You know you need sleep. You have a proscribed amount of time to get it. You are tired enough to sleep for days. But for some reason, you just can't catch a nod. If you are suffering from insomnia, or even if it just happens every once in a great while, listen to this advice from AsapSCIENCE. -via Digg
It is vital for man to eat in order to survive, and I believe we all would agree to that statement. In fact, eating is so crucial that our brain employs different regions for food recognition. For fresh, raw foods one region, the occipital cortex, is involved. Another region, the temporal gyrus, is involved for the recognition of processed or cooked foods.
"Food is essential for life. It is therefore of paramount importance that its key characteristics (is it poisonous? is it tasty? is it nutritious?) are readily recognised. To come to our aid, in this case, is our semantic memory, which is a large personal store of information on everything that we know, including the sensorial or abstract properties of the objects. Semantic memory allows us to give a name and a meaning to what we have encountered during our existence" explain Miriam Vignando and Raffaella Rumiati, respectively lead author and research director: "Speaking of food, one of the key characteristics to identify is certainly the level of processing it has undergone".
Via EurekAlert!
(Image Credit: Rachel Park/ Unsplash)
Since it has the word “dog” in its name, a raccoon dog would behave just the same as a “man’s best friend” would, right? You might want to take a closer look at these creatures first or you might regret taking a tanuki (another name for raccoon dog) as a pet. They might seem like dogs, but they really aren’t.
So what are their differences and similarities to dogs? Are raccoon dogs domestic or are they wild? What’s the right way to take care of them? Those are what Rachel Gutman of The Atlantic set to find out in her interview with Oklahoma City Zoo and Botanical Garden curator, Rebecca Snyder.
See the interview transcript over at the website.
(Image Credit: Oklahoma City Zoo and Botanical Garden)
Are you looking for a deliciously fun and comfy way to celebrate weekend? Dive into the NeatoShop for a My Food Pyramid shirt. This slightly cheesy design is sure to leave you feeling full of pep and happily satisfied.
Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more great items. New items arriving Weekly.
This great design is available on variety of apparel and bags. The NeatoShop specializes in curvy and hard to find sizes. We carry baby 6 months all the way up to 10 XL shirts. We know that fun and fabulous people come in every size.
The Grounds of Alexandria sure made a magnificent makeover of their place. Taking inspiration from the iconic city of Agrabah in the film Aladdin, the said café transformed itself into this spectacular place. Walking into the café is an immersive experience, and dining there a magical encounter.
The mood wouldn't be complete without a menu makeover, so while the experience is open, The Grounds is serving magical drinks like the color-changing "Magic Carpet Ride" cocktail and the "Friend Like Me" tea. The latter is a blend of hibiscus, apple, pomegranate and rosehip and is served in a magic lamp, naturally.
As for desserts, they have dishes like the "I Wish for More...Cake," a pistachio sponge cake layered with white chocolate and orange blossom mousse and raspberry confit. The outside is a purple, shimmery, sparkly situation with a chocolate magic lamp on top so uh, yeah, we want in. The Jafar Cake is equally impressive-looking—to eat it, you crack open what looks like a mandarin orange to find a white chocolate and orange mousse with citrus and almond cake inside.
Check out the amazing venue and the magical food over at the cafe's Instagram account.
(Image Credit: The Grounds/ Instagram)
As the International Space Station orbits the Earth every 93 minutes, its payload, the Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER), tracks cosmic sources of X-rays. As night falls upon the orbital outpost, the NICER team keeps the X-ray detectors active. As the payload turns from target to target, “bright arcs and loops are traced across this all-sky map made from 22 months of NICER data.”
The arcs tend to converge on prominent bright spots, pulsars in the X-ray sky that NICER regularly targets and monitors. The pulsars are spinning neutron stars that emit clock-like pulses of X-rays. Their timing is so precise it can be used for navigation, determining spacecraft speed and position.
Looks like something from a Doctor Strange movie.
(Image Credit: NASA/ NICER)
If you’ve watched this TV series, you’ll know what this living room design is based on. That’s right. It’s based on The Simpsons, the longest-running American sitcom.
For their latest ad campaign, furniture company IKEA decided to recreate the iconic living rooms of TV shows The Simpsons, Friends, and Stranger Things, but with very little differences. This ad campaign titled the “Real Life Series” will be on display on some IKEA stores on the Middle East.
Check out their recreation of Joyce’s living room from Stranger Things and the living room featured on Friends over at People.com.
We have already seen several creatively set wedding ceremonies with certain themes but this one might take the cake when it comes to putting together a couple's dream wedding. For any Pokemon fans out there, you can now have Pokemon weddings in Japan. And this is not something that just anyone put together. This first Pokemon wedding was in collaboration with The Pokemon Company.
ESCRIT, a Japanese company specialising in wedding ceremonies, recently teamed up with The Pokemon Company to start offering officially licensed Pokemon weddings. As you cast your eyes over these images, please remember this is not a wedding simply put together by Pokemon fans; this is professional work, with no corner of the festivities left untouched by the hand of The Pokemon Company’s licensing department.
