A yet unnamed 11-year-old girl from Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh City has been making headlines in Asia, for her alleged uncontrollable power to set things around her on fire.

According to Vietnamese website Ngoisao, on May 12, a young girl living in the Tan Binh district of Ho Chi Minh has burned down almost the entire third floor of her family’s home. Her father says the child did not have access to any fire-inducing objects, and that the fire was caused by the super-energy in her body. How many times have we heard that one before, right? But while that may sound like the exaggerations of a parent looking for media attention, this is apparently not the first time this Vietnamese girl has caused things to burst into fire just by going near them.

The unnamed girl’s parents say they’ve noticed her peculiar abilities about a month ago, when their home’s electrical network underwent repeated short-circuiting. Then the power outlets around the house burst into fire when their daughter came near them, and at one time she even burned a corner of the toilet seat. What’s even more intriguing is they claim the same phenomenon repeated itself when they took the girl to other places, as well. For example, during a vacation to Vung Tau beach, she burned the hotel room. The 11-year-old told Vietnamese media that on occasions, even her clothes catch on fire for no apparent reason.

After the incident that occurred on May 12, the girl’s family rerouted the house’s entire electrical network, moved all furniture  and electrical appliances as far away from their daughter as possible, and got separate keys for all family members so they could all escape the house, should something like this happen again. They keep guard over their daughter 24/7 and sleep with buckets full of water and wet towels next to them to extinguish potential fires. They have also taken the girl to be tested by scientists at the Hong Bang International University, in Ho Chi Minh.

Du Quang Chau, an expert in radiesthesia (the ability to detect “radiation” within the human body) conducted a series of tests on the child and found something odd in her brain’s right hemisphere. Realizing this was an unprecedented case both in Vietnam and the world, he created a panel of scientists to conduct studies on the girl and her surrounding environment. The unique phenomenon attracted scientists from various fields, including physics, medicine, psychology, culture and sociology.  Dr. Nguyen Manh Hung, Director of the Hong Bang University, said RFI (Radio Frequency Interference) tests showed a weird “halo” in the girl’s right hemisphere that could be the cause of her unusual power.

The girl was medically examined at Cho Ray Hospital and the Children No 2 Hospital, but doctors didn’t find anything abnormal.

The names of the unique girl and her parents have not been made public, but photos of their damaged home were published in the media.

Real-Life Mutant Girl Causes Things around Her to Catch on Fire was originally posted at OddityCentral.com

Greg Dunn is on his way to earning a doctorate in neuroscience, from the University of Pennsylvania, but he’s also passionate about pan-Asian art, so he decided to combine his two main interests into one unique art form.

Dunn paints neurons, the tiny cells that comprise our brain, using the Asian sumi-e style, an ancient technique that aims not just to reproduce the appearance of the subject, but to capture its soul. Sumi-e is regarded as the earliest expressionistic art form that captures the unseen. For example, East Asian Ink Brush Painting, as this style is commonly referred to, isn’t used to replicate a person’s appearance perfectly, but rather to express their temperament. In the same way, Greg Dunn doesn’t use photomicrographs as reference to paint a perfect picture of the neurons, but rather as a guide upon which he likes to add his own touch. Painting an exact replica of what he see would “rob the painting of sponteneity”, according to Dunn.

The neuron painter says he has always been more of an introverted person, so he spent a lot of time with his thoughts. So you can understand why he became so curious about what really happens up there, in his head, that he developed scientific interests and decided to study neuroscience. He now refers to himself as a scientist who wants to understand himself. Although he doesn’t remember when exactly he was drawn to Asian art, he believes it was the result of over-exposure to Renaissance art, during a trip to Europe. In contrast to a lot of the art produced in Europe, Asian art was so simple, emotional, and direct. There was breathing room on the canvas, and the techniques were so raw and bold,” Dunn remembers.

“Neural forms are naturally elegant and spontaneous, characteristics that also describe the more traditional forms of Asian sumi-e painting- branches, grasses, etc.  All that is required to connect the dots is the realization that you need to crank down your awareness to the micron scale to see that nature has very similar forms across different scales of magnitude.  The branching form of a dendrite is nearly identical to the form of a branching tree, a series of cracks in the pavement, the movement of rivers and streams as viewed from space, or a lightning bolt.   I wouldn’t be surprised if the form were represented on a cosmic level as well.  It is a fractal solution to the Universe,” the artist said in an interview with The Beautiful Brain.

