WorldMag— by Daniel James Devine Researchers are showing that the old Darwinian ideas about ‘junk’ DNA were simplistic. Welcome to the new genome Adenine, thymine, guanine, cytosine. Biology teachers repeated those molecules to us in high school. We had to memorize them—although they were already embedded in our brains, literally speaking. Working in tandem, those [...]
Full Story »The Power of Wildebeests
Ideas and Discoveries magazine — Getting in the way of 2000 rampaging wildebeests would be suicide once a herd of wildebeests is in motion, it simply devlops to much power. Moving at speeds of up to 50 mph, this 450-ton, 2000-foot-wide living steamroller careens across the savannah, trampling anything that gets under its hooves. Their [...]
Full Story »Planned Obselescense
An interesting small film to watch online (a Norwegian TV documentary) “The lightbulb conspiracy” details a process that few people outside of manufacturing industry’s are even aware exists. So-called “planned obsolescence” or to put it in less PC terms, manufacturers designing stuff deliberately to fail after a certain period of time. In the case of [...]
Full Story »How Do Mosquitoes withstand a Raindrop Assault?
Ideas and Discoveries magazine — One mosquito in the rain might not sound earth-shattering, but it’s enough to take a seasoned physicist’s breath away. The force that acts on a mosquito as it is hit by a raindrop should, in theory, be enough to kill it. Although an average raindrop is just about the same [...]
Full Story »The Dragonfly’s Eye and Wings
Ideas and Discoveries magazine — Dragonflies can rotate their wings during the downward stroke. This creates a vortex that allows them to stay virtually still in the air. They can pump lymph fluid into the tips of their wings as needed to shift their center of gravity while flying. Clearly dragonflies are way ahead of [...]
Full Story »How do Ants Survive a Flood?
Ideas and Dicoveries magaine— Picture a summery country landscape. Suddenly the sky grows dark and, within an hour, a downpour floods the previously bone-dry ground with almost 2 gallon of water per square foot. The fire ants that make their home under the ground here appear to be doomed – or so you would think [...]
Full Story »These Monkeys can be Found only in the Rain
Ideas and Discoveries magazine — Cool ‘do, casual look while chewing on a blade of grass…. This monkey could easily be a movie star — if it weren’t for that nose! Whenever it rains, the droplets fall into the nostrils of the snub-nosed monkey (Rhinopithecus stykeri). They can only get rid of the water by [...]
Full Story »What Does the Internet Experience in 1 Minute?
Ideas and Discoveries magazine — 639,800 — this is how many gigabytes are exchanged within 60 seconds on the World Wide Web. During this time, busy users generate six new Wikipedia articles, and $83,000 worth of sales takes place via the Amazon website. Within 1 minute, 20 million photos are loaded on Flickr, 204 million [...]
Full Story »Guinness: Man Holds Breath 17+ Minutes
XPloreMagic — On April 30, 2008, David Blaine, endurance artist, appeared live on The Oprah Winfrey Show in a water-filled sphere, announcing that he would attempt to set a new world-record in the longest breath-holding category, after failing to surpass the then-current record in his previous attempt Drowned Alive. Since his original attempt, a new [...]
Full Story »Obama’s Marijuana
Ideas and Discoveries magazine — New details about Barack Obama’s past drug use were recently revealed in the press. It seems the president was looking for a high since age 14. His drug of choice? Cannabis, aka marijuana. To achieve his high quickly, Obama cultivated a special smoking technique he called TA (short for total [...]
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