This might just be the end for camera notches and cutouts, as Xiaomi finally reveals a phone which has their 3rd generation Under-Display Camera Technology, which makes the display camera nearly invisible to the human eye. And the camera still captures high definition images!

The holy grail of front camera design is the under-display front camera. Why worry about the camera placement at all when you can just shove it behind the display? Manufacturers have been floating this idea in public since at least last year, with Xiaomi leading the charge. Today, the company is back with video footage of what it's calling its "third-generation" under-display camera technology, even though generations one and two never came to market.

With the caveat that this is highly biased promotional material, Xaiomi's new camera looks darn near invisible in all but one shot of the video. In the worst shot, which [Ars Technica] captured above, the display looks darker than normal over top of the camera area. 

Now this is phenomenal!

(Image Credit: Xiaomi/ Ars Technica)

If you think your friend’s tongue is already strange enough to creep you out, then this is what I have to say to you: your friend’s strange tongue pales in comparison to these strange animal tongues. Some are insanely long, while others are really sticky. Some tongues are weirder than these, like the tongues of penguins, which have more bristles than your toothbrush.

Live Science compiles 20 strange tongues that can be found across the Animal Kingdom. Check them all over at the site.

(Image Credit: Pixabay)

With this kind of design, robots will have their battery capacity increased significantly. The design, called “biomorphic batteries”, was developed by scientists at the University of Michigan. It was inspired by how living beings like us humans store energy inside their bodies, which is through the fat reserves.

“Robot designs are restricted by the need for batteries that often occupy 20 percent or more of the available space inside a robot, or account for a similar proportion of the robot’s weight,” Nicholas Kotov, professor of engineering at the University of Michigan and lead researcher on the project, said in a statement.

According to the team, their new zinc battery could greatly increase energy density.

“We estimate that robots could have 72 times more power capacity if their exteriors were replaced with zinc batteries, compared to having a single lithium ion battery,” Mingqiang Wang, first author of a paper about the research published in the journal Science Robotics today, said in the statement.

They’re also more flexible in terms of where they can be mounted to a robot, and can serve multiple functions at once.

More details about this over at Futurism.

Awesome!

(Image Credit: University of Michigan Engineering/ YouTube)

Our planet is now altered due to climate change. And it’s not just the planet that’s affected by climate change; the creatures that live in it are affected, too, and that includes us. This is what ENT physician Neelu Tummala noticed on her patients.

I vividly remember a patient who came in late for her appointment during a July heat wave. When I walked in, she said, “I’m so sorry I’m late, I was up all night walking my grandbaby around the train station.” Without air conditioning at home, the child was sweating through her clothes in the heat of the night, putting her at risk for dehydration.

[...]

Heat affects every part of our body. It can lead to heat exhaustion, heat stroke, anxiety, impaired cognitive function and even premature death from heart and lung disease. Across the country, the health concerns of the climate crisis are increasingly being recognized, pushing thousands of medical providers—doctors, nurses, pharmacists, therapists, medical students—to become advocates for change.

Tummala believes that this current climate crisis that we’re dealing with will soon lead to a public health crisis, and the poor will be the ones to suffer the most.

More details about this over at Scientific American.

What are your thoughts about this one?

(Image Credit: Pixabay)

One of the oldest tricks in the book that advertisers employ to sell a product is repetition. One of the best examples of this is Head On’s campaign in 2006, which just repeated the phrase “Head On. Apply directly to the forehead, over and over.” This tactic is called “effective frequency” in marketing, but is known in psychology as the “illusory truth effect”.

… the more you hear something, the easier it is for your brain to process, which makes it feel true, regardless of its basis in fact. 

“Each time, it takes fewer resources to understand,” says Lisa Fazio, a psychology professor at Vanderbilt University. “That ease of processing gives it the weight of a gut feeling.”

This is what makes a lie effective, but how do we fight back against that lie? Jennifer Latson provides us with some tips over at Psychology Today.

