With the anime Yu Yu Hakusho now available on Netflix, fans of the series can now watch the show again, and those who haven’t seen it yet now have a new series on their list of what to watch while they stay at home. With its great story and memorable characters, it is indeed a classic masterpiece, although a bit underrated, overshadowed by other shonen like Dragon Ball (DB). But what makes Yu Yu Hakusho a memorable show? It is how the story is told to the audience.
[It has] a one-two punch of arcs that both glorify anime violence and then call into question the glorification of it.
[...]
Yoshihiro Togashi's Yu Yu Hakusho took all of DB's messages about pride and angst… and ran with them, creating a seemingly effortless tale about warriors that find themselves in combat, but lose themselves as well.
In 1928, the first true antibiotic, penicillin, was discovered by Sir Alexander Fleming. This event inspired hope in people: hope that we had a chance to fight against deadly germs, enemies that cannot be seen by the naked eye. Between the 1950s and the 1970s, humanity was thrust into what was known as the antibiotic era, a time in history in which many antibiotic classes were discovered.
But much has changed since those times. The bacteria with which we have waged war against have become much stronger and resilient. If there was something that would disprove the phrase that “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks,” it would be these microscopic organisms. And now, it seems that we’re losing this war, and immediate action is much needed.
How did bacteria become resistant in the first place, and what can we do about it? Scientists at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York and the MRC Centre for Molecular Bacteriology and Infection at Imperial College London might have an answer.
Snakes are unwelcome visitors in anybody’s home, and they could sometimes be the cause of panic and fear to children and adults alike. If snakes can be commonly spotted in your yard, then what should you do to keep them away? Quick and Dirty Tips gives us four ways to keep these slithering creatures away from our yards. You might be surprised at how common kitchen stuff like white vinegar, and even your own hair, could be used as tools to keep these unwelcome visitors away.
But when you do spot a snake crawling in your yard, make sure to immediately call animal control if you suspect that it could be venomous.
On May 12, 2019, the small municipality of Loculi in the island of Sardinia assembled this pecorino cheese. The cheese was then subjected to seasoning for the next 12 months, and, after the said period, a Guinness adjudicator officially examined the creation. After the examination...
The massive pecorino was declared to be the largest cheese made from sheep's milk, beating a 1,178.8-pound block of pecorino made in Ascoli Piceno, in Italy's Le Marche region, in 2009.
"The cheese was made with traditional methods and, above and beyond the record, it was a chance to rediscover the local area's artisan skills and food culture," Anna Pitzalis, who designed the wooden wheel holding the record-breaking cheese, told ANSA.
With a wristband designed by researchers from Cornell University and the University of Wisconsin, Madison, the future of wearable technology is bright. The wristband, called FingerTrak, can track the entire human hand in 3-D space,
...including 20 finger joint positions, using three or four miniature, low-resolution thermal cameras that read contours on the wrist.
This device could be used in various fields such as sign language translation, human-robot interaction, and virtual reality.
"This was a major discovery by our team—that by looking at your wrist contours, the technology could reconstruct in 3-D, with keen accuracy, where your fingers are," said Cheng Zhang, assistant professor of information science and director of Cornell's new SciFi Lab, where FingerTrak was developed. "It's the first system to reconstruct your full hand posture based on the contours of the wrist."
FingerTrak's breakthrough is a lightweight bracelet, allowing for free movement. Instead of using cameras to directly capture the position of the fingers, the focus of most prior research, FingerTrak uses a combination of thermal imaging and machine learning to virtually reconstruct the hand. The bracelet's four miniature, thermal cameras—each about the size of a pea—snap multiple "silhouette" images to form an outline of the hand.
More details about this amazing gadget over at TechXplore.
Because who doesn’t want to eat when they get served their favorite food? For us humans, our favorite food could vary. Some like sweets, while others like salty food. But for ducks, it would be peas, and boy do they get excited when they see a bowlful of these seeds!
Watch as these ducks, named Pepé and Arnold, gobble up a bowlful of green peas in less than a minute!
Some are chonky, while some have an average body size. These new summer fruits also vary in color, probably depending on the tree where they have grown. And if there’s one thing common in all of them, it is their love for sleep. For some reason, they look similar to cats, but it isn’t proven by science that cats grow on trees, so maybe these are different species.
Meet Nana, a really cute British shorthair who can show a lot of expressions, such as shock, surprise, skepticism, compassion, curiosity, and many more! Check out her expressive faces over at 9GAG.
Some people are tasked to stay standing up and wait near the customer as he or she picks his/her order from the menu. These people are called “waiters.” Others, on the other hand, are tasked to float beside the customer as he or she picks an order. These people are called “waitless,” and oftentimes they can be a bit impatient, and thus the name. This sushi restaurant at Tucson Arizona seems to be looking for both types of restaurant servers.
It was a fine afternoon in the rural town of Kita Hiroshimacho in Japan’s Hiroshima Prefecture, and Rumiko Sasaki and her husband were taking advantage of the long daylight hours weeding their backyard. Suddenly, at around 5:30 in the afternoon, a bear came to Rumiko’s backyard. Rumiko’s husband then alerted her of the wild animal’s presence.
...and when Rumiko looked up from where she’d been pulling weeds, sure enough, that’s what she saw. “When I stood up, there was a bear standing there, and it came right at me, aiming right at my face [with its claws],” she says.
