Talk about reusing trash items, right? Researchers have discovered a way to convert discarded tires into a strengthening material for concrete. The rubber from tires was turned into nanomaterial graphene, a strong carbon that can make concrete tougher and more sustainable. Anthropocene Magazine has the details: 

The team from Rice University and C-Crete Technologies in Stafford, TX decided to convert waste tires into graphene, which has been shown before to strengthen concrete.

They used a graphene-production technique developed at Rice called flash heating, which involves superheating carbon sources such as food waste or plastic with a jolt of electricity. The process removes everything else besides carbon atoms, which rearrange into graphene flakes.

The team found that rubber is harder to turn into graphene. So they used the black waste material that is leftover after tires have gone through a recycling process to extract oil. They could convert about 70 percent of this carbon black residue into graphene with flash heating.

Next, they added tiny amounts of this graphene to Portland cement and used it to make concrete cylinders. After seven days of curing, tests showed that the graphene-infused cylinders were 30 percent stronger than regular concrete.

Flash heating is an easy and inexpensive way to produce graphene from rubber tire waste that would otherwise be burned for fuel or disposed in landfills, the researchers write in the paper,

Image via Anthropocene Magazine

The wheel has been reinvented- literally. A group of scientists detailed their design for a new tire that can change its own structure. In a paper published in Science Robotics, the new conceptual wheel is an origami-inspired, shape-shifting tire that can switch between the more traditional tall-and-skinny shape to a short-and-fat form. Inverse has more details: 

The “high-load capacity origami transformable wheel” is not a catchy name, but the wheel uses something called the waterbomb tesselation origami pattern (which is an awesome name) to transition between small and large forms as it is being used.

Origami wheels similar to this one are not new, but these past designs weren’t very good at actually carrying loads during the transition process. A transforming wheel isn’t particularly useful to a driver if you first have to take all your gear off your rig to use it.

The new wheel, however, is capable of bearing more than 2,248 pounds in weight — even when transitioning between wheel shapes.

Image via Inverse 

After being discovered by a caretaker nine years after his death, the Norwegian police investigated. The man was found when the caretaker requested that the police open the apartment so he could do maintenance work. The police believe that the man died in 2011, and an autopsy showed that he died of natural causes: 

His pension was stopped in 2018 when the Norwegian Labour and Welfare Administration (NAV) could not get in touch with him but his bills continued to be paid automatically from his bank account.

Oslo police inspector Grete Lien Metlid told NRK she and her colleagues had thought a lot about how somebody could have lain dead for so long without being missed.

“This is a special case and it has made us ask questions about how it could happen,” she told NRK. “Based on the picture we have, he was obviously a person who chose to have little contact with others.”

Arne Krokan, a professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, said the man would unlikely have lain dead undiscovered for nine years if he had died 30 years ago.

The failure of new technological systems to raise red flags when someone did not make physical contact was “the price we’ve paid for digital services”, he said.

Image via The Guardian 

Upon its release, Ghost of Tsushima took the video game world by storm. While the game may not have won the Game of The Year award last year, people still praised it for its stunning graphics, great voice acting, and realistic combat. But if the combat is said to be realistic, then that means that it can be recreated in real life. But can it really be recreated? Turns out, the answer is yes, but you need to be a sword expert if you plan on doing this.

(Image Credit: Gamology/ YouTube)

A mallard duckling raises its head as a tiny fly hovers above it. In another scene, a swallow can be seen flying through a window with broken glass, and the bird maneuvers its body to make sure that it won’t get hurt as it goes through the window. Meanwhile, a shag, probably searching for food, dives deep into the water.

These are just some of the best photos of the 2021 Bird Photographer of the Year Contest that Colossal has compiled. See more of these over at the site.

(Image Credit: Zdenek Jakl/ Colossal)

@tiabhuva

From afar, shards of ice seem to occupy the space inside the glass box. But as we come closer towards the glass box, we realize that these are not ice shards, but a sedge of tiny orizuru (paper cranes), with each orizuru having only about a centimeter wingspan. These miniature origami cranes are made by the Japanese artist Naoki Onogawa.

Orizuru typically are a symbol of peace. But for Onogawa, they hold a slightly different meaning: prayer. When the March 11th earthquake and tsunami struck the Tohoku region, Onogawa was still a student. But when he visited the Rikuzentakada area the following year, he was struck by the destruction and devastation. It was this experience that prompted the artist to begin making miniature paper cranes as a symbol of prayer.

[...]

Naoki Onogawa is currently showing new works pictured here in an exhibition titled “folklore” at the Setouchi City Museum of Art. The exhibition is up through May 5, 2021 but you can also keep up with the artist on Instagram.

See more of Onogawa’s works over at Spoon & Tamago.

Amazing!

(Image Credit: Spoon & Tamago)

When Wawan Margono suddenly received gibberish messages from his girlfriend Mikayla, he thought that she went crazy and immediately checked up on her inside her room. But upon entering the room, what welcomed Wawan was not her girlfriend, but their cats who were sitting down on the keyboard of Mikayla’s laptop.

Obviously, the cats did not care about what they had done.

