Crossword Puzzle

Bullet Ant

Paraponera clavata is a species of ant, commonly known as the bullet ant, named on account of its powerful and potent sting due to its venom. It inhabits humid lowlandrainforests from Nicaragua and the extreme east of Honduras south to Paraguay.


It is also known as the lesser giant hunting ant and conga ant. A local name is hormiga veinticuatro (the "24 ant" or "24-hour ant"), referring to the full day of pain that follows being stung. The specific epithet clavatameans "club-shaped".


Worker ants are 18–30 millimetres (0.7–1.2 in) long and resemble stout, reddish-black, wingless wasps. Paraponera ispredatory, and like all primitiveponeromorphs, does not displaypolymorphism in the worker caste; the queen ant is not much larger than the workers.





Paraponera clavata – museum specimen





Photograph demonstrating the size of bullet ants, with a 2-cm scale bar
Sting


The pain caused by this insect's sting is purported to be greater than that of any otherhymenopteran, and is ranked as the most painful according to the Schmidt sting pain index, given a "4+" rating, above the tarantula hawk wasp and, according to some victims, equal to being shot, hence the name of the insect. It is described as causing "waves of burning, throbbing, all-consuming pain that continues unabated for up to 24 hours". The ant is thought to have evolved its sting to ward off any predators that would normally unearth them. Poneratoxin, a paralyzingneurotoxic peptide isolated from the venom, affects voltage-dependent sodium ion channels and blocks the synaptic transmission in the central nervous system. It is being investigated for possible medical applications.
Initiation rites


The Satere-Mawe people of Brazil use intentional bullet ant stings as part of their initiation rites to become a warrior. The ants are first rendered unconscious by submerging them in a natural sedative, and then hundreds of them are woven into a glove made of leaves (which resembles a large oven mitt), stingers facing inward. When the ants regain consciousness, a boy slips the glove onto his hand. The goal of this initiation rite is to keep the glove on for a full 10 minutes. When finished, the boy's hand and part of his arm are temporarily paralyzed because of the ant venom, and he may shake uncontrollably for days. The only "protection" provided is a coating of charcoal on the hands, supposedly to confuse the ants and inhibit their stinging. To fully complete the initiation, however, the boys must go through the ordeal a total of 20 times over the course of several months or even years.


Colonies consist of several hundred individuals and are usually situated at the bases of trees. Workers forage arboreally in the area directly above the nest for smallarthropods and nectar, often as far as the upper canopy; little foraging occurs on the forest floor. Nectar, carried between themandibles, is the most common food taken back to the nest by foragers. Two studies in Costa Rica and on Barro Colorado Island(BCI) found about four bullet ant nests perhectare of forest. On BCI, the nests were found under 70 species of trees, six species of shrubs, two species of lianas and one species of palm. Nests were most common beneath the canopies of Faramea occidentalis and Trichilia tuberculata, but these trees are also the most abundant in the forest. Nests were present more frequently than would be expected based on the abundance of the trees under Alseis blackiana, Tabernaemontana arborea, Virola sebifera, Guaria guidonia and Oecocarpus mapoura. The large number of nest plants suggests little active selection of nest sites by bullet ants. Small shrubs, however, are underused, probably because they do not provide access to the forest canopy. The study on BCI concluded trees with buttresses and extrafloral nectaries may be selected for by bullet ants.






Source: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paraponera_clavata

Plasma (no image because plasma doesn't take forms)

A plasma is a hot ionized gas consisting of approximately equal numbers of positively charged ions and negatively charged electrons. The characteristics of plasmas are significantly different from those of ordinary neutral gases so that plasmas are considered a distinct "fourth state of matter." For example, because plasmas are made up of electrically charged particles, they are strongly influenced by electric and magnetic fields (see figure) while neutral gases are not. An example of such influence is the trapping of energetic charged particles along geomagnetic field lines to form the Van Allen radiation belts.

In addition to externally imposed fields, such as the Earth's magnetic field or the interplanetary magnetic field, the plasma is acted upon by electric and magnetic fields created within the plasma itself through localized charge concentrations and electric currents that result from the differential motion of the ions and electrons. The forces exerted by these fields on the charged particles that make up the plasma act over long distances and impart to the particles' behavior a coherent, collective quality that neutral gases do not display. (Despite the existence of localized charge concentrations and electric potentials, a plasma is electrically "quasi-neutral," because, in aggregate, there are approximately equal numbers of positively and negatively charged particles distributed so that their charges cancel.)

It is estimated that 99% of the matter in the observable universe is in the plasma state...hence the expression "plasma universe." (The phrase "observable universe" is an important qualifier: roughly 90% of the mass of the universe is thought to be contained in "dark matter," the composition and state of which are unknown.) Stars, stellar and extragalactic jets, and the interstellar medium are examples of astrophysical plasmas (see figure). In our solar system, the Sun, the interplanetary medium, the magnetospheres and/or ionospheres of the Earth and other planets, as well as the ionospheres of comets and certain planetary moons all consist of plasmas.

