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8640 |
duddy |
9 years ago |
You won't believe what this viper does to lure hungry birds
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The rare Iranian spider-tailed viper ( Pseudocerastes urarachnoides) waggles a fake "spider" - actually a fleshy lure with leg-like scales at the tip of its tail - to tempt birds within striking distance. Until 2001, the viper was known only from a single misidentified specimen collected during a U.S. expedition to Iran in 1968. The weird structure on its tail was so unlike anything documented in other snakes that it was written off as a birth defect or an abnormal growth. While scientists had suspected its unique tail was used for luring prey, new observations of the dramatic bird captures now confirm this. The new study also revealed the viper starts growing its tail lure after birth, and that it isn’t complete until adulthood.
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2736 |
duddy |
8 years ago |
Why do we get brain freeze?
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Brain freeze is the name used to describe the sensation you get when you consume something really cold, really fast. The scientific name for this temporary cold-stimulus headache is sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia. When something extremely cold touches the upper-palate (roof of the mouth), blood vessels in this region dilate to increase blood flow to counter the cold. The homeostatic triggers in your body perceive the cold as a threat to the brain, thinking the brain is in danger from the cold. As the warm blood rushes to your brain, this build-up of blood pressure causes the pain you feel. While brain freezes are not dangerous, they are slightly uncomfortable, so the best way to make it quickly go away is to rub or press your tongue against ...
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7604 |
duddy |
7 years ago |
Why do hard liquors keep you warm?
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Anyone who has ever taken a shot of hard liquor (tequila, brandy) can tell you: it burns on the way down. But it's not the alcohol itself that's burning your throat. Instead, the ethanol in the liquid is making your throat's VR1 heat receptors (left) more sensitive, prompting them to perceive your own body temperature as hot. Normally, the VR1 receptors activate at 42° Celsius, but alcohol lowers this threshold to around 34° C, which is 4° C less than your bodies regulated temperature. ...
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4164 |
duddy |
7 years ago |
Why can't chimps walk upright?
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What can we learn from chimps swinging their hips? In this Nature Video, the walking style of our primate cousins are investigated, and we see what they can teach us about our ambling ancestors.
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5397 |
duddy |
8 years ago |
What's faster, a falcon or a skydiver?
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Watch the fastest animal in the world - a peregrine falcon - effortlessly accelerate to speeds of more than 290 km/h to chase a plummeting skydiver.
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9492 |
duddy |
9 years ago |
What looks like an octopus and stinks likes a skunk?
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The octopus stinkhorn mushroom ( Clathrus archeri) looks like an octopus and stinks like rotten flesh in order to attract the flies that spread its spores. This fungus is indigenous to Australia, including Tasmania, and New Zealand, and an introduced species in Europe, North America and Asia. As shown in the video, the young fungus erupts from a sub-erumpent egg by forming into four to seven elongated slender arms initially erect and attached at the top. The arms then unfold to reveal a pinkish-red interior covered with a dark-olive spore-containing gleba. In maturity it smells of putrid flesh. ...
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5491 |
duddy |
7 years ago |
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33868 |
duddy |
9 years ago |
What causes the rattle in a rattlesnake's tail?
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Rattlesnakes are a group of venomous snakes native to the Americas known for their loud rattling tail. The tip of their tail, known as the rattle (middle), vibrates to deter predators or serves as a warning to passers-by. The rattle is composed of a series of hollow, interlocked segments made of keratin, which are created by modifying the scales that cover the tip of the tail. The contraction of special "shaker" muscles in the tail causes these segments to vibrate against one another, making the rattling noise (which is amplified because the segments are hollow) in a behavior known as tail vibration. The muscles that cause the rattle to shake are some of the fastest known, firing 50 times per second on average, sustained for up to three hour ...
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5983 |
bio_man |
6 years ago |
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1 |
4682 |
duddy |
9 years ago |
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1 |
12114 |
duddy |
8 years ago |
Watch this rare footage of a housewife on LSD
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Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) is a recreational, psychedelic drug that alter awareness of the surroundings, perceptions, and feelings, as well as sensations and images that seem real though they are not. LSD works by binding primarily to the dopamine receptors and adrenal receptors in the brain. It also binds to most of the serotonin receptors. The binding process is believed to overstimulate the natural neurotransmission process, activating the receptors and altering thought and perceptions. Though medical researchers have not scientifically proven how this process alters consciousness, they are certain about the binding process which links hallucinogenic chemicals to receptors and disrupts neurotransmission between receptors and parts of ...
