Bats are the only mammals that can fly. Their feet are not strong enough to support standing or walking for a long time. They have a wingspan ranging from six feet to six inches.
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But the wings don’t produce enough lift to help them take off from a dead stop and the hind legs, too, are [...]
Botanical Name: Coffea arabica (LINN.)
Family: N.O. Rubiaceae
Synonym: Caffea.
Parts Used: Seeds, leaves, caffeine.
Habitat: South-west point of Abyssinia. and cultivated throughout the tropics.
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Coffee is a widely consumed stimulant beverage prepared from roasted seeds, commonly called beans, of the coffee plant. Coffee was first consumed in the 9th century, [...]
Headaches — barring migraine headaches, which are of a different type — are a painful symptom of an underlying systemic problem or cause.
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There may be various reasons why one may develop a headache, each of which has a different trigger mechanism. But the resulting headache in all cases is a red flag signaling a [...]
Sunlight is crucial to our health and when we don’t get enough of it, both our mood and our health suffer. This is especially true in regions where temperatures dip to sub-zero levels and sunlight is scarce.
But why does this happen? When you’re out in the sun, your serotonin levels go up. Serotonin is [...]
Q. Why do people need to sleep?
A.Sleep is vital for giving your body rest and preparing for the next day. It’s a mini-vacation for your body. Sleep is as important as breathing or eating. In fact, people can survive longer without food than they can without sleep. Sleep also gives your brain a chance to [...]
Having two eyes is certainly better than having just one because two eyes provide us with stereo vision and depth perception —things that wouldn’t have been possible with just one eye.
With a gap of around two and a half inches separating our eyes, each eye views an object from a slightly different angle. For instance, [...]
A slice of apple becomes reddish or brownish after a few minutes because of a chemical reaction called oxidation brought about by the oxygen in the air.
Apples and many other fruits contain chemicals called polyphenolic compounds. Phenols are colourless, but on oxidation under the influence of an enzyme called polyphenol oxidase (PPO) — also [...]
A banana skin turn black after a few days, even when the banana is kept in the refrigerator.
The reason behind it is that the green skin of banana contains a gaseous plant hormone, ethylene, which diffuses into the fruit and hastens the process of ripening. It is yellow when the fruit is ripe and turns [...]
Onions come in many varieties and three main colours — yellow, white and red. They are rich in nutrients including vitamins B and C, protein, calcium and iron.
It’s not the strong odour of the onion that makes us cry, but the substances that are released when we chop it. The vegetable contains some sulphur compounds [...]
Eyebrows play a very important role in keeping moisture out of our eyes. Just as an umbrella keeps our bodies dry from the rain, our hairy eyebrows protect our eyes from rain and sweat.
Eyebrows also help with communication. Often you can tell how a person is reacting to something just by the way he moves [...]
Don’t know why you are putting on so much weight? Blame the stress at work and at home.
In a study to show how stress has a direct effect on fat accumulation, body weight and metabolism, scientists have demonstrated that neuropeptide Y (NPY), a molecule the body releases when stressed, can unlock Y2 receptors in [...]
When the cells present at the base of the hair root stop producing melanin (the pigment producing colour), the hair shafts turn grey.
Melanin is made up of specialised pigment cells called melanocytes. These are located at the openings on the skin’s surface (follicles) through which hair grows.
As the hair is being formed, melanocytes inject pigment [...]
KnowHow team explains: This is one of the most commonly held superstitions. Come Friday 13, and some people become so paralysed with fear that they simply won’t get out of bed. Others may steadfastly refuse to fly on an airplane, sign business deals or even change the arrangement of home furniture. [...]
KnowHow team explains: This is a myth. The blood alcohol level depends solely on the amount of alcohol one has consumed.
Different concentrations of alcohol are absorbed into our system at different rates which can lead to confusion, as can the different number of alcohol units present in various drinks. It is probably a combination of [...]
KnowHow team explains: Nature has endowed all life forms with one essential quality: growth. Embryos turn into large animals from a few cells. Seedlings become plants. And in biosphere, no other creature grows as big as trees.
But unlike animals, trees can be trained to become dwarfs. Although the Japanese claim credits of mastering the craft [...]
KnowHow team explains: Shoes are made for walking, jogging, hiking, even dancing. But in the centuries since our ancestors first wrapped their feet in woven grasses and animal skins to protect them from rough surfaces, function has clashed with fashion in the design of our footwear. The crocodile-hide loafers and cowboy boots that cross paths [...]
KnowHow team explains: Hair is curly or straight, depending upon the number of disulphide bonds between the hair proteins found in the hair shaft. The greater the number of links, the curlier is the hair, and the fewer the links, the straighter the hair.
Hair is primarily composed of keratin, a protein that grows from sacs [...]
KnowHow team explains: Sweating is a natural phenomenon that occurs so that our body temperature remains constant. When the heat is on and we perspire, we might feel that all that sweat hardly does any good to us. On the contrary, it does help in reducing our body temperature to a great extent.
The hypothalamus (a [...]
KnowHow team explains: Déjà vu (French for “already seenâ€) describes the experience of feeling that one has been through a particular situation previously. The term was coined by French psychic researcher, Émile Boirac, in his book L’Avenir des sciences psychiques (The Future of Psychic Sciences).
An absolute sense of familiarity and eeriness accompany déjà vu. The [...]
KnowHow team explains: Vertigo is a certain kind of dizziness, often wrongly used to describe a fear of heights (actually called acrophobia). Vertigo is not a disease, but only a symptom. It refers to the sensation of spinning or whirling one experiences when there is a disturbance in the body equilibrium — the feeling that [...]
