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 ...

Birds are very clever animals. They exhibit a wide range of smart behaviors, including good memories, extensive communication, planning for the future, and remembering the past. Some birds can solve problems, and others are capable of adapting to new environments and conditions.

Experts often think of intelligence in terms of creative abilities used to solve problems. Some scientists believe that tool-using birds show such abilities. The woodpecker finch (first from left) of the Galapagos Islands, for example, has learned to use a cactus spine or small twig as a probe to remove carpenter bee larvae from their tunnels. The Egyptian vulture (second from left) uses rocks to break open ostrich eggs. Gulls learn to drop clams and turtles onto roc ...

Unlike conventional plants, the Venus flytrap copes with poor soil by eating bugs! But the cost of insect hunting is high. Catching prey requires Dionaea muscipula to snap down quickly and then carry out the energy-intensive process of digestion. To balance the costs and benefits of eating meat, the plants have developed a counting system to identify real prey from false alarms, according to a new study.

 To understand how the flytrap distinguishes a potential food source from a false alarm like a raindrop, researchers observed the electrical and chemical response of the plant to touch stimulation. In order to mimic insect prey, the scientists stimulated the hairlike sensors located on the plant’s trap. Touching the sensors two times quick ...

Many of us around the world will enjoy a firework display tonight (or have already); but what are the mechanisms behind the magnificent spectacle?



The story behind fireworks begins about 2000 years ago in China. Alchemists at the time were in search for an elixir which made them immortal. Obviously, they did not find this- what they did find however was a substance consisting of potassium nitrate, charcoal and suphur; or gunpowder,as we know it. The evolution of fireworks from gunpowder took another 1000 years until a monk named Li Tian realised that if you placed gunpowder into a bamboo tube and ignited it, an impressive explosion on sound and light ensued. Fireworks were born!

The gunpowder is responsible for the trajectory of the firework, ...

Southern rockhopper penguins (Eudyptes chrysocome) mate for life, reuniting with the same partner year after year during mating season. But even though they're monogamous, a new study reveals that penguin couples really don’t spend much time together.

Using GPS trackers mounted to the penguins’ legs, scientists monitored 16 birds over the course of a mating season. The data show that males arrived at the nesting site approximately 6 days before their female counterparts and stayed about 6 days longer. However, the short mating season means the pairs are only united for about 20 to 30 days a year. And when they were separated, it was usually by a large distance: During the winter months, partners were separated by an average distance of abo ...

That's a pickup line sure to get one's attention if he/she knew that all snowflakes are, in fact, one of a kind!

All snowflakes start off looking basically the same, but they are individually shaped by their environments as they form and fall. First, water vapor condenses and freezes on a dust mote. The snowflake starts as a six-sided prism - six sides because of the way water molecules arrange themselves into ice crystals. As it grows, its edges expand and create branches of ice that shoot out from its corners. Differences in temperature and wind conditions turn the branches into one-of-a-kind works of art: Some are long and thin, some are short and fat, and some are covered in dozens of tiny sub-branches.

Source: http://www.sciencemag.org ...

It has to do with a single gene! More than a decade ago, researchers discovered that one gene (MC1R) on chromosome 16 plays an important role in giving people red hair. MC1R task is to make the protein melanocortin 1. This protein plays an important role in converting red pigment into black pigment. If you end up with only one mutated MC1R gene, red hair can appear in unwanted places, like your beard. When someone inherits two mutated versions of the MC1R-gene (one from each parent), less red pigment is converted into black pigment. ...

Human smell has often been characterized as being deficient when compared to the smell abilities of some lower organisms. Summarized below are four myths about human smell that have been contradicted by research.

Myth 1: Human smell is less sensitive than that of other animals.

Research indicates that the individual smell receptor cells in humans will respond to a single odorant molecule. The difference in overall sensitivity appears to be due to the fact that some lower organisms, such as dogs, have more smell receptors.

Myth 2: Humans have a relatively poor ability to detect changes in smell intensity.

Although earlier research indicated that the difference threshold for smell was the largest of all the senses, more recent research, carefully ...