Science and Tech – Page 45 – Awesci

This Animal Makes its Own Food Like Plants do

By Anupum Pant

We have seen a Game of Thrones themed slug in the past. But today, we look at something that will completely blow your mind off. After giving this little article a read, you’ll be confused and wouldn’t know what to call this slug – a plant, or an animal.

Background

A just born Elysia chlorotica – a kind of sea slug – feeds on algae for the first few days of its life. When it eats algae, what it really does is, stores the chloroplast in its gut. By this way, it able to manufacture its own food later on. Just after those few days from birth, it can completely give up eating, and can survive on just solar energy, by using the stolen chloroplast – just like a plant does.

How is it a true hybrid?

Of course there are animals that eat plants, store chloroplast and use the solar energy in some way. But there is something in E. Chlorotica that sets it apart from animals like that.

E. Chlorotica is a true hybrid animal. Scientists have found that when it eats the algae, by some unknown process, it able to steal the genes from algae and can incorporate it in its own DNA. This gives it an ability to maintain the chloroplast cells by supplying them with the right proteins, and perform real photosynthesis in its own body. Without the gene theft, it wouldn’t have been possible for E. Chlorotica to live off solar energy for the whole life-time (around 1 year).

Photosynthesis in Humans?

The animal has baffled scientists. Before this, they hadn’t known that it was possible for DNA to jump from one kind of a specie to a completely different specie and impart a life-altering function.

No doubt, this opens up a whole lot of possibilities, but scientists say, photosynthesis still doesn’t seem to be possible among humans because unlike E. Chlorotica, our guts are designed to digest and completely destroy chloroplast.

[Source]

No One Knows Where This Water Goes

By Anupum Pant

Background

In the Judge Magney State Park, Minnesota, as the Brule river makes it way towards Lake Superior, something very unusual happens at the Devil’s Kettle Falls – The river splits into two streams, one of which moves away like a normal stream and joins the Lake Superior. But the other stream falls down several meters into a big dark hole. No one till date, has been able to find where the water falling into this hole ends up.

Although no one has been able to prove it, the current theory which holds to some extent, says that the water flows through underground passageways and makes its way to the Lake Superior.

What all has been tried?

Several gallons of dye to track the water stream has been poured into the hole. The dye once poured in has been never seen again. Besides that, so many kinds of objects have been thrown in there. Nothing ever comes out. Moreover, with every tourist, geologist or scientist throwing something in there, it has still not got clogged yet. So, it is the best place to get free ping-pong balls and other objects.
Some say that a car fell into the hole once and was never seen again. But those are probably just stories because the place isn’t big enough to accommodate a car.
Throwing in GPS tracking devices also don’t work because the stream takes them underground where they can’t be tracked by the satellites.
People can’t be dropped in because it is 240 meters deep and no one knows how far it keeps going. There is a lot of uncertainty to risk a human life.
Water-proof cameras can’t be tied to ropes and sent down because the impacts break them. Moreover, the video stream would be impossible to receive if it goes too far and several rock layers come in between.

More Mystery

But there is more. Unlike other parts of the world, where underground rivers are formed cutting through soft-rock deposits (e.g: limestone) underground, this part of Minnesota has no soft-rocks underground. So, even large underground caves can’t be used to explain the Devil’s Kettle.

Scientists have even dismissed a theory that says probably lava tubes have been formed inside. Geologists say that the kind of rock that is there inside, can’t form lava tubes.

What do you think is down there? Do you have any ideas to help figure it out?

Lucky Worms Survived The Space Shuttle Columbia Disaster

By Anupum Pant

February 1, 2003 was a sad day for science. Space shuttle Columbia, during re-entry, due to a broken piece of insulation, got completely disintegrated. With the shuttle, died all the 7 astronauts who were aboard. [Remembering Columbia]

Scientists had lost hope on all of the 80 experiments that were on board. Only several days later while sifting through the wreckage they found something interesting – at least not all was lost. A live group of lucky worms (roundworms) was successfully salvaged from the wreckage. Yes, odd, but true.

