Marijuana use does not make people lethargic and lazy.

Cannabis users are not lethargic, sluggish and lazy people. They are just as motivated as the rest. These conclusions were made by British scientists during a study involving 274 people aged 16-17 and 26-29 years old. Among them were those who smoke marijuana four days a week, and those who do not use it at all - the control group. Scientists believe they have proven that smoking marijuana itself does not cause processes in the brain that reduce motivation or the ability to experience pleasure. Laziness and apathy can be provoked by other social and psychological factors.

Mobot raised $12.5 million and launched a platform for robotic testing of mobile applications.

The Mobot platform allows developers to test their applications with robots. It allows you to automate tests for a number of complex cases, including complex interactions between hardware and software, streaming data stability, and backward compatibility testing. The platform has eliminated thousands of hours of manual testing, improved testing efficiency, and identified more bugs in an app prior to launch on the app store than software can do on its own.

Engineers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have created an "AI psychopath".

Norman - in honor of the protagonist of Hitchcock's "Psycho" - was "fed" with exceptionally cruel and full of violence content that was found on the Internet. And then checked on the Rorschach test. "Normal" AI would interpret such images in a neutral way, such as "a black and white photo of a baseball glove". But Norman sees pictures in the spirit: "a man is shot from a machine gun in broad daylight." The point of all this "madness" is to prove that AI algorithms are not necessarily inherently biased, however they can become biased based on the data they are given.

Molecular Drink Manufacturer

California-based Cana announced the creation of the world's first "Molecular Drink Manufacturer". Cana claims to have studied the molecular analysis of hundreds of drinks. And create a universal cartridge with which you can do almost everything. Actually, the device is sold with such a cartridge - if you believe the characteristics, using a unified cartridge it can do everything from cold coffee to wine.

Scientists have found that the brains of gamers are synchronized while playing online.

Researchers from the University of Helsinki found that the brainwaves of two players playing together online were synchronized, even if the players themselves were in different rooms. Online interaction can lead to better social relationships in the real world, scientists say.

The woman's scent prevented the antidepressant from calming the mice.

Scientists from the US and Cyprus have found that the gender of the experimenter can influence the results of medical experiments on mice. The smell of men causes stress in mice, but if they inject an antidepressant, it works as it should. At the same time, if you put T-shirts on the mice, they will spend more time with the women, and run away from the men. But with injections of an antidepressant, it was revealed that the medicine administered by a woman had a worse effect on mice.

A painting created by the Midjourney neural network won first place in an art competition.

Jason Allen generated a painting using the Midjourney neural network, which won first place in the State Fine Art Competition in Colorado. It is called "Spatial Opera Theatre". The picture gives the impression of man-made. Opinions were divided. Some people blame Allen for hastening the death of creative professions, others don't see this as a problem, since it still takes a very long time to create a high-quality image using Midjourney. The author of the work claims that he nevertheless played an important role in the creation of the picture.

MarsCat, the world's first bionic cat, was shown at IFA 2022.

Marscat is completely autonomous and always has fun on its own when you are busy. But it also has helper apps to personalize your own cat (or kitty). You can adjust the color of the eyes, control its movements, set up face recognition, etc. Through different images of the eyes, Marscar conveys different emotions. The cat responds to sensitive interactions and recognizes face and voice. Thanks to AI, the cat will learn and analyze the data it receives using its own cameras. The algorithm behind this robotic cat is said to take into account its unique personality. There are no two identical marsocats in the world. The planned retail price is $1299.

Biologists have found that ferns have been stealing DNA from other organisms for millions of years.

In total, the fern genome has more than 7 billion bases in 39 chromosomes - this is twice as many as in humans. It turned out that for many years ferns not only accumulated DNA, but also borrowed it from other organisms. The plant's genome has a defense against a toxin that punches holes in the cell membrane. Bacteria have such protection, and scientists have suggested that the fern received it from them during horizontal gene transfer.

In Canada, they found that exhaust gases affect women more than men.

