Life

Sundance to ‘engage and provoke’ with focus on climate

by Frankie TAGGART Agence France-Presse The Sundance Film Festival opens in Utah Thursday, promising to set the agenda for independent cinema and starting the 2018 Oscars buzz a month before this year’s statuettes are awarded. The annual gathering, founded in 1985 by iconic screen outlaw Robert Redford, turns the lens on 118 independent features, as Hollywood descends on the ski resort of Park City for the 33rd edition. “From the passion and chaos of creativity, […]

Eye massager, smart brush, sleep lamp: Health, wellness tech galore at 2017 CES

https://youtu.be/ZVVssVSAq5w   By Anna Cui Las Vegas EBC Correspondent   Las Vegas, USA (Eagle News) — An eye massager, a “smart” brush that tells you if you’re brushing your hair the right way, a scanner that checks nutritional content of food, and “sleep lamps” that can lure you to sleep or wakefulness depending on the time of day. These are just some of the health and wellness products that the Eagle Broadcasting Corporation’s Las Vegas […]

Lady Liberty shown as black woman on U.S. coin for first time

(Reuters) — The United States Mint has unveiled a $100 gold coin featuring an African-American woman as the face of Lady Liberty for the first time in the history of U.S. currency. The 24-karat gold coin, which marks the Mint’s 225th anniversary, was debuted on Thursday (January 12) in the Department of the Treasury’s Cash Room in Washington, D.C. It is the first in a series of gold coins featuring Lady Liberty, which has been […]

New species of seadragon captured on film

Reuters — The ruby seadragon, a new species of animal, has been captured alive on film for the first time by researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California San Diego. The footage, which was captured off the coast of Western Australia in April 2016, was released as part of a study published on Friday (January 13). “I discovered a third species of seadragon and a new species that we had no idea existed […]

‘Peace’ signs risk fingerprint theft, says Japanese study

  (Reuters) — Two-fingered ‘peace’ signs – or V-signs – taken by high-resolution digital cameras from as far away as three metres (9 feet) may lead to fingerprint theft, Japanese researchers warn. Millions of photographs are uploaded onto social networking sites daily, many of which involve people making the ubiquitous sign. Isao Echizen, a professor at Japan’s National Institute of Informatics (NIII), says advanced technology is not necessary for fraudsters to copy fingerprints. “If a […]

Australia disappointed by Japan’s continued whale hunt in Southern Ocean

Reuters — Australia said on Monday (16 January) it was “deeply disappointed” Japan had continued whaling in the Southern Ocean after anti-whaling activists published images of a dead whale, two days after Australian and Japanese leaders discussed the issue. Australia has long opposed Japanese whaling and the contentious issue was raised in talks between Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Sydney on Saturday (January 14), said sources familiar with the […]

Waste chicken feathers could help insulate homes

Each year Britain processes more than 945 million white-feathered broiler chickens, the type found in our supermarkets and used by fast-food chains. That’s a lot of leftover feathers. Two PhD students from Imperial College London are working on a method to turn this chicken feather waste into a useful product. Elena Dieckmann from the Dyson School of Design Engineering, alongside Ryan Robinson from the National Heart and Lung Institute, founded start-up Aeropowder in early 2016. […]

Dutch students STORM around world on self-made electric motorbike

(Reuters) — Undergraduates from Eindhoven University of Technology have successfully undertaken an 80-day round-the-world motorcycle journey on an electric motorbike they built from scratch. The team of 23 students, from various academic disciplines, launched the project, entitled STORM Eindhoven, two years ago with the aim of raising the profile of electric powered vehicles. “The 80 days around the world challenge meant that we had to travel 500 or 600 kilometers a day, even longer sometimes. […]

Weekend exercise may be as good as daily workouts: study

by Kerry SHERIDAN Agence France-Presse MIAMI, United States (AFP) — People who exercise mainly on the weekends may reap significant health and survival benefits, on par with people who work out more regularly, researchers said Monday. Currently, experts recommend 150 minutes of moderate physical activity per week, or 75 minutes of vigorous exercise. But no consensus has been reached on just how often a person needs to exercise, and whether activities should be done daily or […]

Eight men own half the world’s wealth: Oxfam

  LONDON, United Kingdom (AFP) — Eight men own the same wealth as half the world’s population, a level of inequality which “threatens to pull our societies apart”, Oxfam said on Monday ahead of the World Economic Forum opening in Davos. The wealth of the world’s poorest 3.6 billion people is the equivalent to the combined net worth of six American businessmen, one from Spain and another from Mexico. Picked from Forbes’ billionaires list, they […]

Lady Liberty shown as black woman on U.S. coin for first time

  (Reuters) — The United States Mint has unveiled a $100 gold coin featuring an African-American woman as the face of Lady Liberty for the first time in the history of U.S. currency. The 24-karat gold coin, which marks the Mint’s 225th anniversary, was debuted on Thursday (January 12) in the Department of the Treasury’s Cash Room in Washington, D.C. It is the first in a series of gold coins featuring Lady Liberty, which has […]

U.S. eggs arrive in bird flu-hit South Korea

  (Reuters) — Imported eggs from the United States arrived at Incheon International Airport on Saturday (January 14) to ease South Korea’s egg shortage caused by its worst-ever bird flu epidemic. Handout footage from the South Korean agriculture ministry showed workers unloading 100 tonnes of fresh eggs from the United States out of a Korean Air cargo plane. Later in the day, South Korea’s other major airline Asiana Airline is also scheduled to deliver 100 […]