Enginering students from Johns Hopkins University prototyped an edible adhesive tape, called Tastee Tape, to keep burritos and other wrapped foods sealed up during consumption. (In the image above, they used tape colored with dye.)
"First, we learned about the science around tape and different adhesives, and then we worked to find edible counterparts," said Tyler Guarino, who teamed up with fellow engineering seniors Marie Eric, Rachel Nie, and Erin Walsh on the project.
The team tested a "multitude" of ingredients and combinations before settling on a final recipe, which is edible, safe, and has the tensile strength you can trust to hold together a fat burrito.
Because they are applying for a patent, team members declined to disclose their secret formula.
"What I can say is that all its ingredients are safe to consume, are food grade, and are common food and dietary additives," Guarino said.
Months spent prototyping resulted in rectangular strips measuring half an inch by two inches. These come affixed to sheets of waxed paper. To use, simply remove a strip from the sheet, wet thoroughly to activate, and apply to your lunch, dinner, or favorite snack.
Cognitive scientist/psychologist Tom Stafford created this powerful example of chromostereopsis, a fantastic optical illusion where depth is delivered just by using two colors at opposite ends of the light spectrum. From Mind Hacks:
There are big individual differences in perception of the effect. This isn't just in terms of strength, although obviously I'm one of those it hits hard. People also differ in which colour looks closer. For most people it is red, with blue looking deeper or further away. I'm in the minority, so if you're like me this reverse of the image above should look more natural: the pupil set deeper than the surrounding eye[…]
The way chromostereopsis works is not entirely understood. Even the great Michael Bach, who wrote for the Mind Hacks book, describes the explanation for the phenomenon as 'multi-varied and intricate'. That red and blue are at opposite ends of the light spectrum has something to do with it, and the consequent fact that different wavelengths of light will be focussed differently on the back of the eyes. This may also be why some people report that their glasses intensify the effect. The luminance of the image and the background also seems to be important.
Veterinarians in an animal hospital in Ahmedabad, India say that every day in recent weeks, animal rescuers are bringing in dozens of birds that have dropped from the sky from dehydration and exhaustion. A brutal heatwave in the country's western Gujarat state has left little water for animals—human and otherwise. From Al Jazeera:
Doctors in an animal hospital managed by the non-profit Jivdaya Charitable Trust in Ahmedabad said they have treated thousands of birds in the last few weeks[…]
Animal doctors at the trust-run hospital were seen feeding birds multi-vitamin tablets and injecting water into their mouths using syringes on Wednesday.
On Friday in Fayetteville, Arkansas's Baum-Walker Stadium, a commotion erupted that was unrelated to the Arkansas-Vanderbilt baseball game being played. A raccoon was scurrying around the stands. Eventually, the critter made its way to the feet of fan Grant Harmon so he reached down and grabbed it. From Yahoo! Sports:
A self-described "avid outdoorsman" who loves to hunt and fish, Harmon has a lot of family in the Mulberry/Ozark area about an hour south of Fayetteville, which is where most of his outdoor experiences came from.
"It was definitely a first for me, but I mean, it wasn't anything I was afraid of necessarily," Harmon said. "Raccoon hunting is not an uncommon thing in my family and friends. It was definitely something I was roughly familiar with, just maybe not in that exact sense."
Harmon triumphantly lifted the raccoon up to the crowd — during which it turned its head and bit him in the hand[…]
He carried the raccoon out of the stadium but before returning to his seat, medics apparently urged him to seek attention for the bite at a hospital. He ended up with a rabies shot.
"The rabies shot was not any fun," Harmon said. "They had to put it right into my hand, like between my fingers, so that was not very pleasant, I will say. … The bite itself was not terrible at all, but the rabies shot, it has got my hand extra stiff this afternoon."
There's a water tower in Kingsland, Arkansas—birthplace of Johnny Cash—that features a silhouette painting of the Man in Black. A prankster with good aim fired a shot at the tower and now Johnny appears to be perpetually pissing on the town. See the video below! From Kansas.com:
Betty Graham, water office manager, told the Herald it could take as long as a week to fix the damage[…]
"People think it's funny but a lot of hard work and effort went into getting the grant to get this painted," Graham said. "It's sad that someone could do this. Please if anyone heard the shot and knows the time or was out last night and saw something suspicious please let me or someone with the water Dept or the sheriff Dept know."
