We have previously looked at bats and their immunity toward viruses of almost all kinds, and why bats don't get sick from them. But even though bats are immune, they are still carriers, and they can cause some of the deadliest disease outbreaks in history.

Oftentimes, when we look at pandemics and try to figure out how to stop them, we always look for a cure. But a consortium of scientists and researchers including ecologists, infectious disease experts, and policymakers, have recently conducted a broad study on the system-wide complex interactions between wildlife, habitat, climate, and people to determine what could be the best solution to preventing pandemics from happening in the first place.

It's not an isolated phenomenon, they argue. That is, we cannot merely study the bats' physiology, genetics, or behavior to figure out how to kill viruses or produce a cure for the diseases they cause. The best way is to look at the bigger picture, and understand why and how these disease-carrying creatures like bats, rats, birds, and apes, spread diseases in the first place.

In the case of bats, Raina Plowright, an infectious disease ecologist, says that they often shed or release viruses into the environment whenever they get stressed. And the primary stressors for bats is the lack of native food.

Bats often feed on nectar, and for some species, they can eat insects. Generally, bats like the black flying foxes in Australia, look to flowers for nourishment. When natural lands are transformed for agriculture or mining, these bats lose their source of food, and they start looking for them elsewhere.

The next best alternative are agricultural crops, fruits, and the like. So, bats travel to human populated areas to forage food, and when they interact with other creatures like cattle, horses, or sheep, the viruses which the bats carry get transferred from the bats to those animals, and it won't be long before humans get exposed to the viruses as well.

An example of this interaction, says Plowright, is the Hendra virus which spilled over from the flying foxes to horses, and then, it infected humans. Only seven people were infected by the Hendra virus, but four of those cases were fatal. This spillover effect is the main cause of pandemics.

Therefore, in the paper written by the researchers, they gave three recommendations which are quite simple: (1) ensure that the animals have enough to eat, (2) protect the places and spaces where the animals aggregate, and (3) keep people who are most at risk safe by educating them and providing the necessary equipment and gear for work, especially when they come in contact with other animals.

Simple and easy as they may seem, it can be quite difficult to communicate, impart, and apply. But when people are informed about these, they do shift their actions and behavior to make sure that they don't disturb the natural habitats of these animals. So, it would be in our best interest to be kinder to bats, and these other creatures.

(Image credit: Igam Ogam/Unsplash)

Albert Einstein is arguably one of the most prominent and influential figures of the 20th century. His general theory of relativity is still the description being used for gravitation in modern physics. Apart from his theory of relativity, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for his paper on the law of the photoelectric effect, which paved the way for the development of quantum theory.

Many of Einstein's personal effects and memorabilia today can be sold for thousands, if not millions, of dollars on the open market. For example, an original handwritten copy of his manuscript on the general theory of relativity fetched over $14 million.

Anything signed by Einstein himself, whether it be a postcard to a Japanese courier, or the famous photo with his tongue sticking out can go for at least six figures, if not a million. Collectors say that the important feature of these items is its content.

And so, that's why anything that includes his groundbreaking scientific discoveries sell for millions. A letter Einstein wrote to a fellow physicist which bears the famous equation "E=mc²" was valued at $1,243,000.

One of the lesser known theories that Einstein wrote was a three-page dissertation in which he tackled the idea of world peace and how it could be achieved. This he wrote in 1940, just as he had become a citizen of the United States, in the midst of war.

In the manuscript, he asserted the need for an international political organization, which will keep the balance of power in check. Five years later, the United Nations was founded, which is exactly what Einstein had written about.

Although most of his scientific manuscripts are highly valued, this one in particular was never considered for auction. Nevertheless, one can argue that is a historically significant manuscript from one of the greatest minds in history.

(Image credit: Alexander Bitar History)

A woman in the UK spotted what she thought was an abandoned baby hedgehog. She carefully scooped it up, put it in a box with a dish of food and a hot water bottle, and hoped it would survive the night. In the morning, she took the box to the Lower Moss Wood Nature Reserve and Wildlife Hospital in Cheshire. There, staff identified the hedgehog as a bobble. When I first saw the headline of this story, I had to read it because I didn't know what kind of animal a bobble is.

