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With a height of 324.00m (height with antenna) from the ground and 125m x 125m at the base, Eiffel Tower weighs about 10,000 tons (metal framework weight: 7,300 tons) in total. So what is this
Now let’s see, why was this huge structure which is one of the most desired tourist-spot in the world, was created!
Today, the
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Call it woolgathering, but we all love to steal away from real life to indulge in roving thoughts or daydreaming. But what is daydreaming or rather, how do we define daydreaming? Daydreaming or mind-wandering - familiar to one and all, is more precisely defined as a state of mind where thoughts that are experienced by an individual are unrelated to what is going on in the environment around them.
Let’s see why and when we daydream? In the recent studies, researchers found that our minds often wander fancifully while we are engaged in familiar tasks, such as making a sandwich or doing a regular household work, because we don't need to concentrate on it. They observed that daydreaming could be the result of the brain mulling over important - but not immediately relevant - issues when the external environment ceases to pose interesting and engaging.
Scientists now have identified the regions of the brain responsible for our ability to daydream. A default network of cortical regions, including parts of the medial prefrontal cortex (involved in executive functions), the premotor cortex (which coordinates body movements), and the cingulate (part of the limbic system that is implicated in memory and learning) are said to be active when we daydream.
The studies claim that daydreaming relieves stress and those who daydream, can often be great problem-solvers as daydreaming improves thinking. History says it all – while
So what are you waiting for?
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Drinking had been always associated with forgetfulness until recently, as a new research has overruled this age old theory. A glass or two of wine can boost our ability to remember, says a new study. Scientists have found that moderate amounts of alcohol challenge the brain and it responds by improving the memory.
The findings rubbished the notion of drinking to forget, as they also show drinking enough to exceed the limit for driving means you are more likely to remember the embarrassment of an unrestrained spell – from making an indecent proposal to dancing without your trousers on. Contrary to popular belief, it has also been found that excessive levels of alcohol even enhanced memories of highly emotional stimuli. In fact, heavy drinking actually reinforces negative memories.
But moderate levels of alcohol consumption, equivalent to one or two of wine a day, enhance memory on the whole. Researchers suggest - just like the best way to build strength in a muscle is to challenge the muscle, moderate levels of alcohol challenge the brain and it responds by improving memory.
So alcoholics, you get yet another excuse to rejoice and celebrate! Cheers!
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People have always wondered why humans have eyebrows! They definitely played an important role in our culture though, in terms of beauty, since long time. We pluck, pierce, color or tattoo our eyebrows to make fashion statements. However, they don't seem to serve any other logical function apart from enhancing beauty - or do they? Well! The answer is yes, though their purpose has lost significance over time as humans evolved.
Eyebrows act as umbrellas for the eyes. The arch-shaped eyebrows help keep our vision clear by diverting rain and sweat away from the eyes to the sides of the face - leaving our eyes fairly dry. By doing so, our eyebrows not only allow us to see more clearly, but also keep salty sweat from burning or irritating our eyes.
Eyebrows have other roles too. Recent researches support these theories of the fact - why we did not lose our eyebrows with evolution. As one of our most expressive facial features, eyebrows help us determine how people are feeling without ever really asking them. In fact, eyebrows help with human communications. Often, you can tell how a person is reacting to something just by looking at the way he moves his eyebrows. High eyebrows usually denote emotions like surprise or happiness, whereas low furled brows usually denote anger or unhappiness. In short, eyebrows are a form of non-verbal communication.
Eyebrows also play a major part in identification. Eyebrows help us to identify and recognize individuals. You can test this theory yourself, by hiding the brows from a known person’s picture of the face – you will notice how difficult it becomes in recognizing the person.
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Before you start thinking something else, let me clarify what is heartburn! Heartburn has nothing to do with ‘heart’. Also known as pyrosis, heartburn is a form of indigestion. It is a painful burning sensation in the esophagus below the breastbone, caused by regurgitation of gastric acid.
Now let’s see how we have heartburn! Heartburn happens when acid from your stomach gets forced upwards into the oesophagus (gullet). This is called acid reflux. The stomach wall is coated with a layer of mucus that protects it from digestive acid. The oesophagus does not have this protection, so any acid that leaks up, irritates and damages its lining. This causes the burning pain associated with heartburn.
