The Tesla Model S about to be charged by the new Snakebot.
Tesla Motors and Elon Musk have taken to Twitter and YouTube to spread the news that a robotic snake will charge your Tesla car in the near future. The reactions this has spurred all over the internet have, naturally, covered a lot of strange feelings.
It seems that Tesla believes that if you’re going to have an electric car, you would of course need an equally futuristic charging device. So to build you one, the engineers at Musk’s company have gone to nature and asked for one of the most provocative shapes that they could add to the already stunningly gorgeous Model S.
Let’s be honest and make a comparison. Every one of us has a smartphone now, right? You too. And how many times have you had battery problems? Well, the device having so many functions, it’s bound to drain up that battery. A lot. Now, imagine that but only on a car. Needless to say that a car will consume much more electricity than your everyday iPhone, right?
Apparently, Tesla has thought about this. And about the fact that, honestly, we all forget to charge our phones when we’re not using them, and often end up with a dead battery on our hands. And there’s really not much you can do about it from there.
This new snake is perfect for this. As Tesla says, you just get your car in your garage, open the charger lid via a button onboard, and then go to eat that long awaited dinner. Normally, you could forget to plug the car in (how strange that still sounds), but now the snake charger prototype will do it for you. So in the morning when you get up to go to work, the car will be in perfect condition.
Elon Musk had announced this strange device back in December when he tweeted that they were working on it. Since then, a lot of people have been asking whether the strange arm will be offensive towards humans and whether it will require blood offerings every now and then. We’ve yet to receive an answer to these questions.
After the video was launched, it’s been already viewed 1.5 million times on YouTube, with reactions ranging from excitement to terror, from joy to fear and even to some strange sexual innuendos about the future prospects for robot reproduction.
However, Musk has not responded to any of these worries, but has admitted in another Twitter post that the Snakebot does seem wrong.
Image source: cbc.ca
Teenagers did not develop health problems as a result of their past marijuana consumption.
A recent study conducted by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh shows that marijuana consumption among teenagers is not linked to health problems. Until recently it was believed that chronic smokers of marijuana may develop respiratory problems or psychotic affections, but new findings prove the opposite.
The research has been conducted with the participation of 408 teenage boys, whose evolution has been closely followed within a time interval of 20 years. At the end of the research, participants were 30 years old, so scientists could estimate their evolution by comparing their physical and mental state at the beginning of the research with the results registered at the end of the experiment.
Participants were divided into four large groups, based on their use of marijuana. Thus, researchers identified non-smokers or rare smokers of marijuana, early chronic consumers and regular smokers, who have started consuming the plant in their teenage years and continued until adulthood.
The study was first started in the 1980s, when investigators began interviewing 14-year-old males about their marijuana consumption habits. The same participants were interviewed again in 2009-2010, when respondents were 36 years old; thus, enabling scientists to make the comparison between the two periods.
The experiment has proven scientists that there is no connection between marijuana consumption and the health problems that these individuals developed at an older age. On the contrary, investigators confessed that very few participants had developed respiratory and mental affections during this time interval, their percentage being too small to constitute a pattern.
Studies have further revealed that the more mature a person gets, the less inclined is to smoke marijuana. According to the answers that respondents have provided, participants have lowered the consumption of marijuana with the passing of the years. Chronic smokers consumed marijuana only 200 times per year by the time they reached 22 years old.
Researchers at the Pittsburgh University have explained that the recent study has been conducted with the intention to find out whether marijuana should be legalized or not. Although findings indicate that there is no actual risk in consuming marijuana, scientists have agreed that additional tests may be required to confirm the results of the current experiment.
Image source: cdn2.vox-cdn.com
The new Cadillac luxury sedan will cost $84,990.
Car lovers may disagree on many things but they all know the next super-sedan: Cadillac CTS-V 2016. This new prototype has all the qualifications to compete against luxury vehicles like BMW M5 and Corvette Z06, customers’ favorite options until now.
