus trees.There are over 500 varieties.
Australia ‘s sheep population is more than its human population. Its sheep population is 14 times more than its human population.This is why Australia stands first in the production & export of wool in the world.
Major Animals of Australia-Kangaroo, Koala ,Platypus, Emu
Antarctica - Interesting Facts
Do you know before 1840, the Antarctic was called as Terra Australis Incognita (meaning the unknown southern land).
Do you know the area of Antarctica continent keeps changing as per seasons! It is approximately 14.2 million square kilometers in summer, but during winter it almost doubles because of large amount of sea ice that forms along its periphery .
Antarctica is a frozen land area around the South Pole.It is also called “Frozen Continent” . Antarctica is the highest, driest, windiest, emptiest, coldest place on earth.
Antarctica contains 75% of the ice in the world.It is estimated that ice is 4 km thick. It looks all white, that is why it is also known as “White Continent”. Antarctica also contains about 70% of the world’s fresh water
Antarctica is the windiest continent on earth.
The water of the Antarctica is so cold that nothing can rot here.
The coldest natural temperature ever recorded in the world was in Antarctica. It was as low as –89.2°C (–129°F) .

Winters in Antarctica last from May through August.The average winter temperature is -70 degree C in the interior and -30 degree C at the coast.December to February are the summer months here, the average temperature is -35 degree C in the interior and 2 degree C at the coasts.
Antarctica has no cities, villages or farms.The only permanent settlements are research bases, where scientist from different countries come and reside & do different types of research.
Most of the continent is dry .Few interior parts receive an average of 5 cm of rain on annual basis.In a way,the Antarctica is a cold desert.
You would be surprised to know that in Antarctica ,time stands still - there are no time zones!
During the winter period in South Pole (late March to late September) it is dark all the time, means it is always night!
In the summer-time , it is light 24 hours a day !
Another interesting fact about this continent is that there are miles & miles of lakes under its ice.These lakes have been untouched for millions of years and carry many secrets about our planet formation, scientists are trying to uncover few of these secrets.
The land animals are almost negligible on this continent.The largest land animal in Antarctica is an insect, a wingless midge,known as Belgica Antarctica,it is less than 1.3 cm long.
Penguins are most often associated with Antarctica ,Adelie penguins are most common kind of penguins found here.These are birds but can not fly.
Europe - Interesting Facts
It is believed that Europe is named originally after ‘Europa’ who was a Phoenician Princess from Greek Mythology..
In Europe , there are no deserts.It is the only continent without any deserts.
Both world wars were largely focused in Europe.
Golf started in Scotland and Cricket was first played in Britain,both of these are countries in Europe.Similarly piano and guitar are European inventions.
The Vatican city, the world’s smallest country is in Europe .
Most of the countries of Europe use a single currency called the Euro.
Germany is the most populous country in Europe whereas London and Paris are most populous cities in this continent.
Industrial revolution is said to have originated in Europe only & from here it spread to whole world.
One of the unusual festival of Europe is the Tomatina Festival ,it is celebrated in Spain. In this ,every participant is involved in throwing tomatoes at each other.
Major Animals of Europe-European tree frogs, Wild boars,Blue tit,Hedge hog,Roe Deer
North America - Interesting Facts
North America was named after the explorer Americo Vespucci.
North America is the only continent that has every kind of climate
North America has five time zones.
The population density is approximately 22.9 per square kilometer, which is the largest for any continent in the world.
North America is around twice the size of Europe.
Lake Superior in North America is the largest fresh water lake in the world. It is located on the border between the United States and Canada.
North America has the highest average income per person as compared to any other continent and average food intake per person is also greater than that of any other continents..
It is also known as “New World”
North America is the third-largest continent in area, following Asia and Africa, and the fourth in population after Asia, Africa, and Europe.
The Mississippi ,the third longest river in the world is in North America.Its length is 3778 km.In the Native American language Mississippi means 'Great River'
Moose is the tallest animal of North America whereas Elk is the 2nd tallest animal in this continent
The Elf, the world's smallest owl in the world in also found in North America
Major Animals of North America-Brown Bears, bald Eagles, Hummingbirds, Bullfrogs
North America is the world's largest producer of maize,wheat & soybean.More than half of world's maize is produced here whereas it is the largest exporter of wheat.
Cuba,a country in North America, is known as the 'sugar bowl of the world',it is the world's largest exporter of sugar
North America produces about 25% of the world's total mild & dairy products.
Home of Google, Face Book, Apple & many other world famous technology companies.
USA ,world’s largest economy & most powerful nation is also in North America.
South America - Interesting Facts
Andes in South America, form the Second Highest Mountain System in the World next to the Himalayas(in Asia). They are Young Fold Mountains. Mt. Aconcagua is the Highest Peak (7,021 m) of The Andes.
The Angel Falls of South America ,is the Highest Waterfall in the World.
It also has the world’s largest river –Amazon (by volume of water).The name Amazon comes from Native American name for the river 'Amazunu' meaning 'big wave'.In length ,it is the second longest river in the world (6440 km)
South America is also the home of anaconda,one of the world's largest snakes.
Mt. Chimborazo and Mt.Cotopaxi,the world's highest volcanoes are found in South America.
Also the world's highest lake ,Lake Titicaca is located in South America.It is at the height of 3800 meters.It is the largest lake in South America
Major languages spoken in South America are Spanish and Portuguese.
It also has the largest salt lake of the world: Salar de Uyuni (Uyuni salt flats).
Brazil, a country in South America, is the largest producer of coffee in the world.
Soccer is the dominant game in this continent.

Human Body Systems Biology Interesting Facts

2014-09-27T04:52:00.000-07:00

Human Body Systems Biology Interesting Facts

Did you than human nose can remember up to 50000 different types of scents .

Research suggests that Children tend to grow faster in spring season as compared to any other time of the year !

Do you know that on average,men have larger noses than women !

Do you know that the enamel on the top surface of our tooth is the hardest part of the entire body !

Food is either cooled or warmed to a suitable temperature in the mouth !

Hugging releases oxytocin,which helps to heal physical wounds,makes someone trust you more !

Do you know that your Toe-prints are also unique , just like your finger prints !And imagine even your tongue print is unique!

You know ,you have no sense of smell when you're sleeping!

You know ,you can see your nose all the time but somehow your brain always ignores it!

We all blink after every few seconds, but do we know the purpose of blinking ! Blinking helps to wash tears over our eyeballs.That keeps them clean and moist.

An average person has over 1,460 dreams a year which is about 4 dreams every night!

On a clear night ,the human eye can see between 2000 to 3000 stars in the sky.

Do you know the similarity between human body and a banana? You will be amazed to know that 50% of human DNA is same as in banana!

The human body has enough iron in it to make 3 inches long nail.
Almost half of total bones in human body are in hands & feet.

A human heart pumps enough blood to fill 100 swimming pools in an average lifetime.In the same time it will beat almost three billion times

While sleeping, one person out of every eight snores, and one in ten grinds his teeth
All babies are color blind when they are born ,so > they only see black & white.
People with dark color skin wrinkle later than the people having light color skins!
Guess how many muscles are working when you take a step! Well, about 200 muscles are used when we take a single step!
Weight of the eyeball ! The eyeball of a human weighs approximately 28 grams.
People generally read 25% slower from a computer screen compared to paper.
Do you know ,it is impossible to sneeze with your eyes open !
And do you know ,it is impossible to hum while your nose is plugged close !
Do you know 'rhinoplasty' is the name given to plastic surgery which involves nose !
Have you heard about Anosmia ,Dysosmia ,Hyperosmia? These all words are related to sense of smelling. Anosmia means inability to smell and Dysosmia is a condition where things don't smell like they should smell whereas Hyperosmia means strong sense of smelling !
Here is one more trivia about nose :the technical term for sense of smell is 'olfaction' !
Your brain is move active and thinks more at night than during the day.
Here is an amazing fact about the brain,it uses 20% of the total oxygen and blood in your body.
Do you know what is Uvula? It is the small piece of the small tissue dangling over the tongue.
Now this is cool ,the tongue is the strongest muscle in the human body.
And did you know that our fingers don't have any muscles ? The muscles which move our finger joints are located in the palm and up in the forearm.
An adult human body contains approximately 100 trillion cells!
Your tongue has 3,000 taste buds.
Do you know ,your brain is 80% water?
No pain in the brain! Do you know our brain does not feel pain! Even though brain processes pain signals,the brain itself actually does not feel pain.
Bones in an adult account for 14% of the body's total weight.
The tips of your fingers have enough strength to support the weight of your whole body
When you are born with 300 bones in their body, but as an adult you only have 206 bones. This happens because many of them join together to make a single bone.
The outsides of a bone are hard, they are light and soft inside. They are about 75% water.
The strongest bone in your body is the femur (thighbone), and it's hollow!
The smallest bone in the human body is the staples bone which is located in the ear,it is also called stirrup .
Men get hiccups more often than women.
A sneeze can exceed the speed of 100 miles per hour.When a sneeze leaves your body ,it is at such a high speed that you should avoid suppressing it.
It takes food only seven seconds to go from the mouth to the stomach via the esophagus, pretty fast , right?
Enamel is hardest substance in the human body.
Fingernails grow nearly 4 times faster than toenails!
Women hearts beat faster than men. Also women blink more than men !
In one day ,your heart beats 100,000 times.
And do you know that breathing rate is Burberry replica handbags faster in children and women than men !

The normal pulse is 70 heartbeats per minute.
Blood is such a good stain that Burberry replica handbags Native Americans used it for paint.
Did you know that Blood is 6 times thicker than water?
Our kidneys filter about 1.3 liters of blood every minute & expel up to 1.4 liters of urine in a day.
The capacity of an adult human replica parda handbags outlet bladder ranges from approximately 600 ml to 800 ml. The exact maximum capacity varies from person to person. But remember that the urge to urinate is triggered when the bladder contains about 100 to 200 mls , Louis Vuitton replica much lower than full capacity. As the bladder fills with fluid, receptors in the bladder wall get stretched.

