Never really got into the Foo Fighters. Not sure why not. Most of what I’ve heard, I liked. I just wasn’t looking for new bands at the time, I suppose.
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Some wicked good impersonations!
When foreigners try to teach other foreigners how to speak like Americans — you know, to sound like winners — it’s enjoyable. If you’re American, you feel pretty skilled, because you can already do it.
There used to be a lot more of these types of videos on YouTube. I don’t know why they’re becoming scarcer and weirder. They’re probably not PC anymore for the “America is awful” crowd.
So here’s two.
In the first, sounds to my ears like the only things they aren’t real great at are Canadian accents. I’d definitely be fooled by the rest.
And they’re Irish actors, which makes it all the more remarkable.
Even Americans who live in the Northeast can’t get that Boston accent as right….
The second is designed to teach people how to talk like Rachel from “Friends.” It’s just eye candy.
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Researchers One Step Closer to Bomb-Sniffing Cyborg Locusts
Brandie Jefferson, Washington University in St. Louis / August 14, 2020 / Phys.org
If you want to enhance a locust to be used as a bomb-sniffing bug, there are a few technical challenges that need solving before sending it into the field.
I would have said “Duh!” and ended it right there, but there’s more:
Previous work in Raman’s lab led to the discovery that the locust olfactory system could be decoded as an ‘or-of-ands’ logical operation. This allowed researchers to determine what a locust was smelling in different contexts.
Explosive vapors were injected via a hole into a box where the locust sat in a tiny vehicle.
Stop it! You’re killing me!
As the locust was driven around and sniffed different concentrations of vapors, researchers studied its odor-related brain activity.
Wait — who was doing the driving? You kind of glossed over that…
With this knowledge, the researchers were able to look for similar patterns when they exposed locusts to vapors from TNT, DNT, RDX, PETN and ammonium nitrate—a chemically diverse set of explosives. “Most surprisingly,” Raman said, “we could clearly see the neurons responded differently to TNT and DNT, as well as these other explosive chemical vapors.”
OK, that sounds sciencey.
Now they knew that the locusts could detect and discriminate between different explosives, but in order to seek out a bomb, a locust would have to know from which direction the odor emanated.
Enter the “odor box and locust mobile.“
{Catches breath}
I’d love to see the specs for that.
(Good name for a band, though.)
“You know when you’re close to the coffee shop, the coffee smell is stronger, and when you’re farther away, you smell it less? That’s what we were looking at,” Raman said. The explosive vapors were injected via a hole in the box where the locust sat in a tiny vehicle.
Will you please stop saying that??
As the locust was driven around and sniffed different concentrations of vapors, researchers studied its odor-related brain activity.
The signals in the bugs’ brains reflected those differences in vapor concentration.
And, thankfully, they end on a sane note:
The idea isn’t as strange as it might first sound, Raman said.
That’s using the ol’ noodle…
“This is not that different from in the old days, when coal miners used canaries,” he said. “People use pigs for finding truffles. It’s a similar approach—using a biological organism—this is just a bit more sophisticated.”
But they’ll just never live down those locust vehicles.
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Submitted by Slapout:
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WYSIWYG
Written by D B Dukes:
Moon Porn? Yep, moon porn.
That little Canadian girl that does the Vintage Space channel on YouTube did a video about a prank that the Apollo 15 astronauts, who were also the Apollo 12 backup crew, pulled on the Apollo 12 prime crew.
The backup crew prepared the checklists for the prime crew, and the backups inserted a few things that were, shall we say, unexpected.
And, you can see the full unedited checklists for both the moon walkers on NASA’s Website.
The nude ladies aren’t really the reason to look at the checklists, of course — heck, you have the Internet; you can find nekkid ladies anywhere — but it is interesting to see actual checklists and understand what the astronauts had to do while they were standing on the moon. Which is kind of a shame. I mean, really, imagine you’re actually standing on the moon, and instead of being able to just take it all in, you have 24 pages of tasks.
Bonus: at 0:51 in the video, you’ll find that “EMU” gets not only a check-mark next to it on the moon checklist, but a separate tab all to itself as well.
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