Watch perfect salt cubes form naturally in the Dead Sea

Welcome to the Dead Sea, where the beach is covered with perfect little cubes of salt.

This video is incredible, but the science behind the phenomenon is even cooler.

As Chemical Refraction explains over on Reddit, these cubes form because of the geometry of the salt’s chemical bonds - since the surface is exposed to the same concentration of salt in the Dead Sea, the cube grows symmetrically.

So what about all the salt chunks that aren't perfect cubes? It's hard to know for certain, but it's possible these structures contain impurities that have disrupted their formation.

Pretty freaking awesome.

ESPN mulls streaming Major League Soccer to fans without cable subscriptions

ESPN's latest Major League Soccer news could be a boon for cord-cutters. At the moment, there are a few different ways to watch the sports channel's soccerfootball offerings, but they require a pay TV subscription to do so. According toReuters, though, that could change in the future. Company president John Skipper says that he's looking for ways to increase revenues for his company and sees a direct-to-consumer sales approach as a possible step toward that. The reasoning? Well, he forecasts that digital advertising revenues (online ads, bumpers during V-O-D broadcasts) will be the "most promising" area of growth over the next two to three years. Skipper mentions the network's recent purchase of rights to digital MLS broadcasts is a clue to future plans, but was quick to note that none of these plans are "very far along." Despite that, Reuters' anonymous sources still claim that a firm plan could be in place within a few months and that the games could be offered through the ESPN3 app -- hopefully via Roku too.

Museum teams up with Samsung to render mummies in 3D

Thanks to more advanced medical CT scanners, we can now look at what's inside the British Museum's mummies... even if they remain wrapped. The museum has partnered with Samsung to provide 3D visuals for eight mummies of people who lived in the Nile Valley as far back as 4,000 years ago created using high-res CT scans. These visuals (some of them even interactive) show you what lies underneath all those mummified layers, from accessories and hairstyles that indicate their status in life, to the state of their health when they passed away. For instance, you'll see that a man of high status was buried with gold leaves and facial features painted on his wrappings, while a lowly temple doorkeeper had his severed head roughly reattached with wooden poles. The exhibit's already live for anyone interested in (digitally) peeling layers off the ancient remains, and it'll be around until November 30th this year.

Why not use fish as night lights?

Light up your bedroom with sparkling, fluorescent angelfish!

in 2010, a Taiwanese company genetically modified angelfish (Pterophyllum scalare) and convict cichlid (Cichlasoma nigrofasciatus) for the first time to create brilliant, green-glowing fish. 

Now it is possible to get these little fellows as pets!

And, really, who doesn't want a fish disco in their bedroom?

How to improve battery life and performance of your laptop

Hey Guys Today I will Give you all Laptop Users a Small Tip,
Laptop users are generally Worried about Battery and laptap overheating. There is a Command for your Operating System Which helps you to improve performance and Power Efficiency

Before you Carry on Reading this Article I will Suggest You
To Read 5 Best Tips To Avoid Laptop OverHeating and then Come back here.

This command will generate useful information about your laptop’s energy comsumption. If  you use it correctly, you can extend your battery life and performance by great amounts.

Just follow below simple steps

Step 1;To sta open the Start Menu and type “cmd” in the Start Search. 

Step 2: When the “cmd” icon appears, right click it and select “Run as administrator”. 

Step 3:Then the command line opens, run the command “powercfg -energy” without quotes. 

Step 4: Now Press “Enter” .


windows 7 will scan your system and find ways to improve performance and power efficiency.
The results will be exported to an HTML file, which will usually be saved in the “System32” folder.

To navigate to the file, follow the path it gives you after completion. Read The file to know what is Causing so much power to drain

I Hope You like it. 

The coolest dad ever cooks his kids cephalopod pancakes for breakfast

Delicious, delicious zoology.

We're very jealous of Nathan Shields' kids - these relatively anatomically-accurate cephalopod pancakes are delicious AND educational.

We have no idea how he creates such perfect shapes, which are documented over on his blogSaipancakes, but we need to know his secret - the more kids learning taxonomy at breakfast, the better.

Oh, and as Jason G. Goldman reports over at i09, Shields has also made some pretty awesome space pancakes.

This all begs the question, how will you incorporate science into your next breakfast?

Akshay Kumar's "Its Entertainment" trailer just came out. Check it out.

Bollywood star Akshay Kumar is back again with a new slapstick comedy and from the first look of the movie titled 'It's Entertainment', it looks like Akki is all set to switch places with an adorable pooch!

