(CNN) Tiffany Trump, the youngest daughter of President Donald Trump, announced her engagement to Michael Boulos Tuesday. Her happy news -- which happened at the White House -- comes on her father's final full day in office. "It has been an honor to celebrate many milestones, historic occasions and create memories with my family here at the White House, none more special than my engagement to my amazing fiancé Michael! Boulos, described by Town & Country as a "scion from a wealthy family overseas" and by Vanity Fair as a "billionaire heir," posted the same image, writing, "Got engaged to the love of my life!
A SEVERE untreated facial condition has left a woman in India with large hanging growths which eclipse her entire face - causing local children to be scared of her. Khadija Khatoon, 23, from Kolkata, India, has what doctors believe to be neurofibromatosis - a catch-all term for a number of genetic disorders which cause tumours to grow on nerve tissue. The folds on Khadija’s face now cover her eyes, nose and mouth, giving her the appearance of having no face at all. She said: "The tumour was small when I was born, but it covered my face as I grew up.” Doctors have offered her surgery, but Khadija and her family decided the risks were too great. Her father Mohammad said: "They told us nothing could be done, that there was a risk of her dying with surgery. So we accepted her fate and I think she'll have to stay like this. Her life is full of sorrows and hardships, she's a very unfortunate woman, but she's incredibly patient with it. There's no one like her, she's the only one in the entire universe.” Her brother Lutfar says that people often come and take photographs of her in the street when she's outside and Khadija says local children are frightened of her tumours. She added: "When people are scared, usually I'll ask them why. I say Allah has created me like this and I'm human just like them. I think my condition has just become a way of life for me."
It has been said that the human race knows more about certain distant galaxies than it does about the ground that lies beneath its very feet. In fact, while it took the famous Voyager 1 satellite 26 years to exit our Solar System (relaying measurements to Earth from 16.5 billion km away), it took about the same amount of time for humanity to penetrate a mere 12 km into the Earth’s surface.
The Russians dug a nine-inch diameter hole 7.5 miles under the ground just to see what was there-until the Earth’s crust started melting their equipment. You can’t dig a hole to China, but Russia and the U.S. came close. Starting in the 1970s, the superpowers started to drill a hole deep into the Earth’s crust. The USSR’s effort, the Kola super deep Borehole, is now the deepest hole on Earth. “Well to hell” reaches 7.5 miles underground and took 24 years to accomplish. They wanted to go deeper, but temperatures hotter than 350 °F compromised equipment.
There were scientific purposes to this challenge in addition to bragging rights. Researchers were baffled by the presence of liquid water miles below the surface. They believe this is from hydrogen and oxygen atoms being squeezed out of rock layers. They also found fossilized plankton, a whopping 2 billion years old. Despite being 4,000 miles short of hitting the Earth’s core, the borehole was capped in 1994. Japan wants to take Russia’s title with a new drilling project set to kick off in 2030. It aims to dive 3.7 miles under the ocean’s floor into the Earth’s liquid mantle layer.
FLORIDA based personal trainer Joel Nixon has gained his confidence back - after being fitted with an ileostomy bag. The 30-year-old, originally from New Jersey, says he was always an active kid until he started having health issues during high school. In 2007 Joel was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease, a lifelong condition where parts of the digestive system become inflamed. Although the disease was affecting Joel’s day to day life, he didn’t exactly understand what he was dealing with. He told Truly: “I never knew anyone that had Crohn's, I didn’t understand it and tried to hide my illness as I didn’t want anyone to look at me differently.” However, one of the symptoms of his disease was the inability to gain weight, and having a twin brother meant that Joel was often being compared. “They would look at him looking healthy at a normal weight, and then they’d see me looking very skinny and frail.” For years Joel suffered in silence, until a massive flare-up caused him a break down. He explained: “I’d be in the car by myself and I’d be crying yelling to the top of my lungs; ‘what’s going on with me?’” Finally finding the courage to seek help in 2016, doctors told Joel his health had declined so much that the only solution would be an ileostomy bag. “At the time I didn’t like it at all, I was upset to get it but I felt so sick, I was willing to try anything." After the surgery, Joel’s health changed dramatically and when getting back into fitness, he soon started gaining his confidence back as his body became stronger. “Fitness plays a major part in my life, exercising helps my anxiety and depression, it makes me feel alive and like anyone else without a stoma.” Now a personal trainer, Joel wants to support other people with similar health issues and has started using his social media platforms to create a specialised fitness programme and awareness for Crohn’s disease. He added: “I feel like if I spread more awareness and people would know about it more, they would stop bullying and instead start a conversation, I feel like this is what I’m supposed to be doing."
https://www.instagram.com/crohnically.fit/
Are plants capable of learning and retaining information? Studies are showing that some members of the kingdom plantae may have a memory.
Be careful how you treat plants - some of them might remember what you've done to them.
A recent study by ecologist Monica Galiano showed that plants may have memory and the ability to learn. Scientists have also discovered that plants have abilities usually only seen in animals. Galiano studied the Mimosa pudica, a very interesting plant that folds its leaves when touched. After several minutes, its leaves return to their unfolded "calm" state.
She tried to "scare" her test plants by dropping them to see if their leaves reacted the same way. The plants' leaves curled up as usual, but only for the first few rounds of the test. Over the course of one day, Galiano dropped the test plants for a total of 60 times, and as you can probably guess - they stopped reacting to the fall.
According to standards applied to animals by scientists, Mimosa pudica was showing the ability to learn.
Scientists have shown that cell clusters in plant embryos act like brain cells, telling the embryo to grow. Other plants react to situations and their surroundings, and are using that information to decide how to develop. Researchers are hoping if they can assess how plants do this they may one day be "trainable", thus making severe conditions like drought one less thing future farmers will have to worry about.