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China uses snakes to predict quakes

Here is another amazing fact.

You heard about the current earthquake disaster in Taiwan? Two people were killed and 42 injured on Tuesday when three buildings collapsed in earthquakes that shook southern Taiwan. The disaster worries neighbouring countries.

Beijing: China has come up with an earthquake prediction system which relies on the behavior of snakes, after two quakes struck off neighbouring Taiwan.

The earthquake bureau in Nanning, capital of the Guangxi, autonomous region in southern China, had developed its system using a combination of natural instinct and modern technology. Experts at the bureau monitor snakes at local snake farms via video cameras linked to a broadband Internet connection. The video feed runs 24 hours per day.

“Of all creatures on Earth, snakes are perhaps the most sensitive to earthquakes,” bureau director Jiang Weisong said. A snake could sense an earthquake from 120km away, three to five days before it happens. They respond by behaving strangely.

When an earthquake is about to occur, snakes will move out of their nests, even in the cold of winter. If the earthquake is a big one, the snakes will even smash into walls while trying to escape.

China is struck by frequent earthquakes, with most hitting remote rural areas.





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posted by Jason @ 3:13 PM, ,




Disaster Strikes JB and Singapore this Dec? Why?

There is a perception for Malaysia and Singapore:
"It is a place where the sun shines through the rain. Showers are usually sudden and heavy, but also brief and refreshing"

Well, frankly, after long day under hot sun, we always hope for rain. When it rains, we cheer with joy. Until today, things changed. Ok, I'm exaggerating here! But the below news is 100% true.


Disaster Strikes on 17th Dec 2006?

Floods, traffic jams, falling trees, collapsed old shophouse, stranded cars! This is the situation right now in Johor Bahru (southern part of Malaysia) and Singapore.

Shopping for christmas gift? Probably the worst suggestion. It seems impossible to travel around now. Numerous cars stalled in the flood waters and tow trucks struggled to reach them to assist. The usually packed lunch time crowd had thinned to barely a dozen patrons. Water level rose in canals. Roads became fast flowing rivers! Closed roads, terrible traffic. Why? It's the heavy rain.


Rain, rain, keeps raining and still raining right now. Rain stops and come again. I'm now in my faculty sitting near to the corridor. The rain keeps pouring like it will never end forever. It has been raining for 3 days starting Sunday continously. It has never happened for years!



News Headlines on 1th Dec 2006

SINGAPORE: Heavy rain has caused chaos across many places in Singapore. A part of Singapore was swamped by more than the average monthly rainfall for the whole island in less than a day. 313 millilitres drenched a northern part of the country in 16 hours. The floods were the worst we have ever seen.

And it wasn't just trees which felt the impact – over in southern part of the island, part of an empty old shophouse collapsed with debris spilling onto the street.

One of the shop owner said what shocked them the most was the speed of the flood. "But one thing I'm curious is I don't know why it happened so fast, because around 8am, we were here, it's still ok, until say about 8.30am the thing suddenly come out within half an hour it can flood until this condition it's unbelievable, now I'm afraid this thing happened, what about next round, don't know when will happen again."


JOHOR BARU
: Continuous heavy rain since Monday evening caused floods in several districts in Johor. About 4,000 people were evacuated and massive traffic jams were reported here during rush hour. The floods also disrupted train services in the southern region.


Thousands of people in Malaysia's southern Johore state were evacuated Tuesday after heavy rain caused floods and triggered minor landslides which disrupted rail services, state media said. Over 2,000 people in districts around three Johor towns and its capital, Johor Bahru, had been told by police from early Tuesday to leave their homes.

Massive traffic jams were reported by Bernama in and around Johor Baru, while the national rail company said south-bound services, including connections to neighbouring Singapore, were disrupted.


Forecast
Singapore National Environment Agency says it is not uncommon to experience heavy monsoon rain from November until January.


According to the
weather forecast, we'll still be expecting the rain and wind here (Malaysia) and Singapore to last for the next few days.













