Thailand is now in the works for creating a city near the country’s Vietnam War–era U-Tapao airport. The government will be spending around $8.8 billion to create the new “Eastern Aviation City.” 

Even though the government will be spending a huge amount of money, the benefits after the city is established will outweigh the costs. The new transport hub, upon completion, will reportedly create 15,6000 jobs in the first five years. Additionally, the new city will bolster the country’s tourism and aviation industries. 

Aside from being linked to Don Muang, a budget airport, as well as the country’s main airport, Suvarnabhumi, the Eastern Aviation City will include a free trade zone in its area. The expansion will allow U-Tapao International Airport to welcome 60 million to 75 million passengers per annum. 

Image credit: One Works

Artificial intelligence is good, to some extent. It can help us determine certain issues in our body that cannot easily be determined by doctors at a single glance. It can assist us with maneuvering certainly daily tasks. They can be taught to do things that will eventually not be done by humans anymore. 

However, these bundles of code do pose some danger. We’re seeing it right now, especially in the field of art and creativity, where tech bros utilize these machines to steal the artworks of others and shuffle them around to make them their own (and monetize them). 

It turns out that even in ancient times, there have been tales that serve as warning on how many problems these programs and robots can give us. These old tales are compiled by historian Adrienne Mayor in her new book. According to her, these stories can help us find an alternative way to process some questions about intelligent machines. These include the looming moral and practical implications of AI. 

Learn more about these tales and AI here!

Image credit: jimmy teoh/Pexels

A new detection method has shined some light on the fortress walls of Xi’an, China. These thick structures are measured to be 12 meters high and up to 18 meters thick. They served as great defenses for the residents of the city, but they are also impervious to analysis and scanning. 

One type of subatomic particle was found to be able to bypass the thickness of the fortress walls. These particles, called muons, can now be used to assess the structural integrity of the walls so they can be preserved in more years to come. 

New muon scans of the walls revealed density fluctuations inside one of the sections of the walls. These fluctuations could be signs of two things: dangerous flaws that should be repaired or hidden structures. According to nuclear physicist Zhiyi Liu of Lanzhou University, the latter could be “archaeologically interesting for discovery and investigation.”

Read more about the fortress walls here!

Image via: wikimedia commons 

Metaphorically. We wish these websites can grant us some cool powers we can use to make our lives flashier or easier. Despite being mundane and non-magical (in a fantastical sense), these platforms can still add a lot of convenience to our daily tasks. 

A Tweet from writer Gurwinder Bhogal shared a couple of platforms that can help you in your tasks, from fixing your bad writing to assisting with your dinner, these suggestions are meant for making our lives easier without spending much money. 

Out of all the websites he listed, our favorite was myfridgefood.com. All you need to do here is to list what’s in your fridge, and the website will give you recipes that uses what you have. This is great when you have no idea what to cook for a meal! 

Check out his original Tweet below, or Jellica Stillman’s recap on all of them here.

Image credit: cottonbro studio/Pexels

There are over a billion websites on the internet, yet most people never use more than a dozen.

Here are 10 little-known websites that give you superpowers.

Thread:

— Gurwinder (@G_S_Bhogal) December 22, 2022

London tour guide and author Jack Chester was just visiting London Bridge when he discovered some remnants of the previous wars. He spotted two uprooted bollards, which looked totally alright to be there at first glance– because they are used for mooring boats. However, upon inspection, he discovered that they were “sneakily disguised, recycled, upended cannon barrels.”

The cannons were dug out of the ground in the footage he uploaded online. According to Chester, these cannons were actually repurposed into moors. “Upended cannons were used as mooring posts and bollards in the city for centuries, as a convenient way of repurposing old cannons,” he explained in another video.

Well, now at least we know what other countries do to their old cannons! 

Image screenshot via The Independent

Now, this person just really got a good find. A man was reported to have bought a chandelier that looks like the work of Swiss sculptor and painter Giacometti for only £250 ($309). The lucky finder was British painter John Craxton, who found the art piece during the 1960s.

As to why it is being sold just right now, his estate decide to sell the work, more than a decade after his death. 

The artist was known for his elongated figure sculptures and his unique pieces that were inspired and influenced by the Surrealism art movement. The chandelier, with its bronze and golden-brown patina, is measured to be 53 inches tall and 60 inches wide.

Christie’s estimate is that the fixture will be sold for around $1.9 million-$3.7 million in their February 28 auction. 

Image credit: Christie’s  

Well, here’s a new link to add to the food chain. Viruses are found everywhere, and it comes as no surprise that there will be an organic species that will eat them. Researcher John DeLong at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln found a microbe that actually has them as part of its diet. 

He and his team aimed to discover if any actually ate viruses, and whether it would be enough to support the physiological growth of individuals and the population growth of a community. “They’re made up of really good stuff: nucleic acids, a lot of nitrogen and phosphorous,” said DeLong. “Everything should want to eat them. So many things will eat anything they can get ahold of. Surely something would have learned how to eat these really good raw materials.”

Their efforts lead them to find a ciliate known as Halteria. Its population grew about 15 times when supplied with Chlorovirus. The experts now crown the microbe as the first virovore, a creature that eats viruses.

Image credit: CDC

The Roman Empire is renowned for many things. For the cities it has conquered, the art and culture it has cultivated greatly, and even the structures it built that still leave people in awe today.

We look at the Colosseum and marvel at the possible fights and events held there, sure, but there’s something we can also say about the fact that it’s still standing today. These people used some good foundations to build that massive structure. 

Roman concrete is a subject of research in recent years, and one YouTuber has taken the task of recreating it himself. Shawn Kelly, host of the Youtube channel Corporal’s Corner posted a video on how to make some.

