RP350 Towering Beauties

 RP350 Towering Beauties

Yangshuo County in China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region has some truly unique rock formations that make for some of the most interesting geography in the world.
Located in Southeast China, Yangshuo is home to extremely picturesque natural scenery. Its landscape is teeming with unique rock formations that are called karsts. These rocks protrude out of the earth in a big way. They look like stone pillars that have grown to be massive just like a tree might. Strangely enough, the two ingredients for this peculiar geography are extremely simple: water and time.
It took a long time for Yangshuo to inherit its unique geography. Millions of years ago, the Guilin area used to be a gulf. This meant that Guilin's hills were submerged underwater. This water slowly eroded them and fashioned them into pillar shapes. After the water receded, wind and rain continued to eat away at them and contribute to Yangshuo's unique look. Ultimately, the rock formations that we see today in Yangshuo County were tens of millions of years in the making!
There are a few particularly notable karst formations within Yangshuo County. The first of them is called Nine Horse Mural Hill. This landmark is a giant stone cliff that faces the Li River. It got its name from the fact that some people can see nine horses in various poses in the rock patterns. Sunshine reflecting off the cliff face has been known to dazzle spectators with a rainbow of many colors. These colors also change depending on the weather and the time of day.
Elephant Trunk Hill is another famous karst formation in Yangshuo County. It is a limestone arch at the junction of the Li and Taohuajiang rivers. The arch looks like an elephant that has come to drink from the river. Under the arch, there is a crescent-shaped pool that looks like a moon when light strikes it from a certain angle.
While Yangshuo has some of the world's most exquisite karst formations, there are several other worldwide spots that share similar geography. Ha Long Bay in Vietnam and Gunung Mulu in Malaysia are two other popular examples of karst formations that have been dazzling human eyes for thousands of years.

RP349 An Oil to Go Nuts for

 RP349 An Oil to Go Nuts for

Whether in a newspaper or a magazine, you've probably heard of coconut oil. It's a new health craze that's catching on around the world.
Doctors have found that coconut oil is high in healthy fatty acids that are easily digested. Energy from these acids is less likely to be converted into fat. It's also energy that is easily burned when exercising. But the benefits of coconut oil don't stop there—not even close! Studies have revealed the various ways in which coconut oil improves overall health. For one, coconut oil is high in natural saturated fats. These fats increase healthy cholesterol, which prevents heart disease and high blood pressure. Coconut oil is also rich in antioxidants that help reduce inflammation. People who suffer from arthritis and other inflammatory diseases sometimes report reduced swelling and pain. Coconut oil is also believed to help prevent some types of cancer.
As if that's not enough, coconut oil can also benefit your everyday life. Studies have shown that coconut oil can improve memory function in older people. It can also increase metabolism, which leads to better energy and endurance. It even restores skin and leaves it looking younger. No wonder they call coconut oil a superfood: it's creating super-people!
Of course, not everyone agrees on the subject of coconut oil. There are a few doctors and scientists who haven't seen the light yet. For example, the American Heart Association claims that coconut oil is a "troubling" source of saturated fat. Others say that the benefits of coconut oil have been exaggerated, and that more research is needed. Then there are journalists who believe that the coconut oil trend is hurting farmers worldwide.
In reality, the truth is somewhere in the middle. Coconut oil has been proven to have some incredible health benefits. But like anything else in life, it's possible to have too much of a good thing.

RP348 Learn to Fight like an Israeli

 RP348 Learn to Fight like an Israeli

The story of Krav Maga is right out of a Hollywood movie. It begins with a man who grew up in desperate times. His name was Emrich "Imi" Lichtenfeld. Imi was a martial artist, boxer, and acrobat. He was also Jewish, which was very dangerous in 1930s Czechoslovakia. Facing violent threats over his religion, Imi decided to do something about it. He got together with other Jewish boxers and started working on a way to defend their people. The goal was to strip the "art" away from martial art. They wanted to create a fighting style that was practical, effective, and easily taught to others. Their style came to be known as Krav Maga.
Imi's story doesn't end there. After the Nazis invaded in 1940, he fled from Czechoslovakia. He reached Palestine in 1942, and set about training locals in self-defense. His talents were recognized immediately, and he was hired to train military and police forces. After the state of Israel was formed in 1948, he became the army's chief instructor. Imi spent over 20 years in the role, and his legacy is evident. Krav Maga is now the official martial art of the Israel Defense Forces.
Krav Maga is practical above all. Imi drew heavily from other martial arts when developing it, but he only took techniques that were efficient and easy to understand. Therefore, everything in Krav Maga is useful in an actual fight. It teaches how to defend against weapons like knives and guns. It shows how to turn any household object into a weapon. It also puts a premium on swift strikes that can take an attacker out of commission. A Krav Maga fighter will always target vulnerable spots like the eyes, neck, face, or knee.
Krav Maga is also a fighting style that anyone can learn. Imi wanted to develop something that wasn't complicated and easy to learn. Men, women, and children of all ages and body types can train in Krav Maga, but that doesn't mean the training will be easy!

RP347 The Eyes Have It

 RP347 The Eyes Have It!

If you've ever tried to read or watch something on a smartphone in bright sunlight, you know it's not easy. People usually need shade to see screens clearly, especially small screens. And if the sun is right overhead, your eyes can get a nasty blast of glare. Then you won't be seeing anything for a minute or two!
That's all changing right now, however, thanks to moths. Yes, moths. Taking inspiration from these nocturnal insects, scientists in China and the United States have found a solution to midday glare.
The technology that enables people to watch TV on the street in daylight is actually based on what allows moths to see at night. Microscopic structures on moths' eyes let light in but don't reflect it back out. For the insects, this has a double benefit, enabling them to see in darkness while making them less visible to predators. But when similar tiny structures are pressed into a thin, flexible film, they trap sunlight and thereby prevent glare. This means that surfaces coated with such film can be clearly seen even under bright skies.
“Moth eye” film was originally developed for use on solar energy panels, which are more efficient when they' re non-reflective. Now, however, it's ready to take on a variety of new uses. In addition to smartphone screens, windowpanes, road signs, watches, speedometers, and fuel gauges could all be improved by this inexpensive material. Researchers claim that “moth eye” film offers 10 times better readability in clear weather and five times better even in direct sunlight. Since it's self-cleaning, dirt, dust, and fingerprints won't be problems anymore either.
Perhaps the best thing about “moth eye” film is that you won't have to buy a new scooter or phone to get it. It can be stuck onto the surfaces of old gadgets like any screen protector. In the future, however, it may become part of the manufacturing process and already be on products when you buy them.
So the next time you see a moth, be sure to thank it for giving us humans a very helpful idea!

346 A Beautiful Menace Under the Ice

 346 A Beautiful Menace Under the Ice

While exploring the Canadian north, photographer Paul Zizka came across a wonderful sight. It wasn't the snow-capped mountains, the pine trees, or the tranquil lakes. Rather it was some bubbles that caught Paul's eye. These bubbles were visible just under the icy surface of a lake. There were hundreds of them, all frozen in place. They looked like strange sea creatures, maybe even alien life.
What the photographer had discovered is actually a gas called methane. Methane is a greenhouse gas that's far more powerful than carbon dioxide. By some estimates, it's 25 times more powerful. It's also highly flammable and can explode when released. Methane bubbles are formed by bacteria at the bottom of lakes. These bacteria consume plant matter and releases methane as part of their digestion process. You might say it's a bacterium's way of farting. In warmer weather, these methane bubbles float to the surface and are released into the atmosphere. But when the water is frozen, the bubbles get trapped in the ice.
But methane bubbles are far more than just a pretty picture. In actual fact, they' re a serious threat to all of us. Methane is a gas that contributes to global warming. Some parts of the planet are frozen all year round. It's called "permafrost." As the planet heats up, this permafrost melts, releasing methane bubbles from lakes and rivers. The release of this methane causes more global warming, which melts more frozen lakes and rivers. The process is called a "feedback cycle," because the effect contributes to the cause. According to one scientist, frozen methane is a climate time bomb waiting to go off.
The methane feedback cycle is yet another reason why the fight against global warming is so important. We all must do our part to solve the problem. This could mean planting a tree or even just walking to school or work every day. Doing so will help preserve the natural beauty of these frozen bubbles. It will also help save the entire planet. Let's keep these dangerous bacteria farts where they belong: safely under the ice!

RP345 Profit for a Cause

 RP345 Profit for a Cause

Can capitalism be a force for good in matters of the environment and social justice? This is the question at the heart of the social enterprise movement. If you were to ask any social entrepreneur who's working hard to start their own business, they would surely say "yes."
In some ways, a social enterprise is exactly like a regular enterprise. It provides a product or service, employs workers, and aims to make a profit. But there is one major difference: a social enterprise is striving to make the world a better place. You might be thinking: "Doesn't every enterprise want to make the world a better place? Corporations like Apple donate millions of dollars to charity. "That's true, and it touches upon the central debate in the social enterprise movement.
There's a lot of disagreement over what exactly constitutes a social enterprise. To some people, it's an enterprise that invests all of its profit into social welfare. Think of a thrift store that takes its profits and funds a local food bank. This is the "purest" interpretation, but it still raises a few difficult questions. For example, should the thrift store expand and open new locations? Doing so might save more people from hunger. Yet the more money it devotes to expansion, the more it looks like a regular corporation.
Others define social enterprise as a corporation whose goal is to provide social or environmental benefits. An example of this would be a factory that converts dangerous waste into a useful product. The factory operates like any other corporation, but it just so happens to be benefiting the local population. Another interpretation of social enterprise is one that hires vulnerable people who struggle in the mainstream economy. An example of this is the Children Are Us Foundation in China. This foundation runs bakeries staffed by mentally challenged young adults.
With all this disagreement, it's almost like anything can be a social enterprise. But what we're really doing here is just putting a new name on an old phenomenon. Social enterprises have been around for thousands of years. In the past, it was simply called neighbors helping out neighbors. You might even say that "social enterprise" is as old as human generosity.

