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Sex is complicated, right? And gender is also complicated. But it would be fair to assume that starting from the baseline of male and female—two sexes meant to go together—is the norm, because that’s what most of us are taught. Fortunately, loads of cultures work with an entirely different playing field. In Albania, a dwindling population of people assigned female at birth choose to be burrnesha, or sworn virgins. A fifteenth-century code gave them the right to dress, behave, work, and inherit property as men could if they pledged celibacy....

Facebook’s Connectivity Lab announced today it has generated high-resolution population maps of 20 countries, accurate down to 5 meters (about 15 feet). These maps will guide Facebook’s still-in-development drones as they circle populations of people in remote areas and beam down wireless internet, according to Yael Maguire, head of the Connectivity Lab. Just like driverless cars need accurate maps to plot the safest and most efficient route, Facebook’s drones need accurate maps to know where to find people....

These drones, called Aquila (plural being Aquilas?), will fly in tight loops around areas with little or no access to internet, according to Yael Maguire, head of Facebook’s Connectivity Lab. Today, Zuckerberg wrote that Facebook has been flying prototypes of its drones every week, and the company is in the process of building a full-scale aircraft for a larger test. The full wingspan of the aircraft will be 139 feet, Zuckerberg says, but the center pod (which presumably contains most of the internal components) is only 10....

These aquarium plants are great for larger tanks and lots of fish. Each pack comes with 9 beautiful, bright artificial plants that will add color and excitement to any underwater environment. This set can fit nicely in a 20-gallon tank or larger; the tallest frond reaches 12.5 inches, the smallest 5 inches. Each plant has a thick, ceramic base that is designed to be rust and rot free, so the PH of your water will never be affected....

The choice is clear—rethink how we grow food, or starve. Environmental scientist Dickson Despommier of Columbia University and other scientists propose a radical solution: Transplant farms into city skyscrapers. These towers would use soil-free hydroponic farming to slash demand for energy (they’ll be powered by a process that converts sewage into electricity) while producing more food. Farming skyward would also free up farmland for trees, which would help remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere....

The Fender Acoustasonic Player Telecaster design Following in the footsteps of the original and more expensive Acoustasonic line, the all-new Fender Acoustasonic Player Telecaster hails from Fender’s brand-new Ensenada, Mexico, factory and aims to bring the guitar’s versatility to a wider player base via a streamlined design that costs roughly 40% less than that of its predecessors. Visually, the guitar features the same off-the-wall combination of organic delicacy and retrofuturist shapes for which the Acoustasonic line is known, while its electronics have been pared down to the bare essentials to make for a more straightforward playing experience....

Besides the obvious display uses (pics of the dog, porn, music videos), the Bolt is packaged with PowerPoint, Excel and Word. And indeed the company is touting it as a necessary “business tool.” Future versions promise to have the entire Windows Mobile Software pack and full video-conferencing capabilities. At $100 with a two-year contract, this seems nearly too good to be true. But stranger things have happened. Folks, we may be looking at the future of phones here....

But a new study published in Nature Communications shows that fishing in general may be depleting the ecosystems of something else – pee. While it may seem silly, having less pee and other fish waste products can seriously harm the nutrient cycling systems. Pee from most animals contains nitrogen in some form, and nitrogen is an essential building block of life. Fish also release phosphorus, another important nutrient, through their gills....

A former wildland firefighter with the Forest Service, Kolden is now a pyrogeographer, someone who studies how fire impacts the landscape and ecology of an area. At the University of Idaho, where she is a Associate Professor of Forest, Rangeland, and Fire Sciences, she works to figure out how people around the world can live with fire. While she was still a graduate student she got offered the chance of a lifetime by a more established researcher in the field—did she want to be in an experiment that dropped gauges and instruments in front of an oncoming wildfire?...

In this video, Imahara learns that in addition to designing and building these innovative trucks, Nikola is also working with competitors to create a standard for hydrogen fueling—the next gas pump. Hydrogen fuel can be produced from a variety of sources without damaging the environment. And, Nikola’s hydrogen fuel stations will be powered in part by solar power. The company also has a fleet of electric off-road vehicles, including the Nikola Wav personal watercraft....

