The rapper 2 Chainz is reportedly mulling a run for mayor of his hometown in Georgia.

"I am looking forward to running at the end of this year or next year. [I'm] waiting to see if I meet all of the qualifications!" he told the Atlanta Journal Constitution on Monday.

It was unclear how serious he was about the claim. In another interview on the topic, 2 Chainz, whose real name is Tauheed Epps, said, "I'm a musician, not a politician." 

"I'm supposed to be running for mayor in College Park. I got everybody wishing. I'm really gonna do this little mayor thing in College Park," he told XXL magazine in a separate interview published Monday.

The rapper is not a complete stranger to politics — or at least policy debates. Earlier this month, he had a high-profile television showdown with HLN talk-show host Nancy Grace on whether marijuana should be legalized. 2 Chainz was representing the pro-legalization point of view. 

If he runs, 2 Chainz would be challenging veteran incumbent Mayor Jack Longino, according to the Journal Constitution. College Park is a relatively small city near Atlanta, with less than 20,000 residents.

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Nitrogen is the most abundant chemical element in Earth's atmosphere and is crucial for plant growth and reproduction. And yet, it's incredibly boring, clear gas at room temperature.

But expose it to low pressure conditions, and you can transform it into a beautiful, crackling sheet of glass.

While nitrogen is a gas at room temperature, it becomes a liquid when cooled down to negative 320 F. And when you take that liquid, and shove it under a vacuum, something amazing happens — as ChefSteps learned.

But don't try this at home, liquid nitrogen can cause frostbite if not handled carefully.

When the liquid is placed in a vacuum, it makes a crazy substance called "nitrogen glass." The pressure in a vacuum is significantly lower than at sea level on Earth because there's very little air inside. As a result, any liquid placed inside of a vacuum boils at a lower temperature.

You can see the crazy boiling action below:

This boiling action is what the experimenters are after because as the liquid boils it cools. This is because it takes energy to transform the liquid into a gas and as the liquid expends energy, it reduces its overall temperature.

This seems counterintuitive, but think about when you sweat: The liquid evaporating from your skin lowers your body temperature because its carrying away energy, in the form of heat. Similarly, the evaporating liquid nitrogen cools as it boils.

Eventually, the liquid nitrogen boils enough heat away that it reaches its freezing point and instantly hardens into a glass-like solid, shown below, in a slow motion close up and in real time.

While the nitrogen glass looks pretty, it's not stable. The nitrogen atoms want to reorganize into a tighter, stronger, crystalline structure. So, shortly after forming, the glass cracks into a million tiny fissures as the molecules rearrange themselves explosively and seemingly all at once:

"Solid nitrogen is something that few people have ever seen," according to the the video of making nitrogen glass by ChefSteps.

Below is the fracturing in slow motion. What you're seeing is the atoms rearranging themselves like falling dominoes in a chain reaction. The once beautiful glass sheet is now scarred with millions of cracks. Check out the full video below, posted to YouTube by ChefSteps.

LEARN ABOUT: 11 Mind-Blowing Physics Discoveries Made In 2014

READ MORE: SpaceX Has Pinpointed The Problem That Caused The Falcon9 Rocket To Crash Land

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Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer announced the company will be spinning off its Alibaba shares into a whole new company. 

Produced by Matthew Stuart

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Malabo (Equatorial Guinea) (AFP) - A late diving header by Andre Ayew took Ghana through to the quarter-finals of the Africa Cup of Nations on Tuesday alongside favourites Algeria in a dramatic denouement to Group C.

Ghana came from behind to beat South Africa 2-1 in Mongomo to secure their berth in the quarter-finals as winners of the group, having looked set to finish bottom with barely 20 minutes to play.

Meanwhile, the Algerians beat Senegal 2-0 in Malabo thanks to a goal in each half from Premier League stars Riyad Mahrez and Nabil Bentaleb to go through in second place at the expense of the Lions of Teranga.

The Black Stars of Ghana, who have reached at least the semi-finals of each of the last four tournaments, were heading out when Mandla Masango smashed home on 17 minutes in Mongomo to give South Africa the lead.

However, their hopes were revived when defender John Boye equalised on 73 minutes, and with the momentum behind them, Avram Grant's side went on to get the win they required when Marseille winger Andre Ayew headed home with seven minutes to go from a cross by Abdul Rahman Baba.

"We deserve it because South Africa were not better than us. We have finished first in the group of death, which is not bad," said Ghana's Israeli coach Grant.

