The Golden-crowned Sparrow is a medium sized sparrow, slightly larger than the closely related White-crowned Sparrow. It has a distinct gold patch on its head, flanked by two dark black stripes. When not breeding, its plumage is more variable, ranging from a small, dull gold patch and no black, to near breeding season plumage.

The song is a three note whistle, descending in pitch. It is very distinctive and often described as “Oh, dear me”, each note an interval lower in pitch than the preceding. However, birds in the mountains of British Columbia have been reported to have trill on the third note, rather than a clear whistle as in other populations. These songs are heard mainly in the breeding season, but also in the wintering grounds just after fall migration as well as just before they take off for spring migration.

Alaskan gold miners along the trails called this bird Weary Willie, because of its call which sounded like “I’m so weary”. The song resembles the popular tune known as “Volare” (Italian for the infinitive form of the verb “to fly”) written by  Domenico Modugno in 1957. Sergio Franchi sang the song, with modified lyrics, as the television spokesman for the Plymouth Volare in the 1970s.

The entire population of Golden-crowned Sparrows migrates within North America. They leave the breeding grounds in Alaska and Canada late in the fall, most arriving on the wintering grounds throughout northwestern California, Oregon and Washington from mid-September through October. Birds begin to return to the breeding grounds in April or May.

These sparrows makes a habit out of digging in the ground for grubs, insects, and seeds. This is because it has extremely large feet and claws. They use a digging technique of jumping backward off of both feet at the same time, which stirs up the soil, leaf litter, or grass. They then move forward to see what they have uncovered. Sometimes, when they jump backward, you can see the seeds popping up from out of the grass, where they were hidden before. 

Golden-crowned Sparrow Nests are usually dug into the ground or placed in a depression so their rims are even with the ground. Each bird has its own feeding spot at a bird feeder. Even when there are no other birds around, it uses its spot exclusively. A group of Golden-crowned Sparrows are collectively known as a “reign” of sparrows.

The Golden-crowned Sparrow was considered a pest early in the 20th Century, because flocks would feed on vegetables and flowers in gardens and cultivated fields. Its actual impact was not as great as was originally thought, and it is no longer considered a pest. Its population has grown in the past 30 years, and the Golden-crowned Sparrow is now a more common Washington winter resident than it was 30-50 years ago. Its far northern breeding grounds are well protected, with many of them located in national parks, forests, and wildlife refuges.

In their controversial analysis of the contemporary western society, Dialectic of Enlightenment, Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer developed a wider, and more pessimistic concept of enlightenment. In their analysis, enlightenment had its dark side. While trying to abolish superstition and myths by foundationalist philosophy, it ignored its own mythical basis. Its strivings towards totality and certainty led to an increasing instrumentalization of reason. In their view, the enlightenment itself should be enlightened and not posed as a myth free view of the world.

“Myth turns into enlightenment, and nature into mere objectivity. Men pay for the increase in their power with alienation from that over which they exercise their power. Enlightenment behaves towards things as a dictator toward men. He knows them in so far as he can manipulate them. The man of science knows things in so far as he can make them. In this way their “in itself” becomes a “for him”. In this transformation the essence of things is revealed as always the same, a substratum of domination. This identity constitutes the unity of nature.”

Adorno and Horkheimer see the self destruction of Western reason as grounded in a historical and fateful dialectic between the domination of external nature and society. They trace enlightenment, which split these spheres apart, back to its mythical roots. Enlightenment and myth, therefore, are not irreconcilable opposites, but dialectically mediated qualities of both real and intellectual life. Myth is already enlightenment, and enlightenment reverts to mythology. This paradox is their fundamental thesis.

The attempt to ascertain why humanity, instead of entering a truly human state, is sinking into a new kind of barbarism animates the work. This regression ultimately has to do with the very nature of myth, which is said to be obscure and luminous at once. It is with positivism that science believes it can banish all mystery from the world such that humans become masters of it. Art itself has fallen prey to this myth. Perhaps surprisingly, this does not begin in the 18th century European Enlightenment, but with one of our most ancient of founding myths, Odysseus.

