Llamas are known for very soft wool, but they can offer much more than that. They have amazing antibodies that, according to a 2018 study made by scientists from the United States, could be key towards making a universal flu vaccine. But that’s not all that their antibodies can offer.

Now, new research published in the journal Nature Methods has created a synthetic antibody inspired by llamas to stop the human body from destroying imperfect, but still functional proteins. The novel technology could be used to treat several conditions including cystic fibrosis, cancer and epilepsy.

Many genetic diseases result in mutated proteins being churned out by our cells, and while some of these are still able to carry out their function our bodies will ultimately destroy them. The imperfect proteins are marked by our cell’s quality control system with a peptide called ubiquitin. While this is a necessary cell function, preventing these proteins from being destroyed can sometimes be beneficial as while they are imperfect some are still capable of doing their job. Deubiquitinase enzymes (DUBs) can be employed to remove the “for destruction” tags but allowing them to remove tags from all imperfect proteins would be harmful and so such therapies need to be targeted.

Here is where our magical llama antibodies come into play, as study authors Henry Colecraft and his student, Scott Kanner, identified a means of targeting DUBs using nanobodies. Nanobodies are tiny antibodies which are produced by llamas, camels and alpacas, and they bind with their targets with uniquely reliable specificity. They are used in place of antibodies because antibodies’ function changes when acting inside cells, unlike nanobodies.

Learn more about this study over at IFL Science.

Cool! 

(Image Credit: Pezibear/ Pixabay)

Man-made stuff is now likely to be officially heavier than the mass of the natural world. A new research published in Nature, which has detailed the “crossover point” between man-made mass and living biomass, seems to suggest this. Considering the fact that we today are largely dependent on manufactured materials, we know that it is inevitable that we would soon outweigh nature. Still, it is still surprising at how it happened so soon.

The weight of roads, buildings and other constructed or manufactured materials is doubling roughly every 20 years, and authors of the research said it currently weighed 1.1 teratonnes (1.1 trillion tonnes).

As mankind has ramped up its insatiable consumption of natural resources, the weight of living biomass—trees, plants and animals—has halved since the agricultural revolution to stand at just 1 teratonne currently, the study found.

Estimating changes in global biomass and manmade mass since 1990, the research showed that the mass of human-produced objects stood at just three percent of the weight of biomass at the start of the 20th century.

But since the post-World War II global production boom, manufacturing has surged to the extent that humans now produce the equivalent of the weight of every person on Earth every week on average.

Learn more about this over at PHYS.org.

What are your thoughts about this one?

(Image Credit: Ribastank/ Pixabay)

Two friends were cutting a path in the woods to a hunting stand near Mallie, Kentucky. When they cut down one particular tree, the cut in the trunk poured out water for three to four minutes. And it's not just dripping water out; there's a lot of pressure behind that flow.

-via Born in Space

Here it is: the beloved bloopers from Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas, now with subtitles. 🎄

Enjoy the comedic genius of Frank Oz and Jerry Nelson. ❤️ pic.twitter.com/pXrmjdLWxK

— ❄️ Muppet History 🎄 (@HistoryMuppet) December 10, 2020

It's March 30, 1977. Jim Henson and his colleagues at what would eventually become the Creature Shop are filming Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas. The script calls for a drum to roll past Emmet and Ma Otter. It's not rolling correctly, though. But, in take after take, muppeteers Jerry Nelson and Frank Oz, stay in character.

-via Super Punch

“How rare is it?” you ask? It’s a 1 in 500,000 chance. Or if you want it in percentage, it’s 0.00002% chance of getting, and that’s why it’s understandable that Twitch streamer AjentVee freaked out when she found the Pokemon she’s been tracking down for the past month. The Pokemon gods have blessed her.

AjentVee has spent the last month or so tracking down a “shiny” Sinistea in Pokémon Sword and Shield as part of her overall goal to catch an entire Pokédex’s worth of these elusive, alternatively colored pocket monsters. But that’s not all: She also wanted her Sinistea to be “authentic,” which means that it’s one of the select few members of its species with a rare mark on the bottom of its teacup.

