Part of what makes treating cancer so tricky is that cancer cells are just normal cells that have gone haywire. It is sometimes hard for the body to recognize these aberrant cells to dispose of them via the immune system, and it is also hard to design drugs that can effectively kill the cells, while leaving healthy cells alone.
Famous photographer Vincent Laforet takes amazing night photos of urban cities, and his amazing photos of Las Vegas are no exception. Laforet, who has also photographed New York similarly, turns Sin City into an incredible neon metropolis surrounded by a desert of darkness.
The photographer ascended with a helicopter to 10,800 feet above sea level to get the best view. It took him a lot of courage to take the step out onto the skids, but his fear disappeared once he saw the view. The City of Sins became an island of light. The professional equipment he used allowed him to take the high-quality crystal-clear pictures that he has dreamed of capturing for decades.
More info: laforetvisuals.com | storehouse.com (h/t: sploid)
Falling in love is a truly strange experience.
You become utterly, inexplicably obsessed with one person. You feel a spike of pleasure whenever you get a text or email from them, and spend as much time with them as humanly possible. You see the good in them, but not the bad. When you're with them, the world shrinks, telescoping down to a bubble the size of two people.
Not everyone goes through the experience of being in love, but many do, and it's one of the most distinctive parts of being a human. Until recently, though, neuroscience largely ignored love as a topic of research.
"Most neuroscientific research has been devoted to negative symptoms — depression and addiction, instead of joy," says Donatella Marazziti, an Italian psychiatrist who has studied neurotransmitter levels in the brains of people who've recently fallen in love.
Helen Fisher, a Rutgers University researcher who's used MRI and other brain imaging techniques to examine both romantic love and long-term attachment, says that "it's a new idea to accept that there are even brain systems associated with love in the first place."
As a result, the study of love is pretty new, and the phenomenon is still largely a mystery. The studies that have been conducted are relatively small, and they only hint at the neurological basis of love — they don't fully define it.
Still, here are a few interesting things that scientists have learned so far.
Experiments show that people in love have elevated activity in the VTA (left) and caudate nucleus (right). (Fisher et. al. 2005)
Fisher distinguishes the early torrent of romantic love and the longer-term, calmer attachment phase that follows. And she's found that a brain in the initial stage of love looks surprisingly like a brain experiencing a drug addiction.
"When we put people who've just fallen happily in love into a brain scanner, we find heightened activity in a few different brain regions," she says. "The big ones are the ventral tegmental area — the VTA — and the caudate nucleus." The scans compared participants' brains when looking at photos of their lovers, versus photos of random acquaintances. And participants who'd scored higher on a survey that measured feelings of love, moreover, had proportionately more activity in the VTA and caudate nucleus.
The VTA secretes dopamine, which travels to other parts of the brain and leads to feelings of pleasure. (Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology)
These are both core parts of the brain's reward system: areas that release the neurotransmitter dopamine to other parts of the brain, triggering feelings of pleasure. Heightened activity in the VTA in particular has been associated with all sorts of addictions — whether nicotine, alcohol, heroin, or gambling — with each dose causing a fresh spike of dopamine.
This, Fisher says, explains the feeling of obsession many people experience when falling in love. "It's what gives you the elation and the craving that is basic to romantic love." She sees the early stages of love as more of a drive to be fulfilled — like hunger and thirst — than a stable, permanent emotion.
(Shutterstock.com)
Other brain-imaging work by Samir Zeki, a neurobiologist at University College London, might explain a related aspect of falling in love: the way new lovers only see the positives in each other.
When Zeki has put people who have fallen in love inside of fMRI machines and shown them photos of their lovers, he's detected reduced activity in the amygdala — a pair of brain regions that are involved in decision-making. Amygdala activity is typically heightened during fearful or stressful situations, and research suggests that we use it when making social judgements and trying to determine if other people are lying.
(Samir Zeki)
Reduced amygdala activity in lovers, Zeki believes, may make them less prone to making negative judgements and distrusting each other, facilitating a sense of intimacy.
In experiments at the University of Pisa, Marazziti and colleagues have studied levels of serotonin — a neurotransmitter associated with feelings of contentment — in the brains of people who said they fell in love in the previous six months.
Given that we think of love as a positive emotion, it's a bit surprising that she found reduced levels of serotonin in these people, compared to controls. Even more surprising, though, is that they were as low as other study participants who had obsessive compulsive order — so low, she says, that "my biologists came back to me and assumed that the readings were from people who suffered from OCD."
