Category: Science

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10 Facts That Just Might Send You Down a Long Rabbit Hole

There’s almost nothing more exciting than learning about new subjects and then doing a DEEEEP dive into them. It could be history, science, sports, pop culture, politics, etc.

It’s all fair game! And with the Internet, we literally have all the information in the world at our fingertips. That’s why Wikipedia was invented, right? So don’t waste that special opportunity!

Here are 10 facts that might pique your interest and send you down a path of new knowledge.

1. Now, that’s loud!

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2. Trailblazers

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3. Do you have this condition?

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4. Public Enemy #1

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5. Grimalkin

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6. Good use of resources

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7. Give it a shot!

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8. This is so bizarre

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9. Super Women

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10. Yes! Books rule!

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What do you think? You a little more motivated to learn about some new topics after looking over those facts?

I know I am!

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15 Stunning Gardens Around the World You Might Want to Visit

If you’re a garden lover, take note of these spots. Like to take long strolls through acres of plants in absolute silence? My personal favorite place to do this is at the Ringling Museum in Sarasota, Florida. The grounds are so spectacular that I can literally spend hours there just walking around.

Here are 15 gardens around the world that you might want to seek out if you happen to be in the neighborhood.

1. Jardin Majorelle — Marrakech, Morocco

2. Allan Gardens Conservatory — Toronto, Canada

3. The Ruth Bancroft Garden — Walnut Creek, California

4. Longwood Gardens — Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

5. The Garden of Cosmic Speculation — Dumfries, Scotland

6. Jardim Botânico — Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

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"Meu coração, sem direção Voando só por voar Sem saber onde chegar Sonhando em te encontrar E as estrelas Que hoje eu descobri No seu olhar As estrelas vão me guiar Se eu não te amasse tanto assim Talvez perdesse os sonhos Dentro de mim E vivesse na escuridão Se eu não te amasse tanto assim Talvez não visse flores Por onde eu vim Dentro do meu coração" #thanksgod🙏  #prewedding #gratidao #behappy😊 #errejota #rj #riodejaneiro #rio #riosunset #visitrio #destinorj #arpoador #instabrasil #lovetotravel #melhoresdestinos #travel #instariodejaneiro #jardimbotanico #ipanemabeach #riolovers #cidademaravilhosa #natureza #brasil🇧🇷 #southamerica #instalike #instaphoto #voegoloficial #instagram #instalove #instatravel @davisantosfotografia

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7. Jardín Etnobotánico de Oaxaca — Oaxaca, Mexico

8. Le Château de Villandry — Loire Valley, France

9. Hortus Botanicus — Amsterdam, The Netherlands

10. The Butchart Gardens — British Columbia, Canada

11. Lotusland — Santa Barbara, California

12. Arctic-Alpine Botanic Garden — Tromsø, Norway

13. The New York Botanical Garden — New York City

14. Kenroku-en — Kanazawa, Japan

15. Les Jardins de Marqueyssac — Dordogne, France

Those places all look pretty spectacular, don’t they?

Do you have a favorite garden that didn’t make the list? Share in the comments!

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An Extremely Rare Two-Headed Baby Turtle Was Found on a South Carolina Beach

This sure is a strange sighting.

If you’re reading that headline and thinking to yourself “there’s no way a two-headed turtle could be anything other than weird,” well, this little turtle would like you to hold its beer.

I mean, if it drank beer and it was of age to imbibe, I mean.

Because even though the hatchling has two heads, it’s as cute as a button.

Posted by Jayme Davidson Lopko on Wednesday, August 28, 2019

The little guy (guys?) was spotted and filmed by the Sea Turtle Patrol on Hilton Head Island. They were checking out a loggerhead turtle nest, when the strange hatchling caught their eye.

Cause, duh.

They gave him two names – Squirt and Crush (of Nemo fame) – and documented his (their?) existence before setting him free to make his way to the sea.

