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.”

Larrimah is a small town in the Northern Territory at the terminus of the North Australia Railway. How small is it? It had a population of 13 people, including 70-year-old Paddy Moriarty, who spent most of his time drinking beer at the Pink Panther pub.  

Paddy took his place at the bar, filled with bric-a-brac and kitsch Australiana. On any given day, Paddy chatted with regulars and tourists who stopped by to have a drink or a bite to eat, or to get a glimpse of the croc. Some Larrimah residents would describe Paddy himself as an attraction at the pub, spinning yarns from his time on the ranches and greeting arriving tourists with a hearty, “G’day folks, where ya from?”

And so it was on that sweltering day, December 16, 2017, that Paddy sat down to nurse a series of cold XXXX Golds in his koozie — beers, it turned out, that would be his last. Paddy Moriarty and his dog were about to vanish without a trace, kicking off an investigation that would turn the town upside down and spark international media coverage. Initial concern for his wellbeing soon gave way to darker rumors of murder.

In this town — now down to 12 residents — everyone was a possible suspect.

Since no trace of Paddy nor his dog were ever found, the case was considered a murder. The clues were scant, but Paddy's history involved a menagerie with a crocodile, meat pies, a poisoned garden, and roadkill kangaroos. Was it the jealous bartender? Was it the tea house owner who feuded with Paddy for years? Was it the reclusive gardener she depended on for protection? Read the story of the missing man from Larrimah at Medium. -via Damn Interesting

If you're going to be breaking into houses, lifting large bags of cash at the bank, or running from the police, you've got to be in shape! It take training to be a thief! Two anonymous and ridiculously sterotypical criminals put in their time at the gym, where onlookers are fairly bemused. -via Laughing Squid

Move over, usual box-esque architecture! Triangles can be an ideal choice when designing a building or a home. According to Yanko Design’s Srishti Mitra, a triangle’s three sides can provide steady support and reinforcement. To prove that triangular architecture is gaining traction in the field of architecture, Mitra lists some of the very best designs: 

Liyanage’s Cliff Cabin, as he calls it, suspends from the side of a mountain, hovering in midair. In his 3D conceptualization, Liyanage visualizes Cliff Cabin locked in place above four support beams that are bored into the cliffside to create a secure enough foundation for Cliff Cabin to rest atop. In addition to its bottom support, four high-tensile cables are attached to the cabin’s roof and balance the cabin by drawing it back away from the cliff’s edge, evenly distributing the weight of the cabin. Globular spheres lock the cables in place and add an elegant and tidy touch to the cabin as a whole. Cliff Cabin takes on a primarily triangular shape, with right triangle glass facades sharpening the cabin’s sides and protruding out to their center of convergence.

To view the full list, check the article here! 

Image credit: Thilina Liyanage

When ancient Egyptians were buried in their huge and lavish tombs, a lot of their riches were left in their graves. These items were believed to follow the deceased to the afterlife. One of the items that were left to facilitate the transition to the afterlife are sandals. Now these funerary sandals aren’t like our regular leather ones, no! Sandals for dead royals were often crafted in shimmering gold: 

Among royal burials, these rich golden sandals were often occupied by small golden “caps” for the fingers and toes. These are called finger and toe stalls. They protected the extremities of the mummy in burial. According to ancient Egyptian beliefs, the dead were supposed to be entombed as complete bodies—sometimes including prosthetic limbs. Non-royal mummies also were buried with stalls of lesser metals and even clay. Today, most stalls date to the 18th dynasty of the New Kingdom. From about 1550 to 1290 BCE, this period includes the famous boy king Tutankhamen.

If average people used average finger and toe stalls, what sort of sandals were they buried with? Braided papyrus and leather were common materials. A sturdy sole was attached to the foot by straps much like modern sandals. Sandal makers specialized in crafting these items for the living and the dead. Among the many paintings of everyday life included along tomb walls, these ancient cobblers make appearances. Today, most extant sandals are funerary in nature, preserved underground in tombs. While many of the examples below date to the 18th dynasty, the sandals and use of stalls continued well into the period of Roman Egypt.

image credit: The Metropolitan Museum of Art

If the professor takes their time and effort to draw extremely detailed figures on an actual blackboard for class, I’ll certainly pay attention! A young teacher at Shude University of Science and Technology in Taiwan went viral online thanks to his detailed anatomical blackboard drawings. Zhong Quanbin only uses a ruler and chalk to produce some extraordinary artworks: 

Interestingly, even though most of his detailed artworks focus on the human body, Zhong Quanbin doesn’t teach human anatomy. He teaches Anatomy illustrations and Drawing Skills at the Department of Visual Communication Design, at Shute University, and he is so good at his job that he has been commissioned by several medical schools, both in Taiwan and in China or Japan to teach their students how to draw the human body.

“Yes, we have a textbook. But we don’t read it, we draw it,” Zhong said about his class at Shute University. “Students, majoring in this area, cannot learn by just reading the pictures on books. Instead, we learn while drawing something. In my classes, students have to draw what I am demonstrating on the chalkboard.”

Image credit: Zhong Quanbin/Facebook

You start to watch this film, and you'll say, "Hey! This isn't stop-motion animation! This is a stunt skiing video!" Well, why not both? The guys are doing their thing in real time, but the environment around them animates to fill their need for speed -and height! It's an experimental film from Swiss filmmaker Sämi Ortlieb and his fun-loving friends. You can read more about this project here. -via Digg