Why were there worms in the shuttle?

The space shuttle Columbia was a research flight and contained 80 experiments on board. The group of live worms, sealed in a metal container which was ensconced in a safe locker, was a part of one of those 80 experiments.

Although the particular gene experiment that had to be conducted with fresh-worms-from-space was lost because they had entered Earth several days back, the worms still proved useful for other science experiments.

From these worms scientists learned a great deal about what micro-gravity could do to animals – Like weakening of muscles and manifestation of diabetic symptoms. When in space, these are the similar things that happen to humans as well.

How did they not get killed?

Firstly, they were in a strong metal container that was nicely protected by a second layer – a reinforced locker meant to really protect things.

Since the shuttle was coming in at a speed more than 2 times the speed of sound, the locker must have hit the ground pretty hard, right? No, till the time it reached the surface, the drag slowed it down. So, the worms basically experienced just a harder-than-normal landing.

What are they doing now?

Well, as round worms don’t really live longer than 2 years usually, they must have died long back. But their descendants have been stored safely in a genetic center – lucky worms indeed. Some of these descendants were lucky enough to be sent to space during 2011 in the shuttle Endeavour.

Yes, Light Can Push Physical Objects

By Anupum Pant

Tim is a 71-year-old eccentric who has been collecting interesting toys for 50 years now. Today he has a collection of around 250,000 absurd toys in suitcases, labeled and stacked in a room from the floor to the ceiling. He shows them off in a Youtube channel regularly. I almost never miss any of his toys. Usually most the toys he displays amaze you, but do not blow off your mind. The last one did.

Before this, I had not known that light can push or move a physical object. So, I decided to investigate a bit.

The Extraordinary Toy

In his last video, he showed off a beautiful glass bulb mounted on a wooden stand, that he says has been made by some German company. The bulb has a very good vacuüm (not complete vacuüm, just enough to not create unnecessary drag for the vanes) and encloses a fan-like structure that starts rotating when a bright light is switched on near it. Some people call it the light mill – like the wind mill moves with the wind, this one moves when photons hit it. If give enough time, the mill can accelerate to really good speeds (at thousands of rounds per minute). Watch the video below. [Video]

Theories on how a radiometer really works

The device, a special kind of radiometer, was invented around 140 years back in the year 1873, by Victorian experimenter Sir William Crookes to measure the radiant energy of heat or light. It has four vanes mounted at the edge of four stiff wires to make a fan, each of which has a black side and a silvered side. All of this is enclosed in a bulb which is evacuated enough to not cause drag due to air. In complete vacuüm the vanes move in an opposite direction, but that experiment is really difficult to recreate!

When light is turned on, the fan moves in a way that makes it look as if light is pushing away the black colored side. The theory of photons pushing the black side was accepted initially. But soon a problem was seen with the theory. If light is absorbed at the blackened side and reflected at the silvered side, the fan should be moving in the opposite direction.
Then came in the other explanation which explained that the heated black side due to absorbed radiation rarefied the air near the black side and hence caused the gas to rush in and push that side. The greater the heat, the more this back side would get pushed and it would spin faster. Later even this theory was proved to be wrong. But, Britannica, till date decides to go with this explanation – to some extent this theory goes in the right direction, you will see why…
One more theory claimed that the heat evaporated the impurities on the black side, whose force made it spin.

How the radiometer really works?

The correct explanation was given by a prominent Anglo-Irish innovator, Osbourne Reynolds. He explained it by mentioning a porous plate, where the air inside the holes would flow from the colder sides to the warmer side (obviously) and make the vanes spin in the opposite direction. He called it “Thermal Transpiration” – makes sense and is easy to understand. But the vanes here are not porous. So…

He said that “Thermal Transpiration” in the vanes takes place at the edge of the vanes and not the faces. Think of edges as small pores, he said.

