A woman at Foyles bookshop looks at a copy of J. K. Rowling's latest novel “The Casual Vacancy” which has gone on sale today starting at 8:00 am on September 27, 2012 in London, England. “The Casual Vacancy” is J. K. Rowling's first book aimed at an adult readership and is centered on a parish council election in a small West Country town. (Photo by Oli Scarf)

A man holds a copy of the Koran during a protest against Niger President Mahamadou Issoufou's attendance last week at a Paris rally in support of French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, which featured a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammad as the cover of its first edition since an attack by Islamist gunmen, in Niamey January 17, 2015. (Photo by Tagaza Djibo/Reuters)

El Salvador's Elisa Funes fixes her googles during the warm-up prior to swimming finals at the Pan American Games in Santiago, Chile, Monday, October 23, 2023. (Photo by Silvia Izquierdo/AP Photo)

A woman uses a virtual reality (VR) headset to view images by Mexican painter Frida Kahlo in Mexico City, Mexico, 23 May 2018. The technological giant Google launched the “The Faces of Frida”, an interactive digital exhibition that treasures the heartrending work of the Mexican artist to tell her story from different points of view, with attention to the invisible details. (Photo by Sashenka Gutierrez/EPA/EFE)

An Iraqi shi'ite muslim girl places a copy of the Koran on her head during the holy month of Ramadan at the Imam Ali Shrine, in the holy city of Najaf, Iraq on May 28, 2019. (Photo by Alaa Al-Marjani/Reuters)

From Britain to China to Mali, new maps showing travel times to the nearest urban centre reveal huge differences between countries. Using Open Street Map and Google, a University of Oxford team have created a visual breakdown that suggests major inequalities when it comes to commuting. Here: China. The dataset used for China was unique as it relied solely on Open Street Map, due to restrictions on accessing Google data. The population is densely concentrated in the east and accessibility is increased, whereas rural provinces in the west remain remote. (Photo by Daniel Weiss/Jennifer Rozier/Malaria Atlas Project/University of Oxford)

Image patterning has existed for hundreds of years; however, before Thomas Yang no one has ever thought of putting paint on the bicycle wheels and using it as a patterning tool to create very interesting-looking pictures. Being an avid cyclist and an artist, Thomas Yang has decided to combine the two, creating the 100copies. The name of this project not only alludes to the fact that only one hundred copies of those pictures were going to be made, but also to the fact that the pictures themselves consist of hundreds of repeating shapes. And even though the project is called 100copies, no two pictures are alike due to the nature of their creation, making them truly unique. (Photo by Thomas Yang)

A copy of part of the Dead Sea Scrolls is displayed at the “Dead Sea Scrolls: Life and Faith in Biblical Times” exhibition at Discovery Times Square on December 16, 2011 in New York City. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)