Jocelyn Bell Burnell, a doctoral student in astronomy at Cambridge University, was plowing through the massive set of cosmic data from a radio telescope when she spotted something peculiar: a series of spikes in relative brightness. At the time, in 1967, a full scan of the sky took four days and generated nearly 400 feet of paper printouts, so a data error or printer glitch could have easily been the culprit....
As a pet owner, here’s a good rule of thumb to follow: If it’s too hot outside for you, then it’s way too hot for your dog. Jason Nicholas, veterinarian and chief medical officer at Preventive Vet, says once weather hits 80 degrees Fahrenheit (which feels like Antarctica compared to the record heat we’ve experienced the past few years), pet owners should start taking precautions. Nicholas says he’s seen far too many cases of dogs with heatstroke, a deadly, but completely preventable, condition....
“It really wasn’t until more recent decades that a lot of monitoring was going on,” says senior author Kevin Rose, a biology professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. “And so now we’ve got enough data to be able to tell a story.” An international team of researchers analyzed data collected from lakes and reservoirs across the United States, from Lake George in New York to Trout Bog in Wisconsin, as well as some lakes in other temperate countries like Canada, Japan, and Sweden....
Download the latest episode of the podcast This week’s all-new episode takes a more in-depth look at some of the most interesting parts of the new iPhone and Apple Watch hardware. We discuss: Whether or not it’s worth upgrading to the iPhone XS, iPhone XS Plus, or from your current device The importance of the Apple Watch’s new EKG capabilities The challenges of designing websites and apps when screen sizes constantly change You can listen in the player above, follow us on iTunes, add us on SoundCloud, or check us out on Stitcher....
Listen to the bonus episode of Techathlon We’re back in full force next week on the Techathlon podcast, but, in the meantime, you can check out the bonus episode recorded at the Weirdest Thing live show. It’s embedded above, but you can subscribe on iTunes, add us on Stitcher, join us on Spotify, or follow us on Anchor. Mophie released a version of what’s basically Airpower Apple once planned to release a wireless charging pad that would juice AirPods, iPhones, and Apple Watches all at once....
Google’s first attempt at wireless headphones, the Pixel Buds, showed a lot of promise, but a quirky user experience has so far hindered them from becoming an essential Android accessory. But, Google also started rolling out a “made for Google” logo to products that meet specific standards. The Libratone Q Adapt headphones are in the first wave of Google headphones and it’s a good start. What are the Libratone Q Adapt headphones?...
UCSD grad students Christopher Schmidt-Wetekam and David Zhang solved the problem with three innovations. The first is the spring-loaded mechanism that allows it to jump—basically a simpler version of the mechanism that turns the windshield wipers on late-model cars. The second is a combination accelerometer-gyroscope that keeps the ‘bot stable. Finally, “reaction wheels” keep it upright by constantly torquing in the direction the robot is most likely to fall. The resulting robot, iHop, can roll along like a car when the path is clear and then hop over obstacles....
Black widows and many other kinds of spiders are infamous: Their females are the deadlier of the species, devouring males before, after or even during sex. In these species, males have often devised a number of tricks to survive these dangerous liaisons, such as rendering females unconscious with knockout gas. Previous research suggested that male nursery web spiders (Pisaurina mira) might have an unusual way of protecting themselves from sexual cannibalism — they tie up females with silk before and during sex....
Now, scientists are trying to close that knowledge gap in whales and dolphins. A study out last week in Frontiers in Marine Science surveyed 83 animals stranded on shores across the southeastern US from 2012 to 2018 to investigate how toxic chemicals pervade these animals’ bodies, and in what quantities. The 83 animals represent 11 species, some of which scientists know little about as human sightings are incredibly rare. Every time a marine mammal is found dead and stranded in their area, Annie Page-Karjian, a clinical veterinarian at Florida Atlantic University who specializes in marine animals and lead author of the paper, heads out to do a necropsy—the animal equivalent of an autopsy....
In the Pacific Ocean, fish and humans alike are seeing some of the same benefits from strong regulations. At 582,578 square miles, the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument in Hawaii is the world’s largest no-fishing zone and marine protected area (MPA). It was established in 2006 and expanded 10 years later with the goal of, “seamless integrated management to ensure ecological integrity and achieve strong, long-term protection and perpetuation of NWHI ecosystems, Native Hawaiian culture, and heritage resources for current and future generations....