Posted by Jayme Davidson Lopko on Wednesday, August 28, 2019

The baby was struggle to crawl with its oddly shaped shell, but since the group doesn’t collect turtles, but merely observes and monitors the populations, the scientists didn’t keep it (them?).

Posted by Jayme Davidson Lopko on Wednesday, August 28, 2019

Sadly, the survival rate even for healthy hatchlings is pretty low – only 1 in 1,000 green sea turtles survives to adulthood – so Squirt and Crash are definitely facing an uphill battle.

Sea Turtle Patrol wrote about the find on Facebook.

We often find many strange things when we inventory sea turtle nests. Yesterday I found this twin two-headed hatchling….

Posted by Jayme Davidson Lopko on Wednesday, August 28, 2019

“Sea Turtle Patrol follows rules set by the State Department of Natural Resources which calls for us to protect the nests and turtles but to also allow as natural a process as possible. We do not take hatchlings off the beach to raise or rehabilitate. This little guy is on his own just like his brothers and sisters that came from the nest and like they have been doing for millions of years. Good luck and safe travels special guy!”

Posted by Jayme Davidson Lopko on Wednesday, August 28, 2019

It’s super cool that we get to see something like this exist, even if it’s just for a moment, but it would be so hard to just let him go, knowing things probably won’t turn out well.

Would you be able to do it? I guess some people are just conservationists at heart!

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The Reason Why Fresh-Cut Grass Smells so Nice Is Actually Kind of Dark

Those of us who grew up in suburbia probably have a lot of positive associations with the smell of fresh-cut grass. It’s summer, we’re playing outside, our dads are home on the weekends – maybe all of the above. Even now, catching a whiff may cause us to stop, take a deep breath, and smile.

But what if I told you the smell is the result of thousands of blades of grass in distress, working fervently to heal themselves without rot setting in before it’s too late.

Yeah. Makes you think about that whole vegan thing, doesn’t it?

It turns out that when leafy green plants are harmed, they release organic compounds known as green leaf volatiles that help form new cells that heal wounds faster, prevent bacterial infection and fungal growth (sort of like plant antibiotics), and produce compounds that prevent further damage.

They also can serve as distress signals, which some believe leads to questions about a form of language meant to warn others about potential harm.

While some of these emissions help oxygenate the atmosphere, others could pollute the air by contributing to photochemical smog in urban areas – really, the jury is out on that.

I don’t know about you, but I’ll take this as one more reason to stop mowing the lawn and just let my “bee garden” take over naturally.

My neighbors can object until they’re blue in the face; I have SCIENCE on my side.

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The Deadly Incident at Lake Nyos Is One of History’s Most Bizarre Unknown Natural Disasters

Have you ever heard of this story before?

Lake Nyos in Cameroon is a crater lake – the water there poured in after an incredibly explosive volcanic eruption forged the large divot. It appears innocuous and silent, and even though the view is spectacular, the lake could be easily overlooked.

If you know its eerie history, though, you’ll definitely spend some time contemplating its calm surface.

On August 21, 1986, thousands of cattle and 1746 people living near the lake died within moments of each other.

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On August 21, 1986, a rare natural disaster occurred in the West African country of Cameroon. A large cloud of carbon dioxide gas spewed from Lake Nyos and blanketed nearby villages, killing 1,746 people and 3,500 livestock while they slept. .. News of the tragedy took a few days to reach international newspapers, with the first reports appearing in North American papers around the 24th. (Independent Record, 08.25.1986). . . . . . @independentrecord #cameroon #lakenyos #historybuff #historylover #historygeek #historynerd #historylesson #oldnewspaper #newspaper #newspapers #newspaperclipping #newspaperarticle #historicalnewspapers #doyouremember #otd #onthisday #thisdayinhistory #todayinhistory

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When the bodies were discovered, authorities discovered no signs of physical damage or distress.

