12 Top World Building.

A look at 12 top world's buildings which is part of more than 300 projects in 33 categories that have been shortlisted in the World Architecture Festival Awards which takes place in Singapore, 3 - 5 October 2012. It will be judged in a live competition over the course of the three-day festival with the winners of each category competing for the World Building of the Year award.

Reflections at Keppel Bay is a two-million-sq-ft (93,000-sq-m) residential development in Singapore.

The Vanke Triple V Gallery is situated on the Dong Jiang Bay coast in Tianjin, China.

The iGuzzini Illuminazione Spain headquarters, by MiAS Arquitectes, is a research centre for the development of technical knowledge and expertise in lighting systems, the facilities for which are located both inside and outside the building.

The Cloud House, by McBride Charles Ryan, is an addition to a double-fronted Edwardian house in Fitzroy North, Melbourne, Australia.

The Paul S Russell MD Museum of Medical History and Innovation is located on a prominent site at the entry to the Massachusetts General Hospital’s downtown campus.

The Soweto Theatre, by Afritects, is in the heart of the culturally rich area of Jabulani precinct. The objectives of this project were to provide South Africa with a fitting and versatile venue for the arts.

The Soundforms shell, by BFLS, in London Docklands, is engineered to enhance classical and orchestral performances.

This retreat is an arrangement of freestanding structures around a courtyard above Matiatia Bay on Waiheke Island, New Zealand.

The Yurihonjo City Cultural Center, Japan, combines a theatre, library and community centre around an indoor “gathering street”.

Busan Cinema Center, designed by Coop Himmelblau, the architect’s first project in South Korea, has public and private areas overlapping.

Sven-Harry's art museum in Stockholm, Sweden, combines commercial activities on the ground floor with an art collection in the penthouse and hall in the core of the building.

In 2008 architects RYRA Studio designed this ski resort 1km (0.6 miles) from the Shemshak piste, 55 minutes drive from Tehran in Iran.

10 impressive images of rainbows.

We tend to associate rainbows with myth because they call to us with the promises of riches. But rainbows are not the only masterpieces that nature paints across the sky. There are also moonbows - a fainter arch or rainbow, formed by the moon, triple sunrises and even fog bows - a faint white or yellowish arc-shaped light, similar to a rainbow, that sometimes appears in fog opposite the sun. Also called seadog. Here are 10 impressive images of rainbows and their cousins.

Strictly defined, a rainbow is a band of colors formed by the reflection and refraction of the sun’s rays inside raindrops. But regardless of the science, there is an element of the fantastic to rainbows. While their colors include red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet, they are also made up of an infinite range of hues that the human eye cannot see. Rainbows can appear as multiples or even appear without color at all. If you can see the shadow of the back of your head after a storm, you are very likely to look up to a rainbow as well. Pictured here are a rainbow and its reflection over Malmesjaur in Moskosel, Lappland Sweden, as photographed on July 14, 2009.

At the same time, a rainbow truly is an individual experience. We see rainbows because the sun is behind us, reflecting sunlight off the rain, waterfall, mist, dew, or even a water fountain that is before us. But everyone sees their own individual rainbow according to their particular angle, light, and how their eyes interpret color. Combined, colors look white. Refracted, they are broken up into the blues, reds, and oranges we know. Pictured here is a double rainbow just before sunset over Castle Cornet, Guernsey, Great Britain. Double, or secondary, rainbows form when a beam of light is refracted twice.

Pictured here is a double rainbow over Morro Bay, Calif., taken June 24, 2010.

A rainbow forms when each tiny droplet of water disperses sunlight. The pattern of light is always the same in a primary rainbow because each color is reflected at its own particular wavelength. In a primary rainbow, the colors will be in the order of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. Or ROYGBIV. Red has the longest wavelength, with each color decreasing away from it. The colors seem to blend into each other because the light exits at different angles, rather than one unmoving angle. Here we see a supernumerary rainbow, an infrequent phenomenon that happens when faint rainbows are seen within the inner ring of a primary rainbow. Experts say that geometric optics does not fully explain the existence of supernumerary rainbows, which are likely created due to the varying wave nature of light.

When does the color scheme ROYGBIV get reversed? This will never happen in the primary rainbow, but a reflection might reverse the order of colors. NASA explains it this way: “multiple internal reflections inside water droplets sometimes make a secondary rainbow to become visible outside the first, with colors reversed.” Pictured here are multiple rainbows photographed in Norway on Sept. 12, 2007. The third rainbow (the one in between the primary and secondary ones) was caused by sunlight that had first reflected off the lake, according to NASA. If you look into the lake itself, you'll see three more reflections of rainbows.

