Scientists at Hokkaido University in Japan have developed this hydrogel that can somehow “memorize” and “forget” information fed into it, much like how the human brain works. According to Kunpeng Cui, the assistant professor who lead the study along with Prof. Jian Ping Gong, the brain-like system of this hydrogel could be used in some systems, such as making messages disappear for security.
A paper on the research was recently published in the journal PNAS. In the time-lapse video below, you can see the word "gel" sequentially disappearing one letter at a time, due to the fact that each letter cut-out had been exposed to the hot water for an increasingly longer time period.
Find out more about this fascinating hydrogel over at New Atlas.
Back in 2016, bone researcher and physician Sophie Jamal was found to have manipulated data and submitted fabricated evidence to investigators, and then blamed a research assistant for the fabricated evidence. She was then banned from federal funding for life in Canada, and was asked to return the money given to her by the Canada Institute of Health Research. She was also stripped of her medical license in March 2018. But,...
Two years later, Jamal is back on the medical scene. According to The Toronto Sun, her medical license was reinstated after she presented evidence to the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario showing that her misconduct was a direct result of her long-term mental health problems. She can now return to practicing as an endocrinologist, as long as she doesn’t conduct clinical research and continues therapy for her mental health problems.
Whether it’s fit for Jamal to return to treating patients is a matter for medical bodies and institutions in Canada to decide.
This may be one of the most disappointing things that happen in the scientific field.
...scientists guilty of research misconduct often get away with nothing more than a slap on the wrist — that is, if they’re even caught in the first place. A survey of more than 1,100 researchers at eight European universities published earlier this year found that a large amount of research misconduct goes unreported, with early-career researchers the least likely to blow the whistle.
But what can be done to prevent these kinds of misconduct? Dalmeet Singh Chawla suggests some measures to prevent this from happening. See his article over at Undark.
With Google to add 23 creepy crawlies in their ever-expanding roster of augmented reality search results, people will soon be able to interact with beetles, butterflies, moths, and other insects and animals via their smartphone.
The full list of insects includes: rhinoceros beetle, Hercules beetle, Atlas beetle, stag beetle, giant stag, Miyama stag beetle, shining ball scarab beetle, jewel beetle, ladybug, firefly, Rosalia batesi, swallowtail butterfly, morpho butterfly, atlas moth, mantis, grasshopper, dragonfly, hornet, robust cicada, brown cicada, periodical cicada, Walker’s cicada, and evening cicada.
You’ll be able to see the AR insects by searching for the name of the insect and selecting the “View in 3D” option. Android users will even be able to hear the insects, if you want to listen to the startling buzz of a hornet hovering next to you. You’ll need an ARCore-supported device on Android, or an iOS 11 and up device on the iPhone and iPad side.
This is good especially for people who want to interact with insects, but are afraid to interact with a real one. What do you think?
How should a movie end? When you are a kid watching Disney films, you learn that they all lived happily ever after. But later you come to appreciate the possibility that a realistic sad ending can be more satisfying. Or do you prefer a twist, one that you don't see coming but makes perfect sense afterward? To explore what makes a good movie ending, check out a list of 25 well-crafted film conclusions at Mental Floss. Of course the list is subjective, but you'll probably agree with at least some of them. And even with the ending spoiled (not all of them are), you might find a movie to watch that you haven't already seen.
The moment face masks became an accessory, entrepreneurs went all out to provide what people want. We've seen masks with various fandoms, political slogans, and colors to match one's clothing. But the most intriguing idea is to have a face mask that showed a face. Many people ordered face masks printed with a photo of their own faces (personally, I would have gone with a movie star's face). However, this is a fairly new idea, and many small companies are learning as they go. People who have ordered custom printed face masks are beta testers as these providers work out the kinks, such as wrapping a photograph around the corners of a face, and getting the size of the picture to match the size of the face wearing it.
Joseph Herscher of Joseph's Machines (previously) shows us how complicated it is to design Rube Goldberg contraptions by quizzing us on how different mechanisms will turn out. I got the first one right, but by taking the wrong path. These questions gradually get much harder. This turned out to be a lot of fun! -via Boing Boing
The artificial intelligence doesn't eat anything, so perhaps its sense of taste should not be trusted. And an evil AI may even poison you by giving you bad instructions. Nonetheless, tech reporter Rachel Metz trusted the software from OpenAI to come up with a cookie recipe. She describes the results at CNN:
The directions were pretty simple: stir the watermelon gently in a saucepan filled with sugar water over medium-high heat, add in the egg white, and mix in flour, baking powder and salt.
