April 2015 ~ Learn Something New Today

Wednesday, April 15, 2015

Mother hugs the man who killed her daughter in court. But the reason why is absolutely amazing..

Two years after her daughter was shot to death by a classmate in a school bus, her mother Ady Guzman-DeJesus faced her daughter's killer, Jordyn Howe, in court.
But what she did then is something that most people have a hard time to understand.
She went up to Jordyn, gave him a hug, and agreed that he should get a lower sentence.
It can be difficult to imagine how a parent could hug the person who had shot your child to death, but Ady saw an opportunity to give this young teenager a chance instead of putting him behind bars for lifetime from what seems to have been an accident.
So what was it that actually happened?
It seems that Jordyn had taken his stepfather's gun to school and accidentally shot Ady's daughter. He was showing the gun to his friends on the school bus when he accidentally shot Lourdes in the neck which led to her death.
At first, Ady wanted to put the boy behind bars for the rest of his life, but changed her mind when she realized that Jordyn was actually just a kid at the time and had his whole life in front of him. What Ady then came up with was to offer him an opportunity, a way to redeem himself.
After Jordyn has spent one year in prison, he will be touring around Florida together with Ady talking about the dangerous of carrying weapons and their tragic story.
Ady's decision show how amazingly forgiving people can be, and even if some people can't understand or agree with her decision, being forgiving might be the only way to get over something like this.
We admire Ady for her courage and divine ability to forgive.
Rest in peace Lourdes.

I’ve never really got the hype about Kim Kardashian. Yes, it’s fact that she has a bigger bum than most women, but that’s pretty much it.
So if we’re going to go off that fact, then Kathy Ferreiro – the so called ‘Cuban Kim K’ – absolutely wipes the floor with old Mrs Kardashian-West.
She’s also 13 years younger at 21-years-old and is currently based out of Miami. The cosmetics distributor has racked up 1.4 million followers on Instagram, which if we’re honest, is a lot of people.

And this is why…

Celebrities With Born Star Look Alikes

Have you ever gone to bed with dirty fantasies about Lucy Lawless, the actress who played Xena Warrior Princess? About the twerking "Wrecking Ball" star Miley Cyrus?
Both of these celebrities have porn star counterparts, and there are many more out there with look alikes in the porn business to fulfill your celebrity fetish. Just don't expect these porno stars to match the same quality of acting.
Katy Perry and Sophie Dee, Lexi Belle and Hanna Murray, all worth checking out. You'll die for the Miley Cyrus look alike. Trust me!

1.

Tinder is a phenomenal app for connecting with people, no matter if they're strangers or your current estranged significant other. These are the most embarrassing examples of people being caught—and punished—on Tinder.

2.

I was still on his side until the leader dog thing.

3.

They look so cute together.

4.

Don't forget to leave the seat down!

5.

At least he says it with a smile on his face.

6.

A tender moment between a guy and all the men who want to nail his girlfriend.

7.

I like a woman who leaves a little mystery.

Your life might not be quite like Game of Thrones, but you can still feel like a boss power broker if you drive a Chrysler, says a new ad from the automaker.

"Kings and Queens of America," voiced by actor Peter Dinklage, who plays Tyrion Lannister on the hit HBO show, is launching just ahead of the fifth-season premiere this Sunday.

The commercial, created by Wieden + Kennedy, builds on the great American myth that wealth and power are not a birthright, but rather simply there for the taking. That may be true, insofar as Justin Bieber, the Joffrey Baratheon of our time, didn't inherit his fortune from his dad (even if both of them invaded from the North).

The 60-second spot even sports a soundtrack that references the theme music from the Game of Thrones' opening credits.

On screen, a series of modern-day, ostensibly self-made warriors gird themselves for battle in designer glasses, high heels and blazers, and climb on their horses … or rather, into their Chrysler 300s. (Ron Burgundy can offer some wisdom on how many horses it would take to equal a Chrysler engine.) The faces featured include San Antonio Spurs assistant coach Becky Hammon; Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian; pro poker player Phil Ivey; photographer Kwaku Alston; and Los Angeles restaurateur Caroline Styne. They, and others, will appear in 30-second spots airing later this month.

