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Who invented the battery?
In 1800, Allesandro Volta, Italian physicist and chemist (1745-1827) made and introduced the first successful demonstration of a modern battery, commonly referred to as the Voltaic pile.⬆️
This device consisted of a series of zinc and silver plates stacked together, with each plate separated by a cloth soaked in a solution of acid and salt.
This invention paved the way for revolutionary advancements in long-distance communication, including the development of telegraphs in the late 1830s and the telephone in the 1870s.
However, the original Voltaic pile encountered a challenge due to the development of hydrogen bubbles as a result of chemical reactions that adhered to the electrode surfaces. This issue led to a rapid decline in the performance of the battery, rendering it of limited practical use.
ℹ️ The term "battery" was coined by Benjamin Franklin in 1749 to describe a set of linked capacitors he used for his experiments with electricity.
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What factors and mechanisms allow certain cells to keep working after an organismal death and why is it important to study the third state?
Postmortem conditions
🔳 Several factors influence whether certain cells and tissues can survive and function after an organism dies. These include environmental conditions, metabolic activity and preservation techniques.
🔳 Different cell types have varying survival times. For example, in humans, white blood cells die between 60 and 86 hours after organismal death. In mice, skeletal muscle cells can be regrown after 14 days postmortem, while fibroblast cells from sheep and goats can be cultured up to a month or so postmortem.
🔳 Metabolic activity plays an important role in whether cells can continue to survive and function. Active cells that require a continuous and substantial supply of energy to maintain their function are more difficult to culture than cells with lower energy requirements. Preservation techniques such as cryopreservation can allow tissue samples such as bone marrow to function similarly to that of living donor sources.
🔳 Inherent survival mechanisms also play a key role in whether cells and tissues live on. For example, researchers have observed a significant increase in the activity of stress-related genes and immune-related genes after organismal death, likely to compensate for the loss of homeostasis. Moreover, factors such as trauma, infection and the time elapsed since death significantly affect tissue and cell viability.
🔳 Factors such as age, health, sex and type of species further shape the postmortem landscape. This is seen in the challenge of culturing and transplanting metabolically active islet cells, which produce insulin in the pancreas, from donors to recipients. Researchers believe that autoimmune processes, high energy costs and the degradation of protective mechanisms could be the reason behind many islet transplant failures.
🔳 How the interplay of these variables allows certain cells to continue functioning after an organism dies remains unclear. One hypothesis is that specialized channels and pumps embedded in the outer membranes of cells serve as intricate electrical circuits. These channels and pumps generate electrical signals that allow cells to communicate with each other and execute specific functions such as growth and movement, shaping the structure of the organism they form.
🔳 The extent to which different types of cells can undergo transformation after death is also uncertain. Previous research has found that specific genes involved in stress, immunity and epigenetic regulation are activated after death in mice, zebrafish and people, suggesting widespread potential for transformation among diverse cell types.
Implications for biology and medicine
✔️ The third state not only offers new insights into the adaptability of cells. It also offers prospects for new treatments.
✔️ For example, anthrobots could be sourced from an individual’s living tissue to deliver drugs without triggering an unwanted immune response. Engineered anthrobots injected into the body could potentially dissolve arterial plaque in atherosclerosis patients and remove excess mucus in cystic fibrosis patients.
✔️ Importantly, these multicellular organisms have a finite life span, naturally degrading after four to six weeks. This “kill switch” prevents the growth of potentially invasive cells.
✔️ A better understanding of how some cells continue to function and metamorphose into multicellular entities some time after an organism’s demise holds promise for advancing personalized and preventive medicine.
ℹ️ Usually, scientists consider death to be the irreversible halt of functioning of an organism as a whole.
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Which planet in the solar system may once have had a ring like Saturn?
Surprisingly but it’s Earth that may have sported a Saturn-like ring system 466 million years ago, after it captured and wrecked a passing asteroid, a new study suggests.
The debris ring, which likely lasted tens of millions of years, may have led to global cooling and even contributed to the coldest period on Earth in the past 500 million years.
