Houston’s health department has teamed up with local non-profit Houston Wilderness to create an adaptable blueprint with one simple task: planting trees. Although planting trees is not a policy or system-wide solution that will end these polluting industrial operations, the new trees will help improve air quality and reduce flood risks. By scoring different tree species on their capacities to improve the climate, and mapping out the most at-risk community areas, this data can be used to plant trees best suited to solve the environmental problem that is exacerbating health inequities, such as increased risk of asthma and cardiac arrest....

Though targeted ultrasound is useful, it can be unwieldy, with a relatively large focal area. Aim a beam of sound at a kidney stone and you’ll likely hit the centimeter-sized object, but better precision–like hitting a cholesterol deposit in a blood vessel, or a specific clump of cancer cells–is hard to achieve. To improve matters, University of Michigan researchers turned to nanotubes and started with light instead of sound. First Jay Guo and colleagues coated a specially designed optoacoustic lens, used to convert laser light into high-amplitude sound waves, with a layer of carbon nanotubes....

The Air Force is already using Vision 60 robots for patrols around Florida’s Tyndall Air Force Base. There, the legs let the robots march through muck and keep perimeters under surveillance without complaint. The new nautical equipment offers the possibility for port patrols, and to accompany forces in the field further, where other machines cannot go. The Vision 60, like other animal-inspired robots, is partly a work of biomimicry—using a machine to imitate a living creature....

It’s called the default network. If the brain on a whole is one of the least understood parts of the human anatomy, the default network may be the least of the least. You can think of it as like the background processes in a computer: always running or on standby to accept your input or figure calculations. The default network is thought by some to be responsible for daydreaming, taking over when your conscious thought wanders....

The screen uses only one-third the power of and one-half the annual energy consumption of regular LCD TVs. And while there are other companies coming out with “green” TVs of comparable quality (Vizio, for instance, plans to introduce a line of environmentally friendly LCD TVs that use half the power of its competing counterparts) Sharp’s TV takes it up a notch with its solar-powered panel, similar in size to the surface area of the flat screen, and its battery system....

Although the eclipse was partially visible from parts of Australia, New Zealand, Argentina and South Africa, only a few lucky observers saw the full total eclipse from the ground in Antarctica. A few non-Earthbound onlookers also witnessed the eclipse—seven astronauts aboard the International Space Station huddled into the Cupola, the panoramic dome attached to the station, to enjoy the phenomenon. “Saturday morning, the Expedition 66 crew squeezed into the Cupola to check out the total solar eclipse that occurred over Antarctica and the Southern Ocean,” tweeted NASA astronaut Kayla Barron, sharing two photos of the spacefarers’ view....

A new patent granted to European planemaker Airbus, which was filed back in 2013 and was just granted last week, would do away with the cumbersome business of filling in and out of aircraft. Instead, it proposes a radically different alternative: passenger compartments that slide off and load onto the back of airplanes, like a shipping crate but for people. The patent, “Method For Boarding And Unloading Of Passengers Of An Aircraft With Reduced Immobilization Time Of The Aircraft, Aircraft And Air Terminal For Its Implementation,” would save airplanes minutes off their turnaround time, but would require a radically different system for airplanes and airports....

Last November, NASA researchers announced that they’d spotted two potential cryovolcanos on Pluto: Wright Mons, and Piccard Mons. The image above is a closeup of Wright Mons, named after the Wright brothers. Cryovolcanoes, or ice volcanoes, don’t erupt lava like volcanoes here on Earth. Instead, they erupt an icy slush of mixed materials, including ammonia, water, nitrogen, etc. The picture shows a relatively new surface without many impact craters, indicating that the crust in this area might have formed relatively recently....

The e-commerce giant will be building 300-400 physical bookstores, according to Reuters UK, following its flagship Seattle store which was announced in November 2015. At first, this move might seem like more than a few steps in the wrong direction. Remember Borders? The sentiment is pretty well encapsulated by PopSci reporter Kelsey D. Atherton. Coincidence? Maybe, but probably not. After all, why would the leading seller of e-readers invest so heavily in a medium that contradicts one of their own products?...

They were 185 miles off the coast, searching at depths 10,000 feet beneath sea level—finding a tusk seemed an impossibility. Randy Prickett, the senior ROV pilot who first spotted it, was sure that if they didn’t collect it they would later regret it. The crew was only able to retrieve a small fragment, but that shard confirmed that it was indeed a tusk. Preliminary research told them it was likely from a mammoth, but they couldn’t say for sure what species or time period the tusk was from....

