In the era of social media fame and virality, unique experiences are the currency. People are always on the look out for something new to try or an exciting place to visit and Indonesian locals took advantage of that by turning their village pond, Umbul Ponggok, into a tourist attraction.

“Many visitors upload photos of themselves on motorbikes or bicycles, and even do pre-wedding photo shoots, which quickly become viral on their Instagram accounts,” says Umbul Ponggok’s 25-year-old manager, Muhammad Abdul Rahman. Visitors can also swim or snorkel there. Those without underwater cameras can rent one for 60,000 rupiah (US$4.20) per half-hour.

The pond has its own Instagram account, with more than 38,000 followers. As more photos taken there go viral, its visibility on local and national news portals has added to Umbul Ponggok’s fame.

Despite its popularity today, Umbul Ponggok wasn't always a sprawling and vibrant tourist spot.

The Umbul Ponggok of today is a far cry from the polluted, mossy pond that, 15 years ago, was used by villagers for bathing and washing clothes. Ponggok was poor and most of its people were not well educated. They farmed or worked in quarries. Unemployment was high.

It was village head Junaedi Mulyono who had the idea of turning Umbul Ponggok into a tourist destination soon after he was elected in 2006.

(Image credit: James Wendlinger/SCMP)

Astronomers have recently detected an exoplanet that is so hot such that its atmosphere emits magnesium and iron out into space instead of condensing them into clouds. They called it WASP-121b. The reason for its very high temperature is that it closely orbits its star, about 15 times closer than Mercury is to the Sun.

The researchers, led by astrophysicist David Sing at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Md., measured the ultraviolet spectrum of WASP-121b using the Hubble Space Telescope. They looked for imprints of elements and molecules on the distant star’s spectrum as the planet passed in front of it.

“Heavy metals have been seen in other hot Jupiters before, but only in the lower atmosphere,” Sing said in a statement. “With WASP-121b, we see magnesium and iron gas so far away from the planet that they’re not gravitationally bound.”

(Image credit: NASA, ESA, and J. Olmsted)

Among the many ways to combat climate change and bring down the rising global temperatures, planting trees seems to be the ideal solution if countries would not be able to significantly reduce their carbon emissions within the given period of time before things start to become critical.

But it would take one trillion trees, based on recent figures, to help limit warming to 1.5 C. The question is, would it be plausible for us to accomplish that within the time frame?

It’s a number that few of us come up against in day to day life. A trillion is equal to a thousand billion, or 1,000,000,000,000. Planting that many trees promises to require an unholy effort. The idea of getting the job done by hand — it’s about 130 trees per living person — boggles the mind, but there are other approaches that exist.

One of the most promising ideas is that of aerial reforestation. The now seemingly defunct Aerial Forestation Inc. proposed a plan back in the late 1990s aiming to repurpose military aircraft fitted out to drop landmines.

They would instead be reconfigured to drop specially designed cones, containing a sapling as well as fertilizer and moisture absorbent materials. The cones would bury themselves in the soil upon impact, biodegrading to allow the root system of the tree to develop.

With this system, they can deliver an estimate of around 900,000 trees per day. Though it is a significant number, it would still take a lot more effort to reach the one trillion mark. But the thought of using thousands of C-130 aircraft to reforest the Earth is a bit far-fetched.

Even if we were to somehow gather all the equipment and supplies needed for the task, there are still several things to consider. Where are we going to plant these trees? Will all of them successfully grow? Events like forest fires may also impede the effort.

It’s likely within the realms of possibility that this could be achieved. However, it would require a level of commitment similar to the total war doctrine seen in World War II, where countries geared their entire economic output towards ensuring their own survival.

So far, there have been efforts to plan a trillion trees which started in 2006.

The Billion Tree Campaign started back in 2006, and planted a billion trees by 2007. After morphing into the Trillion Tree Campaign, it has planted 13.6 billion trees to date, through a variety of methods involving donations and community involvement.

