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When it comes to worsening eyesight, we are quick to think of three remedies: eyeglasses, contact lenses and Lasik. But, could a video game a day, actually keep the eye doctor away?

Aaron Seitz thinks so. The neuroscientist from the University of California, Riverside argues that training the brain to better adapt to changing eyes is no different than exercising the body to be stronger or faster.

“One aspect of vision is the optics of your eyes, and if you want your vision to be best, you want to make optics the best possible—through Lasik, glasses or surgery,” says Seitz. But our sense of sight also depends on our brain's ability to process visual information. “We like to think that our brain is going to be doing this optimally," he adds, "but that’s not the case."

UltimEyes, the app Seitz released last month, tests for neuroplasticity, or how well the brain's pathways change with our bodies and their surroundings over time. The user completes visual exercises specifically designed to assess how well his or her brain’s visual system is able to react to certain cues.

The app shows users “targets” and “distractors”—fuzzy bumps of varying depths and textures strewn across a flat gray screen—and then asks them to click the targets to earn points. If distractors are hit instead, users lose points.

Each “level” has different targets. Some of the targets have ridges, like potato chips, and how close the ridges are together varies; the tighter they are, the harder it is to tell if there are ridges at all. This tests visual acuity. Others have low contrast, making them blend in with the background on the screen.

“[They are] the kinds of stimuli that will excite cells in the visual cortex, so with repeated practice, you’re able to identify these when they are harder and harder to see, and, in that sense, you’re able to exercise those visual cells,” Seitz says.

The results, so far, have been promising. The university’s baseball team, the first group to test the app, saw a 31 percent improvement in their vision (gaining about two lines on a vision chart) after using the app four times a week for two months at 25 minutes a time, according to results published in the journal Current Biology.

The 19 players who trained with the app also saw varying improvements in their peripheral vision and their ability to see things in low light; some improved their vision to 20/7.5, which means they could see at 20 feet what most people can only see from 7.5, or about a third of that distance.

“It’s one thing to have a prototype that will run on a computer in a lab; it’s another thing to get it so it’s robust enough so people in the world can use it,” Seitz says. “I wanted to see how we can establish that this actually has an impact on things that people actually do.”

Even those of us who aren’t athletes can benefit from the program, Seitz says. Our eyes are constantly changing throughout our lives—and while, “early on in life the visual system is very plastic, pretty much past the age of 25, every aspect of cognition starts to get a bit worse,” he explains.

"As we get older, our eyes are constantly changing, but our brain doesn’t catch up with these changes,” Seitz says. “The program is designed to exercise your brain to accomplish two things: to try to re-optimize to the eyes that you have at that point and to exercise the system so it’s more efficient in general.”

But it’s healthy to have some skepticism, Seitz says. His tests, which have since included the university's softball team, raised more questions than they answered.

For instance, some players saw greater improvements in one eye, or with a certain skill, over another. And, while Seitz estimates up to two years, it is not immediately clear how long the effects last and also what kind of maintenance is required, or which exercises help certain conditions versus others.

Since his early studies were not funded, the neuroscientist relied on volunteers. He wasn’t able to set placebo conditions or reach out to other groups with a lower baseline vision. Though 20/20 is the goal for most of us, it puts you at the back of the pack in baseball, where players tend to have above-average vision in the first place.

Seitz now has funding to focus on specific groups—for instance, those who have age-related macular degeneration, various mental illnesses or have had cataract surgery. He’s also working with the Los Angeles Police Department, and soon, visually-impaired students at a school for the blind, which will give him a better handle on how the games affect the vision of different populations, he says.

Since its launch, the app has reached about 20,000 downloads. As demand grows, Seitz hopes to build “opt-in” permissions that would allow users to share the results of vision tests before and after the program, along with other data like age and sex. He also wants to enable video uploads, so he can track users’ eye movements as they complete each exercise.

“We have the possibility of getting 50,000, 100,000 people on a study, if you can get enough people to have the app in their hand,” he says. “When you’re building in better assessment, better data on who gets benefits and who doesn’t and a way to predict that, it’s much better science as well.”

Seitz is also excited about what something like his app could mean for the broader worlds of medicine and research.

“From a medical perspective," he says, "what we’re seeing is that a lot of approaches that traditionally would only be available in a research lab are accessible in an outpatient basis.” In other words, thousands could be getting treatment without having to check into the hospital.

