In 2016, Elon Musk founded a company named Neuralink. This company was dedicated to developing implantable brain-machine interfaces, or BMIs.

Musk once again directs the people’s attention towards his company, as he showed the progress of the Neuralink device, called the “Link”.

The goal [of BMIs] may be ambitious — and definitely subject to a lot of ethical and medical debate — but the technology that Musk actually demonstrated was much less so. Musk first noted that Neuralink had changed design since the reveal last year, with a smaller physical device profile that he said can be fully hidden under hair once installed in the skull. He had a physical device in-hand to show its size.

Musk then turned the audience’s attention to three pigs that were in attendance in nearby pens, with handlers nearby. The three pigs were one that was untreated, the second (“Gertrude”) was installed with a Neuralink device, called the “Link,” and the third had previously had one installed but then subsequently had it removed.

More details about this story over at TechCrunch.

(Image Credit: Neuralink/ TechCrunch)

Despite being only the third most powerful storm at that time, this hurricane was among the worst natural disasters in the history of the United States. This hurricane was Katrina, which made landfall near New Orleans, Louisiana fifteen years ago, on August 29, 2005.

After briefly coming ashore in southern Florida on August 25 as a Category 1 hurricane, Katrina gained strength before slamming into the Gulf Coast on August 29. In addition to bringing devastation to the New Orleans area, the hurricane caused damage along the coasts of Mississippi and Alabama, as well as other parts of Louisiana.

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin ordered a mandatory evacuation of the city on August 28, when Katrina briefly achieved Category 5 status and the National Weather Service predicted “devastating” damage to the area. But an estimated 150,000 people, who either did not want to or did not have the resources to leave, ignored the order and stayed behind. The storm brought sustained winds of 145 miles per hour, which cut power lines and destroyed homes, even turning cars into projectile missiles. Katrina caused record storm surges all along the Mississippi Gulf Coast. 

Learn more about this destructive hurricane over at History.

(Image Credit: NOAA/ Wikimedia Commons)

Struggling to be alert as you work at night? If so, then consider drinking coffee and then taking a nap after. And yes, in that order. According to this new research from the University of South Australia, doing this unlikely combination improves attention span and reduces sleep inertia (the groggy feeling that you have just after waking up).

"A 'caffeine-nap' (or 'caff-nap') could be a viable alternative - by drinking a coffee before taking a nap, shiftworkers can gain the benefits of a 20-30-minute nap then the perk of the caffeine when they wake. It's a win-win."

Details about this study over at EurekAlert.

(Image Credit: Pixabay)

It’s not just the developer’s fault. In most cases, it’s not the developer’s fault at all. Take for example, what happened during the launch of Mediatonic’s Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout. After 1.5 million players attempted to play the game, the servers collapsed, and the game stopped working. The cause of the problem is far too complex for a simple Twitter post, as The Guardian details: 

As with most social media blow-ups, the answer is far too nuanced for Twitter to cope with, but it comes down to this: running a global large-scale multiplayer online game is an expensive, technologically complex endeavour, even in 2020, even after weeks of beta testing and data analysis. Jon Shiring, co-founder of new studio Gravity Well and previously a lead engineer on Apex Legends and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, puts it very simply: “Each game relies on a lot of semi-independent services, and each one is its own scale problem. On top of that, sometimes they interact in complex ways.”

One key thing to understand is that game developers usually don’t own or operate the servers that online games run on. Instead, they are rented. A multiplayer game may rely on servers housed in dozens of data centres spread across the world, and there are hundreds of different companies running such centres. Alternatively, a developer may use a large cloud-based service such as AWS, Google Compute Engine, or Microsoft Azure, which run games on virtual machines that share server space among lots of different users. The former option, commonly using “bare metal” servers, can lead to better online performance but is complicated to manage; the latter is easier to manage, and to scale up and down depending on player demand, but can be much more expensive.

