The Daily Drift

Welcome to Today's Edition of Carolina Naturally.

Today also happens to be Vitamin C Day ...! 

 

Carolina Naturally is read in 206 countries around the world daily.   

  
It's a Math Thing ... !

Today is - Square Root Day

You want the unvarnished truth?

Don't forget to visit: The Truth Be Told

Some of our readers today have been in:
The Americas
Argentina - Barbados - Brazil - Canada - Chile - Mexico - Nicaragua - Puerto Rico 
Sint Eustatius and Saba - Trinidad and Tobago - United States - Venezuela
Europe
Austria - Bosnia and Herzegovina - Belarus - Bulgaria - Croatia - England - France 
Germany - Greece - Hungary - Ireland - Italy - Latvia - Netherlands - Northern Ireland 
Norway - Poland - Portugal - Romania - Russia - San Marino - Scotland - Serbia - Slovakia 
Spain - Sweden - Turkey - Ukraine - Wales
Asia
Bahrain - Burma - China - Hong Kong - India - Indonesia - Japan - Kuwait - Laos 
Malaysia - Mauritius - Singapore - Taiwan - Vietnam
Africa
Angola
The Pacific
Australia - New Zealand - Philippines

Don't forget to visit our sister blogs Here and Here.

Today in History

527		In Constantinople, Justin, seriously ill, crowns his nephew Justinian as his co-emperor.
1581		Francis Drake completes circumnavigation of the world.
1812		The territory of Orleans becomes the 18th state and will become known as Louisiana.
1818		The United States flag is declared to have 13 red and white stripes and 20 stars.
1841		President William Henry Harrison, aged 68, becomes the first president to die in office, just a month after being sworn in.
1862		The Battle of Yorktown begins as Union gen. George B. McClellan closes in on Richmond, Va.
1917		The U.S. Senate votes 90-6 to enter World War I on Allied side.
1918		The Battle of the Somme ends.
1941		Field Marshal Erwin Rommel captures the British held town of Benghazi in North Africa.
1949		The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) treaty is signed.
1968		Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. is assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee.
1974		Hank Aaron ties Babe Ruth’s home-run record.
1979		Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the president of Pakistan is executed.
1985		A coup in Sudan ousts President Nimeiry and replaces him with General Dahab.

Is the American Dream dead?

Is the American Dream dead?

The belief that you can succeed financially with hard work and determination has been a core tenet of the American Dream. Now more than three-quarters of all Americans believe that downward mobility is more likely than upward mobility.

Florida Just Made It Harder For Police To Take People's Stuff

Florida Just Made It Harder For Police To Take People's Stuff

Why So Many Racists Don’t Think They’re Racist

Why So Many Racists Don’t Think They’re Racist

Ignoring Court Orders, Maricopa County Locks Up Mentally Ill People Too Impaired For Trial

"Locked down for up to 24 hours a day, they deteriorate, refusing medication and treatment, living in squalor, and growing more symptomatic by the day."

Video reveals judge ordered defendant to be shocked into submission — just for talking

Video reveals judge ordered defendant to be shocked into submission — just for talking

Masculine Stereotype Of STEM Pushes Women Out Of The Field

New research shows empirically that when people think of what makes scientists successful, they think of stereotypical masculine traits.

How the brain processes emotions

How the brain processes emotions

Some mental illnesses may stem, in part, from the brain’s inability to correctly assign emotional associations to events. For example, people who are depressed often do not feel happy even when experiencing something that they normally enjoy. A new study from MIT...

Our understanding of nightmares has changed over the last 300 years

How our understanding of nightmares has changed over the last 300 years

Today we recognize recurring bad dreams as an official disorder, and no longer tell rattled sleepers to lay off the fried chicken, flip over and light some sage. Regardless, nightmares remain a source of controversy and mystery.

Little House on the River

The story goes that, 40 years ago, this little island in the Drina River by the town of Bajina Basta, Serbia was a popular spot for young people to swim and sunbathe. The owner and his friends decided to build a cabin there as a private getaway. It was a difficult task--all of the materials had to be rowed out through the river's swift currents.
Now it's an endearing symbol of serenity for its owners and kayakers who occasionally visit. You can see more photos at Atlas Obscura.

Girl Mummy Sheds Light on Early American Fate

by Jennifer Viegas

The La Doncella (The Maiden) Incan mummy dates to 500 years ago.

