Neatorama

---

• Are You Ready to Rock?! The Roman Numeral Four Is
• What Julius Caesar really looked like
• Casually Explained: First Date Mistakes
• Using Facial Recognition Technology on Bears
• The Long History of ‘Bombay Time’
• The Correct Burger Build
• The Machine That Solves Your Weed Problem
• The Beetles That Tread On Water From The Underside
• How The Brain Perceives Visual Information, Shown In This New Visual Illusion
• The Bacteriophage Problem
• An Oral History of <i>Terminator 2: Judgment Day</i>
• Spot's On It
• The Wild West Immortalised: Through the Lens of Tombstone’s Resident Photographers
• Got Rats? Shove a Snake Inside Your Walls.

Are You Ready to Rock?! The Roman Numeral Four Is Posted: 30 Jun 2021 06:03 PM PDT Dr. Crom, an archaeologist and classicist, explains that this ivory tessera (a flat object inlaid in a mosaic), illustrates the hand symbol for the Roman numeral IV--that is, four. Fingers make the V-symbol and the thumb forms the vertical prefix. It's located in the National Library of France, which is where you will need to go to rock out with it. -via Marilyn Terrell

What Julius Caesar really looked like Posted: 30 Jun 2021 05:08 PM PDT Is it possible to see what Julius Caesar looked like? Using a little research and a high tech tool, it might be. This video combs through historical research, Roman coins, and busts of Julius Caesar to get an idea of what he might have looked like. Then, using the videogame creation tool Unreal Engine's new Metahumans feature, we get a high tech look at Caesar's every pore. Ultimately, it's still a guess, but it's a fun journey getting there.

Casually Explained: First Date Mistakes Posted: 30 Jun 2021 05:01 PM PDT This explanation of what not to do on a first date is woefully inadequate, but hey, it's supposed to be a humorous overview from a guy who doesn't date much. The opposite sex could tell you days worth of stories involving men who made the most outlandish screwups on a first date. Like they say, you gotta kiss a lot of frogs before you find a prince. -via Digg

Using Facial Recognition Technology on Bears Posted: 30 Jun 2021 05:00 PM PDT The distance between a bear's eyes and its nose tends to vary and reflect individual differences among them. So that means that software can reliably identify specific bears by their faces. Three years ago, researchers in the United States and Canada developed the technology. Now conservationists are using it to track wild bears in northern Japan. The Mainichi reports: The South Shiretoko Brown Bear Information Center, a nonprofit organization based in Shibetsu, is taking photos and accumulating data by installing automatic cameras at two locations on animal trails that brown bears use, and is accumulating data. However, taking photos from the front has proven unexpectedly difficult, and the organization has succeeded in taking only about 20 photos that can be used to recognize the bears' faces. Nonetheless, they were still able to identify four individual bears. -via Super Punch | Photo: South Shiretoko Brown Bear Information Center

The Long History of ‘Bombay Time’ Posted: 30 Jun 2021 05:00 PM PDT The global system of keeping time zones and synchronizing clocks is a fairly recent development. People set their clocks by the rising and the setting of the sun up until there was a reason to do otherwise, which came about when railroads needed to coordinate schedules in the 19th century. In the United States, standard time was adopted in just a few years. It was a different story in India. See, the US had already split from the British Empire, but in India there was a constant struggle between the way Indians wanted to keep time and the way the British wanted to standardize it. Bombay residents fought for decades to decide what time the city's clock tower would follow.      The British couldn't simply impose the new time standard. While they occupied the most important positions of power, Indians were given a degree of autonomy, especially in local government. The debates in the municipal corporation hall, where some of the opposition unfolded, were vigorous and close-fought. In the streets, about 15,000 people submitted a petition to revert to Bombay Time. Nevertheless, the practical considerations of a single time won out, and on January 1, 1906, Standard Time was set to be imposed. The move angered laborers right away. Bombay was important in the cotton trade, and textile mill workers, already piqued about overtime hours and low wages, would have to start work before dawn under the new time system. They didn't hold back on their frustration. More than 2,000 workers amassed at Jacob Sassoon Mill and vandalized the timekeeper's office, the Times of India reported. The mill authorities ultimately conceded a little, allowing workers to start at 6 a.m. Bombay Time (6.39 a.m. Standard Time)—in tune with the rhythms of the sun. That was far from the end of the flight. Read how the Indian resistance to British rule affected how they kept time at Atlas Obscura.

