The largest urban bat colony in North America roosts beneath the Congress Avenue Bridge in the heart of Austin, Texas. More than 1.5 million bats reside under the bridge in the summer. We asked one of the area's leading experts about some of the common misconceptions surrounding the species.
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Facebook has a lot more to offer than you may think. From 'pirate language' to turning all baby photos into cute kittens, these 7 features will improve your daily Facebook experience.
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Veganism is catching on. So much so that Chipotle even started cashing in on the trendy diet with its tofu-based sofritas.
Ever since celebrity endorsements started pouring out about animal-product-free dining almost a decade ago, Los Angeles has been seen as the epicenter of the movement.
America's first vegan restaurant even opened on Sunset Boulevard in 1969, attracting legends such as Marlon Brando and John Lennon.
And as veganism keeps growing, the dining options just keep getting better and better.
Here are the 10 best vegan restaurants in LA, compiled by our friends at Yelp.
Carnivores shouldn't shy away from Veggie Grill. Yelp users rave about their satisfying vegetarian meat, especially the chickn.
"So, have no fear, Veggie Grill would put your meat free meal or substitute meat nightmares to rest," Yelp user Whitney P. wrote. "I ordered one of the entrée salads with some sort of imitation chicken on it and my fiancé got the same but with faux steak. Both were surprisingly amazing, but the chicken was better."
Note: Yelp's search results are based on an algorithm that is designed to provide the best results based on a number of different factors including review text, ratings, and number of reviews. Because several factors are taken into account, this is why you may see a 3.5-star restaurant with 500 reviews showing above a 4-star one with 15 reviews.
This small Latin restaurant has a great atmosphere with live music and excellent pupusas and tacos.
"This place is amazing. I had a flower papusa, plantains, and a mango coconut smoothie. Everything was delicious," Yelper R.J. wrote. "The papusa was homemade and fresh with salty cheese, and the mango coconut smoothie wasn't loaded up with sugar, it simply contained those two ingredients. The wait staff was very friendly."
Note: Yelp's search results are based on an algorithm that is designed to provide the best results based on a number of different factors including review text, ratings, and number of reviews. Because several factors are taken into account, this is why you may see a 3.5-star restaurant with 500 reviews showing above a 4-star one with 15 reviews.
With locations across the West Coast, this restaurant has an expansive menu that includes meals like a Bistro Steak Sandwich and Chicken Run Ranch Burger.
"Vegans are modern day tricksters. All of which I am amazed by with every visit," Jessica Y. wrote. "There is a lot of thought that goes behind the dishes to make Vegan food not only delicious, but appealing to the regular restaurant-goer. I'm seriously a meat lover, and now a vegan food lover."
Note: Yelp's search results are based on an algorithm that is designed to provide the best results based on a number of different factors including review text, ratings, and number of reviews. Because several factors are taken into account, this is why you may see a 3.5-star restaurant with 500 reviews showing above a 4-star one with 15 reviews.
It could be easy to assume that those living on the streets of New York City don't own any gadgets, but that's not always the case.
Over the course of two weeks last year, we interviewed dozens of homeless people to find out what kind of consumer electronics they own — and more importantly, what they use them for.
From laptops and iPhones, to government-provided phones, it quickly became clear that many homeless people use gadgets to stay connected, search for jobs, and pursue their own creative interests.
Note: All people shown have given their permission for us to take their picture, though some requested we not show their faces.
Imagine getting up from your couch, looking out the window, and seeing this in the front yard.
It happened in Rockaway, NJ and one brave soul in the neighborhood got out his phone to capture everything on camera. The Daily Record reports that the two bears started fighting in an area they think is between two large forests.
They talked to the Department of Environmental Protection to try and get to the bottom of this battle. They said it appears to be a fight between two male bears.
It began in what appears to be someone's backyard.
Followed by an epic standoff on the stairway.
Before moving to the street for the big battle royale.
The Daily Record notes that the Department of Environmental Protection told them that fights like these between animals is not rare. The location, however, is certainly out of the ordinary.
Watch the whole epic battle as it was posted on YouTube by user J Domzalski:
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So many of us use Gmail, but there's a lot you don't know about it. Here are some tips.
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Flu season has arrived and all eyes will be turning to Google's Flu prediction tool, which warns where the flu will hit next by watching people's internet searches.
