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The race to electrify the world’s vehicles and store energy will require batteries — so many of them, in fact, that meeting the demand we will see by 2040 will require 30 times the amount of critical minerals like lithium, cobalt, and nickel that those industries currently use.

That presents an enormous challenge, one exacerbated by the mining industry’s alarming allegations of labor crimes, environmental destruction, and encroachments on Indigenous land. There are ways to mitigate electrification’s extractive impacts, one of which may seem obvious: Recycle every battery we make. 

Doing so would reduce the world’s need to mine these minerals by 10 percent within 16 years, because the critical materials in batteries are infinitely reusable. Eventually, a robust circular battery economy could all but eliminate the need to extract them at all.

Of course, that would require recovering every EV pack at the end of its life, a sizable undertaking as the United States prepares for hundreds of thousands of electric vehicles to retire by the end of the decade. A nascent ecosystem of startups is working toward that goal, and the Inflation Reduction Act includes tax credits to incentivize the practice. But some electrification advocates say those steps do not go far enough. While the European Union recently passed a regulation mandating EV battery recycling, there is no such law in the U.S. Proponents of a federal recycling standard say that without one, batteries that could be recycled might get left behind, increasing the need for mining and undermining electrification’s environmental benefits. 

“We need a coordinated federal response to truly have a large-scale impact on meeting our demand,” said Blaine Miller-McFeeley, a policy advocate at Earthjustice, which favors a federal recycling requirement. “If you compare us to the EU, we are woefully behind and need to move much more quickly.”

That movement would have to come from Congress, according to Miller-McFeeley. Historically, however, regulating recycling has been left up to the states and local jurisdictions. The Biden administration has instead been supporting the country’s budding EV battery recycling industry, mainly by making it good business to recover critical materials. 

The Department of Energy wants to establish a “battery ecosystem” that can recover 90 percent of spent lithium batteries by 2030. It has granted billions in loans to battery recyclers to build new facilities. Automakers are incentivized to buy those recyclers’ products, because part of the federal EV tax credit applies only to cars with batteries that include a minimum amount of critical minerals that were mined, processed or recycled in the U.S. or by a free-trade partner. Manufacturers also get a tax credit for producing critical materials (including recycled ones) in the U.S.

Daniel Zotos, who handles public advocacy at the battery recycling startup Redwood Materials, said in an email that a healthy market for recycled materials is emerging. “Not only is there tremendous value today in recycling these metals, but the global demand for metals means that automakers need to source both more mined and recycled critical minerals.”

Zotos said Redwood Materials agrees with the approach the federal government has taken. “The U.S. has in fact chosen to help incentivize, rather than mandate, recycling through provisions established in the Inflation Reduction Act, which we’re deeply supportive of.”

During a pilot project in California last year, the company recovered 95 percent of the critical materials in 1,300 lithium-ion and nickel metal hydride EV and hybrid batteries. The cost of retrieving packs from throughout the state was the biggest barrier to profitability, but Zotos said that expense will subside as the industry grows.

A tiny but growing secondary market for EV batteries is also driving their reuse. Most batteries will be retired once their capacity dwindles to about 70 to 80 percent, due to the impact on the car’s range. But they’re still viable enough at that point to sustain a second life as storage for renewable energy like wind and solar power. 

B2U Storage Solutions used 1,300 retired batteries from Nissan and Honda to create 27 megawatts hours of storage at its solar farm just north of Los Angeles in Lancaster, California. Photovoltaic panels charge the packs all day, and B2U sells the stored power to the local utility during peak demand in the evening. “There is more value in reuse,” said company president Freeman Hall, “and we’re not doing anything more than deferring recycling another four or five years.” 

Homeowners and hobbyists are embracing second-life batteries, too. Henry Newman, co-owner of the auto dismantler EV Parts Solutions in Phoenix, said customers buy his Tesla and Nissan Leaf batteries to convert classic cars or create DIY power storage at home. Any batteries that Newman can’t sell are picked up by Li-Cycle, a lithium-ion battery recycler with a plant in Gilbert, Arizona. 

Newman said dismantlers and customers seem to want to do the right thing. “I know there will be people who don’t follow regulation, but my experience in the last six to seven years is that the industry is pretty conscious of it and tries to mitigate throwing these things in the trash,” he said. A law could help prevent mishandling, but Newman worries about any overreach or added costs that would come with more regulation. 

But relying on the market to ensure proper stewardship is risky, said Jessica Dunn, a senior analyst in the clean transportation program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “The recycling of cars has traditionally been a market-based environment,” she said. “But we’re dealing with a completely different system now. EV batteries are big and have a lot of critical materials in them that we need to get out of them no matter if it’s economical or not.” 

Transporting EV batteries, which can weigh more than 1,500 pounds, is expensive (as much as one-third of the cost of recycling them), dangerous, and logistically challenging. Packs can catch fire if improperly handled, and they are classified as hazardous material, which requires special shipping permits. If the battery is in a remote location or is damaged, a recycler could deem it too much trouble to retrieve without a mandate to do so.

Dunn also said that not all batteries contain enough valuable materials for it to make financial sense to go through the trouble of recovering them. While most EV batteries currently contain high-value cobalt and nickel, a new generation of cheaper lithium-ion-phosphate, or LFP, batteries don’t use those metals. Tesla, Ford, and Rivian all recently announced they will use LFPs in some models.

“Just because there aren’t nickel and cobalt in them doesn’t mean that the lithium isn’t something that we should be recovering,” said Dunn. Redwood Materials said it collects lithium-ion phosphate batteries and uses the lithium within them to assemble new battery components, and that they collect all battery packs no matter their condition.

Finally, without guidelines in place, viable batteries may not be repurposed before being recycled, which Dunn said undermines their sustainability. “You’ve already put all that literal energy — and the environmental impacts that go along with that — into manufacturing these batteries,” she said. “So if you can squeak an extra five to 10 years out of them, that’s a really good option.” 

With the U.S. poised to see about 165,000 electric vehicle batteries retire in 2030, Dunn said the time to ensure no batteries are stranded is now. “We’re not seeing a big wave now, but that’s coming, and so we need to be prepared for that.”

There has been some federal movement toward a recycling requirement. The 2021 bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act directed the Department of Energy to establish a task force to develop an “extended battery producer responsibility framework” to address battery design, transport, and recycling.

Extended producer responsibility, or EPR, is the approach that the EU took in its battery regulation that passed last December. EPR puts the onus on the manufacturer to ensure that what they produce is properly repurposed and then recycled, either by compelling them to pay for the recycling or to handle it themselves. 

Thirty-three states have such laws, covering 16 products ranging from mattresses to packaging. “It is a paradigm shift for how waste is managed in the United States,” said Scott Cassel of the Product Stewardship Institute. But Congress has never passed such a law. 

EV battery recycling might be the issue that could garner bipartisan support for one. Access to critical materials is a foreign policy and national security issue: China processes more than half the world’s lithium and cobalt, which means a steady domestic supply from recycling would help alleviate dependency on a geopolitical rival. 

Building out the infrastructure to dismantle, recover, and process battery materials could also create thousands of jobs, an accomplishment most lawmakers are happy to align themselves with.  

Republican senators alluded to both benefits when supporting the bipartisan Strategic EV Management Act of 2022, which passed as part of the National Defense Authorization Act last year. It requires multiple agencies to work on guidelines for “reusing and recycling” batteries from vehicles retired from the federal fleet. 

Republican Senator Bill Hagerty of Tennessee said in a statement that the bill would ensure agencies could “reap the full economic benefits of EV investments … and do so in a manner that lessens our dependence on communist China.” 

These laws set in motion efforts to design recycling frameworks, but the timelines to develop them span years. In the meantime, a few states are weighing their own mandates. “The states don’t want to wait for any of these bills to move,” Cassel said. “They’re ready to act right now.”

In California, a Senate bill would require battery suppliers to ensure that all “vehicle traction batteries” be recovered, reused, repurposed, or recycled. The bill passed unanimously this week and is headed to the Assembly. Senator Ben Allen, who introduced the bill, said there is bipartisan political and industry support for creating a framework. “You need a system in place,” he said. “That’s like saying, ‘Oh, the people will drive just fine to and from work. We don’t need traffic laws.’” 

As it has been with other clean-vehicle targets, California could be a bellwether for a standard that would eventually take hold nationally.

“We’d love to create a system that could help to inform national policy,” said Allen. “And in this case, with this industry support and bipartisan backing, there actually may be a blueprint here.”

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/technology/the-u-s-doesnt-have-a-law-mandating-ev-battery-recycling-should-it/. Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org

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It’s been a little over four years since a major fire ravaged France’s iconic Notre Dame de Paris cathedral, causing an estimated $865 million of damage to the majority of its roof and recognizable spire. Since then, the French government, engineers, and a cadre of other dedicated restoration experts have been hard at work rebuilding the architectural wonder, which is currently slated to reopen to the public by the end of 2024.

It’s a tight turnaround, and one that would be much easier to meet if carpenters used modern technology and techniques to repair the iconic building. But as AP News explained earlier this week, it’s far more important to use the same approaches that helped first construct Notre Dame—well over 800 years ago. According to the recent dispatch, rebuilders are consciously employing medieval era tools such as hand axes, mallets, and chisels to reforge the cathedral’s hundreds of tons’ worth of oak wood roofing beams.

Although it would progress faster with the use of modern equipment and materials, that’s not the point. Instead, it’s ethically and artistically far more imperative to stay true to “this cathedral as it was built in the Middle Ages,” explained Jean-Louis Georgelin, a retired general for the French overseeing the project.

[Related: The Notre Dame fire revealed a long-lost architectural marvel.]

Thankfully, everything appears to be on track for the December 2024 reopening. Last month, overseers successfully conducted a “dry run” to assemble and erect large sections of the timber frame at a workshop in western France’s Loire Valley. The next time the pieces are put together will be atop the actual Notre Dame cathedral.

As rudimentary as some of these construction techniques may seem now, at the time they were considered extremely advanced. Earlier this year, in fact, researchers discovered Notre Dame was likely the first Gothic-style cathedral to utilize iron for binding sections of stonework together.

It’s not all old-school handiwork, however. The team behind Notre Dame’s rebuilt roofing plans to transport the massive components to Paris via trucks, and then lifted into place with help from a large mechanical crane. Over this entire process, detailed computer analysis was utilized to make absolutely sure carpenters’ measurements and handhewn work were on the right track. Still, the melding of bygone and modern technology appears to perfectly complement one another, ensuring that when Notre Dame finally literally and figuratively rises from the ashes, it will be as stunning as ever.

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The Federal Trade Commission’s ongoing attempt to rein in Amazon entered a new phase this week, with the regulatory organization recommending both the company and its home surveillance system subsidiary Ring receive multimillion dollar fines in response to alleged monopolistic practices and data privacy violations.

According to an FTC statement released on Wednesday, Amazon disregarded children’s privacy laws by allegedly illegally retaining personal data and voice recordings via its Alexa software. Meanwhile, in a separate, same-day announcement, the commission claims Ring employees failed to stop hackers from gaining access to users’ cameras, while also illegally surveilling customers themselves.

Amazon relies on its Alexa service and Echo devices to collect massive amounts of consumer data, including geolocation data and voice recordings, which it then uses to both further train its algorithms as well as hone its customer profiles. Some of Amazon’s Alexa-enabled products marketed directly to children and their parents collect data and voice recordings, which the company can purportedly retain indefinitely unless parents specifically request the information be deleted.  According to the FTC, however, “even when a parent sought to delete that information … Amazon failed to delete transcripts of what kids said from all its databases.”

[Related: End-to-end encryption now available for most Ring devices.]

Regulators argued these privacy omissions are in direct violation of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) Rule. First established in 1998, the COPPA Rule requires websites and online services aimed at children under 13-years-old to notify parents about the information collected, as well as obtain their consent.

According to the complaint, Amazon claimed children’s voice recordings were retained to help Alexa respond to vocal commands, improve its speech recognition and processing abilities, and allow parents to review them. “Children’s speech patterns and accents differ from those of adults, so the unlawfully retained voice recordings provided Amazon with a valuable database for training the Alexa algorithm to understand children, benefitting its bottom line at the expense of children’s privacy,” argues the FTC.

“Amazon’s history of misleading parents, keeping children’s recordings indefinitely, and flouting parents’ deletion requests violated COPPA and sacrificed privacy for profits,” said Samuel Levine, Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, in Wednesday’s announcement. “COPPA does not allow companies to keep children’s data forever for any reason, and certainly not to train their algorithms.”

[Related: Amazon’s new warehouse employee training exec used to manage private prisons.]

The FTC’s proposed order includes deleting all relevant data alongside a $25 million civil penalty. Additionally, Amazon would be prohibited from using customers’ (including children’s) voice information and geolocations upon consumers’ request. The company would also be compelled to delete inactive children’s Alexa accounts, prohibit them from misrepresenting privacy policies, as well as mandate the creation and implementation of a privacy program specifically concerning its usage of geolocation data.

Meanwhile, the FTC simultaneously issued charges against Amazon-owned Ring, claiming the smart home security company allowed “any employee or contractor” to access customers’ private videos, and failed to implement “basic privacy and security protections” against hackers. In one instance offered by the FTC, a Ring employee “viewed thousands” of videos belonging to female Ring camera owners set up in spaces such as bathrooms and bedrooms. Even after imposing restrictions on customer video access following the incident, the FTC alleges the company couldn’t determine how many other workers engaged in similar conduct “because Ring failed to implement basic measures to monitor and detect employees’ video access.”

[Related: Serial ‘swatters’ used Ring cameras to livestream dangerous so-called pranks.]

The FTC’s proposed order against Ring would require the company to pay $5.8 million in fines to be directed towards consumer refunds. The company would also be compelled to delete any data, including facial information, amassed prior to 2018.

Amazon purchased Ring in 2018, and has since vastly expanded its footprint within the home surveillance industry. In that time, however, the company has found itself under fire on numerous occasions for providing video files to law enforcement entities without consumers’ knowledge, lax security, as well as promoting products via its much-criticized found footage reality TV show, Ring Nation.

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We live our entire lives surrounded by them. They slam into us constantly at more than 700 miles per hour, sometimes hurting, sometimes soothing. They have the power to communicate ideas, evoke fond memories, start fights, entertain an audience, scare the heck out of us, or help us fall in love. They can trigger a range of emotions and they even cause physical damage. This reads like something out of science fiction, but what we’re talking about is very much real and already part of our day-to-day lives. They’re sound waves. So, what are sound waves and how do they work?

If you’re not in the industry of audio, you probably don’t think too much about the mechanics of sound. Sure, most people care about how sounds make them feel, but they aren’t as concerned with how the sound actually affects them. Understanding how sound works does have a number of practical applications, however, and you don’t have to be a physicist or engineer to explore this fascinating subject. Here’s a primer on the science of sound to help get you started.

We can experience sound waves in ways that are more physical, not just physiological, too. If sound waves reach a microphone—whether it’s a plug-n-play USB livestream mic or a studio-quality microphone for vocals—it transforms them into electronic impulses that are turned back into sound by vibrating speakers. Whether listening at home or at a concert, we can feel the deep bass in our chest. Opera singers can use them to shatter glass. It’s even possible to see sound waves sent through a medium like sand, which leaves behind a kind of sonic footprint. 

That shape is rolling peaks and valleys, the signature of a sine (aka sinusoid) wave. If the wave travels faster, those peaks and valleys form closer together. If it moves slower, they spread out. It’s not a poor analogy to think of them somewhat like waves in the ocean. It’s this movement that allows sound waves to do so many other things. 

It’s all about frequency

When we talk about a sound wave’s speed, we’re referring to how fast these longitudinal waves move from peak to trough and back to peak. Up … and then down … and then up … and then down. The technical term is frequency, but many of us know it as pitch. We measure sound frequency in hertz (Hz), which represents cycles-per-second, with faster frequencies creating higher-pitched sounds. For instance, the A note right above Middle C on a piano is measured at 440 Hz—it travels up and down at 440 cycles per second. Middle C itself is 261.63 Hz—a lower pitch, vibrating at a slower frequency.

Understanding frequencies can be useful in many ways. You can precisely tune an instrument by analyzing the frequencies of its strings. Recording engineers use their understanding of frequency ranges to dial in equalization settings that help sculpt the sound of the music they’re mixing. Car designers work with frequencies—and materials that can block them—to help make engines quieter. And active noise cancellation uses artificial intelligence and algorithms to measure external frequencies and generate inverse waves to cancel environmental rumble and hum, allowing top-tier ANC headphones and earphones to isolate the wearer from the noise around them. The average frequency range of human hearing is 20 to 20,000 Hz.

We measure amplitude in decibels (dB). The dB scale is logarithmic, which means there’s a fixed ratio between measurement units. And what does that mean? Let’s say you have a dial on your guitar amp with evenly spaced steps on it numbered one through five. If the knob is following a logarithmic scale, the volume won’t increase evenly as you turn the dial from marker to marker. If the ratio is 4, let’s say, then turning the dial from the first to the second marker increases the sound by 4 dB. But going from the second to the third marker increases it by 16 dB. Turn the dial again and your amp becomes 64 dB louder. Turn it once more, and you’ll blast out a blistering 256 dB—more than loud enough to rupture your eardrums. But if you’re somehow still standing, you can turn that knob one more time to increase your volume to a brain-walloping 1,024 decibels. That’s almost 10 times louder than any rock concert you’ll ever encounter, and it will definitely get you kicked out of your rehearsal space. All of which is why real amps aren’t designed that way.

Twice as nice

We interpret a 10 dB increase in amplitude as a doubling of volume. 

Parts of a sound wave

Timbre and envelope are two characteristics of sound waves that help determine why, say, two instruments can play the same chords but sound nothing alike. 

Timbre is determined by the unique harmonics formed by the combination of notes in a chord. The A in an A chord is only its fundamental note—you also have overtones and undertones. The way these sound together helps keep a piano from sounding like a guitar, or an angry grizzly bear from sounding like a rumbling tractor engine. 

[Related: Even plants pick up on good vibes]

But we also rely on envelopes, which determine how a sound’s amplitude changes over time. A cello’s note might swell slowly to its maximum volume, then hold for a bit before gently fading out again. On the other hand, a slamming door delivers a quick, sharp, loud sound that cuts off almost instantly. Envelopes comprise four parts: Attack, Decay, Sustain, and Release. In fact, they’re more formally known as ADSR Envelopes. 

• Attack: This is how quickly the sound achieves its maximum volume. A barking dog has a very short attack; a rising orchestra has a slower one. 
• Decay: This describes how fast the sound settles into its sustained volume. When a guitar player plucks a string, the note starts off loudly but quickly settles into something quieter before fading out completely. The time it takes to hit that sustained volume is decay. 
• Sustain: Sustain isn’t a measure of time; it’s a measure of amplitude, or volume. It’s how loud the plucked guitar note is after the initial attack but before it fades out. 
• Release: This is the time it takes for the note to drift off to silence. 

Sound’s velocity, or the speed it travels at, differs depending on the density (and even temperature) of the medium it’s moving through—it’s faster in the air than water, for instance. Generally, sound moves at 1,127 feet per second, or 767.54 miles per hour. When jets break the sound barrier, they’re traveling faster than that. And knowing these numbers lets you estimate the distance of a lightning strike by counting the time between the flash and thunder’s boom—if you count to 10, it’s approximately 11,270 feet away, or about a quarter-mile. (Very roughly, of course.) 

A stimulating experience

Anyone can benefit from understanding the fundamentals of sound and what sound waves are. Musicians and content creators with home recording set-ups and studio monitors obviously need a working knowledge of frequencies and amplitude. If you host a podcast, you’ll want as many tools as possible to ensure your voice sounds clear and rich, and this can include understanding the frequencies of your voice, what microphones are best suited to them, and how to set up your room to reflect or dampen the sounds you do or do not want. Having some foundational information is also useful when doing home-improvement projects—when treating a recording workstation, for instance, or just soundproofing a new enclosed deck. And who knows, maybe one day you’ll want to shatter glass. Having a better understanding of the physics of sound opens up wonderful new ways to explore and experience the world around us. Now, go out there and make some noise!

This post has been updated. It was originally published on July 27, 2021.

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An independent security researcher has found malicious code in 18 Chrome extensions currently available in the Chrome Web Store. Combined, the extensions have over 57 million active users. It’s yet more evidence that Chrome extensions need to be evaluated with a critical eye. 

Chrome extensions are apps built on top of Google Chrome that allow you to add extra features to your browser. The tasks that this customizable feature can do are wide-ranging, but some popular extensions can auto-fill your password, block ads, enable one-click access to your todo list, or change how a social media site looks. Unfortunately, because Chrome extensions are so powerful and can have a lot of control over your browsing experience, they are a popular target for hackers and other bad actors. 

Earlier this month, independent security researcher Wladimir Palant discovered code in a browser extension called PDF Toolbox that allows it to inject malicious JavaScript code into any website you visit. The extension purports to be a basic PDF processor that can do things like convert other documents to PDF, merge two PDFs into one, and download PDFs from open tabs. 

It’s that last feature that leaves PDF Toolbox open for bad intentions. Google requires extension developers to only use the minimum permissions necessary. In order to download PDFs from tabs that aren’t currently active, PDF Toolbox has to be able to access every web page you currently have open. Without this feature, it would not be able to pseudo-legitimately access your browser to the same extent.

While PDF Toolbox seemingly can do all the PDF tasks it claims to be able to, it also downloads and runs a JavaScript file from an external website which could contain code to do almost anything, including capture everything you type into your browser, redirect you to fake websites, and take control of what you see on the web. By making the malicious code resemble a legitimate API call, obfuscating it so that it’s hard to follow, and delaying the malicious call for 24 hours, PDF Toolbox has been able to avoid being removed from the Chrome Web Store by Google since it was last updated in January 2022. (It is still available there at the time of writing, despite Palant lodging a report about its malicious code.) 

Palant had no way of confirming what the malicious code in PDF Toolbox did when he first discovered it. However yesterday, he disclosed 17 more browser extensions that use the same trick to download and run a JavaScript file. These include Autoskip for Youtube, Crystal Ad block, Brisk VPN, Clipboard Helper, Maxi Refresher, Quick Translation, Easyview Reader view, Zoom Plus, Base Image Downloader, Clickish fun cursors, Maximum Color Changer for Youtube, Readl Reader mode, Image download center, Font Customizer, Easy Undo Closed Tabs, OneCleaner, and Repeat button, though it is likely that there are other infected extensions. These were only the ones that Palant found in a sample of approximately 1,000 extensions.

In addition to finding more affected extensions, Palant was able to confirm what the malicious code was doing (or at least had done in the past). The extensions were redirecting users’ Google searches to third-party search engines, likely in return for a small affiliate fee. By infecting millions of users, the developers could rake in a tidy amount of profit. 

Unfortunately, code injection is code injection. Just because the malicious JavaScript fairly harmlessly redirected Google searches to alternative search engines in the past, doesn’t mean that it does so today. “There are way more dangerous things one can do with the power to inject arbitrary JavaScript code into each and every website,” writes Palant.

And what kind of dangerous things are those? Well, the extensions could be collecting browser data, adding extra ads to every web page someone visits, or even recording online banking credentials and credit card numbers. Malicious JavaScript running unchecked in your web browser can be incredibly powerful. 

If you have one of the affected extensions installed on your computer, you should remove it now. It’s also a good idea to do a quick audit of all the other extensions you have installed to make sure that you are still using them, and that they all look to be legitimate. If you not, you should remove them too. 

Otherwise, treat this as a reminder to always be vigilant for potential malware. For more tips on how to fight it, check out our guide on removing malware from your computer.

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Last month, engineers at Georgia Institute of Technology unveiled a creepy, crawly centipede-inspired robot sporting a plethora of tiny legs. The multitude of extra limbs wasn’t simply meant to pay homage to the arthropods, but rather to improve the robot’s maneuverability across difficult terrains while simultaneously reducing the number of complicated sensor systems. Not to be outdone, a separate team of researchers at Japan just showed off their own biomimetic “myriapod” robot which leverages natural environmental instabilities to move in curved motions, thus reducing its computational and energy requirements.

[Related: To build a better crawly robot, add legs—lots of legs.]

As detailed in an article published in Soft Robotics, a team at Osaka University’s Mechanical Science and Bioengineering department recently created a 53-inch-long robot composed of six segments, each sporting two legs alongside agile joints. In a statement released earlier this week, study co-author Shinya Aoi explained their team was inspired by certain “extremely agile” insects able to utilize their own dynamic instability to quickly change movement and direction. To mimic its natural counterparts, the robot included tiny motors that controlled an adjustable screw to increase or decrease each segment’s flexibility while in motion. This leads to what’s known as “pitchfork bifurcation.” Basically, the forward-moving centipede robot becomes unstable.

But instead of tipping over or stopping, the robot can employ that bifurcation to begin moving in curved patterns to the left or right, depending on the circumstances. Taking advantage of this momentum allowed the team to control their robot extremely efficiently, and with much less computational complexity than other walking bots.

As impressive as many bipedal robots now are, their two legs can often prove extremely fragile and susceptible to failure. What’s more, losing control of one of those limbs can easily render the machine inoperable. Increasing the number of limbs a lá a centipede robot, creates system redundancies that also expand the terrains it can handle. “We can foresee applications in a wide variety of scenarios, such as search and rescue, working in hazardous environments or exploration on other planets,” explained Mau Adachi, one of the paper’s other co-authors.

[Related: NASA hopes its snake robot can search for alien life on Saturn’s moon Enceladus.]

Such serpentine robots are attracting the attention of numerous researchers across the world. Last month, NASA announced the latest advancements on its Exobiology Extant Life Surveyor (EELS), a snake-bot intended to potentially one day search Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus for signs of extraterrestrial life. Although EELS utilizes a slithering movement via “rotating propulsion units,” it’s not hard to envision it doing so alongside a “myriapod” partner—an image that’s as cute as it is exciting.

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No matter your operating system, Mozilla Firefox makes a great default browser. The free program is quick, intuitive, and packed with features. And you can customize it in all kinds of ways, from tweaking the look of the software to changing the appearances of individual websites.

Once you dig past the surface-level options, you’ll find you can do even more with this privacy-focused browser. These features include app troubleshooting, expert tab management, and entirely new ways of surfing the web. Check out the tips below to ensure you’re taking advantage of all Firefox has to offer.

1. See tabs on your other devices

If you’re using Firefox on multiple devices—maybe a laptop, a desktop, and a phone—and you’re signed into the same Firefox account on all of them, you can see open tabs across all of them through a feature called Firefox View.

First, click the three horizontal lines (top right), then Settings and Sync to make sure you’re signed in. As long as you’re signed in on at least one other device, you can click the Firefox icon on the far left end of the tab bar to see the tabs you’ve got open elsewhere.

2. Customize your address bar

You can turn the Firefox navigation bar into a search powerhouse. That way, when you type keywords (rather than URLs) into the address bar, you’ll be searching for those terms across the web. First, choose the search engine you prefer, whether that’s Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, or something else. Then set it as Firefox’s default, so search terms in the navigation bar will yield results from that search engine. To do so, open the application menu (click the three horizontal lines on the top right of the page), then choose Settings and Search to set the default.

The address bar can act as more than a standard search engine, too. By typing in special keywords, you can launch custom searches within pretty much any site you like, including Wikipedia, IMDb, Amazon, and more. To set this up, navigate to the site you want to search and find its search box. Right-click inside the box and choose Add a Keyword for this Search. A dialog box will pop up. Next, type something short but unusual in the keyword box. This is the term that will trigger your site-specific search when you type it in the Firefox address bar, so you don’t want it to resemble any normal keywords you might search for on a regular basis. For example, you might choose to trigger an IMDb search with the term “imdb”, because you’re not likely to run a general search for that word.

Click Save, and you can then search within that site by entering your keyword, followed by your search terms, in the address bar at the top of the browser. To stick with our previous example, type “imdb Tom Cruise” into the navigation bar to search the IMDb website for Tom Cruise.

3. Watch videos in picture-in-picture mode

When you’re watching a video in Firefox, you’ll see a small overlay button that looks like two rectangles with an arrow pointing from one to the other. Click on this, and your video will pop out of Firefox. Then, you can carry on browsing while the video continues to play.

Click and drag the pop-up window to move it, and drag in (or out) from its edges to resize it. Click the X to close the picture-in-picture video, or the back to tab button (an arrow pointing to a box) to continue playback inside Firefox again.

4. Delete browsing data when Firefox is closed

Keeping on top of cookies and other browsing data saved by the sites you visit in Firefox can be tricky. This data saves information such as your location and your settings for particular sites, and while it can streamline your browsing experience, you may not feel comfortable with websites knowing this much about you.

If you’d like to stay a little more private, click the three horizontal lines (top right) in Firefox, then choose Settings and Privacy & Security. There, you can check the box labeled Delete cookies and site data when Firefox is closed. Every time you shut down the browser, these files will be automatically wiped, so you won’t need to worry about them.

5. Turn on mouse gestures

Clicking and scrolling is fine, but Firefox lets you supercharge your online navigation with mouse gestures that allow you to trigger specific actions by moving your mouse a certain way. Give it a trial run, with the help of the Gesturefy add-on, and there’s a good chance you’ll never look back.

First, install the extension inside Firefox and restart your browser. To explore the available gestures, open the main menu (the three horizontal lines in the top right) and choose Add-ons and themes. Find Gesturefy, click the three dots next to it, then Options, and you’ll find the configuration panel.

Under the Settings tab, you can set the trigger button, which is a button you need to hold down while making a mouse gesture. Gesturefy’s default trigger is the right mouse button, but you can change it if you’d like. Switch to the Gestures tab to see some of the gestures already in place. For example, dragging the mouse quickly to the right, then the left (with the right mouse button held down) closes the current tab. You can add more gestures to the extension’s repertoire here, too.

It may take you some time to get the hang of these gestures, but once you do, you may find that a quick hand movement feels much more intuitive than fishing around for toolbar buttons or scrolling through menus.

6. Manage your tabs

Tabs make up the core of your browsing experience—but you don’t have to settle for the default options Firefox gives you. Check out the Tree Style Tab extension, for example, which introduces a new tab panel on the left and lets you organize your open tabs into hierarchies, almost like a family tree.

Then there’s Tab Stash: This extension lets you save batches of tabs together as bookmarks inside Firefox. If you’re researching a particular topic, for example, and want to come back to it later, you can quickly save all your open tabs as a group that you can open up again later.

You should also check out Simple Tab Groups. This extension does exactly what its name suggests, enabling you to organize open Firefox tabs into color-coded groups in—you could have one group for work stuff and another for personal stuff, or whatever you like.

7. Take screenshots of webpages

There are all kinds of reasons you might want to take screenshots—for posterity, or maybe to refer to in a separate document—and this is really easy to do in Firefox. Just right-click on a blank part of a page, then choose Take Screenshot. You can either click on an element (like an image) to grab it, click and drag across a region to capture, click Save full page to screenshot the entire page, or click Save visible to just capture what you can currently see on screen.

8. Snooze tabs for later

You might be familiar with snoozing your alarm—hitting a button to postpone your wakeup call and sleep for a few extra minutes. Now you can do the same with Firefox tabs, thanks to a third-party extension called Snooze Tabs.

The extension is pretty simple to use: Click the extension button on the toolbar (it looks like a jigsaw piece), then pick Snooze Tabs. You can send the tab you’re currently viewing, or all your Firefox tabs away until a later time and date—choose a preset option like Tomorrow morning or specify your own with Custom time.

9. Search through your tabs

Browser tabs seem to multiply like magic, and you likely have dozens of them open at any one time. That can make navigation tricky, but there is a tab search trick that can help: Click inside the address bar at the top of the Firefox interface, then type the percentage symbol (%)and a space. You’ll then be able to search through the titles of the tabs that you currently have open.

10. Refresh Firefox

If you find your software bogged down with a bunch of extensions, or behaving sluggishly for no specific reason, most programs require that you uninstall and reinstall them to restore their factory settings. Firefox offers a built-in refresh feature that easily resets the browser back to its factory settings and gets it running as good as new. As Mozilla explains, a refresh will return most Firefox settings back to their default state, but it won’t affect your saved bookmarks, stored passwords, browsing history, or even open windows. What it does scrub are third-party extensions, website permissions, modified user preferences, and any customizations you’ve made to the Firefox toolbar.

To access the refresh feature, type “about:support” into the address bar and hit Enter. This takes you to the master troubleshooting page. Click the Refresh Firefox button on the right, and instructions will guide you through the short process.

If you’re really having problems with Firefox, you may not be able to start it at all, which will prevent you from performing a refresh. So try running it in Troubleshoot Mode, which disables everything except the core Firefox program. To open the browser in Troubleshoot Mode, hold down the Shift button (Windows) or the Option button (macOS) while clicking or double-clicking the program icon. As Firefox starts, you’ll see the Troubleshoot Mode window appear. You can continue to browse in Troubleshoot Mode, or go ahead and run that refresh right away.

11. Switch to dark mode

Firefox comes with its own dark mode, which you may prefer. Click the three horizontal lines in the top right, then pick Settings. Open the General tab, and you’ll find Dark under the Web site appearance heading. This will be applied to Firefox’s own settings and new tab screens, but will only darken a website if the site has been coded to respond to a dark mode request from the browser.

This story has been updated. It was originally published on September 11, 2017.

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One of the world’s busiest airports will soon showcase an innovative, undeniably cute way to speed up travelers’ entrances and exits. First announced earlier this month, Dallas Fort Worth International Airport (DFW) is partnering with EV Safe Charge to demonstrate how the company’s mobile electric vehicle charging station, ZiGGY, could be deployed in public spaces to economically and conveniently power up consumers’ parked cars.

[Related: Electric cars are better for the environment, no matter the power source.]

Electric vehicles are an integral component of the societal shift towards clean, renewable energy. Unfortunately, battery shortages stemming from supply chain issues alongside a need for evermore charging stations is hampering a wider adoption of green transportation. ZiGGY obviously isn’t a catch-all fix, but it’s still a novel tool that both its makers and DFW hope to highlight over the summer as part of the airport’s series of EV charging solution demos.

“We know that electric vehicles will be a big part of the future of transportation,” Paul Puopolo, DFW’s Executive VP of Innovation, said in a statement, adding their air hub is “leaning into emerging technology now so that we are prepared to meet the needs of the airport community well into the future.”

ZiGGY itself resembles a large vending machine on wheels, which makes a certain amount of sense given it dispenses electric fuel on demand. Using geofencing technology, app-based controls, and on-board cameras, ZiGGY can be deployed directly to the location of your parked EV, where a user can then connect the charging bot to their ride. To court additional revenue streams, each ZiGGY also features large video screens capable of displaying advertisements. Don’t worry about getting stuck behind it if someone is using a ZiGGY, either—its dimensions and mobility ensures each station can park itself behind an EV without the need for additional space.

Speaking with Ars Technica on Tuesday, EV Safe Charge’s founder and CEO Caradoc Ehrenhalt explained that the idea is to deploy ZiGGY fleets to commercial hubs around the world, such as additional airports, hotels, and shopping centers. “What we’re hearing from people… is the common thread of the infrastructure being very challenging or not possible to put in or not cost effective or takes too much time. And so there really is the need for a mobile charging solution,” said Ehrenhalt.

[Related: Why you barely see electric vehicles at car dealerships.]

Of course, such an autonomous vehicle could find itself prone to defacement and vandalism, but Ehrenhalt apparently opts to look on the sunnier side of things. “Ziggy is fairly heavy because of the battery,” they cautioned to Ars Technica. “It has cameras all around and sensors, including GPS, and so there potentially could be [vandalism], but I’m always hoping for the best of humanity.”

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When a friend asks you to share your WiFi password, how long is your explanation? Saying “Oh, it’s a mess of letters and numbers taped to the router behind the refrigerator in the rental unit upstairs” doesn’t make things easy for them. 

There are better ways to share your WiFi. And sure, each of these tips requires some minimal hoop-jumping, but it’s a heck of a lot easier than trying to dictate a password like “dD^#i16HJ9vD” to someone while they fumble with the password field.

It’s also worth noting that if you often find yourself needing to share your WiFi password, you should set up a guest network to allow people to access your internet while keeping other devices in your home safe. We’ll explain how below, but for now let’s satisfy your immediate needs.

How to share your WiFi password on Android

Google’s operating system allows you to share WiFi passwords via scannable QR codes, so you won’t have to watch your friends hunt and peck on their phone keyboards. 

1. Unlock your phone and open the Quick Settings menu—swipe down with two fingers from the top of the screen.
2. Long-press Internet to open the menu, and then tap the cog icon next to the WiFi network you’re connected to.
3. Tap Share.
4. Your phone will ask you to verify your identity with a biometric or a passcode. Once you provide it, it’ll generate a QR code with your home network’s info.

How to share your WiFi password on iOS, MacOS, and iPadOS

Sharing a WiFi password between Apple devices is even easier—at least if you’ve done some work beforehand. Specifically, both people need to have the email address associated with their Apple ID saved in the other person’s contacts, and you need to be signed into iCloud. For WiFi sharing to work, both devices also need to have WiFi and Bluetooth on, and personal hotspot off.

Unlock the device sharing the password. Have your friend tap the network on their device. A prompt should appear on the one that’s already connected—tap Share Password, then Done.

You’ll need to be somewhat near their device, and in my experience, the process can be a little finicky, but it’s something to consider. If the prompt doesn’t come up, you can always create a dedicated WiFi QR code.

If all else fails, generate your own network QR code

If you find the options above are not working or you have a lot of people coming over and don’t want to share your password with each one, you can print (or cross-stitch, if you’re ambitious) a QR code they can scan. There are plenty of tools out there that will help with this task, but I like QiFi.org. It’s incredibly straightforward: 

[Related: Device won’t connect to WiFi? Here’s what to do first.]

1. Head to your router’s administrator page by typing 192.168.1.1 into your address bar. This is a private IP address some internet service providers use as a gateway to access their routers’ settings. If that one doesn’t work for you, there are other numbers you can try. You can also check the sticker on the bottom of your router or find its user manual. 

2. Look for an option in the settings called Guest Network and set it up with a WPA2 password, if you can. 

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For more than a decade, the king of the skyscrapers—the tallest building in the world—has been the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. With a total height of 2,722 feet, it’s the undisputed champion of the vertical world, a megatall building constructed with a core of reinforced concrete that sits on a piled raft foundation. 

Since its completion, the 163-story building has become a shining part of the world’s architectural and cultural landscape, providing a soaring platform for content that will make your stomach clench. A woman donned flight attendant garb and stood at its dizzying pinnacle not once but twice to hawk for Emirates airlines, with the second stunt involving an enormous A380 aircraft flying behind her. And Tom Cruise famously scaled its glass exterior in a Mission Impossible film.

The Burj Khalifa has owned the superlative designation of tallest building in the world since 2010, towering over everything else. “That’s pretty good staying power considering that there was actually a pretty high rate of replacement—between the replacement of the Sears Tower by Kuala Lumpur’s Petronas Towers, then Taipei 101, and then we moved onto the Burj, which is considerably higher than its predecessors by a good margin,” says Daniel Safarik, the director for research and thought leadership at Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH) in Chicago.

“That begs the inevitable question then: What’s going to be the next new tallest building in the world? And I think the answer is, we don’t know,” he adds. “Initially it was projected to be the Jeddah Tower in Saudi Arabia, but that building has stopped construction with no specified resumption date.” 

The tallest building in the world rises into the unknown 

Adrian Smith is the architect behind the Burj Khalifa, as well as for the on-pause Jeddah Tower. In a video chat from Chicago, he reflects on the question of when and if another building will surpass the height of the Burj. “I think inevitably, that’s the case,” he says.

“One of the interesting things about the ‘tallest building in the world’ as a title, is that if one is serious about doing the tallest building in the world, there’s an enormous amount of publicity that goes along with that,” he adds. Smith is now at Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture and formerly was at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, which is known as SOM. “We’ve had clients hire us to do world’s tallest buildings before—they get an enormous amount of publicity and then for whatever reason, it doesn’t happen. Usually, 90 percent of the time, that reason is money.” 

As for the on-pause Jeddah Tower, which used to be called Kingdom Tower, Smith says that “it’s pursuing the process of starting up again,” and adds, “I have nothing that I can really disclose at all.”

Earlier this year, the Los Angeles Times took a close look at the Jeddah Tower’s frozen progress, and other mega projects in Saudi Arabia, reporting that the tower, at 826 feet tall, “remains a construction site with no construction.” 

[Related: 6 architectural facts about history’s tallest buildings]

But regardless of the Jeddah Tower’s question mark, the Burj remains a decisive and enormous exclamation point. Each time a new tallest building in the world rises up, its designers, engineers, and contractors are pushing into unexplored territory. “First of all, the structure is the most important single thing in a supertall building,” Smith reflects. “And the reason it’s the most important thing is that very few of them are done, and the history of the design process for a supertall—especially a world’s tallest—if it’s truly a world’s tallest, it’s never been done, you don’t know what you’re going to run into.”

The world’s tallest tower came from ‘a tube’

The Burj Khalifa’s core, which is supported by buttresses, is made of reinforced concrete. That’s a change from some of the classic skyscrapers of the previous century that may come to mind. “The structure of Sears Tower is all steel,” Smith says. So too is the structure of the Empire State Building, now just the 51st tallest building in the world but standing proudly since 1931. 

“The structure of Burj Khalifa is all concrete,” he adds. “And the structure for Kingdom Tower will be all concrete as well—but when I say all concrete, they’re heavily reinforced concrete structures. A lot of steel goes into that concrete.” 

Indeed, concrete technology has evolved over the decades, allowing it to have higher and higher compressive strength—the strength it can withstand as gravity pulls on it downwards. 

Stefan Al, an architect, author of the book Supertall, and an assistant professor at Virginia Tech, charts just how much concrete has improved. In the 1950s, he says, concrete was rated at around 20 megapascals. The concrete in the Burj was 80 megapascals, and today’s can do about 250 megapascals. “So basically it’s gotten 10 times stronger—or 10 times more able to withstand compression, meaning you can have 10 times more weight coming from top,” he says. “That’s certainly super impressive.” 

There’s another benefit to concrete (don’t get it confused with cement), which is the way it gets up to where workers need it—by being pumped up and then flowing out of a tube. Reinforced concrete’s current popularity is “a function of concrete’s ability to pump, because that makes it much easier to work with,” Al says. 

That’s different from working with steel way up high, because for that, Al says, “you need super-large cranes” to hoist the beams upwards. And concrete is quick. Al notes that using concrete in a city like New York can result in a building story going up every two to three days. 

Of course, pumping concrete up against gravity produces its own challenges—and opportunities to celebrate. A company that makes concrete pumps, Putzmeister, boasted that its equipment was able to get the material up 1,988 feet—a record at the time. In 2019, they looked back on that 2008 accomplishment, punning that in helping build the Burj, “Putzmeister was a concrete part.”

Smith points out that the plans for the Jeddah Tower call for it to be made out of concrete as well, including even its top spire, which on the Burj is made from steel. “Every few years, technology advances and changes—the concrete gets stronger. There are new additives, new ways of making concrete that’s better for this kind of application,” he says. “If you think about Burj Khalifa and Kingdom [Jeddah] Tower, they’re ultimately built out of a tube that’s maybe 8 inches to a foot in diameter.” He chuckled. 

The second-tallest building in the world

Words like supertall and megatall may sound vague, but in fact they have specific definitions. A supertall building is at least 984 feet tall, while a megatall stands at least 1,968 feet high. At 1,776 feet tall, One World Trade in New York City is a supertall building, but not a megatall one, and is the sixth-tallest building globally. And a new second-tallest building in the world is set to be finished this year—it’s the angular Merdeka 118 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and measures a megatall 2,233 feet tall at the tippy top. (The current second tallest building in the world is the 2,073-foot Shanghai Tower.)

But architecture is about more than height, and Stefan Al highlights an exciting diversity of design he sees in new modern buildings. “You can really speak of a new generation of skyscrapers, which are much taller, but also, you could say, more exuberant” compared to what came before, he observes. “Most of the 20th century, we only had a handful of supertall buildings, including the Chrysler Building and the Empire State Building, but now we have more than 100, and most of them have been built in the last 20 years.” 

As for buildings with wild and varied new styles, he cites the “super slender” trend in New York City, with the skinny and supertall 111 West 57th Street as a notable example. Another is the Central Park Tower, which Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill designed. 

But buildings get even more interesting. The Capital Gate Tower in Abu Dhabi may only be 540 feet tall, but it looks like it could tip over. “It deliberately leans 18 degrees,” Al points out. He says that buildings like this one “are not very logical from a structural perspective.” 

Or check out the M.C. Escher-like CCTV Headquarters in Beijing, or Mexico City’s cool Torre Reforma. 

So will a building ever exceed the height of the Burj Khalifa? Al thinks so, saying he anticipates it happening “within our lifetime.” 

Safarik, of the CTBUH in Chicago, is more cautious, noting that the future seems murky when it comes to a building rising higher than the Burj. But one thing is clear: When it comes to the tallest buildings in the word, things have changed since the CTBUH was founded the same year that the US landed on the moon. 

The post The tallest building in the world remains unchallenged—for now appeared first on Popular Science.

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Following a troubling proliferation of AI-generated and manipulated media, Twitter announced on Tuesday its plans to expand its Community Notes system to flag altered and fake images. First launched late last year shortly after Elon Musk’s $44 billion acquisition of Twitter, Community Notes built upon the company’s previous Birdwatch program aimed at leveraging unpaid, crowdsourced fact checking of tweets to rein in misinformation and hoaxes.

[Related: Why an AI image of Pope Francis in a fly jacket stirred up the internet.]

The expansion is currently in an “experimental” testing phase, and only pertains to posts containing a single image. Twitter states it plans to extend the feature to handle tweets featuring additional media uploads such as GIFs, videos, and multiple images in the near future. As of right now, however, only those signed up as a Community Notes contributor with a user rated Writing Impact score of 10 can see the option to flag a post for its accompanying media instead of just its text. According to Twitter’s Community Notes page, “Tagging notes as ‘about the image’ makes them visible on all Tweets that our system identifies as containing the same image,” meaning that other users’ tweets containing the same image alongside different text will hypothetically contain the same flag.

Twitter’s Community Notes team warned that the new feature’s accuracy could still produce both false positives and negatives for other tweets.  “It’s currently intended to err on the side of precision when matching images,” they explained, “which means it likely won’t match every image that looks like a match to you.” Twitter added that its team will continue to “tune this to expand coverage” while also cutting down on “erroneous matches.”

The new feature arrives just days after a fake image depicting an explosion at the Pentagon began circulating on Twitter, first via an account claiming association with Bloomberg News. The now-suspended account included a “Blue Checkmark” that for years reflected an account’s verified authenticity. Following Musk’s company takeover, a verification can now be obtained via subscribing to the premium Twitter Blue user tier.

[Related: Twitter’s ‘Blue Check’ drama is a verified mess.]

Twitter has relied extensively on crowdsourced moderation via the Community Notes system after axing the majority of its staff dedicated to trust and safety issues. On Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal reported the social media platform is now worth approximately one-third of the $44 billion Musk paid for it.

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Over 350 AI researchers, ethicists, engineers, and company executives co-signed a 22-word, single sentence statement about artificial intelligence’s potential existential risks for humanity. Compiled by the nonprofit organization Center for AI Safety, a consortium including the “Godfather of AI,” Geoffrey Hinton, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and Microsoft Chief Technology Officer Kevin Scott agree that, “Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.”

The 22-word missive and its endorsements echo a similar, slightly lengthier joint letter released earlier this year calling for a six-month “moratorium” on research into developing AI more powerful than OpenAI’s GPT-4. Such a moratorium has yet to be implemented.

[Related: There’s a glaring issue with the AI moratorium letter.]

