Adding up to over 1.3 billion cubic meters, and home to many aquatic creatures, is the vast waters of the Earth. Despite the countless explorations of the ocean by various scientists, many of them very expensive, many parts of the ocean still remains a mystery.

...expensive tools such as depth-defying submarines and swimming drones would have to hit the waves in huge numbers to cover even a fraction of that water.

Fortunately, there are creatures who can be found in the oceans and are readily available. One of them is the moon jellyfish, and researchers at the California Institute of Technology and Stanford University aim to modify them into controllable cyborgs.

The scientists built a microelectronic “prosthesis” or “swim controller” from off-the-shelf parts. They fastened it to the underside of a saucer-size moon jellyfish with a short wooden pin, then ran two electrodes from the device to the sides of the creature’s bell. When active, the prosthesis stimulated the jellyfish’s muscles with a regular electronic pulse. To minimize the impact on the animal, the researchers fit the electronics inside a two-centimeter-wide cylindrical case, adding cork floats and stainless-steel weights to keep the system neutrally buoyant. The scientists tested the device on six moon jellyfish in a tank and found it could make the animals swim at nearly three times their natural pace. They maintained their typical speed when wearing an inactive swim controller. The results were published in Science Advances on Wednesday.

These would surely raise ethical concerns, however, but John Dabiri, co-author of the study, defends their case.

See more details about this study, and about Dabiri’s defense over at Scientific American.

(Image Credit: Rebecca Konte/ Caltech)

One of the first things that students learn about Ludwig von Beethoven is that he went deaf and continued composing, using his memory of what each note sounded like. However, Beethoven began to gradually lose his hearing almost thirty years before his death, and took steps to protect himself from further loss. He carried "conversation books," in which people could jot down their side of a chat, and he also used them for notes to himself. According to Kent State musicologist Theodore Albrecht, his entries indicate that he could still hear a little when his Ninth Symphony premiered in 1824, and for a couple of years afterward.

One account, dated 1823, tells of the composer visiting his favourite coffee house, where he was approached by a stranger seeking guidance on his own failing hearing. Beethoven scribbled down this advice: “Baths [and] country air could improve many things. Just do not use mechanical devices [ear trumpets] too early; by abstaining from using them, I have fairly preserved my left ear in this way.”

He added: “When possible, [conversing] through writing is better; the hearing will be spared.” In another account, from 1824, a musician visits Beethoven and tells him: “You can already conduct the overture entirely alone … Conducting the whole concert would strain your hearing too much; therefore, I would advise you not to do so.”

Read what else Albrecht learned from Beethoven's notes at the Guardian. -via Damn Interesting

If you're making a phone call about a specific topic and need to get down to business, then you can complete your call while standing up.

But if you're fishing for the latest, um, news about life in the neighborhood and have some to share, then it might take some time. You'll need to sit down and get comfortable. That's why furniture makers produced "gossip benches" during the first half of the Twentieth Century.

[The object on the right side of the photo is, believe it or not, a telephone. Since I just had to explain that to my kids, I figured that I might need to so here, too.]

The Design Elements, an antiques magazine, describes the development of this furniture concept:

Many home builders began incorporating a small shelf in a wall of the house, usually in a hallway, where the phone could reside. It was then only a matter of time before some enterprising person saw the need to create a unique and functional piece of furniture made specifically for the telephone, as well to accommodate the user as he or talked to friends and family. 

With a place for the phone on top and a shelf or drawer for the telephone book, telephone tables, also known as gossip benches, became very popular [...]

I don't think that I've ever seen a gossip bench, but my grandmother's house had a nook built into the kitchen for a phone, a stack of telephone books, and a stool. There was work to be done on the farm, so gossip had to be completed expeditiously.

Image: Toscano

Ruth Coker Burks was helping a friend undergoing cancer treatment in 1984 when she became intrigued by another patient. The nurses drew straws to see who would have to go into the patient's room. And no one else did. He had AIDS.

Whether because of curiosity or — as she believes today — some higher power moving her, Burks eventually disregarded the warnings on the red door and snuck into the room. In the bed was a skeletal young man, wasted to less than 100 pounds. He told her he wanted to see his mother before he died.

“I walked out and [the nurses] said, ‘You didn’t go in that room, did you?’ ” Burks recalled. “I said, ‘Well, yeah. He wants his mother.’ They laughed. They said, ‘Honey, his mother’s not coming. He’s been here six weeks. Nobody’s coming. Nobody’s been here, and nobody’s coming.’ ”

Unwilling to take no for an answer, Burks wrangled a number for the young man’s mother out of one of the nurses, then called. She was only able to speak for a moment before the woman on the line hung up on her.

