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Thursday 30 June 2016

INFOGRAPHIC: GROW YOUR OWN SUPERFOOD GARDEN


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Superfood Garden
By
The Greenhouse People, 24 June 2016.

Superfoods don’t have to be super hard to get hold of - and you definitely don’t need to become an expert in strange and exotic produce to get the vitamins and minerals to get the health benefits from food!

We have taken a look at some of the incredible health benefits of the food you can harvest in your own garden, as well as looking at how long they would take to produce and the plants you should have alongside to complement their growth.

What’s more, we have taken a look at a couple of popular foods that don’t have the nutritional benefits you may suspect! So take a look at the infographic below to find out the superfood additions you should be making to your garden!

 Superfood garden


10 PEOPLE WHO WERE THE PATIENT ZERO OF A DEADLY EPIDEMIC


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10 People Who Were The Patient Zero Of A Deadly Epidemic
By Toni Marie Ford,
Listverse, 29 June 2016.

Keep calm, carry on, and maybe wash your hands a little more often. That’s the gist of the advice given to the general public in the event of a deadly epidemic. Less panic, less pandemic. But behind the scenes, epidemiologists are in a frantic race against time to track the spread of the disease back to its origins and, hopefully, find some answers on how to stop it.

Like an earthquake, every deadly epidemic has an epicenter, a central point from which the disaster is set in motion. In the case of an epidemic, the central point is a person and that person is known as patient zero. Here are 10 of the most famous patient zeros in history.

10. Typhoid Mary

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Photo credit: The New York American

We begin with the most famous patient zero of them all, “Typhoid Mary,” whose real name was Mary Mallon. Mary was just 15 when she emigrated from Ireland to the US in 1884 and found work as a maid.

By 1906, Mary had risen to the position of cook for the wealthy Warren family who spent their summers at Oyster Bay, Long Island. None of Mary’s employers had had any problems with her culinary offerings, but it was a bit of a coincidence that the people Mary cooked for had a habit of becoming seriously ill.

Of the eight families Mary had worked for before the Warrens, seven of them had experienced cases of typhoid. Mary was found to be a carrier of typhoid fever, but as she was not sick herself, she refused to be quarantined. In 1907, New York was at the center of a typhoid epidemic that affected around 3,000 people and Mary was thought to be its patient zero.

After two years of forced confinement on North Brother Island, Mary was finally released and took a job (under a false name) as a cook in a maternity hospital. Another typhoid outbreak ensued, at which point Mary was permanently incarcerated on “Pest Island” in the East River. She died in isolation on November 11, 1938. Her obituary officially named her as the cause of 51 cases of typhoid and three deaths.

9. Frances Lewis

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Photo credit: Vivify

Cholera was a serious threat to public health in Victorian London. In 1854, over the course of just 10 days, 500 people dropped dead within a few blocks of central London. Symptoms of cholera included vomiting, diarrhea, stomach cramps, and extreme thirst, and a patient who began feeling queasy could be dead that day.

By the end of the cholera epidemic, over 10,000 people were underground and scientists were desperate to find out where this lethal epidemic originated. Ground zero, they found, was in the diaper of a tiny, five-month-old baby named Frances Lewis.

Local physician John Snow plotted on a map the exact locations where cholera victims had died. Known later as “the ghost map,” Snow’s map showed that the majority of victims lived close to a water pump on Broad Street. It seems that Frances Lewis’s mother was washing her baby’s soiled diapers in pails of water that she then emptied into the cesspool in front of her house on Broad Street.

Victorian London was not known for its cleanliness, and the cesspool leaked directly into the local water source, poisoning thousands of the area’s residents. Soon after the pump was condemned, the cholera epidemic came to an end.

8. Mabalo Lokela

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Photo credit: Trendyx

The Ebola outbreak that devastated West Africa in 2014 sent waves of panic around the world. And no wonder. Ebola is considered one of the most alarming diseases of the 21st century. Ebola kills by causing its victims to suffer massive internal bleeds. It is a disease for which, even now, we have no cure, no vaccine, and no real idea why it keeps coming back.

