Veil Nebula

New close-up images released this week by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope are lifting the veil on a supernova remnant that lies about 1,500 light-years away.

This composite image shows a section in the western part of the Veil Nebula—the wispy remains of a star that exploded about 5,000 to 10,000 years ago.

The colors represent different elements present after the blast: hydrogen in red, oxygen in blue, and sulfur in green.

The Veil Nebula's unique combination of rope-like features and diffused clouds are all that's left of a supernova that sent debris flying at nearly 373,000 miles an hour (600,000 kilometers an hour).

The explosion created shock waves that superheated the gases in their paths, causing them to glow.

Giant Bugs a Thing of the Past, Study Suggests

For the giant insects that roamed Earth 300 million years ago, there was something special in the air.

A higher concentration of oxygen in the atmosphere let dragonflies sometimes grow to the size of hawks, and some millipede-like bugs reached some six feet (two meters) in length, a new study suggests.

Now that the proportion of oxygen has decreased, however, bugs can't grow much larger than they do now, the authors write.

The reason: The bigger an insect, the bigger the proportion of its body devoted to its tracheal system, which functions like a lung but is far less efficient at large sizes.

"[The tracheal system] explains why they are small," said study co-author Jon Harrison, a professor of environmental physiology at Arizona State University. "It takes up all the room."

The study appears this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Bigger Bodies, Bigger Lungs

Scientists have long puzzled over why bugs once grew to gigantic proportions but are now among Earth's more diminutive creatures.

"There were hundreds of ideas to explain the small size, but none of them could be proven," said lead study author Alexander Kaiser, of Midwestern University's Department of Basic Sciences.

So Kaiser and colleagues decided to test the idea that it was it was an insect's respiratory system that limited its size by studying beetles and fruit flies.

The team looked at beetles by peering through their exoskeletons with new x-ray beam technology at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois.

This allowed the scientists to see how much room was dedicated to the respiratory system among four species of darkling beetles ranging from 0.1 to 1.3 inches (3.2 to 33 millimeters) in length.

Insects carry oxygen to cells differently from humans. Instead of a single breathing tube, bugs have several pairs of holes known as spiracles along their bodies.

These holes connect to tubes called tracheae, which transport oxygen to cells and remove carbon dioxide.

The x-ray scans revealed that as beetles become larger, tracheae take up proportionally more room in their bodies because they need to be longer and wider to deliver enough oxygen. This, in turn, inhibits growth by crowding other organs.

The tracheae in the larger beetles took up 20 percent more room than in smaller beetles.

The area where the body and legs meet is particularly limiting, because that opening can only get so big, Harrison noted.

In the smallest beetle, tracheae take up 2 percent of the region, compared with 18 percent in the largest.

Using that information, Harrison estimated that the maximum beetle size under current oxygen levels would be about six inches (15 centimeters).

That coincides roughly with the largest known living beetle, the Titanic longhorn.

"This paper is really interesting in part because there is still a lot we don't know about how insects breathe," said Scott Kirkton, an assistant professor of biology at Union College in Schenectady, New York, who was not associated with the study.

Something in the Air

During the late Carboniferous period (354 to 290 million years ago), however, oxygen levels were much higher than they are now, partly because coal swamps that leaked the gas into the air were very common.

"Back then, there was 31 to 35 percent oxygen in the air," study lead author Kaiser said. "Now we have about 21 percent."

That meant insects needed smaller quantities of air to meet their oxygen demands, allowing the creatures to grow much larger.

"The tracheal diameter can be narrower and still deliver enough oxygen for a much larger insect," Kaiser said.

The team, though, is still trying to definitely show that this phenomenon explains why Carboniferous insects were so large.

Neither fruit flies nor beetles were around, or even had close relatives, during the Carboniferous, so the team hopes to extend its research to more ancient insects such as dragonflies, Kaiser said.

The scientists have already experimented with fruit flies in a lab at Arizona State, raising them in tanks with different levels of oxygen.

Under higher concentrations of oxygen the fruit flies definitely get bigger, Harrison said.

Airline Passengers, Relax: Turbulence Detectors Are on the Way

Wouldn't it be nice if airline pilots turned on the "fasten seat belt" sign before the person standing in the aisle toppled onto your lap because of turbulence?

