Competitive athletes face a constant conundrum in many sports. Gaining weight can give you more energy, muscle, and endurance. But losing weight can put you in a different competition class, which can make the difference between winning and losing. For women athletes, there's also the extra pressure of keeping their weight down for appearances. Looking chubby or masculine can be brutal when you're in the the media spotlight. Coaches and athletes alike have long bought into the "leaner is better" idea. But there's a cost to dieting while training for a sport. Nutritionist Christel Dunshea-Mooij became concerned about New Zealand women's rowing team after the 2016 Olympics. They were in danger of RED-S, or Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport.

In 2018, Dunshea-Mooij tested the female rowers to find out their energy availability, which she describes as "the energy available to the body - from food - after the costs of exercise have been accounted for." So what's left over to run your body for the day.

The athletes made a food diary to see how many calories they were consuming, used their watches to calculate their energy expenditure, and had DEXA scans to determine their fat-free mass.

“When we saw the data, we were shocked,” Dunshea-Mooij admits.

She drew up a risk model based on the IOC consensus statement on RED-S, with three coloured zones - red for high risk, orange for moderate risk, and green for low risk of RED-S. "Only one of our females was in the green,” she says.

RED-S can cause issues with bone density, fertility, immunity, and metabolic and cardiovascular function. (Most of the rowers had "excellent bone density", also measured by the DEXA scan.)

Dunshea-Mooij worked with the rowers' coaches to turn things around. This not only meant eating more, but changing how the athletes thought about eating.

Jackie Kiddle, the current world champion in the lightweight double sculls, was also in the orange after the original testing.

As a lightweight athlete, the change in fuelling was a big shift, she says. “It used to be you ate less to stay a lightweight. But to be able to see I could eat a lot more and then train harder - and stay at the same weight - was eye-opening. It made a huge difference to the way I trained, because I could work harder.”

The change in their training diets led to four Olympic medals won by female boats in various rowing events. In fact, rowing was New Zealand's most successful sport in Tokyo. Read how they did at Newsroom. -via Metafilter

You can call it a secret, but it’s really a hidden gem. Montana has a whopping 55 state parks, and not all of them can be well-known. There are still a few hidden gems that attract fewer crowds. Only In Your State details one of Montana’s ‘secret parks,’ Clark’s Lookout State Park. The eight-acre park is located a mile north of Dillon, Montana: 

The park has hiking trails, picnic areas, cultural and heritage information, and some of the best views in the area. And while there's no camping allowed here, you're welcome to spend the entire day enjoying it. In 1805, the Lewis and Clark Expedition made its way here (hence the name).

Image credit: Sheryl M / TripAdvisor 

Nicole McLaughlin has mastered the art of turning food items into clothes. From cupcakes, to toast to sandwiches to old candies, the designer was able to spin eclectic wearable items that invoke nostalgia and promote sustainable utility. McLaughlin has no fashion background; she taught herself how to sew and opted for recyclable or edible materials as ‘fabrics’:

But so much more exists behind the balloon slippers and air-freshener vests. Nicole McLaughlin is trailblazing the future of sustainable waste behind-the-scenes, working with mega brands to change the way fashion is created. To get some insight on her simultaneously delectable and altruistic projects, CR sat down with Nicole for a broad chat on all things sustainability, design, and social media.

Check out the full interview with McLaughlin here! 

Image credit: Nicole McLaughlin

It’s a good thing someone was brave enough to jump to the rescue! A party guest jumped on the back of an alligator after the animal bit (and didn’t let go) of the hand of its trainer. The animal trainer was injured when she was feeding the alligator during a girl’s birthday party. Lindsay Bull said that she fed the alligator, named Darthgator, ‘hundreds of times in the past,’ but the animal was a little pushy during that time:

At first, she thought the alligator would do a quick bite and release, but then she felt it bite down harder.

"He thrashed and at that point, I realized this is going to be a serious, potentially really big injury," she said.

Bull climbed into the alligator's enclosure and wrapped her legs around him because she wanted to be able to move with him in the water. She feared that if she was standing on the ground when the alligator started to roll, the force might rip her arm off.

Within seconds, Donnie Wiseman shouted for help before scrambling into the tank and jumping on the alligator.

