Cactus: Indigenous Desert Plant

A desert is often characterized by high temperature, high humidity and low precipitation and a drastic fall in temperature at night. When you think of the desert, you might not associate it with fertility, but there are a number of different plants – including cactuses – that inhabit the planet’s driest regions. Here are different types of cactus found in the desert!

How Colours Define our Mood

Did you know your surroundings may be influencing your emotions and state of mind? Do you ever notice that certain places especially irritate you? Or that certain places are especially relaxing and calming? Well, there’s a good chance that the colors in those spaces are playing a part. 

In art therapy, color is often associated with a person’s emotions. Color may also influence a person’s mental or physical state. For example, studies have shown that some people looking at the color red resulted in an increased heart rate, which then led to additional adrenaline being pumped into the blood stream.

You can learn more about how color therapy works and how light and color might affect us in this article.

Spot the Difference

Although these large reptiles belong to different families, they share a number of similarities, including long snouts, powerful tails, short legs, and bony-plated backs. But there are some easy ways to tell them apart!

Everest: A Beauty and a Beast!

Mount Everest is Earth's highest mountain above sea level, located in the Mahalangur Himal sub-range of the Himalayas. The China–Nepal border runs across its summit point. Its elevation of 8,848.86 m was most recently established in 2020 by the Nepali and Chinese authorities.

“Everest is in many ways still a blank canvas,” says alpinist and National Geographic photographer Cory Richards. “It’s still as high, cold, and formidable as it ever was. How one chooses to climb it is as much a reflection of creativity as a skill. There is always a new way to approach something, and Everest is no different.”

Read more facts about Everests' geography and climbing here

5 Facts about Lady Antoinette

Born Maria Antonia Josepha Johanna, Archduchess of Austria, the woman known as Marie Antoinette became Queen of France and Navarre on May 10, 1774. Her marriage to Louis-Auguste was designed to create peace between Austria and France after the Diplomatic Revolution of 1756 and the onset of the Seven Years’ War. She survived shifting political sands of palace intrigue and upheaval between European countries but couldn’t survive the revolution boiling over in her own adopted nation. Here are 10 facts about a woman we love to make up myths about.

Read more facts about Lady Antoinette here.

How Safe are your Household Items?

Paints, cleaning supplies and personal care products (think deodorants and hair sprays) are among common products that send a host of chemicals into the air. These air pollutants — some of the sweet-smelling — now contribute as much to lung-irritating ozone and to tiny airborne particulates as does the burning of gasoline or diesel fuel.
Here are 5 everyday items that cause damage to the environment.\

Check out the whole list here

No Social Distancing for Jupiter & Saturn!

Jupiter and Saturn, the two of the biggest planets in our solar system aligned the closest to each other on December 21, resulting in a ‘conjunction’. Social media platforms have been flooded with pictures and videos of the phenomena and it was even trending on Twitter.

In the once-in-a-lifetime phenomenon, Jupiter and Saturn will cross within .1 degrees of each other (a fraction of the width of the full moon), overlapping to form a ‘double planet when seen from Earth.

Antarctica: Ruled by Penguins

Penguins are the most common birds in the Antarctic. Living in colonies with populations larger than some cities, and surviving in the harshest of conditions, it is no wonder that penguins are seen as the emblem of Antarctica.

However, of the 18 different species of penguin, only two (emperor and Adélie) make the Antarctic continent their true home, although others (chinstrap, Gentoo, and macaroni) breed on the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, where conditions are less harsh. King penguins only breed on the warmer more northerly subantarctic islands.

Wildlife, Wildlife Everywhere!

Ranthambore boasts of being home to a large number of mammals, reptile, and bird species. The national park in Rajasthan is primarily known as the home to Royal Bengal Tigers. Other than this, the national park also has a rich population of leopards, sloth bears, several deer species like chital (spotted deer), marsh crocodile, palm civet, jackal, desert fox, serpent eagle, waterfowl that along with others make 40 species of mammals, 35 species of reptiles and 320 species of birds. Here are 5 animals found in Ranthambore National Park.

Check out the list of all animals at Ranthambore National Park

Bringing Colour to the Oceans

Coral reefs are large underwater structures composed of the skeletons of colonial marine invertebrates called coral. The coral species that build reefs are known as hermatypic, or "hard," corals because they extract calcium carbonate from seawater to create a hard, durable exoskeleton that protects their soft, sac-like bodies. Other species of corals that are not involved in reef-building are known as “soft” corals. These types of corals are flexible organisms often resembling plants and trees and include species such as sea fans and sea whips, according to the Coral Reef Alliance (CORAL), a nonprofit environmental organization.

