At least that’s the conclusion of Philip Marcus, an engineer specializing in fluid dynamics at Berkeley, who defended the Great Red Spot’s vitality at the American Physical Society’s Division of Fluid Dynamics annual meeting on Monday. Observations of red bits flaking off from the main storm combined with decades of data showing the colossal oval shrinking and rounding have led some to fret that the superstorm is waning. But Marcus’s simulations suggest there’s no cause for concern, and that the underlying vortex remains healthy....

The major streaming apps know this, which is why they all come with some kind of list feature that lets you bookmark what you want to watch—just add items to it to remind yourself what you want to enjoy next. Creating and curating a watchlist also means that you’ll spend less time clicking around hunting for something good: You’ll always have a pile of stuff to watch ready and waiting, and with the speed at which new titles premiere, it’s highly unlikely you’ll ever run out....

Thirty-one years after the last Countach rolled off the line, its maker unveiled a modern take on the original wedge-shaped supercar with more power, more tech, and sleeker lines: the Lamborghini Countach LPI 800-4. The name may seem like a mouthful, but it’s easy to dissect when broken up into pieces. First, LPI is an acronym which means “Longitudinale Posteriore Ibrido,” or in English, “Longitudinal Posterior Hybrid.” This refers to the layout of the Countach’s humongous 6....

To help you on that front, here are 21 courses on sale, all available for $20, to help you kickstart your 2022 learning journey. The Professional Microsoft Excel Certification Training Bundle Excel does not only help you organize and analyze your data, it can also make your professional life easier by automating your time-consuming tasks. This 45-hour bundle will teach you how. It’s usually $1,600, but you can get it for $20 for a limited time....

This is exactly what Google did with Meet, and the company has released a flood of functionalities over the past year. If it took the latest layout change for you to notice, maybe you need a walk-through of all the brand new goodies—and a helping hand to learn how to use them. Even though all users have access to Meet, most of the changes over the past few months took place over at Google Workspace, which is Google’s professional suite for companies....

If ease of use is a must, you can’t do much better than a MacBook Air. With a tenth-generation, i-7 Intel processor, a super-smooth Retina display, 512 GB of blazing-fast SSD storage, and a reliable AMD Pro 5000 M graphics card, this should handle pursuits of both work and play. Razer is known for creating some of the best gaming peripherals out there, but it also makes some of the most stunning gaming laptops you can find....

It’s a little tinny at times, but the twice-monthly web radio show, “Armed With Science: Research and Applications for the Modern Military,” packs an informational punch. And it’s not just targeted to stealth-bomber savants and jet propulsion professionals. In the latest 22-minute episode of “Armed With Science,” Navy hydrographer Michael Jeffries details his work on underwater surveys and nautical charts. And of course, tides. His focus is global. That information is just a drop in the bucket....

While identifying a warning sign that would indicate COVID-19 would be extremely useful, doctors and researchers are still cautious. Anecdotal reports, even a lot of them don’t always mean that something is a reliable diagnostic criteria. “There is lots of uncertainty,” says Sanne Boesveldt, a professor in the Wageningen University’s food sciences department who studies the senses. At this point, there’s no scientific certainty, but if anosmia or other sensory symptoms are part of COVID-19, “this may be a tool to track the spread of the disease, of the virus,” she says....

Maserati would ostensibly become Ferrari’s luxury division when it took full ownership of the company in 1999, and the years since have seen Ferrari provide more conventional versions of its high-winding powerplants to Maserati for use in vehicles like the Ghibli sedan and Levante sport-utility. But under the larger Fiat-Chrysler banner, Maserati’s models also inherited plenty of hand-me-down hardware from elsewhere in the group’s portfolio, and glacially-paced development efforts have added to the brand’s recent struggles to uphold its racy reputation....

But serendipity is certainly not the only way to learn new things about the seas. Imagine the possibilities if these rubber ducks were filled with sensors, and could relay the information they picked up from floating around in the ocean to a global database. This possibility is now a reality in the form of Argo floats: an array of free drifting aquatic robots that can measure pH, salinity, temperature, and more....

