When Go Play! announced a competition to design an innovative playground for 1,000 refugee children along the border of Thailand and Burma, Dutch designer AnneMarie van Splunter thought of old car tires. To be specific, she thought of a playground made entirely out of reused tires on a bamboo frame, made in the shape of a tree with expanding roots…
Continue reading… “Reused tires make a squid-like playground for refugee children”
Will rent-a-pet services take off around the world?
Guinea pigs are sociable animals and Swiss law prohibits owners from keeping the furry rodents on their own. But what happens when one dies? Don’t fret, just call Priska Küng, who runs a ‘rent-a-guinea pig’ service to provide companionship for grieving, lonely animals in the twilight of their years. She lives with around 80 of the furry, squeaky little creatures, in addition to six cats, a number of rabbits, hamsters and mice in the village of Hadlikon, some 30 kilometers from Zürich.
Küng, 41, rents out her guinea pigs, a service that has been in high demand in the Alpine nation ever since animal welfare rules were tightened up a few years ago. Switzerland has forbidden people from keeping lone guinea pigs because the animals are sociable and need each other’s company. As a result, the sudden death of a guinea pig, shocking enough in itself, can also place the hapless owners outside the law if they only had two of the pets. That is where Küng comes in…
Continue reading… “Rent-a-guinea pig service takes off in Switzerland”
Look at all the colors.
Want to see an enduring source of scientific dispute and perplexity? Go to your refrigerator, open a carton of eggs, and look at their speckles. Bird-egg coloration has been studied for more than a century. In a review in the Journal of Avian Biology, biologists Golo Maurer and Phillip Cassey present no fewer than seven possible explanations for eggshell color. Each focuses on how colors might shape an embryo’s fate by modulating sunlight hitting its shell…
Continue reading… “The purpose of bird-egg coloration”
Futurist Thomas Frey: As I’m writing this column, there are currently 466,302 mobile apps available for the iPhone and 512,542 mobile apps available to download on an Android phone.
Continue reading… “Introducing the Perpetual Self-Updating Book”
Incentive-based health programs can motivate people to change their behaviour.
Among insurance customers who were rewarded with lower premiums for keeping fit, those who added two gym visits to their weekly routine were 13 per cent less likely to go to hospital.
Spectators watch as Jeb Corliss hurtles though the mountain’s natural arch hundreds of feet in the air
Jeb Corliss, a wingsuit pilot, has taken the sport of sky diving to new heights after hurtling through a narrow slit in a mountainside. (Pics and video)
Continue reading… “Wingsuit stuntman flies through narrow hole on side of mountain”
Surprising drop in triglycerides seen even in normal weight patients.
Liposuction may do more than just slim down your waistline. A new study has found that it might also help your heart.
Continue reading… “Liposuction may be good for your heart: study”
“The Safe House”
The centuries old threat of zombies is making a comeback. From the movie 28 Days Later to The Walking Dead Series on AMC and the best-selling Zombie Survival Guide, we’re all a little too ready to deal with the 2012 of our dreams. (Pics)
Continue reading… “World’s first zombie-proof house”
Acid rain does far more than burn our skin. It completely washes the color from our lives.
“If I were invited to a dinner party with my characters, I wouldn’t show up.” – – Dr Seuss
Continue reading… “Top 10 Photos of the Week”
Looks like a winner!
UK’s Kingston University design student Lee Wei Chen realized that the skills he developed playing a lot of video games are practically useless in real life, so he set out to do something about it.
Behold, the washing machine/arcade combo, where the likelihood of getting your clothes cleaned depends on your ability to play the game…
Continue reading… “Washing machine and arcade combo”
How else will 3D printing change the world?
This 3D printed bicycle, exhibited at this week’s London Design Festival, is claimed to be as strong as steel. It was printed from layers of fused nylon, using a technique more commonly deployed in satellite manufacture…
Continue reading… “3D printed nylon bicycle that’s “as strong as steel””
This weekend NASA published an awesome time-lapse flyby of planet Earth taken from the International Space Station. Awesome, but jerky—until now. Someone interpolated the original frames to achieve this smooth as silk motion film. It’ll leave you stupefied…
Continue reading… “This fluid fly-by video shows astonishing view of Earth”
By delving into the futuring techniques of Futurist Thomas Frey, you’ll embark on an enlightening journey.
Learn More about this exciting program.