Using a specialized technique called total internal reflection microscopy, the researchers were able to aim light at the cell at an angle which lit only the outermost surface, where HIV assembles. To be sure they were seeing actual viral assembly, they added fluorescent molecules to the Gag protein in the cell, which is essential to viral construction. When the proteins appeared at the surface of the cell, the fluorescence changed color as the molecules packed in more tightly, another indicator that what was being witnessed was in fact viral creation....

Rumors had been swirling that Ford and Google were working together to develop driverless vehicles, sparked by a report from Yahoo Tech. Fields acknowledged the rumors while a slide naming partners in the project, including the University of Michigan, State Farm Insurance, and Velodyne sensors, was on the screen behind him. What we did learn about Ford’s autonomous vehicle project at CES 2016 is that it’s currently on its third generation....

Turner needed to identify his samples, so he took them into the lab to sequence their genomes. Many sea sponge species are difficult to tell apart with the naked eye—especially the ones Turner collected, with their formless shapes and monochrome beige bodies. But DNA reveals all their distinctions. After a lot of sequencing, and cross-referencing with existing data and research, Turner concluded that he had discovered four previously undocumented sponge species from the order Scopolinida....

While many industries are winding down in anticipation of the holidays, the space industry is ending not with a whimper, but with a bang — specifically, several bangs characterized by fiery explosions streaking all the way out of the atmosphere. Although Tuesday was originally set to host four (4!) different missions into space, various conditions have postponed them all. But you should be able to catch one or two from the comfort of your favorite device....

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....

The 45-year Cold War probably never got colder than when the US Army decided to build Camp Century, a facility more than 30 feet below Greenland’s ice sheet. Herbert O. Johansen’s February 1960 Popular Science feature, “US Army Builds a Fantastic City Under Ice,” describes the Army’s unusual project, which turned out to have hidden Cold War ambitions. The US Army Corps of Engineers began work on the camp in 1959, claiming it as a site to conduct polar research....

Perhaps best known for his colorful depiction of life on Mars in Popular Science’s May 1930 feature, “Do Beavers Rule On Mars?”, science writer Thomas Elway was no stranger to conjecture. In addition to his prediction of a ruling class of Red Planet beavers whose “eyes might be larger than those of the Earthly beaver because the sunlight is not so strong,” and whose “bodies might be larger because of lesser Martian gravity,” Elway also described a species of crab that might inhabit the Moon (“The Moon is Made of Cinders”, Popular Science, December 1929)....

You can easily make standing waves yourself by taking a rope, fixing it on one end, and shaking the other end up and down. If you play around you’ll find that at a specific frequency of vibration, one big peak forms in the center of the rope. That’s because as one wave peak travels down the rope and reflects off the end, the next peak meets it wave at the same spot resulting in a “double wave”....

Garmin offers a ton of different models and the individual lines can be difficult to tell apart, so we have broken this list down by type. We have also included separate links to include different sizes and colors because personal preference comes into play heavily. Whichever one you pick, it can help you track your progress and fitness gains. Or, it can tell you just how elevated your heart rate gets during the finale of The Bachelor....

In a paper published Monday in Nature Plants, a team of scientists report successfully using the gene editing tool CRISPR to make the groundcherry a more attractive agricultural crop for farmers—and a more appealing fruit for consumers. The new findings are good news not just for groundcherries, but for anyone that wants to popularize all kinds of orphan crops: plants that might have a local or regional footprint but can’t be found in the mass market due to problems in production....

The motor for a reel mower is you! Your legs and arms are the driving force that push the reel mower through your grass and thus convert your mussy lawn into a nice tidy lot. All of this exercise can be a good thing. In order to achieve the best cut with a reel mower, you must walk at a nice even pace. This pace can be easier said than done–pushing a reel mower isn’t a piece of cake....

Google Home Max: What is it? The Google Home Speaker does everything you’d expect a typical Google Home device to do, like tell you the weather, play trivia games, control smart home devices, and of course, sync up to music services like Spotify and Apple Music. The Max is roughly the size of a large bread—not the wimpy Wonder Bread from the super market, but a hearty loaf from the farmer’s market....

Keep working Google Drive and the three online apps within it—Docs, Sheets, and Slides—have an offline mode you can activate when there’s no internet available. You’ll need to set it up before you lose your web connection: From the main Google Drive interface, click the cog icon in the top right, followed by Settings, and finally tick the box next to Offline. That means whatever type of computer you’re on, Chromebook or not, you won’t have to completely give up when your internet connection dies....

One panel (located on the inside front cover) was dedicated to a Ford Motor Company ad for its new crossover vehicle, Flex. The second panel was boldly situated smack dab, top, center on the magazine’s front cover. In case you weren’t too sure about what this cover was all about, Esquire helped you with a top banner callout that puffed, “The World’s First E-Ink Cover.” On the front cover’s E-Ink panel, Esquire proudly proclaimed, “The 21st century begins NOW....

Please download these datasheets for more information about these two ICs: HEF4094BT datasheetPIC12F629 datasheet You can also examine the content of the hex file that is programmed on the PIC12F629. You will need these products for reading the hex file: PICkit 2 (#DV164120) datasheetMouser (#579-DV164120; $49.99)Right angle 6-pin header Molex .100 K.K. connector (Mouser #538-22-28-8060; $0.43)Jumper wires, male (SparkFun Electronics #PRT-08431; $3.95)Jumper wires, female (SparkFun Electronics #PRT-08430; $3.95)Microchip MPLAB IDE #SW007002...

Before buying a handheld navigator, be aware that almost all systems that offer services (like messaging, SOS calls, or tracking) require a subscription. Here are three handheld navigation systems that can offer off-the-grid peace of mind. Remember to update your maps before you head out! The inReach line used to be DeLorme, which was acquired by Garmin in 2016. This device’s 100 hours of battery life is more than any other comparable device on the market....

“This is a critical turning point in the long-term transition of Hawaii’s energy landscape. Unfortunately, the timing has converged with global events that are currently increasing the cost of electricity,” said Shelee Kimura, president and CEO of Hawaiian Electric in press release. “We know that paying more for an essential service like electricity will impact many households and businesses particularly at a time when other costs are rising. We wanted to let customers know the situation in advance so they can plan and we can help them with options....

The extreme heat has put 42 million people under weather alerts. The temperatures are expected to both worsen drought conditions for those in the dry areas that cover two-thirds of the country and bring stormy, humid conditions to the South and Midwest. The already fire-battered Pacific Northwest is at risk of even more burgeoning fires, especially as lightning strikes flare up across southern Oregon and northern California. “It’s been a severe and dangerous summer, some of the heatwaves have been devastatingly hot,” Michael Wehner, a climate scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, told the Guardian....

The news about coronavirus is whirling faster than most people can keep up, and with the constant updates come a slew of terms being bandied about as if everyone is already familiar with them. We gathered a bunch of those words and phrases and broke them down for you here in our handy COVID-19 glossary—and don’t worry, we define that one for you, too. Don’t see something that you’re confused about?...

The image covers 315 square degrees of sky, and 500 square degrees of the galactic bulge. The stars are shown here in three filters, which allows observations based on the stars’ age, chemical makeup and movement around the Milky Way. The colors represent the apparent brightnesses of the stars. It’s a 9-gigapixel image–if printed with the resolution of a typical book, it would be a whopping 9 meters long and 7 meters tall, according to the European Southern Observatory....