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

[ad_1] The car sure-footedly descended from what felt like a cliff’s edge. (Maserati/) A turbocharged, Ferrari-built 590-horsepower 3.8-liter V8 engine makes the Levante Trofeo the most powerful production Maserati in the company’s storied history. The $169,980 vehicle is also the most exclusive, thanks to the availability of 400,000 option combinations, plus Maserati’s available personalization program. For the uninitiated, Maserati is one of Italy’s old’s exotic car brands, founded in 1914 as an engineering company; it’s been building sexy Italian automobiles since 1926. Today, it is one brand in the Fiat Chrysler Automobiles group, alongside its neighbor, Ferrari. The two companies cooperate on technology, and Maserati relies on Ferrari for its cars’ V8 engines. Sales of 55,000 Levantes since the car’s launch in 2016 make it the best-selling Maserati ever. And its crossover SUV body style, and sophisticated all-wheel drive system, make it the most capable off-road Maserati ever, too

[ad_1] A reconstruction of <em>Cambroraster falcatus</em>. (Lars Fields/Royal Ontario Museum/) What has claws like rakes, a circular mouth like a slice of pineapple, and is named after the Millennium Falcon? Cambroraster falcatus , that's what. This newly-discovered aquatic species lived more than 500 million years ago and was a giant of its time. "In terms of animals that it might look most similar to today, you could think of horseshoe crabs," says Joseph Moysiuk, a Royal Ontario Museum paleontologist who is the first author of a paper describing the Cambroraster for the first time. Like the horseshoe crab, the animal had a "huge head shield in the front, relatively small body," he said. Also like the horseshoe crab, Moysiuk and his colleagues believe the Cambroraster spent a lot of time in the mud, where it must have been a strange sight. The creature was about a foot long in a time when most animals were smaller than your little finger: it was

[ad_1] A forest. (Pexels/) Powerful winds can topple trees and tear up shrubs in the forest, and this can create an opening for invaders—plants that don't belong there. To learn more about this post-storm phenomenon, scientists decided to take an up-close and personal look. This can be grueling, as Eric Larson and Melissa Daniels discovered: For Daniels, who did most of the fieldwork, it meant scrabbling over trunks scattered across the ground like pickup sticks, hustling away from a falling tree that crashed down a scant 10 feet behind her, fighting steep hills, ticks, nettles, and poison ivy, and wielding a machete—yes, a machete. “Besides almost stepping on a venomous snake and pulling ticks off of ourselves, critters were probably the least of our worries,” Daniels said. “We were doing intensely strenuous work in obscene weather conditions—the heat index is frequently 100-plus degrees. The terrain is very hilly, and hiking up and down hills is tedious, but even more so when the

[ad_1] Compared to using pads or tampons over the same 10-year period, a menstrual cup cuts down on plastic waste by 94 to 99.6 percent. (Flickr/) The menstrual cup is moving into the mainstream as a growing number of people look for a more environmentally friendly way to manage their periods. But the bell-shaped silicon cups are anything but a new idea. The earliest versions date all the way back to 1867, with a receptacle suspended from a belt worn around the waste. Despite a long history and hundreds of modern models available for purchase, menstrual cups still get far less attention than pads and tampons. But now, more than a century and a half after their first iteration, scientists have scoured all available evidence to give us the scoop. Their verdict: Cups really are greener, safer, and perhaps even more effective than more mainstream products. For the review, published this month in by The Lancet , epidemiologist Annemieke van Eijk and her co-authors analyzed 43 studies and re

[ad_1] Great portable Bluetooth speakers (Pineapple Supply Co. via Unsplash/) Whether you frequently go on long bike rides, are looking for an easy solution to replace the terrible sound in your car, or you’d like to play some music at your next outdoor event, a portable speaker is a game-changer. You don’t need to lug around a five-pound speaker for decent sound. In fact, most of the speakers on this list have sound quality that's good enough to use as your home speaker. When buying a portable speaker, consider at the weight, battery life, and of course, the overall sound quality. Here are some great options. It’s completely waterproof. (Amazon/) The Bose SoundLink Micro Bluetooth speaker is small and portable. In fact, despite the size, it packs quite an impressive sound. The speaker comes with a strap to clip it onto your bike or backpack, making it easy to listen to music on long rides. It’s also completely waterproof, so you can take it with you outdoors without worrying about

[ad_1] The <em>Suffren</em>. The fencing seen on top is temporary. (Christina Mackenzie/) Submarines are some of the most complex objects made by people. They contain up to 1 million components, compared to around 5,000 for a car or 15,000 for a battle tank. Only four nations in the world have the capacity to build and arm them entirely on their own: the United States, France, Russia and China. It takes about 20 years and 50-million worker-hours to design and build one, so a nation like France launches a new type of submarine only every 40 or 50 years. “It's not like a Lego box which contains all the necessary bits and pieces together with detailed instructions,” remarked one French military official. “We had to create everything.” As each submarine is used for more than 30 years, that means those launched this decade will still be diving beyond 2060. This is why this month’s launch in France of a new class of submarine is a very big deal in the defense world. The sub i