NASA researchers are on the job. They are developing a pair of technologies that will give pilots several minutes' warning so they can steer clear of the erratic, gusty winds.

"That's enough time to get everybody seated and carts stowed if you're in the meal phase of the flight," said Jim Watson, an engineer at the NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia.

"And it also allows you to contact air traffic control and get a route diversion if necessary," added Watson, who is project manager for NASA's Turbulence Prediction and Warning Systems.

The system's technologies aim to prevent injuries and save airlines millions of dollars.

Of the 58 turbulence-related injuries that occur on average in the United States each year, 98 percent happen because people don't have their seat belts fastened, according to the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration.

And turbulence costs airlines about a hundred million U.S. dollars a year in rerouted flights, late arrivals, and additional aircraft inspection and maintenance.

Turbulence Detection

The technologies were developed as part of a NASA program to predict oncoming turbulence and report its severity when encountered.

One of the technologies is called Enhanced Turbulence, or E-Turb, Radar. It upgrades existing airborne weather radar systems so they can detect turbulence associated with thunderstorms.

E-Turb's software uses vertical and horizontal radar scans of the weather in front of the airplane to determine the severity of the turbulence.

The software takes into account how moisture is moving through the air—a measure of turbulence—as well as specifics about the airplane such as weight, speed, and angle of flight.

Since not all planes are created equal—a 747, for example, is much heavier than a Learjet—the same amount of turbulence will jostle different planes differently, Watson noted.

The hazard calculated by E-Turb is then presented to the pilot in an easy-to-read format.

"The pilot sees what is called a magenta display that essentially says, For this turbulence level you should get everybody in their seat, and for this higher level turbulence you should definitely get everybody in their seat, and you might want to try to avoid it," Watson said.

The system was tested for 18 months on a Delta Air Lines aircraft. The flight data collected during the test is currently under evaluation, and Watson's team plans to make recommendations this spring on whether the system should be deployed by other airlines.

(See National Geographic magazine's "The Future of Flying.")

Turbulence Reports

The second technology under development is called the Turbulence Auto Pilot Reporting System (TAPS).

This software kicks in when an aircraft's accelerometer, an instrument that measures acceleration, detects an encounter with turbulence. It immediately calculates the severity of the turbulence and reports that information to computers on the ground.

After the airplane lands, maintenance technicians can then use the information to determine if the aircraft warrants special inspection before it returns to the air.

Eventually engineers plan to rebroadcast the information to aircraft flying similar routes, so pilots will know where the turbulence lies, allowing them to take evasive action if necessary.

This is particularly useful in the 10 to 20 percent of turbulence events that occur in the absence of moisture and therefore evades radar detection, Watson said.

Currently TAPS is used on more than a hundred Delta aircraft. As of August 2, 2006, it had generated more than 76,000 turbulence reports, according to AeroTech Research, a Hampton, Virginia, firm working with NASA on the project

Tom Staigle is the chief technical pilot for Atlanta, Georgia-based Delta Air Lines. In a testimonial posted on AeroTech's Web site, he praises the potential of the combined turbulence technologies.

"Together with TAPS, the enhanced turbulence radar effort marks one of the most exciting developments in the struggle to deliver better quality turbulence hazard information to flight crews and potentially other aviation user groups," he said.

Moths Elude Spiders by Mimicking Them, Study Says

The arrival of a jumping spider sends most moths into a flutter trying to escape the predator's lethal pounce.

Not so for metalmark moths in the genus Brenthia. These moths stand their ground with hind wings flared and forewings held above the body at a slight angle.

In that pose the moth looks like a jumping spider, said Jadranka Rota, a graduate biology student at the University of Connecticut.

"That will actually save [the moth's] life," she said.

"The spider needs to act pretty quickly. Deciding whether the moth is potential prey or another jumping spider could take enough time to offer an advantage, in comparison to other moths."

The trickery usually buys the metalmark moth time for a safe escape.

Sometimes the sight triggers territorial postures—raising and waving of the forelegs—from the spider.

Occasionally the spider even backs off.

Rota and her advisor David Wagner described the metalmark moths' behavior last December in the Public Library of Science's interactive online journal PLoS ONE.

Lab Tests

Mimicry is a well-known trick in the animal kingdom. Many creatures are known to adopt the looks and postures of undesirable prey species to evade their predators.

