“Puppy-dog eyes didn’t just evolve for us, in domestic dogs,” says comparative anatomist Heather Smith. Her team’s work has thrown a 2019 finding1 that the muscles in dogs’ eyebrows evolved to communicate with humans in the doghouse by showing that African wild dogs also have the muscles to make the infamous pleading expression. The study was published on 10 April in The Anatomical Record2.
Now, one of the researchers who described the evolution of puppy-dog eyebrow muscles is considering what the African dog discovery means for canine evolution. “It opens a door to thinking about where dogs come from, and what they are,” says Anne Burrows, a biological anthropologist at the Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and author of the earlier paper.
Evolution of canine eyebrows
The 2019 study garnered headlines around the world when it found that the two muscles responsible for creating the sad–sweet puppy-dog stare are pronounced in several domestic breeds (Canis familiaris), but almost absent in wolves (Canis lupus).
The science of puppy dog eyes
If the social dynamic between humans and dogs drove eyebrow evolution, Smith wondered whether the highly social African wild dog might also have expressive brows.
African wild dogs (Lycaon pictus) are native to sub-Saharan Africa. Between 1997 and 2012, their numbers dropped by half in some areas. With only 8,000 or so remaining in the wild, studying them is difficult but crucial for conservation efforts.
Smith, who is based at Midwestern University in Glendale, Arizona, and her colleagues dissected a recently deceased African wild dog from Phoenix Zoo. They found that both the levator anguli oculi medalis (LAOM) and the retractor anguli oculi lateralis (RAOL) muscles, credited with creating the puppy-dog expression, were similar in size to those of domestic dog breeds.
“We could see distinct fibres that are very prominent, very robust,” says Smith. Although the researchers only looked at one African wild dog, Smith says it’s unlikely that such a large and well-developed muscle would be present in one animal and not others.
A communication strategy
The team proposes that the gregarious African wild dogs evolved these muscles to communicate with each other. They use a range of vocal cues to organize hunts and share resources, but until now, non-vocal strategies haven’t been studied.
Burrows speculates that more dog species might have muscles for facial expression than the researchers realized when they compared wolves and domestic dogs. “I wonder if these muscles have been around for a really long time and wolves are the ones that lost them.”
Muhammad Spocter, an anatomist at Des Moines University in West Des Moines, Iowa, says the study is exciting, but cautions against making assumptions about wild dog behaviour based on their physical structure. “Just because the anatomy is there, is it being used?” says Spocter. “And how is it being used?”
I found myself in a variety of odd situations while solving puzzles in Lorelei and the Laser Eyes. I spent some time staring at a mid-century movie poster for a documentary about a decomposing cat, wondering if I should focus on the runtime or the date it came out. I pulled up old hotel blueprints and deciphered the math of dead architects. I played a handful of ASCII-style PC games to receive messages from a 19th-century magician who calls me his sister. I found some toy blocks and shoved them into the walls of a secret cathedral. I slipped between realities and traversed a maze that shattered under my feet. I watched a woman fall to her death. I wondered if that woman was me.
Lorelei and the Laser Eyes is a third-person noir detective game set in a haunted hotel with impossible architecture and a gruesome history. Its hallways are dense with logic-melting puzzles about magicians, mazes, astrology, filmmaking, mausoleums and physics, and it isn’t even clear why the protagonist is there in the first place. With artifacts from the 1800s, set pieces from the 1960s and technology out of the 2010s, it’s barely clear when she’s there. Lack of direction is a key tenet of the game, resulting in a sense of solitude that’s oppressive and supremely unsettling.
It’s also empowering. The hotel in Lorelei is a playground of secrets with no set path for players, and there’s a rich density of riddles and lore to untangle in every scene. Though I still have no idea where I’m heading in the game, I’ve rarely felt lost. It's kind of like Tunic in that regard, but it also feels like something directed by David Lynch, and visually, the game resembles Kentucky Route Zero or Sin City. There’s really no direct comparison for Lorelei and the Laser Eyes. Playing it feels like nothing I’ve experienced before.
Simogo
The actual gameplay in Lorelei is straightforward: Walk around and press a button (on a gamepad, literally any button) to interact with objects that glow when you’re near. Otherwise, pressing a button pulls up a menu with the protagonist’s stats, inventory, reference materials, unsolved puzzles and handheld gaming system. Her stats include caffeine, stress, temperature, cash and bladder trackers, her inventory comes with a tampon and the hotel provides both coffee machines and bathrooms that she can actually use. I haven’t discovered a gameplay reason for the bathrooms or the tampon yet, but I’ve enjoyed the fact that they exist, and I will keep trying to insert the tampon into every statue and keyhole until it finally works. If it ever does. With Lorelei and the Laser Eyes, you just don’t know until you know.