The deceptive nature of the sacrifice in Odysseus is the beginning of our journey towards enlightenment, for it places us on a similar footing with the gods. The attempt of persons such as Sade to advocate a world without superstition not only turns us into beasts with “the innocence of wild animals”, but means that we still must hold onto the one myth that we can actually live in a world where all is entirely as it seems. Transgression of the previous Catholic morality is the necessary mythical supplement to this view. It brings no pleasure but only violence. Both the Culture Industry and Anti Semitism ultimately have the same totalitarian goal, to make everyone the same, as economic cogs in the machine, devoid of their individuality. Thus enlightenment is necessarily violence against the Other, who doesn’t fit in.

The concept of enlightenment posits it as thought liberating man from his natural shackles, and creating man as master of the earth. This process of liberation entails at the same time the possibility of man to protect himself from, and understand the workings of, nature, and also mankind’s loss of being one with nature. In this process, the self is created as a subjectivity divorced from direct experience of the outside world. Man’s memory of this is very vague and distant, but is present in everyone as a certain inchoate feeling of loss. 

In essence, Adorno and Horkheimer argue that the enlightenment turned magical culture, which looked for associations, analogies, and relationships, into a scientific culture, which sought to reduce everything to the irreducible, to base units of measurement, to the smallest particles, and as often as possible to numbers. This results in an inability to address problems of relationships, and often of anything to do with the irrational, such sexuality or emotio. The ideological structure has the tendency, common to most political ideologies, of arguing for its own accuracy. This kind of enlightenment thinking always implicitly claims that anything that is not reducible or quantifiable is simply not worth paying attention to. It is immaterial in the metaphorical sense, and it might as well not exist.

Thus, concepts as divergent as subjectivity, which cannot be measured or objectified, and collective action which is always understood as merely the action of many individuals, cannot be understood because precisely what needs to be understood is relational and subjective. This magical versus scientific thinking is easily recognizable in the two solitudes of contemporary Humanities and Sciences research in universities.

The Pacific Tree Frog is a very common species of chorus frog, with a range from the West Coast of the United States to British Columbia in Canada. Living anywhere from sea level up to over 11,000 feet. They live in many types of habitats and reproduce in aquatic settings.

They can reach up to about 5 cm long from snout to urostyle. The males are often smaller than the females and have a dark patch of skin on their throat. This dark patch is the vocal sac which stretches out when a male is calling. These frogs can have highly variable color on their bodies. They can be anywhere from gray, brown, tan or bright green and can even change between them. They are usually a pale or white color on their bellies. They have many variations of markings on their back and sides that are usually dark and spotty. The one identifiable mark is a dark stripe that goes over the eye from the nose to the shoulder. Their skin is covered in small bumps. They have long legs compared to their bodies and they tend to be slender. Their toes are long and are only very slightly webbed. On the end of each toe, there is a round sticky pad that is used for climbing and sticking to surfaces.

The evolutionary history of these frogs is a very interesting one that has recently been changed to better suit tree frogs. Amphibians themselves are thought to have descended from the lobe finned bony fishes. These fishes had an ossified skeleton and emerged from the water as they developed limb girdles and terrestrial characteristics such as lungs and a neck. It is hard to figure out an exact frog lineage because of the lack of fossil record. The habitat in which these animals lived was moist and decay was quick, which was not helpful in preserving biological clues.

The genus appeared just after the dinosaurs went extinct. They originated in South America and expanded to the north into Mexico and eventually into North America. There was then a rise in sea level and the connection between the northern and southern populations was gone. They have been separate ever since and have become genetically distinct from one another.

One of the most interesting features of these frogs is their ability to change color from brown to green. Previously, it was thought that there were two different fixed colors that an adult tree frog could be. Now it has been found that some of them are actually able to change between the two. They can also change from lighter to darker. These color changing morphs are triggered not by color change in their environment, but a change in background brightness. This type of environmental change would be caused by seasonal fluctuation, and has been shown to be a very useful cryptic survival feature for these frogs.