Google Flu was hailed as the shining example of how big data could be put to use for the public good when Google first launched it in 2008.
And it worked well back then. Google compared its predictions against the cases that the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) confirmed and its predictions were pretty darn close.
But something went horribly wrong over the past two years, with Google over predicting the number of flu cases by 75% to 95%, the Wall Street Journal reports.
The flu season was bad last year, but nearly not as bad as Google thought it would be.
Essentially what happened was this, Google admitted in a blog post on Friday:
When the flu hit, the media wrote stories about the flu and then people to jumped on Google and start searching about the flu. That caused Google Flu to predict huge outbreaks of the flu which caused the media to write even more stories about the flu, using the Google Flu prediction engine as a source ... and so on.
Google also made another mistake with the tool. It only looked at the year-earlier CDC data once. As the CDC started reporting actual cases, Google didn't keep using the CDC data to check the accuracy of its predictions.
Google says it has updated the tool and will now be using actual CDC data all season long.
The good news is that both Google and the CDC say that flu cases are low so far this season. But it's early days yet and there are signs that the flu is starting to hit, the CDC says. Last year, the flu hit epidemic levels in some places in January.
The CDC recommends getting a flu vaccine and if you are thinking about getting one, now would be a pretty good time.
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The Harvard Crimson has a great long look at the differences between the Cambridge, Massachusetts Ivy League stalwart and its cross-coast competitor, Stanford University.
What the growing rivalry between the schools might boil down to, though, is a stark difference in educational philosophy.
While Stanford is certainly the hottest school in the country right now — with its engineering prowess leading to a near-domination of Silicon Valley — Harvard is playing catch up, The Crimson reports, and "is positioning itself to be the leader in education and research in the 21st century."
The difference between the two educational juggernauts is fairly simple — Harvard has a focus on intellectual growth, while Stanford seeks to give its students more practical knowledge. As Meg P. Bernhard at The Crimson writes:
Stanford's objective to "qualify its students for personal success, and direct usefulness in life," as stated in its founding grant, differs greatly than that of Harvard, which according to University literature, focuses primarily on the advancement of knowledge.
... Harvard focuses not so much on the application of education, but, as Harvard President Drew G. Faust wrote in an official capital campaign message, on the discovery of knowledge and the education of future leaders. The University remains true to its founding charter from 1650, part of which emphasizes the "advancement and education of youth in all manner of good literature, arts, and sciences."
A Stanford computer science major offers a more real-life example — "We see Harvard as more focused on theory, the softer side ... Even in computer science, there's a lot more focus on how you do things as opposed to Stanford, which focuses a lot more on the practicality," he told The Crimson.
This philosophical difference could be a reason why many Stanford students are finding early prominence in Silicon Valley. According to The Crimson, "at Stanford, the culture of looking forward is amplified by the successes of current students, not just graduates."
As one Stanford history professor told The Crimson, "Every time a Stanford student reads that someone he met at a frat party just sold a startup for $1 million—and that happens a lot here—it dribbles a few more toxic drops into the water ... It shapes students' aspirations."
Read more about the differences between Harvard and Stanford at The Harvard Crimson >>
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If you are buying a new iPhone, don't use it in bed — and not just because nighttime smartphone use messes up your sleep cycle.
The blue light from personal electronic devices has also been linked to serious physical and mental health problems.
Blue light is part of the full light spectrum, which means we're exposed to it by the sun every day. However, nighttime exposure to that light, which is emitted at high levels by smartphones, tablets, laptops, and other LED screens, may be damaging your vision. It also suppresses production of the hormone melatonin, which throws off your body's natural sleep cues.
When your melatonin levels and sleep cycle go haywire, your risk goes up for a wide range of ailments, from depression to cancer.
Our various personal electronic devices emit blue light because it's so bright. That's the only way we can see those screens when the sun is shining. But we've started to have regular close-up nighttime exposure to this light only in the past 10 or 20 years, as a recent Gigaom story on the topic notes.
Now we're really starting to see the consequences.
1. The damage that this habit does to our eyes alone is both significant and surprising. Direct exposure to blue light can cause damage to the retina. The American Macular Degeneration Foundation warns that retinal damage caused by blue light may lead to macular degeneration, which causes the loss of central vision — the ability to see what's in front of you.