RP344 Say It With Your Fingers Carefully

 RP344 Say It With Your Fingers—Carefully

Being in a place where you can't speak the local language can be frustrating. It's only natural in such situations to attempt to communicate through body language. Hand gestures are indeed universal, but their meanings vary as much as speech from place to place.
Take the gesture made by pressing the tips of your thumb and forefinger together while extending your other fingers. In the West, this is instantly recognized as meaning "okay." In Brazil, it is instantly recognized as an insult. In some East Asian countries, it means money. Just imagine the potential misunderstandings!
Trying to call someone over to you can be just as confusing, depending on where you are. Westerners do it with a hooked forefinger and a raised palm. Asians, on the other… uh, hand, find this rude, as they consider it suitable only for calling dogs. To summon another person, they turn the palm down and wave all four fingers pressed together. This is exactly how Western people tell someone to go away!
One hand gesture that does translate is a raised middle finger with the back of the hand facing outward. Considered extremely offensive, this is the American version of a gesture to which the British add a raised forefinger, forming a V. By turning his palm outward, however, the late British Prime Minister Winston Churchill made this a victory sign during World War II. Twenty-five years later, American hippies used the same gesture to symbolize their wish for peace during the Vietnam War. Nowadays, Vietnamese and other East Asians flash "peace fingers" automatically anytime they have their pictures taken. Confused yet?
Even the simplest hand gestures can cause cross-cultural problems. In the West, a thumb up has a positive meaning and a thumb down a negative one. In the Middle East, a thumb up has a negative meaning and a thumb down has no meaning at all. Might this be part of the reason for the seemingly endless trouble between these two societies?
Body language may be an instinctive option when we can't communicate verbally, but it can also be very hazardous. My advice? The next time you travel abroad, take a phrase book!
East Asians make the "V" gesture when they have their pictures taken.

RP343 Walking on the Moon

 RP343 Walking on the Moon

Cappadocia has a landscape unlike anything you've seen before. Located in central Turkey, this region is famous for its natural rock formations. Some visitors say that visiting Cappadocia is like visiting the moon.
How did Cappadocia become so exceptional? Both nature and humanity had a hand in it. Take the "fairy chimneys" that the region is famous for. These are pillars of rock that have been eroded by thousands of years of wind and rain. They can stand as high as 40 meters tall. Some of them have a cone of harder rock at the top. It can look a bit like a hat sometimes. This cone takes longer to erode than the softer rock underneath.
Now, here's where humanity comes into the picture. The region of Cappadocia was located on the ancient Silk Road. For thousands of years, traders and soldiers from Europe and Asia passed through the area. Some decided to put down roots, and since Cappadocia's landscape is desert-like, without any trees, they faced a housing problem. To solve it, settlers picked up shovels and started digging. They dug into the larger fairy chimneys and built a complex system of caves to live in. Their work left the region's rock formations dotted with holes. The end result is a landscape that's truly jaw-dropping.
Fast-forward to the present, and some of these caves have been converted into hotel suites. Any visitor can try that "cave experience," and live like the settlers did thousands of years ago. But there's one important difference: now you can have a mattress, a pillow, and a blanket!
One of the best ways to discover these natural wonders is to take a hot air balloon ride. Balloon ride operators are common throughout Cappadocia. Tourists can take a 1-2 hour ride and soak in the sights from high in the sky.
Balloon ride operators are common throughout Cappadocia.
These tours can be very fancy. Some even offer buffets and champagne toasts. If you want something more private, there are tours focusing on special occasions like honeymoons or marriage proposals. Wouldn't it be romantic to have such a great surprise up in the air!

RP342 A Method in the Madness

 RP342 A Method in the Madness

Clocks melt like cheese on a hot summer's day, elephants with matchstick-thin legs carry pyramid-shaped monuments on their backs, floating rhinoceros horns form a figure staring out to sea—images like these, pulled from the irrational corners of the mind, were the mysterious subjects of Salvador Dalí.
With his unique dress sense, curled mustache, and eyes wide open as if constantly startled, Salvador Dalí lived his artistic ideas as well as painted them. He presented a lecture while wearing a deep-sea diving suit (including the helmet), resulting in his audience hearing only muffled sounds from within. He invited an art critic to pose while he himself took photos. The camera, however, had no film inside. He designed bizarre art objects like the famous Lobster Telephone. Why, he questioned, was he never given a boiled telephone when he asked for a lobster in a restaurant?
The reason behind Dalí's strange behavior was that he considered himself the physical representation of the surrealist movement. “I myself am surrealism,” he declared as he was being expelled from the surrealist group.
Dalí's version of surrealism involved finding links between things which the rational mind usually would not connect. To do this he used a technique he called the paranoiac-critical method. By inducing a state of extreme distrust and fear of the world around him, objects would take on new forms and become unstuck from their place in the rational world. The method can be compared to how to see different shapes in clouds, or faces in rocks, and allowed Dalí to create what he referred to as “hand-painted dream photographs,” a reflection of his inner mind.
Born in 1904 in northeastern Spain, Dalí's artistic talents were encouraged by his mother, and he studied art in Madrid. He was an extremely talented technical drawer, a skill that would be used to great effect in his paintings, which often used complex geometry and visual illusions.
Dalí's works explore both the ridiculous and terrifying aspects of the illogical. Some people called him insane, but Dalí simply replied, “There is only one difference between a madman and me. The madman thinks he is insane. I know I am mad.”

RP341 The End of Ink

 RP341 The End of Ink?

Suppose you had only a single math notebook for your entire school career, or could take yesterday's paper to a shop each morning and have it reprinted with today's news. Thanks to light-printable paper, such things might be possible very soon!
After years of effort, researchers in the United States and China have developed a remarkable chemical compound. When applied to ordinary paper, this compound makes the paper printable by ultraviolet (UV) light rather than ink. It looks and feels like any paper, but only keeps its text for 5 to 10 days. If you don't need the text for that long, heating the paper will erase it in 10 minutes. Either way, it can be printed on over 80 times with no loss of quality!
The benefits of such an invention are obvious. Newspapers, magazines, posters, notebooks, and supermarket product life labels are just a few of the many temporary information sources we use. Wouldn't it be great if we could keep on using them over and over again?
Then there are the environmental advantages. Paper production is a major source of pollution, and even recycling paper pollutes due to its ink removal process. In some countries, one third of all trees cut down are used for paper and cardboard. And where does all that paper end up? Mostly in landfills, where it accounts for 40 percent of dumped trash. The more we learn about reprintable paper, the more reason there is to love it!
For now, however, widespread use of this new technology is still just a dream. Although reprintable paper only costs about as much as ordinary paper, laser printers which can print it quickly don't exist yet. And since a blue pigment is one component of the light-printable compound, most UV printing is still either blue on white or white on blue. This means that only text and drawings can currently be reproduced using this method.
Nevertheless, UV printing is an exciting new development which we should all keep an eye on. Who knows? One day there might be an edition of this book which you can have reprinted after you've finished reading it!

RP340 The Adventure of Books

 RP340 The Adventure of Books

There is nothing a bookworm loves more than getting absorbed into the world of an engaging novel. In the near future, however, the humble paper-and-ink book is set to take a dive headfirst into the new and exciting dimension of interactive reading.
What if there was a way in which you could receive an email from the main character? What if actually visiting one of the places mentioned in the story opened up a whole new chapter? Suppose performing certain tasks in real life revealed new secret plot lines in the story. Imagine becoming truly involved with the story's narrative by adding to the story yourself. These are just some of the features that are available to the readers of interactive books right now. In addition, readers can even download interactive story apps onto their phones.
Even though this sounds revolutionary, in fact, readers have been getting involved with plot lines for almost half a century. Choose Your Own Adventure books began to be published in the 1970s. The reader was given a choice at the end of every few pages. For example, the sentence—“If you would like to question the gardener, turn to page 23”—was written to give the reader the option of where the story went next. Each choice would eventually lead the reader to one of around 40 different endings.
Video games have also made use of interactive fiction. Text adventure games were some of the first computer games ever made. Players simply had to input commands such as "open the mailbox" or "leave the house" in order to advance the plot.
A variation on text adventure games that are very popular in Japan is the visual novel. These kinds of games use still manga images, have background music, and usually involve very little game play. Occasionally, readers are expected to make a choice between plot strands, but otherwise the experience is all about the story. Most PC games now sold in Japan are visual novels.
Whatever ends up becoming the future of books, be it on paper or on screen, it seems readers will never tire of finding new ways to get drawn into a juicy plot.