Using computer models of how our planet's tectonic plates moved in the past, scientists analyzed 21 crater sites around the world (across modern Australia, China, Europe, India, North America and Russia) that researchers suspect were all created by falling debris from a large asteroid between 488 million and 443 million years ago, an era in Earth's history known as the Ordovician during which our planet witnessed dramatically increased asteroid impacts.
ℹ️Saturn isn’t the only planet with rings. Jupiter, Neptune and Uranus have less obvious rings, too.
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Where do lavas originate from?
Lavas from hotspots likely originate from a worldwide, uniform reservoir in Earth's mantle, according to a new research.
The findings indicate Earth's mantle is far more chemically homogenous than scientists previously thought - and that lavas only acquire their unique chemical "flavours" enroute to the surface, interacting with different types of rocks.
Besides shedding entirely new light on hotspot lavas in oceanic parts of the world, the analysis also revealed an exciting new link to basaltic lavas on the continents. These melts, which contain diamond-bearing kimberlites, are fundamentally different from magmas found at oceanic hotspots. They nevertheless prove to have the same magma "ancestor."
ℹ️ A hotspot is a large plume of hot mantle material rising from deep within the Earth. A line of volcanoes develops as a plate moves over a hotspot, much as a line of melted wax forms as a sheet of waxed paper is moved slowly over a burning candle.
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What clouds are rare and form in unique ways?
Lenticular, or lee wave, clouds
▫️are lens-shaped and often look like flying saucers
▫️form downwind of an obstacle, e.g. a mountain, in the path of a strong air current
▫️seem to stay in one place, even though air is moving through the cloud, unlike other types of clouds.
Kelvin-Helmholtz clouds
▫️look like breaking waves in the ocean
▫️form when there is a difference in the wind speed or direction between two wind currents in the atmosphere and complex evaporation and condensation patterns create the capped tops and cloudless troughs of the waves.
Mammatus clouds
▫️are pouches of clouds that hang underneath the base of a cloud
▫️are most often associated with cumulonimbus clouds that produce very strong storms
▫️usually form during warm months, and are formed by descending air in the cloud.
▫️look like a field of tennis balls or melons, or like female human breasts ('mammatus' in Latin means ‘mamma’, or ‘breast’)
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What are the main characteristics of mid-level clouds?
Altocumulus clouds
▫️are mid-level, grayish-white with one part darker than the other
▫️usually form in groups and are about one kilometer thick
▫️are about as wide as your thumb when you hold up your hand at arm's length
▫️may be an indicator of a thunderstorm by late afternoon if seen on a warm, humid morning.
Altostratus clouds
▫️are mid-level, gray or blue-gray clouds
▫️usually cover the whole sky
▫️may be an indicator of a storm with continuous rain or snow.
The Sun or moon may shine through an altostratus cloud, but will appear watery or fuzzy. Occasionally, rain falls from an altostratus cloud. If the rain hits the ground, then the cloud has become a nimbostratus.
Nimbostratus clouds
▫️are dark gray, have ragged bases and sit low in the sky
▫️are associated with continuous rain or snow.
▫️sometimes cover the whole sky so that one can't see the edges of the cloud.
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When and by whom was the smiley emoticon invented?
🗓🙂 On September 19, 1982, Scott Fahlman, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University, is believed to have invented the sideways smiley emoticon (“smiley face”), by combining a colon, a hyphen, and a close parenthesis – “:-)”
🖥 By the early 1980’s, the Computer Science community at Carnegie Mellon was making heavy use of online bulletin boards or “bboards” – a precursor of today’s newsgroups, a platform socially accessible to others on the university’s closed intranet.
🙂 As this platform was then limited to text only, Fahlman suggested punctuating humorously intended computer messages by posting the smiley emoticon.
☹️ Interestingly, in the same post, Falman also suggested the use of :-( to indicate that a message was meant to be taken seriously, though that symbol quickly evolved into a marker for displeasure, frustration, or anger.
ℹ️ The smiley face has been dubbed the “first internet emoticon”.
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What is the largest volcano in the solar system?
🔺 Mars' Olympus Mons is the largest volcano in the solar system.
