₦airaland Forum

[quote author=luxanne post=27531381]*a sandbank in a stretch of water that is visible at low tide.

*make shallow.




* a gradual increase in loudness.




*walk or tramp about.








English words pls, and do stick to the rules of the game by first giving the definition to the word on ground before dropping yours for orderly sake, thanks.



[b]Next Word: Anathematize

hated and cursed.

tete-a-tete

match is 8;45

crescendo

at 29 he'll be competing for NANS president in nigeria.

The Truth About Animals
Is your toddler really smarter than a chimpanzee?
It sounds like a no-brainer, but it's not clear that young children are
any more intelligent than chimpanzees

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Presented by
Justin Gregg
I've spent the last four years teaching my daughter to be human.
There's a lot to learn, from walking, talking and the (strangely
challenging) task of not soiling yourself, to how to make choux
pastry, Chinese history and the basics of quadratic equations.
Although we still have some way to go, it already feels like a hefty
parental investment, especially when compared with species like the
blue wildebeest, whose newborns can stand, walk, and even outrun
predators just a few hours after leaving the womb. But humans aren't
the only species genetically predisposed to spend years rearing their
offspring. Our closest relatives, chimpanzees, also enjoy a prolonged
childhood. As a socially complex species, their infants stick close to
their mothers for the first five years of life, picking up a laundry list of
essential skills by observing and imitating their elders.
Telling a Picasso from a Monet, for example, should be easy for a
chimpanzee
Many skills that we consider complex are in fact the result of
relatively simple - and often universal - cognitive abilities shared by a
great many species
Of course, the life skills a chimpanzee eventually acquires are
nowhere near as complex as those I'm teaching my daughter. Don't
get me wrong – learning how to make a termite-fishing stick is
cognitively complex, but it's hardly up there with learning to read, or
being able to differentiate between a Picasso and a Monet. After four
years of dedicated training from her parents, my daughter should be
able to beat a chimpanzee in a battle of wits, right?
Wrong. Or at least, it depends on the battle. In fact telling a Picasso
from a Monet, for example, should be easy for a chimpanzee – both
honeybees and pigeons have been trained to do it. Scientists taught
these small-brained species that chambers next to pictures by one or
other of these artists contained food. When later presented with new
Picassos and Monets, they were more likely to opt for the artist whose
work had previously led them to a reward - meaning they had picked
up on underlying stylistic differences. Many skills that we consider
complex are in fact the result of relatively simple - and often universal
- cognitive abilities shared by a great many species.
In reality, when it comes to cognitive development, the divide between
infant chimpanzees and infant humans is often startlingly small
. So small in fact that psychologists once wondered if the key
difference between the two species was not our underlying mental
machinery, but the cultural traditions and recorded knowledge that
humans had accumulated through the ages. Perhaps if an infant
chimpanzee was raised in an exclusively human environment, it would
acquire human abilities, complete with language competency and
table manners.
Previous experiments showed chimpanzees lacked the vocal
structures to produce the sounds of human language
In order to test this hypothesis, Allen and Beatrix Gardner,
psychologists at the University of Nevada, Reno, acquired a 10-
month-old chimpanzee named Washoe . She had been born in the wild
in West Africa in 1965, where she was "recruited" by the US Air Force
for use in biomedical testing as part of the space programme. The
Gardeners brought Washoe into their home in 1966. She was dressed
in human clothes, and joined the Gardeners at the dinner table each
evening. Every effort was made to replicate the childhood of a typical
human infant with the hope that she would not just learn human
language, but learn to be human.
Aware from previous experiments that showed chimpanzees lacked
the vocal structures to produce the sounds of human language,
Washoe was taught to communicate using a form of American Sign
Language. By the time she left the Gardeners in 1970, she could
communicate using a few hundred signed symbols. For some, the fact
that she could combine symbols to form new words such as "water
bird" when shown a swan for the first time was evidence of at least
rudimentary language capacity. Many scientists, however, remained
skeptical, suggesting Washoe and other apes were simply responding
to unintentional cues from the researchers working with them.
It was obvious from the Gardeners' experiment that being raised in a
human environment could not give a chimpanzee a human mind.
Although she was one of the first non-human apes to communicate
with humans in the form of signed symbols, she did not ever truly
acquire language. The question scientists still wrestle with today is
what exactly is going on in the minds of toddlers that allows them to
acquire and use language where chimpanzees fail? And how does this
relate to the skills that define human intelligence, allowing us to
create moon landers and chai lattes?
The human need for deeply cooperative group living brought with
it the ability to get into each other's heads
Michael Tomasello, a psychologist and co-director of the Max Planck
Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, has spent
the last 30 years studying primate cognition in an effort to answer
questions like these. In his recently published book A Natural History
of Human Thinking, he develops the "shared intentionality" hypothesis
to explain the basic difference between human and chimpanzee
cognition. He defines this as the ability "to participate with others in
collaborative activities with shared goals and intentions
".
"Although humans' great ape ancestors were social beings, they lived
mostly individualistic and competitive lives," suggests Tomasello, "but
early humans were at some point forced by ecological circumstances
into more cooperative lifeways, and so their thinking became more
directed toward figuring out ways to coordinate with others to achieve
joint goals or even collective goals. And this changed everything."
This human need for deeply cooperative group living brought with it
the ability to get into each other's heads. Being able to share