A "bobble" is a puffy decoration for a hat, what Americans would call a pom-pom or a topknot. The staff at the wildlife hospital had a good laugh and said that the woman did the right thing. Hedgehogs aren't normally seen out in the daytime, and if this had been a hedgehog, it was surely in distress. They suggested naming this species "hedgebobble." It looks more like a tribble to me. -via Metafilter

We know that the Chicxulub asteroid impact 66 million years ago causes massive changes in earth's condition that led to the extinction of the dinosaurs. Or do we? More recent research leads to a possible second culprit, the Deccan Traps, a system of volcanos now in western India. Their activity a few million years before the asteroid showed up caused massive climate change, carbon dioxide poisoning, and acid rain, which may have been the death knell of the dinosaurs and a lot of other species. If this was the case, then the Chicxulub impact could have been just the cherry on top of the mass extinction event that began earlier. We don't yet know, because dating scarce fossils and geological evidence is hard, especially when you are trying to measure a timeline many millions of years ago, not to mention estimating populations of species based on what we know. Scientists have their opinions, and can argue about it for days. Kurzgesagt explains the Deccan Traps and how it would have impacted life on earth before the asteroid showed up.

Frontotemporal dementia, or FTD, is a group of disorders which result from damage to neurons in the frontal and temporal lobes of the brain. Whereas Alzheimer's disease is characterized by memory loss, FTD is often linked to behavioral changes and can affect one's personality and communication abilities.

Recently, the former talk show host Wendy Williams was revealed to be suffering from FTD. Bruce Willis is another celebrity who is known to have FTD. Usually, this disease affects people ages 45 to 64, and can often be misdiagnosed as early onset Alzheimer's, depression, Parkinson's disease, or some other psychiatric condition.

At the moment, there is no known cure or treatment for FTD, and the progression of the disease ranges from 2 to 20 years. Fen-Biao Gao, a researcher at the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School, is currently doing studies on the disease.

They have identified certain links between FTD and neurodegenerative diseases like amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) or Lou Gehrig's disease. The laboratory where Gao works, in collaboration with neurologist Bruce Miller, has pinpointed that FTD patients had gene mutations in progranulin and C9orf72, both of which have been found to cause ALS.

There might be some connection between these genes and the pathology of FTD, and so Gao has been working with other researchers like cell biologist J. Paul Taylor who helped discover the modifier genes which function to transport molecules in and out of the nucleus of a neuron as well as genes that encode proteins which aid in repairing damaged DNA.

Potential treatments may include gene-silencing techniques which will target the specific modifier genes that cause the disease. At the moment, Gao and other scientists are still trying to map out the genes and proteins that may be responsible for causing FTD, so it might take some time before any treatment will be developed.

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According to Professor Doug Drury, the Head of Aviation at Central Queensland University in Australia, yes. Though the recent spate of flight incidents related to Boeing aircraft earlier this year may be a cause for concern, Drury says we shouldn't ring too many alarms over them.

Although the quality assurance protocols at Boeing will need to be investigated and carefully checked, the recent incidents that have happened, according to Drury, are not all completely Boeing's fault.

In fact, the five incidents wherein an engine caught fire, a tire fell off after takeoff, a plane skidded over grass, and rudder pedal was stuck, were mostly maintenance issues which would land outside the scope of the manufacturer's control.

The Alaska Airlines flight in which the door accidentally got ripped from the plane was most likely the fault of Boeing's manufacturing and quality assurance protocols. However, it was apparently a subcontractor, Spirit AeroSystem, who did not install and bolt the door properly causing the accident mid-flight.

Still, that is not to absolve Boeing of all responsibility over these incidents. The FAA will monitor Boeing's processes closely which should bring its priority back to quality over profit, a paradigm that shifted when Airbus became a major competitor in the early 2000s.

Moreover, since many employees had been laid off during the pandemic, the company is currently training new blood who will be replacing those who were retrenched. And it's going to take time to train this new staff of engineers and maintenance personnel.

At the moment, Boeing is in the midst of correction and a transition period. So, as Professor Drury states, there is no need to panic over Boeing planes as we can hope to see changes effected. Of course, for one's own safety, people can still choose not to fly on Boeing planes, which will be a sign to the company that they need to reconsider their policies and priorities.

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Unless your glasses have thick, dark rims, you might want to skip buying sheets or bed covers with a busy pattern. Redditor hexafocal looked for his glasses for three hours before he found them -a task we all know is harder when you aren't wearing your glasses. He posted this image to the subreddit AccidentalCamouflage to show us how hard it was to find them. I had to enlarge the picture twice to find them, and I'm wearing my glasses! This is one reason I keep an older pair around for emergency use. To be fair, hexafocal would have found them faster if he'd remembered that he left them on the bed, then at least he could have felt around with his hands. If you decide to give up the hunt, here they are with the ever helpful red circle. Even then, you might need to put on your glasses to see them. -via Digg

At the very least, that's what a research conducted by the Global Consciousness Project tried to determine. They wanted to know if collective thought and sentiment, expressed prior to a negative event, may actually point to the fact that a wider swathe of the population have a premonition about future, unpredictable events. Can we sense the future?

