Month: February 2024

For 150 bucks, you can buy a young neurosurgeon’s kit and turn a cockroach into a cyborg controlled by human will.

From the official website:

“…After about 2-7 days, the stimulation stops working altogether, so you can cut the wires and send the cockroach to retire in your breeding colony to spend the remainder of its days eating your lettuce and producing more cockroaches for you.”

In the comments, videos for young neurosurgeons and the controlled cockroach video.

This isn’t something new; this kit has been on sale for eight years already.

Elon Musk, will your Neuralink catch up soon?

I stumbled upon my story on Europe+ about a trip to Azerbaijan from 15 years ago hosted by Anton Kamolov and Olya Shelest. The funniest thing is that I don’t even remember it was aired; I’m listening to it now as if for the first time. I uploaded it to a transcriber, the text is below. It’s fantastic, almost nothing needed editing. Interesting to recall the trip, the prices, the places. And to look at the photos, how different we all were back then 🙂

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Anton Komolov: So, the segment is “In a fairy tale kingdom.” Today, we are traveling to Azerbaijan. Our guest is Rauf Aliyev. Rauf, hello. We are acquainted with each other, so we will be on a first-name basis. Rauf, please tell us, when were you in Azerbaijan? And maybe, being there, did you talk to someone or perhaps knew beforehand, what’s the best time to go there? Just to give people an idea right away.

Rauf: Well, I didn’t go at the best time to visit. We have a tradition of traveling somewhere every May holiday. That’s how our public holidays are structured, with two working days sandwiched between them, and everyone ends up on holiday. And this year, we decided to spend the May holidays in Azerbaijan. Usually, these would be tourist countries, but this time it was off the beaten track. Actually, the best time for vacationing in Azerbaijan is summer. That’s June, July, that’s when there’s the sea.

Anton Komolov: Isn’t it hot? I thought, you know, they say southern countries, when everything just starts blooming, but there’s no sweltering heat yet, that’s the perfect time.

Rauf: Yes, but it’s quite windy there, especially on the Absheron Peninsula, it’s a windy place.

Olya Shelest: What does “wild rest” mean? Does it mean without booking hotels and such?

Rauf: Well, of course, we tried to prepare everything. We tried to find all the hotels, plan the entire route a month in advance, but it didn’t work out too well, because it’s not always possible to get through by phone and make arrangements. Frankly speaking, concerning the city of Baku, everything is straightforward there, but it’s also expensive. I’ll talk about it separately.

Anton Komolov: Expensive compared to Moscow even? Or compared to expectations?

Rauf: Basically, Moscow has a bigger tourist flow, and here you can always find a place to relax for the money you have. In Azerbaijan, you absolutely can too, but only once you’re there, not when you’re arranging it in advance. You always end up facing hotels that cost from 150 to 200 euros per night, and it’s not really clear how one could afford a decent 11-day vacation with that kind of money.

Anton Komolov: No, you can, but it would be worrying.

Rauf: Yes, you’d be quite uneasy because there are always some alternatives that you regret not choosing. And, of course, we tried to plan the route. I’ll tell you right away, the route included Baku, Shamakhi, Gabala, and Sheki. These are four cities in Azerbaijan that are worth visiting. Basically, there were a couple more places, but they were quite far in a different direction. So, we decided to follow this route, and of course, with Baku, reserving hotels or apartments worked out quite quickly, but with the other cities, it had to be done on the spot.

Anton Komolov: Reserving apartments?

Rauf: So, in the end, you stayed not in a hotel, but rented an apartment? Yes, I found an apartment, although staying in a hotel didn’t appeal much, because it’s quite a standard vacation, you don’t get to see how people live. And, I think, it was the right decision. We lived right in the center of Baku, in a very quaint apartment. Generally speaking, all the apartments in the center, in these Eastern courtyards, look very unusual. On the websites that rented apartments daily in Baku, all these apartments looked quite strange to our eyes, it wasn’t European. It was lots of carpets, those bulky sofas, accordingly, very lavishly decorated with drapery. Perhaps many imagine a Baku apartment like that. Yes, but we tried to find something more akin to European taste. And eventually, we found this apartment, not this one, another apartment, that we liked, looked it over on the spot and moved into this one. This apartment was also very colorful.

Anton Komolov: And in terms of money, how does it compare to a hotel?

Rauf: In terms of money, again, Baku is a pretty expensive place. We rented an apartment for 50-60 manats, equivalent to euros, so 50-60 euros per day. That was a two-bedroom apartment, but these were practically cubic rooms with three-meter ceilings, with chandeliers above, but the apartment itself was quite small and compact. And this, let’s say, was the lowest price for a decent apartment in the center, but generally, you might find something for about 30 euros maybe 10-15 minutes’ walk from the center.

