The aptly named Dust Removal Tool is a motorized wire-bristle brush that spins on the end of the rover’s arm. The Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer and the Mars Hand Lens Imager–the latter of which took the picture you see above–share real estate on the end of that arm. The dust brush is designed to clear a spot for those tools to take measurements they otherwise wouldn’t be able to take, with dust covering everything....
The eruption was violent, and the extent of damages incurred in the messy aftermath that followed has not been fully determined. The cataclysmic event also splintered the sole undersea telecommunication cable adjoining Tonga’s islands to the outside world, causing a sweeping internet blackout. Cloudflare showed internet traffic from the country “plunged to near-nothing around 5:30 p.m. local time on January 15,” MIT Technology Review reported. An official statement the government of Tonga made on Twitter indicated that “limited communication has been made with Vava’u and Ha’apai through satellite phones and HF [high frequency] radio,” and two communications operators were “working on satellite options to restore some services including the internet” as they figure out how to reinstate full communications....
Roll a magazine—might we recommend Popular Science?—into a tube. Now, keeping both eyes open, look through it with one eye. Compared with the plain view, the tube-filtered scene will seem brighter, as if lit by a flashlight. This makeshift torch will even make textures and patterns pop. No one has a definitive explanation for this false illumination. Neuroscientists’ best guess is that it has something to do with the way our brain interprets contrast....
What? Imagine for a moment that a group of people are playing with a Ouija board. All hands on the selector, the board manages to spell out a confession from someone in the group. Yes because everyone had their hands on the piece, it’d be impossible to attribute that statement to any specific person. From a regulatory standpoint, a drone controlled by the crowd is probably a nightmare for the FAA, which just started a major drone registration campaign....
Best tent: Mountain Hardwear Trango 3 TentBest mattress pad: Therm-a-Rest Z Lite Sol Camping and Backpacking Sleeping PadBest glasses: Silipint Silicone Pint GlassesBest multitool: Leatherman Signal Camping MultitoolBest bug repellent: Murphy’s Naturals Mosquito RepellentBest single-use tool: Slice Mini Box CutterBest gear bag: RUX (70L) Best mess kit: Hydro Flask Outdoor Kitchen BowlBest cooking utensil kit: Opinel Nomad Camping Kitchen Utensil KitBest coffee tool: OXO BREW Venture Shatter-Resistant-Travel French PressBest camping table: GCI Outdoor Compact Camp TableBest cooler: YETI Tundra 35 CoolerBest insulated bottle: Welly Traveler (28oz)Best power station: Anker 521 Portable Power StationBest fire pit: Solo Stove Bonfire 2....
But going hard on one skill can backfire. Children who play one pastime year-round are about 40 percent more likely to get hurt than those who play more than one. Developing bodies are at particular risk for overuse injuries, caused by repeatedly performing one movement. For example, the number of surgeries to fix elbow injuries—the kind usually seen in fastball pitchers—is going up among teens; in New York, the portion of the procedures done on minors more than doubled between 2003 and 2013....
The Wiki Weapons Project aims to create a working blueprint for a 3-D printed gun and distribute the digital design file online for free. The legal implications are cloudy at best (we reviewed some of them here). But whatever you think of the project, it’s well on its way to producing a workable firearm. In this case, only part of the gun was manufactured with a 3-D printer–just the lower receiver, which is the trigger and handgrip....
The wires have a liquid-metal core and polymer sheath and can reconnect at the molecular level after being severed. Like NCSU’s earlier wires, the liquid core makes them stretchable, which makes them perfect for use in dangerous environments. (Or any environment where you don’t want something to break.) To make the wires, the researchers first dug out tiny tunnels from a self-healing polymer, then filled it with a liquid metal combination of indium and gallium....
Unlike all the other planets, which spin roughly “upright” with their spin axes at close to right angles to their orbits around the sun, Uranus is tilted by almost a right angle. So in its summer, the north pole points almost directly towards the sun. And unlike Saturn, Jupiter and Neptune, which have horizontal sets of rings around them, Uranus has vertical rings and moons that orbit around its tilted equator....