Pacific tree frogs are most common on the pacific coast of California. They are also found eastward to Montana and Nevada. They love water, but they can also be found upland from ponds, streams, lakes. Their habitat consists of a wide variety of climate and vegetation from sea level to high altitudes. The tree frog makes its home in riparian habitat as well as woodlands, grassland, chaparral, pasture land, and urban areas including back yard ponds.

The Pacific Tree Frog begins mating in early winter to early spring. Since these frogs are so widespread geographically, it is thought that their breeding season is determined by local conditions. When it is time, the males migrate to the water. They all call at the same time very loudly. This lures the females to the water and they mate. The females lay their eggs in clumps of 10-90 and usually put them on and under vegetation and leaf litter in the pond. Females usually lay their eggs in shallow, calm water that has little action around it. If they are not eaten, embryos will hatch into tadpoles within one to three weeks.

The tadpoles feed on periphyton, filamentous algae, diatoms and pollen in and on the surface of the water. They feed using a beak like structure that helps scrape vegetation off surfaces and suction. Metamorphosis follows about two to two and a half months later. Prior to transformation, they stop feeding for a short time while their mouth is transformed from herbivorous to carnivorous. Then the tiny baby frogs emerge from the pond measuring as little as one centimetre. They hunt using their sticky pads to climb on vegetation and other surfaces. Much of their diet consists of spiders, beetles, flies, ants and other insects. They mature very quickly and are likely able to mate in the next season after metamorphosis. Predators include snakes, raccoons, herons, egrets, and other small mammals and reptiles. The tree frog is mostly nocturnal, but can be spotted during the day. It spends a lot of time hiding under rotten logs, rocks, long grasses and leaf litter.

These frogs are the most common frogs on the west coast of North America. Although the Pacific Tree Frog remains abundant and most populations of tree frogs appear healthy, there is some evidence of declines. The cause has not been fully understood, but pollution, the introduction of exotic species and habitat loss are very high on the list of factors. Some ways to stop amphibian declines are by respecting and protecting amphibian habitat as well as supporting laws and legislation that help to do this. Another important way is to help limit pollutants that will end up in amphibian habitat, usually from agriculture and urban run off, by boycotting companies who are heavy pesticide users and by not pouring chemicals or pollutants down storm drains or in amphibian habitat.

Fear is a universal emotion that includes everything from the decision to fight or flee to the insidious mounting of stress. It can also cause us to “freeze”, which is not an indicator of indecision in the face of fear, but stems rather from an ancestral skill used to respond to a stalker or predator. A fearful stimulus primes the body with adrenaline and prompts the fastest physical reaction possible. When the brain is triggered in fear, the autonomic system and stress hormones are activated. The amygdala gets immediate input from the thalamus and acts to start up the internal readiness and reaction system. This bypasses the cortex and any consideration of the context and such. It is just responding. In fact, the feared stimulus and the programmed response to it are indelibly etched into the amygdala, as its job is to alert the animal to dangerous, novel, and interesting situations and to direct its response.

The physical and mental responses to fear were so important to the survival of primitive man that they remain very powerful and longlasting. Unfortunately, this adaptive response is not always appropriate in today’s world. Our civilization has evolved away from the need to overrespond, but we still do. Regularly overresponding to life’s minor troubles can lead to high blood pressure, heart disease, migraines, and ulcers. Other malfunctions of the fear system are shown in disorders such as panic and phobias. Once we learn to be afraid of something, our brains become programmed to remember that stimulus in the same way, so that it’s hard to get rid of our conditioned fears.

The startle response is a good example of an adaptive fear mechanism that can sometimes get out of control. A loud, sudden noise will elicit a startle response from most people. As this type of noise is often associated with danger, it is important to be immediately alert and have the adrenaline pumping. However, if a stimulus like a loud noise is repeatedly paired with a dangerous situation, some people will develop an overactive startle response. This is often the case in PTSD. People with this disorder, war veterans or victims of abuse, startle easily and often. They suffer from physical ailments more frequently than the general population, and have an increased incidence of cancer, which is associated with a lowered immune response and raised levels of cortisol. Many of the physical and psychological symptoms associated with PTSD can be traced to the frequent, sometimes constant state of startle and hyperalertness that afflicts these individuals.

