Why a blotting paper absorbs ink?

Because it has innumerable pores on which the ink particles are retained.

Why the water pipes burst in severe cold ?

In winter the temperature goes below 0°c , which is the freezing point of water. When water freeze into ice it expanded and by doing so exert a large force  which results in bursting of water pipes.

Why diamonds shine at night ?

The rays of light entering , its get internally reflected from most of the faces on account of high refractive index and from the few faces that permit light to get out, lot of light comes out.

Mercury

It is the closest planet to the sun.
It is the second smallest planet.
Mercury has no satellites.
It takes only 88 days for one revolution around the sun.

Nicholas James "Nick" Vujicic - ROLE MODEL OF MY LIFE.

Nicholas James "Nick" Vujicic (born 4 December 1982) is an Australian Christian evangelist and motivational speaker born with tetra-amelia syndrome, a rare disorder characterized by the absence of all four limbs. As a child, he struggled mentally and emotionally as well as physically, but eventually came to terms with his disability and, at the age of seventeen, started his own non-profit organisation, Life Without Limbs. Vujicic presents motivational speeches worldwide which focus on life with a disability, hope and finding meaning in life.

During secondary school, Vujicic was elected captain of Runcorn State High School in Queensland and worked with the student council on fundraising events for local charities and disability campaigns. When he was seventeen, he started to give talks at his prayer group and later founded his non-profit organisation, Life Without Limbs.

Vujicic has written that he keeps a pair of shoes in his closet due to his belief in miracles. In 1990 he won the Australian young citizen award for his bravery and perseverance. In 2005 Vujicic was nominated for the Young Australian of the Year Award.

Vujicic graduated from Griffith University at the age of 21 with a Bachelor of Commerce, with a double major in accountancy and financial planning. Subsequently he became a motivational speaker, travelling internationally and focusing on teenage problems. Having addressed over three million people in almost 60 countries on five continents, he speaks to corporate audiences, congregations and schools.

Vujicic promotes his work through television shows and through his writing. His first book, Life Without Limits: Inspiration for a Ridiculously Good Life was published by Random House in 2010. He markets a motivational DVD, Life's Greater Purpose, a short documentary filmed in 2005 . The second part of the DVD was filmed at his local church in Brisbane – one of his first professional motivational speeches. He markets a DVD for young people titled No Arms, No Legs, No Worries!.

In March 2008, he was interviewed by Bob Cummings for the 20/20 American television show.

He starred in the short film The Butterfly Circus, which won the Doorpost Film Project's top prize of 2009. In 2010, the film also won two awards as the Best Short Film at the 2010 Method Fest Independent Film Festival. At the same film festival, Vujicic was awarded Best Actor in Short Film for his starring performance as Will.[8] Butterfly Circus also won the best short film award at The Feel Good Film Festival in Hollywood in 2010.

Vujicic is a motivational speaker with TED.

On February 12, 2012, Vujicic married Kanae Miyahara. Their first son, Kiyoshi James, was born in 2013, while a second, Dejan Levi, was born in August 2015. Both children are healthy  

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The onion (Allium cepa L.)- the bulb onion or common onion,

The onion (Allium cepa L.) (Latin 'cepa' = onion), also known as the bulb onion or common onion, is a vegetable and is the most widely cultivated species of the genus Allium.

This genus also contains several other species variously referred to as onions and cultivated for food, such as the Japanese bunching onion (A. fistulosum), the Egyptian onion (A. ×proliferum), and the Canada onion (A. canadense). The name "wild onion" is applied to a number of Allium species but A. cepa is exclusively known from cultivation and its ancestral wild original form is not known, although escapes from cultivation have become established in some regions. The onion is most frequently a biennial or a perennial plant, but is usually treated as an annual and harvested in its first growing season.

The onion plant has a fan of hollow, bluish-green leaves and the bulb at the base of the plant begins to swell when a certain day-length is reached. In the autumn the foliage dies down and the outer layers of the bulb become dry and brittle. The crop is harvested and dried and the onions are ready for use or storage. The crop is prone to attack by a number of pests and diseases, particularly the onion fly, the onion eelworm and various fungi that cause rotting. Some varieties of A. cepa such as shallots and potato onions produce multiple bulbs.

