The photo above shows an abundance of boulders on the surface of asteroid Bennu (101955 Bennu), as taken by the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft.

The aforementioned spacecraft  will maneuver towards the surface of Bennu, which at a span of 500 meters  is the height of the Empire State, to sample its rugged surface and return the samples to Earth in September 2023.

To read more on these boulders and Bennu itself, click here.

image credit: apod.nasa.gov

Meet GROVER, a new AI (Artificial Intelligence) created to detect fake news spreading wide in the digital age. Besides detecting fake news, GROVER can actually also make them.

Dan Robitzski describes the capabilities of this algorithm:

The system, GROVER, can create fake and misleading news articles that are more believable than those written by humans, according to research shared to the preprint server ArXiv on Wednesday — and also detect them.

   “We find that best current discriminators can classify neural fake news from real, human-written, news with 73% accuracy, assuming access to a moderate level of training data,” the researchers wrote in the paper. “Counterintuitively, the best defense against Grover turns out to be Grover itself, with 92% accuracy.”

To show how good GROVER is, Robitzki explains how it churns out a news article falsely asserting that vaccines are linked to autism:

   Writing in the style of The NYT‘s science section, GROVER generated not only a headline, but also an author’s name and the opening of a news article that attributes a link between vaccines and autism to scientists from UC San Diego and the federal government:

    Those who have been vaccinated against measles have a more than 5-fold higher chance of developing autism, researchers at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report today in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.

Even with GROVER's own set of risks, scientists who built it concede that it is so far the best line of defense against fake news - even those generated by itself.

image credit:@gwern on twitter

Before you travel, you might want to read this article over at the South China Morning Post by Jamie Carter.

A survey by 1st Move International ranks the world’s most dangerous countries by mode of travels - trains, planes, and automobiles - based on the number of accidents and deaths since 1968:

   1. USA - 10 accidents, 4 200 deaths

   2. SPAIN  - 7 accidents, 1367 deaths

   3. JAPAN - 3 accidents, 946 deaths

   4. INDONESIA - 5  accidents, 873 deaths

   5. NIGERIA - 5 accidents, 787 deaths  

Here is a list of the five most- accident-prone airlines, for your consideration:

 1. American Airlines - 5 accidents, 2578 deaths

   2. Aeroflot - 4 accidents, 718 deaths

   3. China Airlines - 3 accidents, 692 deaths

   4. Pan Am - 3 accidents, 758 deaths

   5. Malaysia Airlines - 2 accidents, 537 deaths

In addition to air travel, the article further ranks the five eadliest national rail systems in 2018:

1. India - 2 accidents, 59 deaths

2. Turkey - 2 accidents, 33 deaths

3. South Africa - 3 accidents, 20 deaths

4. Taiwan - 1 accident, 18 deaths

5. Egypt - 1 accident, 15 deaths

Lastly, should you decide to go driving around for your next getaway trip, here are the five deadliest driving destinations in 2018:

1. India - 150,785 deaths

2. China - 58,022 deaths

3. Brazil - 8,651 deaths

4. USA - 35,092 deaths

5. Indonesia - 31,282 deaths

Do remember that these statistics are here not to scare you, but to make you aware of the situations and precautions one must take on traveling. Travel safe, kids!

image credit: wikimedia.org

A Swedish start-up company named Cangoroo announced plans to deploy pogo sticks in select cities to directly compete with e-scooters as a transportation option. San Francisco CBS provides details on the launch of the pogo sticks rental in San Francisco:

On Friday, Cangoroo CEO and co-founder Adam Mikkelsen said his company chose San Francisco as one of its launch cities because of its reputation as place of innovation.

 He added that Cangoroo could start deploying anywhere between 100 and 200 pogo sticks in San Francisco as early as late summer or possibly in the fall.

Mikkelsen said Cangoroo would be ready to work with city officials, including the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, on regulations and safety before launching the product.

Would you use pogo sticks as a mode of transportation, should it be made available in your city?

image credit: Cangoroo.tech

Hold your junk foods at bay, children, because researchers from the University of Naples have discovered that junk foods are linked to food allergies. The study observed children aged 6-12 and separated them into three groups: those with (a) food allergies, (b) respiratory allergies, and (c) healthy controls. The study found the following:

    "..a significant correlation between subcutaneous levels of advanced glycation end products (AGEs) and junk food consumption,

“ that children with food allergies presented with higher levels of subcutaneous levels of AGEs than those children with respiratory allergies or no allergies at all.

“ the research team found compelling evidence relating to the mechanism of action elicited by AGEs in determining food allergy. "

The article further explains what AGEs are, following the mention of it from the results of the study:

  AGEs are proteins or lipids that become glycated after exposure to sugars and are present at high levels in junk foods - deriving from sugars, processed foods, microwaved foods and roasted or barbequed meats.