Seitz can’t promise, after some training with UltimEyes, that you’ll be able to ditch your glasses when you drive—and, in fact, recommends that you don’t. But, the app might be a more beneficial diversion than Angry Birds.

“We all know this idea of use it or lose it, and with any other skill that we engage in, we get rusty if we’re not actively practicing," he says. "Vision is really the same thing.”

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/this-new-app-promises-to-sharpen-your-eyesight-180949903/

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THE GALACTIC EVERYDAY

Scott Kelly, the NASA astronaut who recently finished his one-year mission in space stated, "Personally, I've learned that nothing feels as amazing as water..." This comment struck me that there is a real longing and desire for sensorial and tactile experiences in space, where it is sterile and inhospitable.

The subject of humanness and achieving human comfort in space has been overlooked by science. Humanizing space needs to be addressed and given attention and research in order for humans to live well in long-term space colonization and deep space exploration. My position on space travel is neither the picture painted by NASA and SPACEX, nor is it the adventures of Barbarella, it is the grey area of space, the overlooked day-to-day life of humanity that I believe to be of importance. Why can't living in space be purposeful and fulfilling but also enjoyable, pleasurable, and sensuous?

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Living in a world where the food industry is so lustrous that food has become a given, A shift in the paradigm has occurred

The population of the world is on the rise,  the industries reliance on nature has grown tenfold and as land becomes scarce, different solutions to deal with the rising problems have made way into our diets..

Many people today rely on supplementation of their minerals and vitamins solely from a multitude of food additives and supplements – this has directly been connected to health problems physically and psychologically.

Neo Fruit allows us to break free from nature without skipping its classesת and Uses modern day tech and knowledge to create a truly unique man-made fruit. These Man made fruit, have an array of nutrients that are tailored to our daily needs.

Neo fruit’s form and textures were designed to fulfil our sensory involvement whilst remaining truly and practically healthy. and do not only leave us surviving’ but strengthen the ties between man & technology creating a wholesome; emotional and physical experience.

https://2018.bezalel.ac.il/en/industrial-design/meydan-levy/

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A synanthrope (from the Greek σύν syn, "together with" + ἄνθρωπος anthropos, "man") is a member of a species of wild animals and plants of various kinds that live near, and benefit from, an association with human beings and the somewhat artificial habitats that people create around them (see anthropophilia). Those habitats include houses, gardens, farms, roadsides, garbage dumps, and so on.

The category of synanthrope includes many species regarded as pests. It does not include domesticated animals such as cattle, honeybees, pets, poultry, silkworms, and working animals.[1]

Examples of synanthropes are various insect species (lice, ants, silverfish, cockroaches, et.), house sparrows, rock doves (pigeons), various rodent species, Virginia opossums, raccoons,[2] certain monkey species, coyotes,[3] urban ferals, and other urban wildlife.[1] The brown rat is counted as one of the most prominent synanthropic animals and can be found in almost every place there are people. Rats benefit from living alongside humans.[4][5]

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Scientists have developed an algorithm to monitor the underwater chatter of dolphins with the help of machine learning.

Using autonomous underwater sensors, researchers working in the Gulf of Mexico spent two years making recordings of dolphin echolocation clicks.

The result was a data set of 52 million click noises.

To sort through this vast amount of information, the scientists employed an “unsupervised” algorithm that automatically classified the noises into categories.

Without being “taught” to recognise patterns that were already known, the algorithm was able to seek original patterns in the data and identify types of click.

This enabled the scientists to determine specific patterns of clicks among the millions of clicks being recorded, and could help them to identify dolphin species in the wild.

“It’s fun to think about how the machine learning algorithms used to suggest music or social media friends to people could be re-interpreted to help with ecological research challenges,” said Dr Kaitlin Frasier of Scripps Institution of Oceanography, the lead author of the study published in the journal PLOS Computational Biology.

“Innovations in sensor technologies have opened the floodgates in terms of data about the natural world, and there is a lot of room for creativity right now in ecological data analysis,” she said.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/artificial-intelligence-dolphin-eavesdrop-scientist-ai-gulf-mexico-a8099676.html

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The pink-billed Honeyguide birds lead local hunters to wild beehives stashed in the cavities of baobabs and other tall trees. 

