Month: October 2016

Poliomyelitis, an infectious, potentially fatal disease that permanently paralyzed both children and adults, was once a serious problem in the United States. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was paralyzed due to polio, and almost 60,000 Americans were infected with polio in 1952. The disease inspired fear because there was no obvious way to prevent it, and it struck thousands of children. In 1955, though, virologist Jonas Salk became a worldwide hero when he developed the first effective polio vaccine. Here are a dozen facts about Salk, the Father of Biophilosophy, who was born on this day in 1914.

1. HIS FATHER WAS A CLOTHING DESIGNER WITH LIMITED EDUCATION.

Salk’s father, Daniel, was the son of Jewish immigrants who came to America from Eastern Europe. Daniel graduated from elementary school but not high school, and he worked in the garment industry as a designer of women’s blouses. Salk’s mother, Dora, left Russia for the U.S. in 1901 and had no education. Because of their limited instruction, Salk’s parents encouraged him and his two younger brothers to further their schooling and advance in the world.

2. HE PLANNED TO BE A LAWYER AND SERVE IN CONGRESS.

In a 1991 interview with the Academy of Achievement, Salk revealed that he was not interested in science as a child. He entered college as a pre-law student, hoping to be elected to Congress one day. The reason he switched from pre-law to pre-med? “My mother didn’t think I’d make a very good lawyer. And I believe that her reasons were that I couldn’t really win an argument with her,” he explained.

3. HE WAS REJECTED FROM MULTIPLE LABS AFTER MEDICAL SCHOOL.

After graduating from medical school at New York University and completing his residency training, Salk applied to laboratories to work in medical research. Rather than treat patients as a practicing physician, Salk hoped to work on the influenza vaccine, a research area he began studying in medical school. Although he was rejected from multiple labs, perhaps due to quotas that discriminated against Jewish people, he didn’t get discouraged. “My attitude was always to keep open, to keep scanning. I think that’s how things work in nature. Many people are close-minded, rigid, and that’s not my inclination,” he revealed in his Academy of Achievement interview.

4. THE MARCH OF DIMES FOUNDATION FUNDED HIS RESEARCH.

Salk worked on the influenza vaccine at the University of Michigan’s School of Public Health until 1947, when he began running a lab at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. The next year, he started working on a project for the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis (later renamed the March of Dimes Foundation) to research the different types of polio. Roosevelt created the foundation in 1938 to help other Americans suffering from polio, and the foundation funded many polio research and vaccine trials, including Salk’s.

5. HE TESTED THE POLIO VACCINE ON HIS OWN FAMILY.

In the early 1950s, Salk tested the polio vaccine he developed on monkeys, children in Pittsburgh, and himself. Strongly believing in the safety and efficacy of his vaccine, Salk also injected his wife, Donna, and their three sons [PDF] in the family’s kitchen, using syringes he had boiled on the stove. In 1953, Salk published the preliminary results of his human testing in the Journal of the American Medical Association. By June 1954, 1.8 million children and adults, dubbed polio pioneers, had volunteered to be injected with Salk’s vaccine (or a placebo) in a double-blind trial, sponsored by the March of Dimes. And on April 12, 1955, Salk’s vaccine was licensed. In Ann Arbor, Michigan, the media reported that Salk’s national trial was a success, and crowds of ecstatic people celebrated the news.

6. OTHER SCIENTISTS CRITICIZED HIS NOVEL APPROACH TO VACCINES.

Although Salk was lauded as a savior and international hero, some of his fellow scientists didn’t feel the love. Polish-American scientist Albert Sabin loudly criticized Salk, calling him a kitchen chemist and trying to discredit his choice to use a killed polio virus (rather than a live or weakened one) in his vaccine. Sabin, as well as many of Salk’s contemporaries, incorrectly believed that a killed virus wouldn’t adequately immunize the patient. Additionally, a vaccine using a weakened polio virus might actually infect the patient with polio, and Salk didn’t want to take that risk. Other scientists resented Salk for succeeding outside the medical establishment and for getting all the accolades when he was just one of many researchers working on polio.

In 1962, Sabin introduced an oral (sugar cube) polio vaccine that contained a live (rather than killed) virus, and the U.S. government began using Sabin’s vaccine instead of Salk’s because it was cheaper and still effective. Today, a reformulated version of Salk’s vaccine is used in most parts of the world (except for parts of Africa and the Middle East where polio is still a problem, and where Sabin’s vaccine is used).

