THE WEIRD AND WONDERFUL
Geography is a dynamic and awe-inspiring subject. Have a look through some of the most weird and wonderful Geographical stories.
Around the world in 4 minutes, 50 seconds
Watch this! 17 countries over 343 days.
If Britain were a village...
If Britain were a village of 100 people...
For the full article go to: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/features/if-the-uk-were-a-village-of-100-people-1754307.html
- 17 of the 100 villagers would be under the age of 15, while another 16 would be 65 or over (three of them 80 or over).
- There would be 80 adults (aged 16 or over), of whom 40 would be married and 11 would live alone.
- There would be 42 households in the village, of which 13 would be home to just one person. (Six of these would belong to lone pensioners, of whom five would be female.)
- Of the 19 villagers aged between 20 and 34, four would live with their parents.
- The village would welcome one new baby this year. The baby would expect to live for 76 years and six months (if it was a boy), or 81 years and seven months (if it was a girl).
- 84 of them would live in England, eight in Scotland, five in Wales and three in Northern Ireland.
- There would be 51 women and girls, and 49 men and boys.
For the full article go to: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/features/if-the-uk-were-a-village-of-100-people-1754307.html
Where is your surname from?
Two fantastic websites have been set up by geographers at University College London (UCL). The two websites presents finding from databases to show you the distribution of your name not only within Great Britain, but also globally.
Very interesting, take a look. Apparently the largest concentration of Paternosters within Great Britain are in Ipswich and globally in Italy!
http://gbnames.publicprofiler.org/
http://worldnames.publicprofiler.org/
Very interesting, take a look. Apparently the largest concentration of Paternosters within Great Britain are in Ipswich and globally in Italy!
http://gbnames.publicprofiler.org/
http://worldnames.publicprofiler.org/
Wish you were here?
Two artists, Robert Graves and Didier Madoc Jones, have adopted the traditional postcard format to present startling views of cities altered by the effects of imagined environmental change. The image on the left here shows a disturbing image of what London would look like if it were to flood. More examples of their work can be seen on the website link below:
http://www.postcardsfromthefuture.com/
Cocooned Trees
An unexpected side effect of the 2010 flooding in parts of Pakistan was that millions of spiders climbed up into the trees to escape the rising floodwaters; because of the scale of the flooding and the fact that the water took so long to recede, many trees became cocooned in spiderwebs. People in the area had never seen this phenomenon before, but they also reported that there were fewer mosquitoes than they would have expected, given the amount of standing water that was left. Not being bitten by mosquitoes was one small blessing for people that had lost everything in the floods.
-National Geographic
"Bodies" make up fake Coral Reef
Just off the tourist mecca of Cancún lies the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef System. It stretches all the way south to Honduras and is second in size only to Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.
But like many reefs, it faces threats – from pollution, warming ocean temperatures and overfishing. Add to that the pressure of hundreds of thousands of tourists visiting the area’s waters and the reef’s days could be numbered. Jason Decaires Taylor is trying to help in a novel way – through art.
His project involves sinking 400 human sculptures in nearly 30 feet of water. And in just a few months, the statues have already attracted a wide variety of life. The sculptures designed to become artificial reef units. The cement structures are made from marine grade cement that’s engineered to attract corals so corals adhere to it, they grow, they make different formations. That in turn encourages fish and other marine life.”
JASON DECAIRES TAYLOR, SCULPTOR: “Already, I think there’s a thousand different fish living on them. There’s lobsters, there’s big schools of angel fish. And there’s a big coating of algae, so early signs are good.”
-National Geographic
But like many reefs, it faces threats – from pollution, warming ocean temperatures and overfishing. Add to that the pressure of hundreds of thousands of tourists visiting the area’s waters and the reef’s days could be numbered. Jason Decaires Taylor is trying to help in a novel way – through art.
