Science & Mathematics Questions & Answers

Many people throughout the world suffer from malnutrition-that is, they are undernourished. Undernourishment causes ill-health, starvation and death. The FAO (Food and Agricultural Organization) has worked out how the calorie intake of people compares with what they need for good health. The worst malnutrition occurs in developing countries. For example, the average calorie intake per person in Ghana in 1983 …

Magic sand is water-repellent sand available in blue, green and red colours. When this sand in powder form is sprinkled on water, it sinks and forms a solid substance. This property is used to separate oil floating in the oceans – it can be sprayed on oil spills to enable it to mix with oil and take solid form. It …

Magic Acid, H2SO3F+, is one of the inorganic superacids. This extremely strong acid has a pKa of 20 and is strong enough to protonate saturated alkanes to form carbonium ions. Magic Acid is made by mixing antimonypentafluoride (SbF55) and fluorosulphonic acid. It is considered a superacid and is called Magic Acid because of its strength.

The word macrobiotic originates from the Greek word meaning ‘great or larger than life’. It is based on The Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Internal Medicine, the oldest-known book of Chinese medicine. It is attributed to Yellow Emperor Huang Ti (2704 BC), but was probably not written until about 500 BC. Macrobiotics is a healthy, holistic way of living a balanced …

It is a term for backache in the lumbar region of the backbone.

It is the theory on which the concept of the recycled universe is based. Loop Quantum Cosmology (LQC) has been teasing physicists since 2003 with the idea that our universe could conceivably have emerged from the collapse of a previous universe. It theories that our universe expands and then contracts over and over again, re birthing for infinity. According to …

Liquid air is a mixture of oxygen and nitrogen which have been compressed until they form a liquid. When the pressure on the liquid is released, it turns back into these two gases. The liquid is kept under great pressure in strong steel cylinders. Liquid air has a great many uses, because it enables large amounts of these two gases …

This is a branch of physics which deals with the manufacture of devices that deploy lasers to transmit, gather and process information. Typical usage would be in optic fiber cables to move data over long distances and sensors to measure temperature in engineering structures. It’s a specialized area and scientists hope to use this to develop high speed communication devices.

Kinship analysis is typically used when an individual is deceased and no forensic / post-mortem specimens are available for testing. Since related individuals would have some DNA markers in common with one another, we can re-create a portion of the missing individual’s genetic profile from living relatives in order to perform paternity testing.

Isinglass, which is called so because of its glass-like translucency, refers to thin sheets of mica. It’s used as peepholes in boilers and lanterns. It was preferred over glass because it would not splinter on breaking due to extreme temperature gradients. The name also applies to a collagen derived from the swim bladders of fish, especially the Beluga Sturgeon, used …