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Do you know why camels survive without water?
2007-08-07 14:54:00
Prof. Know Why explains: The humps on a camel's back are actually huge heaps of fat and flesh that can weigh as much as 80 pounds in a healthy camel. These humps help camels survive for weeks without food and water. When water and food become scarce in the deserts where camels roam, the fatty humps serve as stored food and are used for nourishment. As the camel's body metabolizes or uses up the humps' stored fat, the hump becomes smaller and flabbier. So the longer the camel goes without eating, the smaller its hump gets. The size of a camel's hump helps determine a camel's health, food sources, and overall well-being. These humps, or reserves of fat, are the reason why camels can go for days without water and food. While humans are supposed to drink 8 glasses of water a day, camels can go without water for nearly 2 weeks! Visit http://why-corner.blogspot.com for pictures, and other content. Click HERE or the WHY CORNER logo on top.
More About: Water , Survive

Do you know why we have gall-stones?
2007-08-07 14:53:00
Prof. Know Why explains: In medicine, gallstones (choleliths) are crystalline bodies formed within the body by accretion or concretion of normal or abnormal bile components. In easier words, they are small, hard, pathological concretions, composed chiefly of cholesterol, calcium salts, and bile pigments, formed in the gallbladder or in a bile duct. Researchers believe that gallstones may be caused by a combination of factors, including inherited body chemistry, body weight, gallbladder motility (movement), and perhaps diet. Cholesterol gallstones develop when bile contains too much cholesterol and not enough bile salts. Besides a high concentration of cholesterol, two other factors seem to be important in causing gallstones. The first is how often and how well the gallbladder contracts. Incomplete and infrequent emptying of the gallbladder may cause the bile to become over concentrated and contribute to gallstone formation. The second factor is the presence of proteins i...
More About: Tone , Stones

Do you know why Bush winked at the Queen?
2007-08-07 14:51:00
Miss Finder ?The Journo, investigates: When you've just made it sound like the Queen is more than 200 years old, there could be only one way of recovering from the gaffe. That?s typically the Bush ?s self-proclaimed way of projecting smartness, after a blundering stupid act. Yes! Turning to her and giving her a sly wink which might not necessarily needed to be included in any book of royal etiquette though. That's exactly what happened on 7th of May, 2007 after George Bush mangled his greeting to the Queen on her state visit to the U.S. Stumbling over his words, he came perilously close to suggesting that the monarch had toured the States in 1776. And although the President's following wink was initially rewarded with a regal glare, the Queen did at least seem to see the funny side of the blunder. Being human, it was only a forgivable slip-of-tongue-issue, though not expected, which could have been rectified with a normal and humble ?sorry?, instead. But may be tha...
More About: United States , The Queen

Do you know why onions make us cry?
2007-08-07 14:46:00
Prof. Know Why explains: It is not the strong odor of the onion, but the gas that the onion releases when we peel off this member of the lily family, makes us cry. The onion itself contains oil, which contains sulfur, an irritant to both our noses and to our eyes. Cutting an onion arouses a gas contained within the onion, propanethiol S-oxide, which then couples with the enzymes in the onion to emit a passive sulfur compound. When this upwardly mobile gas encounters the water produced by the tear ducts in our eyelids, it produces sulfuric acid. In response to the caustic acid, our eyes automatically blink due to irritation and produce tears to flush out the sulfuric acid. Moreover, to rid the eyes of this foreign substance, we instinctively rub our eyes with our hands, while into the act, which again exacerbates the situation, as our hands are coated with the caustic, sulfuric acid producing oil from cutting the onion. The only remedy to get rid of this pungent, irri...
More About: Make , Onion , Onions

Do you know why we laugh?
2007-08-07 14:45:00
Prof. Know Why explains: The reasons we laugh, including ?contagious? laughter, may be products of evolution. Natural laughter is a two-part, spontaneous, response to humor, that has physiological, psychological, and physical benefits. Most agree that we laugh when we find something to be humorous, though different reasons exist for what we find to be humorous. Additionally, different things are humorous to us at different stages of life. Laugh ter, a physiological response to humor, can be broken down into two parts. The first is a set of gestures, and the second is the production of sound. The brain forces to conduct both responses simultaneously. From a physiological standpoint, a ?sensor? in the brain responds to laughter by triggering other neural circuits in the brain, which, in turn, generate more laughter. Oddly enough, laughter is an orderly response, and almost occurs spontaneously during pauses at the end of phrases, earning it the name the ?punctuation effect...

