Sonic Fire Tech has pattened an ingenious technology that uses low-frequency sound waves to break up the chemical reaction that fuels fire. Heat, fuel and oxygen are the ingredients for fire, and taking away just one can stop the combustion reaction completely. Using infrasound waves to push oxygen molecules away from the fuel, this technology prevents fires from getting the oxygen they need to sustain themselves.

“It’s basically vibrating the oxygen faster than the fuel can use it, so you block the chemical reaction,” Geoff Bruder explained.

Interestingly, Sonic Fire Tech doesn’t claim to have pioneered the use of sound to fight fires. According to Scientific American Magazine, the effect of acoustics on fire is well-documented. The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency spent years studying it in the early 2000s, and academic researchers have been experimenting with it for decades.

“Acoustic influence on flames is well known in combustion,” Albert Simeoni, head of the department of fire protection engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts, told Scientific American. “The challenge is to scale up the technology without creating disrupting or even damaging sound effects.”

Sonic Fire Tech solved the challenge researchers have been struggling with for years by using infrasound. The company’s technology produces low-frequency sound waves at 20hz or lower that are inaudible to the human ear, but very effective against fire because they travel farther than higher-frequency waves.

The San Bernardino County Fire Department recently tested a wearable fire-fighting device designed by Sonic Fire Tech, but the company offers domestic solutions that can be elegantly integrated in any home. They are activated by sensors and can put out fires without damaging furniture or flooding the floor.

“A water sprinkler system is highly ineffective at putting out a grease fire; it actually spreads the fire and makes it worse. Yet, we’re mandated to have sprinklers above our kitchen stoves,” Sonic Fire Tech’s Remington Hotchkis told CBS News. “Our system was shown to suppress the fire, prevent the ignition from occurring with a autonomous detection device.”

Unfortunately, acoustics only works on small fires, so we probably won’t be seeing the technology being used on wildfires or any large scale fires anytime soon.

“In preliminary observations, the fruits retain sweet flavor, red and orange flesh types, and sufficient firmness for handling,” breeder Delaney Raptis told HortiDaily Magazine. “The objective was to minimize fruit size while maintaining the characteristics expected by consumers and supply chains.”

High school researcher Delaney Raptis and her mother began their unique breeding program in 2021, with the goal of producing ultra-small fruit. After several generations, they have reduced the size of watermelons from several kilograms to approximately 80 to 200 grams, with some no larger than chicken eggs.

The main goal of the breeding program was to make watermelon crops viable in high-density greenhouse systems and vertical farms, where maximizing output per square meter is a priority. The reduced fruit size also reduces food waste and is sure to be a hit with the single-portion fruit market.

The two breeders noticed that the seeds of their miniature watermelons are considerably smaller than those of regular-sized fruits, but what we are most curious about is the rind. Is it edible, or does it need to be removed?

For more miniature fruit you probably didn’t know existed, check out the coquitos of the Chilean wine palm.

Météo-France, the French weather forecasting service, believes that a weather station at Charles de Gaulle airport in France was used to manipulate bets placed on Polymarket on what the temperature would be in the French capital on certain days of March and April.

Data shows that on some days, more than $500,000 was placed on bets on the temperature in Paris, with some wallets pocketing around $280,000 by betting that the temperature in Paris would reach 19 °C on April 15. Surprisingly, at approximately 9:30 p.m., the temperature reached 22°C, whereas it had been just 18°C ​​in the middle of the afternoon.

Sébastien Brana, vice president of Infoclimat, a group that focuses on climate observation, told French newspaper Le Monde that his organisation first noticed a sudden and inexplicable rise in temperature at the Charles de Gaulle airport on April 6, when temperatures briefly rose to 22°C at 9:30 pm, before dropping back down to cooler spring temperatures.

“When the information came out, we all thought it was a sensor drift. Then, we suspected a maintenance problem,” Brana said, adding that the second occurrence on April 15 prompted some investigating.

It was soon revealed that the temperature anomalies coincided with unusually high winnings on Polymaket linked to bets on Paris temperature readings at the exact time of the abnormal readings. For example, an anonymous trader with the username “xX25Xx” bet $119 that the weather in Paris on April 15 would jump past the equivalent of 64 degrees Fahrenheit and won $21,398.

Météo-France said it filed a complaint with airport police about possible tampering with its equipment, and people have already started speculating that someone must have used a lighter or a battery-operated hair dryer to heat the station’s temperature sensor.

The weather forecasting service stated that “physical findings on one of our instruments and the analysis of sensor data” prompted its complaint.

French analytics firm Bubblemaps reported that no other weather station in the Paris area recorded the unusual temperature spike, and that xX25Xx’s bet that day was 20 times larger than their typical wager. Interestingly, the weather station at Charles de Gaulles Airport was the one used to track the temperature on Polymarket.

