For fully realized soundscapes: Native Instruments Komplete 13 For mixing and mastering: iZotope Music Production Suite 4 For synth addicts: Arturia V CollectionFor one-stop shoppers: Reason Studios Reason+For Hollywood composers: EastWest ComposerCloud X For zero upfront cost: MeldaProduction MFreeFXBundle What to consider when choosing the best music production software Assuming you have DAW software, which is the foundation for production, this guide concentrates on the best music production collections of audio plug-ins to complement that main software....

With our increasingly sedentary lifestyles, employment and demand for personal trainers is projected to grow in the next decade. While working out at home has been a popular trend for years, people turned toward home fitness in skyrocketing numbers as home offices became the new normal due to closings and safety concerns. Home fitness equipment, fitness trackers, and at-home gym sales have soared as more people take charge of their workouts and fitness goals....

Best overall: Jackery Portable Power Station Explorer 500, 518WhBest for camping: AIMTOM 100W 155Wh Power StationBest portable solar generator: EF Ecoflow Portable Power Station Delta 1260WhBest for home: Yeti 3000X Portable Power Station, 2982WhBest budget: Marbero Portable Power Station 80W 88Wh How we chose the best portable power stations I am a keen outdoors person and while sometimes I like to pack light and go completely off-grid, most of the time I want to charge my phone, use my tablet and run a couple of lights....

Not all rolling pins are made equal though, and some will work better than others. Wood, for example, is better for bread doughs. But if you’re working with buttery pastry, you’ll want one that will stay cool, like marble or stainless steel. As for fondant icing, plastic is actually best. Here’s what else to consider: Shape: There are three main styles of rolling pins: French tapered, cylindrical, and cylindrical with handles....

Many of the Internet addicts are young males hooked by online games such as World of Warcraft and Counterstrike. But other residents of the camp include some young women addicted to dance and virtual family video games, not to mention people suffering from addictions to work, shopping and sex. All of them adhere to a rigid routine of drills and physical exercises on a military base outside Beijing. More than 300 such camps have sprung up in China to tackle modern “non-material” addictions....

A four-page draft document [PDF] proposing the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) was leaked to the press this week which show plans for the creation of an international copyright regulator with its enforcement arm as each nation’s border patrols. Guards and security personnel would be authorized to search electronic devices for any content that “infringes” on copyright laws, whether the copies are from legally purchased CDs or DVDs or not, and decide on the spot which content is infringing....

Having a rough estimate about what size your hands are is important to picking out the best fit for boxing gloves. While many brands have size charts available, not all of them do. If you’re unsure, you might ask a trainer at a boxing gym or do a quick search for how to measure your hands to square up to the size available, which are frequently in ounces. Buying gloves with mesh elements can help reduce sweat and therefore extend your workout or training session, plus the life of your gloves....

Now Twitter, which is struggling to engage and grow its user base, hopes to do just that with integrated GIF search. In a blog post, Senior Product Manager Sasank Reddy announced that users will begin seeing a GIF search button when composing tweets or direct messages as soon as today. The button comes from a partnership among Twitter and GIF-hosting sites GIPHY and Riffsy. In separate statements, the founders of the respective sites expressed their excitement for the partnership....

But the Canadian Space Agency thinks that its Near Earth Object Surveillance Satellite might be able to identify risky rocks that grounded telescopes can’t see. And its total cost to build and launch will be just $10 million. So, even if it doesn’t prove to be much better than ground-based observatories, as some experts suggest might be the case, the CSA won’t be blowing its budget. And if it does spot a threat that NASA’s NEO program doesn’t catch, we’ll all be saying thank you, before sending Bruce Willis up to blow the thing apart....

Here are some of our favorite 3D puzzles and brain teasers on the market. This set of brain teasers is extensive and intriguing enough in design variety to keep your whole family quietly occupied and engaged. Consisting of 16 entangled pairs of high-quality metal pieces, these puzzles are locked together in not-so-obvious ways and it’s your job to get them to come apart. The ends are rounded off, so they’re easy on your hands and appropriate for kids too....

