DFW Wonder Woman, a cosplayer in Dallas, Texas, specializes in mashups of her favorite superhero. She produces each costume to a matchless level of quality, as you can see in this mermaid version of the Princess of Themyscira photographed by Ginger Arlene.

In 1893, James MacMurray gave up his job of tending sheep to become a New York City firefighter. He brought along his trusty collie, Robert Bruce. The dog was a trained and capable sheep dog, now expected to become a big city fire station mascot. They say you can't teach an old dog new tricks, but Robert Bruce was only two years old, and quickly came to understand his new responsibilities. In fact, he soon became a hero. In October of that year, the Nevius & Haviland wallpaper factory caught fire, which spread to the William Campbell paper factory.   

Flames were bursting from the windows of both factories by the time the first of many fire companies arrived. In their rush and excitement, the firemen of Robert Bruce’s company forgot about the horses. Even fireman Pete Tinkum, who drove the engine that night, did not notice that the fire was beginning to spread at the corner of the block where his horses stood.

Since it was the dog’s job to stay with the engines during the fires, Robert Bruce was the first to notice the horse nearest the flames succumb to the heat and collapsed.  He jumped from firemen to fireman to get their attention, but they were too occupied to pay the dog any mind. Finally, he jumped on Pete, who followed the frantic dog to the engine and saved the other horses just in time before they also suffocated.

That's a good dog. It was not the last time Robert Bruce saved lives during fires. Read about two other occasions in which the fire dog distinguished himself, including once where his sheep herding skills were crucial, at The Hatching Cat. -via Strange Company

Nikon has announced the winners of their annual Small World Microphotgraphy competition. The top winner this year is Daniel Castranova, along with Dr. Brant M. Weinstein and Bakary Samasa of the National Institutes of Health for this image of a juvenile zebrafish with its organs highlighted with fluorescent tags. The lymphatic system is orange and the scales are blue.

This image is particularly significant because it was taken as part of an imaging effort that helped Castranova’s team make a groundbreaking discovery - zebrafish have lymphatic vessels inside their skull that were previously thought to occur only in mammals. Their occurrence in fish, a much easier subject to raise, experiment with, and photograph, could expedite and revolutionize research related to treatments for diseases that occur in the human brain, including cancer and Alzheimer’s.

Castranova stitched together more than 350 individual images to create this single stunning visual. The image was acquired using a spinning disk confocal, merging together maximum intensity projections of three separate image Z stacks to generate the final reconstructed image.

See, and read about, the top twenty ranked images from this year's competition at the winners gallery. The honorable mentions are worth a look, too. -via Kottke

The Miss Mexico pageant competition is underway, and all 32 contestants are required to model a costume that reflects the national character. While some have the Vegas showgirl vibe we are used to from the Miss Universe pageant, many are stunning in other ways.

See all 32 contestants in their costumes in a ranked list at Bored Panda. The pageant finale will take place on October 31st.  

(Images from the Miss Mexico Organization at Facebook)

Scientists pretty much agree that the 50-foot shark Otodus megalodon has been extinct for millions of years, yet the monster shark is very much on the public's radar, thanks to monster movies and Shark Week -and even before that, anyone who's ever stood inside a fossil megalodon jaw had to be very impressed.    

Fossil shark teeth got people hooked on the Meg long before paleontology took off in the early 19th century, when scientists started cataloging fossils with gusto. In 1835, Swiss naturalist Louis Agassiz described triangular, finely serrated teeth, which had been found worldwide since antiquity, as belonging to a “megatooth” relative of the great white.

Discoveries around the world—in locations as diverse as Panama, Japan, Australia, and the southeastern United States—piled up over time, but one particular find raised the specter of a Meg still swimming in the deep. In 1875, during an expedition for the Royal Society of London, the HMS Challenger dredged up 4-inch-long teeth from a depth of 14,000 feet near Tahiti. In 1959, zoologist Wladimir Tschernezky, who made a hobby of researching “hidden animals” like Bigfoot, estimated the specimens were just 11,300 years old. Other scientists have since dismissed this dating, but unscrupulous documentarians and curious amateurs still highlight the research as a hint that Meg might persist.

