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[ad_1] We are already aware of many of the dangers that spaceflight can inflict on the human body. Loss of bone and muscle mass, distortions on eyeball size and function, and radiation are just a few in the long list of health consequences that can result from spending time in zero G. But one area of study that’s increasingly concerning is how space environments might damage the brain, and how microgravity itself can induce unique irregularities in brain shape and structure. A new study published in JAMA Neurology this week provides more concerning details on how spaceflight changes the brain. The findings inadvertently underscore just how little we know about the effects of space on brain health and safety, creating a worrisome specter that’s sure to grow larger as we start sending astronauts into space for years at a time. “These brain changes were in the same direction as what you would see with aging, but they occurred at a faster speed,” says Rachael Seidler, a professor of appli

[ad_1] Is it cold outside? Are you hearing loud booms in the middle of the night? Don’t call the Ghostbusters—it’s probably just a frost quake. And while that sounds like the name of a claymation ice monster, it’s actually a real geological phenomenon. A frost quake—or cryoseism, if you want to use the scientific name—isn’t a “real” earthquake, because it isn’t tectonic. Earthquakes happen when tectonic plates, the enormous sheets of Earth’s crust that move around at geologically slow paces, slip suddenly. Sometimes two plates slide past one another, or one plate may subduct beneath the other. These jolting movements are the result of built-up friction between the plates getting released all at once. They’re not affected by the weather. Tectonic plates exist in a whole other timeframe than our puny human one. Frost quakes are also the result of a sudden release of pressure, but the root cause of that pressure is very different—more akin to the forces that cause potholes in roads than t

[ad_1] Technology The first carseats were more about keeping kids corralled than protecting them in a crash. For squishy babies, cars present a fate worse than diaper rash. Securing kids during a ride took decades to perfect. [ad_2] Written By Eleanor Cummins

[ad_1] Bog people preserved in peat. Egyptian mummies perfectly wrapped for the after life. Men encased in ice. Archaeologists love an intact ancient body. But cremated remains? Not so much. “When you think about cremated remains, they look totally destroyed,” says Tim Thompson, a professor of biological anthropology at Teesside University in England. “They look like you can’t get any information out of them at all.” That attitude is slowly changing, according to Thompson, the editor of the 2015 anthology The Archaeology of Cremation . As technology advances, archaeologists can look beyond the ashes. “What we’ve realized is, you can basically collect any information from a burnt body as an unburnt body, it’s just more challenging,” he says. Bodies that have undergone exhumation, the technical term for a full-body burial, and mummification are great candidates for DNA analysis. But the heat of a funeral pyre typically destroys such genetic evidence in cremated bodies. Similarly, chemica

[ad_1] Sports fans across the country may be gearing up for the Super Bowl, but over in the land of baseball, the New York Yankees are doing something quite different: hiring an expert on sports and the environment to advise them on the sustainability of their stadium and the team itself. This could potentially be pretty big news for the team and for sports in general: let’s break it down. It’s the first time a team has had this kind of position–but there’s more to it “It’s a long time coming,” says Haylee Mercado, a University of South Carolina professor in the Department of Sport and Entertainment Management who focuses on sports franchises and sustainability. Mercado says that although this is the first time a professional sports team has appointed someone to a position like this,, she’s not at all surprised. The new appointee is Allen Hershkowitz, a prominent figure in the field of sports sustainability. Working on everything from recycling to greening the Oscars, Hershkowitz is a

[ad_1] With Democrats in control of the House of Representatives and Republicans in control of the Senate, Congress is unlikely to produce any significant legislation on divisive issues like climate change. However, lawmakers may tackle the carbon crisis by other means, including through legislation on infrastructure, one possible area of compromise. Even if Congress fails to invest in solar energy or EV charging stations, just renovating America’s streets, highways and freeways will reduce pollution. Road repairs help drivers use less gas, reducing carbon pollution, according to a new study published in the International Journal of Sustainable Transportation . Though steamrollers and other machines generate pollution while fixing roads, filling cracks and potholes does more to limit emissions overall. “There are many ways to combat climate change from the transportation side, from the design and maintenance of roads to the utilization of renewable or clean energy for vehicles,” said H

