Oolitic limestone blocks used to build the Pentagon and Empire State Building were made
by microbes that lived up to 340 million years ago.
So thanks for the building materials, microbes.
And a study of ethnic groups on the Malay Peninsula found that hunter-gatherers are
far more adept at identifying smells than farmers.
The Semaq Beri were able to name specific smells as easily we name colors, which suggests
that how we live affects how we smell.
Vsauce!
Kevin here.
This is Mind Blow.
NASA is working to ensure that planes avoid one another’s wake -- and even figure out
how to surf them.
With about 100,000 flights per day worldwide, sophisticated air traffic control systems
make sure planes don’t collide, but a wake encounter can be just as dangerous.
The Automated Cooperative Trajectories project at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center
are using technology to track invisible, spinning wakes described as “horizontal tornadoes”
-- and they’re inspired by concepts in nature such as when geese fly in a V-formation.
Planes that fly on top of rising air from wakes will be able to conserve fuel and reduce
emissions.
Which is good.
It turns out babbling babies manipulate adults -- and it helps them further their own education.
Researchers at Cornell’s Behavioral Analysis of Beginning Years Laboratory or BABY LAB
-- found that babies organize their mothers’ verbal responses and use more mature babbling
to draw out more interaction.
That results in a greater number of learning opportunities for babies and encourages simpler
responses and learnable information.
So blahblahblah actually means...
teach me more.
Speaking of babies, dolphins recognize themselves in a mirror, and they can do it many months
sooner than human babies.
A psychologist at Hunter College spent years working with two dolphins, Bayley and Foster,
observing their behavior in a mirror.
She found that by 7 months, dolphins engaged in self-directed behavior, including wagging
their tongues and swirling their bodies.
In contrast, human babies can take 12-15 months to reach this developmental milestone.
So score one for dolphins.
Electronic skin that lets you manipulate virtual objects is poised to replace bulky VR wearables.
Researchers from Germany have combined two existing technologies to develop a barely-perceptible
electronic skin that uses magnetic fields to track movement.
And the next step is to ditch permanent magnets and incorporate the use of geomagnetic fields
for positioning the way that sharks can.
Which sounds amazing.
And now a word from Ansco!
When the neighbors drop by for a slideshow, it's fun for everyone.
But what's the answer when you want to runoff both regular-sized slides and over-sized slides?
The answer is the new Anscomatic, the A+ slide projector from Ansco.
It's the world's only fully-automatic projector to take all popular slides.
Cardboard, glass, metal and plastic.
And when it's time for those big two and a quarter slides, no problem.
Anscomatic projects 'em.
Clear and sharp.
And Anscomatic runs itself, or with the remote control, you can control your slides from
anywhere in the room at any speed you choose.
At the end of the show, Anscomatic even turns on the lights.The new Anscomatic is available
at most dealers for just $11.95 down.
Photographs projected in your living room?
Awesome..
Let’s do a blowback.
Mind Blow #99 in November, 2015, featured the Scan Pyramids Project and they just recently
discovered two mysterious voids.
The voids in the Great Pyramid of Giza will be inspected by a mix of subatomic particle
detection and tiny robots.
Built over 4,500 years ago, the Great Pyramid is the oldest Wonder of the World but it’s
difficult to study without damaging.
Small particles called muons form when cosmic rays interact with the Earth’s atmosphere,
and they lose speed when they travel through dense objects.
By measuring muon velocity, they identified two secret chambers that could be corridors,
serve structural functions, or… who knows.
A team from the French National Institute for Computer Science and Applied Mathematics
is also constructing two very small robots that will be able to explore the voids by
entering through a tiny drilled hole.
A team of Canadian paleontologists have shed light on why few modern animals have the tail
weaponry that made some dinosaurs so destructive.
They concluded that animals with tail weapons like the ankylosaurus were generally large,
herbivorous, and had armored bodies.
As skin armor evolved from bone, tail weapons evolved to be softer, too.
Modern animals like porcupines tend to have tail weapons made of the softer keratin -- except
for Smaug, a small lizard named after the dragon in The Hobbit that retains a bony,
spiked tail.
