Flatscreen television sets have opened up a whole new world to dogs and cats, who used to pay no attention at all to cathode-ray tube TV. Ella is a senior rescue cat who loves to watch TV, but she prefers to see one particular film, every day if possible. You can see more of Ella at her Instagram page.

As soon as you get over your food coma from eating so many Christmas treats, it's time to get ready for another holiday! In the US, especially the South, it's traditional to serve hog jowl (or ham hocks or just ham) along with black-eyed peas and your favorite greens to celebrate the New Year. It's supposed to auger health and prosperity. But there's no need to limit yourself to only what you've eaten before. You might want to look to other countries if you want to institute new food traditions for the holiday. Here's a sampling:

1. Spain

In Spain, it's customary to eat 12 grapes right at midnight on New Year's Eve, representing good luck for each of the coming 12 months.

8. Turkey

In Turkey, some smash pomegranates in the doorways of their homes. As the tradition goes, the number of seeds that fly out predict how much good fortune you'll have in the coming year.

Read about more New Year food traditions at Food52. -via The Week

Mileva Marić Einstein was a brilliant physicist who is little known today, mainly because she was a woman born in 1875. The reason she is known at all is because she was married to Albert Einstein from 1903 to 1919. Their collaboration in both science and life started in 1896 when both were at the Polytechnic Institute in Zurich. In what appeared to be a pattern set for their entire time together, Mileva dragged Albert through his classes.

Albert and Mileva became inseparable, spending countless hours studying together. He attended only a few lectures, preferring to study at home. Mileva was methodical and organized. She helped him channel his energy and guided his studies as we learn from Albert’s letters, exchanged between 1899-1903 during school holidays: 43 letters from Albert to Mileva have been preserved but only 10 of hers remain(5).

Mileva had better grades than Albert, but the professor giving the final oral exam gave her such low marks that she did not graduate. Her four male classmates did. Albert and Mileva went on to collaborate on groundbreaking physics research, but Mileva's name rarely appeared in published papers, possibly because she knew from experience that her participation could diminish those papers and therefore Albert's job prospects. What she felt would advance their future together ended up costing her everything. Read the story of Mileva Einstein at Scientific American. -via Damn Interesting

(Image credit: Unbekannt)

You don't like Christmas music? Shove it down people's throats!

Fun by Khöömïï, Tuvan, Sygyt throat singers.

It was hiding in plain sight, too. A graduate research assistant at the University of Kansas has discovered not one, but three new species of snakes preserved in the university’s Biodiversity Institute’s biodiversity collection. The snake specimens were overlooked until Jeff Weinell discovered that they were actually new species, and now these specimens are the only known members of a new snake genus called Levitonius: 

The newly identified Levitonius mirus, also known as Waray dwarf burrowing snake, is native to the islands of Samar and Leyte in the Philippines, an exceptionally biodiverse archipelago that includes at least 112 land snake species, according to the study.

The snake has among the fewest number of vertebrae of any snake species in the world, according to the study, and has a long and narrow skull relative to its size, Weinell explained in a conversation with CNN. Its scales are highly iridescent, and it is likely that its diet is based on earthworms.

Weinell emphasized the importance of collaboration between US-based scientists and scientists in the Philippines, furthering the understanding of biodiversity in the region.

Image via CNN 

It’s smaller than we would imagine a ‘sea dragon’ to be. The Thalassodraco etchesi or Etches sea dragon is a small marine reptile from 150 million years ago. The species, whose remains have been discovered in a marine deposit in Dorset,  England, may have been able to dive to extreme depths, and are also described as "streamlined marine predators from the Late Jurassic period." IGN has more details: 

“This ichthyosaur has several differences that makes it unique enough to be its own genus and species,” paleontologist Megan L. Jacobs said. “New Late Jurassic ichthyosaurs in the United Kingdom are extremely rare, as these creatures have been studied for 200 years. We knew it was new almost instantly, but it took about a year to make thorough comparisons with all other Late Jurassic ichthyosaurs to make certain our instincts were correct. It was very exciting to not be able to find a match.”

This specific specimen was discovered in 2009 and was estimated to have been about 6 feet long. It was discovered by fossil collector Steve Etches MBE after a "cliff crumbled along the seaside."

It appears to have some similarities to sperm whales with its "extremely deep rib cage" that may have allowed for larger lungs and space so internal organs weren't crushed under the pressure. It also had large eyes, which meant it could have been able to see well in low light.

Its hundreds of tiny teeth seem to indicate a diet that may have consisted of squid and small fish, and "the teeth are unique by being completely smooth."

Image via IGN

While we may insist that our environment influences our preferences, new research reveals that our genes also have influence over our preferences. Our genes control how much of our behavior might have a biological predisposition. This means that we might have been born to have a particular behavior or characteristic, as the Next Web details: 

Research has shown genes may predispose not only our height, eye colour or weight, but also our vulnerability to mental ill-health, longevity, intelligence and impulsivity. Such traits are, to varying degrees, written into our genes — sometimes thousands of genes working in concert.

