[B]ecause matcha is ground, the entire leaf is consumed in powdered form. This makes matcha tea a highly concentrated version of regular green tea, and only a teaspoon or less of powder is needed to make a bowl …. The leaves are mostly hand-picked, then steamed, air-dried and de-stemmed. They are stored in that dry state for up to a year until the next harvest. Then they are stone-ground.

In the foyer of a Japanese vegetarian restaurant on East 39th Street, around the corner from several nail salons and the House of Lasagna, a Japanese tea ceremony was unfolding. Kato Riichiro, the manager of Ippodo Tea, had before him a whisk, a sieve, a wooden spoon and, most important, a bowl of vivid green powder. This is matcha, a very particular kind of Japanese tea that is not easy to come across even in such a caffeinated city.

Usain Bolt was ramping into warp speed when suddenly, stunningly, the sprint turned into a somersault. Fifteen steps into the final homestretch of his final race, something gave in his left hamstring. The World’s Fastest Man skittered to a stop — hopping, skipping, jumping, then finally dropping to the ground and tumbling forward before coming to a rest …. He was certainly every bit as stunned as any of the 60,000-plus who packed the stadium Saturday, or the millions watching one of the world’s most entertaining showmen make his final curtain call in the 4×100-meter relay at world championships.

In a statement, Goodall’s family said they were extremely grateful to all those who were involved in the rescue. ‘It was with a heavy heart Susie left DHL Starlight to fend for herself, before she fills with water and rests on the Pacific Ocean floor. DHL Starlight has been her home for the past few years; a faithful friend who stood up valiantly to all the elements, a guardian until their last moments together …. When she was younger, Susie loved doing somersaults on trampolines. We just never thought she’d do one in a boat…’

More than 160 million years ago, the forests of ancient China were home to a bizarre predator: a tiny dinosaur that glided from tree to tree with leathery, bat-like wings. The newfound fossil, unveiled today in the journal Nature, is just the second feathered dinosaur found with signs of large membranes on its wings ….“The most exciting thing, for me, is that it shows that some dinosaurs evolved very different structures to become volant,” or capable of some form of flight, says lead study author Min Wang, a paleontologist at China’s Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology.

Bats get a bad rap. From horror films to tabloid pages to Halloween, media and cultural depictions of our planet’s only volant, or flying, mammals have long generated and reinforced unfounded fear …. Such hostile attitudes make it harder to conserve bats and thereby safeguard the many critical benefits they provide us. What’s more, persecuting bats because of the diseases they harbor could easily backfire.