Everyday, massive carbon dioxide is emitted to the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels. Carbon dioxide is one of the primary greenhouse gases on earth. Greenhouse gases cause the greenhouse effect, a phenomenon in which the greenhouse gases trap the sun’s warmth, which would in turn cause global warming and climate change.

In response to the worsening climate change, the United Nations formed the Paris Agreement. In this agreement, every nation on Earth vows to keep global warming under control by limiting the increase in temperature to 1.5°C (3.6°F). So far, countries do their part in achieving this goal through various methods. An example of this is Iceland’s effort in reducing CO2 emission using Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS).

Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) is a technology promoted by the United Nations that can capture up to 90 percent of CO2 emissions that come from fossil-fuel sources and send them to an underground storage site—usually an old oil and gas field or a saline aquifer formation—so they don’t enter the Earth’s atmosphere.

Researchers and engineers in Iceland, alongside experts from France and the United States, have been working on one project that applies such CCS methods called CarbFix. For years, they’ve been holed up at Hellisheidi, a massive geothermal plant on a volcano near Reykjavik. The plant is built on a layer of porous basalt rock formed from cooled lava and, crucially, has easy access to the endless water supply underneath the volcano.

See more information on Popular Mechanics.

(Image Credit: Pixabay)

Koji Kasatani had a rich imagination on how to highlight the banana peels in ceramic arts. He utilized these as patterns for his ceramic creations to represent human images and experiences.  

The banana peel is perhaps one of the most recognizable symbols of humor. If I had a banana for every time someone slipped on a banana peel in a vaudeville show or movie, I’d have… well, a lot of bananas. Interpreting this symbol and inco[r]porating it into his own form of comedic art is Japanese artist Koji Kasatani.

Have a glimpse of his creations on Spoon & Tamago. 

(Image Credit: Spoon and Tamago)

The ocean never ceases to amaze me in its contribution to the development of vision. From the scallops with more than 200 eyes, we now go to this fish.

Most of us can’t see in the dark. In the pitch black darkness, we get robbed of our vision and we are left to rely on our other senses in order for us to feel the environment. Such is the case for the ancestors of the cave fish and crickets when they moved into pitch black caverns. However, this is not the case for fishes living in the great depths of the sea, who can still see well despite the absence of sunlight. An example of this is the image above — the spinyfish, who can still see clearly at the depth of 2000 meters. Their secret? They have had “an extraordinary increase in the number of genes for rod opsins, retinal proteins that detect dim light.”

The finding "really shakes up the dogma of deep-sea vision," says Megan Porter, an evolutionary biologist studying vision at the University of Hawaii in Honolulu who was not involved in the work. Researchers had observed that the deeper a fish lives, the simpler its visual system is, a trend they assumed would continue to the bottom. "That [the deepest dwellers] have all these opsins means there's a lot more complexity in the interplay between light and evolution in the deep sea than we realized," Porter says.

At a depth of 1000 meters, the last glimmer of sunlight is gone. But over the past 15 years, researchers have realized that the depths are pervaded by a faint bioluminescence from flashing shrimp, octopus, bacteria, and even fish. Most vertebrate eyes could barely detect this subtle shimmer. To learn how fish can see it, a team led by evolutionary biologist Walter Salzburger from the University of Basel in Switzerland studied deep-sea fishes' opsin proteins. Variation in the opsins' amino acid sequences changes the wavelength of light detected, so multiple opsins make color vision possible. One opsin, RH1, works well in low light. Found in the eye's rod cells, it enables humans to see in the dark—but only in black and white.

More information of this amazing discovery at the Science Magazine.

(Image Credit: Pavel Riha/ University of South Bohemia)

FRANCE — this rock has been discovered a few years ago and up to this day no one has deciphered what the characters present in the rock mean. It is so perplexing that Plougastel, the village which holds the rock, offered a prize of €2,000 (£1,729 ; $ 2247.10) to anyone who can decipher the slab.

Among the normal French letters some are reversed or upside-down. There are also some Scandinavian-style Ø letters.

Two years are visible - 1786 and 1787 - dating the inscription to a few years before the French Revolution. There is also the image of a ship with sails and rudder, and a sacred heart - a heart surmounted by a cross.

But the writing has defied all attempts at interpretation by local academics. Some think it may be in old Breton or Basque, and that the person who wrote it may only have been semi-literate.

The letters may relate to the sounds of words as he or she heard them.

In one section the letters read: "ROC AR B … DRE AR GRIO SE EVELOH AR VIRIONES BAOAVEL".

