Shorter days, changing leaves and crisp cold air — all the hallmarks of a changing season. This photo from Flickr user Bonnie Bowne epitomizes the shift from summer blues and greens to autumn golds.

Have any travel photos that make amazing memories? Upload them to our Flickr pool and we just might select one for our Photo of the Day feature

Photo of the Day (9.07.10) originally appeared on Gadling on Wed, 08 Sep 2010 17:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Warning: this won’t work for everybody. It helps to be female, smokin’ hot and be able to lie comfortably through your teeth.

When you travel, I suspect you don’t roll like Anna Chapman. Rather than book a flight, get a room at an upscale hotel (or pay-by-the-hour joint) and see the usual sights, she truly blended in like a local … and kept here eyes on the sorts of attraction that people back in Moscow want to hear about it.

In case you’re a bit behind, Anna Chapman’s not one of these nomads who scrapes for a living here and there between or during random excursions for self-fulfillment. Rather, she took a four-year extended business trip that ultimately landed her in handcuffs before sending her back to the motherland in a spook-swap.

Anna Chapman was a Russian spy.

And, in case you’re extremely dim, the only reason you know her name and nobody else’s is because “drop-dead” is more than just her job. Now that she can’t lurk in our dark alleys any more, Chapman’s looking for a job, and if life cuts her way, it will be in politics.

Continue reading Not a nomad: Unusual traveler looks for way into politics

Not a nomad: Unusual traveler looks for way into politics originally appeared on Gadling on Wed, 08 Sep 2010 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Turning Stone Resort and Casino’s Ska:ná Spa in New York’s beautiful Mohawk Valley has a cherry blossom manicure and pedicure sure to leave you feeling refreshed and pretty.

Inspired by the romance and beauty of the cherry blossom trees in Japan, these treatments offer superior hydration and exfoliation, leaving your hands and feet feeling brand-new and looking fabulous with the Sparitual polish of your choice.

The Cherry Blossom Mani-Pedi begins with a soothing coconut soak for both hands and feet, and follows it with sweet cherry almond oil and mineral salts to exfoliate. A Vitamin E mask is then applied to the feet, again, with that sweet cherry almond oil, which gives the skin a radiant glow. The hands are cleansed of salt using soft, warm towels. The ritual is completed with soothing massages for the hands, legs and feet, and, of course, nail and cuticle care and polish.

You’ll smell like cherries, and if you pick the right polish, your fingers and toes will remind you of the blossoms for as long as the polish lasts. The 90-minute Cherry Blossom Manicure and Pedicure at Ska:ná costs $100.00.

Want more? Get your daily dose of pampering right here.

[Photo by Jam343 via Flickr.]

Daily Pampering: Cherry Blossom Mani-Pedis at Turning Stone Resort originally appeared on Gadling on Wed, 08 Sep 2010 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The three variables (all weighted equally across 362 metro regions) used to determine the Brainiest Metros Index were:

1. The share of adults 25 years of age and older with a Ph.D., master’s or professional degree
2. Computer scientists and mathematicians as a share of all employment
3. Scientists (physical, biological, social) as a share of total metro employment

Not surprisingly, the ones that made the list were home to high-tech, knowledge-based businesses, and premier colleges and universities. One of the most decisive variables was the presence of a major research university. Second-place went to Durham, North Carolina (home to Duke University and close to University of North Carolina, in Chapel Hill) while Greater Washington D.C. came third, Greater Boston (Harvard, MIT, Boston University) finished fourth, and Trenton-Ewing metro in Central New Jersey (Princeton) rounded out the top five.

The smartest metros tend to have characteristics like higher income, economic output, more patents (high innovation), more high-tech, and higher housing prices. They are also the places you want to be during tough economic times as they are the most resilient.

To see the rest of the top 20 in photo format, check out this gallery.

[Image: Ken Lund / Flickr]

Nuts–if you think about these things, which evidently I do–evoke blustery fall afternoons, or wintery evenings before a roaring fire. You bust out the nutcracker, and get to work. At least, that’s what my family did when I was a kid, even though I grew up in Southern California where, let’s face it, the weather is seldom blustery. Anyways, we always had a lot of Brazil nuts in the communal bowl, and consequently, they’re one of my favorites. They’re big and easy to crack, with rich, oily meat.