The biggest coral reefs are found in the clear, shallow waters of the tropics and subtropics. The largest of these coral reef systems, the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, is more than 1,500 miles long (2,400 kilometers).

Read more about Coral reefs here.

5 Facts About Mars

Mars is the fourth planet from the sun. Befitting the Red Planet's bloody color, the Romans named it after their god of war. In truth, the Romans copied the ancient Greeks, who also named the planet after their god of war, Ares. Other civilizations also typically gave the planet names based on its color — for example, the Egyptians named it "Her Desher," meaning "the red one," while ancient Chinese astronomers dubbed it "the fire star."

5 Bountiful Blue Whale Facts

“Whale” is a common name for a variety of large marine mammals. The Latin word cetus gives the whale species its scientific title, Cetacea. Whales come in two categories of Cetacea. The largest, Mysticeti, are characterized by sieve-like, baleen structures in their upper jaw that they use to filter food from the seawater. The other category, Odontoceti, has teeth, such as sperm whales and orcas. Not surprisingly, blue whales fall within the large baleen parvorder of Mysticeti. Here are 10 of our favorite facts about this largest but little-seen whale species.

Five 2-in-1 Fruits

With bizarre names, hybrids might sound like weird science, but these fruits and their many cousins are more natural and familiar than you might think.

Hybrids don't use genetically modified organism technology. Hybrids use traditional pollination that can ordinarily occur in nature. With controlled pollination, cultivars can breed new generations of fruiting plants with increasingly desirable characteristics.

Farmers benefit from hybridized fruit plants that are naturally disease resistant and hearty in heat, cold, and drought — in addition to producing consistent, higher yields with predictable fruit maturation times. As a result, consumers benefit from unique, uniform fruit sizes and shapes, increased juiciness, improved taste, and better nutrition.

Read more about some hybrid fruits! 

Rabindranath Tagore: Name that Spells Genius.

The great Indian wordsmith, his writings are compelling, thought-provoking, and inspiring, that won him the Nobel prize in Literature in 1913. As the world celebrates the 155th birth anniversary of the visionary poet and philosopher, also hailed as Gurudev, here are 10 of his rare photographs.

The Legend of Aryabhata

Not only was the golden age of painting, architecture, and literature the Golden Age of Gupta's 4th-6th Century AD, but it was also the great age of technology, mathematics, and astronomy. At this time, several pathbreaking discoveries were made. The name of Aryabhatta shines like a star amongst the great mathematicians and astronomers of the time. Aryabhatta invented the decimal method, trigonometry, measured pi magnitude, and studied our solar system while mathematics and astronomy were only in their early creation phases across the globe. The Greeks and others in the Middle East have made extensive use of his works. Let's read about some of his achievements.

Wow Moments of the Universe

Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured by NASA, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. Let's have a look at some of them!

Explore more at NASA

Fun Facts about Food

Food facts are not something you really think about when eating your favorite meal, but we do!
Food can either be a nutritious meal or a guilty pleasure! We all have our weaknesses when it comes to what we like to eat.
Some of those foods, whether they’re healthy or not, have interesting facts about them that you never would have guessed or thought of.

What's in the air?

People like to rely on toxic particles in the outdoor environment. Air pollution may have significant adverse effects on your health. Yet according to the Environmental Protection Agency, the air in your home will be up to five times more toxic than what you breathe outside. And don't ignore that you spend up to 90% of your time indoors, the American Lung Association says. 

Now that energy-efficient buildings keep air leakage to a minimum, there’s a big uptick in the concentration of air pollutants, says Ian Colbeck, PhD, professor in the school of biological sciences at the University of Essex in the UK. Pollutants that should pique your concern include tobacco smoke, nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide, particulate matter agents, formaldehyde, volatile organic compounds (VOCs), and radon, he says.

Let's read about factors that cause air pollution inside our homes.

Only Place to Live: 5 Amazing Facts About the Human Body

“Take care of your body. It’s the only place you have to live.” —Jim Rohn

Sometimes all we need is a friendly reminder about how important our body is and how it impacts our quality of life on so many levels. Jim Rohn’s quote about taking care of your body because it’s the only place you have to live is valid on many levels. Today, we’ll touch on the physiological aspects of the body.

Read more body facts here

Wow Moments of the Universe

Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured by NASA, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. Let's have a look at some of them!

Explore more at NASA