A brand new 3D model showcases the complex beauty behind the Cat’s Eye Nebula.
One of the most complex examples of stellar death known to astronomers is not too far away. Thanks to its nearness, the Hubble Space Telescope has been able to see incredible details of the nebula called the Cat’s Eye Nebula. An astronomy enthusiast recently took the science of the Cat’s Eye to the next level by co-creating the first computer-generated 3D model of the nebula, which suggests a binary star lies at its heart.
Nebulas are the alpha and omega of star life. These giant clouds of gas can nourish young stars, but they also showcase violent details about how an earlier star perished. The Cat’s Eye Nebula reveals a colorful, shell-like structure that formed when the dying star — roughly the mass of the sun — ejected its outer layer of gas.
Related: The best Hubble Space Telescope images of all time!
A new analysis combined Hubble observations with data from the San Pedro Martir National Observatory in Mexico to better understand this nebula, located about 3,000 light-years away from Earth in the constellation Draco. The work complements Hubble’s previous revelations of intricate knots, spherical shells and arched filaments.
The new 3D model was the idea of an “astronomy enthusiast” named Ryan Clairmont, according to a statement; he recently completed high school, and is a prospective student at Stanford University. Clairmont created the 3D model with the help from the Mexico- and Canada-based creators behind a 3D astrophysical modeling software called SHAPE.
According to RAS, this work allowed for a better understanding of short-lived jets within the nebula. The central star of Cat’s Eye ejected streams of high-density gas, and these jets outlined circles similar to the behavior of a spinning top. This produced the symmetric rings and is a signal that the star at the heart of the nebula may in fact be a binary star.
The spherical shape of Cat’s Eye lands it in the category of planetary nebula. Astronomers hope to better understand this population of nebulas because they reveal the future fate of the sun.
And if nothing else, they are beautiful.
The research is described in a paper published in October in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
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An image of the Cat’s Eye Nebula that was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO/K.Arcand, SYSTEM Sounds (M. Russo, A. Santaguida)
Astronomers Discover Rings with Near-Perfect Symmetry in the Cat’s Eye Nebula
Researchers have constructed the first computer-generated three-dimensional model of the Cat’s Eye Nebula, revealing a pair of symmetric rings around the nebula’s outer shell. The rings’ symmetry suggests they were formed by a precessing jet originating from the nebula’s central star. This provides strong evidence for a binary star at the center of the nebula. The study was recently published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society and was led by Ryan Clairmont.
A planetary nebula forms when a dying star ejects its outer layer of gas, creating a colorful, shell-like structure distinctive to planetary nebulae. NGC 6543, or the Cat’s Eye Nebula, is one of the most complex planetary nebulae known. It is just over 3,000 light-years away from Earth, and can be seen in the constellation Draco. The Cat’s Eye Nebula has also been seen in great detail by the
A side-by-side comparison of the three-dimensional model of the Cat’s Eye Nebula created by Clairmont and the Cat’s Eye Nebula as photographed by the Hubble Space Telescope. Ryan Clairmont (left), NASA, ESA, HEIC, and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA) (right) (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0).
The nebula’s mysterious structure confounded astrophysicists because it could not be explained by previously accepted theories for planetary nebula formation. More recent research showed that precessing jets were potential shaping mechanisms in complex planetary nebulae such as NGC 6543, but lacked a detailed model.
Clairmont, an astronomy enthusiast, decided to try to establish the detailed 3D structure of the Cat’s Eye to find out more about the potential mechanism that gave it its intricate shape. To do this, he sought out the help of Dr. Wolfgang Steffen of The National Autonomous University of Mexico and Nico Koning from the University of Calgary, who developed SHAPE, 3D astrophysical modeling software particularly suitable for planetary nebulae.
The researchers used spectral data from the San Pedro Martir National Observatory in Mexico to reconstruct the nebula’s three-dimensional structure’s three-dimensional structure. These provide detailed information on the internal motion of material in the nebula. Together with these data and images from the Hubble Space Telescope, Clairmont constructed a novel 3D model, establishing that rings of high-density gas were wrapped around the outer shell of the Cat’s Eye. Surprisingly, the rings are almost perfectly symmetric to each other, suggesting they were formed by a jet – a stream of high-density gas ejected in opposite directions from the nebula’s central star.
