The benefits of video games for children.

American scientists conducted a study on more than 2,000 children and found that video games have a positive effect on children's brain development. Playing children: - Have better motor skills. - Remember information faster, easier and more accurately. - Showed higher brain activity in areas related to concentration and memory.

Elon Musk showed the giant Mechazilla in action.

The founder of Tesla and SpaceX posted a video on his Twitter page showing a giant tower with a mechanized arm called Mechazilla. It will be used to "catch" the Super Heavy launch vehicle and the Starship spacecraft on landing.

Chemists have uncovered the secret of Stradivari violins.

Italian chemists studied two violins by Antonio Stradivari and found out that the master covered them with a composition of animal proteins before varnishing. Among them was collagen. This layer filled in the smallest irregularities, influenced the resonance and improved the sound of bowed instruments. This is not the only secret of Stradivarius. A few years ago, Taiwanese chemists found a mineral preservative made from calcium, copper, aluminum, sodium, and zinc on the master's tools. Most likely, Stradivari did not just apply it to the wood - the preservative was part of the soaking of the wood.

An American built a flashlight into a prosthetic eye.

The engineer modified his prosthetic eye with a bright LED that can be used as a flashlight. When turned on, the flashlight allows you to light up a room in the dark or read books. Brian notes that the LED does not get very hot after long use, and the battery allows it to work for 20 hours in bright mode and about 10 more hours at a significantly lower brightness.

A quarter of people on Earth do not have access to clean drinking water.

Since the beginning of the 21st century, more than two billion people have gained access to clean drinking water, who did not have it before. But at the same time, a quarter of the world's population still has problems with drinking water.

New Guinness World Record in India.

In India, on the banks of the Saryu (Ghagra) river, sacred to Hindus, more than 1.5 million diya lamps were lit at the same time and set a new Guinness record. The ceremonial lighting of the lamps was held on the eve of the main Hindu holiday Diwali. The city of Ayodhya, where the new record was set, is of particular importance for the faithful Hindus, since, according to legend, the hero-god Rama, the main character of the Indian epic Ramayana, was born there.

Doctors cured cancer in mice with a radioactive gel.

Indian and American scientists created a protein gel with atoms of radioactive iodine-131 and with its help they cured pancreatic cancer in laboratory rodents - the tumors disappeared in 80% of the animals. The new method combines elements of chemotherapy and radiotherapy, but is not so dangerous for healthy tissues. The gel was injected directly into the tumor. It was destroyed by beta radiation that arose after the decay of the nuclei of unstable iodine-131. Beta radiation does not penetrate as deeply as gamma rays, so doctors managed to achieve a point effect. Due to the special structure of the protein part of the gel, it was easily excreted from the body after the procedure.

Lego for Halloween.

LEGO has assembled a gaming PC inside a large horror castle with over 20,000 building blocks ahead of Halloween. To create a computer, we used a powerful RTX 3090 graphics card, an Intel i9 12900KF processor and a customized water cooling system.

BMW cars will notify you of scratches on the body themselves.

BMW has filed a patent application for a scratch detection system that will notify the car owner of any damage to the bodywork. The technology is based on the piezoelectric effect: the control unit captures the electric charge that occurs when the film is deformed and transmits the information to the on-board system of the machine or to the cloud platform. Whether the technology will become serial is still unclear. If a scratch appears while the car is moving, it will report this with audible and visual signals. If this happens while the owner is out of the car, an alert can be sent to the smartphone.

The English police have hired a sniffer dog trained to smell the seminal fluid.

The Cheshire County Police have hired a sniffer dog trained to smell semen. Labrador named April will help investigate rape and other sexual crimes. A dog can smell 0.016 milliliters of seminal fluid even if it was left at the crime scene years ago. April's training lasted six weeks. The dog has already started his first case - he was called to the scene of another crime 36 hours after being hired.

A plastic-filtering robo fish has won a nature-inspired robot competition.