intentions and goals in this way is extremely rare in the animal
kingdom, and many experiments suggest that it's a skill that my
daughter has, but that chimpanzees - like Washoe - lack.
Consider the enigma of human pointing – a strangely difficult signal
for chimpanzees to wrap their heads around. They do not typically
point in the wild, although individuals working with humans in the lab
will often gesture towards food or objects they want, and sometimes
they do so with a pointed finger. What scientists want to know
however is whether or not a pointing chimpanzee is trying to connect
with the person watching them by establishing collaborative, two-way
communication. It is obviously a communicative act, but the question
is whether it is the result of the chimpanzee trying to get inside the
head of the observer to convey the message: "Excuse me, I would
really like you to fetch that banana for me."
Whereas the babies sat politely and pointed toward the object in
an attempt to get their caregiver's attention, the chimpanzees
moved towards the object while making pointing and reaching
gestures
For humans, these collaborative messages are commonplace, even
without the use of language. Imagine for a moment that I had lost my
voice. I could ask my wife to pass the salt simply by pointing to the
salt shaker sitting on the table. Via this signal, I could share with my
wife the knowledge that I want the salt, and she would immediately
realize that I am asking for her help in achieving what I hope is now
a shared goal. I don't need to fling myself across the table while
making exaggerated grabbing motions.
Chimpanzees, on the other hand, do. In a recent experiment,
chimpanzees were pitted against one-year-old children to see how
their behaviour differed when something they wanted was just out of
reach. Whereas the babies sat politely and pointed toward the object
in an attempt to get their caregiver's attention, the chimpanzees
moved towards the object while making pointing and reaching
gestures. The key difference, the researchers concluded, was that the
human infants realized the pointing gesture alone was enough to tell
their caregiver what they wanted.
Humans, it seems, are born ready to share their thoughts with others.
Once we set aside the cognitive traits that encompass Tomasello's
idea of shared intentionality, however, the list of skills that my
daughter possesses that surpass those of chimpanzees is nearly
exhausted. In fact, there are cognitive skills at which chimpanzees can
easily outshine my daughter. Or you and me for that matter.
In another recent study, chimps went head-to-head with humans in a
test of their strategic thinking
. Participants played a simple two player computer game in which
they had to choose one of two squares displayed on a screen. Player
one won if both players chose the same square, and player two won if
both of them chose the opposite squares. After each game, the two
players could see which one their opponent had chosen, allowing
them to learn about their opponent's behaviour and make educated
guesses about their future choices. Players were pitted against others
of their own species, and human winners were rewarded with cash
prizes while chimps that came out on top got pieces of apple.
If the players make the best possible moves, the game should develop
a specific pattern predicted by game theory. It turned out that after
playing the game for a while, chimpanzees made moves that closely
resembled the optimal strategy predicted by mathematical models.
Humans, on the other hand, didn't.
Perhaps humans just don't have the level of fighting spirit (or
desire for infidelity) that gives chimpanzees the edge in some
battles of wits
With our infamous critical thinking skills, how could humans wind up
being soundly beaten by chimpanzees? We know from previous
research that chimpanzees can have stunning visual memory, and this
might be the key to their success. Ayumu, a young chimpanzee
involved in cognitive research at the Primate Institute of Kyoto
University, in Japan, is famously able to memorize the position of the
numbers one to nine in random positions on a screen in as little as
0.67 seconds. No human even came close to Ayumu's performance.
The scientists studying Ayumu suggest that chimpanzees simply have
a better working memory for visual information than humans
- which might explain why they can beat us in strategy games
involving visual tasks.
The researchers who ran the computer game experiment suggest that
it might also be the ultra-competitive mindset of the chimpanzee that
makes them better at developing strategies. Chimpanzees live in a
social world where they are often trying to outwit other members of
their inner circle. Lower ranking males, for example, try to outwit the
alpha males by having secret trysts with females behind their backs.
Plotting and scheming might be second nature to chimpanzees.
Perhaps humans just don't have the level of fighting spirit (or desire
for infidelity) that gives chimpanzees the edge in some battles of wits.
Maybe in some cognitive realms our bias towards co-operating lets
us down.
All of which leaves me wondering whether it's really fair to consider
my young daughter to be any smarter than a chimpanzee.
Chimpanzees lead lives that are not all that dissimilar from our own
recent ancestors in the days before we invented, and were able to
share our knowledge of, medicine, mathematics and physics. And
much of the social behaviour, problem solving, and reasoning
displayed by chimpanzees frolicking in the bush is still
indistinguishable from children playing in the schoolyard. And, as
we've seen, they even outperform humans at some skills.
In the end, though, it's not about who’s smarter. Both chimpanzees
and humans have cognitive skills that help them survive in their own
worlds. Over the next few years, my daughter's mind will blossom in
uniquely human ways. She'll tap into her shared intentionality
skillset, and join the ranks of schoolchildren learning their ABCs and
capital cities. Thanks to her human mind, this knowledge will be
transferred straight from her teacher's mind to hers through the
medium of language. These skills don't make my daughter any
smarter than a chimpanzee because smartness is a concept that is in
the eye of the beholder.
From my very human perspective, experiencing my daughter wanting
to share her thoughts with me is about the best thing in the whole
wide world. I suspect chimpanzee mothers love their young just as
deeply though, even if they can't – or don't want to – tell anyone
about it. http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20141012-are-toddlers-smarter-than-chimps