Burks sat with the patient for 13 hours until he died. Over the next decade, she would care for hundreds of patients dying from AIDS whose families wouldn't even visit. If their families wouldn't accept their remains, Burks buried them herself in her family cemetery. And she helped change attitudes about those suffering from the disease. Read the story of Ruth Coker Burks at the Arkansas Times. -via Nag on the Lake

The honey bees of the world are fighting a battle that they are quickly losing. In the United States, for example, the number of honey bee hives have decreased from 6 million to 2.5 million. That is almost a 60% decrease. Up to now, they are still under threat from mites that kill their colonies, viral pathogens, and possibly pesticides.

Scientists may have found a way to improve bee survival through a bacterium that lives in its guts.

By genetically modifying the bacterium to trick the mite or a virus to destroy some of its own DNA, scientists have improved bee survival in the lab—and killed many of the mites that were parasitizing the insects.

The work, which has yet to be tested in whole hives or outdoors, promises to be effective over the long term, says Robert Paxton, a bee ecologist at Martin Luther University, Halle-Wittenberg, who was not involved with the study. It could help end, he says, “the major plagues of the honey bee.”

More details about this exciting news over at Science Magazine.

(Image Credit: Alexander Wild/ Science Magazine)

Thanks to the advances in the field of natural-language processing (NLP), computers can now create sentences enough to convince a human that another human has written that sentence, all this with a push of a button. But does this mean that artificial intelligence can now understand the human language? A new paper from the Allen Institute of Artificial Intelligence says it doesn’t. In fact, they don’t really understand what they’re writing or reading.

This is a fundamental challenge in the grand pursuit of generalizable AI—but beyond academia, it’s relevant for consumers, too. Chatbots and voice assistants built on state-of-the-art natural-language models, for example, have become the interface for many financial institutions, health-care providers, and government agencies. Without a genuine understanding of language, these systems are more prone to fail, slowing access to important services.

Find out how they arrived at that conclusion over at Technology Review.

(Image Credit: GDJ/ Pixabay)

With those big eyes and pointy ears, only a few would be able to resist the power of Baby Yoda’s cuteness. Now, he not only can be seen on TV; you can also get a chance to have him at your home!

The guys at Sideshow teamed up with Legacy Effects to bring us this amazingly accurate, life-size version of The Child. The little guy measures 16.5″ tall, and looks exactly like its character in The Mandalorian. Every little detail is there, from the peach fuzz on its head to the subtly-hued irises we barely noticed even on our big 4K screen.

It is a bit expensive, however, costing $350, but at least it’s more affordable than the cost of developing the puppet used on the Disney+ series (which is $5 million).

The life-size figure is available on pre-order on Sideshow, with the figure expected to begin shipping this fall, between August and October.

(Image Credit: Sideshow/ Technabob)

Perfectionism can be a great ally when it comes to delivering quality work and service. Having this trait, however, can put you into a bad spot especially when things go south, because the perfectionist, in response to chaos, begin to ratchet up the perfectness.

But when there’s too much to make perfect, rigidity sets in, and the soul hardens. The perfectionist tries to disguise this, because they can’t appear vexed; happy and unbreakable are the hidden creeds of perfectionism. Meanwhile, vulnerability and flexibility keep knocking on the door of the perfectionist’s life. All in all, a recipe—you might even say a "perfect" recipe—for burnout. At least it was for me [Anthony T. DeBenedet].

When DeBenedet decided to explore spontaneity, he found out that this led to fun experiences.

But as I gathered more data, I also noticed something that I didn’t expect to find: spontaneity often reveals itself to us as psychological flexibility.

DeBenedet encourages us to be psychologically flexible, and he gives us two tips on how we can achieve this flexibility. Check out his article over at Psychology Today.

(Image Credit: comicvector/ Pixabay)

Doctors warn parents not to sleep with their babies because of the risk of death by accidental suffocation. Still, mothers who've carried those infants inside them want to be nearby, which is only natural. Surely, modern technology can find a way to do that safely. One idea is the device shown above by BellyBelly. Years later, it is not widely used outside of the Netherlands.

