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Barack Hussein Obama II ( born August 4, 1961) is the 44th and current President of the United States. The first African American to hold the office, Obama had previously been the junior United States Senator from Illinois, serving from January 2005 until November 2008, when he resigned after his election to the presidency.

Obama is a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he was the first African American president of the Harvard Law Review. He was a community organizer in Chicago before earning his law degree. He worked as a civil rights attorney in Chicago and also taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2004.

Obama served three terms in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004. Following an unsuccessful bid for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2000, Obama ran for United States Senate in 2004. His victory, from a crowded field, in the March 2004 Democratic primary raised his visibility. His prime-time televised keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in July 2004 made him a rising star nationally in the Democratic Party. Obama was elected to the U.S. Senate in November 2004 by the largest margin in Illinois history.

Obama began his run for the presidency in February 2007. After a close campaign in the 2008 Democratic Party presidential primaries against Hillary Rodham Clinton, he won his party’s nomination, becoming the first major party African American candidate for president. In the 2008 general election, Obama defeated Republican candidate John McCain and was inaugurated as president on January 20, 2009.

Leopards are graceful and powerful big cats closely related to lions, tigers, and jaguars. They live in sub-Saharan Africa, northeast Africa, Central Asia, India, and China. However, many of their populations are endangered, especially outside of Africa.

The leopard is so strong and comfortable in trees that it often hauls its kills into the branches. By dragging the bodies of large animals aloft it hopes to keep them safe from scavengers such as hyenas. Leopards can also hunt from trees, where their spotted coats allow them to blend with the leaves until they spring with a deadly pounce. These nocturnal predators also stalk antelope, deer, and pigs by stealthy movements in the tall grass. When human settlements are present, leopards often attack dogs and, occasionally, people.

Leopards are strong swimmers and very much at home in the water, where they sometimes eat fish or crabs.

Female leopards can give birth at any time of the year. They usually have two grayish cubs with barely visible spots. The mother hides her cubs and moves them from one safe location to the next until they are old enough to begin playing and learning to hunt. Cubs live with their mothers for about two years—otherwise, leopards are solitary animals.

Most leopards are light colored with distinctive dark spots that are called rosettes, because they resemble the shape of a rose. Black leopards, which appear to be almost solid in color because their spots are hard to distinguish, are commonly called black panthers.

The King Cobra (Ophiophagus hannah) is the world’s longest venomous snake, with a length that can be as large as 6.7 m (22 ft).This species is widespread throughout Southeast Asia and parts of India, but found mostly in forested areas. Its genus name, Ophiophagus, literally means “snake-eater”, and its diet primarily consists of other snakes, including sizeable pythons and even smaller members of its own species. The venom of the King Cobra is primarily neurotoxic, and the snake is fully capable of killing a human with a single bite.The mortality rate from a bite can be as high as 75%.
The King Cobra is a large and powerful snake, averaging 3.6–4 m (12–13 feet) in length and typically weighing about 6 kg (13.2 lb). A particularly large specimen was kept captive at the London Zoo and grew to 5.7 m (18.8 ft) before being euthanized upon the outbreak of World War II.The skin is either olive-green, tan, or black and it has faint, pale yellow cross bands down the length of the body. The belly is cream or pale yellow, and the scales are smooth. The head of a mature snake can be quite massive and bulky in appearance, though like all snakes, they can expand their jaws to swallow large prey items. It has proteroglyph dentition, meaning it has two short, fixed fangs in the front of the mouth which channel venom into the prey like hypodermic needles. The male is larger and thicker than the female. The average lifespan of a King Cobra is about 20 years.
HABITAT
Widespread, but not common, across South and South-east Asia. It lives in dense highland forests. The snake has a preference for living in areas dotted with lakes and streams. King Cobra populations have dropped in some areas of its range due to the destruction of forests, but despite this the snake is not listed by the IUCN as in danger of becoming extinct. It is, however, listed as an Appendix II Animal within CITES.
HUNTING
King Cobras, like other snakes, receive chemical information (“smell”) via their forked tongues, which pick up scent particles and transfer them to a special sensory receptor (Jacobson’s Organ) located in the roof of its mouth.When the scent of a meal has been detected, the snake will flick its tongue to gauge the prey’s direction (the twin forks of the tongue acting in stereo); it will also rely on its keen eyesight (King Cobras are able to detect moving prey almost 100 m [300 feet] away), intelligence and sensitivity to earth-borne vibration to track its prey. Following envenomation, the King Cobra will begin to swallow its struggling prey while its toxins begin the digestion of its victim. King Cobras, as with all other snakes, do not have rigidly fixed jaws. Instead, the jaw bones are connected by extremely pliable ligaments, enabling the lower jaw bones to move independently of each other. Like other snakes, the King Cobra does not chew its food, instead it swallows its prey whole. The expansion of the jaw enables the snake to swallow prey much larger than its head.

