Here Are 24 Awesome Things You Didn't Know About Animals

1. Cows can have best friends


2. A group of flamingos is called "flamboyance"


3. Millions of trees grow every year because grey squirrels bury their nuts


4. Here are two kittens (baby rabbits are "kits" or "kittens")


5. Butterflies taste with their feet


6. Sea otters hold each other's paws when they sleep so they don't drift apart


7. The Turritopsis nutricula jellyfish can regenerate its own cells, making it sort-of immortal


8. When rabbits jump and twist out of excitement, it's called a "binky"


9. Humpback whales share mating songs throughout their population (they have their own popular music!)


10. Gentoo penguins propose to their mates by using a carefully selected pebble


11. Seahorses are monogamous life mates and travel in pairs, holdin each other's tails


12. Male puppets will let their female counterparts "win" when they play fight to encourage affection


13. Monkeys want equal pay. When given a different reward for the same completed task, the shafted monkeys will get upset


14. Worms can communicate by snuggling


15. Elephants show incredible empathy for others, even different species


16. Fish can use tools


17. A cat's nose imprint is unique like a human fingerprint


18. Dolphins have names for each other and can call out for each other specifically


19. Cows produce more milk when listening to soothing music


20. Aside from when nesting, a common swift will spend its entire life in the air (even eating insects up there)


21. A group of porcupines is called a "prickle"


22. Chimp babies like playing with dolls


23. Rats can laugh


24. Quokkas may be the happiest animals on the planet
- See more at: http://www.thinkinghumanity.com/2014/08/here-are-24-awesome-things-you-didnt-know-about-animals-11-just-made-my-week.html#sthash.BKaJQamZ.f7IfMY1L.dpuf

Man who suffer from cerebral palsy paints masterpieces using just a typewriter

 

Paul Smith is incredible artist who creates his work of art using typewriter. Unfortunately, he was born with cerebral palsy, a severe disability that affects his mobility abilities and strength. In His Oregon nursing, he types away using 1 finger tirelessly. Once you see what he's creating, you'll notice his artistic abilities are extraordinary.

How often you should wash your hair, according to science

Wash your hair every day? You're doing it wrong.

ELLIE KINCAID, BUSINESS INSIDER

30 MAR 2015

9923

 

You've probably wondered how often you need to wash that (sometimes greasy, sometimes not) hair of yours. The question is a vexing one. It's so common, in fact, that it's the third suggestion that pops up when typing "how often" into Google (following queries about showering and pooping).

Outside the shower, our scalps gradually get shinier, darker, and more oily. So why does it happen, and how often should you wash to keep the grease at bay?

The root of the issue

Your hair gets greasy for the same reason your face gets oily: glands in the skin produce an oily substance called sebum. Sebum is what moistens hair and keeps it from drying out. The glands that produce sebum (called sebaceous glands) are located next to hair roots in the layer of skin called the dermis. Channels from the sebaceous glands lead to the hair follicle - that's how sebum gets out of the skin and onto your scalp. Take a look:

Credit: Helix84/Wikimedia Commons

The key thing about sebum is this: Each of us produces a different amount. Everything from genetics and hormones affects how much sebum we produce at a given time, Kaiser Permanente dermatologist Paradi Mirmirani told Business Insider in an email. The hormones responsible for extra sebum production spike during puberty, which is what causes so many of us to have extra greasy hair and acne during those lovely years.

How much washing is right for you?

While the answer is different for everyone, no one should need to wash his or her hair every day, says Mirmani. Washing too often, in fact, can do more harm than good, dermatologist and director of Boston Medical Centre's hair clinic Lynne Goldberg told Business Insider. "It's paradoxical, but people who wash their hair a lot to get rid of oil are drying out their scalp and producing more oil," Goldberg said.

Besides avoiding washing every day, there are other things to keep in mind when trying to determine the right amount of washing for you. Here are the three main important factors:

1. Skin type

If your skin and hair are anywhere from normal (not super oily and not super dry) to dry, you probably only need to wash it once or twice a week, according to a Columbia University health column. If you have a greasy scalp, you probably need to wash your hair more often.

