The ongoing civil war in Syria is literally sending the country back to the dark ages. New satellite imagery reveals that 83% of nighttime illumination has disappeared in Syria since the start of the four-year conflict that has claimed the lives of 200,000 people and displaced nearly half its population.
These images were put together by an alliance of 130 humanitarian and human rights organizations known as #WithSyria. With the help of Dr. Xi Li of China's Wuhan University and scientists from the University of Maryland, the group is bringing attention to the devastation wrought in the region since hostilities began in March 2011.
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The images, which which taken 500 miles above Earth, show a comparison of nighttime light levels in March 2011 and February 2014. According to #WithSyria, the loss in illumination can be attributed to the destruction of critical infrastructure and the impact of refugees fleeing or hiding from bombardment. It's estimated that 11 million people have been forced to flee their homes, while three million school-aged Syrian children are no longer in school.
Xi's analysis shows a linear correlation with the number of people internally displaced from Each Syrian province. The most severely affected area is Aleppo, where some 97% of the lights have gone out. Damascus, which is under government control, is now 35% darker than before the war. Its suburbs, however, are 63% darker.
Meanwhile, in ISIS controlled Deir al-Zour and Raqqa, the insurgents have struggled to keep the lights on, particularly after coalition airstrikes began in August last year. There, illumination has been diminished by 96%.
Dairy farmers routinely feed their cows a finger-sized magnet, which settles in the digestive tract to help keep the cows healthy. Wait what? This is no bizarre homeopathy, but rather a legitimate treatment for a stomach-churning ailment called "hardware disease."
The problem arises because cows don't chew before swallowing. Of course, cows do famously spend pretty much all their time chewing cud, semi-digested food that is regurgitated from the stomach. When they're ripping up fresh hay or grass, though, they swallow large portions with barely any chewing. Food, along with whatever nails, tacks, baling wire, and other stray pieces of metal are hiding it, go right down.
All this metal eventually collects in the reticulum, the second of four stomach chambers. Here, it can became hardware disease. Sharp pieces can poke through the stomach and into the heart, which is separated only by the soft muscle of the diaphragm. In slightly less terrible situations, digestion is blocked, and the cow swells up to a shape likened to a "papple," half pear, half apple.
That's where magnets come in. A magnet about the size and shape of a finger is placed inside a bolus gun, essentially a long tube that ensures the magnet goes down the cow's throat. Then it settles in the reticulum, collecting any stray pieces of metal. The magnets, which cost a few bucks a pop, can also be placed preventatively. To check if a cow already has a magnet, farmers use a compass.
Bizarre as the idea of a permanent stomach magnet may be, it's very necessary. One report, from the 1990s, found that 55 to 75 percent of all slaughtered cows had hardware in their stomachs. Our landscapes are littered with stray pieces of metal, and sometimes, horrifyingly, they end up in our cows. Luckily, this low-tech magnet solution can work wonders.
Are you happy, wet wipe users? Your "dank clusters," as the New York Times calls them, are threatening to destroy the infrastructure your city depends on.
The NYT blows the story wide open this morning with an investigation of NYC's sewer treatment plants that are "under siege", having spent $18 million in five years on "wipe-related equipment problems." As wet wipes have grown in popularity amongst non-babies, they've put a huge strain on the systems designed to filter the city's wastewater.
Employees must rake through all those wet wipes in order to clear them from the clogged system. "Often, the wipes combine with other materials, like congealed grease, to create a sort of superknot," says the NYT.
Cloth destined to be made into Baby Wipes at the Nice-Pak factory, which makes 80 percent of the world's disinfecting wipes. AP
And it's not just NYC. Cities all over the country are struggling. In London, a giant 15 ton ball of wipes and grease that clogged the sewers was named "the fatberg." The problems have sent shock waves through local government, consumer product regulatory bodies, and the corporations who claim their wipes are flushablethe very tests that certify the wipes as such are being questioned.
