Still boiling from the heat wave that hit last week? Cool down with the Polar Ocean Image Collection, over 500 high-quality photos taken in the Arctic and Antarctica that capture “remote seascapes, glaciers, iconic wildlife, icebergs, and rarely seen underwater life.” No promises you won’t still need to blast the AC while scrolling, though.
Featured Story
Why Routines Can Boost Our Mental Health and How to Create Ones That Stick
Paper Trident/iStock
What do your Sunday mornings look like? Whether you sleep ’til noon or rise with the sun to complete a 10-step skin care regimen, chances are you have some kind of routine in the a.m.
Many of these steps — like brushing your teeth and gratitude journaling — are beneficial to well-being. But routines themselves can actually boost mental health as well. We spoke to Megan Edgelow, an associate professor in health sciences at Queen’s University in Canada, about the mental health benefits of creating some structure in your day and how to set up an ideal regimen. (And if you identify more as the spontaneous type, there’s room for you here too.) Get her tips in our article below.
For many people with mild obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) and snoring, treatment options often involve wearing a device during sleep — eXciteOSA® by Spring Sleep takes a different approach.
Used for just 20 minutes a day while awake, it is designed to strengthen tongue muscles associated with maintaining upper airway function. Because therapy is completed during the day, there is no device to wear overnight, making bedtime as simple as getting comfortable and going to sleep. Fill out the questionnaire to see if eXciteOSA from Spring Sleep is right for you.
That headline sounds a bit bizarre, we know, but it’s true. Among pigeons’ many talents is providing an extra set of eyes for doctors looking for signs of cancer in medical scans. In 2015, researchers enlisted the unlikely medical assistants to identify breast cancer in mammograms to help prevent imaging misses. Now, another team of scientists has recruited the birds yet again to train AI to help do the same.
In a study published earlier this year, researchers trained six pigeons to watch CT scan videos and spot lung nodules, a type of growth that could be a sign of cancer. After the birds learned to spot the lung nodules, they also started recognizing emphysema and ground-glass nodules — both problems they hadn’t even been trained on.
Here’s where AI comes in: The researchers are now trying to channel the pigeon’s keen visual system, which works similarly to the human’s unconscious visual system, to develop medical AI tools that can double, triple, and quadruple check scans. They noted that the pigeon-inspired method will by no means replace radiologists, but rather help ensure scans are understood as thoroughly as possible. Thanks in advance, pigeons!
Culture
Family-Owned Ohio Amusement Park Opens to Public Only 4 Days a Year
Stricker’s Grove
Stricker’s Grove may just be the most exclusive amusement park in America. The family-owned park outside Cincinnati, Ohio, is only open to the public four days a year — and one of those was yesterday. The park even sweetened the deal for July Fourth by offering free admission (with a pay-per-ride system) and topping off the holiday with fireworks.
Stricker’s Grove dates back to 1924, when Henry Stricker purchased the property to build a dance hall. More than 100 years later, it has since moved locations and is now co-run by Stricker’s granddaughter, but it’s still brimming with good old-fashioned nostalgia (and still surrounded by corn fields).
The slice of Americana features 17 classic rides, including two hand-built wooden roller coasters and a merry-go-round, as well as carnival games, a train, and a mini golf course. While it’s open to all only a handful of times per year — the remaining dates are Aug. 9, Sept. 7, and Oct. 11 — serious amusement park fans can also rent it for private groups from May to October. See more pics.
Science
Great Apes Laugh Like Us — And Have Been Giggling for Millennia, Study Finds
Lukas Klinge—iStock/Getty Images Plus
If you could use another reason to smile today (who couldn’t?), a recent study found that laughter may be more universal than we thought — with great apes like chimps, gorillas, and bonobos chuckling in a similar way to how we humans do. Not only that, but this way of laughing could go back 15 million years, revealing a window into the evolution of speech.
For the study, researchers observed 13 great apes as they received a gentle tickle and then compared the sounds to those of human children laughing while they were tickled at home. They found that all the laughs followed a surprisingly similar rhythmic pattern, with evenly spaced intervals between successive sounds.
The researchers noted that human laughter has evolved over the years to be variable depending on context (e.g., an uncontrollable belly laugh differs from a polite chuckle). But the essential structure of a laugh has not. “By comparing how different species laugh, we can see that a basic rhythmic structure has remained unchanged since our last common ancestor,” study co-author Chiara De Gregorio said in a statement. “That’s extraordinary.” Listen to the great apes’ laugh tracks.
In the 19th century, Massachusetts’ Walden Pond helped inspire many of naturalist Henry David Thoreau’s most influential ideas about what it means to live well. In the 21st century, as issues that Thoreau pushed back on — like consumerism and hustle culture — still plague us, another author has taken similar inspiration from the setting. Psychotherapist Thomas Moore draws on Thoreau’s writings as well as his own memories and experiences to help readers recover their humanity and feel more present, including by finding their personal “natural temples.”
We already knew Elle Woods can fit in where she seemingly doesn’t belong (what, like it’s hard?), but this Legally Blonde prequel series starring Lexi Minetree shows that Harvard wasn’t her first challenge. It’s 1995, and after a teenage Elle’s parents, played by June Diane Raphael and Tom Everett Scott, inform the iced coffee lover that the family is moving from Bel Air to Seattle, she finds herself a fish out of (pink) water at a high school that looks like it could have been the exact birthplace of grunge. All eight episodes dropped Wednesday on Prime Video.
This Week in History
Althea Gibson Becomes First Black Player to Win Wimbledon
July 6, 1957
Bettmann/Getty Images
In an era when the U.S. was still heavily segregated, 29-year-old Althea Gibson made history with a racket — becoming the first Black athlete to win Wimbledon. Born in South Carolina and raised in New York City, Gibson took the women’s singles title in a 1957 match against Darlene Hard at London’s All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club.
She went on to win the U.S. Open that September, and she claimed both titles again the following year. Gibson then retired from tennis, as a lack of prize money at the time meant she couldn’t support herself with the sport. Instead, she turned her eyes to golf, and in 1963 broke more barriers as the first African-American member of the Ladies Professional Golf Association. She died in 2003 at age 76. Watch footage of her 1957 Wimbledon win.
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