Though the locals were ready to blame vengeful spirits or the government testing chemicals, geologists quickly uncovered the real killer: carbon dioxide.

When water from the lake was captured in vials, it popped the lids off the sample jars. It was packed with the colorless, odorless gas, and scientists concluded in their official report that the lake had released a sudden and large amount of the gas. Denser than air, it rolled over fields and down slopes toward the local villages, smothering everything breathing in its path.

The lake sits above a system of still-active volcanos, and since carbon dioxide is a common feature of magmatic systems, the fact that it bubbled up into the water isn’t a surprise. Typically, though, the gas simply leaks out of the water slowly and harms no one – people wouldn’t even be aware of it.

At Lake Nyos, though, the huge amount of very still water ensured that pressure remained high enough to keep the gas dissolved in the water. It hosted a defined layer of CO2 that accumulated for several centuries, undisturbed by any kind of current or waves, until each gallon of water had collected an astonishing 5 gallons of carbon dioxide dissolved inside it.

Obviously, that is unsustainable.

There’s some debate as to what triggered the massive release of the gas. It may have been a landslide that fell into the CO2 layer, or a sudden release of fresh CO2 into the water, but, either way, it was like breaking the seal on an over-carbonated bottle of soda.

Water would have shot up and out in a geyser hundreds of meters tall, expelling 1.2 cubic kilometers of CO2 in a mist that blanketed villages as far as 15.5 miles away. The lake turned from blue to red, a result of the iron at the bottom floating toward the top after the massive disruption.

Entire villages perished – there were only 800 survivors in the area, most of whom suffered symptoms of CO2 poisoning.

Authorities installed a degassing system in the lake, as well as a solar-powered warning system, in the hopes that there will never be another mass asphyxiation event like this in the future.

Lake Kivu, straddling the border between Congo and Rwanda, is 2000x bigger than Lake Nyos, and is full of Co2 as well as methane. With 2 million people living within killing range of either gas, scientists have pointed out that similar precautions should be taken there, as well.

Efforts to extract the methane to be used as an energy source, or to explore it for potential oil deposits, have been met with words of caution from scientists.

Here’s hoping the governments listen, or another silent, mass annihilation could be on the horizon.

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This Is Why Some People Can Function Well on Less Sleep Than Others

Which category do you fall into?

Some people need a full eight hours of sleep to function no matter what, while others seem to be able to go go go with less than six hours of solid sack time. The latter like to brag about their ability as if it’s something they’ve trained for, or a reason to think themselves a superior human, but what is it about their makeup, really, that leaves them able to function with so few zzz’s?

Cause it’s just unfair.

Well, science has the answer, so hold on.

Neurologists from the University of California San Francisco think they’ve isolated a gene that could directly impact how much a person has to sleep to feel good.

The findings, published in Neuron, show that people with a single-letter gene mutation seem to be able to function well on six hours of sleep or less without suffering any of the adverse heath effects associated with too little time under the covers.

Whereas people without the mutation wake up moody, tired, and subject to the other nasty side effects of sleeping less than six hours a night.

Study author Louis Ptacek explained more in a statement:

“It’s remarkable that we know so little about sleep, given that the average person spends a third of their lives doing it. This research is an exciting new frontier that allows us to dissect the complexity of circuits in the brain and the different types of neurons that contribute to sleep and wakefulness.”

Interestingly, this isn’t the only gene that’s been linked to requiring less sleep – one called DEC2 also typically means a person averages 6.25 hours of sleep per night, as opposed to the 8.06 hours averaged by the people who do not posses the mutation.

This new gene exists in people without the previously known mutation, and it appears to affect neurons and their level of activity in the brain region that controls stages of sleep.

When the mutated gene was engineered into mice, the ones with the new gene mutation not only slept less, but were more active both when they were awake, and when they were in REM sleep. So it seems the mutation affected their circadian rhythms, says Ptacek.