Nuts have been associated with the winter solstice since Medieval times (they provided much-needed fat and nutrients). What most of us don’t associate nuts with are steaming jungles, machetes, or endangered wildlife. I certainly didn’t, until I visited the Brazil nut camp in Tambopata National Reserve (TNR), in Peru’s Amazon Basin.

The Tambopata is a tributary of the Amazon, and the 275,000-hectare Reserve is home to some of the world’s most diverse and pristine rainforest. This conservation area, and the adjacent Bahuaja-Sonene National Park were designated by the Peruvian government to protect the watersheds of the Tambopata and Candamo Rivers. Rainforest Expeditions operates three eco-properties within the confines of the Reserve: the Posada Amazonas and Refugio Amazonas eco-lodges, and the Tambopata Research Center. It’s at Refugio that one can visit the Brazil nut camp, and harvest the nuts (April through July).

Continue reading Nuts about Peru’s Tambopata National Reserve

Nuts about Peru’s Tambopata National Reserve originally appeared on Gadling on Wed, 08 Sep 2010 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Developed by Reddit co-founder Steve Huffman, Hipmunk tries to take the headaches out of booking flights. In an interview with Tnooz, the Hipmunk founders describe it as a tool to find “reasonable flight options in a matter of minutes,” rather than taking hours to find the right flight buried deep within search result pages. Hipmunk uses Orbitz data to provide flight results.

The home page is simple, consisting primarily of a search box to choose dates, and departure and arrival cities. In the Tnooz interview, the founders describe the results that travelers receive as intuitive with sorting that other search tools don’t provide. The tool continues to be under development to make it a better product, but the founders hope to continue to reach “sophisticated travelers and web surfers” with Hipmunk. One cool feature of the website is the live chat option, in the right hand corner of the website. In a brief conversation with co-founder Adam Goldstein, he told me that users can talk directly with Hipmunk staff when live chat is online, or use it to send an email with any questions.

[photo courtesy of Alex-S]

It isn’t so much the airline fees that are being targeted these days: it’s the extent to which they are hidden. Three advocacy groups are pushing for airlines to do a better job of disclosing how they’ll nail passengers for extra cash. So, a battle of paper is emerging. On one side, advocates are pushing a petition to get airlines to open the kimono a bit more. And on the other, airlines are looking to protect the paper they’re stacking from ancillary fees.

The stakes are high: last year, the airline industry pulled in a whopping $8 billion for extra charges. They stand to do even more this year, thanks to a recovering travel market.

The American Society of Travel Agents, Business Travel Coalition and Consumer Travel Alliance are getting together to push for fee transparency and to “allow travel booking companies access to fee schedules, making comparisons easier among airlines by third parties.”

Continue reading Hidden airline fees under attack, industry pushing back

Hidden airline fees under attack, industry pushing back originally appeared on Gadling on Wed, 08 Sep 2010 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Anybody that’s ever been to Europe has surely been inside one of the continent’s many cathedrals. But even if you’ve seen all the stone and stained glass you’d ever care to see, the Northern Italian city of Bergamo is giving the cathedral a fresh look by making one of the structures entirely out of living trees.

The man behind the work is the recently deceased Giuliano Mauri, an Italian artist who was commissioned as part of a project for the UN’s International Year of Biodiversity. The frame of the building will initially be made up of more than 1,800 fir tree poles, 600 chestnut branches, and 6000 meters of hazel branch, planted in-between with growths of live Beech trees. As the Beeches grow, the wood frame will decompose, allowing the living trees to take over the structure.

Mauri’s work is not only a novel work of art, it’s an interesting contrast to the more permanent stone halls of worship that have come to dominate our images of Christian Europe. A blending of the natural, the artistic and the religious, all in one. Head on up to Bergamo, about 40km Northeast Mian, if you’re interested in paying a visit.

[Photo courtesy of oltreilcolle.info]

Tree cathedral grows in Northern Italy originally appeared on Gadling on Wed, 08 Sep 2010 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Leisure travel is irrelevant during the election season, but the woes of business travelers seem to resonate. With the midterm contests two months away, all eyes are on the White House … and President Obama’s success rate with road, rail and runway repair.

This is the one time business travelers make the presidential agenda, according to Portfolio.com: “Presidents (or people campaigning for any office) only talk about business-travel infrastructure during election season. Our issues almost never seem to rate presidential attention at any other time in the cycle.”