The world’s first recorded victim of Ebola was a teacher named Mabalo Lokela. Mabalo lived in the town of Yambuku in the Democratic Republic of Congo and returned from a trip north in August 1976 with a high fever. Initially, medics diagnosed Mabalo with malaria. But after two weeks of dreadful symptoms - uncontrollable vomiting, trouble breathing, and bleeding eyes, nose, and mouth - he died.

Unfortunately, the Ebola virus did not die with him and many of the people who came into contact with Mabalo during his sickness contracted the disease. Around 90 percent of the people in Mabalo’s village died, and the world reeled as brave epidemiologists tried to work out how to stop this killer virus from spreading.

7. Dr. Liu Jianlin

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Over the course of nine months, SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) crept steadily around the globe, taking a total of 774 lives across 37 countries and leaving many gravely ill. First diagnosed in the Guangdong province of China in November 2002, SARS was initially described as “atypical pneumonia.” Flu-like at first, the vicious virus quickly developed into full-on pneumonia and eventually respiratory failure.

As is often the case, we had no idea what we were dealing with until it was too late. By the time the world started to take notice of this contagious disease, a certain Dr. Liu Jianlin, a medical doctor from Guangdong province, had checked into Hong Kong’s Metropole Hotel.

Described later as hyperinfectious, Dr. Liu is believed to have infected around 12 people at the Metropole before dying of respiratory failure. One of those 12 people was a lady named Sui-Chu Kwan, a resident of Scarborough, Ontario, who - feeling right as rain - boarded a plane for Canada two days after bumping into Dr. Liu.

6. Edgar Enrique Hernandez

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Photo credit: The Washington Post

“Kid Zero” may sound like the name of a superhero sidekick, but it was actually the nickname of the first human infected with swine flu. Four-year-old Edgar Enrique Hernandez from Mexico tested positive for H1N1 swine flu in March 2009. Soon, photos of his smiling face were on the front page of every newspaper.

In Edgar’s hometown, the rural town of La Gloria, several hundred people fell ill in a matter of weeks and two children died. According to the World Health Organization, H1N1 has caused or contributed to the deaths of over 18,000 people as of January 2016.

Many residents of La Gloria blame nearby industrial hog farms for the outbreak, but the jury is still out on whether H1N1 originated in the pigpens. Also unconfirmed is whether little Edgar was actually the first human to contract H1N1 swine flu. Regardless, the local authorities of La Gloria recently erected a bronze statue of Edgar in an interesting attempt to bring tourists to the town famous for swine flu.

5. Emile Ouamouno

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Photo credit: Belle News

The most devastating outbreak of Ebola the world has ever seen happened in 2014 and claimed the lives of over 5,000 people in one year. As of January 2016, more than 11,000 people have died from the disease, five times more than all other Ebola outbreaks combined.

The first person to succumb to this deadly virus is thought to have been Emile Ouamouno, a two-year-old boy living in a remote village deep in the Guinean forest region. Emile’s death was quickly followed by that of his three-year-old sister, Philomene, their pregnant mother, their grandmother, and a number of other people from his village. But it would be months before Ebola got the worldwide attention it badly needed.

The Ebola virus spread with incredible ease across Guinea’s border into Sierra Leone and Liberia. According to the New England Journal of Medicine, the epidemiologists who traced the 2014 Ebola virus to the doorstep of Emile’s family were unable to work out how the toddler became infected. The most prevalent theory is that the disease was transmitted to humans from local fruit bats.

4. Gaetan Dugas

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Photo credit: The Toronto Star

The most infamous patient zero on our list is a man named Gaetan Dugas. He was an Air Canada flight attendant and was identified by scientists in the late 1970s as the first person to bring the HIV/AIDS epidemic to the US.

Dugas was publicly named by journalist Randy Shilts in his 1987 book And The Band Played On. Upon the book’s release, the New York Post covered the story with the headline, “The Man Who Gave Us AIDS,” forever linking the name Gaetan Dugas with the devastation of the HIV/AIDs epidemic.

However, scientists have now learned that it is highly unlikely that patient zero in the HIV/AIDS epidemic was Gaetan Dugas. A recent genetic study using blood samples taken in the late 1970s has concluded that the virus probably came to New York City in 1970 and was linked to existing viruses then present in Haiti and other Caribbean countries.