But why do we have heartburn? Heartburn is becoming the single most important factor behind the rise in gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) that nowadays largely affects the urban population, mostly due to their long working hours, erratic lifestyle, bad posture (the way you sit and stand) and bad eating habits.
Foods that may cause heartburn are:
Remedies: Drink lots of water and maintain a proper diet. If heartburn occurs when lying down, raising the head with pillows or sitting up frequently may provide some relief. Doctors treat heartburn with antacids or H2-receptor antagonists and proton pump inhibitors (in that order).
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We all experience that deep rush of pink to the face known as blushing, sometime or the other. It happens when we are embarrassed, anxious, angry, ashamed, guilty or receiving unwanted attention. Blushing means we are uncomfortable. Along with that normally goes an avoidance of eye contact with others and a glowing or tingling sensation over the entire body.
But why do we blush when we are embarrassed? Well, blushing is a nervous reaction that triggers tiny blood vessels in the skin to widen. This allows more blood to flow to the skin, causing the reddening.
Scientifically, blushing begins with an emotion - usually one associated with self-consciousness. A confused state of mind then acts upon the sympathetic nervous system. From there, the vasodilators (parasympathetic nerve fibers) are stimulated which causes the peripheral capillaries to expand. As a result, more blood flows to the surface of the face and neck, resulting in the reddening of the face and neck.
Sometimes people may not blush visibly, but may react differently, like tapping their fingers noisily or clearing their throat. Blushing is associated more with the young and inexperienced, rather than the aged. And, it has also been observed that women blush more readily than men do.
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It’s strange, but amazingly true that mosquitoes may not bite all the people in the same place. And only a selective set of people may fall prey to these tiny blood suckers that put millions of lives at stake by spreading malaria - the most prevalent life-threatening disease in the world. Scientists have worked out the answers why and how mosquitoes make a beeline for certain people and leave others almost untouched.
Specific cells in one of the three organs that make up the mosquito’s nose are tuned to identify the different chemicals that make up human body odor. To the mosquito, some people’s sweat simply smells better than others because of the proportions of the carbon dioxide, octenol and other compounds that make up body odor. It’s those people who are most likely to be bitten.
Mosquitoes use three organs to smell and taste – a feathery antenna which can identify a wide range of different chemicals, a proboscis used for short range detection and the maxillary palp for longer range smelling.
Scientists have found that maxillary palp contains a series of highly specialized receptor cells used to detect the different components of human body odor. Professors of biological sciences believe, mosquitoes are good transmitters of malaria because they are extremely good at finding people to bite, and maxillary palps serve as the malaria mosquito’s long range detection system.
So, if you think you are the mosquito’s delight, better take care!
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You feel great when you are in love and it shows, because your health glows. But why and how does your health react in case of an undesired break-up? Scientists say, intense stress caused by bereavement can make someone ‘die of a broken heart’.
While it has always been suspected that emotional problems can put the heart under pressure, this was believed to have been caused by ‘primitive’ brain regions, such as the brain stem sending messages to heart tissue. Bereavement has been one such unexplained problem.
Researchers say, that in such a situation, the regions of the brain responsible for learning, memory and emotion can destabilize the cardiac muscle of someone who already has heart disease. So, when we are under stress like this, the ‘higher regions’ of the brain take part in a vicious circle of activity which can trigger harmful rhythms in the heart.
Doctors say, the activity in ‘higher level’ regions, such as the cortex make the heart to stress, often worsening the situation. And thus, the brain areas responsible for regulating heart function can be unbalanced, which in turn can increase the risk of sudden death through cardiac arrest.
So now, do you know why broken heart can be fatal? Just take care and take things easy, if and when you are going through such a situation in life!
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A mirage is an optical illusion that occurs due to atmospheric conditions by which reflected images of distant objects are seen. In other words, it’s a refraction phenomena in which the image of some objects appear displaced from its true position.
Mirages form when light rays emitted from a source or reflected off an object are bent, as the path of the light ray crosses air layers of different densities.
