Art can be a useful means to inspire people to take action for certain causes. And in the new art exhibit Arcadia Earth, we not only get some stunning displays of various natural scenery but also a call to action, reminding us of our responsibility to take care of our planet.

“Arcadia Earth” is an exhibit for the Instagram generation — it’s colorful, immersive, and just playful enough for phone-clad millennials to throw themselves at it. But it would be unfair to say that the exhibit is nothing but a pretty background for selfies.

The exhibit is, first and foremost, a show with a purpose: opening visitors’ eyes to the state of our planet through immersive art installations and giving them tips on how to reduce their impact.

And there’s truly nothing like walking into a coral-like tunnel made of 44,000 discarded plastic bags (the number used in New York City every minute) to make you think about our responsibility in the whole mess that is our planet currently.

(Image credit: Arcadia Earth)

While the music festival near Area 51 was canceled and substituted with a party in Las Vegas, that was a separate venture from the original Facebook event called “Storm Area 51, They Can’t Stop All of Us,” scheduled for this Friday, September 20. More than two million people have responded that they are going, but most of those responses came months ago. The military has no idea how many people will still try to get into Area 51, so they are instituting defense measures, including temporary flight restrictions (TFRs).

The TFR will be active from September 19th to the 23rd and range from the ground all the way to 18,000 feet. Only military aircraft are allowed overhead and even law enforcement and medical helicopters are subject to tight restrictions in order to enter the closed-off airspace. One can only imagine that the military will have plenty of airborne assets in place to tightly monitor the border with Area 51 in this area. The base already has a cadre of resident HH-60 Pave Hawks that run security operations over the base's sprawling territory and beyond.

The other TFR that has been posted is to the south, along the southern reach of the Nevada Test And Training Range where primary access to the Department Of Energy's Nevada Test Site, now known as the Nevada National Security Site, is located. It was just last week that a pair of Dutch Youtubers were arrested for trespassing beyond the site's perimeter. Another deeper incursion into the area last January ended with the driver being shot dead.

As you can see from the map above, Area 51 is completely surrounded by Department of Defense properties, with varying levels of access. So don't expect to see live aerial footage of whatever may happen on September 20th. Read more about the preparations for the possible storming at The Drive.   -via Gizmodo

(Image credit: Finlay McWalter)

If you can’t see a trash can along the road, do you just throw away the peel of the banana you just ate on the ground? If you think to yourself that it’s fine and “it will just decompose anyway,” think again. While it does decompose, you might be wrong in assuming that it decomposes quickly. 

For this matter, Popular Mechanics interviewed Rhonda Sherman, an extension solid waste specialist at North Carolina State University’s Department of Horticultural Science. She also authored a book entitled “Backyard Composting of Yard, Garden, and Food Discards.”

Before we go any further, let’s take a look at the decomposition process. The first thing that happens after you toss your peel is that microorganisms start breaking it down by secreting enzymes that cause the decomposition, Sherman says. But because microorganisms don’t have mouths or teeth, this doesn’t happen quickly.

… while weather does play a role—things decompose more quickly in tropics than, say, a desert—when all is said and done, food waste can take years to decompose, not just a few weeks like many people may think.

If your banana peel is just laying on the ground for two years, it’s not good for the environment. Plain and simple.

So where do we throw our banana peels, or any kind of food waste? We throw it in the trash bin. Or even better, we can compost it.

Find out more about this topic over at the site.

(Image Credit: Alexas_Fotos/ Pixabay)

Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) is a disease that starts to alter and damage the brain years or even decades before symptoms in a person appear. Being able to identify early if a person is at risk of having this disease would be of great help for the person, as he or she can prepare for the disease, and probably prevent it.

Scientists at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine, in a new study recently published online in the Neurobiology of Aging, state that, with further developments, measuring how fast an individual’s eyes dilate while he or she takes a cognitive test might be a “low-cost, low-invasive method” that can help in screening individuals at increased genetic risk for Alzheimer’s Disease, even before the cognitive decline begins.

In recent years, researchers investigating the pathology of AD have primarily directed their attention at two causative or contributory factors: the accumulation of protein plaques in the brain called amyloid-beta and tangles of a protein called tau. Both have been linked to damaging and killing neurons, resulting in progressive cognitive dysfunction.

The new study focuses on pupillary responses which are driven by the locus coeruleus (LC), a cluster of neurons in the brainstem involved in regulating arousal and also modulating cognitive function. Tau is the earliest occurring known biomarker for AD; it first appears in the LC; and it is more strongly associated with cognition than amyloid-beta…

The LC drives pupillary response — the changing diameter of the eyes’ pupils — during cognitive tasks. (Pupils get bigger the more difficult the brain task.) In previously published work, the researchers had reported that adults with mild cognitive impairment, often a precursor to AD, displayed greater pupil dilation and cognitive effort than cognitively normal individuals, even if both groups produced equivalent results. Critically, in the latest paper, the scientists link pupillary dilation responses with identified AD risk genes.