Another reads: "OBBIIE: BRISBVILAR ... FROIK … AL".

Do you have what it takes to solve the riddle?

(Image Credit: AFP)

Is there a way to move on without deleting your precious pictures — especially the ones where you look so handsome or gorgeous? This woman might have your answer. It is not cropping the picture, but replacing him with something you “deeply love and trust.” For Danielle’s case, that something would be steak.

“We actually dated for a bit,” Danielle told Bored Panda. “To be honest, I’m not really sure why a steak, haha. I love food and a good steak with a nice char on it is probably my favorite thing.”

“While I was deleting a ton of photos, I wondered if there was anything I could do to keep the halfway decent pictures of myself”

Talking about her ex, Danielle painted a pretty vivid picture with just a few words. “Compulsive liar in every sense. Controlling, violent, drugs, you name it, that was him. Oh, and he almost beat a girl to death. So yeah, I’m glad I got out as lucky as I did. Completely broke but very lucky.”

“So I decided to just replace him with something that I truly and deeply love and trust. [With a] Goddamn steak”

“Now I enjoy these pictures again”

Now you know how to not delete your pictures.

(Image Credit: Bored Panda)

It’s like a remote-controlled toy car, but it’s a main battle tank. A real-life tank that can crush everything in its path. And it’s tough, too.

There are many obstacles to be dealt with in ground warfare such as a “countermobility plan” that seek to impede the enemy’s movement. This type of plan would usually involve digging trenches, planting landmines or anti-tank mines and constructing anti-tank barriers.

To combat this countermobility plan, attacking forces also have their own secret weapon (you could call them the “counter-counter mobility plan”, I guess) — combat engineers aka sappers. These men are highly trained to remove such obstacles in the battlefield in order for their battalion to stay on the offensive. However, this would mean that they will be the ones in the front lines, facing bullets, land mines, and every kind of obstacle. As a result, many of them die. Is there a way to stay on the offensive while avoiding casualties? Hopefully, there is.

When the U.S. Army developed a new vehicle designed to literally blast and plow its way through enemy defenses, the M1150 Assault Breacher Vehicle, it decided only the M1 Abrams main battle tank was tough enough to survive on the front line. The Assault Breacher Vehicle removes the vehicle’s turret and main gun and instead adds a mine plow, dozer blade, ordnance removal charges, and an explosive mine-clearing system.

The ABV can plow through wire barriers, fill trenches, blow a lane through minefields with a rocket-propelled linear explosive charge, and smash anti-tank barriers. The ABV increases protection versus anti-tank rockets and missiles with reactive armor boxes bolted to the superstructure.

The Assault Breacher Vehicle gets a new modification: it becomes unmanned through another vehicle.

A new vehicle, the Robotic Complex Breach Concept vehicle, RCBC takes the M1150 Assault Breacher Vehicle and unmans it, with the vehicle operated remotely by a soldier in the rear. The Assault Breacher Vehicle was already wired with a full suite of outward-facing cameras to allow soldiers inside the vehicle to do their jobs (sticking your head outside a hatch during actual combat would be too dangerous), so these cameras were probably just linked to a wireless networking system. A remote steering and equipment operation system was added to the vehicle and the ABV became the RCBC.

I guess the future would just be full of remote-controlled vehicles, and the guys who have better technology and control over their contraptions would come out of the battle as winners.

What do you think?

(Image Credit: okrajoe/ YouTube)

The blooming flowers of the hop plant have been crucial to the beer brewing industry since ancient times. In the UK, hops are grown mainly in the Kent region. When harvest time came, there weren't enough local laborers to pick the blossoms, so poor families from London made a pilgrimage every year to pick hops and pick up some extra cash.

By 1870, special trains were being run to transport families to the hop fields. Londoners who could not afford to get out into the country normally looked on harvest time as something of a holiday.

On arrival, though, conditions were squalid. Families lived in barns, tents, stables, even pigsties. Hygiene was poor and disease spread — in 1849 cholera killed 43 hop pickers on a single farm.

In the 1860s, two priests began to visit the hop fields and campaign for improved conditions, eventually forming the Society for Employment and Improved Lodgings for Hop Pickers in 1866.

Whole families worked to pick hops, while only men wore stilts to reach the highest of the vines. The tradition of traveling to Kent to pick hops died out in the 1950s with the arrival of automated picking machines. See a gallery of photographs from the days of the hop pickers at Retronaut. -Thanks, WTM!

