They say we’re all made of stardust…….
Posted to EarthSky Facebook by Fotograf Göran Strand. Visit Göran on Facebook
Swedish astrophotographer Göran Strand calls this photo Children of the Sun.
You can buy Göran’s photos as prints in his webshop.
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Source….www.earthsky.org
Natarajan
Malav Sanghavi, an Indian student studying in London has developed the prototype of a low cost baby incubator that has the potential to save many lives across the world.
A graduate from the National Institute of Design (NID), Ahmedabad, he participated in a start-up competition held at St James’ Palace in London and won the 3rd prize for his innovation.
The incubator can be used in developing countries like India which lack adequate grassroots-level infrastructure for neonatal care of premature and underweight infants. It provides basic functions necessary for child’s survival in their first days of life.
Malav showed his BabyLifebox invention to the Duke of York during the Pitch@Palace Bootcamp –
According to reports, more than 300,000 babies die within 24 hours of their birth every year in India. And the cause of these deaths are preventable like complications during birth, prematurity and infections. More than half of all Indian women give birth without the help of skilled health care professionals, thereby leading to complications.
Malav came up with this idea a few years ago after his cousin’s daughter had to be kept alive in an incubator. While she had all the facilities available in a modern Indian city, Malav thought about all those infants who fail to get immediate care in remote villages of India. As of now, he is looking for initial seed funding to expand his team and bring more experts on board, develop minimal viable prototypes and start clinical trials.
He put his idea out at the Pitch@Palace event hosted by Queen Elizabeth II’s younger son, Prince Andrew – the Duke of York. Pitch@Palace supports UK entrepreneurs by connecting them with potential investors. There were about 200 entries this year at the fourth Pitch@Palace event. The theme was Internet of Things and Smart Cities. All start-ups, whose products are aimed at creating a smarter world and empowering people, could participate.
“According to our initial research, we found that India’s healthcare service has facilities to deal with a standard birth at sub-centres, primary health centres and community health centres but it lacks infrastructure for neonatal care of premature and underweight infants,” Malav told PTI.
Source…Tanaya Singh…www.the betterindia.com
Natarajan
One young lady from Jaipur came up with an interesting idea – to create a paper that could be planted. Skeptical about her own idea, Kritika didn’t know that it would one day become a successful project. She started a company called Tomato & Co. that designs a paper which can grow into beautiful saplings.
Kritika Parwal, a young lady from Jaipur, was in the middle of a course at Kellogg when, for a particular branding assignment for a coffee chain, the students were required to come up with ‘out of the box’ ideas.
For this idea, Kritika says, “I received a lot of appreciation in my class. But, though I had done enough research on the subject before I announced the idea, I was sceptical about how it would actually turn out once I put it in practice.”
On coming back to India, Kritika happened to meet the Brand Manager of a multi-national FMCG company, and she spoke to him about her idea of making plantable paper. On an impulse, he asked her to implement it for his brand. This time, the still sceptical Kritika made a trip to Sanganer, a suburb of Jaipur, which is the home of the handmade paper industry.
She worked hard on her theoretical idea and, over a period of fifteen days, experimented with different organic materials, pigments and seeds.
‘Seed paper,’ which is another name for the handmade paper made by Tomato & Co, is made through a rather tedious and complicated process. The basic ingredients are organic cotton shreds, few naturally existing bio-binders, resins, and of course seeds.
“A homogeneous pulp of cotton shreds, seeds, binders, and resins of required consistency is made and is flattened out on screens of a specific thickness using muslin membranes. After the paper is semi-dried, it is taken through a few processes to preserve the germination of the seeds used. The sheets are then air dried and shaped into the required products,” explains Kritika.
It has been over a year since Tomato & Co came into being and the company has made successful attempts in using the seeds of tomato, lavender, chillies, carrot, jasmine, basil, lemon mint, lettuce, marigold, sunflower, wheat, parsley, and orange to make plantable paper.
Some of the brands that they have worked with are Unilever, Kissan, Tedx, and Mindshare. For their customers they have created product tags and little cards that carry the name of the brand.
They have also created calendars, postcards, greeting cards, wedding invites, and visiting cards. Bookmarks, door hangers, coffee cup sleeves, wristbands, seed coins, and coasters are some of the other interesting products that have made it to their list.
