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Technology

The Amazon Echo Auto (2nd gen) is smaller but not smarter

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Amazon’s second-generation Echo Auto is a tiny Echo for your car’s dashboard. It has good microphones, is easy to install and to stow when you’re parked, and provides a simple way to add hands-free music playback to your car stereo if it lacks Bluetooth. But it’s not as smart as your smartphone’s built-in assistant, and unless you already have an ecosystem of Amazon smart home gadgets, it doesn’t make sense for most people, myself included.

Simply put, the Echo Auto is a $54.99 microphone that mounts on your dashboard and lets you use Alexa voice commands on the road. It connects to your phone via Bluetooth and then connects to your car stereo for playback either by Bluetooth or a 3.5mm wired connection. Your car doesn’t need any kind of smarts for it to work, just an old-fashioned cigarette lighter / power outlet and an auxiliary input for your stereo.

The microphone end of the second-gen Echo Auto is even smaller than the last one (2.1 x 0.9 inches, compared to 3.3 x 1.9 inches, which was itself a lot smaller than the Echo speakers and pucks designed for the home). It comes with an adhesive-backed magnetic mount that attaches to your car’s dashboard. There’s not a lot of open space on my dash, and I was a little worried it would sit too close to the car stereo’s volume dial. But it’s deceptively small, and I found a good spot for it out of the way of any buttons or knobs. 

The Echo Auto gets its power from your car’s USB port (or the 12V power adapter). Your car needs to be running to use Echo Auto, and once it’s powered on, you can connect it to your phone (and the Alexa app) via Bluetooth. Then you’ll either use Bluetooth or the 3.5mm jack on the Echo’s breakout box to connect to your car stereo. All of this can be done in about five minutes, provided you have an Amazon account and the Alexa app on your phone. 

I had no trouble with it, and I like that I can easily tuck the breakout box and cords into the little compartment below my dashboard so everything is out of the way. Importantly, the whole thing can be unplugged, taken off the mount, and stored in the center console when I leave my car — and plugging it back in is just as quick. I try not to leave anything in view in my car to tempt a break-in, so having something valuable-looking attached to my dash at all times would have been a non-starter.

My experience with Alexa wasn’t quite as smooth. It seems to have gotten smarter since my colleague Sean Hollister reviewed the first-generation Echo Auto. Asking it to find nearby gas stations and coffee shops and to look up store hours usually worked well. But for anything that requires it to interact with the phone, like placing calls and using navigation, you’re limited by what the Alexa app can do on your phone, and you run into those limitations quickly. 

I can’t have Alexa text just anyone in my contacts list — they need to have Alexa messaging enabled. You can see who has opted into this by scrolling through your contacts in the Alexa app. From the looks of it, maybe a third of my contacts have enabled the feature. I also have an unusually high number of current and ex-Amazon employees in my circle (disclosure: I used to work at DPReview, a wholly owned subsidiary of Amazon), so take that with a grain of salt.

Alexa is also able to open up Apple Maps with a specified destination via voice command, but I still have to tap a button in the app to start or stop the navigation. Siri, on the other hand, can do these things without any additional input from me.

The Echo Auto wants to default to Amazon services, which I don’t use many of. Even with Spotify set as my default streaming service, I still had to ask Alexa a couple of times to get A Charlie Brown Christmas to play there instead instead of Amazon Music. It also defaults to putting new events on your “Alexa Calendar,” even if you already have another calendar linked to your account. Do I want this Alexa calendar? Do I even know where it is? No and no. You can change the default to a Google, Microsoft, or Apple calendar easily enough, but it’s one more thing to fiddle with in order to get set up the way I want. 

I can’t have Alexa text just anyone in my contacts list — they need to have Alexa messaging enabled

As for other Alexa services, well, the library of “Skills” is looking pretty bare. I checked for a Starbucks reordering skill, which would come in handy (disclosure: I live in Seattle, and I have a habit). It’s no longer available, and the only Starbucks Alexa Skill available is something that tells you which Starbucks coffee roast is best for you based on answers to a few questions. This is useless. Amazon recently made some major cuts to its devices and Alexa teams, so I don’t feel great about the long-term prospects of a more helpful Starbucks skill (or any other) coming back in the future.

Alexa, naturally, works best in Amazon’s ecosystem. But I’m not convinced that’s something I need in my car. There’s a probably case to be made for the Echo Auto if you have a lot of Alexa-enabled smart home devices. I don’t have any, and I’m not sure I’d care about turning on my living room lights by talking to a device in my car. Even if I did, my phone’s voice assistant can already do that.

I do order a lot of my groceries from Amazon Fresh, which integrates fairly well with Alexa’s shopping list function. Being able to add something to my next grocery order as it occurs to me while driving is legitimate use case for me, so Echo Auto would come in handy in those instances. But that’s still a rare occurrence, and there’s not enough other useful stuff that Alexa could do for me to that I’d want a whole extra device in my car. If I ever get my act together and start using Reminders on my iPhone, I could easily ask Siri to remind me that I need to buy cat food later. It can’t put Fancy Feast in my Amazon shopping cart for me, but I can live with that. 

