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Feeling like the queen of the sea🐟🐟🐟😌 No but really I don’t think we could have lined up this photo with my arms and the fish if we had tried... but somehow it happened and I just love this photo. An underwater twirling ball of magic I won’t ever forget. Photo by @cobiandewey ✨ #RajaAmpat #Wayag #freedive

A post shared by Chelsea Y.✨🌊 Hawaii + Travel (@chelseakauai) on Jun 30, 2019 at 9:32pm PDT

Chelsea Yamase is a social media influencer and entrepreneur who loves to go outdoors and take photos of the beautiful places she visits. Her photography is captivating as she expresses herself through them. And people have responded to that very positively.

While many people can have photos on mountains, far fewer were diving to the depths of the ocean. Yamase quickly hit 100,000 followers with her unique, nature-focused shots.

Initially, she was wary about monetizing on her platform as she didn't want to compromise her integrity for the income. This showed her fans that she was genuine about what she did and this helped her platform grow even more. At the same time, she promotes sustainable living and wants to inspire people to go outside. 

The concept of being sustainable was something that Yamase was familiar about from a young age. “We’re on an island in the middle of the Pacific. We only have so much," said Yamase. The 30-year old said that part of Kaua'i's culture values keeping the island "beautiful for future generations" by focusing on the symbiotic relationship we have with nature.

(Image credit: Chelsea Yamase/Instagram)

A week or so ago, two earthquakes hit Los Angeles. They were recorded at magnitudes of 6.4 and 7.1. NASA has created a map to show how intense the earthquakes were and how it affected the surrounding regions. Created by NASA's Advanced Rapid Imaging and Analysis team, it features rainbow-colored stripes emanating from the epicenter of the quake.

Each rainbow stripes means that the ground has been displaced there by some 4.8 inches. It's the same logic as a topographic map, where lines that are closer together indicate steeper slopes. In this case, the closer together the rainbow stripes are, the more the ground was displaced by the temblor.

Eric Fielding, a geophysicist at JPL, says the parts of the map along the fault where the colors appear jumbled suggest even more dramatic movement of the ground.

(Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ARIA)

Before, there weren't a lot of opportunities for women to succeed as musicians of jazz music. It has been dominated by male musicians ever since it started. But women have shown that they have much to contribute to jazz music and not just as singers but as players too.

Those assembled here are among the most in-demand jazz musicians in the business. They perform as bandleaders and sidewomen, produce concerts, and teach at leading music schools. Each of them says she would prefer to discuss her music, not her gender. Few have had the benefit of female mentors. And most didn’t realize there was anything exceptional about being a woman in jazz until they got to college or started playing in the real world.

Several women are already making their mark in jazz. From Terri Lyne Carrington who was the first woman to win a Grammy for best jazz instrumental album. She is followed by Tia Fuller who this year was nominated for the same award. 

An ensemble of female jazz musicians called Artemis is also gaining attention and they will be playing at Carnegie Hall's Isaac Stern Auditorium this year. I think we have more to look forward to as women are moving to the vanguard of jazz.

(Image credit: Lucy Gram/Jane Ira Bloom)

Just as humans have an internal body clock that tells us when to go to sleep and to wake up, plants have their own system as well. Carl Linnaeus was able to observe and study this phenomenon when he saw that certain species of plants open and close their flowers at certain times of the day. This led him to develop a sort of floral clock.

Ten years after assuming the responsibility of the botanic garden, Linnaeus published Philosophia Botanica, where he compiled a list of a forty-six plants that open during particular times of the day. By arranging these plants in the sequence by which they flower over the day, one could build, a sort of floral clock or horologium florae, as Linnaeus called it.

(Image credit: Amusing Planet)

Several months ago, we had the very first photo of an actual black hole captured by the Event Horizon Telescope. For the scientific community, it was a big thing because then the glimpse into what black holes look like could eventually lead to being able to study them in more depth. Today, scientists have unveiled another first: a photo of quantum entanglement.

It might not look like much, but just stop and think about it for a second: this fuzzy grey image is the first time we've seen the particle interaction that underpins the strange science of quantum mechanics and forms the basis of quantum computing.

Quantum entanglement occurs when two particles become inextricably linked, and whatever happens to one immediately affects the other, regardless of how far apart they are. Hence the 'spooky action at a distance' description.