But rarely have scientists seen prey mimic their predators to successfully avoid becoming dinner.

Rota said she first noticed the metalmark moths "do something weird" when she was walking through the Costa Rican forest and saw them perched on leaves with their wings flared, seeming to jump around.

Wagner suggested that the moths might be mimicking jumping spiders, which are known to employ their unusually keen eyesight to hunt.

To find out, the biologists pitted the presumed mimic moths and normal moths against jumping spiders in the lab. The pair staged 146 of battles; 77 with the mimics, 69 with controls.

When control moths were used, the test spider captured 62 percent of its potential prey.

When paired with the presumed mimic moths, the spider only took 6 percent of its allotted victims.

In addition, the spider made territorial gestures towards 36 percent of the mimics, but no gestures toward the normal moths.

In 11 of the trials, the spiders even backed away from the mimics.

The moths' "ploy of donning the wolf's clothing proves successful," Rota and Wagner conclude in their paper.

Erick Greene is a biologist at the University of Montana. In 1987 he was part of a team that published research in the journal Science on a fly that also mimics jumping spiders.

"These sorts of mimetic interactions may be more common than anyone had suspected," he said in an email from New Zealand, where he is currently on sabbatical.

"And sometimes the patterns are incredibly specific to one very narrow type of interaction, such as [with jumping spiders]."

Evolution Driver

Spider mimicry may also help the moths avoid predation by birds and other animals through what scientists call evasive prey mimicry, the University of Connecticut's Rota said.

This type of mimicry gives insects protection when they look like prey that is hard to catch.

"Birds don't go after hard-to-catch insects, and since jumping spiders are hard to catch, looking like a jumping spider may be advantageous," Rota said.

She has yet to obtain experimental data to back up this theory, but may do so in future research.

The researchers noted that in addition to metalmark moths and flies, mimicking jumping spiders has been suggested for several planthoppers and other moth species.

"The jumping spider predation seems to be an important selective pressure," Rota said. "They are shaping the evolution of all these insects."

Virgin Galactic, Huge Fish, Helix Nebula, More

Dust from comets that survived the death of their star is clouding the "eye" of the distant Helix nebula, reveals this image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope released on February 12.

The nebula, which lies about 700 light-years from Earth, is the colorful remnant of a dying sunlike star that cast off its outer layers to become a white dwarf. Similar nebulae litter our galaxy, but the Helix nebula is now among the few known to show evidence of cosmic survivors. A haze of red around the dead star at the center of the formation is most likely being caused by dust from colliding comets, NASA scientists concluded.

Before the star died, comets in the outer reaches of the system orbited in an orderly fashion. But as the dying star expanded, it blew these comets into each other's paths, so that they now jostle around and send dust swirling around the white dwarf.

Ancient 7 Wonders

The Temple of Artemis, Turkey

The Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, Turkey

The Hanging Gardens of Babylon, Iraq

The Statue of Zeus at Olympia, Greece

The Lighthouse of Alexandra, Egypt

The Colossus of Rhodes, Greece

The Great Pyramid of Giza, Egypt

New 7 Wonders

Taj Mahal, India

Chichén Itzá, Mexico

Machu Picchu, Peru

Petra, Jordan

The Colosseum, Rome, Italy

Great Wall of China

"Christ the Redeemer"

Giant Catfish, Stingrays Among World's ''Monster'' Fishes

Gecko, Mussel Powers Combined in New Sticky Adhesive

Give your tape some real "mussel"!

So might go the ad campaign for "geckel"—a next-generation adhesive inspired by the legendary stickiness of geckos and mollusks—if the product is successfully brought to market.

One of nature's greatest clingers, geckos have long fascinated scientists with the tiny hairs on their feet, which allow the tropical lizards to scurry up walls and across ceilings.

But tapes made by a number of research teams in recent years lose most of their adhesive strength underwater.

Phillip Messersmith, a biomedical engineer at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, was intrigued by the problem.

He has been making liquid glues for several years based on the adhesive proteins of mussels that allow the mollusks to hold on tight to rocks and docks in even the roughest of waters.

"I thought, Well, what if we try to combine the mussel adhesive proteins ... with a gecko type strategy, which has its own set of properties?" Messersmith said.

