NASA scientists have nominated eight potential new targets for a 2020 Mars mission. They're focusing on ancient river deltas and hot springs as sites that have the best chance of preserving signs of life on the red planet. New sites can still be considered, and mission engineers have yet to weigh in on the technical feasibility of landing the rover in the nominated sites.

Diphylleia grayi, also known as the skeleton flower, has white petals that turn transparent with rain. When dry, they revert to white. This plant is native to the eastern United States and eastern Asia.

The KodKod (Leopardus guigna) is the smallest wildcat - it's even smaller than domestic cats. It lives primarily in central and southern Chile and marginally in adjoining areas of Argentina. Check out the video below for more information on this cute creature:

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An old fishing village on the island of Shengshan on the Yangtze River was abandoned for economic reasons, only to become one with nature.


The island, a few hours east of Hangzhou Bay, is a stark contrast to the vibrant metropolitan skyline of nearby Shanghai - an image conjured up in many westerners' minds when imagining populous China. Some of the islands at the mouth of the Yangtze river are popular tourist destinations and have been described as a paradise for seafood lover, while others are inhabitable. The stunning scenery on Shengshan Island is the result of the houses and outbuildings being slowly consumed by nature. The seaside village now lies empty because it was more economical for the fishermen to move and work on the mainland ...

From July 10 to September 30, a team from the US National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) exploration ship, Okeanos Explorer, is going to be mapping the deep waters of the Hawaiian Archipelago in the North Pacific Ocean. This largely unknown deep-sea ecosystems will be explored for the first time using robotic submersibles, as shown in the video above.

The AquaDom is a 25 m (82 ft) tall cylindrical acrylic glass aquarium built at the Radisson Blu Hotel in Berlin, Germany. You can ride the transparent elevator it has in the center!

This is a portable staircase you can strap onto any tree!

Scientists have worked out why your eyes move when you’re dreaming. Scientists have known for decades that the rapid eye movements (REMs) that occur during sleep signal that we’re dreaming, but what do the individual eye motions really represent? It’s long been hypothesised that each movement of the eye reflects new visual information in our dreams, and now for the first time researchers have demonstrated that this is actually the case. According to a new study by researchers at Tel Aviv University in Israel, each flick of the eye that occurs during REM sleep accompanies the introduction of a new image in our dream, with the movement essentially acting like a reset function between individual dream "snapshots".

Source: http://www.sciencealer ...

A Chinese snake breeder recently made a rather unexpected discovery: a two-headed baby Chinese cobra, both with individual, fully-functioning brains.

Scientists have recorded an Alpine swift bird (Tachymarptis melba) that has stayed in flight for more than six months without landing. These awesome birds are known to turn-off half of their brains alternatively to sleep semi-consciously, drink by gliding across surfaces of lakes or rivers, and eat flying insects.

Would someone feel more calm after seeing the colour blue? Or perhaps they would feel more aggressive after having seen the colour red?

Swiss psychiatrist, Max Lüscher, had completed a study in the 20th century that linked colour preference to your personality and your mental state. His belief was further hardwired after an experiment concluded that 151 out of 153 people were weaker after looking at the pink card, when compared to how strong they were when they had looked at the blue card.

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According to a new report published out of the UK, E-cigarettes are 95% less harmful to your health than normal cigarettes. When supported by a smoking cessation service, they help most smokers to quit tobacco altogether. They have also concluded that there is "no evidence" that they offer young people a gateway into smoking.

In fact, the review suggests that e-cigarettes may be contributing to falling smoking rates in the U.K., as 2.6 million adults are now thought to be using the product. They also found that almost all of these adults are ex-smokers, providing evidence that many people are not starting to use the devices after having never smoked in the first place, and instead are using them to either quit or cut down on tobacco.
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Researchers have a new way to estimate the weight of creatures that no longer exist using just its bones and a digital model. With no flesh to fill in the gaps, researchers "shrink wrap" the skeleton to come up with an estimated volume-to-mass conversion based on 14 modern-day mammals. Scientists hope that this weight-estimating technique can eventually be used on other extinct creatures... like dinosaurs!

This is an acute idea

The researchers found the bizarre tube-lipped nectar bat (Anoura fistulata) - the first record of this species in the park. Described in Ecuador just a decade ago and known from only three records. It has the longest tongue in relation to its size of any mammal - stretching 8.5 cm to reach into the deepest flowers.

PS: I added the picture of Dorian (villain from The Mask) below it simply because it was the first thing that popped into my mind when I saw the picture. ...

It's true, and this enables them to easily squeeze through the tightest spaces - like the pipes draining your toilet. And rats are great swimmers too; they can hold their breath for up to three minutes and swim non-stop for more than 48 hours!


For more information, watch the video. ...

According to this poster, a giant panda mom is 900 times more massive than her baby, while a giraffe baby is one-tenth the size of its mom!