No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.  ~ Nelson Mandela

Guinness World Records 2014
The largest rideable bicycle has a wheel diameter of 10 feet.
It was was built by Didi Senft of Germany.

Richard Bradbury/Guinness World Records

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By Simon McCormack, The Huffington
09/01/2014

Feliz cumpleaños, Leandra Becerra Lumbreras.

The Mexican woman thought to be the oldest person in the world reportedly turned 127 on Sunday, according to the Metro.

Lumbreras says she was born on Aug. 31, 1887.

Her family said her secrets to longevity are eating chocolate, sleeping a lot and not getting married.

“She was always a woman who fought. She was still sewing and weaving until about two years ago,’ granddaughter Miriam Alvear, 43, told El Horizonte, according to a translation by Metro.

But as the Telegraph reports, Lumbreras lost her birth certificate during a move 40 years ago.

According to El Horizonte, Lumbreras has 73 great-grandchildren and 55 great-great-grandchildren.

“Her parents were singers,” Alvear said. “She loves to entertain her grandchildren with the old songs they taught her.”

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By Lauren F Friedman
Business Insider, August 31, 2014

Coffee wakes you up in the morning and keeps you alert throughout the day, but how does its magic ingredient actually work? Mitchell Moffit and Gregory Brown demystify the inner workings of caffeine in their latest ASAP Science video.

The first thing to know is that part of your natural tiredness comes from a molecule called adenosine, which is produced by your body while it chugs along through the day. “While you sleep, the concentration of adenosine declines, gradually promoting wakefulness,” the video explains. Meanwhile, the more adenosine that builds up, the sleepier you feel.

Your morning coffee is able to hijack that process because caffeine looks a lot like adenosine to your brain cells:

Because of its similar shape, caffeine can bind to the adenosine receptors in your brain. Once the caffeine is locked into adenosine’s rightful spot though, there is no way for the adenosine to stick around — which prevents it from building up and making you sleepy.

Without the molecule that usually induces exhaustion, “our natural stimulants run wild,” Joseph Stromberg writes in Smithsonian. The result? You feel wide awake — at least for a while.

But all good things must come to an end, and your brain quickly wises up to your tricks.

When the adenosine is continually blocked from binding to its receptors, your body eventually creates more receptors — which means you need even more caffeine to plug them up. This can make kicking your coffee habit increasingly difficult, and make you need more and more caffeine to stay alert. 

Wikimedia Commons

“When you try to quit drinking coffee or miss your daily intake,” Moffit and Brown explain, “you might experience some withdrawal symptoms and feel more tired than you would have before you ever drank coffee.”

But caffeine does more than just block adenosine. It can also pump up your levels of adrenaline and boost your mood — “the exact same thing cocaine does, just to a lesser degree,” the video says.

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Surgeons’ shock after they remove 232 ‘TEETH’ from Indian teenager’s mouth Ashik Gavai, 17 was suffering swelling on the right side of his lower jaw Was diganosed with rare condition known as complex odontoma These are haphazardly arranged tooth-like growths that often affect teens Surgeons say 232 may be a record – previous number removed was 37 Surgeons in Mumbai have removed an astonishing 232 teeth-like growths from the mouth of a teenager.

Ashik Gavai, 17, sought medical help after suffering swelling on the right side of his lower jaw.

He was referred to the city’s JJ Hospital, where doctors found he was suffering from a condition known as complex odontoma.

‘We operated on Monday and it took us almost seven hours,’ head of dentistry Sunanda Dhivare-Palwankar, told AFP.

‘We thought it [would] be simple surgery but once we opened [him up] there were multiple pearl-like teeth inside the jaw bone,’ she said.

After removing those the surgeons also found a larger ‘marble-like’ structure which they struggled to extract.

It eventually had to be ‘chiselled out’ and remove in fragments, Ms Dhivare-Palwankar added.

The teenager’s father, Suresh Gavai, told the Mumbai Mirror newspaper he had feared the swelling was a cancerous growth.

Fortunately the surgeons managed to maintain teenager’s jawbone structure, meaning it should heal without any deformities. Once removed, odontomas do not recur.

Photograph by Dr. Joseph F. Rock, National Geographic Creative

Tigers may be relegated to zoos in the future if we’re not careful. Only about 3,200 tigers can be found in the wild today—a far cry from the iconic cat’s situation a century ago, when 100,000 tigers roamed vast stretches of the Asian continent.

“People don’t realize how dire the situation is for tigers because we see them all the time. We see them in zoos, we see them in circuses, so we think they’re doing all right,” said Sharon Guynup, a writer who co-authored the book Tigers Forever: Saving the World’s Most Endangered Big Cat with National Geographic photographer Steve Winter.

To mark International Tiger Day—which is held annually on July 29—National Geographic spotlights Asia’s largest cat species and the conservation challenges that it faces.

—Katie Langin, July 29, 2014