FACT # 258

 FACT about human eyes

Guys’ eyes are more sensitive to small details and moving objects, while women are more perceptive to color changes, according to a new vision study that suggests men and women actually do see things differently.

“As with other senses, such as hearing and the olfactory system, there are marked sex differences in vision between men and women,” researcher Israel Abramov, of the City University of New York (CUNY), said in a statement. Research has shown women have more sensitive ears and sniffers than men.

“[A] recent, large review of the literature concluded that, in most cases females had better sensitivity, and discriminated and categorized odors better than males,” Abramov and colleagues write Tuesday (Sept. 4) in the journal Biology of Sex Differences.

Abramov and his team from CUNY’s Brooklyn and Hunter Colleges compared the vision of males and females over age 16 who had normal color vision and 20/20 sight — or at least 20/20 vision with glasses or contacts.

In one part of the study, the researchers asked the volunteers to describe different colors shown to them. They found that the guys required a slightly longer wavelength of a color to experience the same shade as women and the men were less able to tell the difference between hues. [Your Color Red Really Could Be My Blue]

The researchers also showed the participants images made up of light and dark bars that varied in width and alternated in color so that they appeared to flicker, a measure of participants’ sensitivity to contrast. Compared with the women, the male volunteers were better able to identify the more rapidly changing images made up of thinner bars, the researchers said.

Abramov explained in a statement these elements of vision are linked to specific sets of thalamic neurons in the brain’s primary visual cortex. The development of these neurons is controlled by male sex hormones called androgens when the embryo is developing into a fetus.

“We suggest that, since these neurons are guided by the cortex during embryogenesis, that testosterone plays a major role, somehow leading to different connectivity between males and females,” Abramov said. “The evolutionary driving force between these differences is less clear.”

Previous research found that men and women also focus differently. In experiments at the University of Southern California, researchers found that men are likely to fixate on the mouth of a person in conversation and also are more likely to be distracted by movement behind that person. Meanwhile, women tend to shift their gaze between a speaker’s eyes and body, and they are more likely to be distracted by other people, the researchers found.

 

FACT # 257

Gudi Padwa

Fast facts -	Gudi Padwa is one of the auspicious festivals in India and is celebrated on the first day of the Chaitra month.
Did you know -	Gudi Padwa is a major festival in the state of Maharashtra and is celebrated as New Year’s Day by Maharashtrians and Hindu Konkanis.
Must do -	Take part in the celebrations and enjoy to the fullest. Get a feel of local culture by watching traditional dance and music events.

Gudi Padwa is one of the auspicious festivals in India. It is a major festival in the state of Maharashtra and is celebrated on the first day of the Chaitra month. The day is celebrated as New Year’s Day by Maharashtrians and Hindu Konkanis. Wide spread celebrations take place during Gudi Padwa.

Gudi Padwa falls on the first day of the Maratha calendar. The festival also has a social significance as it is held to mark the beginning of the spring season. The festival is normally held in the period between the end of March and the beginning of April. People consider it auspicious to start a new activity on this day.

Gudi Padwa is also known as Sanvsar Padvo by the people of the Konkan region. The festival is also celebrated as Ugadi on the same day by the people of Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. The Sindhi festival of Cheti Chand is also celebrated on the very day.

On the day of the Gudi Padwa festival, the courtyards in houses are swept clean and plastered with fresh cow dung. Women and children decorate the entrance of the houses with rangoli designs which signify the charm of the spring season. Everyone in the house dress themselves in new clothes and women adorn themselves with traditional jewelry. People prepare special meals like soonth panak and chana and eat them during meals. People of Maharashtra also make shrikhand and Poori to celebrate the day.

Usually, people begin the Gudi Padwa festival by eating the bittersweet leaves of the neem tree. At times, a paste of neem leaves is prepared along with ajwain, jaggery and tamarind. People eat this paste as it is believed to purify the blood and strengthen the immune system of the body.