Do you know a woman has approximately 4.5 liters of blood in her body, while men have 5.6 liters?
Your blood takes a very long trip through your body. If you could stretch out all of a human's blood vessels, they would be about 60,000 miles long. That's enough to go around the world twice.
Did you know that, our heart (which is one of the main muscles ) is so powerful that it can squirt the blood no less than 9 meters high? It's because it’s programmed to deliver the blood even in the less accessible areas of the body, like the toes & the fingertips, and therefore, in order to do this, it’s necessary for the heart to create lots of pressure inside the veins.
People with darker skin will not wrinkle as fast as people with lighter skin.
The reason honey is so easy to digest is that it’s already been digested by a bee.
The only part of the body that has no blood supply is the cornea in the eye. It takes in oxygen directly from the air.
The sound you hear when you crack your knuckles is actually the sound of nitrogen gas bubbles bursting.
Women blink nearly twice as much as men.
It takes about 20 seconds for a red blood cell to circle the whole body.
Every drop of blood in your body is filtered by your body over 300 times a day.
Babies are born with pink lungs but they darken in color as we breathe in polluted air.
Your right lung is bigger than left lung! The left lung is small so as to adjust heart in that part !
Human hair and fingernails continue to grow after death.
You burn more calorie while sleeping than watching TV.
The Hyoid bone, in your throat ,is the only bone in your body which not attached to other bone..
Your skeleton keeps changing every 10 years, that means your bodies keep renewing themselves so every 10 year you have a new skeleton.
The word Karate means, "empty hand”.
The best time for a person to buy shoes is in the afternoon. This is because the foot tends to swell a bit around this time.
Do you know left hand side of your brain controls right -side of your body whereas right-hand side controls left part of body .
Do you know everybody has a strong eye and one weak!
Pupils in eyes get their name because the picture they give is small ,like schoolchildren !
Rods & Cons are the two types of light sensitive cells in your eyes.Rods tell about brightness of color but Cones tell about what color it is. Cones don't work well in night ,that is why colors look gray at night!
The brain grows quickest till the age of 5.!
And do you know that unlike other body cells ,brain cells can not regenerate . Once brain cells are damaged ,they are not repaired !
A normal human being can survive for 20 days without eating but it can survive only for 2 days without drinking!
Your blood carries food & oxygen to all of your body.!
Body fat is not particularly hazardous to health until the level of total body fat reaches 35% for men & 40% for woman
About 90% of what we eat is assimilated in the small intestine.
Human Bones consist of 50% water & 50% solid material.
14 bones make up the human face.
It is considered that average quantity of blood in a man is 6.8 liters whereas it is 500 ml less in an average woman

Hair is made of protein and keratin & has no blood supply.And common belief that shaving facial hair makes them grow faster or thicker is ,not true.

An average person has 100,000 hairs on his/her head. Each hair grows about 5 inches (12.7 cm) every year.

There are 60,000 miles (97,000 km) of blood vessels in each human.

The average adult can read 150 to 200 words per minute and the vocabulary of an average person consists of only 5,000 - 7,000 words.

The only part of the body that has no blood supply is the cornea in the eye.It takes in oxygen directly from air.

The human heart creates enough pressure while pumping to squirt blood to 30 feet.

Ansmall trivia about human feet: The human feet have 500,000 sweat glands and can produce more than a pint of sweat everyday.

An amazing fact :In an adult human body, there are about 60,000 miles of blood vessels .

A mind-boggling fact:The ear in human body has over 25,000 tiny hair cells to help us hear each and every sound!

Have you heard about 'Glabella' ! It is the space between your eyebrows!

Another interesting word 'Borborygmi' -it is the noise or sound which our stomach makes when we are hungry!

A small important fact about human ears and sound:Ears convert sound waves into nerve impulses that are sent to brain !

The only joint less bone in human body is Hyoid bone in the throat !

Do you know that if human eye was a digital camera , it would have 576 megapixels.

Another fact about blood :An average human adult has between 4.7 and 5 liters of blood in their body. Blood accounts for about 7% per cent of our total body weight!

Click & See free Human Body Systems - videos Science Videos for kids

100 Very Cool Facts About The Human Body

2014-09-27T04:47:00.000-07:00

100 Very Cool Facts About The Human Body

The human body is an incredibly complex and intricate system, one that still baffles doctors and researchers on a regular basis despite thousands of years of medical knowledge. As a result, it shouldn’t be any surprise that even body parts and functions we deal with every day have bizarre or unexpected facts and explanations behind them. From sneezes to fingernail growth, here are 100 weird, wacky, and interesting facts about the human body.

The Brain
The human brain is the most complex and least understood part of the human anatomy. There may be a lot we don’t know, but here are a few interesting facts that we’ve got covered.

Nerve impulses to and from the brain travel as fast as 170 miles per hour. Ever wonder how you can react so fast to things around you or why that stubbed toe hurts right away? It’s due to the super-speedy movement of nerve impulses from your brain to the rest of your body and vice versa, bringing reactions at the speed of a high powered luxury sports car.
The brain operates on the same amount of power as 10-watt light bulb. The cartoon image of a light bulb over your head when a great thought occurs isn’t too far off the mark. Your brain generates as much energy as a small light bulb even when you’re sleeping.
The human brain cell can hold 5 times as much information as the Encyclopedia Britannica. Or any other encyclopedia for that matter. Scientists have yet to settle on a definitive amount, but the storage capacity of the brain in electronic terms is thought to be between 3 or even 1,000 terabytes. The National Archives of Britain, containing over 900 years of history, only takes up 70 terabytes, making your brain’s memory power pretty darn impressive.
Your brain uses 20% of the oxygen that enters your bloodstream. The brain only makes up about 2% of our body mass, yet consumes more oxygen than any other organ in the body, making it extremely susceptible to damage related to oxygen deprivation. So breathe deep to keep your brain happy and swimming in oxygenated cells.
The brain is much more active at night than during the day. Logically, you would think that all the moving around, complicated calculations and tasks and general interaction we do on a daily basis during our working hours would take a lot more brain power than, say, lying in bed. Turns out, the opposite is true. When you turn off your brain turns on. Scientists don’t yet know why this is but you can thank the hard work of your brain while you sleep for all those pleasant dreams.
Scientists say the higher your I.Q. the more you dream. While this may be true, don’t take it as a sign you’re mentally lacking if you can’t recall your dreams. Most of us don’t remember many of our dreams and the average length of most dreams is only 2-3 seconds–barely long enough to register.
Neurons continue to grow throughout human life. For years scientists and doctors thought that brain and neural tissue couldn’t grow or regenerate. While it doesn’t act in the same manner as tissues in many other parts of the body, neurons can and do grow throughout your life, adding a whole new dimension to the study of the brain and the illnesses that affect it.
Information travels at different speeds within different types of neurons. Not all neurons are the same. There are a few different types within the body and transmission along these different kinds can be as slow as 0.5 meters/sec or as fast as 120 meters/sec.
The brain itself cannot feel pain. While the brain might be the pain center when you cut your finger or burn yourself, the brain itself does not have pain receptors and cannot feel pain. That doesn’t mean your head can’t hurt. The brain is surrounded by loads of tissues, nerves and blood vessels that are plenty receptive to pain and can give you a pounding headache.
80% of the brain is water. Your brain isn’t the firm, gray mass you’ve seen on TV. Living brain tissue is a squishy, pink and jelly-like organ thanks to the loads of blood and high water content of the tissue. So the next time you’re feeling dehydrated get a drink to keep your brain hydrated.

Hair and Nails
While they’re not a living part of your body, most people spend a good amount of time caring for their hair and nails. The next time you’re heading in for a haircut or manicure, think of these facts.

Facial hair grows faster than any other hair on the body. If you’ve ever had a covering of stubble on your face as you’re clocking out at 5 o’clock you’re probably pretty familiar with this. In fact, if the average man never shaved his beard it would grow to over 30 feet during his lifetime, longer than a killer whale.
Every day the average person loses 60-100 strands of hair. Unless you’re already bald, chances are good that you’re shedding pretty heavily on a daily basis. Your hair loss will vary in accordance with the season, pregnancy, illness, diet and age.
Women’s hair is about half the diameter of men’s hair. While it might sound strange, it shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise that men’s hair should be coarser than that of women. Hair diameter also varies on average between races, making hair plugs on some men look especially obvious.
One human hair can support 3.5 ounces. That’s about the weight of two full size candy bars, and with hundreds of thousands of hairs on the human head, makes the tale of Rapunzel much more plausible.
The fastest growing nail is on the middle finger. And the nail on the middle finger of your dominant hand will grow the fastest of all. Why is not entirely known, but nail growth is related to the length of the finger, with the longest fingers growing nails the fastest and shortest the slowest.
There are as many hairs per square inch on your body as a chimpanzee. Humans are not quite the naked apes that we’re made out to be. We have lots of hair, but on most of us it’s not obvious as a majority of the hairs are too fine or light to be seen.
Blondes have more hair. They’re said to have more fun, and they definitely have more hair. Hair color determines how dense the hair on your head is. The average human has 100,000 hair follicles, each of which is capable of producing 20 individual hairs during a person’s lifetime. Blondes average 146,000 follicles while people with black hair tend to have about 110,000 follicles. Those with brown hair fit the average with 100,000 follicles and redheads have the least dense hair, with about 86,000 follicles.
Fingernails grow nearly 4 times faster than toenails. If you notice that you’re trimming your fingernails much more frequently than your toenails you’re not just imagining it. The nails that get the most exposure and are used most frequently grow the fastest. On average, nails on both the toes and fingers grow about one-tenth of an inch each month.
The lifespan of a human hair is 3 to 7 years on average. While you quite a few hairs each day, your hairs actually have a pretty long life providing they aren’t subject to any trauma. Your hairs will likely get to see several different haircuts, styles, and even possibly decades before they fall out on their own.
You must lose over 50% of your scalp hairs before it is apparent to anyone. You lose hundreds of hairs a day but you’ll have to lose a lot more before you or anyone else will notice. Half of the hairs on your pretty little head will have to disappear before your impending baldness will become obvious to all those around you.
Human hair is virtually indestructible. Aside from it’s flammability, human hair decays at such a slow rate that it is practically non-disintegrative. If you’ve ever wondered how your how clogs up your pipes so quick consider this: hair cannot be destroyed by cold, change of climate, water, or other natural forces and it is resistant to many kinds of acids and corrosive chemicals.

Internal Organs
Though we may not give them much thought unless they’re bothering us, our internal organs are what allow us to go on eating, breathing and walking around. Here are some things to consider the next time you hear your stomach growl.

The largest internal organ is the small intestine. Despite being called the smaller of the two intestines, your small intestine is actually four times as long as the average adult is tall. If it weren’t looped back and forth upon itself it wouldn’t fit inside the abdominal cavity.
The human heart creates enough pressure to squirt blood 30 feet. No wonder you can feel your heartbeat so easily. Pumping blood through your body quickly and efficiently takes quite a bit of pressure resulting in the strong contractions of the heart and the thick walls of the ventricles which push blood to the body.
The acid in your stomach is strong enough to dissolve razorblades. While you certainly shouldn’t test the fortitude of your stomach by eating a razorblade or any other metal object for that matter, the acids that digest the food you eat aren’t to be taken lightly. Hydrochloric acid, the type found in your stomach, is not only good at dissolving the pizza you had for dinner but can also eat through many types of metal.
The human body is estimated to have 60,000 miles of blood vessels. To put that in perspective, the distance around the earth is about 25,000 miles, making the distance your blood vessels could travel if laid end to end more than two times around the earth.
You get a new stomach lining every three to four days. The mucus-like cells lining the walls of the stomach would soon dissolve due to the strong digestive acids in your stomach if they weren’t constantly replaced. Those with ulcers know how painful it can be when stomach acid takes its toll on the lining of your stomach.
The surface area of a human lung is equal to a tennis court. In order to more efficiently oxygenate the blood, the lungs are filled with thousands of branching bronchi and tiny, grape-like alveoli. These are filled with microscopic capillaries which oxygen and carbon dioxide. The large amount of surface area makes it easier for this exchange to take place, and makes sure you stay properly oxygenated at all times.
Women’s hearts beat faster than men’s.The main reason for this is simply that on average women tend to be smaller than men and have less mass to pump blood to. But women’s and men’s hearts can actually act quite differently, especially when experiencing trauma like a heart attack, and many treatments that work for men must be adjusted or changed entirely to work for women.
Scientists have counted over 500 different liver functions. You may not think much about your liver except after a long night of drinking, but the liver is one of the body’s hardest working, largest and busiest organs. Some of the functions your liver performs are: production of bile, decomposition of red blood cells, plasma protein synthesis, and detoxification.
The aorta is nearly the diameter of a garden hose. The average adult heart is about the size of two fists, making the size of the aorta quite impressive. The artery needs to be so large as it is the main supplier of rich, oxygenated blood to the rest of the body.
Your left lung is smaller than your right lung to make room for your heart. For most people, if they were asked to draw a picture of what the lungs look like they would draw both looking roughly the same size. While the lungs are fairly similar in size, the human heart, though located fairly centrally, is tilted slightly to the left making it take up more room on that side of the body and crowding out that poor left lung.
You could remove a large part of your internal organs and survive. The human body may appear fragile but it’s possible to survive even with the removal of the stomach, the spleen, 75 percent of the liver, 80 percent of the intestines, one kidney, one lung, and virtually every organ from the pelvic and groin area. You might not feel too great, but the missing organs wouldn’t kill you.
The adrenal glands change size throughout life. The adrenal glands, lying right above the kidneys, are responsible for releasing stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline. In the seventh month of a fetus’ development, the glands are roughly the same size as the kidneys. At birth, the glands have shrunk slightly and will continue to do so throughout life. In fact, by the time a person reaches old age, the glands are so small they can hardly be seen.