[ad_1] You can't really see the emissions coming out of planes, but rest assured they're there in droves. (Pexels/) Not every 16-year-old gets to attend the United Nations Climate Action Summit, and even fewer get there by sailing from Sweden to New York in an eco-friendly, 60-foot racing yacht. Greta Thunberg is pretty much the only one. Thunberg is superlative in a lot of ways—she's already a Nobel Peace Prize nominee and would be the youngest laureate ever if she wins—and this boat trip is no exception. She also doesn't fly. As part of her relentless campaign against climate change, she's led school strikes and spoken publicly in many countries, but she's always traveled using some other method to do her part in reducing carbon emissions. Trains, for instance, can get you far in Europe. Crossing the Atlantic is a bit harder sans aircraft, but the skipper of the Malizia II stepped up to offer his services. When it's not ferrying teenage Nobel nominees, the

[ad_1] Caroline S. Brooks with a butter sculpture bas-relief of Columbus for the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago. (Public Domain/) 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 Apple, 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. Today's episode is our season 2 finale, and it's one of our best yet! Now is the perfect time to binge all your old Weirdest Thing favorites. We'll be back again in a few weeks. Fact: America's first celebrity athletes were competitive endurance walkers By Claire Maldarelli Modern-day Americans often express their love of

[ad_1] Our changing climate makes environments more accommodating for people-biting mosquitoes. (Pablo Cabrera/CDC/) A mosquito-borne virus called the Eastern equine encephalitis virus is circulating in Orange County, Florida, health officials warned this week. The virus was identified in a group of chickens researchers use to monitor levels of mosquito-borne diseases in the area. Eastern equine encephalitis virus (EEEV) is dangerous: When it spreads to humans, the virus can infect the brain, and turns fatal in about a third of people, according to the Centers for Disease Control. But the disease is also extremely rare in humans—it only affects an average of seven people in the United States each year. However, like all viruses transmitted by mosquitoes, there's a risk that it could have a bigger impact under a warmer climate. The number of annual cases may start to creep up. "I would not be surprised at all to see that happening," says Thomas Unnasch, an expert in EEEV a

[ad_1] The hack included around 140,000 social security numbers. (From: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Social_security_card_john_q_public.png">Wikipedia</a>) (Wikimedia Commons/) Between major breaches like ones from Equifax and Marriott, you could be forgiven for having data-theft fatigue. It's that world-weary feeling of knowing that once again, the personal information of millions has been compromised. But the news about one how one hacker managed to nab information relating to around 100 million people from Capital One is not just concerning. It’s unusual. Here’s what you should know about the incident, which involves Paige A. Thompson, the hacker Capital One describes as a “highly sophisticated individual.” She has already been arrested by the FBI. Who was affected by the Capital One personal data breach? Capital One says that in the United States, 100 million people were affected. In Canada, that number is 6 million. Most of the informa

[ad_1] Many products featured on this site were editorially chosen. Popular Science may receive financial compensation for products purchased through this site. Copyright © 2019 Popular Science. A Bonnier Corporation Company. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited. [ad_2] Written By Sara Chodosh

[ad_1] "Doing good conservation requires knowing what you’ve got, where it is, and how it’s doing.” —Greg Asner (Photo by Steve Craft/) On the Big Island of Hawaii, a fungus called ceratocystis is murdering ‘Ōhi‘a trees—at least 1 million in the past eight years. Local forest experts had no idea how to contain the quick-killing pathogen, until an aerial survey from ecologist Greg Asner revealed a pattern they could distinctly see only from above. At the edge of Hawaii ­Volcanoes National Park, fences drew a sharp line between dead trees and healthy ones. The barriers kept out feral pigs, which, they realized, would gash the trunks with their tusks, enabling the infection. If the scientists could bar the ungulates, the ‘Ōhi‘as might survive. This type of insight from Asner, 51, has helped arboreal managers plot and maintain the health of forests for nearly a decade. “Doing good conservation requires knowing what you’ve got, where it is, and how it’s doing,” Asner says. His lab, abo

[ad_1] The EPA’s most recent census of U.S. waste tallied 262.4 million tons of new junk in 2015—the weight of about 40 Pyramids of Giza, ​or 4.5 pounds per person per day. We can recycle about one-​­quarter of what we toss, but rising costs and trade issues mean some municipalities no longer bother. Even in places that still attempt to keep trash out of landfills and oceans, not all “recyclable” items end up renewed. Here’s how much of that stuff actually makes it back into circulation—and why it’s smart to use fewer disposables, no ­matter what bin you put them in. [ad_2] Written By Erin Blakemore

[ad_1] Come on—you can do better than a white background. (Matam Jaswanth via Unsplash/) If looking at a grid of icons on your phone has started to become boring, you don’t have to stay married to it. There are plenty of Android home screen launchers that go beyond the 5-by-5 grid and will completely change how you use your phone. I'm not talking about the typical, well-known ones like Nova Launcher, either (though I do love Nova Launcher). While lots of home screen launcher apps aim to amplify Android's typical layout, others seek to use an entirely different paradigm. Some look awesome, some offer denser information up front, and others are simple and minimal, so you aren't constantly distracted by your phone. Check these out: Launcher 10: Windows Phone-Style tiles on Android Launcher 10 lets you play Windows Phone dress-up with your Android. (Whitson Gordon/) Remember Windows Phone—the operating system so few people used it became a bit of a punchline? It actually had a