Kritika has been using different seeds in these papers for over a year now. Raghav Sharma is one such person who has first hand experience of planting the paper and seeing it germinate. In his words, “When I first heard about Tomato & Co, I could not believe that such paper could exist. Being a resident of Jaipur, it was not hard for me to visit Kritika and learn more from her. I picked up the paper from her and once home, I followed the instructions given by her. I planted the paper in a flowering pot and would water it every day. Finally, after around 11 or 12 weeks, little sprouts were seen shooting out of the mud…..well, the seeds did germinate in my very own back yard!” –
Until now, the company has been working only with corporates and individual customers, customising the products of ‘seed paper’ for their specific requirements. According to Kritika, “The concept of a plantable paper echoes very beautifully with the common people and almost every day, someone or the other asks us when we will get into the retail market. We are presently working on a few retail products that will soon be in the market.”
Hopefully it won’t be too long before we can all buy greeting cards, postcards, coasters, diaries, pads and folders made of this unique paper and then plant them to see the seeds germinate in our very homes.
To know more about Tomato & Co. or order from them, visit their website.
Source…..Aparna Menon….www.thebetterindia.com
Natarajan
To a superficial observer, life appears to revolve around eating and drinking, working, and sleeping. But verily life has a much deeper significance. Life is a sacrifice (yajna). Every little act is an offering to the Lord. If your days are spent in deeds performed in this spirit of surrender, your sleep would be a total immersion in the Divine Consciousness(Samadhi)! Most people commit the great fault of identifying themselves with the body and accumulate a variety of things for its upkeep and comfort. When the body becomes weak and decrepit with age, they still attempt to bolster it by one means or the other. How long can death be postponed? When Yama’s (Lord of Death’s) warrant comes, everyone must depart. Position, pride, and power – all vanish before death. Remember, you are not this body! It is your vehicle to serve all. Realising this, strive day and night, with purity in body, mind and spirit, to realise the Higher Self.
There are very few things you can do with all that candy you got on Halloween but don’t actually like. You know, those subpar candy necklaces and 3 Musketeers…I mean, we’re all in for the Twix and Reese’s, am I right? Sure, you can videotape yourself telling your kids you ate all their candy, or you can just power through and eat it, but typically you wouldn’t think to make a whimsical dreamland out of it…that is, unless you’re this guy.
It doesn’t look like much from here…but a quick zoom-in reveals:
Honestly, I would have just eaten it, but this is way cooler — and involves less of a sugar high.
If you’d like to see more of the photographer’s work, head over to his Flickr page!
Source…..Amanda Black in http://www.viralnova.com
Natarajan
The Elephant Foot Glacier in northeastern Greenland, looks like a bowl of batter that has been poured over a pan. The sheer pressure of the zillion-ton ice has broken through the mountain and spilled into the sea in a near symmetric, fan-shaped lobe. Such glaciers are known as piedmont glaciers, and the Elephant Foot Glacier is a perfect example of it. Its shape is so distinct that it stands out dramatically from its surroundings when viewed from high above.
Glaciers are one of the most extraordinary of the earth’s natural phenomena. These rivers of frozen snow accumulated over centuries of precipitation are so densely packed that it exceeds its overall ablation. They are in a constant state of flux, flowing down in the direction of the slope towards a valley or a water body. You can’t really tell if it’s moving but come back in a few decades and you will be able to see thedramatic change in the landscape.
The Elephant Foot Glacier is located on the Kronprins Christian Land peninsula. It is not connected to Greenland’s main ice sheet. Rather, it’s part of a network of glaciers and ice caps that hangs around the periphery of the island. Research has shown that as a whole, these outlying glaciers and ice caps account for 5 to 7 percent of Greenland’s total ice coverage, but they are responsible for 20 percent of its contribution to sea level rise.
Another example of piedmont glaciers is the Malaspina Glacier in southeastern Alaska. 65-km long and 45-km wide, it is the largest piedmont glacier in the world. The glacier arises where several valley glaciers, primarily the Seward Glacier and Agassiz Glacier, spill out from the Saint Elias Mountains onto the coastal plain facing the Gulf of Alaska.
