If you notice your phone battery capacity dropping after a year or two of use: that’s normal, because rechargeable batteries slowly lose capacity over time. Charging your phone while you sleep is also a bad habit to adopt, especially if you’re partially charging your phone’s battery between 20 to 80 percent, as Make Use Of details: 

Manufacturers specify the life expectancy of smartphones through "battery charge cycles." A charge cycle is defined as charging the battery from 0 to 100 percent and then discharged back down to 0 percent. The number of expected charge cycles will tell you how many full cycles the battery can handle before it noticeably starts to lose capacity.

Avoid extremes to extend your battery life. Partial charges and discharges that combine to 100 percent count as a single full cycle. By partially charging and discharging between 20 and 80 percent, you could get 1,000 full cycles or more before hitting a noticeable drop in capacity. That's almost three years of daily charges.

Why does this happen? It's due to how your battery actually works. These batteries are made of a lithium cobalt oxide layer and a graphite layer. Lithium ions move from the graphite to the lithium cobalt oxide to release energy. Charging your battery moves those ions back to the graphite layer.

That's why either extreme damages the battery: you're compromising the cell's integrity because over-stuffing a layer with Lithium increases internal resistance.

Image via Make Use Of 

Crocodile tears have a use after all! Some bugs will actually land near a crocodile’s eyes to drink their tears. Ecologist Carlo de la Rosa noticed that some bugs were perched near a crocodile’s eyes while he was traveling the Puerto Viejo River in Costa Rica  He then found out that the bees and butterflies drink crocodile tears for their salt intake. 

(via Flipboard) 

Image screenshot via Flipboard 

Over the years, space junk has become a growing problem for the Earth’s atmosphere. Of the approximately 6,000 satellites orbiting our planet, about 60 percent of them are now defunct and unused, and this junk presents many hazards to our atmosphere. To address this problem, the Japanese logging and wood processing company, Sumitomo Forestry Co., has teamed up with Kyoto University. Their goal: to design and build wooden satellites. They aim to have working prototypes by 2023.

Both will work together to experiment with different types of wood and test them in extreme environments on Earth, emulating conditions quite similar to those faced by satellites launched into orbit – such as severe changes in temperature and unfiltered exposure to sunlight and radiation.

Kyoto University professor and Japanese astronaut Takao Dai explained to the BBC that wooden satellites held one major advantage over their counterparts made from metal – should they fall out of orbit and burn up upon re-entering the atmosphere, they won't release as many harmful particles and dangerous debris.

"We are very concerned with the fact that all the satellites which re-enter the Earth's atmosphere burn and create tiny alumina particles which will float in the upper atmosphere for many years," he said, also adding that "eventually, it will affect the environment of the Earth."

Cool!

(Image Credit: BBC/ Mashable)

It’s something we are all familiar with: liquid glass. Scientists at the University of Konstanz have identified liquid glass as a new state of matter. Glass is actually not a liquid, as much as other people would tell you, it is an amorphous solid: 

Normally when a substance transitions from a liquid to a solid, the formerly free-flowing atoms line up into a rigid crystal formation. That’s not the case with glass though: its atoms “freeze” in their disordered state.

In the new study, the researchers discovered a form of glass where the atoms exhibit a complex behavior that’s never been seen in bulk glass before. Essentially, the atoms can move but aren’t able to rotate.

The team made this discovery in a model system of colloidal suspensions. These mixtures are made up of large solid particles suspended in a fluid, making it easier for scientists to observe the physical behavior of atoms or molecules. Normally these particles are spheres, but for this experiment the team used elliptical ones so they could tell which direction they were pointing.

Image via New Atlas 

Pop culture stories do manage to all look alike after a while. When a story works, it will work again. While not checking all the boxes, I can think of other heroes that fit this trope. Dorothy Gale for one. Frodo. King Arthur. Of course, there are reasons for all this. It's everyone's fantasy to be the hero of their own story. The lack of parents frees one to act instead being protected. Magic and special abilities make it possible. Fighting for justice against oppressive evil overlords is the epitome of heroism. The stick and the hairy friend... those are just a lot of fun. This comic is from John Atkinson at Wrong Hands. -via Geeks Are Sexy

Don’t worry, it’s not a fictional movie. A feature film based on the Rubik’s Cube will be made by Hyde Park Entertainment Group and Endeavor Content. The film isn’t the only media that Hyde Park Entertainment is making based on the iconic toy. The company, in partnership with Glassman Media, is also making a game show based on the toy. 