This Japanese TV commercial for National batteries is absolutely wonderful. I'm not sure it would sway my battery buying decisions but it's certainly more entertaining than most TV commercials today.
Get up to get down. One of my all-time favorite bands, the unbreakable Afghan Whigs, are back in the ring with new music and a tour. As we wait impatiently for the September arrival of their new LP, titled How Do You Burn?, we can revel in the restrained intensity of "The Getaway" (above) and the unrestrained intensity of "I'll Make You See God" (below). This time out, Greg Dulli, John Curley, Rick Nelson, and Patrick Keeler are joined by Christopher Thorn on guitar. Meanwhile, the album features longtime Whigs co-conspirators Susan Marshall, Van Hunt, Marcy Mays, and the great Mark Lanegan who died in February.
As NASA gets serious about building bases on the Moon and eventually sending humans to Mars and beyond, it becomes increasingly important to understand how offworld agriculture might work. Now, University of Florida biologists have grown plants in lunar soil for the first time ever. When they planted the seeds, they had no idea if they'd sprout or not. From University of Florida News:
The scientists only had 12 grams — just a few teaspoons — of lunar soil with which to do this experiment. On loan from NASA, this soil was collected during the Apollo 11, 12 and 17 missions to the moon. [Horticultural scientists Anna-Lisa Paul and Rob Ferl] applied three times over the course of 11 years for a chance to work with the lunar regolith.
The small amount of soil, not to mention its incalculable historical and scientific significance, meant that Paul and Ferl had to design a small scale, carefully choreographed experiment. To grow their tiny lunar garden, the researchers used thimble-sized wells in plastic plates normally used to culture cells. Each well functioned as a pot. Once they filled each "pot" with approximately a gram of lunar soil, the scientists moistened the soil with a nutrient solution and added a few seeds from the Arabidopsis plant.
Arabidopsis is widely used in the plant sciences because its genetic code has been fully mapped. Growing Arabidopsis in the lunar soil allowed the researchers more insight into how the soil affected the plants, down to the level of gene expression.
"At the genetic level, the plants were pulling out the tools typically used to cope with stressors, such as salt and metals or oxidative stress, so we can infer that the plants perceive the lunar soil environment as stressful," Paul said. "Ultimately, we would like to use the gene expression data to help address how we can ameliorate the stress responses to the level where plants — particularly crops — are able to grow in lunar soil with very little impact to their health."
Last month, we learned that researchers excavating North Dakota's Tanis fossil site found an incredibly well-preserved leg of a dinosaur. The creature—and others at the site—were likely killed by the impact of the 12 kilometer-wide Chicxulub asteroid that crashed into the Gulf of Mexico 66 million years ago and eradicated 80% of Earth's animals. Turns out, the scientists may also have found a minuscule fragment of that asteroid encased in a bit of amber. The story of the discovery is told in Dinosaur Apocalpyse, a new BBC Earth documentary also airing on PBS's Nova. From CNN:
It's "like getting a sample vial, running back in time and getting a sample from the impact site and then saving it for science," [University of Manchester paleontologist Robert] DePalmasaid.
DePalma said they hope to be able to confirm what the asteroid was made from and where it might be from — efforts that have caught the attention of NASA; DePalma presented his findings last month at the agency'sGoddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
"This example of what might be a little tiny fragment, maybe micrograms, of the colliding asteroid — the fact that a record of that is preserved, would be mind-blowing," said Goddard Chief Scientist Jim Garvin, who has studied impact cratering on Earth and Mars.
Last week in Boynton Beach, Florida, a woman collapsed at the wheel on a busy road in the middle of traffic. Brave passers-by sprang into action. Here's the story as the police tell it:
As her car slowly entered the intersection at Congress Avenue, her co-worker raced across the street waving her arms to get the attention of other motorists. Her co-worker was in another car and saw her slumped over the steering wheel. Several people got out of their cars and worked together to stop the moving car. One woman grabbed a dumbbell from her car and a man used it to smash the rear passenger's side window. Another man then climbed through the window to unlock the passenger's side door. The car was then put in park and the Good Samaritans pushed it to a nearby 7-Eleven parking lot where a nurse who was on the phone with 911 provided medical attention until the fire department arrives. We are sharing this video in hopes of learning the identities of all the strangers who came together to save this woman's life. They are heroes and we want to bring them back together at the police department to recognize them and meet the woman they rescued. We need your help to do this. If you or someone you know is in this video or helped in any way, please contact PIO Stephanie Slater at slaters@bbfl.us.