Onions are cultivated and used around the world. As a food item they are usually served cooked, as a vegetable or part of a prepared savoury dish, but can also be eaten raw or used to make pickles or chutneys. They are pungent when chopped and contain certain chemical substances which irritate the eyes.

The onion plant (Allium cepa), also known as the bulb onion or common onion, is the most widely cultivated species of the genus Allium. It was first officially described by Carolus Linnaeus in his 1753 work Species Plantarum.A number of synonyms have appeared in its taxonomic history:

Allium cepa var. aggregatum – G. Don

Allium cepa var. bulbiferum – Regel

Allium cepa var. cepa – Linnaeus

Allium cepa var. multiplicans – L.H. Bailey

Allium cepa var. proliferum – (Moench) Regel

Allium cepa var. solaninum – Alef

Allium cepa var. viviparum – (Metz) Mansf.

Allium cepa is known exclusively from cultivation,[10] but related wild species occur in Central Asia. The most closely related species include Allium vavilovii (Popov & Vved.) and Allium asarense (R.M. Fritsch & Matin) from Iran. However, Zohary and Hopf state that "there are doubts whether the A. vavilovii collections tested represent genuine wild material or only feral derivatives of the crop."

The vast majority of cultivars of A. cepa belong to the "common onion group" (A. cepa var. cepa) and are usually referred to simply as "onions". The Aggregatum Group of cultivars (A. cepa var. aggregatum) includes both shallots and potato onions.

The genus Allium also contains a number of other species variously referred to as onions and cultivated for food, such as the Japanese bunching onion (A. fistulosum), Egyptian onion (A. ×proliferum), and Canada onion (A. canadense).

'Cepa' is commonly accepted as Latin for 'onion' and has an affinity with Ancient Greek: κάπια (kápia), Albanian: qepë, Aromanian: tseapã, Catalan: ceba, English: chive, Occitan: ceba, Old French: cive, Romanian: ceapă.

The onion plant (Allium cepa) is unknown in the wild but has been grown and selectively bred in cultivation for at least 7,000 years.[citation needed] It is a biennial plant but is usually grown as an annual. Modern varieties typically grow to a height of 15 to 45 cm (6 to 18 in). The leaves are yellowish-green and grow alternately in a flattened, fan-shaped swathe. They are fleshy, hollow and cylindrical, with one flattened side. They are at their broadest about a quarter of the way up beyond which they taper towards a blunt tip. The base of each leaf is a flattened, usually white sheath that grows out of a basal disc. From the underside of the disc, a bundle of fibrous roots extends for a short way into the soil. As the onion matures, food reserves begin to accumulate in the leaf bases and the bulb of the onion swells.

In the autumn the leaves die back and the outer scales of the bulb become dry and brittle, and this is the time at which the crop is normally harvested. If left in the soil over winter, the growing point in the middle of the bulb begins to develop in the spring. New leaves appear and a long, stout, hollow stem expands, topped by a bract protecting a developing inflorescence. The inflorescence takes the form of a globular umbel of white flowers with parts in sixes. The seeds are glossy black and triangular in cross section,

Bulbs from the onion family are thought to have been used as a food source for millennia. In Bronze Age settlements, traces of onion remains were found alongside date stones and fig remains that date back to 5000 BC. However, it is not clear if these were cultivated onions. Archaeological and literary evidence such as the Book of Numbers 11:5 suggests that onions were probably being cultivated around two thousand years later in ancient Egypt, at the same time that leeks and garlic were cultivated. Workers who built the Egyptian pyramids may have been fed radishes and onions.

The onion is easily propagated, transported and stored. The ancient Egyptians worshipped it, believing its spherical shape and concentric rings symbolized eternal life.[16] Onions were even used in Egyptian burials, as evidenced by onion traces being found in the eye sockets of Ramesses IV.