The Echo Auto’s strength remains its very good microphones. This version has five instead of eight and relies more on “improved algorithms” to understand voice commands. Even with fewer microphones, it’s still very good. It can hear me speaking at a normal volume, even with the heater and fans running at full blast. It has a harder time if I’m on the highway with the window down, but it can hear me better than I’d expect without having to speak up much. 

Understanding simple questions and commands is what the Echo Auto is best at, and even then, it fails spectacularly at times. I got into a yelling match with it when I asked for the hours of Burien Press, a coffee shop in Burien, Washington, that it had correctly identified on the first try a day before. Here’s a list of things Alexa thought I said as I got increasingly impatient:

  • Variant Press
  • Fury Crest
  • Purion Press
  • Darien Press in Marion Washington

The Echo Auto is a fine piece of hardware that doesn’t make a lot of practical sense. The best use may be for someone with an older car that lacks Bluetooth but has an aux input. In that case, it’s an easy way to add hands-free music playback and basic navigation to your car’s built-in speakers. Still, $55 is too steep for that — $30 feels about right for that kind of thing, and Bluetooth-to-aux adapters already exist. That $55 gets a little easier to justify if you have Amazon smart home products, but I think the overlap in the Venn diagram of “Has a very old car” and “Has lots of Amazon smart home products” is pretty slim. On top of that, the long-term prospects for Alexa getting more and better third-party skills don’t look great. 

What really kills the appeal of the Echo Auto is the device you already own: your smartphone. If you put a simple mount in your car, set your phone in it, and just ask your phone’s built-in assistant to navigate to Starbucks, send a text, or play something on Spotify, you’ll have better luck. As it stands, Alexa isn’t all that smart away from home.

Photography by Allison Johnson / The Verge

a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin [&>a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&>a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&>a]:shadow-underline-white md:text-30″>Agree to Continue: Amazon Echo Auto (2nd gen)

Every smart device now requires you to agree to a series of terms and conditions before you can use it — contracts that no one actually reads. It’s impossible for us to read and analyze every single one of these agreements. But we’re going to start counting exactly how many times you have to hit “agree” to use devices when we review them since these are agreements most people don’t read and definitely can’t negotiate.

In order to use the Amazon Echo Auto, you’ll need to download the Alexa app for iOS or Android. An Amazon account is required to sign in. By signing up for one of those, you must agree to its conditions of use.

When you set up the device in the app, “you agree to Amazon’s conditions of use and all of the terms found here.” You can explore the documentation at that link, but below, we’ve listed the 13 terms that you must agree to:

Final tally: 14 mandatory agreements.

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Science

Morning people are smarter? Early risers have higher verbal intelligence, debunking previous studies

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OTTAWA — Highly intelligent people are often portrayed as night owls. The dedicated novelist writing all night until daybreak, for example. While prior studies actually support this notion, finding that night owls typically display more robust verbal intelligence, new research from the University of Ottawa suggests otherwise.

Turns out the early bird really does get the (verbal) worm.

“Once you account for key factors including bedtime and age, we found the opposite to be true, that morning types tend to have superior verbal ability,” says Stuart Fogel, Director of the University of Ottawa Sleep Research Laboratory, in a university release. “This outcome was surprising to us and signals this is much more complicated that anyone thought before.”

This latest research out of Canada provides some much needed insight into how the impact of a person’s daily rhythm and activity levels during both wake and sleep relates to intelligence.

The research team identified participants’ chronotypes (evening or morning tendencies) by monitoring their biological rhythms and daily preferences. An individual’s chronotype is related to when in the day they prefer to pursue or accomplish demanding or important tasks, from intellectual pursuits to exercise.

Typically, younger people tend to be “evening types,” while older individuals and those more regularly entrenched in their daily/nightly activities are more often “morning types.” Ironically, the morning is usually a critical time for young people, especially those still attending school.

“A lot of school start times are not determined by our chronotypes but by parents and work-schedules, so school-aged kids pay the price of that because they are evening types forced to work on a morning type schedule,” Fogel explains. “For example, math and science classes are normally scheduled early in the day because whatever morning tendencies they have will serve them well. But the AM is not when they are at their best due to their evening type tendencies. Ultimately, they are disadvantaged because the type of schedule imposed on them is basically fighting against their biological clock every day.”

This study used volunteers representing a wide variety of age groups. All subjects were rigorously screened to rule out sleep disorders and any other possible confounding factors. Subjects wore a monitoring device to measure their activity levels.

Fogel explains that establishing the strength of a person’s rhythm, which drives intelligence, is key to understanding this study. Study authors point to a person’s age and actual bedtime as important factors. “Our brain really craves regularity and for us to be optimal in our own rhythms is to stick to that schedule and not be constantly trying to catch up,” he concludes.

The study is published in Current Research in Behavioral Sciences.



