My Science School

Beetle Abodes

Beetles are found almost everywhere except in the oceans, seas and Antarctica. They live in all kinds of habitats including scorching deserts, freshwater lakes and freezing polar ice caps, but are most abundant in tropical rain forests.

They make their homes in diverse places. Some burrow underground or in wood or even in the carcasses of animals. Others prefer ant and termite nests where they have a symbiotic relationship with their hosts.

Just Move It!

Most beetle species have thick, hard front wings called elytra and protective back wings. Desert species trap moisture under their wings while water beetles trap air so they can live underwater. Most beetles can fly, though they move in a slow, lugubrious fashion.

Antennae Alerts

The long, flexible antennae on a beetle’s head are feelers that help it find a mate, food, and a place to lay its eggs. They also catch vibrations in the air to warn it of predators. The body and legs of a beetle are covered with tiny hairs that are hyper sensitive to touch, sound, smell, light and taste.

Some beetles have extensions on their head that resemble horns or antlers.

“Eye” See You!

Most beetles have compound eyes and colour vision. Ground beetles that depend on vision for hunting or breeding (like fireflies) have larger eyes. Whirligig beetles swim on the surface of ponds and use their divided eyes for seeing both above and under water at the same time!

Legging It

Beetles sport all kinds of legs, ranging from long and slender for the speedy ground beetles; the dung beetle’s broad and ridged legs for digging; curved and shaped like a paddle for swimming in water beetles and large hind legs for hopping such as in the flea beetles. A sticky pad on the bottom of each foot on some beetles helps them walk on glass for instance. All species have a pair of claws on each foot.

Dining Etiquette

Beetles eat plants, other insects, carcasses, pollen, and dung. Beetles living in water eat small fish, tadpoles and even snails. Rove beetles catch flying insects with a long, sticky tongue. Some beetles feed on nectar.

Bug-bears

Many beetles are also considered pests (the potato beetle and the boll weevil for example), that infest and destroy crops, vegetables and fruits.

Beetle Benefits

Beetles are great recyclers because they feed on anything including animal carcasses and dung. Some like ladybirds eat aphids which are pests.

Largest and Smallest

The Titan beetle is the world’s largest and can grow up to 17cm long. It lives in the South American rainforest. It has both jaws and claws strong enough to tear into animal and human flesh, but is doesn’t attack unless provoked.

On the other end of the scale is the feather-winged beetle which measures around 0.325mm, the smallest free-living insect (as opposed to parasitic insects which are smaller).

 

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The air we breathe is first processed through the nose. The nose is a miraculous filter lined with tiny hairs called cilia. The cilia have many functions: they filter, humidify and warm or cool the air (depending on the temperature) before it enters the lungs. It is estimated that cilia protect our bodies against about 20 billion particles of foreign matter every day!

Once it exits the nose, air passes through the mucus-lined windpipe. This is another avenue to trap unwanted particles before they enter the lungs. Next, air enters the lungs, where the oxygen is pumped into the bloodstream and circulated through the body. In exchange, the air leaving the body carries with it carbon dioxide from the cells, a waste material that is expelled through exhalation.

We breathe through our nose because the nostrils are smaller than the mouth, air exhaled through the nose creates a back flow of air (and oxygen) into the lungs. And because we exhale more slowly through the nose than we do though the mouth, the lungs have more time to extract oxygen from the air we’ve already taken in.

 

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One of the challenges of international flying is handling different units of measure in different countries. In aviation, the battle between imperial and metric units continues. Feet, meters, statute miles, nautical miles, inches of mercury, millibars, hectopascal, knots, meters/second – it can get a little confusing! Read on and I’ll scramble your brain with international aviation units!

World-wide, the nautical mile (nm) is the standard for measuring the distance an aircraft travels across the ground. 

Other lateral measurements are a mess. Most of the world measures runway length in meters while North America uses feet. Most of the world measures airport visibility in meters. North America? Not nautical miles, not meters, but statute miles! Huh?? Not to worry, North America changes back to feet when measuring Runway Visual Range (runway visibility measured with a laser), while the rest of the world sticks with meters. Confused? I sure am, and I do this for a living!

