Songkhla, Thailand — June 21. Rescuers were trying to go to a man’s house and get him to the hospital as he already felt pain in his chest. Unfortunately, they got lost. Thankfully, 24-year old Saranpat Paengsri, an employee from Thailand Post, found them and eventually led the ambulance to the man’s house. The man was safely delivered to the hospital shortly after.

The team had been struggling to find the man’s location because of the neighborhood’s many soi. After receiving directions from Saranpat, the ambulance appeared take wrong turns, so Saranpat intervened and guided the medics to the correct address on his motorcycle.

The patient was safely delivered to the hospital thanks to Saranpat’s help, rescue worker Boonrit Thongkert said.

Saranpat was showered with praise from netizens because of his act.

(Image Credit: Khaosod English)

In the year 2017, the space mission Cassini-Huygens (commonly known as just “Cassini”) executed its “Grand Finale” by diving into the space between Saturn and the rings of the said planet. Before it did its finale, the spacecraft had a few flybys with Saturn’s largest moon, Titan. Years before its Grand Finale, Cassini released a probe (the Huygens probe) to Titan and the probe landed on Saturn’s largest moon in 2005.

The data provided by the Hyugens probe, which was part of the Cassini mission, suggested that Titan was the perfect candidate for further exploration.

Now, a new NASA spacecraft, called the Dragonfly, would explore more of Saturn’s moon.

"It's the first drone lander and it can fly over 100 miles through Titan's thick atmosphere," said NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine in a statement. "Titan is most comparable to early Earth. Dragonfly's instruments will help evaluate organic chemistry and the chemical signatures of past or present life. We will launch Dragonfly to explore the frontiers of human knowledge for the benefit of all humanity."

[...]

It will launch in 2026, but won't reach Titan until the [sic] 2034 because Saturn is so far from us.

Dragonfly will also explore Titan's atmosphere, surface properties, subsurface ocean and liquid on the surface.

But why are scientists so interested in Titan?

Find out on CNN.

(Image Credit: JHU-APL/ NASA)

What’s up with humans these days that we find animals having a sharp object on their heads? Just recently, in Texas, an alligator was found with a knife on its head. Now, in Florida, a sea turtle was found dead as it floated on Biscayne National Park. As you can see in the image, a spear shaft can be seen to have pierced through the poor turtle’s head.

The turtle, believed to be a green sea turtle, was discovered by fishermen on the ocean side of Elliot Key Friday afternoon, a park’s service law enforcement ranger told the Miami Herald.

[...]

“If you have any information about the poached sea turtle, please contact Biscayne National Park dispatch at 305-242-7740,” the park posted on its Facebook page.

(Image Credit: Biscayne National Park/ Facebook)

On a cold day in 1966, as he visited a patient from Dothan Hospital (now known as Southeast Health), 22-year-old Victor Voss wore his Auburn University ring on his glove, for it was too large on his fingers. Unfortunately, when he removed the glove, he forgot to pull the ring out first. And so the ring went flying in the parking lot outside the hospital’s front entrance.

“I walked that parking lot for two days looking for my ring and never did find it,” said Voss, who studied accounting at Auburn but never finished his degree.

Voss, now 74, was reunited with the lost ring on Monday. He and his wife Jean Voss drove over from their home in Enterprise to meet Jimmy Kilgore, a former Houston County school board member. The weather was much warmer than when Voss last saw the ring, and a brief rain storm didn’t dampen the occasion when Kilgore handed the ring over inside the gas station at the Walmart Neighborhood Market in Dothan.

Kilgore’s father found the class ring many years ago, although Kilgore is not sure exactly when or where his father found the ring. His father gave him the ring, and Kilgore said he made some calls but got nowhere with the search for the rightful owner. The ring ended up in a box.

Via AP News

(Image Credit: Jay Hare/ Dothan Eagle)

Giant birds have been known to roam the Earth for quite some time. One of these birds were the elephant bird, the largest known giant bird, which were over nine feet tall and weighed over a thousand pounds. They became extinct 1,000 years ago. There is also the Australian mihirung or “thunder birds”, 7-foot tall birds weighing around 500 to 1,000 pounds, which disappeared 50,000 years ago.

But until now, no one had ever found evidence of these towering avians in Europe.

