Life

Museum of Ice Cream serves up sweet art

LOS ANGELES, United States (Reuters) — A mouth-watering exhibit in Los Angeles celebrates all things ice cream. Called the ‘Museum of Ice Cream,’ the collection features interactive installations where visitors are encouraged to taste, sniff, and play. In the ‘Banana Split Room,’ 10,000 hanging banana replicas create a colorful jungle, while banana-scented scratch-and-sniff paper lines the walls. Other exhibits feature enormous popsicles, giant gummy bears, and even a pool filled with 100 million custom made […]

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Vinegar offers hope in Barrier Reef starfish battle

SYDNEY, Australia (AFP) — Coral-munching crown-of-thorns starfish can be safely killed by common household vinegar, scientists revealed Thursday in a discovery that offers hope for Australia’s struggling Great Barrier Reef. The predatory starfish is naturally-occurring but has proliferated due to pollution and run-off at the World Heritage-listed ecosystem, which is also reeling from two consecutive years of mass coral bleaching. Until now other expensive chemicals such as bile salts have been used to try and […]

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Baby girl born with four legs returns home to Ivory Coast after surgery

ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast (Reuters) — A baby girl from the Ivory Coast born with four legs and two spines was reunited with her mother and father in Abidjan on Thursday (April 20) after successful surgery in the United States to separate her from a parasitic twin. Dominique underwent a six-hour procedure involving five surgeons at the Advocate Children’s Hospital in Park Ridge, Illinois, on March 8. Before the surgery, the bottom half of her not-fully-developed […]

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Twitter gets lift from uptick in user numbers

by Rob Lever Agence France Presse WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — Twitter shares surged Wednesday after its quarterly update showed improving growth in user numbers, offsetting concerns over a decline in revenue and another net loss for the social network. The first quarter results came in better than most forecasts for Twitter, which has struggled to keep pace in the fast-moving world of social media. The closely watched metric of monthly active users grew nine […]

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How technology helps freezing city grow tomatoes all year round

YAKUTSK, Russia (Reuters) — One of the coldest cities in the world could grow its own vegetables in Japanese-designed greenhouses in temperatures as low as minus 50 degrees Celsius. Yakutsk, a city 5,000km from Moscow in eastern Siberia, has just five hours of daylight in the winter months and an average temperature of minus 34 degrees Celsius. No crops can be grown in the frozen soil. The region’s authorities teamed up with partner Hokkaido Corporation […]

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NASA’s Super Pressure Balloon lifts off in New Zealand

WANAKA, New Zeland (Reuters) — A stadium-sized super pressure balloon launched by NASA in New Zealand began collecting data in near space on Wednesday (April 25), beginning a 100-day planned journey after several launch attempts were thwarted by a series of storms and cyclones. The balloon, designed by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to detect ultra-high energy cosmic particles from beyond the galaxy as they penetrate the earth’s atmosphere, is expected to circle […]

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Los Angeles mayor declares April 25 “La La Land Day”

(Reuters) — Brightly dressed dancers abseiled down the facade of Los Angeles City Hall on Tuesday (April 25) as Mayor Eric Garcetti declared the day to be ‘La La Land Day’ in the city. The declaration honors the Oscar-winning musical romance that tells the story of a struggling actress who falls in love with a jazz musician, set against the backdrop of a dreamy Los Angeles. “A day when you can celebrate your dreams, you […]

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Scientists develop fluid-filled artificial womb to help premature babies

(Reuters) — Scientists in the United States have developed a fluid-filled womb-like bag known as an extra-uterine support device that could transform care for extremely premature babies, significantly improving chances of survival. In pre-clinical studies with lambs, details of which were published on Tuesday (April 25) in the journal Nature Communications, the researchers were able to mimic the womb environment and the functions of the placenta, giving premature offspring a crucial opportunity to develop their […]

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Little Facebook could do amid rise in live murders – expert

LOS ANGELES, California (Reuters) — For the second time in two weeks, a murder, this time showing a Thai man filming himself killing his 11-month-old daughter was posted on Facebook before committing suicide. The murder-suicide, filmed in two parts, was online roughly 24 hours and viewed more than 360,000 times on the father’s Facebook page. Last week, Facebook said it was reviewing how it monitored violent footage and other objectionable material after a posting of the […]

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More Antarctic protections urged on World Penguin Day

by Martin Parry Agence France-Presse SYDNEY, Australia (AFP) — The world needs to do more to protect the Antarctic wilderness and its wildlife, scientists warned Tuesday, as they marked World Penguin Day. The flightless seabirds — a favorite with children for their clumsy, waddling gait — offer a useful yardstick for researchers to judge the health of their habitat. “Penguins are great ambassadors for understanding the need to conserve Southern Ocean resources,” Christian Reiss, an Antarctic […]

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