But the latest film in the zombie lexicon, Warm Bodies, turns that convention on its head. An over-thinking zombie falls in love. He thinks and feels. Which raises an interesting philosophical question: Are zombies hopeless automatons who should be killed without hesitation? Or do zombies experience consciousness? Well, do they? Would zombies be conscious beings? It’s possible. They’re just sick people, argues Steven Schlozman, author of The Zombie Autopsies and an assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School....

In a statement, the Danish Energy Agency said it had found two leaks on the Nord Stream 1 pipeline located northeast of the Danish island Bornholm. The agency spotted a third in the Nord Stream 2 pipeline located in Swedish waters southeast of Bornholm. According to the Associated Press, the second blast was stronger than the first and was the equivalent of a magnitude-2.3 earthquake and seismic stations in neaby Norway and Finland also registered the explosions....

July 2012 was the hottest month on record in the lower 48 states, and the summer brought the “most severe and extensive drought in at least 25 years,” according to the USDA. And it seems summers like last year’s are going to become more commonplace, with 2012-esque temps becoming more likely, specifically in the north-central and northeastern United States. This study follows on the heels of a recently leaked draft of an Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change report, which noted that scientists believe we are experiencing more heat waves because of climate change–which yes, we’re still sure humans are causing....

Public Facebook information, including Pages, Groups, and Events, already shows up on Google searches on a computer. So what’s changed? Now, when someone conducts a Google search on an Android smartphone (sorry iOS & Windows phone users) and clicks on a result that leads back to Facebook, they’ll be taken to the relevant page within the Facebook app. This step may help Google become the dominant search engine for mobile devices, as the promise to bring people directly to where they want to go could entice more mobile users to search via Google....

For most people, the customer-facing changes will always be the most obvious. Think of things like the quick answer box that you see at the top of more and more searches (officially called Featured Snippets), Google’s AI-driven efforts last year to offer more comprehensive search suggestions to complex queries, and the Knowledge Graph, which is what tells you actors’ birthdays, moon phases, and other facts when you look for them....

Today, it’s not the only app in its category: Apple Maps isn’t bad, apps like Citymapper can help you with your commute, and Waze—also owned by Google—is good for driving. To mark its 15 years, Google is slightly changing the layout of the Maps app. Instead of three tabs at the bottom of the app, there are now five: Explore, Commute, Saved, Contribute, and Updates. Explore is the main screen for just checking out the map; Commute is predictably where you can manage your trip to work and back; Saved is for lists of places you want to go or a place you’ve labelled, like “Home”; Contribute is for feedback like a restaurant review; and Updates has recommendations of places to explore....

In a blog post yesterday, Google explained that it believes that “it’s important to have control over how your sensitive, personally identifiable information can be found.” While it doesn’t necessarily host a lot of personal data, Google Search is often the tool that surfaces it on other sites. This puts it in a fairly unique position since, as it explains, “the internet is always evolving — with information popping up in unexpected places and being used in new ways — so our policies and protections need to evolve, too....

The twin spiral grooves formed by the waves, Myhrvold perceived, could hold two different but complementary soups in the same bowl, twined together in tasty tribute to the curvature of spacetime. Myhrvold’s vast kitchen lab has a CNC milling machine (among a number of other conveniences) so it was quite simple to fire up Mathematica, model the Hurt art in 3D, carve it out of aluminum, and cast a mold which potter Wally Bivins then used to form the bowls....

By taking exhaust fumes from carbon-burning plants and factories, mixing it with water so that the CO2 can dissolve into it and then pumping it into a “photobiorector” (a large transparent tube filled with microalgae), scientists can produce solar biofuel. The sunlight beating down on the tube presents the proper conditions for photosynthesis to take place, allowing the algae to convert CO2 into oxygen. The algae can later be removed and buried into the seabed, capturing the gases they take in....

Keep an eye out for updated specifics, but get posting in the meantime: Any Halloween projects uploaded to Instructables between last November and this will be eligible.