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After it reaches its destination, 930,000 miles from Earth, its components will chill down to –400°F. To make sure that the telescope’s scientific instrumentation can handle the cold, engineers at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland put the components through rigorous environmental testing in the Space Environment Simulator. As temperatures within the chamber drop to –400°, the engineers monitor the components and scientific instrumentation to determine whether they will function properly....

Along with its introduction of new AI-powered technology projects, Meta also made a concerted effort to illustrate how AI works behind-the-scenes with a new explanatory tool called “system cards.” “AI powers back-end services like personalization, recommendation, and ranking,” Meta said in a blog post yesterday. “But understanding how and why AI operates can be difficult for everyday users and others. We’re aiming to change that.” Artificial intelligence models may be deployed for a wide range of tasks....

Receiving a Pfizer or Moderna booster shot might be better than a Johnson & Johnson booster shot A new “mix and match” study sponsored by the National Institutes of Health showed that a second dose of either Pfizer or Moderna showed a stronger immune system response for those who had the J&J shot first than a J&J second dose. The study only included around 500 people, a much smaller size than initial vaccine trials, but in all possible combinations of the vaccines, those who got J&J for both the initial shot and the booster had the lowest immune response....

In order to get our future astronauts into the depths of space and back safely, scientists need to understand what happens to human DNA when it’s exposed to cosmic radiation over time. With a manned mission to Mars planned for the mid 2030s, studies like this are critical in preparing humans for life in deep space. Astronauts like Scott Kelley, who is spending a year living on the International Space Station, will be exposed to higher concentrations of radiation than someone living on Earth....

Part of preparing for even more extreme weather to come as a result of the climate crisis, is investing in resilient infrastructure–something the current administration has already proposed. While building infrastructure may sound like a feat fit for futuristic technology, around the world climate-proofing has been happening already for centuries in the form of vernacular architecture. This form of architecture is defined by the use of traditional materials native to that particular region....

Dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic has stretched state and federal disaster preparedness services. But as we move into spring and the beginnings of hurricane, tornado, flooding, and fire season—periods that have grown longer and more unpredictable in recent years—local, state and federal authorities will be fighting to save lives and livelihoods from potentially many more threats. According to experts, they’ll be best equipped to succeed in these aims if they are able to communicate efficiently with one another....

The star is known as Tau Ceti, which resides just 12 light-years away. That’s further than Alpha Centauri (at just four light-years) but the Tau Ceti finding is significant. The Alpha Centauri exoplanet orbits its star at too close a distance to harbor surface water–it’s simply too hot. The potential planet orbiting Tau Ceti, though its precise composition is unknown, looks to be a rocky planet like Earth. And it’s orbital distance is such that liquid water could exist on the planet’s surface....

At first, Riley’s Rebuilds was a way for 17-year-old Schlick to buy her first car, which had to meet her parents’ specifications: It needed to have a manual transmission and a roll bar. Within a few months, she made enough money to buy a Jeep. Then, she brought on four friends to work with her. That hiring spree solved two problems, in Schlick’s mind. Her friends make more money rebuilding carburetors than they would working a minimum wage job, and they get to spend time together....

The Apple TV will now run a new version of the set-top box’s software called tvOS — featuring support for third-party apps, and a UI influenced by iOS 9. Apps made for tvOS will run on directly on your television, without requiring iOS users to use AirPlay on their iPhone or iPad first. Apple TV’s tvOS also brings the arrival of Siri to the living room. Apple TV users will be able to use Siri to control media playback while using the set-top box, and ask questions of the digital assistant, like they can on their iPhones and iPads (“What’s the weather?...

The research, conducted collaboratively at Rice University in Europe and in Singapore, made a breakthrough in showing for the first time that spider silk has a phonon band gap. Phonons are a quantum of a soundwave and a quasiparticle that can behave like electrons in a semiconductor, while band gaps are the space in which semiconductors are semi-conductive (as opposed to insulators, preventing conduction, or conductors, promoting it). “Phononic crystals give you the ability to manipulate sound waves, and if you get sound small enough and at high enough frequencies, you’re talking about heat,” Rice Engineering’s Dean Edwin Thomas points out....