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3493 |
duddy |
7 years ago |
Watch this mysterious lake disappear before your eyes
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Lost Lake, located in central Oregon, is known for rapidly draining every year through a six-foot (two-meter) wide hole in the lake's bottom (as shown in the video). Early in the following spring, however, the lake fills up again, as snowmelt from the surrounding mountains accumulates faster than water can drain out through the hole. That hole is really a lava tube - a geologic feature made when lava cools around the edges of a river of molten rock. After the hot lava drains away, it can leave an empty space. ...
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15219 |
duddy |
8 years ago |
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9237 |
duddy |
8 years ago |
Watch this ex-circus lion feel grass for the first time
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This lion, named Will, spent his life with a traveling circus in Brazil. "For 13 long years, the lion had been confined to a cramped cage and denied any semblance of a normal existence," the Sao Paulo sanctuary wrote.
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1629 |
duddy |
8 years ago |
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5912 |
duddy |
8 years ago |
Watch this 1940's Disney Cartoon Made to Fight Malaria
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In 1943, Walt Disney helped combat malaria by making an animated film called The Winged Scourge. This short film starred the seven dwarfs and taught children that mosquitoes transmit malaria, which is a very bad disease. While not specifically mentioned in the film, malaria is caused by several species of the protozoan Plasmodium, of which Plasmodium vivax and Plasmodium falciparum are the most common. The most serious infections involve P. falciparum, which causes a higher incidence of complications and death. The short film advocated the killing of mosquitoes to stop the disease. Luckily, by 1951, malaria was finally eliminated in the United States ( eliminated means that no new cases arose in the country for 3 years). Today, oral chloroqui ...
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3756 |
bio_man |
4 years ago |
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0 |
21319 |
duddy |
8 years ago |
Watch how the ancient Babylonians tracked Jupiter in the sky
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It's hard to fathom the difficulties our ancestors had to contend with given how our world has advanced with technological sophistication over the past century. We shouldn't, however, underestimate the power of the human-mind, and how everything that was discovered in the past paved the way for the practices used today, especially those used in science. Of the very first astronomers, the ancient Babylonian were the first to use simple arithmetic to predict the positions of celestial bodies. Evidence reveals that these astronomers, working several centuries B.C.E., also employed sophisticated geometric methods that foreshadow the development of calculus. Historians had thought such techniques did not emerge until more than 1400 years later, ...
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5420 |
bio_man |
8 years ago |
Watch how animals react to their own reflection
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A French photographer has conducted an interesting experiment in Gabon by installing mirrors in several locations in the wilds and observing the way the animals reacted to their own reflections. The result was most amusing, to say the least.
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16951 |
duddy |
8 years ago |
Tricking your brain into thinking you're in a room full of sunlight
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There’s an innovative new light technology that's trying to change the way people think about "artificial light." In Italian company called CoeLux has developed a new light source that recreates the look of sunlight through a skylight so well that it can trick both human brains and cameras. It’s a high tech LED skylight that’s designed to provide "sunlight" for interior spaces cut off from the outdoors. One of the main ideas behind it is that to create realistic sunlight, you can’t just simulate the sun… you need to recreate the atmosphere as well. The scientists who invented the light figured out how to use a thin coating of nanoparticles to accurately simulate sunlight through Earth’s atmosphere and the effect known as Rayleigh scattering ...
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16031 |
duddy |
8 years ago |
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0 |
7423 |
duddy |
9 years ago |
This nerve bypass procedure enables a quadriplegic man to move again
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After a broken neck left him quadriplegic, Ian Burkhart was told he would never be able to use his hands. Now he can grasp a bottle and pick up a credit card by using a computer plugged directly into his brain. Special software is able to decode his thoughts and convert them into electrical signals in his hand, bypassing the damaged nerves in his spine. Now Ian has regained an amazing degree of control over his hand, each movement stimulated by his own thoughts. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0I_q_dFtPhU ...
