Monday, 28 April 2014

11 reasons as to why water helps your body

1) Water is the only liquid on Earth that safely reduces weight. It removes the by-products of fat and keeps you fresh and healthy. Drinking water regularly, suppresses your appetite to a great extent and limits your food  intake. Another distinct feature of water is that it literally contains no calories, hence, contributing significantly to weight loss
2) Do you want to look younger? Problem solved! Just drink lots of water every day! Water is a perfect replacement for your expensive ageing treatments. It moisturises your skin and keeps it fresh and glistening thereby enhancing its overall appeal. In addition, it helps maintain the elasticity and suppleness of the skin and prevents dryness by detoxifying the skin. Hence, one should strictly avoid dehydrating foods and beverages such as caffeine (cola, chocolate, coffee, tea) and alcohol
3) Drinking enough water can also combat skin disorders such as eczema, psoriasis, dry skin, wrinkles and spots
4) Water is an essential component required for the effective working of our body since body parts including our brain and the various tissues are mostly composed of water. Considering this, water can significantly improve our ability to think and make us energetic too.
5) Water removes toxins and most of the waste products from our body contributing to a healthy quality of life. If our body lacks water then our heart has to make an extra effort to pump fresh oxygenated blood to our organs causing severe health issues
6) A study conducted in the Loma Linda university in California, involving 20 men and woman in the age range of 38 to 100 years, concluded that those who drank enough water throughout the day were less likely to have a heart attack (41% in women and 54% in men). Hence, it can be suggested that if you substitute water with milk, tea, coffee or other beverages then you will have increased chances of incurring a heart attack, with a precise rate of 50% in women and 46% in men.
7)  Water helps to relieve headaches and back pain. Although there are many reasons that contribute to headaches, dehydration is one of the most common ones
8) Regular intake of water increases your metabolic rate and improves your digestive system. If you are constipated, try drinking more water - it can work wonders!
9) Drinking plenty of water helps fight against the flu and other ailments like kidney stones. Water, along with lemon or lemon juice is often used to overcome respiratory diseases, intestinal problems, rheumatism and arthritis. On the whole, water plays a fundamental role in strengthening your immune system
10) Research suggests that drinking substantial amounts of water is likely to reduce the risks of bladder and colon cancer. This is because water has the ability to dilute the concentration of cancer-causing agents in the urine and reduce the time they take to come in contact with the bladder lining
11) The human body needs a neutral Ph 7 range in order to function properly. Drinking enough water throughout the day helps maintain this balance.

Wednesday, 23 April 2014

The Panda ant

First described in 1938, this fascinating species was quickly nicknamed the Panda Ant (Euspinolia militaris) after its markings which resembled those of a Giant Panda. While it looks just like a fluffy ant, it’s actually not an ant at all! It’s really a species of wingless wasp related to the Red Velvet Ant, or “cow killer” as it is eerily dubbed. The killer nickname comes from the ants’ painful sting which is said to be strong enough to subdue a cow.
Like the Red Velvet Ant, the Panda Ant also packs a powerful sting that can temper just about anything – or anyone – that crosses its path. That’s really all anyone knows about this unique creature as it has been spotted only a handful of times and barely even studied. I can tell you that it would be all I could do not to give this guy a little tickle, though. That fuzzy black and white panda coloration is just too cute! Too bad it would probably destroy me in a single bite. Sigh.
photo: Chris Lukhaup
panda ant, Euspinolia militaris (2)

Friday, 18 April 2014

The Woman Who Scratched Through Her Skull

The woman known only as “M” has had a rough life. After her marriage fell apart, she lost her kids, became a junkie, contracted HIV, and developed a terrible case of shingles. But nothing compared to the “itch.” Two years after kicking her heroin habit and getting a handle on her disease, the right side of her head started inexplicably itching like crazy.
It began after a nasty shingles attack, and when she sought help, the doctors were baffled. She had no parasites, rashes, or red marks. No creams helped, and M couldn’t stop scratching. The itchiness was constant and especially unbearable at night. She sometimes scratched so hard that she woke up to find her pillow caked with blood. She tried wearing caps to bed, but nothing could stop her from scratching her head.
One night, M woke up to find green liquid dripping down her face. Alarmed, she visited her doctor, and after a quick glance, her physician called for an ambulance. M was rushed to Massachusetts General Hospital, where she was told she needed surgery immediately. It turned out that, during the night, M had scratched straight through her skull, digging down to the brain. It seems impossible for fingernails to claw through bone on their own, but because of an infection called osteomyelitis, M’s skull was soft enough that she was able to dig a hole in her head.
Still, the itching remained. M tore off two skin grafts in her desperate attempt to kill the itch and had to be restrained. Doctors put a foam helmet on her head, tied her hands to the bed at night, and kept her locked up in a medical ward for two years. All this time, experts were still unsure what was causing M’s condition. Some surmised that since her shingles had destroyed 96 percent of M’s nerve fibers in the right side of her scalp, perhaps the remaining 4 percent of nerves were active itch fibers. However, when they snipped the main sensory nerve leading to the front of her head, nothing changed. The itch kept on itching.
If nerve fibers aren’t to blame, what’s going on? Science writer and surgeon Atul Gawande believes M’s brain is very confused. Since most of the nerve fibers are gone from the front of M’s head, the brain isn’t sure what’s really going on in that region, and for some reason, it’s decided she must be itchy. Since there aren’t any nerves to contradict the official story, the itching goes on and on. It’s a horrible scenario similar to the suffering of amputees with phantom limbs whose invisible appendages sometimes contort into uncomfortable positions.
Sadly, M has never been cured of her hellish itch. Today, she’s wheelchair-bound because the left side of her body is partially paralyzed. The itch is still there, and while she has overcome her nighttime compulsion to scrape her scalp, she keeps her nails very short, just in case.