Cadillac’s new CTS-V model is fast enough get you nought to sixty in 3.6 seconds. This due to the 640 horsepower that the vehicle has been packed with and its 6.2-liter V8 engine. These result tests are quite remarkable considering that the M5 beamer has only been packed with 600 horsepower and requires 3.7 seconds to reach the same speed level (0-60 mph).
Buyers should not let themselves deceived by the gigantic forms of the car. CST-V may be robust but it is also surprisingly fast, proving that safe cars get along very well with illegal speed limits. Drivers may actually be tempted to push the gas pedal harder knowing that the luxury sedan will protect them against all possible incidents.
The breaking system was designed to provide all the support that drivers need in unexpected moments. CST-V’s Michelin tires have been foreseen with 6-piston breaking systems on the front wheels and 4-piston on the back wheels.
Drivers also benefit of the car’s computer assistance for better response in front of road obstacles. The Magnetic Ride Control has also left many drivers open-mouthed as the car remains just as comfortable at all times, whether on the Autobahn or through the recently bombed streets of Afghanistan. To this, you can also add the four driving modes Sport, Race, Touring and Snow, each with its own advantages.
The vehicle has drawn everyone’s interest, particularly market analysts, who have been waiting for Cadillac’s new model for a long time. The impressive abilities of the new prototype have not remained unnoticed, particularly since the CST-V measures up to BMW’s value. Yet, the Merc could bear down the 2016 Cadillac or at least that’s what Mercedes fans hope to see soon.
Customers, on the other hand, have not been particularly impressed by the car’s tech specifications. The majority of them have stated that Cadillac needs more than one new vehicle to make up for its past failures. The $84,990 starting price did not change their opinion, either.
Image source: caranddriver.com
A new method of non-invasive spinal cord stimulation is proving revolutionary.
Although it’s been a known fact for quite a while that there are good yet expensive SCS operations that helped those paralyzed, now there’s a revolutionary breakthrough in the field of research. A new method of non-invasive spinal cord stimulation helps paralyzed people move.
It all started back in the 90s, when Cristopher Reeve, the man famous for playing Superman in four different Superman movies, three of which were major successes, met Dr. V. Reggie Edgerton, a physiologist during a science convention. But Reeve was not in his prime form. He had just injured himself in a horse ride, and was left paralyzed.
Reeve employed Edgerton to work for the development of new ways of improving the life of people with physical disabilities. But even before that, Edgerton had been working in this particular area for a long time. Now, the doctor has accumulated close to 40 years trying to figure out the real connections between the brain, the spinal cord, and the limbs, so as to help paraplegics everywhere.
Now, he may have just uncovered something revolutionary.
During a four weeks trial period, he and a UCLA team managed to restore mobility to five people who had been paralyzed in the lower part of their bodies for years.
What they did was devise a completely new and relatively affordable type of spinal cord stimulation. As you may know, spinal cord stimulation implies the implanting via surgery of a stimulator near the spinal cord, usually at the lumbar region. This stimulator sends electrical impulses to the cord, enhancing receptivity.
The new strategy is called transcutaneous stimulation and involves the placing of electrodes at specific places outside the body. Naturally this procedure drastically lowers all the risks, as it eliminates all the probable mishaps of surgery, and also the costs of such invasive procedures.
After the first four weeks of promising results, Edgerton extended the test period to eighteen weeks, during which he treated the men in 45 minute daily sessions. The biggest breakthrough was that when the experiments were done, the five men were still able to move their legs, albeit the mobility slowly decreased back to the paralyzed state.
The men also represented different age groups, from 19 years to 56. The test proved that the technique worked no matter the age of the patient. The previous treatment available managed to restore mobility to four people. But the biggest issue with it was the $100,000 price. This newest method is said that it will cost one tenth of that.
The final goal for Edgerton is to further develop this method as to achieve maximum efficiency, as well as making it available on a world-wide range, so that people could just buy it and exercise in their homes.
