Featured Travelers: Hannah & Adam of GettingStamped.com

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Meet Hannah & Adam another traveling couple and the publishers of GettingStamped.com. Currently they are on a Round-the-World trip GETTING STAMPED in 47 countries since June 2013.

Hannah & Adam in El Nido, Philippines

They have always had a case of the travel bug, but it wasnt until a trip to Belize that took their travel addiction to a whole new level. The had the American Dream, got married, owned a house, had great corporate jobs, lived very comfortably, BUT something was wrong. They worked way too much and had little time off. They escaped abroad with every spare minute of holiday time, but it was never enough.

Shortly after they got married, a buzzer went off telling us Its now or never. They felt that everything is getting a bit too normal, and that was scary. Their solution? Pack their bags and head out on an epic trip of a lifetime!

We startedGettingStampedin 2012 when we were in the early stages of planning our around the world (RTW) trip. We had been following travel blogs and realized we needed to start our own blog to share are travel tips, stories, andphotoswith the world, like all the great blogs we had been following.

We took our first trip as a couple within 6 months of dating, and within a year our first international trip to Negril, Jamaica where we returned 5 years later to get married on the beach. We escaped on vacations as much as possible with our limited American holiday leave.

Our lives are forever changed, we now realize how lucky we am to have the opportunities we have.

One of the biggest lessons we learned is to not value stuff as much as we once did. Having, and needing too many things leads to a life of working just to pay for the things in your life. Travel has taught us to value experiences over possessions. Basically travel has showed us how to live a simpler life.

Hannah in a Maasai village in Kenya while on an African safari

The world is so big this list keeps growing, at the top of the list we have the following:

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Featured Travelers: Hannah & Adam of GettingStamped.com

AI system forecasts devastating solar flares

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Artificial intelligence helped analyse patterns in the sun's magnetic lines It found that the energy stored in the magnetic field can forecast flares The next step would be to incorporate data from the sun's atmosphere Soon, Stanford researchers say the computer could help predict when flares will cause widespread power outages on Earth before they form

By Ellie Zolfagharifard For Dailymail.com

Published: 21:07 EST, 20 January 2015 | Updated: 04:11 EST, 21 January 2015

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Artificial intelligence is helping astronomers predict deadly solar flares that have the potential to cause havoc on Earth.

US researchers say their super computer can provide advance warning of solar eruptions, which can release energy equivalent to 100 billion atomic bombs.

The flares arise from twisted magnetic fields that occur all over the sun's surface, and they increase in frequency every 11 years - a cycle that is now at its maximum.

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AI system forecasts devastating solar flares

Online Rabbinical School Celebrates a New Class of Graduates: Eighth Class of Students Ordained in Delray Beach

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New York, NY (PRWEB) January 21, 2015

The Jewish Spiritual Leadership Institute (JSLI) Online Rabbinical School conducted its eighth ordination Saturday night at a ceremony in Delray Beach, FL. Eleven new rabbis will now begin their respective missions and service as teachers and spiritual leaders some advancing the tenets of the Jewish Universalism.

The ordination/Shabbaton weekend provides a marvelous opportunity for scholarship and discussion,meals and conviviality and concludes with the converyance of Rabbinical Ordination, Semicha, to the students, said Rabbi Steve Blane, founder of the Sim Shalom Online Synagogue and Dean of the Rabbinical School. The presentation of the semicha or certificate of ordination denotes a time for celebration of achievement, and contemplation of the future. Sim Shalom, the Online Jewish Universalist synangogue, is the ordaining body of JSLI.

The Hebrew meaning of semicha (sometimes spelled as semikhah) is literally a leaning of the hands" and is derived from the Hebrew word which means "to rely on" or "to be authorized." Within the context of rabbinical ordination, its connotation is that of a transmission of rabbinical authority enabling the holder to give advice or interpretation of Jewish law. The classical line of semicha traces a line of Torah conferment back to Moses and the 70 elders.