Sunday, 13 April 2014

Who knew how useful a lemon could be?

In World War I, several so-called “lemon juice spies”—German agents operating in England—used citrus as their means of communication. The British government had stepped up its censorship of letters in wartime. One agent, Mabel Beatrice Elliot, flagged letters written by three of these men, heated them up, and unmasked them as spies. The lemon-juice operation was a clumsy one: several spies, once caught, had lemons on their persons, or pens with pulp still stuck on the nibs. In the end, the British executed 11 German spies in the Tower of London in 1915; four of them had used lemon juice. “After the painful and visible loss of … the lemon juice spies,” Macrakis writes, “the Germans began to develop more sophisticated invisible ink methods.”

Orange You Glad

Catholic prisoner in England used invisible ink with far happier results in 1597. The Jesuit priest John Gerard came to England in 1588 to carry out a secret mission for the Catholic underground. Caught and detained in the Tower of London, Gerard was tortured for information. The priest befriended his prison guard and began to ask for oranges, whose juice he saved to write to confederates to on the outside. With the help of this guard, Gerard even communicated with a fellow Catholic prisoner whose cell he could see from his own, miming directions for developing the orange-juice letters over flame. The two eventually conspired to escape the Tower, with the help of outside accomplices who brought a rope—a feat made more impressive by the fact that Gerard’s fingers had been wrecked during his torture sessions.

Sunday, 6 April 2014

Top 10 places you aren't allowed to visit

10. RAF Menwith Hill (U.K) – Worlds largest electronic monitoring site. This place is able to detect any type of missile attack around the globe, reportedly.
9. Club 33 (Disneyland California, USA) – This may be one of the few places on Earth that are not government controlled, yet is almost just as hard to gain access to. This address is located in the New Orleans Square part of the theme park and is a club exclusively for VIPs with a membership. Some people wait half their lives just to get access to this club.
8. Bohemian Grove (California, USA) – A secret place in the woods reserved only for the worlds most powerful people.
7. Vatican Secret Archive (Vatican City) – While you are able to request texts to be delivered to you from the archive for browsing, the archives themselves are off limits to everyone except a few people.
6. Lascaux Caves (France) – This delicate site is home to part of our human heritage. Only a few very important scientists are allowed in the caves due to the ancient age and nature of the artwork contained within.
5. Pine Gap (Australia) – Only place in Australia Designated as a No Fly Zone.
4. Metro 2 (Moscow, Russia) – Underground train system in Moscow supposedly reserved for use by Russian secret services and top government officials.
3. Room 39 (Pyongyang, North Korea) – Supposedly a government controlled operation that deals in illegla drug trafficking and smuggling.
2. Mezghhorye (Russia) – The supposed location of Russia’s nuclear missile site. This is heavily guarded by Russian troops at all times.
1. Area 51 (Nevada, USA) – This list probably wouldn’t be complete without including Area 51. This is the rumored location of alien corpses, the Roswell crash remains, and test site for various strange aircraft.

