Happy Deepawali

Wishing You All a Very Happy and Prosperous Deepawali.

Paper aeroplane world record

A former American footballer has set a new world record for throwing a paper aeroplane.

Joe Ayoob threw the plane 69 metres in an aircraft hanger in California, shattering the old record by 6 metres.

The 27-year-old said he grew up making paper airplanes and his reaction after the record showed just how excited he was.

The plane was designed by TV producer John Collins, who spent years studying origami to create the perfect paper aeroplane.

(Source)

Hello Kitty themed hospital

A Hello Kitty-themed maternity and pediatric hospital has opened in Yuanlin, Taiwan.

It is hoped that the white cat will ease the pain and fear associated with childbirth and being admitted into hospital. It will help the mothers to recover faster.

Hello Kitty is one of the most recognizable cartoons in the world.

(Source)

Happy New Year!

World's most accurate clock

An atomic clock at the UK's National Physical Laboratory (NPL) has the best long-term accuracy of any in the world, research has found.

The clock would lose or gain less than a second in some 138 million years.

The UK is among the handful of nations providing a "standard second" that keeps the world on time.

However, the international race for higher accuracy is always on, meaning the record may not stand for long.

The NPL's CsF2 clock is a "caesium fountain" atomic clock, in which the "ticking" is provided by the measurement of the energy required to change a property of caesium atoms known as "spin".

By international definition, it is the electromagnetic waves required to accomplish this "spin flip" that are measured; when 9,192,631,770 peaks and troughs of these waves go by, one standard second passes.

Complete news.

Translate

The Malay word for water is ‘air’!

The Indonesian word for water is ‘air’!

Translate

Bald eagle or jet propelled

This bald eagle may look like it is jet propelled - but it's actually been photographed as an airplane flies in the distance. In a once-in-a-lifetime shot, the engines' exhaust trails appear as if they are billowing out of the bird's talons as it soars through the air. The extraordinary moment was captured on camera by Pam Mullins close to her home in Prince Rupert, British Columbia, Canada.

More pictures.

Top ten myths about the brain

1. We use only 10 percent of our brains.
This one sounds so compelling—a precise number, repeated in pop culture for a century, implying that we have huge reserves of untapped mental powers. But the supposedly unused 90 percent of the brain is not some vestigial appendix. Brains are expensive—it takes a lot of energy to build brains during fetal and childhood development and maintain them in adults. Evolutionarily, it would make no sense to carry around surplus brain tissue. Experiments using PET or fMRI scans show that much of the brain is engaged even during simple tasks, and injury to even a small bit of brain can have profound consequences for language, sensory perception, movement or emotion.

True, we have some brain reserves. Autopsy studies show that many people have physical signs of Alzheimer’s disease (such as amyloid plaques among neurons) in their brains even though they were not impaired. Apparently we can lose some brain tissue and still function pretty well. And people score higher on IQ tests if they’re highly motivated, suggesting that we don’t always exercise our minds at 100 percent capacity.

2. “Flashbulb memories” are precise, detailed and persistent.
We all have memories that feel as vivid and accurate as a snapshot, usually of some shocking, dramatic event—the assassination of President Kennedy, the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger, the attacks of September 11, 2001. People remember exactly where they were, what they were doing, who they were with, what they saw or heard. But several clever experiments have tested people’s memory immediately after a tragedy and again several months or years later. The test subjects tend to be confident that their memories are accurate and say the flashbulb memories are more vivid than other memories. Vivid they may be, but the memories decay over time just as other memories do. People forget important details and add incorrect ones, with no awareness that they’re recreating a muddled scene in their minds rather than calling up a perfect, photographic reproduction.

Read more.

Interesting Sweat Facts

Your body has 4 million sweat glands.  Most of your sweat glands are on your hands, feet, face and in your armpits. There are no sweat glands on the nails, ears and lips.  Women have more sweat glands than men, but men typically have more active sweat glands.

Sweat or perspiration consists of water, salt, potassium and waste materials. Sweating is the excretion of moisture that is produced in special organs in the skin, i.e. the sweat glands.

