Photo: infodjatlov.narod.ru

In 1959, nine experienced cross country skiers, led by Igor Dyatlov, were trapped in a snowstorm and decided to set camp and sleep it out.

Later that night, something made all nine people leave their tents in such a hurry that they ripped them open from within. These people stumbled down the slope, in subzero weather, only in their underwear with no socks or shoes. All nine were discovered dead and frozen by a search party about a month later.

Here's where it gets really creepy: three of the nine suffered massive chest and head injuries that could only be caused by forces akin to that of a car crash, but without any external wounds. There were high doses of radioactivity. And if those weren't weird enough: one victim was missing her tongue.

Read more about the Dyatlov Pass Accident, including how mysterious "bright flying spheres" were seen nearby and why the findings of the investigation were classified as secret: Link | Photo Gallery (in Russian) | Wikipedia entry - via SF Gate and Super Punch

That's actually a light that looks like the ubiquitous surveillance camera. It's designed by Per Emanuelsson and Bastian Bischoff of HDK school of design and crafts in Gothenburg, Sweden.

Link - via GeekAlerts

Photo: Xinhuanet

Genius: a "hidden toilet" in China that remains out of sight until you plunk in a coin. Then it'll rise up to the surface so you can use the bathroom.

Evil Genius: 1 yuan to enter .... 1,000 yuan to exit before the toilet goes down with *you* in it. Bwahahahahaha!

(Okay, I added that last part): Link | Original Source (in Chinese)

One-pack-a-day smoking habit will cost you at least 2 teeth every 10 years.

According to 30-year studies at Tufts University, chain smokers lost an average of 2.9 teeth after 10 years of smoking one pack a day. Non-smokers lost an average of 1.3 teeth after 10 years. A smoker that quit will reduce his or her toothloss to 1.7 teeth. (Source)

Arturo Casadevall of Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York and colleagues have discovered a strain of black fungus capable of utilizing nuclear radiation as a source of energy.

The fungus, Cladosporium sphaerospermum, was growing on the walls of the damaged and radioactive Chernobyl nuclear reactor and was collected by robots:

The fungus was rich with melanin, the same pigment that gives human skin its color, protecting the skin from solar and ultraviolet radiation. Melanin is found in many, if not most, fungal species. [...]

"Just as the pigment chlorophyll converts sunlight into chemical energy that allows green plants to live and grow," so might melanin help fungi make use of ionizing radiation, said nuclear medicine specialist Ekaterina Dadachova at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

Link

I think we've posted about all or nearly all of these buildings on Neatorama, but it's nice to see 'em all in one neat post. Here's WebUrbanist's 5 Incredible Works of Insane Architectural Genius: Wooden Skyscrapers to Recycled Wonderlands.

The one on the upper right hand corner is Forevetron (previously on Neatorama here):

Tom Avery (aka Dr. Evermore) is responsible for the world’s largest scrap-metal architectural sculpture known as Foreverton. Weighing in at over 300 tons this amazing structure climbs 50 feet in the air and reaches 60 to 120 feet in either direction. Once the owner of a salvage business, Avery began turning his talents to this bizarre architectural pursuit over two decades ago and (supposedly) believes a spaceship contained within will launch him eventually into supernatural world beyond our own and bring him into contact with the Divine.

Link

Say what you will about celebrities (especially comics), at least they have a great sense of humor ... even in death.

The one to the left is Mel Blanc's tombstone. Mel's catch phrase, "That's All Folks," the tag line of every Looney Tunes cartoons, just happens to fit in this instance.

Here's a neat post at mental_floss: 10 Celebrity Tombstones Worth a Laugh

Biological differences lead boys and girls to learn in a different manner, according to Dr. Leonard Sax, a family physician turned author. Because of neurological differences, Sax advocates that classrooms are segregated by sex.

As you can imagine, It's a controversial idea (one of the main opponents to same-sex education is the ACLU). Here is a report by Elizabeth Weil of The New York Times about an intermediate school that had began offering separate classes for girls and boys and the positive (though biased) results that it achieved:

Sax comes off as a true believer and describes his conversion experience like this: In 2000, one of his patients, a 12-year-old boy, came to his medical office. For several years before then, the boy had been withdrawn, uninspired and on multiple medications, but he had recently made a big turnaround, which his parents credited to having enrolled him in an all-boys school. Upon hearing this, Sax said to the boy’s mother, “With all due respect, I regard single-sex education as an antiquated relic of the Victorian Era.” To which he says she replied, “With all due respect, Dr. Sax, you have no idea what you’re talking about.” After visiting a handful of single-sex schools, Sax threw himself into studying neurological differences between males and females, eventually focusing on how to protect boys from a syndrome he calls “failure to launch,” which Sax often characterizes as caring more about getting a Kilimanjaro in Halo 3 than performing well in high school or taking a girl on a date.

