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11/09/2023

A globular cluster glitters with starlight in a new photo from the Hubble Space Telescope.

Located 15,000 light-years from Earth, the globular cluster — formally known as Terzan 12 — is nestled deep in our Milky Way galaxy, in the constellation of Sagittarius. A globular cluster contains hundreds of thousands to millions of stars tightly bound together by gravity, causing the large structures to appear spherical when viewed from Earth.

17/08/2023

Linda Lowther, a PEI tourism consultant who became the Island Walk's first manager, led a team whose job, she explained, "was to make the Island Walk a reality". They built a website, designed a logo and brochure, and planned signs marking the route. Lowther began contacting motels, inns and B&Bs to recruit them as partners who would house, feed and potentially transport Island Walkers. "I personally called every single accommodation within a kilometre of the Walk," she said.

But in early 2020, responding to the Covid-19 pandemic, PEI closed its borders, putting the project on hold.

The following year, though, the first walkers began planning their travels, using information from the new website and from the Island Walk page. Lowther said she joined many of those walkers as they passed through the town of Cavendish where she lives. She wanted to learn what was and wasn't working. "Ninety-nine percent of them loved everything," she noted. "They just wish we had more bathrooms."

03/08/2023

Attend an Italian feast

Every summer, the North End's religious fervour and community spirit are on full display at the neighbourhood's Italian Feasts, each celebrating a different Catholic saint. Depasquale asserts that these feasts are the quintessential North End experience, bringing together food, faith and fun in a festive community tradition.

Lights and banners hang across the streets, which are packed with food stalls serving Italian sausage, fried calamari and gelato, plus fairground games and live entertainment. The highlight of each festival is the Grand Procession, when believers carry a statue of the honoured saint through the crowded streets, followed by marching bands and celebratory floats.

20/07/2023

Bogotá, Colombia

While Bogotá (and Colombia in general) has always had a strong bicycling culture, with cycling as the country's national sport, the pandemic accelerated many car-free changes. In 2020, Mayor Claudia Lopez designated an additional 84km of temporary bike lanes to the city's existing 550km Ciclorruta bike path network – already one of the largest in the world – and they have since become permanent.

Bogotá was among the first cities globally to add "pop-up" cycle lanes during the pandemic, and residents have noticed the permanent changes have been for the better. "The city has really started to develop a noticeable Amsterdam and Copenhagen vibe over the last few years," said Alex Gillard, founder of Nomad Nature Travel blog and who lived in Bogotá on and off during the pandemic. "There are so many bikes on the streets at all hours of the day, it is quite inspiring."

On Sundays and public holidays, cars are completely banned from certain routes in a programme known as the Ciclovia, attracting more than 1.5 million cyclists, pedestrians and joggers each week.

12/07/2023

From Aeronaut to Trillium to Notch, Boston's beer scene runs much deeper than just Sam Adams.

In 1984, Jim Koch perfected his great-grandfather's lager recipe and created The Boston Beer Company. His signature beer, Samuel Adams, was named after one of the leaders of the American Revolution, and would soon sweep across the US and pioneer the market for craft beer.

Today, there are more than 130 breweries in Massachusetts alone, with many of those operations in or around Boston. Some, like Trillium, which was named the fourth-best brewer in the world by the global craft beer site Rate Beer in 2020, have reaped accolades for their potent New England-style IPAs. Other establishments, like Bone Up Brewing Company in the nearby town of Everett's burgeoning Fermentation District, are a must-stop for lovers of malt and barley.

According to Chad Brodsky, founder of City Brew Tours, Boston's storied beer history runs deep. "Prior to Prohibition [1920-1933], there were 30-plus breweries solely in [Boston's] Jamaica Plain, including the historic Haffenreffer Brewery, down the block from Sam Adams," he explained.

Brodsky knows a thing or two about the beverage, having started his company in 2008 in Burlington, Vermont. City Brew Tours now operates in 21 cities, including Boston. On Brodsky's tours that take in three or four Boston-area breweries, expert guides show you behind the scenes of each operation, where you learn about the craft of brewing, and – of course – taste their wares.

05/07/2023

What’s happening?

Though these videos take different forms – filming workers’ departures on a live Zoom call, or documenting the second they turn in a letter of resignation – each clip captures the real-time moment when workers quit.

In September 2022, Christina Zumbo, 31, a now-former Australian government worker, shared the moment she clicked send on her resignation email, and waited anxiously for a video call from her boss. Zumbo, who had already shared glimpses of work-related mental health struggles with her 140,000 TikTok followers, said she felt others on the platform would relate to the post.

“I really struggled with making this decision to leave, feeling like I was letting my team and manager down, and the thought of being without work without something lined up, into a tumultuous job market at the time,” she says. “I decided to share this journey online because it simply isn’t talked about enough.”

But even she was surprised by the overwhelming response, with 53,000 likes and nearly 3,000 comments on the short clip. “I had no idea so many people would see, relate and share their own stories – or their fear of leaving their current workplace, or their strong desire to do what I did,” says Brisbane-based Zumbo. “It’s always surprising in the best way, the sense of community you feel if you open yourself up to showing real, relatable vulnerability online.”

