A popular health trend over the past several years has been walking at least 10,000 steps a day, which many say can do wonders for your heart. Definitely, it's great cardio, especially for people who may not have the time to go to the gym or do any more strenuous exercise. But researchers now say that there's a simpler alternative to walking 10,000 steps, and might be just as effective if not more than aerobics. That would be climbing up more than five flights of stairs or around 50 steps a day.

If you have ever tried walking up ten floors of your office building, you'll know how tiring it gets. Before you even reach your floor, you'll already be gasping for air. But the study has shown that people who regularly climbed five to ten flights of stairs were at least 3% less likely to develop atherosclerosis. Of course, there may have been other factors that contributed to their health such as diet, sleep, and other lifestyle habits. But incorporating exercise, even simple ones, into your daily routine definitely aided in reducing the likelihood of developing such diseases.

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The story of Frank Abagnale was quite a thrilling one. Immortalized in the film Catch Me If You Can, we see the life of Frank as a con artist, and how he was able to deceive people into believing that he was this or that, jumping from one profession to the other as a means to survive. Later on, he is caught and was offered the opportunity to work for the FBI Financial Crimes Unit. It's a very interesting true-to-life story. There is a Scottish version of it, which has been made into a documentary in 2022 titled My Old School.

It's the story of how a 30-year-old man named Brian MacKinnon conned his high school into thinking that he was a 16-year-old high schooler named Brandon Lee. His reason for doing it was so that he could go back to university and continue pursuing his dreams of becoming a doctor. None of his classmates or teachers had realized his true identity until a few years later. Jono McLeod, an old classmate of his, decided to make a film about him and his time at Bearsden Academy, so he had an audio interview with "Brandon" 20 years later as well as interviews with other former classmates, and turned it into a documentary about the most successful hoaxer in Scottish history.

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Gopuff is a food delivery company headquartered in Philadelphia which operates in more than 650 US cities. This coming Halloween, Gopuff has promised that they will deliver free candy to anyone if they run out, as long as supplies last. This is in partnership with Mars, Inc. who found in a survey that almost half of Americans feared running out of candy on Halloween. And so, to address this concern, they partnered up with Gopuff so that people wouldn't have to race to the nearest convenience store to get replenishments for their candy stash or even worse, take some of their child's candy to give to trick-or-treaters.

However, in order to have free candy delivered, customers will have to go to the M&M's Halloween Rescue Squad website rather than the Gopuff app. According to the website, you will be able to start ordering candies from 3 PM EST on October 31st, and delivery will take from 30 to 60 minutes. Stocks include fun-size packs and party-size bags of M&M's as well as a variety mix pouch which includes Skittles, Twix, Snickers, Starburst, and M&M's.

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According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, someone in the US dies of a stroke every three minutes and 14 seconds. Out of the 795,000 people in the US who have a stroke yearly, 610,000 are first or new strokes. Furthermore, despite the risk of getting a stroke increasing with age, anyone at any age can get a stroke. Looking at the distribution as regards gender, stroke deaths occur about 40 percent in males and 60 percent in females, according to the American Heart Association. So, the question is, why are strokes more common in women than in men?

There are three main factors according to this article from Deseret News. First of all, it takes into account the fact that the likelihood of having a stroke increases with age, and that women, generally, live longer than men. Therefore, statistically, there will be more women reported to have strokes. The second factor involves hormonal changes that also comes with age and with one's lifestyle. And the third is weight gain, which leads to high blood pressure, diabetes, and atherosclerosis, which are all contributing factors to stroke.

To learn more about the signs and symptoms as well as the means of preventing strokes, you may want to check out resources from the CDC and the American Stroke Association.

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First let's learn the word "toponym," which means a place name. Sometimes a place name can reveal who named it, how old the name is, and its original meaning. Some original names for places are quite descriptive, and give a lot of information if you know the language. Others are named for people, often when a previously-named place was claimed by new colonizers. Coining or changing a place name is the most blatant form of marking one's territory, after all. In modern times, there's a worldwide effort to revert colonial names back to their more original form, like Mt. McKinley reverting to Denali. Dr. Erica Brozovsky looks into how places are named and why, plus a lot of interesting trivia like the longest and shortest place names, and a few wild stories about toponyms for the PBS series Otherwords. -via Laughing Squid

On October 16, the Nebraska Humane Society took in three small kittens. Two seemed healthy, but the third kitten, eventually named Thorn, was weak and lethargic and appeared to be suffering from "flea anemia." The tiny kitten needed a blood transfusion, but there was a problem. While cats have blood types, there is no feline universal donor type, and there wasn't time to test for a compatible donor. However, the shelter has a six-year-old husky named Bret Michaels who just had blood work done that morning, and was a donor candidate. Surprisingly, dogs can donate blood to cats. Bret Michaels was a very good boy while his blood was drawn and transfused into the kitten. Thorn appeared to feel better almost immediately after the first of several transfusions. Here is our husky hero.

