THIS IMPRESSIVE TOWER CREATES WATER FROM THE AIR!

There are a flurry of amazing inventions coming into the fold lately, hoverbikes being among one of them.. but today I want to tell you about this really cool device that is making an impact in Ethiopia, and hopefully will soon make its way overseas to North America and the rest of the world.

The device is called Warka Water – and it has the capacity to generate up to 25 Gallons of water PER DAY simply by sitting in the hot heat of the desert. Now THAT is impressive, especially considering the whole scare of an impending drought that is currently upon us.

The magic of Warka Water however is not just that it generates the water, but HOW it generates the water. This device ultimately harnesses a singularity to pull water from the air through condensation, creating clean and drinkable water for those all around.

I’m not even kidding. It uses a singularity. In order to describe this, let me show you a quick video about what i’m talking about.

kinds of things, such as levitation or even teleportation – but in the mean-time, this is a perfect example of what i’m talking about.

Essentially, the warka-water device creates a means for the water-vapor in the air to move through a transition point (a singularity) and change density. The vapor does a 90 degree turn and becomes more dense, solidifying itself into a more physically tangible drop of water.

This happens around the device at a constant rate, so hundreds of thousands of drops of water are transmuted from the air and are then pulled down by gravity and collected in a basin at the bottom, ready for consumption or use in whatever way you desire.

The singularity is essentially created at the point of transition between vapor and water – where when all of the ingredients are just right, water simply manifests as if by magic. Of course, with the scientific data we know exactly where its coming from, but that’s just part of the magic! The fact that we can materialize water from the ether is one of the first steps of creating using the universe around us.

It is an example and a simple representation of what we will be able to do in the future by generating energy from the ether as well.

WATCH: 3D printing lets disabled dog run for the first time

WATCH: 3D printing lets disabled dog run for the first time

Watch this dog run for the first time on custom-made 3D-printed prosthetic legs. Those little T. rex legs are no longer useless!

Derby the husky cross wasn’t born like other dogs. A congenital deformity caused him to be born with no front paws, and small, twisted forelegs. They basically look like T. rex arms, and unfortunately for Derby, were just as useless. 

But, as fate would have it, Derby happened to be adopted by Tara Anderson, who works for a 3D printing company called 3D Systems, and teamed up with animal orthotist, Derrick Campana. Orthotists work with both people and animals who have lost their limbs, or were born with deformities that make movement difficult.

We're using a variety of 3D technologies, and that allows us to get in there and really modify the organic digital models quickly and easily, and start to do the sort of designs that Derrick wants us to do," one of the team, Kevin Atkins from 3D systemssays in the video above.

The team scanned Derby’s front legs and built custom prosthestic ‘arms’ for him within hours, each from a single mould. The prosthetics - which look sort of like half-wheels - incorporate rubber treads to soften the impact when Derby is running, rigid spokes, and straps that hold them in place on his body.

Believe it or not, Derby is able to run almost 5 km a day using his prosthetic legs. “This is what 3D printing is about,” Anderson told Jeff Parsons at The Mirror. “To be able to help anybody; a dog, person, whoever, to have a better life, there is no better thing to be involved in.”

THE 9 INSIGHTS OF A BETTER LIFE

THE 9 INSIGHTS OF A BETTER LIFE

Feeling Restless? You are not alone.Everyone is starting to look for more meaning in life. Start paying attention to those seemingly “chance coincidences”, those strange occurrences that feel like they were meant to happen.  These are actually synchronistic events, and following them will lead you on your path to spiritual truth.

2. Observe culture within it’s proper historical context. A large part of the past millennium was spent under the rule of the church, and a lot of information has been skewed, changed, or forgotten. Part of the reason why they want the world to be only 6,000 years old is because the written text from before 6,000 years makes their stories seem ridiculous. Looking at all of our reference material for our planets history and the stories of mankind (such as this one) may guide us to knowing our ultimate purpose.3. Connect with the energy of everything all around you. All matter has an equal balance of energy on the other side of the singularity. This is all the way from aura’s to emotions to thoughts. We can learn to see aura’s around any living thing, and we can lend our own energy to give strength to others.

