With the United Kingdom currently suffering from a “math crisis”, where half of all adults have math skills that are no better than kindergarten level, one would really be curious as to why this is happening.
To better understand the origins of the crisis, the researchers looked to the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC), a long-term study of children born in the U.K. between April 1, 1991, and December 21, 1992. Both the children and their parents have provided data for the study from the birth of their child to the present day. In this new effort, the researchers looked at the home environment of the children and compared it to scores on math tests taken by the children as they grew older.
The study suggested two factors that could affect a child’s performance in school math classes: the educational attainment of the child’s parents, and the working relationship between the child and his/her parents.
While this study is not surprising, it is a good reminder for us to create a harmonious environment at our homes.
For the baker, it is used to make the bread rise and expand. But for the scientist, baker’s yeast is an organism worth examining in order to understand more about biological processes and diseases.
A number of biologists in the University at Buffalo College of Arts and Sciences regularly grow the species in their labs, and a few took time to discuss the wacky, wonderful science of S. cerevisiae.
"Yeast is a fungus that grows as a single cell, rather than as a mushroom," says Laura Rusche, Ph.D., UB associate professor of biological sciences.
Though each yeast organism is made up of just one cell, yeast cells live together in multicellular colonies. They reproduce through a process called budding, in which a "mother cell" grows a protrusion known as a "bud" that gets bigger and bigger until it's the same size as the mom.
Learn more about the amazing characteristics of the baker’s yeast over at PHYS.org.
(Image Credit: Douglas Levere / University at Buffalo)
To protect their soldiers from getting wounded by the weapons used in their time, the Ancient Greeks during the time of Alexander the Great developed this suit of armor made out of layers of linen glued together by animal fat. The said armor is capable of deflecting arrows. It can also reduce the impact of sword blows on the wearer’s body. But how does this ancient technology fare against modern weapons, such as new arrows and guns? You might be surprised at how comparable this armor is to a light kevlar, when it (the armor) is 5 times thicker.
It doesn’t fare well against fire, however, as it is flammable because of the animal fat.
Creating a good resumé might no longer be enough when applying for jobs, as companies no longer just look at a person’s resumé — they also look at a person’s social media activity, a process known as cybervetting.
These were readily available information in the form of raw data and metadata, meaning what they had posted, when and how; analytics information that would require processing, for example, results of sentiment analysis or topic modeling of an applicants' posts; and information related to users' online social network that is often used for social network analysis, for example who follows whom on social media.
The question is, are people okay with this method? It turns out, the responses are mixed. Some are worried, while some are not.
Losing parents at such a young age just might be the most devastating and the most emotionally painful experience one can have in this life. It would be really difficult to live life knowing that those who cared the most for you are already gone. Thankfully, there are those who would try to comfort you and make your life less painful.
A miniature golden retriever named Poppie, who lives in Colorado with her cat fostering humans, gently comforted an orphaned litter of kittens who needed reassurance after their mother died. Poppie lovingly rubbed her nose against the little ones who came up to her and even gave one kitten a cleaning much in the way a mother cat would do.
Neither the kittens nor Poppie like being separated from one another for too long.
The bride can be seen to be talking with someone on her phone, while her laptop sits on her lap. A few seconds later, the groom appears on camera and sits besides her. It appears that he is also interested in what makes his bride occupied during the wedding. The video, however, does not reveal what she is doing, and this prompted many Twitter users to theorize what’s really happening.
What are your thoughts about this one?
(Image Credit: Dinesh Joshi/ Twitter)
That's a good idea to ignore the relatives fake hugs and smile 🤣🤣
When it comes to eating sushi, a fatty tuna is what makes the experience great. Because of this, fish buyers dedicate at least a decade of their life trying to learn how to determine which tuna cut is fatty and which isn’t. But if you don’t have the time to train yourself in tuna examining, then this app called Tuna Scope, developed by Dentsu Inc., might help.
The firm trained the machine learning algorithm that powers the software using thousands of images of tuna tail cross-sections. The cut can tell human buyers a lot about the quality of fish they're about to purchase. In testing against human experts, Dentsu claims it found the app gave the same grade more than four out of five times.
The app is currently in use by one company, conveyor belt sushi chain Kura Sushi. The restaurant buys the majority of its tuna outside of Japan. Part of the reason the company started using the app is that it allows its employees to grade tuna without traveling. That's a significant perk during the current pandemic. Moreover, conveyor belt restaurants in Japan tend to offer the least expensive sushi, so there's a cost-saving aspect at play as well.
When she was an undergrad, MacKenzie Wade, along with her roommate, would bake cookies made out of mealworms. She would then take some of the cookies to a party, and, surprisingly, people loved the cookies. The cookies also turned up to be good conversation starters. Wade is not the only one promoting insect eating.
Their arguments are legion: Edible bugs are better for the environment and can help slow climate change, they can alleviate malnutrition and ease food insecurity. Also, they’re delicious.
“June beetles are fantastic,” said [Wade], a doctoral candidate in anthropology at UC Santa Barbara. “They truly taste like bacon.”
...Her research specializes in insects as food, and the cultural aversions to eating them.
[...]
What’s clear, Wade said, is that edible insects have tremendous potential to feed a growing population in an increasingly damaged world. Some 2 billion people, mostly in the global South, already eat insects, many species of which contain as much protein as beef, more iron than spinach, as much vitamin B12 as salmon and all nine amino acids.
Now that is nutritious, but I’ll take meat, fish, and vegetables, thank you very much.
More details about Wade’s research over at The Current.