The humans then scale the trunks, smash the hives, and make off with the sticky riches, leaving the wax and the calorie-rich larvae within for their partners in crime. (The Greater Honeyguide is one of few avians that can eat and digest wax.) It’s what scientists call a mutualistic interaction, and for the Yao community in Mozambique, where Spottiswoode carried out her newest research, honey plays a vital role in their daily lives. 

This unlikely business arrangement between wild birds and people was first documented in multiple regions around Africa as early as the 1500s, but some experts believe it might stretch back to Homo erectus, which would put it at about 1.9 million years old. 

Today, the Yao villagers are keeping the tradition alive. Though brrr-hm is their preferred trigger, Spottiswoode says that the type of sound may be largely arbitrary. It's the meaning that matters. 

https://www.audubon.org/news/meet-greater-honeyguide-bird-understands-humans

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Tama (Japanese: たま, April 29, 1999 – June 22, 2015) was a female calico cat who gained fame for being a station master and operating officer at Kishi Station on the Kishigawa Line in Kinokawa, Wakayama Prefecture, Japan.[1]

The rail company had been close to bankruptcy when she was appointed but her arrival sparked a resurgence is the business’ fortunes as tourists flocked to see the stationmaster in action.

She raised more than 1.1 billion Yen (A$11.6 millon) for the local economy."Tama-chan really emerged like a saviour, a goddess,” Mr Kojima said.

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Pawprints of History

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When it comes to saving the planet, one whale is worth thousands of trees.

Scientific research now indicates more clearly than ever that our carbon footprint—the release of carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere where it contributes to global warming through the so-called greenhouse effect—now   threatens our ecosystems and our way of life.  But efforts to mitigate climate change face two significant challenges.  The first is to find effective ways to reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere or its impact on average global temperature.  The second is to raise sufficient funds to put these technologies into practice.

Many proposed solutions to global warming, such as capturing carbon directly from the air and burying it deep in the earth, are complex, untested, and expensive. What if there were a low-tech solution to this problem that not only is effective and economical, but also has a successful funding model?

An example of such an opportunity comes from a surprisingly simple and essentially “no-tech” strategy to capture more carbon from the atmosphere: increase global whale populations. Marine biologists have recently discovered that whales—especially the great whales—play a significant role in capturing carbon from the atmosphere (Roman and others 2014).  And international organizations have implemented programs such as Reducing Emissions from Degradation and Deforestation (REDD) that fund the preservation of carbon-capturing ecosystems.

Adapting these initiatives to support international efforts to restore whale populations could lead to a breakthrough in the fight against climate change.

The carbon capture potential of whales is truly startling.  Whales accumulate carbon in their bodies during their long lives. When they die, they sink to the bottom of the ocean; each great whale sequesters 33 tons of CO2 on average, taking that carbon out of the atmosphere for centuries. A tree, meanwhile, absorbs only up to 48 pounds of CO2 a year.

Protecting whales could add significantly to carbon capture because the current population of the largest great whales is only a small fraction of what it once was. Sadly, after decades of industrialized whaling, biologists estimate that overall whale populations are now to less than one fourth what they once were. Some species, like the blue whales, have been reduced to only 3 percent of their previous abundance. Thus, the benefits from whales’ ecosystem services to us and to our survival are much less than they could be.

But this is only the beginning of the story.

The whale pump

Wherever whales, the largest living things on earth, are found, so are populations of some of the smallest, phytoplankton. These microscopic creatures not only contribute at least 50 percent of all oxygen to our atmosphere, they do so by capturing about 37 billion metric tons of CO2, an estimated 40 percent of all CO2 produced. To put things in perspective, we calculate that this is equivalent to the amount of CO2 captured by 1.70 trillion trees—four Amazon forests’ worth—or 70 times the amount absorbed by all the trees in the US Redwood National and State Parks each year. More phytoplankton means more carbon capture.

In recent years, scientists have discovered that whales have a multiplier effect of increasing phytoplankton production wherever they go. How? It turns out that whales’ waste products contain exactly the substances—notably iron and nitrogen—phytoplankton need to grow. Whales bring minerals up to the ocean surface through their vertical movement, called the “whale pump,” and through their migration across oceans, called the “whale conveyor belt.” Preliminary modeling and estimates indicate that this fertilizing activity adds significantly to phytoplankton growth in the areas whales frequent.