7. HE DIDN’T WANT TO FILE A PATENT FOR THE POLIO VACCINE.

Salk didn’t directly profit from his polio vaccine because he didn’t file a patent for it. When a journalist asked him who owned the patent, Salk responded: “The people, I would say. There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?” Salk reportedly objected to owning the patent because millions of Americans had donated money to the March of Dimes, hoping to help eradicate polio. But according to U.S. patent law, the vaccine wasn’t novel enough to be patentable, so some scholars criticize Salk for presenting himself as an altruistic person when he was probably aware that the vaccine couldn’t be patented. Forbes estimates that had he owned the patent, Salk could have earned $7 billion.

8. HE DISLIKED BEING A PUBLIC FIGURE.

Although Salk quickly became a world hero, he didn’t enjoy losing his anonymity and gaining the responsibilities that came with being a public figure. “I felt myself very much like someone in the eye of a hurricane because all this swirling was going on around me. It was at that moment that everything changed,” Salk recalled of becoming an overnight celebrity. Some scientists criticized him for hogging the international media spotlight, and the National Academy of Sciences and Nobel Prize Committee ignored him, perhaps because he had achieved success while working outside the scientific establishment.

9. HE WAS THE STEPFATHER OF PABLO PICASSO’S CHILDREN.

In 1970, Salk married Françoise Gilot, a French artist who had two children, Claude and Paloma, with Pablo Picasso. In an interview in 1980, Paloma remembered the fear people had of polio, and that as a child, she didn’t visit her father’s house in the South of France due to a polio outbreak. She also revealed that she got along well with her stepfather: “He’s very cute. He’s a wonderful person,” she said. After his death in 1995, Gilot continued her late husband’s legacy by working at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies.

10. HE TRIED TO DEVELOP CURES FOR CANCER AND AIDS.

After Salk developed the polio vaccine, he tried to develop vaccines for cancer, AIDS, and multiple sclerosis. Although he wasn’t ultimately successful, he did patent Remune, a vaccine for AIDS to delay the progression of HIV into AIDS. In 2001, six years after Salk died, Pfizer stopped funding clinical trials for Remune due to a lack of evidence that it worked.

11. HE WROTE A HANDFUL OF BOOKS ABOUT SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY.

Throughout the 1970s and ’80s, Salk wrote books about science, philosophy, and mankind. In The Survival of the Wisest, Salk applied Charles Darwin’s ideas on survival of the fittest to the need for humankind to be educated and have knowledge. And in World Population and Human Values: A New Reality, he and his psychiatrist son, Dr. Jonathan Salk, discussed the interplay between world population growth and human values.

12. THE SALK INSTITUTE FOR BIOLOGICAL STUDIES CONTINUES HIS WORK.

In 1963, the Salk Institute for Biological Studies opened in La Jolla, California. Although Salk reportedly struggled with running the business side of the institute, he got funding from the March of Dimes Foundation and recruited Nobel Prize-winning scientists to investigate the biological aspects of cancer, AIDS, diabetes, and multiple sclerosis. Designed by architect Louis Kahn, the institute continues to serve as a research center for immunology, neuroscience, and genetics.

For decades, non-compete clauses were used by large businesses to bar former employees from using their expertise against them. Without them, someone well-versed in programming, for example, could make a move to a competing software company and exploit the trade secrets collected in their previous position. Increasingly, non-competes have been popping up in jobs as varied as summer camp counseling, teaching, and even exterminating, severely limiting how a worker can gain experience within their field. And now, the White House is beginning to pay attention.

The White House estimates 20 percent of the workforce is affected by restrictive non-compete agreements, and on Tuesday, the Obama Administration asked for a ban on such clauses for low wage and non-executive level employees. They believe that loosening restrictions on employment would lead to a more competitive job market and faster wage increases.

Speaking on behalf of the Administration, Vice President Joe Biden said he was surprised to hear about situations involving a teacher barred from taking a summer job selling pet food, as well as a laid-off salesman who was prohibited from accepting other sales jobs. The man was forced to tap into his retirement savings.

Currently, only a handful of states have banned non-compete clauses. In the case of California, economists cite the lack of non-competes as a major reason why the tech industry continues to thrive.

[h/t Fortune]

Mad Max: Fury Road is going down as an instant classic thanks to its amazing special effects, stunt work, talented acting, of course, its many Oscars. But for all its praise, fans haven’t even seen the movie as it was intended; director George Miller said he originally wanted the movie to be in black and white. Now the monochromatic edition, Black & Chrome is coming to certain theaters November 1, but you don’t even have to wait that long—you can watch right now on Amazon.