This means that every time AjentVee encountered a Sinistea, there was a one in 500,000 chance it would be both “shiny” and “authentic.” By her own estimation, it only took 4,000 attempts, so I’d say she got off lucky! Not only that, but the Sinistea that ended up being authentic was the first shiny she encountered that day, and at just 11 minutes into her stream at that.

Epic!

(Image Credit: AjentVee/ Kotaku)

When donkeys and horses mate, they produce beings called mules — strong four-legged creatures that ate little. Seeing that these mules would be a great asset for young America’s farms, George Washington longed to have donkeys and have them mate with the horses.

But Washington's desire to breed mules hit a stumbling block. America didn't have any good male donkeys (or "jacks," as he called them). The best jacks were in Spain, who wouldn't export them. Washington spent years negotiating with diplomats to change this, and finally, the king agreed [to] ship a couple to him.

This is just one of the anecdotes that Cracked.com has documented at their site. Check out the other anecdotes, which star Henry VIII, Abraham Lincoln, Peter the Great, and Teddy Roosevelt, over at the site.

(Image Credit: Marzena7/ Pixabay)

It seems that the robot vacuum cleaners that you have at your home not only can pick up the dust and dirt in your home. It can also pick up your private conversations. Computer scientists from NUS have demonstrated this capability through their work which was presented last month at the Association for Computing Machinery's Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems (SenSys 2020).

The novel method, called LidarPhone, repurposes the Lidar sensor that a robot vacuum cleaner normally uses for navigating around a home into a laser-based microphone to eavesdrop on private conversations.

[...]

The core of the LidarPhone attack method is the Lidar sensor, a device which fires out an invisible scanning laser, and creates a map of its surroundings. By reflecting lasers off common objects such as a dustbin or a takeaway bag located near a person's computer speaker or television soundbar, the attacker could obtain information about the original sound that made the objects' surfaces vibrate. Using applied signal processing and deep learning algorithms, speech could be recovered from the audio data, and sensitive information could potentially be obtained.

Learn more about this over at TechXplore.

Scary.

(Image Credit: National University of Singapore/ TechXplore)

Computerized axial tomography scan, better known as CAT scan, is an imaging technique which combines data from several X-ray scans taken from different angles in order to produce a detailed image of structures inside the body. And then there’s the cat scan, where you put a cat on a scanner and, well, scan it. We do the former for medical purposes, and the latter to alleviate boredom, and possibly for research purposes.

If you have a scanner and a cat at home, and if you have nothing worthwhile to do, then try scanning your cat, just like these people did. Check out the pictures of these cat scans over at Sad and Useless.

(Image Credit: Sad and Useless)

Because why not? Ugly sweaters are still sweaters that will keep you warm this winter season. And if I have to choose between a generic sweater and an ugly sweater, I’ll choose the latter for the sake of nostalgia. And I know I’m not alone when I’m saying this; I know you want an ugly sweater by Microsoft, too.

Available in MS Paint, Windows 95, and Windows XP varieties, the sweaters are pre-orderable in sizes small – XXXL for $70, with a portion of each sale being donated to Girls Who Code, a non-profit dedicated to closing the gender gap in tech. Unfortunately, the sweaters won’t ship until January 29th, 2021...

Well, what do you think?

(Image Credit: Technabob)

Do you want to look sharp? McDonald's of Sweden knows that means that you're heading to the McDonald's branded barbershop in Stockholm. There, you can get the "Golden M" haircut.

Which looks like this. Fox News quotes a McDonald's representative:

“When we realized that people were wearing our Golden Arches, we had to act," said Staffan Ekstam, the marketing director at McDonald’s Sweden. "We started the M Barber Shop not only to guard our Golden M, but also to claim it once and for all. The salon is a celebration dedicated to our beloved ambassadors — a helping hand to guide them on how to keep their M’s in perfect trim, even when we can’t move around as freely as we usually can."

I look forward to a response by the hairstylists at Whataburger.