3. Patient Zero MERS

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Photo credit: dna

The MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) epidemic in South Korea was officially declared over in July 2015. Also known as “camel flu,” this deadly respiratory disease was first detected in Saudi Arabia and is thought to be derived from bats. No one knows the identity of the first victim of MERS in Saudi Arabia. But when the virus hit South Korea, causing a serious epidemic that killed 36 people, it was easy to trace the source to one man.

Patient zero in the South Korean MERS outbreak first sought medical attention for a nasty cough and high fever on May 11, 2015. At a clinic in his hometown of Asan, south of Seoul, doctors examined the patient over the course of four days but were at a loss as to the cause of his ill health.

On May 20, the patient sought help at the Samsung Medical Center in Seoul and revealed that he had recently returned from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Finally, he was correctly diagnosed with the highly contagious virus. By then, patient zero had infected the two men who shared his hospital room, his doctor, a number of people sharing his hospital ward, and their visiting relatives.

There were 186 confirmed cases of MERS in South Korea. Thousands of people were quarantined in an attempt to stop the spread of the virus, a precaution that brought chaos to the city of Seoul.

2. Private Albert Gitchell

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When pondering deadly pandemics, a number of nasty viruses spring to mind - the bubonic plague, cholera, Ebola, and typhoid. But what about the benign-sounding Spanish flu? The Spanish flu is one of the most devastating pandemics the world has ever seen and is thought to have killed between 20 and 40 million people.

Yes, you read that right. Million. In the year 1918, with much of the world overwhelmed by World War I, the Spanish flu spread silently from person to person, eventually infecting up to one-third of the world’s population.

It all began on Monday, March 11, 1918, with a cough. A very bad cough coming from Private Albert Gitchell, a cook at the US Army Base in Fort Riley, Kansas. Military medics knew how quickly a virus could spread in camp conditions and had Gitchell immediately quarantined. But it was too little too late.

Gitchell had cooked dinner for hundreds of soldiers stationed at the camp the night before, and by midday, over 100 soldiers were sick. Almost half of the soldiers died from their symptoms, and the flu spread like wildfire throughout the US and Europe, across enemy lines, and into the rest of the world.

1. Goodwoman Phillips

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Photo credit: BBC

Goodwoman Phillips was not the first person to die of the bubonic plague, and she certainly wasn’t the last. In fact, the plague struck as recently as September 1994 when 55 people perished in the city of Surat, India.

Goodwoman Phillips earned her inclusion on our list of patient zeros as she was the first person to officially die of “plague” during the Great Plague of London in 1665-66. Thanks to the work of John Graunt, a London draper with an eye for statistics, deaths from the bubonic plague were meticulously recorded. All told, more than 68,000 deaths from plague were recorded in a city of around 450,000 people, which is over 15 percent of the population.

According to the people of London, the plague that befell the city was the result of two specific occurrences: the appearance of a comet in the skies over London and the coronation of King Charles II. The comet was seen as a bad omen that would bring about the end of days while plague was rumored to follow a coronation as a sign that the new king did not have God’s favor.

We know now that the Great Plague of London was actually the result of squalid living conditions that put people in close proximity with plague-infected rats that were covered in plague-infected fleas.

Top image: Aerial photograph of the village of Yambuku in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo), where in 1976, the first signs of the Ebola virus appeared in a patient, Mabalo Lokela. Credit: Dr. Joel G. Breman via Live Science.

[Source: Listverse. Edited. Top image added.]

Wednesday 29 June 2016

INFOGRAPHIC: BILLION DOLLAR COMPANIES THAT STARTED IN A GARAGE


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Billion Dollar Companies That Started in Garage
By Samantha,
Essay Writing Place, 1 June 2016.

Every new company has to start somewhere. And who told you that to launch a new business you need a corporate office? Amazon, Apple, HP, Disney, Google all started in garages and became billion dollar corporations.

All these companies have proven that success depends on determination, hard work and faith. No matter how much money you have or where you start your business, great idea, passion, and commitment are what you need to make your company a success.