MarthaK:
I won't

just hope you know why you won't dropout.

MarthaK:
So are you advising me to drop out?

if you must.

decountof:
God....please give me ideas of my own

we all at one time or the other have ideas begging to be initiated,but we just cloud our minds with alot of what ifs. rather pray for the boldness to put them to work.

may bitter life leads us to a vanilla flavoured chocolate milk pond.

Some of the most successful and innovative people in the world never
finished college. Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg are both dropouts of
Harvard University for example.
They both quit early to create Microsoft and Facebook, respectively.
Likewise, although he’s no longer with us, Steve Jobs was also a
dropout, leaving Reed College prematurely to build the Apple
empire. Is dropping out of college the pathway to greatness?
Traditional thinking tells us that we need to finish college in order to
get anywhere in this world. Yet, these men made billions by pursuing
their dreams instead of following the pack.
Not only that, they have created companies that have completely
changed the way we live. Simply put, they have had a palpable and
positive impact on the world.
Perhaps this is precisely why billionaire Peter Thiel now encourages
young people to forgo college and follow their passions. Recently,
another college dropout joined the ranks of innovative billionaires,
and she’s barely 30.

Meet Elizabeth Holmes

When Elizabeth Holmes was a 19-year-old sophomore at Stanford
University in 2003, she decided to drop out and start her own
company, Theranos. She felt strongly that her tuition money could be
used for a greater and more benevolent purpose: revolutionizing
healthcare.
When she first told Channing Robertson, her chemical engineering
professor, what she planned to do, he was concerned about the
implications of Holmes leaving her degree unfinished. He asked her
why she wanted to risk everything in order to pursue this plan. Holmes
replied :
The fire in Holmes’ eyes convinced her professor that she would
succeed, and she received his blessing.


Making Medical History

Holmes wanted to create a technology that would make blood tests
easier. She hates needles, and wanted to make blood tests simpler,
cheaper and more accessible for all people. For a decade, she quietly
worked on a technology that would make blood tests nothing more
than a painless finger prick.
Holmes has created hardware and software that allow for blood tests
to be done by pricking someone’s finger and storing the blood in a
tiny vial called a nanotainer.