(Image credit: Moreau et al/University of Glasgow)

Janice, who goes by the name Grandma8bit on Etsy, is a fan of retro video games. And she also loves crochet. So she made blankets inspired by games like Mario, Donkey Kong, and Pac-Man. However, most of her blankets have now been sold with only two remaining in her shop.

The works of Grandma8bit are offered for one hundred euros, a small price considering all the hours this grandma puts into her blankets. According to Grandma, these blankets would be “perfect for winter nights on the couch while playing video games. You can also use it as a baby blanket or as a decoration.

(Image credit: Janice/Etsy)

Computers have dominated games like Chess and Go being able to outplay even the highest caliber of players. But that's because Chess and Go can become predictable, that is, the AI can compute all possible scenarios from the first move to the last because all information is available to them.

However, in games where there is incomplete information like poker, it will be a lot more difficult to come up with an algorithm that would enable the AI to play with elites. Until researchers from Carnegie Mellon University, Tuomas Sandholm and Noam Brown, developed an AI that beat six elite poker players.

For AI researchers, poker presents a better model of the real world. Rarely in life do situations involve just one winner and one loser, or scenarios in which information is fully available. By improving an AI’s ability to deal with hidden information in multi-participant scenarios, computer scientists are dramatically expanding the domains in which AI can be used.

To create a system capable of proficiently playing six-player no-limit Texas hold’em poker, Brown and Sandholm employed a grab bag of strategies, including new algorithms the duo developed themselves. Before the competition started, Pluribus developed its own “blueprint” strategy, which it did by playing poker with itself for eight straight days.

Apart from the blueprint strategy, the AI also adapted its gameplay to be more balanced and unpredictable. One surprising thing about Pluribus' strategy was that it effectively employed strategies that even elites tend to shy away from or consider weak strategies.

(Image credit: Michal Parzuchowski/Unsplash)

A former NASA intern is alleging that he has possession of the original tapes showing the first steps of the Apollo 11 mission and is auctioning them online. NASA has released a statement saying that they never lost such tapes and that all footage of that mission has already been seen and recorded.

"There was no video that came down slow scan that was not converted live, fed live, to Houston and fed live to the world," NASA engineer Dick Nafzger, who led the search for the footage, said at a news briefing about the lost tapes in 2009. "So, just in case anyone thinks there is video out there that hasn’t been seen, that is not the case."

(Image credit: Sotheby's)

Ever since the ad purge on Youtube several years back, content creators have been looking for other ways to generate income through their videos and streams. Some have already jumped ship to other platforms like Twitch and Patreon, while others were forced to change their content in order to comply with Youtube's policies.

So now, Youtube will be implementing new changes and adding some features that would allow creators on their site to maximize their profit potential. Perhaps one of the best changes they have announced is the one regarding copyright infringement, something that made such a big dent on many creators, both new and established alike.

It said copyright owners now have to specify the timestamp in the video their content appears, while creators will be able to use an updated version of YouTube Creator Studio to easily remove the portion of the content associated with the claim.

This helps to address situations where the Manual Claiming system was being used (or some would say abused) to claim very short — even only one-second long — pieces of content, or incidental content — like when a creator walks past a store that’s playing music, for example. The company had said in April it was looking to address this.

More about this on Tech Crunch.

(Image credit: Christian Wiediger/Unsplash)

I was first introduced to video games when I saw a neighbor kid playing on his Gameboy. I have been a fan ever since. My first console was a Playstation 1. Then a few years later, a friend of mine showed me the newest console rolled out by Sony, the Playstation 2. I wanted one but it was only until later when they released a slim version that I was able to get my hands on one. Sure, it was smaller but it was comparably less durable than the original.

This year, two years after Nintendo released its latest handheld Switch, they are coming out with a new "slim" version of the portable gaming device, called Switch Lite. However, in doing this, the Switch Lite has lost the capabilities of the original Switch to well, switch.

The new revision is solely designed for handheld play, meaning it doesn’t have detachable controllers, a kickstand, or the ability to be played on a TV. That’s just the way it goes with video game consoles, though. While new generations of hardware introduce far greater power and functionality, often revisions within the same generation take certain steps backward.

Whether the trade-offs are made to reduce costs or because certain elements were deemed unimportant, over their history, all three current console makers have released multiple machines that killed various features. The question, as ever, is how much those missing features mean to you.

Here's a brief history of slim versions of gaming consoles by Verge.

