While birds don’t have enough brainpower to match our own, did you know that certain birds can understand abstract concepts too? In a study published in The Journal of Neuroscience, a team of researchers studied two male carrion crows (Corvus corone), and proved that crows can understand the concept of zero: 

The crows were trained to peck at the screen or move their heads if the two images matched one another, and to remain still if they did not match.

The greater the difference between the two sets of dots, the more accurately the birds responded; in other words, the birds mixed up closer quantities, such as two and three, more often than more divergent quantities, such as one and four. This phenomenon is known as the "numerical distance effect," which can also be observed in monkeys and humans during similar tests, Nieder told Live Science.

In the more recent study, which included a blank screen, "what we found is that the crows, after this training, could discriminate zero from the other countable numerosities," Nieder said. However, importantly, the birds still demonstrated the numerical distance effect in trials that included the empty screen.

Image credit: Andreas Nieder

Meet the ‘King’ cello, the oldest known cello in existence. The instrument was created by Andrea Amati in the mid-1500s for the court of King Charles IX of France. The violin was part of a set of stringed instruments painted in the style of Limoges porcelain. In addition, it also one of the few Amati instruments in existence: 

The instrument remained in the French court until the French Revolution, after which the basso fell out of favor and the “King” was “drastically reduced in size” through an alteration process that “stood at the forefront of musical instrument development during the last quarter of the 18th century and throughout the 19th,” a way transform obsolete forms into those more suitable for contemporary music. “By 1801,” Zeller writes, “the date that the ‘King’ might have been reduced, large-format bassos were obsolete, discarded in favour of the smaller-bodied cellos.”

Image courtesy of National Music Museum

For now of course, it’s just a concept. Norway’s Wind Catching Systems has proposed a floating power grid composed of more than 100 small wind turbines. The company claims that this conceptual power source could produce enough energy for 80,000 European homes. This new wind farm would stand at more than 1,000 feet tall, atop platforms that are anchored to the ocean floor: 

A common complaint about wind farms is the space they take up, but Wind Catching Systems' grid scales thins down with its compact design. The small size of the individual turbines makes installation and maintenance easy, with no specialty vessels or cranes necessary. With an estimated shelf life of 50 years, they are also designed to be scalable.

image credit: Wind Catching Systems

We can all agree that cannibalism is horrible, but circumstances distinguish desperation from evil. It's one thing to eat a dead body because there's nothing else to sustain life, but quite another thing to murder someone ...and then eat them. History is full of both kinds of cannibalism, like the survivors of the French frigate Méduse.

In early 1816, after the Napoleonic Wars gave France control of Senegal, the Méduse sailed south to Africa to take the reins of its new territory. But tragedy struck. Fifty miles offshore, the ship ran aground. It quickly dawned on the ship’s 400 passengers and crew that there weren’t enough lifeboats to save everybody.

Instead, those who couldn’t fit into the lifeboats—147 passengers in total—huddled onto a makeshift raft. (Some passengers, meanwhile, opted to stay behind with the frigate.) Initially, the raft was towed by the remaining lifeboats … until someone made the fateful decision to cut the ropes. For 13 days, the raft drifted aimlessly. People died—from murder, from being washed (and tossed) overboard, from starvation. Eventually, the survivors turned to cannibalism (and drank their own urine). By the time the raft was discovered, only 15 people were still alive. The tragedy would later inspire one of the biggest paintings of the 19th century, the 16-by-23-foot The Raft of The Medusa.

Read that story, and those of six other incidents of cannibalism at Mental Floss.

The Video Game History Foundation has finished its restoration of a single Nintendo-related, 3.5-inch floppy disk. This small storage device is an Earthbound disk, discovered by original Earthbound translator Marcus Lindblom in 2018. Lindblom donated the disk for preservation to the institution, and they were able to recover a single file: 

Longtime Mother/Earthbound series expert Clyde "Tomato" Mandelin, who famously co-translated Mother 3 as a free, fan-made patch for its Japan-only version, partnered with VGHF to parse the discoveries. His very long report on the findings is mostly wonky stuff for people who know the series like the back of their hand as opposed to a laundry list of shocking revelations.

