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Suborbital space tourism finally arrives | FCC prepares to run public C-band auction | The big four in the U.S. launch industry — United Launch Alliance, SpaceX, Blue Origin and Northrop Grumman — hope to be one of two providers that will receive five-year contracts later this year to launch national security payloads starting in 2022. | China’s launch rate stays high | The International Space Station is the largest ever crewed object in space.

Millican Daltons Caves in Borrowdale, England

Millican’s cave was the home to Millican Dalton for around 50 years. He was a British self-proclaimed “Professor of Adventure.” He left his city life and decided to live in a cave and remained self-sufficient. He also offered climbing and walking adventures for visitors to the area. He was famous for his hat and raft that he used to travel to the nearest town of Keswick. A few of his famous quotes are inscribed on a stone outside his……

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Gros Piton in Soufriere, Saint Lucia

Soaring 2,500 feet from the clear blue waters of the Caribbean, two towering peaks dominate the skyline. The larger of these green-laden summits is known as Gros Piton and its smaller counterpart is Petit Piton. They border Soufrière, a colorful Saint Lucia town that once served as the country’s capital. The Pitons are volcanic plugs that were created when lava cooled within a vent of the currently-dormant volcanoes. The Pitons of Saint Lucia are among the largest of the……

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Raritan Water Power Canal in Raritan, New...

Before the advent of electricity, the biggest source of power was water power from rivers and streams. Almost all had gristmills located on them. However, manufacturing needed a more powerful source. In 1791, the Society for Establishing Useful Manufactures, created by Alexander Hamilton, looked for a place with enough power for a manufacturing hub for the nascent American nation. The society looked at this spot on the Raritan River before deciding on the Great Falls of the Paterson River…….

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An optimized solution for face recognition

The human brain seems to care a lot about faces. It’s dedicated a specific area to identifying them, and the neurons there are so good at their job that most of us can readily recognize thousands of individuals. With artificial intelligence, computers can now recognize faces with a similar efficiency — and neuroscientists at MIT’s McGovern Institute for Brain Research have found that a computational network trained to identify faces and other objects discovers a surprisingly brain-like strategy to……

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Käthe Paulus Memorial in Berlin, Germany

When Katharina “Käthe” Paulus met the balloonist Hermann Latteman in 1889, her great love began, not only for this man, but also for airship travel, aerial acrobatics, and parachuting. This love led her to become the first woman in Germany and the third woman in the world to do a parachute jump in 1893, and ultimately to the development of the foldable parachute, which is still used today. Käthe Paulus was born on December 22, 1868. Even as a……

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In 1980, an Earthquake Destroyed an Italian...

The thousand-year history of Conza della Campania, a town in the southern Apennines of Italy, was interrupted by the earthquake of November 23, 1980. A magnitude 6.9 tremblor, it killed 2,914 people, including 184 in Conza alone. If one travels to “Conza della Campania” today, they will be in a different place, a new town of modern villas, with large roundabouts and a regular plan. Many other towns were rebuilt after that disaster, right where they had once stood…….

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Karonga Museum in Karonga, Malawi

It’s an eight-hour drive from Malawi’s capital city Lilongwe to Karonga, a district seated on the northwest banks of Lake Malawi. Karonga encompasses a rift valley, a low-lying region where the earth’s crust pulls apart. Rifting unearths ancient sediment and rock strata, making the discovery of fossils easier, and helping to piece together Earth’s long history. In Karonga, that history includes the discovery of the geological formation known as the Dinosaur Beds, where numerous fossils dating back millions of……

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Podcast: Sinchi Warmi Amazon Lodge

Listen and subscribe on Stitcher, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major podcast apps. In this episode of The Atlas Obscura Podcast, we learn how a group of Indigenous women in Puerto Misahuallî, Ecuador, fought “machismo” to become entrepreneurs and build an eco-friendly getaway. Our podcast is an audio guide to the world’s wondrous, awe-inspiring, strange places. In under 15 minutes, we’ll take you to an incredible site, and along the way you’ll meet some fascinating people and hear their……

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QS World University Rankings rates MIT No....

MIT has earned a No. 1 spot in 12 subject areas, according to the QS World University Rankings for 2022, announced today. The Institute received a No. 1 ranking in the following QS subject areas: Architecture/Built Environment; Chemistry; Computer Science and Information Systems; Chemical Engineering; Civil and Structural Engineering; Electrical and Electronic Engineering; Materials Science; Mechanical, Aeronautical, and Manufacturing Engineering; Linguistics; Mathematics; Physics and Astronomy; and Statistics and Operational Research. MIT also placed second in two subject areas: Biological……

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Does this artificial intelligence think like a...

In machine learning, understanding why a model makes certain decisions is often just as important as whether those decisions are correct. For instance, a machine-learning model might correctly predict that a skin lesion is cancerous, but it could have done so using an unrelated blip on a clinical photo. While tools exist to help experts make sense of a model’s reasoning, often these methods only provide insights on one decision at a time, and each must be manually evaluated…….

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Avalanche first in NHL to 50 wins,...

PITTSBURGH (AP) — The Colorado Avalanche clinched a playoff spot with the help of two goals from Nathan MacKinnon in a 6-4 win against the Pittsburgh Penguins on Tuesday night. It’s the fifth straight playoff berth for the Avs, who also became the first NHL team to 50 wins this season and have ripped off nine wins in 11 games. MacKinnon scored his 23rd and 24th of the season, while J.T. Compher got his his 14th of the year….

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Olofsson rallies Sabres in 4-2 win over...

BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) — Victor Olofsson had a goal and an assist in the third period to lead the Buffalo Sabres past the Carolina Hurricanes 4-2 on Tuesday night. Jeff Skinner, Casey Mittelstadt and Dylan Cozens also scored for the Sabres, and Craig Anderson made 32 saves in the opening game of a home-and-home set with the Hurricanes. Earning a point for the ninth time in 10 games (6-1-3), Buffalo held off being eliminated from the playoffs for an…

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Faksa’s shorthanded goal pushes Stars past Islanders...

DALLAS (AP) — Radek Faksa’s shorthanded goal midway through the second period gave the Dallas Stars a 3-2 win over the New York Islanders on Tuesday night. Marian Studenic and Tyler Seguin also scored for the Stars, who moved into the Western Conference’s second wild-card spot. They’re a point ahead of Vegas and one point behind Nashville. Jake Oettinger made 19 saves. Jean-Gabriel Pageau and Brock Nelson scored for the Islanders, who trail Washington by 11 points for the…

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'Crowning Woman' in Madison, Wisconsin

Outsider artist Sid Boyum was a fixture of the Schenk-Atwood neighborhood on the east side of Madison until his death in 1991. His painted concrete sculptures feature fantastic beasts, lanterns, human forms, and abstract shapes, often with Asian influences. In addition to sculpture, he was an industrial photographer, political cartoonist, and graphic designer. He was a close friend and collaborator with Alex Jordan Jr., founder of House on the Rock, and Tom Every AKA “Dr. Evermor,” creator of the……

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Catholic Church of Agios Georgios in Ano...

Greece is one of eastern Europe’s most Orthodox Christian countries with 90 percent of the population practicing the religion. This Church overlooks a national anomaly: the most Catholic region in the heart of the Aegean Sea. Agios Georgios, also known as San Tzortzis to the locals or the Catholic Cathedral of Saint George to English speakers, in Ano Syros was first built in 1208. Since the 13th century, the church has been destroyed and rebuilt three times. Most recently,……

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