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http://jassberry.com/calendula-blast/

BUY CALENDULA BLAST | HOMEMADE SOAP

Take a blast of calendula* petals right before starting your day. We love this cheerful orange and yellow plant because it has anti-inflammatory, antimicrobial, astringent, antifungal, and antiviral properties which is perfect for your morning routine. Calendula petals improve skin hydration and firmness and has been shown to help wounds heal faster. Have these beautiful super flowers in your soap together with the same petals but infused in sweet almond oil and feel like in paradise with a delicious mango fragrance. *Avoid use if you are pregnant or breast-feeding. Ingredients: Water (Aqua), Olive Oil (Olea europaea), Sweet Almond Oil (Prunus dulcis), Calendula (Calendula officinalis), Sodium Hydroxide, Fragance.

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Well... this would have been helpful a couple weeks ago...

The Best Way to Pack a Fancy Hat In a Suitcase So It Doesn't Get Crushed 

 If you like to wear hats that are a little fancier than baseball caps, travelling with them can be tricky. This packing trick makes it easy to pack your easily crushed hats in your suitcase.

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What do you guys think about using smart drugs?

Sleep Drug Modafinil Affirmed by Scientists as a Safe and Effective Brain Booster 

Off-license users of modafinil—a drug developed to treat various sleep disorders—have known for some time that it doubles as a surprisingly effective cognitive enhancer, and with very few side effects. A new systematic review shows it’s true, raising some important ethical questions about the use of smart drugs.

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This is an X-Ray View of What's Happening at the Center of Our Galaxy

There’s a lot going on in this brand new X-ray view of our galaxy’s center—but just what does all that sound, fury, and color mean?

Basically it means action, much of it spurred by the black hole knocking things around and kicking up clouds of stardust at the very heart of our galaxy. The ESA used their XMM-Newton X-ray observatory to record this shot, in which they’ve identified exploding supernovae, stellar winds pushing around clouds, and a bubble of hot gas hovering over the black hole. They’re also seeing plenty of newly-formed stars (those red patches you see around the edges) bursting into focus.

Image: ESA

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Hummingbirds are mysteriously efficient feeders—and in this video we finally see why. Not only are they precise fliers, they’re precise and creative lickers. Watch a hummingbird’s tongue at work.

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http://jassberry.com/eucalyptus-spearmint/

EUCALYPTUS/SPEARMINT  | HOME MADE SOAP

Also known as the Resuscitate soap, this bar contains 100% pure eucalyptus essential oil which carries anti-inflammatory, antispasmodic, decongestant, deodorant, antiseptic, antibacterial, and stimulating properties. Our bars also containspearmint leaf powder which has anaesthetic and counterirritant properties that will therapy-ate your senses releiving you from headaches, stress, fatigue, itching and nervous conditions. Get this super bar for your most vulnerable moments.

Ingredients: Water (Aqua), Coconut Oil (Cocos nucifera), Olive Oil (Olea europaea), Palm Oil (Elaeis guineensis), Spearmint (Mentha spicata), Eucalyptus (Eucalyptus globulus), Sodium Hydroxide.

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ESA Confirms Rosetta's Landing Site On Rubber Ducky Comet

After more than 10 years of traveling through space, the Rosetta spacecraft -- the first space vehicle to travel to a comet -- is finally taking a load off. Well, part of it is, anyway.

This morning, the European Space Agency confirmed the landing site for Rosetta’s lander, Philae, on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Out of five potential areas for touchdown, a region known as Site J was picked for the historic landing, which is currently scheduled for November 12. Site J is located on the smaller of the comet’s “lobes” (or the “head” of the rubber ducky-shaped comet).

The landing will mark the first time a spacecraft has touched down on a comet. But the mission won’t exactly be a cakewalk. There’s still a lot more to be done before the landing can happen, and comet 67P’s weird shape means there’s a significant chance the 220-pound lander will more crash than land.

