Bud Ahrens knows this first-hand. A few years ago, while leading a dog sledding trip in northern Minnesota with Outward Bound, an outdoor education and wilderness company, he watched as a coworker fell through ice into a lake. She spent several minutes in the freezing water before the team could pull her out. Ahrens, the program director for Outward Bound’s winter courses, knew just what to do, so he and his team got to work....
The federal government is now proactively investing in offshore wind farms to install in five states across the East Coast over the next decade. The decarbonization of the electricity grid is vital for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Still, the next big challenge for wind energy is ensuring farms are environmentally sustainable by reducing and mitigating any negative impacts on marine ecosystems. Scientists predominantly conducted the existing research on the environmental impacts of offshore wind farms in Northern Europe, where offshore turbines started operating in 1991....
And listen: We’re not here to judge you for filling your phone—it could happen to any one of us. While the best way to free up space on your phone is to maintain your storage as you go, it’s relatively easy to clear out the junk when it’s past the point of no return. Move your photos and videos to the cloud One of the best options is Google Photos....
You’re no use to a wandering turtle if you get hit by a car or cause a crash while trying to lend a helping hand. If you see a turtle on the pavement or by the side of a road facing toward traffic, carefully stop your vehicle and turn on its hazard lights. This will help alert other drivers to the situation. If possible, pull over to the side of the road and exit your vehicle only when it’s safe to do so....
“The trauma of seeing death after death during the peak was very difficult for all,” recalls Dahlia Rizk, an internal medicine physician who works with severely ill patients and leads a 30-person hospital team at Mount Sinai, which, with more than a dozen sites, is one of New York City’s largest health care systems. At the deadliest point of its COVID epidemic, the city logged more than 5,000 cases and nearly 600 fatalities daily....
The tech giant has been touting the technology’s ability to keep your security camera or smart speaker online even when the rest of your devices are offline. Privacy experts, however, have raised legitimate concerns, and the fact that Sidewalk can share part of your internet connection with your neighbors may be at least a little unnerving. Whether or not to use Sidewalk is your call, once you understand exactly what it is....
The study, published last month in Acta Astronautica, found that the two architects had an increasing desire for social connection over the course of the experiment, a 61-day mission in a small capsule-like habitat in Northern Greenland. The shelter, which they designed, is an egg-shaped pod that collapses using origami folds to become portable. Their only access to the outside world was a satellite phone limited to 160-character messages. They didn’t increasingly feel more resigned, however, as might be expected....
The smartwatch has evolved tremendously since then, and now the product cycle is shorter than ever. That model you bought several years ago may still suit your needs, but it could also be missing out on cool, useful new features. But, upgrading isn’t always as simple as buying the latest and greatest version of what you already have. How to pick the best smartwatch Smartwatches have evolved to the point where there is more to the category than just “a smartwatch....
According to the CDC, carbon monoxide poisoning happens most commonly in winter, when we seal up our homes and burn extra fuel for warmth. Now that the weather has cooled, it’s time to take extra precautions. Here’s how to keep this silent killer out of your house. How carbon monoxide kills If you tested the air near you, you’d probably find [trace amounts of carbon monoxide] (http://www.environment.gov.au/protection/publications/factsheet-carbon-monoxide-co/). In fact, CO is the second most common molecule in the universe, and radio astronomers regularly use it to track clouds of interstellar gas....
By making just a few swaps, you can fight light pollution on three fronts. We can show you how to protect your personal health, darken the environment around you, and petition the nearest city to make changes for the better. “I think humanity has so far terribly underestimated the significance of manmade light from an environmental perspective,” says John Barentine, director of public policy at the International Dark-Sky Association (IDA)....
Don’t put your vehicle in neutral while going downhill In the name of fuel economy, some drivers will pop the vehicle in neutral and let it coast downhill purely on momentum, as the engine idles. I’m guilty of this one myself; back in high school, I had a manual transmission Dodge Neon, and I’d coast in neutral down hills instead of leaving the vehicle in gear. Admittedly, a neutral downhill jaunt is a bit more natural in a manual transmission than an automatic, but some insist on this practice no matter the transmission type....