You do not sweat continuously, but a little every now and then. Small quantities of sweat are excreted about six or seven times a minute. A hard working adult can sweat up to around 4 gallons (15 litres) a day. This varies depending on the temperature and humidity of the environment, but even in normal circumstances, the average person sweats up to 1.5 gallons (6 litres) per day. Half a pint (about 240 mL) of that usually comes from the feet!

Just 1% of all perspiration moisture originates from your armpits. Because this part of the body is so badly ventilated, it evaporates less quickly than in other parts of your body. And that's why it seems as though you sweat most under your armpits. You sweat more under your arms when you're standing up than if you're sitting or lying down.

Those with the condition hyperhidrosis sweat up to five times as much as those with normal sweat glands. People with anhydrosis, however, don't sweat enough to cool their bodies. This condition can be fatal if the body gets overheated.

The smell of sweat is influenced by what you eat. For example, garlic and spices give off strong odours. Clean and fresh natural clothing (e.g. cotton) prevents unpleasant odours. Smell of ammonia is caused by physical activity like sports. People who regularly engage in sports have bigger and more active sweat glands. If you’re in poor physical shape, you’ll start sweating once your body temperature reaches 37.2 degrees. If you’re in good shape, you won’t sweat until your body temperature reaches 37.7 degrees.

Pigs do not sweat. That's why they coat themselves in mud to stay cool. Dogs and cats do sweat through the pads on their feet. A rabbit's sweat glands are around its lips.

Pumice : The Floating Rock

Pumice is a type of extrusive volcanic rock, produced when lava with a very high content of water and gases (together these are called volatiles) is extruded (or thrown out of) a volcano. As the gas bubbles escape from the lava, it becomes frothy. When this lava cools and hardens, the result is a very light rock material filled with tiny bubbles of gas. Pumice is the only rock that floats on water, although it will eventually become waterlogged and sink.



It is usually light-colored, indicating that it is a volcanic rock high in silica content and low in iron and magnesium, a type usually classed as rhyolite.  If the lava hardens quickly with few volatiles, the resulting rock is volcanic glass, or obsidian. Pumice and obsidian are often found together.

More aboutPumice.

Deepest part of the ocean

Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench is the deepest point in Earth's oceans. The bottom there is 10,924 meters (35,840 feet) below sea level. If Mount Everest, the highest mountain on Earth, were placed at this location it would be covered by over one mile of water. The Challenger Deep is named after the British survey ship Challenger II, which discovered this deepest location in 1951.

The Mariana Trench is located at a convergent plate boundary. Here two converging lithospheric plates collide with one another. At this collision point, one of the plates descends into the mantle. At the line of contact between the two plates the downward flexure forms a trough known as an ocean trench.

(Source)

New record for tornadoes in US

Preliminary data from the National Weather Service show that more than 600 twisters have touched down in April, smashing the existing record of 267 set in 1974.

The outbreak — the deadliest in nearly 40 years — that devastated large swaths of north central Alabama and other southern states appears to follow a historic pattern. Over the decades, the annual number of tornadoes occurring in the U.S. has climbed — from a low of 201 in 1950 to a record high of 1,817 in 2004. Last year's total was 1,525.

Read more.

Prohibition of death

Prohibition of death is a political social phenomenon and taboo in which a law is passed stating that it is illegal to die, usually specifically in a certain political division or in a specific building.

The earliest case of prohibition of death occurred in the 5th century BC, in the Greek island of Delos; dying on Delos was prohibited on religious grounds.

Today, in most cases, the phenomenon has occurred as a satirical protest to the posture of the governments of not approving the expansion of municipal cemeteries with no more space for additional corpses. In Spain death has been prohibited in the Andalucian town of Lanjarón. In France there have been several settlements which have had death prohibited. Prohibition of death has occurred in three settlements in southern France: Cugnaux, Le Lavandou, and Sarpourenx. Whilst in a town—Biritiba Mirim—in Brazil, an attempt to prohibit is currently taking place.

More on this interesting prohibition.

Pedestrian traffic lights in Nimwegen Holland show couple having sex

Motorists crashed into each other when a set of pedestrian lights showed a couple having sex whenever they turned to green.

Red-faced traffic bosses are investigating who played the prank on the lights in Nimwegen, Holland, which led to a number of rear-end shunts.

People kept pressing the button to see the couple having sex and of course every time they did, the traffic had to stop suddenly.

