Thursday, September 10, 2020

Combine driver flips vehicle, arrested for drunk driving

A man has been arrested for driving drunk after flipping a farming combine in a field near Berthold, North Dakota. Police say the combine landed upside down in the field. The combine has extensive damage. Authorities say the 45-year-old driver of Seattle, Washington was intoxicated and was taken to the Ward County Jail in Minot, North Dakota. (News Dakota)

Parents’ work benefits irk nonparents

Tensions are building at major tech companies over new benefits that help working parents while childless employees say they’re left to lift a heavier workload. The benefits, which include extra time off for childcare if schools or daycares are closed, are said to have caused internal debates at Facebook, Salesforce and Twitter. Some Facebook employees who don’t have kids said the company seemed less concerned about their needs, writing openly “about how isolated they felt, living alone and not seeing anyone for weeks at a time.” (The New York Times)

An orca whale that two years ago was spotted swimming 1,000 miles with her dead calf is a mother again

Tahlequah, as the killer whale is known, swam with the body of her offspring for 17 days in an apparent act of grieving, researchers said. The calf died at birth and its mother prevented it from sinking by pushing it with her head. In a news release, the Whale Research Center said that Tahlequah’s new calf looks “healthy and precocious.” The two were spotted off the coast of British Columbia last week, swimming alongside other members of their pod. “She was still capable of producing a live calf after an approximate eighteen-month gestation! Hooray!” the release said. (CNN)

Disorderly Goat Takes Over Cop Car, Head-Butts Deputy And Eats All The Paperwork

A sheriff’s deputy in Douglas County, Georgia had a run-in with the baddest of the bad when she returned to her cruiser to find a goat had taken over. The Sheriff’s Office said the deputy was serving civil papers at a home during the encounter. She typically leaves her car door open as she’s had to retreat from “vicious dogs” in the past. “Never once did she expect or even consider what was about to happen this day,” the agency wrote. Footage showed the goat in the front seat and was busily eating the deputy’s paperwork. Then, after leaving the vehicle with a mouthful of delicious papers, the goat delivered a head-butt to the deputy’s knees, knocking her down before hoofing it from the scene of the crime. “Even though she was knocked to the ground she was not physically harmed in the incident,” the department wrote. “At the end of the day we all got a little laugh out of it and we hope you do as well!” (Huffington Post)

Surveillance video captures rental truck dumping bags of mail in California parking lot

Bags of mail were found discarded in a California parking lot, according to surveillance video. The owner of a spa saw the mail being dumped during the early morning hours. She said a Budget rental big truck was backing up to the parking lot before, “slowly, one by one, dropping the packages”. Surveillance video from near Serobian’s spa caught a rental truck dumping the mail, and she described what the perpetrators left as a “huge pile.” All of the mail was from the United States Postal Service. Police reported that more mail was discovered in an alley less than a mile away from the spa. Police in California are currently looking into what post office the mail came from and who rented the truck captured on video. This is after piles of mail were discovered in two locations in Glendale, California recently, which included unopened letters and boxes. (KTLA)

The wreckage of a German warship sunk by a British submarine during World War II has been discovered 11 nautical miles off Norway

The whereabouts of where the Karlsruhe came to rest on the sea bottom had remained a mystery for 80 years. Scientists identified the ship from images and sonar scans of its hull and the position of its gun turrets. Built in the 1920s, the 571-foot-long ship was later fitted with a Nazi-era swastika that was also captured in subsea images. The Karlsruhe was part of the Nazi German force that invaded Norway on April 9, 1940. On its return to sea it was torpedoed by the British submarine HMS Truant. A German captain then ordered the sinking of the heavily damaged vessel. Karlsruhe rests three-tenths of mile below sea level with cannons pointing menacingly into the sea. With the main battery of nine cannons in three triple turrets, this was the largest and most fearsome ship in the attack group on Norway. (Fox News)

Talking robots that interact with older people could be introduced into care homes to help fight loneliness and mental ill health

Pepper, a “culturally competent robot,” was tested on care home residents in Britain and Japan, those who interacted with it for up to 18 hours over the course of two weeks “saw a significant improvement in their mental health,” researchers found. Pepper was part of a large global study known as CARESSES, jointly funded by the European Union and the Japanese government, which investigated the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in caring for the elderly. The scientists behind the study also found that “after two weeks of using the system there was a small but positive impact on loneliness severity among users.” Pepper is fully autonomous, meaning that it is not controlled by a person. The gadget, which features a tablet computer that can play music and entertainment, does not just ask and answer questions but can actually engage in and sustain conversation. It has been designed to be “culturally competent,” meaning that it can respond to the culture-specific needs and preferences of older people. (University of Bedfordshire)

New findings suggest infants and young kids process language in both hemispheres of the brain, which could help compensate after a neural injury