Links:
Weather forecast - Singapore and Malaysia
Satellite VIDEO of The Changing Weather




Why this heavy downpour?
The weatherman says it is the Northeast Monsoon which affect intermittent moderate to heavy rain and windy conditions in both places. The Northeast Monsoon brings heavy rainfall. In Malaysia, the Northeast Monsoon comes on November and ends around March. According to the forecast, this monsoon is predicted to last till February. Thus, we'll be expecting wet weather during this period. What is Monsoon? Click here



Great, now it is drizzling. Hope this will last. No more rain please.


(11.59pm: 3 hours later after this post - it is pouring heavily AGAIN! Gosh..)


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posted by Jason @ 8:19 PM, ,




World Tallest Men! Who claims the tallest?

Everywhere I go, everywhere I stand, even I sit, people will look at me at a different way. Some will laugh and whisper their friends while looking at me, some will come straight and ask "Hey, how tall are you?" 6 feet?

I will then entertain them, "Ya, more than that!" I'm so used to it. Strangers will always take this matter to start a conversation with me. Come on, I am just 187cm horizontally. For Americans, that's normal, nothing special. But in Asia, that's TALLL, people say.

Now let me show you, my fellow friends, how to describe T-A-L-L!


TALLEST OF THEM ALL

According to Guinness World Records, the tallest man in medical history for whom there is irrefutable evidence is Robert Pershing Wadlow. He was born at Alton, Illinois, USA, on February 22, 1918, and when he was last measured on June 27, 1940, was found to be 2.72 m (8 ft 11.1 in) tall.

Wadlow died as a result of a septic blister on his right ankle caused by a brace, which had been poorly fitted only a week earlier. He was buried in a coffin measuring 3.28 m long, 81 cm wide and 76 cm deep.

Wadlow's greatest recorded weight was 222.71 kg on his 21st birthday. His shoe size was 37AA (47 cm, 18½ in long) and his hands measured 32.4 cm from the wrist to the tip of the middle finger. He wore a size 25 ring. His arm span was 2.88 m and his peak daily food consumption was 8000 calories.

At the age of nine, he was able to carry his father Harold F. Wadlow, later Mayor of Alton, who stood 1.8 m and weighed 77 kg, up the stairs of the family home.


TALLEST MEN TODAY

Hussein Bisad (7′9″) claims to be the world’s tallest man.

Guinness World Records announced Xi Shun the tallest living man. Xi Shun (China, b. 1951), measured 7 ft 8.95 in (2 m 36.1 cm). Beating the previous holder Radhouane Charbib (Tunisia) by just 2 mm (0.07 in), Xi Shun claims that his height was normal for his age until he was 16. As a comparison, his father stood at 5 ft 10.8 in (1.8 m) and his mother was 5 ft 2.8 in (1.6 m) tall.

However USAToday has an article about Leonid Stadnyk (8′4″) and far more likely to hold the title. But why Guinness still claims Xi Shun? The Height Site says he has yet to be confirmed by Guinness.

I've checked out Wikipedia, then, I found out that Leonid Stadnyk refused to be measured by Guinness World Records although claiming to be the tallest man in the world. That's why..

Guinness commented:

Leonid Stadnik refuses to be measured by us. We have been told that it is because he doesn't want to court publicity — yet he continues to claim to be the tallest. Unfortunately we can only conclude due to previous experience, that he refuses to be measured officially by us because he is not the height he claims to be.



So, Who is the tallest then? Me is definitely out of the question.




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posted by Jason @ 5:09 PM, ,




Is Time Travel POSSIBLE?

Ever wonder of travelling through time? Could it be possible in reality?

I believe you definitely had watched "Back to the Future Film".

Even if it is possible, I would always wonder, this issue will definitely concern human right, perhaps the same issue concerning human clone. Ok, let’s say you failed in your exam, you go back to the past and re-sit for that paper. Ha, definitely you had memorized all the perfect answers. Eventually, you pass with flying colors. That’s dirty.

For me, there are pros and cons. One of the pro is that, if u murdered someone, you can undo it. Isn’t it great? Haha.. just my silly theory of it.

Now let me show you the real answer for it (picked from “The Life Explorer Magazine”)



Possible or Not?

