As it turns out, pigs have been the inspiration for several other recent medical and technological innovations in the last few months. One such instance of pig science is a report from a group of Russian scientists who are implanting pancreatic cells from young pigs that produce insulin into diabetics. The sample size is still quite small (only 4 people have received the treatment), but the results are worth watching....
The woodland has a strangely serene, primeval feel. A sudden wave of grunting reveals large black shapes moving in the distance. A pickup approaches, further breaking the reverie, and out hops a slender middle-aged man in a ball cap. “Buron Lanier,” he says, extending a hand. “Sorry I’m late. I was just finishing up with a calf.” The shapes, Lanier’s Red Angus cattle, amble over. This forest, 100 acres of his 400-acre Piney Woods Farm, is their grazing ground—a modern incarnation of an ancient technique called silvopasture, an integration of forest and fauna....
Probably a helmet, right? Does it look like the one below? The first thing that probably jumps out to you here is that there are no horns. The helmet, discovered at a Norwegian farm in the 1940s, is one of the few complete Viking helmets ever discovered. Crucially, none of them have horns. The idea that Viking helmets ever even had horns is surprisingly recent, despite the fact that the culture is well-documented in written history....
The IPBES will release a groundbreaking report later this year on their findings, which they refer to as the most “comprehensive assessment of its kind.” The full package will be some 1,500 pages long, authored by 145 experts from more than 50 countries and drawing from more than 15,000 scientific and government sources. But the summary is alarming enough on its own. “We are eroding the very foundations of our economies, livelihoods, food security, health, and quality of life worldwide,” IPBES chair Sir Robert Watson said in a press release....
Check out our inaugural episode here below, and keep scrolling for more info about the facts contained therein. Fact: Thomas Jefferson was super into sloths From Sara Chodosh I unearthed this fact while researching a story about how humans might have hunted giant sloths. These beings were eight feet tall, had thick hides, and despite being on the slow side would have been quite hard to kill. The actual study was pretty straightforward: Archaeologists found human footprints embedded within sloth tracks, and it seemed like the sloths were taking evasive action whenever there were humans tracking them (isolated sloth prints go in a roughly straight line, whereas those with human tracks on top show signs of sharp turns)....
Fact: Women once stripped off their tops before dueling to avoid infection By Sophie Bushwick In August 1892, in Verduz, Lichtenstein, Princess Pauline Metternich and the Countess Kielmannsegg disagreed over flower arrangements for a concert. They decided the only way to resolve their argument was with bloodshed. This may seem like a frivolous excuse for a potentially deadly sword fight, but at the time, men often dueled over similarly superficial matters....
Fact: For decades you could pay to gawk at premature babies on the boardwalk By Rachel Feltman This week’s fact is inspired by my favorite episode of The Memory Palace which you should absolutely listen to. The episode mentions a sideshow attraction at Coney Island where folks paid a few cents to look at sick infants. I’ve been fascinated by this story ever since, and when I saw that a book on the subject by Dawn Raffel came out just last year, I decided it was time to do some digging and share it with you all....
Fact: “The United States versus Forty Barrels and Twenty Kegs of Coca Cola” led to one of the first human studies on caffeine By Claire Maldarelli I failed to follow through with a winter break goal of mine: Reduce the amount of caffeine I drink. So one night, while hyped up on my afternoon coffee, I started researching the physiological effects of caffeine—and came across this strangely titled lawsuit from 1916....
That extra screen isn’t very big. It’s a 1.1-inch, wide-format display with a resolution of just 126 x 294. That sounds paltry, but it’s plenty to give people a rudimentary idea of what their picture will look like when shooting a selfie. It can also display notifications and other info like remaining battery life, time, and temperature. A powerful camera bump for the Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra The rest of the gear enveloped by the camera bump is similarly impressive....
All of these mystic items are part of an ongoing biology experiment at Michigan State University (MSU) called the Beal seed experiment, which seeks to find out how long seeds can remain viable in soil—and this recent successful germination of 13 seeds shows that the answer is at least 142 years. Named for botanist William James Beal, who started the experiment, the project has become an ongoing and living legacy of the university’s botanists....