 

FACT # 256

Fascinating Facts about Ants

In many ways, ants can outwit, outlast, and outplay humans. Their complex, cooperative societies enable them to survive and thrive in conditions that would challenge the individual. Here are 10 fascinating facts about ants that just might convince you they’re superior to us.

1. Ants are capable of carrying objects 50 times their own body weight with their mandibles.
Ants use their diminutive size to their advantage. Relative to their size, their muscles are thicker than those of larger animals or even humans. This ratio enables them to produce more force and carry larger objects. If we had muscles in the proportions of ants, we’d be able to heave a Hyundai over our heads!

2. Soldier ants use their heads to plug the entrances to their nests and keep intruders from gaining access.
In certain ant species, the soldier ants have modified heads, shaped to match the nest entrance. They block access to the nest by sitting just inside the entrance, with their heads facing out like a cork in a bottle. When a worker ant returns to the nest, it will touch the soldier ant’s head to let the guard know it belongs to the colony.

3. Certain ant species defend plants in exchange for food and shelter.
Ant plants, or myrmecophytes, are plants with naturally occurring hollows where ants can take shelter or feed. These cavities may be hollow thorns, stems, or even leaf petioles. The ants live in the hollows, feeding on sugary plant secretions or the excretions of sap-sucking insects. What do the plants get for providing such luxurious accommodations? The ants defend the plant from herbivorous mammals and insects, and may even prune away parasitic plants that attempt to grow on the host plant.

4. The total biomass of all the ants on Earth is roughly equal to the total biomass of all the people on Earth.
How can this be?! Ants are so tiny, and we are so big! But scientists estimate there are at least 1.5 million ants on the planet for every human being. Over 12,000 species of ants are known to exist, on every continent except Antarctica. Most live in tropical regions. A single acre of Amazon rainforest may house 3.5 million ants.

5. Ants sometimes herd or tend to insects of other species, like aphids or leafhoppers.
Ants will do just about anything to get the sugary secretions of sap-sucking insects, called honeydew. To keep the sweet stuff in close supply, some ants will herd aphids, carrying the soft-bodied pests from plant to plant. Leafhoppers sometimes take advantage of this nurturing tendency in ants, and leave their young to be raised by the ants. This allows the leafhoppers to go raise another brood.

6. Ants will enslave other ants, keeping them captive and making them do work for the colony.
Quite a few ant species will take captives from other ant species, forcing them to do chores for their own colony. Some honeypot ants will even enslave ants of the same species, taking individuals from foreign colonies to do their bidding. Polyergus queens, also known as Amazon ants, raid the colonies of unsuspecting Formica ants. The Amazon queen will find and kill the Formica queen, then enslave the Formica workers. The slave workers help her rear her own brood. When her Polyergus offspring reach adulthood, their sole purpose is to raid other Formica colonies and bring back their pupae, ensuring a steady supply of slave workers.

7. Ants lived alongside the dinosaurs.
Ants evolved some 130 million years ago during the early Cretaceous period. Most fossil evidence of insects is found in lumps of ancient amber, or fossilized plant resin. The oldest known ant fossil, a primitive and now extinct ant species named Sphercomyrma freyi, was found in Cliffwood Beach, NJ. Though that fossil only dates back 92 million years, another fossil ant that proved nearly as old has a clear lineage to ants of present day. This suggests a much longer evolutionary line than previously thought, leading scientists to estimate the appearance of ants on Earth as somewhere around 130 million years ago.

8. Ants started farming long before humans.
Fungus farming ants began their agricultural ventures about 50 million years before humans thought to raise their own crops. The earliest evidence suggests ants began farming as early as 70 million years ago, in the early Tertiary period. Even more amazing, these ants used sophisticated horticultural techniques to enhance their crop yields. They secreted chemicals with antibiotic properties to inhibit mold growth, and devised fertilization protocols using manure.

9. Some ants form “supercolonies,” massive communities of ants that can stretch for thousands of miles.
Argentine ants, native to South America, now inhabit every continent except Antarctica due to accidental introductions. Each ant colony has a distinctive chemical profile that enables members of the group to recognize each other, and alerts the colony to the presence of strangers. Scientists recently discovered that massive supercolonies in Europe, North America, and Japan all share the same chemical profile, meaning they are, in essence, a global supercolony of ants.