Jackie, a victim of early child abuse, was afraid of everything, from new situations to her own shadow. She was not agoraphobic or afraid of going out into the world, but nevertheless stayed at home. She always overresponded to new situations, seeing them essentially as threats, bringing with them the possibility of her being hit again.

The most poignant example of PTSD is seen in women who have been raped and cannot allow themselves to enjoy sex again. Such a woman is often indelibly programmed to be vigilant and fearful. She may consciously want to engage in sex with her mate but has an inner resistance to it. Clearly, this can cause real trouble in valued relationships.

The amygdala is the area of the brain most involved in fear. Stimuli have a direct pathway through the sensory filter of the thalamus to the amygdala, which can then mobilize the body through its brainstem connections. If you see a snake, or anything that looks like a snake, in the corner of a shadowy garage, the amygdala is immediately triggered and you react before cognizing the image. The image triggers the optic nerve to send a signal into the brain. On its way to the cortex, the signal takes a short route to the amygdala, which shouts “Emergency!” to the rest of your body, triggering a cascade of reactions: your heart rate soars, your blood pressure increases, and your senses become heightened as your body prepares to take action.

With enough time or experience, reason can stop the action. There is another, slower pathway for fear, where the information about a fearful stimulus goes from the thalamus to the frontal cortex and then to the amygdala. This occurs when you realize that the “snake” is really an old coiled garage-door spring. The response to the second pathway overrules the indication of the first. Now all systems reverse. Your blood pressure comes down and your heart rate returns to normal. The lower brain, the amygdala and the rest of the limbic system, is inhibited by the upper brain. You then begin to “think” about what just happened rather than just respond.

The two pathways can be seen as the low road and high road of fearful responses to danger. The path straight through the thalamic projections to the amygdala (the low road) is rough and crude but fast. The pathway using the cortex (the high road) gives a more accurate assessment and can be expected to lead to a more considered response, but it takes longer.

Fear responses to sudden, potentially life-threatening stimuli such as explosive noises or the attack of an animal are automatic in most people. But many other fear responses are learned. Most of us have marveled, for example, at how young children seem to have no fear of heights. We also have to teach them to look both ways before crossing the street, for fear that a car might hit them. New MRI studies also show that teenage brains may not have fully developed the reasoning pathways to adequately assess fear, which may contribute to teens’ difficulty in dealing with emotions. Neuropsychologist Deborah Yurgelun-Todd of McLean Hospital flashed forty faces showing expressions of fear to sixteen adolescents age eleven to seventeen. The younger teens reacted with heightened activity in the amygdala but only a modicum of activity in the frontal lobe. The older teens had greater activation in the frontal lobe. In previous tests, adults showed greater activity in the frontal lobe and less in the amygdala than adolescents. Apparently, there is a gradual shift of emotional and cognitive processing from the instinctive to the cognitive regions as the adolescent brain learns and grows. While this growth of wisdom or activation of the frontal cortex can help teens learn how to stay calm in stressful situations, it can also cause them to learn from parents or friends fears they didn’t have, or need to have, such as an undue fear of heights or of social situations.

As the snake example shows, fear involves contextual conditioning. A garage corner is dark, cool, and dirty, making it much more likely to be the place to find a snake than a corner of the living room. Context is a collection of many stimuli and is dependent on accurate memory of situations. The hippocampus is the brain area responsible for assessing this function. It receives processed information from the cortex that has already been associated with the context of the situation and the fearful stimulus, bringing the whole picture into perspective.

