I have not played bingo for a long time. I recently had the opportunity to play again in a bar of all places. The way it goes is you buy a beer and they give you a playing card and a number. Posted on the wall is the pattern for the day. Some don’t really care much for it but a few patrons were eagerly marking their cards as they become more and more inebriated. I think if you win you get a free beer or something of more value, I forget. It was unique at the very least. That experience got me to take a second look at a bingo hall in a mall I was at a few days ago. I really don’t take notice but it seems like the place is always more than half full. I guess bingo is alive and well since I last properly played it decades ago. Just like gambling where casinos have set up shop in cyberspace, bingo sites abound. I wonder if you can make a real living out playing it just like professional poker players do? It is another form of gambling if you think about it and luck plays a huge role just like gambling. I think the odds are stacked more against a bingo player than say a skilled poker player since I don’t think skill has little to do with playing bingo.
Archive for the ‘Science’ Category
Rooks appear to have a better understanding of how gravity works than do chimps and babies under 6 months old.
A common way of finding out whether animals and babies understand a complex concept is to show them images of impossible events. The rationale is that viewers spend longer looking at those which defy their expectations, presumably as they try to work out what’s going on.
Chris Bird of the University of Cambridge and Nathan Emery of Queen Mary, University of London, showed rooks computer generated images, half of which were impossible according to the laws of gravity, such as an egg floating in mid-air above a table. Almost without exception, the rooks spent more time looking at the “impossible” images than the possible ones. They also took more second glances.
The responses were the same when the “familiar” egg shape was replaced by a cork, proving the birds’ insight applied equally to any object, familiar or not.
The researchers say the result is consistent with rooks being able to solve complex problems from knowledge of cause and effect, rather than by trial and error.
Move over, Midas. A genetically modified version of a bacterium that extracts gold from its environment can signal the presence of the precious metal. The result could be a boon for prospectors.
Some bacteria have long been known to be associated with gold deposits, but it has been unclear whether they play a role in its production – and if so, how they do it. Now Frank Reith of the University of Adelaide, South Australia, has found that dissolved gold is harmful to the bacterium Cupriavidus metallic durans, as it forms a toxic, sulphur-containing compound when it is absorbed from the environment. This compound inhi bits the bacterium’s enzyme function, prompting the distressed microbe to activate a cluster of “gold detox” genes that produce enzymes able to convert the soluble gold compounds into harmless particles of metallic gold (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Knowing how microbes do this will open up a whole new way of prospecting, says co-author Gregor Grass. He and Reith have developed a genetically modified version of C. metalliduransthat produces a visible response when the detox genes are switched on. “When the microbes come into contact with gold, they flash a l i g ht that can be detected using a hand-held photometer,” says Grass. He envisages that prospectors will be able to detect whether gold is present by taking a sample of soil and adding the modified bacteria to it.