This especially true in the vital area just above the water. Now the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) plans to use inexpensive drones to fly into the most active part of the storm and let them be destroyed by it, in order to better predict how a hurricane will progress. Hood presented an overview of the program on Saturday at the annual AAAS conference in Washington, D.C. In the past, researchers have used the dropwindsonde, a sensor attached to a parachute, to estimate wind speeds at the Tropical Cyclone Boundary Layer, right above the water....

If it looks like a Nike product and has marketing material that looks like a Nike product, then it must be … a student with too much time on his hands and a working knowledge of Photoshop? It ends up that Nike has nothing to do with the seemingly impressive technology. Our contact with Nike confirmed that the company is asking the rogue inventor, Billy May, to remove the swoosh branding from his design....

Shark conservation is crucial in today’s world. About 27 percent of cartilaginous fish, including sharks, are estimated or assessed to be threatened with extinction, says Lisa Whitenack, an associate professor of biology and geology at Allegheny College. But, according to researchers, the iconic week of television might be hurting those it claims to help. According to a talk given by Whitenack at the American Elasmobranch Society (AES), an organization dedicated to the research of sharks, skates, and rays, Shark Week fails to deliver on this goal....

Many researchers have been testing interventions such as digital literacy programs and online tipsheets to help older adults familiarize themselves with new information in online environments. But are these efforts actually effective? A new study published in Scientific Reports by researchers from Stanford University in April finds that these programs work. They found that adults who participated in an hour-long course training them to identify and verify the credibility of online information performed better in a fake news assessment test than a control group who did not receive any training....

FACT: Piss was once a precious commodity By Rachel Feltman For most people, urine is a fluid best flushed away as quickly as possible. But for much of human history, our pee was a powerful tool and an important resource. If you let the substance sit around to ferment and evaporate for a spell, its high ammonia content turns it into an effective cleansing and bleaching agent. It can also be used to produce potassium nitrate, otherwise known as saltpeter, which is a component of gunpowder....

Get those midi-chlorians ready. Sphero is calling its device the Star Wars Force Band. “[The wearable] takes it that much further with the notion of using the Force,” Keegan Shoutz, Sphero’s public relations person, tells us. “The use of gestures gives it a more interactive consumer experience than [controlling BB-8] through a screen on a tablet.” Sphero stresses at CES 2016 that this is still far from consumer release. “We were just excited to show off what we’d done,” says Jeff Wiencrot, embedded systems engineer for Sphero....

The sun (even if it might be a little lazy), gives us free heat and light every day. It gives us and our planet life, but more importantly, it can also make s’mores. You don’t need fancy solar panels, either—just an old box, some foil, and some plastic. Stats Time: 15 minutes building, at least one hour bakingDifficulty: moderate What you’ll need A small pizza box (or another similar cardboard box)Black paperAluminum foilPlastic wrapGraham crackersMarshmallowsChocolateTapeScissors (or a utility knife)(Optional) Wooden stick...

A study published in November in Science Advances finds that we might have to take our assumptions about the mineral deposits with a grain of salt. But let’s start back at the beginning, with why dry-packing nuclear waste in salt became our go-to nuclear storage solution. For decades, underground salt deposits have been held up as the ideal storage sites for nuclear waste. Currently, the only nuclear waste repository in the United States, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico, is situated in a salt deposit 2,000 feet thick....

The Google Nest Audio usually retails for $100, but you can buy it now for just $60. That gets you advanced features that have earned it over 600 rave reviews on Best Buy alone. While it may look like a simple speaker, the Google Nest Audio can pair with another Nest Audio to create a stereo setup or connect to your other devices and compatible speakers to create an integrated home audio system....

By analyzing leg bones from two skeletons, paleontologists found evidence that they belonged to half-grown T-rex and not, as some researchers have proposed, a smaller species of tyrannosaurid. The team concluded that T-rex didn’t come into its full strength and bulk until late in adolescence. The two youngsters provide a rare window into this early—but no less ferocious—period in T-rex’s life. “These specimens were clearly very young, fast-growing animals,” says Lawrence Witmer, a paleontologist at Ohio University in Athens who was not involved in the research....

