Health

Why you should stop cleaning your ear with cotton swabs

Contrary to popular belief, you shouldn't clean your ears with cotton swabs, as this could lead to hearing loss, damage or worst, said Ear, Nose and Throat (ENT) Senior Consultant Prof Dr Asma Abdullah of the Canselor Tuanku ...

Health

Quit removing wax from your ears

It can be a common habit—after a shower or getting out of the pool, grabbing a cotton-tipped swab to clean out one's ears to help get rid of excess water, or to remove what one thinks is earwax build-up.

Diseases, Conditions, Syndromes

Thai device tests for coronavirus in armpit sweat

For Bangkok market sellers, the armpit sweat soaking their T-shirts during the humid monsoon season may contain subtle signs of coronavirus infection, local scientists have said.

Other

Which mask is best for speaking?

To assess how different styles of face masks affected speech intelligibility in normal hearing listeners, researchers from Washington University in St. Louis put some of the most popular mask designs to the test.

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Cotton

Cotton is a soft, fluffy staple fiber that grows in a boll, or protective capsule, around the seeds of cotton plants of the genus Gossypium. The fiber is almost pure cellulose. The botanical purpose of cotton fiber is to aid in seed dispersal.

The plant is a shrub native to tropical and subtropical regions around the world, including the Americas, Africa, and India. The greatest diversity of wild cotton species is found in Mexico, followed by Australia and Africa. Cotton was independently domesticated in the Old and New Worlds. The English name derives from the Arabic (al) qutn قُطْن, which began to be used circa 1400 AD.

The fiber most often is spun into yarn or thread and used to make a soft, breathable textile. The use of cotton for fabric is known to date to prehistoric times; fragments of cotton fabric dated from 5000 BC have been excavated in Mexico and Pakistan. Although cultivated since antiquity, it was the invention of the cotton gin that so lowered the cost of production that led to its widespread use, and it is the most widely used natural fiber cloth in clothing today.

Current estimates for world production are about 25 million tonnes annually, accounting for 2.5% of the world's arable land. China is the world's largest producer of cotton, but most of this is used domestically. The United States has been the largest exporter for many years.

This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA