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2022-01-28 11:00:27 What are volatile organic compounds (VOCs)?

Volatile organic compounds or VOCs are chemicals that are lighter than air at room temperature and are responsible for the characteristic smells of things like paint thinner and perfumes.

VOCs come from lots of human-made materials such as paints, petroleum fuels and pharmaceuticals, as well as natural sources.

If produced mostly by plants, animals, and microorganisms, they are called biogenic volatile organic compounds (BVOCs) and play an important role in the chemical processes that occur in the atmosphere.

About 10% of VOCs in the environment are human-made, and many of them, for instance benzene or perchloroethylene, can cause health problems, especially if a person is exposed to high levels for a long period of time.

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2022-01-28 05:30:00 What is normal blood sugar?

Normal blood sugar levels vary from person to person, but a normal range for fasting blood sugar (the amount of glucose in your blood at least eight hours after a meal) is between 70 and 100 milligrams per deciliter (mg/DL), according to the World Health Organization.

Recent studies showed that most people averaged around 82 mg/DL during the night and around 93 mg/DL during the day, and spiked to a maximum of 132 mg/DL an hour after a meal.

Blood sugar, or glucose, is a form of sugar that serves as the body's main source of energy.
We obtain glucose from the food we eat, predominantly carbohydrate-rich foods such as potatoes, rice and bread.
The absorption and storage of glucose is regulated constantly by complex processes that take place in our digestive systems.

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2022-01-27 11:05:54 Does every star have planets?

The answer of astronomers is “no”, but they add that it is a question of whether a planet was detected near a star of not.

Since 1992 when astronomers discovered the first planet outside the solar system, telescopes have spotted thousands of so-called exoplanets orbiting different stars.

Scientists now know that some stars — like the sun, as well as red dwarf stars many light-years away — are home to more than half a dozen planets, while others have none.

But what makes one star host so many planets while others fly solo?

Scientists think it may depend on the way the star was formed.

A ring of dust particles that usually surrounds young stars when they are shaping can eventually form planets.

But that model is not always the case.

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2022-01-25 16:10:29 Does the size of an image matter for remembering it?

In their recent study scientists say yes.

Across experiments where participants viewed images freely without the task of memorising them, larger images were remembered about 1.5 times better than smaller ones, and the effect was proportional to the image size.

It can be explained by the fact that bigger images require more visual system processing resources. That leads to stronger registration into memory than that of smaller images processed by fewer brain resources.

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2022-01-23 15:34:02 Can dogs understand that humans are speaking different languages?

To answer this question scientists scanned the brain of dogs while they were listening to audio records first in a language of their master and then in a “foreign” language.

It was found that one of the brain regions — the secondary auditory cortex — showed different neurological responses to the language that dogs were used to, and to the one, that they hadn’t heard before.

Moreover, the older the dog in the experiment was, the better they were able to distinguish between the two languages.

The research also revealed that dogs react differently to normal speech and to non-speech, that is human speech sounds that made no sense.

Scientists are now trying to establish whether this ability is dogs’ specialty, or it is a common occurrence among non-human species.

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2022-01-22 12:39:58 What were the most drinking nations in 2021?

Evaluating how much alcohol was consumed by different nations in 2021, experts asked respondents from different countries 3 questions.

In terms of frequency of drinking, French people appeared to be the leaders, consuming alcohol on average 132 days a year. New Zealand, whose citizens drink 120 times yearly, is in the second place, and the Netherlands came third with 112 times, followed by Hungary (109) and the UK (107).

The next question was about “feeling drunk”. Here, Australians took the lead, getting drunk almost 27 times a year. Denmark and Finland share the second place with 23,8 times annually. A bit less often in 2021 got hammered the inhabitants of the US and the UK.

In the category of “feeling regret” the survey revealed new leaders. People from Ireland (28,4 times) and Poland (28,3) felt the most regret after drinking alcohol. 25-28 annual regrets were recorded in New Zealand, Romania, Spain, Italy, Canada and Hungary.

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2022-01-20 11:00:32 What are the earliest human-made hybrid-animals?

Cuneiform tablets and seals of Mesopotamia dating back to the late third millennium B.C. document intentional breeding of highly valued equids called “kungas” for use in diplomacy, ceremony, and warfare.

Their precise zoological classification, however, has never been conclusively determined.

But in the early 2000s from a royal burial complex dating back to 2600 B.C. at Umm el-Marra in northern Syria scientists excavated dozens of equine skeletons.

The animals, whose physical features didn’t match any known equine species, appear to be these “kungas”.

After sequencing the genomes of one of these ~4500-year-old equids, the researchers concluded that they were hybrids between female domestic donkeys and male hemippes (Syrian wild ass).

This discovery makes “kungas” the oldest evidence of humans creating hybrid animals.

But as this mystery was solved after the last hemippe perished, it’s impossible to make "kungas" again.

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2022-01-20 05:30:00 What are the longest words in English?

“Methionylthreonylthreonylglutaminylarginyl...isoleucine”, the chemical name of “titin” (also known as “connectin”) is the largest known protein and is considered to be the longest word in English. It has 189,819 letters.

According the Oxford English Dictionary, the longest word is “pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanokoniosis” at 45 letters long. It is a lung disease caused by the inhalation of silica or quartz dust.

Among other longest words one can find a 34 letters long “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious”, made famous by Mary Poppins.

The 21 letter word “incomprehensibilities” is known as the longest used in common language.

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2022-01-19 12:05:06 What is Africa’s “Great Green Wall”?

Africa’s “Great Green Wall” initiative is a proposed 8,000-kilometer line of trees meant to hold back the Sahara from expanding southward.

The project was launched in 2007 by the African Union, and aims to plant 100 million hectares of trees along the Sahel, the semiarid zone lining the desert’s southern edge, by 2030.

11 countries selected as intervention zones for the Great Green Wall are: Burkina Faso, Chad, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, and Sudan.

The project is now roughly 15 percent complete.

According to simulations made recently by scientists, the completed tree line could as much as double rainfall within the Sahel and would also decrease average summer temperatures throughout much of northern Africa and into the Mediterranean. At the same time the study found that temperatures in the hottest parts of the desert would become even hotter.

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2022-01-17 10:00:44 Why is Saudi Arabia importing camels from Australia?

Camel meat has always played a big part in the traditional diet in Saudi Arabia, where these animals are now mostly bred for racing.

The Saudis traditionally imported camels from North Africa, but various economic and political factors led them to look elsewhere.

Australia became the new commercial partner of the Saudis because today it has a population of 500,000 dromedary, one-humped camels.

Australia's camels were brought over from Northern India in the 19th century to cultivate its arid back country.

In the 20th century, when animals were largely replaced by machines, the entire population of 20,000 camels was let into the wild.

Since then the Australian dromedary have been successfully reproducing, and in some areas they have even become a nuisance.

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