Research published Wednesday in the journal Nature unveiled a stunning new map of the brain containing 180 areas, 97 of which were previously unknown. With data gathered by the latest technological advancements used in the Human Connectome Project by the National Institutes of Health, the team of researchers focused on the entirety of the brain versus one part of the cerebral cortex, including all four biological properties — architecture, connectively, function, topography — to develop the colorful map. Made possible by the 210 healthy, young adults who participated in the Human Connectome Project, brain images allowed the team to pay close attention to finer details of the human brain than…

For five minutes, the vortex will be home. It’s the retreat from the outside world, where the wind roars in from three different directions, where the salted ground passes inches below, at 150 mph, and a type of immortality beckons. Three feet in front of her, the Range Rover SVR will hurtle forward, displacing air currents and sending them backward, driver Shea Holbrook watching both the mirror and the fabled salt flats of Bonneville, Utah, as Denise Mueller attempts to claim territory no woman has ever set foot upon: the world bicycle speed record. That record is 167.944 mph, set in 1995 by Fred Rompelberg, a 49-year-old Dutchman. It previously…

Turkish citizens, already reeling from a recent devastating terrorist attack, and likely expecting another, were shocked to instead find the military on the streets after dinner Friday night. Suddenly, the nation’s airports and bridges were closed and the state media shutdown as one of the world’s largest armies seized the country with tanks and jets in tow. Helicopters flew overhead and blasts could be heard. The city of Istanbul, filled with 14 million people, previously buzzing with pedestrians and buses went into a frenzy as the military declared martial law. Bomb blasts shook windows. On a normally quiet street on the Asian side of Istanbul, gunshots could be heard close to midnight. Sonic booms used by militaries to…

Earlier this week, an enterprising Reddit user posted a graphic in the r/Movies subreddit that showed the correlation between box office performance of big-budget movies and their rating on the movie review aggregating site, Rotten Tomatoes. What we see here is pretty intuitive. Better movies make more money (and Kung Fu Panda will make money no matter what). But what then are we to make of the bad low-budget movies? What about the movies that cost a scant few million and actually take a chance at saying something bold? What about the movies that are simply misunderstood, but held hostage by a composite numerical score that does not explain the scope…

It’s not a new celebrity fitness craze. Have you noticed the trend of celebrity videos popping up online lately where someone films themselves doing 22 push ups? It turns out, it’s actually for a very important cause: raising awareness about the roughly 20 U.S. military veterans who commit suicide every day. Unlike the Ice Bucket Challenge, which has raised more than $115 million, the 22 Push Up Challenge effort isn’t raising any money yet … It’s simply trying to bring attention to an incredibly important mental health issue. Specifically, the group 22Kill says they have four primary goals: Raise awareness to veteran suicide and mental health issues such as PTS.…

It’s a trend that Portlandia takes great delight in mocking—in the U.S., we don’t let our bygone professions die in peace. Hand-churned butter, straight-razor shaves, and Polaroid photography all seemed gone, but they’re back with a nostalgic vengance. That’s why it’s a touch bittersweet to look at an industry that just didn’t warrant its own artisanal resurgence. All hail the disco ball.  In a little segment on NBC Nightly News, we get a chance to meet Yolanda “YoYo” Baker, toiling away in an obscure corner of Kentucky. Baker works for Omega National Products, the last American company still producing disco balls. It probably never occurs to most people just how much…

According to the United Nations, all we need to do to save the environment is scale back our workweek. Well, it’s a bit more complicated than that, but working fewer hours means reducing our consumption of raw materials and upping efficiency. In a report released by the U.N.’s International Resource Panel on Wednesday, we’ve tripled our use of raw materials over the past 40 years. But how much is that exactly? According to the report, 70 billion tons of raw materials were extracted from the Earth in 2010, a shocking increase compared to the 22 billion extracted in 1970. An expanding global middle class means we’ll have to drastically rethink…

Remember when putting the latest Black Eyed Peas song on your iPod felt like a scene from a sci-fi movie? These days, middle schoolers are taking it up a notch—actually, make that several notches. According to Mashable, 23-year-old African penguin Yellow Purple, known around the lab as Purps the Penguin, tussled with another bird in 2011 and injured her left leg. Since then, vets at the Mystic Aquarium in Mystic, Connecticut, have been bandaging her foot to manage the pain and help increase mobility.  With a little help from the high-tech students at Mystic Middle School, Mystic Aquarium and ACT Group were able to 3D print a new boot for…

There’s something fundamentally twisted—but definitely inevitable—about the idea of turning a Big Mac into high-end cuisine. If we’ve said goodbye to the Paris Hilton era of up-producing burgers by handing them to bikini-clad models, we’ve said hello to the slightly more respectable age of fast food foodie-fication. And so: Chef Jaimie van Heije rose to the challenge of serving refined fare using all the ingredients of McDonald’s famed sandwich but one.  Success? Of course, if the footage is to be believed. It’s hard to say exactly what the man made out of Big Mac parts (a steak tartare was incorporated to keep things classy), but he fell wisely back on…

It’s no secret that Kanye West enjoys his Mickey D’s—few other rappers have incorporated the words “fish filet” into a verse so smoothly—but this weekend, he fully admitted to his fast food obsession.  If you weren’t hiding under a rock, you probably caught wind of Frank new album “Blonde,” which dropped on Saturday. However, you might not have realized that Ocean released a zine on Saturday called “Boys Don’t Cry,” which features an absolutely bonkers ode to McDonald’s French fries written by none other than Kanye West. It goes like this: This poem should lead any reasonable person to conclude that McDonald’s manufactured the Kardashian clan as a marketing tool, starting with the incubation of…