10. Ants follow scent trails laid by scout ants to gather food.
By following pheromone trails created by other ants from the colony, foraging ants can gather and store food efficiently. A scout ant first leaves the nest in search of food, and wanders somewhat randomly until it discovers something edible. It will then consume some of the food and return to the nest in a straight, direct line. It seems these scout ants can observe and recall visual cues that enable them to navigate quickly back to the nest. Along the return route, the scout ant leaves a trail of pheromones, special scents that will guide her nestmates to the food. The foraging ants then follow her path, each one adding more scent to the trail to reinforce it for others. The workers will continue walking back and forth along the line until the food source is depleted.

 

FACT # 255

Here are a few facts about women in the work place and in education as International Women’s Day is observed on Friday

There has been an International Women’s Day since the early 1900s, a time of great expansion and turbulence in the industrialised world that saw booming population growth and the rise of radical ideologies.

* SOME HISTORY:

– International Women’s Day (IWD) was honoured the first time in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland on March 19, 1911. More than one million women and men attended IWD rallies campaigning for women’s rights to work, vote, be trained, to hold public office and end discrimination.

SOME FACTS:

HEALTH:

* On average, women live six to eight years longer than men globally.

* In 2007, women’s life expectancy at birth was more than 80 years in 35 countries, but only 54 years in the WHO African Region.

* Girls are far more likely than boys to suffer sexual abuse.

* Road traffic injuries are the leading cause of death among adolescent girls in high- and middle-income countries

* Essentially all (99 percent) of the half a million maternal deaths every year occur in developing countries.

* Breast cancer is the leading cancer killer among women aged 20-59 years in high-income countries.

* Globally, cardiovascular disease, often thought to be a “male” problem, is the leading killer of women.

SOURCE: WHO 11/2009

SMOKING:

* Women comprise 20 percent of the world’s 1 billion smokers.

* Of the more than 5 million people who die each year from tobacco use, approximately 1.5 million are women.

* Worldwide, of more than 600,000 deaths caused every year by second-hand smoke, 64 percent occur among women.

* If current conditions continue, tobacco use will kill 8 million people each year by 2030, of whom 2.5 million will be women.

* Three-quarters of these deaths would be women in low- and middle-income countries. Each of these deaths would have been avoidable.

SOURCE: WHO 2010

EDUCATION:

* The ratio of girls to boys enrolment has steadily improved, reaching 97 girls per 100 boys at primary level, 96 girls per 100 boys at secondary level and 108 women per 100 men at tertiary level in 2008.

* Women make up nearly two thirds of the worlds 759 million illiterate adults.

* Access to university-level education remains highly unequal, especially in sub-Saharan Africa and Southern Asia. In these regions, only 67 and 76 girls per 100 boys, respectively, are enrolled in tertiary education. Completion rates also tend to be lower among women than men. Poverty is the main cause of unequal access.

* On average, across 121 countries with available data, women account for 29 percent of researchers, and only 15 percent of countries have achieved gender parity.

SOURCE: UNESCO/WORLD BANK 2010

POLITICAL PARITY:

* Between 1995 and 2010, the share of women in parliament, on a global level, increased from 11 per cent to 19 per cent a gain of 73 per cent, but far short of gender parity.

* Parliamentary elections in 2009 contributed to rising gains for women in sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America and the Caribbean, where 29 per cent and 25 per cent of the renewed seats went to women, respectively. But 58 countries still have 10 per cent or fewer female members of parliament.

* Progress in women’s representation in the executive branches of government is even slower. In 2010, just nine of 151 elected heads of state and 11 of 192 heads of government were women. Globally, women hold only 16 per cent of ministerial posts.

 

FACT # 254

 Here are some interesting, but true facts, that you may or may not have known.