4. Underneath all conflicts lies a competition for energy. By dominating and manipulating others, we get the extra energy that we think we need, which fuels a push-pull vibrational battle which is un-winnable at its core. Both parties are damaged in their core, and are further removed from each other. This insight is all about recognizing that conflict, in order to shift it.

5. The key to overcoming conflict in the world is the experience of tuning in on an energetic level. This means connecting mentally and emotionally with those that you’re conflicting with, and tune in to love in order to create a balance of energy between the two of you.

6. From the moment we are born we are programmed into the ways of the world, and those programs (which include childhood traumas) often dictate our ability to connect on that energetic level. There are 4 basic “Control Drama’s” that we show.

• Intimidators steal energy from others by threat.
• Interrogators steal it by judging and questioning.
• Aloof people attract attention (and energy) to themselves by playing coy.
• Poor me’s make us feel guilty and responsible for them.

Practice becoming aware of the dynamics of your family and friends growing up that created the variety of control drama’s that you have.

7. Overcoming your drama’s happen through the active presence of awareness.By shifting your awareness into the moment, your breath, and the stories of your dramas, you can rewrite these programs and ride a wave of synchronicities, dreams, and intuitions.

8. That evolution can’t be done alone. Learn and practice to create direct currents of energy between people, and tune in on what they are feeling and projecting. Often, you might even find that you are both feeling love, and both feeling afraid to show it. By making eye contact, you can tune in on a level much deeper than anything you’ve experienced before.

9. Our purpose is to evolve beyond this plane. We will continue to evolve mentally and spiritually to get to a place where we our technology can do most of the work for us, and we will be so connected with each other that all of us can operate as tuned in as cells are to each other in a human body. We then in essence become the Creator’s that we truly are, everyone can be, do, and have everything that they want, and together we can create an incredible world for all of us. A world that is inter-dimensional, whole, and complete.

New mind-controlled robot arm grabs and moves objects

New mind-controlled robot arm grabs and moves objects

 paralysed woman use a robot arm to pick up and move objects 

around with unprecedented precision, using just the power of her mind.

Biomedical engineers in the US have developed a new robotic arm, and its actions can be controlled using thoughts alone.

Working with Jan Scheuermann, a woman who has been paralysed from the neck down since 2003, a team at the University of Pittsburgh implanted two tiny electrode grids in Scheuermann’s brain that are connected to a computer program. This program has been designed to translate Scheuermann’s thoughts into artificial arm movements. 

The team, led by researcher Jennifer Collinger, placed the grids in the left motor cortex region of  Scheuermann’s brain, which is responsible for the movement of her right arm and hand. When she thinks about making certain movements with her own paralysed limb, this brain activity is registered on 96 contact points on the grids and fed into the computer program. 

The program then uses algorithms to convert this brain activity into specific electrical pattens that control the robotic arm. You can see it in action in the video above byNew Scientist, as it performs complex hand movements to grip a range of differently shaped objects and move them across a table. 

"Our project has shown that we can interpret signals from neurons with a simple computer algorithm to generate sophisticated, fluid movements that allow the user to interact with the environment," Collinger told Jim Algar at Tech Times. 

The results have been published in the Journal of Neural Engineering.

"The latest version of the algorithm can detect four patterns of activity related to the shape of the hand, adding a scooping shape, thumb extension and a pinching action to the repertoire of possible movements,” says Helen Thomson at New Scientist. "The improvements allow Scheuermann to control the artificial limb with 10 degrees of freedom simultaneously.”

The plan now is to improve the system and give the robot hand more flexibility, allowing it to perform gestures on command, and more dextrous movements with all kinds of different objects. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4O5Mx8-LRQ#action=share

This is just one of a bunch of new technologies that came out this year that point to a brighter future for people affected by missing or paralysed limbs. Earlier this month, an international team of researchers announced the development of a new flexible prosthetic skin for use on robotic arms that can sense temperature, pressure and moisture, and in October, a man in Sweden became the first person to be fitted with a mind-controlled prosthetic arm. We can't wait to see what else the future holds for this technology.

THE SECRET TO HAVING CONFIDENCE

Body language can dramatically change how we feel and how we interact with others. Scientific studies show how you can dramatically change your life with some small changes.

