Wednesday, 8 October 2014
The Amazing Horned Sungem
This beautiful remarkable hummingbird
is mostly found in South America well worthy of such an evocative name and only
the males have the iridescent horns. The horned Sungem or Heliactin bilophus is
the only species, of the genus Heliactin. The experts name bilophus is
sometimes considered a nomen oblitum, which, if accepted results in Heliactin
cornutus being the correct name for this species. A wing-beat is one complete
up and down movement that means the horned Sungem moves its wing muscles at a
rate of more than 10,000 TPM (Times Per Minute).
It selects fairly dry open or
semi open habitats, like savanna and Cerrado. This bird normally avoids dense
humid forest. The Horned Sungem population trend appears to be growing, and
hence the species does not reach the thresholds for Vulnerable under the
population trend criterion and for some reasons the species is evaluated as
Least Concern. The global population size has not been quantified, but this
species is described as “uncommon”.
The females are mainly green
above with clean white under-parts, and long central rectrices, however males birds
are spectacularly adorned with a dark blue crown, black throat and upper
breast, and little red, blue and gold “horns”, as well as also possessing
elongated central tail feathers. In terms of its spreading, the species is
found really locally north of the Amazon, in southern Suriname, as well as in
the savannas of Amapa, in far northeast Brazil, therefore much more incessantly
across the Brazilian interior to eastern Bolivia.
It favors native Cerrado
vegetation and is found to at least 1000 m in elevation. Like numerous
hummingbirds, the Horned Sungem appears to make local movements, at least in
parts of its range, in response to flowering events, though somewhere else the
species populations are seemingly more sedentary.
Labels:
Birds
Sunday, 5 October 2014
Saturday, 27 September 2014
Water is The Vital Source to Increase the Life on Earth & Other Planets
Everyone knows the importance of water on planet earth; no
one can survive without water. So water was a vital source to increase the life
on Earth and also imperative to evaluating the possibility of life on other
planets. However to identifying the original source of Earth’s water is important
to understanding how life-fostering environments come into being and how unlikely
they’re to be found elsewhere. New work from a team, including Carnegie’s Conel
Alexander, observed that plenty of our solar system’s water perhaps originated
as ices that formed in interstellar space. However; water is found throughout
our solar system, not just on Earth, but on icy comets and moons and in the
shadowed basins of Mercury. Thus water has been found included in mineral
samples from meteorites, the Moon, and Mars.
Comets and asteroids in specific, being basic objects, deliver
a natural “time capsule” of the conditions during the early days of our solar
system. Their ices can tell experts regarding the ice that encircled the Sun
after its birth, the origin of which was an unanswered question until now. In
its youth, the Sun was surrounded by a proto-planetary disk, the so-called
solar nebula, from which the planets were born. But it was unclear to scientists
whether the ice in this disk created from the Sun’s own parental interstellar
molecular cloud, from which it was created, or whether this interstellar water
had been damaged and was recreated by the chemical reactions taking place in
the solar nebula.
Labels:
Science
A Graduate Student Created First Man Made Bilological Leaf Which Can Produce Oxygen Just Like a Plant
A graduate student Julian Melchiorri has
created a biological leaf. That has the ability to absorb water and carbon
dioxide to produce oxygen just like a plant. Julian did this by suspending
chloroplasts in a mixture made out of silk protein. He believed it can be used
for several things but the most incredible one is the thought that it could be
used for long distance space travel. Plants do not grow in space, but this
synthetic material can be used to produce oxygen in a hostile environment. The
silk Leaf is composed of chloroplasts suspended in silk proteins, for
the express purpose of long-distance space travel.
He says; plants don't grow in zero gravity.
Therefore; "NASA is researching diverse ways to create oxygen for
long-distance space journeys to let us live in space. This material could allow
us to explore space much further than we can now. This incredible finished
product functions like a plant in the sense that it is biological and produces
oxygen, but its synthetic packaging makes it more likely to be able to survive
in extraterrestrial environments.
Interestingly just like a real plant, it only requires light
and water to survive and photosynthesize:
Because Silk Leaf is the first man-made biological leaf and it is very
light, low energy-consuming, entirely biological. Therefore; it is really very
convenient and can extend even further, as making lamps out of Silk Leaf kills
two birds with one stone. My idea was to increase the efficiency of nature in a
man-made environment. I created some lighting out of this material, using the light
to illuminate the house but at the same time to create oxygen for us.
Labels:
Science
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