To recharge the brain, one can:

1. Take a nap
2. Go for a brisk walk
3. Lie in a nearby park or on a bench and watch the clouds go by
4. Listen to music or even podcast novels
5. Browse a local bookstore
6. Stroll through a nearby art gallery
7. Get a coffee in a cafe and read the paper or, even better, a gossip magazine
8. Hit the gym
9. Meditate or do yoga
10. Hang out at the local dog run and get in touch with your animal nature
11. Memorize poetry
12. Sit on the corner and sketch buildings
13. Window shop
14. Get a massage
15. Do math problems or crosswords

The main thing is to get away from the current situation or place, to do something that uses a completely different part of the brain than the creative work does, and get ones mind off of what one was doing and stimulated with fresh ideas, images and inspirations. One will come back recharged, refreshed, and ready to plunge full speed ahead.

Lemon juice is used as a flavoring ingredient in a large number of dishes, belonging to various cuisines. Apart from that, it is the primary ingredient in lemonade, an extremely refreshing as well as beneficial drink. Most of the people stop after mentioning these two basic uses of lemon juice. However, lemon juice is credited with having a large number of uses and benefits. It is good for the skin, has deodorizing properties, acts as a disinfectant, helps clean stains, and so on. To get an exhaustive list of the everyday uses of lemon juice, read on…

Uses of Lemon Juice

• Applying lemon juice on a minor cut will not only help stop bleeding, but also disinfect the wound.
• Constipation can be treated with the help of lemon juice. For the purpose, have a lemon drink (4 tbsp lemon juice, 1 cup warm water & ½ tsp honey), everyday before breakfast.
• Handling fruit or berry often leaves stains on hands. For getting rid of them, rinse your hands with lemon juice.
• If you have been affected by poison ivy, apply lemon juice over the aggravated area. It will help soothe itching and also assuage the rash.
• If you have blackheads on your face, using lemon juice will help in getting rid of them. Rub the juice over the affected area before going to bed and wash your face in the morning, with cool water.
• Lemon juice can be used for removing ink spots from clothes. Immediately apply lemon juice on the affected area, while the ink is still wet. Wash the garment as usual and line dry.
• If you want to remove the smell of garlic, onions or fish from your chopping board, clean it with lemon juice. It will deodorize the board, making it smell as fresh as ever.
• Lemon juice can help treat cough also. Mix 4 tbsp lemon juice, 1 cup honey and ½ cup olive oil. Heat the mixture for 5 minutes and then stir vigorously for 2 minutes. Take 1 tsp of the mixture, every 2 hours.
• If you have rough hands or sore feet, apply lemon juice over them. Thereafter, massage with olive oil. You will see the results soon enough.
• Lemon juice can help you get rid of skin blemishes. Dab lemon juice over the blemished part, a few times a day.
• Want to write an invisible letter? Take a toothpick and dip it in lemon juice. Use this for writing your letter. The paper will look blank to the naked eye, but as you hold it near a hot light bulb, the writing will start burning brown, giving way to the whole letter.
• Lemon juice can help you whiten as well as strengthen your nails. Half-fill a small bowl with lemon juice and soak your nails in it, for around 10 minutes. Now, add equal parts white vinegar and warm water. Dip a brush in it and clean your nails with it. Rinse with water.
• Lemon juice is effective for removing rust and mineral discolorations from cotton t-shirts and briefs. For the purpose, put 1 cup of lemon juice in the washer, before washing clothes.
• Lemon juice is good for cleaning brass, copper and stainless steel items, including kitchen sinks. Make a paste by adding lemon juice to salt, scrub the stains gently with the paste and then, rinse with water.
• The best way to clean a microwave is with the help of lemon juice. Dilute 4 tbsp lemon juice in one cup water and put the solution in a microwave-safe bowl. Keep it in the microwave and let it boil for five minutes. The steam from the water will condense the inside walls. Use a cloth to wipe your microwave clean.
• You can use lemon juice to get rid of dandruff. Apply lemon juice on your scalp around ½ hour before washing your hair. Mix 2-3 tbsp lemon juice in a mug of water and use it to give the last rinse to your hair, after washing them with shampoo.

