Over 200 people across the U.S have come down with a mysterious illness that seems to be linked with vaping. Perhaps it is our body’s way of telling us the potential serious health risks of using e-cigarettes.

As of August 27, there were 215 cases of severe respiratory disease in 25 states since late June, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported Friday. All patients reported using e-cigarette products. But while officials believe their illness is associated with vaping, they haven’t been able to single out which ingredient or device may be causing the problem.

So far, the patients have a few things in common. They suffered from respiratory symptoms, including coughing, shortness of breath, chest pain, and difficulty breathing. Some have gotten seriously ill, even winding up in intensive care units on oxygen support through ventilators or intubation. Most are in their late teens and 20s with no underlying health issues. Many cases also involved vaping THC-containing liquids (though it’s not clear whether that was from cannabis e-cigs or nicotine e-cigs), and the CDC singled out black market products as another potential commonality.

More details of this news over at Vox.

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Social network company Facebook will no longer scan the faces of new users by default. Facebook will now ask for permission first. Existing users of the site who did not get the site’s face recognition system will be alerted about it.

Facebook notes: “If you do not currently have the face recognition setting and do nothing, we will not use face recognition to recognize you or suggest tags.” In short, it’s not on by default for these users. Good!

Despite the social network company’s efforts to convey its updated policy clearly, however, there are still some users who may be left uninformed.

For those users, Facebook’s face recognition feature may be enabled without them realizing it. And that’s not good, because Facebook’s face recognition practices have bothered some privacy-conscious users…

Facebook’s interest in scanning faces—with and without asking for permission first—goes way back. The technology originally appeared at the end of 2010 as Tag Suggestions. The tag suggestions feature was turned on by default for users in most countries, and if you never turned it off manually, then its broader replacement—the face recognition option—may be (or has already been) enabled for you as well.

So why isn’t Facebook just asking every user explicitly, now, if they want the feature on or off? A spokesperson told Fast Company, “In the US and [other countries] where Tag Suggestions was available, we respected people’s Tag Suggestions settings choice.”

Have you turned your face recognitions off? I believe it’s time we did.

(Image Credit: Simon/ Pixabay)

You should bookmark the Trebek Affirmation Soundboard, because it's just what you need when things haven't been going right, or you're a little down and need a pick-me-up. Alex Trebek, the voice of authority and the host of Jeopardy! is there to give you a little boost. Just choose your topic and select your amount, and let Trebek tell you what you need to hear. -via Metafilter

We've shown you some strange and even dangerous local festivals from around the world, but this one takes the cake. In the town of Nejapa in El Salvador, people celebrate Bolas de Fuego every August 31st by flinging fireballs at each other!

The Fireball Festival commemorates a landmark volcanic eruption in 1922, which, according to legend, was actually a battle between local patron saint San Jeronimo and the Devil. As a tribute to this divine clash between good and evil, Nejapa becomes an unregulated battleground for two warring groups, who marinate balls of cloth in kerosene, light them on fire, and hurl them at one another at close range while flanking crowds cheer them on.

The participants wear gloves and clothing soaked in water. Bystanders are encouraged to wear wet clothing and carry water as well, since someone always gets hurt. -via Kottke

Five hundred years ago, chocolate first arrived in the European shores in the form of cocoa beans. After pillaging the Mayan and the Aztec empires of Central America, where the cocoa beans have been cultivated and used to create various forms of chocolate for over 3,000 years, Hernan Cortes and his conquistadors brought the spiced treat with them over to the ports of Spain.

In honor of this trans-Atlantic transfer, the Barcelona Confectionery Guild has set up the Chocolate Museum to tell the story of chocolate and its modernization. Although the history section of the museum is in no way perfect, visitors get a general trajectory of chocolate’s evolution, moving from bitter water to the stunningly detailed sculptures that fill the museum. By using the statues to visibly depict modern chocolate innovation, the arc of the history of chocolate feels fairly complete.

Upon entrance to the museum, guests are greeted by a massive white chocolate ape named Snowy, along with their own chocolate bar as part of their admission. As they munch on the confectioner’s chocolate, guests walk past glass-encased sculptures made entirely of chocolate. The sculptures include some famous cultural icons such as Minnie Mouse and Louis Armstrong. However, the bulk of work focuses on Spanish architecture, proudly featuring Sagrada Familia, one of Gaudi’s famous houses, and creatures from Parc Guell.

What a sweet way to tell history!

(Image Credit: SpirosK / Flickr / Atlas Obscura)

A new case report came out this week with news of a UK teenager having a diet of potato chips and other junk foods, which led to very undesirable health consequences. Doctors have described how the teen’s disordered “fussy” eating “led to chronic nutritional deficiencies that left him with a variety of symptoms, including permanent partial blindness.”

