These two women are literally living life to its fullest. The first is a woman from Chicago, Dorothy Hoffner, who, at 104, has become the world's oldest skydiver. This actually marks the second time she went skydiving. The first was when she was at 100 years old, after which, she had commented that the next jump would be different, and it was as it is unofficially a record-setting one. Before Hoffner, the title of oldest skydiver belonged to Rut Linnéa Ingegärd Larsson at 103, which she had achieved in May 2022.
The other woman is Kim Emmons Knor, an 84-year-old native of Cadillac, Michigan who has been parachuting since she was 20 years old, has competed in international events for parachuting, and is now aiming to make 1,000 jumps. Currently, she is at 600 jumps, and once she accomplishes 1,000 jumps, she will earn her Gold Wings.
I would like to think that the British monarchy, despite their lives being constantly observed and scrutinized by the public eye, still kept secrets about themselves or their family that nobody would know. And apparently there was one such fact about King Charles III that nobody else had known which the royal family had just recently revealed. To learn what that fact is, check it out on Bustle.
When we think of placebos, normally we would imagine a drug that generally doesn't do anything that would directly target the symptoms of an illness. And the placebo effect is the result of believing that the said drug will do what it was intended to do, despite not knowing that it was an inert substance, or a pill that did not have any active ingredients toward the desired effect. Usually, placebos are used to conduct clinical trials of new medicines or treatments to determine the real effect they are supposed to have.
Recently, the FDA announced that phenylephrine, a common decongestant ingredient found in drugs like Sudafed and Nyquil, didn't work. In relation to this, Science Friday had wanted to understand what placebos really are and what is the science behind them. They invited professor and placebo research specialist Ted J. Kaptchuk to talk more about the thing we call placebos.
One thing I learned from their conversation is that there is a nuance in placebos. They are not actually the drug or inert substances themselves, but rather all the rituals, symbols, and acts of human kindness surrounding the placebo. Which begs the question, how does it actually work, since there are cases when placebos are believed to have the desired effect they were supposed to have even though they had no active ingredients that would work toward that effect. Moreover, in their conversation, they also talk about the concept of the honest placebo.
Concerned with how plastics are generally recycled, Eleonora Ortolani attempted a rather strange project. She thought of making ice cream flavoring by using recycled plastic. Inspired by the idea that some worms were able to consume and digest plastics, Ortolani wondered whether it was possible for humans to do the same. Despite the difficulty of finding a scientist who would help her turn the project into reality, she searched and found a food scientist from the London Metropolitan University, Joanna Sadler. The two successfully converted plastic into synthetic vanillin which is a cheaper alternative to vanilla.
Vanillin mainly consisted of crude oil, which is also used to manufacture plastic, so the idea was simply to break down the plastic into its simplest form and then use an enzyme to synthesize vanillin. Despite successfully creating ice cream with recycled plastic as the source for its flavoring, neither one of its creators has tasted it yet, as it still needs to be analyzed by the food regulatory bodies before being considered safe to eat.
I love animated films. I grew up watching cartoons when I was kid, and my love for the medium and the art has never wavered even in my adulthood. I have watched some weird animated shows and films. Some have left me reeling, others have left me speechless, while there were others that, despite the presence of surreal or phantasmagoric elements, I found captivating, even considering the surrealism a part of its charm.
While animation is usually typecast as children's media, often not being taken seriously by most, there have been attempts at breaking the stereotype. These 12 completely delirious trailers of the most obscure animated films show exactly the boundless possibilities that animation as a medium can offer for any serious storyteller. The video above is a sample for what you should expect from these trailers. I chose it because it was the most palatable for me. Even as a lover of animation, I admit that I found myself squirming at some of these trailers because of their eeriness. But hopefully, if you think animation is just for kids, these trailers will make you think otherwise.
The bears of Katmai National Park in Alaska have been eating as much as they possibly can all summer, and now it's almost time to judge the results. For brown bears in Alaska, getting fat is an important accomplishment, because when winter comes and they go inside their dens to sleep, there won't be much food available. A good layer of fat will help them survive to emerge next spring, and for females, it's crucial to be healthy enough to support a pregnancy. Bears will eat almost anything, but the salmon in Brooks River helps them pack on hundreds of pounds.
During Fat Bear Week, which begins Wednesday October 4th and runs through Tuesday the 20th, your voting will determine the winner in a series of tournament-style matchups. Which bear has gained the most weight? Which bear looks the fattest to you? It's kind of difficult to get them to come in and be weighed, so it's up to you and your observations.
A lot of people have been monitoring the bears at the park's webcams, and already have their favorites. During the live bracket reveal, park rangers explained how bears are selected for the tournament. First, they have to gain weight during the summer. Second, they tend to select bears who have overcome obstacles or otherwise have a good story. And third, the bears have to show up to get a picture taken so we can see their weight gain. Bears who stay hidden cannot compete. The first two matchups will be Wednesday, between two subadult bears named 806 Jr. and bear 428, and the familiar mother bear 402 vs. first-time mother 901. Fan favorites Chunk and Grazer are back, and three-time champion 480 Otis earned a bye. The "meet the bears" page has been updated, so you can read up on this year's contenders, and bookmark this page to place your vote each day for the tournament bracket matchups.