Presumably to guard treasure.
The Coyote III, initially designed for space exploration, is now being used for search
and rescue and to identify gas leaks in buildings.
The German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence developed the Coyote and proved
that it was capable of handling any kind of terrain.
Its on-board computer allows autonomous exploration and responding to data from sensors for practical
purposes here on Earth -- yet another trickle-down benefit from space research.
Roosters are really loud why don’t they go deaf?
Roosters have evolved to protect themselves from their own deafening crows.
Researchers at the University of Antwerp and University of Ghent found that the internal
sound pressure of a rooster’s crow can reach a whopping 140 decibels, which is 50 decibels
more than a lawn mower and 20 more than a loud concert.
Micro-CT scans of roosters’ heads showed that their auditory canal closes when their
beak opens, which essentially plugs their own ears and insulates them from damage.
Now you know that.
The brains of musicians may be as different as the music they play.
Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in
Liepzig found that different processes occur in the brains of classical and jazz musicians
even when they played the exact same piece.
The study of professional pianists showed that jazz musicians were more flexible and
able to “re-plan” harmonies more easily than classical pianists, suggesting that evaluating
the effects of music on the brain might be most accurate when done across the global
musical spectrum.
The European Union’s SecondHands project is supporting the development of robots with
predictive action to help humans.
ARMAR-6 is a human-like robot that can aid maintenance technicians by recognizing what
they’re doing and offer help at the perfect time.
One of the things we're working on is a project called SecondHands.
This is developing a robot to assist our maintenance technicians.
It's called SecondHands because it's literally meant to be a second pair of hands for the
technician to get their work done.
Having now received a SecondHands robot in our lab we're working together with all our
partners to integrate different functionalities in order to demonstrate a real-world maintenance
task.
I’ve been editing Mind Blow using Premiere for years now and if you’re interested in
learning how to edit checkout Learn Adobe Premiere In One Hour over at Skillshare.
Like all their courses it’s taught by an expert so you get top notch information from
people who know what they’re talking about.
And for a limited time get your first three months for just 99 cents.
This is a special deal I worked with Ethan from Skillshare on just for fans of Mind Blow.
If you don’t have 99 cents, you can get free mini lessons if you subscribe to their
YouTube channel.
So click the links at the top of this video's description because whether you’re looking
for premium courses or free insights - you can learn a lot with Skillshare.
Now I’m gonna leave you with a force-multiplying robot with remote operation for sensitive
and dangerous tasks.
Because I know you want that.
And as always - thanks for watching.
The domestication of the computer already has begun.
In Phoenix, Arizona the Charles Crawshaw family has learned to live with a computer terminal
in their kitchen.
This teletypewriter is connected by ordinary telephone lines to a
computer complex in New York City 2,400 miles away.
Charles Crawshaw, a General Electric engineer works on technical problems.
His wife, Barbara, uses the computer for various household chores.
Here, the computer has expanded the proportions of a recipe for six into a recipe for fourteen.
By the 21st century, home computers may be as common as today's telephone.
Hey, what are you doing?
Having fun!
The children of the 21st century, might be educated by a computer at home.
The Crawshaw daughters do some of their homework this way today.
Tomorrow's home computer won't simply do old jobs in new ways.
By the time the Crawshaw daughters have families of their own, we may created jobs for computers
that we haven't even dreamed of today.
Even with a computer in her kitchen, Mrs. Crawshaw still cooks her family's meals.
Cooking might be different in the 21st century.
Industrial designer, Henry Dreyfuss.
I like to think that the art of baking a homemade pie won't be lost.
But maybe the one that comes out of the supermarket's gonna be better than the one that you can
make at home because we've lost the art.
I think that packages for quick food and this doesn't just have to be in the kitchen.
The package might very well have a disposable electric plug as part of it.
And you just plug this in, the package would heat, you'd eat the food, and you might even
eat the package.
All the wasted paper in the world, it's conceivable that when the package is heated, it would
turn into part of the food.