Hey! Stop that fashion blunder

Looking good is good business! A typical lady loves to be complimented and appreciated for her looks, and most especially her fashion sense, however, a lot of ladies in the process of dressing up are fond of making too many fashion blunders which is a total eyesore.

Of a truth, a well-thought out and planned fashion style makes you unique and sexy, however, going to extremes just to prove a point makes it a NO.

Generally, guys feel uncomfortable when their ladies are not dressed appropriately and fit for an occasion. My sister, it’s so not cool when you dress up and your bra straps are dropping off like a leave that fell off from its branch or your pant colour showing like a bulb light covered with a white handkerchief…trust me the guy will be so turned off.

Are you not tired of being jeered at on the road for one or two silly but avoidable fashion mistakes? If you are not, I’m tired of seeing blunders that are bad enough to make me go blind.

Check out these simple tips to prevent you from making those blunders.

1. Underwears

Underwear

Don’t wear see-through leggings and hot pink or shouty yellow underwears. Surely it will always be obvious, but even if you are 100% certain that your leggings aren’t too obvious, don’t wear that faded pants in your closet with your tightest pair and a shirt that doesn’t cover things up.

If you so badly want to rock your leggings do well to put on an underwear that won’t show through your leggings.

For a bra, do not put on a regular bra with a top that doesn’t cover so much; this gives you an incomposed look, for example, tops like a racerback, tank top or a funky backless top. It drifts peoples attention away from how hot that top looks rather they see more of your bra straps.

If you are so much in love with backless tops and racerbacks , then, go with a backless bra or a raceback bra.

2. High heels

high heels

Putting on heels either gives you a corporate look, professional look or classic look. Whichever look you are in for, ensure that the heels you are rocking are perfect match for the clothes you are putting on.

When shopping for heels do not buy heels that are uncomfortable for you or are too tight. Wearing an uncomfortable heel could spoil your day, give you less of the confidence you want and cause terrible pain in your ankle region.

Do buy a comfortable lower heel that make your legs look rocking and gives more sexiness to your legs. Sacrifice some inches to be comfortable and look confident.

3. Clothes that are too small

small clothes

While shopping for clothes, ensure you go for the right size. Don’t buy a shirt that is too small and shows off all your insecurities. Instead go for your right body size that covers those insecurities but still make you look awesome.

Stop hoarding those clothes that no longer fit you. You could choose to sow them as a seed into someone’s life. But if you are the type that doesn’t give, you could keep them and use them to motivate yourself if you want to shed off some weights.

4. Crop tops and low-rise jeans

Crop tops and low-rise jeans

Right from the era of crop tops, this has been a constant mistake. We know you have a wonderful body but showing off those hairs on your tummy could be disgusting at some point. Why put on a crop top with a low -rise jean when there is high waisted jean?

The right combo for a crop top is a high waisted jean. So whenever that idea of putting on a low waisted jeans with a crop top comes up all in the name of showing off some skin shake it off your head and throw it into the refuse bin. Low-rise jeans look great with flowy, or at least longer, tops.

5. Colour contrast

Colour contrast

Putting on a red top on a red trouser or skirt is not always a good idea.

The best way of dressing is contrasting your colours. Contrast colours really look good and gives each of the colour an avenue to pop.

Playing on colours could be a fun thing while dressing but don’t go overboard.

Monochrome is a look best left to the runways, but if you decide to rock a monochrome, be sure to rock it stylishly!

I consider all these tips to be simple tips that one could easily learn. Remember while shopping, shop wisely. Shop like one who wants to dress like a lady, not just an ordinary lady but a lady with class.

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Drop that phone and look up!

One of the best things the 21st century did for us was the smartphone. As we were basking in the euphoria of being able to connect with people miles away with a wireless equipment, the smartphone came along with the social media by its side. With the smartphone, you have the world in your palms; you could do virtually everything and anything.

You connect with millions of people simultaneously, check up vital information about anything and still have the ability to send Short Message Service (SMS) and make calls, all at the same time. The social media itself even seemed more magical and made impossibilities possible, businesses flourished, marriages were established, lost connections were restored, distance was no longer a barrier and we could literally “touch” the world.