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Science

Animals grew back faster and smarter after mass extinction

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The diversification of the saurichthyiform fishes (“lizard fish”) in the Middle Triassic of South China (eastern paleo-Tethys), reflecting the establishment of a complexly tiered marine ecosystem (or marine fish communities) with intensive predator-prey interactions along the food chains. Credit: Feixiang Wu

Paleontologists in the U.K. and China have shown that the natural world bounced back vigorously following the End-Permian Extinction.

In a review, published today in the journal Frontiers in Earth Science, scientists reveal that predators became meaner and prey animals adapted rapidly to find new ways to survive. On land, the ancestors of mammals and birds became warm-blooded and could move around faster.

At the end of the Permian period, 252 million years ago, there was a devastating mass extinction, when nearly all of life died out, and this was followed by one of the most extraordinary times in the history of life. The Triassic period, from 252–201 million years ago, marks a dramatic re-birth of life on land and in the oceans, and was a time of massively rising energy levels.

“Everything was speeding up,” said Professor Michael Benton of the University of Bristol School of Earth Sciences, the lead author of the new study.

“Today, there is a huge difference between birds and mammals on the one hand, and reptiles on the other. Reptiles are cold-blooded, meaning they do not generate much body heat themselves and, although they can nip about quite quickly, they have no stamina, and they cannot live in the cold,” said Prof Benton.

“It’s the same in the oceans,” said Dr. Feixiang Wu of the Institute for Vertebrate Paleontology in Beijing. “After the end-Permian mass extinction, the fishes, lobsters, gastropods, and starfishes show nasty new hunting styles. They were faster, snappier, and stronger than their ancestors.”

Dr. Wu has studied amazing new assemblages of fossil fishes from the Triassic of China, and these include many kinds of predators that show how new hunting modes appeared earlier than had been thought. He has found modern-style sharks, and the long fish Saurichthys, which was very common worldwide and was an ambush hunter. This meter-long fish lurked in murky shallow seas and shot forward to snatch all kinds of prey in its toothy jaws.

“Other Triassic fishes from China were adapted to crushing shells,” said Dr. Wu. “Several major groups of fishes, and even some reptiles, became shell crushers, with great pavements of teeth. We even found the world’s oldest flying fish, and this was probably for escape from the new predators.”

On land too there were revolutionary changes. The latest Permian reptiles were generally slow-moving and used a kind of sprawling posture, like modern lizards, where the limbs stuck out at the side. When they walked, they probably generally moved slowly, and at speed, they could either run or breathe, but not both at the same time. This limited their stamina.

“Biologists have debated the origins of endothermy, or warm-bloodedness, in birds and mammals for a long time,” said Prof Benton. “We can track their ancestry back to the Carboniferous, over 300 million years ago, and some researchers have suggested recently that they were already endothermic back then. Others say they became endothermic only in the Jurassic, say 170 million years ago. But all kinds of evidence from study of the cells in their bones, and even the chemistry of their bones, suggests that both groups became warm-blooded in the aftermath of the great end-Permian mass extinction, early in the Triassic.”

The origins of endothermy in birds and mammals in the Early to Middle Triassic is suggested by two other changes: their ancestors mainly became upright in posture at this time. By standing high on their limbs like modern dogs, horses and birds, they could make longer strides. This probably goes hand-in-hand with some level of endothermy to enable them to move fast and for longer periods.

Second, it now seems that the Early and Middle Triassic bird and mammal ancestors had some form of insulation, hairs in the mammal line, feathers in the bird line. If this is true, and new fossil discoveries appear to confirm it, all the evidence is pointing to major changes in these reptiles as the world rebuilt itself after the end-Permian mass extinction.

“Altogether, animals on land and in the oceans were speeding up, using more energy, and moving faster,” said Prof Benton. “Biologists call these kinds of processes ‘arms races,’ referring to the Cold War. As one side speeds up and becomes more warm-blooded, the other side has to as well. This affects competition between plant-eaters or competition between predators. It also refers to predator-prey relationships—if the predator gets faster, the prey does too in order to escape.”

“It was the same underwater as well,” said Dr. Wu. “As the predators became faster, snappier, and smarter in attacking their prey, these animals had to develop defenses. Some got thicker shells, or developed spines, or themselves became faster in order to help them escape.”

“These are not new ideas,” says Benton. “What is new is that we are now finding that they were all apparently happening about the same time, through the Triassic. This emphasizes a kind of positive aspect of mass extinctions. Mass extinctions of course were terrible news for all the victims. But the mass clear-out of ecosystems in this case gave huge numbers of opportunities for the biosphere to rebuild itself, and it did so at higher octane than before the crisis.”

World’s greatest mass extinction triggered switch to warm-bloodedness

More information:
Michael J. Benton et al, Triassic Revolution, Frontiers in Earth Science (2022). DOI: 10.3389/feart.2022.899541
Provided by
University of Bristol

Citation:
Triassic revolution: Animals grew back faster and smarter after mass extinction (2022, June 20)
retrieved 20 June 2022
from https://phys.org/news/2022-06-triassic-revolution-animals-grew-faster.html

This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no
part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.



