Tidbits of Grand Forks - December 15, 2022

By Janet Spencer

WORLD’S SMALLEST HOUSE

• An amoeba is a single-celled plant which moves around on the floor of a pond, engulfing food and consuming it. Some species of amoeba build themselves tiny houses out of sand grains, carrying them around like a snail in its shell. When the amoeba divides itself in half to propagate, its DNA is cut in half; its cytoplasm (which composes the main body) is divided in half; and the house goes with one half of the amoeba while a collection of unused sand particles contained within the cytoplasm goes with the other half. This is the smallest type of animal architecture ever discovered.

INSECT ARCHITECTURE

• One species of Central American moth is densely covered with long stiff hairs when it’s in the caterpillar stage. When it’s ready to pupate, it pulls out its hairs one by one with its jaws and then attaches the hairs to the stem of a plant using silk extruded from its mouth. Then it builds its cocoon in between rows of these spikey barriers, incorporating the last few hairs to strengthen the wall of the cocoon. In this way it’s protected from predators while it turns into a moth.

How many inches long, is the giant African land snail, biggest snail in the world?

What insect is thought to be the strongest bug on earth?

True or False: Some snails have hairy shells.

T or F: The world’s longest beaver dam is over 1 mile long.

Which Disney princess is modeled after a real person?

What is the only human organ capable of natural regeneration?

How many people signed the U.S. Declaration of Independence— 26, 36, 46 or 56?

Name the song that contains these lyrics: “Everybody sing, everybody dance. Lose yourself in wild romance. We’re going to party.”

• The South American leafcutter ants build underground nests that go as deep as 18 feet and house up to 8 million ants, not including 2 or 3 million larva and eggs. This is equivalent to the population of some of the biggest human cities, all living in a single structure. The ants earn their living by chewing the leaves of certain grasses to a pulp, and then cultivating an edible fungus from the pulp in chambers far underground. The fungus needs ventilation, and the ants build entrance holes in shallow mounds topped by tiny turrets made of dried mud. The wind is caught by the turrets and funneled into the depths of the ant colony.

• In the deciduous forests of the northern hemisphere, trees and other plants drop their leaves every autumn, thus ridding themselves of insect invasions. The insects need to start all over from scratch the following spring. But in the tropics, leaves are never dropped simultaneously, and therefore the trees and shrubs have developed other strategies of protection. One of the main methods is to use toxins in the foliage, making the leaves unpalatable or poisonous. The leaf cutter ants have gotten around this by using the fungus, which is unaffected by the toxins, and does not pass them on to the ants which thrive by eating the fungus.

• In South Africa, termite colonies build towers which average 6 feet tall. One was carbon dated and was about 5,000 years old, with the colony still thriving within.

• Long-abandoned nests of the mud dauber wasp found in caves in Western Australia. were carbon dated and found to be over 17,000 years old –remarkable for a delicate-looking nest made of mud. Mud daubers also build nests under bridges in the U.S. which are so sturdy that swallows use them as a foundation to build their own bird nests made of mud.

INSECT ARCHITECTURE (cont):

• Many people have spent their careers studying how a very large workforce of small-brained creatures can build a complex structure using very simple principles of organization. For instance, a nest of wasps was carefully studied by researchers who put colored dots on the backs of wasps in order to identify where they went and what they did. They found that there are four main tasks divided among the wasp colony: First was to forage for wood pulp; second was to bring water to the nest; third was to combine the pulp and the water and mix it to the right consistency to build the wasp nest; fourth was to forage for pollen and nectar for food.

• In small wasp colonies, task-switching was common, but in large colonies, very little task-switching occurred. In large colonies, when the nest was damaged so that more nest-building materials were required, squadrons of formerly inactive wasps would come forth to get the work done, but those wasps devoted to the gathering of food never joined in the ranks.

• Some species of moth and butterfly evolved to have detachable scales, so if they encounter a spider web, scales peel off and are left behind in the web while the bug falls free. Then spiders evolved to build longer webs so that as the insect falls, it runs out of detachable scales and becomes firmly stuck.

IT’S A FACT

• There’s a length of spider web 0.15 inches long caught and preserved in amber from Lebanon, which dates back to around 125 million years ago. It’s estimated that spiders have been on Earth for 400 million years, but this is the oldest piece of fossilized spider web found so far.

• A web will hold 4,000 times the spider's weight.

Baseball Hall of Famer Whitey Ford was knocked unconscious by pretzels hurled onto the field by angry fans in a 1997 episode of what animated comedy? In 2003, what Phoenix Suns player became the first NBA Rookie of the Year who was drafted out of high school? What NFL team plays home games at Acrisure Stadium?

