For the past month, me, my mother and my sister have been babysitting my aunt's Persian cat Bolinha. We've had some hard times in the past because it can be very aggressive with strangers. After some days and a lot of positive reinforcement conditioning (thank you Ethology lessons!), Bolinha is now really sweet with me and my mother (I don't think it'll ever like my sister), and purrs a lot when we cuddle and pet it. That's got me wondering: how do cars purr?
     It all begins with an stimulus (petting the cat, for example), which triggers the animal's Nervous System. The NS then sends a stimulus to the larynx muscles, which begin to contract and relax every 40 millionths of a second - approximately the speed of a hummingbird's wing-beat -, creating a vibration in the cat's throat and that particular sound of a little engine we all love so much.
     It is also known that cats can use that sound to manipulate us humans to get food, attention and affection but, come on, did you really think that cats could be selfless?

~Ally

      Undoubtedly, the first mirrors must have been puddles and rivers. The most ancient model invented by men, though, is eight thousand years old and was found in Turkey. It is made of obsidian, a stone that resembles glass.
    Other people used metal plates to make mirrors. The first models using glass were created by the Romans. The one that resembles the most our current models - made with a plain glass lamina covered by a methalic mixture - was made in Venice, in the 15th century.

~Ally

     Just outside the city of Šiauliai, Lithuania, an extremely strange sight stretches up in the countryside - hundreds of thousands of crosses. Crosses of every shape and size, including rosaries, are crowded together in huge piles across the entire hillside. The history of the Hill of Crosses (Kryžių kalnas) is as mysterious as the place itself. No one knows exactly when the custom of leaving crosses there began, but it most likely started in 1831.
    The area once housed a fort and the year 1831 marked the end of the November Uprising during which Poland sought independence from the Russian Empire. This resulted in the loss of some 40,000 men. Another rebellion, the January Uprising which lasted from 1863 to 1865, saw the loss of another 20,000. Many Lithuanian families weren’t able to retrieve the bodies of their loved ones, so they put up symbolic crosses where the former hill fort was located to honor them.
     When Lithuania gained its independence from the Soviet Union in 1990, the amount of crosses grew to incredible numbers. The Hill of Crosses also gained international notoriety when Pope John Paul II visited in 1993 and prayed there.
    The number of crosses left at the site continues to grow daily. Although the Hill of Crosses can appear somewhat haunting and eery, it stands as a reminder of the horrors of war and the fight for freedom across the world.

~Ally

     Wow, one hundred days already! Ok, actually it took kind of long to get to this hundredth day. If you're still checking this blog everyday (and I know a few of you are ^^), I thank you very much! Hope we have even more fun in the next 265 days!
     As a way of celebrating this date, I decided to finally learn how to make a Tsuru (Crane) Origami. I know how to make little airplanes and boats with paper, but it's the first time I tried to make something different. I used this great tutorial here and it was very easy! I admit it looks a little bit crooked and, as a matter of fact, it is far from perfect, but it's my first trial and I intend to practice more in the future - that is, if I can remember all the folding steps!
     I recall hearing something about Tsurus once, and it basically said that if a person made a thousand of these Origami, he/she would be lucky for the rest of his/her days or would be granted a wish from the gods. Good huh? But it turns out that this story got famous with the occurrences of Sadako Sasaki's life.
     Sadako was born in Hiroshima and was only two years old when the Americans launched the atomic bomb on the city . She lived far from the epicenter of the bomb and together with her mother and brother,they fled and were unharmed. But, during the flight, they were drenched by the black radioactive rain that fell on Hiroshima during that fateful day.
    Resuming their lives after the war, Sadako and her family lived normally and she was a girl apparently healthy until completing twelve years of age . In January 1955 , during a physical education class, Sadako, who loved racing, felt sick and dizzy. The days passed and again the malaise caused her to fall to the ground, unconscious . Rescued and taken to a hospital, after a few days dark marks appeared on her body and she was diagnosed with leukemia, a disease that was killing other children that were als exposed to the pump. At the time leukemia was even called "atomic bomb disease". She was admitted in February 1955 , receiving predicting survival of only one year.
     In August of that same year , her best friend Chizuko Hamamoto came to visit her in the hospital. Chizuko made ​​a folding tsuru and presented Sadako , telling her the legend of the thousand origami tsurus . Sadako decided to make the thousand tsurus, wishing for her recovery. But the disease progressed rapidly and Sadako increasingly weakened, proceeded slowly folding the birds, without showing up angry and without surrendering.
     At one point Sadako realized that his illness was the result of the war and more than wanting just her own healing , she wanted peace for all humanity, so that no child should suffer more wars. She said about tsurus : "I will write Peace on your wings and you will fly the whole world".
     Finally, on the morning of 25 October 1955, Sadako made her last tsuru and died, supported by her family. She failed to complete the thousand origami, only making ​​644. But her example touched deeply her classmates and they bowed the tsurus missing to be buried with her. Sad and aware , colleagues decided to do something for Sadako and the many other children. They formed an association and began a campaign to build a memorial to Sadako and all the children killed and injured by the war. With donations from students around 3100 Japanese schools and nine more countries in 1958, was erected in Hiroshima the Monument of Children to Peace, also known as Tower of Tsurus in the Peace Park. The granite monument symbolizes Mount Horai, mythological site where Orientals believe that spirits live. At the top of the hill is the young Sadako holding a tsuru in her outstretched arms. At the base of the monument are engraved the words:

