Native to Eastern and Southern Africa are black rhinos. Despite having poor eyesight and relying more on their hearing and smell, these rhinos can hold their own in the wild, easily fending off hyenas and lions.
“Their basic body plan has proved to be good enough to survive on a savanna full of large predators, being very large, thick skinned, big rapier-like horns.”
Their thick bodies, however, don’t stand a chance against humans with guns. Today, because of poaching, these rhinos are now critically endangered. Fortunately, they got help, in the form of the red-billed oxpecker.
The chatty, sociable birds often hang out on the backs of rhinos, feasting on parasitic ticks.
These birds play a vital role in helping the rhinos avoid poachers. They serve as eyes for the rhinos, and with their noisy calls, they give the rhinos an early warning to flee.
Back in February 2019, the AI development company OpenAI announced that they had successfully created a text-generating AI system — the GPT-2. They would not, however, release the full version of the program for fear that it will be used for malicious purposes, like spreading fake news and spam.
Of course, it eventually did did [sic] release a full version of the neural network. By and large, it turned out that people were more interested in using GPT-2 as an AI dungeon master than churning out the endless torrent of fake news and propaganda that OpenAI had worried about.
But while people are not interested in using it to spread false information, some are eager to use it to cheat their way through the academe. At least, an individual named Tiago admitted to doing it.
Tiago, a student who’s getting his master’s degree in business, told Futurism that he been using GPT-2 to write essays for his coursework.
He was willing to share his story — and copies of his AI-generated essays — on the condition that Futurism didn’t share identifying information beyond his first name.
Ancient poop is something that you and I wouldn’t dare touch, but it is something that archaeologists want to put their hands on. After all, information about the ancient people’s health and diet, as well as information about the evolution of parasites, lie within this paleo poop.
There’s just one problem, however: archaeologists have a hard time determining if the poop came from a human being or an animal.
The challenge of determining whether paleofeces and coprolites are of human or animal origin dates back to the 1970s. Usually, only those samples found with human skeletons or mummies could be designated as being of human origin with any certainty. Exceptions could be made for samples found in ancient latrines, since they are highly likely to be human; samples found in trash deposits, however, are more ambiguous.
Now an international team of scientists has devised a new method of doing so that combines host DNA and gut microbiome analysis with open source machine-learning software, according to a new paper in the journal PeerJ.
The cure for boredom is to mess with the cat. You might feel sorry for the poor cat, having to jump through hoops, so to speak, for a treat, but hey, he's getting treats. Anyway, this experiment didn't go to the lengths I expected, because the guy ended it when the cat knocked a treat out of his reach. That was an accident! He could have gone further! I could try this with my cats, but they would just rip the entire cardboard box apart to get a piece of meat. -via Boing Boing
Virgina Senator Mark Warner Makes a very interesting version of the Tuna Melt. It consists of tuna, lots (and we do mean lots) of mayo, bread, and cheese. Oh, and you must have a microwave. That seems to be the preferred method of heating.
The backlash has been deafening, with people from across the country weighing in, including current and former colleagues and at least one celebrity chef, Tom Colicchio of Top Chef.
This man has unified the nation in a way that no other politician seems to have been able to.
As a small token of our appreciation, we’re giving away free Thank You meals to our frontline heroes. Stop by a participating McDonald’s from 4/22 - 5/5 and we’ll take care of the rest.*
*At participating McDonald’s 4/22/20 through 5/5/20 at drive-thru and front counter only. Valid ID required. Limit one Thank You meal per person per day. Not available with Mobile Order and Pay or McDelivery®. Breakfast meal includes Egg McMuffin®, Chicken McGriddles®, or Bacon, Egg & Cheese Biscuit, plus Hash Browns and any size soft drink, tea or hot brewed coffee. Lunch/dinner meal includes Double Cheeseburger, 6 Piece McNuggets®, or Filet-O-Fish®, plus small fries and any size soft drink, tea or hot brewed coffee. Menu options may vary by restaurant. No substitutions. Decisions of manager are final.
It's the details where things may go wrong. A look into the discussion at Facebook shows that quite a few people are either having a problem with the promotion itself, or having a problem accessing it.