RP339 From Seljlandsfoss with Love

 RP339 From Seljlandsfoss with Love

Dear John,
I know that I already wrote you about my trip to Reykjavik yesterday, and I don't want to be irritating, but I need to tell someone about the most beautiful thing I' ve ever seen.
It's called Seljlandsfoss, but don't ask me how to pronounce it. It's a waterfall located about 150 km from Reykjavik on the south coast of Iceland. The falls are a truly awesome sight. I couldn't take my eyes off them for a full two hours. I was so fascinated that I didn't hear the bus driver screaming his head off at me from the parking lot. Apparently, I made the whole tour wait an extra half hour! It's not the magnitude of Seljlandsfoss that makes it so impressive. Though the falls are 60 meters tall, which is not bad considering the Niagara Falls measure in at 51 meters, the Seljlandsfoss falls are not very wide at all.
Picture yourself standing under a gray sky that goes on forever. Rising up to meet the grayness is a rolling landscape of lush green. It's unlike anything you've seen before because there isn't a tree in sight. Even the sensation under your shoes is foreign to you. That's not grass or dirt that you' re standing on— it's moss. In front of you stands a massive stone cliff. It makes you feel uncomfortable, like you' re looking at the earth's exposed skeleton, and it's something you' re not supposed to see. Yet beautiful water flows over the top in a never-ending stream. As the water descends, it's transformed into a fine mist by the wind you feel blowing through your hair. For a split second, you close your eyes and become the waterfall.
That's pretty profound, don't you think? It looks like I've become a bit poetic after staring at a waterfall for two hours. Anyway, it's also possible to walk on a little mountain path that goes behind Seljlandsfoss. It's rare that we get the opportunity to see a waterfall from two different sides.
I know that you' re planning on coming to Iceland next year. Make sure that you add Seljlandsfoss to your plans. It is truly one of the most beautiful things in the world

Yours,

Jenny

RP338 Becoming the Sculpture

 RP338 Becoming the Sculpture

We use art to convey our thoughts, opinions, and experiences. It's something that can help us reach out and form bonds with our fellow human beings. But why should art be limited to a canvas, book, or film reel? Why can't it cover four walls and a ceiling, or expand to the size of a building? Well, with installation art, it can.
Installation art was born out of the conceptual art movement of the 1970s. Conceptual art is the belief that the ideas associated with a piece of art are more important than the aesthetic or how it looks. A good piece of conceptual art will make us think. It won't necessarily stun us with its beauty.
Think of installation art as taking the concept of sculpture and turning it inside out. Usually, when we examine a sculpture, we are on the outside looking in. However, in the case of installation art, the art piece is all around us. In a sense, we become the sculpture.
Sunflower Seeds is a great example of installation art. It involved the artist spreading millions of porcelain sunflower seeds across the floor of London's Tate Modern. Each unique seed was hand-painted in a small workshop in China. The overall aesthetic contrasts the quaintness of being painted by hand with the harsh industrial environment of the Tate Modern, which was formerly a power station.
Néle Azevedo is another renowned installation artist. She travels around the world creating hundreds of miniature ice sculptures of people. Of course, it's inevitable that her creations will melt as soon as temperatures warm up, but that's exactly the point. Néle molds her melting men to raise awareness about the threat of global warming.
Minimum Monument by Néle Azevedo
There are lots of other installation artists out there trying to pull us into the sculpture. Patrick Dougherty uses sticks and twigs to build huge houses, huts, monuments, and even highways in the open air. In France, Guillaume Reymond creates an impression of massive robots using heaps of used cars and trucks. Anything is possible when the world is your canvas.

RP337 A New You

 RP337 A New You?

More and more Asians are discovering that they don't need to keep the face that they were born with or the bum made huge by too many late-night bubble teas. The body they've always wanted is just a doctor's visit away!
Asia is quickly becoming the plastic surgery capital of the world. Thirty years ago, plastic surgery rates in Asia lagged behind the West due to low incomes, fewer qualified doctors, and a culture that shunned outward vanity. Now, countries like South Korea and China are the places to go to have your face and body altered. In South Korea,20 people in every thousand have had plastic surgery. Most of them had their procedures done in Gangnam, a wealthy district of Seoul. More and more people from Vietnam, China, and Japan are also flocking to Gangnam, where over 500 clinics offer "a new you."
So, what's changed to make Asian people so keen to go under the knife? First and foremost, people have more money in their pockets. A beautiful face has become a symbol of success in Asia, which means plastic surgery can help you display your success to the world. There is also a lot of workplace pressure to get plastic surgery. It's not just the actors and actresses who are looking for eternal youth, but regular people as well. Some job seekers get plastic surgery so they don't lose a job to someone who has the same qualifications but a prettier face.
Asian people tend to want different plastic surgery procedures than their Western counterparts. In the West, customers often want to look younger by having wrinkles or bags of fat under their eyes removed. Asian customers on the other hand often want to look like Westerners. Popular procedures in Asia include double-fold eyelids, breast enlargement, and cheek or lip reduction.
This shouldn't come as too much of a surprise. After all, Asia was the birthplace of some of the first plastic surgery procedures. A fourth century Indian medical textbook called The Sushruta Samhita contained a section describing how to reconstruct someone's nose if they happened to have it chopped off.

RP336 The Artful Imparting of Enthusiasm

 RP336 The Artful Imparting of Enthusiasm

When most of us think of cheerleading, we picture elaborate routines, extremely dangerous stunts, and short skirts. Did cheerleading always look as glamorous as it does in Hollywood movies like Bring it On? Where did this peculiar sport that is now practiced by over 1.6 million people around the world come from?
The story of cheerleading begins in late-nineteenth-century America. In 1898, a University of Minnesota student named Johnny Campbell was stumped over how he could help his school's football team win a critical game against a rival school. He decided that the best way he could help the team would be to get the crowd more involved. On the day of the big game, he stood in the stands and led cheers of “rah rahrah, Minn-e-so-tah!” His enthusiasm was infectious, and Minnesota won the game. The concept of cheerleading was born.
In the years following 1898, cheerleading squads started to pop up in schools across America, yet the sport continued to be completely dominated by men in its early years. This changed in 1923 after the University of Minnesota once again pioneered a new trend— this time, the concept of female cheerleading squads. When World War II broke out in the 1940s, women made further advances by filling the gap left by men going overseas to fight. This is how cheerleading became the primarily female sport that we know it as today.
Female cheerleaders meant different kinds of cheerleading routines. The stationary and monotonous cheers of old were quickly replaced with arm movements, kicks, and tumbles. The sport continued to evolve with every passing year.
Cheerleading took another step toward its modern form in 1975, when the Universal Cheerleaders Association (UCA) opened a training camp that included cheerleaders performing routines set to background music. This laid the foundation for competitive cheerleading.
In 1982, the sport stepped into the spotlight when ESPN broadcasted the 1st Cheerleading National Championship. Since then, competitive cheerleading has grown in popularity in America. It has also become more and more popular overseas. There are an estimated 100,000 cheerleaders competing in countries such as Australia, Canada, Japan, Finland, France, Germany, and China.

RP335 Chasing Cheese

 RP335 Chasing Cheese

Chasing after a speeding wheel of cheese may not be everyone's idea of a fun day out, but for the residents of one small village in England, hurtling down a steep hill trying to catch an escaping cheese is one of their oldest and most valued traditions. The Cooper's Hill Cheese-Rolling festival, held in the village of Brockworth, is undoubtedly one of the United Kingdom's weirdest events.
The crowd gathers at the top of a 90 m long slope, and on the count of three a heavy wheel of cheese is released down the hill. Contestants then hurl themselves down the bumpy incline after the cheese. No one is actually expected to catch the cheese itself, as the incredible speed it reaches within seconds of being released makes that impossible. However, the first person past the finish line at the bottom gets to keep the cheese as a prize.
Usually taking place on the last Monday in May, the event consists of five separate races down the hill. It won't come as a surprise to hear that contestants are frequently hurt in pursuit of the rolling cheese. The record to beat is still 1997, when 33 people were hospitalized with sprained ankles, concussions, and broken bones. Being a spectator isn't any safer, either. Some unlucky onlookers have been hit head-on by the runaway cheese. Fortunately, there are paramedics on standby during the event.
The cheese itself weighs 7 lbs, though for a short time after World War II an even more dangerous wooden cheese was used due to the wartime government's food conserving policies.
The origins of the festival are believed to be linked to an ancient harvest ritual dating back hundreds of years, although no one is quite sure exactly when or why the event began.
For the past two years the event has been officially canceled due to safety concerns and the growing number of people who want to participate. However, this has not stopped some faithful cheese-chasing enthusiasts from hosting their own unofficial cheese-rolling. The locals' passion for keeping their rather eccentric tradition alive is, evidently, a very difficult thing to suppress.

RP334 Japan's Literary Superstar

 RP334 Japan's Literary Superstar

Haruki Murakami's aptitude for blurring the line between the real and imagined has earned him fame on both sides of the Pacific. What makes this Japanese writer so popular not only in his home country but also overseas?
For starters, Murakami has quite a romantic background. Born in 1949 to parents who were Japanese literature teachers, he studied drama at a university in Tokyo. After graduating, he worked at a record shop for a while before deciding to open up a jazz bar with his wife in the mid-1970s.
The inspiration to write a novel came to him while watching a baseball game in 1978. After he got home that night, he grabbed a pen and started writing. Months later he sent his work off to a literary contest and they agreed to publish it. This was Hear the Wind Sing, his first novel. Murakami kept on writing but remained relatively unknown in Japan until the publication of Norwegian Wood in 1987. A decade later, international audiences fell in love with him upon the release of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. When his 2013 novel Colorless Tzukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage was released in Japan, it sold 350,000 copies in the first three days.
Murakami's books have now been translated into over 50 languages worldwide and many people openly speculate that he will one day win the Nobel Prize in Literature. That was quite an inspirational game of baseball!
Readers the world over also love Murakami's unique style. It's as if he can see through our world and into the next. This lets him write novels that provide readers with the purest form of escape, letting them take a vacation from reality.
His prose flows from a mix of Eastern and Western culture. He had a Japanese upbringing, yet many of his cultural influences came from the West. He grew up reading Western authors such as Kurt Vonnegut and F. Scott Fitzgerald and listened to music by Thelonious Monk, Nat King Cole, the Beatles, and Bob Dylan.
The end result was an author who was raised on rebels yet lived in a society where everyone conformed. This contradiction did not manifest itself in his novels as a political point of view, but rather as a blurred line between reality and fantasy.

RP333 The Next Atlantis

 RP333 The Next Atlantis?

