SCIENCE and things like that

[Daehawk]

Trying to reduce your salt intake? Japanese scientists develop ELECTRIC CHOPSTICKS that transmit sodium ions from food to your mouth to recreate the sensation of saltiness

The device uses a weak electrical current to transmit sodium ions from food, through the chopsticks, to the mouth where they create a sense of saltiness, said Professor Miyashita.

'As a result, the salty taste enhances 1.5 times,' he said.

[Daehawk]

https://www.sciencealert.com/new-eye-dr ... r-with-age

New Eye Drops Improve Aging Vision Without Glasses. Here's How They Work

[LordMortis]

https://www.sciencealert.com/new-eye-dr ... r-with-age

New Eye Drops Improve Aging Vision Without Glasses. Here's How They Work

I've seen commercials but wondered about prescription and cost. Now I have an answer.

Vuity is currently approved for once-daily use in each eye. A bottle will cost around US$80, requires a prescription and will last for nearly a month if used daily. For some people, it could be a great alternative or adjunct to glasses or surgery.

I bet it would do me wonders. I'm not sure I'd come up with $840 a year for it though. I see NSAIDs as an up and coming alternative but that's off the table for me. I'm no supposed to take them but I already take aspirin for my heart.

[Daehawk]

its the neat new thing.

[Holman]

https://www.sciencealert.com/new-eye-dr ... r-with-age

New Eye Drops Improve Aging Vision Without Glasses. Here's How They Work

I've seen commercials but wondered about prescription and cost. Now I have an answer.

Vuity is currently approved for once-daily use in each eye. A bottle will cost around US$80, requires a prescription and will last for nearly a month if used daily. For some people, it could be a great alternative or adjunct to glasses or surgery.

I bet it would do me wonders. I'm not sure I'd come up with $840 a year for it though. I see NSAIDs as an up and coming alternative but that's off the table for me. I'm no supposed to take them but I already take aspirin for my heart.

Yeah, that's a lot of money. I have a pretty complex astigmatism, but I can get a new pair of quality glasses every four or five years for $300.

[Max Peck]

Feast your eyes on the first image of the black hole at the center of our Milky Way

At the heart of our Milky Way galaxy lurks a supermassive black hole more than four million times the mass of our Sun. Scientists with the international Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration have now produced the first image of that black hole, showing that it has a ring structure. The collaboration made the announcement during a livestreamed press conference this morning from the European Southern Observatory's headquarters in Munich, Germany, as well as numerous other simultaneous press conferences around the world. Six papers about the research have been published in a special issue of The Astronomical Journal Letters.

[Daehawk]

Can't.....resist......

[Daehawk]

Brain parasite may make you more attractive.



Mind-Altering Parasite May Make Infected People More Attractive, Study Suggests

The brain-hijacking parasite Toxoplasma gondii seems to be almost everywhere. The microscopic invader is thought to infect up to 50 percent of people, and a range of studies suggests it may alter human behavior, in addition to that of many other animals.

The parasite has been linked with a large range of neurological disorders, including schizophrenia and psychotic episodes, and scientists keep uncovering more mysterious effects that may result from infection.

In one such new study, researchers found that men and women infected by the parasite ended up being rated as more attractive and healthier-looking than non-infected individuals.

[Kraken]

Cool! It's spread by cat waste, among other things, so as a lifelong cat waste disposal servant I've probably got it.

[Max Peck]

I wonder what the mechanism would be for a brain parasite to make the host more attractive to others. Is it simply the power of positive thinking?

It seems more likely to me that the researchers drew that conclusion because they themselves are under the control of brain parasites who want to craft a narrative about how life is better with brain parasites.

[Isgrimnur]

[Smoove_B]

I wonder what the mechanism would be for a brain parasite to make the host more attractive to others. Is it simply the power of positive thinking?

