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What is a hoverboard? Technically, a hoverboard is a levitating platform (that looks like a skateboard without wheels) that can be used for personal transportation. The term was invented for the movie Back to the Future II, where protagonist Marty McFly travels into the future to discover that teenagers are riding on levitating boards without wheels. Although self-balancing scooters don’t actually hover, people have adopted the term “hoverboard” as a more colloquial way to refer to the vehicles—mainly because it sounds cooler....

The National COVID-19 Preparedness Plan has four chief targets: increase free supplies of tests and antiviral pills, equip local governments and health care facilities against variants, give schools, offices, and daycares the tools they need to safely stay open, and support international pandemic efforts with vaccines and other resources. “Thanks to the progress we’ve made in the past year, COVID-19 no longer need control our lives,” President Joe Biden said in the first State of the Union speech of his presidency on Tuesday....

If you’re one of the lucky (or unlucky) recipients of the seedy postage, here’s what the experts say you should and shouldn’t do until there’s more information. Don’t plant them or throw them away. While there’s no need to be stressed out about the seeds, you also shouldn’t go sticking them in your pandemic garden. They could be perfectly harmless, or they could be an invasive species. Much like the murder hornets you heard about earlier this summer, an invasive species is cause for at least a bit of alarm....

If you’re pregnant, some people in Europe believe that you should avoid certain cosmetics. (Although even if you’re not pregnant, the finding that British women absorb five pounds of makeup a year through their skin and mouths might be enough to make you want to stop.)Time to get out the bow and arrow: Eating the original free-range meat could be harmful, as lead in bullets used to slay deer can contaminate the meat....

The group just released their 2012 data, along with several graphics. Among the interactives, which you can find on the organization’s website, my favorite is this interactive wheel–I think it’s the cleanest and sharpest way to see how one country compares to the rest of the world. This mouse-over map is nice too. There are also a couple good static graphics. Check out this first one for a quick look at the way the U....

The papers confirm that the meteorite was an ordinary chondrite, the same stony rock that Japan’s Hayabusa spacecraft recovered from the asteroid Itokawa in 2010. It likely originated from the Flora asteroid family in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. (For a refresher on the differences between meteors, meteorites and asteroids, see here). In the Science paper, a group of researchers visited villages around the meteorite’s landing spot and re-traced its trajectory using the dash-cams and security footage that caught it on tape that morning, at sunrise on Feb....

Pet lovers refer to this particular color pattern as an animal’s “socks,” “booties,” “mittens,” or “tuxedo” for obvious reasons. The phenomenon of pigment mixed with white splotches can occur in pigs, deer, horses, dogs, guinea pigs, birds, and, in rare cases, humans. But it’s particularly prominent in cats, as evidenced by the fact that Socks consistently ranks in the top names for felines. (Even former President Bill Clinton bestowed it upon his black-and-White House pet, who notoriously did not get along with the family’s monochromatic chocolate lab, Buddy....

The most straightforward thing about goosebumps is their name. When geese are freshly plucked, their skin creates raised bumps where the feathers were. The mechanism that creates goosebumps on humans is also pretty simple. At the end of hair strands closest to the skin, known as the root, are tiny muscles called erector pili. When these muscles tense up, or contract, they cause the hair to stand straight up. Surprisingly, scientists are not entirely sure why we get goosebumps....

The problem is that drops of sweat or rain can reduce the charge too by providing another conduit between the electrodes. Thankfully, over the past few years, touchscreen engineers have solved the water problem by drawing on a different mode of touch sensing called “self-capacitance.” Instead of measuring the charge across pairs of electrodes, the touchscreen measures the increase in charge between an individual electrode on the screen and the ground you’re standing on....

What is a QR code and what can it do? Just as a barcode holds the name and price of a product, a QR code contains data. However, since devices can read this type of pattern both top to bottom and left to right, it can hold significantly more information—up to around 4,000 characters of it. But QR codes (an acronym for quick response) are moving beyond stickers and restaurant menus, making their way to fabric....

Eyes: designed for smizing Daniel Lieberman, Human Evolutionary Biologist at Harvard University The area that surrounds the iris—called the sclera—is tinted in most animals but bright white in humans. This allows us to see where others direct their gazes, enabling crucial silent communication like eye rolls and sideways glances. Nose: a breath of warm air Arslan Zaidi, evolutionary geneticist at the University of Pennsylvania Climate likely plays a role in how noses formed....

All that entertainment requires internet bandwidth and usage is up accordingly. A report from Cloudflare suggests that total US internet traffic has spiked roughly 18 percent since March 1st, which is about the same uptick that happens around the Super Bowl. It’s a considerable jump, but according to a report by connection testing site, Speedtest.net, the surge hasn’t affected actual download speeds in the US thanks to its relatively modern infrastructure....

Xbox Series X vs PS5: Welcome to the ninth generation of video game consoles As graphics technology edges closer and closer to uncanny realism, competition within each video game console generation is hotter than ever. It can feel like splitting hairs, but there are some key differences in approach between the PS5 and Xbox Series X that we’re going to identify to help you make an informed purchasing decision. Xbox Series X Specs...

On February 14, researchers from the University of Bonn and the University of Tübingen in Germany found that certain neurons light up when doing different mathematical operations. The findings were published in the journal Current Biology. Neurons are nerve cells that transmit signals throughout the body, but they are mostly concentrated in the brain and spine. Neurons use chemical neurotransmitters to pass those signals from one neuron to the next, which allows us to think, sense, and move....

YouTube blocks all anti COVID-19 vaccination content Social media users have called on sites like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube to do more in stopping misinformation, and disinformation, from spreading online, and YouTube has taken an active step to do so. They already had misinformation policies in place, but new guidelines will ban all content that is anti-vaccine, and even entire channels that are focused on being anti-vaccine, like those of Robert F....

Tom Loy of Tallgrass Gordon Setters sits by the whelping box, where a litter of three-day-old setter puppies navigate their tiny universe from behind closed eyes. One by one, Loy lifts the puppies from the box and runs them through a series of brief exercises. When he is finished, the puppies go back into the box and crawl close to their mother. Those lessons continue for the next 13 days, and while the exercises have nothing to do with bird hunting—­­at least, not directly—they effectively teach Loy’s setter puppies how to manage stress....

Throughout 2022, 132 photographers took 2.2 million images for the magazine from 60 countries, according to National Geographic. Check out 10 of the very best in the gallery below. For more on this story, visit natgeo.com/photos.

More often than not, the items come off as pricey. But, lucky for you, you can get your hands on some of these CES darlings at massive discounts. Check out this sale: HUDWAY Glass Heads-Up Navigation Display No longer will you have to be distracted by your smartphone notifications when using the GPS with this heads-up display device. The HUDWAY Glass produces a 20-percent larger display from your phone, allowing you to see navigation, speedometer, or any other HUD app with a crystal clear picture....

As an alternative to accumulating dozens of utilities on your laptop or desktop, you can just make use of the many useful online utilities out there: They run instantly inside your browser, need no installation, and you can bookmark them for easy access. Pika is free to use. You can get extra tools and templates starting at $9 a month. Ezgif is free to use. Pomofocus is free to use....