As a Lyme patient, Jennifer Crystal has a lifetime of experience dealing with severe illness. So when the 42-year-old writer and patient advocate came down with what appeared to be a mild case of food poisoning in early March, she cancelled her weekend ski trip to New Hampshire, but otherwise shrugged it off. However, when the dizziness gave way to a fever, and vomiting became a racking cough, Crystal began to worry....
With the COVID-19 Delta variant spreading across the US, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced on Wednesday that all Americans would be eligible to receive a booster shot eight months after their second dose, beginning the week of September 20. Right now the boosters are only for those who received Moderna or Pfizer vaccines, but the CDC anticipates extending the ruling to those who got the Johnson & Johnson single-shot version once they evaluate that data....
The CDC says vaccinated people may be just as likely to spread the Delta variant as the unvaccinated, but the vaccines remain effective at preventing severe illness, hospitalization, and death. Meanwhile, Japan is experiencing its largest infection wave yet as the Olympics continue amid emergency lockdowns. And new data suggests the coronavirus may be finding additional refuge in animal reservoirs in the US. Here’s some of what unfolded over the past week....
From making sure the graphics are optimized on your television screen, to reducing the amount of power your gaming machine draws, playing around with these settings can make a significant difference. Once you’ve configured them to your satisfaction, the gaming can begin. Another feature we’d recommend turning on is the variable refresh rate or VRR. This feature pushes frame rates higher by allowing your hardware to change the game’s refresh rate on the fly, resulting in smoother gameplay and less stuttering on compatible games and screens....
Bose Sleepbuds II $199 (Was $249) Bose built the Sleepbuds II around a type of speaker usually found in hearing aids. The buds connect to a smartphone using Bluetooth as you’d expect, but they don’t stream music or podcasts. Instead, they only pump sounds from Bose’s own super-simple sleep app. The Sleepbuds create various types of repetition-free sounds that mask out any noise coming from your surroundings that might cause you to stir....
Clamor comes in many packages, from abstract waveforms, to countless spoken words in thousands of languages, to mathematically complex values like the decibel. With such cryptic disguises, it’s no surprise that noise plays tricks on us. Reveal the truth with this trio of matching games. Waveforms Onomatopoeia Sci-fi Special Effects This story originally published in the Noise, Winter 2019 issue of Popular Science.
Scientists have come up with a couple versions of the story: in one version, Earth emerged from an era of meteoric collisions so intense that the entire planet was, at first, a spherical sea of magma. In another version, the process was more drawn out–Earth was a rocky mini-planet where, every ten million years or so, something the size of Mars slammed into it and stuck, until finally all the Mars-size objects had either collided or–in the case of Mars itself–settled into an orbit of its own....
Researchers at the University of Cambridge found a potential solution to this challenge by recently developing a novel process using just energy from the sun to transform plastic trash and greenhouse gasses into sustainable fuel and other valuable materials. As detailed in the journal Nature Synthesis, the team successfully created a solar-powered reactor capable of transforming CO2 into syngas, a pivotal component within sustainable liquid fuels. At the same time, the setup also managed to take plastic bottles and break them down into glycolic acid, a chemical often used within the cosmetics industry....
NYT
About 11.3 percent of people living in the United States have diabetes. Of the 37.3 million, 8.5 million are undiagnosed. The high blood sugar levels triggered in diabetes weaken the innate immune system, raising a person’s chances of having regular infections, including UTIs. S. Adam Ramin, a urologist and medical director of Urology Cancer Specialists who was not involved in the new study, says people with diabetes also tend to have problems with urinary incontinence, or problems with incomplete bladder emptying, which can also lead to UTIs....
What good is that portable PC if you can’t type anywhere and anytime? With its ultra-compact keyboard, even touch typing pros will be hard-pressed to avoid frequent mistakes on when the lights go out. To say it’s a frustrating exercise in futility to locate the miniature F3 key in the dark is an understatement. Oops, you just lost WiFi contact by accidentally hitting F2. Clearly, a keyboard backlight like those found in higher-end laptops is the answer to your nocturnal Eee PC typing woes....
