A small colony of short-tailed chinchillas live quietly in the mountains of northern Chile. During the 19th and 20th centuries, these rodents were hunted down almost to extinction because of their ultra-soft fur. These recent years have been good to them, perhaps, the most peaceful time, for them. But maybe this peace won’t last long, as…

The colony in question sits atop 3.5 million ounces of extractable gold, a resource set to be developed by Gold Fields, a South African-based gold mining company. Gold Fields’ CEO Nick Holland said in 2017 at a mining conference in Cape Town that the chinchillas were one of the main obstacles to the project but the company was determined to find a way to protect the colony.

Big mining initiatives take years to roll, with conservation compliance an increasingly crucial part of the package. Gold Fields’ environmental permit for the Salares Norte mining project — which has an $860 million construction price tag — hinged on it finding a way to move the chinchillas, which are protected under Chilean law. The result is a kind of mini Noah’s Ark initiative high in the mountains of northern Chile.

While the plan to relocate the chinchillas can be seen as a good thing, the same cannot be said about the effects of relocation on the animals.

Relocations for animals big and small have a mixed record. In 2018, for example, conservationists relocated six rare black rhinos from South Africa to a national park in the Central African nation of Chad, part of the species’ former range. Four of the animals died within months of the transfer.

Closer to the chinchillas in size and habitat is the American pika, a mountain-dwelling relative of rabbits and hares. A 2015 study in the journal Biodiversity found experimental translocations of the species between alpine habitats in the 1970s had “mixed results.” But it concluded pikas were “a good candidate species” for relocation projects in cases where the animals’ habitats were threatened by climate change.

More details about this over at Undark.

What are your thoughts about this one?

(Image Credit: Luis Ortega/ Undark)

Today, if you smell like human excrement, people would tell you that you stink. But if you are in 18th century France, people in that era would remark that you are fashionable. The French art historian Eugène Viollet-le-Duc would even tell you that your scent reminds him of good times. I know. Pretty weird, right?

It was an era of less scrupulous sanitation. The malodor of privies and cesspools was no doubt part of the distinctive bouquet that jogged the lady’s memory. But it wasn’t just the chamber pots that reeked. In the era of Louis XV, it was fashionable to drench oneself in “animal scents:” musk from the scent glands of fanged Himalayan deer; civet from the perineal glands of civet cats; and ambergris from the intestines of sperm whales. Noblemen perfumed themselves with the same reeks that wild beasts used to mark their territory.

In their natural state, each of these substances smell about as bad as you would expect. The noxiousness of civet, for instance, can be indicated by the fact that early settlers of Virginia thought the skunks they smelled around the woods were a local variety of civet cat, and proposed bottling and selling their secretions for “good profit.” In the same vein, human excrement was occasionally referred to as “occidental Civet,” as the historian Karl H. Dannenfeldt notes in the Journal of the History of Biology.

But why did this happen? Why did such scents become popular that time?

Learn more about this over at JSTOR Daily.

(Image Credit: John William Godward/ Wikimedia Commons)

Apple often announces that their new phones have better cameras than their previous ones. The announcement of the iPhone 12 is no different. In fact, the phone has the biggest advances compared to the previous models that the company has released.

Hardware-wise, there doesn’t appear to be much difference between the iPhone 12, 12 mini, and 12 Pro when compared to the 11 and 11 Pro. All of these phones use the same-sized 12 megapixel sensors for wide, ultrawide, and the Pro model’s telephoto cameras, while the shape and size of the camera bump remains essentially the same.

The biggest hardware change is a new seven-element f/1.6 lens for the primary wide camera. That’s a modest aperture increase on the iPhone 11’s six-element f/1.8 lens; Apple says it improves the lens’ light-gathering ability by 27 percent, which should enable slightly faster shutter speeds or less grainy ISO settings in low light. There are often compromises to sharpness and performance when designing lenses with larger apertures, but the new seven-element structure will “maintain sharp detail in your photo from edge to edge,” according to Apple.

Know more about the features of the iPhone 12 over at The Verge.

(Image Credit: Apple/ YouTube)

Self-driving car company Waymo has just announced that fully automated vehicles are now available in some parts of Phoenix, Arizona. This could soon revolutionize transportation, but it is up to us whether we will greet the new service with open arms.

The service is only available in a limited area for now, both because regulations in Arizona are relatively permissive and because the cars need a detailed three-dimensional map to tell them all about the road environment.

Waymo One currently requires a human driver to be present to supervise the self-driving care and override it when necessary, but the new announcement means fully autonomous, unsupervised vehicles. If successful, passengers will have entirely free time in the back seat.

More details about this over at The Conversation.

