The Glowing Ocean - Navo

• Whether seen from the beach or from the seat of a kayak, the glowing ocean is a phenomenon that, once experienced, is not soon forgotten. What causes this strange glow in the ocean’s water? And what purpose – if any – does it serve?
• The phenomenon of the glowing ocean has fascinated sea travelers for a long time. Folklore from northern Europe, southeast Asia, and the South Pacific include reference to it. Aristotle (3^rd century BCE) wrote his observations about the phenomenon in his work De Anima. During the Renaissance, when European explorers set sail across the world’s oceans, observations of bioluminescent organisms became even more widespread. Even Charles Darwin made note of the phenomena in his written journals from his time on the HMS Beaglein the 1830s.
• The creatures behind the mysterious bluish-green glow in the ocean’s surface waters are tiny organisms called dinoflagellates. These single-celled organisms range in size from 30 µm to 1 mm and can be found in waters around the globe. While an individual dinoflagellate’s glow is typically too dim to be seen by the naked eye, when their populations swell to high concentrations, their presence is unmistakable.  Along the coastlines of the United States, dinoflagellate populations typically grow to high concentrations during the summer to late fall months, when water temperatures are warmer and the seas are calmer.
• Whether on land or sea, however, bioluminescence is another in the long list of those curious traits of our planet’s organisms; traits that, while only a byproduct of some other adaptation, come to serve the organism in other practical – and fascinating – ways.

 

The Red Crab Immigration - Navo

• The red crab is a Christmas Island, Australia, original found nowhere else in the world. But on its home turf it is a very significant species—some 120 million individuals cover the rain forest floor and play a major role in determining the structure of the ecosystem.
• These large crabs are active during the day but prefer to stay in the shade and can die in the moisture-robbing heat of direct sunlight. They scavenge on fallen leaves, seedlings, fruits, and flowers, recycling nutrients and helping to determine the spread and composition of native flora.
• Most of the year red crabs are solitary dwellers of the burrows they dig throughout the forest. During the dry season they retreat into these shelters to retain body humidity and essentially remain there for two to three months.
• But when wet season returns in October or November they begin a legendary mass migration to their seaside breeding grounds, moving in colorful waves that wash over all obstacles including roads (necessitating crab tunnels and road closings) and even seaside cliffs. 
• The annual trek is also intimately tied to the lunar schedule. The crabs arrive at the coast and mate at such a time that the females can produce eggs and develop them in burrows for a dozen or so days before releasing them into the sea precisely when high tide turns between the last quarter and new moon. During this period sea level on the beaches varies the least and offers an easier approach, a factor so important that if weather delays the migration crabs will put off spawning until the next lunar month.
• Red crab eggs hatch right away, and young live as larvae in the sea for a month before returning to the shoreline, molting into air breathers, and slowly returning inland to begin the cycle anew.

Lake Retba - Navo

• Less than an hour away from the capital city of Senegal there is an unusual lake that will surely catch the unsuspecting visitor’s eye because of its unusual yet vivid pink color.
• Lake Retba (or Lac Rose as it is known by locals) is separated only by some narrow dunes from the Atlantic Ocean and, as expected its salt content is very high. Its salinity content compares to that of the Dead Sea and during the dry season it exceeds it.
• Its distinct pink color is caused by the Dunaliella salina bacteria, which is attracted by the lake’s salt content. The bacteria produces a red pigment in order to absorb the sunlight, thus giving the lake its unique color. Its color is especially visible during the dry season (which lasts from November to June) and less during the rainy season (July-October).
• Not many living organisms are able to survive in Lake Retba because of its high salt content, so it serves mainly as a tourist point and for salt production.
• In fact, if you decide to visit the lake, you will constantly see salt collectors working at the lake and the shores of Lake Retba are full of piles of collected salt. This salt is extracted by locals from the bottom of the lake using their hands, then placed into baskets it is transported to the shore where it is used mainly to preserve fish. 
• The lake is only 3 square kilometers big (about 1,1 square miles) and there is no major town developed along its shores.
• When visiting the lake, you will be amazed by the contrast of the mountains of salt packed up next to the lake’s shore, the pink color of the lake’s water and the gold sand dunes on the other side of the Lac Rose.
• Lake Retba has the same type of salt the Dead sea has.

Ahhhhhh......