“So I went ‘Aaaahhh!’ and tossed him off me and sent him flying. I think I hit him a few times too. Then he went running away.”
According to the 82-year-old woman’s estimate, the bear was about a 150 centimeters tall (around 4’ 11”).
After Rumiko’s counterattack, the bear fled into the nearby woods, and hasn’t been seen since. The local hunting club, called Kuma Rangers (“Bear Rangers,” like they’re a tokusatsu team), has set up three capture cages in the forest, and is also patrolling the area.
Although Rumiko suffered several scratches to her face in her encounter with the bear, she was still in good spirits when she was interviewed.
With us staying home for many weeks, we've gotten bored due to the lack of variety in our everyday lives. As the same things happen day in and day out, it's only normal for us to desire something new… and something random, and that’s what this app, called Randonautica, is all about: taking us into random places.
Randonauting is… simple. You can do it using the free app Randonautica, which asks you for your location, prompts you to select one of a handful of different “entropy” generators—which one you choose should not really matter—and then asks you to focus your mind on your “intent.” Then it spits out a set of coordinates that could, allegedly, be influenced by your mind interacting with the machine, or not, and you can choose to go there, or not, and submit a report of what you find, or not. (You can generate 10 sets of coordinates a day for free and pay to generate more.) The app’s logo, fittingly, is an owl, because owls see in the dark; randonauts see what other people don’t. In particular, they see what they otherwise wouldn’t.
Through these months, this app has led people to weird, if not creepy, places such as abandoned houses and quiet forests. Aside from that, it has led people to disgusting objects such as water bottles filled with pee, and horrifying discoveries such as a suitcase containing corpses.
With its rather strange gimmicks, the app was downloaded 6 million times since the beginning of April.
The allure of Randonautica is bigger than “It allows me to be outdoors and kill time,” however. It is janky-looking, sure, and does not always load. And the science behind it—the idea that human thoughts can influence random-number generators—does not make a lot of sense. But it plays with concepts that people tend to love: that we can do something amazing whenever we feel like it, that the universe will talk to us if we try to listen, and that randomness can be tamed if we have a good attitude and a clear mind.
Nothing is really more magical than witnessing new life emerge. It is made even more magical when you don’t see it happening all the time.
Last Sunday, residents of Morterone, the smallest village in Italy where only 28 people live, welcomed their 29th community member, newborn baby Denis. He is the first baby born in the town in eight years.
“It truly is a celebration for the whole community,” Antonella Invernizzi, the mayor of Morterone, told Corriere della Sera.
Denis’s parents, Matteo and Sara, followed the Italian tradition of announcing the birth by placing a ribbon – blue for a boy and pink for a girl – on the door of their home. It is the first time such a ribbon has been seen in the village since 2012, when a baby girl was born.
Denis was born in Alessandro Manzoni hospital in Lecco, weighing 2.6kg.
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“Now we have gone back up to 29,” Invernizzi said. “There are no other pregnancies in sight, at least that I know of … but certainly a newborn is always a joy for all of us.”
More details about the story over at The Guardian.
Hugs can have significant health benefits according to studies. As a hug stimulates touch receptors under the skin, it helps in lowering our anxiety hormones and reducing our stress levels. American author and therapist Virginia Satir said once that “we need four hugs a day for survival. We need 8 hugs a day for maintenance. We need 12 hugs a day for growth”.
If you want a unique hugging experience, then cow cuddling might be the good therapeutic trend for you.
Learn more about cow cuddling and how the cows react to people hugging them over at BBC Reel.
It was the late 1980s, and the business of mobile cinema was flourishing in the humble West African country of Ghana. With a diesel generator, a projector, and a VCR loaded in the truck, these portable video clubs traveled across the rural areas of the country where there were no theaters or electricity, and brought the cinema experience there. With the advent of mobile cinemas came also the hand-painted movie posters which the mobile cinemas used to advertise the movie that they were screening.
To attract viewers, the video clubs needed to advertise their offerings. But they did not have the original movie posters, or the means to print alternatives -- the country's military rulers had even restricted the import of printing presses.
So they made their own, commissioning local artists to hand-paint them on used flour sacks. They were large, usually 40 to 50 inches in width, and 55 to 70 inches in height.
The posters have since made ripples in the art world, with early originals commanding high prices from collectors.
The demand for hand-painted movie posters started dying out in the mid-2000s, but the demand suddenly grew again in 2015.
With its positive impact on the bones, the muscles, the brain, and a person’s weight management, exercise is one of the healthiest activities that you can do. And not only does it offer improvement on the body, as regular exercise also lowers the risk of developing deadly diseases, such as cancer.
According to a literature review of an international group of exercise oncologists last fall, exercise lowers the risk of developing different types of cancer by 10 to 25 percent. But they weren’t sure as to how exercise can lower the risk of developing the disease.
There are plenty of theories involving things like hormone levels, blood sugar, chronic inflammation, and oxidative stress, but no one has put all the pieces together.
Now, a new theory has been proposed by a group led by Peter Biro of Deakin University in Australia. The opinion piece can be found in the journal Trends in Science.
Biro and his colleagues propose a new theory in which the link between exercise and cancer is explained by what they call “energetic capacity.” In short, fit people are able to ramp up and sustain high levels of energy consumption, which gives them the ability to mount a more robust immune response when cancer cells attack and also helps them to withstand the energy-sapping effects of tumors that do get a foothold.
