In 1970, an astrophysicist named Koryo Miura conceived what would become one of the most well-known and well-studied folds in origami: the Miura-ori. The pattern of creases forms a tessellation of parallelograms, and the whole structure collapses and unfolds in a single motion — providing an elegant way to fold a map.
Link:https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-atomic-theory-of-origami-20171031/
Archaeologists have uncovered a mysterious enclosure hidden deep inside the Great Pyramid of Giza, the oldest of the seven wonders of the ancient world.
Texans in Dallas are trying something different when it comes to addressing homelessness among students.
About 3,600 students are homeless, according to data from the Dallas Independent School District, and 90 percent are “economically disadvantaged.” Texas has the third highest number of homeless students in the nation.
Link: https://www.wnyc.org/story/dallas-tries-drop-programs-low-income-students/
In his diary of moral development, young Tolstoy proclaimed: “This is the entire essence of life: Who are you? What are you?” The part left unspoken, perhaps because it is often unspeakable, is that there is no solid self to give a constant answer —
Link:https://www.brainpickings.org/2017/10/16/rebecca-solnit-disaster/
In the striking image above, you can see an early experiment in making books portable–a 17th century precursor, if you will, to the modern day Kindle.
According to the library at the University of Leeds, this “Jacobean Travelling Library” dates back to 1617. That’s when William Hakewill, an English lawyer and MP, commissioned the miniature library–a big book, which itself holds 50 smaller books, all “bound in limp vellum covers with coloured fabric ties.”
In Star Trek: Discovery, astromycologist Lieutenant Paul Stamets, the resident expert on space mushrooms, reveals that the entire Star Trek universe revolves around an unexpected life form: spores. In the third episode, Stamets uses the science of fungi to argue that there’s no difference between physics and biology at the quantum level, explaining that spores are the “pro-generators of panspermia” and the “building blocks of energy across the universe.”
Link: https://www.inverse.com/article/37061-star-trek-discovery-stamets-mycology
It was the end of term at Kirkkojarvi Comprehensive School in Espoo, a sprawling suburb west of Helsinki, when Kari Louhivuori, a veteran teacher and the school’s principal, decided to try something extreme—by Finnish standards. One of his sixth-grade students, a Kosovo-Albanian boy, had drifted far off the learning grid, resisting his teacher’s best efforts. The school’s team of special educators—including a social worker, a nurse and a psychologist—convinced Louhivuori that laziness was not to blame. So he decided to hold the boy back a year, a measure so rare in Finland it’s practically obsolete.
Scientists believe they may have discovered one solution to the planet’s growing level of plastic waste in the form of a plastic-eating fungus.
Researchers who set out to find a naturally occurring means of degrading waste plastic safely, extracted samples from a rubbish dump outside Islamabad in Pakistan and found a soil fungus that was feeding on plastic.
Like a lot of you, books were really important to me growing up. They were a way to escape, they were my friends when I had none, and they were windows into other worlds that I dreamed I could be a part of someday.
Books sheltered me, raised me, and showed me that I wasn’t alone. But they were also really difficult for me — because I have dyslexia.
Link: https://www.revelist.com/wellness/dyslexia-font/4916/default/1
NEW DELHI — The most popular movie in India this summer is about a toilet. It nearly causes a divorce. It makes a father slap his adult son. It splits a village in half. But, ultimately, it’s about a romance.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/03/world/asia/india-toilet-movie.html
“Even the Queen” is a science fiction short story by Connie Willis, exploring the long-term cultural effects of scientific control of menstruation. It was originally published in 1992 in Asimov’s Science Fiction, and appears in Willis’ short-story collection Impossible Things (1994) and The Best of Connie Willis (2013), as well as in the audio-book Even the Queen and Other Short Stories (1996).