The woman in question, a teacher, had gone to use the facilities at the airport before boarding a flight back in Saudi Arabia.

Quite how long she stayed in the toilet remains unclear. What is certain is she emerged to discover her husband had vanished without trace. The woman, who had paid for the holiday, began a desperate search of the airport and grew increasingly concerned that something terrible had happened to him. [...]

When he arrived at his destination, he calmly told relatives his new wife was still in Malaysia. His bride was not so calm about his behaviour. She has demanded an immediate divorce.

Link

The researchers, from the University of Waterloo and the University of New Brunswick, asked people with high and low self-esteem to say "I am a lovable person."

They then measured the participants’ moods and their feelings about themselves. In the low self-esteem group, those who repeated the mantra felt worse afterwards compared with others who did not. However people with high self-esteem felt better after repeating the positive self-statement - but only slightly.

The psychologists then asked the study participants to list negative and positive thoughts about themselves. They found that, paradoxically, those with low self-esteem were in a better mood when they were allowed to have negative thoughts than when they were asked to focus exclusively on affirmative thoughts.

Writing in the journal, the researchers suggest that, like overly positive praise, unreasonably positive self-statements, such as "I accept myself completely," can provoke contradictory thoughts in individuals with low self-esteem. Such negative thoughts can overwhelm the positive thoughts.

Link

What do you think this little guy is dreaming about? Feilds of food and fluffy bedding? Whatever it is, it certainly seems to be delicious and fun.

Link Via Cute Overload

For those of you who love animals in costumes, WebEcoist has a collection of 20 great pet cosumes. There’s bunnies, kitties, doggies and more. I personally perfer the Harry Potter cat above. What’s your favorite?

Link

Link

BuzzFeed has the video clip: Link [embedded YouTube]

Just in time for Fourth of July, here’s American Bacon by Chris Hanson of Pocket Bacon. Who says that pork products can’t be patriotic?

If the American Bacon above isn’t for you, then perhaps this is more your alley: a collection of Fourth of July covers of The Saturday Evening Post throughout the decades: Link

Happy Fourth of July, everyone!

The device scans brain waves through sensors in a cap. In 125 thousandths of a second, the brain-controlled wheelchair can turn a thought into a command to turn the chair left or right or to move it forward. To stop, however, the user must puff out his or her cheek, activating a sensor placed there. [...]

To best pilot the wheelchair, don’t try too hard, suggested RIKEN scientist Andrzej Cichocki, leader of the project.

"It works best if you imagine playing the piano with either hand while turning the wheelchair or, for instance, jogging, to [make the chair] move forward," Cichocki said. "After two to four weeks of training, the accuracy is nearly perfect and it becomes effortless."

Link

Say Peru and the wods Machu and Picchu will often spring to mind as the tourist destination.  Yet the north of the country, often neglected by tourists, has remarkable sites of its own.  From Chan Chan, the biggest adobe city ever built to the mysterious forest fortress of Kuelap, the north of this country is full of amazing reminders of its past.  Pyramids, Mausoleums and surf boards with a two thousand year history beckon.

Built around CE 850, the city was built by the Chimor civilization. It was conquered by the Incas in 1470 and it is thought that at its height over thirty thousand people inhabited the city, close to the Pacific Ocean. The site covers around twenty square kilometers - its vastness will take your breath away. Although some parts of the city are off limits (there are still threats from looters as well as the ravages of earthquakes and our old friend El Niño) the Tschudi Complex, open to the public, will more than sate your appetite for history and archeology at this remarkable place.

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by taliesyn30.

Many people who meditate regularly have better focus and control over their emotions, reduced levels of stress, and
bolstered immune systems, but does meditation do anything to the brain structure itself?

Eileen Luders and colleagues at UCLA used MRI to scan the brains of people who meditate to find out. They examined 44 people (22 control subjects and 22 who had practiced
various forms of meditation) who had practiced an average of 24 years. Meditators showed significantly larger volumes in regions known for regulating emotions.

The researchers found significantly larger cerebral measurements in meditators compared with controls, including larger volumes of the right hippocampus and increased gray matter in the right orbito-frontal cortex, the right thalamus and the left inferior temporal lobe. There were no regions where controls had significantly larger volumes or more gray matter than meditators.

Because these areas of the brain are closely linked to emotion, Luders said, “these might be the neuronal underpinnings that give meditators’ the outstanding ability to regulate their emotions and allow for well-adjusted responses to whatever life throws their way.”

Link - via holeinthedonut

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by baweibel.

It was one of the most contentious debates in the history of environmental issues: what was causing wild frogs to develop with missing limbs?