Image via The Guardian 

Modern times can make us feel very stressed. Along with the looming pandemic, financial and social problems that make it harder for people to relax or sleep peacefully. Trying to get a good night’s sleep while stressed is a difficult feat, as CNN explains: 

Let's say you have been feeling extra overwhelmed lately. That, Breus said, prompts your body to release cortisol, the primary stress hormone. This coincides with sugar (or glucose) entering the bloodstream, which elevates your blood pressure.

Next thing you know, Breus said, your muscles tense up, your heart pumps faster and your brain kicks into overdrive. It's the old fight-or-flight response you learned about in grade school. In other words, your body is now in survival mode.

That is what makes falling asleep very tricky.

When that stress persists week after week, the body adjusts to the higher cortisol levels. This continues to prevent you from getting quality shut-eye but can also lead to serious problems like heart disease, hypertension, diabetes and depression, according to Breus.

CNN recommends some apps that can help you fall asleep even in these difficult times. Check their full list here. 

Image via CNN

Easton LaChappelle has always been fascinated by robotics. As a child, he would take apart everything he could get his hands on, just to understand how things work.

During his science fair days, Colorado’s Easton encountered a young girl with a prosthetic arm that looked “archaic” and cost about $80,000. He remembers thinking, is “this really her best available option?”

He tells GNN, “That’s when I decided to dedicate my life to solving the affordability of prosthetic devices and creating technology that can impact someone’s life on a deep level.

Unfortunately, his school did not have that many resources, and so he would have to learn on his own. And that’s when he turned to YouTube to learn the core fundamentals of electronics. 

Eventually, his resolve would then lead him to build a company — Unlimited Tomorrow.

“Because of YouTube,” he tells GNN, “I was able to turn my passion into a business that is having a positive impact on people’s lives.”

More details about this story in this video.

(Image Credit: Easton LaCappelle/ GNN)

How do cells travel inside the human body? How do they know which way to go? Scientists from the U.K sought to answer these questions by conducting this study, which was published in the journal Science.

When the body is injured, such as being poked with a needle, the immune system responds by sending white blood cells to kill any bacteria that might be trying to enter through the wound. But how do the cells know how to find the wound? Prior research has shown that cells use chemicals in the body known as chemoattractants to navigate short distances. White blood cells can sense and move toward them—but it only works for short distances. In this new effort, the researchers found that cells can use such chemoattractants in a different way to navigate longer and more complicated pathways.

Know more about this study over at PHYS.org.

(Image Credit: Luke Tweedy, Michele Zagnoni, Cancer Research UK/ PHYS.org)

A lot of us turn to movie rating sites or reviews to check if the film we’re about to watch is a waste of time. Criticism is subjective, but that doesn’t stop people from taking it as advice. However, not all movies with low ratings or bad reviews are bad. Some of them are actually public favorites! Buzzfeed compiled a list of movies that the people loved but critics didn’t. Did your favorite film make it in the list? 

Image via Buzzfeed 

In the 1960s and '70s, Pizza Hut expanded across the country and the world, in their distinctive buildings each with an oddly-shaped roof and trapezoidal windows. In the 21st century, the franchise moved away from those red-roofed huts and into more modern spaces as new locations opened and others moved. The buildings with the unique roofs remained, and were sold. Now you can see all kinds of businesses that were obviously once Pizza Huts, but are now dentist offices, clinics, bars, restaurants, offices, and even homes and churches! See a roundup of the different type of recycled Pizza Hut buildings at Digg, and even more in the subreddit FormerPizzaHuts.

(Image source: fleeeb)

Kool-Aid was invented by Edwin Perkins in 1927. That's the short version, but the story of how and why he did it and what happened to his product over the years is much more involved. Perkins was the son of a grocer, and he grew up selling, promoting, improving, and even inventing new products. If he saw a problem, he was impelled to fix it.   

