ciudad ciencias y artes | The City of Arts and Sciences

Ciutat de les Arts i les Ciències The City of Arts and Sciences (Valencian: Ciutat de les Arts i les Ciències, Spanish: Ciudad de las Artes y las Ciencias) is an entertainment-based cultural and architectural complex in the city of Valencia, Spain. It is the most important modern tourist destination in the city of Valencia.

The City of the Arts and the Sciences is situated at the end of the old riverbed Turia. Turia became a garden in 1980, after the bypass of the river by the great flood of Valencia in 1957.

Designed by Santiago Calatrava and Félix Candela, the project underwent the first stages of construction in July, 1996 and the finished "city" was inaugurated April 16, 1998 with the opening of L'Hemisfèric. The last great component of the City of the Arts and the Sciences, El Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía, was presented in October 9, 2005, Valencian Community Day.

Image Source:- flickr.com
Source:- en.wikipedia.org
Video Source:- youtube.com

Most Smelly Sneakers Contest

MONTPELIER, Vt. -An 11-year-old girl will be leaving Vermont as the 2010 "Rotten Sneaker" champion of the United States

Trinette Robinson of Bristol, Conn., was crowned Tuesday in Montpelier at the 35th annual National Odor-Eaters Rotten Sneaker contest.

The runner up was 6-year-old Madilyn Taylor of West Jordon, Utah.

The two were among nine children aged 6 to 16 competing in the contest. Trinette will get $2,500 and an expenses-paid trip to New York City.

In the contest, the kids' sneakers were judged on the sole, tongue, heel, toe, laces, eyelets, overall condition and odor.

Trinette said she got her sneakers dirty by playing hard in Girl Scout Camp and doing community walks for charity.

Source:- wptz.com

Painting Dolphin

The Painting made by Dolphins painter shows a dolphin named Xiaoqiang paint under the instructions of its tamer in an aquatic park in Qingdao, east China's Shandong Province.

Dolphins are smart, talented creatures,no doubt about that, but I had no ides painting was one of their skills.

Source:- xinhuanet.com

luxury dog house $20,000 mansions

A dog-owner has gone to amazing lengths to make sure her beloved pets live in the lap of luxury - by building them their very own mansion.

Now Chelsea, Darla and Coco Puff share an extraordinary 'home' that features vaulted celings, hardwood floors, heating and air conditioning, hand-made curtains and pricey wallpaper.

The dogs' have their own beds or they can lounge on their front lawn surrounded by a white picket fence.

Life of luxury: Tammy Kassis' 11-foot tall Victorian doggie mansion sits in her backyard for her dogs Chelsea, Darla and Coco Puff

Darla the Pomeranian stand proudly in her 'living room' while Yorkies Chelsea and Coco Puff look on from one of the three beds

They even enjoy music from a classic RCA Victor radio.

Little wonder the sign over the front door reads: 'Three spoiled dogs live here.'

Yorkies Chelsea and Coco Puff and Pomeranian Darla have their 47-year-old owner Tammy Kassis to thank for their plush pad on the outskirts of Los Angeles.

Ms Kassis, a former insurance agent, said: 'My dogs are my life.'

She and her advertising executive husband, Sam, decided the dogs needed their own place when Cocdo Puff was almost carried away by an owl.

The couple turned to Alan Mowrer's La Petite Maison, a builder of deluxe kennels.

Tammy Kassis, sits with her dogs Chelsea, Darla and Coco Puff, in front of their 11-foot tall Victorian doggie mansion in Winchester, on the outskirts of Los Angeles

The Victorian doggie mansion has its own yard, white picket fence, porch, doggie door, turret and doorbell on the outside

Mr Mowrer has built dog houses in the style of French French châteaux, Tudor mansions and Swiss chalets.

Mrs Kassis asked him to build a replica of her own home.

She lavished $20,000 (£13,200) on the doggy mansion, icluding things like painting, landscaping, screened doors and windows, mini-blinds and ceiling fans.

When the couple decided to move home, the kennel came with them - although they had to hire a 45-ton crane and a truck to move the thing.

The three little dogs feel perfectly at home in the the tiny mansion.

She told the Los Angeles Times: 'My mother buys them most of the outfits - she treats them like they're grandchildren.'

The next thing on Mrs Kassis's shopping list: a tiny plasma screen TV

'They love to watch Animal Planet,' Kassis says. 'It's their favourite.'

Source:- Dailymail.co.uk

Painting Dolphin | Oil Painting Blue Dolphin

Dolphins are smart, talented creatures,no doubt about that, but I had no ides painting was one of their skills. dolphin from Qingdao, in China’s Shandong Province has learned to paint, under the guidance of his trainer. Looking at his work, I’d say he still has a long way to go before becoming the second Rembrandt, but he’s well on his way. Surprisingly not the world’s first painting mammal, the painting elephants of Thailand and Cholla the painting horse have been doing it for years.

Tags: Oil Painting, Blue Dolphin, Painting Dolphin

Cooking Bacon with a Machine Gun

You start by wrapping the barrel in tin foil. Then you wrap bacon around it, and tie it down with some string.


You then wrap some more tin foil around it, and once again tie it down with string. It is now ready to be inserted into the cooking device.



After just a few short bursts (Give it about 200-250 rounds. ) you should be able to smell the wonderful aroma of bacon.


Ah the smell of sizzling bacon mixed with the smell of gunpowder and weapon oil.


The end result? Crispy delicious well done bacon.

Tags: Cooking Bacon, Machine Gun, gunpowder, aroma of bacon

Underwater Sports

Underwater sports include a range of sports, mostly involving the use of swimfins and often including some element of breath-hold, snorkelling or scuba. The governance of these sports involves some controversies.

Some sports here are related to some events in sports lifesaving.































