Before Momofuku Ando released his groundbreaking Cup Noodle in 1971, he first went on a fact-finding mission to America. In the foreign land, he found out that the Americans were taking his previous invention, the chicken noodle, breaking it in half, and putting it in a cup instead of a bowl. This is, or at least this is what’s said to be, where he got the inspiration to create Nissin’s Cup Noodle, which would be enjoyed by people all around the world. 

Now, almost exactly 48 years later, Nissin is once again releasing what may perhaps be another groundbreaking invention — a fork. But what’s so special about this fork?

Nissin teamed up with design firm nendo, who created an obsessively designed fork based on hours of user observation. Based on the angle of the arm and the shape of the Cup Noodle dish, nendo derived the optimal angle – 128 degrees – for scooping up noodles. But they didn’t stop there. The tip and sides of the fork are the exact same angle as the circular cup that holds the noodle. Small bumps along the teeth of the fork to help hook noodles. The fork itself is shaped like a small pocket to catch toppings and just the right amount of soup. The handle of the fork is not only ergonomically designed but it also has ribbed backside which acts as a clip to secure the lid while you’re waiting for the hot water to cook the noodles. Then they created one for both lefties and righties.

The limited edition of 3000 forks will come with any set of 3 or 5 cup noodles (625 – 726 yen) [$5.77 - $6.71] and will be available on Nissin’s website starting October 30, 2019 at 10:00 AM Japan time.

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(Video Credit: YouTube)

You know someone is talented when he does an accurate impression of another person. But I believe there is something better than this one, and that is when a person can impersonate AND sing at the same time. Now that’s what I call extremely and incredibly talented person.

Check out Keegan-Michael Key’s Impression of Bob Marley, R.E.M, and Frank Sinatra, and be the one to judge.

What are your thoughts about this one? 

(Image Credit: The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon/ YouTube)

Picture this scene for a moment. You just arrived home one afternoon, and you expect to have a relaxing evening. As you headed to your bedroom, you flick the light on, and then suddenly you get chills down your spine. There, on your bed, you find a 7-foot-long carpet python chilling on your bed. What would you do next?

This is what just happened to a woman in Nambour, Australia.

“Let’s just say there was a lot of yelling and screaming,” Stuart McKenzie, of Sunshine Coast Snake Catchers 24/7, wrote on Facebook. 

The woman immediately ran out of the house and contacted McKenzie, and absolutely refused to go back inside until the snake was safely removed. When McKenzie arrived she was still outside, patiently waiting very far away from the door.

Thankfully, while the woman was obviously not a huge fan of snakes, McKenzie was, and he was able to get the snake out of the house and get it back outside where it would be “safer and more at home.”

With a little investigating, he was able to determine that the snake had gotten inside through a rip in the fly screen on the front door.

The woman doubtless set to work fixing the hole in her door right away — and will probably be checking under her bed before going to sleep for a while.

(Image Credit: Sunshine Coast Snake Catchers 24/7/ Facebook)

This is Hellvetica — a font that tells you to “kern in hell.” It’s a very bad, if not evil, version of the Helvetica typeface family. Created by Zack Roif and Matthew Woodward, the font has questionable kerning properties that will surely give any graphic designer nightmares.

Kerning, which adjusts the spaces between letters based on how they’re shaped, is usually applied to make the text more pleasing. However, Hellvetica uses it to distort words, making text difficult to read by randomizing the spaces between characters.

More details about this one over at DesignBoom.

Do you dare use this font?

(Image Credit: Zack Roif, Matthew Woodward/ DesignBoom)

A bright full moon can be seen in the background as a songbird perches on a branch. Moments later, she starts singing and spreads her wings. In the next panel, a squirrel is seen to be observing the majestic singing of the songbird. The squirrel turns around, and it turns out that he is the conductor. He waves his hands, signalling the forest creatures. Turtles, frogs, hedgehogs, and even the fish, gather around him and they sing in unison.

The animation, titled Maestro, was created by Illogic.

In an interview with Vimeo, the team explained that they sought to balance imaginativeness with believability within the confines of their realistic universe. Illogic is based in Montpellier, France, where they recently opened an animation studio called Bloom Pictures.

See the full video over at Colossal.

(Image Credit: Bloom Pictures/ Colossal)

Beginning on November 22, Twitter will no longer post political ads, states Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey. The final policy, according to Dorsey, will be disclosed on November 15. As of this writing, Jack’s post has over 17,000 responses.

What are your thoughts about this one?

(Image Credit: PhotoMIX-Company/ Pixabay)

We’ve made the decision to stop all political advertising on Twitter globally. We believe political message reach should be earned, not bought. Why? A few reasons…🧵

— jack 🌍🌏🌎 (@jack) October 30, 2019

Scientists have recently developed a new way of removing carbon dioxide from a stream of air, which could prove to be useful in humanity’s battle against climate change. This new method can work on the gas at virtually any concentration level, even down to the approximately 400 parts per million found currently inside our atmosphere.

Most methods of removing carbon dioxide from a stream of gas require higher concentrations, such as those found in the flue emissions from fossil fuel-based power plants. A few variations have been developed that can work with the low concentrations found in air, but the new method is significantly less energy-intensive and expensive, the researchers say.

Amazing!

Know more details about this over at Science Daily.

(Image Credit: geralt/ Pixabay)

It looks like a screaming skull to me.