It should be noted however, that most studies show this effect with the light being held very close to the retina, which may not exactly replicate typical phone use.
2. There may also be a link between cataracts and blue light, though more research is needed. Gigaom cited an eye doctor who says he's starting to see 35-year-olds with eyes that are as cloudy with cataracts as 75-year-olds. Though a single account can't prove that blue light exposure causes cataracts — this doctor just thinks there's a link, which doesn't count as evidence — the idea is being investigated. Still, studies haven't concluded anything certain yet.
3. Exposure to blue light at night can ruin sleep. Bright blue light disrupts the brain's production of melatonin, a hormone that helps regulate the sleep cycle. That's fine in the morning, but our brains are supposed to start producing melatonin when we are ready for sleep, and blue light interferes with that process. That's why smartphones ruin sleep, and messing with your sleep has a long list of associated health consequences that range from obesity to genetic disruption and memory problems.
4. Sleep disturbance and "light at night" have been linked to higher cancer risk, particularly for breast and prostate cancers. In addition to helping us sleep, melatonin also functions as an antioxidant. And while more research is needed, researchers have pointed to "uninterrupted darkness" as potentially protective against cancer. People whose natural melatonin production is suppressed are at a higher risk for a variety of cancers, though a causal relationship has not been found.
5. Blue light may also take a toll on mental health. Research also shows that people whose melatonin levels are suppressed and whose body clocks are thrown off by light exposure are more prone to depression.
Despite the way this may sound, it doesn't mean that blue light is bad all the time. At times, it's actually beneficial to your health.
Light tells us when to wake and when to sleep. When bright blue light sends a signal to the brain to stop producing melatonin, it also primes your brain to start production of the hormone again later — in theory while you are getting ready for bed.
Experts say that getting an hour of sunlight in the morning helps people regulate their melatonin production and sleep cycle. They recommend getting some morning light without wearing sunglasses, so light gets through the retina and signals the pineal gland, which is what actually controls melatonin production.
That's great in the A.M., but when nighttime screen usage convinces our brains that it's morning and they shouldn't produce melatonin, that starts to wreak havoc on our bodies.
We can't avoid smartphones, computers, and tablets all the time. But we should try to limit our exposure at night. Sometimes, wearing amber glasses that block blue light or using apps that limit the amount of blue light coming from our screens may help.
Taking breaks from screentime is a good idea too – especially right before and in bed.
READ MORE: Your Smartphone Is Destroying Your Sleep
See also: 25 Horrible Things That Happen If You Don't Get Enough Sleep
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Nikon just announced the winners of its Small World Photography contest.
These images reveal the striking elegance of the tiny things we might come across in our daily lives but never notice.
Panamanian Rogelio Moreno won first place for his image of a miniscule freshwater creature known as the rotifer. Moreno captured the tiny critter as it was sweeping food into its open mouth — a chance event.
"When you see that movement, you fall in love," Moreno said.
"I hope now it can inspire others as much as it has inspired me – to learn about science, to look closely and notice something truly amazing," added Moreno.
We've also included a selection of honorable mentions and images of distinction.
Michelle Phan is one of the most well-known YouTube celebrities in the game.
She has 37 million followers, a startup, a book, and much more on the way. She's not just a person, she's an empire.
Back before she became totally famous, she was making makeup tutorial videos for her YouTube fans.
Her Barbie tutorial is the most-watched YouTube video that has to do with makeup...with about 60 million views. In it, she transforms herself from normal and natural to the spitting image of Barbie.
The 39th floor of the legendary Pierre Hotel is available for extended stay for the first time.
At $500,000 per month it is New York City’s priciest rental listing, according to The Wall Street Journal.
As part of the new Pierre Hotel Residences program, interested tenants can sign a lease for as little as 30 days, or as long as they need.
This program will meet a strong demand for large apartments with flexible lease terms, according to Therese Bateman of Town Fifth Avenue.
“It’s hard to find a six-bedroom apartment with that kind of flexibility,” she told The Wall Street Journal.
But the best part of living in this swanky hotel has to be the many luxury services The Pierre offers. Guests are given complete access to the butler service, pet pampering, twice daily maid service, and the hotel’s chauffeur-driven Jaguar.
You would never have to lift a finger.
Bateman and Andres Perea-Garzon of Town Fifth Avenue have the listing.