Due to a temperature gradient formed, the air starts moving along the surface from colder to the warmer side through the edges. The net pressure difference around the vane is created which pushes it in a direction that is away from warmer air and towards the colder air – makes sense for the apparatus.

This is the reason, if it is cooled, it moves in the opposite direction.

A Mathematical Guide to Optimize Pizza Buying

By Anupum Pant

The logical engineer in me has always paid a lot of attention to how well my money is being put to use, or if something I bought was well worth it. So, before buying anything, I usually love to add in a basic mathematical calculation that would ensure the best logical use of my money. I used to do the same when I was studying engineering and had come up with a handful of tricks, which enabled me to eat the best food, in best quantities at the lowest prices.

Optimized Pizza Buying

Till date, I had relied on calculations for individual joints to buy the pizza that gave me the best value for money (irrespective of what my stomach could fit). In other words, I had never used statistical methods, as I always went to only 2 or 3 pizza places and never felt a need to do it statistically.

So yesterday, while skimming through blogs on NPR, I came across a post by Quoctrun Bui, where he had calculated the best valued pizza size using statistical methods.

The final findings of his study based on 74,476 prices from 3,678 pizza places were condensed into a graph which depicted data as follows (here is the link to the article for an interactive version of the graph).

Conclusion

The above graph plots 74,476 data points to find the pizza size that gives you the best value for money. The y-axis plots price-per-square-inch – the lesser price-per-square-inch you pay, the better deal you score.

This basically means that buying the largest pizza gets the most value out of your money. As the size increases the value for money increases or the price you pay per-square-inch of pizza decreases. – Statistically speaking.

Adding value

I felt a need to add value to the study by finding how well ‘buying a large pizza’ to get the best value works in India. So, I selected a popular joint Dominos (where I go all the time) for the test. I dug out their menu (probably an old one) to see if buying the large pizza always works in India. Here is a record of price you pay per square inch at Dominos for various sizes and categories of pizzas. (Click the image to see a better version)

pizza buying guide dominos — I did not pay much attention. Please point if there is a mistake.

Conclusion (Dominos India)

No, always buying the large pizza clearly is not the best option at Dominos in India.
A small pizza is the best option (economically) if you are buying from the categories: Simply veg, Veg I or Simply Non-veg.
A large pizza is the best option (economically) if you are buying from the categories: Veg II, Non-Veg I or Non-Veg II
Never go for the small Non-veg II pizza. It is the worst choice you can make.
Never ever get a medium pizza from any category!

I’d love to see someone doing the same thing for other popular pizza joints. Do get back to me if you have done it. I’ll add it to the article as an update.

The Blue Blood of a Horseshoe crab is Precious

By Anupum Pant

Not-so-good Bunnies

Several years back large colonies of cute little rabbits were being maintained by pharmaceutical companies. These rabbits were used to find contamination in solutions that would be used to treat human beings. If the rabbits fell sick due to fever after being injected, the solutions were labeled as contaminated and were not injected into humans. If the rabbit had no fever after 2 days, the solution was deemed clean and could be used on humans.

However, pharma companies hated this process – not because they felt bad about harming cute bunnies, but the process was expensive and took about 2 days to give results.

A new discovery

A few years later, a scientist named Fred Bang was studying the circulatory system of a horseshoe crab – half a billion year old specie. He accidentally discovered some amazing properties of the horseshoe crab’s blood when one of his crabs died because its whole blood turned into a semi-solid mass.

He found that when the crab’s blue colored blood came in contact with a certain kind of bacteria, it got clotted into a semi-solid mass and completely trapped the bacteria.

And ultimately with the help of a scientist, Jack Levin, he developed a process that could be used to detect bacteria contaminated solutions (contaminated with endotoxin). This process proved to be a boon to us humans.

The replaced test

Today the old bunny test has been completely replaced. Pharmaceutical companies love the new test because it takes about just 45 minutes to complete and costs much lesser.