There are many different kinds of rainbows. In addition to a primary rainbow, which is the most commonly seen, there are also secondary rainbows that occur when two reflections take place in a water droplet. Then there is the monochrome rainbow. These happen at sunrise or sunset, when the shorter blue and green wavelengths are scattered out before they reach the water droplets. Hence, the human eye sees only red. This unenhanced image was taken on July 6, 1980, just outside of Minneapolis, Minn.

A rainbow gets its traditional semicircle shape from the horizon, which makes it seem as if it is half a circle. So when the same atmospheric conditions that create a rainbow are observed from an airplane, a rainbow can appear to be a full circle. This is called a glory, which NASA defines as an optical phenomenon that “looks like small, circular rainbows of interlocking colors.” This glory was photographed from a plane over South Africa.

Rainbows aren’t the only atmospheric delights. Here we see a triple sunrise as photographed near Green Bay, Wisc., on Sept. 23, 2006. This was when the sun was rising due east on the Equinox. But these weird apparitions are actually more common than rainbows. “Produced by sunlight shining through common atmospheric ice crystals with hexagonal cross-sections,” NASA writes, “such halos can actually be seen more often than rainbows.” The two images on the right and left of the central sunrise are sundogs, which are extra-images of the sun created by falling ice crystals in the atmosphere.

Not all arches in the sky are filled with colors. Here we see a fog bow arcing over the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, Calif., on Nov. 15, 2006. The principle of formation for a fog bow is similar to a rainbow, as the fogbow is a reflection of sunlight. However, as NASA describes it, the lack of relative colors are due to the relatively smaller water drops. “The drops active above are so small that the quantum mechanical wavelength of light becomes important and smears out colors that would be created by larger rainbow water drops acting like small prisms reflecting sunlight,” writes NASA. The right end of the fog bow appears to dip right into the top of the Golden Gate Bridge.

Pictured here is a moonbow, also known as a lunar rainbow, as imaged on July 4, 2001, near Salt Pond Bay in St. John, Virgin Islands. Moonbows operate on the same principles as rainbows; however, they are possible because of the light of the moon instead of the sun. As moonlight is simply reflected sunlight, the colors of a moonbow are the same as a rainbow. Accordingly, as the sun is much brighter than the moon, moonbows are much fainter and rarer than rainbows. While they usually look white to the human eye, their colors can be discerned in long exposure photos.

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10 Most Amazing Airport Terminals.

Singapore Changi International Airport Terminal 3

Airport terminals aren't generally viewed as architectural wonders. The concrete boxes of the 1960s and '70s generally gave way to glass boxes in the '90s and '00s, with the best terminals making a vague stab at incorporating ideas of "light" and "air" -- or at least offering decent food that isn't a mile's walk from the gates.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, of course, and one person's perfect terminal is another's endless walkway of sorrows. Luckily, these ten airport terminals combine personality, functionality, and uniqueness to offer a great travel experience that starts the moment you get off the plane.

Jeddah Hajj Terminal, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

One of the world's most radical airport terminals is one most Americans are unlikely to ever travel through. The Jeddah Hajj Terminal is unique: it's only active during the "hajj," a religiously mandated pilgrimage to Mecca for Muslims. During that six-week period, it's one of the busiest airport terminals in the world.

The Hajj Terminal received the American Institute of Architects' 25-year award as a design that's stood the test of time: it's made of 210 open-air, white fiberglass tents which create a "chimney effect" that can cool the hot desert air by 50 degrees without expensive, hard-to-maintain air conditioning, according to a profile in the Architectural Record. The tents can contain 80,000 people, with flexible spaces devoted to very unusual activities for an airport terminal, such as changing clothes and ritual foot-washing.

Leif Eriksson Air Terminal, Keflavik, Iceland

Iceland's cozy little international airport looks like it arrived in a flat pack from IKEA. It's all blond wood and volcanic-looking stone with big windows looking out on the dramatic Icelandic landscape. There's a lot more wood in this airport than you'll find in most terminals, and instead of being a design accent near the ceiling (as in Madrid), it's on the floor, making the terminal feel much more natural and less sterile than usual.

The best buildings capture a bit of the soul of a place, and the Keflavik terminal does that perfectly: it's cozy (maybe a little too cozy in some of the gate areas), made of local materials, relatively spare and utterly embedded in the landscape. As a greeting to Iceland, it's perfect.