Today, researchers describe the first fossil of a giant bird found in Crimea in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. Dated at around 1.8 million years old, the specimen makes experts question previous assumptions that giant birds were not part of the region’s fauna when early human ancestors first arrived in Europe.

[...]

Based on the femur’s dimensions, the team calculated that the bird would have weighed around 992 pounds—as much as an adult polar bear—making it the third largest bird ever recorded.

Know more of this astounding discovery over at Smithsonian.

(Image Credit: Audrey Atuchin)

Freezing, melting, and evaporation. These are some of the everyday phase transitions (meaning, from one state of matter to another) that we see. These transitions start from a process called “nucleation”, “in which tiny clusters of atoms or molecules (called "nuclei") begin to coalesce.” This process plays a large role in many circumstances like the formation of clouds, boiling, and the start of neurodegenerative diseases.

A UCLA-led team has gained a never-before-seen view of nucleation—capturing how the atoms rearrange at 4-D atomic resolution (that is, in three dimensions of space and across time). The findings, published in the journal Nature, differ from predictions based on the classical theory of nucleation that has long appeared in textbooks.

"This is truly a groundbreaking experiment—we not only locate and identify individual atoms with high precision, but also monitor their motion in 4-D for the first time," said senior author Jianwei "John" Miao, a UCLA professor of physics and astronomy, who is the deputy director of the STROBE National Science Foundation Science and Technology Center and a member of the California NanoSystems Institute at UCLA.

Find out more about this groundbreaking experiment over at PHYS.org.

(Image Credit: Alexander Tokarev)

Just recently, we have learned that just by thinking about coffee, we become stimulated and focused. Now, coffee once again demonstrates to us that it is beneficial to our health. According to new research, coffee could help us lose weight by stimulating brown fat.

Brown adipose tissue (BAT), or "brown fat" (also known as "good fat"), can generate heat and metabolize macronutrients (i.e. glucose-heavy foods like honey and dried fruit) by burning calories. White adipose tissue (WAT), or "white fat," meanwhile, stores calories that haven't been burned.

[...]

The study shows that a cup of coffee or caffeine can actually stimulate brown fat to make heat. "We all have that warm feeling after we drink a cup of coffee, because we're stimulating that brown fat," he said. "It's important and interesting that we actually know the mechanism now.

"The goal is to stimulate brown fat. Exercise stimulates brown fat. Good sleep stimulates brown fat. And now we know caffeine or coffee can do the same."

Coffee, like all kinds of drinks or foods, should be taken in moderation. Dr. Argus states that three cups of coffee is the maximum, and no more beyond that. He also states the latest time of the day that we can drink coffee.

"What I also want to push is, no coffee after 1:00 or 2:00 p.m. Caffeine's half-life is six hours. If you have a 1:00 [cup], it's only going to be half the level by 7:00 at night. Even if you sleep, it's not going to be the deep restful sleep with caffeine on board."

(Image Credit: Christoph/ Pixabay)

Tapioca bubble tea has been soaring in popularity in Japan in the recent months (because of tapioca bubble tea challenge), despite being unpopular in the country for several years. Because of this sudden trend, Mr. Sato of SoraNews24 have been thinking a lot about the sweet drink.

“Tapioca bubble tea is still a kind of tea, right?” our reporter mused while sipping from the drink’s signature large-capacity straw. “And here in Japan, we often eat a dish called ochazuke, which is rice with green tea, so shouldn’t we also be able to make rice with tapioca tea?”

And so they tried it. Instead of putting water into the rice, they put tapioca bubble tea. But what happened next?

After about 15 minutes, a sweet aroma began to emanate from the rice cooker as the milk tea and tapioca heated yup. 15 minutes after that, the rice cooker beeped its announcement that the cooking was done.

[...]

Okay, so it looks and smells good, but how does it taste?

Not bad at all. Rice and tea really do seem destined to go well with each other, and their flavors blended effortlessly together here. As a matter of fact, they’re so compatible that the stronger flavor here remains that of the rice itself, though each and every tapioca bubble is a sweet surprise with an interesting texture change.

I wonder how the taste was like. I might try this at home.

What are your thoughts?