The truth is that parents in the United States want to sleep with their children, and many, in fact, already do. Between 1993 and 2015, surveys show that co-sleeping spiked from 6% to 24%, despite doctors’ warnings. There are also many bedside sleeping devices on the market for home use that allow you to attach a bassinet to the side of your bed so you can sleep close to your child, though the American Academy of Pediatrics declines to comment on their safety. On its website, the AAP says it “cannot make a recommendation for or against the use of bedside sleepers or in-bed sleepers until more studies are done.”

Some doctors are pushing back on the AAP’s recommendations. They argue that the risks of infants dying because of co-sleeping are actually very low. Many of the studies about SIDS were conducted in the early 2000s and found that it often happens when parents sleep in the same bed as their children. But when you take a closer look at the data, the cases of sleep-related infant deaths mostly fell under a few categories: They involve parents who drink or do drugs, they involve premature babies or parents who smoke, and they involve babies sleeping on sofas with their parents and then getting trapped in the cushions.

Read about the struggle over co-sleeping at Fast Company. -via Digg

At one time, every ad for a car that you saw on TV showed a shiny vehicle being driven by a happy motorist, maybe highlighting some of its features, with onlookers admiring it. Then Volkswagen came along and had to get creative in explaining the joys of its unassuming Beetle. So Guillaume Martin's list of the best car ads ever is heavy with old (and recent) Volkswagen commercials, interspersed with more modern ads that are just as creative. And modern doesn't necessarily mean better, as the #1 television ad is 60 years old. You'll remember many of these -some of them are works of art. You can easily play the videos in the Threadreader version, or see them somewhat smaller at the original Twitter thread, where the responses have suggestions for honorable mentions. -via Kottke

This poor crocodile has been wandering around Indonesia with a tire around its neck for around four years now, and no one can figure out how to remove it. The situation pointedly illustrates the problems caused by dumping garbage into the sea. Authorities are concerned that the tire could strangle the crocodile as it grows larger.

Antara reported that the crocodile may be a Siamese crocodile, a species native to southeast Asia that's critically endangered, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Fewer than 1,000 of the crocodiles are thought to be left in the wild.

Indonesian officials have now offered a reward to free the unnamed crocodile from its plight, according to Antara.

"A reward will be given to anyone who can release the hapless reptile," Central Sulawesi Natural Resources Conservation Office chief Hasmuni Hasmar said. Details of the reward were not given.

While all ideas are welcome, the person who would approach the croc to actually do the deed would probably want more details on what the reward would be before risking life and limb. Read more on the story at Insider.  -via Mental Floss

In 2016, astronomers were amazed when their discovered KELT-9b, the hottest planet in the known universe. And just when you thought it couldn’t get hotter, here it is ripping apart its own atmosphere.

New research shows that not only is this planet hotter than most stars, with vaporised iron and rare Earth metals in its atmosphere, its heat is so intense that it experiences planet-wide meltdowns that tear apart the molecules in that atmosphere.

No other exoplanet we've discovered gets anywhere close to being this metal.

Yes, you read it right. Clocking at 4,300°C (7,800°F), the exoplanet is said to be “hotter than at 80% of all known stars”.

More details of how hot it really is over at Science Alert.

Burn, baby, burn!

(Image Credit: NASA/ JPL-Caltech)

This looks for all the world like a TV prank, but it's real. In fact, it's a better take on the car that can communicate with a traffic signal. The Mumbai Police Department came up with a solution for one kind of noise pollution, using technology and old-fashioned psychology. But will installing this scheme at a few select intersections spread better behavior at the other 100,000 intersections in the city? -via Digg

Yes, the calendar is just a system for counting days, which has nothing much to do with the natural world, but it's a system we've used for a long time. That gives us an excuse to celebrate the way the numbers line up on certain dates. Today is special because it's Groundhog Day, Super Bowl Sunday, and also a pure palindrome when you write the numbers out, no matter which side of the pond you are on. There are other strange and rare things about this date which standupmaths will explain. However you decide to celebrate it, have a great day! -via Metafilter

They look like movie pirates, but these are electric toothbrushes dressed as pirates, performing "He's a Pirate" from Pirates of the Caribbean. Googly eyes can look unnervingly lifelike when attached to a machine that vibrates. YouTuber Device Orchestra makes music videos with toothbrushes, adding machines, and credit card readers. I haven't found an explanation of how he makes a toothbrush produce even one note, much less a range of notes, but you can find links to plenty of other toothbrush songs at the YouTube page. -via Geeks Are Sexy