(Image credit: Picography/Pixabay)

Over the weekend, two tragic mass shootings occured yet again which brought up the subject of gun control once more. Some took to social media to express their opinions on the matter. In one particular exchange on Twitter, somebody had posed a question in response to a tweet by Jason Isbell and it went like this:

“Legit question for rural Americans,” it began. “How do I kill the 30-50 feral hogs that run into my yard within 3-5 mins while my small kids play?”

It wouldn't seem likely for such a number of pigs, feral ones at that, to simply come together and stampede into someone's backyard while their children are playing outside. This hypothetical situation, however, has given birth to a new meme.

The absurdity of the question, coupled with the realization that these were the sorts of baldfaced arguments sincerely being used to block laws that prevent gun violence, made it perfect fodder to take off as a meme.

(Image credit: Eva Blue/Unsplash)

Legit question for rural Americans - How do I kill the 30-50 feral hogs that run into my yard within 3-5 mins while my small kids play?

— William McNabb (@WillieMcNabb) August 4, 2019

Several heat waves struck Europe and North America. Last year, Canada had a devastating one which took the lives of many. It's no joke. Temperatures are rising and couple that with increasing humidity, our body's natural response, perspiration, won't be able to bring enough relief to stabilize us. This could lead to death.

To understand what it feels like to be in an environment produced by a heat wave, Marco Chown Oved enters the Montreal Heart Institute's climate-controlled chamber to see the effects that such conditions would do to the human body.

But at the Montreal Heart Institute’s integrative human physiology laboratory, there’s a climate-controlled chamber that acts like a time machine. Professor Daniel Gagnon can recreate the precise conditions of any heat wave — the hot and dry Australian heat wave last January that had highs of 46 degrees or 1995’s hot and humid heat wave in Chicago, when temperatures reached 39 degrees, but with the humidity, it actually felt like 56 degrees.

Gagnon's team strapped him with sensors to measure his body temperature, sweat rate, and heart rate then ushered him into the chamber. He was given water every 20 minutes, placed a fan to help him cool off, and sponged his skin with cold water every now and then. After the experience, he felt light-headed and walked feebly. He lost a whole pound during the whole experiment.

Read more on this at The Toronto Star.

(Image credit: Ava Sol/Unsplash)

Erica Eriksdotter used to work as a public relations consultant before she quit that job to focus on her business, Studio Eriksdotter, in which she paints portraits of deceased or dying pets. It started out as a pastime but as demand was booming for her portraits, she decided to do it full-time.

Her pet portraits start at $774 for a 12-by-12-inch canvas and go up from there. Each one takes her about a month to complete. The price tag may seem hefty, but demand for her portraits is exploding among D.C.-area pet owners: Eriksdotter’s wait list is six months long.

The pet portraits’ popularity may be because of Eriksdotter’s unique process, suggested Antonietta Corvasce, a District of Columbia-based psychotherapist who specializes in grief and loss counselling. Clients who buy paintings of their deceased pets also sign up for several weeks of something akin to therapy.

More on The Star.

(Image credit: Matt McClain/The Washington Post)

One of the primary concerns of ordinary people in living day to day is how they will be able to meet their needs as well as their family's needs. Resources aren't getting more abundant but the population of the world continues to increase which means there will be less of a certain resource for all. Although, technically, it will be less for the majority and there will be more for only a few.

There have been studies showing that the ability and capacity of an individual to meet their own needs can affect their mental health. And the logic behind that is that people who have less to spend will have more to worry about, which can push them to the brink. One researcher on the matter is Johannes Haushofer who wants to know how money affects happiness and whether we can treat the psychological consequences of poverty.

The idea behind much of what I do is to ask whether there is a bi-directional relationship between poverty and psychological well-being. So that means asking the question of: When you’re poor, does that affect your psychological outcomes? Do your psychological outcomes in turn affect your economic situation? If you’re poor, did that lead you to become depressed, and then, if you’re depressed, did that make it hard for you to earn a living?

Other experts on the topic agree that having a Universal Basic Income might address certain issues linked to mental illnesses. Matthew Smith said that the UBI could tackle the causes of mental illness laid out by social psychiatrists namely poverty, class inequality, and social exclusion.

