The report was led by US Senators Rob Portman (R-OH) and Gary Peters (D-MI) and is a follow-up to Portman’s bipartisan 2019 report on federal agency cybersecurity, which found that none of the eight agencies met basic cybersecurity standards and protocols to secure the personal identification information of Americans as well as equipment and programs on the agency’s networks. The eight departments under the magnifying glass are the Departments of Homeland Security, State, Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, Agriculture, Health and Human Services, Education, and the Social Security Administration....

Blue moons, black moons, pink moons, strawberry moons, micromoons, supermoons. For some reason, your news aggregation algorithm of choice thinks you really really really want to know all about these moons. “Catch This Weekend’s AMAZING SUPERMOON,” one headline (or, perhaps, 500 of them) will announce. “The Supermoon Isn’t Actually A Big Deal And You’re All Ruining Astronomy,” another will grouse. The latest example is the full moon that will rise on August 11 around 9:36 p....

The study offers evidence that volcanism arose in the Solar System earlier than astronomers had previously predicted. A team of geologists from Germany and France found, in meteorites, rocks that were made by volcanism on a small asteroid — 4.6 billion years ago. “I would have thought that these kinds of rocks could only have formed much later, on larger bodies like Earth. But to have this happening on asteroids so early is fantastic,” the study’s lead scientist, Addi Bischoff of the University of Münster in Germany, told ABC News in Australia....

So with vehicles like the Blackwing, engineers carefully tune the aerodynamics so that the vehicle doesn’t get lighter on its tires and thus lose performance and stability. If the aerodynamic design on an aircraft exists to make it fly, the design on a car like this one exists to keep it pressed down on the road. “We don’t want it to leave the ground,” he says. “We want it to stay as firmly attached to the ground as possible, because unlike an airplane, we don’t have a rudder in order to change direction—we need the tires to do all that work....

The good news is that you’re not alone. A 2017 eLife study found that science papers from the mid-2010s were more difficult to read than papers from the 19th century. Features that seem to plague most modern academic papers are poorly constructed sentences, questionable word choices, as well as unnecessary jargon and obscure acronyms. This can make scientific knowledge hard to access, for both junior researchers in the field and for those without a science background....

However, those neighborhoods also sometimes have high levels of air pollution: connected streets and close proximity to stores and town centers can mean more cars close by, which generate polluting emissions and can be associated with poor cardiovascular health. And, when walkable neighborhoods do have bad air, their health benefits are canceled out, according to a study published this week in the journal Environment International. “Some of these neighborhoods that should be extremely healthy and were designed around pedestrian activity also have high rates of car emissions from traffic idling,” says study author Gillian Booth, a scientist in the Centre for Urban Health Solutions at St....

Dozens of once crystal-clear streams and rivers in Arctic Alaska are now running bright orange and cloudy, and, in some cases, they may be becoming more acidic. This otherwise undeveloped landscape now looks as if an industrial mine has been in operation for decades, and scientists want to know why. Roman Dial, a professor of biology and mathematics at Alaska Pacific University, first noticed the starkest water-quality changes while doing field work in the Brooks Range in 2020....

Our final edition of “know your Olympic sport,” focuses on the top secret science of shuttlecocks. And for your viewing pleasure, a badminton brawl. Smile for the Birdie It’s first important to distinguish the cookie cutter clunky plastic ‘birdie’ you smacked around family reunions from the hand crafted, literally hand picked, work of art that fire at well above 200 mph in Olympic competition (that’s not a typo). A sleeve of 12 nylon birdies will cost you ten bucks and they might even throw in a free aluminum racket....

Linksys Atlas Wi-Fi 6E Router Home WiFi Mesh System $359.99 (Was $450) NETGEAR Orbi Whole Home Wi-Fi 6 System $427.49 (was $649.99) TP-Link Wi-Fi 6 Gaming Router $279.99 (was $349.99) When gaming is your primary motivation, then you should opt for gear that’s created to help you react in a split second. The TP-Link Wi-Fi Gaming Router comes in blazing fast, providing speeds up to 10 Gbps. It’s designed for multiple users and its WAN port and LAN ports, and USB-A and -C ports allow for plenty of connections....

