Amazing Universe - Random Knowledge

A new study presents the first detailed description of human echolocation, including the acoustic characteristics and spatial range of mouth clicks. The researchers used the results to develop synthetic mouth clicks, which could be used to learn more about this extraordinary skill.For bats, dolphins and some whale species, echolocation is an innate ability used for navigation and foraging for food in the dark. When an animal produces a call, they listen out for the echoes that bounce back from objects in their environment to detect their surroundings.While 'seeing' the world through sound isn't something humans have a natural skill for, studies have shown that vision-impaired people can develop bat-senses with practice. The most famous 'real-life bat-man' is Daniel Kish, who lost his sight at the age of one. Kish became an internet sensation, climbing mountains, riding bikes and living alone in the wilderness using mouth clicking skills to picture hi...

Spider webs are already strong enough to restrain small insects unlucky enough to fly into them, and soon, they may be capable of carrying the weight of a person. In a new study published in 2D Materials , Nicola Pugno at the University of Trento in Italy and his team detail how they cranked arachnids' already impressive metabolic process up to 11 by adding graphene and carbon nanotubes to a spider's drinking water. Afterward, the spider produced silk as it normally would, but the silk was five times stronger, putting it on par with the likes of pure carbon fibres and Kevlar - the strongest materials on Earth. "We already know that there are biominerals present in the protein matrices and hard tissues of insects, which gives them high strength and hardness in their jaws, mandibles, and teeth, for example," Pugno told The Sydney Morning Herald . "So our study looked at whether spider silk's properties could be 'enhanced' by artificiall...