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4406 |
duddy |
8 years ago |
This machine plays music using 2000 marbles
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After two years of work, Martin Molin of the Swedish band Wintergatan debuted a fully custom-made machine that plays music using 2,000 marbles. The marble machine features multiple instruments including a bass guitar, cymbals, and a vibraphone all played by falling marbles. Apart from the 11 mm steel ball bearing marbles, he made all the gears powering the machine by hand. ...
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0 |
3938 |
duddy |
8 years ago |
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0 |
2957 |
duddy |
9 years ago |
The Myers-Briggs test might just be a phony afterall
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Could the most widely used personality questionnaire simply be a farce? In case you don't know, the Myers-Briggs test is an assessment test believed by many to measure psychological preferences in how they perceive things and help them in making decisions. According to the Myers-Briggs test, there exist sixteen different types of personalities. This Myers Briggs Test has a series of questions that require your answers, which in turn determine the type of personality you have and provides you with general assumptions concerning how your personality type best suits you. Back in year-3 of my undergrad., I had to spend $20 to take the test for an assignment I had to write. While it was interesting to note how my personality could be read throug ...
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9122 |
duddy |
8 years ago |
The magnus effect
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An illustration of the magnus effect by trying to score a basket - with a twist. See for yourself!
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1 |
5622 |
ehd123 |
8 years ago |
The ghost fish has been captured on video for the first time
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A living, swimming ghost fish has been seen live for the first time ever. The fish, part of the family Aphyonidae, was caught on camera during an ongoing National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) exploration by the ship Okeanos Explorer. The exploration centers on the deep ocean at Mariana Trench Marine National Monument, a protected area spanning 95,216 square miles (246,608 square kilometers) east of the Philippines. The secretive fish was swimming along a ridge 8,202 feet (2,500 meters) down, according to NOAA. The animal is about 4 inches (10 centimeters) long, with translucent, scale-less skin and eerie, colorless eyes. No fish in the family Aphyonidae has ever been seen alive before. ...
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4964 |
duddy |
7 years ago |
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4304 |
duddy |
9 years ago |
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2824 |
duddy |
9 years ago |
Speedy bacteria
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Bdellovibrio bacteriovorus is a bacterium that attacks other bacteria. It can charge its prey at speeds of up to 100 micrometers per second, comparable to a human running 600 kilometers per hour. It then bores into its hapless victim by spinning at 100 revolutions per second. Most bacteria aren't quite that fast, but they can move by whipping flagella or by spiraling through their environment. ...
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14258 |
duddy |
8 years ago |
Rhino beetles are ginormous bugs
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Rhino beetles and other ginormous bugs are kept as pets, used in gambling fights, and also eaten as food. You've got to see the size of these things!
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23420 |
duddy |
9 years ago |
Red-hot nickel ball versus floral foam
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What's happening: The foam used in this experiment is a type of synthetic carbon, which means it's so dense, it doesn't allow for air-flow. Because of this, the heat smoulders through the material, rather than forming a proper flame, sucking the oxygen out as it goes, and leaving behind the dried out remains. This is the same reaction that happens when you turn wood into charcoal. ...
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1175 |
duddy |
8 years ago |
Please stop eating my face, sir
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Watch as one of nature's most efficient killing machines slowly chows down on the face of a fly as it writhes helplessly in its arms. It's the sound that really got to us...
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5838 |
duddy |
9 years ago |
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17500 |
ehd123 |
9 years ago |
Nine longest words in the English language
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Want to better your vocabulary? Try pronouncing these words on your own, then attempt to use at least one in your next conversation! Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilic ovolcanoconiosis – 45 letters- A lung disease caused by breathing in volcanic dust.
Supercalifragilisticexpialido cious – 34 letters- Meaning "wonderful", from song of this title in the movie Mary Poppins.
Floccinaucinihilipilification – 29 letters- Meaning "the action or habit of estimating as worthless".
Trinitrophenylmethylnitramine – 29 letters- A chemical compound used as a detonator in shells.
Antidisestablishmentarianism – 28 letters- Meaning "opposition to the disestablishment of the Church of England".
Electroencephalographically – 27 lettersMicrospectrophotometr ...