(Image Credit: SoraNews24)

Aging is inevitable. As we get older, our skin gets wrinkled, our bones shrink. We might also have eyesight or hearing issues. Most, if not all, of the system in our body is affected by this natural process, and that includes the cognitive process.

As we age through time, we might find it hard to remember names and words. This happens faster if we don’t keep our brain healthy. 

One way to keep our brain healthy is if we exercise it. “Use it or lose it,” as psychologists would say.

To put it simply, our lifestyle habits determine the speed of aging. There are ways to slow down brain aging, and there are ways to make it faster. According to Fast Company, there are five workplace habits that may contribute to cognitive decline. These habits might seem harmless at first, but it greatly hurts our brains in the long run. Here are the 5 habits, according to them:

1) Working late too many days in a row.

2) Relying on sweets at 3 P.M.

3) Being antisocial

4) Not taking a break when you need to.

5) Multitasking

It is good to use our brain so that we won’t lose it. However, let us not overuse it.

See more details at Fast Company.

(Image Credit: TheDigitalArtist/ Pixabay)

As numerous as the country’s stations are Japan’s ekiben. Ekiben comes from the words eki (which means station) and ben (short for bento, which means “boxed meal). Each ekiben is different on each station, which makes each ekiben very different from the other. Behind this boxed meal is its colorful origins and Japan’s rich food culture.

Ekiben is a bite-size representation of Japan’s food culture, portioned out in compartments of beautifully designed bentos that resemble gift boxes. Most contain pieces of chicken, cubes of breaded or grilled fish, tempura, an omelette, and a vegetable assortment of pickled daikon or seaweed arranged around balls of rice with a sprinkling of black sesame or nori. From this basic template (known as makunouchi, meaning “between act” and harkening to the bento served during intermission at kabuki and Noh shows in the Edo period), ekiben expands to include regionally specific novelties. At Hokkaido, for instance, this might mean celebrating the island’s cherished Pacific flying squid. Hokkaido’s Mori Station offers ikameshi (squid stuffed with a nub of rice and cooked in a special sauce), a dish that became famous during the Second World War when rice was scarce.

Ekiben has been part of Japanese rail travel almost since workers laid the earliest tracks. The first Japanese rail line, from Tokyo to Yokohama, began service in 1872. By 1885, records note, vendors were selling rice balls stuffed with pickled plums in bamboo leaf wrappers at Utsunomiya Station. By the turn of the century, a rapidly expanding rail network was matched in pace by the appearance of ekiben stalls selling boxes of local delicacies: tai meshi (sea bream rice) at Shizuoka station, ayu (fresh river trout) sushi at Yamakita. Initially, vendors peddled ekiben out of trays, coming right up to the train window to eager customers. With the advent of air-conditioned coaches, the call of the ekiben vendor has all but disappeared. Now passengers make a steady canter to ekiben stalls on the station platform during scheduled train stops—a feat that requires speed and hustle. Fortunately, train attendants also sell ekiben from pushcarts.

Know more about the ekiben on Atlas Obscura.

(Image Credit: Fozzibab/ Wikimedia Commons)

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A post shared by Tsubaki Office (@tsubakioffice) on Mar 29, 2019 at 5:07am PDT

White, orange, and sometimes hints of yellow. These are the colors that you will usually see in a goldfish. In the Chinese world, this fish represents “peace, beauty and richness”, and “to let more people” appreciate this fact, Taiwanese photographer Tsubaki shares to us his pictures.

People have been cultivating goldfish for thousands of years, Tsubaki explains, and their presence is replicated in patterns ranging from wood carving to textiles.

Tsubaki is especially drawn to Lionhead goldfish, but also documents Ranchu, Red Hat, Tosakin, and Ryukin breeds. Each photograph features a solitary fish, with a black background bringing out the translucent colors and elegant silhouettes of the aquatic animals.

Check out more of Tsubaki’s goldfish photos on his Instagram account or at Behance.net.

(Image Credit: tsubakioffice/ Instagram)

I loved this review of Aviation Gin someone sent me after I wrote it. pic.twitter.com/YZN4KI0ATD

— Ryan Reynolds (@VancityReynolds) June 22, 2019

What could happen if we drank this gin that had a 97-point rating in 2012 from the Wine Enthusiast magazine? A reviewer named “Champ Nightengale” shares to us his experience through his review of the Aviation American Gin on Amazon.

