Researchers Eugene Chan and Sam Maglio stated that the caffeine inside coffee may not just be the only source of stimulation. If it is not only that, then what else is? Chan and Maglio hypothesized that it may just be the idea of coffee itself that we are stimulated — in other words, just thinking about the caffeinated drink makes us stimulated and focused.

Crucially, however, this was only found to be true for people who psychologically link coffee with ideas of alertness, ambition, and productivity, as is the case in western cultures. The Australian and Canadian researchers behind the study saw that for participants from tea-drinking cultures like Japan, China, and Korea, coffee cues were no more potent than those for its more gently caffeinated cousin.

To lend credence to their hypothesis, Chan and Maglio’s paper points to well-studied effects of other environmental cues on behavior, such as the established connection between subliminal messages about gender stereotypes in math and poorer performance on math tests. They also cite a paper that found just viewing the McDonald’s logo can make a person feel impatient (paywall), because we’re used to immediate service at the fast-food chain.

In the coffee study, the researchers ran four experiments involving lab and online tests. To plant ideas about coffee or tea in the subjects’ minds, they asked everyone to work to brainstorm slogans for a (fake) multinational company called Arisokraft. They also measured participants’ heart rates, and surveyed the subjects about future plans. Sure enough, they found elevated heart rates in the subjects who grew up in Western countries (mostly Canada, Australia, and the US) and were exposed to the coffee conditions, as compared to the tea conditions. Those subjects were also more likely to think in specific, rather than abstract, terms about future tasks, the results showed.

If this is the case, then I’m going to make scented candles and air fresheners that will smell like coffee.

(Image Credit: acekreations/ Pixabay)

Superheroes have alter-egos such as Peter Parker being “Spider-Man”. Since superheroes have alter-egos, it would not be a surprise if their headquarters have one, too. Such is the case of the Avengers headquarters, which is really Sany Heavy Industry Co., a manufacturer of heavy equipment, in real life.

Chinese Marvel fans on Weibo have recently caught wind of the fact that the majestic headquarters of Earth's Mightiest Heroes is actually the US headquarters of Chinese heavy equipment manufacturer Sany Heavy Industry Co. The facility is located in Georgia, where a good chunk of Avengers: Endgame was filmed.

Other people have recognized the building before, as well -- like this Redditor did last month. The connection only recently started trending on Chinese social media, though. The discovery was later confirmed by Chinese media. A Chinese movie journalist who is close to Paul Rudd also posted on Weibo a picture on set, saying he visited the Sany location during the filming of Endgame.

Many netizens were amused by the location choice. After all, the Avengers are supposed to be a high-tech, superpowered team. There seems to be some irony that the real location of their HQ actually makes unwieldy and unexciting machinery.

(Image Credit: China Daily/ Weibo)

(Image Credit: DaweixiongDr_GMF/ Weibo)

We know that computers are faster than us when it comes to calculating numbers. However, there is still something different with us humans that machines would have a difficult time mimicking, and that would be our “innate and intuitive number sense.”

Unlike a computer, a human knows when looking at four cats, four apples and the symbol 4 that they all have one thing in common – the abstract concept of "four" – without even having to count them.

This illustrates the difference between the human mind and the machine, and helps explain why we are not even close to developing AIs with the broad intelligence that humans possess.

However, a new study published in Science Advances reported a very interesting phenomenon: “an AI has spontaneously developed a human-like number sense.”

For a computer to count, we must clearly define what the thing is we want to count. Once we allocate a bit of memory to maintain the counter, we can set it to zero and then add an item each time we find something we want to record. This means that computers can count time (signals from an electronic clock), words (if stored in the computer's memory) and even objects in a digital image.

This last task, however, is a bit challenging, as we have to tell the computer exactly what the objects look like before it can count them. But objects don't always look the same – variation in lighting, position and pose have an impact, as well as any differences in construction between individual examples.

All the successful computational approaches to detecting objects in images work by building up a kind of statistical picture of an object from many individual examples – a type of learning.

…

Modern AI systems automatically start to being able to detect objects when provided with millions of training images of any sort – just like humans do. These unsupervised learning systems gradually notice parts of the elements in the images that are often present at the same time, and build up layer upon layer of more complicated commonalities.

It seems like we’re getting close to a more human-like artificial intelligence. Perhaps it would only be a matter of time before androids roam the Earth with us.