It's well-established that people who suffer from obsessive compulsive order have reduced serotonin levels, likely contributing to extreme feelings of anxiety. When it comes to love, Marazziti writes, a lack of serotonin may lead to the obsessive, irrationally jealous behavior we see in some people.
Fisher has also scanned the brains of people who said they were in love with people who'd rejected them. Given that love shares some characteristics with addiction, it might not be a surprise that when they looked at photos of their beloveds, their brains looked like addicts going through withdrawal.
"When you're rejected in love, we still find activity in the VTA — you're still madly in love with that person, after all," she says. "But we also find elevated activity in other brain regions linked with craving, and in a part of the brain associated with the distress that goes along with physical pain."
Scans of people rejected in love revealed elevated activity in the anterior cingulate (left arrow in image F) and the insular cortex (right arrow in G), both areas associated with physical pain. (Fisher et. al. 2010)
Rejected lovers, in other words, appear to retain the same obsessive focus on their object of desire, but are unable to have it fulfilled. One positive aspect of the study, though, was that the more time that had passed since the participants' rejection, the lower activity was in another brain region associated with attachment.
(Shutterstock.com)
Fisher and other researchers distinguish between these successive phases of love for a good reason — in terms of both behavior and brain activity, they look somewhat different.
Her fMRI studies of couples who'd been happily married for decades found that, when they looked at photos each other, activity increased in brain areas distinct from those identified in the study of new lovers. Activity was elevated in the VTA — just like in new lovers — but also the ventral pallidum, an area associated with maternal attachment in animal studies.
This, Fisher says, may be what's responsible for the long-term, persistent feeling of attachment between people in a committed relationship. "The feeling of attachment is really very different from the feeling of romantic love," she says. "Romantic love is giddiness, elation, euphoria, energy. When you're feeling a deep sense of attachment, you're much more calm, and contented."
It's still uncertain why people transition from the first phase of love to the second phase of attachment, but Fisher hypothesizes that they're driven by separate evolutionary mechanisms. The initial flood of obsessive love evolved, she thinks, in order to get you to focus on a single person in order to reproduce. The second phase of attachment, by contrast, evolved to link you to another person for an extended period of time, in order to raise a child.
[body_image width='800' height='996' path='images/content-images/2015/02/12/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/02/12/' filename='alexander-krack-german-spa-towns-photography-interview-876-body-image-1423744270.jpg' id='26924']
This article was originally published by VICE Germany.
There are more than 300 spa towns in Germany, each boasting a number of illustrious rehabilitation and spa centers that attract people, as well as their pets, from all over the world.
Often surreal environments that combine futuristic technology and traditional architecture, for many these towns offer the sense of having briefly reached utopia. Photographer Alexander Krack traveled to more than 30 of them in search of the aesthetic realm that is the German spa town. I caught up with him to find out a little more about his pictures.
VICE: Hi, Alex. What is it about these spa towns that attracted you in the first place?
Alexander Krack: While researching for another project I coincidentally stayed in a small motel in one of these towns. As I was walking around the "Kurgarten"—the official park area that every spa town has—I came across this painting behind a storefront that was lit up by the evening sun. I took a photo of it and immediately felt that there was more out there that stirred my interest. I guess I liked the idea that I had certain associations with spa towns but could not really grasp a coherent image of those associations. That painting behind the glass expressed that perfectly for me.
What do you think it is that attracts everyone else to these towns?
There are hundreds of these towns in Germany, so it is also a topic of general interest. People go there for different reasons, but mostly for health concerns. A lot of towns have specialized rehabilitation clinics and special treatments for chronic diseases such as asthma or rheumatism. More and more towns have also found a niche in wellness treatments. Thermal baths are one of the main attractions. A lot of people spend their holidays there and can combine recreation and health. This mixture is something I'm really interested in.
So most people are just visiting?
There are loads of visitors to the resorts, but many people grow up there and keep the town running. I also met quite a few elderly people who decided to move there after retirement. I guess the nature of these towns is appealing. Not just the actual nature, which you find in the parks and gardens, but the general feeling of being a little cared for by good doctors and entertainment programs that target mostly older people.
[body_image width='800' height='997' path='images/content-images/2015/02/12/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/02/12/' filename='alexander-krack-german-spa-towns-photography-interview-876-body-image-1423744293.jpg' id='26925']
And what about the animals? What's this dog up to?
This was taken in a special rehab center for animals called the Vierbeiner Reha-Zentrum in a town called Bad Wildungen. Animals, mostly dogs, are treated there, for example when they had an accident with a car. Inside the water tank is a treadmill. That way the joints are less strained while at the same time the muscles are stimulated by the water resistance.
How many different types of treatment do you think you saw?