However, the “magical” smartphone and its “daughter” the social media has brought with it a whole lot of ills which seem really difficult to combat these days.

Everywhere in Nigeria, youths are seen clinging passionately to their communication gadgets, some laughing, others having this business-like look on their faces, they all have one thing in common: They are networking, building strong and long lasting relationships that transcends any bias, be it religious, political, or ethnical. We all seem to be  busy looking down at our phones that we don’t look up to see the little beauties of life, we don’t admire beautiful flowers anymore, we hardly take note of lowly beggars reaching out to us on the streets, nor do we respond to “hellos” from  “familiar strangers”.

We are becoming more concerned with Facebook “friends” than we are with the people we interact with face-to-face in our daily lives.

When last did we make new friends just by saying hello and talking about random stuff till we felt a connection? Social media platforms have lent a voice to the voiceless but has destroyed the throats of those who had voices. We no longer talk to strangers in the bus while travelling or give people our undivided attention.

Our family time, slumber parties, get-togethers and many more have been replaced by group chats, Skype, video conferencing, etc.

Many live for Facebook and Instagram likes, everyone wants to be Facebook famous, very few people want to write a motivational book or start up a movement for inspiration and youth empowerment.

This is a clarion call for the youths to stop the gadget madness. There’s more to life than that gadget!  The frivolous things of life would always come and go. Many social media platforms are dead and buried, but the important virtues of life will always stand strong. Friendship, loyalty, companionship, marriage would always be here and when you miss out on them, you’re missing out on the goodness of life.

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Japanese Space Agency’s Mission Aims To Uncover How Moons Of Mars Formed

NASA/JPL/Handout via Reuters

Elizabeth Tasker, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has announced a mission to visit the two moons of Mars and return a rock sample to Earth. It’s a plan to uncover both the mystery of the moons’ creation and, perhaps, how life began in our Solar System.

The Solar System’s planets take their names from ancient Greek and Roman mythology. Mars is the god of war, while the red planet’s two moons are named for the deity’s twin sons: Deimos (meaning panic) and Phobos (fear).

Unlike our own Moon, Phobos and Deimos are tiny. Phobos has an average diameter of 22.2km, while Deimos measures an even smaller 13km. Neither moon is on a stable orbit, with Deimos slowly moving away from Mars while Phobos will hit the Martian surface in around 20 million years.

The small size of the two satellites makes their gravity too weak to pull the moons in spheres. Instead, the pair have the irregular, lumpy structure of asteroids. This has led to a major question about their formation: were these moons formed from Mars or are they actually captured asteroids?

Impact or capture?

Our own Moon is thought to have formed when a Mars-sized object hit the early Earth. Material from the collision was flung into the Earth’s orbit to coalesce into our Moon.

A similar event could have produced Phobos and Deimos. The terrestrial planets were subjected to a rain of impacts during the final throes of Solar System formation.

Mars shows possible evidence of one such major impact, as the planet’s northern hemisphere is sunk an average of 5.5km lower than the southern terrain. Debris from this or other impacts could have given birth to the moons.

Alternatively, Phobos and Deimos could be asteroids that were scattered inwards from the asteroid belt by the looming gravitational influence of Jupiter. Snagged by Mars’s gravity, the planet could have stolen its two moons. This mechanism is how Neptune acquired its moon, Triton, which is thought to have once been a Kuiper belt object, like Pluto.

There are compelling arguments for both the #TeamImpact and #TeamCapture scenario.

The orbits of the two moons are circular and in the plane of Mars’s own rotation. While the chance of this happening during a capture event are extremely low, observations of the moons suggest they may have a composition similar to that of other asteroids.

Definite determination of the moons’ composition would act as a fingerprint to distinguish the two models. A collision event should result in moons made from the same rock as Mars. But if the moons were captured, they would have formed in a different part of the Solar System with distinct minerals.

This is where the new mission comes in. JAXA’s Martian Moon eXploration Mission (MMX) is due to launch in September 2024 and arrive at Mars in August 2025. The spacecraft will then spend the next three years exploring the two moons and the environment around the red planet.

During this time, MMX will drop to the surface of Phobos and collect a sample to return to Earth in the summer of 2029.