Asked what he finds beautiful about the human brain, Greg Dunn said: “It is literally the most complicated object in the known Universe!  The tremendous knot of cells when connected in a certain way gives rise to a strange sense of “I” that is able to ponder and learn things about its environment.  It is an utter miracle, and is at the root of why we are conscious beings able to appreciate this world and all of its beauty. How can you not love it?!”

Painter/Scientist Turns Neuroscience into Visual Art was originally posted at OddityCentral.com

Let’s face it, many of us do it for free, but Washington University, in St. Louis, will gladly pay participants in its new study $3,500 to eat fast food for a period of three months.

I tell you, job offers don’t get much better than this. A top American university is conducting a study on obesity and asking participants to gain weight during a period of three months. In order to properly motivate them to fill their bellies with various types of fast food, researchers have decided to reward them with a check of $3,500 for the three months of heavy eating. The only real requirement is people who participate in the study must gain at least 5% their starting weight, before the three months are over. Considering they’re all allowed to eat whatever kinds of junk food they like multiple times a day, I don’t think that’s going to be  much of a problem.

Photo: samplesize

“By choosing fast foods, we can regulate that food intake much better than trying to tell people to try and decide on their own eating food at home, which requires judgment and educations on what you’re eating … By going to eat fast food, we know exactly what they’re eating,” said Sam Klein, a Washington University representative involved in the study. The main goal of the three-month eating marathon is to find out why some individuals who consume unhealthy food become overweight while others don’t. The study will also try to determine why some overweight  people develop diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and other conditions associated with obesity, and others don’t.

Photo: TaranRampersad

To qualify for this fast-food-eating study, participants must be between 18 and 65 years old, be a non-smoker and must not have diabetes. Also, they have to already be at least 30 pounds overweight. Just in case you were concerned about the health consequences of this research on participants, you should know the university plans to register them for a weight loss program, so no harm done…

Washington University has even released a list of restaurants participants can visit during the study:

- McDonald’s
- Taco Bell
- KFC
- Burger King
- Pizza Hut

If this sounds tempting, you can apply here.

Dream Job: University Will Pay You $3,500 to Eat Fast Food for Three Months was originally posted at OddityCentral.com

To celebrate its 30th anniversary, Qzina Specialty Foods has set a new Guinness Record for the World’s Largest Chocolate Sculpture, by creating a sweet replica of a Mayan temple weighing 18,239 pounds.

Qzina chose a Mayan theme for their impressive project, because the ancient civilization played a crucial role in the discovery of chocolate. They were among the first to cultivate Cacao trees and acknowledge the true potential of the cocoa bean. They practically worshiped cocoa and praised it as the food of the Gods. So, as a tribute to Mayan contribution in the evolution of chocolate, Qzina’s corporate pastry chef, Francois Mellet and pastry artist Stephane Treand decided to create a scale model of the Temple of Kukulkan, at Chichen Itza.

Built proportionally to the ancient temple’s true size, the chocolate pyramid created by Qzina also features all the details of the original landmark, down to the number of steps and panels. With an impressive base measuring 10 feet by 10 feet, and a height of six feet, this delicious masterpiece is exactly one-thirtieth the size of the original building. Itweighs a whopping 18,239 pounds, with the sculpture’s base alone weighing over 3,000 pounds. Considering the previous record, a chocolate model of the Dome of Milan, weighed “just” 7,500 pounds, it’s safe to say this new attempt blew it right out of the water.

“Breaking a Guinness World Record for building the largest chocolate sculpture will be Qzina’s greatest masterpiece yet. We studied Mayan pyramids at great lengths to create an exact replica of the Temple Kukulkan 
at Chichen Itza to honor the original chocolatiers.It was important for us to create something memorable in celebration of our 30th anniversary and the grand opening of the Qzina Institute of Chocolate & Pastry”, said Richard Foley, founder and CEO of Qzina.

The giant chocolate sculpture will be on display at the Qzina Institute of Chocolate & Pastry, in Irvine, California, starting June 4 and until December 21, 2012, when the Mayan calendar comes to an end. If the world doesn’t end, the pyramid’s method of destruction is yet to be determined.

Qzina via LAist

World’s Largest Chocolate Sculpture Is a Tribute to the Mayan Civilization was originally posted at OddityCentral.com

Chilean artist Carlos Zuniga creates detailed portraits and images by simply striking out names from phone book pages, with black ink. Sounds simple enough, but the results are awe-inspiring.

Carlos Zuniga isn’t the first artist to use phone books as the main medium for his works. Alex Queral has also been using them to carve his amazing celebrity portraits, but Zuniga developed his own artistic technique, which allowed him to differentiate himself from everyone in the art world.