The jet exhibited precession, similar to the wobbling motion of a spinning top. As the jet wobbled, or precessed, it outlined a circle, creating the rings around the Cat’s Eye. However, the data indicates the rings are only partial, meaning the precessing jet never completed a full 360-degree rotation, and that the emergence of the jets was only a short-lived phenomenon. The duration of outflows is an important piece of information for the theory of planetary nebulae. Since only binary stars can power a precessing jet in a planetary nebula, the team’s findings are strong evidence that a system of this type exists at the center of the Cat’s Eye.
As the angle and direction of the jet changed over time, it likely formed all of the features seen in the Cat’s Eye, including the jets and knots. Using the three-dimensional model, the researchers were able to calculate the tilt and opening angle of the precessing jet based on the orientation of the rings.
Ryan Clairmont, the lead author of the paper and now a prospective undergraduate at Stanford University stated, “When I first saw the Cat’s Eye Nebula, it was astonishing. It had a beautiful, perfectly symmetric structure. I was even more surprised that its 3D structure was not fully understood.”
He continued, “It was very rewarding to be able to do astrophysical research of my own that actually has an impact in the field. Precessing jets in planetary nebulae are relatively rare, so it’s important to understand how they contribute to the shaping of more complex systems like the Cat’s Eye. Ultimately, understanding how they form provides insight into the eventual fate of our Sun, which will itself one day become a planetary nebula.”
Reference: “Morphokinematic modelling of the point-symmetric Cat’s Eye, NGC 6543: Ring-like remnants of a precessing jet” by Ryan Clairmont, Wolfgang Steffen and Nico Koning, 15 September 2022, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stac2375
NEW YORK (AP) — The virtual cat hero from the new video game sensation “Stray” doesn’t just wind along rusted pipes, leap over unidentified sludge and decode clues in a seemingly abandoned city. The daring orange tabby is helping real world cats as well.
Thanks to online fundraising platforms, gamers are playing “Stray” while streaming live for audiences to raise money for animal shelters and other cat-related charities. Annapurna Interactive, the game’s publisher, also promoted “Stray” by offering two cat rescue and adoption agencies copies of the game to raffle off and renting out a New York cat cafe.
Livestreaming game play for charity isn’t new, but the resonance “Stray” quickly found from cat lovers is unusual. It was the fourth most watched and broadcast game on the day it launched on Twitch, the streaming platform said.
Viewers watch as players navigate the adventurous feline through an aging industrial landscape doing normal cat stuff — balancing on railings, walking on keyboards and knocking things off shelves — to solve puzzles and evade enemies.
About 80% of the game’s development team are “cat owners and cat lovers” and a real-life orange stray as well as their own cats helped inspire the game, one creator said.
“I certainly hope that maybe some people will be inspired to help actual strays in real life — knowing that having an animal and a companion is a responsibility,” said producer Swann Martin-Raget, of the BlueTwelve gaming studio in Montpellier, in southern France.
When Annapurna Interactive reached out to the Nebraska Humane Society to partner before the game’s launch on July 19, they jumped at the chance, marketing specialist Brendan Gepson said.
“The whole game and the whole culture around the game, it’s all about a love of cats,” Gepson said. “It meshed really well with the shelter and our mission.”
The shelter got four copies of the game to give away and solicited donations for $5 to be entered into a raffle to win one. In a week, they raised $7,000, Gepson said, with the vast majority of the 550 donors being new to them, including people donating from Germany and Malta. The company also donated $1,035 to the shelter.
“It was really mutually beneficial,” Gepson said. ”They got some really good PR out of it and we got a whole new donor base out of it.”
Annapurna also bought out Meow Parlour, the New York cat cafe and adoption agency, for a weekend, as well as donating $1,000. Visitors who made reservations could buy “Stray” themed merchandise and play the game for 20 minutes while surrounded by cats. (The game also captivates cats, videos on social media show.)
Jeff Legaspi, Annapurna Interactive’s marketing director, said it made sense for the game’s launch to do something “positively impactful and hopefully bring more awareness to adopting and not shopping for a new pet.”