Despite the fact that nutrients are carried into the ocean through dust storms, river sediments, and upwelling from wind and waves, nitrogen and phosphorus remain scarce and limit the amount of phytoplankton that can bloom in warmer parts of the oceans. In colder regions, such as in the Southern Ocean, the limiting mineral tends to be iron. If more of these missing minerals became available in parts of the ocean where they are scarce, more phytoplankton could grow, potentially absorbing much more carbon than otherwise possible.

Letting whales live

This is where the whales come in. If whales were allowed to return to their pre-whaling number of 4 to 5 million—from slightly more than 1.3 million today—it could add significantly to the amount of phytoplankton in the oceans and to the carbon they capture each year. At a minimum, even a 1 percent increase in phytoplankton productivity thanks to whale activity would capture hundreds of millions of tons of additional CO2 a year, equivalent to the sudden appearance of 2 billion mature trees. Imagine the impact over the average lifespan of a whale, more than 60 years.

Despite the drastic reduction in commercial whaling, whales still face significant life-threatening hazards, including ship strikes, entanglement in fishing nets, waterborne plastic waste, and noise pollution. While some species of whales are recovering—slowly—many are not.

Enhancing protection of whales from human-made dangers would deliver benefits to ourselves, the planet, and of course, the whales themselves. This “earth-tech” approach to carbon sequestration also avoids the risk of unanticipated harm from suggested untested high-tech fixes. Nature has had millions of years to perfect her whale-based carbon sink technology. All we need to do is let the whales live.

Now we turn to the economic side of the solution. Protecting whales has a cost. Mitigating the many threats to whales involves compensating those causing the threats, a group that includes countries, businesses, and individuals. Ensuring that this approach is practical involves determining whales’ monetary value.

International public good

Whales produce climate benefits that are dispersed all over the globe. And because people’s benefits from the existence of whales do not diminish the benefits that others receive from them, they are a textbook public good. This means that whales are affected by the classic “tragedy of the commons” that afflicts public goods: no individual who benefits from them is sufficiently motivated to pay their fair share to support them. Just think of the importance of earth’s atmosphere to our survival. Even though all nations acknowledge that everyone has an interest in preserving this common resource for the future, global coordination remains a problem.

To solve this international public goods problem, we must first ask, What is the monetary value of a whale? Proper valuation is warranted if we are to galvanize businesses and other stakeholders to save the whales by showing that the benefits of protecting them far exceed the cost. We estimate the value of an average great whale by determining today’s value of the carbon sequestered by a whale over its lifetime, using scientific estimates of the amount whales contribute to carbon sequestration, the market price of carbon dioxide, and the financial technique of discounting. To this, we also add today’s value of the whale’s other economic contributions, such as fishery enhancement and ecotourism, over its lifetime.  Our conservative estimates put the value of the average great whale, based on its various activities, at more than $2 million, and easily over $1 trillion for the current stock of great whales.    

But there is still the question of how to reduce the myriad dangers to whales, such as ship strikes and other hazards. Luckily, economists know how these types of problems can be solved. In fact, a potential model for such solutions is the United Nations (UN) REDD program. Recognizing that deforestation accounts for 17 percent of carbon emissions, REDD provides incentives for countries to preserve their forests as a means of keeping CO2 out of the atmosphere. In a similar way, we can create financial mechanisms to promote the restoration of the world’s whale populations. Incentives in the form of subsidies or other compensation could help those who incur significant costs as a result of whale protection. For example, shipping companies could be compensated for the cost of altered shipping routes to reduce the risk of collisions.

This solution, however, raises questions that are tricky to answer. To begin with, a financial facility for protecting whales and other natural assets must be set up and funded.  Exactly how much should we be willing to spend on protecting the whales? We estimate that, if whales were allowed to return to their pre-whaling numbers—capturing 1.7 billion tons of CO2 annually—it would be worth about $13 per person a year to subsidize these whales’ CO2 sequestration efforts. If we agree to pay this cost, how should it be allocated across countries, individuals, and businesses?  How much should each individual, company, and country that must bear some of the cost of protecting whales be compensated? And who will oversee the compensation, and monitor compliance with the new rules?

International financial institutions, in partnership with other UN and multilateral organizations, are ideally suited to advise, monitor, and coordinate the actions of countries in protecting whales. Whales are commonly found in the waters around low-income and fragile states, countries that may be unable to deal with the needed mitigation measures. Support for these countries could come, for example, from the Global Environment Facility, which typically provides support to such countries to meet international environmental agreements. The IMF is also well placed to help governments integrate the macroeconomic benefit that whales provide in mitigating climate change, as well as the cost of measures to protect the whales, into their macro-fiscal frameworks.  The World Bank has the expertise to design and implement specific programs to compensate private sector actors for their efforts to protect whales.  Other UN and multilateral organizations can oversee compliance and collect data to measure the progress of these efforts.