Get inspired! Check out the most gigantic businesses in the world that launched in someone’s garage.

infographic Garage Companies


Top image: The garage of Steve Jobs' parents on Crist Drive in Los Altos, California, where Apple was founded in 1976. Credit: Mathieu Thouvenin/Wikimedia Commons.

[Source: Essay Writing Place. Top image added.]

Tuesday 28 June 2016

VIDEO: WHAT WOULD HAPPEN TO YOU IF ALL THE BEES DIE?


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You may probably have heard of colony collapse disorder, a mysterious phenomenon of the dying off of bees around the world. And we all know too well how bees are essential for human existence. Why are they dying, and what happens if they disappear? This video explains.


Top image: Colony collapse disorder. Credit: Wolf94114/Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

[Source: Life Noggin via YouTube. Top image added.]

10 IMPRESSIVE FEATS OF HUMAN ENDURANCE


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10 Impressive Feats Of Human Endurance
By Mike Floorwalker,
Listverse, 27 June 2016.

Endurance events like our annual marathons and the infamous Iron Man Triathlon are agonizing, grueling reminders of what we can accomplish while pushed. They promise that with dedication and training, we may be capable of feats which border on the superhuman.

The following people took this notion to sometimes ludicrous extremes. The standard warning to not try any of these things at home would be, in this case, completely unnecessary.

10. 73 Days Living Underwater

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Photo credit: Jules Undersea Lodge

The Jules Undersea Lodge, off the coast of Key Largo, Florida, was billed as the world’s only underwater hotel. We included it on a list of undersea facilities you could actually live in a couple years back; we did not expect that anyone would be ambitious or foolhardy enough to take us up on the suggestion.

In late 2014, biologists Bruce Cantrell and Jessica Fain completed a 10-week stay at the Lodge, barely besting a 22-year-old record set by NASA astronaut Richard Presley at the same facility, and he at least had the excuse of preparing for a long stay in space. The Rhone State (Tennessee) Community College instructors figured it would be a good way to learn more about marine life, the better to educate their students and incidentally break a pretty sturdy record in the process.

The duo spent their time diving (assuming the term still applies in this case) and lounging about their not-so-spacious three-room abode. Among the valuable data gleaned: Hot Pockets cook in a microwave much more quickly under compression and tend to explode.

9. 438 Days Living In Space

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Photo credit: NASA

When American astronaut Scott Kelly returned to Earth after 340 days aboard the International Space Station in early 2016, he set the US record for consecutive days in space. But his partner, Mikhail Kornienko (though undoubtedly proud of the achievement) did not partake in the record-setting festivities. For Mikhail is Russian, and they’ve pretty much had endurance space flight down for decades.

No fewer than four Russian cosmonauts have spent over a year in space, beginning with a 1987 mission aboard the now-defunct Mir Space Station, which was decidedly smaller and less hospitable than the new International version. But the true Big Kahuna of space flight is Valeri Polyakov, who between 1994 and 1995 logged a whopping 438 consecutive days aboard Mir.

Incredibly, Polyakov walked away from his craft upon landing, and his physical and mental assessment after the voyage concluded that he was in excellent condition on both counts, despite (or perhaps because of) the somewhat looser environment on Mir; Russian cosmonauts were known to drink alcohol and even smoke cigarettes aboard the old station.

8. 264 Hours With No Sleep

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Photo via Mind and Society

Way back in 1965, a high school student named Randy Gardner, under the supervision of Stanford University researchers, set a record that has not been touched to this day for multiple reasons: He stayed awake, without the use of stimulants, for just over 11 straight days.

Despite somehow managing to best one of his researchers in a pinball competition on day 10, the physical and mental consequences for Randy were pretty severe, including trouble speaking and with coordination by day three and hallucinations and paranoia by day five. By day 11, his condition was described like this: “Expressionless appearance, speech slurred and without intonation; had to be encouraged to talk to get him to respond at all. His attention span was very short and his mental abilities were diminished. In a serial sevens test, where the respondent starts with the number 100 and proceeds downward by subtracting seven each time, Gardner got back to 65 (only five subtractions) and then stopped. When asked why he had stopped, he claimed that he couldn’t remember what he was supposed to be doing.”