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Health

15 Smarter Ways You Should Be Using Baking Soda

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Photo: Sunny Forest (Shutterstock)

Remember that person who had a crush on you for years—who hung out right there, by your side, close but not stalking, quietly waiting to be noticed while you messed around with flashier, trendier versions of the real deal? Who, once wizened by adulthood, did you look back on and think, “Huh. They were pretty great, actually. I should’ve given them a chance.” Well, that crush is baking soda. And we all should be ashamed for taking it for granted.

Sodium bicarbonate (street name: baking soda) is a kitchen staple that, if you’re anything like me, mostly hangs out in the pantry or back of the fridge waiting for rare moments of usefulness—or until its box becomes too busted up with sugar granules and sticky vanilla drippings to justify keeping. But it turns out, baking soda is the cheap, all-purpose cleaning ninja you never knew you always had. And it deserves respect.

Not only do its acid-reacting, leavening properties make cakes and cookies fluffy, its mild alkaline compounds break down grease, and its gritty granules abrade grime. Behold, the many wondrous uses of that humble crush you should have taken seriously.

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Science

Rocket scientists and brain surgeons are no smarter than the general population

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The stereotype isn’t true! Rocket scientists and brain surgeons are NO smarter than you are, study claims

  • Scientists compared the intelligence of 329 aerospace engineers, 72 neurosurgeons and 18,257 members of the general population
  • Aerospace engineers didn’t show differences in any aspects of intelligence
  • Neurosurgeons were able to solve problems faster than the general public
  • However, neurosurgeons showed a slower memory recall speed

By Shivali Best For Mailonline

Published: | Updated:










‘It’s not rocket science’ and ‘it’s not brain surgery’ are phrases regularly used to say that you do not think that something is very difficult to do or to understand.

But a new study suggests that rocket science and brain surgery may not be so difficult after all.

Researchers from UCL looked at the intelligence of rocket scientists and brain surgeons, and compared these professions to the general public.

Their findings indicate that contrary to popular belief, aerospace engineers and neurosurgeons have similar levels of intelligence to the general population.

‘It is possible that both neurosurgeons and aerospace engineers are unnecessarily placed on a pedestal and that “It’s a walk in the park” or another phrase unrelated to careers might be more appropriate,’ the researchers wrote in their study, published in The BMJ.

‘Other specialties might deserve to be on that pedestal, and future work should aim to determine the most deserving profession.’

Their findings indicate that contrary to popular belief, aerospace engineers (stock image) and neurosurgeons have similar levels of intelligence to the general population

In their study, the team compared the intelligence of 329 aerospace engineers, 72 neurosurgeons and 18,257 members of the general population.

Participants completed an online test to measure distinct aspects of intelligence, including planning and reasoning, working memory, attention and emotion processing.

Other factors that may influence intelligence were taken into account, including gender, handedness and experience in their speciality.

Neurosurgeons (stock image) were able to solve problems faster than the general public, but showed a slower memory recall speed

The results revealed that aerospace engineers and neurosurgeons were equally matched across most aspects, although aerospace engineers were found to be better at mental manipulation abilities, and neurosurgeons were better at semantic problem solving.

When their results were compared to the general public, aerospace engineers did not show significant differences in any aspects of intelligence.

Neurosurgeons, meanwhile, were able to solve problems faster than the general public, but showed a slower memory recall speed.

Overall, the findings suggest that the ‘it’s not rocket science’ and ‘it’s not brain surgery’ stereotypes do not ring true.

‘Despite these stereotypes, and the higher proportion of males, aerospace engineers and neurosurgeons vary in their cognitive aptitudes as does the general population,’ the researchers added.

‘Our results highlight the further efforts required to widen access to these specialities to mitigate impending staff shortages and ensure a diverse workforce to drive future innovation.’

IS SWEARING A SIGN OF INTELLIGENCE?

Research in 2014 revealed people who frequently swear are more likely to have a bigger vocabulary than their clean-tongued peers.

A colourful tongue does not mean the talker is lazy or uneducated, the study published in the Language Sciences journal found.

Instead, those who are more confident using taboo words are more articulate in other areas.

Kristin and Timothy Jay, the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts psychologists who co-wrote the study, said it proved swearing was positively correlated with verbal fluency.

‘We cannot help but judge others on the basis of their speech,’ they wrote.

‘Unfortunately, when it comes to taboo language, it is a common assumption that people who swear frequently are lazy, do not have an adequate vocabulary, lack education, or simply cannot control themselves.’

In their conclusion, they added: ‘The overall finding of this set of studies, that taboo fluency is positively correlated with other measures of verbal fluency, undermines the [normal] view of swearing.’

A separate and unrelated study from the University of Rochester in 2017 found that intelligent people tend to swear more. 

Despite this, studies have also found that the perception of people who swear often is that they are actually less intelligent and trustworthy, creating somewhat of a paradox.  