"We might have something new and interesting and useful."

The result was geckel, a promising new adhesive described by Messersmith and colleagues in this week's issue of the journal Nature.

Geckel could one day replace stitches to close wounds or allow robots to roll up walls or along the seafloor, Messersmith noted.

Proof of Principal

The "proof of principal" adhesive, as Messersmith describes the few square-millimeter patch of tape, is reusable like a sticky note and works while wet or dry.

To make the tape, the researchers used an electron beam to pattern a mold for an array of tiny silicon pillars, each 400 nanometers wide and 600 nanometers tall. (A human hair is about 100,000 nanometers—or billionths of a meter—thick.)

Once the pillars were cast and peeled from the gecko-inspired mold, the team dipped them into a solution with the mussel-adhesive-inspired protein.

The tiny patch of geckel held together for more than a thousand contact-and-release cycles in both wet and dry environments, Messersmith said.

But for the technology to reach a mass market, researchers will need a faster and less expensive method, he added.

Few Years Away?

Ronald Fearing is the director of the Biomimetic Millisystem Lab at the University of California at Berkeley. His research team has developed a flexible array of gecko-like hairs.

He said that several of the gecko-adhesive teams have tested .15-square-inch (one-square-centimeter) pieces of tape and found they fall apart or get dirty after just a few contact-and-release cycles.

Similar wear-and-tear problems might also be encountered with a larger piece of geckel, he pointed out.

"It comes down to if you have a single stalk, it's hard for it not to stick," he said. "Getting millions of stalks all working together—so far, that's been a challenge for many groups."

However, Fearing and Messersmith both predict gecko- and mussel-inspired adhesives are just a few years shy of the market for applications like waterproof bandages or clingy clothing.

Early Humans Were Prey, Not Predators, Experts Say

Prehistoric people were cooperators, not fighters.

That's the new theory proposed in two recent books and at a talk last month during an annual scientific meeting.

The theory is part of a movement to debunk a long-running scientific bias that early humans were warlike.

"It developed from a basic Judeo-Christian ideology of man being inherently evil, aggressive, and a natural killer," said Robert W. Sussman, an anthropologist at Washington University in St. Louis.

"In fact, when you really examine the fossil and living nonhuman primate evidence, that is just not the case."

Agustin Fuentes, a researcher at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, agrees with Sussman.

"Humanity evolved much more by helping each other rather than by fighting with each other," he said. "We shaped the environment and changed how other organisms interacted with it."

Fuentes and other researchers believe that early humans were a prey species hunted by bear-size hyenas, saber-toothed cats, and many other large carnivores.

Early humans survived while other primate species died out because our ancestors cooperated to alter their surroundings, the researchers say.

This cooperation deflected the risk of predation onto other nearby prey species, which became more vulnerable because early humans weren't as easy to catch.

The researchers presented their theories in February at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in St. Louis, Missouri.

Rewriting Assumptions
Sussman is the co-author of a 2005 book, Man the Hunted: Primates, Predators, and Human Evolution.

In the book, Sussman and Donna L. Hart, a University of Missouri-St. Louis anthropologist, first argued that early humans evolved not as hunters but as prey.

The book title harks back to a 1966 symposium, "Man the Hunter," held at the University of Chicago and a 1968 book with the same title.

Both the symposium and the 1968 book represented what was then cutting edge research into the planet's living hunter-gatherer societies. Many anthropologists would study these cultures' traditional lifestyles to gain insight into early human behaviors.

Some of the most celebrated research in support of the view of humans as warriors had come from Napoleon Chagnon, an anthropologist now retired from the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB).

Chagnon studied warfare and other attributes of the Yanomami, or Yanomamo, tribes of the Amazon Basin. His 1968 book on the tribe sold a million copies and became required reading in many anthropology classrooms.

This year Douglas Fry, a researcher affiliated with both Åbo Akademi University in Finland and the University of Arizona in Tucson, published a book called The Human Potential for Peace, which refutes some of Chagnon's key findings.

Fry writes that early studies defining humans by their capacity for killing are flawed. There's just as much evidence, he says, that humans had an established track record in peaceful conflict resolution.

Specifically, Fry's new book pokes holes in Chagnon's assertion that Yanomami men who were efficient warriors had more children.