(Image Credit: Schwerdhoefer/ Pixabay)

Droughts have now been expected to occur more often because of climate change, and scientists expect that survival of species would decrease to some degree because of these droughts. But life always finds a way.

Songbirds in tropical rainforests curtail their reproduction to help them survive droughts, according to a study Monday.

Species with longer lifespans were better able to cope with this environmental volatility than previously thought, researchers found.

[...]

... the study, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, found that instead of trying to juggle the demands of new offspring and harsh environmental conditions, most of the songbird species studied opted to reduce their reproduction during drought.

Check out ScienceAlert to know more about this research.

(Image Credit: Caroline Granycome/ Wikimedia Commons)

Palmyra Atoll, Central Pacific Ocean — Perhaps this will be the strangest story that you will come across today: biologists cutting and poisoning mature trees using herbicide. But don’t take their action the wrong way, as these people do this in an attempt to restore the atoll.

The slashing and poisoning is part of an unprecedented endeavor to rid this remote atoll of all but a few coconut palms (Cocos nucifera). The gangly tree is an icon of idyllic tropical islands, but also an aggressive invasive species that crowds out native plants and animals. By removing 99% of Palmyra’s millions of palms, biologists hope to create more room on the atoll’s three dozen islets for indigenous forests and seabirds, including the world’s second largest colony of red-footed boobies. If all goes as intended, the restoration effort could help make this coral-ringed atoll, which has an elevation of just 2 meters, more resilient to sea-level rise and other ravages of climate change.

Thankfully, there are no human inhabitants on this island, and so the biologists can reshape the landscape and ecosystem to their will.

If the restoration methods work, they could ultimately be replicated on other islands with abandoned coconut plantations run amok.

More details about this over at Science Magazine.

What are your thoughts about this one?

(Image Credit: Dana Edmunds/ Science Magazine)

With the number of dengue cases growing in Florida Keys, and with authorities having a hard time controlling the mosquitoes that cause this disease, officials of the said area have voted to allow the testing of free-flying, genetically modified mosquitoes as pest control devices.

The decision came after about two hours of contentious testimony in a virtual public hearing on August 18. Many speakers railed against uncertainties in releasing genetically engineered organisms. In the end, though, worries about mosquito-borne diseases proved more compelling. On the day of the vote, dengue fever cases in Monroe County, where the Keys are located, totaled 47 so far in 2020, the first surge in almost a decade.

[...]

Sometime after January 1, 2021, Florida workers will set out boxes of eggs of specially bred male yellow fever mosquitoes (a recent version called OX5034) in a stretch of Monroe County still to be chosen. The eggs, shipped from the biotech company Oxitec based in Abingdon, England, will grow into normal-looking males. Like other male mosquitoes, they drink flower nectar, not blood.

This method of releasing genetically modified mosquitoes is no longer a new one. It has been done before in Brazil, and Oxitec states that this has lowered the number of dengue cases there. I hope that the same thing will happen in Florida Keys.

More details about this story over at ScienceNews.

What are your thoughts about this one?

(Image Credit: Oxitec/ ScienceNews)

If you’re someone who loves to stay in the kitchen and cook food, then you know how difficult it is to measure ingredients using different measuring tools such as cups and spoons. But it doesn’t have to be that way anymore, thanks to this measuring cube that has a variety of measurement sizes.

Designed by iomaa, the 3D-printable Bakercube measures everything from a 1/2 teaspoon up to a full cup of ingredients, depending on which side you place it on, and which cubby you fill in.

[...]

… The design is available for download over on Thingiverse for free, though I recommend giving a tip to the designer if you decide to print one for yourself.

Cool!

(Image Credit: iomaa/ Technabob)

Struggling to be alert as you work at night? If so, then consider drinking coffee and then taking a nap after. And yes, in that order. According to this new research from the University of South Australia, doing this unlikely combination improves attention span and reduces sleep inertia (the groggy feeling that you have just after waking up).

"A 'caffeine-nap' (or 'caff-nap') could be a viable alternative - by drinking a coffee before taking a nap, shiftworkers can gain the benefits of a 20-30-minute nap then the perk of the caffeine when they wake. It's a win-win."