Most of these genes instruct how our brain circuitry is laid down in the womb, and how it functions. We can now view a baby’s brain as it is built, even 20 weeks before birth. Circuitry changes exist in their brains that strongly correlate with genes that predispose for autism spectrum disorder and attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). They even predispose for conditions that might not emerge for decades: bipolar disorder, major depressive disorder and schizophrenia.

Increasingly we are faced with the prospect that predispositions to more complex behaviors are similarly wired into our brains. These include which religion we choose, how we form our political ideologies, and even how we create our friendship groups.

Image via The Next Web

Okay, "wraps" doesn’t mean Yianni Charalambous puts wrapping paper around luxury cars as gifts, no. Charalambous specializes in customizing rare and expensive cars for celebrities. If a celebrity isn’t satisfied by how their Ferrari, Aston Martin, Porsche, McLaren, Bentley, or Rolls Royce look, they can hire Charalmbous’ services to customize their beloved cars. Check out the delicate and intricate process on how he changes the look of celebrities’ expensive automobiles.

It seems that not all people get a unique set of swirls on their fingertips. This unique condition, which manifested in Apu Sarker’s family, is a rare genetic mutation. The condition, called Adermatoglyphia, renders people affected with it to have no fingerprints and a reduced amount of sweat glands on their hands, as BBC details: 

Apu, who is 22, lives with his family in a village in the northern district of Rajshahi. He was working as a medical assistant until recently. His father and his grandfather were farmers.

The men in Apu's family appear to share a genetic mutation so rare it is thought to affect only a small handful of families in the world: they have no fingerprints.

Back in the day of Apu's grandfather, having no fingerprints was no big deal. "I don't think he ever thought of it as a problem," Apu said.

But over the decades, the tiny grooves that swirl around our fingertips - known properly as dermatoglyphs - have become the world's most collected biometric data. We use them for everything from passing through airports to voting and opening our smartphones.

[...]

A dermatologist in Bangladesh has diagnosed the family's condition as congenital palmoplantar keratoderma, which Prof Itin believes developed into secondary Adermatoglyphia - a version of the disease which can also cause dry skin and reduced sweating on palms and feet - symptoms reported by the Sarkers.

More testing would be needed to confirm that the family has some form of Adermatoglyphia. Professor Sprecher said his team would be "very glad" to assist the family with genetic testing. The results of those tests might bring the Sarkers some certainly, but no relief from the day to day struggles of navigating the world without fingerprints.

Image via BBC

It's time for Barry Petchesky's annual list of things people had to go to emergency rooms to have removed from various bodily orifices in the preceding year. That includes the ears, nose, throat, penis, vagina, and rectum.

All reports are taken from the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission’s database of emergency room visits, all descriptions are verbatim, and hey don’t put that in there, you might lose it.

Most of the list is just the object and its size, but there are some quotes from the reports. The reports of earbuds stuck in ears are quite believable, and the things pulled from noses appear to be mostly children, but you can almost hear the skepticism in the quotes about how objects became stuck in rectums -as reported by the patients. See the list at Defector.

I pet my dog every chance I get. Do you (if you have one, that is) have to pet your furry companion before you leave?  Researchers recommend you do. Giving pups a little pat before we head out actually keeps them calm while we’re away. According to a study published in the Journal of Veterinary Behavior, gently petting a dog before leaving home has a positive effect on the animal’s stress response: 

The researchers monitored the dogs’ behaviors while the owners were gone, measured the dogs’ heart rates before and after the separation, and noted the animals’ salivary cortisol after their owners left (excess drooling can be a sign of stress). The experimenters noticed that though none of the dogs were highly stressed, the animals from both groups spent almost half the time looking for their missing owners.

However, the key difference between the groups was that dogs who were pet before their owners left exhibited more calm behaviors when their owners were missing and had a lower heart rate after the reunion compared to dogs in the neutral condition. The researchers conclude that this topic needs further study, though they write that the findings suggest “that petting a dog before a brief separation from the owner may have a positive effect, making the dog calmer during the separation itself.”

Image via First For Women

That’s one step closer to our dreams of saying ‘beam me up!’ anytime we go to other locations! Researchers are not able to teleport actual human beings yet, sorry. However, the team of scientists have successfully teleported qubits (basic units of quantum info) across almost 14 miles of fiber optic cables with 90 percent precision. This might be a stepping stone to not only human teleportation, but towards the quantum internet (possibly a much more powerful Internet connection).

When quantum internet is finally a thing, it will make Wifi look obsolete and dial-up even more ancient than it already is. “We achieved sustained, high-fidelity quantum teleportation utilizing time-bin (time-of-arrival_ qubits of light, at the telecommunication wavelength of 1.5 microns, over fiber optic cables,” Panagiotis Spentzouris, Head of Quantum Science at the Fermilab Quantum Institute, told SYFY WIRE. “This type of qubit is compatible with several devices that are required for the deployment of quantum networks.”

What you might recognize is the fiber optic cables used in the experiment, since they are everywhere in telecommunication tech today. Lasers, electronics and optical equipment which were also used for the experiments at Caltech (CQNET) and Fermilab (FQNET) that could someday evolve into the next iteration of internet. Though this is equipment you probably also recognize, what it did for these experiments was enable them to go off without a glitch. Information traveled across the cables at warp speed with the help of semi-autonomous systems that monitored it while while managing control and synchronization of the entangled particles. The system could run for up to a week without human intervention.

