Famous for being home to one of the world’s top football teams, the Rio de Janeiro Carnival and the remarkable Iguazu Falls, Brazil is an exciting world travel destination. As South America’s largest country, Brazil covers a majority of the continent’s northeastern region and borders all of its countries except for Chile and Ecuador. From the Amazon rainforest in the North to the tropical beaches along the Atlantic, to the Pantanal wetlands and the vibrant metropolises of the Southeast there are plenty of interesting places to visit in Brazil.
Monthly Archives: December 2020
Walking Tour: ‘Meersburg’ On Lake Contance In Southwestern Germany
Meersburg is a town in the southwestern German state of Baden-Württemberg. On the shore of Lake Constance (Bodensee), it’s surrounded by vineyards. Medieval Meersburg Castle houses the Fortress Museum, showing a medieval living room and castle dungeon. Nearby, New Palace has baroque architecture and frescoes. Above town, the Droste Museum displays poet Annette von Droste-Hülshoff’s personal writings and belongings.
Medical Technology: The ‘3D-Printed Heart’ (Video)
Imagine having the option to get a 3D-printed organ. Well, a team of biomedical engineers from Carnegie Mellon University has just developed the first flexible, full-size, 3D-print of a human heart, bringing us one step closer to that reality.
Additive manufacturing printers are popular, but are typically known to build hard objects using materials like plastic or metal. But rigid plastic organs aren’t very practical. These printers could be used with softer materials, like biological hydrogels — you know, to make a heart — but those tend to collapse mid-print. But this new method can change the game.
The 3D-printing technique is called Freeform Reversible Embedding of Suspended Hydrogels or FRESH. It can print biological structures with soft squishy materials like alginate, a biomaterial made from seaweed, which feels like human tissue. AND it cleverly solves that collapsing problem during print by suspending flexible materials inside a container of gelatin.
For this team of researchers it all starts with a MRI scan from a real heart. The scan gets “chopped-up” digitally into horizontal slices by a program which then translates them into code that a printer will understand. A needle-like nozzle moves through the gelatin support bath, extruding thin layers of alginate. The layers stack on top of each other to build the shape. When the print is complete, it’s put in an incubator overnight, where the temperature is raised to 37°C to gently melt away the gelatin support structure, leaving only the 3D-printed heart.
Aerial Travel: ‘Toronto’ In Ontario, Canada (Video)
Toronto, the capital of the province of Ontario, is a major Canadian city along Lake Ontario’s northwestern shore. It’s a dynamic metropolis with a core of soaring skyscrapers, all dwarfed by the iconic, free-standing CN Tower. Toronto also has many green spaces, from the orderly oval of Queen’s Park to 400-acre High Park and its trails, sports facilities and zoo.
Morning News Podcast: President Trump Veto & Pardons, Winter Storms
President Trump vetoes bipartisan Defense bill, Christmas week winter storm will bring snow, high winds and heavy rain, and Boston startup delivering holiday spirit during pandemic.
Future Of Trucks: Inside The ‘Tesla Electric Semi’
The personal transportation industry has been shaken up over the past decade or so, with the introduction of electric cars proving to be more environmentally friendly, and importantly, cheaper to run, than their petrol or diesel counterparts. Bike manufacturers are also working on the transition in the motorcycle segment. While this change has been taking place, trucking has been continuing unchanged in the background. Our food, household goods, and even electric car parts, have been transported by diesel power just like they have been from the start, while the industry has grown to be worth $700 billion in the US alone, more than many of the world’s countries’ GDPs. With the huge weights involved, electrifying the trucking industry has taken a back seat due to the impracticality, but at the end of 2017, 3 years ago, Tesla announced plans to change this with the Semi, a fully electric truck designed to shake up the shipping industry. Why The Tesla Semi Is The Future of Trucks
Travel Guides: ‘Sapporo – Japan’ (Expedia Video)
Sapporo – From ski slopes to beer gardens, this dynamic destination is one of the best in Japan.
Sapporo, capital of the mountainous northern Japanese island of Hokkaido, is famous for its beer, skiing and annual Sapporo Snow Festival featuring enormous ice sculptures. The Sapporo Beer Museum traces the city’s brewing history and has tastings and a beer garden. Ski hills and jumps from the 1972 Winter Olympics are scattered within the city limits, and Niseko, a renowned ski resort, is nearby.
Autumn In Japan: ‘Tō-ji Temple’ In Kyoto (Video)
Tō-ji is a Shingon Buddhist temple in the Minami-ku ward of Kyoto, Japan. Founded in 796, it was one of the only three Buddhist temples allowed in the city at the time it became the capital of Japan.
Scandinavian Travel: ‘Helsinki & Southern Finland’ (Video)
Filmed and Edited by; Jan Fröjdman
Many of us hope for brighter times these days, on many levels…
Filmed in Helsinki and the southern part of Finland.
Helsinki, Finland’s southern capital, sits on a peninsula in the Gulf of Finland. Its central avenue, Mannerheimintie, is flanked by institutions including the National Museum, tracing Finnish history from the Stone Age to the present. Also on Mannerheimintie are the imposing Parliament House and Kiasma, a contemporary art museum. Ornate red-brick Uspenski Cathedral overlooks a harbor.
Aerial Travel Video: ‘Dallas – Texas’
Dallas, a modern metropolis in north Texas, is a commercial and cultural hub of the region. Downtown’s Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza commemorates the site of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination in 1963. In the Arts District, the Dallas Museum of Art and the Crow Collection of Asian Art cover thousands of years of art. The sleek Nasher Sculpture Center showcases contemporary sculpture.
Boomers Daily 