Day by day, little by little, Thailand's capital of over eight million people is sinking into the sea. Its annual rate of descent ranges from 1.5 to 5 centimeters. That's very substantial for a city that was built on swampland only 1.5 meters above sea level.
There are several factors behind Bangkok's slow descent into the Gulf of Thailand. First and foremost is urbanization. Every year, Bangkok expands to absorb new waves of people arriving from the surrounding countryside. Heavy buildings are built on top of irrigation canals and natural flood defenses, causing coastal erosion. More people means more groundwater must be extracted for them to drink, and the more groundwater that's extracted, the faster Bangkok sinks. It is a vicious cycle that is difficult to stop.
What's more, the sinking process is irreversible. Every inch that Bangkok sinks is an inch that it will never get back.
Bangkok is going down just as sea levels are coming up. This dangerous combination has led some experts to predict a catastrophe in the not-so-distant future. Some believe that parts of Bangkok will be underwater by 2030. Smith Dharmasaroja of Thailand's National disaster Warning Center goes a step further. According to him, Bangkok will have become the next Atlantis by 2100.
The government of Thailand must act fast if it wants to avoid this catastrophe. One plan is to construct a system of seawalls in the Gulf of Thailand to protect the city from rising sea levels. However, these walls would cost billions of dollars and several prominent members of the scientific community believe that they might not even help. They point out that the last major floods to threaten Bangkok came from the north, not the south.
Another option is to assert more government control over Bangkok's urban sprawl. Buildings need to be moved back from the Chao Phraya River and built on higher ground.
Saving Bangkok will take time, money, and effort. If the government of Thailand delays for too long, it might find that it only has one more option left: abandon the Venice of the East and build a new city somewhere else.

RP332 The War That Never Ends

 RP332 The War That Never Ends

In ancient times, the land known as Israel was the home of the Jewish people. The Romans conquered Judea, as they called it, in the first century B.C. For the next 2,000 years, this small piece of desert would be part of many successive empires. As time passed, most Jews left for other parts of the world. In their place came Arabs, who called the land Palestine and themselves Palestinians.
After World War II, the United Nations decided to give most of Palestine back to the Jews. This involved removing countless Palestinians from their homes. Fighting broke out between the long-time Arab residents and the new Jewish arrivals. The Jews ultimately won the struggle and Israel was founded in 1948.
Armed conflict immediately broke out again, however, this time between Israel and its Arab neighbors. Over the next 25 years, a series of wars would be fought in the region. Some were started by the Jews, and some by the Arabs. Israel won them all, however, and the Palestinians continue to suffer under a harsh Israeli occupation. As a result, many have turned to terrorism in an effort to force the Jews out.
What can be done? Israel insists it has a right to exist and be recognized as a Jewish state. It also says it has the right to keep the territory it has captured. Arab countries refuse to recognize Israel until it gives back all of that territory. They also want the descendants of Palestinians who lost their homes when Israel was created to be allowed to return there.
The conflict between the Arabs and Israelis has had a major impact on the wider world. Western countries, especially the United States, support Israel politically, military, and financially. This has caused many Arabs and other Muslims to resent the West, sometimes violently. Many people throughout the world sympathize with the Palestinians. They wonder why the West ignores Israeli abuses and calls the Palestinians victims.
In the current political climate, attitudes on both sides of the Arab-Israeli conflict are only growing harder and more extreme. Whatever else may happen, the war that never ends will continue for a long time to come.

RP331 Forever Young

 RP331 Forever Young

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to live forever? Most people consider this an impossible dream, but for one species of jellyfish, immortality is just another part of life. It's been called “the immortal jellyfish,” and it is only about five millimeters long, smaller than your fingernail.
What's special about this kind of jellyfish is that it can reverse its life cycle by changing its cells in a process called transdifferentiation. After it becomes sexually mature, it can force its cells to become those of a progressively younger version of itself. Its umbrella and tentacles are absorbed back into its body, and it sinks to the ocean floor to become an immature pod, or polyp. This polyp can then produce new jellyfish identical to the adult.
One of the benefits of reversing its life cycle is that the jellyfish can survive periods when food is scarce or conditions are dangerous. By returning to its immature stage, it can wait out these harsh conditions as a polyp and emerge again when conditions are more stable.
Though it can still be killed by other sea creatures, this remarkable ability to survive against all odds has allowed the tiny jellyfish to spread around the world. Scientists suspect that these immortal animals are being accidentally ferried around the world by long-distance cargo ships. The jellyfish get sucked into the ships and are then transported thousands of miles away from their original habitats. There are now so many in the world's oceans that some are calling it an invasion.
The species was discovered over a century ago, but its amazing ability was not noticed until fairly recently. This power to dramatically alter its cells has been of great interest to scientists who are trying to find ways to cure illnesses like cancer and heart disease. These currently incurable conditions could be eliminated by the discovery of how to change one kind of cell into another.
Although it might take a while for scientists to figure out how we humans can permanently avoid dying of old age, there is no doubt that the immortal jellyfish holds the key to immortality.

RP330 The incredible Sled Dog

 RP330 The incredible Sled Dog

Sled dogs have been used to transport supplies over difficult terrain for thousands of years, and it's easy to see why. These amazing animals can pull one and a half times their own weight, often over vast stretches of arctic territory. Whether it's a frozen river, a jagged mountain peak, a massive glacier, or a winding forest trail, sled dogs can handle it. They don't just survive in the bitter cold and unforgiving geography of the Arctic—they thrive on it.
The Arctic is a huge region that borders several countries, so it should come as no surprise that there are many different breeds of sled dog. For example, the Inuit sled dog is popular among aboriginal communities in Canada, and the Samoyeds are used as sled dogs in northern Russia. Some people believe that the Inuit sled dog's extraordinary endurance and wolflike howl are the result of Inuit populations crossbreeding dogs with wolves over 35,000 years ago. However, some members of the scientific community are skeptical about this explanation. They think that the Inuit sled dog's toughness comes from living in arctic regions for so long.
Sled dogs have been an important mode of transportation in harsh arctic environments for a very long time. They were there when early explorers set out to map the Arctic and the Antarctic. They helped Canadian and American police authorities in remote gold mine areas in the late 1800s. In 1925, a team of sled dogs even helped prevent an epidemic by transporting a critical shipment of diphtheria serum to Nome, Alaska. Yet no matter how hardy these sled dogs are, they can't compete with modernization. Nowadays, snowmobiles have taken over as the primary mode of arctic transportation.
Despite this, every year on the very same trail that the famous sled dog team once transported medicine to Nome, the "last great race on earth" is held in Alaska. The Iditarod Trail Race spans 1,150 miles of harsh arctic territory and sled teams of 12 to 16 dogs must finish it in fewer than 17 days. The growing popularity of the race is proof that man's best friend will continue pulling sleds for a long time.

RP329 The Dark Mystery of Deep Space

 RP329 The Dark Mystery of Deep Space

Question: How many astronomers does it take to change a light bulb? Answer: None. Astronomers aren't afraid of the dark! Bad jokes aside, astronomers may not be afraid of the dark, but they certainly lose a lot of sleep over dark matter.
Dark matter is four times more common in our universe than ordinary matter, but it is impossible to see with a telescope, and scientists only know of its existence because of the effects it has on visible matter.
Actually, “know” is perhaps too strong a word. Dark matter is an idea, a hypothesis, which tries to fill in the gaps between what we can see and what scientific data tells us about the universe. However, experiments have yet to detect the existence of dark matter particles, and this has caused some scientists to doubt the standard model for the structure and formation of the universe.
The existence of dark matter was first suggested by a Swiss physicist named Fritz Zwicky in 1933. Observing a galaxy cluster called the Coma Cluster—where over 1,000 galaxies, each containing billions of stars, collect together in an unimaginably vast cosmic group— Zwicky found a puzzling inconsistency.
Zwicky made a mass calculation based on the amount of visible matter in the cluster and also calculated the speed at which the galaxies in the cluster were moving. He realized that this mass did not provide enough gravity to keep these fast-moving galaxies in orbit. The galaxies should have been flying out of the cluster, rather than staying inside it. Zwicky then calculated the mass of the cluster based on the speed of the galaxies and discovered that it was 400 times more than the calculation based on the visible matter. He reasoned that there must be some kind of invisible matter which made up the difference in the calculations.
Due to the extreme difficulties that scientists have in detecting dark matter, new theories about its formation and behavior are seldom conclusive. Scientists have to make assumptions based on the indirect influence of dark matter on other cosmic structures, and this means that the secrets of dark matter could, for a long time, remain in the dark.

RP328 Facing the Future

 RP328 Facing the Future

Waking up with someone else's face is the stuff of nightmare s and science fiction movies for most people. For accident victims left with terrible facial scarring and disfigurement, a face transplant is a ray of hope for being able to lead a normal life.
In normal facial surgery, tissue is taken from the patient's own body, and then joined onto his or her face—a procedure called skin grafting. A face transplant, however, involves taking the face of another person and then attaching it directly onto the patient.
A common misunderstanding is that the recipient will then look exactly like the donor. Instead, because the patient and the donor have a different bone structure, a third hybrid face is created.
The first successful face transplant was done in 2005 by French doctors. They transplanted the nose, lips, and chin of a brain-dead donor onto the face of a 38-year-old woman who had been viciously attacked by a dog. In 2010, a man injured in a shooting accident was given a completely new face, the first ever full face transplant.
This type of operation is especially complex as it involves carefully connecting the nerves, muscles, and blood vessels found under the skin of your face. This must be done so skillfully that the patient will later be able to move the new face in a way that looks natural. The procedure is so difficult that it sometimes takes over 24 hours to complete. Despite its difficulty, doctors have praised the face transplant over grafting, which usually makes the face look like a mask rather than allowing for natural expression.
One of the main dangers for patients is that their body tends to reject the new face. As a result, recipients of new faces must take special drugs for the rest of their lives to suppress their immune system. In 2008, a Chinese bear-attack victim who received a new cheek, upper lip, and nose, died because he took other medicine instead of the prescribed drugs. The recipient of the first ever transplant also died 11 years later, in 2016, from complications with her medication.
Even with these dangers, recipients of face transplants have expressed joy at being able once again to do the things that most people take for granted, like speaking, eating, and smiling.