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Technology

Why a toaster from 1949 is still smarter than any sold today

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My colleague Tom once introduced you to a modern toaster with two seemingly ingenious buttons: one to briefly lift your bread to check its progress, and another to toast it “a bit more.” I respectfully submit you shouldn’t need a button at all.

That’s because in 1948, Sunbeam engineer Ludvik J. Koci invented the perfect toaster, one where the simple act of placing a slice into one of its two slots would result in a delicious piece of toasted bread. No button, no lever, no other input required. Drop bread, get toast.

Some of you are no doubt already connoisseurs who know what I’m referring to: the Sunbeam Radiant Control Toaster, sold from 1949 all the way through the late ‘80s. (It goes by many names, including the T-20A, T-20-B, T20-C, T-35, VT-40, AT-W and even the 20-30-AG.) In 2019, the YouTube channel Technology Connections famously explained precisely why the antique Sunbeam Radiant is better than yours, and it might be the smartest thing you watch today.

But if you don’t have the time just now, I’ll summarize: When you stick a piece of bread into this toaster, it pushes down a series of cleverly designed levers that have just enough tension to lower and raise two slices all by themselves — and it’s got a mechanical thermostat inside that stops your bread toasting when it’s toasted and ready, NOT after some arbitrary amount of time.

With the Sunbeam, the heat radiating from the bread itself warms up a bimetal strip (one of the simplest kinds of thermostats) which, being made of two different kinds of metal that expand at different rates, ends up bending backwards to sever the connection and stop the flow of electricity when the toast is done. And here’s the most ingenious part: when the heating wire shrinks as it cools down, that is what triggers the mechanical chain reaction that lifts your bread back up. Here’s how Sunbeam describes it in the toaster’s official service manual:

Raising or lowering of the bread is obtained by making use of the energy of expansion and contraction of the Center Element wire. Of course, this movement is very small and is measured in thousandths of an inch, but more than adequate carriage movement is obtained by a simple linkage which multiplies this movement approximately 175 times.

And that mechanism doesn’t just wear out after nearly three-quarters of a century of use: there’s a single screw underneath the crumb tray to adjust the tension of the wire, and it alone is enough to bring many aging toasters back to life.

So yeah: drop bread, get toast. And like Technology Connections points out, you get toast regardless of whether your bread is room temperature, refrigerated, or frozen when you stick it into the device.

That also makes it remarkably hard to accidentally burn your bread by toasting it too long! Remember the “A bit more” button on Tom’s toaster? The Sunbeam Radiant Control Toaster does that merely by dropping a toasted piece of bread back in the slot — it warms the bread right back to the temperature at which it browns, which browns the bread slightly more, before it trips the thermostat once again and shuts itself off.

My Sunbeam T-35.
Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge

By now, you might have guessed I wasn’t satisfied watching a YouTube video — I bought my own off eBay. And then I bought a second and a third, because it turns out a Space Age artifact that produces delicious food is just the kind of wonderful conversation piece that makes for a wonderful gift, too. (Before giving them, I opened them up and replaced their aging power cords with modern grounded three-prong ones, as many of these predate even polarized plugs and are not remotely safe by modern electrocution prevention standards.)

There are good arguments that the Sunbeam Radiant Control Toaster still isn’t perfect. For one thing, there’s no ding to remind you when the toast is done — though these 1275- and 1375-watt toasters are powerful enough you might as well stick around for the minute or two it takes. (Let your tea steep, grab your butter and preserves.)

You’re also not going to toast bagels in these easily, since the thermostat’s aimed at the center of your piece of bread. Frozen waffles come out fantastic, but I have to carefully split English muffins perfectly in half so they don’t catch on the guide wires. And while slices of square sandwich bread crisp up beautifully, including the thin-cut Taiwan toast from my local bakery, thick or oblong breads don’t necessarily fit. (A wide slice of Oroweat Buttermilk or Nature’s Own Brioche Style might require a quick flip-and-retoast to crisp all the way across.)

But when it works, which is most of the time, the result is the kind of crisp-on-the-outside, fluffy-and-moist-on-the-inside piece of toast my mom tells me she hasn’t had since she left her own mother’s kitchen.

Only the original T-20 variants have this art deco design.
Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge

I admit I’ve never tried a Balmuda, the $300 toaster oven where you add a splash of water so it “locks in the bread’s inner moisture before the surface is given a golden brown finish.” But I have to wonder if quickly crisping the outside with a dedicated vertical toaster, instead of baking it a second time in a miniature oven, might be a more elegant solution? I do own a Panasonic FlashXpress, which often takes home best toaster oven awards, and its perfectly browned slices definitely don’t have the same taste the Sunbeam can provide.

I found the T-20B slightly easier to work on than the T-35 or a later Vista model. The Vista had a couple riveted panels that were easy to unscrew here.
Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge

If you find yourself in the market for a Sunbeam Radiant yourself, you should know they’re not all quite the same — you can read about the differences here and here — and you may have to pay quite a bit. They go for an average of $130 on eBay, with fully restored models fetching two to four times that at auction. (Tim’s Toasters also promises to restore your existing Sunbeam for $250, though I can’t vouch for their work myself.)