The Hurricane that came from space, Hurricane Arthur - Navo

This Hurricane lasted to July 2 - 3, 2014 (Thursday, Friday)

• A stunning photo snapped by astronauts aboard the International Space Station shows Hurricane Arthur churning off the coast of Florida, heading north.
• The storm was invisible once it hit the earth's atmosphere but in a few hours you could see big white clouds.
• Robotic eyes are keeping tabs on Arthur from orbit as well. NASA's Aqua satellite took a picture on Wednesday afternoon as it passed over the storm.
• The storm is expected to be a Category 2 hurricane when it passes over or near the North Carolina coast, NHC officials said in an advisory Thursday. (Meteorologists classify hurricanes based on wind speed from Category 1, the weakest, to Category 5, the most powerful.)
•  Arthur was about 70 miles (113 kilometers) south-southwest of Cape Fear, North Carolina and featured maximum sustained winds of 90 mph (150 km/h). The National Hurricane Center (NHC), which is run by the U.S. National Weather Service, has issued a hurricane warning for areas from Surf City, North Carolina north to the Virginia border.
• Arthur is the first tropical storm of the 2014 Atlantic hurricane season. It took shape off southern Florida on Tuesday (July 1) and is currently heading north off the East Coast.

Abdul Kalam - Navo

1. Once, Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam rejected the suggestion to put broken glass on the wall of a building that needed protection. Why? Because broken glass would be harmful for birds!

This happened when Dr. Kalam was with the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and his team was discussing options to secure the perimeter of a building that needed protection. Dr. Kalam reportedly said: “If we do that, birds will not be able to perch on the wall.”

2. When youngsters & teenagers requested a meeting with President Kalam, the President not only obliged and gave the kids his precious time, but he also listened carefully to the ideas the kids had.

As President, often Dr. Kalam’s office would receive requests from youngsters for a meeting with the country’s first citizen. Not only would Dr. Kalam meet the kids in his personal chambers at the Rashtrapati Bhavan, but he would also give them his precious time, “listen” to their ideas and 

3. Soon after it was declared that Dr. Kalam would be the next President, he visited a modest school to deliver a speech. His security detail was minimal, and he didn’t mind taking control of the situation when the power went off.

Speaking to around 400 students, Dr. Kalam ensured the power cut didn’t cause any interruption. He walked right in the middle of the crowd and asked the students to surround him. He then spoke to 400 students with his bare voice and delivered, like always, an inspiring keynote.
 

4. President Kalam has given up all his life savings and salaries to a trust he founded named PURA (Providing Urban Amenities to Rural Areas).

The government takes care of the President of India as well as of all the former presidents. Knowing this, Dr. Kalam during his tenure as President decided to give away all his wealth and life savings towards a fund that works towards providing urban amenities to rural population. Apparently, Dr. Kalam called up Dr. Verghese Kurien, the founder of Amul, and asked: “Now that I have become the President of India, the government is going to 
look after me till I am living; so what can I do with my savings and salary?”

5. President Kalam is known to write his own thank you cards.

As humble and generous the man is, President Kalam is known to sign his own thank you cards. One instance is when Quora user Naman Narain drew a sketch of Dr. Kalam and sent it to the President. To his surprise, the President sent him a thank you card, with a short handwritten message and personalised with his signature.

Salva Dut - Navo

• Millions died. Millions more were displaced, fleeing for their lives to refugee camps in Ethiopia, Kenya, and other neighboring countries. Finally, in 2005, after over two decades of war, the Comprehensive Peace Agreement was signed. A truce was declared and the semi-autonomous Government of South Sudan (GOSS) was established for that region.  On July 9, 2011 the Republic of South Sudan celebrated its independence, becoming the newest nation on earth.
• Salva Dut was one of those boys. As an 11-year old Dinka from Tonj in southwest Sudan, Salva fled first to Ethiopia. Then later, as a teenager, he led 1500 "Lost Boys" hundreds of miles through the Southern Sudan desert to the Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya. That courage and heroic perseverance continue to this day. Relocated to the United States in 1996, he now leads Water for South Sudan, Inc., the non-profit organization he founded in 2003.
• The organization is based in Rochester, New York and South Sudan.  Salva holds dual citizenship as an American and South Sudanese. He now spends most of the year in South Sudan overseeing Water for South Sudan’s drilling operations. During his travels to the US and other countries, he works to educate people about South Sudan and fund-raise for the work of Water for South Sudan.
• Salva’s knowledge of local cultures, his contacts within the South Sudan government and other non-governmental organizations enable Water for South Sudan to operate effectively in ways that few development organizations can.
• Salva was starred in a book called The Long Walk To The Water.