Some people are so afraid of needles and blood, they would rather
avoid getting blood tests than obtaining potentially life-saving
medical information. Surprisingly, about half of all Americans do not
comply when their doctors ask them to get blood work done. Holmes’
technology eliminates that fear, and makes it easier and more likely
that people will get necessary blood tests.
Not to mention, traditional blood tests typically involve sending
multiple vials of blood to separate labs for evaluation. This takes
weeks for the results to come through, and also leaves a lot of room
for error.

With the single prick of a finger, the technology Holmes has created
can provide a wealth of information with exceptional efficiency. The
new tests can be done at a pharmacy without going to a doctor or
lab, and the results only take about four hours. Furthermore, the same
drop of blood can be used for multiple tests with this technology.
Blood work can also be very expensive, depending on your insurance
coverage. This new test, however, is much cheaper, which was always
one of Holmes’ goals when she started Theranos.
It’s painless, more accurate, cheaper and quicker. Simply put, this
technology is revolutionary, and it will save lives.

Blood Money

Holmes’ company, Theranos, is now worth $9 billion. She owns 50
percent of it and is worth $4.5 billion, making her the youngest
female and third-youngest billionaire on the recently released list of
the 400 richest Americans from Forbes. She is the youngest woman to
become a self-made billionaire.
Her company has also partnered with Walgreens, and it seems that it
will only continue to grow. Yet, Holmes did not create her company to
get rich, she sincerely wanted to make a change in the world. As she
puts it:

She believes that affordable and efficient healthcare is a human and
civil right. Elizabeth Holmes is proof that greatness is achieved by
combining passion, innovation and the desire to better the lives of
those around you.

Photo Courtesy: Facebook
http://elitedaily.com/money/entrepreneurship/meet-elizabeth-holmes/788918/

Vaccine gives monkeys Ebola immunity
By James Gallagher
Health editor, BBC News website
7 September 2014 Last updated at 18:1

The first patient was injected with the vaccine last week

Vaccinated monkeys have developed "long-term" immunity to the Ebola virus, raising a prospect
of successful human trials, say scientists.

The experiments by the US National Institutes of Health showed immunity could last at least 10
months.

Human trials of the vaccine started this week in the US and will extend to the UK and Africa.

The World Health Organization says more than 2,000 people have now died in the outbreak in
West Africa.

Several experimental treatments are now being considered to help contain the spread of Ebola.
This includes a vaccine being developed by the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious
Diseases and pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline.

It uses a genetically modified chimp virus containing components of two species of Ebola - Zaire,
which is currently circulating in West Africa, and the common Sudan species.

The viral vaccine does not replicate inside the body, but it is hoped the immune system will react
to the Ebola component of the vaccine and develop immunity.

Poor durability
Animal research, on which the decision to begin human trials was based, has now been
published in the journal Nature Medicine.

It shows four crab-eating macaques all survived what would have been a fatal dose of Ebola
virus five weeks later.

However, only half survived an infection 10 months after immunisation.

Dr Anthony Fauci, the director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told
the BBC: "The good part of this vaccine is that at five weeks or earlier you get full protection.

"The sobering news is the durability isn't great, but if you give a boost, a second shot, you make
it really durable."

"We knew this worked in the monkey months ago and based on this paper we started human
trials."

For now this is the best evidence available on how successful such a vaccine would be in people.
Healthcare workers would be prioritised for a vaccine

The first patient, a 39-year-old woman, was given the vaccine last week as human trials got
under way.

There will also be separate trials of the vaccine against just the Zaire Ebola species.

These will take place in the US, the University of Oxford in the UK as well as in Mali and Gambia.
The WHO said safety data would be ready by November 2014 and, if the vaccine proved safe, it
would be used in West Africa immediately.

Healthcare workers and other frontline staff would be prioritised for vaccination.

'Really encouraging'
The number of doses currently available is between 400 - if a lot of vaccine is needed for
immunity - and 4,000 if smaller amounts are sufficient.

As with all experimental therapies, the WHO has warned hopes of a vaccine must not detract
from the proven methods of infection control which have defeated all previous outbreaks.

Prof Jonathan Ball, a virologist at the University of Nottingham, said: "This is really encouraging
data.