Annapurna declined to disclose sales or download figures for the game, which is available on PlayStation and the Steam platform. However, according to Steam monitor SteamDB, “Stray” has been the No. 1 purchased game for the past two weeks.
North Shore Animal League America, which rescues tens of thousands of animals each year, said it hadn’t seen any increase in traffic from the game but they did receive more than $800 thanks to a gamer.
In a happy coincidence, the shelter had just set up a profile on the platform Tiltify, which allows nonprofits to receive donations from video streams, the week the game launched. The player channeled donations to the shelter, smashing her initial goal of $200.
“We are seeing Tiltify and livestreaming as this whole new way for us to engage a whole different audience,” said Carol Marchesano, the rescue’s senior digital marketing director. Usually, though, organizations need to reach out to online personalities to coordinate livestreams, which can take a lot of work, she said.
About nine campaigns on Tiltify mention the game “Stray,” the company’s CEO Michael Wasserman said. JustGiving, which also facilitates charity livestreams, said it identified two campaigns with the game.
For his part, Gepson from Nebraska reached out to an Omaha resident who goes by the name TreyDay1014 online to run a charity livestream. Trey, who asked that his last name not be used, has two cats, one of which he adopted from the shelter.
Last week, he narrated to viewers watching live on the platform Twitch as his cat character batted another cat’s tail and danced along railings.
“If I found out my cat was outside doing this, I’d be upset,” Trey said, as his character jumped across a perilous distance. Moments later, a rusty pipe broke, sending the tabby down a gut-wrenching plunge into the darkness.
“That is a poor baby,” Trey said somberly, “but we are okay.”
A $25 donation followed the fall, pushing the amount raised by Trey for the Nebraska shelter to over $100 in about 30 minutes. By the end of four and a half hours of play, donations totaled $1,500. His goal had been to raise $200.
“This has opened my eyes to being able to use this platform for a lot more good than just playing video games,” Trey said.
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AP business writer Matt O’Brien contributed to this report.
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Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and non-profits receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.
“Stray,” the video game about a nameless feral cat wandering through a city of robots, is one of the summer’s biggest surprise hits. Now, some players are modifying the game to add their own feline friends to its post-apocalyptic world.
Mods — short for modifications — are fan-made alterations to a video game that are done by rewriting or changing the game’s files. The simplest mods make cosmetic changes, such as changing the texture on a weapon to look nicer. But mods can also be wildly ambitious, sometimes ballooning into entirely new games. 2021’s “The Forgotten City,” an adventure set in ancient Rome, was originally a “Skyrim” mod.
On NexusMods, a site that hosts downloadable mods, there are already a number of options available to players seeking to change the look of “Stray’s” furry hero with different coats and eye colors. The site is flush with options for black cats, gray tabbies, calicoes and more, each already downloaded hundreds of times.
Review: ‘Stray,’ a game in which you play as a cute cat, is a meow-sterpiece
Many of the modders who made those skins based them off their own cats. One creator added their green-eyed tuxedo cat, Maro, to “Stray.” The download page includes a real-life photo reference for maximum accuracy. Hi, Maro!
Another user, Narwhix, uploaded a mod to let gamers play as Sunny, their adorable calico. A blurry picture of the cat glaring down at the camera can be found on the listing.
Some modders have started taking requests from interested players. NexusMods user NorskPL, for example, created retextures of the “Stray” cat matching specifications shared by fellow users, and created a beginner’s tutorial for anyone interested in making their own cat mod. Another NexusMods user, Hacktix, uploaded skins of Sushi, Lilly, Luna and Buffy (all cats) in response to commissions from users.
For players looking for something more offbeat, there are also modifications that turn the nameless “Stray” hero into an adorable puppy or the lasagna-loving cartoon cat Garfield. One mod transforms Carl “CJ” Johnson, the protagonist of “Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas,” into a terrifying but nonetheless playable cat.
There are also mods that add quality-of-life improvements to “Stray,” such as button remapping, higher graphics settings, localizing the game’s language into Thai and a very rudimentary split-screen multiplayer mode. You can even modify the game’s six badges, a collectible players can find that are displayed on the cat’s harness, into pride pins.