Bodily Functions
We may not always like to talk about them, but everyone has to deal with bodily functions on a daily basis. These are a few facts about the involuntary and sometimes unpleasant actions of our bodies.

Sneezes regularly exceed 100 mph. There’s a good reason why you can’t keep your eyes open when you sneeze–that sneeze is rocketing out of your body at close to 100 mph. This is, of course, a good reason to cover your mouth when you sneeze.
Coughs clock in at about 60 mph. Viruses and colds get spread around the office and the classroom quickly during cold and flu season. With 60 mph coughs spraying germs far and wide, it’s no wonder.
Women blink twice as many times as men do. That’s a lot of blinking every day. The average person, man or woman, blinks about 13 times a minute.
A full bladder is roughly the size of a soft ball. No wonder you have to run to bathroom when you feel the call of the wild. The average bladder holds about 400-800 cc of fluid but most people will feel the urge to go long before that at 250 to 300 cc.
Approximately 75% of human waste is made of water. While we might typically think that urine is the liquid part of human waste products, the truth is that what we consider solid waste is actually mostly water as well. You should be thankful that most waste is fairly water-filled, as drier harder stools are what cause constipation and are much harder and sometimes painful to pass.
Feet have 500,000 sweat glands and can produce more than a pint of sweat a day. With that kind of sweat-producing power it’s no wonder that your gym shoes have a stench that can peel paint. Additionally, men usually have much more active sweat glands than women.
During your lifetime, you will produce enough saliva to fill two swimming pools. Saliva plays an important part in beginning the digestive process and keeping the mouth lubricated, and your mouth produces quite a bit of it on a daily basis.
The average person expels flatulence 14 times each day. Even if you’d like to think you’re too dignified to pass gas, the reality is that almost everyone will at least a few times a day. Digestion causes the body to release gases which can be painful if trapped in the abdomen and not released.
Earwax production is necessary for good ear health. While many people find earwax to be disgusting, it’s actually a very important part of your ear’s defense system. It protects the delicate inner ear from bacteria, fungus, dirt and even insects. It also cleans and lubricates the ear canal.

Sex and Reproduction
As taboo as it may be in some places, sex is an important part of human life as a facet of relationships and the means to reproduce. Here are a few things you might not have known.

On any given day, sexual intercourse takes place 120 million times on earth. Humans are a quickly proliferating species, and with about 4% of the world’s population having sex on any given day, it’s no wonder that birth rates continue to increase in many places all over the world.
The largest cell in the human body is the female egg and the smallest is the male sperm. While you can’t see skin cells or muscle cells, the ovum is typically large enough to be seen with the naked eye with a diameter of about a millimeter. The sperm cell, on the other hand, is tiny, consisting of little more than nucleus.
The three things pregnant women dream most of during their first trimester are frogs, worms and potted plants. Pregnancy hormones can cause mood swings, cravings and many other unexpected changes. Oddly enough, hormones can often affect the types of dreams women have and their vividness. The most common are these three types, but many women also dream of water, giving birth or even have violent or sexually charged dreams.
Your teeth start growing 6 months before you are born. While few babies are born with teeth in place, the teeth that will eventually push through the gums of young children are formed long before the child even leaves the womb. At 9 to 12 weeks the fetus starts to form the teeth buds that will turn into baby teeth.
Babies are always born with blue eyes. The color of your eyes depends on the genes you get from your parents, but at birth most babies appear to have blue eyes. The reason behind this is the pigment melanin. The melanin in a newborn’s eyes often needs time after birth to be fully deposited or to be darkened by exposure to ultraviolet light, later revealing the baby’s true eye color.
Babies are, pound for pound, stronger than an ox. While a baby certainly couldn’t pull a covered wagon at its present size, if the child were the size of an oxen it just might very well be able to. Babies have especially strong and powerful legs for such tiny creatures, so watch out for those kicks.
One out of every 2,000 newborn infants has a tooth when they are born. Nursing mothers may cringe at this fact. Sometimes the tooth is a regular baby tooth that has already erupted and sometimes it is an extra tooth that will fall out before the other set of choppers comes in.
A fetus acquires fingerprints at the age of three months. When only a small fraction of the way through its development, a fetus will have already developed one of the most unique human traits: fingerprints. At only 6-13 weeks of development, the whorls of what will be fingerprints have already developed. Oddly enough, those fingerprints will not change throughout the person’s life and will be one of the last things to disappear after death.
Every human spent about half an hour as a single cell. All life has to begin somewhere, and even the largest humans spent a short part of their lives as a single celled organism when sperm and egg cells first combine. Shortly afterward, the cells begin rapidly dividing and begin forming the components of a tiny embryo.
Most men have erections every hour to hour and a half during sleep. Most people’s bodies and minds are much more active when they’re sleeping than they think. The combination of blood circulation and testosterone production can cause erections during sleep and they’re often a normal and necessary part of REM sleep.

Senses
The primary means by which we interact with the world around us is through our senses. Here are some interesting facts about these five sensory abilities.

After eating too much, your hearing is less sharp. If you’re heading to a concert or a musical after a big meal you may be doing yourself a disservice. Try eating a smaller meal if you need to keep your hearing pitch perfect.
About one third of the human race has 20-20 vision. Glasses and contact wearers are hardly alone in a world where two thirds of the population have less than perfect vision. The amount of people with perfect vision decreases further as they age.
If saliva cannot dissolve something, you cannot taste it. In order for foods, or anything else, to have a taste, chemicals from the substance must be dissolved by saliva. If you don’t believe it, try drying off your tongue before tasting something.
Women are born better smellers than men and remain better smellers over life. Studies have shown that women are more able to correctly pinpoint just what a smell is. Women were better able to identify citrus, vanilla, cinnamon and coffee smells. While women are overall better smellers, there is an unfortunate 2% of the population with no sense of smell at all.
Your nose can remember 50,000 different scents. While a bloodhound’s nose may be a million times more sensitive than a human’s, that doesn’t mean that the human sense of smell is useless. Humans can identify a wide variety of scents and many are strongly tied to memories.
Even small noises cause the pupils of the eyes to dilate. It is believed that this is why surgeons, watchmakers and others who perform delicate manual operations are so bothered by uninvited noise. The sound causes their pupils to change focus and blur their vision, making it harder to do their job well.
Everyone has a unique smell, except for identical twins. Newborns are able to recognize the smell of their mothers and many of us can pinpoint the smell of our significant others and those we are close to. Part of that smell is determined by genetics, but it’s also largely do to environment, diet and personal hygiene products that create a unique chemistry for each person.

Aging and Death
From the very young to the very old, aging is a necessary and unavoidable part of life. Learn about the process with these interesting, if somewhat strange facts.

The ashes of a cremated person average about 9 pounds. A big part of what gives the human body weight is the water trapped in our cells. Once cremated, that water and a majority of our tissues are destroyed, leaving little behind.
Nails and hair do not continue to grow after we die. They do appear longer when we die, however, as the skin dehydrates and pulls back from the nail beds and scalp.
By the age of 60, most people will have lost about half their taste buds. Perhaps you shouldn’t trust your grandma’s cooking as much as you do. Older individuals tend to lose their ability to taste, and many find that they need much more intense flavoring in order to be able to fully appreciate a dish.
Your eyes are always the same size from birth but your nose and ears never stop growing. When babies look up at you with those big eyes, they’re the same size that they’ll be carrying around in their bodies for the rest of their lives. Their ears and nose, however, will grow throughout their lives and research has shown that growth peaks in seven year cycles.
By 60 years of age, 60-percent of men and 40-percent of women will snore. If you’ve ever been kept awake by a snoring loved one you know the sound can be deafening. Normal snores average around 60 decibels, the noise level of normal speech, intense snores can reach more than 80 decibels, the approximate level caused by a jackhammer breaking up concrete.
A baby’s head is one-quarter of it’s total length, but by age 25 will only be one-eighth of its total length. As it turns out, our adorably oversized baby heads won’t change size as drastically as the rest of our body. The legs and torso will lengthen, but the head won’t get much longer.

Disease and Injury
Most of us will get injured or sick at some point in our lives. Here are some facts on how the human body reacts to the stresses and dangers from the outside world.

Monday is the day of the week when the risk of heart attack is greatest. Yet another reason to loathe Mondays! A ten year study in Scotland found that 20% more people die of heart attacks on Mondays than any other day of the week. Researchers theorize that it’s a combination of too much fun over the weekend with the stress of going back to work that causes the increase.
Humans can make do longer without food than sleep. While you might feel better prepared to stay up all night partying than to give up eating, that feeling will be relatively short lived. Provided there is water, the average human could survive a month to two months without food depending on their body fat and other factors. Sleep deprived people, however, start experiencing radical personality and psychological changes after only a few sleepless days. The longest recorded time anyone has ever gone without sleep is 11 days, at the end of which the experimenter was awake, but stumbled over words, hallucinated and frequently forgot what he was doing.
A simple, moderately severe sunburn damages the blood vessels extensively. How extensively? Studies have shown that it can take four to fifteen months for them to return to their normal condition. Consider that the next time you’re feeling too lazy to apply sunscreen before heading outside.
Over 90% of diseases are caused or complicated by stress. That high stress job you have could be doing more than just wearing you down each day. It could also be increasing your chances of having a variety of serious medical conditions like depression, high blood pressure and heart disease.
A human head remains conscious for about 15 to 20 seconds after it is been decapitated. While it might be gross to think about, the blood in the head may be enough to keep someone alive and conscious for a few seconds after the head has been separated from the body, though reports as to the accuracy of this are widely varying.

Muscles and Bones
Muscles and Bones provide the framework for our bodies and allow us to jump, run or just lie on the couch. Here are a few facts to ponder the next time you’re lying around.