Speaking with The New York Times on Tuesday, Center for AI Safety’s executive director Dan Hendrycks described the open letter as a “coming out” for some industry leaders. “There’s a very common misconception, even in the AI community, that there only are a handful of doomers. But, in fact, many people privately would express concerns about these things,” added Hendrycks.

But critics remain wary of both the motivations behind such public statements, as well as their feasibility.

“Don’t be fooled: it’s self-serving hype disguised as raising the alarm,” says Dylan Baker, a research engineer at the Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR), an organization promoting ethical AI development. Speaking with PopSci, Baker went on to argue that the current discussions regarding hypothetical existential risks distract the public and regulators from “the concrete harms of AI today.” Such harms include “amplifying algorithmic harm, profiting from exploited labor and stolen data, and fueling climate collapse with resource consumption.”

A separate response first published by DAIR following March’s open letter and re-upped on Tuesday, the group argues, “The harms from so-called AI are real and present and follow from the acts of people and corporations deploying automated systems. Regulatory efforts should focus on transparency, accountability and preventing exploitative labor practices.”

Hendrycks, however, believes that “just as it would be reckless to exclusively prioritize present harms, it would also be reckless to ignore them as well.” Hendrycks likened the moment to when atomic scientists warned the world about the technologies they created before quoting J. Robert Oppenheimer, “We knew the world would not be the same.”

[Related: OpenAI’s newest ChatGPT update can still spread conspiracy theories.]

“They are essentially saying ‘hold me back!’ media and tech theorist Douglas Rushkoff wrote in an essay published on Tuesday. He added that a combination of “hype, ill-will, marketing, and paranoia” is fueling AI coverage, and hiding the technology’s very real, demonstrable issues while companies attempt to consolidate their holds on the industry. “It’s just a form of bluffing,” he wrote, “Sorry, but I’m just not buying it.”

In a separate email to PopSci, Rushkoff summarized his thoughts, “If I had to make a quote proportionately short to their proclamation, I’d just say: They mean well. Most of them.”

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It feels like nearly every week or so, someone’s quadrupedal robot gains yet another impressive (occasionally terrifying) ability or trick. But as cool as a Boston Dynamics Spot bot’s new capability may be, it’s hard to reliably compare newly developed talents to others when there still aren’t any industry standard metrics. 

Knowing this, a team of research scientists at Google are aiming to streamline evaluations through their new system that’s as ingenious as it is obvious: robot obstacle courses akin to dog agility competitions. It’s time to stretch those robotic limbs and ready the next generation of four-legged machines for Barkour.

[Related: This robot dog learned a new trick—balancing like a cat.]

“[W]hile researchers have enabled robots to hike or jump over some obstacles, there is still no generally accepted benchmark that comprehensively measures robot agility or mobility,” the team explained in a blog post published last week. “In contrast, benchmarks are driving forces behind the development of machine learning, such as ImageNet for computer vision, and OpenAI Gym for reinforcement learning (RL).” As such, “Barkour: Benchmarking Animal-level Agility with Quadruped Robots” aims to rectify that missing piece of research.

In simple terms, the Barkour agility course is nearly identical to many dog courses, albeit much more compact at 5-by-5 meters to allow for easy setup in labs. The current standard version includes four unique obstacles—a line of poles to weave between, an A-frame structure to climb up and down, a 0.5m broad jump, and finally, a step up onto an end table.

To make sure the Barkour setup was fair to robots mimicking dogs, the team first offered up the space to actual canines—in this case, a small group of “dooglers,” aka Google employees’ own four-legged friends. According to the team, small dogs managed to complete the course in around 10 seconds, while robots usually take about double that time.

[Related: Dogs can understand more complex words than we thought.]

Scoring occurs between 0 and 1 for each obstacle, and is based on target times set for small dogs in novice agility competitions (around 1.7m/s). In all, each quadrupedal robot must complete all five challenges, but is given penalties for failing, skipping stations, or maneuvering too slowly through the course.

“We believe that developing a benchmark for legged robotics is an important first step in quantifying progress toward animal-level agility,” explained the team, adding that, moving forward, the Barkour system potentially offers industry researchers an “easily customizable” benchmark.

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At first glance, race cars and electric go-karts have nothing in common except for a vaguely similar shape. Both are open-cockpit vehicles with wide wheels, and they both thrive on sharp turns—and that appears to be it. 

What many don’t realize is that go-karts are often the entry point for future Indy 500 drivers, and competitors also practice in the tiny vehicles to develop muscle memory. Several companies manufacture karts, and the most recent iteration of Honda’s version is the eGX go-kart concept, which is equipped with two 10-kilo (about 23 pounds) swappable battery packs good for about 45 minutes at a time. This battery technology allows the brand to test the dynamics of electric vehicles on a smaller scale before rolling it out to the much pricier race cars (and eventually apply this insight to passenger vehicles as well). 

Honda Accord, Civic, CR-V, and Odyssey owners might not realize it, but Honda’s passion starts with racing, and passenger cars reap the research benefits. Only two manufacturers make IndyCar engines, and Honda is one of them. In the last 30 years, Honda has claimed 18 IndyCar championships and 15 Indianapolis 500 wins. 

PopSci had a chance to pilot one of these eGX karts in the Indianapolis area over Indy 500 weekend. It was heart-pounding, arm-muscle-straining excitement, like a taste of the race itself (minus the yellow and red flags). We also got to speak with engineers to better understand Honda’s strategy for its entire product lineup, from power tools to cars. Here’s what we learned.  

Battery packs offer modularity and continuity

Kids interested in racing start with small go-karts and work their way up. If they have enough skill and a little luck, they’ll find themselves behind the wheel of a high-performance IndyCar or F1 machine. As they develop, drivers keep practicing with karts—albeit increasingly high-powered versions—that twist and squeal and mimic the experience of a road course race. 

“Karts are closer to the open-wheel experience than anything else,” says John Whiteman, commercial motorsports manager at Honda Performance Development. (In case you were wondering, an open-wheel car is one that has its wheels outside of the car versus underneath, like a passenger car.)

Honda Performance Development, or HPD for short, was founded in 1993 for the purpose of designing and developing racing engines along with chassis and performance parts for motorsports. HPD has a history of repurposing small engines to make gas-powered karts and quarter midgets (small racers that are about one-quarter scale of a full-size midget race car).

If you’ve ever been to an outdoor recreational karting track with friends and family, you’re familiar with the whine and buzz of the gas-powered version. Gas-powered kart engines are often shared with lawn mowers, made by other companies like Briggs and Stratton as well as HPD, and indoor tracks use electric karts so they’re not filling the air with toxic fumes. 

The eGX takes a typical electric go kart to the next level, employing two saddle packs on either side of the seat to house the lithium-ion batteries that power the kart. That way, the kart is balanced and maintains its grip with the road without adding rear bias or tip-over potential by loading the battery on one side. 

Whiteman says the swappable battery packs offer many upsides, including reduced maintenance costs and environmental benefits. Through this technology, HPD has learned more about energy storage, heat management, and vehicle weights and balances. These battery packs are already in use for small construction equipment like cordless rammers and compact excavators.

Along with reduced emissions and noise pollution, battery-pack-powered vehicles keep the equipment in commission continuously if you have a bank of these batteries that can be charging up while the others are in use. 

How race car research benefits Honda’s passenger cars

Ultimately, Honda and its HPD division are testing new ideas to find out how that translates to performance and customer satisfaction. Rebecca Johnson, HPD director of production and senior manager, says exploring electrification and sharing each division’s findings throughout the company creates opportunities to improve across the board. 

“We’re trying to train ourselves to be better at hybrids and battery packs for electrified racing,” Johnson says. “Let’s build something. Let’s make a car and let’s call it our laboratory, if you will, and let people ‘play’ and iterate on the design or technology. As we strive forward, we can put that together with what customers want.”

In 2024, the IndyCar series will run with hybrid units with 2.2-liter engines; currently, the power is all supplied by renewable race fuel. Honda is getting ready for this change by testing battery packs and a custom concept hybrid built with a tubular cage and sheet metal copied from a production CR-V crossover. It’s mind-boggling to ride in the Beast, as Honda calls it internally, as it looks like an SUV with a giant wing and sounds like a screaming hurricane inside. This is the future, and it’s pretty exciting. 

Johnson is steeped in racing culture, and she has her eyes trained forward as HPD works to maintain the visceral appeal of IndyCar and Formula One races while moving toward drastically reducing emissions.   

“We’re a racing company that happens to sell cars,” Johnson says. “Racing is in our DNA. If we can prove out tough things on a race track, we can surely make a good Civic. If you can do it at [IndyCar] level, then you should be very good at performance for a Civic owner. They want all the things that we want [for race cars] but on a different level.”

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On March 15, the US Navy launched a torpedo-shaped robot into the Persian Gulf from the back of a helicopter. The robot was a Slocum glider, an uncrewed sensing tool that can collect data on ocean conditions below the surface. Dropping it from a helicopter was a proof of concept, a test towards expanding the array of vehicles that can put the robots into the water. As the US Navy seeks to know more about the waterways it patrols, distributing data collection tools can provide a more complete image of the ocean without straining the existing pool of sailors.

The US Navy helicopter, part of Helicopter Mine Countermeasures Squadron (HM) 15, delivered the glider by flying low and slow over the sea surface. The glider, held between railings facing seaward, slid forward, diving but not tumbling into the water. The setup enabled smooth entry into the water, keeping the robot from falling aft over teakettle.

“We are excited to be a part of another series of firsts! In this instance, the first launch from a helicopter and the first-ever successful glider deployment from an aircraft,” Thomas Altshuler, a senior VP at Teledyne, said in a release. While the test took place in March, it was only recently announced by both the Navy and Teledyne, makers of the Slocum glider. “Teledyne Marine​ takes pride in our continued innovation and support of the U.S. Navy as it expands the operational envelope of underwater gliders.”

This is what that entry looked like:

A second video, which appears to be recorded by the phone camera of one of the sailors standing next to the rail, offers a different angle on the descent. The mechanics of the rail mount are clearer, from the horseshoe-shaped brace holding the glider in place, to the mechanism of release. When the glider hits water, it makes a splash, big at the moment then imperceptible in the wake of the rotor wash on the ocean surface.

For this operation, Teledyne says the glider was outfitted with “Littoral Battlespace Sensing – Glider (LBS-G) mine countermeasures (MCM) sensors.” In plain language, that means sensors designed to work near the shore, and to collect information about the conditions of the sea where the Navy is operating. This data is used by both the Navy for informing day-to-day operation and by the Naval Oceanographic Office, for understanding ocean conditions and informing both present and future operations.

[Related: What it’s like to rescue someone at sea from a Coast Guard helicopter]

In addition to HM 15, the test was coordinated with the aforementioned Naval Oceanographic Office, which regularly uses glider robots to collect and share oceanographic data. The Slocum glider is electrically powered, with range and endurance dependent upon battery type. At a minimum, that means the glider can travel 217 miles over 15 days, powerlessly gliding at an average speed of a little over 1 mph. (Optional thruster power doubles the speed to 2 mph.) With the most extensive power, Teledyne boasts that the gliders can range over 8,000 miles under water, stay in operation for 18 months, and work from shallows of 13 feet to depths of 3,280 feet.

“Naval Meteorology and Oceanography Command directs and oversees more than 2,500 globally-distributed military and civilian personnel who collect, process, and exploit environmental information to assist Fleet and Joint Commanders in all warfare areas to make better decisions faster than the adversary,” notes the Navy description of the test.

Communicating that data from an underwater robot to the rest of the Navy is done through radio signals, satellite uplink, and acoustic communication, among other methods. These methods allow the glider to transmit data and receive commands from remote human operators. 

“The invention of gliders addressed a long-standing problem in physical oceanography: how do you measure changes in the ocean over long periods of time?” reads an Office of Navy Research history of the program. The Slocum gliders themselves date back to a concept floated in 1989, where speculative fiction imagined hundreds of autonomous floats surveying the ocean by 2021. The prototype glider was first developed in 1991, had sea trials in 1998, and today according to that report,the Naval Oceanographic Office alone operates more than 150 gliders.

This information is useful generally, as it builds a comprehensive picture of the vast seas on which fleets operate. It is also specifically useful, as listening for acoustics underwater can help detect other ships and submarines. Undersea mines, hidden from the surface, can be found through sensing the sea, and revealing their location protects Navy ships, sailors, and commercial ocean traffic, too.

Releasing the gliders from helicopters expands how and where these exploratory machines can start operations, hastening deployment for the undersea watchers. When oceans are battlefields, knowing the condition of the waters first can make all the difference.

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Even after all that quarantine hobby honing, gardening can still be an uphill battle for those lacking a green thumb—but a little help from robotic friends apparently goes a long way. Recently, UC Berkeley unveiled AlphaGarden, a high-tech, AI-assisted plant ecosystem reportedly capable of cultivating a polycultural garden at least as well as its human counterparts. And in one particular, consequential metric, AlphaGarden actually excelled.

As detailed by IEEE Spectrum over the weekend, UC Berkeley’s gardening plot combined a commercial robotic gantry farming setup with AlphaGardenSim, an AI program developed in-house by utilizing a high-resolution camera alongside soil moisture sensors. Additionally, the developers included automated drip irrigation, pruning, and even seed planting. AlphaGarden (unfortunately) doesn’t feature a fleet of cute, tiny farm bots scuttling around its produce; instead, the system resembles a small crane installation capable of moving above and tending to the garden bed.

[Related: How to keep your houseplants from dying this summer.]

As an added challenge, AlphaGarden was a polyculture creation, meaning it contained a variety of crops like turnips, arugula, lettuce, cilantro, kale, and other plants. Polyculture gardens reflect nature much more accurately, and benefit from better soil health, pest resilience, and fewer fertilization requirements. At the same time, they are often much more labor-intensive given the myriad plant needs, growth rates, and other such issues when compared to a monoculture yield.

To test out AlphaGarden’s capabilities compared with humans, researchers simply built two plots and planted the same seeds in both of them. Over the next 60 days, AlphaGarden was largely left to its own literal and figurative devices, while professional horticulturalists did the same. Afterwards, UC Berkeley repeated the same growth cycle, but this time allowed AlphaGarden to give its slower-growing plants an earlier start.

According to researchers, the results from the two cycles  “suggest that the automated AlphaGarden performs comparably to professional horticulturalists in terms of coverage and diversity.” While that might not be too surprising given all the recent, impressive AI advancements, there was one aspect that AlphaGarden unequivocally outperformed its human farmer controls—over the two test periods, the robotic system reduced water consumption by as much as a whopping 44 percent. As IEEE Spectrum explained, that translates to several hundred liters less after the two month period.

[Related: Quick and dirty tips to make sure your plants love the soil they’re in.]

Although researchers claim “AlphaGarden has thus passed the Turing Test for gardening,” referencing the much-debated marker for robotic intelligence and sentience, there are a few caveats here. For one, these commercial gantry systems remain cost prohibitive for most people (the cheapest one looks to be about $3,000), and more research is needed to further optimize its artificial light sources and water usage. There’s also the question of scalability and customization, as different gardens have different shapes, sizes, and needs.

Still, in an era of increasingly dire water worries, it’s nice to see developers creating novel ways to reduce water consumption for one of the planet’s thirstiest industries.

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Termites are often thought to be structural pests, but two researchers have taken a slightly contrarian viewpoint. As detailed in a new paper recently published in Frontiers in Materials, David Andréen of Lund University and Rupert Soar of Nottingham Trent University studied termites’ tens of millions of years of architectural experience exhibited within their massive mounds. According to the duo’s findings, the insects’ abilities could inspire a new generation of green, energy efficient architecture.

Termites are responsible for building the tallest biological structures in the world, with the biggest mound ever recorded measuring an astounding 42-feet-high. These insects aren’t randomly building out their homes, however—in fact, the structures are meticulously designed to make the most of the environment around them. Termite mounds in Namibia, for example, rely on intricate, interconnected tunnels known as an “egress complex.” As explained in Frontiers’ announcement, these mounds’ complexes grow northward during the November-to-April rainy season in order to be directly exposed to the midday sun. Throughout the rest of the year, however, termites block these egress tunnels, thus regulating ventilation and moisture levels depending on the season.

To better study the architectural intricacies, Andréen and Soar created a 3D-printed copy of an egress complex fragment. They then used a speaker to simulate winds by sending oscillating amounts of CO2-air mixture through the model while tracking mass transference rates. Turbulence within the mound depended on the frequency of oscillation, which subsequently moved excess moisture and respiratory gasses away from the inner mound.

[Related: Termites work through wood faster when it’s hotter out.]

From there, the team created a series of 2D models of the egress complex. After driving an oscillating amount of water through these lattice-like tunnels via an electromotor, Andréen and Soar found that the machine only needed to move air a few millimeters back-and-forth to force the water throughout the entire model. The researchers discovered termites only need small amounts of wind power to ventilate their mounds’ egress complex.

The researchers believe integrating the egress complex design into future buildings’ walls could create promising green architecture threaded with tiny air passageways. This could hypothetically be accomplished via technology such as powder bed printers alongside low-energy sensors and actuators to move air throughout the structures.

“When ventilating a building, you want to preserve the delicate balance of temperature and humidity created inside, without impeding the movement of stale air outwards and fresh air inwards,” explained Soar, adding the egress complex is “an example of a complicated structure that could solve multiple problems simultaneously: keeping comfort inside our homes, while regulating the flow of respiratory gasses and moisture through the building envelope,” with minimal to no A/C necessary. Once realized, the team believes society may soon see the introduction of “true living, breathing” buildings.

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Ford and Tesla have been rivals for years in the electric vehicle market, but a new agreement may change their relationship status. On Thursday, Ford said in a press release that its EV customers would be able to get access to 12,000 Tesla superchargers across the US and Canada by spring of next year. This will broaden the availability of charging stations by adding to the network of ​​10,000 DC fast-chargers and over 80,000 level-two chargers that Ford has been building out for the last decade. 

Most EVs on the market use the Combined Charging System (CCS) ports for fast charging. Teslas have a unique charging port called the North American Charging Standard (NACS), but its vehicle owners can use special adapters to charge at non-Tesla power stations. 

Pre-2021, it meant that Teslas could charge at public power stations, but no other EVs could charge at a Tesla station. However, starting in November 2021, Tesla started making some (but not all) of its superchargers open to non-Tesla EVs through a “Magic Dock” adapter. Drivers who wanted to use this still had to download the Tesla app on their phones in order to make it work. The Ford partnership will change that process, making things easier for people driving vehicles like the Mach-E or F-150 Lightning.  

“Mustang Mach-E, F-150 Lightning and E-Transit customers will be able to access the Superchargers via an adapter and software integration along with activation and payment via FordPass or Ford Pro Intelligence,” the company said. “In 2025, Ford will offer next-generation electric vehicles with the North American Charging Standard (NACS) connector built-in, eliminating the need for an adapter to access Tesla Superchargers.”

[Related: Electric cars are better for the environment, no matter the power source]

As EVs become more commonplace, charging availability and range anxiety become understandable concerns for many owners. The only way to relieve that is to build a charging infrastructure that parallels the distribution of gas stations across the country. The Biden Administration has made building public chargers a priority, and last fall, the Department of Transportation said that it had signed off on the EV charging plans for all US states, as well as DC and Puerto Rico. States like Michigan and Indiana have even come up with ambitious plans to make wireless charging possible through special roadway systems. 

When it comes to smoothing over the potholes in the way of EV adoption in the US, more accessible chargers are never a bad thing. Tesla, having led the EV game for so long, seems like it’s finally ready to share its resources for the greater good. “Essentially, the idea is that we don’t want the Tesla Supercharger network to be like a walled garden. We want it to be something that is supportive of electrification and sustainable transport in general,” Tesla CEO Elon Musk said Thursday in Twitter Spaces, as reported by TechCrunch.  

“It seems totally ridiculous that we have an infrastructure problem, and we can’t even agree on what plug to use,” Ford CEO Jim Farley said at a Morgan Stanley conference, CNBC reported. “I think the first step is to work together in a way we haven’t, probably with the new EV brands and the traditional auto companies.”

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Learning to ride a bike is a rite of passage in many families and communities, and that means the ability to teach someone how to ride a bike is an equally important skill. The first few tries can be scary for kids, but finding the right balance, and coordination will be easier if they have a confident teacher guiding them. That’s where you come in. 

Now, it’s not entirely natural to perch atop a pair of wheels, and falling is a near-certainty until a child has found their bike legs. Challenges are part of the process, but there are a number of ways that you can help the kid you’re teaching get comfortable on two wheels with limited trouble.

Balance bikes are simple. They’re just like small regular bikes, except without pedals. Riders propel themselves forward by pushing with their feet on the ground, essentially running with the bike beneath them. New riders can walk as slow as they want while seated on the bike, and as they get comfortable, start to move faster until they naturally lift their feet and glide farther and farther. Once they’ve mastered staying upright with their feet off the ground and can turn with a combination of the handlebars and leaning, it’s easy enough for them to hop up on a regular bike and learn the nuances of pedaling, starting, and stopping. There’s often no need for training wheels at all. One study found that children who started on a balance bike learned to ride a pedal bike around 4 years old on average, while those who started on a bike with training wheels didn’t learn until they were closer to 6. 

[Related: The best bikes for kids]

I started my kids on balance bikes when they were about 2 (they’re twins), and in a couple of weeks they were zooming and gliding faster than I could keep up with on walks around our neighborhood. When we introduced pedal bikes a few months before their fifth birthday, they got the hang of riding in two short driveway practice sessions and could easily start on their own without a push a few days later. They used training wheels for a total of 30 minutes, and that was only because we bought the bikes fully assembled and they refused to wait for me to take them off before hopping on.   

Even if your kids are older, or you’re trying to teach yourself as an adult, balance bikes are a great way to start. If you can’t find a larger balance bike or don’t want to buy one, Yip suggests removing the pedals from a regular bike and lowering the seat so the rider’s feet rest flat on the ground.

Create a fun, safe space for learning

Riding can be scary at first, so it’s important that kids start off in a comfortable environment. “Start in a flat, traffic-free area, such as a park or a quiet cul-de-sac, where your child can practice without distractions or dangers,” says Peter Ballin, a former international mountain bike racer, UCI Mountain Bike World Cup mechanic, and bicycle coach out of Morzine, France. “Ideally, start them on grass so it’s softer if they fall.” They shouldn’t have to worry about navigating around dangers or running out of space. Let them focus solely on riding.

It’s also important to remember that learning new skills is uncomfortable, so don’t push kids too hard, Yip says. After all, riding a bike should be fun. If the kids aren’t enjoying it, or are getting stressed from too much pressure, they’re going to have a harder time learning. “It’s better to let the child learn at their own pace,” he says. There’s no set amount of time that it should take. In Yip’s classes, students sometimes move from a balance bike to a pedal bike in a single day, but others might take weeks or months to get comfortable with the transition—and that’s OK.  

Ballin adds that as your child improves, giving them little challenges can be a fun way to keep them engaged and pushing themselves without undue pressure. He recommends setting up simple obstacle courses for your kid to navigate, or racing against a clock to keep them motivated and excited to learn.

Don’t forget to teach safe riding habits, too

Teaching a kid to ride a bike isn’t only about guiding them through balance and pedaling. They also have to learn about safety. First is the importance of wearing a helmet anytime they’re out riding. One analysis found that wearing a helmet could reduce the risk of head injuries by 45 percent, brain injuries by 33 percent, facial injuries by 27 percent, and deaths by 29 percent. I’ve seen the value of a helmet in action—one of my kids took a pretty bad balance bike spill and landed on the road on his face. The rim of the helmet saved him from no more than a split lip. Without the helmet, I’m sure it would have been a trip to the hospital instead. 

The other important safety lesson kids need to learn are the rules of the road, both Yip and Ballin say. Make sure to teach them that they should always ride with the flow of traffic rather than against, why we stop at intersections, what stop lights and road signs mean, and who has the right of way in what situations. Even if they’re years away from being old enough to ride alone, it’s good to drill that knowledge into their heads from the start.  

Classes are another option. In addition to providing people for your child to watch, sometimes kids need to learn from someone other than a parent or caretaker, particularly if you find yourselves getting frustrated by a lack of progress. Classes can also be a validating experience for kids who might be embarrassed that they don’t know how to ride yet, Yip says. They’ll see people of all ages who are also learning to ride, and realize that there’s no shame in not having mastered the skill yet.

And once your child is up and running on their bike, so to speak, biking groups and classes are a great way to expand their, and your, knowledge about cycling. Whether it’s getting more comfortable with street riding and racing, diving into the exciting world of BMX, or heading up into the hills for some mountain biking, there are a ton of ways to expand their skills and keep them in the saddle.

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In ancient times (i.e. the early 2000s) scammy websites would automatically open multiple windows with ads, which you then had to close one by one. It was obnoxious, which is why now every major browser stops sites from opening new windows by default. But websites found a workaround to show you ads or get you to sign to their newsletter: the overlay.

You’ve surely seen them, even if you never had a word for it before. Overlays cover up what you’re trying to read, watch, or access, generally asking you for an email address or some other piece of personal information. Most times their purpose is relatively harmless, but sometimes these boxes have dark patterns: deliberately confusing design that manipulates users to collect their personal information.

Fortunately, you can remove overlays by editing the HTML code of a webpage. You can do this manually in your browser if you want, but it’s a lot easier to use an extension especially designed for the job.

If you prefer, you can also use the app’s keyboard shortcut to trigger the extension: Ctrl + Shift + X on Windows, or Cmd + Shift + X on MacOS. If you’re a Chrome user, you can ditch the default key combo and set up your own. Head over to the extension settings page by clicking on the puzzle piece icon in the top right corner of the interface and choosing Manage extensions, or by typing Chrome://Extensions into the address bar. Click the three-line menu in the top-left corner of the screen and in the emerging sidebar, choose Keyboard shortcuts. Find the BehindTheOverlay extension and click the pen icon under it to edit the shortcut. 

This is a minimalistic tool but this level of simplicity has its downsides. There’s no way to automatically remove overlays, and if the extension doesn’t work on a particular site there’s not a lot you can do. Still, BehindTheOverlay works in most cases, which is why it’s worth trying out first.

The Aggressive mode will remove basically anything that follows you as you scroll. In some cases, this could even remove page elements such as headers, which is why there’s also a Moderate option. This is the extension’s default and tries to only remove the annoying layovers. Finally, there’s Dormant mode, which does nothing and it’s useful when the extension seems to be breaking the website you’re looking at.

PopUpOff is certainly the kind of tool you’ll need to spend some time tweaking, but once you’re done overlays will be a thing of the past and you won’t even think about them anymore.

Google, an advertising company, does not offer a reader mode in Chrome—at least, not without doing some digging through hidden settings. If you use the Big G’s browser, the Postlight Reader extension can add a reader mode to Chrome and even allow you to configure the font and text size of the article you’re reading.

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Elon Musk’s brain-computer interface company Neuralink announced on Thursday evening that it has received FDA approval to begin conducting human trials. News of the major step arrives after years of research and numerous regulatory hurdles, as well as multiple investigations into potential safety and animal ethics violations.

“This is the result of incredible work by the Neuralink team in close collaboration with the FDA and represents an important first step that will one day allow our technology to help many people,” Neuralink wrote via its Twitter account on Thursday evening, with Musk retweeting the message alongside his congratulations.

[Related: Elon Musk hopes humans will test Neuralink brain implants in the next six months.]

Neuralink aims to create a line of computer implants that connect directly with users’ brains, initially in order to restore patients’ vision and help those with a “Stephen Hawking-type [neurological] situation,” explained Musk during a Neuralink presentation last November. For the majority of his life, Hawking suffered from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), which ultimately resulted in a near total body paralysis.

Neuralink first released footage in 2019 of a successful interfacing with rat test subjects. The company subsequently moved on to similar implants for sheep, pigs, and monkeys. In 2021, the company released footage of one of its test macaques playing Pong via a prototype “brain-machine interface.” Late last year, however, an exposé from Reuters revealed the company was under a federal investigation stemming from “internal staff complaints” regarding alleged animal-welfare violations, some of which pertained to over alleged 1,500 dead test subjects. Shortly thereafter, another report via Reuters indicated the FDA had rebuffed the company’s initial requests to begin human test trials, citing concerns over devices potentially overheating, as well as the possibility of damaging brain tissue upon implant removal.

[Related: Employees say Neuralink’s ‘hack job’ tests killed roughly 1,500 animals since 2018.]

As The Verge and DigitalTrends noted on Thursday, Neuralink is not the first company to receive regulatory greenlight on human brain-computer interface trials. Earlier this year, a company called Synchron—backed by the likes of Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates—announced it had successfully implanted their “Stentrode” neuroprosthesis device in four human subjects. BrainGate’s device has also previously allowed a paralyzed man to convert his imagined handwriting into text to communicate.

Per Neuralink, recruitment is not yet open for clinical trials, but the company promised “more information on this soon.” Last November, Musk stated during a company show-and-tell that “You could have a Neuralink device implanted right now and you wouldn’t even know,” adding that, “ Hypothetically in one of these demos, in fact… I will.”

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Apart from being naturally cliquey, gorillas are born foragers. In the wild, the great apes are regularly on the move in search of fruits, vegetables, and bamboo shoots; a habit that can become difficult to recreate when living within a zoo setting. At Zoo Atlanta, for example, human workers generally provided gorillas with their meals at certain scheduled times and locations.  But an affordable new device could provide a much more naturalistic feeding regime for the apes—once they get used to it.

[Related: Gorillas can be cliquey, too. Here’s what that says about our own social lives.]

Recently, a team of mechanical engineering students and alumni at Georgia Tech began developing and testing ForageFeeder, a $400 machine partly inspired by deer feeders that can disperse gorillas’ their meals at random intervals and locations throughout the day. Suspended about 15 feet above the ground, ForageFeeder drops food such as carrots, sweet potatoes, and turnips from a bucket into a tray, after which time a rotor shoots the snacks in a circular motion as far as 30 feet away from the machine.

Recreating animals’ natural habitats and environments are crucial to ensuring zoo residents’ psychological and physical wellbeing, while also encouraging exercise and mental stimulation. Much like modern humans, zoo animals frequently deal with obesity due to a lack of activity. Tools and techniques such as the ForageFeeder not only promote Zoo Atlanta gorillas’ movement, but better simulate their natural foraging world.

Zookeepers at Zoo Atlanta have utilized the ForageFeeder on-and-off in their gorilla enclosure since last August. Although the primates are now largely used to its appearance, it wasn’t always the case. A video showcasing the gorillas’ first encounter with ForageFeeder depicts pretty much what one might expect—that is to say, some extremely befuddled apes. Over time, however, Zoo Atlanta’s residents have grown more used to the device.

“I’m confident we’re going to see statistical data that confirms what we’re already seeing: more foraging behavior,” Josh Meyerchick, senior keeper of primates at Zoo Atlanta and one of the research paper’s co-authors, said earlier this month.

[Related: Zoo animals are getting COVID vaccines made specially for them.]

That said, the team behind ForageFeeder aren’t waiting for gorillas to get with the program. Plans for the machine are currently open source online, and easily modifiable to adapt for countless other animal species’ diets, feeding times, and other particularities. ForageFeeder’s makers have already even modified their creation to serve Zoo Atlanta’s Angolan colobus monkey population.

“I find the zoo projects very interesting because your intended audience can’t provide any feedback,” says Magie Zhang, a project collaborator and recent mechanical engineering graduate. “If the device stops working, the animal doesn’t tell you. If they rip it apart, you can’t tell them to stop. It’s good to anticipate the problems of a design and figure out its solutions before it’s sent into the real world.”

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These days, it seems like every carmaker—from those focused on luxury options to those with an eye more toward the economical—is getting into electric vehicles. And with new US policies around purchasing incentives and infrastructure improvements, consumers might be more on board as well. But many people are still concerned about whether electric vehicles are truly better for the environment overall, considering certain questions surrounding their production process. 

Despite concerns about the pollution generated from mining materials for batteries and the manufacturing process for the EVs themselves, the environmental and energy experts PopSci spoke to say that across the board, electric vehicles are still better for the environment than similar gasoline or diesel-powered models. 

When comparing a typical commercial electric vehicle to a gasoline vehicle of the same size, there are benefits across many different dimensions. 

“We do know, for instance, if we’re looking at carbon dioxide emissions, greenhouse gas emissions, that electric vehicles operating on the typical electric grid can end up with fewer greenhouse gas emissions over the life of their vehicle,” says Dave Gohlke, an energy and environmental analyst at Argonne National Lab. “The fuel consumption (using electricity to generate the fuel as opposed to burning petroleum) ends up releasing fewer emissions per mile and over the course of the vehicle’s expected lifetime.”

[Related: An electrified car isn’t the same thing as an electric one. Here’s the difference.]

EVs also produce no tailpipe emissions, which means reductions in particulate matter or in smog precursors that contribute to local air pollution.

“The latest best evidence right now indicates that in almost everywhere in the US, electric vehicles are better for the environment than conventional vehicles,” says Kenneth Gillingham, professor of environmental and energy economics at Yale School of the Environment. “How much better for the environment depends on where you charge and what time you charge.”

Electric motors tend to be more efficient compared to the spark ignition engine used in gasoline cars or the compression ignition engine used in diesel cars, where there’s usually a lot of waste heat and wasted energy.

Creating an EV produces pollution during the manufacturing process. “Greenhouse gas emissions associated with producing an electric vehicle are almost twice that of an internal combustion vehicle…that is due primarily to the battery. You’re actually increasing greenhouse gas emissions to produce the vehicle, but there’s a net overall lifecycle benefit or reduction because of the significant savings in the use of the vehicle,” says Gregory Keoleian, the director of the Center for Sustainable Systems at the University of Michigan. “We found in terms of the overall lifecycle, on average, across the United States, taking into account temperature effects, grid effects, there was 57 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions for a new electric vehicle compared to a new combustion engine vehicle.” 

In terms of reducing greenhouse gas emissions associated with operating the vehicles, fully battery-powered electric vehicles were the best, followed by plug-in hybrids, and then hybrids, with internal combustion engine vehicles faring the worst, Keoleian notes. Range anxiety might still be top of mind for some drivers, but he adds that households with more than one vehicle can consider diversifying their fleet to add an EV for everyday use, when appropriate, and save the gas vehicle (or the gas feature on their hybrids) for longer trips.

The breakeven point at which the cost of producing and operating an electric vehicle starts to gain an edge over a gasoline vehicle of similar make and model occurs at around two years in, or around 20,000 to 50,000 miles. But when that happens can vary slightly on a case-by-case basis. “If you have almost no carbon electricity, and you’re charging off solar panels on your own roof almost exclusively, that breakeven point will be sooner,” says Gohlke. “If you’re somewhere with a very carbon intensive grid, that breakeven point will be a little bit later. It depends on the style of your vehicle as well because of the materials that go into it.” 

[Related: Why solid-state batteries are the next frontier for EV makers]

For context, Gohlke notes that the average EV age right now is around 12 years old based on registration data. And these vehicles are expected to drive approximately 200,000 miles over their lifetime. 

“Obviously if you drive off your dealer’s lot and you drive right into a light pole and that car never takes more than a single mile, that single vehicle will have had more embedded emissions than if you had wrecked a gasoline car on your first drive,” says Gohlke. “But if you look at the entire fleet of vehicles, all 200-plus-million vehicles that are out there and how long we expect them to survive, over the life of the vehicle, each of those electric vehicles is expected to consume less energy and emit lower emissions than the corresponding gas vehicle would’ve been.”

To put things in perspective, Gillingham says that extracting and transporting fossil fuels like oil is energy intensive as well. When you weigh those factors, electric vehicle production doesn’t appear that much worse than the production of gasoline vehicles, he says. “Increasingly, they’re actually looking better depending on the battery chemistry and where the batteries are made.” 

And while it’s true that there are issues with mines, the petrol economy has damaged a lot of the environment and continues to do so. That’s why improving individual vehicle efficiency needs to be paired with reducing overall consumption.

EV batteries are getting better

Mined materials like rare metals can have harmful social and environmental effects, but that’s an economy-wide problem. There are many metals that are being used in batteries, but the use of metals is nothing new, says Trancik. Metals can be found in a range of household products and appliances that many people use in their daily lives. 

Plus, there have been dramatic improvements in battery technology and the engineering of the vehicle itself in the past decade. The batteries have become cheaper, safer, more durable, faster charging, and longer lasting. 

“There’s still a lot of room to improve further. There’s room for improved chemistry of the batteries and improved packaging and improved coolant systems and software that manages the batteries,” says Gillingham.

The two primary batteries used in electric vehicles today are NMC (nickel-manganese-cobalt) and LFP (lithium-ferrous-phosphate). NMC batteries tend to use more precious metals like cobalt from the Congo, but they are also more energy dense. LFP uses more abundant metals. And although the technology is improving fast, it’s still in an early stage, sensitive to cold weather, and not quite as energy dense. LFP tends to be good for utility scale cases, like for storing electricity on the grid. 

[Related: Could swappable EV batteries replace charging stations?]

Electric vehicles also offer an advantage when it comes to fewer trips to the mechanic; conventional vehicles have more moving parts that can break down. “You’re more likely to be doing maintenance on a conventional vehicle,” says Gillingham. He says that there have been Teslas in his studies that are around eight years old, with 300,000 miles on them, which means that even though the battery does tend to degrade a little every year, that degradation is fairly modest.

Eventually, if the electric vehicle markets grow substantially, and there’s many of these vehicles in circulation, reusing the metals in the cars can increase their benefits. “This is something that you can’t really do with the fossil fuels that have already been combusted in an internal combustion engine,” says Trancik. “There is a potential to set up that circularity in the supply chain of those metals that’s not readily done with fossil fuels.”

Since batteries are fairly environmentally costly, the best case is for consumers who are interested in EVs to get a car with a small battery, or a plug-in hybrid electric car that runs on battery power most of the time. “A Toyota Corolla-sized car, maybe with some hybridization, could in many cases, be better for the environment than a gigantic Hummer-sized electric vehicle,” says Gillingham. (The charts in this New York Times article help visualize that distinction.) 

Where policies could help

Electric vehicles are already better for the environment and becoming increasingly better for the environment. 

The biggest factor that could make EVs even better is if the electrical grid goes fully carbon free. Policies that provide subsidies for carbon-free power, or carbon taxes to incentivize cleaner power, could help in this respect. 

The other aspect that would make a difference is to encourage more efficient electric vehicles and to discourage the production of enormous electric vehicles. “Some people may need a pickup truck for work. But if you don’t need a large car for an actual activity, it’s certainly better to have a more reasonably sized car,” Gillingham says.  

Plus, electrifying public transportation, buses, and vehicles like the fleet of trucks run by the USPS can have a big impact because of how often they’re used. Making these vehicles electric can reduce air pollution from idling, and routes can be designed so that they don’t need as large of a battery.  

“The rollout of EVs in general has been slower than demand would support…There’s potentially a larger market for EVs,” Gillingham says. The holdup is due mainly to supply chain problems. 

Switching over completely to EVs is, of course, not the end-all solution for the world’s environmental woes. Currently, car culture is very deeply embedded in American culture and consumerism in general, Gillingham says, and that’s not easy to change. When it comes to climate policy around transportation, it needs to address all the different modes of transportation that people use and the industrial energy services to bring down greenhouse gas emissions across the board. 

The greenest form of transportation is walking, followed by biking, followed by using public transit. Electrifying the vehicles that can be electrified is great, but policies should also consider the ways cities are designed—are they walkable, livable, and have a reliable public transit system connecting communities to where they need to go? 

“There’s definitely a number of different modes of transport that need to be addressed and green modes of transport that need to be supported,” says Trancik. “We really need to be thinking holistically about all these ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”

The post Electric cars are better for the environment, no matter the power source appeared first on Popular Science.

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In April, the Air Force took its Angry Kitten out for a spin in the skies above Nevada. The feline-monikered system is a tool of electronic warfare, developed originally to simulate enemy systems in testing and training. Now, the Air Force is exploring using the system as an offensive tool, and as a weapon it can bring to future fights. This testing included putting the Angry Kitten on a Reaper drone.

Electronic warfare is an increasingly important part of how modern militaries fight. The systems generally operate on the electromagnetic spectrum outside the range of visible light, making their actions perceived primarily by their resulting negative effects on an adversary, like lost signals or incorrect sensor information. What makes Angry Kitten especially valuable as a training tool, and as a future weapon, is that it uses a software-defined radio to adjust frequencies, perceiving and then mimicking other aircraft, and overall making a fussy mess of their signals.

“Electronic Attack on the MQ-9 is a compelling capability,” said Michael Chmielewski, 556th Test and Evaluation Squadron commander, in a release. “15 hours of persistent noise integrated with a large force package will affect an adversary, require them to take some form of scalable action to honor it, and gets at the heart of strategic deterrence.”

In other words, putting the Angry Kitten on a Reaper drone means that the jamming system can be airborne for a long time, as Reapers are long-endurance drones. Any hostile air force looking to get around the jamming will need to attack the Reaper, which as an uncrewed plane is more expendable than a crewed fighter. Or, it means they will need to route around the jammed area, letting the Air Force dictate the terms of where and how a fight takes place.

Reapers were developed for and widely used during the long counter-insurgency wars waged by the US in Iraq and Afghanistan. These wars saw the drones’ long endurance, slow speed, and ability to loiter over an area as valuable assets, especially since the drones rarely had to contend with any anti-air missiles. They were operating in, to use Pentagon parlance, “uncontested” skies. As the Pentagon looks to the future, one in which it may be called upon to use existing equipment in a war against nations with fighter jets and sophisticated anti-air systems, it’d be easy to see Reapers sidelined as too slow, vulnerable, or irrelevant for the task.

Putting an Angry Kitten on a Reaper is a way to make the drone relevant again for other kinds of war.

[Related: The Air Force wants to start using its ‘Angry Kitten’ system in combat]

“The goal is to expand the mission sets the MQ-9 can accomplish,” said Aaron Aguilar, 556th Test and Evaluation Squadron assistant director of operations, in the same release. “The proliferation and persistence of MQ-9s in theater allows us to fill traditional platform capability gaps that may be present. Our goal is to augment assets that already fill this role so they can focus and prioritize efforts in areas they are best suited for.”

Putting the Angry Kitten on a Reaper turns a counter-insurgency hunter-killer into a conventional-war surveillance platform and jammer. It emphasizes what the tool on hand can already do well, while giving it a different set of ways to interact with a different expected array of foes. 

An earlier exercise this spring saw the Air National Guard test landing and launching a Reaper from a highway in Wyoming, expanding how and where it can operate. The ability to quickly deploy, refuel, rearm, and relaunch Reapers, from found runways as well as established bases, can expand how the drones are used.

In addition to testing the Angry Kitten with Reapers, the Air Force tested the Angry Kitten in Alaska on F-16 Fighting Falcons and A-10 Thunderbolts, both older planes originally designed for warfare against the Soviet Union in the 1980s. In the decades since, Fighting Falcons—known more colloquially as vipers—have expanded to become a widely used versatile fighter in the arsenal of the US and a range of nations. Meanwhile, the Air Force has long worked to retire the A-10s, arguing that they lack protection against modern weapons. That process began in earnest this spring, with the oldest models selected for the boneyard.

In the meantime, putting the Angry Kitten on drones and planes still in service means expanding not just what those planes can do, but potentially how effective they can be against sophisticated weapons. Targeting systems, from those used by planes to find targets to those used by missiles to track them, can be disrupted or fooled by malicious signals. An old plane may not be able to survive a hit from a modern missile, but jamming a missile so that misses its mark is better protection than any armor.

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Certain robots can certainly sense cold temperatures, but feeling cold is a whole other ordeal. And yet the world is now blessed with robot sweaters.

To be fair, the new, adorable garb recently designed by an engineering team at Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute isn’t intended to keep machines warm. As detailed in a research paper scheduled to be presented at 2023 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, the group utilized the properties of a knitted sweater to create a fabric capable of sensing pressure and contact. The cutting-edge textile can now help indicate direction, orientation, and even grip strength via physical touch. 

[Related: A new material creates clean electricity from the air around it.]

Like its yarn inspiration, the new “RobotSweater” fabric can be woven into whatever three-dimensional shape is needed, and thus fitted over robots’ uneven shapes and surfaces. The knitted material itself features two layers of conductive, metallic fibers capable of conducting electricity. Between those two layers, another lace-like pattern is inserted. When pressure is applied, a closed circuit is generated and subsequently detected by sensors.

In order to ensure the metallic yarn didn’t degrade or break with usage, the team wrapped the wires around snap fasteners at the end of each stripe in the fabric. “You need a way of attaching these things together that is strong, so it can deal with stretching, but isn’t going to destroy the yarn,” James McCann, an assistant professor in Carnegie Mellon’s School of Computer Science (SCS), explained in a statement.

To demonstrate their creation, researchers dressed up a companion robot in their RobotSweater, then pushed it to direct its head and body movement. On a robotic arm, the fabric could respond to guided human pushes, while grabbing the arm itself opened and closed a gripping mechanism.

[Related: Dirty diapers could be recycled into cheap, sturdy concrete.]

Swaddling robots in smart sweaters isn’t just fashionable—it could prove extremely valuable in industrial settings to improve human worker safety. According to the team, most safety barriers are currently extremely rigid and shield-like; encasing machines in flexible, sensitive fabrics, however could make them much more sensitive, and thus able to “detect any possible collision,” said Changliu Liu, an assistant professor of robotics in the SCS. Moving forward, the team hopes to integrate touchscreen inputs like swiping and pinching motions to direct robots. Even if that takes a while to realize, at least the machines will look stylish and cozy.

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The notorious Pegasus software exploit developed by the Israeli tech company NSO Group has allegedly been used for the first time as a weapon against civilians in an international conflict. According to a new report, the software is being used to spy on experts, journalists, and others critical of Azerbaijan’s incursion into the territories of Nagorno-Karabakh in Armenia.

Reports of potentially the first documented case of a sovereign state utilizing the commercial spyware during a cross-border conflict comes courtesy of the digital rights group, Access Now, in collaboration with CyberHUB-AM, the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs, Amnesty International’s Security Lab, and independent mobile security researcher, Ruben Muradyan.

[Related: You need to protect yourself from zero-click attacks.]

According to the research team’s findings published on Thursday, at least 12 individuals’ Apple devices were targets of the spyware between October 2020 and December 2022, including journalists, activists, a government worker, and Armenia’s “human rights ombudsperson.” Once infected with the Pegasus software, third-parties can access text messages, emails, and photos, as well as activate microphones and cameras to secretly record communications.

Although Access Now and its partners cannot conclusively link these attacks to a “specific [sic] governmental actor,” the “Armenia spyware victims’ work and the timing of the targeting strongly suggest that the conflict was the reason for the targeting,” they write in the report. As TechCrunch also noted on Thursday, The Pegasus Project, monitoring the spyware’s international usage, previously determined that Azerbaijan is one of NSO Group’s customers.

[Related: Why you need to update your Apple products’ software ASAP.]

Based in Israel, NSO Group claims to provide “best-in-class technology to help government agencies detect and prevent terrorism and crime.” The group has long faced intense international criticism, blacklisting, and lawsuits for its role in facilitating state actors with invasive surveillance tools. Pegasus is perhaps its most infamous product, and offers what is known as a “zero-click” hack. In 2021, PopSci explained:

Unlike the type of viruses you might have seen in movies, this one doesn’t spread. It is targeted at a single phone number or device, because it is sold by a for-profit company with no incentive to make the virus easily spreadable. Less sophisticated versions of Pegasus may have required users to do something to compromise their devices, like click on a link sent to them from an unknown number. 

In September 2021, the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab discovered NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware on a Saudi Arabian activists’ iPhones that may have proved instrumental in the assassination of US-based Saudi critic Jamal Khashoggi, quickly prompting Apple to release a security patch to its over 1.65 billion users. Later that year the US Department of Commerce added NSO Group to its “Entity List for Malicious Cyber Activities.”