Link (a bit long, but very interesting)

"Nobody will ever win the battle of the sexes. There's too much fraternizing with the enemy."

- Henry Kissinger, diplomat (b. 1923)

What do you get when you replace McDonald's Big Mac's bread with McChicken patties? An "Atkins-friendly" masterpiece: behold the Big MacChicken!

http://groceryeats.com/2008/02/28/big-macchicken/ - via metafilter

In this video clip at Centripetal Notion blog, you'll see a neat example of an oscillating chemical reaction:

The Briggs-Rauscher oscillating reaction is one of a small number of known oscillating chemical reactions. It is especially well suited for demonstration purposes because of its visually striking color changes: the freshly prepared colorless solution slowly turns an amber color, suddenly changing to a very dark blue. This slowly fades to colorless and the process repeats, about ten times in the most popular formulation, before ending as a dark blue liquid smelling strongly of iodine.

http://centripetalnotion.com/2008/01/24/13:36:26/ [embedded YouTube]

"A trailer carrying 26 alligator carcasses to a processing plant overturned on a Fort Lauderdale highway (year unknown). The carcasses, which weighed about 10,000 pounds were put on a flatbed truck and taken to the processing plant."

TruckSpills.com, like its name clearly states, is a website dedicated to documenting things that have spilt out of overturned trucks. Some of the weirder things include alligator (above), glue, live chicken, and ... cocaine!

Oh, and there's this: a 8,000 liter (2,113 gallon) Sunny D spill (though it's not from a truck)

In 2004, Richard Box slipped a local farmer £200 to "borrow" a 3,600 m² field to plant fluorescent light tubes near overhead power lines. The show began at night:

A fluorescent tube glows when an electrical voltage is set up across it. The electric field set up inside the tube excites atoms of mercury gas, making them emit ultraviolet light. This invisible light strikes the phosphor coating on the glass tube, making it glow. Because power lines are typically 400,000 volts, and Earth is at an electrical potential voltage of zero volts, pylons create electric fields between the cables they carry and the ground.

Box denies that he aimed to draw attention to the potential dangers of power lines, ‘For me, it was just the amazement of taking something that’s invisible and making it visible,’ he says. ‘When it worked, I thought: ‘This is amazing.’’

http://www.zen54564.zen.co.uk/r/index.htm - via Gizmodo

Ed Boyden, assistant professor in the MIT Media Lab and Biological Engineering, wanted to teach a class called "How to Think," which would focus on "how to be creative, thoughtful, and powerful in a world where problems are extremely complex, targets are continuously moving, and our brains often seem like nodes of enormous networks that constantly reconfigure."

I don't know if he ever got to teach that class, but Boyden did compose a 10 rules on How to Think. For example:

1. Synthesize new ideas constantly. Never read passively. Annotate, model, think, and synthesize while you read, even when you're reading what you conceive to be introductory stuff. That way, you will always aim towards understanding things at a resolution fine enough for you to be creative.

2. Learn how to learn (rapidly). One of the most important talents for the 21st century is the ability to learn almost anything instantly, so cultivate this talent. Be able to rapidly prototype ideas. Know how your brain works. (I often need a 20-minute power nap after loading a lot into my brain, followed by half a cup of coffee. Knowing how my brain operates enables me to use it well.)

7. Make your mistakes quickly. You may mess things up on the first try, but do it fast, and then move on. Document what led to the error so that you learn what to recognize, and then move on. Get the mistakes out of the way. As Shakespeare put it, "Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt."

Read the entire list - it's worth it: Link

Hooray for war! If any one ever asked you what the Iraq war is good for, tell 'em this study by the United States Military Academy: it is good for the self esteem of Iraqi teenagers (if they're still alive ...)[Re-reading my intro, I agree that it was a bit snarky. It's never my intention to denigrate the US armed forces - they have my respect, support, and admiration for doing a difficult and dangerous job. Get back home safely soon, guys.]

Here's an interesting study by the US Army on the effect of war on the psyche of Iraqi teens:

For obvious reasons, few social science researchers have ventured into Iraq since the American-led invasion. However, in 2004, a year into the hostilities, the US Army funded a team of Iraqi interviewers, based at the Asharq Centre for Polls and Marketing Research, to go into ten neighbourhoods of Baghdad to survey the concerns and self-esteem of 1000 teenagers.

The results showed that rather than damaging their sense of self, the war appeared to have bolstered the teenagers' self-esteem, especially in those who felt most strongly that their country was under threat. [...]

The researchers said their finding was consistent with Social Identity Theory, which predicts that people will seek to maintain their sense of self when their identity is under threat. It's also consistent with research on mortality salience, showing that people tend to shore up their sense of self when reminded of, or threatened by, risk of death.

Link (Photo: Staff Stg. Sean A. Foley [wikipedia]) - via Mind Hacks