Found above on the cosmos is this ghostly Veil Nebula, a large expanding cloud born of the death explosion of a massive star.

Light from the original supernova explosion likely reached Earth over 5,000 years ago. Also known as the Cygnus Loop, the Veil Nebula now spans nearly 3 degrees or about 6 times the diameter of the full Moon.

You really can find a lot of things in the cosmos.

(Image Credit: Anis Abdul)

Within 100 to 300 milliseconds. That’s how fast the human brain can recognize a familiar song, according to a UCL study. In other words, your brain can recognize a song before you can finish blinking (as an average blink takes about 400 milliseconds).

Anecdotally the ability to recall popular songs is exemplified in game shows such as ‘Name That Tune’, where contestants can often identify a piece of music in just a few seconds.

For this study, published in Scientific Reports, researchers at the UCL Ear Institute wanted to find out exactly how fast the brain responded to familiar music, as well as the temporal profile of processes in the brain which allow for this.

More about this study over at Neuroscience News.

(Image Credit: geralt/ Pixabay)

November 5, 1999. It was a historic day for those who have a grudge on GIFs, as it was Burn All GIFs Day. On that memorable Friday, the game plan was laid out as plainly as its name says: "On Burn All GIFs Day, all GIF users will gather at Unisys and burn all their GIF files." Alongside this declaration are PNG files — proudly anti-GIF.

Despite the obvious joke of setting files on fire, acknowledged with a winking plea to "extinguish all GIFs before leaving the vicinity," the anger was real and the mission was earnest: to free the web from the scourge of the GIF once and for all.

But it seems that they were not successful in their mission. Up until this day, the GIF still lives, and it rules the Internet.

Find out more about this over at Popular Mechanics.

Long live the GIF!

(Image Credit: Popular Mechanics)

Check out this encounter between a trio of divers and a drifting gelatinous blob that is as big as an adult human. The divers found this blob, which is really a squid’s egg sac, off the western coast of Norway. Inside the blob are numerous eggs holding baby squids, which are estimated to be in the hundreds of thousands.

A video captured and shared on YouTube on Oct. 6 by Ronald Raasch, a diver with the Norwegian research vessel REV Ocean, shows a diver slowly circling a spherical blob surrounded by a transparent membrane, with a dark mass suspended inside.

Amazing!

(Video Credit: Caters Clips/ YouTube)

Ok, sounds legit, will donate 1M trees

— Treelon (@elonmusk) October 29, 2019

Recently, YouTube Jimmy Donaldson, better known as “MrBeast”, has started a campaign that aims to plant 20 million trees. A donation of $1 would be equal to 1 tree.

Enter Elon Musk, who announced on Tuesday that he would donate $1 million worth of trees. Now if that isn’t awesome, I don’t know what is.

According to an update by Donaldson, Musk is now in the number one spot with the most trees. Second spot goes to Donaldson himself with only 100,002 trees — a tenth as many as Musk.

I hope more entrepreneurs would join this cause.

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Compared to tweens and teens from families that have incomes over $100,000 annually, kids from families that have an income of less than $35,000 yearly spent nearly two hours more with screen media each day, according to media nonprofit Common Sense.

Lower-income teens (13- to 18-year-olds) spent more than 8.5 hours each day on smartphones, tablets, video games, and other screen media, compared with six hours and 49 minutes for their higher-income peers. Lower-income tweens (8- to 12-year-olds) used screen media for nearly six hours a day, compared with four hours for higher-income tweens.

That’s despite higher-income kids having universally greater ownership of all matter of screens, from smartphones to computers to TVs, according to the study.

Why is this the case? Find out over at Vox Recode.

What are your thoughts about this one?

(Image Credit: Andi_Graf/ Pixabay)

New York, Washington, Boston, and other cities across the country have launched bike-share programs as sustainable transportation alternatives that have a number of benefits, such as easing traffic congestion, cut carbon emissions, and also improve public health.

Cyclists in those cities, meanwhile, have embraced bike-sharing to make their commutes faster, cheaper, and more fun. Last year, U.S. bike-share riders completed nearly 46 million trips—more than twice as many trips from the previous year.

Despite the popularity and the advantages of these programs, however, there are still significant operational challenges that remain.

Take, for instance, the distribution of bikes. Because of commuting patterns, residential neighborhoods face shortages of bicycles in the morning rush, while business districts have a dearth of bikes in the evening. What’s more, parking docks can be full at certain hours, making it difficult for riders to return the bikes once they’ve reached their destinations.

How do we, then, make the system more efficient?

More details about this over at Scientific American.

(Image Credit: yorgunum/ Pixabay)

In Southeast Asia and West Africa, rice crops are always attacked by bacterial blight. This crop disease is very well studied, and it is often used as a model system to analyze how microbes and host plants interact with each other. Called Xoo, for Xanthomonas oryzae pathovar oryzae, the pathogen, in order to survive, hijacks a number of rice genes that export sugars.

Xoo secretes TALes (transcription activator-like effector molecules) that bind to the DNA near the rice's SWEET genes, activating them. These SWEET genes (Sugars Will Eventually Be Exported Transporters) are ubiquitous in plants. As their name indicates, the SWEET proteins transport sucrose across the cell membrane. Their expression is required for susceptibility to Xoo.

To help the plants combat these pathogens, scientists used CRISPR to edit the rice DNA.

Find out more about this over at Ars Technica.

(Image Credit: Hans/ Pixabay)