Polymarket has yet to comment on this situation, but its website shows that it is no longer using the Charles de Gaulle weather sensor data and is instead using data from a station at the Paris–Le Bourget Airport to settle bets.

Grecia Guadalupe Orantes Mendoza went missing on the night of April 12, in the municipality of Ocozocoautla de Espinosa. Following a report filed by the young woman’s family, police activated the Alba Protocol, a mechanism that initiates immediate actions for the search for missing women.

As part of the protocol, police used some of Grecia’s social media photos to create missing persons posters that they then distributed both online and among the local community. There was just one problem – according to the people who knew the 30-year-old woman, the person in the photos looked nothing like her!

In these types of situations, when time is of the essence and every hour that passes makes finding the victim alive less likely, missing persons posters play a crucial role, but in this particular case, they only made it more difficult for locals to recognize the missing woman.

“How were they going to find her with photos full of filters?” was one of the comments that circulated on various platforms, reflecting the impact that detail had on the perception of the case.

Luckily, the woman was found alive several days later on a highway connecting Ocozocoautla with the municipality of Jiquipilas, and she remains in police custody. The circumstances surrounding her disappearance and her subsequent location remain confidential while the case is being investigated.

The case of Grecia Guadalupe Orantes Mendoza has sparked a debate about the use of social images for missing persons posters. Although they are the easiest source for such important visual material, experts say that the frequent use of filters hinders police instead of helping them.

“The National Search Commission for Missing Persons identified some time ago that identification forms for the Alba Protocol are failing frequently when trying to locate missing persons, because they are generated using photos from social media, where users employ numerous filters and even artificial intelligence software,” security consultant David Saucedo said.

Makoto Kuroda has been charged with recklessly endangering safety and tampering with a household product “with the intent to kill, injure or otherwise endanger the health” of another person, after he admitted to lacing a fellow lab worker’s water bottle with paraformaldehyde and chloroform.

Kuroda and the victim, identified only by their initials, TM, had met in 2017 and had worked together at the university’s Influenza Research Institute in Madison for five years. The two had been pretty close, but had drifted apart over time to the point where Kuroda was so upset that he decided to poison his colleague.

TM noticed something strange on April 4, when he tried to take a sip from an already opened water bottle that had been sitting on his desk for a couple of days. He immediately spat out the mouthful of water because it tasted funny, and a fellow lab worker confirmed that the bottle smelled off.

A couple of days later, TM sensed a strong smell coming from his lab shoes, so he contacted the police. Samples from the water bottle and the shoes were analysed and came back positive for chloroform. The concentration was reportedly so high that the test strips could not provide an accurate result.

Strangely enough, Kuroda admitted to the poisoning attempt both to TM himself and to a professor from the university, adding that he had become “upset with TM for not following the lab rule of wearing a lab coat and goggles,” for a promotion that the victim had gotten and for other things that had just “added up” over time.

The Japanese-born man told police investigators that he retrieved “2 or 3 microliters of PFA mixed with Trizol,” from his work fridge and put “.5 microliters of the mix in TM’s water bottle,” and about “1.5 microliter of the mix into each of TM’s shoes.”

Kuroda said that he expected the chemical mix he put in TM’s shoes to cause a rash, and the poisonous cocktail in his water to make him sick. He also admitted to using ChatGPT to learn about the amount of chemicals needed to achieve his sinister goal.

Police documents show that Makoto Kuroda wanted his victim to “feel bad”, suggesting that he deserved it, because “bad things happen to bad people.”

Snack Kingdom was designed as a unique experience for shoppers. The entrance is a long “snack corridor” made up of glass cabinets featuring various types of colourful snacks, and it’s meant to give visitors an idea of what they can expect inside.

The store’s “Instant Noodle City” section features over 3,500 types of instant noodles, both domestic and from other regions of the world, ranging from classic types to rare specialities that most people have never even heard of.

The cola section takes up two long, multi-tiered shelves, featuring cola from about 20 countries. Apart from classic varieties from well-known brands like Coca-Cola and Pepsi, visitors can expect to find obscure varieties, like salted cola, for example.

Snack Kingdom is meant to function as an actual store, although it has been struggling to keep up with demand ever since it opened. On April 19, just two days after its grand opening, management announced that it was suspending sales for a couple of days in order to deal with several issues, including restocking, checkout efficiency, and system capacity. Meanwhile, visitors are still welcome to visit Snack Kingdom, browse the difference sections and take pictures.

Interestingly, Changsha is also home to a supersized snack store that features giant versions of popular snacks, such as Lay’s chips bags, Oreo cookies and instant noodles, all available for purchase.