Seoul Incheon Airport, Incheon, South Korea

Scattered throughout the terminal like Easter eggs, you'll find hands-on Korean craft workshops, a dress-up area where you can take photos in traditional clothing, the best free Internet cafes you've ever seen (and yes, that's absolutely a bit of Korean culture), a museum, and plenty of places to take a comfortable nap. Want to try a traditional Korean bathhouse? Head to the basement. Plants and flowers keep up the impression that you're in a showplace for Korea's melding of history, art and technology, and not just a mere airport terminal.

Wellington Airport "Rock" Terminal, Wellington, New Zealand

Many people have called this the world's ugliest airport terminal. But there's a reason the new international terminal in Wellington has won enough awards to fill a jumbo jet. Like the Keflavik terminal above, it's an intelligent response to New Zealand's identity and landscape and not just another swooping glass box evoking "flight."

Opened last year, the Rock is a pair of egg-shaped buildings covered in copper plating that's designed to turn blue-green in the sea air. Inside, curving corners and geometric panels play peekaboo: the terminal packs double the passenger capacity of the previous terminal into the same space without feeling crowded. A plain box wouldn't have been able to do that.

JFK Terminal 5, New York, NY

Airport terminals don't usually age well. JFK's Terminal 5 is the exception. One of the greatest icons of the mid-20th Century Jet Age, Eero Saarinen's TWA terminal has been intelligently swallowed by the grasping tendrils of JetBlue's modern new terminal, which has by far the best airport food court in New York. So you get the best of both worlds: an AirTrain ride up to the home of "Catch Me If You Can" glamour followed by a smooth walk through a spacious, modern terminal.

Singapore Changi International Airport Terminal 3

This is the airport as amusement park. Singapore's three terminals are widely considered to be the most fun you can have in an airport, and each one has its attractions. Terminal 3 gets the nod, though, as it's the newest, with "an automatic light modulation system" to give the whole place a soothing, even, slightly unearthly glow.

Terminal 3 is home to Changi's butterfly garden, an 18-foot waterfall, a huge indoor playground, a movie theater, TV lounges and a four-story spiral slide that's a lot more fun than taking the elevator. The other terminals join in the theme of combining indoor and outdoor spaces, with more gardens and even an outdoor swimming pool available to the public.

Marrakech Menara Airport Terminal 1, Marrakech, Morocco

This one is another great example of culturally aware terminal design. The new Terminal 1 at Marrakech's airport looks like a Moroccan palace twenty-first-century style, with classic Islamic geometric and nature motifs inscribed into a giant network of concrete diamonds. You could make a strong argument that the whole thing is one giant artwork.

At night, colored lights dance along the front face of the building, illuminating the desert plantings along the arrivals roadway. A lounge inside evokes 19th-century Moroccan luxury, with rugs, chandeliers, and a wrought-metal dome.

Madrid Barajas Terminal 4

Designed by "starchitect" Richard Rogers, Madrid's huge Terminal 4 tries to break free of typical box-style construction by using a roof line of undulating ribs, which helped it win the 2006 Stirling Prize for architecture.

Terminal 4 comes with a strike against it: it's so long (especially when you include the integrated, but next-door Terminal 4S) that it can feel like it takes forever to get from gate to gate. But this is an unusually intelligently designed terminal: clear, color-coded signs group together directions for gates, and multi-level walkways reduce traffic on each individual level.

Carrasco International Airport, Montevideo, Uruguay

This isn't a busy airport, but it's designed as if it was one: the terminal is designed to handle 4.5 million passengers a year, according to one of the companies which built it but its traffic has been stable for years at a bit over a million. That means fewer crowds, and more appreciation of the elegant lines here as you glide through the terminal.

Bilbao Airport Main Terminal

Bilbao's terminal is known as "the dove," and it has Calatrava's signatures: sharply-canted curves and lots of light streaming through, and bisected by, ribs which resemble cables. A grand viewing gallery lets the families of arriving passengers see their loved ones as they pick up their bags.


Credit: frommers.com

Golden Poison Frog

Phyllobates terribilis

Phyllobates terribilis, the Golden Poison Frog or the Golden Dart Frog, is a poison dart frog endemic to the Pacific coast of Colombia. The optimal habitat of P. terribilis is the rainforest with high rain rates (5 m or more), altitude between 100–200 m, temperature of
at least 26 °C, and relative humidity of 80–90%. In the wild, P. terribilis is a social animal, living in groups of up to six individuals; however, captive terribilis can live in much larger groups than that. Terribilis are often considered innocuous due to their small size and bright colours; however wild specimens are lethally toxic. This poison dart frog is confirmed to have killed humans who touched the wild frog directly.