Every year thousands of live Horseshoe crabs are made to bleed blue to take advantage of their blood’s unique properties. About 30% of these crabs die. The miracle blue liquid can detect contamination in solutions that are extremely tiny (even if the contamination is as tiny as some parts-per-trillion).

The several liters blood extracted from these live crabs is used to save human lives by protecting them from contaminated solutions.

Every single person who has ever had an injection, has been protected because the blood of a horseshoe crab ensured that you got clean injections. Had there been no horseshoe crabs, we’d have been killing bunnies. Salute to the crab.

A Chat With Jaan Altosaar From Useful Science

By Anupum Pant

Today is a special day on Awesci because I’m publishing the first ever interview that has been done especially for the website – A talk with one of the creators of Useful Science, Jaan Altosaar. I hope I keep bringing more of these interesting talks in the future.

Useful Science – Background

Useful Science is a super-hit science website run by a team of grad students from some of the world’s top universities like MIT, McGill, UCSB, Oxford, and Johns Hopkins. The website does exactly what its name says – Publishes practically useful science research summaries (every of them is cited) that can be understood by anyone in 5 seconds or less – a marvelous concept, I must say.

Make sure you finish reading our talk because in the end Jaan shares a great piece of information, without which and article on AweSci wouldn’t be labeled as complete.

A: When did you start Useful Science? Could you share with us what goes behind the scenes at Useful Science?

J: We launched on January 15th, 2014. We use Trello to coordinate our team and review process, and many of us use RSS feed readers to stay on top of the latest research (e.g. we subscribe to research journals, EurekAlerts, and blog feeds). The backend (designed and run by Cameron Spencer at lab43.com) is built on Drupal. We use Google Analytics for tracking stats, Hootsuite for managing our social media profiles, and Mailchimp for our email list (subscribe here!).

A: How did all of you guys meet?

J: Most of us are connected through McGill (our alma mater) and more specifically, we lived together in Douglas Hall in first year! I reached out to the rest of the contributors after meeting them at graduate school open houses.

A: Where else on the web do the team members write?

J: A few of us have personal websites; they’re listed on Useful Science’s about page.

A: What advice will you give to the thousands of Indians who apply to graduate school every year?

J: I found the process time-consuming but worth it, and tried to organize my thoughts into a resource in the form of a blog post (focused on graduate school).

A: Why did you feel the need to start Useful Science?

J: We felt there was a gap in science communication. The question was: what would a website look like if every sentence on it was cited?

A: Judging from your backgrounds, you people just love science too much and do it for the joy of it, but do you ever wish to make money out of useful science?

J: We’d wish to make only enough to make the website sustainable. We are non-profit and any funds we receive through donations go directly to upkeep of the website (e.g. server costs and new features).

A: What revenue sources do you have in mind?

J: We’re hoping to integrate with Shirts.io so that anyone can order any of the one sentence summaries on a t-shirt.

A: I’ve read about you on Lifehacker, where else on the web, have you been featured?

J: We’ve been lucky to have been featured in BoingBoing, the McGill Science Undergraduate Research Journal’s blog, BetaKit, McGill’s Office for Science and Society blog, ITworld, the McGill Reporter, and Computerworld.

A: Before you go, could you share with us an interesting piece of science trivia for the day from any of your favorite areas?

J: One of my favorite areas of research focuses on the importance of mindset. Specifically, believing that intelligence is malleable and not fixed (i.e. it can be improved with practice) has been shown to improve grades. It’s great motivation for overcoming failure and pursuing deliberate practice.

This Little Math Trick Proves a Profound Point

By Anupum Pant

Someone shows you a random set of numbers, say 2, 4, 8 and says that I have a rule in my mind for selecting these numbers to have them in the series. Your task is to guess the rule. But the only way you are allowed to do that is by stating 3 numbers and confirming if they follow the rule or not (any number of times). The host won’t lie, will just say yes it does, or no it doesn’t. See how fast can you guess the rule that he has in his mind.