Contextual conditioning can be used in reverse to treat panic disorders and phobias such as fear of snakes, dogs, or heights. The technique, which is called “flooding,” involves a step-by-step process of gradually experiencing more and more of the feared stimulus so that the patient can learn that snakes or dogs or heights are not invariably dangerous. First the patient is asked to visualize the least fearful aspect of the experience, the snake’s interesting skin design, the dog’s cuteness, the great view from the bridge, and then to practice relaxation or meditation, which gradually lessens the anxious firing of the brain’s neurons and relaxes the tense muscles of the stomach and legs, relieving the fear input from the body. Note that both the brain and the body symptoms must be dealt with, again supporting the theory that emotions are sustained by varied systems throughout the body. Eventually the patient works up to actually experiencing the feared stimulus: holding the snake, petting the dog, standing on the bridge.

Hans Sieburg, a psychiatrist at the University of California at San Diego, has developed a virtual-reality treatment for acrophobia that he calls City Project. Patients wear high-tech goggles that provide a realistic, three-dimensional image of what it looks like to be standing on the top of a skyscraper, and while wearing them are calmed with music and reassurance. With practice in repeat sessions, they realize that they are not going to fall. Their bodies stop swaying at the sight of the ground far below. The off-balance feeling subsides. They learn with their bodies that they are not going to fall, and thus they conquer the irrational fear. They train their cortex to re-evaluate the situation and quickly respond to inhibit their amygdala.

The flooding process is straight cognitive behavioral training; it is rearranging the circuits in the brain, reducing all the neural connections that have long supported the thesis that height equals falling while strengthening the circuits that convey “safe.” By gradually rewiring, the patient begins to refocus on the fact that he’s not going to fall off the building. Separating the low (bodily) and high (cognitive) roads in this way seems to be the key to successful treatment.

Crickets are insects somewhat related to grasshoppers and more closely related to katydids They have somewhat flattened bodies and long antennae. There are about 900 species of crickets. They tend to be nocturnal and are often confused with grasshoppers because they have a similar body structure including jumping hind legs.

Crickets do not rub their hind legs together to chirp. The left forewing of the male has a thick rib which bears 50 to 300 ridges. The chirp, which only male crickets can do, is generated by raising their left forewing to a 45 degree angle and rubbing it against the upper hind edge of the right forewing, which has a thick scraper. This sound producing action is called stridulation and the song is specific to each species.

There are four types of cricket song. The calling song attracts females and repels other males, and is fairly loud. The courting song is used when a female cricket is near, and is a very quiet song. An aggressive song is triggered by receptors on the antennae that detect the near presence of another male cricket and a copulatory song is produced for a brief period after successful deposition of sperm on the female’s eggs.

Crickets chirp at different rates depending on their species and the temperature of their environment. Most species chirp at faster rates the higher the temperature is. The relationship between temperature and the rate of chirping is known as Dolbear’s Law. In fact, according to this law, it is possible to calculate the temperature in Fahrenheit by adding 40 to the number of chirps produced in 15 seconds by the snowy tree cricket common in the United States.

To hear the mating call of other crickets, a cricket has ‘ears’ located on its knees, just below the joint of the front legs. Their auditory sensation is mediated by tympanic membranes located in their knees.

Crickets are popular as a live food source for carnivorous pets like frogs, lizards, tortoises, salamanders, and spiders. Feeding crickets with nutritious food in order to pass the nutrition onto animals that eat them is known as gut loading. Crickets are also eaten by humans in some African and Asian cultures. They are often considered a delicacy.

Crickets are popular pets and are considered good luck in Asia, especially China where they are kept in cages. It is also common to have them as caged pets in some European countries.

The singing of crickets in the folklore of Brazil and elsewhere is sometimes taken to be a sign of impending rain or of a financial windfall. In Caraguatatuba, Brazil, a black cricket in a room is said to portend illness, a gray one money, and a green one hope. In Alagoas state, northeast Brazil, a cricket announces death, thus it is killed if it chirps in a house. In Bahia, a constantly chirping cricket foretells pregnancy, but if it pauses, money is expected. The mole cricket is said to predict rain when it digs into the ground.

In Barbados, a loud cricket means money is coming in, hence, a cricket must not be killed or evicted if it chirps inside a house. However, another type of cricket that is less noisy forebodes illness or death. In Zambia, the Gryllotalpa africanus cricket is held to bring good fortune to anyone who sees it.

