Butterfly

Butterflies are delightful, flying bugs with expansive layered wings. Like all bugs, they have six jointed legs, 3 body parts, a couple of radio wires, compound eyes, and an exoskeleton. The three body parts are the head, thorax (the midsection), and mid-region (the last part).

The butterfly's body is secured by small tactile hairs. The four wings and the six legs of the butterfly are joined to the thorax. The thorax contains the muscles that make the legs and wings move.


Flying
Butterflies are great fliers. They have two sets of huge wings secured with beautiful, glowing scales in covering lines. Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths) are the main creepy crawlies that have flaky wings. The wings are connected to the butterfly's thorax (mid-segment). Veins help the fragile wings and feed them with blood.

Butterflies can just fly if their body temperature is over 86 degrees. Butterflies sun themselves to warm up in cool climate. As butterflies age, the shading of the wings blurs and the wings get to be worn out.


The velocity shifts among butterfly species (the toxic mixtures are slower than non-noxious assortments). The quickest butterflies (a few captains) can fly at around 30 mile every hour or quicker. Moderate flying butterflies fly around 5 mph.


LIFE-CYCLE OF A BUTTERFLY
Butterflies and moths undergo complete metamorphosis in which they go through four different life stages.

• Egg - A butterfly starts its life as an egg, often laid on a leaf.
• Larva - The larva (caterpillar) hatches from an egg and eats leaves or flowers almost constantly. The caterpillar molts (loses its old skin) many times as it grows. The caterpillar will increase up to several thousand times in size before pupating.
• Pupa - It turns into a pupa (chrysalis); this is a resting stage.
• Adult - A beautiful, flying adult emerges. This adult will continue the cycle.

DIET
Caterpillars invest the majority of their time consuming leaves utilizing solid mandibles (jaws). A caterpillar's first feast, notwithstanding, is its own eggshell. A couple of caterpillars are meat-eaters; the  larva  of the predatory Harvester butterfly consumes woolly aphids.


Butterflies and moths can just taste fluid sustenance utilizing a tube-like proboscis, which is a long, adaptable "tongue." This proboscis uncoils to taste nourishment, and curls up again into a winding when not being used. Most butterflies live on nectar from blossoms. A few butterflies taste the fluid from decaying products of the soil uncommon few incline toward spoiling creature tissue or creature liquids (the Harvester butterfly punctures the groups of woolly aphids with its sharp proboscis and beverages the body liquids).

HABITAT
Butterflies are discovered everywhere throughout the world and in a wide range of situations: hot and cool, dry and damp, adrift level and high in the mountains. Most butterfly species, nonetheless, are found in tropical ranges, particularly tropical rainforests.


Many butterflies relocate keeping in mind the end goal to evade antagonistic ecological conditions (like icy climate). Butterfly relocation is not well caught on. Most move generally short separations (like the Painted Lady, the Red Admiral, and the Common Buckeye), however a couple (like a few Monarchs) relocate a huge number of miles

CLASSIFICATION

Butterflies and moth belong to the order Lepidoptera. Lepidos is Greek for "scales" and ptera means "wing". These scaled wings are different from the wings of any other insects. Lepidoptera is a very large group; there are more types of butterflies and moths than there are of any other type of insects except beetles. It is estimated that there are about 150,000 different species of butterflies and moths (there may be many more). There are about 28,000 butterfly species worldwide, the rest are moths.

BUTTERFLY FOSSILS

Butterfly fossils are uncommon. The soonest butterfly fossils are from the early Cretaceous period, around 130 million years prior. Their improvement is nearly connected to the advancement of blossoming plants (angiosperms) since both grown-up butterflies and caterpillars eat blooming plants, and the grown-ups are critical pollinators of numerous blooming plants. Blossoming plants likewise advanced amid the Cretaceous period.

What Can Be Done about Pseudoskepticism?

Just because we don't know everything doesn't mean we know nothing

Izhar Cohen

What do tobacco, food additives, chemical flame retardants and carbon emissions all have in common? The industries associated with them and their ill effects have been remarkably consistent and disturbingly effective at planting doubt in the mind of the public in the teeth of scientific evidence. Call it pseudoskepticism.

It began with the tobacco industry when scientific evidence began to mount that cigarettes cause lung cancer. A 1969 memo included this statement from an executive at the Brown & Williamson tobacco company: “Doubt is our product since it is the best means of competing with the ‘body of fact’ that exists in the minds of the general public.” In one example among many of how to create doubt, a Philip Morris tobacco executive told a congressional committee: “Anything can be considered harmful. Applesauce is harmful if you get too much of it.”