1. The Statue of Liberty’s index finger is eight feet long.
2. Rain has never been recorded in some parts of the Atacama Desert in Chile.
3. A 75 year old person will have slept about 23 years.
4. Boeing 747′s wing span is longer than the Wright brother’s first flight. The Wright brother’s invented the airplane.
5. There are as many chickens on earth as there are humans.
6. One type of hummingbird weighs less than a penny.
7. The word “set” has the most number of definitions in the English language; 192 Slugs have four noses.
8. Sharks can live up to 100 years.
9. Mosquitos are more attracted to the color blue than any other color.
10. Kangaroos can’t walk backwards.
11. About 75 acres of pizza are eaten in in the U.S. everyday.
12. The largest recorded snowflake was 15 Inch wide and 8 Inch thick. It fell in Montana in 1887.
13. The tip of a bullwhip moves so fast that the sound it makes is actually a tiny sonic boom.
14. Former president Bill Clinton only sent 2 emails in his entire 8 year presidency.
15. Koalas and humans are the only animals that have finger prints.
16. There are 200,000,000 insects for every one human.
17. It takes more calories to eat a piece of celery than the celery had in it to begin with.
18. The world’s largest Montessori school is in India, with 26,312 students in 2002.
19. Octopus have three hearts.
20. If you ate too many carrots, you would turn orange.
21. The average person spends two weeks waiting for a traffic light to change.
22. 1 in 2,000,000,000 people will live to be 116 or old.
23. The body has 2-3 million sweat glands.
24. Sperm whales have the biggest brains; 20 lbs.
25. Tiger shark embroyos fight each other in their mother’s womb. The survivor is born.
26. Most cats are left pawed.
27. 250 people have fallen off the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
28. A Blue whale’s tongue weighs more than an elephant.
29. You use 14 muscles to smile and 43 to frown. Keep Smiling!
30. Bamboo can grow up to 3 ft in 24 hours.
31. An eyeball weighs about 1 ounce.

 

FACT # 253

Timeline of life evolution on earth

Timeline of life evolution on Planet Earth with approximate dates and events from when Earth first formed to modern human.

I have been compiling this list for sometime now for my own curiosity. I find it very interesting to go back and go through the list from time to time