RP327 The Electric Henry Ford

 RP327 The Electric "Henry Ford"

If Elon Musk has his way, for longer trips, you' ll zip around in sealed pods that are faster and cheaper than airplanes. And someday you might even own an apartment on Mars! Does that sound far-fetched? Well, if you've ever used PayPal to buy something, you' re already part of Mr. Musk's rapidly changing world.
Born in South Africa in 1971, Elon Musk studied physics and economics in the United States. His early interests included clean energy, space travel, the Internet, and social change. Remarkably, he has had a major impact in all of these areas.
After starting— and later selling— a successful software company, Musk helped establish PayPal in 2001. This online money transfer company has changed the way people pay for many things.
Most of us would consider that enough of an accomplishment. Just a year later, however, Musk literally launched SpaceX, a rocket manufacturing company. His purpose was to advance space travel technology, and he succeeded. In 2012, SpaceX became the first private company ever to dock a vehicle at the International Space Station! Maybe Musk's dream of building a human colony on Mars by 2040 isn't so crazy after all.
Meanwhile, back here on Earth, Musk set up SolarCity in 2006. As you might imagine, this is a solar power company, currently the second-largest in America. Renewable energy was also the main reason Musk took over the Tesla electric car company in 2008. Tesla now allows other carmakers to use its technology to develop their own electric vehicles. For Elon Musk, it seems, money isn't everything— though he certainly has plenty of it!
And the ideas just keep on coming. The "hyperloop" transportation system Musk envisions would have people traveling through tubes in sealed pods at speeds of up to 1,200 kilometers per hour. That's nearly 50 percent faster than the average commercial airplane! Musk also wants to make artificial intelligence more widely available and someday connect it directly to the human brain.
From anyone else, that would sound like science fiction. But given all that this remarkable man has already done, we can't dismiss anything he might imagine.

RP326 Permanent Tongue Twisters

 RP326 Permanent Tongue Twisters

The way that our body hears, understands, and produces speech is extremely complex, and like any other complex process, it can malfunction sometimes. This is called a language disorder, and it can have serious consequences when it comes to communicating with our fellow human beings.
Language disorders come in two forms: developmental and acquired. Developmental language disorders occur naturally in some children when they are growing up. They can affect the growth of speech organs such as the larynx, vocal cords, or the parts of the brain that are responsible for communication. Acquired language disorders can happen to anyone, no matter one's age. They are most often caused by head trauma or a lack of oxygen to the brain.
Some language disorders come in both developmental and acquired forms. Take stuttering, for example. Stuttering is a disorder where the flow of someone's speech is constantly interrupted. The first sound of a word might be repeated ("g-g-g-go"), or lengthened ("mmmmmake"). Sometimes, the word cannot leave the mouth at all.
Most of the time, stuttering is a developmental language disorder that emerges in children, more often boys, around the age of three. Eighty percent of these children eventually stop stuttering before they become adults. However, there are rare instances when stuttering can be an acquired disorder. In these cases, a head trauma, a stroke, or drug use can cause sudden stuttering in an adult.
Aphasia is another type of acquired language disorder. Much like acquired stuttering, a person can develop aphasia after suffering a head trauma or a stroke. The symptoms of aphasia are extremely diverse. Some of them are simple, such as difficulty pronouncing words or using complete sentences. Others are quite serious, such as the inability to read or write. Some other symptoms are just downright strange, such as using nonsense words in place of real ones.
The good news is that treatment for language disorders is improving all the time. Although most disorders cannot be cured, they can usually be reduced. Speech therapists help patients to improve the accuracy and clarity of their sounds—and, equally importantly, their confidence.

RP325 Not the Only You

 RP325 Not the Only You?

You've just sat down and opened your textbook. It's time to improve your English reading ability and learn some new vocabulary. But maybe there's another version of you who decided not to study today. Maybe there's yet another version who gave up on studying because he or she decided to become a professional dancer sometime last year. Maybe there's a particularly vulgar one who prefers to rip the pages out of this textbook and eat them rather than use them to master the English language.
While this might sound a little crazy, the theory of parallel universes has actually become well established in certain scientific circles.
Think of a deck of cards. If you shuffle that deck hundreds of thousands of times, you will eventually get every possible combination. Some experts in the field of quantum physics believe that the same concept applies for our universe. If the universe is infinite, meaning that it goes on forever without stopping, then every possible combination of particles must exist somewhere.
Quantum physicist s are also encouraged by evidence that matter can exist in two different states simultaneously. In 2010, researchers at the University of California made a tiny piece of metal vibrate and stay still at the same time. If their conclusions are correct, then the reality of our universe is based on observing one of those possible states. The one that we don't see is being observed by someone else in a parallel universe. This process of observing one of many possible different states is what causes our reality to split into different parallel universes. In the simplest terms, the theory of parallel universes assumes that our actions and decisions can be measured on the quantum level. In layman's terms, the decision to eat a hot dog makes particles in the brain react in a certain way.
Many of the scientists who believe in the theoretical existence of parallel universes admit that it's probably impossible for us to travel between them. However, 100 years ago, most scientists believed that space travel was possible. You might just get to meet the version of yourself that became a professional dancer one day after all.

RP324 Hearty French Feasting

RP324 Hearty French Feasting
When you think of French food—the rich creams, the buttery sauces, heaps of cheese, succulent red meat—do the words “heart attack” leap to mind?
Well, they shouldn't because despite eating four times as much butter and almost twice as much cheese as Americans, the death rate from heart disease in France is under half of what it is in the United States.
It's been called the French paradox, and scientists have linked it to various factors from the French habit of snacking less to the Mediterranean climate, which encourages more exercise.
The phenomenon, which contradicts common sense, has largely baffled scientists, but the prevailing theory about why this counterintuitive trend occurs is centered on the French love of red wine.
Research has shown that moderate consumption of red wine does have a positive effect on health and long life. Scientists originally thought that the chemical resveratrol was responsible for this effect, but it seems that resveratrol levels in red wine are too low to create an effect as large as the French paradox.
Another chemical has been found in wine that does occur in sufficient quantities to protect the cells in human blood vessels effectively. Oligomeric procyanidins occur in greater quantities in the wines of those French regions which have the healthiest people. Whatever the science behind the phenomenon, the revelation that wine could keep you heart healthy resulted in a huge surge in wine imports in the United States.
Other theories that attempt to explain the French paradox suggest that simple French eating habits, such as eating smaller portions of food over a longer period of time, have a positive influence on their health. French people tend not to snack between meals, eat less fried food, and take more time between courses to allow their food to digest properly.
Also, the sunny weather of southern France provides ample opportunities for the French to get larger doses of vitamin D from the sun. Vitamin D helps prevent the hardening of arteries and reduces the risk of heart attacks.
Theories aside, it seems if you want to enjoy good food and still have a healthy heart, it's simply better to have been born French.

RP323 A White Ocean

 RP323 A White Ocean

One geophysicist described it as “a white ocean with no waves.” Imagine standing on 10,582 square kilometers of barren white land as flat as a dinner plate, and you have some idea of what it might be like to visit the Salar de Uyuni, the world's largest salt flat in Bolivia, South America.
Formed from the gradual drying of a gigantic prehistoric lake, the Salar is covered with a solid salt crust a few meters thick and hides a 20-meter-deep lake of salt water beneath the surface. It looks like a region of Antarctica rather than South America, and visitors find it difficult to convince themselves that it's salt, not snow, that they' re treading on.
The salt flat is dotted occasionally with small islands, which are the tops of ancient volcanoes once submerged beneath the lake, but which are now the perfect habitat for 1,000-year-old cacti growing at a rate of one centimeter per year.
The area is astonishingly flat, with elevation varying 80 centimeters at most over an area the size of a small country. This has made it perfect for satellites to use to adjust their altimeters. Satellites usually use the ocean floor to determine exactly how high they are in space, but the clear weather and uniform nature of the Salar makes it about five times more effective at giving accurate readings.
The salt flat has also been an economic lifesaver for Bolivia, which is South America's poorest country. It is estimated that up to 70 percent of the world's lithium supply is contained in the heavily concentrated salt water beneath the Salar's hard surface. Lithium, which is essential for making batteries, is extracted from the Salar by creating small ponds on the surface filled with the salty solution from beneath. The lithium and salt are separated as the water evaporates in the sun.
Visitors to the salt flats will also be able to see pink South American flamingos, which breed there in November, and also the famous Palacio de Sal, a hotel made entirely of salt, where the one important rule is “Don't lick the walls！”

RP322 Dancing in the Moonlight

 RP322 Dancing in the Moonlight

Every month, the island of Ko Pha Ngan in Thailand plays host to one of South East Asia's most infamous parties—The Full Moon Party at Haad Rin Beach. On the night of the moon, partygoers wearing bright neon clothing and neon body paint crowd onto the beach. Fire-dancers perform dangerous, awe-inspiring stunts. DJs play all kinds of head-spinning music. Vendors—their stalls covered in bright lights—sell giant, sweet cocktails served in beach pails.
Up to 30,000 people attend the party each month, all looking for an unforgettable experience. And while the party is particularly popular with young backpackers, anyone and everyone is welcome to attend. Indeed, the fun of the Full Moon Party is that you never know who you might meet beneath Ko Pha Ngan's giant full moon, or what friendships or romances you might kindle there. Most people don't stop dancing until the sun comes up the next morning.
No one is quite sure how or when these parties began, though there are many stories. Most people think they started sometime in the late 80s, probably as a going away party at one of the beach's holiday bungalows. But regardless of when or how the parties began, news of them quickly spread by word of mouth. Soon, not only had the parties become a regular occurrence, but they were increasingly bigger and wilder, too.
Some might say, though, that the parties have now become too popular, with locals complaining about the noise and mess caused by the partygoers. The parties have also become increasingly dangerous, due to the large number of revelers and the excessive drinking that goes on. Broken glass causes bare-footed partiers particular problems, and the numerous attractions and activities involving fire leave many with minor burns. In addition, thieves take advantage of the fact that most tourists will be out all night to break into their hotel rooms and steal their valuables.
Because of this, it's not clear how long the Thai government will allow the parties to continue. So if attending a Full Moon Party is on your bucket list, you'd better do it quickly!

