Cute dogs for your Monday blues! Enjoy!
Monthly Archives: September 2015
Cosplay Pictures for Your Saturday
Celebrating cosplayers an cosplay. Enjoy!
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- Yelaina May cosplay
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- Jessica Nigri – Umbreon and Espeon
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- Tniwe Cosplay
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- Nigel and Eliza from the Wild Thornberries
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- Captain America
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- Guardians of the Galaxy
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- Darth Maul
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- Aurora O’Brien with Alien
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- Scarlet Witch
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- Steampunk
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- Cara Nicole as Black Widow
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- Daenyrys
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- Harley Quinn
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- Daredevil and Mary Jane
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- Hawkgirl
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- Lara Croft
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- X-Men
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- Red Sonja
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- Red Skull of Hyrdra
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- Addams Family
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- Seampunk
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- Psylocke
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- Alice in Wonderland
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- DC Comics
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- Drow
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- Gambit
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- Dog from Game of Thrones
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- Black Widow
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- Vamptress LeeAnna Vamp
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- Guardians of the Galaxy
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- Black Cat
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- Amy Wilder
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- Harley Quinn
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- Sith
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- Sara Moni Cosplay as Storm
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- Dwarves from the Hobbit
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- Deadpool faces off against Resident Evil heroine
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- Harley Quinn
Filed under Humor and Observations
Scientist shocked by what he sees moon jellyfish doing
By Elizabeth Armstrong Moore
Published June 16, 2015
Newser
Moon jellyfish are pictured. (AP Photo/Lionel Cironneau, File)
When Caltech biologist Michael Abrams cut two arms off a young jellyfish in 2013, he figured it would do what many marine invertebrates do—grow new ones. But no.
“[Abrams] started yelling… ‘You won’t believe this, you’ve got to come here and see what’s happening,'” his PhD adviser Lea Goentoro tells National Geographic.Reporting this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Abrams says he watched the jellyfish, which relies on being symmetrical to move about, not regenerate the missing arms but rather rearrange its remaining six limbs so that they were symmetrical again.
The phenomenon, dubbed symmetrization, has never before been observed in nature, and Abrams was floored. The jellyfish was using its own muscles to push and pull on its remaining six arms to space them out evenly again.
(They confirmed this by observing that muscle relaxants made the jellies unable to rearrange their arms, while increasing muscular pulses allowed them to rearrange their arms faster.) And the discovery was accidental; Abrams and his team had only been cutting into the common moon jellyfish to practice for their future study on what are called immortal jellyfish, which had yet to arrive in the lab.
They’ve since observed symmetrization in moon jellies many times, and it takes anywhere from 12 hours to four days to complete. (Scientists recently made another staggering observation, this one in Norway.)
This article originally appeared on Newser: Moon Jellyfish Shock Scientists With This Trick
Filed under Animals, Humor and Observations
Cute Dog Pictures for Your Tuesday after a Long Weekend…
You just had three days off hopefully, and now you have a short week. Maybe these cute dogs can cheer you up even more…
Filed under Animals, Humor and Observations
Unusual Wood Stoves, Burners and Fireplaces…
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- Bullerjan Classic
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- OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
Filed under Humor and Observations
Labor Day – According to the US Department of Labor
LABOR DAY: WHAT IT MEANS
Labor Day, the first Monday in September, is a creation of the labor movement and is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers. It constitutes a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country.
LABOR DAY LEGISLATION
Through the years the nation gave increasing emphasis to Labor Day. The first governmental recognition came through municipal ordinances passed during 1885 and 1886. From these, a movement developed to secure state legislation. The first state bill was introduced into the New York legislature, but the first to become law was passed by Oregon on February 21, 1887. During the year four more states — Colorado, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York — created the Labor Day holiday by legislative enactment. By the end of the decade Connecticut, Nebraska, and Pennsylvania had followed suit. By 1894, 23 other states had adopted the holiday in honor of workers, and on June 28 of that year, Congress passed an act making the first Monday in September of each year a legal holiday in the District of Columbia and the territories.
FOUNDER OF LABOR DAY
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More than 100 years after the first Labor Day observance, there is still some doubt as to who first proposed the holiday for workers.
Some records show that Peter J. McGuire, general secretary of the Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners and a cofounder of the American Federation of Labor, was first in suggesting a day to honor those “who from rude nature have delved and carved all the grandeur we behold.”
