Ultra Sip | Hive BEEhavior | Brain Slice

This week I put Oreos in my rice cooker and didn’t ruin it. Which is already a win in my book, but the cookies-and-cream rice cakes also tasted good!

-Steve

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Ultra Sip

Ultrasound is the key to instant cold brew coffee. Researchers developed a sound system that cuts brewing time down to just 3 minutes.

• Normal cold brewing time = 12-24 hours

• Ultrasonic process collapses acoustic bubbles

• Creating micro-jets that extract coffee compounds

Trained sensory evaluators confirmed ultrasound-coffee is on par with traditional brews. Testing was done with an off-the-shelf espresso machine, meaning consumer-level quick cold brew could be coming soon. Let’s call it Ultra Brew!

Cold C₈H₁₀N₄O₂

Hive BEEhavior

Busy bees cooperate to get more done. Bumblebees demonstrated intentional cooperation in a recent study.

• Study involved pushing blocks and tunnel navigation

• Bees waited for their partner before initiating tasks

• Teams trained in pairs performed better than combining solo-bees

Bee brains were previously considered too small to process social cues seen in larger animals like apes and humans. Further research will determine how advanced bee’s social skills are by comparison. Bee-work makes the dream work!

Bee-team > A-Team

Brain Slice

If our brains were pizza, we now know what one slice is made of. Neuroscientists charted a cubic millimeter of human brain tissue.

• Brain tissue donated by epilepsy surgery patient

• ~150 million synapses mapped

• Sample = 1/1,000,000^th of a human brain

Assembling the map of ~5,000 microscopic layers took a whole year. The results are publicly available for research to accelerate our understanding of our own minds. Can’t wait to see which neural connections created st3v!

Braaaaaains

Unnatural Selection

Last week: “Which would you rather swim with?”

“It stings” - spiders commenting on their close loss.

st3v on site

Ultra-Caffeinated

st3v and the bees confirmed 38.8-kHz makes the best coffee. Fortunately they already worked great as a team!

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