In ancient Greece, athletes ate large quantities of onion because it was believed to lighten the balance of the blood.Roman gladiators were rubbed down with onions to firm up their muscles. In the Middle Ages, onions were such an important food that people would pay their rent with onions, and even give them as gifts.Doctors were known to prescribe onions to facilitate bowel movements and erections, and to relieve headaches, coughs, snakebite and hair loss.

Onions were taken by the first settlers to North America, where the Native Americans were already using wild onions in a number of ways, eating them raw or cooked in a variety of foods. They also used them to make into syrups, to form poultices and in the preparation of dyes. According to diaries kept by the colonists, bulb onions were one of the first things planted by the Pilgrim Fathers when they cleared the land for cropping.

Onions were also prescribed by doctors in the early 16th century to help with infertility in women. They were similarly used to raise fertility levels in dogs, cats and cattle, but this was an error as recent research has shown that onions are toxic to dogs, cats, guinea pigs and many other animals

Onions are commonly chopped and used as an ingredient in various hearty warm dishes, and may also be used as a main ingredient in their own right, for example in French onion soup or onion chutney. They are very versatile and can be baked, boiled, braised, grilled, fried, roasted, sautéed or eaten raw in salads. Their layered nature makes them easy to hollow out once cooked, facilitating stuffing them. Onions are a staple in Indian cuisine, used as a thickening agent for curries and gravies. Onions pickled in vinegar are eaten as a snack. These are often a side serving in pubs and fish and chip shops throughout the United Kingdom and The Commonwealth, usually served with cheese and/or ale in the United Kingdom. In North America, sliced onions are battered and deep-fried and served as onion rings.

Common onions are normally available in three colour varieties. Yellow or brown onions (called red in some European countries), are full-flavoured and are the onions of choice for everyday use. Yellow onions turn a rich, dark brown when caramelized and give French onion soup its sweet flavour. The red onion (called purple in some European countries) is a good choice for fresh use when its colour livens up the dish. It is also used in grilling. White onions are the traditional onions that are used in classic Mexican cuisine. They have a golden colour when cooked and a particularly sweet flavour when sautéed.

While the large mature onion bulb is the onion most often eaten, onions can be eaten at immature stages. Young plants may be harvested before bulbing occurs and used whole as spring onions or scallions. When an onion is harvested after bulbing has begun but the onion is not yet mature, the plants are sometimes referred to as summer onions.

Additionally, onions may be bred and grown to mature at smaller sizes. Depending on the mature size and the purpose for which the onion is used, these may be referred to as pearl, boiler, or pickler onions, but differ from true pearl onions which are a different species.Pearl and boiler onions may be cooked as a vegetable rather than as an ingredient and pickler onions are often preserved in vinegar as a long-lasting relish.

Onions are available in fresh, frozen, canned, caramelized, pickled and chopped forms. The dehydrated product is available as kibbled, sliced, rings, minced, chopped, granulated and powder forms. Onion powder is a spice widely used when the fresh ingredient is not available. It is made from finely ground, dehydrated onions, mainly the pungent varieties of bulb onions, and has a strong odour. Being dehydrated, it has a long shelf life and comes in several varieties: yellow, red and white.

YOU CAN FIND LUCKY NUMBERS..

An animation demonstrating the lucky number sieve. The numbers in red are lucky numbers.

In number theory, a lucky number is a natural number in a set which is generated by a certain "sieve". This sieve is similar to the Sieve of Eratosthenes that generates the primes, but it eliminates numbers based on their position in the remaining set, instead of their value (or position in the initial set of natural numbers).

Begin with a list of integers starting with 1:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

Every second number (all even numbers) in the remaining list is eliminated, leaving only the odd integers:

1 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 25

The second term in this sequence is 3. Starting with 5, every third number which remains in the list is eliminated:

1 3 7 9 13 15 19 21 25

The next surviving number is now 7. Every seventh remaining number is eliminated, starting with 19:

1 3 7 9 13 15 21 25

One way that the application of the procedure differs to that of the Sieve of Eratosthenes is, for n being the number being multiplied on a specific pass, the first number eliminated on the pass is the n-th remaining number that hasn't yet been eliminated, as opposed to the number 2n. That is to say that the numbers this sieve counts through is different on each pass (for example 1, 3, 7, 9, 13, 15, 19... on the third pass), whereas in the Sieve of Eratosthenes, the sieve always counts through the entire original list (1, 2, 3...).

