What Does A Bored Astronaut Do In Space?

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Planning recreational events is a tough job. Entertainment is not just a hot topic on earth but also in space. Don’t you want to know what astronauts do when they feeling bored in space? Samantha Cristoforetti sheds some light on this topic. The Italian who came back to earth recently shared her experience regarding the various activities out there in space.

She has spent the longest time in space than any other woman on a single mission.

Here's a list of six things Samantha has been doing during her extraordinary time in space.

Exploring science

Samantha has been on the ISS with her crew mates, Anton Shkaplerov and Terry Virts, the commander of Expedition 43. The ISS offers three state-of-the-art laboratories where research and experiments can be done without gravity.

Cook and cook!

Whilst on the ISS, Samantha showed us how she manages to cook one of her bonus food recipes in micro-gravity; a quinoa salad with dried tomatoes, mackerel and leek cream, all wrapped in a warm tortilla.

Exercise

Samantha was on the ISS for nearly seven months and the only way to keep an astronaut's muscles and body active is by visiting the 'space gym'.

Hair cuts

Samantha got a haircut on the ISS by her Nasa colleague Terry Virts while cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov had to hold a vacuum cleaner, making sure that no hair cuttings float off.

Reading rhymes

One of Samantha's favorite hobbies in space was reading out rhymes with a inter-galactic twist.

World watching

Not many people have had the lucky opportunity to live on the International Space Station.

The astronauts on the Space Station spend as much time as possible working on science.

Twitter Feeling The Heat From Messaging Apps - No 140 Character Limit For Direct Messages

This article was published in foxnews.com
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Twitter is all set to remove the 140 character limit on the Direct Messages option. The changes will begin next month onward.

However, the public tweeting limit remains the same;140 characters.

Looks like the company is in stiff competition with direct message applications and hence is all set to dive deeper into this segment. As of now there are a number of options in popular messaging apps and the company aims to bring in some unique features so create a loyal customer base.

This latest change is one of several made to the private messaging element of the app in recent months, and looks set to help Twitter compete more effectively with the myriad of popular messaging apps already on the market.

Earlier this year, the San Francisco-based company announced support for group messaging up to 20 users, while more recently it allowed users to opt in to receiving DMs from any other Twitter user. Before that, DMs could only be sent between two people who already followed each other.

Twitter's decision to ditch the limit for DMs makes sense, though some may wonder why it wasn't done earlier.

Customer service agents, for example, will find the change useful, as they'll now be able to engage more freely and naturally when contacting a user about a particular issue, and no longer have to knock out a detailed response across several messages.

"We've done a lot to improve Direct Messages over the past year and have much more exciting work on the horizon," Twitter's Sachin Agarwal said in the message to developers.

Holy Cow! Spider Rain In Australia! Ever Heard Such A Thing?

This news is dated 18th May, 2015 (published by The Sydney Morning Herald). 

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It seems like the biggest nightmare  you thought of is true now!  Baby Spider rain!! Eeeksss!

But yes, it is true and has happened in Australia. The whole area in Southern Tablelands of Australia looks like a giant spider web. The numbers range in millions. It seems like a spider attach from nature's side and the residents are scared.

Experts are debating on various theories and possibilities and there is hope that this mass migration will disperse on its own.

Naturalist Martyn Robinson from the Australian Museum said two migration techniques associated with spiders would explain why locals might have thought it was raining spiders.

The first, a dispersal technique called "ballooning", is more commonly used by baby spiders, although some adults use it as well. The spider climbs to the top of vegetation and releases a streamer of silk that catches on the breeze and carries the spider aloft.

Spiders have been caught flying like this up to three kilometers above the ground, Robinson said.

"They can literally travel for kilometers … which is why every continent has spiders. Even in Antarctica they regularly turn up but just die," he said.

"That's also why the first land animals to arrive on new islands formed by volcanic activity are usually spiders."

In some years, the mass migration of baby spiders means "you can have entire fields and paddocks and trees festooned with this gossamer or Angel Hair, as some people call it," he said.

Gossamer is a non-adhesive silk that snags easily, one of nine different kinds of silks produced by spiders.