🔺 Found in the Tharsis Montes region near the Martian equator, Olympus Mons is one of a dozen large volcanoes, many of which are ten to a hundred times taller than their terrestrial counterparts. Olympus Mons is the tallest of them all towers 25 km (16 mi.) above the surrounding plains and stretches across 601 km (374 mi.).
🔺 Olympus Mons is a shield volcano.
🔺 Olympus Mons rises three times higher than Earth's highest mountain, Mount Everest.
ℹ️ Since there's no surface water on Mars, it isn't as easy to quantify terrain heights there as it is on Earth. But scientists have defined an effective 'sea level' for Mars, known as the areoid, which is an imaginary sphere having the average equatorial radius of the planet. Relative to the areoid the mountain is only 21 km (13 mi.) high — but that's still a record-breaking size.
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What planet could have been responsible for the killing the dinosaurs?
*️⃣ Many mysteries remain about the Chicxulub impactor that wiped out more than 60 percent of known species, including the non-avian dinosaurs like Tyrannosaurus rex.
*️⃣ In a recent study, researchers used an innovative technique to demonstrate that the apocalyptic culprit had formed beyond Jupiter's orbit.
*️⃣ Scientists also suggest the Chicxulub impactor wasn’t a comet or a run-of-the-mill giant space rock—it was a conspicuously “carbonaceous” (C-type) asteroid, rich in carbon and organic compounds.
*️⃣ The conclusions are particularly notable, given how rarely this type of asteroid collides with Earth.
*️⃣ According to researchers, studying the nature of asteroids that have struck Earth since its beginnings:
📍 can help solve the enigma of the origin of our planet's water that may have been brought to Earth by asteroids;
📍 also allows humanity to prepare for the future.
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What are different types of love?
ℹ️ Love is often defined as a set of emotions and behaviors characterized by intimacy, passion, and commitment, also involving care, closeness, protectiveness, attraction, affection, and trust.
Psychologists note that love is a physiological motivation such as hunger, thirst, sleep, and identify several different types of love that people may experience.
❤️Friendship involves liking someone and sharing a certain degree of intimacy.
❤️Infatuation involves intense feelings of attraction without a sense of commitment, takes place early in a relationship and may deepen into a more lasting love.
❤️Passionate love is marked by intense feelings of longing and attraction, often involves an idealization of the other person and a need to maintain constant physical closeness.
❤️Compassionate/companionate love is marked by trust, affection, intimacy, and commitment.
💔Unrequited love happens when one person loves another who does not return those feelings.
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How does the placebo effect work?
Studies indicate that the brain controls a variety of responses that manifest as the placebo effect.
Physiological processes subject to placebos include pain response, depression, insulin secretion, immunosuppression, symptoms of Parkinson’s disease, and serum iron levels.
Multiple factors likely play a role:
✔️Expectation: if you think an injection will hurt, it probably will. Or, if you think a pill (real or placebo) helps a condition, then it likely does.
✔️Conditioning: a learned response or association between two events. If you get used that a real peal works for a certain period, a placebo that you take after that period will work too.
✔️Genetics: some people are genetically predisposed to respond to placebos.
❗️In some situations, a placebo is an effective treatment, even when people know they are taking a placebo.
Placebos have an effect on:
💊Asthma
💊Depression
💊Irritable bowel syndrome
💊Menopause
💊Pain
💊Sleep disorders
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What are some physical property examples?
Some examples of physical properties
📍Albedo–reflectivity of an object
📍Area–size of a two-dimensional surface
📍Boiling point–temperature at which a liquid changes into a gas
📍Brittleness–tendency to break under stress
📍Color–wavelengths of light reflected by matter
📍Density–amount of matter per unit of volume
📍Ductility–measure of how readily a substance stretches into a wire
📍Malleability–measure of how readily a substance may be pounded or pressed into sheets
📍Freezing point–temperature at which a substance changes from a liquid into a solid
📍Length–longest dimension of an object
📍Luster–measure of the interaction between light and an object’s surface
📍Mass–amount of matter in an object
📍Solubility–amount of matter that dissolves in a solvent
📍Temperature
📍Viscosity–resistance to deformation by stress; resistance to flow
📍Volume–3D space a substance occupies
📍Weight–effect of gravity on a mass
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How to tell if something is a physical or chemical property?
