In Japan, an island nation, waves are symbols long found in a vast array of art, design and craft from around the country, which one author decided to systemize in a three-book series now available for free online.

Myriad ancient wave and ripple examples were carefully compiled and catalogued in black ink by little-known artist Mori Yuzan just over a hundred years ago, detailing different motifs and patterns for other creators and craftspeople to emulate

The sheer variety of waves in these volumes alone is mesmerizing, all fitting into a style yet representing various applications as borders, backgrounds and design details suitable for all sorts of applications..

These Nihonga style (Japanese painting) graphics, typically applied to Japanese washi paper with brushes, can also be applied to anything from everyday ceramics to religious objects, swords, scrolls and wall art.

Perhaps the most famous application of waves remains the Great Wave of Kanagawa, a classic image from the 1800s featuring an enormous wave threatening boats off the coast of the present-day city of Yokohama. While sometimes assumed to be a tsunami, the wave is more likely to be a large rogue wave. As in many of the prints in the series, it depicts the area around Mount Fuji under particular conditions, and the mountain itself appears in the background.

Following the Meiji Restoration in 1868, Japan ended a long period of national isolation and became open to imports from the West. In turn, much Japanese art came to Europe and America and quickly gained popularity. The influence of Japanese art on Western culture became known as Japonism. Japanese woodblock prints became a source of inspiration for artists in many genres, particularly the Impressionists. Hokusai was seen as the emblematic Japanese artist and images from his prints and books influenced many different works.

When a cold front blew in over Lake Ontario, photographer John Kucko caught wind of the phenomenon and rushed to shoot images of a remarkably frozen home.

Located in Webster, New York, the house is entirely trapped inside ice, a combination of sheets and icicles wrapping the residence on all sides. Outdoor furniture and landscaping elements between the lake and the house were likewise wrapped in frozen water.

An unusual combination of waves, wind and freezing weather contributed to the mix, as well as the home’s proximity to the lake. Winds over 80 mile per hour pushed water the short twenty feet to the residence. You can see more images and videos on the photographers Facebook page.

Years ago, artists in Detroit did something similar but intentional with an abandoned home, showering it with water and letting it ice over for effect.

Providing secure enclosures and other critical safety features in the face of tsunamis, floods and accidents at sea, this system of survival pods adds another critical dimension as well: connectivity. The award-winning Duckweed Survival House units come with variable-length tethers and are individually designed to stay upright and keep their occupants sheltered in the harshest conditions.

Much like the series of independent-but-connectable space habitats proposed in Neal Stephenson’s Seveneves, each individual unit is self-supporting but also benefits by networking with the rest. The rounded-square shape helps allow the different units to be organized in grids, lines or otherwise without sharp corners that could damage adjacent units.

Together, they provide increased stability, visibility, wave and wind resistance, but the units can be separated as well to avoid obstacles or for situations-specific emergency needs, like jettisoning a defective pod. As in the aforementioned work of science fiction, the idea is to maximize the odds for all survivors by creating options for configuration and collaboration.

A stem projecting beneath each unit stabilizes the crafts while a built-in, reverse osmosis filter turns salty water potable. Pressurized carbon dioxide gas provides quick inflatability while an operable overhead vent allows in fresh air. Bright markers aid in night rescue while also helping people in disparate pods spot one another more easily on the ocean waves.

Nothing moves faster than light, right? True as that may be in theory, a team at MIT has developed a method for visualizing its propagation to amazing effect in practice.

Slowed down and turned into film format, an illuminated tomato goes from ordinary to uncanny as a snaking arc of white light approaches in a billionth-of-a-second burst, then deforms to move across it, with an unrivaled FPS rate.

And the impact goes beyond making neat little films: “Beyond the potential in artistic and educational visualization, applications include industrial imaging to analyze faults and material properties, scientific imaging for understanding ultrafast processes and medical imaging to reconstruct sub-surface elements.”

So how does it work? Per their abstract: “The effective exposure time of each frame is two trillionths of a second and the resultant visualization depicts the movement of light at roughly half a trillion frames per second. Direct recording of reflected or scattered light at such a frame rate with sufficient brightness is nearly impossible. We use an indirect ‘stroboscopic’ method that records millions of repeated measurements by careful scanning in time and viewpoints. Then we rearrange the data to create a ‘movie’ of a nanosecond long event.”