Magnetoception is the ability to detect a magnetic field to perceive direction, altitude or location. This sense plays a role in the navigational abilities of several animal species and has been postulated as a method for animals to develop regional maps.

It is most commonly observed in birds, where sensing of the Earth’s magnetic field is important to the navigational abilities during migration. In pigeons and other birds, researchers have identified a small heavily innervated region of the upper beak which contains biological magnetite and is believed to be involved in magnetoception.

Evidence has also been found that the light-sensitive molecule cryptochrome in the photoreceptor cells of the eyes is involved in magnetoception. According to one model, cryptochrome when exposed to blue light gets activated and forms a pair of two radicals where the spins of the two unpaired electrons are correlated. The surrounding magnetic field affects the type of correlation (parallel or anti-parallel), and this in turn affects the length of time cryptochrome remains in its activated state. Activation of cryptochrome may affect the light-sensitivity of retinal neurons, with the overall result that the bird can “see” the magnetic field. Cryptochromes are also essential for the light-dependent ability of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster to sense magnetic fields.

It is believed that birds use both the magnetite-based and the radical pair-based approach, with the radical pair mechanism in the eyes providing directional information and a magnetite-based mechanism in the upper beak providing information on position as component of the ‘map’.

In bees, it has been observed that magnetite is embedded across the cellular membrane of a small group of neurons. It is thought that when the magnetite aligns with the Earth’s magnetic field, induction causes a current to cross the membrane which depolarizes the cell.

Crocodiles are believed to have magnetoception, which allows them to find their native area even after being moved hundreds of miles away. Some have been strapped with magnets to disorient them and keep them out of residential areas.

In 2008, a researcher team led by Hynek Burda using Google Earth accidentally discovered that magnetic fields affect the body orientation of cows and deer during grazing or resting. In a followup study in 2009, Burda and Sabine Begall observed that magnetic fields generated by power lines disrupted the orientation of cows from the Earth’s magnetic field.

Humans have magnetite deposits in the bones of the nose, specifically the sphenoidal/ethmoid sinuses. Beginning in the late 1970s the group of Robin Baker at the University of Manchester began to conduct experiments that purported to exhibit magnetoception in humans. People were purposely disoriented and then asked about directions to a specific place. Their answers were more accurate if there was no magnet attached to their head. These results could not be reproduced by other groups and the evidence remains ambiguous. Recently, other evidence for human magnetoception has been put forward as low-frequency magnetic fields can produce an evoked response in the brains of human subjects.

Certain types of bacteria and fungi are also known to sense the magnetic flux direction. They have organelles known as magnetosomes containing magnetic crystals for this purpose.

A volcano is an opening, or rupture, in a planet’s surface or crust, which allows hot, molten rock, ash, and gases to escape from below the surface. Volcanic activity involving the extrusion of rock tends to form mountains or features like mountains over a period of time. The Ancient Romans called volcanoes Vulcano, after Vulcan, their fire god.

Volcanoes are generally found where tectonic plates are diverging or converging. A mid-oceanic ridge, for example the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, has examples of volcanoes caused by divergent tectonic plates pulling apart. The Pacific Ring of Fire has examples of volcanoes caused by convergent tectonic plates coming together. By contrast, volcanoes are usually not created where two tectonic plates slide past one another. Volcanoes can also form where there is stretching and thinning of the Earth’s crust, such as in the African Rift Valley, the Rio Grande Rift in North America and the European Rhine Graben with its Eifel volcanoes.

Volcanoes can be caused by mantle plumes. These so-called hotspots, for example at Hawaii, can occur far from plate boundaries. Hotspot volcanoes are also found elsewhere in the solar system, especially on rocky planets and moons.

The most common perception of a volcano is of a conical mountain, spewing lava and poisonous gases from a crater at its summit. This describes just one of many types of volcano, and the features of volcanoes are much more complicated. The structure and behavior of volcanoes depends on a number of factors. Some volcanoes have rugged peaks formed by lava domes rather than a summit crater, whereas others present landscape features such as massive plateaus. Vents that issue volcanic lava and gases can be located anywhere on a landform.

Other types of volcano include cryovolcanoes or ice volcanoes, particularly on some moons of Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune. Mud volcanoes are formations often not associated with known magmatic activity. Active mud volcanoes tend to involve temperatures much lower than those of igneous volcanoes, except when a mud volcano is actually a vent of an igneous volcano.

