16 Of The Most Magnificent Trees In The World How do I love thee, tree? Let me count the ways; you change carbon dioxide into the oxygen we breathe, you sequester carbon, and you provide shelter for countless critters. There are many reasons for which we should all be tree-hugging hippies, but within the scope of this article, all we’ll focus on is how amazing some of them look. Granted, not all of these amazing beautiful trees are trees (the Wisteria is a vine, Rhododendrons are shrubs, and bamboo technically belongs to the grass family), but we’ll give them a pass because they are amazing, huge and beautiful. If you know of an amazing tree not on this list, you can submit it at the bottom of this post. 125+ Year Old Rhododendron “Tree” In Canada This huge 125-year-oldold rhododendron is technically not a tree – most are considered to be shrubs. 144-Year-Old Wisteria In Japan Image credits: tungnam.com.hk At 1,990 square meters (about half an acre), this huge wisteria is the largest of its kind in Japan. Image credits: falcor88
47181 10152145797890328 1247193876 n 10 Mind-Blowing Discoveries This Week | Environment Photo Credit: Everett Collection/ Shutterstock.com July 5, 2012 | Like this article? Join our email list: Stay up to date with the latest headlines via email. It was champagne and top hats all around in the science world this week. That’s a twofer! 1. Good news, jokers, smokers and midnight tokers! Natalie Wolchover of Life’s Little Mysteries quotes Dr. Instead, it might still have been a synthetic version of bath salts that went undetected. Meanwhile, a man high on a synthetic version of pot zombie-attacked and violently killed the family dog after trying to eat it . Jesus. 2. “Drug-addled, flesh-eating zombies are so last month,” you say with a yawn. That might happen more often than you think. Researchers at the Universidad de Porto in Portugal have found that humans don’t just catch yawns from each other -- dogs catch them from their owners. The human-dog connection is so strong that this will feel intuitive to any dog lover. 3.
Most Beautiful Forests in The World Bluebells in Halle`s forest, Belgium. From late April to early May a few acres of woodlands are covered by a splendid carpet of wild bluebell hyacinths. Photo by: Raimund Linke Thick grove of poplar trees, Oregon. Photo by: David Thompson Arashiyama, a bamboo forest in Kyoto, Japan. Magical winter in Quebec forest, Canada. The Black Forest during night in Baden-Württemberg region, southwestern Germany. Deep in the green forest, France. Natural the tunnel near Halnaker, England. Mysterious glowing light in a Finland forest. Beautiful forest from a fairy tale, Belgium. White carpathians forest in autumn. Splendid yellow forest. Deep in the moss forest, Spain. Camp/trek in the beautiful forests by safely navigating, storing memories, and staying connected with hosted virtual PCs, Windows applications and cloud storage with your phone using Apps4Rent.com. . Bluebells in Halle`s forest, Belgium. Thick grove of poplar trees, Oregon. Arashiyama, a bamboo forest in Kyoto, Japan.
253070 539570399389934 177210390 n Technology - Garance Franke-Ruta - Still Confused About the Higgs Boson? Read This A chance encounter at a July 4 picnic made the latest development in particle physics seem much more comprehensible. Here's what I learned. So I was at a July 4 picnic on Wednesday where one of the other guests used to be a physics teacher at Stuyvesant High School, and he explained this whole Higgs boson thing to me in a way that made it make about as much sense as it's going to for someone who only took physics in college. And he did the whole thing without using food metaphors -- molasses, soup, etc. -- which I thought was impressive. Basically, it's like this: Sub-atomic particles are either fermions or bosons. Bosons are different. But if this whole particle-that-lacks-mass thing is still tripping you up, you don't need to use that word in your own head; bosons lose nothing for our purposes by being thought of as entities, even if they are still technically particles, which is to say something really small of which other things are made. * Gluons. * W and Z bosons. * Photons.
El fascinante fenómeno botánico de la "Timidez entre árboles" Timidez botánica: el singular fenómeno por el que las copas de los árboles nunca se tocan Quizá en alguna ocasión haya coincidido que, paseando por algún bosque o zona poblada de árboles, hayamos mirado hacia arriba y visto, para nuestra sorpresa, que las ramas y las hojas de los árboles habían crecido pero sin cubrirlo todo, sin tocarse las ramas y hojas de los diferentes árboles entre ellas, como si se tratase de un techo fragmentado, con la luz colándose entre esas grietas como dejadas al azar, o con un propósito que aun está por ser descubierto. Científicos de diversas disciplinas llevan desde los primeros compases del siglo XX cuestionándose qué provoca este fenómeno conocido como “timidez entre árboles”. Por algún motivo, en ciertas especies de árboles las copas crecen sin nunca tocarse, con lo cual se forma un dosel con brechas.
