Latest news with #Ponzo
Daily Mail
27-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
How many ducks can you see in eye-boggling optical illusion in 30 seconds
A seemingly innocent image posted by the popular Facebook page Minion Quotes is driving internet users wild - after it challenged them to count every duck in a sneaky new brain teaser. A Facebook page called Minion Quotes recently shared this optical illusion, which shows a flock of happy white ducks scattered across a bright yellow background. At first glance, the picture looks simple enough - just rows of cute little birds waddling along in perfect formation. But there's a catch that has left even the sharpest-eyed puzzle fans scratching their heads. At the top of the image, the bold question reads: 'How many duck you can count?' Easy, right? Not so fast. Take a closer look and you'll spot the real twist: some of the ducks are hiding in plain sight. Tiny ducklings are tucked away inside the outlines of their larger, feathered friends - camouflaged so well that many viewers miss them completely. A few are peeking out from behind wings, while others are so perfectly blended you might need to squint to see them. Within hours, the comments section erupted as thousands rushed to post their guesses - ranging from a handful to 17 ducks. Some claim to have cracked the code, while others are still scanning the image, convinced they've missed a sneaky stowaway. Optical illusions and hidden picture puzzles have long been a hit on social media, providing not just entertainment, but a test of your observation skills - and this duck-themed challenge is no exception. Think you can outsmart the flock? Despite hundreds of guesses, only the eagle-eyed few can spot all 22 - did you? Think you're seeing reality clearly? For a group of certain professionals, years of training have sharpened their vision so much, even optical illusions struggle to trick them. For decades, scientists believed that visual illusions were automatic - hardwired quirks of the brain that no one could truly 'see through'. But a new study has found that radiologists, who spend their careers scanning complex images for subtle signs of disease, are far less susceptible to certain visual illusions than the average person. A recent study explored whether expert training in medical image analysis could alter how people perceive visual illusions - and the results were surprising. Radiologists, who spend years learning to detect subtle signs of disease in complex medical scans, need to filter out irrelevant information and focus quickly on key visual details. This intense training raised an intriguing question: could it also help them see through optical illusions? To find out, researchers tested 44 medical image experts - ranging from reporting radiographers and trainee radiologists to certified radiologists - alongside a control group of 107 psychology and medical students. Participants were shown classic optical illusions such as the Ebbinghaus, Ponzo, Müller-Lyer, and Shepard Tabletops, and asked to make forced-choice decisions based on what they saw. In the first image above, the orange circle on the left is actually six percent smaller than the one on the right - yet most people perceived it as larger. It's a textbook example of how our brains can be misled by visual context. In the second circle image above, the size difference increases: the left circle is now 10 percent smaller. Still, many non-radiologists continued to see it as larger. But this time, most radiologists correctly judged the sizes, highlighting how their trained perception cuts through the illusion. Only when the size gap reached nearly 18 percent smaller, as shown in the final image, did most non-radiologists finally start to see through the trick. The findings were clear: trained radiologists were significantly less susceptible to most of the illusions, outperforming the control group in perceptual accuracy. Interestingly, this advantage did not extend to the Shepard Tabletops illusion, where both groups performed similarly. The Shepard's Table Illusion was introduced by cognitive scientist Roger N. Shepard in 1990. It is an optical illusion that messes with our perception of shape and size by using two identical parallelograms - tabletops - at different angles. The two tables are in fact the same size but our brain perceives one as longer and thinner and the other as wider and shorter. What's more, radiologists at the very start of their training were no better than the students, suggesting that this resistance to illusions isn't innate - it's developed through years of focused practice. These results challenge current theories of expertise, which generally argue that specialist skills don't transfer outside a specific domain. In this case, expertise in reading medical scans appears to offer a broader benefit: enhanced visual discrimination that extends even to general illusions. Of course, there's no shortcut to achieving this level of perceptual precision. As the researchers note with a touch of humor: if you want to learn to see through illusions, all it takes is five years of medical school followed by another seven in radiology.