"It was like instant relief. For a minute, I'm there going through this by myself and then all of a sudden, Donnie was up there on the platform yelling at me, 'what do you want me to do?'" Bull said. "I can't imagine that it was easy for him to jump in and jump on his back."

Wiseman showed CNN Salt Lake City affiliate KUTV the scrapes and scratches on his torso from the alligator's scales and said Bull remained calm throughout the entire ordeal.

Image credit: Scale And Tale Utah

Frank Olito  lists ten reasons why he believes that taking the train is better than flying when it comes to traveling. After taking a 19-hour trip on an Amtrak train from New York to Chicago, Olito realized that there are benefits in riding trains compared to boarding an airplane. While the journey was not worth the $550 price tag, the lack of long lines, not worrying about baggage limits, and other reasons made the writer prefer trains over airplanes. Check his full piece here. 

Image credit: Aris

Now this cat is a hero! Pets show their love in different ways. Dogs like to be cuddly and super friendly, while cats can be standoffish-- that doesn’t mean they don’t love their owners! Take a look at Piran, for example. This cat managed to alert rescuers to save her owner who fell 70 feet into a stream: 

The woman had fallen through some barbed wire and had come to a stop in a stream below.

Tamar Longmuir, 38, was informed of her missing neighbour by the woman's friend on and immediately started searching her farm in Bodmin, Cornwall.

“The cat is very attached to her, and he was going back and forth in the gateway and meowing, so I decided to go and search the maize field,” Tamar Longmuir told reporters.

Longmuir then went to the field and started calling the woman’s name.

At first Longmuir’s cows responded but then she said that she heard the woman’s call for help.

“Without the cat waiting at the gate to that field, it could have been hours later that I or anyone else would have checked there,” Longmuir told Sky News.

Image credit: Tamara Longmuir

Located some 2,500 light years from our planet, near the constellation Lyra, is this planetary nebula known as M57, also known as the Ring Nebula. Because this nebula is near the said constellation, it can be easy to spot even for amateur astronomers. Those who find this nebula are treated with a certainly eye-catching view.

However, it is worth noting that, compared to this image, which is the result of combining data from three different large telescopes, seeing the M57 from a small telescope is much less appealing.

(Image Credit: Hubble, Large Binocular Telescope, Subaru Telescope/ Robert Gendler)

It is often said that, as we age, our attention and executive functions gradually decline. However, this recent study from Georgetown University Medical Center counters this popular belief. The results from this study suggest that there are key mental abilities that could actually improve as we get older. Michael T. Ullman, the senior investigator of the study, describes the findings as “amazing, and have important consequences for how we should view aging.”

“This is all the more important because of the rapidly aging population, both in the US and around the world,” Ullman says. He adds that with further research, it may be possible to deliberately improve these skills as protection against brain decline in healthy aging and disorders.

[...]

The components they studied are the brain networks involved in alerting, orienting, and executive inhibition. Each has different characteristics and relies on different brain areas and different neurochemicals and genes. Therefore, Ullman and Veríssimo reasoned, the networks may also show different aging patterns.

Alerting is characterized by a state of enhanced vigilance and preparedness in order to respond to incoming information. Orienting involves shifting brain resources to a particular location in space. The executive network inhibits distracting or conflicting information, allowing us to focus on what’s important.

The study found that only alerting abilities declined with age. In contrast, both orienting and executive inhibition actually improved.

Aging is not so bad after all.

(Image Credit: TheDigitalArtist/ Pixabay)

If you think that tortoises are one of the longest-living animals in the world, then this list may come as a surprise for you. Why? Because tortoises don’t even make it to this list of ten longest-living animals. That’s right. While tortoises indeed live long, their lifespan seems short when compared to the animals on this list. Now you may wonder, “how long can these so-called longest-living animals live?” Here is the answer: some of them have been alive for over 10,000 years, and then there are some that are potentially immortal.

Check out the list over at Live Science.

(Image Credit: Hemming1952/ Wikimedia Commons)

Ever since the release of Windows 7 in 2009, MS Paint, the beloved program of meme-makers and Picasso-wannabes, has remained mostly untouched and unchanged. The only thing that the aforementioned operating system did for the doodling app was the incorporation of the “ribbon” user interface — a feature introduced in Office 2007. Some time later, the app was pushed aside in favor of its little brother, Paint 3D.

Now, after over a decade of being ignored, MS Paint finally received some love.