The 11 new graduates of JSLI hail from all over the United States and the United Kingdom. JSLI alumni are currently serving worldwide in congregations, as pastoral counselors, and as Jewish educators. They perform a full panoply of Life Cycle events including weddings, funerals, and bnai mitzvoth.

Jewish Universalism encompasses the ideal of peaceful existence between adherents of different religions and religious denominations.

And now our conveyed and ever-evolving process of education and enlightenment begins again, noted Rabbi Blane. We have ten new students entering the schools next rabbinical class embracing the opportunity for a life of personal spiritual development, and service to humanity.

About Sim Shalom

Sim Shalom is an interactive online Jewish Universalist synagogue which is liberal in thought and traditional in liturgy. Created in 2009 by Rabbi Steven Blane on Manhattan's Upper West Side, Sim Shalom offers a means of connecting the unconnected. Rabbi Blane leads accessible and short Kabbalt Shabbat services every Friday night using a virtual interface and additionally Sim Shalom provides online education programs, Jazz concerts, conversion and life-cycle ceremonies along with weeknight services at 7:00PM EST led by Rabbis and students of this online community.

Rabbi Blane is also the founder and director of the Jewish Spiritual Leader's Institute, http://www.jsli.net, a professional second career online rabbinical school.

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Online Rabbinical School Celebrates a New Class of Graduates: Eighth Class of Students Ordained in Delray Beach

ELIOT | Cornells Standing Babas

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By CHRISTO ELIOT

There is a group of Hindu devotees in India called the Khareshwari, or the Standing Babas. A Baba vows to stand, and not sit or lie-down, for a number of years or the rest of his life. Babas will sleep standing up, using a sling that keeps his torso upright. Per a citation-less Wikipedia article, the vow is a form of corporal punishment that strives to bring about spiritual enlightenment, called Tapa in the Hindu religion.

I have never met and never really expect to meet a Standing Baba but was struck by how bizarrely and differently they practice their religion when I first encountered them in a novel Gregory David Roberts called Shantaram over break. Winter Break also provided me with the opportunity to listen to cereal, but I really did not get why putting your ear next to a bowl of Rice Krispies got so hyped up Shantaram was one of the first books I have read for pleasure in a while, and in that time I have not become any more comfortable with how sensual the term pleasure reading sounds and feels. That said, this novel which like any other novel is a unique arrangement of only 26 letters was the first one I have read with any Standing Babas.

There are a couple of stages a Baba will go through when he takes his vow. Likewise, a Cornell student will go through many stages as he or she navigates their academic careers most of them characterized by an overwhelming sense of pain.

For the first five or so years, a Babas legs will swell and bloat unrecognizably as their muscles are exhausted by constantly supporting his weight. After that, his legs atrophy to look like nothing more than popsicle sticks with skin spray-painted on and a withered web of veins. The process ends with the Babas feet becoming horribly disfigured and perpetual podiatric pain.

On the surface, there are not many analogies that can be easily drawn between the progression of the Standing Babas and that of Cornell undergraduates. In reality though, what a Baba goes through and what we go through have some interesting parallels. The most obvious one is the early weight gain. Just as a Babas legs have no choice but to swell up under constant compression, I was among one of many freshmen who didnt want but needed to get soft serve ice cream at every meal. As we move from introductory courses to more and more demanding ones, time becomes more and more precious. Sometimes meals need to be sacrificed and take a backseat to studies or even heading to a bar or a game of Settlers of Catan (ladies). Eventually we all leave Cornell with some battle wounds, like the torn up feet of the Babas, and hopefully achieve some form of spiritual enlightenment.

One of the most unbelievable parts of the Standing Babas is that each of them chooses to become one. Nobody forces any man to take the vows of the Khareshwari, but several dozen Hindus in India are drawn to it by the same force that calls priests, rabbis and imams. Many more choose to become a Baba as preparation for death and their next stage in reincarnation. Although many legacies may feel pressure from their parents to come to school here, students at Cornell all chose to matriculate. No individual was truly forced against their will to become a Cornellian, and most of us are here hoping it will help us throughout the stages in life that follow our time here.