Assuming you’ve watched it, it is natural for all of us to confirm the rule that is followed by the series 2, 4, 8 over and over, assuming that it must be, the multiply-by-two rule (your hypothesis). You try to prove your that hypothesis is right, several times. Never once do you try to disprove your hypothesis (not soon enough at least), which could have straight away given you the answer. Even though the rule is pretty straight forward, you just can’t seem to figure the rule out.

This little math trick or puzzle or exercise conducted by Veritasium (a science video blog) proves a profound point.

In fact, this is a classic exercise used by teachers all over the world with which they are able to prove it to their students – Humans tend to notice or come up with a hypothesis first and then they try to prove it right every time instead of trying to prove it wrong.

This phenomenon where people constantly seek out information to prove their existing opinions and overlook the information that proves it wrong is called Confirmation bias. It affects our decision-making in all aspects of our lives and can cause us to make poor choices.

It happens all the time

You watch a conspiracy theory documentary – say the one that says, moon landing is a hoax. The documentary seeds an idea in your mind by repeatedly confirming an idea – the moon landing was a hoax – through various ‘proofs’. When you finish watching it, you go to Google and seek out information that confirms the theory; you are amazed. And then, you start noticing that some of your friends are making great points that also confirm the conspiracy. The same information coming from different sources seems genuine and now you get convinced that the moon landing was indeed a big conspiracy.

This is how conspiracy theories can make you – a rational human being – believe in something as outrageous as – the moon landing was a hoax or AIDS does not exist and so on…

This is the reason investors believe in company-failing rumors, confirm it by Googling to seek out negative opinions, overlook the positive news and make poor financial decisions in the stock market.

The profound point

As time passes, by never trying to disprove something, you collect subscriptions to blogs, magazines, books, people and television channels that confirm your beliefs. You become so confident in your world-view that people stop trying to dissuade you. At some point, if you are not cautious enough, you would stop questioning your own beliefs. You would eventually end up in a situation where everyone else knows that everything you have ever believed is actually false and you still remain a confident fool.

In science, a belief moves closer to the truth when scientists try to find evidence to disprove something. You should probably do the same in your life.

Moral: Try to never believe in something you read or hear instantly. Develop your own opinions by also feeding yourself the information that questions your beliefs and then make an informed decision.

Without disregarding it as utter B.S, this is the reason I listened to the three-hour long debate – Bill Nye vs. Ken Ham.

Can Your Eyes Breathe?

By Anupum Pant

Wait! Who says eyes breathe

The transparent front part of the eye that covers the iris and pupil is called Cornea. Cornea contributes a lot to the focusing power of the eye. That means, light has to pass through it without obstruction. To do that it has to remain completely clear. Consequently, to remain transparent, it can’t have any impurities nor can it have any blood vessels – that would have made it less transparent.

Every organ needs oxygen to run the cell processes with the energy that comes by oxidizing nutrients contained in the cells. To receive oxygen, they need to have access to blood. Since Cornea does not have any blood vessels, it cannot receive oxygen from blood. So what does it do to stay alive?

It absorbs oxygen directly from the air through diffusion. Oxygen gets dissolved in the tears and then diffuses across the cornea. However, the amount of diffused oxygen is so less that it is just enough for only the cornea cells. This can’t be supplied to other parts of the body. And this is exactly the reason you would get yourself killed if you plug your nose and your mouth, expecting your eye would keep you alive by breathing in oxygen.

In a sense, you could call it breathing. But it isn’t exactly ‘breathing’. Breathing, according to the medical definition means:

The process of respiration, during which air is inhaled into the lungs through the mouth or nose due to muscle contraction and then exhaled due to muscle relaxation.

Clearly, as the oxygen received by cornea doesn’t come from the mouth or nose and never goes through the lungs, it cannot be called breathing.

Other ways?