Miller explained his reasoning for the monochrome film in a Q&A with filmmaker Edgar Wright:

One thing I’ve noticed is that the default position for everyone is to de-saturate post-apocalyptic movies. There’s only two ways to go, make them black and white—the best version of this movie is black and white, but people reserve that for art movies now. The other version is to really go all-out on the color. The usual teal and orange thing? That’s all the colors we had to work with. The desert’s orange and the sky is teal, and we either could de-saturate it, or crank it up, to differentiate the movie. Plus, it can get really tiring watching this dull, de-saturated color, unless you go all the way out and make it black and white.

Previously, a fan took up the task of creating a completely de-saturated version of the film, with minimal sound effects and no dialogue. The video has since been taken down, but you can now stream the official version or buy the Mad Max High Octane Collection on either DVD or Blu-ray on December 6.

If you can’t quite picture the full black and chrome treatment, watch this video that shows the versions side by side.

[h/t Konbini]

There’s no such thing as bad chocolate, but some companies certainly go above and beyond. Worldwide, we consume a staggering 7.3 million tons of chocolate, but today there’s far more to chocolate than just dark, white, or milk. And thankfully, there is no limit to the creativity these 15 companies put into their chocolaty confections.

1. CHUAO CHOCOLATIER

Chuao Chocolatier (pronounced chew-WOW) is a master of textural wonderment, known for their diverse range of unique chocolate bars including the Firecracker—a dark bar infused with sea salt, chipotle, and popping candy that explodes in your mouth. Founded in 2002 by Master Chef Michael Antonorsi, the company is named after Venezuela’s legendary cacao-producing region of Chuao and recognized as the first Venezuelan chocolatier based in the United States. Since introducing their original signature flavor, Spicy Maya, the company’s one-of-a-kind menu has expanded to include chocolate bars, bonbons, truffles, and drinking chocolate in extraordinary flavor combinations like coconut hibiscus, raspberry rose, caramel apple, and cinnamon cereal. They have two chocolate cafes in San Diego County, California and can be found in specialty retailers such as Whole Foods, Dean and Deluca, and Crate & Barrel.

2. ASKINOSIE CHOCOLATE

Named one of Forbes‘ 25 Best Small Companies in America and Oprah Magazine’s “15 Guys Who Are Saving the World,” former criminal defense lawyer Shawn Askinosie started Askinosie Chocolate with his wife in 2005 from their Springfield, Missouri home. Using a 6000-pound antique granite melangeur from Europe (fancy phrasing for tabletop grinder) to whip up their first batches, Askinosie Chocolate took off and the owners have never looked back. Their cocoa is sourced direct from farmers in Honduras, Ecuador, Philippines, and Tanzania. Askinosie features a CollaBARation™ line of bars made possible through partnerships with complementary businesses to produce flavors like Dark Chocolate + Intelligentsia Coffee and Dark Chocolate + Crunchy Sugar Crystals.

3. THE CHOCOLATE SMITHS

The confectionery offerings at The Chocolate Smiths are as entertaining as they are unusual—perhaps summed up by the name of their signature line, appropriately called Bizarre Bars. The company specializes in “luxury chocolates with the fun left in.” From Scorpion Chili (made with the world’s second hottest pepper) to Bubblegum (mixed with creamy white chocolate and vanilla), the chocolatier uses only high-quality Belgian couverture chocolate to deliver a unique candy experience. Located in Benton, Newcastle upon Tyne in the UK, The Chocolate Smiths ship worldwide and can be found in independent delicatessens, department stores, and major tourist attractions across the globe.

4. VOSGES HAUT-CHOCOLAT

Take a walk on the wild side with Vosges Haut-Chocolat. Their use of exotic ingredients like Hungarian paprika, Indian curry, and Chinese star anise makes them a chocolate lover’s paradise with a twist. Founder Katrina Markoff’s love of travel is reflected in the company’s premium chocolate that nurtures awareness of and appreciation for the world’s diverse cultures. Vosges has retail locations in New York, Chicago, and Las Vegas.

5. CHOCOLATES EL REY

Award-winning Chocolates El Rey, one of the oldest chocolate manufacturers in Venezuela, has been making premium-grade chocolates since 1929. A socially responsible and eco-friendly company, El Rey offers consumers gourmet chocolate made with fairly traded cacao beans direct from small- and large-scale Venezuelan growers. Their products, which include the Carenero Superior, Rio Caribe, and Special Reserves lines, are crafted with specialty beans from various regions of this breathtaking South American country.