Time	Event
4.6 billion years:	The Sun formed from the gravitational collapse of a region within a large molecular cloud. Most of the matter gathered in the center (Sun), while the rest flattened into an orbiting disk that became the Solar System (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune).Sun was about 70% as bright as today. Our solar system is currently orbiting at around 24,000–26,000 light-years from the galactic center of the Milky Way, completing one orbit in about 225–250 million years. The distance of the Sun from Earth is approximately 149.6-million kilometers. At this average distance, light travels from the Sun to Earth in about 8 minutes and 19 seconds.
4.5 billion years:	Earth collided with a planetoid the size of Mars. Fragments orbited Earth and formed the Moon.At this time, moon was orbiting at about 64,000 km from Earth. Earth did not yet have water.
3.9 billion years:	Meteorites bombarded Earth bringing along water and other elements. Earth’s atmosphere became mostly carbon dioxide, water vapor, methane, and ammonia.
3.8 billion years:	Surface of Earth changed from molten to solid rock. Water started condensing in liquid form. Earth day was 15 hours long.
3.6 billion years:	First simple cells, oxygen producing bacteria.
3.4 billion years:	Stromatolites demonstrated photosynthesis; a process used by plants and other organisms to convert light energy captured from the sun into chemical energy.
2.2 billion years:	Organisms with mitochondria capable of aerobic respiration appeared.
2.0 billion years:	Meteor impact, 300 km crater in South Africa.
1.8 billion years:	Meteor impact, 250 km crater in Ontario, Canada.
1.6 billion years:	Complex single-cell life appeared.
1.5 billion years:	Organisms with complex cells containing nucleus appeared.
1.2 billion years:	Sexual reproduction appeared, increasing the rate of evolution.
1.0 billion years:	Multicellular life appeared.
900 million years:	Earth day was now 18 hours long. Moon was about 350,000 km from Earth.
650 million years:	Snowball Earth, the entire Earth was covered in ice for many million years.Mass extinction of 70% of dominant sea plants.
590 million years:	Meteor impact, 90 km crater in Acraman, South Australia.
580 million years:	Simple, soft-bodied organisms developed i.e. Jellyfish.The accumulation of atmospheric oxygen allowed the formation of the ozone layer. This blocked ultraviolet radiation, permitting the colonisation of the land. The ozone layer is found at approximately 20 to 30 kilometres (12 to 19 miles) above Earth, it absorbs 97–99% of the Sun’s medium-frequency ultraviolet light which potentially damages exposed life forms.
570 million years:	Arthropods appeared, ancestors of insects.
560 million years:	Earliest fungi.
530 million years:	Fish appeared. Major diversification of living things in the oceans.
443 million years:	Mass extinction, 49% of life disappeared.
434 million years:	The first primitive plants moved onto land, having evolved from green algae living along the edges of lakes. They are accompanied by fungi, which may have aided the colonization of land through symbiosis.
410 million years:	Fish developed teeth and jaws.Spiders, Centipedes appeared.
374 million years:	Mass extinction, 70% of marine species disappeared.
370 million years:	First amphibians, ancestors of frogs, toads, etc…
360 million years:	Crabs appeared.
363 million years:	Insects roamed the land and would soon take to the skies; sharks swam the oceans as top predators, and vegetation covered the land, with seed-bearing plants and forests soon to flourish.
340 million years:	Diversification of amphibians.
280 million years:	Beetles appeared.
320 million years	Reptiles appeared.
251 million years:	Mass extinction event, up to 95% of ocean species and 70% land species lost.
225 million years:	First small dinosaurs appeared.
220 million years:	Forests dominated the land.
201 million years:	Mass extinction, 20% of all marine species killed; caused by oceanic anoxic event.
200 million years	Mammals appeared.
150 million years:	Birds appeared.
130 million years	Flowering plants evolved with structures that attract insects and other animals to spread pollen. This innovation causes a major burst of animal evolution through co-evolution. First freshwater pelomedusid turtles.
110 million years:	Crocodiles appeared.
100 million years	The first bees evolved.
90 million years:	Snakes appeared.
80 million years:	Ants appeared.
68 million years:	Tyrannosaurus rex, the largest terrestrial predator of North America thrived.
65 million years:	Meteor impact, 170 km crater Chicxulub, Yucatan, Mexico.Mass extinction of 80-90% of marine species and 85% of land species. Dinosaurs became extinct. Mammals became dominant species. Rapid diversification in ants.
55 million years:	Whale appeared.
52 million years:	Bats appeared.
40 million years:	Modern-type butterflies appeared.
30 million years:	Pigs and Cats appeared.
25 million years:	Deer appeared.
20 million years:	Giraffes, Hyenas, Bears appeared.Increase in bird diversity.
15 million years:	Kangaroo appeared.
14 million years:	The first great apes appeared.
10 million years:	Grasslands and savannas established. Diversity in insects, especially ants and termites. Horses increased in body size and developed high-crowned teeth. Major diversification in grassland mammals and snakes.
5 million years:	First tree sloths and hippopotami, diversification of grazing herbivores like zebras and elephants, large carnivorous mammals like lions and dogs, burrowing rodents, kangaroos, birds, and small carnivores, vultures increase in size, decrease in the number of perissodactyl mammals.
4.4 million years:	Appearance of Ardipithecus, an early Hominin Genus.
4 million years:	North and South America joined at the Isthmus of Panama. Animals and plants cross the new land bridge.Ocean currents changed in the newly isolated Atlantic Ocean. First modern elephants, giraffes, zebras, lions, rhinos and gazelles appear in the fossil record.
3.9 million years:	Appearance of Australopithecus, Genus of Hominids.
3.7 million years:	Australopithecus Hominids inhabited Eastern and Northern Africa.
2.7 million years:	Evolution of Paranthropus.
2.4 million years:	Homo Habilis appeared.
2.1 million years:	Yellowstone supervolcanic eruption.
2 million years:	Tool-making Humanoids emerged.Beginning of the Stone Age, lasted several million years.
1.7 million years:	Homo Erectus first moved out of Africa.
1.3 million years:	Yellowstone supervolcanic eruption.
1.2 million years:	Evolution of Homo antecessor. The last members of Paranthropus died out.
700,000 years:	Human and Neanderthal lineages started to diverge genetically.
640,000 years:	Yellowstone supervolcanic eruption.
600,000 years:	Evolution of Homo Heidelbergensis.
530,000 years:	Development of speech in Homo Heidelbergensis.
400,000 years:	Hominids hunted with wooden spears and used stone cutting tools.
370,000 years:	Human ancestors and Neanderthals were fully separate populations.
350,000 years:	Evolution of Neanderthals.
300,000 years:	Hominids used controlled fires.Neanderthal man spread through Europe
200,000 years:	Anatomically modern humans appeared in Africa.
105,000 years:	Stone age humans foraged for grass seeds such as sorghum.
80,000 years:	Non-African humans interbreed with Neanderthals.
60,000 years:	Oldest male ancestor of modern humans.
40,000 years:	Cro-Magnon man appeared in Europe.
30,000 years:	Neanderthals disappeared from fossil record.First domestic dogs.
15,000 years:	Bering land bridge between Alaska and Siberia allowed human migration to America.
12,000 years:	Fired pottery invented.
9,000 years:	Metal smelting started.
5,500 years:	Invention of the wheel.
5,300 years:	The Bronze Age.
5,000 years:	Development of writing.
4,500 years:	Pyramids of Giza.
3,300 years:	The Iron Age.
2,230 years:	Archimedes advanced mathematics.
250 years:	Start of the Industrial Revolution.
50 years:	Space travel.
Year 1957:	Satellites orbited Earth.
Year 1969	Human walked on the surface of the Moon.
	**Of all known forms of life ever to inhabit Earth, through many extinction events, only about 10 percent life forms still exist today.

