Scientists examined fossilized fish that perished shortly after the impact and used the growth patterns and chemicals preserved within the bones to pin down the timing of the event. The researchers concluded that the asteroid strike occurred during spring in the Northern Hemisphere, a time when many animals would have been raising young and especially vulnerable to the cataclysm. The season in which the asteroid made contact likely influenced which species survived the mass extinction that followed, the team reported on February 23 in Nature....

There are robots devoted to wiping your butt Okay, not literally. But P&G does have an analytical lab full of super-calibrated instruments for testing paper properties, and an increasing number of them are autonomous robots. I watched one bot spend several minutes retrieving tiny strips of paper and placing them in a device designed to slowly pull them apart, recording the force required to cause a tear. Other machines in the lab measure things like what angle a paper will drape at as it hangs off a roll, how much pressure a finger-sized probe will need to break a sheet while it’s wet versus when it’s dry, and exactly how thick the quilting on a slim piece of TP really is, down to fractions of a millimeter....

Essential console: Nintendo Switch with Neon Blue and Neon Red Joy‑Con This handheld game console weighs less than a pound and is highly versatile. When you’re at home, dock the device to your TV or computer monitor using an HDMI (high-definition multimedia interface) port. No matter where you are, you can use the built-in stand to prop up the screen on any flat surface and separate the left and right controllers for multiplayer action....

Just like iOS, Android is now mature and refined enough that it doesn’t need a full-on renovation every 12 months, so we’ve gotten used to there not being too many huge changes each year. That said, there are improvements and upgrades in Android 13 that are worth talking about. Here are the ones you should check out once it arrives on your handset. In Android 13, this protocol has been extended to notifications....

Tech companies and manufacturers have made it seem like privacy is just a matter of digging into your device’s settings and disabling cameras and microphones. But after years of data breaches and high-profile reports of secret recordings, maybe you don’t trust that approach and are looking for analog solutions that neutralize the hardware rather than the software. This is not just guesswork. A 2018 investigation by researchers at Northeastern University found that out of the 17,000 most popular apps on the Google Play Store, only a small handful of them surreptitiously listen to you....

As much of the nation continues to shelter at home to prevent the spread of COVID-19, atmospheric forces seem to be conspiring to keep us inside. The culprit is the dreaded polar vortex, a climate phenomenon associated with bitter cold snaps that usually have the good sense to occur during late fall or winter. Hearing about the polar vortex in May is a little bit like running into your dentist at the circus, so don’t feel bad if you need a reminder of how it all works....

The idea is indeed backed by some atmospheric scientists, who say that the rapidly warming Arctic could disrupt both the stratospheric polar vortex as well as the jet stream, or tropospheric polar vortex, and the main source of last week’s extreme cold. But other studies haven’t corroborated these findings, and the topic remains an area of active debate among scientists. Here’s why we can’t say for sure if climate change will bring more cold snaps in the U....

But once we all get past our collective fear of loud noises, and the devastation that is a popped balloon, there are actually some interesting scientific questions that need answering. In a new study published in Physical Review Letters researchers found that the amount of pressure inside a balloon directly affects how the balloon pops. The authors filmed their experiments with a high-speed camera, allowing them to see how a balloon pops in very slow motion....

“Crypto markets have exploded in recent years, with retail investors bearing the brunt of abuses in this space. Meanwhile, cyber-related threats continue to pose existential risks to our financial markets and participants,” said Gurbir S. Grewal, director of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement, in a press release. “The bolstered Crypto Assets and Cyber Unit will be at the forefront of protecting investors and ensuring fair and orderly markets in the face of these critical challenges....

Musk explained on stage that Neuralink’s initial two goals for humans will be restoring vision, even for those born congenitally blind, and connecting with the motor cortex for those with a “Stephen Hawking-type situation,” as Musk puts it, to do things like “control their phone better than someone who has working hands.” Hawking was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) in 1962, and in later years communicated using a speech generating device controlled via augmented keyboard systems as his paralysis intensified....

