Record setting caves

World's largest cave - Hang Son Doong or Mountain River Cave.
Located in the heart of the Vietnamese jungle, the cave was first explored by a British team in earlier 2009. Measuring at 200 meters high, 150 meters high, and at least 4.5 kilometers long, it is believed to be almost twice the size of the current record holder, the Deer Cave in Sarawak, Malaysia, which is 100m high and 90m wide.


World's longest cave - Mammoth Cave.
Located near Cave City, Kentucky, the cave has more than 367 miles (591 kilometers) of explored passage but cave explorers believe the cave system will eventually prove to be 560 miles (900 km) long. This record is unlikely to be surpassed in the near future, as the second longest cave in the world, Optimisticeskay Cave, is only 143 miles (230 km) long.


World's deepest cave - Krubera Cave or Voronya Cave.
Located in Abkhazia, Georgia, the distance between the entrance point to the deepest explored point is about 2,191 meters. The cave remains the only cave on Earth deeper than 2,000 metres.

Why Cell Phone use is banned on Airplanes

It turns out that the ban on wireless devices has a lot more to do with possible interference for ground networks, rather than any danger posed to aircraft systems. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) banned in-flight use of most cell phones and wireless devices in 1991, citing the reason of ground network interference. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) regulations uphold the FCC decision. But some airlines allow passengers to use cell phones in "airplane mode," which shuts off phone transmissions.

The FCC briefly considered lifting the in-flight ban on wireless devices, but eventually decided in 2007 to keep the current rules in place because there wasn't enough evidence to show whether in-flight wireless devices would cause harmful interference with ground networks. There also wasn't evidence demonstrating that the devices do cause interference, but the federal agency decided to play it safe.

Source: http://www.livescience.com/technology/091221-airline-devices.html

Does Drinking Ice Water Burn Calories?

You have an 8-ounce glass of ice-cold water in front of you. That's about 240 grams of water.

When you drink the ice water, which is roughly 4 degrees Celsius, your body will expend calories to bring it to body temperature, which is about 37.5 degrees Celsius; that's a difference of 33.5 degrees. To raise 1 gram of water 1 degree Celsius, 1 calorie is expended. (This is a "little" calorie - what scientists use to measure small units of energy. The calories we refer to colloquially are actually 1,000 of these and are known as kilocalories in the science world.)

Raising 240 grams of water by 33.5 degrees Celsius will take 33.5 calories x 240 grams of water, which equals 8,040 little calories.

Dividing 8,040 by 1,000 gives us 8.04 food calories (kilocalories). Therefore, you’ll burn about 8 calories for each glass of iced calorie-free beverage you drink. That's equal to about one Life Saver: not exactly a weight-loss miracle.

Using Clemens's figures, it would take about 435 8-ounce glasses of ice water to lose a pound.

Source: http://www.chow.com/stories/10877

The Tree Whisperer

Alex Erlandson, born in 1884 has a passion for sculpting trees, also known as arborsculpture. As a young boy, the Swedish born grew up becoming a bean farmer in Central California near Turlock. There, inspired when he noticed that trees of the same species would naturally "inosculate" or bond together where they touch, he began to shape trees. It started out as a hobby for the amusement of himself and his family but turned into his life's work as his tree creations brought more and more attention from the public. Using a special set of skills, Erlandson started to sculpt things out of living, growing trees.

In 1947, Erlandson opened his Santa Clara Valley attraction called "The Tree Circus" where locals and tourists could pay to see his “World's Strangest Trees” and by 1957, he had created more than 70 circus trees. Alex Erlandson died in 1964.


Today 25 of Axel Erlandson's trees are on display at Gilroy Garden, California and his first creation, the "Four Legged Giant" remains alive and well at the park, some 80 years after it was begun.

Unfortunately, Erlandson never shared his techniques. When people asked him how he created them, he simply said "he talked to the trees". Many believe he may have done just that.

Can blind people see in their dreams?

Most researchers believe that people who are blind from birth or who become blind in infancy do not see in their dreams. They do not retain visual imagery because it was never acquired in the first place.

However, those blinded in childhood, adolescence, young adulthood, or afterwards usually do see in their dreams. "They often retain visual imagery in their waking life and in their dreams," according to Drs Nancy Kerr of the Department of Psychology at Oglethorpe University and G. William Domhoff of the Department of Psychology at the University of California at Santa Cruz.

They write in the December 2004 issue of Dreaming that "individuals blinded before the age of about five report no visual imagery in dreams as adults, whereas those blinded after about the age of seven are likely to retain visual imagery in dreaming".

This conclusion is based upon four sleep laboratory studies conducted between 1966 and 1999. According to the Royal National Institute of the Blind in London: "Dreams are experienced in the same way as life is lived. If someone loses their sight, they will dream of events during the days when sight was available in visual terms. If dreams are about recent events when sight was not used, sensations will be in terms of sound, smell, texture, and so on." A person dreams as they live.

Source: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/12/09/the_odd_body_dreaming/

How to win a Nobel prize?

Winning a Nobel prize makes you the most honorable individual on the planet and can fetch you a big amount of money (USD1.5 million up to date and getting higher each year). If you want to be part of it, here's how.

Do something useful
You're more likely to get the nod if you can actually offer some evidence that your work actually matters. For example; global warming is big news at the moment so solving climate change or the forthcoming energy crisis should score you a few points. Incurable diseases are always a popular area.

Move to the U.S. and, if necessary, have a sex change
Statistic shows that you stand a better higher chance of of winning if you're an American. And a man. Prior to 2006, 758 individuals and 18 organizations have been honored by the Nobel Foundation and almost 300 of those recipients have been American. For women though the figures look even worse. There had been just 33 female winners since 1901.

Be a famous humanitarian
This is the obvious approach. It is also the hardest. The Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to Albert Schweitzer, who built hospitals in Africa; to Norman Borlaug, who developed high-yield strains of wheat; to Muhammed Yunus, who devised a new method of giving loans to low-income entrepreneurs; and to the Dalai Lama, who...actually, I'm not sure what the Dalai Lama does, but evidently it impresses a lot of people.

Bluff it
The key to Nobel success is that nobody should understand anything at all about what you do. Maybe you don't understand either, but that doesn't really matter. At the end of the day, all you have to do is convince somebody else that what you do is really important.

Start an international organization
Over the years, the Nobel Peace Prize has gone to Amnesty International, Doctors Without Borders, the UN's International Labor Organization, and the Red Cross. Gore himself will share his prize with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

World's largest artwork

Etched onto the desert sands of the Black Rock Desert in Nevada, this unique sand drawing is the world's largest single artwork with a total circumference of over nine miles. Big enough to contain over 176 Wembley Stadiums, the giant drawing is visible from 40,000 feet up in the sky, and has even been wowing airline passengers flying across the desert into San Francisco.

Taking 15 days to complete, Jim Denevan and a team of three colleagues worked day and night on the stunning piece in May of this year, which has a diameter of just over three miles.


Containing more than 1000 individual circles, Jim, 48, painstakingly built up the giant circle using a roll of chain fencing six feet across pulled by a truck round repeatedly to dig into the desert sand. Using GPS technology to organise their co-ordinates to create a perfect circle, the team braved the intense desert heat and night-time cold to construct their masterpiece.

Artist Jim has been creating sand art for the past 17 years and sees this piece as the next step in his ultimate plan to work with NASA to draw on the plains of Mars.

Click on the pictures for enlarged view.

Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1236380/Worlds-largest-artwork-etched-desert-sand.html