Sometimes science just happens when you're not prepared for it. Researchers Delphine Farmer and Mj Riches were in the woods of Colorado studying the leaf-level photosynthesis of Ponderosa pines in 2020. Or as we non-scientists would call it, pine needle-level photosynthesis. The pores in a tree's leaves (or needles) take in carbon dioxide and emit oxygen and other materials. But there was smoke from wildfires in the area, and they found that the trees' pores had essentially shut down and were not doing their usual life-sustaining actions. The trees had detected the smoke.
This defense mechanism led the two scientists to look into the effects of wildfire smoke and other pollutants on a tree's health. There's not much a tree can do to defend itself from fire, but they can reject poor quality air -at least for a short time. Read about how trees breathe, until they refuse to, at the Conversation.
(Image credit: Matt Lavin)
In 1752, Benjamin Franklin famously flew a kite in a thunderstorm and literally caught lightning in his hand. In 1753, Russian physicist Georg Wilhelm Richmann tried to do the same with a metal rod and was killed by lightning. Meanwhile in Bohemia (now the Czech Republic), a priest named Prokop Diviš wanted to build a machine to control the weather, specifically the electricity in the atmosphere. In 1754, he erected his weather machine atop a 40-meter pole in order to extract the natural electricity from the air and prevent thunderstorms. Scientists thought he was nuts. The local villagers believed in his machine, and tore it down when there was a drought.
The "weather machine" worked, but not in the way Diviš wanted, and for reasons he didn't quite anticipate. For a long time, people thought Benjamin Franklin invented the lightning rod, but Diviš' tower preceded Franklin's. Read how Diviš came up with the lightning rod at Amusing Planet.
(Image credit: Bohemianroots)
Korean women's pistol shooter Kim Ye-ji while casually breaking a world record and winning the gold medal pic.twitter.com/8TgMPQJEH7
— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) July 30, 2024
Kim Yeji, an athlete who represents South Korea at the Olympics, took a silver medal, a world record, and the hearts of fans with her perfectly calm demeanor during the women's 10-meter pistol shooting competition in Paris.
What are Yeji and other shooting competitors wearing on their faces? Core77 describes these unique optics that world-class shooters wear. They are mechanical irises that allow competitors to adjust their vision to match specific conditions, including light and fatigue. This particular example sells for $285.
Government laboratories run by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) do research on virulent and deadly diseases like smallpox, ebola, and Marburg virus in order to keep us all safe. But what about the people who work in those labs? The safety protocols have to be on the level of The Andromeda Strain. And just like that story, the strictness of the different levels correspond with the danger of the virus being studied. Unlike the movie, the different levels are in different labs in different places. The first level is on par with what hospitals require of visitors to an infectious patient with, say, flesh-eating bacteria. Don't ask me how I know. Above that, the protocols get very serious. The most serious of these virus labs is one that hasn't even been built yet, but will cover a big chunk of ground in Atlanta. This video from Half as Interesting is only seven minutes long; the rest is an ad. -via Digg
The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration awarded to members of the United States Armed Forces who have distinguished themselves through acts of valor at the risk of life above and beyond the call of duty in three different situations: (1) while fighting against an enemy of the United States, (2) while engaged in military operations involving conflict with an opposing foreign force, or (3) while serving with friendly foreign forces engaged in an armed conflict against an opposing armed force in which the United States is not a belligerent party.
Last year, retired Army Capt. Paris Davis received the Medal of Honor for his service during the Vietnam War. He was part of the special forces dispatched to Vietnam in 1965, and he led the 883rd Regional Force Company in a nighttime raid against a Viet Cong regional headquarters.
Initially successful in conducting the raid, a counterattack was launched against them leaving several of their company wounded, including Davis who was shot in the leg. Despite this handicap, he still led the artillery and small-arms fire, rallying his troops and providing a boost in morale as they continued to hold their position, awaiting reinforcements.
Being a commander of the 5th Special Forces Group (Airborne), Davis forged on and provided support in rescuing several of the wounded members of their unit, but refused to be medically evacuated himself, opting to stay behind and rescue his gravely injured team sergeant.
With incredible disregard for his own life, he crossed the open field with bullets raining over them, and rescued his team sergeant. In the process, Davis got wounded again from enemy fire but still refused to be evacuated, and continued leading their regional force company to fight off the Viet Cong forces until help arrived.
