Can Horses Talk? Of Course, Of Course

                                                               

For thousands of years, horses have obeyed our commands.
It's why we rode them into battle, use them as farmhands, and - more recently - draw on them for therapy and rehabilitation programs. 

But new research into human-equine communication confirms horses aren't just able to listen to us; they're able to talk back.

A study conducted by Norwegian animal behaviour experts has found horses are able to convey their preferences to handlers by touching symbols with their noses.

The researchers trained 23 horses, of various ages and breeds, for up to 15 minutes a day on how to approach and touch a board in order to tell the handler whether whether they were too cold, too warm or just right. 

One of the symbols meant "blanket on", the second meant "blanket off" and the third symbol meant "no change".

After two weeks, the horses were all able to tell their handlers if they wanted their blanket put on or taken off by touching the corresponding symbol.

The animals were tested in all sorts of conditions, including warm weather as well as rain and snow.

"The horses not only became able to discriminate the three symbols and associate each of them with a specific outcome ... they were also able to understand the effect a change in blanketing status would have on their thermal wellbeing," the study reads.

However, before you start dreaming up scenes reminiscent of the talking horse from Mr Ed, it's important to understand horses have always communicated with humans.
Equine experts say it's just that most people don't realise the horse is trying to talk to them in the first place. 

Kim Wren, the owner of Wedgetail Rides in the Yarra Valley, said the people in this study have simply taken the time to listen to the horses involved.

"We're often talking to horses, telling them what they can and can't do," she said. 

"But a lot of horses communicate with humans and each other through body language. We need to listen by watching the body language. This is exactly what these people [the researchers] are doing - they've taught them cues."

Ms Wren has a herd of 17 horses she uses for classes with at-risk youth or people living with disabilities. 

She said her horses also tell her if they don't want to be rugged up.
"If I go to rug up the horse and the horse walks off, it's saying it doesn't want it on," she said. 

"If they walk up, they do. You listen to the horse by observing."

By Broede Carmody

With many thanks to The Age 

                                                                

Related:

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Sgt Reckless - The Real War Horse

The Akhal-Teke Horse

Men And Wild Birds Communicate To Collect Honey

                                                                    

                                                                     

African tribesmen have learned to converse with a nondescript brown bird, in a rare case of “mutualism” with wild animals.

A Cambridge University-led study found the Yao people of Mozambique have developed a specialised language with bush birds, known as “honeyguides”, as part of a hunting pact that benefits both species.

The birds guide the tribesmen to hives hidden high in tree crevasses, then wait while the bees are smoked out and their nests broken open. The birds help themselves to the wax after the men have taken the honey.

Using animals as hunting assistants is nothing new, with dogs and falcons harnessed this way for millennia. But partnerships with wild animals are extremely rare, with the only other cases thought to involve dolphins herding fish and whales.

“The relationship involves free-living wild animals whose interactions with humans have probably evolved through natural selection, (possibly) over the course of hundreds of thousands of years,” said Cambridge bird ecologist Claire Spottiswoode.

The partnership with the honey­guides was first recorded by a missionary in 1588, with tribesmen elsewhere in eastern Africa found to have forged similar bonds. The new study, reported today in the journal Science, teased out the two-way communication that seals the deal.

The researchers found the men summoned the birds using a distinct call — a loud trill followed by a grunt. The birds replied with a distinct call of their own, then flitted from tree to tree pointing out hives. The researchers recorded the hunters’ calls and played them back to summon the birds. Compared with other recordings, the call doubled the chances of securing help from birds and more than tripled the odds of finding honey.

Dr Spottiswoode said people in other parts of Africa used different sounds for the same purpose. Hadza tribesmen of Tanzania recruit honeyguides with a melodious whistle. She said the honeyguide’s unassuming plumage belied its brutal interactions with other species.

“Like a cuckoo, it lays its eggs in the nests of other birds, and its chick hatches equipped with sharp hooks at the tips of its beak (that it) uses to kill foster siblings as soon as they hatch.
                                                                  

“(It’s) a master of deception and exploitation as well as co-­operation — a Jekyll and Hyde of the bird world.”