Presentiment or the "predictive physiological anticipation" effect is a phenomenon described by the way our bodies react before a certain unpredictable event happens. If there is any scientific basis to say that such an ability exists, then we might have to probe into the connection between human consciousness and the world around us.

We know that certain animals have a sense about them of impending danger, since they are able to notice changes in the environment, vibrations within the earth, or they have some kind of instinctive mechanism in their physiology that tells them that something wrong is about to happen.

Usually, such senses are felt moments before the actual event happens, and by then, it might be too late. So, the researchers at the GCP wanted to see if public sentiment days or weeks before a negative unpredictable event happens would correlate. And if so, then it might be a possible predictor for future events.

To be able to remove any biases that could distort the data, the team isolated incidents or events that were significantly more negative than other days, and separated events which come immediately after another negative event since they might have been affected by the first event. Also, they evaluated the events to see if they were truly unpredictable, and then compared tweets from two days to two weeks before the chosen events happened.

From their analysis, they found that preceding the events, general sentiment had followed a negative trend, which then culminated in the unforeseeable negative events. Now, whether these meant that humans could feel that an impending negative event was about to happen, much like animals could sense natural disasters, is uncertain at best.

There's a possibility that the downward trend in sentiment may not be related to any future events happening, but it could just point to the social or political climate at the time. This would require the selection of events to be truly independent of other factors that could have influenced people's sentiment for the results to be truly significant.

But the researchers believe that the study may suggest that the collective mood of society at present may be affected by the emotional reactions to a future event, in a sort of backwards ripple effect. Whether or not this is truly the case, we cannot say for certain.

(Image credit: Ivan Lapyrin/Unsplash)

Culture can be defined as the set of learned behaviors, customs, or norms, that have been passed on through observation or instruction within a social group. Through thousands of years of iteration and incremental progress, humans have gone a long way in developing culture, passing it on from one generation to the next, and also changing parts of culture to keep up with the changing times.

Animals have been observed to have the capacity for culture as well, mostly seen in Japanese macaques, crows, and even sheep. But these are mostly vertebrate animals, and it was unthinkable or rather, it was assumed that this capacity was not present in invertebrates. It was thought that the behaviors exhibited by invertebrates like bees were innate or instinctive. However, a research has shown that there is a possibility that invertebrates like bees may have the capacity for culture.

It's the first step toward determining whether bees can develop their own culture. The first thing that the researchers needed to do was to design an experiment in which bees would have to solve a complex two-step puzzle. To any humans, such a feat may be simple, but to a bee, it is considered extremely difficult.

The experiment was designed by UK behavioral ecologist Alice Bridges who was curious about the concept of culture in invertebrates being innate. She wanted to see if there was a possibility that bees could learn socially how to solve this complex problem by observation and demonstration.

First, they had to train some bees to solve the problem, which admitted required a lot of time for trial and error. It required several intermediate rewards so that the bees may figure out the solution. But in time, it became like clockwork for the trained bees.

The next step was to put another bee, which hadn't seen the puzzle and hadn't been trained to solve it, along with the trained bee. This was when the social gears of bees starting turning, and their team found that the bees had the ability to learn and pass on information in similar fashion as other animals that exhibit a capacity for culture.

However, the only issue for bees is that they have a relatively short lifespan, and so being able to pass on knowledge or information may be difficult if, after one generation is born, the previous one dies out right away. Then, it would be quite challenging to develop culture that lasts more than one generation.

Bridges and her team are hopeful, however, that this proves that this kind of socially learned behavior and culture is not exclusive to humans or vertebrates, but that invertebrates may also have the capacity.

(Video credit: nature video/Youtube)

That's right. You read that correctly. Perrikaryal has successfully been able to beat video games with just her mind. She's neither a psychic nor a telepath. She uses Emotiv's EEG headset to record her brain activity and programmed the patterns being picked up by the interface to certain actions or commands.

Originally, the Twitch streamer's dream was to perform stand-up, but because facing a crowd of people on stage was a bit daunting, a friend suggested that she try out streaming first which is akin to a performance but in front of your monitor. And having a master's in psychology, most of the games she played initially were those that had a unique psychological perspective like Superliminal, The Closing Shift, and Detroit: Become Human.