Turns out, this “Champ” was none other than our wacky actor Ryan Reynolds.

“I loved this review of Aviation Gin someone sent me after I wrote it,” said Reynolds via Twitter.

In a video posted on the product's website, Reynolds says he loved the gin so much he bought the company.

The review makes me want to try it, to be honest. I wonder how far the gin can take me.

(Image Credit: Ryan Reynolds/Twitter)

Anticholinergic drugs are a type of medication that stops acetylcholine, a neurotransmitter. Acetylcholine causes involuntary movements in many parts of the body. To put it briefly, anticholinergic drugs help in contracting and relaxing the body’s muscles.

A study carried out by researchers from the University of Nottingham showed that there was almost “50% increased risk of dementia among patients aged 55 and over who had used strong anticholinergic medication daily for three years or more.”

The research, published in the JAMA Internal Medicine journal and led by Professor Carol Coupland from the University's Division of Primary Care, looked at the medical records of 58,769 patients with a diagnosis of dementia and 225,574 patients without a diagnosis of dementia, all aged 55 and over and registered with UK GPs contributing data to the QResearch database, between 1 January 2004 and 31 January 2016.

The study findings showed increased risks of dementia for anticholinergic drugs overall and specifically for the anticholinergic antidepressants, antipsychotic drugs, antiparkinsons drugs, bladder drugs and epilepsy drugs after accounting for other risk factors for dementia.

No increased risks were found for the other types of anticholinergic drug studied such as antihistamines and gastrointestinal drugs.

More about this study at EurekAlert.

(Image Credit: Pexels/ Pixabay)

Japan’s stationery company Tombow released in November 1969 one of the country’s most iconic stationery items: the MONO eraser. Over the course of 50 years, the simple striped design of this eraser remained unchanged. And now, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the eraser, Tombow runs several fun promotions this year.

Last June 19 to 23, a double decker bus painted to look like the iconic eraser ran the streets of Tokyo. Aside from this...

In July a commemorative set of all the old designs will go on sale. And by participating in the company’s social media lottery. You can keep up with everything Tombow-related by following the company on Twitter.

(Image Credit: @tombowpencil/ Twitter)

今日から都内を周遊しているモノ消しロンドンバス🚌の様子📸
静かに過ぎ去っていく様子はさすが消しゴム(？)
明日明後日も渋谷～原宿エリアを走っています！さらに22日(土)と23日(日)にはこのバスに乗れるイベントも開催！
詳細はこちら→https://t.co/tz657ozk8u #モノカラー50周年 pic.twitter.com/zjcFcs3O8p

— トンボ鉛筆 (@tombowpencil) June 19, 2019

Two decades ago, psychologists came up with what is now known as the “dark triad”. It is a set of personality traits that makes up the “dark side” of a person. These three personality traits are narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy.

However, a psychologist from Columbia University in New York named Scott Barry Kaufman was frustrated by the fact that “people are so fascinated with the dark side, but the light side of personality was being neglected.” Thus, he focused on the “brighter side of our inner lives.”

Like its dark counterpart, the “light triad” being investigated by Kaufman and his colleagues comprises three personality traits that together paint a picture of someone’s overall character. Each of the traits highlight a different aspect of how you interact with others: from seeing the best in people and being quick to forgive, to applauding the successes of others, to being uncomfortable manipulating people into doing something you want.

The first trait, humanism, is defined as believing in the inherent dignity and worth of other humans. The second, Kantianism, gets its name from philosopher Immanuel Kant, and means treating people as ends unto themselves, not just as unwitting pawns in your personal game of chess. Finally, “faith in humanity” is about believing that other humans are fundamentally good, and not out to get you.

There can be no darkness without light. The same could be said the other way around. This is also true in our personality. Kaufman’s study suggested that we are a mix of light and dark personality traits.

This could be a good thing. Those with darker personalities tend to be more brave and assertive, for example – two traits that come in handy when trying to get things done. Darker personalities are also correlated with creativity and leadership skills.

Know the levels of both your light and dark personality traits over at Kaufman’s website.

Learn more about the study at BBC.

(Image Credit: PublicDomainPictures/ Pixabay)