The Big Apple is still one of the most visited cities in the world. It bears a lot of history and culture, through its streets, the architectural design of its buildings, and the faces of the people walking by.
Spanish photographer Manel Armengol wanted to capture the essence of what New York was and is. It culminated in his album of black-and-white New York City photographs which shows the landscape, the scenes, the people, the parks, the cars, and the streets on which he traversed.
Japanese pro soccer players Hotaru Yamaguchi, Hiroshi Kiyotake and Yosuke Ideguchi went head to head against 100 kids. Who do you think will win?
Do you think 3 pro soccer players can beat a swarm of kids? Wait till you see how the kids guard the goal ... I won't spoil it for you - you've just got to watch.
The fabella bone found in our primate ancestors was once rare in humans and scientists believed that we might have lost this primordial knee bone during evolution. However, a recent study from Imperial College of London found an increasing occurrence - this bone is now three times more common in humans than it was a hundred years ago.
The fabella bone is a small bone behind the knee and up until now nobody knows its function.
"We don't know what the fabella's function is – nobody has ever looked into it," says one of the team, Michael Berthaume.
"The fabella may behave like other sesamoid bones to help reduce friction within tendons, redirecting muscle forces, or, as in the case of the kneecap, increasing the mechanical force of that muscle. Or it could be doing nothing at all."
What we do know is that the fabella is linked to knee pain and arthritis, though it doesn't necessarily cause it – people with osteoarthritis of the knee are twice as likely to have a fabella than people without osteoarthritis, for example.
Real estate and home renovation TV shows have pushed the benefits of the open plan home for years. They are big and airy and make the whole family seem like they're together even when everyone is doing their own thing. Some people thrive in a "great room" that includes living room, dining room, and kitchen all-in-one, while others grow to hate it. But you've bought the house. What can you do about it? You could put the walls back in, but if that's beyond your budget, Lifehacker has a few ideas you can try to reduce the noise and the exposure.
I wouldn't dare go near any snake but apparently someone from 450 CE not only went near a rattlesnake, out of all the snakes, and ate it whole. How were archaeologists able to say that? Well, they have poo to prove it.
The desiccated coprolite—archaeologists’ term for ancient poop—contained the scales and bones of the snake along with remnants of a small rodent and an assortment of edible desert plants. It’s a great example of how coprolites can give archaeologist a direct (sometimes unnervingly direct) look at what ancient people ate.
The remains were found in the Chihuahuan Desert and scientists are trying to figure out how this came about. Was it a normal part of those ancient peoples' diet? Or perhaps it might have had some cultural or religious significance, as in a ritual of some sort?
For now, there is no way of knowing why, until they can excavate further artifacts that may serve as a clue to figure out why somebody had eaten a rattlesnake whole. Nonetheless, it must have been a very difficult feat to do. Even though there are people who eat snakes, eating one whole is unheard of. So we will have to wait and see what comes up in the research.
Ripples or disturbances in space-time called gravitational waves have been theorized by Albert Einstein in his theory of general relativity but they have only been recently detected, confirming their existence. The first instance was in August 2016 which was recorded by astronomers with the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO). This was followed up by its detection of a neutron star merger in 2017.
The second such case of gravitational wave detection was believed to have occurred last Thursday. Astronomers say that the gravitational waves might have been caused by a neutron star merger, also the second time that such merger was picked up.
LIGO’s first detection of a neutron star merger came in August 2017, when scientists detected gravitational ripples from a collision that occurred about 130 million light-years away. Astronomers around the world immediately turned their telescopes to the collision’s location in the sky, allowing them to gather a range of observations across the electromagnetic spectrum.
The 2017 detection was the first time an astronomical event had been observed with both light and gravitational waves, ushering in a new era of “multi-messenger astronomy.” The resulting information gave scientists invaluable data on how heavy elements are created, a direct measurement of the expansion of the universe and evidence that gravitational waves travel at the speed of light, among other things.
This second observation appears to have been slightly too far away for astronomers to get some of of the data they had hoped for, such as how nuclear matter behaves during the intense explosions.
May Day brings a peculiar spring ritual in Padstow, Cornwall. It begins at midnight on May first, when the villagers erect a May Pole and sing to awaken the Hobby Horse, or 'Obby 'Oss in the local dialect.
In the morning, the ‘Obby ‘Oss emerges. It consists of a large round platform supporting a black apron. The man who carries the beast puts his head through a whole at the centre of the structure. He wears a mask with a tall pointed cap, a menacing otherworldly image. At one end of the platform is a tail and at the other, a stylized head with snapping jaws. Simpson and Roud have noted that, ‘by no stretch of the imagination does it look like a horse’.
The costume-wearing man cavorts along the streets, accompanied by a ‘teaser’ who leads the ‘Oss in a traditional dance to the sound of accordions and pounding drums as the participants sing the ‘Day Song’.
The tradition has it that any woman caught beneath the apron will be married or pregnant within the next year. There is some speculation that the 'Obby 'Oss is more of a dragon than a horse, which harks back to the possible origins of the ritual. There's more to the Padstow May Day festivities, which you can read about at Folklore Thursday. -via Strange Company
A part of the Kingdom of Denmark, the Faroe Islands comprise of 18 rocky islands. Of the 18 islands, only one is left uninhabited by humans, and that is Lítla Dímun, the smallest of the Faroe Islands. Although it is uninhabited, some Faroese farmers still dare to the said island to take care of the little island’s rulers: the sheep.