Image source: massdevice.com
It turns out that Uber’s app might be a lot more complicated than it seems. The taxi-hauling company has responded to claims that it shows on its in-app map some cars that aren’t really there, saying that there are several factors that might influence the driver’s position.
If a car’s location isn’t accurately represented on the passenger app, you can blame either latency, the driver’s safety or the company’s aiming to keep a good user experience inside the app.
Uber’s official statements came in response to a report that quoted some Uber drivers who said that the Uber app is more like a ‘screensaver’ when it comes to visually representing the actual location of the cars. The researchers behind the report had also included a video filmed by one of the company’s drivers, who wanted to demonstrate how inaccurate the app is.
This is not the first time Uber has been accused of showing the so-called phantom cars. An Uber spokesperson told Mashable that there are many factors that might feed this theory. For once, there’s a lag between the driver’s GPS and the app accessed by the passenger; if the driver is in motion, the GPS might have some trouble sending an accurate location in real-time.
Even though one of the company’s goals is showing an accurate representation of the cars on the in-app map, that is not always possible. Another reason is that the app is designed to only spot the nearest eight cars, in an attempt to keep the screen easy to read and to interact with.
At the same time, drivers’ safety is also something to be protected, as some of the individual cars do not appear on the map until a ride is requested. An inside source has confirmed that the Uber app will not show more cars – only less, if there are more than eight – than are in the area.
Lyft, Uber’s number one rival, seems to be using a similar tactic in keeping the screen as decluttered as it can. User experience comes first, and if you would have trouble tapping on the desired ride because of the large number of cars appearing on the screen, user feedback would suffer.
In some ‘volatile situations,’ as explained by the company in a blog post, locations of individual drivers might sometimes be hidden from the app’s map until a ride is requested. Uber said it was doing this so it could protect their drivers’ safety. One event when this was necessary is the violent anti-Uber protests occurring in Paris earlier this summer.
Image Source: Mac World
The molecule resulted in lower glucose level and 5% body weight loss.
A team of researchers at the University of Southampton have discovered and claimed that their Compound 14 could be the diet pill that mimics exercise to help the battle against obesity and type 2 diabetes. They are one of the issues of grave concern in United States, where one third of Americans are considered obese and type 2 diabetes makes up for 95% of the cases.
Chemical biology professor, Dr. Ali Tavassoli, and his team have developed a drug that inhibits the activity of ATIC, a cellular enzyme with a vital role in metabolism. How it works is that when the ATIC’s function is blocked, another molecule ZMP gathers in the cell and triggers the energy sensor known as AMPK, thus tricking them into thinking the body is low on energy.
In order to make up for it, the cells then instantly power up and try to increase the energy by accelerating the body’s metabolism and heightening glucose intake. That is a process commonly occurring during exercise and is widely attributed to weight loss.
To test out the new Compound 14, the team of scientists have gathered two separates groups of mice. One group consisted of rodents on a normal diet, with normal weight and glucose levels. The other group included mice who were on a diet rich in fat, reaching the status of obese, and who were also glucose intolerant, which is the sign of pre-diabetes.
After just one appliance of the drug, it was noticed that while normal mice held steady in their glucose levels, obese mice showed reduced levels that lowered them to the standard number. It is presumed that this could see the same effects in humans suffering from type 2 diabetes or, at the very least, prevent early signs from developing into the full condition.
Furthermore, the normal mice recorded no weight loss, but the obese mice lost 5% of their body weight after a seven day course of Compound 14.
By accelerating the metabolism and forcing the cells into overdrive, the molecule is able to trick the body into thinking it’s exercising, thus lowering glucose levels and resulting in weight loss. Researchers believe this could pave the way for new medication that will battle against widely-spread obesity and diabetes alike.
However, before anyone tosses their workout gear and packs up their exercise mats, it is to be noted that the drug only functions on those suffering from obesity, so the normal way of losing weight is still applicable to them and should not rush into pharmacies just yet.