King Cobras are able to hunt at all times of day, although it is rarely seen at night, leading most herpetologists to classify it as a diurnal species.
DIET
The King Cobra’s diet is mainly composed of other snakes (ophiophagy): both non-venomous snakes such as pythons and venomous snakes including kraits When food is scarce, King Cobras may also feed on other small vertebrates such as lizards, birds, and rodents. In some cases, the cobra may “constrict” its prey, like birds and larger rodents using its muscular body, though this is uncommon. After a large meal the snake may live for many months without another one due to its slow metabolic rate.[1]

The King Cobra’s favourite meal is the Ratsnake, which feeds on rats, this leads King Cobras near human settlements as rats are drawn to human settlements, Ratsnakes follow the rats and King Cobras follow the Ratsnakes.
DEFENSE
If a King Cobra encounters a natural predator, such as the mongoose, which has some resistance to the neurotoxins,[ the cobra will generally try to flee. If all else fails, it will flatten its upper body by spreading its ribs, forming the distinctive cobra hood about its neck, which can be the size of an adult’s handspan. It will also emit a high-pitched hiss, sometimes with feigned closed-mouth strikes. These efforts usually prove to be very effective, especially since the King cobra is more dangerous than other mongoose prey as well as being much too large for the small mammal to kill.
VENOM
The King Cobra’s venom, which is composed mostly of proteins and polypeptides, is produced in specialized salivary glands (as is the case with all venomous reptiles) just behind the animal’s eyes. When biting its prey, venom is forced through the snake’s half-inch (1.25 cm) fangs and into the wound. Although its venom is not the most toxic one, a King Cobra’s size enables it to inject larger quantities of venom than most other species. On a single bite, it injects as much as 6 to 7 ml of venom. The large amount of venom in a single bite allows the King Cobra to kill faster and to kill larger animals than other serpents. The King Cobra can kill up to five times faster than the black mamba, so it just takes a few minutes to kill a human, and it can even kill an Asian Elephant within three hours if the larger animal is bitten in a vulnerable area such as the trunk.

The King Cobra’s venom is primarily neurotoxic and thus attacks the victim’s central nervous system and quickly induces severe pain, blurred vision, vertigo, drowsiness, and paralysis. In one to two minutes, cardiovascular collapse occurs, and the victim falls into a coma. Death soon follows due to respiratory failure. There are two types of antivenin made specifically to treat King Cobra envenomations. The Red Cross in Thailand manufactures one, and the Central Research Institute in India manufactures the other; however, both are made in small quantities and are not widely available. Ohanin, a protein component of the venom, causes hypolocomotion and hyperalgesia in mammals. Other components have cardiotoxic, cytotoxic and neurotoxic effects.

Despite the King Cobra’s fearsome reputation and deadly bite, it is a shy and reclusive animal, avoiding confrontation with humans as often as possible. There are other venomous snakes within this species’ range, in fact, that are responsible for more fatal snake bites than the King Cobra, such as the Monocled Cobra, or Russell’s Viper .

In Burma, King Cobras are often used by female snake charmers. The charmer is usually tattooed with three pictograms using an ink mixed with snake venom; superstition holds that it protects the charmer from the snake.The charmer kisses the snake on the top of its head at the end of the show.

Einstein was one of the greatest scientists the world has ever known, yet if i had to convey the essence of Einstein in a single word, i would choose simplicity. perhaps an anecdote will help.once, caught in a down pour,he took off his hat and held it under his coat. Asked why, einstein explained, with admirable logic, that rain would damage his hat, but his hair would be none the worse for its wetting. this knack for going instinctively to the heart of a matter was the secret of his major scientific discoveries-this and einstein’s  extra ordinary feeling for beauty

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