[ad_1] You probably remember the rules of Jenga: You tap at a wooden block in the tower, try to remove it, and then hopefully place the piece back on top of the increasingly unstable creation. The first person to knock the tower over loses. Jenga! Jenga’s physical nature makes it different from classic coffee table games like chess, or Go, which are contests at which artificial intelligence already excels. As complex as those games are, Jenga poses its own unique challenges for a robot. Mechanical engineers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have been working on a two-fingered bot that uses AI and sensors to figure out the physics of that game and play it. With a game like chess, you can glean all the information you need to play, and hopefully win, just by looking at the board. No one needs to poke at the knight on a chess board to figure out if it’s capable of moving. (And with board games like that, AI software can learn rapidly in simulation.) Jenga is different. You can’

[ad_1] It’s dangerously cold in the Midwest right now, and unless you’ve cut yourself off from the internet you know why: the polar vortex. Streams of cold air are swooshing down from the northern latitudes and they’re bringing some spectacular scenery along with them (even if it’s too cold to appreciate the outdoors). This image comes courtesy of NASA’s Terra satellite. Taken on January 27, it clearly shows streams of air moving south and east across the Great Lakes. Those ribbons of white are called cloud streets—yes, that is the technical term—and they’re right in line with the prevailing winds. Cloud streets are bands of cumulus clouds that form when a layer of cold air gets sandwiched between (relatively) warm water below and air above. The water gives off heat, causing thermal columns to rise up and then roll back onto themselves, forming kind of a long jelly roll of moist air. Those jelly rolls are the cloud streets (you can see a diagram here). You see them mostly over and down

[ad_1] You don’t need to hurl yourself off a cliff or out of a plane to get a taste of adrenaline. This winter, find a hill, put on your puffiest pair of ­fanny-​­protecting snow pants, and grab a slippery rig for a dose of pure, ­gravity-​­powered fun. Ranked here from fastest to slowest, these light and aerodynamic sleds will carry you down slopes and around slick corners, and possibly even propel you into fantastic yard-​sale-​style wipeouts. Ask your pals to record your ice capades in slow motion to relive later, hot cocoa in hand. The Yukon Hammerhead Pro HD flies across the snow thanks to its 4.5-inch-wide rear skis: They create less friction than a flat-­bottom ride, and won’t dig into terrain like ­classic skinny rails will. Flop onto the ­ Flexible Flyer Runner , then tear down hard-packed snow. Sleds of this type are usually around 42 inches long, but the Flexi’s 60-inch body supports your legs so they won’t drag and slow you. Instead of lying down, riders kneel on the 16-in

[ad_1] What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits iTunes, Anchor, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you'll love the show. And if you like what you hear, join us for our next live show on February 1 in New York City. Tickets are on sale now, and they're going fast. Fact: Women once stripped off their tops before dueling to avoid infection By Sophie Bushwick In August 1892, in Verduz, Lichtenstein, Princess Pauline Metternich and the Countess Kielmannsegg disagreed over flower arrangements for a concert. They decided the only way to resolve their argument was with bloodshed. This may seem like a fr

[ad_1] I’m a snob about camera stuff. I like pricy lenses, big imaging sensors, and poking through complicated menus that let me tweak my camera’s settings to the point where I’m the only one that knows how to actually use it. So, when DJI announced the Osmo Pocket, its all-in-one camera with a built-in stabilizer, I appreciated how useful it could be for YouTubers and other types of video bloggers, but I truly wondered if it made sense as a professional piece of kit. As it turns out, DJI did something truly impressive in simplifying the camera and stabilizer into one extremely usable little package that weighs just four ounces and is better than the sum of its parts. What is it? The top of the Osmo Pocket is a camera, similar to what you’d find on one of DJI’s drones. It shoots 4K and captures still images with various shooting modes like time lapse. The camera is integrated onto a three-axis gimbal, which is basically a robotic cradle that uses information from internal orientation s