Roughly I would say about 30 to 40 depending on what one considers an individual treatment. One of the most extreme was definitely a cold chamber where people go in for about three minutes at minus 110 degrees Celsius. It's supposed to help with chronic arthritis or ease the pain after a spinal operation. Even though it seems bizarre, I spoke to some people who had been doing it for weeks and they definitely felt it helped. I went in myself and felt pretty relaxed afterward. Maybe some of it is just positive thinking, though.
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What's going on with these old people sitting down and looking at a wall in a cave?
They are sitting in an adit. Within the adit is a microclimate that keeps a constant temperature of 8 degrees Celsius throughout the whole year. Humidity is at nearly 100 percent, and the air is almost completely free of dust particles, germs, and allergenic pollen. Therefore the air is supposedly really good for your lungs. Also there is a spring inside the adit that releases so-called reduced water, which is supposed to work as a catcher of free radicals.
If you didn't have captions for some of these pictures they could easily be misunderstood. Is that intentional or just the nature of these bizarre healing worlds?
That's intentional as I wanted to find "images" rather than document some treatment in the most objective and scientific manner. It goes back to what I said in the beginning. To me it is about the overall feeling of these places—at least the way I perceived it. However, I didn't want to obscure reality, and from my experience in showing the work, most people understand what they see. Maybe not right away by the single image, but with the series they do. I want them to fill in the blanks with their imagination and create their own narrative.
[body_image width='633' height='468' path='images/content-images/2015/02/12/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/02/12/' filename='audio-porn-tumblr-lends-mystery-to-masturbation-body-image-1423744365.png' id='26927']Still from audibleporn.tumblr
It's no secret that Tumblr is full of porn. You don't even need to go looking for it: On Tumblr, porn finds you. Start an account, follow a few blogs, and before long your dashboard will be full of S&M GIFs and nude selfies of self-promoting cam girls, or nasty stuff, like revenge shots, Photoshop forgeries, and hacked celebrity nudes.
The upside, though, is that Tumblr offers alternatives. Tumblr is sex-positive and inclusive, full of diverse, feminist-friendly porn. Experimental porn. Tasteful porn. Maybe even porn that's safe for work.
Audio Porn is one of those Tumblr blogs. At first it doesn't look remarkable: It's plain, text-heavy, pastel-pink, and devoid of images. Instead, there are little black bars of clickable audio. No one glancing over your shoulder would have suspicions, unless they were to read the URL.
But Audio Porn lives up to its title: It's a little online treasure trove of sexual experiences, each post submitted by readers who have recorded themselves during sex. It's disconcerting,
ASMR-like, intensely intimate, and more than a little bit adorable.
[body_image width='621' height='461' path='images/content-images/2015/02/12/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/02/12/' filename='audio-porn-tumblr-lends-mystery-to-masturbation-body-image-1423744383.png' id='26928']Photo via
Tracks are published without context and without contributors' names: Only the track's title is provided, offering few answers (" Great sex" and "Cute boy moans" are among the most popular posts on the site). They act like a prompt for sex, rather than giving you the full story, asking the listener to imagine the rest.
The effect is something like having stumbled onto a phone sex line, or living next door to insatiable neighbors in a building with very thin walls.
I spoke to Audio Porn's founder, who prefers to remain anonymous but who also runs the Romantic Pornography Tumblr (a.k.a. " Porn4Ladies"), where the tagline is "Yes, women actually masturbate! Happy orgasming."
Both blogs have gained a significant following, though Audio Porn's success was less predictable. "I have almost half a million followers on P4L," says the site's founder, "and some of the most popular audios on Audio Porn have been listened to over half a million times."
The experimental measure of restricting porn to sound clearly found an instant niche: "I'd listened to audios before, and it really turned me on—I mean, who doesn't secretly enjoy it when they can hear someone having sex in the next room? I also like it because the followers aren't crusty middle-aged men masturbating by themselves at home. The audience is much younger and very female."
The minimalist approach goes against porn's historical tendency to cater to the male gaze by disposing of the gaze entirely. Some tracks feature gasping and female screams of pleasure; others are far less identifiable and might pass as entirely unrelated to sex were we not given a clue in their title.
The result is female-friendly, democratic, and inclusive, and followers are all too happy to join in. "I get too many submissions to cope with. Most of them are ladies masturbating... I think sex audios are my favorite thing to receive in my inbox." The format allows for exhibitionism with minimal chance of being identified: "People seem very relaxed about their privacy. It's a lot harder to identify audio of people having sex or masturbating compared with pictures or videos."