Due to their weak gravity, collecting a sample from small rocky bodies is a difficult challenge. But this is JAXA’s speciality. The space agency has previously returned samples from asteroid Itokawa in 2010. The sequel to that mission, Hayabusa2, is due to arrive at asteroid Ryugu next year.

International collaborations

The excitement for a Mars moon mission has led to strong international involvement in MMX. On April 10, JAXA president Naoki Okumura met his counterpart from France’s Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES), Jean-Yves Le Gall.

The meeting cemented a collaboration between the two space agencies. CNES will provide an instrument for MMX as well as combining expertise on flight dynamics for the tricky encounter with the Martian moons.

The French instrument will combine a high-resolution infrared camera and spectrometer, a technique that analyses the composition of each image pixel. This will allow the rocks of the Martian moons to be investigated down to a few tenths of a metre.

With a pixel size an order of magnitude smaller than that of similar instruments on missions such as NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and ESA’s Mars Express, the spectrometer will also be able to help MMX select the best landing site on Phobos and take the sample.

CNES will also explore the possibility of building a rover to explore the surface of Phobos. A decision will be taken in November this year.

In addition to the collaboration with France, MMX will carry an instrument from NASA. While the CNES spectrometer will examine the type of minerals on the moons, the NASA instrument will pick out individual chemical elements. This is done by analyzing the high-energy Gamma rays and neutrons that are produced during the bombardment of cosmic rays from the Sun or more distant sources.

Together, these instruments will reveal a more thorough composition of Mars’s mysterious satellites.

Both #TeamCapture and #TeamImpact offer fantastic science. Moons formed from collisional debris would be preserved time capsules of conditions on the young Mars. In this early epoch, Mars and the Earth are expected to have been far more similar than now. A sample from this time could reveal how a planet becomes habitable.

But moons captured from the asteroid belt would be kin to the meteorites that rained down on the young Earth. These are thought to be the deliverers of our oceans and even our first organic molecules. A sample from Phobos would be a taste of the package that was flung around the early Solar System.

Phobos’s ever decreasing distance to Mars also means that the top layer of the moon’s soil should be littered with meteorites scattered from the planet. Such a short journey would allow much lower-density material to survive the trip, unlike the Martian meteorites that manage to reach Earth.

This transferred material will also be from all over Mars, rather than the small patch that rovers have examined. And it might result in a more complete picture of Mars, as well as of its moons.

MMX is an exciting mission, bringing information about moon formation, Mars and water delivery around our Sun. As we wait for 2024, are you voting for #TeamImpact or #TeamCapture?

Elizabeth Tasker, Associate Professor, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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Fountain of Poop? Fish Study Hints at Microbes' Role in Aging

Credit: InsectWorld/Shutterstock

Poop may hold the secret to preserving youth — at least for some fish.

In a recent study, scientists discovered that older fish lived longer when they fed on microbes from younger fish's feces. Their findings suggest that the microbiome —communities of single-celled organisms such as bacteria, fungi and viruses — plays a role in the aging process.

In their study, the scientists examined turquoise killifish (Nothobranchius furzeri), a vertebrate with one of the shortest life spans on Earth. Killifish reach sexual maturity at 3 weeks old, and die after only a few months of life. As these fish age, their gut bacteria become less diverse, the researchers noted. To test whether increasing microbiome diversity might affect the aging process, the scientists introduced the gut bacteria of younger fish to the older fish. [Body Bugs: 5 Surprising Facts About Your Microbiome]

Middle-age, 9.5-week-old killifish were presented with the gut contents of 6-week-old killifish, lead author Dario Valenzano, a geneticist at the Max Planck Institute for Biology of Ageing in Germany, told Nature. Though killifish don't eat feces, the older fish ingested microbes when they pecked at the fecal material to see if it was food, Valenzano said.

"Recolonizing the gut of middle-age individuals with bacteria from young donors resulted in life span extension and delayed behavioral decline," the researchers wrote in the study. "This intervention prevented the decrease in microbial diversity associated with host aging and maintained a young-like gut bacterial community."

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The older fish that consumed the microbes from the younger fish had a different bacterial makeup after doing so, according to the researchers. And at 16 weeks old, these "senior" fish that received younger microbes still had gut microbiomes similar to those of 6-week-old killifish, the researchers said.

