A man cycles by a ship at Hachinohe, Aomori Prefecture, northern Japan, Monday, March 14, 2011, three days after a powerful earthquake-triggered tsunami hit Japan’s east coast. (Shizuo Kambayashi/Associated Press)
Vessels float on oil spilled water in Fudai, Iwate, northern Japan Monday, March 14, 201. (Associated Press/Yomiuri Shimbun, Hiroshi Adachi)

A car sits atop another in an area affected by an earthquake and tsunami in Miyako, Iwate prefecture March 14, 2011.

A pleasure boat sits on top of a building amid a sea of debris in Otsuchi town in Iwate prefecture on March 14, 2011. (Yomiuri Shimbun/AFP/Getty Images)

The vast devastation wrought by the earthquake and resulting tsunami that hit Japan on March 11, 2011, may only be matched by the destroyed lives left in their wake. Few survivors have been found, but families continue to search for their sons, daughters, wives, husbands and friends. Threats of a nuclear reactor meltdown and resulting disaster loom. – Paula Nelson

Images provided by GeoEye show the Arahama area of Sendai, Japan on April 10, 2010, left, and March 12, 2011. (GeoEye/Associated Press)

A girl’s shoe sits in flood debris Monday, March 14, 2011, in the coastal area of Soma city, Fukushima prefecture, Japan. (Wally Santana/Associated Press)

found on boston.com

An oncoming tsunami strikes the coast in Natori City, Miyagi Prefecture, northeastern Japan March 11, 2011. The biggest earthquake to hit Japan in 140 years struck the northeast coast on Friday, triggering a 10-metre tsunami that swept away everything in its path, including houses, cars and farm buildings on fire.

Workers inspect a caved-in section of a prefectural road in Satte, Saitama Prefecture, after one of the largest earthquakes ever recorded in Japan slammed its eastern coast March 11. (Saitama Shimbun/Associated Press/Kyodo News).
Vehicles are crushed by a collapsed wall at a carpark in Mito city in Ibaraki prefecture on March 11. (Jiji Press/AFP/Getty Images).

A fishing boat rests surrounded by debri in the city of Kamaishi in Iwate prefecture on March 12. (Yomiuri Shimbun/AFP/Getty Images)
Japanese soldiers make their way atop a wall to get around vehicles swept by a tsunami at Kesennnuma, northeastern Japan March 12. (Kyodo News/Associated Press)

A vessel sits after it was washed away by tsunami into urban area in Kesennuma, Miyagi, northern Japan March 12. (Kyodo News/Associated Press)

Cargo containers are strewn about in Sendai Japan March 12. Japan launched a massive military rescue operation Saturday after a giant, earthquake-fed tsunami killed hundreds of people and turned the northeastern coast into a swampy wasteland, while authorities braced for a possible meltdown at a nuclear reactor. (Itsuo Inouye/Asociated Press)

A volunteer firefighter searches for victims of the tsunami at Rikuzentakada, Iwate Prefecture, northern Japan March 13. (Shizuo Kambayashi/Associated Press)

Vessels washed away by the tsunami sit on land in Minami Soma, Fukushima, northern Japan March 12. (Kyodo News/Associated Press)

found on boston.com

Mix together a beautiful European-like city with attractive residents (call themporteños), gourmet cuisine, awesome shopping, a frenzied nightlife and top-drawer activities, and you get Buenos Aires, a cosmopolitan metropolis with both slick neighborhoods and equally downtrodden areas – but that’s part of the appeal. It’s an elegant, seductive place with a ragged edge, laced with old-world languor and yet full of contemporary attitude. BA is somehow strangely familiar, but unlike any other city in the world.

Planetario de Buenos Aires, BA-Palermo

The Giant Robot of Buenos Aires

In between cutting-edge designer boutiques, ritzy neighborhoods and grand parks are unkempt streets full of spewing buses and bustling fervor. Seek out classic BA: the old-world cafés, colonial architecture, fun outdoor markets and diverse communities. Rub shoulders with the formerly rich and famous in Recoleta’s cemetery, making sure to sidestep the ubiquitous dog piles on the sidewalks. Fill your belly at aparrilla (steak restaurant), then spend the night partying away in Palermo Viejo’s trendiest dance club.

found on lonelyplanet.com

We came across this ingenious development; via the Raising the Roof property blog. Regatta Jakarta is a nautical themed design conceived by the renowned Atkins-design studio. It is a mixed-use development situated in Pantai Mutiara Canal Estate on the shores of the Java Sea.

The centrepiece of the Regatta is its iconic 160 metre high, arch-shaped five-star hotel tower that represents a ‘lighthouse’ or ‘beacon’ surrounded by 10 residential apartment towers which each representing ships sailing around this ‘beacon’, hence the name ‘Regatta’ was coined.

found on globalconstructionwatch.com

Lightning Strike NY Harbor. This shot was captured during a major electrical storm. There was little wind and no rain which allowed me to stay safely inside and shoot from an open window. This was the 82nd exposure out of 150 made that night. The camera was mounted on a tripod, exposures made with a cable release for 5 seconds at f10. Except for a some minor level adjustments and a square crop this was what came out of the camera.

(Photo and caption by Jay Fine)

Yes it’s spring. Fishing on the end of the bridge.

(Photo and caption by Stan Bouman)
A supercell thunderstorm rolls across the Montana prairie at sunset.

(Photo and caption by Sean Heavey)

Liquid Planet. Another picture from the Liquid Vision Series, which shows a different point of view of waves. An angle that people are not used to seeing.