Algeria also had to win against Senegal to be sure of going through and Christian Gourcuff's team were on their way when Leicester City winger Mahrez slotted home on 11 minutes.

At 1-0, both sides were going through until events of the final 10 minutes in Equatorial Guinea. First, Sofiane Feghouli set up Bentaleb to lash home and put Algeria 2-0 up, and then Ghana's winning goal in the other game condemned Senegal to an early exit.

"It was an excessively difficult game physically. The ball was almost always in the air, which is not an advantage for us," said Algeria coach Gourcuff, who is now looking forward to a quarter-final tie this weekend.

"It was not easy to get out of this group. We don't choose our opponents. Of course we'll follow the games with lots of interest tomorrow (Wednesday) and we'll see what happens," he added.

- Senegal fail again -

While Algeria, who last won the competition in 1990, and Ghana can look forward to the knockout stage, Senegal and South Africa are left to wonder what might have been.

Bafana Bafana go home with just one point after throwing away the lead in all three of their matches, although their coach Ephraim 'Shakes' Mashaba remained upbeat at how his team performed.

"We played well in qualifying against some very strong teams, and we played well here too," he said.

However, Senegal coach Alain Giresse was not able to praise his side, who came up short despite only requiring a draw to progress.

And as the Lions of Teranga were left to contemplate another failed attempt to finally get their hands on the continental trophy, Giresse was urged to step down by the Senegalese media.

"My contract has finished," he reminded them. "The road ends here for Senegal. There will be a lot of changes in and around the team. What happens next I don't know, but I know what I am going to do."

Algeria and Ghana will find out their last-eight opponents on Wednesday, when Group D concludes with Cameroon and the Ivory Coast clashing in Malabo while Guinea and Mali meet in Mongomo.

All four sides are currently deadlocked with identical records, with every game thus far in the section having finished 1-1.

Elsewhere on Tuesday, organisers announced that the quarter-finals due to be played in Ebebiyin and Mongomo would be moved to Bata and Malabo respectively.

The decision means that hosts Equatorial Guinea will meet Tunisia in Bata on Saturday rather than in the tiny 5,000-seat Ebebiyin stadium.

In addition, Sunday's scheduled quarter-final between Ghana and the runners-up in Group D will now be played in Malabo rather than in Mongomo.

Organisers said deteriorating pitches in the towns in question were behind the decision.

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Researchers working out of California's Monterey Bay have released footage from their use of "Crittercams" attached to one of the Pacific Ocean's most elusive creatures: the Humboldt squid.

Also known as the jumbo flying squid, the cephalopod can grow to more than six feet in length and about a hundred pounds in weight. The Humboldt squid has eight arms, two tooth-studded tentacles, and a parrot-like beak for breaking up prey.

Anecdotes and studies have even found the squid to cannibalize: A marine biologist working out of Mexico analyzed the stomach contents of more than 500 Humboldt squid, and found evidence that they'd eaten their peers in a quarter of those cases.

The Crittercam was made by National Geographic to offer "rare views of the private lives of animals."

In this case, the technology was attached to an off-the-shelf swim shirt that researchers at Stanford's Hopkins Marine Station in Pacific Grove, California then put over the squid's main part — sometimes known as the "tube." Researchers attracted the squid with glowing jig, capturing three of them before fitting them with cameras.

Humboldt squid hunt in shoals as many as 1,200 strong, so the usable footage — of which researchers got about an hour — provides some rich (and pretty scary) moments of the tentacled predators interacting with one another. One of the three squid was released with a light to capture footage at night, which attracted attacks from its peers, Rosen said.

One topic of curiosity is their communication system. The Humboldt squid is capable of quickly changing the color of its skin thanks to special cells called chromatophores, which is Greek for "color-bearing." The center of each chromatophore contains a small sac of variously colored fluid. The squid flexes certain muscles to change its color and pattern.

The footage here is black and white, but it's still plain to see that the Humboldt squid can change colors in the blink of an eye. Here a few specimen flash from white (their color at rest) to red.

"The color of their muscle is actually white underneath their skin, so when they relax the chromatophores that's actually the muscle underneath," Hannah Rosen, one of the authors of a study analyzing the footage, told Business Insider.

Rosen calls any conclusions on what the creatures are "saying" speculative, but the researchers are confident that it is indeed a form of communication, "simply because it's such an attention grabbing display, and we only ever observed it with other squid nearby," she said.

The National Geographic's presentation of the research reports that the Humboldt squid's color changes could serve to assert dominance, attract mates, or even (as the study suggests) mimic the "reflections of down-welled light in the water column" as a means to camouflage.