2. Hair texture

Texture matters because it affects how quickly sebum works its way from your roots through the length of your hair. Coarse or curly hair slows down sebum's spread, so if you have hair like this you may only need to shampoo once a week, say the experts at Columbia. On the other hand, people with fine, straight hair will likely need to shampoo twice a week or more.

Personally, I go about two days without washing my curly hair. In between shampoos, I rinse my hair, massage my scalp, and apply conditioner to the ends of my hair.

3. Styling

Another thing to consider is the paces you put your hair through styling and treating it. If your hair is processed or damaged by styling, you should wash it less frequently, says Mirmirani. But that's something you'll have to find out for yourself. I've figured out what works for my hair purely by experimentation. So don't be afraid to go a couple days without shampooing and see if you like what happens.

Largest Rhino Airlift Ever to Move 100 At-Risk Animals

By Brian Clark Howard, National Geographic 

PUBLISHED MARCH 30, 2015

Weighing up to two and a half tons each, rhinos aren't easy to herd, let alone pack into crates and ship across national borders in airplanes.

But that's what conservationists are doing with about a hundred rhinos in South Africa, in an admittedly desperate bid to save the endangered animals from poachers and establish new populations in the wild.

"Rhino conservation is a desperate situation, so we are moving rhinos from the highest poaching areas to the lowest poaching areas," says Dereck Joubert, a wildlife filmmaker and conservationist based in Botswana'sOkavango Delta.

Rhino conservation is a desperate situation.

Dereck Joubert, conservationist

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There are an estimated 4,000 to 5,000 black rhinos and 20,000 white rhinos left in Africa, with another one killed by poachers every seven and a half hours, says Joubert, a National Geographic explorer-in-residence. That's more than a thousand rhinos slaughtered a year, mostly so their horns can be hacked off and sold in China and Vietnam on the black market.

The horn is marketed as a cure for a wide range of ailments and fetches about $65,000 (U.S.) per kilogram (2.2 pounds) on the street, even though Western scientists dismiss its purported medical uses. "It's smoke and mirrors; it does nothing," says Joubert. "It's like chewing your fingernails." (Read more about rhino wars.)

Joubert and his wife Beverly launched a nonprofit campaign last year calledRhinos Without Borders, which recently moved ten rhinos from overcrowded reserves in South Africa to an undisclosed staging area in a protected part of the country.

The animals are being treated for illnesses and parasites. In a few months, they'll be flown by cargo plane to another undisclosed location in a park in northern Botswana.

These types of airlifts have been tried before, for rhinos, elephants, and other animals, but the Jouberts' plan makes it the largest airlift of rhinos in history. The team hopes to collect another 25 rhinos from South Africa by year's end and move 65 more next year.

At $45,000 per rhino, it's an expensive operation. And each move takes months to complete.

A Rhinos Without Borders team shortens the horn of a sedated rhino (in a painless process) in order to decrease the risk of injury to the animal during a move to Botswana from South Africa.

 
PHOTOGRAPH BY BEVERLY JOUBERT

Big Moves

Game managers have been moving rhinos for decades in an effort to restock dwindling populations and thwart rampant poaching. Some of the moves are to and from private game reserves but many have been paid for by African governments, with some support from international nonprofits such as the World Wildlife Fund.

Rhinos and other animals are being moved overland to more secure zones in Kruger National Park in South Africa, away from the porous and poacher-infiltrated border with Mozambique. Twenty-five black rhinos were airlifted to Zambia from South Africa between 203 and 2010, in an effort to return the species to a country where it had disappeared by 1993. (Learn more about moving rhinos.)

In Botswana, the Jouberts hope to double the current wild rhino population, from an estimated 77 to 100 animals to 200 animals within a couple of years. Before the advent of modern hunting, the country was home to a thriving population. Today, about 80 percent of the world's wild rhinos live in South Africa. (Read a Q&A with the Jouberts on the project.)

Botswana is considered relatively safe for rhinos in part because it has a human population of just two million, compared to 53 million in South Africa, reducing human pressure.

Botswana's government has also enlisted the military to defend against poachers and maintains a controversial "shoot to kill" policy against them. And Joubert says that corruption is relatively low, so that government collusion with poachers is less of a problem than in some other African countries.