 

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Lord Hanuman, son of Vayu (wind God) and Anjana, was very powerful. There are different versions of how he was born. One is that on Ramanavami, when Rishyashringa performed yagna, divine nectar which contained the seed of Lord Shiva was given to the three wives of King Dasharatha, the King of Ayodhya.

After consuming it, Ram, Lakshman, Bharat, and Shatrughna were born to them. But one portion of the nectar was carried away by a large bird into the sky. However, Vayu took that portion away from the bird

and brought it to Anjana. She drank it and Lord Hanuman was born.

 

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By far, the most abundant gas in the Earth's atmosphere is nitrogen, which accounts for about 78% of the mass of dry air. Oxygen is the next most abundant gas, present at levels of 20 to 21%. Although humid air seems like it contains a lot of water, the maximum amount of water vapor that air can hold is only about 4%. The amount of water vapor is highly variable. In hot, humid locations, it is the third most abundant gas. This makes it the most common greenhouse gas. In dry air, the third most abundant gas is argon, a monatomic noble gas. The abundance of carbon dioxide is variable. While it is an important greenhouse gas, it is only present an average of 0.04 percent, by mass.

It's important to know which gas is most abundant, what the other gases are in the Earth's atmosphere, and how the composition of air changes with altitude and over time for multiple reasons. The information helps us understand and predict the weather. The amount of water vapor in the air is particularly relevant to weather forecasting. The gas composition helps us understand the effects of natural and man-made chemicals released into the atmosphere. The make-up of the atmosphere is extremely important for climate, so changes in gases may help us predict broad climate change.

 

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Air may not seem like anything at all; in fact, we look right through it all the time, but during a windstorm, air really makes its presence known. Wind is able to lift roofs off buildings, blow down power lines and trees, and cause highway accidents as gusts push around cars and trucks.

Wind is moving air and is caused by differences in air pressure within our atmosphere. Air under high pressure moves toward areas of low pressure. The greater the difference in pressure, the faster the air flows.

Wind is described with direction and speed. The direction of the wind is expressed as the direction from which the wind is blowing. For example, easterly winds blow from east to west, while westerly winds blow from west to east. Winds have different levels of speed, such as “breeze” and “gale”, depending on how fast they blow. Wind speeds are based on the descriptions of winds in a scale called the Beaufort Scale, which divides wind speeds into 12 different categories, from less than 1 mph to more than 73 mph.

 

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Pigeons are here, there, everywhere, and are generally considered a nuisance. But, there’s one pigeon that draws gasps of admiration – and that’s the Nicobar pigeon (Caloenas nicobarica). It’s colourful plumage is what makes it so attractive. It also happens to be one of the largest pigeons and is the member of its genes. Also known as vulturine pigeon, hackled pigeon, or white-tailed pigeon, its bright plumage is a contrast to its close relative the dodo which is a dull grey. Nicobar pigeons birds are found only in some parts of the world – the Andaman and Nicobar islands in Southeast Asia. They usually avoid human contact and other predators, hence not much is known about the bird. Though one can spot them, they tend to breed on remote and uninhabited islands. Their behaviour is quite different from the other pigeons and doves.

Striking appearance

It has a sturdy body with a small head, long legs and wings, and a small white tail. Adults grow up to 16 inches and weigh about 1 pound. Females are heavier. The feathers on the head and the neck are blue-grey. The mane is covered with iridescent long purple hackles. The legs are purplish red in colour with long yellow claws. Their bills are black and hooked and have a black knob near the base. Body feathers are iridescent in shades of green, blue, hints of copper and gold. Males and females both have the same plumage, but the male is larger than the female and has brown iris, while the female has a white iris. Also, he females have a smaller knob on their bills.

Habitat

These pigeons are found mainly in South East Asia and the Pacific – from the Nicobar Islands to Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Palau, Myanmar, and the islands near Cambodia and Vietnam. They make their homes in forests and mangroves as they need a constant supply of food. They are nomadic by nature and fly from place to place within their range.