“Sleep is complicated. We don’t think there’s one gene or one region of the brain that’s telling our bodies to sleep or wake. This is only one of many parts.”

One of many parts that I clearly don’t have. Le sigh…

I’m gonna go take a nap.

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A Study Found That Drinking Red Wine Can Contribute to a Healthy Gut

Studies come and go extolling the benefits of having a glass of red wine (aside from stress relief) now and then (and now), so add this one to the mix. It claims that red wine has the potential to improve your gut health.

The study of almost 3,000 drinkers in the U.S., the U.K., and the Netherlands revealed that red wine drinkers have a higher diversity of gut microbiota than those who prefer beer, cider, or white wines, even when controlling for age, weight, diet, and socioeconomic status.

Having a healthy gut microbiome has been linked to physical and mental health, including curbing food cravings and the efficacy of certain medicines.

The King’s College research was led by Caroline Le Roy, who issued a statement about their findings.

“While we have long known of the unexplained benefits of red wine on heart health, this study shows that moderate red wine consumption is associated with greater diversity and healthier gut microbiota that partly explain its long-debated beneficial effects on health.”

They’re still looking into why this might be the case, though they posit it has to do with active compounds called polyphenols that are found in the beverage. The chemicals are found in the grape skins, and have anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties that may help fuel the microbes living in our guts.

The same chemicals are found in chocolate and coffee, so maybe take a look at those, too.

“Although we observed an association between red wine consumption and the gut microbiota diversity, drinking red wine rarely, such as once every two weeks, seems to be enough to observe an effect. If you must choose one alcoholic drink today, red wine is the one to pick as it seems to potentially exert a beneficial effect on you and your gut microbes, which in turn may also help weight and risk of heart disease. However, it is still advised to consume alcohol with moderation.”

Moderation is key with alcohol consumption, of course, and the authors point out that people often underreport their consumption, for obvious reasons – and also that there was no way for them to determine the causal relationship between drinking red wine and health.

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It's all about the art of the pour. #PerUs

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The scientific community has spent a fair amount of time trying to decide whether the benefits of drinking wine outweigh the potential downsides, so for now, as ever, consume with caution.

But if you’re going to pick up an alcoholic beverage, red wine seems like the best possible choice.

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This Is Why You Should Never Buy Batteries from Dollar Stores

There are some things that you should simply never buy at dollar stores — like batteries. Batteries from the dollar store are much lower-quality, according to experts.

Walk into any dollar store, and you’ll likely find a rack of batteries sold in bulk packages for just $1 per package. At such a low price, those batteries are definitely tempting (just like everything else at the dollar store).

But before you throw these $1 packages into your cart, you should know that they may not be worth the savings.

Photo Credit: iStock

Dollar stores typically sell carbon-zinc batteries, whereas most name brand batteries (like Duracell or Energizer) are alkaline batteries. Carbon-zinc batteries carry way less energy and therefore last for less time than alkaline batteries.

For example, a AA battery from Energizer carries 10,798 joules, while a battery from Duracell from 9398 joules. A battery from Dollar General? Only 2983 joules. That’s a huge downgrade.

Dollar store batteries are also more likely to leak. Reader’s Digest reports that battery packages from brands like Sunbeam and Panasonic were stamped with warnings that they should be used only in “low-drain” devices, like clock radios.

Photo Credit: iStock

Frankly, it’s a huge pain when batteries run out over and over. It’s also impractical for emergency scenarios, when you need your battery-operated devices to work.

For those reasons, it’s best to just pay the full price for batteries that will provide more power and last longer.

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This Is Why You Should Never Buy Batteries from Dollar Stores

There are some things that you should simply never buy at dollar stores — like batteries. Batteries from the dollar store are much lower-quality, according to experts.

Walk into any dollar store, and you’ll likely find a rack of batteries sold in bulk packages for just $1 per package. At such a low price, those batteries are definitely tempting (just like everything else at the dollar store).

But before you throw these $1 packages into your cart, you should know that they may not be worth the savings.

