If you ever get stuck in a blackout without candles or a flashlight ...
30 minutes might be stretching it, but a regular sized crayon will easily burn for more than 15 minutes. The paraffin used in crayons is very flammable, but slow burning. Handy to know!
Sailfish grow up to 2 meters (6 feet) long and are found in temperate and warm waters all around the world. They have a dark blue color and a white underbelly, providing camouflage from predators. They also use their large sails to corral small fish which makes easy work of getting a meal, though they also eat octopus and squid.
Have you ever wondered why a cat's tongue feels so rough? A cat's tongue is covered in backwards facing spines, about 500 microns long. These are called papillae and they contain keratin (the same stuff your fingernails and hair is made of) making them quite rigid. These are used in grooming and act almost like a hairbrush.
The blue whale is not only the largest animal alive currently, but is likely the largest animal ever to have lived.Depending on the location, blue whales can grow to be 33 meters (108 feet) and weigh as much as 181 metric tons (200 imperial tons).They can live to be 90 years old and ingest about 3.6 metric tons (4 imperial tons) of krill each day. Blue whale are considered endangered by the IUCN.
This science behind this is actually seriously interesting. A small % of European populations are immune to HIV - it's thought that the same mutation provided some protection against the plague. If a person with HIV receives a bone marrow transplant from someone who is immune, their new blood cells are immune. This was first discovered in a man known as the "Berlin patient", who suffered from both leukaemia and HIV. The bone marrow transplant was administered to treat his cancer, and it wound up curing his HIV.
The problem is that finding a bone marrow donor is tough enough as it is, let alone someone who happens to have the correct mutation. As well as that, people with HIV tend to have a normal life expectancy with correct medication, where as bone marrow transplants have a 15-20% mortality rate. With those sorts of numbers, it's very difficult to get ethical approval for a trial.
Why do we itch? Like pain and heat, itching sensations are transmitted by a class of nerve cells known as TRPV1-expressing neurons. If you engineer a mouse without these neurons, the mouse feels no pain, no heat and no itching. Research published last month suggests that there are a specific subset of TRPV1-expressing neurons that are exclusively responsible for itching. They produce a molecule called neuropeptide natriuretic polypeptide b (Nppb). All sensations require a neurotransmitter to "leap the gap" to adjacent nerve cells, and Nppb seems to perform that function for all itching sensations
Another look at the goblin shark (Mitsukurina owstoni), a deep sea creature that's been sighted less that fifty times since its discovery. They're the only living representative of the family Mitsukurinidae.
