Murder Hornets, Smart Glasses, Goats vs. Sheep and More Mysterious News Briefly — March 19, 2021

Mysterious News Briefly — March 19, 2021

A new study conducted at an animal reserve in Zimbabwe by researchers from the University of Oxford found that lions roar more frequently when they are near to water, when it's humid, and on calm windless nights. If they could point to a map while roaring, we wouldn’t need TV weather reporters.

A new study by researchers at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU) and the Leibniz Institute for Farm Animal Biology (FBN) found that goats are smarter than sheep when it comes to adapting to new situations and changing environmental conditions. Sheep will probably dispute this study, saying the researchers just fell asleep while watching them.

NASA’s Perseverance rover sent back images of a dust devil spinning from right to left and kicking up dirt. You can see it in the distance behind my robotic arm in this enhanced/processed view. The dust devil is moving right to left and creating whirlwinds of dust in its path. Marvin the Marian should demand an explanation from Warner Brothers why the Tasmanian Devil has invaded his space.

A group of 15 volunteers is living for 40 days deep in the Lombrives Cave in southwestern France as part of an experiment to see how they survive without any contact with the outside world. Ironically, after only a few days, they’re driving bats batty.

Marine biologists have observed whales, sharks, seals, penguins, and sea turtles swimming in circles at a constant speed for a long time for no apparent reason -- they’ve ruled out mating rituals, navigation, hunting and other possibilities. Maybe they’re just going in circles from trying to figure out why humans are so interested in watching them.

If confirmed, the next NASA administrator will be former Democratic Senator and former astronaut Bill Nelson– in 1986, Nelson flew on the Space Shuttle Columbia as a payload specialist. Elon Musk will have to settle for ambassador to Mars.

For the first time ever, a team of scientists from the Weizmann Institute of Science has reached the so-called ‘holy grail’ of embryonic development research by growing mouse embryos outside a uterus in an artificial womb, and they’re predicting human embryos could be next. This is exciting news, but look for Harrison Ford to let someone else play Indiana Jones in the movie.

Scientists in the U.S. and Canada are gearing up for a new season of fighting the Asian giant ‘murder’ hornets in Washington, British Columbia and wherever else they have spread in North America. The toughest part may be avoiding crews from dozens of new “Murder Hornets!” cable reality shows.

An AI system called BakeryScanAI, originally designed for high-tech Japanese bakeries to distinguish between different types of pastry, has been adapted to identify cancer cells on microscope slides with 99% accuracy. Everyone will love it until it finds a cancer caused by eating bakery.

Facebook has teamed up with EssilorLuxottica, which owns eyewear brands including Ray-Ban, to develop augmented reality ‘smart’ glasses it plans to release next year. Some people are already saying that if you’re still using Facebook, you need more than augmented glasses to be smart.