Even if the date is wrong, it's intriguing to think that megalodon may be hiding out in the deeper parts of the ocean, where humans find conditions difficult for study and there's plenty of room for creatures we've never seen before. However, there are scientific reasons to think that even if the giant shark managed to make a home there, it would have had to change into something very different to survive. Read those reasons at Popular Science. -via Digg

Food has to have at least 2 qualities. One, it has to be edible. Two, it has to look good (if not, then at least it should look decent). And then, there are those people who take away even these basic qualities from food, and the result is stomach-churning “food.”

Instagram account @TotallyGourmet has taken upon itself to show the world terrible food pictures that will make you feel deeply uncomfortable just by looking at them.

For your safety, I will only share here the picture that gives the least discomfort. But if you’re brave enough, then go ahead and visit Sad and Useless for more photos.

(Image Credit: Totally Gourmet/ Sad and Useless)

The historic Charles Bridge in Prague, Czech Republic, was built over the Vltava River. Construction began in 1357 and continued for around 50 years. How did they build such a large and sturdy bridge back then? This video by Tomáš Musílek gives us a ridiculously quick idea of what was involved in the bridge construction.  
 


We can only hope the engineers and laborers alike were adequately compensated. -via TYWKIWDBI

(Image credit: Sergey Ashmarin)

In 2018, a new science fiction museum opened in Allendale Town, England. Neil Cole's Adventures in Science Fiction: Museum of Sci-fi lured science fiction fans to the small village in Northumberland County. Locals enjoyed it too, as well as they enjoyed the extra business brought by tourists. But only three months after the opening, the Northumberland County Council confronted Cole with a complaint that a small shed in front of the museum did not conform with the historical nature of the building, and must be taken down within 14 days. The shed was a shelter for a Dalek, the fictional space villains of the TV series Doctor Who.

“One of the arguments that a councilor made [against the shed] was that we didn’t need a Dalek outside because we had one inside,” says Cole. “They were missing the point: The one inside is an original; the one outside attracts people inside. A little sandwich board is not going to do it.”

Cole refused to be bullied, but the Planning Committee would not yield. The battle between the AllenDalek and the Northumberland County Council made headlines across the country—and the globe. Even Hollywood took notice; a Tom Hardy–helmed film about the saga is currently in development. The Council repeatedly declined requests for comment at the time, instead releasing the statement, “We wish to work with the property owner to resolve this[.]”

The Council didn’t appear to be quite so open to dialogue in practice. On two separate occasions, Cole claims, a member of the Planning Department was caught hiding behind his garbage bins, covertly snapping photos of the AllenDalek. Cole says, “It was all about ego, saving face, and people throwing their power around irresponsibly.”

Sci-fi fans, and fans of the museum, got involved to save the museum's outdoor Dalek. Find out how the saga of the AllenDalek has played out so far (it's not quite over yet) at Atlas Obscura.

Police officers in Western Australia have called off their search for the body of a missing 52-year-old surfer last Sunday, two days after the man was attacked by a shark. This would be the sixth case of a person killed by a shark this year, and this year will be the highest record of deaths caused by a shark in Australia since 1934. So what’s happening with the sharks there?

This number is well above Australia’s 50-year average of 1.02 deaths a year. Yet while fatalities are at an 86-year high, the number of unprovoked shark bites, 17, is more or less in line with the average over the past decade: meaning it’s not the number but rather the nature of the attacks that’s contributing to the uptick in deaths.

“In some of the cases this year it sounds like the shark hung around and bit more than once, which is unusual behaviour for great white sharks,” Dr Blake Chapman, a marine biologist who examined shark neuroscience for her PhD, told Guardian Australia. “[And] when they bite more than once it’s more likely to be fatal as there’s more blood loss.”

Dr Chapman noted that multiple bites could suggest the apex predators are starting to treat humans as prey. Another factor could be the weather.

Dr Chapman notes, however, that the data is inconclusive.

More details about this over at Vice.

What are your thoughts about this one?

