More than a sign of sleepiness, yawning may cool the brain

people are less likely to yawn when the heat outdoors exceeds body temperature.

The cooling effect of yawning is thought to result from enhanced blood flow to the brain caused by stretching of the jaw, as well as countercurrent heat exchange with the ambient air that accompanies the deep inhalation.

The muscular exertions involved in laughter make you feel good

Laughter is regularly promoted as a source of health and well being, but it has been hard to pin down exactly why laughing until it hurts feels so good.

The answer, reports Robin Dunbar, an evolutionary psychologist at Oxford, is not the intellectual pleasure of cerebral humor, but the physical act of laughing. The simple muscular exertions involved in producing the familiar ha, ha, ha, he said, trigger an increase in endorphins, the brain chemicals known for their feel-good effect.

Homemade Lip Gloss

Aloe vera,coconut,vitamin e oil,scented oils if you want smell,respberry,strawberry juice or beet juice for color,coffee for darker color.

Being a guy, I don’t use lip gloss, but this is damn cool.

Why Hammocks Make Sleep Easier, Deeper

The scientists weren’t too surprised to find that people fell asleep faster when the bed rocked. But they were surprised at the big difference that rocking made in brain activity. Rocking increased the length of N2 sleep, a form of non-REM sleep that takes up about half of a good night’s rest. It also increased slow oscillations and “sleep spindles.” Sleep spindles are brief bursts of brain activity, which look like sudden up-and-down scribbles on an electroencephalogram.

“We were basically trying to find a scientific demonstration of this notion of rocking to sleep,”

The fact that the brain waves changed so much …was “totally unexpected.”

Sleep spindles are associated with tranquil sleep in noisy environments and may be a sign that the brain is trying to calm sleepers stuck in them. Spindles also have been linked with the ability to remember new information. And that is associated with the brain’s ability to rewire itself, known as brain plasticity.

Haha, it would be ridiculously fun to install an indoor hammock.

Missouri Shop Makes Cicada Ice Cream

Sparky’s employees collected cicadas from their backyards and brought them in to work on Wednesday. The cicadas are fully cooked through boiling, then covered in brown sugar and milk chocolate. The base ice cream is a brown sugar and butter flavor. The first batch of ice cream sold out before it was “placed in the display case.”

I’ve eaten insect dishes a few times - and they were really delicious. I know it’s hard to get over the mental idea, but once you’re used to it, it’s great. I wish that opportunities like this were more common.

Scientists cure cancer, but no one takes notice So this is pretty cool technology….  The method employs dichloroacetate, which is currently used to treat metabolic disorders. So, there is no concern of side effects or about their long term effects. This drug doesn’t require a patent, so anyone can employ it widely and cheaply compared to the costly cancer drugs produced by major pharmaceutical companies. Canadian scientists tested this dichloroacetate (DCA) on human’s cells; it killed lung, breast and brain cancer cells and left the healthy cells alone. It was tested on Rats inflicted with severe tumors; their cells shrank when they were fed with water supplemented with DCA.   via @mjdub citing dca
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Scientists cure cancer, but no one takes notice

So this is pretty cool technology….

 The method employs dichloroacetate, which is currently used to treat metabolic disorders. So, there is no concern of side effects or about their long term effects.

This drug doesn’t require a patent, so anyone can employ it widely and cheaply compared to the costly cancer drugs produced by major pharmaceutical companies.

Canadian scientists tested this dichloroacetate (DCA) on human’s cells; it killed lung, breast and brain cancer cells and left the healthy cells alone. It was tested on Rats inflicted with severe tumors; their cells shrank when they were fed with water supplemented with DCA. 

 via @mjdub citing dca

Mechanism by Which Exercise Reduces Stress

neurons born from running actually behave differently from other neurons. They are not as physiologically excitable, even in stressful situations. The Princeton scientists showed that after a rodent stress test, the hippocampi of running mice contained fewer proteins associated with neuron activity than the brains of sedentary mice, even though the runners had more neurons over all. The runners’ brain cells had remained, it seemed, more calm in the face of stress. Similarly, the scientists found, areas of the brain that would normally shoot stimulating messages to the hippocampus during and after stress were quieter in exercised mice.

Cool.