“Stray,” released to near-unanimous praise from critics and fans, nails the feeling of being a cat — an unusual selling point for a video game. With its growing popularity, expect to see even more mods in the future, bringing all sorts of cute cat characters to virtual life.
WARSAW, Poland (AP) — A respected Polish scientific institute has classified domestic cats as an “invasive alien species,” citing the damage they cause to birds and other wildlife.
Some cat lovers have reacted emotionally to this month’s decision and put the key scientist behind it on the defensive.
Wojciech Solarz, a biologist at the state-run Polish Academy of Sciences, wasn’t prepared for the disapproving public response when he entered “Felis catus,” the scientific name for the common house cat, into a national database run by the academy’s Institute of Nature Conservation.
The database already had 1,786 other species listed with no objections, Solarz told The Associated Press on Tuesday. The uproar over invasive alien species No. 1,787, he said, may have resulted from some media reports that created the false impression his institute was calling for feral and other cats to be euthanized.
Solarz described the growing scientific consensus that domestic cats have a harmful impact on biodiversity given the number of birds and mammals they hunt and kill.
The criteria for including the cat among alien invasive species, “are 100% met by the cat,” he said.
In a television segment aired by independent broadcaster TVN, the biologist faced off last week against a veterinarian who challenged Solarz’s conclusion on the dangers cats pose to wildlife.
Dorota Suminska, the author of a book titled “The Happy Cat,” pointed to other causes of shrinking biodiversity, including a polluted environment and urban building facades that can kill birds in flight.
“Ask if man is on the list of non-invasive alien species,” Suminska said, arguing that cats were unfairly assigned too much blame.
Solarz pushed back, arguing that cats kill about 140 million birds in Poland each year.
Earlier this month, the Polish Academy institute published a post on its website citing the “controversy” and seeking to clarify its position. The institute stressed that it was “opposed to any cruelty towards animals.” It also argued that its classification was in line with European Union guidelines.
As far as categorizing cats as “alien,” the institute noted that “Felis catus” was domesticated probably around 10,000 years ago in the cradle of the great civilizations of the ancient Middle East, making the species alien to Europe from a strictly scientific point of view.
The institute also stressed that all it was recommending was for cat owners to limit the time their pets spend outdoors during bird breeding season.
“I have a dog, but I don’t have anything against cats,” Solarz said.
There’s a lot of buzz about Stray right now, by dint of its coming out during a pretty dry patch for new releases, and more importantly, how you get to play as an incredibly cute cat. Unfortunately, what I think a lot of people are about to discover this week, is that it very quickly forgets about that, and turns incredibly…gamey. I was not expecting to be playing as a robot, zapping mutant blobs, for instance.
The following contains spoilers for Stray’s game elements (how you play, rather than why you do it), without getting into the story itself at all.
Stray’s opening is just wonderful. Without any fussy nonsense, no tiresome cutscenes, the camera gently swoops over four kittens living in the overgrown remains of a dam, before settling behind the ginger critter of the collection, and gives you control. The first thing you do is interact with your brothers and sisters, each a gorgeous moment of beautifully observed kitty behavior. The animations are perfect, and anyone of any decency will be awwing at the screen.
Screenshot: BlueTwelve Studio / Kotaku
After a little sleep, the four cats head off on a journey, crossing the ruins of what was once an enormous structure, jumping from concrete block to massive pipe, trotting down railings, and poking about in a very cat-like fashion. It’s only when you follow your three siblings onto one large pipe that a cutscene kicks in, and Ginger (as I’m calling him) scrabbles, slips, then falls far, far below. It’s genuinely traumatic!
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Waking up in what looks like a sewer pipe, Ginger is injured, walking with yet another superbly observed limp, before falling down and resting some more. At this point your kitten feels so vulnerable, so fragile, and as a player it’s imperative to do everything you can to keep the little guy safe.
This is clearly set in some sort of future, post-human by the looks of things, with the rusting remains of robots found on your path. Then, in glimpses at first, you see some rather unpleasant pink-blob creatures that feel like they’d be more at home in Inside. They scurry away, however, so you can carry on your kitty way, jumping and dashing about, looking for safety, and as a player, desperately wondering how you’ll reunite the little guy with his family.