Sometimes life at Cornell can be challenging. Sometimes the biting wind can be pretty painful, and the Mongo at RPCC gets repetitive. The Babas lives are painful, but their conviction that what they are doing is something worth doing helps them honor their vows. The Wall Street cliche is, There is no such thing as a free lunch. I am generally not a fan of cliches or Wall Street and am a pretty big fan of free lunches, but I think the idea that nothing worth having comes easy should resonate with almost all Cornell students. Although the school will test us and at times push us to our limits, even freshmens days here are numbered.

Looking down the barrel of my last semester at this school, I feel like a Baba nearing the end of his commitment. For the past four years, Cornell has been the keystone of my life (no pun intended). Cornell builds its students into impressive people and helps them develop strong characters. It does this not for our time at Cornell but for what comes after. I certainly am not looking forward to closing the chapter on the when I was in college era of my life, but finally sitting down after years of being a Cornell Baba is going to be refreshing.

Christo Eliot is a senior in the College of Engineering. He can be reached at celiot@cornellsun.com.The Tale of the Dingo at Midnightappears alternate Wednesdays this semester.

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ELIOT | Cornells Standing Babas

Lego Batman 3 Beyond Gotham: Ep. 4 – Space Station Infestation – Video

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Lego Batman 3 Beyond Gotham: Ep. 4 - Space Station Infestation
This is Lego Batman 3 Beyond Gotham... This is the third installment of the Lego Batman. SpeakEasy #39;s Social Media ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------...

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Lego Batman 3 Beyond Gotham: Ep. 4 - Space Station Infestation - Video

Space Station worms' research potential is anything but flat

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IMAGE:These are image representations of live worms with single, bipolar, triple and quadruple heads for the Flatworm Regeneration investigation aboard the International Space Station. view more

Credit: Dr. Michael Levin, Tufts University

For years, it was assumed the world was flat. Now, we have a laboratory that orbits our big, blue marble. So, it's funny to think of returning to flatness aboard the International Space Station, but this outpost currently houses flatworms for research. The study of these creatures has the potential to be rather robust in implications for regenerative medicine, an area of treatment for repairing or replacing human cells, tissues or organs on Earth to restore normal function. A new study launched aboard SpaceX's fifth commercial resupply services (CRS) mission to the space station examines the reparative processes of flatworms in microgravity.

As flatworms age, or should they encounter cellular damage, they have the ability to renew their cells. For example, if they lose their tail, they can regrow it. A team of researchers from Kentucky Space LLC and the Center for Regenerative and Developmental Biology at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts, will use the worms to observe repair processes and wound-healing done by cells in space during the Flatworm Regeneration investigation. This insight could influence the development of medicine on Earth with new methods for repairing damaged tissue from injury or physical impairment.

"We are specifically looking at regenerative processes and applications that could be potentially valuable for use on Earth," said Kris Kimel, president and founder of Kentucky Space. "Much of what has been done in the past has been focused on astronaut health, and you can learn a lot from that, but we're focused primarily on the cellular and molecular level processes that could impact regenerative processes on Earth."

This investigation is a first step toward understanding how gravity affects an organism's mechanisms for repair and renewal. Researchers hope to map the cell signaling processes that help the worms' bodies locate cellular damage and instruct an area or appendage to regrow. They are observing the worms in space to find out how these processes may be disrupted by the lack of gravity.

The research implications not only apply to regenerative medicine, but also to technology development. Engineers may be able to create new algorithms - a set of steps used in mathematics or to design computer processes - based on the knowledge gained from flatworm study in orbit. This could lead to technology that employs these algorithms to reconfigure their own components and energy use in deep space.

