EnterTheVoid Posted July 12, 2025 Posted July 12, 2025 TIL I l want to fly wing suits. Hope the free-flight experience carries over. coffee_rules and Tillu 2
coffee_rules Posted July 12, 2025 Author Posted July 12, 2025 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Nyos_disaster Killer Lake. This is scary Tillu and BacktoCricaddict 2
BacktoCricaddict Posted July 12, 2025 Posted July 12, 2025 3 minutes ago, coffee_rules said: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Nyos_disaster Killer Lake. This is scary Not to make light of this tragedy but I wonder if climate alarmists blamed this on climate change too. After all it was caused by CO2. coffee_rules 1
Tillu Posted July 13, 2025 Posted July 13, 2025 ORVs(Oral Rabies Vaccines) are being explored to vaccinate the free roaming dog population in India. The current method of catch, vaccinate and release is proving to be quite expensive, laborious and stressful for the animals. So now the govt is planning to bait the animals by mixing the oral vaccine in meat, fish and eggs and planning to distribute in places where the dogs usually gather. The method seems to be successful in Goa where the bait was triggering an immune response in the dogs. This looks like a similar excercise in Bangalore.
Tillu Posted July 14, 2025 Posted July 14, 2025 Byrnihat a small town in Meghalaya quietly became the most polluted city in the world. Reason: It hosts 80 factories including iron and steel plants, cement units, distilleries and beverage production facilities. coffee_rules 1
coffee_rules Posted July 16, 2025 Author Posted July 16, 2025 Not a TIL, but imagining the concept is amazing Tillu and BacktoCricaddict 2
BacktoCricaddict Posted July 17, 2025 Posted July 17, 2025 Everything we thought we knew about dodos is probably wrong: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20250714-why-history-got-the-dodo-so-absurdly-wrong Quote The biggest misconception of the dodo is "that it's sort of fat, stupid and deserved to go extinct", says Gostling. "It wasn't. It was adapted to its environment, and it had been doing very well… The thing that it wasn't adapted to were rats, cats, pigs and goats, and obviously people." And it's only really in the last decade that people have started to question the negative image of the dodo, says Gostling. "It's so pervasive." Fawcett's sculpture, he says, is the most accurate model yet made. It's now believed it was animals brought by sailors that ultimately caused the dodo's demise. "The dodo laid a single egg in a nest on the ground, which made these eggs particularly vulnerable to predation by introduced species like rats and pigs, which arrived on Mauritius at the same time as people," says Beth Shapiro, an evolutionary biologist at the University of California-Santa Cruz. Rats would have also been serious competition for food, says Hume. It's not known how many dodos lived on Mauritius before people arrived there, says Hume, but accounts from the time tell us something of how the dodo behaved in its home habitat, with one noting "they could run very fast". Dodos, like other birds on the island, appeared relatively unafraid of people, and were easy for humans to catch when out in the open. But accounts say that the dodo was incredibly agile when it got between the rocks and the trees and would apparently "stand upright and run incredibly fast, and you couldn't catch it", says Gostling. This next paragraph? I have a bit of a problem with it. As a scientist, I understand why scientific curiosity should be pursued, but I am not a huge fan of reviving extinct animals. Genetic technologies are brilliant tools, but unless they are used for a true purpose of bettering human lives, I just don't see the point in them Quote But even while these scientists are working to find out more about the extinct dodo, a more controversial avenue is pursued to recreate it: the dodo is among the targets of "de-extinction" by gene editing company Colossal Biosciences. (Read more about why scientists are concerned about de-extinction). Tillu and coffee_rules 2
BacktoCricaddict Posted July 17, 2025 Posted July 17, 2025 2 hours ago, coffee_rules said: RO Water is Reverse Osmosis But why the ? coffee_rules 1
coffee_rules Posted July 17, 2025 Author Posted July 17, 2025 22 minutes ago, BacktoCricaddict said: But why the ? That I have always wondered and I didn’t know. I know about Reverse Osmosis, but now I know what Hemamalini is selling as RO water filter BacktoCricaddict, Lord and Tillu 3
coffee_rules Posted July 17, 2025 Author Posted July 17, 2025 3 hours ago, BacktoCricaddict said: Everything we thought we knew about dodos is probably wrong: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20250714-why-history-got-the-dodo-so-absurdly-wrong This next paragraph? I have a bit of a problem with it. As a scientist, I understand why scientific curiosity should be pursued, but I am not a huge fan of reviving extinct animals. Genetic technologies are brilliant tools, but unless they are used for a true purpose of bettering human lives, I just don't see the point in them Fascinating! With your learning, you make us look like a dodo! BacktoCricaddict 1
