Curio Cabinet

This week, as the weather continues to warm, we're looking back on some of our favorite springtime curios from years past.
 
These cleaning fish are making a mess in Texas! 406 invasive suckermouth armored catfish were removed from the San Marcos River recently by researchers from Texas A&M and Texas State universities. Better known as plecostomus or plecos, the fish are native to parts of Central and South America but were introduced to Texan waters mainly by people who dumped them from their aquariums. In some bodies of water, they were also introduced intentionally, to control algae. The fish are popular to keep because they eat the algae growing inside tanks, but their productivity can lead to headaches for their owners down the line, as plecos can grow up to three feet long from all that eating.
 
Once they’re in the wild, it’s a disaster for native wildlife. As their name implies, their thick, armored skin leaves them with few natural predators, and according to the Texas Invasive Species Institute, they reproduce quickly and are even capable of surviving out of water for 20 hours. Plecos have also been found to tolerate brackish waters, or water that has some salt and freshwater content, further increasing the range of their threat. Lastly, they tend to dig burrows along river banks, destabilizing them and increasing erosion. The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department (TPWD) has been raising awareness on the issue for years and instructs people who catch the fish to not release them back into the water. When a highschooler caught a record-breaking suckermouth back in 2011, Dr. Gary Garrett—the Director of Watershed Conservation for the TPWD at the time—stated, “These fish are the most destructive exotic fish in Texas. They take over important habitats such as springs, push out and replace native species, including listed species and species of conservation concern, decimate native vegetation and undermine and destabilize banks. In no way do they have any redeeming qualities.” While scientists have tagged and released the invasive fish in the past to track their population, the 406 caught recently will not be so lucky, as the TPWD announced that the invaders will be euthanized humanely using a fish anesthetic and their remains will be used for further research. Seriously, don’t mess with Texas.

 
[Image description: A plecostomus fish in an aquarium.] Credit & copyright: Karelj, Wikimedia Commons.

This week, as the weather continues to warm, we're looking back on some of our favorite springtime curios from years past.
 

It's a bird! It's a plane! Nope, it's a drunk bird. And Gilbert, a tiny city in northeastern Minnesota, seems to have been attacked by thousands of them. The Gilbert Chief of Police, Ty Techar, put out a notice that residents should watch out for "tipsy birds" flying into windows, dive-bombing residents, slamming into cars, and generally "flopping all over the place." The birds are also exhibiting an atypical willingness to stay put when humans approach. All of this has led authorities to conclude the birds are suffering from fermentation toxicity. In other words, they're drunk. It commonly occurs when animals eat berries that have fermented into alcohol—usually during spring thaw when berries are susceptible to wild yeasts fermenting their remaining sugars. Normally it affects bigger animals like deer, since the birds have migrated south for the winter. But this year an early frost seems to have kicked in the phenomenon much earlier than normal. Meaning tiny sparrows and robins, with blood alcohol tolerances much lower than deer, are gobbling up the berries. Some bird experts say there's no real evidence the birds are drunk, and that when migration begins there are always increased episodes of birds going berserk. But Chief Techar isn't buying it. While he admits he hasn't given the birds a breathalyzer, he says it's easy to tell. Still, he wants residents to calm down: "it's not like every bird in our town is hammered." You can find the joke there yourself.
 

Image credit & copyright: PookieFugglestein, Wikimedia Commons. This file is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.
 

Falling in quicksand is a lot like falling in love, in that most people don't really know how it works. A Michigan man recently made headlines when he found himself stuck in quicksand. When he was rescued, he not only regained his freedom, but he'd made a love connection.
 
Though most people don’t encounter it on a daily basis, quicksand can be a common hazard in certain areas, especially places with high levels of groundwater. Recently, Mitchell O'Brien and Breanne Sika were rock hunting on the shores of Lake Michigan when the former stepped into quicksand and suddenly found himself stuck, waist-deep. If sand becomes saturated with enough water and air, it can become a sand-water suspension that can't support a person's weight on the surface. Luckily, a person stuck in quicksand won’t usually sink so deep that their entire body is covered, since the human body is less dense than the suspension. That's not to say that quicksand isn’t dangerous. When a person falls in, the sheer weight of the sand can lock their limbs into place. If the person struggles and loses their balance, they can drown even if they're not fully submerged. There's also a risk of drowning if a person is caught in quicksand near water during a rising tide.
 