The robot floats by flapping its tail while keeping its mouth wide open to collect water and microplastics into its internal cavity. When the cavity fills, the robot closes its mouth, opens the gill flaps, and pushes the water out, lifting the bottom of the cavity. A fine mesh attached to the gill covers allows water to pass through but retains plastic particles. The 50 cm long Gillbert robot collects particles up to 2 millimeters in size. It also has built-in sensors to monitor turbidity and light levels underwater, and uses an IMU to track its movements in the water. The developer plans to improve the robot and increase its size.

Scientists have discovered the "Marshmallow Planet" 580 light years from Earth.

A giant gas planet, similar in density to a marshmallow, was found orbiting a cold red dwarf. The diameter of TOI-3757 b is slightly larger than Jupiter, and the weight is 2 times less than Saturn. The planet makes a revolution around a star 25 times faster than Mercury.

Tesla investor has invested in a flying car startup.

Startup Alef Aeronautics hopes to revolutionize the market with its flying cars. The company has already shown a prototype of the first flying car and was able to attract at least one well-known venture capitalist who backed electric car manufacturer Tesla. According to Reuters, the ambitious Alef flying car project has caught the attention of Tim Draper, a well-known American venture capitalist and one of the first investors in Tesla and SpaceX. His fund Draper Associates Fund V supported Alef by investing $3 million in the startup at the start.

Denmark has created an optical fiber capable of transmitting 1.84 Petabits of data per second.

This is more than all the Internet traffic in the world per second. And all this - in one cable. The 1.84 petabits per second throughput was not easy to test and verify because no single computer can send or receive, let alone store, such a huge amount of data. The research team used dummy data on individual channels to test what the total throughput would be.

Helmet from KFC.

KFC invented the Brainwave Bucket helmet, which analyzes brain activity. All for the sake of a promotion - to prove to customers that while eating chicken, the stress level is reduced. Participants are offered to watch an ASMR video with chicken cooking, and if the subject's brain activity does not change, the chicken will be given out for free. By the way, in the future such buckets will be sold to everyone.

Engineers taught a neural network to kill cockroaches with a laser.

The YOLOv4 neural network was trained to distinguish cockroaches in the frame. Then she was connected to cameras that broadcast live video. When a cockroach enters the lens, the device calculates its location and sends a command to the laser and mirror. The insect detection accuracy is one centimeter at a distance of ten meters. The laser beam destroys the cockroach in a second. But sometimes it can get into the limbs - then the insect has a chance to escape.

LEGO has unveiled the Marvel Hulkbuster set.

This is an armor model from The Avengers. The Hulkbuster is a powerful suit of armor designed by Tony Stark. The armor can be seen in Avengers: Age of Ultron. The height of the assembled robot is 52 cm. The set consists of 4049 parts. Includes information plate and Tony Stark minifigure. LEGO said the armor model has many movie-accurate features, such as glowing "reactors" in the arms and chest.

3D printer for printing meat.

Israeli company Redefine Meat has created a 3D printer that can print tons of meat. Ultimately, the company plans to print 15 tons of products per day. The printer allows you to make steaks of different hardness and with different percentages of fat. The machine creates plant-based counterparts of the three components of meat - muscle, fat and blood - and then combines them to produce different products. The main ingredients for printing are chickpeas, soybeans, peas, beets, nutritional yeast and coconut milk. The company continues research to bring the taste and texture of the printed product closer to the original. Redefine Meat has created eight of these printers, six of which went to the Netherlands, where another company plant will soon start operating.

Minecraft built a giant life-size city.

More than 500 players worked on the city for 11 years. All built houses on the map have their own unique and different interiors that you can enter. Despite the work done, according to the developers, the city is only 20 percent ready. Even if you don't have Minecraft installed, you can take a bird's-eye sightseeing tour by looking at the dynamic online map.

Erase and Replace tool.

Runway launched the Erase and Replace tool, powered by the Stable Diffusion neural network. With its help, you can easily and quickly replace image fragments with frames generated by artificial intelligence. You just need to select the fragment that needs to be replaced, and then describe what should appear in the marked place.