Image via wikimedia commons

 The deadly dance floor where John the Baptist was sentenced to death has been found by archaeologists. A courtyard uncovered at Machaerus in Jordan is likely the area where Salome danced so well that she was able to ask for John the Baptist’s head as a reward. Live Science has the details: 

At Herod Antipas' birthday party, Herodias' daughter, named Salome, performed a dance that so delighted Herod Antipas that the king promised her anything she wanted as a reward. Salome, goaded on by Herodias, asked for the head of John the Baptist. Herod Antipas was reluctant to grant the request, according to the Bible, but he ultimately decided to fulfill it and had John the Baptist's head brought to Salome on a platter. 

A courtyard uncovered at Machaerus is likely the place where Salome's dance was performed and where Herod Antipas decided to have John the Baptist beheaded, wrote Győző Vörös, director of a project called Machaerus Excavations and Surveys at the Dead Sea, in the book "Holy Land Archaeology on Either Side: Archaeological Essays in Honour of Eugenio Alliata" (Fondazione Terra Santa, 2020). The courtyard, Vörös said, has an apsidal-shaped niche that is probably the remains of the throne where Herod Antipas sat. 

Whether or not the discovered area is the actual location where John the Baptist was beheaded remains unknown. But hey, at least we can associate a place in real life towards the event now, right? 

Image via Live Science 

People in the past envisioned flying cars by the year 2010. Yeah, sorry about that, but we have yet to achieve the flying cars we see in films. While most of us are scrolling through various ‘yearly fortunes’ and tarot card readings for a sneak peek of what can happen to us this year, it’s also fun to check out what people from a full century ago envisioned for us. Entrepreneur’s Jason Feifer compiles the predictions people from 1921 had for the year 2021. Do you think some of it will come true or has already come true? 

Image via the Entrepreneur

Between 1836 and 1880, the remains of a shipwreck were visible in the sand dunes near Warrnambool on the Shipwreck Coast of Victoria, Australia. It was one of many, which is how the Shipwreck Coast got its name. This particular wreck was unusually flat-bottomed and was said to have been there so long that it was part of Gunditjmara Aboriginal folklore. Influential writers speculated that it was Portuguese, but it was only after the sands of time had reclaimed the wreckage that the legend of the Mahogany Ship took hold.

In 1977, the Portuguese theory was resurrected—and seemingly confirmed—by a book called The Secret Discovery of Australia, written by lawyer and historian, the late Kenneth McIntyre. McIntyre asserted that the Mahogany Ship was one of a trio of caravels captained by Cristóvão de Mendonça in 1522 on a covert exploration through Spanish-controlled waters. Ironically, the ships were searching for another bit of maritime lore: Marco Polo’s fabled island of gold, Jave la Grande. According to McIntyre, Mendonça successfully charted the east coast of Jave la Grande before changing course for home after the Mahogany Ship sank in a perilous storm.

McIntyre's theory rested more on speculation than evidence, but the book went to the reading list at Australian schools, and the town of Warrnambool hosts a Portuguese cultural festival in honor of the early explorers who supposedly left the Mahogany Ship behind. The buried wreck has not been found, but continues to draw scientists and treasure hunters to Warrnambool. Read the legend of the Mahogany Ship as we know it at Atlas Obscura.

Last month, a motorcyclist crashed into a baby elephant in Thailand. The rider was not badly injured, but the elephant was in very bad shape. An off-duty rescue worker named Mana Srivate came upon the scene and immediately began performing CPR on the elephant. BBC News reports:

Mr Mana, who has been a rescue worker for 26 years, told Reuters he came across the accident scene late on Sunday while he was off duty on a road trip.

"It's my instinct to save lives, but I was worried the whole time because I can hear the mother and other elephants calling for the baby," Mr Mana told the agency by phone.

"I assumed where an elephant heart would be located based on human theory and a video clip I saw online.

"When the baby elephant starting to move, I almost cried," he said.

After ten minutes, the baby elephant stood up. After subsequent treatment, it was released back into the wild.