Research led by physicist and mathematician Leif Ristroph looked at how vertical cylinders of ice melt in water baths between 2°C to 10°C. Below 4°C, the ice whittled into a pointy and smooth hanging tooth structure—slightly warmer water settled to the bottom of the water bath, accelerating melting lower down the ice compared to upper parts of the structure. At temperatures of 7°C or higher, the geometry flipped: This time, a spire appeared instead, due to warmer water rising and hastening melting higher up the ice....

In April 2019, Doeleman and his colleagues spilled the beans, revealing to the world the first image of a supermassive black hole. The behemoth in question sits 55 million light-years away in the M87 galaxy in the constellation Virgo. This big reveal could help answer some of our heftiest questions about the universe. Astrophysicists coined the term “black hole” in 1967, and there’s a reason the elusive beasts have fascinated us for the decades since....

“Simply put, the microbial world constitutes the life support system of the biosphere,” the authors write. Microbes are at the bottom of every food web, and live in places on Earth that nothing else can. They were here long before other forms of life, and life relies on their functions. But despite this fundamental influence, how microbes fit into climate change is still poorly understood. “Microbes are everywhere, and they’re dynamic,” says Rick Cavicchioli, a microbiologist at the University of New South Wales Sydney and the paper’s main author....

After the Liberator, designers expanded beyond its single-shot design. Now, a YouTube user with the handle Derwood is showing of a 3D printed semi-automatic weapon dubbed the Shuty-MP1. Evolving from single-shot pistols to semi-automatics the first time took roughly 600 years, though with the existence of bullets and modern gun-making know how, it’s not terribly surprising people were able to make the transition for printing guns in just two and a half years....

At the afterparty for Microsoft’s Imagine Cup, a worldwide student technology competition, some of the smartest students in the world are singing “Like a Virgin.” One of them begs me to get him a beer; the line is impossibly long and I’ve finally reached the front. But really, you can’t blame them for wanting to unwind. It’s been a long week in St. Petersburg, Russia, where the students have largely neglected the sights in favor of long nights of coding and honing their business pitches....

In July 2017, archaeogeneticist Christina Warinner headed there to learn about the population’s complex relationship with milk. In Khatgal, she found a cooperative called Blessed by Yak, where families within a few hours’ drive pooled the bounty from their cows, goats, sheep, and yaks to supply tourists with heirloom dairy products. Warinner watched for hours as Blessed by Yak members transformed the liquid into a dizzying array of foods. Milk was everywhere in and around these homes: splashing from swollen udders into wooden buckets, simmering in steel woks atop fires fueled by cow dung, hanging in leather bags from riblike wooden rafters, bubbling in specially made stills, crusting as spatters on the wood-lattice inner walls....

He isn’t allowed to say exactly how far ahead of time he is told the winners, but it’s not difficult to infer that the work needs to be done quickly. The paintings—yes they’re real paintings, not digital renderings—are released in the same second the prizes are announced, says Elmehed. As we video chatted this month, shortly after the last winner was announced, still attached to the wall behind him was the completed portrait of that day’s Peace Prize winner, Abiy Ahmed....

California-based climbing brand Five Ten has been producing cutting-edge designs and proprietary ‘stealth rubber soles’ for almost 30 years. These bouldering shoes are very ‘aggressive’—think pointed and tight, like ballerina pointe shoes—so you may want to size up, but they’ll help you work on your footwork on real rock. The price point is low, too, compared to other climbing shoes, making these the perfect entry pair that are a huge step up from climbing gym rentals....

We’ve picked some of our favorite herb garden systems for your kitchen. The AeroGarden is an incredibly easy way to grow fresh herbs right on your kitchen countertop. 40 Watt LED grow lights help herbs grow strong and bushy, without sunlight or placement concerns. Seeds are grown in water—avoiding the mess of soil—and watered through filling up a removable bowl at the bottom. A touch screen tells you how much water is left in the trough, making vacations easy to prepare for....