Later on, she was able to buy an Emotiv EEG, which gave a depiction of what was happening inside her brain while she played certain games like horror titles with jumpscares. But as she continued with this gimmick, she discovered that the device had an interesting feature to it.

She found that she could program the interface to detect certain brainwaves or patterns and associate those with command inputs. But it wasn't an easy thing, as she recounts how it took a massive amount of time for trial and error to figure out which specific visualizations could be used for certain actions.

At some point, it took her 600 to 700 times in order to program a certain command input only to find out in the end that it was unreliable, so she had to start all over. However, with enough patience and effort, she was able to map out the right visual prompts to consistently churn out certain commands, and she found herself beating games without using a controller.

First, she practiced with Minecraft, and she found that there were certain visualizations and thought patterns that could be reliably used to make characters do certain actions. Then, she amped up the complexity by trying out different games that have more difficult controls.

That led her to Elden Ring, which is infamous for being one of the most difficult games to beat. But she spent a lot of time training the EEG's interface, and with enough game time, she was able to beat the first boss of the game, Margit the Fell Omen.

She continued upping the complexity and training the interface until such time that she was playing hands-free and beating the hardest bosses of the game, eventually even toppling the most agonizing one, Melania Blade of Miquella.

Since then, she has tried out playing other games like Palworld, Smash Bros., and even Pac-Man, by just simply using her brain as the controller with the help of the EEG.

Not everybody thinks she was actually playing with just her mind, but that encouraged her because she believes that these negative comments only happen because people don't understand the technology and the processes behind her playstyle. But once the information began to spread and people learned more about it, people's perspectives started to shift.

This can be a great means for accessibility in the future. People who may not be able to play using traditional controllers or peripherals will have a chance of playing even the most complicated games through the EEG device or even voice commands and eye-tracking. It's only the beginning.

(Video credit: Perrikaryal/Youtube)

Whether you believe or not in the existence of psychic powers, paranormal experiences, or ESP, we cannot deny that there are certain things that, as of yet, we do not have the capability or technology to explain.

Many people claim to have supernatural abilities or encounters, and we generally dismiss them as being insane or fraudulent. Certainly, we have come to the belief that anything which cannot be scientifically proven or tested, must be fake, a hoax, or nonexistent. And that's just the effect of culture veering away from the mythical to the natural.

But there are people out there who are determined to unravel the truth behind these claims through scientific methods and rigorous experimentation. If those who claim to have psi abilities vehemently stress the reality of such paranormal events, then there must be some way of finding out the truth behind it.

Scientific research is often characterized by three things. They have to be observable, measurable, and replicable. It's the foundation of empirical methods which is what modern science is founded on. And with regard to parapsychology and the supernatural, some scientists have focused on designing methods and experiments that can truly test such claims from psychics, mediums, and espers.

People like Professors Dick Bierman and Suitbert Ertel have worked on the fields of physics and psychology, respectively, for most of their lives and have also looked into the subject of parapsychology and psi phenomena.

And they have approached James Randi, the stage magician and skeptic who was famous for his Million Dollar Challenge which aimed to test the claims of psi-gifted people, as Ertel calls them. Dr. Dean Radin, an educational psychologist and investigator of parapsychological phenomena, also applied for the challenge.

Much controversy has surrounded James Randi's Million Dollar Challenge as well as the organization that conducts it, the JREF (James Randi Educational Foundation), as many who have looked at the rules of the challenge point out that the rules are heavily disadvantageous to applicants, and can be seen as a crusade and polemic against the subject of parapsychology and any who seriously research it.

Instead of a sincere curiosity and interest in learning about the truth of the matter, and looking for scientific analysis of robust data and rigorous experiments that can advance such efforts, proponents say that James Randi's challenge is simply designed to ensure that any applicants fail in order to protect the prize money. It's no earnest quest of testing whether there is some truth to the claims of the existence of psi phenomena.

In this, Mitch Horowitz, a historian and writer of metaphysical themes, criticizes James Randi's brand of skepticism, citing sociologist Marcello Truzzi who called it a form of pseudoskepticism, the objective of which is to lambaste any serious attempt at a scientific inquiry of psi phenomena.

Though there are con artists and frauds who claim they can see the future or communicate through telepathy, there are those with more valid claims and are willing to undergo experimentation to prove them. The research of people such as Radin, Ertel, Schwartz, and Bierman, aim to understand the true nature of these claims, what their connections are to reality, and whether they are replicable.