What do you think, which is healthier – a peanut butter sandwich or a glass of whole milk? In terms of fat, the sandwich is actually better, according to an article published by American Heart Association. They recommend a daily fat intake limited to 30 percent of the day’s total calories, but the type of fat we eat may be just as important as the amount. People who eat a diet high in monounsaturated fat were found to have a lower risk of heart disease than those who eat more saturated fats.
Monounsaturated fats may help reduce harmful triglycerides in blood and increase good HDL cholesterol. So, how can someone change ones diet accordingly? Try to incorporate more foods that have more good (mono or polyunsaturated) fat and less bad (saturated) fat. Here are a few examples:

THE GOOD GUYS
* Peanut butter
* Olive oil
* Avocados
* Soybeans
* Nuts
* Canola oil
* Corn oil
* Sesame, sunflower and pumpkin seeds

THE BAD GUYS
* Marbled meats
* Organ meats (including sausage)
* Butter
* Ice cream
* Mayonnaise
* Milk
* Cream
* Cheese
* Palm oil

IN THE MIDDLE
* Lean red meat
* Chicken
* Fish

But remember hidden saturated fats also lurk in lots of snack foods such as cookies, chips, and candy. For example, anything with coconut or coconut oil even if it’s a vegan snack will be high in saturated fat.

And note that this isn’t, of course, an open invitation to start gorging on peanut butter. It’s still wise to keep your total fat intake to around 30 percent a day – just make them “better” fats.

1. Instant Gratification

This one works immediately – stare at the dot in the center of the image and move your head back and forth – the rings will rotate.

2. Leaning Tower Illusion

The two images above are identical, yet the tower on the right appears to be leaning more steeply. The reason for this is because the visual system treats the two images as if part of a single scene. Normally, if two adjacent towers rise at the same angle, their image outlines converge as they recede from view due to perspective, and this is taken into account by the visual system.

3. Straight Lines

The image above is composed entirely of straight lines. If you don’t believe, try using a ruler to test it.

4. Inverse Image

Stare at the center of the image above for about 30 seconds then immediately look at a blank white wall or a piece of white paper. Stare at the blank paper and an image will emerge. The more you stare, the clearer the image becomes.

5. Sacred Heart Illusion

Click the image above to open it as its full size then slowly move your head away from the image.

6. Color Illusion

This one is amazing – the blue and green lines in the picture above are the same color.

7. Impossible Cube Illusion

The impossible cube or irrational cube is an impossible object that draws upon the ambiguity present in a Necker cube illustration. An impossible cube is usually rendered as a Necker cube in which the edges are apparently solid beams. This apparent solidity gives the impossible cube greater visual ambiguity than the Necker cube, which is less likely to be perceived as an impossible object. The illusion plays on the human eye’s interpretation of two-dimensional pictures as three-dimensional objects.

8. Ebbinghaus Illusion:

The Ebbinghaus illusion is an optical illusion of relative size perception. In the best-known version of the illusion, two circles of identical size are placed near to each other and one is surrounded by large circles while the other is surrounded by small circles; the first central circle then appears smaller than the second central circle.

9. White Illusion

White’s illusion is an optical illusion illustrating the fact that the same target luminance can elicit different perceptions of brightness in different contexts. Note, that although the gray rectangles are all of equal luminance, the ones seen in the context with the dark stripes appear brighter than the ones seen in the context with the bright stripes.

10. Color Perception

Believe it or not – the pink spots in the image above are the same – if you don’t believe it, open the image in photoshop and compare them.

1. Zöllner Illusion

In this figure the black lines seem to be unparallel, but in reality they are parallel. The shorter lines are on an angle to the longer lines. This angle helps to create the impression that one end of the longer lines is nearer to us than the other end. This is very similar to the way the Wundt illusion appears. It may be that the Zöllner illusion is caused by this impression of depth.

2. Blivet

A blivet, also known as a poiuyt, is an undecipherable figure, an optical illusion and an impossible object. It appears to have three cylindrical prongs at one end which then mysteriously transform into two rectangular prongs at the other end.

3. Hermann Grid Illusion

The Hermann grid illusion is an optical illusion reported by Ludimar Hermann in 1870 while, incidentally, reading John Tyndall’s Sound. The illusion is characterised by “ghostlike” grey blobs perceived at the intersections of a white (or light-colored) grid on a black background. The grey blobs disappear when looking directly at an intersection.

4. Hering Illusion

The Hering illusion is an optical illusion discovered by the German physiologist Ewald Hering in 1861. The two vertical lines are both straight, but they look as if they were bowed outwards. The distortion is produced by the lined pattern on the background, that simulates a perspective design, and creates a false impression of depth.