“Body language affects how others see us, but it may also change how we see ourselves. Social psychologist Amy Cuddy shows how “power posing” — standing in a posture of confidence, even when we don’t feel confident — can affect testosterone and cortisol levels in the brain, and might even have an impact on our chances for success.”-TED

Body language can have a huge impact our level of success in life.  With something as simple as our posture and openness we can completely change how we feel and how we interact with people around us.

Here's when you should be drinking your coffee, according to science

Image: Shaiith / Shutterstock.com

Here's when you should be drinking your coffee, according to science

If you're not timing your coffee breaks with your cortisol dips, you're doing it wrong.

It probably doesn’t surprise you when I say that caffeine is the most widely consumed psycho-active substance on the planet. One of the most popular vehicles for caffeine consumption - coffee - is so popular, worldwide production is now over 7 million metric tonnes. If averaged out, that equates to 1.3 kg of coffee per person per year. So it’s safe to say we like the stuff. 

Why? It’s not just because it tastes good and suppresses our appetites. It’s also because at a time when, as a society, we have way more things to get done than we have hours in the day, it wakes us up and keeps us going. 

But not all coffee breaks are created equal. Research into the dips and peaks of hormone production in our bodies suggests that we need to be strategic about when we consume caffeine, in order to maximise that buzz and keep productive.

caffeine is a drug, and b) drugs have an affect on our internal chemistry. Which means to use a drug strategically, you need to know the rhythms of your body chemistry and sync your consumption up with that. There’s an entire scientific discipline that examines how drugs interact with our biological rhythms, he says, called chronopharmacology

One of the most important biological rhythms for a good deal of species on the planet is our internal circadian clock. It’s controlled by a tiny region in the brain’s hypothalamus called the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN), and serves a number of different functions. "The SCN controls your sleep-wake cycle, feeding and energy consumption, sugar homeostasis, and in addition to a few other things it controls your hormones. And, with respect to your alertness, the SCN’s control of cortisol (often referred to as the "stress" hormone) production is extremely important,” says Miller.

This means if you’re producing too much cortisol, you’re not doing too good, but having moderate levels of the hormone helps keep you alert. And, says Miller, healthy levels of cortisone naturally peak between the hours of 8 am and 9 am. So that’s a good time to drink caffeine right? That would be super-convenient because that’s what I’ve been doing for the past, I don’t know, decade.

Turns out that consuming caffeine at the same time as your cortisol levels anaturally peaking is pretty much a waste of time. As Miller explains at NeuroscienceDC:

“One of the key principles of pharmacology is [to] use a drug when it is needed (although I’m sure some scientists might argue that caffeine is always needed). Otherwise, we can develop tolerance to a drug administered at the same dose. In other words, the same cup of morning coffee will become less effective and this is probably why I need a shot of espresso in mine now. 

Although your cortisol levels peak between 8 and 9 am, there are a few other times where - on average - blood levels peak again and are between noon to 1 pm, and between 5:30 to 6:30 pm. In the morning then, your coffee will probably be the most effective if you enjoy it between 9:30 am and 11:30 am, when your cortisol levels are dropping before the next spike.”

Scientists have found a way to make graphene magnetic

Image: Eugene Sergeev/Shutterstock

Scientists have found a way to make graphene magnetic

One of the world's strongest, lightest and generally most overachieving supermaterials just got even better.

Graphene has a lot going for it - as you've most likely heard, at just one carbon atom thick, the material is 100 times stronger than steel, light, conductive, super-flexible, and could soon be used to filter fuel straight out of thin air.

But the one property it's never had is magnetism - until now.

Researchers from Spain have now found that by inserting little "islands" of lead, or more precisely lead atoms, into the hexagonal graphene structure, they can make the material highly magnetic.

As the press release explains:

"This produces an enormous interaction between two electron characteristics: their spin - a small 'magnet' linked to their rotation - and their orbit, the movement they follow around the nucleus.”

The spin-orbit interaction in the graphene with added lead is a “million times more intense than that inherent to graphene,” said Rodolfo Miranda, a researcher from IMDEA Nanoscience in Madrid who led the study, in a press release.

To create the material, the team placed lead atoms onto an iridium crystal and then placed a layer of graphene over the top. This caused the lead to form these islands below the graphene. The resulting two-dimensional material, which you can see in the diagram below, acts as if it’s in the presence of a huge 80-tesla magnetic field, and this allows the selective control of the electrons’ spin.