Future studies using the Crittercam could reveal more about the Humboldt squid. The Smithsonian National Zoological Park, for instance, notes that the creature's eggs have never been observed in nature.

"It's kind of a win win for the both of us," Rosen said about her team's use of National Geographic's camera, "because we get some great data for science and they get good footage."

The whole video is just incredible. See it below, or scoot on over to National Geographic. 

SEE ALSO: This Amazing Chart Shows How Big The Biggest Animals In The Ocean Get

SEE ALSO: 23 Fantastic Images Of The Incredibly Weird Things In The Ocean

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Apple just had the most profitable quarter of any company in history.

China was a major part of the company's success — according to recent estimates by UBS, China is quickly becoming one of the company's largest markets for iPhones.

The company's ultimate goal is to have 40 stores operating in China by the end of 2016, and to start they're opening five locations in just five weeks.

Apple started its flurry of activity with the opening of its store in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, this weekend. Situated over two large levels of retail space, the new Apple store is one of the biggest in Asia.

Excited fans turned out in droves to attend the opening of the new store on Saturday. 

The store looks absolutely gorgeous. 

The new store in Hangzhou is situated over two levels of retail space.

It's one of the largest Apple stores in Asia.

Inside you'll find the long tables and minimalist design we've come to expect in an Apple store.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) thinks Mitt Romney, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R), and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) might actually help him win the 2016 GOP presidential primary. 

And Paul isn't the only one who thinks this trio of high-powered rivals could give him an edge.

In a recent conversation with Business Insider, a close ally of one of the other candidates went so far as to say the current likely composition of the Republican field gives Paul the best shot at a victory.

"Based on where the primary electorate is right now, if there's a frontrunner in this race from an electoral perspective, it's probably Rand Paul," the source said. 

The theory behind this is that Romney, Christie, and Bush all are relative moderates and would split the same segment of the vote in a Republican primary. This would leave room for someone like Paul to stand out and score wins in crucial states.

In an interview with Fox News on Tuesday, Paul revealed this is exactly how he'd like the race to play out.  

"The more the merrier as far as I'm concerned. I think we have place in the party for moderates like Christie, and Bush, and Romney. And then there'll also be conservatives," Paul said. "Hopefully — at least from a conservative point of view — we hope the moderates will divide up the moderate vote and maybe allow a conservative to be the nominee. It's been quite a while since we've really had the conservative come forward as the nominee." 

Paul also argued that his libertarian-oriented policy agenda gives him a "little bit of an edge" over his more orthodox Republican rivals.

"The libertarian issues give a little bit of an edge that brings in young people, working class, people that are concerned with privacy, minorities who are concerned with minority rights," he said. "The question to me is whether or not that message will resonate. ... I would only get involved if we really think we have a chance to win."

However, the source allied with one of the other candidates told Business Insider they think Paul's more libertarian, noninterventionist positioning on foreign policy is exactly why he's in trouble in spite of the seemingly favorable circumstances.

The source argued recent foreign-policy issues, including the rise of the jihadist group Islamic State (also known as ISIS or ISIL), have made Republican voters more eager for a candidate who will "assert" himself on the global stage. Specifically, the person suggested that the electorate is less inclined to favor noninterventionism than it was in 2012, when Paul's father, former congressman Ron Paul, made a splash in the GOP primary and built himself a base with a libertarian-leaning campaign. 

"He has a threshold question he has to answer," the source said of Paul. "Republican primary voters understand the world is a much more dangerous place than it was four years ago, they feel like this president has put our nation and allies in a much weaker position, and want to nominate a candidate who will strengthen and assert America’s position both at home and abroad."

The source suggested the main challenge for Paul would be whether he can change his brand on this front.

"The question is whether Rand can recast himself," they said. "The national security piece is a huge hurdle for him in a Republican primary." 

NOW WATCH: Why Law School Is A Waste Of Money Unless You Get Into A Top School

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This never ceases to be shocking. If you are a woman talking about sexism in video games, you will be showered with the most horrific threats, particularly via Twitter.

Anita Sarkeesian is part of a two-person team running Feminist Frequency, a video web series that explores sexism in pop culture.

For the past two years, she's been documenting how women appear in video games and how female video game characters are very often portrayed as sexual objects, damsels in distress, or disposable murder victims.

And because she's been talking about this, she's been subject to untold threats. On a daily basis, she receives tweets that threaten to kill her, rape her, beat her ... many using very graphic language, ick, you get the idea.

