The fires are part of a longer-term pattern across the US, as increasingly variable conditions have made fast-growing fires possible any time of year, rather than in discrete “fire seasons.” A blaze in northern Arizona called the Tunnel Fire began on scrubby grassland 14 miles northeast of Flagstaff. It shot east through the dry understory, and has scorched pine and juniper forest. Around 750 households were forced to evacuate, and 30 homes so far have burned....

Digital cameras can snap better photos Smartphones have undoubtedly revolutionized photography. With cameras in nearly everyone’s hands, we’re now documenting and sharing much more of our lives than ever before. From social media to breaking news, phone photography has changed the game. This versatility means less stuff in our pockets and bags, but there’s a case to be made for not using your phone for everything—at least not all the time....

Celebrate the news by following Popular Science on Instagram! If you’re someone who’s concerned about notifications though, you may not want to rejoice. According to the Instagram Help Center: Hope you’re ready for the deluge.

Why should I do a deep-clean? A Princeton study found that a junk-covered room amps up stress and frustration by overloading your mind with stimuli. Basically everywhere you look you’re reminded of something you should do. That only intensifies during those long winter evenings when it’s just you, the pile of books you’ve got to alphabetize, and the crusties underneath your stove grates. Clutter in particular seems to have a deleterious effect on your mood and health....

Roomba is one of our favorite robot vacuum brands, earning a well-deserved place on our best robot vacuums list. The iRobot Roomba 630 is great for those who are looking for a base model that can vacuum dirt, dust, hair, and debris from carpets, hardwood, tile, and laminate floors. Its iAdapt technology allows the robot to automatically adjust to different floor types as it glides across your home. A patented three-stage cleaning system gets rid of dirt from the wall edges to the floor, while AeroVac technology pulls hair and debris off Roomba’s brushes and guides it to the back of the AeroVac bin to hold more debris than before....

These apps live inside the Messages app and carry a wealth of extra functionalities, from song sharing to sticker creating. No matter what type of chatter you are, you’re bound to find at least a few that are of interest. To get at them, open an iMessage conversation and tap the gray app store icon to the left of the message box. There you’ll see apps you’ve already added, and you can find more by tapping the blue app store icon....

Then : Clothes Wringer Etching Press In 1939, Popular Science published instructions for building an etching press out of an old clothes wringer. With the addition of a 35-cent scribing tool (about $5.79 today) and a few easy modifications to the clothes wringer, aspiring printmakers could etch patterns onto paper and even silk. It was a great way to bring a design to life—though not quite as literally as today.

Movies, music, and video games are all about escape—pulling you out of your reality into something, or someplace, extraordinary. This year, technological leaps in everything from game streaming and filmmaking to guitar playing and binge-watching made it easier than ever to lose touch, however briefly, with the everyday. At the same time, creatives found new ways of keeping the rest of us enthralled. Numbers matter to gamers. Players want 4K resolution, whip-fast 60-frame-per-second refresh rates, and 5....

In a paper that will be presented at SIGGRAPH Asia on November 4, the researchers, led by Changxi Zheng, an assistant computer science professor at Columbia Engineering, describe just what it takes to reliably build an instrument in which shape is of utmost importance. The team took on the challenge of designing a metallophone (a type of metal instrument that produces sounds based on vibrations of the instrument itself, rather than a reed or strings)....

A social behavior still common in today’s oceans, shoaling involves small marine animals moving collectively to guard against predators. Fish swim in oblong formations, huddling together to avoid being swallowed. “Shoaling is one of the most impressive behavior patterns found in nature,” says Nobuaki Mizumoto, a behavioral scientist at Arizona State University who authored a new study on the fossil. Until now, scientists could only guess that this extinct freshwater species, Erismatopterus levatus, moved in unison....

How to evaluate a diamond The Gemological Institute of America created the globally-accepted diamond grading standard known as the 4Cs. This method measures four crucial factors that determine the value of a diamond: clarity, cut, carat weight, and color. Clarity considers the existence and visibility of any internal or external flaws. The cut refers to the choices made by the artisan who shaped the gem from its rough original form, specifically the arrangement and proportions of its flat surfaces (facets)....

CSIC is a major shipbuilder for the People’s Liberation Army Navy, responsible for high ticket items like aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines. The biggest item in CSIC’s not-so-secret portfolio is China’s first nuclear-powered carrier. Popularly identified as the Type 003, it will be the largest non-American warship in the world when its launched in the late 2020s. CSIC’s Dalian Shipyard, which refurbished the aircraft carrier Liaoning, and launched China’s first domestically built carrier, CV-17, in 2017, will presumably build China’s first “Type 003” CVN....

The common misconception that people of color don’t have to wear sunscreen comes from the fact that high amounts of melanin, by way of its ability to absorb light, offers some degree of sun protection factor (SPF). Public figures have helped this belief take root—actress Angela Bassett (long revered for her seemingly flawless skin) said Black people have “natural sunscreen,” which might lead readers to believe her good looks come just from having dark skin....

This post has been updated. For weeks, hydroxychloroquine has been making headlines as a hotly contested therapy for treating patients with COVID-19. President Donald Trump publicly praised the antimalarial drug on numerous occasions, and several weeks ago he claimed he’d been taking it himself. But the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) warned back in April that the medication could cause heart problems, and most experts agree that taking it as protection against COVID-19 is a bad idea....

Before we get into what the future holds for Google’s messaging platforms, here’s a look back at how we got here. Google’s messaging efforts over the past decade and a half have been a complete mess. Google Talk (or GChat) launched in 2005 and for a few years things were simple. There was one service, and it worked really well. Of course, the good days didn’t last. Google would iterate through increasingly inconsistent messaging apps that it later shutdown or rolled into other apps....

Speech recognition Echo Show 15 The new Echo Show 15 is a bigger mountable smart home hub that emulates a painting on the wall, rather than a picture frame on your desk. It has a 15.6-inch screen which is like putting a laptop display on your wall. It doubles as a TV, but also sports a new Alexa-based interface that focuses on widgets. Any family member can add events to the built-in calendar or add sticky notes....

Since coronavirus cases started to climb back in March, scientists have been struggling to identify drugs and other therapies that can treat COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel virus. Unlike many bacterial invaders that are thwarted by antibiotics, there aren’t many pharmaceuticals that help us beat viral infections. Last week, the FDA issued an emergency use authorization for a treatment called convalescent plasma. The therapy isn’t new—in fact, it was used in the 1918 flu pandemic....

Declawing a cat may sound like a relatively benign procedure, like getting your nails trimmed. But the process involves removing the bones at the tip of a feline’s toes, which can result in long-term problems for your furry friend, a study concludes. Declawed cats are more likely to have a difficult time walking because with the ends of their toes removed, they’re forced to walk on the soft cartilage that was previously a part of their joints....

Logitech Blue Ember XLR Condensor Microphone, $84.99 (Was $99.99) Logitech’s Blue Ember is an XLR microphone that’s appropriate for musicians recording vocals or acoustic instruments, and podcasters thanks to its neutral audio profile. Your voice will sound natural, and the microphone’s slim design means it won’t pick up a lot of room noise or echo. The slim microphone is also easy to store and take with you if you’re headed to a recording session outside of your home studio....