Nobody, though, is shown viscously murdering his or her father, son-in-law, wife, brother or random stranger, for that matter.

CREDITS
Client: Chrysler
Spot: "The Kings & Queens of America"
Chief Marketing Officer, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, Global: Olivier Francois
President, CEO, Chrysler Brand: Al Gardner
Director, Head of Global Advertising, Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram: Marissa Hunter
Head of Advertising, Chrysler Brand: Melissa Garlick
Chrysler Brand Advertising Specialist: Danielle DePerro

Agency: Wieden + Kennedy, Portland, Ore.
Creative Directors: Aaron Allen, Kevin Jones
Copywriter: Alex Romans
Art Director: John Dwight
Broadcast Producer: Endy Hedman
Art Producers: Grace Petrenka, Amy Berriochoa
Strategic Planning: Cat Wilson, Sarah Biedak
Media, Communications Planning: Alex Barwick
Account Team: Cheryl Markley, Lani Reichenbach, Stephanie Montoya
Business Affairs: Karen Murillo
Project Management: Jane Monaghan, Annie Quach
Executive Creative Directors: Joe Staples, Mark Fitzloff
Head of Production: Ben Grylewicz

Production Company: HSI
Director: Samuel Bayer
Executive Producer: Roger Zorovich
Line Producer: William Green
Director of Photography: Samuel Bayer
Photographers: Samuel Bayer, John Clark

Editing Company: Joint
Editor: Nicholas Davis
Assistant Editor: Kristy Faris
Post Producer: Leslie Carthy
Executive Post Producer: Patty Brebner

Visual Effects Company: Joint
Lead Flame Artist: Katrina Salicrup
Flame Artist: David Stern
Smoke Artist: David Jahns
Visual Effects Producer: Alex Thiesen

Song: "Blood and Stone"

Mix Company: Joint
Mixer: Noah Woodburn
Producer: Sarah Fink

9 Of Your Weirdest Questions, Answered With Science

1. How do birds pee?

Birds only kind of pee. They don’t have separate openings for urine and feces, so everything gets mixed up and comes out as a paste through one hole called a cloaca. (See the above diagram, and then go here for more information than you ever wanted to know about bird excretion, courtesy of Eastern Kentucky University.)

Birds also use their cloacas for reproduction, and male birds fertilize female ones in a process called a “cloacal kiss”.

2. Can sleeping in a fridge kill you?

The main thing you need to worry about if you’re in a fridge is getting enough air – get stuck inside and you’ll eventually suffocate. This was apparently such a problem by 1956 that The Refrigerator Safety Act was passed in the US, meaning all new fridges had to have a mechanism that allowed them to be opened from the inside.

So, yes, sleeping in a fridge could actually kill you, if it’s not well-ventilated and you get trapped inside.

3. Why do chickens have red flappy bits on their heads?

That “red flappy bit” on top of a chicken’s head is called a comb, and the part that hangs down from its throat is called a wattle. Together, the comb, wattle, and fleshy bits on their earlobes are known as a caruncle.

The caruncle is thought to be ornamental and used by females to work out whether she wants to have a male’s chicks. In males, a large caruncle demonstrates high testosterone levels. According to a paper published in 2010, pheasant hens might be able to work out whether a cock has compatible genes from the size of his wattle.

4. Do fish get thirsty?

Fish don’t technically drink water like we do. Instead, it diffuses through their body from the surrounding water in a process called osmosis. How exactly this happens depends on whether they live in freshwater or seawater.

According to aquaculture specialist William Wurts writing at Scientific American:

In seawater, fish must drink salt water to replace lost fluids and then eliminate the excess salts. Their kidneys produce small volumes of fluid containing high concentrations of salt. Freshwater fish produce large volumes of dilute urine, which is low in salt. Less demand is placed on the kidneys to maintain stable concentrations of blood salts in brackish or low salinity waters.