So far, it has not been proven to be harmless to humans, but trials are expected to be underway soon enough and Compound 14 could be integrated into innovative drugs sometime in the near future.
Image source: healthydietbase.com
GM rice could cut the greenhouse gas emissions by 90%.
An international team of scientists have recently created a new type of GMO, and the genetically modified rice is pro-environment. However, they will have a tough sell ahead of them in order to publicly market and distribute the genetically modified organism (GMO), likely to be opposed by other commercial groups in the same business.
Genetically modified rice is “green rice” though, proven to have astounding benefits to the environment and the dreaded greenhouse gasses that daily harm our planet’s atmosphere.
Over half of the world’s population has rice as a dietary stable, but rice fields across the globe are one of the most harmful and largest sources of methane, a gas that is 20 times more damaging to the atmosphere than carbon dioxide. Rice paddies yearly produce between 25 to 100 million metric tons of methane, which accounts for 17% of the total atmospheric pollution.
The team of scientists from the United States, China and Sweden, however, have found a solution that will severely reduce the content of methane by an astonishing 90%, due to a genetically modified rice created by transferring a barley gene into the normal rice plant.
It resulted into a breed that had bigger grains and smaller roots, the latter of which are the cause of carbon dioxide transferring into the earth that further transforms into methane lifted up into the atmosphere. By reducing the size of the roots and focusing more on the comestible grain, the amount of greenhouse gas emissions were reduced drastically.
The study has been deemed as “a tremendous opportunity for more sustainable rice cultivation” by a researcher at the Netherlands Institute of Ecology, cutting the greenhouse gas emissions while able to still feed the large amount of population partaking in rice. However, it has been mentioned that the trial requires to be proven on a larger scale before it’s sent to farmers around the world.
There might be a hitch in their path though. Genetically modified organisms are not generally well received and most products of the same kind had faced great opposition along the years. In 2002, Golden Rice, a breed of rice which contains beta-carotene in order to fight malnutrition in poorer countries, has not been allowed to appear on the market.
It is the hope of the researchers that the same will not happen with their particular breed of GM rice, as it has been created to combat the infamous issue of greenhouse gas emissions, which is one of the main concerns of our planet today.
Image source: businessinsider.com
The two little blue and orange dots in the center see the birth of a galaxy.
ALMA and the birth of galaxies are now studied by European researchers who have uncovered new information about one of the most distant histories we know. No, I’m not talking about actual written texts, I’m talking about the earliest recoded information from the birth of the Universe.
The Big Bang is said to have happened about 13.8 billion years ago. At least, that is the common belief shared by astrophysicists today. When it formed, it quickly expanded. Back in its first billion years of age, it was full of hydrogen gas. As it expanded, the bigger and brighter galaxies made up of stars, quasars and powered by supermassive black holes, started to literally “demystify” the universe.
This last period was dubbed the “reionization.” Still, the scientists aimed to find out more about the galaxies that made up the universe before this period. So, to do this, the set up the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to detect these galaxies using specific qualities that these were known to have had. After this, they teamed it with the Very Large Telescope to produce images from as early as 800 million years after the birth of the Universe.
To spot the elusive blobs of light, they set the devices to look for a really faint glow of ionized carbon which appeared from the hydrogen gas clouds and gave them a red-orange look. The scientists were not looking for those formations which were the brightest in the sky back then, but by the very common ones which appeared at around that period and were the ones responsible for the reionization.
This reionization period is the one that set the stage for the very common galaxies that we all are seeing – and experiencing – today. Our own Milky Way included.
The results amazed even the researchers. Robert Maiolino and his team of scientists, along with Andrea Ferrera, the co-author of the study from Pisa, Italy, discovered an image of the galaxy BDF 3299, one of the early galaxies from the formation of the Universe.
The amazing thing about the image (presented above) is that the red glow of ionized carbon is not coming from the center of the star formation (as was previously believed to be the case) but from a side. The researchers speculate that this may be due to the ever-growing number of stars in that galaxy, which eventually pushed the ionization process to the edge.
