The night of October 29, 1969, marked one of the most historic events in Internet history: it’s when the first data was transmitted over Arpanet, the precursor of the Internet, blipped from a computer at the University of California, which is in Los Angeles, to a computer at the Stanford Research Institute, in Palo Alto.

That evening, the team at UCLA got on the phone with the SRI team and began typing “LOGIN.” “We typed the L and we asked, ‘Did you get the L?’” the UCLA computer scientist Leonard Kleinrock recently recalled. “‘Yep’ came the reply from SRI. We typed the O and asked, ‘Did you get the O?’ ‘Yep.’ We typed the G and asked, ‘Did you get the G?’ Crash! The SRI host had crashed. Thus was the first message that launched the revolution we now call the internet.”

Stephanie Wehner has always been fascinated by the ability of networks to transmit data to each other, as well as their ability to behave unpredictably and crash.

“On a single computer, things will happen nice and sequentially,” said Wehner, a physicist and computer scientist at Delft University of Technology. “On a network, many unexpected things can happen.” This is true in two senses: Programs on connected computers interfere with one another, with surprising effects. And users of networks get creative. With the internet, Wehner noted, initially “people thought we would use it to send around some files.”

Wehner was a computer programmer back in the 90s, and then she grew bored. Now, she is “one of the intellectual leaders of the effort to create a new kind of internet from scratch”. This internet is the quantum internet.

Find out more about this over at Quanta Magazine.

(Image Credit: TheDigitalArtist/ Pixabay)

The most recent rendition of the famous Batman villain Joker, in the film of the same name directed by Todd Phillips, has earned $93.5 million domestically over the weekend, making it the film with the biggest October opening in history, according to Variety. The record was previously held by Venom’s $80 million opening from last year.

But behind the film’s success lies scorn and derision, especially from the critics. But who’s laughing now?

(Image Credit: Warner Bros./ Slate)

A team of scientists led by MIT professor Michael Strano has concluded that unexpected findings from biologging (the practice of implanting sensors in animals) should “cause a seismic shift in how wearable sensors are used to promote health in humans.”

The team states that while the animals are fitted with sensors in order to measure one or two behaviors, scientists were able to gain dramatic and unforeseen insights into a wealth of other habits.

Take for example the jaw sensor, which is implanted in penguins, sea lions, and dolphins. To the uninitiated the tiny device may look like it’s only able to know if the jaw is moving up or down. For scientists, however, it’s much more than that. By drilling down on the size and frequency of signals, scientists are able to know when the animal is chewing, swallowing, or capturing prey. They are also able to know what type of food the animal eats and how long it feeds.

Which is fine and dandy if you’re interested in the gustatory habits of, say, the Northern rockhopper penguin.

But the scientists argue it is also of critical importance for the emerging science of wearable health monitoring, not least because most of us are already sensor-enabled.

“[R]oughly three billion people owned smartphones in 2018, effectively already being tagged with a subset of sensors,” they write.

Researchers have used smartphone tapping behaviour to predict Parkinson’s disease, analysed text and email data to detect depressed speech and even used the camera to measure heart rate by look at skin colour changes in the finger.

More details over at Cosmos.

What are your thoughts on this one?

(Image Credit: GDJ/ Pixabay)

There was once a time when everyone wanted a wicker peacock chair. That time was in the late 1970s and early '80s. You saw it in magazines and ads and especially album covers, which made it cool. But even then, it was a continuation of a long-lasting design. It came to be a stand-in for a throne. But eventually we figured out that it wasn't comfortable, took up too much room, and became rickety with use. Still looks cool though. -via Metafilter

In a joint project between NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Arizona State University, they have launched robot arms which will do minor tasks in space.

To do this, they launched a rocket along with smaller payloads into space and then sent the cubesats after them. From there, the cubesats did all the work of locating the components and assembling them.

(Image credit: Arizona State University)

You've probably heard it again and again from your parents: Drink lots of water to stay hydrated.

But is it really water that does the best job, or should we start favoring other beverage options? A study from Scotland's St. Andrews University might answer this.

The researchers found that while water -- both still and sparkling --does a pretty good job of quickly hydrating the body, beverages with a little bit of sugar, fat or protein do an even better job of keeping us hydrated for longer.

The reason has to do with how our bodies respond to beverages, according to Ronald Maughan, a professor at St. Andrews' School of Medicine and the study's author. One factor is the volume of a given drink: The more you drink, the faster the drink empties from your stomach and gets absorbed into the bloodstream, where it can dilute the body's fluids and hydrate you.

The other factor affecting how well a beverage hydrates relates to a drink's nutrient composition. For example, milk was found to be even more hydrating than plain water because it contains the sugar lactose, some protein and some fat, all of which help to slow the emptying of fluid from the stomach and keep hydration happening over a longer period of time.

What about you? What is your proven go-to drink to re-hydrate?

Photo by Pixabay from Pexels

The television is one of the modern inventions that have changed the way we receive information. It has also heavily influenced our consumption habits and lifestyles. Moreover, it has also given us other ways of entertaining ourselves and telling stories.

Today, there are so many shows that try to grab our attention and there is even a group of people who give awards to those who make some of the best and most relevant TV shows. We are inevitably in the age of "Peak TV". But that doesn't mean that the medium itself has been revolutionized.