Yahoo
08-02-2025
- Yahoo
Former Massachusetts police officer gets time in federal prison for bribery, Mass Save fraud scheme
A former Stoneham police officer has been sentenced to federal prison after pleading guilty to a criminal bribery and kickback scheme that netted him millions of dollars in Mass Save contracts, the U.S. Attorney said Friday. Christopher Ponzo, 50, of North Reading, was sentenced by U.S. District Court Judge Nathaniel Gorton to 27 months in prison, to be followed by two years of supervised release, U.S. Attorney Leah Foley said in a statement. Ponzo was also ordered to pay a $300,000 fine. In November, Ponzo pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit honest services wire fraud, 24 counts of honest services wire fraud and one count of making false statements to government officials. Ponzo was indicted by a federal grand jury in January 2023 along with his contractor brother, Joseph Ponzo. Joseph Ponzo also pleaded guilty to four counts of causing false tax returns to be filed with the Internal Revenue Service from 2016 to 2019. His sentencing is scheduled for Feb. 28. The brothers were arrested on the charges in April 2022. 'Virtually every Massachusetts resident who uses energy is surcharged and pays for Mass Save,' then-U.S. Attorney Rachael Rollins said in a statement following their arrests in April 2022. 'These payments are mandatory and amount to hundreds of millions of dollars,' Rollins said at the time. 'Defrauding the Mass Save program for millions of dollars means we are all left paying the bill. It is corruption at its core and will not be tolerated.' From 2013 to 2022, the brothers conspired to bribe associates of a Mass Save lead vendor company that netted the pair millions of dollars in Mass Save contracts, prosecutors said. Mass Save is a program that is designed to help Massachusetts residents manage their energy and utility costs. Under the program, utility companies pick lead vendors to approve and select contractors to perform energy improvement work for residential customers. This contracting work – performed by contractors at no-cost or reduced cost to the customer – is then paid for by the lead vendor company with Mass Save funds. Prosecutors said the Ponzo brothers paid vendor company employees in home bathroom fixtures, a computer, free electrical work, and a John Deere tractor in addition to weekly cash bribes ranging anywhere from $1,000 to $10,000. In exchange, the brothers received a procurement of millions in Mass Save contracts with the vendor company. From 2013 to 2017, Christopher Ponzo paid one associate $1,000 in cash on a weekly basis, prosecutors said. At times, Christopher Ponzo paid that associate $5,000 to $10,000 in cash, telling the associate that the extra money was from Joseph Ponzo for his part in the bribery scheme. In return for these payments, the associate helped Joseph Ponzo set up a shell company, Air Tight, to do insulation work and get approved as a lead vendor contractor under the Mass Save program. Prosecutors said Joseph Ponzo put his spouse's name on Air Tight incorporation documents and licenses to hide his involvement in the corruption. Joseph Ponzo collected over $7 million under the Mass Save program, despite having no professional experience in residential insulation work, prosecutors said. When that associate left the company in 2017, prosecutors said the Ponzos recruited another associate to the bribery-kickback scheme, paying them thousands of dollars in cash from approximately 2018 to 2022, and also hiring a relative of the second associate as part of the ongoing scheme. Joseph Ponzo also filed false tax returns from 2016 to 2019 by claiming hundreds of thousands of dollars in false business deductions, prosecutors said. To disguise personal expenses as business deductions, Joseph Ponzo used his company credit card to make hundreds of thousands of dollars in purchases at The Home Depot, Lowes, and Staples, claiming to his tax preparers that charges at those stores were business-related, prosecutors said. But Joseph Ponzo actually used the company credit card at those stores to buy gift cards that he and his spouse then used to make thousands of dollars in personal purchases, prosecutors said. In April 2022, both Joseph Ponzo and Christopher Ponzo lied to federal agents when they denied making bribe payments to any company employees, prosecutors said. This is a developing story. Check back for updates as more information becomes available. Download the FREE Boston 25 News app for breaking news alerts. Follow Boston 25 News on Facebook and Twitter. | Watch Boston 25 News NOW