[ad_1] Desert sky at Joshua Tree National Park. (Pixabay/) Botanist Lynn Sweet regularly treks through California's Joshua Tree National Park, nearly 800,000 acres that lie at the intersection of the Mojave and Colorado deserts. She likes to photograph the gnarly, spikey-limbed trees, which look—as some have observed—like a picture from a Dr. Seuss children's book. Much as many of the park’s million or more yearly tourists do, she marvels at their strange beauty. “They have an amazing shape,” she says. She said they don’t bloom every year, but when they do it’s very special. “This year, the plants flowered earlier than most people had ever seen. Some plants started flowering in November, and then the number of trees in flower increased until springtime, when nearly every tree was in flower. It was incredible,” she says. The trees, legend has it, were named after the Biblical figure Joshua by 19th century Mormons who thought their upwardly outstretched limbs resembled arms raise

[ad_1] A tough puzzle to solve. (Robina Weermeijer on Unsplash/) We've known for a while that having a mutation in one specific gene is the most common genetic cause of ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease. What we didn't know is how that miscoded DNA turns into illness. People with this mutation have hundreds of extra copies of a short RNA sequence—GGGGCC. Most people just have a few copies, says Aaron Gitler, a geneticist at Stanford University who is one of the authors of a new study out today in Nature Neuroscience . In those people, the sequence doesn't do anything; it just sits there as part of the genome, located in a gene called C9orf72. But in people with hundreds of copies, the sequence comes alive and codes for a type of protein that damages neurons as it builds up. How exactly this endless junk RNA turns harmful has remained mysterious, as it doesn't contain the bits of genetic code that typically kickstart protein formation. But now researchers belie

[ad_1] A tough puzzle to solve. (Robina Weermeijer on Unsplash/) We've known for a while that having a mutation in one specific gene is the most common genetic cause of ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease. What we didn't know is how that miscoded DNA turns into illness. People with this mutation have hundreds of extra copies of a short RNA sequence—GGGGCC. Most people just have a few copies, says Aaron Gitler, a geneticist at Stanford University who is one of the authors of a new study out today in Nature Neuroscience . In those people, the sequence doesn't do anything; it just sits there as part of the genome, known as the gene RPS25. But in people with hundreds of copies, the sequence comes alive and codes for a protein that damages neurons as it builds up. How exactly that happened has been mysterious—until now. “What we set out to do is discover how that protein works,” Gitler says. The team started with yeast, which is easy to do genetic modifications on. When

[ad_1] The new smart bed system is technically called the Tempur-Ergo Smart Base Collection with Sleeptracker technology. (Tempur Sealy/) According to the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, roughly 50 percent of people have had a problem with snoring at some point. There’s no shortage of potential treatments out there, from nasal strips to jaw-positioning devices. Tempur’s latest smart bed, though, uses built-in sensors that can detect when you might be snoring and automatically adjust the angle of the bed to try and stop it. The Tempur-Ergo Smart Base has sensors that sit below the mattress and above the adjustable base. Rather than relying on microphones, the tech senses a sleeper’s heart-rate and breathing pattern to try and identify when snoring may occur. It looks for signs of an elevated heart rate or labored breathing, both of which can indicate reduced oxygen intake from snoring. The system doesn’t rely on microphones to actually hear you snoring in order to take action. Once

[ad_1] Parents are bombarded on social media and other sites by an ever-changing stream of advice on how to nourish their young children. (Pixabay/) Every five years, nutrition experts from across the country congregate in Washington, D.C. to begin the tricky work of deciding how and what Americans should eat. This also includes what federal aid programs should pay for and what hospital and school lunches should include. But the 2020 guidelines, set to come out next spring, will be the first to take into account a previously neglected group of Americans: infants under the age of two. The right food is critical for proper development, but what that "right food" is has been socially and emotionally contentious. Parents are bombarded on social media and other sites by an ever-changing stream of advice on how to nourish their young children: Introduce vegetables before bananas to be sure your child will like greens, breast-feed whenever possible as its better for your baby's

[ad_1] For more deals and product chatter, check out our exclusive Facebook group. LILLEbaby (Amazon/) Today, you can snag a LILLEbaby Baby Carrier for up to 55 percent off. There are 19 options to choose between, ranging in price from $77 to $105. The LILLEbaby Complete All Season model lets you comfortably carry your baby in six positions and features two-way straps that allow you to carry your child in front or in back. The company designed the carriers to permit for temperature control with zip-off material, lumbar support for your back, and comfy padded shoulder straps. It also comes with storage pockets and a hood to keep your kid out of the sun. $105. For all carrying options, click here. Anker (Amazon/) Anker charging accessories are on sale once again for up to 42 percent off. You can't go wrong with Anker products. Their USB-C Anker PowerStrip Padr comes with two outlets, two 12-watt USB-A ports, and one 30-watt USB-C port. The plug fits sideways into your wall outlet, so