5 Spectacular Beaches in Italy | Mondello Beach | Maria Beach

Italy, one of Europe’s most beautiful countries, is endowed with spectacular beaches to esteem. Spend the most amazing vacations, enjoy the sun and feel the smooth sand of the peninsula. Complemented by breathtaking scenery and joyful people, explore our top 5 best coastlines and have fun on the amazing Italian land.

Domus de Maria Beach – Domus de Maria is a one of the most famous coastlines in Sardinia. For travelers looking for innovation, the site is spectacular. Wild and unspoiled by urbanism, Domus de Maria is an amazing location to spend a relaxing vacation. Throughout the shore, tourists will also find camping opportunities, as well as plenty of dwellers who want to have fun. Appreciate the gorgeous sun, feel the breeze of the sea and enjoy a ravishing retreat along such rejuvenated Italian shore.

Castiglione della Pescaia – Unlike other regions in Italy, Castiglione della Pescaia Beach is more traditional and cultural. The superb country view and the inspiring sea will recreate the best ambiance for tourists. Eye catching, mysterious and old fashioned, visitors will definitely be amazed by the overview. The coastal city nearby, as well as the medieval castle will make up for the perfect ambiance for romantic travelers. Furthermore, you can even esteem how fishermen are putting their skills to the test, or participate at their traditional beach parties.

Mondello Beach – Mondello Beach is more than just a simple coastline in Palermo, Italy. It’s also an entertaining avenue full of shops, pubs and bars for the people to take advantage of. In addition, the location offers plenty of activities as well, especially during the summer season. Appreciate the beautiful sea, dive into the blue waters and try out diving with the fish, or snorkeling for instance. As for the food, tourists will have the amazing chance to uncover magnificent Italian tastes available along the inviting bistros spread all over Mondello Beach.

Piscinas Beach – Recognized for its attractive dunes of sand, Piscinas is like a small Italian wasteland but gorgeous and out of this world. Declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site due to its astonishing sites, the location is perfect for couples and families alike. Enjoy the relaxing vibe of Piscinas Beach, benefit from the array of amenities and have a great time. The landscape is additionally surreal, while the unique dunes make the beachs so spectacular. The relaxing surroundings and the sound of the sea will make people fall in love with Piscinas, especially because it has a private vibe appealing to visitors.

Marina Piccola Beach – The small bay of Marina Piccola is located on Capri Island. Suitable for tourists who want to escape from the urban and noisy Italy, the coastline is the right place to appreciate. Enjoy the tranquility and sense the romantic tone of Marina Piccola Beach. Accommodate at the nearby hotels, have fun and spend quality time with your loved one. Explore the breathtaking Italian setting, walk along the shore and get your skin tanned under the baking sun. Moreover, swimming and diving are also highly recommended for tourists interested to discover the marvelous underwater life of Italy.

Top 5 Bicycle Friendly Cities In The World

Bicycle has to be the best eco friendly, healthy and cheap vehicle till now. There are number of cities which are recognized as bicycle friendly cities, here are few of them.

5. Beijing, China

Beijing is the capital of the People’s Republic of China. The city is recognized as the political, educational, and cultural centre of China. Cycling is very popular in the city that hosted the summer Olympics in 2008. During the 2008 Olympic Games cycling was ideal way to get around in Beijing. New cycle paths were constructed before the Games to accommodate cyclists and it became popular thereafter.

4. Barcelona, Spain

Barcelona is the second largest city in Spain. It is recognized as a Global City due to its importance in finance, commerce, media, entertainment, arts, international trade, education and tourism. On 22 March 2007, Barcelona’s City Council started the Bicing (a community bicycle program) service. Once the user has their user card, they can take a bicycle from any of the 100 stations spread around the city and use it anywhere the urban area of the city, and then leave it at another station.

3. Bogota, Colombia

Bogota is the capital city of Colombia. In terms of land area, Bogota is the largest city in Colombia. Despite the city’s chronic congestion, the city is regarded as one if the most bicycle-friendly cities in the world. The ciclorruta (Bogota’s bike paths network) is one of the most extensive dedicated bike path networks of any city in the world. Since its construction, bicycle use has quintupled in the city, and it is estimated that there are between 300,000 and 400,000 trips made daily in the city.