Having a younger microbiome also helped the older fish live longer: The fish that consumed the microbes from younger fish lived 41 percent longer, on average, compared with the fish that did not receive the young microbes, according to the researchers. The older fish were also more active, just like younger fish, the researchers found.

"Our findings demonstrate that the natural microbial gut community of young individuals can causally induce long-lasting beneficial systemic effects that lead to life span extension in a vertebrate model," the researchers concluded in the study.

Though the findings showed the impact of younger microbes, it's unclear how, exactly, these microbes influence the fish's life span, Valenzano told Nature. The researchers are continuing their experiments, now working with fruit flies, to better understand how the microbiome is connected to aging.

Details of the study were published online April 6 on bioRxiv, a preprint website for biology research that has not yet been peer-reviewed.

Original article on Live Science.

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Giant Peanut-Shaped Asteroid to Pass Harmlessly by Earth Today

The asteroid 2014 JO25 will fly safely past Earth April 19, coming within 1.1 million miles (1.8 million km) of the planet — about 4.6 times the distance between the Earth and the moon. This map shows the asteroid's locations as it passes through the sky April 19 to April 22 — it will appear bright in the sky for small telescopes for a few days after closest approach. Its position will vary from location to location.

Credit: Gianluca Masi (Virtual Telescope Project)/TheSkySixPro

A huge, shiny, peanut-shaped asteroid will safely swing by Earth tomorrow morning (April 19), coming within a distance of 1.1 million miles (1.8 million kilometers) of the planet — about 4.6 times the distance from Earth to the moon.

The bright asteroid 2014 JO25   is coming toward Earth from the sun's direction and should be visible in the sky in small telescopes for a few days afterward as it fades from view. It will be at its closest point to Earth at 8:24 a.m. EDT (1224 GMT). You can see a video animation of the asteroid's orbit here.

Asteroid 2014 JO25 was first spotted in May 2014 by astronomers at the Catalina Sky Survey in Arizona, and measurements from NASA's NEOWISE mission suggested it was about 2,000 feet (650 meters) across, according to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). Radar observations from the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico suggest it could be as big as 4,270 feet (1.3 km) at its widest point.

The asteroid's surface reflects about twice as much light as the moon. Its approach marks the closest an object this large has come to Earth since the gigantic asteroid 4179 Toutatis tumbled by in 2004, within 4 times the distance from the Earth to the moon.

The Aricebo Observatory caught this radio image of the asteroid 2014 JO25 on April 17, 2017, as the large, peanut-shaped asteroid neared its closet approach to Earth.

Credit: Aricebo Observatory/NASA/NSF

Wednesday's approach is the closest 2014 JO25 has come in at least 400 years, and there's no known close approach coming through at least the year 2500. Although the asteroid's approach poses no risk to Earth — with a 0 percent impact probability — the International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center still classified it as "potentially hazardous" because of its size and nearness to Earth. Researchers will have to keep an eye on it to see if it drifts closer over the centuries, the Minor Planet Center wrote.

Astronomers around the world will study asteroid 2014 JO25 during and after its approach, including skywatchers at Arecibo and NASA's Goldstone Solar System Radar in California, JPL officials said in the statement — making observations that can potentially reveal features just a few meters across.

"Using radar, we can illuminate a near-Earth asteroid and directly measure its features,"astronomer Edgard Rivera-Valentín, a planetary scientist with the Universities Space Research Association (USRA) at the Arecibo Observatory, said in a separate statement. That's how scientists pinned down the asteroid's peanut shape, he added.

The next close approach of a known giant asteroid will happen in 2027, when the half-mile-wide (800 m) asteroid 1999 AN10 passes by at about the distance from the Earth to the moon.

You can watch asteroid 2014 JO25's journey live on the Slooh online observatory's website starting at 7 p.m. EDT (2300 GMT) April 19. You can also seek it out in the sky using the celestial map above and a small telescope (although its position will vary, depending on your location).

While you're looking, keep an eye out for the comet PanSTARRS (C/2015 ER61), which will be visible in the dawn sky to observers with binoculars or a small telescope as it makes its closest approach of 109 million miles (175 million km).