"The degree of protection seen with the chimpanzee adenovirus alone - which will be used in one
of the human clinical trials planned for the UK, Mali and the Gambia - was still pretty impressive,
especially when the animals received Ebola virus within a few weeks of vaccination.

"This is important as it would keep the dosing regimen simple and could still provide good
protection in the sort of outbreak that we are seeing in Western Africa at the moment."
Ebola virus disease (EVD)

* Symptoms include high fever, bleeding and central nervous system damage
* Spread by body fluids, such as blood and saliva
* Fatality rate can reach 90% - but current outbreak has mortality rate of about 55%
* Incubation period is two to 21 days
* There is no proven vaccine or cure
* Supportive care such as rehydrating patients who have diarrhoea and vomiting can help
recovery
* Fruit bats, a delicacy for some West Africans, are considered to be virus's natural host


http://m.bbc.com/news/health-29076371

hope alive.

I'll never forget Mrs doubtfire and father's day. Sad he's gone.

age must have played a major role in his own case. the other patients obviously have higher thresholds.

chuchuo: I was naturally left handed but I was beaten and forced to use my right hand to write. Now I can use both hands to do most things.

same here. . talk about misinformed teachers.

PurestBoy: Why do you think so? Its not FP worthy?

gory i must say.

PurestBoy: Mods, FP pls

I don't think so.


God have mercy.

hunt has been launched in Sierra Leone's
capital, Freetown, for a woman with Ebola
who was forcibly removed from hospital by
her relatives.
Radio stations around the country are
appealing for help to find the 32-year-old who
is being described as a "risk to all".
She is the first Freetown resident to have
tested positive for the virus.
Meanwhile, Nigeria's health minister has
confirmed that a Liberian man has died of
Ebola in Lagos.
According to the Reuters news agency, he
collapsed on arrival in Lagos on Sunday and
was taken from the airport and put in
quarantine at a hospital in the Nigerian city.
Since February, more than 660 people have
died of Ebola in West Africa - the world's
deadliest outbreak to date.
It began in southern Guinea and spread to
Liberia and Sierra Leone. The case in Nigeria is
the first in Africa's most populous country.
Angry protesters
The virus kills up to 90% of those infected but
if patients receive early treatment, they have a
better chance of survival.
It spreads through contact with an infected
person's bodily fluids.
WHO: Latest West Africa Ebola outbreak
figures
Guinea - 314 deaths, 415 cases
Liberia - 127 deaths, 224 cases
Sierra Leone - 219 deaths, 454 cases
Sidi Yahya Tunis, a spokesperson for Sierra
Leone's ministry of health, said the King
Harman Road Hospital was stormed by the
Ebola patient's family on Thursday.
The BBC's Umaru Fofona in Freetown said the
woman, who is an apprentice hairdresser, is a
resident of the densely populated area of
Wellington in the east of the city.
The Ebola cases in Sierra Leone are centred in
the country's eastern districts of Kenema and
Kailahun, just over the border from the
Guekedou region of Guinea where the outbreak
started.
Our reporter says there is increasing anger and
confusion over the handling of the outbreak.
Police say thousands of people have taken to
the streets of Kenema to protest - thronging to
the town's hospital, which treats all Ebola
cases in the district.
The father of a nine-year-old boy has told the
BBC that his son was shot and injured by
police as they tried to put down the angry
demonstration, in which he says his son was
not involved.
Our reporter says the police have not been
able to confirm this as they say they are still
busy with operational matters.
Nurses at Kenema hospital went on strike for a
day on Monday after three of their colleagues
died of suspected Ebola.
Earlier this week, it was announced that the
doctor leading Sierra Leone's fight against
Ebola was being treated for the virus.
On Thursday, the World Health Organization
said that 219 people had died of Ebola in
Sierra Leone.
Ebola virus disease (EVD)
Symptoms include high fever, bleeding and
central nervous system damage
Fatality rate can reach 90%
Incubation period is two to 21 days
There is no vaccine or cure
Supportive care such as rehydrating patients
who have diarrhoea and vomiting can help
recovery
Fruit bats are considered to be the natural
host of the virus.
http://m.bbc.com/news/world-africa-28485041

no. wouldn't waste our time.

Nihilist: You just exhibited how infinitely stu.pid you are.