Asked how he came up with this unique way of creating detailed images, the South American artist says it all started with a project he did back in 2006, called The Origin of Species. Inspired by the Ludovico technique used in the 1971 film  the  A Clockwork Orange, he began striking out every line of text from Charles Darwin’s book, The Origin of Species. Throughout the whole process, he couldn’t stop thinking about how to depict his ideas in a figurative way. Figurative representation had always been a great interest to him, but his drawing skills were lousy, and after eight years of taking classes, he felt frustrated.

But Zuniga wasn’t going to abandon his passion just because he didn’t have a talent for drawing. After 10 years of working as a designer in an editorial business, the idea of “making strokes” had become a part of him, so when he made The Origins of Species, he realized striking out was going to be the foundation of his figurative representations. It took a lot of trial and error before he perfected his technique, but he is now fully aware of his evolution, and constantly working on improving his skill.

In his series, Imperial Poem, Carlos Zuniga used Chinese ink to strike out names from Argentinian phone books to create detailed portraits and images from the Falkland Islands. “The result is a monochrome pattern that, from a certain distance, and also by optical effect, gives form to the images of the Falklands. For me, showing this work makes me responsible for the images and their content. The system I have developed allows me to get in touch with society in order to communicate matters that interest me”, the artist says about his works.

Carlos Zuniga Creates Art on Phone Book Pages was originally posted at OddityCentral.com

If you’re a couch potato who dreams of seeing the beautiful Alps without actually doing any hiking, you can thank technology for the unbelievable experience offered by WebWandern.ch.

Translated as Web Hike, this revolutionary website allows visitors to see the most beautiful sights the Alps have to offer, from the perspective of a hiker. To achieve the desired effect, the project initiators used real hikers to film HD footage of their  mountain treks and uploaded the material to their website. All in all there are 10 stages that cover 130 kilometers of hiking, from Thusis (Switzerland) to Tirano (Italy). It all unfolds at normal speed, so it would take you days to go through the whole thing, but the best part is anyone can just jump through the footage however they like and see the most popular sights of the mountain range in a matter of hours.

To understand just how incredible this web hike really is, you have to check it out for yourself. The cameramen are absolutely silent throughout the whole experience, so you can only hear their footsteps and the nature sounds in the background. The camera is very steady, the quality of the footage is very good, and the perspective almost makes you feel like you’re actually there, only you’re in your underwear and munching on potato chips, not worrying about muscle aches. If you though Google Street View and those panorama-style pages were cool, this is going to blow your mind.

Although this virtual hike through the Alps allows anyone to see their beauty from the comfort of their own home, tourist chiefs in Switzerland hope this project will actually attract more visitors to the area. “We don’t think it will stop people coming to enjoy the real thing. You can’t experience the clean air and the pure countryside by being a couch potato” said spokesman Gieri Spescha.

Swiss Website Lets You Hike through the Alps without Breaking a Sweat was originally posted at OddityCentral.com

Most artists prefer to paint or draw their artistic portraits, but Surrey-based English artists Heather Ackroyd and Dan Harvey grow theirs from living grass.

We’ve featured some pretty amazing art here, on Oddity Central, but this probably takes the cake. English duo Ackroyd & Harvey have managed to harness the power of photosynthesis to fix photographic images onto the blades of growing grass. They expose plots of seeding grass to a 400-W projector bulb passing through a negative for prolonged periods of time,  and the varying densities of the negative’s lighter and darker areas produce a full range of midtones by controlling the light levels in each area. The light produces green, or darker tones, while lack of light produces lighter (yellow) tones. Within only a couple of weeks, you can see the green portraits literally emerging from the ground, but wait too long and they will simply fade away, just like old photos.

Heather Ackroyd and Dan Harvey began their artistic collaboration in 1990, “after observing the pale outline created by a ladder left on a lawn for a few days”. In 1997, they began working with IGER (Institute of Grassland and Environmental Research) scientists who had developed a grass that keeps its green color even under stress. While the green blades of this grass retain their chlorophyll much more effectively than regular grass, the effects of other processes, such as oxidative bleaching, gradually occur and over time contribute to an irreversible loss of image. Still it allowed the two artists to grow photographic canvases and then dry them.

via My Modern Metropolis

Photo-Realistic Living Grass Images by Ackroyd and Harvey was originally posted at OddityCentral.com

Aherk! is an ingenious online service that allows people to blackmail themselves in order to achieve their personal goals, through pressure.

