Scientists at the University of Barcelona have discovered that honeybees exhibit collective decision-making behavior, which is useful for creating a swarm of robots.
Controlling a swarm of drones with a hand movement
The arXiv website indicates that scientists designed and produced 35 robots, equipped with small legs, LED lights, and an infrared receiver, and programmed to perform dance movements. Each robot was tasked with finding a potential nesting site for the colony and then reaching a consensus among the other robots on choosing the optimal location.
The researchers modeled the robot's behavior on scout bees from the kingdom Apis mellifera (honeybees), such that when a scout detects a potential hive site, it performs a "dance" — a series of rapid swaying movements, forming a shape roughly resembling the number 8. This dance is information about the distance and direction to a potential nesting site or the type and size of food supplies.
Experiments showed that this swarm can make a collective decision in a decentralized manner, like honeybees and choose the best route to reach a chosen location. In this same way, robots can communicate with each other and track disease development processes or body deformities of patients, or carry out search and rescue missions in serious cases.
A Harvard scientist explains "a mysterious sound that shook homes in New England"!
Residents of New England reported hearing a “strange” sound on the evening of October 20, which shook homes and windows for at least 12 seconds, according to reports.
Harvard University's astronomical instruments recorded the noise and found that it did not resemble anything coming from birds, planes or wind.
Alien-hunting physicist and former head of astronomy at Harvard University, Avi Loeb, investigated the source of the "strange sound."
Loeb determined that a UFO released explosive energy equivalent to 2,400 pounds of TNT, which was detected from a distance of more than 10 miles.
The sound was moving at a speed of 1,115 feet per second (0.3399 km/s), when it was discovered by an observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Loeb determined that the energy source likely came from the explosion of a mile-wide meteorite during the Orionid shower that peaked in the region on October 21.
Loeb's Galileo Project Observatory recorded the event using a giant, ultra-sensitive microphone that he installed on the roof of a building on the Harvard campus.
Andy Meade, who designed and built the system, contacted Loeb on October 21, after he noticed something strange picked up by the sensors.
The Mexican Congress listens to controversial evidence about the reality of "non-human beings"!
“I started receiving messages this morning about a sound that was being heard all over New England,” Mead said in a note. “It is worth noting that the Mount Washington Observatory published a post about this topic as there were a lot of inquiries. The post has now achieved more than 4,000 reactions, 1,000 comments, and 751 shares.” ".
He told MedLoop that he found a "very interesting sound" that lasted for 12 seconds.
Loeb then created a website to collect reports from other sites.
Physicists shared in a Medium post: “Given the mission of the Galileo project, one question comes to mind: Is this an unidentified anomalous phenomenon (UAP)? Are aliens using advanced technologies near Earth?”
The signal was short but produced a sudden release of energy, sending a wave through the Earth's atmosphere.
The Orionid meteor shower, which occurs every fall when Earth passes through a stream of debris from Halley's Comet, peaked on October 21 with up to 25 meteors every hour.
Every year, Earth passes through these trails of debris, which collide with our atmosphere and break up to form fiery, colorful streaks in the sky.
Because this is an annual event, New England residents reported hearing “similar sounds” in 2021, also on October 20.
Russia : creating a carbohydrate-free alternative to sugar
Russian scientists working for the food industry company "Effco" have created an alternative sweetener for sugar that does not contain carbohydrates at all.
Rostislav Kovalevsky, one of the company's shareholders, said in an interview with the Russian Novosti News Agency that this innovation can be considered an important breakthrough for people suffering from diabetes.
He says: “Of course there are different alternatives to sugar, including a group of chemical alternatives (artificial sweeteners). However, the main problem is that the human body does not adapt to them, and many scientific studies have shown their harm. The second group is plant alternatives such as stevia, It also has its drawbacks - it is not tasty and is very expensive, because it cannot be grown in large quantities, as stevia can be obtained from a special plant that grows only in South America.”
According to him, a group of scientists working for the company discovered rare types of African fruits that taste sweet, but not because of sugar, but because of a type of protein, which when it comes into contact with taste receptors, gives amazing sweetness.
Biotechnologists have devised a way to obtain this protein in laboratory conditions.
He says: “This is a special mechanism that allows microorganisms to produce this sweet protein. The best models we obtained showed that it is about 10,000 times sweeter than regular sugar,” noting that one gram of this protein replaces 10 kilograms of regular sugar.
It should be noted that, according to the World Health Organization, the number of people suffering from diabetes has quadrupled over the past 40 years. Diabetes is the only serious non-communicable disease in which the risk of premature death increases. According to the International Diabetes Federation, 537 million adults worldwide currently suffer from diabetes - that's one in ten people. More than 90 percent of them have type 2 diabetes, and about half of them do not know it.