"This tutorial will show you the most basic and least equipment-heavy way of baking the concentric layer cake as seen in both the Earth cake and Jupiter cake. You can stop at half way and just make a hemisphere cake, or make two hemispheres and join them into one as in this video."
P.S. Neatorama's John Farrier spots Beth Klosterboer's Earth Cake with Rock Candy Core... 
"Corals and sponges are surprisingly mobile creatures, but their agonizingly slow movements are difficult to detect with the human eye. Now, using 150,000 photographs [here's] stunning macro timelapse [where] these subtle movements can be seen"
"According to the Guinea Pig Club's honorary secretary, Bob Marchant, who worked with the surgeon in the 1950s, it was his focus on young men's future lives, which paid dividends. "He not only treated them for burns, but also psychologically by getting them back into the community," he said. "There were a lot of wealthy people around here and McIndoe went out and asked them to invite the airmen into their homes. He also did the same in the pubs. "Eventually East Grinstead became known as the town that didn't stare."
Amazing and holistic healing innovations... Finally, 60 Minutes catches up with two Australian "Guinea Pigs" who met during recovery and are still best mates after all these years!
"As children’s play spaces evolve, the spirit behind the original 19th-century “sand garden” is on the rise again. [...] in 1885, one charitable group decided to offer something of an experiment to the local children: a pile of sand, deposited for the summer in the yard of a chapel on Parmenter Street. Little did any of them know how much it would change the experience of childhood in America. [...] The spot -- across the street from what is now the North End public library branch -- was an immediate hit with children, who spent long afternoons digging with small shovels and making sand pies. [...] Today, playgrounds look nothing like that simple sandpile. Over the next century, playgrounds were filled in with dangerous but thrilling monkey bars, swings, see-saws, and metal carousels, all on beds of dirt or asphalt. Then, starting in the 1980s, a new trend began, in which these sometimes rusty and risky structures were replaced by standardized plastic structures, the asphalt giving way to rubber matting. Modern playgrounds have become so predictable, cushioned, and programmed that they are now coming under attack as a symptom of everything that’s wrong with contemporary childhood. [...] The most ambitious play thinkers argue that the ultimate goal should be returning the places we live -- or at least neighborhoods -- to kids. [...] Not all opportunities for play, in other words, need to be look like playgrounds. They don’t necessarily need to be permanent, expensive, or complicated. As Johnson puts it, “We ought to have play that comes and goes. We ought to dump some sand piles in the summer.” What people thought children wanted in the 1880s, it turns out, might be the same thing they want today."Here's just a couple of the Globe's archival playground pictures!
The DailyMail shares Adam Pearson's OpEd TV's Beauty and the Beast star hopes to beat prejudice after big-screen debut... "My genetic condition, neurofibromatosis, causes excess body tissue and non-cancerous tumours. [...] As a teenager, I was called Elephant Man, Scarface and Quasimodo. All three of these film characters with a scar, mark or illness is either a victim or psychotic killer. I could probably act the part, but in real life I am neither of these things. It’s all about context. [...] What I hope I can do is help to create a society where grown-ups don’t hold these immature, naive prejudices."Towards this end, Adam supports Changing Faces and the Face Equality campaign...
"...calling for balanced portrayals of people with disfigurements in films. [...] James Partridge, CEO of Changing Faces, said: “We’re so used to seeing people with disfigurements portrayed as the villain in films that it may be hard for people to imagine they could ever play someone’s friend, the Dad picking up his kids from school, the US President, or a lover. [...] “The problem is that, for those who actually do have facial scars or whose faces are asymmetrical as a result of cancer, strokes or birth conditions, the way that people react in the cinema can spill over into the way they are treated in everyday life. It can encourage people to make moral judgements based on what they see on the screen."Here's the short film Leo to provoke thought... What did you think was going to happen?
"...enlightening visualizations of how history's most creative and influential figures structured their days. Unfortunately, there is no common prescription for the perfect schedule, and each person had a very different set of rituals. Based on the charts, we learn that some of history's icons had more eccentric habits than others."
"Here we present the results of a synchrotron-based study performing micrometre-resolution, time-resolved microtomography on the 145 Hz wingbeat of blowflies. These data represent the first four-dimensional visualizations of an organism's internal movements on sub-millisecond and micrometre scales. This technique allows us to visualize and measure the three-dimensional movements of five of the largest steering muscles, and to place these in the context of the deforming thoracic mechanism that the muscles actuate. Our visualizations show that the steering muscles operate through a diverse range of nonlinear mechanisms, revealing several unexpected features that could not have been identified using any other technique."Amazing work by the researchers, including Simon Walker, Daniel Schwyn, Rajmund Mokso, Martina Wicklein, Tonya Müller, Michael Doube, Marco Stampanoni, Holger Krapp, Graham Taylor! Here's the experimental setup...