Food

Fruits, seeds, and small insects make up their meal. Their strong gizzard with its gizzard stone helps them feed on nuts with tough shells. The stone helps them grind up hard food items.

Raising the family

In the wild, these birds breed year-round, but in places where there is no human intervention. They are monogamous, and hence, mate for life. The male selects the nesting site and gathers all the required materials. The female then arranges them. Nests are pretty untidy and consist of twigs and dried leaves perched up in the trees. Sometimes there are several nests in a tree built by different members of a flock. The female lays only one egg per clutch, which hatches after a three-four weeks. The adults regurgitate their food and feed the chick crop milk. The fledglings get independent only after a month, but choose to stay in the nest for some more time. The young ones are dark coloured for around two years, and then they get the adult white tail. Nicobar pigeons live till they are 8 – 12 years in the wild and longer in captivity.

Conservation status

The species has been listed as “Near Threatened” by the IUCN because of dwindling forests, and because they are prey for cats and rats. Hunting of the birds by humans for food, the pet trade, and for their gizzard stones which are used as jewellery has also caused their numbers to decline.

Fascinating facts

• These pigeons travel in large flocks of around 80-85 birds. During the day, they don’t mind the presence of humans, but at night, they prefer flying to uninhabited islands.


• The birds’ white tail can be seen in flight. It guides other birds while flying at night or in the dark. Each bird follows the other’s tail while flying in a flock.


• All pigeons suck up water similar to using a straw.


• Some keep their neck plumage erect, during courtship or while displaying aggressive behaviour.


• Nicobar pigeons are not very vocal, they normally coo. Only when they are scaring away predators do they make a sound that resembles a grunt.

 

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“Lives of great men all remind us, we can make our lives sublime and departing, leave behind us, footprints on the sands of time” – More than 200 hundred years after his death, the words of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow often greet us in the least expected places. Inside a get-well card; or a poster hanging on the restaurant walls, or stranger still, as a motivational message on a WhatsApp group. Such is the power of this gifted poet’s words that they have transcended time and truly left their immortal footprints.

Longfellow was nothing less than a celebrity in his time. From Abraham Lincoln and Nathaniel Hawthorne to Queen Victoria and Edgar Allan Poe, everyone was a fan of his lyrical and simple verses. And not just adults, he was adored by children, who found his verses to be playful and smart. He was second only to Lord Tennyson. Rarely has a poet received such recognition. But did you know that Longfellow was fluent in no less than eight languages?

A love for languages

Right from an early age, Longfellow displayed phenomenal linguistic skills. He picked up languages with an uncanny ease, without any special coaching. By 14, he was fluent in Latin, a language proficiency was so good that he was even offered the post of the professor of modern languages at his alma mater, Bowdoin College in Maine, immediately after graduating as the trustees were immensely impressed by his work.

Before taking up the job offer, Longfellow embarked on a three-year preparatory study tour across Europe. He travelled to France, Spain, Italy, Germany and England. In Madrid, he became friends with Washington Irving, author of Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of the Sleepy Hollow. Irving encouraged the young Longfellow to pursue writing.

Longfellow, who started teaching at Bowdoin college on his return, translated textbooks from French, Italian, and Spanish. His first published book was a translation of the poetry of medieval Spanish poet Jorge Manrique in 1833.

He became the first American author to translate Dante’s Divine Comedy, which served as an inspiration for many generations of writers.

After Bowdoin, he taught Modern Languages at the prestigious Harvard College in Cambridge, where he spent the rest of his years.

Friendships

Longfellow had a close friendship with another great mind, Nathaniel Hawthorne, who also urged him to explore his literacy skills. At his behest, Longfellow published Voices of the Night, his debut book of poetry, which contained some of the poems he had written as a teenager. At Cambridge, Longfellow formed a literary society called the Five of Clubs, which included Charles Sumner and Cornelius Conway Felton. The house where it all began is now preserved as the Longfellow House-Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site.

Simplicity is key

Longfellow penned lyrical poems, often presenting stories of mythology and legend. Though he was a huge success, he was also criticised for writing uncomplicated and simple verses. However, Longfellow loved writing poems that had a mass appeal. He wanted people to find pleasure and solace in his verse, regardless of whether they were rich or poor. The playful and musical nature of his poems made him a favourite among children too.