“Helping attack those already experiencing violence is a despicable act, even for a company like NSO Group,” Access Now’s senior humanitarian officer, Giulio Coppi, said in a statement. “Inserting harmful spyware technology into the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict shows a complete disregard for safety and welfare, and truly unmasks how depraved priorities can be. People must come before profit—it’s time to disarm spyware globally.”

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In a groundbreaking new study published earlier this month in the journal Nature, a team of neuroscientists and other researchers detail how electrical devices implanted into the brain and spinal cord of a paralyzed man have helped him walk and even climb stars. 

[Related: The slow, but promising progress of electrode therapy for paralysis.]

The implants communicate wirelessly and fuse together two experimental technologies that are being developed to treat paralysis. One of the devices is inserted into the skull and sits above the brain’s surface. It decodes the patterns involved in walking and sends a signal to the second device that is implanted in the spinal cord. The spinal cord is then stimulated by the electrodes in a precise sequence that activates the leg muscles needed to walk.

According to the study’s authors, the devices provide a “digital bridge” between the brain and the spinal cord that bypasses the injured areas of the spinal cord. The brain-spine interface uses an artificial intelligence thought decoder to read the brain’s intentions. These intentions are detectable as electrical signals in the brain and then match them to muscle movements. 

The patient in this new study is Gert-Jan Oskam, a 40-year-old man from The Netherlands who was paralyzed in a cycling accident in 2011. Oskam received an experimental spinal-cord stimulator in 2017 that retired his ability to walk, according to CEO Dave Marver of Onward Medical. The Netherlands-based biotechnology company manufactures the spinal cord device used in the study.

“We’ve captured the thoughts of Gert-Jan, and translated these thoughts into a stimulation of the spinal cord to re-establish voluntary movement,” study co-author and spinal cord specialist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne Grégoire Courtine, said in a press briefing according to The New York Times.

Brain-computer interfaces like these allow for more natural movement than just using spinal cord stimulation alone. Oskam now can even pause mid-gait, adjust his stride, and navigate on irregular terrain like stairs.

Previously, the Onward Medical device was used in a study that restored the ability to walk to nine patients by mapping out the neurons that are associated with the body’s complex commands for walking. Marver told The Washington Post that the company is likely five years away from being able to commercialize a system like the one used in this study and that his aspirations are even broader. “Ultimately, our vision is that a person with paralysis will be able to visit the doctor and select what function they want to restore,” he said.

[Related: I became a cyborg to manage my chronic pain.]

The brain implant that was used in this study was developed by Clinatec and a French government-backed research institute called CEA. 

Some of the limitations to this work include that the brain’s subtle intentions are difficult to distinguish and the same brain-spine interface used for walking, may not be suitable for restoring movement in the upper body. The treatment is also invasive, requiring multiple surgeries and hours of physical therapy. The system, as it currently stands, does not fix all spinal cord paralysis.

This study is one of a number of spinal cord injury treatment advances in recent years. In 2016, a group of scientists restored paralyzed monkey’s ability to walk. In 2018, scientists figured out a way to use electrical-pulse generators to stimulate the brain and allowed partially paralyzed people to walk and ride bicycles again. 

The post AI-assisted brain and spine implants helped a paralyzed man control his legs again appeared first on Popular Science.

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THE INTERNET is vast, and we all have our own ideas about how we want to interact with it: Some livestream their every move, while others keep their daily activities to themselves. This would be perfectly fine if we all lived on our own isolated virtual islands, but we most definitely don’t.

When we share something about ourselves online, we’re also revealing details about those around us—just ask the victims of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, or the incredibly private people who’ve had their real identities revealed by TikTok sleuths. It’s beyond time we started looking at online privacy not as a personal decision, but as a collective issue.

To keep this conversation going, the Opt Out has created a code of conduct everyone could abide by. Of course, we can’t actually control what you do online, but we can help you understand that your actions on the internet have offline consequences, often for people other than you. 

So read these rules, take what applies to your life, and share it with your friends. The more people think about how everyone’s data and personal information is connected via the web, the more attainable privacy will be for all of us. 

1. Consent is king 

Consent is crucial to respecting people’s boundaries. Before you share a photo, a video, a personal story, or anything that depicts or describes someone else, ask them if they’re comfortable with you posting it. 

This includes images in which they’re featured prominently, as well as those where they’re visible only in the background, so be careful when you pan your camera—you might be unwittingly outing a secret relationship people have been speculating about for months. But it’s not only about images: You should also ask for permission when sharing written posts that include a person’s name or details that might identify them. You’ll want to be especially careful with information people might use to contact the person mentioned in your post, like their email address, phone number, location, and place of employment. You don’t want to inadvertently help stalkers get closer to their victims.  

[Related on PopSci+: When you should and shouldn’t accept a website’s cookies]

Content involving children is particularly sensitive. If you’re not the parent or guardian, make sure you ask the person who is before you hit publish. Even if they agree, consider hiding the kids’ faces as much as possible. 

Finally, just don’t post about someone who’s intoxicated, asleep, unconscious, or unable to provide clear consent. In fact, don’t take any pictures or videos of them at all—that’s just creepy.

2. Think carefully about filming or recording random people on the street

Listen, we agree with you: It’s not OK to be mean to people. And as much as you might enjoy the occasional Karen video, you should know that filming people like that is also not OK.

There can be truly good intentions behind such footage, and videos of rude people have probably made some viewers reconsider how they treat others. But once a video is online, you lose control over it. TikTok users have built followings by finding anyone they believe deserves comeuppance and calling their employer to get them fired or reprimanded. Others go even further and dox them, resulting in disproportionate consequences for them and their loved ones, including stalking, harassment, and even assault. Social media rarely makes the distinction between a truly awful person and someone who’s just making a huge mistake. 

That said, there are exceptions. Sometimes whipping out your phone and hitting record could help bring justice to a victim of assault, a hit-and-run, or even murder. Use your judgment to gauge whether you’re in an extreme situation like that and stop to think about the best way you can help—it may be filming at your own personal risk, but it may also be calling 911 or attracting the attention of other bystanders. 

And if you choose to hit that red square on your screen, you’ll have to figure out what to do with the video once you have it. In the great majority of cases, you shouldn’t publish it to social media. The harm you cause when the video leaves your control may be magnitudes greater than whatever clout, following, or emotional boost you gained by posting it. The rare exceptions include when you want to help someone but can’t contact them because they were arrested or removed in an ambulance. Even then, you may want to take some time to see if you can track them down and hand the material over personally.

Keep in mind that even in a court of law, your footage will take on a life of its own once it leaves your hands. Despite your best intentions, your video may not have the effect or result you intended it to.  

3. Don’t share one-to-one messages

As a general rule, treat all texts, photos, and videos you get through one-on-one chats and private message groups with the same care an international spy treats confidential orders from their handler. The people sending those messages meant for you alone to see them, so you shouldn’t send or show them to anybody else. The best example of this is nudes: If you get one, you can save or delete it, but that’s all.

4. Share contact information only when it’s consensual or public

A lot of people have their contact information on websites or their social media accounts. For example, you can email a PopSci writer by clicking the letter icon in their bio at the bottom of a story. This allows readers to send us comments and questions.

But that doesn’t mean other contact information is also public. If you need to disclose someone’s contact information, share only what’s publicly available on their official channels. If they have none listed, always ask them before you share their contact information: Tell them what you plan on sharing and with whom, and proceed only once they say they’re OK with it.  

5. Avoid revealing more information than you need to 

Sometimes we share more information than we think we’re sharing. Without realizing it, your long-awaited unboxing might have given all your followers your home address, and an innocent photo with your colleagues taken during lunch might have revealed your place of employment just because one person forgot to take off their badge.  

This is bad enough when it comes to your own information, let alone when it involves others. So be careful with what you share and look out for details about yourself and the people around you that reveal more than you’d like. 

Be careful with pictures featuring packing labels, official documents, license plates, and boarding passes—if you must share them, blur or cover sensitive information. Don’t forget the background—you’d be amazed at how much you can learn about someone by pausing a video and peeking at their corkboard. You should also take a good look at screenshots before posting, as they may include location data or even a rogue notification you didn’t notice popped up at just the wrong time. When taking photos near windows or outside, pay attention to landmarks, street signs, and anything else that might make your location evident. If you want to go the extra mile, consider erasing the metadata from image files before posting or sharing them online.

Finally, mind the words you use and avoid those that describe a direct affiliation with someone. Going back to that lunch with your colleagues, a sweet post about how much you like them might reveal a lot more than your appreciation for them. Just calling them colleagues reveals everyone’s place of employment (remember that one who didn’t take off their badge?) and if you mention how happy they’ve all made you for the past three years, viewers now have an approximate period of employment. It might not be a lot of information, but it accumulates with every post. 

6. It’s OK not to share your passwords with your partner. It’s also OK if you do. 

You have the right to privacy, and you don’t owe your partner unlimited access to your accounts. Lots of couples share their credentials for the sake of transparency and practicality, but that’s not necessarily a sign of a good and healthy relationship.

[Related on PopSci+: Stop choosing bad passwords, already]

Whether you share your passwords and passcodes with your significant other is your decision and yours alone. If you feel comfortable doing it and think it might make the relationship better, go for it. Just know that you should be able to keep your own space and say no if your partner asks you to open that door.

7. You’re the only one responsible for setting your boundaries

You may have someone in your life who’s very much online—the one who takes a picture of everything and posts multiple updates on social media throughout the day. So the next time you go out with this person and they whip out their phone to take a group picture, don’t just hide from the lens—take some time to have a conversation about what you’re OK with when it comes to being featured in someone else’s online posts. 

They may not understand or agree with your stance at first, and you might have to have the same conversation more than once. But you cannot expect to be comfortable going out with them if they don’t know what you want. Setting boundaries will make it easier for your friend to respect your needs and for you to enforce them. 

8.  Post about what you’re doing but not whom you’re with 

We understand if you don’t feel like having a conversation about online privacy as your food is making its way to your table. It’s a bit boring and certainly not the reason you and your friends got together. So if you haven’t had a conversation about expectations and boundaries when it comes to social presence, you should feel free to post about whatever you’re doing—just as long as you don’t disclose whom you are with.  

The idea is to include only you, the one person definitely providing consent to appear on social media. If someone else also consents, you may include them as well, but be mindful of those who opt out—don’t include them in group photos, and don’t tag or mention them. Be careful to leave out any identifying details, such as tattoos, cars, or anything that might hint at whom you’re out and about with.

9. No consent, no tag

Some people may be comfortable with appearing in your posts but not with you including a link to their social media account or accounts. Again, just ask them what they feel comfortable with. 

This rule also applies to other situations like contests, promotions, friends’ posts, and even using hashtags. Most social media platforms group hashtags and generally make identically tagged content easily accessible to people who may or may not be directly connected to us. For someone who wants to keep to themselves, this can be an unwanted reservoir of information about them.

10. Consent can be given and consent can be taken away

Your friend’s priorities regarding privacy may have changed since the last time you saw them. Even if they frequently post to Instagram and you think they’ll have no problem with you sharing a photo, don’t assume, and always ask them before you post. 

[Related: Everything you need to cure your smartphone addiction]

Tell them what you plan to write as a caption, if you’re planning to mention them, and make them feel comfortable by showing them the picture or post before hitting publish. Give them veto power and options.

And if you’re going to make assumptions about how someone feels about popping up on your timeline, it’s always a good idea to err on the side of caution. Assume the person beside you is private and doesn’t want anything about them online, until you learn otherwise. 

Read more PopSci+ stories.

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AI chatbots such as ChatGPT and Google Bard have now reached a level where they can write emails, essays, and entire books. There’s an ongoing debate on how good that content actually is, but these platforms can certainly give a passable impression of a human being when it comes to creating copy.

That’s a problem when it comes to proving you wrote a particular document, whether you’re submitting a college essay or entering a short story competition. Right now, we don’t have a reliable way of detecting AI-generated text (ChatGPT can’t tell if ChatGPT has written something), but there are some options you can explore.

One is to track the changes to your document as you create it in your program of choice. It’s not a foolproof option, as you could still manually type out any output from ChatGPT or Bard, but it does at least show whoever’s reading your document how it came together, if they ever want to check.

When it comes to passing on your work to someone else, you need to use the built-in Google Docs sharing feature: Click Share on the right to grant access or to get a link you can copy and paste into an email or chat box. If you save your work as a Word document or a PDF, the version history won’t be transferred over to the file.

Note that whoever you’re sharing your document with will have to log into a Google account to access it, and you’ll have to give them Editor permissions too. If the other person opens the document anonymously via a link, or only has Viewer or Commenter permissions, then won’t have access to the version history, and won’t be able to see that the document is all your own work.

By default, the software will underline new text and color it red, but you can change this by clicking All Markup on the Review tab: Choose Simple Markup to have edits highlighted in the margin rather than in the body of the text, or No Markup to turn off highlighting altogether. Whether the highlights are visible or not, you can click Reviewing Pane (or Reviewing on macOS) on the Review tab to see all the document revisions. The person reading your work will be able to see all of the edits you made to the document in the same way, demonstrating it’s your own work.

The second option is to save your Word file to your OneDrive account and share it via a link, which is the more modern, Google Docs-style approach. While the Track Changes option is still available, you can also click the name of the document at the top of the window, then Version History, to view (and revert to) previous versions of the document.

Go to File, then Share, and you can generate a link for the file to pass on: Make sure the recipient has editing privileges and can sign in with their own Microsoft account. They’ll then be able to access the version history of a document by clicking on its title, whether they open it on the web or in Word for desktop. As long as the file is in your OneDrive account, version history will be available.

If you’re using Pages on a Mac, open the File menu then Revert To and Browse All Versions to see previous versions of the document (and revert back to them if needed). If you’re using Pages on iCloud on the web, click the three dots (top right) and then Browse All Versions. Anyone you’re sharing the document with has the same options available to them, as long as you’ve granted them editing privileges.

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Following a similar report issued by the American Psychological Association (APA) earlier this month, the US Surgeon General released an advisory statement on Tuesday warning of social media platforms’ potentially harmful effects on minors.

While cautioning more research is still needed to understand the full scope of social media’s impact on children, adolescents, and teens, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy’s office makes clear they believe “ample indicators” show social media can represent a “profound risk of harm to [their] mental health and well-being.”

“We are in the middle of a national youth mental health crisis, and I am concerned that social media is an important driver of that crisis—one that we must urgently address,” Murthy said in a statement this week, citing the “growing evidence” supporting their worry. In one such study referenced, adolescents who spend over 3 hours per day on social media faced double the risk of mental health issues such as symptoms of anxiety and depression. Additional research cited by the Surgeon General’s report points towards particular harm for girls, who face cyberbullying and body-image issues.

[Related: APA releases youth social media guidelines.]

“At this time, we do not yet have enough evidence to determine if social media is sufficiently safe for children and adolescents,” the advisory states.

At the same time, the advisory statement makes it clear that children and adolescents utilize and are influenced by social media in vastly varying ways. The ways children are impacted by social media are often based on their particularly emotional and psychological strengths and vulnerabilities, as well as cultural, historical, and socio-economic factors. Some of these experiences on social media can prove beneficial, such as offering spaces for community and connection with like-minded individuals sharing “identities, abilities, and interests,” alongside offering access to important information and spaces for self-expression.

As The New York Times noted on Thursday, social media has also proven especially helpful to children and teens within the LGBTQ+ community. “[A] variety of research over the decade since social media became ubiquitous among teenagers has found that often, social media use has been more beneficial than not for LGBTQ youth,” the article states.

A Surgeon General’s advisory does not carry any legal weight, but often serves as a public statement calling attention to a health issue alongside subsequent recommendations for policymakers, businesses, and the public. Among other suggestions, the Surgeon General’s office urges lawmakers to enact legislation ensuring tech companies share relevant health impact data to independent researchers and the public “in a manner that is timely, sufficiently detailed, and protects privacy.”

Additionally, the report recommends the development and implementation of digital and media literacy curricula in schools, as well as encouraging policies that “further limit access—in ways that minimize the risk of harm—to social media for all children.”

[Related: How to use built-in parental controls on Instagram, TikTok, and more.]

Meanwhile, businesses such as Meta, Twitter, and TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, are pushed to maintain a proper level of transparency about their own internal research and methods for developing products used by minors—something that’s frequently proven difficult to realize. Parents are also strongly encouraged to discuss, educate, and monitor their children’s social media habits.

Earlier this month, the American Psychological Association released its first-ever health advisory report on youth and adolescent social media usage, which spoke broadly of potential developmental effects stemming from experiences on platforms like TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. The APA’s 11-page outline described these apps as “not inherently beneficial or harmful to young people,” but stressed it was rather how minors used the apps that influenced them.

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The days of freely sharing a Netflix account are over. This week, Netflix finally announced that it would stop American subscribers from sharing their Netflix account with family members, friends, and anyone else who lives at a different location. In an email to affected subscribers, the streaming giant wrote: “Your Netflix account is for you and the people you live with—your household.”

Although Netflix embraced—or at least tacitly allowed—password sharing for years, slowing financial growth, subscriber retention issues, subscriber growth falling short of expectations, and competition from Disney and other streaming services have forced the company to change its tact. Last year, it launched the limited $6.99/month ad-supported tier. At that time, Netflix started cracking down on password sharers in three test countries: Chile, Costa Rica, and Peru. Seemingly, those trials proved successful (or at least lucrative), as the streamer is now rolling these features out to subscribers in 103 countries around the world, including the US, most of Europe, Australia, Singapore, Mexico, and Brazil.

According to Netflix, anyone who lives with you will be able to continue to use your account as normal, but anyone who lives in a different location—like children away at university, deployed military personnel, and the ex you haven’t spoken to in three years—will have to transfer their profile to another account or convince you to pay $7.99/month to add an extra member to your account. 

“A Netflix account is for use by one household,” the company says in the email to subscribers. “Everyone living in that household can use Netflix wherever they are—at home, on the go, on holiday—and take advantage of new features like Transfer Profile and Manage Access and Devices.” 

Netflix now wants users to set up a Netflix Household by signing in on a TV connected to their home internet. Any device that uses the same internet connection will be automatically added to the Household. 

Netflix is keeping quiet about how exactly it detects if you’re sharing your account with someone you shouldn’t. In an FAQ on the website, the company says: “We use information such as IP addresses, device IDs, and account activity to determine whether a device signed into your account is part of your Netflix Household. We do not collect GPS data to try to determine the precise physical location of your devices.” Still, it’s unclear what will trigger the system. Presumably your device needs to connect to the Household internet connection with some regularity, but does a three week backpacking trip or semester abroad count as a holiday? Or will Netflix’s automated systems decide that someone needs to set up a new account. 

Similarly, if you have a complicated Wi-Fi setup, expect Netflix to have Household issues. In the same FAQ, the company says that for subscribers with “multiple Wi-Fi networks, we may only associate one with your Netflix Household. If you want to watch Netflix on devices that are connected to Wi-Fi networks using different ISP accounts or that have different external IP addresses, you may be asked to verify that device as part of your Netflix Household.”

But no matter what happens with the edge cases, it sounds like Netflix is pretty serious about stopping out-and-out password sharing. If you don’t genuinely live with the person whose account you use, it looks like your options are pretty limited. If you really want to stay on the same account, you can ask them to add an extra member slot for $7.99/month; though only if they are on the $15.49/month Standard or $19.99/month Premium plan. The $6.99/month Standard with Ads and $9.99/month Basic plans don’t support extra members. 

Otherwise, you can transfer your profile to a new account and start paying (ugh) or just give up on Netflix for a little while and check out what some of the other streaming services have to offer. 

Though there is, perhaps, one workaround. Apparently, “If you don’t watch Netflix on a TV or don’t have one, you do not need to set a Netflix Household for your account.” So as long everyone watches on their laptops, tablets or smartphones, you might be able to dodge the great password sharing crackdown.

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Researchers recently constructed a material capable of generating near constant electricity from just the ambient air around it—thus possibly laying the groundwork for a new, virtually unlimited source of sustainable, renewable energy. In doing so, and building upon their past innovations, they now claim almost any surface could potentially be turned into a generator via replicating the electrical properties of storm clouds… but trypophobes beware.

According to a new study published today with Advanced Materials, engineers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst have demonstrated a novel “air generator” (Air-gen) film that relies on microscopic holes smaller than 100 nanometers across—less than a thousandth the width of a single human hair. The holes’ incredibly small diameters rely on what’s known as a “mean free path,” which is the distance a single molecule can travel before colliding with another molecule of the same substance.

[Related: The US could reliably run on clean energy by 2050.]

Water molecules are floating all around in the air, and their mean free path is around 100 nm. As humid air passes through Air-gen material’s miniscule holes, the water molecules come into direct contact with first an upper, then lower chamber in the film. This creates a charge imbalance, i.e. electricity.

It’s the same physics at play in storm clouds’ lightning discharges. Although the UMass Amherst team’s product generates a miniscule fraction of a lightning bolt’s estimated 300 million volts, its several hundred millivolts of sustained energy is incredibly promising for scalability and everyday usage. This is particularly evident when considering that air humidity can diffuse in three-dimensional space. In theory, thousands of Air-gen layers can be stacked atop one another, thus scaling up the device without increasing its overall footprint. According to the researchers, such a product could offer kilowatts of power for general usage.

[Related: How an innovative battery system in the Bronx will help charge up NYC’s grid.]

The team believes their Air-gen devices could one day be far more space efficient than other renewable energy options like solar and wind power. What’s more, the material can be engineered into a variety of form factors to blend into an environment, as contrasted with something as visually noticeable as a solar farm or wind turbine.

“Imagine a future world in which clean electricity is available anywhere you go,”Jun Yao, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering and the paper’s senior author, said in a statement. “The generic Air-gen effect means that this future world can become a reality.”

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Software updates are crucial to the health of your various gadgets and it’s generally in your best interest to install them as soon as they’re available. Apple knows this so they introduced a different type of software update called Rapid Security Response. These patches run separately from the usual iOS or macOS updates and work in a slightly different way.

If you see a Rapid Security Response notification on one of your Apple devices, don’t panic—it’s there to keep your device safe and secure.

Behind the more showy, user-facing upgrades, these updates also do a lot of important work under the hood in improving security and stability. The problem is that sometimes significant security issues come to light and need to be addressed immediately rather than in a few weeks or months.

That’s where Rapid Security Responses come in. Apple can send out these patches whenever they need to so that security vulnerabilities don’t stay vulnerable for long. The company says these responses could help “mitigate some security issues more quickly,” particularly those that pose a current risk. The company is now sending these updates to iPhones, iPads, and Macs running iOS 16.4.1, iPadOS 16.4.1, or macOS 13.3.1 or later. If you haven’t already, make sure to update your operating system to receive them.

For the good health of your Apple gadget, we strongly recommend you authorize these automatic updates, but if you feel strongly about preventing software from installing without your consent, you can stop Rapid Security Responses. To go about it, open the Settings on your iPhone or iPad and choose General, Software Update, and Automatic Updates. Once there, toggle off the Security Responses & System Files option. On a Mac computer, open the Apple menu, then select System Settings, General, and Software Update. Click the info button next to Automatic updates to find the Install Security Responses and system files option and toggle it off.

When your Apple device installs a Rapid Security Response, the iOS, iPadOS, or macOS version number will have a lowercase letter after it—so “macOS Ventura Version 13.3.1 (a)” for example. To check this, go to Settings on an iPhone or iPad, or to System Settings on a Mac, and choose General, and then About. You’ll notice that, unlike normal software updates, these special security patches don’t come with any details about what they’ve fixed, presumably in the interests of speed and security.

[Related: Smart ways to manage software updates on Windows and macOS]

If you’ve disabled these automatic updates, you can still manually check for Rapid Security Responses in the same way as you would for any other update: Just go to General and Software Update in the settings on your Apple device. Any Rapid Security Responses your device doesn’t apply immediately will be rolled into the next standard software update, but we strongly advise you to protect your device by installing them as soon as they appear.

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In the desert plain south of Albuquerque, New Mexico, and just north of the Isleta Pueblo reservation, the Air Force defeated a swarm of drones with THOR, a powerful microwave weapon. THOR, or the Tactical High-power Operational Responder, is designed to defend against drone swarms, frying electronics at scale in a way that could protect against many flying robots at once.

THOR has been in the works for years, with a successful demonstration in February 2021 at Kirtland Air Force Base, south of Albuquerque. From 2021 to 2022, THOR was also tested overseas. 

This latest demonstration, which took place on April 5, saw the microwave face off against a swarm of multiple flying uncrewed aerial vehicles. The event took place at the Chestnut Range, short for “Conventional High Explosives & Simulation Test,” which has long been used by the Air Force Research Lab for testing.

“The THOR team flew numerous drones at the THOR system to simulate a real-world swarm attack,” said Adrian Lucero, THOR program manager at AFRL’s Directed Energy Directorate, in a release earlier this month. “THOR has never been tested against these types of drones before, but this did not stop the system from dropping the targets out of the sky with its non-kinetic, speed-of-light High-Power Microwave, or HPM pulses,” he said.

Crucial to THOR’s concept and operation is that the weapon disables and defeats drones without employing explosive or concussive power, the kind derived from rockets, missiles, bombs, and bullets. The military lumps these technologies together as “kinetics,” and they make up the bread and butter of how the military uses force. Against drones, which can cost mere hundreds or even thousands of dollars per vehicle, missiles represent an expensive form of ammunition. While the bullets used in existing counter-rocket weapons are much cheaper than missiles, they still create the problem of dangerous debris everywhere they don’t hit. Using microwaves means that only the damaged drone itself becomes a falling danger, without an added risk from the tools used to shoot it down.

“THOR was extremely efficient with a near continuous firing of the system during the swarm engagement,” Capt. Tylar Hanson, THOR deputy program manager, said in a release. “It is an early demonstrator, and we are confident we can take this same technology and make it more effective to protect our personnel around the world.”

The THOR system fits into a broader package of directed energy countermeasures being used to take on small, cheap, and effective drones. Another directed energy weapon explored for this purpose is lasers, which can burn through a drone’s hull and circuitry, but that approach takes time to hold focus on and melt a target.

“The system uses high power microwaves to cause a counter electronic effect. A target is identified, the silent weapon discharges in a nanosecond and the impact is instantaneous,” reads an Air Force fact sheet about the weapon. In a video from AFRL, THOR is described as a “low cost per shot, speed of light solution,” which uses “a focused beam of energy to defeat drones at a large target area.”

An April 2023 report from the Government Accountability Office is much more straightforward: A High Power Microwave uses “energy to affect electronics by overwhelming critical components intended to carry electrical currents such as circuit boards, power systems, or sensors. HPM systems engage targets over an area within its wider beam and can penetrate solid objects.”

Against commercial or cheaply produced drones, the kind most likely to see use on the battlefield in great numbers today, microwaves may prove to be especially effective. While THOR is still a ways from development into a fieldable weapon, the use of low-cost drones on the battlefield has expanded tremendously since the system started development. A report from RUSI, a British think tank, found that in its fight against Russia’s invasion, “Ukrainian UAV losses remain at approximately 10,000 per month.”

While that illustrates the limits of existing drone models, it also highlights the scale of drones seeing use in regular warfare. As drone technology improves, and militaries move from adapting commercial drones to dedicated military models made close to commercial cost and scale, countering those drones en masse will likely be a greater priority for militaries. In that, weapons like THOR offer an alternative to existing countermeasures, one that promises greater effects at scale.

Watch a video about THOR, which also garnered a Best of What’s New award from PopSci in 2021, from the Air Force Research Laboratory, below:

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The concept of a sailboat might conjure up thoughts of swanky sailing holidays or fearsome pirates—and some companies are hoping to bring them back into the mainstream, albeit in a modern, emissions-focused way. According to the International Maritime Organization (IMO), there are seven types of Wind Propulsion Technologies, or sails, which could potentially help the organization bring down the shipping industry’s currently massive carbon footprint. 

[Related: Colombia is deploying a new solar-powered electric boat.]

Wired reports that a Swedish company called Oceanbird is building a sail that can fit onto existing vessels. The Wingsail 560 looks kind of like an airplane wing placed vertically like a mast on a boat, and this summer the company plans to test out a prototype on land. If all goes well, next year it could be making its oceanic debut on a 14-year-old car carrier, also known as a roll-on/roll-off or RoRo shipping container, called the Wallenius Tirranna.

This is how the sail, coming in at 40-meters high and weighing 200 metric tons, works—the sail has two parts, one of which is a flap that brings air into a more rigid, steel-cored component that allows for peak, yacht-racing inspired aerodynamics, according to Wired. Additionally, the wing is able to fold down or tilt in order to pass underneath bridges and reduce wind power in case of an approaching storm. One Oceanbird sail placed on an existing vessel is estimated to reduce fuel consumption from the main engine by up to 10 percent, saving around 675,000 liters of diesel each year, according to trade publication Offshore Energy.

But, the real excitement is the idea of a redesigned vessel built especially for the gigantic sails. According to Wired, the Oceanbird-designed, 200-meter-long car carrier Orcelle Wind could cut emissions by at least 60 percent compared to a sailless RoRo vessel. The company themselves even estimates that it could reduce emissions by “up to 90 percent if all emissions-influencing factors are aligned.” However, it will still be a few years before one of these hits the high seas. 

[Related: Care about the planet? Skip the cruise, for now.]

Oceanbird isn’t the only company setting sail—according to Gavin Allwright, secretary general of the International Windship Association, by the end of the year there could be 48 or 49 wind-powered vessels on the seas. One such ship already took a voyage from Rotterdam to French Guiana in late 2022 using a hybrid propulsion of traditional engines and sails. However Allwright tells Wired “we’re still in pretty early days.”

The IMO has already set a climate goal of halving emissions between 2008 and 2050, but experts have called this goal “important, but inadequate” to keep emissions low enough for a liveable future. Currently, these goals are still not being reached, with a Climate Action Tracker assessment showing that emissions are set to grow until 2050 unless further action is taken.

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Wing, Google parent company Alphabet’s drone-delivery subsidiary, pulled off a fun demonstration delivery earlier this month: one of its drones delivered beer and peanuts to Coors Field, the Colorado Rockies’ stadium in the middle of Denver. While this novel first comes with a heavy dose of caveats, it still gives a nice glimpse of how far some drone delivery operations have come over the past few years. 

What are the caveats? According to Wing, the drone delivered a small package of beer (“Coors of course”) and peanuts to the outfield area of Coors Field during the opening party for the Association of Unmanned Vehicle Systems International’s (AIVSI) annual autonomous systems conference. There were apparently 1,000 people in the stands, though as you can see in the video, it was no game day crowd. Crucially, Wing wasn’t using its drones to deliver beers and peanuts on demand—this was purely a demonstration flight to show the drone operating in a downtown urban environment. 

“Our drones will never match the experience of flagging down a vendor and having them toss peanuts to you from 20 seats away. Nor do we think delivering during game day is a particularly compelling use-case for our technology,” writes Jonathan Bass, Wing’s head of marketing and communications in the blog post announcing the feat. “We’re more focused on supplementing existing methods of ground-based delivery to move small packages more efficiently across miles, not feet.”

And Coors Field was a suitable environment to show just how capable its drones have become. Over the past few years, the former moonshot has progressed from delivering to rural farms and lightly populated suburbs to flying packages around denser suburbs and large metro areas like Dallas-Forth Worth in Texas. As Bass explains it, despite Wing having done 1,000 deliveries on some days in one of its Australian bases of operations, the company is still regularly asked if drone delivery could work in “dense, urban environments”.

“We chose Coors Field because it’s a particularly challenging environment,” writes Bass. “Coors Field sits in the middle of Denver, Colorado—one of the fastest growing cities in America. Any professional sports stadium—with stadium seating, jumbotrons, and the like—makes for a fun challenge.”

The demonstration is all part of Wing’s plans to massively expand where it operates over the next while. Earlier this year, it announced the Wing Delivery Network. Drones in this program would work more like ride-sharing vehicles that picked up and dropped off packages as needed instead of operating from a single store or base. To make this possible, Wing unveiled a device called the AutoLoader. It sits in a parking spot outside a store and enables to staff to leave a package for a drone to autonomously collect. 

While things seem to be taking off for Wing, the scene is a bit more turbulent across the drone delivery industry. In particular, Amazon’s Prime Air is really struggling to launch. Despite first being unveiled almost a decade ago, Prime Air has now completed a total of “100 deliveries in two small US markets,” according to a report earlier this month by CNBC. The company apparently intended to reach 10,000 deliveries this year, but has had to revise those projections. It probably doesn’t help that a significant number of workers were laid off earlier this year.

Other companies are having more success. Zipline, best known for delivering medical supplies by parachute in rural Africa from catapult-launched fixed-wing drones, recently showcased a new platform that would allow it to deliver more typical packages—like a Sweetgreen salad—by lowering them on a tether from a hover-capable drone. It, along with DroneUp and Flytrex, have partnered with Walmart and collectively completed more than 6,000 deliveries last year. The big question consumers have: Are delivery drones going to be everywhere in the next few years? Probably not, but they are likely to be more present. 

Watch the drone in action below:

The post Watch a Google drone deliver beer and snacks to Denver’s Coors Field appeared first on Popular Science.

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High altitude balloons have drawn a lot of fire lately. In February, the US military shot down a spy balloon potentially operated by the Chinese government and an “unidentified aerial phenomenon” that was later revealed to likely be a hobbyist balloon.

So, when people caught sight of another large balloon in the southern hemisphere in early May, there was concern it could be another spy device. Instead, it represents the future of astronomy: balloon-borne telescopes that peer deep into space without leaving the stratosphere.

“We’re looking up, not down,” says William Jones, a professor of physics at Princeton University and head of NASA’s Super Pressure Balloon Imaging Telescope (SuperBIT) team. Launched from Wānaka, New Zealand, on April 15, the nearly 10-foot-tall telescope has already circled the southern hemisphere four times on a football stadium-sized balloon made from polyethylene film. Its three onboard cameras also took stunning images of the Tarantula Nebula and Antennae galaxies to rival those of the Hubble Space Telescope. The findings from SuperBIT could help scientists unravel one of the greatest mysteries of the universe: the nature of dark matter, a theoretically invisible material only known from its gravitational effects on visible objects.

[Related: $130,000 could buy you a Michelin-star meal with a view of the stars]

Scientists can use next-level observatories like the James Webb Space Telescope to investigate dark matter, relying on their large mirrors and positions outside Earth’s turbulent atmosphere to obtain pristine views of extremely distant celestial objects. But developing a space telescope and launching it on a powerful rocket is expensive. Lofting Hubble into orbit cost around $1.5 billion, for instance, and sending JWST to Lagrange point 2 cost nearly $10 billion.

SuperBIT took just $5 million to launch—a price cut stemming from the relative cheapness of balloons versus rockets and the lower barrier of entry for skilled workers to build the system.

“The whole thing is run by students. That’s what makes projects such as these so nimble and able to do so much with limited resources,” Jones says, referring to the SuperBIT collaborative between Princeton, the University of Durham in the UK, and the University of Toronto in Canada. “We have no professional engineers or technicians working on this full time—only the grad students have the luxury of being able to devote their full-time attention to the project.”

SuperBIT is not the first telescope carried aloft with a balloon: That honor goes to Stratoscope I, which was built in 1957 by another astronomy group at Princeton. But SuperBIT is one of a handful of new observatories made possible by 20 years of NASA research into so-called super pressure balloons. That work finally culminated in tests flights beginning in 2015 and the groundbreaking launch of SuperBIT.

Traditional balloons contain a lifting gas that expands as the sun heats it and as atmospheric pressure changes with altitude. That changes the volume of the envelope and, in turn, the balloon’s buoyancy, making it impossible to maintain a constant altitude over time.

Superpressure balloons keep the lifting gas, typically helium, pressurized inside a main envelope so that volume and buoyancy remain constant across day and night. The balloon then uses a smaller balloon—a ballonet—inside or beneath the main envelope as a ballast, filling or emptying the pocket of compressed air to change altitude and effectively steer the ship.

The super pressure balloon carrying SuperBIT can maintain an altitude of 108,000 feet (higher than 99.2 percent of Earth’s atmosphere) while carrying the 3,500-pound payload of scientific instruments. Unlike JWST and other missions, the purpose of the SuperBIT telescope isn’t to see farther or wider swaths of the universe or to detect exoplanets. Instead, it’s hunting for signs of a more ubiquitous and enigmatic entity.  

“Dark matter is not made of any of the elements or particles that we are familiar with through everyday observations,” Jones says. That said, there’s a lot of it around us: It might make up about 27 percent of the universe. “We know this through the gravitational influence that it has on the usual matter—stars and gas, and the like—that we can see,” which make up around 5 percent of the universe, Jones explains.

Scientists estimate that the remaining 67 percent of the cosmos is made of dark energy, another largely mysterious material not to be confused with dark matter. Whereas the gravity of dark matter may help pull galaxies together and structure the way they populate the cosmos, dark energy may be responsible for the accelerating expansion of the entire universe.

Researchers probe extreme forces where dark matter might exist and calculate its presence by observing galactic clusters so massive their gravity bends the light that passes by them from more distant objects—a technique known as gravitational lensing. Astronomers can use this approach to turn galaxies into a sort of magnifying lens to see more distant objects than they normally could (something JWST excels at). It can also reveal the mass of the galactic clusters that make up the “lens,” including the amount of dark matter around them.

“After measuring how much dark matter there is, and where it is, we’re trying to figure out what dark matter is,” says Richard Massey, a member of the SuperBIT science team and a professor of physics at Durham University. “We do this by looking at the few special places in the universe where lumps of dark matter happen to be smashing into each other.”

Those places include the two large Antennae galaxies, which are in the process of colliding about 60 million light-years from Earth. Massey and others have studied the Antennae galaxies using Hubble, but it “gives it a field of view too small to see the titanic collisions of dark matter,” Massey says. “So, we had to build SuperBIT.”

Like Hubble, SuperBIT sees light in the visible to ultraviolet range, or 300- to 1,000-nanometer wavelengths. But while Hubble’s widest field of view is less than a tenth of degree, SuperBIT’s field of view is wider at half a degree, allowing it to image wider swaths of the sky at once. That’s despite it having a smaller mirror (half a meter in diameter compared to Hubble’s 1.5 meters).

SuperBIT has another advantage over space telescopes. With less time from development to deployment and without complex accessories needed to protect it from radiation, extreme temperatures, and space debris, the SuperBIT team was able to use far more advanced camera sensors than those on existing space telescopes. Where Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 contains a pair of 8-megapixel sensors, Jones says, SuperBIT contains a 60-megapixel sensor. The balloon-carried telescope is also designed to float down on a parachute after the end of each flight, which means scientists can update the technology regularly from the ground.

“We’re currently communicating with SuperBIT live, 24 hours a day, for the next 100 days,” Massey says. “It has just finished its fourth trip around the world, experiencing the southern lights, turbulence over the Andes, and the quiet cold above the middle of the Pacific Ocean.” The team expects to retrieve the system sometime in late August, likely in southern Argentina, according to Jones.

[Related on PopSci+: Alien-looking balloons might be the next weapon in the fight against wildfires]

SuperBIT may just be the beginning. NASA has already funded the development of a Gigapixel class Balloon Imaging Telescope (GigaBIT), which will sport a mirror as wide as Hubble’s. Not only is it expected to be cheaper than any space telescope sensing the same spectrum of light, GigaBIT would also be “much more powerful than anything likely to be put into space in the near term,” Jones says.

As to whether SuperBIT will crack the mystery of just what dark matter is, it’s too early to tell. After a few flights, the grad students will have to pore over the project’s findings.

“What will the [data] tell us? Who knows! That’s the excitement of it—and also the guilty secret,” Massey says. “After 2,000 years of science, we still have absolutely no idea what the two most common types of stuff in the universe are, or how they behave.”

The post A super pressure balloon built by students is cruising Earth’s skies to find dark matter appeared first on Popular Science.

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Rejoice, Tacoma fans: The fourth generation of the beloved pickup is finally here, and there’s a lot to like. The midsize truck was redesigned from the ground up, retaining its off-road-capable bones and getting new skin, more power, and more options that should please truck buyers of all types. The last time the Taco, as it’s affectionately known, had a full workup was for model year 2016, so this has been a long-awaited update. 

In its popular TRD Pro trim, the new Tacoma includes brand-new seats for the driver and front passenger that ride on a shock absorber system. The purpose of these so-called IsoDynamic Performance Seats is to keep your head—and in turn, your eyes—steady and focused while driving (or riding in the right seat) on rugged terrain. If you’ve ever ridden a horse or performed in a marching band, you understand how important it is to keep your vision intact while moving. 

Let’s take a closer look at this and some of the Tacoma’s other new features. 

Shock-absorbing seats

When driving off-road, your entire body gets bounced around. Depending on the quality of your suspension system, you could be shaken like a James Bond martini. But wouldn’t it be better to float as though you’re moving in tune with the vehicle? Sheldon Brown, the chief engineer for the Tacoma, says the team started by plumping up the bolsters (the narrow pillows that surround your seat) in the seat and seat back, which snugs the occupant into the vehicle securely and comfortably. 

“We were looking to do something and provide better stabilization of the driver and the occupant in those high-speed or even some of the tactical off-road driving scenarios,” Brown told The Drive, which is owned by Recurrent Ventures, PopSci’s parent company. “If you think about, for example, a downhill skier or even if you look to the wild you see a cheetah chasing its prey. The eyes are focused and fixed, the body is moving but the head and the eyes are staying stable, so the goal here is to stabilize the upper torso, particularly the head.”

The Toyota engineering team started with a hot-formed steel tube to create the superstructure of the seats, and surrounded it with a lightweight reinforced resin for the seat pan and back frame. A swivel joint, spring-loaded ball joint, and articulation structure provides the flexibility and movement. The human body’s bone structure works closely with tendons and muscles for full range of motion; the new IsoDynamic Performance Seat is designed to move with those elements for a much less bone-jarring ride. 

Most notably, the seat can be customized to your liking. Airing it up is as simple as using a bicycle tire pump to achieve the level of pressure you like, and Toyota provides a set of recommended pressures based on your unique body mass. From there, you can tweak the comfort as desired. And, of course, you can turn off the adjustments entirely and it becomes a plain old truck seat. 

More power, more torque—and the manual remains

Available in a whopping eight variants—SR, SR5, TRD PreRunner, TRD Sport, TRD Off Road, Limited, TRD Pro, and Trailhunter—the 2024 Tacoma is offered with two different powertrains and myriad shiny new accessories straight from the factory. 

Starting with the base SR, the Tacoma gets a turbocharged 2.4-liter four-cylinder engine making 228 horsepower and 243 pound-feet of torque. Moving up to the SR5 and above, the same engine is tuned for 278 hp and 317 pound-feet of torque. Automatic and manual transmissions are available, and the manual option is largely attributed to Brown’s influence, as he is not just the engineer but a major Tacoma enthusiast. 

The star of the lineup is the i-Force Max hybrid powertrain. Engineers paired the turbo 2.4-liter engine with an electric motor and 1.87-kilowatt-hour battery for 326 horsepower and an impressive 465 pound-feet of torque. Standard on the TRD Pro and Trailhunter models and available on TRD Sport, TRD Off-Road, Limited variants, the i-Force Max is the most potent power combination ever offered on the Tacoma. 

“The great part about the hybrid system, which is what we just launched in the Tundra (and the motor and battery are identical, by the way) is instantaneous torque,” Brown told PopSci. “While we’re waiting for those turbos to spin up, which isn’t too long, it can really supplement the overall drive experience with an instant burst of power, especially when you’re towing or heavily laden.” 

With the i-Force Max, the truck has nearly double the torque numbers of the previous generation’s V6 capabilities. Gas mileage ranges from 19 miles per gallon to 21 miles per gallon for that model year. While we don’t know the EPA mileage ratings for the new Tacoma, Toyota has definitely made efforts to improve those numbers with a massive air dam in front that creates better aerodynamics. Don’t fret, though, off-roaders: it can be removed to increase ground clearance as necessary. 

Trailhunter vs TRD Pro

New for 2024 is the Trailhunter trim, designed for the ever-increasing overlanding population. Since 2020, the popularity of overlanding (in basic terms, camping in or near your car over long distances) has exploded, and Toyota is making the most of that trend with the Trailhunter. 

Before this trim debuted this year, the TRD Pro was the top of the line for ruggedness, but it’s built more for driving fast in the desert. The Trailhunter fills a need for go-everywhere adventurers with a whole catalog of accessories available straight from the factory, all of which can be rolled into a monthly payment versus purchasing piece by piece. Two years ago, the Trailhunter was teased at the Specialty Equipment Market Association annual trade show as a concept, and enthusiasts will be excited to see it in production. 

Toyota chose custom shocks from an Australian company called Old Man Emu to cushion the ride for both on- and off-road comfort. It’s also key for carrying a heavy load with lots of gear, which is what overlanders tend to do with on-board refrigerators from Dometic, rooftop tents, hydraulic lifts, and spare tires. For the uninitiated, Old Man Emu shocks were created Down Under, and are a popular choice to replace factored suspension components for other outdoors-focused brands like Land Rover

“In the Australian outback, Old Man Emu is the OG of overlanding,” Brown says. “They have a reputation for building good, reliable solutions for the aftermarket and we wanted to partner with them to work on the development together. This is a custom-tuned set that you can’t buy off the shelf.” 

The Trailhunter also boasts an onboard air compressor for airing up tires after an off-roading session, plus a fuel tank protector, mid-body skid plate, front bash plate, and rock sliders all designed to safeguard the truck from damage. 

Stay tuned, because the 2024 Toyota Tacoma is scheduled for dealerships later this year. As soon as we can get behind the wheel, we’ll tell you more about how it performs. 

The post The new Tacoma’s shock-absorbing seats help you keep your eyes on the prize appeared first on Popular Science.

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Everyone has different perceptions of pain. Some can sit for hours getting tattooed for an arm sleeve, while others squirm at having their finger pricked. Because pain is subjective, doctors have a hard time evaluating and treating patients who are dealing with it chronically.

Now, neurologists have successfully used a person’s brain signals to predict how much pain they were feeling. The small but unprecedented study, published today in the journal Nature Neuroscience, identified hard clues in brainwaves that could objectively measure the intensity of chronic pain versus acute pain. 

The findings are part of a larger clinical trial aimed at creating a personalized brain stimulation therapy that could bring relief to the 51.6 million Americans living with chronic pain. Another recent study in the journal JAMA Network Open reported that the rate of chronic pain in the US was as high as other common health issues like diabetes, depression, and high blood pressure. 

“For the first time, the authors were able to understand and visualize the differences between the acute and chronic pain experience on a neural level,” says Akanksha Sharma, a neurologist at the Pacific Neuroscience Institute in California who was not involved in the research. “This is novel and important, learning how and where our brain perceives and processes acute and chronic pain and understanding how the individual brain rewires in response to chronic pain.”

[Related: Medical startup put useless plastic implants in chronic pain patients, says FBI]

The study authors invited four people with uncontrollable long-term pain—three recovering from strokes and one with phantom limb syndrome—to get implants that tracked neural activity. The patients had exhausted all their treatment options. “They tried medications, injections, and nothing was working. Brain surgery was the last resort,” says lead author Prasad Shirvalkar, a neurologist and pain medicine specialist at the University of California, San Francisco. 

Each participant underwent deep brain stimulation, a medical procedure that acts like a pacemaker for the cerebrum. The medical team implanted electrodes in specific areas to detect and record electrical activity from two brain regions associated with pain: the anterior cingulate cortex and the orbitofrontal cortex. The technique is commonly used for neurological conditions such as epilepsy and Parkinson’s, but has never been tested with chronic pain. 

