💬 Water Ants | Hot Nostrils | Anti-Aging

Happy New Year! This week we're reflecting on stories with NYE vibes; huddled by a fire, being healthy, and living young.

Bonus reads for you:

• Last week's Convo Kit, written and illustrated by AI

• Haiku Book Reviews: 17-syllable summaries of great books, written by a human (me)

-New Year's Steve

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Fire Raft

In the most stressful game of Twister ever, fire ants link together to survive flooding. If Antony doesn’t get “right mandible, red” quick enough, the whole colony could drown.

• Flash floods prompt fire ants to build living rafts in under 100 seconds

• No communication or hierarchy is involved, they just build it

• “Treadmilling” allows some ants to patrol atop their friends

Being literally alive, the rafts can adapt and generate branches in search of land. Researchers at Georgia Tech are studying this coordination in hopes of passing on ant-logic to swarm robotics.

More on the ants dance

Nostril Heat

We finally know why cool weather brings the sniffles. Scientists found cold air suppresses our nose’s immune system.

• Our noses take in a lot of viruses and bacteria

• And also hosts specialized defender cells

• But a 9°F drop in the booger barn kills ~50% of them

Studies were done in vitro (aka in human tissue, not actual noses) but scientists believe keeping our nostrils warm could significantly boost immune defense. Still time to knit a nose warmer!

The nose knows

Water Bear of Youth

This is a water bear’s world, we’re just living in it. Adding to their real-life superpowers, tardigrades have been observed to literally stop aging when entering “tun”.

• Tardigrade = micro-animals that survive in extreme environments up to 10 yrs.

• “Tun” (suspended animation) when facing life-threatening conditions

• Anti-aging tested by comparing a control group to an occasionally frozen one

Tardigrades that entered tun-cations lived twice as long as their counterparts. If we subtract the time frozen, their lifespans are about the same. Proving that all we have to do to slow down aging is freeze dry our cells and shrink down under a mm.

Ha, more like TardiGREAT

Clickables

• New dolphin species just dropped

• Hide and seek champ: invisible frogs

• Black hole stars, aka beasts of the early universe

• How stealthy mud volcanoes work

• Robo-swarm learned jailbreaking from ants

st3v on site

Happy New Year

Reflecting back on 2022 reminded st3v of all his adventures investigating TCK stories. And bees. He loves bees.

Forward to a friend!

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Catch-up here: Artificial Author | Dead Gravity | Fungus Festivus (written by ai!)

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