It has been acknowledged for decades that the stress associated with poverty can cause mental health problems. Recent research on inflammation is providing new insights into how stress can trigger such anxiety and depression, but the real issue is simple: finding ways to eliminate poverty.

Of course, there might be other reasons for mental illnesses since different people have various situations that may not be directly linked to poverty. However, there is some merit in saying that alleviating a person's poverty could at least ease their circumstances. And perhaps implementing a universal basic income would make way for that.

(Image credit: Pepi Stojanovski/Unsplash)

When a foreign species is introduced to an area, it changes the dynamic of the ecosystem. Native plants and even animals may start to decrease as the invasive species populates the area. And before long, the invader will have taken over and erased any traces of the natural biodiversity of a particular environment.

In a study published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers share the results of their examination of 517 plots of forest on the Hawaiian islands. What they found may change the way you think about biodiversity in the natural world.

“The effects of island age on diversity patterns of native species percolate across spatial scales via the distribution of rare species,” write the researchers in their study. “However, we found that biological invasions are eroding the signal of island age on biodiversity.”

According to the researchers, the situation is a bit different between older islands which have a more established natural environment than much younger islands wherein the invasive species spread and grow quickly such that native species are being pushed out. The problem worsens when you think about the effects of climate change and other human activities that take away much of the space that the native species need to flourish.

(Image credit: Jelle de Gier/Unsplash)

The past century has seen some of the worst events happen in human history. These events were made even more devastating with the advancement of technology and things like war have never been the same again.

The two world wars themselves caused so much more destruction together than all previous wars combined. And the atrocity of it all can be said to be barbaric. But the word "barbaric" wasn't associated with cruelty or brutality before. It only meant "the state of being primitive or unsophisticated".

But because the developments in technology intensified the power of our weapons of war, the word "barbaric" had to change following in their trail. Yet, not all kinds of barbarism are negative. Walter Benjamin, in his essay, attempts to introduce a new positive notion of barbarism. One that is connected with the poverty of experience.

The consequences of feigning or misappropriating experience are too clear in the mishmash of styles and ideologies created in the last century for us not to find it honorable to acknowledge our poverty. Let us admit it: our poverty of experience is not only an impoverishment of private experience but of human experience as a whole. It is, therefore, a new kind of barbarism.

Barbarism? Indeed. We say this in order to introduce a new, positive notion of barbarism. For where does poverty of experience lead the barbarian? It leads him to start again from the beginning, to start fresh, to make do with little, to rebuild with next to nothing and without looking left or right.

(Image credit: Htoo Myat Thu/Unsplash)

Kyle Riggen had wanted to cook some chicken wings but he doesn't want to wait four hours with his electric smoker just to get them. So he made some experiments in order to cut down the cook time and tried other methods to see which could bring out the most flavor into meat. After that, he decided to build his own pressure cooker.

Riggen debuted his first K-Rigg Pressure Smoker a year ago. The pressure is built using a small, propane-fueled engine. There’s a pull starter at the bottom, like you’d find on a lawnmower. The engine’s exhaust, which goes through a catalytic converter, is what pressurizes the system.

The cooking chamber is a simple steel tube. A larger tube surrounds it, and a gas burner sits between the tubes. The smoke comes from wood chips sprinkled on the bottom of the cooking chamber. The steel tube gets hot enough from the burner below to ignite the wood.

With his design, the pressure cooker can go up to 450 degrees which can cut down the cook time for meat like a rack of ribs to 30 minutes and a ten-pound brisket to just under two hours. That's a significant leap from his old electric smoker. But how would the meat taste? Find out on Texas Monthly.

(Image credit: Daniel Vaughn/Texas Monthly)

The master artist Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn has made some of the most moving and innovative works of art in history. He has done paintings, sketches, and prints about a range of subjects from portraits to landscapes and even mythological themes.

But Harvard Art Museums has newly acquired one of Rembrandt's early drawings, the "Four Studies of Male Heads", which would show a more intimate side of the artist's hand.