According to the case report, published Monday in the Annals of Internal Medicine, the boy had visited his family doctor at age 14 with complaints of fatigue. He seemed otherwise healthy and wasn’t taking any medications, but he described himself as a “fussy eater” and tests showed that he was low in vitamin B12 and had anemia. He was prescribed injections of B12 and was given advice on how to eat a proper diet.

A year later, though, he developed hearing loss and was sent to another doctor. Soon after, he started having vision problems as well. But tests at the time, including brain scans and standard eye exams, didn’t reveal any underlying physical causes. Over the next two years, his vision continued to worsen, and by the time he saw an eye specialist, he was diagnosed with damage to his optic nerves.

Again, tests looking for a possible explanation like a hereditary disease came up short—but a more sensitive test found that he was still low in vitamin B12. And when they asked about his diet, he revealed that since he was a kid in grade school, he had flat out avoided foods with “certain textures” and almost exclusively ate chips, white bread, processed ham and sausage; he had also stopped taking vitamin B12 shots. Further tests showed that he was deficient in copper, selenium, and vitamin D too, and his bones were unusually weak with low mineral density.

Check out more details about this saddening news over at Gizmodo.

What are your thoughts on this one?

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#WATCH Himachal Pradesh: A car crosses a makeshift bridge made of iron poles after heavy rainfall in the region damaged the road, in Drekari area of Chamba district. (22-08) pic.twitter.com/3XrHekeKqc

— ANI (@ANI) August 26, 2019

No road? No problem!

Watch how this daredevil Indian driver drove his car across a washed-out road in Himachal Pradesh, northern India, using iron poles that were laid out and taped together. Nerves of steel or simply madness?

China is currently experiencing its lowest marriage rate in 11 years due to lack of interest in marriage among the young people, especially women. Aside from this, there is a huge imbalance between the sexes, men being 30M more than the population of women. And most women focus more on their careers than building families.

In 2015, the government ended its decades-long one-child-only policy after realizing that a marriageless and childless society will not sustain the People’s Republic. In line with this is the government’s effort to become more intentional in promoting marriage among the citizens. They launched a matchmaking train to help young men and women fall in love.

Last August 10, there were 1,000 singles that boarded the train. Ice breakers and fun activities during the trip helped them to know each other better, with the goal of developing romantic relationships.

"These activities are more creative than matchmaking. The train is like a bridge, bringing people from different places together, to get to know each other during the journey," said Huang Song, one of the participants on the Love-Pursuit Train. "Even if you don't find the right one for you, you can still make a lot of friends on the train."

So far, the love train is working and the two-day train trip has brought together hundreds of people, and some even got married.

Photo by China Daily

In a society where access and affordability of medicines are real challenges, can biohackers be considered as “heroes” for social justice in health? Are there other creative solutions?

This article discusses the reality of how extremely expensive medical research and clinical trials are. It also introduces how biohackers, a group of independent biologists, are proudly pirating a cheap version of a million-dollar gene therapy. We are now forcibly faced with the question: are they medicine’s Robin Hood or a threat to safety? What about concerns regarding Bioethics?

Read more about this pressing concern at Technology Review.

Image Credit: Bruceblaus / Victor Tangermann

Some people call it “August Anxiety”, some call it “Summertime Sadness” - this feeling of real sadness and uneasiness in anticipation of the end of summer is real and is felt by many. August is the last third of summer, and we really don’t want to curl up into a ball of anxiety when we can enjoy summer to its fullest. Debra Kissen, PhD, explains to Refinery29 that there are things that we can do to re-wire our brain to handle August differently: 

The core skill that you need to develop in order to combat August anxiety is simply mindfulness, she says.  "Gently notice that thought of future distress, and without judgment, just return back to the present moment," 

It's also worthwhile to find ways to be present, whether that's spending time in nature or literally just watching TV without scrolling your phone at the same time. "It's so much harder and harder to be present, because real-life distractions keep injecting themselves," Dr. Kissen says. "Our minds are so used to being given this pace of information that it doesn’t know how to slow down." And if that still doesn't help, the next best thing you can do for the rest of the month is commiserate with other people and blast the Lana Del Ray.

image credit: via wikimedia commons

Meow Wolf, a strong artist collective has opened the doors to a new immersive art environment. The House of Eternal Return is a 20,000 square foot role-playing installation located in an abandoned bowling alley in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The environment serves as a unique combination of art exhibition, fantasy world, jungle gym, and children’s museum where you are allowed to interact with anything and everything! On Meow Wolf’s process in creating this fantasy, open-world themed environment, Colossal has the details: 

“The group has long been inspired by monumental works of art,” Vince Kadlubek, one of Meow Wolf’s organizers, told Colossal. “But I think we are equally inspired by arcades, theme parks, Burning Man, grocery stores, nature—immersive spaces. At the heart of it we are probably most inspired by the forts we built growing up and certainly Nickelodeon, MTV, Jim Henson, Tumblr, and Twin Peaks.”