Many ancient accounts ascribe volcanic eruptions to supernatural causes, such as the actions of gods or demigods. To the ancient Greeks, volcanoes’ capricious power could only be explained as acts of the gods, while the 16th German astronomer Johannes Kepler believed they were ducts for the Earth’s tears.

Various explanations were proposed for volcano behavior before the modern understanding of the Earth’s mantle structure as a semisolid material was developed. For decades after awareness that compression and radioactive materials may be heat sources, their contributions were specifically discounted. Volcanic action was often attributed to chemical reactions and a thin layer of molten rock near the surface.

The Virginia opposum are the only North American marsupial. They are commonly also called possum, though that term is also applied to the extensive Australian species. The Virginia Opossum is the original animal named opossum. The word comes from Algonquian wapathemwa. Opossums probably diverged from the basic South American marsupials in the late Cretaceous or early Paleocene.

Their unspecialized biology, flexible diet and reproductive strategy make them successful colonizers and survivors. Originally native to the eastern United States, the Virginia Opossum was intentionally introduced into the West during the Great Depression as a source of food. Its range has been expanding steadily northwards, thanks in part to more plentiful, man-made sources of freshwater, increased shelter due to urban encroachment, and milder winters. Its range has extended into Ontario, Canada, and it has been found farther north than Toronto.

Opossums have a remarkably robust immune system, and show partial or total immunity to the venom of rattlesnakes, cottonmouths, and other snakes. Opossums are about eight times less likely to carry rabies than wild dogs.

They are opportunistic omnivores with a very broad diet. Their diet mainly consists of carrion and many individual opossums are killed on the highway when scavenging for roadkill. They are also known to eat insects, frogs, birds, snakes, small mammals, and earthworms. Some of their favorite foods are fruits, and they are known to eat apples and persimmons. Their broad diet allows them to take advantage of many sources of food provided by human habitation such as unsecured garbage containers and pet food.

Opossums are solitary and nomadic, staying in one area as long as food and water are easily available. Some families will group together in burrows or even under houses. Though they will temporarily occupy abandoned burrows, they do not dig or put much effort into building their own. As nocturnal animals, they favor dark, secure areas. These areas may be below ground or above.

When threatened or harmed, they will “play possum”, mimicking the appearance and smell of a sick or dead animal. The lips are drawn back, teeth are bared, saliva foams around the mouth, and a foul-smelling fluid is secreted from the anal glands. The physiological response is involuntary, rather than a conscious act. Their stiff, curled form can be prodded, turned over, and even carried away. The animal will regain consciousness after a period of minutes or hours and escape.

Adult opossums do not hang from trees by their tails, though babies may dangle temporarily. Their semi-prehensile tails are not strong enough to support a mature adult’s weight. Instead, the opossum uses its tail as a brace and a fifth limb when climbing. The tail is occasionally used as a grip to carry bunches of leaves or bedding materials to the nest. A mother will sometimes carry her young upon her back, where they will cling tightly even when she is climbing or running.

Threatened opossums will growl deeply, raising their pitch as the threat becomes more urgent. Males make a clicking noise out of the side of their mouths as they wander in search of a mate, and females will sometimes repeat the sound in return. When separated or distressed, baby opossums will make a sneezing noise to signal their mother. If threatened, the baby will open its mouth and quietly hiss until the threat is gone.

In Mexico, opossums are known as tlacuache. Their tails are eaten as a folk remedy to improve fertility. Opossum oil (Possum grease) is high in essential fatty acids and has been used as a chest rub and a carrier for arthritis remedies given as topical salves.

Lichens are composite organisms consisting of a symbiotic association of a fungus with a photosynthetic partner, usually either a green algae or cyanobacterium. The morphology, physiology and biochemistry of lichens are very different to that of isolated fungus and algae. Lichens occur in some of the most extreme environments on Earth, such as arctic tundra, hot deserts, rocky coasts and toxic slag heaps.