Sarkeesian just shared on Tumblr a mere one week's worth of threats on Twitter. (Read at your own discretion, a lot of them are pretty disgusting.) Dozens of them, all from different accounts. And all because she's pointing out that the imaginary characters in make-believe worlds are largely undesirable stereotypes and trying to get the game industry to up its game on that front.

She's openly talked about such threats lots of times. She was a big target during the Gamergate controversy last fall, where some people argued that it was the male gamers who were being unfairly stereotyped.

Things got so ugly for Sarkeesian that she cancelled a public appearance because of death threats.

We keep hoping that things will get better in the game industry and for the people speaking out against sexism, or any "ism" (racism, ageism) in the tech industry.

Earlier this month, other victims of Gamergate created an organization that will help victims of online abuse fight back.

Twitter in December has said that it is rolling out more controls to help people report abuse. That's good, although it could perhaps do more.

For instance, we contacted Twitter and asked why it didn't automatically screen for and report death and rape threats. We'll update this post when we hear back.

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Apple crushed earnings expectations today, but amid all the good news, iPad sales were down 18% from last year.

CEO Tim Cook made his case for the iPad's long-term success on a call with analysts on Tuesday.

Cook said he didn't think iPad sales would see "miraculous improvement" in the short-term but stressed high first-time buyer rates, especially abroad.

About 50% of iPad buyers last quarter in the US, UK, and Japan were buying an iPad for the first time, Cook said.

In China, the first-time buyer rate was even higher, around 70%.

Cook argued that those high first-time buyer rates mean the iPad market is far from saturated.

The Apple CEO also said 80% of tablet commerce is taking place on iPads and that Apple's partnership with IBM to sell iPads to businesses could "move the dial" on sales.

The iPad has a long replacement cycle. People can buy one and not need to upgrade for years.

If Apple wants to turn around the iPad's slumping sales it will have to either unveil a brand new stunning device — like the rumored larger "iPad Pro"— or consistently add new features to its current tablet lineup that make people want to buy the latest model.

Don't expect any big innovations anytime soon, though. Cook said Apple wasn't "projecting something very different in near quarters." And he would know.

SEE ALSO: Apple Sold 21.4 Million iPads, Down 18% From Last Year

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Violent crime and property crime in America both decreased in the first half of 2014, the FBI said in a new preliminary report released Tuesday. 

The FBI's latest crime statistics reflects a long-term trend. Even though America's local police are more militarized than ever, the crime rate has been steadily falling in the past two decades. 

In the 1980s property crime and violence were both much more common, spurring politicians to bill themselves as "tough on crime" in order to get elected in America. (Presidential candidate Michael Dukakis famously lost against George H.W. Bush, who ran a tough-on-crime campaign.)

These days that tough-on-crime rhetoric isn't as common, and there's a excellent reason why. Crime stats consistently show that the country is getting safer. 

In 2013, the number of murders in America dropped 4.4% to 14,196 — down signifcantly from its peak of 24,703 in 1991. The drop in homicides is even more obvious when you look at individual cities that once had bad reputations.

New York recorded 2,245 homicides at its peak in 1990 but only 328 by 2014. Los Angeles had 2,589 homicides in 1992 but only 254 last year. 

Washington, D.C., a much smaller city, saw its murder number decline from a peak of 443 homicides in 1992 to only 105 last year.

Overall, violent crimes including homicide, rape, aggravated assault, and robbery dropped 38% between 1992 and 2011. 

The dramatic plunge in violent crime shocked many experts, who predicted America would just get more violent.

"Recent declines in rates of violent crime in the United States caught many researchers and policymakers off guard," criminology professor Gary LaFree wrote back in 1999. "These declines were perhaps more surprising in that they came on the heels of dire predictions about the rise of a generation of 'superpredators' who would soon unleash the full force of their destructive capacities on an already crime-weary nation." 

Crime experts have yet to come up with a unified theory for why America has gotten so much safer. However, one of the more plausible reasons for the falling violent crime rate is that many cities in America have more police per capita than they used to — and those police officers have gotten better at doing their job.

An omnibus crime bill passed in 1994 provided funding for 100,000 new police officers in the US as and set aside $6.1 billion for crime prevention programs.

In reality, the number of cops on the street only increased by 50,000 to 60,000 in the 1990s, but that was still a bigger increase than in previous decades, according to Levitt's analysis of FBI data. In New York City, which had a particularly sharp drop in violent crime, the police force expanded by 35% in the 1990s.

The mere presence of more police officers can obviously be a big crime deterrent. During the 1990s, these police officers has also became more strategic — in part because they began to use computerized systems to track crimes and find out where they should deploy their officers.