When this procedure has been carried out completely, the survivors are the lucky numbers:

1, 3, 7, 9, 13, 15, 21, 25, 31, 33, 37, 43, 49, 51, 63, 67, 69, 73, 75, 79, 87, 93, 99, ... (sequence A000959 in OEIS).

An animation demonstrating the lucky number sieve. The numbers in red are lucky numbers.

The term was introduced in 1956 in a paper by Gardiner, Lazarus, Metropolis and Ulam. They suggest also calling its defining sieve, "the sieve of Josephus Flavius"[1] because of its similarity with the counting-out game in the Josephus problem.

Lucky numbers share some properties with primes, such as asymptotic behaviour according to the prime number theorem; also, a version of Goldbach's conjecture has been extended to them. There are infinitely many lucky numbers. However, if Ln denotes the n-th lucky number, and pn the n-th prime, then Ln > pn for all sufficiently large n.[2]

Because of these apparent connections with the prime numbers, some mathematicians have suggested that these properties may be found in a larger class of sets of numbers generated by sieves of a certain unknown form, although there is little theoretical basis for this conjecture. Twin lucky numbers and twin primes also appear to occur with similar frequency.

A lucky prime is a lucky number that is prime. It is not known whether there are infinitely many lucky primes. The first few are

3, 7, 13, 31, 37, 43, 67, 73, 79, 127, 151, 163, 193 (sequence A031157 in OEIS).

Manappullikavu Vela

Manapullikavu Vela is a Hindu temple dedicated to Mother Goddess, situated in Manapullikavu, Palakkad town in Kerala, south India. The temple serves as a spiritual centre in the town.A saintly Brahmin once prayed and perfected the Manappully Bhagavathy, so the folklore goes. He did the prayers in his kitchen which is also known as the madappalli. That must be in course of time and usage, become "Manappulli" This Brahmins house was part of the "Yagakkara" where Agnihothra yagas were performed. This in turn must have changed to become "Yakkara" the present name. It is presumed that the place where this temple is situated derived its name from this.

Sree Manappulli Bhagavathi is Lord Shiva's daughter and she is Bhadrakaali. She was born out of the sacred "Jada" of Lord Shiva during Dakshayaga. Shree Manappulli Bhagavathi is black in colour, with four hands, each one having Soolam, Kapalam, gadkam and khedam. she is with three eyes, four big teeth, with beautiful dress, several ornaments, in ghost vahana very bright and shining and fearful in appearance. She is well known to satisfythe desires of the devotees. It is said that the Goddess will be there whenever any devotee calls with real devotion.

Manapullikavu Vela is a festival honouring the deity at Manapullikavu called 'Manapulli Bhagavathy'. The festival is celebrated between last week of February and first week of March based on the Malayalam Calendar year. The celebration starts with 'Kodiyettam' (flag hoisting on a bamboo pole) which declares the 'Vela'(Festival) has started. After the Kodiyettam, a week full of pooja ceremonies and evenings with colourful cultural programmes are organized by the 'Vela Committee' (Festival Committee) which all ends with the grand day 'Manapullikavu Vela'. Lots of devotees from various parts of Kerala and other southern states of India come for worshipping Bhagavathy on this auspicious day. The Vela day starts early with poojas to the Bhagavathy continuing with all day poojas. The 'Chaandh Abishekam', one of the important pooja during the day attracts flocks of devotees. 'Vedikettu' (Firework) is also an important attractive element of the festival which is organized in the evening around 9 PM and early morning by 4 AM. The Vela day is declared as Local Holiday which shows the importance of the festival. There are many other festivals celebrated in Palakkad district. Nenmara Vallanghy Vela, Kalpathi Car festival, chinakathur pooram, Puthussery Vedi etc. are some of them. Vallanghy Nenmara Vela is considered as the top of these festivals. Vedikettu in Nenmara Vallanghy Vela is famous.