This is the question everyone would love to answer. Time travel has been a favorite theme of science fiction novels. And some of it is actual fact. For example, it has been proven possible to travel forwards in time. Einstein’s theory of relativity predicts that an observer moving relative to Earth can leap into Earth’s future, and the effect has been confirmed using atomic clocks.

Going back in time is not as easy. Relativity does not rule out the possibility of travelling back in time, but all the scenarios so far require very exclusive circumstances. One way to go back in time is to use a wormhole in space. Theorists speculate that such a tunnel – or star gate – lining two points in space-time, really might exist. If this is true, then one could be adapted to form a time machine. You could go through it and exit not only somewhere else, but “somewhen” else too. And that could be the future or the past.


Issues arise if it is possible

If this were possible, then all sorts of problems and paradoxes could arise, namely, is it possible to alter the past or affect the future? It certainly seems too irrational for some physicists. Stephen Hawking suggested a “chronology protection conjecture”, surmising that something would intervene to prevent physical objects or influences looping back in time. For example, quantum vacuum energy might surge without limit near the entrance to the wormhole, blocking it.

Hawking also noted that it is hard to get funding for time travel research. So it is likely that this issue will have to wait a long while to be proved or disproved.


Related:

Astronomers Find Most Ancient Planet




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posted by Jason @ 4:17 PM, ,




Astronomers Find Most Ancient Planet

Astronomers have detected the most ancient planet yet known orbiting a binary system thousands of light-years away. The new discovery indicates that planet formation in the Milky Way may have started sooner and been more widespread than previously believed. A report describing the find appears in the current issue of the journal Science.

In 1988, researchers discovered pulsar PSR B1620-26, a neutron star spinning about 100 times a second, in the 13-billion-year-old globular star cluster known as M4. Scientists soon found a white dwarf nearby and further observations located a third object in orbit around both, which astronomers thought was either a brown dwarf or a low-mass star.

The new work, carried out by an international team led by Steinn Sigurdsson of Pennsylvania State University, indicates that the orbiting object is instead a planet with a mass 2.5 times that of Jupiter. Using the Hubble Space Telescope, the team inferred the weight of the planet from its effects on the pulsar, thereby determining that it was too small to be either a star or a brown dwarf. "This is tremendously encouraging that planets are probably abundant in globular star clusters," notes study co-author Harvey Richer of the University of British Columbia.

Because globular clusters have low concentration of heavy elements-necessary building blocks for planets-scientist believed that they were unsuitable as planet breeding grounds. Indeed, the metal content of M4 is just 5 percent of that of our sun. Our Hubble measurement offers tantalizing evidence that planet formation processes are quite robust and efficient at making use a small amount of heavier elements. This implies that planet formation happened very early in the universe.


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posted by Jason @ 10:49 PM, ,




Masturbating May Protect Against Prostate Cancer

Here is another amazing science fact I've gained from 'The Life Explorer' Magazine.

It will make you go blind. It will make your palms grow hairy. Such myths about masturbation are largely a thing of the past. But the latest research has even better news for young men: frequent self-pleasuring could protect against the most common kind of cancer.

A team in Australia led by Graham Giles of The Cancer COuncil Victoria in Melbourne asked 1079 men with prostate cancer to fill in a questionnaire detailing their sexual habits, and compared their responses with those of 1259 healthy men of the same age. The team concludes that the more men ejaculate between the ages of 20 and 50, the less likely they are to develop prostate cancer.

The protective effect is greatest meanwhile men are in their twenties: those who had ejaculated more than five times per week in their twenties, for instance, were one-third less likely to develop aggressive prostate cancer later in life (BJU International, vol 92, p211).

The results contradict those of previous studies, which have suggested that having had many sexual partners, or a high frequency of sexual activity, increases the risk of prostate cancer by up to 40 percent. The key difference is that the earlier studies defined sexual activity as sexual intercourse, whereas the latest study focused on the number of ejaculations, whether or not intercourse was involved.

The team speculates that infections caused by intercourse may increase the risk of prostate cancer. "Had we been able to remove ejaculations associated with sexual intercourse, there should have been an even stronger protective effect of other ejaculations," they suggest. "Men have many ways of using their prostatw which do not involve women or other men," the researcher adds.


