KNOWLEDGE TO GAIN

Did You Know? Every living thing on the Earth contains carbon. Plants take in CO2. They keep the carbon and give away the oxygen. Animals breathe in the oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide. Plants and animals depend on each other. It works out well. For hundreds of millions of years, plants and animals have lived and died. Their remains have gotten buried deep beneath Earth's surface. So for hundreds of millions of years, this material has been getting squished and cooked by lots of pressure and heat. So what happens to all this dead plant and animal stuff? It turns into what we call fossil fuels: oil, coal, and natural gas. This is the stuff we now use to energize our world. We burn these carbon-rich materials in cars, trucks, planes, trains, power plants, heaters, speed boats, barbecues, and many other things that require energy.

Did You Know? Bees can see the ultraviolet light. Bees can see ultraviolet – a color humans can only imagine – at the short-wavelength end of the spectrum. Color is a by-product of sunlight. It stems from the fact that visible light contains all the colors of a rainbow. In other words, visible light is part of a larger spectrum of energy. Bees can see ultraviolet – a color humans can only imagine – at the short-wavelength end of the spectrum. So it's true that bees can see 'colors' we can't. Many flowers have ultraviolet patterns on their petals, so bees can see these patterns. They use them as visual guides – like a map painted on the flower – directing them to the flower's store of nectar. Some flowers that appear non-descript to us have strong ultraviolet patterns. But being a bee doesn't necessarily mean you live in a more colorful world. Bees can't see red – at the longer wavelength end of the spectrum – while humans can. To a bee, red looks black. Bees

Did You Know? In 1900 the average lifespan in the US was 47. There is a lot of data that tells us about the quality of life of people throughout time. From forensic records and bone samples of people who live two thousand years ago to the dental records and death records of people who died just yesterday. What does that data tell us about the life expectancy of Adults in the US both from a century ago and today? There are many factors that impact the life expectancy of people and individuals. War, disease, genetics, diet, lifestyle, gender, and health are a few of those. As we explore this data, ask yourself about your own health, wellness, and how they impact your own life expectancy. The short story here is that life expectancy is expanding and people are living longer than they once did. Here is a closer look at that progress. In 1900, the expectation for white men was to live to age 47 and 12 percent of those born in 1900 would make it to age 65. In contrast, an African American ma

Did You Know? The croissant was invented in Austria. A croissant is a buttery, flaky, viennoiserie pastry of Austrian and French origin, named for its historical crescent shape. Croissants and other viennoiserie are made of a layered yeast-leavened dough. The dough is layered with butter, rolled and folded several times in succession, then rolled into a sheet, in a technique called laminating. The process results in a layered, flaky texture, similar to a puff pastry. Crescent-shaped breads have been made since the Renaissance, and crescent-shaped cakes possibly since antiquity. Croissants have long been a staple of Austrian and French bakeries and pâtisseries. In the late 1970s, the development of factory-made, frozen, pre-formed but unbaked dough made them into a fast food which can be freshly baked by unskilled labor. The croissant bakery, notably the La Croissanterie chain, was explicitly a French response to American-style fast food, and as of 2008 30–40% of the croissants sold in

Did You Know? The fortune cookie was invented in San Francisco. A fortune cookie is a crisp and sugary cookie usually made from flour, sugar, vanilla, and sesame seed oil with a piece of paper inside, a "fortune", on which is an aphorism, or a vague prophecy. The message inside may also include a Chinese phrase with translation and/or a list of lucky numbers used by some as lottery numbers; since relatively few distinct messages are printed, in the recorded case where winning numbers happened to be printed, the lottery had an unexpectedly high number of winners sharing a prize. Fortune cookies are often served as a dessert in Chinese restaurants in the United States and other Western countries, but are not a tradition in China. The exact origin of fortune cookies is unclear, though various immigrant groups in California claim to have popularized them in the early 20th century. They most likely originated from cookies made by Japanese immigrants to the United States in the lat

Did You Know? African Grey Parrots have vocabularies of over 200 words. So much so that it boasts a vocabulary of over 200 words, with a minimum of 100. Research has shown that the African Grey is intelligent enough to not only mimic but also comprehend human language as well as communicate needs and feelings, in addition to other clever things.

Did You Know? The pathologist who made Einstein body's autopsy stole his brain and kept it in a jar for 20 years. A hundred years ago on Nov. 25, 1915 – Albert Einstein presented his famous theory of relativity to the Prussian Academy of Science in Germany. To commemorate the occasion, museums and universities around the world will be celebrating the life of Einstein. But from Einstein's death emerges a different chapter. It's a story that's not garnering as much attention. It happened just eight hours after the legendary physicist passed away on April 18, 1955. Princeton Hospital pathologist Dr. Thomas Stoltz Harvey was performing the autopsy and, when nobody was looking, he did the unthinkable: He stole Albert Einstein's brain. "It's a macabre story. It was a scandal. It was done against the will of his family," Hanoch Gutfreund, the director of the Albert Einstein Archives at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, told From The Grapevine. Einstein was a fo

Did You Know? In 1815, Mount Tambora in Indonesia erupted (believed to be the largest eruption of all time), creating a crater on its top 2,000 feet deep after it blew off 4,000 feet of mountain. The volcano looms over the Java Sea from the northern shore of the island of Sumbawa, which lies towards the eastern end of the former Dutch East Indies, now Indonesia. Every now and again Mount Tambora erupts. Its 1815 explosion was possibly the most destructive ever recorded. Tambora stood over 14,000 feet high in 1815, but when it blew its stack it hurled more than 4,000 feet off the top of it, leaving a crater more than four miles across and 2,000 feet deep. On 5 April a modest eruption occurred, as if the volcano was practising, followed by thunderous rumbling noises. Ash began to fall and on 10 April there were more rumblings that sounded like cannon. That evening the eruption moved into full force with an explosion that was heard more than 1,200 miles away in Sumatra. The ground shook a

Did You Know? %90 of the world's freshwater is in Antarctica. 90% of fresh water is in Antarctica. Lasers beamed from space have detected lakes of water under 2,300 feet of compressed snow and ice below Antarctic ice. About 90 percent of the world's fresh water is locked in the thick ice cap that covers Antarctica.

Did You Know? The type of music you listen to affects the way you perceive the world. Music is not only able to affect your mood -- listening to particularly happy or sad music can even change the way we perceive the world, according to researchers from the University of Groningen. Music and mood are closely interrelated -- listening to a sad or happy song on the radio can make you feel more sad or happy. However, such mood changes not only affect how you feel, they also change your perception. For example, people will recognize happy faces if they are feeling happy themselves. A new study by researcher Jacob Jolij and student Maaike Meurs of the Psychology Department of the University of Groningen shows that music has an even more dramatic effect on perception: even if there is nothing to see, people sometimes still see happy faces when they are listening to happy music and sad faces when they are listening to sad music. Jolij and Meurs had their test subjects perform a task in which