In nearly all adults, sentence processing only takes place in the left hemisphere, according to neuroscientists from Georgetown University Medical Center. Previously, with traditional scanning, it was unclear whether “strong left dominance for language [was] present at birth or [appeared] gradually during development,” said one of the professors at Georgetown neurology in a news release. However, analyses using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) revealed that “brain networks that localize specific tasks to one or the other hemisphere start during childhood but are not complete until a child is about 10 or 11,” explained. They found that while young kids “showed left-lateralized language activation, a large proportion of the youngest children also showed significant activation in the corresponding right-hemisphere areas.” Researchers expects a higher right hemisphere involvement if the study were to examine even younger children. According to the release, the researchers are now investigating language activation in teens and young adults who underwent “a major left hemisphere stroke” during birth. (Georgetown University Medical Center)

A 400-year-old chamois, a member of the goat-antelope species, was found buried in the snow by a champion skier in the Italian Alps

An explorer said he was on a six-hour hike in Val Aurina when he stumbled upon the perfectly preserved carcass. “Only half of the animal’s body was exposed from the snow. The skin looked like leather, completely hairless; I had never seen anything like it. I immediately took a photo and sent it to the park ranger, together we then notified the Department of Cultural Heritage,” he said in a statement. The mummified chamois was taken to a lab for further observation and study, which was a challenge, given where it was found. It was found at 10,500 feet elevation and was only spotted because ice had started to recede. The Alpine Army Corps was involved in the removal of the chamois mummy, with the infantry building a special case to encase it. From there, the mummy was airlifted by helicopter and flown to Eurac Research’s conservation lab in Bolzano, Italy. “Our goal is to use scientific data to develop a globally valid conservation protocol for ice mummies,” said the Director of the Institute for Mummy Studies at Eurac Research. “This is the first time an animal mummy has been used in this way.” (Eurac Research)

General Motors and startup Nikola are joining forces to manufacture electric vehicles

Under the agreement, GM will acquire an 11% stake in Nikola, which is developing a pickup truck called Badger, as well as large commercial trucks. In return for the stake, GM will supply Nikola with batteries and a factory in which to build the Badger. The carmaker will also develop a chassis and fuel cell systems for Nikola. As part of the deal, Nikola will pay GM up to $700 Million for assembling the Badger. The companies said that the manufacturing of the Badger will start before the end of 2022. Nikola has signed deals to supply trucks to Republic Services, a waste collection company, and brewer Anheuser-Busch. Nikola became a public company in June through a reverse merger with a special purpose acquisition company. (Reuters)

Japan says the Olympics must be held “at any cost” next year

The country’s Olympic Minister said that the games should be held for the benefit of the athletes, despite uncertainty about the pandemic. Postponing the international competition, scheduled to begin in July this year, has cost Japan an estimated $6 billion. The Japanese government and the International Olympic Committee took the unprecedented decision in March to postpone the Games, originally scheduled to begin in July, until 2021 because of the virus. “Everyone involved with the Games is working together to prepare, and the athletes are also making considerable efforts towards next year,” the Olympic Minister said during a news conference. Organizers are looking at over 200 proposals on how best to deal with the virus, including easing travel restrictions for foreign athletes, anti-virus measures at the Athletes’ Village and how to handle spectators. (Kyodo News)

Tylenol may make you take more risks

Tylenol may not just stop aches and fevers, it may actually make you more prone to taking risks, according to a study published in the journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience. “Acetaminophen seems to make people feel less negative emotion when they consider risky activities – they just don’t feel as scared,” co-author of the study and an associate professor of psychology at The Ohio State University said in a press release. The researchers studied 189 college students who took 1,000 mg of acetaminophen (the active ingredient in Tylenol), which is the recommended dose for a headache, or a placebo that looked similar to Tylenol. Participants were then asked how risky certain activities (such as bungee jumping, starting a new career in your mid-30’s, participating in a skydiving class and walking home in an unsafe area of town while alone at night) would be rated on a scale of one to seven. The study revealed that those who took acetaminophen rated those activities as less risky than the placebo group. The risk-taking effects from acetaminophen were also explored in other separate experimental studies involving 545 students, according to the press release. Researchers suggested the study findings have implications in daily lives as many things we do, like driving, involve assessing risk. (Oxford Acedemic)

Austrian man breaks world record with 2.5 hour ice cube bath

An Austrian man chilled out for just over two-and-a-half hours in a full-body ice bath — breaking his own world record by almost 30 minutes. The 42-year-old  needed 440 pounds of ice cubes to fill a custom-made, transparent box up to his shoulders. Wearing nothing but swim trunks, he sat inside the box in front of a small crowd in Melk, and his cool for 2 hours, 30 minutes and 57 seconds, beating his own record for full-body exposure to ice that he set last year with two hours, eight minutes and 47 seconds. After being taken out of the ice box by helpers, he said the sun felt “really great” on his back. He already plans to ice out his own record again next year, this time in Los Angeles. (The New York Post)

Thursday Grinds Down With:

• School Picture Day (Second Thursday)
• Swap Ideas Day
• TV Dinner Day
• World Suicide Prevention Day