It takes 17 muscles to smile and 43 to frown. Unless you’re trying to give your face a bit of a workout, smiling is a much easier option for most of us. Anyone who’s ever scowled, squinted or frowned for a long period of time knows how it tires out the face which doesn’t do a thing to improve your mood.
Babies are born with 300 bones, but by adulthood the number is reduced to 206. The reason for this is that many of the bones of children are composed of smaller component bones that are not yet fused like those in the skull. This makes it easier for the baby to pass through the birth canal. The bones harden and fuse as the children grow.
We are about 1 cm taller in the morning than in the evening. The cartilage between our bones gets compressed by standing, sitting and other daily activities as the day goes on, making us just a little shorter at the end of the day than at the beginning.
The strongest muscle in the human body is the tongue. While you may not be able to bench press much with your tongue, it is in fact the strongest muscle in your body in proportion to its size. If you think about it, every time you eat, swallow or talk you use your tongue, ensuring it gets quite a workout throughout the day.
The hardest bone in the human body is the jawbone. The next time someone suggests you take it on the chin, you might be well advised to take their advice as the jawbone is one of the most durable and hard to break bones in the body.
You use 200 muscles to take one step. Depending on how you divide up muscle groups, just to take a single step you use somewhere in the neighborhood of 200 muscles. That’s a lot of work for the muscles considering most of us take about 10,000 steps a day.
The tooth is the only part of the human body that can’t repair itself. If you’ve ever chipped a tooth you know just how sadly true this one is. The outer layer of the tooth is enamel which is not a living tissue. Since it’s not alive, it can’t repair itself, leaving your dentist to do the work instead.
It takes twice as long to lose new muscle if you stop working out than it did to gain it. Lazy people out there shouldn’t use this as motivation to not work out, however. It’s relatively easy to build new muscle tissue and get your muscles in shape, so if anything, this fact should be motivation to get off the couch and get moving.
Bone is stronger than some steel. This doesn’t mean your bones can’t break of course, as they are much less dense than steel. Bone has been found to have a tensile strength of 20,000 psi while steel is much higher at 70,000 psi. Steel is much heavier than bone, however, and pound for pound bone is the stronger material.
The feet account for one quarter of all the human body’s bones. You may not give your feet much thought but they are home to more bones than any other part of your body. How many? Of the two hundred or so bones in the body, the feet contain a whopping 52 of them.

Microscopic Level
Much of what takes place in our bodies happens at a level that we simply can’t see with the naked eye. These facts will show you that sometimes that might be for the best.

About 32 million bacteria call every inch of your skin home. Germaphobes don’t need to worry however, as a majority of these are entirely harmless and some are even helpful in maintaining a healthy body.
Humans shed and regrow outer skin cells about every 27 days. Skin protects your delicate internal organs from the elements and as such, dries and flakes off completely about once a month so that it can maintain its strength. Chances are that last month’s skin is still hanging around your house in the form of the dust on your bookshelf or under the couch.
Three hundred million cells die in the human body every minute. While that sounds like a lot, it’s really just a small fraction of the cells that are in the human body. Estimates have placed the total number of cells in the body at 10-50 trillion so you can afford to lose a few hundred million without a hitch.
Humans shed about 600,000 particles of skin every hour. You may not think much about losing skin if yours isn’t dry or flaky or peeling from a sunburn, but your skin is constantly renewing itself and shedding dead cells.
Every day an adult body produces 300 billion new cells. Your body not only needs energy to keep your organs up and running but also to constantly repair and build new cells to form the building blocks of your body itself.
Every tongue print is unique. If you’re planning on committing a crime, don’t think you’ll get away with leaving a tongue print behind. Each tongue is different and yours could be unique enough to finger you as the culprit.
Your body has enough iron in it to make a nail 3 inches long. Anyone who has ever tasted blood knows that it has a slightly metallic taste. This is due to the high levels of iron in the blood. If you were to take all of this iron out of the body, you’d have enough to make a small nail and very severe anemia.
The most common blood type in the world is Type O. Blood banks find it valuable as it can be given to those with both type A and B blood. The rarest blood type, A-H or Bombay blood due to the location of its discovery, has been found in less than hundred people since it was discovered.
Human lips have a reddish color because of the great concentration of tiny capillaries just below the skin. The blood in these capillaries is normally highly oxygenated and therefore quite red. This explains why the lips appear pale when a person is anemic or has lost a great deal of blood. It also explains why the lips turn blue in very cold weather. Cold causes the capillaries to constrict, and the blood loses oxygen and changes to a darker color.

Miscellaneous
Here are a few things you might not have known about all different parts of your anatomy.

The colder the room you sleep in, the better the chances are that you’ll have a bad dream. It isn’t entirely clear to scientists why this is the case, but if you are opposed to having nightmares you might want to keep yourself a little toastier at night.
Tears and mucus contain an enzyme (lysozyme) that breaks down the cell wall of many bacteria. This is to your advantage, as the mucus that lines your nose and throat, as well as the tears that wet your eyes are helping to prevent bacteria from infecting those areas and making you sick.
Your body gives off enough heat in 30 minutes to bring half a gallon of water to a boil. If you’ve seen the Matrix you are aware of the energy potentially generated by the human body. Our bodies expend a large amount of calories keeping us at a steady 98.6 degrees, enough to boil water or even cook pasta.
Your ears secrete more earwax when you are afraid than when you aren’t. The chemicals and hormones released when you are afraid could be having unseen effects on your body in the form of earwax. Studies have suggested that fear causes the ears to produce more of the sticky substance, though the reasons are not yet clear.
It is not possible to tickle yourself. Even the most ticklish among us do not have the ability to tickle ourselves. The reason behind this is that your brain predicts the tickle from information it already has, like how your fingers are moving. Because it knows and can feel where the tickle is coming from, your brain doesn’t respond in the same way as it would if someone else was doing the tickling.
The width of your armspan stretched out is the length of your whole body. While not exact down to the last millimeter, your armspan is a pretty good estimator of your height.
Humans are the only animals to produce emotional tears. In the animal world, humans are the biggest crybabies, being the only animals who cry because they’ve had a bad day, lost a loved one, or just don’t feel good.
Right-handed people live, on average, nine years longer than left-handed people do. This doesn’t have a genetic basis, but is largely due to the fact that a majority of the machines and tools we use on a daily basis are designed for those who are right handed, making them somewhat dangerous for lefties to use and resulting in thousands of accidents and deaths each year.
Women burn fat more slowly than men, by a rate of about 50 calories a day. Most men have a much easier time burning fat than women. Women, because of their reproductive role, generally require a higher basic body fat proportion than men, and as a result their bodies don’t get rid of excess fat at the same rate as men.
Koalas and primates are the only animals with unique fingerprints. Humans, apes and koalas are unique in the animal kingdom due to the tiny prints on the fingers of their hands. Studies on primates have suggested that even cloned individuals have unique fingerprints.
The indentation in the middle of the area between the nose and the upper lip has a name. It is called the philtrum. Scientists have yet to figure out what purpose this indentation serves, though the ancient Greeks thought it to be one of the most erogenous places on the body

50 Incredibly Weird Facts About the Human Body

2014-09-27T04:46:00.000-07:00

50 Incredibly Weird Facts About the Human Body

As long as we make efforts to take care of ourselves and live healthy, there is a good chance that our bodies will serve us well for a long time. Our bodies truly are amazing. You might be surprised at what your body is capable of after reading these 50 weird facts about the human body:

The Brain

Complex and poorly understood, the brain is what makes everything work properly. The body may be kept alive, but without the brain, a person can’t truly live. Here are some interesting and weird facts about the brain.

The brain doesn’t feel pain: Even though the brain processes pain signals, the brain itself does not actually feel pain.
Your brain has huge oxygen needs: Your brain requires 20 percent of the oxygen and calories your body needs — even though your brain only makes up two percent of your total body weight.
80% of the brain is water: Instead of being relatively solid, your brain 80% water. This means that it is important that you remain properly hydrated for the sake of your mind.
Your brain comes out to play at night: You’d think that your brain is more active during the day, when the rest of your body is. But it’s not. Your brain is more active when you sleep.
Your brain operates on 10 watts of power: It’s true: The amazing computational power of your brain only requires about 10 watts of power to operate.
A higher I.Q. equals more dreams: The smarter you are, the more you dream. A high I.Q. can also fight mental illness. Some people even believe they are smarter in their dreams than when they are awake.
The brain changes shapes during puberty: Your teenage years do more than just change how you feel; the very structure of your brain changes during the teen years, and it even affects impulsive, risky behavior.
Your brain can store everything: Technically, your brain has the capacity to store everything you experience, see, read or hear. However, the real issue is recall — whether you can access that information.
Information in your brain travels at different speeds: The neurons in your brain are built differently, and information travels along them at different speeds. This is why sometimes you can recall information instantly, and sometimes it takes a little longer.

Your Senses

You might be surprised at the amazing things your various senses can accomplish.

Your smell is unique: Your body odor is unique to you — unless you have an identical twin. Even babies recognize the individual scents of their mothers.
Humans use echolocation: Humans can use sound to sense objects in their area using echolocation. It is thought that those who are blind develop this ability to heightened effectiveness.
Adrenaline gives you super strength: Yes, with the proper response in certain situations, you really can lift a car.
Women smell better than men: Women are better than men at identifying smells.
Your nose remembers 50,000 scents: It is possible for your nose to identify and remember more than 50,000 smells.
Your hearing decreases when you overeat: When you eat too much food, it actually reduces your ability to hear. So consider eating healthy — and only until you are full.
Your sense of time is in your head: How you experience time is all about your perception. Some speculate that stress can help you experience time dilation. Apparently, time manipulation isn’t just for superheroes.

Reproduction

How we as a species reproduce offers all sorts of interesting weird facts. Here are some of the weirder things you might not know.

Your teeth are growing before birth: Even though it takes months after you are born to see teeth, they start growing about six months before you are born.
Babies are stronger than oxen: On a pound for pound basis, that is. For their size, babies are quite powerful and strong.
Babies always have blue eyes when they are born: Melanin and exposure to ultraviolet light are needed to bring out the true color of babies’ eyes. Until then they all have blue eyes.
Women might be intrinsically bi: There are sex studies that indicate that women might bisexual intrinsically, no matter how they class themselves, while men are usually either gay or straight.
Most men have regular erections while asleep: Every hour to hour and a half, sleeping men have erections — though they may not be aware of it.
Sex can be a pain reliever: Even though the “headache” excuse is often used to avoid sex, the truth is that intercourse can provide pain relief. Sex can also help you reduce stress.
Chocolate is better than sex: In some studies, women claim they would rather have chocolate than sex. But does it really cause orgasm? Probably not on its own.

Body Functions

The things our bodies do are often strange and sometimes gross. Here are some weird facts about the way your body functions.

