I'm so sorry pic.twitter.com/ihbWhJb3t1
— Felix the Skeleton (@FelixOrion) June 23, 2019
Swedish furniture company IKEA has implemented planning tools in their website, and Twitter users had fun creating their own couches. While most of the designs are hilarious, they are undeniably creative and innovative. Check these ones out.
The famous astronomer Galileo Galilei once said that, “The Book of Nature is written in the language of mathematics.” I can say with confidence that he was right.
The world that we live in is a beautiful sight, and the natural world a spectacle. If beauty can be found in nature, and if nature can be written in mathematical statements, then can there be a mathematical explanation for what we perceive as beauty? The answer is most likely yes.
A wonderful illustration of this is the Fibonacci sequence. Named after the mathematician Leonardo of Pisa (c. 1170 – c. 1250), this sequence begins with:
1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, …
Except for the first two, each number in the sequence is the sum of the previous two. (For example, 3=1+2 and 5=3+2.) Fibonacci stumbled on this sequence when thinking about how to count the offspring produced by a pair of rabbits. Not very exciting (or beautiful), I admit. But a hidden pattern emerges when you visualize the numbers differently. The image on the left creates squares whose side lengths are the successive Fibonacci numbers; the image on the right draws circular arcs connecting opposite edges of those squares:
The rectangle on the left is called the golden rectangle. The beautiful blue spiral on the right is called the golden spiral. I can almost guarantee that you’ve seen these in your everyday life (albeit sometimes hidden in plain view):
This connection between the Fibonacci numbers and the many beautiful objects containing patterns describable by the numbers is why I, along with most other mathematicians, think that the Fibonacci numbers are beautiful.
There is also an underlying mathematical pattern in the beautiful faces that we see. Check out the article over at Psychology Today.
(Image Credit: Draw Paint Academy)
Two papers, one for each respective animal, were published on June 20. The papers show that Egyptian fruit bats and mice, respectively, can “sync” brain waves” in social situations. Two years ago, there was a previous study that showed that the “rhythms of brainwaves between two people taking part in a conversation begin to match each other”. But why was this current study on the Egyptian fruit bats and mice important?
"Animal models are really important for being able to study brain phenomena at levels that we can't normally access in humans," says Michael Yartsev of the Department of Bioengineering at the University of California, Berkeley, and senior author of one of the papers. "Because bats are extremely social and naturally live in highly complex social environments, they are a great model for tackling important scientific questions about social behavior and the neural mechanisms underlying it."
"If you think of the brain like a black box that receives input and gives some kind of output in response, studying social interactions is like trying to understand how the output of one box provides input to another, and how those two boxes work together and create a loop," says Weizhe Hong of the Departments of Biological Chemistry and Neurobiology at the University of California, Los Angeles, and senior author of the other paper. "Our research in mice allows us to peer inside these black boxes and get a better look at the internal machinery."
Previous studies showing how neural activity in humans becomes synchronized during social interactions have used technologies like fMRI and EEG, which look at brain activity with relatively coarse spatial and temporal resolutions. These studies found that when two people interact, structures in their brain simultaneously decode and respond to signals from the other person.
Because the new studies looked at neural activity at a level of detail that is difficult to obtain in humans, they could explore the detailed neural mechanism underlying this phenomenon.
Learn more about this brain synchronization study over at Science Daily.
(Image Credit: Dawson/ Wikimedia Commons)
Marie Kondo is known for her helpful tips in cleaning and organizing things. Her mindset in cleaning is simple: keep the things that spark joy, and throw away those that don’t. (In other words, decluttering). These things that can be either kept or thrown away can be anything found in your home. After applying her mindset into your cleaning process, most likely you’ll end up having more things to throw away than to be kept. Materialistic people would most likely have a painful experience in discarding things.
“For hoarders, objects can represent comfort and security,” says James Gregory, a clinical psychologist and expert on hoarding at the University of Bath. In the most extreme cases, hoarding is recognised as a medical disorder that can rob people of their quality of life. One study by researchers at Yale University used brain scans to show that for people with the disorder, throwing out objects activates a part of the brain that’s also responsible for processing pain.
Most of us may not feel so strongly about our possessions, but things that are tied to emotionally significant memories can nevertheless represent a piece of your identity that is difficult to discard. When you struggle to part with that jersey you wore on the junior varsity basketball team, for example, you are not really clinging to the shirt itself. Instead, you’re hanging onto the memories represented by that now-tattered item of clothing you probably won’t wear again. Its sentimental value may make giving the jersey away feel like giving up a piece of your own identity, says Gregory.
But can throwing away things “that no longer spark joy” really lead to a better and happier life? This is what science has to say.
Scientific research suggests Kondo is on to something and the effects of tidying can leave us feeling invigorated and satisfied.
