Awe-inspiring science reporting, technology news, and DIY projects. Skunks to space robots, primates

[ad_1] Airbus' technology head Paul Eremenko will leave to join rival United Technologies, both groups said on Thursday - a blow to Airbus as it tries to overhaul its strategy and win back business from Boeing. The announcement came two and a half years after Eremenko was hired from Google and told to foster innovation and import radical thinking from Silicon Valley. Airbus has long said that digital technology will change the way aircraft are made. He headed Airbus' Silicon Valley outpost and rose quickly to become Chief Technology Officer of the whole group in June, 2016 at the age of 36. But insiders say the outspoken executive clashed with the technical leadership at Airbus, notably former chief engineer Charles Champion, and came to represent a U.S.

[ad_1] Alaska Airlines has launched an investigation into Randi Zuckerberg's report of a passenger in her row making "repeated lewd sexual remarks" as the flight attendants "brushed off his behavior" and "kept giving him drinks." The founder and CEO of Zuckerberg Media, who previously worked at her brother Mark's company Facebook, said the person talked to her about touching himself, repeatedly asked her if she fantasized about her female colleague she was traveling with, commented about other passengers' bodies and made "many more equally horrifying and offensive comments." When she alerted the flight attendants, they allegedly said the man was a frequent traveler on the route and they have had to talk to him about his behavior in the past. She said they told her not to take it personally since he doesn

[ad_1] Since buying an Apple Watch a few months ago, I've been searching and trying out all sorts of accessories to protect, charge, and show off my shiny new toy. Below, the Apple Watch add-ons that were worthwhile. This Nomad silicone sports strap is waterproof, made of a antimicrobial material, and is compatible with all 42mm Apple Watches. $42 . If you're looking for a cheaper silicone replacement band, this Been5le fits all models. $11 . These Belkin classic Italian leather wristbands are 3 mm thick and come in sizes for both 38mm and 42mm watches. $60 . For a more colorful option, this Case-Mate leather band has a bright blue interior. It works with all versions of the Apple Watch and comes with a lifetime warranty. $25 . If you have a favorite watch band company that doesn't make a model for the Apple Watch, don't worry. These stainless steel band adapters are available in three colors—grey, pink gold, and silver—and come in sizes for both the 38mm and 42mm model

[ad_1] New Jersey's Willowbrook Mall, which is owned by General Growth Properties, has a "Next Generation" Sears store. The freed-up space will be filled with one of the area's first Dave & Buster's arcade restaurants, along with a handful of other tenants that haven't yet been announced. In pursuing this redevelopment, GGP will be able to boost a key "sales-per-square-foot" metric at Willowbrook, and likely all other malls where the revamps take place. "Seritage, Simon and GGP have been at the forefront of redeveloping Sears' anchor boxes," Boenning & Scattergood analyst Floris van Dijkum told CNBC. "And they've been achieving high returns." In its fiscal third-quarter release, Sears said its efforts have led to improved fin

[ad_1] CNBC: And people often don't feel it coming? Williams: One of the big challenges with AFib is that people with AFib often don't feel the symptoms -- it's asymptomatic. There are pretty clear interventions available, but people don't know they have the problem. So we believe that detecting AFib will put people in a better position to effect their health and hopefully save a lot of lives. That's what this study at the highest level is about. The way this is gonna work, anybody over age 22 in the United States -- there's a few conditions we exclude, people who are already being treated for AFib and other things -- but, in general, anybody can download this app, starting tomorrow. That's a new way to do studies. This is a bit of a breakthrough in that it's a virtual clinical trial. There are probably some other clinical trials that have used apps to some degree, but one bro

[ad_1] Andrew Harrer | Bloomberg | Getty Images Paul Manafort, former campaign manager for Donald Trump, arrives to the U.S. Courthouse for a bond hearing in Washington, D.C., on Monday, Nov. 6, 2017. Attorneys for former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort have reached a deal with the special counsel's office to spring Manafort from house arrest and allow him to travel between New York, Virginia and Florida ahead of his anticipated May trial. The filing, dated Tuesday, was submitted to the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. It is subject to approval from U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson. According to the filing, Manafort has agreed to forfeit assets he says are worth about $11.65 million, including four homes, if he violates the conditions of his bail.

