You can study a language in school for years, but if you don't practice it in the real world, how fluent are you, really? In this scenario from Foil Arms and Hog, a detective needs someone who knows Gaelic, fast. The skit is only two minutes long, despite the video length. -via Laughing Squid
He was a man who “knew how to form a personal bond with the French people,” according to former socialist President Francois Hollande. His country was in his blood, and he explored its every corner and tasted every local delicacy.
He is Jacques Chirac, the French president from 1995 to 2007. He passed away peacefully on Thursday surrounded by his loved ones, his son-in-law Frederic Salat-Baroux stated in an interview with Reuters.
Mayor of Paris for 18 years and prime minister for presidents on the political left and right before entering the Elysee Palace himself, Chirac had a knack for connecting with voters, particularly in rural France.
The National Assembly interrupted a sitting to hold a minute’s silence. President Emmanuel Macron canceled a public engagement and scheduled a televised address later on Thursday.
Know more about his life over at Reuters.
(Image Credit: David Scull/ Wikimedia Commons)
Trying to revitalize a city is painstaking labor. Not only do you need to have a vision that would see the city flourishing in the next ten, twenty, fifty years but you also need to understand the city's present condition, especially that of its inhabitants.
Pittsburgh tried several times to transform and reinvent itself starting in the 1940s. There were some setbacks along the way and downsides to the changes they made in certain aspects of the city. But now, it seems that it has gained momentum.
The renaissancers kept trying—“Hope in East Liberty,” ran a 1996 headline—but the people kept leaving. By 2010, Pittsburgh’s population was barely 300,000, less than half its size in 1950. Pittsburgh had all the comparative disadvantages of other Rust Belt cities: high taxes, powerful unions, burgeoning pension obligations, inferior public schools, and a decaying infrastructure. East Liberty and the rest of the city seemed a lost cause.
But then, over the past decade, I was stunned to see the ruins come to life. How did this happen? Outside economic forces were partly to thank: the new money flowing into Pittsburgh from fracking, robotics, health care, and other industries. But some credit goes to the same kind of coalition that led the earlier renaissances: business leaders, philanthropists, nonprofit groups, politicians, and developers. They learned from their predecessors’ mistakes, and the lessons are valuable for any city.
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Nowadays, with too many distractions taking up our attention, we can easily lose track of time and not be able to get our tasks done or even have enough sleep at night.
Especially for the younger generation, sleep deprivation could be a big issue as it stunts their growth and aggravates the effects of mood swings, physical exhaustion, and mental strain among others due to puberty.
So researchers conducted a study which combined two therapies to enable teens to get more sleep at night. And it resulted with teens getting 43 more minutes of sleep per night.
Stanford researchers increased how long teens slept with light therapy, used to reset their circadian clocks, combined with cognitive behavioral therapy to motivate them to go to bed earlier.
The treatment had two components: brief, early morning flashes of bright, broad-spectrum white light to reset the teens’ circadian clocks, and cognitive behavioral therapy that motivated them to try earlier bedtimes. The findings were published online Sept. 25 in JAMA Network Open.
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At about 9:15 PM on Tuesday, estate agent Asif Ali was taking a business call when he suddenly heard the dogs barking really aggressively. When he went to see what the commotion was about, he saw a man dressed in black from head to toe standing at his front door. Immediately, the man threw a punch at Ali, which Ali dodged. Ali then instantaneously responded with a flurry of punches which cornered the man in black.
“I didn't know what I was doing. Instinct just kicked in - I just trying to get him out of the house,” Ali said as he recounted the events of the night.
But the man dressed in black was not alone; there were four of them. But Ali was able to drive them all away from his home.
Find out the details over at Daily Mail.
(Image Credit: Men Media/ Daily Mail)
Have you ever had marital or family problems because of someone’s drinking habit? According to a survey published Monday, 1 in 10 Thais say they have experienced this problem.
The survey involved face-to-face interviews with 1,695 Thais over the course of twelve months, and it found out that over a third of respondents feel threatened when they see someone drinking in public.
The survey comes at a time when proponents of stricter alcohol regulations are saying it’s time the authorities focus on the adverse impacts of drinking, similar to a recent crackdown on second-hand smoking.
“When someone faces a drinking problem, people around them are affected as well,” survey organizer Orathai Waleewong from the Ministry of Public Health said at a news conference.
The survey was supported by four organizations, including the Thai Health Promotion Foundation and the Center for Alcohol Studies.
Although less than 2.4 percent of respondents say they have been assaulted by family members or friends under the influence of alcohol – and even less, 0.8 percent, say they have been sexually assaulted – Orathai said alcohol can precipitate violence.
She also identified other impacts on work, the emotional well-being, and the finances of drinkers.
More details on Khaosod English.
(Image Credit: Republica/ Pixabay)
ZeFrank tells us all about a spider named Margaret, who is an ogre-faced spider. You might guess from the name that the imagery in this True Facts video might be hard to take for people suffering from arachnophobia. Also, there's a bit of rude language. That said, the ogre-faced spider has a unique type of web and a unique method of hunting prey. -via Geeks Are Sexy
The Disney parks around the world have a lot in common, but there have been other Disney projects that went nowhere. One of them was Disney’s America, a theme park announced in 1993 that would be built near Haymarket, Virginia.
The park would be arranged into nine sections, loosely focusing on significant periods of U.S. history. One land would focus on the founding fathers while others would feature a 20th century farm, world war battlefields, factories of the industrial revolution. The park would also cover some potentially controversial topics too, like turn-of-the-century immigration, Native Americans, and slavery.
