Bored with routine, regular life? Well, if you are keen to bump into fresh new species at every corner, visit the Nakanai and Muller mountain ranges in Papua New Guinea. Scientists have just discovered a total of 200 new plants and animals in the remote ranges which can only be accessed by plane or boat. A tube nosed fruit bat, named after its distinctive mustard-yellow nose and tubular nostrils is one of them. Other new species include an orange spider, a thumbnail sized frog, and a mouse with a white tipped tail. The scientific team led by the Conservation International has also identified two mammals, 24 species of frog, nine plants and 100 new insects including damselflies, crickets and ants.
Conservation International’s Program director, Leeanne Alonso said, “While very encouraging, these discoveries do not mean that our global biodiversities are out of the woods. On the contrary, they should serve as a cautionary message about how much we still don’t know about earth’s still hidden secrets and important natural resources, which we can preserve with coordinated, long term management.”
A spray created by a United Kingdom (UK) company, can identify a thief who has been smeared with it, using Ultra Violet (UV) rays. Sounds like a scene from a sci-fi flick, doesn’t it? SelectaDNASpray is true to its name. If a thief tries to burgle, for instance, a shop, an employee can hit a panic button that shoots a fine mist of spray over everyone standing around.
The unique feature all is that every batch of the spray has a unique DNA signature, so the police can connect the robber with the scene of crime even if he flees. And if you think the spray can be washed away, you are wrong, at least partially so. The thief may wash it off his or her hands, but remnants of it will still be lodged in his nose, ears or nails.
So once the thief is brought in and made to stand under a UV, he would be caught red handed, or shall we say blue handed?
Imagine a boulder thrown from a height into a swimming pool. Quite a splash, right? Now imagine an asteroid having a width of a kilometre hitting an ocean on Earth. The results would be quite catastrophic, according to a study from the Planetary Science Institute in Tuscan. The study shows that a one kilometre wide asteroid would jettison 42 trillion kilograms of water, enough to fill 16 million Olympic sized pools, into the atmosphere. But that is not all. This water combined with compounds containing chlorine and bromine from the vaporised seawater salts would create a massive hole in the ozone layer, leaving ample room for harmful Ultra Violet (UV) rays to enter the Earth’s atmosphere. Now here is some good news. No such asteroid is headed our way, yet.
What do you do when you want to clean your hands but no soaps are available? You probably reach into your purse for the hand sanitizer. But if a new study is to be believed, it might be a futile move. Doctors at NYU Langone Medical Centre claim that hand sanitizers work for all but two minutes and must be reapplied if one wants to keep those germs at bay!
This is disappointing news, as more and more people these days prefer to carry small alcohol sanitizers with them everywhere they go, especially mothers of newborn babies. The study also revealed that using soap and water is the best option. Only in situations where one has no other alternatives, one would reach out for that sanitizer.
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