If there's not enough space for you to build your house, then you just have to get creative. And that's what BIO-architects did when they designed the Bridge House, a structure hanging over a creek. It's being used as a second residence for clients of designers headed by Ivan Ovchinnikov.
Located in the client’s open lot in Russia’s Zaokskiy district, the atypic home hovers over a creek, supported by a load-bearing timber structure. The main living area is kept as an open plan space, with light filtering in during the day through the glazed facades.
Given Russia’s heavy winters and glorious summers, we imagine the views to be had from the Bridge House to be dramatically beautiful, whichever the season.
Hello Kitty has captured the hearts of many people all over the world. And as the adorable character turns 45 this year, artists gave tribute by creating Hello Kitty-inspired paintings, drawings, and other works of art which will be displayed at the Corey Helford Gallery.
Researchers discovered a fossil showing an ancient school of fish clustered together which suggests that this behavior of swimming together in groups may have developed at least 50 million years ago.
The fossil captures a mass of 259 fish apparently swimming in the same direction. It’s unclear what killed the fish. But a suddenly collapsing sand dune, for example, could have buried them in place in a flash, knocking just a few askew in the process, the researchers suggest.
The paper was published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B and could give scientists more insight on the evolution of such collective behavior.
It doesn't necessarily benefit someone who has been inflicted with a grave injury to stay conscious, far from what famous movie scenes would have us think. The logic behind staying awake might not be for the victim but for those around who think they will lose them if they starting slipping into a deep sleep.
In fact, unconsciousness may even mildly help in some cases. For example, one study, Tightly coupled brain activity and cerebral ATP metabolic rate, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, showed when rats were intentionally knocked out, they produced about 50% fewer ATP molecules. (ATP being the energy that cells use to perform all their vital functions.)
The net result of all of this was about a 66% reduction in energy requirements by the brain- potentially a very good thing if your body is already low on the necessary resources to keep on keeping on.
However, there are also cases when staying conscious might be helpful. When it's not all too clear, EMTs might need some insight into one's condition so that they would best understand and know how to treat the victim. Other than that, it should be fine to have some much needed rest as the medical professionals do their thing.
Dogs can be trained to do some really clever tricks as shown in a video where three herding dogs were coaxing four ducks to go through a hula hoop and then under a girl doing a back flip.
In the video, we can see the three dogs - Roy, Lass, and Celt - surrounding four ducks as their trainer gives them the signal by his whistles. The ducks in turn waddle toward the path the dogs set for them. -via Geekologie
Many trends have appeared throughout history. And from the data we gather, we can make statistical analyses to figure out the reason behind these trends as well as where these trends will go in the future.
Now, graphic designer Olivier Ballou created a simple online game which tests your knowledge of statistical trends throughout history.
From the number of internet users since the 1970s to men's age at their first marriage since the 1900s, you will find some neat trivia and gain some insight on what has been going in the world. You may check out the online game here and see how accurately you do.
If you don't bring your own reusable bags to the East West Market in Vancouver, you might find yourself being on the receiving end of an embarrassing situation. In order to inspire customers to bring their own bags, the management launched an initiative to use a peculiar line of single-use plastics.
The bags feature less than flattering business names, including "The Colon Care Co-Op," "Into the Weird Adult Video Emporium," and "Dr. Toew's Wart Ointment Wholesale." Each bag also features the tagline, "Avoid the shame. Bring a reusable bag."
However, despite the clever tactic, customers seemed to have been more inclined to buy the store's plastic bags with fake business names.
"Please may I buy all three? I promise I will reuse them to tatters," said one woman. "This just makes me want to use your plastic bags even more, sorry not sorry, this is awesome," said another.
Still though, local governments continue to urge businesses to come up with similar strategies that would help reduce the use of single-use plastics. Hopefully, more people would join in to help save our environment, no matter how small or big our actions may be.
With the increasing capacity of artificial intelligence to do numerous tasks, we will see more of them in various fields in the future. In particular medical AI are becoming quite a hyped prospect. This doesn't mean that AI will replace doctors and other healthcare professionals though. But AI will help our healthcare pros spend time on what matters most.
The AI revolution, still in its early phase in medicine, is already spurring some amazing advances, despite the fact that some experts say it has been overhyped. IBM’s Watson Health program is a case in point.
IBM capitalized on Watson’s ability to process natural language by designing algorithms that devour data like medical articles and analyze images like MRIs and medical slides. The algorithms help diagnose diseases and recommend treatment strategies.
Most of the issues which surround medical AI is how to convert and translate data in a way that would bridge the communication gap between these data-crunching algorithms and the humans who would use these data to prescribe the proper treatment for diseases.
But once we are able to jump over that hurdle, it will provide medical access and efficiency in giving treatments. It will also give medical professionals much needed time to recuperate instead of being steeped in mountains of work causing them to spend so many hours which they could use for themselves.
We are a ways away from that but with support from various industries as well as independent healthcare projects being launched by giant corporations, we will hopefully soon see our healthcare sectors improving for everyone's benefit.
It's no surprise that there is an increasing number of students going to universities who don't have the capacity to support their education let alone afford their next meal. But many people refuse to acknowledge that food insecurity in universities is a big issue.
Despite its prevalence, food insecurity on college campuses has largely been a hidden problem; colleges of all kinds have stigmatized or overlooked the needs of low-income students, who make up a fast-growing portion of the nation's student body.