For a third time, Davis refused medical evacuation in order to rescue an advisor who was presumed to be dead after the initial ambush against their company. Not only that, Davis continued to be obstinate and refusing to leave the battlefield until everyone was securely recovered and evacuated.
Similar to the maritime tradition of "the captain goes down with the ship", Davis exemplified what it means to lead a company with bravery, determination, and a deep sense of responsibility and care for those under your command. Despite being wounded three times, he had the courage to press on and risk his life for his comrades-in-arms.
That alone would have been enough reason for him to be deserving of the award. However, he also led with great competence, proficiency, and skill, being able to repel the assaults from the opposing forces and buying enough time for reinforcements to arrive. Anyone in that situation may have been satisfied with simply rescuing whomever they can salvage from the fray. But Davis stayed until the very last second to ensure that he could save as many as possible.
If Davis had returned home and lived a normal life after that, then we can say he had already served his country well. But after 25 years of service in the Army, he pursued further education receiving a PhD, and then founded the Metro Herald newspaper, a means of supporting civil rights causes and the community in Alexandria, Virginia.
And all of this he did despite living in a time when discrimination against African-Americans was quite intense. He dutifully served his country and his fellow men, and continued to fight against injustice. We can say, his is a life well-lived.
(Image credit: Department of Defense)
It has been almost 90 years since the first synthetic element was artificially created in a lab. That was technetium, discovered in 1937 by Carlo Perrier and Emilio Segrè. The next synthetic element was plutonium, created in 1940. Later on, plutonium would find its application in the creation of the atomic bomb and nuclear reactors.
Although synthetic elements are generally produced in a lab, some of them are naturally occurring but only in trace amounts, so it would be more practical to just synthesize them. The first entirely synthetic element was curium, discovered in 1944 by chemists Glenn T. Seaborg, Ralph A. James, and Albert Ghiorso.
Since curium's synthesis, 23 other synthetic elements have been produced over the course of 60 years. The process by which these synthetic elements are created in the lab is nuclear fusion, whereby one forces two smaller elements' nuclei to collide with each other in order to add protons to the newly formed nucleus of a larger element.
In this process, researchers often employ calcium-48 in particle accelerators to synthesize new nuclei due to its stability and the unusual richness of neutrons in its nucleus, containing 20 protos and 28 neutrons. This is why it has been used to create the five heaviest elements in the periodic table so far, from flerovium to oganesson. However, it's quite tricky when it comes to producing element 120 because it simply does not have enough protons.
Creating heavier elements beyond element 118 would require a beam with more protons. And that's where scientists at Berkeley Lab may have found a small opening for a breakthrough in the quest to create element 120.
Element 120, formally called unbinilium or Ubn, is being considered as a theoretical "island of stability" since models suggest that with the nuclear composition of this element, it will be relatively long-lived, giving scientists an opportunity to study it and perhaps, other superheavy elements, in more detail. Once element 120 is successfully created in a lab, then, it will be the first element to occupy the eighth row of the periodic table, thus opening a new horizon for nuclear physics and materials science.
For now, scientists are still trying to find the best way to create it. And Berkeley Lab, which has already discovered 16 elements, may be on its way to unlocking element 120. So, instead of using calcium-48, they tried a titanium-50 beam to successfully produce element 116, livermorium. This breakthrough may be the avenue needed.
In theory, the proposed method of making element 120 is to collide titanium-50, which has 22 protons, with californium-249, which has 98 protons, thereby resulting in element 120. Although they were successful in this attempt, they say it may still take years before we can finally see element 120 brought to fruition.
There are still many uncertainties about titanium-50. One of the main concerns with titanium-50 is its instability, which lowers the chance of having successful nuclear fusions. Furthermore, the researchers found it difficult to work with titanium-50 because it has a higher melting point, double that of calcium-48. However, for now, it is the most viable option.
(Image credit: Szczureq/Wikimedia Commons; Jenny Nuss/Berkeley Lab)
When choosing a place to live, there are a few non-negotiable factors which I consider before making a final decision. One of those factors is a high-speed internet connection. It has only been 60 years since ARPANET, the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network, was established and we now have internet connections with speeds that go up to more than 1 Gbps.
