Different types of sushi are beautifully lined up on the table. At first glance, they look appetizing, but on a closer look, you’ll notice that something’s not right with them. That’s because they’re not real food. These are made of stone.

The artist, who goes by the name Hama, is a graduating senior from art school who created this series of hand-polished sushi stones during the pandemic-induced lockdown and subsequent remote learning. It may be heard to believe, but all the rich colors you see are from natural stones – no paints or artificial coloring of any kind was used.

Close observers will notice that among the sushi are body parts like ears, lips, nose and a finger. The artist says that the series – both the fish but also the body parts – were inspired by his part-time work in the seafood industry where he saw so much life being ended and then thrown out without even being eaten. Creating body parts as pieces of sushi was the artist’s way of reminding us that much of the food we eat was once alive, and that we all need to do our part to combat food waste.

Hama’s work is part of the Joint Graduation Exhibition of 5 Art Universities in Tokyo.

Cool!

(Image Credit: Hama/ Spoon & Tamago)

A ‘long, cylindrical object’ was spotted by an American Airlines flight crew over New Mexico during their flight from Cincinnati to Phoenix. The crew saw the unidentified flying object, which almost looked like a cruise missile as it zipped over their airplane. The FBI issued a statement after TMZ reached out to the organization  concerning the incident: 

When TMZ reached out to the FBI, spokesperson Frank Fisher said the Bureau is “aware of the reported incident.” He continued: “While our policy is to neither confirm nor deny investigations, the FBI works continuously with our federal, state, local, and tribal partners to share intelligence and protect the public.”

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) also released a short statement confirming the encounter:

A pilot reported seeing an object over New Mexico shortly after noon local time on Sunday, Feb. 21, 2021. FAA air traffic controllers did not see any object in the area on their radarscopes.

Image via TMZ 

Karagöz, or shadow puppetry, is a Turkish art form going back hundreds of years. The plays performed this way center around two main characters, Karagöz and Hacivat, who worked together to build a mosque, despite coming from different social classes. They were both charming and witty, and their shenanigans led to their execution, yet they live on in shadow plays. These characters lend themselves to both drama and comedy.

The concept of shadow theater came to Turkey during the 16th century, when the Ottomans conquered the sultanate of Egypt. Ottoman sultan Selim I defeated the Mamluk dynasty and attached Egypt to his empire, capturing Tuman bay II, the vanquished sultan, and hanging him in 1517. To win the victor’s favor, a Mamluk puppeteer portrayed the hanging during a shadow theater performance. Selim the Grim, as he was also known, was so pleased by the grisly show that he brought the puppeteer to his court. Soon after, shadow theater became popular throughout the Ottoman Empire, with performances based on social events, daily life, politics, and romance.

But the practice of Karagöz is waning. Master puppeteer Cengiz Özek is one of the few artists working full time to keep the tradition alive. Learn about his work at Atlas Obscura.

Have you ever heard of a bongo? According to Wikipedia, the bongo is the third-largest antelope in the world, and comes in two species: the western bongo is a near-threatened species, and the eastern bongo has a native habitat that consists of only a few mountains in Kenya. It is critically endangered, and there are more in zoos than in the wild. The Naples Zoo welcomed the birth of a new eastern bongo in January. The female calf's name is Amali, which means "hope" in Swahili. Read about bongos and the breeding program trying to save them from extinction at ZooBorns.

We learned about the historical practice of letterlocking some years ago. Then we learned about a trove of 17th-century undelivered mail discovered in the estate of postmasters Simon de Brienne and Marie Germain. Some of the mail was eventually opened and read, and some remained letterlocked to preserve its historical significance. Now a team of scientists and engineers from MIT have figured out how to read those letters without unfolding them!

“We’re X-raying history,” says team member David Mills, X-ray microtomography facilities manager at Queen Mary University of London. Mills, together with Graham Davis, professor of 3D X-ray imaging at Queen Mary, used machines specially designed for use in dentistry to scan unopened “locked” letters from the 17th century. This resulted in high-resolution volumetric scans, produced by high-contrast time delay integration X-ray microtomography.

“Who would have thought that a scanner designed to look at teeth would take us so far?” says Davis.

The technology had to be adapted to the project in order to separate the different layers of handwriting on paper. On the one hand, this could be a real breakthrough for deciphering writing on fragile ancient materials such as the Dead Sea Scrolls. On the other hand, it could enable nefarious organizations to read our contemporary correspondence. Read about the project at MIT News.  -via Metafilter

(Image credit: MIT Libraries)

When G Cody QJ Goldberg brought his child Harper to the playground, her little walker got stuck in the wood chips that surround typical playgrounds, and so he and his wife started what would eventually be called "Harper's Playground."