His project involves sinking 400 human sculptures in nearly 30 feet of water. And in just a few months, the statues have already attracted a wide variety of life. The sculptures designed to become artificial reef units. The cement structures are made from marine grade cement that’s engineered to attract corals so corals adhere to it, they grow, they make different formations. That in turn encourages fish and other marine life.”
JASON DECAIRES TAYLOR, SCULPTOR: “Already, I think there’s a thousand different fish living on them. There’s lobsters, there’s big schools of angel fish. And there’s a big coating of algae, so early signs are good.”
-National Geographic
Cyclops Shark
Talk about a one-of-a-kind discovery—an extremely rare cyclops shark has been confirmed in Mexico, new research shows.
The 22-inch-long (56-centimeter-long) foetus has a single, functioning eye at the front of its head—the hallmark of a congenital condition called cyclopia, which occurs in several animal species, including humans.
Earlier this year fisher Enrique Lucero León legally caught a pregnant dusky shark near Cerralvo Island (see map) in the Gulf of California. When León cut open his catch, he found the odd-looking male embryo along with its nine normal siblings.
Once Galván-Magaña and colleague Marcela Bejarano-Álvarez heard about the discovery—which was put on Facebook—the team got León's permission to borrow the shark for research. The scientists then x-rayed the fetus and reviewed previous research on cyclopia in other species to confirm that the find is indeed a cyclops shark.
Cyclops sharks have been documented by scientists a few times before. The fact that none have been caught outside the womb suggests cyclops sharks don't survive long in the wild.
Overall, finding such an unusual animal reinforces that scientists still have a lot to learn, Gelsleichter added.
"It's a humbling experience to realize you ain't seen it all yet."
-National Geographic
The 22-inch-long (56-centimeter-long) foetus has a single, functioning eye at the front of its head—the hallmark of a congenital condition called cyclopia, which occurs in several animal species, including humans.
Earlier this year fisher Enrique Lucero León legally caught a pregnant dusky shark near Cerralvo Island (see map) in the Gulf of California. When León cut open his catch, he found the odd-looking male embryo along with its nine normal siblings.
Once Galván-Magaña and colleague Marcela Bejarano-Álvarez heard about the discovery—which was put on Facebook—the team got León's permission to borrow the shark for research. The scientists then x-rayed the fetus and reviewed previous research on cyclopia in other species to confirm that the find is indeed a cyclops shark.
Cyclops sharks have been documented by scientists a few times before. The fact that none have been caught outside the womb suggests cyclops sharks don't survive long in the wild.
Overall, finding such an unusual animal reinforces that scientists still have a lot to learn, Gelsleichter added.
"It's a humbling experience to realize you ain't seen it all yet."
-National Geographic
Singing Sand Dunes
When Marco Polo heard it in China, he suspected evil spirits. When residents of Copiapo, Chile, heard it they dubbed the peak El Bramador, for its roars and bellows.
Scientists today call it "singing sand," but they're all referring to the same thing: As sand grains shuffle down the slopes of certain sand dunes, they produce a deep, groaning hum that reverberates for miles.
But how these dunes produce this "music" remains a much debated mystery. Another vexing question is why different dunes sing different tunes—and how can some even sing more than one note at a time?
A trio of Parisian biophysicists think they know the answer. It's not necessarily the motion of the sandy ocean that determines the pitch of the note—it's the size of the grains, though why the size matters is still unknown.
The researchers first tracked down a pair of singing dunes, one in Morocco, the other in Oman. They scooted feet-first down the the dunes to trigger avalanches. They found that, while the Moroccan hill moaned at a steady 105 Hz—or a low G sharp—the Omani dunes sang a nine-note blare that ranged from 90 to 150 Hz.
With the sounds identified, the team packed their suitcases with Moroccan sand and Omani sand and hauled them back to their lab in Paris.
After examining the sound they concluded that "The size of the grain controls the actual sound," Dagois-Bohy. Why exactly this happens, and how the sound itself is created, is still uncertain. However, they suspect that, during an avalanche, grains of sand move together down the dune—each grain colliding with and rolling around its neighbors, creating a constant stream of collisions. Larger grains of sand move around each other at slower rates, and vice versa for smaller grains.