The plasmas of interest to space physicists are extremely tenuous, with densities dramatically lower than those achieved in laboratory vacuums. The density of the best laboratory vacuum is about 10 billion particles per cubic centimeter. In comparison, the density of the densest magnetospheric plasma region, the inner plasmasphere, is only 1000 particles per cubic centimeter, while that of the plasma sheet is less than 1 particle per cubic centimeter.

The temperatures of space plasmas are very high, ranging from several thousand degrees Celsius in the plasmasphere to several million degrees in the ring current. While the temperatures of the "cooler" plasmas of the ionosphere and plasmasphere are typically given in degrees Kelvin, those of the "hotter" magnetospheric plasmas are more commonly expressed in terms of the average kinetic energies of their constitutent particles measured in "electron volts." An electron volt (eV) is the energy that an electron acquires as it is accelerated through a potential difference of one volt and is equivalent to 11,600 degrees Kelvin. Magnetospheric plasmas are often characterized as being "cold" or "hot." Although these labels are quite subjective, they are widely used in the space physics literature. As a rule of thumb, plasmas with temperatures less than about 100 eV are "cold," while those with temperatures ranging from 100 eV to 30 keV can be considered "hot." (Particles with higher energies--such as those that populate the radiation belt--are termed "energetic.")

Source http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_%28physics%29

Imaginary Culinary

Hello again welcome to my blog. Today i would like to share my favorite food of all time, the Krabby Patty. It is a beef burger so tasty that it was said to flourish the mouth of Neptune himself. It is one of many kids favorite food, for the obvious reason of it being inside the best selling cartoon Spongebob Squarepants. and the secrecy of its secret vague recipe. it is so popular that some company that holds spongebob's stockhold tried to make their own copyrighted Krabby Patties. So in someway or another krabby is alive.

There is a huge amount of blog on the internet that tried to decipher the krabby patty formula. but only one sparks my interest. http://spongebob.wikia.com/wiki/Krabby_Patty_Secret_Formula.  this site gathers pieces of information scattered arround the cartoon series and put them together to make the imaginary food and they even showed us how to make them. the steps are as follows:

Ingredients

- Sesame Seeds

- Bottom bun

- Chum (Food)

- Ketchup

- Mustard

- Mayonnaise

- Relish

- Cheese

- Pickles (Food)

- Lettuce

- Tomatoes

- Onions

- Salt

- Tartar Sauce

- Secret sauce

- Top bun

Steps:

*The Meat Fillings*

1

Place the chopped onions and celery into a skillet or frying pan. Saute in 1 tablespoon of oil.

2

Add the thyme. Reduce the heat and cook gently until the onions wilt, or appear transparent. Avoid browning or burning them.

3

Mix the crabmeat, sauteed onions and celery, breadcrumbs, Dijon mustard,mayonnaise, egg, salt and pepper in a mixing bowl. Mix well until all 

4

Create patties from the mixture. Make round patty shapes using a mold or your hands. Pat them flat or use the back of a fork.

5

Return to the skillet. Heat 3 tablespoons of oil. Cook the patties in batches of 2 to 3 at a time. Cook each patty 2 minutes each side, or until the patties are golden brown. Keep adding oil for following batches as needed.

6

Preheat the oven to 200ºC/400ºF. Add the fried Krabby patties to the oven for a 10 minute bake.

7

Remove and serve. Serve with a mix 1 cup of mayonnaise and 3 tablespoons of ketchup together or serve mayonnaise and ketchup separately.

*The Krabby Patty*

1

Organize the ground beef into a long layer. Make to desired burger thickness.

2

Cut round, patty shapes for the Krabby patties.

3

Lay the Krabby patties on a grill or frying pan. Heat 500ºF for 5-10 minutes on each side for a nice, for a medium to well done patty.

4

Lay the cheese on each of the patties and let melt for 2 minutes.

5

Take the patties off the grill. Lay them onto the buns.

6

Add the condiments as listed in the ingredients above.

For secret Krabby Sauce, mix ketchup and mayonnaise with a very small drop of hot sauce and add to the Krabby patties.

7

Serve. Enjoy!

Source:spongebob.wikia.com/wiki/Krabby_Patty

Hello folks!! Today i'm going to tell you guys about my long holiday story. This holiday is not one of the good holiday i imagined it would be. For the first week, the cycle is always the same wake up, eat, play, take a bath sleep. Looping for a whole boring week. Not quite what i expected from a holiday. But nevertheless i had fun. I played multiplayer online games with my classmates, with my classmates ex, with my classmates's classmates ex. But most of the first week of my holiday is basically consisted of "play to snore".

The next week i got an invitation to a red cross recruitment in my school. Then i said to myself "hey why not". It is a camping recruitment test program to determine your position and ability to treat people in the schools red cross extraculicullar. So i joined packed up and ready it took place in lembang. In ciwangun to be precise. I thought we were going to easily camp there, oh but no. the higher ups decided to camp on the top of the hill. As how i saw it from the bottom "nay, it looks pretty close, should be a scratch". But 15 minutes later i changed my mind it was so far away it was very exhausting. And when i finally got the courage to ask the senior about the height. He said that we were not even close to half the hiking. Aww no. Finally we made it there and we settle our camp bear the slope end of the hill, so that we can get a better view.

The view was beautiful, singing in the night, sitting beside the campfire the usual stuff