We're all familiar with the different basic tastes - sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and umami - but now scientists have found a sixth one where the tongue detects ammonium chloride. Research from USC Dornsife has discovered that protein receptors on the tongue not only respond to sour taste but also to ammonium chloride as well. Scientists were very much aware that the tongue responds to ammonium chloride, but haven't been able to specify which exact protein receptors... until now. The protein OTOP1 is responsible for this which can be found in the cell membranes and forms a channel for hydrogen ions moving into the cell. Whenever we taste anything that's particularly sour such as vinegar or lemon juice, OTOP1 is able to detect the acidity found in both of those. Therefore, given that ammonium chloride similarly affects the concentration of hydrogen ions within a cell, research was carried out on whether OTOP1 protein would react to this too. After lab-grown human cells with OTOP1 protein were created and exposed to acid or to ammonium chloride, the team found that ammonium chloride was a "strong activator" of OTOP1. “We saw that ammonium chloride is a really strong activator of the OTOP1 channel. It activates as well or better than acids,” Dr Emily Liman, a professor of biological sciences at USC Dornsife and study author. Now, perhaps you're wondering what ammonium chloride tastes like, one example of where it can be found is in salt liquorice candy which is popular in Nordic countries. “If you live in a Scandinavian country, you will be familiar with and may like this taste,” Dr Liman added. Though the flavour can be of an acquired taste and one that many may not be a fan of - but there is an explanation for this. “Ammonium is found in waste products – think of fertilizer – and is somewhat toxic, so it makes sense we evolved taste mechanisms to detect it,” Dr Liman explained. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

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STATESBORO, Ga.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jul 13, 2023--

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Sony has announced “Project Q”, a portable version of the PlayStation. The handheld system appears to be something like a PlayStation 5 controller, chopped in half with a screen placed in the middle of it. It works by streaming games over WiFi, the company said during a reveal. But it also suggested that customers will still need a PS5 in their home, and that the Project Q handheld will not be a standalone device. “We will launch a dedicated device that enables you to stream any game from your PS5 console using Remote Play over Wi-Fi,” said PlayStation boss Jim Ryan. “Internally known as ‘Project Q,’ it has an 8-inch HD screen and all of the buttons and features of the DualSense wireless controller.” That divided controller will have all the same “buttons and features” of the controller from the PS5, Sony said. That includes its adaptive triggers and haptic feedback. It will also have a screen that can show up to 1080p resolution at 60 frames per second, the company said. The headset is due to be announced later this year. Sony gave no further information about when that would be, how much it would cost, or even whether “Q” would be its eventual name. The system is not a devoted handheld device, like the Nintendo Switch or the Steam Deck. Nor is it specifically for streaming games over the internet, which would be part of a long-rumoured push into cloud gaming from PlayStation. Instead, it appears to be intended as a way of playing PlayStation games in other parts of the house. Users must not only have a PS5 also connected to the WiFi – which will be accessed through that Remote Play service – but also have the game they want to play installed on that console. Other services already offer the ability to play Remote Play games on handheld devices. Android and iPhones can use that same service, and can pair with controllers. Read More WhatsApp could be making a major change in how you find people Top Twitter engineer quits after DeSantis campaign fiasco Elon Musk’s Neuralink brain chip company gets FDA approval for human testing

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Two of the world’s biggest artificial intelligence firms are being sued by celebrities including Sarah Silverman. The writers claim that ChatGPT creator OpenAI and Facebook parent company Meta used their text to train their artificial intelligence systems, without permission. “Since the release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT system in March 2023, we’ve been hearing from writers, authors, and publishers who are concerned about its uncanny ability to generate text similar to that found in copyrighted textual materials, including thousands of books,” wrote Joseph Saveri and Matthew Butterick, the lawyers behind the class-action complaint. Mr Saveri and Mr Butterick have already launched legal proceedings against GitHub Copilot, an AI coding assistant, as well as Stable Diffusion, the popular AI image generator. They call the systems “industrial-strength plagiarists” on a website built to track and promote that work that also includes the complaints that have been filed in California. Last week, the two lawyers launched class-action lawsuits against OpenAI, arguing that it was remixing the “copyrighted works of thousands of book authors—and many others—without consent, compensation, or credit”. That complaint was initially launched on behalf of two authors, Paul Tremblay and Mona Awad, who have since been joined by Sarah Silverman, Chris Golden and Richard Kadrey. The lawsuit alleges that their work had been downloaded from “shadow library” websites that make it possible to download large amounts of text in bulk. They were then used to train the ChatGPT and LLaMa systems made by Meta and OpenAI, it claims. The suit shows that ChatGPT will summarise those authors’ books when prompted, infringing copyright and not giving any of the copyright information about the books, the lawyers claim. The authors “did not consent to the use of their copyrighted books as training material”, the lawsuit says. OpenAI did not respond to a request for comment from The Independent. Meta declined to comment. Read More Will.i.am hails AI technology as ‘new renaissance’ in music Instagram Threads hits 100 million users SpaceX smashes reusable rocket record as Elon Musk makes bold Starship claim

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Move around the board with just a quick spin of the ovaries.