(Image Credit: Mika Baumeister/ Unsplash)

Victor Vescovo went down to his submersible, ready to explore the deepest place in the ocean — the Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean. As he went down, the ship then proceeded to detach the submersible. The submersible, now detached, went down the ocean floor. Smoke (possibly made out of sand, I think) came upon the submarine’s impact on the bottom — Victor has successfully landed on the ocean floor, and the crew on the ship cheered.

As Victor toured the ocean floor for four hours, he found arrowtooth eels, transparent-headed cusk eels, grenadier fish, and, perhaps unsurprisingly, some plastic bags.

The latest descent, which reached 10,927m (35,849ft) beneath the waves, is now the deepest by 11m - making Victor Vescovo the new record holder.

Humanity's impact on the planet was also evident with the discovery of plastic pollution. It's something that other expeditions using landers have seen before.

Millions of tonnes of plastic enter the oceans each year, but little is known about where a lot of it ends up.

The scientists now plan to test the creatures they collected to see if they contain microplastics - a recent study found this was a widespread problem, even for animals living in the deep.

More details about this exploration on BBC.

(Image Credit: Reeve Jolliffe)

(Image Credit: Atlantic Productions for Discovery Channel)

W. Heath Robinson was an English cartoonist, illustrator, and artist, known for his elaborate yet unnecessary designs in his illustrations. Because of that, his name is now synonymous to “machines that are complicated, yet of no practical use.” Despite his rather “silly” creations, Robinson was considered to be a genius. He served as an inspiration to some of the greatest minds in his time.

During WWII, one of the codebreaking machines built to assist in the decryption of German message traffic (the predecessor to the world’s first programmable digital electric computer), was named “Heath Robinson” in his honour.

As a draughtsman, he predates America’s Rube Goldberg, who similarly became famous in the US for his illustration of complex devices linked to produce an amusing domino effect. By the 1920s, the term “Rube Goldberg” was being used in American print to describe some of the wilder inventions of the era, and by the 1960s, his name was added to the dictionary too. Heath-Robinson began his career as an illustrator much earlier however, with his first published works as a children’s illustrator in 1897.

At the outbreak of the First World War, he shifted pen towards cartoons, depicting unlikely secret weapons being used by the enemy. During wartime, he poked fun at the Germans and provided the public with humour when they needed it most… 

Here are some of his rather eccentric but beautifully drawn illustrations.

(Image Credit: Heath Robinson Museum)

(Image Credit: Messy Nessy)

(Image Credit: Messy Nessy)

ARKANSAS — A 3-year old K-9 Belgian Malinois named Mya Tarvin was included in Bryant High School’s yearbook. Mya was the K9 School Resource Officer. Her photograph garnered a lot of support from the community online.

Police previously posted that Mya began serving with the department in August 2018. She serves as “primarily a narcotics K9 but is also trained for tracking and article recovery,” and works mainly in Bryant High School and at school functions.

The community was quick to offer their support of Mya online.

“That is a very adorable picture!! She looks so happy!!” one user wrote. “She’s my favorite officer,” wrote another.

Looking at the photograph, she looks like the happiest one.

(Image Credit: Bryant Police Department)

In 2012, Swedish company IKEA made an apartment inside the Auber Metro Station in Paris. Five people even volunteered to live there for a week. Now, 7 years later, the company pulls yet another unusual stunt, this time in Madeleine Station, still in Paris.

The Swedish retailer opened its new concept store in the district of La Madeleine on May 6. According to the company, it’s the first of a new type of Ikea store in Paris–one that is specially designed for city centers rather than the giant blue buildings of the suburbs. To announce the launch of the new retail strategy, Ikea transformed the nearby metro station, hanging 1,500 individual products on the walls. From chairs to curtains to kitchen gear and even plush toys, they turned the station into an overwhelming bazaar of Ikea design, complete with typical black-and-white Ikea signage showing their unpronounceable names and their prices.

(Image Credit: Charlie Boillot/ Twitter)

How far, you ask? Just about 45 km away.

First, a phone that has a camera that can zoom up to 50x — enough for you to see the spots on the moon. Now, this. Looks like China does not want to put on the brakes when it comes to developing their cameras.

