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[ad_1] Travel gets very expensive very fast—and one of the biggest costs is the hotel room. But with all the discounts and deal-hunting sites out there, you shouldn't pay top price unless you absolutely have to. Instead, save more of your budget for actually enjoying your trip. Here are our top tips and essential resources for spending as little as possible on your next hotel stay. Get the timing right Most hotels will reward you for booking as early as possible: That's when they offer the cheapest prices, and sometimes, they throw in sweeteners like free drinks or an extra night. So, once you know where and when you plan to travel, start looking at prices as soon as you can, while they're at their lowest. On the flip side, you can also find good deals by booking very late, as hotels try to fill up their rooms at the last minute. However, with this option, you'll have a smaller pool of hotels and rooms to choose from. Thanks to the limited selection, you may miss out on...

[ad_1] Streaming services like Netflix, YouTube, and Hulu put a vast library of movies and television shows at your fingertips. But the sheer size of the repository makes it easier than ever for youngsters to stumble across inappropriate content. So the companies that provide all this digital media have integrated a number of parental controls into their platforms. However, you may not know how to find all the settings. Here's how to establish protections for younger eyes and ears. When you decide to control what your kids watch on Netflix, you have two options: Create a new, limited user profile, or set up password protections for mature content. First, you can set up a dedicated user profile for your children. This has the added benefit of keeping their viewing separate from your own, preventing your recommendations from filling up with children's shows and cartoons. However, it's not perfect: This method relies on kids to stick to their own profiles, but they can easily ...

[ad_1] The planet’s coral reefs are in trouble. Thanks to warming and acidifying oceans, the animals that make up coral reefs are dying, turning the reefs themselves into algae-covered ghost towns. This represents a loss of habitat for numerous nearby creatures, many of which evolved to only live in the reefs. So the deaths of the corals can lead to the deaths of many other species. From monitoring the reefs by listening to them to local action and working to understand the dynamics of coral illness, scientists and conservationists are taking a lot of approaches to stem the tide. Still, without drastic action on our part, the oceans are going to get warmer—and more coral will die—a predicted three-quarters of the world’s reefs by 2100. This grim story was illuminated by a ray of hope this week, in the form of a new paper published in the journal Scientific Reports . After years of attempts, Smithsonian Institution researchers in Hawaii have figured out how to cry...

[ad_1] Gadgets The biggest camera show in the U.S. has some impressive new models. All the best new gear that we saw during the New York City show. [ad_2] Written By Jeanette D. Moses

[ad_1] C limate change has spurred the spread of invasive insects that devour crops, destroy homes, and spread disease. Now, rising temperatures are driving cadaver-eating blow flies to migrate north in search of cooler weather, with consequences for forensic scientists who rely on them to solve crimes. Blow flies are drawn to dead bodies, both human and animal. They land on a fresh corpse within minutes of death. The females take a quick taste to make sure it’s good food for their larvae, then lay hundreds of eggs. Once hatched, the maggots begin feasting on soft tissues, hastening decomposition. In doing so, they become key players in murder investigations by helping forensic scientists determine when a person died. Blow flies have proved critical in countless homicides by supporting the innocence or guilt of suspected killers. Forensic entomologists can do this because they know the lifecycle of blow flies found in their region. But now, as blow flies move northward, driven by ...

[ad_1] It looks like a quick photoshop job. Or the work of a secret Antarctic civilization that worshipped right angles. But this rectangular iceberg is one hundred percent natural. Okay so it’s not a perfect rectangle, but this floating ice sheet gets unsettlingly close. NASA scientists spotted the geometric beauty just off the northern Antarctic peninsula when surveying the region earlier this month as part of Operation IceBridge, the agency’s longest-running polar ice survey initiative. “I thought it was pretty interesting; I often see icebergs with relatively straight edges, but I've not really seen one before with two corners at such right angles like this one had,” IceBridge scientist Jeremy Harbeck said in a NASA statement. With its steep sides and flat top, this iceberg is what’s known as a tabular iceberg. NASA has not released official measurements, but Ted Scambos, senior research scientist at the University of Colorado Boulder told National Geog...

[ad_1] Twitter is cracking down on bots. A fundamental part of the social media platform’s appeal, these automated accounts provide information—and comedy and artistry—in ways that are totally acceptable under the site's terms of service. Twitter's API, which helps external software meld with the site, supports users in building their own, leading to a lively newsfeed that’s part human, part machine. Bots are under intense scrutiny, as any news consumer is sure to know. Over the last quarter, Twitter erased 9 million of these robo-users (and perhaps a few real people with bot-like habits by mistake) in an effort to “improv[e] the health of the public conversation.” Fake accounts like these have long been criticized for artificially inflating celebrity followings and generally annoying real users, but the recent spate of deletions is a response to fake accounts exerting undue influence on national politics. As such, the mass bot massacre is expected to...