Nature Hub

  From :- BBC World News   By ;-  Jasmin Fox-Skelly  Editted by  :- Amal Udawatta Getty Images Professional soccer players and American football stars are at much greater risk of developing dementia. What can we do to help them? If you're a football player, there's nothing quite like the rush of leaping towards a ball hurtling towards you at great speed, heading it into the net, and scoring a goal for your team. Yet evidence is mounting that repeatedly doing so can lead to brain damage that manifests decades later as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and motor neurone disease. The dangers of contact sports have actually been known about for almost 100 years. In 1928, US pathologist Harrison Martland published a  scientific article  arguing that, "for some time, fight fans and promoters have recognised a peculiar condition occurring among prize fighters which, in ring parlance, they speak of as 'punch drunk'."  Symptoms included a staggering gait and mental...

    From:- Sky & Telescope    By :- J. Kelly Beatty   Editted by :- Amal Udawatta Dazzling Jupiter and the brilliant stars of Orion, the Hunter — as well as Sirius and Procyon — dominate the eastern sky during January evenings. We’ll want to make good on that pledge right away, because our first opportunity occurs early in January, with the arrival of the Quadrantid meteor shower. These meteors get their name from Quadrans Muralis, an obsolete constellation near the handle of the Big Dipper. Unfortunately this year the peak arrives in the Americas on the afternoon of January 3rd — and there’s a full Moon that night. Bummer! Of the five planets visible by eye, three of them — Mercury, Venus, and Mars — are bunched closely together very close to the Sun in the sky and thus out of view this whole month. That leaves Jupiter and Saturn to entertain us. Right now Saturn is fairly high in the southwest after even twilight fades. Meanwhile, Jupiter reaches what’s ca...

   From :- BBC World News    By :-   Mayeni Jones ( Africa Correspondent, Cape Town)    Editted by :- Amal Udawatta    Cape Town Pelagics Albatrosses are particularly vulnerable to being harmed by fishing boats On a small boat in the Atlantic, about 27 nautical miles (50km) away from South Africa's Cape Point, a group of bird watchers are calling out seabird names: "Atlantic yellow-nosed! Black-browed albatross!" The tour boat takes bird watchers from Cape Town to see endangered seabirds, including albatrosses, that are hard to find on the mainland. It's a warm summer's day and the sky is blue and clear, perfect conditions for bird-watching. The skipper is speaking on his radio - he's looking for fishing trawlers. He soon finds one, and makes a beeline towards it. The closer the boat - operated by Cape Town Pelagics, a non-profit organisation - gets to the fishing vessels, the more seabirds appear. As he stops right next to the fishing b...