Different strokes for different folks, so the saying goes. The study mentioned in this article regarding the correlation between cognitive performance and environmental factors shows that women generally perform better in higher temperatures than men. Moreover, it is a steep gap.

However, that doesn't mean that it applies to everyone. Some people would much prefer working in a slightly cooler environment while others get their gears going in a slightly warmer one. It depends on how our bodies react to these environmental factors.

For one, temperature is not the only variable that would affect performance. Lighting, humidity, noise, and even congestion could affect our work habits and productivity. What we can take away from this is that business managers need to be aware of the different concerns that might be affecting their employees in order to improve their productivity at work.

(Image credit: Campaign Creators/Unsplash)

For hobby gamers and board game enthusiasts out there, the Spiel des Jahres has announced their nominees for the award in three categories: Spiel des Jahres, Kennerspiel des Jahres, and Kinderspiel des Jahres.

This year, the jury of German critics went with light, easy-to-teach games for the family-friendly "Spiel des Jahres" award. Just One and Werwörter (Werewords in English) are word-based party games, while L.A.M.A. is a card-shedding game from design legend Reiner Knizia. All three play in under 20 minutes (!).

For the list of games in other categories, you may check them out on the Spiel des Jahres website.

(Image credit: Spiel des Jahres)

Progress and development are usually associated with a higher standard or quality of living and generally a more convenient lifestyle. However, apart from the effects that digital technology has had on human populations, in terms of mental health, social dynamics, and even political and economic issues, new technologies in general might be accelerating too much for us to handle.

But let's go back to basics for now. The most fundamental means by which humans have survived and sustained themselves without the use of technology was through hunter-gathering. We looked for food available naturally in the wild. We foraged, hunted, and fished. Then agriculture was developed and most of us never looked back.

Now, it seems that agriculture jump-started much of our technological innovation. However, researchers are suggesting that perhaps, the hunter-gathering lifestyle might have been a lot easier than farming.

A paper published in Nature Human Behaviour explores how this shift affects the time budgets of hunter-gatherers in the Philippines, finding that women who participate more in agricultural work have less leisure time—around half the leisure time of women who prioritize foraging. 

The results fall in line with past research that challenges the concept of hunting and foraging as arduous work with scant rewards, and this work contributes to a growing understanding of the social dynamics that go along with a shift to agriculture.

(Image credit: sasint/Pixabay)

Portland, Oregon is known as the knife-making capital. Other states produce fine knives but you can only find some of the most renowned custom-designed knives in Portland. To give you an inkling on Portland's knives, these three blades are what gave it such a moniker.

(Image credit: Wu Yi/Unsplash)

People with red hair have been depicted in many paintings throughout history that it might simply pass us by without asking ourselves why. In reality, redheads have received some discrimination for being the "other" or the "oddities" of life since it's quite rare for people to have red hair.

As such, certain symbolism have been affixed to being a redhead. Even in art, these are subtly, if not explicitly, shown. For example, Botticelli's Venus possesses red hair but for what reason did he give the goddess of beauty, sex, and love those locks?

“This business of being attracted to the color red is very hardwired into us,” Harvey said. Early humans developed the ability to differentiate between reds, greens, and blues as an evolutionary mechanism to help them (among other things) better forage for ripe, brightly colored fruits in overwhelmingly green forests. 

“And that’s even before all of the associations with fire, and warmth, and sun, and blood,” Harvey continued. Red is thus a highly visceral color associated with survival, sex, and strong emotion.

(Image credit: Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Wikimedia Commons)

When we go to the bathroom, we usually expect the standard facilities to be available or at the very least, be ordinary. But for some reason or another, some bathrooms have mirrors that are awkward to look at or simply useless. From mirrors that are poorly designed to those that are inappropriately placed, Sad and Useless gives us here a collection of funny bathroom mirrors.