Is the Sun shrinking?

• Does the size of the sun change over the years? Recently, "John A. Eddy (Harvard -Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and High Altitude Observatory in Boulder) and Aram A. Boornazian (a mathematician with S. Ross and Co. in Boston) have found evidence that the sun has been contracting about 0.1% per century…corresponding to a shrinkage rate of about 5 feet per hour. The diameter of the sun is close to one million miles, so that this shrinkage of the sun goes unnoticed over hundreds or even thousands of years. There is no cause for alarm for us or for any of our descendants for centuries to come because the sun shrinks so slowly. Yet the sun does actually appear to shrink. The data Eddy and Boornazian examined spanned a 400-year period of solar observation, so that this shrinkage of the sun, though small, is apparently continual.
• What does the shrinkage of the sun have to do with creation and evolution? The sun was larger in the past than it is now by 0.1% per century. A creationist, who may believe that the world was created approximately 6 thousand years ago, has very little to worry about. The sun would have been only 6% larger at creation than it is now. However, if the rate of change of the solar radius remained constant, 100 thousand years ago the sun would be twice the size it is now. One could hardly imagine that any life could exist under such altered conditions. Yet 100 thousand years is a minute amount of time when dealing with evolutionary time scales.
• How far back in the past must one go to have a sun so large that its surface touches the surface of the earth? The solar radius changes at 2.5 feet per hour, half the 5 feet per hour change of the solar diameter. The distance from the sun to the earth is 93 million miles, and there are 5,280 feet in one mile. One must remember that the 20 million year B.C. date is the extreme limit on the time scale for the earth's existence. The time at which the earth first emerged from the shrinking sun is 20 million B.C. A more reasonable limit is the 100 thousand year B.C. limit set by the time at which the size of the sun should have been double its present size.
• A further word of explanation is needed about the assumption that the rate of shrinkage of the sun is constant over 100 thousand years or over 20 million years. The shrinkage rate centuries ago would be determined by the balance of solar forces. Since the potential energy of a homogeneous spherical sun varies inversely with the solar radius, the rate of shrinkage would have been greater in the past than it is now. The time at which the sun was twice its present size is less than 100 thousand B.C. The time at which the surface of the sun would touch the earth is much less than 20 million B.C. Therefore, the assumption of a constant shrinkage rate is a conservative assumption.
• The shrinkage of the sun greatly alters what we believe to be the energy source within the sun. The sun shrinks because of its own self-gravitational attraction. As it compresses itself, it heats itself. This heat is then liberated in the form of solar radiation.

Malala Yousafzai - Navo

• In 2009, Malala started blogging about living under Taliban rule for the BBC. She later became a national figure in her country, appearing on television as a spokesperson for girls’ education.At 17 years old, Malala is is the youngest recipient of the Nobel Peace.
• Malala was aboard a bus in 2012, campaigning for education of girls in Pakistan, when the Taliban reportedly hijacked the bus and singled her out, shooting her in the head and the neck.She has been living in England since being treated for her gunshot wounds.
• Since her increased visibility, Malala has changed her career focus to politics. Ziauddin Yousafzai ran one of the last schools to defy the Taliban’s orders to not educate girls. He has reportedly encouraged his daughter to be outspoken from a young age.
• Malala will be splitting the prize money, $1.1 million, with her 60-year-old co-recipient, Kailash Satyarthi, a human rights advocate from India.
• Malala was shot on October 9th, 2012. She was reported to be in critical condition and not expected to survive.

Easter Island - Navo

• Easter Island, a Chilean territory is remote to a volcanic island in Polynesia. It is famed for the astonishing monuments it has, including the 900 man made statues.
• Easter Island covers roughly 64 square miles in the South Pacific Ocean, and is located some 2,300 miles from Chile’s west coast and 2,500 miles east of Tahiti. Known as Rapa Nui to its earliest inhabitants, the island was christened Paaseiland, or Easter Island, by Dutch explorers in honor of the day of their arrival in 1722. 
• It was annexed by Chile in the late 19th century and now maintains an economy based largely on tourism. Easter Island’s most dramatic claim to fame is an array of almost 900 giant stone figures that date back many centuries.
• The statues reveal their creators to be master craftsmen and engineers, and are distinctive among other stone sculptures found in Polynesian cultures. There has been much speculation about the exact purpose of the statues, the role they played in the ancient civilization of Easter Island and the way they may have been constructed and transported.