Then you find the flying robot. Now, this isn’t quite as daft as it sounds, given that as a cat in a world seemingly only lived in by AI lifeforms, you’d otherwise struggle to communicate. B-12, your robot companion, appears to be able to speak to cats and robots alike, and also possesses the astonishing ability to “digitize” physical objects, then rematerialize them when needed. So yeah, he’s a talking inventory.
Stray, at this point, becomes a game about a cat in an underground robot city, helping out the locals with their menial tasks. And, even here, I’m cool. You’re still—albeit now wearing an enormous robo-saddle—a cat, and while I’ve yet to meet the cat that would willingly help anyone to do anything, it’s still fun to play. Your role is really never more than finding third-person platform routes to a destination, and jumping about the sprawling city areas offers you a great deal of freedom. Even the ability to roleplay as a cat, which is to say: ignoring your tasks and just finding cool places to sleep.
It starts to push credulity here at around the one-hour mark of its five or six hours, as you’re optionally gathering sheet music for a robot to play on a guitar, and seeking out “memories” for your amnesiac robo-chum by looking at floaty pixel patterns, and trying to find enough cans of energy drink to buy objects from a shop…Yeah, yeah, I know, it’s already collapsed into gamey game-game nonsense, but as I say, you do all this by pratting around as a kitten.
It’s after that lengthy section, just over halfway, that I’d say Stray abandons almost all notions of being a cat-sim, and just descends into every other third-person action game.
Screenshot: BlueTwelve Studio / Kotaku
You help a robot find the equipment he needs to complete a weapon that can take on the Zurks. These are the preposterously-named alien-like blobs that have apparently mutated into existence at some point since the death of humanity. The further you progress, the more of the fleshy webbing you see strung through tunnels and on the sides of buildings, taking this cutesy cat-me-do into a realm of visceral horror motifs that feels so weirdly incongruous. These grow eggs, the eggs spawn Zurks, and you have to murder them up with a purple light.
It’s L1 to fire the light beam, emitted from B-12 hovering above your cat body, at which point there’s really no pretense that you’re controlling anything other than the machine. And you’re zapping what may as well be aliens. In gray corridors. Can you see the issue?
Later still, this moves on to running away from enemy drones, who cast a net of blue light before them. Cross into it and it switches green, then if you stay too long it’s red and they start firing bullets at you. Bullets, fired from floating drones, in gray ruins…
I’m dumbfounded by this. How did a game that was so wonderfully good at giving us a kitty-cat to play as, with such precise and delightful observations of kitten behavior, find itself in this place? It’s certainly not because it was wanting for anything.
Screenshot: BlueTwelve Studio / Kotaku
I would have been delighted if it just carried on as it began for its five or six hours. Just being a cat, exploring an abandoned city, looking for routes through the remains. Maybe I’d need to find a drink here and there, and perhaps I–as the player–could piece together something of the history of the place, to the cat’s obvious indifference. Heck, if it desperately needed to go sci-fi, maybe I would stumble on surviving computers and traps, something to evade in a cat-like way. Honestly, I’d have ditched the robots entirely, since their real role is to present fetch quests. But even keeping them, it didn’t need to slide so far down the slippery slope to gametown.
I won’t even get into how much I hated the ending. That can be for another day. Let’s just say my son is still furious about how awful it was two days later. It really encapsulated how much the game had abandoned the lovely place it started in, and if you’ve completed the game, you’ll know exactly what I mean.
Stray could have been just magical from start to finish. Instead, it’s magical at the start, then slowly collapses into the gray roboty mire of Most Other Games. At the start, I’d been roleplaying! I was meowing at locked doors, deliberately going in the wrong direction to explore nooks and crannies, haughtily ignoring a pressing task to find a place to nap. By the end I’d almost entirely forgotten I was a cat, and may as well have been a spaceship for all the difference it made. And that sucks.
When your feline friend rubs, rolls against, chews and licks catnip leaves, it’s not just playful high jinks sparked bythe plant’s intoxicating qualities. The behavior leads to the release of certain compounds that might protect cats from pesky mosquitoes, according to newresearch out of Japan.