The tiny dino’s fossilized remains were dug up during multiple digs over the over the past 10 years near a dam in Patagonia’s Río Negro province. The province is home to the La Buitrera palaeontological zone, a region well-known for the discovery of three complete southern raptors (Unenlagia) skeletons, herbivorous terrestrial crocodiles, the oldest found chelid turtles, and more. Jakapil is part of the Thyreophoran dinosaur group that lived from the Jurassic period to the early Cretaceous period whose name means “shield bearer....
I’m not here to stop you from googling your favorite pooches to relive the experience. In fact, maybe I can help feed your obsession. Here’s everything you ever wanted to know about the newest addition to the official line up competing for Best of Show: Meet the Azawakhs. The Azawakh looks something like a cross between a star ballerina and a miniature Arabian horse — taller than it’s length, with a long elegant neck and dark expressive eyes....
The supercomputer will be completed later this year, and the company said in a press release that they expect it to “be the fastest [AI supercomputer] in the world once fully built out in mid-2022.” Meta said that the supercomputer can help their researchers feed more data into AI models that enable them to work across multiple languages to analyze text, images, and video together, potentially for translation purposes or identifying harmful content....
As Elon Musk walked out on stage, the crowd immediately erupted into one loud, unified cheer. He was the reason they were all there. Challenged by Musk in his white paper that introduced the world to the Hyperloop, the 120-plus teams had spent months developing pods to help bring the concept one step further to reality (and a quick note, for those unfamiliar with the Hyperloop, which projects giant elevated tubes that will transport people in pods from city to city at speeds that can reach upwards of 800 miles per hour)....
It’s the same feeling I get as I stare at the introductory plaque that greets visitors at a new exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC. The logo, printed in black, is interspersed with phosphor-green animated graphics, featuring familiar figures from “Pac-Man,” “Pong,” “Tetris,” and “Space Invader.” The exhibit, titled “Never Alone,” is dedicated to 35 video games plucked from different points in time between 1972 and 2018, and it’s a showcase of the intents and executions of interactive design....
If you watch a lot of cable or ever flip through Sky Mall, then you know what I’m talking about. Sports cars and plasmas never carry the “Space Certified Technology” seal; that badge of honor seems to be reserved for dull, low-quality knickknacks you’d expect Billy Mays or Anthony Sullivan to shill for. And what does that “Space Certified Technology” seal even mean? In 1958, Congress passed a mandate requiring NASA to share research and development with the private sector in the hopes that NASA technology would lead to exciting new commercial products....
Today, though, astronomers revealed a much bigger change: two new large impact craters in the Martian crust, observed by both the Mars Reconnaisance Orbiter (MRO) and the InSight lander. These are the largest impact craters discovered by MRO to date and the first detection of seismic surface waves, according to two new studies published in the journal Science. “We never thought we’d see anything this big,” said Ingrid Daubar, planetary scientist at NASA’S Jet Propulsion Lab and MRO/InSight team member, in a NASA press conference on the new findings....
LGBTQI+ scientists and astronomers have protested the name, saying it glorifies a hateful period in American history. The telescope was named in 2002, when it was still in its planning stages, by former NASA administrator Sean O’Keefe. The name is meant to recognize Webb’s contributions to government service, including running NASA as it developed the Apollo program from 1961 to 1968. However, the fact that Webb held high positions of power during a time of such rampant discrimination should be enough for his name to not be on the telescope, says a group of astronomers working to get it renamed....
However, a new economic analysis published Wednesday in Science Advances finds that monuments give more to a community than they take away. In fact, there’s no evidence that they’ve really taken away any jobs. Public lands management is inherently a balancing act. In the West, more than 50 percent of lands are federally owned. Across most of this area, the Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service work to conserve natural resources while allowing recreation and industry to also use the land....
This mathematical object is called a Möbius strip. It has fascinated environmentalists, artists, engineers, mathematicians, and many others ever since its discovery in 1858 by August Möbius, a German mathematician who died 150 years ago, on September 26, 1868. Möbius discovered the one-sided strip in 1858 while serving as the chair of astronomy and higher mechanics at the University of Leipzig. (Another mathematician named Listing actually described it a few months earlier, but did not publish his work until 1861....