Did you write the article?

no name calling please. . . here's a topic i created before this;and in this case it would have been very easy for me to claim credit because its not an article like on the BBC with the million views, yet i posted the reference: https://www.nairaland.com/1822309/why-mosquitoes-bite-some-people . like i said,harmless omission. . .think.

3sth3r: All those ones na film trick..even oduduwa coming down with chain abi obatala..too many pepper and salt.

Adonblivit

we can as well say the same about the greek legends. The difference here may be because we lacking in systemic recording and preservation of history and legends.

Nihilist: How is it a 'harmless omission'?

You attempted to pass off a BBC article as your own work. You even went as far as lifting the embedded pictures from the article and attaching them to your post, but harmlessly omitted to put a reference to the author...

Anyway with the lack of originality you've shown on this thread, I think it's rather ironic that you would question any other person's commitments to African Legends....

Afterall, you ARE the one who posted a plagiarised article on Greek Legends for debate no?

you don't plagiarize a world news outlet like the BBC on an article that is not in isolation,probably seen by millions at the moment. the accusation is out of context. . .common sense.

Nihilist: OP you copied this article word for word from the BBC

Why have you not put a reference?

Nigerians and plagiarism sha...

And then you have to gall to type the rubbish in the comment above..

plagiarize the BBC? harmless omission though. but what's the correlation between my comment you quoted and the alleged plagiarism.

many here defending how true the greek legends were won't say the same about our own legends - like the sango and all though.

slimpoppa: Moscow is bent on destabilising that country.

maybe not this time.

papindinho: arrgh..mae I remove am

saw the article now, could not access my mail before. must say you nailed it aptly. . when you have so much inside of you to say, nothing expresses it best like the pen and paper.

when one is yet unsolved, and then another.

Hamas should stop firing rockets and Israeli forces must be pressured to retreat. enough of innocents being casualties.

The fact that the adaptation was uniform
throughout Greece has suggested that there
was a single adapter rather than many. Greek
tradition named the adapter Palamedes, which
may just mean "clever man of old". Palamedes
was also said to have invented counting,
currency, and board games.
The Greek letter-shapes came to differ visually
from their Phoenician progenitors - with the
current geometrical letter-shapes credited to
the 6th Century mathematician Pythagoras.
4. Did Pythagoras invent Pythagoras'
theorem? Or did he copy his homework
from someone else?
It is doubtful whether Pythagoras (c.
570-495BC) was really a mathematician as we
understand the word. Schoolchildren still learn
his so-called theorem about the square on the
hypotenuse (a2+b2 =c2). But the Babylonians
knew this equation centuries earlier, and there
is no evidence that Pythagoras either
discovered or proved it.
In fact, although genuine mathematical
investigations were undertaken by later
Pythagoreans, the evidence suggests that
Pythagoras was a mystic who believed that
numbers underlie everything. He worked out,
for instance, that perfect musical intervals
could be expressed by simple ratios.
5. What made the Greeks invent money?
Was it trade or their "psyche"?
It may seem obvious to us that commercial
imperatives would have driven the invention of
money. But human beings conducted trade for
millennia without coinage, and it's not certain
that the first monetised economy in the world
arose in ancient Greece simply in order to
facilitate such transactions.
The classicist Richard Seaford has argued that
the invention of money emerged from deep in
the Greek psyche. It is tied to notions of
reciprocal exchange and obligation which
pervaded their societies; it reflects
philosophical distinctions between face-value
and intrinsic value; and it is a political
instrument, since the state is required to act
as guarantor of monetary value.
Financial instruments and institutions -
coinage, mints, contracts, banking, credit and
debt - were being developed in many Greek
cities by the 5th Century BC, with Athens at
the forefront. But one ancient state held the
notion of money in deep suspicion and resisted
its introduction: Sparta.
6. How spartan were the Spartans?
The legendary Spartan lawgiver Lycurgus
decreed that the Spartans should use only iron
as currency, making it so cumbersome that
even a small amount would have to be carried
by a yoke of oxen.
This story may be part of the idealisation of
the ancient Spartans as a warrior society
dedicated to military pre-eminence. While
classical Sparta did not mint its own coins, it
used foreign silver, and some Spartan leaders
were notoriously prone to bribery.
However, laws may have been passed to
prevent Spartans importing luxuries that might
threaten to undermine their hardiness. When
the Athenian playboy general Alcibiades
defected to Sparta during its war with Athens
in the late 5th Century, he adopted their
meagre diet, tough training routines, coarse
clothing, and Laconic expressions.
But eventually his passion for all things
Spartan extended to the king's wife Timaea,
who became pregnant. Alcibiades returned to
Athens, whence he had fled eight years earlier
to avoid charges of shocking sacrilege, one of
which was that he had subjected Athens' holy
Mysteries to mockery.
7. What were the secrets of the Greek
Mystery Cults?
If I told you, I'd have to kill you. The secrets
were fiercely guarded, and severe penalties
were prescribed for anyone who divulged them
or who, like Alcibiades, were thought to have
profaned them. Initiates were required to
undergo initiation rites which may have
included transvestism and centred on secret
objects (perhaps phalluses) and passwords
being revealed.
The aim was to give devotees a glimpse of the
"other side", so that they could return to their
lives blessed in the knowledge that when their
turn came to die they could ensure the
survival of their soul in the Underworld.
Excavations have uncovered tombs containing
passwords and instructions written on thin
gold sheets as an aide-memoire for deceased
devotees. The principal Greek Mystery Cults
were those of Demeter, goddess of agriculture,
and of Dionysus (also known as Bacchus), god
of wine, ecstasy - and of theatre.
8. Who first made a drama out of a crisis?
How did theatres begin?
In 5th Century Athens, theatre was closely
connected to the cult of Dionysus, in whose
theatre on the southern slopes of the Acropolis
tragedies and comedies were staged at an
annual festival.
But the origin of theatre is a much-debated
issue. One tradition tells of the actor Thespis
(hence "thespian" standing on a cart and
playing a dramatic role for the first time
around 532BC; another claims that drama
began with ritual choruses and gradually
introduced actors' parts.