The Correct Burger Build Posted: 30 Jun 2021 05:00 PM PDT Ingredients are what makes a burger delicious. But this does not mean that you just stack these ingredients in between the bottom and top buns of the burger. They have to go in a specific order which enables you to taste every ingredient in the burger. That's right. There is a proper way to stack your burger. And the proper way apparently is the Krabby Patty's stack order. I'm not kidding. That's what the video says. (Image Credit: The Food Theorists/ YouTube)

The Machine That Solves Your Weed Problem Posted: 30 Jun 2021 05:00 PM PDT Weeds may be good for the soil in that they prevents erosion due to wind and rain. But when you have a farm filled with plants, weeds may become a big problem, as they suck up the nutrients that should be for your crops. For this reason, farmers have to remove them. Carbon Robotics are very well aware of this weed problem in farms, and so the company has developed the Autonomous Weeder, a machine designed to "kill weeds without harming the soil or water, scans the ground with its 12-camera array, identifies weeds via onboard AI, then kills them with high-powered carbon dioxide lasers." The tractor-size Autonomous Weeder can kill approximately 100,000 weeds an hour and between 15 and 20 acres a day, compared to about a single acre by a human laborer, and without the damaging effects of herbicides or the inexact nature of killing them with fire. Plus the robot can work autonomously both day and night, with no need for food or bathroom breaks. Unfortunately, this machine costs "hundreds of thousands of dollars," according to the company's CEO Paul Mikesel. But there are lease options available. Still cool, though. (Image Credit: Carbon Robotics/ Technabob)

The Beetles That Tread On Water From The Underside Posted: 30 Jun 2021 05:00 PM PDT Behavioral biologist John Gould was looking for tadpoles late one night at the ephemeral pools in the Watagan Mountains, when he suddenly spotted a tiny black object. Gould thought that it was just a bug swimming across the water's surface, but when he took a closer look at the scene, he realized that the bug wasn't on the water's surface, but under it, and he quickly filmed it. Later, Gould mentioned the encounter to his colleague Jose Valdez, a wildlife ecologist at the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research in Leipzig. Valdez thought the observations were interesting, but he'd seen insects walk upright under water before. "I didn't fully grasp what he was describing until he showed me the video," says Valdez. "Then I was floored." Searching the scientific literature, the researchers found that some snails could slide along the underside of the water's surface on a layer of mucus, but little documentation of beetles walking this way existed — just passing mentions in decades-old papers. How is the beetle able to perform this feat? The scientists think that it is because of the beetle's buoyancy. More about this over at Science News. (Image Credit: Darkone/ Wikimedia Commons)

How The Brain Perceives Visual Information, Shown In This New Visual Illusion Posted: 30 Jun 2021 05:00 PM PDT Several concentric star polygons can be found spinning on a gradient background. As these polygons spin, rays of light can be seen appearing from the center of the image, but in reality these rays of light are not produced by the image; they are produced by our brains. This visual illusion is called "Scintillating Starburst", and shows how our brains process visual information. "The research illustrates how the brain 'connects the dots' to create a subjective reality in what we see, highlighting the constructive nature of perception," explains Pascal Wallisch, a clinical associate professor in New York University's Department of Psychology and Center for Data Science and senior author of the paper, which appears in the journal i-Perception. "Studying illusions can be helpful in understanding visual processing because they allow us to distinguish the mere sensation of physical object properties from the perceptual experience," adds first author Michael Karlovich, founder and CEO of Recursia Studios, a multidisciplinary art and fashion production company. The authors acknowledge that the visual effects of this illusion are superficially similar to a number of previously described effects of other, grid-based illusions. However, their Scintillating Starburst, unlike known visual illusions, evokes a number of newly discovered effects, among them that fleeting illusory lines diagonally connect the intersection points of the star polygons. Cool! (Image Credit: Michael Karlovich, Recursia LLC)