Is that actually a lot? The Sunbeam T-20 reportedly retailed for over $22.50 brand new back in 1949. That’s $260 in today’s money, which may be why no other company has seemingly bothered to replicate its fully automatic charms.

This Thanksgiving, I thought I’d raise a toast to the ultimate toaster. We may never see its like again.

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Science

Are cats or dogs smarter?

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Dog and cat owners make a lot of assumptions about their four-footed companions’ intelligence. Of course, we all like to imagine our Fido or Felix is the smartest animal ever to fetch — or pounce on — a ball. So can we settle the age-old debate? Which species is smarter: dogs or cats?

Turns out, the answer isn’t as straightforward as pet lovers might like.

“Dog-cognition researchers do not study ‘intelligence’ per se; we look at different aspects of cognition,” Alexandra Horowitz, a senior research fellow who specializes in dog cognition at Barnard College in New York and the author of “Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know” (Scribner, 2010), told Live Science in an email.

Related: Why do dogs and cats run around in random bursts of speed?

In fact, Horowitz questions the human habit of comparing intelligence across species. 

“At its simplest form, cats are smart at the things cats need to do, and dogs at dog things,” she said. “I don’t think it makes any sense at all to talk about relative ‘smarts’ of species.”

Brian Hare, a professor of evolutionary anthropology at Duke University, agreed with that assessment.

“Asking whether a dog is smarter than a cat is like asking whether a hammer is a better tool than a screwdriver — it depends on what it was designed for,” he told Live Science in an email.

This is not to say that animal behavior researchers haven’t tried to measure dog and cat intelligence — or, more precisely, cognitive abilities beyond those needed to sustain life.

Kristyn Vitale, an assistant professor of animal health and behavior at Unity College in Maine, said animal intelligence is typically divided into three broad areas: problem-solving ability, concept formation (the ability to form general concepts from specific concrete experiences) and social intelligence.

Vitale primarily studies cats, and her current focus on the inner life of cats revolves around social intelligence. Often stereotyped as aloof and disinterested in humans, cats actually show a high degree of social intelligence, “often at the same level as dogs,” she told Live Science in an email.

For example, studies show that cats can distinguish between their names and similar-sounding words, and they have been found to prefer human interactions to food, toys and scents. Human attention makes a difference to cats: A 2019 study published in the journal Behavioural Processes found that when a person paid attention to a cat, the cat responded by spending more time with that person.

In one of the rare studies directly comparing cats and dogs, researchers found no significant difference between the species’ ability to find hidden food using cues from a human’s pointing. However, the researchers noted that “cats lacked some components of attention-getting behavior compared with dogs.” (Pet owners who’ve watched a dog beg at its feeding bowl while a cat walked away know exactly what the researchers observed.)

Related: How much do cats and dogs remember?

Cats and dogs are intelligent in different ways. (Image credit: Jessica Harms via Getty Images)

Then, there’s brain size. A commonly held notion is that brain size dictates relative intelligence, and if that were always true, dogs would appear to prevail.

Hare said he and University of Arizona anthropologist Evan MacLean recruited more than 50 researchers around the world to apply a test they developed across 550 animal species, including “birds, apes, monkeys, dogs, lemurs and elephants,” he said.

The idea was to test one cognitive trait, self-control, or what researchers call “inhibitory control,” across species. Their test, reported in a 2014 paper published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, was the animal version of the famous 1972 Stanford University study in which children ages 3 to 5 were tested on their ability to delay eating a marshmallow. 

The cross-species study showed that “the bigger the brain an animal had, the more self-control they showed in our animal marshmallow test,” Hare said. The ability to exercise self-control is one of the indications of higher cognitive function.

But there is one catch: Cats weren’t included in the test, so while we can speculate how they might have performed based on their brain size, we don’t actually know. 

Another thing to keep in mind when doing this kind of intelligence assessment is that we may treat dogs and cats differently, Vitale said.

“For example, dogs are often well socialized and attend puppy classes, go for rides in cars and go to the dog park,” she said. “Cat owners give their cats less of these types of socialization and training opportunities.”

So, ultimately, who wins? The takeaway may be to appreciate your pet’s particular kind of intelligence, especially the social intelligence that makes them delightful companions.

Originally published on Live Science.

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Health

Are left-handed people smarter? | Live Science

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Left-handed people comprise only around 10% of the global population, but a quick glance reveals that many key movers and shakers are lefties. 

For instance, three out of the last six American presidents were lefties: George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. Plus, an eclectic slew of outliers who’ve rocked the world in one way or another had dominant left hands: Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Paul McCartney, David Bowie, Jimi Hendrix, James Baldwin, Nikola Tesla, Oprah Winfrey, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, according to a 2019 report and The New York Times. 

It’s an impressive roster, but what does the data say? Are left-handed people smarter than righties? 