Flatbush Cats neuters and feeds feral cats in Brooklyn, and tries to find homes for as many as they can. One day a new stray showed up who was shy, hungry, and sick. Julius didn't have the strength to fight the humans who helped him, but he was scared. Watch his transformation into a beautiful, cuddly pet under the care of volunteers who go the extra distance for their feline friends. -via Laughing Squid

We've noticed movie posters becoming more formulaic for decades. Teal and blue. A woman's backside. Looking through legs. But the more research that goes into what catches the eye, the more every movie is using each factor, until they are so alike that there's little need to actually notice any one of them. Blockbusters have a diagonal feature. Romantic comedies have two people back-to-back, with a red title on a white background, or yellow on blue if it's French. Read about how you can look at a movie poster and learn nothing at all about the movie, but everything about marketing at The Wrap. -via reddit

Help @handelandhaydn find this "wow" child! Find out more: https://t.co/TsjEQmeSYX pic.twitter.com/CeZcciRM2G

— 99.5 WCRB, Classical Radio Boston (@995WCRB) May 7, 2019

The Handel and Haydn Society orchestra played Mozart's "Masonic Funeral Music" last Sunday at the Boston Symphony Hall. When the last note was done, the entire hall could hear a child exclaim "Wow!" The voice was full of pure appreciation of the music. The audience giggled, then applauded loudly. The society thought it was so charming, they reached out online to find him. And they did. He is 9-year-old Ronan Mattin.

Ronan didn't mean to be disruptive, said his grandfather, Stephen Mattin, who took Ronan to the concert. His grandson, Mattin explained, is on the autism spectrum, and often expresses himself differently than other people.

"I can count on one hand the number of times that [he's] spontaneously ever come out with some expression of how he's feeling," Mattin said.

Ronan has been invited to meet with the Handel and Haydn Society's artistic director and learn more about the orchestra. -via the A.V. Club

This is superionic ice. It is a highly electrically conductive material that may perhaps be the newest variety of ice discovered. This ice came into existence “at pressures between one and four million times that at sea level and temperatures half as hot as the surface of the sun”.

“Yes, we’re talking about ice,” says study leader Marius Millot, a physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. “But the sample is at several thousand degrees.”

Normally unachievable here on Earth because certain conditions have to be met, this type of ice may exist on the planets Neptune and Uranus as these conditions are present in those planets. This might be able to explain how these distant planets mentioned work and what the origins of their unusual magnetic fields are.

Scientists already know of 17 varieties of crystalline ice… And more than 30 years ago, physicists predicted that crushing pressure should squeeze water into superionic forms.

Superionic materials are dual beasts, part solid and part liquid, that on a microscopic level consist of a crystal lattice permeated by free floating atomic nuclei that can carry electrical charge. In water—aka H2O—the oxygen atoms would crunch into a solidified crystal while the hydrogen’s protons would zip around like a liquid.

“It’s quite an exotic state of matter,” says coauthor Federica Coppari, also of the Livermore lab.

Last year, Millot, Coppari, and their colleagues found the first evidence for superionic ice, using diamond anvils and laser-induced shock waves to compress liquid water so much that it turned to solid ice for a few billionths of a second. The team’s measurements showed that the water ice briefly became hundreds of times more electrically conductive than it had previously been, a strong hint that it had gone superionic.

In their latest tests, the researchers used six giant laser beams to generate a sequence of shockwaves that crunched a thin layer of liquid water into solidified ice at millions of times Earth’s surface pressure and between 3,000 and 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Precisely timed x-ray flashes probed the configuration, which again only lasted for a few billionths of a second, and revealed that the oxygen atoms had indeed taken on a crystalline form.

Scientists have proposed to calling this new form of ice “Ice XVIII.” The name is not that catchy for me.

(Image Credit: Millot, Coppari, Hamel, Krauss (LLNL). Artist rendition.)

Pagodas have been an icon of the traditional Chinese architecture. Up to this day, very little to no changes have been made to its design, while other architectural styles changed and evolved much over time. A Shanghai-based architect named Amey Kandalgaonkar, creates a fictional re-interpretation of these pagodas.

The designer comments: ‘while the entire world was swept by the modernist movement, china was largely untouched by modernism. so when I visited various ancient chinese monuments, I couldn’t help wonder how a modernist mind would interpret traditional chinese architecture.’

The result is this image. I admit, this really looks incredibly realistic. What are your thoughts on this? Would you want to see a future with this kind of pagoda?

Image Credit: Amey Kandalgaonkar (@ameyzing_architect)/ Instagram

H.L. Mencken compiled a list of different regional names that Americans used to refer to certain states and the people who lived there, the origins of some owing to some historical artifact or tidbit about the state, while others having no apparent reason for being called such.