Tamanna Bhatia will be seen as female lead along side Akshay.
Here's is the latest trailer of the Movie. It seems funny & entertaining, Check it out.

3D print your own lightsaber with these free files

You never know when you'll need one.

We're a little late to the game here, but this news is too awesome not to share - to celebrate May the 4th this year, Ultimaker has released free files that show you exactly how to 3D-print your own lightsaber.

Valcrow from Redicubricks took things one step further and even printed his own glow-in-the-dark blade to go with it, Amanda Cooser reports for CNET.

Of course, this only works if you have access to a 3D printer, but the results are pretty awesome. 

SONY RX100 III

Typically when a camera gets a sequel, it replaces the old model. Not so with the Sony RX100 III. While this powerful pocket cam boasts the same basic build as its predecessors — including the same terrific 1-inch, 20.1 MP back-illuminated CMOS sensor — it features an all-new Zeiss 24-70mm lens that gives you a f/1.8 aperture at the wide end and f/2.8 at 70mm, making for more pleasing bokeh. Other new features include the blazing fast Bionz X processor, a pop-up OLED electronic viewfinder, and an articulated LCD that can tilt 180º upwards, making for the best selfies you've ever shot.

Tokyo Artist “Speed Sketches” the People Around Him

When not doing commercial based work, Tokyo artist Hama-House spends his time chilling in cafes and parks. There he does “speed sketches” to improve his drawing abilities, capturing the unsuspecting subjects around him as they stare at their laptop, chit chat with friends or take a short snooze. Thankfully, Hama-House is there to quickly document the action.

He has already accumulated an extensive body of work on his artistic journey. After graduating with a BFA from Kanazawa College, his commercial work ranged from shooting promotional videos and designing book covers, to spearheading advertising campaigns.

He presently has over 275 quick sketches, all of which are shared on his Instagram page. Check out more of his work on his personal site.

New chemical turns the skeletons of mice and lizards into biological art

Dead animals in jars have never looked so pretty.

A team of PhD students from New Jersey have transformed animal specimens into beautiful transparent artworks. They have developed a chemical formula called Visikol that can rapidly change the transparency of animal tissues without degrading the specimen. 

Visikol works by changing the refractive index of animal tissue so that light is able to pass through. The chemical mix was originally designed as a clearing agent for plants but this team soon realised it had potential beyond a lab setting. Through their startup company, Taxiclear, the researchers are raising money to expand their new product. 

They aim to make transparent life forms accessible to hobbyists, artists and educators by making the chemical ingredients affordable and easy to produce. 

Transparent preserved animals can substitute for messy dissections in classrooms as they reveal much about the inner workings of animals. Their striking, surreal aesthetics are likely to spark an interest in biology. 

China plans to build a railway from Beijing to the US

China’s new high-speed rail network will include a 13,000-km underwater tunnel across the Pacific. 

Railway engineering doesn’t get more ambitious than this. 

China’s newly unveiled plan to connect the world by high-speed rail includes lines to London, Germany, Turkey, Singapore, Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia, but their “express to the US” is the most ambitious part of the project.

The US line, explains Tomas Jivanda from The Independent, will “travel up through Siberia, across the Bering Strait to Alaska and down through Canada” before reaching the US – that’s about 13,000 km (8,100 miles).

This isn’t the first time that engineers envision a tunnel between Asia and the US. Back in 2007 Russian authorities announced the TKM-World Link, which aimed to connect Russia with the western coast of Alaska. The tunnel would have been 103-kilometres long and, if built, would have become the longest tunnel in the world. The TKM-World Link was featured in Discovery Channel’s series Extreme Engineering.

If current China’s plans succeed the US-China link will become the world’s longest underwater tunnel. Wang Meng-shu, from the Chinese Academy of Engineering, told Jivanda that the train would travel at 354 km/h (220 mp/h) and the trip would take two days. 

Reuters reports that China is already is discussions with Russia. We just hope construction starts soon!

What’s life without additive-free holographic chocolate?

The Swiss have done it again. They’re re-invented chocolate. 

Chocolate has changed very little throughout its two thousand-year history. It began life as a spicy Aztec beverage and became a European craze in the 16th century but it has always retained its characteristic brown colour. Until now. 

Swiss company, Morphotonix, has devised a method of imprinting rainbow holograms on chocolate without using additives. 

Holograms are two-dimensional images that resemble three-dimensional objects. Like a real 3D object, holograms appear different depending on the angle of observation. They are often used on credit cards to improve security.

