How can a tree with no leaves look so special? Place it in Iceland, wait for the northern lights, and voila! You now have a tree that looks like it came out of a fantasy film.
Alyn Wallace, who photographed this picture, was mesmerized when he saw this visual coincidence. And who wouldn’t be?
Fortunately, before the aurora morphed into a different overall shape, he came to his senses and capture the awe-inspiring momentary coincidence.
Utterly amazing.
(Image Credit: Alyn Wallace/ NASA)
One of the benefits of being a domesticated sheep is having your wool shorn annually. This annual shearing helps the sheep stay healthy, as having overgrown wool makes it prone to injury and infections. For domesticated sheep that no longer have owners, their wool just keeps on growing unchecked, because there is no one to shear it for them. Such is the case for Baarack.
He hadn't been shorn in years, and his fleece had grown into a dense, gargantuan mass by the time he was captured and brought to Edgar's Mission Farm Sanctuary for rescued farm animals in Lancefield, Victoria, a representative of the nonprofit told Live Science in an email.
When Baarack’s wool was finally shorn, it was said that his wool weighed about as much as a ten-year-old child.
At one point in the past, Baarack had an owner, as he had been castrated and mulesed — a practice that removes skin from around a sheep's tail, creating smooth scar tissue that deters blowflies, according to Australia's Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA). His ears also showed signs of tagging, though the tags were long gone, possibly torn out by the weight of his overgrown coat, according to Edgar's Mission.
Photos of Baarack before his haircut show the sheep's muzzle poking out of an enormous and very crusty wool cocoon. When the sheep was standing, only his hooves and a small section of his lower legs were visible; when he lay down, his legs disappeared entirely.
The load of wool around his head was so heavy that it partly hid his face, and the fleece's weight pulled on his lower eyelids, exposing his eyes to grit and dust. He had a painful ulcer in one eye from a stuck grass seed, according to the mission representative.
Now he’s free of that woolly burden.
(Image Credit: Edgar’s Mission/ Live Science)
The WWE wrestling superstar Triple H has challenged Elon Musk to a fight, and he wants that fight to be not in any wrestling arena here on Earth; Triple H wants his fight with Elon to be on Mars.
“Elon Musk, if you’ve got the guts, if you have what it takes to do this,” the wrestler said, “then you and I will talk about what I really want to talk about, which is taking one of your rockets, launching it from Florida, going up into space, heading to Mars with a team from the Performance Center, where we then put on the largest spectacle the Universe has ever seen – WrestleMania Mars.”
Of course, the pro wrestler said this in a humorous way, but if it does happen, it would be a fight worth watching.
(Image Credit: SpaceX/ Wikimedia Commons)
One of the many fun moments from tonight's show - @TripleH cutting a promo on @elonmusk pic.twitter.com/PqIbkfSu4x
— The Good Time Show (@GoodTimeShowCH) February 26, 2021
The advancement of technology paved the way for the invention of the smart TV, television with an integrated computer and operating system. This TV became very popular over the years, and it made basic or dumb TVs obsolete. There’s just one problem with smart TVs, however. The computers inside them don’t last as long as their displays do.
When your smart TV is a few years old, you might still have a perfectly good display panel, but you'll be forced to interact with it through a slow, old, possibly abandoned integrated computer. Companies should sell dumb TVs without any of this crap permanently integrated into them, but if they refuse, letting consumers turn off the software is the next best thing.
Google has addressed this integrated computer issue by introducing the “basic TV” mode into their TVs.
A report from 9to5Google details an upcoming "Basic TV" mode that will be built into Google TV, which turns off just about all the smart TV features. Right now, Google TV is only available in the new Chromecast, but Google TV will be built into upcoming TVs from Sony and TCL. Basic mode means we'll get smart TVs with a "dumb TV" mode.
The photo above shows how the mode looks a lot simpler compared to the normal Google interface. Learn more details about it over at Ars Technica.
(Image Credit: 9to5Google/ Ars Technica)
For years, scientists have been puzzled as to why we wheeze. While we know that wheezing occurs when we have a cold, an allergic reaction, or a long-term condition such as asthma, reasons as to why wheezing occurs still remain a puzzle… until now.
New research has used a combination of modelling and high-resolution video to try and shed some light on the mechanisms of wheezing, finding that there's a "violent" process that can cause our lung pipes to make these raspy sounds.
With this new information available, the team is hoping that wheezing might be better understood and diagnosed in the future.
[...]
"We found that there are two conditions for wheezing to occur: the first is that the pressure on the tubes is such that one or more of the bronchioles nearly collapses, and the second is that air is forced through the collapsed airway with enough force to drive oscillations."
In either case, the oscillations are sustained through a fluttering mechanism, where the travelling waves of air have the same frequency as the opening and closing of the tube. The same sort of resonance scenario can collapse bridges and cause aircraft wings to fail, which shows how damaging it could be to the lungs.
Learn more about what causes wheezing over at ScienceAlert.
Yikes!
