Googly-Eyed Stubby Purple Squid Can’t Be Real Life

KS Strange ScienceIf you haven’t smiled yet today, you need to watch this video of researchers aboard Nautilus coming across an adorable googly-eyed cephalopod.
stubbypurple
I’m not sure what is better – the actual squid or the crew. Such excitement! It goes a little something like this:

“What IS that?!”

“He has weird eyes.”

“No, no, no. Don’t change the angle, please!”

“It looks like some little kid dropped their toy.”

“Maybe he has eye problems…”

“He looks fake, like Davy Jones.”

“He looks like he has googly-eyes! They look painted on.”

“He is awesome.”

“His eyes are freaking me out…”

“He is cool, Mr. Cuttlefish!”

“Is he a cuttlefish? Octopus? No, cuttlefish. He is a ‘cuddle’ fish.”

From the Nautilus website: ‘The stubby squid (Rossia pacifica) looks like a cross between an octopus and squid, but is more closely related to cuttlefish. The team spotted this Stubby Squid off the coast of California at a depth of 2,950 feet.

This species spends life on the seafloor, activating a sticky mucus jacket and burrowing into the sediment to camouflage, leaving their eyes poking out to spot prey like shrimp and small fish.

Rossia pacifica is found in the Northern Pacific from Japan to Southern California up to 300m, but in addition to the team’s sighting, researchers at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) have spotted them at depths of 1,300 m (4,260 ft).’

Nautilus is currently cruising up the California coastline investigating old ship wrecks. How cool is that? Follow them on Twitter for more updates during their mission!


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Video

First-Ever Shark Sonogram Reveals 20 Jaws Full of Sharp Teeth

KS_LOGOs2_UnderwaterCan you imagine? Congratulations – you’re having SHARKS! You’re looking at the first ever shark ultrasound. Scientists were shocked to discover the shark, who they named “Emily,” was really pregnant.

shark sonogram

The 12.5 foot tiger shark was found with 20 well-formed thrashing pups – which incidentally comes with 20 tiny jaws of razor sharp teeth! Scientists estimate the shark pups to be about 40 to 45 centimeters (15 to 18 inches) long. That delivery sounds delightful.

James Sulikowski, of the University of New England, along with collaborators from the University of Miami conducted the sonogram in the Bahamas. Their ultrasound is groundbreaking because, not only is it uncharted territory, it could also change how researchers study pregnant sharks. Shark wombs used to be cut open in order to be studied, which ultimately killed the mother.

This creepily adorable video is part of Discovery’s Shark Week. Check it out below:


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First-Ever Shark Sonogram Reveals 20 Jaws Full of Sharp Teeth

Nintendo Shocks with NES Classic Edition: a Retro Blast from the Past!

KS TechnologyI can’t help but feel the need to high-five my younger self. I woke up to the BEST news this week. Nintendo is bringing back the NES! It’s just a whole lot smaller.

nintendo new classic edition

On July 14th, Nintendo announced what it’s calling the Nintendo Entertainment System: NES Classic Edition. It looks exactly like the original gaming console, only miniaturized, and it comes with 30 built-in games!

The new system offers multiple suspend points and all of your favorite classic games. No cartridges or passwords required. Simply connect the NES Classic Edition to your TV with the HDMI cable provided, pick up the ‘original’ full-size NES controller (you heard me), and play the games that made you fall in love with Nintendo years ago.

Cool Fact: The new controller will also connect to your Wii Remote, so you can use it to play Virtual Console games on the Wii or Wii U.