(Photo and caption by Freddy Cerdeira)

Cloud and ship. Ukraine, Crimea, Black sea, view from Ai-Petri mountain.

(Photo and caption by Yevgen Timashov)

found on boston.com

found  on boston.com

The fine folks at National Geographic have been kind enough to share with us some images from “Great Migrations: Official Companion Book” below. Great Migrations premieres in the U.S. on Sunday, November 7 on the National Geographic Channel:

An advancing white shark typically means doom for any large sea mammal it approaches, even for huge elephant seals off Guadalupe Island off Mexico’s Pacific coast. (© National Geographic/Mauricio Handler)

A polar bear stands on sea ice. The ice is critical to its habitat, and is decreasing in the warming Arctic. (© National Geographic/Paul Nicklen)
Off the coast of western Australia, small fish cluster around a whale shark, using it as shelter from predators. (© National Geographic/Brian Skerry)

Spawning salmon dominate traffic in the Ozernaya River on the Kamchatka Peninsula, Russia. (© National Geographic/Randy Olson)

To the walrus, ice is life. An oxygen-breathing marine mammal, it relies on the ice as a place to rest, to give birth, to nurse and to migrate. And with global warming, the ice is disappearing. Their annual migration is becoming a race against time and distance, depth and disaster. (© National Geographic/Paul Nicklen).

found on boston.com

A Greek Fire Service plane clears a hilltop, after just dumping its load of water on a forest fire outside the central Greek city of Thebes on Thursday, July 23, 2009. Six water-dropping planes and two helicopters were involved in the effort to contain the blaze, aided by a lull in high winds that had earlier threatened a village in the area. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris).

A helicopter tries to extinguish a wildfire next to a house near Nuoro, in the centre of Sardinia, Italy on July 23, 2009. (MASSIMO LOCCI/AFP/Getty Images).

Members of the fire brigade “Romeo 10″ of Segovia watch as a tanker plane makes a drop over a fire in Parras, near Avila, Spain on July 29, 2009. (PEDRO ARMESTRE/AFP/Getty Images).

The shadow of a Greek Fire Service plane appears on the ground as smoke rises from a fire outside the central Greek city of Thebes on Thursday, July 23, 2009. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris).

A firefighting helicopter lifts water from a swimming pool in El Arenal, near Avila, Spain as forest fires raged in the region, on July 29, 2009. (PEDRO ARMESTRE/AFP/Getty Images).

A firefighting airplane drops water over a forest fire near Avlonari village on the island of Evia northeast of Athens, Greece on July 30, 2009. (REUTERS/Yiorgos Karahalis).

An airplane dumps water on a forest fire which is burning out of control in Mazo municipality on the southern part of La Palma island in Spain’s Canary Islands on August 2, 2009. (REUTERS/Santiago Ferrero).

A fire-fighting helicopter collects water to control a wildfire in Segorbe, near Valencia, Spain on July 25, 2009. (REUTERS/Heino Kalis)

A firefighting airtanker drops Phos-Check fire retardant over the Gap fire as more than 1,000 wildfires continue burning across about 680 square miles of central and northern California, on July 3, 2008 near Goleta, California. (David McNew/Getty Images)

10 Tanker Air Carrier, a DC-10 jet converted to a firefighting aircraft, drops Phos-Check fire retardant over the Piute fire as more than 1,400 wildfires continue to burn across about 550 square miles of central and northern California, on July 1, 2008 south of Isabella Lake, California. (David McNew/Getty Images

found on boston.com

This 3rd Place-winning entry is a view of the olfactory bulbs of a Zebrafish, viewed at a magnification of 250x. Image made by Oliver Braubach from the Department of Physiology & Biophysics, Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada. (Courtesy of Nikon Small World)

A Bryozoa, a tiny aquatic filter-feeder is seen at 20x magnification. Image made by Jocelyn Cheng of the Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, New York. (Courtesy of Nikon Small World).

The Nikon International Small World Photomicrography Competition recently announced its list of winners for 2010. The competition began in 1974 as a means to recognize and applaud the efforts of those involved with photography through the light microscope.

Peering into the small worlds of animal, plants and minerals using many techniques and different instruments, this year’s entries brought us images of crystalline formations, fluorescent body parts, cellular structures and more, valuable for both their beauty and insight.

The lovely folks at Nikon were kind enough to share some of their images here with us, be sure to click the link above to see all the winners.

Pekka Honkakoski of Sonkajarvi, Finland brings us this image of a snow crystal magnified 40 times. (Courtesy of Nikon Small World).

Dr. Gregory Rouse took 12th Place with this darkfield image of a juvenile bivalve mollusc, (Lima sp.), magnified 10 times. Dr. Rouse is from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California. (Courtesy of Nikon Small World).

found on nikonsmallworld.com

WHITE HAVEN BEACH AT HIGH TIDE, Queensland, Australia

ICEBERGS OFF THE ADELIE COAST (SOUTH POLE)

In 2005 Yann Arthus-Bertrand created GoodPlanet, a non-profit organization which is dedicated to the promotion of sustainable development, his leitmotiv, through all his different projects. Yann would like to enable each and every one of us to become a custodian of our planetís future and consequently of our own future. He also directed a series of four, two hour documentaries entitled Earth From Above ñ which was shown on French television in 2006-2007 ñ, and started this year the production of a feature length film on the state of the global environment and the challenges we are facing.

VILLAGE ON STILTS IN TONGKIL, Samales islands, Philippines

Cleaning up fuel oil leaked from the tanker Prestige, Biarritz, France

found on yannarthusbertrand.org