So-called "hot spot policing" is one of the most effective new strategies, political scientist James Q. Wilson has written in The Wall Street Journal.

"The great majority of crimes tend to occur in the same places," Wilson writes. "Put active police resources in those areas instead of telling officers to drive around waiting for 911 calls, and you can bring down crime."

One Minneapolis-based study that Wilson cited found that for every minute a police officer spent at a "hot spot" more time passed before another crime was committed in that spot after he left.

There are other theories about why violent crime decreased, including that it was because America got its crack epidemic under control and because the US economy grew stronger.

Steven Levitt, the economist who wrote the best-seller "Freakonomics," proposed one of the more controversial theories about the crime drop, which was that the legalization of abortion in 1973 was partly responsible. If it weren't for abortion, the theory goes, many unwanted children would have been been grown up to be criminals by the 1990s.

An even more bizarre theory ties the rise of lead in the atmosphere to increases in violent crime. Lead emissions rose from the 1940s to the 1960s, while crime rose from the 1960s through the 1980s — when children exposed to lead were becoming adults.

In an extensive look at the lead/violence theory, Kevin Drum of Mother Jones cited research that found "even moderately high levels of lead exposure are associated with aggressivity, impulsivity, ADHD, and lower IQ. And right there, you've practically defined the profile of a violent young offender."

The thumbail for this story is an Associated Press photo of the 1992 riots in Los Angeles that occurred around the time crime peaked in the United States.

There are a lot of places in the world that still struggle with violence.  The 50 Most Violent Cities In The World

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Apple just reported a record number of iPhone sales in its Q1 earnings.

But while iPhones might be selling like hot-cakes, there are still a bunch of reasons why Android phones are better. 

When you buy an iPhone, you're stuck with as much storage as you decided to buy at the get-go. Most Android phones, however, have a microSD card slot, so you can easily and cheaply buy more storage space.

If your battery starts sucking, you can often remove it and replace it with a new one. Can't do that with an iPhone.

You can use a bunch of different Android phones (including the HTC One, LG G3, and the Galaxy S5) as remote controls, because they have infrared blasters on the top. iPhones do not.

Climate change is real, and it's coming. But we're all going to be affected in different ways. How will your country fare?

The folks at Eco Experts put together a great infographic based on data from the Notre Dame Global Adaptation (ND-Gain) Index, an annual ranking of which countries are best poised to adapt to a warming world.

While the maps provide a great zoomed-out perspective of what's going to happen globally as the earth warms, there are a few caveats to keep in mind when checking it out, however:

First, these maps are based on country rankings, not comprehensive evaluations of each country. In other words, the best-ranked countries are only as great as they seem compared to the countries that are performing less well.

Additionally, the ranking looks only at the level of entire countries. All of the state-specific, region-specific, or city-specific data gets somewhat lost in this zoomed out perspective.

Take the United States, for example. It gets a green-light on this map. But what about specific parts of the US that aren’t as well-equipped to handle climate change as the country might be on average? Miami Beach, Florida, for instance, is poised to see sea levels rise between 6-7 feet by the end of the century; most of the city is less than 10 feet above sea level. Multiple parts of New York City are similarly vulnerable to climate change.

Thankfully, the US as a whole has the infrastructure to adapt; the government can force people in coastal cities like Miami Beach to move inland; we can also build new airports and transit hubs closer to the center of the country. And the map reflects countries' abilities to do just that.

Here's the graphic in its entirety:

SEE ALSO: The Cost Of Living In Every Part Of The World In One Infographic

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Tokyo (AFP) - Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Wednesday slammed as "utterly despicable" an Islamist militant threat to kill a Japanese hostage within 24 hours unless Jordan releases a jihadi bomber.

"This was an utterly despicable act, and I am appalled," the Japanese prime minister told reporters. "While we are in an extremely severe situation... the government is united to work for the early release of Mr Kenji Goto."

"The government, in this extremely severe situation, has been asking for the Jordanian government's cooperation towards the early release of Mr Goto, and this policy remains unchanged."

He urged ministers to do their utmost to resolve the issue and called on them to "take all possible measures to ensure the safety of Japanese nationals at home and abroad."

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The Russian One is a new commuter tram that looks like something from a sci-fi film.

The futuristic tram features LED cabin lighting, felt-covered sofas, wooden handrails, and sliding glass doors that operate by touchscreen.

Luckily, photographer Ilya Varlamov was able to snap some pictures of the new Russian One prototype, right from the showroom floor.

