We know that pollution can affect our health negatively. It can increase risk of heart attacks, as well as cause lung diseases such as asthma. But those are not the only things that pollution can do: it can also affect brain development as well. These recent studies from USC show how air pollution affects the brains of children and older women.

The first study, published in Environment International, found that these fine particles — known as PM2.5 — may alter the size of a child’s developing brain, which may ultimately increase the risk for cognitive and emotional problems later in adolescence.

“At this young age, the neurons in children’s brains are expanding and pruning at an incredible rate. As your brain develops, it wants to create efficient pathways,” said lead author Megan Herting, an assistant professor at the Keck School of Medicine of USC. “If these pathways are altered by PM2.5 exposure, and different parts of the brain are maturing and making connections at different rates, that might set you up for individual differences later on.”

The other research, on the other hand, shows that older women who are more exposed to pollution have smaller white matter in their brain, which could be an early sign of Alzheimer’s disease.

Learn more details about these studies over at Neuroscience News.

(Image Credit: SD-Pictures/ Pixabay)

It’s good to reuse old items in order to reduce waste! These old shipping containers were turned into a luxurious hotel. The Geneseo Inn was a collaboration between architecture firm Ecotech Design, winery owners Steve Crass and Ted Plemons, and CRATE Modular. Each room in the hotel is made of two shipping containers joined at the center, as Euronews detailed: 

“The design was inspired by the vineyard itself,” says Walter Scott Perry, founder of Ecotech Design. “The most compelling attribute of this project is the use of modular components, in combination with recycled materials.”

“The structures become truly integrated with their environment. Both container units and the vineyard itself have been recycled.”

All of the other materials have been locally sourced and are either recycled or environmentally friendly. A green roof and solar panels will also be added in the future..

Inside, the ceilings and floors are made from wood and agricultural materials that were previously used by the winery.

image via Euronews

Do you have any old family photos that are looking worse for wear? It’s expensive to hire photography studios to restore old photos, so why not restore it on your own? Anyone who’s interested in restoring old photos can do it with Photoshop and Lightroom. Light Stalking shares some tips and tricks on how to restore old photos. Check the full piece here. 

image via Light Stalking 

Talk about a beautiful coincidence! Photographer Sarah Bethea was able to take a photo of the setting sun lining up with a glacier cave in Southern Iceland. The light from the sun made the interior of the cave look like glowing amber. PetaPixel has more details: 

The Oregon-based photographer witnessed this phenomenon in December 2017. It’s said that the Sun only lights up the glacier cave in this way once or twice a year.

“The light of the sunset striking the ice made it glow like amber for just a few minutes,” Bethea writes. “I expected these ice caves to be beautiful, but this was quite a surprise. Nature never fails to amaze.”

image via PetaPixel

You’ve heard of do-it-yourself projects on a smaller scale, get ready for DIYs on a bigger scale. Hello Wood presents the Kabinka, a simple and modern small-batch cabin. The Budapest-based creative architectural and design studio took cues from local rural architecture design. The Kabinka is made for those who want to build a weekend home, as Designboom detailed: 

‘the tiny house movement, which bursted into hungary a few years ago, unites those who favor a more conscious way of living and building,’ comments hello wood. ‘there is a growing number of people enamored with holiday homes and unique houses close to nature, who are looking for an intimate place to disappear to when on vacation and hello wood’s newest, reasonably priced, charming cabin, kabinka, is sure to resonate with them. it can be used as a great weekend home or a private work space, but it is also a perfect option for companies in need of a community space or meeting room.’

kabinka is available in four different sizes — from 12 to 20 square meters. inside, users can fit a tea kitchen, bathroom, couch and stove. with sustainability in mind, the cabin has been built applying a low-energy consumption and environmental focus, resulting in a structure that is greener than one built with non-renewable materials and conventional technologies

image via Designboom

With the current global situation, theme parks and other places like it have been forced to temporarily close their establishments. One such theme park is Walibi Holland in Biddinghuizen in the Netherlands. The fun, however, doesn’t stop in the place, as the theme park decided to offer their services to non-living things.

The park re-opened last May 25 with social distancing measures.

Watch the video over at CNN.

Cool!

(Image Credit: CNN)

When photographer Christian Spencer was taking pictures of the local wildlife in Itatiaia National Park in Brazil, he noticed something in the hummingbirds, particularly their wings. Apparently, their wings can bend light, much like how prisms work.

While observing the hummingbirds, Spencer noticed that if he shot them with the sun directly behind him, a prism-effect appeared on their wings, showcasing a full-range rainbow.

Spencer then took photos of these little creatures with the prism-effect in their wings, and these photos can be described as nothing short of being majestic.

Titled Winged Prism, this series of photographs by Christian Spencer shows nature’s mastery and perfection. Hummingbirds, known for the high speed in which they flap their wings, have always been a favorite for bird’s photographers. The small birds are also fast, being able to move from one spot to another at over 34 miles per hour (54.72 kilometers per hour).

Magnificent.

(Image Credit: Christian Spencer/ DesignBoom)

Melissa first met Oliver, a golden retriever, when he was still five years old, which was nine years ago. It was the day when Melissa moved into the neighborhood. Fast forward to this day, the now 14-year-old Oliver still visits Melissa’s house everyday, usually coming at around seven in the morning at the gate.

“He’s like a wandering old grandpa,” describes Melissa.

Oliver’s mother, Sue, has no problem with Oliver wandering around. 

“From a puppy on, he’s just had this spirit where he’s wanted to kind of wander. And we’ve let him kind of do his thing because, at the end of the day, he always comes home,” says Sue.

