That daily use goes far beyond hopping the Staten Island Ferry to get to jobs in Manhattan. People who live in remote locations in Southeast Alaska or down the Aleutian Islands often have no other options, save perhaps flights that are weather dependent and expensive. And if they want to transport their car, ferries are the only way to go. “Ferries are part of our road system,” says Douglas Olerud, mayor of Haines, Alaska....

Both apps—which Qatar reportedly requires for entry into World Cup events—request private information that far oversteps the European nations’ own regulations regarding fundamental human rights and data protections. These permission grants include the ability to amass phone call metadata, which is often used to pinpoint geographic location and other device fingerprints. The apps also prevent users’ phones from entering into Sleep mode, thus preventing the disabling or silencing of messaging and phone calls....

There’s no guarantee that Google will be there to help when gashes, scrapes, or broken bones arise, and medical help isn’t always just a phone call or car ride away. The best medicine for any type of injury is preparedness, so it’s important to know what to keep in your pack for everything from a day hike to a month-long sojourn, plus how to treat common injuries and frequent misconceptions about wilderness first aid....

This article was originally published in the March/April 2017 issue of Popular Science, under the title “Carry Water.”

These prototypes are electric and don’t give off any planet-warming greenhouse gases during flight, but mining and producing the electricity to charge their batteries is still an environmental cost. But the flying air taxis of the near future, which can both hover like helicopters and glide like airplanes, might be more energy efficient than you’d think—provided you carpool and only use them for long-distance travel. That’s according to scientists at the University of Michigan, who recently considered the energy costs of these vehicles compared to ground-based cars....

The ALMA telescope, the largest radio telescope on the planet, is providing some answers. New observations of a young star system about 450 light years away show the planets and stars sharing gas, with bridges stretching from the dusty gas disk all the way to the star. The disk itself is made up of two portions, an inner section near the star and an outer section where planets are forming....

Unlike the more than 30 species of oceanic dolphins, the South Asian River Dolphin is unique, or “tremendously bizarre” as Smithsonian marine mammal fossil curator Nicholas Pyenson puts it. But because of its polluted habitat, overfishing and other human-caused environmental pressures, the already rare dolphins are endangered. But a new find hiding in the 40-million-specimen Smithsonian paleobiology collection may hold some clues about how to best protect this unique cetacean by uncovering its evolutionary past....

or out of this world, hair matters to humans. Really, to all mammals. Hair and fur bind us all together from the adorable… …all the way down the cuteness food chain to pizza rat. As much as we might not like thinking about the ties that bind us to our rodent relatives, our flowing locks and their fur have the same tangled roots. Scientists announced today that they found evidence of hair on a fossilized, 125 million year old rat-like animal....

Around 95,000 cases of fraud originated from either a social media ad, post, or message, accounting for more than a quarter of all reported frauds last year, according to reports made to the FTC. The numbers suggest that social media was the most profitable way for scammers to reach their victims. For comparison, scams from websites or apps cost consumers around $554 million, and scams from phone calls cost $546 million....

On Mars, it’s a confluence of three geologically interesting features, and the first zone for Curiosity to do its science. In Scotland, it’s a tiny hamlet that now finds itself internationally interplanetarily famous. But who are we to name rocks on another planet? Won’t that annoy the Russians, or someone? It’s actually pretty complicated. Once scientists obtain the first detailed images of an area on another world, they settle on some themes for the region, according to Joy Crisp, MSL deputy project scientist....

One of the best ways to learn those details is to reproduce the changes that occurred some 400 million years ago–to virtually go back in time and alter the development of the land-goer’s living ancestors and see what happens. Which is what biologist Renata Freitas and colleagues were up to when they added some extra Hoxd13–a gene known to play a role in distinguishing body parts during embryological development– to the tip of a zebrafish embryo’s fin, and watched as the developing fin kept growing: Those round objects on the ends of the embryo’s fins look a lot like autopods, the multifinger proto-extremities that evolved from lobe-finned fish, allowing life’s first foray on to land....

The limes get their new purple hues from molecules called anthocyanins, which also give blueberries and red wine their distinctive shades. By adding genes from purple grapes and blood oranges to Mexican limes, the researchers created a lime that could synthesize its own anthocyanins. The researchers found that the new genes also changed the color of the lime’s roots and leaves. There’s no word yet on whether the genetic tweaks change the limes’ flavor, but they could be better for your health....

If you are in the market for a good deal on a present, you are in luck. Right now you can purchase a Sam’s Club 1 Year Membership for a 50 percent markdown as a part of our Every Friday is Black Friday deals. No coupons are necessary to redeem this deal, and new ones are coming out each Friday, so be sure to not miss next Friday’s drop either....

General Motors is already testing its own autonomous vehicles on its campuses, but the partnership puts the company in both the ride-sharing game and the conversation on self-driving cars. Lyft benefits as well by adding cars to its fleet and allowing drivers who don’t own cars to pick up GM models from rental locations around the US. Drivers will also have access to GM’s OnStar services. Lyft is now valued at $5....

WHAT’S NEW The Nexus, aside from being Google’s first entry into this category, includes an amp, so you plug speakers right into it, but you also can (and should) plug it into your TV via HDMI. Paired with a phone or tablet, you can beam audio or video purchased from Google Play right to it, just like with Apple’s AirPlay. It has shiny lights and you can twist the top half of the sphere to adjust volume....

One of Android’s greatest strengths is also its greatest weakness: for better or worse, Google’s smartphone OS is free to install on any device. But in a recent report, the company wants to begin crafting its own Android hardware—controlling the mobile Google experience from top to bottom. The Information reports that Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai and his team have told colleagues that the company would like to take greater control over the Nexus smartphones, which are made by third-party manufacturers like Samsung, LG, and Huawei, but run Google’s software....

In a blog post, Anthony Chavez, a vice president of product management for Android’s security and privacy division, explained that the company wants to limit the amount of data shared with third parties and eliminate identifiers that follow users across different apps. That includes advertising ID, a unique numerical code Google assigns to users that allows advertisers to track their activity and ad interactions. The change comes as part of a sweeping initiative Google has been implementing in recent years known as the “Privacy Sandbox....

Now, imagine you had a robotic dog, and you wanted to try to program it to just do something basic, like walking. Even if you were a skilled programmer, you’d likely find it a daunting task to get your mechanical canine to smoothly carry out actions like that, let alone a furry frisbee jump. To try to find a faster, more scalable approach, researchers from Google and the University of California, Berkeley, turned to data of actual flesh-and-blood dog movements to train their robotic pooch to carry out tasks like walking at different speeds or spinning....

Eventually, this remarkable hardware will go to space. The bolts, or ones like them, will hold together sections of the Orion spacecraft, a new vehicle that, sometime in the next decade, will carry humans out of low-Earth orbit for the first time since 1972—initially to the moon and later on trips to Mars. But ­before that, the fasteners must survive a mock version of their journey. Only worse. The shaking they’re enduring is merely the beginning, intended to simulate the ­violence of a launch....

As a portable light source, only the LED flashlight is superior to the carbide miner’s lamp, which had been the standard for brightness, weight and reliability since the early 1900s. Carbide lamps have an upper chamber full of water and a lower chamber full of rocklike calcium carbide (CaC2). A valve lets the water drip onto the CaC2 at a steady rate. When water hits carbide, it produces acetylene gas, which is directed to a nozzle in a parabolic reflector and then lit manually....