Anton Komolov: Yes, Rauf, by the way, we talked a bit off the air too. You said that the city even looks different, that there are unique customs there. For example, in Moscow, you can’t even hang air conditioner blocks on building façades, to not alter the façades and so on, officially. In Baku, it’s much simpler, I understand, right?

Rauf: Yes, absolutely. The first thing that struck me when we were driving from the airport to the center, we passed by houses literally draped with laundry outside, and it made a very strange impression. In the very center, there are historic houses, and generally, they probably keep an eye on that, but if you move a bit away, it’s evident that no one stops people from adding on and building various additional blocks to their own apartments, whether inside the entrances or on the outside. And sometimes you encounter quite interesting and unconventional solutions, such as an extension on the level of a fourth-floor residential building, and long-long piles hanging down from it. It’s clear that someone expanded their apartment space, and apparently, no one minds.

Later, we lived in the center of Baku in a small courtyard, which had shrunk in size even further because it had grown such additions literally. So, each apartment somewhere added something. And it looks, of course, a bit odd, but quite typical for Azerbaijan. And colorful, probably. But here it’s also worth noting that after the events in Nagorno-Karabakh, quite a significant number of refugees, about a million, moved to Baku. And apparently, from the authorities’ side, some preferences were given to these refugees. At least, apparently, no one bothered them regarding their housing, meaning, wherever they managed to settle, they stayed. Strangely, in Azerbaijan itself, they are treated not just neutrally, but more than neutrally. Despite these people settling the city very distinctly, very unconventionally. Well, for instance, I saw a 14-story building that wasn’t finished, the top three floors. And this entire 14-story building was occupied by someone, and these top unfinished three floors were covered with some rags, and someone lived there too. This also looked quite unconventional. And such things are noticeable throughout all the residential areas and very evident in the regions.

Anton Komolov: And tell me, about transport in Baku itself. Meaning, if you’re staying in Baku for some time, living there, how is it best to get around? Take a taxi or does the public transport work well?

Rauf: Public transport works very well there. Generally, we traveled both by bus and taxi. A taxi there costs, I think, to any point you can convert it to euros, 5 euros. Basically, not much money. When going out of town, you can always find a car very quickly. Mainly by car. Moving around out of town is possible only by car. There only by buses or minibuses. Minibuses run in all directions from the bus station.

I stumbled upon my story about a trip to Azerbaijan 15 years ago hosted by Anton Kamolov and Oli Shelest. The funniest part is that I don’t even remember it being there, listening now as if it’s the first time.

P.S. Facebook doesn’t make previews because the domain scares Facebook. Well, Facebook scares the domain too.

I am reading Ed Yong’s “An Immense World” about how animals perceive the world. It feels like this is the fifth or sixth post on the topic. Currently, a very intriguing chapter about magnetoreception. The dull parts remain off-stage, I only share the most roof-shattering discoveries on the topic with you. Not always from “recent years,” but we didn’t cover biology very thoroughly in school.

Generally, everyone knows about pigeons that manage to arrive exactly where needed from any point. Interestingly, as of today, no one understands the physics and biology of this phenomenon definitively. There are three theories, which I’ll discuss later.

It turned out that quite a lot of animals, not just birds, can navigate by Earth’s magnetic fields. Even humans have cells potentially telling the brain what’s needed, but evolution, with our speeds and the distances we travel, deemed it unnecessary. But whales, turtles, all sorts of flying creatures, even mice, and foxes demonstrate it quite well.

Recall that only in 2014 did one of the Ig Nobel prizes go to Czech researchers who demonstrated that dogs prefer to defecate aligning themselves along geomagnetic field lines, from north to south. My observations don’t confirm this, so I don’t have a prize, but they do.

Testing on birds was the easiest because they are small and the phenomenon there is easily reproducible. It turned out that birds have a predictable moment, having a German name Zugunruhe, “migratory restlessness.” As the time approaches, they start going crazy and fly wherever they must go. It’s not a signal from the heavens, of course, but something like that. And at such moments, scientists come and start wrapping birds in magnetic coils (Hermholtz coils) and noting in which direction the legs left more traces (Merkel & Wiltschko).

But with whales, it doesn’t work like that. However, whales leave clear signs—carcasses on the shore. In English, this is called “to beach themselves.” So, it turned out after 33 years of observations (Granger/Walkowicz), that these self-killings happen during the peaks of solar storms. Although this doesn’t prove that whales have a compass, there is a sense in which forces generated by the planetary layer of molten metal collide with forces unleashed by the fiery star, jointly influencing the minds of wandering animals, and determining whether they find their path or lose it forever.