(Image credit: Wikimedia Commons)

Though carrying a guitar isn't that big of a deal, it could still be inconvenient especially because its neck takes up a lot of space. So Ciari Guitars have unveiled a new design in which the neck can be folded and the body has a locking mechanism inside.

The Ascender hasn't been designed to be a cheap replacement for your studio guitars, it has premium written all over it. The patented mechanism hidden inside the body allows the guitarist to lock the neck to play, and unlock for travel.

(Image credit: Ciari Guitars)

It's sort of common knowledge that if it's hot outside, it would be better to wear thin and bright clothes than thick and dark ones because they wouldn't absorb too much of the heat from the sun. Rhett Allain did some experimenting to show exactly why though.

OK. Let's be clear. This black vs. white clothing isn't exactly a settled issue. People actually study this stuff—here is an article from Nature published in 1980: "Why do Bedouins wear black robes in hot deserts?".

There are clearly several situations to consider with the Bedouin clothing. But what about more common outfits, like a T-shirt? Should you wear a black or white T-shirt on a warm summer day?

In order to get data, Allain got an infrared camera and captured photos of various pieces of clothing with different colors to find out how much heat they absorb and how much light they emit or simply reflect. Check out the outcomes here.

(Image credit: Hao Ji/Unsplash)

But seriously, what's up with this weird temple thing on Jeffrey Epstein's private island? pic.twitter.com/njxfg2HahN

— jon gabriel (@exjon) July 9, 2019

As bits and pieces from Jeffrey Epstein's private life and business dealings come to light, some people have found a curious building on his Little St. James private island. It looks like a temple of some sort but nobody knows what it's for.

It strongly resembles a temple, though of which sort remains elusive. Epstein is Jewish, and it is possible that he wanted his own private synagogue. But the statuary would be out of place at such a temple, given the Old Testament's prohibition on graven images. Though the cubic base and dome call to mind Islamic architecture, Poseidon would likewise be an odd choice for a mosque. Churches, of course, tend to feature crosses.

Others speculated that it could be a private music room in which Epstein would play the piano. Still others say it could be a lodging place for a caretaker or a cistern for storing or treating water. Insider has more of the details on the mysterious building.

-via Digg

(Image credit: Jon Gabriel/Twitter)

Imagine if all vehicles in the world would be powered by biofuel or fuels taken from plants, farms, and forests. It could possibly significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions as well as air pollution. Well, some airlines have already flown several of their planes on biofuel and they plan to do more.

For example, over the next ten years, JetBlue plans to use nearly 375 million liters of biofuels at its hub at New York’s JFK airport, sourced from natural oils that don’t compete with food supply.

Virgin Atlantic has partnered up with LanzaTech, a company that developed a technology to convert carbon monoxide emissions from steel plants into ethanol via proprietary microorganisms.

Of course, there's a big cost to converting to biofuel. If an airline company were to use biofuel for its entire fleet, they might encounter problems scaling the production of the fuel. The logistics alone would increase the cost which would then lead to higher airfares, or government subsidies meaning higher taxes.

But if it would mean that we can help the environment, I think it would be a worthy investment.

(Image credit: Dominik Scythe/Unsplash)

For now, at least. But several countries have already tried in the past to lay their claim on the North Pole, saying it's part of their territory. Russia, Denmark, and most recently, Canada have all put forth their bids to the UN to declare the North Pole theirs. However, things aren't that simple.

Arctic nations do have a procedure for divvying up the region. In 2008, Denmark, Norway, Canada, Russia and the United States—the countries with land bordering the Arctic Ocean—signed a declaration in Ilulissat, Greenland to divide Arctic ocean territory according to the United Nations’ Law of the Sea. Each nation gets exclusive economic rights to the area where its continental shelf extends into the ocean, up to 200 nautical miles beyond its coast.

This is where things get a bit tricky. These countries need to prove that the territory to the North is actually an extension of their continental shelf. So the process could take years as shown by the decade-long data collection and research conducted by Canada before they were able to present their proposal to the UN.

But why are so many countries racing to get to the North Pole? It's simple. They want the resources that are supposedly lying beneath, particularly oil and natural gas.

One hypothetical reason would be for future oil and gas drilling: The Arctic as a whole could contain as much as 22 percent of the world’s untapped oil and natural gas reserves.

(Image credit: Alexander Hafemann/Unsplash)