On Friday, one of the US National Oceanic and Administration's Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites—known as GOES—snapped this curious image from space depicting clouds spelling out "Go." From Live Science:
Seeing recognizable shapes in clouds or other unrelated objects is known as pareidolia, where the human brain sees familiar patterns in random shapes. The so-called "Face on Mars," this wild pareidolia rat on the Red Planet and scary screaming skull views and more from space are just a few examples of the psychological phenomenon.
Or that's what They'd want us to believe, anyway.
If you zoom in on this imagery, which was captured via the #GOESEast 🛰️, the clouds seem to form the word "GO." 😃 pic.twitter.com/JkfdzvckwP
Students at Philadelphia's St. Anselm School, a K-8 Catholic elementary school, hosted a plant sale where kids could purchase Mother's Day faux roses as a gift for their parent. Turns out, each flower was actually a pair of red thong underwear folded into the shape of a rose. Ooops. Video below. From the principal's email admitting to the blunder:
"The roses sold at our Mother's Day plant sale were not the single faux flowers originally intended. Instead, the item was a Valentine's Day gift intended for adults. The administration will determine how the error occurred and take steps to prevent a further recurrence."
Next week, a subcommittee of the US House Intelligence Committee will hear from two Pentagon officials about UFO sightings. The hearing follows last summer's release of a Pentagon report meant to contain "a detailed analysis of unidentified aerial phenomena data and intelligence" but was really just nine pages of not much at all. In the hot seat for next week's hearing—Congress's first open session on the UFO "problem" since 1970— are Ronald S. Moultrie, under secretary of defense for intelligence and security, and Scott W. Bray, deputy director of naval intelligence. From the New York Times:
"The federal government and intelligence community have a critical role to play in contextualizing and analyzing reports," said Representative Adam B. Schiff, the California Democrat who is chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. He said the purpose of the hearing was to illuminate "one of the great mysteries of our time and to break the cycle of excessive secrecy and speculation with truth and transparency."
The report delivered to Congress last June was done by the intelligence community along with the Pentagon's Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon Task Force, which the Pentagon replaced in November with a new office, the Airborne Object Identification and Management Synchronization Group. The group's job is to "detect, identify and attribute objects of interest in Special Use Airspace and to assess and mitigate any associated threats to safety of flight and national security."
Mr. Moultrie oversees that new group, which will be a focus of the upcoming hearings[…]
In recent years, intelligence reports and statements by officials have cited concerns about a national security threat from U.F.O.s through advanced technology hinted at by reports from pilots of, for example, vehicles traveling at extreme speeds without visible means of propulsion.
Today is former musicologist and conductor Clive Wearing's birthday. He's 84 years old. But if you told him that, he'd forget less than a minute later. Wearing has both anterograde and retrograde amnesia, preventing him from forming new memories or accessing old ones. The condition arose in 1985 after he contracted a form of herpes called Herpesviral encephalitis that affects the brain and central nervous system. Above is a short video about him.
And here is an excerpt from a 2005 documentary interview with Wearing:
Do you miss your old life?
Yes. But I've never been conscious to think that. So I've never been bored or upset. I've never been anything at all, it's exactly the same as death. No dreams even. Day and night, the same.
When you miss your old life… what do you miss?
The fact that I was a musician. And in love.
Above is a brief documentary about Wearing's curious condition. From Wikipedia:
His memory for events lasts between seven and thirty seconds. He spends every day "waking up" every 20 seconds or so, "restarting" his consciousness once the timespan of his short-term memory (about 30 seconds) has elapsed. During this time he repeatedly questions why he has not seen a doctor, as he constantly believes that he has only recently awoken from a comatose state. If he is engaged in conversation he is able to provide answers to questions, but he cannot stay in the flow of conversation for longer than a few sentences and is angered if he is asked about his current situation.
