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They combed the internet for sleep myths and gathered experts to sort and refine their list. The experts then rated the myths on a scale from one to five for two criteria: their degree of falsehood, and their importance to public health. “In the long term, these beliefs should be annihilated to improve population health,” Robbins says. Their analysis was published this week in the journal, Sleep Health. These sleep-related myths might have passed from person to person and eventually became ingrained cultural beliefs, Robbins says....

While incomplete carrolldongi fossils have been unearthed in the past, two newly analyzed ones from what is today the Hubei province in central China finally revealed a key part of the animal’s morphology: its head. When the research team, which published its study Thursday in the journal Scientific Reports, cleaned up the pair of fossils and sat down to give them a look, they were shocked. “Immediately we noticed the head was really strange,” says Ryosuke Motani, a study author and paleobiologist at the University of California Davis....

For the first time, the top-rated language learning platform Rosetta Stone offers all its 24 languages with unlimited learning capabilities. While you can only learn one at a time, there are endless possibilities for brushing up on the basics or learning an entirely new language from scratch. With plenty of innovative tools, such as its proprietary technology that carefully analyzes everything you say at a rate of 100 times per second, you’ll achieve your learning goals in no time....

YouTube user Dark Pixel has assembled a mashup between the two popular franchises to bring us Star Kart. The footage shows Mario, Bowser, Yoshi and others traveling through hyperspace, flying across Tatooine, and encountering the Death Star. All while gathering coins, of course. Seeing is believing so you can watch the video below. Nintendo is no stranger to adding downloadable content (DLC) to its games nowadays. Most recently, the company brought two new characters to its Super Smash Bros series....

But a little planning can go far. Tracking prices ahead of the big holiday sales can be incredibly helpful when it comes to getting more bang for your buck. And if you start early this year, you can even skip the lines, the rush, and any stock or supply chain problems that may arise. But that’s just the very tip of the iceberg—spreadsheet programs can be incredibly powerful, and add-ons can make them even more impressive....

Putting his robotics doctorate to good use, Anderson built a metal prototype, then machined the final version. Hand-cranked gears turn two cylinders, each etched with an image. The cylinders drag a penny through the gap between them, flattening and elongating the coin while pressing an image into both sides. Slifer, along with eight other artists, created more than a dozen penny designs, many showcasing critically endangered or extinct animals from North America....

Now researchers at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory have created a way to synthesize proteins with a small bioreactor so that they can be used immediately in patients most in need. A study about the new device was published recently in the journal Small. Normally, scientists use living cells to create these proteins. But the bioreactor can pump out small batches of the same proteins without having to keep cells alive....

Watch A Humanoid Robot Walk A TightropeCan Andrea Rossi’s Infinite-Energy Black Box Power The World–Or Just Scam It?Puppies Only Pick Up Yawns When They’re Old Enough To Understand EmpathyElectric Brain Stimulation Warps Your Perception Of Faces [Video]How To Properly Butcher And Eat A Triceratops And don’t forget to check out our other favorite stories of the week: They Said It Couldn’t Be Done! The Quest For Human-Powered Flight iPod Nano And iPod Touch Review: Hey Guys, Remember iPods?...

According to Reuters, under the new proposed partnership, “the cloud computing giant will store all of TikTok’s US user data on Oracle data servers.” This partnership agreement will also establish a team of engineers and cybersecurity experts based in the US that will be responsible for managing and shielding this data from ByteDance. It’s also possible that TikTok will not have any oversight or control over this team. Since 2019, ByteDance has been trying to separate TikTok from its Chinese operations....

Cheap, blade-based machines chop your beans into ­inconsistent chunks, but the Baratza Virtuoso+ uses two carbon-steel burrs to crush them into a uniform powder, while extracting more oil for enhanced flavor. Choose from 40 levels of coarseness to match your brew. The key to the Six-Cup Classic Chemex is its beaker-riffed ­design. Pour the water (heated to 204 degrees Fahrenheit) over your precious grounds, then watch them bubble up—or “bloom”—as they release CO2....