Before the Wisconsin Badgers and Minnesota Golden Gophers football teams played for the Paul Bunyan’s Axe trophy, the winner of their rivalry game was awarded what? A single point in Canadian football is also known by what name? AL Rookie of the Year honors went to Oakland A’s players three straight times from 1986 to 1988. Who were they?

RODENT ARCHITECTURE

One species of rodent called the Brant’s whistling rat gets the blue ribbon for its tunneling ability. Most rodents who live underground will dig a burrow with one or two entrances. But this African rodent builds a system of branching tunnels with an average of 41 entrances, with some of them having over 500 places to exit. You might expect that such a complicated system of burrows would house dozens, if not hundreds, of rats. But the truth is that usually only one or two, sometimes three, rats live here. Why go through all the trouble? Because the Brant’s rat eats vegetation but lives in a desert where vegetation is sparse, and where cover from predators is hard to find. This way, the rat is never more than a short dash away from safety.

Many species of spiders and caterpillars use silk for their own purposes, but it’s also scavenged and used second-hand by many birds. The tailor bird combines silk with soft and fuzzy plant down to make short lengths of yarn which is used to stitch together living leaves to make a pouch. The pouch

Grasses, palms, and lilies have veins that run parallel to each other, and they are called monocots. Trees, shrubs, and most flowers have veins that are more like lace, and they are called dicots. Birds that use plants for weaving nests prefer monocots. They clip a long blade of grass near the ground and fly off with it clutched in their beak, pulling a long narrow strip of leaf as the tear travels up between veins. They then have a nice long strong piece of thread. Researchers have shown that weaver birds use a variety of common knots, including half hitches, overhand knots, and slipknots, as well as over-and-under weaving used to

OF KNOWLEDGE

by Lucie Winbourne

• In 2020, a lightning bolt extending a total of 477.2 miles spread across Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas, setting a new world record for the longest flash.

• Rubber bands last longer if you refrigerate them.

• Rooms at the Null Stern ("zero star") Hotel are situated in repurposed nuclear bunkers and include open-air mountain rooms with equally zero walls. The designers obviously weren't kidding about that rating.

• In 2002, NASA intern Thad Roberts stole a safe full of moon rocks so he and his girlfriend could have "sex on the moon." Their otherworldly romantic encounter backfired when they later tried to sell the $21 million worth of rocks. Roberts was caught and sentenced to eight years in prison.

• And speaking of romance: Tinder's not just for humans! Well, not at the Dutch zoo that created a "Tinder for orangutans" to help a female named Samboja find a breeding partner. The primate was shown photos of potential mates from an international breeding program on a tablet, but unfortunately her mother got hold of it ... and smashed it to pieces.

• Poet W.B. Yeats and magician Aleister Crowley were such bitter rivals in the world of the occult that Yeats once kicked Crowley down a flight of stairs for being a proponent of "black magic."

• Only humans have chins.

• In 2012, the police chief of Vaughn, New Mexico, stepped down because his own criminal record prevented him from carrying a gun. That left just a drug-sniffing dog named Nikita as the only certified member of the town's police department.

• Trained pigeons can tell the difference between paintings by Pablo Picasso and Claude Monet. ***

Thought for the Day: "What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals." -- Zig Ziglar

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Opportunity ↔ Opportunity ↔ Opportunity ↔ For You?

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On Dec. 23, 1672, Italian astronomer, mathematician and engineer Giovanni Domenico Cassini discovered Rhea (originally christened Sidera Lodoicea), the second-largest of Saturn's 62 moons. In 2010, a spacecraft named for Cassini would detect a thin oxygen atmosphere around it -- the first such known outside planet Earth.

• On Dec. 24, 1945, a fire destroyed the home of George and Jennie Sodder and their nine children in Fayetteville, West Virginia. While their parents and four other siblings escaped, no sign of the remaining five children has ever been found, despite decades-long publicity and numerous investigations by both law enforcement and amateur sleuths.

• On Dec. 22, 1956, a baby western gorilla named Colo debuted on the world stage at the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium in Ohio, where she would spend her entire life, becoming the first-ever gorilla born in captivity. Upon her death in 2017, she was also the oldest known gorilla in the world.

• On Dec. 20, 1957, Elvis Presley received his Army draft notice while spending the holiday season at his newly purchased mansion, Graceland. Distraught fans sent thousands of letters to the Army asking for him to be spared, but Elvis himself had no hesitation about entering, though he did receive a deferment that allowed him to finish work on the movie "King Creole."

• On Dec. 21, 2006, rebel monks at the centuries-old Esphigmenou Monastery in Thessaloniki, Greece, took up crowbars and fire extinguishers to repel church-appointed monks with sledgehammers attempting to break in. The rebels vehemently opposed efforts by the Orthodox church to improve relations with the Vatican.