This super camera takes advantage of single photodetectors combined with 3D computational imaging. The technique is based on laser ranging and detection, a technology that illuminates its subjects using laser light and then proceeds to create an image using reflected light.

The big advantage of this kind of active imaging is that the photons reflected from the subject return to the detector within a specific time window that depends on the distance. So any photons that arrive outside this window can be ignored.

This “gating” dramatically reduces the noise created by unwanted photons from elsewhere in the environment. And it allows lidar systems to be highly sensitive and distance specific.

To make the new system even better in urban environments, Zheng-Ping and co use an infrared laser with a wavelength of 1550 nanometers, a repetition rate of 100 kilohertz, and a modest power of 120 milliwatts. This wavelength makes the system eye-safe and allows the team to filter out solar photons that would otherwise overwhelm the detector.

(Image Credit: Technology Review)

American filmmaker and artist Doug Aitken will launch a mirrored hot-air balloon in Massachusetts from July 12 to 28. This is Aitken’s latest major project — “New Horizon”, which “will concern some of the most iconic properties in the region that are part of the protected area by the US Landscape Conservation Organization, as part of a project to revitalize the territory and local arts.”

(Image Credit: fubiz)

I love seafood, especially fish, and I believe that many of us have that same love for seafood, as there is a global demand for seafood. Each year, the global demand for seafood for human consumption is 143.8 million tonnes, and the overall consumption footprint, which includes other uses of seafood, is 154 million tonnes. China has the largest seafood consumption footprint of 65 million tonnes. Well, I guess that is not a question since they have the largest population in the world.

Chow and Lin in 2017 wanted to examine the impact of fish farming through China’s most popular fish — the yellow croaker. And examine they did. Through the help of experts and the locals, they “traversed 4 towns in Fujian China to build a tessellated mosaic of fish portraits to see how much wild small fish is needed to sustain fish farming.”

The answer is 7.15kg, 39 species, more than 4000 wild small fish to raise a single kilogram of large yellow croaker.

They are the 3 singular fish at the centre of the picture.

The large yellow croaker is China’s most popular fish, and they used to be caught in the wild for generations. Overfishing coupled with a sharp rise in consumption in China has led to a near extinction of the large yellow croaker species in the wild.

Today, virtually every large yellow croaker is farmed, and they are fed with wild small fish caught in the nearby China seas. Many of these fish are caught premature, and these species are threatened due to overfishing and lack of regulation.

(Image Credit: National Institute of Korean Language/ Wikimedia Commons)

Well, bears still belongs to the same order of dogs, scientifically speaking.

Two years ago, Su Yun bought a “puppy” for her family. Upon bringing the “puppy” home, she immediately noticed its surprisingly large appetite. What she thought of as a puppy ate two buckets of noodles and a box of fruits every single day. Turns out it was a bear.

The family realised their error when the pet did not stop growing and started showing a talent for walking on two legs.

“The more he grew, the more like a bear he looked,” said Ms Yun, a villager living near the city of Kunming in Yunnan province. “I am a little scared of bears.”

The animal has now been taken into care at the Yunnan Wildlife Rescue Centre after the family got in touch requesting help. Footage taken by officials shows it standing about a metre tall. Staff were so intimidated by the animal – which had lived in the family home – they sedated it before transportation.

Looks like the family just has to bear with it.

(Image Credit: CGTN)

It’s like a remote-controlled toy car, but it’s a main battle tank. A real-life tank that can crush everything in its path. And it’s tough, too.

There are many obstacles to be dealt with in ground warfare such as a “countermobility plan” that seek to impede the enemy’s movement. This type of plan would usually involve digging trenches, planting landmines or anti-tank mines and constructing anti-tank barriers.

To combat this countermobility plan, attacking forces also have their own secret weapon (you could call them the “counter-counter mobility plan”, I guess) — combat engineers aka sappers. These men are highly trained to remove such obstacles in the battlefield in order for their battalion to stay on the offensive. However, this would mean that they will be the ones in the front lines, facing bullets, land mines, and every kind of obstacle. As a result, many of them die. Is there a way to stay on the offensive while avoiding casualties? Hopefully, there is.

When the U.S. Army developed a new vehicle designed to literally blast and plow its way through enemy defenses, the M1150 Assault Breacher Vehicle, it decided only the M1 Abrams main battle tank was tough enough to survive on the front line. The Assault Breacher Vehicle removes the vehicle’s turret and main gun and instead adds a mine plow, dozer blade, ordnance removal charges, and an explosive mine-clearing system.