The patch uses a technique called trigeminal nerve stimulation (TNS). It’s hooked up to a 9-volt battery with which it generates small electrical currents that move through the forehead to parts of the trigeminal nerve, the largest nerve in the brain. The nerve is connected to many different parts of the brain, including the nucleus tractus solitarius, a structure found in the brainstem that is thought to integrate information from several disparate parts of the brain, including those in which patients with PTSD have abnormal activity....

As a report from Bloomberg last week detailed, antivaxxers in particular are becoming increasingly reliant on coded language, often using emojis to convey prohibited misinformation and propaganda on social media platforms such as Facebook. What’s more, a former Facebook exec overseeing public policy says it is becoming clear that current AI moderation programs aren’t up to challenge—and there’s reason to believe they may never be. “All these systems that these platforms continue to build are frankly still very much in their infancy of being able to do some of the stuff that they would like them to be able to do,” Katie Harbath, CEO of the tech policy strategy group, Anchor Change and a Nonresident Senior Fellow for the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensics Research Lab who previously served for ten years as Facebook’s head of public policy, tells PopSci....

The Electric RacecarThe Inner EarthA Private Moon LanderA Wiffle Ball PitchThe Highest-Efficiency Solar CellA Surgical SnakebotAn Electronic Cigarette Radio Tecnico How the Zetas cartel built a clandestine radio network to take over Mexico. By Damon Tabor The AIDS Cure For decades, scientists struggled just to control HIV. Now they are testing ways to wipe it out completely. By Apoorva Mandavilli Invisible World Billions of microbes live in our midst. One biologist wants to map them—starting in your kitchen....

Click to launch the photo gallery. Popular Science has been around for 138 years, which gives us a couple of decades on the first commercial motion pictures. After the use of narrative and orchestra music became integral to cinema, filmmakers devoted themselves to elevating movies from experimental form of entertainment into an art form. Not only were we there to break the news when movies finally played sound, but we were privileged enough to receive a couple of enlightening articles from Charles Francis Jenkins, who helped invent the television, and D....

“We need more drama for heatwaves and we think that a name is going to do that,” said Kathy Baughman-McLeod, director of the Adrienne Arsht–Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center and a leader of Extreme Heat Resilience Alliance, told the CBC last year. “Naming tropical storms and hurricanes and cyclones has brought the awareness and the culture of prevention and preparation and resources to areas of the world that are plagued by hurricanes and cyclones....

When the sun someday balloons into a red giant, swallowing Mercury and Venus whole and scorching Earth will be just its first step in transforming the solar system. Because it’ll grow so much larger, our star will also flood space with thousands of times more light than it currently does, like swapping out a lamp for a searchlight. One of the most dramatic effects of this energy abundance will be to spin asteroids into pieces, suggests a recent publication in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society....

Peruvian guano has been used as a fertilizer for centuries. Garcilaso de la Vega wrote in the 1609 Royal Commentary of the Incas, “They use no other manure but the dung of sea birds, of which large and small varieties occur on the coast of Peru in such enormous flocks that they seem incredible to anyone who has not seen them.” The Humboldt Current carries cold, nutrient-rich Antarctic waters up the Peruvian coast that feeds shoals of anchoveta, an anchovy relative....

This article originally appeared in the February 2014 issue of Popular Science.

“Antarctica: A Chromatic Paradox” won the People’s Choice award for Posters & Graphics in the 2016 Vizzies. See all 10 of the winners. This article was originally published in the March/April 2016 issue of Popular Science, under the title “The 2016 Vizzies.”

Best hummingbird feeder: Perky-Pet 8116-2 RedBest window bird feeder: Nature Gear Window Bird FeederBest cardinal bird feeder: Perky-Pet Red Cardinal Bird FeederBest squirrel proof bird feeder: Droll Yankees YF-M Yankee FlipperBest budget bird feeder: First Nature 3055 32-ounce Hummingbird Feeder What to look for when shopping for the best bird feeders Narrowing down the best bird feeders requires you to consider the types of bird species you want to attract, the frequency of maintenance that is realistic for you, your overall budget, and the best location around your home....