A team of scientists at Harvard have discovered how to make crazy, beautiful, very tightly controlled shapes that are so tiny they're invisible to the naked eye. Just by making simple changes in the environment in which salt and silicon crystals grow, they've made gardens of flower-like structures. Wim Noorduin, a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard University, grew a variety of these "flowers," recently featured in the journal Science.

Clothing retailers don't have it easy. It's very hard to keep up with what's in style. And what's in style now? Fracking! Which means flame-retardant clothing for when shit gets out of hand.

Back in March we told you about a polar bear who had been orphaned in Alaska when its mother was shot by a hunter. We invited (well, ordered) you to watch it play which, even two months later, remains an experience of acute adorableness. Now we have some good news about this polar bear, little Kali: He has found a permanent home. That home will be at the Buffalo Zoo, where he'll share digs with another polar bear named Luna.

We knew we'd been doing some damage to the planet, but we didn't realize we'd been making it bleed.

Do you feel like your doctors and your more annoying friends are always telling you to drink more water? Well, they're just trying to help. Water is so important for your health! Sadly, water tastes like, well, water. And since Americans eat like 100 pounds of sugar a year, the taste of water just isn't good enough for us. Even though we are very lucky to have fresh water, we don't get too excited about it -- 20 percent of people say they just don't like how it tastes (i.e., watery). What we do get excited about are artificially flavored, sugar-free water products.

Artist Matt Hope calls the concept bicycle he's inventing "a weird provocative object" with a "Chinese fighter pilot breathing thingy." We call it a bike that, as the rider pedals, powers a purifier that feeds the rider more breathable air. 

So Dunkin' Donuts and Jack In the Box both have waffle sandwiches, and lot of fancier places are getting all upscale with the waffle as well. Waffles are kind of the bacon of carbohydrates. And so, it is not terribly surprising that Taco Bell would join in with its own waffle experience, which is a "taco" consisting of an egg and sausage inside a waffle.

How would you like it if every single room in your house was an exercise station? You think that would suck? Well, maybe it would create a lot of unpleasant pressure to be working out and make you feel like a big loser all the time, but then again, maybe it would make exercising so convenient that the habit would just fold seamlessly into your life. And then, what if your workout was generating the power you needed to cook, clean, and entertain yourself? Would that be enough to make it a really solid habit? Or just an even more giant pain in the ass?

You may have read about some hardworking, smart, and civic-minded students who, back in 2011 and 2012, fought to keep their local river park open. Fought and won, actually. Well, students from that same school, Grass Valley Charter in Grass Valley, Calif., are now on to another battle -- with the help of students from other area schools, they want to push Nevada County to put a ban on single-use plastic bags and start charging for paper bags. These kids are unstoppable.

They are starting their campaign in the county seat, Nevada City, and made their desires known at a Nevada City Council meeting on May 8 when several of them presented some rather sobering research they have done on the subject of single-use plastic bags. One kid talked about the Pacific gyres, massive globs of plastic waste in the Pacific Ocean, and the effect this was having on the health of the oceans in general and most acutely, on sea life. Another pointed out that Californians use 400 plastic bags every second. Another read a list of the 75 California communities that have already made similar proposed laws around single-use plastic bags and urged Nevada County to join them. Another posed the question, "Do you really want me to grow up in a world without sea turtles?" Who could say yes to that?

You're probably not clueless enough to think real life hippos are cute and cuddly, but did you know hippos are Africa's deadliest animal? Paul Templer, a river guide showing tourists the sights near Victoria Falls, near the border of Zimbabwe and Zambia back in 1996, found this out the hard way when he almost lost his life inside a hippo's mouth.