Note: All photos shown are used with permission.

The Russia One is covered in stunning glass paneling.

This is the tram's designer, Alexei Maslov.

The interior of the tram is incredibly beautiful.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — A jury convicted two ex-Vanderbilt football players on Tuesday of raping a former student, rejecting claims that they were too drunk to know what they were doing and that a college culture of binge drinking and promiscuous sex should be blamed for the attack.

The jury deliberated for three hours before announcing that Brandon Vandenburg and Cory Batey were guilty of aggravated rape and aggravated sexual battery.

Batey was stoic, staring ahead and Vandenburg shook his head "no," appearing stunned. His father had an outburst and abruptly left the courtroom.

The victim, a 21-year-old neuroscience and economics major at the time of the June 2013 attack, cried as each guilty verdict was announced. The men face decades in prison when they are sentenced March 6.

The jury heard two weeks of dramatic testimony from a parade of witnesses, including police, former and current Vanderbilt students and the woman, who said she didn't remember what happened that night, only that she woke up in a strange dorm room. They also saw cellphone images from the night of the attack that Vandenburg sent to his friends as it was happening.

Despite the photos and video, and witnesses seeing the woman unconscious and at least partially naked in a dorm hallway, no one reported it.

The victim said in a statement she was hopeful the publicity from the case would lead to a discussion of how to end sexual violence on college campuses. In Nashville, where the prestigious private university is located, hundreds of college officials from across the state were meeting this week to discuss exactly that.

"Finally, I want to remind other victims of sexual violence: You are not alone. You are not to blame," she said.

Vandenburg and Batey were on trial together, but represented by different attorneys. Attorneys for Vandenburg, who had been seeing the woman, said he did not assault her.

Testimony showed Vandenburg passed out condoms to the other players, slapped her buttocks and said he couldn't have sex with the woman because he was high on cocaine.

Batey raped the woman and urinated on her, prosecutors said. His attorneys argued the images didn't show that.

Defense lawyers argued that Vandenburg and Batey were too drunk to know what they were doing and that a college culture of binge drinking and promiscuous sex should be partly to blame.

During closing arguments, Deputy District Attorney Tom Thurman told jurors that the college culture argument was a "red herring" and that the athletes thought the law didn't apply to them.

"That's the culture that you really saw here," Thurman said. "Their mindset that they can get away with anything."

Earlier, one of the defense attorneys conceded that Vandenburg took "deplorable" photos, but shouldn't be convicted of rape because he didn't take part in it.

"He took photographs that he never should have taken," attorney Fletcher Long said.

Batey, of Nashville, turned 21 on Tuesday. Vandenburg, 21, is from Indio, Calif.

Vandenburg's roommate at the time testified that he had been on the top bunk and saw the woman face down on the floor. He said he heard one of the players say he was going to have sex with her, but didn't do anything because he was afraid.

Rumors about what happened quickly spread around campus, and the assault might have gone unnoticed had the university not stumbled onto the closed-circuit TV images several days later in an unrelated attempt to learn who damaged a dormitory door. The images showed players carrying an unconscious woman into an elevator and down a hallway, taking compromising pictures of her and then dragging her into the room.

School authorities contacted police, who found the digital trail of images.

The university said after the verdict that they had kicked the players off the team many months ago, expelled them from school and were confident they acted appropriately.

"We will also continue our comprehensive ongoing efforts to raise awareness of the importance of every Vanderbilt student intervening when another student is at risk or in distress," the school said in a statement.

Jaborian "Tip" McKenzie, who is also charged in the case, testified he did not touch the woman himself but also took pictures.

No trial date has been set for him and Brandon Banks, the fourth former player accused in the assault. Banks did not testify.

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Elon Musk, the billionaire CEO of the commercial spaceflight company SpaceX and electric car company Tesla, made a guest appearance on The Simpsons on Jan. 26.

While the episode, titled "The Musk Who Fell To Earth," calls Musk "possibly the greatest living inventor" it didn't hold back on poking fun at many of the famous inventor's ideas.

At the beginning of the episode, Musk arrives in Springfield as a washed up inventor who uses Homer's bizarre ramblings for inspiration.

Some of his amazing suggestions: Violin-playing quadcopters, luggage that can pack itself, a yoga mat that rolls itself up, and baseball tickets that guide you to your seat.

Musk suggests building a high-speed transportation system called the Hyperloop for Springfield (we guess that'd be his hinted-at test track for the future one he's proposed connecting Los Angeles to San Francisco).

