Behind The Global Race To Contain China’s Killer Bug
President Xi Jinping’s government has cordoned off much of the central Chinese province of Hubei, practically blockading more than 50 million people, in the biggest large-scale quarantine in the modern era. The Politburo Standing Committee, the nation’s top decision making body, has taken charge of the crisis.

A Hot Bath Has Benefits Similar To Exercise
Many cultures swear by the benefits of a hot bath. But only recently has science began to understand how passive heating improves health. Cycling resulted in more calories being burned compared with a hot bath, but bathing resulted in about as many calories being burned as a half-hour walk.

The Internet Is Destroying Our Collective Attention Span
The length of time our “collective attention” is on any given event has grown shorter, and topics become popular and then drop out of public view at an accelerating rate. It’s no surprise if it feels harder and harder to dwell deeply on any topic.

How Shenzhen Is Fueling Ethiopia’s Burgeoning Startup Scene
As Shenzhen companies look to Africa for new consumer markets, African entrepreneurs are turning to Shenzhen for manufacturing partners to turn their ideas into reality. How the movers and shakers in Ethiopia’s burgeoning tech startup scene are tapping into the open source manufacturing ecosystem of China’s most entrepreneurial city.

Hicamp: Camping & Glamping Everywhere
Hicamp is an app that lets you book unique camping experiences on farms, ranches, vineyards and public parks across the country. Find undiscovered, one-of-a-kind camping destinations or visit tried and true staples.

Who Killed Two Journalists In Ukraine? And Why?
An investigation and trial has answered some of the questions about what happened to Andrei Mironov and the Italian photographer he was accompanying. Yet so much remains uncertain. Theirs is a story of the murky nature of facts in a war zone. It’s a story of elusive moral clarity in a land where death comes from who knows where.

The SoftBank Effect: How $100 Billion Left Workers In A Hole
Masayoshi Son, SoftBank’s chief executive, was hailed as a kingmaker in 2016 when he unveiled the Vision Fund. Using the cash hoard, Mr. Son poured money into fledgling companies across the world, many of which have a business model of hiring contractors who deliver their services. Above all, he urged these start-ups to grow as fast as possible.

“Il Capo”, A Striking Look At Marble Quarrying In The Italian Alps
Italian artist and filmmaker Yuri Ancarani captures the otherworldly landscape of Carrara’s marble quarries in the Apuan Alps, Northwest Italy, as Il Capo (The Chief) guides his men through the extraction process in this excerpt by Yuri Ancarani.

The Last Ship To St. Helena, A Remote Island In The Atlantic
Every third week, a British Royal Mail ship begins its journey from Cape Town to Saint Helena, the remote island in the Atlantic where Napoleon was once in exile. Five days, with a northwesterly course, and only then do the sheer black cliffs appear in front of RMS St. Helena.

Mining For Gold In The World’s Highest Permanent Human Settlement
High up in the Andes, La Rinconada is a place where people go to seek whatever fortune they can muster in the gold mines nestled there. Photographer James Whitlow Delano describes it as a place with no running water or sewage system, populated by about 30,000 to 50,000 inhabitants.

Hack Your Dreams: MIT Built A Wearable Glove To Encourage Lucid Dreaming
A team of scientists at MIT is building devices meant to monitor people’s sleep and influence their dreams. One device, called Dormio, is an “interactive social robot” designed to detect when the user is falling asleep and affect their dreams with audio cues.

Relax, Turn Off Your Phone, And Go To Sleep
Our devices are a gift that connect us to so many people and so much information, but they do not have to raise our anxiety and harm our all-important sleep. We need to control our devices, rather than letting them control us.

Why Do Pandemics Keep Happening?
From the black death to the coronavirus, this is what we need to think about in order to tackle pandemics. Bloomberg explains why pandemics keep happening in this 8-minute video.

David Altrath Photographs The Spectacular Stockholm Metro
German photographer David Altrath unveils the majestic underground tunnels and their stunning architectural and artistic detail that feature in Stockholm’s underground in his latest series, simply titled Metro.

Sweden’s Floating, Circular ‘Arctic Bath’ Hotel Opens On The Lule River
The unique Arctic Bath hotel, which was first announced in 2018, comprises a floating circular main building designed by architects Bertil Harström and Johan Kauppi to resemble a bird’s nest, accompanied by a series floating and land cabins around it.

How Campbell’s Soup Changed Tomatoes’ DNA For The Worse
The perfect tomato to eat is red, plump, juicy, and bursting with flavor. When mass-produced, tomatoes also have to be easy to remove from the vine. That is why the Campbell Soup Company cultivated a variety with a genetic mutation more than a half-century ago.

The Brazilian Town Where The American Confederacy Lives On
Confederates who had rejected Reconstruction fled the United States in the wake of the Civil War—a voluntary exile that American history has more or less erased. The Confederados in Americana, Brazil, are one of the last remaining enclaves of the children of the unreconstructed South.

Eating Chilies Cuts Risk Of Death From Heart Attack And Stroke
Chili has been hailed for its therapeutic properties, and now researchers have found that eating chili peppers regularly can cut the risk of death from heart disease and stroke. Researchers found that the risk of dying from a heart attack was 40% lower among those eating chili peppers at least four times per week.

Building Egypt’s $58BN New City In The Sand
Following a period of political instability that affected the progression of infrastructure projects, the country’s government took the decision to construct an entirely new capital in 2015. Located 45 kilometers east of the original Cairo, the as-yet-unnamed city has been under construction ever since.

Reversing Ageing: New Studies Show It Can Be Done
The Horvath clock is extremely accurate at predicting how old you are and can even predict when you’ll die. The clock itself is part of the aging mechanism, hence physically being able to dial back the hands of the clock could mean becoming physically younger.

Haunting Photos Of An Abandoned Italian Madhouse
When German-born photographer Andy Schwetz visited the Manicomio di Racconigi, an abandoned insane asylum in Italy, he was struck by the horror of the procedures performed there, from electroshock therapy to experimental operations.