Manatees have thick pads around their lips and stiff bristles that help them grab food and move it towards the mouth. A manatee eats sea grass and all kinds of sea vegetables. All its teeth are shaped like a human's molars. The eight hours of chewing each day wears down on their teeth. In fact, its first two pairs of teeth get so worn out that they simply fall out sometimes. However, manatees can grow new teeth. New teeth are always growing in the back. When front teeth fall out, the back teeth move forward to take their place. In mammals, only elephants and (quite independently) kangaroos have this kind of system.
The Sirenia are thought to have evolved from four-legged land mammals over 60 million years ago. Their closest living relatives are the Proboscidea (elephants) and Hyracoidea (hyraxes).
Manatees live on the coasts of the Atlantic Ocean and the rivers.
The West African Manatee lives on the western side of Africa, on the shores from Senegal to Angola. They also live in some rivers like the Niger River and around Lake Chad.
The West Indian Manatee lives in the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean, and also on the shores of Brazil and Venezuela.
The Amazonian Manatee lives in parts of the Amazon Basin in South America.
Manatees live in salt water and in fresh water. On the sea shores they mostly live in shallow water, like lagoons and mangroves. They also live in brackish water and rivers. Manatees like bodies of water with a temperature of over 20 °C.
They are mainly herbivores, spending most of their time grazing in shallow waters at depths of 1-2 metres (3–7 ft).
Natural history
Natural history is the study of plants and animals in the wild, and the environments they live in. This includes the geology of the places in which they live.
The work of naturalists is observation, interpretation, collecting and classification, rather than experiments. People who study natural history are called naturalists. They were among the first to explore the world. They were the first to study the Amazon and other tropical places. Naturalists find new species and classify plants and animals. They study ecology.
Naturalists developed some theoretical ideas which were valuable. They noticed that living things fitted the lives they led. This was adaptation. They noticed a struggle for existence between animals. They thought they could see a chain of being from lower animals to higher, which they thought was the work of God. The idea that such things might happen by natural means began to surface in the 18th century, and become the majority view in time of Charles Darwin.
Before Darwin, most naturalists did not think of themselves as scientists. When they looked at nature, perhaps as explorers, they looked at everything. They looked at the land, the people, the plants and animals. After Darwin, they did see themselves as scientists. Early on, Darwin called himself a geologist. Thomas Henry Huxley was an anatomist. Joseph Dalton Hooker was a botanist. Charles Lyell was a geologist. They changed the way in which they were educated as well. They often took degrees in science. That sort of education was rare before Darwin.
Naturalists were educated amateurs; scientists are trained professionals. The change happened slowly, during the 19th century. The very word "scientist" was invented in 1837 by William Whewell. Before then, the term was "natural philosopher" (for the physical sciences) or "natural historian" (for the biological sciences and geology). "Naturalist" is short for "natural historian".
Some of the people who are important because they were interested in natural history are:
Theistic evolution
Theistic evolution, or evolutionary creationism, is the belief that God, or another higher power, used evolution as a tool to create the different species of living creatures on Earth. It says that evolution does not deny the existence of God.
Queer
The term queer is a word that describes any person who does not fit into what is considered normal by society when talking about their gender and/or sexuality.
It is a word which has been reappropriated by social and political LGBT activists, and has been the word which a lot of academic studies have used to describe non-heterosexual identities. It is also used as a word which talks about someone's sexuality or gender in a deliberately non-specific way.
Queer is mostly used by younger LGBT people to describe themselves and is usually described as a "fluid" label. Many people like the term in the LGBT community as it focuses on what that community has in common and not its differences. But many older LGBT people may find the term "queer" to be offensive due to its use as a homophobic insult.
The term "queer" entered English in the 16th century, meaning "strange" or a word describing someone who is sick. The word was used a lot in the 20th century to refer to gay men, as it still does a lot today.
Abdus Salam
Mohammad Abdus Salam (29 January 1926; Santokdas, Sahiwal Punjab – 21 November 1996; Oxford, England) was a Pakistani theoretical physicist. He was awarded the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics.
He was initially educated at the Government College Lahore and the University of the Punjab, Lahore. For a time also worked at the Government College as a lecturer, adding considerably to its intellectual life. Later he went to Cambridge University, England for PhD studies. In 1951 he returned to Pakistan, but he found that he was cut off from the rest of the scientific world there. In 1953, he again went to England where he started to teach and research, having interest in the Grand Unified Theory.
He believed that if the Creator of the universe was one then the origin of all the forces had to be single also. He then set off to unify the electromagnetic and the weak nuclear force.
According to another scientist, Peter Higgs, a field existed i.e. the Higgs field. Salam successfully showed that weak nuclear forces are not really different from electromagnetic forces, and two could inter-convert. Salam provided a theory that shows the unification of two fundamental forces of nature, weak nuclear forces and the electromagnetic forces, one into another.
Livermorium
Livermorium is a chemical element. It has the chemical symbol Lv. Livermorium is number 116 on the periodic table. The element lasts only 47 milliseconds.
The element is named in honor of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
It was first discovered in 2000 by the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Russia. Its name was first "Ununhexium" (Uuh), but it changed on May 30st, 2012, when the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry changed it.
UCI ProTour
The UCI ProTour is a series of bicycle road races organised by the world governing body the International Cycling Federation ("Union Cycliste Internationale" - the UCI)
The ProTour is the top grade of races for the top 20 cycling teams.
The ProTour includes one day races, time trials, and stage races. It started in 2005 and replaced the old world championship series which did not include stage races.
All of the ProTour races are in Europe, but the teams come from Europe and the United States. At the moment it is hard to move up from the Continental circuits to the ProTour, but in the future teams from Africa, Australia or Asia could take part in the ProTour.
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