Despite a couple claims to beating this record in subsequent years, these attempts are not recognized by Guinness, and no further attempts ever will be. The record isn’t even listed anymore, so as to not encourage anyone else to attempt to break it.

7. 86 Hours Running Continuously

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Photo credit: The Telegraph

In 2012, New Zealander Kim Allan made a serious attempt at breaking the 486-kilometer (302 mi) continuous running record set by American Pam Reed. She failed, despite running over 85 hours, after suffering frightening hallucinations and losing all of her toenails. This in itself is impressive enough, but more so is that she tried to break the same record again the following year - and succeeded, covering 499 kilometers (310 mi) in just over 86 hours.

Interestingly, Ms. Allan - 47 at the time of her record-breaking run - isn’t particularly fond of running and only took up the sport in 2010 as a means to challenge her own physical and mental endurance. A former professional jockey, she was inspired to push her limits when she suffered a crippling leg break in 2003 after being trampled by a horse.

Says Kim, “I swore then, I’m never going to take for granted the ability to get out of bed and walk.” Fittingly, her run was an event for charity, to raise money for people with spinal injuries.

6. 22 Minutes Underwater With No Air

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Photo credit: NavySeals.com

With a PhD in medicine, mastery of the art of yoga, and an incredibly manly name, Stig Severinsen has dedicated a great portion of his life to breathing. And not merely in the sense that we all do - his current profession involves teaching people to breathe better, and if there is anyone qualified, it is Stig. After spending most of his adult life setting diving records (for both depth and time, with fins and without) Stig dropped the mic in 2012 after setting one that is highly unlikely to ever be broken: He stayed submerged, without assistance, for 22 full minutes.

In his classes (which he calls “Breatheology Workshops”), he teaches a form of underwater meditation, which sounds pretty dangerous but is what he says enables him to “laugh in the face of pain” and remain serenely beneath the water for the length of a network television sitcom episode.

It may not surprise you to know that he remains a multiple world record holder. In 2010, with the assistance of a swimming suit and goggles, Stig swam 72 meters (236 ft) under ice, besting the previous record of 14.5 meters (48 ft). Yes, he more than quadrupled the previous record.

5. 48 Hours In Virtual Reality

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Photo credit: GameCrate.com

Some records are made to be broken, and while this one will certainly fall sooner rather than later, one can imagine that it would take a certain type of person to even want to set the bar. In early January 2016, Thorsten Wiedemann, artistic director for a large German gaming festival, hooked himself into an HTC Vive virtual reality rig and settled into a fully immersive digital environment, where he remained for two full days.

With VR designer Sara Lisa Vogl as his “guide,” Wiedemann filled his virtual time with a variety of virtual activities: playing tennis with himself, strolling around weird planetscapes created by Vogl’s team, ramping off massive ski jumps, hunting down and shooting people - just normal stuff.

And yes, he slept, for two and a half hours each morning, in a cave on one of Vogl’s planets. Part of the idea behind the whole experience was to see what it would be like to fall asleep and wake up in virtual reality. As the technology progresses, proponents speculate that everyday people will spend an increasing amount of time in virtual environments. Vogl and Wiedemann’s experiment/performance, titled “Disconnected,” was livestreamed to a huge gaming audience, which promptly dubbed him “48 Hours Vive Marathon Guy.” Despite a panic attack around the 25th hour - which, if you’re keeping score at home, seems like it would likely be soon after waking up in VR for the first time - Wiedemann completed his stay with no other adverse reactions.

4. 41 Minutes Without Blinking

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Photo credit: ABC

In the Northern Territory of Australia, which is frankly the only place on Earth we would expect people to voluntarily submit themselves to such punishment, a competition was held in 2011 to raise money for a local boy who needed a new wheelchair. It was a staring competition. The contestants ranged in age from toddlers to full-grown adults, and it was called “So You Think You Can Stare.”

The last two standing were Fergal “Eyesore” Fleming and Steven “Stare Master” Stagg, who both obliterated the previous Guinness record of 17 minutes - although Stagg, who was favored to win (by whom, we are not sure), finally blinked at 41 minutes 59 seconds, leaving Eyesore as the sole record holder.