Adam Wilson tries to unpack that concept of the Golden Age of TV, and how it was brought about by more of a confluence of market and technological forces rather than a massive paradigm shift in the medium. Listen to the podcast wherein Violet Lucca talks with Wilson about the Golden Age of TV on Harper's Magazine.

(Image credit: Sven Scheuermeier/Unsplash)

Mark Rutte, the prime minister of the Netherlands, chooses to travel into his office by cycling, if the weather allows. While this isn’t far from the famous perception of the Dutch and their love of cycling, there is a lot of context behind their fondness for the mode of transportation. Even when cars and other modes of transportation are available, more than a quarter of all trips in the country are made by bike. From the country’s flat landscape and roads designed to accommodate cycling, to the health benefits of riding a bike, Ecowatch details the reasons why Rutte and the Dutch love using their bikes: 

"I didn't cycle a lot for 10 years. But for the past two years, I've had my own bike again and, when the weather allows, I travel into the office that way," he told the World Economic Forum.

He explains why it's long been such a phenomenon: "The Dutch love cycling because we are a small country. We have to get from A to B. And of course taking a car, yes, is an option, but you have congestion plus the environmental impact. From the old days, almost from the late 19th century, we're used to taking a bicycle."

There are more than 35,000 kilometers (21,750 miles) of cycle lanes and the city of Utrecht is home to the world's biggest underground bike park.

The health benefits of cycling are well-known: it reduces the risk of illnesses such as diabetes and cardiovascular diseases, and can help boost mental wellbeing.

A 2015 study found more than 6,000 deaths in the Netherlands are prevented each year due to cycling, and it adds six months to the average life expectancy.

image credit: via Mark Rutte on Instagram

A pair of teenage Colorado swimmers came to the rescue of a drowning prairie dog by performing CPR. Teagan Mayer and Grace Keogh spotted the prairie dog at the bottom of the pool when their team was practicing at the Arapahoe YMCA in Lafayette. Mayer and Keogh took turns performing chest compressions on the animal, and when the prairie dog started to move as water came out of its nose and mouth, the coach was surprised to see the dog resuscitated. 

(via UPI)

image credit: via YMCA of Northern Colorado on Facebook

Paul Kay was an anthropology graduate student at Harvard University. When he arrived in Tahiti in 1959, he expected that he would have a difficult time learning the local words for colors.

Kay was surprised, however, to find it easy to understand colors in Tahitian, which had fewer color terms than English.

For example, only one word, ninamu, translated to both green and blue (now known as grue). But most Tahitian colors mapped astonishingly well to categories that Kay already knew intuitively, including white, black, red, and yellow.

This struck Kay as odd, as the groupings were not more random. This would lead into a more detailed research along with his fellow anthropologist, Brent Berlin.

Head over at Nautilus for more details.

(Image Credit: jarmoluk/ Pixabay)

Poor kitty can't get any traction! The polished floor is just too smooth.

That's my best explanation. Alternatively, he's dancing with expertise.

-via Geekologie

My first encounter with wasps was a bit scary. I saw one coming in through the window and thinking that it was a bee, I swatted it away. Eventually, it signaled to its friends to come to its aid. Before long, I was faced with a swarm coming in. It was a terrifying experience.

In parts of southern United States, they experience even worse encounters. So in response to this, scientists at Washington State University are conducting research in collaboration with the US Department of Defense to learn more about the ways wasps learn in order for them to create better traps for them.

(Image credit: Capri23auto/Pixabay)

Using an ordinary camera, with the help of long exposure, a laser, and two electrodes to suspend the atom in the air, David Nadlinger successfully took a photo of a glowing atom.

The image won first prize in a science photo contest conducted by UK based Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).

The EPSRC explains how a single atom is somehow visible to a normal camera:

When illuminated by a laser of the right blue-violet colour, the atom absorbs and re-emits light particles sufficiently quickly for an ordinary camera to capture it in a long exposure photograph.

Image Credit: DAVID NADLINGER/UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD/EPSRC

Crazy Coffins is a company in Nottingham, UK that makes unique coffins and urns for people who wish to depart this world in style. Each one is custom-designed and built to suit the specialized tastes of the deceased customer.

Great art takes time, though, so be sure to order yours before your expiration date. This kind of work can't be done quickly. Browse the gallery and read the stories behind these designs as you plan your own.

Meredith Root-Bernstein, an ecologist, observed Visayan pigs for three years at an anthropological museum in Paris. During that time, she saw two mated pigs repeatedly digging in the ground with sticks. The Daily Mail reports:

Whenever nesting season would return, the warty pig would find a stick and burrow, though the pigs didn't shows signs of tool use at any other time during the year.

Over the course of three years, she observe both the mother and father pig using tools a total of 11 times.

As part of her research, she introduced four kitchen spatulas to the pig habitat to see if they might prefer those slightly more efficient tools.

Root-Bernstein observed one pig try the spatula out on two separate occasions, but sticks seemed to be their preferred helper.

It's only a matter of time before they start building and using spears and other weapons once they realize that we humans regard them as food.

-via Dave Barry