This is definitely one of the record deep observations which were made with the instrument, but Maiolino says that it is still to reach is full capabilities.
Image source: phys.org
According to an appeals court decision on Tuesday, Facebook cannot fight off the 381 search warrants which have been issued in a criminal fraud investigation. The warrants are seeking to look at the criminal’s Facebook postings, an extensive request causing unease for the social network.
The state ruling of the Supreme Court Appellate Division is not giving prosecutors more information than they already had, as Facebook had previously lost other rulings and data had already been turned over. But this particular case has been under close scrutiny from social media companies and civil libertarians.
Facebook’s latest statement on the issue says the company is currently considering whether or not it should continue fighting the prosecutors off.
A Facebook spokesperson said that their reluctance to grant the government such extensive search warrants where they get to indefinitely keep the account information of hundreds of people comes from considering them unconstitutional. Moreover, privacy issues and important concerns about people’s online information will rise as well.
On the other hand, the warrants issued received a unanimous decision from the Appellate Division’s First Department, and following them through led to building a massive case of fraud for disabilities benefits against retired agents in the police and fire department retirees.
According to Joan Vollero, district attorney’s office spokeswoman, many cases were built on evidence found on their Facebook accounts, which came in direct opposition to the false claims the defendants made. For example, pictures contradicted the lies they told the Social Security Administration about the psychological devastation that doesn’t allow them to work.
It turns out that a large number of the defendants had posted on Facebook pictures or statuses about their full and active lives: travelling overseas, flying helicopters, and martial arts courses are just some of them.
Facebook’s concern over the bulk warrants was acknowledged by the five-judge panel, but that didn’t stop them from issuing them, even though only 62 people out of the 381 warrants have been charged. Prosecutors offered a document of 93 pages detailing on why these accounts were targeted out of the 1,000 people part of the initial investigation.
Facebook was backed up by other online players, such as Google or Twitter, all of whom thought prosecutors had cast too wide a net. Civil liberties unions have also joined the fight on Facebook’s side.
Image Source: SCPR
Marijuana has never received more praised for its many claimed benefits than now, when more and more states agree to make it legal. The latest superpower on the list is its alleged ability to heal broken bones.
It’s yet unknown if the compound – CBD or cannabinoid cannabidiol – has the same effect in humans at it does in rats, as no experiment up to date has been made on anything else but rodents.
Researchers at the Tel Aviv University and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem discovered that isolating CBD, the weed compound that does nothing to the mind, from the other elements that make up cannabis, can accelerate the healing process of broken bones in rats to only eight weeks.
Published in the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research, the study shows that not only does CBD help the broken bones heal faster, but the reason behind this enhanced process is the fact that the compound mineralizes the bone. This finding is particularly important as it can lead researchers to create new medicine that can prevent osteoporosis in the elderly.
Leading study author Dr. Yankel Gabet explained that CBD was proven to enhance the bone’s strength during healing by stimulating the production of collagenous matrix. Following the CBD treatment, the healed bone turned out to be stronger and harder to break in the future.
Dr. Gabet made it very clear that the paper does not claim that smoking a joint will help healing your broken bones – all it might do is make you not care for a short time. Dr. Gabet is one of the top researchers in the Bone Research Laboratory at Tel Aviv University.
Previous studies conducted by the same scientific team paved the way for this discovery, pointing out to the way an organism responds to cannabinoid molecules by inhibiting bone loss and stimulating bone formation at the same time.
According to these studies, CBD is safe for humans; the body contains a mechanism that’s responsible with the reaction to cannabinoid drugs, which is, in fact, also involved in several other fundamental physiological processes, such as memory, mood, appetite, and pain sensation.
As for medical marijuana, that’s a horse of another color. People have been praising the plant’s benefits for a long time, and recent studies – still on rats, sorry – show that marijuana might be able to prevent post-traumatic stress disorder.
Image Source: Emaze