We know that pets such as cats and dogs have a great effect on our psychological and mental well-being. They are not just companions; they can also be healers. They can help in improving our mood, as well as decrease our blood pressure. And finally, pets help in transforming lives.

Four years ago in the state of Indiana, the Animal Protection League started a program called F.O.R.W.A.R.D in Pendleton Correctional Facility.

The idea behind this initiative is to take cats from a shelter and place them in the correctional facility so inmates could take care of them. The program quickly proved to be beneficial for both cats and inmates.

Many cats who end up at the shelter, often have a long history of abuse and mistreatment, thus leaving them unable to properly socialize with humans.

[...]

While the cats are being taken care of by prisoners who feed them, clean after them and groom them, the animals become more social and trusting towards humans.

However, cats are not the only ones who benefit from the program. Inmates get a wonderful opportunity to learn how to care for and take responsibility for a living creature.

“It teaches them responsibility, how to interact in a group using non-violent methods to solve problems and gives them the unconditional love of a pet – something many of these inmates have never known,” the APL writes on their website.

What do you think about this?

(Image Credit: Pendleton Correctional Facility_ FORWARD/ Facebook)

Facetune is a popular selfie-editing app. It has tools which can make your earrings shinier, your skin smoother, the insides of your eyes whiter, and the lighting brighter or darker. It is, I believe, all right to use this app to an extent, but not to an extent of overuse.

Zoe Schuver, a 21-year-old senior at St. Louis and an Instagram user, states that, “If [you’re editing] little things it’s fine, but you can tell when someone’s done a lot to their pictures.”

It’s hard to talk critically about this stuff — girls and young women, manipulated images, and the implicit assumption of what those images are doing to their self-esteem — without coming off as a little bit hokey, or at the very least tiresome. We’ve been discussing the evils of Photoshop for decades, and airbrushing before that, because of their negative effect on body image, with the general, agreed-upon takeaway being that yes, it is bad to narrow already-thin models’ waists or misrepresent their skin tones. Media-savvy young people are all too aware that many, if not most, of the advertisements and fashion shoots they see are altered.

Things get more complicated, though, when the bogeyman is not an anonymous evil fashion editor at a glossy magazine or the Hollywood machine. It’s women like Zoe touching up tiny flaws, and influencers plumping their lips. Facetune has allowed virtually anyone to participate in that same manipulation. It has given them the power to create a digital persona that has little to do with their actual selves.

There have been ripple effects, too: In the more than five years that Facetune has existed, it has helped give rise to an aesthetic sameness known as “Instagram Face” and produced an entire cottage industry devoted to exposing the differences between our constructed faces and our real ones. The democratization of beauty has meant that the latest, coolest filters are less about looking like pretty humans and more about looking like weird experimental cyborgs. More than any of that, Facetune has been at the center of conversations around the discrepancies between our crafted online selves and the messy realities of life inside of a body.

What are your thoughts on this one?

More details of this topic on Vox.com.

(Image Credit: ivanovgood/ Pixabay)

Good news for Nintendo Switch users.

According to an internal documentation, Nintendo “recently told customer representatives that the company will no longer charge customers seeking Joy-Con repairs”, and asks them to refund those who have already paid.

“Customers will no longer be requested to provide proof of purchase for Joy-Con repairs,” the internal customer service details say. “Additionally it is not necessary to confirm warranty status. If a customer requests a refund for a previously paid Joy-Con repair [...] confirm the prior repair and then issue a refund.”

More details on Vice.com.

(Image Credit: InspiredImages/ Pixabay)

The Y chromosome has been the symbol of masculinity. Despite it being the carrier of the “master switch” gene, SRY, which determines whether the embryo will develop as “male” or “female”, the Y chromosome only contains very few other genes and is the only chromosome not needed in life. After all, women can live without one.

Through time, the Y chromosome has degenerated rapidly. While women have two perfectly formed X chromosomes, men have a shrivelled Y.

