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Soft-Shelled Cantor’s Giant Turtle

Our weekly collaboration with Cellar Image of the Day brings us the image of this strange animal: a rare soft-shelled turtle called Cantor’s giant turtle.

A 24-pound female Cantor’s giant turtle — known for its rubbery skin and jaws powerful enough to crush bone — was captured and released by researchers in March, U.S.-based Conservation International and World Wildlife Fund said in a statement. …

The species can grow up to 6 feet in length and weigh more than 110 pounds. It was last spotted by scientists in the Cambodian wild in 2003. It also was found in small numbers in Laos, but appears to have disappeared from Vietnam and Thailand.

The turtle has a rubbery skin with ribs fused together to form a protective layer over its internal organs. It protects itself from predators by spending 95 percent of its life hidden in sand or mud with only its eyes and nose showing.

French Spiderman at Abu Dhabi

He lived in ABU DHABI (the skyscraper capital city of UAE...and the richest emirate of the GULF) for several years. I know ADIA is a tall building right on the Corniche)

Feb 23, 2007: French climber Alain Robert , aka the French Spiderman took on Abu Dhabi `s tallest building in front of a crowd numbering the tens of thousands without any safety mechanisms in place. Alain Robert completed the climb in only 20 minutes!!!!!

The audience cringed and cheered in fear and amazement as Robert scaled the 185 meters of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority building.

Alain Robert has also climbed the Sears Tower in Chicago, Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Eiffel Tower in Paris and Empire State Building in New York City.

World's Largest Digging Machine

This is the largest digging machine (or trencher or rotating shovel) in the world. It was built by Krupp and is shown here crossing a road in Germany on the way to its destination, an open air coal mine. Although at the mine the treads are unnecessary, it was cheaper to make the machine self-propelled than to try and move it with conventional hauling equipment. Some factoids:

* The machine is 95 meters high and 215 meters long (almost 2.5 football fields in length)
* Weight is 45,500 tons (that's equivalent to a bumper to bumper line of jeeps 80 miles long)
* It took 5 years to design and manufacture at a cost of $100 million
* Maximum digging speed is 10 meters per minute
* Can move more than 76,000 cubic meters of coal, rock,and earth per day

Burj Al Arab sailboat hotel looks like a boat sailing the ocean

Burj Al Arab Hotel in Dubail is the ONLY existing 7-star luxury hotel in the entire world.

Designed to resemble a billowing sail, the Burj Al Arab Hotel soars to a height of 321 meters or 1,053 feet, dominating the Dubai coastline. At night, Burj Al Arab hotel offers an unforgettable sight, surrounded by choreographed color sculptures of water and fire. This all-suite sailboat-looking hotel reflects the finest luxury that the world has to offer

Views from above the hotel




view from the front


from the beach


map of burj al arab location Burj Al Arab map

"Stunning" Buddha Art Found in Nepal Cliff

RELATED

* In the remote highlands of Nepal, a local shepherd has made some unusual "additions" to his flock—an international team of archaeologists.

The sheepherder recently led researchers to an isolated complex of caves containing a massive treasure trove of Buddhist art, including a 55-panel mural of Buddha's life, one panel of which is seen above.
The shepherd had made the discovery by chance while seeking shelter from a rainstorm decades ago. But he had missed the significance until making a passing mention to scientists.
A full expedition of scientists, art experts, and climbers from the U.S., Italy, and Nepal then climbed high into Nepal's mountainous Mustang area, some 250 kilometers (160 miles) northwest of Kathmandu, locating the caves in March .
It took ice axes and skillful mountaineering to clear a path to the caverns—set in a sheer 14,000-foot (4,300-meter) rock face in the Himalaya. But the results were more than worth it, experts say.
"What we found is fantastically rich in culture and heritage and goes to the 12th century or earlier," U.S. writer and conservationist Broughton Coburn told the Associated Press.
Included among the sprawling complex are manuscripts written in Tibetan, pre-Christian artifacts, pottery shards, and a number of smaller paintings.
The team plans to conduct limited excavations and search for additional archaeological sites nearby. But for now they have kept the site's exact location secret to prevent disturbances to the fragile artwork.
In the meantime there's still a lot of work to be done on the artifacts collected so far.
"Who lived in those caves? When were they there, when were [the caves] first excavated, and how did the residents access them, perched as they are on vertical cliffs?" Coburn said to BBC News.
"It's a compelling, marvelous mystery."

cylindrical aquarium

Placed at the lobby of the Radisson SAS Hotel in Berlin

the 25 meters high AquaDom is the largest cylindrical aquarium ever built.

Filled with about 900,000 liters of seawater

it contains some 2600 fish of 56 species.





Combined with a vast amount of sandblasted glass, the giant AquaDom gives a transparent-like feeling to the lobby Guests and visitors are able to travel through the aquarium in a glass-enclosed elevator to reach a sightseeing point and restaurant under the glass roof.

Two full-time divers are responsible for the care and feeding of the fish and maintenance of the aquarium.

Some of the interior rooms and suites look out over the atrium, offering "ocean views" of the AquaDom









Construction

The AquaDom was opened in December 2003. It cost about 12.8 million euros.

The acrylic glass cylinder was constructed by the U.S. company Reynolds Polymer Technology.

The outside cylinder was manufactured on-site from four pieces; the inside cylinder for the elevator was delivered in one piece The Aquadom is the largest acrylic glass cylinder in the world, with a diameter of over 11 meters built on a 9 meters tall concrete foundation.