During the late 1980’s and early 90’s, researchers received reports of wild frogs being found with missing and or extra limbs.  Some felt predatory insects were to blame, and others thought it was caused by environmental degradation such as thinning of the ozone layer.

Biology professor Stanley Sessions and other researchers were able to determine that a parasitic flatworm disrupted the developing structure of a tadpole, leading to extra limbs.  However, what was causing limb loss was unknown until recently.

Sessions and colleague Brandon Ballengee of the University of Plymouth, U.K., found the apparent answer during one of their recent collaborations.

As part of this work, Ballengee and Richard Sunter, the official Recorder of Reptiles and Amphibians in Yorkshire, spent time during the summers of 2006 to 2008 surveying the occurrence of deformities in wild amphibians at three ponds in the county.

In all, they found that between 1.2% and 9.8% of tadpoles or metamorphosed toads at each location had hind limb deformities. Three had missing eyes.

“We were very surprised when we found so many metamorphic toads with abnormal limbs, as it was thought to be a North American phenomenon,” says Ballengee.

While surveying, Ballengee also discovered a range of natural predators he suspected could be to blame, including stickleback fish, newts, diving beetles, water scorpions and predatory dragonfly nymphs.

So Ballengee and Sessions decide to test how each predator preyed upon the tadpoles, by placing them together in fish tanks in the lab.

None did, except three species of dragonfly nymph.

Crucially though, the nymphs rarely ate the tadpoles whole. More often than not, they would grab the tadpole and chew at a hind limb, often removing it altogether.

“Once they grab the tadpole, they use their front legs to turn it around, searching for the tender bits, in this case the hind limb buds, which they then snip off with their mandibles,” says Sessions.

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Geekazoid.

Photographer Thomas Birke went to Japan in 2008 to take photos of "the future" - and he didn’t go away disappointed. Thomas’ large format photography reveals how much Tokyo resembles the dystopian future city in Blade Runner.

Dark Roasted Blend has the exclusive: Link

The Standard Grill in the Standard Hotel in New York has a very unusual floor: it’s made of pennies! I guess if you’re a couple of pennies short on tips, just pry them off the floor!

Link

In 1946, famed surrealist artist Salvador Dali and Walt Disney became unlikely collaborators, and set to work on a short film called Destino.

The project was ultimately abandoned with less than 20 seconds of film shot, but six decades later modern Disney artists completed the film using Dali’s original storyboards. The result is easily the strangest thing to come out of the Disney studios since… well, probably ever.

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by gregs.

The Oops Design Awards have taken it upon themselves to do something that should have been done a long time ago -they have created an award for the ugliest, silliest and most useless product designs of the year. As you may have guessed, the lamp above is in the running for ugliest. It is the Oswine Lamp designed by Johanness Hemann. The nominees gallery actually has a few items I like, but for the most part it’s brimming with hillariously hideous items.

Link

Unlike her three husbands, Veitch says, the Mercury has “never lied to me, never cheated on me, and I can always depend on her.”

Veitch is on her seventh Midas muffler, and thank you, gentlemen, for the lifetime warranty. She’s had three sets of Sears shock absorbers, also through a lifetime warranty. And though the number seems high, she claims to have had 16 free batteries, courtesy of J.C. Penney and Firestone.

“She’s demonstrating the perfect way to take care of a car,” says Mike Hardie, director of global quality and productivity for Ford Motor Co., and that’s what makes her a menace.

“If everyone did that,” he says, “we’d never sell another one, so don’t spread it around too far.”

If the engine ever goes out, Veitch may be in trouble, because they are no longer manufactured. Link -via the Presurfer

The meat-eating Banjo has been dubbed Australia’s answer to the feared Velociraptor.

“The cheetah of his time, Banjo was light and agile,” said Queensland Museum paleantologist Scott Hocknull, who is among the scientists being credited with the discoveries.

“He could run down most prey with ease over open ground. His most distinguishing feature was three large slashing claws on each hand. Unlike some theropods that have small arms (think T. rex), Banjo was different; his arms were a primary weapon.

“He’s Australia’s answer to velociraptor, but many times bigger and more terrifying.”

The bones will eventually go on display to the public. Link -via Fark

Researchers in Japan and Spain have made an interesting discovery:  the Argentine ant, originally native to South America, is now found on every continent except Antartica thanks to humans.  This super colony may be the biggest of its kind in the insect world.  Even more fascinating is that these super colonies that thrive across Europe, America, and Japan, may in fact be one mega colony.

But it now appears that billions of Argentine ants around the world all actually belong to one single global mega-colony.