Flatworms with amputated heads or tails are contained inside sealed test tubes for this study. The tubes were placed in Biological Research in Canisters (BRIC) hardware and loaded on the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft for delivery to the station. This flatworm investigation does not require power or interaction from the station crew.

"It's a potentially valuable experiment in terms of the results, but in this first iteration, we're making it as self-sustaining as we can," said Kimel.

The research plan stipulates that the flatworms return alive upon landing. They are currently scheduled to return aboard Dragon at the conclusion of SpaceX CRS-5. The research team will analyze regeneration patterns of the space-flown worms and compare them with control worms living in similar conditions on Earth during the study time period.

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Space Station worms' research potential is anything but flat

UPDATE: Space Station Returns to Normal After Glitchy Ammonia Leak Alarm

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UPDATE:(NBC) -- Astronauts returned to the U.S. side of the International Space Station on Wednesday, hours after an apparent false alarm raised concerns about an ammonia leak and forced a partial evacuation.

The six crew members shut down the U.S. segment and hung out on the station's Russian side for much of the day while ground controllers went about troubleshooting the problem. Eleven hours after the alarm arose, mask-wearing astronauts went back in and sampled the air.

"No ammonia indication," NASA reported in a tweet.

The likeliest cause of the alarm was a malfunctioning card in a signal-processing box, NASA space station project manager Mike Suffredini said during a televised update.

"At this point, the team does not believe we leaked ammonia. ... What we are dealing with is a failure, probably of a card inside a multiplexer-demultiplexer," he said. The space station has a number of multiplexer-demultiplexer boxes that process readings from components aboard the orbital outpost, which has as much livable space as a six-bedroom house.

NASA said turning the box off and then back on cleared up the worrisome readings.

The alarm was raised at 4 a.m. ET, when Mission Control saw pressure changes that could have been caused by an internal leak in the station's coolant system, which uses water on an inside loop and toxic ammonia on an outside loop. "If this is possible, then we immediately 'safe' the vehicle and get the crew in a safe place," Suffredini said.

Crew members put on emergency masks, powered down the systems on the station's U.S.-built segment, moved into the Russian segment and closed a connecting hatch. The ammonia coolant system services only the U.S. side of the station, so controllers said there was no risk to the crew.

"The safety of the team was preserved thanks to swift actions of the cosmonauts and astronauts themselves and the team on the ground in Moscow and Houston," said Maksim Matyushin, the chief of Russia's Mission Control.

Follow-up readings indicated no sign of an actual ammonia leak into the station, although fluctuations in cabin pressure continued to cause concern. Suffredini said those fluctuations were probably the system's "normal reaction to the events that started to unfold."

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UPDATE: Space Station Returns to Normal After Glitchy Ammonia Leak Alarm

Zero-gravity ablution: it's hard to maintain German-style personal hygiene in space

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In 1969, US astronaut Russell Schweickart peed into a plastic receptacle in the Apollo 9 capsule on the way to the moon.

The condom-like vessel allowed Schweickart - and the other crew members - to relieve themselves in space.

But they often made a big mess when they removed the receptacle - painfully, they learnt that size does actually matter. The astronauts would reach for the largest of the three receptacles, when perhaps a smaller one was sufficient.

"You only make that mistake once," Schweickart said after his return.

Since then, going to the toilet in space has become easier.

Modern space toilets even allow astronauts a brief, intimate timeout. But personal hygiene remains one of the greatest challenges onboard the International Space Station (ISS).

German astronaut Reinhold Ewald, who stayed at the space station MIR, told DW he was often pushed to the edge of his own limits. "It's not for the highly sensitive," he said.

Make sure you buckle up for the ride

Astronauts have to belt themselves down to the space toilet. Strong sucking pressure allows them to relax on the throne, despite the zero gravity. For missions outside of the craft, diapers can be used.

Reuse everything

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Zero-gravity ablution: it's hard to maintain German-style personal hygiene in space