Now, I know what you're thinking: This problem must be caused by the idiots who buy "non-flushable" wipes and lazily flush them anyway. Wrong! Here is a hard truth: No wipes are flushable, no matter what the box says. Officials at the city and federal levels are begging you: Please throw your wipes in the trash. Or, you know, harden up and don't use them at all.
1. Farts can probably carry germs, but you don't really need to worry about it unless you're naked
A brief entry in the British Medical Journal's 2001 holiday issue recounts how one Dr Karl Kruszelnicki "established whether human flatus was germ-laden, or merely malodorous":
I contacted Luke Tennent, a microbiologist in Canberra, and together we devised an experiment. He asked a colleague to break wind directly onto two Petri dishes from a distance of 5 centimetres, first fully clothed, then with his trousers down. Then he observed what happened. Overnight, the second Petri dish sprouted visible lumps of two types of bacteria that are usually found only in the gut and on the skin. But the flatus which had passed through clothing caused no bacteria to sprout, which suggests that clothing acts as a filter.
Our deduction is that the enteric zone in the second Petri dish was caused by the flatus itself, and the splatter ring around that was caused by the sheer velocity of the fart, which blew skin bacteria from the cheeks and blasted it onto the dish. It seems, therefore, that flatus can cause infection if the emitter is naked, but not if he or she is clothed. But the results of the experiment should not be considered alarming, because neither type of bacterium is harmful. In fact, they're similar to the 'friendly' bacteria found in yoghurt.
Our final conclusion? Don't fart naked near food. All right, it's not rocket science. But then again, maybe it is?
2. Herring (yes, the fish) may use farts to communicate with one another
About a decade ago, researchers led by marine biologist Ben Wilson discovered that Atlantic and Pacific herring can create high-frequency sounds by releasing air from their anuses. Wilson and his colleagues named the distinctive bursts of pulses "Fast Repetitive Tick" (aka FRT) sounds, after the noise they make.
Because darkness and high densities of fish seem to trigger the farts, Wilson and his colleagues suspect herring may use the FRT sounds to help them form protective shoals at night.
3. Some people are sexually aroused by farts
(The official term is "eproctophilia.")
4. According to master satirist Jonathan Swift, there are five types of farts
To our knowledge, there is no official classification system for farts, but the tradition of categorizing them predates fartnames.com by several hundred years, at least. Jonathan Swift, for his part, maintained in his notorious treatise "The Benefit of Farting Explain'd," that there exist at least five "different species of farts, and which are perfectly distinct from each other, both in weight and smell. First, the sonorous and full-toned, or rousing fart; Second, the double fart; Third, the soft fizzing fart; fourth, the wet fart; and Fifth, the sullen wind-bound fart."
5. One of the most famous depictions of farts in the Italian literary canon comes from Canto XXI of Dante's Inferno
The passage describes a scene in which a band of demons gathers to escort Dante and Virgil through the fifth pocket of Malebolge:
Per l'argine sinistro volta dienno;
ma prima avea ciascuna la lingua stretta
coi denta, verso lor duca, per cenno;
ed elli avea del cul fatto trombetta. (XXI, 1369)
[They made left face on the bank; but first each had bit his tongue toward their leader, as a salute, and he of his ass had made a trumpet.]
These demons were clearly just having some harmless, farty fun, though, right? Maybe not:
6. "In medieval Italy the demonic anus functioned as a locus for the generation of sinners' souls."