5. Jastrow Illusion

The Jastrow illusion is an optical illusion discovered by the American psychologist Joseph Jastrow in 1889. In this illustration, the two figures are identical, although the lower one appears to be larger.

6. Bezold Effect

The Bezold Effect is an optical illusion, named after a German professor of meteorology, Wilhelm von Bezold (1837-1907), who discovered that a color may appear different depending on its relation to adjacent colors. In the above example, the red seems lighter combined with the white, and darker combined with the black.

7. Fraser Spiral Illusion

The illusion is also known as the false spiral, or by its original name, the twisted cord illusion. The overlapping black arc segments appear to form a spiral; however, the arcs are a series of concentric circles.

8. Adelson’s Checker Shadow Illusion

The image shows what appears to be a black and white checker-board with a green cylinder resting on it that casts a shadow diagonally across the middle of the board. The black and white squares are actually different shades of gray. The image has been constructed so that “white” squares in the shadow, one of which is labeled “B,” are actually the exact same gray value as “black” squares outside the shadow, one of which is labeled “A.” The two squares A and B appear very different as a result of the illusion.
9. Café Wall Illusion

The café wall illusion is an optical illusion, first described by Doctor Richard Gregory. He observed this curious effect in the tiles of the wall of a café at the bottom of St Michael’s Hill, Bristol. This optical illusion makes the parallel straight horizontal lines appear to be bent. To construct the illusion, alternating light and dark “bricks” are laid in staggered rows. It is essential for the illusion that each “brick” is surrounded by a layer of “mortar” (the grey in the image). This should ideally be of a color in between the dark and light color of the “bricks”.

10. Motion Illusion

One type of motion illusion is a type of optical illusion in which a static image appears to be moving due to the cognitive effects of interacting color contrasts and shape position. To properly view this effect, click the image above to see the full sized version.

Interesting, isn’t it?

Source: Wikipedia

Unlike Harry Potter’s one-of-a-kind invisibility cloak, the real deal will likely be cheap and easily reproducible.

Researchers have created an invisibility cloak of sorts, though it looks more like a yellow bathmat than Harry Potter’s famous cloth. The cloak is shown lying over a bump on a flat surface. Both the bump and surface are covered in a reflective coating. The cloak makes it appear that microwaves hitting the bump are actually reflecting off a flat surface.

An invisibility cloak for visible light could be made within six months, say scientists from Duke University, who, in a new paper published in Science, explain how to hide objects from a dramatically extended range of wave lengths.

A “metamaterial” is a material with unique properties that derive from its physical structure, not its chemical make up. To manipulate light the microscopic surface of a material must be much smaller than that of the wave length of light being used.

Smith’s (David Smith, a professor at Duke University and author of the Science paper) original 2006 invisibility cloak provided invisibility to longer microwaves, letting them flow around the object and regroup on the other side. As you move through microwaves and into the infrared (and soon, visible light) wavelengths become shorter, so the microscopic structure of the material has to get even smaller. Smith said, advances in nanotechnology are making it easier to create ever smaller structures that can manipulate ever smaller wavelengths.

To conduct the experiment, the scientists assembled a roughly 20- by 4-inch platform and covered it with the mirror-like metamaterial. Then they covered a roughly 1-square-inch rounded bump in the same metamaterial, placed it on the other surface, and shined infrared light on the set up. Any normal curved material would scatter the light at a variety of different angles. The metamaterial covered bump instead reflected light back towards the source like a flat surface would do, hiding the bump underneath.

The Duke cloak does have its limitations. It only works in two dimensions. Both the background and the hidden object must also both be wrapped in the metamaterial.

Hiding a small bump is great for science, and for hiding things in general, but invisibility technology has a much wider range of uses besides mere concealment. Just as one example of many, Smith says that cloaking technology could remove cell-phone interference in buildings, letting people have clear conversations even inside an elevator.

It took Smith and his colleagues about nine days to design and implement the experiment.

Source: Discovery Channel

Motorola’s said its new W233 Renew phone, unveiled in advance of the 2009 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, is the world’s first carbon neutral phone.

Motorola unveiled a cell phone made of recycled water bottles hoping to cash in on the trend for environmentally friendly products.