How to Move a Rhino

Moving a rhino is even more involved than it sounds. The process begins with the Jouberts' team working with game managers in South Africa to identify animals in reserves that are crowded or are facing intense poaching threats.

Cathy Dean, director of Save the Rhino International, says game managers look for rhino populations that are nearing the capacity of their habitat to support them. The closer the population gets to that point, the more the birth rate goes down, which means fewer rhinos, says Dean, who is not involved with the Jouberts' project but has worked on other rhino moves through her London-based charity.

Once the animals are selected, a warden darts them with a sedative, typically from a helicopter. Then the rhinos are roped, blindfolded, given an antidote to the sedative, and walked into a cage. The animals are kept in quarantine for six weeks—to reduce the chance of them spreading disease—and are outfitted with microchips in their body and horn.

"That means we know instantly if the horn is separated from the body by a poacher," says Dereck Joubert.

When the rhinos are ready for new homes, they're loaded onto commercial freight planes, up to five per flight. Beverly Joubert says that flying provides higher security from poachers and reduces the time the animals have to be sedated, although it costs more than overland transport.

The process carries a mortality rate of 2 to 5 percent, mostly due to the risk of the rhinos overdosing on tranquilizers or overheating, say the Jouberts, although veterinarians have succeeded in driving the death rates down over time.

The animals are released only on land where other rhinos had not previously established territories, to avoid conflicts, Beverly Joubert says. It doesn't take long for the new arrivals to mark out their own space with their droppings.

So far, Rhinos Without Borders has moved only white rhinos, but it plans to eventually relocate a few of the more endangered black rhinos. Young rhinos that are just a few years old are preferred because they have several years of reproduction ahead.

The campaign is a partnership between the Jouberts' Great Plains Foundation and their Great Plains Conservation travel business and the safari company And Beyond. The couple has raised $280,000 for the project so far, mostly from small donations through the crowdfunding site Trevolta.

Time is running out and we need to trigger something positive.

Dereck Joubert

 |

Beverly Joubert says the key to the program's long-term success will be making sure the local communities in Botswana benefit from the rhinos through ecotourism. In South Africa, some communities support poachers for a cut of horn sales. (Learn about the controversy around legal rhino hunting.)

The program has attracted some criticism. South African game warden Bruce Leslie has told the news media that it remains to be seen whether moving rhinos around will afford them enough protection against relentless poaching.

Asked if conservation dollars are well spent on moving rhinos, Dean of Save the Rhino says there is no "one size fits all answer ... You have to consider the objectives of the particular project and ask if there are cheaper ways of achieving the same thing."

Dereck Joubert argues that desperate times call for desperate measures. "Time is running out and we need to trigger something positive," he says. "It's no good to talk about how Africa is losing its wildlife without working on any solutions." (Learn more about the Jouberts' efforts.)

Scientists discover a simple way to cook rice that could halve the calories

Rice is a mainstay of dozens of different cuisines around the world, and pretty much the fuel that keeps uni students alive (alongside instant noodles). But although the versatile grain is cheap and easy to cook, there's one big issue with it - it's not that great for you. In fact, one cup of cooked rice contains around 240 starchy calories that can be quickly converted into fat if they're not burnt off.

But now researchers in Sri Lanka have discovered a new, simple way of cooking the grain that dramatically cuts its calories by as much as 50 percent, and also offers some other important health benefits. And we're never going to cook rice any other way again.

All you need to do is get a pot of water boiling, but before adding your raw rice, you add coconut oil - about 3 percent of the weight of the rice you're going to add. So that's roughly a teaspoon for half a cup of rice, explains Sudhair James, an undergraduate chemistry student from the College of Chemical Sciences in Sri Lanka, who led the research with his supervisor. He presented the work at theNational Meeting and Exposition of the American Chemical Society on Monday.

"After it was ready, we let it cool in the refrigerator for about 12 hours. That's it,"James told Roberto A. Ferdman from The Washington Post. To eat it, you simply pop it in the microwave and, voila, you have a "fluffy white rice" that's significantly better for you.

Simple, right? But the process actually involves some pretty fascinating food chemistry. At the heart of the technique is the fact that not all starches are created equal.