Earwax is necessary: If you want healthy ears, you need some earwax in there.
Your feet can produce a pint of sweat a day: There are 500,000 (250,000 for each) sweat glands in your feet, and that can mean a great deal of stinky sweat.
Throughout your life, the amount of saliva you have could fill two swimming pools: Since saliva is a vital part of digestion, it is little surprise that your mouth makes so much of it.
A full bladder is about the size of a soft ball: When your bladder is full, holding up to 800 cc of fluid, it is large enough to be noticeable.
You probably pass gas 14 times a day: On average, you will expel flatulence several times as part of digestion.
A sneeze can exceed 100 mph: When a sneeze leaves your body, it does so at high speeds — so you should avoid suppressing it and causing damage to your body.
Coughs leave at 60 mph: A cough is much less dangerous, leaving the body at 60 mph. That’s still highway speed, though.

Musculoskeletal System

Find out what you didn’t know about your muscles and bones.

Bones can self-destruct: It is possible for your bones to destruct without enough calcium intake.
You are taller in the morning: Throughout the day, the cartilage between your bones is compressed, making you about 1 cm shorter by day’s end.
1/4 of your bones are in your feet: There are 26 bones in each foot, meaning that the 52 bones in account for 25 percent of your body’s 206 bones.
It takes more muscles to frown than to smile: Scientists can’t agree on the exact number, but more muscles are required to frown than to smile.
When you take a step, you are using up to 200 muscles: Walking uses a great deal of muscle power — especially if you take your 10,000 steps.
Your tongue is the strongest muscle in your body: Compared to its size, the tongue is the strongest muscle. But I doubt you’ll be lifting weights with it.
Bone can be stronger than steel: Once again, this is a pound for pound comparison, since steel is denser and has a higher tensile strength.

Unnecessary Body Parts

We have a number of body parts that are, well, useless. Here are some facts about the body parts we don’t actually need.

Coccyx: This collection of fused vertebrae have no purpose these days, although scientists believe it’s what’s left of the mammal tail humans used to have. It may be useless, but when you break your coccyx, it’s still painful.
Pinkie toe: There is speculation that since we no longer have to run for our dinner, and we wear sneakers, the pinkie toe‘s evolutionary purpose is disappearing — and maybe the pinkie itself will go the way of the dodo.
Wisdom teeth: This third set of molars is largely useless, doing little beyond crowding the mouth and sometimes causing pain.
Vomeronasal organ: There are tiny (and useless) chemoreceptors lining the inside of the nose.
Most body hair: While facial hair serves some purposes, the hair found on the rest of body is practically useless and can be removed with few ill effects.
Female vas deferens: A cluster of dead end tubules near the ovaries are the remains of what could have turned into sperm ducts.
Male Uterus: Yeah, men have one too — sort of. The remains of this undeveloped female reproductive organ hangs on one side of the male prostate gland
Appendix: Yep, your appendix is basically useless. While it does produce some white blood cells, most people are fine with an appendectomy.

Random Weird Body Facts

Here are a few final weird facts about the human body.

Your head creates inner noises: It’s rare, but exploding head syndrome exists.
Memory is affected by body position: Where you are and how you are placed in your environment triggers memory.
You can’t tickle yourself: Go ahead. Try to tickle yourself.
Being right-handed can prolong your life: If you’re right-handed, you could live up to nine years longer than a lefty.
Only humans shed emotional tears: Every other animal that produces tears has a physiological reason for doing so.

Amazing Facts About Human Body

2014-09-27T04:41:00.000-07:00

Amazing Facts About Human Body

Of all experiences in nature, none are closer to us than the characteristics of our own bodies. However, the true nature of the human body is still being uncovered, and a host of bizarre surprises, eerie findings and at times frightening facts await those who study the incredible machine. In this account, we will explore 10 of the most incredible or lesser known traits of the human body.

#COUNTDOWN...................

10. Allergies as Cancer Prevention

Airborne allergies such as hay fever are among the worst allergies one can experience. While foods that trigger allergies may be readily avoided and many chemical exposures can be reduced, avoiding grass, dust, pollen and mold may be exceedingly difficult. However, scientific research indicates that there may be a bright side to the scourge of spring and summer. Exposure to airborne allergens appears to tinker with the immune system in such a way that the risk of cancer is mitigated in allergy suffers. Preliminary research suggests statistically significant reductions in cancer among human study samples suffering from hay fever due to an immune stimulation effect similar to inoculation.

9. Syphilis: A KTI

Sexually transmitted infections are a scourge of modern society originating in behavioral, socio-economic and medical education shortcomings. Syphilis is a mutilating and eventually fatal disease if not treated that is often flagged as prime example of the STI problem. Believed to have originated from ancient human deviance with animals or unsafe consumption syphilis is widely seen as a sexually transmitted illness. However, the illness is also transmissible through mere kissing as a Kissing Transmissible Infection (KTI). Spirochete bacteria infection manifests in the form of oral sores, and even boils on the hands and face. The first manifestation during the infectious stage is a small chancre sore in the mouth. If the patient kisses another human, they may become infected with the diseases in certain cases.

8. Sense and Synesthesia

Humans frequently consider the possibility of a sixth sense. However, humans possess far more than 5 distinct senses. Vision is actually a combination of senses for light and color, while evidence shows that humans share some of the avian ability to detect magnetic fields. Humans also have the ability to detect their relative position, which is known as procerioception. The diversity of human sensory experience becomes even more complicated in the disorder known as synesthesia, where sounds may be associated with particular colors, or colors may be attributed to the descriptions of letters. Human senses are surprisingly subjective and may become highly confused as the brain interprets raw data collected through the body’s many sensory systems.

7. Allergic to Work—Literally

Accusing someone of being “allergic to work” is a frequently used method of encouraging industry or taking laziness to task. But for those with Exercise-induced anaphylaxis, being allergic to work is no joking matter. In fact, it may be a disabling reality that is at worst, life threatening. Suffers break out in hives upon exercise, often in concert with exposure to an aggravating food. The exact mechanism of the reaction is unknown, but a related condition known as Cholinergic Urticaria triggers allergic symptoms upon exposure to heat. It is thought that production of stress chemicals and changes in metabolism associated with exercise set the stage for the anaphylactic reactions to occur. Without treatment, complications can lead to potentially fatal shock.

6. Eye & Breast Tissue Discrepancies

Humans, like many other animals display a startling degree of symmetry between body parts. Surprisingly, a small number of humans may be born with Heterochromia iridum, or dual eye coloration. One eye may be blue, and the other brown or hazel. Causes of eye color discrepancies may stem from genetic mutations, combinations of distinct cells. Although most people with this “condition” are born with it, rare cases of medication induced Heterochromia have been reported. A more common discrepancy is in breast size. Human females tend to have a slightly larger left breast than the mammary gland on the right. Additionally, the vestigial breast tissues in males may display the same discrepancy.

5. Herpes Keratitis Blindness

In developed countries, up to 60 percent of the population caries the Herpes Simplex virus, responsible for the distressing skin lesions euphemistically referred to as “cold sores”. While this viral disease is seen by many people as an unappealing nuisance, Cold Sores are in fact potentially dangerous, and rank as a leading cause of blindness worldwide. Herpes Simplex resides in the facial nerves, and emerges into the skin causing lesions during active phase. However, the virus may also inhabit the optic and trigeminal nerves. During the active phase, virulent herpes can then form lesions on the cornea of the eye. Complications of the outbreaks may lead to blindness through keratosis and subsequent scarring, or even necrosis of eye tissues.

4. Organ Transplant Cell Memory

Traditional western models of psychology and physiology tend to view the brain as the center of human intelligence where thoughts are formed and memories are stored. However, numerous reports from organ donation recipients claiming changes in personality have sparked interest in some researchers who believe that memories and thoughts that do not appear to be their own may originate from a more systemic consciousness that features cell memory. Cases where food preferences and even sexual orientation have switched have been reported, and in one especially eerie case, the recipient of a heart from a murder victim led police to the killer. It is unknown whether these changes could be purely stress related, or whether something much more mysterious is at work when human body parts are merged…

3. Optical Inversion

When we look at the world around us, we must remember that the veil of human perception means things are not always what they seem. When you glance at an object, the image received actually appears inverted on the retina. Our eyes in fact see everything upside down, but incredibly, our brain compensates by default, allowing us to perceive the world right side up. The brain’s ability to be misled in this regard presents an eerie insight into the potential for manipulation of human experience. In a series of experiments, volunteers wore lenses to turn the world upside down. This reversal caused the brain of the subjects to stop compensating for the retinal inversion in order to see upright. When the lenses were removed, the participants saw upside down for a time.

2. Extra Ribs

Humans are normally equipped with 24 symmetrical ribs to protect the vital organs, but around 1 in 500 people are born with an extra rib extending from the neck and shoulder section, known as the thoracic outlet. The cervical rib, or in even rarer cases, extra pair may interfere with the blood supply to the arm, causing a loss of pulse when the arm is moved in certain directions. The vestigial rib is believed to be connected with genes that suppress cancer risks, but the nature of this effect unknown. In some cases, complications include numbness, tingling, coldness in the hands and most disturbingly, a protruding sensation in the arm. The ribs are useful in other mammals, but are vestigial in humans.

1. Born with Teeth

Human babies are certainly not as precocious as many other mammal species such as ungulates that are born ready to walk on their own. Teeth in humans normally start to appear after 6 months, but around 1 in 2,000 infants are born with neonatal teeth appearing through the gumline. Although mildly startling, newborns with teeth are often perfectly healthy, as the condition may not be associated with harmful genetic mutations. The often loose teeth may form a chocking hazard, and are known to be capable of inflicting rather painful bites if the infant is allowed to nurse. Normally, only one or two teeth appear in cases of neonatal dentition development.

17 Famous Logos That Have A Hidden Message

2014-09-27T04:21:00.000-07:00

17 Famous Logos That Have A Hidden Message

Whether you're cruising down the aisles of the grocery store, or speeding down the freeway, you're guaranteed to come across a few famous logos. Take one glance at any one of these logos and you instantly recognize the brand, but did you know there's sometimes a hidden message buried in them? It's surprising, but true.

Here are 17 famous logos that have a hidden message. Take a look:

1. VAIO

At first you just see the word VAIO, but look a little closer and you'll see the first two letters represent an analog symbol and the last two letters are binary.

2. Baskin Robbins

Take a look at what's highlighted in pink. Look familiar? It's a 31, which is the number of flavors they offer.

Basking Robbins is coding us with 31.... the numbers of flavors they offer. *wink*

3. Formula 1

Between the letter F and the speed marks is the number one.

4. Northwest Airlines

This logo actually has two hidden messages. First, it features an N and a W in negative spaces. Second, the triangle in the circle points northwest as if it's a compass.

5. Tostitos

The two middle T's in Tostitos shows two friends sharing some tortilla chips and salsa.

6. Elefont

Look at the negative space in the lowercase E - it's an elephant's trunk!

7. Hope for African Children Initiative

When you first look at it, it looks like only a map of Africa. But take a closer look and you'll see an adult and child facing each other.

The upper-right section depicts an adult woman, and the lower-left section depicts a child facing each other... Hope for African Children Initiative! Winks

8. Toblerone

The logo shows a picture of a bear, the trademark picture of toblerone... It was originated from the city of bears; Bern, Switzerland.

9. Hartford Whalers

This simple-looking logo is actually quite clever. First, you have the whale's tail, the letter W in green, and an H in the white space.

10. Goodwill

Take a look at the G in Goodwill. It's actually a smiling face!

