Our world isn't growing any bigger, not enough to accommodate the increasing world population. We face multiple issues in the future, one which is food security aggravated by climate change. In response to this, Peter van Wingerden turned his idea for a floating farm into a passion project which has now become a reality.

The idea for the Rotterdam farm came to life in 2012, when van Wingerden was working in New York City as Hurricane Sandy hit. Damaging floods crippled parts of the city and brought food distribution by truck to a halt. The experience galvanized van Wingerden to turn his previously vague ideas about growing food on the water into a passion project.

“I see this as a substantial way to produce food close to consumers,” van Wingerden says. He sees floating farms as a way to ensure food is always nearby while simultaneously reducing the costs of transportation. “It’s not the 100 percent solution, but part of a hybrid model.” A floating farm is “part of a circular city,” he adds.

(Image credit: Floating Farm)

Climate change is one factor to the death of many coral reefs but there's a specific reactive agent that is responsible for coral bleaching and researchers from Florida Atlantic University's Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute reveal that it's reactive nitrogen.

Improperly treated sewage, fertilizers and top soil are elevating nitrogen levels, which are causing phosphorus starvation in the corals, reducing their temperature threshold for "bleaching."

These coral reefs were dying off long before they were impacted by rising water temperatures. This study represents the longest record of reactive nutrients and algae concentrations for coral reefs anywhere in the world.

(Image credit: USFWS Pacific/Flickr)

Introducing the face of the new £50 note - the father of computer science, Alan Turing.” Find out more https://t.co/pO7eu9nfHT #Turing50 #ThinkScience pic.twitter.com/RLmXD0QUQY

— Bank of England (@bankofengland) July 15, 2019

Alan Turing was a brilliant mathematician who cracked the Enigma machine's code during World War II and his contributions paved the way for the development of modern-day computers which are only some of the achievements he had during his lifetime. Sadly, he passed away rather young.

But now, the Bank of England will honor his contributions to society by making him the new face of the 50-pound note, replacing James Watt.

Turing was one of more than 227,200 people who were being considered to appear on the banknote, which is worth $62 in American currency. Prominent figures like Charles Babbage, Margaret Thatcher, Ada Lovelace and Stephen Hawking were also in the running.

(Image credit: Bank of England/Twitter)

It cost A$16 million to build the d'Arenberg Cube, a five-storey rubik's cube inspired structure which was the brainchild of Chester Osborn, a fourth-generation winemaker of d'Arenberg wines.

It was opened to the public in December 2017 and has received numerous accolades including the NECA excellence award for commercial project, the McLaren Vale tourism award, and the award for Best Tourist Attraction at the South Australian Tourism Awards 2018 among others.

Chester Osborn had the idea to build the d'Arenberg Cube in 2003 but it took a while before the concept could be realized.

It took him about nine years to get the five-storey oddity – which houses a tasting room and a restaurant – built, despite the 2008 financial crisis and opposition from his father and the rest of his family. He also had to fight most of his business managers.

And why a Rubik's Cube as inspiration, here's what Osborn thought:

Osborn’s thinking was that wine is a puzzle to work out, and his vineyard’s names for its wines are also a puzzle. So he asked himself what was the world’s most iconic puzzle, and then, after struggles with architects, engineers and government paperwork, he had his answer – a Rubik’s Cube – built in glass and steel at a cost of about A$16 million (HK$88 million).

Read more about it on SCMP.

(Image credit: Rikx/Flickr)

I often thought of science fiction as stories that talk about science and the future. In a way, that is partly what science fiction does. But, as with a lot of stories, they also reflect the values prevalent in society as well as provide social commentary and a means to effect change in society. In this regard, science fiction writer Octavia Butler was a pioneer.

“Science fiction, more than any other genre deals with change—change in science and technology, and social change. But science fiction itself changes slowly, often under protest.”

Some of Octavia Butler's popular works are the Parable series, the Xenogenesis trilogy, and Bloodchild. However, she died young in 2006 at the age of 58. But her works are still very relevant in today's culture and society.

Butler’s work “helped define the literary cornerstone of Afrofuturism,” notes Grinberg. Her writing was strategic, a way to confront dehumanizing political and social political realities.