The creative process for creating such an involved experience took 18 months, in part because the installation and storyline were being built in tandem. “We had a team of six writers who had a specific story arc with specific plot points and characters, but much of the story elements were written from backgrounds of the objects and spaces that were being created,” said Kadlubek. “Our creative process is not top-down. It is lateral.”

image credit: via Colossal

At one time, we thought that humans evolved in a straight line, from one species to another, until homo sapiens sapiens, or modern humans, were achieved -as illustrated in the artwork called March of Progress. But as we developed the ability to analyze DNA, the story gets much messier. Several species of hominins co-existed over the course of our evolution, possibly many species at different times. We now know that non-African humans carry a small percentage of Neanderthal genes, and some carry Denisovan genes. Even more recent genetic research shows that those Neanderthals that modern humans encountered when they left Africa 60,000 years ago already had a legacy of mixing with modern humans in their genome!

The finding also adds to the already compelling body of evidence that there were multiple migrations of modern humans out of Africa, stretching back over hundreds of thousands of years. Modern humans were thought to have evolved in Africa after the departure of Neanderthals and Denisovans, and to have remained on the continent until their well-known out-of-Africa diaspora 60,000 years ago. But recently, fossil evidence has indicated otherwise: A human jawbone in Israel, reported last year to date back to 180,000 years ago, and a skull fragment in Greece that’s even older, indicate earlier human migrations.

In fact, with that piece of skull, archaeologists may have stumbled across a possible member of the long-ago exodus that Siepel and his team inferred in their genomic study. The fossil, which was classified as Neanderthal when it was unearthed in Greece in the 1970s, was analyzed last month by the paleoanthropologist Katerina Harvati of the University of Tübingen and her colleagues. Structurally, it looked somewhat like a modern human skull, but it was estimated to be about 210,000 years old — supposedly too old to be modern at that location.

Under this model, it appears that modern humans didn't survive the earlier migrations, and the Neanderthals and Denisovans did not survive the last large homo sapiens sapiens migration. Or did they? The traces of DNA left after each exodus show they are still with us in some ways. Read more about how genome sequencing is revealing more about human evolution at Quanta magazine.  -via Digg

(Image credit: Olena Shmahalo/Quanta Magazine)

The US threw its heart and soul into the Manhattan Project in order to develop a weapon to stop World War II. It did, but left unimaginable horror behind. Then came the arms race with the Soviet Union, in which both sides developed ever more powerful nuclear weapons. As we became more afraid of nuclear bombs, the US government went to great lengths to maintain public support for nuclear research. That included a 1965 comic outlining the possible peaceful uses of such weapons.

This particular pro-nuke comic was written by scientist and educator Athelstan Spilhaus and was published in the July 4, 1965 edition of newspapers around the country as part of the long-running Our New Age series. Titled, “Atomic Ditch Digging,” this edition of the strip explained that humanity had harnessed the atom, and now it would be used for countless useful purposes in peacetime. Peacetime is a relative word, of course, since the U.S. was dramatically escalating its presence in Vietnam during the summer of 1965 and expanding the military draft at home.

Nevertheless, the comic explained that nuclear explosions were far cheaper than traditional explosives and could be used for building roads, railways, and “huge canals.” The illustration, done by Gene Fawcette, even included a shovel with a nuclear symbol, further pressing the idea that this was a perfect use of atomic energy for large infrastructure projects.

When all you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail. What could possibly go wrong? See more of the comic and the history behind it at Paleofuture. -via Boing Boing

(Image credit: Brett Ryan Bonowicz)

Sam Battle connected 95 LEGO droids, 42 musical instruments, and 30 iPads together to create the Droid Orchestra. You can probably guess what song they play. The project is to introduce you to the new programmable LEGO® Star Wars™ BOOST Droid Commander. Yeah, they're expensive and probably technically challenging, but they are pretty cool to watch. Learn more about the Droid Orchestra project in a behind-the-scenes video.   -via Geeks Are Sexy

About 250 pigs have escaped from a farm in Vermont, causing a nuisance for drivers and passers-by. But most of them have returned. Thanks to the trail of hot dog buns and good ol’ fashioned corralling!

"The pigs have been allowed and remain to be allowed in the town right of way so cars are unable to pass, people can't walk on the road because the pigs chase them," said Town Clerk Angela Eastman on Thursday.

According to the farm owner, Walter Jeffries, the fence enclosure was allegedly damaged by his former employee, who he had already reported to the police.

The ruckus of the pigs in town cost Jeffries tens of thousands of dollars in fines as a public hazard.

Image Credit: Lisa Rathke / AP