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The list is long: Actors Idris Elba, Tom Hanks, and Rita Wilson. British football manager Mikel Arteta. Former television host and wife to Canada’s prime minister, Sophie Trudeau. The majority of the Los Angeles Lakers basketball team. What do all these prominent people have in common? They were all able to rapidly access tests for SARS-CoV-2, the novel coronavirus now racing across the world. While testing for the coronavirus becomes the most in-demand “luxury” good among the famous and wealthy, it remains out of reach of the rest of the population....

The closures of businesses and states throughout the US due to the COVID-19 pandemic have been stressful, costly, and challenging for many. But the restrictions don’t affect everyone equally. Particularly vulnerable are those with substance-use disorders. With schedules disrupted, medical and psychological care curtailed and support networks shut down, the COVID-19 pandemic may jeopardize their recovery. The COVID-19 pandemic comes on the coattails of the US opioid epidemic. Between 1998 and 2018, about 450,000 people died from opioid overdose....

The best: Rowenta DW7180 Everlast 1750-Watt Anti-Calc Steam Iron This iron from Rowenta has a stainless steel soleplate with 400 micro-steam holes and a high-precision tip, which is helpful for ironing pleats or around buttons on your blouses. It also has an auto-steam feature that automatically adjusts how much vapor is coming out, depending on the temperature of the soleplate. The integrated lime and calcium collection base is removable and washable, helping to greatly extend the life of this device....

The plan is to begin with two large hubs: New York City and Los Angeles. The companies promise a “premium” experience, although aren’t yet sharing how much it will cost or when exactly the service will begin. The general idea is something like this: Someone booking a ticket via Delta to fly from John F. Kennedy International Airport to another city would see an option to add on an air taxi leg to get them from a heliport-like facility somewhere near their home to JFK, and would book it through Delta’s app or website....

As we head into the final month of summer, the tail end of the pandemic is still bringing us new surprises. Cases continue to climb nationwide but vaccine mandates are unlikely until full FDA approval is granted. Pet cats are more susceptible to the virus than pet dogs, according to a recent study. And a new analysis of UK data highlights the importance of vaccines to fight the Delta variant, while another analysis reveals that millions of children have lost at least one caregiver during the course of the pandemic....

Morbid? Oh, yeah. But Face Retirement, as it’s called, has a practical goal: to encourage users to save money for retirement. Just upload a normal photo with your age and gender and the program will spit back an aged photo, guess the cost of living in the future, give you options to start saving, and let you share your presumably frugal future self with friends on Facebook. Saving for retirement is a good thing, obviously....

“At this site they’re eating every single bit of the skeleton, anything they could get their mouth around,” says Stephanie Drumheller, a paleontologist at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville and coauthor of the new findings. “At least under certain circumstances, these big Jurassic theropods were perfectly willing to scavenge anything that was available, including each other, and they were accessing bones as a food resource.” She and her team examined more than 2,300 fossils excavated from the Mygatt-Moore Quarry over a timespan of more than three decades....

But do we still need to save the bees? The answer is complicated: The public began worrying about bees at a time when western honeybees were dying in alarming numbers from a mysterious syndrome, colony collapse disorder. Now, their populations are much more stable. However, wild bees, which play an entirely different role in our food system and environment, are still in trouble. Colony collapse The recent intense focus on honeybee health began after the fall of 2006, when beekeepers from Pennsylvania began to notice that their hives were dying off over winter....

Pfizer and the US government have a deal for a COVID-19 treatment pill On Thursday Pfizer announced that the US government will pay the pharmaceutical giant $5.3 billion for almost 10 million treatment regimens of its COVID-19 treatment pill, Paxlovid, pending approval. Pfizer submitted Paxlovid to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for emergency use authorization on Tuesday. The company reported earlier this month that the pill reduced risk of hospitalization and death in coronavirus patients by 89 percent in randomized studies....

eufy Pet Camera for Dogs and Cats $139.99 (Was $199.99) Check on your pet anytime with this pet camera, which uses tracking tech, rotation, and a wide-angle lens to ensure that all eyes are on your pup. An HD camera with night vision always keeps Fido in clear view, and you can watch them rip up their dog bed in real-time with the eufy Pet app—even better, multiple people can watch the live feed at the same time, including dad, grandma, and human nieces....

