Shown: Not meth but another kind of addictive crystal
The Sugar Association, paid the equivalent of about $49,000 today to three scientists to conduct a literature review on scientific evidence about sugars, fats and coronary heart disease. Their investigation was eventually published in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine. However, the foundation apparently cherry-picked data favorable to its desired conclusion that fat, not sugar, was linked to coronary heart disease and its funding of the review was not disclosed.
Parisian website My Little Paris released this rather impressive promotional video, claiming 90% of it was done without any special effects. Even so, it is quite convincing (I looked away twice) and I bow to their fearless performer.
And on the subject of not looking down, here’s some similarly tummy-unsettling images I’ve been collecting:
Explanation: How much of planet Earth is made of water? Very little, actually. Although oceans of water cover about 70 percent of Earth’s surface, these oceans are shallow compared to the Earth’s radius.
Spheres showing: (1)All water-Largest sphere 1,384 km (860 mi) diam. (2)Freshwater in ground, lakes, swamps, rivers– Medium sphere, 273 km (169.5 mi) diam. (3)Freshwater lakes and rivers -Tiny sphere, 56.2 km (34.9 mi)
In the first bar, notice how only 2.5% of Earth’s water is freshwater – the amount needed for life to survive.
The middle bar shows the breakdown of freshwater. Almost all of it is locked up in ice and in the ground. Only a little more than 1.2% of all freshwater is surface water, which serves most of life’s needs.
The right bar shows the breakdown of surface freshwater. Most of this water is locked up in ice, and another 20.9% is found in lakes. Rivers make up 0.49% of surface freshwater. Although rivers account for only a small amount of freshwater, this is where humans get a large portion of their water from.
A new documentary about the Beatles shows the toll Beatlemania took on them as they became “more popular than Jesus” at the height of their fame.
“Eight Days a Week: The Touring Years” — the first authorised portrait of the Fab Four in almost half a century — follows the band on the road for four years from their native Liverpool in 1962 through a series of gruelling US tours until the release of the album “Revolver”.
Hollywood director Ron Howard has unearthed a treasury of previously unseen footage of the band as well as material from John Lennon’s widow Yoko Ono.
In one interview, Lennon confessed that the song “Help!” was quite literally a cry for help.
“It was real. I was singing ‘Help!’ and I meant it,” he said.
“There is no off-switch. It’s like you are a politician. You are on 24 hours a day… everyone wants a bit you.”
Such was the noise from their hysterical, mostly female fans that their concerts had become “a freak show”, he said. “The music wasn’t being heard.”
Drummer Ringo Starr recalled how he “couldn’t hear anything. I was watching John’s arse and Paul’s head shaking to see where we were in the song.”
“We always felt sorry for Elvis because he was on his own” dealing with the demands of fame, said guitarist George Harrison, whose widow Olivia also co-operated with the project.
“At least there were four of us, so we shared the experience.”
‘Stoned’
Paul McCartney admitted that the four were so strung out that they “spent a lot of (the time on the set of the film ‘Help!’) slightly stoned”.
It was only when they retreated into the studio with their producer George Martin that the band was able to get its mojo back, the songwriter added.
“Eight Days a Week” is being released in cinemas worldwide for special one-off screenings on September 15. Afterwards it will be available online through the Disney-owned video on demand operator Hulu.
It is being shown alongside a newly discovered 30-minute segment of the band’s now legendary 1965 concert in New York’s Shea Stadium when they played in front of 56,000 screaming fans.
Director Ron Howard said he thought he knew what fame entailed until he began “working on this film and realised the unimaginable chaos these guys experienced.
‘Jaw-dropping stuff’
“Like many people, I thought I knew The Beatles,” the director said in production notes to the movie. “But I didn’t really know the intensity” of Beatlemania.
“It’s pretty jaw-dropping stuff to see” some of the crowd-sourced footage ferreted out by researchers working for the Beatles’ record company, Apple, he said.
The band were mobbed wherever they went, overwhelming police forces across the world, with 240 fans ending up in hospital after one 1964 concert in Vancouver, Canada.
The documentary also shows how the Beatles refusal to play to segregated audiences in the American South was instrumental in forcing venues there to lift the color barrier.
“I knew (the Beatles) were drawn into the anti-Vietnam war movement at a certain point,” Howard said, “but I had no idea about this, and as an American, to recognise that these guys from the outside were coming in and saying this… was a very courageous thing.”
But for the two surviving members McCartney, now 74, and 76-year-old Starr — who have given the film their blessing — the real pleasure was seeing their younger selves play.