IMDEA Nanoscience/UAM/ICMM-CSIC/UPV-EHU

"And, what is most important, under these conditions certain electronic states are topologically protected; in other words, they are immune to defects, impurities or geometric disturbances," said Miranda in a press release. 

"If we compare it to traffic, in a traditional spintronic material cars circulate along a single-lane road, which make collisions more likely, whilst with this new material we have traffic control with two spatially separate lanes, preventing crashes."

It’s not just another notch under the material's belt, there are some pretty exciting applications of a bulletproof magnetic material - most digital storage relies on magnetism, so graphene could be used to provide a pretty much indestructible material on which to store our data.

The only problem now is that the scientists aren’t able to control the spin of the electrons in the new material as yet. But that’s the next thing the team is working on. If they can achieve it, the potential would be pretty huge.

Source: ScienceDaily, Gizmodo

The UK is successfully crowd-funding themselves to the Moon

Image: Lunar Mission One

The UK is successfully crowd-funding themselves to the Moon

An independent British consortium called Lunar Mission One has successfully raised more than £600,000 (AUD$1.1 million) in just one month as part of a Kickstarter campaign to get a UK space probe to the Moon.

A British project called Lunar Mission One aims to land a robotic probe on the Moon for lunar rock analyses, and the team can now get started thanks to a colossalcrowd-funding effort that netted them more than £600,000.

And it wasn’t just Brits who funded the endeavour - Lunar Mission One is reporting that thousands of people from more than 60 countries dipped into their pockets to help it meet its Kickstarter goal. 

The team, which includes former UN and NASA space flight experts, expects this mission will take 10 years to complete, with the end goal to drill up to 100 metres into the rocky surface of the Moon and take samples of its 4.5 billion-year-old insides - something that's never been done before. The drilling will be done using a 2-metre drill connected to the unmanned spacecraft by a cable, which will prepare a 5-cm in diameter borehole first, before carving out cylindrical rock cores for analysis right there on the Moon. 

Further funding would enable Lunar Mission One to bring home the spacecraft and its samples for further analysis.

The mission also has a public education element to it too, says Katie Collins atWired UK, its secondary aim being to encourage young people to take an interest in STEM subjects, particularly those connected to space.

"Lunar Mission One has deliberately been launched as an independent venture which is not controlled by government agencies," Chair of Lunar Missions Ltd, Ian Taylor, told Wired UK. "This project will be built using public support alongside the skills and expertise of some of the world's leading scientists, engineers and technologists. Having achieved what we have today, we are celebrating the beginning of a 10-year journey of collaboration, innovation and exploration."

The Kickstarter campaign still has just over 10 hours to go, and they’re now well over £600,000. The team says if they make it to £700,000 by the close of the campaign, they’ll be able to fund the entire set-up phase of the mission using public donations. Those who contributed the more significant amounts will be offered the opportunity to watch the launch and landing from a viewing gallery at mission control.

Contributors will also get the chance to upload some digital information to what the company is calling a Digital Memory Box, which will be included in a time capsule that they plan to plug the drill-hole up with. Suggestions for what to upload include a personal message, a photo, a family tree, a poem, a video, or a favourite song. The team is calling this the first publicly assembled record of life on Earth.

 At a time when governments, particularly in Australia, are continually reallocating funds that used to go towards research and science education, it's great to see that big things can still get done without them. British physicist Stephen Hawkings is especially excited, saying:

"Today they have achieved what are the first steps towards a lasting legacy for space exploration. Lunar Mission One is bringing space exploration to the people, and I have no doubt that young people and adults alike will be inspired by the ambition and passion of all those involved in the project. As a truly scientific endeavour, I wish it nothing but success over the coming years.”

Three short walks can reverse the damage of three hours of sitting

Three short walks can reverse the damage of three hours of sitting

Image: Sebastian Kaulitzki/Shutterstock

We all know by now that sitting for long periods of time can be deadly - recent research has linked prolonged sitting to high cholesterol, obesity and cardiovascular problems. This is partly because sitting makes the muscles in our bodies become lazy and stop contracting, causing blood to pool in our legs instead of being pumped back to the heart. This causes instant damage to the endothelial function of the arteries, which means that the inner lining of the blood vessels (the endothelium) begin to fail at dilating and contracting.

