A humanoid robot chef’s kitchen test went off the rails and the internet can’t stop watching.
A viral clip shows Unitree’s G1 humanoid attempting to cook — only to spill food, slip, and crash spectacularly.
Category: food – Page 2
Why we used to sleep in two segments — and how the modern shift changed our sense of time
From the article:
“In multi-week sleep studies that simulate long winter nights in darkness and remove clocks or evening light, people in lab studies often end up adopting two sleeps with a calm waking interval. A 2017 study of a Madagascan agricultural community without electricity found people still mostly slept in two segments, rising at about midnight.”
There’s a reason you sometimes wake up in the middle of the night.
Rare lost allele that boosts soybean seed protein identified
A research team led by Prof. Hou Xingliang from the South China Botanical Garden of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has used genome-wide association studies (GWAS) to identify a rare allele that controls seed protein content and was lost during soybean domestication.
Their findings were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Oct. 30.
Domesticating wild plants into crops represents a breakthrough in human history, yet key beneficial traits are often lost in the process. Soybeans are a good example. Modern soybean cultivars have lower seed protein content (30%–40%) than their wild ancestors, wild soybeans (Glycine soja), which typically contain 50%–60% protein. Since soybeans (Glycine max [L.] Merr.) are the primary source of plant-based protein for both livestock feed and human nutrition, increasing seed protein content is a critical goal for agricultural research.
Chimpanzees rationally revise their beliefs
The study, titled “,” was conducted by a large research team that included UC Berkeley Psychology Postdoctoral Researcher Emily Sanford, UC Berkeley Psychology Professor Jan Engelmann and Utrecht University Psychology Professor Hanna Schleihauf. Their findings showed that chimpanzees — like humans — can change their minds based on the strength of available evidence, a key feature of rational thought.
Working at the Ngamba Island Chimpanzee Sanctuary in Uganda, the researchers presented chimps with two boxes, one containing food. Initially, the animals received a clue suggesting which box held the reward. Later, they were given stronger evidence pointing to the other box. The chimps frequently switched their choices in response to the new clues.
“Chimpanzees were able to revise their beliefs when better evidence became available,” said Sanford, who is a researcher in the UC Berkeley Social Origins Lab. “This kind of flexible reasoning is something we often associate with 4-year-old children. It was exciting to show that chimps can do this too.”
To ensure the findings reflected genuine reasoning rather than instinct, the team incorporated tightly controlled experiments and computational modeling. These analyses ruled out simpler explanations, such as the chimps favoring the latest signal (recency bias) or reacting to the most obvious cue. The models confirmed that the chimps’ decision-making aligned with rational strategies of belief revision.
“We recorded their first choice, then their second, and compared whether they revised their beliefs,” Sanford said. “We also used computational models to test how their choices matched up with various reasoning strategies.”
The study challenges the traditional view that rationality — the ability to form and revise beliefs based on evidence — is exclusive to humans.
“The difference between humans and chimpanzees isn’t a categorical leap. It’s more like a continuum,” Sanford said.
How a chorus of synchronized frequencies helps you digest your food
Synchronization abounds in nature: from the flashing lights of fireflies to the movement of fish wriggling through the ocean, biological systems are often in rhythmic movement with each other. The mechanics of how this synchronization happens are complex.
For instance, in the vasculature of the brain, blood vessels oscillate, expanding and contracting as needed. When there is neural activity, the arterioles expand to increase blood flow, oxygen and nutrients. These oscillations are self-sustained, but the arterioles also work in concert with each other. How this happens is not well understood.
To uncover the answer, researchers at the University of California San Diego looked to another part of the body: the gut. Here they found that oscillators operating at similar frequencies lock onto each other in succession, creating a staircase effect. Their work appears in Physical Review Letters.
Tool reveals how your dinner affects risk of 30,875 species land-dwelling animals going extinct
University of Cambridge researchers have developed a new way to measure the impact of our food production on other species’ survival around the world.