They are abundant on leaves and branches in rain forests and temperate woodland, on bare rock, including walls and gravestones, and on exposed soil surfaces in otherwise harsh habitats. Lichens are widespread and long-lived, however, many species are also vulnerable to environmental disturbance, and may be useful to scientists in assessing the effects of air pollution, ozone depletion, and metal contamination. Lichens have also been used in making dyes and perfumes, as well as in traditional medicines.

Lichens must compete with plants for access to sunlight, but because of their small size and slow growth, they thrive in places where higher plants have difficulty growing. Lichens are often the first to settle in places lacking soil, constituting the sole vegetation in some extreme environments such as those found at high mountain elevations and cooler latitudes. Some survive in the tough conditions of deserts, and others on frozen soil of the Arctic regions. Recent research shows that lichen can even endure extended exposure to space.

The form of most lichens is quite different from those of either the fungus or alga growing separately, and may strikingly resemble simple plants in form and growth. The fungus surrounds the algal cells, often enclosing them within complex fungal tissues unique to lichen associations. In many species the fungus penetrates the algal cell wall, forming penetration nodes or roots similar to those produced by pathogenic fungi.

The algal or cyanobacterial cells are photosynthetic, and as in higher plants they reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide into organic carbon sugars to feed both symbionts. Both partners gain water and mineral nutrients mainly from the atmosphere, through rain and dust. The fungal partner protects the algae by retaining water, serving as a larger capture area for mineral nutrients and, in some cases, provides minerals obtained from the substrate. If a bacteria is present as a primary partner or another symbiont in addition to green alga as in certain tripartite lichens, they can fix atmospheric nitrogen, complementing the activities of the green algae.

Lichens are capable of surviving extremely low levels of water content. However, the reconfiguration of membranes following a period of dehydration requires several minutes at least. During this period a solution of metabolites from both the fungus and plant leaks into the extracellar spaces. This is readily available to both forms to take up essential metabolic products ensuring a perfect level of mutualism. Other epiphytic organisms may also benefit from this nutrient rich base. This phenomenon also points to a possible explanation of lichen evolution from its original components with its subsequent migration from an aquatic environment to dry land. Thus, during repeated periods of dehydration in an algae and the resultant leakage of beneficial metabolites to an adjacent aquatic fungus, the mutalistic patterns slowly became constant.

Lichens may be eaten by some animals, such as reindeer living in arctic regions. The larvae of a surprising number of Lepidoptera moth and butterfly species feed exclusively on lichens. These include Common Footman and Marbled Beauty. Lichens are also used by the Northern Flying Squirrel for nesting, food, and a water source during winter.

Extracts from many lichen species were used to treat wounds in Russia in the mid-twentieth century. The lichen Umbilicaria esculenta is collected from cliffs for use in a variety of traditional Korean and Japanese foods.

Many lichens produce secondary compounds, including pigments that reduce harmful amounts of sunlight and powerful toxins that reduce herbivory or kill bacteria. These compounds are very useful for lichen identification, and have had economic importance as dyes such as cudbear or primitive antibiotics.

There are reports dating almost 2000 years of lichens being used to extract purple and red colors. Of great historical and commercial significance are lichens belonging to the family Roccellaceae, commonly called orchella weed. The pH indicator litmus is a dye extracted from the lichen genus Rocella tinctoria by boiling.

The Count of St. Germain has been variously described as an adventurer, charlatan, inventor, alchemist, pianist, violinist and amateur composer, but is best known as a recurring figure in the stories of several strands of occultism, particularly those connected to Theosophy, where he is also referred to as the Master Rakoczi and credited with near god-like powers and longevity. 

Guy Ballard, founder of the I AM Activity, claimed that he met Saint Germain on Mount Shasta in California in August of 1930, and that this initiated his training and experiences with other ascended masters in various parts of the world.

A book titled The Great Secret, Count St. Germain by Dr. Raymond Bernard purports that St. Germain was actually Francis Bacon by birth, and later authored the complete plays attributed to Shakespeare. He also contends, as does the Saint Germain Foundation in Chicago, IL., that Francis Bacon was the child of Queen Elizabeth and Lord Dudley but that it was kept quiet. Francis was raised by the Bacon family, yet throughout the Shakespeare Plays, there are numerous hints that he knows of his true birth as revealed in the plays itself, the numerous explicit hints in the text, as well as the cipher code he employed.

