Construction of the water link was started as early as in the 1930s but due to the World War 2 and subsequent division of Germany the work remained suspended till 1997. The aqueduct was finally completed and opened to the public in 2003.



























References:
Wikipedia
How Stuff Works
Wired/WiredScience
Rumormillnews

With most of us still struggling to adjust to “spring forward” daylight savings time, it’s hard to believe that some people may be blessed with the ability to thrive on only 4 hours of sleep.For a small group of people —perhaps just 1% to 3% of the population— sleep is a waste of time.

Natural "short sleepers," as they're officially known, are night owls and early birds simultaneously. They typically turn in well after midnight, then get up just a few hours later and barrel through the day without needing to take naps or load up on caffeine.

They are also energetic, outgoing, optimistic and ambitious, according to the few researchers who have studied them. The pattern sometimes starts in childhood and often runs in families.

While it's unclear if all short sleepers are high achievers, they do have more time in the day to do things, and keep finding more interesting things to do than sleep, often doing several things at once.

Nobody knows how many natural short sleepers are out there.Out of every 100 people who believe they only need five or six hours of sleep a night, only about five people really do, Dr. Buysse says. The rest end up chronically sleep deprived, part of the one-third of U.S. adults who get less than the recommended seven hours of sleep per night, according to a report last month by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Normal Sleeper
Most adults have normal sleep needs, functioning best with 7 to 9 hours of sleep, and about two-thirds of Americans regularly get it. Children fare better with 8 to 12 hours, and elderly people may need only 6 to 7.
Wannabe Short Sleeper
One-third of Americans are sleep-deprived, regularly getting less than 7 hours a night, which puts them at higher risk of diabetes, obesity, high blood pressure and other health problems.
Short Sleeper
Short sleepers, about 1% to 3% of the population, function well on less than 6 hours of sleep without being tired during the day. They tend to be unusually energetic and outgoing. Geneticists who spotted a gene variation in short sleepers were able to replicate it in mice—which needed less sleep than usual, too.

Dr. Ying-Hui Fu was part of a research team that discovered a gene variation, hDEC2, in a pair of short sleepers in 2009. They were studying extreme early birds when they noticed that two of their subjects, a mother and daughter, got up naturally about 4 a.m. but also went to bed past midnight.


Genetic analyses spotted one gene variation common to them both. The scientists were able to replicate the gene variation in a strain of mice and found that the mice needed less sleep than usual, too.

News of their finding spurred other people to write the team, saying they were natural short sleepers and volunteering to be studied. The researchers are recruiting more candidates and hope to find more gene variations they have in common.

To date, Dr. Jones says he has identified only about 20 true short sleepers, and he says they share some fascinating characteristics."Typically, at the end of a long, structured phone interview, they will admit that they've been texting and surfing the Internet and doing the crossword puzzle at the same time, all on less than six hours of sleep," says Dr. Jones.

References:
the globe and mail
rem sleep labs
Cnn
Scientific American
The Wall Street Journal

The Anechoic Chamber in the US is the world's quietest room where sound doesn't bounce off the walls the way it does in a regular room.But while the room promises to provide complete silence, it can't guarantee visitors will be at peace once inside.

The room is located in Orfield Laboratories in Minneapolis.

A typical quiet room you sleep in at night measures about 30 decibels. A normal conversation is about 60 decibels. This room has been measured at -9 decibels, the Minnesota Public Radio reported.

Orfield Labs uses the room to test products, including switches that go on car dashboards and the sound an LED display makes on a cell phone to make sure they're not too loud.

To get into the Anechoic Chamber, which holds a Guinness World Record, you go through two bank vault-like doors. The floor in the room is mesh like a trampoline so there's nothing on the floor for the sound to bounce off of. The walls are lined with sound-proofing wedges that are a meter long so they absorb the sound.

"When you sit in any rooms a person normally sits in, you hear the sound and all its reflections," said Steven Orfield, president of Orfield Labs.

"When you go into an Anechoic Chamber, there are zero reflections. So if you listen to me talk and hear my voice, you're hearing my voice exactly. And if I turn around and talk, the only thing you'll hear is the sound bending around my head," the Minnesota radio quoted him as saying.

Source

Here’s what you need
Let’s get to the fun stuff. In order to make a Naked Egg you will need the following items:

• Vinegar (at least 16 ounces)
• A couple of glasses or cups
• Raw eggs

The process is really very simple. Carefully place the egg in a cup and fill the cup with vinegar so that the egg is completely covered. Don’t worry if the egg floats a bit. Just get enough vinegar in the cup to mostly cover the egg.