Less than 30 years ago, I remember using dial-up modems, the highest transfer speed of which was 56 kbps. Nowadays, those speeds are paltry and will no longer hold to the current standards. Fiber-to-the-home technology has enabled households to have at least 50 Mbps speeds, which can be considered decent, although the minimum recommended internet speed is 100 Mbps. With this, one can enjoy everything that the internet has to offer without latency, which allows for efficiency and higher productivity, especially since work-from-home setups have risen since the pandemic.
Needless to say, a decent internet connection has become essential to 21st century humans. And it's easy to see why. The internet has enabled us to gain access to a vast library of information, to transcend geophysical barriers to communicate with others at the soonest possible time, to establish businesses without significant capital investments or cash outlays, to express one's creativity through shared platforms as well as monetize one's output, and connect with people who share the same interests in online communities.
The cyberspace is a frontier of endless possibilities, and that's why there are movements and organizations whose sole purpose it is to ensure 100% connectivity throughout the world. As it stands, only two-thirds of the world's population are online, despite only 5% of people living in places which practically cannot have an internet connection.
That means, in theory, 95% of the world's population should be able to connect to the internet, but that's not the case. Only 67% of those who theoretically should have access to the internet are actually connected.
The International Telecommunication Union (ITU), a specialized agency associated with the United Nations whose objective is to facilitate global connectivity in communication networks, has identified two main reasons why 2.6 billion people still don't use the internet. These two reasons are the coverage gap and the usage gap.
The coverage gap is the reason why 5% of people cannot connect to the internet. Due to lack of infrastructure development, especially people living in rural areas or low-income nations, this portion of the populace literally have no access to the internet. And it's understandable since it would be difficult for internet service providers to make investments in those areas where it won't be profitable for them to establish a service.
The usage gap is why only 67% of the 95% who, theoretically, should be connected to the internet are actually online. Several factors affect these people's access to the internet. One major factor is the cost of being connected to the internet. In places where investments in network infrastructure are low, the cost of an entry-level mobile broadband subscription is about 20 times higher than developed nations who have sufficient infrastructure.
Of course, we also consider the standard of living in those places. Another reason why people aren't able to connect to the internet even if, say, there is enough infrastructure, is that they cannot afford to buy the necessary hardware i.e. smartphones, computers, etc., to access the internet.
With regard to this, there are different groups, programs, and initiatives that are trying to close the digital divide. One of which is the alliance launched by the ITU, called the Partner2Connect (P2C) Digital Coalition. What they do is to get groups to pledge to invest resources that would help foster universal connectivity and digital transformation.
Other initiatives like UK charity unconnected.org aim to provide free internet for schools in rural and underserved areas, and other companies like telecom provider IndoSat have also given out free data packages as well as conducted digital training to 100,000 people in Indonesia.
So far, not even more developed regions have 100% connectivity to the internet. As the chart above shows, even Europe, the region with the highest percentage of individuals using the internet, is still just at 91%.
There's still a long road ahead before the whole world can be fully connected to the internet. And it would take more than just the efforts of a few organizations or agencies. If governments will prioritize initiatives that will not only ensure that internet access is available for everyone, but also that everyone will have the capacity for internet access, then I think the work will be much easier.
Just imagine what it would be like if the entirety of the world's population has access to the internet. Will the world become a slightly better place for everyone?
(Image credit: Discover Savsat/Unsplash; ITU, Facts and Figures 2023)
William and Margaret Patterson owned a photo supply shop in El Paso, Texas. There was evidence that their marriage was not always happy, but they were otherwise upstanding and well-liked in the community. Then on March 6, 1957, a store employee was awakened by a call from William Patterson saying the couple were going away. That didn't seem all that suspicious, but later events would. Nine days later, a telegram arrived at the store directing employees to lease out the Patterson's home for nine months and make other odd arrangements. At the home, they found the Pattersons had not taken their luggage, and Margaret's beloved cat was wandering the neighborhood, which was very suspicious. By August, employees involved the police.
While the Pattersons were never seen again in El Paso, a cryptic letter came from Laredo about distributing the Patterson's assets, and witnesses had seen the couple in Valle de Bravo, near Mexico City. As the years passed, the clues became more infrequent, but still stranger than before. Read about the mysterious disappearance of William and Margaret Patterson at Mental Floss.