For three to six months, the participants answered surveys about the severity and quality of their pain. Immediately after, they pressed a remote to let the electrode implants take a snapshot of their brain activity. A computer then used the recordings and survey responses to build models that calculated a pain severity score for each patient. Changes in the orbitofrontal cortex helped inform the personalized neural signatures more than any other brain region.

“This information can help drive more customized treatment options for patients,” Sharma says. “If we can objectively “see” the pain experience of a patient, then we can potentially modulate those areas of the brain with new interventions to alleviate or change the perception of pain.”

Brain activity recordings also showed a difference between chronic and acute pain. Signs of chronic pain were more strongly associated with changes in how neurons in the orbitofrontal cortex fired. According to Shirvalkar, this brain region is understudied in its role in shaping the pain experience. The anterior cingulate cortex, on the other hand, is better known for its role in perceiving and processing pain across the body. This brain region was found to be more associated with acute pain.

The team learned that they couldn’t apply the same kinds of brain activity used to chart acute pain in therapeutic research to chronic pain in the real world. “Chronic pain is not a more enduring version of acute pain—it’s fundamentally different in the brain with different circuits,” Shirvalkar explains.

Understanding the differences in how patients are neurologically wired for acute versus chronic pain can help further personalized brain stimulation therapies for the most severe forms of discomfort. Medhat Mikhael, a pain management specialist at the MemorialCare Orange Coast Medical Center in California who did not contribute to the research, says this would help treat the most difficult of chronic pain cases, especially those stemming from a stroke and traumatic brain injury.

[Related: The slow, but promising progress of electrode therapy for paralysis]

While Sharma finds the work fascinating, she warns people to exercise caution in interpreting the data and generalizing it to all neuropathic pain conditions, given that there were only four people in the trial. The study authors say their next goal is to recruit six patients and then move on to a phase two trial where the sample size would increase to 20 or 30 patients. There’s also a risk of life-altering complications with surgical implants in the brain. At the moment, Shirvalkar says noninvasive methods such as electroencephalography and functional MRIs would not be able to record for long periods of time. However, he hopes that one day tech companies can make small wearable devices that track brainwaves. 

“Treating pain relies on subjective reporting, or on how the person with pain communicates their pain to their provider. Not everyone’s pain is believed or treated equally,” Kate Nicholson, the executive director and founder of the National Pain Advocacy Center, wrote in an email to PopSci. “For these reasons, the search for phenotypes and objective measures for pain is the search for a holy grail in pain management. Objective measures [like the ones found through this study], if valid and validated, hold promise to transform pain’s assessment and treatment.”

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An estimated 30 tons of highly volatile ammonium nitrate disappeared from a railcar traveling last month between Wyoming and the Mojave Desert in California. Frequently used as a fertilizer, the compound is also infamous for its role in the deadly 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, as well as a massive 2020 explosion in Beirut, Lebanon, that killed over 200 people. In this instance, however, multiple reports indicate Union Pacific railway officials believe the cargo accidentally leaked out of “the bottom gate on the railcar” during its two-week journey across the western US.

According to The New York Times, a Union Pacific spokesperson explained that the fertilizer—transported in pellet form within a covered hopper car akin to coal shipments—is designed for ground application and quick soil absorption, and “should pose no risk to public health or the environment.” The shipment belonged to an explosives manufacturer, Dyno Nobel, whose representatives also told the Times they do not currently suspect “criminal or malicious activity” behind the disappearance. Union Pacific is reportedly in the “early stages” of its investigation, while the Federal Railroad Administration and the California Public Utilities Commission are also conducting their own reviews of the incident.

[Related: Toxic train derailment in East Palestine, OH highlights issues facing America’s railways.]

“The railcar was sealed when it left the Cheyenne facility, and the seals were still intact when it arrived in Saltdale. The initial assessment is that a leak through the bottom gate on the railcar may have developed in transit,” a Dyno Nobel spokesperson said in a statement.

Although ammonium nitrate is relatively harmless on its own, its addition to a fuel source combined with heat and pressure make for an extremely powerful explosion. This can often prove useful—as is the case with a compound called ANFO (ammonium nitrate/fuel oil), which miners use to clear large rock formations. However, ammonium nitrate is also a go-to chemical for illegal homemade explosives and bombs. As California radio outlet KQED explains, Congress passed a law in 2007 on the regulation and transfer of ammonium nitrate to prevent its misuse by bad actors. In 2011, the Department of Homeland Security proposed additional regulations, but never formally adopted them.

News of the rail incident comes only a few months after a Norfolk Southern freight train derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, resulting in a temporary, mandatory evacuation order for thousands of residents. The release of toxic chemicals such as vinyl chloride gas and a carcinogen called ethylhexyl acrylate resulted in numerous reports of physical and respiratory issues such as headaches, coughing, and acute bronchitis.

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Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC) slapped Meta with a record-shattering $1.3 billion (€1.2 billion) fine Monday alongside an order to cease transferring EU users’ Facebook data to US servers. But despite the latest massive penalty, some legal experts warn little will likely change within Meta’s overall approach to data privacy as long as US digital protections remain lax.

The fine caps a saga initiated nearly decade ago thanks to whistleblower Edward Snowden’s damning reveal of American digital mass surveillance programs. Since then, data privacy law within the EU changed dramatically following the 2016 passage of its General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR). After years of legal back-and-forth in the EU, Ireland’s DPC has determined Facebook’s data transfer protocols to the US do not “address the risks to the fundamental rights and freedoms” of EU residents. In particular, the courts determined EU citizens’ information could be susceptible to US surveillance program scrapes, and thus violate the GDPR.

[Related: A massive data leak just cost Meta $275 million.]

User data underpins a massive percentage of revenue for tech companies like Meta, as it is employed to build highly detailed, targeted consumer profiles for advertising. Because of this, Meta has fought tooth-and-nail to maintain its ability to transfer global user data back to the US. In a statement attributed to Meta’s President of Global Affairs Nick Clegg and Chief Legal Officer Jennifer Newstead, the company plans to immediately pursue a legal stay “given the harm that these orders would cause, including to the millions of people who use Facebook every day.” The Meta representatives also stated “no immediate disruption” would occur for European Facebook users.

As The Verge notes, there are a number of stipulations even if Meta’s attempt at a legal stay falls apart. Right at the outset, the DPC’s decision pertains only to Facebook, and not Meta’s other platforms such as WhatsApp and Instagram. Next, Meta has a five-month grace period to cease future data transfers alongside a six-month deadline to purge its current EU data held within the US. Finally, the EU and the US are in the midst of negotiations regarding a new data transfer deal that could finalize as soon as October.

[Related: EU fines Meta for forcing users to accept personalized ads.]

Regardless, even with the record-breaking fine, some policy experts are skeptical of the penalty’s influence on Meta’s data policy. Over the weekend, a senior fellow at the Irish Council for Civil Liberties told The Guardian that, “A billion-euro parking ticket is of no consequence to a company that earns many more billions by parking illegally.” Although some states including California, Utah, and Colorado have passed their own privacy laws, comprehensive US protections remain stalled at the federal level. 

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Disaster has struck—a nasty piece of malware has taken root on your computer, and you need to remove it. Viruses can cause serious damage, but you might be able to get your computer back on its feet without too much difficulty, thanks to an array of helpful tools.

We’re using the term malware to refer to all kinds of malicious programs, whether they’re viruses, ransomware, adware, or something else. Each of these threats has its own definition, but the terms are often used interchangeably and can mean different things to different people. So for simplicity’s sake, when we say malware, we mean everything you don’t want on your computer, from a virus that tries to delete your files to an adware program that’s tracking your web browsing.

With so many types of malware and so many different system setups out there, we can’t cover every scenario. Still, we can give you some general malware removal pointers that should help you get the assistance you need.

First, identify the problem

When malware hits, you sometimes get a threatening error message—but sometimes you don’t. So keep an eye out for red flags, such as an uncharacteristically slow computer, a web browser inundated by endless pop-ups, and applications that just keep crashing.

Most machines have some kind of antivirus security protection, even if it’s just the Windows Defender tool built into Windows 10 or 11. Extra security software isn’t as essential on macOS—its integrated defenses are very effective—but that doesn’t mean a clever bit of malware can’t get access.

If you do have a security tool installed, make sure you keep it up to date. Then, when you suspect you’ve been hit, run a thorough system scan—the app itself should have instructions for how to do so. This is always the first step in weeding out unwanted programs.

[Related: How to make sure no one is spying on your computer]

You might find that your installed security software spots the problem and effectively removes the malware it on its own. In that case, you can get on with watching Netflix or checking your email without further interference. Unfortunately, if your antivirus software of choice doesn’t see anything wrong or can’t deal with what it’s found, you have more work to do.

Deal with specific threats

If your computer is displaying specific symptoms—such as a message with a particular error code or a threatening ransomware alert—run a web search to get more information. And if you suspect your main machine is infected and potentially causing problems with your web browser, you should search for answers on your phone or another computer.

Telling you to search online for help may seem like we’re trying to pass the buck, but this is often the best way to deal with the biggest and newest threats. To remove malware that has overwhelmed your computer’s built-in virus protections, you’ll probably need to follow specific instructions. Otherwise, you could inadvertently make the situation worse.

As soon as new threats are identified, security firms are quick to publish fixes and tools. This means it’s important to stay in touch with the latest tech news as it happens. If your existing antivirus program is coming up blank, check online to see if companies have released bespoke repair tools that you can use to deal with whatever problem you’re having.

Finally, based on what your research and antivirus scans tell you, consider disconnecting your computer from the internet to stop any bugs from spreading, or shutting down your machine completely to protect against file damage.

Tools such as Microsoft Safety Scanner, Spybot Search and Destroy, Bitdefender Virus Scanner (also for macOS), Kaspersky Security Scan, Avira PC Cleaner, Malwarebytes, and others can parachute onto your system for extra support. There, they’ll troubleshoot problems and give your existing security tools a helping hand.

All of the apps listed above will do a thorough job of scanning your computer and removing any malware they find. To make extra sure, you can always run scans from a couple of different tools. If your computer has been infected, these apps will most likely be able to spot the problem and deal with it, or at least give you further instructions.

Once your existing security tools and an on-demand scanner or two have given your system a clean bill of health, you’re probably (though not definitely) in the clear. That means that any continued errors or crashes could be due to other factors—anything from a badly installed update to a failing hard drive.

A more drastic—but extremely effective—course of action is to wipe your computer, reinstall your operating system, and start again from scratch. Although this will delete all your personal files, it should hopefully remove malware and other unwanted programs at the same time. Before you take this step, make sure all your important files and folders are backed up somewhere else, and ensure that you’ll be able to download all your applications again.

Reinstalling the operating system and getting your computer back to its factory condition is actually much easier than it used to be. We have our own guide for resetting Windows 10 and 11, and Apple has instructions for macOS. If you need more pointers, you can find plenty of extra information online.

That’s it! Through a combination of bespoke removal methods, existing security software, on-demand scanners, and (if necessary) a system wipe, you should now have effectively removed whatever malware had taken root on your system. At this point, if you’re still struggling, it’s time to call in the experts. IT repair specialists in your area may be able to lend a hand.

Next, install a solid security tool you can trust. For Windows 10 and 11, the built-in Windows Defender program is a competent antivirus tool even if you don’t add anything else. That said, you can opt to bolster your machine’s defenses by paying for extra software from the likes of Norton, Avast, and many others. While the number of shady programs targeting Apple computers is on the rise, they’re still more secure than Windows machines. The general consensus is that macOS is mostly safe from harm, provided you only install programs through the App Store and apply plenty of common sense. That means you should avoid following shady links or plugging in strange USB drives you’ve found lying in the street.

Finally, make sure your software is always patched and up to date. Most browsers and operating systems will update automatically in the background, but you can check for pending patches on Windows 10 by opening Settings and clicking Update & security (on Windows 11 it’s Settings > Windows Update). If you have a macOS computer, just open up the App Store and switch to the Updates tab to see if anything is available that you haven’t downloaded.

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Last week, The New York Times went backstage at the Oregon Zoo for an intimate look at the fake eggs the zoo was developing as a part of its endangered Condor nursery program. 

The idea is that caretakers can swap out the real eggs the birds lay for smart egg spies that look and feel the same. These specially designed, 3D-printed eggs have been equipped with sensors that can monitor the general environment of the nest and the natural behaviors of the California condor parents (like how long they sat on the egg for, and when they switched off between parents). 

In addition to recording data related to surrounding temperature and movement, there’s also a tiny audio recorder that can capture ambient sounds. So what’s the use of the whole charade? 

The Oregon Zoo’s aim is to use all the data gathered by the egg to better recreate natural conditions within their artificial incubators, whether that has to do with adjusting the temperatures they set these machines to, integrating periodic movements, or play back the sounds from the nest, which will ideally improve the outcomes from its breeding efforts. And it’s not the only group tinkering with tech like this.

A ‘spy hippo’

This setup at the Oregon Zoo may sound vaguely familiar to you, if you’ve been a fan of the PBS show “Spy in the Wild.” The central gag of the series is that engineers craft hyper-realistic robots masquerading as animals, eggs, boulders, and more to get up close and personal with a medley of wildlife from all reaches of the planet. 

[Related: Need to fight invasive fish? Just introduce a scary robot]

If peeking at the inner lives of zoo animals is a task in need of an innovative tech solution, imagine the challenges of studying animals in their natural habitats, in regions that are typically precarious or even treacherous for humans to visit. Add on cameras and other heavy equipment, and it becomes an even more demanding trip. Instead of having humans do the Jane Goodall method of community immersion with animals, these spies in disguise can provide invaluable insights into group or individual behavior and habits without being intrusive or overly invasive to their ordinary way of life.  

A penguin rover

Testing unconventional methods like these is key for researchers to understand as much as they can about endangered animals, since scientists have to gather important information in a relatively short time frame to help with their conservation. 

[Related: Open data is a blessing for science—but it comes with its own curses] 

To prove that these inventions are not all gimmick and have some practical utility, a 2014 study in Nature showed that a penguin-shaped rover can get more useful data on penguin colonies than human researchers, whose presence elevated stress levels in the animals. 

The point of all this animal espionage?

Minimizing the effects created by human scientists has always been a struggle in behavioral research for the natural sciences. Along with the advancement of other technologies like better cameras and more instantaneous data transfer, ingenious new sensor devices like the spy eggs are changing the field itself. The other benefit is that every once in a while, non-scientist humans can also be privy to the exclusive access provided into the secret lives of these critters, like through “Spy in the Wild,” and use these as portals for engaging with the world around them.

The post Spy tech and rigged eggs help scientists study the secret lives of animals appeared first on Popular Science.

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You’ve been developing your Minecraft world for a while. You have a full set of diamond armor, a field rife with pumpkins and melons next to your lakefront mansion, and you just defeated the Ender dragon. But reaching the End doesn’t need to be the end. If you want to spice up your crafting and maximize your gameplay experience, you can easily add a few, or a few dozen, modifications.

Veterans of the game might recall how hard it was to add mods to Minecraft in the early days. The process was manual and time-consuming. I, for one, lost days, if not weeks, of my teen years seeking out the latest versions of obscure mods online, waiting for downloads, and rooting around in config folders. Today, thanks to modern modding platforms, everything is automated.

Whether you’re trying to figure out how to install Minecraft mods for the first time or just need a refresher, this guide will help you snag the best user-created additions or alterations for this beloved sandbox game. If you encounter a warden in the deep dark, though, you’re on your own.

Install CurseForge

There are many modding platforms out there, such as Technic Launcher and Feed The Beast, but I prefer CurseForge. It’s one of the easiest to use, and features a diverse array of mods and modpacks suited to your wildest gameplay dreams. CurseForge is free for Windows, Mac, and Linux, and you can install it directly from your browser.

Once installed, CurseForge will prompt you to choose a game for modding and add-ons. Right now you want Minecraft, but the platform includes modding options for other popular games such as The Sims 4, World of Warcraft, and Elder Scrolls. 

To make your own modpack with a unique combination of mods, hit Create Custom Profile in the top right of the CurseForge window. The Profile Name is the name of your modpack. Once you set that, you will need to select the game version. Keep in mind that user-developed mods take a while to catch up with the latest Minecraft version. As of writing, most mods are updated to at least version 1.12.2. If you have a specific mod or mods in mind, you can look up its latest version online or in the CurseForge desktop app and choose the Minecraft version that suits your needs.

After you’ve created your modpack, it’s time to add some mods. Click the three vertical dots next to the orange Play button and select the puzzle piece labeled Add More Content in the dropdown menu. The puzzle piece icon to the right will take you to the same page. Here, you’ll be able to search for mods by name, and sort by update version and category. When you find one you want to add, click the Install button. Keep installing mods until you’re happy with the lineup.

Be careful not to add more than your computer can handle. A computer designed for gaming might be able to handle hundreds, but an older or lighter laptop might only be able to run 15 to 20 at a time without crashing. 

You can also add resource and texture packs in the Add More Content panel under Resource Packs. These alter the game’s graphics, including lighting and the appearance of blocks, items, and mobs. This is where you’ll find color-blind-friendly resource packs, and ones that make the game more realistic with alterations such as rounded logs, shadows, and clear windows.

When you’re finished adding mods and are ready to play, exit the Add More Content window and hit the orange Play button. This should open the Minecraft launcher. Make sure you’re on Java Edition. In the lower left corner where the Minecraft version is, you should see your modpack name. Hit the green Play button like usual. You should get a warning message saying that the mods may not support the latest safety features (such as parental controls, community guidelines, and chat moderation). If this isn’t a concern, go ahead and click Play. 

That’s it—you just made and launched your first modpack. Enjoy your game! If you want to play with friends, keep reading. 

To export your modpack, click the three vertical dots next to the orange Play button in CurseForge, then select Export Profile.

You’ll end up in an export window where you can change the name of the file, name the version (optional) and select which files to include (the preset should work fine). Then, click the orange Export button and it will save to whichever file location you choose.

Your modpack will save as a ZIP file, which you can send to friends over email, as a link to a cloud drive, in an iMessage if you both have macOS, or via any other file-sharing method.  

If your modpack.zip is an exceptionally large file, or if you have a slow internet connection, it might be most efficient to stash it, old-school, on a USB stick, or recreate it on your friend’s CurseForge account by repeating the steps in the previous section.

Just know that if you’re playing multiplayer, all players must have the same mods running. If one player adds or removes mods from their pack, the game will prevent players from joining the server due to incompatibility. You don’t want to miss out on traversing new dimensions with your friends because one of you is missing a mod.

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On May 18, the United States Department of the Air Force announced that it is looking to award a contract for the Next Generation Air Dominance Platform in 2024. The name, shortened to NGAD, is a jumble of Pentagon concepts, obscuring what is actually sought: a novel fighter jet representing the newest era of military aircraft—a sixth-generation fighter. 

“The NGAD Platform is a vital element of the Air Dominance family of systems which represents a generational leap in technology over the F-22, which it will replace,” Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall said in a release. “NGAD will include attributes such as enhanced lethality and the ability to survive, persist, interoperate, and adapt in the air domain, all within highly contested operational environments. No one does this better than the U.S. Air Force, but we will lose that edge if we don’t move forward now.”

The solicitation to industry for the NGAD is classified, making the details of what, exactly, the Air Force wants hard to know at this time. But jet fighters have, for decades, been classified into generations. So what makes a fighter generation, and what makes a sixth-generation fighter?

“In calling NGAD a sixth-generation fighter, that’s an important signal that it’s moving into a new level of capability, and it has to, because the threats are really evolving,” says Caitlin Lee, senior fellow at Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies.

Aircraft generations, explained

Fighter planes date to the first World War as a distinct concept, and ever since that time observers have grouped fighters into generations, or models built at similar times around similar technologies. Fighter evolution in war happened rapidly, as the first exchanges of pistol-fire between the pilots of scout planes gave way to aircraft built for combat, with dedicated machine guns firing first around and then even through propellers. As hostile planes got better, new aircraft were built to let pilots win fights. Once enough of these changes were accumulated in new models of planes, those aircraft could be grouped by sets of features into different generations.

[Related: How does a jet engine work? By running hot enough to melt its own innards.]

This is true for the earliest fixed-wing and biplane fighters, up through the piston-powered patrollers of World War II and into the jet era. In October 1954, Popular Science showed off four fighter generations flying in formation for ceremonies at an Air Force gunnery competition. This snapshot of generations captured two propeller-driven planes: the SPAD biplane from World War I and the F-51 fighter from World War II. They are joined by two distinct jet fighters: the F-86 Sabre, a type which saw action in the Korean War, and F-100 Super Sabre, a model that would go on to see action in the Vietnam War.

The attributes that go into an aircraft generation

What separates fighter generations, broadly, is their speed, weapons, sensors, and other new features as they become part of the overall composition of a plane. Sticking to jets, fighters with that method of propulsion have gone from straight-wing planes flying at top speeds below the sound barrier, with guns, unguided rockets, and bombs, all the way to sensor-rich stealth jets capable of carrying a range of anti-air and anti-ground missiles.

There is no one agreed-to definition of exactly what fighter generations are, though jet fighters are generally grouped separately from propeller predecessors. Historian Richard Hallion expressed a version, published in the Airpower Journal’s Winter 1990 issue, that outlines six generations as defined primarily by speed and maneuverability. Hallion’s definitions precede not just the Next Generation Air Dominance plane, but also the F-35 and F-22, which have become widely accepted as definitive fifth-generation fighters.

First generation

• Feature: The propulsion comes from jet engines. Weapons, wing shapes, and sensors are similar to preceding and contemporary propeller-driven plane designs.
• Models: Germany’s Me 262, which saw action in World War II. The P-80 Shooting Star, flown by the United States from 1945 to 1959.

Second generation

• Features: The wings are swept backwards, planes are now equipped with onboard radar, and they are armed with missiles.
• Models: The F-86 Sabre, flown by the US in Korea, and the MiG-15, flown by China and North Korea in the Korean War.

Third generation

• Features: The jets can now achieve supersonic speed for short bursts and are equipped with missiles that could hit targets beyond line of sight.
• Models: The MiG-21, designed by the USSR and still in service today, and the F-4 Phantom, developed for the US Navy and still in service with a few countries today.

Fourth generation

• Features: These jets have reduced radar signatures, better radars, and even more advanced missiles.
• Models: France’s Mirage 2000, a delta-wing fighter still in service today, and the F/A-18, used by the US Navy and Marine Corps. Plus, the US Air Force’s F-15 and F-16.

Fifth generation

• Features: Jets are built for stealth, use internal weapons bays, fly with high maneuverability, have better sensors, and have the ability to sustain cruise at supersonic speeds.
• Models: The F-22 and F-35 family developed by the US, and the J-20 made by China and the Su-57 developed by Russia.

Tirpak defined a fifth-generation fighter as having “All-aspect stealth with internal weapons, extreme agility, full-sensor fusion, integrated avionics, some or full supercruise,” and pointed to the F-22 and F-35 as examples. 

To unpack the jargon above, “stealth” is a set of technologies, from the coating of the plane to the shape it takes, that make it hard to detect, especially with radar. Sensor fusion combines information from a plane’s sensors, like targeting cameras and radar, as well as other avionics, to create a fuller picture of the environment around the aircraft. “Supercruise” is flight at above supersonic speed, for sustained time, without having to dump extra fuel into the engines, a previous way of achieving supersonic bursts.

[Related: How fast is supersonic flight? Fast enough to bring the booms.]

All of these changes are responses to the new threat environment encountered by previous fighters. Stealth is one way for plane design to mitigate the risk from advanced anti-air missiles. Enhanced sensors are a way to allow fighters to see further and better than rival aircraft, and rival air-defense radars. Fighter design is about both building with the threats of the day, while anticipating the threats of the future, and ensuring the plane is still capable of surviving them.

One way to think of this is that the NGAD will be one among several kinds of aircraft the Air Force intends to use in the future, the way it might use wings of fighters today. This could include fighting alongside the Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA), a combat drone the Air Force plans as part of its Next Generation operations model.

“What’s next-generation about CCA is that they will have more autonomy than the current UAVs in the Air Force inventory like Reaper. And the question is how much more autonomy will they actually have,” says Lee. “And I think what the Air Force is interested in is starting with having that manned fighter aircraft, whether it’s NGAD or something else, be able to provide inputs and certainly oversee the operations of the CCA.”

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On Friday, NASA awarded Blue Origin a contract to provide a lunar lander for the Artemis V moon mission scheduled for 2029—two years after they lost a bid to build similar vehicles for the Artemis III and IV missions.

Blue Origin will lead a consortium that also includes Lockheed Martin and Boeing to design and build the lander, with NASA contributing $3.4 billion in funding. According to The New York Times, Blue Origin’s VP for lunar transportation also confirmed their company would also add “well north” of that number for the project.

[Related: SpaceX’s Starship launch caused a ‘mini earthquake’ and left a giant mess.]

“We are in a golden age of human spaceflight, which is made possible by NASA’s commercial and international partnerships,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said on Friday. “Together, we are making an investment in the infrastructure that will pave the way to land the first astronauts on Mars.”

Now comes the hard part: Blue Origin will soon begin designing, building, and testing a new lander that meets NASA’s mission requirements, such as the ability to dock with Gateway, a planned space station that will transfer crew into lunar orbit. The contract encompasses both an uncrewed moon landing demo, as well as the crewed Artemis V mission on track for 2029.

In 2021, Blue Origin and another company lost out to SpaceX on a contract to supply vehicles for Artemis III and IV, which both aim to put humans back on the moon’s surface for the first time in over half a century. SpaceX turned in a proposal estimated to cost $2.9 billion, while Blue Origin’s was tallied at $6 billion.

[Related: Watch SpaceX’s giant Starship rocket explode.]

Blue Origin then attempted to sue NASA in federal court over the bidding process, claiming their proposal had been unfairly evaluated. A 76-page report subsequently issued by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) laid out all the reasons NASA had every legal right to choose a contract with SpaceX, which cost around half as much as Blue Origin’s $6 billion proposal. NASA’s other concerns included the fact that Blue Origin’s proposal vehicle did not reportedly include proper safeguards for landing in the dark. As Business Insider noted at the time, “The GAO contended that NASA was not required to lay out all minute details, and Blue Origin should take into account the conditions on the moon or space itself—which is dark.”

Jeff Bezos’ company eventually lost the legal fight. “Not the decision we wanted,” Bezos tweeted afterwards, adding that he would respect the court’s judgment while wishing “full success for NASA and SpaceX on the contract.” Two years later, however, it appears Blue Origin has properly revised its proposal process—hopefully including plans for landing in the dark.

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A documentary project using cutting edge 3D imaging, drone photography, and virtual reality combined with painstakingly detailed hand drawings is digitally preserving some of Afghanistan’s most awe-inspiring, endangered historical sites. On Friday, MIT previewed the impending release of “Ways of Seeing,” a collaborative effort between MIT Libraries and its Aga Khan Documentation Center alongside the Aga Khan Trust for Culture that aims to create “extended reality” (XR) experiences of significant architectural locales throughout the country.

“Ways of Seeing” currently focuses on four separate historical sites across Afghanistan: the Green Mosque in Balkh, a Buddhist dome south of Kabul known as the Parwan Stupa, the 15th century tomb of Queen Gawhar Saad, and the 200-foot-tall Minaret of Jam, built during the 12th century in a remote location in western Afghanistan. According to MIT’s announcement, scholars chose the sites for their architectural and religious diversity, as well as the relative inaccessibility of some of the locales.

[Related: Staggering 3D scan of the Titanic shows the wreck down to the millimeter.]

To amass the visual data, MIT researchers worked alongside an Afghan digital production crew that traveled to the chosen sites after being remotely trained to pilot a “3D scanning aerial operation.” Once there, the on-location journalists collected between 15,000 and 30,000 images at each location. Meanwhile, Nikolaos Vlavianos, a PhD candidate in MIT’s Department of Architecture Design and Computation group, led an effort to “computationally [generate] point clouds and mesh geometry with detailed texture mapping.”

Afterwards, Jelena Pejkovic, an MIT alum and practicing architect, created detailed drawings of the locations via VERNADOC, a traditional ink rendering technique first developed by the Finnish architect Markku Mattila. “I wanted to rediscover the most traditional possible kind of documentation—measuring directly by hand, and drawing by hand,” Pejkovic said in Friday’s announcement.

While “Ways of Seeing” is meant to provide a cutting-edge means of digital preservation of remote and potentially at-risk historical sites, the team ultimately hopes to make the archive available to displaced Afghans around the world, as well as “anyone keen to witness them,” says Fontini Christia, a political science professor at MIT who led the project. Christia’s team also hopes this approach to extended reality modeling could eventually be scaled and replicated for other at-risk heritage sites around the world in the face of environmental catastrophes, wars, and cultural appropriation. “Ways of Seeing” is scheduled to be publicly released by the end of June 2023.

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The era of recording mixtapes and burning CDs for friends and family has passed by, so you’ll have to get creative if you want to share the latest track or artist you’re excited about.

One of your options is social media. You can share music on Instagram or have your pick from the TikTok music selection with only a few taps.

When you select a song, Instagram will add it to your story as a sticker, and down at the bottom of the screen, you’ll be able to scroll through the track to pick a snippet of up to 15 seconds. You can also tap on the song’s icon to get more options: select a different sticker style, remove it completely, or use the album art instead. Tap Done to post the story.

If you want to add music to an Instagram post on your main feed, you can do so by tapping Add music on the final screen before publishing. You get a similar option when making a reel—just tap Audio on the left before or after you record your clip. 

Yet another way to share music on Instagram is by posting a link to Spotify or YouTube, for example. In a Story, choose your image or video, tap the sticker icon, and choose Link. You can also just paste a URL in a direct message conversation if you want to go for something more private.

The app will then take you to the music selection screen: Browse through the Recommended tab to find popular TikTok music suggested by the algorithm, or Favorites, where you’ll find the sounds you’ve tried in the past. Finally, if you want something completely new, you can tap the magnifying glass icon on the right and use the search box. When you tap on a track you’ll get a preview—if you’re OK with it, confirm your choice by tapping on the pink checkmark button, but if you want to make some edits, you can always hit the scissors icon.

Snapchat

Snapchat offers almost as many ways as Instagram for sharing music with friends and family. Let’s start with Snapchat stories. Tap the camera icon at the bottom of your screen to go into recording mode, and either before or after capturing an image or clip, tap the musical note symbol on the right.

You can browse through the music that Snapchat suggests (trending tracks and songs based on mood), as well as search for specific tunes via the box at the top. Tap on the small play button to preview a track, or on its title to add it to your story.

You can then drag across the song’s sound wave to pick a 10-second snippet to use. With that done, tap Next to post the image or video as a story or as a snap directly to one or more of your contacts.

Tap your profile picture (top right), select the three dots, and go to Audio to connect your account to your favorite music service. If something is playing on Spotify or Apple Music when you capture a BeReal photo, you’ll see an icon down in the lower right corner of the image. Tap it and pick Shared so your friends can see the track and artist, or Private so only you can see what was playing when you took that picture.

In both cases, you can search for specific tracks or pick one of the Facebook suggestions. After you add a song, tap on its icon on the right to pick which part of it to embed into your story, and change how the track details and lyrics display in your post.

Stories aren’t your only option. To add music to a Facebook post, for example, tap Music from the list of options that pop up underneath as you’re creating it. You can also link your Spotify and Facebook profiles so people can click through on: From the mobile app, tap your avatar on the left, then go to Edit profile, and next to Links choose Add. Continue by tapping  Add Social Link and then Spotify.

The best way to share music on Twitter is to just paste in a link from somewhere else, whether you’re internally sending a message to one person or broadcasting a tweet to the world. If you’re sharing from Spotify, tap the three dots next to a song while on the app, then choose Share and Copy link.

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Pilots can experience forces while flying that punish their bodies, and they can also find themselves in disorienting situations. A military pilot in a fighter jet will endure G-forces as they maneuver, resulting in a crushing sensation that causes the blood to drain downwards in their bodies, away from the brain. And someone at the controls of a plane or helicopter, even in more routine flights, can have their senses become discombobulated. One of the causes of the crash that killed Kobe Bryant in 2020 was “spatial disorientation” on the pilot’s part, according to the NTSB. 

Then there’s being launched in a rocket up into space. One astronaut recalled to PopSci that when flying in the space shuttle, the engines shut down, as planned, 8.5 minutes after launch. “It felt like the shuttle stopped, and I went straight through it,” he said. “I got a tremendous tumbling sensation.” Another astronaut noted in a recent NASA press release that he felt like he “was on a merry-go-round as my body hunted for what was up, down, left, and right,” in the shuttle as well.

And of course, anyone down on Earth who has ever experienced vertigo, a sensation of spinning, or nausea, knows that those are miserable, even frightening sensations. 

To better understand all the uncanny effects that being up in the air or in space has on humans, NASA is going to employ a Navy machine called the Kraken, which is also fittingly called the Disorientation Research Device—a supersized contraption that cost $19 million and weighs 245,000 pounds. Pity the poor person who climbs into the Kraken, who could experience three Gs of force and be spun around every which way. NASA notes that the machine, which is located in Ohio, “can spin occupants like laundry churning in a washing machine.” It can hold two people within its tumbling chamber. As tortuous as it sounds, the machine provides a way to study spatial disorientation—a phenomenon that can be deadly or challenging in the air or in space—safely down on dry land. 

[Related: I flew in an F-16 with the Air Force and oh boy did it go poorly]

The NASA plan calls for two dozen members of the military to spend an hour in the Kraken, which will be using “a spaceflight setting” for this study. After doing so, half of them, the space agency says, “will perform prescribed head turns and tilts while wearing video goggles that track their head and eye movements.” The other half will not. All of them will carry out certain exercises afterwards, like balancing on foam. Perhaps, NASA thinks, the head movements can help. “Tests with the Kraken will allow us to rigorously determine what head movements, if any, help astronauts to quickly recover their sense of balance,” Michael Schubert, an expert on vestibular disorders at Johns Hopkins University and the lead researcher on this new study, said in the NASA release on the topic.

The study will also involve civilians who have pre-existing balance challenges (due to having had tumors surgically removed), who thankfully won’t have to endure the Kraken. They will also perform the head movements and carry out the same balance exercises. The goal of all this research is to discover if these head movement techniques work, so that “astronauts could adopt specific protocols to help them quickly adapt to gravitational changes during spaceflight,” NASA says. 

Additionally, the same techniques could help regular people who aren’t going to be launched into space but do struggle with balance or dizziness down on Earth. Watch a video about the Kraken, below. 

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This article was originally featured on KFF Health News.

In the past few years, 10,000 to 20,000 apps have stampeded into the mental health space, offering to “disrupt” traditional therapy. With the frenzy around AI innovations like ChatGPT, the claim that chatbots can provide mental health care is on the horizon.

The numbers explain why: Pandemic stresses led to millions more Americans seeking treatment. At the same time, there has long been a shortage of mental health professionals in the United States; more than half of all counties lack psychiatrists. Given the Affordable Care Act’s mandate that insurers offer parity between mental and physical health coverage, there is a gaping chasm between demand and supply.

For entrepreneurs, that presents a market bonanza. At the South by Southwest conference in March, where health startups displayed their products, there was a near-religious conviction that AI could rebuild health care, offering apps and machines that could diagnose and treat all kinds of illnesses, replacing doctors and nurses.

Unfortunately, in the mental health space, evidence of effectiveness is lacking. Few of the many apps on the market have independent outcomes research showing they help; most haven’t been scrutinized at all by the FDA. Though marketed to treat conditions such as anxiety, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, and depression, or to predict suicidal tendencies, many warn users (in small print) that they are “not intended to be medical, behavioral health or other healthcare service” or “not an FDA cleared product.”

There are good reasons to be cautious in the face of this marketing juggernaut.

Decades ago, Joseph Weizenbaum, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and considered one of the fathers of artificial intelligence, predicted AI would never make a good therapist, though it could be made to sound like one. In fact, his original AI program, created in the 1960s, was a psychotherapist named ELIZA, which used word and pattern recognition combined with natural language programming to sound like a therapist:

Woman: Well, my boyfriend made me come here.

ELIZA: Your boyfriend made you come here?

Woman: He says I’m depressed much of the time.

ELIZA: I am sorry to hear that you are depressed.

Woman: It’s true. I am unhappy.

ELIZA: Do you think coming here will help you not to be unhappy?

Though hailed as an AI triumph, ELIZA’s “success” terrified Weizenbaum, whom I once interviewed. He said students would interact with the machine as if Eliza were an actual therapist, when what he’d created was “a party trick,” he said.

He foresaw the evolution of far more sophisticated programs like ChatGPT. But “the experiences a computer might gain under such circumstances are not human experiences,” he told me. “The computer will not, for example, experience loneliness in any sense that we understand it.”

The same goes for anxiety or ecstasy, emotions so neurologically complex that scientists have not been able pinpoint their neural origins. Can a chatbot achieve transference, the empathic flow between patient and doctor that is central to many types of therapy?

“The core tenet of medicine is that it’s a relationship between human and human — and AI can’t love,” said Bon Ku, director of the Health Design Lab at Thomas Jefferson University and a pioneer in medical innovation. “I have a human therapist, and that will never be replaced by AI.”

Ku said he’d like to see AI used instead to reduce practitioners’ tasks like record-keeping and data entry to “free up more time for humans to connect.”

While some mental health apps may ultimately prove worthy, there is evidence that some can do harm. One researcher noted that some users faulted these apps for their “scripted nature and lack of adaptability beyond textbook cases of mild anxiety and depression.”

It may prove tempting for insurers to offer up apps and chatbots to meet the mental health parity requirement. After all, that would be a cheap and simple solution, compared with the difficulty of offering a panel of human therapists, especially since many take no insurance because they consider insurers’ payments too low.

Perhaps seeing the flood of AI hitting the market, the Department of Labor announced last year it was ramping up efforts to ensure better insurer compliance with the mental health parity requirement.

The FDA likewise said late last year it “intends to exercise enforcement discretion” over a range of mental health apps, which it will vet as medical devices. So far, not one has been approved. And only a very few have gotten the agency’s breakthrough device designation, which fast-tracks reviews and studies on devices that show potential.

These apps mostly offer what therapists call structured therapy — in which patients have specific problems and the app can respond with a workbook-like approach. For example, Woebot combines exercises for mindfulness and self-care (with answers written by teams of therapists) for postpartum depression. Wysa, another app that has received a breakthrough device designation, delivers cognitive behavioral therapy for anxiety, depression, and chronic pain.

But gathering reliable scientific data about how well app-based treatments function will take time. “The problem is that there is very little evidence now for the agency to reach any conclusions,” said Kedar Mate, head of the Boston-based Institute for Healthcare Improvement.

Until we have that research, we don’t know whether app-based mental health care does better than Weizenbaum’s ELIZA. AI may certainly improve as the years go by, but at this point, for insurers to claim that providing access to an app is anything close to meeting the mental health parity requirement is woefully premature.

KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

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American families need over one trillion diapers every year for the 4 million babies born across the country annually. Diaper use can extend far past the first year of infants’ lives—and they generally don’t finish potty training until somewhere between 1.5 to 3 years old. Extrapolate those needs to the entire world, and it’s easy to see how disposable diapers are the third-most prevalent consumer product found in landfills. Because most diapers contain plastics such as polyester, polyethylene, and polypropylene, they are expected to linger in those same landfills for about 500 years before breaking down.

But what if disposable diapers’ lifespans expanded far beyond their one-and-done use? Environmental engineers recently pondered that very question, and have reportedly found a surprising solution: diaper domiciles.

As detailed in a paper published on Thursday with Scientific Reports, a trio of researchers at Japan’s University of Kitakyushu combined six different amounts of washed, dried, and shredded diaper waste with gravel, sand, cement, and water, then cured their samples for 28 days. Afterwards, they tested their composite materials’ resiliencies, and recorded some extremely promising results.

[Related: Steel built the Rust Belt. Green steel could help rebuild it.]

For a three-story, 36-square-meter floor plan, the team found that the cured diaper waste could replace as much as 10 percent of sand within a structure’s traditional concrete support beams and columns. In a single-story home, that percentage nearly tripled. Meanwhile, diapers could swap out 40 percent of the sand needed in partition wall mortar, alongside 9 percent of the sand in flooring and garden paving. All told, disposable diaper waste could replace as much as 8 percent of all sand in a single-story, 36-square-meter floor plan.

The team’s results are extremely promising for low- and middle-income nations facing intense housing crises. For the purposes of their study, researchers adhered to Indonesian building codes to mirror a real world application. “Like other developing countries, low-cost housing provision in Indonesia has been a serious concern in the last three decades,” writes the team in their article. Indonesia’s urban population is growing at around 4 percent per year, resulting in an annual housing deficit of as much as 300,000 homes per year, the authors also noted.

Moving forward, researchers note that collaboration would be needed with government and waste facility officials to develop a means for large-scale collection, sanitization, and shredding of diaper waste. At the same time, nations’ building regulations must be amended to allow for diaper-imbued concrete. Still, the findings are a creative potential solution to the literal and figurative mountain of a sustainability issue—one that may soon finally be toppled. Just make sure it’s all sanitized first.

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A worrying new report from the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) estimates over two-thirds of North America will see elevated risks of energy grid shortfalls and blackouts over the summer if faced with extreme temperature spikes and dire weather. While resources remain “adequate” for normal seasonal peak demand, the major non-profit international regulatory authority’s 2023 Summer Reliability Assessment warns most of the US—including the West, Midwest, Texas, Southeast, and New England regions—may not possess enough energy reserves to handle heatwaves, severe storms, and hurricanes.

NERC’s report is particularly troubling given this year’s El Niño forecast. El Niño historically produces wetter-than-average conditions along the Gulf Coast alongside drier climates for areas such as the Pacific Northwest and the Rocky Mountains. While a naturally occurring event, both El Niño and La Niña weather patterns are expected to rapidly strengthen by the end of the decade due to the exacerbations from climate change. On top of this, industry watchdogs say the US power grid still requires critical maintenance, repairs, and modernization. “The system is close to its edge,” warned NERC’s Director of Reliability Assessment and Performance Analysis John Moura in a call with reporters.

In Texas, for example, the NERC explains that “dispatchable generation may not be sufficient to meet reserves during an extreme heat wave that is accompanied by low winds.” Wildfire risks in the West and Northwest, on the other hand, could jeopardize the ability to transfer electricity as needed, resulting in “localized load shedding.”

[Related: How an innovative battery system in the Bronx will help charge up NYC’s grid.]

“This report is an especially dire warning that America’s ability to keep the lights on has been jeopardized. That’s unacceptable,” Jim Matheson, the CEO of the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, said in a statement.“Federal policies must recognize the compromised reliability reality facing the nation before it’s too late.”

In addition to reliability concerns during peak performance times, the NERC report notes that continued supply chain issues concerning labor, material, and equipment have affected preseason maintenance for generation and transmission facilities across North America.

Still, NERC’s assessment isn’t entirely bad news—much of northern Canada and the US East Coast face a low risk of exceeding their operating reserves. Meanwhile, no region in North America is currently staring down a “high” risk of not meeting their needs during normal peak conditions. “Increased, rapid deployment of wind, solar and batteries have made a positive impact,” said Mark Olson, NERC’s manager of Reliability Assessments. “However, generator retirements continue to increase the risks associated with extreme summer temperatures, which factors into potential supply shortages in the western two-thirds of North America if summer temperatures spike.”

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Wendy’s announced this week that it is going to try using underground autonomous robots to speed up how customers collect online orders. The burger joint plans to pilot the system designed by “hyperlogistics” company Pipedream, and aims to be able to send food from the kitchen to designated parking spots.

Wendy’s seems to be on a quest to become the most technologically advanced fast food restaurant in the country. Last week, it announced that it had partnered with Google to develop its own AI system (called Wendy’s FreshAI) that could take orders at a drive-thru. This week, it’s going full futuristic. (Pipedream’s current marketing line is “Someday we’ll use teleportation, until then we’ll use Pipedream.”)

According to a PR email sent to PopSci, digital orders now make up 11 percent of Wendy’s total sales and are growing. On top of the 75 to 80 percent of orders that are placed at a drive-thru.

The proposed autonomous system aims “to make digital order pick-up fast, reliable and invisible.” When customers or delivery drivers are collecting an online order, they pull into a dedicated parking spot with an “Instant Pickup portal,” where there will be a drive-thru style speaker and kiosk to confirm the order with the kitchen. In a matter of seconds, the food is then sent out by robots moving through an underground series of pipes using “Pipedream’s temperature-controlled delivery technology.” The customer can then grab their order from the kiosk without ever leaving their car. Apparently, the “first-of-its-kind delivery system” is designed so that drinks “are delivered without a spill and fries are always Hot & Crispy.”

[Related: What robots can and can’t do for a restaurant]

Wendy’s is far from the first company to try and use robots to streamline customer orders, though most go further than the parking lot. Starship operates a delivery service on 28 university campuses while Uber Eats is still trialing sidewalk delivery robots in Miami, Florida; Fairfax, Virginia; and Los Angeles, California. Whether these knee-height six-wheeled electric autonomous vehicles can graduate from school and make it into the real world remains to be seen.

The other big semi-autonomous delivery bets are aerial drones. Wing, a subsidiary of Google-parent Alphabet, unveiled a device called the Auto-Loader earlier this year. It also calls for a dedicated parking spot and aims to make it quicker and easier for staff at partner stores to attach deliveries to one of the company’s drones. 

What sets Wendy’s and Pipedream’s solution apart is that it all happens in a space that the restaurant controls. Starship, Uber Eats, and Wing are all trying to bring robots out into the wider world where they can get attacked by students, take out power lines, and otherwise have to deal with humans, street furniture, and the chaos of existence. Providing Wendy’s abides by building ordinances and any necessary health and safety laws, cost is the only stopping them adding tube-dwelling robots to every restaurant the company controls. Really, the option Wendy’s is trialing has more in common with a pneumatic tube system—hopefully it will be a bit more practical.

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Montana Governor Greg Gianforte signed a bill into law on Wednesday banning TikTok within the entire state, all-but-ensuring a legal, political, and sheer logistical battle over the popular social media platform’s usage and accessibility.

In a tweet on Wednesday, Gianforte claimed the new law is an effort to “protect Montanans’ personal and private data from the Chinese Communist Party.” Critics and security experts, however, argue the app’s blacklisting infringes on residents’ right to free speech, and would do little to actually guard individuals’ private data.

“This unconstitutional ban undermines the free speech and association of Montana TikTok users and intrudes on TikTok’s interest in disseminating its users’ videos,” the digital rights advocacy organization Electronic Frontier Foundation argued in a statement posted to Twitter,  calling the new law a “blatant violation of the First Amendment.”

[Related: Why some US lawmakers want to ban TikTok.]

According to the EFF and other advocacy groups, Montana’s TikTok ban won’t actually protect residents’ from companies and bad actors who can still scrape and subsequently monetize their private data. Instead, advocates repeated their urge for legislators to pass comprehensive data privacy laws akin to the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulations. Similar laws have passed in states like California, Colorado, and Utah, but continue to stall at the federal level.

“We want to reassure Montanans that they can continue using TikTok to express themselves, earn a living and find community as we continue working to defend the rights of our users inside and outside of Montana,”TikTok spokesperson Brooke Oberwetter stated on Wednesday.

Montana’s new law is primarily focused on TikTok’s accessibility via app stores from tech providers like Apple and Google, which are directed to block all downloads of the social media platform once the ban goes into effect at the beginning of 2024. Montanans are not subject to the $10,000 per day fine if they still access TikTok—rather, the penalty is levied at companies such as Google, Apple, and TikTok’s owner, ByteDance.

[Related: The best VPNs of 2023.]