Lorelei’s world is built on Roman numerals, Greek letters, zodiac signs and 24-hour clocks, and it’s filled with puzzle boxes, keypad codes, logic riddles, mazes, image reconstructions, memory tests and other ultra-satisfying mystery-solving mechanics. Even then, part of the game’s genius lies in the actions that take place off-screen. Lorelei and the Laser Eyes is meant to be played with a notebook and pen close by, and I do not suggest starting without these tools. Yes, even you, the person who just scoffed and thought, “I won’t need to write anything down.” I promise, you will.
Simogo
Lorelei definitely has puzzles with straightforward solutions, but the bulk of its queries are challenging, relying on previous answers, significant amounts of reading, object manipulation, deduction and creative thinking. The simple riddles supply a steady cadence of endorphin hits, especially in the early game. They also provide a guide for approaching the trickier puzzles: Trust your instincts. If you think of something, try it, no matter how outlandish it may seem. Lorelei and the Laser Eyes rewards curiosity and the game is incredibly adept at planting the seeds of concepts that’ll be useful hours later.
I hit my first mental wall around hour seven, and that’s when Lorelei’s pacing shifted downward for a spell. I went from consistently — but not effortlessly — solving puzzles and unlocking new areas of the hotel, to lingering on a handful of rooms I simply couldn’t figure out, pacing among them and scouring my notes for hidden clues. After 45 minutes or so, I remembered I still had a simple puzzle from my first hour waiting to be solved; I returned to it, completed it, and the game expanded beautifully in response, offering up an entirely new area of the hotel to explore and increasing the tempo once again.
Simogo
Each eureka moment in Lorelei introduces more questions, and the secrets pile up as a grand, overarching narrative elegantly unfurls around the protagonist. There are classic horror elements here: children in owl masks giving advice from beyond the grave, hell-dark hallways, spooky phonograph music, ghosts with no eyes. A man with a maze for a head floating right behind you, reaching for the back of your neck. The game seamlessly introduces various visual styles at regular intervals, breaking its own reality in perfectly orchestrated ways.
All of this weirdness forms a cohesive experience because Simogo knows how to make a damn fine puzzle game. This is the studio behind Device 6, an iOS title that played with text and physical input methods in trippy ways,and Year Walk, a haunting adventure about Swedish mythology and death. Lorelei feels like a magnum opus for Simogo, an atmospheric powerhouse of a puzzle game that proves how deeply its developers understand these systems, and pushes the genre into strange and unchartered territory.
Lorelei and the Laser Eyes is a rat king of riddles. It’s a game composed entirely of mysteries, with each puzzle twisted around the previous one and strangling the next, solutions knotted with concealed information. Mark my words, the game guides for this thing are going to look like House of Leaves.
I’m ten hours in and plenty of mysteries remain. There’s a six-handed clock with zodiac signs and Roman numerals in the west wing that I still can’t figure out, and there’s a journal with a lock based on moon phases that’s been slowly driving me batty. More than a dozen puzzles are waiting to be solved in my character’s on-screen scratchpad. In real life, the pages of my notebook look similar, covered in hastily scribbled numbers, letters, dates, arrows and symbols, solutions sprinkled among the chaos.
Lorelei and the Laser Eyes is due to hit Steam and Switch on May 16.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/lorelei-and-the-laser-eyes-preview-this-may-be-my-goty-140030011.html?src=rss
Some Apple Vision Pro owners have been dealing with health issues related to the wearing of the headset, according to a report from MarketWatch. The site spoke to Vision Pro owners experiencing headaches and neck pain, among other issues.
Emily Olman, marketing chief of Hopscotch Interactive, said she got two “superdark black eyes” after wearing the Vision Pro for the first time, likely caused by the weight on the cheeks. Ian Beacraft, CEO of consulting firm Signal, told MarketWatch that he had pain at the base of his skull and his upper back.
There have also been complaints about the Vision Pro on Reddit from users experiencing ongoing headaches, eye strain, and pain from the weight of the device. Some users have had luck with modified straps and third-party products, and other people have no issue with the headset and the default band options.