There are two main types - digestible starches, which our bodies quickly turn into glucose and store as fat if we don't burn it up; and resistant starches, which aren't broken down into glucose in the stomach, so they have a lower calorie content. They instead pass through to the large intestine, where they act more like a dietary fibre and can provide all kinds of useful gut benefits.

Although a lot of starchy foods, such as potatoes and rice, start out containing a lot of resistant starches, depending on how we cook them, they often end up chemically changing before we eat them so that they're mostly digestible starches.

Researchers had previously noted that, strangely enough, fried rice and pilaf style rice both seem to have more resistant starch than the more commonly prepared steamed rice. And a study last year also showed that letting pasta cool down before reheating and eating it greatly increased the content of resistant starch. So James and his supervisor Pushparajah Thavarajah wanted to investigate further.

They tested eight different ways of cooking rice on 38 different types of the grain found in Sri Lanka, and they discovered that by adding a fat such as coconut oil before cooking, and then immediately cooling the rice, they could change the starch composition of the end result so that it contained more resistant starch. 

The oil works by interacting with the starch molecules and changing its architecture. "Cooling for 12 hours will lead to formation of hydrogen bonds between the amylose molecules outside the rice grains which also turns it into a resistant starch," explained James in a press release. And he notes that heating the rice back up afterwards doesn't change the resistant starch levels. 

So far the duo has only measured the specific chemical outcomes in the variety of rice that initially had the worst starch content, but they found that they were able to reduce the amount of digestible starch 15 fold. This was also associated with a 10 to 15 percent reduction in calorie content.

James and Thavarajah will now begin testing the process on the naturally best strain of rice, Suduru Samba, which they believe will result in a 50 to 60 percent drop in calories. They're also experimenting with using other types of lipids, such as sunflower oil.

This new cooking technique could lead to new pre-packed rice that's already been cooked in fat and cooled, and is ready to microwave with dramatically less calories than current products. 

And, even more importantly, the team now believe that the same technique could be used to make other starchy foods that we love more healthy. "It's about more than rice," Thavarajah told Ferdman. "I mean, can we do the same thing for bread? That's the real question here."

Not to discount your amazing work, team, but I think the real question here is can we do the same thing for potatoes? Because if we can somehow create fries with half the calories, I'm pretty sure I'll be set for life.

WATCH: Here's how you turn styrofoam into solid metal

It sounds completely ridiculous, but hear us out, because you can legitimately transform a styrofoam object into a solid aluminium one, and all you need is some sand, some scrap aluminium, and a whole lot of heat.

In the video above, by Grant Thompson aka The King of Random on YouTube, you can see the whole process, and even if you're not ready to try this at home (seriously, you really need to know what you're doing to attempt this) it's fun enough just to watch. 

First, Thompson buys some foam board from the hardware store, and builds a 3D model pistol, by cutting out a pattern and gluing it all together. Next, he fires up hishome-made mini metal foundry and starts melting the solid aluminium 'biscuits' he made from discarded cans in this previous episode. While they're cooking away, he fills a big plastic bucket with sand, and attaches a thick, foam handle to the bottom of his pistol model. The pistol goes in the sand, front-first, and is completely covered in sand so only the tip of the foam handle is exposed.

Next, you've got to manoeuvre this sand so there's a 'volcano' of empty space around the handle, which will help funnel the molten aluminium in the right place. And in goes the super-hot liquid metal, and out comes a sold aluminium replica. "The foam at the bottom vaporises in an instant and the liquid aluminium rushes in to take its place," Thompson explains in the video above. After 10 minutes, the metal will have set, and then you can get to filing back any jagged edges to make it look perfect.

Thompson also uses the technique to make a little replica sword and it's so cute, now all I can think about is if there are any life situations that would warrant me having one of my own.

Watch below to see Thompson make those 'aluminium biscuits' using recycled cans. Suddenly all of my hobbies don't feel adequate anymore.

He’s Just 13 Year Old, But This Genius Came Up With An Idea That Could Change The Entire Planet

What do trees know that we don’t? 13-year-old inventor Aidan realized that trees use a mathematical formula to gather sunlight in crowded forests. Then he wondered why we don’t collect solar energy in the same way.