Electrik Glitter is a great product to use if you are trying to be music festival ready whilst fighting to protect ocean life. For every purchase, Electrik Glitter donates a portion of the proceeds to ocean conservation efforts. This shiny stuff is all-natural, dissolvable, and made out of non-ecotoxic cellulose extracted from eucalyptus trees, making it much softer on the skin than plastic alternatives. This chunky glitter is made in California, comes in a never-ending variety of colors, and can sit comfortably on the face, hair, nails, or body....

Since eero’s 6+ mesh Wi-Fi system can connect to over 75 internet-enabled devices without slowing down, here are some of the best deals on smart-home accessories that’ll work perfectly with your upgraded network: Arlo Essential XL Spotlight Camera, $116.99 (Was $149.99)Arlo Essential Wired Video Doorbell, $121.01 (Was $149.99)Ring Video Doorbell 3, $159.99 (Was $199.99)Ring Video Doorbell Pro, $139.99 (Was $169.99)Epson Workforce Pro WF-3820, $129.99 (Was $199.99)Kasa Indoor Pan/Tilt Smart Security Camera, $27....

It’s been close to 100 years since a cache of this size has been dug up in the country, says Kara Cooney, an Egyptologist at UCLA. The mummies are from the 21st and 22nd dynasty, she adds, and the coffins likely belonged to the high priesthood of Amun, not royalty. Two of the bodies were identified as children. “There was no king of power in Luxor at the time, so the people filled that power vacuum with a kind of theocracy or temple rule,” Cooney explains....

Efi Rousi, a senior scientist at Potsdam Institute for Climate Research in Germany, told the New York Times that the heatwave plaguing Europe currently is due to a split jet stream that has been sitting on top of the continent for the past two weeks. When a jet stream breaks down into two, the different currents lock in a region of weak winds and high-pressure air between them that forms the perfect environment for extreme heat....

Ecologists have long thought this idea was pretty intuitive—but they didn’t have much proof. To really prove it, you’d need to have studied plant or animal populations just before a storm struck and then immediately again afterwards. And as any American on the East Coast will tell you, it’s not so easy to know where exactly a storm will strike. We’re slowly getting better at storm predictions, though, and it’s coinciding with another reason for the push to study cyclone ecology: these storms are getting worse as our seas warm....

Here’s the key nugget from the FAA’s fact sheet: Drones are a weird category of aircraft, and one that for years the FAA was hesitant to address. Mandated to come up with regulations and registration for small unmanned aircraft by a Congressional act in 2012, last week the FAA released at last their registration rules. All drones weighing over half a pound will have to be registered by their owners by February 19th, 2016....

Sponsoring ships is a tradition that goes back centuries if not longer. In the United States Navy, sponsors attend the keel-laying of the ship, etching their initials into it. When it comes time to christen a ship, the sponsor will be the one who smashes a bottle upon its bow, and at the commissioning, the sponsor is supposed to say “Man our ship and bring her to life,” imbuing the whole affair with an aura of reanimation....

In the U.S. alone, an estimated seven million such pigs are spread across 35 states, where the omnivorous swine tear up soil and habitats looking for something—anything—to eat. They cause $2 billion in damage every year, according to the USDA, and can spread disease to domestic pigs and humans alike. They are also an understudied threat to livestock, according to a study published Tuesday in the journal PLOS-Biology. In the paper, two wildlife scientists from Clemson University make the case that non-carnivorous animals such as feral hogs and elephants should be included in policies aimed at controlling more classic examples of livestock predators like wolves, coyotes, and lions....

With already established options like the Apple Watch and the Android Wear line of devices, Fitbit may have a rough time breaking into the already crowded smartwatch market. Though the company can likely rely on its millions of users that want a smarter wearable but would like to stay within the Fitbit ecosystem. As the top-selling wearable maker, selling their own smartwatch makes sense. But the Fitbit brand can offer positives as well as negatives....

Staying entertained is vital because when you’re on long space flights, boredom can be dangerous. “It leads to performance errors,” says NASA Senior Operational Psychologist James Picano. Breaking a tool is a lot more worrisome when you’re trying to keep a vessel that weighs hundreds of thousands of pounds on course. Not only does playtime keep operations smooth, it also plugs the team into pop culture and helps Americans relate to their high-flying idols....