[ad_1] NASA has begun what is very likely its final attempt to re-establish contact with the Opportunity rover, after a massive Martian dust storm forced the agency to put the 15-year-old robot to sleep. If unsuccessful, this effort will make for a sad finale to the rover, but also cap off one of the greatest Mars missions ever conducted—propelled by technology that’s punched way above its weight. To recap: a gargantuan dust storm swelled over the red planet last summer, effectively blotting out the sun. NASA chose to move Opportunity, a solar powered rover, into an energy-saving mode, keeping it technically on, but shutting down its scientific operations and most of its instruments. This way, the rover could run enough power to keep its heaters on and protect itself from cold temperatures that could do irreparable harm to its parts. Once the storm abated, the rover could use sunlight to recharge its batteries and come back to life once again. It didn’t exactly work out this way. The

[ad_1] A frigid blast of Arctic air is gushing over much of the Midwest this week, hammering many cities including Chicago, Minneapolis, Detroit, and Milwaukee. Temperatures will dip lower than they have for over two decades in some areas, down to -30 to -55 ºF with wind chill. In this cold, frostbite can happen in just five minutes. Inevitably, some will be tempted to sneer at the reality of climate warming. But a bout of cold weather in a small part of the globe says little about long-term averages. Here’s why. Why it’s cold this week At the beginning of this year, the polar vortex—a swirling blob of cold air that sits high above the Arctic land surface—split apart. A lobe of cold air from the separated vortex is now touching down over the Great Lakes. “Like a rock in a stream—in this case, the jet stream—[the polar vortex lobe] helped keep the jet stream pushed southward, which encourages cold air to be transported from Canada and the Arctic into mid-latitudes,” says Amy Butler, an

[ad_1] Don't limit your music listening experience to just one source, hearing it fade out as you go upstairs to brush your teeth or get a snack. Thanks to today's smart speakers, your tunes can follow you wherever you go. Fortunately, UX designers have spent hours creating systems that are easy to use, so setup takes just a few minutes. Here's how to get started with all the popular speaker ranges on the market, and some of the differences between them. With Sonos speakers Sonos has been in the high-quality, multi-room, wireless audio streaming game since 2002, and it shows. You can buy Sonos speakers in a variety of shapes and sizes, and they all work together seamlessly. Adding new speakers to an existing setup is simple too. Whether you're setting up your first Sonos speaker or adding new ones, everything is done via the Sonos app for Android or iOS (this app controls music playback too). The app is also available for Windows and macOS, which is great for when it co

[ad_1] Last night, a security bug popped up in Apple's FaceTime video chat app. The flaw let users exploit a group conference calling feature that allowed callers to hear the recipients talking, even before they picked up the call. Worse still, if the recipient pressed a button to dismiss the call, it would enable the camera as well. It was essentially a work around that let people eavesdrop on unassuming users. Apple eventually disabled the group talk function on the server side, but it's still probably not a horrible idea to disable FaceTime for the moment until a software update comes down the line. Here's how to turn it off for now. iOS: Go into your settings, locate FaceTime, and flip the switch at the top to turn it off completely. MacOS: Open the FaceTime app, go to preferences, and uncheck “Enable for this account.” As The Verge points out, this feature has been in place since October of 2018, but the company doesn't know exactly when the bug started happening

[ad_1] We’re officially in the worst part of winter. It’s cold out, and, with CES close in our rearview mirrors, there aren’t a ton of new gadgets to ogle. But, as always, the juggernaut that is the tech world rolls on. Here’s a close look at everything you missed while you were debating whether three coats were enough to protect you from the polar vortex. Loop wants to bring back milk-man-style product deliveries I’m too young to have had milk delivered to my house, but a company called Loop is trying to modernize the concept. The plan is for UPS drivers to dump a package, containing common grocery items in reusable containers, on your doorstep. For example, instead of buying a cardboard pint of ice cream, you’d get a metal container of Rocky Road that you’d return when it’s empty. The service will be up and running in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Paris in May of 2019. Harvard’s Music Lab tests are the most fun thing on the internet so far this week Online quizzes are typic