So why should we read Octavia Butler's works? I think Open Culture summarized it best:

...because she had a better read on how the time she lived in would turn into the time we live in now than nearly anyone writing at the time; because she told strange, wonderful, outlandish, compelling stories that stretched the imagination without losing sight of the human core;

because, like Ursula K. Le Guin, she challenged the world as it is with profound visions of what it might be; and because she not only excelled as a storyteller but specifically as a committed science fiction storyteller, one who deeply touched, and thus deeply changed, the form.

(Image Credit: Nikolas Coukouma/Wikimedia Commons)

Currently, the Deep Space Observatory (DSCOVR) has been placed in a "safehold" position as engineers are working to fix an issue in the system. During this time, it won't be able to send any measurement data which helps us to monitor trends or events in space weather.

DSCOVR's ability to forecast space weather events is unprecedented, and its data gives power utilities a 45-minute warning before a solar storm hits the Earth. But we're far from prepared to deal with an event of a dangerous magnitude, and DSCOVR's absence certainly exacerbates the issue.

Clearly, we’re losing something very valuable in this time that DSCOVR remains in its safehold setting. Leslie explains, however, that while DSCOVR is offline, “there will be no interruption to the ability of NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center to forecast and monitor space weather.”

(Image credit: NASA/Wikimedia Commons)

When artwork becomes damaged beyond repair, they are usually just thrown into a warehouse and left there to collect dust. But is that the end for all art that gets damaged? That's what Elka Krajewska sought to change: to find value in salvage art.

Krajewska was intrigued by the concept of what was once considered a work of art being demoted to an object with no value beyond its materials.

In response, she came up with the idea for a museum of salvaged art, a place where these totalled former artworks could find new life in the conversations and philosophical questions they spark: What defines an artwork? How do we determine its inherent value? Is there such a thing as objective value?

(Image credit: Neubauer Collegium/SAI)

It wasn't until her six-year-old son was diagnosed with ADHD and getting a diagnosis of her own that Charlene Harrison finally found peace with what she had been going through all her life. Not a lot of people are diagnosed with ADHD as an adult so it carries a bit of stigma and it's more difficult to find a support system.

“When my son was diagnosed, I read everything I could to learn more about ADHD. I found out that ADHD was highly genetic right at the time my 12-year-old daughter was struggling with high school so I started asking questions about ADHD presentation in girls and found that girls are more likely to exhibit inattention.

"So I had my daughter assessed and she received a diagnosis. And then I realised that my daughter’s behaviour was so much like mine that I thought maybe this might answer a few questions for myself”.

(Image credit: Wikimedia Commons)

Funerals are as much for our loved ones who have passed away as it is for our own closure and healing process. Different people have certain traditions or customs with which they conduct funerals. But at times, loved ones may have wishes on how they want their funerals to be conducted and there are not-for-profit funeral services that help them fulfill these wishes.

Jenny Briscoe-Hough, founder and director of not-for-profit funeral service Tender Funerals, says that everyone should tread their own path when it comes to farewelling someone they love.

"People should be involved as much or as little as they wish in the process of saying goodbye," she says. "It's not just about a funeral. It starts from when someone dies, through to transporting their body to the mortuary, and all the other aspects.

The family of the deceased loved one has the right to be involved in the process and grieve in their own way. And these three stories show how it could benefit the families as much as it does their loved ones who have gone.

(Image credit: Rhodi Alers de Lopez/Unsplash)

Being a parent is stressful and exhausting. There is no perfect way to raise children but parents always have to deal with thoughts of whether they're doing what's right for their children and for themselves.

Katie Arnold shares an interesting observation about two animals with different styles of parenting: the elks and the bison. In one instance in which she and her family witnessed, an elk mother had left her newborn calf when she sensed danger.

It was late May, the beginning of calving season, and the baby elk was minutes old, its fur still wet. When it saw us, it flopped to the ground, while the cow bolted in the opposite direction, running up a ridge until she was out of sight.

Our guide, Pete, explained, “This is what elk mothers do. When predators approach, they run away, leaving their babies, who aren’t strong enough to walk. Most of the time, the mothers come back for their calves but only after the danger has passed.”

This was different from what bison mothers did explained Pete. Instead of leaving their calves to fend for themselves, they would protect them fiercely. Now, it's obviously different to live in the wild as opposed to living in a more urban environment. But this is a dilemma that parents often face: how to strike a balance in raising children.

(Image credit: Byron Johnson/Unsplash)

We know that insects can sense danger and any other stimuli that might be perceived as harmful to them. But scientists have discovered that insects may also experience what we can describe as chronic pain.

