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

[ad_1] There’s something mysterious and magnetic about a message that disappears after you read it. And this type of communication can be useful too, allowing you to share private words or silly pictures without leaving a digital data trail. We collected five services, from email to instant-messaging, that let you send self-destructing messages. Read about each one, and then find the app that works best for you. 1. Gmail As part of its recent revamp, Gmail has added a new Confidential Mode, which lets you give your sent messages an expiration date. To make this work, instead of shooting your self-destructing emails to another server, Google hosts them on its own servers, where it can delete them after a set period of time. If both sender and recipient use Gmail, this process works seamlessly: Incoming messages look like typical emails, but when the expiration date arrives, the body text disappears (although the email itself and the subject header will stay in the recipient’s...

[ad_1] ↑ Katie Dahlhausen, biophysics Ph.D. candidate at UC Davis In 2015, I went to Australia to collect koala poo, which can teach us about their complex microbiome. Bacteria in their guts break down toxic tannins in the eucalyptus leaves they eat. We think one reason the babies eat their moms’ poo is to acquire microbes that will give their own system toxin-degrading powers. But I wanted to know for sure. An animal strain of chlamydia infects many Australian koalas. When I got to the wildlife hospital, veterinarians were treating them with antibiotics, but they were still sick. Some had stopped eating and were wasting away. Their poo, which is normally the size and shape of chocolate-­covered almonds, looked really dry, like the stuff at the bottom of a Cheetos bag. We guessed the drugs might be damaging their gut flora—which could prevent them from passing on key bacteria to their babies. Some koalas had survived treatment, and I soon discovered that they had ...

[ad_1] It’s Memorial Day weekend here in the U.S.A., which means it’s time to slow down for a beat and remember those who sacrificed. It’s also the unofficial beginning of summer and a Monday and a day for family barbecues. So, if you need something to stare at on your phone to avoid talking to your uncle Larry who has strong political opinions and a shocking amount of potato salad stuck in his goatee, you can hang out right here with us. Here’s a rundown of the biggest tech stories you missed last week. Catch up on the Last Week in Tech podcast There is no new episode of LWIT this week, which makes this a great time to dig into the backlog. Go back to last week or dig back several months and remember a time before Elon Musk went totally bonkers. You can follow us on SoundCloud, subscribe on iTunes, or add us on Stitcher. The great Alexa butt dial freak out of 2018 Last week, a Portland woman claimed that her Amazon Echo Dot device started secretly recording her ...

[ad_1] P eople who think physics is boring couldn’t be more wrong. It can explain everything from spooky interactions on the tiny scale of atoms and particles to how the entire universe behaves. As if that wasn’t enough, it can also be used to assess how realistic futuristic technology in science fiction is. My area of expertise—plasma physics—can explain many aspects of both lightsabers and the Death Star within Star Wars lore, for example. I’ve now worked out how feasible the blaster weapons used by, among others, the Star Wars character Han Solo are—and how they compare with lightsabers. In fact, real life versions of these weapons have already been developed. So with the prequel film Solo: A Star Wars Story being released, it seemed fitting to share this “research”. The key to understanding Star Wars technology is plasmas, a so-called “fourth state of matter” (in addition to solids, liquids and gases). This comprises freel...

[ad_1] About 14.5 percent of our ­greenhouse-​gas emissions come from livestock. But what if you could eat a burger without having a cow? When Mark Post grew the first lab-made beef in 2013, the patty (“close to meat but not that juicy,” according to one taste tester) cost $330,000. The speculative price of a frankenburger is now a much more palatable $12, and some startups say mock meat will hit shelves within a couple of years. Plants will most likely always be the greenest protein, but cultured meat could at least become more sustainable than flesh grown on the bone. Here’s how some ­estimates say it will shake out in land and water use, electricity, and emissions. 1/5 football field Making a metric ton of lab-grown protein wouldn’t require much land, according to researchers Hanna Tuomisto and Avijit Roy. But the 2.6 fields taken up cultivating the same protein from fava, kidney, or black beans aren’t wasted: These crops help keep fields...

[ad_1] After spending countless hours putting together a killer workstation, you have a tricked-out desktop computer, multiple monitors, bangin' speakers, and...a surface that's too tiny to fit it all. Here's how to build your own ergonomic, customized desk that displays all your tech, looks awesome—and doesn’t break the bank. What you’ll need There are an infinite number of ways to construct a desk. But for this particular project, I have four criteria I need my workstation to hit. Large : The vast majority of desks you’ll find in the store are 60 inches long or less. I needed at least 80 inches to fit all my gear, and the few store bought options I found just didn’t cut it. They were either ugly and cheaply made, or too expensive—a large, decent-quality one will run you at least $400. Cheap : Making something yourself instead of buying it almost always saves some money—and in this case, it’s going to cut hundreds of dollars from the pric...

[ad_1] Many people in the United States are looking forward to the first long weekend of the summer, filled with parades and remembrances of those who died in military service, time with family at a backyard cookout or lazing on a beach, and an extra 24 hours free from work to fill. Here are some science-related books that debuted over the past month to plump up your weekend reading list. Skincare is a huge obsession in modern society. Ever wonder what a dermatologist has to say about all those creams, washes, and elixirs? In Beyond Soap dermatologist Sandy Skotnicki lays out what she thinks you should be doing to keep your largest organ healthy. Chernobyl: The History of a Nuclear Catastrophe by Serhii Plokhy is a history of the 1986 nuclear disaster, putting the events around the crisis in context and exploring what can be done to ensure that an occurrence like Chernobyl doesn’t happen again. Christie Watson spent 20 years as a nurse, embodying one of the most intimate sides o...