Disney’s new park would be state-of-the-art amusement while mixing in education and sensitivity towards the “painful, disturbing, and agonizing” aspects of American history. Attendees could expect VR technology, innovative motion-simulators, next generation animatronics, and a nightly ironclad ship battle between the USS Monitor and the CSS Virginia.
For various reasons, the project was canceled less than a year after it was announced. But what they had planned is quite intriguing, including the development of technologies that were later used elsewhere in the Disney universe. Read a description of the attractions planned for Disney's America at Popular Mechanics. -via Digg
(Image credit: Mliu92)
Haburu loves to nap on his human's noise-making machine. Sometimes the noises that he uses it to make, such as something called "Brahm's Lullaby," are even soothing.
What's even better is when the hammers of the noise-making machine provide a gentle massage along one's back. The human and his machine are useful.
-via Twisted Sifter
A new research published in Cell has revealed that there is an astounding diversity of molecules living inside our bodies, many of which have not yet been described before. All of these microorganisms which compose of bacteria, archaea, and fungi build up the human microbiome and interact with each other in our bodies. -via LBL
“Because it is much more difficult to search for sequences encoding small proteins than it is to trawl for large proteins, our comprehension of the small proteins expressed by microbial communities has always been lacking,” said Nikos Kyrpides, a Berkeley Lab senior scientist who contributed to the work.
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As demand grows, supply should be able to keep up with its pace so that we won't run out of resources. Though it seems like we might have a lot of sources for water given that 75% of the Earth is made of water, not all of that is usable for drinking and other things.
In the US, a new $100M Energy-Water Desalination Hub has been awarded to the National Alliance for Water Innovation in order to ensure the United States' water security in the future. The Hub will help accelerate research and development of desalination technologies and treatment of nontraditional water sources.
NAWI is a research alliance headquartered at Berkeley Lab and includes Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, the National Energy Technology Laboratory, and 19 founding university partners, and 10 founding industry partners.
NAWI’s goal is to advance a portfolio of novel technologies that will secure a circular water economy in which 90% of nontraditional water sources – such as seawater, brackish water, and produced waters – can be cost-competitive with existing water sources within 10 years.
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Add extra cuteness to your caffeine-filled mornings or your tea breaks in the afternoon with this pair of kawaii cat mugs from Goodglas Japan.
Two kitties are on offer, with the one above sporting a clear handle as it closes its eyes in cheerful bliss.
The alternate design comes with a black handle and an alert feline looking right back at you.
Since the cat is transparent and won’t form until you pour your drink in the cup, the cat’s color depends on what the color of your drink is. A handle-free version of the cup is also available.
The handle-less members of this glass menagerie are priced at 3,200 yen (US$30) each, while the mugs are just a bit more, at 3,500 yen. The entire lineup is being offered for sale at the Tokyu Hands Hands Expo interior shop in Toky’s Ginza neighborhood, but if that’s a little outside the bounds of your next shopping trip, they can be purchased online through Goodglas’ website here.
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Newcastle cancer researcher Dr Matt Dun was supposed to highlight the importance of more funding for research on Childhood Brain Cancer Awareness Day (which happened on Thursday), through his speech alongside the Federal Health Minister in Melbourne. Unfortunately, he wasn’t able to make it.
In the early hours of that same day, his 4-year-old daughter, Josie, was admitted to hospital.
"She is not doing OK. She is coming to the end of her journey," Dr Dun said.
Josie has been fighting DIPG - or diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma - a "ferocious", inoperable cancer that almost exclusively affects children.
Dr Dun, a University of Newcastle and Hunter Medical Research Institute biologist, was already focused on paediatric high grade cancers. But since Josie's diagnosis, he has also turned his attention to understanding DIPG, and developing better treatments for it.
"We wanted to try to highlight the importance of research, and funding research, on Brain Cancer Awareness Day," he said.
Dun states that of the 100 children that die of cancer annually, 36 of them die from brain cancer, and 20 of them die from DIPG. Of the 36, over half of them die due to one particular brain cancer — one that is totally untreatable and have no recognized treatments whatsoever.
"Until we do the work to really understand the biology of the disease, kids are still going to face a bleak prognosis, which is 300 days from diagnosis to death."
I hope scientists would be able to do something about it, and I hope that more funds would be given for this research.
(Image Credit: Newcastle Herald)
Heritage Hall in Vancouver is a historic building with a grand ballroom, and a famous urinal that startles men. You've seen rather public urinals that have little separation. You probably recall seeing trough urinals that can serve many men at once. But a trough still allows men to stand side-by-side and not look at each other. That's what is startling about this one.
A double-sided, or twin, urinal, to be precise, separated by what can barely be described as a divider.
The unsuspecting men who are blindsided by its design must stand upright, a hair's distance from each other, and count down the seconds while nature takes its course.
"You're out there next to somebody who you've never met before and have to basically look them in the eyes," said Straw, a 36-year-old lawyer.
"In my long and storied bathroom career, I have never seen anything like that before."
The urinal is as old as the building, which was built in 1916 as a post office. Read the story of the "twin tinker" at CBC. -via Metafilter
(Image credit: Flickr user Cosmo Spacely)
Using pesticides and other chemical-based agents in agriculture has too many potential risks, not just to humans but also to the environment and wildlife. So researchers continue to find ways so that we could farm without chemicals. Now, they are turning to bees to fight pests in a more natural way.
While the GMO controversy rages, a handful of companies are taking another innovative approach to crop protection. Instead of engineering pest-resistant plants, they’re developing products known as biologicals—natural compounds that protect crops but don’t harm beneficial insects or threaten human health.
Ontario-based Bee Vectoring Technologies (BVT) is taking the growth of biologicals one step further by recruiting bees to spread a natural fungus that controls pests and aids plant growth as they pollinate crops.
Listen to the podcast on Genetic Literacy Project.
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