Having established a correlation between AGEs and junk food consumption, and how children with food allergies have higher levels of AGEs than the rest of the groups observed - do you think that there’s a chance that eating your favourite amount of junk food would give you a food allergy?

Image: Bill Branson/National Cancer Institute/Wikimedia

When Rachel Palma came down with symptoms like hallucinations, disorientations and confusion when dealing with everyday tasks and objects, her doctor diagnosed her with brain cancer.

Indeed, a brain scan revealed a small lesion in the left frontal lobe, and Palma went in for a biopsy to see if the tumor was malignant.

Then things went weird … really weird.

"We did a small dissection of the brain tissue and what we saw was a very well encapsulated, firm lesion that was ovoid," said [Neurosurgeon Dr. Jonathan Rasouli.] "It looked like a quail egg: Same size, same look, same firmness."

"Wait a second, this is clearly not a brain tumor," he recalled saying at the time.

Asked what a brain tumor looks like, he laughed: "It doesn't look like a quail egg. Most brain tumors are very soft, very mushy, they're not very well defined, they're infiltrative and it's difficult to get completely around them."

Quickly, Rasouli took the extracted lesion away from the surgical field, placed it under a surgical microscope and opened it up.

"And what came out was a baby tapeworm," he said.

Read the rest of Palma’s unusual encounter with brain tapeworm over at CNN.

Michelle Woo tried out an experiment which turned into a fun activity, a way for her daughter to learn and practice at her own volition, and a medium of communication between the two of them.

The “noticing wall” as Woo called it, began with her tearing out a worksheet page with a question or an exercise and taping it to the side of their kitchen island. She wanted to see if her daughter noticed it:

That evening, she did. Without any prompting, she quietly got a pen, sat on the floor and completed the worksheet. And that was that! I didn’t say “Good job!” or anything at all—instead, when she was off at school the next day, I simply took down the completed page and put up a new one. And then she finished that one, too. So I put up another and another and another.

Due to her daughter’s enthusiasm in answering the papers taped on the noticing wall, Woo’s little experiment has now become a zero-pressure space for the mother and daughter to write notes to each other, ask questions, jot down fun things, and make plans.

Maybe if I do this on my bedroom wall, I can also get my tasks done on time.

Image: Michelle Woo

In many parts of rural South Korea, plummeting birth rate means that there aren’t enough children to fill a school. In order to save a local school from being shut down, the local education office decides to enroll older villagers that wanted to learn to read and write.

Not only has this move saved their school from being shut down, but it has also reinstated the elderly women's dreams of getting their education and grabbing new opportunities in town.

Choe Sang-Hun has the story over at The New York Times:

Every morning on her way to school, Hwang Wol-geum, a first grader, rides the same yellow bus as three of her family members: One is a kindergartner, another a third grader and the other a fifth grader.

Ms. Hwang is 70 — and her schoolmates are her grandchildren.

Illiterate all her life, she remembers hiding behind a tree and weeping as she saw her friends trot off to school six decades ago …

Help came unexpectedly this year from the local school that was running out of school-age children and was desperate to fill its classrooms with students.

Image: Chang W. Lee

It’s probably a good idea to inspect what you’re buying, especially if it costs a lot of money. Case in point: a woman in China bought a parking space for 200,000 yuan ($29,000) without seeing it first, and was surprised to find out that the space was so narrow that the only way she could move out of her parked car was to climb out of the sunroof!

The space is located conveniently near to the elevator in the parking garage, but inconveniently in between two walls, leaving just enough room for a car to pull in, but not enough for the driver to actually open to door and get out. The woman, surnamed Tao, said that the only way she could actually leave her vehicle was through the sunroof.

Tao has already decided to bring the matter to the court upon the company's refusal to give her a refund. Read the full article over at Shanghaiist.

Familiar food can bring comfort when one’s traveling in a foreign country, so it’s understandable that when Sora24 Japanese language correspondent Masanuki Sunakoma visited Morocco, he wanted a taste of something familiar: burger and fries.

Burger is a safe choice, Masanuki thought, so imagine his surprise when his order of “burger and fries” in a local Moroccan restaurant didn’t translate to “burger and a side of fries.” Instead, Masanuki got exactly what he ordered ...

Scientists have revealed that the dragonfish's so-called invisible fangs are actually made up of the same material as the human teeth. The dragonfish, a deep sea species called Aristostomias scintillans, has virtually-transparent fangs that are made up of an outer layer of enamel - but unlike the enamel in our teeth - they contain nanoscale crystals that prevent light from reflecting off the fish's tooth surface.

The dragonfish’s “invisible” teeth makes lets them catch their prey easier, as the prey is less likely to notice the predator’s mouth.

Image: Audrey Velasco-Hogan