Let us consider the second possibility. At the inner corner of the eye there is a very thin tube that connects to the nose. Through this tube (A.K.A the Punctum), your eye is able to drain off excess tears. Punctum is the reason, you have to blow your nose when you cry. Punctum is also the tube that enables this guy to squirt milk out of his eyes (By sucking it through his nose first) [Video – Pretty disgusting to watch]

Also, you can blow an extremely tiny volume air out of these corner eye holes. But, you can’t breathe in through them.

Conclusion

Although the cornea of your eye has the ability to absorb oxygen directly from the air, you cannot technically call it breathing.

Whatsapp Uses This Mind Trick for Effective Persuasion

By Anupum Pant

Okay, time and again I’ve urged you to subscribe to 59Seconds on YouTube – A relatively new channel where Richard Wiseman, a professor of the Public Understanding of Psychology at the University of Hertfordshire, talks about interesting psychological studies that actually matter. If you haven’t done it already, you’ve probably missed their new video where he talks about an effective persuasion trick that could help you sales and marketing guys perform better at work.

Note: I have no idea if they teach this in Business schools (because I’ve never been to one). If they do, you could skip to this article where I talk about another trick that could help you persuade better. I bet no one teaches that at school.

Simply put

The trick is called ‘Foot-in-the-door‘ technique. It is basically a technique that involves getting a person to say yes to a bigger request by first setting them up with a smaller request.

Here is how it works:

Suppose you need a large sign installed in the front-yard of a house. What do you do?

No, You don’t go to them and ask if you could place the sign there. Chances are high that they will say no to that big request, says this study.

According to the research study, this is what works the best – Go and ask if you could put a tiny sign on their front yard – a little request. There is a great chance they will say, fine, how would that tiny sign affect me. A few days later, go back and ask if you could replace the tiny one with a bigger board – about 76% of the people would say yes.

How can you use it?

The best way is to observe and learn from examples. Look at how ‘Freemium‘ products and services use it. They’ll give you something for free – say the software Workflowy – An amazing piece of software. You’ll start using it. The chances are great that you’ll find it very useful, you’ll get addicted and will have a lot invested in it (not money, you will have a couple of notes stored in it). Now, the day you try to store the 251st note on it, you’ll be asked to extend services by putting in some money or by sharing it with your friends. Instead of taking pains to migrate to some other note-taking software, or sell it to others, you’ll pay that small amount and buy their pro pack.

Why do you think supermarkets give away samples for free? And why do you think they place 75% sale boards with a little ‘upto’ sign outside shops? Simply to – Get Your Foot in the Door.

This is the best. Why do you think Whatsapp installs for free?
The answer is, to get you in and make you invest in it (again, not money, time and effort), only to ask you for a dollar the next year. Who’d say no to that after they’ve made a huge network of useful contacts on it!

Now watch how Prof. Wiseman explains it. [Link]

Cinnamon Challenge is Deadly – Don’t do it

By Anupum Pant

A couple of years back a dare game went viral on the internet through YouTube. It was called the Cinnamon challenge. Literally everybody was doing it. There were more than half a Million videos uploaded, of people doing that challenge. Although the popularity has declined to very low levels today, there still are people who haven’t stopped trying this fad out. Here is a tiny contribution, backed by solid science, from my side to help stop this deadly challenge.

What is Cinnamon Challenge?

It is a dare game where a person dared to do it has to attempt swallowing a tablespoon of cinnamon in under 60 seconds without vomiting or inhaling the powder. Seems easy, but is extremely difficult and people take it on their ego to take the challenge. Moreover it has some serious long-lasting health effects. On video it looks something like this – [Video]

The ill-effects of Cinnamon Challenge

Before I talk about what it can do to you, let me introduce to you Dejah Reed – A girl from Ypsilanti, Michigan who tried the challenge four times. For the first three times fortunately, she did not experience any lasting effects apart from a lot of coughing and spitting. The fourth time proved to be deadly. One of her lung collapsed and had to be rushed to the hospital.
Now she runs a website where she urges people to say no to Cinnamon Challenge.