Details about this study over at EurekAlert.

(Image Credit: Pixabay)

Despite being only the third most powerful storm at that time, this hurricane was among the worst natural disasters in the history of the United States. This hurricane was Katrina, which made landfall near New Orleans, Louisiana fifteen years ago, on August 29, 2005.

After briefly coming ashore in southern Florida on August 25 as a Category 1 hurricane, Katrina gained strength before slamming into the Gulf Coast on August 29. In addition to bringing devastation to the New Orleans area, the hurricane caused damage along the coasts of Mississippi and Alabama, as well as other parts of Louisiana.

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin ordered a mandatory evacuation of the city on August 28, when Katrina briefly achieved Category 5 status and the National Weather Service predicted “devastating” damage to the area. But an estimated 150,000 people, who either did not want to or did not have the resources to leave, ignored the order and stayed behind. The storm brought sustained winds of 145 miles per hour, which cut power lines and destroyed homes, even turning cars into projectile missiles. Katrina caused record storm surges all along the Mississippi Gulf Coast. 

Learn more about this destructive hurricane over at History.

(Image Credit: NOAA/ Wikimedia Commons)

How do cells travel inside the human body? How do they know which way to go? Scientists from the U.K sought to answer these questions by conducting this study, which was published in the journal Science.

When the body is injured, such as being poked with a needle, the immune system responds by sending white blood cells to kill any bacteria that might be trying to enter through the wound. But how do the cells know how to find the wound? Prior research has shown that cells use chemicals in the body known as chemoattractants to navigate short distances. White blood cells can sense and move toward them—but it only works for short distances. In this new effort, the researchers found that cells can use such chemoattractants in a different way to navigate longer and more complicated pathways.

Know more about this study over at PHYS.org.

(Image Credit: Luke Tweedy, Michele Zagnoni, Cancer Research UK/ PHYS.org)

In 2016, Elon Musk founded a company named Neuralink. This company was dedicated to developing implantable brain-machine interfaces, or BMIs.

Musk once again directs the people’s attention towards his company, as he showed the progress of the Neuralink device, called the “Link”.

The goal [of BMIs] may be ambitious — and definitely subject to a lot of ethical and medical debate — but the technology that Musk actually demonstrated was much less so. Musk first noted that Neuralink had changed design since the reveal last year, with a smaller physical device profile that he said can be fully hidden under hair once installed in the skull. He had a physical device in-hand to show its size.

Musk then turned the audience’s attention to three pigs that were in attendance in nearby pens, with handlers nearby. The three pigs were one that was untreated, the second (“Gertrude”) was installed with a Neuralink device, called the “Link,” and the third had previously had one installed but then subsequently had it removed.

More details about this story over at TechCrunch.

(Image Credit: Neuralink/ TechCrunch)

Easton LaChappelle has always been fascinated by robotics. As a child, he would take apart everything he could get his hands on, just to understand how things work.

During his science fair days, Colorado’s Easton encountered a young girl with a prosthetic arm that looked “archaic” and cost about $80,000. He remembers thinking, is “this really her best available option?”

He tells GNN, “That’s when I decided to dedicate my life to solving the affordability of prosthetic devices and creating technology that can impact someone’s life on a deep level.

Unfortunately, his school did not have that many resources, and so he would have to learn on his own. And that’s when he turned to YouTube to learn the core fundamentals of electronics. 

Eventually, his resolve would then lead him to build a company — Unlimited Tomorrow.

“Because of YouTube,” he tells GNN, “I was able to turn my passion into a business that is having a positive impact on people’s lives.”

More details about this story in this video.

(Image Credit: Easton LaCappelle/ GNN)

If you’ve watched Doraemon when you were a kid, then you probably are familiar with the dorayaki (known as “yummy buns” in the English dub), a pancake-like pastry with red bean paste filling.

YouTuber Nino’s Home shows us how to make this Japanese pastry in this video.

Yum!

(Image Credit: Ocdp/ Wikimedia Commons)