DNA from 92 pre-Columbian people, including a well-preserved mummy of a girl who was sacrificed 500 years ago, shed light on who the first Native Americans were, what their initial migration path was, and what might have happened to certain early indigenous populations after Europeans arrived in the Americas.

More

Viking Site in Canada Hinted by Satellite Data

Viking Site in Canada Hinted by Satellite Data

The site in Newfoundland could be the first new Viking site discovered in North America in over 50 years.

A programming language for living cells

A programming language for living cells

MIT biological engineers have created a programming language that allows them to rapidly design complex, DNA-encoded circuits that give new functions to living cells. Using this language, anyone can write a program for the function they want, such as detecting and...

Astronomical News

Forget Tatooine, This Exoplanet Has THREE Suns

An exoplanet has been discovered in a very strange star system more bizarre than most science fiction storylines.

'Baby Earth 2.0' Found in Young Star's Crib

Where DO baby planets come from? Well, this observation of a young star sporting a ringed protoplanetary disk holds the answer.

SETI: Does ET Call a Red Dwarf 'Home'?

California-based SETI Institute plans to expand a hunt for radio signals broadcast by extraterrestrial civilizations by scanning red dwarf stars, which are older and smaller than stars like the sun.

2-Faced Exoplanet Is Both Solid and Molten Rock

Astronomers have, for the first time, mapped a nearby 'super-Earth' exoplanet to find that one hemisphere is almost completely molten rock, while the other half is almost completely solid.

Is Planet Nine behind mass extinctions on Earth?

 One astrophysicist says yes

Planet Nine has seen its share of headlines lately, but its newfound popularity is also bringing back theories that the yet-to-be-discovered planet may have affected, and may in the future affect, life here on Earth.

Retired astrophysicist and current University of Arkansas math professor Dr. Daniel Whitmire says Planet Nine’s suspected multi-million year orbit around the sun may trigger comet bombardments. His analysis suggests this happens about once every 27 million years.

How does this happen? Planet Nine passes through the Kuiper Belt, a region of space beyond the outermost planets that is the breeding ground for comets and asteroids alike. As the planet passes through this region, it disrupts the paths being followed by comets, sending some of them hurtling toward the inner solar system.

Whitmire’s research found that some of these comets not only would end up striking Earth, but that they would also disintegrate in large numbers, effectively lowering the amount of solar radiation reaching the Earth. Furthermore, Whitmire was able to match the theorized interval of Planet Nine’s orbit through the Kuiper Belt to mass extinction events here on Earth, lending credence to paleontologist theories that the death of the dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures may indeed have been the result of comet impacts.

“There is not a perfect one-to-one correlation,” Whitmire told Digital Trends in an interview Friday. He attributed the events that did not correlate to statistical randomness. “Nonetheless the statistical analysis shows a strong regular period of 27 million years.”

Whitmire already showed back in 1985 — when he first started looking into the possibility of Planet Nine-related comet barrages — that the pattern held for at least the last 250 million years. Newer research suggests that these barrages may actually have been happening for as much as 500 million years, and quite possibly longer.

The latest comet shower is thought to have occurred around 11 or so million years ago, around the time of the Middle Miocene mass extinction. Before that, similar events were thought to have occurred around 38 and 66 million years ago, the latter thought to be the comets that killed off the dinosaurs.

Don’t ring the alarm bells though for the next bombardment. Humankind will likely be dramatically evolved (if hopefully not long gone) by the time Planet Nine passes through the Kuiper Belt again. “Modern man doesn’t have worry about the next comet shower for 16 million years,” Whitman quipped.

10-Million-Year-Old Snake Revealed in Living Color

10-Million-Year-Old Snake Revealed in Living Color

Preserved within the fossilized remains are cell structures that revealed the colors that would have dappled its skin while the animal was alive.

Porcupine Fish Refuses to Abandon Trapped Best Friend

(Video Link) 

Core Sea is a marine conservation and research organization in Southeast Asia. Recently, one member of the team came across a porcupinefish while snorkeling in Chaloklum Bay, Thailand. The fish was caught in a net. The snorkler used a broken bottle to cut the fish free of the net. That was a challenge, as the net kept on getting caught on the procupinefish's spines.
Throughout the entire rescue, another porcupinefish insisted on staying close by. When the trapped fish was free, the couple swam off together.

Nudibranches Nab Prizes in Photo Competition

Nudibranches Nab Prizes in Photo Competition

The soft, seagoing slugs took center stage in a recent underwater photography contest.

Animal Pictures