Common examples of a mirage are the appearance of water some distance down the highway on a hot summer day and seeing a lake in the desert.
Oasis or viewing a lake in the desert happens when light passes through two layers of air with different temperatures. The desert sun heats up the sand, which in turn heats up the air just above it. The hot air then bends light rays and reflects the sky. So when you see it from a distance, the different air masses colliding with each other act like a mirror. And the desert ahead seems to have become a lake which is actually a reflection of the sky above.
Mirages can be seen almost anywhere – those shimmering heat hazes that appear on the road ahead of you on sunny days, but disappear as you approach are mirages. Again, in the countryside you may seem to see a small lake or a pond near trees or in a field, which is also created by the same concept, i.e. differences in temperature between the ground temperature and the air just above the ground level.
Witnessing the history, throughout the ages, mankind has always been fascinated by rainbows. And their arched splashes of color have been the subject of numerous songs and poems, stories and mythology. Even, in the Bible, the rainbow is seen as a sign of God's promises.
What makes rainbows so mysterious is the simple but often puzzling fact that rainbows are light and they exist only in the eyes of the beholder! To unlock this amazing secret of the nature and explore how water and light work together to produce the magnificent colorful work of art, we have to understand a little bit of physics, because that’s what it is – pure science!
You need three factors to work together to see a rainbow. Firstly, the sun must be shining. Secondly, the sun must be behind you, and thirdly, the air in front of you must have water drops in it. When the sunlight enters a water drop, it is refracted, or bent, and reflected out from the drop in such a way that the light appears as a spectrum of colors. Actually, the rays of light bend twice. As they enter the drops, the rays of light bend, then reflect off the back of the drops. Then they bend again, this time while exiting the drops. That's when the light appears before our eyes. Each drop reflects only one color of light, so there must be many water drops to make a full rainbow. You'll see the brightest rainbows when the water drops are large, usually right after a rain shower.
When a raindrop bends light, the light exits the raindrop at an angle of 40 to 42 degrees away from the angle it entered the raindrop. As a result, the only beams of light you see are from raindrops that are 40 to 42 degrees away from the shadow of your head. This gives the rainbow its curved appearance.
In one line, lightning is a bright flash of electricity that is produced by a thunderstorm.
Within a thundercloud way up in the sky, many small bits of ice (frozen raindrops) bump into each other as they move around in the air. All of these collisions create an electric charge. After a while, the whole cloud fills up with electrical charges. The positive charges or protons form at the top of the cloud and the negative charges or electrons form at the bottom of the cloud. Lightning results from the buildup and discharge of this electrical energy between positively and negatively charged areas. Lightning can occur within the cloud or between the cloud and the ground as well. In the second case, this electrical charge strikes around anything that sticks up, such as mountains, people, or single trees.
When a lightning bolt travels from the cloud to the ground it actually opens up a little hole in the air, called a channel. Once the light is gone, the air collapses back in and creates a sound wave that we hear as thunder. The reason we see lightning before we hear thunder is because light travels faster than sound!
Remember, lightning is approximately six times hotter than the surface of the sun! So, don’t play around during lightning and always look for a safer place or stay indoors.
Let me simplify it first - warm air turns the water from rivers, lakes, and oceans into water vapor that rises into the air. That water vapor forms clouds, which contain small drops of water or ice crystals. When the water vapor in the cloud becomes too heavy, it falls back to the ground as rain or snow.
Now let’s get into a detailed explanation. When warm, wet air rises, it cools, and water vapor condenses out to form clouds. As said above, cloud is made up of small drops of water or ice crystals, depending on its height and how cold is the surrounding air. Height and temperature also determine whether any ‘precipitation’ (Latin for 'to fall from') will be rain or the hail associated with thunderstorms, or the snow, or the sleet and freezing rain.
To form rain, water vapor needs a ‘condensation nucleus’, which can be tiny particles of dust, or pollen, swept up high into the atmosphere. When the condensing droplets that form the cloud get large and heavy enough to overcome the upward pressure of convection, they begin to fall. If the temperature all the way to the ground is above freezing, then, it ‘rains’! And when ice crystals form high up in the cloud, and it's below the freezing point of water all the way down, then you get snow.