Wired's Nicholas Tufnell notes that Neurosurgeons successfully implant 3D printed skull at the UMC Utrecht hospital... "A 22-year-old woman from the Netherlands who suffers from a chronic bone disorder -- which has increased the thickness of her skull from 1.5cm to 5cm, causing reduced eyesight and severe headaches -- has had the top section of her skull removed and replaced with a 3D printed implant. The operation, which took 23 hours, was led by Dr Bon Verweij. The patient's skull was so thick, that had the operation not been performed, serious brain damage or death may have occurred in the near future. [...] The lead surgeon had previous experience with 3D reconstructions of skulls, but such a large implant had never been accomplished before. "It is almost impossible to see that she's ever had surgery," said Dr Verweij in the university's official statement. It is hoped this technique can also be used for patients with other bone disorders or to repair severely damaged skulls after an accident or tumour.
And here's UMC Utrecht's surgery video...
"Debby Elnatan's young son, Rotem, has cerebral palsy. He has very limited mobility. She wanted to find a way to help him experience upright movement, so she invented the Upsee. It's a harness that straps a child to the legs and waist of an adult. Both the child and the adult wear sandals that are joined together and slip over their shoes. With the adult's assistance, the child can step, walk, dance and even kick. Both can keep their hands free while doing so. Elnatan took the Upsee to Leckey, a child accessory manufacturer in Lisburn, Northern Ireland. On Monday, the company released Upsee for global distribution."The DailyMail shares more parent+child experiences...
"Short-term, the Upsee improves special needs family participation and quality of life, while research suggests it has the potential to help with physical and emotional development in the longer term,' she said. 'It has been humbling to see the progress and happiness the Upsee is creating; watching children to do simple things for the first time such as kicking a ball or playing with a sibling is wonderful for everyone involved, but especially the families."
"Trampe is the world's first bicycle lift intended for urban areas. The prototype was built in 1993. During its 15 years of operation, Trampe pushed more than 200,000 cyclists up the 130m long hill Brubakken in Trondheim. Already from the beginning, it became one of the most popular tourist attractions."The creation and venture escalation story is compelling...
"The inventor of the Bicycle Lift [...] Jarle Wanvik, is a true bicycle enthusiast. He always finds an excuse for parking his car and using his bicycle instead. [...] In 1992, Wanvik got luminous visions about a bicycle lift that could carry cyclists uphill. Inspired by the ski lift technology, he visualized a lift design by which the cyclists could be pushed uphill without having to descend the bicycle. [...] Wanvik joined forces with the experienced mechanical engineer Stein Løvold and the electrical engineer Magnar Wahl. The local ski lift manufacturer, Protek AS, was picked to manufacture and assemble the world’s first bicycle lift. More than 2.000 people enjoyed the opening ceremony of Trampe on August 18 1993. 15 years and 220.000 trips later it was time to renew the lift. In 2010, the POMA GROUP contacted Design Management AS. After having tested Trampe they asked for a worldwide license. The license agreement was signed on the July 22 2011. Trampe had been authorized by DNV (Det Norske Veritas) in 1994. However, in spite of no accidents during 15 years of operation, International Cableway authorities claimed a more secure design for the next generation of lifts. The answer was CycloCable, a new bicycle lift developed by SKIRAIL (a company member of POMA GROUP), and Design Management AS. CycloCable is based upon the same patent as Trampe but with new, retractable foot plates. The CycloCable in Trondheim is the very first installation of its kind, so Trondheim keep on being the true pioneer of bicycle lifts."
"It is a danger hidden beneath the streets of New York City, unseen and rarely noticed: 6,302 miles of pipes transporting natural gas. [...] The perilous state of New York City’s underground network, one of the oldest in the country [is] a glaring example of America’s crumbling infrastructure. [...] Communities across the country have been struggling to replace thousands of miles of these old, metal pipes with pipes made of plastic or specially coated steel that are less prone to leakage. Few, however, face as daunting a challenge as New York City. To replace all of the old mains in its network right now would cost as much as $10 billion, Con Edison estimates. Much of that expense would fall on the residents and businesses that use the gas for heating and cooking. [...] “Some of this aging infrastructure has reached the end of its useful life” [...] “It’s a major ordeal in a city like New York to just start digging things up.”Yikes, surely there's a better way to design, build, and maintain cities?! Here's the mess below as visualized by Larry Buchanan's infographic and Robert Stolarik's photos...
"When a global effort to end polio was launched in 1988, the disease crippled more than 200,000 children every year in India. Almost two decades later, in 2009, India still reported half of the world's new cases -- 741 out of 1,604. India has millions of poor and uneducated people. The population is booming. Large areas lack hygiene and good sanitation, and polio spreads through contaminated water. Many health experts predicted India would be the last country in the world to get rid of polio. They were wrong."