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9193 |
bio_man |
5 years ago |
Next time you ask a scientist why something happens remember this guy
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This is Richard Feynman's take on a simple question, why do magnets repel each other? A little more on Richard Feynman. He was an American theoretical physicist known for his work in the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, the theory of quantum electrodynamics, and the physics of the superfluidity of supercooled liquid helium, as well as in particle physics for which he proposed the parton model. As always: A scientist is not a person who gives the right answers, but one who asks the right questions. ...
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0 |
2431 |
duddy |
8 years ago |
Never trust a mirror
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Can you figure out this optical illusion? Squares are magically turned into circles, then vice versa. But interestingly, it's not strictly the mirror that is fooling you - it's a combination of the shapes used and your fickle perspective. The trick was designed by Kokichi Sugihara from Meiji University in Japan for the "Illusion Of The Year" competition. You can see the other top 10 finalists from the competition right here. ...
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3 |
5469 |
duddy |
7 years ago |
Must watch, this ancient Turkish language is whistled
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Turkish communities living in the mountains in the north east of the country use a remarkable whistling language to communicate. Around 10,000 people use the bird-like whistle, which researchers suggest is the first known form of language to use both sides of the brain. Whistlers usually speak Turkish when talking near each other, but switch to whistling when they want to convey a message over longer distances, which can be up to five kilometers. The whistling language has the same vocabulary and grammatical structure as Turkish, it’s just a different format. Scientists have previously assumed that all spoken language, written texts and sign language mainly utilize the left hemisphere, but this doesn't seem to be the case for the whistling l ...
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0 |
9432 |
duddy |
8 years ago |
Mind-blowing dragon illusion
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This type of optical illusion plays with our brain’s sense of perspective: the dragon’s face looks like it’s sticking out toward us because, after all, we know from a life time of experience that faces stick out instead of cave in. But the exact opposite is actually the case here. Regardless of what you perceive, the entire face of this dragon is inverted making everything backwards: For example, the right eye is actually farther away from us than the left eye, and it’s this inversion that confuses our brains and makes us think the dragon is staring at us. ...
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0 |
2648 |
duddy |
8 years ago |
Living without a heart
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Stan Larkin (pictured on the right), who's now 25, was diagnosed with familial cardiomyopathy. This form of disease results in the heart having difficulty pumping enough blood through the body. Faced with a lack of compatible heart donors, Stan underwent an operation in 2014 to remove his failing heart and replace it with an external total artificial heart, dubbed the Freedom portable driver. This battery-powered device uses compressed air to pump blood around the body in the same way a heart does, and as the name suggests, it is portable and only weighs 6 kilograms (13 pounds). The device does an incredible job at keeping the patient in a healthy condition while a donor heart becomes available, but it isn’t considered a long-term option. ...
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6103 |
duddy |
7 years ago |
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0 |
16346 |
duddy |
9 years ago |
How to paint an island red with crabs
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Christmas Island is a unique natural habitat located in the Indian Ocean with many endemic species. The national park covers two-thirds of the island, which has been referred to as the Galapagos of the Indian Ocean. Many people are aware of the red crabs whose mass migration to the sea has been described as one of the wonders of the natural world. Christmas Island has many other species of crabs, including the impressive robber crabs ( Gecarcoidea natalis). These may be the largest land-dwelling arthropod on Earth. Together these abundant land crabs clear the forests of leaf litter and maintain burrows that prevent soil becoming compacted, creating an open and diverse forest. This thriving natural system, however, was disrupted by an invasive ...
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7989 |
duddy |
7 years ago |
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10984 |
duddy |
9 years ago |
Here's why your hair will eventually turn gray
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As soon as we're born, we're destined to age. Some of us age gracefully - we enjoy years of youthfulness - while others experience hair loss, wrinkles, and greying earlier than expected. Found in the core of each hair, a pigment known as melanin gives rise to a person's hair color. This universal pigment is also found in our skin and eyes, giving use our unique physical traits. Dark and light versions of melanin - eumelanin and phaeomelanin, respectively - combine in various combinations to create all natural hair colors. Melanin itself is the product of a specialized cell, the melanocyte, which is found in each hair follicle, from which the hair grows. As hair grows, the melanocyte injects melanin into the hair cells, which contain the s ...
