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Climate change - long-term shifts in temperatures and weather patterns. These shifts may be natural, for example: variations in the solar cycle, but ever since the 1800s, the main cause has been human activities, mostly the burning of fossil fuels. When humans burn fossil fuels, we generate greenhouse gas emissions that act similarly to a blanket wrapped around Earth, raising temperatures by trapping the sun’s heat. Some greenhouse gas emissions causing climate change are carbon dioxide and methane. These emissions can come from the gasoline used to drive a car or burning coal to heat a building. Carbon dioxide can also be released when land and forests are cleared. A major source of methane emissions are landfills where LFG (landfill gas - a byproduct of the decomposition of organic material in landfills) is made of about 50% methane.  Since greenhouse gas concentrations are at their highest level in 2 million years, Earth is about 1.1℃ warmer than it was during the late 1800s. Climat

Rubber duck debugging, or rubber ducking, is a method of debugging code in software engineering. The term can be traced back to “The Pragmatic Programmer”, a book by Andrew Hunt and David Thomas detailing a programmer who carries around a rubber duck and debugs their code by explaining it to the duck, line by line.  Steps:  Get a rubber duck (preferably a bath-time duck, but any size is okay) Start explaining the code to the duck making sure to read each logical step out loud and in detail while pointing to the screen so that the duck knows which line you’re talking about Continue to go through your code until the solution to the problem is found The main point of the exercise is to have the developer slowly and carefully explain their code out loud, line by line. Since we think faster than we speak, verbally explaining the code forces the coder to slow down and, under the assumption the duck knows nothing about the code, the coder also has to be precise in their explanation which help

Foxglove grows throughout the United States and typically blooms in the spring. Its bell-shaped flowers are usually purple but can also be cream yellow, white, pink, or rose. Each foxglove plant can produce 1 to 2 million seeds and was used in heart failure treatment in the 18th century.  The “digitalis” part of foxglove’s botanical name, digitalis purpurea , is also the name of a heart medicine derived from this plant. Digitalis is used to help a weakened heart pump harder, so eating parts of the plant or sucking the flowers is basically taking an unregulated dose of heart medicine. After consuming the plant, symptoms for humans include an irregular or slow heartbeat, low blood pressure, nausea, headaches, blurred vision, hallucinations, a loss of appetite, and seeing halos around objects. The last 3 symptoms are commonly observed in people who have been poisoned over a long period of time.  Sources: Foxglove: How to Plant and Grow Foxglove Flowers | The Old Farmer's Almanac , Fo

Some ways find an acceptable watermelon:  Look for a consistent and symmetrical shape. No matter what size and shape watermelons you buy, avoid melons with bumps, dents, and cuts. These signs can indicate that the fruit was inconsistently watered or wasn’t pollinated properly. The cuts and dents may announce the presence of insects or fungus.  Heavy for its size = good melon. If you pick up the watermelon and feel as though it's heavy for its size, it’ll usually mean the fruit is full of water and, thus, juicer.  Find a melon with a large ground spot. The ground or field spot of a watermelon is typically on the bottom of the melon. A large yellow ground spot indicates that the melon spent more time connected to the vine and should be sweeter. Avoid melons with white field spots which show that the fruit was picked too early and never hit peak ripeness; these melons are usually plain-flavored.  Pick melons that have a deep sound when tapped. Ripe watermelons give off a deep sound wh

While butternut trees are some of the hardiest nut trees, they are becoming rarer in the wild and aren’t frequently found in nurseries. This is because the tree is susceptible to butternut canker, a deadly fungal disease. In some states, butternut canker killed up to 80% of butternut trees. There is no cure for this disease and affected trees typically die after a few years. Hybrid butternut trees usually have better resistance against butternut canker.  The native range of butternut trees ranges from all of northeastern United States and into southeastern Canada. The tree was once highly valued for its rich, sweet, and buttery flavored nuts and its light, golden wood. Butternut trees can be planted in spring or fall and usually show yellowish-green flowers in late spring. The flowers are replaced by fruits which then ripen into nuts in the fall. The trees can grow to be 40 to 60 feet tall and wide (12 to 18 meters ) but grow quite slowly with less than 12 inches added to their heigh

  The Grim Reaper is a personification of death and isn’t someone who kills mortals, but rather transports their souls to the afterlife. He is often portrayed wearing a black cloak, holding a scythe in one hand, and an hourglass in the other.    The Grim Reaper seems to have appeared in the 14th century when Europe was facing the world’s worst pandemic, the Black Death. This medieval-era plague permanently changed how the average person saw death. With at least 25 million people dying in the initial outbreak, and millions continuing to die in outbreaks flaring up for centuries, a sense of sorrow and misery hovered above all activities, influencing writers and artists of the time. Death soon started to be symbolized by a skeleton in the artwork during the era. Most artists depicted this form of death in similar ways. Death was often shown holding arrows, a crossbow, or another weapon. Sometimes a young woman was seen standing at death’s side, providing a reminder of the link between li

Meteoroids are the “space rocks”, the objects in space that range in size from dust grains to small asteroids. The meteoroids that enter a planet’s atmosphere at a high speed and then burn up are called meteors, or “shooting stars.” If a meteoroid survives its trip through the atmosphere and hits the ground, it’s referred to as a meteorite.  Some meteoroids are pieces of larger space rocks while others come from asteroids, the moon, and other planets. Meteoroids can be rocky, metallic, or a combination of rock and metal.  Sometimes meteors can appear to be brighter than Venus; this is when they are referred to as “fireballs”. On any given night, several meteors can usually be seen, but when there are more meteors, it’s called a meteor shower. Some meteor showers can occur annually or at regular intervals as the Earth passes through the trails of debris that are left by comets, or in a few cases, asteroids. Meteor showers are typically named after a star or constellation that’s close to