The team selected wild ants from the main European super-colony, from another smaller one called the Catalonian super-colony which lives on the Iberian coast, the Californian super-colony and from the super-colony in west Japan, as well as another in Kobe, Japan.

They then matched up the ants in a series of one-on-one tests to see how aggressive individuals from different colonies would be to one another.

Ants from the smaller super-colonies were always aggressive to one another. So ants from the west coast of Japan fought their rivals from Kobe, while ants from the European super-colony didn’t get on with those from the Iberian colony.

But whenever ants from the main European and Californian super-colonies and those from the largest colony in Japan came into contact, they acted as if they were old friends.

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Geekazoid.

It goes without saying that the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum has some of the neatest collection of planes in the world, but this one is particularly intriguing: fly-powered aircrafts built by famed aircraft modelered Frank Ehling in the 1970s.

The AirSpace Blog has more:

Designed and built by famed aircraft modeler Frank Ehling in the 1970s, they are the smallest flying models the Museum owns. But more unusual than their size is that they are powered by flies – yes, you heard right, houseflies, the insect. Constructed from balsa wood and red tissue paper, the one-fly design has a wingspan of two inches, and the two-fly version, which features a delta-wing design, is four inches wide. In both cases, contact cement was used to attach the live powerplant to the fuselage.

Link

If you’re skeptical, there’s a video clip of another fly-powered airplane, this time by inventor Thomas Fetterman (oh, you can also buy the kit from his website)

Think your health care plan is bad? Consider yourself lucky that you don’t live back in the middle ages when "advanced" surgeries were done using these 20 seriously scary surgical tools. Yikes.

This one to the left is the Arrow Remover:

Arrow Remover - Not much is known about this tool, but it is hypothesized that it was inserted into the wound in a contracted position, with the central shaft used to grasp the arrow. The blades, which appear to have their sharp edges facing outward, were then expanded using the scissor-like handles…

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by yugosakimi.

By tracking individual cells in genetically modified salamanders, researchers have found an unexpected explanation for their seemingly magical ability to regrow lost limbs.

Rather than having their cellular clocks fully reset and reverting to an embryonic state, cells in the salamanders’ stumps became slightly less mature versions of the cells they’d been before. The findings could inspire research into human tissue regeneration.

“The cells don’t have to step as far back as we thought they had to, in order to regenerate a complicated thing like a limb,” said study co-author Elly Tanaka, a Max Planck Institute cell biologist. “There’s a higher chance that human or mammalian cells can be induced into doing the same thing.”

Researchers are hopeful, but also aware that early experiments in replicating this cell process can lead to uncontrolled growth, meaning cancers. Link

Consumerist has a great list article with 10 ads you’d never see today. In it, you’ll learn how the World Trade Centers could have been saved by asbestos, why you should wrap your children in cellophane and why doctors love Camel cigarettes. Hilarity ensues.

Link

One-year-old Tango became the star of the discussion programme after finding his way into the school hall where it was being recorded.

He ducked under a desk and headed towards the panel. At first, Dimbleby and guests including employment minister Jim Knight and Tory security spokesman Dame Pauline Neville-Jones were oblivious to his presence.

But as he pawed under the table he caught the eye of LibDem MP Julia Goldsworthy, who in astonishment mouthed the word ‘cat’ at the production team.

Meanwhile, Jackie Ellery of Newquay, England hadn’t seen her cat Tango in hours. As she wondered about his whereabouts, she sat down to watch TV.

She said: ‘My friend phoned me to say, “Have you seen your cat on the telly?” And there he was.

‘It’s lovely - he’s a mischievous cat anyway and because we live so close to the school he’s often in the school grounds.’

Tango, who returned to his owner that night, has since become something of a celebrity. Mrs Ellery said: ‘I’ve even been asked for his paw-tograph.’

Link - via Arbroath

The video:

[YouTube Clip]

This week’s collaboration with the What is it? Blog is super easy (maybe) - can you guess what the object above is used for?

Two prizes this week: a free Neatorama T-shirt for the first correct guess and another one for the funniest, but incorrect one. Place your guess in the comment section - one guess per comment, though you can enter as many as you can think of. Post no URLs or weblinks - let others play (if you do, you’ll forfeit the prize).

For more clues, check out the What is it? Blog - Have fun and good luck!

Update 7/3/09 - the answer is: A golf ball marker, according to the patent:

The part with the black handle is used to apply the ink, patent number 1,281,063..

Congrats to the winners: Jared, who got it right first, and Sam Saturday, who got me crackin’ with “pocket mohel”!