That said, there is no clear or legal way to force Montanans to delete the app if it is already downloaded to their phones. Likewise, proxy services such as VPNs hypothetically could easily skirt the ban. As The Guardian noted on Thursday, the ability for Montana to actually enforce a wholesale ban on the app is ostensibly impossible, barring the state following censorship tactics used by nations such as China.

“With this ban, Governor Gianforte and the Montana legislature have trampled on the free speech of hundreds of thousands of Montanans who use the app to express themselves, gather information, and run their small business in the name of anti-Chinese sentiment,” Keegan Medrano, policy director at the ACLU of Montana, said in a statement. “We will never trade our First Amendment rights for cheap political points.”

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When you get used to multiple monitors it feels impossible to work without them. But these devices are not as portable as your trusty MacBook, so you should probably learn how to use your iPad as a second screen.

Thanks to a feature called Sidecar, iPads can mirror your laptop’s screen or act as an extension of it. And even if they’re not as big as your desktop monitor, Apple’s tablets are a lot easier to pack, so you can seamlessly take your work wherever you go.

First, make sure both devices are signed into the same iCloud account. Then, open the System Settings app on your Mac, which you can find by clicking the Apple logo in the top-left corner of your screen and then clicking System Settings. On the sidebar on the left, head to Displays, and if your iPad is nearby and turned on, it should show up here automatically. If it doesn’t, click the + (plus) button to the right of the display icons.

On the drop-down menu, under Mirror or extend to, choose your iPad’s name and then Extended display. This will effectively turn your tablet into an extension of your Mac’s screen, meaning you can just drag your windows on your computer over to your iPad.

Physically position your iPad where it’s most comfortable for you and click the Arrange button in the settings menu to make sure your virtual space reflects the device’s physical location in relation to your computer. Drag and drop the icons representing your devices into position if you need to make changes.

By default there will be a bar on the side and at the bottom of your iPad screen. The bar on the left that make it easier to control Mac apps using the touchscreen, while the bar at the bottom is a recreation of the interactive touch bar as seen on the MacBook Pro. If you prefer, you can turn both off by disabling the Show sidebar and Show Touch Bar options—you’ll get fewer on-screen functionalities, but gain more workspace, which is what it’s all about.

Among the free ones, our favorite is Splashtop Wired XDisplay, but as you’d imagine, setting things up is not as simple as on a Mac computer. First, download the app both on your iPad and your Windows device and open them. Continue by plugging your iPad into your computer and on your iPad, tap Trust to tell your tablet it’s OK to let Windows access your data.

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Shortly after CNN’s Town Hall with Donald Trump last week, the former president’s son tweeted a clearly manipulated 9-second video clip featuring an AI-generated vocal imitation of CNN anchor Anderson Cooper offering a vulgar compliment of the former president’s town hall performance. “I’m told this is real…,” wrote Donald Trump, Jr. “[I]t seems real and it’s surprisingly honest and accurate for CNN… but who knows these days.”

Despite a Twitter Community Note flagging the video as fake, one commenter replied “Real or not, it’s the truth just the same.”

Two days later, Trump re-upped the same altered clip to Truth Social, the alternative social media platform favored by his supporters. And while many replies on both Twitter and Truth Social appear to indicate users are largely aware of the clumsy parody, experts warn Trump’s multiple recent instances of embracing AI-generated content could sow confusion and chaos leading up to his bid for reelection in next year’s presidential campaign.

[Related: “This fictitious news show is entirely produced by AI and deepfakes” ]

“Manipulating reality for profit and politics not only erodes a healthy society, but it also shows that Trump has incredible disrespect for his own base, forget about others,” Patrick Lin, a professor of philosophy and director of California Polytechnic State University’s Ethics and Emerging Sciences Group, told PopSci. “It’s beyond ironic that he would promote so much fake news, while in the same breath accuse those who are reporting real facts of doing the same,” said Lin.

And there’s no indication the momentum behind AI content will slow—according to Bloomberg on Wednesday, multiple deepfake production studios have collectively raised billions of dollars in investments over the past year. 

Barely a month after Trump posted an AI-generated image of himself kneeling in prayer, the Republican National Committee released a 30-second ad featuring AI-created images of a dystopian America should President Biden be reelected.

“We’re not prepared for this,” A.J. Nash, vice president of intelligence at the cybersecurity firm ZeroFox told AP News over the weekend regarding the rise of audio and video deepfakes. “When you can do that on a large scale, and distribute it on social platforms, well, it’s going to have a major impact.”

According to Lin, the spread of AI-manipulated footage by a former president, even if done so jokingly, is a major cause for concern, and “should be a wake-up call that we need regulation of AI right now,” they say. To him, recent high-profile stories focused on AI’s theoretical existential threats to humanity are a distraction from the “clear and present dangers” of today’s generative AI, ranging “from discrimination to disinformation.”

Correction 05/19/23: A previous version of this article misattributed A.J. Nash’s comments to an interview with PBS, instead of with AP News.

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Months of painstaking work analyzing over 16 terabytes of imaging and 4K video data has resulted in the first full-sized 3D scan of the RMS Titanic’s stunning, sunken remains.

Per the BBC, specialists working for the deep-sea mapping company Magellan Ltd. began remotely piloting two deep sea submersibles during the summer of 2022. The pair of subs, Romeo and Juliet, collected over 700,000 images over the 3-mile wreckage site during their more than 200 hours of diving time. The results are renderings in such detail that they showcase one of the cruise liner propeller’s serial numbers alongside passengers’ shoes and bottles of unopened champagne.

[Related: How scientists keep ancient shipwrecks from crumbling into dust.]

Over 1,500 people died after the cruise liner struck an iceberg and sank into the frigid Atlantic Ocean waters during its 1912 maiden voyage from Southampton, UK, to New York. Numerous expeditions have surveyed the Titanic’s remains since its rediscovery in 1985, but until now the ocean’s pitch-black environment at 3,800m (12,500ft) coupled with the ship’s sheer size have only allowed murky glimpses and snapshots of wreckage.

Now, however, experts can begin studying the Titanic’s remnants with an entirely new level of detail and precision. In a statement, Parks Stephenson, a longtime Titanic researcher, explained, “What we are seeing for the first time is an accurate and true depiction of the entire wreck and debris site. I’m seeing details that none of us have ever seen before and this allows me to build upon everything that we have learned to date and see the wreck in a new light.”

According to Stephenson, despite knowing the disaster’s cause, we still aren’t sure what really happened when the ship hit the iceberg. “We don’t even know if she hit it along the starboard side, as is shown in all the movies—she might have grounded on the iceberg,” Stephenson told the BBC. Additionally, examining portions such as the ship’s stern could uncover the physics behind how the ship actually landed upon the sea floor.

[Related: Watch never-before-seen footage of the Titanic shipwreck from the 1980s.]

Time is of the essence for future visits to the Titanic’s remains, as microbial life continues to eat away at portions of the ship while other pieces disintegrate within the deep ocean’s hostile environment. But even so, the newest imagery will be an invaluable historical asset for researchers as they continue to learn from one of the 20th century’s most famous tragedies.

The 2022 expedition was detailed by a film crew working alongside Magellan Ltd. for Atlantic Productions, with plans to release a documentary on the project in the near future. 

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Google said this week that it would start deleting unused and abandoned accounts at the end of this year. In a blog post announcing an update to its inactive account policies, Ruth Kricheli, vice president of product management, explained that any accounts that haven’t been logged into or used in the previous two years were potentially in line for removal. 

Google is presenting the updated policy as a security decision. In the blog post, Kricheli wrote that, “if an account hasn’t been used for an extended period of time, it is more likely to be compromised. This is because forgotten or unattended accounts often rely on old or re-used passwords haven’t had two factor authentication set up, and receive fewer security checks by the user.” According to Google’s internal analysis, unused accounts are “at least 10x less likely” to have two-factor verification set up which makes them easier for malicious actors to hijack and then use for identity theft, to send spam, and more. 

As a result, Google is going to start deleting inactive accounts and their contents from Gmail, Google Docs, Google Drive, Google Meet, Google Calendar, and Google Photos no earlier than December, 2023. The company intends to take a phased approach and start by deleting accounts that were created but never used. Before an account is deleted, Google will send multiple notifications to the email address associated with it as well as any recovery email addresses.

[Related: All the products that Google has sent to the graveyard]

The new inactivity policy applies to any personal Google Accounts that haven’t been signed into or used in some way in the last two years. Accounts managed by a business or school are safe, at least for now, even if they aren’t currently active. 

It’s worth noting that the previous inactivity policy, announced in 2020, already allowed Google to delete the contents of any account that hadn’t been logged into for two years. The difference here is that the company may now delete the entire account, instead of just its content. According to 9to5Google, any deleted email addresses won’t be reassigned which nicely avoids the issues plaguing Twitter’s recently trial-ballooned username reassignment plan. The accounts will just permanently stop working. 

There are also another few edge cases and caveats to note. Google Photos has its own two-year inactivity rules. To keep your photos from being deleted, you need to log into the service separately. Logging into your Google account will keep it active, but you may still lose your photos. 

9to5Google reports that accounts with YouTube videos are also safe, at least for the time being, because deleting them “would be tricky as some old abandoned clips might have historical relevance.” Similarly, accounts that are signed into Android devices are considered active, as are any with an ongoing subscription to Google One or third-party apps. 

The wording of the whole announcement seems to suggests that Google either hasn’t finalized the process and policies, or that it is keeping things relatively secret for security reasons. Either way, keeping your account active is relatively easy. All you have to do is sign in and perform some basic actions, like reading or sending an email, watching a YouTube video, using Google Search, or logging into a third-party service. 

Kricheli also uses the announcement to recommend that Google users create a backup plan for their account and its contents. You can set up a recovery email, so that you can reclaim you account if you forget their password or otherwise lose access to it. If you no longer use an account, the Takeout feature allows you to download all your data and export it to another platform. 

Finally, there is a Google feature called the Inactive Account Manager that allows you to specify what happens if you don’t sign into your account for 18 months. You can set up a Gmail autoresponder, send specific files to chosen contacts, or delete your account entirely. It’s designed so that if something bad happens to you, you have control over what happens to the (potentially meaningful) contents of your account. 

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Nothing in this life is free, especially a “free” 55-inch television. On Monday, a new startup called Telly announced plans to provide half-a-million smart TVs to consumers free-of-charge. But there’s a catch—underneath the sizable 4K HDR primary screen and accompanying five-driver soundbar is a second, smaller screen meant to constantly display advertisements alongside other widgets like stock prices and weather forecasts. The tradeoff for a constant stream of Pizza Hut offers and car insurance deals, therefore, is a technically commercial-free streaming experience. Basically, it swaps out commercial breaks for a steady montage of pop-up ads.

Whether or not this kind of entertainment experience is for you is a matter of personal preference, but be forewarned: Even after agreeing to a constant barrage of commercials, Telly’s “free” televisions make sure they pay for themselves through what appears to be an extremely lax, potentially litigious privacy policy.

[Related: FTC sues data broker for selling information, including abortion clinic visits.]

As first highlighted by journalist Shoshana Wodinsky and subsequently boosted by TechCrunch on Tuesday, Telly’s original privacy fine print apparently was a typo-laden draft featuring editorial comments asking “Do wehave [sic] to say we will delete the information or is there another way around…,” discarding children’s personal data.

According to a statement provided to TechCrunch from Telly’s chief strategy officer Dallas Lawrence, the questions within the concerning, since-revised policy draft “appear a bit out of context,” and there’s a perfectly logical explanation to it:

“The team was unclear about how much time we had to delete any data we may inadvertently capture on children under 13,” wrote Lawrence, who added, “The term ‘quickly as possible’ that was included in the draft language seemed vague and undetermined and needing [sic] further clarification from a technical perspective.”

[Related: This app helped police plan raids. Hackers just made the data public.]

But even without the troubling wording, Telly’s privacy policy also discloses it collects such information as names, email addresses, phone numbers, ages, genders, ethnicities, and precise geolocations. At one point, the policy stated it may collect data pertaining to one’s “sex life or sexual orientation,” although TechCrunch notes this stipulation has since been “quietly removed” from its privacy policy.

User data troves are often essential to tech companies’ financials, as they can be sold to any number of third-parties for lucrative sums of money. Most often, this information is used to build extremely detailed consumer profiles to customize ad experiences, but there are numerous instances of data caches being provided to law enforcement agencies without users’ knowledge, alongside various hacker groups and bad actors regularly obtaining the personal information.

Telly is still taking reservations for its “free” smart TVs, but as the old adage goes: Buyer beware. And even when you’re not technically “buying” it, you’re certainly paying for it.

The post Read the fine print before signing up for a free Telly smart TV appeared first on Popular Science.

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Adobe has been building artificial intelligence into applications like Photoshop for several years now. But Lightroom Classic, another of the company’s image editing programs, also features AI tools to quickly improve the look of your photos.

Underpinning it all is Adobe’s mighty AI muscle, trained on huge libraries of stock and publicly available images to generate new pictures. This means Lightroom Classic knows what a sky or a person looks like in a photo, and can make changes accordingly.

You can now use AI to pick out backgrounds, subjects, skies, and objects: Just click the Masking icon on the right (it looks like a circle inside a dash-lined square) and pick Subject, Sky, Background, or Objects. You’ll also be able to choose Brush for more precise control over where your selection goes.

The program will shade the new masked selection in red and you’ll be able to manipulate it as needed. For example, if you selected the sky, you’ll be able to tweak the brightness and contrast to make your photo appear sunnier. The Masks window, which will pop up on the right of your screen when you select something,  is where you can switch between your masks, create new ones, and delete them. Just click the three dots next to each item to see a full set of options.

Use the sliders that pop up underneath the tool when you click it to change the size and opacity of the brush, and paint over the object you’d like to remove. Once you finish your selection, the program will get to work. Lightroom Classic automatically chooses which parts of the background to sample to replace the deleted object, but you can use Ctrl+click (Windows) or Cmd+click (macOS) to specify a particular area, such as a blue sky.

This works just like the Tone Curve tool, but it only applies to the area of the picture under the mask. Along the top of the panel you’ll see selectors for the red, green, and blue channels—use them for more precise adjustments.

Choose Photo,  Enhance, and then check the Denoise option so that the AI can work its magic. The slider underneath the tool’s icon lets you control how aggressive it is—you can check the preview panel on the left to see the difference before you commit any changes. When you’re happy with the level of denoising, click Enhance to confirm your choice.

To find them, go to the Presets dialog box on the left and click on the small arrows right next to it to see the full list of Adaptive Presets. For example, you can select Storm Clouds to add a bit of drama to the sky or Enhance Eyes to highlight the peers in a portrait.

Open up the Masks window via Tools and Masking to see the mask that Lightroom Classic’s AI created to apply the effect. You can edit this mask as any other, allowing you to use the brush tool to change the outline of the selection the program has come up with, for example.

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It’s easy to run a full factory reset on a Windows 10 or 11 computer, but the risk of losing all your files is viscerally real. To avoid devastating data loss, you’ll need to prepare ahead of time and choose the right options before you give your device a fresh start.

The two best reasons to completely reset a laptop or desktop are to fix catastrophic performance issues or wipe it as clean as possible before selling, donating, or otherwise disposing of the device. If you’re considering a factory reset as a method of repair, make sure you’ve exhausted your troubleshooting options, especially if there are no other problems with your computer other than it being slow and/or hot.

It’s also worth noting that while a factory reset is the most dramatic version of a reset you can do, you’re not required to go that far. When you reset a computer to its factory settings, you’re essentially installing a clean version of the operating system—everything will disappear except for the files and apps your PC’s manufacturer preinstalled on the device. Windows, however, offers a number of options that allow you to keep personal data, settings, and apps intact throughout the reset. It’s a custom process, so make sure you use the settings that best suit your needs.

First, back up your files

Although a reset won’t necessarily clear everything off your laptop or desktop, it’s best to back up everything you want to keep before you proceed. Everyone has their own preferred file storage methods, but if you’re looking for tips, you can start with our basic backup guide.

One important piece of advice: If you know or suspect your computer has been infected with malware, be very careful about what you back up. Don’t just snag all the folders you can see—take some time to ensure you actually recognize the files. You wouldn’t want to back up a virus and reinfect your newly reset device.

Finally, make sure your computer is plugged in—Windows won’t reset if it’s running on battery power.

1. Open the reset options. The easiest way to find these is to click the Windows 10 Start menu, go to Settings (the cog icon), and select Update & Security followed by Recovery. Once you’re there, find Reset this PC and hit Get Started.

• On Windows 11, the steps are slightly different: Start menu > Settings (cog icon) > System > Recovery > Reset this PC > Reset PC.
• On versions of Windows 10 prior to version 2004 (released in 2020), you’ll need to follow these steps: Start > Settings > Update & security > Windows Defender > Device performance & health > Fresh Start > Additional info > Get Started.

If for some reason you can’t access your computer settings, you can also reset a laptop or desktop from its sign-in screen. To force your Windows 10 or 11 computer to display the login screen, press Win+L to lock your computer. Then click the power button icon in the bottom right corner of the screen (not your computer’s physical power button), hold Shift, and click Restart on the emerging menu. This will open the Windows Recovery Environment. From the Choose an option screen, pick Troubleshoot and Reset this PC.

[Related: When to repair your computer and when to replace it]

2. Decide how much you want to keep or remove. The next screen will offer you two options: to keep or remove your files, apps, and settings. No matter which one you pick, you may also need to choose whether Windows reinstalls from the cloud (Cloud download) or your device (Local reinstall).

• Keep my files. If Windows asks, choose whether you want your files to be saved in the cloud or on your local drive. By default, this option will restore all apps and settings that came with the PC when it was brand new—a complete factory reset. To avoid that and keep only what you had most recently, hit Change settings and turn the toggle switch under Restore preinstalled apps? to No, then hit Confirm. If you don’t see those additional options, your computer didn’t have any preinstalled apps.
• Remove everything. As you may have guessed, this will reinstall Windows 10 or 11 and remove your personal files, apps you and your PC manufacturer installed, and reset any changes you made to your computer’s settings.
  • Once you select this, you can also hit the Change settings link to decide exactly how clean you want your device to be (there’s a Yes/No toggle switch under a Clean data? heading—choose one and hit Confirm to lock it in). Cleaning the drive could take a couple hours but Microsoft recommends it if you plan to get rid of your PC—doing so will make it harder for people to recover anything. Otherwise, you can opt not to clean your data, which will be faster but less secure. The company also notes that this type of data erasure is aimed at consumers and doesn’t meet government or industry standards, so someone with enough expertise and resources might still be able to restore some of your data.

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Navy SEALs have a well-earned reputation as an amphibious force. The special operations teams, whose acronym derives from “Sea, Air and Land,” are trained to operate from a range of vehicles, departing as needed to carry out missions through water, in the sky, or on the ground. When deploying covertly in the ocean, SEALs have for decades taken the SEAL Delivery Vehicle, a flooded transport in which the crew ride submerged and immersed in ocean water.  Now, Special Operations Command says the new enclosed submarine—in other words, it’s dry inside—should be ready for operation before the end of May.

This new submarine, in contrast to the open-water SEAL Delivery Vehicle, is called the Dry Combat Submersible. It’s been in the works since at least 2016, and was designed as a replacement for a previous enclosed transport submarine, the Advanced SEAL Delivery System. This previous advanced sub, developed in the early 2000s, was canceled after a prototype caught fire in 2008. That, compounded by cost overruns in the program, halted development on the undersea vehicle. It also came at a time when SEALs were operating largely on land and through the air, as part of the increased operational tempo of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. 

But now, it appears to be full-steam ahead for the Dry Combat Submersible. The news was confirmed at the SOF [Special Operations Forces] Week conference in Tampa, Florida, which ran from May 8 through 11. The convention is a place for Special Operations Forces from across the military to talk shop, meet with vendors selling new and familiar tools, and gather as a chattering class of silent professionals. It is also, like the Army, Navy, and Air Force association conventions, a place for the military to announce news directly relevant to those communities.

“This morning we received an operational test report. So that means the Dry Combat Submersible is going to be operational by Memorial Day, and we’re coming to an end scenario,” John Conway, undersea program manager at SOCOM’s program executive office-maritime, said on May 10, as reported by National Defense Magazine.

The flooded submersible in use today allows four SEALs and two drivers, clad in wetsuits, to travel undetected under the surface of the water several miles. With just the driver and navigator, the craft can traverse 36 nautical miles at 4 knots, a journey taking nine hours. With the four SEALs, the distance is limited, not just by the weight of passengers and their gear, but by the conditions of the submersible itself.

“Because the SEALs are exposed to the environment water temperature can be a more limiting factor than battery capacity,” wrote Christopher J. Kelly, in a 1998 study of the submarine in joint operations.

When Lockheed Martin announced in 2016 that it would be manufacturing Dry Combat Submersibles, it offered no specifics on the vehicle other than that it would weigh more than 30 tons and be capable of launch from surface ships. (The current SEAL Delivery Vehicle is launched from larger submarines.) The Dry Combat Submersible, at announcement, promised “longer endurance and operate at greater depths than swimmer delivery vehicles (SDV) in use,” the ability to travel long distances underwater, and an overall setup that “allows the personnel to get closer to their destination before they enter the water, and be more effective upon arrival.”

Concept art for the vehicle showed a passenger capacity of at least nine, though it would still be a fairly compact ride. The S351 Nemesis, made by MSubs, who has partnered with Lockheed Martin on this project, and is the likely basis for the Dry Combat Submersible. As listed, the Nemesis has a capacity for eight passengers and one pilot. The nemesis can travel as far as 66 nautical miles, and do so at a speed of 5 knots, or make the journey in 13 hours. 

Once in the Navy’s hands, the new submersible will ensure better starts to operations for SEALs, who can arrive at missions having only briefly donned wetsuits, instead of dealing with the fullness of the ocean for hours.

As the Pentagon shifts focus from terrestrial counter-insurgencies to the possibility of major power war, especially in and over the islands of the Pacific, the Dry Combat Submersible will expand how its SEALs can operate. It’s a lot of effort for a relatively small part of the overall military, but the precise application of specialized forces can have an outsized impact on the course of subsequent operations, from harbor clearing to covert action behind fortified lines. 

The post Navy SEALs will finally stay dry in a cozy new submarine appeared first on Popular Science.

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A golden, tissue box-sized satellite has set a new record for the fastest data transfer rate ever achieved by orbital laser light communications—breaking its own previous milestone set less than a year ago. According to a recent announcement from NASA, the agency’s TeraByte InfraRed Delivery (TBIRD) system achieved a 200 gigabit per second (Gbps) space-to-ground optical link speed on April 28 during a six-minute pass high above its corresponding ground station.

Within that time frame, NASA estimates TBIRD can transmit multiple terabytes of test data back to Earth. That’s equivalent to thousands of hours of HD video data. “This capability will change the way we communicate in space,” said Beth Keer, TBIRD’s mission manager at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.

[Related: NASA’s newest office is all about putting humans on Mars.]

Since 1958, radio waves have transmitted the majority of all space communications via the Deep Space Network, a global antenna array capable of sending and receiving information for satellites and astronaut crews. As NASA explains, switching to “ultra-high-speed” optical communications crams more data into each lasers’ infrared light waves that are invisible to the naked eye. This alternative—as showcased in TBIRD’s recent record breaking demonstrations—will prove vital to future space research and exploration, particularly as humans look to return to the moon, and eventually attempt to make their way to Mars.

The TBIRD system was first delivered into space last year via NASA’s Pathfinder Technology Demonstrator 3 (PTD-3) as a tiny satellite (also known as a CubeSat) roughly the size of two stacked cereal boxes. CubeSats are popular for both their relative simplicity and cost-effectiveness. After launching aboard SpaceX’s Transporter-5 rideshare mission in May 2022, PTD-3 synchronized with the Earth’s solar orbit so that the CubeSat entered a “fixed” position relative to the sun. Once established, the TBIRD satellite could begin transmitting data twice a day as it passed over its space-to-ground command center link. Within less than a year, its capabilities have broken records twice over.

[Related: This tiny, trailblazing satellite is taking on a big moon mission.]

“Just imagine the power of space science instruments when they can be designed to fully take advantage of the advancements in detector speeds and sensitivities, furthering what artificial intelligence can do with huge amounts of data,” Kerr added. “Laser communications is the missing link that will enable the science discoveries of the future.”

The post A tiny NASA CubeSat just set a big data speed record with lasers appeared first on Popular Science.

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Formula 1, a 70-year old motorsport, has recently undergone a cultural renaissance. That renaissance has been fueled in large part by the growing popularity of the glitzy, melodrama-filled Netflix reality series, “Drive To Survive,” which Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff once said was closer to the fictional “Top Gun” than a documentary. Relaxed social media rules after F1 changed owners also helped provide a look into the interior lives of drivers-turned-new-age-celebrities. 

As a result, there’s been an explosion of interest among US audiences, which means more eyeballs and more ticket sales. Delving into the highly technical world of F1 can be daunting, so here are the basics to know about the design of the sport—plus an inside look at the complex web of communications and computer science at work behind the scenes. 

Data and a new era of F1

Increasingly, Formula 1 has become a data-driven sport; this becomes evident when you look into the garages of modern F1 teams. 

“It started really around 60, 70 years ago with just a guy with a stopwatch, figuring out which was the fastest lap—to this day and age, having every car equipped with sensors that generate around 1.1 million data points each second,” says Luuk Figdor, principal sports tech advisor with Amazon Web Services (AWS), which is a technology partner for F1. “There’s a huge amount of data that’s being created, and that’s per car.” Part of AWS’ job is to put this data in a format that is understandable not only to experts, but also to viewers at home, with features like F1 Insights.

There was a time where cars had unreliable radios, and engineers could only get data on race performance at the very end. Now, things look much more different. Every car is able to send instantaneous updates on steering, G-force, speed, fuel usage, engine and tire status, gear status and much more. Around the track itself, there are more accurate ways for teams to get GPS data on the car positions, weather data, and timing data. 

“This is data from certain sensors that are drilled into the track before the race and there’s also a transponder in the car,” Figdor explains. “And whenever the car passes the sensor, it sends a signal. Based on those signals you can calculate how long it took for a car to pass a certain section of the track.” 

These innovations have made racing more competitive over the years, and made the margins in speed between some of the cars much closer. Fractions of seconds can divide cars coming in first or second place.

F1 101

For newbies, here’s a quick refresher on the rules of the game. Twenty international drivers from 10 teams compete for two championships: the Driver’s Championship and the Constructors’ Championship.

Pre-season testing starts in late February, and racing spans from March to November. There are 20 or so races at locations around the world, and each race is around 300 km (186 miles), which equals 50 to 70 laps (except for the Monaco circuit, which is shorter). Drivers get points for finishing high in the order—those who place 10th or below get no points. Individuals with the highest points win the Driver’s Championship, and teams with the highest points win the Constructors’ Championship. 

A good car is as essential for winning as a good driver. And an assortment of engineers are crucial for ensuring that both the driver and the car are performing at their best. In addition to steering and shifting gears, drivers can control many other settings like engine power and brake balance. Races are rain or shine, but special tires are often required for wet roads. Every team is required to build certain elements of their car, including the chassis, from scratch (they are allowed to buy engines from other suppliers). The goal is to have a car with low air resistance, high speed, low fuel consumption, and good grip on the track. Most cars can reach speeds of around 200 mph. Certain engineering specifications create the downward lift needed to keep the cars on the ground. 

Technical regulations from the FIA contain rules about how the cars can be built—what’s allowed and not allowed. Rules can change from season to season, and teams tend to refresh their designs each year. Every concept undergoes thorough aerodynamic and road testing, and modifications can be made during the season. 

The scene backstage before a race weekend

It’s the Thursday before the second-ever Miami Grand Prix. In true Florida fashion, it’s sweltering. The imposing Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens has been transformed into a temporary F1 campus in preparation for race weekend, with the race track wrapping around the central arena and its connected lots like a metal-guarded moat. Bridges take visitors in and out of the stadium. The football field that is there normally has been turned into a paddock park, where the 10 teams have erected semi-permanent buildings that act as their hubs during the week. 

Setting up everything the 10 teams need ahead of the competition is a whole production. Some might even call it a type of traveling circus. 

Ed Green, head of commercial technology for McLaren, greets me in the team’s temporary building in the paddock park. He’s wearing a short-sleeved polo in signature McLaren orange, as is everyone else walking around or sitting in the space. Many team members are also sporting what looks like a Fitbit, likely part of the technology partnership they have with Google. The partnership means that the team will also use Android connected devices and equipment—including phones, tablets and earbuds—as well as the different capabilities provided by Chrome. 

McLaren has developed plenty of custom web applications for Formula 1. “We don’t buy off-the-shelf too much, in the past two years, a lot of our strategy has moved to be on web apps,” Green says. “We’ve developed a lot into Chrome, so the team have got really quick, instant access…so if you’re on the pit wall looking at weather data and video systems, you could take that with you on your phone, or onto the machines back in the engineering in the central stadium.” 

This season, there are 23 races. This structure that’s been built is their hub for flyaway races, or races that they can’t drive to from the factory. The marketing, the engineers, the team hospitality, and the drivers all share the hub. The important points in space—the paddock, garage, and race track—are linked up through fiber optic cables. 

“This is sort of the furthest point from the garage that we have to keep connected on race weekend,” Green says. “They’ll be doing all the analysis of all the information, the systems, from the garage.”

To set up this infrastructure so it’s ready to transmit and receive data in time for when the cars hit the track, an early crew of IT personnel have to arrive the Saturday before to run the cabling, and get the basics in order. Then, the wider IT team arrives on Wednesday, and it’s a mad scramble to get the rest of what they need stood up so that by Thursday lunchtime, they can start running radio checks and locking everything down. 

“We fly with our IT rig, and that’s because of the cost and complexity of what’s inside it. So we have to bring that to every race track with us,” says Green. The path to and from the team hub to the garages involves snaking in and out of corridors, long hallways and lobbies under the stadium. As we enter McLaren’s garage, we first come across a wall of headsets, each with a name label underneath, including the drivers and each of their race engineers. This is how members of the team stay in contact with one another. 

The garage, with its narrow hallway, opens in one direction into the pit. Here you can see the two cars belonging to McLaren drivers Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri being worked on by engineers, with garage doors that open onto the race track. The two cars are suspended in various states of disassembly, with mechanics examining and tweaking them like surgeons at an operating table. The noise of drilling, whirring, and miscellaneous clunking fills the space. There are screens everywhere, running numbers and charts. One screen has the local track time, a second is running a countdown clock until curfew tonight. During the race, it will post video feeds from the track and the drivers, along with social media feeds. 

We step onto a platform viewing area overlooking the hubbub. On the platform, there are two screens: one shows the mission control room back in England, and the other shows a diagram of the race circuit as a circle. “We look at the race as a circle, and that’s because it helps us see the gaps between the cars in time,” Green says. “Looking through the x, y, z coordinates is useful but actually they bunch up in the corners. Engineers like to see gaps in distances.” 

“This is sort of home away from home for the team. This is where we set up our garage and move our back office central services as well as engineering,” he notes. “We’re still in construction.”

From Miami to mission control in Woking

During race weekend, the mission control office in England, where McLaren is based, has about 32 people who are talking to the track in near real time. “We’re running just over 100 milliseconds from here in Miami back to base in Woking. They will get all the data feeds coming from these cars,” Green explains. “If you look at the team setting up the cars, you will see various sensors on the underside of the car. There’s an electronic control unit that sits under the car. It talks to us as the cars go around track. That’s regulated by the FIA. We cannot send information to the car but we can receive information from the car. Many, many years ago that wasn’t possible.”

For the Miami Grand Prix, Green estimates that McLaren will have about 300 sensors on each car for pressure taps (to measure airflow), temperature reading, speed checks across the car, and more. “There’s an enormous amount of information to be seen,” Green says. “From when we practice, start racing, to when we finish the race, we generate just about 1.5 terabytes of information from these two cars. So it’s a huge amount of information.” 

[Related: Inside the search for the best way to save humanity’s data]

Because the data comes in too quickly for any one person to handle, machine learning algorithms and neural networks in the loop help engineers spot patterns or irregularities. These software help package the information into a form that can be used to make decisions like when a car should switch tires, push up their speed, stay out, or make a pit stop. 

“It’s such a data-driven sport, and everything we do is founded on data in the decision-making, making better use of digital twins, which has been part of the team for a long time,” Green says. Digital twins are virtual models of objects that are based off of scanned information. They’re useful for running simulations. 

Throughout the race weekend, McLaren will run around 200 simulations to explore different scenarios such as what would happen if the safety car came out to clear debris from a crash, or if it starts raining. “We’ve got an incredibly smart team, but when you have to make a decision in three seconds, you’ve got to have human-in-the-loop technology to feed you what comes next as well,” Green says. “It’s a lot of fun.” 

[Related: Can software really define a vehicle? Renault and Google are betting on it.]

Improved computing resources and better simulation technology has helped change the sport as a whole too. Not only does it reduce the cost of testing design options (important because of the new cost cap rule that puts a ceiling on how much teams are allowed to spend on designing and building their cars), it also informs new rules for racing.  

“One of the things pre-2022, the way that the cars were designed resulted in the fact it was really hard to follow another car closely. And this is because of the aerodynamics of the car,” Figdor says. When a car zooms down the track, it distorts the air behind it. It’s like how a speedboat disrupts the water it drives through. And if you try to follow a speedboat with another speedboat in the lake, you will find that it’s quite tricky. 

“The same thing happens with Formula 1 cars,” says Figdor. “What they did in 2022 is they came up with new regulations around the design of the car that should make it easier for cars to follow each other closely on the track.”

That was possible because F1 and AWS were able to create and run realistic, and relatively fast simulations more formally called “two-car Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) aerodynamic simulations” that were able to measure the effects of various cars with different designs following each other in a virtual wind tunnel. “Changing regulations like that, you have to be really sure of what you’re doing. And using technology, you can just estimate many more scenarios at just a fraction of the cost,” Figdor says. 

Making sure there’s not too many engineers in the garage

The pit wall bordering the race track may be the best seat in the house, but the engineering island is one of the most important. It sits inside the garage, cramped between the two cars. Engineers from both sides of the garage will have shared resources there to look at material reliability and car performance. The engineering island is connected to the pit wall and also to a stack of servers and an IT tower tucked away in a corner of the garage. The IT tower, which has 140 terabytes of storage, 4.5 terabytes of memory, 172 logical processors, and many many batteries, keeps the team in communication with the McLaren Technology Center.  

All the crew on the ground in Miami, about 80 engineers, make up around 10 percent of the McLaren team. It’s just the tip of the iceberg. The team of engineers at large work in three umbrella categories: design, build, and race. 

[Related: Behind the wheel of McLaren’s hot new hybrid supercar, the Artura]

The design team will use computers to mock up parts in ways that make them lighter, more structurally sound, or give more performance. “Material design is part of that, you’ll have aerodynamicists looking at how the car’s performing,” says Green. Then, the build team will take the 3D designs, and flatten them into a pattern. They’ll bring out rolls of carbon fiber that they store in a glass chiller, cut out the pattern, laminate it, bind different parts together, and put it into a big autoclave or oven. As part of that build process, a logistics team will take that car and send it out to the racetrack and examine how it drives. 

Formula 1 cars can change dramatically from the first race of the season to the last. 

“If you were to do nothing to the car that wins the first race, it’s almost certain to come last at the end of the season,” Green says. “You’ve got to be constantly innovating. Probably about 18 percent of the car changed from when we launched it in February to now. And when we cross that line in Abu Dhabi, probably 80 percent of the car will change.” 

There’s a rotating roster of engineers at the stadium and in the garage on different days of race week. “People have got very set disciplines and you also hear that on the radio as well. It’s the driver’s engineers that are going to listen to everything and they’re going to be aware of how the car’s set up,” Green says. “But you have some folks in aerodynamics on Friday, Saturday, particularly back in Woking. That’s so important now in modern F1—how you set the car up, the way the air is performing—so you can really over-index and make sure you’ve got more aerodynamic expertise in the room.”

The scene on Sunday

On race day, the makeup of engineers is a slightly different blend. There are more specialists focused on competitor intelligence, analysis, and strategy insight. Outside of speed, the data points they are really interested in are related to the air pressures and the air flows over the car. 

“Those things are really hard to measure and a lot of energy goes into understanding that. Driver feedback is also really important, so we try to correlate that feedback here,” Green says. “The better we are at correlating the data from our virtual wind tunnel, our physical wind tunnel, the manufacturing parts, understanding how they perform on the car, the quicker we can move through the processes and get upgrades to the car. Aerodynamics is probably at the moment the key differentiator between what teams are doing.” 

As technology advances, and partners work on more interesting products in-house, some of the work is sure to translate over to F1. Green says that there are some exciting upcoming projects looking at if Google could help them apply speech-to-text software to transcribe driver radios from other teams during the races—work that’s currently being done by human volunteers.

The post An inside look at the data powering McLaren’s F1 team appeared first on Popular Science.

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Rumors of a free national tax e-filing service have surfaced repeatedly over the past couple years, and it sounds like the US could be one step closer to making it a reality. As The Washington Post first reported on Monday, the IRS plans to test a digital tax filing prototype with a small group of Americans at the onset of the 2024 tax season—but just how much of your biometric data is needed to use the service remains to be seen.

Although the IRS offers a Free File system for people below a certain income level (roughly 70 percent of the population), the Government Accountability Office estimates less than three percent of US tax filers actually utilize the service. The vast majority of Americans instead rely on third-party filing programs, either in the form of online services like Intuit TurboTax and H&R Block, or via third-party CPAs. The $11 billion private tax filing industry has come under intense scrutiny and subsequent litigation in recent years for allegedly misleading consumers away from free filing options to premium services. Last November, an investigation into multiple major third-party tax filing services’ data privacy policies revealed the companies previously provided sensitive personal data to Facebook via its Meta Pixel tracking code.

[Related: Major tax-filing sites routinely shared users’ financial info with Facebook.]

According to The Washington Post’s interviews with anonymous sources familiar with the situation, the IRS is developing the program alongside the White House’s technology consulting agency, the US Digital Service. A dedicated universal free filing portal would add the US to the list of nations that already provide similar options, including Australia, Chile, and Estonia.

Last year, the IRS found itself facing a barrage of criticisms after announcing, then walking back, a new policy that would have required US citizens to submit a selfie via ID.me to access their tax information. ID.me is a third-party verification service used extensively by state and federal organizations, as well as private companies for proofing, authentication and group affiliations via a combination of photo uploads and video chat confirmations. Using ID.me is currently one of multiple verification options for the IRS. It is unclear if such a process will be mandatory within a future federal free filing portal. Both the IRS and the US Treasury Department have not responded to requests for clarification at the time of writing.

The post A free IRS e-filing tax service could start rolling out next year appeared first on Popular Science.

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This story was first published on June 3, 2013. It covered the most up-to-date technology in bomb detection at the time, with a focus on research based off canine olfaction. Today, dogs still hold an edge to chemical sensors with their noses: They’ve even been trained to sniff out bed bugs, the coronavirus, and homemade explosives like HMTDs.

IT’S CHRISTMAS SEASON at the Quintard Mall in Oxford, Alabama, and were it not a weekday morning, the tiled halls would be thronged with shoppers, and I’d probably feel much weirder walking past Victoria’s Secret with TNT in my pants. The explosive is harmless in its current form—powdered and sealed inside a pair of four-ounce nylon pouches tucked into the back pockets of my jeans—but it’s volatile enough to do its job, which is to attract the interest of a homeland defender in training by the name of Suge.

Suge is an adolescent black Labrador retriever in an orange DO NOT PET vest. He is currently a pupil at Auburn University’s Canine Detection Research Institute and comes to the mall once a week to practice for his future job: protecting America from terrorists by sniffing the air with extreme prejudice.

Olfaction is a canine’s primary sense. It is to him what vision is to a human, the chief input for data. For more than a year, the trainers at Auburn have honed that sense in Suge to detect something very explicit and menacing: molecules that indicate the presence of an explosive, such as the one I’m carrying.

The TNT powder has no discernible scent to me, but to Suge it has a very distinct chemical signature. He can detect that signature almost instantly, even in an environment crowded with thousands of other scents. Auburn has been turning out the world’s most highly tuned detection dogs for nearly 15 years, but Suge is part of the school’s newest and most elite program. He is a Vapor Wake dog, trained to operate in crowded public spaces, continuously assessing the invisible vapor trails human bodies leave in their wake.

Unlike traditional bomb-sniffing dogs, which are brought to a specific target—say, a car trunk or a suspicious package—the Vapor Wake dog is meant to foil a particularly nasty kind of bomb, one carried into a high traffic area by a human, perhaps even a suicidal one. In busy locations, searching individuals is logistically impossible, and fixating on specific suspects would be a waste of time. Instead, a Vapor Wake dog targets the ambient air.

As the bombing at the Boston marathon made clear, we need dogs—and their noses. As I approach the mall’s central courtyard, where its two wings of chain stores intersect, Suge is pacing back and forth at the end of a lead, nose in the air. At first, I walk toward him and then swing wide to feign interest in a table covered with crystal curios. When Suge isn’t looking, I walk past him at a distance of about 10 feet, making sure to hug the entrance of Bath & Body Works, conveniently the most odoriferous store in the entire mall. Within seconds, I hear the clattering of the dog’s toenails on the hard tile floor behind me.

As Suge struggles at the end of his lead (once he’s better trained, he’ll alert his handler to threats in a less obvious manner), I reach into my jacket and pull out a well-chewed ball on a rope—his reward for a job well done—and toss it over my shoulder. Christmas shoppers giggle at the sight of a black Lab chasing a ball around a mall courtyard, oblivious that had I been an actual terrorist, he would have just saved their lives.

That Suge can detect a small amount of TNT at a distance of 10 feet in a crowded mall in front of a shop filled with scented soaps, lotions, and perfumes is an extraordinary demonstration of the canine’s olfactory ability. But what if, as a terrorist, I’d spotted Suge from a distance and changed my path to avoid him? And what if I’d chosen to visit one of the thousands of malls, train stations, and subway platforms that don’t have Vapor Wake dogs on patrol?

Dogs may be the most refined scent-detection devices humans have, a technology in development for 10,000 years or more, but they’re hardly perfect. Graduates of Auburn’s program can cost upwards of $30,000. They require hundreds of hours of training starting at birth. There are only so many trainers and a limited supply of purebred dogs with the right qualities for detection work. Auburn trains no more than a couple of hundred a year, meaning there will always be many fewer dogs than there are malls or military units. Also, dogs are sentient creatures. Like us, they get sleepy; they get scared; they die. Sometimes they make mistakes.

As the tragic bombing at the Boston Marathon made all too clear, explosives remain an ever-present danger, and law enforcement and military personnel need dogs—and their noses—to combat them. But it also made clear that security forces need something in addition to canines, something reliable, mass-producible, and easily positioned in a multitude of locations. In other words, they need an artificial nose.

IN 1997, DARPA created a program to develop just such a device, targeted specifically to land mines. No group was more aware than the Pentagon of the pervasive and existential threat that explosives represent to troops in the field, and it was becoming increasingly apparent that the need for bomb detection extended beyond the battlefield. In 1988, a group of terrorists brought down Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people. In 1993, Ramzi Yousef and Eyad Ismoil drove a Ryder truck full of explosives into the underground garage at the World Trade Center in New York, nearly bringing down one tower. And in 1995, Timothy McVeigh detonated another Ryder truck full of explosives in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168. The “Dog’s Nose Program,” as it was called, was deemed a national security priority.

Over the course of three years, scientists in the program made the first genuine headway in developing a device that could “sniff” explosives in ambient air rather than test for them directly. In particular, an MIT chemist named Timothy Swager honed in on the idea of using fluorescent polymers that, when bound to molecules given off by TNT, would turn off, signaling the presence of the chemical. The idea eventually developed into a handheld device called Fido, which is still widely used today in the hunt for IEDs (many of which contain TNT). But that’s where progress stalled.

Olfaction, in the most reductive sense, is chemical detection. In animals, molecules bind to receptors that trigger a signal that’s sent to the brain for interpretation. In machines, scientists typically use mass spectrometry in lieu of receptors and neurons. Most scents, explosives included, are created from a specific combination of molecules. To reproduce a dog’s nose, scientists need to detect minute quantities of those molecules and identify the threatening combinations. TNT was relatively easy. It has a high vapor pressure, meaning it releases abundant molecules into the air. That’s why Fido works. Most other common explosives, notably RDX (the primary component of C-4) and PETN (in plastic explosives such as Semtex), have very low vapor pressures—parts per trillion at equilibrium and once they’re loose in the air perhaps even parts per quadrillion.

The machine “sniffed” just as a dog would and identified the explosive molecules. “That was just beyond the capabilities of any instrumentation until very recently,” says David Atkinson, a senior research scientist at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, in Richland, Washington. A gregarious, slightly bearish man with a thick goatee, Atkinson is the co-founder and “perpetual co-chair” of the annual Workshop on Trace Explosives Detection. In 1988, he was a PhD candidate at Washington State University when Pan Am Flight 103 went down. “That was the turning point,” he says. “I’ve spent the last 20 years helping to keep explosives off airplanes.” He might at last be on the verge of a solution.

When I visit him in mid-January, Atkinson beckons me into a cluttered lab with a view of the Columbia River. At certain times of the year, he says he can see eagles swooping in to poach salmon as they spawn. “We’re going to show you the device we think can get rid of dogs,” he says jokingly and points to an ungainly, photocopier–size machine with a long copper snout in a corner of the lab; wires run haphazardly from various parts.

Last fall, Atkinson and two colleagues did something tremendous: They proved, for the first time, that a machine could perform direct vapor detection of two common explosives—RDX and PETN—under ambient conditions. In other words, the machine “sniffed” the vapor as a dog would, from the air, and identified the explosive molecules without first heating or concentrating the sample, as currently deployed chemical-detection machines (for instance, the various trace-detection machines at airport security checkpoints) must. In one shot, Atkinson opened a door to the direct detection of the world’s most nefarious explosives.

As Atkinson explains the details of his machine, senior scientist Robert Ewing, a trim man in black jeans and a speckled gray shirt that exactly matches his salt-and-pepper hair, prepares a demonstration. Ewing grabs a glass slide soiled with RDX, an explosive that even in equilibrium has a vapor pressure of just five parts per trillion. This particular sample, he says, is more than a year old and just sits out on the counter exposed; the point being that it’s weak. Ewing raises this sample to the snout end of a copper pipe about an inch in diameter. That pipe delivers the air to an ionization source, which selectively pairs explosive compounds with charged particles, and then on to a commercial mass spectrometer about the size of a small copy machine. No piece of the machine is especially complicated; for the most part, Atkinson and Ewing built it with off-the-shelf parts.

Ewing allows the machine to sniff the RDX sample and then points to a computer monitor where a line graph that looks like an EKG shows what is being smelled. Within seconds, the graph spikes. Ewing repeats the experiment with C-4 and then again with Semtex. Each time, the machine senses the explosive.

A commercial version of Atkinson’s machine could have enormous implications for public safety, but to get the technology from the lab to the field will require overcoming a few hurdles. As it stands, the machine recognizes only a handful of explosives (at least nine as of April), although both Ewing and Atkinson are confident that they can work out the chemistry to detect others if they get the funding. Also, Atkinson will need to shrink it to a practical size. The current smallest version of a high-performance mass spectrometer is about the size of a laser printer—too big for police or soldiers to carry in the field. Scientists have not yet found a way to shrink the device’s vacuum pump. DARPA, Atkinson says, has funded a project to dramatically reduce the size of vacuum pumps, but it’s unclear if the work can be applied to mass spectrometry.