Compounds called iridoids in the leaves of catnip (Nepeta cataria) and the plant silver vine (Actinidia polygama) act as an insect repellent as they are released when the cats rub their bodies against the leaves,the same team found in a study published last year.
Catnip, sometimes called catmint, and silver vine are both flowering plants with aromatic leaves that grow in many places around the world. Dried catnip and silver vine leaves are also used in cat toys.
The group’s latest research has shown that the way cats lick and chew the leaves causes 10 times the amount of these compounds to be released, with damaged leaves thus making the insect repellent properties more effective.
With the help of 16 cats, the researchers compared feline responses to intact silver vine leaves and leaves the team crumpled and tore by hand. The cats showed a more prolonged interest in interacting with the damaged leavesthan with the intact leaves.
Then, to test whether the felines were reacting to the iridoids specifically, the cats were given dishes with pure nepetalactone and nepetalactol — key active compounds in catnip and silver vine, respectively.
“Cats show the same response to iridoid cocktails and natural plants except for chewing,” said Masao Miyazaki, a professor inthe department of biological chemistry and food sciencesat Iwate University in Japan, said in a news release. “They lick the chemicals on the plastic dish and rub against and roll over on the dish.”
It’s the smell of the plant that triggers the behavior, according to the research.
“When iridoid cocktails were applied on the bottom of dishes that were then covered by a punctured plastic cover, cats still exhibited licking and chewing even though they couldn’t contact the chemicals directly,” Miyazaki said. “This means that licking and chewing is an instinctive behavior elicited by olfactory stimulation of iridoids.”
In the case of silver vine, damaging the leaves triggered the release of other iridoids.
“Nepetalactol accounts for over 90% of total iridoids in intact leaves, but this drops to about 45% in damaged leaves as other iridoids greatly increase,” he said. “The altered iridoid mixture corresponding to damaged leaves promoted a much more prolonged response in cats.”
The work might help identify plant enzymes that could be used as insect repellants for humans, the study said.
Miyazaki said that catnip and silver vine posed no risk to cats and were not addictive. The plants likely gave the cats a feeling of “euphoria,” he explained via email.
As many of you know, Marmalade is FIV+, acquired from his mother at birth. Despite this, our favorite ginger tabby named after British jam has enjoyed a spectacular life. He kicked cancer’s butt, and having Feline Immunodeficiency Virus (FIV) doesn’t hold him back one bit either.
And we love to report when there are breakthroughs that help FIV+ cats like Marmalade! We recently shared news about an innovation in diagnostic testing that will help untold numbers of cats like Marm.
In 2014, veterinarians discovered Marmalade was FIV+ and had GI lymphoma possibly caused by another common virus (FcaGHV1) in cats.
Note: FIV isn’t transmittable to humans.
At the time, the virus was only recently discovered, and there was no diagnostic test. No more, because Dr. Shana Owens from the University of Arkansas developed a quick, easy test for cats. With a small blood sample, veterinarians can determine if the virus is present in minutes. By catching it early, vets have the best chance to stop cancer.
A Gel to Help Treat FIV+ Cats
Now, we’re happy to share news of another development with the potential to help cats with oral health issues. As many as 3 out of 4 cats may suffer from oral health issues.
As you know, FIV can depress the immune system, and FIV-positive cats can exhibit symptoms including dental disease.
For house cats like Marm, routine veterinary checkups can keep potential problems in check. Recently, Marmalade had a dental checkup and his teeth, gums, and roots look great.
But for strays and shelter cats, their oral health can deteriorate quickly for many reasons.
Cats with Dental Disease
When veterinarians treat shelter cats’ mouths, there can be profuse bleeding from the gums. Recently, we were happy to learn a new gel is available to help stop the bleeding in cats, so we wanted to get the word out.
Note: Cole and Marmalade aren’t affiliated with the companies or products in this article and just want to raise awareness of the potential for cats. (We can’t confirm claims or effectiveness.)
It’s called Vetigel, a plant-based “prescription hemostatic gel for veterinary use” that claims to control bleeding in seconds on contact. According to a testimonial from Diane Woods Young DVM from the Feline Medicine & Surgery Clinic in Edmond, OK, Vetigel made a big difference for cats at a shelter.
