Most of the animals in the book are the ones you’d expect: apes, monkeys, dolphins, and parrots. But there are a whole mess of highly intelligent animals you might not expect. What we’re saying is, if you really want a smart pet, don’t get a dog or cat. Get a domesticated raven. Click to launch the gallery.

Without further ado, here are some courses on security, web development, and more, that can help you break into tech this year. Take your pick, all of them are on sale: The A to Z Cyber Security and IT Certification Training Bundle Boasting 114 hours of premium content, this bundle is designed to take you from cybersecurity zero to systems security hero. From ethical hacking and penetration testing to cloud security and SQL injection, it leaves no stone unturned when it comes to teaching you the fundamentals of cybersecurity....

Ember’s ceramic mug—and its travel mug—is my favorite product of 2017. Its ability to keep your beverages hot for extended periods makes it especially great for people who need help staying warm over these next cold winter months. If winter turns your ears into icicles, meet Sprigs Earbags. They are like hats for your ears and come in small, medium, and large. Unlike traditional muffs, these fleece-lined warmers fit around your ears....

Anker has a fairly new sound bar called the Soundcore Infini Mini. The 21-inch speaker fits on your desk, has separate modes for music and movies, and is controlled via remote. Hook up your TV, computer, or smartphone via Bluetooth, AUX cable, or optical cable. Today, get the $100 sound bar for $68. If you want a larger option, check out Anker’s 35-inch bar from our affordable sound bar article....

This year’s award recognizes groundbreaking research in subjects such as prime numbers and the packing, or efficiently arranging, of spheres in eight-dimensional space. The winning mathematicians–Hugo Duminil-Copin of France, June Huh of the US, Maryna Viazovska of Switzerland, and James Maynard of the UK–have answered questions that have stumped other experts for years. Duminil-Copin, of France’s Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques, was awarded for his work on the probabilistic theory of phase transitions—how matter changes forms, such as water freezing to ice....

The key, of course, is preparation, especially if you’re visiting a new country. Aside from packing essentials, you also have to at least gain familiarity with the language being used in your destination. Here are 7 apps and tools that can help, and you can get them for extra discounts during our Spring Refresh Sale. Mondly: Lifetime Subscription (1 Language) Named App of the year 2017 in EMEA by Facebook FbStart, this language-learning app takes a different approach to help you gain fluency in your language of choice....

Here are nine little-known facts about poison you can impress your relatives with over Thanksgiving dinner. Or not.

Lathrop, a physics and geology professor at the University of Maryland, thinks one key to creating a magnetic field is size. A bigger orb with more hot metal churning inside it, mimicking Earth’s iron core, could provide the mass needed to make a planet-shaped magnet. So he has spent $1.6 million in grant money building a fake Earth that is 10 feet tall and weighs 30 tons. Our planet’s magnetic field has reversed directions hundreds of times throughout its history and has weakened 10 percent since monitoring began in the 1830s....

The latest example is the Nissan ECO-pedal system, which will be available in models starting next year. Although the company says they have no “test mules” (e.g., car prototypes) anywhere in the world, they have tested the ECO-pedal in their lab. When the driver accelerates too much, the ECO-pedal system pushes back – automatically slowing down the driver to save fuel. There’s also a visual indicator: a green ECO-P light emits from the speedometer and it flashes when fuel economy is degrading faster....

Private companies can make space travel a lot cheaper by reusing the rocket boosters that lift space-bound cargo off the ground. After carrying a package dozens of miles above the Earth, a typical rocket’s first stage separates and falls back to Earth, usually into the ocean, never to be seen or heard from again. This system of throwing away the most expensive part of a rocket is not an efficient or sustainable way to do business....

According to a release from NOAA’s Weather Prediction Center, the heaviest snowfall—in the realm of 6-12 inches—is likely to occur “across a swath extending from the Eastern Shore of Maryland up through most of Maine.” Blizzard conditions are forecasted in parts of coastal New England, where 1-2 feet of snow or more are possible. Blizzard warnings have been issued across 10 different states, from Maine to Virginia, that will impact around 10 million people, according to CNN....

For some observers, the holiday starts with the nine days of Navaratri, which marks the rise of the goddess Durga as she battles demons and protects the planet from carnage. But the main Diwali dates typically fall in late October or early November, with clay lamps, firecrackers, and fairy bulbs gleaming from temples, markets, and homes. Revelers don their finest clothes, cook up giant feasts, swap gifts, visit temples, and scope out extravagant displays with friends and family....

That number could have been much lower had more people received naloxone, a medication that reverses opioid-related overdose. Naloxone is safe, non-addictive and highly effective. And it does more than save lives: When used shortly after overdose, naloxone reduces the likelihood of long-term brain damage from diminished blood flow. Available as an injection or nasal spray, naloxone can be administered by anyone trained to do so—assuming, that is, that someone has it on hand at the scene of the overdose....

Now a group of researchers has discovered a new technique—one that might work not only for the universe’s most gargantuan black holes, but also for certain small and dense objects like white dwarfs. Pulling off measurements of this type will take time, but the observations could eventually let researchers weigh many more giant black holes than before, helping physicists reach a new understanding of the behemoths that govern most galaxies....

This fantastic concept isn’t too different from the principle that some engineers want to harness to build better robots. For a demonstration, one group has created a robot that could learn, through practice, what its own form can do. “The idea is that robots need to take care of themselves,” says Boyuan Chen, a roboticist at Duke University in North Carolina. “In order to do that, we want a robot to understand their body....

Then the foundation of the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory (HVO)—​established by the US Geological Survey (USGS) in 1912—began to crack. On May 16 the staff was forced to evacuate. “We scattered to the winds and took what we could carry,” recalls Brian Shiro, who was then a geophysicist at the site. Shiro has always had a front-row seat in the rapidly changing field of hazard monitoring, but Kilauea presented the unique challenge of extracting real-time data from an uncontrollable force of nature....

But, you ask, didn’t the military’s tilt-rotor Osprey V-22 claim the lives of 30 people during test flights? Karem, who specializes in designing tilt-rotor aircraft, says he’s learned from those early failures. The AeroTrain adopts the military’s warning system for altitude-stealing turbulence conditions and replaces easily shredded hydraulic control lines with electric motors. And it will use computer software that prevents the pilot from flying into turbulence when landing. “It’s a different animal than the V-22,” says Daniel Schrage, director of the Army Center of Excellence for Rotocraft Technology at Georgia Tech....

Still, smart screens will almost certainly proliferate. Right now, you have several options, and many of them differ considerably when it comes to built-in camera options. Here’s an overview of the current crop of smart screens as well as their status when it comes to a built-in camera. Echo Show 5 The newest Echo device has a physical barrier you can slide over the camera to block it in case you’re worried about privacy and you don’t want to stick a piece of tape over it like many people do with laptops....

Within two years of Yosemite’s establishment in 1890, Congress authorized wagon road and turnpike construction in the country’s third national park; in 1905, it shrunk Yosemite by almost a third to permit forestry and mining. Less than a decade later, the O’Shaunessy Dam was built in Yosemite’s Hetch Hetchy Valley. More recently, the Trump administration reduced the 1.35 million-acre Bears Ears National Monument by 85 percent about a year after it was established....