Why vintage tech? Despite the non-stop production of newer and neater stuff, older tech has its advantages. Americans crank out around 44 pounds of electronic waste per person each year, much of which is hazardous. So, by maintaining or reusing your devices for as long as possible, you’re helping the planet. Older tech is often perfectly capable of doing basic tasks like word processing, or can easily be reused as an alarm clock, a speaker, or for some other task you don’t want to buy a new widget for....

Fortunately, removing those gouges and restoring the wood’s original luster is a fast, easy project that anyone can handle. When you’re done, your cutting board will look as great as the day you got it—maybe even better. Stats Time: less than 1 hour (not including drying time)Material cost: $10 to $20Difficulty: Easy Materials Butcher block conditioner Tools Orbital sanderSanding discs (80-, 120-, 150-, and 220-grit)Lint-free ragsAnti-slip matFace maskTack cloth...

With that in mind, perhaps you should be sending more of these personalized, informal audio snippets that can say just about anything (whether you’re arranging a party or despairing about a sports game, a voice message works). Many messaging apps now support voice recordings as standard, and there are workarounds for the rest. In that case, you’ll need to start in a voice recording app. On an iPhone, the native Voice Memos app will do just fine: Record your piece, tap the three dots next to it, and choose Share....

There are a lot of period apps out there that promise to make your life easier in this regard, but you may not want to rely on them. Luckily, the tracking of menstrual cycles didn’t start with the smartphone era, and you can always begin to keep tabs on your body using the good ol’ calendar method. Research has found that what we understand as a healthy menstrual cycle varies depending on where in the world you are....

The following is an excerpt adapted from Imagine It!: A Handbook for a Happier Planet by Laurie David and Heather Reisman. We rarely, if ever, think about climate change and other environmental damage when we are filling our shopping carts with paper towels, facial tissues, or toilet paper; and likely even less when we are picking up our morning cup of coffee or using paper cups, paper shopping bags, or all that holiday wrapping paper....

The 27-megaton asteroid has a diameter of roughly three football fields, and would pack a society-ending punch if it really impacted Earth. So astronomers are interested in nailing down its trajectory and characteristics. At its maximum brightness, it will still be quite dim, with an apparent magnitude of 19.7. That’s not bright enough for a backyard telescope, but it should be enough for telescopes in remote spots like the Canary Islands, where Slooh’s is located....

The blast was captured by a host of sensors located in land, sea, and sky. Two groups of scientists published their analyses of this data on May 12 in the journal Science. One team concluded that pressure waves from the event were comparable in scale to those from the massive 1883 Krakatau eruption in Indonesia, which unleashed clouds of ash that reached 50 miles high and explosions that could be heard 2,200 miles away at its peak....

After college, in 1969, I worked as a salesperson in the office-​­furniture industry and sold a cubicle marketed as having “speech privacy.” It didn’t work—people could overhear each other—but nobody knew why the design failed, or how to fix it. A couple of years later, in Minneapolis, I founded what’s now Orfield Laboratories, a multisensory research center, to tackle problems like these. We can test everything from consumer response to the sound of a Harley-­Davidson motorcycle to how lights in retirement homes affect elderly residents’ cognitive functioning....

Take, for example, Callaway’s Chrome Soft line of balls: The spheres promise relatively low spin and high speed off the driver and irons, which helps with distance without sacrificing control on wedge shots around the green. As the Callaway has churned out these high-end balls from its Chicopee, Mass., factory, it’s become one of the fastest growing golf ball manufacturers in the world. There, we got a look at the elaborate chemistry and engineering that goes into those little orbs before we buy them and shank them into the water hazard....

Some—like the ones that shattered high-temperature records in Europe and swept the United States in late July—are a mix of heat and high humidity. Others in regions like the Southwestern U. S., the Middle East, and parts of Australia instead strike with an intense, dry heat. Both can be dangerous, and an initial human reaction to either is often to blast a fan. But according to a new study published Monday in Annals of Internal Medicine, in arid heatwaves, flipping on an electric fan may not help cool you down—and may even spike your body temperature....

Earlier this afternoon, the Popular Science crew at CES spotted Intel’s technicians assembling a series of half-pipes outside the Las Vegas Convention Center ahead of CES 2016, which officially kicks off tonight (although the convention center doesn’t open to press until tomorrow, Tuesday, January 5). The technicians said that Intel would be showing off motion-sensing microchips inside the BMX bikes all week, but declined to provide any further details. An Intel spokesperson confirmed to us that Curie would be making a return to CES in the form of BMX bikes....

Learn about infographic design. [via Visual.ly]

In some lower-income communities across Austin, Texas, pipes burst, and utilities still shut down even after the snow began to melt away. The brutal cold led to more than 240 hypothermia-related deaths, while another assessment outlined that there were potentially hundreds of more deaths from the shutdowns. “Hundreds of residents still don’t have access to water following the devastation of the winter storm last week, and may be out of service for several more days or even weeks,” said Austin Disaster Relief Network executive director Daniel Geraci in a press release last February....

According to NASA, extrasolar or exoplanets are any planets beyond our solar system. Most exoplanets orbit other stars like Earth does with our sun, but free-floating exoplanets (or rogue planets) orbit the galactic center and are untethered to any star. TOI-1452 b is about 100 light-years away from planet Earth and is orbiting a red dwarf star in a binary star system located in the Draco constellation. It is slightly bigger than Earth in both in size and mass and is potentially rocky....

Youth sports weren’t always like this. “What used to be a way to have fun with your friends turned into ‘how good can you get and how quickly can you get there’,” Jayanthi says. Around two decades ago, Jayanthi was among the first researchers to raise the alarm on what he called “youth sports specialization.” Today, a body of literature suggests that this trend comes at a cost to young athletes....

The SEC has pushed for closer federal regulation of crypto and other virtual assets for years, and Kardashian’s brief, murky partnership is just one of the cases they have shined a light on. “This case is a reminder that, when celebrities or influencers endorse investment opportunities, including crypto asset securities, it doesn’t mean that those investment products are right for all investors,” SEC Chair Gary Gensler said via an official press release....

Let’s be honest. We don’t know much about equestrian, other than the tight pants. Below are some basics straight from the Olympic website before we hit the science. There are three equestrian disciplines contested at the Olympics, with an individual and team event in each, making six events on the Olympic program. The three disciplines are jumping (or show jumping, or Prix de Nations as a team event), dressage, and eventing....

Apps like Tinder connect people who otherwise might not have met.4 And they’re becoming more efficient at it all the time.5 Apps curate our choices,6 make it easier to ask out a stranger,7 and take a lot of the risk (and cold sweats) out of first dates.8 When it comes down to it, though, online dating operates by the same social rules as dating in real life—and suffers from the same human flaws....

I’d always assumed that he’d just burned all the taste buds off his tongue, leaving him desensitized to the pain I felt if a raw pepper came anywhere near mine. But the science of spicy food liking and intake — there’s a whole body of research dating back at least to the 1980s on this — shows there’s more to it than just increased tolerance with repeated exposure. Personality, researchers say, is also a factor in whether a person enjoys spicy meals and how often he or she eats them....