6. MAST BROTHERS

Artistic elegance describes brothers Rick and Michael Mast’s product line, who name collections of their bean-to-bar chocolate after their flagship locations in Brooklyn, Los Angeles, and London. They’re the only ones in the world offering bars like Rhubarb and Custard, Black Treacle, Tea and Milk, and Tahitian Vanilla, made with ingredients sourced from some of the most beautiful places on the planet. Sea salt from Iceland? Delicious. Founded in 2007, Mast Brothers wraps all their confections in ornamental wrappers almost too pretty to open. Almost.

7. CACAO ART CHOCOLATES

This Florida treasure features some of the most artistic chocolates ever. Case in point: their decadent Anís y Papelón truffle (an International Chocolate Awards winner), made from sweet anise and raw cane sugar and inspired by the traditional Venezuelan pastry. Sisters Susana and Isabel Garcia started the business in Venezuela but later relocated to Miami. Their goal is to recreate the flavors of their childhood while capturing the growing arts scene in South Florida.

8. MOONSTRUCK CHOCOLATE COMPANY

Master Chocolatier Chef Julian Rose was named one of the best chocolatiers in North America for a reason: He creates chocolate of a near-addictive quality. Much like the Apollo moon landing, Moonstruck is exploring new ground—they just do it by introducing the world to unknown chocolate varieties. Their signature bar, Fortunato No. 4, is made from a Peruvian cacao bean once thought to be extinct. In addition to their four cafes in the Pacific Northwest, Moonstruck Chocolate is sold at specialty retailers and gift shops across the United States.

9. FRENCH BROAD CHOCOLATES

French Broad Chocolates, owned by husband and wife team Dan and Jael Rattigan, is named after North Carolina’s French Broad River—which happens to be the third oldest river in the world. Their truffles—packaged in fanciful collections featuring flavors like cider, beet, ginger, bourbon, lavender, grapefruit, and more—are of colossal proportions. Both the French Broad Lounge and French Broad Factory & Tasting Room are located in Asheville, North Carolina.

10. 2 CHICKS WITH CHOCOLATE

After a life-altering car accident prevented Barbara Wassung from commuting to work, she and her daughter, Elyissia, got serious about launching their chocolate company from their home kitchen in Queens, New York. What started as a home-grown, door-to-door small business has now blossomed into a fledgling chocolatier specializing in hand-crafted chocolates. Their 12-piece signature collection includes a designer box and mouthwatering flavors like passion fruit caramel, raspberry ganache, champagne ganache, and marshmallow fluff. Find their goodies online and at their stores in New Jersey towns like East Brunswick, Metuchen, and Middletown.

11. NORMAN LOVE CONFECTIONS

Based out of Fort Myers, Florida and founded by Norman Love and his wife, Mary, in 2001, Norman Love Confections offers unique, vibrantly colored chocolates that often incorporate fruit—like tart raspberry and passion fruit. Each piece resembles a shining bit of finished marble—exquisite, yet edible. Their recently launched Norman Love Confections BLACK collection combines chocolate from five different regions including Maracaibo (Venezuela), Peru, Ghana, Tanzania, and Hispaniola (Dominican Republic). Find their delightful treats at one of their store-owned “salons” or at hotels, florists, and fine restaurants in the United States.

12. GAIL AMBROSIUS CHOCOLATIER

Shiitake mushroom is just one example of the many adventurous flavors found in Gail Ambrosius Chocolatier chocolate bars and truffles. After a school trip to Paris when she was 17, Ambrosius fell in love with dark chocolate and knew she had to start her own company. She finally had the opportunity to make a fresh start when, more than two decades later, she found herself suddenly laid off. Try the company’s Beerific Taster’s Box, which can be found online, at the store in Wisconsin, or other retailers in the greater Madison, Wisconsin area.

13. CHOCOLATE FOR THE SPIRIT

Does the Midwest have spirit? You bet it does! Enriching lives through thoughtfully created confections is the name of the game at Chocolate for the Spirit in Carmel, Indiana. Their Tall, Dark & Handsome bar is a Grand Cru single-origin bar with licorice notes, hints of coffee, and blended-in Swiss milk to create a memorable experience for chocolate connoisseurs.

14. COMPARTÉS

A favorite among Hollywood celebs—including the late Marilyn Monroe—and supplier to major events such as the Golden Globes and the Academy Awards, Compartés has been putting a hip spin on chocolate from their Los Angeles location since 1950. Recently taken over by chocolate prodigy Jonathan Grahm, the chocolatier uses only chocolate sourced from South America, along with local ingredients found at California farmers’ markets. Try Jonathan’s Signature Truffles, which come in various prints and designs and are filled with a rich chocolate ganache.