⚖️🔬 A physical property can be measured through observation and passive measurement (e.g. placing an item on a scale or noting qualitative features) that do not irreversibly change the material that has the property. Occasionally, physical properties will be measured with more active methods (e.g. measuring conductivity or resistance by applying a current of electrons).
🧪 Chemical properties are attributes of a substance that allow for a chemical change, often irreversible, and can't be observed without chemical experiments. Just as with physical reactions, there are some chemical properties, like oxidation (i.e. rust), which will display naturally through observation.
Throughout physical and chemical changes, 2️⃣ terms are also defined:
📌 extensive properties that rely on the amount of matter present (e.g. mass or caloric energy)
📌 intensive properties that are only dependent on the identity of the substance.
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How much of the world population is young?
📍 Today, the world counts 1.8 billion young people between the ages of 10 and 24 – about 22,5 per cent of the global population, according to the United Nations.
📍 Today’s youth is the largest generation in history.
📍 Close to 90 per cent of these, live in developing countries, where they make up a large proportion of the population.
🌍 Africa has the youngest population of any continent. By 2030, young Africans are expected to make up 42 per cent of the world’s youth and account for 75 per cent of the those under age 35 in Africa.
📍There is no universally agreed international definition of the youth age group. For statistical purposes, however, the UN - without prejudice to any other definitions made by Member States—defines ‘youth’ as those persons between the ages of 15 and 24 years.
📍 The physical age of youth is sometimes categorized to be between 15 and 35 years.
🎉 International Youth Day takes place on August 12.
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How did ancient people call Mercury?
Mercury has been known since ancient times since it is visible to the naked eye.
✍️ The Babylonians called it "the jumping planet" and later Nabu, for the messenger to their gods.
✍️ In ancient China, the planet was Chen-xing, meaning “the Hour Star.”
✍️ In Hindu mythology, the name Budha was used for Mercury – the god that was thought to preside over Wednesday.
✍️ The same is true for the Germanic tribes, who associated the god Odin/Woden with the planet Mercury and Wednesday.
✍️ The Maya may have represented Mercury as an owl – or possibly four owls, two for the morning aspect and two for the evening – a messenger to the underworld.
✍️ The ancient Greeks called Mercury variously "Stilbon" ("the gleaming"), Hermaon, and Hermes, the swift-footed messenger of the Greek gods.
✍️ The Romans continued this tradition, naming the planet Mercurius after Mercury, a counterpart of Hermes.
It’s an apt name, since Mercury is the fastest planet ⬆️
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What is the “Baghdad Battery”?
🔋 Batteries are perhaps the most prevalent and oldest forms of energy storage technology in human history.
🔋 In 1938, Wilhelm Konig, a German archaeologist, unearthed earthenware jars of approximately the size of a human fist at Khujut Rabu, located near Bagdad, modern Iraq. These 2,200-year-old jars were comprised of an iron rod within a copper cylinder, sealed with an asphalt stopper.
🔋 It is speculated that these jars were utilized by the inhabitants of the Parthian civilization, which governed the region 2,000 years ago, as electrical batteries for electroplating gold onto silver.
🔋 According to researchers, this ancient battery could produce electric current of approximately two volts.
🔋 This assemblage has become known as the “Bagdad Battery”.
❗️ However, it is important to note that there is currently no concrete evidence supporting this speculation, and even the dating of these artifacts remains somewhat disputed.
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What life-forms can emerge after death?
In a new study, scientist expanded knowledge about so-called “third state” that lies beyond the traditional boundaries of life and death.
Researchers described how certain cells – when provided with nutrients, oxygen, bioelectricity or biochemical cues – have the capacity to transform into multicellular organisms with new functions after death.
It was found that:
📌 skin cells extracted from deceased frog embryos were able to adapt to the new conditions of a petri dish in a lab, spontaneously reorganizing into multicellular organisms called xenobots ⬆️
📌 solitary human lung cells can self-assemble into miniature multicellular organisms – anthrobots – that behave and are structured in new ways, being able not only able to navigate their surroundings but also repair both themselves and injured neuron cells placed nearby.