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What Drove Tsavo Lions to Eat People? Century-Old Mystery Solved

Lt. Colonel John Patterson in 1898, with one of the Tsavo man-eaters that he shot.

Credit: The Field Museum

Their names were "The Ghost" and "The Darkness," and 119 years ago, these two massive, maneless, man-eating lions hunted railway workers in the Tsavo region of Kenya. During a nine-month period in 1898, the lions killed at least 35 people and as many as 135, according to different accounts. And the question of why the lions developed a taste for human flesh remained a subject of much speculation. 

Also known as the Tsavo lions, the pair of beasts ruled the night until they were shot and killed in December 1898 by railway engineer Col. John Henry Patterson. In the decades that followed, audiences were captivated by the story of the ferocious lions, first told in newspaper articles and books (one account was written by Patterson himself in 1907: "The Man-Eaters of Tsavo"), and later in movies.

In the past, it had been suggested that the lions' desperate hunger drove them to eat people. However, a recent analysis of the remains of the two man-eaters, a part of the collection at The Field Museum in Chicago, offers new insight into what led the Tsavo lions to kill and eat people. The findings, described in a new study, suggest a different explanation: that tooth and jaw damage — which would have made it excruciating to hunt their usual large herbivore prey — was to blame. [Photos: The Biggest Lions on Earth]

For most lions, humans are typically far from their first choice of prey. The big cats usually feed on large herbivores, such as zebras, wildebeest and antelope. And rather than viewing people as potential meals, lions tend to go out of their way to avoid humans entirely, study co-author Bruce Patterson, curator of mammals at The Field Museum, told Live Science.

But something else convinced the Tsavo lions that humans were fair game, Patterson said.

To unravel the century-old mystery, the study authors examined evidence of the lions' behavior preserved in their teeth. Microscopic wear patterns can tell scientists about an animal's eating habits — particularly during the last weeks of life — and the Tsavo lions' teeth didn't show signs of the wear and tear associated with crunching big, heavy bones, the scientists wrote in the study.

Hypotheses proposed in the past suggested that the lions developed a taste for people through scavenging, perhaps because their usual prey had died off from drought or disease. But if the lions were hunting humans out of desperation, the starving cats would have certainly cracked human bones to get the last bit of nutrition from their grisly meals, Patterson said. And wear patterns on the teeth showed that they left the bones alone, so the Tsavo lions probably weren't motivated by a lack of more suitable prey, he added. 

A more likely explanation is that the ominously named The Ghost and The Darkness began hunting humans because infirmities in their mouths hindered their ability to catch bigger and stronger animals, the study authors wrote.

Down in the mouth

Previous findings, first presented to the American Society of Mammalogists in 2000, according to New Scientist, documented that one of the Tsavo lions was missing three lower incisors, and had a broken canine and a sizable abscess in the tissues surrounding another tooth's root. The second lion also had damage in its mouth, with a fractured upper tooth showing exposed pulp. [The 10 Deadliest Animals on Earth]

For the first lion in particular, pressure on the abscess would have caused unbearable pain, providing more than enough motivation for the animal to skip large, powerful prey and go after punier people, Patterson said. In fact, chemical analysis conducted in another, earlier study, published in 2009 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, showed that the lion with the abscess consumed more human prey than its partner. Moreover, after the first lion was shot and killed in 1898 — more than two weeks before the second lion was gunned down — the attacks on people ceased, Patterson noted.

Nearly 120 years after the man-eaters' lives abruptly ended, fascination with their gruesome habits persists. But had it not been for their preserved remains — which John Patterson sold to FMNH as trophy rugs in 1924 — today's explanations for their habits would be no more than speculation, Bruce Patterson told Live Science. 

"There would be no way to resolve these questions if it weren't for specimens," he said. "After almost 120 years, we can tell not only what these lions were eating, but we can resolve differences between these lions by interrogating their skins and skulls.

"There's a lot of science you can build on that, all derived from specimens," Patterson added. "I have 230,000 other specimens in the museum collection, and they all have stories to tell."

The findings were published online today (April 19) in the journal Scientific Reports.

Original article on Live Science.

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