Today, fans of Chevrolet’s Corvette and EVs in general received good news in the form of an announcement from GM’s president, Mark Reuss. The company officially has electron-fueled Corvettes in the works: “We are here today to tell you about an electrified Corvette that’s coming first, and then a fully electric Corvette after that,” Reuss told CNBC. “We will have an electrified Corvette next year, so this is coming very quick,” Reuss added, in terms of the timeframe....
Flash floods have been in the news most recently with record-breaking rainfall in Kentucky in late July that killed 37 people. And though the damage has been extensive, the state is not alone. Within the past several months, floods have repeatedly burst across the US: At the tail end of 2021, 17 inches of rain fell on Tennessee in a single day; 22 people were killed in the deluge. At the start of summer 2022, flash flooding shut down Yellowstone National Park....
Amid mounting pressure, on July 8, President Joe Biden signed an executive order with steps to protect access to reproductive healthcare. Some involve access to reliable information for abortion and ensuring the right to emergency medical procedures for pregnant people. The executive order says the US Department of Health and Human Services will submit a report to him in 30 days outlining the plan. While several reproductive rights organizations, such as Planned Parenthood and NARAL Pro-Choice America, have lauded Biden’s efforts to improving abortion rights, others are concerned that the executive order will not have much impact....
Drivers would have to pay up to $23 to drive through Manhattan in one of the proposals. That said, New Jersey and outer-borough residents would be able to subtract any tunnel tolls they paid during their commute from the fee. About half of New York’s carbon emissions currently come from transportation; fewer cars inching down the roads and more people using public transit could cause a steep reduction in the city’s air pollution....
But just how strong is the force? We know that gravity acts the same whether an object is as light as a feather or as heavy as a stone, but otherwise, scientists don’t have a precise answer to that question, despite studying gravity in the cosmos for centuries. According to Isaac Newton’s law of universal gravitation, the gravitational force drawing two objects (or particles) together gets stronger the more massive those objects are and the closer they get to each other....
Inglis isn’t alone. A new study, published Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change, shows just how powerful children can be in shifting their parents’ deeply-held positions. In the study, parents of middle school students enrolled in a climate change curriculum grew more concerned about climate change, and the effect was especially strong in conservative parents who started out with little concern. “Basically, kids are giving us this ability to work together towards solutions,” says Danielle Lawson, who studies climate change communication at North Carolina State University and is the study’s lead author....
References to force fields appear three times in “Directed Energy Futures 2060,” a report from the Air Force Research Laboratory published July 16. The potential for military force fields is captivating—a concept that seems more suited to science fiction; the report actually contains an appendix of three science fiction vignettes. The real-world term to know here is “directed energy,” and force fields are one of the more distant applications of that idea....
While many scientists believe that there is a genetic component to homosexuality, there are non-genetic factors that may influence a person’s sexuality. For one, there’s the fraternal birth order effect–a pattern where a woman’s first male pregnancy increases the chances that her subsequent sons are gay by as much as 33 percent. This phenomenon supports the idea that the body keeps track of internal and environmental dealings and uses that information later on....
“We had a very fragile grid before the hurricane, and we hadn’t made the long-term repairs that needed to be made,” explains Sergio Marxuach, the policy director and general counsel at the Center for a New Economy in Puerto Rico. “But it’s old technology, and eventually the entire world needs to move to renewables due to climate change.” In 2019, Puerto Rico passed a climate law mandating 100 percent of the island’s electricity come from renewable sources like solar and wind-powered facilities by 2050....
Though research on the impact of breakfast has focused on short-term effects, rather than long-term impacts, as of now, there’s no conclusive evidence that skipping the meal is damaging to your health. However as a whole, our body’s responses to breakfast are mostly positive, says Kristin Gustashaw, a clinical dietician at Chicago’s Rush University Medical Center who says that most people would benefit from eating something in the mornings. Aside from this generality, there are certain groups of people from whom breakfast is key....
The new Star Wars: Episode VII trailer will debut during ESPN’s Monday Night Football game between the New York Giants and the Philadelphia Eagles during a commercial break at halftime (there’s some nice corporate synergy afoot there, as Disney owns both Star Wars and ESPN). The game starts at 8:15 p.m. EST, but the exact time of the trailer showing hasn’t been released yet. Football fans probably planned on tuning into game tonight anyway, but now Star Wars fans who usually neglect good old pigskin action will have a reason to tune-in as well....
