From Dominican monks to exiled legal scholars, Lincoln’s Inn has witnessed plenty over the course of its 800-year history. For the last 700 years, the inn has been home to the Honourable Society of Lincoln’s Court, a legal association that counts Herbert Asquith and Tony Blair as alumni. Before this, however, it was owned by Henry de Lacy, the 3rd Earl of Lincoln, from whom it derived its name. The earl himself took over the land after it was……
Listen and subscribe on Stitcher, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major podcast apps. In this episode of The Atlas Obscura Podcast, Jonathan Carey and Michelle Cassidy of the Atlas Places Team catch listeners up on the new and surprising additions to Atlas Obscura that capture their attention. This includes a heiress’s pet cemetery and ruins visible beneath a grocery store floor.. Our podcast is an audio guide to the world’s wondrous, awe-inspiring, strange places. In under 15 minutes, we’ll……
Rising more than 10,000 feet from lush forest and fields in the center of Java in Indonesia, two perfectly shaped stratovolcanoes stand side by side. The summits of Sundoro and Sumbing are less than 10 miles apart, surrounded by countless small farms that grow rice, sugarcane, and other crops in the fertile volcanic soil. A narrow highway between the peaks is dotted with guesthouses, cafes, and outfitters: Each year, thousands of hikers pass through on their way to tackle……
When Michelle Kornberg was about to graduate from MIT, she wanted to use her knowledge of mechanical and ocean engineering to make the world a better place. Luckily, she found the perfect senior capstone class project: supporting sustainable seafood by helping aquaculture farmers grow oysters. “It’s our responsibility to use our skills and opportunities to work on problems that really matter,” says Kornberg, who now works for an aquaculture company called Innovasea. “Food sustainability is incredibly important from an……
Computer vision systems sometimes make inferences about a scene that fly in the face of common sense. For example, if a robot were processing a scene of a dinner table, it might completely ignore a bowl that is visible to any human observer, estimate that a plate is floating above the table, or misperceive a fork to be penetrating a bowl rather than leaning against it. Move that computer vision system to a self-driving car and the stakes become……
This article is adapted from the December 4, 2021, edition of Gastro Obscura’s Favorite Things newsletter. You can sign up here. One recent afternoon, I found myself sitting in the Penn Museum café in Philadelphia, surrounded by students. Some were clicking away on laptops, others were discussing exhibits they’d just visited with friends. I was alone, drinking a strong beer. Instead of visiting the museum to see priceless ancient objects, I came solely for this ale. But this particular……
From the outside, this small, rural community in upstate New York looks like many others in the state. Victorian cottages cozy up to one another in various shades of green, white, and yellow. Large red oaks dot sidewalks, stretching their long limbs into a vibrant canopy. But look a bit closer and you’ll start to see the “Medium Open” signs or stumble upon the Healing Temple or the community’s pet cemetery. Welcome to Lily Dale, America’s oldest Spiritualist community…….
The versatility of the nervous system comes from not only the diversity of ways in which neurons communicate in circuits, but also their “plasticity,” or ability to change those connections when new information has to be remembered, when their circuit partners change, or other conditions emerge. A new study by neuroscientists at The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory of MIT shows how just one protein situated on the front lines of neural connections, or synapses, can profoundly change……
As a building material, concrete withstands the test of time. Its use dates back to early civilizations, and today it is the most popular composite choice in the world. However, it’s not without its faults. Production of its key ingredient, cement, contributes 8-9 percent of the global anthropogenic CO2 emissions and 2-3 percent of energy consumption, which is only projected to increase in the coming years. With aging United States infrastructure, the federal government recently passed a milestone bill……
“To turbocharge work on saving the planet, we need effective, innovative, localized solutions, and diverse perspectives and experience at the table,” said U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm, the keynote speaker at the 10th annual U.S. Clean Energy Education and Empowerment (C3E) Women in Clean Energy Symposium and Awards. This event, convened virtually over Nov. 3-4 and engaging more than 1,000 participants, was devoted to the themes of justice and equity in clean energy. In panels and presentations,……
When jazz great Louis Armstrong’s plane touched down in Accra—the capital of what was then the British Gold Coast—on a spring morning in 1956, thousands of spectators awaited him on the tarmac. Cries of “Armstrong Akwaaba!”—Welcome, Armstrong!—went up as the world-famous trumpeter and his All Stars musicians appeared. At that moment, more than a dozen African bands began serenading them with a joyous rendition of “All for You!,” a song recorded by Accra’s own E.T. Mensah, a trumpet player,……
Driving South on Broadway will find what appears to be a car lot but is actually the Colorado Antique Gallery (CAG), Colorado’s largest antique mall. On display inside are everything from ancient tribal masks, to Danish Modern furniture. CAG is a family-owned and operated business that has been the heart of Littleton since 1994. CAG is home to over 275 independent dealers with fast-moving inventory and new treasures arriving daily. Add to that a knowledgeable, enthusiastic, and attentive staff……
Let’s say you wanted to build the world’s best stair-climbing robot. You’d need to optimize for both the brain and the body, perhaps by giving the bot some high-tech legs and feet, coupled with a powerful algorithm to enable the climb. Although design of the physical body and its brain, the “control,” are key ingredients to letting the robot move, existing benchmark environments favor only the latter. Co-optimizing for both elements is hard — it takes a lot of……
Many may be familiar with the works of the Scottish writer, Robert Louis Stevenson, but few outside Scotland may be aware of his grandfather, also named Robert. Robert Stevenson the senior was a prominent architect and designer of lighthouses up and down the coasts of Scotland. In his lifetime, he was responsible for the establishment of over a dozen lighthouses. He served as the engineer of the Northern Lighthouse Board for nearly five decades. In 2016, he was inducted into……
Located right off a major road in the Columbus metropolitan area sits this 2,000-year-old conical burial mound. Constructed by people of the Adena Culture, this 20 foot high, 100-foot diameter burial mound sits between a roadway and an operating quarry lake. There are two dirt pathways up to the top of the mound: one starting at the entry gates and being a more gradual path and a second, steeper, and more direct route on the western side. The mound……