Apple declined to comment on the customer complaints, directing MarketWatch to its user guidelines. Apple recommends taking a break from the headset every 20 to 30 minutes during the acclimation period, and to stop using the headset when feeling unwell. Apple does not recommend that people experiencing eye strain, headache, or pain continue to use the device.
Have you had problems with the Vision Pro headset? Let us know in the comments below.
Apple agreed to pay up to $14.4 million (CAD) to settle a class action lawsuit in Canada that alleged the company secretly throttled the performance of some iPhone models (“batterygate”), and eligible customers can now submit a claim for payment. Apple’s settlement received court approval on March 4, and the claims period began today, according to law firm Rochon Genova LLP. To submit a…
While rumors have been focused on new iPad Pro and iPad Air models, some Apple customers are wondering when the next iPad mini will be released. In his Power On newsletter today, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman said new iPad mini and entry-level iPad models will be released in late 2024 at the earliest. “The company is also working on new versions of the low-end iPad and iPad mini, but those…
Following a few notable discounts on MacBooks yesterday, Best Buy today introduced a sale on the 10th generation iPad, including numerous all-time low prices on the tablet. Prices start at $349.00 for the 64GB Wi-Fi model, and include $100 markdowns on both Wi-Fi and cellular devices. Note: MacRumors is an affiliate partner with Best Buy. When you click a link and make a purchase, we may…
While the iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max are still months away from launching, there are already over a dozen rumors about the devices. Below, we have recapped new features and changes expected for the devices so far. These are some of the key changes rumored for the iPhone 16 Pro models as of April 2024:Larger displays: The iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max will be equipped with large…
Apple’s CEO Tim Cook this week sold 196,410 shares of the company’s stock, which had a total value of approximately $33.2 million based on the average sale price of the transactions, according to a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing. After taxes, Cook netted nearly $16.4 million from the sales. Cook received all of the shares that he sold this week as a performance-based stock…
This weekend, Best Buy has a sale on MacBooks, including the previous generation 15-inch MacBook Air and the M3 MacBook Pro. As usual, Best Buy’s sale covers far more than just Apple products, and you’ll also find solid discounts on TVs, video games, and more during the event. Note: MacRumors is an affiliate partner with Best Buy. When you click a link and make a purchase, we may receive a…
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and former Apple design chief Jony Ive have officially teamed up to design an AI-powered personal device and are seeking funding, reports The Information. Little is known about the AI device at this time, but it won’t look like a smartphone. Altman is a major investor in the Humane AI pin, a wearable AI device that does not have a screen, so it’s possible he will create …
Several people are typing, and they’re all saying Netflix’s Leave the World Behind is wildly prescient. The movie, directed by Sam Esmail, opens on a world where communication has been knocked out following a cyberattack. And earlier this week, when nearly all of Meta’s platforms—Facebook, Instagram, Threads—went down, people took to (other) social media platforms to post and hand-wring about the apocalypse.
Most of the posts, per usual, were jokes: wry observations to help soothe the agita that comes with being alive when everything feels unstable. “Another dry run for Leave the World Behind,” wrote one X user. “I fear we are moving close to a Leave the World Behind scenario,” wrote another. “These tech glitches are increasingly [sic] with regularity.”
But there was also a more conspiratorial undercurrent. For those who don’t know, Leave the World Behind was produced by Barack and Michelle Obama through their company Higher Ground Productions. Ever since the movie’s release, a conspiracy theory has persisted online that the film is somehow a warning about the widespread disorder to come.
This same thread emerged late last month when an AT&T network outage wreaked havoc on US cellular networks. “The predictive programming of the Obama’s [sic] movie, Leave the World Behind, is becoming a little too real right now,” one user wrote on X. “I wouldn’t put it past our own federal government to institute a terrorist or cyber attack, just to blame it on foreign countries like China and Russia.”
Odds are that nothing of the sort happened. Leave the World Behind is based on a 2020 book by Rumaan Alam and, according to the film’s director Sam Esmail, the former US president came on as a production partner only after the script was pretty much done. “I would just say [the conspiracy theorists] are pretty wrong in terms of his signaling,” he told Collider. “It had nothing to do with that.”
Not that facts have ever gotten in the way of an online conspiracy before. Case in point, this week’s big trailer drop: Civil War. When the first trailer for Alex Garland’s next film dropped in December, online right-wing pundits speculated that it was also predictive programming, something meant to prepare the populace for events already planned by those in power. When the new trailer dropped this week, people on Reddit and elsewhere seemed to be fretting that the film will become, as The Hollywood Reporter put it, “MAGA fantasy fuel.”