The tobacco model was subsequently mimicked by other industries. As Peter Sparber, a veteran tobacco lobbyist said, “If you can ‘do tobacco,’ you can do just about anything in public relations.” It was as if they were all working from the same playbook, employing such tactics as: deny the problem, minimize the problem, call for more evidence, shift the blame, cherry-pick the data, shoot the messenger, attack alternatives, hire industry-friendly scientists, create front groups.

Documentary filmmaker Robert Kenner encountered this last strategy while shooting his 2008 film Food, Inc. He has said that he “kept bumping into groups like the Center for Consumer Freedom that were doing everything in their power to keep us from knowing what's in our food.” Kenner has called them “Orwellian” because such front groups sound like neutral nonprofit think tanks in search of scientific truth but are, in fact, funded by the for-profit industries associated with the problems they investigate.

Consider “Citizens for Fire Safety,” a front group created and financed in part by chemical and tobacco companies to address the problem of home fires started by cigarettes. Kenner found it while making his 2014 film Merchants of Doubt, based on the 2010 book of the same title by historians of science Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway. (I appear in an interview in the film.) To misdirect regulators and the public away from the link between cigarettes and home fires, the tobacco industry hired Sparber to work with the National Association of State Fire Marshals to promote the use of chemical flame retardants in furniture. As another memo reads: “You have to fireproof the world around the cigarette.” Suddenly Americans' furniture was awash in toxic chemicals.

Climate change is the latest arena for pseudoskepticism, and the front group du jour is ClimateDepot.com, financed in part by Chevron and Exxon and headed by a colorful character named Marc Morano, who told Kenner: “I'm not a scientist, but I do play one on TV occasionally … hell, more than occasionally.” Morano's motto to challenge climate science, about which he admits he has no scientific training, is “keep it short, keep it simple, keep it funny.” That includes ridiculing climate scientists such as James E. Hansen of Columbia University. “You can't be afraid of the absolute hand-to-hand combat metaphorically. And you've got to name names, and you've got to go after individuals,” he says, adding with a wry smile, “I think that's what I enjoy the most.”

Manufacturing doubt is not difficult, because in science all conclusions are provisional, and skepticism is intrinsic to the process. But as Oreskes notes, “Just because we don't know everything, that doesn't mean we know nothing.” We know a lot, in fact, and it is what we know that some people don't want us to know that is at the heart of the problem. What can we do about this pseudoskepticism?


In Merchants of Doubt, close-up prestidigitator extraordinaire Jamy Ian Swiss offers an answer: “Once revealed, never concealed.” He demonstrates it with a card trick in which a selected card that goes back into the deck ends up underneath a drinking glass on the table. It is virtually impossible to see how it is done, but once the move is highlighted in a second viewing, it is virtually impossible not to see it thereafter. The goal of proper skepticism is to reveal the secrets of dubious doubters so that the magic behind their tricks disappears.

Advanced Life Skills

100 Ways to Overcome Stress

Stress comes in many forms and enters our lives through a multitude of channels. How can we deal with such a pervasive force?

Clearly, there is no singular solution to such a complex issue, but there are simple steps that work well in the war against stress.

Every single day dozens of people come to looking for ways to overcome or counteract the stress they are experiencing. I hope this helps!