The man who stuck his head in a particle accelerator

Anatoli Bugorski might be the luckiest scientist of all time. On July 13, 1978, the Soviet researcher was repairing a particle accelerator intimidatingly named the Synchrotron U-70. As he was repairing a faulty piece of equipment, he made a slip-up worthy of Tim “The Tool Man” Taylor. While poking around the machine, Bugorski stuck his head inside the accelerator and straight into the path of a proton beam.
Made out of hydrogen atoms without electrons, proton beams are often used to obliterate cancer cells, but only in carefully controlled doses—just over five grays (“grays” measure absorbed doses of ionizing radiation) will normally turn humans into irradiated toast. When the beam zapped Bugorski, it measured about 2,000 grays. When it exited near the left side of his nose, it blasted out at 3,000.
As it coursed through his skull, the proton beam burned a hole through Bugorski’s brain. While it was painless, he said he was blinded by a flash “brighter than a thousand suns.” After staggering away from the machine, the left side of his face swelled to enormous proportions. Later, the skin near the entry and exit wounds peeled away, and Bugorski lost hearing in his left ear. However, this Soviet survived his mind-blowing experience, perhaps because the proton beam was moving at nearly the speed of light.
Despite his good luck, Bugorski eventually lost every nerve in the left side of his face, becoming partially paralyzed. The proton beam also damaged Bugorski’s mental capabilities, though not as badly as you might expect. Despite his handicap, Bugorski earned a PhD and is still alive today, proving that it takes a lot more than a proton beam to kill a Russian.

Friday, 4 April 2014

Mars on April 8th!

On April 8, 2014, our planet Earth in its orbit passes in between the sun and the red planet Mars. Because Mars is opposite the sun in our sky at this juncture, astronomers say that Mars is at opposition. Thus, Mars rises in the east around sunset, climbs highest in the sky around midnight and sets in the west around sunrise. For much of April 2014, you can watch this brilliant world shine from dusk till dawn.
At or near opposition, Earth comes closest to Mars for the year, and Mars, in turn, shines most brilliantly in our sky. Mars’ disk not only covers more area of sky around opposition time, but Mars’ surface reflects the light of the sun most directly back to Earth, making Mars all the brighter. Quite literally, this is Mars’ day in the sun. Take advantage, for Mars won’t be returning to opposition again until May 22, 2016.
Mars ranks as the second-brightest planet in the April 2014 evening sky, after the giant planet Jupiter. Mars and the star Sirius exhibit about the same brightness, but it should be fairly easy to distinguish Mars from Sirius – or from Jupiter.

Thursday, 3 April 2014

Einsten's brain journey

After the genius Einstein died, he didn't want researchers going around his brain for analysing it etc.
But Thomas Harvey didn't care. At peril to his job, he went and clamied that he had permission to take the brain during the autopsy. However Harvey was not a neuroscientist. Next, when hospital officials asked him to give the brain back he refused. He next drove to Philadelphia where he found a technician to cut Einstein's brain into 200 pieces. Over the next 40 years these cubes ended up in all weird places. He stored them in jars at the basement of his house and it nearly got destroyed by his wife! When he moved to Kansas he kept them in a box under the beer cooler. Once Harvey, by mistake left it in Einstein's granddaughter's house! She wasn't too pleased with this. Harvey tried to mail pieces of the brain to scientists but either they they didn't study it or the very few of them who showed interest cranked out studies that were inconclusive, derided or discredited. Dissapointed Harvey returned the brain to the hospital. He died in 2007. 

Tank Tag

At its core, Tank Tag seems like some good, clean fun, and for the guests of Action Park, it probably was. But for the workers, it was literally the worst station in the park to be posted.
Think of the ride like most bumper cars, with riders in a relatively small fenced in area, but the bumper cars are tanks, and the tanks are armed with tennis ball cannons. The perimeter of the enclosure was lined with mounted tennis ball cannons that other park visitors could pay money to fire at the tanks.
Every now and then, one of the tanks would stall out, requiring one of the workers to run out and start it back up. Despite countless signs posted to dissuade this very thing, the park employees (who were totally unarmed and unprotected) would suddenly become everyone’s target and get pelted with tennis balls. Talk about a stressful work environment.
Sources: www.listverse.com

Wednesday, 2 April 2014

Announcement

After a lot of thinking I came to a conclusion. I've got to stop this blog. Its been a long time- a month. Happy that its got about 350 hits. But that's it! I'm stopping this.









Happy Belated April fools day




















hope you fell for that!

Tuesday, 1 April 2014

April Fools Day with Google!

Google is known for their April fools pranks. Last year I actually fell for google nose but no the Youtube retiring rubbish. So here the list for this year

1. Google Magic Hand
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0u1zoaJYAmw

2. Google maps pokemon challenge.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0u1zoaJYAmw

3. Gmail Shelfie
Loved this one. Made my old dp(mcfc logo) my background!














4. Emoji translation in Chrome for Android and IOS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3NXNnoGr3Y

5. Auto Awsome Photobomb
Makes David Hasselhoff photobomb your picture!

6. Top planets and moons in Adsense

7. Official Cat Keyboard

8. Adbirds!
adbirts Roundup: All of Googles jokes for April Fools Day 2014