But Peter McGuire’s place in Labor Day history has not gone unchallenged. Many believe that Matthew Maguire, a machinist, not Peter McGuire, founded the holiday. Recent research seems to support the contention that Matthew Maguire, later the secretary of Local 344 of the International Association of Machinists in Paterson, N.J., proposed the holiday in 1882 while serving as secretary of the Central Labor Union in New York. What is clear is that the Central Labor Union adopted a Labor Day proposal and appointed a committee to plan a demonstration and picnic.
Who do you think is the real Father of Labor Day?
THE FIRST LABOR DAY
The first Labor Day holiday was celebrated on Tuesday, September 5, 1882, in New York City, in accordance with the plans of the Central Labor Union. The Central Labor Union held its second Labor Day holiday just a year later, on September 5, 1883.
In 1884 the first Monday in September was selected as the holiday, as originally proposed, and the Central Labor Union urged similar organizations in other cities to follow the example of New York and celebrate a “workingmen’s holiday” on that date. The idea spread with the growth of labor organizations, and in 1885 Labor Day was celebrated in many industrial centers of the country.
A NATIONWIDE HOLIDAY
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The form that the observance and celebration of Labor Day should take was outlined in the first proposal of the holiday — a street parade to exhibit to the public “the strength and esprit de corps of the trade and labor organizations” of the community, followed by a festival for the recreation and amusement of the workers and their families. This became the pattern for the celebrations of Labor Day. Speeches by prominent men and women were introduced later, as more emphasis was placed upon the economic and civic significance of the holiday. Still later, by a resolution of the American Federation of Labor convention of 1909, the Sunday preceding Labor Day was adopted as Labor Sunday and dedicated to the spiritual and educational aspects of the labor movement.
The character of the Labor Day celebration has undergone a change in recent years, especially in large industrial centers where mass displays and huge parades have proved a problem. This change, however, is more a shift in emphasis and medium of expression. Labor Day addresses by leading union officials, industrialists, educators, clerics and government officials are given wide coverage in newspapers, radio, and television.
The vital force of labor added materially to the highest standard of living and the greatest production the world has ever known and has brought us closer to the realization of our traditional ideals of economic and political democracy. It is appropriate, therefore, that the nation pay tribute on Labor Day to the creator of so much of the nation’s strength, freedom, and leadership — the American worker.
Check out these related stories
Filed under Humor and Observations
Cosplay Pictures for the Labor Day Weekend
Cosplayers and cosplay for your enjoyment!
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- Judge Dredd
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- Sara Moni Cosplay
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- Bumblebee gets married
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- Jessica Nigri
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- Gotham Bad girls
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- Old and new Green Arrows
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- Cobra Commander
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- Cara Nicole as Little Red Riding Hood
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- Nicole Marie Jean
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- Harley Quinn
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- Aurora O’Brien as Black Canary
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- The Huntress
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- Miss Marvel
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- Wonder Woman
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- Ariel
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- Guardians of the Galaxy
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- Winter soldier
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- Original Batgirl
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- The Huntress
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- Toni Darling
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- “CoralFy Cosplay”
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- Alice in Wonderland
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- Jessica Nigri
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- Mad Hatter
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- Tons of cosplay
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- Black Widow
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- Squirrel Girl
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- Game of Thrones
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- Ivy Doomkitty as Black Cat
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- Raychul Moore as Slave Leia
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- Romans
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- Slave Leia
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- Gotham Villains
Filed under Uncategorized
Straw Dinosaurs Appear in Japanese Fields, Try To Eat Humans
It’s September. In Japan that means rice is being harvested across the country. It also means straw art.
After the grains are harvested, rice straw (“wara” in Japanese) is left behind. In Niigata Prefecture, however, locals have been turning that rice straw into art with a yearly Wara Art Festival.
Bringing these giant beasts, not all of which are dinosaurs, to life is not easy!
[Photo: tan_makoto]
[Photo: Ruki40788274]
[Photo: Ruki40788274]
While not a dinosaur, this does appear to be a giant enemy crab.
Twitter user agedashi0210 captures the wonderful detail that goes into each sculpture.
[Photo: agedashi0210]
[Photo: agedashi0210]
[Photo:agedashi0210 ]
Back in 2013, Kotaku first introduced these festivities, and this year’s straw sculptures are as impressive as ever. Maybe even more so!
[Photo: satoshi700203]
[Photo: amymauscd]
[Photo: yuko_vitzksp90]
[Photo: amymauscd]
[Photo: kiyukatawani]
Top image: amymauscd
To contact the author of this post, write to bashcraftATkotaku.com or find him on Twitter@Brian_Ashcraft.
Kotaku East is your slice of Asian internet culture, bringing you the latest talking points from Japan, Korea, China and beyond. Tune in every morning from 4am to 8am.
