20 Things I Learned While I Was in North Korea. Well that was weird.
I was only in North Korea for five days, but that was more than enough to make it clear that North Korea is every bit as weird as I always thought it was. If you merged the Soviet Union under Stalin with an ancient Chinese Empire, mixed in The Truman Show and then made the whole thing Holocaust-esque, you have modern day North Korea. It’s a dictatorship of the most extreme kind, a cult of personality beyond anything Stalin or Mao could have imagined, a country as closed off to the world and as secretive as they come, keeping both the outside world and its own people completely in the dark about one another—a true hermit kingdom. A question, then, is “Why would an American tourist ever be allowed into the country?”
Allow me to illustrate what I believe is the reasoning behind my being let in: High Level Government Meeting And so, I was allowed in, along with a small group of other Westerners, accompanied (at all times) by three North Korean guides. 1. 2. 3. This is it. 10 Failed Utopian Cities That Influenced the Future. I would also suggest my old home town, Zion, IL.
Founded in 1901 by the New Zealander John Alexander Dowie, the town was intended as a walled-off theocracy, a town that was built specifically to support the people of Dowie's church. It was built in the shape of a Union Jack with roads perpindicular to each other, minus four that ran diagonally through the town to the center, where the church was built. Drinking (and the mere presence of alcohol), smoking, spitting, eating pork, engaging in any sort of labor on Sunday, and other "immoral" behaviors were outlawed and you could be reported for violating them by your fellow citizens (and people were — shades of 1984!). Dowie brought in the nation's first lace factory to be the primary industry of the town and it was well regarded for its time. The growing evidence that plants can think and communicate. How to Write Descriptive Passages Without Boring the Reader or Yourself. Quantum world record smashed. 14-Nov-2013 [ Print | E-mail ] Share [ Close Window ] Contact: University of Oxford Press Officepress.office@admin.ox.ac.uk 44-186-528-3877University of Oxford A normally fragile quantum state has been shown to survive at room temperature for a world record 39 minutes, overcoming a key barrier towards building ultrafast quantum computers.
An international team including Stephanie Simmons of Oxford University, UK, report in this week's Science a test performed by Mike Thewalt of Simon Fraser University, Canada, and colleagues. In the experiment the team raised the temperature of a system, in which information is encoded in the nuclei of phosphorus atoms in silicon, from -269 °C to 25 °C and demonstrated that the superposition states survived at this balmy temperature for 39 minutes – outside of silicon the previous record for such a state's survival at room temperature was around two seconds. There is still some work ahead before the team can carry out large-scale quantum computations. Long-distance relationships are about to get a whole lot better. UA Study: Your Brain Sees Things You Don’t. University of Arizona doctoral degree candidate Jay Sanguinetti has authored a new study, published online in the journal Psychological Science, that indicates that the brain processes and understands visual input that we may never consciously perceive.
The finding challenges currently accepted models about how the brain processes visual information. A doctoral candidate in the UA's Department of Psychology in the College of Science, Sanguinetti showed study participants a series of black silhouettes, some of which contained meaningful, real-world objects hidden in the white spaces on the outsides. Saguinetti worked with his adviser Mary Peterson, a professor of psychology and director of the UA's Cognitive Science Program, and with John Allen, a UA Distinguished Professor of psychology, cognitive science and neuroscience, to monitor subjects' brainwaves with an electroencephalogram, or EEG, while they viewed the objects. Man Makes 3D Printed Prosthetic Hand For Son For Only $10. Thanks to 3D printing, high quality prosthetic limbs are cheaper and easier to obtain than ever before.
Twelve-year-old Leon McCarthy has been missing fingers on his left hand since birth due to lack of blood flow during his development. within the womb. Traditional prosthetic units to help people like Leon can run tens of thousands of dollars. In search of a cost-effective alternative, Leon’s father discovered a YouTube video by inventor Ivan Owen. Owen and Richard Von As from Johannesberg, South Africa began to collaborate on a high quality, low cost 3D printed prosthetic (which has already been covered by IFLScience). Because Owen and Van As do not hold a patent or charge to download the plans for the hand, the cost of materials is all that is required. Despite the materials being inexpensive, 3D printers still carry a hefty price tag. Finally! A black hole that you can visit and survive! How-it-ends-1013-de.jpg (589×589)