The K2 comet was first detected through the Hubble Space Telescope in May 2017 between the orbits of Saturn and Uranus—about 2.4 billion kilometers from the sun. NASA reported it was the farthest they have seen a comet enter the solar system’s planetary zone. The K2 comet is believed to have originated from the Oort Cloud, a spherical layer of icy objects where the temperature reaches -440 degrees Fahrenheit. The Oort Cloud is located in the outermost region of our solar system....
Each year, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission recalls roughly 400 items a year, according to CNBC. The commission, which is responsible for children’s toys, coffee makers, and 15,000 other consumer objects, monitors voluntary recalls companies make themselves, and enforces recalls on products that pose “unreasonable risks” to consumers. Other agencies have their own areas of expertise. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is responsible for car recalls; the FDA covers dietary supplements; and the FDA and USDA team up to monitor sausage links, spinach, and other foods....
Phonautograph In 1853, Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville invented the phonautograph and made the likely first copy of a human voice seven years later. The device’s stylus preserved sound waves by etching their movement into smoke-darkened glass, but Scott never managed to create a machine that could play back the results. No one would hear his snippet of “Au Clair de la Lune” until 2012. Wax cylinder Thomas Edison invented a replay-capable phonograph in 1877, but it took Alexander Graham Bell nine years to turn that concept into the commercially available Graphophone....
Official numbers will be available in January 2023, as with previous years. At a session of Idaho’s Natural Resources Interim Committee last week, the state Department of Fish and Game Director Ed Schriever said the preliminary data on human-caused and natural wolf mortality is similar to the rate seen since 2019 before these new regulations were enacted. “I think the best way to describe Idaho’s population right now is that it’s fairly stable, and it’s fluctuating around 1,250,” he told lawmakers, according to reporting from the Associated Press....
Infiniti’s system, expected to debut on the 2014 G sedan, uses an electronic actuator to measure the movement of the steering wheel. Electronic control modules then relay instructions to another set of actuators, which pivot the steering rack (and, thus, turn the wheels). The computer-controlled system can instantly vary steering ratio and power-steering assist for low-speed maneuvers or high-speed stability. And with no mechanical connection, the system can filter out steering-wheel-tugging “noise” such as rough-road vibration and impacts....
The researchers suspected that inflammation was doing most of the damage—that’s what happens when a bee stings you—but they weren’t quite sure. So they gave different doses of scorpion venom to groups of 4-6 mice and observed the different systems that activated in response. They found that even small amounts of the venom stimulated the “inflammasome”—a network of proteins that induce tissue inflammation—and that two compounds in particular came in waves to signal the start and end of that inflammation....
But neuroscientists in Israel are trying to turn back the biological clock with one simple ingredient: oxygen. Shai Efrati, a physician and director of the Sagol Center for Hyperbaric Medicine and Research at the Yitzhak Shamir Medical Center in Israel, has developed a new type of hyperbaric oxygen therapy that increases blood flow in the brain to prevent declining cognitive function in the brains of healthy, older adults. His team’s results were published in the journal Aging this month....
A few seconds later, there’s a small glitch: One of the aircraft’s landing gear legs—the rear one on the left—decides to stay down. The rest fold up, as they should. The pilots determine that the problem isn’t big enough to scrub the day’s flight, so the bomber pushes on with its training mission, two big wheels hanging down for five hours like an incomplete thought, limiting the plane’s speed and reducing its fuel efficiency....
This time, it will take the form of a 4,000-mile-per-hour reconnaissance drone with strike capability. Known as the SR-72, the aircraft will evade assault, take spy photos, and attack targets at speeds of up to Mach 6. That’s twice as fast as its predecessor. Aeronautical engineers at Lockheed Martin and Aerojet Rocketdyne have been designing the SR-72 at their Skunk Works black site in California for the past several years....