Still, the findings include breadcrumbs to help fans understand how this text-heavy game was made and released, along with enough code-related discoveries to allow ROM hackers to recreate some of the unfinished scenes mentioned in the disk's code and notes. (The disk doesn't contain art, sprites, or textures, but the script contents are dense enough for VGHF's ROM hackers to work with.)

Image credit: Video Game History Foundation

Yes, it’s explorable. In a stunning display of talent and artistry, Ernesto Neto has created a new fiber-based installation. Housed at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the artwork, called “SunForceOceanLife,” is a hand-crocheted, walkable maze that stretches 79 feet across the gallery and spirals 12 feet in the air:

Plastic balls also fill the pathway and shift underfoot, which forces those passing through the suspended structure to intentionally maintain their balance. Neto explains:

It directly engages the body as does a joyful dance or meditation, inviting us to relax, breathe, and uncouple our body from our conscious mind. The sensation of floating, the body cradled by the crocheted fruits of our labor, brings to mind a hammock: the quintessential indigenous invention that uplifts us and connects us to the wisdom and traditions of our ancestors.

“SunForceOceanLife” is on view at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston through September 26, 2021. You can see more of Neto’s interactive, site-specific projects at Galerie Max Hetzler.

Image credit: Museum of Fine Arts, Houston via Colossal 

Researchers have successfully created a self-healing concrete that can repair its own cracks! The concept behind the self-healing concrete is that an intervention needs to be staged before water gets in tiny cracks and causes the rupture to spread. The special concrete makes use of an enzyme found in human blood, as New Atlas details: 

The team put the CA enzyme to use by adding it to concrete powder before the material is mixed and poured. When a small crack forms in the concrete, the enzyme interacts with CO2 in the air to produce calcium carbonate crystals, which mimic the characteristics of concrete and promptly fill in the crack.

Through their testing, the scientists demonstrated their doped concrete can repair its own millimeter-scale cracks within 24 hours. The team says this is a marked improvement on some previous technologies that have used bacteria to self-heal, which are more expensive and can take up to a month to heal even far smaller cracks.

While the amount of CO2 the concrete gobbles up is likely to be negligible in the grand scheme of things, the real environmental potential of the material lies in its potential longevity. Rahbar predicts that this type of self-healing technology could extend the life of a structure from 20 years to 80 years, which reduces the need to produce replacement concrete in what is a notoriously carbon-intensive process.

“Healing traditional concrete that’s already in use is critically beneficial, too, and will help reduce the need to produce and ship additional concrete, which has a huge environmental impact,” says Rahbar.

Image credit: Worcester Polytechnic Institute

We know that an asteroid hit the earth about 66 million years ago and caused the dinosaurs to die out. But what was it like in the moment? What were the immediate effects? And how did an impact in one place cause death and destruction globally? Kurzgesagt tells us all about it as if it were a dramatic campfire story.

Don't be daunted by the video length- the actual story is less than ten minutes.

I AM PISSING MYSELF OVER THIS VIDEO HELP SHSJSBSJSBA pic.twitter.com/bIrutKEPlD

— 💘Cherri🌷 (@cherriimiu) June 9, 2021

This video of unknown origin (most likely hidden to protect the horses from public shaming) shows two horses, Domino and Pie, on their way to dinner. Their path is blocked by a ferocious rabbit. The horses, prudently heeding the warning of Tim the Enchanter, are keeping their distance.

-via Super Punch

Before he became Leondegrance in Excalibur, Gurney Halleck in Dune, and Captain Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation, Patrick Stewart was already an acclaimed Shakespearean actor. In 1996, he slipped on his tights again and played the titular role in Hamlet for Sesame Street. Shakespeare's script was changed a bit.

-via Kottke

Here’s something to brighten up your day! The video of a small group of dolphins playing with a dog went viral on the Internet. The clip, filmed by Anastasia Vinnikova on a beach near Opuk Cape in Crimea, featured her two-year-old dog excitedly interacting with the group of dolphins. The dog, named Patrick, was happily playing a game of chase up and down the beach with the other animals. It’s a wonder how these two different kinds of animals are joyfully playing with each other: 

"When they come across something novel, they want to check it out," Professor Lars Bejder from the Murdoch University Cetacean Research Unit told 9NEWS when asked about a similar interaction back in 2017.

Dolphins and dogs are both intelligent, curious animals. So when they're confronted with something they might never have seen before, that curiosity takes over. And when the New Thing You're Looking At turns out to be a Fun Thing Looking At You, Too, a little playtime might just be in order.