Fry says a reanalysis of the data reveals that Chagnon failed to control for age differences. Fry concludes that it was actually older tribal members, not necessarily the best warriors, who had achieved greater success at reproduction.

And that, Fry says, can be expected in any culture, regardless of a propensity for violence.

What Do the Fossils Say?

Instead of studying living traditional cultures, as Chagnon did, Washington University's Sussman decided to base his research for Man the Hunted on a hard look at the fossil record.

"I have always, since my early days in anthropology, thought the hunting hypothesis was based on little actual evidence from the fossils," Sussman said.

Sussman found that our ancestors from three or four million years ago, Australopithecus afarensis, had small teeth, lacked tools, and were about three feet (one meter) tall.

Lacking size or weapons, this early human species most likely used brains, agility, and social skills to escape from predators, the anthropologist says.

At that time, he says, A. afarensis suffered the same predation rates as many other primate species—about 6 percent.

But about two million years ago there was a shift in the record. Somehow predation rates on other species suddenly went up while rates on human ancestors declined.

Another group of primates with humanlike attributes, the genus Paranthropus, went extinct by about one million years ago—the same time our predecessor, Homo erectus, was expanding across Africa and Eurasia.

All the Angles

Several other researchers presented in St. Louis their work exploring various genetic, hormonal, and psychiatric explanations for early humans' success.

James K. Rilling directs the Laboratory for Darwinian Neuroscience at Emory University in Atlanta. His brain-imaging studies have revealed a potential connection between the act of cooperating and the brain's reward centers.

If prehistoric humans got instant gratification from cooperating, he says, that may have aided group survival.

And Charles Snowdon, a psychologist and zoologist at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, pointed out that expectant monkey fathers gain weight and take on hormonal changes along with their pregnant partners.

The study offers evidence that these primates evolved to be good fathers, an important attribute for protecting young from predators.

Snowdon's endocrine studies have also shown that the likelihood that male primates will dally with new females decreases when the male already has a mate—and still more when the pair is raising offspring.

It's possible a similar system of mate fidelity aided the group cohesion needed to minimize predation in early humans, he said.

The University of Arizona's Fry says the notion that early humans relied on cooperation changes more than the widespread image of a club-toting early human in a warlike stance.

He believes it has implications for today's human interactions.

"Many of us Westerners share a view of human nature that humans are naturally warlike," Fry said. "This view helps perpetuate a self-fulfilling prophecy."

Changing our perspective to match the anthropological record, he said, "opens new possibilities in today's world."

World's Largest Superconducting Magnet Up and Running

The world's largest superconducting magnet has been successfully powered up on its first try and is ready to test some of the most fundamental questions of science, researchers say.

Weighing 110 tons (100 metric tons), the Barrel Toroid—seen here with all eight of its superconducting coils clearly visible in a photo released November 20—is 16 feet (5 meters) wide and 82 feet (25 meters) long, dwarfing the lone technician seen bottom center.

The instrument is a vital component of ATLAS, one of the particle detectors housed at the European Organization for Nuclear Research's (CERN's) Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a new, internationally funded particle accelerator scheduled to begin operation late next year in Geneva, Switzerland. Particle accelerators create and collide beams of speeding, highly energetic atomic or subatomic particles.

The LHC will smash two beams of protons together in some of the most energetic collisions ever created. The goal, physicists say, is to explore the fundamental nature of matter and energy by creating conditions similar to those of the early universe.

At stake are some of science's most difficult puzzles. What is dark matter? Why do things have mass? Why is there so little antimatter? The LHC could provide answers to them all.

The Barrel Toroid will help scientists analyze the proton collisions by generating an enormous magnetic field to bend the paths of charged particles. Scientists can use the angle of deflection along with readings from other instruments to puzzle out what particles were created.

To check that the Barrel Toroid was working, researchers began cooling the instrument to -459 degrees Fahrenheit (-269 degrees Celsius) in July. After six weeks, the device was slowly powered up to an electrical current of 21,000 amps on November 9—more than enough to generate the needed magnetic field.

The instrument was then safely discharged of its stored magnetic energy—1.1 gigajoules, the equivalent of 10,000 cars traveling at 43 miles (75 kilometers) an hour.

Said Herman ten Kate, ATLAS magnet system project leader, in a statement: "We can now say that the ATLAS Barrel Toroid is ready for physics."

