Turmeric: Memory worker.

Hey guys, it's Adventure Van here with a blog about Tumeric, a indian spice that improves your memory capabilites and helps stave off dementia. In a study done by UCLA, in a double-blind, placebo-controlled test, it was discovered that if you take two doses of Curcumin, a common substance in Tumeric, a day, you'd have around a 28% improvement in memory function, as well as feeling better overall and less plaque buildup in areas that control memory, decision making,  and emotion. All in all, there has yet to be a discovered disadvantage with this, so if you have a steady supply of tumeric, go nuts! Or roots.

Adventure Van, remembering awayyy.

Mars and Humans: Destiny?

Hey guys, it's Adventure Van here with a blog about Water on Mars! I know, it's nothing new, but it is. Recently, we've discovered parts of Mars that have sheets of ice underneath a few feet or ground. Seeing how the more we look at it, the more it seems to oblige humans living there, it's getting more and more possible to build colonies at later date. Humans seem to be really interested over all in working towards mars, and we're getting closer with technology to come up with a great way to get up there, build a research station, colonies, and even Terraforming. But even with what we have now, it's looking optimistic. Theoretically, if you go out with a shovel and a bucket, you should be able to dig down deep enough to cut out blocks of ice. It's the pure type of ice, not ice encrusted dirt, which is harder to get water out of. All in all, assuming spaceship exploration of technology continues at the current rate, it's very likely that we'll be able to have humans on space in less then 20 years. But that's hoping for the best.

Adventure Van, drinking away!

Lights Off? The problems with Light Pollution.

Hey guys, it's Adventure Van here with a blog about Light Pollution, a thing that sounds outrageous at first. How can you have too much light? Except for staring at a bright bulb, there's no real disadvantages to light, right? Well, the answer might not be obvious to you now, but that's because of the fact that we've grown so used to what we've been obscuring being obscured. The amount of stars we used to be able to see, (and are still able to see at some remote places) has been reduced down to a few ten. The sky has become so obscured by human lights, that we can't see the galaxy above our own heads. It's destroying the aesthetic. But aesthetics aren't that important, right?

Well, other then being a detriment to astrologers who need to seek out untouched areas in order to look at potentially important things up in the sky, it's also damaging local wild life, and humanity as a whole. How? Well, most animals incapable of generating their own light (almost all of them), are based around a cycle of day and night, while those that can depend on light to deal with their own species. Light ruins the cycle and can even mess up very important things, like mating or hibernation.

But hey, says the most selfish among us. If it doesn't effect me, why should I care? To them I say, it does effect you, and in more ways then robbing us of natural beauty and wildlife. As above, we humans lived a very long time without being able to have an excess of unnatural light, and we suffer the consequences range from Insomnia to oversleeping. An ill-placed collection of lights produces a glare that can blind people, which when around a street is devastating. And above all, too much light at night can raise chances of the following: obesity, depression, sleep disorders, diabetes, breast cancer and more.

Adventure Van, dimming the lights.

If you're interested in this kind of stuff, or want to help out in your area, check out the International Dark Sky Association.

Exercise & Brains

Hey guys, it's Adventure Van here with a blog about exercise. Well, we all know that exercise is a great way to make your body healthier, happier, and more capable. But the more we look at the benefits, the more ways we discover that it helps us. The most recent way? Aerobic exercise is being researched to apparently have a positive effect on stopping brain shrink. The well backed results (14 separate studies involving upwards of 730 participants) state that people who do that type of exercise dramatically reduce shrinkage in their hippocampus. Basically, the more research put into exercise, the more it seems to reap.

That's Adventure Van, flexing out.

Ross 128 b: Another Jupiter?

Hey guys, it's Adventure Van here with a blog about the Ross 128 b, a planet by a red dwarf star that seems to be in the star's habitable zone. Only 11 light years away, it's been claimed that upon reaching space travel, it could be used as a colony as well as a chance to see if we can find life. But, it it so, or is our wish to find a habitable planet so strong that we're falling into a "Skeleton Men of Jupiter" trap? I'll look over the past couple of times that humanity has been sure that we got it right this time when it came to living in space.

For some reason, ever since we left the idea that the world was flat and had large domes overhead that rotated (I say that loosely, as some people still have that belief), we've fantasized over heading into the "Final Frontier". Everywhere from the popular shows Star Wars and Star Trek, to the hundreds of thousands of books that wish to bring the reader from boring ol' Terra out into the wilderness that is space. We look at the sky with rose tinted telescopes, hoping for the best whenever we see something.

So, what do I mean when I say "Skeleton Men of Jupiter"? Popular "Science Opera" writer Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote a large amount of science fiction, one of the most popular being "John Carter of Mars". But he wrote a large selection of books, including SKOJ. So why am I describing it as a trap? Because it is. Before we had powerful enough telescopes, it was theorized by the main body of astrologically inclined minds that it could be somewhat like earth. The idea caught on, and it got a large following from the sci-fi community. It's a shame that Jupiter was soon found out to be a gas planet.

We've gone over these types of things several times. We've had to deal with enthusiasm misplaced in the past, so some people are perfectly justified in the doubt that we haven't actually found a new habitable planet. Unfortunately, we've got a much wider Sci-Fi community, and most of them come up with the new planets, so we won't be able to have a Sci-Fi novels for every planet we've seen. 

Want to see the article from the group that discovered it? Here you go!

Want to read about the station that found it, and take a virtual tour of it? Here you go!

That's Adventure Van, spacing out. Huh?