Add it all together, and this video ticks all the right boxes. Incredible sea creature? Check. Fun-loving pupper? Check! It's a fascinating look into the animal world and an adorable inter-species play date. What more could you need?

Since the death of beloved Jeopardy! host Alex Trebek, the show has been hosted by a round robin of celebrities and fans. This is in part fun for those who had appearing on the game show on their bucket list, and also part audition for a new host. Nine different people have put in their two weeks (or a month, in the case of Ken Jennings, who stepped in immediately when the show returned). There are seven more people already scheduled to host the show this summer, and there may be more in the wings. So who's done a good job so far? Den of Geek breaks down the performances of the nine who have hosted so far, some of whom would not take the job permanently and others who would jump at the chance. I've only caught a couple of episodes of each, so I don't know how well this ranking will hold up against your opinions, but I completely agree with number one. Still, there's plenty of summer -and plenty of guest hosts- to come.  -via Digg

Over the weekend, an airliner had to turn back to the gate and the crew summoned authorities because two passengers were fighting over an armrest. Yes, it seems ridiculous to get into it over something so trivial, but these kinds of situations are exactly what etiquette was developed for- so that everyone knows what is expected. Use of the limited armrests in an airplane should be common knowledge, but apparently some people need to be taught. Jason Torchinsky explains how airline armrests should be allocated, and the reasoning behind the unwritten rules at Jalopnik.

(Image credit: Jason Torchinsky)

The question is: could it be the next planetary home for humanity? Experts don’t have the answer to that yet. However, they have pointed out some interesting similarities between the newly-discovered exoplanet and our planet. The celestial body, named TOI-1231b, is located 90 light years from Earth, and its atmosphere suggests that it may bear some resemblance to our own: 

Most notably, TOI-1231b has a similar temperature to Earth, at around 57 degrees Celsius, making it one of the coolest small exoplanets discovered by NASA so far. CNN reports that scientists think studying the planet could help them understand how common it is for Earth-like atmospheres to form, and could also reveal clues as to the likelihood of similar planets capable of creating water clouds being able to host life.

Diana Dragomir, an assistant professor in the University of New Mexico’s department of physics and astronomy and co-author of a new study into the planet, said:

Even though TOI 1231 b is eight times closer to its star than the Earth is to the Sun, its temperature is similar to that of Earth, thanks to its cooler and less bright host star.

However, the planet itself is actually larger than earth and a little bit smaller than Neptune – we could call it a sub-Neptune.

Scientists are especially excited by the possibility of being able to analyse TOI-1231b’s atmosphere, as the majority of similar planets are inaccessible and clouded by interstellar gas. However, scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory believe they may be able to find evidence of hydrogen and helium atoms escaping this newly-discovered planet, which they say are typically ‘almost impossible to detect’.



Image credit: NASA JPL

This slime mold can solve puzzles, and make decisions even if it doesn’t have a brain. How the hell? The Physarum polycephalum has scientists befuddled. This little organism does not have a brain or a nervous system, and yet it is able to thrive undisturbed in the environment for years. In addition, it’s able to do things that requires thinking, even with the lack of the organs needed for the action: 

"I think it's the same kind of revolution that occurred when people realized that plants could communicate with each other," says biologist Audrey Dussutour of the French National Center for Scientific Research.

"Even these tiny little microbes can learn. It gives you a bit of humility."

P. polycephalum – adorably nicknamed "The Blob" by Dussutour – isn't exactly rare. It can be found in dark, humid, cool environments like the leaf litter on a forest floor. It's also really peculiar; although we call it a 'mold', it is not actually fungus. Nor is it animal or plant, but a member of the protist kingdom – a sort of catch-all group for anything that can't be neatly categorized in the other three kingdoms.

It starts its life as many individual cells, each with a single nucleus. Then, they merge to form the plasmodium, the vegetative life stage in which the organism feeds and grows.

In this form, fanning out in veins to search for food and explore its environment, it's still a single cell, but containing millions or even billions of nuclei swimming in the cytoplasmic fluid confined within the bright-yellow membrane.

To learn more about this unique and intriguing little fella, check out ScienceAlert’s full piece here! 

Image credit: (Audrey Dussutour/CNRS)