RP321 The Bigger They Are, the Harder They Fall

 RP321 The Bigger They Are, the Harder They Fall

The investment bank with a 160-year history, Lehman Brothers, weathered its fair share of crises. From railroad bankruptcies to the Great Depression and even two world wars, it appeared the Lehman was built to last. That all changed however, on September 15, 2008 when that Lehman Brothers' luck ran out. It became the biggest bankruptcy in American history.
Just five years before its collapse, business was booming for the investment bank. In 2003 and 2004, the firm acquired a series of subprime mortgage lending companies. Subprime refers to high-interest loans that are given to financially risky clients. Most of the people who received subprime loans didn't earn enough money to pay them off. However, this wasn't considered to be a problem as long as property prices kept going up. Lehman Brothers was one of the Wall Street firms that dove headfirst into the subprime mortgage market, and from 2005 to 2007 it was rewarded with record profits.
In early 2008, however, everything changed. Property prices began to drop, and homeowners across America were suddenly on the hook for loans that were worth more than their houses. In March 2008, Bear Stearns, another large investment firm, nearly collapsed due to its exposure to subprime lending. Lehman Brothers stock gradually started to fall.
By September 2008, Lehman stock had fallen off a cliff. Global equity markets plunged worldwide, and the firm looked for salvation elsewhere. In a desperate attempt to stave off bankruptcy, Lehman looked for a partner that could buy it out. It reached out to Barclays PLC, Bank of America, and even the Korea Development Bank, but no deal could be reached in time to save it. The fourth-largest investment bank in the United States went under.
Even though the American Government bailed out other financial institutions such as Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac, it did nothing to stop the collapse of Lehman Brothers. The decision to not help was based on Lehman's lack of valuable assets. The irony is that so many homeowners went bankrupt during this time for this very reason. After the news of Lehman Brothers' bankruptcy was announced, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 500 points. This triggered a wider panic as investors pulled their money out of markets in America and around the world. The Great Recession had begun.

RP320 Small but deadly

 RP320 Small but deadly

The world is a dangerous place, especially for a small animal. In the wild it pays to have a deadly weapon, be it for self-defense or better hunting. From snakes to snails, some animals have developed a weapon more effective than big teeth or sharp claws, a weapon that can kill no matter how strong the threat is: venom.
Many of the world's deadliest animals live in the sea. The terrifying box jellyfish is about three meters long and its venom can kill in less than three minutes. Some reports claim that this jellyfish has killed more than 5,500 people since 1954. Though stings can be treated with vinegar, the venom acts so quickly that most people die in the water before even reaching the shore. You'd better be careful the next time you decide to take a dip.
Good things also come in small packages, and so, it seems, does venom. The blue-ringed octopus is only the size of a golf ball, but it is one of the world's most deadly animals. Its bite has enough venom to kill 26 humans, but you might not even realize you've been bitten as its bite is often tiny and painless. Its venom is so powerful that most people die within minutes and there is no antivenin. However, there is still hope. If the victim's heart can be kept going long enough, the venom will eventually leave the body with no harmful side effects.
While most creatures use their venom in self-defense and won't attack unless provoked, the Brazilian wandering spider is particularly dangerous because of its aggressive nature. Several things make this spider an unpleasant customer. The first is it likes to move around a lot and lives in heavily populated areas, hiding in houses, boxes, and cars; the second is it has the most effective venom of all species of spider; the third is that it's huge—sometimes as big as a man's hand! Luckily though, many of its bites contain no venom at all as it prefers to conserve its supply for prey. Even more reassuring is that no deaths have been reported since the discovery of the antivenin.

RP319 Windows into the Underworld

 RP319 Windows into the Underworld

Near the small village of Derweze in the deserts of Turkmenistan, a gaping hole, 328 feet wide, burns red with a light that can be seen for miles around. It looks like Hell itself has opened up and is pouring its insides into the world above.
The ancient Greeks had many stories of heroes venturing into Hell to rescue lovers or question the dead, and the Italian poet Dante wrote of entering through an archway on which the words “ABANDON ALL HOPE, YE WHO ENTER HERE.” were inscribed.
This fascination with entering the underworld has resulted in many places being labeled “gates of Hell,” perhaps because of a strange natural phenomenon (often to do with fire, smoke, or darkness) or because of a legend or superstition attached to the place.
The most visually impressive of these gates is Derweze's Door to Hell in Turkmenistan, which has been burning constantly for over 40 years.
The Door to Hell is not an entirely natural phenomenon. Russians drilling at the site in 1971 accidentally pierced a massive underground deposit of natural gas. The ground collapsed beneath the drill, and the entire operation fell into the pit.
In order to prevent the poisonous gas escaping into the atmosphere, the Russians decided to set the deposit on fire. They thought the gas would burn out in a few days, but the fires are still alight to this day.
You don't need a giant pit of fire to create a good gates of Hell myth, though. Hellam Township, Pennsylvania, has not only an unusual name, but also a disturbing story attached to it, giving rise to the belief that Hell's gates may be found in the woods near the town.
Legend has it that there was once a mental asylum in the woods. Fearing the patients would escape, the residents built seven gates around the asylum. One day a fire broke out in the asylum, and many of the patients were burned alive, stopped from escaping by the seven gates. The story goes that if someone finds these gates and passes through all seven, they will go directly to Hell itself.

RP318 Celebrating in Color

 RP318 Celebrating in Color

Padma opened her eyes, threw off her blanket, and darted out of bed. The day that she had been looking forward to for a long time had finally arrived. It was the last full moon of the winter season. It was time to celebrate Holi, the Hindu Festival of Colors.
Padma didn't even have time to finish dressing before Sanjay beckoned to her from outside the window. In a flash, she ran downstairs and out the door. Her mother didn't even have enough time to scold her for wearing nice clothes on Holi.
Armed with water pistols and red, blue, and yellow gulal color powder, Padma and Sanjay set out. They rode their bikes through the streets searching for people to ambush. Whenever they came across someone, they would shout “Holi hai!” and shower them with water and handfuls of gulal. Eventually, they ran into a rival group of children and an all-out war broke out. When the battle was over, the warriors on both sides looked like rainbows.
They went back to Padma's apartment for lunch. Sanjay could eat with Padma's family because normal rules regarding the separation of castes aren't followed during Holi. As the two kids chewed on sweets, Padma's mom told them about where Holi came from.
Holi originated from the story of a demon king named Hiranyakashyap and his sister Holika. One day, the demon king asked his son Prahalad who the greatest god was. When Prahalad answered “Vishnu,” the Supreme god, instead of his father, the demon king became enraged and demanded that his sister Holika kill this rebellious son of his. Holika agreed, but when she tried to drag Prahalad into a pit of fire, the gods protected him and she was burnt to a crisp.
After lunch, Padma and Sanjay headed out to ambush more people with water and gulal. That night, there was a huge bonfire, and all of the locals came out to sing, dance, and enjoy a giant feast together. Later that night, back in her bed, Padma was still smiling when she finally closed her eyes. She was already looking forward to next year's Holi celebrations.

RP317 The City Lost Under the Sea

 RP317 The City Lost Under the Sea

When Plato wrote in 360 B.C. about an advanced island society named Atlantis, he probably had no idea that his words would become such a historical mystery. Even today, over 2,000 years after his dialogues were originally written, we are still trying to discover whether Atlantis is fact or fiction.
Plato described an island empire that was rich in resources and military power. He also mentioned that Atlantis was once allies with Athens, the city where Plato is thought to have been born. In the end, Atlantis betrayed Athens and launched an invasion against its former ally. Its attempt failed, and afterward the island of Atlantis suffered a series of natural catastrophes that caused it to be "swallowed by the sea."
Some people believe that there's no mystery at all. Plato was just using Atlantis as a metaphor to teach his readers a moral lesson. Their argument is supported by two important pieces of evidence. First, Plato was known to use metaphors frequently in his writing. Secondly, Plato claimed that these events occurred in 9000 B.C. Back then, Athens was probably just a handful of people sitting around campfires, if it was anything at all.
Others believe that Plato's Atlantis was actually an analogy describing the downfall of a totally different Greek island called Thera (present-day Santorini). Sometime around 1500 B.C., one of the largest volcanic eruptions in the history of human civilization occurred. It destroyed Thera and most of the Minoan civilization along with it. Supporters of this theory shrug off the 9000 B.C. date that Plato recorded; maybe he was just tired that day and added an extra zero by mistake.
Finally, there's a group of people who believe that Plato's account of Atlantis is the literal truth. For them, the ruins of this advanced island civilization are somewhere at the bottom of the sea just waiting to be discovered. What's more, finding them won't be easy. While most people who believe in Atlantis place it somewhere in or around the Mediterranean Sea, others claim that it's in the Atlantic Ocean or the North Sea off the coast of Sweden. That's quite a large area to search.

RP316 The City of Music

 RP316 The City of Music

From the performers on every street corner to the loud and lively funeral processions, it's easy to see that New Orleans has a long and important musical heritage. Of all of New Orleans's achievements, none are more important than the birth of jazz music.
The Big Easy had already established a name for itself well before jazz was invented. All the way back in 1835, African slaves were known to gather in Congo Square to dance and play music every Sunday. Their style of music slowly began to blend in with the local white musicians who were being influenced by European trends. This early mix of influences made it possible for the innovation that followed.
After the end of the Spanish-American War in 1898, New Orleans was flooded with musical instruments as military bands broke up and went home. Lots of these instruments ended up in the hands of the city's poorer black citizens. As they learned to play, they would let their passion guide them and not rely on written music. This was called improvisation. Eventually, they started to blend their own improvisation techniques with two of New Orleans's other musical traditions— ragtime and blues. The end result was the birth of jazz music, one of America's most beloved cultural achievements.
Jazz music was born in poor, working-class communities. Consequently, some of New Orleans's greatest jazz musicians, like Louis Armstrong and Jelly Roll Morton, had very difficult upbringings. As a young man, Louis Armstrong sold food he found on the street to restaurants to help support his mother. Jelly Roll Morton was thrown out of his grandmother's house after she discovered he worked as a piano player in a shady bar in New Orleans. Of course, the two of them went on to become legends.
Jazz music can also claim to have influenced several other styles that subsequently emerged from New Orleans. Fats Domino and Dr . John drew from jazz influences when they invented the rhythm-and-blues style after World War II.
What's more, both jazz and rhythm-and-blues would eventually influence the birth of rock and roll, a cultural phenomenon that is still sweeping the planet. That's a lot of heritage for just one city!

