The Art of Reading

Astronaut Alexander Gerst captured the stunning photo this weekend from the International Space Station The astronaut shared the image on Twitter this past Saturday, writing : ‘Wolkenplanet – A planet of clouds’ Through the window of the ISS, the curved horizon of Earth is seen as the planet appears covered in clouds It’s a scene reminiscent of theories on ‘Snowball Earth’; a vast blanket of white that appears to stretch across the entire globe, completely blotting out the surface. The breathtaking image captured by astronaut Alexander Gerst this weekend shows our planet swathed in clouds, with barely a hint of blue peeking through the cracks. Gerst attained the unique perspective from 250 miles above the surface, aboard the orbiting International Space Station. A breathtaking image captured by astronaut Alexander Gerst this weekend shows our planet swathed in clouds, with barely a hint of blue peeking through the cracks. The astronaut shared the image on Twitter this past Sat...

Mobile apps on your smartphone can range from most useful and secure to social media and games that help you pass your time. There are also quite a few apps that are plain redundant on the Play Store or  App Store . Though, regardless of the type, smartphone apps are the backbone of our smartphone existence. Apps act as the gateway for the data that we consume as well as feed the system, and most users trust what the apps ask them to do. Considering smartphone apps are critical for the complete smartphone experience, one would believe that the developers making these apps would be careful in making these apps. Even though most developers put in efforts to ensure that their apps are secure, and act responsibly by protecting user data while handling them. There are some exceptions where developers try to push malicious apps that want to mine user data, steal user data or even mine bitcoin in the recent past. But, there is a third type of developers who accidentally or out o...

Spotify co-founder and CEO Daniel Ek There's a new collaboration in the works. Early Friday morning, Spotify co-founder and CEO Daniel Ek (pictured) revealed through an online Q&A session that the music streaming service is partnering with smart-phone makers Samsung to "create a seamless music listening experience together for the user that would be hard for either of us to build alone". The streaming service will now be integrated into future Samsung phones, and will be the brand's main music player app. Another feature that will be available will be the synchronizing of Spotify accounts across multiple Samsung devices, from phones to TVs, tablets, speakers and watches. Ek commented on the feature, saying, "As you move from room to room, your devices will be aware of your location and prompt you to effortlessly transition your listening between them". Ek further went on to comment on Spotify's integration with Samsung, revealing that the partn...

7 Signs that Mercury Retrograde has been messing with you (BabyMac) Mercury Retrograde is a three-week astrological cycle in which the energies associated with Mercury, communication and the mind, tend to create an atmosphere that can feel rather slow, heavy and mostly negative. Here's 7 Signs that Mercury Retrograde has been messing with you. Life may seem to flow slowly and be more inexplicably confusing. It may also seem as if everything seems like more effort than usual. During this Retrograde time, you might assume that your heightened feelings are originating from you however, though your emotions and thoughts are your own, please understand that the planets energies may be affecting and amplifying certain hidden patterns within you. If the last few weeks have felt 'somehow', here are 7 possible ways that Mercury Retrograde has been messing with you. 1. You have found yourself in a deep dark funk that you simply cannot shift. You're questioning everything...

International Youth Day is commemorated each year on 12 August in order to highlight the vital role of youth in socio-economic development of society. Youth are also encouraged around the world to organize various programs to raise awareness about the situation of youth in their respective countries. The theme for International Youth Day 2018 is safe spaces for youth. Youth need safe spaces where they can come together, engage in activities related to their diverse necessities and interests, participate in decision making processes and freely express themselves. While there are many types of spaces, safe spaces ensure the dignity and safety of youth. Safe spaces such as civic spaces enable youth to engage in governance and electoral process; public spaces afford youth the opportunity to participate in sports, other leisure activities in the community and extra-curricular activities at the educational institutions; digital spaces help youth interact virtually across borders with ever...