[ad_1] Since the late 1700s, Norwegian rats have haunted New York City’s alleys, parks, and basements. They came on ships from France and England, and then they never left. Matthew Combs, a graduate student at Fordham University, didn’t just want to learn about the history of those rats. He also investigated how their families move around the city, and found that certain areas had more genetic diversity. The Lower East side and East Harlem had more movement of genes between rats, while Midtown (especially west) had less. The residential areas of the city provide better homes for the rats than the more touristy areas. Better habitats mean more rat babies, which leads to the more frequent DNA mutations that Combs measured. The Norwegian rat, or brown rat, paradoxically originated in Asia, then spread through the Middle East to Europe and Africa. Combs found that a population from England or France made their way to New York City sometime between 1750 and 1770. Even after the U.S. started

[ad_1] Google Street View images are filled with cars. That is a simple and pedestrian truth, and one which artificial intelligence researchers have taken advantage of to do something surprising. By analyzing car type, they were able to make predictions about the demographic information of the people in the cities they studied. For example, the team, largely from Stanford University, analyzed whether they saw more pickups trucks or sedans in a given city. With a greater number of pickup trucks, the urban area had an 82 percent chance of voting Republican, and with more sedans, there was an 88 percent chance it voted Democrat. Artificial intelligence systems shine when crunching staggeringly large amounts of data and then making predictions about what they see in it. In this case, that data came in the form of over 50 million images in 200 cities from Google Street View. From there, the researchers used an object recognition technique to pick out cars from other objects in the images. T

[ad_1] Delivering packages by rocket and developments in blockchain technology may be the future of shipping but the latest bullish case for FedEx looks at a different industry transformation: e-commerce. "A generational shift to ecommerce shipments, solid global trade prospects, management's incremental focus on improving returns and a cheap valuation make FedEx shares a compelling opportunity," Barclays' transportation analyst Brandon Oglenski wrote in note Thursday. FedEx is no "unicorn stock," Oglenski says, but it is the firm's top pick when "left choosing between less than ideal outcomes" among transportation companies. Barclays sees FedEx stock gaining 20 percent from Wednesday's close at $225.93. "A solid backdrop for global

[ad_1] When you’re a kid, practical gifts are the worst. Sure, you needed those pens for school, but you asked Santa for Nintendo or a Ninja Turtle, not office supplies. They might as well be vegetables. But, things are different when you’re an adult. Practical gifts become pretty great. You get useful gadgets that improve your life without having to shell out your own hard-earned cash. This carefully curated collection of products will turn you into Santa’s much more sensible brother, Tom, who brings useful, handy presents to the people in your life who can appreciate the value of a good pair of tube socks. Computers are getting slimmer, but that means they’re also getting stingier with their USB ports. This 10-port dock has seven high-speed USB-3 data and charging ports, as well as three high-power 2.1 Amp charging-specific ports for faster top-offs. Not bad for a device the size of a candy bar. Note: Actual candy bars also make good gifts, but they’re not very practical. $39 . Once

[ad_1] CVS Health could announce an acquisition of insurer Aetna for more than $66 billion as early as Monday, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday. The talks are advanced and would likely see Aetna valued at between $200 and $205 a share and be comprised mainly of cash, the Journal reported. The talks, like all deal discussions, could be delayed or ultimately fail, the Journal cautioned. Aetna had a market capitalization of $59.27 billion after the report came out Thursday morning. Shares rose about 1 percent. CVS had a market capitalization of $77.2 billion as of Thursday morning, and its shares rose more than 2 percent on the report. CVS and Aetna both declined to comment.

[ad_1] Gmail dominates the email landscape. It provides gigabytes of storage, works at super-fast speeds in any browser, and automatically sorts messages into specialized sections depending on their content and importance. But perhaps its greatest strength—as you might expect from a Google product—is its search abilities. You're probably comfortable typing a few words or contact names into the search box at the top of the page, but some less obvious terms can open up whole new inbox-sifting possibilities. We've collected nine invaluable search tools to help you organize your inbox, find lost emails, dig up oversize attachments, unsubscribe from spam, and more. 1. Find important emails that you haven't read Search query: "is:important is:unread" Based on the emails you've opened and responded to in the past, Google determines which messages are most important to you and flags them with a little yellow arrow just to the left of the sender's name. To find the

[ad_1] Express Scripts had a word of caution for Amazon as it weighs its push into the multibillion-dollar pharmacy market. "What [Amazon] will see is the magic isn't in lower net prices to consumers. It's getting the right drug to consumers and helping them navigate the system — all things we've built a business over 30 years to do," Express Scripts CEO Tim Wentworth told CNBC on Thursday. CNBC reported in May that Amazon was hiring in an effort to figure out how to break into a market, which Wentworth called highly competitive. While not a done deal, Wentworth said he is "confident" Amazon is examining an entrance, "as they should be." Wentworth said he sees Amazon more as a potential partner, rather than as a threat to Express Scripts'

[ad_1] Quevedos rise also highlighted the increasing power of the Venezuelan military, which has gained clout in Maduro's Cabinet and in key industries like mining and food distribution. While military appointments had also been increasing in the oil industry, PDVSA so far had been led by chemist Nelson Martinez and the Oil Ministry by engineer Eulogio Del Pino. The military has achieved its aim of controlling PDVSA. The forecast is somber, said Francisco Monaldi, a fellow in Latin American energy policy at the Baker Institute in Houston, echoing much of the mood in the local oil industry. Quevedo also faces accusations from the opposition of violating human rights during the National Guard's handling of anti-Maduro protests. U.S.

