Meet Sanford, the once “broken dog” who cannot stop smiling now. Why was he described as broken?

On April, Sanford got hit by a car, which left him unable to walk. Sanford was then rescued by animal control and was taken to a small municipal shelter in Dallas, Texas, where he stayed for a week. The facility, however, was short on resources, and so he didn’t get any medical attention there.

When a volunteer for Dallas DogRRR, a local dog rescue group, first saw Sanford at the shelter, she knew she had to help him.

“He was physically broken … and when the volunteer went to see him, he didn’t really make any effort to come and say hello,” Kerry Anechiarico, executive director of Dallas DogRRR, told The Dodo. “It’s almost like he had given up, and he was just waiting for his time to come.”

Fortunately, everything changed for Sanford when Karen Velazquez took him to her home.

“He came to my home on May 1, just a few days after he was released from the hospital,” Velazquez said. “He has been all smiles ever since. I think the minute he came to my home, he realized he was in a safe place.”

Now, Sanford is always smiling, and the only time he doesn’t is when he’s asleep or eating.

(Image Credit: Karen Velazquez/ The Dodo)

Yes, you’ve read it correctly. Every single item in this deli is handmade out of felt.

This is contemporary artist Lucy Sparrow’s sixth installation in her felt shop series, Delicatessen on 6th, located at the Rockefeller Center. Despite the items being made of felt, they are still available for purchase, which is a surprise.

Located on the corner of 49th street and 6th avenue, Lucy Sparrow‘s Delicatessen on 6th is a fully functioning retail experience mimicking an upscale deli, all in felt, where all items are available for purchase. The site-specific, interactive installation, which opened yesterday, October 1, 2019, invites customers into a parallel universe where hand-stitched, bejeweled artworks in the form of cheese, fish, seafood, and other fine food produce take center stage. Most of the items are adorned with tiny eyes and smiles, encouraging the viewer to examine their relationship with the food they purchase and to consider their own thoughts about consumerism.

What are your thoughts on this one?

(Image Credit: Lucy Sparrow)

Created by filmmaker Daisy Jacobs and animator Chris Wilder, dimensions collide in this multi-award winning short film titled “The Full Story”, as “painted animation on walls, combined with sculpture components like moveable papier maché limbs, and regular ‘real world’ objects”, and human actors, merge and interact with each other to create this fantastic world. But how did they do this?

In order to merge the real and imagined, Jacobs and Wilder explain that they made the sets more realistic and the actors more ‘painterly’ to find a stylistic middle ground. “To make the sets more realistic we emphasized textures and brought out shine with lighting and varnish. With the real people we did the opposite–painting their clothes, minimizing shadows on their faces with make-up and making them more graphic with wigs.”

Check it out over at Colossal.

(Image Credit: Colossal)

Using a watercolor background and detailed ballpoint pen illustrations, Manabu Endo creates these impressive portraits of dreamy animals, plants, and occasionally, humans. What’s more impressive, however, is Manabu Endo himself.

The 38-year old Endo is entirely self-taught, and began his career as an artist just a few years ago, which is surprising given how developed his style is. “Mountains from a distance look like moss. Moss from up close can look like a mountain,” says Endo, describing his his philosophy “and in some sense, everything can be thought of as a forest.” In that context, one can begin to see the circular nature of Endo’s works as an inter-connected forest with blades of grass becoming wood, which becomes fur, which then gives life to flowers.

Check out his works over at Spoon & Tamago.

(Image Credit: Spoon & Tamago)

The original Nintendo DS didn’t launch like a rocket in its time, with its launch titles being Super Mario 64 and a Metroid demo. What revolutionized the DS, however, were not action games, but high quality casual games such as Nintendogs, in which you can pet virtual dogs. 

One of these high quality casual games is Brain Age, and a new Brain Age is coming to the Nintendo Switch.

Users take off the Joy-Con for multiplayer math fun. The IR camera tracks different hand shapes like 1-2 Switch. There’s still plenty of writing to do on the touch screen, though. And just like with Super Mario Maker 2, the Japanese version of the game comes with a capacitive stylus.