If Atkinson can reduce the footprint of his machine, even marginally, and refine his design, he imagines plenty of very useful applications. For instance, a version affixed to the millimeter wave booths now common at American airports (the ones that require passengers to stand with their hands in the air—also invented at PNNL, by the way) could use a tube to sniff air and deliver it to a mass spectrometer. Soldiers could also mount one to a Humvee or an autonomous vehicle that could drive up and sniff suspicious piles of rubble in situations too perilous for a human or dog. If Atkinson could reach backpack size or smaller, he may even be able to get portable versions into the hands of those who need them most: the marines on patrol in Afghanistan, the Amtrak cops guarding America’s rail stations, or the officers watching over a parade or road race.

Atkinson is not alone in his quest for a better nose. A research group at MIT is studying the use of carbon nanotubes lined with peptides extracted from bee venom that bind to certain explosive molecules. And at the French-German Research Institute in France, researcher Denis Spitzer is experimenting with a chemical detector made from micro-electromechanical machines (MEMs) and modeled on the antennae of a male silkworm moth, which are sensitive enough to detect a single molecule of female pheromone in the air.

Atkinson may have been first to demonstrate extremely sensitive chemical detection—and that research is all but guaranteed to strengthen terror defense—but he and other scientists still have a long way to go before they approach the sophistication of a dog nose. One challenge is to develop a sniffing mechanism. “With any electronic nose, you have to get the odorant into the detector,” says Mark Fisher, a senior scientist at Flir Systems, the company that holds the patent for Fido, the IED detector. Every sniff a dog takes, it processes about half a liter of air, and a dog sniffs up to 10 times per second. Fido processes fewer than 100 milliliters per minute, and Atkinson’s machine sniffs a maximum of 20 liters per minute.

Another much greater challenge, perhaps even insurmountable, is to master the mechanisms of smell itself.

OLFACTION IS THE OLDEST of the sensory systems and also the least understood. It is complicated and ancient, sometimes called the primal sense because it dates back to the origin of life itself. The single-celled organisms that first floated in the primordial soup would have had a chemical detection system in order to locate food and avoid danger. In humans, it’s the only sense with its own dedicated processing station in the brain—the olfactory bulb—and also the only one that doesn’t transmit its data directly to the higher brain. Instead, the electrical impulses triggered when odorant molecules bind with olfactory receptors route first through the limbic system, home of emotion and memory. This is why smell is so likely to trigger nostalgia or, in the case of those suffering from PTSD, paralyzing fear.

All mammals share the same basic system, although there is great variance in sensitivity between species. Those that use smell as the primary survival sense, in particular rodents and dogs, are orders of magnitude better than humans at identifying scents. Architecture has a lot to do with that. Dogs are lower to the ground, where molecules tend to land and linger. They also sniff much more frequently and in a completely different way (by first exhaling to clear distracting scents from around a target and then inhaling), drawing more molecules to their much larger array of olfactory receptors. Good scent dogs have 10 times as many receptors as humans, and 35 percent of the canine brain is devoted to smell, compared with just 5 percent in humans.

Unlike hearing and vision, both of which have been fairly well understood since the 19th century, scientists first explained smell only 50 years ago. “In terms of the physiological mechanisms of how the system works, that really started only a few decades ago,” says Richard Doty, director of the Smell and Taste Center at the University of Pennsylvania. “And the more people learn, the more complicated it gets.”

Whereas Atkinson’s vapor detector identifies a few specific chemicals using mass spectrometry, animal systems can identify thousands of scents that are, for whatever reason, important to their survival. When molecules find their way into a nose, they bind with olfactory receptors that dangle like upside-down flowers from a sheet of brain tissue known as the olfactory epithelium. Once a set of molecules links to particular receptors, an electrical signal is sent through axons into the olfactory bulb and then through the limbic system and into the cortex, where the brain assimilates that information and says, “Yum, delicious coffee is nearby.”

While dogs are fluent in the mysterious language of smell, scientists are only now learning the ABC’s.As is the case with explosives, most smells are compounds of chemicals (only a very few are pure; for instance, vanilla is only vanillin), meaning that the system must pick up all those molecules together and recognize the particular combination as gasoline, say, and not diesel or kerosene. Doty explains the system as a kind of code, and he says, “The code for a particular odor is some combination of the proteins that get activated.” To create a machine that parses odors as well as dogs, science has to unlock the chemical codes and program artificial receptors to alert for multiple odors as well as combinations.

In some ways, Atkinson’s machine is the first step in this process. He’s unlocked the codes for a few critical explosives and has built a device sensitive enough to detect them, simply by sniffing the air. But he has not had the benefit of many thousands of years of bioengineering. Canine olfaction, Doty says, is sophisticated in ways that humans can barely imagine. For instance, humans don’t dream in smells, he says, but dogs might. “They may have the ability to conceptualize smells,” he says, meaning that instead of visualizing an idea in their mind’s eye, they might smell it.

Animals can also convey metadata with scent. When a dog smells a telephone pole, he’s reading a bulletin board of information: which dogs have passed by, which ones are in heat, etc. Dogs can also sense pheromones in other species. The old adage is that they can smell fear, but scientists have proved that they can smell other things, like cancer or diabetes. Gary Beauchamp, who heads the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia, says that a “mouse sniffing another mouse can obtain much more information about that mouse than you or I could by looking at someone.”

If breaking chemical codes is simple spelling, deciphering this sort of metadata is grammar and syntax. And while dogs are fluent in this mysterious language, scientists are only now learning the ABC’s.

THERE ARE FEW people who better appreciate the complexities of smell than Paul Waggoner, a behavioral scientist and the associate director of Auburn’s Canine Research Detection Institute. He has been hacking the dog’s nose for more than 20 years.

“By the time you leave, you won’t look at a dog the same way again,” he says, walking me down a hall where military intelligence trainees were once taught to administer polygraphs and out a door and past some pens where new puppies spend their days. The CRDI occupies part of a former Army base in the Appalachian foothills and breeds and trains between 100 and 200 dogs—mostly Labrador retrievers, but also Belgian Malinois, German shepherds, and German shorthaired pointers—a year for Amtrak, the Department of Homeland Security, police departments across the US, and the military. Training begins in the first weeks of life, and Waggoner points out that the floor of the puppy corrals is made from a shiny tile meant to mimic the slick surfaces they will encounter at malls, airports, and sporting arenas. Once weaned, the puppies go to prisons in Florida and Georgia, where they get socialized among prisoners in a loud, busy, and unpredictable environment. And then they come home to Waggoner.

What Waggoner has done over tens of thousands of hours of careful study is begin to quantify a dog’s olfactory abilities. For instance, how small a sample dogs can detect (parts per trillion, at least); how many different types of scents they can detect (within a certain subset, explosives for instance, there seems to be no limit, and a new odor can be learned in hours); whether training a dog on multiple odors degrades its overall detection accuracy (typically, no); and how certain factors like temperature and fatigue affect performance.

The idea that the dog is a static technology just waiting to be obviated really bothers Waggoner, because he feels like he’s innovating every bit as much as Atkinson and the other lab scientists. “We’re still learning how to select, breed, and get a better dog to start with—then how to better train it and, perhaps most importantly, how to train the people who operate those dogs.”

Waggoner even taught his dogs to climb into an MRI machine and endure the noise and tedium of a scan. If he can identify exactly which neurons are firing in the presence of specific chemicals and develop a system to convey that information to trainers, he says it could go a long way toward eliminating false alarms. And if he could get even more specific—whether, say, RDX fires different cells than PETN—that information might inform more targeted responses from bomb squads.

After a full day of watching trainers demonstrate the multitudinous abilities of CRDI’s dogs, Waggoner leads me back to his sparsely furnished office and clicks a video file on his computer. It was from a lecture he’d given at an explosives conference, and it featured Major, a yellow lab wearing what looked like a shrunken version of the Google Street View car array on its back. Waggoner calls this experiment Autonomous Canine Navigation. Working with preloaded maps, a computer delivered specific directions to the dog. By transmitting beeps that indicated left, right, and back, it helped Major navigate an abandoned “town” used for urban warfare training. From a laptop, Waggoner could monitor the dog’s position using both cameras and a GPS dot, while tracking its sniff rate. When the dog signaled the presence of explosives, the laptop flashed an alert, and a pin was dropped on the map.

It’s not hard to imagine this being very useful in urban battlefield situations or in the case of a large area and a fast-ticking clock—say, an anonymous threat of a bomb inside an office building set to detonate in 30 minutes. Take away the human and the leash, and a dog can sweep entire floors at a near sprint. “To be as versatile as a dog, to have all capabilities in one device, might not be possible,” Waggoner says.

Both the dog people and the scientists working to emulate the canine nose have a common goal: to stop bombs from blowing up. It’s important to recognize that both sides—the dog people and the scientists working to emulate the canine nose—have a common goal: to stop bombs from blowing up. And the most effective result of this technology race, Waggoner thinks, is a complementary relationship between dog and machine. It’s impractical, for instance, to expect even a team of Vapor Wake dogs to protect Grand Central Terminal, but railroad police could perhaps one day install a version of Atkinson’s sniffer at that station’s different entrances. If one alerts, they could call in the dogs.

There’s a reason Flir Systems, the maker of Fido, has a dog research group, and it’s not just for comparative study, says the man who runs it, Kip Schultz. “I think where the industry is headed, if it has forethought, is a combination,” he told me. “There are some things a dog does very well. And some things a machine does very well. You can use one’s strengths against the other’s weaknesses and come out with a far better solution.”

Despite working for a company that is focused mostly on sensor innovation, Schultz agrees with Waggoner that we should be simultaneously pushing the dog as a technology. “No one makes the research investment to try to get an Apple approach to the dog,” he says. “What could he do for us 10 or 15 years from now that we haven’t thought of yet?”

On the other hand, dogs aren’t always the right choice; they’re probably a bad solution for screening airline cargo, for example. It’s a critical task, but it’s tedious work sniffing thousands of bags per day as they roll by on a conveyor belt. There, a sniffer mounted over the belt makes far more sense. It never gets bored.

“The perception that sensors will put dogs out of business—I’m telling you that’s not going to happen,” Schultz told me, at the end of a long conference call. Mark Fisher, who was also on the line, laughed. “Dogs aren’t going to put sensors out of business either.”

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This article was originally featured on KFF Health News.

What use could health care have for someone who makes things up, can’t keep a secret, doesn’t really know anything, and, when speaking, simply fills in the next word based on what’s come before? Lots, if that individual is the newest form of artificial intelligence, according to some of the biggest companies out there.

Companies pushing the latest AI technology — known as “generative AI” — are piling on: Google and Microsoft want to bring types of so-called large language models to health care. Big firms that are familiar to folks in white coats — but maybe less so to your average Joe and Jane — are equally enthusiastic: Electronic medical records giants Epic and Oracle Cerner aren’t far behind. The space is crowded with startups, too.

The companies want their AI to take notes for physicians and give them second opinions — assuming they can keep the intelligence from “hallucinating” or, for that matter, divulging patients’ private information.

“There’s something afoot that’s pretty exciting,” said Eric Topol, director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute in San Diego. “Its capabilities will ultimately have a big impact.” Topol, like many other observers, wonders how many problems it might cause — like leaking patient data — and how often. “We’re going to find out.”

The specter of such problems inspired more than 1,000 technology leaders to sign an open letter in March urging that companies pause development on advanced AI systems until “we are confident that their effects will be positive and their risks will be manageable.” Even so, some of them are sinking more money into AI ventures.

The underlying technology relies on synthesizing huge chunks of text or other data — for example, some medical models rely on 2 million intensive care unit notes from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston — to predict text that would follow a given query. The idea has been around for years, but the gold rush, and the marketing and media mania surrounding it, are more recent.

The frenzy was kicked off in December 2022 by Microsoft-backed OpenAI and its flagship product, ChatGPT, which answers questions with authority and style. It can explain genetics in a sonnet, for example.

OpenAI, started as a research venture seeded by Silicon Valley elites like Sam Altman, Elon Musk, and Reid Hoffman, has ridden the enthusiasm to investors’ pockets. The venture has a complex, hybrid for- and nonprofit structure. But a new $10 billion round of funding from Microsoft has pushed the value of OpenAI to $29 billion, The Wall Street Journal reported. Right now, the company is licensing its technology to companies like Microsoft and selling subscriptions to consumers. Other startups are considering selling AI transcription or other products to hospital systems or directly to patients.

Hyperbolic quotes are everywhere. Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers tweeted recently: “It’s going to replace what doctors do — hearing symptoms and making diagnoses — before it changes what nurses do — helping patients get up and handle themselves in the hospital.”

But just weeks after OpenAI took another huge cash infusion, even Altman, its CEO, is wary of the fanfare. “The hype over these systems — even if everything we hope for is right long term — is totally out of control for the short term,” he said for a March article in The New York Times.

Few in health care believe this latest form of AI is about to take their jobs (though some companies are experimenting — controversially — with chatbots that act as therapists or guides to care). Still, those who are bullish on the tech think it’ll make some parts of their work much easier.

Eric Arzubi, a psychiatrist in Billings, Montana, used to manage fellow psychiatrists for a hospital system. Time and again, he’d get a list of providers who hadn’t yet finished their notes — their summaries of a patient’s condition and a plan for treatment.

Writing these notes is one of the big stressors in the health system: In the aggregate, it’s an administrative burden. But it’s necessary to develop a record for future providers and, of course, insurers.

“When people are way behind in documentation, that creates problems,” Arzubi said. “What happens if the patient comes into the hospital and there’s a note that hasn’t been completed and we don’t know what’s been going on?”

The new technology might help lighten those burdens. Arzubi is testing a service, called Nabla Copilot, that sits in on his part of virtual patient visits and then automatically summarizes them, organizing into a standard note format the complaint, the history of illness, and a treatment plan.

Results are solid after about 50 patients, he said: “It’s 90% of the way there.” Copilot produces serviceable summaries that Arzubi typically edits. The summaries don’t necessarily pick up on nonverbal cues or thoughts Arzubi might not want to vocalize. Still, he said, the gains are significant: He doesn’t have to worry about taking notes and can instead focus on speaking with patients. And he saves time.

“If I have a full patient day, where I might see 15 patients, I would say this saves me a good hour at the end of the day,” he said. (If the technology is adopted widely, he hopes hospitals won’t take advantage of the saved time by simply scheduling more patients. “That’s not fair,” he said.)

Nabla Copilot isn’t the only such service; Microsoft is trying out the same concept. At April’s conference of the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society — an industry confab where health techies swap ideas, make announcements, and sell their wares — investment analysts from Evercore highlighted reducing administrative burden as a top possibility for the new technologies.

But overall? They heard mixed reviews. And that view is common: Many technologists and doctors are ambivalent.

For example, if you’re stumped about a diagnosis, feeding patient data into one of these programs “can provide a second opinion, no question,” Topol said. “I’m sure clinicians are doing it.” However, that runs into the current limitations of the technology.

Joshua Tamayo-Sarver, a clinician and executive with the startup Inflect Health, fed fictionalized patient scenarios based on his own practice in an emergency department into one system to see how it would perform. It missed life-threatening conditions, he said. “That seems problematic.”

The technology also tends to “hallucinate” — that is, make up information that sounds convincing. Formal studies have found a wide range of performance. One preliminary research paper examining ChatGPT and Google products using open-ended board examination questions from neurosurgery found a hallucination rate of 2%. A study by Stanford researchers, examining the quality of AI responses to 64 clinical scenarios, found fabricated or hallucinated citations 6% of the time, co-author Nigam Shah told KFF Health News. Another preliminary paper found, in complex cardiology cases, ChatGPT agreed with expert opinion half the time.

Privacy is another concern. It’s unclear whether the information fed into this type of AI-based system will stay inside. Enterprising users of ChatGPT, for example, have managed to get the technology to tell them the recipe for napalm, which can be used to make chemical bombs.

In theory, the system has guardrails preventing private information from escaping. For example, when KFF Health News asked ChatGPT its email address, the system refused to divulge that private information. But when told to role-play as a character, and asked about the email address of the author of this article, it happily gave up the information. (It was indeed the author’s correct email address in 2021, when ChatGPT’s archive ends.)

“I would not put patient data in,” said Shah, chief data scientist at Stanford Health Care. “We don’t understand what happens with these data once they hit OpenAI servers.”

Tina Sui, a spokesperson for OpenAI, told KFF Health News that one “should never use our models to provide diagnostic or treatment services for serious medical conditions.” They are “not fine-tuned to provide medical information,” she said.

With the explosion of new research, Topol said, “I don’t think the medical community has a really good clue about what’s about to happen.”

KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

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Dressed in a glorious shade of green called Verde Fangio Metallic, the all-new Alfa Romeo Tonale slalomed through the city streets of Milan. After dodging pedestrians and cyclists in a dance that seemed natural to Italians and startling to visitors, we drove it onto country roads leading to Alfa Romeo’s prime proving grounds at the Circuito di Balocco test track. It was time to test out the brand’s first hybrid and its first compact crossover: the Tonale.

Alfa Romeo has a 113-year history of building beautiful, powerful cars with an abundance of style. Can its new hybrid pass the test with both established and new fans of the brand? We drove one in Alfa Romeo’s homeland to find out.

The two-tone Tonale: one engine, one motor

The brand’s first all-new vehicle in five years, the Tonale is a follow-up to the popular Stelvio SUV. Situated squarely in the popular compact SUV class, the Tonale competes with gas-powered luxury models like the BMW X1 and Mercedes-Benz GLA as well as the Volvo XC40 plug-in hybrid.

Equipped with a 1.3-liter gas engine up front and a 90-kilowatt electric motor at the rear, the Tonale boasts 285 horsepower and 347 pound-feet of torque. Whether driving on twisty roads or straightaways, I found the Tonale has plenty of vigor, and the responsive steering made for a great drive. The crossover also has a generous sprinkling of Italian charm, which sets it apart from others in the category. 

Drive mode selections include Alfa Romeo’s traditional D, N, and A options, which stands for Dynamic, Natural, and Advanced. Each has its own distinctive personality. Spin the dial to Dynamic for access to the full suite of power and to the highest level of brake regeneration, which sends juice to the battery. Natural is the middle-of-the-road option for daily driving, and Advanced offers a more fuel-efficient choice by running the Tonale in battery-only mode for about 30 miles.

The driver can drill down even further for more options to customize the ride. Choosing Comfort is the default suspension partner to Natural and Advanced mode, providing a softer feel. Sport mode (the preset calibration for Dynamic mode) stiffens the ride, meaning better control when you want more of a track-like experience. Alfa Romeo calls it a “dual stage valve electronic suspension” and says it’s intended to offer the driver a choice between performance and comfort.

On the track, I put it through its paces myself, and also slid into the passenger seat with a professional driver behind the wheel. That’s an unusual twist; most crossovers are marketed for staid comfort, not necessarily adventurous, quick turns and acceleration. 

Maximizing energy from the Tonale’s battery 

Driving the Tonale, I noticed that it was regenerating the battery quickly as I coasted downhill from the mountain passes on the drive route in Dynamic mode. Domenico Bagnasco, head of high-performance vehicles for Alfa Romeo, told me that the vehicle never depletes the battery completely. When the battery starts to run low, the Tonale automatically defaults to Natural mode to recharge it. If you start in Advanced to experience the all-electric range, it will switch over silently and seamlessly. Also, a touch of the e-Save button under the gear shifter helps preserve the battery’s energy by prioritizing the gas engine. 

Bagnasco has a history in performance and engineering for both Fiat and Alfa Romeo, serving as the Abarth racing model chief engineer and product development manager for Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. That means he had a hand in the delightful Fiat 124 Spider Abarth, a Miata look-alike with a spunky ride. With the Tonale, he’s putting that experience to use and expanding upon what he’s learned from previous iterations of a long list of Italian models. 

He also shared the details of the Tonale’s brake-by-wire system, which means stepping on the brake pedal triggers an electronic signal that activates a microprocessor. Brake-by-wire systems utilize electronic sensors and actuators instead of the mechanical and hydraulic components of traditional braking setups. As a result, braking is designed to be smoother and more predictable instead of predicated solely on the uneven pressure of your foot. For the Tonale, brake action also helps recapture energy. 

Brake-by-wire systems are fairly standard fare, especially on hybrid vehicles like the Audi e-Tron and Porsche Taycan. This technology takes stopping power to the next level, compiling input from your surroundings and anticipating braking needs. For instance, if the car senses that you’re headed for a collision based on your speed and that of the car in front of you, the brake-by-wire system can apply maximum braking power for you. And it’s lighter: Dominique says the electronic brake saves 10 pounds overall.

The serpent is a plug

The crossover also includes a generous suite of driver-assist features, including adaptive cruise control, blind-spot monitoring, lane departure assist, and more. It’s also equipped with over-the-air software update capacity, Amazon Alexa, and wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. All of that gilds the performance aspects of this new plug-in hybrid. Even the storied Alfa Romeo logo tells the tale in a version that’s etched onto the driver’s side rear window; the head of the biscione serpent has been stylized into a plug. 

Starting at $44,590 (including destination charges) and ranging up to nearly $60,000 with all the options on the top-level Veloce trim, the Tonale is available in dealerships now. 

The Tonale, up against its competitors, feels like the difference between a pony ride at a county fair and a pedigreed mare at a steeplechase. Sure, the Tonale could be just another compact crossover on the market. But it’s an Alfa Romeo, and there is something magical about it.

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WhatsApp just got a new feature bolstering its long-standing emphasis on users’ privacy: a “Chat Lock” feature that squirrels away your most confidential conversations.

Much like Apple’s hidden photos option, Chat Lock allows users to create a separate folder for private discussions; it’s protected by either password or biometric access. Any conversations filed within WhatsApp’s Chat Lock section also will block both sender and text in their push notifications, resulting in a simple “New Message” button. According to WhatsApp’s owners at Meta, Chat Lock could prove useful for those “who have reason to share their phones from time to time with a family member or those moments where someone else is holding your phone at the exact moment an extra special chat arrives.”

[Related: WhatsApp users can now ghost group chats and delete messages for days.]

To enable the new feature, WhatsApp users simply need to tap the name of a one-to-one or group message and select the lock option. To see those classified conversations, just slowly pull down on the inbox icon, then input the required password or biometric information to unlock. According to WhatsApp, Chat Lock capabilities are set to expand even further over the next few months, including features like locking messages on companion devices and creating custom passwords for each chat on a single phone.

Chat Lock is only the latest in a number of updates to come to the world’s most popular messaging app. Earlier this month, WhatsApp introduced multiple updates to its polling feature, including single-vote polls, a search option, and notifications for when people cast their votes. The platform also recently introduced the ability to forward media and documents with captions for context.

[Related: 3 ways to hide photos and files on your phone.]

Although it has long billed itself as a secure messaging alternative to standard platforms such as Apple’s iMessage (both WhatsApp and iMessage use end-to-end encryption, as do some other apps), WhatsApp experienced a sizable user backlash in 2021 when it changed its privacy policy to allow for more personal data sharing with its parent company, Meta. Meanwhile, other privacy-focused apps like Signal and Telegram remain popular alternatives.

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Researchers at Canada’s University of Waterloo have unveiled a new program for personal assistance robots. This new program utilizes episodic memory and object-detection algorithms to help locate lost items. Although designed specifically to aid patients suffering from cognitive issues, the team believes their advancements could eventually find their way onto people’s smartphones or tablets.

Dementia affects approximately 1 in 10 Americans over the age of 65, while another 22 percent of the same population contends with mild cognitive impairments. Symptoms vary between individuals, but forgetfulness is a common issue that can disrupt one’s day and increase stress levels for both those suffering from these conditions, as well as their caregivers.

Knowing this, a four-person team at the University of Waterloo created an algorithm they then uploaded to a commercial Fetch mobile manipulator robot, endowing the machine with a memory log of individual objects detected via its onboard video camera. Once enabled, the Fetch robot noted the time and date for anytime it spotted an object in its view area. Researchers also designed a graphical user interface (GUI) for individuals to pick and label which detected objects they wanted to track. Searching for a label via keyboard entry could then bring up Fetch’s “highly accurate” location log, according to a statement released on Monday.

[Related: The latest recommendations for preventing dementia are good advice for everyone.]

“The long-term impact of this is really exciting,” said Ali Ayub, a postdoctoral fellow in electrical and computer engineering and study co-author. “A user can be involved not just with a companion robot but a personalized companion robot that can give them more independence.”

Caregiving robotics is a rapidly expanding field that is showing promise in a number of areas. Recently, researchers at the Munich Institute of Robotics and Machine Intelligence announced Garmi, a personal assistant designed to help elderly users for telemedicine appointments, and potentially even physical tasks like opening bottles and serving meals.

Although Ayub and their colleagues have only tested their visual-based algorithm amongst themselves, the team hopes to soon conduct further trials—first with people without disabilities, then with people dealing with dementia and other cognitive issues. While Ayub’s team conceded that disabled individuals could potentially find the GUI and robot intimidating, they believe the system could still prove extremely beneficial for their caregivers and family members.

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This month marks the fifth anniversary of “No Mow May,” an annual environmental project dedicated to promoting sustainable, eco-friendly lawns via a 31-day landscaping moratorium. In doing so, the brief respite gives bees and other pollinators a chance to do what they do best: contribute to a vibrant, healthy, and biodiverse ecosystem. To keep the No Mow May momentum going, Swedish tech company Husqvarna has announced a new, simple feature for its line of robotic lawnmowers: a “rewilding” mode that ensures 10 percent of owners’ lawns remain untouched for pollinators and other local wildlife.

While meticulously manicured lawns are part of the traditional suburban American mindset, they come at steep ecological costs such as biodiversity loss and massive amounts of water waste. The Natural Resource Defense Council, for instance, estimates that grass lawns consume almost 3 trillion gallons of water each year alongside 200 million gallons of gas for traditional mowers, as well as another 70 million pounds of harmful pesticides. In contrast, rewilding is a straightforward, self-explanatory concept long pushed by environmentalists and sustainability experts that encourages a return to regionally native flora for all-around healthier ecosystems.

[Related: Build a garden that’ll have pollinators buzzin’.]

While convincing everyone to adopt rewilding practices may seem like a near-term impossibility, companies like Husqvarna are hoping to set the literal and figurative lawnmower rolling with its new autopilot feature. According to Husqvarna’s announcement, if Europeans set aside just a tenth of their lawns, the cumulative area would amount to four times the size of the continent’s largest nature preserve.

Enabling the Rewilding Mode only takes a few taps within the product line’s Automower Connect app, and can be customized to change the overall shape, size, and placement of the rewilding zones. Once established, the robotic mower’s onboard GPS systems ensure which areas of an owner’s lawn are off-limits and reserved for bees, butterflies, and whatever else wants to set up shop.

Of course, turning on Rewilding Mode means owning a Husqvarna robotic mower that supports the setting—and at a minimum of around $700 for such a tool, they might be out of many lawn care enthusiasts’ budgets. Even so, that doesn’t mean you should abandon giving rewilding a try for your own lawns. It’s easy to get started on the project, and as its name suggests, doesn’t take much maintenance once it’s thriving. If nothing else, there’s still two weeks left in No Mow May, so maybe consider postponing your weekend outdoor chore for a few more days.

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Since 2021, the EU and the nation of Georgia have highlighted a need to install an underwater internet cable through the Black Sea to improve the connectivity between Georgia and other European countries. 

After the start of war in Ukraine, the project has garnered increased attention as countries in the South Caucasus region have been working to decrease their reliance on Russian resources—a trend that goes for energy as well as communications infrastructure. Internet cables have been under scrutiny because they could be tapped into by hackers or governments for spying. 

“Concerns around intentional sabotage of undersea cables and other maritime infrastructure have also grown since multiple explosions on the Nord Stream gas pipelines last September, which media reports recently linked to Russian vessels,” the Financial Times reported. The proposed cable, which will cross international water through the Black Sea, will be 1,100 kilometers, or 684 miles long, and will link the Caucasus nations to EU member states. It’s estimated to cost €45 million (approximately $49 million). 

[Related: An undersea cable could bring speedy internet to Antarctica]

“Russia is one of multiple routes through which data packages move between Asia and Europe and is integral to connectivity in some parts of Asia and the Caucasus, which has sparked concern from some politicians about an over-reliance on the nation for connectivity,” The Financial Times reported. 

Across the dark depths of the globe’s oceans there are 552 cables that are “active and planned,” according to TeleGeography. All together, they may measure nearly 870,000 miles long, the company estimates. Take a look at a map showing existing cables, including in the Black Sea area, and here’s a bit more about how they work.

[Related: A 10-million-pound undersea cable just set an internet speed record]

The Black Sea cable is just one project in the European Commission’s infrastructure-related Global Gateway Initiative. According to the European Commission’s website, “the new cable will be essential to accelerate the digital transformation of the region and increase its resilience by reducing its dependency on terrestrial fibre-optic connectivity transiting via Russia. In 2023, the European Investment Bank is planning to submit a proposal for a €20 million investment grant to support this project.”

Currently, the project is still in the feasibility testing stage. While the general route and the locations for the converter stations have already been selected, it will have to go through geotechnical and geophysical studies before formal construction can go forward.

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This article was originally featured on The Drive.

Ferrari is perhaps the most well-known supercar manufacturer in the world because it has a long history of making cars people want to drive—not necesssarily be driven in. During a discussion at the Financial Times Future of the Car Summit, Ferrari CEO Benedetto Vigna, did not mince words about how the automaker feels about self-driving cars. “There are four kinds of software. There is performance software, there is comfort software, there is infotainment software, and there is autonomous,” Vigna said. “The last one, we don’t care.”

This isn’t the first time the brand has said no to AVs. Previous executives have made many similar statements to the media. The automaker is developing an electric vehicle, though, and it says it has the in-house expertise to make it happen. In the case of AVs, it’s likely the company was not only uninterested in developing the idea as a matter of principle, but it also doesn’t have the resources to do so independently.

Business Insider reports Vigna referenced the “soul of the car” in conversation. Indeed, a Ferrari without a driver wouldn’t be much of a Ferrari at all. The brand is its own master after not taking part in the merger of FCA and PSA that created Stellantis. That means it isn’t getting high-up directives to develop AVs and it has other companies in its porfolio with which to easily share advanced technical resources.

Most other exotic car manufacturers are under the umbrella of a larger automaker. In most cases, it’s the Volkswagen group, which owns Porsche, Lamborghini, and the newly merged Bugatti-Rimac. These companies could create AVs, or at least use technology from their parent to create them. Others like McLaren—which is struggling financially—and Koenigsegg, which is very low volume and focuses most of its resources on vehicle engineering, are unlikely to independently create self-driving cars. Driver assistance systems may be independently developed or licensed from other companies, but self-driving seems farfetched, to say the least.

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Knowing how to find your IP address is a useful skill, even if you don’t know exactly what an IP address is or what it’s for. Whether you want to set up a new 3D printer or don’t want to sound ignorant while on the phone with your internet service provider, there are a couple of ways to easily get this information.

Get to know these methods in case you ever need them, and while you’re at it, maybe learn what this string of numbers is and why it’s important.

There’s a reason why Windows computers and some other devices have two IP addresses. Internet protocol version 4, also known as IPv4, is the original system invented back in 1980 to identify computers and other devices. But IPv4 only has 32 bits, which means there are only so many addresses available and not nearly enough for the hyperconnected future we live in today. Enter IPv6—the 64-bit solution that provides many more addresses to make space for all the new devices hitting the market every day. The problem is that the rollout of this 1998 protocol took a long time, and some older servers and programs are not compatible with it. This is why some devices use a workaround and have two IP addresses to bridge that gap and avoid any service interruptions. 

In general, an IP address is a unique series of numbers that identifies a device with the ability to connect to the internet. Every gadget has a private or internal IP address assigned by its manufacturer. If the internet were a town, this would be your home address. When you watch a movie on a streaming service, your device sends a request to whatever platform you’re using, which in turn knows where to send the reply (i.e. the movie) thanks to your IP address. This specific piece of data is very useful, which makes it very valuable. Treat it as your social security number and don’t disclose it.  

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On a small patch of land in the northeast Bronx in New York City sits a tidy but potent battery storage system. Located across the street from a beige middle school building, and not too far from a Planet Fitness and a Dollar Tree, the battery system is designed to send power into the grid at peak moments of demand on hot summer afternoons and evenings. 

New York state has a goal of getting a whopping six gigawatts of battery storage systems online in the next seven years, and this system, at about three megawatts, is a very small but hopefully helpful part of that. It’s intended to be able to send out those three megawatts of power over a four-hour period, typically between 4 pm and 8 pm on the toastiest days of the year, with the goal of making a burdened power grid a bit less stressed and ideally a tad cleaner. 

The local power utility, Con Edison, recently connected the battery system to the grid. Here’s how it works, and why systems like this are important.

From power lines to batteries, and back again

The source of the electricity for these batteries is the existing power distribution lines that run along the top of nearby poles. Those wires carry power at 13,200 volts, but the battery system itself needs to work with a much lower voltage. That’s why before the power even gets to the batteries themselves, it needs to go through transformers. 

During a January tour of the site for Popular Science, Adam Cohen, the CTO of NineDot Energy, the company behind this project, opens a gray metal door. Behind it are transformers. “They look really neato,” he says. Indeed, they do look neat—three yellowish units that take that voltage and transform it into 480 volts. This battery complex is actually two systems that mirror each other, so other transformers are in additional equipment nearby. 

After those transformers do their job and convert the voltage to a lower number, the electricity flows to giant white Tesla Megapack battery units. Those batteries are large white boxes with padlocked cabinets, and above them is fire-suppression equipment. Not only do these battery units store the power, but they also have inverters to change the AC power to DC before the juice can be stored. When the power does flow out of the batteries, it’s converted back to AC power again. 

The battery storage system is designed to follow a specific rhythm. It will charge gradually between 10 pm and 8 am, Cohen says. That’s a time “when the grid has extra availability, the power is cheaper and cleaner, [and] the grid is not overstressed,” he says. When the day begins and the grid starts experiencing more demand, the batteries stop charging. 

In the summer heat, when there’s a “grid event,” that’s when the magic happens, Cohen says. Starting around 4 pm, the batteries will be able to send their power back out into the grid to help destress the system. They’ll be able to produce enough juice to power about 1,000 homes over that four-hour period, according to an estimate by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, or NYSERDA.

[Related: How the massive ‘flow battery’ coming to an Army facility in Colorado will work]

The power will flow back up into the same wires that charged them before, and then onto customers. The goal is to try to make the grid a little bit cleaner, or less dirty, than it would have been if the batteries didn’t exist. “It’s offsetting the dirty energy that would have been running otherwise,” Cohen says. 

Of course, the best case scenario would be for batteries to get their power from renewable sources, like solar or wind, and the site does have a small solar canopy that could send a teeny tiny bit of clean energy into the grid. But New York City and the other downstate zones near it currently rely very heavily on fossil fuels. For New York City in 2022 for example, utility-scale energy production was 100 percent from fossil fuels, according to a recent report from the New York Independent System Operator. (One of several solutions in the works to that problem involves a new transmission line.) What that means is that the batteries will be drawing power from a fossil-fuel dominant grid, but doing so at nighttime when that grid is hopefully less polluting. 

How systems like these can help

Electricity is very much an on-demand product. What we consume “has to be made right now,” Cohen notes from behind the wheel of his Nissan Leaf, as we drive towards the battery storage site in the Bronx on a Friday in January. Batteries, of course, can change that dynamic, storing the juice for when it’s needed. 

This project in the Bronx is something of an electronic drop in a bucket: At three megawatts, the batteries represent a tiny step towards New York State’s goal to have six gigawatts, or 6,000 megawatts, of battery storage on the grid by 2030. Even though this one facility in the Bronx represents less than one percent of that goal, it can still be useful, says Schuyler Matteson, a senior advisor focusing on energy storage and policy at NYSERDA. “Small devices play a really important role,” he says. 

One of the ways that small devices like these can help is they can be placed near the people who are using it in their homes or businesses, so that electricity isn’t lost as it is transmitted in from further away. “They’re very close to customers on the distribution network, and so when they’re providing power at peak times, they’re avoiding a lot of the transmission losses, which can be anywhere from five to eight percent of energy,” Matteson says. 

And being close to a community provides interesting opportunities. A campus of the Bronx Charter Schools for Better Learning sits on the third floor of the middle school across the street. There, two dozen students have been working in collaboration with a local artist, Tijay Mohammed, to create a mural that will eventually hang on the green fence in front of the batteries. “They are so proud to be associated with the project,” says Karlene Buckle, the manager of the enrichment program at the schools.

Grid events

The main benefit a facility like this can have is the way it helps the grid out on a hot summer day. That’s because when New York City experiences peak temperatures, energy demand peaks too, as everyone cranks up their air conditioners. 

To meet that electricity demand, the city relies on its more than one dozen peaker plants, which are dirtier and less efficient than an everyday baseline fossil fuel plant. Peaker plants disproportionately impact communities located near them. “The public health risks of living near peaker plants range from asthma to cancer to death, and this is on top of other public health crises and economic hardships already faced in environmental justice communities,” notes Jennifer Rushlow, the dean of the School for the Environment at Vermont Law and Graduate School via email. The South Bronx, for example, has peaker plants, and the borough as a whole has an estimated 22,855 cases of pediatric asthma, according to the American Lung Association. Retiring them or diminishing their use isn’t just for energy security—it’s an environmental justice issue.

So when power demand peaks, “what typically happens is we have to ramp up additional natural gas facilities, or even in some instances, oil facilities, in the downstate region to provide that peak power,” Matteson says. “And so every unit of storage we can put down there to provide power during peak times offsets some of those dirty, marginal units that we would have to ramp up otherwise.” 

By charging at night, instead of during the day, and then sending the juice out at peak moments, “you’re actually offsetting local carbon, you’re offsetting local particulate matter, and that’s having a really big benefit of the air quality and health impacts for New York City,” he says.  

[Related: At New York City’s biggest power plant, a switch to clean energy will help a neighborhood breathe easier]

Imagine, says Matteson, that a peaker plant is producing 45 megawatts of electricity. A 3-megawatt battery system coming online could mean that operators could dial down the dirty plant to 42 megawatts instead. But in an ideal world, it doesn’t come online at all. “We want 15 of [these 3 megawatt] projects to add up to 45 megawatts, and so if they can consistently show up at peak times, maybe that marginal dirty generator doesn’t even get called,” he says. “If that happens enough, maybe they retire.” 

Nationally, most of the United States experiences a peak need for electricity on hot summer days, just like New York City does, with a few geographic exceptions, says Paul Denholm, a senior research fellow focusing on energy storage at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Colorado. “Pretty much most of the country peaks during the summertime, in those late afternoons,” he says. “And so we traditionally build gas turbines—we’ve got hundreds of gigawatts of gas turbines that have been installed for the past several decades.” 

While the three-megawatt project in the Bronx is not going to replace a peaker plant by any means, Denholm says that in general, the trend is moving towards batteries taking over what peaker plants do. “As those power plants get old and retire, you need to build something new,” he says. “Within the last five years, we’ve reached this tipping point, where storage can now outcompete new traditional gas-fired turbines on a life-cycle cost basis.” 

Right now, New York state has 279 megawatts of battery storage already online, which is around 5 percent of the total goal of 6 gigawatts. Denholm estimates that nationally, nearly nine gigawatts of battery storage are online already. 

“There’s significant quantifiable benefits to using [battery] storage as peaker,” Denholm says. One of those benefits is a fewer local emissions, which is important because “a lot of these peaker plants are in places that have historically been [environmental-justice] impacted regions.” 

“Even when they’re charging off of fossil plants, they’re typically charging off of more efficient units,” he adds. 

If all goes according to plan, the batteries will start discharging their juice this summer, on the most sweltering days. 

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This year marks the 250th anniversary of the first human hopping aboard a hot air balloon. But Jean-Francois Pilatre de Rozier only hovered about 85 feet above the ground, so it’s safe to say he would be stunned at what his country’s modern denizens are planning. As CNN reported on Thursday, a French company called Zephalto aims to begin “edge of space” hot air balloon tourist sojourns as early as next year—for $130,000 a seat.

After ponying up the hefty price tag, passengers will board Zephalto’s pressurized capsule, Celeste, which is attached to a massive, helium-filled stratospheric balloon. Over the course of roughly ninety minutes, the balloon will ascend at 4 meters per second to an altitude of 25 kilometers (about 15.5 miles). Once at the edge of space, tourists will enjoy a fancy meal during their three-hour hover time in front of 7-square-meter window views of the Earth’s curvature before descending back down to terra firma.

[Related: How will NASA keep up with space tourism?]

Other high-profile space tourism ventures such as Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic travel much higher than the capabilities of even a high-end hot air balloon such as Zephalto’s. In July 2021, Virgin Galactic’s founder, Richard Branson, soared 86 km above Earth. Just one week later, Blue Origin took its co-founder and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos above the Karman Line, the internationally recognized (if somewhat disputed) boundary for outer space.

Unlike those high-profile space tourism ventures, however, Zephalto bills itself as being a much more eco-friendly alternative. According to its official description page, only 26.6 kg of CO2 are purportedly needed for a single journey—the lowest amount required for a space flight, says the company, or akin to “as little as the production of a pair of denim trousers.” By comparison, a single suborbital rocket launch can put out as much as 300 tons of CO2 into the upper atmosphere during its journey.

[Related: Blue Origin brought the first official tourists to space.]

As reservations quickly fill for the trips—Zephalto told CNN it’s already booked out until mid-2025. The company’s founder recently explained they were working closely with France’s space agency, CNES, alongside partners at Airbus to ensure all safety and logistical regulations are met. Once in full swing, Zephalto aims to launch as many as 60 flights per year, each with six passengers alongside two pilots.

And if the six-hour-total journey and fancy meal aren’t enough to sell you on a $130,000 ticket, Zephalto says it’s throwing in complementary psychological counseling ahead of the outing to help deal with what’s known as the “overview effect,” the existential weight that reportedly comes from viewing the entirety of Earth from high above its surface.

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The swift rise of generative platforms such as ChatGPT and Dall-E mini has brought artificial intelligence to everyone’s attention in recent months. But programs such as Photoshop have been offering AI assistance of their own for quite some time now.

When it comes to Adobe’s image editing software, these capabilities are there to help select the outline of an object, fill in a picture’s background, or change the expression on someone’s face. Your AI-enhanced edits can be subtle or quite dramatic, and there’s plenty of room to experiment.

All of this machine-powered magic works in a similar way, no matter what Photoshop tool you’re using: developers have used vast amounts of stock and copyright-free images to train the program to be able to decide where a pixel should or shouldn’t go, or what color it should be.

To use them, go to Filter in the main navigation bar and then click on Neural Filters. You’ll be able to choose from a wide range of actions, such as adding depth to your images and smoothing the skin on people’s faces. Each filter comes with its own set of options, so you can tweak them to make them more or less aggressive, depending on what you want your final photo to look like. You may notice some of the filters are still in beta. This means they’re works in progress, so keep that in mind if you use them, as the results might be less than perfect.

For example, click Smart Portrait and you’ll be able to use simple sliders to make people in the photo look happier, younger, or older, and even change the direction they’re looking in.

Switch to Object Aware mode on the right menu to get Photoshop’s help in picking out edges, then use the Refine Edge Brush Tool to make cuts—select it by clicking the second icon from the top down in the left sidebar, or hitting the R key on your keyboard. It’s particularly good when you’re trying to trace around very faint edges, like someone’s hair.

Open an image, go to Edit, and then Sky Replacement to make alterations. You can drop in one of the program’s presets or load your own, as well as tweak the sky’s temperature and brightness, and make adjustments to the foreground to help it match the lighting.

Select an object in your photo, go to Edit, and choose Content-Aware Fill. You’ll be able to refine your selection further and see a preview of how the fill is going to work. You can specify areas of the image Photoshop should use to fill in the background once it removes the object.

To do this even quicker trusting in Photoshop’s process and without any refinement options, select an object and press Shift+Backspace. Just make sure the Content-Aware option is selected in the dialog box that pops up, and click OK to apply the changes.

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A road capable of charging electric vehicles en route to their destinations could power up as soon as 2025 in one of the world’s most eco-friendly nations. As the Amsterdam-based tech site The Next Web explains, Sweden is well on track to electrifying a roughly 13-mile portion of its E20 highway spanning between Hallsberg to Örebro, both of which are located between Sweden’s two largest cities, Stockholm and Gothenburg.

The electric road system (ERS) project is overseen by the nation’s transport administration, Trafikverket, who are still determining which of three specific technologies could be best suited for the task: overhead conductive, ground-based conductive, and ground-based inductive charging. The first format utilizes an overhead pantograph design similar to those seen atop traditional trolleys and streetcars, but would be limited to large vehicles capable of reaching the tall power lines, i.e. public commuter vehicles.

[Related: Car owners: here’s when experts say you should switch to an EV.]

The other two options, however, could hypothetically also support smaller vehicles and private EVs. In a ground-based conductive format, power would transfer from specialized tracks installed either on top or below the pavement via a mechanical arm. Inductive charging would require conductive coils installed in both the roads and vehicles.

As futuristic as these ideas may sound, Sweden has already successfully tested all three ERS methods in various areas around the nation, including the towns of Gotland, Lund, and Sandviken. While much of that work has pertained to mass transit options, designers also tinkered with systems capable of supporting smaller and private vehicles as far back as 2018.

There are immense benefits to expanding ERS capabilities, beyond just the immediate convenience. According to one recent study from Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, increased reliance on ERS installations alongside at-home EV charging could lower electrical grid demands during peak usage times, as well as potentially reduce vehicle battery size by as much as 70 percent. Those smaller batteries would mean less rare earth materials are harvested, leading to potentially cheaper, more accessible EV options for consumers.

[Related: Why you barely see electric vehicles at car dealerships.]

“After all, many people charge their cars after work and during the night, which puts a lot of strain on the power grid,” author Sten Karlsson, an energy efficiency researcher and professor at Chalmers, said in a release in March. “By instead charging more evenly throughout the day, peak load would be significantly reduced.”

Sweden isn’t alone in its aim to electrify portions of its roadways. As the electric transportation industry site Electrive notes, similar projects are also underway in the UK, Germain, Italy, and Israel. Here in the US, the Norwegian company ENRX recently announced plans to install a one-mile ERS prototype section within a stretch of four-lane highway near Orlando, Florida.

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Later this year, the Department of Homeland Security hopes to provide a new prototype helmet for firefighters, a piece of gear designed to meet modern challenges in one flexible, composite form. Firefighting is dangerous work, even when it’s narrowly focused on fires, but as first responders firefighters handle a range of crises, including ones where the immediate threat may be more from firearms than flame. To meet that need, the Department of Homeland Security’s Science and Technology directorate is funding a new, all-purpose helmet for firefighters that will include both protection from bullets and fire.

“Firefighters are increasingly called upon to respond to potentially violent situations (PVS), including active shooters, armed crowd and terrorist incidents, hazardous materials mitigation, and disaster response,” reads a Homeland Security scouting report published in July 2019, outlining the needs and limits of existing helmet models. “Currently, firefighters must carry one helmet for fire protection and one helmet for ballistic protection, which creates a logistical burden when firefighters must switch gear on the scene.” 

Relying on two distinct helmets for two distinct kinds of response is not an efficient setup, and it means that if a firefighter is responding to one kind of emergency, like a shooter, but then a fire breaks out, the first helmet offers inadequate protection for the task. While dealing with shooters is and remains the primary responsibility of law enforcement, rescuing people from danger that might include a shooter is in the wheelhouse of firefighters, and so being able to do that safely despite bullets flying would improve their ability to rescue. 

Beyond survivability from both bullets and fires, Homeland Security evaluated helmets for how well they could incorporate self-contained breathing apparatus (SCBA) gear, fit integrated communications, and be able to either project light or, if lights are not baked into the helmet design, easily mount and use lights. The breathing apparatus required for indoor firefighting must work cleanly with the helmet, as without the outside air circulation like in wildfire fighting, firefighters are tasked to venture into smoke-filled rooms, sometimes containing smoke from hazardous materials. Communications equipment allows firefighters to stay in contact despite the sounds and obstructions of a building on fire, and lighting can cut through the smoke and blaze to help firefighters locate people in need of rescue.

