It is a very rare occurrence for the aurora borealis to appear in places below the Arctic Circle but scientists said that several parts of the US will get to see them this week.

Following a significant release of plasma and magnetic energy from the Sun's corona, the Space Weather Prediction Center announced a geomagnetic storm watch for this week.

During that time, the prediction center says the northern lights may appear over parts of the contiguous United States. Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan, New York, and most of New England all fall within the projected aurora zone.

(Image credit: SSgt. Joshua Strang/Dept. of Defense/US military; Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain)

Tim Friede always had a fascination for dangerous animals: spiders, scorpions, and especially venomous snakes, which he collected. Nineteen years ago, Friede embarked on a self-immunization project to build up his body's self-defense against snake venom to protect himself from his pets. That's good, because his cobras, rattlesnakes, and mambas occasionally bite. Friede has been bitten around 200 times. He extracted venom from his snakes and injected himself with it, starting with a tiny amount and raising it over time.     

He also began taking what he calls “Darwinian notes.” On December 12, 2001, he wrote, “Since dying was no fun, took off ’til December.” That day he injected himself with the venom from the same cobra that nearly killed him, and he spiked his blood every few weeks from then on. He rated pain on a numerical scale, with entries ranging from 1 to 1,000. A common symptom was “3x3 swelling”; rarer was “swelling from knee to ass,” “hives over whole body,” and “anaphylactic shock” (though he suffered the last of these 12 times). Within a year of starting, he was letting live snakes bite him to demonstrate his immunity. Over time he could distinguish how much venom they’d injected simply by his body’s reaction. He grew to like water cobras, because their neurotoxic venom blocked his nerve cells, making a bite less painful and “very easy to beat.” He hated Cape cobras and rattlesnakes, whose necrotic venom dissolved his muscles.

Along the way, Friede developed a sort of stuntman-next-door persona by posting videos online. Some were macho, like the one where a drunk friend howls in disbelief as he films a black mamba double-nipping a sober Friede. But in most of the clips, Friede tries earnestly to share how self-­immunization really works. He was just your average enthusiastic guy in a Slayer T-shirt, admiring nature’s deadliest snakes by letting them bite him. He recorded the moments after a Mojave rattlesnake tagged him by surprise and after he’d solicited a bite from a black mamba to help “a girl with a school project.”

With Friede's growing notoriety came the idea that his unique body composition could help scientists develop a universal antivenom against snake bites. Few scientists were interested until immunologist Jacob Glanville, who has spent years working on a universal flu vaccine, discovered Friede. Here was a man who went way beyond any ethical scientific experiments on humans to alter his own antibodies, and the two men are now working together to unlock the secrets of Friede's immunities. Read their stories at Outside Online. -via Digg

(Image credit: safaritravelplus)

When most people are looking for fun and relaxation, they think, "Hey, let's go to the Taco Bell." The problem is that after the restaurant closes, the police get called when you refuse to leave and it becomes in awkward situation for everyone.

But what if you could stay at a Taco Bell for a long time? Say, overnight and not have the employees hassling you? Well, I have great news! Taco Bell plans to open a hotel and resort inspired by its famous luxury brand.

The company will build a resort in Palm Springs, California. The Thrillist reports:

The temporary destination will have swanky rooms and no shortage of opportunities to sip a Baja Blast by the pool, or catch some rays on a Hot Sauce packet pool float. There will also be a gift shop with T-Bell hotel apparel and accessories, and even an on-site salon offering Taco Bell-inspired nail art, haircuts, and braids. Obviously, there will also be plenty of Taco Bell food on hand to enjoy during your stay, including several new and exclusive menu items the chain has yet to reveal.

“The Bell stands to be the biggest expression of the Taco Bell lifestyle to day. It will be fun, colorful, flavorful and filled with more than what our fans might expect,” Taco Bell’s Chief Global Brand Officer Marisa Thalberg said in a statement. “Also, just like some of our most sought-after food innovation, this hotel brings something entirely new for lucky fans to experience and enjoy.”

Is the resort hiring? May I offer my services as a chef?

-via Kaiju the Bricklayer

Photo: Taco Bell

You might be surprised at how many Renaissance portraits worked in a creature from the mustelid family, which includes weasels, minks, ermines, martens, stoats, and ferrets. Yes, some of the subjects wore them as furs, complete with head and feet, as was the style once. But others are pictured carrying the critters as pets, or being annoyed by one. We can assume that the weasels did not sit for the painter. Such a portrait was considered a fine wedding gift, to portend prosperity and fertility. The weasel could mean a variety of things, mostly having to do with sex and fertility, from purity to pregnancy. Read the different ways weasels in portraits can be interpreted at The Museum of Ridiculously Interesting Things. -via Boing Boing

We've featured Kate Beaton and her webcomic Hark! A Vagrant here at Neatorama many times going back to 2009. We've even used her illustrations for a feature article once. Beaton discontinued her webcomic site last year (although the archives are still there) to focus on her family. Beaton's sister Becky battled cancer for a long time, and died on May 14th, 2018. One day before the first anniversary of her passing, Kate gave birth to her first child.   