1. It is not a mandatory company-wide campaign. Each outlet can choose whether or not to participate in this promotion.
2. Managers at participating outlets independently define "health care worker." This usually includes doctors and nurses, but may be limited to those working at a hospital. It may or may not include other hospital employees, CNAs, pharmacists, techs, nursing home staff, home health nurses, or clinic workers.
3. Some commenters report that their local participating outlet claims the promotion is a discount, not a free meal.
4. Commenters believe that truck drivers, grocery store workers, and delivery people deserve a free meal just as much. Some think McDonald's employees should get free meals for working through the pandemic.
5. Other commenters think the free meals should go to unemployed workers, who may now be depending on food banks.
You know what they say: There is no free lunch, and no good deed goes unpunished.
This city of Juneau, Alaska thought people could use a good laugh so they set up their own joke hotline. You call the number and you hear a joke. A new joke was released everyday.
Apparently people are really in need of a laugh, because the joke hotline stopped functioning from the high volume of users. Not to worry, their technology department is on the case. They hope to have the joke hotline back up and running soon.
As of Wednesday the morning, the joke line wasn’t functioning, and Juneau officials were trying to figure out if it had been overwhelmed Tuesday by a “very positive response” from the public.
“We are already working with our tech department and the phone company to find out. Hopefully we will have answers soon,” said recreation planner Dawn Welch.
Oh, and in case you are wondering. Yes, the jokes are supposedly clean and family friendly.
Kirsty Russell and her family had planned to fly on vacation from Sydney, Australia to Munich, Germany. Alas, the pandemic put a halt to their plans. So her husband suggested that they simulate the 15-hour flight to Europe.
Russell's Twitter thread illustrated their long journey, recreated in detail. There was even an airport security check.
A wildfire ravaged Tasmania, off the coast of Australia, in 2013. During the chaos, a lamb escaped from her farm and became stranded on the wrong side of a fence. It wasn't until much later that Alice Gray and her family discovered the sheep was missing when they reviewed some video surveillance footage. The sheep, dubbed Prickles, showed up again recently as Gray was celebrating her son's birthday.
"While we were setting up, we looked across a dam and we saw this big round thing on the other side of the dam — like, oh my God, I think that is that crazy sheep we saw in the video," Gray said.
"So we were just having our barbecue lunch when my husband went missing. And about 15 minutes later, he called back and he was puffing and panting. … He'd trapped the sheep in the corner of a paddock and was lying on it."
It took a group effort to wrangle the massive sheep into the back of the truck and return it to the flock, where Gray says she is now settling in nicely.
Prickles has gone seven years with no shearing. Gray's family is using the incident as a fundraiser for COVID-19 victims by letting people guess how much wool Prickles will produce when she is finally shorn on May first. -via Damn Interesting
It takes a leap of faith to adopt a tiny kitten, especially one who has been abandoned, neglected, or abused. Or an older cat who has run out of luck. A good dose of love and time can make all the difference. It might even make you look smaller!
A year later, you might not even recognize it as the same cat. See the difference a permanent home can make in the life of a struggling cat, and what a great companion it may turn out to be, not to mention handsome fellows. See 35 before-and-after pictures, many with stories, at Bored Panda.
Movie buffs and those in the industry eagerly await the weekend box office report to see how newly-released movies rank. Those statistics may be completely moot when theaters are closed. But the report still came out this week, and the Weekend Domestic Chart for April 17 lists Resistance and Swallow as tied for the number one spot. Both movies grossed $2,490 from one theater. It was a double feature at the Ocala Drive-In in Ocala, Florida. Slashfilm explains the weirdness.
This doesn’t mean that there’s only one theater open in the entire country — there are still a fair few drive-in theaters (official and makeshift) across the U.S. that are still open — but it seems Ocala is the only one still showing new releases and reporting their grosses. The majority of drive-in theaters show repertory screenings of older or classic films. But perhaps other drive-in theaters could take note of Ocala’s newfound renown — it is making headlines, after all — and start showing new releases so that we could get a fuller box office report. For now, it seems like the No. 1 movie at the U.S. box office is the unnerving Haley Bennett-starring thriller Swallow.