He confessed to feeling like his eyeballs were getting tattooed at 35 minutes in, a full seven excruciating, soul-wrenching (we assume) minutes before blinking. This is a man who lives up to his nickname, and he is bound to be a formidable opponent on the Staring Contest Circuit, which our source insists is real.

3. 11 Hours Playing Wimbledon Championship Match

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Photo credit: AP

At Wimbledon in 2010, John Isner defeated Nicolas Mahut to advance up the board. To say that it was a hard-fought contest would be a slight understatement. Despite every other entry on this list describing continuous events, this match earns its entry perhaps not despite but because it was stopped. On account of darkness. Not once but twice.

That is to say, the biggest match in the lives of either participant took THREE DAYS to complete, clocking in at a staggering 11 hours and five minutes of playing time over seven epic matches. After play was stopped on the first day (a rarity in itself). The second day of play alone took longer than any previous Wimbledon match and is also the longest recorded tennis session played on one day. One can only imagine the psychological difficulty both men must have faced in returning for day three.

Mahut, ranked 148th in the world at the time of his loss, recovered nicely in the intervening years, winning a few championships and achieving a career-high rank of 37th. He and Isner became close friends after the match, which is nice, though it’s a little surprising that they would ever want to see each other’s faces again.

2. 76 Hours In Continuous Flight

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Photo credit: Latin American Post

The Solar Impulse 2 is a technological marvel, a fully solar-powered airplane with over 17,000 cells capable of virtually continuous, never-ending flight. Other than weather conditions, the only thing keeping it from remaining in the air indefinitely is the endurance of the pilots. On its 2016 around-the-world trip meant to showcase the awesome abilities of renewable energy, that endurance was sorely tested.

Although pilot Bertrand Piccard was at the helm when Solar Impulse 2 completed an historic crossing of the Atlantic - never before done by a solar plane - it was teammate Andre Borschberg who crushed all previous records for solo, continuous flight with a mind-boggling 76-hour stretch from Japan to Hawaii. Pilots are only able to take brief naps, and that in the only space available: the tiny cabin of the plane, which is not heated or pressurized.

The team’s journey began in March 2015 and has been held up several times by persistent inclement weather. At the time of this writing, they are scheduled to complete their trip in Abu Dhabi, where it started, in the very near future, weather conditions permitting.

1. 15 Days (Or 70+ Years) Without Food Or Water

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Photo credit: Banoosh.tv

Finally, we have the story of Prahlad Jani, and elderly Indian man who has professed something of an aversion to food and drink. Quite simply, he has claimed that he doesn’t need either at all, and his claim has successfully deceived testers on multiple occasions.

Most recently in 2010, at the age of 82, Mr. Jani was held under close observation at Sterling Hospital in Ahmedabad, India. While there, he consumed no food and drank no water and did not urinate or pass stool for a full 15 days. His vital signs were found to be perfectly normal. Even Dr. Sudhir Shah, who participated, seemed to be having trouble reconciling his results: “We studied him for 15 days with him taking no water or food. Somebody doesn’t take water for seven or eight days, he surely dies.”

Dr. Shah was also part of a 2003 study of Jani which lasted 10 days and yielded similar results. Despite its bizarre and seemingly singular nature, researchers are interested in further study of Mr. Jani’s condition in seeking ways to alleviate famine and help disaster victims survive longer, among the dozens of practical uses to be gleaned from eliminating the need for sustenance. Particularly since, at the time of the more recent study, Mr. Jani shamelessly claimed to have had no food or drink in over 70 years.

Top image: Stig Severinsen, a Guinness World Record holder for holding his breath underwater for 22 minutes. Credit: Stig Severinsen Facebook.

[Source: Listverse. Edited. Top image added.]