So all fish do need to take in water, but they probably don’t ever actually feel thirsty.

5. How do cats have sex?

If you really want to know what cats having sex looks like, there are plenty of videos on YouTube that can help you in that department. If you want to know about how weird cat penises are, read on.

The first thing you need to know is that male cats have barbed penises. Click the GIF below to see what that looks like. It’s thought that a cat’s penis spines help to keep it in place while mating and stimulate ovulation in the female. Also, cats have an actual bone in their penis called a baculum that helps them to maintain their erection. So now you know.

6. What’s the highest anyone has ever counted to?

Jeremy Harper counted to a million in 2007 (watch him finish his epic count here) – he started on June 18 and finished on September 14, counting for 16 hours each day.

If you were to try to attempt a similar feat without breaks, it’d take you just over 11 and a half straight days, counting at one number per second (which, let’s be honest, is a bit ambitious when you get into five figures). To count to a billion, it’d take over 31 YEARS.

7. How do we know what noises dinosaurs made?

Here’s a fun fact: The dinosaur sounds you heard in Jurassic Park were actually animal sex noises.

It’s not been easy for scientists to work out what dinosaurs would have really sounded like, because the vocal cords they presumably used were made from soft tissues and did not get fossilised. But we can look to their closest living relatives to put the puzzle together.
According to Joe Hanson at It’s Okay To Be Smart:

The deep groaning vibrations used by crocodiles and reptiles come from the larynx. Much like in our own vocal chords, air from the lungs vibrates folds of tissue to create rather intimidating vibrations that sound like this. Birds, on the other hand…or wing…use a structure called the syrinx, which is close to a larynx but probably evolved independently. That means that roars and rooster calls could have a different evolutionary origin. One, both, or neither of those structures may have existed in various families of dinosaurs.

Some features possibly related to sounds made by dinosaurs have been fossilised, like the lambeosaur’s crest. According to the University of California, Berkeley: “The most accepted theory today of the function of the crest is that it served as a resonating chamber, allowing lambeosaurs to make deep, loud sounds.”

8. Why does hair get darker when wet even though water is clear?

The Naked Scientists have answered this one. Basically, your hair reflects less light when it’s wet. Think about it – your hair is way more bouncy when it’s dry, so light is being reflected everywhere and it looks lighter. When it’s wet, the strands are closer together and light doesn’t bounce off as much.

9. What are the Neoplatonic ramifications of Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle?

Lol jk.

Have you ever wondered why, for example, if you held the word stressed in front of a mirror, it would read “desserts?” How come mirrors seem to only flip things horizontally, rather than vertically? Of course, the mirror doesn’t know the x-direction from the y-direction, so what’s going on?

In the video below, vlogger Physics Girl explains the reason, and although it may have never dawned on you before, it’s actually pretty simple. As Meg points out, it’s because weare presenting the images backwards, not the mirror. We flip them horizontally and not vertically. If you wrote the word desserts down on a piece of paper and then flipped it vertically to face the mirror, rather than horizontally, it would still read desserts, albeit upside down, of course.

Check it out here:

1. “What actually are blackhead pimples?”

Both blackheads and whiteheads are pores in your skin that have become clogged with sebum and dead skin (yum). The difference is whiteheads are trapped under the skin and blackheads are exposed to the air. That’s actually how blackheads end up black – the melanin in sebum reacts with oxygen in the air and turns a dark colour, as you can see in the handy diagram above.

2. “Can you sneeze with your eyes open?”

You can try. You close your eyes when you sneeze because of a reflex: When your brain sends the message to sneeze, part of it tells your eyes to shut. “It is certainly possible to keep your eyes open if you try while you are sneezing… but it requires working against the reflex,” Dr Rachel Vreeman told NBC News in 2013.