The company, which dropped to No. 4 in the global handset market in the most recently reported quarter due to a weak product line-up, said the W233 Renew eco-friendly phone would be sold by Deutsche Telekom’s T-Mobile USA in the current quarter.

It did not disclose pricing for the phone. Motorola said it was the world’s first carbon neutral phone. As well as using recycled materials for the plastic casing, the company also pledged to offset the carbon dioxide used in manufacturing, distribution and operation of the phone through investments in renewable energy sources and reforestation.

‘StarCraft II,’ ‘Final Fantasy XIII’ top the list of can’t-wait-to-play titles. Here are some most anticipated video games of 2009.

Resident Evil 5

Given the pedigree of the series, not to mention the innovative enhancements of the last game, the sequel to ‘Resident Evil 4′ was a shoo-in on the list this year. Early previews suggests ‘5′ is more of the same, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Final Fantasy XIII

Widely regarded as the most influential role-playing franchise on consoles, the latest ‘Final Fantasy’ is scheduled to arrive on PS3 this year and later on Xbox 360. But don’t let the ridiculously high sequel number dash your hopes for originality, though. Developer Square Enix has a history of perfecting and evolving the art of the RPG, as they’ll likely do with this one.

StarCraft II

This 10-year-old game is still being played – a lot – so you’ve gotta figure that die-hard fans are beyond excited for this one. Like a real-time version of ‘Risk’ set in space and running at 80 miles per hour, it’s no wonder ‘StarCraft’ is one of the best-selling PC games of all time. And South Korea where ‘Starcraft’ tournaments are televised live is sure to implode once the game drops. (Also consider Diablo 2)

Wheelman

Made by the same studio that produced 2004’s critically-acclaimed ‘Chronicles of Riddick,’ the quick-hit missions, variety of tasks and just plain driving around never fail to entertain. The vehicular combat is so fun it will make you rethink the role of automobiles in open world games.

Punch-Out!!

Nintendo fans flipped in October when the company announced the first proper update to ‘Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!!’ since 1994. And rightfully so: The requisite timing and pattern recognition to play the game, in addition to its humor, always arouses a smile. It won’t be easy revitalizing the 8-bit classic, but since the game is being handled by the developers of ‘Mario Strikers Charged’. (Also consider Wii Sports Resort).

A research indicates that drinking coffee lowers the risk of developing cancer of the oral cavity or throat, at least in the general population of Japan.

The consumption of coffee in Japan is relatively high, as is the rate of cancer of the esophagus in men. To look into any protective effect of coffee drinking, Dr. Toru Naganuma of Tohoku University, Sendai, and colleagues, analysed data from the population-based Miyagi Cohort Study in Japan.

The study included information about diet, including coffee consumption. Among more than 38,000 study participants aged 40 to 64 years with no prior history of cancer, 157 cases of cancer of the mouth, pharynx and esophagus occurred during 13 years of follow up. Compared with people who did not drink coffee, those who drank one or more cups per day had half the risk of developing these cancers, Naganuma’s group reports in the American Journal of Epidemiology.

They note that the reduction in risk included people who are at high risk for these cancers, namely, those who were current drinkers and/or smokers at the start of the study.

The researchers conclude in their article, “Although cessation of alcohol consumption and cigarette smoking is currently the best known way to help reduce the risk of developing these cancers, coffee could be a preventive factor in both low-risk and high-risk populations.”

Source: American Journal of Epidemiology

A Bangladeshi gaming portal named 2funmail.com has just been launched for all the online gamers. That’s great news, isn’t it?

There are lots of games you can play on this site. The games have been classified into six different categories — action, arcade, sports, racing, strategy and puzzle. Within these six categories there are 120 highest-rated games you can play with your counter-part over the internet.

The site is not only a gaming portal, but also you can get all the latest and hottest news of the gaming world. You can get all the game-related updates and features in this site.

Some Quick links are also available where you can get all the news and reviews of the recent popular games. The information about the latest and upcoming games is also available in the “Hot Games” section. While playing you can also enjoy all the latest music of Bangladesh and the rest of the world through “2fun Pod” anytime you log on to this site.

Moreover, the site has opened a window of opportunity for the game-creators” as you can upload your own games on this website.
There is also a forum for the users where you can share your views with other gamers around the globe. At the same time, you can also rate the games you played.

But remember, whatever you do you have got to register and become a member, before you can make the most of this experience. So, enjoy….