China’s Broad Group recently showcased its innovative Living Building, a new type of modular building system, by erecting a 10-storey apartment building in Changsha City in only 28 hours and 45 minutes.

The Living Building concept developed by Broad Group sounds like it could truly revolutionize the construction industry, and the Chinese company’s recent feat of erecting a 10-floor building in just over a day was meant to emphasize just how disruptive its new system can be. Technically, the building was just assembled on a site in Changsha, by three cranes and a large workforce, as all the components were built in a local Broad Group factory and transported by truck. But that’s one of the features of the Living Building system, it consists of pre-made container-size modules that only need to be bolted together at the “build” site and have their electricity and plumbing connected.

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Cookie-cutter sharks are a small species of shark about the size of a domestic cat that will attack predators several times their size, biting off conical chunks of their flesh, and even the soft parts of nuclear submarines.

The cookie-cutter shark (Isistius brasiliensis) was discovered in the early 19th century, by French naturalists, but it wasn’t until the 1970s that marine scientists realized just how brave and dangerous these small marine creatures could be. Up to that point, the conical, deep wounds that researchers often documented on all sorts of marine life, from small fish to dolphins and even great white sharks, were a mystery. It wasn’t until 1971, when Everet Jones discovered small conical pieces of flesh in the stomachs of cookie-cutter sharks that marine scientists began to realize that the deceptively small sharks could severely wound some of the ocean’s mightiest creatures.

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North Carolina-based start-up BIOMILQ recently announced that it has successfully created cell-cultured human milk from mammary cells, in a laboratory.

In the age of Impossible Burgers and 3D-printed meatless steaks, human breast milk made in the lab instead of inside a woman’s breast really doesn’t seem that strange, honestly. The breakthrough announced by BIOMILK earlier this month really has the potential to disrupt the infant and baby industry as well as impact the environment, as over 10 percent of dairy today goes towards making baby formula. How the world reacts to lab-make breastmilk, on the other hand, is another matter.

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At the foothills of the Caucasus Mountains in northwest Azerbaijan, lies Parigala, one of the world’s most impressive archeological mysteries. Carved into the nearly vertical face of a rock cliff, the centuries-old structure remains a mystery that hardly anyone knows anything about.

The idea that an amazing site like Parigala (literally ‘Fairy Castle’ in Azerbaijani) is one of Azerbaijan’s lesser-known archeological treasures baffles the mind. That has to do both with the country’s still underdeveloped tourism industry, and the fact that you need to go off the beaten path to reach Parigala. That fits the general theme of the place, which is inaccessibility, but still, hopping into a four-wheel drive vehicle to navigate the narrow tracks leading up to it,  then climbing up a very slippery slope to a steep, leaf-covered and forested hillside just to reach the cliff it’s carved into, is definitely not for everyone.

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Located in the Russian Far East, the island of Sakhalin is allegedly home to giant versions of common plants like buckwheat, burdock and butterbur that can grow up to 5 meters tall.

Sakhalin is known for being the largest island in the Russian Federation, as well as a point of contention between Japan and Russia over the centuries. However, according to obscure reports going back over a decade, the northernmost island of the Japanese archipelago, as well as the nearby Kuril Islands are home to versions of ordinary herbaceous plants of truly gigantic proportions. Plants that normally reach the knee of an average adult, on these islands allegedly grow several times the height of a human.

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After losing his balance and falling off his bicycle, a bright Chinese engineer dedicated his spare time to designing and building a bike that not only self-balances, but also detects and avoids obstacles.

I never learned how to ride a bicycle, and I always wondered how people managed to keep their balance on those two thin wheels, but thanks to the efforts of Zhi Hui Jun, I may never have to. The talented engineer was fascinated by the self-driving bicycle built by scientists at Beijing Tsinghua University back in 2019, and after suffering a bicycle accident that left him with minor injuries to his face, the young engineer decided to build his own self-balancing bicycle.

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Surrounded by lush forest on all sides and untouched by human civilization, the heart-shaped Lake Toyoni is a hidden gem among Japan’s many tourism attractions.

Up until a few years ago, Lake Toyoni was virtually unknown to most Japanese, but a popular television commercial featuring an aerial view of the heart-shaped natural wonder turned it into a popular tourist spot virtually overnight. The internet is full of digitally-altered heart-shaped lakes, but Toyoni is one of the few, if not the only one, in the world that actually has this shape, so when people learned that it was real, they flocked to the island of Hokkaido to see the natural wonder for themselves.

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Gosiame Thamara Sithole, a 37-year-old woman from South Africa , reportedly gave birth to the world’s first decuples – 10 babies from a single pregnancy.