15. DIVINE CHOCOLATE

Divine Chocolate is, unusually, a farmer-owned chocolate company. Co-owned by the 85,000 farmer members of Kuapa Kokoo, the cooperative in Ghana that supplies the cocoa for each bar of Divine, the chocolatier got its start in the UK before relaunching in the United States in 2007. Each wrapper includes a variety of Adinkra symbols which date back hundreds of years and convey traditional Ghanaian values and wisdom. Check out their popular Dark Chocolate with Pink Himalayan Salt.

13 Episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000 to Watch on Halloween. Since you need some laughs to go with your thrills.
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The Psychology of Scary Movies. Knowing why we get a kick out of them won’t stop you from getting a kick out of them.
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Realistic Disney Villains. Finnish artist Jirka Väätäinen puts the bad guys in the flesh.
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Rachel thought her head might fit inside the pumpkin she was carving. She was right, but then she couldn’t get it off!
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There Are 5 Types of Haunted House Visitors. Which One Are You?
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Four Years After the Storm: The Legacy of Hurricane Sandy. We’ve learned that healing the earth can help protect us from the wrath of Mother Nature.
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The Mystery Behind the Missing Corpse of One of the Richest Men Ever. His  body was never recovered -or was it?
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11 Bloody Facts About Vampire Bats. The few bloodsuckers gave all bats a bad reputation.

Each month, we round up the most interesting comics, graphic novels, webcomics, digital comics and comic-related Kickstarters that we think you should check out.

1. Rolling Blackouts: Dispatches from Turkey, Syria, and Iraq

By Sarah Glidden
Drawn & Quarterly

In 2010, cartoonist Sarah Glidden traveled to Turkey, Iraq, and Syria with a group of journalist friends and a former U.S. soldier to interview refugees and others impacted by war in the Middle East. Their hope was to find stories that haven’t yet been told and to tell them in a way that will appeal to Western media publications. Meanwhile, as Glidden observes and records their process in cartoon form, she in turn finds her own unique hook for this story: showing how journalism is done and what it means in the 21st century. With this book, and a recent comic she did for The Nib, Glidden has entered into the comics journalism space that is occupied by only a select few right now. This is only her second graphic novel (after 2011’s How To Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less), which is understandable considering the extensive time it must take to research and produce a 300-page book of this size with such exquisitely drawn and painted artwork. It is certainly coming out at a time in our media history when we truly need to better appreciate the work that goes into good journalism.

2. Demon Vol. 1

By Jason Shiga
First Second

Jimmy Yee checks into a motel room, writes a suicide note and hangs himself—only to wake up in bed. After four subsequent attempts that go about the same way, he wakes up in a hospital to find a young woman he’s never met claiming to be his daughter. The mystery only deepens from here in what author Jason Shiga describes as “basically a 3 player chess match that pivots into a series of 7 concentric escape puzzles, briefly turns into a meditation on existence before pivoting back to the chess match which itself is contained in 2 more layers of puzzles.” Shiga crafts his comics with the storytelling precision of a mathematician (he actually was a pure mathematics major in college). Books like the choose-your-own-adventure Meanwhile read like intricate puzzles and Demon, a thrilling, twisted epic about immortality, has been considered his best, winning awards and much acclaim in its original webcomic and self-published iterations. Now being published by First Second, the first of this four-book series is appearing for the first time in most comic shops and bookstores.

3. Superman: American Alien

By Max Landis and others
DC Comics

The best Superman comic since 2005’s All-Star Superman comes from writer and director Max Landis, who offers a new spin on the admittedly over-told origin (thankfully, there are no Krypton scenes here). He gives us a fresh take on the character that manages to be modern, edgy and relatable but still heroic. Landis is joined by an impressive array of artists such as Joelle Jones, Jae Lee, Nick Dragotta, Jock, Tommy Lee Edwards, Francis Manapul and Jonathan Case—each taking a different chapter of the 7-issue mini-series—plus a number of other artists who provide one-page backups and covers. The young Clark Kent presented here is not the typical idealized, corn-fed farm boy we’re used to, but neither is he a cynical, overly flawed anti-hero that modern superhero comics tend to offer up to over-correct the straight edge of classic characters. Landis makes some surprising changes to the Superman mythos and his relationships with some of his supporting characters that make this feel fresh and exciting in a way that is really hard to pull off with a 75 year old character like this.