The Hyperloop is a system of sealed tubes designed to cut down on drag and transport people between Los Angeles and San Francisco in a record-breaking 35 minutes.

But a small mouse takes a ride on The Simpsons' version of the Hyperloop, and throws up.

This spectacular loss launches the city into a depression, and Musk ends up leaving in disgrace. At the end of the episode, Musk takes off in his company's Dragon spacecraft and Lisa Simpson comments that "for a man who likes electric cars he sure burns a lot of rocket fuel."

This final joke compelled him to take to Twitter for a good-old debunking:

He explains that since space is a vacuum, there's nothing to push against. That means something as heavy as a spacecraft needs a huge ejected force to propel it through space. Electric rockets would not produce enough force for the spacecraft to react against.

Musk also points out that ion thrusters aren't up to the task of propelling a spacecraft since they only generate a very small force. Anything being launched into space "must have more thrust than weight or you don't go up," Musk tweeted.

Musk also took the opportunity to point out his big problem with space elevators— essentially cables running from Earth's surface to a weight floating high above the atmosphere. Carbon nanotubes, a strand of carbon atoms that are 100 times stronger than steel, might be the right material to use for space elevators, but the research is no where near making them a reality.

I'm all about this self-packing luggage, though:

Watch the episode on Hulu here:

SEE ALSO: SUCCESS: Elon Musk Landed A Rocket On A Platform In The Ocean

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Apple reported fantastic earnings on Tuesday, crushing Wall Street estimates.

In short, Apple's success is nothing less than historic.

Here's just how historic...

Apple's quarterly revenue just from the iPhone, $51.2 billion, was greater than Yahoo's entire market capitalization of $45.5 billion.

Apple's iPhone revenue was more than three times Google's total revenue in the third quarter of 2014, $16.5 billion.

And Apple's iPhone revenue was almost twice Microsoft's total quarterly revenue of $26.5 billion last quarter.

Melbourne (AFP) - American teenager Madison Keys defeated her childhood idol Venus Williams to make the Australian Open semi-finals on Wednesday and end the seven-time Grand Slam champion's stirring run at Melbourne Park.

The unseeded Keys, 19, beat her 18th seeded compatriot 6-3, 4-6, 6-4, overcoming a thigh injury to set up a final four clash with either top seed Serena Williams or last year's finalist Dominika Cibulkova.

Keys said she had to beat nerves facing the 34-year-old Williams, who started her Grand Slam career when the teen was two years old, in her first quarter-final at a major.

"The moment's definitely sweeter being able to play Venus," the world number 35 said after a rollercoaster three setter.

"It's amazing, obviously I was very nervous coming out but I had to embrace the moment and I did and I get to enjoy another moment in the next round."

Keys, who is coached by former Australian Open champion Lindsay Davenport, had a lengthy time out in the second set and said she feared the return of an injury that ended her Wimbledon campaign last year.

"It wasn't as bad as Wimbledon but it was that nightmare of 'I don't want this to happen again' so it was a little overwhelming," she said.

Keys took a tight first set but was trailing 4-1 in the second when she had the lengthy medical timeout, with Williams going on to take the set.

The third was a see-sawing affair featuring four breaks of serve, with Keys finally winning in one hour 55 minutes when Williams netted a return on match point.

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Tuesday, January 13 marks the premiere of the seventh and final season of "Parks and Recreation."

In leading lady Amy Poehler's recently published memoir, "Yes Please," she describes the moment she fell in love with her character Leslie Knope.

Prepare to have your heart melted.

In early 2008, Poehler was readying to leave "Saturday Night Live."

Michael Schur, who cut his teeth in the writing room of 30 Rockefeller Center and went on to write and produce the American reboot of "The Office," called to ask if she was interested in working on a show that he and producer Greg Daniels were creating.

At the time, the series — still a nebulous idea — was rumored to be an "Office" spinoff. They talked vaguely of concepts, and agreed that it would be fun to work together.

By the time the series' premise came together, Poehler was pregnant. Schur decided to pitch her anyway. "Greg's and my general feeling was: Poehler or bust, pregnancy be damned," he writes in the footnotes of Poehler's book.

Schur called again, this time from the balcony of his house while chain-smoking. Poehler writes:

"He told me about a character he and Greg created called Leslie Knope. She was an extremely low-level Parks and Recreation Department employee who had big dreams. She was inspired by the 'Yes We Can' spirit of Obama's recent election. She believed that it only took one person to make a difference. She wanted to effect change, she wanted to someday be president, but most importantly, she wanted to turn an empty parking lot in her town into a park."