By John Ross
With many thanks to The Australian 

How to Use Google’s New My Activity Privacy Tool

                                                                   

Have you ever wondered what data Google collects on you as you surf the web and use its apps and services? My Activity, a new tool from the Alphabet-owned search giant, gives you a better picture than ever before of your digital tracks — but it still doesn’t tell you everything.

If you have a Google account (and you do if you use Gmail, Google Docs, YouTube or any other Google services), you’ll find My Activity at myaccount.google.com. Once logged in, you get a list of privacy and security options, including a link that says “Go to my activity.”

There you will see a timeline of websites you visited (with links), things you have looked up in Google’s search engine or the Google Play app store, places found in Google Maps and videos you watched in YouTube. A search box lets you find specific things in your vast timeline and filter searches by date or by a specific Google product (Chrome, YouTube, Maps, etc.).

Like a browser history, My Activity also lets you delete specific events. Just click the three-dot button for a menu. A Google spokeswoman said that when you delete anything from My Activity, Google no longer takes that data into consideration when profiling you.

Having this all in one location, across so many Google apps and services, is both helpful and more transparent. Here’s the catch: My Activity defaults to only showing data for the device you are on at the time. If you want to see this data across multiple devices, then you will need to opt in to an advertising privacy setting that will give Google permission to combine this data with other data on you that Google currently keeps separate. This includes the data it collects from your personal interactions inside Gmail, Google Calendar and other apps you won’t see listed in My Activity.

Google already tracks some of what you do inside those apps, to add booked flights to your calendar, for example, or block spammy emails. However, until now it didn’t use that data to target ads at you. A spokeswoman for the company said that combining these two silos of data will let Google better personalise the ads you see in apps and the web in the short term, and in the long term, it will lead to better privacy tools too. Even after you opt to combine all your data, there is still no way to see precisely what Google is logging when it is combing through all of your emails.

Bear in mind, whether or not you opt into Google’s personalised ad tracking, you still will see personalised ads — they just likely will be less relevant to your interests.

If you do want to opt in, go back to the My Account website. Under Personal Info & Privacy, there is a link for ad settings. Click that, then click “Manage ads settings.” Next to the check box for Google’s ad personalisation, there is some text that is worth reading: “Also use Google Account activity and information to personalise ads on these websites and apps and store that data in your Google Account.” You can opt out later if you want.

Like Google, Facebook tracks the websites you visit, and collects data on what you do inside of its apps and services, using all that data to target ads. But whereas Google gives you a choice whether or not to combine these different data sets, Facebook does it by default. If you don’t want Facebook to track your web activity to target ads, you have to dig into a series of confusing menus to turn it off.

I’ve opted out of Facebook’s tracking because there is no real benefit for me since I largely ignore the ads I see on Facebook anyway. But I’ve opted in to Google’s new personalised ad tracking because of the incentive of being able to see what Google is tracking across all my devices. If Facebook ever creates something as easy and transparent as what Google is doing with My Activity, I might change my mind.

Whatever your preference, My Activity is a great tool for anyone with a Google account — and an important reminder that when you do use all these free apps and services, you are giving up personal data to do it.

By Nathan Olivarez-Giles

With many thanks to The Australian
                                                                        

Heteronyms

                                                                        

Homographs are words of like spelling but with more than one meaning.

A homograph that is also pronounced differently is a heteronym.

1) The bandage was wound around the wound.

2) The farm was used to produce produce.

3) The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.

4) We must polish the Polish furniture.

5) He could lead if he would get the lead out.

6) The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.

7) Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present.

8) A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.

9) When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.

10) I did not object to the object.

11) The insurance was invalid for the invalid.

12) There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.

13) They were too close to the door to close it.

14) The buck does funny things when the does are present.

15) A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.

16) To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.

17) The wind was too strong for me to wind the sail.

18) Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear..

19) I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.

20) How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?


