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Gold comes in many different forms
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The Golden Tortoise beetle is found in the Americas. They feed on the leaves of plants related to the sweet potato, including the morning glory and bindweed, though they rarely eat enough to cause serious damage to the plant.
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5268 |
duddy |
10 years ago |
So, chemistry is all theory, right?
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Using high-resolution atomic force microscopy, a hydrogen bond has been imaged for the first time. This technique is quite similar to the one used to photograph bonds breaking and reforming that was announced earlier this year.
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4707 |
savio |
10 years ago |
Ink poisoning
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Varieties of the inky cap mushroom can be around the world. While they are edible, ingesting alcohol while eating the mushrooms increases symptoms of nausea and vomiting, and can even cause a heart attack. After the mushroom has released its spores, the cap begins to liquefy. The thick black liquid that is seen dripping from the edges is how the inky cap got its name.
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4546 |
savio |
10 years ago |
Imagine being able to draw while you're sleep
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Artist Lee Hadwin has a unique talent - he can only produce his artwork in his sleep, as shown above. Lee cannot remember doing anything while he is asleep, and cannot recreate his work while he is awake. He says he has no real interest in art, but has been producing his own work since a small child.
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4787 |
duddy |
10 years ago |
Cool shiny metal
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This is bismuth, a brittle metal with a white or silver-pink hue and an iridescent oxide tarnish that produces a rainbow of colours from yellow to blue. It is the most naturally diamagnetic metal in the world, which means it can create a magnetic field in opposition to an externally applied magnetic field. ...
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3596 |
duddy |
10 years ago |
Birds evolving from fish, a possibility?
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A flying fish moves its tail up to 70 times per second to propel itself up and out of the water. Those specialised pectoral fins are spread wide and tilted slightly upward to provide lift, and then folded back against the body to lower the fish back into the ocean. Flying fish (family: Exocoetidae) are eaten by dolphins, tuna, birds, squids and porpoises, so they needed to develop an ingenious mode of escape - such as flying - in order to survive.
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2857 |
duddy |
10 years ago |
Next time you experience acne, try not to remember this
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Demodex folliculorum and Demodex brevisare are parasitic mites that particularly favour the hair follicles of eyebrows and eyelashes and measure a mere fraction of a millimeter long. They crawl about your face in the dark to mate and then crawl into the pores to lay their eggs and die. Healthy adults have around one or two mites per square centimetre of facial skin, though people with the condition rosacea can have 10 times more. Demodex does not have an anus and therefore cannot get rid of its faeces. Instead, their abdomen gets bigger and bigger, and when the mite dies it decomposes and releases its faeces all at once into the pore. ...
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5266 |
duddy |
10 years ago |
Brain defects go a long way
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This is a human brain without grooves and folds, a condition known as lissencephaly. It belonged to a patient who died in a mental health facility in 1970, and almost a year ago a photographer found the jar containing the brain in a collection at the University of Texas, Austin. People with this rare condition suffer from seizures, muscle spasms, a range of learning difficulties, and usually die before the age of ten. ...
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5165 |
duddy |
10 years ago |
The strangest medical story ever
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This 22-year-old man had a car accident last year and as a result his nose became infected and deformed. Doctors weren’t able to repair it, but decided to take cartilage from one of the young man’s ribs to grown a new nose. The nose, which is temporarily attached to his forehead, has been developing for 9 months and is ready to be transplanted.
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5026 |
duddy |
10 years ago |
New island forms in Pakistan after a major earthquake
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Barely half an hour after being jolted by a major earthquake on Tuesday, people of the Pakistani coastal town of Gwadar had another shock when they saw a new island emerge in the sea, just over a kilometre from the shore. It has a rough surface, much of which is muddy and some parts are mostly made up of fine- to coarse-grained sand. ...
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5277 |
duddy |
10 years ago |
Long middle finger
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The aye-aye lives in the forests of Madagascar. Despite looking like a very scared rodent, the aye-aye is a kind of lemur with a bushy tail and super-thin, elongated middle fingers that they use to dig grubs out of hollow branches. Aye-ayes also have huge lower incisors to chew through wood and bamboo—and in captivity they’ve been known to chew through concrete cinder blocks ...
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5379 |
duddy |
10 years ago |
Why does water bridge form in the presense of electricity?
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If you fill two beakers with water, apply an electric voltage across them, and then separate them, you will form a water bridge. This phenomena was discover some 120 years ago and researchers believe it occurs because the voltage makes the water molecules line up, generating a dielectric tension that defies gravity, stopping the bridge from falling. Understanding how water bridges form could help engineers develop better electrowetting displays. ...
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2694 |
duddy |
10 years ago |
Birds of Paradise
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A must see introductory video about paradise birds. This video reveals the astounding beauty of 39 of the most exquisitely specialized animals on earth. After 8 years and 18 expeditions to New Guinea, Australia, and nearby islands, Cornell Lab scientist Ed Scholes and National Geographic photojournalist Tim Laman succeeded in capturing images of all 39 species in the bird-of-paradise family for the first time ever.
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3245 |
savio |
10 years ago |
Catch me if you can
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The relative speed is based on body length. The tiger beetle ( Cicindela hudsoni) run so fast, their eyes can’t process information as quickly as they need to and they temporarily blind themselves. Some sources claim that the tiger beetle can up to 9 km/hour! When attacking prey, the beetle will aim itself at its target and start running, but will need to stop and relocate the prey because it cannot keep an eye on it. Once it has reoriented itself, it charges forward again and hopes to run into the target. ...
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4384 |
duddy |
10 years ago |
Self-exploding ants
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Carpenter ants ( Camponotus cylindricus) are found in Borneo and expel the lethal sticky substance to defend their colony. Both ant and invader are killed in these attacks; they fall from the canopy as a pair into the leaf litter below, to eventually be eaten by something. Most of the bodies of the south-east Asian Camponotus cylindricus ants are for storage of the deadly secretion. The insects react quickly - when researchers lightly touched them with forceps their abdomen walls ruptured. ...
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2492 |
duddy |
10 years ago |