(Image Credit: Skitterphoto/ Pixabay)

This is the Great White Spot of Saturn (see top left of the image), which began as a “fluffy white storm cloud” in the northern hemisphere of Saturn back in 2010. Now, it has spread across the entire planet, which, if scaled to a storm system on the Earth, would be comparable to “a storm system that covers all of North America but wraps around the entire planet.”

Pictured here in false colored infrared in February, orange colors indicate clouds deep in the atmosphere, while light colors highlight clouds higher up. The rings of Saturn are seen nearly edge-on as the thin blue horizontal line. The warped dark bands are the shadows of the rings cast onto the cloud tops by the Sun to the upper left. A source of radio noise from lightning, the intense storm was thought to relate to seasonal changes when spring emerges in the north of Saturn. After raging for over six months, the iconic storm circled the entire planet and then tried to absorb its own tail -- which surprisingly caused it to fade away.

(Image Credit: Cassini Imaging Team, SSI, JPL, ESA, NASA)

Albert Einstein, in his theory of general relativity, hypothesized that a black hole, formed from two cosmically quaking collisions of two massive black holes, would ring in the aftermath. This ring would produce gravitational waves that, like a struck bell, would reverberate sound waves. Einstein predicted that this particular pitch and decay of these gravitational waves would indicate the mass and the spin of the newly formed black hole.

Now, physicists from MIT and elsewhere have "heard" the ringing of an infant black hole for the first time, and found that the pattern of this ringing does, in fact, predict the black hole's mass and spin -- more evidence that Einstein was right all along.

The findings, published today in Physical Review Letters, also favor the idea that black holes lack any sort of "hair" -- a metaphor referring to the idea that black holes, according to Einstein's theory, should exhibit just three observable properties: mass, spin, and electric charge. All other characteristics, which the physicist John Wheeler termed "hair," should be swallowed up by the black hole itself, and would therefore be unobservable.

More details of this news on Science Daily.

(Image Credit: geralt/ Pixabay)

Alex Trebek of Jeopardy! is of French Canadian origin. He's a native French speaker and can switch between French and English easily.

So when he pronounces a French word or an English loanword from French, he very carefully uses a French accent. "Genre" comes up a lot on Jeopardy! Here is a compilation of him saying it so deliciously on that show.

-via AV Club

Forensic investigators in Australia ran a grisly experiment for more than a year and came up with some fairly weird conclusions. They observed (and photographed) a corpse as it decomposed at a body farm for 17 months. A picture was taken every half-hour during daylight for that entire time. They discovered that a dead body can move for a long time after death- more than a year.

"What we found was that the arms were significantly moving, so that arms that started off down beside the body ended up out to the side of the body," Alyson Wilson a medical scientist at Central Queensland University told the ABC.

Some movement after death is expected, but the fact that it continued for such a long time was a complete surprise, Wilson said.

The results of the study could have implications for forensic investigations. We can no longer assume that the position in which a long-dead body is found is the same position the deceased was in at death. Read the story at Interesting Engineering. -via Damn Interesting

(Image credit: Flickr user projectexploration)

Lady Macbeth's Guest Soap Mini Soap

Your home is your castle. Treat your guests like royalty and show that you are full of the milk of human kindness with the Lady Macbeth's Guest Soap Mini Soap from the NeatoShop.

This wickedly fun soap is bound to be your new guilty pleasure. It would be a true crime to let your guests wash their hands with anything else.  Don't let the thought of inferior soaps keep you up at night. Stock your bathroom with Lady Macbeth's Guest Soap Mini Soap for a clean and spotless state of mind.     

Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more great Bath & Body items. New products arriving all the time. 

Don't forget to stop by the store to check out our large selection of customizable apparel. We specialize in Curvy and Big and Tall sizes. We carry baby 6 months all the way to 10 XL shirts. We know that fun, fabulous, and Shakespeare loving people come in every size. 

In the Nile Delta governorate of Gharbeya, an Egyptian masseuse plays with fire to ease his client’s muscle pain. The technique, an ancient Pharaonic technique known as the “fiery towel” starts with a standard massage, then Abdel Rehim Saeid, the masseur, places several layers of towels and insulating materials on the client’s back and a final towel soaked in alcohol. The alcohol-soaked towel is set on fire for a minute before the flames are put out with a wet towel, as Reuters details: 

“It is ...called a fiery massage,” Saeid said, that works by sucking moisture out of the body.