If the same rate of degeneration continues, the Y chromosome has just 4.6m years left before it disappears completely. This may sound like a long time, but it isn't when you consider that life has existed on Earth for 3.5 billion years.

The Y chromosome hasn't always been like this. If we rewind the clock to 166m years ago, to the very first mammals, the story was completely different. The early “proto-Y" chromosome was originally the same size as the X chromosome and contained all the same genes. However, Y chromosomes have a fundamental flaw. Unlike all other chromosomes, which we have two copies of in each of our cells, Y chromosomes are only ever present as a single copy, passed from fathers to their sons.

This means that genes on the Y chromosome cannot undergo genetic recombination, the “shuffling" of genes that occurs in each generation which helps to eliminate damaging gene mutations. Deprived of the benefits of recombination, Y chromosomal genes degenerate over time and are eventually lost from the genome.

Will the Y chromosome disappear? The scientific community is still divided on this matter. But if the Y chromosome really does vanish, what will happen? Will there be no males?

Find out the answer on Big Think.

(Image Credit: National Human Genome Research Institute/ Wikimedia Commons)

It is already a no-brainer that we should exercise regularly. After all, exercise helps in keeping our bodies healthy. Unfortunately, despite this knowledge that we should exercise more, we don’t know how to do this exactly.

It is an ongoing debate to this day about whether cardio (aerobic) exercise beats resistance (strength) training. Cardio usually takes the form of running, while resistance training often takes the form of weightlifting.

A common refrain is that cardio is the best thing for losing weight or improving heart health, and resistance is the best thing for building muscle (though without any cardiovascular benefits). But is that really the case?

The problem is that in sports science, solid advice based on big scientific studies is quite rare. It makes sense when you think about it: Unlike clinical medicine, where a company can earn hundreds of billions of dollars down the road after developing a single drug, there’s not as much motivation (or money) behind finding the perfect workout. What’s more, as a society, we are generally more interested in knowing which medications prevent heart attacks than in whether crunches or situps are more effective.

[...]

When it comes to comparing cardio and resistance training, the evidence doesn’t show a benefit either way. One large systematic review — a type of meta-study that collates evidence from an entire field of research — focused on mentions of visceral fat in studies comparing the two forms of exercise. This is the fat that builds up in your torso and is thought to be the primary driver of obesity-related disease, which makes it an important indicator for health. The systematic review combined the results from 35 studies looking at more than 2,000 people across a wide range of exercise regimens. In terms of visceral fat, the review found that cardio provided benefits, but when compared to resistance training, the data was inconclusive.

Like most studies in the field, those comparing cardio and resistance training are few and far between. Another review, this one from 2018, looked at a range of health factors. Researchers found more than a dozen studies showing that cardio improved health, but only a handful compared cardio and resistance, and those lacked enough evidence to draw any conclusions at all.

It turns out the results depend on how much you’re already doing.

See more of this on Medium.com.

(Image Credit: Ichigo121212/ Pixabay)

This is a question that plagues a lot of people. If you ever went to a museum, you might have noticed that a lot of statues have their noses missing, just like this marble head of the poet Sappho held in Glyptothek in Munich. Even the Great Sphinx in Egypt has its nose missing. The question is: where did the noses go? The usual speculation would be that someone chipped off the nose. However, that isn’t necessarily the case, but it is sometimes true nonetheless.

It is true that a few ancient sculptures were indeed deliberately defaced by people at various times for different reasons. For instance, there is a first-century AD Greek marble head of the goddess Aphrodite that was discovered in the Athenian Agora. You can tell that this particular marble head was at some point deliberately vandalized by Christians because they chiseled a cross into the goddess’s forehead.

This marble head, however, is an exceptional case that is not representative of the majority of ancient sculptures that are missing noses. For the vast majority of ancient sculptures that are missing noses, the reason for the missing nose has nothing to do with people at all. Instead, the reason for the missing nose simply has to do with the natural wear that the sculpture has suffered over time.

