“We think this is a hidden role of large wood,” says Ivan Arismendi, a stream ecologist at OSU and a coauthor on the study. “Everybody that will need to cross will use them, so it creates a concentration of animals.” The rivers of North America were once full of naturally downed trees. A log jam in Bellingham, Washington, removed by colonists in 1877, was three-quarters of a mile long, and was so ancient that trees grew on top of the fallen wood....

According to Zuckerberg’s post, this stunt, in which he plays around in a demo called “The World Beyond,” was created with the Presence Platform, which the company first unveiled during the 2021 Facebook Connect conference. While the teased Project Cambria device is not yet available, the Meta CEO says it will come out “later this year.” (Protocol has more about the device, and how the passthrough technology works with both the Quest 2 and Project Cambria; “passthrough” refers to the process of beaming real-world scenes into the headset....

Released May 1, and with just a brief runtime, the video showcases a novel jetpack, portraying a version of the future of naval warfare—and then undermines that same promise. It is a beautiful gimmick, but also a sign of the real limitations of jetpacks as a military tool. Made by Gravity Industries, the jetpack is really a system of engines, worn like a gangly exoskeleton. In each of the pilot’s hands is a thruster, used for balance and steering....

Unsurprisingly, toys aren’t at that level of sophistication yet, but some companies are trying to imitate the excitement of fighting in mid-air. ByRobot, a Chinese drone manufacturer, makes remote controlled quadcopters that can fight virtually. Instead of firing real, exciting lasers, they fire invisible canons at each other. When either one has been hit a certain number of times, it drops out of the air, defeated. It’s a fun, fast-paced game, and for $49, it’s one of the more affordable drones on the market....

Historically, low income and minority communities have been on the receiving end of pollution, toxic waste, and other environmental problems at rates much higher than middle-class white Americans. Many of these communities have also been on the discriminatory end of the criminal justice system, public school funding, and access to amenities like parks and grocery stores.“The whole spirit of organizations like ours,” says Green ReEntry’s Rashad, “is a spirit of wanting to right social wrongs....

The very first images of a giant squid were only recorded in 2004, and it was nearly another decade before researchers got live footage of one in action. Both those sightings happened in Japanese waters. Last week, though, NOAA researchers on an exploratory mission in the Gulf of Mexico recorded a squid in U.S. waters for the very first time. The video is brief and eerie, like most glimpses of deep-sea life....

Wombat feces are cubic, a fact that you should remember in case it comes up in bar trivia. This isn’t news—people have been wondering about the cubic poop for a long time. Past wombat poop thinkers have speculated that perhaps the three extant species of wombat have a square anus, which forms the dry feces into dense little cubes on their way into the world, or perhaps the wombat’s stomach somehow digests the food into the unusual shape....

Days after the news, the organization announced that it would assemble experts to look at setting international guidelines for the use of this unprecedented new gene editing technology. Last week, the UN organization announced the appointment of that committee, which consists of eighteen experts from around the globe and two chairs. There’s no guarantee the guidelines they’ll assemble on human genome editing will be followed, but it’s a first attempt at ushering the world into a future in which we can edit the very things that make us human....

This report follows in tandem with another good energy update: Almost all of the power plants shut down last year used fossil fuels as their source of energy. And most of those plants used coal, largely recognized as the most carbon intensive fuel type. And the good news keeps on rolling. We should expect this trend to continue, since the agency reports that power companies plan to retire nearly 10 gigawatts of coal power in 2018....

Each house was designed to be as energy-efficient as possible—on a budget of $250,000. As I stepped up to the SURE House, a student from Stevens Institute of Technology (SIT) in Hoboken, New Jersey—which took first place among the 15 colleges and universities participating in the decathlon—asked, “Would you like a tour?” (Since last December, SIT students have been documenting the progress of SURE House through their blog on the Popular Science website....

Tactics from foam rollers to compression tights to ice baths have become popular among all athletes, whether they be weekend warriors or elite competitors. But none of them are the miracle products we often think they are. Why do our muscles get sore after we exercise? The reason we get soreness in the first place has to do with what’s happening inside our muscles when we workout: We generate small amounts of damage to the muscle fibers themselves....

If you’re not in the industry of audio you probably don’t think too much about the mechanics of sound. Sure, most people care about how sounds make them feel, but they aren’t as concerned with how the sound actually affects them. Understanding how sound works does have a number of practical applications, however, and you don’t have to be a physicist or engineer to explore this fascinating subject. Here’s a primer on the science of sound to help get you started....

The by-products of all this rampant combustion are smelly compounds called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. These molecules “seem to be all over the universe,” says Louis Allamandola, the founder and director of the Astrophysics and Astrochemistry Lab at NASA Ames Research Center. “And they float around forever,” appearing in comets, meteors and space dust. These hydrocarbons have even been shortlisted for the basis of the earliest forms of life on Earth....

Light travels in waves. Every color we see is determined by the length of those waves. Red wavelengths are the longest, and as you go through the rainbow the waves get shorter and shorter until you reach the blues and violets, which are the smallest. As the Sun’s light travels towards us, at first all it encounters is the emptiness of space. But here on Earth, swirling in the air around us are thousands of near-invisible particles....

Its name is gluten. Gluten is a mixture of proteins found mostly in wheat, but also in barley, rye, and oats. These grains make up many of our breads, pastas, granolas, noodles, tortillas, and beers. That’s trouble for several million Americans (about one percent of us) who suffer from celiac disease, an autoimmune disorder in which gluten causes the body to attack the small intestine. Several million more people (up to five percent of the population) suffer from “non-celiac wheat sensitivity,” in which gluten triggers celiac-like symptoms—such as stomachaches, diarrhea and depression....

The species had evaded the spotlight in the rugged Greater Annamites of north Vietnam until last spring, when scientists from Global Wildlife Conservation (GWC) and local universities captured hard footage of the rabbit-sized critter scampering through the undergrowth. They published a description of the find in Nature Ecology and Evolution this week. According to a press release from GWC there are 10 known species of chevrotain mainly in Asia, and none of them are mice or deer....

It’s early September, and the treeline along the Housatonic River by the flight field in Stratford, Connecticut, is still green. The cockpit holds a wealth of screens, switches, buttons, and gauges, but I only need to focus on three key controls: the rudder pedals at my feet, a lever called the collective to my left, and a stick known as the cyclic between my knees. Those are the basic controls that any helicopter pilot must master, and I’m certainly no pilot....

Semiconductors—computer chips—are essential for modern tech. If you’re curious about semiconductors and this new legislation, here’s what to know about how this new influx of money could affect the global chip landscape. The rationale behind the funding “The primary motivation is that the world has become dependent on one company located in one country, which has a number of risks associated with it,” says David Yoffie, a professor of international business administration at Harvard Business School....

One way to gauge what potential Russian attacks could look like is to analyze past events. “We know from what Russia has done in the past, what they’re capable of,” says Glenn Gerstell, former General Counsel of the United States National Security Agency from 2015 to 2020. “And they’ve used Ukraine as a little bit of their cyber punching bag, so to speak.” Since 2015, when a Russian attack took out Ukraine’s electrical grid, Ukraine has worked hard to shore up its digital defenses....

As reported by Inside Defense last week, the US Navy’s new Medium Unmanned Surface Vessel (MUSV) will “feature a broad payload area where the Navy can ‘pick and choose’ the platform’s capabilities.” Another way to look at this tidbit is that the Navy wants a new kind of robotic boat, knows the rough size of the vessel it wants, and does not yet know exactly how that robot will be used for war....