The first recorded case of decuplets is currently shrouded in mystery, as  ten days since the woman allegedly brought the 10 babies into the world, no one has seen either the mother or the newborns. All we have to go on at this point are media reports and statements made by the babies’ father and other relatives, all of which claim that Gosiame Thamara Sithole did in fact give birth to 10 babies – seven boys and three girls – at the end of a 29-week pregnancy. Apart from the suspicious absence of the mother, there are a few things that don’t really add up, though…

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Hua Zhibing officially registered and became a student of Beijing’s Tsinghua University on Tuesday. But she’s not just another student, but China’s first AI-powered, virtual student.

Hua Zhibing’s appearance, voice and even the music playing in the background of the vlog she introduced herself to the world in were all created using on a record-breaking AI modeling system called Wudao 2.0. It was unveiled at the 2021 Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence (BAAI) Conference on June 1, and, according to its developers, it is the first trillion scale model in China and the largest in the world. Wudao 2.0 is designed to enable machines to think like humans and is reportedly close to passing the Turing test in poetry and couplets creation, text summaries, answering questions and painting.

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Muscle Girls is a Tokyo-based women’s gym that doubles as a fitness-themed bar staffed by a group of young, muscular women.

Japan is famous for its plethora of themed bars and cafes, from black cat cafes to cafes dedicated to women’s thighs, but Muscle Girls is the country’s first and only bar dedicated to female weightlifting. Founded by a young fitness enthusiast who goes by the name of Eri Muscle, Muscle Girls started out as a women’s gym, but recently transitioned into the entertainment industry, opening its own unique bar as well as a popular YouTube channel. Photos and videos of the venue started going viral earlier this year, mainly because of its staff, which is made up exclusively of muscular, fitness-loving girls.

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What to you get when you combine an old Soviet tank with two Soviet jet engines and a lot of water? The answer is Big Wind, a fire truck capable of stopping oil well fires all by itself.

In February of 1991, near the end of the Gulf War, the retreating Iraqi army set over 700 Kuwaiti oil wells on fire, thus creating the desert into an almost apocalyptic landscape. Up to six million barrels of oil burned every day for 30 weeks, sending flames as high as 300 feet into the air and covering the sky with thick, black smoke. The fires reached temperatures of 2000 degrees Fahrenheit, and even the air around them was an unbearable 650 degrees Fahrenheit, but even if anyone managed to get close enough, putting out the fires was a nearly impossible task. But that was just the kind of job that Big Wind was built for…

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A group of Pakistani police officers are facing suspension after allegedly arresting 19 employees of a fast food restaurant in Lahore for refusing to give them free burgers.

According to local reports, staff at a Johnny & Jugnu fast food restaurant in Lahore, Pakistan, were rounded up and arrested at around 8 PM on Saturday and held in custody overnight for having the audacity to refuse a group of policemen free burgers last week. Employees weren’t even allowed to close down the kitchen, allegedly leaving the fryers running and customers waiting in line for their orders. In an official statement, Johnny & Jugnu representatives offered details about the incident, explaining that it had been caused by staff’s refusal to give policemen free burgers.

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A Brazilian young man recently got a rather humiliating birthday party thrown for him by police after being arrested for theft right on the day that he turned 18.

Celebrating your 18th birthday should be a joyous occasion, but for one Paulo Rodrigo das Neves, from Brazil’s Rio Grande do Norte region, the event was anything but. Arrested on his birthday after being caught on camera stealing sound equipment and other parts from people’s cars, the birthday boy got to enjoy a humiliating celebration at the police station, with staff there singing him “Happy Birthday” and even serving cake and soda in his honor. To make matters worse, the whole thing was filmed and posted online.

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Most 90-year-olds can barely walk, let alone exercise, but 90-year-old Takishima Mika not only conducts daily fitness regimens religiously, but she actually works as a fitness instructor at a gym.

For most of us, “age is just a number” is just a tired cliché, but people like Takishima Mika, aka “Takimika”, are proof that it doesn’t have to be. The sprightly pensioner, who turned 90 on on January 15, is more active than most 20-year-olds and probably fitter too. She is Japan’s oldest fitness instructor and has become somewhat of a minor celebrity in the Asian country, both because of her excellent physical shape, and her positive attitude and infectious smile. But Takimika wasn’t always like that. In fact, her transformation began late in life, when she was already in her 60s.

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An Indian woman who had left her family home in 2010 and hadn’t been seen since was recently found living just 500 meters from her parent’s home, in the house of a man she had fallen in love with.

Sajitha’s family had given up home of ever finding her, after she simply walked out of the house one day, in 2010. Thinking that she had died or was living thousands of miles away somewhere, they never even entertained the idea that she could be in the same village, let alone in walking distance from them. As it turns out, the woman, who was 18 at the time of her disappearance, simply walked out of the family home and into that of her secret lover, a local man who she was convinced her parents wouldn’t approve of. How they managed to keep the secret from both of their families for over a decade is a tale fit for Bollywood.

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