100 of my favorite stress busters

1. Forgive yourself for every mistake you’ve ever made.

2. Forgive others for their offenses against you.

3. Stop obsessing over things you can’t control.

4. Take breaks often to clear you mind.

5. Do one thing at a time.

6. Stop over analyzing and start doing.

7. Stop judging what others do or don’t do.

8. Learn to say no and really mean it.

9. Only add to your “to do” list after crossing 2 things off.

10. When you buy something new, get rid of something old.

11. Give yourself some sincere approval.

12. Stop being a perfectionist and move on.

13. Let go of trying to control everything.

14. Don’t get emotionally invested in every little thing.

15. Quit agonizing over decisions you’ve made. It’s a done deal.

16. Remember that almost everything is temporary.

17. Ask yourself: Will it matter in 3 years? If not, let it go.

18. Find reasons to laugh out loud several times a day.

19. Stop taking things personally, it’s not always about you!

20. Use Touchstone Triggering to enhance the positive.

21. Don’t compare yourself to others. Life is not a contest.

22. Smile at everyone!

23. Start every conversation with a positive thought.

24. Don’t worry about things that haven’t happened yet.

25. Quit reacting like everything is an emergency.

26. Exercise every single day!

27. Don’t trade sleep for work.

28. Eat for nourishment not for comfort.

29. Express gratitude for the small things you appreciate.

30. Choose walking over driving whenever possible.

31. Do things that connect you with the earth.

32. Put up a bird feeder and become a bird watcher.

33. Don’t watch the news, especially when you are eating.

34. Listen to music that calms your soul and carries you away.

35. Get an answering machine or service.

36. Alarm clocks are rude, learn to wake up naturally.

37. Go to the beach or river and soak up the negative ions.

38. Do something nice just for you every single day.

39. Do something nice for someone else every single day.

40. Tell the people you love how you feel daily.

41. Count your blessings every morning and every night.

42. Eliminate unnecessary commitments.

43. Don’t allow others to make you feel pressured.

44. Stop creating unnecessary drama in your life.

45. Take 10 slow, deep breaths every hour on the hour.

46. Help others whenever it is within your power to do so.

47. Consciously relax every muscle in your body at bed time.

48. Turn off the “problem solver” 2 hours before bed time.

49. As soon as you wake up, do a gratitude review.

50. Play with your children or pets every day.

51. Laugh at yourself.

52. Be early for everything so you don’t feel rushed.

53. Make peace of mind a high priority in your life.

54. Find ways to express your creativity regularly.

55. Do an hourly brain dump for 30 seconds. Let it all go.

56. Hang out with happy, light hearted people.

57. Never complain. If something bothers you take action.

58. Don’t use words like stressed out, worried, or pressured.

59. Never rush through a meal. Savor every bite.

60. Maintain you energy levels and you will stress less.

61. Reduce spending and work toward being debt free.

62. Lighten your material load. More stuff = more stress!

63. Practice unplugging from the electronic world.

64. Read for pleasure and relaxation.

65. Exchange massages with someone.

66. Inhale calm, exhale tension.

67. Identify and eliminate energy drains.

68. Don’t flog your adrenals with more coffee, get some rest.

69. Actively interact with positive people as much as you can.

70. If it’s not your problem get out of the way (like tailgaters).

71. Get a hobby that completely captures your focus.

72. Never respond to or repeat gossip, it will backfire.

73. Only project positive thoughts into your future.

74. Be realistic with the demands you put on yourself.

75. Take care of your health, 90% of illness is stress related.

76. Don’t over focus on potential (imaginary) problems.

77. Maintain an optimistic perspective.

78. Don’t sweat the small stuff.

79. Be reasonable about scheduling your time.

80. Accept that everything takes longer than you think.

81. Use applied focus sessions to create more free time.

82. Stop trying to do everything yourself. Get some help.

83. Never argue with ignorance it will only frustrate you.

84. Adopt a stress free attitude because it’s all perception.

85. Remember that negative life lessons have great value.

86. Counter stress with anti-stress actions like squeezing stress balls.

87. When you’re feeling down take time to help other people.

88. Get rid of anything or anyone that makes you miserable.

89. Control over expectation to avoid disappointment.

90. Remember; first come the fear then the blessing.

91. Don’t stress out trying to get everyone to agree with you.

92. Stay away from the negative what if syndrome.

93. Seize every opportunity to be encouraging to others.

94. Live in the present instead of longing for the past.

95. View challenges as opportunities to minimize stress.

96. Unchain Yourself from conventional thinking myths

97. Multitasking creates stress and lowers productivity, don’t do it.

98. Believe that if it doesn’t kill you it will make you stronger.

99. Harness the anti-stress Power of Your Emotional Vocabulary.

100. Life isn’t always fair but it is still a gift, practice gratitude.

Letting go of Stress

When stress continues over a sustained period of time it can have devastating results. Recognizing the value of eliminating stress doesn’t do us much good if we don’t have the right skills to actually do it.

So, use these stress management tips to help you lessen the effects of stressful situations and prevent the cumulative effects of stress from interfering with our ability to create the life we really want.

Windows 10 Offers Smoother Experience, Free Upgrade Options

January 21, 2015 - Microsoft says its new operating system will be a free upgrade for anyone running Windows 7 or 8.1, as well as mobile users with Windows Phone 8.1.

Company executives unveiled a suite of new features for Windows 10, which will be released to the public later this year. First and foremost, it will be a free upgrade for existing Windows users, so long as they're not running Vista or below. In the past, Windows users have been forced to pay for upgrades.

Microsoft executives Terry Myerson and Satya Nadella discuss the new version of Windows

Another big new feature is called Continuum. It's aimed at people who are running Windows on multiple platforms, and is designed to unify the user experience. With current versions of Windows, switching between mobile and desktop devices is not a smooth process. Continuum promises to make the process simple and intuitive.

Microsoft's unloved browser, Internet Explorer, will be rebooted as Spartan. The browser has been built from the ground up in order to fix Internet Explorer's shortcomings and compete with the likes of Chrome and Firefox. Spartan's features include voice commands and context-based actions - for instance, if you go to a restaurant's website, Spartan can pull up directions to the restaurant and reviews.

Windows 10 also offers a full suite of features for its Xbox video game console, improving integration between consoles and computers. Gamers will be able to stream gameplay from their Xbox to their PC, record footage and even play multiplayer games against players on different platforms.

The new version of Windows features extensive Xbox integration

Windows 10 has no firm release date, but is scheduled for release sometime in 2015.