Teacher and art students create 58-foot paper snowflake

A Texas art teacher and 14 of his students broke a Guinness World Record when they created a massive paper snowflake measuring 58 feet in diameter.

Will West and his students at Dunbar High School, in Fort Worth, worked together to fold and cut a giant sheet of paper into a snowflake measuring 58 inches across.

The snowflake incorporates the words “Dunbar” and “Fort Worth”. The school said the snowflake has been submitted to Guinness World Records for official recognition.

Sweaters made from oyster shells, plastic bottles

A Massachusetts company is aiming to make oceans and landfills a little bit cleaner by making sweaters out of oyster shells and plastic bottles.

Mike Lamagna, the founder of Long Wharf Supply Co., said each sweater in his company’s Seawell Collection is made from four to five oyster shells and about eight recycled water bottles.

Water bottles are a major source of ocean pollution, and oyster shells sent to landfills causes the calcium carbonate in the shells to break down slowly and become toxic.

The sale will benefit the MA Oyster Project, which aims to ‘seed’ recycled oyster shells back into the ocean, where they create substrate for baby oysters, animals that naturally filter the ocean water.

“Every piece can reseed up to 30 oysters, which will naturally filter up to 1,500 gallons of seawater every single day,” Lamagna said.

Malaysia’s first reptile cafe

Malaysian reptile enthusiast Yap Ming Yang hopes visitors to his pet-friendly cafe will learn to appreciate snakes and lizards as much as they do furrier creatures such as dogs and cats.

Bearded dragons, leopard geckos and corn snakes are among the species resting in glass tanks stacked around Yap’s cafe on the outskirts of Malaysia’s capital, Kuala Lumpur. These species are commonly bred in the country. Customers can hold and pet the scaly animals while ordering drinks and food. Yap has a background in environmental science and is part of a community of Malaysians with an interest in herpetology — the study of reptiles.

“I hope showing the public how interesting (they) are, we can cause them to have a better outlook on reptiles and less loved animals,” he said.

Florida professor plans 100 days in undersea habitat

Joe Dituri, an associate professor at the University of South Florida, is living in an underwater hotel, the Jules Undersea Lodge, located 22 feet below the surface in a Key Largo lagoon.

Dituri is aiming to break the Guinness World Record for the most continuous time spent in an underwater habitat. The current record of 73 days was set at the Jules Undersea Lodge in 2014 by Bruce Cantrell and Jessica Fain.

Dituri’s project was inspired by director James Cameron, who asked the professor to evaluate one of his submersibles in 2012. Dituri is hoping his experience, dubbed Project Neptune, will help him make new discoveries, including studying the effect that the project had on his own body. He is chronicling his project on social media, and will not be alone for the entire duration of the project, as student divers will be making occasional visits to the Jules Undersea Lodge.

Published in Dawn, Young World, April 1st, 2023