The National Fire Protection Association sets standards for fire gear, and the ballistic standards chosen are from the National Institute of Justice’s Level 111A, which includes handgun bullets up to .44 Magnum but does not cover rifle ammunition. 

[Related: A new kind of Kevlar aims to stop bullets with less material]

In the 2019 evaluation, eight helmets met the standard for fire protection, while only one met the standard for ballistic protection. The fields of fire and ballistics protection have largely been bifurcated in design, which is partly what initiatives like funding through the Science and Technology Directorate are built to solve. In the same 2019 evaluation of existing models, no one existing helmet offered both ballistic protection alongside the other firefighting essentials sought in the program. These designs all ditch the wide brim and long tail traditionally found in firefighting helmets, as the protection offered by the helmet’s distinctive shape can be met through other means.

“The NextGen Firefighter Helmet will be designed with a shell that can absorb energy during impact and rapidly dissipates it without injuring the skull or brain. While the current materials used in both firefighter and military helmets are inadequate for the temperature and ballistic protection being sought, they provide a useful blueprint for future innovation,” said DHS in a release. “For example, Kevlar fiber has a melting point of 1040 °F and has proven highly effective in ballistic helmets and body armor. Similarly, polyester resins used in current firefighter headgear can have glass transition temperatures (the point at which it becomes hard and brittle) as high as 386.6°F. The idea is that thermosetting resins can be reinforced with Kevlar fiber, creating a shell that meets both the thermal and ballistic protection requirements of the NextGen Firefighter Helmet.”

Other important design features will be ensuring that the finished product doesn’t weigh too much or strain the necks of wearers too badly, as protective gear that injures wearers from repeated use is not helpful. That means a large-sized helmet that ideally weighs under 62 ounces, and in a medium size is under 57 oz. The helmet will need to be simple to put on, taking less than a minute from start until its secure in place. 

DHS expects the prototype to be ready by mid-2023, at which point it will conduct an operational field assessment. Firefighters will evaluate the helmet design and features, and see if what was devised in a lab and a workshop can meet their in-field needs. After that, should the prototype prove successful, the process will be finding commercial makers to produce the helmets at scale, creating a new and durable piece of safety gear.

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At Google’s annual I/O developer’s conference, the tech giant announced a whole heap of AI-powered features that will be coming soon to its core apps, like Gmail, Docs, Sheets, Photos, and Meet. It even showcased an updated version of Project Starline, the 3D video-calling booth it announced back in 2021. 

While all very fun and exciting, Google’s flashy new project announcements are usually met with some degree of trepidation by the tech press. The company has undeniably revolutionized search and advertising, and products like Gmail and Docs are incredibly popular. But, it has also announced countless products with great fanfare, failed to support them, then quietly killed them. Let’s have a look at some of the high and low lights from Google’s product graveyard. 

Google Glass, Wave, Reader, and the other ones people are still bitter about

Over the past two decades, Google has killed off a lot of products—and some of them were pretty popular, or at least had diehard fans. Others, not so much. 

Google Reader is, perhaps, the biggest victim here. The beloved RSS reader app was unceremoniously axed, possibly in an attempt to drive people to Google+. It’s still missed by a lot of tech writers. 

The Google URL Shortener was a handy free alternative to bit.ly and other similar services. It got killed in 2019. Another similar service, Google Go Links, that allowed you to make your own custom URL shortener was also discontinued in 2021.

Inbox by Gmail, an innovative mobile-first email app, was pulled in 2019. However, most of its features, like snoozing emails and smart replies, were added to Gmail. 

Another groundbreaking Google app was Google Wave: A real-time editing and collaborative document tool. Apps like Notion, Slack, and even Google Docs owe a lot to the trend-setting app, which was shut down in 2012. 

Less bitterly, Google Glass was discontinued for consumers in 2015 and the Glass OS version of Android was discontinued a few years later in 2017. Its official demise was announced earlier this year. Not many people were sad to see it go, though if rumors are to be believed, we might be gearing up for the next AR goggle hype-cycle. 

And perhaps most famously, Google+ was an attempt to build a Facebook-style social network that failed spectacularly. Despite cramming Google+ features into YouTube, Gmail, and every other Google app, it was faded off in 2019.

Now, with some of the big names out of the way, here are some products you might have forgotten Google even launched. 

Stadia, we hardly knew ya

Google Stadia was a cloud gaming service that ran through Chrome, a Chromecast, or a mobile app. The idea was that you could stream games that actually played on Google’s server. As long as you had a fast enough internet connection, it would effectively turn your smartphone, TV, or under-powered PC into a games console. 

Unfortunately, despite some dedicated fans and a lot of hype from Google, the company never delivered the one thing a games console needs: great games. It stopped operating early this year. 

Jacquard

One of Google’s wildest ideas, Jacquard was a collaboration between Google and Levi’s, the clothing brand. Somehow, the two companies made two generations of a smart jacket—one in 2017 and another in 2019. It featured a touch-sensitive strip of fabric on your wrist so you could play and pause music and answer phone calls. 

While it’s hard to argue that Jacquard ever really took off, Google officially killed it earlier this year.

YouTube (not so) Originals

Launched in 2016, YouTube Originals was a somewhat misguided attempt to compete with Netflix and justify the $12/month Google was asking for YouTube Premium (at the time called YouTube Red). Already big YouTubers like PewDiePie were given large budgets to make poorly received shows. 

Though it wasn’t all bad: Cobra Kai, a sequel to The Karate Kid, got two seasons as a YouTube Original before moving to Netflix. 

YouTube Originals was finally discontinued in late 2022. 

About 9 different messaging apps

Google has a long history of releasing messaging apps before merging them, pivoting them, killing them, and reusing the name. The situation is so ridiculous that we had to write a full explainer last year. 

But in short, Google currently has three communications apps: Google Chat, Google Meet, and Messages. To get to this streamlined situation, it has killed, rebranded, or otherwise discontinued: Google Talk or GChat, Google+ Messenger, SMS on Android, Google Voice, Google Messenger (a different app again), YouTube Messages, Google Allo, Google Duo, and Google Hangouts.

So, while Project Starline looks awesome, we fear there’s a good chance the general public never sees it. The AI-features look more likely to get some support, but who knows how long Google will let them stick around.

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After being approached by a neurosurgeon seeking a less invasive method to treat conditions that require a brain implant, a team of researchers at Switzerland’s Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne led by neurotechnology expert Stephanie Lacour started working. They took inspiration from soft robots to create a large cortical electrode array that can squeeze through a tiny hole in the skull. They published their findings in Science on May 10. 

A cortical electrode array stimulates, records, or monitors electrical activity in the brain for patients who suffer with conditions like epilepsy. Epilepsy is relatively common, and affects around 1.2 percent of the US’s population. The disorder is known to cause seizures, which are electrical activity bursts in the brain and may cause uncontrollable shaking, sudden stiffness, collapsing, and other symptoms. 

While microelectrode arrays were first invented decades ago, the use of these arrays for deep brain stimulation in epilepsy patients has only became FDA approved in the past handful of years. Even so, current devices often have certain trade offs, be it electrode resolution, cortical surface coverage, or even aesthetics, the authors write in their paper.

The researchers created a superthin flower-shaped device that can be folded small enough to fit a 2 centimeter hole in the skull, where it can rest in between the skull and the surface of the brain—a tiny, delicate area that only measures around a millimeter in width. Once deployed, the flexible electrode releases each of its six spiraled arms one by one to extend across a region of the brain around 4 centimeters in diameter. Other devices may require a hole in the skull the same size as the diameter of the electrode array. 

 “The beauty of the eversion mechanism is that we can deploy an arbitrary size of electrode with a constant and minimal compression on the brain,” Sukho Song, lead author of the study, said in an EPFL statement. “The soft robotics community has been very much interested in this eversion mechanism because it has been bio-inspired. This eversion mechanism can emulate the growth of tree roots, and there are no limitations in terms of how much tree roots can grow.”

The device, however, isn’t exactly ready for human brains yet—the team has only tested it in a mini-pig—but will continue to be developed by a spinoff of EPFL Laboratory for Soft Bioelectronic Interfaces called Neurosoft Bioelectronics. 

“Minimally invasive neurotechnologies are essential approaches to offer efficient, patient-tailored therapies,” Lacour said in the EPFL statement.

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In even the most immersive virtual reality setting, it’s unusual to encounter smells. Previous attempts at incorporating smells into VR often utilized aerosols or atomizers, which take the gear to a whole new level of bulkiness, not to mention more complicated cleaning requirements. 

However, scientists from Beihang University and the City University of Hong Kong recently published a report in Nature Communications detailing their methods for integrating smell into existing VR technology. 

The first of the two devices is a sort of a patch designed to be worn right under your nose, while a second device looks more like a soft mask. But, they both do basically the same thing—a temperature-sensing resistor controls a heating element, and this heating element warms up a smelly paraffin wax to provide the user with a number of scents (two for the nose patch and nine for the mask). When smelling time is over, magnetic induction coils sweep heat away from the face, effectively blowing out the smelly wax. 

“This is quite an exciting development,” Jas Brooks, a PhD candidate at the University of Chicago’s Human-Computer Integration Lab who has studied chemical interfaces and smell, told MIT Technology Review. “It’s tackling a core problem with smell in VR: How do we miniaturize this, make it not messy, and not use liquid?”

[Related: A new VR exhibit takes you inside the James Webb Space Telescope’s images.]

The authors were able to make 30 different scents total, from herbal rosemary to fruity pineapple to sweet baked pancakes. They even included some less-than-pleasant scents, for example a stinky durian. The 11 volunteers were able to detect said smells with an average success rate of 93 percent. 

The device, the authors hope, can make VR feel more realistic. But it can also help people who are physically far from each other feel close again, something that may have come in handy during the COVID-19 lockdowns.

Author and scientist at City University of Hong Kong Xinge Yu told New Scientist that he hopes the device can help families or couples feel closer together by creating shared smells. “In terms of entertainment,” Yu continued, “users could experience various outdoor environments with different nature smells at home by VR.”

In a health setting, using the sniffable tool could help rejig memory for people with cognitive decline, or even help people improve their sense of smell after temporary loss due to COVID or another illness, Scientific American reports. But, before any of that happens, the researchers plan to work on shrinking down the size of the tools, and maybe even fiddling with the concept of taste next.

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We’ve all got messy, unlabeled music files cluttering up our collections. You might have gotten them from questionable sources in the early 2000s, ripped them yourself but were too lazy to tag them, or just didn’t care for a neat library at the time. 

This gives MusicBrainz Picard a vast pool of information to draw from, but also some limitations, as its database mostly only includes music that’s seen a wide commercial release. As a result, the software won’t be able to properly identify a recording of your high school band performing songs from Les Misérables, or a CD of your mom singing reggae versions of Bob Dylan songs (but please send me that CD, it sounds amazing).

Your tracks will automatically show up in the left panel. Click the Scan button at the top of the interface and Picard will attempt to identify your music and download the appropriate metadata for it. After a few seconds, your files will appear on the right panel with the right labels indicating the track’s name and number, and the name of the album they belong to.

By default, this feature will replace file names with the track number of each song followed by its title, but you can customize this setting by choosing a different File naming script in the menu. This will allow you to include details such as the artist’s name and album if you like. If none of the scripts work quite the way you like, you can always write your own—just click Open file naming script editor.

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WHEN A NUCLEAR-POWERED satellite crashes to Earth, whom do the authorities call? What about when a derailed train spills toxic chemicals? Or when a wildfire burns within the fenceline of a nuclear-weapons laboratory? When an earthquake damages a nuclear power plant, or when it melts down? 

Though its name isn’t catchy, the National Atmospheric Release Advisory Center (NARAC) is on speed dial for these situations. If hazardous material—whether of the nuclear, radiological, biological, chemical, or natural variety—gets spewed into the atmosphere, NARAC’s job is to trace its potentially deadly dispersion. The center’s scientists use modeling, simulation, and real-world data to pinpoint where those hazards are in space and time, where the harmful elements will soon travel, and what can be done.

The landscape of emergency response

NARAC is part of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, which is run by the National Nuclear Security Administration, which itself is part of the Department of Energy—the organization in charge of, among other things, developing and maintaining nuclear weapons. 

Plus, NARAC is part of a group called NEST, or the Nuclear Emergency Support Team. That team’s goal is to both prevent and respond to nuclear and radiological emergencies—whether they occur by accident or on purpose. Should a dirty bomb be ticking in Tempe, they’re the ones who would search for it. Should they not find it in time, they would also help deal with the fallout. In addition, NEST takes preventative measures, like flying radiation-detecting helicopters over the Super Bowl to make sure no one has poisonous plans. “That’s a very compelling national mission,” says Lee Glascoe, the program leader for LLNL’s contribution to NEST, which includes NARAC. “And NARAC is a part of that.”

And if a suspicious substance does get released into the atmosphere, NARAC’s job is to provide information that NEST personnel can use in the field and authorities can use to manage catastrophe. Within 15 minutes of a notification about toxic materials in the air, NARAC can produce a 3D simulation of the general situation: what particles are expected where, where the airflow will waft them, and what the human and environmental consequences could be. 

In 30 to 60 minutes, they can push ground-level data gathered by NEST personnel (who are out in the field while the NARAC scientists are running simulations) into their supercomputers and integrate it into their models. That will give more precise and accurate information about where plumes of material are in the air, where the ground will be contaminated, where affected populations are, how many people might die or be hurt, where evacuation should occur, and how far blast damage extends. 

Modeling the atmosphere

These capabilities drifted into Lawrence Livermore decades ago. “Livermore has a long history of atmospheric modeling, from the development of the first climate model,” says John Nasstrom, NARAC’s chief scientist.

That model was built by physicist Cecil “Chuck” Leith. Leith, back in the early Cold War, got permission from lab director Edward Teller (who co-founded the lab and was a proponent of the hydrogen bomb) to use early supercomputers to develop and run the first global atmospheric circulation model. Glascoe calls this effort “the predecessor for weather modeling and climate modeling.” The continuation of Leith’s work split into two groups at Livermore: one focused on climate and one focused on public health—the common denominator between the two being how the atmosphere works. 

In the 1970s, the Department of Energy came to the group focused on public health and asked, says Nasstrom, whether the models could show in near real time where hazardous material would travel once released. Livermore researchers took that project on in 1973, working on a prototype that during a real event could tell emergency managers at DOE sites (home to radioactive material) and nuclear power plants who would get how much of a dose and where.

The group was plugging along on that project when the real world whirled against its door. In 1979, a reactor at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania partially melted down. “They jumped into it,” Nasstrom says of his predecessors. The prototype system wasn’t yet fully set up, but the team immediately started to build in 3D information about the terrain around Three Mile Island to get specific predictions about the radionuclides’ whereabouts and effects.

After that near catastrophe, the group began preemptively building that terrain data in for other DOE and nuclear sites before moving on to the whole rest of the US and incorporating real-time meteorological data. “Millions of weather observations today are streaming into our center right now,” says Nasstrom, “as well as global and regional forecast model output from NOAA [the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration], the National Weather Service, and other agencies.” 

NARAC also evolved with the 1986 Chernobyl accident. “People anticipated that safety systems would be in place and catastrophic releases wouldn’t necessarily happen,” says Nasstrom. “Then Chernobyl went wrong, and we quickly developed a much larger-scale modeling system that could transport material around the globe.” Previously, they had focused on the consequences at a more regional level, but Chernobyl lofted its toxins around the globe, necessitating an understanding of that planetary profusion.

“It’s been in a continuous state of evolution,” says Nasstrom, of NARAC’s modeling and simulation capabilities. 

‘All the world’s terrain mapped out’

Today, NARAC uses high-resolution weather models from NOAA as well as forecast models it helped develop. Every day, the center brings in more than a terabyte of weather forecast model data. And those 3D topography maps they previously had to scramble to make are all taken care of. “We already have all the world’s terrain mapped out,” says Glascoe. 

NARAC also keeps up-to-date population information, including how the distribution of people in a city differs between day and night, and data on the buildings in cities, whose architecture changes airflow. That’s on top of land-use information, since whether an area is made up of plains or forest changes the analysis. All of that together helps scientists figure out what a given hazardous release will mean to actual people in actual locations around actual buildings.

Helping bring all those inputs together, NARAC scientists have also created ready-to-go models specific to different kinds of emergencies, such as nuclear power plant failures, dirty bomb detonations, plumes of biological badness, and actual nuclear weapons explosions. “So that as soon as something happens, we can say, ‘Oh, it’s something like this,’ that we got something to start with.” 

Katie Lundquist, a scientist specializing in scientific computing and computational fluid dynamics, is NARAC’s modeling team lead. Her team helps develop the models that underlie NARAC’s analysis, and right now it is working to improve understanding of how debris would be distributed in the mushroom cloud after a nuclear detonation and how radioactive material would mix with the debris. She’s also working on general weather modeling and making sure the software is all up to snuff for next-generation exascale supercomputers. 

“The atmosphere is really complex,” Lundquist says. “It covers a lot of scales, from a global scale down to just tiny little eddies that might be between buildings in an area. And so it takes a lot of computing power.”

NARAC has also striven to improve its communications game. “The authorities make the decision, but in a crisis, you can’t just give them all the information you’ve generated technically,” Glascoe says. “You can’t give them all sorts of pretty images of a plume.” They want one or two pages telling them only what the potential impact is. “And what sort of guidelines might help their decision making of whether people should shelter, evacuate, that sort of thing,” says Glascoe. 

To that end, NARAC has made publicly available examples of its briefing products, outlining what an emergency manager could expect to see in its one to two pages about dirty bombs, nuclear detonations, nuclear power plant accidents, hazardous chemicals, and biological agents.

The sim of all fears

Recently, the team has been assisting with radioactive worries in Ukraine, where Russia has interfered with the running of nuclear power plants. It also previously kept an analytical eye on the 2020 fires in Chernobyl’s exclusion zone and the same year’s launch of the Mars Perseverance rover. The rover had a plutonium power source, and NARAC was on hand to simulate what would happen in the event of an explosive accident. Going farther back, the team mobilized for weeks on end during the partial meltdown of the Fukushima reactors in Japan in 2011. 

But one of the events Glascoe is most proud of happened in late 2017, when sensors in Europe started picking up rogue radioactive activity. Across the continent, instruments designed to detect elemental decay saw spikes indicating ruthenium-106, with more than 300 total detections. “We were activated to try and figure out, ‘Well, what’s going on? Where did this come from?’” says Glascoe. 

As NARAC started its analysis, Glascoe remembered an internal research project involving the use of measurement data, atmospheric transport models, statistical methods, and machine learning that he thought might be helpful in tracing the radioactivity backward, rather than making the more standard forward prediction. “As the data comes in, the modeling gets adjusted to try and identify where likely sources are,” says Glascoe. 

Like the prototype that DOE had called up for use with Three Mile Island, this one wasn’t quite ready, but Glascoe called headquarters for permission anyway. “I said, ‘Hey, I know we haven’t really kicked the tires too much on this thing, except they did conclude this project and it looks like it works.’” They agreed to let him try it. 

Four days and many supercomputer cycles later, the team produced a map of probable release regions. The bull’s-eye was on a region with an industrial center. “And sure enough, a release from that location would do the trick,” says Glascoe. 

The suspect spot was in Russia, and many now believe the radioactivity came from the Mayak nuclear facility, which processes spent nuclear fuel. Mayak is located in a “closed city,” one that tightly controls who goes in and out. 

Ultimately, no one can stop the atmosphere’s churn, or its tendency to push particles around. The winds don’t care about borders or permits. And NARAC is there to scrutinize, even if it can’t stop, that movement.

Read more PopSci+ stories.

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Wendy’s is working with Google to create an AI chatbot that will be able to take customer orders at its drive-thrus. According to a press release from both companies, the AI—called Wendy’s FreshAI—is set to debut at a chain restaurant in Columbus, Ohio, in June.

Although the AI is being billed as a chatbot, it’s safe to assume it will work a little differently to ChatGPT or Bing AI. From a report in The Wall Street Journal, it seems that the customers will be able to speak to the AI but will receive a reply in the form of on-screen text. Once a customer places their order, it will be sent to a screen for the line cooks. When the meal is ready, the customer will then drive forward and collect it. This is one of the first instances we’ve seen where a chatbot is being taken out into the real world—and it sounds like it could work. 

Wendy’s FreshAI is powered by Google Cloud’s generative AIs and large language models (LLMs). Over the past few years, Google has developed a number of LLMs and other AI tools, including GLaM, PaLM, and LaMDA (the AI model that one researcher got fired for thinking was sentient). They’re all trained on gigantic datasets and are capable of understanding complex sentences and concepts and generating human-like text. LaMDA used to power the chatbot Google Bard, but it’s since been moved to the new and improved PaLM 2 model.

Crucially, these LLMs can be further trained on specific data—which is exactly what Wendy’s has done. According to the press release, because customers can completely customize their orders, there are billions of possible menu combinations. To limit miscommunications and incorrect orders, the AI has been trained on Wendy’s menu. According to The WSJ report, it has been taught the “unique terms, phrases and acronyms” that customers use when ordering at Wendy’s, including “JBC” for junior bacon cheeseburger and “biggie bags” for “various combinations of burgers, chicken nuggets and soft drinks.” Apparently, you will even be able to order a milkshake—despite Wendy’s officially calling them “Frosties.” It’s even been taught to upsell customers by offering larger sizes and daily specials, and to answer frequently asked questions.

[Related: Google previews an AI-powered future at I/O 2023]

To keep Wendy’s FreshAI from spouting nonsense or taking orders for McNuggets, it has also been trained on the company’s established business practices and was given some logical and conversational guardrails. While it can take your order, it probably won’t be able to plot world domination. Still, Wendy’s Chief Executive Todd Penegor told The WSJ: “it will be very conversational. You won’t know you’re talking to anybody but an employee.”

And from the tests so far, it’s apparently a pretty good employee at that. “It’s at least as good as our best customer service representative, and it’s probably on average better,” Kevin Vasconi, Wendy’s chief information officer, told The WSJ.

Wendy’s hopes the AI will speed up drive-thru orders which the company says account for between 75 and 80 percent of its business. Of course, getting the chatbot to work perfectly won’t be without its challenges. 

“You may think driving by and speaking into a drive-through is an easy problem for AI, but it’s actually one of the hardest,” Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud, told The WSJ. He listed the noise of music or children in a family car and people changing their mind mid-order as some of the problems that the AI has to be able to overcome. 

Assuming the AI works as planned, Wendy’s is aiming to launch it at a company-operated store in Columbus, Ohio, next month. If it’s a success, it could roll out more widely over the next few months. 

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After embracing artificial intelligence, Microsoft is taking another gamble on a promise from OpenAI’s CEO for one more moonshot goal—nuclear fusion. As CNET reports, Microsoft announced it has entered into a power purchase agreement with a startup company called Helion Energy that is slated to go into effect in 2028. Unlike AI’s very immediate realities, however, experts suspectbelieve the project’s extremely short timeframe and technological constraints make this timeline unrealisticcould easily prove disastrous.

Nuclear fusion is considered by many to be the end-all be-all of clean, virtually limitless energy production. Compared to fission reactions within traditional nuclear power plants that split atoms apart, fusion occurs when atoms are forced together within extremely high temperatures to produce a new, smaller mass atom, thus generating comparatively massive amounts of energy in the process. Researchers accomplished important fusion advancements in recent years, but a sustainable, affordable reactor has yet to be designed. What’s more, many experts estimate achieving this milestone won’t happen without “a few decades of research,” if ever.

Helion was founded in 2013, and received a $375 million investment from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman in 2021, shortly after it became the first private company to build a reactor component capable of reaching 100 million degrees Celsius (180 million degrees Fahrenheit). The optimum temperature for fusion, however, is roughly double that temperature. Meanwhile, Altman’s OpenAI itself garnered a massive partnership with Microsoft earlier this year, and has since integrated its high-profile generative artificial intelligence programming into its products, albeit not without its own controversy.

[Related: Physicists want to create energy like stars do. These two ways are their best shot.]

Helion aims to have its first fusion generator online in 2028. This generator would theoretically provide at least 50 megawatts following a one-year ramp up period—enough energy to power roughly 40,000 homes near a yet-to-be-determined facility location in Washington state. From there, Microsoft plans to pay Helion for its electricity generation as part of its roadmap to match its entire energy consumption with zero-carbon energy purchases by the end of the decade. As CNBC notes, because it’s a power purchase agreement, Helion could face financial penalties for not delivering on its aggressive goal.

In 2015, Helion’s CEO David Kirtley estimated their company would achieve “scientific net energy gain” in nuclear fusion within three years. Within nuclear fusion research, this energy gain refers to the ability to viably emit more power than it takes to produce. When asked this week by MIT Technology Review if Helion met those goals, a representative declined to comment, citing competitiveness concerns, but said its “initial timeline projections” had assumed the company would raise funds faster than it ultimately managed.

“We still have a lot of work to do,” Helion CEO David Kirtley also admitted in a statement released Wednesday,  but we are confident in our ability to deliver the world’s first fusion power facility.”

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Google’s annual I/O developer’s conference highlights all the innovative work the tech giant is doing to improve its large family of products and services. This year, the company emphasized that it is going big on artificial intelligence, especially generative AI. Expect to see more AI powered features coming your way across a range of key services in Google’s Workspace, apps, and Cloud. 

“As an AI-first company, we’re at an exciting inflection point…We’ve been applying AI to our products to make them radically more helpful for a while. With generative AI, we’re taking the next step,” Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and Alphabet, said in the keynote. “We are reimagining all our core products, including search.”

Here’s a look at what’s coming down the AI-created road.

Users will soon be able to work alongside generative AI to edit their photos, create images for their Slides, analyze data in Sheets, craft emails in Gmail, make backgrounds in Meet, and even get writing assistance in Docs. It’s also applying AI to help translations by matching lip movements with words, so that a person speaking in English could have their words translated into Spanish—with their lip movements tweaked to match. To help users discern what content generative AI has touched, the company said that it’s working on creating special watermarks and metadata notes for synthetic images as part of its responsible AI effort.  

The foundation of most of Google’s new announcements is the unveiling of its upgrade to a language model called PaLM, which has previously been used to answer medical questions typically posed to human physicians. PaLM 2, the next iteration of this model, promises to be faster and more efficient than its predecessor. It also comes in four sizes, from small to large, called Gecko, Otter, Bison, and Unicorn. The most lightweight model, Gecko, could be a good fit to use for mobile devices and offline modes. Google is currently testing this model on the latest phones. 

[Related: Google’s AI has a long way to go before writing the next great novel]

PaLM 2 is more multilingual and better at reasoning too, according to Google. The company says that a lot of scientific papers and math expressions have been thrown into its training dataset to help it with logic and common sense. And it can tackle more nuanced text like idioms, poems, and riddles. PaLM 2 is being applied to medicine, cybersecurity analysis, and more. At the moment, it also powers 25 Google products behind the scenes. 

“PaLM 2’s models shine when fine-tuned on domain-specific data. (BTW, fine tuning = training an AI model on examples specific to the task you want it to be good at,)” Google said in a tweet. 

A big reveal is that Google is now making its chatbot, Bard, available to the general public. It will be accessible in over 180 countries, and will soon support over 40 different languages. Bard has been moved to the upgraded PaLM 2 language model, so it should carry over all the improvements in capabilities. To save information generated with Bard, Google will make it possible to export queries and responses issued through the chatbot to Google Docs or Gmail. And if you’re a developer using Bard for code, you can export your work to Replit.

In essence, the theme of today’s keynote was clear: AI is helping to do everything, and it’s getting increasingly good at creating text, images, and handling complex queries, like helping someone interested in video games find colleges in a specific state that might have a major they’re interested in pursuing. But like Google search, Bard is constantly evolving and becoming more multimodal. At Google, they aim to soon make Bard include images in its responses and prompts through Google Lens. The company is actively working on integrating Bard with external applications like Adobe as well as a wide variety of tools, services, and extensions.

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One of the leading US mental health organizations, the American Psychological Association (APA), has issued its first ever health advisory report on social media usage for youth and adolescents. Published on Tuesday, the 11-page brief speaks in broad terms regarding the habits of children and teens on platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, and Twitter, describing them as “not inherently beneficial or harmful to young people.” Rather, the APA argues social media’s influences on minors are only part of a much wider, complex array of factors, and “likely depend on what teens can do and see online, teens’ pre-existing strengths or vulnerabilities, and the contexts in which they grow up.”

In short, the APA reiterates that, like every other aspect of psychological development, it’s difficult to pinpoint and quantify any single influence on an individual’s brain evolution. Instead, the association focuses on two major contributors to how social media can potentially affect younger users—parental oversight and awareness, as well as a platform’s own algorithmic structures.

[Related: Twitter may soon purge ‘inactive’ accounts.]

The APA recommends parents regularly review and discuss their children’s social media usage, particularly during early adolescence—usually defined as between 10- and 14-years-old. Educating children and teens on social media literacy and usage alongside fostering healthy online habits and relationships are also considered key methods of maintaining a safe experience on platforms like TikTok, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

Meanwhile, the APA stresses the responsibility does not rest solely on minors’ parents. The advisory’s authors note that the tech companies’ algorithms determining how, when, and why users see certain content are built upon “centuries of racist policy and discrimination encoded.” Social media therefore often becomes an “incubator” of these inherent biases, and which can  introduce and exacerbate extremist socio-political and racist ideals. “The resulting potential impact is far reaching, including physical violence offline, as well as threats to well-being,” adds the APA.

Speaking to PopSci, Jeremy Birnholtz, a professor of communication studies at Northwestern University focusing on LGBTQ+ adolescent social media usage and the head of the school’s Social Media Lab, says he believes the APA’s “measured document” is a step in the right direction, but argues some of the guidelines are potentially difficult to follow for parents.

[Related: Is shyness something kids feel, or something kids are?]

In one section of the report, for example, the APA advises limiting the amount of time younger users spend comparing themselves to others the see on social media, “particularly around beauty- or appearance-related content,” pointing towards its potentially influence on “poorer body image, disordered eating, and depressive symptoms, particularly among girls.”

“The guideline is ‘teens should avoid using social media for social comparison.’ And it’s like, well, what does that mean? You shouldn’t look at your friends’ vacation photos? You shouldn’t follow the influencers that all your friends follow? I don’t think that’s realistic,” says Birnholtz.

Like the APA’s report, Birnholtz also argues social media’s negative effects are often symptomatic of broader, real world issues. Racism can be baked into social media—while that’s true, it’s also baked into society,” they say of platforms’ algorithmic biases. “Certain things like social comparison, no question, can be exacerbated by social media. But to suggest that they are a function of [it] is problematic, I think.”

Birnholtz goes on to explain that while it’s vital to take the APA’s suggestions into account, it’s important to remember the origins of many social media issues. “You’re detaching problems with social media from the problems that they represent in the broader society,” says Birnholtz. “You can fix it on social media, but as long as it’s in the [real world], you’re not going to fix it.”

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It might be hard to believe, but the Apple TV box—not the Apple TV app—has been with us since 2007. In that time, it’s gotten both smaller and smarter, and it has a few tricks up its sleeve that you might not know about.

While the Apple TV is designed to make it easy for you to sit back, relax, and get to your entertainment as quickly as possible, you can improve your viewing experience by digging into some of the settings and hardware features. Note that these tips work with all generations of the Apple TV 4K, whether you have the latest version and its Siri Remote (with a circular clickpad), or the older model and its Touch Remote.

To delete an app from the home screen entirely, tap and hold on it, press Play/Pause, and select Delete to remove it. As on iOS, you can create folders too: press Play/Pause and choose New Folder to create one, and you’ll be able to drag app icons into it. To remove them, drag them out of the folder.

There are more options for changing your home screen’s appearance on the General menu within Settings, including switching between a light and a dark interface mode and choosing from a list of available screensavers.

2. Tame your notifications

If you install apps that support notifications—like the Apple TV app, which will alert you to new shows—you’ll see badges on the app icons when there’s a new alert. If you’d rather not have the extra clutter, go to Settings and open up Notifications, where you can turn these badges on or off for each app.

You can double-tap the Home button (which looks like a big TV display) to show all of your recent apps. Within an app, if you slide a finger left or right on the touch-sensitive top half of the Touch Remote or tap the left or right side of the clickpad ring on the Siri Remote, you’ll go backward or forward in videos and audio tracks.

A downward swipe (Touch Remote) or a tap on the bottom part of the clickpad ring (Siri Remote) brings up more options while you’re watching something. The options vary by app, but in the Netflix app, for example, it will bring up the subtitle and audio options.

If you find your remote too sensitive, or not sensitive enough, head to the Settings app, then choose Remotes and Devices to adjust it. You can check on the remote’s battery level at the same time.

4. Control the Apple TV 4K with your iPhone

You can use your iPhone to control your Apple TV 4K, and you may find that easier than the device’s remote. Setting this up is as simple as opening the Control Center (swipe down from the top right corner of your phone’s screen), then tapping on the remote button (which looks like your Apple TV 4K remote). If you can’t see the button, open iOS Settings and choose Control Center to add and position it.

[Related: All the ways to customize your iPhone lock screen]

5. Get info on your screensavers

The Apple TV 4K has some of the most gorgeous screensavers in the business. If you find yourself particularly taken with a scene and want to know where in the world it is, lightly touch the top half of the Touch Remote or the clickpad on the Siri Remote (without actually clicking) to see the location.

6. Add more users

You don’t necessarily want family members or housemates ruining your Disney Plus recommendations list or checking out your photos and videos, which is why the Apple TV 4K supports multiple user accounts. From Settings, pick Users and Accounts, then Add New User. This new user will need their own Apple ID, which grants them access to all their apps and services. You can swap between users from the same screen, or by pressing and holding the Home button (with the TV display icon on it).

7. Check how much space apps are using

You get a certain amount of on-board storage with the Apple TV 4K, but all those high-resolution movies can quickly eat up precious space, and you don’t want to run out of room. If you need to free up some storage, you can see which installed apps are the biggest data hogs by going to Settings and choosing General, followed by Manage Storage.

The next screen will show all the apps on your Apple TV 4K, with the bulkiest (perhaps a game of some sort) at the top. Handily enough, there’s a trash can right by each entry on the list—tap this icon once to delete the app and free up some space. The Apple TV 4K remembers your app purchases, so you can always download them again.

8. Do more with Bluetooth devices

Your Apple TV 4K has Bluetooth, so make the most of it. You might already know you can boost the audio capabilities of your box with Bluetooth speakers or your own headphones, but you can connect other devices as well. Up to two Bluetooth devices can be connected to your Apple TV 4K at any one time.

For example, tvOS now supports Bluetooth keyboards, which means you can save yourself the hassle of typing out movie titles and search requests—just swap the Touch Remote or Siri Remote for a keyboard.

Or, add an MFi Bluetooth game controller to give yourself more intuitive control over your big-screen games. From the Settings app, head to Remotes and Devices, then choose Bluetooth to pair devices or to remove one device and make room for another.

9. Make your Apple TV kid-friendly

The Apple TV can entertain kids of all ages, but you don’t necessarily want your youngsters to access all available material or start spending your money on in-app purchases.

On top of that, you can disable multiplayer gaming, screen recording, and even explicit language in Siri’s responses. All of these blocks and limits are protected by a PIN code, which must be entered to turn them off again.

Just install Plex on your computer and install the Plex app on your Apple TV to get started. If you need a little more help, Plex has more information about setting up the app. VLC Media Player is also worth a mention here, as it’s one of the most versatile media players for computers and phones. On the Apple TV, it provides support for streaming almost anything from your local network.

12. Calibrate your TV picture

The Apple TV 4K offers a rather smart color calibration feature, which you can use if you also have an iPhone. From Settings, choose Video and Audio, then Color Balance, and follow the instructions on screen. Note that you’ll need to turn your iPhone toward your TV to monitor and adjust the balance of colors. When the calibration is done, which only takes a few seconds, you’ll have the option to accept the new settings or go back to the original calibration.

13. Get help from Siri

Siri is available on the Apple TV, so make use of the voice-controlled assistant by pressing and holding on the Siri (microphone) button on the remote—it’s on the front on the Touch Remote and on the side on the Siri Remote.

Try asking, “What’s the weather forecast?” or saying, “Show me comedy movies from the 90s” (or whatever genre you’d prefer). The best part is, Siri’s results pop up at the bottom of the screen most of the time, so they won’t interrupt what you’re doing.

When watching movies and shows, you can say, “Forward 10 minutes” to jump around, or ask, “Who stars in this?” to get a list of cast members to appear on screen. Another good vocal trick is asking, “What did he (or she, or they) just say?” This prompts Siri to rewind whatever you’re watching by 15 seconds and temporarily turn subtitles on. Meanwhile, saying, “Reduce loud sounds” can make it easier to hear dialogue.

14. Use picture-in-picture

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On April 30, an MQ-9 Reaper drone landed on Highway 287, north of Rawlins, Wyoming. The landing was planned; it was a part of Exercise Agile Chariot, which drew a range of aircraft and saw ground support provided by the Kentucky Air National Guard. While US aircraft have landed on highways before, this was the first time such a landing had been undertaken by a Reaper, and it demonstrates the continued viability of adapting roads into runways as the need arises. 

In a video showing the landing released by the Air Force, the Reaper’s slow approach is visible against the snow-streaked rolling hills and pale-blue sky of Wyoming in spring. The landing zone is inconspicuous, a stretch of highway that could be anywhere, except for the assembled crowds and vehicles marking this particular stretch of road as an impromptu staging ground for air operations. 

“The MQ-9 can now operate around the world via satellite launch and recovery without traditional launch and recovery landing sites and maintenance packages,” said Lt. Col. Brian Flanigan, 2nd Special Operations Squadron director of operations, in a release. “Agile Chariot showed once again the leash is off the MQ-9 as the mission transitions to global strategic competition.”

When Flanigan describes the Reaper as transitioning to “global strategic competition,” that’s alluding to the comparatively narrower role Reapers had over the last 15 years, in which they were a tool used almost exclusively for the counter-insurgency warfare engaged in by the United States over Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as elsewhere, like Somalia and Yemen. Reapers’ advantages shine in counter-insurgency: The drones can fly high over long periods of time, watch in precise detail and detect small movements below, and drone pilots can pick targets as the opportunity arises.

But Reapers have hard limits that make their future uncertain in wars against militaries with substantial anti-air weapons, to say nothing of flying against fighter jets. Reapers are slow, propeller-driven planes, built for endurance not speed, and could be picked out of the sky or, worse, destroyed on a runway by a skilled enemy with dedicated anti-plane weaponry.

In March, a Reaper flying over the Black Sea was sprayed by fuel released from a Russian jet, an incident that led it to crash. While Wyoming’s Highway 287 is dangerous for cars, for planes it has the virtue of being entirely in friendly air space. 

Putting a Reaper into action in a war against a larger military, which in Pentagon terms often means against Russia or China, means finding a way to make the Reaper useful despite those threats. Such a mission would have to take advantage of the Reaper’s long endurance flight time, surveillance tools, and precision strike abilities, without leaving it overly vulnerable to attack. Operating on highways as runways is one way to overcome that limit, letting the drone fly from whenever there is road. 

“An adversary that may be able to deny use of a military base or an airfield, is going to have a nearly impossible time trying to defend every single linear mile of roads. It’s just too much territory for them to cover and that gives us access in places and areas that they can’t possibly defend,” Lt. Col. Dave Meyer, Deputy Mission Commander for Exercise Agile Chariot, said in a release.

Alongside the Reaper, the exercise showcased MC-130Js, A-10 Warthogs, and MH-6M Little Bird helicopters. With soldiers first establishing landing zones along the highway, the exercise then demonstrated landing the C-130 cargo aircraft to use as a refueling and resupply point for the A-10s, which also operated from the highway. Having the ability to not just land on an existing road, but bring more fuel and spare ammunition to launch new missions from the same road, makes it hard for an adversary to permanently ground planes, as resupply is also air-mobile and can use the same improvised runways.

Part of the exercise took place on Highway 789, which forks off 287 between Lander and Riverton, as the setting for trial search and rescue missions. “On the second day of operations, they repeated the procedure of preparing a landing zone for an MC-130. Once the aircraft landed, the team boarded MH-6 Little Birds that had been offloaded from the cargo plane by Soldiers from the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment. The special tactics troops then performed combat search-and-rescue missions to find simulated injured pilots and extract them from the landing zone on Highway 789,” described the Kentucky Air National Guard, in a statement.

With simulated casualties on cleared roads, the Air Force rehearsed for the tragedy of future war. As volunteers outfitted in prosthetic injuries were transported back to the care and safety of landed transports, the highways in Wyoming were home to the full spectrum of simulated war from runways. Watch a video of the landing, below.

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In the news, it seems like electric vehicles are everywhere—from new tech developments to changing policies to increasingly interesting designs. And while the road to electric vehicles may be bumpy, reports show that it’s absolutely crucial to electrify our transportation sector in order to reach critical climate change goals. But unfortunately, the feeling of EV omnipresence doesn’t currently extend to the dealership.

According to a new study released this week by the Sierra Club, 66 percent of car dealerships nationwide did not have a single electric vehicle for sale. And out of those dealerships, only 44 percent reported that they would offer an EV for sale if they could get their hands on one. While this is a step up from previous reporting done by the Sierra Club in 2019, it’s still low considering the massive EV goals set in place by businesses and certain state legislation.

[Related: EV companies call out their own weaknesses in new clean energy report.]

“To help avoid the worst impacts of climate disruption and protect our communities, it’s important that we accelerate the transition to all-electric vehicles,” Sierra Club Clean Transportation for All Director Katherine Garcia said in a release. “Enough empty promises: The auto industry must step on the accelerator and get electric vehicles on dealership lots now.”

One of the major problems getting EVs to the dealership lots is supply chain problems involving semiconductors and batteries, but some major manufacturers are also part of the problem themselves. Major manufacturers often don’t have many EV options in the US—for example, Honda’s first EV to sell in the US won’t be available until 2024, with Toyota only starting to sell the BZ4X stateside last year. 

For dealers, selling EVs just isn’t the same money making machine as selling combustion cars. A decent chunk of a dealership’s income is from parts and service, something that just isn’t as necessary for electric vehicles, according to the National Automobile Dealers Association.

“All else equal, an electric car has fewer mechanical parts than a gasoline or diesel car, which directly means that the revenue a car dealer makes from an electric car is much lower than what the dealer will make from a gas or diesel counterpart,” Vivek Astvansh, an assistant professor of marketing at Indiana University, told Vox.

Plus, investing in infrastructure can represent a huge cost, from purchasing chargers and infrastructure to retraining staff on the ins and outs of EVs. Some manufacturers, such as Chevrolet, are enacting EV standards for their dealerships, according to reporting by Vox. 

[Related: Here’s when experts say you should switch to an EV.]

It’s not all bad news, however—the ability to buy directly from EV makers such as Rivian and Lucid can put the pressure on dealerships to get the electrification started. States where policy allows for direct sales account for 615,724 EVs sold in 2022, representing 65 percent of all EVs sold nationwide, according to the report. 

And if you’re looking to find a dealership that has an EV in stock, your best bet is to try locations in the Southeast (which have a 41 percent rate of dealers with EVs) or look around for Mercedes-Benz dealerships which above 75 percent of offer EVs. 

But for dealerships, the time to act is now. There are already 1.9 million reservations or pre-orders for recently released EVs, and the percentage of EVs in new vehicle sales has tripled since 2020.

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Immense strides in human-robot interactions have been made over the past few years. But, all of these robots tend to be quite different.  The lack of an affordable, generalized, modular robotic platform hampers many researchers’ progress, alongside their ability to share and compare findings.

The National Science Foundation, an independent US government-funded agency supporting research and education, wants to accelerate advancements in robotics, and is offering a $5 million fleet of standardized humanoid robots to speed things along. On Monday, the NSF announced plans to distribute another 50 of its Quori bots to various research projects, with assistance from Oregon State University, University of Pennsylvania’s GRASP Laboratory, and the robotics software company, Semio.

[Related: Meet Garmi, a robot nurse and companion for Germany’s elderly population.]

First designed with support from the NSF’s Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) Community Research Infrastructure, Quori robots feature an omnidirectional, wheeled base, expressive video screen face, two gesturing arms, and a bowing spine. Quori is made to function both in labs and “in the wild,” according to its official description.

A previous pilot program built and tested 10 Quori robots that were subsequently awarded to research teams, including one from Carnegie Mellon University, who used their model to focus on social behavior and communication methods between humans and robots.

The new multimillion-dollar expansion will see many more of these standardized humanoid bots made available to applicants. All of Quori’s hardware designs are available as open-source, meaning anyone can access them to potentially build their own versions.

“A big hurdle in robotics research has been the lack of a common robot to work with,” Bill Smart, a professor of mechanical, industrial, and manufacturing engineering in OSU’s College of Engineering and project co-lead, explained in a statement.  “It’s tough to compare results and replicate and build on each other’s work when everyone is using a different type of robot. Robots come in many shapes and sizes, with different types of sensors and varying capabilities.”

[Related: Robot trash cans have survived a New York City field test.]

Alongside OSU project co-lead Naomi Fitter, Smart’s team will primarily set up and maintain a resource network for the Quori fleet, as well as beta test the robots. The project aims to soon connect both researchers and students through online collaborations, events, and various other opportunities in hopes of “building a community of roboticists that can learn from one another and advance the pace of research.”

According to Smart, pairing newcomers alongside experienced individuals can help quickly bring them up to speed in their field, while also increasing diversity and access in a field that is inordinately composed of white male researchers. 

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On Monday, Twitter CEO Elon Musk announced plans to delete accounts that the company deems inactive. He also warned that users may see their number of followers drop as a result of the digital house cleaning. “We’re purging accounts that have had no activity at all for several years,” Musk tweeted via his personal account.

The decision prompted swift criticism from both fans and critics of Musk’s chaotic tenure at the company, with some users pointing towards the emotional and historical implications in the wholesale erasures. For many, the Twitter profiles and messages of deceased relatives and loved ones function as digital memorials. Since Musk’s announcement, some users describe scrambling to archive the data before it disappears.

[Related: Twitter’s ‘Blue Check’ drama is a verified mess.]

“My son’s account is inactive because he died nearly 2 years ago. I would be devastated if his account were to be deleted… [I]t is one of the few things I have left,” one user tweeted. “I agree it’s worth preserving the libraries from the ancient internet,” tweeted Grimes, a musician and Musk’s ex-partner.

The sudden policy shift comes less than a week after Musk threatened to reassign NPR’s account handle after the news outlet publicly stated it would cease utilizing the social media platform. NPR’s decision stemmed from objections over Twitter’s attempt to relabel the nonprofit as a “government-funded media.” It now simply features a blue checkmark indicating the account is “Verified.” Federal funding comprises less than 1 percent of NPR’s annual operating budget, according to its own public data.

Prior to Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, the social media platform attempted a similar inactive username sweep in 2019, but widespread criticism at the time prompted the company to promptly reverse course. “We’ve heard you on the impact that this would have on the accounts of the deceased. This was a miss on our part,” company representatives said at the time, adding that Twitter would not remove any inactive accounts until they created “a new way for people to memorialize accounts.”

[Related: How to download your data from Twitter and other sites.]

A new memorialization method was never announced, although in responding to one critic yesterday, Musk claimed purged accounts “will be archived… But it is important to free up abandoned handles.” Musk has not yet offered an estimated timeline of when username deletions might occur, nor how a purged account archive would work. As of writing, it is still possible to download an archive of one’s own personal account.

