popsci

In research presented today at the American Geophysical Union’s (AGU) Fall Meeting, Raphael Kudela of the University of California, Santa Cruz, announced that unusual conditions in the Pacific Ocean caused the surprising and incredibly toxic algal bloom along the West Coast this summer. A strange area of warm water in the Pacific, known as the Blob, combined with the nutrient-rich waters on the Pacific coast created the perfect conditions for an algal bloom, a phenomenon seen more often in warmer waters, like the Persian Gulf or areas with a lot of nutrient runoff, such as Lake Erie....

The switch to DST makes your body think that it’s going through some sort of jet lag, and it may take some time to get used to. And to help you with the transition, here are 10 sleep products that can help you go back to sleeping like a baby. They’re all on sale for a limited time. CarbonIce: 7-in-1 Bacteria Protection and Cooling Pillow A Kickstarter and IndieGoGo hit, this 7-in-1 pillow features Activ-Air technology and CarbonIce, which work together to enhance breathability, increase comfort, wick moisture, and resist dirt, bacteria, and dust....

Here are some of our favorite “found” accessories and some suggestions for putting them to good use. MacGyver would be proud.

At a time when people are working (and playing) harder than ever before, consumers are hungry for products that make them feel not just good, but better. But the marketing around such spaces—cosmetics, skin- and haircare, fitness, and sexual health, to name a few—has long been a minefield of meaningless buzzwords and pseudoscientific solutions. This inaugural class of Personal Care winners represents some of the best exceptions: These products use genuine innovations in science and technology to improve daily life....

Now in its seventh year, the Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards recognizes six winners and 10 commendations from a pool of 5,000 entries. The competition is free to enter, and 10 percent of all publicity profits are donated to the UK’s Whitley Fund for Nature. Check out our favorites from the entertaining 2022 champions.

In 2009, a young female pipistrelle was “ringed” in the Russian Darwin Nature Reserve, where she received a small bracelet with a identifying number on it. More than two months later, her body was found in the French Alps. A team of Russian and French biologists mapped out the journey to be at least 1,544 miles, although they speculate that with varied flight paths and hunting detours, the bat could have flown upwards of 1,864 miles....

After months of negotiations, however, The New York Times reported Monday morning that the Biden administration is closer than it’s ever been to reaching a tentative security agreement regarding future TikTok operations in the US, one that unlike Trump’s past demands, wouldn’t require TikTok’s Chinese tech giant owner, ByteDance, to sell it to a third-party. However, both the Justice and Treasury Departments remain skeptical of the initial deal’s efficacy and security....

In 2017, the property owner noticed some fragments of fossilized bones during a backyard construction project. The owner contacted a research team who investigated the site and launched an excavation campaign. Between August 1 and 10 of this year, Portuguese and Spanish paleontologists working on the site have unearthed what could be the remains of the largest sauropod dinosaur ever found in Europe. “It is not usual to find all the ribs of an animal like this, let alone in this position, maintaining their original anatomical position....

The city of Mykolaiv sits just northwest of the mouth of the Dnieper River, in southern Ukraine. While the city has not yet been occupied by Russian troops, it has not been spared from attack. A Russian missile tore through a government building in the city on Tuesday, leaving at least 12 dead. Just over two weeks earlier, on March 13, nine civilians were killed by Russian cluster munitions in the city, according to a report from Human Rights Watch, and that was just one of multiple uses of the widely condemned weapon so far in the war....

Most contaminated-water diving is done by military and professional divers either as part of routine inspections or just after tanker explosions, natural disasters and pipeline breaks. “It can be hard to determine if a body of water is contaminated just by looking at it,” explains Phil Newsum, a former commercial diver who now heads the Association of Diving Contractors International. “But those pollutants will come right into your helmet.” In 2001, shortly after sending its divers into diesel-fouled waters to repair the USS Cole, the U....

Horned lizards have a specific behavior — and handy anatomy — that lets them eat venomous ants without getting stung. Your grandmother, however, would not approve of their manners.A paleontologist has found the fossil of a pregnant whale — which appeared initially to be a confusing jumble of adult and fetus bones — indicating that early amphibious whales gave birth on land.Somewhere along the way, ethanol developed a bit of a reputation as an eco-friendly alternative fuel — it’s corn!...

When you want feedback on an outfit, you can ask Alexa to take a picture or video. The camera is oriented so it can take a full-body image from a reasonably close distance. It then applies a “depth-effect,” which strongly resembles the fake background blur you’ll find in the iPhone 7 Plus Portrait Mode. From there, users dive into the companion app, in which they can browse a Look Book full of past styles, share photos, and call up fashion advice from the Style Check app....

Data designer Carlo Zapponi has a lovely new animation, Bolides, showing all these recorded impacts, along with every known meteorite fall–most of which weren’t seen when they happened. The information comes from The Meteorite Bulletin, which is maintained by the Nomenclature Committee of the Meteoritical Society. The word “bolide” comes from the Greek word for missile, and is used to describe bright fireballs. The database doesn’t yet include the giant Chelyabinsk meteorite, which fell over Russia earlier this year....

The class of drugs that Veran was calling out were, specifically, non-steroidal anti-inflammatories (NSAIDs), which are already more closely regulated in France than in most other countries, including the United States. NSAIDs like ibuprofen are used throughout the world to treat fever and pain.The Guardian reports that a spokesperson from Toulouse hospital in France explained that anti-inflammatories can increase the risk of complications “when there is a fever or infection....

During a different study in 2007, the researchers discovered that treating the roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans with a common antidepressant compound called mianserin helped the worms live 30 to 40 percent longer. This time, the researchers wanted to figure out why that happened. They were paying special attention to gene expression—whether or not genetic blueprints are used and can change throughout an organism’s life—of a particular set of genes that, if turned on, were known to cause many of the effects of aging....

The new HBO drama House of the Dragon gave us an excuse to bug some reptile and dinosaur experts, and have them share their scientific interpretations of these magical hellfire beasts. Riley Black, paleontology writer for PopSci and many others The House of the Dragon reptiles look pretty ho-hum to me. They are your standard Western dragon we’re all pretty familiar with, pretty much all the same form and likely the same species, and are only about as different from each other as two Komodo dragons....

In a new study published in the journal Endocrine Reviews, epidemiologists reviewed existing research from around the world to understand how a resident’s ability to walk around their neighborhoods is linked to the likelihood of obesity and diabetes. By reviewing several papers that link physical activity to metabolic diseases, Gillian Booth, a scientist at the MAP Center for Urban Health Solutions at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto, Canada, and her co-author Nicholas Howell tried to distill the individual factors that affect people’s mobility across built environments....

For researchers in Japan, the latest of the argonaut mysteries concerns its “shell,” which is actually a self-built, paper-thin egg case that surrounds the females. This case—which is the reason argonauts are commonly referred to as the paper nautilus (despite their status as octopuses)—has been of particular interest to scientists and philosophers for thousands of years, even piquing Aristotle’s curiosity. Argonauts are distantly related to a hard-shelled cephalopod called nautiluses, leading scientists to question whether shared genetic information may lead to similar shell formation....