The ABV can plow through wire barriers, fill trenches, blow a lane through minefields with a rocket-propelled linear explosive charge, and smash anti-tank barriers. The ABV increases protection versus anti-tank rockets and missiles with reactive armor boxes bolted to the superstructure.

The Assault Breacher Vehicle gets a new modification: it becomes unmanned through another vehicle.

A new vehicle, the Robotic Complex Breach Concept vehicle, RCBC takes the M1150 Assault Breacher Vehicle and unmans it, with the vehicle operated remotely by a soldier in the rear. The Assault Breacher Vehicle was already wired with a full suite of outward-facing cameras to allow soldiers inside the vehicle to do their jobs (sticking your head outside a hatch during actual combat would be too dangerous), so these cameras were probably just linked to a wireless networking system. A remote steering and equipment operation system was added to the vehicle and the ABV became the RCBC.

I guess the future would just be full of remote-controlled vehicles, and the guys who have better technology and control over their contraptions would come out of the battle as winners.

What do you think?

(Image Credit: okrajoe/ YouTube)

Is there a way to move on without deleting your precious pictures — especially the ones where you look so handsome or gorgeous? This woman might have your answer. It is not cropping the picture, but replacing him with something you “deeply love and trust.” For Danielle’s case, that something would be steak.

“We actually dated for a bit,” Danielle told Bored Panda. “To be honest, I’m not really sure why a steak, haha. I love food and a good steak with a nice char on it is probably my favorite thing.”

“While I was deleting a ton of photos, I wondered if there was anything I could do to keep the halfway decent pictures of myself”

Talking about her ex, Danielle painted a pretty vivid picture with just a few words. “Compulsive liar in every sense. Controlling, violent, drugs, you name it, that was him. Oh, and he almost beat a girl to death. So yeah, I’m glad I got out as lucky as I did. Completely broke but very lucky.”

“So I decided to just replace him with something that I truly and deeply love and trust. [With a] Goddamn steak”

“Now I enjoy these pictures again”

Now you know how to not delete your pictures.

(Image Credit: Bored Panda)

The first clinical trial of deep brain stimulation for people addicted to methamphetamine, along with parallel trials for people addicted to opioids, is being conducted at Ruijin Hospital in Shanghai. The said method has long been used to treat people who suffer from movement disorders such as Parkinson’s disease.

Deep brain stimulation is a neurosurgical procedure in which two holes are drilled on the patient’s skull and his brain will be fed electrodes thereafter. A neurostimulator (the pacemaker for the brain), a device that will send electrical impulses, will be implanted to the brain.

Unlike other ways to treat drug addiction, such as rehabilitation, which takes years, this method might stop the patient’s addiction instantaneously with a flip of the switch, literally. However, there are also risks to be considered in this type of surgery, such as death due to brain haemorrhage, emerging seizures, brain infections, or changes in the patient’s personality. Since the operation touches the brain, it has the ability to tweak a person’s emotions.

Ethical issues have been raised for this type of surgery, and some critics say that this should not be allowed.

What are your thoughts on this one?

(Image Credit: Erika Kinetz/ ABC)

I personally love the cold. Staying at home, enjoying the cold breeze coming from the window, drinking hot chocolate (or coffee or tea), and just wrapping myself in a blanket and then proceed to sleep — these are just some of the things I love doing in the cold days. But not everybody enjoys the cold, especially the plants, as the cold weather damages them.

This is what happens right now in Italy. The abnormally cold weather damages the vineyards which could potentially be worth millions of Euros. To prevent the cold from coming to the plants, the farmers have created this simple, but effective method — lighting up torches. The result is a visually stunning image of lights that span for hectares. Unfortunately, the solution still does not prevent the plants from being damaged. But it does a little, at least.

While The Local reports that 300 torches can raise the temperature in one hectare by about three degrees Celcius—and while that difference can certainly mitigate some of the damage—the torches are unlikely to fully protect the agricultural industry. The farmers’ union Coldiretti, according to The Local, estimates that losses from the inclement weather will still add up to millions of euros.

(Image Credit: Abbazzia di Novacella/ Werner Waldboth)