In English speaking comedy, the sound of crickets may be used to humorously indicate a dead silence when a response or activity is expected. For example, if a comedian in a TV show tells a bad joke, instead of the audience laughing, crickets may chirp.

Similarly on political blogs, writers may use the concept of crickets chirping in a rhetorical sense to signal that the writer believes that he or she has made a point that a hypothetical opponent cannot answer. The space that would have been occupied by the nonexistent answer is instead occupied by the symbolic word *crickets* to symbolize this silence.

The Walt Disney corporation has used a number of notable cricket characters in their animated movies through the ages. Most of these characters represent good. For example, in the movie Pinocchio, Jiminy Cricket is honored with the position of the title character’s conscience.

Schrodinger’s cat is the best known example of the paradox regarding the measurement problem in the interpretation of quantum mechanics. A cat is apparently evolving into a linear superposition of basis vectors that can be characterized as an alive cat and states that can be described as a dead cat. Each of these possibilities is associated with a specific nonzero probability amplitude. The cat seems to be in a mixed state. However, a single observation of the cat does not measure the probabilities. It always finds either a living cat, or a dead cat. After the measurement the cat is definitively alive or dead. The question is, how are the probabilities converted into an actual, sharply well-defined outcome?

The measurement problem is the key set of questions that every interpretation of quantum mechanics must address. The wavefunction in quantum mechanics evolves according to the Schrodinger equation into a linear superposition of different states, but the actual measurements always find the physical system in a definite state. Any future evolution is based on the state the system was discovered to be in when the measurement was made, meaning that the measurement did something to the process under examination. Whatever that something may be does not appear to be explained by the basic theory.

Different interpretations of quantum mechanics propose different solutions of the measurement problem. Quantum decoherence was proposed in the context of the many worlds interpretation, but it has also become an important part of some modern updates of the Copenhagen interpretation based on consistent histories. Quantum decoherence does not describe the actual process of the wavefunction collapse, but it explains the conversion of the quantum probabilities that are able to interfere to the ordinary physical probabilities. 

Hugh Everett’s relative state interpretation, also referred to as a many worlds interpretation, attempts to avoid the problem by suggesting it is an illusion. Under this system there is only one wavefunction, the superposition of the entire universe, and it never collapses, so there is no measurement problem. Instead the act of measurement is actually an interaction between two quantum entities, which entangle to form a single larger entity, for instance living cat and happy scientist. Everett also attempted to demonstrate the way that in measurements the probabilistic nature of quantum mechanics would appear. Everett’s interpretation posits a single universal wavefunction, but with the added condition that reality from the point of view of any single observer is defined as a single path in time through the superpositions. Under this system our reality is one of many similar ones.

The Bohm interpretation tries to solve the measurement problem very differently. This interpretation contains not only the wavefunction, but also the information about the position of the particles. The role of the wavefunction is to create a quantum potential that influences the motion of the real particle in such a way that the probability distribution for the particle remains consistent with the predictions of the orthodox quantum mechanics. According to the Bohm interpretation, once the particle is observed, other wave function channels remain empty and thus ineffective, but there is no true wavefunction collapse. 

The present situation is slowly clarifying. Several proposals have been put forward to elucidate the meaning of probabilities and arrive at the Born rule. No decisive conclusion appears to have been reached as to the success of these derivations. Only the physical interactions between systems then determine a particular decomposition into classical states from the view of each particular system. Thus classical concepts are to be understood as locally emergent in a relative state sense and should no longer claim a fundamental role in the physical theory.

Nelumbo is a genus of aquatic plants with large, showy, flowers commonly known as sacred lotus. There are two species in the genus, the better known of which is the well known national flower of India.

Hindus associate the lotus blossom with creation mythology and with the gods Vishnu, Brahma, and the goddesses Lakshmi and Sarasvati. From ancient times the lotus has been a divine symbol in Hindu tradition. It is often used as an example of supreme beauty. Its unfolding petals suggest the expansion of the soul. The growth of its pure beauty from the mud of its origin holds a benign spiritual promise. Particularly Brahma and Lakshmi, the divinities of potency and wealth, have the lotus symbol associated with them. In Hindu iconography, deities are often depicted with lotus flowers as their thrones.

