Fluid
Designed by Melbourne-based Peddle Thorpe Architects, Fluid is a whale-inspired pavilion that is sure to be a showstopper at the much-anticipated 2012 World Expo in Yeosu, South Korea. (Pics)

Abu Dhabi is probably tired of Dubai always stealing the thunder as the star of the United Arab Emirates, but that may change with the construction of a F1 spec race track and a Ferrari-based theme park set to open in 2010.
 

Oasis of the Seas
The world’s largest cruise liner, the Oasis of the Seas, has set sail for Miami from the Finnish shipyard where it was built. (Pics)

Daylight Saving Time ends in most of the United States a 2AM on Sunday, November 1st (Hawaii and Arizona have been on standard time all summer). We remember which way to set our clocks by thinking “spring forward, fall back.” It makes you wonder how we ever got our clocks coordinated in the first place. [...]

 
Apple’s iPhone has officially gone on sale in China. Despite the country being the world’s largest mobile market, there wasn’t any frenzy like the iPhone launches in other countries. While you might suggest it’s a cultural difference or other reasons, it’s most likely caused by 2 factors. The first being that the iPhone in China [...]

Featured Invention at the Colorado Inventor Showcase 2009
Centuries ago in another land far away, a war was fought between two rulers of a tiger-like race.  Their names are long forgotten, but their memory lives on in this game of strategy and cunning!  Tora (TM) is a classical style board game done in the same vein [...]

International domain names or addresses that can be written in non-English characters are expected to be approved this week.  This will spark one of the biggest changes to the internet in its four-decade history.
 

A U.S.-Chinese venture is out to prove the benefits of quick-charge buses.
Municipal transit agencies have tried to reduce the carbon footprint of their bus fleets using a range of options over the years, from biofuels and hydrogen to batteries and hybrid-electric diesel. Now a Chinese company and its U.S. partner say that ultracapacitors could offer [...]

The grueling 150-mile (240km) Sand Marathon (Marathon des Sables) takes place near Ouarzazate in Morocco. Around 700 dedicated competitors from around the world take on the course over 11 long days. (Pics)
 

Shasta-Trinity fire from space
An omniscient eye in the sky can spot natural and man-made disasters, give advance warning about forest fires, water contamination or an oil slick.  A new Tel Aviv University (TAU) technology combines sophisticated sensors in orbit with ground based sensors to create a “Hyperspectral Remote Sensor” (HRS).

The worldwide recession has hit a lot of people hard, but it’s not all doom and gloom. Far from it actually, as is the case with property. As the price of real estate has fallen, there are plenty of bargains to be had all around the world! The villa pictured is in Halcyon Hills, Greece.
No [...]

South Korea’s super skyscraper
A new super skyscraper has just been announced for South Korea and will tower over all other buildings in Asia when it is complete in 2014. From a global perspective, Lotte Super Tower 123, designed by Kohn Pederson Fox, falls just short of taking the title, and will be not the tallest [...]

Genetically modified (GM) crops have been around for a generation but there are now new possibilities thanks to developments in understanding of the makeup of plants.
 

A new giant orb spider has been discovered in South Africa.
A new giant spider – which has huge five-inch females and tiny males – has been discovered by scientists.  The female of the new species of golden orb weaver spider has a body one and a half inches long with a leg span of [...]

Sanwei Bookshop in central Beijing
China has excelled in recent years at producing Olympic gold medalists, skilled factory workers and more billionaires than any country other than the United States. But authors are another story. The influence of China’s novelists and other writers has long been stunted by the country’s history of censorship and custom of [...]

Solta Island Resort
A rotating hotel is to form the centrepiece of a new resort near Split in Croatia. Designed by Richard Hywel Evans of Studio RHE, specialists in holiday resort design, the concept was proposed from a desire to provide sea views from each room.  (Pics)
 

A drawing of a pig and a biohazard sign mark the door of a lab where samples are tested for the H1N1 swine flu virus
The new H1N1 flu is “strikingly different” from seasonal influenza, killing much younger people than ordinary flu and often killing them very fast, World Health Organization officials said on Friday.   A [...]

Making a vaccine against seasonal influenza is a constant catch-up game. Scientists must predict which of the constantly mutating virus strains will be most virulent six months in the future, the amount of time it takes to manufacture the vaccine. The system has worked well enough for the regular flu. But when new, virulent strains [...]

China’s economy has fewer influencers than the U.S.
Financial commentators are obsessively debating whether the recent rise in the Chinese stock market means there’s a bubble — and if so, when it’s going to burst.
My take? Who cares! What happens to the broader Chinese economy is what we should really be watching. It will have a [...]

“Show your loo before you woo”
An ideal groom in this dusty farming village is a vegetarian, does not drink, has good prospects for a stable job and promises his bride-to-be an amenity in high demand: a toilet.  In rural India, many young women are refusing to marry unless the suitor furnishes their future home with [...]

Taichung Convention Center
Taiwan’s new Taichung Convention Center will be covered in solar-powered skin that naturally ventilates the structure reducing energy consumption. (Pics)
 

The pale halo-shaped cloud was hovering over Moscow on Wednesday
In what could have been a scene from the film Independence Day, a luminous ring-shaped cloud could be seen hovering over the city of Moscow last week.  The pale gold ‘halo’ could be seen above the Russian capital city’s Western District on Wednesday, and was captured [...]

While we’ve all heard of diseases, seen someone with a disease, and had a disease personally, it’s unlikely that we’ve encountered a rare disease. In the non-medical world, people use and interchange disease to mean infection, sickness, illness, or something similar. In the medical world, a disease is an abnormal condition that impairs bodily functions [...]

A South African information technology company on Wednesday proved it was faster for them to transmit data with a carrier pigeon than to send it using Telkom , the country’s leading internet service provider.
Internet speed and connectivity in Africa’s largest economy are poor because of a bandwidth shortage. It is also expensive.
Local news agency SAPA [...]

China contributed 19.2 percent of the world economic growth in 2007, up from 2.3 percent in 1978, a report by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has said.   It said China tops the world in contribution to the global economic growth.