Filed under Humor and Observations
World’s thinnest light bulb created from graphene
By Jesse Emspak
Published June 16, 2015
When a current was run through strips of graphene that were placed across a trench of silicon, the result was light emission. (Young Duck Kim/Columbia Engineering)
Graphene, a form of carbon famous for being stronger than steel and more conductive than copper, can add another wonder to the list: making light.
Researchers have developed a light-emitting graphene transistor that works in the same way as the filament in a light bulb.
“We’ve created what is essentially the world’s thinnest light bulb,” study co-author James Hone, a mechanical engineer at Columbia University in New York, said in a statement.
Scientists have long wanted to create a teensy “light bulb” to place on a chip, enabling what is called photonic circuits, which run on light rather than electric current. The problem has been one of size and temperature — incandescent filaments must get extremely hot before they can produce visible light. This new graphene device, however, is so efficient and tiny, the resulting technology could offer new ways to make displays or study high-temperature phenomena at small scales, the researchers said.
Making light
When electric current is passed through an incandescent light bulb’s filament — usually made of tungsten — the filament heats up and glows. Electrons moving through the material knock against electrons in the filament’s atoms, giving them energy. Those electrons return to their former energy levels and emit photons (light) in the process. Crank up the current and voltage enough and the filament in the light bulb hits temperatures of about 5,400 degrees Fahrenheit for an incandescent. This is one reason light bulbs either have no air in them or are filled with an inert gas like argon: At those temperatures tungsten would react with the oxygen in air and simply burn.
In the new study, the scientists used strips of graphene a few microns across and from 6.5 to 14 microns in length, each spanning a trench of silicon like a bridge. (A micron is one-millionth of a meter, where a hair is about 90 microns thick.) An electrode was attached to the ends of each graphene strip. Just like tungsten, run a current through graphene and the material will light up. But there is an added twist, as graphene conducts heat less efficiently as temperature increases, which means the heat stays in a spot in the center, rather than being relatively evenly distributed as in a tungsten filament.
Myung-Ho Bae, one of the study’s authors, told Live Science trapping the heat in one region makes the lighting more efficient. “The temperature of hot electrons at the center of the graphene is about 3,000 K [4,940 F], while the graphene lattice temperature is still about 2,000 K [3,140 F],” he said. “It results in a hotspot at the center and the light emission region is focused at the center of the graphene, which also makes for better efficiency.” It’s also the reason the electrodes at either end of the graphene don’t melt.
As for why this is the first time light has been made from graphene, study co-leader Yun Daniel Park, a professor of physics at Seoul National University, noted that graphene is usually embedded in or in contact with a substrate.
“Physically suspending graphene essentially eliminates pathways in which heat can escape,” Park said. “If the graphene is on a substrate, much of the heat will be dissipated to the substrate. Before us, other groups had only reported inefficient radiation emission in the infrared from graphene.”
The light emitted from the graphene also reflected off the silicon that each piece was suspended in front of. The reflected light interferes with the emitted light, producing a pattern of emission with peaks at different wavelengths. That opened up another possibility: tuning the light by varying the distance to the silicon.
The principle of the graphene is simple, Park said, but it took a long time to discover.
“It took us nearly five years to figure out the exact mechanism but everything (all the physics) fit. And, the project has turned out to be some kind of a Columbus’ Egg,” he said, referring to a legend in which Christopher Columbus challenged a group of men to make an egg stand on its end; they all failed and Columbus solved the problem by just cracking the shell at one end so that it had a flat bottom.
The research is detailed in the June 15 issue of Nature Nantechnology.
Filed under Humor and Observations
Star Wars Samurai Figures Coming to A Galaxy Near You
Star Wars Samurai Figures Coming to A Galaxy Near You
I’m just going to let the pictures do the talking for this one….
Lord Vader and the Classic Stormtrooper have been on sale for some time in Japan, the new Boba Fett, Sandtrooper and Imperial Guard will all go on sale over the next few months in to 2016. They are a part of Tamashii Nations’ Meisho (great commander) Movie Realization toy line. The Sandtrooper Stormtrooper went on pre-sale on August 25(Japan time). Each figure stands 170 millimeters tall (about 6.7 inches) and will cost 8,856 yen (US $74.25). Clearly these are aimed at the adult collector and not the kid looking to break them out and toss them all over the backyard. Not sure the price would stop me from taking these out and playing with them though!!
More pictures of these beautiful detailed figures can be seen at the official website:
Filed under Humor and Observations
Michael Bradley - Time Traveler 