More than a third of Americans wake up every day feeling tired. What can they do about it? Digital Vision/Getty Images A mother of a 2-year-old son and 2-month-old baby daughter, owns a hoodie with the words "I'm Tired" printed in big block letters. That hoodie speaks the truth. Even if we don't have small children waking us up at all hours, too many American adults are sleep-deprived. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 35 percent of U.S. adults aren't getting the recommended seven hours or more of sleep per night. And a Sleep Foundation survey found that even those who average more than seven hours each night still wake up bone tired. For 35 percent of Americans, the quantity of sleep is there, but the quality is not, and is rated as "poor" or "only fair." Even worse, 20 percent of those surveyed reported not waking up refreshed for the past seven days straight. We reached out to clinical psychologist...

Some mammals have specific times of year when they mate and reproduce. That's not the case for us primates, though. Wundervisuals/Getty Images Most animals have a mating season, and it's usually a time when food, sunlight and fertility are plentiful. But what about humans? We don't hibernate — Netflix and chill doesn't count — and those with access to modern economies don't have to wait for seasonal resources to put food on the table. "Humans don't have a true 'mating season' simply because sex is had throughout the year, rather than saving it for a specific time," says author and professional matchmaker Dominique Clark. "People want to be together and desire connection most. So they seek relationship, but not because doing so during this season will produce offspring that can survive the harshest winter, but simply because the desire for intimacy and sex have increased." We're part of a biologically classified group known ...

NASA's Parker Solar Probe will provide new data on solar activity and help us forecast major space-weather events that impact Earth. NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Steve Gribben Four million miles (or if you prefer, 6.44 million kilometers) is quite a distance. It's the equivalent of driving around Earth's widest point, the equator, 160 times in a row. Well that's about as close to the sun as NASA is willing to take its new Parker Solar Probe (PSP). Scheduled to launch out of the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station later this month, the vessel will gather data on our sun and hopefully answer some basic questions we still have about it. The PSP is about to make history as well. Eventually, its orbital path will take it just 3.83 million miles (6.16 million kilometers) away from the big yellow star. Such proximity is completely unprecedented. NASA's Helios 2 probe came within 27 million miles (43.45 million kilometers) of the surface of the sun in 1976. That's clos...

The last anyone heard of Robert Kennicott was his cheerful hum as he strolled into the Alaskan wilderness early on the morning of May 13, 1866. It was good to hear the scientist sing. It had been a long and punishing winter at Fort Nulato, where Kennicott's expedition to map the Yukon had spent the last five months, and he bore the setbacks badly. The frigid cold and endless dark left no time for exploration or research, a fact that rendered Kennicott "entirely broken down," a friend wrote. This was not a young man used to failure. By age 30, Kennicott had become an accomplished explorer and celebrated naturalist for the Smithsonian Institution. He was bold, brilliant and fearless; someone who handled venomous snakes with his bare hands. When Kennicott didn't return, his men began to worry. The expedition's engineer brought up a note their leader left for him that morning, which included instructions "in case of any accident happening to me." A search p...

When astronomers are searching the depths of space for new objects it’s typically easier to find undiscovered planets if they’re orbiting a star. That’s because spotting the dips in the star’s brightness as the planet passes in front of it gives away its presence. Finding a solitary planet — called a “rogue” planet — is more difficult, but researchers just managed to spot one using a radio telescope, and it’s a real weirdo. The planet is known as… *inhales* …SIMP J01365663+0933473. It’s an absolutely massive alien world that is nearly big enough to be classified as a brown dwarf. Brown dwarf planets are sometimes called “failed stars” because they’re nearly large enough for fusion to begin taking place in their core, but that’s not even the most unique thing about this particular planet. What’s really special about that planet with the big long name is that it has a magnetic field 200 times stronger than even the mighty Jupiter. That’s an incredible finding, and it suggests that the...

There has been considerable debate about the merits and risks of the My Health Record (MHR) scheme – ranging from the deep inefficiencies in the current system, to privacy issues and control of data. There has been less discussion of some down-the-track intended uses of this data for secondary purposes – such as for research. A rich dataset of health information could be used in studies that generate enormous benefits to society, but medical research is carried out under strict ethical guidelines. Unfortunately, a consent process where people are required to opt out rather than opt in doesn’t meet ethical standards for research. Using MHR data for research The privacy policy for My Heath Record states: "We are authorised under the My Health Records Act to prepare and provide de-identified data for research and other public health purposes. De-identified data is data that has had information removed that could reasonably identify any individuals such as name, date of birth or...