Well, let’s take a look at what Obama’s done for the white collar travel crowd. Here are five business traveler issues that could attract some attention in November:

Continue reading Five business travel factors for Obama and the midterm elections

Five business travel factors for Obama and the midterm elections originally appeared on Gadling on Wed, 08 Sep 2010 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This dichotomy between repulsion and fascination for the human body is nothing new. The first “medical museums” were actually personal collections of medical oddities, and they’ve been incredibly popular since Renaissance Europe when aristocrats would create their own and charge for viewing. Whether they were called Cabinets of Wonder, Kunstkammer, or Wunderkammer, these collections fulfilled both private curiosities and played an important role in assisting medical professionals–  they play a similar role in modern culture. Although not all Cabinets of Wonder were purely medical, many of the oldest (and sometimes strangest) artifacts in modern medical museums were donated by the benefactors of such collections.

Medical museums are unquestionably not for the squeamish, but there are a surprising number of them out there. Since they are usually off-the-beaten-track and not particularly popular, they are a fascinating way for tourists to see parts of the cities they might not otherwise have seen. And there’s nothing like a medical museum’s gift shop to score that perfect postcard to mail to your grandma back home.

(WARNING: some of the following images, while taken mostly of plastic models, are extremely detailed and graphic in nature. Proceed with caution – NSFPeople with sensitive sensibilities, squeamish beware! [Ed. note: travel blog editors included... blech])

1. Semmelweis Museum of Medicine, Budapest

Image: Curious Expeditions/Flickr

Ignaz Semmelweis was a Hungarian physician born in 1818 who has been credited with being the “savior of mothers” by discovering something modern people think of as basic knowledge. Semmelweis noticed that women giving birth with the help of doctors had three times the mortality rate than women giving birth with the help of midwives. The only difference he noted was that the doctors were involved in examining the cadavers of women who had already died of childbed fever. The midwives did not examine the cadavers. Smartypants Semmelweis concluded that “cadaverous particles” on the doctors’ hands were being transferred to the healthy mothers, and they were being poisoned.

Images: Curious Expeditions/Curious Expeditions/Curious Expeditions/Flickr

Solution? Semmelweis told all doctors to wash their hands after manhandling cadavers infected with disease and before helping healthy mothers give birth, and voila! Within a few years the rate of childbed fever was reduced to 30% of mothers to almost zero.

Images: Curious Expeditions/Curious Expeditions/Flickr

In his honor, the Semmelweis Museum of Medicine was opened in the former home of the doctor, and many a medical mystery is spread over four rooms of the period home. Even though all the museum descriptions are in Hungarian, you’ll get a great sense of the history behind the science through the reconstructed 19th century pharmacy. Be sure not to miss the Anatomical Venus. There are only three of her in the world; her gutted, gaping insides juxtaposed with her stunning beauty make for a pretty jarring experience.

Images: Curious Expeditions/Curious Expeditions/Flickr

2. Josephinum Medical Museum, Vienna

Image: Curious Expeditions/Curious Expeditions/Flickr

Founded in 1785 by Emperor Joseph II, this museum was originally a medical academy designed to train doctors and midwives. Although the school is long gone, the absolutely exquisite anatomical and obstetrical models that were commissioned for the school are luckily still around. Made under the supervision of master anatomist Paolo Mascagni between 1784 and 1788 in Florence, 1,192 different models were shipped to Vienna where they have survived in their cases of rosewood and Venetian glass.

Image: Curious Expeditions/Curious Expeditions/Flickr

Image: Curious Expeditions/Curious Expeditions/Flickr

Today the Josephinum is home to the largest collection of obstetrical wax models in the world, and also some of the most beautiful. The makers of these models were so detail oriented, they created individual veins by dipping thread into different colors of glass. At a time when cadavers were messy and hard to come by, these models served as a medical student’s only “hands-on” training.

Image: Curious Expeditions/Curious Expeditions/Flickr

Be sure not to miss another example of the Anatomical Venus, with this particular model sporting a set of pearls and a gold circlet around her head.

3. Icelandic Phallological Museum, Husavik

Image: C. G. P. Grey/Flickr

They got some in jars, some mounted on the wall, and some hang out behind glass cases. At the Icelandic Phallological Museum, there are penises everywhere! With 272 specimens (both penises and “penile parts”) from 92 different species of animal (including 16 whale and one “rogue polar bear”), the museum aims to collect penis specimens from every animal in Iceland. In addition to all those species that one might be able to spot in Iceland, the museum also has a penis collection of a more fanciful kind, including: elves, trolls, and sea monsters.

