»tag clouds« by mathieu tremblin
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sexta-feira, agosto 19, 2016
»arizona’s dream« by lourdes villagomez(time lapse of ants...
»arizona’s dream« by lourdes villagomez
(time lapse of ants foraging sugar and ham)
After 10 Years of Absence Arabian Sand Cat Is Back (8 pics)
Blink and you’ll miss it. The sand cat is a shy and secretive animal only seen in the desert at night.
It’s a nocturnal hunter perfectly adapted to its desert home. It doesn’t need to drink water as it can get all it needs from the small birds, reptiles and mammals that are its prey. Special hairs in its ears and on its paws keep the sand out.
Despite its wide distribution across the deserts of North Africa, Arabia and Central Asia, little is known about this elusive species.
Lack of records and difficulty in spotting it means we don’t even know how well it is faring. Sand cats are listed as “near threatened” on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) red list and as endangered in the United Arab Emirates, where the Al Ain Zoo is a hotspot for captive breeding programmes to try to conserve the species.
In western UAE, the cat has only been documented in the wild anecdotally – and even such records date to 10 years or more ago.
In 2015, Shakeel Ahmed, an assistant scientist at The Environment Agency – Abu Dhabi (EAD) led a team studying the animals and plants of the Baynouna – a protected area in Abu Dhabi. They baited camera traps with cat food over several months and eventually managed to get 46 photos, which the team later identified as being of three individuals. Sightings were usually late on moonlit nights and at cooler times, suggesting the cats prefer medium to low temperatures of between 11 and 28 °C. Their habitat was in sparsely vegetated sand dunes.
The team also set traps for small animals, and caught Cheeseman’s gerbils and the lesser jerboa. Other sightings on the camera included the urchin beetle, and reptiles such as Arabian sand skink and gecko. All these mean there is plenty of food available in the region for the sand cat.
The team hopes this information will help inform future conservation strategies. For example, it could be useful for work comparing the relatedness of this population to those in neighbouring Oman and Saudi Arabia.
This Brazilian Daredevil Has Balls Of Steel Or Does He Really? (15 pics)
The photos of this daredevil hanging from a cliff with 10,000ft drop went viral, but there is one but… It isn’t what you think it is.
Brazilian riot cop Luiz Fernando Candela, 27, was photographed by his girlfriend performing this incredible stunt, hanging on a cliff edge with nothing but his abs holding him up. There are also various photos of him doing different stunts with his girlfriend without using any safety gear.
Brazilian riot cop Luiz Fernando Candela, 27, was photographed by his girlfriend performing this incredible stunt, hanging on a cliff edge with nothing but his abs holding him up. There are also various photos of him doing different stunts with his girlfriend without using any safety gear.
Science Says You’ll Be Much Happier If Your Mind Wanders Less
Our minds are a wandering machine. A study found that almost half of our thoughts are not related to what we are doing. If that isn’t a telling statistic, then I don’t know what it is. This raises questions: “How does this brain activity affect our happiness?” and “Does it make us happier (or not)?”
Much of the research on the factors that contribute to happiness has focused on factors like income, gender, education, and marriage, but as Harvard Psychologist Matt Killingsworth mentioned in Greater Good, “Factors like these don’t seem to have particularly strong effects.”
It seems, according to Killingsworth, that fleeting aspects of our everyday lives—such as what we’re doing, who we’re with, and what we’re thinking about—have a big influence on our happiness. And yet these are the very factors that have been most difficult for scientists to study. This drove Killingsworth and Daniel T.Gilbert to test the influence that such factors have on happiness.
The Research
The Harvard study titled “A Wandering Mind is an Unhappy Mind”, made use of an unconventional technique known as experience sampling – where people were interrupted at various intervals during the day. This technique is extremely powerful. It allows you to find large patterns in human thought and behavior, develop a portrait of someone and find distinct correlations between thoughts, actions, and happiness.
The psychologists developed an iPhone app to sample ongoing thoughts, feelings, and actions. At intervals throughout the day, people were sent a brief questionnaire asking them about their experience at that moment just before the signal.
They were asked how they felt (on a scale of very bad to very good), what they were doing (22 activities including watching tv and eating were provided) and whether they were thinking about something else. They could answer yes or no to this last question. If they were thinking about something else, they were asked whether the feelings were neutral, unpleasant or pleasant.
A diverse group – ages 18-80, representing a wide range of incomes, education levels and marital statuses and nationalities – of 15000 people formed part of the sample. This allowed the researchers to gather over 650 000 real-time reports.
Our Mind Wanders Toward Unhappiness
The study found that 47% of the time people were thinking about something other than their current activity. This varied across the 22 activities – from 65% when taking a shower, 50% when working, 40% when exercising, all the way to 10% while having sex. Aside from sex, people’s minds were wondering at least 30% of the time. Our minds then wander a considerable amount of the time, even when we are resting and following instructions to think about nothing in particular.
According to psychology, if your mind wanders often, there is an 85% chance that you are subconsciously unhappy with your life. This study supports this notion. It was found that people were significantly less happy when their minds were wandering than when they were not and the size of the effect is considerable. In the words of Killingsworth:
“…how often a person’s mind wanders, and what they think about when it does, is far more predictive of happiness than how much money they make, for example.”