“The impressionists, and many 19th-century artists such as James McNeill Whistler, looked to Rembrandt as a model,” said Elizabeth and John Moors Cabot Director of the Harvard Art Museums Martha Tedeschi on a recent afternoon in the museums’ airy Art Study Center. “Vincent van Gogh called Rembrandt a magician and pointed to his ability to capture mysterious aspects of the human psyche and human life in a way that words in any language couldn’t. Many found him to have a kind of depth, a perception that was incredibly rare.”

For Tedeschi, as for many other art enthusiasts, drawings hold special appeal. Unlike paintings, where an artist’s early composition or color choice may have been obscured by layers of oil added over time, in a drawing one can see clearly “the direct connection between the decisions being made by the artist and the hand,” said Tedeschi. “For me that’s why drawings are so special, particularly when you are looking at a Rembrandt drawing like this, where his process is laid bare.”

(Image credit: Rembrandt/Wikimedia Commons)

Even though there are millions of stars in the universe, it is quite curious that there aren't a lot of new stars being born. One possible reason could be that there aren't many opportunities for stars to be born, according to astronomers from the National Astronomical Observatory in Japan.

Stars are born in gas clouds. The high-density gas pockets form in the extended, low-density gas clouds, and stars form in the very dense gas cores which evolve within the high-density gas. However, observations of distant galaxies detected 1000 times fewer stars than the production value expected from the total amount of low-density gas. To interpret the discrepancy, observations which detect both of the high-density and low-density gas with high-spatial resolution and wide area coverage were needed.

Kazufumi Torii, a project assistant professor at NAOJ, and his team analyzed the big data obtained in the FUGIN project, and measured the accurate masses of the low-density and high-density gas for a large span of 20,000 light-years along the Milky Way. They revealed for the first time that the high-density gas accounts for only 3% of the total gas.

(Image credit: NAOJ)

After his first unsuccessful attempt, Franky Zapata has finally achieved his goal of crossing the English Channel by flying over it with his "flyboard". This could be the first time we will ever see a jetpack, or something of the sort, in action and it is quite exciting to see how this new invention will shape the future of travel.

He had successfully flown the 35 km stretch in 20 minutes. It has also been reported that Zapata kept an average speed of 140 km per hour (87 mph) while flying at about 15-20 meters above the sea. Last July 25, Zapata attempted the same route but failed when he fell into the water while trying to refuel his flyboard.

The flyboard is a home-made invention by Zapata, a former jet-ski champion, that looks like a flying skateboard. Zapata has been building his flyboard for years. The invention can reach top speeds of as much as 189 km per hour (118 mph).

(Image credit: Zapata)

Historical documents could give us one perspective about events that happened in a particular period of time and it has been difficult to understand the context of a certain event without any evidence or data to give us a background of it.

With regard to the Suffragist Movement however, it's a good thing we have plenty of documents and papers. Although it might be too much for a handful of people to preserve on their own. Which is why the Library of Congress, who has possession of these documents, have sought help from volunteers to transcribe them.

The Library of Congress has already scanned the original documents into a digital library, but if you’ve ever tried to use a computer to search for a word in a scanned source, you know that it’s not easy to do—especially since decades-old documents often make for blurry scans that are difficult to decipher.

So last year, the Library of Congress launched a crowdsourcing platform called By the People, asking the public to help type up written documents word for word, which will make it easier to find and read original sources.

-via Open Culture

(Image credit: American Press Association/Wikimedia Commons)

Why do cats have nine lives? Because every time they fall off precarious heights, they always seem to land on their feet. When scientist-inventor Etienne-Jules Marey first observed this, he started to make experiments by dropping a cat and capturing its fall through chronophotography.

This showed how cats were able to break their fall by bending their bodies to harness the inertia of their weight and why they are able to land on their feet every time they fall.

The white cat survived its ordeal by arching its back mid-air, effectively splitting its body in two to harness the inertia of its body weight, much like a figure skater controlling the velocity of her spin by the position of her arms.

But cats weren't the only ones with which Marey had tried to experiment on the physics of motion.

Marey's preoccupation with the mechanics of organic locomotion extended to horses and humans. It prompted him to invent photographic techniques that prefigured cinematography, and, more darkly, to subject other, less-catlike creatures to deadfalls from similar heights.

(Image credit: Etienne-Jules Marey)