You probably wouldn't associate Canada with having any deserts, since the country is typically attributed with winters that are long and harsh. However, that's not entirely true if you visit the southern region of Osoyoos, British Columbia, Canada, known as the Okanagan Desert. In this area, summer temperatures regularly exceed 38˚C (100 °F), and portions of the area receive roughly 250 to 300 mm (10 to 12 inches) of rain per year – compare that to Vancouver, which receives approximately 1120 mm (43 inches) of rain per year.

While some areas in British Columbia experience hotter summer temperatures and are at least as arid, the South Okanagan area is home to several species of plants and animals that are not found elsewhere in Canada. For e ...

The magic number is 42 m/s (94 mph). Using mathematical data and physical experiments, scientists say they have found the law that governs the resistance of wooden beams under stress. According to the study (link), researchers hung weights from wooden rods and pieces of pencil lead to record the amount of force needed to snap the cylinder. As one might sense, they found that for a fixed length, increasing the diameter made the rods stronger: They could bend more before breaking. This would make tall skinny trees most vulnerable, but, as the team points out, trees don’t grow taller without getting disproportionately thicker as well. By incorporating established laws of tree allometry - which explain the relationship of tree size parameters ...

Wombat droppings are cube-shaped. This prevents them from rolling away when marking their territory. These cube-shaped poop looks like, but doesn't taste like chocolate brownies.

Some of us may be guilty of procrastination, but we all are pre-crastinators at some level.

Procrastination is a serious problem to many of us that like to put off work and cram the night before. Not only is procrastination a behavioral problem, but also one with a psychological implication. Procrastination is the "thief of time". On the other hand, precrastination, discovered to be the complete opposite, is the tendency to do things ahead of time - and really ahead of time- just for the sake of completion.



Precrastination was found to be exhibited in pigeons as well. And the fact that we and pigeons have separated in phylogeny 300 million years ago suggests that precrastination is a behavior also found earlier in phylogeny. How has this be ...

A volcano in Indonesia produces lava that looks BLUE!

Though the molten sulfur looks red in daylight, during the night, the blue flames that reach heights of 5 meters (16 feet) are highly visible. The sulfur, which is right around its melting point at 115°C (240 °F), is pumped away from the volcano so it can cool and be collected by miners for 680 rupiahs per kilogram (about 2.5 cents per pound).

This is a famous optical illusion, known as the '13 hidden faces'. It is also an attractive piece of art. How many can you find? It is considered that if you can find 10 faces you have normal powers of observation. If you find 15, you have above average observation skills, if you discover 21 or more, you have extremely keen observation skills. The faces that are most obvious are the ones in the foreground, along the path. They are lit up and our eyes are drawn naturally to them. The faces in shadow are perhaps more tricky to observe.

Let me know if you find more, here are my solutions

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Blue whales are not only the largest animal alive right now, but they are believed to be the largest animal that has ever lived.

They are listed as endangered by the IUCN, but a group of researchers hopes to designate 10% of the ocean as protected by 2020. Despite their slow reproduction times, researchers believe this will be enough to help rebound their number