So says Suzanne Magnanini, an associate professor in the Department of French and Italian at the University of Colorado at Boulder and author of the book Fairy-Tale Science, in which she contextualizes Dante's infamous fart-scene:
If we consider the iconography of devils and hell contemporary with Dante's poem, it becomes clear that in medieval Italy the demonic anus functioned as a locus for the generation of sinners' souls. In the Scrovegni chapel in Padua, Giotto depicted the devil as eating sinners while defecating others into hell. Similar images could be found ion the walls of churches and abbeys in Bologna, Modena, Pisa, and San Gimignano. Camporesi locates the origins of such depicctions of Lucifer and devils in a figure associated with ancient agrarian festials, stating, 'nel corpo gigantesco e villoso di Lucifero rimane sottesa l'arcaica immagine del'orso padre dai cui peti nascevano le nuove anima, il gigantesco mostro delle feste agrarie, l'orso carnevalesco, una bestia pelosa e peteggiante' [in the gigantic and furry body of Lucifer there remains underneath the archaic image of the father bear from whose farts were born new souls, the gigantic monster of agrarian festivals, the carnivalesque bear, a hairy and farting beast.]
7. In Japanese folklore, flatulence can serve as a form of defense
In Japanese folklore, the kappa is a mischievous water sprite with a penchant for reaching up people's butts in pursuit of their shirikodama, a magical, soul-bearing orb. That said, it is said that kappa can be repelled by blasting them with powerful bursts of flatulence. The technique is immortalized in Tsukioka Yo****oshi's (1839-1892) ukiyo-e work "Farting at a kappa at the lumber yard in Fukagawa" (above), and elsewhere.
8. Basically, flatulence plays an important role in the folklore, myths, and fairy tales of many cultures
In Innu mythology, one of the most powerful spirits is called Matshishkapeu, which translates to "The Fart Man." The Greeks were also partial to farts. Folklore scholar D.L. Ashliman lists a handful of legendary farts on his website, though his account is by no means exhaustive.
If you decide to seek out more examples of flatulence in myths and fables, keep an eye out for common motifs. One of the more interesting similarities I've found between seemingly disparate folk tales and belief systems is the association of farts with the giving and taking of life. Two examples: In Viola, a tale by 16C Italian storyteller Giambattista Basile, an ogre believes his flatulence to have reproductive, i.e. life-giving powers. In Maya tradition, the god of death is occasionally referred to as "the flatulent one."
In his book Death and the Classic Maya Kings, mesoamerican archaeologist James L. Fitzsimmons writes that the biological associations of flatulence with death are "obvious." I admit, this had not previously been obvious to me, but as it turns out...
9. Dead bodies fart
In fact, according to Caleb Wilde (a sixth-generation mortician and creator of the hugely popular blog Confessions Of A Funeral Director), "some dead bodies fart a bunch."
10. You can thank the microbes in your intestine for your death-farts
Your large intestine is home to hundreds of species of beneficial bacteria that help digest whatever food your small intestine misses. In doing so, these bacteria generate a variety of gases, including carbon dioxide, oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen and methane, to name a few. It is here where farts are born not just in life, but in death (just because you've kicked the bucket doesn't mean your microbes need to stop doing their thing.)
Another source of death farts is putrefaction. As the body decomposes, it releases noxious gasses. Occasionally, these gasses are released in the form of a postmortem toot. When these gasses have nowhere to go they can accumulate, sometimes with explosive results.
11. The same microbes responsible for human farts are occasionally responsible for explosive colonoscopies
The medical literature contains a record of at least 20 instances of a colonoscopy resulting of "colonic gas explosion" between 1952 and October 2006. One of these was fatal.
12. Wait, I know farts are flammable but people explode during colonoscopies? How?
Yep. It's interesting, actually a lot of people think farts are flammable due to their methane content. While this is technically true, most human farts are actually flammable due to the hydrogen, which is also produced, and typically in greater volumes. Some people's guts produce both both gasses, in which case they burn together.
ANYWAY, according to researchers led by gastroenterologist Emmanuel Ben-Soussan, an explosion of colonic gasses requires three things: The presence of combustible gases (hydrogen and/or methane); the presence of combustive gas (oxygen); and the application of a heat source. As we previously reported:
Your bacteria provide the first two; electrocautery a technique that uses heat to remove potentially cancerous intestinal growths known as polyps provides the third. The perfect colonic storm would comprise a high concentration of hydrogen and/or methane (greater than 4% or 5%, respectively), plenty of oxygen and a piping-hot electrocautery tool. Concentrations of hydrogen and methane in the colon can vary considerably (0.06%47% and 0%26%, respectively, according to this study). Taking these thresholds into consideration, it is estimated that almost half of colonoscopy patients with unprepared large intestines harbor potentially explosive concentrations of hydrogen and methane in their bowels.
