Thursday Things: Mysteries of Mind Edition
21 May 2020. Vol 2 No 21 By Dan McGirt. #41
Welcome to Thursday Things! This week: spiders, robots, smart glass, electric thoughts, and more! Read on!
Maybe they were on to something? Photo by Jezael Melgoza on Unsplash
An AI made of glass? Mind blown. Although AI seems a bit of a reach here, it is still an impressive design feat: Scientists Create an AI From a Sheet of Glass
In an extraordinary bit of left-field research, scientists from the University of Wisconsin–Madison have found a way to create artificially intelligent glass that can recognize images without any need for sensors, circuits, or even a power source — and it could one day save your phone’s battery life.
Speaking of mind-blowing research: Neuroscientists Think They've Found a Previously Unknown Form of Neural Communication
Scientists think they've identified a previously unknown form of neural communication that self-propagates across brain tissue, and can leap wirelessly from neurons in one section of brain tissue to another – even if they've been surgically severed.
If these neural signals can jump from neuron to neuron inside a single brain even when the physical connection between those tissues has been severed, can such signals jump to cells in a different brain? That’s beyond what this research found, but it does raise an intriguing possibility as the basis for something like telepathy. Science fiction is becoming science fact faster than you can think it!
I worked from home (or from various coffee shops, hotels, and other undisclosed locations) even before the Global Pandemic Lockdown 2020, so my normal routine has not been very much disrupted (except for my gym being closed, leading to my bathroom scale being declared non-essential for the duration). But for those whose jobs were office-based, the sudden shift to work-from-home has been quite an upheaval. You’ve all adapted, I’m sure. But what happens when the all clear is sounded? This piece has some interesting observations and predictions about office life in the post-coronavirus world: What if You Don't Want to Go Back to the Office?
At least one poll from early in the pandemic suggests a strong preference for remote work. Gallup found that almost 60% of Americans working from home would prefer to work remotely “as much as possible” after restrictions are lifted, with 40% saying they preferred to return to the workplace.
A few weeks ago Thursday Things included an item on a team that took advantage of the reduced highway traffic to break the (illegal, yet awesome) Cannonball Run record for a cross-country drive. The record has apparently been broken at least six more times since then. It’s the golden age of illegal high speed coast-to-coast driving feats!
It will be super ironic if the thing that ultimately saves us all from the coronavirus is … a tobacco-based vaccine. It’s like those stories where the hero has to team up with his arch-nemesis against an even bigger threat. Tobacco-Based Coronavirus Vaccine Poised for Human Tests
An experimental Covid-19 vaccine developed by cigarette maker British American Tobacco Plc is poised to begin testing in humans.
Pre-clinical tests of the vaccine showed a positive immune response, the London-based maker of Lucky Strike cigarettes said Friday in a statement.
Really did not need to know this. Spiders that hunt in packs can bring down prey more than 22 TIMES their size (Don’t click if images of spider swarms disturbs you…)
Spiders that hunt in packs can bring down prey more than 22 times their size, while solitary arachnids only tend to target insects half as big as themselves, research shows.
Tiny tangle-web social spiders known as Anelosimus eximius live in their thousands in webs up to 25-foot long, suspended in the trees of the South American rainforest.
Known for eating larger prey, they can take on insects as large as the four-and-a-half-inch giant grasshopper, swarming over it before it can escape.
Just what we need right now in Georgia — an invasion of South American Death Lizards.
Georgia’s Department of Natural Resources (DNR) is warning residents that an invasive species of giant lizards has established in the state, posing a threat to wildlife and crops because they eat “anything they want.”
And more from the NY Post: “The Argentine tegu lizard is spreading through several southern states, feasting on the eggs of ground-nesting birds and other reptiles, such as American alligators and the endangered gopher tortoise, according to the Georgia Department of Natural Resources (DNR).”
The robots are coming! Today they’re monitoring crops and herding sheep. Tomorrow they’ll be monitoring and herding us. Do androids dream of electric sheep?
Thank you for reading. See you next Thursday!