RP315 The Soft Glow of the Natural World

 RP315 The Soft Glow of the Natural World

Whether it's fireflies glowing in the night sky or an angler fish illuminating the darkest depths of the ocean, bioluminescence shows us just how clever the process of evolution can be.
The word bioluminescence comes from a combination of the Greek word for living and the Latin word for light. It's used to describe the light that certain organisms can produce via a simple chemical reaction involving luciferin, luciferase, and oxygen.
Most people assume that bioluminescence is restricted to fireflies and glowworms, but in reality several organisms can glow in the dark, including fish, whales, squids, bacteria, and even mushrooms. Bioluminescence also comes in a whole spectrum of colors, from the black dragonfish's red glow to the way Vibionaceae bacteria can make the ocean look like milk.
So what's the point of all this glowing? The answer has to do with evolution. Each species has evolved bioluminescence in order to survive in its environment.
Take fireflies for example, their bioluminescence serves a few purposes. It helps them attract things they want such as prey and potential mates. It also helps them avoid potential dangers. Predators think twice about eating fireflies because they know that the chemicals that produce bioluminescence taste awful.
Firefly bioluminescence is fairly straightforward. Other species can be a lot more complex. Mycena lucentipes, a glowing mushroom found in Brazil, is one such example. Insects are a constant threat to these mushrooms, so they rely on bioluminescence to attract animals that like to chow down on insects. This is like evolution's version of the old saying "the enemy of my enemy is my friend."
Comb jellies have also evolved a fascinating defense. If a predator takes a bite out of these bioluminescent deepwater jellyfish, their meal will continue to glow all the way into their stomach. This illuminates the predator, which can be quite dangerous in the darkness of the ocean. Consequently, predators think twice about bothering comb jellies in the future.
The process of evolution is truly amazing. It's like nature's tycoon—it identifies a gap in the market and uses innovation to fill it. What's more, if evolution can find a way to make living organisms create light like a light bulb, what can't it do?

RP314 A River of Fire in the Sky

 RP314 A River of Fire in the Sky

In northern Venezuela, where the Catatumbo River flows into Lake Maracaibo, thunder and lightning rage on up to 300 nights each year. It's an eternal thunderstorm that lights up the sky with over 20,000 flashes of lightning per night and is known to local tribes as "the river of fire in the sky."
The first mention of this extraordinary natural phenomenon is in a 1597 poem, which tells how the ships of English pirate Sir Francis Drake, who was planning to attack the area, were illuminated by the recurring flashes of lightning. As a result, Drake's surprise attack was spotted and prevented.
The lightning is so bright that it can be seen 500 km away on the Caribbean island of Aruba, leading to its alternate nickname, “The Maracaibo Lighthouse.”
Though the lightning itself is no different from that in common thunderstorms, a number of factors make the storms truly spectacular. Large amounts of natural gas in the area's atmosphere allow the lightning to recharge faster than usual, resulting in more flashes over shorter periods of time. Also, dust particles in the atmosphere often give the flashes an unusual red or orange hue, and storms can last for up to 10 hours at a time.
The prevailing theory is that the storms are caused by warm winds flowing in from the Caribbean Sea to the north, which mix with cold air blowing from the Andes mountain range to the south.
Mountains of almost 5,000 meters in height surround the lake, and this traps the hot and cold winds in a relatively small area, causing an intense concentration of conditions perfect for a thunderstorm.
The thunderstorm is also one of the greatest individual sources of natural ozone in the world. Ozone is created as the lightning rips through molecules of oxygen, rearranging them into ozone. The new ozone usually stays in the lower levels of the atmosphere, however, never actually reaching and healing the damaged ozone layer.
For those eager to see the spectacle firsthand, a warning: Tourists should be aware that this area of Venezuela is full of drug gang s and armed bandits, making a visit potentially dangerous as well as awe-inspiring.

RP313 And the Worse Actor Goes to

 RP313 And the Worse Actor Goes to...

Winning an Oscar is every actor's dream. It is considered the height of achievement for anyone involved in the movie industry. The Golden Raspberry Awards (or "the Razzies"), to the contrary, are the opposite of the Oscars and celebrate the very worst in moviemaking.
Awards are given in categories such as Worst Movie, Worse Actor, Worst Screenplay and Worse Director. It goes without saying that most actors dread hearing that they've been nominated for a Razzie.
The Razzies began in 1981 at the house of John Wilson, a Hollywood-based writer. Every year he would hold a dinner party on the night of the Oscars. He decided it would be fun to hold a fake award ceremony which celebrated the year's worst movies. That year, Can't Stop the Music won the first Gold Raspberry Award for Worse Picture. Using a broomstick and foam ball as a fake microphone, Wilson hauled his guests onstage to make some comedic speeches.
Everyone agreed that Wilson's fake awards had been so funny that they should happen every year. By 1984, the ceremony had moved from Wilson's house into a school auditorium and even managed to attract reporters from CNN.
Since then, the Razzies have gained a cult following. In order to take advantage of the surge in media presence in Hollywood, the Razzies take place the night before the Oscars. Now, the ceremony can get the attention it deserves without having to compete with the Oscars.
In 2005, actress Halle Berry turned up in person to accept her award for Worst actress. Holding her 2002 Oscar in one hand, and her Razzie in the other, she gave a hilarious speech to the crowd. Interestingly enough, in 2010, actress Sandra Bullock won an Oscar and a Razzie in the same year.
Some claim, however, that the Razzies and John Wilson are cruel by poking fun at the worst movies. Wilson has responded by saying "a banana peel on the floor, not a slap in the face," although not everyone in Hollywood agrees with him. Nevertheless, it won't stop the Razzies from making fun of the Hollywood elite any time soon.

RP312 The Animal That's Also an EnvironmentRP312 The Animal That's Also an Environment

 RP312 The Animal That's Also an Environment

It looks like a plant. It feels like a stone. But coral, which we consider a colorful setting for television programs about fish and other marine life, is actually an animal. And if we view a coral reef as a single organism, then it is by far the largest and oldest living thing on Earth.
Distant relatives of jellyfish and sea anemones, corals are invertebrates despite having a sort of skeleton. “Hard” corals’ skeletons, known as calices, are made of limestone. “Soft” corals, on the other hand, have wood-like skeletons. Only “hard” corals can form reefs. They do this by attaching themselves to rocks in shallow areas of tropical seas. A single coral can divide itself thousands of times, creating clone s which connect their calices to form a colony. This colony is in fact one animal, and can connect with other colonies to form a reef. Some reefs are believed to be over 50,000 years old!
If you've ever watched a TV show about ocean life, you probably think corals are very colorful. In fact they are clear, and get their rainbow tones from the billions of algae (plants) which attach to them. This relationship is highly beneficial to both parties. Corals get most of their food from the algae they host, but are also equipped with poisonous, hooked tentacles. These are used mostly at night, when the algae are asleep, to catch plankton and even small fish. That's right—corals are meat-eaters!
Since they must live near coastal areas, corals cover less than one percent of the ocean floor. Nevertheless, they support roughly 25 percent of all marine life. This is a problem, because reefs are rapidly falling victim to a variety of natural and man-made threats. Pollution, storms, global warming, boats, and the dumping of soil and sand into the world's oceans are all deadly to corals. Even a slight change in water temperature can cause corals to lose their algae covering, resulting in a potentially fatal condition known as bleaching.
If people cannot protect the world's oldest and largest organisms, what can we do? The time has come to start thinking about our impact on our environment—especially when that environment is itself an animal.

RP311 The Magic Mirror

 RP311 The Magic Mirror

What if customers could try on their favorite clothes in a store without having to enter a dressing room? Or better yet, without leaving their bedroom? Technological advances are allowing us to do just that. This new shopping experience could be coming to a mall near you sooner than you think.
This new technology is called a "virtual dressing room." Imagine standing in front of a full-length mirror that shows your reflection and also lists the clothes available for purchase. Customers can browse through clothes with a simple downward motion of their hand. Clothing selected by a customer will appear virtually on top of the customer's reflection. Customers can now see what the outfit looks like just as it would in real life. If the customer doesn't like the color, all he or she needs to do is point at a different part of the mirror and select a new one.
Though this sounds a lot like science fiction that will be arriving sometime in the distant future, this technology is here today. Virtual dressing rooms are already being put to use in department stores around the world. Topshop, a world-class clothing chain store, has implemented virtual dressing rooms that use Microsoft's Kinect technology in its Moscow branch. Macy's department store in New York City experimented with the technology in 2010 when it built a "magic mirror." The installation allowed customers to try on anything in the store. If they liked how they looked, they could post an image of their new virtual outfit on their Facebook page. Customers who used these virtual dressing rooms found that it saved them a lot of time. It allowed customers to sort through the items they were interested in by narrowing their search to the clothes they like the most.
While it's true that this technology is starting to appear in stores around the world, it's still far from perfect. For one, the clothing's image can look unnatural and doesn't always give a good feel for the real thing. Not to mention, the technology has no way of informing the customers of how the clothes will actually feel on them.