The lotus plant is cited extensively within Puranic and Vedic literature. In the Bhagavad Gita it is said that one who performs his duty without attachment, surrendering the results unto the Supreme Lord, is unaffected by sinful action, as the lotus leaf is untouched by water.

Borrowing from Hinduism, in Buddhist symbolism the lotus represents purity of body, speech, and mind, as if floating above the muddy waters of attachment and desire. The Buddha is often depicted sitting on a giant lotus leaf or blossom. According to legend, he was born with the ability to walk and everywhere he stepped, lotus flowers bloomed.

The flowers, seeds, young leaves, and rhizomes are all edible. In Asia, the petals are used sometimes for garnish, while the large leaves are used as a wrap for food. However, in Korea, those can be made as a tea with dried petals of white lotus. The rhizomes are used as a vegetable in soups, stir-fried and braised dishes. Petals, leaves, and rhizome can also be eaten raw, but there is a risk of parasite transmission, therefore it is recommended that they be cooked before eating.

The lotus seeds or nuts are quite versatile, and can be dried and popped like popcorn. They can also be boiled until soft and made into a paste. Combined with sugar, lotus seed paste becomes one of the most common ingredient used in pastries such as mooncakes, daifuku, and rice flour pudding. Lotus seeds called Phool Mukhana are also used in Indian cooking.

Various parts of the Sacred Lotus are also used in traditional Asian herbal medicine. The traditional Sacred Lotus contains the alkaloid aporphine, which is used to treat Parkinson’s disease, erectile dysfunction and sexual arousal disorder.

Researchers report that the lotus has a remarkable ability to regulate the temperature of its flowers to within a narrow range just as humans and other warmblooded animals do. Physiologists at the University of Adelaide in Australia found that lotus flowers blooming in their gardens maintained a temperature of 86 to 95 degrees Fahrenheit, even when the air temperature dropped to 50 degrees. They suspect the flowers may be turning up the heat for the benefit of their coldblooded insect pollinators.

Helmholtz resonance is the phenomenon of air resonance in a cavity. The name comes from a device created in the 1850s by Hermann Helmholtz to show the height of the various tones. An example of Helmholtz resonance is the sound created when one blows across the top of an empty bottle.

When air is forced into a cavity, the pressure inside increases. Once the external force that forces the air into the cavity disappears, the higher-pressure air inside will flow out. However, this surge of air flowing out will tend to over-compensate, due to the inertia of the air in the neck, and the cavity will be left at a pressure slightly lower than the outside, causing air to be drawn back in. This process repeats with the magnitude of the pressure changes decreasing each time.

This effect is similar to that of a bungee jumper bouncing on the end of a bungee rope, or a mass attached to a spring. Air trapped in the chamber acts as a spring. Changes in the dimensions of the chamber adjust the properties of the spring. A larger chamber would make for a weaker spring, and vice versa.

The air in the the neck of the chamber is the mass. Since it is in motion, it possesses some momentum. A longer port would make for a larger mass, and vice versa. The diameter of the port is related to the mass of air and the volume of the chamber. A port that is too small in area for the chamber volume will choke the flow while one that is too large in area for the chamber volume tends to reduce the momentum of the air in the port.

Helmholtz resonance finds application in internal combustion engines, subwoofers and acoustics. In stringed instruments, such as the guitar and violin, the resonance curve of the instrument has the Helmholtz resonance as one of its peaks, along with other peaks coming from resonances of the vibration of the wood. An ocarina is essentially a Helmholtz resonator where the area of the neck can be easily varied to produce different tones. The West African djembe has a relatively small neck area, giving it a deep bass tone. The djembe may have been used in West African drumming as long as 3,000 years ago, making it much older than our knowledge of the physics involved.

Helmholtz resonators are used in architectural acoustics to reduce undesirable sounds such as standing waves by building a resonator tuned to the problem frequency, thereby eliminating it. This technique is most usually used for low frequency waves.