Useful app.

Volvo has launched a smartphone app that will alert pedestrians staring at the screen when a car is approaching. For now, the app will only work with a specific pool of cars. But in the future, development may start saving lives.

Spiders can dream.

It turned out that during sleep, the limbs of arthropods twitched, their retina also moved at certain intervals. They increased during the night. Researchers do not deny the possibility that spiders can dream. It is assumed that eye movements in the fast phase are directly related to night visions.

The neural network has learned to recognize the faces of people in masks and veils.

An international team of scientists has created a convolutional neural network that, with 99.95% accuracy, recognizes the appearance, gender and age of people with closed faces: in masks, niqabs and veils. Also, in 80.9% of cases, the algorithm for one eye determines whether a person is smiling. Further, scientists plan to test it with more diverse images - for example, taken from different angles, in different lighting, and so on. The technology can be used in the field of security, medicine, and education. It will probably work with low quality images as well.

Gorillas at the Atlanta Zoo have learned a new call to keepers.

This means that these primates have the ability for complex vocal learning. The new sound is like a cross between a cough and a sneeze and is equivalent to a human "ahem". In English, it was called snough - sneeze ("sneeze") + cough ("cough"). Gorillas use this sound to get food and attention from humans. Experiments have confirmed that the call is used purposefully. Analysis of the sound showed that it differed acoustically from standard gorilla audio signals.

Mercedes has confirmed plans to get rid of manual transmissions by the end of 2023.

Volkswagen spoke about the same intentions and pushed the deadline a little further. It is obvious that other manufacturers will follow the leaders.

In the US, speleologists accidentally found a missing dog that had been living in a cave in complete darkness for two months.

Fish and crustaceans live in caves 35 kilometers long - there is water there, but no light at all. Cavers Hayley and Jerry Keene were surprised that the dog could survive so long in complete darkness. After they rescued the dog, they went around all the houses in the area in search of her owners. One of the women recognized her pet - her nickname is Abby. The American woman had not seen the dog since June 9 and was worried that she had lost her forever.

Physicists have figured out which ice cream melts the slowest in the heat.

Chocolate covered ice cream won. Its hard shell melts at a higher temperature, protecting the soft filling. Thanks to this, ice cream can withstand +30 ° C for a long time. In second place are the horns. They may not melt for 40 minutes at +28 °C - waffle and a special shape limits the effect of the heat of our hands on ice cream. Cylindrical fruit ice melts the fastest - it begins to melt already at +17 °C.

James Webb photographed the farthest star from Earth.

The James Webb Infrared Space Observatory has obtained a new image of the "star at the edge of the universe" - the so-called object "Earendil" (Earendel). It is the farthest observable star from Earth discovered to date. The light of Eärendil has been traveling to us for 12.9 billion years. Its mass is 50 times greater than the sun, and its radiance is millions of times brighter.

Tesla Semi

Elon Musk said the Tesla Semi, with a range of 804 km, will start shipping this year. It is known from the media that PepsiCo Corporation has already pre-ordered a large batch of tractors. Already installed Megachargers at the Frito-Lay plant in Modesto, California. Elon also said that Cybertruck will be released next year.

Wireless headphones with solar panels.

A Swedish startup has unveiled the world's first wireless earbuds with solar panels built into a charging case. The manufacturer promises eight hours of continuous operation of the Phoenix itself, and together with the charging case, the headphones can work up to 32 hours. Sales will begin in the fall of 2022, and their cost will be $149.

A copy of Paris - the city of Tianducheng.

In China, not far from Shanghai, in 2007, an almost exact copy of Paris was erected - the city of Tianducheng. It has the Eiffel Tower - 110 meters high (almost 3 times smaller than the original), a reduced copy of the Champs Elysees and the Luxembourg Gardens, residential buildings, copies of expensive houses from the center of Paris. The city was designed to accommodate 10 thousand people. A few years later, it became a ghost - only 2 thousand people live in it. Of these, 80% are the poor and the military, to whom the local authorities provided housing for temporary use "until the city is fully populated."

Interesting facts about shaving.

The human beard grows at a rate of 14 centimeters per year. Men, with a daily shave, spend 3,350 hours in their lifetime shaving off 8.4 meters of stubble.

Bioengineer finds 400-year-old yeast and recreates Latin America's oldest beer.

A barrel with a sample of yeast was kept in the city of Quito in the monastery of St. Francis, built in the 16th-17th centuries. The bioengineer found the formula for the drink in a trade magazine. Carvajal managed to brew beer only ten years after the start of the project - it was necessary to cultivate yeast and fill in the gaps in the recipe. Carvajal called his work beer and microbial archeology. He wants to make money on the old beer, but has not yet decided on the start date for the sale of the drink and its price.

Self-healing paint for cars appeared.

Scientists from South Korea have created a polymer coating that can quickly and repeatedly self-repair under the influence of infrared radiation. It is suitable for painting cars - scratches will disappear in half an hour in the sun. The new coating is more practical and better than analogues. It can be applied over regular paint. It is also suitable for smartphones and other constantly damaged devices.

Climate change exacerbates the impact of pathogens on humans.

Natural disasters exacerbate approximately 58% of human pathogenic diseases. That is, because of the climate crisis, the risk of epidemics caused by viruses, bacteria, animals, fungi is growing. American scientists came to such conclusions during the analysis of an interactive scheme demonstrating the relationship between natural disasters and 375 diseases. It turned out that 277 of them are spreading more actively due to heat, forest fires and floods. In total, scientists have found 3213 examples in history when disease outbreaks were associated with climate disasters.

The American company Embark has taught an unmanned truck to present documents to the police.

The truck detects that a car with a flashing light is following it - with a high probability this means that the police want to stop it. The drone sends a signal to a remote operator: he watches the broadcast from the cameras and decides whether to stop. After parking, the police officer can request the documents of the car, which are stored in the safe. To do this, you need to call the operator at the number written on the back of the truck and request a code. After checking the documents, the policeman can clarify the details with the operator and put the papers back in the safe. After that, the truck will return to autonomous mode and continue driving.

An unusual app for VR.

David Glowacki, a molecular physicist, has created a VR app that simulates drinking medium doses of LSD. It was tested by independent experts and confirmed that the experience acts on the human brain in the same way as a portion of hallucinogenic mushrooms or LSD.

The hologram was teleported to other countries for the first time.

For the first time, scientists have been able to conduct two-way cross-border holographic teleportation. They sent holograms of American students to the UK and Canada "without airfare." Researchers have developed Hololens mixed reality glasses, a device that resembles a VR helmet. Through lenses, a person can see not only objects in his environment, but also "virtual" objects and people. When glasses are used by several people, each of them can interact with objects that surround the other. The new technology can be applied in distance learning, space research and medicine.

The robot surgeon MIRA will work on the ISS.

The robot has been in development for almost two decades. This is the brainchild of Virtual Incision from Nebraska. The MIRA device will be tested on the ISS in 2024 to see if it is a viable medical instrument for long-duration crewed deep space missions. During testing aboard the orbital outpost, MIRA will operate in a microwave-sized experiment chamber and perform procedures that mimic those used in surgery.

A new dangerous virus in China - "Langya".

Most likely of animal origin, more than 30 people have already been infected with it. Symptoms of "Langyi" include fever, fatigue, coughing, nausea, and vomiting. Scientists have not yet found out whether it is transmitted from person to person. But they are frightened by the fact that "Langya" is similar to Nipah - one of the most dangerous viruses in the world, against which there is no cure.