Neatorama

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• Duck Tape Prom Dress Has Coronavirus Art Theme
• Why Did Men Stop Wearing Hats?
• Honey Is Making A Comeback As A Treatment For Wounds
• Florida Woman Sues Neighbor, Seeks Paternity Test On Her Goats
• Why Birds Can Fly Over Mount Everest
• Husky Ancestors Started Hauling Sleds for Humans Nearly 10,000 Years Ago
• SlothBot is Both Cute and Useful
• Questionable Relationship Advice
• Why Americans Eat Dessert for Breakfast
• LEGO Relief Map

Duck Tape Prom Dress Has Coronavirus Art Theme Posted: 26 Jun 2020 11:36 PM PDT For twenty years now, Duck brand tape has held the Stuck at Prom competition, in which scholarships are up for grabs for the best prom dress and tuxedo made from Duck tape. The 2020 competition is now closed for entries, but the winners have not been determined yet. One dress that sticks out enough to go viral is the one you see above. Peyton Manker had never sewn a dress before, but she got some tape and went to work. When her prom was canceled, she decided to finish the dress, and use it as a canvas for COVID-19 themed art. So, the COVID-themed duct tape prom dress features a number of details that reference all the things that happened during the lockdown. This includes imagery of zoom classes and online graduations, people in masks and those sneezing, people running away from the coronavirus, a call to flatten the curve, and also an image honoring essential and front-line workers. Besides the predominantly blue and gold gown, Peyton also crafted a duct tape mask, a coronavirus shaped purse, and a number of smaller accessories like a hair clip and a wristband, all adorned with viral imagery.   Manker estimates she spent around 400 hours on the dress. See all the images of the dress, accessories, and art details at Facebook. See more Duck tape prom attire at the Stuck at Prom gallery. (Image credit: Suzy Smith Manker)

Why Did Men Stop Wearing Hats? Posted: 26 Jun 2020 11:35 PM PDT For thousands of years, men wore hats in public, first for protection, but soon after for decoration. The hat design signaled a man's status and fashion sense, but could also broadcast his profession, affiliation, wealth, or ancestry.   So how is it that mens hats, after playing such an active, evolving role on both cultural and political levels, seemed to virtually disappear from everyday society? There are a few facts, stats, and theories that come together to explain their gradual retreat from popularity. For one, the rise and evolution of the automobile meant men didn't need to cover up their heads as much for protection from the elements. The Hat Research Foundation (HRF), which was apparently a real thing, also found that 19 % of men in 1947 who didn't wear hats said it was because they triggered the trauma of war associated with their uniforms. There were other reasons, but the real point of the article is to celebrate the history of men's hats in all their former glory, in pictures that span more than a century, at Messy Nessy Chic.

Honey Is Making A Comeback As A Treatment For Wounds Posted: 26 Jun 2020 11:34 PM PDT Back in ancient times, humans liked to put various things on their open wounds, many of them strange (like moldy bread), if not disgusting (like animal poop). Aside from these things, they also put honey on their wounds, and this sweet substance seems to be making a medical comeback after thousands of years. … there's one type of honey that researchers have paid the most attention to, because its bacteria-killing arsenal goes beyond hydrogen peroxide. Manuka honey comes from honeybees that feast on the nectar from manuka flowers in New Zealand. Carter says manuka honey's antibacterial properties stem from a special chemical in manuka flowers called dihydroxyacetone, or DHA. In honey, DHA becomes methylglyoxal (MGO), which is a sugar that attacks undesirable bacteria. Humans and other organisms have a well-developed enzyme system that protects them from MGO, while bacteria don't fare as well. Just like the way ancient humans used honey, scientists have primarily focused on using honey to treat wounds. "There is a lot of scientific evidence that shows that honey allows complex wounds to heal," says Edwar Fuentes Pérez, a biochemist at the University of Chile. So, not only is honey good for the body when ingested, it's also good for healing wounds! More details about this over at Discover Magazine. (Image Credit: Sage Ross/ Wikimedia Commons)

Florida Woman Sues Neighbor, Seeks Paternity Test On Her Goats Posted: 26 Jun 2020 11:33 PM PDT A Florida woman named Kris Hedstrom has filed a lawsuit against her neighbor, Heather Dayner. Hedstrom seeks a paternity test for five Nigerian dwarf goats — Bella, Gigi, Rosie, Zelda and Margoat — that she bought from Heather for $900. According to the lawsuit, Hedstrom believed the goats… could be registered with the American Dairy Goat Association, a group that records goat pedigrees. Registered goats have higher values than unregistered goats. Dayner, who has been selling goats at Baxter Lane Farm for about 10 years, typically provides information to her clients so they can register their animals themselves. She said the father goat was registered, but the Tampa Bay Times reports the American Dairy Goat Association rejected Hedstrom's application to register the babies because Dayner is not an active member. [...] Dayner offered to refund the money in exchange for the goats. Apparently, Hedstrom had been calling the police on Dayner constantly for three months straight and even trespassed on Dayner's farm. What are your thoughts about this one? (Image Credit: HoppingRabbit34/ Wikimedia Commons)