The result was barely edible. It looked more like a watermelon omelette muffin than a cookie, and tasted like a sugary, gloopy nightmare. My four-year-old daughter was the only fan in our house, saying they tasted "weird" but also protesting when I threw them in the compost.
It is the late 1890s in Germany, and a new accessory designed to protect others just arrived in town. Surgeons at that time, however, didn’t want to use such a thing. This accessory was meant to keep bacteria from spreading as surgeons put their hands inside their patients' body cavities. The accessory was surgical gloves.
“Many historical accounts show deep impatience with past surgeons’ hesitation to adopt surgical gloves,” writes Thomas Schlich, historian of medicine… It would take “more than a decade of passionate argument” before surgeons finally accepted gloves as a necessity.
Learn more about how surgical gloves became widely accepted in Germany, as well as how surgical gloves evolved over time, over at JSTOR Daily.
With a few pairs of chopsticks, some rubber bands, a clothespin, and a lifesize printout of the bass emoji (actually a guitar emoji but with 3 strings), YouTuber Davie 504 manages to create a makeshift bass guitar that sounds similar to an acoustic bass.
A group of people in Odisha, India were confused when they managed to rescue this little turtle, as never in their life have they seen a turtle that was completely yellow until that day. When they turned over the reptile to the Indian Forest Services (IFS), the institution was just as confused as they were, “but eventually came up with a theory.”
The turtle is a very bright yellow from head to toe, and the most likely explanation for his coloring is albinism. Albinism often causes an animal to be completely white, but sometimes non-mammal albino animals can be different colors — in this case, yellow.
“Most probably it was an albino,” Susanta Nanda, an IFS officer, wrote in a post on Twitter. “One such aberration was recorded by locals in Sindh a few years back.”
The adorable yellow turtle was very lively when he was first rescued, swimming around in a little tub of water, and he’s quite a sight to see.
“Mark the pink eyes, one indicative feature of albinism,” Nanda wrote.
The turtle would be under the care of the department officials for now, who would ensure his safety and well-being.
Fictional stories which somehow predicted the future are both amazing and scary at the same time. As we read through these decades-old works, sometimes we scratch our head, wondering if these authors had the power to look into the future, or just happened to explain their story very well.
Mental Floss lists seven books that seem to have predicted a thing or two in the future. See them over at the site.
Content creators are hardworking people. To keep their audience engaged and entertained, they always think of creative and crazy ways to keep their content relevant. But sometimes you don’t need “high-quality” content to keep your audience entertained — you just need to be relevant. And if there’s something that will always be relevant to people, it is doing nothing.
… one vlogger and comedian recently went viral as he posted a video of himself doing absolutely nothing for 2 hours. Sounds rather crazy, right? Who would view that? But quite amazingly, the video has gone viral, earning over 800k views in 2 weeks. Whoa.
Comedian Russell Peters had actually gone viral in the past for a similar video, claiming that men have the ability to sit for 15 minutes, doing nothing, thinking about nothing, and simply staring off into space.
As of this writing, this video now has over 1.2 million views.
The abyssal plain of the South Pacific Gyre is a particularly dreary place. Not only is it deep under the ocean, it contains little organic matter to feed on. The sediment at the bottom accumulates very slowly, so that oxygen permeates deep into the ocean subfloor. Scientists from the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology and partner organizations retrieved cores from the sea floor 100 meters deep and nearly 6000 meters below the ocean surface. They found the cores contained oxygen throughout -and ancient microbes that may have been lying dormant for millions of years. Steven D’Hondt of the University of Rhode Island explains.
When they were first buried, D’Hondt says, these sediments would have contained about one million cells per cubic centimetre. “What’s left are about 1000 cells per cubic centimetre, but they’ve been living under very challenging conditions for up to 100 million years.”
He continues: “Basically, they’re only getting enough energy to repair their molecules as they break”, with none left over to grow and divide.
When brought into the lab and given more nutrient-rich diets, however, these bacteria prove to be not just alive, but able to revive, grow and multiply, exactly like normal bacteria.
How they can do that, D’Hondt says, is a mystery. Either the individual cells are somehow surviving for “ridiculous lengths of time” or they “are reproducing with less energy than we thought possible”. But one way or another “they are starvation artists”.
The discovery may have implications for the search for life on Mars and other planets. Then we have the questions of what could possibly go wrong with resurrecting ancient microbes, why this had to be done in 2020, and will hand sanitizer kill them? Read about the research at Cosmos magazine. -via Metafilter