(Image credit: WhisperToMe)
While the original Star Wars trilogy left us with the idea that the Jedi were good and the Sith were bad, the prequels made us doubt the Jedi were all that ethical, and the sequel trilogy further tarnished their reputation. However, the Sith remain ridiculously evil. The latest Star Wars TV series, The Acolyte, further muddies the waters with Jedi who have plenty of questionable motivations and deeds. The streaming series concluded a couple of weeks ago, and received generally favorable reviews, after an initial review-bombing. There is no word yet on whether there will be a season two. Meanwhile, Screen Junkies has plenty to say about the series in an Honest Trailer that makes me feel as if I have seen the entire run of Star Wars: The Acolyte, yet I'm still confused as to what it's all about. The whole idea of space witches has me longing for a simple trench run.
behind the scenes of iconic album covers, a thread: pic.twitter.com/KOFKwvltaL
— pop culture (@gagasyuyi) July 16, 2024
Some album covers are works of art, while others are nonsensical, but all are designed to get our attention and a lot of thought goes into them (with some exceptions).
Twitter user @gagasyuyi collected a list of 34 album covers paired with a photo taken during the photoshoot that gives us an idea of what went into designing it. Most are from the 21st century, although they do go back as far as Abbey Road. You might be surprised by the things you thought were Photoshopped that turn out to be real, and the things you thought were real that were anything but. And we find out that they really did set a guy on fire for the cover of the 1975 Pink Floyd album Wish You Were Here.
Check out the entire collection at Twitter or at Threadreader. -via Kottke
If you were to choose by which frame of mind you will look at reality and live according to that perspective, would you rather life be a fairy tale, a novel, or a poem?
Perhaps, many of us would prefer living in a fairy tale, in a world of fantasy and magic, where the impossible can become possible, only limited by what your imagination can conjure up. Living in a novel seems no different than how we are currently living our real lives. Day in and day out, it's just a reflection of our reality. Living life as a poem seems a bit tricky, since poems are more fluid, and they don't have a certain end in mind.
Now, instead of having an aspirational perspective about the topic, if we take a different approach and look at our lives and see how we actually live, the question takes on a different form. If we were to describe our lives right now, would we say that it is a fairy tale, a novel, or a poem?
I have learned that, no matter how much I hope or plan or expect things to happen in my life, things often don't go the way we want them to. And so, the question then is, how do we respond to the different circumstances, sometimes maddening and at other times, blissfully surprising, that we encounter in life? How do we look at reality and inwardly, where do we position ourselves in the grand scheme of things?
That was the question that G.K. Chesterton pondered on in a portion of his essay collection Tremendous Trifles, quoted by The Marginalian in this article. Essentially, we can either look at our lives as a fairy tale, in that, we see ourselves as sane and rational surrounded by a chaotic and wild world, or as a novel, in which the world around us is mundane and trifling, while we are the odd ones out.
As I thought about it, it felt that the duality between these two perspectives seems insufficient to capture the fullness of reality and our response to it, whether that makes us sane or not.
On the one hand, there are times when it feels as though the world or fate has conspired against us, foiling our attempts at living peacful lives in every juncture and crossroads. And at times, it does seem as though life just offers little to stimulate our imagination and our capacity for adventure, and it drives us mad how routine everything has become, and we want to escape it somehow.
But these two scenarios are merely two of many different circumstances that can happen in life. We may be making rational decisions and things will go our way. And we may be out seeking adventure of some sort and we are thrown into the unknown, left to fend for ourselves and quench our thirst for spice in life. If we put these different scenarios under one of the storytelling frameworks, then we would be hard-pressed to categorize it under one or the other because it appears to be a mixture of the two.
Then, there's the third perspective in approaching this problem of reality and sanity. And that's the way of the poem. Whitman suggests that by breaking free from the "rules of life" that do not fit or do not work for you, then you will be able to live like a great poem. And I take that to mean that Whitman urges people to express their individuality without fear or bias of what rules of structure, rhythm, or composition dictate. Let your mind run free and take everything in as they come.
Whether you see your life right now as a fairy tale, novel, or a poem, I think what it all boils down to is our search for meaning in life. At the end of the day, we all want to live for something, and we frame the external factors and aspects in our lives according to that thing for which we strive. And so, try to find what it is that gives your life meaning and devote your life to it. Hopefully, everything else will fall into place.
(Image credit: Denise Jans/Unsplash)
I find it equally fascinating and annoying how, sometimes, a random tune would start playing in my head, and it sounds so familiar yet I can't seem to put my finger on the song's title, the singer or band who sang it, or even the lyrics. However, that just goes to show how music can be so deeply embedded in our memory that, no matter how old we get or whether we have memory problems, we can still remember and recognize familiar tunes from different moments of our lives.
