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NASA pictures merge with movie magic to create a stunning fly-through of the Orion Nebula.

Journalists, industry heads, and tech enthusiasts descended on Las Vegas this week for the annual CES showcase of bleeding-edge electronics. On Wednesday, everyone gathered around giant gleaming TVs, strapped on VR headsets, played fetch with robot dogs, and then the power blew out.

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Androids dream of electric sheep, and Ridley Scott dreams of sequels.

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Old-timey pirates are typically portrayed as stupid, unrefined thugs whose only interests involved plundering captured ships and forcing enemies to walk the plank. The recent discovery of legible text on paper pulled from the cannon of Blackbeard’s flagship paints a strikingly different picture of these misunderstood…

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С известно закъснение, представям кратък фото-очерк на местата, които съм посетил през изминалата 2017-та година.

2017-та започна обсипана с обилен сняг, който създаде доста главоболия с придвижването.

Сняг беше покрил дори и плажовете.

Балканът, колкото и да е труднодостъпен през зимата, е още по-пленителен, особено ако си се запътил сам към хижа Рай.

Вечер в нощното небе грейват безброй ярки звезди.

Рила предлага микс от назъбени скали подаващи се страховито в намусеното време.

В равнинните части на страната е почти сигурно, че там, където има хълм, някога се е издигала крепост, също като тази край село Венчан.

С настъпването на пролетта, лилави великденчета изпълват поляните.

Всичко се мени бързо и непрестанно. Както грее слънце, ще завали дъжд и ще се покаже дъга. Мимолетни макове обагрят в алено произволни площи.

Сезонът, който изпълва с оптимизъм всяко живо същество.

Правим бърза отбивка в Андалусия, която с невероятната си история ни връща в миналото.

Колкото да хвърлим поглед на двореца Алхамбра в Гранада.

Както и на приказният мост Nuevo Ponte в Ронда.

Но не се изкушаваме да тръгнем по курортите на Коста дел сол.

Съвсем спонтатто се пренасяме на колоритният остров Мадейра.

Където има от всичко по много - планини, крайбрежие...

Древни гори.

И слънце в изобилие.

За момент се връщаме в България, за да видим какво е положението в живописният циркус на Урдини езера.

Оказва се, че голямо стадо игриви коне е обсадило всичко наоколо.

Юли е, лавандула е покрила като лилав килим многобройни кътчета в Тракийската низина.

Време е за море, време е за някой гръцки остров, защо не Лефкада.

Където морето е по-синьо от небето.

А небето се слива с морето.

И така неизбежно пристигаме в Родопите, където млечният път свети като фар в мрака на необятната вселена.

А край Карадере луната изгрява за да прогони мрака.

Неусетно пристига есента, покрила с пъстра премяна котловини и хребети на Кормисош.

Неустоими и пленителни са Родопите в средата на есента, дори и сред най-забутаните дерета.

Какво остава пък, ако случайно се окажем по изгрев някъде над виещите се из пъстрите гори меандри на Арда.

Понякога ми се струва, че това е всичко, което ми се иска да съм видял, но както се казва, с гледането идва апетита за още и още.

Годишни отчети

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British number two Kyle Edmund has an injury scare in his defeat by Grigor Dimitrov at the Brisbane International.

Devices with microchips made by firms including Intel, ARM and AMD are vulnerable say researchers.

   Преди няколко дни първи ви съобщихме за евентуално първо гостуване на финските езически "воини" TURISAS в София. Днес идва и ...

The world can be divided into two types of people: those who can guzzle down a bottle of red wine without any health repercussions and those who get a painful headache from just a single glass. The mystery surrounding the latter — why do some people get migraines from red wine? — involves understanding the effects of key substances found in a bottle of red.

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It's that time of year when gingerbread houses seem to be coming out of our ears. No, not literally, that sounds horribly painful, but you get the idea. If you have children you've probably been asked to assemble one. In the beginning this sounds fun, but 200 pounds of candy and icing in your carpet later all sanity has been lost.

Your interest might be regained in the craft of gingerbread, however, when you lay eyes on this festive Imperial Star Destroyer from Star Wars. It's huge!

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"There are people who, instead of listening to what is being said to them, are already listening to what they are going to say themselves."

Europe's top court says EU members need not legally recognise divorces not granted by a state court.

My grandfather, James, was a meticulous recordkeeper. He kept handwritten journals detailing everything from his doctor visits to the daily fluctuations of stocks he owned. I only discovered this part of his life seven years after his death, when my family’s basement flooded on Christmas Eve in 2011 and we found his journals while cleaning up the damage. His travel records impressed me the most. He documented every trip he ever took, including dates, countries and cities visited, methods of travel, and people he traveled with. In total, he left the United States 99 times, visited 80 countries, and spent 1,223 days at sea on 48 ships.