Subliminal messaging has been part of advertising for a long time. And more often than not, that messaging is related to sex in some way.
Here are five examples of innocent products that hid some risqué material in their ads.
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If you grew up loving classic rock and roll, you may want to pass that love onto your own kids, raising them on heavy metal from the time they're born.
But as any new parent can tell you, nothing, NOTHING is more important than getting your little bundle to fall asleep and stay asleep. And rock music may not be the best choice for that.
Enter Lisa Roth, the sister of David Lee Roth, former front man for 1980's rock band Van Halen.
Lisa Roth is a music mogul in her own right, as vice president of music production company CMH Label Group.
She's taken a bunch of classic rock songs, and even some popular current songs, and turned them into sweet lullabies.
It's a music brand called Rockabye Baby that launched in 2006.
"I was shopping for a baby shower gift for a friend that loves music and I didn’t see anything out there that was exciting or fun," she told us. She wanted something that would appeal to the parents as much as the baby.
She had just started working at CMH Label Group when she thought of the Rockabye Baby idea. Flash forward to 2014 and she's sold 1.6 million lullaby albums and about 1.3 track downloads.
Brother David Lee wasn't, for the most part, involved. "It's not a good idea to mix family and business," she laughs.
But he did help her understand what it would take to get an artist to agree to license music to her "I take great care with the songs," she says. "I saw what my brother had to do to make it. Those were the days that were pre Voice, pre YouTube. I have the great respect for artists."
By the way, she says she, personally, can't carry a tune, the only one in her family who can't sing. Running a record label is her musical outlet. CMH Label Group has a number of other brands that produces traditional lullaby albums, meditation music, country/bluegrass albums, and so on.
Here are some snippets of three classic rock songs turned into lullabies.
This is "Jump" by Van Halen. Click the box below to hear a snippet. (Here's the original on YouTube.)
Here's "Yellow Submarine" from the Beatles. (Here's the original.)
And here is David Bowie's Space Oddity. (Original.)
SEE ALSO: WHERE ARE THEY NOW? Look What Happened To LinkedIn's First Employees
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Melinda Gates is often credited for helping her husband develop his kinder, gentler side.
During his formative years Bill Gates was notoriously hard-nosed. There are many stories of his tantrums when he and Microsoft were young, such as this one: Microsoft employed a person to count of how many times F-bombs he would drop during a meeting, according to a former Microsoft employee. The lower the count, the happier Gates was with the meeting.
After marrying Melinda and having a family, Gates mellowed. While he's still opinionated, he's clearly a happier, more cordial person. His philanthropic work to end poverty and disease makes him a role model for other leaders to follow.
But the woman who helped tame Bill Gates had to learn how to be a good friend herself, she said in a Fortune article where CEOs have offered their best advice.
And the person who taught her how to do that was fellow billionaire Warren Buffett. (Buffett and the Gates are famously good friends.)
Here's how that happened, Melinda says:
One of the things I was most impressed about when Bill and I met Warren Buffett very early on was he introduced us to his friends. And Warren has the most high quality set of friends you could meet, and these are friends that he has had over his lifetime. And it really got me thinking, "wow, I better cultivate my friends."
Warren does little things with his friends, like he will send you an article of something he is thinking about, reading about. That was a way to help me think about my friends.
Melinda also says that another friend helped her learn how to balance work and home when her kids were young and she was feeling stressed out about it.
The man told her, "Melinda, you don’t get a do-over with your kids." and she says, "I always have to remember that, at the end of the day, my kids come first."
She feels so strongly about this that it trumps all of her charity work.
"On the day I die, I want people to think that I was a great mom and a great family member and a great friend. I care about that more than I care about anything else," she said.
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Paul Lamere is the director of developer platform for The Echo Nest, a group that calls itself a "music intelligence company" for major music firms.
In a February study, Lamere calculated the relative number of streams for a given artist for all 50 states, using a database of his clients' users.
The result: A map showing which artist enjoys the most outsized support in each state. To be clear, these aren't necessarily the most-listened-to bands in each state, but rather the bands that have unusually high support in each state. So for example, Vermonters skew more toward Phish than other Americans do, and Texans are bigger George Strait fans than anyone else. (Via Digital Music News)
His model also allows users to compare two states' favorites.
Here's New York vs. California:
SEE ALSO: The Most Powerful Person In Hollywood At Every Age
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This post is sponsored by FlexPath by Capella University.