Would you like to speak on your phone--even loudly--without disturbing other people? Or are you concerned about the privacy of your conversations? Shiftall, a technology in Tokyo, has a solution: the Mutalk.
Design Boom reports that this Bluetooth-enabled microphone wraps around the head and, when activated, reduces the volume by about 20 decibels. A normal conversation is about 60 decibels, so this is a substantial reduction. When shouting, the volume level reduction is about 30 decibels.
Mutalk comes with a 3.5mm audio jack, so it can be used with headphones. This is especially helpful when using separate microphones and earphones.
The challenge in implementing this invention is that the people who most need it are also the least likey to do so.
Due to a recent incident at the Cannon House Office Building in Washington, D.C., Twitter is lately discussing allegedly confusing signs. Mark Joseph Stern, a writer with Slate, shares this image that he photographed at a ferry in Quebec.
I read this sign as expressing that centering oneself requires that adults must find within themselves their inner children and the child must seek out their adult future selves. This is necessary on the journey to enlightenment.
The designers probably made the sign like this because the text would be too long if it was necessary to write the sentiment in both English and French.
It's October now, so of course you are looking for spooky films to watch. Here's one about a shape-shifting vampire, or a whole family of vampires, that are out to suck the life force from their victims. Well, they are amoebas, but if you were scaled down to their size, they would be terrifying. These microbes are voracious, and their feeding habits are so like the cinematically familiar "bite and suck" method that they were named Vampyrellida. Leave it to the folks at Journey to the Microcosmos to teach us about amoebas by making them the stars of a horror film. -via Geeks Are Sexy
Today I was introduced to small skeletons called larva convivialis through a TikTok video. These were used as party favors at fancy banquets in the Roman Empire, as a sort of memento mori, or a reminder of your eventual death. The memento mori of the Middle Ages were used in a religious sense, in that you'd better repent your sins and follow church practices because you never know when death is coming. It was a bit different in Rome. The reminder of death encouraged guests to enjoy themselves and their time left on earth as much as they could. Or when combined with other party decorations, they could scare the daylights out of guests for the host's perverse pleasure, as the emperor Domitian did in 89 CE.
The larva convivialis pictured at the top is at the Science Museum in the UK. Made of bronze, it's been altered a bit. The lower right leg was missing, so someone used its left arm as a substitute. Here is another example, from the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. It's a bit worse for wear.
Both artifacts have articulated joints (or did at one time), so the skeletons could be posed or made to dance by shaking them. And you can still buy them today, although the plastic version from Dollar Tree is much more affordable. -via Everlasting Blort
There is so much to unpack in this story written by Gideon Lewis-Kraus from The New Yorker. The gist of it is that renowned behavioral economist Dan Ariely, author of the book Predictably Irrational, and a very prominent Harvard Business School professor, Francesca Gino, who both worked on dishonesty, have, in a sudden twist of irony, been accused of fabricating their data.
Ariely became famous for his work on "The Honesty Pledge" wherein he added a line on an insurance company's automobile-policy review form that prompted participants to sign an honesty declaration, with half the forms placing the pledge at the beginning, and the other half at the end. His thesis was that those with the honesty pledge at the beginning of the form were less likely to lie in the forms than those with the honesty pledge at the end. On the published paper, Ariely found that those who signed the honesty pledge at the beginning were less likely to cheat.
Francesca Gino became prominent in the late 2000s when she saw several papers she wrote being published in journals in a year. She also worked on the topic of dishonesty and frequently collaborated with Ariely. With her unprecedented surge in productivity, Gino became an HBS professor who had a significant influence in research circles. Despite this, several professors and researchers had expressed their doubts about the data and the results of her research. But most of those were simply brushed off, leaving Gino virtually untouched throughout her more than a decade tenure at HBS.
It wasn't until Zoe Ziani, a former PhD candidate who was denied a doctorate because of her critique of Gino's work, contacted the group of Joe Simmons, Leif Nelson, and Uri Simonsohn, collectively called Data Colada, the title of their blog where they unraveled the dishonest practices of researchers and called out people in their field, to show them Ariely's car-insurance study and started the whole investigation into Ariely's work, apart from Gino's work whom they were already looking into.
Long story short, Gino was placed on administrative leave by Harvard, and although Ariely has continued to forget, misremember, or lie about the data he used or the methods he used to get them for his research, much doubt has been cast on the veracity of the results his studies claimed. For the full details of this story, check it out on The New Yorker.
I remember when I was about three or four years old, my dad would read fairy tale books to me before going to sleep. I always loved those moments and I anticipated them every night. At times, I remember having to force him to read to me. Understandably, not all fathers may have the time or the energy to do that all the time, however, a new research has shown that dads spending time with their children can go a long way in their children's development.
A study by researchers from the University of Leeds found that dads' involvement in their children's lives, especially during their formative years, through interactive activities like reading, playing, and storytelling can help boost their children's performance at school.
