If you want to navigate your smartphone at top speed, single-finger tapping just won’t cut it. As device manufacturers ditch physical buttons for huge, bezel-free screens, specific hand gestures have become vital shortcuts for powering through emails, notifications, maps, and more. But how can you tell when to make specific motions? The correct swipe isn’t always obvious (especially if you’ve recently upgraded your years-old iPhone to one without a Home button or swapped iOS for Android)....

What could be more fundamental to photography today than our smartphone cameras? They’re ever-present, ready in moments, and the technology behind them makes it easy to capture great photos in most situations. And yet, I regularly encounter people who are unaware of many of the core functions of the built-in camera app. Smartphone camera fundamentals extend beyond just “push the big button.” Some tools help you set up the shot, and some give you more control over the exposure....

First of all, we remote workers don’t have a physical separation of work and personal space. Without that, we often start the day later than intended, and in the evening, the tasks don’t quite stop. This lack of a consistent routine means we easily get distracted, especially when we sit only a few steps from the refrigerator and the television—and no nosy coworkers can poke around to keep us honest....

The 32-year-old NASAS/ESA telescope captured a stunning image of the heart of globular cluster NGC6638 in the constellation Sagittarius. According to NASA/ESA, the star-studded image highlights the density of stars at the heart of these tightly bound groupings of clusters, which range from tens of thousands to millions of stars. Hubble’s state-of-the-art Wide Field Camera 3 and the Advanced Camera for Surveys created the glittery image that was released to the public on August 1....

Before Ian, or Maria, or Katrina, there was Camille. With winds so powerful that they knocked out wind gauges in Mississippi, the epic strength of Hurricane Camille was monstrous. But before it struck the Gulf coast on August 17, 1969, Robert Simpson, the director of the National Hurricane Center, made the executive decision to warn residents in the path of the giant storm of high winds, low barometric pressure, and a storm surge of between 15 and 20 feet....

As devastating as these events were, meteorologists don’t all agree on whether storms are indeed growing stronger, or if there’s just more people living on the coast, where they are vulnerable to the powerful winds and rain. But a new study finds that even when accounting for increases of people and wealth in areas hit by the cyclones, the devastation is increasing. “If a storm hits a major city, of course it causes more damage than if it’s in a rural area,” says lead author Aslak Grinsted, climate scientist at the University of Copenhagen....

Disassortative mating alert! A group of European scientists led by Oxford biostatistician Raphaelle Chaix has provided some of the most compelling evidence yet that we humans pick our partners based on how different their immune systems—or officially, their Major Histocompatibility Complexes—are from our own. The MHC is a large and super-important group of related genes that regulate what antibodies we produce. It is unusually polymorphous—that is, it differs quite a bit from person to person, even within genetically similar groups....

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A study published yesterday in the journal PNAS puts weight behind the hypothesis that–more than any social or environmental factor–humans own their giant cognitive leap to the ancestral chefs and proto grill masters who invented cooked food. Why? According to the researchers, a diet of raw foods can’s support an endless growth of both brawn and brains. Larger body sizes and bigger brains both meant more energy use, which meant more time spent eating each day....

Bioengineers at Harvard and Caltech designed the sponges, which are primarily made from alginate, a gel made from algae. They can be molded into any shape or size and contain large pores, which allow liquids and large molecules to pass through. The pores can also hold cells, proteins and small-molecule drugs, which can then pass into the body when the alginate starts to break down. They could be promising new tissue scaffolds at sites of injury or infection, according to David J....

You shouldn’t assume that your personal dentist is following all of those guidelines to the letter, says JoAnn Gurenlian, a professor of dental hygiene at Idaho State University and chair of the American Dental Hygienists’ Association’s COVID-19 task force on the return to work. “I don’t think you should assume that every office has put all the new measures that are in our guidance documents in place,” she says. Before you head in for your regular cleaning, call and ask about how they’ve changed their practices....

Now, a new type of sustainable fashion has hit the headlines, this time focusing on how fabric materials are grown. Recent brands, including Eileen Fisher, Stella McCartney, Christy Dawn, and Kering Luxury Group, which contains high-end brands like Gucci, Bottega Veneta, Balenciaga and Alexander McQueen, have ventured into the realm of regenerative agriculture to promote a more sustainable fashion experience. Regenerative agriculture can be defined as farming practices that restore soil biodiversity, which among other benefits, promotes natural carbon storage....

Does the barley taste any different? Apparently, no. In fact, scientists have not found a difference in the genetic make-up of the earth-grown and space-grown barley yet, according to Manabu Sugimoto, an Okayama University biologist who has been part of a Russian project to investigate growth methods for edible plants in space. Bar crawlers will have to wait to get their hands on this enticing beverage, though. The company only has enough barley to make 100 bottles of beer this fall and they will not be sold commercially....

What is the Joué Play controller? Joué Play is an ultra-portable, customizable MIDI controller with swappable and velocity-sensitive silicone mats representing different control surfaces: piano keys, drum pads, a 17-key chromatic keyboard-like module called Scaler, and a guitar fretboard (with aftertouch and pitch modulation). It’s available in multiple configurations, with either two ($245) or four pads ($295), and in two color schemes, Fire (tested) and Water. In the box you’ll also find a USB-C cable with a number of adapters for connecting to your computer (both macOS and Windows are supported) or an iPad....

Many people, researchers included, assumed that liberals, who have a reputation for being open-minded and flexible, would find more of the jokes humorous. The joke was on them, because as it turned out, conservatives enjoyed humor more across all categories. Researchers guess that traditional jokes, like the following, which has a clear punch line and reinforces stereotypes, would be a hit with the right—and they were right: Jake is about to chip onto the green at his local golf course when a long funeral procession passes by....

Mobile World Congress is speed dating for new smartphones You probably couldn’t make it to Barcelona last week, but smartphone makers converged on the city and brought with them a wide variety of new devices, some of which have 5G, others that fold up, and some with cameras scattered all over them. You can see some of the highlights in this gallery. The Momo challenge took over the news News outlets all over the country last week touted the rise of the “Momo Challenge,” a supposed YouTube phenomenon that was encouraging kids to harm themselves with messages hidden in Minecraft and Peppa Pig videos....

Due to the area’s remote location, rescuers were unable to reach the scene until a day after the stranding was reported. Still, they managed to save 32 whales with the help of a local fisherman who used his boat to herd the whales back out to sea. The dead whales were left to decompose naturally. Just one week earlier, more than 50 whales died after becoming stranded on another nearby beach....

A little under an hour later, Moraes came across another bird-moth pair. The bird, another Black-chinned Antbird, once again sat on its branch in a sleepy stupor as the erebid moth fluttered on the bird’s neck and slurped its eye juices. For the moths, this is a pretty standard night out. Biologists have spotted moths and butterflies drinking tears from mammals, turtles, and crocodiles. Bird eyeballs are a less common source of refreshment—Moraes is the first person to spot moths drinking bird tears in Brazil....

While no such technology is commercially available yet, the platform Meta, formerly known as Facebook, is in the early stages of creating haptic gloves to bring the virtual world to our fingertips. These gloves have been in the works for the past seven years, the company recently said, and there’s still a few more to go. These gloves would allow the wearer to not only interact with and control the virtual world, but experience it in a way similar to how one experiences the physical world....