• On Dec. 25, 2013, military defense forces discovered a professionally designed but incomplete 40-meter tunnel connecting Hong King to China that included rail tracks, hanging lamps, ventilators and a small transport cart. Authorities believed the tunnel, which cost an estimated $494,000, was created with the intention of smuggling goods into Hong Kong to avoid tariffs.

(c) 2022 King Features Synd., Inc.

BLACK HOLES

• Every black hole started out as a star. Every star started out as a swirling mass of gasses. As gravity pulled the gas cloud closer, everything pressed together. Pressure built up on the inside, eventually becoming so intense that a nuclear reaction started. The star became a furnace which burned for millions or billions of years, until the furnace ran out of fuel and the nuclear reaction ceased.

• The center of the star began to cool down, and the superheated plasma surrounding the center collapsed and compressed, and then rebounded, like a wave hitting a cliff wall and bouncing back. The pressure pushed the outer layers of the star outward in what’s called a supernova. A supernova has the potential to become a black hole, but it all depends on the size of the original star.

• If the star was 25 to 40 times bigger than our Sun, the supernova eventually collapsed in upon itself, pulling matter in so tightly that gravity will not even allow light to escape. It is now a black hole.

• However, if the star was only ten times the size of the Sun or less, when the supernova contracts, it becomes a white dwarf. This will be the eventual fate of our Sun.

• If the star is ten to 25 times the size of our Sun, it’s not quite big enough to form a black hole. It becomes a neutron star.

• Black holes come in four different sizes: stellar, supermassive, intermediate, or miniature. Black holes grow by swallowing surrounding matter and by merging with other black holes. There is no limit to their size.

• Approximately one out of every thousand stars is massive enough to become a black hole. Since the Milky Way contains over 100 billion stars, our home galaxy must harbor some 100 million black holes.

• Albert Einstein first predicted the existence of black holes in 1916, with his general theory of relativity. The term "black hole" was coined in 1967 by American astronomer John Wheeler.

• The first black hole ever discovered was Cygnus X-1, located within the Milky Way in the constellation of Cygnus, the Swan. Astronomers saw the first signs of the black hole in 1964, and confirmed its existence in 1971 by noting a blue star circling endlessly around a blank spot, while the blank spot was constantly drawing material off of the star. Cygnus X-1is ten times larger than the Sun.

• The first image of a black hole was captured in 2019. The photo of the black hole at the center of the M87 galaxy 55 million light-years from Earth thrilled scientists around the world. It is 6.5 billion times heavier than the Sun.

• There is a black hole at the center of every galaxy, but black holes exist elsewhere too.

• The supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way, Sagittarius A* (pronounced A-star), is 4.3 million times the mass of our Sun. It’s 27,000 lightyears away. This is the only black hole whose mass has been measured directly by observing the full orbit of a circling star. It’s diameter is about equal to the distance between Earth and the Sun.

• A snowball size ball of plasma from the center of the Sun weighs as much as a 10-year-old child. But the same size ball of material from inside a black hole would weigh as much as ten Earths.

• The closest black hole to Earth is dubbed “The Unicorn” and is located about 1,500 light-years away. The nickname has a double meaning. Not only does the black hole reside in the constellation Monoceros (“the unicorn”), but it’s also incredibly low mass, being only about three times that of the Sun, making it rare and one of a kind, like a unicorn.

by

Researchers must be worried about us. There are hundreds of studies done around the world on the topic of isolated seniors and how it's bad for our brain and physical health. While we can appreciate their concern, it would be nice if they could all agree on the facts they report.

A Norwegian university has released the results of a report on maintaining brain health and preventing cognitive decline. They've concluded, after reviewing 101 other studies, that social activity is important, along with physical exercise and interesting hobbies.

One study praised us for following the Covid rules and staying home and not having face-to-face social activity, saying we mentally weathered our isolation better than any other age group. Another study said that we didn't do well, that we suffered from sleep disturbances, depression and anxiety.

Another study analyzing information from before and during the pandemic concluded that yes, there was physical and social isolation, but not digital isolation. In other words, we've been online communicating with others.

One serious study looked at 12 possible relationships (friends, neighbors, family and so on) and concluded that being socially isolated made one more susceptible to the common cold.

Yet another study said that it was when the Covid rules were lifted, when we could go to stores and back to our meetings, that our real stress started.

In the U.S., 27% of seniors over the age of 60 live alone, as opposed to several other countries where multiple generations live together. One thing researchers need to consider: Some seniors might like the peace and quiet of living alone, might like having control about who comes over and when, and might prefer the independence.

Still, if you sense you don't get out enough, go. Take a walk. Volunteer to walk a dog at the shelter. Stroll the aisles at the library.

Or don't. It really is up to you.