An egg soaking in vinegar with part of it's shell dissolved.
Now the hard part – you will have to wait as the acetic acid in the vinegar begins to react with the calcium in the egg shell. In just a short while, you should see some bubbles appearing on the outside of the egg. These are bubbles of carbon dioxide gas from the reaction. It can take 12-24 hours before a good portion of the shell is removed. A good sign of progress is a white frothy scummy layer on the top of the surface of the vinegar.

After a day of soaking you can carefully remove the egg from the vinegar. I would suggest pouring the liquid into another cup and catching the egg in your hand. Using a spoon to fish the egg out might seem like a good idea, but I’ve seen a few eggs break or get damaged when using a spoon to remove them.
At this point you may be able to literally rub the shell off the egg with your fingers. It will rub off as a white powdery substance. Give it try, just be very careful, you don’t want to break the egg, it’s getting more fragile as the shell is slowly dissolved. Depending on your particular egg, you may already have a naked egg. However, I would suggest you fill a cup with fresh vinegar and soak the egg for at least one more day.

After two days of soaking you should have a pretty cool Naked Egg. Notice that the egg is a bit bigger than when you first started. This is because some of the vinegar (and some of the  water in the vinegar) has moved through the membranes to the inside of the egg. The membranes are semi-permeable and allow water to move through them. This is called osmosis.


Not Recommended !

 I would NOT recommend eating a naked egg prepared this way. Keep in mind you created your egg by soaking a raw egg in vinegar sitting at room temperature for a few days. That is not how to treat eggs you are going to eat! Even if you stored the egg in the refrigerator, I still would not recommend eating the raw egg.







A big thank you to one of our visitors who grabbed a great photo of what happens when you soak a naked egg in corn syrup for a few days. I might call it a “dehydrated naked egg.” And side-by-side is a brilliant red naked egg soaked in red food coloring.

The United States and Canada, by and large, have been peaceful neighbors — especially since Canada became a de facto independent nation under the British North America Act in 1867. But while the two nations are friendly and, typically, allies, things can change. And in 1927, the United States planned for just such a scenario.

At the time, Canada was still mostly under British control, and even though the United States and the United Kingdom were friendly — they fought on the same side in the Great War — things could always change. The U.S. was concerned that the UK’s imperial desires might extend back to the U.S., and the U.S. was not going to be caught unprepared. The U.S. Army developed “War Plan Red,” a comprehensive strategy to foil any British expansion into its long-former colony.

War Plan Red assumed that, in the case of war, Britain had two significant advantages. First, the British navy was a formidable force, able to control the seaways and therefore the U.S. export economy. Second, the UK controlled Canada, and could have used it as a staging ground for an invasion of the United States. The American plan was to strike Canada first.

Specifically, U.S. forces would invade Nova Scotia, hoping to take Halifax, which (American strategists assumed) would be the focal point for the British Navy in North America. If this failed, the U.S. would try to take New Brunswick, isolating Nova Scotia from the mainland. After securing that region, American forces would target Quebec City, further separating east from west; Ontario, taking control of much of Canada’s manufacturing (at the time); Winnipeg, a railway transit hub; and Vancouver, as part of a belt-and-suspenders approach toward controlling the ports. War Plan Red only laid plans for military action in the Western Hemisphere — America never intended to attack the British Isles. Rather, the plan was to hold Canada hostage, so to speak, in hopes that Britain would agree to a peace treaty to free its largest New World territory.

In 1974, the United States declassified War Plan Red. which created a minor ripple in U.S./Canadian relations — but it quickly passed.

(via)

Clean dirt and grime regularly off you’re numerical keypads otherwise it’s only a matter of time before a thief finds their way.

To see the fair market value for an item you want to purchase, run an advanced search on eBay checking only ‘completed listings’.

Report Text Message SPAM to your carrier by forwarding the messages to 7726 (S-P-A-M)

Re-heat pizza on the stove, not microwave

Capture fruit flies in your kitchen by taping a cone inside a cup filled with a banana slice and vinegar

Store your basement stuff on pallets to avoid water damage

 The position of a freeway’s exit sign often indicates whether the exit will be on the left or right

Take a picture of business cards. You will lose them, quit telling yourself otherwise

How to tell if jalapenos are hot or not 

Use bottle caps as your laptop’s “cooling pad”

Don’t waste money on “find my car” apps. Drop a pin as soon as you park. Instant waypoint