2. Copenhagen, Denmark

Copenhagen is the capital of Denmark. It is a bicycle-friendly city and 36% of all citizens commute to work, school or university by bicycle. The city’s bicycle paths are extensive and well used. Bicycle paths are often separated from the main traffic lanes and sometimes have their own signal systems. The municipality is also developing a system of interconnected green bicycle routes, greenways, the aim being to facilitate fast, safe, and pleasant bicycle transport from one end of the city to the other.

1. Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Amsterdam is the capital and largest city of the Netherlands. The city is considered one of the most bicycle-friendly cities in the world and is a centre of bicycle culture with good facilities for cyclists such as bike paths and bike racks. Bicycles are used by all socio-economic groups because of their convenience, Amsterdam’s small size, the large number of bike paths, the flat terrain, and the arguable inconvenience of driving an automobile. In the city centre, driving a car is discouraged.

3D TV Without Glasses Unveiled

The world's first 3D Without Glasses television that doesn't require glasses has hit the market.

Toshiba unveiled the high-definition liquid crystal display 3D television that does not require the special glasses - one of the biggest consumer complaints about the technology.

The Tokyo-based company hopes this could be the breakthrough that brings 3D TV to the masses.

Glassess-less 3D: The Regza GL1 Series TV which combines image processing technology with a double convex sheet to render depth-filled images from any angle using parallax

Toshiba describes the TVs as being for 'personal use'.

Whether consumers embrace the new TVs remains to be seen. Many might be put off by the fact that they'll have to be very close to the screen for the 3D effect to really work - not to mention the steep price tag.

Electronics and entertainment companies around the world are banking on 3D to fuel a new boom in TV, movies and games.

Most 3D TVs on the market today rely on glasses to deliver separate images to each eye, which creates a sense of three-dimensional depth.

In its new TVs, Toshiba uses a 'perpendicular lenticular sheet,' which consists of an array of small lenses that direct light from the display to nine points in front of the TV. If a viewer is sitting within the optimal viewing zone, the brain integrates these points into a single 3D image.

Small: Masaaki Osumi of Toshiba with the 12-inch 3D TV and the 20-inch

'The result is a precise rendering of high-quality 3D images whatever the viewing angle within the viewing zone,' Toshiba said.

The system is similar to what's used in Nintendo's 3DS, the company's highly anticipated hand-held device that features glasses-free 3D gaming.

Toshiba will offer two sizes - 12 inches and 20 inches. The technology is not advanced enough yet to integrate into larger screens. Suggested viewing distance for the 20-inch model is 90 centimetres (35.4 inches) and 65 centimetres (25.6 inches) for the 12-inch size.

The TVs will go on sale in Japan in late December, Toshiba said. The smaller version will cost about 120,000 yen (£912), and the larger one will be double the price.

The company did not release details on overseas availability.

Rev7 : Non Stick Chewing Gum

A non-stick chewing gum that dissolves within 24 hours went on sale yesterday.

Rev7, which has been formulated by British scientists, has the same taste and texture as normal gum, but is water soluble.

It can be removed easily from clothes using soap and water and tests show it can largely be cleared up by conventional street cleaning.

Any gum washed into the drains will break down into minerals and biodegradable materials.

The development could help cut the £150million annual chemicals bill to remove the sticky substance from the nation’s streets.

Professor Terry Cosgrove, who led the research at Bristol University, said the gum contained a special polymer which made it far less sticky.

‘The motivation to invent the product came from seeing chewing gum on the streets in this country and in America. It’s everywhere,’ he said. ‘The materials developed can be used for lots of other uses such as anti-graffiti paint and bacterial protection.

‘But because chewing gum is such an enormous problem at the moment we decided to target this as our main area.

‘This is like a dream come true for me, seeing academic research result in a real commercial product.

‘There are also several other exciting ventures in the pipeline.’

Revolymer, a company set up by Bristol University, used a £10million grant from investors to launch the product, which has now gone on sale in the United States.

Available in spearmint and peppermint flavours, it should go on sale here in 2011.