I was only twenty-four when he died, so I hadn’t yet realized that I’d inherited many of his record-keeping, journaling, and collecting habits. And I had never had the chance to ask him many questions about his travels (like why he went to Venezuela twelve times or what he was doing in Syria and Beirut in the 1950s). So, in an effort to discover more about him, I decided to make an infographic of his travel logs.

Today, we take for granted that we can check stocks on our phones or go online and view records from doctor visits. The kinds of repetitive tasks my grandfather did might seem excessive, especially to young web developers and designers who’ve never had to do them. But my grandfather had no recording method besides pencil and paper for most of his life, so this was a normal and especially vital part of his daily routine.

Whether you’re processing Sass, minifying, or using Autoprefixer, you’re using tools to perform mundane and repetitive tasks that people previously had to do by hand, albeit in a different medium.

But what do you do when you’re faced with a problem that can’t be solved with a plugin, like my grandfather’s travel data? If you’re a designer, what’s the best way to structure unconventional data so you can just focus on designing?

My idea for the travel web app was to graph each country based on the number of my grandfather’s visits. As the country he visited the most (twenty-two times), Bermuda would have a graph bar stretching 100 percent across the screen, while a country he visited eleven times (St. Thomas, for example) would stretch roughly 50 percent across, the proportions adjusted slightly to fit the name and visits. I also wanted each graph bar to be the country’s main flag color.

The big issue to start was that some of the data was on paper and some was already transcribed into a text file. I could have written the HTML and CSS by hand, but I wanted to have the option to display the data in different ways. I needed a JSON file.

I tediously transcribed the remaining travel data into a tab-separated text file for the countries. I added the name, number of visits, and flag color:

...
honduras	    1    #0051ba
syria	1	#E20000
venezuela	    16    #fcd116
enewetak	2	rgb(0,56,147)
...

For the ships, I added the date and name:

...
1941    SS Granada
1944    USS Alimosa
1945    USS Alcoa Patriot
...

Manually creating a JSON file would have taken forever, so I used JavaScript to iterate through the text files and create two separate JSON files—one for countries and one for ships—which I would later merge.

First, I used Node readFileSync() and trim() to remove any quotation marks at the end of the file so as to avoid an empty object in the results:

const fs = require('fs');

let countriesData = fs.readFileSync('countries.txt', 'utf8')
	.trim();

This returned the contents of the countries.txt file and stored it in a variable called countriesData. At that point, I outputted the variable to the console, which showed that the data was lumped together into one giant string with a bunch of tabs (\t) and newlines (\n):

"angaur\t2\t#56a83c\nantigua\t5\t#ce1126\nargentina\t2\trgb(117,170,219)\naruba\t10\trgb(0,114,198)\nbahamas\t3\trgb(0,173,198)\nbarbados\t6\trgb(255,198,30)\nbermuda\t22\trgb(0,40,104)\nbonaire\t1\trgb(37,40,135)\nguyana\t2\trgb(0,158,73)\nhonduras\t1\trgb(0,81,186)\nvirgin Islands\t2\trgb(0,40,104)\nbrazil\t3\trgb(30,181,58)\nburma\t1\trgb(254,203,0)\ncanary Islands\t1\trgb(7,104,169)\ncanal Zone\t7\trgb(11,14,98)\ncarriacou\t1\trgb(239,42,12)\n ..."

Next, I split the string at the line breaks (\n):

const fs = require('fs');

let countriesData = fs.readFileSync('countries.txt', 'utf8')
.trim()
.split('\n');

After split(), in the console, the countries’ data lived in an array:

[
  "angaur\t2\t#56a83c",
  "antigua\t5\t#ce1126",
  "argentina\t2\trgb(117,170,219)",
  "aruba\t10\trgb(0,114,198)",
  "bahamas\t3\trgb(0,173,198)",
  "barbados\t6\trgb(255,198,30)",
  "bermuda\t22\trgb(0,40,104)",
  ...
]	

I wanted to split each item of country data at the tabs, separating the name, number of visits, and color. To do this, I used map(), which iterates and runs a function on each item, returning something new. In this case, it split the string at each tab it found and returned a new array:

const fs = require('fs');

let countriesData = fs.readFileSync('countries.txt', 'utf8')
	.trim()
	.split('\n')
	.map(item => item.split('\t'));

After I used map(), countriesData was an array of arrays with each country and its data split into separate items:

[
  [
    "angaur",
    "2",
    "#56a83c"
  ],
  [
    "antigua",
    "5",
    "#ce1126"
  ],
  [
    "argentina",
    "2",
    "rgb(117,170,219)"
  ],
  [
    "aruba",
    "10",
    "rgb(0,114,198)"
  ],
  [
    "bahamas",
    "3",
    "rgb(0,173,198)"
  ],
  ...
]

To create the final output for each country, I used reduce(), which uses an accumulator and a function to create something new, whether that’s an object, a value, or an array. Accumulator is a fancy way of referring to the end product, which in our case is an object ({}).

const fs = require('fs');

let countriesData = fs.readFileSync('countries.txt', 'utf8')
	.trim()
	.split('\n')
	.map(item => item.split('\t'))
	.reduce((countries, item) => {
		return countries;
	}, {countries: []});

I knew I wanted {countries: []} to contain the data. So instead of creating it on the first pass and testing whether it existed on each iteration, I added {countries: []} to the resulting object. That way, it existed before I started iterating.