“One of the obvious advantages to a tidy house is that being able to easily locate things will cause you less stress,” says Chris Stiff, a lecturer in psychology at Keele University. There is evidence that tidy environments help us think more clearly. For example, researchers at the University of Navarra found volunteers made more mistakes inputting data in a messy environment, than in a neat one.
Know more details about the study over at BBC.
(Image Credit: Free-Photos/ Pixabay)
Because of the release of the film Toy Story 4, the newest entry to the Toy Story series, the old-age question has resurfaced once again: Which is the best Pixar film? Our answers could vary depending on which state we live in.
Cabletv.com “toyed around with Google Trends” to see the most popular Pixar movie in each state.
What’s your favorite Pixar movie? Does your favorite match with what the map says?
Via Gizmodo
(Image Credit: cabletv.com)
With love from the proud parents, @KFC and #Cheetos. Available nationwide July 1st. #KFCCheetosSandwich pic.twitter.com/tFfZeWn8ak
— Chester Cheetah (@ChesterCheetah) June 20, 2019
KFC will be releasing a limited edition KFC Cheetos Chicken Sandwich on July 1. It is a fried chicken sandwich with mayo and Cheetos sauce, with crunchy Cheetos at the bottom. Does it taste good? I guess we’ll just have to find out along the way. For now, we’ll have to patiently wait for the first day of July.
Chester Cheetah, the official mascot of Cheetos, promoted the product via his tweet. The replies on his tweet were divided. One stated that she loves Chester, but the said sandwich “was unholy”, and that the “sandwich gods are weeping”. Another stated that he’s “sickened but curious.”
What are your thoughts on this one?
(Image Credit: Chester Cheetah/ Twitter)
May 30. Kitakyushu City. At about 9:40 in the morning a power failure occurred on the JR Kagoshima Line between Moji Station and Space World Station. This also happened at the Nippo Line running between Kokura and Jono Stations.
In total, 26 train routes were affected running in all directions and approximately 12,000 people were affected by delays that lasted about an hour.
The source of the blackout was found out to be a disconnector switch. It is a switching device used to isolate an element of the electrical network so that the network operators can proceed to repairs safely.
...because their purpose is safety, they must be guarded from people and the elements. In this case, the switch was housed in a box with all its openings sealed with glue to prevent insects or small animals from wandering inside.
However, when rail crews opened a disconnector switch on the Kagoshima Line between Moji and Kokura Stations, they found the body of a slug that appeared to have been electrocuted. More impressive than the JR workers’ ability to determine the slug’s cause of death is the fact that it got in the highly-sealed container to begin with.
(Image Credit: Michel_van_der_Vegt/ Pixabay)
Valdivia, Chile. Like stray dogs, sea lions prowl the fish market, waiting for food. A solar-powered water taxi then comes at them. A young scientist named David Ebmer stretches out his hand from the water taxi, reaching out to a massive sea lion . In his hand is a long stick with a lice comb taped on its end.
As a student of the parasitologist Carlos Hermosilla at Justus Liebig University in Giessen, Germany, Ebmer came to Valdivia to advance the team’s goal of studying marine mammals in the least disruptive way possible.
As human activities including fishing, shipping, and drilling encroach on marine mammals worldwide, scientists are striving to reduce the impact of their research. Flashy new technology, such as the drones that collect whale snot, can help. But sometimes all you need is a comb, a stick, and some tape. As Ebmer reported in May 2019 in the journal Parasitology Research, his “telescopic lice comb” performs beautifully, collecting sea lion fur and loose skin in addition to lice. With these samples, scientists can probe the curious biology of marine lice—some of the world’s only seafaring insects—as well as the genetics and health of the sea lions themselves.
Find out more about the sea lions and the study over at Atlas Obscura.
(Image Credit: David Ebmer)
We all have dreams when we sleep (when we are in the REM phase). In this dream world, we have our dream bodies which we can interact with in the dream environment. We can touch, hear, see, taste, and smell things around us in the dream world.
It's striking that we can recreate such vivid bodily experiences in a state when our physical body is completely unresponsive.
The question is: can we manipulate dream content? You may have heard of lucid dreaming where the dreamer is aware that he is in a dream, and therefore he can control what happens in his dream. But this experiment is different. This one relies on electric current.
Recently, a study aimed to investigate whether the sensorimotor cortex underlies the generation of movement and bodily experiences in dreaming. The authors used a method called transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) to inhibit activity of the sensorimotor cortex during REM sleep, and observe the effect on bodily sensation and movement in dreams.
[...]
Two blind judges also carried out a content analysis of the dream reports and scored whether the report contained any movement of the dream-self, and what type of movements occurred— either single action, repetitive action, or passive movement. For instance, “diving” was classed a single action; “riding a bike downhill” as a passive movement; “writing something” as a repetitive action. A total of 50 dreams were analysed.
[...]
Overall the results support that using electrical stimulation to inhibit sensorimotor cortex activity specifically decreases presence of repetitive actions in REM sleep dreams. This provides novel evidence that the sensorimotor cortex is causal in the generation of dream movement.
