#WATCH Himachal Pradesh: A car crosses a makeshift bridge made of iron poles after heavy rainfall in the region damaged the road, in Drekari area of Chamba district. (22-08) pic.twitter.com/3XrHekeKqc
— ANI (@ANI) August 26, 2019
No road? No problem!
Watch how this daredevil Indian driver drove his car across a washed-out road in Himachal Pradesh, northern India, using iron poles that were laid out and taped together. Nerves of steel or simply madness?
China is currently experiencing its lowest marriage rate in 11 years due to lack of interest in marriage among the young people, especially women. Aside from this, there is a huge imbalance between the sexes, men being 30M more than the population of women. And most women focus more on their careers than building families.
In 2015, the government ended its decades-long one-child-only policy after realizing that a marriageless and childless society will not sustain the People’s Republic. In line with this is the government’s effort to become more intentional in promoting marriage among the citizens. They launched a matchmaking train to help young men and women fall in love.
Last August 10, there were 1,000 singles that boarded the train. Ice breakers and fun activities during the trip helped them to know each other better, with the goal of developing romantic relationships.
"These activities are more creative than matchmaking. The train is like a bridge, bringing people from different places together, to get to know each other during the journey," said Huang Song, one of the participants on the Love-Pursuit Train. "Even if you don't find the right one for you, you can still make a lot of friends on the train."
So far, the love train is working and the two-day train trip has brought together hundreds of people, and some even got married.
Photo by China Daily
In a society where access and affordability of medicines are real challenges, can biohackers be considered as “heroes” for social justice in health? Are there other creative solutions?
This article discusses the reality of how extremely expensive medical research and clinical trials are. It also introduces how biohackers, a group of independent biologists, are proudly pirating a cheap version of a million-dollar gene therapy. We are now forcibly faced with the question: are they medicine’s Robin Hood or a threat to safety? What about concerns regarding Bioethics?
Read more about this pressing concern at Technology Review.
Image Credit: Bruceblaus / Victor Tangermann
Some people call it “August Anxiety”, some call it “Summertime Sadness” - this feeling of real sadness and uneasiness in anticipation of the end of summer is real and is felt by many. August is the last third of summer, and we really don’t want to curl up into a ball of anxiety when we can enjoy summer to its fullest. Debra Kissen, PhD, explains to Refinery29 that there are things that we can do to re-wire our brain to handle August differently:
The core skill that you need to develop in order to combat August anxiety is simply mindfulness, she says. "Gently notice that thought of future distress, and without judgment, just return back to the present moment,"
It's also worthwhile to find ways to be present, whether that's spending time in nature or literally just watching TV without scrolling your phone at the same time. "It's so much harder and harder to be present, because real-life distractions keep injecting themselves," Dr. Kissen says. "Our minds are so used to being given this pace of information that it doesn’t know how to slow down." And if that still doesn't help, the next best thing you can do for the rest of the month is commiserate with other people and blast the Lana Del Ray.
image credit: via wikimedia commons
Meow Wolf, a strong artist collective has opened the doors to a new immersive art environment. The House of Eternal Return is a 20,000 square foot role-playing installation located in an abandoned bowling alley in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The environment serves as a unique combination of art exhibition, fantasy world, jungle gym, and children’s museum where you are allowed to interact with anything and everything! On Meow Wolf’s process in creating this fantasy, open-world themed environment, Colossal has the details:
“The group has long been inspired by monumental works of art,” Vince Kadlubek, one of Meow Wolf’s organizers, told Colossal. “But I think we are equally inspired by arcades, theme parks, Burning Man, grocery stores, nature—immersive spaces. At the heart of it we are probably most inspired by the forts we built growing up and certainly Nickelodeon, MTV, Jim Henson, Tumblr, and Twin Peaks.”
The creative process for creating such an involved experience took 18 months, in part because the installation and storyline were being built in tandem. “We had a team of six writers who had a specific story arc with specific plot points and characters, but much of the story elements were written from backgrounds of the objects and spaces that were being created,” said Kadlubek. “Our creative process is not top-down. It is lateral.”
image credit: via Colossal
At one time, we thought that humans evolved in a straight line, from one species to another, until homo sapiens sapiens, or modern humans, were achieved -as illustrated in the artwork called March of Progress. But as we developed the ability to analyze DNA, the story gets much messier. Several species of hominins co-existed over the course of our evolution, possibly many species at different times. We now know that non-African humans carry a small percentage of Neanderthal genes, and some carry Denisovan genes. Even more recent genetic research shows that those Neanderthals that modern humans encountered when they left Africa 60,000 years ago already had a legacy of mixing with modern humans in their genome!
