Giraffe vs Giraffe

Male giraffes often engage in necking, which has been described as having various functions. One of these is combat. Battles can be fatal, but are more often less severe, generally ending when one giraffe surrenders to the other. The longer the neck, and the heavier the head at the end of the neck, the greater the force a giraffe is able to deliver in a blow. It has also been observed that males that are successful in necking have greater access to estrous females, so the length of the neck may be a product of sexual selection.

After a necking duel, a giraffe can land a powerful blow with his head — occasionally knocking a male opponent to the ground. These fights rarely last more than a few minutes or end in physical harm.

In the tradition of ‘Killer Whale vs Seal‘, ‘Lion vs Buffalo vs Crocodile‘, ‘Shark vs Octopus‘, ’Leopard vs Porcupine‘, ‘Hornets vs Honey bees‘, ’Salmon vs Grizzly Bear‘, ‘Hippopotamus vs Crocodile’ and ‘Polar Bear vs Walrus Colony’, here is Giraffe vs Giraffe:

Birds grow a garden to attract a mate

What has green fingers but no hands? The bowerbird, if a new study is to be believed. Males appear to cultivate plants around the structures they build to attract a mate.

Male spotted bowerbirds (Ptilonorhynchus maculates) build structures, or bowers, from twigs before intricately decorating them with objects to attract a female. One of the males’ most desirable decorations is the berry of the Solanum ellipticum plant.

Although the males didn’t build their bowers in locations with abundant S. ellipticum, a year after construction there were, on average, 40 of the plants near each. It seems the males may discard shrivelled berries outside their bowers which subsequently sprout and grow.

The bowerbirds are thus shaping the distribution of the plants in the area. Learn more here.

Childhood Stress Leaves Genetic Scars

Traumatic experiences in early life can leave emotional scars. But a new study suggests that violence in childhood may leave a genetic mark as well. Researchers have found that children who are physically abused and bullied tend to have shorter telomeres—structures at the tips of chromosomes whose shrinkage has been linked to aging and disease.

Telomeres prevent DNA strands from unravelling, much like the plastic aglets on a shoelace. When cells divide, these structures grow shorter, limiting the number of times a cell can reproduce. For this reason, telomeres may reflect biological age. Research has found associations between stress and accelerated telomere loss, and shortened telomeres correlate with several health problems, including diabetes, dementia, and fatigue.

Rather than assuming children are biologically resilient given their youth, such exposures leave imprints that may not just go away as we age. Learn more here.

The Chemistry of Fireworks

Did you like the fireworks during the Olympic Games opening ceremony?

From the sizzle of the fuse to the boom and burst of colors, this video brings you all of the exciting sights and sounds of fireworks, plus a little chemical knowhow.

How the Mantis Shrimp Can Revolutionize Body Armour

Mantis shrimp, which ironically is neither mantis nor shrimp, sure knows how to pack a punch. The bright orange fist-like club of the mantis-shrimp, which it uses to crack open clam shells, accelerates faster than a 22-caliber bullet underwater. But how does the Mantis shrimp club survive repeated high-velocity strikes without cracking?

Scientists found that the club is a highly complex structure, comprised of three specialized regions that work together to create a structure tougher than many engineered ceramics.

The first region, located at the impacting surface of the club, contains a high concentration of mineral, similar to that found in human bone, which supports the impact when the mantis shrimp strikes prey. Further inside, highly organized and rotated layers of chitin (a complex sugar) fibers dispersed in mineral act as a shock absorber, absorbing energy as stress waves pass through the club. Finally, the club is encapsulated on its sides by oriented chitin fibers, which wrap around the club, keeping it intact during these high velocity impacts.

This club is stiff, yet it’s light-weight and tough, making it incredibly impact tolerant and interestingly, shock resistant. Learn more here.

Hottest Man-Made Temperature Ever

An atom-smasher called the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) has just snagged a Guinness World Record for reaching the hottest man-made temperature ever — 250,000 times hotter than the centre of the sun.

The temperature was achieved when gold nuclei — the central part of the atom made of protons and neutrons that has a positive charge — were set zipping around an underground racetrack near light speed until they slammed into one another. When they collide you’re left with a soupy mix of particles called quarks and gluons.

This stew of subatomic particles formed a primordial plasma that scientists liken to the material that filled the universe just seconds after The Big Bang nearly 14 billion years ago. And it hit about 4.0 × 10¹² degrees Celsius. Learn more here.

The World’s Hardest Sudoku

So. You think you’re smart. Well, Finnish mathematician Arto Inkala challenges you to a game of sudoku, the hardest one ever constructed (on the scale of 1 to 5 as rated by difficulty, this sudoku goes all the way to 11):

Learn more here. (Give up? Here’s the answer)

We Live in an Age of Exoplanetary Wonder

The following image represents the 786 planets know to mankind as at June 2012.

Most of them are huge because those are the kind we learned to detect first, but now we are finding that small ones are actually more common.

We know nothing about what is on any of them. But with technological advances that will certainly change.

This is an exciting time to be alive !!!

Sunscreen in the Sky to halt global warming

Spritzing a sunscreen ingredient into the stratosphere could help counteract the effects of global warming, according to scientists behind an ambitious new geoengineering project.

The plan involves using high-altitude balloons to disperse millions of tons of titanium dioxide—a nontoxic chemical found in sunscreen as well as in paints, inks, and even food.

Once in the atmosphere, the particles would spread around the planet and reflect some of the sun’s rays back into space.

About three million tons of titanium dioxide—spread into a layer around a millionth of a millimeter thick—would be enough to offset the warming effects caused by a doubling of today’s atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. Learn more here.

Tomatoes Sequenced and also Lost Their Taste

The genome sequence of one of the world’s highest-value salad plants — the tomato — was decoded by an international team of scientists earlier in the year.

The tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) is an increasingly popular fruit, with 145.8 million tonnes produced globally in 2010. Learn more here or here.

On top of this, another study has revealed that decades of breeding the fruits for uniform color have robbed them of a gene that boosts their sugar content.

The finding is a massive advance in our understanding of tomato fruit development and ripening.

Farmers pluck the fruits from the vine before they are ripe, and for about 70 years breeders have selected tomatoes that are uniformly light green at that time. This makes it easier to spot the tomatoes that are ready to be harvested and ensures that, by the time they hit supermarket shelves, the fruits glow with an even red color. Wild varieties, in contrast, have dark green shoulders, and that makes it harder to determine the right time to harvest.

Unfortunately, while the light green mutation is beneficial to farmers, it’s not such a sweet deal for consumers. It seems those tomatoes have less sugar and don’t taste quite as good. Learn more here.