The Bacteriophage Problem Posted: 30 Jun 2021 05:00 PM PDT Antibiotics are a great weapon against bacteria. However, with antibiotics also comes the rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. When you get hit with a bacteria that even the most potent antibiotic, vancomycin, cannot handle, what will you do? Fortunately, we still have another line of defense: bacteriophages. These are specialized viruses that can infect and kill bacteria without adverse effects on humans. The therapy is called 'Last Chance Viral Therapy' and can be used against chronic diseases such [as] urinary tract inflammation. However, there is a big problem when it comes to bacteriophages; their active numbers decrease in the solution for injection, making them ineffective against bacteria. It seems that scientists have finally found a clue to solve this problem. More details about this over at PHYS.org. (Image Credit: Adenosine/ Wikimedia Commons)

An Oral History of <i>Terminator 2: Judgment Day</i> Posted: 30 Jun 2021 05:00 PM PDT Embed from Getty Images Terminator 2: Judgment Day was released 30 years ago this week. The sequel to the 1984 hit The Terminator was a long time coming, but turned out to be worth the wait. James Cameron had made several movies in between, and knew that fans of The Terminator would return, but also knew there needed to be something new to impress the audience in addition to the return of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Cameron: I talked to Dennis Muren at ILM. I said, "I've got an idea. If we took the water character from The Abyss, but it was metallic so you didn't have the translucency issues, but you had all the surface reflectivity issues and you made it a complete human figure that could run and do stuff, and it could morph back into a human, and then turn into the liquid metal version of itself, and we sprinkled it through the movie, can we do it?" He said, "I'll call you back tomorrow." Dennis Muren (visual effects supervisor, Industrial Light & Magic): I had an idea of what's possible not only from The Abyss, but I'd seen there was work being done and research at universities, and commercials on TV at that time that had computer graphics, and their figures were moving and animated. That's just one part of the many components that had to be worked out to get T2 made. James Cameron, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Robert Patrick, Edward Furlong, and many other people involved in the production tell the story of how Terminator 2: Judgement Day came about at The Ringer.

Spot's On It Posted: 30 Jun 2021 04:57 PM PDT We knew that Boston Dynamics' quadruped robot Spot can dance, but we didn't know it could make such a nice chorus line! Here you see seven of them dancing to BTS's "IONIQ: I'm On It." Read more about this performance here. -via Geeks Are Sexy

The Wild West Immortalised: Through the Lens of Tombstone’s Resident Photographers Posted: 30 Jun 2021 04:57 PM PDT Tombstone, Arizona, is the epitome of a Wild West town, at least as far as the pop culture lore of the Western genre goes. What made Tombstone stand out among other Western boomtowns? For one, it was the site of the famous gunfight at the O.K. corral. It was also a relatively large mining town at its height in the mid-1880s. And the characters of Tombstone were well documented in photographs, thanks to Fly's Photography, the studio founded by C.S. "Buck" Fly and his wife Mollie, who were both photographers. They set up shop in a tent in Tombstone in 1879, but soon built a sturdy wooden building.     Even though he now had a more professional studio, Buck Fly spent much of his time out in the field, mostly focused on outdoor photography. While he was often absent and searched the countryside for potential photographic motifs such as mills, soldiers, ranchers, and picturesque panoramas, his wife Mollie ran both the pension and the studio. At a time where female photographers were extremely rare, newspaper reports claim that Mollie actively participated in her husband's business and that she operated Fly's Gallery when Buck was away. She handled the indoor portraits, charging 35 cents for cabinet cards. All of the studio portraits however are credited to her husband C.S. Fly. Almost everyone in Tombstone at the time Fly's studio was open had their picture taken. Both the portraits and the outdoor photography give us a look into the history of Tombstone. Fly combined the two techniques in his images of Geronimo and his men, which are the only photographs ever taken of Native Americans still at war with US forces. Read about C.S. and Molli Fly and see a collection of their Tombstone photographs at Messy Nessy Chic.

Got Rats? Shove a Snake Inside Your Walls. Posted: 30 Jun 2021 12:09 PM PDT This video of uncertain provenance shows an ingenious method to eliminate a rat infestation inside a wall. Just cut a hole through the drywall and feed a snake inside. The panicking rats flee through the hole. Amazingly, the snake, once it has completed the task, slides right out, too. That's helpful, because I wouldn't want to have to put a larger animal, like a honey badger or an eagle, into the wall to get rid of the snake. -via Dave Barry

You are subscribed to email updates from Neatorama. To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Google, 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, United States