If you’re cruising down the highway and see an 18-wheeler pull up next to you with no driver in the front seat, don’t worry, it’s probably just a self-driving semi. Created by Otto, which was purchased by Uber earlier this year, these modified semis are designed to navigate the nation’s highways byways, no human required. Recently, Uber loaded up its first self-driving truck with 50,000 cans of Budweiser and sent it on a 120-mile run through Colorado from a brewery in Fort Collins to Colorado Springs. There are four major modifications that allow Uber’s trucks to drive themselves. Laser detection systems and radars are placed around the vehicle so it can sense its…

Winners have been announced for the annual photography exhibition hosted by the Royal Observatory Greenwich, and the results are beyond stunning. Chinese photographer Yu Jun’s mesmerizing photo, “Baily’s Beads,” won the Sun category as well as the overall competition, taking home a grand prize of £10,000. According to The Guardian, this stunning visual effect happens as a result of the moon passing over the sun, allowing beads of light to poke through in some places. By taking a series of photos and stacking them on top of one another with computer software, Yu Jun was able to show the total effect for one prize-winning image.     View the most gorgeous images…

When a young athlete has difficulty standing up, walking, or talking after a “hit” with another athlete, it’s easy to suspect a concussion. Often, however, such immediate symptoms don’t occur. A recent study in the journal Pediatrics suggested that more than half a million concussions in youth go unreported—and all too often, young athletes are asked to provide a self-evaluation mere seconds after a traumatic brain injury. Yet in most cases, the outward signs of concussion are subtle and easy to miss. When one occurs a few feet from the ball, that concussion can easily go unnoticed. The NFL and now the larger collegiate football conferences include spotters and a physician whose primary role is…

Embed from Getty Images     To prepare Qatar for the 2022 FIFA World Cup, more than 1.7 million migrant workers have worked on stadium and infrastructure projects that journalists and human rights groups say have been defined by systematic abuse, including forced labor that some call modern-day slavery. On Sunday night, a Bangladeshi migrant worker sued world soccer’s governing body for its role, according to The Guardian. It is the first time FIFA has been held accountable for Qatar’s labor system. FIFA sitting president Gianni Infantino, who arrived at the position after the ousting of Sepp Blatter last year, now has three weeks to accept complicity in the legal challenge, which was brought forth by…

“How are you feeling today?”  It’s a loaded question to say the least. To a stranger one might blindly respond, “great, thanks, how are you?” no matter the chaos one’s life may be in. To a friend, the reply might consist of a bit more information, sharing more happy, sad, or in-between emotions. But what is the response when you pose the question to yourself? One app is hoping to capture that answer and more.  How Is The World Feeling Today is hoping to track the emotions of 7 million people over a one-week period, starting Monday, October 10, which also happens to mark World Mental Health Day.  “Despite the increase in awareness of…

Ever since Gwyneth Paltrow announced that her baby’s name was Apple, it’s been a damn free-for-all out here. You can’t attend a toddler sing-a-long class without being introduced to someone’s son named Wood Chip, or something of that nature. Sure, anyone has the right to name their child whatever the hell they want. But at some point we are going to laugh at their choices. That’s exactly what happened to a woman who decided to name her child — wait for it — Squire Sebastian Senator. Yes, that is just the first name. No, her friends and family did not take it well. In fact, apparently they talked so much shit that the mother canceled…

For nearly 40 years, 70-year-old Nassib Soleh has descended almost every day to a rocky stretch of shoreline on Beirut’s western edge to swim near the famous Pigeon Rocks — or Raouché, as the locals know it — a pair of prominent offshore rock arches that are the city’s most recognizable natural vista. The sea has been privatized… it’s like people are kind of in a prison in Beirut. Soleh, the head of a nonprofit that works with developmentally disabled adults, joins a group of some 40 other swimmers — including engineers, lawyers, and blue-collar workers — who take their afternoon dip together at one of the few publicly accessible…

Click:ecolchi At the beginning of the year, Upworthy, our sister site, published a story about the final words of Holly Butcher, a woman who died of cancer at the young age of 27. In the days after her death, her powerful, life-affirming Facebook post had over 56,000 shares, but the word keeps spreading. Eleven months later, it has been shared an additional 110,000 times, so we’ve decided to repost Holly’s final words to keep them in people’s hearts and minds. On January 4, 2018, the world said goodbye to Holly Butcher, a 27-year-old woman from Grafton, Australia. Butcher had been battling Ewing’s sarcoma, a rare bone cancer that predominantly affects young people. In…

Christiana Figueres, former executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change—the person who led COP21 and the Paris Agreement—offered a “golden engraved invitation” to us all during a panel on climate action that I moderated at the Clinton Global Initiative. Ms. Figueres called upon the world to act with a sense of binding urgency and “swallow the alarm clock.” The Paris Agreement officially entered into force last Friday and today marked the opening of COP22 in Marrakech where world leaders are gathering to discuss implementation of the Paris Agreement. Solving for climate change will take incredible innovations across industries. Everyone needs to be at the table. In partnership with…

“You can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.” ― Anne Lamott A Twitter user has a problem with transgender folks because they “insult” god. But, if there is a god, how does she know that he or she has such a problem with them? The Bible says absolutely nothing about being transgendered. But there are many characters in the book that God loves who express their gender in ways that don’t necessarily align with their biological sex. Jay Michaelson points to the story of Jacob. So, Hodges can choose to view transgender people positively, but instead she…