[ad_1] Scientists have long wondered how and why fish swim in shoals and birds fly in flocks—what’s in it for the individuals? New research from New York University helps shed some light on what benefits they derive from their formations. Unlike, say, a peloton of cyclists that are travelling on land by pushing their tires against the ground, fish and birds are moving in a medium that’s all around them, not just below them—and they’re both doing it, basically, with similar mechanisms: what NYU Ph.D. candidate Joel Newbolt, the study’s lead author, refers to as “flapping.” Previous work has demonstrated that “in these groups like schools and flocks, you can do things like reduce the amount of energy it takes to move through the water or through the air,” Newbolt says. These ways of traveling lead schools of fish and flocks of birds to move in characteristic shapes. The geometry may differ from species to species—a flock of starlings moves differently than a V of Canada geese—but both ar

[ad_1] A strange-looking Boeing aircraft took off last week. It hovered above the Manassas Regional Airport in Virginia, and then landed again—the duration of the whole flight was less than 60 seconds, according to a Boeing representative. Eight propellers, all of them powered by electric motors, gave the craft the ability to ascend, hover, and descend. Boeing and its subsidiary, Aurora Flight Sciences, created the nearly 9-feet-wide, 30-feet-long prototype, but it’s not alone in this space: other outfits are working on hybrid or pure electric aerial craft designed to carry just a few people a short distance. Boeing is joined by companies like Bell, which showed off a hybrid vehicle with six propeller-like fans called the Nexus at the Consumer Electronics Show; it hasn’t flown yet, and is considered a hybrid because in addition to batteries, the concept also includes a gas-powered turbine that powers a generator. Then there’s Airbus, which is working on both an electric craft called th

[ad_1] Plants are humanity’s greatest ally in the fight against climate change. They soak up carbon dioxide and turn it into leaves and branches. The more trees humans plant, the less heat-trapping carbon pollution in the air. Unfortunately, plants require a lot of water and land, so much that humans might need to find a new ally to help draw down all that carbon. New research from a team of German scientists suggests that artificial photosynthesis could help. Scientists are urging the world to invest in the technology, which remains too costly to be practical. Artificial photosynthesis imitates the process that fuels plants naturally. Like the real thing, the technology uses carbon dioxide and water as food, and sunlight as an energy source. But rather than turn that carbon dioxide and water into leaves and branches, it produces carbon-rich products, such as alcohol. The process uses a special kind of solar cell that absorbs sunlight and conveys electricity to a pool of carbon dioxide

[ad_1] Anyone who Ventures far into backcountry mountains—or even skis off-piste at a resort—should know what they’re getting into. Slides kill more than 150 people worldwide every year, doing in snowmobilers, skiers, and ­snowboarders. But carrying the right gear (and taking a safety class) will make those epic, swooshy descents safer. These tools will help you get rescued—or save a teammate—in a snowfall emergency. [ad_2] Written By Berne Broudy

[ad_1] Our northern neighbors have invented a quintessentially-Canadian way of transporting oil from tar sands: They’re forging it into solid, hockey-puck-like briquettes. Dubbed ‘CanaPux,’ these bitumen-based blocks patented by the Canadian National Railway might make transporting oil by rail safer, cheaper, and more environmentally friendly—or at least as friendly as viscous petroleum can be. The amount of oil transported by rail within Canada drastically increased this past year, partly as a result of several pipeline proposals being blocked, including the controversial Trans Mountain and Keystone XL. That also means that more Canadian oil is now being exported via rail to the United States, and with it a host of safety concerns. Moving oil via rail is riskier than pushing it through a pipeline: Spills are more than twice as likely, according to a 2017 report by the Fraser Institute, a Canadian think tank. The chance of a spill is still low (less than one incident per 5 million barr

[ad_1] When the wintry mix makes going outside unpleasant, the couch and a good book are tempting. But think: if you do your spring cleaning now, you’ll be able to enjoy the first warm days of spring outside smelling flowers instead of inside scrubbing floors. Plus, if you start now, you can leverage the momentum of the new year and the revitalized fervor for the Konmari Method. Why should I do a deep-clean? A Princeton study found that a junk-covered room amps up stress and frustration by overloading your mind with stimuli. Basically everywhere you look you’re reminded of something you should do. That only intensifies during those long winter evenings when it’s just you, the pile of books you’ve got to alphabetize, and the crusties underneath your stove grates. Clutter in particular seems to have a deleterious effect on your mood and health. As a 2017 article in Psychology Today noted, “life satisfaction, physical health, and cognition all speak to the value of streamlining.” Plus, it