Philae 

An artist's rendering of Philae touching down on 67P 

ESA/ATG medialab

On November 11, the day before the expected touchdown, the flight dynamics team will have to make a series of “Go/No-Go” decisions in order to determine that Rosetta is where it needs to be to deliver Philae safely. Since Rosetta arrived at the comet on August 6, it has been moving closer to the comet body every day. Right now, it’s about 10 kilometers away from 67P, which is only 4 kilometers wide itself. But on landing day, the spacecraft will need to be 22.5 kilometers away from the comet’s center.

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Elephants Able To Detect Rainstorms 150 Miles Away

Lions may be the kings of the animal world, but at least elephants could make for spunky meteorologists. New research is revealing that elephants have a radar-like spidey sense, capable of detecting an approaching rainstorm up to 150 miles off.

While this may seem like an impractical talent, researchers say elephants' weather-predicting could help human conservationists save the animals from poachers.

The elephants’ abilities are rooted in their excellent hearing skills. Elephants can hear sounds atvery low frequencies, even those below the human range of hearing. It’s one of the ways theycommunicate with each other. Thunderstorms also produce low-frequency sound, whether it’s a thunderclap or the pitter-patter of rain hitting the Earth. Scientists aren’t sure which element elephants are listening to, but they know the animals are detecting some signature component of oncoming rain.

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This Woman Sees 100 Times More Colors Than The Average Person

When Concetta Antico looks at a leaf, she sees much more than just green. “Around the edge I’ll see orange or red or purple in the shadow; you might see dark green but I’ll see violet, turquoise, blue,” she said. “It’s like a mosaic of color.”

Antico doesn’t just perceive these colors because she’s an artist who paints in the impressionist style. She’s also a tetrachromat, which means that she has more receptors in her eyes to absorb color. The difference lies in Antico's cones, structures in the eyes that are calibrated to absorb particular wavelengths of light and transmit them to the brain. The average person has three cones, which enables him to see about one million colors. But Antico has four cones, so her eyes are capable of picking up dimensions and nuances of color—an estimated 100 million of them—that the average person cannot. “It’s shocking to me how little color people are seeing,” she said.

Although tetrachromats have more receptors in their eyes, their brains are wired the same way as a person with normal vision. So how can a brain like Antico’s change to see more colors? Like anything else, practice makes perfect, even when it comes to neural pathways. 

For years, researchers weren’t sure tetrachromacy existed. If it did, they stipulated, it could only be found in women. This is because of the genes behind color vision. People who have regular color vision have three cones, tuned to the wavelengths of red, green, and blue. These are connected to the X chromosome—men have one, but women have two. Mutations in the X chromosome cause a person to perceive more or less color, which is why men more commonly have congenital colorblindness than women (if their one X chromosome has a mutation). But the theory stood that if a woman received two mutated X chromosomes, she could have four cones instead of the usual three.

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Suspended Animation In Space Travel: What Scientists Still Need To Learn

The first astronauts who head off to Mars might make the entire 180-day journey while they’re fast asleep. In a NASA-commissioned study on human stasis, aerospace engineers at SpaceWorks have found that the benefits of placing a crew in suspended animation for the duration of the journey could be legion. Without living spaces or kitchen facilities, the ship carrying the crew could be lighter and smaller. With everyone basically in hibernation, with a lower metabolic rate, future missions can reduce consumables like food and water by up to 70 percent. And having an unconscious crew also reduces the grueling boredom and chances of personality clashes before humanity can complete the small step/giant leap onto the Red Planet. 

It sounds practically perfect in every way, but there’s still a considerable amount of time and research that needs to happen before we send astronauts off to Mars via the shores of sleep. The technology that SpaceWorks is looking at is a form of therapeutic hypothermia that will drop the temperature of the astronauts’ bodies by just 5 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit, reducing their metabolism and putting them in a kind of hibernation. “It doesn’t take much to get the body to start slowing down,” says John Bradford, President of SpaceWorks Enterprises. 

Though it involves chilly temperatures, therapeutic hypothermia is a hot topic in the medical world, with numerous published studies and trials in the works, all trying to buy trauma patients an increased chance of recovery on the surgeon’s table.  Bradford says that SpaceWorks has been paying close attention to the studies coming out of the medical world, and that they think therapeutic hypothermia could be used safely on interplanetary flight, once some of the medical concerns of such an endeavor are studied and addressed.   