His idea has gone all the way to the White House Science Fair where Aidan got to present his project to the President himself.

Massive Underground City Found in Cappadocia Region of Turkey

By Jennifer Pinkowski, National Geographic 

PUBLISHED MARCH 26, 2015

When the invaders came, Cappadocians knew where to hide: underground, in one of the 250 subterranean safe havens they had carved from pliable volcanic ash rock called tuff.

Now a housing construction project may have unearthed the biggest hiding place ever found in Cappadocia, a region of central Turkey famous for the otherworldly chimney houses, cave churches, and underground cities its residents carved for millennia.

Discovered beneath a Byzantine-era hilltop castle in Nevşehir, the provincial capital, the site dates back at least to early Byzantine times. It is still largely unexplored, but initial studies suggest its size and features may rival those ofDerinkuyu, the largest excavated underground city in Cappadocia, which could house 20,000 people.

Light in the Tunnel

In 2013, construction workers demolishing low-income homes ringing the castle discovered entrances to a network of rooms and tunnels. The city halted the housing project, called in archaeologists and geophysicists, and began investigating.

We found documents stating that there were close to 30 major water tunnels in this region.

Hasan Ünver

 
Mayor, Nevsehir

A 300-year-old paper trail between the local government and Ottoman officials suggested where to begin. “We found documents stating that there were close to 30 major water tunnels in this region,” says Nevşehir mayor Hasan Ünver.

In 2014, those tunnels led scientists to discover a multilevel settlement of living spaces, kitchens, wineries, chapels, staircases, and bezirhane—linseed presses for producing lamp oil to light the underground city. Artifacts including grindstones, stone crosses, and ceramics indicate the city was in use from the Byzantine era through the Ottoman conquest.

Like Derinkuyu, the site appears to have been a large, self-sustaining complex with air shafts and water channels. When danger loomed, Cappadocians retreated underground, blocked the access tunnels with round stone doors, and sealed themselves in with livestock and supplies until the threat passed.

Cappadocia’s early adoption of Christianity—the apostle Paul arrived in the first century, and by the fourth its bishops were power players in the newly Christian Byzantine Empire—made it a safe haven during centuries of war for control of Anatolia. Muslim invaders arrived in the late eighth century, and centuries later came the Seljuk Turks. Eventually Ottoman emperors ruled the entirety of Anatolia.

Turkey’s Cappadocia region is famous for its subterranean safe houses carved from tuff—a light, porous rock composed of volcanic ash.

 
PHOTOGRAPH BY MURAT KAYA, ANADOLU AGENCY/GETTY

How Big Is It?

Geophysicists from Nevşehir University conducted a systematic survey of a 1.5-mile (4-kilometer) area using geophysical resistivity and seismic tomography. From the 33 independent measurements they took, they estimate the site is nearly five million square feet (460,000 square meters).

These studies suggest the underground corridors may plunge as deep as 371 feet (113 meters). If that turns out to be accurate, the city could be larger than Derinkuyu by a third.

But the exact size is unknown, cautions Nevşehir Museum director Murat Gülyaz, the archaeologist in charge of the investigation. “As of now, it is not possible to say. But given the city’s location, defenses, and proximity to a water supply, it is highly likely that it spans a very large area.”

“World’s Largest Antique Park”?

“This new discovery will be added as a new pearl, a new diamond, a new gold” to Cappadocia's riches, raves Ünver, the mayor, who wants to build “the world's largest antique park,” with boutique hotels and art galleries aboveground, and walking trails and a museum below. (The planned housing complex has been moved to the suburbs.) “We even plan to reopen the underground churches,” he says. “All of this makes us very excited.”

Gülyaz’s team of archaeologists will continue to clear rubble from tunnels and explore deeper underground—a risky undertaking, since the soft tuff is prone to collapsing. “When the underground city beneath Nevşehir Castle is completely revealed,” he says, “it is almost certain to change the destination of Cappadocia dramatically.”

Fighting cancer and Ebola with nanoparticles

By Peter Shadbolt, for CNN

Updated 9:39 PM ET, Wed March 25, 2015

(CNN)In medicine, finding a substance that attacks cancerous tumors without destroying the healthy tissue around it has long been the Holy Grail.