Brain Age’s actual ability to curb mental decline as you age has always been a bit suspect. But at the very least you’ll get a little better at math. Brain Age is coming to Nintendo Switch in Japan this December.

Are you looking forward to this game?

(Video Credit: Nintendo/ YouTube)

Now that we have had major advancements in the field of medicine, it is no wonder that our life expectancies today are much higher than those who lived before us. However, with age comes age-related diseases as well. Knowing this, scientists find ways in order to improve health in old age.

A new study led by UCL and the Max Planck Institute for Biology of Ageing showed that through the use of triple drug combination, the lifespan of fruit flies increased by 48%.

The three drugs are all already in use as medical treatments: lithium as a mood stabiliser, trametinib as a cancer treatment and rapamycin as an immune system regulator.

"Here, by studying fruit flies which age much more rapidly than people, we have found that a combination drug treatment targeting different cellular processes may be an effective way to slow down the ageing process."

Head to Science Daily for more details of the study.

(Image Credit: Sanjay Acharya/ Wikimedia Commons)

If you’re like this one-eyed monster who wants to go to a black hole that bad, then here’s a safety video for you made by NASA. It will tell you what a black hole is, and where to find one.

(Video Credit: NASA/ YouTube)

You may have heard of college students say that “sleep is for the weak,” and you may also have believed that during your college days. After all, papers and exams are piling up and you don’t have the time to slack off.

But a recent study from two MIT professors have seen "a strong relationship between students’ grades and how much sleep they’re getting.”

What time students go to bed and the consistency of their sleep habits also make a big difference. And no, getting a good night’s sleep just before a big test is not good enough — it takes several nights in a row of good sleep to make a difference.

Learn more of the study over at Neuroscience News.

(Image Credit: freephotocc/ Pixabay)

We use computers a lot in our lives. We can use it to surf the Internet, talk to our friends and families, watch videos, listen to music, and many more. Thanks to these computers, the massive digital information around us becomes arranged and organized, thereby creating order, and creating order is what computers are good at. But computers are not perfect; they can’t do everything. One such thing that they can’t do is the opposite of order — disorder, or more appropriately, chaos. It’s too… chaotic for them.

It's beyond the ability of digital computers to reliably reproduce the behavior of chaotic systems, researchers say.

Scientifically speaking, chaotic systems are "dynamical systems that are highly sensitive to initial conditions." In popular culture, that sensitivity is best known as the butterfly effect.

“Our work shows that the behavior of the chaotic dynamical systems is richer than any digital computer can capture," says Peter Coveney, Director of the University College London Center for Computational Science and the study's coauthor, in a press statement. "Chaos is more commonplace than many people may realize and even for very simple chaotic systems, numbers used by digital computers can lead to errors that are not obvious but can have a big impact. Ultimately, computers can’t simulate everything."

Know more about this “chaotic” study over at Popular Mechanics.

(Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

Pompeii was a city that was buried in ash in A.D. 79 as Mount Vesuvius erupted, and many people that lived there died. But before that catastrophic event, Pompeii was a wealthy city, and it was filled with parties and struggles, at least according to an inscription discovered in 2017, which was recently deciphered.

The inscription describes a massive coming-of-age party for a wealthy young man. who reaches the age of an adult citizen. According to the inscription, he threw a massive party that included a banquet serving 6,840 people and a show in which 416 gladiators fought over several days.

The inscription also tells of harder times, including a famine that lasted four years and another gladiator show that ended in a public riot, Massimo Osanna, the director general of the Archaeological Park of Pompeii, wrote in a paper published in the 2018 issue of the Journal of Roman Archaeology, which is published once a year.

Osanna deciphered the inscription and discussed some of the findings the inscription reveals, including new information that may allow researchers to determine how many people inhabited Pompeii.

More details of the inscription over at LiveScience.

(Image Credit: ElfQrin/ WIkimedia Commons)

Hao Li is one of the leading experts in the field of deepfake technology, and with that tech advancing so rapidly, he can’t keep up with it.

Li has watertight credentials. When he isn’t teaching classes as a professor of computer science at the University of Southern California, he’s the creator of some of the most convincing deepfakes out there.