Due to some actions done by student bodies concerned with the issues of the populace, the food insecurity problem has been brought to the attention of national lawmakers and some policy changes had been implemented. Despite these efforts, it doesn't seem to be enough to resolve the issue.
Although many colleges already have food banks or basic needs centers, campus food insecurity is getting worse. "It's escalating as we start seeing higher prices for tuition, higher prices for housing, and changing demographics," says Leslie Kemp, director of Aggie Compass, the basic needs center at UC–Davis.
No matter where you are today in the world, whether it be in the center of the most advanced cities or the top of the highest mountain, internet is life. We can no longer live without the convenience that is the internet. Yet still so many areas in the US alone don't have broadband connectivity. Why? Blame it on the faulty broadband maps.
Government regulators and the telecom industry agree that broadband maps showing who has internet access and who has high-speed internet are inaccurate. Members of Congress complain that the maps are “bogus.” Even the Federal Communications Commission admits they’re deeply flawed, which is why Chairman Ajit Pai said the commission will vote to change them in August.
Despite knowing its inaccuracies, the FCC still bases their programs and initiatives on the old maps. Even though a team of Penn State researchers, in collaboration with other researchers from other states, has already created an updated map of internet users nationwide, the commission refuses to use what they made. This causes a lot of problems of accessibility for many rural areas in the US.
Sascha Meinrath who led the Penn State team's research said that the old broadband maps exaggerate the number of residents who don't have access to broadband.
In other words, the FCC has wasted billions through the Universal Service Fund (USF) and Connect America Fund trying to address rural broadband without actually knowing who needs service.
Because of that, there’s a reluctance to hit the reset button because it will show a tremendous regression in broadband availability across the United States, and no one wants to be part of that. They’d much rather increase hyperbole than accuracy.
Lamalo is the latest addition to Gadi Peleg's restaurants where he serves some of the most authentic Middle Eastern dishes you can find in New York City. One of their signature dishes is the Shabtai-style Fish which Peleg says is inspired by a restaurateur named Shabtai.
“That’s the one that’s closest to my heart,” he says, “and we worked diligently to get it just the way that reminds us of our childhood.” Shabtai, it turns out, was the owner of a restaurant in the port city of Jaffa. “That was a thing you did as an Israeli family,” said Peleg.
Lamalo’s chefs — there are three of them — weren’t able to source great red mullets Stateside. “We assigned the same technique to local fish that we found were fresh and delicious. It felt exactly the way we remembered it. And we pay homage to Shabtai.”
They apply the same type of care and technique to every dish listed on their menu. It's really like bringing the culture of dining from Middle East and introducing it to the world.
Don't judge a book by its cover seems to be an oft-quoted phrase when someone wants to tell you that you shouldn't make any assumptions or notions about other people just by the way they look. Everybody is far more than what their appearance would tell us.
Amy Lloyd struggled with such a dilemma when she realized that their house had been burgled and wanted to visualize how the criminal must have looked like so that she could "hate him properly". But oftentimes, our notions about what criminals are supposed to look like are outlandishly different from actual criminals.
In her short piece, she explores a little bit about the psychology behind appearances and how these could affect the way we perceive certain people as well as the way we think about suspicious-looking people and criminals.
Her books are beloved by the world over and have even been featured on several film and TV adaptations but the famous mystery writer Agatha Christie's own life is just as colorful as the stories she wrote, like when she suddenly left and vanished one night without saying where she was going or for how long.
The real reason behind her sudden departure is actually something quite similar to a lot of the plots in her books which might tell us something about where she gets inspiration for her mystery novels.
NASA says they will soon be pulling the plug on the Spitzer telescope despite it still being functional even after they officially terminate the mission.
As with other NASA missions like the Hubble and Mars Opportunity Rover, Spitzer has outlived its expected life span in space. Throughout the course of its mission, it has taken numerous photos of our galaxy and those beyond.
Spitzer is an infrared telescope, meaning that it doesn’t see things in the same way that, say, the Hubble telescope does. It senses heat rather than visible light and that allows it to see things that are undetectable by optical telescopes. This has made it incredibly useful for spotting very distant stars and spotting various features of the Milky Way that would otherwise go unnoticed.
As to why NASA will be retiring Spitzer, this is what they had to say:
“Spitzer orbits the Sun on a path similar to Earth’s but moves slightly slower. Today it trails about 158 million miles behind our planet – more than 600 times the distance between Earth and the moon.
Being so far away from Earth means that it would be very difficult to receive data from Spitzer as there is only a short window of time before it has to readjust itself in order to align and transmit more. It would also take a lot of power to keep the telescope going. As such, NASA has decided that it will be lights out for Spitzer as of January 2020.
The annual strongman event has finally finished and we have crowned a new World's Strongest Man. Last year, it was Hafthor Julius Bjornsson from Iceland who also played 'The Mountain' on the popular series Game of Thrones. But after the series wrapped, he said he had more time to focus on training.
However, out of nowhere the American Martins Licis snagged Bjornsson's hope of getting the title back to back from under him. Licis, who is nicknamed 'The Dragon' because of the fire he says is in his belly, came at a surprise as he has never finished in the top three before.
He’s been chasing this dream his whole life and admits to dreaming about winning the title one day ever since he was a child growing up in Latvia where he used to lift stones, practising for a day like today. That child is now the official strongest man on Earth.
Bjornsson finished third, despite having a nightmare four-day event where he suffered a serious foot injury in the first day of competition.