A new mindset

Coordinating the economics of whale protection must rise to the top of the global community’s climate agenda. Since the role of whales is irreplaceable in mitigating and building resilience to climate change, their survival should be integrated into the objectives of the 190 countries that in 2015 signed the Paris Agreement for combating climate risk.

International institutions and governments, however, must also exert their influence to bring about a new mindset—an approach that recognizes and implements a holistic approach toward our own survival, which involves living within the bounds of the natural world. Whales are not a human solution—these great creatures having inherent value of their own and the right to live—but this new mindset recognizes and values their integral place in a sustainable ocean and planet. Healthy whale populations imply healthy marine life including fish, seabirds, and an overall vibrant system that recycles nutrients between oceans and land, improving life in both places. The “earth-tech” strategy of supporting whales’ return to their previous abundance in the oceans would significantly benefit not only life in the oceans but also life on land, including our own.

With the consequences of climate change here and now, there is no time to lose in identifying and implementing new methods to prevent or reverse harm to the global ecosystem.  This is especially true when it comes to improving the protection of whales so that their populations can grow more quickly. Unless new steps are taken, we estimate it would take over 30 years just to double the number of current whales, and several generations to return them to their pre-whaling numbers. Society and our own survival can’t afford to wait this long.

https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2019/12/natures-solution-to-climate-change-chami.htm

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New study finds whales’ [poop] might be our best defense against climate change

A team of economists at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) waned to drive home how important whales are, so they put it in terms we could understand: money. A new analysis detailed in Finance & Development puts a price tag on exactly how much whales are worth to us, and why we should care about the world's whale population.

Whales absorb large amounts of carbon in their bodies. During the lifetime of the average whale, which is 60 years, it will sequester 33 tons of CO2. In comparison, a tree absorbs up to 48 pounds of CO2 each year. Whales also promote the growth of phytoplankton. Phytoplankton captures 40% of the world's CO2 and contributes at least 50% of oxygen to the atmosphere. "At a minimum, even a one percent increase in phytoplankton productivity thanks to whale activity would capture hundreds of millions of tons of additional CO2 a year, equivalent to the sudden appearance of two billion mature trees," the study says.

Whales promote the growth of phytoplankton in two ways. The movement of whales pushes nutrients from the bottom of the ocean to the surface, which feeds phytoplankton and other marine life. The second way they help with carbon absorption is through their poop. "It turns out that whales' waste products contain exactly the substances — notably iron and nitrogen — phytoplankton need to grow," per the study. Yes, you read that right. Whale poop might be the solution to climate change we've been waiting for.

The IMF says that each whale is worth more than $2 million. All of the world's whales have a value of over $1 trillion. According the IMF, "if whales were allowed to return to their pre-whaling numbers — capturing 1.7 billion tons of CO2 annually — it would be worth about $13 per person a year to subsidize these whales' CO2 sequestration efforts."

The whale population is one-fourth of what it was pre-commercial whaling. There used to be four to five million whales swimming the world's oceans. Now, there's just over 1.3 million. Certain species of whales have dwindled more than others, such as the blue whale, whose population is 3% of what it once was.

The whale population is recovering, however, since commercial whaling ended in 1986, but they still face many other problems, such as overfishing. There is a catch-22 as well. Dwindling whale populations can lead to an increase in greenhouse gases, and an increase in greenhouse gases can decrease the whale population. "Whales are highly mobile creatures, so if climate change causes the prey to move, they will probably follow them. Then there's the increased competition that comes about as surface temperatures change and species move to different habitats — all of a sudden, you have different species using the same area, so there's more competition," Natalie Barefoot, executive director of Cet Law and co-author of a report looking at how whales absorb carbon, told Scientific American.

Increasing the whale population is a "no-tech" solution, and IS easier to execute than some of the other ways suggested to combat climate change. "Since the role of whales is irreplaceable in mitigating and building resilience to climate change, their survival should be integrated into the objectives of the 190 countries that in 2015 signed the Paris Agreement for combating climate risk," the report says.