“I communicate with the human body, coming into close contact with the body of the human in front of me,” he said.

Saeid said he cannot use the technique with people suffering from high blood pressure, kidney failure or haemophilia.

image credit: screenshot via Reuters

Models pulled up in a yellow school bus outside Bergdof Goodman, a tourist spot near Central Park. The models trotted out in two by twos on the streets, sat by the Pulitzer Fountain to eat and read books. This performance, called The Officepeople was done in celebration of Thom Browne’s womenswear arrival at Bergdof Goodman. The idea came from the designer himself, as Vogue detailed: 

In Thom Browne’s fantasy, everyone walks in a synchronized marching motion with the X-Acto knife precision of an army brigade. Everyone has very clear skin like beautiful, genetically engineered characters plucked from the film Gattaca. Everyone wears their socks pulled up to their perfectly sculpted shins.

 “How could you take the idea of something as mundane as a gray suit and show it interestingly, and even the idea of uniformity and show that in an interesting way?” said Browne. “It is taking those everyday activities but presenting them in a way that is somehow weird and in a way that there is a tension.”

image credit: Cris Maggio for Thom Browne via Vogue

The Mid-Autumn Festival is a wonderful celebration of lights, food, stories, and bonding with one's family as they give thanks for a good harvest during the season.

Several Asian cultures have their own traditions in celebrating the festival but at the heart of it all, it's about spending time together with one's family and sharing in the bountiful harvest that they have received.

Of all the Chinese festivals, I love the Mooncake/Mid-Autumn Festival the most. Right after the scary Hungry Ghost Festival or Ghost Month, it is a lovely festival celebrating family gatherings, enjoying sweet mooncakes and admiring the full moon. Happy childhood memories are filled with beautiful lanterns, playing with candles and nibbling on lotus bean paste mooncakes.

A harvest festival, the Mid-Autumn Festival is celebrated by Asians and the Asian diaspora, for example the Chinese and the Vietnamese. Other Asian cultures have their own harvest festivals too like Tsukimi and Chuseok. It usually falls on the 15th day of the 8th month of the lunar calendar. The 15th day is always the full moon. The festival falls between late September to early October.

(Image credit: Shizhao/Wikimedia Commons)

We usually see a lot of influencers on Instagram “living” their best lives with vacations, brand partnerships, and  giving tips on how to live “happy” and “fully”. Whether it’s how to achieve a well balanced lifestyle, glass skin, or a great body, we live in an age where we are constantly told how to live. That what the media and society perceives as “living fully” is the only way to live. But what does “living fully” really mean, amid all these standards and expectations? Sara Kubric tells The Guardian that in the age of Instagram, life is often reduced to doing things worth documenting: 

What makes us happy, at its core, is an existential question, according to Sara Kuburic, a psychotherapist and counselor who works with millennials. She believes inspirational tropes are popular because they offer the promise of immediate fulfillment. “I find that people increasingly conceptualize living fully as seizing opportunities, taking risks and exploring the unknown,” she says. “Living fully, in the Instagram age, is often then reduced to doing things that would be worth documenting.”

“We are eager to live our lives fully,” she says. “Yet the pressure to prove this to our ‘friends’ is a major reason why we are not.”

image credit: via wikimedia commons

Hideo Kojima has blessed the Internet with evidence of a visit from none other than Keanu Reeves himself. Kojima (for those who don’t know) is the person behind the Metal Gear Solid franchise, who Reeves visited while he was in Japan, to promote the Japanese premiere of John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum. This meetup might result in something, but only time will tell what that something is.

image credit: Hideo Kojima via Twitter

Deciding who needs urgent care and attention in hospitals can usually become a subjective choice. Oftentimes, people with life-threatening conditions or those with very serious injuries get treated first since it's a matter of life and death.

However, what about others who aren't necessarily fighting for their lives but still have serious illnesses? How can we decide who gets prioritized and what measures will we use to make that decision so that it would be fair to all? A team of researchers may have the answer to these questions.

Our research group has developed an evidence-based tool that aims to help clinicians with these difficult decisions. The Responding to Urgency of Need in Palliative Care (RUN-PC) Triage Tool is expected to change practice internationally.

We conducted a foundational qualitative study with Victorian health professionals to better understand which factors clinicians use to assess the urgency of palliative care needs and the ethical aspects of their decision-making.

We used these results as the basis for an international online discrete choice experiment to determine how each of these factors should be weighted. We then developed a scoring system for the final Responding to Urgency of Need in Palliative Care (RUN-PC) Triage Tool.

(Image credit: Adhy Savala/Unsplash)