“That’s our first one of the day,” Hagen said to a half-dozen volunteers gathered around him for the annual Staten Island butterfly count he led at the end of June. By the end of the outing, the group tallied 346 individual butterflies representing 24 species across several sites. Hail and thunder ended their 8-hour effort. Among their finds: stained-glass American ladies perched on lavender, broad-winged skippers and buckeyes swirling in a whirl of rust and orange, and a dusty-looking common sootywing resting on a dandelion....

The first states to offer the feature will be Arizona and Georgia; Connecticut, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Oklahoma, and Utah will do so at a later date. Apple did not announce a specific timeline for the roll out, though it’s expected to be implemented with a software update slated for this fall. For now, the feature will be limited to airport-security use only. Apple has partnered with the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to allow the digital IDs in “select airport security checkpoints and lanes in participating airports,” according to the company’s press release....

Deadspin has a nice run-down of the take-aways, to which I would add only one question: Does anyone know what that blob of Steelers fans is doing in southern Oregon? [via Deadspin]

The strength of a flu shot depends on how many antibodies it helps develop, which varies from person to person. But people in one group, the physically fit, generally have a better response to the shots, and thus a reduced chance of catching the bug every winter. Even the elderly, who usually don’t respond very well to inoculation, improved their odds when they exercised more often, the New York Times points out....

Many products often come with expiration dates to indicate a predetermined shelf life, like food and medicine. Once the indicated date has passed, these products are generally deemed unfit for use or consumption—but does that mean people should toss them out the second that date passes? According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the average person generated about 2.68 pounds of municipal solid waste per day in the 1960s, which include food, plastic, and paper waste....

In a new study, researchers from the University of Wisconsin Madison asked over 800 local residents in the Madison metropolitan area to assess their attitudes towards using autonomous vehicles in the future and found that study respondents would be interested in using a driverless car about 31 percent of the time, a significant chunk more than taking the bus. Wissam Kontar, a doctoral student at the University of Wisconsin Madison and lead study author, says that with growing popularity and industry investment in autonomous vehicles, that this “excitement” may be “overshadowing potential environmental impacts....

Since early August, African swine fever (ASF) has wiped out pork productions across China, Mongolia, Vietnam, and most recently, Cambodia, without signs of stopping––the virus has already claimed more than 1 million pigs in China, by far the largest pork producer in the world. African swine fever—not to be confused with swine flu, which affects humans—is not zoonotic, meaning the virus cannot jump from animals to people, but among pigs it is incredibly contagious, virtually always fatal, and can have serious economic impacts....

When the plants closed, the levels of PM2.5 pollution (particles measuring less than 2.5 micrometers, about 30 times smaller than a human hair) in the surrounding area went down, along with levels of nitrogen oxide. And in the year after they closed, fertility rates in the surrounding areas went up. The power plant closures were, in a way, a natural experiment, allowing researchers the rare opportunity to measure the effects of removing pollution from the community....

Want to know how he did it? You can browse the C++ source of the hack. Try it if you’re computer science-savvy and have a hankering for some folk or classical harp tunes. You can preorder a Leap Motion device here.

As recently as four years ago, capturing enough of an individual’s vocal patterns and intonations was a much longer process. For example, VocalID, a company that provides synthetic voices for clients with conditions that leave them unable to speak, required several hundred sentences’ worth of data to accurately recreate an individual’s voice. Around the same time, a similar product called Speech Morphing required about an hour’s worth of scripted inputs....

Virtually all homes point their solar panels south, where they can best capture rays from the sun when it rises in the southeast and sets in the southwest. That way, residents collect the most power possible throughout the day, which they can use in their own homes or sell to the grid (if they have any power leftover). But critics say the panels would actually do more good facing west, where they could capture sunlight during the midday and afternoon when energy is most needed....

“One down!” Those were Victor Vescovo’s first words after climbing out of the hatch of the DSV Limiting Factor. He had just dove 27,480 feet down to the bottom of the Puerto Rico Trench, making him the first person to reach the absolute nadir of the Atlantic Ocean. Or at least those were the first intelligible words, over the waves, and the motor of the nearby Zodiac raft, and the low hum of the support vessel DSSV Pressure Drop, which was idling nearby....

Despite its refusal, Apple has already divulged a potential trove of private information from the San Bernardino shooter’s phone, which includes the iCloud backups and all associated iCloud data. This is standard practice for Apple, which as a (normally) law-abiding company provides law enforcement with all data relevant to investigations, even extracting information from phones multiple times in the past. Tim Cook confirmed this protocol in his now-infamous missive “A Message To Our Customers....

The heat wave, coming just a little over a month after the record-setting heat dome that scorched the region in June, is extreme, but not as eye-popping. Late July and early August are the Northwest’s hottest months, though highs in Portland are usually 20 degrees lower, around 80 degrees. The wave could end up setting daily heat records in Seattle, which might again hit 100 degrees. Those temperatures are still potentially deadly—about 600 people died in the June heat wave across the US and Canada....

The insidious thing is that each of these end-of-the-world action disaster movies starts with a more-or-less reasonable premise — in the case of Armageddon a large asteroid is on a collision course with Earth which is of course possible — and they then proceed to use a lot of realistic-sounding techno-jargon and a sufficient smattering of actual science to fool the unwary viewer into believing that some of the scenarios actually have some connection to reality....

And it had to be (almost) one of a kind. Though Aston Martin has been building Bond’s cars over the course of 25 years, this is the only one that won’t eventually hit the production line. As its name implies, the DB10 is a limited run of 10 state-of-the-art concepts. Reichman’s engineers tailored each car to its scene. Some have roll cages. Some have flamethrowers in the exhaust. Plot spoiler: It’s disguised in such a way that it will surprise audiences....

Despite the lander’s successes, however, one gauge has met with resistance from the Martian environment while trying to carry out its mission. Something has stopped InSight’s 15-inch digging probe, dubbed “the mole” for its burrowing prowess. Instead of diving deep into the Martian sand where it could take the planet’s temperature, it’s been stuck half-buried. An intercontinental team of MacGyvers has spent a year devising successively daring plans to get the mole digging again, but still it flounders on the surface....

After considering the results of more than 800 studies, the committee classified processed meats as a Group 1 carcinogen, which is known to cause cancer in humans—other agents in that group include alcohol, smoking, and various chemical compounds. Red meat, such as beef or pork, was categorized as a Group 2A possible carcinogen. But having a diet filled with bacon and sausage doesn’t mean that a person is likely to develop cancer as much as a smoker is likely to....

How can I find the best beach chair? When you’re shopping for the best beach chair, you want to be sure to snag a chair that will bring you hours of comfort, be durable enough to last at least through the summer, and lightweight and collapsible for easy transport. Finding the best beach gear means asking yourself how and where you will be spending your time. If you plan on camping at a rustic, wooded coastal area, it may make sense to bring a portable beach hammock or easy-to-carry camping beach chair....