The finding also adds to the already compelling body of evidence that there were multiple migrations of modern humans out of Africa, stretching back over hundreds of thousands of years. Modern humans were thought to have evolved in Africa after the departure of Neanderthals and Denisovans, and to have remained on the continent until their well-known out-of-Africa diaspora 60,000 years ago. But recently, fossil evidence has indicated otherwise: A human jawbone in Israel, reported last year to date back to 180,000 years ago, and a skull fragment in Greece that’s even older, indicate earlier human migrations.
In fact, with that piece of skull, archaeologists may have stumbled across a possible member of the long-ago exodus that Siepel and his team inferred in their genomic study. The fossil, which was classified as Neanderthal when it was unearthed in Greece in the 1970s, was analyzed last month by the paleoanthropologist Katerina Harvati of the University of Tübingen and her colleagues. Structurally, it looked somewhat like a modern human skull, but it was estimated to be about 210,000 years old — supposedly too old to be modern at that location.
Under this model, it appears that modern humans didn't survive the earlier migrations, and the Neanderthals and Denisovans did not survive the last large homo sapiens sapiens migration. Or did they? The traces of DNA left after each exodus show they are still with us in some ways. Read more about how genome sequencing is revealing more about human evolution at Quanta magazine. -via Digg
(Image credit: Olena Shmahalo/Quanta Magazine)
The US threw its heart and soul into the Manhattan Project in order to develop a weapon to stop World War II. It did, but left unimaginable horror behind. Then came the arms race with the Soviet Union, in which both sides developed ever more powerful nuclear weapons. As we became more afraid of nuclear bombs, the US government went to great lengths to maintain public support for nuclear research. That included a 1965 comic outlining the possible peaceful uses of such weapons.
This particular pro-nuke comic was written by scientist and educator Athelstan Spilhaus and was published in the July 4, 1965 edition of newspapers around the country as part of the long-running Our New Age series. Titled, “Atomic Ditch Digging,” this edition of the strip explained that humanity had harnessed the atom, and now it would be used for countless useful purposes in peacetime. Peacetime is a relative word, of course, since the U.S. was dramatically escalating its presence in Vietnam during the summer of 1965 and expanding the military draft at home.
Nevertheless, the comic explained that nuclear explosions were far cheaper than traditional explosives and could be used for building roads, railways, and “huge canals.” The illustration, done by Gene Fawcette, even included a shovel with a nuclear symbol, further pressing the idea that this was a perfect use of atomic energy for large infrastructure projects.
When all you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail. What could possibly go wrong? See more of the comic and the history behind it at Paleofuture. -via Boing Boing
(Image credit: Brett Ryan Bonowicz)
Sam Battle connected 95 LEGO droids, 42 musical instruments, and 30 iPads together to create the Droid Orchestra. You can probably guess what song they play. The project is to introduce you to the new programmable LEGO® Star Wars™ BOOST Droid Commander. Yeah, they're expensive and probably technically challenging, but they are pretty cool to watch. Learn more about the Droid Orchestra project in a behind-the-scenes video. -via Geeks Are Sexy
About 250 pigs have escaped from a farm in Vermont, causing a nuisance for drivers and passers-by. But most of them have returned. Thanks to the trail of hot dog buns and good ol’ fashioned corralling!
"The pigs have been allowed and remain to be allowed in the town right of way so cars are unable to pass, people can't walk on the road because the pigs chase them," said Town Clerk Angela Eastman on Thursday.
According to the farm owner, Walter Jeffries, the fence enclosure was allegedly damaged by his former employee, who he had already reported to the police.
The ruckus of the pigs in town cost Jeffries tens of thousands of dollars in fines as a public hazard.
Image Credit: Lisa Rathke / AP
One of the first pairs made by Nike Inc shattered the record for a pair of sneakers at public auction, by selling for $437,500. The “Moon Shoe”, bought by Canadian investor and car collector Miles Nadal (who had previously paid $850,000 for 99 other pairs of rare or limited collection sneakers as well), was designed by Nike co-founder and track coach Bill Bowerman for 1972 Olympics runners.
The purchase broke the previous record, which was $190,373 in 2017 for a pair of signed Converse sneakers said to have been worn by Michael Jordan. Reuters has the details:
Sotheby’s, better known for selling art works fetching tens of millions of dollars, teamed up with streetwear marketplace Stadium Goods to auction 100 pairs of the rarest sneakers ever produced in a venture that reflects their fast-growing status as collectibles.