May 14th, 2018, was the worst day of my life, when we lost Becky forever. May 13th, 2019, this little baby came two weeks early to remind me what unconditional love is, and to bring the presence of an aunt who I would love to be here, right now.

— Kate Beaton (@beatonna) May 14, 2019

Beaton announced the new arrival by Tweeting the above comic, only a day after the birth, and two days after Mothers Day. Congratulations, Kate! -via Metafilter

Fans of the Netflix series Stranger Things can now build a complete LEGO version of the Byers' family home (the alphabet wall even lights up!) with minifigs of eight main characters ...and below the floor level is "the Upside Down," appropriately positioned upside down. But you can flip it right side up, as the structure is positioned between trees that act as pedestals. There's even a minifig Demogorgon! See a list of features and lots of pictures at the LEGO product page. The 2287-piece Upside Down LEGO set will be available June first, and will retail for $199.99. -via Laughing Squid

Researchers Eugene Chan and Sam Maglio stated that the caffeine inside coffee may not just be the only source of stimulation. If it is not only that, then what else is? Chan and Maglio hypothesized that it may just be the idea of coffee itself that we are stimulated — in other words, just thinking about the caffeinated drink makes us stimulated and focused.

Crucially, however, this was only found to be true for people who psychologically link coffee with ideas of alertness, ambition, and productivity, as is the case in western cultures. The Australian and Canadian researchers behind the study saw that for participants from tea-drinking cultures like Japan, China, and Korea, coffee cues were no more potent than those for its more gently caffeinated cousin.

To lend credence to their hypothesis, Chan and Maglio’s paper points to well-studied effects of other environmental cues on behavior, such as the established connection between subliminal messages about gender stereotypes in math and poorer performance on math tests. They also cite a paper that found just viewing the McDonald’s logo can make a person feel impatient (paywall), because we’re used to immediate service at the fast-food chain.

In the coffee study, the researchers ran four experiments involving lab and online tests. To plant ideas about coffee or tea in the subjects’ minds, they asked everyone to work to brainstorm slogans for a (fake) multinational company called Arisokraft. They also measured participants’ heart rates, and surveyed the subjects about future plans. Sure enough, they found elevated heart rates in the subjects who grew up in Western countries (mostly Canada, Australia, and the US) and were exposed to the coffee conditions, as compared to the tea conditions. Those subjects were also more likely to think in specific, rather than abstract, terms about future tasks, the results showed.

If this is the case, then I’m going to make scented candles and air fresheners that will smell like coffee.

(Image Credit: acekreations/ Pixabay)

Recent books published by Michael Bloomberg and Howard Schultz chronicle their life stories from when they were starting out in the world of corporate America to making it big and eventually moving on to loftier goals such as holding public office.

Ben Fountain from The New York Review of Books takes a dive into these memoirs by these billionaires and tries to deconstruct the different aspects particularly their politics and reality.

(Image credit: Joakim Honkasalo/Unsplash)

To be able to move with precision, one must have a good sense of his surroundings and keep an eye for the ceiling, the walls, and other barriers present. Thankfully, most of us have good depth perception and spatial awareness. But did you ever wonder which part of our brains process this type of information to keep us from bumping into things? Researchers from Columbia University's Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute and Aalto University in Finland, set to find out.

"Vision gives us an almost instant sense where we are in space, and in particular of the geometry of the surfaces -- the ground, the walls -- which constrain our movement. It feels effortless, but it requires the coordinated activity of multiple brain regions," said Nikolaus Kriegeskorte, PhD, a principal investigator at Columbia's Zuckerman Institute and the paper's senior author. "How neurons work together to give us this sense of our surroundings has remained mysterious. With this study, we are a step closer to solving that puzzle."

To figure out how the brain perceives the geometry of its surroundings, the research team asked volunteers to look at images of different three-dimensional scenes. An image might depict a typical room, with three walls, a ceiling and a floor. The researchers then systematically changed the scene: by removing the wall, for instance, or the ceiling. Simultaneously, they monitored participants' brain activity through a combination of two cutting-edge brain-imaging technologies at Aalto's neuroimaging facilities in Finland.

"By doing this repeatedly for each participant as we methodically altered the images, we could piece together how their brains encoded each scene," Linda Henriksson, PhD, the paper's first author and a lecturer in neuroscience and biomedical engineering at Aalto University.

Our visual system is organized into a hierarchy of stages. The first stage actually lies outside brain, in the retina, which can detect simple visual features. Subsequent stages in the brain have the power to detect more complex shapes. By processing visual signals through multiple stages -- and by repeated communications between the stages -- the brain forms a complete picture of the world, with all its colors, shapes and textures.

In the cortex, visual signals are first analyzed in an area called the primary visual cortex. They are then passed to several higher-level cortical areas for further analyses. The occipital place area (OPA), an intermediate-level stage of cortical processing, proved particularly interesting in the brain scans of the participants.