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0 |
9488 |
duddy |
8 years ago |
Hammers are no match for this glass
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The tough-yet-fragile physical properties of the tadpole-shaped pieces of glass known as Prince Rupert’s drops have puzzled physicists for as long as, well, there have been physicists. Bash the head with a hammer, and a drop gets barely a scratch. But break off its thin tail, and it shatters into fine powder. Researchers long ago realized that the strength of the drops - named for Prince Rupert of Bavaria, who presented five of them to Britain’s King Charles II in 1660 - has something to do with stresses in the glass created when a drop is made by letting a blob of molten glass fall into water, so that it cools rapidly. Twenty years ago, a pair of researchers took high-speed video of a drop disintegrating showing that, when the tail is brok ...
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0 |
3833 |
bio_man |
6 years ago |
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2 |
21137 |
duddy |
9 years ago |
Go home nature. You are drunk!
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This is the Wilson's bird-of-paradise, found exclusively on the tiny islands of Waigeo and Batanta in the Raja Ampat archipelago of West Papua. That turquoise cap isn't made of feathers - it's actually a patch of very brightly coloured bald skin.
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1 |
3283 |
duddy |
10 years ago |
Finally, some good news related to tigers
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India’s tiger population has risen from 1,706 individuals to 2,226 in the past four years, officials have reported. With the global population teetering around 3,000 individuals, this kind of growth is incredible.
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1 |
30295 |
duddy |
9 years ago |
Fashion matters
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Although I'm a guy, I enjoyed watching this video. I also appreciate a modestly-dressed woman
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1 |
3859 |
savio |
10 years ago |
Fake it till you BECOME it
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Perhaps one of my favourite TEDtalks. Amy Cuddy’s research on body language reveals that we can change other people’s perceptions - and even our own body chemistry - simply by changing body positions. Her take-home message is simple, instead of faking it till you make it and living a life as an impostor, you must fake it till you become it.
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5192 |
bio_man |
8 years ago |
Double hand transplant
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At only eights years-old, Zion Harvey is the youngest person with a double hand transplant ever. Four teams of surgeons worked over 11 hours to complete the complicated operation. Zion lost both of his hands and feet when he contracted sepsis at age two and experienced multiple organ failures. When he was four, he received a kidney transplant from his mother, and leg prosthetics have enabled him to engage in many activities.
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1941 |
duddy |
8 years ago |
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10817 |
duddy |
9 years ago |
Could pink prison cells calm prisoners down? This psychologist thinks so
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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 20 th 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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9437 |
duddy |
8 years ago |
Check out the footage of this tricky plant
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To tap into scarce water supplies, most desert plants have extensive root systems that burrow deep or spread wide. But one desert moss has a different trick up its sleeve: a thirst-quenching structure called an awn. Awns are tiny, hairlike structures that project from the end of each leaf to capture water (above). For the first time, scientists have examined in detail how this moss ( Syntrichia caninervis) pulls water right from the air using its awns. At the smallest scale, the awns are covered with grooves about 100 nanometers deep and 200 nanometers wide, the perfect size for dew to condense within them when conditions are right. Those nanogrooves lie within larger troughs that measure about 1.5 micrometers deep and 3 micrometers wide, a ...
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4099 |
duddy |
7 years ago |
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2 |
30389 |
ehd123 |
9 years ago |
A view of the ocean floor
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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.
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1982 |
duddy |
8 years ago |
A moth that resembles a hummingbird
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As this hawk-moth feeds on flowers and makes a similar humming sound, it looks a lot like a hummingbird. What’s interesting is that it is surprisingly good at learning colors.
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3 |
4219 |
duddy |
10 years ago |
A miniature wildcat
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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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0 |
2022 |
duddy |
8 years ago |
150 thousand people are going to die today
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It's true, and this estimate is the same for tomorrow, and the day after. This video explains the Years of Life Lost measurement - a measurement which takes into account the age at which deaths occur by giving greater weight to deaths at younger age and lower weight to deaths at older age (more information can be found here). The video neatly displays the leading causes of death in each country from 2013. According to statistics, Saudi Arabia really needs to chill out with its driving antics given that death by vehicle is the leading cause of early death there at 19 people per day! ...
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23294 |
duddy |
8 years ago |
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1 |
21298 |
duddy |
8 years ago |