Head over to Psychology Today for more details of the study.
(Image Credit: CreativeHexenkueche/ Pixabay)
Five Chinese tech companies were added by the Trump administration to the U.S blacklist on Friday. This move further restricts China’s access to American technology. This also heightens the already high tensions before the planned meeting between U.S President Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping that will happen next week in Japan.
The Commerce Department announced that it would add four Chinese companies and one Chinese institute to an “entity list,” saying they posed risks to American national security or foreign policy interests. The move essentially bars them from buying American technology and components without a waiver from the United States government, which could all but cripple them because of their reliance on American chips and other technology to make advanced electronics.
Know more of this story over at The New York Times.
(Image Credit: TheDigitalArtist/ Pixabay)
To find out how violent stars affect their surroundings, astronomers made a 48-frame high-resolution, controlled-color panorama of the center of the largest star forming regions on the cosmos — the Carina Nebula. This image here, taken in 2007, is the most detailed image of the nebula as of the moment.
Cataloged as NGC 3372, the Carina Nebula is home to streams of hot gas, pools of cool gas, knots of dark globules, and pillars of dense dusty interstellar matter.
The cosmos is always a magnificent view and is ever-amazing.
Image Credit: NASA, ESA, N. Smith (U. California, Berkeley) et al., and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)
Vin jaune, which literally translates to “yellow wine”, is a rare wine created in the Jura region of eastern France. Attracting hardcore wine enthusiasts, this wine “matures under a veil of yeast in a barrel for at least six years.” During this time, the wine develops a golden color (thus the name “yellow wine), and an intense, nutty aroma. Last year, a 244-year old bottle of vin jaune was sold at auction for $121,000.
Turns out this yellow stuff has been historically enjoyed and cultivated for at least 900 years, according to scientists.
Researchers conducted DNA tests on 28 samples of grape seeds dug out of waterlogged wells, dumps and ditches at archaeological sites across France. The results, published today in the journal Nature Plants, show strong connections between modern wine grapes and those used as far back as the Roman period.
Check out the details of this study at Smithsonian.
(Image Credit: Arnaud 25/ Wikimedia Commons)
In another attempt to clean the huge island of trash floating in the Pacific Ocean between California and Hawaii, the floating device designed to trap plastic waste redeploys for the second time.
Boyan Slat, creator of The Ocean Cleanup project, announced on Twitter that a 2,000-foot (600-meter) long floating boom that broke apart late last year was sent back to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch this week after four months of repair.
A ship towed the U-shaped barrier from San Francisco to the patch in September to trap the plastic. But during the four months at sea, the boom broke apart under constant waves and wind and the boom wasn’t retaining the plastic it caught.
The device not only cleans up the ocean; it also does not make any environmental impact according to marine biologists.
(Image Credit: AP Photo/ Lorin Eleni Gill, File)
Amphibians such as frogs have been greatly affected by the changes in the natural world. In the UK, European common frogs are at risk of extinction because of ranavirus, a virus that can kill a large number of frogs in a short time.
Scientists are looking for ways to prevent these frogs from going extinct. Fortunately, they discovered a bacteria that dwells on the skin of frogs that could protect them from the deadly virus.
They found a link between outbreaks of the disease and the make-up of bacteria on the frogs' skin in different populations across southern England.
This gives the first demonstration that in the wild there is a correlation between populations that get disease and populations that remain disease-free, and the mix of bacteria on the skin, said Dr Lewis Campbell from the University of Exeter.
"It's a silver bullet against the virus, potentially," he said.
The researchers hope the work could help save the frog species most often seen in UK ponds.
It is said that 40% of species are in danger of being wiped out due to habitat loss and climate change, and pathogens. I hope we can still avoid that from happening.
(Image Credit: Richard Bartz/ Wikimedia Commons)
This is Peter Petrov. You may call him Uncle Petrov. Despite his Russian features of bright blue eyes and fair skin, Petrov does not speak Russian; he speaks Chinese.
That's because Petrov, whose legal name is Dong Desheng, lives in his birthplace of Heilongjiang province and is an ethnic Russian, one of China's 55 officially recognized minority groups.
In a country where the predominant ethnic group, Han Chinese, accounts for 92% of the population -- or 1.2 billion people -- Petrov, 44, says his appearance and heritage makes him stand out.
Petrov started posting videos about his life in late 2017 through China’s most popular streaming app, Kuaishou. He went viral a year after.
The clips saw him playing with his dog, Little White; eating dumplings with his family; tending to his corn and soybean crops.
[...]
But more than creating a social media star, Petrov's videos have stirred debate online about what it means to be "Chinese" in a society where ethnic homogeneity and social conformity are the norm.
How did Petrov and his family come and settle in Heilongjiang, China?
See more details of Petrov’s story over at CNN.
(Image Credit: Peter Petrov/ CNN)