These findings challenge the idea that cells and organisms can evolve only in predetermined ways.
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How many “hidden turbulences” in Van Gogh's “Starry Night”?
The illusion of movement in “The Starry Night” is so vivid that scientists analyzed how closely van Gogh’s depiction mirrors the actual physics of atmospheric turbulence.
They discovered two “hidden turbulences”:
1️⃣the sizes of the 14 whirls or eddies and their relative distance and intensity, follow a physical law known as Kolmogorov’s theory of turbulence.
ℹ️In the 1940s, Soviet Russian mathematician Andrey Kolmogorov (1903-1987) described a mathematical relationship between the fluctuations in a flow’s speed and the rate at which its energy dissipates.
2️⃣the paint, at the smallest scale, mixes around with some background swirls and whirls in a fashion predicted by turbulence theory, following a statistical pattern known as Batchelor’s scaling.
ℹ️Batchelor’s scaling mathematically represents how small particles (drifting algae in the ocean or pieces of dust in the wind) are passively mixed around by turbulent flow.
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Why is morning wiser than evening?
People are easily seduced by first impressions, even when they turn out to be inaccurate.
At the same time, expressions like ‘morning is wiser than evening’ or ‘one should sleep on it’ exist in many cultures and languages.
According to a new study, sleeping on it can really help people avoid judging a book solely by its cover.
In “garage sale” experiments, the researchers asked participants to look through virtual boxes. All boxes were equally valuable, but rewards were either evenly distributed or clustered at the beginning, middle, or end of the sequence. A pattern (a psychological phenomenon called primacy bias) quickly emerged: when the participants had to make a decision right away, they tended to believe that some boxes were more valuable than they really were. However, participants who weren’t asked to decide until the next day were less likely to fall into these traps and made more rational choices.
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What are the main characteristics of low-level clouds?
Cumulus clouds
▫️have vertical growth
▫️are puffy white or light gray clouds looking like floating cotton balls
▫️have sharp outlines and a flat base at a height of 1000m
▫️are generally about 1km wide
▫️can be associated with fair or stormy weather.
Cumulonimbus clouds
▫️have vertical growth and can grow up to 10 km high, where they have an anvil-like shape because of high winds
▫️are thunderstorm clouds and are associated with heavy rain, snow, hail, lightning, and sometimes tornadoes.
Stratus clouds
▫️are low and have a uniform gray in color
▫️can cover most or all of the sky
▫️can look like a fog that doesn't reach the ground.
Light mist or drizzle is sometimes falling when stratus clouds are in the sky.
Stratocumulus clouds
▫️are low, lumpy, and gray
▫️can line up in rows and also spread out
▫️may be confused with higher altocumulus clouds.
Only light rain (usually drizzle) falls from stratocumulus clouds.
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What are the main characteristics of high-level clouds?
Cirrus clouds are
▫️made of ice crystals and look like long, thin, wispy white streamers high in the sky
▫️commonly known as "mare's tails" because they are shaped like the tail of a horse
▫️often seen during fair weather (but if they are followed by cirrostratus clouds, there may be a warm front on the way).
Cirrocumulus clouds are
▫️small rounded puffs that usually appear in long rows high in the sky
▫️usually white, but sometimes appear gray
▫️often called a "mackerel sky” as they can look like the scales of a fish when covering a lot of the sky
▫️common in winter indicating fair, but cold, weather.
Cirrostratus clouds are
▫️high, thin sheet-like thin clouds that usually cover the entire sky
▫️so thin that the Sun or moon can sometimes shine through and appear to have a halo as light hits the ice crystals and bends.
▫️usually seen 12 to 24 hours before a rain or snowstorm.
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How many types of clouds are there?
The global standard for cloud classification is the World Meteorological Organization's International Cloud Atlas, which lists 10 main types of clouds:
High-Level Clouds
☁️ Cirrus
☁️ Cirrocumulus
☁️ Cirrostratus
Mid-Level Clouds
☁️ Altocumulus
☁️ Altostratus
☁️ Nimbostratus
Low-Level Clouds
☁️ Cumulus
☁️ Cumulonimbus
☁️ Stratocumulus
☁️ Stratus
There are also other types of clouds that generally fall outside of this classification system:
☁️ lenticular clouds
☁️ mammatus clouds
☁️ contrails (condensation trails produced by airplanes).