4. Tetris: The Games People Play

By Box Brown
First Second/MacMillan

After his acclaimed 2014 biography of the wrestler Andre the Giant, Box Brown continues to find his niche in celebrating 1980s pop culture by looking at the rise of video game addiction through the story of the most addictive video game ever made: Tetris. Its history is a surprisingly complex one, full of corporate wrongdoing, creator rights issues and even communism. The idea for the game came from a software engineer in Moscow who shared the game on floppy disks as freeware. Once it got passed outside the walls of the Soviet Union, it quickly went viral and began attracting the attention of video game companies like Nintendo who could recognize a money-making concept when they played one. Brown’s graphic, almost geometric style of drawing is perfectly suited for this subject and its famously shaped play pieces. His style makes a story that is mostly about litigation and intellectual property visually interesting and, at times, even thrilling.

5. Love & Rockets Magazine #1

By Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez
Fantagraphics

Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez’s seminal Love & Rockets began as a monthly comic back in 1982. After rising to a level of eminence in the indie comics world, it began to be repackaged in more bookstore-friendly formats in the early aughts and eventually shifted to an annual, digest-sized format about ten years ago. Now, as it is about to celebrate its 35th year, L&R is returning to its original 32-page, magazine-sized format (slightly bigger than a standard comic book in size and page count) with new issues released on closer to a quarterly basis.

This first issue is a good reintroduction to the characters that the Hernandez brothers have been telling amazingly rich stories about over three decades now and who have all grown and aged nearly along with the series. Jaime opens with a story about his famous duo, Maggie and Hopey, who find themselves aging out of their beloved punk rock scene. Meanwhile, Gilbert gives us a detailed status quo on Fritz, the buxom therapist turned B-movie actress and her many imitators.

6. Such a Lovely Little War: Saigon 1961-63

By Marcelino Truong
Arsenal Pulp Press

As a young child in 1961, Marcelino Truong moved to Saigon from the United States with his Vietnamese father (a diplomat who worked directly with President Diem), his French mother, and his older brother and sister. The erupting conflict between the North and South at that time in history is echoed by the growing tension between Marco’s parents. As members of Saigon’s upper class, they are mostly shielded from the war until aspects of it begin to seep into the city. The fear of being massacred by the Viet Cong and the stress of keeping her young children safe and nurtured in a war-torn foreign city takes its toll on Marco’s mother who (Marco would realize later in life) is suffering from bipolar disorder. Truong’s memoir tells a side of the Vietnam War that Americans rarely see. Interspersed with the family drama is an interesting historical context of the war and the class separation in the country at that time.

7. The Secret Loves of Geek Girls

Edited by Hope Nicholson
Dark Horse Comics

This Hope Nicholson-edited anthology of prose and comics by and for (geeky) women is now famous for its inclusion of original comics written and drawn by novelist Margaret Atwood. Its success as a Kickstarter in 2015 led to Nicholson facilitating Atwood’s foray into writing her first graphic novel this year (Angel Catbird) but it also led to Dark Horse picking up Secret Loves for major distribution. It consists of a veritable who’s who of today’s veteran and up-and-coming female comics creators (Marguerite Bennett, Trina Robbins, Marjorie Lieu, Carla Speed McNeil, Mariko Tamaki, Noelle Stevenson and Kelly Sue DeConnick, who writes the foreword) telling mostly true stories about love, dating, sex, video games, comics and science fiction.

8. The Fade Out: Deluxe Edition

By Ed Brubaker, Sean Philips and Bettie Breitweiser
Image Comics

One of my picks for best comics of 2015, this 12-issue crime noir set in old, post-War Hollywood is now deservedly collected into an oversized hardcover format which allows for a proper admiration of Philips and Breitweiser’s gorgeous artwork. These creators are modern masters of crime and this book may be their masterpiece, one that doesn’t rely as much on genre trappings—even though the plot hinges on the murder of a Hollywood starlet—as it does on accurately painting its historical setting and depicting the seedy underbelly of late ‘40s Hollywood as corrupt, depraved and even more gritty than the noir films they were creating at the time.

9. Burt’s Way Home

By John Martz
Koyama Press

Burt is a young boy (drawn in this anthropomorphic comic as a little bird) who gets lost in time and space and taken in by a woman (drawn as a dog) named Lydia. Burt is always explaining that his parents were time travelers from another dimension and due to an accident he finds himself separated from them and stranded here with Lydia who is always lovingly watching over him and making sure he wears a hat when he goes outside. Martz’s cartooning style, colored with a simple flat blue tone, is elegantly simple in a way that recalls many classic children’s picture books and the story here is heartwarming in such a beautiful and subtle way.