-via Dave Barry | Photos: McDonald's

A video of a woman getting revenge on another passenger for blocking her passenger seat television went viral on the Internet. Posted on TikTok, the video features a woman’s long blonde hair covering the screen on the back of her seat. The revenge involves chewing gum,  a pair of nail clippers, and a lollipop: 

Since it was posted two weeks ago, the video -- which was captioned “Whose side are you on?!” -- has been viewed more than 106.2 million times. 

Many viewers said they sided with the vengeful passenger, noting how the woman with her hair over the television kept flipping it back.

“I fully support their actions,” one person said. 

“They totally deserved that,” someone else said.

However, other viewers noted that the video was so absurd that it's unlikely to be real. 

“That HAS to be a wig and this is staged,” one commenter wrote. 

Another person added: “Come on that’s a wig!!! Totally staged!!! You think after she flipped it she didn’t feel all that stuff in her hair!”

Several other viewers also said the woman would have noticed the gum and lollipop in her hair. 

Do you think that the video was staged? 

Image screenshot via Fox News 

It’s that time of the year again when you’ll have to think about what gifts you should give to your friends. Fortunately, there are some articles out there on the Internet, such as this one, which might give you great ideas of what to give this season. Engadget suggests 5 DIY kits that make excellent gifts, for both kids and adults who love DIY stuff. Check out the site for more details.

(Image Credit: StackCommerce/ Engadget)

The Zodiac Killer, who murdered at least five people in 1968 and 1969 and claims to have killed many more, sent taunting letters to California newspapers. One of the messages consisted of a series of letters and symbols in a code that no one could decipher. Many tried, and we even posted about a guy who claimed to have solved it in 2011. Now a team of codebreakers operating in three different countries say they have finally deciphered the letter known as cipher Z340. 

I HOPE YOU ARE HAVING LOTS OF FUN IN TRYING TO CATCH ME
THAT WASNT ME ON THE TV SHOW
WHICH BRINGS UP A POINT ABOUT ME
I AM NOT AFRAID OF THE GAS CHAMBER
BECAUSE IT WILL SEND ME TO PARADICE ALL THE SOONER
BECAUSE I NOW HAVE ENOUGH SLAVES TO WORK FOR ME
WHERE EVERYONE ELSE HAS NOTHING WHEN THEY REACH PARADICE
SO THEY ARE AFRAID OF DEATH
I AM NOT AFRAID BECAUSE I KNOW THAT MY NEW LIFE IS
LIFE WILL BE AN EASY ONE IN PARADICE DEATH

The FBI has accepted their decryption. The video above explains how they did it. You can read more at the San Francisco Chronicle, or if that's blocked by a paywall, at Zodiac Killer Facts. -via Metafilter

This is the vegan dog leash made by Project Blu, a pet accessory business based in Wales. This leash, unlike other leash, is made from apple skins with an organic polymer. But don’t think that this dog leash is extremely weak just because it’s made of fruit, as this leash is stronger than the ones made of leather. Project Blu has other environment-friendly products aside from the leash, such as collars, harnesses, and even poop-bag handlers.

Through their Kickstarter campaign, they are offering, for a limited time, special early-bird prices available now…

[...]

And, with every sale made, the company plants a tree in partnership with Eden Reforestation Projects to help combat deforestation.

On a mission to remove pollution from the pet industry, Project Blu wants to revolutionize the pet product market offering products that are sustainable, affordable, and built to last.

Cool!

(Image Credit: Project Blu/ Good News Network)

pic.twitter.com/e3N00xCr5i

— Patty Jenkins (@PattyJenks) December 10, 2020

Disney announced a few details about the next Star Wars movie during a livestream Thursday. The movie is already titled Star Wars: Rogue Squadron. It will be directed by Patty Jenkins, who gave us the 2017 movie Wonder Woman. Jenkins posted the above video about the same time as the announcement.

Rogue Squadron is a known entity in Star Wars lore, referred to in comic books and video games, but the plot of the upcoming film is not yet known. It has been said that the story will take place after the events of The Rise of Skywalker, which gives it a blank slate for what happened a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. Star Wars: Rogue Squadron is scheduled to premiere in 2023. -via Boing Boing