Poison

The Golden Poison Frog's skin is drenched in alkaloid poison, one of a number of poisons common to dart frogs (batrachotoxins) which prevents nerves from transmitting impulses, leaving the muscles in an inactive state of contraction. This can lead to heart failure or fibrillation. Alkaloid batrachotoxins can be stored by frogs for years after the frog is deprived of a food-based source, and such toxins do not readily deteriorate, even when transferred to another surface. Chickens and dogs have died from contact with a paper towel on which a frog had walked.

Like most poison dart frogs, the poison of P. terribilis is used only as a self-defense mechanism and not for killing prey. The golden poison frog is not venomous, but poisonous; venomous animals use their toxins to kill their prey. The most venomous animal is the box jellyfish, which is only slightly less toxic than P. terribilis.

The average dose carried will vary between locations, and consequent local diet, but the average wild P. terribilis is generally estimated to contain about one milligram of poison, enough to kill about 10,000 mice. This estimate will vary in turn, but most agree that this dose is enough to kill between 10 and 20 humans, which correlates to up to two African bull elephants. This is roughly 15,000 humans per gram.

This extraordinarily lethal poison is very rare. Batrachotoxin is only found[4] in three poisonous frogs from Colombia (genus Phyllobates) and three poisonous birds from Papua New Guinea: Pitohui dichrous, Pitohui kirhocephalus and Ifrita kowaldi. Other related toxins are Histrionicotoxin and Pumiliotoxin, which are found in frog species from the genus Dendrobates.

The golden poison frog, like most other poisonous frogs, stores its poison in skin glands. Due to their poison, the frogs taste vile to predators; P. terribilis poison kills whatever eats it, except for a snake, Liophis epinephelus. This snake is resistant to the frog's poison, but is not completely immune.

The poisonous frogs are perhaps the only creatures to be immune to this poison. Batrachotoxin attacks the sodium channels of the cells, but the frog has special sodium channels that the poison cannot harm.

Since easily purchasable foods such as fruit flies and extra-small crickets are not rich in the alkaloids required to produce batrachotoxins, captive frogs do not produce toxins and they eventually lose their toxicity in captivity. In fact, many hobbyists and herpetologists have reported that most dart frogs will not consume ants at all in captivity, though ants constitute the larger portion of their diet in the wild. This is likely due to the unavailability of the natural prey species of ants to captive frog keepers. Though all poison frogs lose their toxicity when deprived of certain foods, and captive-bred Golden Poison Frogs are born harmless, a wild-caught poison frog can retain alkaloids for years. It is not clear which prey species supplies the potent alkaloid that gives golden poison frogs their exceptionally high levels of toxicity, or whether the frogs modify another available toxin to produce a more efficient variant, as do some of the frog's cousins from the genus Dendrobates.

Thus, the high toxicity of P. terribilis appears to be due to the consumption of small insects or other arthropods, and one of these may truly be the most poisonous creature on Earth. Scientists have suggested that the crucial insect may be a small beetle from the family Melyridae. At least one species of these beetles produces the same toxin found in P. terribilis. The beetle family Melyridae is cosmopolitan. Its relatives in Colombian rainforests could be the source of the batrachotoxins found in the highly toxic Phyllobates frogs of that region.

Physical description

P. terribilis is the largest species of poison dart frog, and can reach a size of 55 mm in adulthood, with females typically being larger than males. Like all poison dart frogs, the adults are brightly colored, however they lack the dark spots present in many other dendrobatids. The frog's color pattern is aposematic (which is a warning pigmentation to warn predators of its toxicity). The frog has tiny adhesive disks in its toes which aid climbing of plants. It also has a bone plate in the lower jaw, which gives the frog the appearance of having teeth, a distinctive feature not observed in the other species of Phyllobates. The frog is normally diurnal (active during the day). Phyllobates terribilis occurs in three different color varieties or morphs:

Mint green

Mint green morph

This morph exists in the La Brea area of Colombia and is the most common form seen in captivity. The name mint green is actually rather misleading as the frogs of this morph can be metallic green, pale green, or white.

Yellow

The yellow morph of Phyllobates terribilis is the reason it has the common name golden poison dart frog. Yellow terribilis are found in Quebrada Guangui, Colombia. These frogs can be pale yellow to a deep, golden yellow color. A frog sold under the name "Gold terribilis" was once believed to be a deeper yellow terribilis. However, genetic tests have proven these frogs to be a uniform colored morph of Phyllobates bicolor.