Holograms usually require detailed tweaking of microstructures to achieve the perfect diffraction of light that produces the effect. This becomes somewhat harder when working with food products because their structure is more difficult to control on a small scale. 

Morphotonix creates the holograms by etching the design onto metal moulds, transferring this to plastic moulds and then impressing the pattern onto the chocolate. It is a tricky business and doesn’t work with some types of chocolate. 

Still, I think Willy Wonka would be very impressed. 

New York is turning thousands of old phone booths into free Wi-Fi hubs

Around 7,300 defunct phone booths in New York will soon be transformed into a free internet hotspots.

The City of New York announced the plan late last week after two years of questions over the future of old phone boxes around the city.

Once repurposed, the old phone booths will offer people free city services calls, as well as gratisinternet, and will make up one of the largest free Wi-Fi networks in the U.S.

This clever idea was put forward as part of the 2013 the Reinvent Payphones Design Challenge, but the final design still hasn't been decided on, Wired reports.

Instead the city is calling for more public proposals on how the phone booths will ultimately look, and is searching for additional services that could be added to the booths, such as charging stations (YES!) or city information.

In a press release, the City of New York also explains that they want everything to be powered sustainably.

"For years, the question was, 'What to do with payphones?' and now we have an answer," said Mayor Bill de Blasio in the statement.

"By using a historic part of New York's street fabric, we can significantly enhance public availability of increasingly-vital broadband access, invite new and innovative digital services, and increase revenue to the city - all at absolutely no cost to taxpayers."

When you consider all of the unused phone booths around the world at the moment, it's exciting to think of the possibilities.

You can now have your grilled cheese sandwich delivered by parachute

An Australian company that drops toasted cheese sandwiches down to hungry clients by parachute is going global

Since last year, Melbourne company Jafflechutes has been delivering "jaffles", or toasted cheese sandwiches, by throwing them out of a seventh floor window attached to a parachute and letting them float down to customers who are told to wait on an 'X' below.

It may not be the most high-tech innovation, but it's pretty awesome, and also delicious.

Now the company has reached its crow-funding goal to bring the "world's first float-down eatery" to North America, Discovery News reports. It'll start with operations in New York City and Montreal before expanding.

Surprisingly, the global expansion just required $5,000 to cover ingredients, travel and parachute materials. The sandwiches, which are paid for using PayPal, cost between $5 and $6.

The invention isn't going to change the world anytime soon, but we'd love to see a little aerodynamics and physics integrated into our lunch.

Now go and read the company's about page, because it's pretty hilarious.

Scientists may have found a genetic switch to turn off fear

In a discovery that could be the beginning of the end for phobias, neuroscientists might have worked out how to silence the gene that feeds fear.

The international team of scientists believe the breakthrough could help to loosen the grip of fear-related memories, which are involved in phobias and conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder.

The research, involving Australian neuroscientists, identified a gene regulation mechanism that's associated with fear extinction - a normal learning process thought to be critical for getting rid of fear when the response is no longer required.

When this fear extinction process doesn't occur, it can lead to anxiety disorders. 

But the good news is, it now looks like we may be able to turn it on again by modifying DNA expression, according to the paper published in the Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences.

“Rather than being static, the way genes function is incredibly dynamic and can be altered by our daily life experiences, with emotionally relevant events having a pronounced impact,” said Dr Timonthy Bredy from the University of Queensland's Brain Institute in a press release.

By working out how this switch can be triggered without changing the underlying genetic sequence, the scientists hope to be able to develop future anxiety and phobia treatments.

This is all part of the fascinating field of science known as epigenetics, and is the first comprehensive analysis of how fear extinction is influenced by modifying DNA.

We don't want to get too excited just yet, but imagine what a word without irrational fears would look like…

Adobe bets Voice app will help people make persuasive videos

Adobe Voice offers a range of narrative templates, automates the animated transitions through the app, and offers 25,000 images and graphic elements.

In an era of social-media marketing, school fundraisers, and Kickstarter campaigns, more and more people need to persuade others to do something. Not everybody has the budget or skills for a TED talk, though, which is why Adobe is launching a new iPad app called Voice.

The free app walks people through a handful of templates, offering a narrative structure like "hero's journey" or "promote an idea." People then add clip art, music, and graphics to build a pitch. Voice then generates a video hosted on Adobe's website or replayed on the iPad. The video can be embedded on websites, shared over social networks, or emailed to contacts.