The fact is, ancient sculptures are thousands of years old and they have all undergone considerable natural wear over time. The statues we see in museums today are almost always beaten, battered, and damaged by time and exposure to the elements. Parts of sculptures that stick out, such as noses, arms, heads, and other appendages are almost always the first parts to break off. Other parts that are more securely attached, such as legs and torsos, are generally more likely to remain intact.

(Image Credit: Bibi Saint-Pol/ Wikimedia Commons)

A new experimental drug is displaying promising results from the last phase of human clinical trials. Part of a new class of drugs called JAK-inhibitors, the new drug targets people who suffer from rheumatoid arthritis and is hoped to be approved by the FDA within the next 12 months.

The JAK family consists of four closely related molecules: JAK1, JAK2, JAK3 and TYK2, which play a pivotal role in facilitating cellular inflammatory signals. Over the past decade a new class of drugs known as JAK inhibitors have been in development as prospective treatments for a number of different immune-meditated diseases, from eczema to inflammatory bowel diseases such as Crohn's.

Back in 2011/12, two JAK inhibitors initially hit the market. These first-generation iterations have been found to be somewhat effective but their lack of specificity can trigger a variety of negative side effects. The latest generation of JAK inhibitors are now reaching the final stages of human clinical trials. Designed to more narrowly inhibit individual JAK molecules, these new drugs are hoped to be more effective with fewer adverse effects.

Filgotinib is a JAK inhibitor that selectively targets the JAK1 enzyme. It is primarily being investigated to treat rheumatoid arthritis but initial clinical trials have shown promise treating both ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease. After years of development scientists are this week publishing some of the first results from the final Phase 3 human trials into the efficacy of the new drug, ahead of an FDA application to move the drug to market by 2020.

The results are certainly promising, with over 40 percent of subjects on the highest dose of filgotinib reporting "low disease activity" after 12 weeks, compared to only around 15 percent reporting similar effects on a placebo. By 24 weeks of use this success rate had increased to nearly 50 percent. Even more impressively, 30 percent of the high-dose filgotinib group achieved full disease remission after 24 weeks, compared to just 12 percent on placebo.

More details of this news over at New Atlas.

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The Neolithic people of Great Britain are great builders. The British Isles are a great example of this one — covered with countless ancient megaliths, hill forts, monumental graves, ritual sites, and structures that have baffled archaeologists for centuries.

An entirely different structure can be found in Ireland, and to some extent, in Scotland. The structures on this part of Great Britain are artificial islands known as crannogs which are constructed by “pounding wooden piles into the beds of lakes and waterways and topping them with dirt.”

In places where timber was unavailable, such as in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland, crannogs were built entirely of stones. Why did Neolithic people invest so much time, effort and resources hauling stones, some up to 250 kilograms, to build islets at a place where there was no dearth of habitable lands or natural islands is a mystery.

One theory goes that Ireland at that time was densely wooded, and apart from the upland areas, the lakes were practically the only place where one could see the sky. So the Neolithic people started building homes on artificial islands. Being surrounded by water also protected them from wild animals, so crannogs could also have served a defensive purpose. Many crannogs show signs of habitation and over multiple periods of time, starting from the Neolithic, Bronze and Iron ages, right into Medieval times. During Iron ages, crannogs were probably the centers of prosperous farms, where people lived in an easily-defended location to protect themselves and their livestock from passing raiders. The settlement would have consisted of a farm house, with cattle and crops being tended in nearby fields, and sheep on hill pastures.

Crannogs are pretty widespread in Ireland, with an estimated 1,200 examples, while in Scotland approximately 600 sites have been identified. Actual figures could be higher as a lot of crannogs have now been completely submerged. Many are difficult to distinguish from natural islets, unless properly investigated. Millenniums of disuse have cloaked them with vegetation and now they look like tiny tree-covered islands.

Amazing!