It has been three years since the death of James Randi, and the Million Dollar Challenge was discontinued in 2015. But as Horowitz says, in today's world, there is a need for healthy skepticism and for the restoration of sound practices when it comes to dealing with contentious topics in science or any field. - via The Daily Grail

(Image credit: James Randi Education Foundation/Wikimedia Commons)

Subscribing to a high-speed internet plan may be all well and good, but it won't matter that much if there are places in your house where you can't get any WiFi signal at all. WiFi behaves similarly to radio or light waves which means obstructions like walls or floors can affect the strength of the transmission as well as its reach.

Generally, to boost your WiFi signal, your ISPs might suggest buying a WiFi extender which will increase the coverage of your WiFi. However, those devices aren't cheap, and if you have a big space, you may need to fork out a significant amount of cash to reach every nook and cranny of your home.

Now, there is this nifty tech hack which may solve your WiFi problems without having to hurt your wallet. Some tech experts suggest using aluminum foil to direct your WiFi signal and increase its signal strength to those areas of your home which the WiFi cannot reach.

The setup is simple. You get a sheet of aluminum foil, curve it so that it looks like a C-shape, and then place it behind your router. Make sure that the shiny side of the aluminum foil faces inward toward the router as it will be the part that reflects the WiFi signal's beams. Point it toward the direction of the dead zone in your home, and see the tech magic unfold.

Apparently, aluminum foil isn't the only material that can have this effect. James McQuiggan, a tech expert, suggests that you can also use soda cans and beer cans as well as other metals like copper baking sheets. As long as the curved, shiny part of the material is faced toward the direction you want to boost the wireless signal, it should work.

You might be wondering if this is a myth or not, and that's understandable. Researchers from Dartmouth University actually tested the hack, and they found that it helped boost their wireless signals by up to 55.1% in certain spots. Just as much as the aluminum foil hack boosted the signal toward the direction it was pointed, it also reduced the signal strength by up to 63.3% in the areas where the signal was redirected from.

Granted, the Dartmouth experiment was in a controlled environment, and they were able to match the specifications of the router and aluminum foil to the size of the room. So, results may vary for much less controlled environments. Things like the size of your space, the number and type of obstructions, as well as your internet plan can affect the effectiveness of this hack.

(Image credit: Mykola/Kolya Korzh; Misha Feshchak/Unsplash)

I don't know a lot about figure skating, but 19-year-old Ilia Malinin of Reston, Virginia, is very good. They tell us that it is nigh impossible to jump in the air and spin around four times, but he does it over and over, six times in all in this routine that won him the world championship in figure skating Saturday night in Montreal. On top of that, this routine received the highest score ever in the sport. Malinin comes by his talent honestly, by having two champion skaters as parents and training since he was six. It still stings to see someone born in 2004 becoming the world champion of anything, but that's the way time works. Malinin's performance is only five minutes; the rest of the video is replays and everyone talking about how great it was. -via Digg

The nature of reality is explored in the movie The Matrix, which turns 25 years old this month. Do we really know what reality is, or are we forever doomed to think of reality as only what we experience? It's not a new question, as it was posited in a story related in Plato's Republic. Along with a setup in which peoples' experience is limited, both stories have characters who prefer their limited life to reality because it's more comforting.

Back in 1999, The Matrix seemed far fetched, but in the 25 years since then, we've seen the rise of the world wide web, and then social media, and then smart phones. Each development drew millions more people into the artificial world of the internet, until it that world became our major source of communication, social life, entertainment, news, and for some of us, even employment. There's no doubt that the internet has improved the lives of many millions of people, but it also seems to be replacing the world around us. As the reality of our screens take over our time, is the world of The Matrix slowly creeping up on us? Maybe not so slowly. Read about the question of experience vs. reality and how our modern world resembles The Matrix in an article reposted from The Wall Street Journal. -via Metafilter

(Image credit: Jamie Zawinski)

Climate change has come to Washington, DC. The National Cherry Blossom Festival opened over the weekend and will run until April 14. However, the blossoms reached their peak on March 17th, the earliest on record, due to warm winter weather. The star of this year's festival is a tree named Stumpy, which has become a viral sensation. This tree has lost most of its branches, and the trunk has become hollowed out, yet it stubbornly blooms every year. This year is Stumpy's last hurrah, as it is one of 140 cherry trees to be cut down and made into mulch for a seawall reconstruction project. The mulch will be used to nourish the remaining trees, and Stumpy's branches will be rooted to produce new trees. When the seawall is completed, 277 new cherry trees will be planted.

Tourists visiting Washington for this year's cherry bloom are paying tribute to Stumpy. Continue reading to see some of them.