In the polar regions, the top of the troposphere is lower, so clouds are lower. In the tropics, the top of the troposphere is higher, so clouds are higher.
Sometimes researchers mention the four main types of clouds, referring to the classification by industrial chemist Luke Howard (1772-1864) who named three main types — cirrus, cumulus, and stratus — with a fourth special type called nimbus.
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What makes a story successful?
There are not so much universal truths about humanity, but one thing is for certain: humans love stories.
Whether it's books, movies, TV shows or even advertisements, people are constantly being told or telling stories every day. Entire industries are built around storytelling and understanding which stories connect with people the most.
By applying advanced computational linguistics and trend detection analysis to 30,000 books, movies, TV shows, and even fundraising pitches, the researchers found one core element of storytelling that helped predict a story's success with audiences: narrative reversals.
Narrative reversals are defined as key turning points in a story or changes in fortune that take characters from heights to depths and vice versa.
According to scientists, narrative reversals are not the sole determiner of how good a story is, but they were impressed with its consistency and the fact that it's so simple.
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Where does love live?
❤️🧠 Love is often associated with the heart, but, according to scientists, love is more about the brain.
Using cutting-edge brain imaging technology, researchers characterized the brain areas involved in love for six different objects: romantic partner, one’s children, friends, strangers, pets, and nature.
Scientists induced feelings of love using short stories and found that depending on its object different types of love light up different parts of the brain ⬆️
Interestingly, the experts found that love for one’s children generated the most intense brain activity, closely followed by the romantic type.
Interactions with different entities, whether humans, animals, or nature, led to varying patterns of brain activation.
The findings extend beyond understanding emotional responses, offering potential applications in improving mental health and paving the way for more effective therapies that strengthen emotional well-being and personal relationships.
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How big were ancient sea scorpions and why?
🌊🦂 Eurypterids, or “sea scorpions,” are an extinct group of chelicerates, arthropods related to horseshoe crabs, scorpions, spiders, mites, and ticks.
They thrived all over the world for more than 200 million years in the Devonian period of the Paleozoic Era, until their disappearance during a mass extinction at the end of the Permian 250 million years ago.
The pterygotid eurypterids reached total lengths of more than 2.5 meters (8 ft) and sometimes are called the largest arthropods ever to exist.
Sea scorpions were also the only eurypterids that were able to swim across open oceans.
Scientists suggest several explanations why sea scorpions grew to be so big:
📌 the atmosphere with a higher concentration of oxygen (35%, compared to 21% today) accounts for the gigantism during the Devonian period
📌 the necessity to pierce the ever-evolving armor of their fish prey
📌 the lower gravity found underwater
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What is placebo and nocebo effects?
The placebo effect is the phenomenon where a subject experiences an effect from an inactive substance or fake treatment, which is called a placebo.
A placebo, in turn, is a substance or treatment that has no effect. Examples of placebos – sugar pills, consumable liquids or solids, saline injections, and fake surgeries.
The placebo effect is a therapeutic benefit or apparent side effect from a placebo. Alternatively, it is a treatment with the exact composition of inactive ingredients or the same steps as the therapy, minus the active substance or procedure.
However, some scientists refer to a therapeutic or beneficial response as the placebo effect and side effects or a negative response as the nocebo effect (negative placebo). The nocebo effect also includes withdrawal symptoms some patients experience after discontinuing a placebo treatment.
ℹ️ The term "placebo" became part of medical jargon in the late 18th century.
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Why is it important to know the chemical properties of a substance?
It’s important to know the chemical properties of a substance because the information helps:
✅ Identify it
✅ Classify it
✅ Store it safely
✅ Know its hazards
✅ Predict its reactions with other samples
✅ Predict its uses
✅ Purify it
✅ Separate it from other chemicals
✅ Develop new materials for various applications
Matter has many chemical properties. Examples include:
✔️ Chemical bond formation
✔️ Chemical reactivity
✔️ Coordination number
✔️ Corrosivity
✔️ Flammability
✔️ Oxidation states
✔️ Toxicity
✔️ Reactivity
✔️ Acidity and basicity
✔️ Enthalpy of formation
✔️ Heat of combustion
✔️ pH
✔️ Half-life
✔️ Surface tension
✔️ Hygroscopy
✔️ Catalytic ability
✔️ Chemical stability
✔️ Electronegativity
✔️ Radioactivity
✔️ Solubility
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How many pets are homeless?