Normal chewing gum is made from synthetic latex, which is resistant to the weather and strongly adhesive

Secrets of the Ocean

Weird and wonderful creatures of the deep: Decade-long 'sea census' uncovers 6,000 new species of marine creature Now more than 250,000 different sea creatures beneath the waves

A 'riot of species' has been uncovered in the world's oceans by the most comprehensive survey ever conducted of life in the seas, scientists announced today.

But the decade-long Census of Marine Life, the first global attempt to map the wildlife of the oceans, showed many species - from turtles to seabirds and sharks - were in decline in the face of human activity.

Blind Lobster

A blind lobster with bizarre claws belonging to the very rare genus Thaumastochelopsis, previously known only from four specimens of two species in Australia

Dr Ian Poiner, chairman of the project's scientific steering committee said that, from the Poles to tropical waters and the deep sea, there was an abundance of life.

Many discoveries had been made of new life, with around 6,000 potential new species found by the project and the overall estimate of known marine species increasing from 230,000 to nearly 250,000.

One shrimp-like creature, known as Ceratonotus steiningeri, has several spikes and claws and looks intimidating. It was first discovered five years ago three miles beneath the surface off the Atlantic coast of Africa.

It was one of 800 species found in that research trip, said discoverer Pedro Martinez Arbizu, a department head at the German Centre for Marine Biodiversity Research.

He was astonished to find that the tiny creature also was within the cataloguing he'd made earlier 8,000 miles away in the central Pacific.

'We were really very, very surprised about that,' Arbizu said. 'We think this species has a very broad distribution area.'

But after a decade of work researchers warn they could still not reliably estimate the number of species in the oceans, and it is thought there could be at least a million species in the Earth's seas in total.

Some of the 'most beautiful and wonderful' species found in the decade of discovery included a Jurassic shrimp thought to have become extinct 50 million years ago and a crab named the Yeti crab.

The census also included genetically sequencing tiny microbes to tell them apart, and Dr Poiner said there could be as many as one billion different types in the ocean.

The project, which involved more than 2,700 scientists spending a total of 9,000 days at sea on more than 540 expeditions, also used new technology such as tagging fish to see where they were swimming, fitting seals with monitors to record data as they dived and acoustic systems which measured fish populations as large as Manhattan Island.

Discoveries included the revelation that North Atlantic tuna on the eastern US seaboard were the same fish as those off the coast of Spain or in the Mediterranean as they migrated across the ocean.

The census also showed life was found in the most inhospitable places, and was much more connected than previously thought, through genetic relationships between creatures, the movement of species around the oceans and the 'snow' of food falling from the upper layers of the sea into the deep.

Dr Poiner said: 'It's the first time we truly have a global census of marine life, and have a global baseline which we can use to monitor change in the future - be the changes fishing activity, development of emerging energy, extraction of oil and gas, impacts of climate change, warming oceans or oceans becoming much more acidic.'

The census also looked back in time, using historical records of fish catches, sightings and even restaurant menus and photographs of family fishing trips to see what had happened to our seas.

Dr Poiner said that while 'wherever we went, there was a riot of species', many creatures had suffered significant declines.

In some cases, populations had plummeted by 90% from historical baselines, and fish such as swordfish which were being caught now were also much smaller than in the past.

And creatures at the bottom of the food chain known as phytoplankton, near the surface had declined globally, analysis of observations from ocean-going vessels since 1899 showed.

Dr Poiner said: 'Sadly the seas have been changed much more than we expected, these changes occurred much earlier than we expected and occurred quite quickly.'

And he warned that while recoveries were possible, and had occurred in some cases, to restore the population of species such as whales or degraded habitat took much longer than it took to do the damage.

According to the research, numbers of some species have declined within a human generation.

It also revealed that people began catching marine creatures a long time ago and on a much broader scale than previously thought.

The census will not only provide a baseline for measuring change but is already producing data which can be used by policy makers around the globe to introduce conservation efforts and to govern the high seas.

Victor Gallardo from Chile, vice chairman of the scientific steering committee, said: 'A human census is used for many practical purposes, like government allocations of seats in a legislature, or funds for education or healthcare.

'Likewise, this ocean life inventory constitutes a true census which can guide conservation.'

The project has also generated a website, iobis.org, on which anyone can see the distribution of a species in the ocean from a giant database of names and 'addresses' of marine creatures.

And it reveals just how little we still know about the seas, as the Census database has no records at all for around a fifth of the oceans' volume, while vast areas have very few records.