The complete list of games:

  • Balloon Fight
  • Bubble Bobble
  • Castlevania
  • Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest
  • Donkey Kong
  • Donkey Kong Jr.
  • Double Dragon II: The Revenge
  • Dr. Mario
  • Excitebike
  • Final Fantasy
  • Galaga
  • Ghosts’N Goblins
  • Gradius
  • Ice Climber
  • Kid Icarus
  • Kirby’s Adventure
  • Mario Bros.
  • Mega Man 2
  • Metroid
  • Ninja Gaiden
  • Pac-Man
  • Punch-Out!! Featuring Mr. Dream
  • StarTropics
  • Super C
  • Super Mario Bros.
  • Super Mario Bros. 2
  • Super Mario Bros. 3
  • Tecmo Bowl
  • The Legend of Zelda
  • Zelda II: The Adventure of Link

Whats in the box? The NES Classic Edition system, one NES Classic Controller, HDMI cable, AC adapter, and 30 pre-installed games. The NES Classic Edition will be available on November 11th for $59.99 – just in time for Christmas! 🎮

NES_Classic_2.0


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Nintendo Shocks with NES Classic Edition: a Retro Blast from the Past!

#CephalopodWeek Top Reads, Videos and Incredible Images

KS_LOGOs2_UnderwaterIt’s time to bid farewell to my favorite time of the year – #CephalopodWeek. For 7 days, scientists and cephalopod enthusiasts honor our smart, inky, tentacle waving friends.

I’ve selected a few awesome must-read articles and must-see videos from Cephalopod Week 2016 for you to enjoy! 🐙


Eight (or More) Reasons to be Amazed by the Octopus – Science Friday

Science Friday 1

Video: Colorful Cephalopods – CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES

Cal Academy

Cephalopod Week Returns – American Museum of Natural History

AMNH

Photos: Cephalopod Awareness – Biodiversity Heritage Library

Flickr

Video: Video: Run, Octopus, Run! – Science Friday

Science Friday 2 Run

We’re Not Squidding Around – Cephalopod Week Is Sure to Suck You In – KQED

KQED

This #CephalopodWeek infographic shows everything you should know about squids – The Daily Dot

Daily Dot

Vampire squid take mommy breaks – Science News

Science News

Video: I, Octopus – Science Friday

Science Friday 3 I, Octopus

Video: Pelagic parenting: A deep-sea squid broods its eggs – Monterey Bay Aquarium

Monterey Bay Aquarium


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#CephalopodWeek Top Reads, Videos and Incredible Images

San Diego Zoo Welcomes Adorable Koala and Rare Baby Lemur

nature-science

The San Diego Zoo’s Australian Outback has a new resident – koala mom Cambee gave birth to an adorable little joey! She actually gave birth last November, but the little one only recently emerged from her mom’s pouch. Talk about a cute backpack. 🐨

san diego zoo koala

“It is always fun when we get to work with koala joeys and watch their personalities develop,” said Lacy Pearson, San Diego Zoo keeper. “At this age, she has not shown us her personality yet, but she is doing great, and has already started to eat eucalyptus leaves.”

The San Diego Zoo has the largest breeding colony of Queensland koalas and the most successful koala breeding program outside of Australia. Zoo officials say the tiny baby koala just had her first check-up and doesn’t have a name yet, so stay tuned.

Can’t make it to the zoo to visit the koalas? No problem! Watch the koalas live here.

Fun Fact: Koala joeys eat their mother’s poop in order to obtain the bacteria koalas need in their gut to digest eucalyptus leaves.


Cambee’s joey isn’t the only cute baby at the San Diego Zoo right now… they are also looking after a little red ruffed lemur who currently tips the scale at 9.2 oz. Keepers named him Ony, which means river in Malagasy.

san diego lemur baby

Ony was born on May 18, 2016. This is the first baby for red ruffed lemur Morticia. Keepers are stoked because it has been 13 years since the last red ruffed lemur was born at the zoo.

These striking red and black creatures are among the largest in the lemur family – and also the loudest. Sadly, the IUCN Red List states that the red ruffed lemur is critically endangered. Logging, burning of habitat, cyclones, mining, hunting, and the illegal pet trade are primary threats. This is why every new birth is such an exciting event.

You can’t visit the lemurs at this time. You can look forward to seeing the red ruffed family, and the rest of the zoo’s amazing lemurs, when Africa Rocks opens in summer 2017.