This process returned an empty object because I hadn’t told reduce() what to do with each array of data.

To fix this, I used reduce() to push and add a new object for each country with the name (item[0]), visits (item[1]), and color (item[2]) into the end result object. Finally, I used a capitalization function on each name value to ensure formatting would be consistent.

const fs = require('fs');

const cap = (s) => {
  return s.charAt(0).toUpperCase() + s.slice(1);
};

let countriesData = fs.readFileSync('countries.txt', 'utf8')
	.trim()
	.split('\n')
	.map(item => item.split('\t'))
	.reduce((countries, item) => {
		countries["countries"].push({
			name: cap(item[0]),
      			visits: item[1],
      			color: item[2]
		});
		return countries;
	}, {countries: []});

I used the same method for the ships.txt file and merged the two using Object.assign, a method that takes two objects and creates a new one.

let result = Object.assign({}, countriesData, shipsData);

I could have created a function that took a text file and an object, or created a form-to-JSON tool, but these seemed like overkill for this project, and I had already transcribed some of the data into separate files before even conceiving of the infographic idea. The final JSON result can be found on CodePen.

I used the JSON data to create the infographic bars, defining the layout for each one with CSS Grid and dynamic styles for width and color. Check out the final product at ninetyninetimes.com. I think my grandfather would have enjoyed seeing his handwritten logs transformed into a visual format that showcases the breadth of his travels.

He passed away in 2005, but I remember showing him my Blackberry and explaining the internet to him, showing him how he could look at pictures from around the world and read articles. He took a sip of his martini and sort of waved his hand at the screen. I think he preferred handwritten notes and life outside of the internet, something many of us can appreciate. After sifting through all his travel logs, I more clearly understood the importance he placed on having different experiences, meeting new people, and fearlessly exploring the world. To him, his travels were more than just dates on a page. Now they’re more than that for me, too.

The author wishes to thank Mattias Petter Johansson, whose video series, “Fun Fun Function,” inspired some of the thinking in this article.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: Older brains may forget more because they lose their rhythm at night. During deep sleep, older people have less coordination between two brain waves that are important to saving new memories, a team reports in the journal Neuron. The finding appears to answer a long-standing question about how aging can affect memory even in people who do not have Alzheimer's or some other brain disease. The study was the result of an effort to understand how the sleeping brain turns short-term memories into memories that can last a lifetime, says Matt Walker, the author of the book Why We Sleep. "What is it about sleep that seems to perform this elegant trick of cementing new facts into the neural architecture of the brain?" To find out, Walker and a team of scientists had 20 young adults learn 120 pairs of words. "Then we put electrodes on their head and we had them sleep," he says. The electrodes let researchers monitor the electrical waves produced by the brain during deep sleep. They focused on the interaction between slow waves, which occur every second or so, and faster waves called sleep spindles, which occur more than 12 times a second. The next morning the volunteers took a test to see how many word pairs they could still remember. And it turned out their performance was determined by how well their slow waves and spindles had synchronized during deep sleep. Next, the team repeated the experiment with 32 people in their 60s and 70s. Their brain waves were less synchronized during deep sleep. They also remembered fewer word pairs the next morning. And, just like with young people, performance on the memory test was determined by how well their brain waves kept the beat, says Randolph Helfrich, an author of the new study and a postdoctoral fellow at UC Berkeley. The team also found a likely reason for the lack of coordination associated with aging: atrophy of an area of the brain involved in producing deep sleep. People with more atrophy had less rhythm in the brain, Walker says.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Today marks the halfway point for this year’s Chemistry Advent! Even if you don’t celebrate Christmas, the topics covered in the graphics might still pique your chemistry curiosity; graphics in recent days have looked at the compound behind the snow in snow globes, the chemistry behind the different colours of LED lights, and how poinsettia […]

Satoru Anzaki, who has terminal cancer, invited 1,000 people to the party to thank them and say goodbye.