Saint Germain is the central figure in the Saint Germain Series of Books published by the Saint Germain Press. The first two volumes, Unveiled Mysteries and The Magic Presence, written by Godfre Ray King, describe Saint Germain as an Ascended Master who is assisting humanity and the Earth. Godfre Ray King is the pen-name for Guy Warren Ballard. In these first two books, he discusses his personal experiences with Saint Germain and reveals many teachings that are in harmony with Theosophy. 

C. W. Leadbeater claimed to have met him in Rome in 1926 and gave a physical description of him as having brown eyes, olive colored skin, and a pointed beard. Leadbeater said that Saint Germain showed him a robe that had been previously owned by a Roman Emperor and told him that one of his residences was a castle in Transylvania. According to Leadbeater, when performing magical rituals in his castle in Transylvania, Saint Germain wore a suit of golden chain mail once belonging to a Roman Emperor over which is worn “a magnificent cloak of purple with a clasp of a seven pointed star in diamond and amethyst”.

Theosophists consider him to be a Mahatma, Master or Adept. Helena Blavatsky said he was one of her Masters of Wisdom and hinted at secret documents. Some esoteric groups credit him with inspiring the Founding Fathers to draft the United States Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, as well as providing the design of the Great Seal of the United States.

Alice A. Bailey’s book The Externalization of the Hierarchy gives the most information about his reputed role as a spiritual Master. His title is said to be the Lord of Civilization and his task is the establishment of a new civilization. He is said to telepathically influence people who are seen by him and as being instrumental in bringing about the Age of Aquarius. Bailey stated that sometime after AD 2025, Master Jesus, Saint Germain, Kuthumi, and the others in the spiritual hierarchy would descend from the spiritual worlds and interact in visible tangible bodies on the Earth in ashrams surrounded by their disciples.

A sundial is a device that measures time by the position of the Sun. In common designs such as the horizontal sundial, the sun casts a shadow from a thin rod or a sharp, straight edge onto a flat surface marked with lines indicating the hours of the day. As the sun moves across the sky, the shadow edge progressively aligns with different hour lines on the plate. Such designs rely on the style being aligned with the axis of the Earth’s rotation. If such a sundial is to tell the correct time, the style must point towards true North, not the north magnetic pole, and the style’s angle with horizontal must equal the sundial’s geographical latitude. However, many sundials do not fit this description, and operate on different principles.

The custom of measuring time by one’s shadow has persisted since ancient times. In Aristophanes’ play, Assembly of Women, Praxagora asks her husband to return when his shadow reaches 10 feet. The Venerable Bede is reported to have instructed his followers in the art of telling time by interpreting their shadow lengths.

On any given day, the Sun appears to rotate uniformly about an axis, making a full circuit in 24 hours. A linear gnomon aligned with this axis will cast a shadow that, falling opposite to the Sun, rotates about the celestial axis at 15° per hour. The shadow is seen by falling on a receiving surface that is usually flat, but which may be spherical, cylindrical, conical or of other shapes. If the shadow falls on a surface that is symmetrical about the celestial axis, the surface shadow likewise moves uniformly and the hour lines on the sundial are equally spaced. However, if the receiving surface is not symmetrical, as in most horizontal sundials, the surface shadow generally moves non uniformly and the hour lines are not equally spaced.

Since half of the Earth’s globe is either north or south of the Equator, a sundial at a particular latitude in one hemisphere must be reversed for use at the reciprocal latitude in the other hemisphere. To position a horizontal sundial correctly, it has to point to the true South in the Southern hemisphere as in the Northern Hemisphere it has to point to the true North. Also the hour numbers on a horizontal dial run counterclockwise rather than clockwise. Sundials are not as common in the Southern hemisphere as in the North. One proposition for this is that when Europeans arrived, the mechanical clock was accurate enough for their purposes of time keeping and there was no need to erect sundials.

Among the most precise sundials ever made are two equatorial bows constructed of marble found in Yantra Mandir in India. This collection of sundials and other astronomical instruments was built by Maharaja Jai Singh II at his new capital of Jaipur, India between 1727 and 1733. The larger equatorial bow is called the Samrat Yantra (The Supreme Instrument); standing at 88 feet, its shadow moves visibly at one millimeter per second, or roughly a hand’s width every minute.