(Image Credit: Myriams-Fotos/ Pixabay)
Ten years ago, in the early Roman port of Berenice in Egypt, archaeozoologist Marta Osypinska and her colleagues discovered a grave site just outside the city walls, beneath a Roman trash dump. But it wasn’t people that were buried in this site. Rather, the remains at this site were that of animals. In 2017, about a hundred remains of animals — most of them being cats — were unearthed by Osypinska and her team. At the present, the team has already excavated about 600 animals in the site, which could be considered the oldest pet cemetery in the world.
“I’ve never encountered a cemetery like this,” says Michael MacKinnon, a zooarchaeologist at the University of Winnipeg who has studied the role of animals across the bygone Mediterranean but was not involved with the new work. “The idea of pets as part of the family is hard to get at in antiquity, but I think they were [family] here.”
[...]
“We have individuals who have very limited mobility,” Osypinska says. Yet many lived long lives and their injuries healed. “Such animals had to be fed to survive,” she says, “sometimes with special foods in the case of the almost-toothless animals.”
[...]
The fact that humans took such good care of the animals, especially in a rough-and-tumble region where almost all resources had to be imported—and that they took such care in burying them, just as many modern owners do—suggests the people of Berenice had a strong emotional bond with their cats and dogs, the team concluded last month in World Archaeology. “They weren’t doing it for the gods or for any utilitarian benefit,” Osypinska says. Instead, she argues that the relationship between people and their pets was “surprisingly close” to the one we see today.
More about this over at Science Magazine.
(Image Credit: M. Osypinska/ Science Magazine)
The Akiyuki Brick Channel on YouTube has set up a 224-foot LEGO roller coaster track for those who miss riding roller coasters. A cart equipped with a GoPro camera was put on the track, which gives us a point-of-view ride along the track.
Traveling at a speed of 0.38-meters/second (1.2-feet/second), the roller coaster cart pulls itself along the track, which includes cranks, corkscrews, somersaults, stairs, wall rides, and bridges.
Cool!
(Image Credit: Akiyuki Brick Channel/ Technabob)
The quality of the food we eat is dependent upon the quality of the environment in which the food was grown. And because alcoholic beverages are made from crops and fruits, their taste and quality are also dependent upon environmental conditions. A recent study focused on barley, the grain crop used in whiskey, found out how environmental conditions affect the flavor of the said alcoholic beverage.
This is [the] first scientific study that found the environmental conditions, or terroir, of where the barley is grown impacts the flavor of whiskey, said Dustin Herb, an author of the study and a courtesy faculty member in the Department of Crop and Soil Science at Oregon State University.
"Terroir is increasingly being used to differentiate and market agricultural products, most commonly wine, as consumers grow more interested in the origins of their food," Herb said. "Understanding terroir is something that involves a lot of research, a lot of time and a lot of dedication. Our research shows that environmental conditions in which the barley is grown have a significant impact."
[...]
Herb's doctoral research at Oregon State with Pat Hayes, a barley breeder in the College of Agricultural Sciences, focused on the contributions of barley to beer flavor. Their research found notable differences in the taste of beers malted from barley varieties reputed to have flavor qualities.
[...]
"What this does is actually make the farmer and the producer come to the forefront of the product," Herb said. "It gets to the point where we might have more choices and it might provide an opportunity for a smaller brewer or a smaller distiller or a smaller baker to capitalize on their terroir, like we see in the wine industry with a Napa Valley wine, or Willamette Valley wine or a French Bordeaux."
Learn more about this study over at EurekAlert.
(Image Credit: Pixabay)
For years, scientists have debated the cause of the extinction of the woolly mammoth. Some suggested that the giant creatures went extinct because of the climate change that happened about 15,000 years ago. Others suggested that they went extinct because of human hunting. And then there were those who suggested that the mammoth went extinct because of both. But which of these was the closest to reality? A new simulation suggests that it was the third theory.
Prior research has shown that as the planet warmed after the last ice age, woolly mammoths began to move north—they survived by eating the types of grass that grow in cold climates. Prior research has also shown that most of them died out approximately 11,000 years ago—small pockets managed to survive in some isolated areas for a few thousand more years. It is generally believed that the last of them died out approximately 4,000 years ago.
In this new effort, the researchers created a simulation showing wooly mammoth populations from approximately 21,000 years ago, to 4,000 years ago—the time when the last of the mammoths died out. To recreate conditions the mammoths faced, the researchers added climate data as well as known human hunting data. They ran their simulation over 90,000 times with slight changes to the factors that might have led to their demise. The simulations showed that the most likely scenario involved climate change pushing the mammoths into smaller environments and hunters finishing them off. The simulations also showed that it is likely that some of mammoth populations survived for longer than has been thought in regions that have not been explored yet. Interestingly, the researchers also found that if they removed human hunters from the simulations, the majority of the mammoths held on for another 4,000 years.
To put it simply, had we humans not hunted every last one of them, they would have been around for a little bit longer.
(Image Credit: Pixabay)
It may already be hundreds of years old, but the Japanese art of paper folding, origami, still thrives to this day, and it remains as a fun activity for anyone, may it be a kid or an adult. Origami can be a hobby, but it can also be a discipline to dedicate your life to.