(Image Credit: F. Sturt)

The Lizzie Borden murder case is recognized up to this day as one of the most famous in American criminal history. In fact, the case was so famous that it was immortalized through a children’s rhyme passed down across generations. The rhyme goes like this:

Lizzie Borden took an axe,

And gave her mother forty whacks.

When she saw what she had done,

She gave her father forty-one.

It is obvious that Lizzie murdered them. However, the rhyme did not get some parts of the story correctly. A hatchet, not an axe, served as the murder weapon. It wasn’t really Lizzie’s mother — the 64-year-old woman, named Abby, was her stepmother. The number of strikes in the rhyme does not match up with the real story, either. Lizzie Borden struck her stepmother nineteen times, and her 69-year old father Andrew she struck ten more. If there was something the rhyme got correct, it would be the sequence of events that happened on the morning of August 4, 1892.

Despite the convincing evidence that were thrown against her, she was eventually pronounced not guilty.

But why was Lizzie pronounced not guilty? Find out on Smithsonian.com.

(Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons/ Public Domain)

Marvel announced in the San Diego Comic-Con that they have cast Chinese-Canadian actor Simu Liu as Shang Chi, the kung-fu master hero of Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. Unfortunately, the Chinese are not too happy about this and they responded negatively to the announcement.

“The plotline of Shang-Chi is about belittling Chinese people while praising Americans,” wrote one user... on the social media platform. Another called it “horrible” that the movie will include “a symbol of foreign discrimination against Asians.”

In the comics, Shang-Chi’s father was a super-villain called Fu Manchu, who spends most of his time plotting evil schemes of world domination. In the movie version, Hong Kong actor Tony Leung will play a villain known as the Mandarin. Fans are speculating that the film’s antagonist is likely a substitute for Fu Manchu—long seen as a “yellow peril” symbol historically linked to racist beliefs of Asian peoples and cultures being a threat to the West.

Fu was first created by British author Sax Rohmer in the early 1900s. With stereotypical physical features and an outfit mimicking those worn by officials from China’s Qing Dynasty, Fu was licensed to Marvel and featured as the evil father of Shang-Chi in comics including The Hands of Shang-Chi: Master of Kung Fu in the 1970s.

Despite Marvel’s move to replace Fu in the movie with the Mandarin, a classic villain in Iron Man who also has Chinese origins, China’s internet users don’t appear to be convinced by the difference between the two.

More details on Quartzy.

What are your thoughts on this one?

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Eleanor of Aquitaine is a woman of many titles — wife, mother, counselor of kings, crusader, and patron of the arts. She is often portrayed as one of the most powerful queens. In fact, in the eyes of her husband, her power is so great that it needs to be contained. And so, her husband, Henry II of England, locked her up.

Eleanor is only one of the great women of history. And these great women had the same power as her, and they used it quite like Eleanor did as well.

...In a recently published paper, the political anthropologist Paula Sabloff of the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico attempts to do just that, by comparing the roles and political clout of royal women in eight premodern societies spanning five continents and more than 4,000 years.

[...]

With the help of a small army of students and citizen scientists, over a period of five years, Sabloff built a series of databases on 14 premodern states. Of those, eight had enough information on royal women to support comparison. The oldest was Old Kingdom Egypt (2686-2181 BCE), the youngest protohistoric Hawai’i – a society that lasted from the 16th century CE until the first Europeans arrived in 1778. In between fall Aztec, Inka, Maya, Zapotec, Late Shang China and the Mari Kingdom of Old Babylonia. They range from city-states with populations in the tens of thousands, to empires comprising tens of millions. Some practised primogeniture, others did not. They varied with respect to their rules on succession, women rulers, marriage between kin and gender separation – meaning that each gender had its matched ruler. In short, they were worlds apart.