A yeti crab

A hairy-clawed 'yeti crab' is seen in this picture taken in 2006

hydrothermal vent snail

A hydrothermal vent snail found in Suiyo Seamount at the Tokyo Hydrothermal Vent

leafy Seadragon

A leafy Seadragon, Phycodurus eques, which is camouflaged to resemble a piece of drifting seaweed

Polychaete Worm

A polychaete worm found at a whale fall at Sagami Bay, Japan at a depth of 925 metres

Tiny Copepod

A tiny copepod collected from the Atlantic abyss during the DIVA 2 cruise in February/March 2005

Squid Worm

A recently discovered species called a squidworm found in the Celebes sea in Southeast Asia

Ceratonotus steiningeri

The Ceratonotus steiningeri, that was first discovered 5,400 metres deep in the Angola Basin in 2006. Within a year it was also collected in the southeastern Atlantic, as well as as in the central Pacific Ocean

Census Map Show Seafloor Biomass

Census scientists used nearly 200 studies to estimate the biomass on the seafloor globally from bacteria through fish and other large animals. The yellow-to-red zones in the map show seafloor biomass reaching 3 to 10 grams of carbon per square metre

Dr Niel Bruce Studying Specimens

Dr Niel Bruce of the Museum of Tropical Queensland studying specimens in lighted aquarium on Lizard Island Reef in Australia as part of the census

Human Mattress Dominoes

king koil Mattress Dominoes Springs were in the air yesterday when the world record for human mattress dominoes was broken.

The attempt was made by Palantine Beds, in Newcastle, and saw 400 mattresses toppled - beating the current world record set by a team in America.

After four months of planning, the team behind the event were last night celebrating in style.

The firm's sales and marketing manager Andrew Waters, is now awaiting official confirmation from the Guinness Book if World Records that his team are now the current world record holders in human mattress dominoes.

Mr Waters said: 'We didn't have the turnout we were hoping for so we had to improvise.

Volunteers in Newcastle breaking the World Record for human mattress dominoes when they toppled 400 mattresses in succession

The event took place at the spacious Newcaslte Furniture Service warehouse in Newburn Riverside, where excited participants whooped as they passed the current record

'The first two rows that toppled then had to pick their mattresses up and run around and join the end. But it actually made the whole thing more exciting to be honest.

'It was a great morning. I had a lump in my throat at the end of it.'

Until two weeks ago, the world record as held by a group in China, who toppled 256 mattresses in May this year.

Then a team in New York toppled 380 mattresses, making the record harder to beat.

But yesterday's attempt saw 400 mattresses fall, after colleagues from Palantine Beds, owned by Newcastle City Council, Your Homes in Newcastle (YHN), and other volunteers, took three minutes and 41 seconds to set a new record.

The event took place at the spacious Newcaslte Furniture Service warehouse in Newburn Riverside, Newcastle, where excited participants whooped as they passed the current record.

The Lord Mayor of Newcastle, Coun Brenda Hindmarsh, started the event, which involved hundreds of Geordies and their mattresses.

Mr Waters added: 'We followed their rules to the letter so there is no reason why we shouldn't have the record. It's what we set out to do.

'It was a lovely atmosphere and it just wouldn't have been possible without all of the volunteers who gave up their time on Saturday morning to take part.

'When we originally set out to do this it was going t be 301 mattresses, but a few weeks ago America did 380.

'So we upped ours. We had to extra staff working overtime to makae extra mattresses and they have all been absolutely fantastic.

'It was just a daft idea that snowballed, but it couldn't have been done without everybody who has taken part.'

Beard and Moustache Championships 2010

The European Beard and Moustache Championships 2010 in Leogang, Austria town hosts European beard contest - 'Full natural' and 'freestyle' were among the categories that had hirsute types primping, preening - and even blow-drying - their facial tresses for a stab at the top title in the weekend's European Beard and Moustache Championship.

Attracting around 150 proud beard and moustache owners from eight countries, the whiskery face-off took place in the Austrian town of Leogang.

According to reports, the event's only hairy moment (so to speak) happened when a losing Italian team tried to get the competition declared void, claiming their country invented the 'sport' in the 1970s and refusing to recognise new rules.