Let's face it - English is a crazy language. There is no egg in eggplant, nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins weren't invented in England or French fries in France .. Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren't sweet, are meat. 

We take English for granted. But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.

And why is it that writers write but fingers don't fing, grocers don't groce and hammers don't ham? If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn't the plural of booth, beeth? One goose, 2 geese. 

So one moose, 2 meese? One index, 2 indices? Doesn't it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend? If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it?

If teachers taught, why didn't preachers praught?

If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat? 

Sometimes I think all the English speakers should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane.

 In what language do people recite at a play and play at a recital? Ship by truck and send cargo by ship? Have noses that run and feet that smell?

How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites? 

You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out and in which, an alarm goes off by going on.

English was invented by people, not computers, and it reflects the creativity of the human race, which, of course, is not a race at all. 
That is why, when the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights are out, they are invisible.

People can be cool or hot - it means the same.


PS. - Why doesn't 'Buick' rhyme with 'quick'?

Lovers of the English language might enjoy this.

There is a two-letter word that perhaps has more meanings than any other two-letter word, and that is 'UP.'

It's easy to understand UP, meaning toward the sky or at the top of the list, but when we awaken in the morning, why do we wake UP?

At a meeting, why does a topic come UP?

Why do we speak UP and why are the officers UP for election and why is it UP to the secretary to write UP a report?

We call UP our friends.

And we use it to brighten UP a room, polish UP the silver; we warm UP the leftovers and clean UP the kitchen.

We lock UP the house and some guys fix UP the old car.

At other times the little word has real special meaning.

People stir UP trouble, line UP for tickets, work UP an appetite, and think UP excuses.

To be dressed is one thing, but to be dressed UP is special..

A drain must be opened UP because it is stopped UP.

We open UP a store in the morning but we close it UP at night.

We seem to be pretty mixed UP about UP!

To be knowledgeable about the proper uses of UP, look the word UP in the dictionary.

In a desk-sized dictionary, it takes UP almost 1/4th of the page and can add UP to about thirty definitions.

If you are UP to it, you might try building UP a list of the many ways UP is used.

It will take UP a lot of your time, but if you don't give UP, you may wind UP with a hundred or more.

When it threatens to rain, we say it is clouding UP.

When the sun comes out we say it is clearing UP..

When it rains, it wets the earth and often messes things UP.

When it doesn't rain for a while, things dry UP.

One could go on and on, but I'll wrap it UP.
For now my time is UP.

So.......it is time to shut UP!

Received via email.
Picture credit: Busy Teacher


See also 
Contronyms

Paraprosdokians

English And Mathematics Are Being Sorely Neglected

How English Gave Birth To Surprising New Languages

11 Inventors Who Became Nouns

Do All Languages Come From A Single Common Ancestor?

How English Gave Birth To Surprising New Languages

Can You Correctly Pronounce Every Word In This Poem?

Li-Fi Has Been Tested And It's 100 Times Faster Than Wi-Fi

                                                                   

                                                                     

Expect to hear a whole lot more about Li-Fi - a wireless technology that transmits high-speed data using visible light communication (VLC) - in the coming months. 

With scientists achieving speeds of 224 gigabits per second in the lab using Li-Fi earlier this year, the potential for this technology to change everything about the way we use the Internet is huge. 

And now, scientists have taken Li-Fi out of the lab for the first time, trialling it in offices and industrial environments in Tallinn, Estonia, reporting that they can achieve data transmission at 1 GB per second - that's 100 times faster than current average Wi-Fi speeds.

"We are doing a few pilot projects within different industries where we can utilise the VLC (visible light communication) technology," Deepak Solanki, CEO of Estonian tech company, Velmenni, told IBTimes UK.  

"Currently we have designed a smart lighting solution for an industrial environment where the data communication is done through light. We are also doing a pilot project with a private client where we are setting up a Li-Fi network to access the Internet in their office space.” 

