Scorpions are predatory arachnids of the order Scorpiones. They have eight legs, and are easily recognized by a pair of grasping pincers and a narrow, segmented tail, often carried in a characteristic forward curve over the back and always ending with a stinger. The evolutionary history of scorpions goes back 435 million years. They mainly live in deserts but have adapted to a wide range of environmental conditions, and can be found on all continents except Antarctica. There are over 2,500 described species, with 22 extant (living) families recognized to date. Their taxonomy is being revised to account for 21st-century genomic studies.
Sodium carbonate is the inorganic compound with the formula Na2CO3 and its various hydrates. All forms are white, odourless, water-soluble salts that yield alkaline solutions in water. Historically, it was extracted from the ashes of plants grown in sodium-rich soils. Because the ashes of these sodium-rich plants were noticeably different from ashes of wood, sodium carbonate became known as "soda ash". It is produced in large quantities from sodium chloride and limestone by the Solvay process, as well as by carbonating sodium hydroxide which is made using the Chlor-alkali process.
The lesser flamingo is a species of flamingo occurring in sub-Saharan Africa and western India. Birds are occasionally reported from further north, but these are generally considered vagrants.
Owens Lake is a mostly dry lake in the Owens Valley on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada in Inyo County, California. It is about 5 miles (8.0 km) south of Lone Pine. Unlike most dry lakes in the Basin and Range Province that have been dry for thousands of years, Owens held significant water until 1913, when much of the Owens River was diverted into the Los Angeles Aqueduct, causing Owens Lake to desiccate by 1926. A 2004 court order required the LADWP to reestablish a small flow from the river into the lake. As of 2013, it is the largest single source of dust pollution in the United States.
The Solvay process or ammonia-soda process is the major industrial process for the production of sodium carbonate (soda ash, Na2CO3). The ammonia-soda process was developed into its modern form by the Belgian chemist Ernest Solvay during the 1860s. The ingredients for this are readily available and inexpensive: salt brine (from inland sources or from the sea) and limestone (from quarries). The worldwide production of soda ash in 2005 was estimated at 42 million tonnes, which is more than six kilograms (13 lb) per year for each person on Earth. Solvay-based chemical plants now produce roughly three-quarters of this supply, with the remaining being mined from natural deposits. This method superseded the Leblanc process.
Trona (trisodium hydrogendicarbonate dihydrate, also sodium sesquicarbonate dihydrate, Na2CO3•NaHCO3•2H2O) is a non-marine evaporite mineral. It is mined as the primary source of sodium carbonate in the United States, where it has replaced the Solvay process used in most of the rest of the world for sodium carbonate production.
Hemachandra was a 12th century Indian Jain saint, scholar, poet, mathematician, philosopher, yogi, grammarian, law theorist, historian, lexicographer, rhetorician, logician, and prosodist. Noted as a prodigy by his contemporaries, he gained the title kalikālasarvajña, "the knower of all knowledge in his times" and father of Gujarati language.
California Valley is an unincorporated community located in the eastern part of San Luis Obispo County, California, in the northern portion of the Carrizo Plain.
Social science fiction is a subgenre of science fiction, usually soft science fiction, concerned less with technology/space opera and more with speculation about society. In other words, it "absorbs and discusses anthropology" and speculates about human behavior and interactions.
Salsola soda, the opposite-leaved saltwort, oppositeleaf Russian thistle, or barilla plant, is a small, annual, succulent shrub that is native to the Mediterranean Basin. It is a halophyte that typically grows in coastal regions and can be irrigated with salt water.
The Lost Ship of the Desert is the subject of legends about various historical maritime vessels having supposedly become stranded and subsequently lost in the deserts of the American Southwest, most commonly in California's Colorado Desert. Since the period following the American Civil War, stories about Spanish treasure galleons buried beneath the desert sands north of the Gulf of California have emerged as popular legends in American folklore.
The vernal pool fairy shrimp, Branchinecta lynchi, is a species of freshwater crustacean in the family Branchinectidae. It is endemic to the U.S. states of Oregon and California, living in vernal pools as well as non-vernal pool habitat. They range in size from 0.43 to 0.98 inches long. Vernal pool fairy shrimp are listed as a vulnerable species on the IUCN Red List, and has been listed as Federally Threatened species since 1994.
The western banded gecko is a species of lizard in the family Eublepharidae. The species is native to the southwestern United States and adjacent northwestern Mexico. Five subspecies are recognized.
Diamond Alkali Company was an American chemical company incorporated in 1910 in West Virginia by a group of glass industry businessmen from Pittsburgh. The company soon established a large chemical plant at Fairport Harbor, Ohio, which would operate for over sixty years. In 1947, the headquarters of the company was moved from Pittsburgh to Cleveland. Later the company established a plant in Redwood City, California, that produced ion-exchange resins. In 1967, Diamond Alkali and Shamrock Oil and Gas merged to form the Diamond Shamrock Corporation. Diamond Shamrock would go on to merge with Ultramar Corporation, and the combined company, Ultramar Diamond Shamrock Corporation, would in turn be acquired by Valero Energy Corporation in 2001.
Lonar Lake, also known as Lonar crater, is a notified National Geo-heritage Monument, saline, soda lake, located at Lonar in Buldhana district, Maharashtra, India. Lonar Lake is an astrobleme created by a meteorite impact during the Pleistocene Epoch. It is one of only four known hyper-velocity impact craters in basaltic rock anywhere on Earth. The other three basaltic impact structures are in southern Brazil. Lonar Lake has a mean diameter of 1.2 kilometres (3,900 ft) and is about 137 metres (449 ft) below the crater rim. The meteor crater rim is about 1.8 kilometres (5,900 ft) in diameter.
Paruroctonus is a genus of scorpions in the family Vaejovidae. There are about 10 described species in Paruroctonus.
Lauren Esposito is the assistant curator and Schlinger chair of Arachnology at the California Academy of Sciences. She is the co-founder of the network 500 Queer Scientists.
Paruroctonus conclusus is a species of scorpion in the genus Paruroctonus. It lives in the deserts of Southern California where it associates with alkali clay soils in the Mojave Desert area of eastern Kern County. P. conclusus is an alkali sink specialist species with an extremely small range.
Wernerius inyoensis is a species of scorpion in the taxomic family Vaejovidae. W. inyoensis is the third species described in the genus Wernerius. Wernerius inyoensis lives throughout the Inyo Mountains of Death Valley National Park in the southwestern North America, eastern California just like many scorpion species discovered around the year 2009.
The southern stuttering frog is a large species of frog endemic to south-eastern Australia. It is found in mid-eastern New South Wales and at least formerly Victoria, where it ranges from Carrai National Park south to East Gippsland. It inhabits temperate and subtropical rainforest, wet sclerophyll forest, and moist gullies in dry forests.