Designers of the Taipei 101, the first record setting skyscraper in the third millennium, brought the ancient tradition forward. The tower, tallest in the world when it opened in Taiwan in 2004, stands over half 1,640 feet in height. The design of an adjoining park uses the tower as the style for a huge horizontal sundial.

The association of sundials with time has inspired their designers over the centuries to display mottos as part of the design. Often these cast the device in the role of memento mori, inviting the observer to reflect on the transience of the world and the inevitability of death, such as “Do not kill time, for it will surely kill thee.” Other mottos are more whimsical: “I count only the sunny hours,” and “I am a sundial and I make a botch, of what is done far better by a watch.” Collections of sundial mottoes have often been published through the centuries.

Water is a common chemical substance that is essential for the survival of all known forms of life. In typical usage, water refers only to its liquid form, but the substance also has a solid state, ice, and a gaseous state, water vapor or steam. Water covers 71% of the Earth’s surface. It is found mostly in oceans and other large water bodies, with 1.6% of water below ground in aquifers and 0.001% in the air as vapor, clouds, and precipitation.

The Ancient Greek philosopher Empedocles held that water is one of the four classical elements along with fire, earth and air, and was regarded as the basic substance of the universe. Water is also one of the five elements in traditional Chinese philosophy, along with earth, fire, wood, and metal.

All known forms of life depend on water, with many distinct properties that are critical for the proliferation of life that set it apart from other substances. It carries out this role by allowing organic compounds to react in ways that ultimately allow replication. Water is vital both as a solvent in which many of the body’s solutes dissolve and as an essential part of many metabolic processes within the body.

Civilization has historically flourished around rivers and major waterways. Large cities like London, Montreal, Paris, New York City and Hong Kong owe their success in part to their easy accessibility via water and the resultant expansion of trade. In places such as North Africa and the Middle East, where water is more scarce, access to clean drinking water was and is a major factor in human development.

Water is considered a purifier in most religions. Major faiths that incorporate ritual washing include Hinduism, Rastafarianism, Taoism, and Judaism. Immersion of a person in water is a central sacrament of Christianity, where it is called baptism. In addition, a ritual bath in pure water is performed for the dead in many religions including Judaism and Islam.

Water is often believed to have spiritual powers. In Celtic mythology, Sulis is the local goddess of thermal springs. In Hinduism, the Ganges is also personified as a goddess, while Saraswati have been referred to as goddess in Vedas. Alternatively, gods can be patrons of particular springs, rivers, or lakes. In Islam, not only does water give life, but every life is itself made of water.

A mouse is a small animal that belongs to one of numerous species of rodents. The best known mouse species is the common house mouse. It is also a popular pet. The American white footed mouse and the deer mouse also sometimes live in houses.

Although mice may live up to two and a half years in the lab, the average mouse in the wild lives only about four months, primarily owing to heavy predation. Cats, wild dogs, foxes, birds of prey, snakes and even certain kinds of insects have been known to prey heavily upon mice. Nevertheless, because of its remarkable adaptability to almost any environment, and its ability to live with humans, the mouse is regarded to be the second most successful mammalian genus living on Earth today after humans.

The word mouse and the word muscle are related. Muscle stems from musculus meaning small mouse, possibly because of a similarity in shape. The word mouse is a cognate of Sanskrit mus meaning to steal, which is also cognate with mys in Old Greek and mus in Latin.

All species of mice are native to Eurasia and Africa, where they range from lowlands to mountaintops. The five species in the subgenus Pyromys are found in Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan, and mainland Southeast Asia. Much of their range originally consisted of open grasslands or grassy patches in forests.

Mice are common experimental animals in biology and psychology primarily because they are mammals. They are the most commonly used mammalian model organism, more common than rats. The mouse genome has been sequenced, and virtually all mouse genes have human homologs. They can also be manipulated in ways that would be considered unethical to do with humans. A knockout mouse is a genetically engineered mouse that has had one or more of its genes made inoperable through a gene knockout.

There are other reasons for why mice are used in laboratory research. Mice are small, inexpensive, easily maintained, and can reproduce quickly. Several generations of mice can be observed in a relatively short period of time. Mice are generally very docile if raised from birth and given sufficient human contact. However, certain strains have been known to be quite temperamental. Mice have the same organs in the same places, just different proportions.