Chronic pain comes in two forms: inflammatory and neuropathic. Neely and colleagues focused on neuropathic pain, which occurs after damage to the nervous system and, in humans, is usually described as a burning or shooting pain.

They damaged a nerve in one leg of a fly, allowed it to fully heal, then noticed how the other legs had become hypersensitive. Next, they genetically dissected exactly how that works.

(Image credit: Phonsay P/Unsplash)

I kind of agree with what the article is trying to say. When you play video games, though the narrative is an important aspect, a lot of players don't necessarily play particular attention to them. Unless the game itself revolves around the narrative and the information you get from it helps you progress in the game. But even in those cases, what's most important is interaction.

Speedrunning is a type of gaming where players try to beat a game as fast as possible. In the typical speedrun you might watch on YouTube or Twitch, the player will mash buttons to get past any plot-explaining text, causing the backstory to fly by too quickly for a human to comprehend. When possible, major cutscenes get skipped completely, making not only the plot but the characters and their motivations impossible for the viewer to understand. 

Despite the irrelevance of story, speedrunning thrives—not just as the individual passion of runners striving to beat their favorite games as quickly as possible using whatever glitches, bugs, and exploits that speed things up, but also as spectated streaming performances that can draw hundreds of thousands of viewers.

(Image credit: Nintendo)

Going on outdoor adventures is fun, thrilling, and exciting. There are so many activities one can do but one in particular might just help put things in perspective. Walking safaris might not be for the faint-hearted but if you are able to join one, it will be one heck of an experience.

Planning my trip, everyone thought I was nuts. “A walking safari? With lions and snakes and crocodiles around?” my boyfriend balked. “I’ll start making the funeral arrangements.” Even my dad, an established wildlife writer, urged me to conduct some risk-benefit analysis lest I wound up in a hippo’s digestive tract.

But I’d done my research, and I wasn’t worried. Not only were walking safaris safe—with Robin Pope, each group is accompanied by a shotgun-carrying park ranger—to me, they seemed like the best way to get to know a landscape, dung piles and all.

In this article, Benjamin Kemper explores one of the walking safaris in Zambia, the South Luangwa National Park, with some information on what kind of activities and sights you will get to witness, and how you can experience it yourself.

(Image credit: Absolute Zambia Safaris/TripAdvisor)

The US military is the largest and most expensive one in the world. Despite that, it also has a very dismal record in terms of winning wars since World War II.

They didn't have any success in unifying the two Koreas in the Korean War which eventually split into the communist North and the more pro-Western South. Then came the Vietnam War which was also a huge defeat. Since then, several other military operations were conducted in the Middle East and Africa which didn't make much success.

So what's with this losing streak?

Some analysts locate the problem within the military’s culture. American forces have been trained, organized and indoctrinated in conventional operations using high-tech weaponry, so they have been fighting with a considerable handicap.

Other students of recent American wars see hubris as a major factor in explaining military failure. Policymakers and generals alike have consistently underestimated their enemies, particularly their staying power. As the political scientist Dominic Tierney quipped, “We have the power. They have the willpower.”

Others point to American politics and how, despite the military being respected by the American public, they are disengaged. The military has been placed under the control of a national security establishment which does as it sees fit. 

So what would be best for the US military going forward? Some veterans share their opinions on the matter on The Daily Beast.

(Image credit: The US Army/Flickr; Wikimedia Commons)

We have discovered over 4,000 exoplanets since the 1990s and we will continue to chart new territories and places in space. So NASA made it a lot easier for us to see these exoplanets in a wider perspective. With the map that they created, they charted more than 4,000 exoplanets that we have been to find.

But how have we discovered so many exoplanets so quickly? Well, we can thank the now-retired Kepler Telescope for a lot of the rapid growth. The number of planets found increased substantially once Kepler began helping in the search for exoplanets. New tech like the Kepler Telescope uses radial velocity which measures the movements and the color signature of a star.

Now that Kepler is retired, NASA's Hubble successor, the James Webb Telescope, will take over some of Kepler's responsibilities. The James Webb Telescope is set to reach orbit in 2021 where it will be able to find exoplanets and have the ability to discern whether the foreign planets would be able to sustain life.

(Image credit: Chado Nihi/Pixabay)

Here's a video showing the map. If you look at the chart, the exoplanets are represented by various colors and sizes of circles which tell us how they were detected.