Poet’s corner

Longfellow’s life was marked by tragedy. He lost his first wife shortly after marriage. His second wife died in a freak accident at home. Both the losses cast a shadow on his life till the poet passed away at the age of 72 on March 24, 1882. As a tribute to the literary giant, a life-size bust of the poet was placed in the Poet’s Corner Westminster Abbey in 1884 – the first non-British writer to receive this honour.

Oh really?

• Longfellow was born in the seaside of Portland, Maine, in the U.S., over 200 years ago. His ancestors were among the earliest settlers in the U.S. They had come to the country on the historical Mayflower in search of a new and better life.


• He was the first U.S. author to translate Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy.


• In 1867, Longfellow hosted Charles Dickens for Thanksgiving dinner.


• A bridge in Cambridge, which he frequently crossed while walking home from Cambridge, was later named after him. In 1906, the Boston Bridge was replaced and renamed the Longfellow Bridge.


• Longfellow sustained facial injuries that prevented him from shaving his face and he grew a full beard as his trademark.


• Paul Revere’s Ride is Longfellow’s best-known poem.

 

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Birds such as swifts, songbirds, seabirds, and sandpipers also sleep unihemispherically, with half of their brain shut. This helps them during long flights.

Keeping one half of the brain at rest, called unihemispheric slow-wave sleep, is in direct contrast to the typical situation where sleep and wakefulness are mutually exclusive states of the whole brain, the scientists say. "We have found that birds can detect approaching predators during unihemispheric slow-wave sleep, and that they can increase the use of unihemispheric sleep as the risk of predation increases," they report.

The scientists studied groups of mallard ducks while they rested side by side and found that those at the edge of the group were significantly more likely to keep one eye open, with the closed eye being on the side of its nearest neighbour.

"We have found that birds sleeping under risky situations spend more time with one eye open and half the brain awake, and choose to direct the open eye towards a perceived threat," added Dr Rattenborg.

 

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The dolphin sleeps with half its brain and one of its eyes shut at a time to keep a watch on approaching predators and other dolphins. After two hours or so, they shut the other eye and the other half of the brain, so both eyes and brain hemispheres get their due rest.

Dolphins have binocular vision (with their eyes sitting on opposite sides of their head), so the researchers trained one of the dolphins to recognized two shapes, either three horizontal red bars or one vertical green bar. They trained Say with her right eye first.

The scientists thought that because half of the dolphin's brain would be asleep during testing, Say would only recognize the shapes with the eye connected to the conscious half of her brain. But she gave them a surprise: She trained her left eye on the shapes, even though that eye had not seen the shapes before.

Ridgway said this must mean that information is transferred between the two hemispheres of the brain.

The dolphins proved just as sharp with their eyes as they were with their ears: After 120 hours, they still saw the shapes.

 

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Many creatures sleep in a group for protection from predators. Puppies, squirrels, bats and meerkats sleep huddled together for warmth and protection.

Puppies will often sleep on their stomach so that they can get up quickly and not miss any playtime. If a dog sleeps on its back, it is either very comfortable, as it's organs are the most exposed, or it's trying to cool off. If your dog cuddles with you, it's showing you affection and trust.

Many dogs will circle before laying down, which is what their ancestors the wolves would do to trample grass down to make a comfortable bed. Digging is something their ancestors would do to keep them warm in the winter and cool in the summer.

If your dog sleeps during the day, it may be due to boredom. If there's any kind of noise and their ears perk up, it means that they are just waiting for something exciting to happen and weren't in deep sleep.

 

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The large hairy armadillo sleeps for 20 hours a day. It is followed by the brown bat (19 hours), the North American opossum (18 hours), the python (18 hours) and the owl monkey (17 hours).

Armadillos live in temperate and warm habitats, including rain forests, grasslands, and semi-deserts. Because of their low metabolic rate and lack of fat stores, cold is their enemy, and spates of intemperate weather can wipe out whole populations.