11. Spartan Golf Club

This logo is pure genius. Look at it one way and you see a Spartan helmet. Look at it another way and there's a golfer taking a swing.

12. Unilever

Unilever produces so many different products that sometimes it's hard to keep track of everything they do. Lucky for us, there's symbols for literally everything they make right in their logo.

13. Amazon

See where that arrow points? It suggests that you can buy everything from A to Z on Amazon.

14. Sun Microsystems

Usually boring tech companies stick with boring, meaningless logos, but not Sun Microsystems. Take a closer look at that diamond and you'll see it actually says Sun in every direction.

15. Wendy's

If you look at Wendy's collar you'll actually see the word "MOM." Their thinking is that the next time you think of mom's cooking, you'll think Wendy's.

16. The Bronx Zoo

Look closely at the giraffes' legs. You'll see the animals are within a big city!

There are tall buildings of different types... #Check it out! *winks*

17. Coca Cola

Look closely at the "o." Do you notice anything? No? Don't worry because most people wouldn't notice it. It's actually the Denmark flag. This wasn't always the original intention. Coca Cola discovered that part of its logo looks like the Danish flag, which has been named the happiest country on earth. Once they discovered that, they set up a media stunt in Denmark's biggest airport, where they welcome people with flags. Still can't see the flag? Here you go:

ANALYSIS

The picture reveals the flag of Denmark.... Try and check it out

Like this article? Feel free to comment and share... Also, dont forget to like us on facebook and follow us on twitter

Hackers exploit 'Shellshock' bug with worms in early attacks

2014-09-26T10:34:00.000-07:00

Hackers exploit 'Shellshock' bug with worms in early attacks

Hackers have begun exploiting the newly identified 'Shellshock' bug, also known as Bash, using fast-moving worm viruses to scan for vulnerable systems and then infect them.

'Shellshock' is the first major internet threat to emerge since the discovery in April of 'Heartbleed,' which affected encryption software used in about two-thirds of all web servers, along with hundreds of technology products.

The latest bug has been compared to 'Heartbleed' partly because the software at the heart of the 'Shellshock' bug is also widely used in web servers and other types of computer equipment.

According to security experts, 'Shellshock' is unlikely to affect as many systems as 'Heartbleed' because not all computers running Bash can be exploited. Still, they said the new bug has the potential to wreak more havoc because it enables hackers to gain complete control of an infected machine, which lets them destroy data, shut down networks or launch attacks on websites.

The 'Heartbleed' bug only allowed hackers to steal data.

The industry is rushing to determine which systems can be remotely compromised by hackers, but there are currently no estimates on the number of vulnerable systems.

Amazon.com and Google have released bulletins to advise web services customers how to protect themselves from the new cyberthreat. A Google spokesman said the company is releasing software patches to fix the bug.

"We don't actually know how widespread this is. This is probably one of the most difficult-to-measure bugs that has come along in years," said Dan Kaminsky, a well-known expert on Internet threats.

For an attack to be successful, a targeted system must be accessible via the internet and also running a second vulnerable set of code besides Bash, experts said.

"There is a lot of speculation out there as to what is vulnerable, but we just don't have the answers," said Marc Maiffret, chief technology officer of cybersecurity firm BeyondTrust. "This is going to unfold over the coming weeks and months."

Attack on devices Joe Hancock, a cybersecurity expert with insurer Aegis in London, said in a statement that he is concerned about the potential for attacks on home broadband routers and controllers used to manage critical infrastructure facilities.

"In some areas this will be a challenge to fix, as many embedded devices are not designed with regular updates in mind and will never be able to be patched," Hancock said.

HD Moore, chief research officer with security software maker Rapid7, said it could take weeks or even months to determine what impact the bug will have.

"At this point we don't know what we don't know, but we do expect to see additional exploit vectors surface as vendors and researchers start the assessment process for their products and services," Moore said in an email. "We are likely to see compromises as a result of this issue for years to come."

Linux makers released patches to protect against attacks on Wednesday, though security researchers uncovered flaws in those updates, prompting No. 1 Linux maker Red Hat to advise customers that the patch was 'incomplete.'

"That's a problem. It's been a little over 24 hours and we're still in the same boat," said Mat Gangwer, lead security consultant at Rook Security. "People are kind of freaking out. Rightfully so."

Worms

Russian security software maker Kaspersky Lab reported that a computer worm has begun infecting computers by exploiting 'Shellshock.'

The malicious software can take control of an infected machine, launch denial-of-service attacks to disrupt websites, and also scan for other vulnerable devices, including routers, said Kaspersky researcher David Jacoby.

He said he did not know who was behind the attacks and could not name any victims.

Jaime Blasco, labs director at AlienVault, said he had uncovered the same piece of malware, as well as a second worm seeking to exploit 'Shellshock', which was designed for launching denial of service attacks.

'Heartbleed' is a bug in an open-source encryption software called OpenSSL. The bug put the data of millions of people at risk, as OpenSSL is used in about two-thirds of all websites. It also forced dozens of technology companies to issue security patches for hundreds of products that use OpenSSL.

A Hidden Ocean On Enceladus That May Harbor Life

2014-09-26T10:30:00.000-07:00

A Hidden Ocean On Enceladus That May Harbor Life

It's turning out that the outer reaches of the solar system may be more hospitable to life than we ever imagined. Gravity measurements made by Cassini have confirmed that Enceladus, a tiny moon orbiting Saturn, hosts a subsurface ocean in its southern latitudes. Astronomers are now saying it's potentially habitable.

The idea that Enceladus may host a subsurface ocean is nothing new. Back in 2005, NASA's Cassini spacecraft beamed back images showing what appeared to be plumes of water vapor spewing out from fractures, called "tiger stripes," near the icy moon's southern pole (similar to what was recently detected on Europa, another icy moon with a subsurface ocean). By itself, these plumes didn't prove that liquid water existed under the ice. It's conceivable, for example, that massive tectonic forces exerted by Saturn's gravity was creating friction along the plates of ice, resulting in cracks and the jettisoning of liquid water.

But now, after an analysis of gravity measurements made by Cassini from 2010 to 2012, astronomers have confirmed that a large reservoir of liquid water exists underneath Enceladus's icy surface. And just as importantly, they've confirmed that the tiny moon is a differentiated celestial body; it's comprised of two layers — an external icy layer and an internal rocky core made up of silicates. Excitingly, this layer of silicate rock, in conjunction with liquid water, means that Enceladus features a potentially habitable environment — one that could be even more hospitable to life than Europa.

A Negative Gravity Anomaly

Geophysical data provided by Cassini revealed a rather strange thing about Enceladus. The moon's southern region featured a negative gravity anomaly. These anomalies exist when there's less mass in a particular region that what would be expected in an otherwise uniform spherical body. Enceladus has a depression on its surface at the south pole, so scientists were expecting to find this negative mass anomaly. But what they weren't expecting to find was one so large; it was considerably bigger than what would be predicted by the depression alone.

What this suggested to the astronomers, a team consisting of Luciano Iess of Sapienza University of Rome and David Stevenson, a professor of Planetary Science at Caltech, is that a denser mass must exist under the surface to compensate. And because water is denser than ice, the only reasonable explanation is that liquid water resides underneath.

The Southern Reservoir

Unlike Europa and its global subsurface ocean, Enceladus has an ocean in the southern regions. It extends from the south pole in all directions to about 50 degrees south — about half-way to the equator. This ocean is deepest near the south pole. Astronomers haven't ruled out the possibility of something larger, but the current data does not support it.

Enceladus, which is only 310 miles (500 km) in diameter, features a large water reservoir about 18 to 25 miles (30 to 40 km) beneath the icy surface. This liquid layer is about 5 to 6 miles (8 to 10 km) deep. Its total water volume is similar to that of Lake Superior's — the largest of the Great Lakes.

That Enceladus can host liquid water comes as somewhat of a surprise. The surface temperature of the moon is -180 degrees C (-292 degrees F). Speaking at a press conference yesterday, Stevenson conjectured that Saturn's intense gravitational forces are likely responsible for creating the required energy. Alternately, there could be some kind of internal energy source. Enceladus's small size may account for its partial ocean (Europa is much bigger — about the size of our moon).

The scientists aren't entirely sure why the ocean is located in the south, but it's likely that the flexing and heating of the ice is pronounced in the polar regions — a process that feeds back on itself creating increasing amounts of lubrication.

As for the plumes, they're probably caused by tidal forces that are flexing and heating the ice. A kind of plumbing system likely connects the ocean through the cracks to the surface.

The Importance of Silicates to Life

As noted, Enceladus features a rocky core made up of silicates and at a density of about 2.4 grams per cubic centimeter. This is exciting for astrobiologists because silicate provides many materials essential for life, such as phosphorous and sulphur. And in fact, scientists have already detected evidence of salts and organic molecules in the plumes and near the tiger stripes. Because the water is in contact with silicates in the presence of energy, chemical reactions are possible. Taken together, this means that Enceladus is — in the words of the researchers — "an attractive place to look for life."

Related: The rocket that could take us to Enceladus.

Interestingly, astronomers don't know if Europa hosts organic molecules or silicates (water ice in contact with liquid water behaves much differently). But Enceladus does. This means that Enceladus may actually be a better candidate for life than Europa.

Indeed, one of the main take-aways from this research is that potentially habitable environments are emerging in completely unexpected places. In time, the outer solar system may yield a cornucopia of life-friendly environments. Given that Titan, Callisto and Ganymede may also host subsurface oceans (still unconfirmed), a certain kind of "habitablezone for outer gas giants" may actually exist — though the potential for these remote regions to foster the development of intelligent life is unknown and likely at an extremely low probability.

Next Steps

Looking ahead, astronomers would like to gain a better understanding of the moon's interior structure. They'd like to know the exact location, size, and shape of the reservoir that supplies the jets. Measuring gravity anomalies will continue to inform this research.

As for future missions, spectrographic measurements of the plumes could yield more insights into the molecular makeup of the water.

New Record Made by an Egyptian Man

2014-09-26T10:26:00.000-07:00

1,000 Feet Down: Man Sets New Deep-Dive Record

Ahmed Gabr dove over 1,000 feet below the Red Sea to earn his Guinness World Record title.
Credit: Guinness World Records

View full size image

An Egyptian man recently took the ultimate plunge for the sake of science. Setting a new Guinness World Record for the deepest scuba dive, the man dove more than 1,000 feet (305 meters) below the surface of the Red Sea.

When asked why he decided to dive deeper than any person had before, Ahmed Gabr, 41, told the media that he was hoping to prove that humans could survive the conditions of deep-sea immersion, according to Guinness World Records.

Diving off the coast of Dahab, Egypt, Gabr reached a depth of 1,090 feet 4 inches (332.35 meters). The previous record holder for the deepest scuba dive, Nuno Gomes of South Africa, also dove off the coast of Dahab, in 2005, reaching a depth of 1,044 feet (318.21 m).

To put these depths into perspective, three American football fields laid end to end would measure 900 feet (274.32 m) long — less than the distance these divers reached underwater. Most recreational scuba divers only dive as deep as 130 feet (40 meters), according to the Professional Association of Diving Instructors.