At the police station, the 22-year-old man, identified only as Matina, eventually admitted to setting fires in Kaeng Hat Oi Forest, but offered a very bizarre reason for it.

“I just wanted to have fun. I had nothing to do, so I started a fire to get forest rangers to put it out. I just acted out of recklessness,” the man casually said.

Rangers transferred the suspect to the Chat Trakan Police Station for legal proceedings, where he was charged with damaging natural resources. The young arsonist remains in custody, but authorities have yet to announce the penalties he faces.

Thailand is already battling numerous forest fires started by natural causes or human recklessness, but this is probably the first case of someone starting a forest fire for fun. House fires are a different matter entirely, though, as we have reported several cases of people setting homes on fire for their own entertainment.

The South China Morning Post newspaper reported the unusual case of a family that commissioned an AI clone of a man killed in a car accident so his 80-year-old mother could continue communicating with him via video. Although details about the family have not been revealed, the case was made public by the developer of the digital clone, contacted by the deceased’s son. 

The digital model was reportedly created using photos, videos, and audio recordings of the deceased and ended up looking and sounding eerily realistic, using the same accent and distinctive speech pattern, and borrowing the same mannerisms, such as leaning forward when he speaks.

Photo: Unsplash

The man’s 80-year-old mother was never informed of his passing, and she continues to believe he is busy working in another city. To keep up the illusion and spare her the pain and sorrow in her old age, the family sets up video calls with the AI clone. The elderly woman urges her “son” to take care of himself, eat well, and wear warm clothes, while he promises to come by her place someday soon, when he is less busy with work.

The deceased was reportedly the elderly woman’s only child, and seeing as she also suffers from heart disease, her family decided to conceal the news of his passing from her.

The case sparked controversy on Chinese social media, splitting the public into two camps – one that believes that the family acted out of kindness and love for the octogenarian, and others who believe she deserved to know the truth rather than be reduced to talking to a digital clone.

This unusual story reminded us of the similarly heartwarming case of a police officer who pretended to be a woman’s deceased son for several years out of kindness.

“Being able to slice it this thin is pretty impressive tech in a way lolllll If they wanna cut costs that bad, they should just stop doing all-you-can-eat in the first place lolllll,” one person posted on X.

“Was there a translucent pig or something?” someone else commented on the original photo of the cuts, which garnered over 3 million views on X alone.

The original poster also commented that one of the advantages of stealth pork is that the ultra-thin slices allow diners to eat more slices than usual and then brag to their friends about how many they consumed.

The unusually thin slices got so much attention online that a couple of days ago, Shabu-yo put out a statement apologizing to its customers.

“We have confirmed that at some stores, meat was being served in a condition that differed from the meat serving standards that we originally set,” the statement read. “We deeply apologise to our valued customers for providing a product of a quality that did not meet their expectations.”

The cuts are pretty impressive, to be honest. Prosciutto cutters only wish they could pull off this thinness without messing up the slice.

Che was only in kindergarten when he became fascinated with paper planes. He noticed the difference between throwing a paper ball and launching a paper plane by hand, and was curious what made the plane float the way it did. Before long, he turned his house into an experimental laboratory for paper planes, but that was only the beginning.

According to his parents, Che once dedicated three hours each day to reading science books on aeronautics, and by the third grade, he was already teaching himself calculus, aerodynamics, printed circuit board circuitry, as well as working with complex software like SolidWorks, and Computer-Aided Design (CAD).

At one point, he discovered online tutorials and decided to build something practical himself. He focused mostly on video tutorials on Duoyin (China’s version of TikTok), and progressed to the point where he decided to build a miniature functional jet engine. But he didn’t just want to copy someone else’s design and call it a day. He wanted to design the thing himself, using his acquired knowledge.

“Some people publish blueprints online, but if I just copied them directly, I felt it would be meaningless,” Che Jiangping told China Youth Daily. “I wouldn’t learn anything, and it would be a waste of time.” 

To fulfil his dream, the young whiz kid started designing every little component from scratch, making his own 2D engineering drawings in CAD, building 3D models in SolidWorks, calculating airflow, temperature, and pressure using simulation software. He began documenting every process by uploading clips on Douyin, and before long, he started interacting with like-minded people.

Fellow enthusiasts shared advice in the comment section, others cheered him on, and some even offered to 3D-print his components for free. Within six months, he already had a prototype. Unfortunately, the test was a failure, as Che himself identified problems with the fuel, the combustion chamber design, and the compressor alignment. But he didn’t let that setback curb his ambition.

“Nothing can be successfully accomplished on the first try. Even if I didn’t succeed, I learned something, and that gives me the motivation to build it a second time,” the teen said.

Che Jingang is already working on a new and improved version of a functional turbojet engine and is getting ready to test it. Meanwhile, most kids his age are busy playing Fortnite and wasting their time on social media.