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

[ad_1] Please do yourself a favor this February and prepare in advance for Valentine's Day. You want a gift that's as interesting and cool as your partner is, so don't wait until February 12 to frantically buy something on Amazon Prime. Below, our favorite picks for your romantic pal. If none of these catch your fancy, we're still pretty sweet on our list from last year. A bouquet of roses is great and all, but a crepe-paper-wrapped group of planets, Star Wars figures, or corgies is way better—and less thorny. The Plush Planetary bouquet is 19 inches tall and comes with 10 celestial bodies—including fan favorites like the Sun, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, and Pluto. $40 . Alternatively, the 18-inch-tall Star Wars bouquet features nine long-stemmed plush characters. Your valentine can enjoy snuggling up next to you, plus characters like BB-8, Chewbacca, R2-D2, and a Porg. This bundle is $80 . With this subscription, you or your loved one will receive two boxes of Oreos, an Oreo...

[ad_1] Almost every aspect of the Super Bowl has changed in its 51-year history. The first game, played between the National Football League and the now-defunct American Football League in 1967, was a relatively low-key affair. The teams battled it out on the Bermuda grass at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. At halftime, there was nary a star to be seen; instead, two college marching bands performed. And the weather was one for the history books. Despite it being January, the open-air stadium was a balmy 72 degrees at kickoff. Super Bowl LI will be rather different. On Sunday, the New England Patriots will square off with the Philadelphia Eagles on bright green turf. Justin Timberlake will perform. And all of America will be watching in HD. Most striking, however, will be the difference in venue. This year, the big game will be played at U.S. Bank Stadium, a futuristic glass shard in frigid Minneapolis, Minnesota. John Hutchings of HKS Architects served as the principal designer for ...

[ad_1] Almost every aspect of the Super Bowl has changed in its 51-year history. The first game, played between the National Football League and the now-defunct American Football League in 1967, was a relatively low-key affair. The teams battled it out on the Bermuda grass at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. At halftime, there was nary a star to be seen; instead, two college marching bands performed. And the weather was one for the history books. Despite it being January, the open-air stadium was a balmy 72 degrees at kickoff. Super Bowl LI will be rather different. On Sunday, the New England Patriots will square off with the Philadelphia Eagles on bright green turf. Justin Timberlake will perform. And all of America will be watching in HD. Most striking, however, will be the difference in venue. This year, the big game will be played at U.S. Bank Stadium, a futuristic glass shard in frigid Minneapolis, Minnesota. John Hutchings of HKS Architects served as the principal designer for ...

[ad_1] Ivan Pavlov had many research pursuits, but it’s his work with dogs that made him a household name. The Russian psychologist carried out unusual experiments on the behavior and gastric function of lovable mutts with names like Muyrka and Ukap. After years of work, he famously showed that one could use a relatively neutral stimulant (in this case, a bell) to trigger a reflexive response (canine salivation), a phenomenon now called classical conditioning. But Pavlov’s dogs provided another important insight, too—one that’s had implications for almost every species on Earth, from pigeons to humans. New research suggests that when it comes to measuring the trustworthiness of strangers, we’re about as sophisticated as a few hungry puppers. At the turn of the 20th century, Pavlov realized that conditioned dogs didn’t respond solely to the sound they were trained with. Rather, they could be encouraged to salivate with other stimuli, as long as that ne...

[ad_1] Ellen Crupi lives in Bethesda, Maryland, but works for a startup company in Minnesota. She does everything online from sales pitches to video conferences. Working at home means she doesn’t have to dress up, wear makeup, buy new work clothes or go out to lunch. When she’s not working, she also shops online, and streams movies and concerts. “Not having to drive or get on an airplane saves me über amounts of time, and that lets me spend it doing more important things,” she said. Crupi, 52, is one of a growing number of Americans embracing the great indoors. While the rise of streaming video services and online shopping is driving down movie theater attendance and hurting retail stores, there is an upside: America’s couch potatoes are putting a serious dent in energy use outside the home. “We had no idea that the energy savings were going to be so enormous,” said Ashok Sekar, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Texas at Austin and...

[ad_1] Wilkie the killer whale shouldn’t know how to say “Amy.” English isn’t exactly her first language, and the “em” sound is challenging when you’re speaking through your nose and a pair of vibrating membranes. And yet, Wilkie’s trainers taught her to say it. This isn’t just hubris on the part of some chick named Amy, and it isn’t a stunt to wow audiences or lull unwitting journalists into covering a research paper. It’s part of a completely legitimate effort to decode whatever form of language cetaceans like Wilkie might use. The problem with understanding animal language and communication—and this will seem obvious in retrospect—is that we don’t know what’s going on in animal brains. A farmer can teach his border collie to understand and follow hundreds of commands, and it can appear as if the dog comprehends what “go find the blue toy” means. But we don’t know at what level ...