But new research by scientists from Indiana University in the US suggests we’re not all doomed. By taking three slow, five-minute walks, we can actually reverse the damage to our arteries caused by three hours of sitting down, the study shows.

The researchers investigated this by dividing up 12 non-obese men into two groups - one that sat at a desk for three hours without  moving their legs or feet (like most of us do each day), and another that sat at the desk for three hours but got up and took slow, five-minute walks on a treadmill three times during the period. This second group only walked at 3.2 kilometres an hour (2 miles per hour) at 30 minutes, 1.5 hours and 2.5 hours into the sitting.

After the three hours, the researchers used ultrasound to see what state the inner lining of the femoral arteries of the test subjects were in - the femoral artery is the large artery in the thigh which supplies blood to the leg. 

The arteries of the first group of men, who sat for three hours straight, had decreased dilation by an astonishing 50% compared to the start of the experiment. Their rate of blood flow had also dropped.

On the other hand, the group who took three short walks during the study didn’t experience any decrease in artery dilation. Although this experiment involved a small sample size, the results were so striking that they were statistically significant. The results are published in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise.

"There is plenty of epidemiological evidence linking sitting time to various chronic diseases and linking breaking sitting time to beneficial cardiovascular effects, but there is very little experimental evidence," said lead author Saurabh Thosar, who is now a researcher with Oregon Health & Science University, in a press release. "We have shown that prolonged sitting impairs endothelial function, which is an early marker of cardiovascular disease, and that breaking sitting time prevents the decline in that function."

While these results will now need to be replicated on a larger scale, the study gives us all hope that by simply setting a reminder to get up and walk for five minutes every hour or so, we might actually be able to reverse some of the damage our modern lifestyle does.

“American adults sit for approximately eight hours a day," said Thosar. "The impairment in endothelial function is significant after just one hour of sitting. It is interesting to see that light physical activity can help in preventing this impairment."

Inside the world's largest gathering of snakes

           Inside the world's largest gathering of snakes

Each spring in the Canadian province of Manitoba, 75,000 red-sided garter snakes (Thamnophis sirtalis infernalis) congregate inside limestone caves to form 'mating balls’ - writhing heaps of up to a hundred males tussling for a single female. 

This is the biggest gathering of snakes in the world, a phenomenon that can only happen here because of two geological factors - limestone crevices and marshes. According to an interview National Geographic did with environmental documentary photographer, Paul Colangelo, the area is perfect during summer because the snakes can feed off the wealth of frogs that live in the marshes, and in winter, those limestone crevices provide fantastic shelter deep underground. Which is just as well, because winter temperatures in Manitoba can dip down to -40 degrees Celsius. 

The crevices also provide the perfect place for the red-sided garter snakes - which are completely harmless to humans - to perform their mating balls. According to Colangelo, the males court the larger female by rubbing their chins on her head, vying for as much contact with her as possible within the mating ball.

Mysterious methane bursts detected on Mars

Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

Mysterious methane bursts detected on Mars

NASA's Curiosity rover has detected bursts of methane on the Red Planet and scientists are suggesting two possibilities - subterranean water interacting with certain rocky minerals, or alien microbes.

Short bursts of Martian methane have been discovered by NASA’s Curiosity rover, in a find that goes against previous reports stating that were was none. This change suggests that something must be sporadically creating the gas, but right now, no one’s really sure what. 

What we do know is that 90 percent of the methane molecules here on Earth are produced by something that is, or once was, living, either of which would be a pretty mind-blowing possibility for Mars. But before we get too excited, we’re far from any kind of discovery like that at this stage. 

"They're very exciting measurements,” one of the team behind the find, Christopher Webster from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in the US, told Lisa Grossman atNew Scientist. "They've completely opened up the debate again on Mars methane.”

According to Alan Duffy from Swinburne University of Technology, the Mars Curiosity rover has been analysing the Martian air over the past 20 months, and over a two-month period in late 2013 to early 2014, they detected a 10-fold increase in the amount of methane present. This amount was detected on four separate occasions. 