The Enclave CineHome PRO wireless home theater system’s design The Enclave CineHome PRO ($1,599) promises a big surround sound experience from an easy-to-setup wireless 5.1 surround sound system. That big sound comes from a six-piece speaker system that does not skimp on size. The 24-inch-tall, 7.3-pound left and right front speakers are meant to stand vertically and each has two 3-inch drivers and a 1-inch tweeter inside. The 24-inch-wide, 7.3-pound center speaker also has two 3-inch drivers and a 1-inch tweeter; it is basically the same design as the left and right front speakers except that it lies horizontally beneath your TV rather than standing vertically....
You’ve certainly seen the pictures of a chimpanzee gradually straightening up and progressing through various hominids all the way to a modern human being. Yes, they can be humorous. But these kinds of popular representations about evolution get it all wrong. As three scholars of biodiversity and biology, these images bother us because they misrepresent how the process of evolution really works—and run the risk of reinforcing the public’s misconceptions....
Millions of Americans enjoy feeding and watching backyard birds. Many people make a point of putting food out in winter, when birds needs extra energy, and spring, when many species build nests and raise young. As a wildlife ecologist and a birder, I know it’s important to understand how humans influence bird populations, whether feeding poses risks to wild birds, and how to engage with birds in sustainable ways. There’s still much to learn about the risks and benefits of feeding birds, particularly through large integrated national citizen science networks like Project FeederWatch....
Kids take these messages and try to use them to make sense of the world, which can ultimately lead to ideas that are wrong, self-limiting, or downright discriminatory. Studies reveal that if adults don’t talk to young ones about gender from the moment they’re able to hold a conversation, those early views may never change. But when TV shows, books, and schools teach traditional gender values, it can be a tough conversation....
After years of development, the SpaceX Starship is rumbling to life for its first big launch. But before the 164-foot-tall rocket can lift off into space, the company, headed by Elon Musk, has to make it through some final regulatory hurdles. The launch is set to take place at Boca Chica, located at the southernmost tip of Texas and surrounded by state parks and wildlife refuge. The nature of its operations has raised concerns about potential harm to wildlife species, especially to threatened shorebirds, in the region....
Earlier research has found that people make snap judgments—within a tenth of a second—whether or not a person can be trusted solely on the appearance of the person’s face. Based that finding, Princeton researchers tried to quantify and define which characteristics a face must have to for people to reach a conclusion about that person. The researchers showed pictures of unfamiliar faces to test subjects and asked them to describe the traits of each face....
Last week, an Air Force C-17 lifted off from Afghanistan and flew to Germany. On board the large cargo aircraft was an intricate bio-containment system populated by three government contractors who were also coronavirus patients. The April 10 flight was the first time that the contraption, first developed during the Ebola crisis in 2014 and unveiled five years ago, was used for real. The Air Force calls it the Transport Isolation System, or TIS, and it can move people who are infected with a contagious bug of some kind without giving the contagion to anyone else on the plane, or contaminating the aircraft itself....
The Fitbit Inspire 2 fitness tracker, the newest entry-level offering from the step-counting stalwart, offers a lightweight and affordable guide out of a long pandemic rut. The $100 workout tracker follows the Inspire 1 and Inspire HR with several key improvements, most notably an extended battery life of up to 10 days, silent alarms, more advanced sleep analytics, and a heart-rate-based metric called Active Zone Minutes. The second-generation workout tracker also includes an optical heart rate monitor and automatic exercise recognition, though it skips the personalized reminders found in the Inspire 1....
As spring draws to a close, the long wait finally ends with the birth of thousands of flamingos. To document this sensitive process, I had to approach the sandy islet where the birds had settled in complete darkness. From the shore, the murmur of the colony was barely audible, but loud enough for me to estimate that the population was situated some 800 meters away from me, an assessment that I managed to confirm as soon as I crossed the water and mud to reach the islet....