Geological Time Scales:

References and More Readings:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_evolutionary_history_of_life

 

FACT # 252

Hospital Window

Two men, both seriously ill, occupied the same hospital room. One man was allowed to sit up in his bed for an hour each afternoon to help drain the fluid from his lungs. His bed was next to the room’s only window. The other man had to spend all his time flat on his back. The men talked for hours on end. They spoke of their wives and families, their homes, their jobs, their involvement in the military service, where they had been on vacation.

Every afternoon when the man in the bed by the window could sit up, he would pass the time by describing to his roommate all the things he could see outside the window.

The man in the other bed began to live for those one hour periods where his world would be broadened and enlivened by all the activity and color of the world outside.

The window overlooked a park with a lovely lake. Ducks and swans played on the water while children sailed their model boats. Young lovers walked arm in arm amidst flowers of every color and a fine view of the city skyline could be seen in the distance.

As the man by the window described all this in exquisite detail, the man on the other side of the room would close his eyes and imagine the picturesque scene.

One warm afternoon the man by the window described a parade passing by.

Although the other man couldn’t hear the band – he could see it. In his mind’s eye as the gentleman by th! e window portrayed it with descriptive words.

Days and weeks passed.

One morning, the day nurse arrived to bring water for their baths only to find the lifeless body of the man by the window, who had died peacefully in his sleep. She was saddened and called the hospital attendants to take the body away.

As soon as it seemed appropriate, the other man asked if he could be moved next to the window. The nurse was happy to make the switch, and after making sure he was comfortable, she left him alone.

Slowly, painfully, he propped himself up on one elbow to take his first look at the real world outside.

He strained to slowly turn to look out the window beside the bed.

It faced a blank wall. The man asked the nurse what could have compelled his deceased roommate who had described such wonderful things outside this window

The nurse responded that the man was blind and could not even see the wall.

She said, “Perhaps he just wanted to encourage you.”