30/06/2023

The most dramatic and memorable episodes of sleep paralysis are normally those that come with vivid hallucinations. Usually these nocturnal visions are a source of fear, but scientists also think they can tell us fascinating things about the human brain.

When you enter sleep paralysis, your brain's motor cortex starts sending signals to the body, telling it to move. But the muscles are paralysed, and so the brain does not get any feedback signals in return. "There's an incongruence … the self is broken up, degraded," says Jalal. As a result, the brain "fills in the gap", and creates its own explanation for why the muscles cannot move. That's why so many hallucinations involve a creature sitting on your chest or holding your body down.

It reinforces the idea, popular among evolutionary scientists, of the human brain as a "storytelling machine". We struggle to accept the fact that much of the world is random, and so our brain devises dramatic narratives in an effort to find meaning in the mundane.

Christopher French, head of the anomalistic psychology research unit at Goldsmiths, University of London, has spent more than a decade speaking to people across the world who have experienced these hallucinations, and recording what they saw. "There are common themes, but there's also a huge amount of idiosyncrasy, variability," French says.

Some hallucinations are difficult to explain – and even downright bizarre. Over the years French has recorded sightings of a sinister-looking black cat, and a man being strangled by plants. But others are far more common and seem to be heavily influenced by culture. In Canada's Newfoundland, it's common to see an "Old Hag" sitting on your chest. Mexicans report a "dead man" lying on their chest, whilst St Lucians speak of "kokma", the souls of unbaptised children, strangling them in their sleep. Turks describe the "Karabasan" – a mysterious, ghostly creature. Italians often hallucinate witches.

27/06/2023

According to Radhakrishnan, there have been several plans to shut down this train service due to it being uneconomical. But it is such an integral part of Ooty's tourism sector that these plans get squashed as soon as they are mooted. "Many people come here only for a ride on this train, and it is impossible to think of Ooty without the NMR," he said.

When we finally pulled into Mettupalayam, four calm and relaxing hours after leaving Ooty, I recalled something that Rao had told me: "Travel on this train is a throwback to gentler times."

I found it to be an antidote to the stress and strife of everyday life, and as my own mind slowed to match the speed of the train, it was exactly the kind of throwback I needed.

Rail Journeys is a BBC Travel series that celebrates the world's most interesting train rides and inspires readers to travel overland.

23/06/2023

The hot phase, called El Niño, occurs every two to seven years and sees warm waters come to the surface off the coast of South America and spread across the ocean pushing significant amounts of heat up into the atmosphere.

Record warm years, including 2016, the world's hottest on record, usually happen the year after a powerful El Niño event.

Weather agencies around the world use different criteria to decide when this hot phase is upon us.

For scientists in the US, their definition requires the ocean to be 0.5C hotter than normal for a month, the atmosphere must be seen to be responding to this heat and there must be evidence the event is persisting.

These conditions were met in the month of May. In a statement, US National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said that "El Niño conditions are present".

"This is a very weak signal. But we believe that we're starting to see these conditions and that they will continue to intensify," said Michelle L'Heureux, a scientist with NOAA.

"Our weekly value is actually 0.8C this past week, which is even stronger."

20/06/2023

The Prince and Princess of Wales have visited a charity that works with young people at risk of urban violence, as their US trip continues.

They are in America to hand out awards for their Earthshot Prize - given to innovative ideas for the environment.

But the trip risks being overshadowed by a racism row involving Prince William's godmother.

Lady Susan Hussey resigned after asking a black British charity boss where she was "really" from.

Prince William's spokesperson has said "racism has no place in our society".

15/06/2023

How does CaSSIS work?
The team selects specific targets from a database before capturing them.

CaSSIS flies over the surface at about 3km/s, so the images have to be taken very quickly. The exposure time for the images is only 1.5ms.

"We get around 4.5m per pixel on the surface from a distance of about 400 km - so it is a little like looking at a bus in London from Liverpool," Prof Thomas explains.

The camera uses false-colour imagery to enrich its findings.

The colours differ from how they would appear to the human eye, but it helps the CaSSIS team search for different minerals that reflect sunlight in different colours.

"We wanted CaSSIS to do science so we decided not to put simple red, green and blue colours into the camera system, but optimise the colours for science return," Prof Thomas added.

06/06/2023

Freshwater mussels at risk of extinction have started reproducing for the first time in 13 years.

Conservationists have been monitoring the River Irt which is home to the "critically endangered" population of about 300 mussels.

Only a handful of freshwater shellfish populations remain in England.

Chris West from West Cumbria Rivers Trust said it was "thrilling" and "heartening" to find evidence the species was reproducing.

05/06/2023

Ron DeSantis is expected to launch his 2024 bid for the Republican presidential nomination in a live interview on Elon Musk's Twitter on Wednesday.

In doing so, the Florida governor is bypassing more traditional methods of kicking off a campaign, such as an in-person rally, a big TV interview or a slickly produced online video.

While he will eventually do all of these, opting for Twitter as his first choice makes a notable statement about the kind of campaign he will run - and the type of supporter he hopes to prioritise.

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