The handmade “Moon Shoe,” with a waffle sole pattern, was one of only 12 pairs ever made and the pair that were auctioned on Tuesday are the only ones known to exist in an unworn condition, Sotheby’s said.
Nadal, the founder of investment firm Peerage Capital, said in a statement he was thrilled at his purchase, calling the “Moon Shoe” a “true historical artifact in sports history and pop culture.”
image credit: Sotheby via Reuters
Tooth enamel is the hardest tissue in the human body. Sadly, it cannot repair itself when damaged, making people more susceptible to cavities and eventually needing fillings or tooth extraction.
Now, scientists at the Zhejiang University School of Medicine in Hangzhou, China, have found a way to grow the enamel with the same structure as in teeth! This is by mixing calcium and phosphate ions (both minerals which are found in enamel) with the chemical called triethylamine in an alcohol solution.
Writing in the journal Science Advances, Changyu Shao said: “Although a range of materials, such as composite resins, ceramics, and amalgam, have been developed for the restoration of tooth enamel, they have failed to achieve permanent repair because of the imperfect combination between these foreign materials and the native enamel.
“However, the layer newly regrown by remineralization can be integrated into native enamel such that the repair would be permanent, and this process may be developed as an effective cure for enamel erosion in clinical practice.
They believe that when developed, it is a promising enamel repair material for dental applications in the near future.
Scientists showed it is possible to soak a small biodegradable sponge with the drug and insert it into a cavity, where it triggers the growth of dentin and repairs the damage within six weeks. They also discovered a new group of stem cells that contributes dentin growth.
Commenting on the new Chinese research Professor Damien Walmsley, Scientific Advisor for the British Dental Association, said: “This is exciting but it’s still a very long way off. “A lot of other things need to come together before we can successfully grow back a tooth.
“I think we’ll eventually get there in ten, 15, 20 years.”
Know more about the procedure via The Telegraph
Christian Sasse, a photographer who documents the eagle population in Vancouver, British Columbia, is waist-deep in the water as he waits for the opportunity to capture the perfect picture of a bald eagle.
The eagle Sasse was observing had come to the beach in search of a snack. “During low tide [the eagles] can access the intertidal zone,” Sasse told The Dodo. “And we have a lot of fish called midshipman fish there that are high in protein for eagles.”
Sasse was not expecting anything amazing to come up with the photos as he snapped a few photos and left for a day. He thought wrong, however.
… when he reviewed the shots later that night, he started cracking up: “When I came home, I looked at the photos, and said, ‘Oh my gosh, this is just too funny.’”
In one of the shots, a mysterious stream of water seemed to be coming from the eagle. It looked to Sasse as if the bird was peeing, but he knew that was impossible.
See the explanation behind this photo over at The Dodo.
(Image Credit: Sasse Photo/ Facebook/ The Dodo)
J.T Sexkik has compiled a series of misspellings and grammatical blunders taken from Yahoo! Answers into one video, and reads them. The result is an extremely hilarious video that would surely leave you rolling on the floor laughing.
Despite this video of misspellings of the word “pregnant” being over 2 years old, it is still fun to watch.
Via Funny Or Die
(Video Credit: J.T Sexkik/ YouTube)
This is Emmanuelle Moureaux’s new installation titled “Universe of Words” which forms part of the Japanese soft drink Calpis — “Calpis 100th year anniversary, let’s meet at Tanabata” — exhibition.
… The work immerses visitors in colored pieces of paper suspended from the ceiling. As the latest in moureaux’s ‘100 colors’ series, the work uses the full spectrum to compose intimate and thoughtful spaces.
The installation was unveiled on July 4, with the day coinciding with the Japanese star festival.
In Japan, Tanabata Day marks a tradition when people write their hopes and dreams on colored pieces of paper and hang them from a bamboo branch in the hope that their wishes will come true. Moureaux‘s installation reinterprets this event by floating words throughout the gallery space, in an effort to evoke visitors’ curiosity and emotion.
It really looks like you’re being transported to another dimension, to a “universe of words”. The installation, indeed, lives up to its name.
(Image Credit: Daisuke Shima)
Toronto-based artist Micah Adams loves to make tiny assemblages from tiny things that he was able to collect over the years. These tiny things would range from “toys, bottle caps, beach finds and even teeth”, which he would cast in metal.
“... They were like tiny bronzes or miniature monuments. That lead me to look for tiny things that were already metal that I could use. So I looked at coins and their designs for things I could cut-out.”
And cut out designs from coins he did by using a jeweler’s saw.
See the photos over at Colossal.
(Image Credit: Colossal)
