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What to do if your cat gets stuck in a tree

Popular Science

Take a paws and run through these three solutions from a cat-rescue expert. More information Adding us as a Preferred Source in Google by using this link indicates that you would like to see more of our content in Google News results. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. By signing up, you confirm you are 16+, will receive newsletters and promotional content and agree to our Terms of Use and acknowledge the data practices in our Privacy Policy . There may be no more idyllic trope than the housecat stuck in a tree.


700,000-year-old squirrel poop helps scientist recreate an ancient world

Popular Science

Descendants of these rodents are still alive today and are'like tiny Arctic pack rats.' More information Adding us as a Preferred Source in Google by using this link indicates that you would like to see more of our content in Google News results. Researchers document a cluster of ancient Arctic ground squirrel faecal pellets preserved in permafrost at Hunker Creek, Yukon, in August 2022. These coprolites contain remarkably intact ancient DNA, offering rare glimpses into ice age ecosystems. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week.


It's baby season at Yellowstone National Park

Popular Science

Even though they are cute and fuzzy, remember to'give wildlife room and use a zoom.' More information Adding us as a Preferred Source in Google by using this link indicates that you would like to see more of our content in Google News results. Baby bighorn sheep are some of the many new arrivals in Yellowstone this spring. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. Even though many parts of the northeastern United States have seen surges of summer temperatures, it's technically still spring in the Northern Hemisphere, which means many animals are having babies.


No, bears don't actually hibernate

Popular Science

Their winter survival trick is a months-long power-save mode--and scientists think it could help humans, too. This bear woke up like this. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. For many animals that live in cold climates, winter means low-power mode. But no creature is more tied to the image of a long, cozy winter than hibernating bears all snuggled up in their dens.



The Squirrels Keep Beating My Family's Expensive "Squirrel-Proof" Bird Feeders. I Figured Out Why.

Slate

Like a true Midwesterner, my dad has been feuding with the squirrels in his backyard for years. Every few months, he comes home with a new "squirrel-proof" bird feeder, each more expensive than the previous, each one promising to finally do the trick. My mom rolls her eyes at the pile of hardware-store receipts and discarded feeders. I shake my head watching this all play out--knowing full well those feeders never stood a chance. Walk down the birdseed aisle in any hardware store and you'll find an entire product category promising "squirrel-proof" solutions.


During WWII, a dress-wearing squirrel sold war bonds alongside FDR

Popular Science

US bomber crews even carried photos of Tommy Tucker on missions. Tommy Tucker did radio spots, had a fan club, and even posed for LIFE magazine. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. A few months after the attack on Pearl Harbor thrust the United States into World War II, a little girl was walking to school in northwest Washington, D.C. when she found a baby squirrel that had apparently fallen out of a hickory tree. She took the tiny rodent home, fed him warm milk, and made him a cozy bed in a red woolen hat.


How squirrels actually find all their buried nuts

Popular Science

Every fall, squirrels hide hundreds of acorns--and use smell, memory, and even theft to get them back. Every fall, squirrels stash hundreds of nuts to survive the colder winter months. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. As someone who routinely "hides" things from myself--car keys, receipts, even my phone while I'm actively talking on it--I felt instantly validated by Sarah Silverman's joke that squirrels forget where they bury 80% of their nuts. "And that's how trees are planted!"


Non-Interactive Symbolic-Aided Chain-of-Thought for Logical Reasoning

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

This work introduces Symbolic-Aided Chain-of-Thought (CoT), an improved approach to standard CoT, for logical reasoning in large language models (LLMs). The key idea is to integrate lightweight symbolic representations into few-shot prompts, structuring the inference steps with a consistent strategy to make reasoning patterns more explicit within a non-interactive reasoning process. By incorporating these symbolic structures, Symbolic-Aided CoT preserves the generalizability of standard prompting techniques while enhancing the transparency, interpretability, and analyzability of LLM logical reasoning. Extensive experiments on four well-known logical reasoning benchmarks -- ProofWriter, FOLIO, ProntoQA, and LogicalDeduction, which cover diverse reasoning tasks and scenarios -- demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach, particularly in complex reasoning tasks that require navigating multiple constraints or rules. Notably, Symbolic-Aided CoT consistently improves LLMs' reasoning capabilities across various model sizes and significantly outperforms conventional CoT on three out of four datasets, ProofWriter, ProntoQA, and LogicalDeduction.


'Attack squirrel' sends two people to the ER

Popular Science

Environment Animals Wildlife'Attack squirrel' sends two people to the ER A friendly reminder to not feed wildlife. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. The residents of San Rafael, California, have been traumatized by some vicious wildlife . While cougars, coyotes, or great white sharks would be viable guesses for the culprit, this time it was a less formidable predator. The aggressor is a squirrel .