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What Happens After Someone Survives Ebola?

While most of the recent coverage of the ongoing Ebola outbreak has focused on rising death tolls and a few infected U.S. citizens, other segments of the population have passed mostly unnoticed from the harsh glare of the media spotlight: Survivors, and those who are seemingly immune to Ebola. 

People who survive Ebola can lead normal lives post-recovery, though occasionally they can suffer inflammatory conditions of the joints afterwards, according to CBS. Recovery times can vary, and so can the amount of time it takes for the virus to clear out of the system. The World Health Organization found that the virus can reside in semen for up to seven weeks after recovery. Survivors are generally assumed to be immune to the particular strain they are infected by, and are able to help tend to others infected with the same strain. What isn't clear is whether or not a person is immune to other strains of Ebola, or if their immunity will last.  

As with most viral infections, patients who recover from Ebola end up with Ebola-fighting antibodies in their blood, making their blood a valuable (if controversial) treatment option for others who catch the infection. Kent Brantly, one of the most recognizable Ebola survivors, has donated more than a gallon of his blood to other patients. The plasma of his blood, which contains the antibodies, is separated out from the red blood cells, creating what’s known as a convalescent serum, which can then be given to a patient as a transfusion. The hope is that the antibodies in the serum will boost the patient’s immune response, attacking the virus, and allowing the body to recover. 

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MIT Students Claim Astronauts Will Starve On 'Mars One' Mission

PhD students at MIT published a study this week that seems to debunk Mars One's plan to land humans on Mars by 2025 using existing technology. They say that without dramatic improvements in equipment life, the space colonists, who would have no way to return to Earth, could starve to death.

The students, part of a research group specializing in large-scale multi-billion dollar space programs, used publically available information about the Mars One mission plans to simulate the trip to Mars. They say the problems they uncovered surprised them.

"We tried to keep a completely open mind going into it," says Sydney Do, one of the researchers on the study. He says the idea of space colonization excites him.

Mars One is looking for 25 to 40 pioneers to leave home forever and live out their lives on the red planet, by growing food and using resources from the Martian environment. The non-profit hasrecieved more than 200,000 applicants, and there are plans to fund their Mars journey with a global reality show.

The MIT research was conducted to build a framework for analyzing other space colonization plans. But flaws in Mars One's plan jumped out as the students ran the numbers.

Mars One expects to grow crops indoors on Mars. Plants produce oxygen--and too much in a closed environment could feed oxygen-sucking fires. Farming would require machines that separate and vent oxygen without losing nitrogen vital to keep up air pressure. But the technology needed to to keep oxygen under control has never been tested beyond our planet, and Do says hardware tested on Earth can fail in surprising ways after liftoff.

A urine recycling system installed on the International Space Station in 2009 returned drinkable water with 90 percent efficiency in NASA laboratories. But on the ISS it broke down. Astronauts lose bone mass in zero-gravity, dumping calcium into their waste, and those deposits gummed up the recycler's works. The system is up and running again, but at only 70 percent capacity. On a trip with no return flight and limited resupply, such failures could be deadly, especially when they involve maintaining oxygen supply.

But Mars One CEO Bas Lansdorp says the students used incorrect and incomplete data for their study.

"I've talked to very knowledgeable people--experts with companies like Lockheed Martin--who tell me these technologies will work," he tells Popular Science. He says he hasn't had the time to read the research all the way through, but has looked at the conclusions.

Lansdorp seized on the excess oxygen problem as an example of misplaced alarmism in the research. "This technology has been widely tested on Earth," he says, "and it's very well understood." Similar equipment for scrubbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere has been used in space for years.

But Lansdorp did not have a solution for what Do called the more serious issue uncovered in the research: replacement parts. The students used the failure rates of parts on the ISS to estimate the need for spares in a Mars colony. Without a resupply mission coming for another two years, a huge portion of the mass included in the initial launch would have to be extra materials.

"They are correct," Lansdorp says, "The major challenge of Mars One is keeping everything up and running." Repairing equipment and suits on Mars is a problem Mars One has yet to solve. Unmanned supply missions in advance of a second human launch are expected to land on the red planet a few weeks after the original colonists arrive, and Lansdorp suggests the first crew could take those stocks in a pinch.