While it's difficult to free oneself from quicksand without assistance, it’s not impossible. Leaning backward when stepping in quicksand can prevent the feet and legs from sinking in further, and it's possible to escape by slowly moving each limb back and forth. Unfortunately, O'Brien had to wait for firefighters to arrive to pull him out, but the "emotional torment" that he went through with his rock-hunting partner apparently brought them closer together, allowing them to express their latent romantic feelings for one another. Who needs dating apps when you have quicksand?

 
[Image description: A close-up photo of sand.] Credit & copyright: Annajohepworth, Wikimedia Commons. This file is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.

Everyone loves a good tutorial video…even robots. Despite humanity’s recent breakthroughs in AI technology, there still aren’t many robots around. That’s because robots have physical bodies, which means that they have to navigate the physical world…which means that they have to be able to learn and adapt. That’s a tall order for a non-living entity with no brain. Typically, robots have to be programmed with very specific instructions, and then re-programmed with new information whenever they inevitably encounter real-world obstacles. Now, though, researchers at Cornell University in New York have developed an AI-powered framework that allows robots to learn new things simply by watching a video. It’s called RHyME (Retrieval for Hybrid Imitation under Mismatched Execution), and it works by equipping robots with a “memory bank” of moving images that they can access when they encounter tasks they don’t understand. While videos of humans performing various tasks have been used to train robots before, the method was never completely successful because humans don’t move like robots, and their movements would therefore confuse their robotic pupils. This is the problem that RHyME set out to fix. When a RHyME-equipped robot watches how-to videos of humans performing tasks, it retains all the images within a memory bank. After watching multiple videos, the robot has a lot of stored information to draw upon, and it can piece together new actions using its memory for “inspiration.” For example, if a robot has seen a video of a person opening a book, it can not only open a book itself, but also draw on other videos it might have seen of humans grasping, lifting, and setting down objects. This would allow it to grab, lift, and set down the book in addition to opening it, even if it hadn’t seen a human perform those exact actions with a book. RHyME could open the door to more adaptive robotic learning, allowing robots to safely perform tasks in all sorts of new environments. Futuristic robotic butlers, here we come!

[Image description: A digital illustration of a robotic hand reaching toward geometric grid-like shapes.] Credit & copyright: Tara Winstead, Pexels
 

The colors of spring are always a sight to behold, but some of them we can’t actually see. While we’ve known for decades that there are certain colors the human eye can’t detect, new research has uncovered a previously unknown one—and has even helped a few people to see it.
 
Humans see color because of light sensitive cells in our eyes called cones. Some cones are sensitive to long wavelengths of light, some to medium wavelengths, and others to short wavelengths. While short-sensitive cones are stimulated by white-blue light and long-sensitive cones by red light, medium-sensitive cones aren’t stimulated by any light independent of other cones. To see what would happen if these medium-sensitive cones were stimulated directly, U.S. researchers first mapped the retinas of five study participants, noting the exact positions of their cones. Then, a laser was used to stimulate only the medium-sensitive cones in each person’s eye.
 
Participants reported seeing a large patch of color different from any they’d seen before. It was described as an impossibly saturated blue-green. The new color has been dubbed “olo”, a name based on the binary code 010, which indicates that only the medium-sensitive cones were activated. To ensure that participants had actually seen the same color, they each took color-matching tests. When given an adjustable color wheel and asked to match it as closely as possible to olo, all participants selected a teal color.
 
As amazing as the results seem, some scientists are dubious that olo is actually its own color, claiming that, though it can only be seen via unnatural stimulation, the color itself is just a highly-saturated green. As much as we’d love to see whether they’re right, we’re not quite ready to have lasers flashed in our eyes. For now, we’ll stick with regular, springtime green.

[Image description: A digital illustration representing rainbow light shining through a triangular, white prism.] Credit & copyright: Author-created illustration. Public Domain.