Ultimately, reactions like these to Leave the World Behind and Civil War merely serve as proof that they’re effective as works of fiction. They’re not part of some psyop to placate the public—they’re reactions to a political era that is fraught at best. Comfort is not a prerequisite for good filmmaking; movies are supposed to be unsettling sometimes. Concerns about a movie being too real are just signs that the filmmakers have tapped in to the collective psyche. Rather than think that Esmail or Garland—or Obama, for that matter—are trying to send some warning, perhaps consider the circumstances for why you’re worried that they might.
In the world of beauty and cosmetics, there exists a secret that has been transforming ordinary eyes into extraordinary beauty. Careprost, a name often whispered among beauty enthusiasts, holds the key to unlocking the potential of your eyelashes. This article delves into the remarkable journey of how Careprost has revolutionized the beauty industry, bringing forth lush, long, and luxurious lashes.
The Power of Lush Eyelashes
Before we dive into the secrets of careprost bimatoprost, it’s essential to understand the significance of beautiful eyelashes. Lush and full lashes have long been considered a symbol of femininity and allure. They frame the eyes, making them appear larger, more expressive, and captivating.
The Evolution of Eyelash Enhancement
For decades, women have sought various means to enhance their eyelashes. False lashes, mascara, and eyelash extensions have been go-to options, but they all come with their drawbacks. False lashes are temporary, mascara clumps and can be a hassle to apply daily, and eyelash extensions require frequent maintenance.
Introducing Careprost: The Game-Changer
In recent years, Careprost has emerged as a groundbreaking solution. This remarkable serum, formulated originally for treating glaucoma, contains an active ingredient called Bimatoprost. The discovery was accidental, but it unveiled a world of possibilities for eyelash enhancement. Bimatoprost was found to promote the growth of eyelashes, and thus, Careprost was born.
The Science Behind Careprost
Understanding the science behind careprost eye drops 3 ml is crucial to appreciating its effectiveness. Bimatoprost extends the anagen phase (the growth phase) of eyelashes, allowing them to grow longer and thicker. It also increases the number of hairs produced during this phase. The result is not just longer lashes, but also a more abundant set of lashes.
Why Careprost Stands Out?
1. LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing) – The Game-Changing Formula
Careprost is a testament to the power of cutting-edge LSI technology. LSI is a sophisticated method used in information retrieval and natural language processing. In the context of Careprost, LSI has been employed to develop a formula that specifically targets eyelash growth. It’s this precise formulation that sets Careprost apart from other products in the market.
2. Synonyms for Beauty
When we speak of beauty, there are numerous synonyms and associated terms that can be used. Words like “gorgeous,” “stunning,” “captivating,” and “mesmerizing” all convey the essence of beauty. Careprost works its magic, making your eyelashes exhibit these qualities effortlessly.
The Careprost Experience
The journey with Careprost is a simple and hassle-free one. A small amount of the serum is applied to the base of the upper eyelashes once a day. With consistent use, the results are evident within a few weeks. Long, full, and thick eyelashes begin to grace your eyes, transforming your look and boosting your confidence.
Testimonials Speak Louder Than Words
To truly appreciate the transformation that Careprost offers, let’s hear from some of the countless satisfied users:
“I never thought my lashes could look this amazing. Careprost has made me fall in love with my eyes again!” – Sarah M.
“I was skeptical at first, but the results are astonishing. I now recommend Careprost to all my friends.” – Lisa R.
“Careprost has saved me time and money on mascara. I wake up with gorgeous lashes every day!” – Emily W.
Safety and Side Effects
As with any product, it’s essential to consider safety. Careprost is generally safe when used as directed. However, some users may experience mild side effects, such as eye redness or itching. It’s advisable to consult a healthcare professional before use, especially if you have any eye conditions.
Final Thoughts
In a world where beauty is highly valued, Careprost has emerged as a game-changer for those seeking to enhance the allure of their eyes. With its LSI-optimized formula and a multitude of synonyms for beauty, Careprost has revolutionized eyelash enhancement, making it more accessible and effective than ever.
So, if you’ve been dreaming of extraordinary beauty and captivating eyes, it’s time to embrace the power of lumigan eye drops for eyelashes. Transform your ordinary lashes into an extraordinary asset, and let your eyes do the talking.