From targeted remedies such as monoclonal antibodies to surgery, cancer has still managed to elude a treatment that discretely and separately attacks it alone.

Nanotechnologies, however - the manipulation of matter at a molecular and even atomic scale to penetrate living cells -- are holding out the promise of opening a new front against deadly conditions from cancer to Ebola.

According to Dr Thomas Webster, the chair of chemical engineering at Northeastern University in Boston, research into medical nanotechnology is gaining pace and the medical establishment is starting to sit up and pay attention.

At the core of the technology is the ability to attach drugs, and in some cases metals and minerals, to nanoparticles that would then bind themselves to life threatening cancer cells or viruses.

Star technology

In one study, Dr Webster's team is developing methods to attach gold nanoparticles to cancer cells.

Infrared light would then heat up the nanoparticles, killing the cancer cells with heat but leaving the healthy cells alive to do their job.

"This technology has been studied for the better part of a decade, but we're looking at ways of making it better," Dr Webster told CNN. "One that we've created in the lab we've called 'nanostars.'

"A star shape has a lot more surface area, so they can kill cancer cells faster than a nanosphere because they heat up faster.

"Even if it's carrying a drug, a star has a lot more surface area on which to attach it -- it's got a different morphology."

Strength from selenium

Nevertheless, problems of toxicity, and in particular how organs like the kidneys and liver expels these nanoparticles after they've been used, is the subject of medical investigation.

Dr Webster said that research into nanoparticle selenium -- an essential trace mineral in the human diet -- as a nano-scaled tool in the fight against cancer was the latest avenue of study.

"Selenium is a natural part of our diet, but we've made nanoparticles of selenium that we're seeing -- in the same way as we've seen with gold and infrared -- having the ability to kill cancer cells and kill bacteria and at the same time not have any toxicity problems you might see with anti-bacterials like silver."

While it has yet to be used in human trials, animal tests have shown promising results. Finding natural agents that can be easily absorbed by the body was the next step for nanoparticle therapies.

Nanomedicine can help patients today not 10 years down the road

Dr Thomas Webster

"A lot of researchers in biomaterials and cancer treatment are getting very excited by this healthy approach. It's almost like the approach in Eastern medicine, where we're looking for natural nanomaterials, not synthetic ones, like gold and silver," Dr Webster said.

Ultimately, he said, nanotechnologies are likely to be used in conjunction with already available therapies, such as antibiotics, to better target medicines.

Nano future

While nanoparticle technology still has many years of research ahead of it, nanostructured surfaces are already becoming part of the medical firmament.

"These are being approved by the Food and Drug Administration and we're seeing better bone growth, better tissue growth and we're seeing the ability to decrease infection using these materials."

These developments, he said, were helping patients in the here and now.

"What we're using with this is the same materials that we are implanting today -- so titantium for hip implants, polyvinyl chloride for catheters, silicone for breast implants.

"We're doing a lot of work with putting nanofeatures on materials that could stop cancers from coming back."

One successful area, he said, had been the implanting of nanofeatures on catheters; a common vehicle of infection where catheters are often reused.

"We're taking what's currently being used, we take it off the shelf, we then figure out a way to put nanofeatures on there and we see significant improvements.

"It's a wonderful way to give an immediate solution to nanomedicine; so that the public, scientists and clinicians can see how nanomedicine can help patients today, not 10 years down the road."

Sensing a breakthrough

One area where nanotechnology is shaping up as a medical game changer is in the area of medical sensors. Dr Webster said research into getting early warning of problems with implants was a rich field for nanotechnology experts. He plans to present his research as a member of the American Anatomists Association at the Experimental Biology Conference 2015 on March 28-31.

While he said development stopped short of the plot of the speculative fiction novel "Prey" by Michael Crichton, where nano-robots roamed through patients autonomously hunting down medical problems, he said that nanomaterials on implants that could control biological events was not far away.

"We are just on the edge of a whole big effort in terms of developing sensors out of nanomaterials that can do that," he said.

"The smaller the material the more you will not adversely affect the events you're trying to measure. I think this is where this technology shows real promise -- there will be sensors on vascular stents, pacemakers, hip implants."