Compared to a previous Norinco exoskeleton, which came out in 2015, this second generation has a better battery, more robust hydraulic and pneumatic actuators, and a streamlined harness. The new version is also lighter, which will likely reduce strain felt by the exoskeleton’s wearer, making it a better choice for troops in mountainous terrain. (Hence all the press photos that look like REI ads.) These refinements in weight, ergonomics, and power supply could also boost the second-generation exoskeleton’s coefficiency ratio....

Xingzhe No. 1’s design is similar to that of Cornell’s Ranger Robot, the previous record-holder. In 2011, that robot walked over 40 miles in under 31 hours. Both Xingzhe and Ranger aren’t really designed for real world applications, as there are few jobs that require a robot to walk a smooth circular path until it collapses. Instead, the robot is a lesson in efficiency, in how well a simple design can move, and how long a battery can power its basic movements....

Now that I no longer have cookie dough at hand, when the craving hits I look for more immediate satisfaction. The article succeeded in awakening my craving for warm, soft cookies, I just wasn’t entirely sure I wanted to go through the process of making the dough and then have to wait 36 hours to bake off the cookies. Fortunately I remembered the vacuum sealer in our kitchen. In the past we had used the vacuum sealer for pasta doughs....

Choosing a smartwatch is like selecting a smartphone, in that there are countless models to choose from. But that’s where the similarities end. While whatever handset you pick will be able to perform the same standard tasks—such as making calls, sending texts, and running apps—smartwatches offer a variety of functions and features, which makes finding the right one even harder. We’re here to dispel some of that confusion so you know how to choose the right smartwatch for your specific needs....

The impacts vary as greatly as the sites themselves. Hundreds of archaeological sites in coastal Scotland, Egypt’s North Sinai Archaeological Sites Zone, and The Old Chimney in Florida’s Pensacola Bluffs are threatened by coastal erosion and rising sea levels. Thawing permafrost in Alaska is destroying artifacts that were once preserved in ice. In Iran, sites dating back to 300 BCE are buried in sand due to desertification or when drought, farming techniques, or deforestation turn fertile land into deserts....

Now, a new study shows that changes in climate, particularly ice ages, can wash a mountain away to the sea faster than it can be built up by geologic forces. Over the years, the St. Elias mountains have eroded, with rocks soil and other sediments from the mountains eventually landing in the depths of the Gulf of Alaska. The researchers spent over a decade drilling into these sediments to get a better picture of how erosion rates changed through the mountains’ history....

Getting machines to learn this way has been a struggle, because complex objects, like toothbrushes, have to be explained in mathematic formulas so the computer can understand it. A lot of work in machine learning, which is how we tackle artificial intelligence, is centered around how to best represent objects and ideas so computers can understand them. New research in Science claims to have come closer to the human method of learning....

Noting the increased sales of concentrate, Madeline Meier, an assistant professor in the department of psychology at Arizona State University, was interested in seeing if broader use of concentrates among adults purchasing the products legally was mirrored by any trends in cannabis use for adolescents and teenagers. In a study published this week, Meier found that nearly a quarter of all eighth, tenth, and twelfth grade students surveyed in Arizona had used concentrate at one point....

“We really count on all of you to try to set the record straight,” CDC spokesperson Nancy Messonier, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, told reporters when asked about false information during a briefing last week. “We recognize that misinformation can rapidly spread, especially through social media, and I’m asking for your help to combat the spread of those rumors.” According to Nicholas Evans, a philosophy professor at the University of Massachusetts Lowell who studies false information and biosecurity, the CDC’s approach is to first release “very clear guidance on what they consider to be the best evidence-based policy for responding to the disease....

Until now, though, most of the evidence highlighting the long lifespans of these animals have come from anecdotal reports from zoos, says Beth Reinke, a biologist at Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago. She and a team of more than 100 researchers from around the globe have compared rates of aging in 77 species of reptiles and amphibians in the wild. The study initially grew out of the long-running notion that turtles can live for a long time....