Fortunately, that’s something we can do in virtual reality. Like an arcane cyberpunk set-up, this virtual hoverboard is generated through a hodge-podge of external sensors and displays. Amsterdam developer Sander Sneek’s hoverboard uses a Leap Motion controller, a Wii Fit board, and a Kinect sensor to track your movements, while an Oculus Rift headset and headphones immerse you in the graceful simulation. The project is set to debut on October 31st, at Amsterdam’s Dutch VR Days virtual reality festival....

This little songbird that may well have just revealed animal communication to be a much more complex world than we previously thought. The new findings are published in the journal Nature Communications. Human language is prominently characterized by the its ability to produce a seemingly infinite number of articulations from a finite number of vocal tools. It’s principally made up of two main parts: phonology and compositional syntax. Phonology combines sounds to make words, and compositional syntax combines words to form more complex expressions....

February last year, Jessica Mundall came across a dead buck while driving. The animal had just been hit and killed by a semi truck, and was still “super fresh.” She and her husband, both hunters, processed the deer on the side of the road, taking three legs home in the bed of their truck (the fourth leg was shattered from the impact). “After that, we were hooked,” says Mundall, 26, who works for the state’s fish and game department in Boise, Idaho....

Pollution-Eating Tiles German-American architects Daniel Schwaag and Allison Dring have figured out how to improve urban air quality by adding pollution-sucking tiles to buildings. Prosolve 370E is a series of plastic tiles coated with titanium dioxide, a substance used to whiten toothpaste. When exposed to ultraviolet light and humidity, titanium dioxide reacts with and neutralizes pollution such as car exhaust. A parking garage in Sheffield, England, and a housing development in Mexico City are first in line....

Kelly also posted the all-clear, showing us the view from the immediate aftermath. From that vantage point, it looks like we all did OK, though the people shoveling out DC and New York today might beg to differ. Kelly wasn’t the only entity in space watching the storm. Plenty of other NASA satellites were doing the same thing, keeping tabs on the storm as it grew, or capturing images of the storm inadvertantly....

Chytrid fungus causes a condition called chytridiomycosis, in which the parasite infects the skin and causes it to thicken. This is bad news for frogs, who use their skin to drink water and absorb electrolytes. When their electrolyte levels go out of whack, their hearts stop. A 2007 study called the fungus the worst infectious disease ever recorded among vertebrates in terms of the number of species impacted—more than infections found in birds or even mammals....

In a paper published today in Nature, researchers explain how they combined the water-collecting traits of two desert-dwellers (a Namib desert beetle and a cactus) to create a new material adapted to pull water out of the air — even really warm air that would normally be very difficult to retrieve any water from. The beetle’s contribution to the textured material was the design of the bumps, which grow on its back....

In a new study published in the journal BMC Plant Biology and coauthored by Wightman, a team of researchers examined what this “wool” is made of, and how the plant makes it. The researchers used plant samples from the Cambridge University Botanic Garden, which were originally collected from the species’ natural range—which extends from the border of Turkmenistan to mountain regions in Iran and Afghanistan—by a Bristol University professor around 1970....

Waterfall illusion While watching a moving river, Aristotle noticed that when he shifted his attention to stationary rocks, they wiggled upstream. Neurons that process motion tire after focusing on the same activity. When struck with a still object, cells that track movement in the opposite direction have a stronger impact in comparison, and send it swimming away. Afterimages After staring directly at the sun (not recommended), Aristotle saw a glowing disc shaped like our local star in his vision for a few lingering moments....

Curiosity’s drill bit slammed into the surface over the weekend, but it didn’t rotate, so it wasn’t really drilling. It just proved that it can breach a rock’s surface and expose its interior. This is called a “drill-on-rock checkout,” and it’s designed to use the hammer part of the hammer-drill action. This will assure engineers that the percussion mechanism and all the controls work properly and are properly tuned, NASA says....