Macho Exaggeration
The researcher accepts the possibility that the men who completed the questionnaires could have lied about their habits. But he doubts this skewed the results, since questions about masturbation are unlikely to evoke the same macho exaggeration as questions about, say, number of sexual partners.


How Masturbating prevent prostate cancer?
But why should ejaculating more often cut the risk of prostate cancer? The team speculates that ejaculation prevents carcinogen building up in the gland. The prostate, together with the seminal vesicles, secretes the bulk of the fluid in semen, which is rich in substances such as potassium, zinc, fructose and citric acid.

Generating the fluid involves concentrating these components from the bloodstream up to 600-fold-and this could be where the trouble starts. Studies in dogs show that carcinogens such as 3-methylcholanthrene, found in cigarette smoke, are also concentrated in prostate fluid.

"It's a prostatic stagnation hypothesis," says Giles (the researcher). "The more you flush the ducts out, the less there is to hang around and damage the cells that line them."


Stages of Prostate Cancer


Illustration copyright 2003 Nucleus Communications, Inc.


Stage 1: The tumour can't be felt by DRE
Stage 2: Tumour involves one lobe, then both lobes.
Stage 3 and 4: Tumous has spread to surrounding tissue.


Sexual Repertoire
His findings suggest an intriguing parallel between prostate cancer and breast cancer, as recent studies indicate that lactating reduces a woman's risk of breast cancer, perhaps because this also flushes out carcinogens. Alternatively, ejaculation might induce prostate cells to mature fully, making them less susceptible to carcinogens.

If the finding is confirmed, future health advice from doctors may no longer be restricted to diet and exercise. "Masturbation is part of people's sexual repertoire," says Anthony Smith, deputy director of Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society at La Trobe University in Melbourne.

"If these findings hold up, then it's perfectly reasonable that men should be encouraged to masturbate"



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posted by Jason @ 9:57 PM, ,




WHY don’t venomous snakes die from their own venom?

All venomous animals have some kind of protection of their own venom, some have protection against other species venom but not against all of them. It is like a protein cage that built around the venom that protects the rest of the cells from it. That is just the way they are born that way. That thing prevents the venom from attacking its own body.





Venom is like a soup of a bunch of different proteins and all have different effects. The main effect from a cobra venom is a neurotoxin (poison which acts to the nervous system) effect which paralyze you and your neural system. As for rattlesnake venom, it has hemotoxin (which attacks your blood and tissues), so you start to swell up, you probably feel instantly pain, and you start losing the ability to coagulate your blood. The enzymes in venom will start digesting your muscle tissues.


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posted by Jason @ 2:01 PM, ,




WHY RED EYE in photos?

Have you wonder why there is Red Eye in photos taken at night?

This is a knowledge I've learned and would like to share to you.

Bright light comes into the eye, the eye tends to change its sizes of the opening, get shrink and become smaller. Light go to the back of the eye and then bounces back forward. So what happen is when there is a camera flash, when it is too fast or too bright, the people doesn’t have time to shrink the eyes, the light bounce to the back of the eye which is red. Its redness is because of the blood vessel. So, when you actually looking into the red eyes in the camera, you’re actually looking at the back of someone’s eye. Thus, you might notice that there are some digital cameras, which tend to reduce the red eye, they will have an initial flash to make the eye opening gets smaller and then another one, and then you won’t get as much the redness back.

Is this post helpful? Feel free to comments.


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posted by Jason @ 1:57 PM, ,




Science Is Amazing

Welcome to this blog! A blog where you can find amazing science facts.

Ever wonder Why Red Eyes in photographs? The question sounds easy, but have you got the answer?

People always accept things that are already were. Very few, question it and view in different perspective.

This blog contains the general knowledge I obtained through different sources. Focusing on WHY? HOW? WHAT?

Realising the fact is fun.. Are you with me? If yes, lets make a difference!
Feel free to comment. I'll be here expecting for it.

Happy Viewing!



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posted by Jason @ 10:08 PM, ,