Li-Fi was invented by Harald Haas from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland back in 2011, when he demonstrated for the first time that by flickering the light from a single LED, he could transmit far more data than a cellular tower. Think back to that lab-based record of 224 gigabits per second - that's 18 movies of 1.5 GB each being downloaded every single second.
 
The technology uses Visible Light Communication (VLC), a medium that uses visible light between 400 and 800 terahertz (THz). It works basically like an incredibly advanced form of Morse code - just like switching a torch on and off according to a certain pattern can relay a secret message, flicking an LED on and off at extreme speeds can be used to write and transmit things in binary code.  

And while you might be worried about how all that flickering in an office environment would drive you crazy, don’t worry - we’re talking LEDs that can be switched on and off at speeds imperceptible to the naked eye.  

The benefits of Li-Fi over Wi-Fi, other than potentially much faster speeds, is that because light cannot pass through walls, it makes it a whole lot more secure, and as Anthony Cuthbertson points out at IBTimes UK, this also means there's less interference between devices. 

While Cuthbertson says Li-Fi will probably not completely replace Wi-Fi in the coming decades, the two technologies could be used together to achieve more efficient and secure networks. 

Our homes, offices, and industry buildings have already been fitted with infrastructure to provide Wi-Fi, and ripping all of this out to replace it with Li-Fi technology isn’t particularly feasible, so the idea is to retrofit the devices we have right now to work with Li-Fi technology. 

                                                                     

Research teams around the world are working on just that. Li-Fi experts reported for the The Conversation last month that Haas and his team have launched PureLiFi, a company that offers a plug-and-play application for secure wireless Internet access with a capacity of 11.5 MB per second, which is comparable to first generation Wi-Fi. And French tech company Oledcomm is in the process of installing its own Li-Fi technology in local hospitals. 

If applications like these and the Velmenni trial in Estonia prove successful, we could achieve the dream outlined by Haas in his 2011 TED talk below - everyone gaining access to the Internet via LED light bulbs in their home. 

"All we need to do is fit a small microchip to every potential illumination device and this would then combine two basic functionalities: illumination and wireless data transmission," Haas said. "In the future we will not only have 14 billion light bulbs, we may have 14 billion Li-Fis deployed worldwide for a cleaner, greener, and even brighter future." 

By Bec Crew

With many thanks to Science Alert




Related:

Modern Technology and Albert Einstein: Are We There Yet?

Arthur Benjamin: The Magic of Fibonacci Numbers

Claude Shannon Jr: The Greatest Genius No One Has Heard Of

John von Neumann: This Hungarian-American Mathematician May Have Been Smarter Than Einstein 

Great Minds: Filippo Brunelleschi

Great Minds: Leonardo da Vinci

The Genius of Nicola Tesla

Hedy Lamarr - Beauty And Brains in Abundance

The New Turing Test:Brainy Machines Need An Updated IQ Test, Experts Say 

Alan Turing Manuscript Sells For $1 million 

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Albert Einstein: Inspiring Quotes on Nature and Life

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Warp Speed Space Travel A Possibility Thanks To Einstein's Theory Of Relativity

Einstein's Famous Theory Has Aged Well 

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Hedy Lamarr's 101st Birthday Celebrated by Google

                                                             

Today’s Google Doodle celebrates the life of Hedy Lamarr, on what would be her 101st birthday. 

Although some may recognise Lamarr, particularly because she was once named ‘the most beautiful woman in the world’, little is known of her life outside of her film career.

                                                                    

Here’s five things you didn’t know about Lamarr:

1. Her real name is Hedwig. She was born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler in Vienna, Austria in 1914. She was of Jewish descent and the daughter of a banker and pianist. She died in 2000, aged 85.

2. One of her first acting roles was in the Czech film Ecstasy in 1933. Controversial for its time, Lamarr is also credited as acting the first female orgasm to be shown in a non-pornographic film. The movie was banned in many places, including many areas of the USA.