Manapullikavu Vela consists small velas from other desams. Velas from West Yakkara, Vadakkanthara, Vennakkara, Koppam are some of them. These small velas come together to make the final show. Plenty of chariots (bull carts and other motorised vehicles) take part in Manapullykavu Vela.

Manpullikavu temple is near Yakkara Village, which was the origin of this temple. The name yakkara has derived from two words in Malayalam- "YAGAM" & "KARA". These two words combine to form the name "Yagakkara" which changed into Yakkara in due course of time.

Kovalam beach- town by the Arabian Sea in Thiruvananthapuram city.

Kovalam is a beach town by the Arabian Sea in Thiruvananthapuram city, Kerala, India, located around 16 km from the city center.Kovalam means a grove of coconut trees and true to its name the village offers an endless sight of coconut trees.

Kovalam first received attention when the Regent Maharani Sethu Lakshmi Bayi of Travancore constructed her beach resort, Halcyon Castle, here towards the end of the 1920s. Thereafter the place was brought to the public eye by her nephew the Maharaja of Travancore. The European guests of the then Travancore kingdom discovered the potentiality of Kovalam beach as a tourist destination in the 1930s. However, Kovalam shot into limelight in the early seventies with arrivals of the masses of hippies on their way to Ceylon in the Hippie Trail. This exodus started the transformation of a casual fishing village of Kerala into one of the most important tourist destinations in all India.

Kovalam has three beaches separated by rocky outcroppings in its 17 km coastline, the three together form the famous crescent of the Kovalam beach

Lighthouse Beach

The southernmost beach, the Lighthouse Beach is the one most frequented by tourists, Lighthouse Beach got its name due to the old Vizhinjam Lighthouse located on a 35 meter high on top of the Kurumkal hillock. The lighthouse is built using stones is colored in red and white bands and enjoys a height of 118 feet. It's intermittent beams at night render the beach with an unearthly charm

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Hawah Beach

Eve’s Beach, more commonly known as Hawa Beach, ranks second, in the early day, is a beehive of activities with fishermen setting out for sea. With a high rock promontory and a calm bay of blue waters, this beach paradise creates a unique aquarelle on moonlit nights.

Samudra Beach

A large promontory separates this part from the southern side. Samudra Beach doesn't have tourists thronging there or hectic business. The local fishermen ply their trade on this part.

Detour past Kovalam junction to land on Samudra Beach which is to the north of Ashoka Beach. One has the option to walk along the sea-wall too.The sight of the waves lashing on the rocks below is awesome. Shallow waters stretching for hundreds of metres are ideal for swimming. The beaches have steep palm covered headlands and are lined with shops that offer all kinds of goods and services.

The larger of the beaches is called Lighthouse Beach for its 35 metre high light house which towers over it atop Kurumkal hillock. The second largest one is Hawah Beach named thus for the topless European women who used to throng there. It was the first topless beach in India.[citation needed] However topless bathing is banned now except in private coves owned by resorts. Visitors frequent these two beaches. The northern part of the beach is known as Samudra Beach in tourism parlance. A large promontory separates this part from the southern side. Samudra Beach doesn't have tourists thronging there or hectic business. The local fishermen ply their trade on this part. The sands on the beaches in Kovalam are partially black in colour due to the presence of ilmenite and Monazite. The normal tourist season is from September to May. Ashoka beach is also the part of Kovalam beach.

There are a large number of beach resorts in and around Kovalam. The sea port of Vizhinjam is about 3 km away and famous for its special varieties of fish, old Hindu temples, big churches and a mosque. The Proposed International Trans shipment Terminal at Vizhinjam is also close to Kovalam.

Kovalam was among the most prominent tourist spots in India during the hippy era. It still has a high status among tourists, who arrive mostly from Europe and Israel.[citation needed] Kovalam is finding a new significance in the light of several Ayurvedic salons, and recuperation and regeneration resorts which provide a wide variety of Ayurvedic treatments for tourists