So many things can look silly but from a different perspective, we see the purpose. Three Vanderbilt biology researchers were riding through Nashville and they had one objective: to create an image of Elvis.

Elvis is already immortalized as one of the greatest in music history but these researchers wanted to take it one notch further and make one of those GPS images where they trace a route that would form an image.

The Music City-themed bike route is part of a global trend some call GPS doodling, or "Strava art." Runners, cyclists, skateboarders and other athletes trek around towns, and even across countries, with GPS devices strapped to their wrists or handlebars to create pictures with their activity routes.

When they are done, they post them to networks like Strava, which is essentially social media for athletes. It's meant as a training tool, where people can compare their performances and friends and followers can like and comment on them.

But this wasn't the first image that they had created. Check out who it was they made an image first and why on the Tennessean.

(Image credit: Jonny Kennaugh/Unsplash)

When a top athlete is caught using performance-enhancing drugs in an elite competition, like the Olympics, it's big news. But humans will make a competition out of anything, and even the most obscure tests of skill and talent have their cheaters. Even the card game bridge.  

Early 2019 delighted the world with news of the world's #1 Bridge player, Geir Helgemo, being suspended after getting caught doping. Of course, if you read a little deeper, you'll see that Helgemo was using two drugs to increase his testosterone, which increases your Bridge skills in ... no way whatsoever? Maybe his strategy involved intimidating other players with his sudden influx of chest hair?

The World Bridge Federation acknowledged that the drugs weren't performance-enhancing in any way they're familiar with, but because they abide by World Anti-Doping Association guidelines, the substances were still banned. Except why does the World Bridge Federation need to observe the World Anti-Doping Association Guidelines in the first place? What substances do make you better at bridge?

There have been other instances of cheating in bridge tournaments, but they usually involve coded signals between team members. Read more about the bridge tournament, plus cheaters in Scrabble, animal shows, a fishing tournament, and the Iditarod at Cracked.

I guess you could say that this heart… beats in a 3-dimensional manner.

The Israeli researchers from Tel Aviv University successfully 3D printed a heart. This gives us hope that in the future we can use these to patch hearts suffering from disease. It is also possible that we can use them for transplants.

This heart took about 3 hours to print. Unfortunately, this heart is too small for humans. Approximately 2.5 cm, it is similar to the size of a rabbit’s. The heart was made from a patient’s biological materials.

From Bloomberg:

“It’s completely biocompatible and matches the patient,” reducing the chances of rejection inside the body, said Tal Dvir, the professor who directed the project.

Researchers took fatty tissue from a patient, then separated it into cellular and non-cellular components. The cells were then “reprogrammed” to become stem cells, which turned into heart cells. The non-cellular materials were turned into a gel that served as the bio-ink for printing, Dvir explained.

Previously, only simple tissues -- without the blood vessels they need to live and function -- had been printed, according to a press release from the university. The breakthrough was reported Monday in a paper in Advanced Science.

(Image: Advanced Science/2019)

Beards are in vogue but modern men were not the only ones sporting such plenty facial hair. History has shown that there have only been a few periods in which men did not sport beards.

Adrian Wooldridge, a pognophobe, laments this fact in his article. For better or worse, the beard is here to stay though there have been moments when one would think that the trend has died out.

But what is it about beards that makes them so appealing? Wooldridge also explores that briefly, from examples of famous people wearing beards to the common associations people have about beards.

(Image credit: Jakob Owens/Unsplash)

This image is the result of a project by a team of five amateur astrophotographers who left their camera shutters open for 1,060 hours, which has to be some kind of record. That's 44 days! The photograph shows the Large Magellanic Cloud, 163,000 light years away.

The image is a mosaic made of 16 smaller fields of view, which, once stitched together form a high-resolution image of 204 Million of pixels! As of matter of fact, this is not the work of a single person but by a team of five french amateur astronomers called "Ciel Austral":  Jean Claude CANONNE, Philippe BERNHARD, Didier CHAPLAIN, Nicolas OUTTERS et Laurent BOURGON.

"Ciel Austral" owns a remotely-controlled observatory located in the most prestigious skies of the planet, in Chile, and more precisely at the El Sauce Observatory (Coquimbo Region). A 160-mm APO-refractor telescope and a Moravian CCD were used to obtain this wonderful field. The datasets were taken over several months, ranging from 2018 and 2019. The heavy files handled represent 620 GB and needed few hundreds of hours to get out of the image processing step! Once stacked together, they make up the stunning figure of 1060 hours of exposure.

Read more about the image at AstroSpace. You can see high-resolution versions of the image at Ciel Austral's gallery. Be aware that they may take some time to load, but it will be worth it just for the opportunity to zoom in and explore the details.  -via Metafilter

Ian McKellen appeared on The Dick Cavett Show in 1981 and spoke eloquently about the nuts and bolts of acting. Spoiler: it's a lot more complicated than you would imagine. But that's all after you marvel at how young he was here. McKellen was already in his forties, but he certainly doesn't look like the Magneto or Gandalf you know. -via Laughing Squid

Using 3D images by Historic Environment Scotland (HES) and Edinburgh University’s Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies, forensic artist Amy Thornton successfully recreated the head of the 4,000-year old dog, using the 3D print of the Cuween Hill skull as basis to build the anatomy.

From BBC:

The animal is believed to have been the size of a large collie with features similar to a European grey wolf.

The skull was one of 24 discovered when the chamber at Cuween Hill was excavated in 1901.

It is believed the dogs were placed there more than 500 years after the passage tomb was built.

Steve Farrar, interpretation manager at HES, said the model would help "to better relate to the people who cared for and venerated these animals".

He said: "Just as they are treasured pets today, dogs clearly had an important place in Neolithic Orkney, as they were kept and trained as pets and guards and perhaps used by farmers to help tend sheep.