Wearing remembers little of his life before 1985. He knows, for example, that he has children from an earlier marriage, but he cannot remember their names. His love for his second wife, Deborah, whom he married the year before his illness began, is undiminished. He greets her joyously every time they meet, believing either that he has not seen her in years or that they have never met before, even though she may have just left the room momentarily. When he goes out dining with his wife he can remember the names of food, but he cannot link them with taste, as he forgets what food he is eating by the time it has reached his mouth[…]
Despite having no memory of specific musical pieces when they are mentioned by name, and an extremely limited recall of his previous musical knowledge, Wearing remains capable of playing complex piano and organ pieces, sight-reading, and conducting a choir.
For more on Wearing, read Oliver Sacks's 2007 profile of him in the New Yorker:
The Internet noticed striking similarities between a Duke University commencement speech given on Sunday by Priya Parkash and Sarah Abushaar's Harvard commencement speech from 2014, that's been viewed on YouTube around 3.8 million times. Comparison above. Duke University is investigating and Parkash has hired a PR firm, as one does, and issued a statement:
"When I was asked to give the commencement speech," the statement read, "I was thrilled by such an honor and I sought advice from respected friends and family about topics I might address. I was embarrassed and confused to find out too late that some of the suggested passages were taken from a recent commencement speech at another university. I take full responsibility for this oversight and I regret if this incident has in any way distracted from the accomplishments of the Duke class of 2022."
A shipment of the tropical fruit Mangosteen arrived at the US border carrying an unwelcome stowaway never seen in this country before. Customs officials at the Pharr International Bridge on the Texas-Mexico border apparently spotted a single Cochabamba leaf beetle—bad news for crops—in one of the fruit boxes. According to the US Customs and Border Protection agriculture specialists, Cochabambas have never made it this far north before. From US Customs and Border Protection:
This pest can cause agricultural and economic damage as their larvae skeletonize the leaf surface and adults eat plant and tree leaves and cause damage to foliage. This pest is found in central and south America and its travel pattern indicates that it is migrating north. The shipment was refused entry and returned to Mexico.
NASA's James Webb Space Telescope is now perfectly aligned, as evidenced by this absolutely incredible image of the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way that is around 160,000 light years away from Earth. Below, compare the new image with the previous one captured by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. From NASA:
Here, a close-up of the MIRI image is compared to a past image of the same target taken with NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope's Infrared Array Camera (at 8.0 microns). The retired Spitzer telescope was one of NASA's Great Observatories and the first to provide high-resolution images of the near- and mid-infrared universe. Webb, with its significantly larger primary mirror and improved detectors, will allow us to see the infrared sky with improved clarity, enabling even more discoveries.
For example, Webb's MIRI image shows the interstellar gas in unprecedented detail. Here, you can see the emission from "polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons," or molecules of carbon and hydrogen that play an important role in the thermal balance and chemistry of interstellar gas. When Webb is ready to begin science observations, studies such as these with MIRI will help give astronomers new insights into the birth of stars and protoplanetary systems.
Do you even lift? Nah, don't need to. A gentleman so desired six-pack abs, but couldn't seem to reach his goal at the gym, so he enlisted the support of Manchester, UK tattoo artist Dean Gunther. Results! See below. From Oddity Central:
I had seen really bad ones attempted before. Because I specialize in color realism I wanted to give it a go," Gunther said. "I thought it would be funny as hell."
After finding a test subject for his goofy project, Gunther ran into a roadblock soon after starting work. The client apparently wanted to quit just one hour into the first day, but was convinced to go on, and made it to the two days of heavy inking.
The apocalypse seemingly arrived early in China's eastern port city of Zhoushan with the sky appearing blood red over the weekend. What the hell? Turns out that the horrific hue was caused by the lights of boats in the area. From The Independent:
According to the experts, the weather in Zhoushan port city was perfect for a refraction phenomenon as the sky was cloudy with drizzle which led to an unusual reddening of the sky, triggering a brief panic.
A member from the meteorological bureau explained that when weather conditions are good, it leads to formation of more water in the atmosphere. This forms aerosols which then refract and scatter the light of fishing boats and create the red sky seen by the public," the official said, the report added.