Post-apocalyptic Tokyo scenery 19 Aug 2010 The illustrations of TokyoGenso (a.k.a. Tokyo Fantasy) depict a post-apocalyptic Tokyo devoid of people and overtaken by nature. Shinjuku skyline [+] Tokyo Big Sight [+] Rainbow Bridge [+] Moai statue at Shibuya station [+] Kabuki-za Theater, Ginza [+] Mode HAL iKO Building, Shinjuku [+] Poster for "The Book of Eli" (Japanese title: "The Walker") [+] Gundam // Tokyogenso Robot Tokyo Sky Tree [+] Sofmap Akihabara [+] Haneda Airport [+] Cover of Liberal Time, September 2010 Akihabara [+] Saigō Takamori statue, Ueno Poster for "The Book of Eli" (a.k.a. Osaka street scene - Tsūtenkaku Tower [+] Osaka street scene - Billiken [+] Osaka street scene [+] Hato Bus [+] Tokyo Monorail [+] Shibuya station (Fukutoshin Line) // Seibu Shibuya "Manneken Pis" statue at Hamamatsuchō station Ueno [+] Tokyo Tower [+] Shinjuku station [+] Hanayashiki amusement park, Asakusa [+] McDonald's [+] Yoyogi station [+] Nakano station [+] Akihabara [+] Shibuya [+] Wako Building, Ginza [+] [Links: tokyogenso blog, pixiv, deviantART]
When Left Is “Right” Motor Fluency Shapes Abstract Concepts + Author Affiliations Daniel Casasanto, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, P.O. Box 310, 6500 AH, Nijmegen, The Netherlands E-mail: casasanto@alum.mit.edu Abstract Right- and left-handers implicitly associate positive ideas like “goodness” and “honesty” more strongly with their dominant side of space, the side on which they can act more fluently, and negative ideas more strongly with their nondominant side. Article Notes The authors declared that they had no conflicts of interest with respect to their authorship or the publication of this article.
Loggers Accidentally Cut Down World’s Oldest Tree in Amazon Forest World News Daily Report Environment Illegal loggers at the frontier of the Peruvian and Brazilian border have mistakenly cut down what experts claim is the world’s oldest tree after allegedly not noticing they were logging deeply in Matsés Indigenous Reserve, an area where logging is illegal, infuriating local conservation organizations and native indigenous communities. The giant Samauma tree that is thought to be over 5,800 years old judging on its concentric rings and estimated to be close to 40 meters in height was a major part of the native tribes cultural landscape, countless generations of natives having witnessed the long duration of the tree and having included it in their own culture. «It is the Mother spirit of the rainforest, from this spirit-tree came the life force of all things living. They have destroyed Aotlcp-Awak, they have brought darkness upon not only our people, but the whole world» explains local tribesman leader Tahuactep of the Matsés tribe.
10 Hidden Gem National Parks Looking for sunken pirate ships and lost treasure? Civil War history buff? Really into masonry? If any of these apply to you, then Dry Tortugas National Park is the park for you. Seventy miles west of Key West are the Dry Tortugas islands, so-called because they lack surface fresh water ("dry") and Ponce de Leon caught a lot of sea turtles ("tortugas") here in the 1500s. The centerpiece of the park is Fort Jefferson, a behemoth brick fortress originally intended to protect the U.S. from Gulf Coast invaders (namely pirates), but also used as a Union stronghold during the Civil War. Dry Tortugas is also a great place to watch migratory birds in the spring.
Honeybees May Have Personality | Wired Science By Olivia Solon, Wired UK Bees have different “personalities”, with some showing a stronger willingness or desire to seek adventure than others, according to a study by entomologists at the University of Illinois. [partner id="wireduk"]The researchers found that thrill-seeking is not limited to humans and other vertebrates. The brains of honeybees that were more likely than others to seek adventure exhibited distinct patterns of gene activity in molecular pathways known to be associated with thrill-seeking in humans. The findings present a new perspective on honeybee communities, which were thought to be highly regimented and comprised of a colony of interchangeable workers taking on a few specific roles to serve their queen. It now seems as though individual honeybees differ in their desire to perform particular tasks and these differences could be down to variability in bees’ personalities. Have you seen a grumpy honeybee or an irritable ant? Image: Gilles San Martin/Flickr
Trees Talk to Each Other in a Language We Can Learn, Ecologist Claims A massive web of hair-like mushroom roots transmit secret messages between trees, triggering them to share nutrients and water with those in need. Like humans, trees are extremely social creatures, utterly dependent on each other for their survival. And, as it is with us, communication is key. After scientists discovered pine tree roots could transfer carbon to other pine tree roots in a lab, ecology professor Suzanne Simard set out to figure out how they did it. What she discovered was a vast tangled web of hair-like mushroom roots — an information super highway allowing trees to communicate important messages to other members of their species and related species, such that the forest behaves as “a single organism.” The idea that trees could share information underground was controversial. Having trouble finding research funding, she eventually set out to conduct the experiments herself, planting 240 birch, fir and cedar trees in a Canadian forest. 1. 2. 3. 4.