The Facebook post about the transfusion went viral, and the rock star Bret Michaels heard about it. The singer for Poison has experience with huskies, and called to adopt the dog named after him. 

Bret Michaels (the man) is adopting Bret Michaels (the dog)! We can't wait to see how he thrives in his new home, we just hope it doesn't get too confusing when someone tells Bret Michaels to fetch!

Michaels posted pictures of his new dog at Facebook, and pledged to find a good home for the kitten Thorn, too. Michaels is calling his new dog Bret, Jr. and will soon welcome the hero husky into a home that already has two German shepherds.

(Images credit: Nebraska Humane Society)

The fastest Formula One cars can go from zero to 100 km/h (62 mph) in about two seconds. Some experimental cars can accelerate even faster. But how about an electric vehicle? The car called mythen by AMZ Racing (in conjunction with Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts and ETH Zurich) is an EV that holds the world record for electric vehicle acceleration: 0-100 km/h in 0.956 seconds! And since it's electric, it makes barely any noise doing it. To achieve such a feat, mythen designers had to build a system to keep it on the ground where it can get traction, instead of flying off into the air. It sounds kind of scary, especially when Tom Scott is recruited into driving it himself.

When you see his reaction, you realize that the most likely real-world application of this technology will be to make it a theme park ride. It will be short and expensive and have very long lines. And everyone will say it was worth it.

It's common knowledge that the sign for hitchhiking is to stick your thumb out. But how did it come to be that? Why not the index finger or simply just hold the entire hand out, fanning it vigorously until the car stops? At Today I Found Out, they explored various angles as to the explanation why the "thumbs up" sign became the universal symbol for hitchhiking and the history of the sign itself.

The most convenient and perhaps reasonable explanation is that it originated from the Flying Tiger brigade of American pilots who picked up the gesture from the Chinese when they were stationed there. After arriving back in the US, it simply caught on, first in the military and then to ordinary civilians. However, that meaning of the "thumbs up" sign only came about after WWII. The odd thing is that records have shown that the terms hitchhiking and "thumb-pointer" (to refer to a hitchhiker) had already been used before WWII.

But generally, it appears that the reason why hitchhikers would stick out their thumb was simply to indicate the direction in which they were going. Considering how awkward the gesture would be if you used any of your other fingers, the thumb sticking out is the best way to go.

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A group of Canadian scientists from different fields have conducted a pilot study aiming to find correlations between the gut microbiota and cognitive ability. The hypothesis is that bacteria present in our digestive system have a certain connection as to how our brain develops, how we think or feel, and even how neurological diseases come about. Some go so far as to say that even consciousness itself may find its link in the gut microbiota.

What they did was they collected samples from dozens of babies' poo and looked into their cognitive development. Brett Finlay, the microbiologist in the team, had shared concerns that if they were to find a strong positive correlation between a particular bacteria or group of bacteria that directly affects babies' cognitive ability, coined "IQ bugs", then it might cause too much of a stir, with parents hankering to give their children these IQ bugs.

Thankfully, the study found nothing of the sort. However, their paper did suggest that the early microbiome has an impact on a baby's brain and behavior development. This opens the way for further research as the area of study associated with the gut-brain axis is quite new in the field, and leaves much to be explored. Who knows? Maybe they might find a correlation between depression and a baby's gut bacteria. If so, it would allow us to target those bacteria such that we can guide a child's development to steer away from going down that path.

In any case, it's a very young field, and it's showing enough promise that a lot of microbiologists are flocking to it. For more details on their research, check it out at National Post.

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I had a friend whose hobby was making personalized clothes, mostly for herself, but she dreams of being able to design clothes professionally as well, and selling her designs to the market. While I was observing her cutting fabrics based on a pattern, I was amazed at how several seemingly disjointed pieces later coalesced to form a nice summer dress. However, I was also a bit annoyed when she asked me to help her clean all the scraps strewn all over the floor.

If the manufacturing process for large-scale clothing brands is the same way, then imagine how many leftovers there are. Jessica Schreiber, founder and CEO of Fabscrap, was similarly concerned about the issue of textile wastes as residue from the manufacturing of clothes, and she decided to develop a model that would make use of these discarded fabric wastes and turn them into fresh, new garments. So, inspired by the concept, Marie Claire Magazine had challenged five designers to turn 10 pounds of assorted scraps into something fashionable. Here's what they came up with.

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Lenin's Mausoleum is a wooden tomb built on Red Square in Moscow, the place where the actual body of Vladimir Lenin is interred. For almost 100 years, the Russian government has yet to make a decision about what to do with the body of Lenin.

Originally, the wake was only scheduled to be for a week after Lenin's death, however, since people continued pouring in to visit, the government decided to postpone the funeral. Then, officials thought that it would be a good reminder for future generations about Russia's history, so instead of burying the body, they preserved it through an experimental long-term type of embalming at the time, and here we are a century later.