Men with beards and big moustaches look very manly and this sort of squabbling is unbecoming in men of hair,' remarked one wise official amid the furore.

Austria's beardy bonanza follows a distinctly more 'buzzing' tournament across the pond.

At Ontario's recent Clovermead Bees & Honey Bee Beard Competition , Tibor Szabo emerged triumphant while the losers were left feeling a bit stung (sorry).

In case the concept passed you by, the competition requires entrants to 'grow' a beard by placing a queen bee in a small cage underneath their chin, attracting the worker bees.

























Source : AFP

World's Smallest Apartment on Sale in Rome

World's Smallest Apartment on Sale in Rome - A former porter's closet measuring five square metres (55 sq ft) has gone on the market in Rome at £43,000. The property, which is being described as the world's smallest apartment, lies in the heart of the Italian capital, which has become of the world's most expensive cities for property, but is barely large enough to contain a single bed.

The owner of the bijou property says he has been inundated with queries since putting it on the market a few days ago.

Presented as a "compact bedsit", it is located on Piazza di Sant' Ignazio, a picturesque square overlooked by an enormous Renaissance church.

One report described it as "little bigger than a wigwam" while Il Giornale, a daily newspaper, commented: "In Rome, people now live like rats".

The flat consists of a ground floor bathroom with a shower, sink and lavatory and a ladder leading to a sleeping platform just big enough for a single bed. There is a single window, but to open it you have to climb over the bed.

It lies just behind Palazzo Grazioli, the imposing mansion which is rented by Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian prime minister, as his private residence in the capital.

World's Largest Pot of Bortsch Soup Recipe

A Russian chef bortsch recipes in a huge-sized pot during an international agricultural exhibition on the outskirts of Kiev, capital of Ukraine, on Oct. 2, 2010. By putting 250 kilograms of cabbages, 90 kilograms of onions, 80 kilograms of carrots, 140 kilograms of beans and 27 kilograms of salt into a 5,000-liter soup pot, chefs finally created 4,000 liters of "borscht", setting a new world record.

[borscht] ingredient It usually contains beet, which gives it a strong red color. Other typical additional ingredients, depending on preparation, Non vegetarian are vegetarian (beans, cabbage, carrots, cucumbers, potatoes, onions or tomatoes), the mushrooms and meat (chicken, pork or beef).

It is commonly accepted that the borscht is originally from Ukraine, but part of the local culinary heritage of many countries of eastern and central Europe. The soup is called barščiai in Lithuania, barszcz in Poland, borscht (Борщ) in Russia and Ukraine and bors in Romania.

There are two kinds of barszcz : white (Bialy) and red (Czerwony); it is prepared from sugar beet and is one of twelve traditional dishes from the table on Christmas Eve Polish.

Hair Washing And Massaging Robot

A HAIR washing robot that uses 3D imaging to map and "remember" a person's head for the perfect rinse has been unveiled.

The hi-tech device - designed to cater for Japan's growing elderly population - was built by electronics giant Panasonic.

The machine - which resembles a dentist's chair with a wash basin - performs a 3D scan, measuring and recording the exact shape of the head, in order to apply the ideal amount of pressure when it uses its 16 rubber fingers to wash the hair.

The prototype was shown off at the 37th International Home Care and Rehabilitation exhibition in Tokyo yesterday.

Panasonic said they created the robot to meet the needs of under-pressure workers at hospitals and healthcare facilities as Japan's "silver generation" continues to grow.

The firm added: "With 16 fingers, the robot washes hair and rinses the shampoo bubbles with the dexterity of human fingers.

"The robot's two arms scan the head three dimensionally as they move and measure and remember the head shape to apply just the right amount of pressure to each person when shampooing and massaging."

Source : The Sun

BBC Boat Made From Ice And Wood Pulp

Bid by BBC presenters to sail boat made of ice fails after ship melts When ideas are left on the drawing board, it is often with good reason.

But that didn’t stop the BBC testing out one of the craziest proposals of the Second World War...a boat made from ice and wood pulp.

Maverick inventor Geoffrey Pyke claimed his five and a half ton craft would both save on steel and be impossible to sink.

Yet a mock-up of his brainchild took on water and melted within minutes of its launch in Portsmouth harbour yesterday.