Underwater sports are typically considered to include:-

* Sub-aqua diving (also known as scuba)
* Finswimming
* Underwater hockey (more commonly known as Octopush)
* Underwater rugby
* Underwater orienteering
* Underwater target shooting
* Spearfishing
* Freediving
* Underwater photography
* Underwater ice hockey
* Underwater football (here the football refers to American Football not Association Football or any other variant)
* Aquathlon (underwater wrestling)
* Speed Lifesaving (there are several events in which fins are used)

how to mend a broken heart

A Lesson From the Zebrafish How to Mend a Broken Heart

An ability to regrow damaged or missing heart tissue makes the lowly zebrafish an ideal model for discovering new ways to repair human hearts, scientists say.

When a part of its heart is removed, the tiny zebrafish is a bit sluggish for a few days, but then appears normal within a month. This remarkable heart repair is achieved by differentiated cardiac muscle cells called cardiomyocytes -- not stem cells, but mature cells that normally supply the contractile force of the heart.

"What the results of our study show is that Mother Nature utilizes other ways besides going all the way back to pluripotent stem cells to regenerate tissues and organs," Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte, a professor in the Gene Expression Laboratory at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in California, said in a news release.

The study appears in the March 25 issue of the journal Nature.

Prior to heart failure, damaged mammal heart muscle cells enter a state called hibernation, in which they stop contracting in an effort to survive. Mammal heart cell hibernation is significant, said study first author Chris Jopling, a postdoctoral fellow at the Center of Regenerative Medicine in Barcelona, Spain.

"During heart regeneration in the zebrafish we found that cardiomyocytes displayed structural changes similar to those observed in hibernating cardiomyocytes," Jopling said in the news release. "Because of these similarities, we hypothesize that hibernating mammalian cardiomyocytes may represent cells that are attempting to proliferate."

"This idea fits nicely with the findings from a number of groups -- that forced expression of cell cycle regulators can induce cardiomyocyte proliferation in mammals. Maybe all they need is a bit of push in the right direction," Jopling said.

Researchers are looking for factors that supply that push.

Source:- businessweek.com

Man Who Survived Two Atomic Bombs

Image Credit

Tsutomu Yamaguchi was, depending on your point of view either the luckiest man on Planet Earth of exactly the opposite. Either way, what happened to him in the August of 1945 is nothing short of amazing – and his survival miraculous.

Yamaguchi was a resident of Nagasaki but on the fateful day of 6 August 1945 he was in Hiroshima, on business for his employer, Mitsubishi. He was badly wounded when the bomb carried by Enola Gay exploded above Hiroshima but survived and returned to Nagasaki the next day.

Amazingly, he returned to work on August 9 – most of us in this day and age will take a day off work if we have a nosebleed, let alone get blown up by an atomic bomb. He was explaining the first bomb to his supervisor when Bocks Car flew over Nagasaki. The Fat Man atomic bomb was dropped on to the city and Tamaguchi became the victim of a second atomic blast. He was three kilometers away from Ground Zero but was not able to get treatment for the injuries he had received in Hiroshima – for obvious reasons.

He was recognised as a hibakashu (one of those affected by the explosions) but only of the Nagasaki bomb – he kept his remarkable story to himself for many years. The Japanese government finally recognised his presence in both cities in 2009. He died of stomach cancer in January 2010.

We may not have heard the last of Tsutomu Yamaguchi. Several months before his death he met the film director James Cameron (of Titanic and Avatar fame). It seems that the director is keen to shoot Yamaguchi’s story – and it certainly does deserve more exposure. Let’s just hope that Celine Dion doesn’t sing the theme music.
kuriositas

Tags: Atomic Bomb, Nagasaki, Yamaguchi Survivor, Survivors

Top Russian machine guns Russian Arms, Military Technology

Various weapons are very often exposed in movies nowadays. Here are legendary Russian machine guns having their own history ever shown in the Soviet (and not only) movies.

1. Maxim heavy machine gun model 1910. It was a first self-powered machine gun with water cooling of the barrel. Gun produced after 1940 were upgraded in such a way that coolant circuit could be loaded not only with water but with snow or ice. This gun could provide only automatic fire so it was extremely effective against infantry.

2. Degtyaryov hand-held infantry machine gun was used by the Soviet Army starting from the year 1927. It was one the few weapon models developed solely in the Soviet Union but not changed or modernized western samples. It appeared to be rather fail-safe and easy in use and maintenance and for this reason was widely used till the end of the World War 2. In its combat characteristics Degtyaryov’s gun excelled similar foreign analogs of that times.

3. Kalashnikov hand-held machine gun abbreviated in Russian as RPK was developed in mid-50’s when a national program on modernization of army weapons was launched. It was aimed to produce a reliable infantry assault rifle and a light machine gun which would be of a rather similar construction and with similar and interchangeable spare parts. A tender was held in 1961 to determine the best designed products. As a result the modernized AK-47 and unified with it RPK were introduced into the Soviet Army. By the way, speaking about its appearance in the movies, you should remember it from Rambo series.

4. Degtyaryov-Shpagin Large-Caliber (DShK) heavy anti-aircraft machine gun developed in the far 1938 is still in use. This weapon provided very fast fire but still with high accuracy which caused ti effective use in many campaigns from WW2 till Iraq in 2004. This was the gun John Rambo (him again) used to hit down enemy’s helicopters.

5. NSV heavy machine gun was a universal anti-infantry, anti-aircraft and anti-armored-carriers weapon designed in 1971 in order to replace DShK. Its production was ended immediately after the Collapse of the USSR. Now its modification is produced in Ukraine and several licenses for production have been sold abroad.

Tags: Top guns, Russian machine guns, Russian Arms, Military Technology