[ad_1] On Tuesday night, President Donald Trump made his first State of the Union Address. Keeping with the mandate laid out by the U.S. Constitution, which asks the president to report to Congress “such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient,” Trump touched on his favorite topics, including tax reform, border control, and police heroism. He also touched on science. Following a week in which the President was roundly criticized for neglecting to appoint a director for the Office of Science and Technology Policy and his inaccurate remark that the extent of polar ice have reached record highs (they’re actually at record lows), Trump addressed scientific topics ranging from prescription drugs to energy development. For your convenience, find below all of the President’s State of the Union comments concerning science. I guess you could call it … the State of the Science. “We have endured floods, and fires, and storms.” Trump opened his s...

[ad_1] The moon is a photographic tease. It hangs up there in the sky, all big and bright. Then you try to take a picture of it and you get a pathetic white blob floating in a sea of digital noise and darkness. It’s frustrating, especially when you’re experiencing a super moon, or a blood moon, or a harvest moon, or any of those other moon phenomena that don’t really mean anything, but are extremely good at helping websites rack up page views and Instagram users gather likes. But, while the earth’s little lunar buddy can be a pain to photograph, the results can be rewarding. Here are some tips for photographing a full moon, no matter what kind of camera you have, or what kind of media hype that particularly moon brings with it. Plan your shot Let’s start with the bad news: Stumbling across a beautiful moon and expecting to capture it with your smartphone is extremely unlikely to happen. In fact, you’ll probably end up with something like this mess. Gr...

[ad_1] Gompertzian Law is hard to spell, but pretty easy to understand: the older a mammal is, the more likely it is to die. That’s just a fact of life—except, apparently, for naked mole rats. A new study from Calico Labs, which has the moonshot goal of unlocking the secrets of aging, found that the bald rodents’ risk of death isn’t necessarily proportionate to its age. The creepy, hairless critter (which was famously featured as an anthropomorphic, nacho-loving side kick in the cartoon Kim Possible ) has an unusually long life span, and a host of characteristics that make it seem relatively invincible. Naked mole rats don’t appear to feel pain the way most mammals do, and only a few individuals out of the hundreds studied are known to have developed cancer. They can also hold their breath for 18 minutes at a time with no apparent side effects whatsoever. Unfortunately, this doesn’t mean naked mole rats hold the key to immortality. “I hate to bu...

[ad_1] There’s an intriguing new player on the cybersecurity block, and it’s called Chronicle. Notable because it’s part of Google’s parent company, it emerged out of Alphabet’s “moonshot” incubator, known as X. Announced last week in two different blog posts on Medium, Chronicle will focus on helping companies comprehend their own security data and, according to the company’s CEO, “stop cyber attacks before they cause harm.” In an era of global computer infections like WannaCry, or vulnerabilities in computer processors like Meltdown and Spectre, a Google-like company turning its focus and resources to cybersecurity is a good thing. But there’s limited information available about how it might function. In a blog post, the company’s cofounder and CEO, Stephen Gillett, wrote that one prong of the firm will be “a new cybersecurity intelligence and analytics platform that we hope can help enterprises better manag...

[ad_1] I n graduate school, I earned beer money by modeling for life drawing classes in various art departments. (Don’t judge, grad school doesn’t pay well and beer isn’t free.) In the long hours standing around, I would survey the room and count how many of the aspiring artists were left-handed. Later in my career, I did the same thing—counting lefties, not standing around naked—in the biology classes I taught. Funny thing: in any given class, around 10 percent of the students were lefties. It turns out this is true for all human populations, not only middle-America university classes. Globally, about 90 percent of people are righties. But why? For as long as I can remember, I’ve been fascinated by handedness—our almost ubiquitous tendency to favor one hand over the other—and maybe a little envious of the rare left-handers. Their rareness gave a certain mystique—and they got to use those funky chair-desks with the desktop on the ...

[ad_1] We rely on expensive computer programs to edit photos and video, deal with office work, and protect our computers from malware. But they're not our only options. Often, commercial studios will offer the most basic versions of their products free of charge. In other cases, volunteers who believe that software should be free will develop open-source alternatives. Between them, you can find free programs to cover just about any computing task. However, not all free apps are created equal. We've narrowed down the plethora of options to highlight 10 of the finest free alternatives to pricey computer programs. 1. Office suite: LibreOffice If you need a comprehensive office suite that can do just about everything Microsoft Office can, then LibreOffice is one of the best options out there. Although it lacks the visual polish of the more expensive product, it can perform the same functions, and it works seamlessly with files created in Office and other formats. Available for Wind...

[ad_1] Whether you’re a football fan or not, it’s hard to deny that the Super Bowl is one of the biggest collective cultural events of the year. Last year, 111.9 million people tuned in to watch the chaotic mix of slick commercials, Madonna, and the occasional bit of actual football. But, having the big game in your home isn’t a given anymore. By the end of 2016, 16.7 million people in total had ditched cable. Estimates put that number around 22.2 million at the end of 2017. The typical TV route isn’t for everyone anymore, but there are other options for tuning into this year’s Super Bowl. Here’s a breakdown of your choices. Use a dedicated app Since NBC is broadcasting the game this year, the network would love for you to stream it through the NBC Sports App on various platforms like Roku, but that requires a login from a TV provider, which defeats our whole purpose here. Luckily, other apps like Verizon’s go90, Yahoo Sports, and the NFL’...