Why did the discovery take so long to report? Grossman reports at New Scientistthat these methane bursts are just 7 parts per billion, while on Earth, levels of methane are hundreds of times higher. “Measuring this tiny amount is an incredible achievement itself,” she says.

Figuring out exactly where the methane came from is the next very tricky part of the process. 

"On Earth we know that most of the methane in our air is from the actions of living creatures and this is why we're so excited to track down the methane on Mars,” said Duffy in an email. "Unfortunately life is just one of the possible causes for the methane on Mars, so detecting the gas doesn't tell us if the Red Planet still hosts life.”

Duffy suggests that the methane could be coming from the break down of organic - but not living - chemicals on the surface of Mars by UV radiation from the Sun. Or perhaps it’s the result of a reaction that occurred long ago between Olivine - a group of iron-magnesium silicate minerals found in Martian rocks - and water molecules, and the methane accumulated and got trapped in a chemical lattice called aclathrate. 

If these clathrates were disturbed for some reason, they could suddenly release the methane gas again, in short little bursts. This doesn’t discount the possibility that this trapped methane was one produced by biological processes, adds Duffy, "but it might be that the gas has been trapped in a clathrate long after life has become extinct, meaning Mars could still be a dead world.”

On top of the discovery announced last week that a once-habitable lake covered a region called the Gale Crater, which served as Curiosity’s landing site in August 2012, the rover has also detected the first evidence of organic compounds on Mars, in crushed up rock samples. The finds suggest that over billions of years, changing conditions have forced the now dry and rocky planet to lose every skerik of its water, and with the help of the MAVEN Mars orbiter scientists are now collecting more data to piece together those circumstances. 

Man single-handedly grows a forest larger than Central Park

Man single-handedly grows a forest larger than Central Park

Image: William Douglas McMaster

Home to a population of 150,000 residents, Majuli Island in northeast India is the largest river island on Earth. But due to the effects of erosion over the past hundred years, it's been shrinking, as strong winds sweep the soil and sand away and into the surrounding river water. The island's total area of 1,250 square kilometres has been reduced to less than half, and as of 2001, it covered just 421.65 square kilometres.

One resident has decided to do something to stem the erosion of Majuli Island. Since 1979, forestry worker Jadav Payeng has dedicated his life to fortifying the island by building a forest on one of its sandbars, tree by tree. Trees are crucial for keeping the effects of erosion at bay because not only do their roots hold the soil together, preventing it from shifting away, but they also act as windbreakers, slowing the wind down so it’s less likely to blow both soil and sand away.

Now, over three decades later, Payeng’s forest covers 550 hectares. This mean this one man’s forest is now larger than New York’s Central Park - which is just 341 hectares by comparison.

Named the Molai Forest, it is so rich and dense, large populations of wildlife, including several endangered species, have moved in. “One hundred and fifteen elephants live there for three months every year,” says Payeng in a documentary about him called Forest Man, released by Canadian filmmaker William Douglas McMaster last year. "In my forest there are also rhinos, deer, and many tigers. After 40 years, we have also seen vultures return to the area.” 

Molai Forest also includes many plant species, including arjun (Terminalia arjuna), ejar (Lagerstroemia speciosa), goldmohur (Delonix regia), koroi (Albizia procera), and moj (Archidendron bigeminum), plus 300 hectares of bamboo.

Here's the tiny human twig in the Tree of Life

 

Here's the tiny human twig in the Tree of Life

This is what 3.5 billion years of evolution looks like. Time to meet your relatives.

Created as part of a collaboration between the Tree of Life Web Project and designer Leonard Eisenberg, this epic infographic is one monster family tree, showing the history of 3.5 billion years of life on Earth.

Click here for a much larger version, courtesy of Fast Company.

The Tree of Life Web Project aims to collect pictures, text and other information on every species, both living and extinct, with the help of expert and amateur contributors. Here they show how all of life - from plants and fungi to sharks, fish, mammals, and humans - all sprung from the humble bacterium, a creature that has spent billions of years spreading to every corner of the Earth.

The Tree of Life team says the infographic has been drawn to show all the major - and some of the minor - branches of life tied to a geologic time scale, in the shape of rainbow tree. You can also see how major events of extinction, such as the dinosaurs, have gone extinct, and from there, biodiversity branched out to fill the ecological gaps.