These halo rings were first described in the 1960s and is now known as “grazing halos.” Now it has been investigated by Joshua and Elizabeth Madin, both ecologists and are husband and wife.The grazing halo theory says that the sea urchins and the fishes eat everything around the area. This leaves behind bare sand. But why “grazing halos”?
… these grazers are loathe to venture into the open, where they could be easily picked off by sharks, barracuda, snappers, and jacks. Their fear keeps them close to the reef, and their hunger keeps that zone free of greenery. Hence: grazing halos.
At least, that was the theory. No one had ever truly tested it, so the Madins decided to do so. As they waited for the weather to calm down, they waded through the waist-deep lagoon and sowed clumps of seaweed in various locations. Anything they placed within nine meters of a patch reef was quickly eaten; everything else was largely untouched. The grazer hypothesis was right. “We thought it would be a quick open-and-closed study,” says Madin, who is now at the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology. “But I fell down a rabbit hole. These halos are far more complex than we originally thought.”
Who could have made such things? The answer is not that simple.
With the dawn of the new Reiwa era coming on midnight at the 1st of May this year, the people of Japan take their time to commemorate the events that happened on the soon-to-end Heisei era, may it be personal achievements or general trends. And what more creative way to celebrate the closing era with a breath, or specifically, a can of air? This idea came from the city of Seki, Gifu prefecture.
Buyers can choose to open these cans whenever they like, so it’s up to you whether you’ll open it right when the Reiwa era starts or save it until later.
Children have the most adorable ways of communicating certain things and they have no bones about it. They will say what's on their minds without any self-editing mechanism because they haven't been exposed to a world of cues and subtle meanings behind body language and other forms of communication. It's savage but also cute.
A preschool teacher has to deal with all the issues children are concerned with every single day. They are the ones who have to mediate between tattling children. But if you're handling a dozen or twenty children in a class, it can get very tiresome. So what one preschool teacher did was to install a tattle phone where kids can tattle into which was recorded with permission.
Here are a few excerpts from the recording:
David Kestenbaum
OK. So I brought the phone into class, and I set it up. And the kids started to use it immediately and with great enthusiasm.
Kid 1
Eli told me a lie.
Kid 2
Seamus wasn't sharing with me, and I don't like it, and I'm very upset.
Kid 3
Nathan farted in my face, and I said, yuck, Nathan.
David Kestenbaum
Catch that one? Nathan farted in my face, and I said, yuck, Nathan. But the real crime?
The title character in the 1979 film Alien kept surprising us -at least the first time we saw the movie. It changed into several forms over its life cycle, from an egg to a face hugger to a chest burster to a xenomorph. It was quite otherworldly, but still resembles creatures of earth, some that lived millions of years ago and others that still exist. Each phase of the alien's life was inspired by a different species.
The design of the "chestburster" and the full-grown xenomorph ("alien-shaped thing") is based on Giger's "Necronom IV", an artwork created in 1976. The surrealist drawing shows a female figure composed of different parts of insects, parts of vertebrates and even fossils. Giger used the fossils of 300 million-year-old crinoids, commonly called sea lilies, on display in the Aathal dinosaur museum as a source of inspiration. The earliest known crinoids date back to the Ordovician (some 450 million years ago).
It wasn't just the look of the alien that came from nature, but its behavior and life cycle, too. The team that produced Alien apparently found the scariest things about different animals and combined them to create the horror of Alien. Geologist David Bressan looks at the various real-life inspirations for the different phases of the xenomorph, at Forbes. -via Real Clear Science
With the new procedure called abdominal etching, which uses liposuction to make a six-pack like appearance, having a six pack have never been this easy. However, this procedure won’t work on everyone. An ideal patient would be someone who has a healthy lifestyle and exercises regularly, but for some reason cannot make their fat disappear. Also, this procedure is not completely safe. Liposuction has its risks such as swelling and infection.
What do you think?
(Image Credit: American Society of Plastic Surgeons)
K-pop’s influence has spread around the globe. What started as a national sensation at South Korea now became recognized worldwide. However, the state-run media of China does not want any of that. Some Chinese also share the same sentiment, such as the Real Man Training Club founded by Tang Haiyan.
In order to fight against the influence of K-pop, he makes a call for the hinese men to be alpha males.
Tang, a former schoolteacher, founded the Real Man Training Club to combat what he and others in China see as a masculinity crisis — part of a backlash against the makeup- and earring-wearing male TV, film and pop idols who have gained immense popularity here.
…
Influenced by K-pop idols in Korea, China’s boy bands and celebrities — with their delicate beauty, dyed hair and haute couture wardrobes — have a massive following among women here. But China’s state-run media condemns the young idols, calling them “sissy pants" and “fresh young meat.”
Scientist have discovered a new crab species that lived during the dinosaur age. It was so bizarre that no one could imagine this type of creature existed.
It had the mouth of a shrimp, the claws of a modern frog crab, the shell of a lobster and the paddle-like appendages of a sea scorpion, the researchers found. Its eyes were so giant that it would be like a human with soccer ball-size peepers, said study lead researcher Javier Luque, a postdoctoral fellow in paleontology at Yale University and the University of Alberta in Canada.