10. Untitled

By Meghan Lands
Unpublished

Meghan Lands describes this comic as a “rejected anthology submission” and hasn’t even given it a title, but the 80k+ notes on it indicate that it struck a chord with a lot of people when she posted it to Tumblr. In it, she processes memories of her childhood bully and what happens when she decides to look her up on Facebook. It’s a comic that many will find relatable and it shows how bullying can leave lasting marks even into adulthood, something that social media maybe only make worse.

11. Platinum End Vol. 1

By Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata
Viz Media

A troubled teenager named Mirai decides to take his own life, only to be saved by an angel who bestows him with a variety of powers and places him in contention with 12 other chosen mortals to become the new “God.” The competition among the chosen ones soon turns deadly and Mirai begins to question the morality of these so-called angels and the unethical choices he may be forced to make because of them. This is the latest manga from the team behind the incredibly popular Death Note, and it echoes that work in many ways yet strays from it interestingly in others. This first volume collects material that was originally serialized on the web in English earlier this year as it was simultaneously released in Japanese in Jump SQ magazine.

12. Black #1

By Kwanza Osajyefo, Jamal Igle and Khary Randolph
Black Mask Studios

The first issue of Black begins with a scene we’re all too familiar with from today’s current events: a group of African-American teens are confronted by police; things get immediately out of hand and all three teens are gunned down in a hail of bullets. However, one of them, Kareem, wakes up in the back of an ambulance, alive and completely healed of all bullet wounds. It turns out that superpowers exist in this world but only black people can manifest them. Kareem winds up a target of authorities but also of a shadowy organization that wants to recruit him for a coming battle.

After a successful Kickstarter in February, Black has now been picked up by the scrappy new publisher Black Mask Studios to add to its growing library of edgy and progressive new comics. The comics industry seems to be making great strides in diversifying the stories it tells and the characters it tells them with but yet still seems to struggle with giving a spotlight to African-American creators. Osajyefo, Igle, and Randolph are all veterans of the industry who have stepped away from working for “The Big Two” (Marvel and DC) to tell a story they would not have been able to tell there.

13. The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl Beats Up the Marvel Universe

By Ryan North, Erica Henderson and Rico Renzi
Marvel Comics

Marvel doesn’t put out too many straight-to-graphic-novel publications these days, but if they’re going to do it, this seems like a good choice. The ongoing Unbeatable Squirrel Girl series is a critical darling but is probably not hitting the ideal audience of young female readers that tend to gravitate more towards graphic novels than comics. This new 120 page book by regular creative team Ryan North, Erica Henderson and Rico Renzi jokingly plays on the heroine’s knack for surprisingly winning battles against heavy hitters like Thanos and Galactus by having an evil duplicate of herself take on every hero in the Marvel Universe. Squirrel Girl is unlike any other character Marvel publishes and her book, with its cute art and smart humor, is a breath of fresh air among the overly serious, post-Hollywood Marvel of today.

Researchers may have found something extraordinary inside a plain-looking pebble: fossilized dinosaur brain. They described their findings [PDF] in a special publication from the Geological Society of London. 

Twelve years ago, fossil hunter and paper co-author Jamie Hiscocks was looking through an exposed sandstone riverbed in Sussex, England, when he spotted a round brown stone. Hiscocks brought the rock to the attention of renowned paleobiologist Martin Brasier at the University of Cambridge. The two men immediately began speculating on the rock’s contents.

“I noticed there was something odd about the preservation,” Hiscocks said in a statement, “and soft tissue preservation did go through my mind. Martin realized its potential significance right at the beginning.”

Brasier and colleagues at the University of Cambridge and the University of Western Australia began exploring the mysterious rock from every imaginable angle. They put it through a computed tomography (CT) scanner to look inside and examined its smallest details using super-high-powered microscopes.

What they found astounded them. The nondescript-looking rock, they say, concealed the remains of some prehistoric animal’s brain. Close-up images revealed fragments from the supportive membrane surrounding the brain, plus blood vessels and cortices from within.

The team believes the brain may have belonged to an iguanodon-like dinosaur that lived in the Early Cretaceous period around 133 million years ago. The fact that the chunk of brain has lasted this long is “astonishing,” said co-author Alex Liu.

The researchers say the brain’s owner likely met its demise in or near a body of water. It probably then became at least partially submerged and buried in sediment at the bottom, where acidic water and a lack of oxygen helped preserve the tissue.