Before it was developed by Perkins in 1927, Kool-Aid was preceded by a fruit-based liquid called Fruit Smack. It was a liquid concentrate available in a few different flavors. Corked and sold in four ounce glass bottles, the product tended to leak or break during transit. Despite Perkins’ intentions of enabling families to use the concentrate to make pitchers of the beverage for a very low cost, he was confronted with a bit of a supply chain problem. Fruit Smack was a hit with the Perkins’ customers, but its fragility created the need for something more economical, easier to transport and preferably in powdered form.

See, if there had been plastic packaging 100 years ago, we might have never enjoyed a glass of Kool-Aid. Kool-Aid started out with six flavors, and grew to 74 flavors -although they were never all available at the same time. Read everything you need to know about Kool-Aid at Tedium.

(Image credit: Flickr user clotho98)

This is really clever and I'll probably try it myself the next time my dog needs her nails trimmed.

Odile, a mastiff in Maldegem, Belgium, gets anxious during nail trimming. So a friend wrapped her head in plastic wrap, then applied a thick coating of peanut butter to the plastic. Odile was so distracted by the tasty treat that she barely noticed the work on her nails.

-via Born in Space

Ora Lee was a young woman who worked in a match factory in Ohio. In 1908, she discovered she was pregnant, and begged her boyfriend Guy Rasor to marry her. Rasor purchased a marriage license, but the next day, Ora Lee was found dead, shot through the head and dumped on the side of the road. Rasor was arrested, but the only evidence linking him to the crime were some bloodstains on his coat. He said it was pig's blood. Could anyone prove otherwise? Immunologist Paul Uhlenhuth had developed a technique for distinguishing human from animal blood, but that was in Germany, and the research wasn't well known in the US. However, Professor of Medical Jurisprudence Dr. John Spenzer of Ohio Wesleyan University's medical school had studied in Germany. Spenzer was contacted about the case. After conducting several tests of the blood, he proceeded with Uhlenhuth’s “precipitin reaction.”

Precipitin tests rely on an unusual property in blood serum that “repels” any foreign substances. When a foreign body like a protein is introduced, the antibodies in the blood form a cloud of precipitated substance. Immunologists were interested because antigens—proteins that produce antibodies—would lead to better vaccines and blood typing. For Spenzer, how and when (and if) the reaction occurred would allow him to determine what sort of animal the blood came from. The original procedure involved a great deal of effort, however, and a strong stomach, because the chemist must first prepare the antibody serum in a process that reads more like witch-doctoring than scientific method.

Warning: the 1908 test described involves animal cruelty. The results were introduced into the murder trial of Guy Rasor, and it is anyone's guess whether the jury understood any of it. But the Orc Lee case introduced blood expertise into American crime investigation, and you can read the entire story at Crime Reads. -via Damn Interesting

(Unrelated image credit: SpicyMilkBoy)

We've been posting videos from Tom Scott for twelve years now. Personally, my favorite is still this one. They have become so familiar that Matt Colbo made one, too. While the information about the subject is perfectly useless, his impression is amazing. -via Laughing Squid

Meanwhile, the real Tom is overdue for a haircut.

The Tower of London has been home to ravens for hundreds of years. Legend has it that if the ravens ever vacate the tower, the kingdom will fall. Accounts of the origin of the legend vary. It was just last year that we posted about ravenmaster Chris Skaife successfully breeding a new raven in the tower. But this is 2020.  

Summer visitor numbers would usually exceed 15,000 but because of the coronavirus pandemic, they have fallen to fewer than 800 a day. As a result, the birds are restless for more company.

With a lack of regular tourists, the birds have been venturing away, according to those who work there.

Christopher Skaife, a raven master, told the Sun: “If the ravens were to leave, the tower would crumble to dust. The tower is only the tower when the people are here.

Is this an ominous omen or just a sign of the times? Why not both? Read more about the ravens at the Guardian. -via Strange Company

When the song “Your Body Is A Wonderland” was created, the composer John Mayer probably did not think about the body in a scientific way. But the body really is a wonderland in its own way. It is full of wonders that will surprise you and weird you out.

Cracked.com compiles 22 of these amazing body trivias. See them over at the site.

(Image Credit: Cracked.com)