This playground is "radically inclusive through three levels of inviting":

1. Physically inviting - that is, if you use wheels, you can get everywhere
2. Socially inviting with circular seating areas, communal gathering spaces, and the use of nature
3. Emotionally inviting that uses art, good design lines, music.

Watch the story of this family that influenced a whole community towards building inclusive playgrounds.

Video by Catalysts on Facebook

It’s like the moving images in Harry Potter. Deep Nostalgia is an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered service that animates still photos. Offered by genealogy company MyHeritage, the software uses AI licensed from D-ID to create the effect that a still photo is moving. The application has taken over Twitter, with people using the service to create the creepiest fake videos.’ But how does Deep Nostalgia work  their magic? The Verge has the details: 

The program uses pre-recorded driver videos of facial movements and applies the one that works best for the still photo in question. Its intended purpose is to allow you to upload photos of deceased loved ones and see them in “action,” which seems like a lovely idea.

Users have to sign up for a free account on MyHeritage and then upload a photo. From there the process is automated; the site enhances the image before animating it and creating a gif. The site’s FAQ says it does not provide the photos to any third parties, and on its main page a message reads “photos uploaded without completing signup are automatically deleted to protect your privacy.”

Image via The Verge 

If there was a word that could completely describe the human gut, that word would be diverse. This region in the human body is home to thousands of viruses called bacteriophages, as well as trillions of bacteria. A recent research published about two weeks ago in the journal Cell identified more than 140,000 viral species living in the human gut, most of them never seen before. The research analyzed over 28,000 gut microbiome samples acquired in various places in the world, mainly from healthy individuals.

The number and diversity of the viruses the researchers found was surprisingly high, and the data opens up new research avenues for understanding how viruses living in the gut affect human health.

Dr Alexandre Almeida, Postdoctoral Fellow at EMBL-EBI and the Wellcome Sanger Institute, said: "It's important to remember that not all viruses are harmful, but represent an integral component of the gut ecosystem. For one thing, most of the viruses we found have DNA as their genetic material, which is different from the pathogens most people know, such as SARS-CoV-2 or Zika, which are RNA viruses. Secondly, these samples came mainly from healthy individuals who didn't share any specific diseases. It's fascinating to see how many unknown species live in our gut, and to try and unravel the link between them and human health."

Learn more about this research over at Science Daily.

Cool!

(Image Credit: Pixabay)

Anything could be possible, huh? Scientists have discovered that communication is possible with people who are lucid dreaming. Lucid dreaming is a state where the person is aware that they are actually dreaming. Ph.D student Karen Konkoly and her colleagues have published a study in Current Biology that asked lucid dreamers questions to try two-way communication: 

They were studying rapid-eye-movement sleep, which is the stage of sleep where people dream most vividly. In REM sleep, "every muscle in your body is completely paralyzed, except you can twitch and you can move your eyes," Konkoly tells Scott Simon on Weekend Edition. "So if you become lucid in a dream and you want to communicate, then when people are dreaming, they just look left-right, left-right, really dramatically. And then we know that they're communicating out."

Lucid dreaming is not common. So to study it, researchers recruited people who had experience with it and also trained people to try to make lucid dreaming more likely.

Before the participants went to sleep, they were also trained on how to communicate their answers. Special sensors measured people's eye movements or experts would judge their facial movements.

For example, a typical question would be to ask what is 8 minus 6. A 19-year-old American man was able to respond by moving his eyes left-right, left-right — two times — to signal "2." Researchers asked the question again, and he moved his eyes the same way two times again.

Out of the 158 trials among 36 participants, about 18% of the time, they were able to give correct answers. In another 18%, it wasn't clear whether participants were responding or not. They were wrong 3% of the time. Most often, 61%, participants didn't respond at all.

Image via NPR 

Now this is a very expensive purchase. Honestly, when it comes to puzzles, I’m satisfied with the basic jigsaw puzzles we can find in stores, or the puzzle games that are freely available on the Internet. Chris Ramsay takes puzzle solving a step further by getting an expensive and elaborate puzzle worth more than my tuition for a semester! The puzzle was created by Labsterium, and Ramsay shares in the comments section of the video that it took him more than four hours to solve it. 

Yikes, we’re going full The Matrix now! Well, I’d be really scared if it was true that we’re living a simulation as robots use us for batteries. Physicist Hong Qin from the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) has created a computer algorithm to predict the orbits of planets in the solar system. From the data of Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Ceres, and Jupiter orbits, the algorithm can predict other planetary orbits. But what does that have to do with proving that our reality is a simulation? Big Think details on Qin’s work: 

Qin's work takes the approach of using "discrete field theory," which he thinks is particularly well suited for machine learning, while somewhat difficult for "a current human" to understand. He explained that "a discrete field theory can be viewed as an algorithmic framework with adjustable parameters that can be trained using observational data." He added that "once trained, the discrete field theory becomes an algorithm of nature that computers can run to predict new observations."