(Image credit: Sad and Useless)

If you see a line of lights straddling along the night sky, then this might be the first set of Starlink satellites that SpaceX recently launched in order to provide internet coverage to the world. Marco Langbroek eagerly anticipated these low-orbit satellites and after making calculations, his location was close enough to view this satellite train.

He wrote on his blog:

On 24 May 2019 at 2:30 UT, SpaceX launched STARLINK, a series of 60 satellites that is the first launch of many that will create a large constellation of satellites meant to provide global internet access.

Just short of a day after the launch, near 22:55 UT on May 24, this resulted in a spectacular view over northwestern Europe, when a ‘train’ of bright satellites, all moving close together in a line, moved across the sky. It rained UFO reports as a result, and the press picked it up as well.

(Image credit: SpaceX/Starlink Mission; Wikimedia Commons)

This is not a scam, it's legit. The reason behind this whole thing is, according to the artist (yes, it's an art project), "to create a catalogue of historical threats". In collaboration with Deep Instinct, Chinese internet artist Guo O Dong infected a laptop with six of the deadliest computer viruses in history.

“Malware is one of the most tangible ways that the internet can jump out of your monitor and bite you,” Guo told VICE. “These pieces of software seem so abstract, almost fake with their funny, spooky names, but I think they emphasize that the web and IRL are not different spaces.”

All together, the six pieces of malware — ILOVEYOU, MyDoom, SoBig, WannaCry, DarkTequila, and BlackEnergy — have caused $95 billion dollars in damages worldwide, attacking millions of users and targeting banks, government institutions, and average people.

Rest assured, anybody who will subsequently own this computer does not risk having other computers infected. The collaborators made sure that these viruses will not spread. But it probably would be best to leave the computer alone and not stick anything into it.

(Image credit: Soumil Kumar/Pexels)

Creativity can be used both for the sake of art and practicality, and fish decoys exemplify that feature. These realistic fish were carved to mimic the appearance of their live counterparts, not just to be used as decoration but also to lure fish.

For certain types of fishing, these decoys can be even more effective than live bait: Not only can they be brighter, but they can be tailored to mimic the fish most appetizing to pike. But Osvold and others spend more time carving and painting than strictly necessary. “It becomes fun, and you kinda get addicted,” he says.

Osvold knew that he was far from the only one obsessing over decoys, which have long been sold to people looking for a mantelpiece item rather than a fishing tool. So about 20 years ago, he started the National Fish Decoy Association (NFDA).

The association showcases the decoys created by artists in order for them to gain exposure as well as connect with other enthusiasts of the craft. You may check out their gallery here.

(Image credit: Jacob Sazama/NFDA)

Volcanoes are as majestic as they are destructive and as much as hikers enjoy climbing a mountain, they would have the same experience with a volcano, and then some. The thrill of climbing a volcano, especially an active one is electrifying. Taking the risk is what makes it fun.

Adrian Rohnfelder knows this fascination well. A photographer based in Germany, he has a virulent, incurable strain of a disease he calls the “firework virus.” Symptoms include a mix of wanderlust and keen curiosity that compels him to visit the tallest, farthest, most spectacular dormant or active volcanic peaks around the world—sometimes in the hope that he will be there when they spew.

In all his travels, Rohnfelder documented the tallest and perhaps the most fascinating volcanoes in the world, bringing us from the top of Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania to the frigid heights of Mount Sidley in Antarctica, these are some of the best photos you will ever witness.

(Image credit: NASA/Landsat 8; Wikimedia Commons)

Scientists have been searching for the origins of Libyan desert glass and how it formed and survived through all these years. Many studies have been conducted without any definitive proof of how it came to be. 

Some suggested that it formed during meteorite impact while others say it could have been due to a massive object burning through the Earth's atmosphere. Now, there is a study that might be able to confirm one of those hypotheses.