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Ten of the future destruction of human catastrophe

British scientist Martin in the universe in his "last century" predicted that earth in the next 200 years will face an imminent 10 disasters , the chance of human to escape only 50%.

1.A particle experiments could swallow the Earth

Experimental particle by particle accelerators enable scientists to the speed of light particles, a mutual collisions, to study the microscopic world energy law. As the study of the material is so small, human particles may never worried about what will be a threat to mankind. But recently, some serious scientific reports that the United States Library of Long Island particle accelerator experiments or relativistic heavy ion collision experiments may be a micro-black hole, it will slowly swallowed all the substances on the planet, including the Earth.

2.The robot to take over the world

Regular reports that the computer has reached a speed of 100 million per second, how many times, and even some scientific reports that, by 2030, will have a computer or robot and the human brain as the storage capacity and processing speed, or even completely replace human thinking. Scientists even predicted that even unconscious state under the robot, it can pose a threat to humanity.

3.Nano robots

Scientists hope nanotechnology research, in the short term create a size smaller, faster computer chips, and long-term goal is to create micro-robot, or robot called nanotechnology. They can be injected into the body to destroy cancer cells and repair damaged human tissues Similarly, nano-robots will also be able to deal with various chemicals to create useful materials science. However, according to a scientific report, nanotechnology robot self-reproduction, they will pass through each of the same material structure are copied into their own, while humans can not prevent the occurrence of this process. Mktin

4.Biochemical weapons against humanity is not far away from

In the 1960s, with antibiotics and anti-pathogen filtration of the invention, human confident that we have never conquered the various infectious diseases, all the virus can be killed by antibiotics. Unfortunately, the more the virus began to change their antibiotic resistance genes to the role. Up to now, physicians have to do anything more than anti-virus unabated.

Genetic engineering goes even further, human DNA repair can be modified through the use of high-tech change some animal or plant genetics, artificial chromosomes will soon be used for medical and agricultural science. However, these goodwill gene technology may also bring an unexpected disaster. Humans may think that their operation is a friendly biological genes, but they may be in some unexpected ways scientists destroy crops, animals and even human destruction.

Chemical and biological weapons on human virus is one of the biggest threats, it used to be difficult to manufacture, but now some Internet virus biochemical manufacturing information has to become very easy.

5.The super volcano eruption

Earth broke at least six devastating volcanic eruptions, relative to these super volcano erupted, Italy Mount Etna is a pediatrician. University of London Institute of Earth Physics Professor Biermaige in his book "Towards the end of the world", a book that, under a super volcanic eruption only a matter of time.

6.Struck off the world economic crisis

Humans can not predict whether the Earth will happen again as a similar 1923 Tokyo earthquake. In that venue epicenter, 200,000 deaths and economic losses amounting to 50 billion US dollars. Scientists estimate that if a similar human being to the 1923 Tokyo earthquake, the stock market would be as free diving, Europe and the United States economy would collapse completely.

7.The Earth asteroid collision probability greater than in the lottery award

In the past history of Earth, which has been space from the asteroid or comet impact, but these extraterrestrial smaller because of the earth do not constitute enormous harm. However, scientists believe, a more than 150-foot-diameter asteroid crashed into the Earth, it will become a human catastrophe. If such a big hit in London, will destroy the whole of Europe. Scientists estimates that a 1 km diameter asteroid the size of every 10 years will hit the Earth once, the days of this size objects will cause a global ecological catastrophe. A 10 km diameter and the size of days, the Earth objects will be razed to the earth return the extinction of dinosaurs 65 million years ago disaster. According to the British Salford University Research Professor Dukenshidier, about 1,500 kilometers in diameter the size of an asteroid has been or is being enveloped the Earth's orbit.

8.Increasing of global warming

Over the past century, the Earth's temperature has increased by 0.6 degrees Celsius, which led directly to the planet by storm, flood, drought and other natural disasters caused by various multiplied. According to statistics, in 2000 the number of natural disasters is the Earth twice in 1996, scientists predict that in the 21st century, a few of these disasters will increase the rate six times. Latest scientific findings prove that this summer, the Arctic ice is melting large, these will accelerate the Earth's climate warming, the future of humanity in the heat of the greenhouse effect "gradually died."