They never saw the Beatles, McCartney joked.
“I think the basic thing about the Beatles is that we were a great little band,” he added.
“So to see us performing as a band is a great thing, because without that, we couldn’t have made the records. That was the foundation of everything we recorded.”
In 1964 the Beatles played on 3 consecutive nights in Melbourne. Here’s a remastered recording of those shows:
The above was digitally remastered and posted by Audiophile, a Russian music lover with a great YouTube channel.
If you live in the Bay Area, here are some local showtimes for “The Beatles: Eight Days a Week”
5o Terran Years ago tonight, on the Star Date above (Sept. 8 1966) Star Trek was launched across American TV screens. I watched it with my mom. To celebrate the anniversary, the Smithsonian’s National Air & Space Museum restored the original model of the U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701 for display in the Milestones of Flight Hall alongside The Spirit of St. Louis, the Bell X-1, Apollo 11 and other famous flyers.
Here’s a short video about the 3.5m (11′) model’s restoration:
Here’s some related images to celebrate this anniversary with:
Dr. Krister Smith of the Department for Messel Research at the Senckenberg Research Institute in Frankfurt, BD “We discovered a fossilized lizard inside the snake, which in turn contained a fossilized beetle in its innards!”
Credit: Krister Smith
“Until now, we had never found a tripartite food chain – this is a first for Messel!” exclaims Smith elatedly.
To this day, only one other example of such fossil preservation has been found worldwide – in a 280-million-year-old shark:
Using a high-resolution computer tomograph, Smith and his colleague Agustín Scanferla from Argentina were able to identify both the snake and the lizard to the species level.
Credit: Krister Smith
Smith comments, “The fossil snake is a member of Palaeophython fischeri; the lizard belongs to Geiseltaliellus maarius, which has only been found at Messel to date.” Palaeophython fischeri with the devoured lizard Geiseltaliellus maarius (orange) and the unidentified insect (blue).
The snake measures 103 cm (41″) in length and is thus significantly smaller than other specimens of this species, which can reach two meters or more. Smith therefore assumes that the fossil represents a juvenile of this relative of the modern-day boas.
The lizard measures approximately 20 cm (8.5″) from the head to the tip of its tail – and some of the snake’s ribs, which overlap the arboreal reptile, clearly indicate that the lizard is located inside the snake. Geiseltaliellus maarius was presumably equipped with a small sagittal crest. It had the ability to shed its tail in case of danger, but did not lose it when it fell prey to the snake. “Unfortunately, we were unable to unambiguously identify the beetle – it was not well enough preserved to do so,” adds the Messel researcher from Frankfurt.
Nonetheless, the small crawler offers insights into the previously barely known feeding behavior of these lizards from Messel: The stomachs of previously discovered reptiles only contained the remains of plants; the fact that the lizards also fed on insects indicates an omnivorous diet.
Smoking the equivalent of a single ‘spliff’ of cannabis makes people less willing to work for money while ‘high’, finds a new UCL study.The research, published in Psychopharmacology, is the first to reliably demonstrate the short-term effects of cannabis on motivation in humans. The researchers also tested motivation in people who were addicted to cannabis but not high during the test, and found that their motivation levels were no different to volunteers in the control group.“Although cannabis is commonly thought to reduce motivation, this is the first time it has been reliably tested and quantified using an appropriate sample size and methodology,” says lead author Dr Will Lawn (UCL Clinical Psychopharmacology). “It has also been proposed that long-term cannabis users might also have problems with motivation even when they are not high. However, we compared people dependent on cannabis to similar controls, when neither group was intoxicated, and did not find a difference in motivation. This tentatively suggests that long-term cannabis use may not result in residual motivation problems when people stop using it. However, longitudinal research is needed to provide more conclusive evidence.”
In other science news, apparently getting stoned makes you more fertile:
Cannabinoid receptor activates spermatozoa
Biologists have detected a cannabinoid receptor in spermatozoa. Endogenous cannabinoids that occur in both the male and the female genital tract activate the spermatozoa: they trigger the so-called acrosome reaction, during which the spermatozoon releases digestive enzymes and loses the cap on the anterior half of its head. Without this reaction, spermatozoa cannot penetrate the ovum.
During fertilization, a sperm must first fuse with the plasma membrane and then penetrate the female egg in order to penetrate it. To this end, sperm cells go through a process known as the acrosome reaction which is the reaction that occurs in the acrosome of the sperm as it approaches the egg. In the lab, this so-called acrosome reaction is considered a test for analysing the ability of semen to accomplish fertilisation. A receptor for an endogenous cannabinoid plays a crucial role in this process. A team of biologists from Bochum and Bonn, headed by Prof Dr Dr Dr Hanns Hatt, have been the first one to provide a proof of the so-called G protein-coupled receptors 18 (GPR18) in spermatozoa, following a comprehensive analysis. They published their findings in Scientific Reports.