The Australian twins, now four years old, are, indeed, not identical. But they’re not fraternal, either. They’re what the medical community calls semi-identical, doctors concluded after a variety of tests—only the second ever case of semi-identical, or sesquizygotic, twins ever reported. “I think it’s remarkable that the genetic techniques we have today allows us to find these kind of twinings,” says Megan Dennis, who studies human genetics at the University of California, Davis....
Its debut device will feature flexible vibrating bases that wrap around each foot and are inserted into each shoe, and a small pack that resembles an AirPods case that can be detached for charging. Once fitted, the vibrating components are aligned along the sensitive nerves on the foot and can send coded walking instructions to the user. In its present form, this device is intended to help those with low vision navigate a route that comes from a smartphone app....
Last week, researchers from the University of Toulouse in France published a study in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences showing that the species Anelosimus eximius decides whether it should move toward prey based on the vibrations from not only the prey itself but also of its fellow spiders. “What is fantastic is that there is no leadership role among these spiders,” Raphael Jeanson, one of the authors of the paper and a researcher at the Research Center on Animal Cognition (CRCA) at the University of Toulouse, told Live Science....
It doesn’t matter if they’re energetic preschoolers or brooding teenagers—it’s hard to keep them entertained while you work or check items off your daily to-do list. Add the challenge of continuing their education at home, and things may start to spiral out of control. Some good news though: You can find reinforcements online, and we’re not talking about hiring a tutor off Craigslist. As a way to collaborate with parents as we wait out the pandemic, a handful of online platforms, services, and publishers have made their content available to keep students learning while in lockdown....
Since 2015, DoNotPay has offered increasingly nuanced and diverse legal advice via AI software trained on copious amounts of past court cases and law data. Last month, the startup’s latest toolkit update included the abilities to negotiate lower bills and cancel unwanted subscriptions while sparing consumers from lengthy customer service interactions. Taking things one step even further in 2023, DoNotPay now seeks to aid defendants in a real-life court setting....
A new analysis of Tanystropheus bones from Switzerland indicates that the fossils scattered around the world actually belonged to two different species and one was much bigger than the other. The larger Tanystropheus species was adapted for an aquatic lifestyle and likely used its long neck to sneak up on unsuspecting fish. Researchers reported the findings this week in the journal Current Biology. “What makes the Tanystropheus neck such a puzzle is not only its extraordinary length but also the fact that it is composed of only 13 vertebrae,” says Olivier Rieppel, a paleontologist at the Field Museumin Chicago who coauthored the findings....
Researchers have known for some time that this dazzling, deadly display is a typical feeding tactic of all anglerfish species, but a study on the rare Pacific footballfish sheds new light on how they get their sparkle. According to results published in the Journal of Fish Biology, this particular species doesn’t just emit a glow: it also converts its shining colors into “an amazing disco ball of light,” says study author Todd Clardy, the ichthyology collections manager at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County (NHM)....
According to experts, snoring is the result of air passing through your breathing passageway when it is partially blocked. The tissues located on top of your airway vibrate, producing the often irritating sound of snoring. This can be disruptive, not only to you, but to your partner too. The good news is there’s a tool that you can use to open your airway and improve your breathing at night. FDA-approved and highly rated, VitalSleep is a mouthpiece designed to function as an effective and comfortable snoring solution....
For generations, scientists such as Sir Isaac Newton believed that time was immutable and unchanging. Newton was of the school of absolutes; Einstein was of the school of relatives. In Einstein’s special theory of relativity, our precious unit of time was not the same on one occasion as in the next. A second’s duration depended on the speed of the observer. Humanity preferred certainty in culture and life. However, Einstein uncovered that a second is not a second is not a second....
As part of a five-year Emory University study funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, veterans with PTSD take the drug or a placebo, don a virtual-reality helmet, and re-create their worst nightmares: rumbling down the road to Falluja, feeling the vibration beneath the seat, hearing the rat-a-tat of gunfire just before a bomb explodes. A therapist guides them safely through the traumatic memory. The study is double-blind, so neither the researchers nor the patients know what’s in the pills, but one group is showing an improvement in symptoms sooner than they normally would....