The culture and legends of ancient Greece
have a remarkably long legacy in the
modern language of education, politics,
philosophy, art and science. Classical
references from thousands of years ago
continue to appear. But what was the origin
of some of these ideas?
1. Was there ever really a Trojan Horse?
The story of the Trojan Horse is first
mentioned in Homer's Odyssey, an epic song
committed to writing around 750BC,
describing the aftermath of a war at Troy that
purportedly took place around 500 years
earlier.
After besieging Troy (modern-day Hisarlik in
Turkey) for 10 years without success, the
Greek army encamped outside the city walls
made as if to sail home, leaving behind them a
giant wooden horse as an offering to the
goddess Athena.
The Trojans triumphantly dragged the horse
within Troy, and when night fell the Greek
warriors concealed inside it climbed out and
destroyed the city. Archaeological evidence
shows that Troy was indeed burned down; but
the wooden horse is an imaginative fable,
perhaps inspired by the way ancient siege-
engines were clothed with damp horse-hides to
stop them being set alight by fire-arrows.
2. Homer is one of the great poets of
ancient Greek legends. Did he actually
exist?
Not only is the Trojan Horse a colourful
fiction, the existence of Homer himself has
sometimes been doubted. It's generally
supposed that the great epics which go under
Homer's name, the Iliad and Odyssey, were
composed orally, without the aid of writing,
some time in the 8th Century BC, the fruit of a
tradition of oral minstrelsy stretching back for
centuries.
While the ancients had no doubt that Homer
was a real bard who composed the
monumental epics, nothing certain is known
about him. All we do know is that, even if the
poems were composed without writing and
orally transmitted, at some stage they were
written down in Greek, because that is how
they have survived.
3. Was there an individual inventor of the
alphabet?
The date attributed to the writing down of the
Homeric epics is connected to the earliest
evidence for the existence of Greek script in
the 8th Century BC.
The Greeks knew that their alphabet (later
borrowed by the Romans to become the
western alphabet) was adapted from that of
the Phoenicians, a near-eastern nation whose
letter-sequence began "aleph bet".

they all look good. Nigeria is going places i see.

