Pedro Martin Ureta, a 70-year old Argentine farmer from General Levalle, has used 7,000 cypress and eucalyptus trees to create a giant guitar in memory of his late wife, Graciela, who died in 1977, when she was only 25. He consulted a number of landscapers, but none of them were interested in such a daring endeavor, so the farmer just had to do it himself…
Continue reading… “Argentine Farmer Makes Giant Guitar With 7,000 Trees”
Construction material manufacturing often produces hazardous byproducts that are either toxic or difficult to recycle, as are many of the materials themselves. Brooklyn based Planetary ONE is experimenting with the idea of grow-your-own construction materials by making bricks from mushrooms.
Their latest project, Mycoform, places mushroom roots known as mycelium spores into a mold and feeds them with agricultural byproducts like buckwheat husks. In just over a week at 80 degrees, the spores grow to fill the form, resulting in a light yet solid structure. The brick is heated to 100 degrees when complete to kill the spores, preventing further growth.
Continue reading… “One Day Will People Be Living In Shroom Houses?”
It’s easy to say you’ll never use DEET, that is until you come down to South Carolina. My home state boasts mosquitoes that rival your house pet in size and stature. But even still, many fear the toxicity of DEET and try to avoid it even with those mini-monsters landing on you noon and night. According to the CDC, lemon eucalyptus oil could be a much safer and more natural weapon.
Continue reading… “CDC Confirms Lemon Eucalyptus Oil as Effective as DEET”
Experimenting Our Way to Success – Reinventing Publishing Models
Futurist Thomas Frey: Amazon revolutionized book reading in 2007 when it introduced its Kindle book reader. Within the past three years, the explosive sale of book readers has caused a massive surge in the sale of e-books, already outpacing the sale of hardcover books, with a prediction by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos that they will outsell paperbacks within the next year.
Continue reading… “The Fall of Book Publishing: The Rise of New E-Book Business Models”
Health insurers propose double-digit increases in their rates, citing a need for protection against any sudden uptick in demand once people have more money to spend on their health.
Major health insurers in the U.S. are heading into a third year of record profits. Their earnings have been enriched in recent months by a lingering recessionary mind-set among Americans. Many who are postponing or forgoing medical care.
Albert Einstein
Huge objects in the universe distort space and time with the force of their gravity, scientists said on Wednesday after a NASA probe confirmed two key parts of Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity.
Continue reading… “Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity Proven”
2015 global manufacturers will view the U.S. as equal to if not better-than China.
In March, U.S. exports hit a record $173 billion, up 15% from a year-ago and 37% from 2009. According to a new study from The Boston Consulting Group (BCG), the good times for “Made in America” are just getting started. (video)
Continue reading… “‘Made in America’ Making a Comeback: Study”
Futurist Thomas Frey: It has always seemed outrageous to me that in a world where so many people are dying of obesity, that we can still have an equally unacceptable number of people dying of starvation.
Continue reading… “Direct to the People – Bypassing the Brokers”
Are Anti-gravity Devices Just Around the Corner?
The Antihydrogen Laser Physics Apparatus (ALPHA) at the CERN particle physics laboratory announced that they have been able to hold 309 atoms of antihydrogen in a magnetic trap for 1000 seconds, approximately 10,000 times longer than before.
When they experimented with the anti-atoms last year they verified that they were in fact antihydrogen atoms by releasing them from the trap and observing them being annihilated by hydrogen atoms. During that experiment they were only able to contain the atoms for 170 milliseconds.
They have repeated this experiment, but have made a few changes. By cooling the antiprotons that create the antihydrogen they were able to lower their energy, this allowed for more atoms to be contained with a longer life span. The longer life will allow scientists to do more experiments, like checking if antihydrogen has the same energy level as hydrogen…
Fractal art from before computers were doing it.
Benoit Mandelbrot was a Polish-born mathematician. He received a doctorate from the University of Paris and emigrated to the U.S. in 1958. He is best known for his work with fractals, geometric patterns that are repeated at ever smaller scales to produce irregular shapes and surfaces that cannot be represented by classical geometry.
But before anybody knew Mandelbrot, artists were seeing fractals in nature and transfered the patterns in painting, design and sculpture…
There are about 7 billion human beings on the planet.
Earth is in the middle of a population crisis. While countless species have seen their numbers plummet in recent decades, with more than a few going extinct entirely, humans have seen theirs grow and grow — and the two trends are hardly unrelated. But incredibly, when considering the indelible impact we’ve had on the planet and the creatures we share it with in our brief time here, everyone alive today accounts for a whopping 12 percent of all the humans that have lived, ever.
Women can drink up to five cups of coffee daily to stave off the disease
Drinking up to five cups of coffee daily can protect women from developing oestrogen-receptor negative breast cancer. This type of breast cancer is one of the most aggressive forms of the disease, says a new study.
Continue reading… “Drinking Up to Five Cups of Coffee a Day Lowers Breast Cancer Risk”