You may check out the photos from the very first Pokemon wedding here. And for more details on these Pokemon weddings, check out Escrit's page.
(Image credit: Pokemon)
As far as we were taught, Europe's military technology and intimidation led to many parts of Asia being colonized. Only some of the bigger empires in Asia were able to put up decent resistance against the Europeans until their wily schemes caused China and Japan to acquiesce.
But a new paradigm shift on the dynamics between Europe and Asia shows that the European colonizers and imperialists weren't able to breach Asia until much later in the 19th century. And even then, Asia wasn't backing down.
The moment that Europe embarked on long-distance trade with Asia in 1498, when the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama landed at Calicut in India, a process started that would ultimately lead to large European colonial empires. More than three centuries later, these empires spanned the globe.
It is easy to see what happened in Asia before 1800 in the light of what happened later, but conquest depended more on Asian circumstances than on European superiority. However, this can also stand in the way of understanding what might have actually happened in the past.
If we are to change our views on these historical events, then we would need to do a deeper study on the sequence of events or circumstances which led to Europe's being able to get a strong foothold in Asia and build their empires. If Asia had the upper hand all along, then which events caused them to relinquish this advantage?
(Image credit: Edward H. Cree/MIT; Wikimedia Commons)
Modern art expos nowadays are all about celebrating diversity veering away from simply showing a certain school or philosophy and welcoming various genre, types, and media of expression.
That's what Five Points Festival is about. It tries to bring together different indie artists and other niche crafts as a way of building and supporting the community of artists who share the same kind of passion for their work and art.
And passing by the corner of Allen Street and Rivington in New York, you might be able to see a huge mural on the side of an apartment complex. This was done by KaNO, a well-known street artist, who was commissioned by the Allen Hotel in honor of the very first Five Points Fest.
(Image credit: Worley Gig)
You may have seen videos of the Berezka Dance Ensemble before. Their eerie, floating style has often been described as a traditional ethnic Russian folk dance. It's a tradition that goes all the way back to ...1948.
Unreal, right? The dance, also spelled “Beryozka”, was invented in 1948 by Russian ballerina and choreographer Nadezhda Nadezhdina and literally means “little birch”, as the women would usually dance holding birch twigs. Today, it endures as one of Russia’s most iconic dance troupes, but Nadezhda was always quick to say that this wasn’t your average folk dance – this was the dance of the future. “Beryozka’s dances are not folk dances,” she said, “They are dances whose source is the creative work of the people. But composed by me”.
Learn the real history of the dance and the Soviet dance troupe that popularized it at Messy Nessy Chic.
They are calling it the 'Forbidden Planet' because it isn't something that's supposed to be, it defies expectations. Perhaps a more apt name would be the 'Impossible Planet' but let's not get into the nomenclature.
What makes this planet's existence impossible is that it could be found in a Neptunian desert, a region with intense radiation that nothing should be able to survive. But this one planet does and scientists aren't yet sure why.
(Image credit: University of Warwick)
There are a few places on earth where basalt pillars extruded through the surface due to volcanic activity and left towers made up of hexagonal columns. The Devils Postpile near Yosemite is one, the Giant's Causeway in Ireland is another. There's also one in Mumbai, in the middle of the city, called Gilbert Hill. But Gilbert Hill has not been revered like the others.
Gilbert Hill was declared a National Park in 1952, and a Grade II heritage structure in 2007. However, the current condition of this highly encroached-upon natural wonder shows that neither its legal status as a National Park nor its inclusion in the heritage list has made any difference. There are two temples on the top of the hill, accessible by stairs. The vegetation that once surrounded the hill has given way to buildings and dingy slums. The people who live around this geological monument are barely concerned about the hill because of their own struggle for survival. The only people who visit the site are scholars, historians and devotees of the shrines.
It's rather odd to see a natural wonder surrounded so closely by residential buildings. Read about Gilbert Hill and see more pictures at Amusing Planet. -via Strange Company
(Image credit: Oknitop)
Are UFOs real? Will we ever get to see extraterrestrial beings in our lifetime? Do the aliens see us and just not bother? Do people still even care?
These are only some of the questions that the writer of The Daily Grail grazed a bit on the article concerning History Channel's Unidentified premiere as well as disclosures about UFOs. Read more on it here.
(Image credit: The National Archives UK/Wikimedia Commons)
(Image credit: mobuco)
Quotation marks are used to denote a quote. Over time, journalists got into the habit of using quote marks to connote something they themselves would never say, but someone else did, implying that the journalist does not believe it. This use led to the rest of us reading short quotes as something you shouldn't believe, or sarcasm. However, people who make signs often use quote marks for emphasis, which ends up conveying the opposite of what they intend.
(Image credit: panicatthepharmacy)
Sign makers: you can make certain words bold, italic, or even underlined for emphasis. Don't use quote marks, or you'll end up in a post like this. See 17 examples of misguided quotations at Buzzfeed.