"If you can't tell a persuasive story using video today, you're generally not going to be part of the conversation," said Ely Greenfield, senior principal scientist for Adobe's digital imaging business. "We don't want people getting bogged down in all the details of production. We want them to focus on telling the story in their own voice."

As CNET first reported last year, Adobe began testing Voice last October under the code name Ginger. Now the company is ready to release it -- the first of a planned series of apps intended to carry Adobe's name beyond creative professionals to a larger market.

Adobe was one of those companies whose clout in the PC era of computing didn't immediately transfer to the explosively growing smartphone and tablet markets. It's released some mobile apps like Photoshop and Kuler that lie closer to its traditional market, but other apps like Instagram have stolen much of the company's thunder. If Voice succeeds, a much broader audience will recognize the Adobe name and consider it relevant.

"We want to get this into as many hands as possible. There are a lot of people out there who have this need -- a much bigger audience than our traditional customer base, and we're still earning about these customers," Greenfield said.

Adobe long has catered to professionals with software like Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects, and Premiere Pro. That software has never been cheap, though, and Adobe has angered a sizeable number of customers by shifting sales from perpetual licensing to its Creative Cloud subscription plan. Apps like Voice hold the potential to reach more mainstream customers -- people at schools, small businesses, and nonprofit organizations that may not have the expertise in Adobe's full software suite much less the $50 a month it costs to use it.Eventually, Adobe will work on making money out of that broader audience, but not yet. Voice is "the first of a number different things. There will be premium pieces in there," Greenfield said.

Voice starts off asking users what type of presentation they'd like to make. It chooses music then presents within that presentation's framework. People record snippets of audio to accompany each page, and Voice "sweetens" the recordings to make the voice-over more appealing, Greenfield said.

Depending on what sorts of photos and illustrations people use, Voice automatically sets transitions from one page to another as it constructs the video, with animations and other effects.

The app is only for iPad today, but Adobe plans to expand.

"It's easy for us to start with iPad because that's the device that's most prominent in the US. What's great about it is its consistent hardware," Greenfield said.

Thus far, Voice can't export a video as a presentation that might accompany a talk, a job where Microsoft's PowerPoint has long been an entrenched power. But Adobe will consider it as it gradually improves Voice.

"We've had people ask for it," Greenfield said. "The focus now is the video, but it's a direction we might grow."

A brain injury has turned a man into a mathematical genius

After being brutally attacked in 2002, Jason Padgett now sees the world through a geometric lens. New research suggests the same ability may lie dormant in all our brains.

Before the attack, which left him with concussion and post-traumatic stress disorder, Jason Padgett had very little interest in maths.

But while recovering from his injury, he suddenly started to see the world differently. It was pixelated and appeared as "discrete picture frames with a line connecting them, but still at real speed". Imagine a set of video frames that haven't been smoothed, explains Tanya Lewis who has written about Padgett's amazing story for LiveScience.

He also started to see geometric shapes almost everywhere he looked. "I see shapes and angles everywhere in real life" — from the geometry of a rainbow, to the fractals in water spiralling down a drain, Padgett told Live Science. "It's just really beautiful." 

He started drawing geometric shapes frequently without knowing what they meant. It was only after a physicist saw him sketching in a mall and encouraged him to study mathematics that he realised he suddenly could understand extremely complex concepts, such as that of pi.

It turns out, his injuries had unlocked a part of his brain that makes the world appear to have a mathematical structure.

The extraordinary ability is something doctors call savant syndrome, in which a normal person develops special abilities after injury or disease. It's extremely rare, with only 15 to 25 cases of someone acquiring savant syndrome recorded. But it's even rarer for someone to acquire mathematical skills like Padgett.

He also appears to have synesthesia, which is a phenomenon where one sense bleeds into another, allowing him to perceive mathematical formulas as geometric figures.

Fascinated by what was causing these unique abilities, neuroscientists began conducting studies of Pagnett's brain. They now believe they've finally figured out which part of his brain was altered to unlock his new skills.

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and transcranial magnetic simulation, which involves zapping the brain with a magnetic pulse to activate or inhibit a specific brain region, the researchers found that activity in Padgett's parietal cortex seemed to be causing his unusual abilities. The parietal cortex is an area behind the crown of the head known to integrate information from different senses.

But what causes these changes?

In another study, Berit Brogaard, a philosophy professor now at the University of Miami, who led the research on Pagnett, showed that when neurons die, they release brain-signalling chemicals that can increase brain activity in surrounding areas. The increased activity usually fades over time, but it can also result in structural changes that cause brain-activity modifications to persist, which may be the case for Padgett.

