Sun Mirror at Viganella

Viganella is a small town in Italy whose inhabitants dread arrival of the winter season. The reason being that each year for 84 days in a row, the sun would not shine in the town as it went behind the 1,600-Meter high mountain that covered the town. The 197 inhabitants were plunged into a near darkness and just waited for the 84 days to pass so that they can once again feel the heat of the sun. With the sun not shining in the town the inhabitants lived a depressed life a scenario which docs call the 'Seasonal Affective Disorder' or SAD.

But finally their pain has been heard of and the authorities have just installed a 8-meter wide and 5-meter tall mirror that has been installed on a mountain so that it can reflect the sun's light on to the town for approximately 8 hours every day. The gargantuan sun mirror is made of an eight-by-five meter (26x16ft) sheet of steel and positioned above a nearby peak to reflect sun rays onto Viganella's main square. This enormous mirror is completely operated by a computer that regularly tracks sun's path. The result is that starting in 2006, the town was able to celebrate the first winter sun in 800 years!

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Jellyfish Lamps

A company in the United States has found a use for dead jellyfish by turning them into glow-in-the-dark lamp paperweights.

The Amazing Jellyfish encases the bodies of jellyfish that have died of natural causes to preserve their glowing properties.

The company says they are made of crystalline epoxy so they will never break or shatter.

Jellyfish absorb light naturally and glow when darkened because of natural proteins in their bodies.

They contain bioluminescence, a defence mechanism that causes them to glow in the dark to frighten predators, according to the company.

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Parrot parents name their babies

Research shows that parrot conversations are very complex. Each parrot has its own signature call that others use to address it, which is the parrot equivalent of having a name. But where do these “names” come from? New research has shown that just like with human babies, parrot parents name their offspring, even before the babies can communicate themselves.

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Smart Chickens

According to a recent study, chickens do not just live in the present, but can anticipate the future and demonstrate self-control, something previously attributed only to humans and other primates.


Prior studies have found that neuron organization in chicken brains is highly structured and suggests that, like humans, chickens evolved an impressive level of intelligence to help improve their survival. Unlike humans, the chicken brain has a remarkable capacity to repair itself fully after trauma.

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Dolphin collaboration

In the waters off Laguna in Brazil, fishermen have forged an extraordinary partnership with one of the smartest animals on the planet. The most equitable and amazing of partnerships is found between the fishermen and wild dolphins. Here the local fishermen use dolphins to drive shoals of mullet into their nets. When the fish are within catching distance, the dolphins leap out of the water as sign to the fishermen that they should now throw their nets. As the mullet break rank, the dolphins can then pick off the errant fish one by one.

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Sea gypsies and land sickness

Photo from Human Planet

The Bajau Laut of South-East Asia, also known as “sea gypsies” live in house boats or stilt houses built on top of coral reefs and when they do spend the occasional night on solid ground they often experience ‘land sickness’.

The best Bajau free-divers can dive to depths of over 20 metres and stay there for several minutes in the search for fish. Studies have shown that “sea gypsy” children from Thailand and Burma have unusually good underwater-vision because their eyes have adapted to the liquid environment.

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Paper aeroplane world record

A former American footballer has set a new world record for throwing a paper aeroplane.

Joe Ayoob threw the plane 69 metres in an aircraft hanger in California, shattering the old record by 6 metres.

The 27-year-old said he grew up making paper airplanes and his reaction after the record showed just how excited he was.

The plane was designed by TV producer John Collins, who spent years studying origami to create the perfect paper aeroplane.

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Prehistoric flower blooms again after 30000 years

Biologists have revived a 30,000-year-old plant that last flowered when ancient woolly mammoths roamed the Earth.

Cultivated from fruit tissues that were recovered from frozen sediment in Siberia, Silene stenophylla is by far the oldest to be brought back from the dead.

The previous record holder was a sacred lotus, which dated back about 1200 years.

The late researchers in Moscow, Russia, recovered the fruits of the ice age flowering plant from a fossilised squirrel burrow in frozen sediments near the Kolyma river in north-east Siberia.

Radiocarbon dating of the fruit suggested that the squirrel hoarded it around 31,800 years ago, just before the ice rolled in.

By applying growth hormones to the fruit tissue, the researchers managed to initiate cell division and ultimately produce a practical flowering plant.

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Pitcher plant eats bird

A plant has killed and "eaten" a great tit at a garden nursery in Somerset, England.

The caretaker was inspecting his tropical garden when he discovered one of his pitcher plants had trapped the bird. He was "absolutely staggered" to find it had caught the creature.

The larger pitcher plants frequently take frogs, lizards and mice, and the biggest ones have been found with rats in them, but to find a bird in one is pretty unusual.

It is believed to be only the second time such a carnivorous plant has been documented eating a bird anywhere in the world.

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Hello Kitty themed hospital

A Hello Kitty-themed maternity and pediatric hospital has opened in Yuanlin, Taiwan.

It is hoped that the white cat will ease the pain and fear associated with childbirth and being admitted into hospital. It will help the mothers to recover faster.

Hello Kitty is one of the most recognizable cartoons in the world.

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35 feet camera

A man is creating a camera that's 35 feet in length. The camera is intended to be able to take photos as large as 24 feet, with enough details that you can see the angles at which your eyebrow hairs are growing.

The camera is described as "the camera the size of a New York Apartment," and it requires negatives that are 4.5 x 6 feet! The camera is actually not digital at all. The negatives need to be developed by taking a chemical shower.

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The man who hears colour

Artist Neil Harbisson is completely colour-blind. Until 11, he didn't know he was suffering from achromatopsia (a rare vision disorder) and could only see in shades of grey.

When he was 16, he decided to study art. He was allowed to do the entire art course in greyscale - only using black and white.

In the university, he paired up with a cybernetics expert who helped him come up with the antenna-like device. It’s a simple device, made up of a webcam, a computer and a pair of headphones and created software that would translate any colour in front of him into a sound.

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Young goats can develop distinct accents

Young goats learn new and distinctive bleating "accents" once they begin to socialize with other kids.

The discovery is a surprise because the sounds most mammals make were thought to be too primitive to allow subtle variations to emerge or be learned.
They made the discovery using 23 newborn kids. To reduce the effect of genetics, all were born to the same father, but from several mothers, so the kids were a mixture of full siblings plus their half-brothers and sisters.

The researchers allowed the kids to stay close to their mothers, and recorded their bleats at the age of 1 week. Then, the 23 kids were split randomly into four separate "gangs" ranging from five to seven animals. When all the kids reached 5 weeks, their bleats were recorded again.

Some of the calls are clearly different to the human ear, but the full analysis picked out more subtle variations, based on 23 acoustic parameters.

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