Fingerprints and facial features are two of the most popular methods in confirming a person’s identity. But perhaps in the near future, this method — which is scanning finger veins — might soon be used for biometric authentication. This might also be integrated in smartphones soon.

“The 3D finger vein biometric authentication method we developed enables levels of specificity and anti-spoofing that were not possible before,” says Jun Xia, from University at Buffalo in the US, lead author of a paper in the journal Applied Optics.

“Since no two people have exactly the same 3D vein pattern, faking a vein biometric authentication would require creating an exact 3D replica of a person’s finger veins, which is basically not possible.”

Details about this study are at Cosmos Magazine.

(Image Credit: Jun Xia/ University at Buffalo/ Cosmos)

When it comes to a typical Japanese anime, you’ll usually encounter at least two types of characters: a “tsundere” and a “yandere”. The former is the character who is cold at the start but warms up as the series progresses. The latter, on the other hand, expresses intense love through insane, or even violent, means.

Just as there are real-life tsundere, there are real-life yandere, too, and this story is an example of the real-life yandere.

Here’s the translation of the accompanying note:

“Long time no see, ex-boyfriend!

Do you know who this is?

I slipped into you and your girlfriend’s little love nest.

Is she cooking good food for you?

It’s been a while since I’ve made a homemade meal for you, so I did my best to whip some up!

I’ll slip in every now and then from here on, so eat up *3”

Ah yes, the old “break into your ex-lover’s house and leave them a meal that you made on the table along with a cryptic note” method of communication. Something that perfectly normal human beings do every single day!

…right?

Some Japanese netizens commented that this is a terrifying story. Others commented that it’s better than having convenience store food every day.

As far as @hanahanakaidou’s response to the situation, this is what he had to say when someone asked if he’d contacted the police:

“For now, I’ve just decided to eat the meals.”

(Image Credit: @hanahanakaidou/ Twitter)

The "Missed Connections" section of Craigslist has been a source of humor and fantasy for years, and maybe some happy endings that we'll never know about. One such ad inspired Patrick Dias to fill in some of the blanks and make an animated short called Missed Connections: "Was that your limb? - w4m".

With narration sourced from a real Craigslist Missed connections ad, and visually wrapped with a fictional narrative—this is a story of a space captain late for his own launch, and the woman who was at the right place but at the wrong time.

I only wish we could get a sequel with a real-life resolution. -via Laughing Squid

Using some cars, plastic sheeting, as well as a large tarpaulin, local residents of the Chilean town of Puerto Cisnes, along with the Police and the Chilean Navy officials, successfully guided a lost elephant seal back to the sea.

The huge animal managed to lumber down ten blocks of a residential area of Puerto Cisnes, in the country's southern Patagonian region, before returning to its natural habitat with a little bit of help from the locals.

Other Good Samaritans threw buckets of water over the confused animal to keep it hydrated.

[...]

“It was a great effort. The seal is safe now and out of danger from humans and dogs that could do it damage.”

More details about this amazing story over at DailyMail.

(Image Credit: Manuel Novoa/ DailyMail)

Worried about how people with dementia were coping during the lockdown, three teenagers developed an app that uses music to comfort its users. The Nigerian-Irish trio (Rachael, 16, Margaret, 17, and Joy, 17) decided to launch the application, called Memory Haven, when their mentor, Evelyn Nomayo, lost her mother to dementia. The app beat 1,500 entries from across 62 countries at Technovation, a prestigious technology competition, as Inews details: 

The app uses facial recognition. It will detect the person’s mood by reading their facial expression and tailor the music it plays accordingly.

It has five other main features as well as the music which include a health check, a photo wallet, reminder alerts, a memory game feature and a reach-out feature that can be used to contact friends, families, caregivers, doctors or emergency services.

They want as many people as possible to benefit from their app.

“The main aim for all of us was to try and help as many families, individuals and communities because we know firsthand how tough it is knowing somebody living with dementia,” they explain. “We hope the app can go global one day and reach millions of people who are affected by dementia and help make their lives somewhat easier.”

