You might know that the size of the pupils in our eyes changes depending on how well lit our environment is, but there’s more to the story: Scientists have now discovered that the pupil also shifts in size depending on how many objects we’re observing.

The more objects in a scene, the bigger the pupil grows, as if to better accommodate everything that it has to look at. This “perceived numerosity” is a simple and automatic reflex, the new research shows.

In a new study, researchers observed the pupil sizes of 16 participants while they looked at pictures of dots. In some of the pictures, the dots were linked together in dumbbell shapes – creating the illusion that there were fewer objects – and pupil size then shrank.

Wed, Oct 27 at 4 PM PDT.

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If you haven’t been to Nunavut, you may not know it’s home to a vast variety of flowering plants, lichens, mosses, and more found on the land. Lynn Gillespie, a Canadian Museum of Nature botanist, has built a career studying Arctic botany. Lynn will be on Facebook LIVE on October 27th discussing plants you can find in Nunavut, what it’s like to conduct field research in the Arctic, and answering your questions. This interview will be facilitated by Joni Karoo, SOI Arctic 2019 alum from Taloyoak, Nunavut!

*This interview will be held in English*.

The “badge posts” of the company’s former researchers offer the parting thoughts of the disillusioned.

Decades in development, Michelin’s airless tires finally hit the road.

The authors present a high-resolution palaeomagnetic record for a Late Cretaceous limestone in Italy. They claim that their record robustly shows a ~12° true polar wander oscillation between 86 and 78 Ma, with the greatest excursion at 84–82 Ma.

He’s quite possibly the funniest man in America.

He’s certainly one of the most Brian Regan-iest.

Acclaimed as “your favorite comedian’s favorite comedian”, Brian Regan has built an enviable and decades-long career as a stand-up comic that includes two concert specials and a four-part series on Netflix, sellout nationwide tours, a recurring role on the hit show Loudermilk, and regular appearances on talk shows hosted by people with names like Jimmy Fallon, Conan O’Brien and David Letterman. His comedy is known as much for his physical and facial contortions as for its approach to the humorously mundane outrages of everyday life.

It may be more contagious than Delta, but there is no evidence yet that it causes worse illness, experts say.

It is almost equally fascinating to see old things pop up out of dust and new flashy things invented. Kory Anderson and his team in South Dakota did precisely the same thing. They breathed life back into a monster. As a result, the largest steam engine to have ever made, the 150HP Case, came to life nearly after a slumber of a century.

The JI Case Company based in Racine, Wisconsin, back in the day boasted the creation of this mammoth engine to their credit. It was used like a warhorse or a work mule to pull gigantic freights and heavy loads over long distances.

This magnanimous engines were produced for a little over two years, after which their production was shelved because of the lack of metallurgical advancements back in the day. Only 9 of these engines were produced, and their parts were later sold off for scrap. The only remnant of these engines was a boiler.