And you don’t have to worry about your eyes popping out if you manage it. If they were going to pop out, they’d do it whether your eyes were open or not, according to Dr Robert Naclerio, a professor of surgery and section chief of otolaryngology at the University of Chicago Medicine. He told NBC News: “There is no way that keeping your eyelids closed can prevent [your eyes from popping out]. It’s not like the muscles are strong enough.” (You can decide whether or not that’s a good thing…)

3. “My boyfriend keeps telling me girls had testicles at birth but they rolled up inside them and turned into ovaries… true or not true?”

The only truth in this is that ovaries and testicles start life in the same way.

For a little while in the womb, an embryo’s gonads are the same whether that embryo is male or female. It’s a gene called SRY (found on the Y chromosome) that controls how other genes function and stops these gonads turning into ovaries, putting them on a path to becoming testicles instead.
As always it’s not *quite* as simple as SRY being the only gene that can control this switch between ovaries and testes. For example, in experiments on mice, scientists have been able to turn adult ovaries into testes in just three weeks by silencing a different gene, FOXL2, that appears to do the opposite of SRY – it stops gonads becoming testes. (Read this post by Ed Yong for the full story.)
But still, maybe your boyfriend should get a new fun fact.

4. “What’s the purpose of wisdom teeth?”

Wisdom teeth are the last set of molars to erupt, but they’re not actually any different from your other molars. So their purpose is just normal toothy stuff. They come through when you’re between the ages of 17 and 25, the age at which you’re (um, supposedly) getting wiser, which seems to be how they got their name.

If there’s enough room in your mouth, everything will work out fine. If there isn’t, you might have to get those wisdom teeth removed. Thankfully, you’ll still get to keep whatever wisdom you gained in your early twenties. Use it well.

5. “Do you have blue blood in your body?”

All those diagrams that showed arteries as red and veins as blue lied to you. Deoxygenated blood is a darker red than oxygenated blood, but calling it blue would be a bit of a stretch (there’s an interesting discussion to be had about how the perception of colour plays into this, but we’ll save that for another time). Think about it: If there were blue blood in your veins, it’d come out that way when you cut yourself, right?

Veins look blue, however, when you view them through your skin because of the different wavelengths different colours of light have (blue is shorter than red) and how far into your skin the blood vessels you’re looking at are.

6. “Why can we grow back skin, nails, hair, and stuff but not limbs?”

The simple answer is: Scientists don’t really know.

In order to regenerate limbs we’d need to hang on to the embryonic stem cells we have in the womb. During development we’re able to grow all the organs we need thanks to these cells – but when we’re born we switch them out for adult stem cells instead. Adult stem cells help repair our bodies: growing new layers of skin, forming scar tissue, and making new blood cells, for example. But they can’t grow entire new limbs.
Some animals, like salamanders, can regrow limbs. One explanation for our inability to do the same is that we’re warm-blooded mammals, Enrique Amaya, a developmental biologist at the University of Manchester, told BBC Future. Humans can’t hide away for weeks without eating in order to regenerate a new limb, so our bodies do the best they can as quickly as they can.

7. “What is the gunk from my eyes for?”

It’s not really for anything, it’s just a byproduct of how your eyes work. Your have something called meibomian glands (named after German physician Heinrich Meibom, also known as tarsal glands) in your eyelids. The glands make something called meibum, an oil that coats your eye to help you blink and stop your tears evaporating.

Overnight, this oil combines with rheum, the name for watery discharge that comes out of your eyes (and also nose). Because you’re not blinking and washing it away like you do when you’re awake, it all collects in the corner of your eye and dries up, meaning you wake up with “sleep” in your eye.

8. “Why do some parts of our bodies grow more hair than others?”

Hair develops in three phases: anagen, catagen and telogen. Anagen is the growth phase, so the longer the hair stays in this phase the longer it will grow.

Head hair typically stays like this for between two and six years, but hair on other parts of your body doesn’t (eyebrows are only in anagen phase for about 10 weeks). After the anagen phase, your hair is cut off from its blood supply and will eventually fall out when new hair grows in its place.
As for why you have all that long hair on your head…maybe sexual selection?
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