Using volcanic ash, pumice, and limestone, he was able to make a brick that can go up against modern concrete. To learn more about this building material, Open Culture has got you covered.

Check the video above to see the process!

If you find yourselves away from a reliable source of drinking water, it’s vital to know just what you can do to make it yourself, right? Well, to create one means you need to find some water first.

The next step is to boil it long enough to ensure that the water will be safe. Drinking water without doing so can make you ill. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), it’s better to use bottled water or boil tap water. They also note that we shouldn’t swallow any water coming from the shower.

Aside from not drinking shower water, the organization also advises against using tap water for wetting your toothbrush and rinsing your mouth after brushing your teeth. CDC also says to boil filtered tap water. To kill pathogens, it needs to reach at least 71 degrees Celsius.

After boiling, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) recommends adding a pinch of salt per liter of water that you will be boiling to improve its taste.

Image credit: Steve Johnson

Surprise! 

A group of oncologists from the Netherlands Cancer Institute in Amsterdam were conducting research to learn more about the cancers that can occur in the neck and head when they accidentally discover a new body organ. 

The new discovery, called the tubarial glands, was found through radioactive glucose injected in patients. The chemical was used so researchers can see tumors in the body during scans when they noticed that two areas in the head lit up over and over again in all 100 participants of their study.

These glands were described as a set of salivary glands located in the back of the nasopharynx, which is the part of the throat that is behind the nose. 

Image credit: Olha Ruskykh

Evolution is a tricky thing. It’s the term used to describe how different species adapt and change the world as time passes, but experts believe there’s a limit to how many can do so, and the number of times these creatures can actually change. 

Their biggest question, however, is why crabs continue to evolve. This doesn’t just involve actual living crabs changing different parts of their body though, as they keep pushing out new kinds to add to the crab species. According to experts, these creatures have evolved at least five times. 

A working theory as to why these crustaceans evolve way too many times compared to other species is that they’re not really a biological group or species. 

As we know, crabs are decapods, animals with ten walking legs. This means that crabs are part of a collection of branches in the decapod tree, so not all of them look the same. Learn more about crabs and their evolutions here. 

Image credit: Pixabay

Experts have found tombs and two lead sarcophagi underneath the floor slabs of the church’s transept crossing three years after a fire burned the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. This was when a team of archeologists from the French National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research (Inrap) was doing the preparatory dig for rebuilding the cathedral’s spire.

One might think that the fire, while devastating the structure, also gave way to new findings for archeologists. It still doesn’t erase the fact that the building got destroyed, though. 

Obtaining the bodies in the tomb for analysis, Paul Sabatier of the forensic research faculty from the University of Toulouse III finally identified one of the bodies. They’ve determined the corpse to be Antoine de la Porte, an 83-year-old religious dignitary. It was also found that he had good teeth, apparently. 

The other body in the second lead tomb had no name yet but was found to be a young, aristocratic cavalier. 

Image credit: DR UT3 via HyperAllergic

Alright, who had the “a rare fossil creature appears in a city” in their 2022 bingo card? Nobody? Well, we didn’t have it either, but it did happen. 

Yahoo! News reported that a creepy, prehistoric-looking “dinosaur shrimp” has shown up in Arizona. These creatures were discovered on December 23, 2022, by a tourist in The Wave, a sandstone rock formation and tourist spot. 

The visitors found a pool of water in the area and noticed some tadpole-like shrimps that were the living fossils we were talking about. According to experts, these beings dated all the way back to the Jurassic age. Talk about ancient! 

These creatures are called Triops and are described as looking like little mini-horseshoe crabs with three eyes. While it’s nice to find that some ancient crustaceans are still alive and kicking, we have to ask, why are they appearing now? 

According to Central Michigan University, the shrimp eggs can lie dormant for many decades until enough rain comes to create lakes. So the pool of water must have formed recently for the tadpoles to hatch from the eggs. It is perfectly natural, so don’t worry that their appearance is a sign of an impending apocalypse or something. It isn’t!

Image credit: wikimedia commons

A holiday miracle. After more than a decade of mourning her son, a Scottish woman has discovered that her child was alive in a different country all along. The woman, named Joyce Curtis, filed a missing person report in 2009 after not hearing from her son, Nicholas, for a period of time. 

Her son left their Glasgow home to travel to Europe to find work. The last thing she knew before she filed the report was that Nicholas was hitchhiking along France and Spain. Her family was contacted in 2010 by the British Consulate in Paris to tell them that their son was in a hospital. 

Joyce and her husband flew to Paris to meet their child, and that was the last time they ever saw him. He was supposed to board a plane back to the UK, but it never happened. "I was expecting him home at Glasgow at a certain time," she explained. "I worked at the Southern General Hospital at the time. I was waiting on him coming home and there was no sign."

Now, decades after that incident, Joyce received another call from the Consulate informing her that Nicholas was actually alive, but was again in a hospital. While overjoyed to learn about her son, she does not want to build her hopes up until he finally returns home. 

Image credit: SWNS

With the year coming to a close, we think that it’s the right time for listing all the highlights we had in the year. While we can talk about pop culture and other topics that went on the news, there’s also another thing that we should highlight for 2022: exploration and discovery. 

It may seem that we’re pandering to academia more, but we believe that it’s always nice to acknowledge what mankind found out this year about our past or the very planet we’re living on. From random discoveries of rings, while using a metal detector, to discovering a Byzantine-era mosaic artwork on somebody’s farm, CNN has compiled its list of the top art and archaeological discoveries in 2022. 

One of the most bizarre and unexpected discoveries featured in the list was experts finding a secret tunnel that leads to what potentially could be Cleopatra’s tomb. You know, the one place that eluded archaeologists for decades. 

If you’re intrigued to learn more, check CNN’s full piece here.

Image credit: Wikimedia commons