Woods Young discussed treating cats with dental disease in a ward for FIV+ cats at a no-kill shelter. Before using the gel, the vets had to use gauze to stop the bleeding, and it filled a trash bag. After ordering the gel, Woods Young could successfully treat a cat with severe dental problems. Previously, this kitty was considered untreatable due to hemorrhages.
“I sent the cat home the same day, and that’s never happened before because they bled so bad,” she said.
With the tool to stop the bleeding, surgery times were cut down “at least half if not more, which is a really good idea for an FIV+ cat,” she notes. By saving so much time, the vet was able to help more cats during the day too.
If this is true, then the potential to help cats, particularly shelter cats, looks amazing. We hope it lives up to the claims here. If so, it could offer an amazing new tool for vets treating cats and animals in general.
Video by Vetigel:
Facts About FIV and FeLV
Previously, we’ve shared facts about FIV, frequently confused with Feline Leukemia Virus (FeLV). While cats can be vaccinated against FeLV, there is not currently one for FIV.
Importantly, indoor cats have a very low risk of transmitting FIV. Here’s Marmalade with FIV- Bond, and their tortie princess sisters Jugg & Zig Zag are negative for FIV too.
Marmalade and Bond
When cats fight aggressively, deep puncture wounds are possible. Then, the FIV retrovirus can be transmitted. That’s why the virus mostly affects outdoor cats and strays that frequently get into very serious territorial fights.
In most cases, cats with FIV live long, healthy lives. FIV+ Cats = Positively Adoptable!
Simply being exposed to things we’re not familiar with – new objects or species of animals, for example – puts us in learning mode, new research has revealed, and makes us more ready to learn about the new thing later on.
Once we’ve encountered a new thing, our brains are able to capitalize on a period of brief learning later on to take in more knowledge about it. The new study should help scientists understand this kind of subconscious learning or latent learning.
Much of how we perceive different things in the world has to do with categorizing them, but the ways we learn these categories are often not explicit. For example, we learn that ‘cat’ and ‘dog’ are different categories mainly by being exposed to cats and dogs, rather than being sat down and taught the specifics.
In this study, the researchers wanted to find out more about how such incidental exposure contributes to us learning different categories.
“We often observe new things out in the real world without a goal of learning about them,” says psychologist Vladimir Sloutsky from Ohio State University.
“But we found that simply being exposed to them makes an impression in our mind and leads us to be ready to learn about them later.”
The team ran five different experiments involving a total of 438 adult volunteers. Researchers used a custom computer game to expose the participants to unfamiliar fantastical creatures, which in some cases were split into two categories – categories similar to cats and dogs.
During the initial phase, the participants were instructed to react as quickly as possible to a creature jumping either to a red panel on the left side of the screen, or a blue panel on the right side. Unbeknownst to the participants, the side the creatures jumped to was always the same as their category, and there were a couple of different types of category structures.
While nobody figured out the ‘secret’ categories in this initial phase, it was clear from the results that people who’d been exposed to the creatures in the initial phase were able to learn the categories faster.
Later in the experiments, there was a period of explicit learning, in which the made-up categories – ‘flurps’ and ‘jalets’ – were revealed to those taking part. The teaching also involved explaining how to distinguish between creatures in the two categories (different colored tails and hands, for example).
Examples of the creatures used for the experiments. (Unger and Sloutsky, Psychol. Sci., 2022)
The volunteers exposed to pictures of ‘flurps’ and ‘jalets’ in advance were much faster in being able to grasp the differences between the creature categories, even though they weren’t exposed to any kind of learning instructions during the initial phase.
“Participants who received early exposure to Category A and B creatures could become familiar with their different distributions of characteristics, such as that creatures with blue tails tended to have brown hands, and creatures with orange tails tended to have green hands,” says psychologist Layla Unger from Ohio State University.
“Then when the explicit learning came, it was easier to attach a label to those distributions and form the categories.”
In experiment five, the initial phase images were accompanied by one of two sounds assigned at random, and the participants had to respond to the sound rather than the picture – in other words, they didn’t need to pay attention to the creature at all.