The studies I've read about where they were researching how toxoplasma affects behavior involved mice infected with the parasite then eaten by cats. The parasite somehow makes the mice less fearful of the cats, dramatically increasing the chances they'll be eaten - so the parasite can complete its life cycle inside the cat's body (the only known host).

For humans:

One work found an increased risk of traffic accidents in people infected with the parasite; another found changes in responses to cat odour.

It's possible that what makes them more attractive is that they seem more confident (i.e. fearless) in their behavior.

F-ing parasites.

[Max Peck]

If sublime confidence is a symptom, I'm definitely not infected.

[Kraken]

Cat people are just inherently sexy.

[Daehawk]

It also mentions possible control of pheromones and hormones.

[stessier]

This is cool. I never knew how the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn were defined.

[Daehawk]

I love the tropics.

[Holman]

Cool! It's spread by cat waste, among other things, so as a lifelong cat waste disposal servant I've probably got it.

Bah. There's nothing to this ridiculous theory, you sexy beast.

(Call me!)

[Daehawk]

Summer solstice 2022: Sensual traditions on the longest day of the year

Do you feel a stirring in your heart? Maybe a jump in your libido? Heck, are you just getting plain ol' hot and bothered?
The summer solstice for 2022 is arriving. The longest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere kicks off the official calendar start of summer and with it comes maximum sunshine, lots of heat, romantic vibes and the bounty of the harvest.
The solstice is historically linked to fertility -- both the plant and human variety -- in destinations around the world.

[Daehawk]

[Max Peck]

New bacterium roughly the size, shape of an eyelash smashes size record

Clinging to sunken debris in shallow, marine mangrove forests in the French Caribbean, tiny thread-like organisms—perfectly visible to the naked eye—have earned the title of the largest bacteria ever known.

Measuring around a centimeter long, they are roughly the size and shape of a human eyelash, batting away the competition at 5,000 times the size of garden-variety bacteria and 50 times the size of bacteria previously considered giant. In human terms, this is akin to coming across a person as tall as Mount Everest.

[stessier]

Might also go in the Youtube thread - the 100 Prisoner Dilemma

[Daehawk]

Ive seen that and thought I posted it. But I cant find if I did so guess not.

[Smoove_B]

Submitted without comment:

If you think spiders are creepy when they’re alive, just wait until you see what they can do when they’re dead. A team of engineers at Rice University in Texas successfully reanimated dead spiders to serve as mechanical grippers.

That’s right. In proof that we have permanently strayed from God’s light, the team published a study of their Frankensteinian experiment in Advanced Science on July 26, in which they were able to control a dead spider’s legs with puffs of air. The authors described the creation as “necrobotics,” and believe that it could be used for a range of purposes including capturing insects and even assembling microelectronics.

“Prior research has focused on bioinspired systems, where researchers look to nature for inspiration and mimic the physical traits of living organisms in engineered systems,” Faye Yap, a mechanical engineer at Rice and lead author of the paper, told The Daily Beast in an email. She later added, “Necrobotics, on the other hand, uses biotic materials, which are non-living materials derived from once-living organisms, such as the necrobotic gripper sourced from a spider in our work.”

[Unagi]

Honestly, it would be cool for someone to totally empty out a King Crab, and replace their insides with robotics, as see it scuttle around... I mean, I suppose you could just not use the crab carcass and all, but you know... nightmares and stuff.

[Smoove_B]

"Necrobiotics" is not a term we should ever get comfortable with.

[Daehawk]

Poor little dead spiders.

[Sudy]

Wizards of the Dark Woods have been pulling off this kind of shit for decades. Move along.

[Sudy]

I feel the need to share that I scrolled past an article on this titled "Back From The Grave" which reminded me of the song with the same name by Mountain Witch. The very next song that came up on my randomized Spotify playlist of 274 songs was that song. Clearly the commies are in my head.

