“If you go back 10, 15, 20 years ago to what hearing aids used to be, they’re now becoming more of a direct-to-consumer solution,” said Dr. Vinaya Manchaiah, director of audiology at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. These products are called personal sound amplification products (PSAPs) and can technically only be marketed to people without hearing loss who want to amplify their hearing. However, many people use these items to help them with hearing loss out of necessity, either because insurance will not cover the cost of hearing aids or because they do not have insurance and cannot afford to buy a hearing aid out-of-pocket....

The annual Perseids meteor shower reached its peak over the weekend providing stargazers and astro photographers with a spectacular show. Thanks to the waxing crescent moon, dark skies created ideal conditions for meteor viewing and shooting. During today’s early morning hours observers could see approximately 60-70 meteors per hour. Unlike the eclipse earlier this year, the spectacular show was visible on both sides of the equator. The dark skies made this year’s shower one of the brightest ever....

If you have a premium Spotify account, you’ll want to get the most value out of your $10 per month. These tips can help. From saving on data usage to keeping your playlists for posterity, there’s much more to Spotify than you might have realized. Algorithms rule our lives now, from Netflix recommendations to Facebook news stories. Spotify is no different. When you’re trying to fill out a playlist but struggling for inspiration, the app can use your recent listening history to plug the gaps....

Nowhere is global warming having as obvious an impact as in the Arctic, and people living in Alaska, northern Canada, northern Scandinavia and Siberia have front-row seats. Some experts say that temperatures in these regions have risen by 3˚ to 5˚F over the past 30 years. And the temperature in the Arctic has warmed at twice the global average rate in the past century, according to the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report....

In fact, only two instances stand out from McCain and Obama’s legislative histories that relate to their answers for this Science Debate question. Interestingly though, McCain and Obama’s work on scientific integrity came not as votes on actual bills but in the back room maneuvering that actually constitutes the day to day work of the Senate. McCain’s main action on the topic of scientific integrity and government came during the assemblage of the America Competes Act, eventually passed into law as S 761 of 2007....

For a nation that spends more on healthcare per citizen than almost any other, America isn’t exactly reaping the rewards. Life expectancy has climbed steadily over the course of the last few decades, but in recent years it’s taken a troubling turn in the other direction. Each year the Centers for Disease Control release a massive health report that includes the country’s most recent data on mortality and life expectancy....

But a good electric knife can do one thing really well: it will cut roast meat cleanly, leaving a tidy little strip of skin on top of each slice. In other words—they are silly, but if you’re ever going to use one, it’s Thanksgiving and other occasions like it. The moments when you want things to be pretty. Last year, staffers at Cook’s Illustrated magazine—the magazine of the well-respected America’s Test Kitchen—tried out four electric knives....

Looking for the complete list of 100 winners? Find it here. Grand Award Winner: Adaptive Accessories by Microsoft: Making computers accessible to all Microsoft’s Adaptive Mouse might not look very advanced. It’s a simple, squircle-shaped device with two buttons, a scroll wheel, and several slots around its edges. You’re not meant to use it as it ships, however. This mouse is one of Microsoft’s Accessible Accessories that easily connect to custom, 3D-printed attachments to accommodate a wide variety of users with different physical needs....

Scientists already have the know-how to make mind control a reality. The rest is engineering, says Rodney Brooks, a roboticist at MIT. “It’s only a matter of time before it will be normal for people to interface with the virtual world using direct connections to their brain,” he predicts. “We’ll be able to activate any of our machines just by thinking about it.” It’s a nifty idea for all of mankind, but even more so for those who struggle to talk, walk, and see....

Before Mars, Calef worked for a transportation agency in Massachusetts and for small local governments mapping watersheds, then got a Ph.D. in geology. Now, after years of working on the Curiosity mission, Calef is gearing up for the launch of Insight in 2016, NASA’s next mission to Mars. He has already begun doing landing-site analysis for Insight. Dr. Calef took some time out of his 831st Martian sol to talk to us about his job and where he plans to set up camp on Mars....

