February 20, 2020

Baby elephant on parade

Don't know which is funnier--him chasing the birds, or running to Mama when he falls down!

February 19, 2020

Scientists Demonstrate Direct Brain-to-Brain Communication in Humans

We humans have evolved a rich repertoire of communication, from gesture to sophisticated languages. All of these forms of communication link otherwise separate individuals in such a way that they can share and express their singular experiences and work together collaboratively. In a new study, technology replaces language as a means of communicating by directly linking the activity of human brains. Electrical activity from the brains of a pair of human subjects was transmitted to the brain of a third individual in the form of magnetic signals, which conveyed an instruction to perform a task in a particular manner. This study opens the door to extraordinary new means of human collaboration while, at the same time, blurring fundamental notions about individual identity and autonomy in disconcerting ways.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/scientists-demonstrate-direct-brain-to-brain-communication-in-humans/

And in an older article:
https://www.iflscience.com/brain/scientists-invent-interface-that-connects-3-peoples-brains-so-they-can-send-each-other-thoughts/


Obviously this would never work on brainless rethuglicans.

February 19, 2020

India Builds Wall to Hide Slum During Trump Visit

February 14, 2020

Washable and Breathable Orthopedic cast

As someone who has had to wear numerous casts over the years (arm, wrists, ankles), I am loving this idea! Don't have to try putting a garbage bag over it to take a shower, and doesn't itch, or stink like hell when it comes off.

February 14, 2020

7 amazing ways artificial intelligence is used in healthcare

One of the biggest impacts of new technology - and perhaps the most life-changing - will be felt in healthcare.

1. Detecting skin cancer

2. Eye health

3. Drug development

4. Knowing when someone in a coma will awaken

5. Read CT scans

6. Recognise depression

7. Robot doctors



https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/09/7-amazing-ways-artificial-intelligence-is-used-in-healthcare/


Pretty amazing stuff in the article.

February 10, 2020

A new way to profit from ancient Alaskan forests--leave them standing

In the Tongass National Forest, threatened by expanded logging, a Native-owned corporation is being paid to leave some old-growth trees standing.

When I visit Sealaska’s corporate headquarters in downtown Juneau, snow-capped mountains loom in the background, shrouded by a December sky that’s a palette of every imaginable shade of gray. Heavy snow coats the ground for the first time in the season, a mark of how quickly the climate is changing. As recently as the 1990s, many people told me, there would have been regular knee-deep snows.

Now, every time Anthony Malott, the Stanford-educated CEO of Sealaska, flies home, there’s more rock on the mountains below, and less ice.

The nervousness over rapid change hangs over every conversation I have in Southeast Alaska. People talk about it as a climate refuge, “one of the last temperate places that’s going to be left,” one says. They point to the plants struggling to flower in the strange false spring of December, and the ocean turning warm, forcing the salmon north to Bristol Bay, where the cold currents they live on still swirl.

Malott is Tlingit, one of the three main Native peoples who live up and down the islands and channels of Southeast Alaska, and part of the much larger cultural grouping that goes down to Washington State. The peoples of Southeast Alaska—like their neighbors as far south as Seattle—were part of an international, but shared, world, in which Haida, Tsimshian, and Tlingit fought and traded and raided each other under a common religious and clan system. It was supervised by a form of international governance that regulated, to painstaking degree, the use of the productive, fragile forests and rivers of the Northwest Coast.

The land was so rich that the Northwest Coast people had developed settled towns and fortified cities without agriculture. They didn’t need it. Every year millions of salmon, which had spent their lives getting fat off the shrimp and eels of the North Pacific, flung themselves up the rocky streams that drain off the Coast Range, and their bodies infused energy and nutrients into the forests and the creatures that lived there.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/02/new-way-to-profit-from-ancient-alaskan-forests-leave-them-standing/?cmpid=org=ngp::mc=social::src=linkedin::cmp=editorial::add=li20200209science-newscienceforestryprofit:rid=&sf229836249=1

Long article, with lots of pics, well worth reading.

February 10, 2020

96 year old Dancing Queen

February 10, 2020

New baby goat!

He's about a week and a half old now, and just a little bundle of joy. He's already growing (still about the size of a Chihuahua), has just discovered jumping up and down off things, and that he has pogo sticks for legs (hilarious, but can't get a clip). Pure Nigerian, his name is Adam, son of Rachel. I will post Nancy's baby when she has it. She has the blue eyes, so hope baby does too.

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February 8, 2020

The Call Of The Wild

I WILL be seeing this! Looks totally awesome. Always loved the book, and Harrison Ford.

February 6, 2020

Opinions on garden flame-throwers

Anyone use a propane torch for weeding? Is it a pain to use? Recommendations,.

Getting ready for spring, and the weeds left over from last year