We humans need comfy beds to rest after hours of back-breaking work from home. Our pets need comfy beds, too, after they spend the whole day spreading happiness, joy, cuteness, and love. 

And what better way to show your pets you love them than to get an IKEA bed to snooze in. I'm talking about the IKEA 'DUKTIG' doll bed. The perfect size for a cat or a small dog.

The IKEA 'DUKTIG' is made of fiberboard and solid pine, and it comes complete with a pillow, mattress, and blanket.

According to the product details on IKEA's website, it's made for children ages 18 months and above. It also "encourages make-believe play".

Well, if you don't have any human children, I bet your cats (or small dogs) would appreciate it.

Check out more details and see the photos over at Mashable.

(Image Credit: IKEA Malaysia/ Mashable)

A human-like robot designed to do manual labor is now for sale at Agility. Get ready to break the bank if you want to buy one, though, as the robot costs $250,000.

Most of the robots that have been built in recent years are for research purposes. Scientists all over the world are striving to give them more and better capabilities. On their web page, the team at Agility claim that it is time for robots to start getting out of the research lab and into the real world where they can start doing useful things. They note that Digit has been engineered to do just that, and it is ready right now, for customers.

Learn more details about this robot over at TechXplore.

What are your thoughts about this one?

(Image Credit: Agility/ TechXplore)

Time flows forward the same way around the world, but the way people measure time and communicate it varies more than you might realize. When the day begins, how long an hour is, and what you call this time of day can be different depending on where you are. These timekeeping systems are only easy if you've done it all your life. -via Digg

An ATM user outside a Redwood City, California, bank noticed that there were things going on inside the closed lobby. Two young raccoons were trapped inside, apparently after climbing through the air ducts to get into the bank. Bank managers and staff from the Peninsula Humane Society & SPCA went inside and chased the critters around for ten minutes before driving them outside.

“It’s not every day an animal organisation gets called to deal with a bank break-in, but since the bank robbers were masked bandits of the wildlife kind, we were indeed the appropriate responders,” Peninsula Humane Society and SPCA communications manager, Buffy Martin Tarbox, told the ABC.

The raccoons left behind a path of destruction, but no funds were missing. Read the news report at The Guardian. -via Metafilter

(Image credit: Peninsula Humane Society & SPCA)

Losing a toy is one of the most painful experiences that you can have as a child. It causes a lot of tears to be shed, as well as a few sleepless nights. Fortunately, there are adults who know just how valuable a toy is to a child.

When staff at Lavish Dog Day Spa found this lost plush toy outside their establishment, they decided to treat it inside their spa.

A bubble bath, shampoo, a good combing, and a shiny blue bow were all part of the toy’s big day.

By Sunday morning, the pampered pup was back in its owner’s arms.

“Thank you so much for looking out for my son’s puppy,” the boy’s mother wrote on Facebook. “He was so happy to be reunited with him.”

Wholesome!

(Image Credit: Lavish Dog Day Spa/ Facebook)

The Royal Meteorological Society and Accuweather joined forces to crown the 2020 Weather Photographer of the Year. The first place winner is Rudolf Sulgan for his photograph of a snowstorm in New York City titled "Blizzard." A photograph called “Baikal Treasure” by Alexey Trofimov was the people's choice winner, decided by votes from the public. It shows hummocks of snow and ice on Lake Baikal in Siberia.  



See the top ten photographs from the main competition, the Young Photographer division, and the public's choices at the competition website.  -via Nag on the Lake

Producing antivenom for snake bites is a time-consuming, labor-intensive process that saves lives. But different antivenom must be developed and produced for each of the wildly different species of venomous snakes all over the world. One institution in Costa Rica has perfected the art of raising snakes far from their native environment, extracting venom, inoculating horses, and isolating the targeted antibodies from their blood.   

The Instituto Clodomiro Picado, or ICP, named after the father of Costa Rican herpetology, is one of the world’s leading manufacturers of snake anti­venoms, and the only one in Central America. The need for antivenoms is far more urgent than a person living in a developed nation blessed with a temperate climate might suppose. Globally, venomous snakebites kill roughly 100,000 people each year, mostly in South Asia, Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. In these regions’ poorer corners, local capacities for antivenom production are limited or nonexistent; the ICP has stepped in to help fill the gaps. Beyond meeting its own country’s needs, the institute has supplied or developed lifesaving antivenoms for victims on four continents, each treatment customized to protect against species that still pose lethal threats, from the West African carpet viper to the Papuan taipan.

Founded 50 years ago to save Costa Ricans from the dreaded terciopelo, or the fer-de-lance snake that causes a terribly painful death with one bite, the institute now serves the entire world. Read how they do it at Smithsonian.

As you walk up the stairs in this house, you’ll be greeted by a pair of ghost dogs, clothed in white and with glowing eyes. But have no fear, as they are harmless. In fact, they are friendly ghosts, who can help you find your way in this seemingly haunted house.

They still look spooky, though.

Via Loki & Friends on Facebook

Poking through the contents of old outhouses is not exactly a common career objective, but it is proving to have an important role in science. Now that we can analyze ancient species down to the microbial level, we are learning what kind of microbiome people had in the pre-industrial world. Piers Mitchell is a Cambridge University paleopathologist, which means he studies fossilized microscopic life. In old latrines.

Mitchell knows his shit. As the director of Cambridge’s Ancient Parasites Laboratory, he’s studied storied stools across Europe, Asia, and Africa, some more than 9,000 years old, and when it comes to ancient piles, Mitchell keeps his finger on the pulse. “Whenever [an archaeologist] finds a latrine or coprolites in a part of the world where no one’s done any intestinal fecal analysis, I send them an email.”