“As we can’t see the lobes of the brain itself, we can’t say for sure how big this dinosaur’s brain was,” co-author David Norman said. “What’s truly remarkable is that conditions were just right in order to allow preservation of the brain tissue—hopefully this is the first of many such discoveries.”

However, some paleontologists are reserving judgment about the fossil until further research is done, including the American Museum of Natural History’s Mark Norell, who told NPR he is “not convinced” the find is a dinosaur brain.

Martin Brasier did not live to see the results of this research, but the team’s report on their findings was published in a special volume dedicated to his life and work.
 
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That smiley photo you posted on Facebook only got three likes. Your pithy tweet is met with silence. You have no idea how to Snapchat. Failing to get a reaction on social media can be frustrating and embarrassing—and it can also be bad for business. Social media has become an essential way to connect with customers, not just friends, so we spoke with marketing and digital strategy experts about tried and true ways to boost your social media profile.

1. DETERMINE YOUR OBJECTIVE.

Do you want more followers? Are you trying to engage your customers? Figure out your goal before deciding on a strategy, says Dana DiTomaso, president of Kick Point, a digital-first marketing agency.

2. INTERVIEW YOUR CUSTOMERS.

Get to know your audience’s online tastes and habits and adjust your game plan accordingly. Once you discover why they go online, you can figure out what you should be putting on your social media pages, DiTomaso, says. In order to help a healthcare client gain more customers, for instance, DiTomaso interviewed a group of local nurses about why they use social media. Turns out, they often log on to see where their favorite food trucks are at lunch. So DiTomaso suggested her client incorporate the food trucks into their events. Similarly, after determining that a builder client’s online followers were interested in home design, DiTomaso encouraged her client to share more stories about decor.

3. USE VISUALS.

Eye-catching photos, graphics, or videos can help your posts stand out from the rest, says Peg Fitzpatrick, a social media speaker and strategist. Fitzpatrick suggests using Adobe Spark for fun, easy, and free graphics and videos.

4. USE HASHTAGS.

Think of hashtags as the glue that holds social conversations and ideas together, Fitzpatrick says. “On Instagram, you can use up to thirty hashtags per post,” she says. Fitzpatrick recommends using hashtags that are relevant to your photo to connect it with like-minded people. “I put one or two in the initial description and the rest in a comment on the post.” But use discretion: Over-hashtagging or tagging unrelated terms or products makes people cranky—and you won’t reach the right audience.

5. BE STRATEGIC ABOUT YOUR FACEBOOK POSTS.

Maintaining an engaging and interesting Facebook page is an art, Fitzpatrick says. She recommends the following steps to make your page more popular: Experiment with posting at different times of the day; add variety to your posts; space your posts apart so you don’t clog your fans’ newsfeed.

6. CROSS-PROMOTE YOUR CONTENT.

Use social media platforms like Twitter and Instagram to share your videos to reach more people. “The wildly successful vloggers are all working multiple social media channels with their YouTube content,” Fitzpatrick says.

7. GO LIVE.

According to Facebook, people will spend triple the time watching a live video as they will one that was previously recorded. So think of an event, interview, or contest that you can broadcast live in order to attract more eyes to your page.

The reason why older people typically can’t hear very well has very little to do with the functional capabilities of their ears, Co.Exist reports. Instead, as a recent study in the Journal of Neurophysiology (freely available here) investigates, it has more to do with how the brain processes sound, and how that ability deteriorates as we age.

Researchers at the University of Maryland, College Park report that the deterioration is due to aging’s effect on the brain’s midbrain (associated with hearing as well as vision and motor control) and cortex (associated with thought and language). The study examined 17 younger adults and 15 older people with no signs of dementia. They were asked to listen to an audiobook while another narrated audiobook played in the background.

When trying to distinguish between the voices of two different speakers, the midbrains of older adults don’t respond as strongly as those of younger people. The older adults’ brains couldn’t encode the auditory signals as well, and they took longer to process speech, especially when there were two competing voices. The older brain appears to be less capable of picking out one sound out of many.

However, their cortex actually reconstructed the amplitude of the speech they heard in the brain with greater accuracy—an exaggerated response, which may reveal why older people need to pay more attention to process the noise of people talking. As the study’s abstract notes, this response suggests “an age-related over (or inefficient) use of cognitive resources that may explain their difficulty in processing speech targets while trying to ignore interfering noise.”

So the next time you encounter an older individual who is hard of hearing, don’t bother trying to speak louder. It won’t help them hear you any better. Instead, move your conversation to a place with less background noise.

[h/t Co.Exist]
 
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