Kondo’s book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, and her new Netflix series, Tidying Up with Marie Kondo, describe the “KonMari” method. This is a series of simple ways of reorganizing your home to get rid of clutter and mess. According to the author, following her method will not only lead to a cleaner, more organized household, but also to a more positive and happy lifestyle overall. Can simply tidying up really be that life changing?...

A study published this weekend in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society proposes that the oldest star in the Milky Way is a faint white dwarf that is about 10.7 billion years old and shining roughly 90 light years away from Earth. The inevitable fate of most stars (our sun included) is to become a white dwarf: a star that has burnt up all of its fuel, shed its outer layers, and then cools down and shrinks....

The plan’s proponents call themselves the Skycar Expedition Team, a name that could have figured in a Gerry Anderson TV show. But they’re serious about the trip. Skycar designers include aviation engineer Gilo Cardozo, who says the Skycar will be able to toggle between “road mode” and “fly mode” in three minutes. Cardozo is best known for flying to Mount Everest in his Wankel rotary-powered Parajet, a personal aircraft he designed....

Vaccine-preventable diseases suffer from the very fact that they’re preventable. “Largely in the developed world and in the developing world, some of the vaccine-preventable diseases aren’t as visible, so people don’t seek the vaccine,” explains Katrina Kretsinger, an immunization expert at the World Health Organization. “But there are some places where that fear still exists.” Many places where measles, polio, and the like are still widespread—and still major childhood killers—people recognize how important a vaccine is to preventing deaths....

For everyone who’s ever wanted to walk down the street listening to tunes blaring from their pants, Chinese researchers have an exciting discovery. Also on the strange clothing front: GPS lingerie, for keeping track of that special someone or, we suppose, finding misplaced underwear. If you weren’t quite ready to try starving your way to old age, there may still be hope. A mouse trial for a promising longevity drug actually involved gorging on high-fat food....

Packaging made from polyactic acid (something we reported on a few weeks ago) needs anaerobic conditions in order to break down. (This is part of the reason researchers are looking for hybrids of polyactic acid that can break down in all conditions.) Current commercial anaerobic digesters—used mostly for treating wastewater— don’t take this kind of packaging and are very difficult and expensive to maintain. If the bags end up in current plastics recycling operations, they can contaminate the works and make the entire batch they’re in unrecyclable....

No, seriously — why? John Pavlus and Christopher Mims, also known as Small Mammal, are here again with the latest episode of The Science of YouTube, the Popular Science_ video series that humanely anesthetizes YouTube videos, deftly dissects them, and labels their exposed organs for all to enjoy._

At least it was at first. The December 1966 Popular Science feature, “The Secret Weapons That Hit Pearl Harbor,” cites two main factors (among other factors) for Japan’s success: its shallow-water aerial torpedoes and the fleet’s ability to escape detection. Pearl Harbor was too shallow for conventional torpedoes; they would’ve just dived in and stuck to the bottom of the ocean floor. So a few months before the attack, Japanese designers created finned torpedoes that could perform “a feat like that of an acrobat high-diving in shallow water....

Densely populated areas like cities are excellent breeding grounds for viruses. They have plenty of human hosts in which to make camp, and those hosts are in close proximity to other humans to whom the virus can spread via a sneeze or a cough. Basic logic would suggest that the more people living a city, the more opportunities for the flu to spread and the more intense an outbreak would be....

The TSA announced late last month that it is ordering 300 new CT scanners—the initials stand for computed tomography—at a price of $96.8 million. While 22 CT scanners are already in place at checkpoints at airports such as Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson and Chicago O’Hare, the new machines on order represent a significant ramp-up of a technology they first started testing in this manner in 2017. The TSA says its goal is to eventually have the machines at every security checkpoint, and that the 300 new ones will be deployed by 2020....