Posts

Showing posts from September, 2016

A world without war.

Image
Ever thought of how it would be without war, a world without clash of interest, a world filled with individuals, groups and states that never growled at each other?. Conflicts are essential part of human existence, but arguably not war, which is the apex of conflicts. Many theorists have tried to conjure an exact definition for this state of being. War isn't only a thing of physical occurrence as it is also a state of mind, this constitute a major problem as they try to come up with a true definition of the term 'war'. The following are the different views on what war is:   🎤War is a state of armed conflict between societies. It is generally characterized by extreme aggression, destruction, and mortality, using regular or irregular military forces. An absence of war is usually called "peace". Warfare refers to the common activities and characteristics of types of war, or of wars in general. Total war is warfare that is not restricted to purely legitimate mili

GIRAFFES: How do they mate?

Image
With their treelike height, thin legs and awkward locomotion, giraffes are the epitome of the word "gangly." But do their sexual behaviors involve smoother actions than one would assume from their appearance? Like people, giraffes mate year-round, though there's some indication that breeding times correspond with periods of high food availability. The tall ungulates live in a so-called fission-fusion society, in which the size and the composition of herds continually shift — the social mammals use this ever-changing society to find mates. "The best way to describe it: Giraffes live in a permanent cocktail party," said Fred Bercovitch, a biologist at Kyoto University in Japan who has studied the reproductive and social behaviors of giraffes. "At a cocktail party, you'll see there are some people who are really social butterflies and spend a little bit of time mingling with a lot of people, and others who spend more time with fewer people." And th

LEPROSY: facts you don't know.

Image
Leprosy may conjure up images of lost limbs and isolated colonies, but the disease is actually much less extreme and completely treatable today. The modern name for leprosy is Hansen's disease; it's caused by the bacterium Mycobacterium leprae. The disease causes skin lesions and can permanently damage a person's nerves; however, it is a misconception that it causes people's body parts to fall off. Here are six strange facts about leprosy. 1. Leprosy cases still occur, even in the U.S. Although leprosy is often thought of as an ancient disease, people can still become infected with the bacteria that cause the disease. Indeed, a case of leprosy was reported in a California schoolchild in September 2016, and several cases pop up each year across the southern United States, including in Florida, Louisiana and Texas. In 2014, there were 175 cases of leprosy reported in the U.S., according to the National Hansen's Disease Program (NHDP). Typically, between 150 and

Marijuana Use May Raise Risk of Psychosis Relapse

Image
Smoking marijuana may increase the risk of experiencing an episode of psychosis, or a break with reality, in people who have already had such an episode, according to a new study. In the study, researchers looked at about 200 patients in England who had been diagnosed with psychosis at least two years before the start of the study, and asked them about their marijuana use. The researchers found that those who used marijuana during the two years after they experienced their first episode of psychosis had a 13 percent higher chance of experiencing another episode of psychosis during this time, compared with people who did not smoke marijuana during the first two years after being diagnosed. However, it is important to put these estimates into context, said study co-author Sagnik Bhattacharyya, a researcher who studies psychosis at King's College London. "Patients with psychosis already have a high risk of relapse even if they do not use cannabis," he said. The estimates p

SENSE OF PROPRIOCEPTION: 'SIXTH SENSE"?

Image
Taste, smell, vision, hearing, touch and… awareness of one's body in space? Yes, humans have at least six senses, and a new study suggests that the last one, called proprioception, may have a genetic basis. Proprioception refers to how your brain understands where your body is in space. When police ask a drunken person to touch their finger to the tip of their nose, they're testing the sense of proprioception. Previous research in mice has suggested that a gene called PIEZO2 may play a role in this sense, according to the study. The PIEZO2 gene tells cells to produce "mechanosensitive" proteins. Mechanosensation is the ability to sense force, for example, being able to feel when someone presses down on your skin. It also plays a role in proprioception, according to the study. To understand the gene's effect in humans, the researchers at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) identified two young patients who had very rare mutations in the gene, according to th

Sober People Make Drinkers Feel Drunker

Image
Many people have seen a movie in which a drunk character accuses everyone else of being drunk too. But a new study from the United Kingdom suggests that in real life, being surrounded by sober individuals may actually have a, well, sobering effect. The researchers found that people who were surrounded by other intoxicated individuals were more likely underestimate their own level of drunkenness. But when more sober people were present, drinkers tended to overestimate their own drunkenness, the study found. In other words, if that drunk person in the movie was actually surrounded by sober people, he or she would be more likely to realize it — and to think of himself as drunker than them. [7 Ways Alcohol Affects your Health] "Researchers have historically worked under the assumption that those who drink [the] most alcohol incorrectly 'imagine' everyone else also drinks to excess," Simon Moore, a professor of public health research at Cardiff University in Wales and t

These back exercises will help in preventing Injury and Reducing Pain

Image
A healthy back is important not just for exercising and playing sports but also for performing everyday tasks, from tying your shoes to cleaning the house. Certain exercises can help prevent back injuries, but it's important to know which ones will help you and which ones could actually lead to injury. There is a lot of information out there on back exercises, and some tips are more useful and accurate than others. At Live Science, we've done the research, looking at studies and talking to top experts. So, when it comes to figuring out the best ways to exercise your back, we've got your… well, you know. Having a "healthy back" means more than just having strong back muscles; the muscles need to be able to work together properly to stabilize your spine, said Stuart M. McGill, director of the Spine Biomechanics Laboratory at the University of Waterloo in Ontario and author of "Back Mechanic" (Backfitpro Inc, 2015) "It's not always about strengt