This holds true for all 22 activities and regardless as to what the person is doing, even if what they are doing is not enjoyable, for example, commuting to work. This can be explained by the fact that when our minds wander, we often think about negative and unpleasant things – our worries, our anxieties, and even our regrets. These, in turn, have a big impact on our happiness.
How Mental Presence Affects Happiness
The data from the Harvard Group study also points to the fact that your happiness is not determined by the way we spend our day. Rather it has to do with engaging in the present.
Mental presence then, where we match our thoughts to our specific actions, is a massive predictor of our happiness and should be cultivated for a happier life. However, as Killingsworth said, “The lesson here isn’t that we should stop mind-wandering entirely—after all, our capacity to revisit the past and imagine the future is immensely useful, and some degree of mind-wandering is probably unavoidable.”
What is suggested is that we cultivate ways to reduce mind wandering (e.g. meditation practice) as this ultimately will improve the quality of your life, help us more effectively cope with bad moments, achieve greater enjoyment from the good ones and become happier.
Featured photo credit: Martina K via magdeleine.co
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You May Not Know Epsom Salt Can Ease Your Life In So Many Ways
Epsom Salts have been a staple part of our society since their discovery 1680. It was first discovered in well near Epsom, Britain, and since then it has penetrated to the very heart of our civilization. Epsom salt has long been hailed for both it’s health and gardening applications. In fact, Epsom has been discovered to help in so many different ways!
1. Cleaner Hair
If your hair feels greasy and gross, add a bit of Epsom Salt to your shampoo. It’ll help strip some of the oils from your hair, just be sure to wash your hair out afterwards.
2. Foot Scrub
Mix a bit of the Salt, Olive Oil, Castile Soap and some essential oils. Scrubbing your feet with this once or twice a week will help eradicate dry skin. This scrub leaves you with nice, smooth feet.
3. Washing Your Face
This one is really easy. Add Epsom Salt to your face cream or liquid soap. This adds a nice extra rub to your mixture which gives you a gentle, yet prominent scrub. That scrub helps open and cut through any grime. Just remember to wash afterwards like normal.
4. Headaches
Hop in a bath with Salt added into it. An Epsom bath has long been touted to help alleviate headaches. Something about the heat and salt just add a pleasant mixture to help calm down aggravated nerves.
5. Hangovers
Mixing a teaspoon of Epsom Salt with water helps tremendously with a Hangover. The mixture has been hailed as being quite effective at removing unwanted toxins from the body. Remember to keep drinking water to stay hydrated though while it does its work.
6. Bruises
You can quickly and easily makes bruises fade faster by combining two teaspoons with water. Use this mixture each day until you feel the effects. Continue to use it to fade bruises quickly and effectively.
7. Sleeping Problems
Epsom baths are quite effective for relaxing the body. If you calmly relax in the bath tub for 20 minutes until you’re sleepy you’ll notice a huge difference. There are some people who use this ritual every night!
8. Muscle Pains
Alongside headaches and sleeping problems, Epsom Salt Baths are good at loosening muscles. When you sit in a bath, you’ll completely feel your muscles loosen in the water. This relaxing feeling allows you to think straighter as well, as you don’t have so much tension built up any longer.
9. Splinters
If you are sick of digging through your fingers with a pair of tweezers rejoice! Soaking the appendage in warm water mixed with salt helps move the tissues and force the splinter to the surface. It may take a few soakings but don’t give up, it’ll free itself soon enough.
10. Cleaning the Bathroom
Epsom has been proven to cut through grease quite effectively. Mixing the salt with liquid soap into equal parts does wonders. Scrub grout and tiles with vigor to see startling results! It’s also quite good at hitting and cutting through frustrating spots in your flooring.
11. Fertilize Fruits
One little known secret of Epsom Salt is its gardening ability. If you add a teaspoon of salt to soil, you’ll often get a much higher yield from your fruits. Also, they’ll often be brighter and more vibrant as well.
12. Fortify Plants
Now for this little technique, you take the knowledge from above and get creative with it. Magnesium deficiency is an issue that can be disastrous to gardens. Epsom salt can prevent that by simply adding two teaspoons of the salt to the soil each month, you’ve completely removed the issue.
13. Garden Pests
It can also help prevent slugs and other pests. It works similar to diatomaceous earth. If you surround your garden and porch with the salt you’ll notice that suddenly all the pests are gone!
14. Weed Control
Mix a gallon of vinegar, a few cups of Epsom salt and dish soap into a spray bottle. If you spray this concoction on any plant it kills it almost immediately. Be careful not get it on your plants however. This ia almost too effective for it’s own good.
15. Greener Grass
The last gardening tip is to add two teaspoons of Epsom salt to a gallon of water. Spray your yard down with it, you’ll see amazing results. It brightens up the grass if done in repetition a few times a month!
Epsom Salt is secretly one heck of a substance. If you’re looking for ways to help aid in both medical and gardening you’ve hit the jackpot. The substance is a cheap alternative to many harsh products, and costs much less! The best part is the fact that these aren’t even all the ways it can help! You may know a few ways to use Epsom that others don’t! Feel free to comment or share these other ways below!
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