[body_image width='907' height='333' path='images/content-images/2015/02/12/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/02/12/' filename='audio-porn-tumblr-lends-mystery-to-masturbation-body-image-1423745401.png' id='26936']
Still from
audibleporn.tumblr
Getting off on audio is not without precedent: Rumors famously plagued Jane Birkin and Serge Gainsbourg's " Je T'aime... Moi Non Plus" that the orgasm sounds at the end of the track were real, leading to a radio ban of the track and ensuring its everlasting infamy. And on a skit on 1994's Ready to Die album the story has always been that, yes, that really is the sound of Biggie getting a blowjob.
The tracks leave listeners curious, and the blog's creator is no different. "People don't tell me much about the submissions, which is frustrating. I'd like to know more." And yet that has to be part of the fun: The idea that you could be listening to anyone, a unique and random cross section of Tumblr users.
It's hard not to ascribe a certain reactionary quality to the Audio Porn blog, standing against the very different, very visual porn blogs which already populate Tumblr. Taking away one key element makes it experimental, and political in a sense. It's amateur porn with no risk of exposure, no body politics and no identity, leaving just the immediacy and intimacy of sex. The threat of doxxing so often leveled at women in particular loses its currency.
It seems little coincidence that the blog receives audio of female-sounding voices most of all: The blog lets women negotiate amateur porn on their terms. Says the site's creator: "Running the blogs has just reminded me how much women do masturbate, regardless of whether they admit to it. I love scrolling through my followers and finding all these pretty innocent faces, and realizing how kinky they really are."
Follow Roisin on Twitter.
After Beck’s great Album of the Year Grammys upset over Beyoncé on Sunday, a SoundCloud artist going by “Beckyoncé Knowles-Hansen” has just the thing to bring peace to the pop music world. The olive branch consists of a surprisingly haunting track combining combining Bey’s 2008 anthem “Single Ladies” with Beck’s 1994 breakout hit “Loser” culminating in “Single Loser (Put a Beck on It)
The only thing missing from the track is a Yeezy verse, but I guess Kanye can’t interrupt everything.
I’ll admit, it’s a fun listen, but the Destiny’s Child /Fugazi mashup “Independent Room” put together by Party Ben is still the Beyoncé mashup to beat.Tell me it doesn’t kick you right in the teeth from the moment that Joe Lally bass line kicks in.
[h/t Complex]
Yesterday, the game development studio Daybreak went through massive layoffs, culling a large number of jobs in order to stay "profitable ." That's just business as usual in the video game industry, where it seems like there's a new round of layoffs every single week.
Nine out of 10 major pharmaceutical companies spent more on sales marketing than researching new drugs.
This chart, based on a previous report by the BBC, captures the spending differences:
John Oliver's segment on his Sunday show, Last Week Tonight, resurfaced these numbers. As Oliver pointed out, a lot of the marketing these companies do is specifically targeted toward physicians. In 2012, pharmaceutical companies spent more than $24 billion marketing to doctors.
"Drug companies are a bit like high-school boyfriends," Oliver said. "They're much more concerned with getting inside you than being effective once they're in there."
These spending numbers are at odds with a common claim by pharmaceutical companies that they need to patent drugs for extraordinary amounts of time to justify the massive amounts of money spent on research. Not only do many top drugmakers appear to spend more on advertising, but their profit margins, the BBC noted, are often larger than their research spending.
Bridgetbullshit
Turtle Rock Studios already revealed plans for Evolve's monstrous amount of downloadable content prior to the game's launch, but even that doesn't include the more than $130 worth of skins and cosmetic items up for sale.
The game's Xbox One DLC hub spans four pages and includes 44 items that can be purchased a la carte. A quick breakdown: 24 are priced at $1.99, nine priced at $2.99, eight priced at $4.99 and three priced at $6.99 for a total of $135.56.
None of that is included in the game's season pass or the DLC associated with it. With the $24.99 Evolve Season Pass, players gain access to three skins exclusive to the pack and four new hunters. Hunters will be available individually upon release for $7.49 each.
The regular edition...
Apart from being apparently soulless and generally having a pretty short fuse, what other unique talents and mutations have we gingers been blessed with?
Check out Hank Greens SciShow video explaining the truth about redheads.
Bridgeti missed this but at least i got to see a clip of ice-t bitching about campers.
When Law & Order: SVU takes on video games, the results are usually not pretty. Tonight's episode—a GamerGate special—was no exception.
Bridgetdon't hate on my childhood
First: a list of things that are great about Grim Fandango and will always be great about Grim Fandango. Consider this an attempt to appease the angry mob congregating outside the Kotaku Australia office 30 minutes after I hit publish on this article.
