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While this is often portrayed as big news for Apple, it affects far more device makers at every level of the market. Although this law has been in the works for a while, it has had to clear several stages to get to this vote and there are still a few more to go. But given the level of support it has among EU member states (the vote was passed 602 for and 13 against with 8 abstentions) and the provisional agreement reached this summer, it seems like the final steps to get it over the finish line will be a formality....

In a study published recently in Nature Communications scientists at the University of Tokyo announced that they had created a material that could store up heat and then release it on command, with just a little bit of pressure applied. The material is a ceramic, but not the kind you’d use in pottery class. It’s called stripe-type-lambda-trititanium-pentoxide and is made of titanium and oxygen. This new ceramic can store up heat energy over the course of a day, and then release it when needed....

The newly mapped regions will give geneticists a window into stretches of the genome once described as “junk DNA.” Those regions are now understood to be fundamental to evolution, embryo growth, and the ways cells replicate and die. “We’ve discovered things are a lot more diverse than we could have ever appreciated,” says Rachel O’Neill, a comparative biologist at the University of Connecticut, and coauthor on the sequence. The previous results were “like studying culture and music and language for the planet of Earth, and ignoring all of Africa....

That, say observers who have had a front row seat for the rebuilding of New Orleans, is a vindication of the investment. And it holds a lesson for the rest of the country, says Andy Horowitz, a historian at Tulane University, and the author of Katrina: A History, 1915-2015. “Investments in infrastructure will save people’s lives,” he says. “I think it is impossible that the United States will overspend on protection and adaptation to the climate crisis....

Though reaching just 47 million households, the channel, which is backed by Participant Media, has launched some interesting programming, including Fortitude, a murder mystery on a fictional Arctic island, and now Truth and Power, a multi-part docuseries hosted by Maggie Gyllenhaal and executive produced by Brian Knappenberger, who directed The Internet’s Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz and We Are Legion: The Story of the Hacktivists. Episode two explores malware and premieres on Pivot tonight at 10 p....

Humanity’s first two excursions into so-called interstellar space happened by accident. Voyager 1 and 2 took advantage of a once-in-a-175-year alignment of the planets to give researchers an up-close look at Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune between 1979 and 1989. The probes did that, and then kept going, embarking on a second mission to the edge of the sun’s influence that was never intended—but nevertheless revolutionized our understanding of our star’s place in the galaxy....

Smoking is bad. Even smokers know this is so. In the years since the Surgeon General’s infamous 1964 report, billions of dollars have been spent making sure physicians and members of the public are aware that they’re unhealthy. You may not have the same opinion of marijuana, whether medical or otherwise—but researchers say that the health impacts of smoking pot warrant the same kind of consideration. In a new commentary published Monday in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, researchers Wan Tan and Don Sin make the case that we need to know more about how smoking weed affects the lungs....

Ohio’s Battelle Memorial Institute has a small history with novel weapons. In October, they demonstrated an anti-drone rifle, which brought down flying machines by jamming their controls. Their latest, blandly patented as “Caseless projectile and launching system,” is a gun that fires a jet-powered, laser-guided large blunt bullet, a metal fist thrown at someone dozens of yards away. Fired from a specially-made pistol, or attached to a rifle in place of a grenade launcher, the round will rely on a laser rangefinder (not yet developed) to make sure it hits its target at an appropriate velocity....

Since the dawn of nuclear explosives, citizens and scientists alike have speculated that the government might be able to repurpose weapons of war as weapons of weather. Most recently, President Donald Trump asked why we couldn’t just nuke hurricanes out of the sky. Meteorologists are wincing at the reappearance of this all-too-familiar myth. “It doesn’t make sense at all,” says Falko Judt, a meteorologist who specializes in hurricanes at the National Center for Atmospheric Research....

The machine does not use staples as we know them in the common desktop stapler. It has a spool of wire, lengths of which it punches through the materials being bound, folds twice, and cuts. As the Stitcher model name suggests, it functions like a sewing machine for wire staples. One stomp on the foot pedal produces one staple, the length of which can be controlled by the configuration of some parts inside the head of the machine....