For many tourists who come to Russia, that's one of the things that they cannot leave Russia without. They had to see Lenin's body, but for what reason? Sofia Polyakova of Russia Beyond asked tourists their reasons for wanting to visit Lenin's Mausoleum, and the reasons were pretty much the same throughout. Read more about it on RBTH.

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We learned about the talented musician and songwriter behind ABC's hit 70's children's educational program Schoolhouse Rock!, Bob Dorough, a few years ago here on Neatorama. Not only were the songs educational and factually correct, but they were also very catchy, adding to the memory recall for children even after decades. However, did you know the story behind the concept of Schoolhouse Rock!? It was a very cool concept indeed, but the reason why the show decided to turn concepts from mathematics, science, grammar, etc. into rock and pop songs was because David McCall, one of the creators, wanted his son to learn his multiplication tables.

McCall was concerned that his son still hadn't memorized his multiplication tables at school but equally surprised that his son had excellent recall of songs by the Rolling Stones and other major rock bands at the time. So, an idea popped up in his head to make songs that would help his son learn. Being an advertising agency president, he commissioned the help of their jingle writer who churned out a generic-sounding jingle that didn't suit his taste. So he enlisted the aid of a colleague George Newall who was a musician, who in turn sought jazz bassist Ben Tucker, who knew Bob Dorough, and said that he (Bob) could put music to anything. And that gave birth to the very first song of Schoolhouse Rock!, "Three is a Magic Number".

However, they didn't initially plan on creating a TV series out of the project. It was supposed to be an album and a book. But no publishers were biting, so the ad agency shifted directions. They noticed ABC was one of their clients, so they drew up storyboards and presented it to Michael Eisner, then VP for Children's Programming at ABC. And the rest was history.

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A hundred years ago, steamships employed coal stokers to shovel coal into the boilers that kept the vessel going. It was hard, dirty, and dangerous work, but someone had do it. Arthur John Priest became possibly the most famous coal stoker on any steamship for his eventful career. He survived two ship collisions and four sinkings, including that of the Titanic! Of course, he was very lucky to have survived all that, but there comes a point when steamship crews start to look at such a person as a bad omen. But perhaps Priest was more like Adrian Carton de Wiart, and refused to give up his profession even as fate kept telling him to retire.

Priest was only 24 when he survived the sinking of the Titanic. He jumped into the water and was picked up by a lifeboat. Then came World War I, and Priest joined the British military. He was stoking coal on the HMS Alcantara when it was sunk by a German ship disguised as a Norwegian merchant ship. Priest then served on the hospital ship HMS Britannic, sunk by a German mine in the Mediterranean. He survived that sinking alongside two other Titanic survivors. Then in 1917, he was serving as a fireman on the hospital ship SS Donegal, which was attacked and sunk by a German U-boat. Read about the many adventures of the unsinkable Arthur John Priest at Amusing Planet. -via Strange Company  

In the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, we saw Space Station V, a rotating wheel in space that contained a luxury hotel for space travelers. The rotation provided enough force to simulate gravity and allow people to operate almost normally.

Digital artist Erik Wernquist imagined such a structure and designed the SSPO Esperanta, a sort of space cruise ship for interplanetary tourists. It has a radius of 450 meters and spins at one revolution per minute, generating artificial gravity at half that of earth. In the short film ONE REVOLUTION PER MINUTE, he shows us the views from the Esperanta, with available light moving all around every minute. It would be quite disorienting, but still beautiful. He admits that a spacecraft with this many windows is impractical, not to mention far beyond any earth budget, but it's an art film that explores those lights and shadows, so just consider it fictional. -via TYWKIWDBI 

Star Trek has grown into a beloved franchise with millions of fans, but when Gene Roddenberry's original series aired from 1966 to 1969, it had a notoriously small budget. This led to some very creative decisions, like inventing the transporter, because using a shuttle was both expensive and time-consuming. It also led to some really cheap-looking aliens, although with the dearth of science fiction on TV at the time, we didn't mind. This extreme parsimony was evident on the set, too. The futuristic interiors had chairs that were bought off the shelf at furniture stores, sometimes slightly altered, but recognizable. Later Star Trek series and movies with bigger budgets were able to get designer seats, but are often still recognized by trekkies who know furniture.

Four of those fans have built a database of commercially-available Star Trek chairs. Each of the 163 identified chairs are listed by category, with its movie or episode, history, and availability. For example, the chair shown above from "The Trouble with Tribbles" is the Chromcraft Sculpta Unicorn. The same design was later used in Star Trek: Discovery.  

Ex Astris Scientia is also asking for help in identifying more chairs. If you are inclined to buy seating based on the story you can tell about it, you'll want to take a look. Who knows, you might already have one of these designs in your home!  -via Everlasting Blort