ZOO WATCH: BAT'S SIGHT

Image
Some fruit bats can see UV light. Here, a dwarf epauletted fruit bat (Micropteropus pussilus) Credit: Ivan Kuzmin / Shutterstock.com Bats hunt in the dark using echolocation, meaning they use echoes of self-produced sounds bouncing off objects to help them navigate. But that doesn't mean that bats can't see. Contrary to myth, bats aren't blind. In fact, research shows that depending on the circumstances, bats sometimes prefer using eyesight to sound when hunting. And many fruit bats, which drink nectar rather than hunt insects, don't echolocate at all. These species have particularly sharp vision, and some can even see ultraviolet light. There are at least 1,300 species of bat, according to the advocacy group Bat Conservation International, and those species are a diverse bunch: Some feed off flowers; others eat insects; and three (all Latin American species) feed off blood. So different species have evolved different visual abilities. Researchers reporting in a 20

ZOO WATCH:Lizards

Image
Lizards are reptiles. There are over 4,675 species of lizard, according to the San Diego Zoo. Others sources say there are about 6,000 species. Included in this large number are lizards with four legs, some with two legs and some with no legs at all; lizards with frills, horns or wings; and lizards in nearly every color imaginable. SIZE Lizards generally have small heads, long bodies and long tails. With so many species of lizard, it's understandable that they come in a wide variety of sizes. The largest lizard is the Komodo dragon. It grows up to 10 feet (3 meters) long and weighs up to 176 lbs. (80 kilograms). The smallest lizard is the tiny dwarf gecko, which grows to 0.6 inches (1.6 centimeters) long and weighs .0042 ounces (120 milligrams). HABITAT Lizards are found all over the world in almost every type of terrain. Some live in trees; others prefer to live in vegetation on the ground, while others live in deserts among rocks. For example, the Texas horned lizard is found

Middle-aged parents are now more likely to smoke weed than their teenaged kids.

Image
  Smoking weed is often seen as an indulgence reserved for the young and the reckless: kids get high, in the popular imagination, but by and large their parents don't. But new federal data show a stunning reversal of that age-old stereotype. Middle-aged Americans are now slightly more likely to use marijuana than their teenage children. The research, released this week by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, found that only 7.4 percent of Americans aged 12 to 17 years old smoked marijuana regularly in 2014, a 10 percent decline since 2002. But 8 percent of 35 to 44 year olds used marijuana regularly in 2014, surpassing use among teens for the first time since at least 2002. (Survey data prior to that year aren't directly comparable, as the methodology changed.) And it's not just middle-aged folks who are indulging more often. Since 2002, regular marijuana use among Americans age 45 to 54 has jumped by nearly 50 percent. Among those ages 55 to 64, it's jump

Ever thought of how it would be without Google?

Image
  Today (sept4)  marks the 17th year we've been enjoying First Class services from Google, let's take a look at what it would have been without them.     Founded in September 4 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin in Menlo Park, California, USA, with the brand name it still bears today (Google). The internet and computer software giant already took hostage of the world's internet services, providing an awesome internet weather and has propelled it to another level, making ground breaking changes to the computing world.   Known to most as just a "search engine" as it could present a list of articles written on any topic to anyone who tries to surf for such information, Google is a technology company specializing in Internet-related services and products that include online advertising technologies, search, cloud computing , and software and not only a search engine Google's mission statement from the outset was "to organize the world's information an

Postpartum depression: chief cause of lasting child birth pain.

Image
Women who continue to experience pain from childbirth one month after having a baby may be more likely to develop postpartum depression, a new study suggests. Specifically, researchers found that women in Singapore who had pain that lasted longer than four weeks after they gave birth had higher scores on tests that measured the women's risk for postpartum depression. This was compared with both new mothers who had no pain following delivery and with women whose pain resolved by four weeks. The findings suggest that persistent childbirth pain in women is linked with a greater risk for postpartum depression, said Dr. Ban Leong Sng, the senior author of the study and the deputy head of the department of women's anesthesia at KK Women's and Children's Hospital in Singapore. The exact mechanisms to explain the link between persistent childbirth pain and postpartum depression are still being investigated, Sng said. However, possible explanations could include genetics, hor

Why tall people are better in judging how far things are.

Image
Tall people are better than short people at gauging how far away they are from objects in the middle distance, a new study reports. The researchers say the results are evidence for the idea that people's spatial perception abilities are influenced by their height, and develop over time. The human brain depends on a certain model to provide "the best guess of where objects could be located," said study co-author Teng Leng Ooi, a professor of optometry at The Ohio State University. That model, or "intrinsic bias," is typically revealed when people have very little information about where an object is located, e.g., literally in the dark, and must make an educated guess. People usually underestimate the distance between themselves and an object, and as objects get farther away, the effect gets larger. "Our previous studies have shown that the intrinsic bias is an imaginary curve that extends from one's feet and slants upward to the far distance," O