Matilda Charles

Adaptive Sports

The Department of Veterans Affairs has given out $16 million in grant money to organizations that provide adaptive sports opportunities to disabled veterans all over the country, thus relieving 13,000 veterans of the need to provide their own financing for their participation in the program. In the past eight years alone, that comes to $100 million that's been granted.

If you're in physical therapy (and enrolled in VA health care), take a look at the Sports4Vets Throwdown at www. blogs.va.gov/nvspse/throwdown. It's a competition for veterans of all ages and abilities to improve their fitness. Go to the "Click here to access the 2022 workouts" link for videos of weeks of adaptive exercises, broken down by wheelchair, modified mobility, visually impaired and upper extremity. Ask your physician or therapist if any of those workouts would be appropriate for you to increase your fitness.

The program focuses on archery, rock climbing, skiing, hunting, sky diving and Paralympic sports, with a bonus this year: CrossFit, sailing and scuba.

And there's more ... the National Veterans Wheelchair Games will be held in Portland, Oregon, next July, and registration for it will be open from Feb. 1 to April 5, 2023. There will be more than 500 veterans competing in 22 sports. Get information at wheelchairgames. org. If you're new to adaptive sports, scroll down and click on "Learn More" to see the list of benefits to becoming involved. Among other reasons, they list maintaining body weight, sleeping better and reducing anxiety and depression. Those alone might be worth the effort of joining an adaptive sport, but they also list controlling Type 2 diabetes and hypertension.

If you're age 55 or older, the National Veterans Golden Age Games might be for you, with over a dozen different sports, such as air rifle, basketball, golf, cycling and bowling.

If you do an online search for "@Sports4Vets, you'll find the VA's adaptive sports and arts Facebook page, Instagram and Twitter. Pay special attention to Facebook, as they've listed a number of programs and events that are coming up.

by Freddy Groves

• A married couple went on vacation and left their cat with an aunt at her house while they were away. The aunt lived two miles away, and the cat had never been there before. When the couple returned home two weeks later, they found their cat on their front porch. They called their aunt to thank her for returning the cat, saving them the trouble of collecting him. The aunt heaved a sigh of relief, saying that the cat had slipped out the door that morning and she’d been searching for him ever since.

• One woman had to move far away, leaving her beloved cat with her parents. The cat disappeared a few days later, and the parents could not find him anywhere. But every two or three months, the woman came home for a visit. The cat would always turn up at her parents’ home just in time to greet her. He was well-fed and nicely groomed, but had no collar or ID on him. Everyone was baffled as to where he was living, and how he knew to show up just when his beloved previous owner came for a visit. The curiosity continued, as he disappeared as soon as she left to return to her new home. This continued for some time. The cat would always come whenever she came home for a visit. The biggest surprise came when the cat showed up at the parents’ home even though she had not scheduled a trip home. Then she showed up for an unannounced visit, showing that the cat was right once again.

• One woman owned five cats who had the run of the house and the yard, using a cat door to come and go. One time when she suffered a prolonged illness, the five cats took turns staying by her side, while the others roamed free. They had a very exacting rotating schedule which they never varied from, so she was never alone in the house and always had a companion by her side.

• One lady who was an enthusiastic cook often used a grinder to grind vegetables, fruits, and meats. Her cat would always come into the kitchen whenever she got out the grinder to grind meats, because she would drop scraps. But the cat never came to the kitchen when the intention was to grind fruits or vegetables.

• Cats can even sometimes sense things coming over the phone. Take the case of Carlo, who belonged to a young girl. When she grew up and went off to college, she would phone home occasionally, but not on any sort of schedule. In the family’s house, the phone was on the stair landing, and the cat was not allowed upstairs. But whenever the phone rang and it was her on the line, Carlo would bound up the stairs and stand next to the phone. He never did this any other time.

• Sugar was a Persian that belonged to a family in California. When they moved to a new home in Oklahoma, Sugar jumped out of the car window in panic and could not be found. The family continued with their move, and the neighbors notified them later that they had found Sugar and would keep her safe until they could return for her. Unfortunately, Sugar disappeared a few days later and could not be found anywhere. A year later, the cat turned up at the family’s new home in Oklahoma, having traveled over 1,000 miles through unknown territory.

• A survey of vet clinics showed that 64 out of 65 often experienced cancellations when cats where scheduled for appointments, because cats would so often intuit that a vet visit was in the offing and would disappear. The only clinic that did not report this phenomenon had stopped making appointments for cats, and just told cat owners: “Bring your cat in whenever you can catch it, and we’ll see it then.”

Quiz Answers

1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

5% Up to 8 inches long on average. Dung beetle True. False: It is 1/2-mile long

6. 7. 8. 9.

Pocahontas The liver 56 “All Night Long (All Night)” by Lionel Richie in 1983.

Sports Answers

The Simpsons Amar’e Stoudemire. Steelers The Slab of Bacon A rouge

6.