BacktoCricaddict Posted July 17, 2025 Posted July 17, 2025 1 hour ago, coffee_rules said: Fascinating! With your learning, you make us look like a dodo .... ... a truly smart, well-adapted bird. coffee_rules 1
diga Posted July 21, 2025 Posted July 21, 2025 (edited) On 7/17/2025 at 5:04 PM, BacktoCricaddict said: Everything we thought we knew about dodos is probably wrong: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20250714-why-history-got-the-dodo-so-absurdly-wrong This next paragraph? I have a bit of a problem with it. As a scientist, I understand why scientific curiosity should be pursued, but I am not a huge fan of reviving extinct animals. Genetic technologies are brilliant tools, but unless they are used for a true purpose of bettering human lives, I just don't see the point in them Agree with you... but sometimes the unintended consequence of pointless research yields breakthrough technology or medicine eg. penicillin or velcro PS: also will get you ignobel prize Edited July 21, 2025 by diga BacktoCricaddict 1
BacktoCricaddict Posted August 1, 2025 Posted August 1, 2025 (edited) Today I learned that the world's smallest known snake is found in Barbados, and is only 3-4 inches long https://www.sciencealert.com/worlds-smallest-snake-rediscovered-after-vanishing-for-decades A snake so small it could be mistaken for a worm has been spotted in Barbados, nearly two decades after it was thought to have been "lost" to science. The Barbados threadsnake (Tetracheilostoma carlae) was found hiding under a rock in central Barbados during an ecological survey in March by the Barbados Ministry of the Environment and National Beautification and conservation group Re:wild. Edited August 1, 2025 by BacktoCricaddict coffee_rules 1
coffee_rules Posted August 1, 2025 Author Posted August 1, 2025 1 hour ago, BacktoCricaddict said: Today I learned that the world's smallest known snake is found in Barbados, and is only 3-4 inches long https://www.sciencealert.com/worlds-smallest-snake-rediscovered-after-vanishing-for-decades A snake so small it could be mistaken for a worm has been spotted in Barbados, nearly two decades after it was thought to have been "lost" to science. The Barbados threadsnake (Tetracheilostoma carlae) was found hiding under a rock in central Barbados during an ecological survey in March by the Barbados Ministry of the Environment and National Beautification and conservation group Re:wild. Animals in islands are very unique compared to larger continents. They would have migrated before islands formed and their evolution paths are much different with unknown predators and animals don’t need to adapt BacktoCricaddict 1
BacktoCricaddict Posted August 4, 2025 Posted August 4, 2025 Today, I learned about the difference between ASTRONAUT and COSMONAUT. And the difference is ........................................ ................................... ................................... ................................... ................................... NOTHING!! If you're trained by Amreeka and Western powers, you call yourself an astronaut. Soviets and "Eastern bloc" trainees call themselves cosmonaut. That's it. coffee_rules, Tillu and Lord 3
coffee_rules Posted August 4, 2025 Author Posted August 4, 2025 1 hour ago, BacktoCricaddict said: Today, I learned about the difference between ASTRONAUT and COSMONAUT. And the difference is ........................................ ................................... ................................... ................................... ................................... NOTHING!! If you're trained by Amreeka and Western powers, you call yourself an astronaut. Soviets and "Eastern bloc" trainees call themselves cosmonaut. That's it. One of my science teacherS in HS had mentioned it! Stanley Sir. BacktoCricaddict 1
Tillu Posted August 5, 2025 Posted August 5, 2025 6 hours ago, BacktoCricaddict said: Today, I learned about the difference between ASTRONAUT and COSMONAUT. And the difference is ........................................ ................................... ................................... ................................... ................................... NOTHING!! If you're trained by Amreeka and Western powers, you call yourself an astronaut. Soviets and "Eastern bloc" trainees call themselves cosmonaut. That's it. India is intending to call them Vyomonaut or Gaganaut after our Gaganyan mission. BacktoCricaddict and coffee_rules 2
coffee_rules Posted August 5, 2025 Author Posted August 5, 2025 10 hours ago, Tillu said: India is intending to call them Vyomonaut or Gaganaut after our Gaganyan mission. Why go with "naut" suffix even? Antarikshyatri" or "brahmandyatri" "nakshatrayaan raahi" BacktoCricaddict 1
Tillu Posted August 5, 2025 Posted August 5, 2025 5 minutes ago, coffee_rules said: Why go with "naut" suffix even? Antarikshyatri" or "brahmandyatri" "nakshatrayaan raahi" Within the country we can use these words. It might be too difficult for the other countries to spell these words. For the outside world India is looking to follow a consistent naming convention with that suffix. Even the Chinese astronauts are referred to as Taikonauts by western countries although within China they call them Yuhangyuan. coffee_rules 1
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