Image via Syfy

I had no idea this existed. But this infamous goat problem is more difficult than the ‘how many milk bottles’ will one have after a certain number of conditions. This one has baffled mathematicians for quite some time. The problem is this: ‘for a goat to be able to eat grass in a circle with an area of exactly one half acre, how much rope does it need?’ Now this may look simple, but the answer actually has only been approximations for centuries, as Popular Mechanics detailed: 

The goat problem is a living example of what it means to round off your answer. Steve Nadis at Quanta explains the distinction:

“To illustrate the difference, consider the equation x2 − 2 = 0. One could derive an approximate numerical answer, x = 1.4142, but that’s not as accurate or satisfying as the exact solution, x = √2.”

With a few moments of thought, the goat problem quickly turns into an exercise in many intersecting approximations. This is why every answer offered since the 1700s has been an approximation as well.

And now, finally, there’s an exact solution for the first time. Mathematician Ingo Ullisch took a cue from the previous researchers who made progress on the problem. He introduced complex analysis, which is kind of like algebra with an optional imaginary-number add-on. 

Check Popular Mechanics’ full piece on the solution to the problem here. 

Image via Popular Mechanics

Tardigrades, also known as water bears, are microscopic creatures that have possibly taken over the lunar surface.  Scientists believe that these animals are now thriving on the moon after an Israeli spacecraft crash-landed on the Moon in 2019. The spacecraft contained a ‘library of life,’ which included a stack of disks archiving 30 million pages of information about Earth, a copy of the entire English-language Wikipedia, human DNA samples, and thousands of tardigrades: 

Beresheet's strange occupants were dehydrated tardigrades, a process which essentially slows their metabolism down and suspends them in a near-life state. The idea was that, if they were to be rehydrated by someone or something, then they would come back to life, ostensibly telling future lunar explorers about life on Earth today.

But the spacecraft carrying the tardigrades didn’t land on the Moon according to plan, instead crashing on the lunar surface and losing contact with ground control.

Despite the impact, scientists believe that if anything survived the crash intact, it may well have been the tardigrades. The microscopic creatures were sandwiched between micron-thin sheets of nickel and suspended in epoxy, a resin-like preservative that acts like a jelly — potentially enough to cushion their landing.

This is not a totally outlandish idea. Tardigrades have been shown to survive the harsh conditions of space in the past.

Image via Inverse

Natalie Portman uses the domino run effect to suggest an active book shelf. Oh, she says, did my taking down a book cause that? How unfortunate. That's always happening. pic.twitter.com/QaafnK1hzc

— Bookcase Credibility (@BCredibility) December 3, 2020

Bookcase Credibility is a Twitter account that judges famous people for the books that appear in the background of their Zoom or WebEx video conferences. It's an inevitable practice, as the new ways of telework inevitably bringing the world into your home to judge you for your interior design choices. Or, more specifically, your intellectual rigor and home library organization skills.

So it's now important to not only dress well and furnish your office to look professional. Now even your bookcase has to impress people. Now you could read respected academic works that expand your mind. But that takes time and is boring. Instead, just have the service Books by the Foot send you a curated collection of books that subtly deceive people you work with into thinking that you're smart.

Books by the Foot, which is operated by a company called Wonder Book has been in business for many years, but quarantine life has given its services only greater importance. Politico reports:

The Wonder Book staff doesn’t pry too much into which objective a particular client is after. If an order were to come in for, say, 12 feet of books about politics, specifically with a progressive or liberal tilt—as one did in August—Wonder Book’s manager, Jessica Bowman, would simply send one of her more politics-savvy staffers to the enormous box labeled “Politically Incorrect” (the name of Books by the Foot’s politics package) to select about 120 books by authors like Hillary Clinton, Bill Maher, Al Franken and Bob Woodward. The books would then be “staged,” or arranged with the same care a florist might extend to a bouquet of flowers, on a library cart; double-checked by a second staffer; and then shipped off to the residence or commercial space where they would eventually be shelved and displayed (or shelved and taken down to read).

Only sometimes do Bowman and Wonder Book President Chuck Roberts know the real identity of the person whose home or project they’ve outfitted: “When we work with certain designers, I pretty much already know it’s going to be either an A-list movie or an A-list client. They always order under some code name,” Bowman says. “They’re very secretive.”

Visually-appealing book arrangements are important for more than just video conference calls. Books by the Foot also provides scenic backgrounds for offices on TV shows and movies:

Books by the Foot’s creations have also popped up in a variety of TV shows and movies, many of them politics-adjacent. “Madam Secretary,” “Veep,” “The Blacklist,” “House of Cards,” as well as the 2017 movie Chappaquiddick, for example, have all outfitted their sets with Books by the Foot curations. Some of the most high-profile projects the team works on, however, aren’t revealed to them until after the fact: Bowman has had the distinctly surreal experience of watching a movie for the first time and recognizing her work onscreen. (That’s how it works, she said, with “pretty much anything Marvel.”)

-via Althouse