Though its nativity is a part of its name, the Mexican free-tailed bat – also known as the Brazilian free-tailed bat – has made almost the entire Americas its home. The night-raider enjoys a special status in Austin, from where it receives yet another name: The Austin bat. The binomial name of the mammal is Tadarida brasiliensis. The…
One of the first things that come to mind while discussing south India is its heat. ‘Oh, it’s so hot in those regions’, most people who don’t belong from there would snap. Yet, even amidst all the scorch and sweat of the southern side of India is a place, with only as much as about…
Sun, the pivotal element of the solar system, is a middle-aged star that is around 4.6 billion years old. This near-perfect sphere is made up of 70 per cent hydrogen and 28 per cent helium. With the amount of hydrogen left on it, it can survive for another 5 billion years. In the last stages…
Akira Kurosawa (1910–1998), the man who ruled Japanese cinema for five decades, was born to a samurai family, in Tokyo. Young Kurosawa was introduced to cinema by his father, who took his eight children to the movies to familiarize them with Western culture. In his school days, he was attracted to art and painting, after being…
Asia, the largest continent on Earth, has a total land area of 44,579,000 square kilometers. It constitutes 30 per cent of the total available land area. The continent tops the list even in terms of population. More than 4.1 billion people reside in Asia, which is 60 per cent of the entire global population, with a population…
Pulses and beans, belonging to the legume family, are responsible for feeding majority of the world’s poor. Grown abundantly in the tropics, they are cheap, high in nutrient content, and healthy. Beans are an important source of proteins, complex carbohydrates, and micronutrients. People in sub-Saharan Africa consume as much as 66 kilograms of pulses per…