Researchers find 223 additional receptors
Specialised in olfaction research, the team from Bochum had detected as many as 60 olfactory receptors in spermatozoa early this year, and has activated and localised ten of them. “In the current study, we have focused on the remaining G protein-coupled receptors, which, rather than being olfactory receptors, bind other substances,” explains Hanns Hatt. Analysing samples by numerous donors, the researchers investigated which genes are expressed in spermatozoa; their conclusion was that the number of receptors totalled 223. The three most common ones include receptor GPR18, a cannabinoid receptor that has recently been described for the first time.
New receptor is more sensitive to NAGly than classical ones
“The receptor reacts to the herbal cannabis agent THC as well as to the endogenous fatty acid NAGly, which is associated with the cannabinoid system,” says Hatt. “It is much more sensitive to NAGly than the classical, long-known cannabinoid receptors.” Activating the receptor, which is situated in the centre of spermatozoa, can trigger the so-called acrosome reaction. In the course of this process, the spermatozoon’s surface is altered as it approaches the egg. Without this reaction, the spermatozoon cannot penetrate the egg cell.
Cannabinoids in female reproductive tract
Scientists know that endocannabinoids occur in both the male and the female genital tract. Studies suggest that in women their concentration increases during the fertile days. “The endocannabinoid activates the spermatozoa for fertilization” concludes Hanns Hatt. The GPR18 receptor also occurs in other tissues in the human body, for example in the brain and in the heart. However, its function was not known until now.
A massive wooden replica of 17th century London was torched Sunday on the River Thames to mark the 350th anniversary of the Great Fire of London, which paved the way for the building of the modern city.
Onlookers crowded along the river that winds through the British capital to watch as the 120-metre (394-foot) long wooden model was set alight.
Spectators snapped photographs on their smartphones as the flames devoured the replica buildings floating on the water.
The torching of the model of London — as it stood on September 2, 1666 — was executed by US “burn artist” David Best and live streamed online.
Here’s a time-lapse:
The Great Fire started in Thomas Farrinor’s bakery on Pudding Lane and raged until September 5, destroying 80 percent of the mostly wooden, walled inner city.
An estimated 70,000 of the 80,000 residents were rendered homeless by the disaster. By the time the fire was extinguished a total of 13,200 houses, 87 parish churches and Saint Paul’s Cathedral had been destroyed.
The London of today, with its characteristic English Baroque architecture in grey Portland stone, was built from the ashes of the wooden city, though the old street layout was retained to respect property rights.
Recreating the fire on Sunday was part of a wider series of events to mark the anniversary of the inferno, celebrating the city’s ability to rebuild and thrive.
Nick Bodger, head of cultural and visitor development for the City of London, said the capital’s resilience — witnessed again during the 1940s Blitz — helped it rebuild and survive.
“350 years ago, when embers from a baker’s oven sparked one of the most catastrophic events the capital has ever witnessed, London’s economic prowess almost came to a fiery end,” he told reporters in the run-up to the anniversary.
“A renewed sense of purpose saw the great city we enjoy today rise from those ashes, develop and thrive.”
The London’s Burning programme saw flames being projected onto Saint Paul’s Cathedral — one of the capital’s most iconic monuments which was completed 44 years after the Great Fire.
The final touches are made to a 120 metre-long wooden sculpture of London’s skyline from the seventeenth century as it is moored up on the river Thames in London on August 30, 2016.
In the Polish city of Pruszków you’ll find the Gallery of Steel Figures, an entire museum devoted to dozens of sculptures built from scrap metal salvaged from a local scrapyard.
Their most recent addition is a collection of four iconic cars designed and built by roughly 50 artists over the last 5 years.
The models include a Mercedes-Benz 300 SL, a Bugatti Veyron, a Maserati GranTurismo, and a Lamborghini Aventador The steel vehicles are built completely to scale and include functional doors and replica interiors.
The Galeria Figur Stalowych (Gallery of Steel Figures) also has wide array of imposing Transformers and other pop culture figures from TV and film.
A massive wooden replica of 17th century London was torched Sunday on the River Thames to mark the 350th anniversary of the Great Fire of London, which paved the way for the building of the modern city.
The steel vehicles are built completely to scale and include functional doors and replica interiors.
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