Something else turned out interesting about turtles. It’s known that sea turtles crawl up on the shore to lay eggs, far enough from the water, but so that the newborns still have a chance to make it to the ocean. And these little ones, once born, quickly figure out which direction to run. And they run not just towards the water—at least because they simply don’t see it at first. By the way, this run is quite dangerous, as predators know the spot well (it’s the same one every time), and estimates suggest that one in 10,000 turtles survives. Specifically, Florida ones head for the North Atlantic Gyre—a formation in the ocean spanning several million square kilometers, swirling clockwise. On this planetary-scale carousel, they ride for 5-10 years and grow into adults. And guess where they lay their eggs? In the same place! That is, after 5-10 years of wandering the vast ocean, they pretty well understand where their spot is, where they managed to survive at least once.

So, what was discovered (Lohmann, 1991)—the turtles have not just a compass. A compass alone would show the relative direction, but for what was described above, you need a full GPS. Well, they have one. Research has shown that their brains sense two parameters of the magnetic field— the inclination of magnetic lines and intensity. Overall, these two parameters are more or less enough to figure out “where I am.” For example, at the poles the inclination is 90 degrees, and at the equator – zero. Intensity is generally higher at the poles, lower at the equator, but there are also various anomalies in the Earth’s crust affecting it. In the end, turtles figured out how to use this, and experience has shown that even from a completely new place, they correctly determine where to crawl and then where to swim.

Meanwhile, over the last 83 million years, the Earth’s geomagnetic field has changed places 183 times. But the genetic programs, apparently, are adapted to this.

Since they don’t have maps of Earth in their heads, only rules on where to swim under various combinations of inclination and intensity, and because the magnetic field is very, very weak, turtles have to swim quite a long time not entirely in the right direction to figure out how to correct their course. But in the end, they arrive where they need to.

How these sensory organs work isn’t fully understood. There are three theories. They do not contradict each other, and most likely, all three are valid.

According to the first, sensitivity to the magnetic field may be provided by magnetite (Fe3O4)—a ferromagnet, meaning a substance in which the magnetic moments of atoms are ordered and persist in the absence of a significant magnetic field. Their direction depends on the polarity of such a field (if it exists). In 1970, bacteria were found containing crystals of magnetite. I don’t know why bacteria need the south, but this is definitely proven. Well, if such magnetite needles can be combined with sensory cells, it’d make a biological compass. But so far, such haven’t been found. There’s a noticeable amount of magnetite in the cerebellum and in the brainstem, but these are not receptors, and they are located deep in the tissue—whereas it would logically be best to place magnet-sensitive structures closer to the surface to increase the number of signals they can perceive. Regular domestic chickens have deposits of iron minerals in the dendrites at the top part of their beaks, enabling them to be capable of magnetoreception.

According to the second, the culprit is electromagnetic induction. This is closer to electroreception in sharks and rays—I wrote about this two days ago, take a look, it’s interesting. Essentially, it’s about the generation of induced electric signals in organisms moving in a magnetic field, signals that could potentially be read by cells. But this second theory doesn’t work anywhere except in water—induced electric fields are too weak for detection due to the lower conductivity of air compared to water.

The third theory is the most complex, but seemingly the main one. Here comes into play quantum physics (skip if scary). It involves the assumption that the geomagnetic field can influence biochemical reactions inside the retinal receptor cell, similar to those that lead to the detection of light by visual pigments. Cryptochrome cells are responsible for detection. (Interestingly, these blue light-sensitive proteins have the prefix “crypto” from cryptogamic organisms—ferns, on which many studies of blue light were done, and cryptogamic organisms are called so in Russian—Taynobrachnie—because Carl Linnaeus didn’t find flowers—sexual organs, and the name then stuck.) So, the theory is that cryptochromes, influenced by light, can form pairs of radicals—molecules with unpaired electrons. These unpaired electrons are sensitive to magnetic fields, allowing cryptochromes to act as magnetic receptors. Changes in the magnetic field can affect chemical reactions within these radical pairs, which in turn can trigger signaling pathways in cells, informing the organism about the direction of the Earth’s magnetic field. Also, research has shown that birds’ visual cortex gets excited when this “GPS” is turned on. Apparently, they conditionally “see” the magnetic field overlaid on what they see in the visible spectrum—RGB+ultraviolet. Of course, looking through their eyes and brain will never be possible, but there are indirect signs that this is the case.

Well, in about a month it will be 4 years since I stopped going to the office at all. Time flies quickly

This farmer has a really cool and fun channel about everything related to food. Why broilers are GMOs, what they pump into the meat, etc. I once posted about this topic out of interest, and besides being informative and visual, it’s also quite amusing

Definitely watch the second part. The first is essentially an introduction. The second is really interesting. In the comments

Find ten differences