Contrast the report with the one from February 14, which had Sonic the Hedgehog at #1. It grossed $58 million in its opening weekend. The charts may fill out a bit when warmer weather spurs more drive-ins to open, but that still won't make more new movies available. -via reddit
Photosynthesis is the process where plants convert the light energy they collect from sunlight into chemical energy, which fuels the organism’s activities. This process, however, is a double-edged sword, and the increasing temperatures on our planet isn’t helping.
Photosynthesis generates chemical byproducts that can damage the light-converting machinery itself—and the hotter the weather, the more likely the process is to run amok as some chemical reactions accelerate and others slow.
It would be unsurprising if our plants and crops don’t produce much yield in the near future because of global warming. Fortunately, we have scientists to the rescue.
Now, a team of geneticists has engineered plants so they can better repair heat damage, an advance that could help preserve crop yields as global warming makes heat waves more common. And in a surprise, the change made plants more productive at normal temperatures.
“This is exciting news,” says Maria Ermakova of Australian National University, who works on improving photosynthesis. The genetic modification worked not just in two kinds of model plants, but in a staple crop, rice, suggesting any crop plant could be helped. The work bucked conventional wisdom among photosynthesis scientists, and some plant biologists wonder exactly how the added gene produces the benefits. Still, Peter Nixon, a plant biochemist at Imperial College London, predicts the study will “attract considerable attention.”
The garden at Monticello, the home of Thomas Jefferson in Virginia, grows with more than 70 species of heirloom vegetables, plus herbs and fruit. It's not been a continuous garden, but a painstaking recreation of the experiment Jefferson was obsessed with, along with things like moose, macaroni and cheese, and wine.
The third U.S. president’s interest in fruits, vegetables, and spices was obsessive and indulged on a grand scale. From the perspective of ingredients, Hatch calls Jefferson early-America’s foremost culinary connoisseur.
“His devotion to obtaining rare varieties and experimenting with cultivation techniques bordered on religious,” says Hatch. “He dedicated more writing to the subject, about 700 pages, than any other.”
As an evangelical byproduct, Jefferson founded what was arguably the nation’s first seed bank.
“He would hear about a ‘new’ vegetable and have to have it,” says Hatch. If growing experiments proved fruitful, seeds, taste descriptions, and instructions were mailed to “everyone he knew”—including George Washington, James Monroe, and James Madison. The efforts helped introduce then-obscure ingredients such as tomatoes, eggplant, and okra into mainstream usage.
Recreating the garden at Monticello wasn't easy, but Jefferson left his detailed plans behind, which aided the accuracy of the project. Read about bringing Jefferson's garden back to life at Atlas Obscura.
There has been a growing number of research studies that say that sleep loss and obesity are linked. These studies suggest poor sleep quality is associated with an increased risk of obesity by deregulating appetite, which makes one consume more calories. But is that really the case? Does poor sleep quality really cause obesity? A study recently published in PLOS Biology suggests that we might have it reversed.
It's not the sleep loss that leads to obesity, but rather that excess weight can cause poor sleep, according to researchers from the University of Pennsylvania's Perelman School of Medicine and the University of Nevada, Reno, who discovered their findings in the microscopic worm Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans).
"We think that sleep is a function of the body trying to conserve energy in a setting where energetic levels are going down. Our findings suggest that if you were to fast for a day, we would predict you might get sleepy because your energetic stores would be depleted," said study co-author David Raizen, MD, PhD, an associate professor of Neurology and member of the Chronobiology and Sleep Institute at Penn.
These findings in worms, however, may not directly translate to humans, but this could help us explain why people with obesity experience issues with sleep.
Wolves are known to prey on large hoofed ungulates like moose and deer. Aside from these, they also prey on smaller animals like hares. But wolves do not just feed on meat alone; they also eat fruits like blueberries.
… scientists are increasingly recognizing that these predators have an exceptionally varied diet, partaking in everything from beavers and fish to fruit.
Gray wolves are known to snack on blueberries, but the animals do more than fill their own bellies. A new, serendipitous observation shows an adult wolf regurgitating the berries for its pups to eat, the first time anyone has documented this behavior.
[...]
Conservation biologist Robert Mysłajek of the University of Warsaw says the discovery is an “interesting complement” to our knowledge of the species. “Such observations should be especially important for wildlife managers, who often focus only on wolf-ungulate interactions, forgetting about other food items consumed by wolves,” Mysłajek says.