(Image Credit: geralt/ Pixabay)

Phil gets a mug of Aaron's coffee by mistake, which turns him into a caffeinated dynamo. Meanwhile, Aaron sips Phil's catnip tea and takes on the behaviors of a stoned cat. It's a ludicrous scenario that makes for a goofy video from Aaron's Animals. -via Tastefully Offensive 

Before this study was conducted, our scientists only knew about 15,000 viruses in our planet. Who would have thought, that there'd be more ... many more.

In a recent investigation, researchers have identified 195,728 viruses under water and were able to classify them into five different ecological groups. 

Despite the large number of viruses discovered, and the vast complexity of the world's ocean regions, the team of researchers was able to split the viruses into five distinct ecological zones – all depths of the Arctic and the Antarctic, and three distinct depths of the Temperate and Tropical regions.

In the future, I’m not gonna be surprised if my grandchildren need to study the "World Map of Viruses" in their biology class.

(Image Credit: A. Deniaud Garcia/ Fondation Tara Ocean)

If you are looking for a fun experience in coffee shops, I think, Mellower Coffee, is worth the visit. Their unique concept of serving coffee is totally cool. The Sweet Little Rain is a huge cup of Americano coffee with a ball of cotton candy suspended on the top. The steam of the hot coffee melts the sugar cloud which then rains down on the drink. 

Just be prepared to get a little messy because the sugar droplets can also land directly on the cup and on the saucer. 

(Image Credit: Asian Food Channel/ Youtube)

My life for the past year has been this story. I spent 3 months in the field on 4 continents with photographer @kirstenluce investigating how animals suffer for tourist entertainment. On the cover of the June issue of National Geographic Mag. Online now: https://t.co/fp0gu5X68T

— Natasha Daly (@natashaldaly) May 15, 2019

If you're traveling to an exotic location, you certainly want to interact with the local fauna, right? So does everyone else. There are 3,800 captive elephants in Thailand. More than half of them work in the tourist industry, performing in shows and hauling paying customers on their backs. What you don't see is the life they live as a whole, how they are tamed and controlled. It's the same with wildlife encounters all over the world, from swimming with dolphins to photoshoots with wolves.  

Around the world Kirsten and I watched tourists watching captive animals. In Thailand we also saw American men bear-hug tigers in Chiang Mai and Chinese brides in wedding gowns ride young elephants in the aqua surf on the island of Phuket. We watched polar bears in wire muzzles ballroom dancing across the ice under a big top in Russia and teenage boys on the Amazon River snapping selfies with baby sloths.

Most tourists who enjoy these encounters don’t know that the adult tigers may be declawed, drugged, or both. Or that there are always cubs for tourists to snuggle with because the cats are speed bred and the cubs are taken from their mothers just days after birth. Or that the elephants give rides and perform tricks without harming people only because they’ve been “broken” as babies and taught to fear the bullhook. Or that the Amazonian sloths taken illegally from the jungle often die within weeks of being put in captivity.

Social media has driven the proliferation of exotic animal encounters all over the world, where owners and operators make lots of money and tourists get precious photographs. National Geographic takes a look at the price the animals pay for wildlife tourism. -via Digg

Frida Kahlo and Monkey Enamel Pin Set

Frida Kahlo de Rivera is one of Mexico's most famous artists. Her works were inspired by nature and embraced a native folk art style. While her striking images seem almost fanciful, she actually claims to have never painted dreams. Instead she dared to paint her own colorful reality.

Let the fearless Frida Kahlo, and her monkey companion, remind you that you have wings to fly with the Frida Kahlo and Monkey Enamel Pin Set from the NeatoShop. This fabulous set includes a Frida Kahlo pin and monkey pin. They are a wonderful additional to any outfit, or bag, and are a fantastic reminder to be your own muse.  

Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more great items. New items arriving weekly. 

Medical science and demographics are converging to give us a bountiful crop of elderly people, because we live, on average, thirty years longer than humans in most of history. That's good, but the problem is that we spend those extra thirty years being elderly, with all the infirmities of age that comes with it. What good is saving up for retirement when you're too tired and ill to enjoy it? That's where cutting-edge medical science is looking. Harvard molecular biologist George Church is working on gene therapy to fight the wearing out of the body, to make old cells your again -or at least act young again.    

Church is aware that the Food and Drug Administration, among other regulatory bodies, may not be crazy about weird new therapies that address what we customarily take to be a natural process. “Our emphasis is on reversal rather than longevity, in part because it’s easier to get permission from the F.D.A. for reversal of diseases than for prolongation of life,” he says. “Longevity isn’t our aim—we’re just aiming at the reversal of age-related diseases.” Noah Davidsohn enthusiastically seconds this: “We want to make people live better, not necessarily longer, though obviously longer is part of better.” But Church makes it plain that these are adjoining concerns. “How old can people grow?” he says. “Well, if our approach is truly effective, there is no upper limit. But our goal isn’t eternal life. The goal is youthful wellness rather than an extended long period of age-related decline. You know, one of the striking things is that many super-centenarians”—people who live productively past a hundred years—“live a youthful life, and then they die very quickly. They’re here, living well, and then they’re not. It’s not a bad picture.”

Read about some of the experiments going on now that may help us stay young as we live ever longer, at the New Yorker.

(Image credit: Igor Bastidas)