My grandmother who has had dementia for the past 13 years can still remember the songs she used to listen to back in her day, so we just put those songs on repeat and let her listen to them, and it soothes her. When she's quite lucid, she'll even remember the lyrics to the songs and sing along with the video.
Sarah Sauvé, a music scientist at the University of Lincoln in the United Kingdom, recently conducted a study which suggested that our musical memories may be immune to any age-related cognitive declines or degenerative diseases like Alzheimer's. In order to test her hypothesis, she gather a group of 90 adults, ranging from age 18 to 86, and had them listen to a live concert by the Newfoundland Symphony Orchestra. Meanwhile, another group of 31 people watched a recording of the concert in a laboratory.
In the test, the researchers had the participants listen to three pieces of music: Mozart's Eine kleine Nachtmusik, of which the team assumed all the participants were familiar, and two experimental pieces which were specifically played for the experiment.
The results of the experiment showed that all the participants equally recognized Eine kleine Nachtmusik. On the other hand, they were also all unfamiliar with the two experimental pieces. The same results were found to be true for those who watched the recording in a laboratory.
According to Steffen Herff, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Sydney, Australia, the reason why people can still remember and recognize these familiar tunes even as they age may be due to the emotions attached to those pieces of music, making it more deeply embedded into our minds.
Despite these findings, the study did not look into the participants' cognitive health and functioning so it is uncertain whether any of them have problems with memory or symptoms of Alzheimer's and other neurodegenerative diseases. This study may not have focused on that and so, we cannot make a definitive conclusion about musical memory recognition or recall of people with memory problems like Alzheimer's, but there is growing interest in the use of music to help people with dementia buttress their memory from the progression of the disease.
(Image credit: Nikoloz Gachechiladze/Unsplash)
This shot of Gabriel Medina is ABSOLUTELY UNREAL 🤯 😱
— Bleacher Report (@BleacherReport) July 29, 2024
( 📸: Jerome Brouillet) pic.twitter.com/4JQNI4olsi
Here we see Brazilian surfer Gabriel Medina celebrating after riding a perfect wave, scoring a 9.9 during the qualifying round of the 2024 Olympics. The surfing events are happening in Tahiti, 15,700 kilometers (8400 miles) from Paris. Medina is so happy he's levitating above the water, along with his tethered surfboard!
The full, uncropped photo shows even more. This picture has not been Photoshopped. It was taken by surf photographer Jerome Brouillet, who knows how to capture a moment in time, but this borders on magical. To understand how serendipitous this image is, here is the video sequence showing when it was caught.
Now picture where Brouillet had to be positioned to get the picture. The shot is one in a million, or maybe even one in a billion. Medina may well go on to achieve a gold medal, but he is already a star for posing while flying through the air with a surfboard. -via reddit
This story has nothing to do with underwear. Jenny Nguyen envisioned a sports bar that only showed women's sports on the TVs. It would be more of a pub than a bar, welcoming families with children, maybe with some sports memorabilia. She would offer food and drinks from companies run by women. In 2022, she opened The Sports Bra in Portland, Oregon.
On opening night, the line to get in was long. In the first nine months, the bar pulled in a million dollars. Athletes and teams donated memorabilia from women's sports that line the walls. Other people took the idea and ran with it, like Jillian Hiscock, who opened A Bar of Their Own in Minneapolis. And most importantly, young girls saw athletes they could look up to on the TVs and on the walls. Read about the meteoric rise of The Sports Bra and women's sports in general at The 19th. -via Metafilter
(Image credit: Another Believer)
Storm chasing is quite a peculiar occupation, whether one is a professional or a hobbyist. When we first took notice of these folks, they seem tailor-made for exciting action movies and reality TV. The new movie Twisters opened ten days ago and scored a record box office for a natural disaster movie. But is it anything like a real storm chaser's life? Just the more exciting parts. Oh yeah, it takes a special person to even consider heading toward a tornado instead of away from one, but you can't just decide to do it and think you'll be okay. The real labor that storm chasers put in to learn the ropes and find tornados to get relatively intimate with while staying safe is a lot of work, but not all that exciting onscreen. Still, learning the story behind the story is always interesting. Accomplished storm chasers have varied motivations, but some of them have ultimately made the rest of us safer.