More about this wholesome story over at The Dodo. 

(Image Credit: The Dodo)

When Malaysian comedian Nigel Ng (previously), in his character named “Uncle Roger”, criticized the egg fried rice video from BBC Food, he made a follow-up video on his Instagram account, showing how to cook rice the Asian way. And the Asian way? Cooking rice with a rice cooker. “World War II is over, use technology!” he remarked.

Thanks to the power of modern technology, we can now cook the perfect rice through the use of rice cookers. But rice cookers aren’t as great before, and many Japanese companies have raced to invent the perfect rice cooker.

Know more about the history of rice cookers over at Atlas Obscura.

(Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

Caroline Ewen was a serious cat lady in New York City. An original member of the Society to Befriend Domestic Animals, she worked to support a cat shelter and a nocturnal project to euthanize stray cats. But her claim to fame was that she kept between 80 and 180 cats in her own three-story brownstone home. The neighbors weren't happy at all, mainly due to the noise. They complained for years.

In August 1904, two of Caroline’s neighbors at 103 and 107 East 101st Street petitioned the Board of Health regarding the nightly concerts of 80 or more fat and sassy cats sheltered in the woman’s three-stone brownstone at 105 East 101st Street. “It is not that we object to Miss Ewan’s humane impulses in caring for all the stray and homeless felines of the neighborhood, but the noise of her pets is something wonderful,” the petitioners said. “It is enough to drive a strong man with a newly-signed pledge in the pocket to drink.”

According to petitioners Jacob Thorman and J. Kaplan, “There are bass cats and soprano cats, tenor cats and contraite cats, but there is no feline to drill them and make them sing in unison or harmony. I am fond of good music, but I do not consider eighty cats singing in eighty keys and eighty kinds of time good music.” 

Ewen was forced to move elsewhere, but she continued to advocate for stray and unwanted cats for the rest of her life, and even after her death. Read about the devoted cat lady of East Harlem at The Hatching Cat. -via Strange Company

We are coming up on the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II. The conclusion of the biggest event of the 20th century is celebrated on a specific day, which is different depending on where you are, but was actually a series of steps wrapping up the war. Still, the surrender of Japan on August 14, 1945, is a milestone we don't see in wars that have been waged since then. And you might be surprised at how much you don't know about how the war actually ended. For example, 

6. The Soviet Union declared war on Japan less than a month before World War II ended.

At the Allies' Tehran Conference in November 1943, the Soviet Union had agreed to declare war on Japan three months after Germany's surrender to force an end to World War II while retaking occupied territory from Japan. That day came on August 8, 1945. About 1.6 million Soviet troops were swiftly dispatched to Japanese-occupied Manchuria (modern-day northeastern China). The USSR inflicted heavy losses during their engagements with Japanese forces in China, Korea, and the Kuril Islands.

You can't blame the Soviets for wanting a three-month breathing period -and it no doubt took most of that time to move troops across Eurasia. Read more about the many steps taken to officially end World War II at Mental Floss. 

(Image credit: Office of the Chief Signal Officer collection) 

If you cannot make up your mind what subject to make a film about, how about making a film about the struggle to decide? Or on the other hand, don't do that. Chico Jofilsan did just that, and the delightful animation that resulted ended up being strangely meta. -via Laughing Squid

What would be easier: adopting a new nomenclature in order to avoid spreadsheet errors or customizing MS Excel to accomplish the same?

Exactly. So, The Verge reports, that's what geneticists are doing:

“It’s really, really annoying,” Dezső Módos, a systems biologist at the Quadram Institute in the UK, told The Verge. Módos, whose job involves analyzing freshly sequenced genetic data, says Excel errors happen all the time, simply because the software is often the first thing to hand when scientists process numerical data. “It’s a widespread tool and if you are a bit computationally illiterate you will use it,” he says. “During my PhD studies I did as well!”

There’s no easy fix, either. Excel doesn’t offer the option to turn off this auto-formatting, and the only way to avoid it is to change the data type for individual columns. Even then, a scientist might fix their data but export it as a CSV file without saving the formatting. Or, another scientist might load the data without the correct formatting, changing gene symbols back into dates. The end result is that while knowledgeable Excel users can avoid this problem, it’s easy for mistakes to be introduced.

Therefore the HUGO Gene Nomenclature Committee has created a new system that has resulted in 27 new gene names in the past year.

-via Marginal Revolution | Photo: Pixabay

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So many of you got this right on Twitter! This piece is inspired by the one and only Dory - who should I paint next? I posted a progress video of this piece over on @tiktok - My user name is the same everywhere 💙 . . . . . . #art #digitalpainting #digitalart #disney #disneyland #disneyart #pixar #findingnemo #drawingoftheday #procreate

A post shared by isabelle staub (@isabelle_staub) on Mar 13, 2020 at 10:29am PDT

Inspired by the great stories of Disney films, Isabelle Staub re-imagined non-human female characters as walking, talking, humans, losing fins and paws in the process. Staub is a remarkably skilled artist and her whole Instagram feed is worth exploring. The distinctive style of her women is captivating.

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🏋🏼‍♀️ Today... i feel Good 🏋🏼‍♀️ #scaf #anamorphic #opticalillusion #3d #abandoned #art #spraypaint #fitness

A post shared by SCAF 🇫🇷 (@scaf_oner) on Jun 22, 2020 at 7:05am PDT

SCAF, a French street artist, makes images that, when viewed from just the right angle, pop out of two dimensions and into three. Many show magical animals that seem to come to life and interact with passersby who are daring or foolhardy enough to approach. It's an exciting, surreal world inside SCAF's head.