Why Birds Can Fly Over Mount Everest Posted: 26 Jun 2020 11:32 PM PDT Walter Murch was contemplating bar-headed geese. These geese spend their summers in Kazakhstan or Mongolia, and their winters in India. To migrate, they must fly over the Himalayan Mountains. That's a feat that requires world-class lungs, so Murch decided to write a story for his granddaughter explaining how they work. All mammals, including us, breathe in through the same opening that we breathe out. Can you imagine if our digestive system worked the same way? What if the food we put in our mouths, after digestion, came out the same way? It doesn't bear thinking about! Luckily, for digestion, we have a separate in and out. And that's what the birds have with their lungs: an in point and an out point. They also have air sacs and hollow spaces in their bones. When they breathe in, half of the good air (with oxygen) goes into these hollow spaces, and the other half goes into their lungs through the rear entrance. When they breathe out, the good air that has been stored in the hollow places now also goes into their lungs through that rear entrance, and the bad air (carbon dioxide and water vapor) is pushed out the front exit. So it doesn't matter whether birds are breathing in or out: Good air is always going in one direction through their lungs, pushing all the bad air out ahead of it. How did birds get such great lungs? They inherited them from dinosaurs. Birds are dinosaurs! When I was growing up in the 1940s, there was a category in biology called Aves, which meant birds. But scientists have now folded Aves into a category called Dinosauria, and those dinosauria, like pigeons and seagulls and geese, are flying all around us today. If you want to know what a dinosaur probably tasted like, eat some chicken! But how did dinosaurs evolve the great lungs they eventually bequeathed to birds? The answer involves plants, gravity, fungus, and oxygen. Oh yeah, and dinosaurs. The entire story, delightfully told at an understandable level, is at Nautilus.  -via Damn Interesting (Image credit: Rodrick rajive lal)

Husky Ancestors Started Hauling Sleds for Humans Nearly 10,000 Years Ago Posted: 26 Jun 2020 07:20 PM PDT It appears that DNA evidence shows that huskies, malamutes, and sled dogs descended from Siberian wolves. The genomes of modern Greenland sled dogs were compared to a 9,500-year-old sled dog found in Siberia and a 33,000-year-old Siberian wolf. Curiously, the genomes suggest that sled dogs did not descend from any lineage of American wolves.   The site at Zokhov Island that yielded the 9,500-year-old sled dog genome also includes physical evidence of sleds and harness materials. Bone analysis has led one team of scientists to suggest that the site may represent the earliest-known evidence for dog breeding, with sledding as a goal, and that the process may have started as long as 15,000 years ago. The sled dogs' genetic history aligns with archaeological evidence. Together, the findings suggest the dogs have been established for nearly 10,000 years and have spent those many millennia doing the same things they do today. What were sled dogs doing back then? Evidence shows that they were helping to transport large game, such as polar bears and reindeer, to human communities. Read more about the study of the lineage of modern sled dogs at Smithsonian. (Image credit: Markus Trienke)

SlothBot is Both Cute and Useful Posted: 26 Jun 2020 07:20 PM PDT Magnus Egerstedt of Georgia Tech's School of Electrical and Computer Engineering watched sloths in Costa Rica and was inspired to create a robot that was just as energy-efficient, if a bit slow. The result is SlothBot, a robot that slowly monitors the environment at the Atlanta Botanical Garden. Built by robotics engineers at the Georgia Institute of Technology to take advantage of the low-energy lifestyle of real sloths, SlothBot demonstrates how being slow can be ideal for certain applications. Powered by solar panels and using innovative power management technology, SlothBot moves along a cable strung between two large trees as it monitors temperature, weather, carbon dioxide levels, and other information in the Garden's 30-acre midtown Atlanta forest. All that, and it's cute, too! -via Laughing Squid

Questionable Relationship Advice Posted: 26 Jun 2020 12:38 PM PDT Face it, girl, he's just not that into you. Julie Nolke (previously at Neatorama) plays three friends discussing a man. I've heard this exact conversation both among friends and in my head, and the upshot from my many years of experience is to listen to the Julie on the left. Contains NSFW language. -via reddit

Why Americans Eat Dessert for Breakfast Posted: 26 Jun 2020 12:38 PM PDT Johnny Harris goes on a rant about the standard American breakfast, but it has a lot of interesting information in it. American breakfast comes in two versions; the "diner breakfast" which he describes as IHOP serves it, and the sugar-encrusted cold cereals that paid for all those Saturday morning cartoons. These are not the only ways to eat breakfast, and we can all benefit from expanding our menus ...or even skipping breakfast. The video is 10:40; the rest is promotion and ads.  -via Digg

LEGO Relief Map Posted: 26 Jun 2020 12:38 PM PDT When cartography enthusiast Cameron Bennett went into quarantine in March, he needed something to keep him busy. His solution was to build an accurate topographical map of Idaho using accurate data and cartographic software. To acquire the necessary blocks, Bennett used LEGO's precise purchasing system: If you run out of pieces in one or more colors (as I did) and are too stubborn to downsize and start over (as I am), Lego offers the ability to order exact pieces using their Pick-a-Brick service. Be warned, shipping times were especially slow under COVID restrictions. Through some quick searches, I found a handful of Ebay vendors peddling pieces at slightly more competitive prices, with less control over piece and quantity selection. -via Flowing Data

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