Recommended Links of the Week #723: Living Robots, Spaghetti, and More

Welcome to issue #723 of Recommended Links! This week we've got living robots, spaghetti growing on trees, cryonics, penile bumps, and the X-ray of a single atom. Read on for the rest of the wonders gathered here. Enjoy!

Recommended Links of the Week (No. 723) — Mariah Carey

The Links

Scientists create the first 'living robots' made entirely of living cells: "Scientists have created a new kind of 'robot', not made of metal, plastic, and wires, but formed entirely of living cells. In a report published in PNAS, researchers from the University of Vermont and Tufts University detail how they achieved this feat using cells taken from frog embryos. These fascinating organisms, nicknamed 'xenobots', were designed using algorithms that mimic the forces of natural selection."
200 frozen people waiting to return to life when technology advances enough: "In a world where science and technology constantly intertwine, there are people who have made a decision as bold as it is intriguing: they have chosen cryonics as a way to prolong their lives or cure their diseases in the future. These individuals, with unwavering faith in the potential of science, have chosen to undergo a cryogenic process, where their bodies or brains are preserved at extremely low temperatures."
When a BBC documentary made millions of viewers believe they could grow spaghetti at home: "Put a sprig of spaghetti in a can of tomato sauce and hope for the best." This is the answer the BBC gave to viewers who called asking how they could grow spaghetti at home. We're not crazy. It's about a fun episode that happened in the UK in 1957, after the famous network broadcast a report on a Swiss family that harvested that type of pasta.

Illusion 'Platform 9'

Economy of friendship: why men have fewer and fewer friends: "If we take these data literally, says psychologist and family physician Sebastian Tong, 'we would be witnessing a worrying decline of friendship as an institution and as a concept'. The supply chain of soulmates willing to 'walk by our side' from one twilight to another, as Albert Camus would say, is being interrupted. And this time we cannot blame an unfortunate traffic jam in the Suez Strait, as in the case of microchips."
The growing number of young South Koreans who never leave their rooms: "In 2019, Yoo Seung-gyu came out of the studio where he lived for the first time in five years. The 30-year-old South Korean first cleaned his 'messy apartment' with his brother. Then he set off on a fishing expedition at sea, with recluses like him he had met through a charity. 'It was a strange feeling to be at sea, but at the same time it was very refreshing after reclusion. It felt unreal, but it definitely was there. It existed', said Yoo."
Penile bumps - 11 causes and how to treat (includes photos): "Penile bumps, often similar to pimples, can be caused by benign problems such as pearly penile papules or Fordyce spots, and can appear at any age. However, these lumps on the penis can also arise from other alterations such as the presence of a lymphocele, lichen planus, genital warts, and in rarer cases it may indicate penile cancer. Learn more about penile cancer symptoms."

https://www.youtube.com/embed/zWGnlAQsRaE

Tyrannosaurus vs. Quetzalcoatlus

Why did trilobites become extinct?: "Trilobites are strange creatures: they look like swimming bugs whose armored plates end in helmets like Darth Vader's, which lived on Earth for a whopping 270 million years. These pelagic invertebrates, whose species once numbered in the tens of thousands and specimens in the billions, thrived as they tirelessly scoured the ocean floor in search of food with such success that they even managed to survive the first two mass extinctions."
The man who was buried alive and exhumed to be dissected: "In the 19th century, premature burial was so common that there were large coffins designed so that anyone buried two meters deep and alive could communicate it to those on the surface. There were coffins, like the one built in 1868 by Franz Vester, that even had a place to store food. In 1896, in that context of hysteria, the Englishman William Tebb founded the London Association for the Prevention of Premature Burial, to prevent people suffering from cholera to misdiagnoses from being buried."
Gladis, the killer whale that teaches other orcas to take revenge on humans in sailboats: "A killer whale named 'White Gladis' or simply 'Gladis' is causing a stir on the coasts of Gibraltar and has become a viral internet phenomenon because it could be teaching other mammals of its species to attack sailboats as a form of 'revenge' after being traumatized by an encounter with a boat crewed by humans. According to a study in the journal Marine Mammal Science, recovered by Live Science, reports of aggressive encounters with orcas off the coast of the Iberian Peninsula began in May 2020 and are becoming more frequent."

AI doesn't understand dogs and cats

New record of planes flying at the same time, more than a million people in the air: "On last May 26, the record of planes flying at the same time was broken: more than 22,000. A total of more than 253,000 flights in one day. More than a million people in the air at the same time. The map with the flights has some curiosities. Thanks to the FlightRadar24 website, we can know exactly the number of planes flying in real time worldwide, as well as their position."
The clearest evidence of why in the Universe there is 'something' instead of 'nothing': "In a perfect and totally symmetric Universe, none of us would exist. And there would be no planets, stars, galaxies, or any other thing made of matter we can imagine. In a perfect Universe everything would be symmetric, and the Big Bang would have produced exactly the same amount of matter and antimatter, which have the peculiarity that, upon contact, they cancel each other out leaving... nothing."
Scientists achieve a technological feat that will transform the world: "Scientists have been able to take an X-ray of a single atom, for the first time in the history of science. It should be noted that an atom is one ten-billionth of a meter, meaning that in the diameter of a human hair (about 80 microns), 800,000 atoms would fit in a row. The authors of this research were not only able to distinguish through X-rays the type of atoms they were seeing (there were two different ones), but they also managed to study the chemical behavior exhibited by both atoms."