Almost every American has heard Hoosier for an Indianan, Wolverine for a Michigander, Sucker for an Illinoisan, Cracker for a Georgian, Blue Hen’s Chicken for a Delawarean, Tar Heel for a North Carolinian, Clay-eater for any kind of Carolinian, Puke for a Missourian, Mud-cat for a Mississippian, Lizard or Yellowhammer for an Alabamian, Buckeye for an Ohioan, Hawkeye for an Iowan, Jayhawker for a Kansan, Gopher for a Minnesotan, Okie for an Oklahoman, Webfoot for an Oregonian, and Badger for a Wisconsinite.

He also mentioned nicknames given to particular cities and some have even made their way to this day but mostly associated with college sports teams. Most of these nicknames signified how back then, people's prejudice seeped into every level, from the individual to the collective, creating stereotypes for different groups.

As time passed by, however, and people migrated from one state to another, these nicknames slowly faded away from people's memories, relegating them only to history books.

(Image credit: Wikimedia Commons; Public domain)

Researchers from Purdue University have built a flying robot with the capability of mimicking and learning the behavior of hummingbirds. Not only that, but it also has the ability to enable tracking of locations by touching surfaces, which could help people make a map of the area.

"The robot can essentially create a map without seeing its surroundings. This could be helpful in a situation when the robot might be searching for victims in a dark place—and it means one less sensor to add when we do give the robot the ability to see," said Xinyan Deng, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at Purdue.

The success of this research would make it easier to create drones with an expanded scope of reaching different locations. Initially, the problem that researchers encountered was the physics of making a small robot that could generate enough lift to support its weight.

But hummingbirds don't use conventional aerodynamics—and their wings are resilient. "The physics is simply different; the aerodynamics is inherently unsteady, with high angles of attack and high lift. This makes it possible for smaller, flying animals to exist, and also possible for us to scale down flapping wing robots," Deng said.

In order to produce the hummingbird drone, Deng and her team observed how hummingbirds flew and the different maneuvers or techniques it used when flying. They then translated this into a computer algorithm and built a robot with machine learning to enable it to learn to fly like a hummingbird.

Further research on insects and other smaller flying organisms can help change the way we conduct search and rescue missions but there is also a caveat of this technology being used for covert operations, which may or may not be to the benefit of the public.

Still though, it opens up more avenues for scientists to study hummingbirds in their natural environment and allows us to push the boundaries of what technology can do.

(Image credit: Jared Pike/Purdue University)

Most of us only know that scallops are just one of the delicacies the sea can offer us. But did you know that these scallops have eyes? They have up to 200 eyes, to be exact, and these eyes function like telescopes. A new study has revealed that these eyes, like ours, dilate and contract in response to light.

“It's just surprising how much we're finding out about how complex and how functional these scallop eyes are,” says Todd Oakley, an evolutionary biologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

The optics of scallop eyes are set up very differently than our own ocular organs. As light enters into the scallop eye, it passes through the pupil, a lens, two retinas (distal and proximal), and then reaches a mirror made of crystals of guanine at the back of the eye. The curved mirror reflects the light onto the interior surface of the retinas, where neural signals are generated and sent to a small visceral ganglion, or a cluster of nerve cells, whose main job is to control the scallop's gut and adductor muscle. The structure of a scallop's eye is similar to the optics systems found in advanced telescopes.

For many years, the physics and optics of the scallop eye posed a perplexing problem. "The main retina in the eye gets almost completely unfocused light because it's too close to the mirror," says Dan Speiser, a vision scientist at the University of South Carolina and the senior author of the new study. In other words, any image on the proximal retina would be blurry and out of focus. “That just seems so unreasonable to me,” Speiser says.

The new study sheds some light on this mystery. The researchers found that the scallop pupils are able to open and contract, though their pupillary responses aren’t as quick as our own. A scallop pupil's diameter changes by about 50 percent at most, and the dilation or contraction can take several minutes. Their eyes don’t have irises like our eyes do, and instead, the cells in the cornea change shape by going from thin and flat to tall and long. These contractions can change the curvature of the cornea itself, opening the possibility that the scallop eye might change shape and respond to light in a way that makes it possible to form crisper images on the proximal retina.

The scallops’ many eyes tell us a lot about the evolution of eyes in organisms, and the scallop is not the only sea creature that have weird eyes.

Find out more on Smithsonian.

(Image Credit: Science Magazine / YouTube)