Each bump makes a shock that, on its own, would be all but inaudible. But add them together in the right conditions and you get "the sound of millions of little shocks."
-National Geographic
Scientists today call it "singing sand," but they're all referring to the same thing: As sand grains shuffle down the slopes of certain sand dunes, they produce a deep, groaning hum that reverberates for miles.
But how these dunes produce this "music" remains a much debated mystery. Another vexing question is why different dunes sing different tunes—and how can some even sing more than one note at a time?
A trio of Parisian biophysicists think they know the answer. It's not necessarily the motion of the sandy ocean that determines the pitch of the note—it's the size of the grains, though why the size matters is still unknown.
The researchers first tracked down a pair of singing dunes, one in Morocco, the other in Oman. They scooted feet-first down the the dunes to trigger avalanches. They found that, while the Moroccan hill moaned at a steady 105 Hz—or a low G sharp—the Omani dunes sang a nine-note blare that ranged from 90 to 150 Hz.
With the sounds identified, the team packed their suitcases with Moroccan sand and Omani sand and hauled them back to their lab in Paris.
After examining the sound they concluded that "The size of the grain controls the actual sound," Dagois-Bohy. Why exactly this happens, and how the sound itself is created, is still uncertain. However, they suspect that, during an avalanche, grains of sand move together down the dune—each grain colliding with and rolling around its neighbors, creating a constant stream of collisions. Larger grains of sand move around each other at slower rates, and vice versa for smaller grains.
Each bump makes a shock that, on its own, would be all but inaudible. But add them together in the right conditions and you get "the sound of millions of little shocks."
-National Geographic
Fire Tornado in Hawaii
While battling a blaze on the slopes of Mauna Kea in August, a Hawaii firefighter captured rare footage of a fire tornado. The flaming whirls can spew embers thousands of feet, helping wildfires spread.
In the video, this fire whirl started with a narrow column of fire in the center of a small dust tornado. Then the tornado gets bigger, and the fire grows. In the end of the video, the fire sort of ‘explodes’ to be much larger and more dangerous. As the fire truck drives away you can see the enormity of the fire.
In the video, this fire whirl started with a narrow column of fire in the center of a small dust tornado. Then the tornado gets bigger, and the fire grows. In the end of the video, the fire sort of ‘explodes’ to be much larger and more dangerous. As the fire truck drives away you can see the enormity of the fire.
Sea of Stars
Pinpricks of light on the shore seem to mirror stars above in a picture taken on Vaadhoo Island in the Maldives.
The biological light, or bioluminescence, in the waves is the product of marine microbes called phytoplankton—and now scientists think they know how some of these life-forms create their brilliant blue glow.
Various species of phytoplankton are known to bioluminesce, and their lights can be seen in oceans all around the world.
"I've been across the Atlantic and Pacific, and I've never seen a spot that wasn't bioluminescent or a night that [bioluminescence] couldn't be seen," Hastings said.
The most common type of marine bioluminescence is generated by phytoplankton known as dinoflagellates. A recent study co-authored by Hastings has for the first time identified a special channel in the dinoflagellate cell membrane that responds to electrical signals—offering a potential mechanism for how the algae create their unique illumination.
—Ker Than
The biological light, or bioluminescence, in the waves is the product of marine microbes called phytoplankton—and now scientists think they know how some of these life-forms create their brilliant blue glow.
Various species of phytoplankton are known to bioluminesce, and their lights can be seen in oceans all around the world.
"I've been across the Atlantic and Pacific, and I've never seen a spot that wasn't bioluminescent or a night that [bioluminescence] couldn't be seen," Hastings said.
The most common type of marine bioluminescence is generated by phytoplankton known as dinoflagellates. A recent study co-authored by Hastings has for the first time identified a special channel in the dinoflagellate cell membrane that responds to electrical signals—offering a potential mechanism for how the algae create their unique illumination.
—Ker Than