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(Image Credit: John Krafcik/ Twitter)

One of the methods that we use to examine whether a decision is moral or not is universalization. In this method, we ponder about what would happen if everyone made the same decision. For example, if all of us lied, then nobody would trust anyone. Through this reasoning, we are able to determine that an action is moral or not. The question is, do we practice it in our everyday lives? It seems that the answer is yes, but we don’t do it all the time.

In a study of several hundred people, MIT and Harvard University researchers have confirmed that people do use this strategy in particular situations called “threshold problems.” These are social dilemmas in which harm can occur if everyone, or a large number of people, performs a certain action. The authors devised a mathematical model that quantitatively predicts the judgments they are likely to make. They also showed, for the first time, that children as young as 4 years old can use this type of reasoning to judge right and wrong.

“This mechanism seems to be a way that we spontaneously can figure out what are the kinds of actions that I can do that are sustainable in my community,” says Sydney Levine, a postdoc at MIT and Harvard and the lead author of the study.

Learn more about the study over at MIT News.

Via Big Think

(Image Credit: Bessi/ Pixabay)

Food has to have at least 2 qualities. One, it has to be edible. Two, it has to look good (if not, then at least it should look decent). And then, there are those people who take away even these basic qualities from food, and the result is stomach-churning “food.”

Instagram account @TotallyGourmet has taken upon itself to show the world terrible food pictures that will make you feel deeply uncomfortable just by looking at them.

For your safety, I will only share here the picture that gives the least discomfort. But if you’re brave enough, then go ahead and visit Sad and Useless for more photos.

(Image Credit: Totally Gourmet/ Sad and Useless)

Police officers in Western Australia have called off their search for the body of a missing 52-year-old surfer last Sunday, two days after the man was attacked by a shark. This would be the sixth case of a person killed by a shark this year, and this year will be the highest record of deaths caused by a shark in Australia since 1934. So what’s happening with the sharks there?

This number is well above Australia’s 50-year average of 1.02 deaths a year. Yet while fatalities are at an 86-year high, the number of unprovoked shark bites, 17, is more or less in line with the average over the past decade: meaning it’s not the number but rather the nature of the attacks that’s contributing to the uptick in deaths.

“In some of the cases this year it sounds like the shark hung around and bit more than once, which is unusual behaviour for great white sharks,” Dr Blake Chapman, a marine biologist who examined shark neuroscience for her PhD, told Guardian Australia. “[And] when they bite more than once it’s more likely to be fatal as there’s more blood loss.”

Dr Chapman noted that multiple bites could suggest the apex predators are starting to treat humans as prey. Another factor could be the weather.

Dr Chapman notes, however, that the data is inconclusive.

More details about this over at Vice.

What are your thoughts about this one?

(Image Credit: Olga Ernst/ Wikimedia Commons)

Of the many types of games that are available for the Nintendo Switch, you wouldn’t expect that a simple kart-racing game would outsell them all. But, as they say, simplicity is beauty, and that’s what Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is. It’s simple, fun, and addictive, and that’s why it’s the top best-selling game in the game console, with 26.74 million sales. Nintendo, however, decided to take the fun to the next level: by taking the races, as well as the characters, to your own home in physical form, literally, through a new Mario Kart title, Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit.

The latest edition in the series isn’t just a video game. It’s an actual remote-control kart. Fit with a camera, you drive it around your house like a drone, turning your floor into a racecourse populated with virtual competitors and all the familiar Mario Kart tropes like heat-seeking turtle shells and Bowser’s pesky offspring.

Mark Wilson tested the game with his family over the past weekend. This is what he has to say:

Whereas most mixed-reality experiences feel like technical demos, Mario Kart Live is an incredibly entertaining mix of what’s happening on the screen and on the floor. But its real appeal is how it will make you appreciate the disorder of your own home.

[...]

After spending a weekend playing Mario Kart Live, I’ve decided it’s not really about the toy. It’s actually a machine that’s built to turn your whole home into a toy. And as many of us are hunkering down, prepping for a long winter, I couldn’t imagine a more apt gift than something that helps you celebrate the cramped chaos of home.

Check out Wilson’s story over at Fast Company.

(Image Credit: Nintendo/ Fast Company)

1643. England is in the middle of a civil war between the royalists and the parliamentarians for months now, and the latter just intercepted a letter from the former after the battle of Chichester in 1642. This might have been crucial information, but the parliamentarians had one big problem: the message was coded.

Enter John Wallis, a young chaplain, who was 26 at that time. Wallis caught wind of some gossip about the letter, and…

Not a little audaciously, Wallis, a young clergyman, offered to try his hand at deciphering the letter. If Wallis’s diary is to be believed, he cracked the code before going to bed that night, and so began a new career as one of England’s foremost cryptographers.