Soon after Poehler received the script, she said "it took five minutes to realize Leslie Knope was the best character ever written for me."

After a long discussion with then-husband Will Arnett, she moved her family out to Los Angeles and shot six episodes in a row. "Parks and Recreation" went on to become one of the most beloved female-lead comedies of the last decade, earning five Emmy nominations.

Looking back at Leslie's journey, Schur reflects, "It's so interesting to think about it this way, now, as we near the end — it was, at the beginning, really that simple: a woman who wanted to make something out of nothing."

The final season of "Parks and Recreation" premieres Tuesday, January 13 at 8 p.m. ET on NBC.

SEE ALSO: 8 TV Shows That Didn't Get Popular Until Their Second Seasons

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Monrovia (AFP) - A potent symbol of the nightmare enveloping west Africa at the height of the Ebola outbreak, the ELWA-3 treatment centre is being dismantled and incinerated bit by bit as the region emerges from catastrophe.

The largest Ebola unit ever built opened in the Liberian capital Monrovia with 120 beds on August 17 but was immediately overwhelmed, with staff forced to turn patients away at its gates, despite more than doubling its capacity.

Five months later to the day it registered no patients at all for the first time, and staff this week marked a drastic retreat of an epidemic which has killed thousands by dismantling and burning the first tent put up at the clinic.

"The number of cases has decreased significantly -- we are down to five confirmed cases in Liberia," said Duncan Bell, the field coordinator in Liberia for Medecins san Frontieres (MSF), the medical aid charity at the forefront of treating victims of the outbreak.

"In line with this development we think it was appropriate to reduce the treatment centre. Today we have 60 beds and at the end of February we hope to go down to 30 beds. This does not mean that we are closing ELWA-3 -- we are just reducing the capacity."

"We still have the capacity to scale up to 120 beds within 24 hours if the need arises," he added, as staff carried wooden planks and canvas to a large fire nearby.

The worst outbreak of the virus in history has seen Liberia and its neighbours Guinea and Sierra Leone register almost 9,000 deaths in a year.

- 'Tremendous leap' -

Soon after it opened, staff at ELWA-3 were struggling to screen new arrivals, care for admitted patients or safely remove dead bodies and transport them to the crematorium.

By the end of the year the centre had taken in 1,826 patients, 1,225 of whom tested positive for Ebola and 498 of whom survived.

But Liberia and its neighbours Sierra Leone and Guinea have reported huge progress on stemming the spread of Ebola since the summer, when the joint tally was several hundred new infections a week.

Liberian Commerce Minister Axel Addy told reporters in Geneva on Monday that 12 of Liberia's 15 counties had reported no new cases, adding: "We've made a tremendous leap."

He said the crisis had cost Liberia $93 million (82 million euros) in lost revenue, with the key mining sector coming "to a grinding halt".

Bell said the downsizing of ELWA-3's capacity went hand in hand with a reduction in workers on the ground, noting that MSF staff had performed an "incredible job".

MSF said in its latest crisis update on Monday it was treating just two patients in ELWA-3, a huge tented field clinic put up on the grounds of a missionary hospital.

Those were among just over 50 patients at MSF's eight Ebola units across Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. 

The charity's busiest Ebola management centre is currently the Prince of Wales centre in Freetown, with 30 patients as of January 24.

- 'We cannot rest easy' -

Children trickled back to school last week in Guinea, where the Ebola epidemic broke out in December 2013 and teaching is due to resume in neighbouring Liberia next week.

Classrooms in both countries have been provided with health kits containing chlorine, thermometers and soap, while teams will monitor students to detect possible infections.

Mali, which along with Senegal and Nigeria had a minor Ebola scare, was able last week to declare itself Ebola-free after 42 days without any new cases.

Senegal and Nigeria had previously already done so.

"This decline is an opportunity to focus efforts on addressing the serious weaknesses that remain in the response," said Brice de la Vingne, MSF Director of Operations.  

"We are on the right track, but reaching zero cases will be difficult unless significant improvements are made in alerting new cases and tracing those who have been in contact with them."

He warned that just a single new case could be enough "to reignite an outbreak". 

"Until everyone who has come into contact with Ebola has been identified, we cannot rest easy," he said.

The African Union plans to launch an Ebola fund and disease control centre, officials in Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa said on Wednesday, as aid agency Oxfam warned leaders needed to keep their promises to boost healthcare systems on the continent.

Oxfam called for a "massive post-Ebola Marshall Plan", referring to the United States aid package to rebuild Europe after World War II.

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