Transport officials are investigating how computer hackers managed to get into the town's traffic light system to manipulate the image, which showed the couple having sex from behind.

(Source)

A car number plate which means vagina

A woman in New South Wales, Australia is being relentlessly pursued by state road authorities because her personalized number plate means "vagina" in another language,

The Roads and Traffic Authority (RTA) says the number plate bearing the name - "Kiki" - is the same word used for vagina in the Filipino language, Tagalog, and wanted them removed.

Kristen Perry, a lawyer from Newcastle, said she was informed of her "offensive" nickname after first receiving her personalized plates five years ago as a gift from her husband. Perry said that Kiki has been her nickname since childhood.

The RTA received a complaint from a Tagalog speaker who found the number plate offensive. The Tagalog people are an ethnic group in the Philippines, making up 28.1 per cent of the Filipino population.

Complete news.

World’s Longest Underground River

The waterway twists and turns for 95 miles (153 kilometres) through the region's limestone below Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula. A pair of European divers spent four years exploring these caverns and discovered that the second and third largest Mexican cave systems actually link up.

Complete news.

Notable Lakes

Lake Michigan-Huron is the largest lake by surface area: 117,350 km². It also has the longest lake coastline in the world: 8,790 km. If Huron and Michigan are considered two lakes, Lake Superior is the largest lake, with 82,414 km². However, Huron still has the longest coastline at 6,157 km (2980 km excluding the coastlines of its many inner islands). The world's smallest geological ocean, the Caspian Sea, at 394,299 km² has a surface area greater than the six largest freshwater lakes combined, and it's frequently cited as the world's largest lake.

• The deepest lake is Lake Baikal in Siberia, with a bottom at 1,637 m. Its mean depth is also the greatest in the world (749 m).

It is also the world's largest lake by volume (23,600 km³, though smaller than the Caspian Sea at 78,200 km³), and the second longest (about 630 km from tip to tip).

• The longest lake is Lake Tanganyika, with a length of about 660 km (measured along the lake's center line).

It is also the second largest by volume and second deepest (1,470 m) in the world, after lake Baikal.

• The world's oldest lake is Lake Baikal, followed by Lake Tanganyika (Tanzania).

• The world's highest lake is the crater lake of Ojos del Salado, at 6,390 metres (20,965 ft). The Lhagba Pool in Tibet at 6,368 m (20,892 ft) comes second.

• The highest large freshwater lake in the world is Lake Manasarovar in Tibet Autonomous Region of China.

• The world's highest commercially navigable lake is Lake Titicaca in Peru and Bolivia at 3,812 m (12,507 ft). It is also the largest freshwater (and second largest overall) lake in South America.

• The world's lowest lake is the Dead Sea, bordering Israel and Jordan at 418 m (1,371 ft) below sea level. It is also one of the lakes with highest salt concentration.

Find out more about lakes.

Welcome to New Avtar of Cre8tivFacts

Welcome to new avtar of Cre8tivFacts. I have taken out time to streamline the website. The focus was to make it simple and easy to navigate. I sincerly hope you like the update and enjoy reading the blog. Your feedback and comments are highly appreciated.

Unrecognizable Earth by 2050

The earth could become "unrecognizable" by 2050, if a growing affluent global population keeps consuming more resources, researchers warned at a major US science conference.

"By 2050 we will not have a planet left that is recognizable" if the global population continues to increase, said Jason Clay of the World Wildlife Fund Sunday at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

The United Nations has predicted the global population will reach seven billion this year, and climb to nine billion by 2050, "with almost all of the growth occurring in poor countries, particularly Africa and South Asia," said John Bongaarts of the non-profit Population Council.

Read more.

Egyptian Man Names His Daughter Facebook

An Egyptian father has reportedly named his newborn daughter "Facebook" to honour the social media site's role in Egypt's revolution.

A young man in his twenties wanted to express his gratitude about the victories the youth of 25th of January have achieved and chose to express it in the form of naming his firstborn girl "Facebook" Jamal Ibrahim (his name.) The girl's family, friends, and neighbours in the Ibrahimya region gathered around the new born to express their continuing support for the revolution that started on Facebook. "Facebook" received many gifts from the youth who were overjoyed by her arrival and the new name. A name (Facebook) that shocked the entire world."

Complete news.