Orange

While not as common as the other two morphs, orange terribilis exist in Colombia as well. They tend to be a metallic orange or yellow-orange color, with varying intensity.

Feeding

The main natural sources of food of P. terribilis are the ants in the genera Brachymyrmex and Paratrechina, but many kinds of insects and other small invertebrates can be devoured, specifically termites and beetles, which can easily be found on the rainforest floor. This frog is considered the most voracious of the dendrobatids.

In captivity, the frog is fed with Drosophila fruit flies, cochineals and crickets (Gryllidae), the larvae of various insects, and other small live invertebrate foods. An adult frog can eat food items much larger in relation to its size than most other dendrobatids.

Poison frog and the indigenous people

P. terribilis is a very important frog to the local indigenous cultures, such as the Choco Emberá people in Colombia's rainforest. The frog is the main source of the poison in the darts used by the natives to hunt their food.

The Emberá people carefully expose the frog to the heat of a fire, and the frog exudes small amounts of poisonous fluid. The tips of arrows and darts are soaked in the fluid, and keep their deadly effect for over two years.

Behaviour

P. terribilis is considered to be one of the most intelligent anurans. Like all poison dart frogs, captive terribilis can recognize human caregivers after exposure of a few weeks. Terribilis are also extremely succcessful tongue hunters, using their long, adhesive tongues to catch food, and almost never miss a strike. This success at tongue-hunting implies better brainpower and resolution on eyesight than some other frogs. Golden poison frogs are curious, bold, and seemingly aware of the fact that they are next to invulnerable, making no attept to conceal themselves and actually flaunting their beautiful colors to intimidate potential predators.

P. terribilis in captivity.

Golden poison frogs are social animals. Wild specimens typically live in groups of four to seven (average six); captive frogs can be kept in groups of 10 or even 15, although groups that rise past that number are extremely susceptible to aggression and disease. Like all poison dart frogs, terribilis are rarely aggressive towards members of their own species; however occasional minor squabbles may occur between members of the group. Being immune to their poison, golden poison frogs interact constantly with each other. They communicate not only with their calls, but also with gestures. Push-up movements are a sign of dominance, while lowered heads seem to signal submission. Phyllobates terribilis also tap their long middle toes as a sign of excitement. This is commonly seen while hunting and courting.

Like all members of the genera Phyllobates, Dendrobates, and Ranitomeya, family groups of golden poison dart frogs gather together in large breeding gatherings once or twice per year. While peaceful towards other terribilis at other times, the male frogs can be formidibly aggressive while competing for a breeding space. Females will remain fairly calm throughout this ordeal. Courtship for the golden poison frog is similar to that of the green and black poison dart frog. Its call consists of a rapid series of high-pitched squeaks. Golden poison frogs are notable for being extremely tactile during reproduction, each partner stroking their mate's head, back, flanks, and clocal areas before mating.

Terribilis are dedicated parents. The golden poison frogs lay their eggs on the ground, hidden beneath the leaf litter. Once the tadpoles emerge from their eggs, they stick themselves to the mucus on the backs of their parents. The adult frogs carry their young into the canopy, depositing them in the pools of water that accumulate in the centre of bromeliads. The tadpoles feed on algae and mosquito larae in the bromeliad, and their mother will even supplement their diet by laying infertile eggs into the water for the tadpoles to eat. Unlike with Oophaga pumilio, however, terribilis tadpoles can thrive on other foods and do not require their mother to feed them eggs.

Captive care

Like the other poison dart frogs, Phyllobates terribilis is harmless when raised away from its natural food source. They are a popular rainforest vivarium subject and are somewhat easier to feed than some dart frogs. Larger species of fruit flies, small crickets, waxworms, small mealworms, termites, and phoenix worms can be used if supplemented with calcium and other minerals. The temperature should be in the low to mid 20s (°C). They are sensitive to high heat and suffer from a condition called "wasting syndrome" if overheated for too long. They require high humidity as they come from one of the world's most humid rainforests. P. terribilis is not as territorial as most dart frogs and can successfully be kept in groups. However, they require a slightly larger enclosure due to their adult size, similar to the enclosure size used for Dendrobates tinctorius. Occasional disputes may occur, but injuries are rare, and deaths have not been reported as the result of such conflicts.

Horrible church sign photos.

Fostering a global conversation about the role of religion and belief in peoples' lives and since some people pastor for living, they have to promote their church to attract worshipers with billboards message that doesn't seem to be the real issue from the bible. The following church signs send to CNN iReport not only funny but also reveal no truth to their message.