Scientists have identified a new form of matter, the existence of which has been theorised for 50 years.
The substance is known as “excitonium”.
It is made up of excitons – unusual particles made up of an escaped electron and the hole it has left behind in a material.
As more cities try to improve walkability–from car-free “superblocks” in Barcelona to heat-protected walkways in Dubai–a new report outlines the reasons behind the shift, the actions that cities can take to move away from a car-centric world, and why walkability matters.
Link: https://www.fastcompany.com/3062989/50-reasons-why-everyone-should-want-more-walkable-streets
These are some thoughts about utopia and dystopia. The old, crude Good Places were compensatory visions of controlling what you couldn’t control and having what you didn’t have here and now — an orderly, peaceful heaven; a paradise of hours; pie in the sky. The way to them was clear, but drastic. You died.
(Reuters) – Tyson Foods (TSN.N), the largest U.S. meat processor, said on Thursday it slightly raised its stake in plant-based protein maker Beyond Meat as it looks to tap growing demand for alternative sources of protein.
Link: https://mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKBN1E1381?__twitter_impression=true
To Americans and Britons, the Nordic countries have come to represent a near-mythical paradise of gender equality and family harmony, where legions of happy fathers push prams through the streets, relaxed mothers enjoy lengthy paid maternity leaves, and well-nourished children in chunky sweaters glow from their free healthcare.
A former Burke County Public Schools student recently helped test a growing and evolving piece of technology by racing it more than 1,000 miles across Australia.
Kali Smith is a junior at Appalachian State University studying environmental economics. She is a former East Burke High School student who transferred to the North Carolina School for Science and Math and recently traveled to Australia with a few other classmates to race a solar-powered vehicle in an international competition called the Bridgestone World Solar Challenge.
Why should we go to space? To learn more about the universe and our place in it? To extract resources and conduct commerce? To demonstrate national primacy and technological prowess? To live and thrive in radically different kinds of human communities? Visions, Ventures, Escape Velocities takes on the challenge of imagining new stories at the intersection of public and private—narratives that use the economic and social history of exploration, as well as current technical and scientific research, to inform scenarios for the future of the “new space” era.
Blue whales, grays and humpbacks are traveling south along the California coast this month to their annual breeding grounds in warm Mexican waters. They feed in the same spots where cargo ships travel to some of the world’s busiest ports — and one strike could be deadly.
Link: https://www.kqed.org/science/1715680/can-song-loving-robots-help-save-whales-from-ships
Documentaries about film itself have existed for decades, but only with the advent of short-form internet video — preceded by the advents of powerful desktop editing software and high-quality home-video formats — did the form of the cinema video essay that we know today emerge. Over the past few years, the Youtube channel Every Frame a Painting has become one of the modern cinema video essay’s most respected purveyors, examining everything from how editors think to the bland music of superhero films to why Vancouver never plays itself to the signature technique of auteurs like Martin Scorsese, Jackie Chan, and, yes, Michael Bay.
Link: http://www.openculture.com/2017/12/a-salute-to-every-frame-a-painting.html
Just before Thanksgiving, Reverend Jesse Jackson announced to his supporters that he’d been suffering from Parkinson’s disease for about three years, joining the ranks of other public figures with the condition, like actor Michael J. Fox and boxer Muhammed Ali, who died after a lengthy battle with Parkinson’s last year.
Link: https://www.good.is/articles/parkinsons-deep-brain-stimulation
A weapon as legendary as the dagger of King Tutankhamun needs an epic backstory, and last year X-ray analysis showed that the iron in the ancient blade had come from meteorites. Now, a French study has found that the artifact was far from alone as all iron tools dating back to the Bronze Age have otherworldly origins.
Link: https://newatlas.com/bronze-age-iron-tools-meteorites/52474/