(Image Credit: Wawan BudiAwan Margono / The Meowed Club On Facebook)

White canvas sneakers are difficult to clean, especially if they’re past the point of being returned back to their pristine state. However, with the help of the father-daughter duo Miguel and Grace Showlorio, we can now get some tips on how to polish our old shoes into near-new condition. They scour local thrift stores for sneakers in need of some TLC and do their magic, posting their progress on TikTok and introducing themselves as shoe doctors. Check out GQ’s full piece on the Showlorios as they share some tips and most surprising sneaker transformations. 

image via GQ

The question is, how did they react? The Indiana Bell Telephone Company was able to add a second building beside its headquarters in Indianapolis by rotating it 90 degrees. The company was able to successfully rotate and erect the changes despite the fact that there were employees that were working in the building! Open Culture has more details: 

But between October 20th and November 14th, 1930, the company did indeed manage to turn and shift the entire structure as planned, “and the move caused no service outages, and all 600 workers within the building still reported to work every day.”

This necessitated lengthening and making flexible all its utility cables and pipes, then lifting it a quarter-inch with jacks and placing it on rollers. “Every six strokes of the jacks would shift the building three-eighths of an inch, moving it fifteen inches per hour.” As for Indiana Bell’s employees, they entered and left their slowly pivoting workplace “using a movable passenger walkway that moved with the building.” To Kurt Vonnegut Jr., then eight years old, all this must have been an impressive sight indeed.

The fastest record for beating the original Super Mario Bros. for the NES was previously four minutes and 55 seconds. This record has been unbeatable for two years, to the point that there are forum discussions about achieving a 4 minutes and 54 seconds run. The debates ended, as Twitch streamer Niftski managed to finish the game at 4:54:97, toppling the multiple 4:55 records in the speedrun records, as Polygon details: 

Theoretically, a faster time has always been possible. At least, that’s what tool-assisted speedruns, which can be written frame by frame, tell the experts. The question was whether or not an actual human could improve on what is already an extremely optimized run that requires pixel-perfect control. Already, a 4:55 time is nearly flawless compared to what a computer can achieve (4:54.26, for those keeping track.)

And now, in 2021, someone has. The new record, which is being called historic by the community, was achieved by Twitch streamer Niftski. Clocking in at 4:54:97, it is now the fastest anyone has beaten Super Mario Bros.

“This is insane,” Niftski said during the stream. “It hit me, but it hasn’t hit me fully.”

Now that the seemingly impossible has been achieved, the streamer ended his broadcast by announcing that he was developing new 2021 goals for the game.

Image via Gaming Age

The fabric looks like strokes of paint on a well-colored background. Thomas Jackson uses the wind as the main tool in his series of dreamy images, featuring multiple fabrics over Californian seascapes. Jackson picked nylon tulle for his artworks, as it is lightweight, flexible, highly durable, and can be used for multiple shoots: 

The series takes place primarily on the scenic shores of Point Reyes and Stinson Beach in northern California, near San Francisco. “The initial inspiration for the series was fire,” Jackson explains. “As a California resident living in a vulnerable area, the threat of fire and the resulting pollution became a constant preoccupation. Once I started shooting, however, the work took on a life of its own. Some of the installations ended up resembling fire, but others assumed more abstract, inscrutable forms. The wind, it turned out, is an unreliable artistic collaborator, and many of the shoots turned out completely different from what I initially envisioned. However, fire remains the guiding inspiration for this series as I go forward.”

Image via My Modern Met 

Paweł Kałuziak is confident when he lets his dog Gucio go off leash as they walk along the wooded trail near their home in Poland. After all, they know this path well, and Gucio never strays far from him. But one day in Early February, something unexpected happened: Gucio did not return to Kałuziak.

When Gucio failed to appear after a few minutes, Kałuziak became concerned.

“He always comes back whenever I call to him,” Kałuziak told The Dodo. “But when I called his name, Gucio did not come back.”

Kałuziak continued to search all through the afternoon, but his dog was nowhere to be found.

For days, Kałuziak searched for Gucio, but to no avail. And then days turned into weeks, but Kałuziak did not give up.

Several weeks later after Gucio’s disappearance, a man walked his dog Diego in the same area where Kałuziak and Gucio walked. Suddenly, Diego tugged on his leash repeatedly, catching the attention of his owner. Diego then led his owner to a deep hole that was hidden in the landscape, and inside that hole was Gucio, tired and too weak to bark. Thanks to Diego, Gucio was found before it was too late.

All told, it’s believed that Gucio had been trapped in the hole for 32 days, surviving on melting snow. He’d grown very weak and thin, but it was nothing Gucio couldn’t overcome with the love of his family.

Read more about this heartwarming story over at The Dodo.

(Image Credit: Paweł Kałuziak/ The Dodo)

Not before she managed to break her own record, of course! Ayanna Williams beat her previous Guinness World Record of 18 ft and 10.9 inches before sawing her nails off with an electric rotary tool. The official measurement of her nails was 24 feet and Williams shared that she has been growing her nails for about 28 or 29 years, as People details:  

"I have mixed emotions about my babies going," she said about her nails, revealing she's been growing them for "about 28 [or] 29 years."

Williams continued, "I'm so, so ready for a new life. I know I'm going to miss them, but it's just about that time – it's time for them to go. I'm just about tired of them so it's time for them to go."

"With or without my nails, I will still be the queen. My nails don't make me, I make my nails!" she stated.

She also revealed her decision to cut her nails stemmed from difficulty doing daily tasks.

"With my movements, I have to be very, very careful. So usually in my mind, I'm already preparing for the next step that I have to do to make sure that I don't hurt myself with my nails - or break them," Williams revealed. "I'm excited about cutting my nails because I'm looking forward to new beginnings."

Image via People