According to Mitchell, our intestinal microbiome isn’t keeping up with the rapid pace of globalization. “Things are changing incredibly quickly,” he says, “but our genetics are still pre-industrial.” He associates modern ills such as high rates of allergies, obesity, and inflammatory bowel disease with modern substances that affect the gut, from antibiotics to fast food. “Parts of us are coping, but other parts are suffering,” Mitchell says.

Read how research on the poop left behind hundreds of years ago can help us treat modern digestive troubles at Atlas Obscura.

(Image courtesty of Uldis Kalejs)

We all want to save money, and I think that’s why we’re always into promos, deals, and discounts. With that in mind, Uber Eats Japan offers a great deal to its citizens: a 35% off the cost of your food.

All you have to do is utilize the app’s omochikaeri option when ordering.

And what’s omochikaeri mean? “Pickup.” In other words, Uber Eats is offering the discount to customers who are willing to go pick up their order themselves.

It’s pretty much a complete role reversal for a company whose whole business model is “give us money and we’ll bring you food,”...

But does this mean Uber Eats is unnecessary, or the same as just ordering takeout? Not really.

As strange as the promotion may be, a discount is still a discount, and since using the self-pickup option means you’re not paying any service or delivery fee, the entire discount is extra money in your pocket compared to placing an ordinary non-Uber Eats takeout order. Essentially you use Uber Eats as an ordering app in order to get the discount (which caps at 1,000 yen [US$9.50], which would be your discount for an order of 2,857 yen or more). Uber Eats itself also points out that placing your order through its app cuts down on time spent waiting in line and for your order to be cooked, since it’ll be ready and waiting for you at the counter (or fried chicken locker, if you’re ordering from certain Tokyo KFC branches).

What are your thoughts about this one?

(Image Credit: Uber Eats/ SoraNews 24)

Impossible Foods is no longer just focused on creating alternative meat products. The company has recently announced at a press conference that they are planning on creating plant-based milk. That’s right. Artificial milk, and they will call it Impossible Milk.

According to the company, it is not designed to be just another soy milk or nut-based milk alternative. Instead, it’s designed to function and behave just like the animal-derived cow’s milk.

In a demonstration from the company’s food lab, a researcher showed samples of Impossible Milk side by side [with] other plant-based milks like almond milk and soy milk, to show that the Impossible Milk looks much more like cow milk than the others. According to her, Impossible Milk is designed to be just as creamy as regular milk, and will not curdle in hot beverages like other plant-based milks will. She demonstrated this by mixing it in a cup of hot coffee, and it did not appear to curdle. Impossible Milk can also apparently be frothed just regular milk.

[...]

Impossible Milk is still very much in the development phase, and won’t be available for consumers any time soon.

More details about this over at Engadget.

What are your thoughts about this one?

(Image Credit: Impossible Foods/ Engadget)

Thinking of a way to make wearing face masks “more pleasant and approachable”, Danish design studio Hej decided to create this set of face masks made out of food. While these face masks are not designed to protect you from infectious germs in the air, they sure do give one a more approachable look. But maybe you can wear one of these over a regular face mask.

Well, what do you think?

Via Laughing Squid

(Image Credit: Hejstudio_/ Instagram)

Losing someone, even a pet, is tough. Some people take a long time to accept their departure and move on. A woman from Cedar Falls, Iowa, lost her precious cat Mr. Tufts some time ago, leaving her in mourning. However, she decided to get a new cat that looks exactly like her previous furry companion. It’s not coincidence, because her new cat is a clone of the previous one, as Oddee details: 

ViaGen Pets is a pet cloning and genetic preservation company. They have extensive experience in cloning animals. The firm’s helped preserve the endangered Przewalski’s horse through cloning, for example.

Christman and the cat lady contacted ViaGen after Mr. Tufts had passed, asking about the possibility of cloning him. The company said that they could definitely do it, but it would cost the cat’s owner dearly.

Sounds like a deal with the devil, but no eternal souls were exchanged in this transaction. Only cold, hard cash. A total of $35,000 worth of it.

Apparently, no price was too high for our cat owner, since she coughed up the money. Christman sent the extracted genetic material over to ViaGen, and their experts got to work.

Melain Rodriguez, ViaGen’s client services manager, said they replaced the nucleus of a female cat’s egg with one of the frozen cells from Mr. Tufts. Then, they joined the egg and cell together and transferred the whole shebang to surrogate cat mother.

After a normal feline pregnancy and birth, Mr. Tufts Jr. entered the world.

Image via Oddee 

Maybe this program can help our archaeologists and historians to decipher old artifacts inscribed with a language they haven’t encountered or deciphered yet. The system’s creators, researchers at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), claim that the program can decipher a lost language without knowledge of its relation to other languages, as VentureBeat details: 

This CSAIL work, which was supported in part by the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity and spearheaded by MIT professor Regina Barzilay, a specialist in natural language processing, leverages several principles grounded in insights from historical linguistics. For instance, while a given language rarely adds or deletes a sound, certain sound substitutions are likely to occur. A word with a “p” in the parent language may change into a “b” in the descendant language, but changing to a “k” is less likely due to the significant pronunciation gap.

By incorporating these and other linguistic constraints, Barzilay and Luo developed a decipherment algorithm that can handle the vast space of transformations and the scarcity of a signal in the input. The algorithm learns to embed language sounds into a multidimensional space where differences in pronunciation are reflected in the distance between corresponding vectors. This design enables the system to capture patterns of language change and express them as computational constraints. The resulting model can segment words in an ancient language and map them to counterparts in a related language.

With the new system, the relationship between languages is inferred by the algorithm; the algorithm can assess the proximity between two languages. Moreover, when tested on known languages, it can accurately identify language families.

Image via VentureBeat