Sol Neelman is a sports photographer who once dreamed of being a pro wrestler. Now, he has published his third photobook titled More Weird Sports in which he documents sports like mashed potato wrestling and cosmic bowling.
Weird sports is loosely defined, but for Neelman’s purposes, it’s any athletic gathering he deems out-of-the-norm, often prizing performance art and a good time over competition and athletics.
With its shiny blue hue, this electric blue tarantula named Chilobrachys natanicharum surely mesmerizes those that gaze upon it, since it's quite rare to see anything in nature that would be akin to something like phosphorescence. Now, a study had given this explanation as to why the tarantula would have such a pigmentation:
According to the study, the secret behind the electric blue tarantula’s wild color comes from the unique structure of their hair and not from a presence of blue pigment. Their hair incorporates nanostructures that manipulate the light shining on it to create the blue appearance. Their hair can also display a more violet hue depending on the light, which creates an iridescent effect.
“The males stop worrying about anything else and, for the first time, we have found signs of that re-prioritization in the behavior of specific brain cells,” said Vikram Gadagkar, PhD, a principal investigator at Columbia’s Zuckerman Institute and a co-first author, along with graduate student Andrea Roeser of Cornell University, on a new paper in Nature that documents these findings.
“Our findings could help explain what our brains are doing when they shift gears as different opportunities arise and as our priorities change,” said Dr. Gadagkar, who also is an assistant professor of neuroscience at Columbia’s Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons.
Eurekalert shares details of the findings by Dr. Gadagkar and his colleagues as well as a link to their paper titled "Dopaminergic error signals retune to social feedback during courtship".
The photo was posted by the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) about a week ago, and it served as a testament of the capability of the camera system onboard its Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM), which had launched on September 6, to help SLIM land on the moon.
The image, which JAXA posted Sept. 21 via its SLIM account on X (formerly known as Twitter), was taken around 62,000 miles (100,000 kilometers) from Earth. The image is monochromatic, as the dual-camera, vision-based navigation system is designed to identify crater positions from data stored aboard the spacecraft.
"This is the first research study to show that individual wild elephants have different willingness and abilities to problem solve in order to get food," said the study's lead author Sarah Jacobson, a psychology doctoral candidate studying animal cognition at the CUNY Graduate Center and Hunter College.
"This is important knowledge, because how animals think and innovate may influence their ability to survive in environments that are rapidly changing due to human presence."
You may watch a video of one of the elephants solving a puzzle on Phys.
Smartphones were a game-changer, in that they offered users multiple functions in a single device which can be carried wherever. One of the things that have become a part of people's lives with the smartphone is taking pictures and videos of their experiences and sharing them online.
However, one possible limitation of this is that while you're capturing the moment, you won't exactly be able to take part and the scope of what you can capture is also dependent on where you point your phone. That's where the Ray-Ban Meta smartglasses might come in. On Tech Crunch:
Unveiled this morning at Meta Connect in Menlo Park, California, the new sunglasses are capable of livestreaming video to (naturally) Facebook and Instagram.
The systems come in the standard classic Wayfarer design, along with a new Headliner style. They look like standard sunglasses (or eyeglasses, depending on the lens), save for two round modules on the side of either eye. On the right is a 12-megapixel camera that can take stills and record video in 1080p. The other side — that looks more or less identical (for symmetry’s sake) — is actually an LED light that flips on to alert others that you’re recording.
Apart from livestreaming video, there are also plans of including a feature which would allow the wearer to translate text on signs and the like.
Oil has been the king of all natural resources for the past century, and for the past five years, the US has been at the top of the world's largest oil producers. But apart from the US, do you know which countries have big shares in the global supply of oil? The Visual Capitalist gives us a concise infographic showing the different countries with stakes in oil production.
The construction of Hoormem's facility was completed in May of this year, and the project was spearheaded by Cun Panda Nana, the creative studio who also developed the 1/2 Coffee & Bar in Xiamen. Through the design, Hoormem wanted to create an atmosphere conducive to utmost rest and relaxation.
Underpinned by a subtle interplay of curved and rectilinear forms, and complemented by a mix of soothing sounds and dreamy aromas, Hoormem’s flagship facility is a tranquil, therapeutic space full of vitality despite the gentleness of its design, promoting healing through all five of the senses.
Misdirected amplexus is the scientific term that describes male frogs' odd behavior of trying to mate with things other than frog-kind. And there is now evidence that suggests that this behavior began as far back as 220 million years ago.
Mating frogs may have been occasionally getting it wrong for hundreds of millions of years. We know that males today will sometimes select an inappropriate partner during the breeding season – a frog from a different species, a turtle, a fish or even an inanimate object.
“For a male facing huge competition with rivals to reproduce, it would be advantageous for males to arbitrarily be attracted to – and thus clasp – any female-looking object in order to increase mating probabilities,” says François Brischoux at La Rochelle University in France.
If you're a fan of the Final Fantasy series, then you might find this new sweets lineup by Fujiya quite delectable. They will be selling Fat Chocobo Cake, Cloud macarons and other character macarons for 800 yen each.
The Fujiya/Final Fantasy collaboration is technically a promotion for the recently released "Final Fantasy VII: Ever Crisis" mobile game, but the specific branding is subtle enough for it to be fun for fans of the franchise as a whole, and all of the items go on sale October 6.
Through the James Webb Space Telescope, scientists have been able to find multiple other galaxies like the Milky Way which they say should fundamentally alter our view of the universe.
In a new study by a team of international researchers, the JWST has been used to reveal galaxies similar to the Milky Way – ‘flat’ disc galaxies that rotate around a centre point, like CDs, and often contain vast spiral arms – in the early universe.
This involved looking “back in time” ten billion years or more, to a turbulent period that occurred in the wake of the Big Bang, which is just what the pioneering telescope was made for.
What does this mean? Apparently, these types of galaxies are the perfect places where life could have formed.
The video above is only of the top 15 videos from this year's Audubon Photography Awards, and to me, it was quite a marvel to see what seemed like thousands of snow geese honking and flying across Freezeout Lake Wildlife in Montana. The video was taken by Ben Pierce and he shares the story behind it here on Audubon. You may also check out 14 other videos and how the photographers caught them in film.
(Video credit: Ben Pierce/National Audubon Society)
It's been over decade since China and the Philippines have had tensions over the contested islands west of the Philippine island of Luzon, and Reuters gives us a quick summary of the salient points in this dispute and why it's significant in the grand scheme of things.
Studio Ghibli fans are in for a treat with the 25th feature film, The Boy and The Heron, set to release in the US this coming December 8th. The new film is currently showing in Japanese theaters, and has been since July, and so far, it has received a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a Metacritic consensus of 89. So, in view of the upcoming new film, Vulture has republished their ranking of Studio Ghibli films.