Mark Wilson explains at Fast Company:

"As you look at the graphic, realise that time radiates outward and each kingdom’s appearance is also in chronological order from left to right. What you’ll discern then is a story of origins and mass extinctions, the way life almost bided its time through the Ice Age then hit the gas through the Cambrian Explosion. It was here when the protostomes (everything from trilobites to squids) simply went nuts, and the separation of plants vs. animals as we know them arose.”

Those big white splotches that disrupt various branches throughout the tree represent either extinction events or the end of species whose evolutionary pathway did not lead to further species. 

It’s a pretty sobering thought that humans, all the way down there in the bottom right-hand corner, have been wiping their way through so many species, particularly in the past half a century. 

Seven years of preventable disease outbreaks around the world

Image: GOOD

 Seven years of preventable disease outbreaks around the world

In just 70 seconds, this new data visualisation shows seven years of outbreaks around the world of diseases that could have been prevented by by vaccines. 

The video above, created by GOOD magazine, shows the impact of those millions who are not vaccinated against diseases such as whooping cough, polio, the measles and the mumps. Using data collected by the Council on Foreign Relationsbetween 2008 and 2014, the visualisation shows that measles is the most widespread preventable disease of the past decade, followed by the mumps and polio. Africa, China and Southeast Asia are the most seriously affected by these diseases.

As Nicole Gregory at GOOD notes, diseases such as measles and whooping cough have spread in middle-class communities in the US - particularly in California - likely due to anti-vaccine campaigns. For example, she reports, in 2010, there were 12,000 reported cases of whooping cough worldwide - 5,000 of which were in California. Since then, this number has risen to almost 8,000 cases this year.

“I see the devastating effects of these infections which are vaccine-preventable,” Jeffrey Bender, medical director in the Division of Infectious Diseases at the Children’s Hospital Los Angeles in the US told Gregory at GOOD. “The most frustrating part for me is in talking to these families after their child becomes severely ill. I have to tell them that ‘yes your child’s illness probably could have been prevented.’ This is the hardest thing for young parents to hear. All of them tell me that they did not think it could happen to their child. But it does happen.”

There are now just five northern white rhinos left in the world

Image: Angalifu. Credit: Sheep81/Wikimedia

There are now just five northern white rhinos left in the world

One of the last remaining male northern white rhinos has died of old age in the San Diego Zoo Safari Park.

The death of a 44-year-old male rhino called Angalifu has sadly pushed the critically endangered northern white rhinos (Ceratotherium simum cottoni) a step closer to extinction.

Before he died, conservationists at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park had hoped that Angalifu would mate with Nola, their female northern white rhino, but their attempts were all unsuccessful, as the Associated Press reports. 

"Angalifu's death is a tremendous loss to all of us," Randy Rieches, the safari park curator, said in a statement. "Not only because he was well beloved here at the park but also because his death brings this wonderful species one step closer to extinction."

The white rhino (Ceratotherium simum) is the largest existing rhino species in the world, and is made up of two subspecies, the northern and southern white rhinos.

The remaining five northern white rhinos are now located in captivity around the world - there are three at a preserve in Kenya, one at a zoo in the Czech Republic, and Nola remains at the San Dieo park.

As recently as 1960, there were around 2,000 living northern white rhinos, but poachers have quickly reduced the population. The rhino horn is extremely valuable on the black market due to its rumoured healing powers.

Unfortunately, breeding attempts to save the species around the world are also stalling - just last week, preservationists at the animal sanctuary in Kenya reported that their one male and two female northern white rhinos also wouldn’t reproduce naturally.

But scientists are now making an effort to keep the species alive through in vitrofertilisation, the Associated Press reports. They’re hoping that if they can fertilise a northern white rhino egg, it could be transplanted into a southern white rhino surrogate mother. 

And, there is always a chance that the species still exists somewhere we just haven’t found as yet.

As Amar Toor reports for The Verge, the southern white rhino (Ceratotherium simum simum) was considered extinct back in the 1800s, before a small population was discovered in South Africa and conservation efforts were implemented. Now the WWF estimates there are more then 20,000 alive today.

Let’s hope that if such a population of northern white rhinos does exist somewhere in the world, they stay well hidden and protected.