And yet, says Sabloff: ‘This same structure pops out.’ In all eight societies, royal women exerted power in at least four ways: they influenced policy; they influenced the behaviour of those both above and below them in rank; they acted as go-betweens; and they patronised clients. In addition, they were often involved in determining succession, governing, building alliances, and expanding or defending territory. The most powerful of all were the queen rulers. They were rare – the only society in Sabloff’s sample that tolerated them was the Maya – but they packed almost as much political punch as their male counterparts. In the 7th century CE, Lady K’awiil Ajaw of Cobá in the Yucatan peninsula presided over a formidable group of warriors and statesmen, and when she died she left behind one of the most successful kingdoms in Mayan history.

See the rest of the comparative study over at Aeon.co.

(Image Credit: ElanorGamgee/ Wikimedia Commons)

Quantum computers will never replace the classical computers that you have right now (such as your smartphone or your laptop). These type of computers won’t stream the latest shows from Netflix or help you with your taxes. So, how will quantum computers be useful? What can they do and why would they be important?

What they will do — what’s long been hoped for, at least — will be to offer a fundamentally different way of performing certain calculations. They’ll be able to solve problems that would take a fast classical computer billions of years to perform. They’ll enable the simulation of complex quantum systems such as biological molecules, or offer a way to factor incredibly large numbers, thereby breaking long-standing forms of encryption.

The threshold where quantum computers cross from being interesting research projects to doing things that no classical computer can do is called “quantum supremacy.” Many people believe that Google’s quantum computing project will achieve it later this year.

To achieve quantum supremacy, a quantum computer would have to perform any calculation that, for all practical purposes, a classical computer can’t.

[...]

… At the most basic level, [quantum supremacy] could lead to quantum computers that are, in fact, useful for certain practical problems.

Find out more about this on Quanta Magazine.

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Researchers led by Carme Gallart from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias in Spain published their findings in Nature Astronomy on Monday. They found out that ten billion years ago, the Milky Way met Gaia-Enceladus, another galaxy, and consumed it.

Scientists have had evidence for a while that the Milky Way saw a major merger in its past. Even without direct evidence here in our home galaxy, scientists know that galaxy collisions are commonplace in the universe. These mergers are the major way that galaxies grow and evolve. But this is the first time that astronomers have been able to pinpoint the ages of different stellar populations within the Milky Way accurately enough to pin down when this merger occurred, and how exactly it affected our home galaxy.

So how did they pinpoint the time when this merging occurred? Find out on Discover Magazine.

(Image Credit: Koppelman, Villalobos and Helmi/NASA/ESA/Hubble)

Money is always an essential thing to have in order to survive in this modern world. Without money, you won’t be able to buy food, or send yourself or your children to school. Without it you won’t be able to buy a house, or even pay the bills. We need money, and that is a fact. Perhaps this is why some people dedicate their lives in saving money, or look for ways to earn money, so that when they get old and their bodies get weak, they can still fend for themselves through the money that they saved.

For a man named Kurt, money should be the last thing that you should ask. For him, before you consider the money, you should answer the first three questions.

Know the necessary questions that you have to ask yourself over at Forbes.

What are your thoughts on this one?

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Chocolate. Kids love it and we adults crave for it (or at least, people with a sweet tooth crave for it). But did you know that chocolate never had anything to do with sugar or with any other sweetener in the past?

Cocoa, the World Cocoa Foundation tells us, developed as a crop in many ancient South American cultures, including the Aztecs and Mayans. “Researchers have found evidence of cocoa-based food dating back several thousand years. The cacao bean was so significant to the local cultures, it was used as a currency in trade, given to warriors as a post-battle reward, and served at royal feasts.”

According to the foundation, “When the Spanish conquistadors arrived in the New World and began the process of invading, colonising, and ultimately destroying the native cultures, they also discovered the value of the local cacao crop.”

[...]

The Spanish invaders were introduced to this bitter drink and didn’t find it to their liking. But once mixed with honey or cane sugar, it quickly became popular throughout Spain and spread into Europe.

And that is how the big change to chocolate happened. But that was just the start of how chocolate would be known in society today.

Know the rest about the bitter-turned-sweet history of chocolate over at the Cosmos Magazine.

(Image Credit: AlexanderStein/ Pixabay)