Do you know why Richard Gere kissed Big Brother Shilpa Shetty?
2007-08-07 14:43:00
Scene 1 -Shilpa surprised! Scene 2 -Shilpa resisting. Scene 3 -Shilpa submitted, mission accomplished. Miss Finder ?The Journo, investigates: The occasion was an AIDS awareness programme in New Delhi, India on 15th of April, 2007. Hollywood star Richard Gere went on to hug his Pretty Woman, Big Brother Shilpa Shetty on stage. It was supposed to be a normal hug, or so was thought by Shilpa! But suddenly Richard held her tight, and then leaned on to kiss on her cheek. Shilpa was quite taken aback, tried to kind of resist somehow, but finally submitted, all with her gracious laugh. Now, what could the reason be, behind this sudden act? Well! It could be that Richard wanted to pass the message that AIDS doesn?t get transmitted like this, or one should be so much affectionate with an AIDS patient. And it might also be for a spicy headline though, in his otherwise not so happening career at the moment! Or could it be that he was eyeing this conservative Asian beau...

Do you know why pregnant women crave for pickles and icecreams?
2007-08-07 14:39:00
Prof. Know Why explains: Pregnant women are famous for their midnight yearnings for pickles and ice-creams. And the desire for chocolates is the stuff of legend. It?s tempting to believe ?as many people do ?that cravings are the body?s way of telling us that we are lacking a certain nutrient which the food we crave can supply. Chocolates, as the belief goes, might soothe a broken heart by replacing compounds lost in oceans of tears. But pregnant women might crave ice-creams because they need calcium or pickles because they lack sodium. Pregnant women rarely crave for fruits and vegetables. More often, they yarn for foods that are very sweet, spicy or salty. From an evolutionary standpoint, this makes sense. A craving for highly palatable foods may have been nature?s way of boosting calorie intake, ensuring a healthy pregnancy. So would-be fathers ?get ready for your sweet-heart?s sudden demand of a chocolate-ice-cream in the wee hours of the night. Visit http://why-...
More About: Women , Pickles , Pickle , Crave

Do you know why stars twinkle?
2007-08-07 14:33:00
Prof. Know Why explains: On a clear, dark night, our eyes can see about 6,000 or so stars in the sky. They seem to twinkle, or change their brightness, all the time. The scientific name for this twinkling of stars is stellar scintillation or astronomical scintillation. Stars seem to twinkle when we see them from the Earth's surface, because we are viewing them through thick layers of turbulent (moving) air in the Earth?s atmosphere. The Earth's atmosphere comprises of layers of gases surrounding the Earth. It?s composed of 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, 0.9% argon, 0.03% carbon dioxide, and other gases. These gaseous layers insulate the Earth from extreme temperatures and block the Earth from much of the Sun?s incoming ultraviolet radiation. As light of a star travels through these layers of the Earth's atmosphere, it is bent or refracted many times and in random directions (it happens whenever it hits a change in density - like a pocket of cold air or hot air). This rando...
More About: Prof , Twinkle

Do you know why we suffer from blocked ears?
2007-08-07 14:30:00
Prof. Know Why explains: While travelling by aeroplane or climbing mountains we might have temporary ear blockage, which is not associated with loss of hearing though. This happens due to an imbalance in air pressure. Let?s see how it happens. Ear comprises of three parts ?external, middle and internal ear. And for normal hearing, we need to have proper air balance in the middle as well as the external ear. The ?hearing mechanism? works like this: A membrane called Tympanic membrane separates the middle ear from the external ear. The middle ear is connected with the upper part of the Pharynx by a tube called the Eustachian tube. Now, when we breathe in, a portion of the air enters the middle ear through this tube. So to balance the pressure within the ear for normal hearing, some amount of air also enters the external ear through the external auditory canal. But when in a flight or on higher altitudes, the atmospheric pressure inside the middle ear remains the same, whil...
More About: Ears