It reveals that between 700 and 1,100 species of vertebrate are likely to go extinct in the next 100 years, if global land-use for agriculture does not change. This figure does not account for future population growth, and is probably a huge underestimate.
By considering the productivity of any piece of land, the team can figure out the “per kilogram impact” of each commodity per year on biodiversity.
Psychology study suggests chimpanzees might be rational thinkers
Chimpanzees may have more in common with human thinkers than previously thought. A new study published in Science by an international team of researchers provides evidence that chimpanzees can rationally revise their beliefs when presented with new information.
The study, titled “Chimpanzees rationally revise their beliefs,” was conducted by a large research team that included UC Berkeley Psychology Postdoctoral Researcher Emily Sanford, UC Berkeley Psychology Professor Jan Engelmann and Utrecht University Psychology Professor Hanna Schleihauf. Their findings showed that chimpanzees—like humans—can change their minds based on the strength of available evidence, a key feature of rational thought.
Working at the Ngamba Island Chimpanzee Sanctuary in Uganda, the researchers presented chimps with two boxes, one containing food. Initially, the animals received a clue suggesting which box held the reward. Later, they were given stronger evidence pointing to the other box. The chimps frequently switched their choices in response to the new clues.
Creepy Science That’s Changing the World in Surprising Ways
From mini-brains and spider-inspired gloves to edible wolf apple coatings and microplastic-filled retinas, scientists are transforming creepy concepts into life-improving innovations. Lab-grown brain organoids could replace animal testing, web-slinging gloves can spin instant wound dressings, and wolf apple starch may keep veggies fresh longer. Meanwhile, the discovery of microplastics in human eyes reveals a haunting truth about our environment’s reach inside us.
Lab-Grown “Mini-Brains” Offer New Insight into the Human Mind
Scientists writing in ACS Sensors have successfully grown a small brain organoid in a petri dish, creating a powerful new tool for studying how nerve cells interact without the use of animal testing. Over two years, human nerve cells multiplied and organized themselves into a three-dimensional “mini-brain” that displayed electrical activity similar to real brain tissue. Researchers say this breakthrough could help scientists better understand how the human brain communicates and functions—or, as they joke, provide “a lab-grown lunch option for zombies.”
3D DNA looping discovery in rice paves the way for higher yields with less fertilizer
A team of Chinese scientists has uncovered a hidden 3D structure in rice DNA that allows the crop to grow more grain while using less nitrogen fertilizer. The finding, published in Nature Genetics by researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), could guide the next “green revolution” toward higher yields and more sustainable farming.
The study reveals that a looping section of DNA—a “chromatin loop”—controls the activity of a gene called RCN2, which governs how rice plants form their grain-bearing branches. Adjusting this loop boosted both yield and nitrogen use efficiency (NUE), two traits that normally conflict with each other.
According to Prof. Fu Xiangdong from the Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology of CAS, who led the team, boosting crop yields depends on strengthening both the “source” and the “sink” within a plant. The source refers to tissues such as leaves that produce and release sugars through photosynthesis, while the sink includes the growing parts—grains, panicles, young leaves, stems, roots, and fruits—that store or consume those sugars. Improving both sides of this system simultaneously is essential for increasing yield and NUE.
A quest to find probiotics with immune benefits
Kirin has now worked LC-Plasma into a range of non-beer products including yoghurt beverages, green tea and other drinks. In 2020, these became the first ‘functional’ food or beverages in Japan to be allowed to be marketed as containing potentially immune-boosting ingredients.
“A food or beverage that might help improve immune function had been highly sought after in Japan for almost 30 years. But none succeeded in spite of much effort and expense,” Fujiwara says. “We conducted lots of studies and finally succeeded in meeting government requirements in 2020.”
Researchers at Kirin and NIID/JIHS have also been exploring in laboratory and animal studies the effects of LC-Plasma against various infectious diseases, including influenza, dengue fever, SARS-CoV-2 and common colds.