There’s a game titled Final Sword in Nintendo eShop that looks oddly familiar: it looks like the Legend of Zelda. But it doesn’t just look like the latter; it even sounds like it! Perhaps the only differences of Final Sword are the frustrating game bugs, as well as the bad choice of sound that its developers used when the player falls to his death, as well as the ugly music on the “game over” screen.
There’s plenty of Dark Souls in the main character’s animation, and a boss fight with a dragon shows the creature posing just like its counterparts in Skyrim as it breathes a blast of fire. Several Japanese gamers have noted similarities to Monster Hunter as well. But perhaps the game Final Sword is most blatantly, oh, let’s call it “taking inspiration” from for the look of its menus and outdoor environments, is The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
Heck, even the game’s covers look incredibly alike…
[...]
But what’s really gotten Final Sword in trouble isn’t how much it looks like Zelda, but how it sounds like the beloved Nintendo franchise. Not long after its release earlier this month, players started noticing something very familiar about a certain piece of background music in Final Sword…
How far would you go in order to get attention? For this cat, named Lolly, he would die, or at least pretend to be.
A cat owner has been forced to post notes to her neighbours reassuring them they haven't killed her cat due to the moggy's continuous attention-seeking pranks.
According to Lesley Southam, the cat’s owner, Lolly would lie down so still that people would stop by to check if he’s okay.
It's not the only prank 14-year-old Lolly is known for, as he often enjoys jumping into stranger's cars and making himself at home after wandering into offices.
The note posted around the neighbourhood includes a picture of the prankster cat and reads: "Hi, my name is Lolly.
"My favourite thing is people and pretending I am dead at the side of the road.
With the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) now having over 20 films, with more films coming in the future, superhero comic book adaptations have indeed taken Hollywood by storm.
Using loosely serialised storytelling and logistically impressive crossover elements, the MCU has bent the very medium of cinema to its whim, liberally borrowing from the conventions of TV. With at least 14 more MCU films planned, as well as countless TV series to stream on Disney+, this is a road with no end in sight.
But is the big screen the best medium that we can use to give life to the superheroes that we once saw on comic books? For some, there is a better medium that could be used, and that medium is video games.
The suitability of video games as the ultimate platform for superhero adaptation has been obvious for decades; as far back as the late 1970s and 1980s, savvy developers were churning out crude 2D games featuring Superman, Batman and Spider-Man.
Unlike superhero movies which offer you the opportunity to view the narrative through the lens of a spectator, superhero video games offer you the opportunity to don the superhero’s suit. In other words, you get to be the hero, and you watch the story unfold through the eyes of the superhero himself. Such is the case of the recently released Iron Man VR and other games like it.
Superheroes have always been rooted in wish fulfilment and fantasies of power. Video games are perhaps the fullest realisation of this, giving players the agency to use unnatural abilities as they see fit...
Perhaps the watershed moment for superhero games came in 2009, with the release of Batman: Arkham Asylum. Set within the boundaries of the fictional Gotham prison, Asylum was engrossing, unfiltered Batman. Whether you were beating swarms of enemies to a pulp, gliding around environments with batlike stealth, or deploying one of several mechanical gadgets, it all felt right – more authentically nailing the tone of (some of) the comics than any film has ever managed. The Independent called it and the first of its sequels, 2011’s Batman: Arkham City, “two of the best action games ever made”. Superhero films may often struggle for validation in the world of cinema, but in games, they have shown they can spar with the best of ’em.
[...]
Compare this, for instance, to The Dark Knight, Christopher Nolan’s Michael Mann-inspired DC Comics adaptation, released in 2008. The Dark Knight’s reputation has stood the test of time, more or less – Heath Ledger’s tic-heavy posthumous-Oscar-winning performance is still held up as the gold standard of onscreen supervillainy, and the film proved monumental in legitimising superhero fare in the eyes of the cinema-going public. But it was also overstuffed, and criticisms often focus on the difficulty of balancing two distinct supervillains – Ledger’s Joker and Aaron Eckhart’s Two-Face – both competing for screen-time and attention.
People visit Italy every year during summer. While some go to the country to visit the Colosseum, the canals of Venice, or the Leaning Tower of Pisa, others go to the small village of Castelluccio, found in the Apennine Mountains of central Italy, to see what may perhaps be the most colorful masterpiece painted by none other than Mother Nature herself: the fields of blooming lentils and poppies.
See the photos taken by photographers Antonio Masiello and Tiziana Fabi over at The Atlantic.
Despite still holding a baby bottle in hand, this kid already is aware of his surroundings as well as the traffic laws of the land. When he noticed that the light was red, he immediately ordered his dad to stop. “It’s red, Daddy” he reminded his father, and so the father stopped. When it was green again, the father moved again, but he accelerated rather quickly, causing his son to say “oh my god! That’s so much!”
At first glance, peanut butter may just be a simple spread that you put on your bread. But on a closer look, it is more than that: it is a versatile ingredient, which you can use in many ways, such as in making tasty treats, breakfast food, and even in savory dishes that will surely make your mouth water.
The Guardian lists many peanut butter recipes that you could try making at the comfort of your own home. See them all over at the site.
Thanks to recent research, we now know that there is some sort of relation between the gut and the brain. And since we now know about this relationship, it would only be logical to think that what benefits one of them also benefits the other. New research suggests that foods and supplements that contain microbes could help us in our battle against depression.
"This is good quality research but it is a review of relatively preliminary data," Allan Young, a professor of mood disorders at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, King's College London, told the Science Media Centre in London.
"So while this systematic review of the research literature supports the notion that pre and probiotics may be helpful for people with anxiety and depression, more research is needed. These data do make a case for larger trials to be carried out," said Young, who wasn't involved in the review.
[...]
The researchers said their review had several caveats: None of the included studies lasted very long; and the number of participants in each was small.