How long does it take to master a craft? How about 80 years? Because 109-year-old Australian Alfred Date has been knitting since the 1930s and his latest/most famous endeavor was making mini sweaters… for endangered penguins!
Back in 2013, Victoria’s Phillip Island Penguin Foundation asked for volunteers to make sweaters for the rare “little penguins.” Alfie, who has yet to learn to say no, pitched in. Knitted penguin jumpers play an important role in saving little penguins affected by oil pollution.
Father to 7, grandparent to 20, he’s not only been an active knitter, but also a sportsman, having played golf till his 90’s.
His secret for longevity? “Waking up every morning”. See, he’s a joker, too!
More info: Phillip Island Penguin Foundation (h/t: ninemsn, mashable)
Image credits: PenguinFoundation
Image credits: ninemsn
Image credits: ninemsn
NO I JUST OILED YOU DON’T GO IN THERE
BAD CAT
BAD
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BridgetSO VERY 90s WHERE IS MY BODY GLITTER
There are plenty of nature motifs in jewelry and fashion, but there’s something special about having actual pieces of bark and moss or dried flowers in your accessories. Sarah Smith, the Oregon-based artist behind Modern Flower Child, creates hand-made resin bracelets, bangles and earrings by forever preserving real feathers, flowers, seashells and other beautiful bits and pieces of nature in hard, crystal-clear resin.
She writes that it can take her 2-3 weeks to complete a single piece – “from design, to pouring resin, curing, to shaping the piece.“ Fortunately, she does take custom orders, and can create bracelets or bangles from plants or other decorative elements sent in by clients as well.
To see more of her work, check out her website and Etsy shop!
More info: Etsy | modernflowerchild.com | Facebook (h/t: colossal)
These bracelets are available on Etsy (Update: They’re sold out, but you can find similar crafts at this Etsy shop)
Boston has gotten a truly ridiculous amount of snow this winter, with a record 60.8 inches falling over the past 30 days.
There's now so much snow that the city has run out of places to put it, Mayor Martin Walsh told the Boston Globe. The lots where the city's bulldozers normally take the plowed snow are completely full. Sidewalks and roads are clogged:
A 10-foot path along the shore would be open all night along some beaches. [ 
2015 Boston winter, in one image: (via http://t.co/Gyp0Ox6NuV): pic.twitter.com/2zgULaB2qr
— Ben Swasey (@benswasey) February 9, 2015
So Walsh has offered up a controversial suggestion — let's dump some of the snow in Boston Harbor.
Snow is removed from the roof of Rotary Variety in the South Boston neighborhood on February 8, 2015. (Photo by Pat Greenhouse/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)
Normally, dumping plowed snow into waterways is considered a bad idea. After all, the snow that's been on roads and highways is filthy. It's mixed with chemical-laced road salt, motor oil, dog poop, trash. Not only that, but some of the snow could potentially freeze in chunks and threaten boat traffic.
The EPA doesn't regulate it, but state agencies often recommend against dumping snow in rivers or oceans. Massachusetts state law forbids coastal towns from doing so — unless the snow threatens public safety and they get an emergency waiver. There's a reason for this: Boston Harbor was notoriously polluted and overrun by sewage for many decades and the state had to spend billions cleaning it up.
Instead, most cities normally dump the snow in "snow farms" further inland so that the soil can filter out contaminants as it melts and runs toward the sea. During storms, cities like Boston and New York will also ship some of their snow to melters, which send the water to treatment plants to remove contaminants.
Crews use an Aero Snow Melter to dispatch mounds of snow at the Marine Industrial Park snow farm on February 8, 2015. (Photo by Pat Greenhouse/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)
But sometimes emergency situations override these concerns. When coastal cities accumulate an insane amount of snow, it can become dangerous. The snow piled up alongside roadways can get so high that drivers can't see. Pedestrians stop using sidewalks and start stumbling down streets.
Yeah, we have a bit of snow here in Boston. pic.twitter.com/kqc3qBpO4O
— about:virtualization (@aboutv12n) February 9, 2015
That's why, back in 2011, after another large snowstorm, state Sen. Jack Hart called for a "Boston snow party," suggesting the city dump the snow in the harbor. Boston also got a waiver under state law in 2013 to dump some snow into the harbor.
Now Boston — along with a number of coastal cities — may need to do so again. (Salem, Lowell, Lawrence, and Marblehead have already received waivers.) "I don't know if we'll get environmental push-back," Walsh said, according to the Globe. "At some point, public safety in my opinion comes up first."
Further reading: How America became addicted to road salt — and why it's a problem