Other Things I Think Are Cool | ResearchBuzz: Firehose - Part 2

February 12, 2023

Unseen Japan: Japan’s “Mermaid Mummy” Finally Identified via New Research

Unseen Japan: Japan’s “Mermaid Mummy” Finally Identified via New Research. “The mummy is 30 centimeters long and has human features on its face. However, it also has scales running down its back…. Last year, a team of researchers began a mission to discover the mummy’s true identity. Scientists at Kurashiki University of Science and the Arts (倉敷芸術科学大) carefully subjected the artifact to X-rays and other examinations at the University’s animal research college.”

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February 8, 2023

CNN: Codebreakers find and decode lost letters of Mary, Queen of Scots

CNN: Codebreakers find and decode lost letters of Mary, Queen of Scots. “A trio of codebreakers has found and deciphered a treasure trove of lost letters written by Mary, Queen of Scots. The 57 secret letters, from Mary Stuart to the French ambassador to England between 1578 and 1584, were written in an elaborate code. The findings come 436 years after Mary’s death by execution on February 8, 1587.”

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February 4, 2023

To move a manatee: Museum catalogs skeletal specimen (North Carolina Coastal Federation)

North Carolina Coastal Federation: To move a manatee: Museum catalogs skeletal specimen. “It took a lot of collaboration to get an 800-pound manatee carcass that washed up on a beach in Kill Devil Hills in early December 2021 to Lisa Gatens, the mammalogy collection manager at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences in Raleigh. The carcass was delivered in mid-December 2021 and buried in manure to decompose, leaving just the bones. After about a year, the bones were dug up, cleaned, put in a freezer to get rid of any critters, cleaned again and, as of last week, each bone was being entered into the mammalogy collections catalog.”

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February 2, 2023

Two Row Times: New grant for Indigenous filmmakers launched in honour of Jeff Barnaby

Two Row Times: New grant for Indigenous filmmakers launched in honour of Jeff Barnaby. “Netflix and imagineNATIVE on Thursday announced the Jeff Barnaby Grant in honour of his contributions to Indigenous narrative sovereignty, genre film, and Canadian cinema. Five Indigenous film and television creatives across Canada with productions at any stage in the horror, thriller and futurism genre will each receive $25,000 to support their projects.”

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January 29, 2023

Boing Boing: Fun game makes you guess what year a photo was taken

Boing Boing: Fun game makes you guess what year a photo was taken. “Chronophoto presents the player with a photo and a timeline ranging from 1900 to current times. The closer you get to the exact year of the photograph’s creation, the more points you’ll be awarded.”

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January 27, 2023

University of Texas at Dallas: New Carbon Nanotube Yarn Harvests Mechanical Energy

University of Texas at Dallas: New Carbon Nanotube Yarn Harvests Mechanical Energy. “Nanotechnology researchers at The University of Texas at Dallas have made novel carbon nanotube yarns that convert mechanical movement into electricity more effectively than other material-based energy harvesters… UT Dallas researchers and their collaborators describe improvements to high-tech yarns they invented called ‘twistrons,’ which generate electricity when stretched or twisted.”

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January 26, 2023

Vanderbilt University: New technique unlocks ancient history of climate and wildfires recorded in California cave rocks

Vanderbilt University: New technique unlocks ancient history of climate and wildfires recorded in California cave rocks. “Jessica Oster, associate professor of Earth and environmental sciences, worked with scientists at Johannes-Gutenberg University of Mainz, Germany to develop and apply a new technique that allows researchers to reconstruct fire activity above caves based on chemicals trapped in stalagmites as they grow from water dripping from the soil and rocks above. With this new advancement, scientists can now measure unique chemicals in stalagmites to reveal fire activity from tens to hundreds of thousands of years ago.”

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January 24, 2023

New Lines Magazine: Who Invented Paper?

New Lines Magazine: Who Invented Paper?. “A new discovery at a long-neglected site suggests the ancient Egyptians used it more than 2,000 years before the Chinese.”

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January 23, 2023

Hackaday: Running Cray OS And UNICOS On Your Own Cray Simulator Instance

Hackaday: Running Cray OS And UNICOS On Your Own Cray Simulator Instance. “This simulator allows you to run software written for the Cray X-MP (1982), Y-MP (1988), J90 (1994) and SV1 (1998), which covers essentially all major Cray systems after the Cray 1 and up till when Cray had become part of SGI in 1996.”

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January 21, 2023

WIRED: You Can Use This Silly Game to Do Some Serious Physics

WIRED: You Can Use This Silly Game to Do Some Serious Physics. “The game works like this: You start off with a rocket on a very small planet. Click on the rocket to start, then you can use the arrows on your keyboard to turn on the thruster, rotate the spacecraft, and find other planets and a few fun things that are mostly inside What If jokes. That’s it. That’s the game. It’s silly and fun, and I love it. But it turns out that you can use even a simple game to explore some key concepts in physics.”

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January 19, 2023

Independent (Ireland): Restoration of iconic Clerys clock unveiled to Dubliners’ delight

Independent (Ireland): Restoration of iconic Clerys clock unveiled to Dubliners’ delight. “Dubliners looked on as the emerald green clock face with gold roman numerals was unveiled by Dublin’s Lord Mayor Caroline Conroy and clockmaker Philip Stokes. To mark the restoration, a new archive of documents, artefacts, objects and images opens to the public tomorrow and will tell the story of the store, with rescued artefacts dating back to 1847.”

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January 18, 2023

CNET: Museum Asks Public to Reinvent a Classic Painting, With Incredible Results

CNET: Museum Asks Public to Reinvent a Classic Painting, With Incredible Results. “Girl With a Pearl Earring? More like Guy With an Apple AirPod. The Mauritshuis museum in The Hague put out a call for re-creations of Johannes Vermeer’s iconic 17th century painting — with bizarre and delightful results.”

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January 17, 2023

Dalhousie University: Dal researchers’ chance discovery could help extend battery life by replacing tape that causes self‑discharge

Dalhousie University: Dal researchers’ chance discovery could help extend battery life by replacing tape that causes self‑discharge. ‘”In commercial battery cells there is tape — like Scotch tape — that holds the electrodes together and there is a chemical decomposition of this tape, which creates a molecule that leads to the self-discharge,” says Michael Metzger, an assistant professor and the Herzberg-Dahn chair and in the Department of Physics and Atmospheric Science.’

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January 15, 2023

Washington Post: A Yorkie was dognapped. A man who hunted al-Qaeda came to the rescue.

Washington Post: A Yorkie was dognapped. A man who hunted al-Qaeda came to the rescue.. “Most stolen dogs are never recovered, but what followed was an improbable effort to crack the identity of the dognapper. It brought together [Raquel] Witherspoon, neighbors, TV news, police and a former Marine Corps intelligence operator who offered skills he honed on the battlefields of Iraq to capture al-Qaeda fighters.” I didn’t know that Instagram trick. That’s a good one.

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January 14, 2023

This is Colossal: Hapless Hangups and Silly Spoofs Abound in the 2022 Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards

This is Colossal: Hapless Hangups and Silly Spoofs Abound in the 2022 Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards. “In this year’s juried contest, 5,000 entries from 85 countries amounted to fierce competition, showcasing ‘seriously funny’ images in an effort to highlight the diversity of the world’s wildlife and raise awareness of the need for conservation. In partnership with the Whitley Fund for Nature, the contest contributes 10% of revenue toward conservation efforts in countries across the Global South.”

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