Thus, rain and snow are the two sides of the same coin!
Normally, there are about 100,000 to 150,000 hair strands on the human scalp. However many people cannot retain them and eventually go bald.
Androgenetic Alopecia, the most common type of baldness — otherwise known as male pattern baldness — occurs due to a chemical known as Dihydrotestosterone (DHT) that builds up around the follicle and eventually kills the follicle and the hair. In simple terms, the growing cycle becomes shorter. So the hair does not grow as long as it once did. It becomes finer, and eventually the growth cycle is eliminated.
A follicle’s resistance to DHT is genetic – which is why some people go bald and others do not. If you have relatives with thin hair or who are bald, you may well develop the same problem. Doctors say that the gene can be inherited from either the mother’s or the father’s side of the family and skips generations.
In other conditions, such as Alopecia Totalis and Alopecia Universalis, the entire scalp and entire body become completely bald due to a viral condition.
Patch baldness, in which hair falls out of the scalp in patches, is caused by stress or poor nutrition or adverse scalp conditions. In this case, the hair usually grow back once the cause has been rectified.
While the effects of hair loss can be devastating, there are treatment options from non-surgical techniques to hair transplants that can slow or stop hair loss or even gain the appearance of a full head of hair. So just don't worry too much and be happy!
Like people, the leaves of trees also age, but do so much more rapidly. Each spring the young leaves develop from buds and then rapidly mature to full size to carry on photosynthesis (the process that provides food needed for the tree to grow and maintain itself). By autumn, the leaves of many hardwood trees reach old age and do not function well. At this time a tree must also prepare for the harsher weather conditions of winter. Signals to the tree indicating it is time to prepare for winter include shorter days, less intense sunlight and cooler temperatures. Prior to the leaves falling, nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus move from the leaf into the adjacent stem to be reused during the next growing season. The following spring a new crop of leaves are produced and the cycle is repeated.
To sum up, in early autumn, in response to the shortening days and declining intensity of sunlight, leaves begin the processes leading up to their fall. The veins that carry fluids into and out of the leaf gradually close off, as a layer of cells forms at the base of each leaf. Once this separation layer is complete and the connecting tissues are sealed off, the leaf is ready to fall.
Thus while trees can live for decades and even centuries, some parts of the tree like the leaves, live for only a few months or years (in certain varieties of trees).
Lizards can lose their tails, but not all lizards can grow them back, though. Lizards that lose their tails also lose an important source of energy because they store fats at the base of their tails.
In lizards, the tail bones have central regions that break away easily when the tail is pulled. The muscles of the tail pull apart and the blood vessels constrict to stop the wounded tail from bleeding. So, if a predator attacks a lizard, the tail is designed such that it separates from the body allowing the lizard to escape while the predator gets the tail. Lizards that lose their tails grow them back but the replacement tail is never as long or as colorful as the original one. Replacement tails grow back in as little as three months or as long as two years.
In short, in order to defend it in a threatening situation, the lizard chooses to detach its tail by contracting a special muscle near a weakness in its vertebrae.
In lizards, especially big ones like Iguanas and Komodo Dragons, the tail bones are not designed to break easily and the tail muscles are also not designed to pull apart smoothly. These lizards however can also lose their tails, but it takes a much stronger pull to make this happen. With these types of lizards, the wound heals like others though, but the tail does not grow back.
Women cry 64 times a year on average, while men just 17, says a recent study. Actors and politicians do it on demand though! But why does crying happen in the first place?
When we become upset, our brains and bodies overreact and work overtime, producing chemicals and hormones. Crying helps eliminate t,hese extra chemicals that we don't need, in the form of tears. These tears are formed in tiny glands present in the upper eyelids of our eyes, called lachrymal glands.
Scientifically, emotional tears contain high levels of manganese and a chemical called prolactin.
As our tears flow, they sooth our sadness or distress by disposing of these chemical agents. That is why generally, we feel calmer or more refreshed after crying, because the tears get rid of these hormones that are produced when we are sad, happy, or distressed.