Many contemporary origami artists are pushing the boundaries of paper folding—including a samurai figure that took three months to plan and execute…
Interested in learning origami? My Modern Met provides some tips for the starter, such as the best type of paper that you can use to develop your paper folding skills. The site also provides a list of recommended YouTube videos to watch as you learn the art. Check them out over at the site.
(Image Credit: padrinan/ Pixabay)
Back in 2015, tech company HP announced that their HP Stream Tablets and x360 Notebooks with Intel Inside would come with free 4G, and they promoted this via this funny commercial, which showed two people Skyping at their respective offices, when in reality they were walking at the beach.
(Image Credit: HP/ YouTube)
Despite having the South Pacific Ocean in front of them, the people of Chile, specifically those who live in shantytowns, still have a problem with the supply of clean water, as they don’t have the means to desalinate the water. Also, while their place has abundant solar energy that could be harnessed, many families only have unreliable electricity.
… power comes unreliably through an electrified wasp’s nest of jerry-rigged powerlines, and windows are often boarded up to increase privacy and security, removing almost all natural light.
To put it simply, Chile has “abundant, if unusable” resources, but Henry Glogau is determined to put these into use with his solar light that also acts as a desalination still.
“I wanted to achieve a design which was sustainable, passive, and created a striking feature inside the dark settlement home,” writes Goglau, who graduated from the Royal Danish Academy with a master’s in specialized architecture for extreme conditions.
“In my development process it became apparent that I could address the lack of indoor lighting and water access by creating a hybrid skylight and solar desalination device.”
Truly killing several birds with one stone, Goglau’s salination still can purify 440 milliliters of water a day, with leftover brine being sifted into batteries made of zinc and copper where they power an LED strip for use during the night.
More details about this over at Good News Network.
Now this is epic!
(Image Credit: Solar Desalination Skylight/ Good News Network)
There is a legend in the 17th century that tells the story of a woman whose face turned to that of a pig’s, thanks to the power of witchcraft. According to the story, after the wedding of a man and the pig-faced woman, a witch offered a choice to the man: either the woman will appear beautiful to him and pig-faced to others, or she will appear beautiful to others, but pig-faced to him. When the man left the choice to the woman, the spell was broken, and her pig-faced appearance ended with it.
As time went on, the stories evolved, and then evolved to rumors. People reported sightings of the pig-faced lady. And then people turned it into reality at the freak shows by stuffing drunk bears into dresses.
People now wanted to see a pig-faced woman, rather than be merely told there's one.
Painted images were displayed of pig-faced ladies by people who were too afraid to get a bear off its face on beer, shave it, then cram it into a dress, while others put on a much better (though far less ethical) show by getting a bear off its face on beer, shaving it, and cramming it into a dress.
"The pig-faced lady is not infrequently exhibited in travelling-caravans, by showmen at fairs, country-wakes, races and places of general resort," Robert Chambers wrote in 1832.
Learn more about this over at IFL Science.
(Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons)
Dogs have been known to alert their families whenever they notice something wrong in their homes. This phenomenon has been reported a few times in the past. Cats, on the other hand, are not as communicative as dogs, but it doesn’t mean that they don’t alert their families, as they do it, too, but in their own way.
A rescue cat was reported to have rescued a family in Oregon from a disaster after noticing a gas leak in their home.
Sandi Martin said she was playing at her Lake Oswego home with Lilly, the cat she recently adopted from Cat Adoption Team in Sherwood, when the feline started sniffing at a fireplace valve in a way that struck Martin as unusual.
"I went over and sniffed and there was a natural gas smell," Martin told KGW-TV. "It was very faint so I didn't really trust my nose. Then I asked my husband to sniff it, and he sniffed it, too."
The couple contacted NW Natural, their gas company, and they were told to shut off everything in the room, including their phones, and open all available windows and doors.
[...]
Martin said Lilly has extra toes on her feet, a trait that is considered lucky in cats. She said the gas experience confirmed the feline's good fortune.
The family has indeed been lucky.
(Image Credit: KGW News/ YouTube)
In an effort to reduce the large amounts of leftover materials (which usually end up as waste) produced by the laser-cutting process in the industry, researchers from MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL) have developed a new tool called Fabricaide. The tool could help designers save time and resources on their projects.
"By giving feedback on the feasibility of a design as it's being created, Fabricaide allows users to better plan their designs in the context of available materials," says Ph.D. student Ticha Sethapakdi, who led the development of the system alongside MIT Professor Stefanie Mueller, undergraduate Adrian Reginald Chua Sy, and Carnegie Mellon University Ph.D. student Daniel Anderson.
Fabricaide has a workflow that the team says significantly shortens the feedback loop between design and fabrication. The tool keeps an archive of what the user has done, tracking how much of each material they have left. It also allows the user to assign multiple materials to different parts of the design to be cut, which simplifies the process so that it's less of a headache for multi-material designs.
Learn more about this tool over at TechXplore.
Cool!
(Image Credit: Massachusetts Institute of Technology/ TechXplore)