But alien sunbeams are not the only type of interstellar messenger. At least two comet-like objects have made their way to our solar system, and naked cores of atoms rain down upon our heads daily in the form of cosmic rays. Now, in a not-yet-peer-reviewed preprint, two researchers are proposing that signs of another cosmic connection could lie undetected in labs and museums around the world. Exploding stars could, according to their results, have expelled bursts of dust particles that rocketed across the Milky Way, eventually burying themselves in lunar rocks....

The shareable moment came from a January speech Thunberg gave at Davos, the annual World Economic Forum held in the Swiss town of the same name. Standing in front of Jane Goodall, Bono, and Christiana Figueres of the UN, the Swedish teen told the room: “Some people have said we have all created the climate crisis, but that is not true. Because if anyone is guilty, then no one is to blame....

With that in mind, the new iPad Air, the fifth of its name, is something of a technical spectacle. It features one of Apple’s bespoke M1 chipsets like the ones used in modern Macs and the iPad Pro. Combined with a small set of nominal, but clutch upgrades—including 5G support and a new front camera—the M1 gives the iPad Air a concentrated performance boost that should impress anyone looking to create video or audio content, or do everyday computing....

Human intelligence may have actually peaked before our ancient predecessors ever left Africa, Gerald Crabtree writes in two new journal articles. Genetic mutations during the past several millennia are causing a decline in overall human intellectual and emotional fitness, he says. Evolutionary pressure no longer favors intellect, so the problem is getting exponentially worse. He is careful to say that this is taking quite a long time, so it’s not like your grandparents are paragons of brilliance while your children will be cavemen rivaling Hartman’s SNL character....

In a paper published in the journal Atmospheric Environment, researchers describe how they were able to trace the rise of Chile’s copper industry by analyzing layers of ice in Antarctica, 4,000 miles away. Other pollutants from distant human activities have been detected in Antarctica in the past, but these deposits have an interesting story to tell. How did the arsenic get there? Arsenic is a naturally occurring but highly toxic element, and often shows up in the same geologic formations as another valuable resource–copper....

OxiClean is designed to be used with regular detergent, helping to pick up some of the chemical cleaning slack. The product is a powder of sodium percarbonate, the chemical mixture of sodium carbonate, a component of glass, and hydrogen peroxide, the common disinfectant. When OxiClean is added to water, the chemical breaks up into those two constituent parts. As it turns out, there are three kinds of stains, and the two parts of OxiClean attack two different kinds of stains....

Researchers are increasingly coming to recognize that while thought can be carbon neutral, science is anything but. Now a trio of Australian astronomers has estimated how much carbon dioxide their professional activities produce. Between flying to conferences, crunching numbers, lighting their offices, and keeping observatories running, the field emits at least 15,000 tons of carbon dioxide per year in Australia alone—roughly equivalent to the annual emissions of about 2,000 homes, according to a report recently published on the preprint server arXiv....

The concept is simple: water (the main component of beer) has a higher solid-to-liquid phase transition temperature (aka “melting point”) than does ethanol. If one were to get beer cold enough, one could freeze some of the water in the beer — the alcohol would remain liquid — and separate the solids from the liquids. This would yield almost-pure water ice, and beer with a higher percent alcohol-by-volume (%ABV). Repeated rounds of this (under successively colder conditions) could yield a pretty potent brew....

Today, this route is a scenic and challenging driver’s road, twisting through the Alps Maritime, so it seems appropriate that Bentley would choose this road to demonstrate the handling prowess of the new Flying Spur sedan. Along the way, the new car reclaimed the mantle of the original 1952 Bentley Flying Spur, a position that had been lost by the disappointing rendition of 2005 to 2018, which was an ungainly adaptation of a front-drive chassis to premium sedan duty....

Best overall: Dolphin Nautilus CC Plus Robotic Pool VacuumBest automatic: Zodiac Ranger Suction Side Automatic Above-Ground Pool CleanerBest electric: Dolphin Escape Robotic Above-Ground Pool CleanerBest battery-operated: Pool Blaster MaxBest budget: XtremepowerUS 75037 Climb Wall Pool Cleaner How we chose the best above-ground pool vacuums We’re well-versed in aquatic accessories and have conducted past research on the best above-ground pools. Based on that, we know what an above-ground pool vacuum needs to meet the demands of above-ground pool ownership....