Dr. Helen Norman, Research Fellow at Leeds University Business School, who led the research, said: “Mothers still tend to assume the primary carer role and therefore tend to do the most childcare, but if fathers actively engage in childcare too, it significantly increases the likelihood of children getting better grades in primary school. This is why encouraging and supporting fathers to share childcare with the mother, from an early stage in the child’s life, is critical.”
Furthermore, they also found that dads being more engaged in their children's school activities contribute positively to the kids' academic performance. The research suggests that playing, drawing, or singing with their kids every week and spending even 10 minutes a day reading or storytelling with them proves to have long-lasting effects for their children's scholastic achievements. On the other hand, the mom heavily impacts the kids' emotional and social development. With this in mind, they encourage both parents to share in the responsibility of childrearing as it greatly impacts the cognitive abilities of children.
I'm not completely familiar with the struggle of finding a place to put your purse in the car, but I think it's understandable how women would prefer having a convenient and secure slot inside their car where their purses will go since all of their essentials conveniently go in it.
The passenger seat may be an option, but there's always the possibility of the purse falling off when you unexpectedly have to come to a screeching halt or, even on the go, it might accidentally slip. I can imagine the difficulty of having to put your purse at the back of the driver's seat. It would be too much of a hassle, especially if you quickly need something from your purse. And it would just be completely out of reach if you were to just place it on the back seat.
With this problem in mind, car designers thought of a few ways for women to have a place in their car to put their purse. One solution is having electronic gear shifts. Instead of the gear shift being mechanically connected to the transmission, some cars are designed where the gear selector sends electronic signals, through a row of buttons on the lower dashboard, thus freeing up some space where the gear stick is supposed to be. Other designs have a carved out space under the shifter console where purses and other stuff can go. In Volvo's EX30 EV, the center console functions as a drawer of sorts where compartments can slide out and allow you to fit coffee cups, phones, and even your purse for a hassle-free drive. What do you think about these designs? - via Fark
The idea that we can create human-animal hybrids sounds deranged and downright absurd. Such a thing, we would think, only belongs in fiction, folk tales, or myths. After all, how would it be possible for human DNA to mix with that of an animal? Moreover, there is something about these chimerical combinations that obviously crosses ethical boundaries. It's best to leave them etched only in myths or folklore. However, one Soviet doctor had been so obsessed with the idea of a hybrid human-ape super warrior that he went to great lengths to create them. His name was Ilya Ivanov.
Ivanov had been successful in artificially inseminating horses so that one stallion can breed up to 500 mares. Apart from this, he also specialized in interspecific hybridization of animals, which led him, at some point in his scientific career, to become fixated with creating a human-ape hybrid, which he thought would be incredibly resistant to disease and even potent enough to become super warriors a la Planet of the Apes.
Imagining an army of half-human, half-ape chimeras, clad in red, rampaging through Europe was not enough, he knew, to convince the Soviet government to give him the funds for his research. However, he also knew that Vladimir Lenin and his compatriots were heavily anti-religious. Using this as an opportunity, he presented the idea that creating a human-ape hybrid would basically make them gods who could refashion genetics, anatomy, and physiology. He got the funding and set out to Africa.
However, Ivanov quickly found out that making his very own "humanzee" was not as easy as he thought it would be. He faced various hurdles to the point that he became desperate and almost had to forcefully inseminate women. Thankfully, he was caught and deported. But his pursuit of human-ape hybrids didn't end there. He continued his experimentation until his death, albeit unsuccessful in achieving his goal. Until in 2019, when a collaboration of scientists from the US, China, and Spain successfully created a human-monkey embryo. Is this finally the start of the realization of Ivanov's dream? Only time will tell.
After 25 years of renting out physical DVDs to customers, Netflix finally bids farewell to their rental business. And it comes as no surprise since even the global sales for DVDs and Blu-rays have been gradually dwindling over the past several years, with a 19 percent decrease from 2021 to 2022. The streaming behemoth announced in April that the last shipments of DVDs will be done on September 29th, marking the close of that chapter for DVD rentals.
Netflix first started shipping DVDs in 1998 with Beetlejuice, and since then, they have shipped 5.2 billion movies to over 40 million customers. Over the years, as consumer preferences shifted toward streaming, Netflix also shifted gears, offering movies and TV shows on-demand, later producing and distributing their own content on the platform.
Nowadays, video on-demand has simply taken over the market, and as streaming services continue to grow, we might soon shelve DVDs and Blu-rays along with other technologies from a by-gone era. Disney's move to stop production of DVDs and Blu-rays in Australia is one tell-tale sign that the industry has decided to steer toward digital distribution, which makes sense from a business perspective as it costs less but gives a much wider reach.
However, one good thing did come about this as Netflix also announced that whoever still has rentals in their possession would get to keep them. Furthermore, they may even request up to 10 more movies simply so that the company can finally get rid of all the remaining stock. So, for anybody who still would love to get physical copies of their favorite movies, go and check to see if Netflix still has a copy and request them right away. From Engadget.