Hinduism, according to many scholars, is the world’s oldest religion with roots and customs that date back more than 4,000 years. Today, it’s the 3rd largest religion behind Christianity and Islam, and has around 900 million followers. About 95% of the world’s Hindus live in India. Hinduism is unique in the fact that it’s not a single religion and is instead a collection of many traditions, beliefs, and philosophies.  Most forms of Hinduism are henotheistic, meaning they worship a single deity but still recognize other gods and goddesses. In most cases, “Brahman”, the Hindu god of creation, is considered the single, most superior deity. Some beliefs of the religion are the doctrines of samsara, the continuous cycle of life, death and rebirth, and karma, the universal law of cause and effect, aka “what goes around, comes around.” A key thought of Hinduism is “atman”, or belief in soul. One Hindu philosophy is that living creatures have souls and they’re all part of the supreme soul. The

    Poison hemlock, also called conium maculatum, deadly hemlock, poison parsley, spotted hemlock, European hemlock, and California or Nebraska fern, is a poisonous plant with white flowers that grow in small, upright clusters. Each of those flowers then develops into a green, deeply ridged fruit, containing many seeds. After maturity, the fruit turns grayish brown. This plant starts growing in the early spring and usually grows for 2 years, however, in favorable locations, it may live longer. It grows along fence lines, in irrigation ditches, and other moist environments. It is typically 2 to 3 meters tall (6.5 to 10 feet) and has a hollow stem peppered with reddish or purple spots. Ancient Greeks used poison hemlock to execute criminals and political prisoners; one famous example is the execution of Socrates.  All parts of the poison hemlock are poisonous, and the leaves are especially poisonous in the spring and up to the time the plant flowers. Even the dead canes remain toxic for

    As their name suggests, bee hummingbirds are barely bigger than bees and make a buzzy sound while flying, similar to a bumblebee. Bee hummingbirds are the world’s smallest birds and have one of the fastest heartbeats at more than 1,200 beats per minute. They weigh 1.6-2 grams, are 5 to 6 centimeters long, and have a lifespan of 7-10 years. These birds can fly for 20 hours without a break and can fly straight up, down, backward, and upside down. During a typical day, a bee hummingbird will eat half its body weight in food and will help pollinate up to 1,500 flowers. They mainly feed on nectar but will occasionally eat an insect or spider.      Bee hummingbirds are native to the entire Cuban archipelago and live in rainforests, mountain valleys, swamplands, dry forests, and rural gardens. They are sedentary, which means they inhabit the same locality throughout their life and only make short movements to nearby islands. Male bee hummingbirds are very territorial towards their feeding

  A supernova is the largest explosion in space that humans have ever seen. Each blast seen in the sky is a tremendously bright and super-powerful explosion of a dying star. Supernovae (plural of supernova) can be so bright that they outshine their entire galaxies for a few days or months and can be seen from across the universe! Astronomers believe that about 2 or 3 supernovae happen every century, with an average of a supernova occurring once every 50 years in a galaxy the size of the Milky Way. Since the universe has many galaxies, a star explodes every 10 seconds. Astronomers observe a few hundred supernovae per year outside of our galaxy. The oldest recorded supernova is RCW 86, which Chinese astronomers saw in the sky in A.D. 185 and had records showing that this “guest star” stayed in the sky for eight months.  The way a star dies depends partly on its mass. Our sun doesn’t have enough mass to explode as a supernova and will instead, once it runs out of nuclear fuel, expand into

   The Black Death was a plague pandemic that laid waste to medieval Europe from 1346 to 1356 CE and was estimated to have killed 25 to 30 million people. The disease was known as the Black Plague because it would turn skin and sores into a disturbing black, among other symptoms. With up to two-thirds of the people who suffered from the disease dying, approximately 30% to 50% of the population in places affected by the Black Death lost their lives due to the disease. The Black Death was the worst plague in human history, causing death tolls so high that it would take the population of Europe 200 years to recover to the numbers seen before the pandemic.  The disease originated in central Asia and was then taken to Crimea, a peninsula on the northern coast of the Black Sea, by Mongol warriors and traders. The plague entered Europe through Italy after rats on Genoese trading ships sailing from the Black Sea brought the disease over. The cause of the Black Death was the bacillus bacteria Y

  Milk snakes, or Lampropeltis Triangulum , get their name from an old folktale that depicts these snakes sucking cow udders to get milk. While the myth is false, since milk snakes do not have the physical ability to do so, milk snakes are often found in or around barns, due to their cool and dark environment, which is what most likely resulted in the folktale.  Milk snakes are a non-venomous species of kingsnake, have a lifespan of 12 to 21 years, and a length of 60 to 132 centimeters, or 24 to 52 inches. The largest milk snakes are typically found in Central and South America. They live in forested regions, tropical hardwood forests, open woodland, open prairies, grasslands, shrublands, and can also be found in small streams, marshes, and rocky slopes. They live in tropical and temperate climate zones and typically live on the ground but will occasionally climb trees to eat birds and their eggs. Milk snakes are nocturnal hunters, meaning that they are active at night and hide during