Those volunteers who glimpsed ‘flurps’ and ‘jalets’ during the initial phase with sounds still did better in the learning phase, suggesting that a lot of what was being absorbed was done at a subconscious level. Simple exposure was enough to start learning.
“The exposure to the creatures left participants with some latent knowledge, but they weren’t ready to tell the difference between the two categories. They had not learned yet, but they were ready to learn,” explains Unger.
Studies of this type of latent learning are rare, and future studies could expand on the current analysis of adults to look at the process in infants and children too.
“It has been very difficult to diagnose when latent learning is occurring,” says Sloutsky.
“But this research was able to differentiate between latent learning and what people learn during explicit teaching.”
The research has been published in Psychological Science.
An internal email from PlayStation president Jim Ryan contains several paragraphs about cats, but doesn’t contain a hard stance in support of his staff’s reproductive rights, and even asks employees to “respect” anti-abortion views and opinions, leaving many PlayStation staff angry and upset.
As reported by Bloomberg earlier today and independently verified by Kotaku, an email from PlayStation boss Jim Ryan addressing the recently leaked Supreme Court draft signaling that the court will overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision went out to PlayStation employees Thursday, May 12. If the court does indeed overturn that historic case, it would allow states to begin banning abortions of all kinds across the United States, making it harder than ever for folks seeking abortions to get the care they need and deserve. However, while Ryan’s email opens with a mention of this seemingly imminent, devastating blow to reproductive rights, the PlayStation president avoids taking a side, instead asking staff to “respect differences of opinion” on both sides of the issue.
In the email, which Bloomberg has seen and Kotaku has confirmed was sent out to internally hired staff, Ryan writes that the company, its employees, and its players are a “multi-faceted and diverse” community and that they all hold “many different points of view.” He also wrote that staff and the company “owe it to each other and to PlayStation’s millions of users to respect differences of opinion among everyone in our internal and external communities. Respect does not equal agreement. But it is fundamental to who we are as a company and as a valued global brand.”
Kotaku has contacted Sony and PlayStation about the email but didn’t hear back before publication.
Instead of taking a stance, promising to use his company’s resources to aid staff who might need abortions in the future, or at the very least offering a bland message of support for abortion rights, Ryan spent much of the email talking about his cats. Seriously.
After barely paying lip service to the destruction of safe, legal abortion access in the United States, Ryan wanted to share something that was “lighthearted” in an attempt to “inspire everyone to be mindful of having a balance that can help ease the stress of uncertain world events.” (Stress that a powerful president of a large company could perhaps more effectively ease by supporting his staff and their rights…)
He then spent a reported five paragraphs in the email talking about his two cats’ first birthdays, the noises they make, and his dream of one day owning a dog. Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier additionally reported via Twitter that Ryan wrote “that dogs really are man’s best friend, they know their place, and perform useful functions like biting burglars and chasing balls that you throw for them.” Kotaku also separately confirmed the content of this email and learned that Ryan also wrote about missing his travels to Japan, and watching Anatomy of a Scandal
Read More:Tripwire CEO ‘Steps Down’ After Supporting Anti-Abortion Law
As you might expect, some staff weren’t happy with the email. Bloomberg reports that internal discussion about the email was negative, with many sharing their anger and disappointment over the tone of the letter and its lack of a stance in support of reproductive rights. One employee reportedly wrote that they had “never been so mad about a cat birthday before.” Some women at the company allegedly wrote that they felt their rights had been disrespected or even trivialized by Ryan’s email.
While PlayStation and Jim Ryan seem unable or unwilling to offer more concrete support for abortion access and the rights of women in the United States, Bungie has taken a much different approach.
The Destiny developer has spent the past week and a half on Twitter, publicly supporting access to abortion, condemning the possible overturning of Roe v. Wade, and even taking on angry gamers who don’t like the idea of studios supporting their employees and their bodily rights. Under the circumstances, it’s interesting to note that PlayStation is planning to buy Bungie for $3.6 billion. (Kotaku also reached out to Bungie for this story, but didn’t receive a response before publication.) I’m curious if Sony and PlayStation will be okay with the studio continuing to be so publicly supportive of abortion rights once the sale is complete.
