Ten Squirrel Facts

Spring is here and the squirrels are here. Did you know squirrels can leap 10 times their body length? They can turn their ankles 180 degrees to face any direction when climbing. They have good eyesight, and they can learn from copying other animals and humans.

Fifty Six cases of bubonic plague (it is now treatable with antibiotics) and seven deaths were recorded in the US between 2000 and 2009, and squirrels harboring the infected fleas were among the main culprits.

Squirrels are clever, and can learn to navigate numerous obstacles to find the most efficient route to food.

They will find a dead rattlesnake, chew its skin, and then lick themselves. This leaves the squirrels smelling like snakes, and scientists believes this tricks animals into thinking that the squirrels’ burrows are actually home to snakes.

Squirrels store nuts and acorns for winter, because they do not hibernate. Also, because they bury their acorns, squirrels are partially responsible for oak trees in much of the US.

Hungry squirrels have been observed scoring a maple tree’s bark with their teeth, letting the sap leak, and returning to lick it later when it’s dried up.
Squirrels’ tunnels can exceed 9 meters (30 ft) in length.

What's in a Name, Whipping Boy

This term is still used, but did you know there really were whipping boys? Whipping boys were created, because of the divine right of kings, which stated that kings were appointed by God, and implied that no one but the king was worthy of punishing the king’s son. Tutors to young princes found it difficult to enforce rules or learning.

A whipping boy was a young boy who was assigned to a young prince and was punished when the prince misbehaved or fell behind in his schooling. The idea was that seeing a friend being whipped or beaten for something that he had done wrong would be likely to ensure that the prince would not make the same mistake again. Whipping boys were established in the English court during monarchies of the 15th century and 16th centuries.

Dull and Boring

The town of Boring, Ore. has become official partners with the Scotland town of Dull. The two towns joined forces in 2013 in an attempt to increase tourism. Oregonians declared a new state holiday called "Boring and Dull Day" to celebrate the occasion, while Scotland invited a bagpipe player to play some tunes.

Eye Floaters

Eye floaters are little oddly shaped objects that appear in your vision, often when a person looks at bright light such as a blue sky. Their shapes vary greatly, but will often appear as spots, cobwebs, or randomly shaped stringy objects. These are not optical illusions, but rather something your eyes actually perceive. There are a few different things that can cause this, but in most cases these eye floaters are caused by pieces of the gel-like vitreous breaking off from the back portion of your eye and then floating about in your eyeball.

The vitreous humor, or often just “vitreous”, is a clear gel that fills the gap between your retina and lens, helping maintain the round shape of your eye in the process. This gel is about 99% water and 1% mostly consisting mostly of a network of hyaluronic acid and collagen. Hyaluronic acid ends up retaining water molecules. Over time though, this network breaks down which results in the hyaluronic acid releasing its trapped water molecules. When this happens, it forms a watery core in your vitreous body.

As you age, pieces of the still gel-like collagen/hyaluronic acid network will break off and float around in this watery center. When light passes through this area, it creates a shadow on your retina. This shadow is actually what you are seeing when you see the eye floaters.

Children and teenagers almost never experience these types of eye floaters as there must first be some deterioration of the gel-like substance in their eye for these floaters to appear. However, they do still sometimes experience a certain type of eye floater that often appears more like a crystallized web across their vision. These floaters aren't found in the vitreous humor like the other floaters. Instead, they are found in the Premacular Bursa area, right on top of the retina. These floaters are microscopic in size and only appear as big as they do because of their proximity to the retina.

Banana Food Hack

Take two to four ripe bananas, peel them and let them sit in the freezer for an hour, then slice them up toss into a blender. You will get a smooth and tasty treat that is good for you. If you feel the need to punch up the taste, add two tablespoons of peanut butter or chocolate chips.

Wordology, Lb

Did you ever wonder why we use the Lb abbreviation for pound? Lb is an abbreviation of the Latin word libra. The primary meaning of libra was balance or scales (as in the astrological sign), but it also stood for the ancient Roman unit of measure libra pondo, meaning “a pound by weight.” The word “pound” in English from the pondo part of the libra pondo but the abbreviation comes from the libra. The libra is also why the symbol for the British pound is £, an L with a line through it. The Italian lira also used that symbol (with two lines through it), the word “lira” itself being a shortened version of libra.

“Ounce” is related to the Latin uncia, the name for both the Roman ounce and inch units of measurement. The word came into English from Anglo-Norman French, where it was unce or ounce, but the abbreviation was borrowed from Medieval Italian, where the word was onza. These days the Italian word is oncia, and the area once covered by the Roman Empire has long since switched to the metric system.

Free Spring Smile

No words needed

Happy Friday

Don't make 'good morning' just a wish for someone, make it a positive statement.

Try this - Good morning, have a Happy Friday!

Pi Approximation Day

Pi Day was invented by physicist Larry Shaw and the first Pi Day celebration was held at the San Francisco Exploratorium in 1988. In 2009 the US Congress officially recognized March 14 as Pi Day in the United States. Traditional Pi Day activities include eating pizza, fruit pies, pancakes, and other circular food.

Foiling Garden Pests

Early spring planting tip - cut up small strips of used aluminum foil and mix in with garden soil to keep away aphids and other garden pests.

Salt and Grilling

Spring means time to clean the barbecue and get ready to grill. Salting meat after it is cooked helps the flavor, but salt draws moisture out of the surface of the meat. If salt is left on the surface of meat for a significant period of time, it will dehydrate the meat. Usually, this is not a good idea before cooking meat.

However, if the meat is going to be cooked quickly (like a grilled steak) and if the salt is added just before cooking, then the salt will neither help nor hurt the meat. This is because it is too short a period of time for the salt to dehydrate the surface of the meat.

Ultra Thin Circuits

Ultra thin film-like organic transistor integrated circuits are being developed by a research group led by Professor Takao Someya and Associate Professor Tsuyoshi Sekitani of the University of Tokyo, who run an Exploratory Research for Advanced Technology program sponsored by the Japan Science and Technology Agency, in collaboration with Siegfried Bauer's group at the Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria.

The circuits are extremely lightweight, flexible, durable and thin, and conform to any surface. They are just 2 microns thick, just 1/5 that of kitchen wrap, and weighing only 3g/m^2, are 30 times lighter than office paper. They also feature a bend radius of 5 microns, meaning they can be scrunched up into a ball, without breaking. Due to these properties the researchers have dubbed them "imperceptible electronics", which can be placed on any surface and even worn without restricting the users movement.

The integrated circuits are manufactured on rolls of one micron thick plastic film, making them easily scalable and cheap to produce. And if the circuit is placed on a rubber surface it becomes stretchable, able to withstand up to 233% tensile strain, while retaining full functionality.

"This is a very convenient way of making electronics stretchable because you can fabricate high performance devices in a flat state and then just transfer them over to a stretchable substrate and create something that is very compliant and stretchable just by a simple pick and place process."

In the future, the group would like to expand the capabilities of these circuits and open a wide range of new applications, from health monitoring systems, wearable medical instruments, and even robotic skins.