Photo Credit: iStock

Dollar stores typically sell carbon-zinc batteries, whereas most name brand batteries (like Duracell or Energizer) are alkaline batteries. Carbon-zinc batteries carry way less energy and therefore last for less time than alkaline batteries.

For example, a AA battery from Energizer carries 10,798 joules, while a battery from Duracell from 9398 joules. A battery from Dollar General? Only 2983 joules. That’s a huge downgrade.

Dollar store batteries are also more likely to leak. Reader’s Digest reports that battery packages from brands like Sunbeam and Panasonic were stamped with warnings that they should be used only in “low-drain” devices, like clock radios.

Photo Credit: iStock

Frankly, it’s a huge pain when batteries run out over and over. It’s also impractical for emergency scenarios, when you need your battery-operated devices to work.

For those reasons, it’s best to just pay the full price for batteries that will provide more power and last longer.

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Zoos Are No Longer Able to Acquire African Elephants from the Wild

You might have already assumed that trade in wild African elephants – and endangered species in general – was illegal, even if it was a zoo that was looking to take one in.

We would have been wrong.

Though hopefully that won’t be the case for much longer.

At the 18th meeting of CITES, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, members from over 180 countries reassessed regulations on international elephant trade. A vast majority of the the representatives voted to end the capture and sale of wild African elephants for display in zoos worldwide.

The issue will go for a vote in front of the full conference, but with 46 of the 83 countries in favor, it looks to have a good chance of passing.

Iris Ho, a senior policy advisor at Humane Society International (HSI), told Bloomberg that everyone in the business of supporting endangered species sees this as a win.

“It’s a huge step forward. It’s really historic that the majority of the parties present recognized that African elephants should not be captured in the wild, sent to zoos and be kept in captivity for the rest of their lives.”

The ban would largely affect countries in southern Africa, where elephant populations are healthier and herds are regularly thinned for the purpose of selling them to zoos. Zimbabwe alone sold over 100 wild-caught baby elephants to China in the past 7 years, and the issue of separating calves from their mothers and the rest of the herd certainly has animal welfare experts concerned.

“Calves suffer psychological and physical harm when taken from their mothers,” explains elephant biologist Audrey Delsink of HSI Africa. “Zoos and other captive facilities force these calves to live in an unnatural, unhealthy environment that doesn’t meet their complex needs.”

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Did you know that African elephants are the largest land animals on Earth? They are slightly larger than their Asian cousins and can be identified by their large ears that look like the continent of Africa. Their ears radiate heat to help keep them cool, but sometimes the African heat can be too much so they use their trunk to give themselves a shower. Elephants eat roots, grasses, fruits, and bark and they eat a lot of it. In fact, an adult elephant can consume up to 300 pounds of food a day. Female elephants have a longer pregnancy than any other mammal (22 months) and usually give birth to one calf. In 2018, Tarangire’s famed Eloise was the oldest elephant to give birth to twin calves. Source of information: National Geographic https://www.wanderlusttours.org #wanderlust #tours #africa #tanzani #tarangirenationalpark #tarangire #elephants #africanelephants #thisisafrica #travel #concioustravel #mindfultravel

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Elephant trade has long been a hot topic, with African nations often territorial about managing their own wildlife without outside interference. Black market demands for ivory has drastically increased elephant poaching in the last few decades, though, so organizations like CITES feel as if they have a duty to protect the endangered species as if it belongs to the world, and not only to its endemic areas in Africa.

Over a million species are listed as at risk thanks to all manner of human activity, so committees like CITES are set to have busy years as they work to revamp how different species are protected around the globe.

“Nature’s dangerous decline is unprecedented,” says CITES Secretary General Ivonne Higuero. “Business as usual is no longer an option.”

I feel like that statement applies to environmental challenges all over the globe, and I hope there are people in every nook and cranny waiting to step up to do their part to save us all.

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