Related: Why are people left- (or right-) handed?

To investigate this question, researchers looked at the differences in mathematical achievement between more than 2,300 right- and left-handed students between the ages of 6 and 17 in Italy. While there was no difference when looking at the easier math problems, left-handed students had a significant edge on the more difficult problems, such as associating a mathematical function to a set of data, according to the 2017 study in the journal Frontiers, led by Giovanni Sala, an assistant professor at the Institute for Comprehensive Medical Science at Fujita Health University in Japan.

But why would a person’s dominant hand have anything to do with mathematical ability? Left-handedness is associated with some surprising differences in the architecture of the brain. A 1995 meta-analysis of 43 studies in the journal Psychobiology determined that left-handers possess a significantly larger corpus callosum — the bundle of nerve fibers connecting the two hemispheres of the brain — than right-handers do.

“A possibility is that the stronger connection between the two hemispheres allows the [left-handed] subject to have stronger spatial abilities, and we know that spatial abilities are connected to mathematics because mathematics is often conceptualized throughout space,” said Sala, who conducted his research while at the University of Liverpool in the U.K.

In some cases, it might depend on how a person becomes left-handed. “Handedness is a very complex trait, and specifically left-handedness may be an advantage or a disadvantage depending on what the cause is,” Sala told Live Science. Sometimes, “left-handedness can be caused by some kind of brain damage, when the right hemisphere has to take over because there is some kind of damage in the left hemisphere.” 

This type of damage could be caused by a hemispheric lesion that occurs prenatally, according to a 1985 study in the journal Brain and Cognition. If the lesions occur in the left hemisphere of the brain, then this could lead the individual to predominantly use the right half of their brain. Since the hemispheres of the brain are cross-indexed (meaning the left hemisphere controls the right side of the body, and vice versa), a dominant right hemisphere can lead to left-handedness. The study refers to this as “pathological left-handedness,” and noted that it can lead to learning difficulties. In other words, sometimes being lefty is associated with learning problems.

It’s complex, but Sala’s study paints a picture of left-handers being over-represented at both the bottom and top of the cognitive spectrum. “Once you see that the subject is not intellectually challenged … then left handedness seems to be a predictor of intellectual ability,” specifically mathematical ability, according to his study, Sala said. However, he cautions that his results are not the final word, and that further studies must be done. 

What’s more, other data shows that righties have a slight intellectual edge over lefties. A 2017 study in the journal Neuroscience and Behavioral Reviews reviewed 18 other studies which included data from over 20,400 people and found that right-handers had negligibly higher IQs than left-handers do, on average. “The jury is still out when it comes to the questions of whether it is degree of hand preference that is associated with intelligence and whether there is a relationship between relative handskill and intelligence,” the authors wrote in the study. 

Lefty history

Left-handedness has not always been seen in such a positive light. In the 1936 pamphlet “The Prevention and Correction of Left-Handedness in Children,” by J.W. Conway, left-handedness was described as a “disease” as serious and problematic as rickets and pneumonia. 

Prejudice against left-handers has deep roots and is built into our very language. To be someone’s “right-hand man” is good, while having “two left feet” or receiving a “left-handed compliment” is bad. The word itself comes from the old English “lyft” meaning weak or broken, while the word “right” is given the additional honors of meaning factually correct, morally justified, or a “moral or legal entitlement.” 

These slights are not unique to English, either. The French word for left is “gauche,” which in both English and French also means “awkward or tactless,” while ,”droite,” the French word for right, translates to “adroit.” Going back further still, the Roman word for left was “sinister,” while their word for right, or “dexter,” gives us the English word dexterity.

Even modern research acknowledges some downsides to being of the lefty persuasion. It’s been statistically associated with schizophrenia, dyslexia, and breast cancer, to name a few. (However, an association does not prove that one causes the other.)

But these prejudices just make those numerous left-handers who have become historical and contemporary icons all the more impressive. Not bad for a group of supposed gauche and sinister abnormals, right?

Originally published on Live Science.

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Technology

The Nanoleaf Canvas Light Panel smarter pack is $50 off at Costco

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If you like your lighting to be on the adventurous side, rest assured that Nanoleaf’s canvas light panels aren’t made to be subtle. The touch-sensitive squares are flashy and versatile, with the ability to display more than 16 million colors and a modular design that lets you place them in a variety of patterns. The bright LED panels also work with all the major smart home platforms, and can cycle through a number of preset colors or respond to sound when in “Rhythm Mode,” a feature that’s just as suited for the ambient noise outside your bedroom as your favorite record. Right now, Costco members can purchase Nanoleaf’s Canvas Light Panel smarter pack with nine panels and everything needed to get started for $50, one of the better prices we’ve seen on the intuitive lighting system.

Nanoleaf Canvas Light Panel smarter pack

Nanoleaf’s colorful, touch-sensitive LED panels support all major smart home platforms and can cycle through more than 16 million colors, making them the perfect accent piece for any room in need of a little flair.