Desperate times call for desperate measures. British Prime Minister Theresa May last week flew to France to meet French President Emmanuel Macron at his holiday home, to lobby for her Cabinet’s version of Brexit that emerged from a retreat at Chequers, her own country retreat, a few weeks ago. The proposal scraped through in the House of Commons. And having just about won the support of her own Tory party MPs, Ms. May and her Cabinet colleagues are now taking the show on the road, hoping to sell the plan to individual European leaders. It won’t be easy. Last week, Michel Barnier, the European Union’s chief negotiator, suggested in a newspaper article a softening of the EU’s position on the Irish “backstop” — a temporary customs arrangement to avoid a hard border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, until a permanent solution is found. Both the EU and the U.K. are against a hard border between Ireland and Northern Ireland, key to the Good Friday Agreement that has en...

Scientists have unveiled details about the people who built the Stonehenge in the U.K., by analysing the human remains found at the site. Despite over a century of intense study, very little is known about the people buried at the Stonehenge or how they came to be there. A study, published in the journal Scientific Reports, suggests that a number of people who were buried at the Wessex site had moved with and likely transported the bluestones used in the early stages of the monument’s construction, sourced from the Preseli Mountains of west Wales. The researchers, including those from the University of Oxford in the U.K., combined radiocarbon-dating with new developments in archaeological analysis. Lead study author Christophe Snoeck demonstrated that a cremated bone faithfully retains its strontium isotope composition, opening the way to use this technique to investigate where these people had lived during the last decade or so of their lives. The team analysed skull bones from 2...

The number of neonatal deaths remains around 2.4 times higher than the target Almost half of the districts in India are not on track to reduce the mortality rates of newborns and meet the target set under the Sustainable Development Goals for 2030, a study has found. India still has the world’s highest number of deaths among children under five and newborns, around 1.1 million per year. The study, by Jayanta Bora and Nandita Saikia from Austria-based non-profit International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, is the first to evaluate neonatal and under-five mortality at a district level in India, as well as a state level. Under the World Health Organization’s Sustainable Development Goal 3 (SDG3), all countries should aim to reduce neonatal mortality to 12 deaths per 1,000 live births per year, and under-five mortality to a maximum of 25. Researchers used data from the National Family Health Survey, a survey of the full birth history of women aged 15-49, carried out most re...

Five years ago, a lot of people thought Cody Wilson was a wild-eyed fanatic. The New Yorker described his rhetoric about making blueprints for 3D-printed guns available to anyone on the internet as “divorced” “from any practical reality.” Yet here we are in 2018, and Wilson’s company, Defense Distributed, is still in the news being branded as a threat to national security. President Donald Trump weighed in this week, and just yesterday, a federal court blocked the 30-year-old from relaunching his website. What the hell is happening? The website in question is DEFCAD.org, an online repository for 3D-printed gun designs. In theory, anyone with a 3D-printer could log on to this website, download a file, and print a gun out of plastic or other materials. “I think access to the firearm is a fundamental human dignity,” the self-identified crypto-anarchist told CBS This Morning. “It’s a fundamental human right.” A lot of people in the United States government seem to disagree. Wilson and h...

A general view of the Taj Mahal before the visit of Prince William and Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, on April 16, 2016, in Agra, India. Restoration efforts for the monument have been proceeding slowly for years. Chris Jackson/Getty Images The Taj Mahal is one of the seven new wonders of the world, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and easily the most famous cultural landmark in India. But a caustic combination of air pollution, water pollution and bug poop (yes, bug poop) has left its mark, literally, on the nearly 400-year-old, palatial marble mausoleum. The Taj Mahal's ivory-white exterior has been stained brown, green and yellow by industrial pollution and swarming insects. And flooding from the nearby Yamuna River, laden with human and industrial waste, is also no treat for tourists. The pitiable state of one of the world's most beloved monuments recently led the Supreme Court of India to threaten the country's Ministry of Environment and Forests, saying, "...