ℹ️ New research used data from over 900 sources, along with almost 30,000 public surveys and 200 expert interviews to build a picture of pet homelessness across 20 countries: Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Greece, India, Indonesia, Japan, Lithuania, Mexico, New Zealand, The Philippines, Poland, South Africa, Turkey, Thailand, the U.S., and the U.K.
✍️ The findings from these countries revealed that almost 35% of cats and dogs are homeless:
143 million dogs living on the street and 12 million dogs in shelters
203 million cats living on the street and 4 million cats in shelters
These numbers and percentages vary across countries; e.g., about 70% of pets in Greece and India are homeless, 32% - in Mexico, 20% - in the U.S., and only 5% of pets in the U.K. are homeless.
📅 Every third Saturday in August, animal lovers around the world come together to observe International Homeless Animals Day (IHAD). In 2024, the date is August 17th.
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What are unique features of Mercury?
Mercury is a terrestrial planet that shares several characteristics with other planets in this category, such as Earth, Venus, and Mars, but also possesses unique features ⬇️.
📌 Terrestrial Planet Characteristics: Terrestrial planets consist primarily of rock and metal, have solid surfaces, and are closer to the Sun compared to gas giants. Mercury fits this description and is the innermost planet in our solar system.
📌 Surface Composition: Mercury’s surface is similar to that of the Moon, featuring numerous impact craters from collisions with asteroids and comets. The surface also features extensive plains, as well as cliffs and ridges that suggest a history of geological activity. The surface consists of silicate rocks and dust.
📌 Internal Structure:
Core: One of Mercury’s most notable features is its disproportionately large core, which makes up about 60% of the planet’s total mass. This is significantly larger in proportion compared to the other terrestrial planets. The core is primarily iron and is partly liquid.
Mantle: Surrounding the core is a silicate mantle, which is about 400 kilometers (250 miles) thick. The mantle likely consists of silicates and minerals similar to those found on Earth’s mantle.
Crust: The outer shell of Mercury is a thin silicate crust that is about 100-300 kilometers (62-186 miles) thick. It’s the part of Mercury that bears the brunt of impacts from space debris. There is a decent amount of water ice, but the low atmospheric pressure means it can’t exist as a liquid.
📌 Lack of Plate Tectonics: Unlike Earth, Mercury does not exhibit plate tectonics. However, there are signs of past geological activity, such as volcanoes, fault scarps, and ridges.
📌 Density and Composition Mysteries: Mercury’s high density (second only to Earth in our solar system) and oversized iron core have puzzled scientists for years. Mercury may have formed from the solar nebula closer to the Sun, where materials like iron were more abundant. Alternatively, perhaps Mercury was once a larger planet that lost its outer layers due to a massive impact or intense solar radiation early in its history.
📌 Magnetic Field: Despite its small size, Mercury has a weak global magnetic field. This magnetic field may result from a dynamo effect in its liquid iron core.
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Which planet may hide a real treasure?
Mercury, the smallest planet in the solar system, may hide an all-diamond layer up to 18 kilometers (10 miles) thick at the boundary between the core and the mantle, new research suggests.
Scientists used data collected by MESSENGER spacecraft to inform their theories about the structure of the planet's interior.
When the planet was formed around 4.5 billion years ago, the metal core was entirely liquid which progressively crystallized over time.
Two processes could have resulted in the diamond layer:
1️⃣ the crystallization of the magma ocean that likely contributed to forming only a very thin diamond layer at the core/mantle interface
2️⃣ the crystallization of the metal core of Mercury.
The study suggests that under extreme pressure, the carbon in the mantle turned into diamond.
According to scientists, the results could point to differences between the formation of Mercury and other planets, including Earth and Mars.
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