Fun Fact: The San Diego Zoo has a successful history of breeding red ruffed lemurs; in fact, they’ve had over 100 born since 1965. They attribute this success to the Primate Propagation Center, a facility specifically designed for breeding lemurs.

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VIDEO: Google’s Virtual Reality Tilt Brush Lets You Paint with Stars and Fire

KS TechnologyFinally, a virtual reality app I can get behind!  I just saw Google’s video for Tilt Brush—a new virtual reality (VR) app that lets you paint from an entirely new perspective, available on the HTC Vive. Fast Company has hailed it as the ‘Microsoft Paint of 2020.’

Art and design will never be the same again. This is the perfect introduction to VR for non-gamers. Check out the 3D artwork drawn in Tilt Brush below.

Tilt Brush

With Tilt Brush, you can paint in 3D – simply select your colors and brushes by waving your hand. What starts as an empty room quickly becomes the blank canvas for your imagination. The coolest part? This is virtual reality art, so you can choose to paint with crazy materials like stars, smoke, fire, or snowflakes!

You also have the ability to walk through and around your art + share your artwork as room-scale VR masterpieces or animated GIFs. For $29.99 I’m SOLD.

“Tilt Brush lets you paint in 3D space with virtual reality. Unleash your creativity with three-dimensional brush strokes, stars, light, and even fire. Your room is your canvas. Your palette is your imagination. The possibilities are endless.” – Google, YouTube

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Up Close and Personal with the Jagged Shores of Pluto’s Highlands

space-newsIt’s time to get up close and personal with Pluto’s dark, rugged highlands – informally named Krun Macula. (Krun is the lord of the underworld in the Mandaean religion, and a ‘macula’ is a dark feature on a planetary surface.).

plutohighlands

This enhanced color view from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft zooms in on the southeastern portion of Pluto’s great ice plains. Krun Macula rises 1.5 miles above Pluto’s icy surface, and the craters that decorate it typically reach between 5 and 8 miles across!

The amazing image below was crafted using three separate observations made by New Horizons as it flew by Pluto in July 2015. It represents pieces of the highest and second-highest resolution observations gathered by the spacecraft.

pluto close up
Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI

Why does Pluto have that dark rust color? According to NASA, Pluto is believed to get its deep red color from tholins, complex molecules found across much of the surface.


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Image

6 Reasons Robots are Going to Kill Us All: You’ve Been Warned

KS Technology

When I told my boyfriend I was writing a post about robots killing us all he simply said, “duh, just tell people to go watch Terminator 2.” So, if you have 2 hours to kill and want to watch some good ol’ fashioned cyborg destruction, be my guest.

I get it. The idea of a robot uprising isn’t new. But, there have been too many alarming signs recently. Robots are driving our cars, mimicking human emotion, checking us into hotels, and sleeping around.

Here are 6 reasons why robots are bound to kill us all:

1) ROBOT BULLYING IS A THING

It looks like bullying in the year 2016 just got a little more interesting. Boston Dynamics worked hard to make a human-like robot that can navigate tough terrain, recover from stumbles, and pick up boxes – just to bring in a human to knock the boxes out of its cold metal hands.

boston-dynamics

All joking aside, the hockey stick exercise you see in the clip above was done to gauge the robot’s responsiveness.

But, this isn’t the first time Boston Dynamics has made headlines for bulling one of its creations. They released a video in February 2015 of their four-legged robot named Spot – where they repeatedly kick the robot to try and throw off its balance.

2) We like to have sex with them

I think its safe to say my most popular video for IBTimes was a story about sex robots being the future of prostitution. It was even mocked by Lewis Black on The Daily Show.

I don’t know about the future of robot prostitutes, but I do know people are already having sex with them. As far as I’m concerned, that means robots now hold all the power.

3) Robots run hotels

When you enter Japan’s Henn-na Hotel you are greeted by an English speaking robotic dinosaur in a bow tie, next to a multi-lingual fembot, ready to check you in.

Other robots greet guests and serve coffee – a robot even brings your luggage to your room. They have also ditched traditional room keys for face recognition technology, making them one of the first hotels to do so.