Wallis would decode many letters before his death in 1703. Today, many of his deciphered letters are valued at a high price, and recently, 53 of his deciphered letters were sold by the Dominic Winter Auctioneers for £29,000 (over $37,000).

How did Wallis decode the letters? What method did he use?

The answers are over at Atlas Obscura.

(Image Credit: Philip Beeley/ Atlas Obscura)

Australia — This woman was traveling down the mountain from Maleny in the Sunshine Coast Hinterland when she suddenly saw a terrifying figure in the rearview mirror: a spider. A huge spider. The woman immediately pulled over and asked a tradesman to swipe the spider off, to which the tradesman replied “Hell no!”

I kept driving hoping to send it flying, but it just kept wandering about the back window. I got out and turned on the camera, in case everything went pear-shaped, and as I worked up the nerve to do the swipe, then in flew my unlikely 'hero.' A Magpie, the torment of cyclists across the nation, dove in front of me and snatched the spider for his midday snack. I love birds.

Thanks, random magpie!

(Image Credit: ViralHog/ YouTube)

We have many definitions of the word “home.” But what is a home? Through his 2019 piece, titled “Home Within Home”, Korean artist Do Ho Suh explores both the physical and the metaphorical understandings of the word. His piece, which can be seen suspended from an atrium in Incheon International Airport in Seoul, is similar to his 2013 piece, titled “Home Within Home Within Home Within Home Within Home”.

“The spaces we inhabit also contain psychological energy, and in his work, he makes visible those markers of memories, personal experiences, and a sense of security, regardless of geographic location,” a statement about his practice says.

Suh is represented by Lehmann Maupin, and you can explore more of the artist’s architectural sculptures, installations, and smaller works on the international gallery’s site.

See some photos of the suspended piece over at Colossal.

(Image Credit: Do Ho Suh/ Lehmann Maupin/ Colossal)

In 2013, Japanese Twitter user @Kya7y discovered something that is nothing short of magnificent. It was a highly-detailed maze created on an A1 size paper (a 33 x 23 in paper). It was dated 1983. When she asked her father about the hand-drawn maze, her father, Papa, explained that it was his masterpiece, which he made for 7 years.

In 2015, Spoon & Tamago decided to partner with her and her Papa, and now full-scale replicas are on sale over at the site. The maze was also featured in the comic One Punch Man. Because of the site’s partnership with him, Papa was also able to create another maze in 2017. Now, Papa, who we only by the name K. Nomura, releases yet another mind-boggling maze — Papa's Maze 3.0.

 … he once again picked up his pen in an attempt to outdo himself. Using only his hand and a ballpoint pen, the artist began the daunting daily task of transferring the image from his brain, onto canvas.

The maze was supposed to take much longer but the global pandemic-induced lockdown allowed Papa to work uninterrupted, speeding up its completion. The result is easily the most dense and challenging yet beautiful maze we’ve ever seen.

See the photos over at the site.

(Image Credit: Spoon & Tamago)

This happened one day, two years ago. Murphy’s family had just finished filling his dog bowl with food, and then, like always, the family went into the other room to watch TV as they ate on the couch, leaving the dog in the kitchen. But Murphy wanted to be with his family. And so he did.

"My daughter and I were sitting at opposite ends of the couch eating our dinner when he brought his bowl in and hopped between us, gently placed it down and began to eat," Audrey Waito, the dog's owner, told The Dodo.

And so, Murphy discovered how to eat while chilling on the couch.

Murphy's done the same thing ever since.

Waito and her family hardly mind having Murphy eat with them on the couch — in fact, it's something they welcome.

By dining on the couch like everyone else, it's clear that Murphy considers himself to be a bona fide member of the family. And he's not the only one who thinks so.

"He is my other child," Waito said. "He's quite spoiled."

Smart doggo.

(Image Credit: Audrey Waito/ The Dodo)

By combining sculpture, electronics, and software, artist Neil Mendoza is able to recreate famous paintings with an interesting twist: you can interact with them.

Optimized for short attention spans, it allows viewers to poke, inflate, add water, or even a disco ball to their heart’s content. The interactive work was created for the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh as part of it’s ‘tough art’ residency.

This is a dream come true for kids... and the kids-at-heart who wanted to mess with museum paintings when they were young. 

See the short clip over at DesignBoom.

Well, what do you think?

(Image Credit: Neil Mendoza/ DesignBoom)

For over a year, the YouTube channel Muse Asia has been delivering legal anime that people online can watch for free. Now, the hard work of the team behind the channel is paying off. Over a week ago, the Muse Asia team received their Gold Play Button, after reaching a million subscribers back in August.

“We are still working on trying to bring more titles to the channel, so please continue to stay with us,” says Jing (also called the Muse Lady).

(Image Credit: Muse Asia/ YouTube)