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This story from the March 2012 issue of Popular Science covered the nuclear fusion experiments of Taylor Wilson, who was then 16. Wilson is currently 28 and a nuclear physicist who’s collaborated with multiple US agencies on developing reactors and defense technology. The author of this profile, Tom Clynes, went on to write a book about Wilson titled The Boy Who Played With Fusion.

“PROPULSION,” the nine-year-old says as he leads his dad through the gates of the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama. “I just want to see the propulsion stuff.”

A young woman guides their group toward a full-scale replica of the massive Saturn V rocket that brought America to the moon. As they duck under the exhaust nozzles, Kenneth Wilson glances at his awestruck boy and feels his burden beginning to lighten. For a few minutes, at least, someone else will feed his son’s boundless appetite for knowledge.

Then Taylor raises his hand, not with a question but an answer. He knows what makes this thing, the biggest rocket ever launched, go up.

And he wants—no, he obviously needs—to tell everyone about it, about how speed relates to exhaust velocity and dynamic mass, about payload ratios, about the pros and cons of liquid versus solid fuel. The tour guide takes a step back, yielding the floor to this slender kid with a deep-Arkansas drawl, pouring out a torrent of Ph.D.-level concepts as if there might not be enough seconds in the day to blurt it all out. The other adults take a step back too, perhaps jolted off balance by the incongruities of age and audacity, intelligence and exuberance.

As the guide runs off to fetch the center’s director—You gotta see this kid!—Kenneth feels the weight coming down on him again. What he doesn’t understand just yet is that he will come to look back on these days as the uncomplicated ones, when his scary-smart son was into simple things, like rocket science.

This is before Taylor would transform the family’s garage into a mysterious, glow-in-the-dark cache of rocks and metals and liquids with unimaginable powers. Before he would conceive, in a series of unlikely epiphanies, new ways to use neutrons to confront some of the biggest challenges of our time: cancer and nuclear terrorism. Before he would build a reactor that could hurl atoms together in a 500-million-degree plasma core—becoming, at 14, the youngest individual on Earth to achieve nuclear fusion.

WHEN I MEET Taylor Wilson, he is 16 and busy—far too busy, he says, to pursue a driver’s license. And so he rides shotgun as his father zigzags the family’s Land Rover up a steep trail in the Virginia Mountains north of Reno, Nevada, where they’ve come to prospect for uranium.

From the backseat, I can see Taylor’s gull-like profile, his forehead plunging from under his sandy blond bangs and continuing, in an almost unwavering line, along his prominent nose. His thinness gives him a wraithlike appearance, but when he’s lit up about something (as he is most waking moments), he does not seem frail. He has spent the past hour—the past few days, really—talking, analyzing, and breathlessly evangelizing about nuclear energy. We’ve gone back to the big bang and forward to mutually assured destruction and nuclear winter. In between are fission and fusion, Einstein and Oppenheimer, Chernobyl and Fukushima, matter and antimatter.

“Where does it come from?” Kenneth and his wife, Tiffany, have asked themselves many times. Kenneth is a Coca-Cola bottler, a skier, an ex-football player. Tiffany is a yoga instructor. “Neither of us knows a dang thing about science,” Kenneth says.

Almost from the beginning, it was clear that the older of the Wilsons’ two sons would be a difficult child to keep on the ground. It started with his first, and most pedestrian, interest: construction. As a toddler in Texarkana, the family’s hometown, Taylor wanted nothing to do with toys. He played with real traffic cones, real barricades. At age four, he donned a fluorescent orange vest and hard hat and stood in front of the house, directing traffic. For his fifth birthday, he said, he wanted a crane. But when his parents brought him to a toy store, the boy saw it as an act of provocation. “No,” he yelled, stomping his foot. “I want a real one.”

This is about the time any other father might have put his own foot down. But Kenneth called a friend who owns a construction company, and on Taylor’s birthday a six-ton crane pulled up to the party. The kids sat on the operator’s lap and took turns at the controls, guiding the boom as it swung above the rooftops on Northern Hills Drive.

To the assembled parents, dressed in hard hats, the Wilsons’ parenting style must have appeared curiously indulgent. In a few years, as Taylor began to get into some supremely dangerous stuff, it would seem perilously laissez-faire. But their approach to child rearing is, in fact, uncommonly intentional. “We want to help our children figure out who they are,” Kenneth says, “and then do everything we can to help them nurture that.”

At 10, Taylor hung a periodic table of the elements in his room. Within a week he memorized all the atomic numbers, masses and melting points. At the family’s Thanksgiving gathering, the boy appeared wearing a monogrammed lab coat and armed with a handful of medical lancets. He announced that he’d be drawing blood from everyone, for “comparative genetic experiments” in the laboratory he had set up in his maternal grandmother’s garage. Each member of the extended family duly offered a finger to be pricked.

The next summer, Taylor invited everyone out to the backyard, where he dramatically held up a pill bottle packed with a mixture of sugar and stump remover (potassium nitrate) that he’d discovered in the garage. He set the bottle down and, with a showman’s flourish, ignited the fuse that poked out of the top. What happened next was not the firecracker’s bang everyone expected, but a thunderous blast that brought panicked neighbors running from their houses. Looking up, they watched as a small mushroom cloud rose, unsettlingly, over the Wilsons’ yard.

For his 11th birthday, Taylor’s grandmother took him to Books-A-Million, where he picked out The Radioactive Boy Scout, by Ken Silverstein. The book told the disquieting tale of David Hahn, a Michigan teenager who, in the mid-1990s, attempted to build a breeder reactor in a backyard shed. Taylor was so excited by the book that he read much of it aloud: the boy raiding smoke detectors for radioactive americium . . . the cobbled-together reactor . . . the Superfund team in hazmat suits hauling away the family’s contaminated belongings. Kenneth and Tiffany heard Hahn’s story as a cautionary tale. But Taylor, who had recently taken a particular interest in the bottom two rows of the periodic table—the highly radioactive elements—read it as a challenge. “Know what?” he said. “The things that kid was trying to do, I’m pretty sure I can actually do them.”

A rational society would know what to do with a kid like Taylor Wilson, especially now that America’s technical leadership is slipping and scientific talent increasingly has to be imported. But by the time Taylor was 12, both he and his brother, Joey, who is three years younger and gifted in mathematics, had moved far beyond their school’s (and parents’) ability to meaningfully teach them. Both boys were spending most of their school days on autopilot, their minds wandering away from course work they’d long outgrown.

David Hahn had been bored too—and, like Taylor, smart enough to be dangerous. But here is where the two stories begin to diverge. When Hahn’s parents forbade his atomic endeavors, the angry teenager pressed on in secret. But Kenneth and Tiffany resisted their impulse to steer Taylor toward more benign pursuits. That can’t be easy when a child with a demonstrated talent and fondness for blowing things up proposes to dabble in nukes.

Kenneth and Tiffany agreed to let Taylor assemble a “survey of everyday radioactive materials” for his school’s science fair. Kenneth borrowed a Geiger counter from a friend at Texarkana’s emergency-management agency. Over the next few weekends, he and Tiffany shuttled Taylor around to nearby antique stores, where he pointed the clicking detector at old
radium-dial alarm clocks, thorium lantern mantles and uranium-glazed Fiesta plates. Taylor spent his allowance money on a radioactive dining set.

Drawn in by what he calls “the surprise properties” of radioactive materials, he wanted to know more. How can a speck of metal the size of a grain of salt put out such tremendous amounts of energy? Why do certain rocks expose film? Why does one isotope decay away in a millionth of a second while another has a half-life of two million years?

As Taylor began to wrap his head around the mind-blowing mysteries at the base of all matter, he could see that atoms, so small but potentially so powerful, offered a lifetime’s worth of secrets to unlock. Whereas Hahn’s resources had been limited, Taylor found that there was almost no end to the information he could find on the Internet, or to the oddities that he could purchase and store in the garage.

On top of tables crowded with chemicals and microscopes and germicidal black lights, an expanding array of nuclear fuel pellets, chunks of uranium and “pigs” (lead-lined containers) began to appear. When his parents pressed him about safety, Taylor responded in the convoluted jargon of inverse-square laws and distance intensities, time doses and roentgen submultiples. With his newfound command of these concepts, he assured them, he could master the furtive energy sneaking away from those rocks and metals and liquids—a strange and ever-multiplying cache that literally cast a glow into the corners of the garage.

Kenneth asked a nuclear-pharmacist friend to come over to check on Taylor’s safety practices. As far as he could tell, the friend said, the boy was getting it right. But he warned that radiation works in quick and complex ways. By the time Taylor learned from a mistake, it might be too late.

Lead pigs and glazed plates were only the beginning. Soon Taylor was getting into more esoteric “naughties”—radium quack cures, depleted uranium, radio-luminescent materials—and collecting mysterious machines, such as the mass spectrometer given to him by a former astronaut in Houston. As visions of Chernobyl haunted his parents, Taylor tried to reassure them. “I’m the responsible radioactive boy scout,” he told them. “I know what I’m doing.”

One afternoon, Tiffany ducked her head out of the door to the garage and spotted Taylor, in his canary yellow nuclear-technician’s coveralls, watching a pool of liquid spreading across the concrete floor. “Tay, it’s time for supper.”
“I think I’m going to have to clean this up first.”
“That’s not the stuff you said would kill us if it broke open, is it?”
“I don’t think so,” he said. “Not instantly.”

THAT SUMMER, Kenneth’s daughter from a previous marriage, Ashlee, then a college student, came to live with the Wilsons. “The explosions in the backyard were getting to be a bit much,” she told me, shortly before my own visit to the family’s home. “I could see everyone getting frustrated. They’d say something and Taylor would argue back, and his argument would be legitimate. He knows how to out-think you. I was saying, ‘You guys need to be parents. He’s ruling the roost.’ “

“What she didn’t understand,” Kenneth says, “is that we didn’t have a choice. Taylor doesn’t understand the meaning of ‘can’t.’ “

“And when he does,” Tiffany adds, “he doesn’t listen.”

“Looking back, I can see that,” Ashlee concedes. “I mean, you can tell Taylor that the world doesn’t revolve around him. But he doesn’t really get that. He’s not being selfish, it’s just that there’s so much going on in his head.”

Tiffany, for her part, could have done with less drama. She had just lost her sister, her only sibling. And her mother’s cancer had recently come out of remission. “Those were some tough times,” Taylor tells me one day, as he uses his mom’s gardening trowel to mix up a batch of yellowcake (the partially processed uranium that’s the stuff of WMD infamy) in a five-gallon bucket. “But as bad as it was with Grandma dying and all, that urine sure was something.”

Taylor looks sheepish. He knows this is weird. “After her PET scan she let me have a sample. It was so hot I had to keep it in a lead pig.

“The other thing is . . .” He pauses, unsure whether to continue but, being Taylor, unable to stop himself. “She had lung cancer, and she’d cough up little bits of tumor for me to dissect. Some people might think that’s gross, but I found it scientifically very interesting.”

What no one understood, at least not at first, was that as his grandmother was withering, Taylor was growing, moving beyond mere self-centeredness. The world that he saw revolving around him, the boy was coming to believe, was one that he could actually change.

The problem, as he saw it, is that isotopes for diagnosing and treating cancer are extremely short-lived. They need to be, so they can get in and kill the targeted tumors and then decay away quickly, sparing healthy cells. Delivering them safely and on time requires expensive handling—including, often, delivery by private jet. But what if there were a way to make those medical isotopes at or near the patients? How many more people could they reach, and how much earlier could they reach them? How many more people like his grandmother could be saved?

As Taylor stirred the toxic urine sample, holding the clicking Geiger counter over it, inspiration took hold. He peered into the swirling yellow center, and the answer shone up at him, bright as the sun. In fact, it was the sun—or, more precisely, nuclear fusion, the process (defined by Einstein as E=mc2) that powers the sun. By harnessing fusion—the moment when atomic nuclei collide and fuse together, releasing energy in the process—Taylor could produce the high-energy neutrons he would need to irradiate materials for medical isotopes. Instead of creating those isotopes in multimillion-dollar cyclotrons and then rushing them to patients, what if he could build a fusion reactor small enough, cheap enough and safe enough to produce isotopes as needed, in every hospital in the world?

At that point, only 10 individuals had managed to build working fusion reactors. Taylor contacted one of them, Carl Willis, then a 26-year-old Ph.D. candidate living in Albuquerque, and the two hit it off. But Willis, like the other successful fusioneers, had an advanced degree and access to a high-tech lab and precision equipment. How could a middle-school kid living on the Texas/Arkansas border ever hope to make his own star?

When Taylor was 13, just after his grandmother’s doctor had given her a few weeks to live, Ashlee sent Tiffany and Kenneth an article about a new school in Reno. The Davidson Academy is a subsidized public school for the nation’s smartest and most motivated students, those who score in the top 99.9th percentile on standardized tests. The school, which allows students to pursue advanced research at the adjacent University of Nevada–Reno, was founded in 2006 by software entrepreneurs Janice and Robert Davidson. Since then, the Davidsons have championed the idea that the most underserved students in the country are those at the top.

On the family’s first trip to Reno, even before Taylor and Joey were accepted to the academy, Taylor made an appointment with Friedwardt Winterberg, a celebrated physicist at the University of Nevada who had studied under the Nobel Prize–winning quantum theorist Werner Heisenberg. When Taylor told Winterberg that he wanted to build a fusion reactor, also called a fusor, the notoriously cranky professor erupted: “You’re 13 years old! And you want to play with tens of thousands of electron volts and deadly x-rays?” Such a project would be far too technically challenging and hazardous, Winterberg insisted, even for most doctoral candidates. “First you must master calculus, the language of science,” he boomed. “After that,” Tiffany said, “we didn’t think it would go anywhere. Kenneth and I were a bit relieved.”

But Taylor still hadn’t learned the word “can’t.” In the fall, when he began at Davidson, he found the two advocates he needed, one in the office right next door to Winterberg’s. “He had a depth of understanding I’d never seen in someone that young,” says atomic physicist Ronald Phaneuf. “But he was telling me he wanted to build the reactor in his garage, and I’m thinking, ‘Oh my lord, we can’t let him do that.’ But maybe we can help him try to do it here.”

Phaneuf invited Taylor to sit in on his upper-division nuclear physics class and introduced him to technician Bill Brinsmead. Brinsmead, a Burning Man devotee who often rides a wheeled replica of the Little Boy bomb through the desert, was at first reluctant to get involved in this 13-year-old’s project. But as he and Phaneuf showed Taylor around the department’s equipment room, Brinsmead recalled his own boyhood, when he was bored and unchallenged and aching to build something really cool and difficult (like a laser, which he eventually did build) but dissuaded by most of the adults who might have helped.

Rummaging through storerooms crowded with a geeky abundance of electron microscopes and instrumentation modules, they came across a high-vacuum chamber made of thick-walled stainless steel, capable of withstanding extreme heat and negative pressure. “Think I could use that for my fusor?” Taylor asked Brinsmead. “I can’t think of a more worthy cause,” Brinsmead said.

NOW IT’S TIFFANY who drives, along a dirt road that wends across a vast, open mesa a few miles south of the runways shared by Albuquerque’s airport and Kirkland Air Force Base. Taylor has convinced her to bring him to New Mexico to spend a week with Carl Willis, whom Taylor describes as “my best nuke friend.” Cocking my ear toward the backseat, I catch snippets of Taylor and Willis’s conversation.

“The idea is to make a gamma-ray laser from stimulated decay of dipositronium.”

“I’m thinking about building a portable, beam-on-target neutron source.”

“Need some deuterated polyethylene?”

Willis is now 30; tall and thin and much quieter than Taylor. When he’s interested in something, his face opens up with a blend of amusement and curiosity. When he’s uninterested, he slips into the far-off distractedness that’s common among the super-smart. Taylor and Willis like to get together a few times a year for what they call “nuclear tourism”—they visit research facilities, prospect for uranium, or run experiments.

Earlier in the week, we prospected for uranium in the desert and shopped for secondhand laboratory equipment in Los Alamos. The next day, we wandered through Bayo Canyon, where Manhattan Project engineers set off some of the largest dirty bombs in history in the course of perfecting Fat Man, which leveled Nagasaki.

Today we’re searching for remnants of a “broken arrow,” military lingo for a lost nuclear weapon. While researching declassified military reports, Taylor discovered that a Mark 17 “Peacemaker” hydrogen bomb, which was designed to be 700 times as powerful as the bomb detonated over Hiroshima, was accidentally dropped onto this mesa in May 1957. For the U.S. military, it was an embarrassingly Strangelovian episode; the airman in the bomb bay narrowly avoided his own Slim Pickens moment when the bomb dropped from its gantry and smashed the B-36’s doors open. Although its plutonium core hadn’t been inserted, the bomb’s “spark plug” of conventional explosives and radioactive material detonated on impact, creating a fireball and a massive crater. A grazing steer was the only reported casualty.

Tiffany parks the rented SUV among the mesquite, and we unload metal detectors and Geiger counters and fan out across the field. “This,” says Tiffany, smiling as she follows her son across the scrubland, “is how we spend our vacations.”

Willis says that when Taylor first contacted him, he was struck by the 12-year-old’s focus and forwardness—and by the fact that he couldn’t plumb the depth of Taylor’s knowledge with a few difficult technical questions. After checking with Kenneth, Willis sent Taylor some papers on fusion reactors. Then Taylor began acquiring pieces for his new machine.

Through his first year at Davidson, Taylor spent his afternoons in a corner of Phaneuf’s lab that the professor had cleared out for him, designing the reactor, overcoming tricky technical issues, tracking down critical parts. Phaneuf helped him find a surplus high-voltage insulator at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Willis, then working at a company that builds particle accelerators, talked his boss into parting with an extremely expensive high-voltage power supply.

With Brinsmead and Phaneuf’s help, Taylor stretched himself, applying knowledge from more than 20 technical fields, including nuclear and plasma physics, chemistry, radiation metrology and electrical engineering. Slowly he began to test-assemble the reactor, troubleshooting pesky vacuum leaks, electrical problems and an intermittent plasma field.

Shortly after his 14th birthday, Taylor and Brinsmead loaded deuterium fuel into the machine, brought up the power, and confirmed the presence of neutrons. With that, Taylor became the 32nd individual on the planet to achieve a nuclear-fusion reaction. Yet what would set Taylor apart from the others was not the machine itself but what he decided to do with it.

While still developing his medical isotope application, Taylor came across a report about how the thousands of shipping containers entering the country daily had become the nation’s most vulnerable “soft belly,” the easiest entry point for weapons of mass destruction. Lying in bed one night, he hit on an idea: Why not use a fusion reactor to produce weapons-sniffing neutrons that could scan the contents of containers as they passed through ports? Over the next few weeks, he devised a concept for a drive-through device that would use a small reactor to bombard passing containers with neutrons. If weapons were inside, the neutrons would force the atoms into fission, emitting gamma radiation (in the case of nuclear material) or nitrogen (in the case of conventional explosives). A detector, mounted opposite, would pick up the signature and alert the operator.

He entered the reactor, and the design for his bomb-sniffing application, into the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair. The Super Bowl of pre-college science events, the fair attracts 1,500 of the world’s most switched-on kids from some 50 countries. When Intel CEO Paul Otellini heard the buzz that a 14-year-old had built a working nuclear-fusion reactor, he went straight for Taylor’s exhibit. After a 20-minute conversation, Otellini was seen walking away, smiling and shaking his head in what looked like disbelief. Later, I would ask him what he was thinking. “All I could think was, ‘I am so glad that kid is on our side.’ “

For the past three years, Taylor has dominated the international science fair, walking away with nine awards (including first place overall), overseas trips and more than $100,000 in prizes. After the Department of Homeland Security learned of Taylor’s design, he traveled to Washington for a meeting with the DHS’s Domestic Nuclear Detection Office, which invited Taylor to submit a grant proposal to develop the detector. Taylor also met with then–Under Secretary of Energy Kristina Johnson, who says the encounter left her “stunned.”

“I would say someone like him comes along maybe once in a generation,” Johnson says. “He’s not just smart; he’s cool and articulate. I think he may be the most amazing kid I’ve ever met.”

And yet Taylor’s story began much like David Hahn’s, with a brilliant, high-flying child hatching a crazy plan to build a nuclear reactor. Why did one journey end with hazmat teams and an eventual arrest, while the other continues to produce an array of prizes, patents, television appearances, and offers from college recruiters?

The answer is, mostly, support. Hahn, determined to achieve something extraordinary but discouraged by the adults in his life, pressed on without guidance or oversight—and with nearly catastrophic results. Taylor, just as determined but socially gifted, managed to gather into his orbit people who could help him achieve his dreams: the physics professor; the older nuclear prodigy; the eccentric technician; the entrepreneur couple who, instead of retiring, founded a school to nurture genius kids. There were several more, but none so significant as Tiffany and Kenneth, the parents who overcame their reflexive—and undeniably sensible—inclinations to keep their Icarus-like son on the ground. Instead they gave him the wings he sought and encouraged him to fly up to the sun and beyond, high enough to capture a star of his own.

After about an hour of searching across the mesa, our detectors begin to beep. We find bits of charred white plastic and chunks of aluminum—one of which is slightly radioactive. They are remnants of the lost hydrogen bomb. I uncover a broken flange with screws still attached, and Taylor digs up a hunk of lead. “Got a nice shard here,” Taylor yells, finding a gnarled piece of metal. He scans it with his detector. “Unfortunately, it’s not radioactive.”

“That’s the kind I like,” Tiffany says.

Willis picks up a large chunk of the bomb’s outer casing, still painted dull green, and calls Taylor over. “Wow, look at that warp profile!” Taylor says, easing his scintillation detector up to it. The instrument roars its approval. Willis, seeing Taylor ogling the treasure, presents it to him. Taylor is ecstatic. “It’s a field of dreams!” he yells. “This place is loaded!”

Suddenly we’re finding radioactive debris under the surface every five or six feet—even though the military claimed that the site was completely cleaned up. Taylor gets down on his hands and knees, digging, laughing, calling out his discoveries. Tiffany checks her watch. “Tay, we really gotta go or we’ll miss our flight.”

“I’m not even close to being done!” he says, still digging. “This is the best day of my life!” By the time we manage to get Taylor into the car, we’re running seriously late. “Tay,” Tiffany says, “what are we going to do with all this stuff?”

“For $50, you can check it on as excess baggage,” Willis says. “You don’t label it, nobody knows what it is, and it won’t hurt anybody.” A few minutes later, we’re taping an all-too-flimsy box shut and loading it into the trunk. “Let’s see, we’ve got about 60 pounds of uranium, bomb fragments and radioactive shards,” Taylor says. “This thing would make a real good dirty bomb.”

In truth, the radiation levels are low enough that, without prolonged close-range exposure, the cargo poses little danger. Still, we stifle the jokes as we pull up to curbside check-in. “Think it will get through security?” Tiffany asks Taylor.

“There are no radiation detectors in airports,” Taylor says. “Except for one pilot project, and I can’t tell you which airport that’s at.”

As the skycap weighs the box, I scan the “prohibited items” sign. You can’t take paints, flammable materials or water on a commercial airplane. But sure enough, radioactive materials are not listed.

We land in Reno and make our way toward the baggage claim. “I hope that box held up,” Taylor says, as we approach the carousel. “And if it didn’t, I hope they give us back the radioactive goodies scattered all over the airplane.” Soon the box appears, adorned with a bright strip of tape and a note inside explaining that the package has been opened and inspected by the TSA. “They had no idea,” Taylor says, smiling, “what they were looking at.”

APART FROM THE fingerprint scanners at the door, Davidson Academy looks a lot like a typical high school. It’s only when the students open their mouths that you realize that this is an exceptional place, a sort of Hogwarts for brainiacs. As these math whizzes, musical prodigies and chess masters pass in the hallway, the banter flies in witty bursts. Inside humanities classes, discussions spin into intellectual duels.

Although everyone has some kind of advanced obsession, there’s no question that Taylor is a celebrity at the school, where the lobby walls are hung with framed newspaper clippings of his accomplishments. Taylor and I visit with the principal, the school’s founders and a few of Taylor’s friends. Then, after his calculus class, we head over to the university’s physics department, where we meet Phaneuf and Brinsmead.

Taylor’s reactor, adorned with yellow radiation-warning signs, dominates the far corner of Phaneuf’s lab. It looks elegant—a gleaming stainless-steel and glass chamber on top of a cylindrical trunk, connected to an array of sensors and feeder tubes. Peering through the small window into the reaction chamber, I can see the golf-ball-size grid of tungsten fingers that will cradle the plasma, the state of matter in which unbound electrons, ions and photons mix freely with atoms and molecules.

“OK, y’all stand back,” Taylor says. We retreat behind a wall of leaden blocks as he shakes the hair out of his eyes and flips a switch. He turns a knob to bring the voltage up and adds in some gas. “This is exactly how me and Bill did it the first time,” he says. “But now we’ve got it running even better.”

Through a video monitor, I watch the tungsten wires beginning to glow, then brightening to a vivid orange. A blue cloud of plasma appears, rising and hovering, ghostlike, in the center of the reaction chamber. “When the wires disappear,” Phaneuf says, “that’s when you know you have a lethal radiation field.”

I watch the monitor while Taylor concentrates on the controls and gauges, especially the neutron detector they’ve dubbed Snoopy. “I’ve got it up to 25,000 volts now,” Taylor says. “I’m going to out-gas it a little and push it up.”

Willis’s power supply crackles. The reactor is entering “star mode.” Rays of plasma dart between gaps in the now-invisible grid as deuterium atoms, accelerated by the tremendous voltages, begin to collide. Brinsmead keeps his eyes glued to the neutron detector. “We’re getting neutrons,” he shouts. “It’s really jamming!”

Taylor cranks it up to 40,000 volts. “Whoa, look at Snoopy now!” Phaneuf says, grinning. Taylor nudges the power up to 50,000 volts, bringing the temperature of the plasma inside the core to an incomprehensible 580 million degrees—some 40 times as hot as the core of the sun. Brinsmead lets out a whoop as the neutron gauge tops out.

“Snoopy’s pegged!” he yells, doing a little dance. On the video screen, purple sparks fly away from the plasma cloud, illuminating the wonder in the faces of Phaneuf and Brinsmead, who stand in a half-orbit around Taylor. In the glow of the boy’s creation, the men suddenly look years younger.

Taylor keeps his thin fingers on the dial as the atoms collide and fuse and throw off their energy, and the men take a step back, shaking their heads and wearing ear-to-ear grins.

“There it is,” Taylor says, his eyes locked on the machine. “The birth of a star.”

Read more PopSci+ stories.

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Quick Response (QR) codes were popular before the COVID-19 pandemic, but now they’re everywhere, from restaurant menus to billboards. These square codes are quick and easy to use, and anyone can scan them on their mobile device using its built-in camera, no special app or update necessary. 

If you’ve ever wondered how to make a QR code, know that it doesn’t require any great degree of technical know-how or a huge amount of time. You just need the right app and the content you want to encode.

[Related: QR codes are everywhere now. Here’s how to use them.]

On mobile, the process is similar:

Chrome’s QR code generator is free and easy to use, but gives you little in terms of customization. If you create the code on an Android device or a computer, it will always have the Chrome dinosaur in the middle, but you can avoid that by using an Apple mobile device instead.

You can also try The QR Code Generator, which has nearly the same name as the one we just mentioned. You can easily access this free platform from your browser, and you can start creating QR codes from the get-go. To enjoy features like the ability to add logos, make simpler patterns, or generate dynamic QR codes, you’ll have to create an account. But if you have basic needs, this site is intuitive and provides everything you’ll need.  

What you can do with QR codes

QR codes can store around 4,000 characters of text, which can be a plain message, a link to a website, a file to download, or pretty much any other information you can think of. You’re probably most familiar with their ability to store website URLs, whether that’s a portal to a company website on an advertisement or a shortcut to a bar’s drinks list.

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If you have Face ID set up on your iPhone, you can unlock your device by showing it your visage instead of using a pin code or a thumb print. It’s a familiar aspect of smartphone tech for many of us, but what about using it to get in your vehicle?

The Genesis GV60 is the first car to feature this technology to unlock and enter the car, pairing it with your fingerprint to start it up.

How does it work? Here’s what we discovered.

The Genesis GV60 is a tech-laden EV

Officially announced in the fall of 2022, the GV60 is Genesis’ first dedicated all-electric vehicle. Genesis, for the uninitiated, is the luxury arm of Korea-based automaker Hyundai. 

Built on the new Electric-Global Modular Platform, the GV60 is equipped with two electric motors, and the result is an impressive ride. At the entry level, the GV60 Advanced gets 314 horsepower, and the higher-level Performance trim cranks out 429 horsepower. As a bonus, the Performance also includes a Boost button that can kick it up to 483 horsepower for 10 seconds; with that in play, the GV60 boasts a 0-to-60 mph time of less than four seconds.

The profile of this EV is handsome, especially in the look-at-me shade of São Paulo Lime. Inside, the EV is just as fetching as the exterior, with cool touches like the rotating gear shifter. As soon as the car starts up, a crystal orb rotates to reveal a notched shifter that looks and feels futuristic. Some might say it’s gimmicky, but it does have a wonderful ergonomic feel on the pads of the fingers.

Embedded in the glossy black trim of the B-pillar, which is the part of the frame between the front and rear doors, the facial recognition camera stands ready to let you into the car without a key. But first, you’ll need to set it up to recognize you and up to one other user, so the car can be accessed by a partner, family member, or friend. Genesis uses deep learning to power this feature, and if you’d like to learn more about artificial intelligence, read our explainer on AI.

The facial recognition setup process

You’ll need both sets of the vehicle’s smart keys (Genesis’ key fobs) in hand to set up Face Connect, Genesis’ moniker for its facial recognition setup. Place the keys in the car, start it up, and open the “setup” menu and choose “user profile.” From there, establish a password and choose “set facial recognition.” The car will prompt you to leave the car running and step out of it, leaving the door open. Gaze into the white circle until the animation stops and turns green, and the GV60 will play an audio prompt: “facial recognition set.” The system is intuitive, and I found that I could set it up the first time on my own just through the prompts. If you don’t get it right, the GV60 will let you know and the camera light will turn from white to red.

After the image, the GV60 needs your fingerprint. Basically, you’ll go through the same setup process, instead choosing “fingerprint identification” and the car will issue instructions. It will ask for several placements of your index finger inside the vehicle (the fingerprint area is a small circle between the volume and tuning roller buttons) to create a full profile.

In tandem, these two biometrics (facial recognition and fingerprint) work together to first unlock and then start the car. Upon approach, touch the door handle and place your face near the camera and it will unlock; you can even leave the key in the car and lock it with this setup. I found it to be very easy to set up, and it registered my face on the first try. The only thing I forgot the first couple of times was that I first had to touch the door handle and then scan my face. I could see this being a terrific way to park and take a jog around the park or hit the beach without having to worry about how to secure a physical key. 

Interestingly, to delete a profile the car requires just one smart key instead of two.

Not everyone is a fan of this type of technology in general because of privacy concerns related to biometrics; Genesis says no biometric data is uploaded to the cloud, but is stored securely and heavily encrypted in the vehicle itself. If it is your cup of tea and you like the option to leave the physical keys behind, this is a unique way of getting into your car. 

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At least 83 moons orbit Saturn, and experts believe its most reflective one could harbor life underneath its icy surface. To find out, NASA scientists hope to send a massive serpentine robot to scour Enceladus, both atop its frozen ground—and maybe even within a hidden ocean underneath.

As CBS News highlighted on Monday, researchers and engineers are nearing completion of their Exobiology Extant Life Surveyor (EELS) prototype. The 16-foot-long, 200-pound snakelike bot is capable of traversing both ground and watery environments via “first-of-a-kind rotating propulsion units,” according to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. These repeating units could act as tracks, gripping mechanisms, and underwater propellers, depending on the surrounding environment’s need. The “head” of EELS also includes 3D mapping technology alongside real-time video recording and transmission capabilities to document its extraplanetary adventure.

[Related: Saturn’s rings have been slowly heating up its atmosphere.]

In theory, EELS would traverse the surface of Enceladus towards one of the moon’s many “plume vents,” which it could then enter to use as a passageway towards its oceanic source. Over 100 of these vents were discovered at Enceladus’ southern pole by the Cassini space probe during its tenure around Saturn. Scientists have since determined the fissures emitted water vapor into space that contained amino acids, which are considered pivotal in the creation of lifeforms.

To assess its maneuverability, NASA researchers have already taken EELS out for test drives in environments such as an ice skating rink in Pasadena, CA, and even an excursion to Athabasca Glacier in Canada’s Jasper National Park. Should all go as planned, the team hopes to present a finalized concept by fall 2024. But be prepared to wait a while to see it in action on Enceladus—EELS’ journey to the mysterious moon would reportedly take roughly 12 years. Even if it never makes it there, however, the robotic prototype could prove extremely useful closer to Earth, and even on it. According to the Jet Propulsion Lab, EELS could show promise exploring the polar caps of Mars, or even ice sheet crevasses here on Earth.

[Related: Saturn has a slushy core and rings that wiggle.]

Enceladus’ fascinating environment was first unveiled thanks to NASA’s historic Cassini space probe. Launched in 1997, the satellite began transmitting data and images of the planet and its moons back to Earth after arriving following a 7 year voyage. After 13 years of service, a decommissioned Cassini descended towards Saturn, where it was vaporized within the upper atmosphere’s high pressure and temperature. Although NASA could have left Cassini to cruise sans trajectory once its fuel ran out, they opted for the controlled demolition due to the slim possibility of crashing into Enceladus or Titan, which might have disrupted the potential life ecosystems scientists hope to one day discover. 

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An unsettling report released barely a year ago painted a grim picture of the plastics industry—only about 5 percent of the 46 million annual tons of plastic waste in the US makes it to recycling facilities. The number is even more depressing after realizing that is roughly half of experts’ previous estimates. But if all that wasn’t enough, new information throws a heaping handful of salt on the wound: of the plastic that does make it to recycling, a lot of it is still released into the world as potentially toxic microplastics.

According to the pilot study recently published in the Journal of Hazardous Materials Advances focused on a single, modern facility, recycling plants’ wastewater contains a staggering number of microplastic particles. And as Wired explained on Friday, all those possibly toxic particulates have to go somewhere, i.e. potentially city water systems, or the larger environment.

The survey focusing on one new, unnamed facility examined its entire recycling process. This involves sorting, shredding, and melting plastics down into pellets. During those phases of recycling, however, the plastic waste is washed multiple times, which subsequently sheds particles smaller than 5 millimeters along the way. Despite factoring in the plant’s state-of-the-art filtration system designed to capture particulates as tiny as 50 microns, the facility still produced as many as 75 billion particles per cubic meter of wastewater.

[Related: How companies greenwash their plastic pollution.]

The silver lining here is that without the filtration systems, it could be much worse. Researchers estimated facilities that utilized filters cut down their microplastic residuals from 6.5 million pounds to around 3 million pounds per year. Unfortunately, many recycling locations aren’t as equipped as the modern plant used within the study. On top of that, the team only focused on microplastics as small as 1.6 microns; particles can get so small they actually enter organisms’ individual cells. This implies much more plastic escapes these facilities than previously anticipated.

“I really don’t want it to suggest to people that we shouldn’t recycle, and to give it a completely negative reputation,” Erina Brown, a plastics scientist at the University of Strathclyde, told Wired. “What it really highlights is that we just really need to consider the impacts of the solutions.”

Most experts agree that the most important way to minimize coating the entire planet in microplastics is to focus on the larger issue—reducing society’s reliance on plastics in general, and pursuing alternative materials. In the meantime, recycling remains an important part of sustainability, as long as both facilities do everything they can to minimize microscopic waste.

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When traveling on rough and unpredictable roads, the more legs the better—at least for robots. Balancing on two legs is somewhat hard; on four legs, it’s slightly easier. But what if you had many many legs, like a centipede? Researchers at Georgia Institute of Technology have found that by giving a robot multiple, connected legs, it allows the machine to easily clamber over landscapes with cracks, hills, and uneven surfaces without the need for extensive sensor systems that would otherwise have helped it navigate its environment. Their results are published in a study this week in the journal Science.

The team has previously done work modeling the motion of these creepy critters. In this new study, they created a framework for operating this centipede-like robot that was influenced by mathematician Claude Shannon’s communication theory, which posits that in transmitting a signal between two points, that to avoid noise, it’s better to break up the message into discrete, repeating units. 

“We were inspired by this theory, and we tried to see if redundancy could be helpful in matter transportation,” Baxi Chong, a physics postdoctoral researcher, said in a news release. Their creation is a robot with joined parts like a model train with two legs sticking out from each segment that could allow it to “walk.” The notion is that after being told to go to a certain destination, along the way, these legs would make contact with a surface, and send information about the terrain to the other segments, which would then adjust motion and position accordingly. The team put it through a series of real-world and computer trials to see how it walked, how fast it could go, and how it performed on grass, blocks, and other rough surfaces. 

[Related: How a dumpy, short-legged bird could change water bottle designs]

“One value of our framework lies in its codification of the benefits of redundancy, which lead to locomotor robustness over environmental contact errors without requiring sensing,” the researchers wrote in the paper. “This contrasts with the prevailing paradigm of contact-error prevention in the conventional sensor-based closed-loop controls that take advantage of visual, tactile, or joint-torque information from the environment to change the robot dynamics.”

They repeated the experiment with robots that had different numbers of legs (six, 12, and 14). In future work with the robot, the researchers said that they want to hone in on finding the optimal number of legs to give its centipede-bot so that it can move smoothly in the most cost-effective way possible.

“With an advanced bipedal robot, many sensors are typically required to control it in real time,” Chong said. “But in applications such as search and rescue, exploring Mars, or even micro robots, there is a need to drive a robot with limited sensing.” 

The post To build a better crawly robot, add legs—lots of legs appeared first on Popular Science.

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If the thought of friends, family, and coworkers admiring your custom laptop stand isn’t enough to get you picking out wood, let’s circle back to those benefits. By elevating your computer, you raise the screen, which can help reduce eye and neck strain while you’re working. Ideally, the top of your display should be at or just below eye level, so you’re looking down slightly while using it, according to the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Much better than craning your neck up or down to see what you’re doing.  

A good laptop stand will also help your computer stay cool. The central processing unit (CPU), memory, and WiFi card are typically the three biggest heat producers in a laptop, says Gregor Angus Berkowitz, a computer engineer and managing partner at GBA, a technical management consultancy in California. This heat comes from the electrical resistance in those units as they consume power to perform their processing functions.  

“It’s kind of a runaway scenario where as they get hotter they become more inefficient and use more power and battery,” Berkowitz says. “If you can keep your CPU and memory cooler, it uses less power.”

Although it’s difficult to damage your computer these days by letting it overheat, your laptop’s internal temperature measurement devices will throttle the CPU and eventually shut down the device before anything catastrophic happens, Berkowitz explains. Still, a hot computer will make your life harder.

The laptop stand I designed has a rail-mounted approach, and includes holes in its side panels to ensure that air can move beneath the laptop from any direction to dissipate heat. It’s also easy to make from scrap wood, and you can modify the design to match any wood you have on hand. I didn’t actually design anything up front—I just stared at the boards I wanted to use until the final vision came to me. I’ll save you that trouble though, and you can just copy mine.

Warning: DIY projects can be dangerous, even for the most experienced makers. Before proceeding with this or any other project on our site, ensure you have all necessary safety gear and know how to use it properly. At minimum, that may include safety glasses, a face mask, and/or ear protection. If you’re using power tools, you must know how to use them safely and correctly. If you do not, or are otherwise uncomfortable with anything described here, don’t attempt this project.

How to build a wooden laptop stand

Stats

• Time: 2 to 4 hours
• Material cost: $5 to $20
• Difficulty: moderate

Materials

• 1 (2- to 3-foot-long) piece of 1-by-6 board
• 5 (1- to 2-inch wide) boards 12 to 13 inches long
• Wood glue

Tools

• Table saw
• Crosscut sled
• Jointer
• Planer
• Tape measure
• Angle finder
• Marking gauge
• Orbital sander
• Router
• Sanding discs (120-, 150-, and 220-grit)
• Clamps
• Drill press (or drill)
• Roundover bit
• (Optional) card scraper

Instructions

1. Choose the dimensions and angle for your laptop stand. These measurements should be based on a few factors. The first is the size of the bottom of your laptop. The stand should be an inch or two narrower than your laptop, left to right, and an inch or so larger than it, front to back. You’ll also want to consider whether it will be dedicated to one laptop, or if multiple people might use it. I made mine 13 inches deep instead of the 11.5 it actually needed to be, for example, so the family member who requested it could keep using it if they got a larger computer in the future.

The second consideration is the height of the stand. Based on the idea that the top of the screen should be at or just below eye level when you’re sitting at your desk, calculate the height needed to raise your laptop that tall. I designed my stand to be about 5 inches tall in the back, which raises the top of the monitor about 15 inches above the desk top.

• Pro tip: Even if you don’t follow my design, Berkowitz cautions that DIY laptop stands should be fairly skeletal, leaving as much of the computer exposed as possible. Placing the laptop on a solid sheet of plywood, for instance, would be adding insulation below, preventing effective heat dissipation.

2. Mill your boards to their final dimensions. This is a project where well-milled boards are important, because there are some precise sizes and joinery involved. I wrote a guide on how to mill wood at home if you need more details, but the steps are pretty straightforward. First, use a jointer to flatten one face and edge of each board so they are at a perfect right angle to one another. Next, run the wood through the planer to its final thickness, in this case around half an inch. Then cut them to their final width on your table saw. If you don’t have a jointer, you can flatten the faces of the boards with a hand plane, or a jointer sled in your planer, and square the edge on your table saw with the help of a level. 

When you’re done milling, you should have seven boards, all about half an inch thick. Adjust these dimensions as needed to fit your computer: 

• 2 (12-by-5-inch) boards for the two side panels
• 4 (12-by-1-inch) pieces for the top and rear braces and the legs
• 1 (12-by-½-inch) piece for the front brace (the computer stop)

3. Cut the angle for the top of the stand. I didn’t precisely measure my angle, but I decided to settle between 15 and 20 degrees after looking at some pictures and doing some testing with my laptop. To find the right slope, I put my laptop down on the desk, then raised the back up with some scrap boards until I found a comfortable typing angle. I measured that with my angle gauge and transferred that slope to the side panels.

To cut the angle easily, and to make sure both were exactly the same, I used a tapering jig. You can buy a fancy one, but it’s easy enough to build your own simple jig with some leftover plywood. 

[Related: The surprising woodworking tools you already have around the house]

Mark the line of your angle on the side panels, then position that line along the edge of the tapering jig. Run both boards through your table saw one at a time, and you’ll end up with perfectly matched angles for the laptop to sit on.  

4. Plan to cut rabbets into the side panels to hold the legs, braces, and computer stop. Rabbets are slots cut into the edges of boards to hold wood together more securely than butting them together. Because one board is inset into another, this kind of joint has both mechanical strength and increased surface area for glue to adhere to.

The easiest way to cut rabbets consistently is with a table saw and a crosscut sled. Measure and mark the positions and depths of each rabbet carefully. I use my wheel marking gauge for this because it’s the most accurate and consistent, but you can use a sharp pencil as well.

Each side panel should have five rabbets, and it may help if you imagine the boards standing on edge, as they will in the final project:

• 2 on the bottom edge to hold the leg pieces
• 1 at the front of the top edge (the lowest part of the angle) to hold the computer stop
• 1 at the back of the top edge to hold the top brace
• 1 in the center of the back edge to hold the rear brace

While the rabbets for the top and rear braces should be as deep as those pieces are thick—so they fit within the original shape of each side panel—the rabbets for the computer stop and legs should be about half the width of those pieces. This means they’ll sit a quarter inch or so higher than the edge of the side panels. Check the photo above if you need a visual guide.

• Note: You may want to test a few board thicknesses for the computer stop—it should rise above the side panel enough that the front of the laptop catches on it, which will vary based on the model you have. 

5. Cut the rabbets. To ensure that the cuts remained consistent across both side boards, I taped the two together with painter’s tape, keeping the edges perfectly flush, and cut them at the same time. Use a flat grind blade on your table saw if you have one, and use multiple passes to cut out each rabbet.

6. Drill ventilation holes in the side boards. When most laptops get too hot, internal fans kick on to circulate the air and move the heat away from delicate electrical components and out the back or bottom of the computer. Some laptops have passive cooling devices like heat pipes—small pipes filled with water or another coolant under a slight vacuum—that carry energy to a fan or radiator at the back of the computer. Whatever the case, if your stand simply traps that heat underneath the device, you’re not doing it any favors.

In order to keep the air flowing beneath my laptop stand, I added openings in the side panels. The easiest way to do this is to drill some holes with a 1.5- to 2-inch Forstner bit, or route out some slots. I decided to get fancy with mine, however, and drilled a series of holes, decreasing in size from 2 inches down to half an inch. These approximately follow the angle of the taper, creating a cool effect that didn’t take a ton of time… OK, that’s a lie—it took over an hour, between planning exactly which bits I wanted to use, how far apart to space the holes, and then drilling. Not to mention the increased sanding time. But I think the end result was worth it.

7. Round over all the exposed corners. This step takes some planning. You’ll want to round over all the outside edges of all the pieces, but not the edges that will be inside a rabbet. Otherwise you’ll get an awkward gap in the corners of the rabbets.

[Related: A beginner’s guide to Shapr3D]

Mark the edges you want to round over, as well as the ones you don’t, and try not to talk yourself into adding more roundovers in the heat of the moment when the router is in your hand. I did a few too many, and while the stand is structurally fine, the little gaps just mock me every time I look at them.

Use a router and whatever size roundover bit you have that makes sense with the aesthetic you’re going for. A router table is even better for this, if you have access to one.  

8. Sand. Sanding small projects like this gets tricky once they’re assembled, especially the interior parts. That’s why it’s a good practice to sand all of your pieces before assembly, even if you know you’ll have to do a bit more sanding later to clean up the seams. I’m lucky enough to have access to a drum sander at my local makerspace, so I used 120-grit sandpaper in that and finished this step in no time, with no hand cramping. Those of you without access to a drum sander, pick up that orbital sander and get cracking.

Ultimately, I decided to assemble the stand in two stages. The first stage was to get the three support boards glued into place, and then I would attach the legs once those were dry. I glued and clamped the rear brace first, using the computer stop as a reference to keep the front from folding in. Then I glued the top brace and computer stop into place, and adjusted everything so the diagonals from corner to corner of the stand were all the same length—that’s the best way to know that a box is actually square.

Once the supports were dry, I glued and clamped the legs in place.

I’m sure there’s a jig you can build to make this clamping process easier if you’re making a lot of laptop stands, but when the glue dried, I was only a sixteenth-inch off corner to corner, which is well within tolerances for this project.  

10. Clean up any glue squeeze-out or residue. No matter how diligent you are with cleaning up glue while it’s wet, there will probably be some stains left over. Clean those up in whatever way works best for you. Sandpaper is the most accessible, but a chisel can be useful to get into those hard-to-reach nooks and crannies. I’m also partial to using a card scraper, though that takes quite a bit of practice to learn to use well—I’m still not great with one.

11. Apply your favorite finish. Follow the manufacturer’s instructions on the bottle. I like spray-on polyurethane or shellac for a project like this, because it’s fast, easy, and the spray can get into those hard-to-reach areas better than brushes typically can. If you use a spray-on finish, be careful not to linger in one place—this will help you avoid getting runs or drips that you have to sand off. For a perfectly smooth finish, rub the final coat down with a piece of brown paper bag.  

Once the finish is shined up to your liking, you’re done. Plop it down on your desk, elevate that laptop, and listen to the far quieter hum of a laptop fan that isn’t constantly on the verge of overheating. Your ears will thank you, your patience will thank you as you avoid annoying computer slowdowns, and your newly comfortable computer components will thank you too.

The post This DIY laptop stand will help keep your computer cool appeared first on Popular Science.

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