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Medellín's tourist boom reached inside residential buildings
Short-term rentals brought visitors into apartment buildings in El Poblado, prompting complaints and city inspections. The economic tension is close to home:…
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Hudson Yards funded itself with future tax revenue
The city borrowed against property taxes it expected the development to generate in the future. Those projected taxes backed the bonds used to fund Hudson…
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Why older faces can trigger instant bias
You can form an impression of an older face before you know anything about the person wearing it. Age cues trigger learned expectations about ability, warmth,…
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A thousand tiny robots assembled a shape from local clues
Harvard’s 2014 Kilobot demonstration gave the swarm a target shape, then used simple rules and nearby signals to organize movement. Individual robots did not…
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Douro Valley volunteers crush wine grapes in granite lagares
Harvest volunteers crush the grapes barefoot in huge granite lagares, marching in rhythm to the harvest master's commands. Their legs can stay stained purple…
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Buhen fortress hoarding grain against Egyptian sieges
Buhen’s defenders needed food to outlast a siege, so the fortress stored grain behind moats, drawbridges, and arrow slits arranged for crossfire. The defenses…
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Connected trucks can share the decision to brake
In platooning systems, wireless communication passes information between vehicles so following trucks can respond in coordination. Closer spacing can reduce…
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Tokyo's tuna auctions use secret hand signals
At Tokyo’s Toyosu Market, licensed buyers use rapid-fire hand signals to bid on premium bluefin tuna. The auction moved there from the former Tsukiji Market.
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How the Dodgers reshaped Ohtani’s salary
Ohtani agreed to wait for nearly $700 million until his playing days are over. The delay lowers the contract’s present value—and the amount the Dodgers count…
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Why stadium crowds start to move as one
One section rises; the next sees it and follows. Because people copy what’s happening right beside them, a small patch of movement can spread through the…
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Brunton's earthquake-proof beacons modernizing Japan
Scottish engineer Richard Henry Brunton designed lighthouse foundations to absorb earthquake shocks, because rigid stone towers could crack when the ground…
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Neutron-star pasta is stronger than steel
Deep inside a neutron star, gravity crushes matter until atomic nuclei are squeezed into tangled shapes nicknamed nuclear pasta. Simulations suggest this…
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Rewarding effort, not just success, can train the brain to enjoy working hard
If every reward arrives only after a win, effort can start to feel like a miserable toll you pay for success. Recognizing persistence gives the work itself a…
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Titin proteins unravel like springs under muscle stress
When a muscle stretches, parts of the giant protein titin unfold one by one, absorbing energy instead of letting the tug hit all at once. They act like tiny…
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How Serial changed the podcast cold open
Sarah Koenig’s Serial helped popularize the true-crime cold open: starting with a gripping audio clip before listeners know its context, then revealing the…
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Why Argentina keeps printing pesos
Debt bills still come due when tax money isn’t enough, so Argentina’s government has leaned on the central bank to create pesos. That pays obligations, but…
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Feeling understood can make advice easier to hear
An immediate solution can sound like a judgment that the problem was simple all along. When the listener first recognizes what is difficult, the person…
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Inflammatory biomarkers track ICU survivor trauma
The end of an ICU stay does not always mean the body’s inflammatory activity has fully settled. Some proteins can remain elevated in the blood for weeks,…
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Why brain fog can linger after COVID
One proposed explanation is that lingering viral material may keep immune activity elevated, with inflammatory signals affecting brain function. Those signals…
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How Rotterdam cut truck wait times with algorithms
Port algorithms schedule trucks into appointment slots using terminal capacity, spreading arrivals instead of sending everyone to the gate at once. The aim is…
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Venus displayed a wave larger than a continent
Japan's Akatsuki spacecraft observed a bow-shaped atmospheric feature stretching about 10,000 kilometers in 2015. It stayed over the highlands while…
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Radar can map a landscape through cloud and darkness
Synthetic aperture radar sends out microwave pulses and builds an image from their echoes as the instrument moves. It supplies its own illumination instead of…
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The ketogenic diet was treating epilepsy a century ago
Used for epilepsy from 1921, the high-fat, very-low-carbohydrate approach changes the body's fuel supply toward ketones. Specialist-supervised dietary therapy…
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Magic: The Gathering color-codes cardboard value
Expansion symbols use black for common, silver for uncommon, and gold for rare, so you can spot a card’s rarity at a glance.
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