Matt McCarthy describes his own cats as sweet and cuddly creatures, but on the day when he saw his cats play with a bug that entered his home, McCarthy remembered something about cats: they are apex predators. A thought then crossed his mind: “How would cats react to me and my wife if we were that small?” This resulted in the creation of these photos which depict giant cats in various cities.
It is often said that our imagination knows no bounds, and time and time again the phrase is proven to be true by artists and inventors alike. Imagination does have no limits, and we only have to open our minds to the countless possibilities.
In this series of photos, visual artist Helga Stentzel shows us that, with just a little imagination and creativity, ordinary household objects could be turned into images of animals and people.
Laughing Squid shares some of her photos. Why don’t you check it out?
When the time comes that you find yourself holding a duck, and someone shouts “duck!”, make sure that you do lower your head and not just laugh about it; you might get hurt if you don’t.
2020 indeed has been a challenging year for all of us, and it is thanks to those around us that we were able to survive the previous year.
One of the many things that have greatly helped people during 2020 are emotional support animals, such as dogs, cats, and rabbits. CNN covers the story of Finn and Budgie: two bunnies that gave great emotional support to their humans.
Read about their heartwarming stories over at the site.
Only a few people know about this, but Calvin Klein has a long-lost brother who grew up in another place. Cailv Kailun is also a designer, and has also designed his own apparel under his own name.
You’ve seen pizzas filled with pepperoni, cheese, or pineapples, but you might not have seen a pizza filled with marshmallows and bubble tea. That’s right. Something like that exists, but only for a limited time. Pizza Hut Singapore is offering the Bubble Tea Blossom Pizza until March 30, 2021. Of course, “but why?” would be a normal question to such weirdness.
Pizza Hut Singapore's Head of Marketing and Food Innovation Jayss Rajoo said the team put in some thought into the creation of the pizza.
“The team at Pizza Hut, Singapore’s leading pizza restaurant, takes pride in offering customers a moment’s relaxation from their busy, complex lives with a slice of simple, delicious pizza.
"We know that pizza is a firm family favorite of Singaporeans; so, we thought, why not combine it with another great Singaporean love – bubble tea?" he said in a statement.
Thirty years after the original release of Street Fighter II, video game publisher Capcom has released the Capcom Arcade Stadium for the Nintendo Switch. The Capcom Arcade Stadium is a compilation of video games which include multiple versions of Street Fighter II, such as the original game and its Turbo versions. The re-release, however, has had some changes, specifically in the E. Honda stage.
… the rising sun and its rays have disappeared from the stage’s background mural.
In the original versions of the games, the gray sun would also light up in alternating colors of red and yellow when the round was over.
This has now been changed to the entire left half of the mural changing color as a solid block, as shown in these screen captures.
Anchorage, Alaska — We expect to be relieved when we go to the toilet, and that’s what Shannon Stevens expected as well when she went to the outhouse. But, as she sat down on the toilet, she felt something bite her butt, causing her to jump up and scream. Her brother Erik heard her scream from their yurt (which was about 150 feet away) and immediately carried with him his headlamp, and went to the outhouse.
“I opened the toilet seat and there’s just a bear face just right there at the level of the toilet seat, just looking right back up through the hole, right at me,” he said.
Once safely inside, they treated Shannon with a first aid kit. They determined it wasn’t that serious, but they would head to Haines if it worsened.
The next morning, they found bear tracks all over the property, but the bear had left the area. “You could see them across the snow, coming up to the side of the outhouse,” she said.
They figure the bear got inside the outhouse through an opening at the bottom of the back door.
Carl Koch, a biologist from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game Wildlife Management, suspects that the bear who bit Shannon might have been a black bear. He also suspects that the bear did not really bite Shannon, but rather only swatted her with a paw. Nevertheless, Koch states that Shannon’s case is unique.
“As far as getting swatted on the butt when you’re sitting down in winter, she could be the only person on Earth that this has ever happened to, for all I know,” Koch said.
Read more about this unusual story over at AP News.
Different species have different lifespans. Some live only for a day like the adult mayflies, while others are able to live for a hundred years, like the sea turtles. The question is, how do we calculate lifespan? It seems that the DNA could be the key to answering this question, and it could be the key to helping animals and humans live longer.
DNA is the biological blueprint that makes each living creature unique. Everything from a person’s height to the iconic orange scales on a clownfish ties back to DNA instructions. When it comes to determining lifespans, DNA might be relevant, too. More specifically, methylation, a biological process inside cells, might hold clues to lifespan and the aging process in humans and animals.
After receiving the majority of the over 35,000 votes cast between it and the Anchisaurus polyzelus, the Podokesaurus holyokensis dinosaur is now recognized as the official state dinosaur of Massachusetts. The said dinosaur, which comes from the mid-Jurassic era, is a lightweight dinosaur, only weighing about 90 pounds, and only measured about three to six feet.
The poll was held in hopes to revitalize interest in paleontology.