The advisory committee was commissioned after a 2011 report declared most NIH research on chimps was scientifically unnecessary. Going forward, the advisory council recommends keeping 50 out of 451 chimpanzees currently being researched through NIH. For any future research using the animals, the NIH report stipulated that lab living conditions should “promote the full range of natural chimpanzee behaviors,” rather than simply “allow” them. As such, they recommended chimps live in social groups of at least 7 individuals, with 1,000 square feet of living space per chimp, room to climb and outdoor access year round....

Bots are under intense scrutiny, as any news consumer is sure to know. Over the last quarter, Twitter erased 9 million of these robo-users (and perhaps a few real people with bot-like habits by mistake) in an effort to “improv[e] the health of the public conversation.” Fake accounts like these have long been criticized for artificially inflating celebrity followings and generally annoying real users, but the recent spate of deletions is a response to fake accounts exerting undue influence on national politics....

Researchers at Virginia Tech and University of Nebraska-Lincoln wanted to recreate these properties on an underwater glove called the Octa-glove, which they described in a recent Science Advances paper. This glove can sense whether objects are within reach, and it can activate tiny suckers that can stick strongly to and release from surfaces. On land, animals like geckos use physics properties like van der Waals forces to stick onto walls as they climb....

Here are just a couple of the newest, highest-tech running shoes that you might catch a (blurry) glimpse of on Olympians later this month. Nike’s distance running shoes Nike introduced a pair of carbon-fiber plate running shoes in 2017. Carbon-plate shoes include a hardened, rigid layer of material between layers of cushioning to act as a spring, explains Bryce Dyer, a sports scientist at Bournemouth University in England who researches the design, development, and ethics of sports technology and equipment....

Portable Brain Recording Device (With App!): “The effort will develop a portable, inexpensive, and easy-to-use electroencephalography (EEG) device and corresponding mobile application (app) for use by nontraditional audiences,” the solicitations says. Who is this audience? Why, it’s me and you. According to DARPA, there are plenty of DoD-based reasons for wanting a cheap ($30) and easy to use EEG device that runs off a smartphone–like being able to diagnose neural trauma in the field–but that’s not DARPA’s primary driver for funding this....

We crowned the Coleman SaluSpa for its stable construction and durable construction, easy-to-access digital controls, and ease of cleaning and draining. Plus, it features an even coverage of bubble jets and a heater that maintains temperatures up to 104°F for up to 72 hours. Coleman SaluSpa Inflatable Hot Tub, in Black $497.99 (Was $629.99) This design doesn’t have seats, though they can be bought separately. However, when you’re sitting on the bottom, those air jets gently massage the lower back....

Yes, it’s really true. The Offside Football Coffee Table functions as both game and table. A ten-millimeter-thick slab of glass turns the football field into a dome and provides ample space for the drinks of potential participants. The solid oak construction adds a level of class that just might convince your better half to include a bar-room game in front of the Pottery Barn couch. There’s even a stool designed in a similar fashion, because everyone loves matching furniture....

“Binge drinking among college students varies widely from college to college,” reports Nelson. “At some colleges almost no students binge drink, while at others nearly four in every five students do. Interestingly, we found that the levels of binge drinking, and the problems related to it, remain very stable at the same colleges over time.” The study, which surveyed 50,000 students at 120 colleges and universities between 1993 and 2001, does have a bigger purpose than picking on Booze U....

My patient, a man in his 70s, sat a few feet away from me in a clinic room at our cancer center. His wife was by his side, both literally and emotionally—she was his touchstone, his connection to the normal life he led before his leukemia diagnosis. I noticed they tended to wear outfits that even complemented each other, as if their sartorial choices had harmonized and become intertwined along with their affection over the 40 years of their marriage....

While there are options for recycling smartphones, phones and other waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEEs) aren’t recycled for a variety of reasons. An estimated 5.3 billion mobile phones will be thrown out in 2022, according to the WEE Forum and the UN’s Global E-Waste Monitor. For context, that many unused phones would rise about 31,000 miles into the air when stacked on top of one another. When items like laptops and cellphones are thrown into landfills, they leak toxic chemicals into the environment....