Camouflage Homes

Ever wish you could just disappear? Well, a camouflage home may be the answer! These noticeable or unnoticeable homes are the examples of amazing architectural skills. From modern estates to funky little mud huts built by hand.

                             Wood House, Hilversum, Netherlands

This mini-dwelling is disguised as a pile of wood that's been stacked for the winter. In actuality, the building is a pre-fab structure made of steel and plastic. The log-like appearance was achieved by applying a wood veneer.

                            Casa do Penedo, Fafe Mountains, Portugal

What looks like left-over boulders from the Stone Age is actually a house. Casa do Penedo or the 'House of Stone', was built in 1974 with four different boulders.

 

                            Leaf Box, San Francisco, California

This modern cube, which stands behind a San Francisco row house, is actually an art studio. The verdant plant life that grows on its walls was introduced to make the boxy building blend into the property's adjacent parkland.

 

                            Dune Home, Atlantic Beach, Florida

Carved into the dunes of Atlantic Beach, Florida, these two psychedelic apartments are pure 1970s. Native landscaping on the exterior ensures comfortable 70-degree temperatures indoors. Created by architect William Morgan, they were constructed using technology that was devised to create unite swimming pools.

Dragon Rock, Garrison, New York

 Industrial designer Russell Wright designed this retreat, called Dragon Rock, in the 1960s. Nestled into a rocky hillside among 75 acres of trees and woodland gardens, the house and studio overlook a quarry pond.

  

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Human body in a vacuum of space

If you don't try to hold your breath, exposure to space for half a minute or so is unlikely to produce permanent injury. Holding your breath is likely to damage your lungs, something scuba divers have to watch out for when ascending, and you'll have eardrum trouble if your Eustachian tubes are badly plugged up, but theory predicts that otherwise, exposure to vacuum causes no immediate injury. You do not explode. Your blood does not boil. You do not freeze. You do not instantly lose consciousness.

Various minor problems sunburn, certainly some swelling of skin and underlying tissue start after ten seconds or so. At some point you lose consciousness from lack of oxygen. Injuries accumulate. After perhaps one or two minutes, you're dying. The limits are not really known.

You do not explode and your blood does not boil because of the containing effect of your skin and circulatory system. You do not instantly freeze because, although the space environment is typically very cold, heat does not transfer away from a body quickly. Loss of consciousness occurs only after the body has depleted the supply of oxygen in the blood. If your skin is exposed to direct sunlight without any protection from its intense ultraviolet radiation, you can get very bad sunburn.

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Ceiling fan direction

The first ceiling fans appeared in the early 1860s and 1870s, in the United States. At that time, they were not powered by any form of electric motor. Instead, a stream of running water was used, in conjunction with a turbine, to drive a system of belts which would turn the blades of two-blade fan units. The electrically powered ceiling fan was invented in 1882 by Philip Diehl.

Unlike air conditioners, fans only move air—they do not directly change its temperature. Therefore ceiling fans that have a mechanism for reversing the direction in which the blades rotate (most commonly an electrical switch on the side of the unit) can help in both heating and cooling.

In summer, the fan's direction of rotation should be set so that air is blown downward (Usually counter-clockwise from beneath). The blades should lead with the upturned side as they spin. The breeze created by a ceiling fan speeds the evaporation of perspiration on human skin, which makes the body's natural cooling mechanism much more efficient. Since the fan works directly on the body, rather than by changing the temperature of the air, during the summer it is a waste of electricity to leave a ceiling fan on when no one is in a room.

In winter, ceiling fans should be set to turn the opposite direction (usually clockwise; the blades should spin with the downward turned side leading) and on a low speed. Air naturally stratifies — that is, warmer air rises to the ceiling while cooler air sinks. Unfortunately, this means it is colder on or near the floor where human beings spend most of their time. A ceiling fan, with its direction of rotation set so that air is drawn upward, pulls up the colder air below, forcing the warmer air nearer the ceiling to move down to take its place, without blowing a stream of air directly at the occupants of the room. This action works to even out the temperature in the room, making it cooler nearer the ceiling, but warmer nearer the floor. Thus the thermostat in the area can be set a few degrees lower to save energy, while maintaining the same level of comfort. It is important to run the fan at a low speed to minimize the wind chill effect described above.

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Ghost Ship

The Baychimo was a steel 1,322 ton cargo steamer built in 1914 in Sweden and owned by the Hudson's Bay Company, used to trade provisions for pelts in Inuit settlements along the Victoria Island coast of the Northwest Territories of Canada. She became a notable ghost ship along the Alaska coast, being abandoned in 1931 and seen numerous times since then until her last sighting in 1969.

On October 1, 1931,  Baychimo became trapped in pack ice. The crew briefly abandoned the ship, traveling over a half-mile of ice to the town of Barrow to take shelter for two days, but the ship had broken free of the ice by the time the crew returned. The ship became mired again on October 8, more thoroughly this time, and on October 15 the Hudson's Bay Company sent aircraft to retrieve 22 of the crew. 15 crew remained behind, intending to wait out the winter if necessary, and they constructed a wooden shelter some distance away. On November 24 a powerful blizzard struck, and after it abated there was no sign of the Baychimo; the skipper concluded that she must have broken up and sunk in the storm. A few days later, however, an Inuit seal hunter informed them that he had seen the Baychimo about 45 mi (72 km) away from their position. The 15 men proceeded to track the ship down and, deciding that the ship was unlikely to survive the winter, retrieved the most valuable furs from the hold to transport by air. The Baychimo was abandoned.

