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Time is a pretty interesting concept to get your head around. For instance, thanks to Einstein, we know that time runs faster the further you are from a gravitational field.The difference, for observers like us standing on a rocky planet, is generally pretty small, but it is something we have to take into account when observing the universe or determining coordinates using GPS. We've even calculated precisely how much faster time ticks by on the Moon, and know that astronauts heading to Mars will experience small amounts of time dilation.There are big questions about what causes the tick of time, and how we experience it. But it turns out people have more fundamental questions than that, such as "what does AM and PM actually mean?" and "what is o'clock short for?".These concepts are a little easier. First up, why are days divided into 24 hours? A day is defined by how long it takes the Earth to rotate around its own axis with respect to the Sun, and a year is defined by how long it takes the Earth to complete an orbit of the Sun. It is more useful for us to break this chunk of time down further by dividing it into smaller parts, of course meaning hours, minutes, seconds, all the way down to zeptoseconds, yoctoseconds, and Planck time.The reason we use 12 hours, 24 hours, and divide hours up into 60 minutes comes down to the Ancient Egyptians. Instead of using base 10, they used base 12."Night-time was divided in 12 hours, based on the observations of stars. The Egyptians had a system of 36 star groups called 'decans' — chosen so that on any night one decan rose 40 minutes after the previous one," Dr Nick Lomb, consultant curator of astronomy at the Sydney Observatory explained to ABC Science. "Tables were produced to help people to determine time at night by observing the decans. Amazingly, such tables have been found inside the lids of coffins, presumably so that the dead could also tell the time."Two extra hours were added by the Egyptians, who used shadow clocks, for twilight and sunset. Hours and minutes being divided into 60 comes from the Babylonians, who inherited base 60 from the Sumerians. As for what "o'clock" means, this is incredibly simple. It is a contraction of a phrase in Middle English, "of the clokke".  Clearly saying "of the clock" was taking too much time to say, and so it eventually became abbreviated to "o'clock", with the first recorded instance of this use reportedly being in 1560. For a time, a rival phrase "a clock" was also used, though this seems to have died out in the 19th century, with o'clock becoming the preferred contraction.All “explainer” articles are confirmed by fact checkers to be correct at time of publishing. Text, images, and links may be edited, removed, or added to at a later date to keep information current.  

The mysteries of the animal world are plentiful with much about the inner workings of the lives of Earth’s animals still to be uncovered. In the sea slug department, however, there has been something of a breakthrough, as scientists have successfully reared a chromodorid sea slug from egg to adult in a lab for the first time.Nudibranchs, or sea slugs, are mollusks and are popular for their bright colors and funky appearances. Surprisingly, sea slug young have shells immediately after hatching that they lose as they settle on reefs. At this stage of development, they shift from a floating lifestyle to becoming creatures at the bottom of the sea bed. While the stages of development between floating and seafloor life ages are understood in some species they had remained something of a mystery in the species Hypselodoris festiva. The reason why it is so difficult to rear sea slugs in the Chromodorididae family, which includes H. festival, is that they are picky eaters, with each species having a very specific diet, some of which are unknown. Therefore getting the appropriate food for the adults to create an egg mass has been challenging. Nudibranchs are simultaneous hermaphrodites, meaning they have both sex organs. Adult individuals spawn masses of fertilized eggs after mating. Scientists collected adult H. festiva from tidal pools in Japan and reared them in a laboratory setting. Just six days later several thousand floating larvae hatched. Fed on a diet of microalgae the young continued to grow, metamorphosing about three weeks after their hatch date. Metamorphosis involved the loss of their shells and the known switch of lifestyle from floating to sea floor dwellers. At this time they also ate the same food as adults, namely sponges, and developed their characteristic coloration at around 36 days after hatching. They started to form the feathery sensory structures known as rhinophores as well as gills around 42 days after hatching. The chemosensory organs called rhinophores forming in stages during development.Image Credit: Hayashi, M & Nakano, H. Scientific Reports (2024) CC BY 4.0Observing their growth in the lab setting allowed researchers to create nine stages of growth for the sea slugs, which include two metamorphic stages and seven juvenile ones. The study also revealed more about sea slug bottoms. Prior to the study, the anus was believed to be on the dorsal side of the sea slug and did not move much during growth. However in H, festiva the anus appeared on the ventral side as a juvenile and the adult stage anus was on the dorsal side, meaning the sea slugs had, for a time, two anuses. The team speculates that the internal organs detach from the juvenile anus and move to the adult position. There are more than 395 species in the Chromodorididae family, and the full life cycle of none of them had been fully understood before now. The team is proposing H. festiva as the model organism for chromodorid research and the methods applied to rear this species could be applied to other sea slugs in the future.  The paper is published in Scientific Reports.

It’s always eye-opening when The Washington Post is so liberally biased that you’ll find it in their Food section! Writer Emily Heil – who used to gush over Michelle Obama as a Post gossip columnist – penned this sugary piece: “Kamala Harris’s cooking wisdom: 7 tips from her kitchen videos.” This is a bit odd, since Harris hasn’t made a cooking video in four years. But any opportunity for fawning can’t be missed. Heil starts off with “chef and humanitarian Jose Andres,” a Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton donor. Heil began: “I’m just a home cook,” Vice President Harris says in one of the videos posted on her YouTube page in which she prepares food with famous chefs and regular folks alike. That line, from a 2020 video, came in response to chef and humanitarian José Andrés telling her that she has a “big reputation ... as a chef,” a designation she first earned for a viral pandemic-era video in which she schooled Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.) on the finer points of tuna-sandwich making (after her colleague’s chaotic and sloppy sandwich horrified the internet). Harris, now the likely Democratic presidential nominee, long ago proved that politics and cooking can mix. And despite her modesty, the culinary prowess that Harris displays in the videos — including an impressive one-handed egg-crack and deft knife skills — says otherwise. Liberal journalists really prove their utility by touting a national politician's modesty as genuine. One can guess that Emily Heil is not a cook, because she’s dazzled that Kamala uses bacon “as a flavor” and puts mayonnaise on the outside of grilled cheese sandwiches, which is not a mysterious cooking hack at all. Heil touts her as a Woman of the People because she professes to like Miracle Whip and fried bologna. “Harris’s cooking videos are more than political stunts,” Heil proclaimed, which is humorous, since the cooking videos are clearly meant to “humanize” her for voters. But her point was she also chats about policy on the cooking videos with her favorite Democrat chefs (there’s always Top Chef judge Tom Colicchio for celebrity vibes). Against the backdrop of their kitchens, Harris dove into pandemic restaurant relief with Tom Colicchio, and hunger and food-insecurity policies with Andrés. She talked about her own Indian heritage with [actress Mindy] Kaling as the two chopped and sauteed. “People have these ... misconceptions about who Indians are,” she said. She bonded with a supporter over a butter-stained family cookie recipe. And she discussed breaking gender barriers after preparing flapjacks. “I eat ‘no’ for breakfast,” she said in the latter video, as she dug into the meal she had just made. “And apple pancakes with some bacon.” Don't get me wrong, knowing how to cook is a cool skill, and it beats feminists like Hillary Clinton exposing themselves of thinking that's a skill for housewives, not career women. But everything about these videos is political, which is why the Post is trying to reintroduce them as one of many, many puff pieces for the general-election campaign.  PS: Jazz Shaw at Hot Air has thoughts about mocking Kamala's cooking.