The late-Cretaceous specimen belongs to a group of dinosaurs called oviraptorosaurs, which are closely related to birds. Intriguingly, the embryo’s position resembles the “tucking” posture that modern birds assume before hatching. The findings indicate that this important adaptation evolved before birds split off from other dinosaurs, the researchers reported on December 21 in the journal iScience. “Dinosaur embryos are key to the understanding of prehatching development and growth of dinosaurs,” Fion Waisum Ma, a PhD student in paleobiology at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom and coauthor of the findings, said in an email....

Look at the patterned image above. With the screen fixed, the design remains still. But scroll or physically move your screen ever so slightly, and the decorative display picks up speed. What’s driving this delusive dynamism, says neuroscientist Stephen Macknik at SUNY Downstate Medical Center in New York, is our mental attempt to focus on a moving world. When our eyes concentrate, they generate tiny jerk like twitches known as microsaccades, which alert our brains to motion....

Being this hot, swift, and dark comes with a downside: Under such conditions, the atmosphere burns so intensely that it can’t quite keep itself together. “The planet is so hot that the outermost layers are pumped up,” says Samuel Yee, an astrophysicist at Princeton University. Eventually parts of the planet’s atmosphere expand so far from its core that they fall into its hungry host star. In 2010, researchers gave the planet just ten million years left to live....

So what’s the point of a supercomputer? Experiments like crash-testing a car are expensive, complicated, and sometimes dangerous. A supercomputer simulation, however, allows researchers to carry out those tests virtually, and track and change countless variables as they play out. Some supercomputers even simulate nuclear blasts, which is best done virtually, and not in the real world. Then there’s energy research: researchers could use Aurora to test the design of a wind turbine blade....

“With this test, you don’t have to know what you’re looking for,” said the study’s senior author, Gregory Storch, in the press release. To develop the test, the researchers collected unique sequences of DNA and RNA from every group of viruses known to infect humans and animals—thus far, they have included up to 2 million unique pieces of genetic material. For the test, these unique sequences are compared against the genetic material found in a patient’s blood, stool, or sputum....

That craft is the Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment—CAPSTONE, for short. It will launch for the moon in late June, potentially becoming the first lunar satellite of its class. And it’s going on a test run where future, perhaps shinier missions are planned to follow. CAPSTONE may help NASA create a communications hub that, not too far in the future, will circle the moon. The fellowship of the CubeSat Despite its size, CAPSTONE is remarkable for a few reasons, many of which have to do with the satellite’s class: CubeSat....

A generous helping of Brave Robot’s cool confection—may we suggest the Raspberry White Truffle?—is different. Although it is every bit as delicious as a bowl of your favorite melty treat, it doesn’t involve our bovine pals at all. The vegan recipe starts with a milk substitute created by Perfect Day. The California startup skips the udder by adding cow DNA to a prolific strain of a fungus called Trichoderma reesei....

Our five senses—taste, touch, smell, hearing, and sight—don’t function in vacuums. They work together in intricate ways. Consider this: With our eyes covered and our nose plugged, we probably can’t ­distinguish an apple from an onion. Without our eyes to see, an apple is an apple and an onion an onion because of its taste, odor, and texture. Together, these attributes create what we call flavor, ­differentiating one food from another....

In their winter habitats in the mountains of northern Mexico, the monarchs cluster together so tightly that their populations are tabulated not by the number of individual butterflies, but by the total area they cover. The long term restoration goal for the eastern monarchs is a stable winter population of 6 hectares—an area of about 11 football fields. Recent estimates put the population at 2.1 hectares, down from highs of 18 in the mid-90s....

On Wednesday, the agency announced that it’s partnering with two private space companies, Axiom Space and Collins Aerospace, to build the next generation of spacesuits. Astronauts will wear those suits to conduct spacewalks aboard the International Space Station, explore the lunar surface during Artemis missions, and prepare for human-led missions to Mars. The companies were chosen as part of the Exploration Extravehicular Activity Services contract, an agreement that allows selected companies to compete for tasks through 2034....

“It will be the fastest machine ever deployed at a university in the US,” says Dan Stanzione, the executive director of the Texas Advanced Computing Center. With supercomputers, the title of fastest is a moving target—what’s perhaps more important is not the exact ranking, but that they’re available for researchers to use in the first place. Right now, the fastest supercomputer in the world is called Summit, and it’s at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, part of the Department of Energy (DOE), and is specifically tailored for AI....

The model has its upsides. Companies can enjoy a steady stream of your money until you cancel your account (or, you know, die). In exchange, because the payments happen automatically, you don’t have to think about bills—you just receive a convenient service. But this also makes it all too easy to sign up for more and more new subscriptions without tracking how much you’re already paying. Those small monthly fees quickly add up to a serious chunk of cash....

While these apps don’t have quite as many features or formatting options as the programs you can install for Windows and macOS, they do work in any modern browser, and can be accessed from anywhere, with no installation required—perfect for working on the go or across machines. Here we’ll explain how you can get up and running with each suite of tools. Google Docs, Sheets and Slides If you’ve got a Google account and a web browser then you can get started with Docs, Sheets and Slides, which can also be accessed through the Google Drive interface—just click the big blue New button in the top-left corner....

Further Up Yonder from Giacomo Sardelli on Vimeo.

Over the past five decades, VR has advanced from its science-fiction roots to a future that, well, sounds pretty sci-fi too. 1962 Morton Heilig—a cinematographer and the father of VR—patents the Sensorama Simulator. The refrigerator-size mini theater comes equipped with a vibrating seat and a wind machine to blast the viewer. 1981 Tom Furness of the U.S. Air Force builds the first immersive VR system, a virtual cockpit with a wide field of view, to improve cockpit design....

Scientists suspect that volcanic lightning results from particles in the ash cloud rubbing together as the plume swirls. They aren’t sure about which types of particles generate the most static electricity, nor do they know how much energy is produced during the event. Of course, the lack of research done in the field is understandable: Even scientists, when they see an erupting, lightning-spewing volcano, tend to run in the opposite direction....

While the additional weight (fish belly?) might be less noticeable in the water, once the penguins are on land, they have to figure out how to deal with the newly-acquired belly fat. Scientists noticed through observations that it seemed like the heavier penguins were falling down more often, but they wanted to figure out why. Were they walking differently? In a paper published in PLOS One Astrid Willener and colleagues describe how the addition of weight affects how King penguins walk on land....

Created by a team at the Singapore University of Technology & Design, this new seed-inspired one-wing drone is named F-SAM. It is a type of monocopter, or a helicopter with only one rotating blade. Engineers first developed a monocopter in 1913, with testing in 1915, but a problem arises in trying to make a crewed aircraft out of an entire spinning wing: It is really easy for a human pilot to get dizzy....

These predictions help us draw floodplain maps and design infrastructure so that it can withstand even intense events. But if our predictions are wrong, that means we can no longer plan new housing, roads, and bridges based on the storms of the past. Increasing extremes—such as tropical cyclones, heat waves, and heavy storms—will force us to change our plans and design structures that can endure these changes. It’s hard to understand the influence human-caused warming has on extreme events....

I decided to make some edible water bottles and put them to a taste test. Note: The method that I used is NOT the method used to make Ooho, a commercial product that’s currently seeking beta testers. Instead, I used a method created by Inhabitat, and based on existing molecular gastronomy techniques. I mixed sodium alginate and water to get a gooey substance that would go inside the water bottles....