Microsoft Chief Product Officer Panos Panay posted a brief video of the new design, showing off its updated look, a new dark mode, better text tools, updated brushes, and other tweaks that collectively serve to modernize the app a bit.

But don’t expect the app to be on the same level as Adobe Photoshop or any modern photo-editing software out there. MS Paint is still a doodling app at the end of the day. What you can expect, however, is that the next generation can still bear witness to the app that made childhood in the 90s fun.

The new MS Paint will be made available for Windows Insider soon.

(Image Credit: Microsoft via Ars Technica)

Coming unprepared for an exam, or finding oneself naked in a public place are some examples of recurring dreams. You may have experienced one or both of these themes in your dreams, and they might have bothered you for quite some time.

Why do we have recurring dreams? What causes these dreams to repeat, and what makes these dreams disappear? Some theories say that recurring dreams could be associated with unresolved conflicts and stress.

Studies suggest that dreams, in general, help us regulate our emotions and adapt to stressful events. Incorporating emotional material into dreams may allow the dreamer to process a painful or difficult event.

In the case of recurrent dreams, repetitive content could represent an unsuccessful attempt to integrate these difficult experiences. Many theories agree that recurring dreams are related to unresolved difficulties or conflicts in the dreamer's life.

And, as these recurring dreams begin with a kind of stress, these dreams also end once the stress is finally resolved.

ScienceAlert has more things to say about recurring dreams. See them over at the site.

(Image Credit: Pexels/ Pixabay)

If you post a grainy, out-of-focus picture the internet, people will accuse you taking it with a potato instead of a camera. So when I heard of the Potato Photographer of the Year competition, I assumed it was a joke. It is not a joke, and it is exactly what it says: a photo competition for pictures of potatoes. The overall winner is William Ropp, for the artwork you see above, entitled "Fish and Chips."

“There's something extremely wonderful and weird about this work. The amalgamation of vegetables and animals creates a strange portrait of the everyday food we consume. The fact that the image was taken on a polaroid camera with just a flashlight is of great credit to the photographer's skill.” Amy D’Agorne

I particularly like this image by Steve Caplin, which he says was made with Potatoshop. It came in fifth in the competition. Not all those that placed in the final results are artworks, though- there are plenty of straightforward but lovely photos of potatoes in one form or another. See all the top photos here.

-via Nag on the Lake

Oreo's new ad campaign suggests that new packages could help protect your packages of cookies from thieving kids. What kid (or adult) would actually want to eat cauliflower and rice? Yes, you might see it in the refrigerator, but you won't actually pull it out. Thus the cookies inside are safe.

I’m pretty sure you can get another job and you’ll earn some money, but the point here is that mathematics can earn you a big amount of cash. It isn’t obvious at first because a person graduating with a mathematics degree might be more likely to join academia, but a lot of jobs need mathematicians. Science Focus has the details: 

Maths opens up a huge variety of rewarding careers, both intellectually and financially. A 2012 survey revealed that the 10 per cent of the British workforce employed in mathematical science occupations were punching above their weight, contributing 16 per cent of the UK economy. Maths also made Larry Page and Sergey Brin multi-billionaires when they used it to invent the algorithm behind Google.

Despite what some say about calculators, computers don’t make maths obsolete. Instead, their ever-increasing power opens up new opportunities to apply it, such as Artificial Intelligence. A smartphone is maths incarnate.

Many applications use mathematical methods invented specifically for that purpose, but a few rely on maths that originated for totally different reasons, often just because of a mathematician’s fascination with following their nose.

Image credit: Jeswin Thomas

Watching the entire footage honestly made me feel a little dizzy. It’s still amazing, though! Filmmaker Ellis van Jason released a video of his first person view (FPV) drone shot of diving over the edge of Angel Falls in Venezuela, the tallest waterfall in the world. Here’s a fun fact: without a use of a drone, the mesmerizing footage would be impossible to capture: 

Unlike typical drones, FPV drones are controlled using a headset that has a live transmission of the flight that puts the pilot in a visual position that feels to them as if they are driving the drone from a tiny front seat.

Many drones are capable of showing the perspective of descending down the waterfall, but only FPV drones have the aerial speed and maneuverability to do so in a way that makes the pilot — and the viewer — feel as though they are flying.

“It’s like you’re a bird,” van Jason says to CNN. “You can fly wherever you want.”