This suggests that, if stimulated correctly, all human brains may have the potential to see the world as Padgett does, even if it's just temporarily.

But before you start getting excited about potentially zapping your brain to go on a mathematical trip, it's still not known whether having savant skills comes with a trade-off. In Padgett's case, he has fairly severe post-traumatic stress disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder.

However, his tragic accident provides some amazing insight into how our brains work and how we interact with the world around us. And Padgett wouldn't change it for the world. He told LiveScience: "It's so good, I can't even describe it."

Large groups of fire ants act as a solid

They can also be poured as liquids and squashed down like putty. Seriously, what the hell?

They might be really bite-y, but it turns out fire ants also have mind-blowing cohesion abilities.

Physicists have discovered that not only can a group of fire ants act as a putty-like solid, capable of being pushed down and rebounding, but they can also be poured like a liquid.

The result is some pretty amazing footage. 

If scientists manage to work out how fire ants do this, it could help improve robotics and material science.

Watch this amazing New York Times video on the behaviour to be simultaneously grossed out and blown away.

This 'fishy' plastic is a solution to a huge problem

A new bioplastic made from the second-most abundant organic material on Earth may help to stop plastic pollution.

Look around you. Count all the objects that are made out of plastic. Most of them will end up buried in landfills – and some will take up to 1,000 years to degrade.

Chitosan, a form of chitin, is a polysaccharide found in the shells of shrimps and some insects. Chitin from shrimp shells is usually discarded or used in fertilisers, but researchers at the Wyss Institute have used a novel method to transform it into a bioplastic that is cheap and easy to make.

The chitosan bioplastic can be used to make 3D objects, such as plastic cups, cutlery and even diapers, using traditional casting or injection-moulding, explained the researchers in a news release. Best part: the material breaks down just a few weeks after being discarded, becoming a nutrient-rich fertiliser.

“There is an urgent need in many industries for sustainable materials that can be mass produced,” Wyss Director Donald E. Ingber said. “Our scalable manufacturing method shows that chitosan, which is readily available and inexpensive, can serve as a viable bioplastic that could potentially be used instead of conventional plastics for numerous industrial applications.”

Every year we produce about 300 million tons of plastic per year and recycle just 3 percent. This bioplastic can change it forever..

How to root and install custom ROMs in android phones?

The trend of installing custom ROM’s and apps has brought a big revolution with many users trying to root their mobile devices to accomplish it. Rooting is a very sensitive task which should be done properly or else the device may lose its initial configuration and may result in malfunction of your gadgets. If you are fond of custom apps and ROM’s and what to integrate the same in your Android devices, you will have to first root your devices and then install the custom ROM’s.

Here is the step by step process to root and install the custom ROM’s in your Android phones.

Rooting your Android phones

Though every device has its own rooting process, but here we will discuss the general procedure to root the handsets which will work for all types of models.

Step 1 – In order to get started with rooting, dial *#*#2846579#*#* and you will be directed to the internal application which is used by the manufacturer. Here you can find out the different hardware’s installed on your device and can access the internal statistics as well.

Step 2 – Now look for Background Settings and then go to Log Settings

Step 3 – From the Log Settings menu, search Log Switch and enable it

Step 4 – Go to Settings and enable the USB debugging option as well

Step 5 –Install SuperClickOne app on your device and connect it to your desktop

Step 6 – Now extract the files from the zipped folder and run the exe file

Step 7 – On the top right corner, you will get find the option Root. Follow the steps and complete the rooting process

Step 8 – Restart your phone to confirm the changes

Installing custom ROM’s

Once the Android phone is rooted, you can easily install the custom ROM and apps of your choice. But before installing the ROM, it is important to perform one more process and that is the recovery image so that you are able to create a backup and recover the initial features if the installation is not done in the right manner. Here is a complete process that you can follow.

Step 1 – Find the Settings option in your device and search Applications

Step 2 – On the menu, find Fast Boot option and enable it

Step 3 – Download a recovery image file meant for your device. You can take the help of the internet to find the right one for the device

Step 4 – Copy the file on your SD card or any wherein in the device

Step 5 – Install the ES File Explorer on your device so that you are able to write the operations in an easy way

Step 6 – Now copy the recovery files to cust_backup/image” folder

Step 7 – Switch off the device and turn it on.

Step 8 – When the device starts, a screen will come before you

Step 9 – Now choose the custom ROM’s that you wish to install, download and run them

So just follow the above process and you will be able to install the custom ROM of your choice.