Image: C. G. P. Grey/Flickr

Image: C. G. P. Grey/Flickr

Currently the museum has a collection of silver casts of the Icelandic National Handball Team who won Olympic Silver in 2008, and soon the collection of Homo sapien penises could get even, ahem, bigger. Some reports claim a human specimen has been promised posthumously by 95 year-old Icelander Pall Arason.

Image: ameriskur/zandra898/Flickr

4. Musée Fragonard, Paris

Although it may not seem like it today, for much of human history the arts and sciences were so closely intertwined, it was often hard to see where one ended and the other began. This is shown clearly in the work of Honoré Fragonard, who was both an anatomy expert and a ground-breaking artist. A teacher at the first veterinary school in France in 1762, Fragonard created elaborate “écorchés”, figures of human or animal bodies without skin to help teach his pupils.

Image: marc kjerland/marc kjerland/Flickr

Although many écorchés were done with paint on canvas or ceramics, Fragonard instead utilized cadavers which he turned into “flayed figures” (think: BodyWorlds). He was incredibly secretive about his process of preserving and mounting the figures, and even to this day his methods have yet to be discovered.

Image: InvisibleParis/Ted Drake/Flickr

Image: Ted Drake/Flickr

Although he was considered a madman and was eventually driven out of the school, today he is revered as an artistic master with an incredibly scientific eye. Out of 700 flayed pieces created by Fragonard, only 21 remain, all of which are on display at the Museé Fragonard. Make sure not to miss his most famous piece, “The Horseman of the Apocalypse” based on a print by Albrecht Durer. The display consists of a man riding a horse, both flayed, and surrounded by a gaggle human fetuses riding sheep and horse fetuses.

Image: Ted Drake/marc kjerland/Flickr

5. Meguro Parasitological Museum, Tokyo

Ever wonder how big of a jar you would need to house a 29 foot tapeworm? Perhaps you’re curious what a distended testicle of a human hosting a tropical bug might look like? Or maybe you just want to spend Friday night at the hottest date-spot in all of Meguro, Tokyo. If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, the Meguro Parasitological Museum is the right place for you!

Image: Megan Forry/Flickr

Image: andresmh/Flickr

Established in 1953, the museum has amassed a collection of over over 300 parasite specimens. Located in an unexpected and quiet residential neighborhood, the Parasitological Museum claims its collection is, “one of the most distinguished museums in the world”. Although the Louvre, the Met, and the British Museum might not agree with that claim, the parasite museum is definitely one-of-a-kind. It even employs a rope the same length as its famed tapeworm, so people can “get a feel” of what the real thing is like. Neat!

Image: TVJ/Flickr

6. Mütter Museum, Philadelphia

Image: John Dunges/Flickr

Although there are many important historical artifacts on display in Philadelphia like the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall, the more morbid, err, “curious” museum go-er shouldn’t miss the Mütter Museum, billed as America’s largest museum dedicated to medical oddities. Located inside the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, the original collection was donated by Dr. Thomas Dent Mütter and was intended for educating the doctors studying there. Today, the items on display are half-sideshow freak, half-scientific wonder.

Some of the museum’s most outrageous items are:

A 9-foot-long human colon that once was home to over 40 pounds of fecal matter, named “The Human Balloon” while on display at a sideshow.

Image: james.troilo/Flickr

The tallest skeleton in North America.

A 2,000 object collection of items removed from people’s throats, organized into drawers labeled “Bones”, “Coins”, “Dental Material”, and “Nuts, Seeds, Shells or Other Vegetable Substance”.

A malignant tumor removed from President Cleveland’s hard palate called “The Secret Tumor of Grover Cleveland”.

The conjoined liver and plaster death cast of Chan and Eng Bunker, the world’s most famous conjoined twins, born in 1811 and the namesakes of the term “Siamese Twins (the brothers were born in “Siam”).

Another one of the Mütter Museum’s totally bizarre artifacts is the body of the “Soap Lady“, the corpse of an obese woman who perished of yellow fever in the 19th century and was buried in soil that contained certain chemicals that turned her remains into a soap-like substance called adipocere. For more than a century her frightening body has been on display at the Mütter Museum, and toxicology reports are still being conducted to learn more about this mysterious woman and her unusual postmortem life.