If you’ve had trouble dealing with personal goals, but always manage to do good in school or at work, you probably already know it has something to do with feeling under pressure. Some people see it as a bad thing, but for most of us it’s the engine that drives us in our everyday lives. Just think about it for a second, you’re always trying to meet your deadlines and be productive, because you know otherwise you’ll be faced with immediate bad consequences, like getting a pay cut or worse, being fired. But we never really face that kind of pressure in our personal lives, so simple goals like losing weight, quitting smoking or saving money are really harder to reach. That’s where Aherk! comes in…

What started out as a game among friends, now has the potential to become one of the most popular apps on the Internet. It’s called Aherk! and it’s goal is to allow you to blackmail yourself into finally achieving those goal you’ve been postponing for so long. Sure, you can find a lot of other motivational apps out there, but as we all know, motivation works really well when there’s something truly important on the line. Aherk! makes sure you have that something to fight for. How, you ask? By posting an embarrassing photo of you on Facebook, for all your friends to see. The brilliant part is you have to submit the photo to Aherk! yourself.

A photo uploaded on Aherk!

Raphael Caldas, the brilliant mind behind Aherk!, says the service started out as a game between friends, while he was learning to program in Rails, but it became public almost by accident and has recently become pretty popular. The simplicity of Aherk! is probably what makes it so fun to use. All you have to do is log into it with your Facebook account, set your goal and a deadline for it, and then upload a compromising photo of yourself. Once you reach the deadline, your Facebook friends will be asked to vote if you’ve successfully reached your goal. Depending on how they vote, this photo you never wanted anyone to see may be uploaded to your Facebook account.

A photo uploaded on Aherk!

Aherk is far from completed, as it doesn’t even have a privacy policy yet, to let users know how their photos are being used, and there’s a lot of tweaking to be done, but the idea behind it is pretty funny, and just might get people to finally reach their personal goals.

Website Lets You Blackmail Yourself to Reach Goals was originally posted at OddityCentral.com

If you thought your hairstylist was amazing, wait until you see what living masterpieces these Indian camel enthusiasts can create with just scissors and a lot of patience.

Every year, the desert city of Bikaner, in India’s state of Rajasthan, hosts one of the most colorful events in the world – the Bikaner Camel Festival. Home to the only camel breeding farm in India, and one of the largest such farms in all of Asia, it’s only natural this city should have a festival dedicated to the useful humped animal. The popular event takes place over two days, in January, and draws in camel breeders from all over Rajasthan, as well as tourists from all around the world. This homage to camels includes various events, from camel races and rides, to camel haircut competitions and even a camel beauty pageant.

Photo: Steve Hoge

Although many of the thousands of visitors who flock to Bikaner for the desert festival eagerly await the camel races that take place during the second day, I for one found the shearing and beauty contests the most fascinating. In the shearing competition, artists wielding sharp scissors transform their camels into breathing works of art, by shaving their coats to make room for traditional Indian patterns. For the beauty contest, most breeders adorn their camels with colorful accessories to attract the attention of the judges, but don’t be surprised if you see some humped ones wearing make-up, as well…

Photo: yaver999

Situated in the heart of the Indian desert belt, Bikaner has always been a hard place to reach, and before motor vehicles became available, the people of these land depended on camels for their transportation. In fact, the camels of this region were famous for their endurance, strength and beauty.

Photo: osaprio

Photo: osaprio

Photo: mova.gov

Photo: Bahawalpuri

Photo: Aria Niwas

Unique Animal Art at the Bikaner Camel Festival was originally posted at OddityCentral.com

Pedal-Powered Ferrari Is World’s Coolest Bike (Autoblog)

Man Wins $1 Million Cash Prize Six Times (Daily Mail)

17 Photos from the World’s Most Colorful Festival (Environmental Graffiti)

Man Completes Triathlon while Joggling (AOL)

Unique Display of 100,000 LED  Lights on a River in Tokyo (Laughing Squid)

Guy Gives Himself Magnet Implants to Attach iPod Nano to Wrist (Geekologie)

Bomb Disposal Robot Is Wedding Bearer at Unique Wedding (Gizmodo)

Japanese Company Launches Ice Bra To Keeps Women Cool This Summer (Huffpost)

Chinese Luxury Car Wash Uses Bikini Clad Models to Attract Customers (China Smack)

The World’s 13 Loneliest Outhouses (Environmental Graffiti)

Coolest Finds of the Week #38 was originally posted at OddityCentral.com