[Smoove_B]

Quite appropriate with the release of the Sandman on Netflix - Spiders seem to have REM-like sleep:

Barred from her lab by pandemic restrictions, behavioral ecologist Daniela C. Rößler caught local jumping spiders and kept them in clear plastic boxes on her windowsill, planning to test their reactions to 3-D-printed models of predatory spiders. When she came home from dinner one night, though, she noticed something strange. “They were all hanging from the lids of their boxes,” says Rößler, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Konstanz in Germany. She had never seen jumping spiders suspended motionless on silk lines like this before. “I had no idea what happened,” Rößler says. “I thought they were dead.”

It turns out the jumping spiders were simply asleep—and that Rößler had discovered an alternate sleeping habit of the species Evarcha arcuata, which had been known to build silk sleeping dens in curled-up dead leaves. But the real surprise came when she decided to spy on them all night. She bought a cheap night-vision camera, duct-taped some magnifying lenses to it (E. arcuata is typically around six millimeters long) and aimed it at a sleeping female spider. What Rößler saw on the recording astonished her.

Also:

There is abundant evidence for REM sleep or an analogous state in many mammals and birds. Scientists have also found something similar in two reptile species and hints of a state like it in zebra fish. Both octopuses and cuttlefish appear to have an REM phase, complete with eye movements, arm twitches, and rapid skin color and texture changes that resemble displays they perform when awake. Beyond those animals, there are glimmers but not much evidence of REM sleep in invertebrates, including insects and arachnids.

“It wouldn’t surprise me at all if [jumping spiders] have dreams,” says behavioral ecologist Lisa Taylor, who studies the spiders at the University of Florida and was not involved in the new research. “They live in such a rich sensory world, and we know they have amazing cognitive capabilities and memory.”

What's next:

Yet as clues that nonhuman animals dream continue to accumulate, the philosophical implications are potentially huge, says David Peña-Guzmán, a philosopher at San Francisco State University and author of the new book When Animals Dream: The Hidden World of Animal Consciousness. Dreaming offers an entry point into questions of awareness in other animals: it is difficult to imagine that even a simple dream is possible without something like an ego or an “I” experiencing it, he adds. So if spiders dream, “it might mean that we start talking about spiders having something like a minimal self,” says Peña-Guzmán, who was not involved with the spider research.

The jumping spiders’ visible eye tubes might offer a way to test the theory that rapid eye movements are related to visual dream sequences and if those scenes are replays of things the arachnids witnessed while awake, Rößler says. It may be possible to play spiderlings a video of a simple scene of, say, a cricket hopping while tracking and measuring their eye movements and then see if those movements are re-created during sleep.

Remember this the next time you have a spider in your house...

[Kraken]

I project at least a rudimentary consciousness onto virtually all living things. Even plants can sense their environment and pass chemical messages. Dreaming is a little more advanced than I would expect from arthropods, though.

[stessier]

I thought this was a cool demonstration given what happened in Death Valley recently.

[AWS260]

‘Angry minion’ with no anus not related to humans after all, scientists conclude

[Holman]

‘Angry minion’ with no anus not related to humans after all, human scientists conclude

FTFY

[Unagi]

I thought this was a cool demonstration given what happened in Death Valley recently.

Watching the video makes me wonder why they feel they could make a seal around the cup when it’s placed over grass.

Seems obvious.

[Daehawk]

Yes! Both of those are emptying due to air being let in by a bad seal. It wouldn't absorb water but releasing air. Exactly.

[Daehawk]

[Isgrimnur]

Freethink

In a recent experiment, [Cambridge researchers] changed a kidney’s blood type from A to the universal type O — making it theoretically available for any patient, including those with type B blood.
...
Using a machine called a normothermic perfusion machine, they flushed three deceased donor kidneys with blood containing an enzyme that works like a pair of “molecular scissors,” slicing out those A or B antigen blood markers.

With those markers stripped away, the kidneys became type O in just a few hours.
...
The team’s research is scheduled to be published in coming months in the British Journal of Surgery. Similar work has previously been performed in lungs.

[The Meal]

Holy shit. That's big.

[Smoove_B]

That is...amazing.