Monday 27 June 2016

INFOGRAPHIC: HOW TO PROTECT YOUR LAPTOP FROM DAMAGE AND DISASTER


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You spent a good deal of money on your laptop and you most likely have some incredibly important information on it, so why would you run the risk of damaging it through sheer carelessness? Think twice the next time you decide to carry it one-handed or use it while drinking a cup of coffee. For more on how to protect your laptop, check out the infographic below:

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TASTY TECH EYE CANDY OF THE WEEK XCI


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Tasty Tech Eye of the Week (June 26)
By Tracy Staedter,
Seeker, 26 June 2016.

Robotic cargo ships, blue wine and the world's most powerful supercomputer round out this week's gallery.

1. Roll Royce’s Robotic Cargo Ship

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Roll Royce is serious about robotic cargo ships. This week, the company, which heads up the Advanced Autonomous Waterborne Applications initiative, presented a white paper outlining the problems and solutions required to make these ships a reality by 2020. One of the advantages of a robotic cargo ship is that space normally set aside for the crew could be used for shipping containers. But since these ships are controlled and monitored from the shore, a major challenge is amping up the bandwidth needed to run the computer-controlled sensors and communications.

2. Funky NYC Building

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This 14-story building on the campus of Columbia University in New York City won’t win any awards for being tall, but it is turning heads on its asymmetrical lines and contorted windows. The redesigned Columbia University Medical Center, conceived of by Diller Scofidio + Renfro, has plenty of energy efficient technologies and ample green space to apply for a LEED Gold certification once complete.

3. Off-Road Concept Car

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Industrial designer Keith Dolezel envisions this concept car, named BMW iT, as an electric off-road vehicle. The large window keeps drivers and passengers in touch with the outdoors, while the lightweight carbon fibre body and heavy duty suspension allow it to go just about anywhere.

4. Autonomous Drone System

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Autonomous drones have the potential to improve all areas of business and industry. They can inspect roads and bridges, guard wildlife, survey disaster areas, scan forests. But deploying them might be a challenge for companies new to using drones. Israel start-up Airobotics have put together an all-in-one system to manage, maintain and deploy drones for just about any use. A drone can be deployed using intuitive software and maintained with the help of the box above, which has a robotic arm designed to swap out batteries. See a video here for more details.

5. Vegan Burger Bleeds

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In a recent interview for The Wall Street Journal, Impossible Foods founder Patrick Brown said, “The whole mission of this company is to make eating animals unnecessary. So, we don’t want our product to just be delicious, we want it to be as delicious as meat.” To that end, he’s developed a meatless burger that tastes, smells, and cooks like the real thing. Coconut oil gives it juiciness, a potato compound creates a crispy exterior when fried and oddly enough, a molecule from honeydew melon gives it a meaty aroma.

6. Blue Wine

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You might as well have a glass of blue wine with your juicy, vegan burger. Spanish winemaker Gik makes it by combining red and white grapes, adding a pigment found in grape skin and giving it a pinch of indigo, a dye extracted from the Isatis tinctoria plant.

7. Electric Road

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Sweden has become one of the first countries in the world to conduct tests for driving heavy transport vehicles using electric power. A stretch of road was opened for business this week and over the next two years will be used in experiments to see how electric roads work in practice, and whether it makes sense to develop them further as a way to achieve the country’s goal of a fossil fuel-free vehicle fleet by 2030.

8. Urban Mobility

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Yamaha’s three-wheeled 05Gen has been designed for urban drivers who need to cover short distances. It has electric assist pedalling and a large panoramic windshield that not only gives the driver some shelter against light winds and rains, but also folds down over the bike to protect it.

9. Underwater Skyscraper Reef

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The Aquarim Trinity is a concept from Malaysian designers Jethro Koi and Quah Zheng Wei for an artificial coral reef. Its shape and height provide a framework where corals can grow in water depths ideal for their health. Koi and Wei suggest that the towers could be used to farm corals, relocating them to ocean zones that could benefit from reefs.

10. Fastest Supercomputer, For Now

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China’s Sunway TaihuLight supercomputer is officially the world’s most powerful supercomputer, according to Top500, which ranks supercomputers on a bi-annual basis. The 93-petaflop machine can perform around 93,000 trillion calculations per second.

Top image: BMW iT Concept Vehicle. Credit: Keith Dolezel/Bēhance.

[Source: Seeker. Edited. Top image and some links added.]