The report raises some serious safety concerns over the rocket and spacecraft that will send NASA astronauts to Mars. The report also says that NASA’s overall plan to get to Mars is too vague. Part of the problem, as the report points out, is political uncertainty. NASA scientists spent years during the Bush administration planning the Constellation program—a plan to send humans back to the moon and then on to Mars–which mostly got scrapped when President Obama took office....

Rather than face a jury trial, AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal, and McKesson agreed to pay $215 million to Summit and Cuyahoga counties. Meanwhile, drug manufacturer Teva Pharmaceuticals, pledged to pay $20 million in cash and $25 million in addiction treatment and overdose drugs to the Ohio counties. The deal did not require any admission of guilt by any of the companies. Henry Schein Medical, a NY-based pharmaceutical company and another defendant in the case, reached a separate $1....

Oil spills are a result of human activity, including deep sea or offshore oil drilling. Still, marine environments have a mechanism to break down the oil that ends up in the water—bacteria. New research recently published in Applied and Environmental Microbiology, outlines that marine bacteria found in chilly Canadian seas are capable of biodegrading oil and diesel fuel in response to oil spills. In the past, researchers have looked at bacteria blooms in warmer waters at around 30 degrees Celsius and found oil dissolving bacteria in warmer waters like the Gulf of Mexico....

That’s not just a boon for the prosthetics community of course, but for the whole discipline of brain-machine interfaces–a field that is enjoying both an influx of funding (in the wake of two wars that have seen many soldiers lose appendages to improvised explosive devices) and huge leaps in capability thanks to better algorithms that can translate brain signals into the appropriate mechanical movements. The U. of Pittsburgh arm relies on just two microelectrodes implanted in the patient’s left motor cortex based on functional MRI scans that pinpointed the exact nerve clusters that lit up when they asked the patient to think about moving her arm and hand....

That’s because PayPal announced on Wednesday that they are partnering with United to introduce PayPal QR Codes as a new form of in-flight payment starting in November. These QR codes will work with or without WiFi, and passengers will just need to show a flight attendant the PayPal QR Code in the PayPal app to buy snacks, drinks, and other items onboard. This latest offering follows a batch of other developments from the company’s app....

Bennett’s condition left him unresponsive to treatments and ineligible for the transplant list or an artificial heart pump. The physician-scientists at the Baltimore medical center, however, had another—albeit risky—option: transplant a heart from a genetically-modified pig. “It was either die or do this transplant,” Bennett had told surgeons at the University of Maryland Medical Center a day before the operation. “I want to live. I know it’s a shot in the dark, but it’s my last choice....

The folks on the LIGO experiment neither confirmed nor denied the rumor, and in Krauss’s rumor-mongering raised hackles in the astrophysics community. But now he’s back at it again: There’s plenty of reason to remain skeptical–we won’t know for sure whether the rumor is true until we hear from the researchers on the experiment. If it does turn out to be true, it would be a very exciting finding. As part of his general theory of relativity, Albert Einstein proposed that, sort of like a ship moving through water, very large objects could generate ripples in the fabric of space and time....

These boots are made out of seamless, molded PVC. They’re waterproof, of course, and flexible for comfort. They’re reinforced at stress points (like toes and heels) for durability, and offer a cushion support that’s washable and replaceable. You won’t slip on slippery services, and stay comfortable even if the environment isn’t. Also, they’re made in the USA. These sturdy boots hit at your lower calf, which means they keep your pant bottoms dry but don’t make you feel like you’re about to hit up a cranberry bog....

Today, Qantas announced that it was gearing up for takeoff for more flights like that, with an order for a dozen new Airbus A350-1000 aircraft, all of which will be “capable of flying direct from Australia to any other city including New York and London,” the company said in a statement. Those flights are set to begin at the start of 2025, Qantas said, and if the air time from those research flights is any indication, expect them to last around 19 hours in the sky....

Hydrogen peroxide decomposes when it meets chlorine, releasing molecules of oxygen, each of which has one electron in a high-energy state. When the electrons inevitably return to a low-energy state, the excess energy comes off as a photon of light, creating a glow. Simple—but there are two problems. First, quantum calculations show that the energy created in this transition is only enough for a photon of infrared light, which is invisible....