And now we know exactly what it'll cost. But more importantly, we know exactly what it'll cost if we don't invest in whales.

https://www.good.is/whales-climate-change-study?fbclid=IwAR05oAE0EASyj8U4oxS4NC_w4AWu29ZQAgbBrHlDEmTf6vAF-CeMXAs3U8Q

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Portuguese designer Susana Soares has developed a device for detecting cancer and other serious diseases using trained bees ( + slideshow).

The bees are placed in a glass chamber into which the patient exhales; the bees fly into a smaller secondary chamber if they detect cancer.

"Trained bees only rush into the smaller chamber if they can detect the odour on the patient's breath that they have been trained to target," explained Soares, who presented her Bee's project at Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven last month.

Scientists have found that honey bees - Apis mellifera - have an extraordinary sense of smell that is more acute than that of a sniffer dog and can detect airborne molecules in the parts-per-trillion range.

Bees can be trained to detect specific chemical odours, including the biomarkers associated with diseases such as tuberculosis, lung, skin and pancreatic cancer.

Bees have also been trained to detect explosives and a company called Insectinel is training "sniffer bees" to work in counter-terrorist operations.

"The bees can be trained within 10 minutes," explains Soares. "Training simply consists of exposing the bees to a specific odour and then feeding them with a solution of water and sugar, therefore they associate that odour with a food reward."

Once trained, the bees will remember the odour for their entire lives, provided they are always rewarded with sugar. Bees live for six weeks on average.

"There's plenty of interest in the project especially from charities and further applications as a cost effective early detection of illness, specifically in developing countries," Soares said.

Here is a project description by Susana Soares:

Bee's / Project

Bee's explores how we might co-habit with natural biological systems and use their potential to increase our perceptive abilities.

The objects facilitate bees' odour detection abilities in human breath. Bees can be trained within 10 minutes using Pavlov’s reflex to target a wide range of natural and man-made chemicals and odours, including the biomarkers associated with certain diseases.

The aim of the project is to develop upon current technological research by using design to translate the outcome into systems and objects that people can understand and use, engendering significant adjustments in their lives and mind set.

How it works

The glass objects have two enclosures: a smaller chamber that serves as the diagnosis space and a bigger chamber where previously trained bees are kept for the short period of time necessary for them to detect general health. People exhale into the smaller chamber and the bees rush into it if they detect on the breath the odour that they where trained to target.

What can bees detect?

Scientific research demonstrated that bees can diagnose accurately at an early stage a vast variety of diseases, such as: tuberculosis, lung and skin cancer, and diabetes.

Precise object

The outer curved tube helps bees avoid from flying accidentally into the interior diagnosis chamber, making for a more precise result. The tubes connected to the small chamber create condensation, so that exhalation is visible.

Detecting chemicals in the axilla

Apocrine glands are known to contain pheromones that retain information about a person's health that bees antennae can identify.

The bee clinic

These diagnostic tools would be part of system that uses bees as a biosensor.

The systems implies: - A bee centre: a structure that facilitates the technologic potential of bees. Within the centre is a beefarm, a training centre, a research lab and a healthcae centre.

- Training centre: courses can be taken on beetraining where bees are collected and trained by beetrainers. These are specialists that learn beetraining techniques to be used in a large scope of applications, including diagnosing diseases.

- BEE clinic: bees are used at the clinic for screening tests. These insects are very accurate in early medical diagnosis through detection on a person's breath. Bees are a sustainable and valuable resource. After performing the diagnose in the clinic they are released, returning to their beehive.

Bee training

Bees can be easily trained using Pavlov’s reflex to target a wide range of natural and man-made chemicals odours including the biomarkers associated with certain diseases. The training consists in baffling the bees with a specific odour and feeding them with a solution of water and sugar, therefore they associate that odour with a food reward.

https://www.dezeen.com/2013/11/20/honey-bees-can-be-trained-to-detect-cancer-in-ten-minutes-says-designer-susana-soares/

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A cool cat has been taking the train in Tokyo regularly. He keeps the human passengers company and brings them plenty of smiles.In Tokyo, the city's Seibu Ikebukuro Line has attracted some commuters, animal lovers, to get on just so they can get a chance to meet a very special feline passenger.

According to some of the commuters, the cat travels on his own and is not accompanied by a human. He decides when to get on and where to get off.

Some say the cat has learned excellent train etiquette where he keeps himself neatly in a compact manner so to make room for other passengers to sit.