The idea of picking a state dinosaur came to Massachusetts state representative Jack Lewis while brainstorming Covid-safe projects for his child’s cub scouts chapter that would engage the scouts in both science and the legislative process.
In January, Lewis used Twitter to announce his plan on introducing a bill to declare a state dinosaur. He asked Massachusetts residents to vote between two dinosaurs: Podokesaurus holyokensis and Anchisaurus polyzelus, reports Morrison for Mass Live on January 4. The online poll received an overwhelmingly positive response, and on the first day of putting out the initial tweet, the poll already had 7,500 votes reports, Christopher Gavin for Boston.com. The bill was originally going to be filed on January 15, but after continued immense support, the voting period was extended by two weeks until January 29, reports Charlie McKenna for the Boston Globe.
The year is 1968. The world was already switching to color television. Israel, however, had just had its first broadcast in black and white, even though they could afford color broadcast, because their authorities believed that “color broadcast was a frivolous expense that should best be avoided.”
Television came to Israel under a shroud of doubts and apprehension. The state founding fathers perceived television as a threat; they feared it would change the political, social and cultural characteristics of the young state. They felt that television broadcasts would put unnecessary economic pressure upon the state, and the mass buying of television sets would be an economic burden upon the population as well. Television, they argued, was a luxury that suited only wealthy and economically settled states.
The government also feared that television and western shows would dilute Hebrew culture and change people’s political views. Furthermore, television would reduce the amount of time people spent reading, going to the theater, and participating in social activities, thereby threatening traditional norms and family life.
It was only in 1967, during its the Arab-Israeli war, that the need for the television was recognized, and a year later, on May 2, 1968, the first public broadcast was launched by the Israeli Broadcasting Authority. However,...
Although the Israeli Broadcasting Authority (IBA) did invest in color equipment, political pressure forced them to broadcast in back and white. When Israeli television started buying the rights to many American and British TV series and movies that were filmed in color, the government ordered the broadcasting authority to erase the color information from the signal so that receivers displayed back and white images.
It would take over a decade before color broadcast became regular in Israel.
Learn more about this period in Israel over at Amusing Planet.
The greatest issue when it comes to solar cells is flexibility. While they are great power sources, they are not flexible enough to be integrated into vehicles, phones, indoor devices, and clothing.
For years, scientists have been trying to address this issue and were able to create solar cells that can bend but only at a limited degree.
It seems that their efforts have finally paid off. Recently, engineers at Pusan National University in Korea were able to create prototype solar cells that are fully foldable. Their research is published in the journal Advanced Science.
“Unlike merely flexible electronics, foldable devices are subject to much harsher deformations, with folding radii as small as 0.5 mm,” says Professor Il Jeon, corresponding author of the study. “This is not possible with conventional ultra-thin glass substrates and metal oxide transparent conductors, which can be made flexible but never fully foldable.”
To address that concern, the researchers turned to conductive films made of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs). They embedded this film onto a polyimide substrate, then doped it with molybdenum oxide to improve its conductivity.
In the end, the researchers were able to make a solar cell just seven micrometers thick that could fold to a radius of just 0.5 mm. They were able to withstand over 10,000 folding cycles without breaking. They of course also functioned decently well as solar cells too, exhibiting a power conversion efficiency of 15.2 percent and 80 percent transparency.
“The obtained results are some of the best among those reported thus far for flexible solar cells, both in terms efficiency and mechanical stability,” says Jeon.
This is a breakthrough!
(Image Credit: Pusan National University/ New Atlas)
Foxy the corgi nudges the hands of her owners with her nose when she wants them to pet her. Usually, it is just a little nudge, but Foxy on this particular night was rather forceful, and she really seemed to need a lot of petting.
When Alina Pleskova rescued a book that someone left behind on the curb, she did not expect that it would be a gem. The book, titled “Jane Asher’s Fancy Dress”, contained over 100 costume ideas for both children and adults, as well as how to make such costumes. After reading the book, Pleskova stated that she “never [wants] to look at another book again in [her] life.”
Just don’t expect that these candies were made with love. After all, they are emotionless machines. Do not expect that they made good-looking candy hearts, either; they don’t have a conceptual idea of one.
So what can you expect from AI-generated candies, you ask? Well, expect that they’ll be interesting. VERY interesting.
Rather than go the passé Sweethearts route, Janelle Shane, a research scientist who writes about the ways AI can get weird, used machine learning to create candy hearts of her own. The resulting images aren’t a treat you’d want to give anyone. Instead, most look like they’re created by someone who doesn’t know what the compound word “candy heart” is, but knows the confectionery “candy” and the human organ “heart” and combined them. “The task of generating anything a human can ask for is a really broad problem, and AI usually does best on very narrow problems,” explains Shane. Basically, the attempt at a candy heart shows you can’t just get “close enough” and have it look right.
Check out the results of Shane’s experiment over at Fast Company.