13. In the late 60s, scientists studied the farts of NASA astronauts
The purpose of the study? To quantify the potential buildup of hydrogen and methane in people on a "space diet," namely the one followed by astronauts on the early Gemini missions. It was thought that these gasses "could constitute a fire hazard in a closed chamber." Say, a spacecraft. Or a space suit.
You can read the details behind the experiment here, but the results basically showed that astronauts fed a Gemini-style diet produced a lot more flammable gas than those fed a "bland" formula. "Computed from 12-hour values, maximum potential daily H2 and CH4 are per man: for S, 730 ml and 382 ml; for F, 80 and 222 ml," write the researchers, though they note that these "volumes would be larger at reduced spacecraft and suit pressures."
14. Apollo 16 astronaut John Young, by his own admission, farted prolifically while on the moon
He's even known to have described his flatulence during a mission briefing.
15. The marginalia of illuminated manuscripts are loaded with visual fart jokes.
Poop jokes, too.
Since January, over 1,450 sea lions have been found stranded on California beaches, crowding rescue centers past capacity and worrying animal experts, The New York Times reports. According to researchers, this is 5 times greater than the historical average.
"There are so many calls, we just can't respond to them all," said Justin Viezbicke, who manages strandings for the state. "The reality is, we just can't get to these animals."
The reasons behind the increaselargely made up of sick and starving pupsis uncertain, but scientists believe rising ocean temperatures may play a role:
Experts suspect that unusually warm waters are driving fish and other food away from the coastal islands where sea lions breed and wean their young. As the mothers spend time away from the islands hunting for food, hundreds of starving pups are swimming away from home and flopping ashore from San Diego to San Francisco.
Many of the pups are leaving the Channel Islands, an eight-island chain off the Southern California coast, in a desperate search for food. But they are too young to travel far, dive deep or truly hunt on their own, scientists said.
A similar surge in lost pups occurred in the spring of 2013, leading the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to declare an "unusual mortality event" and release this troubling graph:
At that time, Dr. Shawn Johnson of the Marine Mammal Center told the San Francisco Chronicle, "We're hoping it's not the new norm." However, the situation may be even grimmer this year.
"Things are worse than 2013," Marine Animal Rescue's Peter Wallerstein told NBC Los Angeles. "We're doing everything we can to take in as many patients as we can."
There's a single question you can ask that instantly reveals the differences between America and the rest of the world and it's not about income, religion, lifestyle, or politics.
Ready? It's "how's your day going?" It's the blandest of questions and if you ever want to truly, deeply discomfort someone all you have to do is give them an even slightly less than bland answer. And yet, the difference researchers found in how people answered that question depending on where they lived shows something unusual about the United States.
The question was originally designed as merely a warm-up question, to give the subjects a false sense of comfort with the interviewer for when the more personal questions kicked off a few moments later. But when Pew researchers asked it to groups of people around the world as part of a large scale survey on global attitudes and perceptions, and then compared the results with just those of Americans, something weird happened.
Regardless of what day the survey was being administered on, Americans were having an unusually good day. Perhaps, theorized the researchers, it had something to do with our high per capita income. But when they adjusted for income, things just got weirder. Countries with similar income levels Germany, Japan, the U.K. all were less likely to say they were having a good day, in some cases (like Japan where under 10% of respondents were likely to call that particular day good) markedly so. The only countries that reported similar levels of a measure which I will from now on be calling the GGDI (Global Good Day Index) were countries with less than half our income levels.
