Interesting facts about elephants.

Elephants' brains react to humans the same way humans react to puppies - they think we're cute.

Saffron is one of the most expensive spices in the world.

To collect 1 kg of spice, you need to collect the stigmas of 200,000 flowers.

Horse polo is considered the oldest team game in the world.

The game appeared more than two thousand years ago and was widespread in Persia and India. It was in India that the officers of the English army got acquainted with this game, thanks to whom polo spread throughout Europe.

Israeli scientists have grown sperm in the laboratory.

To do this, they cultivated testicular cells in a medium that mimics the natural one. Experiments on mice were successful - during the tests, sperm appeared in immature males after a month and a half. The technology may in the future become part of a therapeutic strategy to combat male infertility and preserve reproductive function in boys who undergo aggressive chemotherapy or radiation therapy during puberty. These are not the first scientists to grow sperm in the lab. Similar work is underway in different countries. It is important whose technology will be the most efficient, simplest and cheapest.

Tesla will unveil a prototype humanoid robot, Optimus, on September 30th.

Elon Musk promised to create the first programmable robot whose AI would allow him to perform a wide range of tasks. For example, help in the production of Tesla.

Amazon monitors warehouse workers minute by minute and fires them if they "did nothing" for more than two hours a day.

The company tracks and records every minute of “off-hours” using RF scanners that warehouse employees use to track customer packages. If an employee has accumulated from 30 to 59 minutes of "non-working" time for the first time in a year, he is first issued a written warning. If from 60 to 120 minutes a day has accumulated, or after a warning, an employee has accumulated another 30 to 59 minutes, he can be fired.

Hellish planet

Astronomers have discovered a "hellish planet" - it is constantly burning. The unusual planet 55 Cancri E was discovered 50 light years from Earth. The celestial body is too close to its star, the surface temperature of the planet is much higher than the melting point of rock-forming minerals, so its day side is covered with oceans of lava.

The most powerful supercomputer in the world.

The American supercomputer Frontier achieved a performance of 1.1 exaflops and took first place in the ranking of the most powerful in the world. In terms of speed, it outperforms the next seven supercomputers combined. Frontier has 9.4 thousand 64-core AMD EPYC 7A53 processors and 37.6 thousand AMD Instinct MI250X accelerators. The storage volume is about 700 petabytes. Frontier occupies a space of 372 square meters. Components are installed in 74 modules, each of which weighs almost 3.6 tons. It took 145 kilometers of cables to connect everything.

In China, a robot cloned pigs for the first time in history.

Scientists from Nankai University have come up with a method of cloning pigs, in which only a robot is involved. After the first automated insemination of the female, seven piglets were born. Full robotization of cloning ensures its success. The machine is less likely to damage cells during the operation, as it works more accurately than a person. The developers of the robot believe that the new technology will reduce China's dependence on pork imports. The country is the world's largest consumer of this product.

Children involved in basketball, football and other team sports are less likely than others to suffer from mental disorders.

These conclusions were made by American scientists in the course of a study involving 11.2 thousand schoolchildren aged 9-13 years. Participation in team sports is associated with fewer symptoms of anxiety and depression, as well as fewer problems with attention and socialization. At the same time, children who do not play sports at all have fewer mental problems than those who prefer individual sports: tennis, gymnastics, golf.

The liver does not age with a person - it is always about three years old.

The liver is constantly damaged during the purification of blood from toxins. But the body is capable of regeneration - it goes on continuously, even in old age. It doesn't matter how old a person is: 20 or 80. His liver is always about three years old. German biologists came to such conclusions after radiocarbon analysis of the liver of 33 dead people aged 20-84. Despite the “young age” of the organ as a whole, not all of its cells are of the same age. Some - are restored annually, others - live for ten years.

Golden machine.

There are vending machines in Dubai that sell gold bars in the same way that they usually sell drinks and chocolates.

More people believe in ghosts than they trust the government.

Every second Briton (50%) believes in ghosts, and only every fifth (20%) trusts the government. This was shown by a survey of a thousand people commissioned by SpiritShack. In addition, there are twice as many people who believe in the existence of ghosts than those who trust the media. Also, the belief in ghosts is more popular than the theory of total surveillance in the spirit of "Big Brother" - 50% versus 38% of respondents.

In Britain, a sperm donor deliberately concealed a genetic disease.

In Derby, 37-year-old James McDougall offered sperm donor services to homosexual women on social media while hiding the fact that he had an incurable genetic disease. Martin-Bell syndrome, diagnosed in a Briton, leads to developmental delay and decreased intelligence. McDougall fathered 15 children. The peculiarities of the man and his deceit became known during the court session of the commission on family affairs. McDougall asked to be allowed to communicate with four of the 15 children, despite the fact that he had previously signed a no-contact agreement. The affected women were against it. The court deprived McDougall of paternity and forbade him from being a sperm donor for other women.

In Iceland, they came up with a unique service for tourists

OutHorse Your Email - answers work letters during the holidays, but the main feature is that not people, but horses answer letters. How? Everything is very simple. Horses walk and run on a huge pad-like keyboard and send all sorts of gag from a person’s work e-mail. "Enjoy a distraction-free trip to Iceland and remember if you suddenly get emails from work while on vacation, the Icelandic horses have your back." - Visit Iceland staff.

American startup Astroforge plans to become the first company to master the extraction of minerals from asteroids and their delivery to Earth.

The startup has already received $13 million in seed investment to develop its project. The founders of the startup, former SpaceX, NASA and Virgin Orbit engineers are Matt Gialich and Jose Acain. They have developed a fundamentally new technology for processing materials in outer space, but specific details have not yet been disclosed. What is currently known is that this technology requires a high vacuum and only works in zero gravity. Astroforge promises to demonstrate it in low-Earth orbit as early as 2023 and to arrange the supply of minerals from space before the end of this decade.

British schoolchildren will be fed insects.

School canteens in the UK will begin serving dishes with crushed insects. The pilot project starts this week. It involves children aged 4-11 from four schools in Wales. They are expected to understand the benefits of alternative proteins. Researchers claim that insects are rich in proteins and vitamins. At the same time, their breeding farms are more environmentally friendly than poultry farms - they emit 75% less carbon. Worldwide, insects are eaten by approximately two billion people. They mainly live in regions with corresponding culinary traditions.

The largest plant in the world was found off the coast of Australia.

The vast kelp meadows in Shark Bay on the west coast of Australia are actually the shoots of a single plant. This was shown by his genetic analysis. For 4.5 thousand years, the Posidonia australis algae has captured an area of ​​​​200 square kilometers and has become home to many fish, crabs, turtles and other animals. Posidonia australis grew at a rate of 35 centimeters per year. In some places, the length of her ribbons is only 10 centimeters, in others - a whole meter. The algae was able to survive in difficult conditions - at 15-30 ° C in the saltiest parts of Shark Bay. Posidonia australis has become the largest plant on Earth. It is several hundred times the size of a Pando Poplar colony in Utah with a common root system.

The pygmy marmoset is the smallest monkey on the planet, weighing only 150 grams.

They spend most of their lives in trees. They feed on tree sap, insects and fruits.

Giant bulb

Pete Glazebrook from Northern England looks lovingly at the nearly 9 kg bulb he has grown. She entered the Guinness Book of Records as the heaviest bulb.