3. Lamarr changed her name after fleeing her husband Friedrich Mandl – a rich military magnate, and moved to America. Reportedly Mandl was particularly controlling; the New York Times report he purchased a vast amount of the copies of Ecstasy in a bid that nobody would see “the look on her [Lamarr’s] face during the sex scenes.”

4. She became concerned about the Nazis and their practice of jamming the radios of the Allies in World War Two. Using her interest in Science she and composer George Antheil, invented a “secret communications” device which would use ‘frequency hopping’, meaning frequencies would be controlled making the radio harder to intercept. The US navy began using the device in the 1960s. 4. She became concerned about the Nazis and their practice of jamming the radios of the Allies in World War Two. Using her interest in Science she and composer George Antheil, invented a “secret communications” device which would use ‘frequency hopping’, meaning frequencies would be controlled making the radio harder to intercept. The US navy began using the device in the 1960s.

5. The wireless communications she devised during the Second World War are still used today in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. Biographer Richard Rhodes told CBS: “Today, frequency hopping is used with the wireless phones that we have in our homes, GPS and most military communication systems.”

By Oliver Blair 

With many thanks to The Independent


                                                              

Related:
 Hedy Lamarr - Beauty And Brains in Abundance
11 Female Inventors Who Helped Power The Information Age 
Top Ten Things Women Invented

Alan Turing and The Imitation Game
Li-Fi Has Been Tested And It's 100 Times Faster Than Wi-Fi
Temple Grandin On The Autistic Brain
German WWII Coding Machine Found On eBay For $20

                                                               

Mind Lies - "I Don't Matter" Subconscious Belief: Daniel Rechnitzer

                                                               

                                                        

Do you feel like "I Don't Matter"? Well it's not the truth! In his new book "MIND LIES and The Truths That Will Set You Free" Daniel Rechnitzer smashes through the limiting subconscious beliefs (MIND LIES) holding us back. Check out this highlight from his new book and discover the truth of "I DON'T MATTER". 

See www.MINDLIES.com or www.DiscoverUi.com for more.


From Discover UI:

From The Author Of ‘The ALL KNOWING Diary’ Comes A Profound And Engaging Expose… of YOUR MIND!
 
Did you know that your sub-conscious belief systems are responsible for the life you are living? Your finances, your health, your relationships and why you react to certain circumstances are all a direct result of what you believe to be true.

“Your Beliefs Are To You And Your Reality The Same As Software Is To A Computer. To Change The Life You Know, You Must Reprogram The Code!”

So, what if some of your beliefs are not the truth? Are you sub-consciously creating a reality based on fictitious notions of your life?  Are your belief systems steering you off-track and away from health, wealth and happiness, without you realizing it? YES! Where there is hardship, stagnation, health problems or a lack of fulfillment in any area of life, there are MIND LIES.

So, what exactly are MIND LIES? They are beliefs about ourselves and our reality, that are not the truth.   Thankfully, over time, life shows up the truth about MIND LIES. Some classics include: “The Earth is flat” and “Smoking isn’t bad for you.” But there are still many damaging MIND LIES lurking in the human psyche, causing havoc in our daily life. Some include: “I’m not respected”, “I’m not loved”, “I’m not deserving of success”, “Illness runs in my family”, “Money is more important than my health”, to “I’m not enough”.

MIND LIES dictate our state of being, our every decision and our every action, perpetuating hardship and lack of fulfillment. They are at the root of self-sabotage and dissatisfaction in life. They delay our success and worst of all, they block us from discovering our true identity – who we really are and what we are truly capable of.
With the help of Daniel’s new book, you get to see through these MIND LIES, dissolving them from the sub-conscious to awaken to the ultimate truth of who – and what – you really are!
  Experience:
~ New levels of self-love and a Super-Conscious connection
~ Healing of old emotions and physical symptoms
~ Rapid improvements to your reality and fulfillment levels
~ A deep awakening to the sublime YOU

You Will Never Look At Yourself In The Same Way Again!

Above: What is UI?                                                            

Click Here To Pre-Order Your Copy!

                                                                   
See also Daniel's You Tube channel.

 

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