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I live in a one-bedroom “garden” apartment, which means that I get to have my own front door, porch, and small strip of flower bed. The only downside? The flower bed is under the porch roof, which means it’s constantly damp and shady, and also an ideal mosquito habitat.

So this year, after frantically trying to squash a few rogue mosquitoes that snuck indoors while I was carrying in groceries, I’ve decided to get myself some mosquito-repelling plants.

Yes, there are some plants that mosquitoes don’t like, due to their potent smell. The oils of some of these plants are used to formulate natural mosquito repellents, but there’s also some preliminary research to suggest that some live plants can also help keep at least some mosquitoes away.

I’m not expecting my mosquito-repelling plants to work miracles, but hopefully, they’ll discourage a few of those blood-suckers from coming too close. If you’re out doing a bit of weeding, or flipping burgers on the grill, try crushing the leaves of these plants and rubbing the oils on your skin to get the most protection.

Want to try growing your own mosquito-resistant garden? Here’s what you should plant.

Citronella Grass

The essential oil from citronella grass is used to make those insect-repellent candles you’ve probably come across at a summer barbecue. Make sure you’re buying the tall spiky grass Cymbopogon nardus, not “citronella plant” (Pelargonium citrosum), which is actually a type of geranium that smells similar to citronella but doesn’t contain the same mosquito-repelling oils. Citronella grass prefers partial sun and moist, loamy soil, so water every day if you’re growing it in a container. It is a perennial in tropical climates, but can be grown as an annual in colder places.

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Photo by Lana Kenney

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For the first time in over 60 years, a rare egg-laying mammal has been spotted by scientists. Attenborough’s long-beaked echidna (Zaglossus attenboroughi) was caught on camera during a major expedition in the Cyclops Mountains in Indonesia’s Papua Province.

A sacred animal

The long-beaked echidna is named for wildlife documentarian and conservationist Sir David Attenborough and has only been recorded by scientists once, in 1961. It is considered a monotreme, or an evolutionary distinct group of mammals who can lay eggs. The platypus is also a monotreme and there are only five remaining species of these strange types of mammal on Earth. 

They live in burrows and mainly eat insects, earthworms, and termites. They are listed as Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species and are only known to live in the Cyclops Mountains.

“Attenborough’s long-beaked echidna has the spines of a hedgehog, the snout of an anteater, and the feet of a mole. Because of its hybrid appearance, it shares its name with a creature of Greek mythology that is half human, half serpent,” University of Oxford biologist James Kempton said in a statement. “The reason it appears so unlike other mammals is because it is a member of the monotremes–an egg-laying group that separated from the rest of the mammal tree-of-life about 200 million years ago.”

The echidna also has cultural significance for the people in the village of Yongsu Sapari. They have lived on the northern slopes of the Cyclops Mountains for eighteen generations. Rather than fighting during conflicts, the tradition is for one party to go up into the Cyclops to find echidna while the other party goes to the ocean to search for a marlin. Both of these creatures were difficult to find, and it would take decades to even whole generations to locate them. However, once they were found, the marlin and echidna would symbolize the end of the conflict.

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Attenborough’s long-beaked echidna, photographed by a camera trap. Expedition Cyclops

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Indians looking to escape the country’s chronic unemployment rut frequently fall prey to rackets. One such ring has reportedly conned at least 50,000 people since 2020, making it one of India’s biggest job frauds in recent times.

The success of such criminal syndicates is an indication of how bad the conditions are for job seekers in one of the world’s fastest-growing economies that is simply unable to generate enough employment opportunities.

Job rackets lure the gullible

India’s latest organized job scam episode has affected people in the Indian states of Gujarat, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal, and Odisha. They were duped of crores of rupees after being promised jobs, reports said.

“The scam was being run by a group of tech-savvy engineers from Uttar Pradesh with the help of some expert website developers. This core group was assisted by around 50 call center employees. These employees were paid 15,000 rupees ($181) per month and were from Jamalpur and Aligarh localities of Uttar Pradesh,” according to Jai Narayan Pankaj, a senior Odisha police officer.

Candidates paid up to Rs70,000 for training and other orientation programs, including Rs3,000 in registration fees. However, the training never happened, Pankaj said.