One things the robots don’t do? Make the beds. So we have that going for us…

Henn-na Hotel Dinosaur

4) Your car wants to drive off without you

Self driving cars are a reality! According to Business Insider, companies like Mercedes, BMW, and Tesla have already released, or are soon to release, self-driving features that give the car some ability to drive itself.

Tech companies like Google have also joined the game with their Google Self-Driving Car Project.

5) Drones are now NAVY Seals

Engineers at Rutgers University have developed a drone that can swim and fly – and the Office of Naval Research wants in! According to Rutgers, the Navy has agreed to fund the development of the special air-and-water craft.

This way, in the future, robots can turn into flying and swimming death machines. Click here for video!
swimming-flying-drone

6) Robots are learning how to manipulate People

University of California San Diego researchers made a creepy robot baby named Diego-san. Their android child is designed to mimic the expressions of a one year old human child as it learns to control its body and interact with humans. NO THANK YOU.


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6 Reasons Robots are Going to Kill Us All: You’ve Been Warned

New Casper Look-a-like Octopod Spooks NOAA Scientists from the Deep

KS_LOGOs2_UnderwaterThe first operational dive of Okeanos Explorer’s 2016 season got off to a frightful start. At the end of February, NOAA’s remotely operated vehicle (ROV) Deep Discoverer dove 2 1/2 miles underwater to collect geological samples near Hawaii. While surveying the area, scientists were shocked to see a wispy white ghost-like octopod dance into view.

The appearance of this animal was unlike any published records and was the deepest observation ever for this type of cephalopod.

According to NOAA, deep-sea octopods are easily separated into two distinct groups:

  • (1) the cirrate, or finned, octopods (also known as “dumbo” octopods), characterized by fins on the sides of their bodies and fingerlike cirri associated with the suckers on their arms
  • (2) incirrate octopods, which lack both fins and cirri and are similar in appearance to common shallow-water Octopus
This ghostlike octopod is almost certainly an undescribed species and may not belong to any described genus. Image courtesy of NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research, Hohonu Moana 2016.
This ghostlike octopod is almost certainly an undescribed species and may not belong to any described genus. Image courtesy of NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research, Hohonu Moana 2016.

The octopod spotted by the ROV was a member of the second group, the incirrates. What makes this species unusual is that it lacks pigment cells called chromatophores, giving it its spooky appearance, and it isn’t very ‘muscular.’ Casper the wimpy ghost! 👻

The haunting image below captures the moment the unique cephalopod appeared from the deep. Scientist believe it is almost certainly an undescribed species and may not belong to any described genus.

Image courtesy of the NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research, Hohonu Moana 2016.
Image courtesy of the NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research, Hohonu Moana 2016.

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New Casper Look-a-like Octopod Spooks NOAA Scientists from the Deep

NASA’s Hubble Telescope Found the Galaxy Far, Far, Farthest Away!

space-newsCan you feel that? I think my nerdy little heart just skipped a beat. 😍

A group of international astronomers have pushed NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope to its limits. As a result, they’ve smashed records by measuring the furthest galaxy ever seen in the universe! Bye, bye, cosmic distance record. Hello GN-z11!

This surprisingly bright infant galaxy, named GN-z11, is seen as it was 13.4 billion years in the past, just 400 million years after the Big Bang.

galaxy-far-far-away

“We’ve taken a major step back in time, beyond what we’d ever expected to be able to do with Hubble. We see GN-z11 at a time when the universe was only three percent of its current age,” explained principal investigator Pascal Oesch of Yale University.

Credits: NASA, ESA, B. Robertson (University of California, Santa Cruz), A. Feild (STScI)
Credits: NASA, ESA, B. Robertson (University of California, Santa Cruz), A. Feild (STScI)

Astronomers are closing in on the first galaxies that formed in the universe. The new Hubble observations take astronomers into a realm that was once thought to be only reachable with NASA’s upcoming James Webb Space Telescope.

NASA’s Hubble Telescope Found the Galaxy Far, Far, Farthest Away!