The processes of hardening and calcification of the arteries, as well as the levels of proteins associated with cardiovascular disease, were more strongly observed in women who took part in the experiment. Gases also affected men, but not so much.

A new land speed record is planned - over 455 km/h.

On the Tachyon Nb electric motorcycle from the American company Lightning, they plan to set a land speed record - to overcome the mark of 455 km/h. To achieve these results, the body of the motorcycle has been optimized in a wind tunnel and made of a special niobium material. Nb has been used in brake discs to improve their performance at high temperatures and added to the on-board charger to improve reliability and efficiency. The exact date of the attempted record race has not yet been named.

Chinese engineers plan to 3D print a hydroelectric dam.

Scientists from Beijing have developed a plan to build a 181-meter-high dam using robots, 3D printing and artificial intelligence. In this case, completely without direct human participation. The hydroelectric power plant will be able to provide electricity to a city like Beijing.

Did you know?

Daniel Radcliffe broke about 80 wands during the filming of Harry Potter because he used them as drums.

Scientists have obtained diamonds from plastic bottles.

During the experiment, scientists fired intense laser flashes at a thin sheet of PET plastic used to make beverage bottles. Powerful pulses heated it up to 6,000 degrees Celsius and created a shock wave that, in a few nanoseconds, compressed the substance to a pressure millions of times higher than atmospheric pressure. The scientists found that this produced diamonds several nanometers in size. A similar process occurs on the ice giants of the solar system - Uranus and Neptune. The experiment of scientists made it possible to confirm that diamond rain really falls on them.

In Italy, a woman with a transplanted uterus gave birth for the first time.

On the island of Sicily, a woman gave birth after a womb transplant. This is the first such case in the country. A girl weighing 1.6 kilograms was born prematurely, doctors are watching her.

The British will feed the starving Africans with caterpillars and locusts.

UK charities have donated £350,000 to edible insect breeding projects in Zimbabwe and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. According to British food technologists, the new food will be more nutritious than corn, which is popular in Africa.

Apple decided to make smartphones and other equipment from "waste" without using the Earth's resources.

Tim Cook said it was important for Apple to produce products in an environmentally friendly way: "Whether it's the materials used or the recycling of materials, we want to make the Earth a better place." Cook also said that Apple itself has achieved carbon neutrality, and by 2030 hopes to achieve carbon neutrality in the supply chain and new products that will be produced without using the resources of our planet. In particular, Apple plans to use environmentally friendly and recycled materials.

NASA will try to "shoot down" the asteroid live.

The test will take place as part of a test of a system to protect the Earth from the threat of asteroid impacts. For these purposes, the DART satellite was launched into space last year. The essence of the test is that the satellite will crash into the asteroid at high speed and possibly change its trajectory. The goal of the mission was the asteroid Didim, or rather the smaller Dimorph asteroid revolving around it. After the collision, scientists want to know how the orbit of rotation of this 165-meter “satellite” around a larger asteroid will change, and at the same time understand what force must be applied to change the direction of the flight of a cosmic body if it threatens the Earth.

The James Webb Space Telescope has photographed a planet outside the solar system for the first time in history.

On it is the gas giant HIP 65426 b, it is 6-12 times heavier than Jupiter. The planet does not have a rocky surface, so it cannot be habitable. HIP 65426 b is located 100 times further from its parent star than the Earth is from the Sun. Its atmosphere, containing reddish dust clouds, warms up to 1300 °C. The planet makes a complete revolution around its star in 630 Earth years. Previously, exoplanets were photographed only by ground-based telescopes, because of this, it was not possible to study celestial bodies in detail. Now a new stage of research will begin, which is why astronomers have called the James Webb image historical.

For the first time, scientists have filmed a video of the sunken Titanic in 8K resolution.

With the help of such detailing, it is possible to examine previously inaccessible fragments of the ship and study how quickly the hull of a ship that sank more than 110 years ago is being destroyed.