It took Gabr only about 12 minutes to reach the record depth, which he achieved with the help of a specially tagged rope that he pulled along with him from the surface, Guinness World Records officials said in a statement. However, the trip back up to the surface took much longer — about 15 hours. Returning too quickly from such depths is associated with a number of health risks, such as decompression sickness (also known as the bends) and nitrogen narcosis from excess nitrogen in the brain, which Gabr luckily avoided.

Gabr has been training for his world record attempt for four years, according to Guinness World Records. In addition to serving as a special forces officer in the Egyptian army, Gabr has also taught as a diving instructor for 17 years.

The blackest material ever discovered

2014-09-26T10:24:00.000-07:00

A British company has produced a "strange, alien" material so black that it absorbs all but 0.035 per cent of visual light, setting a new world record. To stare at the "super black" coating made of carbon nanotubes – each 10,000 times thinner than a human hair – is an odd experience. It is so dark that the human eye cannot understand what it is seeing. Shapes and contours are lost, leaving nothing but an apparent abyss.
If it was used to make one of Chanel's little black dresses, the wearer's head and limbs might appear to float incorporeally around a dress-shaped hole.

Actual applications are more serious, enabling astronomical cameras, telescopes and infrared scanning systems to function more effectively. Then there are the military uses that the material's maker, Surrey NanoSystems, is not allowed to discuss.

The nanotube material, named Vantablack, has been grown on sheets of aluminium foil by the Newhaven-based company. While the sheets may be crumpled into miniature hills and valleys, this landscape disappears on areas covered by it.

"You expect to see the hills and all you can see … it's like black, like a hole, like there's nothing there. It just looks so strange," said Ben Jensen, the firm's chief technical officer.

A sample of the new material. Image credit: Surrey NanosystemsAsked about the prospect of a little black dress, he said it would be "very expensive" – the cost of the material is one of the things he was unable to reveal.

"You would lose all features of the dress. It would just be something black passing through," he said.
Vantablack, which was described in the journal Optics Express and will be launched at the Farnborough International Airshow this week, works by packing together a field of nanotubes, like incredibly thin drinking straws. These are so tiny that light particles cannot get into them, although they can pass into the gaps between. Once there, however, all but a tiny remnant of the light bounces around until it is absorbed.

Vantablack's practical uses include calibrating cameras used to take photographs of the oldest objects in the universe. This has to be done by pointing the camera at something as black as possible.

It also has "virtually undetectable levels of outgassing and particle fallout", which can contaminate the most sensitive imaging systems. The material conducts heat seven and a half times more effectively than copper and has 10 times the tensile strength of steel.

Stephen Westland, professor of colour science and technology at Leeds University, said traditional black was actually a colour of light and scientists were now pushing it to something out of this world.

"Many people think black is the absence of light. I totally disagree with that. Unless you are looking at a black hole, nobody has actually seen something which has no light," he said. "These new materials, they are pretty much as black as we can get, almost as close to a black hole as we could imagine."

Close Encounters Of The Radio Kind?

2014-09-25T16:26:00.000-07:00

Close Encounters Of The Radio Kind? Mystery Bursts Baffle Astronomers

Scientists say a brief burst of radio activity has been detected at the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico. This new report resembles previous activity detected in Australia, which has scientist debating possible causes, including solar flares, blitzars, or something even more mysterious.

Brian Negin/iStockphoto

Astronomers have a mystery on their hands. Two large radio telescopes, on opposite sides of the planet, have detected very brief, very powerful bursts of radio waves.
Right now, astronomers have no idea what's causing these bursts or where they're coming from. And nothing has been ruled out at the moment — not even the kind of outrageous claims you'd expect to see in tabloid headlines.
Australian Recordings Inspire Curiosity And Doubt

The Parkes Observatory, in New South Wales, Australia, first detected the brief, intense bursts of radio waves in 2007.

The first report of these "fast radio bursts" appeared in 2007. Duncan Lorimer and his colleagues had found the signal buried in recordings made at the Parkes radio telescope in Australia.
Lorimer argued at the time that the source of the burst came from way beyond our galaxy. But then the same telescope recorded more bursts that were similar, but clearly coming from something much closer by.
"They cast a lot of doubt on the original detection that we made," Lorimer says; something nearby would probably have a much more pedestrian explanation.
Other astronomers began to suspect Lorimer's extra-galactic detection was a fluke — but that changed last year, when a significant paper in Science announced the discovery of four more bursts.
That paper convinced most astronomers that something real, far away and still very mysterious was happening.
But there was one lingering doubt. All of the detections were made by one radio telescope, the Parkes telescope. Some astronomers wondered if the bursts might not be an astronomical event at all, but some problem with the electronics in the telescope.
But now, Lorimer says, "It's clearly not."

In Puerto Rico, Fresh Reports Renew Speculation
There's a report of a burst detected at the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico. Lorimer says several more reports of detections will soon be showing up in the scientific literature.
As you would imagine, there's been lots of speculation about what's behind these mysterious bursts. Some astronomers think they're caused by blitzars, pulses of energy from a supermassive star collapsing into a black hole. Others think they may be caused by power solar flares coming from stars nearer by.
And Lorimer says he has to mention it: "There's even been discussions in the literature about signatures from extraterrestrial civilizations."
It's just a theoretical paper suggesting the bursts could be generated by intelligent beings intentionally beaming a radio signal directly at Earth.
James Cordes, an astronomer at Cornell University who's also on the hunt for an explanation of these radio bursts, says he'd bet against the possibility of extraterrestrial involvement.
Cordes says astronomers will need to find more examples of these bursts before they'll be able to say with any certainty what's causing them.
But finding examples will take time. The kinds of radio telescopes that can detect these bursts have what Cordes calls tunnel vision: "We don't see the whole sky — we see just a very narrow snippet of it."
So catching a burst in the act requires a bit of luck. That's frustrating for astronomers, but having only a tiny bit of hard data does have its upside: Theoreticians can spin out all kinds of interesting ideas.
"The nice things about this in the current stage is that we really don't know what these bursts are caused by," Cordes says. "And so the sky's the limit in some respects."

The Cure to HIV: How many people cured, How?

2014-09-25T16:09:00.000-07:00

Only 1 Person Has Been Cured of HIV: New Study Suggests Why

An illustration of the HIV virus in the blood stream.
Credit: Sebastian Kaulitzki | Shutterstock.com

View full size image

To this date, only one person is thought to have been cured of HIV — the "Berlin patient" Timothy Ray Brown. But no one is exactly sure which aspect of Brown's treatment may have cured him.

Now a new experiment on monkeys provides more evidence that a rare genetic mutation in the person who donated bone marrow to Brown may have had a central role in his cure.
Brown's HIV was eradicated in 2007 after he underwent a treatment in Germany for his leukemia, a cancer of the white blood cells. In the leukemia treatment, Brown first underwent radiation to kill the cancer cells and stem cells in his bone marrow that were creating them, and then received a bone-marrow transplant from a healthy donor to generate new blood cells.

After the treatment, not only was Brown's leukemia in remission, his HIV levels also plummeted to undetectable levels, and they have remained so ever since, even though he has not been taking the antiretroviral (ART) drugs typically used to keep HIV levels low in patients. [7 Devastating Infectious Diseases]

Three possibilities
The reason the virus remains undetectable in Brown could be that the bone-marrow transplant was from a donor who had a rare genetic mutation that renders a person's CD4-T cells — the immune cells that are the main target of HIV infection — resistant to the virus.

Having this mutation, known as delta 32, results in having immune cells that have an altered form of a certain receptor called CCR5, which prevents the virus from entering the cells.
But it is also possible that radiation killed very nearly all of Brown's cells that contained HIV at the outset of his treatment (and hence, the donor's genetic mutation mattered very little).

Still another possibility is that the new immune cells (that were produced by transplanted bone-marrow cells) attacked Brown's original cells, in what is called "graft-versus-host disease". This could have killed any HIV reservoirs within Brown that had survived his radiation treatment.

So which is it?
Now in a small study, Dr. Guido Silvestri, a pathologist at Emory University in Atlanta, and colleaguesgave the same treatment that Brown was given to three monkeys, to find out which step in the cancer treatment might have been responsible for the eradication of the HIV.

The monkeys in the study were infected with Simian-Human Immunodeficiency Virus, or SHIV, which is a virus related to HIV that causes a disease similar to AIDS in animals. The monkeys received antiretroviral drugs for some time, to mimic the situation of HIV patients. Then, the animals underwent radiation and received a transplant of their own bone-marrow cells, which were harvested before they were infected with SHIV. [10 Deadly Diseases That Hopped Across Species]

The researchers found that radiation killed most of the animals' blood and immune cells, including up to 99 percent of their CD4-T cells. This finding left open the possibility, at this point in the experiments, that radiation could have been a key step in curing Brown by killing almost all HIV reservoirs.

The scientists also found that the transplant resulted in the generation of HIV-free blood and immune cells within a few weeks, showing that the bone-marrow transplant experiment in monkeys was successful. If the monkeys were to be found cured of HIV, the researchers would be able to rule out graft-versus-host disease, because each monkey received its own cells in the transplant.

But after the treatment, once the researchers stopped giving the monkeys antiretroviral medications, the levels of the virus rapidly rebounded in two of the three animals.

The third monkey, who had to be euthanized after developing kidney failure, had some level of HIV in a number of tissues when it died, suggesting that none of the three monkeys had been "cured" by the treatment, according to the study published today (Sept. 25) in the journal PLOS Pathogens.

The findings support the idea that although radiation can reduce HIV levels, it's not enough to eliminate all reservoirs of the virus, the researchers said. The results suggest that in the case of the Berlin patient, either the genetic mutation of the bone-marrow donor or the graft-versus-host disease "played a significant role," the researchers said.

The Berlin patient's treatment has been tried in at least two other HIV patients who also had lymphoma — cancer of the lymph nodes. However, the bone-marrow donors in those cases did not have the rare mutation in the CCR5 gene. The patients initially appeared to be free of HIV, but the virus returned after a couple of months and the patients had to start antiretroviral medication again.

Top 10 Mysteries of the Mind

2014-09-25T16:06:00.000-07:00

Top 10 Mysteries of the Mind

Much of what we don't understand about being human is simply in our heads. The brain is a befuddling organ, as are the very questions of life and death, consciousness, sleep, and much more. Here's a heads-up on what's known and what's not understood about your noggin.

Consciousness

When you wake up in the morning, you might perceive that the Sun is just rising, hear a few birds chirping, and maybe even feel a flash of happiness as the fresh morning air hits your face. In other words, you are conscious. This complex topic has plagued the scientific community since antiquity. Only recently have neuroscientists considered consciousness a realistic research topic. The greatest brainteaser in this field has been to explain how processes in the brain give rise to subjective experiences. So far, scientists have managed to develop a great list of questions.

Deep Freeze

Living forever may not be a reality. But a pioneering field called cryonics could give some people two lives. Cryonics centers like Alcor Life Extension Foundation, in Arizona, store posthumous bodies in vats filled with liquid nitrogen at bone-chilling temperatures of minus 320 degrees Fahrenheit (negative 195 degrees Celsius).
The idea is that a person who dies from a presently incurable disease could be thawed and revived in the future when a cure has been found. The body of the late baseball legend Ted Williams is stored in one of Alcor's freezers. Like the other human popsicles, Williams is positioned head down. That way, if there were ever a leak in the tank, the brain would stay submerged in the cold liquid. Not one of the cryopreserved bodies has been revived, because that technology doesn't exist. For one, if the body isn't thawed at exactly the right temperature, the person's cells could turn to ice and blast into pieces.