[ad_1] Another Black Friday is in the books. But the holiday season is hardly over for retailers. Many companies have now shifted resources to focus on their digital operations on Cyber Monday, an annual internet shopping phenomenon that got its start in the early 2000s. Retailers including Amazon, Best Buy, Target and Wal-Mart are doling out exclusively digital deals with extraordinary markdowns. Target, for example, is slashing 15 percent off prices across its entire website. Meantime, shoppers are expected to spend more than ever online — $6.6 billion on Monday alone — according to Adobe Insights — an increase of 16.5 percent from last year's sales. "Consumers are conditioned to waiting for those key shopping mome

[ad_1] Stronger corporate profits and increased economic confidence among employers may not translate to an end-of-year cash bonus for workers. Thirty-nine percent of companies will be awarding a cash bonus this year, according to a new survey from outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. The new numbers, based on a survey of about 150 human resources executives in October and November, fell from 41 percent who said their companies would award a companywide or performance-based cash bonus last year. Worse for employees is that 35 percent of respondents said their companies will be offering no year-end award at all. That's 5 percentage points higher than the 2016 figure of 30 percent. "These results are surprising, given the tight labor market," the firm said

[ad_1] Call it the holiday comeback. Retail stocks, and mainly those of department store operators, were climbing at a rapid clip Wednesday morning, on the heels of upbeat reports regarding a strong start to the holiday season. Among them, preliminary results from the National Retail Federation indicated more people shopped both at stores and online over Thanksgiving weekend. Macy's shares were up about 9 percent, Dillard's stock was climbing nearly 10 percent, Nordstrom's stock spiked more than 7 percent and Kohl's shares were up 5 percent. Sears Holdings, which is set to report fiscal third-quarter earnings before the bell Thursday, also watched its stock climb over 7 percent, while J.C. Penney shares were u

[ad_1] The party has been trying to make inroads into foreign-funded companies since President Xi Jinping came to power and began pushing to increase its role in all aspects of life in China. "As far as I know, some foreign-funded companies have been required to offer full pay for at least one party branch member who would deal with the company's party branch issues," said Liu Kaiming, head of the Institute of Contemporary Observation, a think tank based in Shenzhen. "Operators of foreign firms usually see a Communist Party branch in their company as something set up by staff to help promote goodwill and communication with the party. But now they feel these branches are trying to extend the party's influence within company operations," Liu said. "Members of these

[ad_1] Garrison Keillor, former host of America's beloved "Prairie Home Companion," has been fired by Minnesota Public Radio for alleged "inappropriate behavior." Keillor, 75, had retired from his radio show but still produced "The Writer's Almanac" for syndication. Keillor initially broke the news, telling The Associated Press he was fired over "a story that I think is more interesting and more complicated than the version MPR heard." Minnesota Public Radio confirmed the termination, effective immediately. "Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) is terminating its contracts with Garrison Keillor and his private media companies after recently learning of allegations of his inappropri

[ad_1] One would assume that many of the strongest members of our species are elite athletes. And if particularly strong arms are what you're after, collegiate rowers—who routinely exert many times their body weight in power to propel a boat forward as fast as humanly possible—are about as good as it gets. But according to a new study, even elite female rowers have nothing on the arms of prehistoric women. In a study out this week in the journal Science Advances , researchers at the University of Cambridge compared the bones of women living in Central Europe during the first 5,500 years of farming to those of typical college students, as well as members of the school's women’s crew team. Apparently, prehistoric women would have made pretty decent rowers. They might even have blown other teams out of the water. Agriculture was just taking hold over hunting and gathering, and women were doing some hefty workouts. They harvested crops and ground up grain, without any fancy machine

[ad_1] In December, SpaceX will again send cargo to the International Space Station — but this time, it will use a Falcon 9 rocket that has already flown to space and back. NASA officially confirmed the decision today during a meeting, noting that SpaceX's upcoming resupply mission will fly on a Falcon 9 that already launched to the ISS in June. It marks the first time SpaceX will launch a used rocket for NASA, further validating the company's reusable rocket technology. "NASA participated in a broad range of SpaceX data assessments and inspections regarding use of a previously flown Falcon 9 first stage booster," NASA said in a statement confirming the decision to T he Verge . Ultimately, NASA will consider flying on used Falcon 9s on a case-by-case basis going forward, the space agency said. Throughout 2017, SpaceX