Most species dig burrows and sleep prolifically, up to 16 hours per day, foraging in the early morning and evening for beetles, ants, termites, and other insects. They have very poor eyesight, and utilize their keen sense of smell to hunt. Strong legs and huge front claws are used for digging, and long, sticky tongues for extracting ants and termites from their tunnels. In addition to bugs, armadillos eat small vertebrates, plants, and some fruit, as well as the occasional carrion meal.

 

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Prey animals such as deer and sheep sleep for 3 to 4 hours per night, and sheep typically sleep in a herd for added protection. The giraffe sleeps only about 30 to 90 minutes a day. Because getting up from the ground takes them a little time, laying down makes them more vulnerable to predators such as crocodiles and lions. For this reason, they will often sleep standing up and may rest their head on their rumps. Researchers until the 1950s believed that they didn't sleep at all. Many prey animals sleep less than predatory animals. However, this rule does not apply to all species.

Since they are a prey species, they sleep extremely lightly and tend to nap during the day. They’ll sleep within the herd, and some sheep will stay awake whilst others to sleep to act as alarm bells in case of predators.

 

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Did you know some animals sleep through summer? This is called aestivation. The equivalent during the winter months is hibernation, which you may be aware of. But humans neither aestivate nor hibernate. Some molluscs (e.g. Spanish snail), fish species (e.g. African lungfish in picture), reptiles (e.g. North American desert tortoise) and amphibians (e.g. waterholding frog) spend hot or dry period in a prolonged state of torpor or dormancy. They do so to avoid damage from high temperatures. They have to conserve energy, retain water in the body and ration the use of stored energy during aestivation. Animals that aestivate go through almost the same physiological processes as those that hibernate.

For going into hibernation or aestivation, animals go through the pre-preparation stage, where the animals store enough of food and water which may last for the long duration, but generally, the food is stored in the form of fat, which provides energy to survive.

These sleep proceeds gradually, as the metabolic activity, hearts beat and breathing rates also slows down. The electrical activity in the brain though stops, but still, the animals respond to stimuli such as sound, light, and temperature.

 

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In 1796, an English doctor called Edward Jenner (1749-1823) gave the first vaccination. He realized that milkmaids who caught cowpox did not catch the very dangerous disease of smallpox. By injecting the cowpox virus into a child, he was able to vaccinate him against the more serious disease. As the body fights the virus, antibodies are formed in the blood that prevents further infections or infection by some similar viruses. Today, huge vaccination programmers ensure that most children are protected against a range of diseases.

A person may become immune to a specific disease in several ways. For some illnesses, such as measles and chickenpox, having the disease usually leads to lifelong immunity to it. Vaccination is another way to become immune to a disease. Both ways of gaining immunity, either from having an illness or from vaccination, are examples of active immunity. Active immunity results when a person’s immune system works to produce antibodies and activate other immune cells to certain pathogens. If the person encounters that pathogen again, long-lasting immune cells specific to it will already be primed to fight it.

A different type of immunity, called passive immunity, results when a person is given someone else’s antibodies. When these antibodies are introduced into the person’s body, the “loaned” antibodies help prevent or fight certain infectious diseases. The protection offered by passive immunization is short-lived, usually lasting only a few weeks or months. But it helps protect right away.

Infants benefit from passive immunity acquired when their mothers’ antibodies and pathogen-fighting white cells cross the placenta to reach the developing children, especially in the third trimester. A substance called colostrum, which an infant receives during nursing sessions in the first days after birth and before the mother begins producing “true” breast milk, is rich in antibodies and provides protection for the infant. Breast milk, though not as rich in protective components as colostrum, also contains antibodies that pass to the nursing infant. This protection provided by the mother, however, is short-lived. During the first few months of life, maternal antibody levels in the infant fall, and protection fades by about six months of age.

Passive immunity can be induced artificially when antibodies are given as a medication to a nonimmune individual. These antibodies may come from the pooled and purified blood products of immune people or from non-human immune animals, such as horses. In fact, the earliest antibody-containing preparations used against infectious diseases came from horses, sheep, and rabbits.