According to Qin, discrete field theories go against the most popular method of studying physics today, which looks at spacetime as continuous. This approach was started with Isaac Newton, who invented three approaches to describing continuous spacetime, including Newton's law of motion, Newton's law of gravitation, and calculus.

Qin believes there are serious issues in modern research that stem from the laws of physics in continuous spacetime being expressed through differential equations and continuous field theories. If laws of physics were based on discrete spacetime, as Qin proposes, "many of the difficulties can be overcome."

If the world works according to discrete field theory, it would look like something out "The Matrix," made of pixels and data points.

Image via Big Think 

How can a tree with no leaves look so special? Place it in Iceland, wait for the northern lights, and voila! You now have a tree that looks like it came out of a fantasy film.

Alyn Wallace, who photographed this picture, was mesmerized when he saw this visual coincidence. And who wouldn’t be?

Fortunately, before the aurora morphed into a different overall shape, he came to his senses and capture the awe-inspiring momentary coincidence.

Utterly amazing.

(Image Credit: Alyn Wallace/ NASA)

One of the benefits of being a domesticated sheep is having your wool shorn annually. This annual shearing helps the sheep stay healthy, as having overgrown wool makes it prone to injury and infections. For domesticated sheep that no longer have owners, their wool just keeps on growing unchecked, because there is no one to shear it for them. Such is the case for Baarack.

He hadn't been shorn in years, and his fleece had grown into a dense, gargantuan mass by the time he was captured and brought to Edgar's Mission Farm Sanctuary for rescued farm animals in Lancefield, Victoria, a representative of the nonprofit told Live Science in an email.

When Baarack’s wool was finally shorn, it was said that his wool weighed about as much as a ten-year-old child.

At one point in the past, Baarack had an owner, as he had been castrated and mulesed — a practice that removes skin from around a sheep's tail, creating smooth scar tissue that deters blowflies, according to Australia's Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA). His ears also showed signs of tagging, though the tags were long gone, possibly torn out by the weight of his overgrown coat, according to Edgar's Mission.

Photos of Baarack before his haircut show the sheep's muzzle poking out of an enormous and very crusty wool cocoon. When the sheep was standing, only his hooves and a small section of his lower legs were visible; when he lay down, his legs disappeared entirely.

The load of wool around his head was so heavy that it partly hid his face, and the fleece's weight pulled on his lower eyelids, exposing his eyes to grit and dust. He had a painful ulcer in one eye from a stuck grass seed, according to the mission representative.

Now he’s free of that woolly burden.

(Image Credit: Edgar’s Mission/ Live Science)

The WWE wrestling superstar Triple H has challenged Elon Musk to a fight, and he wants that fight to be not in any wrestling arena here on Earth; Triple H wants his fight with Elon to be on Mars.

“Elon Musk, if you’ve got the guts, if you have what it takes to do this,” the wrestler said, “then you and I will talk about what I really want to talk about, which is taking one of your rockets, launching it from Florida, going up into space, heading to Mars with a team from the Performance Center, where we then put on the largest spectacle the Universe has ever seen – WrestleMania Mars.”

Of course, the pro wrestler said this in a humorous way, but if it does happen, it would be a fight worth watching.

(Image Credit: SpaceX/ Wikimedia Commons)

One of the many fun moments from tonight's show - @TripleH cutting a promo on @elonmusk pic.twitter.com/PqIbkfSu4x

— The Good Time Show (@GoodTimeShowCH) February 26, 2021

The advancement of technology paved the way for the invention of the smart TV, television with an integrated computer and operating system. This TV became very popular over the years, and it made basic or dumb TVs obsolete. There’s just one problem with smart TVs, however. The computers inside them don’t last as long as their displays do.

When your smart TV is a few years old, you might still have a perfectly good display panel, but you'll be forced to interact with it through a slow, old, possibly abandoned integrated computer. Companies should sell dumb TVs without any of this crap permanently integrated into them, but if they refuse, letting consumers turn off the software is the next best thing.

Google has addressed this integrated computer issue by introducing the “basic TV” mode into their TVs.

A report from 9to5Google details an upcoming "Basic TV" mode that will be built into Google TV, which turns off just about all the smart TV features. Right now, Google TV is only available in the new Chromecast, but Google TV will be built into upcoming TVs from Sony and TCL. Basic mode means we'll get smart TVs with a "dumb TV" mode.

The photo above shows how the mode looks a lot simpler compared to the normal Google interface. Learn more details about it over at Ars Technica. 

(Image Credit: 9to5Google/ Ars Technica)