In another incident unearthed in December, around 30 people were tricked into counting the arrival and departure of trains at the New Delhi Railway Station for a month, BBC reported. They were told this was part of their training for the positions of travel ticket examiner, traffic assistant, and clerk. Each of the duped candidates had paid up between Rs2 lakh and Rs24 lakh for the coveted Indian Railways job.

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Photo: ANUSHREE FADNAVIS (Reuters)

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This is happening today!

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In mathematics, simple rules can unlock universes of complexity and beauty. Take the famous Fibonacci sequence, which is defined as follows: It begins with 1 and 1, and each subsequent number is the sum of the previous two. The first few numbers are:

1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34 …

Simple, yes, but this unassuming recipe gives rise to a pattern of far-reaching significance, one that appears to be woven into the very fabric of the natural world. It’s seen in the whorls of nautilus shells, the bones in our fingers, and the arrangement of leaves on tree branches. Its mathematical reach extends to geometry, algebra, and probability, among other areas. Eight centuries since the sequence was introduced to the West — Indian mathematicians studied it long before Fibonacci — the numbers continue to attract the interest of researchers, a testament to how much mathematical depth can underlie even the most elementary number sequence.

In the Fibonacci sequence, every term builds on the ones that came before it. Such recursive sequences can exhibit a wide range of behaviors, some wonderfully counterintuitive. Take, for instance, a curious family of sequences first described in the 1980s by the American mathematician Michael Somos.

Like the Fibonacci sequence, a Somos sequence starts with a series of ones. A Somos-k sequence starts with k of them. Each new term of a Somos-k sequence is defined by pairing off previous terms, multiplying each pair together, adding up the pairs, and then dividing by the term k positions back in the sequence.

The sequences aren’t very interesting if k equals 1, 2 or 3 — they are just a series of repeating ones. But for k = 4, 5, 6 or 7 the sequences have a weird property. Even though there is a lot of division involved, fractions don’t appear.

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Kristina Armitage/Quanta Magazine

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Some folks say, out with the old and in with the new. But according to David Sabgir, MD, a board-certified cardiologist, avocado toast is one ~trendy~ recipe that will forever be in style when it comes to cardiovascular health.

In fact, avo toast is one of Dr. Sabgir’s all-time favorite breakfast recipes for boosting heart health, and one he noshes on almost every single day. “It’s simple, quick, and perfect for getting in those good fats and fiber, which support my heart health. And I especially love that it fills me up,” Dr. Sabgir says. Ahead, we delve into what makes avocado toast the perfect balanced breakfast for optimal heart health, according to the cardiologist. Plus, a few ways to make this easy breakfast recipe even heart-ier (for extra protein, health perks, and happiness) first thing in the morning.

How to construct a heart-healthy breakfast, according to a cardiologist

According to Dr. Sabgir, you really only need two (yes, just two!) ingredients to make a heart-healthy breakfast: avocado + toast. “When it comes to heart health, I always recommend that people look for nutrient-dense foods that contain dietary fiber and good-for-you unsaturated fats. They’re both excellent for longevity, and most people aren’t consuming enough of them—especially fiber,” he says. Fortunately, avocados and toast satisfy both of these needs—talk about a match made in avo toast heaven.

On the one hand, avocado is an excellent source of not only dietary fiber but also unsaturated fats. For context, a 100-gram serving of avocado (about a half of a medium avocado) contains six grams of fiber and nearly 10 grams of monounsaturated fat. “Research shows that monounsaturated fats—or MUFAs—like that found in avocado, can help reduce bad cholesterol levels in your blood, which can, in turn, lower your risk of heart disease and stroke,” Dr. Sabgir says. Plus, whole grain toast is a good source of dietary fiber that pairs perfectly with creamy and dreamy avocado.

That said, it’s important to note that this recipe is lacking in the protein department. To that end, the cardiologist recommends pairing it with another source of protein to make sure your energy levels last all morning. Cheesy fried eggs with black beans or smoothie on the side, anyone? “It’s just such a versatile meal. It’s so good on its own, or you can increase the protein by adding a hard boiled egg or cottage cheese,” Dr. Sabgir says. Or you can scrap the bread altogether and swap it for a slice of sweet potato for a cozy and nourishing, gluten-free, high-fiber breakfast.

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Photo: Stocksy/ Tatjana Zlatkovic

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https://www.wellandgood.com

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