Photo credit: Thobu/Panoramio
Photo credit: eggertsae/Panoramio
Photo credit: phys.org
Malaspina Glacier. Photo credit: Bob Mattson/Panoramio
Source….www.amusingplanet.com
Natarajan
| If you’ve got an iPhone, here’s a handy app you’ll most definitely want to install, one that could potentially save your life. This health app, contains an important feature called Medical ID. You’re probably already familiar with the ‘In Case of Emergency’ (ICE) practice, which collects important contact information on your phone so that it may be used to contact family in the event of an emergency – well, Apple’s Medical ID is basically an enhanced version of ICE. This feature provides both emergency contact information, and also informs first responders and medical personnel of important health information, such as your medications, medical conditions, blood type and allergies. | |||||||
| Setting Up | |||||||
Here’s how to set up Medical ID on your iPhone:
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We often downplay just how drastically the weather can affect our state of mind, but some studies suggest that our moods change with the seasons. This could explain why it’s just as hard to imagine being lethargic and irritable on a warm, sunny day as it is to imagine being upbeat and productive when the sky opens up with heavy rain and thunder.
Just ask the people of Seoul, South Korea. Right now, they’re facing the worst part of the year: monsoon season. Needless to say, they know a thing or two about letting the weather get them down. That’s whyPantone — a leading color technology and design firm — decided to team up with creators from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago to turn the bustling city’s damp, dreary streets into exuberant works of art.
School of the Art Institute of Chicago
After all, it’d be hard not to smile while swimming with beautiful sea creatures on the way to work and school.
School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Each piece is created with hydrochromatic pigments. They’re applied like regular paints, but they become invisible once they dry. The only thing that can bring them back to life is water.
(via My Modern Met)
It’s tempting to let rain put a literal damper on your day, but it’s important to find beauty at every turn. That being said, it’s probably much easier to do that when talented creators cover your city’s streets with stunning images of whales, fish, and sea turtles. We wish the people of Seoul luck as they endure the final stages of monsoon season, and we hope that this awesome art is helping them get by!
Source….www.viralnova.com
Natarajan
One of the most prestigious prizes in architecture has just been awarded to a housing complex in Singapore.
The judges at the World Architecture Festival 2015, which ran from November 4 – 6, has bestowed its top honours, the “World Building of the Year” award, upon an apartment complex known as The Interlace. Designed by the Dutch-based Office for Metropolitan Architecture, the building was an entry in the housing category, where it was also recognised as the top entry.
The development is located on an elevated site covering eight hectares. It makes the most of being located in the lush green Southern Ridges of Singapore, with its 31 stacked apartment blocks each measuring six stories high and ensuring beautiful views in every direction.
This also creates eight huge, open courtyards with rooftop sky gardens and terraces for both public and private use. The development’s apartment facings were carefully designed to ensure privacy.
But this unique design doesn’t sacrifice living space. The complex contains 1,040 apartment units of varying sizes spread across more than 1.8 million square feet — all with an incredible amount of outdoor space and landscaping.
Source…. Dennis Green …www.businessinsider.com.au
Natarajan
Despite being located in an earthquake-prone region, residents of Uttarkashi do not hesitate in constructing multi-storey houses. These elaborate buildings in Rajgarhi area of Uttarkashi district of Uttarakhand are perfect examples of splendid architecture as well as earthquake-resistant engineering.
Even the extremely disastrous earthquakes, in recent times the 1991 and the 1999 ones that killed thousands of people and caused immense damage to property including many concrete structures in the state, could not move these buildings. One such building in Guna has been standing tall for more than 728 years now.
Koti Banal style came into existence about 900 years ago and is hailed as one of the finest specimens of architecture as well as of earthquake-resistant design. The houses are built using locally available materials like stone-filled solid platforms and there is an extensive use of wood, which offer special advantages over other materials during earthquakes.
The height of these houses is usually 7 to 12 metres above the base. The traditional houses usually have five storeys. Some of the key features of these houses include a simple layout of the structure; construction on an elaborate, solid and raised platform; incorporation of wooden beams all through the height of the building at regular intervals; small openings and shear walls.
Extensive use of locally available wood was made in these homes since wood is an elasto-plastic material with the ability to absorb the brunt of an earthquake.
People have also started destroying these structures in order to use the building material for the construction of new and modern houses. Lack of awareness is further causing the slow death of these traditional houses which represent a strong cultural heritage.
Photos and inputs from : Dr. Piyoosh Rautela and Girish Chandra Joshi. Check out their full report on these extra ordinary structures.
Featured image: www.worldfpa.org]
source….Shreya Pareek
http://www.the betterindia.com
Natarajan
Take off with Natarajan 