Author: Daily Upsider

Over 450 guests have stayed at “the world’s only bookshop Airbnb,” where they not only spend the night but also run the store during the day.

Located in Wigtown, Scotland’s National Book Town, The Open Book offers guests a chance to manage their own seaside bookshop. Airbnb calls it “the first ever bookshop residency experience,” and it’s so popular that the waiting list stretches two years, with visitors coming from as far as Hawaii and Beijing. The shop, established by The Wigtown Festival Company, aims to promote books, support independent bookshops, and welcome people from around the world.

Since opening in August 2014, The Open Book Airbnb has become a hit, with guests enjoying the unique opportunity to run the shop. One guest from Austin, Texas, told the BBC, “There’s no better feeling than somebody buying a book you put on display.” Airbnb describes the property as “a holiday home with a difference,” offering visitors the chance to run a real bookshop in Wigtown. Guests stay in the apartment upstairs and run the shop downstairs, with full freedom to change displays, price books, and get creative with the space. Some prefer a quiet approach, while others come with bold plans and ideas.

A significant piece of U.S. history has been uncovered and is expected to fetch $20 million at auction. In preparation for the Constitutional Convention of 1787, 100 copies of the U.S. Constitution were printed, but only eight were signed by Charles Thomson, secretary of the Continental Congress. These signed copies were sent to each state for delegates to review.

One of these signed copies was recently discovered in a North Carolina home, making it the only privately owned signed copy in the country. It’s now up for auction at Brunk Auctioneers, where the opening bid of $1 million has already been met. The document was found by a family that had maintained the Hayes Plantation in Edenton, previously owned by Samuel Johnston, North Carolina’s governor from 1787 to 1789, and the person who ratified the Constitution for the state. The family had held the plantation for seven generations, but while preparing to transfer the property to the state as a historic site, a large-scale cleanout revealed the signed Constitution.

“We wouldn’t be surprised if it sells for $20 million, though it could go higher or lower. Another copy sold for $42.3 million at Sotheby’s,” said Andrew Brunk, CEO of the auction house, in an interview with CBS News. The document is preserved as two sheets containing eight pages, with the famous “We the People” in the top right. A resolution from the Confederation Congress is also attached, explaining the document’s purpose and what state officials should do with it.

Some educators view finger counting as a sign of mathematical struggle in children, while others see it as evidence of advanced numerical understanding. New research indicates that teaching finger counting can significantly enhance children’s arithmetic skills.

Swiss and French researchers explored whether finger counting could aid primary school children with math problems. Adults often avoid using fingers for basic calculations, associating this behavior with cognitive issues. However, children under eight who use finger counting demonstrate a sophisticated understanding of quantities, recognizing that they can be represented in various ways.
The study, published in the journal Child Development, involved 328 kindergarteners aged five to six in France, assessed on simple addition tasks. Participants were recruited through their teachers for an experiment comprising a pre-test, two weeks of training, a post-test, and a delayed post-test. Results showed a marked improvement in trained children who initially did not use finger counting, with correct responses rising from 37% to 77%. In contrast, non-finger users in the control group showed no significant gains.

Dr. Catherine Thevenot, the study’s lead researcher, emphasized the importance of these findings, stating, “Finger calculation training is effective for over 75% of kindergartners. The next step is to support the remaining 25% who didn’t respond as well to the intervention.”

Researchers at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute (MCRI) in Australia have made a significant breakthrough in bone marrow transplants by developing a new method to convert personalized stem cells into hematopoietic stem cells, which are crucial for treating various blood and bone marrow diseases like leukemia.

Currently, bone marrow transplants are the main treatment for these diseases, but they carry serious risks, including graft-versus-host disease, where donor cells attack the recipient’s body. To address this issue, the MCRI team reprogrammed cells obtained from hair, skin, and nails into pluripotent stem cells, which can transform into any cell type. While creating pluripotent stem cells has been successful for over a decade, converting them into hematopoietic stem cells has proven difficult.

The researchers believe that standardizing this conversion process could greatly improve transplant outcomes, especially for children with leukemia. Lead author Elizabeth Ng emphasized the potential of generating patient-specific blood stem cells, which could reduce complications from donor mismatches. The team successfully transformed pluripotent stem cells into hematopoietic stem cells and tested them in immune-deficient mice after freezing, showing results comparable to standard transplants using umbilical cord blood. MCRI Professor Ed Stanley noted that refining these techniques could lead to personalized treatments for various blood disorders, addressing donor shortages and issues with mismatched transplants. Dr. Andrew Elefanty, another researcher, mentioned that these patient-specific stem cells could also be used for genome editing to correct genetic defects.

The study highlighted the case of an 11-year-old girl named Riya, who endured a long recovery after receiving a bone marrow transplant from her mother. This research aims to improve outcomes for patients like her, showcasing the promising future of personalized medicine in treating blood diseases.

Spanish archaeologists have used AI to locate ancient underground irrigation systems, known as qanats, in desert regions around the world.

The AI was trained to analyze Cold War-era satellite photos and detect signs of underground aqueducts that transported water from mountains to dry plains. Unlike Roman aqueducts, qanats were dug below ground, protected from the desert sun by vertical shafts for airflow and maintenance. Qanats, which date back 3,000 years, are hard to spot unless standing near their access points. Despite this, the AI correctly identified qanats in 88% of cases, analyzing images from spy satellites like HEXAGON, which surveyed the Middle East and North Africa between 1959 and 1986.

Hector Orengo from the Catalan Institute of Classical Archaeology led the study, highlighting how these systems allowed survival in previously uninhabitable areas. The AI will now continue to search for undiscovered qanats in these regions, offering a faster, safer alternative to human surveyors.