9.War and nuclear weapons

Since mankind since the invention of nuclear weapons, under the umbrella of nuclear deterrence, the war has not reduced human, but it has increased. Since 1950, the Earth 20 times in inhumane massacre, more than one million people died. Indeed, with the US-Soviet Cold War ended, the nuclear threat facing humanity becomes more serious. According to statistics, there are currently more than 31,000 pieces of the world of nuclear weapons, as long as one thousandth being abused, it can result in the end come early.

10.Force resistant

Apart from the above nine may face the threat of mankind, scientists will last a threat attributed to the nature of force resistant. In the universe there are many mysteries, each a mysterious force to the future destiny of mankind to have a crucial influence. There are scientists that the universe and even millions of light years away in a supernova explosion, will be the potential impact of the Earth in space destiny.

The world largest rat

Divorce cake

Exotic crab

Many types of crabs, usually grown in freshwater, known as Crab, growth in the ocean known as crab. Green as a delicacy in seafood has been well known, but many of us do not fully understand.

The first is a renewable crab body function. Crab 10 limbs are born "broken line." If a limb by "enemy" bite, or injured or trapped in stone rapidly, it has a special muscle contraction immediately, cut off the limb. Broken limbs not to the bloodshed, as limbs with special membrane, nerve and vascular completely closed. There was a special "gate" can be closed off the blood cells to produce proteins and grow new limbs began.

In addition, crabs are a very special "Compound Eye", could reach 180 ° angle. "Compound Eye" feel connected to a below Eyestalk, hidden in a hard shell socket, two can be extended outward respectively. If a bad eyes, will soon grow a new eye. However, its eyes and Eyestalk If all damaged or severed, can no longer grow new eyes in orbit only in a long tentacles. Crab renewable capacity with a number of other animals, like the ability to regenerate the body, scientists are striving to explore the mysteries and would like to untie them problems.

Another crab specific functions, in addition to the mouth and Xieao sophisticated, the other eight "legs" to have "debate style" skills. In 1930, biologists will be performed on a crab, the paper has several sucked into the gravy, this is the last one pair of crabs "legs" encountered gravy, immediately seized and begin feeding.

Australian scientists on a sand crabs bubble after years of observation and study found that of previous scholars believe it - foot section of the film may be hearing the disc, and confirmed by experiments, it is this peculiar enough to breathe. Foot in the film is a complex vascular system, which will oxygenated blood and non-delivery of oxygenated blood exchange.

It was also found that the crabs "legs" is very sensitive and aware of the water can be a shock, the first pair of "legs" can detect objects very far away and liquid turbulence. Crab five pairs of "legs" to the hidden complexity of our current system is unknown.

Many crabs are in a "clock" can have a museum of color changes. Biologists found that crab body red, white and three black pigment. During the day it spread a red shell, two black pigment to color comparison Oh museum. At night, these pigment faded, the colors become On crabs. The biological significance of these changes have yet to be revealed.

Some of the crabs in underwater objects to the use of polarized light and the means to determine the direction of future actions. Some scientists experiment proved, North America and South America waters common crabs, if left to its original habitat, can return home to find direction. They only at the dark clouds in the sky when it lost direction and operations remain unchanged.

In 1960, biologists discovered that the crab arterial blood pressure 20 times lower than humans. Because of the arteries, hypertension crab not, and never will die of heart disease. To help blood circulation, some crab gills underneath another auxiliary heart.