And fixed-wing airplanes too: Here’s how it works. An algorithm (made by CSAIL and available on Github] plots the open spaces the drone needs to fly through. This is based on work CSAIL did for ATLAS, their walking robot entrant into DARPA’s Great Robotics Challenge. Here’s how MIT describes it: That’s great for quadcopters, which move calmly through space, but doesn’t quite work for the fast-flying planes. Instead, they created a separate tool to guide fixed-wing drones....

This counterintuitive result could be crucial for conservation efforts. These beautiful butterflies are at risk due to habitat loss and an increase in severe storms, which can sweep them up as they migrate to and from their southern winter habitats. But changes in global temperatures may also be a cause for concern. It’s generally been assumed that monarch butterflies took their cues to get moving from the emerging warmth of spring....

Emergency contraceptives, which prevent a pregnancy from happening in the first place, are different from abortion pills. However, it’s useful to understand how both kinds of medicines work and when they’re used, experts say, especially as demand surges. Reproductive health company Stix told the New York Times sales of its morning-after pill rose 600 percent within a day of the Supreme Court ruling. “A lot of confusion around emergency contraception and how it works is probably due to the fact that we do such a poor job of teaching reproductive health,” says Beverly Gray, an OB-GYN with Duke Health in North Carolina and founder of the Duke Reproductive Health Equity and Advocacy Mobilization team....

“With commercial companies now providing transportation to low-Earth orbit in place, we are partnering with US companies to develop the space destinations where people can visit, live, and work, enabling NASA to continue forging a path in space for the benefit of humanity while fostering commercial activity in space,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in a press release. The investment comes as NASA works to transition away from the International Space Station, which is on the road to retirement, in favor of working with more private and commercial companies for space travel....

NASA has approved preliminary plans for a spacecraft that would repeatedly zip by Jupiter’s icy moon, clearing it for the final design phase. The Europa Clipper, which could launch in the early 2020s and arrive in the Jovian system later that decade, represents the space agency’s first attempt to directly study how friendly this intriguing moon—and the liquid ocean that likely sloshes beneath its frozen crust—might be to life. “We are all excited about the decision that moves the Europa Clipper mission one key step closer to unlocking the mysteries of this ocean world,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in a press release....

As NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft descended toward asteroid Bennu to grab a sample of its surface materials, mission principal investigator Lauretta and his team knew the process would leave a mark–both on planetary science and on the boulder-filled surface of the rock itself. For its first-ever mission to retrieve a sample from an asteroid, the space agency selected a target that holds leftover, unchanged material from when the solar system formed....

Aside from Earth, Mars is the most closely studied planet in the solar system. However, in spite of having orbiters, landers, and rovers visit over the years, no spacecraft has ever focused on the interior of the planet. We don’t know how big the core is, what it is made of, or if the planet is still active. This is what InSight will investigate over its two year primary mission....

Popular Science caught up with some of the students, whose stunning projects covered such complex topics as stem cell research, wind energy, and cancer treatments. Some of them are already packing up their projects for the trip to Nevada.

Wave power is a measurement of the relationship between wind energy (basically, how the wind is blowing and how warm it is) and the upper ocean. Waves occur largely because of this relationship. The researchers found that wave power has risen globally by 0.4 per cent since 1948. Some areas have seen bigger increases than others, but they’ve all seen increases. Climate change is driving global temperatures upward, and “most of the… heat imbalance is going into the oceans,” says Borja Reguero, a UC Santa Cruz environmental engineer and the paper’s lead author....

Pre-orders for the Oculus Rift will begin at 8am Pacific Time on January 6. The release lines up directly with the beginning of CES, where Oculus had a major presence last year when it demonstrated the third-generation of its developer kit, Oculus DK 3 Crescent Bay. At the time, the company was demonstrating new breakthroughs in virtual reality including the 360º head tracking, more accurate positional tracking, 3D audio and much more....