Pierre de Fermat's birthday (today is August 17)

Today is Pierre de Fermat's birthday, so i decided to post 3 cool things about him. :)


!. the guy was born in a museum! is that cool or what?
2. he was a lawyer and a mathematician (i dunno, it seems to me like that is an unusual combination)
3. he was given credit for "early developments that led to infinitesimal calculus, including his adequality. In particular, he is recognized for his discovery of an original method of finding the greatest and the smallest ordinates of curved lines, which is analogous to that of the then unknown differential calculus, and his research into number theory." (wiki)


HAPPY BIRTHDAY Pierre de Fermat'!

Lions

Lions are one of the four big cats in genus Panthera, and a member of the family Felidae.  Some of the males  are more than 250 kg, and they are the second largest cats in the world, the first being the tiger. Wild lions live in sub-saharan Africa and in Gir Forest National Park in India. However, they used to live all over the world, in fact, they were the most widely spread large land mammal besides humans. They were found in most of Africa, from southern europe to india, and in the Americas from Yukon to Peru. Lions are now considered a vulnerable species as they have seen a population decrease of 30 to 50 percent in the last 20 years that may be irreversable. The cause of the decline is not fully understood, but habitat loss and coflict with humans are most likely doing a lot of damage.

In the wild lions live 10-14 years, but can live longer than 20 in captivity. Male lions rarely live longer than ten years in the wild because of the constant fights with other males. A pride of lions usually consists of related females and offspring, and a few adult males. Groups of females hunt together, preying on wildebeast, impalas, zebras, buffalo, and warthogs. lions are typically predators though they will sometimes scavenge if the opertunity presents itself. Lions don't generally hunt humans, but some have been known to.

Lions spend most of their time resting - about 20 hours per day. Lions can be active at any time, but their activity peaks after dusk with socializing, grooming, and defecating. they have some bursts of energy off and on through the night hours until dawn when most og the hunting takes place. They spend about 2 hours every day walking and 50 minutes eating.

Human-like robots: not just science fiction anymore:

Isaac Asimov's (author of "I, Robot") world full of robots working alongside humans may not be as far away as most people think -  but in real life the robots will look and act (somewhat)  like humans - not machines. Roboticists are working on making robots look and act more human, and are further along than people suspect. there is already robots in testing that can look as much (if not more) like a human as Data from Star Trek TNG.  There are many possible uses for such machines such as doing chores around the house, babysitting, and giving speeches for people on their absence. Of course, fitting them into our daily lives may be difficult as they would creep people out at first, and no matter how much they deny it, many people are afraid of change. Will we be working alongside robots and talking to them as if they were human in the upcoming decades? Perhaps, but there is still a lot of research to be done.