Have you been thinking about going back to school and earning another (or first) degree? Well, you're not alone. But despite the many benefits, prospective students are often intimidated by how much time and money the commitment requires.
We polled Business Insider readers to find out why they would consider going back to school and what might be holding them back. Take a look at our infographic below to see the results.
Learn more about Capella University's new FlexPath self-paced learning program.
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In 2013, Londoners took 2.4 billion bus journeys. They were prescribed 116 million items by doctors, and found themselves joined by more than 1,750,000 American tourists.
Meanwhile, in one small, financial corner of the capital, the population, in every 24-hour period of the year, spiked from 222 residents to more than 127,000.
These staggering statistics are the work of geographer James Cheshire and visual artist Oliver Uberti, who have merged to create a new series of maps depicting London as "the most data-heavy capital in the world."
The maps and infographics are as diverse as the information they cover — highlighting, for example, the 2,580 mobile phones left in a single year at Heathrow Airport, and charting the 1.1 million phone calls the emergency services took in 2013. Approximately 32,500 of them, by the way, came from incapacitated binge drinkers.
In "There is order and beauty in the chaos of your commute," Cheshire and Uberti capture London's commuting routes using data from Oyster travel cards logged by University College London. Tracking the likes of train journeys and taxi fares and digitalizing their movements, they arc to form a colorful algorithm of details.
"Almost every journey taken in London leaves a digital trace in its wake," explain Cheshire and Uberti on their website. "It may be hard to appreciate as you squeeze onto a Tube or bus in the morning, but you are one of millions adding to the beauty of the currents captured."
In "Generation rent," the graph on the left shows the change in median monthly rent prices from January 2013 to April 2014. On the right, there's a visualization of the cost increase for two-bedroom apartments along the Tube's Central line, with inner stations costing far more than their suburban neighbours.
It's one of 100 new maps and graphics in the pair's new book, "London: The Information Capital," and Cheshire admits referring to London as such is a bold claim.
On his website, he explains: "We think it is justified for two reasons: London not only generates a huge volume of data, it shares an unprecedented amount with its citizens to use as they wish.
"Open data initiatives exist in other cities, not least in Europe and North America, but what gives London an information edge is the belief that data can not only record social change but also instigate it."
"Lost and found," seen below, looks at all the items lost at Heathrow Airport in 2013. In the 12 months, 1,060 wallets were misplaced, alongside 5,090 computers, tablets, and electronics, and 650 sets of keys. 
Traveling through Heathrow Airport is Uberti, an American with a passion for London's availability of data and information.
He says on his site: "As an American, I couldn’t believe how much government data was publicly available and how easy it was to access it online."
Uberti and Cheshire used Google Hangouts to discuss the project and see it in motion; together inspired by questions about London and finding out what makes it tick.
The UK capital is a very diverse city. In fact, three million of its 8.2 million citizens come from overseas. Below, "Twitter ink" highlights tweets by home country and projects Twitter users from places such as Kuwait, Turkey, and Italy.
Cheshire used data analysis in open source software to find his statistics, while many of Uberti's images started life as hand-drawn sketches. Numerous Freedom of Information Requests and compiled information nestles alongside artistic experimentation and creativity.
This chart features the top 20 nations by spending, per visitor, in 2012. The US, by far, had the most tourists — but it was Saudi Arabia, right down at the bottom, whose citizens spent most. Each individual parted with thousands.
SEE ALSO: REPORT: Lyft Is Considering Expanding To London
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"This is what a feminist looks like" tee-shirts have been praised for their girl power, but a women’s rights charity in England is investigating claims that the tees are being made by women in a sweatshop.
These are what the products look like. They're the creation from the Fawcett Society, which calls itself "the U.K.’s leading charity for women’s equality and rights."
The Daily Mail reports that "the investigation had found the shirts were being produced on a factory on the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius where the women machinists sleep 16 to a room and were being made by women workers being paid just 62p (about a dollar) an hour."
In a statement to the Daily Mail, the Fawcett Society says,
We have been very disappointed to hear the allegations that conditions in the Mauritius factory may not adhere to the ethical standards that we, as the Fawcett Society, would require of any product that bears our name.
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Many people think that coffee and workouts don't go together — but the science is beginning to come in, and times have changed.
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