The Razer Nari Essential is by no means a groundbreaking headset, yet, for the price, it’s an admirable entry-level model that will appease most gamers, especially on the PC side. The jet-black wireless gaming headset features an adjustable headband, a sturdy build, and support for both PC and PlayStation consoles, with THX Spatial Audio simulated surround sound available on the former. Normally $100, it’s currently available at Woot for $55, more than 45 percent off its typical list price. If Razer’s budget-friendly Nari Essential doesn’t offer what you’re looking for, however, we’ve also rounded up the best gaming headsets overall, including multiplatform models and both wired and wireless alternatives.

Razer Nari Essential

At $55, the Nari Essential is hard to beat. It’s one of Razer’s more affordable wireless headsets, with 16 hours of battery life, a well-made build, and simulated surround sound on PC, a feature that lets you pinpoint enemies before sneak up on you.

Good noise-cancellation can be hard to come by for $100 — just look at the Nothing Ear 1s. Fortunately, there’s the second-gen Amazon Echo Buds, a pair of true wireless earbuds that churn out satisfying sound while benefitting from improved comfort and noise cancellation over their first-gen counterpart. Amazon’s mid-range earbuds, which are now on sale for a limited time at Best Buy for $80, also feature IPX4 water and sweat resistance, and allow for hands-free voice commands via Alexa, meaning Amazon’s virtual assistant is always available at the tip of your tongue. Read our review.

Amazon Echo Buds (second-gen)

Amazon’s Echo Buds 2 improve upon the originals with a more comfortable design, improved ANC, and a more natural ambient sound mode. They still offer hands-free Alexa voice commands as well.

Other deals of note

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Science

Why trash-raiding cockatoos in Sydney are smarter than ‘bin chickens’

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He shared it with Barbara Klump and Lucy Aplin, both researchers at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in Germany — and they were immediately fascinated.

“It was so exciting to observe such an ingenious and innovative way to access a food resource, we knew immediately that we had to systematically study this unique foraging behavior,” said Klump, a postdoctoral research fellow at the institute in a news release.

It’s a five-stage process for the birds to open the bin lid, according to the study. The bird has to pry open the lid with its beak, twist its neck sideways and hop onto to the edge of the bin, hold it open with its beak or foot, walk along the rim, and finally flip the lid open.

On Thursday, the scientists published their findings in the journal Science, which found that the iconic Australian bird species learned this foraging skill from each other and showed innovation by developing different ways of opening the bins.

It’s difficult to demonstrate the evolution of new behaviors in animals for two reasons, said Major, principal research scientist at the Australian Museum. First, it’s difficult to detect behaviors when they first arise because they begin as rare instances before spreading. Secondly, if populations in two different locations perform the behaviors differently, it’s hard to tell whether that’s due to a difference in the animals themselves or their environments.

That’s why the Sydney sulphur-crested cockatoos, a highly social parrot common across East Coast cities, provided a rare opportunity. The whole country uses the same standardized public trash bin — and the cockatoos live in one of Australia’s biggest cities, meaning there are millions of residents who can help observe their behavior.

The research team launched an online survey asking Sydney residents if they had seen cockatoos lifting trash bin lids for food.

Before 2018, this behavior had only been reported in three suburbs — but by the end of 2019, that number shot up to 44 suburbs, according to the study. And the behavior spread among nearby neighborhoods faster than it reached far-flung ones, showing that the new behavior wasn’t randomly popping up.

“These results show the animals really learned the behavior from other cockatoos in their vicinity,” Klump said in the release.

The researchers also marked cockatoos with paint dots to track which ones had learned to open the trash cans — which turned out to be only 10% of the birds. The other cockatoos would wait, then help themselves once the trash cans had been opened.

And not all birds open trash cans the same way — the team found that regional subcultures had emerged among the cockatoos, who had distinct styles and approaches. For instance, in late 2018, a cockatoo in northern Sydney reinvented the technique by opening the lids a different way, prompting birds in neighboring districts to copy the behavior.

“There are different ways to go about (opening the lids),” said Major. The fact that groups have developed different ways to do it was “evidence they learned the behavior from each other, rather than them solving the puzzle independently.”

It may seem like a trivial finding — that birds can open lids differently — but it’s significant because it proves animals can learn, share and develop subcultures, Major said. He compared it to human dance, how each culture has their own, and how places that are geographically close may have more similar dance styles than in countries far away.

The study also sheds more light on how animals are evolving in urban centers. There are always “winners and losers” as cities expand and land use changes, Major said — and the animals who can can adapt to new environments emerge as the winners.

There are plenty of other species who forage — most notably, the larger ibis, known as the “bin chicken,” that digs through the city’s trash. But “it’s easy for an ibis to see food in a bin, and get food out of it,” said Major. “For a cockatoo to lift a bin to find food, that’s another level of puzzle solving.”

“Cockatoos are broadening out their diet, so they’re able to exploit opportunities in an urban environment,” he added. “I hope our research will help us learn to live with them as well as they’re learning to live with us.”

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