"This is our cry,
This is our prayer,
PEACE IN THE WORLD "

     Every year, thousands and thousands of colorful paper tsurus are sent from all over Japan and the world, in a gesture of affection that also demonstrates the concern of children and their power to work for a just cause .

~Ally

      Also known as Kermode Bears (Ursus americanus kermodei), this species is considered special for its white coat. However, they're not albino bears, since their noses and paws are brown or black. Scientists are believe it is a recessive gene that causes the white color, since most of the animals present black fur in their entire body. DNA analysis are being conducted on bear's hairs so that they can also determine how common it is elsewhere on the Northertn continent. To determine whether the Spirit bear is a race or simply the product of a concentration of a gene in a given area is another aim of the researchers. They have been analyzing fur samples from “rubbing” trees used by the bears, and have set out snares across trails to capture hairs to examine for genetic information. These Canadian bears are found most frequently on Princess Royal Island, situated between the coastal mainland and the Queen Charlotte Islands.
     In a more mythical approach, we can consider the one lore of the Kitasoo Xaixais people, who have lived with these bears for thousands of years. They have a myth about the white bears that says:
   “Raven made one in every ten black bears white to remind the people of a time when glaciers covered this land and how the people should be thankful of the lush and bountiful land of today.” 
    Many of the Kitasoo Xaixais believe these species hold super-natural powers, hence the name Spirit Bear. It is said that the indians protected the Ghost Bears (another cool name they have!) from hunters, by not revealing where they lived.

~Ally

      Meet Europa, one of the four great moons of Jupiter. Discovered in 1610 by Galileu Galilei, it is almost as big as our moon and possesses an unique surface, full of colorful and shiny lines. Scientists believe they are a big frozen ocean.

~Ally

      It's a strange world, folks. And it used to be a lot stranger in the past, in terms of medicine.
     In the 30's, syphilis was considered an incurable disease and was also the major cause for dementia, making people violent, paranoid and uncontrolable. They often ended up in asylums and there was not much left to do for those poor souls.
    But the Austrian doctor Julius Wagner von Jauregg noticed that when these patients contracted diseases that caused episodes of high fever and convulsions, the madness disappeared. So, he decided to inject the blood of a soldier contaminated with malaria in 9 patients with chronic paresis (an incomplete pralisis or decrease of motricity in one or more parts of the body, due to lesions in the nervous centers, or in the motor pathways or in the peripheric nervous system - which can be caused by syphilis). Four of those patients recovered from dementia, and two other also presented improvements. Those results gave Dr. von Jauregg the Nobel Prize in 1927. However, this treatment was very dangerous - obviously, because you got better from madness, but then you had malaria. Great, huh?! - and ceased to be used in the 60's, when antibiotics and proper medicines for mental problems were discovered.

~Ally

      My all time favourite flower is Lavender (Lavandula sp). However, I had never tried its tea until today. It's delicious and brings many benefits, some of which are: combating headaches and migraines, intestinal gas, asthma, bronchitis, catarrh, rheumatic pain, influenza, rheumatism, nervous tension and cough, and many other things, as well as restoring the menstrual flow and acting as a sedative.

~Ally

     Until today I had heard and read about Thomas Edison and the Lumière brothers when it came to Cinema's history. Little did I know that it was a totally different guy who really filmed the first sequences of moving images back in 1888: Louis Le Prince. That's three years before Auguste and Louis Lumière made their first movie! He used a single lens camera and a paper pellicle to do his film.
     Sadly, though, Le Prince disappeared before he could present his work to the public: in 1890, the cinema pioneer got on a train in Dijon, France, heading to Paris and was never seen again. Conspiracy theories, anyone?

~Ally

      ... Is Lego! Yeap. Believe it or not, they're the champions in terms of tire units produced. Nowadays, about 31 billion pieces are made in the four Lego factories in the world. If put side by side, all the pieces sold in one year would be enough to go around the world five times. That's a loooooooooooooooOOOooooooooot of Lego, dude.

~Ally