-via Twisted Sifter

US Coast Guard veteran Craig J. Gordnier transformed a 1999 Blue Bird school bus into a house on wheels. The transformation was a solo project that ran for 200 days. The result of his hard work was a surprisingly spacious and cozy home. It even comes with an espresso bar! Designboom has more details: 

craig began by raising the original roof by 20 inches, resulting in a maximum ceiling height of 8ft 6 inches. the interior is split into kitchen, living, and sleeping accommodation, with the bed located at the rear of the bus and the kitchen counter positioned at the front. 

partitioned off from the bed is a rainfall shower with skylight above. the bus also features a tiled hearth to match the shower, an artificial fireplace, an 11ft poured epoxy kitchen counter, a full espresso bar, a queen size pull out couch, and stainless steel appliances. everything is 100% powered by the sun thanks to solar panels on the roof.

the new home was designed and built by craig and he now lives and travels full time in the 1999 blue bird. to see more pictures of the transformation, and to follow craig on his journeys across the US, you can check out his instagram page here, where he posts to over 11k followers.

Image via Designboom 

It even feels like the fabric is sentient as it dances against these beautiful landscapes. London-based photographer Neal Grundy’s ongoing series, Transient Sculptures, consists of photos of shimmering fabrics dancing in front of different landscapes. His photos capture the movement of the fabrics in a single moment, as Plain Magazine details: 

In his ongoing series, Grundy employs his still skills in capturing a collection of shimmering fabrics dancing in front of a range of landscapes. His work is all the more beautiful given the lives of his ‘subjects’ that are lost outside of the moment the shutter snaps. His photographic sculptures capture the fabric in a single moment, its solid structure a mere illusion only recorded then and there by the camera. Shot during the UK’s Covid lockdown in early 2020, the series is backdropped by East Sussex’s coastal landscape. Discover more of his work on his website and on Instagram.

Image via Plain Magazine

On Sunday, a 14-year old girl became entangled on ski lift at the Bristol Mountain Ski Resort in Canandaigua, New York. For two minutes, she hung from her jacket, which was wrapped around the lift. The resort's ski patrol quickly brought out a tarp to catch her. She was, thankfully, uninjured and was able to walk away from the scene.

The incident could have had a far worse outcome. ABC News reports that chairlifts can, on rare occasions, be deadly:

Ski lift accidents are rare. According to the National Ski Areas Association, a person is five times more likely to die in an elevator and eight times more likely to die in a car than on a chairlift.

Still, rare does not mean never. In 2019, 17-year-old Connor Golembiewski died after a 20-foot fall off of a lift at a ski resort in Pennsylvania's Pocono Mountains.

In an incident similar to this week's in 2018, a 5-year-old girl dangling from a chairlift was rescued after falling safely onto a tarp at Bear Mountain Ski Resort in Southern California.

-via Super Punch

The Sinai Peninsula in Egypt is the bridge between Africa and Asia. Around 4,000 years ago, the Sinai plateau called Serabit el-Khadim was a center for mining turquoise and other minerals, which drew laborers from neighboring nations who could not read Egyptian hieroglyphs. In 1905, artifacts taken from a temple in Serabit el-Khadim included a small sphinx with strange markings, which have since been identified as an alphabet, and even translated.     

“For me, it’s worth all the gold in Egypt,” the Israeli Egyptologist Orly Goldwasser said of this little sphinx when we viewed it at the British Museum in late 2018. She had come to London to be interviewed for a BBC documentary about the history of writing. In the high-ceilinged Egypt and Sudan study room lined with bookcases, separated from the crowds in the public galleries by locked doors and iron staircases, a curator brought the sphinx out of its basket and placed it on a table, where Goldwasser and I marveled at it. “Every word we read and write started with him and his friends.” She explained how miners on Sinai would have gone about transforming a hieroglyph into a letter: “Call the picture by name, pick up only the first sound and discard the picture from your mind.” Thus, the hieroglyph for an ox, aleph, helped give a shape to the letter “a,” while the alphabet’s inventors derived “b” from the hieroglyph for “house,” bêt. These first two signs came to form the name of the system itself: alphabet. Some letters were borrowed from hieroglyphs, others drawn from life, until all the sounds of the language they spoke could be represented in written form.

The concept of an alphabet profoundly changed the way we communicate. By turning sounds into symbols, speech could be recorded and deciphered in different languages, and new words can be constructed without previous written context. The theory that the idea was developed by itinerant laborers working together to overcome their illiteracy in a foreign country is an intriguing idea, which you can read about at Smithsonian.

(Image credit: British Museum)

Multiple witnesses in Hawaii reported an unidentified flying object Tuesday night. It was bright blue, and described as being "larger than a telephone pole." Is it an advertising stunt gone wrong? Or God seeding the ocean with a new species of nudibranch? What does it look like to you? Check out the footage as broadcast by the local ABC affiliate. -via Geekologie