"We don't believe what we have designed is the best solution. It's a good solution," he says. He adds that Mars One has done its own research with better results, but is not an aerospace company. He hopes future feasibility studies from groups like Lockheed Martin will provide answers. In the meantime, their in-house data is under wraps.

"We'd love to see what data he has and update the model," Do says.

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Researchers Make One-Atom-Thin Electrical Generator

How thin can an electrical generator possibly be? Thanks to a study published yesterday in Nature, the answer is about as thin as possible. Using molybdenum disulfide, researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology and Columbia Engineering proved that a layer just an atom thick can generate an electric charge.

The key to this charge is piezoelectricity, or the electric generated from pressure, usually from stretching or compressing a material. With the molybdenum disulfide, the researchers found that it generated electricity in layers that were an odd number of atoms thick, including layers as thin as one atom.

From the abstract:

A single monolayer flake strained by 0.53% generates a peak output of 15 mV and 20 pA, corresponding to a power density of 2 mW m−2 and a 5.08% mechanical-to-electrical energy conversion efficiency. In agreement with theoretical predictions, the output increases with decreasing thickness and reverses sign when the strain direction is rotated by 90°. more

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A Few Questions For Steven Johnson: Why Innovation Is In Everything

Journalist and author, Steven Johnson is a sucker for innovation. He's covered it in various forms in his book Where Good Ideas Come From, and in The Ghost Map, which followed the discovery of the cure to cholera. Last night, his new show for PBS, How We Got to Now, premiered. Through six episodes, divided into six innovation themes—Clean, Cold, Sound, Light, Glass, and Time—Johnson tells the story of the modern world through the inventions that made it possible.

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At Last: Technology To Make Injections Painless

Scared of needles? You aren’t alone. According to some estimates, as many as 1 in every 10 people are frightened of needles, and experts fear that the fear of pain may deter people from getting important injections at the doctor’s office. 

But what if getting a shot didn’t hurt? That’s the idea behind new research presented at the annual meeting of the American Society of Anesthesiologists, which showed how vibrations and pressure applied to the injection site right before a shot could reduce pain. 

“Our early research suggests that using a device that applies pressure and vibration before the needle stick could help significantly decrease painful sensations by closing the ‘gate’ that sends pain signals to the brain,” lead author of the study William MacKay said in a press release.  

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Lockheed's Fusion Promise: What We Know So Far

Researchers at Lockheed Martin made headlines this week with the announcement that they are on the fast track to building a nuclear fusion reactor. But experts responded with skepticism.

Fusion promises unlimited clean, renewable energy without the nasty byproducts of the uranium-splitting fission that drives today's nuclear plants. The problem is figuring out how to contain it. For hydrogen atoms to smash together with enough force to fuse, they must jitter and bounce with many times the heat of the sun's core. Tom McGuire, the Lockheed project lead, tells Popular Science their reactor will run at 200 million degrees. Matter that hot leaves the simple world of solids, liquids, and gasses to form a plasma. No solid vessel will contain that material, so fusion generators resort to suspending the roiling mass with powerful electromagnets. The best-funded fusion project in the world, called the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), takes the brute force approach. It's fusion chamber, or "tokamak," stands 100 feet tall and, at 23,000 tons, has about the same mass as a tank battalion. If it's ever finished, it's expected to cost tens of billions of dollars.

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Scientists Discover the Ideal Dance Moves for Men

Before heading out for a night on the town, guys might want to make sure they have their dance moves down. A recent study showed women rated these particular dance moves higher than others.

The study—conducted by Northumbria University in Newcastle, UK, and published in Biology Letters—found that women rated male dancers higher when they performed large, variable movements of their head, neck, and torso. Male dancers were also considered "good" dancers if they displayed fast bending and twisting of the right knee. Study lead Nick Neave, from the School of Life Sciences at Northumbria University, used motion-capture technology to record different males dancing in different ways. To avoid bias, when the females were asked to identify which dancers showed strong dancing ability, they only saw the plain grey avatars you can see in the above video from Business Insider's YouTube channel.