The Baychimo did not sink, however, and over the next several decades there were numerous sightings of the ship. People managed to board her several times, but each time they were either unequipped to salvage the ship or driven away again by bad weather. The last recorded sighting of the Baychimo was by a group of Inuit in 1969, 38 years after she was abandoned. She was stuck fast in the pack ice of the Beaufort Sea between Point Barrow and Icy Cape in the Chukchi Sea off the northwestern Alaskan coast. Baychimo's ultimate fate is unknown and is presumed sunk.

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Bombay Blood Group

Bombay blood group is a rare blood group also called Hh blood group. This blood phenotype was first discovered in Bombay, now known as Mumbai, in India, by Dr. Y.M. Bhende in 1952. A patient was admitted to KEM Hospital and required blood transfusions. A sample of blood was sent to the Blood Bank for grouping as is the usual practice. The red cells grouped like O group and hence O group blood was administered. The patient developed haemolytic transfusion reaction, and therefore transfusion had to be stopped.

A detailed study of the patient’s blood revealed a rare genotype (blood group), which was neither ‘A’ nor ‘B’ nor ‘AB’ nor ‘O’. Since the first case was detected in Mumbai (then Bombay), the blood group came to be called as Bombay Blood Group. Blood from a Bombay Blood Group individual only should be transfused to a Bombay Blood Group patient.

Individuals with the rare Bombay phenotype (hh) do not express H antigen (also called substance H), the antigen which is present in blood group O. As a result, they cannot make A antigen (also called substance A) or B antigen (substance B) on their red blood cells, whatever alleles they may have of the A and B blood-group genes, because A antigen and B antigen are made from H antigen; For this reason people who has Bombay phenotype can donate RBCs to any member of the ABO blood group system (unless some other blood factor gene, such as Rhesus, is incompatible), but they cannot receive any member of the ABO blood group system's blood (which always contains one or more of A and B and H antigens), but only from other people who have Bombay phenotype.

This very rare Phenotype is generally present in about 0.0004% (about 4 per million) of the human population, though in some places such as Mumbai (formerly Bombay) locals can have occurrences in as much as 0.01% (1 in 10,000) of inhabitants and 1 in a million people in Europe.

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Google Driverless Car

The Google Driverless Car is a project by Google that involves developing technology for driverless cars. The project is currently being led by Google engineers at Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.

The U.S. state of Nevada passed a law in June 2011 concerning the operation of driverless cars in Nevada. The Nevada law went into effect on March 1, 2012, and the Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles issued the first license for a self-driven car in May 2012. The license was issued to a Toyota Prius modified with Google's experimental driver-less technology.

The system combines information gathered from Google Street View with artificial intelligence software that combines input from video cameras inside the car, a LIDAR sensor on top of the vehicle, radar sensors on the front of the vehicle and a position sensor attached to one of the rear wheels that helps locate the car's position on the map. As of 2010, Google has tested several vehicles equipped with the system, driving 1,609 kilometres (1,000 mi) without any human intervention, in addition to 225,308 kilometres (140,000 mi) with occasional human intervention. Google expects that the increased accuracy of its automated driving system could help reduce the number of traffic-related injuries and deaths, while using energy and space on roadways more efficiently.

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World’s longest ship

Seawise Giant was the longest ship ever built. The massive ship was built in 1979 by a Greek shipping magnate, but was soon bought by a Hong Kong shipping magnate, who expanded its size.

After the refit, the ship had a capacity of 564,763 metric tons, a length overall of 458.45 m (1,504.1 ft.) and a draft of 24.611 m (80.74 ft.). The ship had 46 tanks, 31,541 square metres (339,500 sq. ft.) of deck space.

Seawise Giant was damaged during the Iran–Iraq War by an Iraqi air force attack while transiting the Strait of Hormuz on 14 May 1988 and carrying Iranian crude oil.

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Scientists have found soft tissue on dinosaurs

After 68 million years in the ground, a Tyrannosaurus rex found in Montana was dug up, its leg bone was broken in pieces, and fragments were dissolved in acid in Schweitzer’s laboratory at North Carolina State University in Raleigh.

The discovery was astonishing.  The scientist Dr. Mary Schweitzer discovered blood vessels and structures that looked like whole cells inside that T. rex bone—the first observation of its kind. No one ever imagined that even a trace of still-soft dinosaur tissue could survive. When an animal dies, soft tissues such as blood vessels, muscle and skin decay and disappear over time, while hard tissues like bone may gradually acquire minerals from the environment and become fossils. Schweitzer, one of the first scientists to use the tools of modern cell biology to study dinosaurs, has upended the conventional wisdom by showing that some rock-hard fossils tens of millions of years old may have remnants of soft tissues hidden away in their interiors.

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New species of purple crab discovered in the Philippines

(Hendrik Freitag/National Geographic)

Four new species of crab have been discovered in the Philippine island of Palawan. And one of the crabs truly stands out with its unusually bright purple shell.

It is believed that the particular violet coloration might just have evolved by chance, and must not necessarily have a very specific function or reason aside from being a general visual signal for recognition.

The newly discovered crabs are quite small in stature, each from about an inch to two inches wide.

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42,000-year-old mammoth baby

Photo by TYRONE SIU/REUTERS

Lyuba, the 1-month old baby mammoth of the Ice Age, died 42,000 years ago and was preserved in the ice. She was found by a reindeer herder in Siberia in 2007. By far, she is the best preserved mammoth mummy in the world. Although her fur and toenails have disintegrated, her skin and internal organs are intact. Apparently, there were traces of her mother’s milk in her stomach. Scientists hope to gain insight into what caused Ice Age mammals, including the mammoths, to become extinct at the end of the Pleistocene era around 10,000 years ago.

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