Experts said that the experiment for science show Bang Goes The Theory probably failed because the boat was too small, and so less resistant to melting, and because the water they tested in was far warmer than the Atlantic - where the invention was designed to be used.

The crew abandon ship as the ice vessel begins to capsize as the ice quickly began to melt

In the event of steel stocks running out in the 1940s inventor Geoffrey Pyke suggested it was possible to make an unsinkable aircraft carrier using a material called Pykrete, made of both ice and wood pulp.

The bizarre mixture could be moulded into any shape and, with a slow melting rate, it was thought perfect for seafaring vessels.

The BBC decided to put Pyke's theory to the test by mixing 5,000 litres of water with the hefty material hemp and freezing it in a 20 feet-long boat-shaped mould.

It took three weeks to freeze it in one of the UK's largest ice warehouses, in Tilbury, Essex, before it was ready for launch in Gosport, Hants.

The team made it in to Portsmouth Harbour where they were saluted by members of the navy stationed on destroyer HMS Diamond.

But shortly after that, after just over an hour in the water, it began to take on water and capsized.

Four BBC presenters, who had hoped to make it all the way to Cowes on the Isle of Wight, had to abandon ship and swim to rescue craft.

Lynette Slight, of the BBC science show, said: ‘They had just got out of the marina when it began to sink.

The BBC decided to put Pyke's theory to the test by mixing 5,000 litres of water with hemp and freezing it in a 20 feet-long boat-shaped mould

It was all a little bit strange. I don’t think they realised what would happen. In the end it just tipped upside down. It was taking on too much water at the back and the engine became too low.’

Jon Edwards at the Royal Society of Chemistry said 'It’s hardly a surprise that the boat sank – the temperature in the Solent is probably a fair bit higher than the middle of the Atlantic, where Pyke designed his material to be used.

'He also used enormous cooling units to keep the pykrete in his tests below zero degrees centigrade. If they didn’t use those refrigerators, the intrepid ice-sailors from Bang never stood a chance.'

He added: 'The size of the boat may have added to their problems, too. A huge aircraft carrier, as Pyke envisioned, would have been more resistant to melting – a larger surface area of ice requires a lot more energy to start melting, so the non-surface ice stays cooler for longer.

'A 1000-ton test boat, built out of normal ice on a lake in the Rockies, lasted a whole summer.'

And an Institute of Physics spokesperson said: 'The surface to volume ratio will have been the key to success.

'If too much of the surface of the ice was exposed directly to the water, or if the volume of ice set to melt was not calculated accurately enough, then unfortunately it was always doomed to failure.'

The plan was to sail the boat, complete with outboard, to Cowes in the Isle of Wight with the show's presenters, Jem Stansfield, Liz Bonnin, Dallas Campbell and Dr Yan Wong, on board.

The Ice Boat is readied for action at Gosport Marina, Hants before it began to go wrong

All four presenters had to be rescued from the water and the boat, which seemed to melt beyond recognition in no time at all, had to be towed to shore.

Lynette Slight, production coordinator of the show, said: 'They had just got out of the marina when it began to sink.

'It was all a little bit strange. I don't think they realised what was going to happen. In the end it just tipped upside down.

'It was taking on too much water at the back and the engine became too low. They thought they could get it to Cowes - they couldn't, but you never know until you try it.'

Giles Harrison, director of the show, blamed the failure on a fault, which meant water poured into the vessel sooner than expected.

He said: 'There are a couple of reasons why we did it. There was the proposal in the Second World War, when they were running low on steel to use ice with wood pulp in it.

'It was an idea taken quite seriously, until the war ended and it was forgotten. We were essentially using that concept to see how composite materials work.

'We did anticipate that something would go wrong but we hoped to get further out than we did.

'I think we've proved that Pykrete works but it is unstable.'

Bang Goes The Theory is on BBC1 at 7.30pm on Wednesday evenings. The ice boat stunt will appear on October 13.





Source : BBC News

Penguin Wedding

Club Penguin Wedding react during a collective wedding ceremony organised by Dalian Sun Asia Polar Ocean Park in Dalian, northeast China's Liaoning Province, Oct. 1, 2010. The park threw a wedding for 4 pairs of penguins that were born in the park







Source : News Xinhuanet