Image via Inews 

Yandy is notorious for offering sexy Halloween costumes, and every year, in addition to the classic horror and pop culture characters, they come up with the most ridiculous versions of whatever is in the news. This year is no exception. For 2020, behold, the sexy mail-in ballot costume! But that isn't the only new one this year. See the sexy hand sanitizer costume, the sexy murder hornet costume, the sexy postal babe costume, and the sexy Tiger King costume (available for both men and women) at Geeks Are Sexy.

A Beholder is a monstrous creature in the game Dungeons & Dragons. Natalie Sideserf of Sideserf Cake Studio in Austin, Texas (previously), made this cake in the image of a Beholder. While it does not look quite as malevolent as its reputation implies, it is apparently much sweeter on the inside. You can see a detailed video on how she made this Beholder cake at Laughing Squid.

The biggest shark ever was Otodus megalodon, now extinct, which could grow up to 50 feet long. And there may as well not even be a second place, as that's twice as big as any other shark. How did this shark get so big, and what makes it so different? For one thing, O. megalodon reproduced with eggs like other fish, but it does not lay eggs. Rather, the eggs hatch inside the mother, who gives birth to them later on. That allowed for larger baby sharks, but wasn't the best environment for some of them.  

A new study, published today in Historical Biology by DePaul University paleontologist Kenshu Shimada and colleagues, suggests that cannibalism in utero may have helped set up the rise of the largest meat-eating shark of all time. The researchers suggest that a biological connection existed between having large, hungry babies, a metabolism that ran warm and increases in size—with the appetites of baby sharks driving their mothers to eat more and get bigger, which led the babies to get bigger themselves.

It's not that unborn sharks developed a taste for meat by eating eggs and sibling in utero, at least not that alone. Read about the evolutionary forces that could have driven megalodon to such great size at Smithsonian.

(Image credit: Smithsonian Institution)

September 30. Haverhill, Massachusetts. A woman who temporarily cares for animals in need of homes was in the process of transporting an emu named Kermit to a farm in Maine. Suddenly, a gust of wind opened the gate where Kermit was being held, and the emu took its chance and ran away.

Haverhill police spokesman Capt. Stephen Doherty said a call came in at 9:16 a.m. for an "emu running toward Walnut Square (School)."

The bird later took strides on its long legs over to nearby 17th Avenue, where it was met by police and animal control officers, eyewitness Brianna Smith said.

Fortunately, the authorities were able to capture Kermit safely, thanks to their secret weapon: a pear.

The bird calmed down after being given a pear from a nearby pear tree and was carried to safety.

Now that’s what I call negotiation.

Well, what do you think?

(Image Credit: Eagle Tribune)

Sure, you already follow him on Instagram and listen to his podcast. But now you can watch live, streaming video thanks to a camera invented by Vikram Iyer, a doctoral student at the University of Washington.

It's a remarkable technical achievement. Not only is the image sensor tiny, but it's mounted on a swinging arm that matches the direction of the insect's head, thus presenting a more realistic depiction of a bug's view of the world.

To save on battery life, the camera only turns on when an accelerometer is triggered and thus remains dormant when the beetle doesn't move. As a result, the camera can capture video for up to six hours.

How is this useful? Iyer described his invention as more useful for robotics than entomology. King 5 News quotes him:

“If you need to build a robot that can fit into small spaces, you need a way to navigate around that environment,” said Iyer. “And vision is one of the major ways people solve these problems.”

At the core, he said it’s essentially a tiny computing platform ready to be modified for different uses. 

-via Dave Barry | Image: Science magazine

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Pogo Stick Crutches™️ A broken leg doesn’t need to be boring. With our newest invention get a little bit of air time on your downtime. These crutches have integrated high powered springs to put a little pep in your broken step. You’ll bounce back in no time. (🚨 watch how I broke my leg on my YouTube channel - link in bio) #unnecessaryinventions

A post shared by Unnecessary Inventions (@unnecessaryinventions) on Oct 6, 2020 at 2:36pm PDT

Matt Benedetto, an inventor in Vermont, specializes in gadgets with little to no practical value. But every now and then, he makes something actually useful. These spring-loaded crutches, for example, help him get around while his broken foot heals. He'll surely bounce back soon now that he's healing.