What can it do to you?

Cinnamon is a healthy thing to eat in small amounts. Although ingesting a spoonful of cinnamon would seem like a harmless thing to do, it can be really deadly. –

Since it comes from the bark of a plant, it has cellulose. This substance can’t be broken by our bodies easily and can get lodged in the lungs to cause a permanent damage to your body.
Talking about the instant effects, it can prevent oxygen from reaching your lungs and make you choke to death.
The caustic nature of it can cause chronic inflammation on the interior walls of your respiratory system.
Can cause pneumonia.

[Read more]

Third-Hand Smoke is as Bad as Smoking

By Anupum Pant

Yes, third-hand smoke (THS)! I knew there was second-hand smoke that someone standing near a smoker could inhale and get affected, but never knew there was third-hand smoke. The worst part about it – It is as deadly as smoking a cigarette and effectively affects everybody, irrespective of your proximity to the smoker and his smoke.

So, if you are a non-smoker and the next time someone tells you that their smoking habit is none of your business, you need to tell them, actually it is. The third hand smoke is killing even the non-smokers.

What is third-hand smoke?

Since smoke is nothing but a collection of several tiny particles floating in air, it can get trapped in things like cloth fibers, hair and surfaces. This is the reason you always get that whiff of burning cigarette once a smoker without his cigarette enters a relatively clean room. It stays there, on clothes and objects, for a long time, even after the cigarette has been extinguished and is called third-hand smoke.

Interesting studies

1. Recently, researchers at University of California Riverside decided to study the deadly effects of third-hand smoke. They did the study on mice, exposed them to the kind of exposure normal human beings have to THS. Significant damage to livers and lungs of mice was recorded.

2. Last year, Lara Gundel, a scientist from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, published a study on the effects of THS on Human DNA. Scientists exposed paper strips to cigarette smoke for 258 hours and ventilated air for 35 hours. After this, they exposed the compounds collected in that paper to human cells in petri dishes. It showed that THS can cause harm and mutation in Human DNA cells. It doesn’t stop at that. The potential to cause problems by THS can increase with time.

How it affects you

The thing about third-hand smoke that should worry you the most is, almost everyone comes in contact with it; at home, work, restaurants, bars, shops, etc… It is not like second-hand smoke where you have to inhale the smoke to get affected (equally deadly).

Smoke from cigarettes can collect over time on the walls and objects of a room; layer upon layer of carcinogenic compounds!
Cars, due to their small sizes and a lot of fibrous material inside can be the worst THS affected areas.
Someone smoking in some other room with a fan turned on can send a significant amount of particulates your way. These things can travel far, keep collecting in your room and can potentially affect every body.
Children and infants are the worst affected. As they touch objects and put things in their mouths, their tender developing brains can get affected by this more than adults (infants experience about 20 times greater effects)
Watch out for smoke rooms. You shouldn’t have a reason to go with your smoker friends in there.

Train Wheels are Not as Simple as They Seem

By Anupum Pant

I’m pretty sure not many of you know this about train wheels, neither did I.

Look at the picture and answer this: What do you think keeps a train moving on the track? or Which part of the wheel do you think it is that keeps the train from careening away from the track at turns?
Applying general logic, I thought that flanges at the end of the wheels kept a train from going off rails at a turn. Turns out, I was wrong!

In fact, flanges at the end of the wheels are just a safety mechanism to keep the train on its track only if the main mechanism fails. And what is that main mechanism?

Train wheels are conical in shape. That means they have a varying diameter at different points of contact. Now, suppose the track turns right. The train’s left wheels now have to travel more than the right wheels because at the turn the track on the left is longer.

So how do the left wheels travels more than the right wheels without a differential?
Since the wheels are conical in shape, the whole wheel-set shifts a bit to the left, if the track curves right. Now the point of contact of the left wheel is at a larger diameter of the cone. While the smaller wheel touches at a point where the diameter of the wheel is lesser. Therefore, if the left wheel now makes one circle it travels further than the right wheels and the train moves along the curve smoothly.