Even in the ancient times, I could say that dogs were already considered “man’s best friend.”

(Image Credit: Historic Environment Scotland)

The island of Alcatraz in the San Francisco was a federal prison from 1934 to 1963. After it was decommissioned, the island was listed as surplus federal property. That designation drew the interest of Native Americans, because under the terms of the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie, any federal property designated as surplus was to be returned to the natives who originally occupied it. In 1969, after the San Francisco American Indian Center was destroyed by fire, a group of Native American protesters went to Alcatraz and stayed there for 19 months.

Soon about 100 Native Americans, mostly students and activists from urban communities, were living the island that had otherwise seemed destined to fall into decay, or the whims of private developers. By Thanksgiving of 1969, the island had blossomed into a well-rounded community with elected council members, and a regular voting system and 400 occupants.

The first step was getting a running kitchen and sanitation system going, then a clinic, a day-care, and even a radio station run by Trudell, who the FBI described as being “extremely eloquent…therefore extremely dangerous.”

The US government first took a wait and see attitude, but eventually blockaded supplies from reaching the island, and even cut off the electricity. Read about the 1969 occupation of Alcatraz and see plenty of pictures at Messy Nessy Chic.

(Image credit: Bonnie Byler)

For people interested in home decor with a specific theme or just something with an artisanal feel, sculptor Art Donovan has recently released his newest handmade lamp inspired by the Event Horizon sighting of an actual black hole.

He writes:

Two weeks ago, I had finished this design called, "Event Horizon" to find that the subject of Black Holes and that incredible, historic image was all over the news last week. My own "E.V." was inspired by both my NASA experience and also the 2014 Christopher Nolan film, "Interstellar".

You may check out his other art on his website. -via Boing Boing

(Image credit: Art Donovan/New Art and Design)

Vox surveyed several experts on what they think would be a modern practice that we do today that might become obsolete in the future and they gathered those ideas.

Some may be quite shocking answers considering their widespread appeal and influence today. But then again, we are talking about five decades in the future.

Fifty years ago, people thought smoking was an innocuous pastime or habit. Now, the dangers of smoking are plastered all over. So what are these 15 things and would you agree with them? -via Kottke

(Image credit: Alex Wong/Unsplash)

Nope, it's not what you're thinking. This was made possible through in vitro fertilization, but more than that, it had to be done "in order to overcome a woman's infertility due to mitochondrial disease."

It's unprecedented, the medical procedure has only been done once with much controversy, and though it was done successfully without any complications in childbirth, it still raises concerns in the scientific community. The ethics of the procedure is being questioned.

The experimental form of IVF uses an egg from the mother, sperm from the father, and another egg from a donor woman.

Combining the mother's DNA with the donor's mitochondria is thought to prevent mitochondrial disease. The child, who is a boy, derives a tiny amount of his genetic makeup from the donor woman as mitochondria contain DNA.

We don't know what effects this would have on the child with regard to his development but for now, the parents welcome a new member into their family which should be enough cause for good cheer.

(Image credit: qimono/Pixabay)

I like books and I like hoarding books. But many books of the past have unfortunately been hopelessly lost to history or to time.

There was also a book collector in the 16th century named Hernando Colon. His collection spanned 15,000 volumes most of which are gone, perhaps to decay, fire, or some other incident or natural occurrence. But a recent discovery of his catalogue of books helps us peer into the world of 16th century literature.

“It’s a discovery of immense importance, not only because it contains so much information about how people read 500 years ago, but also, because it contains summaries of books that no longer exist, lost in every other form than these summaries,” said Wilson-Lee.

“The idea that this object which was so central to this extraordinary early 16th-century project and which one always thought of with this great sense of loss, of what could have been if this had been preserved, for it then to just show up in Copenhagen perfectly preserved, at least 350 years after its last mention in Spain ...”

(Image credit: Lin Kristensen/Wikimedia Commons)

Though our daily lives are now bombarded with technology from running water to processed food, not to mention the myriad of devices and systems that make modern living supposedly more convenient, there is just some kind of appeal to living a simple life without them.

An Irish man wanted to simply do away with all of that and went off the grid three years ago. His name is Mark Boyle and he was interviewed by RTE's Ryan Tubridy to know what it was like.

"I think life is left. We kind of forget sometimes that when we accept one thing, we reject another thing. I think when we bring all of these technologies into our lives, we’re rejecting a lot of life."

(Image credit: David Marcu/Unsplash)

British artist Richard Wilkinson turns Star Wars characters, ships, and creatures, into a collection of insects in his work “Anthropoda Iconicus” series.

From Trendland:

Each beetle and bug from the series not only uses Star Wars as an inspiration for colorful camouflage—although some are more obvious than others—but also comes complete with genus, family, and species names to complete the imaginary insect.

Here are some of the stunning images from the collection!

See more of these photos on Richard Wilkinson’s website!

(Image Credit: Richard Wilkinson/ Trendland)

Reddit user BCThai posted 4 days ago on a reddit forum a photo of a human (on left) and dolphin brain (on right). As seen on photo, it looks like the dolphin brain hemispheres are not connected. A reddit user sheds light on this:

From Reddit:

As some of you have pointed out, "the two halves aren't connected." In reality, they are connected, but the corpus callosum is very thin. Dolphins do that thing called unihemispheric slow‐wave sleep, and are able to remain vigilant even with only one hemisphere awake. Positron emission tomography (PET) scans during this type of sleep show that there's also lateralization in cerebellar activity. However, the fact that dolphins can remain vigilant even with one hemisphere asleep implies that there is no extreme lateralization of function that would cause severe impairment.

See the full story on Reddit!

(Image Credit: BcThai / Reddit)