Maci Curran is 17 years old, and she is 6' 10" tall. She will be included in the next edition of the Guinness Book of World Records for having the longest legs of any woman, and the longest legs of any teenager.

Her left leg measures 135.267 cm (53.255 in), while her right leg measures 134.3 cm (52.874 in).

Maci’s family, from Cedar Park, Texas, are relatively tall but none of her other siblings or parents quite match her height.  

Standing at 6 ft 10 in tall, her legs actually make up 60% of her total height! She wanted to go after this record title to inspire tall people everywhere to embrace their height.    

In the picture above, she is standing with her mother, the only one in the family who isn't tall. She has always towered over her classmates, which gives her an advantage on her high school volleyball team. Read about Curran and see a video at the Guinness World Records site. -via Boing Boing

Almost all citrus fruits came from three Asian plants: the mandarin, the pomelo, and the citron. The oranges, limes, and lemons we have are products of careful crossbreeding between these base fruits and their hybrids. Then there's the grapefruit. It developed from the various citrus fruits imported to the West Indies, in some haphazard manner that history hasn't properly recorded. Even the origins of the word grapefruit is shrouded in mystery, although there are several theories of how the grapefruit was named.

This is largely guesswork, almost all of it, because citrus is a delightfully chaotic category of fruit. It hybridizes so easily that there are undoubtedly thousands, maybe more, separate varieties of citrus in the wild and in cultivation. Some of these, like the grapefruit, clementine, or Meyer lemon, catch on and become popular. But trying to figure out exactly where they came from, especially if they weren’t created recently in a fruit-breeding lab, is incredibly difficult.

A Frenchman named Odet Philippe is generally credited with bringing the grapefruit to the American mainland, in the 1820s. He was the first permanent European settler in Pinellas County, Florida, where modern-day Tampa lies. (It took him several attempts; neither the swamp ecology nor the Native people particularly wanted him there.) Grapefruit was Philippe’s favorite citrus fruit, and he planted huge plantations of it, and gave grafting components to his neighbors so they could grow the fruit themselves. (It is thought that Phillippe was Black, but he also purchased and owned enslaved people.) In 1892, a Mainer named Kimball Chase Atwood, having achieved success in the New York City insurance world, moved to the 265 acres of forest just south of Tampa Bay he’d purchased. Atwood burned the whole thing to the ground and started planting stuff, and soon he dedicated the land to his favorite crop: the grapefruit. The dude planted 16,000 grapefruit trees.

Grapefruit, though, is wild, and wants to remain wild.

What's weirder than the history of grapefruit is the nature of the fruit itself, due to its strange chemistry. Read how grapefruit can be uniquely dangerous at Atlas Obscura.

(Image credit: Stella Murphy)

Hey, it’s an eco-friendly option! The demand for Indonesian coffin maker Natianingsih‘s rattan coffin increased by 50 percent in early 2020. Some Europeans are choosing to bury their loved ones with rattan coffins, a more environmentally-friendly casket than the traditional wooden caskets. Watch South China Morning Post’s full piece on the rise of popularity of these eco-friendly caskets. 

The Supreme Court of Ireland has ruled that the bread baked and sold at Subway cannot be legally defined as bread. The reason? It has too much sugar.

The ruling came in a tax dispute brought by Bookfinders Ltd., an Irish Subway franchisee, which argued that some of its takeaway products - including teas, coffees and heated sandwiches - were not liable for value-added tax.

A panel of judges rejected the appeal Tuesday, ruling that the bread sold by Subway contains too much sugar to be categorized as a “staple food,” which is not taxed.

“There is no dispute that the bread supplied by Subway in its heated sandwiches has a sugar content of 10% of the weight of the flour included in the dough, and thus exceeds the 2% specified,” the judgement read.

The judgment has stated that the law makes a distinction between “bread as a staple food” and “fancy baked goods.”

Subway disagreed with the characterization in a statement.

“Subway’s bread is, of course, bread,” the company said in an email. “We have been baking fresh bread in our restaurants for more than three decades and our guests return each day for sandwiches made on bread that smells as good as it tastes.”

What are your thoughts about this one?

(Image Credit: Cxshawx/ Wikimedia Commons)