RP310 Making His Mark

 RP310 Making His Mark

On February 4, 2004, a Harvard student created an Internet phenomenon from his dorm room. The website was Facebook, and it changed the way people all over the world communicate. But Facebook isn't the only impact Mark Zuckerberg had on the world.
Computers have been a constant theme in Mark Zuckerberg's life. He learned the basics of computer programming from his dad. At just 12 years of age, he wrote a simple messaging program, ZuckNet, for his family home. Shortly after that time, messaging programs like AOL Instant Messenger took off nationwide.
Mark then wrote another program called Synapse. Synapse used artificial intelligence to study the way users listen to music. The program was so impressive that he received job offers from major software companies like Microsoft. Mark declined these offers, having decided that he would rather further his studies instead. Like with ZuckNet, Mark's program Synapse came just before another program called Pandora gained popularity.
Mark's zeal for programming flourished during his time at Harvard. In his second year, he wrote a program that helped students select courses and find study groups. He also created Facemash, a precursor to Facebook that asked users to compare people's faces. Of course, after Mark created Facebook, it started to spread quickly. This time, it was Mark's own program that took over and dominated the space.
Today, Facebook is still the most-used form of social media, with over two billion monthly users. But this is not enough for Mark. He genuinely believes that the Internet makes people's lives better. So, he wants to get everyone on the planet connected to the Internet. In 2013, Zuckerberg launched a new company called Internet.org. The company uses artificial intelligence, drones, and even lasers to increase Internet access for everyone.
However, Mark is not only interested in computers. He and his wife, Priscilla Chan, also value education, health, sustainable energy, and human equality. Together, they started another organization called the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. Through this organization, they will donate 99 percent of their wealth to such causes over their lifetime. With every new project, Mark Zuckerberg continues to change the world.

RP309 When the Streets Turn Red

 RP309 When the Streets Turn Red

La Tomatina in Buñol, 2013
On the last Wednesday in August, the streets of Buñol, Spain, run red with...tomato juice. It's the world's biggest annual food fight, and it involves 160 tons of squashed tomatoes being thrown by 22,000 very messy participants. In previous years up to 50,000 people, mostly tourists, took part! Nowadays, to control numbers, tickets must be bought in advance.
At 10 a.m., anxious shopkeepers frantically cover their storefronts. Fire trucks are at the ready with hoses to wash away the slippery tomato residue that will soon cover everything in sight, and the immense crowd dances and cheers in anticipation.
They are waiting for the "palo jabón"— the greasy pole. Unlike most events, La Tomatina does not start with a pistol shot. A long pole is erected in the town and a ham is placed on the very top. Members of the crowd then race to climb the pole, scrambling over each other, desperate to be the first one to the top. When the ham is knocked to the ground, the tomato throwing can begin.
Trucks empty the mass of overripe vegetables into the town square, and the frantic food fight explodes into action. In no time at all, the streets are flooded with the soft, wet guts of thousands upon thousands of hurled tomatoes.
After an hour, exhausted, soaked from head to toe, and glowing bright red, the crowd slowly begins to disperse. The battered food fighters make their way down to the river to wash the seeds out of their hair and the slime from their faces.
No one knows quite when or why La Tomatina began. It's usually dated to the mid-1940s, and there are many theories about what started off the first tomato fight. Some say it was just a playful fight between friends, while others claim it began as an attack on city council members. Some even say it began after a lorry accidentally spilled its produce on the street, and people just couldn't contain themselves.
The festival has become so popular that other nations have even tried to hold identical events. Some governments, however, are a little stricter than the fun-loving Spanish. The Indian version of the event in Bengaluru was banned after tomato growers complained that throwing such a large amount of produce would be an unacceptable waste of food.

RP308 Struggle and Genius

 RP308 Struggle and Genius

“Nothing in this world is harder than speaking the truth, nothing easier than flattery,” or so says Fyodor Dostoyevsky in his 1866 classic Crime and Punishment. These words reflect an intimate knowledge of what it is to be human, and they came from the pen of a literary genius on the verge of financial ruin.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, one of the giants of Russian literature, was born in Moscow on November 11, 1821. His parents had emigrated from what is now Ukraine. He was the second of seven children, and he almost immediately began to suffer from temporal lobe epilepsy. This was a condition that would linger for his entire life. Dostoyevsky went to school for mathematics, a subject he despised. He served in the Russian army for three years, from 1841 to 1844. After being discharged from the military, he began to write fiction.
Things started to go badly for Fyodor in 1849. This was the year when he was arrested and sentenced to death along with a group of intellectuals in St. Petersburg. Tsar Nicholas I, the leader of Russia at the time, was terrified of revolution. Fyodor Dostoyevsky and his fellow intellectuals were brought out into a courtyard, tied to poles, blindfolded, and told they were going to be shot in the head. But the bullets never came.
It was all a trick, a mock execution meant to teach them a lesson. The experience shattered Fyodor's nerves, and he never quite recovered his peace of mind. Afterward, he was sent to Siberia, where he was forced to labor and serve in the army until 1859.
After returning to St. Petersburg, Fyodor continued his writing, but things didn't get any easier. He began to drown in debt following the deaths of his wife and brother in 1864. He also developed a terrible gambling habit. It is said that he had to rush the last part of Crime and Punishment because he had gambled away his last kopek.
In the years leading up to his death in 1881, Fyodor wrote some of his most famous novels such as The Idiot and The Brothers Karamazov. He was survived by his second wife and four children.

RP307 Mini Mind Control

 RP307 Mini Mind Control

Deep in the tropical rain forests of Thailand, ant society is facing a terrible crisis. Workers aren't coming home. Queens are locking themselves in their chambers. They' re all terrified of the same thing—zombie ants!
The panic is being caused by a particularly sneaky fungus called Ophiocordyceps. This fungus can literally take over an ant's mind and make it do things that it doesn't want to do.
Imagine an innocent ant out for a stroll on a sunny day. It comes across a strange corpse covered in Ophiocordyceps fungus but pays it no heed. Over the next couple of days, this ant continues its normal routine like nothing is wrong. Three days pass and it starts to experience physical effects. This is the fungus slowly destroying muscle tissue as it takes over the ant's nervous system. In a few more days, the ant starts to convulse and loses control of itself.
This is when the fungus really takes over. It forces the ant to climb up a leaf and bite it. Perhaps strangest of all, zombie ants always perform this final death bite at noon, when the sun is highest in the sky.
Now comes the gross part. After the ant is dead, the fungus starts to grow out of its head like a mushroom. Over the course of two weeks, the fungus converts the ant's insides into sugars, so it has food to grow. When it's ready, it will release new spores that can doom any nearby ants.
Ophiocordyceps is extremely powerful, and it has been known to destroy entire colonies of ants. But ants have gotten used to the threat and do their best to keep themselves safe. If a healthy ant sees another ant displaying zombie tendencies, it will drag the infected ant as far away from all of the other ants as possible. Better to abandon that one infected ant than risk zombie spores being released all over the colony!
It's not just ants that have to live in fear of this zombie fungus. There are lots of different species of Ophiocordyceps. Each of them targets a particular insect, such as moths, mantises, and even spiders.

RP306 The World of Criminal Graffiti

 RP306 The World of Criminal Graffiti

Banksy, the anonymous graffiti artist, first became active in Bristol, the United Kingdom, in the early 1990s. His distinctive style of black-and-white stenciling is the consequence of having to paint quickly to avoid being arrested. Legend has it that while he was hiding from the police, the idea of stenciling originally came to him when he saw a stenciled serial number on the bottom of a garbage truck. Banksy's preference for painting on walls in public places makes some people view him more as a criminal than an artist.
Banksy's works can be found on the streets of Bristol, New York, London, and New Orleans. In 2005, he even did a series of thought-provoking paintings on the West Bank barrier. To many, he is regarded as an artistic genius. This belief creates a difficult question: If Banksy is an artist, does that mean that all graffiti is art as well? Banksy often makes fun of traditional notions of what art is. He has been known to walk into major museums and hang his own pieces on the wall. The Mona Lisa has also been a recurring character in his paintings.
Banksy's art raises another critical question: Is the artist even important? Nobody knows who Banksy really is. The mystery surrounding his identity has caused the media to speculate openly. In 2016, scientists from Queen Mary University claimed to have found the identity of Banksy. Using a method known as "geographic profiling," researchers believe the artist is Bristol local Robin Cunningham. Cunningham has neither confirmed nor denied the findings. Others speculate that Banksy is actually a group of graffiti artists who all operate under the same anonymous title. Whatever the truth is, Banksy doesn't want to be discovered.
Whoever Banksy really is, his art is clearly antiauthority and has an antiwar message. Banksy's being anonymous is perhaps his most important message of all. If the artist is unknown, we can observe the art for itself without drawing unnecessary conclusions about its meaning.

RP305 Where Giants Walk the Earth

 RP305 Where Giants Walk the Earth

He doesn't look a day over 35 (and never has), but Superman will soon be 80 years old. He first appeared in the pages of Action Comics number 1 in June 1938. That comic book cost 10 cents when it was published, but in 2014 a copy sold on eBay for an eye-popping US$3,207,852. The Man of Steel, apparently, is also the Man of Gold!
The world's most expensive comic book, of course, is a story in itself. But it's just one of many stories involving Action Comics' publisher, DC Comics. Within a year of Superman's debut, DC introduced Batman in issue 27 of its Detective Comics title. The fastest man alive, the Flash, followed very quickly indeed in 1940, and the first major female superhero, Wonder Woman, in 1941. All were highly successful, and came to define what is called the Golden Age of Comics.
By the late 1940s, however, superheroes were losing their popularity. Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman survived, but many other DC characters did not. The company's comedy, horror, science fiction, and romance comics helped it hold on to fans. Still, the 1950s were a difficult decade for most comic book publishers, including DC. One highlight occurred in 1956, when the Flash was reintroduced with a new origin, costume, and secret identity. This was the beginning of the Silver Age of Comics, though no one knew it at the time.
Ironically, the new age DC had started would cause it to lose the top spot among American comic book publishers. The company's fiercest rival, Marvel Comics, dominated the industry for the next 30 years. Even Superman and Batman couldn't compete with Spider-Man, the X-Men, the Hulk, and Marvel's many other hugely popular characters. DC still got plenty of respect, but it was a distant second in terms of sales.
That started changing in the late 1980s. The success of the Batman film series renewed people's interest in DC's characters. Superman and Wonder Woman later found new fans through movies as well. DC and Marvel now battle year after year for sales just as their superheroes battle villains for the safety of mankind. Who says life can't imitate art?