Why Do Mosquitoes Bite Some People More
Than Others?
Blood type, metabolism, exercise, shirt
color and even drinking beer can make
individuals especially delicious to
mosquitoes
By Joseph Stromberg
SMITHSONIAN.COM
JULY 12, 2013
16.2K 341 22 203 861 118 29.2K
16.2K 341 203 861 22 29.2K
You come in from a summer hike covered with
itchy red mosquito bites, only to have your
friends innocently proclaim that they don’t
have any. Or you wake up from a night of
camping to find your ankles and wrists aflame
with bites, while your tentmates are
unscathed.
You’re not alone. An estimated 20 percent of
people , it turns out, are especially delicious
for mosquitoes, and get bit more often on a
consistent basis. And while scientists don’t yet
have a cure for the ailment, other than
preventing bites with insect repellent (which,
we’ve recently discovered, some mosquitoes
can become immune to over time), they do
have a number of ideas regarding why some of
us are more prone to bites than others. Here
are some of the factors that could play a role:
1. Blood Type
Not surprisingly—since, after all, mosquitoes
bite us to harvest proteins from our blood—
research shows that they find certain blood
types more appetizing than others. One study
found that in a controlled setting, mosquitoes
landed on people with Type O blood nearly
twice as often as those with Type A. People
with Type B blood fell somewhere in the
middle of this itchy spectrum. Additionally,
based on other genes, about 85 percent of
people secrete a chemical signal through their
skin that indicates which blood type they have,
while 15 percent do not, and mosquitoes are
also more attracted to secretors than
nonsecretors regardless of which type they
are.
2. Carbon Dioxide
One of the key ways mosquitoes locate their
targets is by smelling the carbon dioxide
emitted in their breath—they use an organ
called a maxillary palp to do this, and can
detect carbon dioxide from as far as 164 feet
away. As a result, people who simply exhale
more of the gas over time—generally, larger
people—have been shown to attract more
mosquitoes than others. This is one of the
reasons why children get bit less often than
adults, on the whole.
3. Exercise and Metabolism
In addition to carbon dioxide, mosquitoes find
victims at closer range by smelling the lactic
acid, uric acid, ammonia and other substances
expelled via their sweat, and are also attracted
to people with higher body temperatures.
Because strenuous exercise increases the
buildup of lactic acid and heat in your body, it
likely makes you stand out to the insects.
Meanwhile, genetic factors influence the
amount of uric acid and other substances
naturally emitted by each person, making some
people more easily found by mosquitos than
others.
4. Skin Bacteria
Other research has suggested that the
particular types and volume of bacteria that
naturally live on human skin affect our
attractiveness to mosquitoes. In a 2011 study ,
scientists found that having large amounts of a
few types of bacteria made skin more appealing
to mosquitoes. Surprisingly, though, having
lots of bacteria but spread among a greater
diversity of different species of bacteria
seemed to make skin less attractive. This also
might be why mosquitoes are especially prone
to biting our ankles and feet—they naturally
have more robust bacteria colonies.
5. Beer
Just a single 12-ounce bottle of beer can make
you more attractive to the insects, one study
found. But even though researchers had
suspected this was because drinking increases
the amount of ethanol excreted in sweat, or
because it increases body temperature, neither
of these factors were found to correlate with
mosquito landings, making their affinity for
drinkers something of a mystery.
6. Pregnancy
In several different studies, pregnant women
have been found to attract roughly twice as
many mosquito bites as others, likely a result
of the fact the unfortunate confluence of two
factors: They exhale about 21 percent more
carbon dioxide and are on average about 1.26
degrees Fahrenheit warmer than others.
7. Clothing color
This one might seem absurd, but mosquitoes
use vision (along with scent) to locate humans,
so wearing colors that stand out (black, dark
blue or red) may make you easier to find, at
least according to James Day, a medical
entomologist at the University of Florida, in
commentary he gave to NBC.
8. Genetics
As a whole, underlying genetic factors are
estimated to account for 85 percent of the
variability between people in their
attractiveness to mosquitoes—regardless of
whether it’s expressed through blood type,
metabolism, or other factors. Unfortunately,
we don’t (yet) have a way of modifying these
genes, but…
9. Natural Repellants
Some researchers have started looking at the
reasons why a minority of people seem to
rarely attract mosquitoes in the hopes of
creating the next generation of insect
repellants. Using chromatography to isolate
the particular chemicals these people emit,
scientists at the UK’s Rothamsted Research lab
have found that these natural repellers tend to
excrete a handful of substances
that mosquitoes don’t seem to find appealing.
Eventually, incorporating these molecules into
advanced bug spray could make it possible for
even a Type O, exercising, pregnant woman in
a black shirt to ward off mosquitoes for good.

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/why-do-mosquitoes-bite-some-people-more-than-others-10255934/