Our research, published in the journal Geology, reports the first evidence of high-pressure damage, showing the glass formed during a meteorite impact. The new “smoking gun” for understanding the origin of the Libyan desert glass is evidence of an unusual mineral called reidite. Reidite only forms during a meteorite impact, when atoms in the mineral zircon are forced into a tighter arrangement.

Reidite is rare and only reported from meteorite impact sites. It is found in material ejected from craters and in shocked rocks at craters. Prior studies have found evidence of former reidite within zircon from impact melt, similar to how it was identified in Libyan desert glass.

Now, this doesn't solve the entire mystery altogether though. If Libyan desert glass was produced in this way, then where is the source crater located and what has happened to it? More research needs to be conducted on the matter. This is just a possible piece of the puzzle.

(Image credit: H. Raab/Wikimedia Commons)

Nothing perhaps could be as complicated yet so simple, so serious yet petty, than matters of the heart. There has not been an event, whether it be far-reaching or minuscule in scope, in which the heart was not involved. Relationships, ambitions, betrayals, and everything in between have caught the attention of our heart in one way or another.

How does the human heart — that ancient beast, whose roars and purrs have inspired sonnets and ballads and wars, defied myriad labels too small to hold its pulses, and laid lovers and empires at its altar — unbusy itself from self-consciousness and learn to be a heart? 

That is what artist and illustrator Corinna Luyken explores in the lyrical and lovely My Heart (public library) — an emotional intelligence primer in the form of an uncommonly tender illustrated poem about the tessellated capacities of the heart, about love as a practice rather than a state, about how it can frustrate us, brighten us, frighten us, and ultimately expand us.

(Image credit: Brain Pickings)

Difficult is an understatement when it comes to describing the parents' situation when they bring their baby or toddler with them on trips. Taking care of a child at home is already a hassle to begin with, what more when you bring said child to an unfamiliar place with lots of unfamiliar people, customs, and rules. It's a recipe for disaster.

Thankfully, we have some experienced parents who have gone through the hassle and devised ways to make their trips with their children a lot smoother and easier, or at the very least, decent. Here is a list of seven tips for traveling with your baby or toddler. The first one is probably a traveling rule of thumb, that is, to pack light:

Skip the crib. Babies are heavy—or rather, their accouterments are. So don’t bring what you don’t have to. “On Airbnb, I filter by houses with cribs or high chairs. (It's hidden in amenities.) This makes traveling with my eight-month-old and three-year-old much easier.” Searches can also be customized to suit families - and you can add “infants” to the guests to only show homes that are baby friendly.

(Image credit: Johannes Rapprich/Pexels)

When you bike through the city, you definitely help reduce the greenhouse gas emissions as well as get a good workout. However, not everybody decides to just set aside the convenience of driving with a car for nature.

There will always be risks to any initiative. It's possible that biking through the city could affect your lungs when you breathe in all the air pollution that vehicles emit. Not only that, but you also have to watch out for accidents. There isn't much protection for cyclists. You definitely would risk physical injury, despite your efforts to cover your body with protective gear.

However, that doesn't mean we should abandon biking altogether because of these risks.

Believe it or not, there’s actually a study that took on your very question about the health benefits of biking (ripped calves, strong heart) vs. huffing in polluted air (everything we already discussed), and found that the answer is yes, cycling is still worth it. Even in the most extreme cases — cities in the 99th percentile of particulate matter concentration — an hour-long bike ride is still considered to have net-positive benefits.

(Image credit: Free-Photos/Pixabay)

97-year-old Huang Yung-Fu was the only resident left in his village and the government wanted to tear it down to build a more modern apartment complex. This was the only place Huang could call home as he had been born in China but migrated to Taiwan after the war.

“When I came here, the village had 1,200 households and we’d all sit and talk like one big family,” Huang shared with BBC. “But then everyone moved away or passed away and I became lonely.” With nowhere to go, he turned to art to ease his suffering.

Learn more about his story on My Modern Met. -via This is Colossal

(Image credit: Steven R. Barringer/Street Art Utopia; Wikimedia Commons)