At an MIT conference on Wednesday, he told attendees that the technology needed to create perfect deepfakes (those that are virtually impossible to detect with the naked eye) are only two to three years away.

While this is already a scary thought, Li recalibrated his statement, which made the matter even scarier.

...two days later, Li appeared on CNBC’s “Power Lunch” program and told the show’s hosts he expects everyday people to be able to create “perfectly real” deepfakes in just six to 12 months.

What changed his mind? Find out on Futurism.

(Image Credit: geralt/ Pixabay)

You’ve seen Neil deGrasse Tyson explain the universe while eating these spicy wings, Gordon Ramsay critiquing them, but eating them nevertheless, and Billie Eilish freak out as she tries to eat these hot wings.

This is Hot Ones, “the show with hot questions and even hotter wings,” and behind this show lies a very interesting story that perhaps you have never heard.

Check it out on Vox.

(Video Credit: First We Feast/ YouTube)

Vaping-related illness cases have once again spiked up sharply this week, adding pressure to uncover the cause of the mysterious illness.

There have been 805 confirmed and probable cases of lung injury linked with e-cigarette use across 46 states and the U.S. Virgin Islands, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Thursday. The case count marks a surge from the 530 cases reported last week, and the 380 cases reported the week prior. The agency also reported 12 deaths linked to the illnesses. 

Many of the patients stated that they had vaped THC. Many also vaped both THC and nicotine, while some only used e-cigarettes for nicotine products. Health officials, however, have noted that some patients are reluctant to disclose THC use.

Health officials still have not identified a culprit or culprits behind the recent spate of illnesses.

“This is a complex investigation and I don’t think that we should expect definitive answers imminently. This may take some time,” the CDC’s principal deputy director, Anne Schuchat, told reporters last week. 

(Image Credit: sarahjohnson/ Pixabay)

Nathan Mattise approached the Mondo Games rep at Fantastic Fest, as he wanted to play a round of Unmatched, the recently released spin on deck battle game board games. There, he stood confused. Should he use the Jurassic Park raptors? What about Robin Hood?

“You should definitely play Bruce Lee,” the rep suggested, directing me to a different board. And with that, our battle commenced: the greatest martial arts fighter of all time against… the mythical King Arthur? Huh?

When “deck battling” gets mentioned, most minds probably go to the classic collectible trading card games: Magic The Gathering, Pokémon, The Star Wars Customizable Card Game, The Star Trek Customizable Card Game, etc. These games developed cult followings for their combinations of complex strategy, varying play styles, and multi-faceted gameplay. But they also alienated other gamers because the process of acquiring cards could get expensive—and building a successful deck required significant thought and time.

Unlike other games, this game, which was created in partnership with Restoration Games, tries to find the middle ground.

It’s deck battling, but the decks have been premade. Players can still use varying play styles, but those styles have been attached to specific characters. (Bruce Lee ain’t here to dink and dunk you with range attacks; it’s melee time, folks.) Because of this, the setup and learning curve are greatly simplified (though options for expansive customization are, too).

Who won the game between Bruce Lee and King Arthur? Find out over at Ars Technica.

(Image Credit: Nathan Mattise)

David Feldman’s mother was only 18 years old when her boyfriend suddenly broke up with her. Because of this, she experienced a mixture of shock and sadness. Fortunately, there was Richard, her brother, who had experienced a similar stage in his life, and he knew exactly what to do.

He picked her up in his late-1960s Firebird and took her to the local A&W Rootbeer stand. There, they sat together. They didn’t say much—just gulped down root beer floats.

When Richard recently passed away at the age of 65, my mom also knew just what to do. In silence, she drove herself, now in a mid-2010s Toyota, to the local A&W Rootbeer stand. There, she ordered two floats and drank both of them.

The act of visiting the root beer stand and drinking floats there has been a ritual for David’s mom, and it’s an effective one. This brings us to the question: why are rituals so powerful in healing us?

Find out the answer over at Psychology Today.

(Image Credit: Engin_Akyurt/ Pixabay)