This is one of the most common problems worldwide. Snoring occurs when the muscles at the back of the throat relax during sleep and narrow the passage through which you breathe. As the air passes through this narrowing, the soft palate and uvula vibrate and produce the sound of snoring. The airway can be further narrowed due to:
- Poor muscle tone (after alcohol or sedative use).
- Enlarged tonsils and adenoids.
- A long soft palate or uvula.
- Blocked nasal airways from polyps, a deviated septum, allergies or a cold.
- Excessive weight causing tissue at the neck to be bulky and flaccid.
- Tissue swelling from cigarette smoking.
- Hypothyroidism.
However, snoring can be treated medically.
Somnoplasty is a new technique to treat snoring painlessly. It involves placing an electrode for a brief moment into the soft palate to locally reduce the quantity of tissue. As it heals over the next few weeks and the soft palate shortens and stiffens, the vibration of the soft palate decreases and snoring is eliminated.
In selected cases, laser treatment is the best choice. It is done using a high-intensity laser beam to trim and reshape the uvula and soft palate.
Wearing a dental appliance at night can also offer another solution. Molded to the teeth, this appliance keeps the lower jaw in a forward position during your sleep therefore decreasing your snoring. This appliance is often used to treat obstructive sleep apnea.
The humps on a camel's back are actually huge heaps of fat and flesh that can weigh as much as 80 pounds in a healthy camel. These humps help camels survive for weeks without food and water.
When water and food become scarce in the deserts where camels roam, the fatty humps serve as stored food and are used for nourishment. As the camel's body metabolizes or uses up the humps' stored fat, the hump becomes smaller and flabbier. So the longer the camel goes without eating, the smaller its hump gets. The size of a camel's hump helps determine a camel's health, food sources, and overall well-being.
These humps, or reserves of fat, are the reason why camels can go for days without water and food. While humans are supposed to drink 8 glasses of water a day, camels can go without water for nearly 2 weeks!
In medicine, gallstones (choleliths) are crystalline bodies formed within the body by accretion or concretion of normal or abnormal bile components. In easier words, they are small, hard, pathological concretions, composed chiefly of cholesterol, calcium salts, and bile pigments, formed in the gallbladder or in a bile duct.
Researchers believe that gallstones may be caused by a combination of factors, including inherited body chemistry, body weight, gallbladder motility (movement), and perhaps diet.
Cholesterol gallstones develop when bile contains too much cholesterol and not enough bile salts. Besides a high concentration of cholesterol, two other factors seem to be important in causing gallstones. The first is how often and how well the gallbladder contracts. Incomplete and infrequent emptying of the gallbladder may cause the bile to become over concentrated and contribute to gallstone formation. The second factor is the presence of proteins in the liver and bile that either promote or inhibit cholesterol crystallization into gallstones. In addition, increased levels of the hormone estrogen as a result of pregnancy, hormone therapy, or the use of birth control pills, may increase cholesterol levels in bile and also decrease gallbladder movement, resulting in gallstone formation.
Low-fiber, high-cholesterol diets, and diets high in starchy foods are suggested as contributing factors to gallstone formation. Other nutritional factors that may increase risk of gallstones include rapid weight loss, constipation, eating fewer meals per day, eating less fish, and low intakes of the nutrients folate, magnesium, calcium, and vitamin C.
On the other hand, coffee, wine, fish, and whole grain bread may decrease the risk of gallstones.
When you've just made it sound like the Queen is more than 200 years old, there could be only one way of recovering from the gaffe. That’s typically the Bush’s self-proclaimed way of projecting smartness, after a blundering stupid act. Yes! Turning to her and giving her a sly wink which might not necessarily needed to be included in any book of royal etiquette though. That's exactly what happened on 7th of May, 2007 after
Stumbling over his words, he came perilously close to suggesting that the monarch had toured the States in 1776. And although the President's following wink was initially rewarded with a regal glare, the Queen did at least seem to see the funny side of the blunder.
Being human, it was only a forgivable slip-of-tongue-issue, though not expected, which could have been rectified with a normal and humble ‘sorry’, instead.
But may be that the president, without finding any other form of expression, resorted to his impulsive cowboy-type street smartness!
Any comments guys?
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