So what's going on here? There are a couple possible explanations for this: Perhaps Americans really are exceptionally optimistic. Or perhaps it's simply that a response of "good" is the easiest route around here to keeping our social interactions frictionless. Either way, it's a reminder this seemingly boring question has a lot going on.
I think it's a bit of both being genuinely more optimistic, as well as faking it really well. My friends in college who studied abroad, there was some culture shock since nobody smiles in other countries. They don't fake being happy when they're not. And then when they come back to the US, the smiles from service people feel especially fake.The Answer To One Question Shows How The U.S. Differs From The World
http://io9.com/the-answer-to-one-question-shows-how-the-u-s-differs-f-1691672059
Nothing worse than when you ask someone that and they spill their heart out to you haha
1,100,000 units of housing. 6,200 miles of boulevards. 2,000 schools. $45 billion dollars. Egypt is planning a sparkling new capital outside of Cairo, and it wants to do it fast.
Egypt hosted an economic development conference in which it detailed plans for a massive new pyramid. But it also announced an entire new city: A project called The Capital Cairo, designed by the American architects at Skidmore Owings & Merrill, the designers behind everything from the Burj Khalifa to One World Trade Center. The BBC reports that the glimmering plans have "attracted pledges worth [$12 billion] in aid and investment from Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates."
The city isn't just being built by the Burj's architects. It's also being built by the businessman behind the Burja UAE entrepreneur named Mohamed Alabbar who is heading up the investment fund that will finance the project. "It is a wonderful opportunity to be able to design something from scratch, and to design it keeping in mind the needs of the Egyptian people and the Egyptian government," Alabbar told the BBC.
It seems Egypt's leaders are hoping to replicate Dubai's glittering urban formswhich themselves have been plagued with problems, both social and economic.
But setting aside the Burj for a second, it's worth pointing out that Egypt is in the midst of a severe shortage of low- and middle-income housing in its real-life cities, while there's a glut of high-priced units. There are reportedly up to 20 million people living in illegal "informal" housing without basic amenities. But while new housing is desperately needed, it's unclear how the government plans to tackle the crisis in Cairo while focusing on building a brand-new capital.
So how do Egyptians feel about the plan? The Washington Post points to a blistering response from Egyptian historian and professor Khaled Fahmy, who called the project "chasing mirages in the desert:"
With 66 billion USD Cairo could easily solve the problems of transportation, housing, sanitation and garbage collection. With 66 billion USD we could solve the problems of Cairo's inner cities where 63 % of the city's inhabitants live. We could provide them with all the basic needs that they have been deprived of over the past fifty years: potable water, health care, clean air, recreational facilities and much more. With 66 billion USD we could improve the living standards of millions of Cairenes and of Egyptians who, at best, are dealt with as second-class citizens in their own country.
But no, our Dubai-intoxicated political, military and economic elites want to turn their back to a history that goes back for thousands of years and to pretend that Egypt is a tabula rasa on which they could draw their depraved dreams for the future. More seriously, these deeply corrupt elites are willing to turn their backs to their own people. They yearn to have a new Egypt, with a new capital, and a new people.
The weirdest part, maybe, is the schedule: The Guardian's Egypt correspondent, Patrick Kingsley, says the project will be built in five to seven years, a timeline so tight it's virtually impossible. It can take that long to build a single skyscraper, much less a full city with dozens of towers, millions of residential units, and a 1.5-square-mile theme park.
In the end, it seems like moving the capital is an attempt to show how, under the new government, investment, infrastructure, and housing are all underway. It's a trope that's been repeated by architects all over the worldthe WaPo, for example, talks about Brasilia, the new Brazilian capital that was built in the 1960s. But there are many others, like Sejong City, the city Korea is currently building to house much of its government. Egypt itself has relocated its capital dozens of times, as Kingsley points out, though not for centuries.
The dream of the "instant city," where democracy grows out of technology and architecture, is easier said than built. Cities are rarely instantand they're rarely fix-alls.
