Eventually, every computer slows down—even if you’re using it for the exact same things you were five years ago. “Over time, you’ll get Windows updates, or a new version of macOS, and these things can weigh heavily on the PC,” says Joe Silverman, owner of New York Computer Help. Even some of your apps will update themselves over time, and the web pages you visit may just require more resources than they used to....
Geologists agree that in the next 100 million or 200 million years, the land will once again converge and, in the process, eliminate an ocean. But which ocean closes is the subject of heated debate. As a graduate student, I built a computer model showing how North America and Asia might meet somewhere near Hawaii, crushing the Pacific Ocean. Not everyone agrees. Many geologists think we’ll revert to a Pangaea-like supercontinent, where the Atlantic disappears, and South America and Africa touch....
In 2014, a woman visited a California doctor’s office complaining of a year and a half of watery diarrhea. She seemed healthy—she hadn’t lost weight and was in excellent shape. In fact, she had started running marathons two years prior, and typically ran about 20 miles every weekend. She also mentioned that she had noticed a correlation between her long runs and the uncomfortable bowel movements, which seemed to become less formed and more frequent as her intense training months dragged on....
The good news is many of the most common issues have relatively simple fixes you can perform yourself. The bad news is that this will not always be the case. If these solutions don’t do the trick, we’re sad to tell you that you might have to take your handset to a professional repair shop, or (gasp) upgrade to a newer model. But before you start panicking, take a deep breath—the solution to your problem might be just a few taps away....
In September of 2020, Boom received Air Force funding—as did other companies—to explore what supersonic aircraft could look like for government executive travel. Not long after that, in October, the company revealed an aircraft called the XB-1. It’s a third smaller than Overture will be, and is not a passenger plane—it’s meant to be a test vessel to help the company eventually produce the larger Overture aircraft. The company had initially planned to fly the XB-1 in 2021, but that has since moved to this year....
This habitual home searching is quickly becoming a part of the cultural lexicon. “Saturday Night Live” recently featured a skit about millennials salivating over Zillow porn, and Curbed now has a weekly column devoted to listings found while idly browsing. In 2020, Zillow saw a total of 9.6 billion visits to its website and app, up 1.5 billion from 2019. But only a “single-digit percentage” turned into buyers, according to the company’s CEO....
There’s a lot of water to process and clean up in North America alone. Canada treats and releases six trillion liters (more than 1.5 trillion gallons) of municipal wastewater into the environment every year. Another billion liters of untreated sewage is then discharged into pristine surface waters when storms overtax systems and facilities, leading to water contamination. Water treatment facilities in the United States process over 34 billion gallons (over 128 million liters) every single day, the EPA reports....
Researchers Eric Horvitz of Microsoft and Jure Leskovec of Carnegie Mellon studied more than 30 billion chat sessions by 180 million users to arrive at the finding, which was presented at the WWW 2008 Conference in Beijing. “This is the first time a planetary-scale social network has been available to validate the well-known ‘six-degrees of separation finding,’” the researchers wrote. So, how many degrees are you from Kevin Bacon? Let’s do a little social networking experiment....
Nurdles are the building blocks for most plastic goods, from single-use water bottles to television sets. These small pellets—normally between 1mm and 5mm – are classed as a primary microplastic alongside the microbeads used in cosmetic products—they’re small on purpose, as opposed to other microplastics that break off from larger plastic waste in the ocean. The small size of nurdles makes them easy to transport as the raw material which can be melted down and moulded into all kinds of plastic products by manufacturers....
The house wasn’t big enough for Merida and her mother Isabelle. It had two bedrooms and one bathroom, and Merida longed for an office. When she worked from home in her bedroom, the exhaustion that lived always inside of her—that persistent knowledge of her mother’s worsening condition—lured her back into the blankets. The backyard had enough space for one raised bed, upon which Isabelle’s window looked out. Whenever Merida tried to grab a moment of peace, her mother rushed out the moment she touched shovel to soil, reminding her of what they’d both lost....
We use a nickel-titanium alloy for muscles because it changes its molecular structure at 160°F, which shortens the wire, tightens the spring’s coil, and squeezes that body segment. Our prototype—it’s about five inches long and one inch in diameter—has four segments, each controlled by the robot’s microprocessor. A small battery inside provides an electrical current that travels through the wire; the wire’s resistance makes it get hotter. We also add a wire tendon that runs from head to tail and keeps the worm’s overall length fixed....
Excluding physical vouchers or cards, this list includes no permanent objects or gift cards intended to purchase permanent physical objects. Even with that restriction, we found 10 gift ideas that should suit a range of tastes. Travel can reduce stress, depression, and even heart attack risk (really!) while increasing satisfaction and creativity. But even if you’re taking a simple weekend trip, the expenses can add up. Subsidize someone’s journey by helping cover these costs....
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Science deal spot! Today only, you can save 37 percent on this 52-piece beginner’s microscope kit from AmScope. All the pieces fit in a hard plastic carrying case. It offers 20 to 1,200-times magnification, manual focus, and reusable glass slides. It also includes some slides that show the life cycle of brine shrimp. The $40 microscope is available for $25. Science deal spot number two: AmScope also has a metal microscope on sale for $62 (it was $85)....
Earliest Concepts in Science Fiction Between October 1869 and February of 1870, readers of the Atlantic Monthly were introduced to the idea of living off the Earth through Edward Everett Hale’s science fiction story, “The Brick Moon.” Hale’s story tells of a 200-foot diameter brick sphere designed to orbit the Earth as a navigational aid for ships. But the brick moon is accidentally put into orbit with people on board....
Ew, ew, this is not a good use of science: a glaucoma drug is set to be sold under another name as a prescription drug for growing longer, thicker eyelashes, presumably for the same people who like to inject toxins into their foreheads. On the other hand, though, if this drug gets sold full-price to people with too much money to spend, perhaps it’ll allow the pharmaceutical company to sell other drugs at more affordable rates....
Even when the researchers added nausea-inducing lithium chloride to the chocolate milk, the rats still turned to the left. This is how the researchers knew that the habit was pretty deeply ingrained. The next step was to use optogenetics to inhibit cells in the infralimbic cortex–a region inside the pre-frontal cortex that is believed to control habits. Optogenetics is the engineering of nerve cells to create light-sensitive proteins that can either inhibit (or excite) neuron activity....
The duo, a French product designer and a Harvard University biomedical engineer, unearthed NASA research from the 1980s on plants that absorb chemicals through their leaves and roots. Philodendra, for instance, soak up formaldehyde much as they do carbon dioxide. But plants can clean only the air that touches them. To quickly and efficiently clean a whole room, LeHanneur constructed a container that moves as much air as possible around the entire plant....
Drawing on the principles of photosynthesis, the team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology designed a system that uses solar power to break water into hydrogen and oxygen, which can be stored for later use as fuel. The process, detailed in the July 31st issue of the journal Science, hinges on the addition of new catalysts. The new technique takes advantage of a cobalt catalyst’s ability to create oxygen gas when combined with water and an electric current....
