Samsung has partnered with Irish drone delivery company Manna to bring drone delivery of small electronics like phones and smartwatches to a small town in Ireland. Residents of the town will receive their devices within three minutes if they order from Samsung's Irish online store. Manna's drones can travel at speeds of over 60 kilometers per hour, and they will only operate within a two-kilometer radius from their dispatch center. People in the town have already been able to order groceries and medicines to be delivered by drone since last year, thanks to a deal Manna has with Tesco.
Robinhood is building a platform that will allow users to buy into IPOs. Traders that get to buy into IPOs often have an advantage over other traders who can't buy into a stock until its shares start trading. Robinhood will have to negotiate agreements with companies and their brokerages and get the blessing of US regulators before the platform goes public. The company recently filed paperwork with the SEC for its IPO. Allowing amateur traders to buy into IPOs could boost Robinhood's valuation in its own IPO.
Scientists from Brazil who study how octopuses sleep say that an octopus' changes in color, behavior, and movement during sleep serve as evidence of a sleep cycle. The findings suggest that octopuses shift between active and quiet sleep. It takes about six minutes for octopuses to enter the active sleep state, which lasts from a few seconds to a minute. While it is not possible to confirm whether octopuses dream, the active sleep stage is a state analogous to REM sleep in humans.
Waymo recently held a live demonstration of its automated driving system with a Class 8 tractor on highways near the company's operations center outside of Phoenix. The truck performed lane changes and merges while negotiating traffic. It responded to a cut-in by automatically extending the following distance without harsh braking. Waymo also showcased its fifth-generation Waymo Driver, which has 360-degree camera sensors that can detect objects more than 500 meters away. Images of the truck from the demonstration are available in the article.
TinaCMS is a toolkit for building content management directly into a website. It allows teams to have a contextual and intuitive editing experience without sacrificing code quality. A demo is available on the main website.
Sperm counts in the West have dropped by 50 percent due to pesticides, plastics, and other chemicals. Chemicals used to make plastic soft and flexible, like phthalates, are endocrine disruptors that cause men to produce less testosterone. Most phthalate ingestion is through food, and a lot of chemicals are absorbed through the skin. Processed foods have a high risk of containing phthalates. A lot of chemicals are put into personal care products specifically to increase skin absorption. It is possible to increase sperm quality by eating a Mediterranean diet and avoiding foods with pesticides.
A recent study on the role of ducks in dispersing fish eggs has found that some eggs remain viable after being eaten and pooped out by waterfowl. The researchers fed eight captive ducks roughly 500 eggs each from two invasive species of carp. Six of the ducks passed living eggs in their feces, and three fish successfully hatched. A single carp can lay up to 1.5 million eggs several times a year. Even a tiny percentage of surviving eggs is significant and helps explain how fish sometimes seem to appear out of nowhere in isolated bodies of water.
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