Mortal Mystery

Living forever is just for Hollywood. But why do humans age? You are born with a robust toolbox full of mechanisms to fight disease and injury, which you might think should arm you against stiff joints and other ailments. But as we age, the body's repair mechanisms get out of shape. In effect, your resilience to physical injury and stress declines.
Theories for why people age can be divided into two categories:

1) Like other human characteristics, aging could just be a part of human genetics and is somehow beneficial.

2) In the less optimistic view, aging has no purpose and results from cellular damage that occurs over a person's lifetime. A handful of researchers, however, think science will ultimately delay aging at least long enough to double life spans.

Nature vs. Nurture

In the long-running battle of whether our thoughts and personalities are controlled by genes or environment, scientists are building a convincing body of evidence that it could be either or both! The ability to study individual genes points to many human traits that we have little control over, yet in many realms, peer pressure or upbringing has been shown heavily influence who we are and what we do.

Brain Teaser

Laughter is one of the least understood of human behaviors. Scientists have found that during a good laugh three parts of the brain light up: A thinking part that helps you get the joke, a movement area that tells your muscles to move, and an emotional region that elicits the "giddy" feeling. But it remains unknown why one person laughs at your brother's foolish jokes while another chuckles while watching a horror movie.
John Morreall, who is a pioneer of humor research at the College of William and Mary, has found that laughter is a playful response to incongruities — stories that disobey conventional expectations. Others in the humor field point to laughter as a way of signaling to another person that this action is meant "in fun." One thing is clear: Laughter makes us feel better.

Memory Lane

Some experiences are hard to forget, like perhaps your first kiss. But how does a person hold onto these personal movies? Using brain-imaging techniques, scientists are unraveling the mechanism responsible for creating and storing memories. They are finding that the hippocampus, within the brain's gray matter, could act as a memory box. But this storage area isn't so discriminatory. It turns out that both true and false memories activate similar brain regions. To pull out the real memory, some researchers ask a subject to recall the memory in context, something that's much more difficult when the event didn't actually occur.

Mission Control

Residing in the hypothalamus of the brain, the suprachiasmatic nucleus, or biological clock, programs the body to follow a 24-hour rhythm. The most evident effect of circadian rhythm is the sleep-wake cycle, but the biological clock also impacts digestion, body temperature, blood pressure, and hormone production.
Researchers have found that light intensity can adjust the clock forward or backward by regulating the hormone melatonin. The latest debate is whether or not melatonin supplements could help prevent jet lag — the drowsy, achy feeling you get when "jetting" across time zones.

Phantom Feelings

It's estimated that about 80 percent of amputees experience sensations, including warmth, itching, pressure and pain, coming from the missing limb. People who experience this phenomenon, known as "phantom limb," feel sensations as if the missing limb were part of their bodies. One explanation says that the nerves area where the limb severed create new connections to the spinal cord and continue to send signals to the brain as if the missing limb was still there. Another possibility is that the brain is "hard-wired" to operate as if the body were fully intact — meaning the brain holds a blueprint of the body with all parts attached.

Slumber Sleuth

Fruit flies do it. Tigers do it. And humans can't seem to get enough of it. No, not that. We're talking about shut-eye, so crucial we spend more than a quarter of our lives at it. Yet the underlying reasons for sleep remain as puzzling as a rambling dream.
One thing scientists do know: Sleep is crucial for survival in mammals. Extended sleeplessness can lead to mood swings, hallucination, and in extreme cases, death. There are two states of sleep — non-rapid eye movement (NREM), during which the brain exhibits low metabolic activity, and rapid eye movement (REM), during which the brain is very active. Some scientists think NREM sleep gives your body a break, and in turn conserves energy, similar to hibernation. REM sleep could help to organize memories. However, this idea isn't proven, and dreams during REM sleep don't always correlate with memories.

Sweet Dreams

If you were to ask 10 people what dreams are made of, you'd probably get 10 different answers. That's because scientists are still unraveling this mystery.
One possibility: Dreaming exercises brain by stimulating the trafficking of synapses between brain cells. Another theory is that people dream about tasks and emotions that they didn't take care of during the day, and that the process can help solidify thoughts and memories. In general, scientists agree that dreaming happens during your deepest sleep, called Rapid Eye Movement.
Subscribe, share, comment, invite and like our page!!!

Feeling Bummed? How Disappointment Works in the Brain

2014-09-25T15:54:00.000-07:00

Feeling Bummed? How Disappointment Works in the Brain

Credit: Christin Gasner/Shutterstock.com

View full size image

That feeling of "oh, bummer," is linked with a rather uncommon type of brain signaling, new research shows. The finding could lead to a new class of drugs to treat depression, researchers say.
That downer feeling involves the finely tuned, simultaneous firing of two different neurotransmitters in the brain. It is the ratio of the two neurotransmitters — one enhancing and one dampening positive feelings — that determines where on the disappointment spectrum you'll fall, from "oh well" to "total bummer."
The scientists call this dual firing of neurotransmitters, which sets off the human sense of disappointment, a "dimmer switch" — essentially the neurochemical underpinnings for calling the proverbial glass of water half empty or half full.

Such dual firing of neurotransmitters is a rare event in the brain. Scientists know of only two other situations in which the brain uses a simultaneous combination of excitatory and inhibitory neurotransmitters, and neither of those situations involves mood. [Top 10 Mysteries of the Mind]
The study was published Sept. 25 in the journal Science.

How disappointment works
Neurotransmitters are chemicals that relay signals from one neuron to the next. The brain and nervous system use dozens of neurotransmitters to enable thought and movement. Some neurotransmitters, such as dopamine and serotonin, are well-known to be associated with mood. Neurons usually produce only one kind of neurotransmitter, rarely two.
In the new study, a team of scientists led by Dr. Roberto Malinow, a professor of neurobiology at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine,found that two well-known neurotransmitters — glutamate and GABA, which is short for gamma-aminobutyric acid — are released simultaneously by neurons in a small region of the brain called the lateral habenula to signal the emotion of disappointment.
"The more glutamate is released relative to GABA, the greater the 'disappointment' signal in the brain is likely to be; and the less glutamate is released relative to GABA, the smaller the 'disappointment' signal should be," said Dr. Steven Shabel, a postdoctoral student in Malinow's lab and the lead author of the new report.
Previous studies have shown that depression is linked to neural activity in the lateral habenula. And experiments with monkeys have shown that activity in the lateral habenula increases markedly when the monkeys are expecting a sip of fruit juice or other reward but don't get it — that "bummer" feeling.
In the new work, the researchers studied rodents. They demonstrated that the neurons of rodents with aspects of human depression produced less GABA relative to glutamate, compared with rodents without depression. Also, when the animals with depression were given an antidepressant to raise their brains' serotonin levels, their relative GABA levels increased — a sign that they were less disappointed after being denied their reward.
"Our study suggests that one of the ways in which serotonin alleviates depression is by rebalancing the brain's processing of negative life events through the balance of glutamate and GABA in the habenula," Shabel said. "We may now have a precise neurochemical explanation for why antidepressants make some people more resilient to negative experiences."
That means antidepressants are likely to work on this glutamate-GABA ratio, but in ways that are hard to control from person to person, he said. The researchers said that if they could develop medications that target the lateral habenula more selectively, then they might have a better treatment for depression.
Several current antidepressant drugs target serotonin, but the neurotransmitter is used by the brain and central nervous system for many kinds of tasks other than mood, such as for controlling sleep, memory and appetite, so the drugs don't act selectively on depression. Glutamate and GABA also are used for a variety of brain tasks, and thus are not good targets for drugs, Shabel said.
But focusing on how to manipulate this newly discovered mechanism of competing neurotransmitters might be a promising avenue that leads to the discovery of a new generation of antidepressants, the researchers said.

Introduction to the File Transfer Protocol (FTP)

2014-09-24T09:10:00.000-07:00

Introduction to the File Transfer Protocol (FTP)

Introduction

In current times if you want to transfer a file to a friend, you can just attach it in an email and send it off. With high speed bandwidth being so cheap and plentiful to the home user, transferring a file in this manner is usually more than adequate. What if you needed to transfer the file to someone immediately; there could be no delays, it has to be fast, and the files you are transferring may be very large. In a scenario like this, email will most likely not be adequate. This is because most email providers limit the size of your mailbox on their servers, the size of attachments you may receive, and that there is no guarantee when you send email how long it will take for the recipient to receive it or if it will even get there. This is where FTP comes in.

What is FTP

FTP stands for the File transfer protocol and is used to transfer files between an FTP server and another computer. In the past, FTP was much more common than it is today and was the dominant file transfer mechanism on the Internet. If you needed to transfer files between two computers, you would use FTP to do so. FTP is still very popular today when a service requires that a lot of files be hosted for other to people to download. FTP also tends to be faster than other contemporary methods of transferring files because it was designed to do so.

Even more important, FTP support Automatic Resume. This means that if you are downloading the latest new game demo that is over 600 megs, and for some reason the download stops in the middle of the transfer, the ftp client will attempt to on the next download of the same file, to continue from where you left off. This feature can save you a huge amount of time but is generally only found in specialized FTP client software and not in your browser software.

How to Connect to an FTP Server

There are two approaches to allowing users to connect to an FTP Server. The first is to make it so anyone can log in anonymously, otherwise known as anonymous FTP, or you can assign user names and passwords to people that they must use to log in to the server.

The two most common ways to connect to an FTP server is with your Web Browser or with a FTP client such as FileZilla. To connect to a FTP server with your browser you would prefix the hostname you are connecting to with the ftp:// protocol statement. For example, ftp://www.bleepingcomputer.com. It would then try to connect anonymously. If the server you are trying to connect to requires a username and password, you can do so in the following format:

ftp://username:password@ftp.somedomain.com

It is recommended when you do connect with a username and a password that you do not put the password in as well, otherwise it will show up in your browser's history. Instead do this:

ftp://username@ftp.somedomain.com

This way your browser will prompt you for a password and you do not have to worry about it being stored in your history list, which can potentially be a security risk.

The other method is to use a FTP client that is designed specifically to connect to FTP servers. These types of software are generally the best as they have been streamlined for speed and support a lot of the advanced features like automatic resume. You should browse through the list of FTP Clients and find one you like.

How to Transfer Files

Whether you are connected to an FTP server via your web browser or an FTP client, you will be presented with a list of folders and documents that have files you can download to your computer. If you are using a web browser, you will click on the file you would like to download and it will prompt you to save it or open it. Unless you really know what it is you are downloading, you should save it to a directory that you will know how to find later, and open it from there.

If you are using an FTP Client, you will be presented a list of the files that you can download. You should first specify where you would like downloads to save to, and then you can double click on the file to start the download. When you are done downloading, you can shut the FTP client and open the file from where it was stored.

Conclusion

Now that you know what FTP is, you will probably notice it more often. If you would like to ask some questions or discuss this tutorial, please do so in the CONTACT ME page.