Good Morning! 🌞

This Memorial Day, let’s take a moment to remember and honor the brave men & women who gave their lives for our country. We owe our freedoms to them. As we enjoy the day with our loved ones, let’s reflect on their courage and be thankful for all we have.

Science

Spider Silk Microphones

Spider silk might hold the key to creating the world's best microphone. While spiders weave webs to capture their prey, these sticky strands also enhance their hearing.

Unlike human eardrums and conventional microphones that detect sound pressure waves, spider silk responds to changes in the velocities of air particles caused by a sound field. This method of detecting sound velocity is largely unexplored but offers significant potential for high-sensitivity, long-distance sound detection.

Researchers at Binghamton University investigated how spiders listen to their environment through their webs. They found that spider webs can match the acoustic particle velocity over a wide range of sound frequencies. Ronald Miles presented these findings in May at the joint meeting of the Acoustical Society of America and the Canadian Acoustical Association at the Shaw Centre in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.

Most insects that can hear sound use fine hairs or their antennae, which don’t respond to sound pressure,” said Miles, a professor of mechanical engineering. “Instead, these thin structures respond to the motion of the air in a sound field. I wondered how to make an engineered device that would also be able to respond to sound-driven airflow. We tried various man-made fibers that were very thin, but they were also very fragile and difficult to work with. Then, Dr. Jian Zhou was walking in our campus nature preserve and saw a spiderweb blowing in the breeze. He thought spider silk might be a great thing to try.”

Before developing such a device, the team needed to prove that spider webs genuinely respond to sound-driven airflow. To test this idea, they opened their lab windows and observed the Larinioides sclopetarius, or bridge spiders, residing on the windowsills. They played sounds ranging from 1 Hz to 50 kHz for the spiders and measured the movement of the spider silk with a laser vibrometer. The results showed that the sound-induced velocity of the silk matched the particles in the surrounding air, confirming the mechanism these spiders use to detect their prey.

Entertainment

Very Bizarre Video

This has got to be one of the most bizarre and hilarious videos I have seen in a long time.

I can’t help but think that the deer thought it was a kangaroo. Which are notorious for picking fights with both humans and each other.

I will warn you all that there is a bit of language in the video, in case you have kids around.

World News

US to Become Germany’s Largest Trading Partner

The United States is poised to overtake China as Germany's primary trading partner as trade activities shift throughout 2024. In the first quarter of the year, trade between Germany and the U.S. reached 63 billion euros ($68 billion), surpassing the 60 billion euros in trade between Germany and China, as per CNBC's computations based on a Reuters report.

Carsten Brzeski, the global head of macro research at ING Research, highlighted several factors contributing to this shift. Notably, relatively strong economic growth in the U.S. has surged demand for German goods. Meanwhile, Germany's exports to China have declined due to multiple factors including China's increased self-reliance in producing goods such as automobiles, which it previously imported, and weaker domestic demand within China itself.

For several years, China held the title as Germany's largest trading partner, but the dynamics have been changing. The U.S. has consistently been a larger market for German exports compared to China, and this trend is intensifying due to economic shifts and strategic realignments. Holger Schmieding, chief economist at Berenberg Bank, mentioned that the U.S. is not only a key destination for exports but is also becoming increasingly important for German imports.

Mind Stretchers 

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The answer to yesterday’s Mind Stretcher was:
Record (Break the old record, set a new record)

Gerry Moore got the closes answer with his answer of “a goal”. Most goals are personal records of a type.

Be the first to send us the correct answer for today’s mind stretcher for a shout-out with the answer tomorrow. Just send us the answer and your name to [email protected] or reply to this email.

If you have any uplifting stories and experience you might want to share, send those over to [email protected] for the chance to be featured.