Earth’s H2O is 97 percent seawater, and most of the remaining 3 percent is inaccessible, frozen in glaciers or permafrost. Only a small portion, about half of a percent, exists as freshwater in aquifers and rivers that humans can tap into. A process called desalination, however, allows us to dip into the oceans to satisfy our thirst. Desal has been around for decades and is used to make both seawater and salty groundwater drinkable....

Several seemingly sound explanations exist for the absurd notion that civilization will end tomorrow, Dec. 21, 2012, the end of the 5,125-year “long-count” Mayan calendar. These include a catastrophic solar flare related to the solar maximum; some kind of interaction with a black hole; a hidden second sun, or second planet called Nibiru, impacting Earth; and so on. The Slooh space camera, which broadcasts live telescope coverage of astronomical phenomena from telescopes in the Canary Islands, is addressing them....

Traeger makes some of the best pellet grills around. These auger-fed cookers automatically push just the right amount of wood pellet fuel into the cooking chamber to keep the grill at just the right temperature. That makes it ideal for going low-and-slow for a rack of ribs. But, it can also crank high enough to sear a steak. The free accessory kit comes with an assortment of sauces and rubs, as well as the $80 full-length grill cover that will protect the cooker in the winter....

The one-gig capacity is more than previous attempts, and the design can be attached to standard goggle straps on the back of the head, minimizing drag issues. The headphones hook tightly around the back of the ear, while multiple sizes of ribbed inserts made from thermoplastic elastomer fit nicely into the ear. Developed over a year and tested by top-level swimmers, the headphones promise to stay put during a Phelps-esque flip turn....

Sell your photos to magazines, newspapers, and websites For an amateur with nothing but a smartphone and a good eye for photography, the easiest way to make money off your photos is to sell them directly to magazines, newspapers, and websites. These publications are always in the market for images, especially of something newsworthy, like a car crash or a protest that springs up out of nowhere. Don’t get it wrong though—I say easiest, but it’s still difficult....

More specifically, the “proprietary bacterial consortium” helps create a biofilm that can self-regulate and has proven highly efficient at cleaning wastewater. Researchers demonstrated the system’s ability to clean wastewater within 24 hours at several city and military sites, so that less than ten percent sludge remained by volume. That contrasts with traditional septic systems that can take 30 days and leave 40 or 50 percent sludge, the researchers said. The demo apparently impressed the Army enough to order two of the units, which arrived at Afghanistan inside 20-foot shipping containers....

In a recent paper, researchers detail their observations of ‘superflares’ on a binary star in our galaxy named KIC 9655129. These superflares are huge solar flares that are much larger than any that we’ve observed coming off our own sun. But even though they differ in terms of magnitude, (a superflare might give off the energy of a billion-megaton bomb while our sun’s solar flares reach a piddling 100 million megaton-bomb) researchers discovered that the underlying processes that drive the superflares on other stars is the same basic engine that drives solar flares on our own stars–periodic oscillations of magnetically charged plasma within the interior of the sun....

To get to the bottom of all these goals could add up to, researchers at North Carolina State University and Columbia University compiled information from 36 major utility pledges in place at the end of 2020 across over 80 utility subsidiaries. Altogether, the pledges industry-wide would be enough to drop the energy sector’s greenhouse gas emissions by over 30 percent compared to 2018 levels by the year 2050. They published their findings in the journal One Earth....

Fans had been demanding a remake of the PS1 classic for years before Square/Enix announced it was finally in the works. Helmed by Tetsuya Nomura, the mind behind the Disney/Square mashup Kingdom Hearts, the project generated a lot of anticipation, and at the same time a lot of worry that the soul of the original would be lost. There’s no doubt that Nomura put his stamp on the game by presenting combat in real time rather than turn-based fashion....

Over the next week, we’ll be tallying your votes through five rounds of head-to-head matchups (thanks to our friends over at Grantland whose Wire character smackdown inspired us). Rounds 1-3 pit products against their kin in four divisions: Vehicles, Science & Technology, Electronics, and The Internet. The ultimate goal: to name the most important product of the last quarter century. And so today we begin with round one: 32 innovations enter, 16 will move on....