The missing nation

It was in the deep Atlantic ocean floor, a sunken countries, said it is the Great. The earliest records of the Great things are great Greek philosopher Plato. In his book "Kerry Qi", Plato said, the original Great sector is the center of civilization. This country than Libya and Asia Minor also together, it forces has been extended to Egypt and the Tyrrhenian. Later, the Great State of Egypt, Greece and the Mediterranean coast all the other nationalities have launched a war. A pair of Great States launched a war of Athens, Athens, carried out life-and-death resistance to the Great's army repelled. Soon, a massive earthquake that sank in the Great State of the waves. Great is the founder of the pipeline. Poseidon was married to a beautiful girl Jeff marry. She gave birth to ten kilometer son. Great country into the pipeline 10 to part 10 of his son were in charge. They are the Great State of the initial 10-regent. Atlas is the eldest son of Poseidon Great King of the inheritor. The original 10 regent Wang had met each other no interaction away, a difficult one, the parties support. Great shape of the coastline, beautiful mountains, vast plains. Great country rich in natural resources, crop can be harvested twice a year. Most people rely on farming, mining gold and other precious metals and domesticated animals living. In cities and the wild, flowers are everywhere, many of Great States will extract perfume on life. In Yichang city in the country's densely populated, very busy. Garden city around everywhere with the red, white and black colors of marble temples were covered up, amphitheater, the Colosseum, public baths and other tall buildings. The piers, ship to ship to, in many countries, the businessmen to trade with the Great. With Great countries are increasingly strong, the Great King became ambitious. Driven by the insatiable ambitions, their determination to launch more wars, to conquer the whole community. But a strong earthquake and ensuing floods, the whole country in Great overnight will trace the day. Great time of the sinking, according to Plato in another book by a recorded statement projections, about 11,150 years ago. Plato has repeatedly said that the situation is Great ages have been handed down orally, by no means is his own fiction. Plato said this personally to ask that Egypt prestigious monks. Plato's teacher Socrates On Great State also said: "It is good because the facts, the story of this much stronger than fiction." If true Plato said, as early as 12,000 years ago, human civilization has created. But this Great country where it? For centuries people have always cherished this great interest. By 20 JI since the 1960s, the Atlantic waters west of Bermuda and the Bahamas, Florida peninsula, near the sea, have found a series of sector-wide sensation miracle. One day in 1968, the Bahamas than Rimini near the Atlantic Sea Island a calm sea as translucent glass, a look in the end. Several boats take divers to return to the island than Rimini way, it was suddenly up screaming: "Harbor of the main roads there!" Several divers coincidentally downward looking really is a boulder with the laying of the submarine lying on the main roads. This is a polygon with a rectangular flat stone and brick path, the size and thickness of stone mixed, but with neat, sharp contours. This is not the Great State Name? The early 1970s, a group of scientific research personnel went to the Atlantic near the Azores. From 800 meters deep in the seabed out of the core, a scientific identification, in this place 12,000 years ago, is indeed a land. With modern science and technology derived from the conclusions, even with Plato's description of this surprisingly identical! Here is the Great sunken places? In 1974, the former Soviet Union a research vessel in the Atlantic Ocean to take the eight photos - collectively constitute a vast ancient artificial construction! This is not the construction of the Great Island people? In 1979, the United States and France, some scientists is the use of advanced equipment in Bermuda "Devil Triangle" submarine discovered pyramid! Tap bottom of about 300 meters, about 200 meters high, the pinnacle of only 100 meters from the surface, much larger than the pyramids of Egypt. Tap the bottom with two huge holes, water at an alarming rate from the bottom flow. This is not the Great Pyramid construction of the Great Island people? Great army had conquered Egypt, is not the Great Pyramid people will be brought to the Egyptian civilization? American also pyramid is from Egypt, or from the Great State? In 1985, two Norwegian sailor in "Devil Triangle" area found under a city. The couple's photographs, a plain aspect of the main roads and streets, domed housing, fight field, monasteries, river .... The couple said: "Do not doubt, we found is Great Island! And Plato's description of exactly the same! "This is really? Regrets that the Bermuda "Harbor pyramid" yes instruments detected in the sea, scientists so far no one can confirm whether it is not a true artificial buildings, it is probably because a cone angle of underwater mountains. The Soviets shoot down the seabed photographs of the construction site, and no one can confirm it is the Great sites. Rimini beneath the Atlantic island than Stone Road, reportedly Later scientists had sneaked into the ocean floor, "Stone Road," were conducted back-testing and analysis. The results showed that these "Stone Road" less than ten thousand years ago. If this road is the Great Xiuzao people, it should at least not less than ten thousand years. As for the photo of two sailors Norway has also not verified. Only the right can be concluded that, at the end of the Atlantic there is a land AR. So, if indeed existed Atlantic Great States, Great States really like legends, sank in the Atlantic Ocean at the end, then, the Atlantic at the end we will be able to find the remains of the Great. Unfortunately, no one has yet archaeologists announced that he had found in the Atlantic Ocean at the end of the Great State possessions. So until today, the Great is still a mystery of the ages suspect.

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