According to a study in the journal Memory, reading aloud works by creating a "production effect" which cements information in your memory. Meanwhile, hearing words said in your own voice personalizes the references and enhances recollection, according to psychology professor Colin MacLeod and researchers from the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada. Quartz reports: The findings are based on a study of 95 students (75 of whom returned for a second session) at the University of Waterloo. The students were tested on their ability to recall written information inputted in four different ways -- reading silently, hearing someone else read, listening to a recording of oneself reading, and reading aloud in real time. They were tested on recollection of short, four-to-six letter words on a list of 160 terms. The results show that reading information aloud to oneself led to the best recall. Oral production is effective because it has two distinctive components, a motor or speech act and a personal auditory input, the researchers explain. "[The] results suggest that production is memorable in part because it includes a distinctive, self-referential component. This may well underlie why rehearsal is so valuable in learning and remembering," the study concludes. "We do it ourselves, and we do it in our own voice. When it comes time to recover the information, we can use this distinctive component to help us to remember."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

dryriver shares a report from Science Alert: According to a new study, it's possible that all iron-based weapons and tools of the Bronze Age were forged using metal salvaged from meteorites. The finding has given experts a better insight into how these tools were created before humans worked out how to produce iron from its ore. While previous studies had found specific Bronze Age objects to be made from meteoric metal -- like one of the daggers buried with King Tutankhamun -- this latest research answers the question of just how widespread the practice was. Albert Jambon, from the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) in France, studied museum artifacts from Egypt, Turkey, Syria, and China, analyzing them using an X-Ray Fluorescence Spectrometer to discover they all shared the same off-world origins. "The present results complementing high quality analyses from the literature suggest that most or all irons from the Bronze Age are derived from meteoritic iron," writes Jambon in his published paper. "The next step will be to determine where and when terrestrial iron smelting appeared for the first time."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The attack, said to have been sparked by a succession feud, leaves three people dead.

   Няма смисъл да броим концертите на HELLOWEEN в България. Навремето се чудехме дали изобщо ще ги видим. Днес със ...

One of the oldest and most complete skeletons of our ancestors is unveiled in South Africa.

Guinness World Records are considering whether the 5.2lb (2.35kg) fruit is the heaviest on record.

Lesser-known facts from the people of Finland as their country marks its centenary.

dryriver writes: For those suffering from type 2 diabetes, there is good news. Nearly half of the participants in a watershed trial of a new diabetes treatment were able to reverse their affliction. The method is quite simple -- an all liquid diet that causes participants to lose a lot of weight, followed by a carefully controlled diet of real solid foods. Four times a day, a sachet of powder is stirred in water to make a soup or shake. They contain about 200 calories, but also the right balance of nutrients. If the patient can keep away from other foods long enough, there is a chance of reversing type 2 diabetes completely. Prof Roy Taylor, from Newcastle University, told the BBC: "It's a real watershed moment. Before we started this line of work, doctors and specialists regarded type 2 as irreversible. But if we grasp the nettle and get people out of their dangerous state (being overweight), they can get remission of diabetes." However, doctors are not calling this a cure. If the weight goes back on, then the diabetes will return. The trial only looked at people diagnosed with diabetes in the last six years. Doctors believe -- but do not know with absolute certainty yet -- that in people who have had the affliction much longer than that, there may be too much permanent damage to make remission possible. The trial results have been published in the Lancet medical journal.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

If you’re like most people, you do not like Wall Street or the financial industry, which commanded a large amount of confidence among just 19 percent of Americans in a poll from last year—perhaps because they crashed the national economy nearly a decade ago and the vast majority of the recovery went to the already rich

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The growth of easily available credit profoundly altered our attitude to money.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from DSLReports: New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has launched a new tool for users interested in knowing whether their identity was stolen and used to fraudulently support the FCC's attack on popular net neutrality rules. The NY AG's office announced earlier this month that it was investigating identity theft and comment fraud during the FCC's public comment period. Researchers have noted repeatedly how "someone" used a bot to fill the comment proceeding with bogus support for the FCC plan, with many of the names being those of folks who'd never heard of net neutrality -- or were even dead. The new AG tool streamlines the act of searching the FCC proceeding for comments filed falsely in your name, and lets you contribute your findings to the AG's ongoing investigation into identity theft. "Such conduct likely violates state law -- yet the FCC has refused multiple requests for crucial evidence in its sole possession that is vital to permit that law enforcement investigation to proceed," noted Schneiderman. "We reached out for assistance to multiple top FCC officials, including you, three successive acting FCC General Counsels, and the FCC's Inspector General. We offered to keep the requested records confidential, as we had done when my office and the FCC shared information and documents as part of past investigative work." "Yet we have received no substantive response to our investigative requests," stated the AG. "None." As such, the AG is taking its fight to the public itself.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The British Ecological Society has announced the winners of its annual photo competition, and it features fantastic photos of fearsome predators pouncing on prey, a freakishly rare ocelot, and a crafty chameleon doing what a chameleon does best.

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Neo-Nazis in the Netherlands have responded violently to calls to get rid of Santa's blackface holiday assistant.

Half the people on one study halved the number of migraines they had each month.