Note to all enthusiastic photographers: The Mütter Museum doesn’t allow photography, so if you were hoping to snap a pic next to the Soap Lady for you’re next holiday card, you’ll have to do it on the sly.

Image: John Dunges/MPR529/Flickr

7. Musée de la Médecine, Brussels

We think every sex-ed class in Belgium should be required to take a field trip to Musée de la Médecine. With over 300 wax anatomical models showing the ravages of venereal diseases, the exhibit was always intended to shock and awe. Many of the models on display are part of the Spitzner collection, an infamous group anatomical models displaying different parts of the human body afflicted by a multitude of unfortunate STDs.  In the 19th century, the Spitzner collection made its rounds in fair grounds throughout Europe in an attempt to warm common folks of the unpleasantness that could befall them, and the models are still pretty darn effective to this day.

Images: AtlasObscura

8. National Museum of Health and Medicine, Washington D.C.

Images: domo_arigato/Flickr

Washington D.C. is an absolute hub for history museums and America-themed artifacts. Although the National Museum of Health and Medicine qualifies as the first and has a bucket load of the second, it can’t seem to draw in the crowds like most other D.C. destinations. Maybe it is because it’s tucked in a remote corner of government-ville, situated behind the Walter Reed Medical Center. Or maybe it’s because the museum’s collection of presidential body parts and Civil War medical memorabilia are not exactly what vacationers have in mind when they think of wholesome family fun.

Images: domo_arigato/domo_arigato/Flickr

Images: domo_arigato/domo_arigato/Flickr

Established during the Civil War as a medical research center and museum, the original curator frequented battlefields and asked for “donations” from doctors working on the fronts. After the war, the museum collected photographs of the wounded so they could see the gruesome effects of gunshot wounds and amputations. As the US advanced medically, so did the National Museum of Health and Medicine, and it is even credited with discovering that yellow fever was spread by mosquitoes, not human contact, which was a huge breakthrough in treating the deadly disease.

Image: g-go/Flickr

Today the museum has an astonishing collections of around 25 million artifacts with everything from 8,000 preserved organs to 5,000 skeletons to 12,000 pieces of medical equipment. But the museum’s most famous artifact is a little piece of Abraham Lincoln, literally. On display are pieces of Lincoln’s skull and hair, the bullet that killed him, the probe used to search for the bullet in his skull, and the shirt cuff, stained in blood, of the surgeon who searched for it.

Image: g-go/Flickr

9. Kunstkamera, St. Petersburg

Russia is a pretty huge place, but it didn’t get its first museum until 1727. Although the country might have been a little late in the museum-game (the UK had them beat by some 50 years), Russia’s first museum sure made up for it. Built by Peter the Great, Kunstkamera originally held the Tsar’s personal treasures, which were moved from their original home in his Summer Palace. Peter’s personal collecting had a little of this (fetuses with anatomical deficiencies) and a little of that (skulls with encephalitis-swollen skulls), and although opening his morbid collection to The People may have seemed appalling, Peter had good reason to do it.

Image: szerenka/Flickr

In an attempt to modernize the people of Russia, Peter saw great importance in eradicating the superstition and fear of the unknown that crippled Russian society. By displaying abnormalities, diseases, and afflictions openly and with an inquisitive eye, Peter hoped to show Russians that these things were the result of science instead of curses. He even went so far as to create a decree that the bodies of all infants with deformities were required, by law, to be “donated” to the museum.

Image: de-kay/de-kay/de-kay/flickr

Today the collection holds an astonishing 2 million artifacts. One thing not to miss? The decapitated head of Willem Mons. Mons was publicly drawn and quartered in 1724 after having been convicted of treason. Although he may have doctored the Tsar’s books a bit, it is widely believed he was actually being punished for his liaison with Empress Catherine, Peter the Great’s wife. After being hanged, having his entrails and genitals removed before his eyes and burned, then being cut into four pieces, his head was chopped off and placed in alcohol…where it remains to this day in the museum.

Been to a great medical museum we left off the list? Let us know!

A special thanks to the Atlas Obscura website for its help in researching this post!

[Main Image: Aphexlee/Flickr]