(Image Credit: Olga Ernst/ Wikimedia Commons)

1643. England is in the middle of a civil war between the royalists and the parliamentarians for months now, and the latter just intercepted a letter from the former after the battle of Chichester in 1642. This might have been crucial information, but the parliamentarians had one big problem: the message was coded.

Enter John Wallis, a young chaplain, who was 26 at that time. Wallis caught wind of some gossip about the letter, and…

Not a little audaciously, Wallis, a young clergyman, offered to try his hand at deciphering the letter. If Wallis’s diary is to be believed, he cracked the code before going to bed that night, and so began a new career as one of England’s foremost cryptographers.

Wallis would decode many letters before his death in 1703. Today, many of his deciphered letters are valued at a high price, and recently, 53 of his deciphered letters were sold by the Dominic Winter Auctioneers for £29,000 (over $37,000).

How did Wallis decode the letters? What method did he use?

The answers are over at Atlas Obscura.

(Image Credit: Philip Beeley/ Atlas Obscura)

The game is to guess what product they are advertising, which will be revealed at the very end. If you want to have some real fun, stop the ad and tell us your guess as soon as you come up with one. Otherwise, just watch and feel sorry for these guys.  -via reddit

We all recognize Banksy's art style, but can a neural network learn to mimic it? Yes and no. Matt Round trained an algorithm named GANksy by feeding it Banksy artworks. The result is about what you'd expect- GANksy learned the style as it was supposed to, but like other artificial intelligence algorithms, it doesn't really understand reality. GANksy's artworks are for sale, and "All proceeds will help us make more nonsense."  -via Boing Boing

Tinnitus affects millions of people around the globe. A person having this condition hears a ringing noise in his ears. It is stated that this condition can cause difficulty focusing, as well as anxiety and fatigue, which could lead in a reduced quality of life.

For years, scientists have been looking for ways to alleviate the ringing sound heard by people with tinnitus…

but to date, no drug or medical device has been shown to reliably improve this condition.

Just recently, scientists have discovered a method which could be an effective way to provide relief to those with tinnitus. The method involves combining sounds with zaps to the tongue.

According to study co-author Hubert Lim, an associate professor of biomedical engineering and otolaryngology at the University of Minnesota, this treatment targets a subset of brain cells that are firing abnormally. Through studies in both humans and animals, Lim’s team and others previously reported that electrically stimulating touch-sensitive neurons in the tongue or face can activate neurons in the auditory system. Pairing these zaps with sounds appears to rewire brain circuits associated with tinnitus.

Learn more about this over at Scientific American.

(Image Credit: Anemone123/ Pixabay)

Imagine that you traveled the world with a particular destination in mind, and just as you were about to reach it, it was decreed off-limits. You can see it, but you can't touch. And you had to stay there, so close yet so far away. That's the story of 26-year-old Jesse Katayama of Osaka, Japan, who flew to Peru to visit Machu Picchu. He landed on March 14, just in time for a national lockdown.  

With international flights on hold and lockdown in full effect, 26-year-old Katayama was stranded, report Tiffany May and Hisako Ueno for the New York Times. He rented a small room in Aguas Calientes and passed the time by teaching boxing to local children, taking yoga classes, and studying for various exams.

In his free time, Katayama visited nearby attractions like the Putucusi Mountain and the Calientes Waterfalls. But the destination he’d originally set out to see remained elusive.

“I go to run every morning and I could see Machu Picchu afar in distance,” he tells CNN’s Lilit Marcus. “I thought I would never make it to Machu Picchu as I was expecting it [wouldn’t] open within this year.”

Seven months later, Katayama finally got to see Machu Picchu in a most spectacular fashion, which you can read about at Smithsonian.

Scream came out in 1996, but since it's October and we've never seen an Honest Trailer for it, well, that makes today an appropriate time to take another look at the movie. Scream was both a slasher/horror film and a comedy satire of such films ...and it almost single-handedly saved the horror genre from fading away in the mid-'90s. If you've never seen the original Scream, this Honest Trailer might convince you to give it a look this Halloween season -or maybe watch it again, because it's been long enough to forget the details.