The whole beauty of this system is that the amount of shift of the wheel-set happens automatically, makes the train move on turns smoothly and keeps the train on track.

Look at how you can try this at home using 2 plastic cups and 2 similar pipes. [Experiment]

If I couldn’t explain it properly, probably the best physics teacher ever – Richard Feynman – will explain it to you better. [Video]

He Lives With No Heart Beating in His Chest

By Anupum Pant

Imagine this…
You are a doctor. A patient comes to you complaining of something and now you need to check his heartbeat. You plug the stethoscope in your ears and confidently move the probe to touch the chest of this patient, only to find that there is no heart beating inside that chest! In medical terms, isn’t this a dead man walking?

The answer is no, he is as alive as we are. Medical technology has made it possible for a man to live without a traditional beating heart. Two incredible doctors, Billy Cohn & Bud Frazier, in the year 2011, replaced Craig A. Lewis’s lifeless heart with a revolutionary artificial device – A device that can replace your heart and lets the blood flow continuously – without a beat. By all criteria that doctors use to analyse patients, Craig is dead.

Side note: Do read about that scientist who died and came back to life – [Is There a Scientific Explanation for Everything?]

There is no beating when it works. Through a stethoscope, a doctor would probably hear a continuous whistling of blood sluicing through synthetic pipes and motors (I’m not sure about that). The two doctors had been testing it on cattle and it was their only hope to save Craig’s life. So, they decided to do it – replace his heart with this revolutionary device.

Related article: A heart that runs on nuclear energy – [Nuclear powered pacemakers for the heart]

Yes, technically you could say Craig A. Lewis is a heartless guy, but this is a serious leap in medical technology we are talking about here.

You cannot miss this very-short BBC documentary – “Heart Stop Beating” – where both the doctors talk about how they did something that had never been done before. [Video]

Heart Stop Beating | Jeremiah Zagar from Focus Forward Films on Vimeo.

The Marathon Monks of Japan

By Anupum Pant

I saw this on TV a couple years back. Just now when I was going through my archives, I came across the Tarahumara people article and I remembered having watched a documentary about the Marathon Monks of Japan.

Who are they?

Just outside Kyoto there is a mountain that goes by the name, Mt. Hiei. If you happen to spend a holiday there, you might notice a very absurd thing – hundreds of unmarked graves dotting the mountain terrain. These graves are the resting place of those Buddhist monks, who couldn’t complete a spiritual challenge called the Kaihogyo.

This challenge, Kaihogyo, which has killed several monks on Mt. Hiei is an extreme physical challenge that involves an inordinate amount of running and other related endurance activities, which if a monk fails to complete has to die.

How much running?

Well, the challenge lasts for 7 years. For the first 3 years, a monk has to run at least 30 km (18.6 miles) everyday for 100 consecutive days. For the 4th and 5th year, he has to run 30 km everyday for 200 consecutive days. All of this running is done on the mountain terrain, making their way through dense forests and surviving on just rice (or noodles).

It doesn’t end there. Once a monk is able to some how complete these 5 long years of pain, then he has to go 9 straight days without food, water or even sleep. Let me remind you, the world record for the longest span a human being has been awake is 11 days. To make sure that the monk doesn’t sleep accidentally, there are 2 other monks watching him continuously.

If you think that was a lot already, wait, there is more. For the 6th year, the monk has to run for 60 km (37.2 miles) everyday for 100 days. During the 7th year he has to run 84 km (52 miles) every day for the first 100 days and 30 km per day for the remaining 100 days.

Withdrawing: In the first year, if a monk wishes to withdraw, he can. But, if he moves on to the 101th day, there can be no withdrawal. The only way to withdraw after the 100th day is to commit suicide.

In the last 400 years only 46 monks have been able to complete this. Watch the short documentary below. [Video]

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