It was during a cruise in Alaska that Linda Zhong realized that the world didn’t have to be full of plastic. “I grew up in cities, so you’re very used to seeing all kinds of trash everywhere,” says the graduate student in microbiology. Zhong, who is Canadian and lived in Ottawa growing up and in Toronto during college, routinely saw trash in the waters of the Ottawa River and on the beaches around Lake Ontario. “You never see it……
Nearly every culture throughout time seems to have enjoyed puppet theater of some sort. They can be used for humor or drama, tell stories about the past or the present, or be for children or adults. One of the wonders of puppet theater is that it is many or even all of these aspects at once. The Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry at the University of Connecticut promotes puppetry as an art form and preserves a collection of……
MIT electrical engineering and computer science Professor Emeritus Michael Athans died peacefully on May 26 at his home in Clearwater, Florida, at the age of 83. Athans was born in Drama, Macedonia, Greece in 1937. He came to the United States in 1954 for a one-year exchange visit under the auspices of the American Field Service (AFS), and attended the Tamalpais High School in Mill Valley, California. His year in the AFS was a defining one. He fell in……
More than a decade before people with Huntington’s disease (HD) show symptoms, they can exhibit abnormally high levels of an immune-system molecule called interleukin-6 (IL-6), which has led many researchers to suspect IL-6 of promoting the eventual neurological devastation associated with the genetic condition. A new investigation by MIT neuroscientists shows that the story likely isn’t so simple. In a recent study they found that Huntington’s model mice bred to lack IL-6 showed exacerbated symptoms compared to HD mice……
A strange trilithon—consisting of two standing stones with a lintel on top—on the island of Tongatapu, Ha‘amonga ‘a Maui stands about 17 feet tall and is 19 feet long. Each coral limestone slab weighs approximately 30 to 40 tons. Because of its clear resemblance, it has been nicknamed the “Stonehenge of the Pacific.” The name means “Maui’s Burden” in the local language, and as the stones are too heavy for humans to handle, it is believed that the god Maui himself brought……
MIT engineers have designed a “brain-on-a-chip,” smaller than a piece of confetti, that is made from tens of thousands of artificial brain synapses known as memristors — silicon-based components that mimic the information-transmitting synapses in the human brain. The researchers borrowed from principles of metallurgy to fabricate each memristor from alloys of silver and copper, along with silicon. When they ran the chip through several visual tasks, the chip was able to “remember” stored images and reproduce them many……
Marriott, Hilton and other big hotel companies are used to competing on price or perks. Now they are competing on cleanliness. From masked clerks at the front desk to shuttered buffets, hotels are making visible changes in the wake of the pandemic. Signage will tout new cleaning regimens: Red Roof Inns promise “RediClean,” while Hilton boasts of “CleanStay with Lysol.” Hotels are still mostly empty; in the U.S., occupancy stood at 37% the week ending May 30, down 43%…
Hidden away deep in the Italian Mezzogiorno, on the periphery of the unassuming municipality of Capaccio in Campania, lies a breathtaking marvel of the ancient world. Paestum (originally known as Poseidonia, its original Greek name) was a Greek colony. It is best known for its three temples, which are some of the the best surviving examples of ancient Greek architecture. The Temple of Hera II dates back to the time of the first Greek settlements in Italy. It stands tall over the……
The ancient city of Kyōto functioned as Japan‘s capital between 794 and 1869. Historically, its main district was known as Heian-kyō, where the Emperor’s residence was located. The city’s official entrance was called Rajōmon or Rashōmon, which means “city-wall gate.” Originally a magnificent structure, the Rajōmon was destroyed by a storm in either 816 or 980, and was never restored. For a while, the upper part of the gate was used to dispose of unclaimed corpses. According to the Shōyūki, some……
One afternoon in 1947, when German archaeologist Helmut de Terra made an unusual find. The remains of a mammoth had recently been discovered in the nearby town of Santa Isabel, but with stone tools that seemed to have been made by human hands. In a Tepexpan field nearby, Terra found the remains of a human, face down. It was thought to be as much as 10,000 years old, and became known as oldest human remains on the entire continent. (Now many……
Travel behavior has changed quite a bit in the last decade and the online booking journey has become more complex. Your website visitors have a lot of options for booking a place to stay on their next trip. You compete against other hotels, Airbnb, the many choices on OTAs and review platforms. In this article you will learn concrete actions you can take to provide a highly personalized guest journey from the first visit to your website to loyalty……
Spanish startup Bnext is revamping its cashback program so that you can buy from partner stores directly from the Bnext app and get some money back. The company has partnered with Button and the feature is available as an open beta. Traditional cashback portals are a bit clunky. When you find an offer that gives you 2% of your money back, you click on the offer, get redirected to the partner site and hope that your purchase will be……
Curve, the “over-the-top” banking platform that lets you consolidate all of your bank cards into a single Curve card and app, is quietly testing its planned “Klarna rival”. Dubbed “Curve Credit“, the new feature is being tested with a small number of customers ahead of a full launch later this year. It offers credit on purchases made via your Curve card, to be paid back in instalments. The idea is to offer an alternative to other types of consumer……
The middle of a traffic roundabout isn’t the place you would expect to find a railway. And railways are normally longer than a couple of meters. But in the middle of the Viables Roundabout in Basingstoke, this is exactly what you can find. While it only runs for a few meters now, the railway once stretched from a station at the town center to a station in the nearby town of Alton. While Alton still has a railway station,……
On November 5, 1930, a Wednesday morning tour by Sunday Creek Coal Company officials and customer reps was cut short by a massive underground explosion. Eighty-two men lost their lives in what remains the worst mining disaster in Ohio history. Company officials had wanted to display the safety improvements made to the recently acquired mine. Before the disaster, Mine Number 6 was said to be the Sunday Creek Coal Company’s best and safest mine in the Hocking Valley. The……
