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Implanting a horse with a microchip involves using a needle and syringe to shoot a rice-grain-sized device into a thick ligament that runs from the horse’s head to the shoulders. The chip, encased in biomedical glass, is usually implanted by a vet; the procedure is akin to giving the horse a vaccine. Horses implanted with chips can be identified using a handheld microchip scanner. When held over the animal’s body, the scanner displays the ID number associated with the microchip....

Flying cars What’s the holdup? The point of flying cars is convenience: to go up and over traffic instead of sitting in it. That means the craft’s propulsion technology must be powerful enough to soar, but also safe, quiet, and nimble enough to land in a suburban driveway. While startups have developed clever flight schemes, none has found the happy medium between auto and airplane. Silicon Valley company Opener has a single-seater that takes off vertically using eight rotors, but the contraption has no wheels, which means it is more like a personal helicopter than a road-ready rover....

If you live east of the American Rockies, you’re probably used to seeing Northern cardinals zooming around in all four seasons. That’s right, baby—this species sticks around for the toughest weather, unlike other songbirds that only show up in spring and summer. But the cardinal’s consistency can also make it harder to appreciate. While its lipstick-smear look (scarlet in males and coral in females) is absolutely photogenic, it’s often overlooked by feeder owners and experienced birders because of its constant presence....

Rogue waves are twice as large as the surrounding waves, which in stormy seas can be absolutely massive. Seafarers have reported waves like this over 110 feet tall, large enough to swamp a ship. Rogue waves are unpredictable, coming seemingly out of nowhere. Until now, the only warnings that a ship’s crew had of an approaching rogue wave were the few seconds between when they saw the wall of water towering over their ship and when it struck....

Einstein formulated that mass could become energy back in the early 1900s, which occurs in nuclear fusion. The energy and heat from this massive, constant reaction help us stave off seasonal depression, grow plants, and create power with solar panels. A fusion reactor, or a fusion power plant or thermonuclear reactor, is a device that scientists can use to create electrical power from the energy released in a nuclear fusion reaction....

Four-strand DNA–or “G-quadruplex structures” (the G is for the base guanine)–is nothing new to genetic scientists. It can be easily conjured in the lab via guanine-rich strands of synthetic DNA, for instance, and it has long been thought to occasionally form naturally in biological cells. But a new study published online at the journal Nature Chemistry and conducted by University of Cambridge researcher Shankar Balasubramanian suggests that G-quadruplex structures are more common in natural genomes than we thought, and that they may carry out some important genetic business....

This is actually a well-documented phenomenon, complete with hundreds of Yahoo! Answers queries (my favorite response: “well probly idk mayb there jus bored lol”) and a book called, yup, Why Do Men Fall Asleep After Sex? Even Arianna Huffington has weighed in (“Men go to sleep because women don’t turn into a pizza,” _Men’s Health _editor Dave Zinczenko informed her.) There’s no hard-and-fast consensus yet, and physical exertion probably plays a small-to-middling role in the post-sex snoozathon, but the chief culprit seems to be (as you guessed) the soup of hormones that men release after orgasm....

How much weight can it support? You won’t be able to stand on it one way or another, but some pantry turntables are far stronger than others. Imagine making a multi-tiered cake only to have it collapse under the weight. Avoid this by considering how much weight it can hold and how that relates to your storage and cooking needs.Will it stay balanced? Don’t be fooled by a weight threshold in the product specs....

Materials. Some models, such as the iconic slatted Adirondack chair, with its wide back and uniquely angled seat, can be found both poolside and on the edge of the woods. These chairs can be crafted from hardwood and may require refinishing, though, while models made out of plastics and recycled materials may not require special care. Cushions. If you’re looking for a little extra comfort in your patio chairs, designs with removable cushions are a smart choice....

“If this was just one person peeing in the pool, then clearly that would not be a problem,” says Ernest Blatchley, an environmental engineer at Purdue University. “But we have evidence to suggest that there are circumstances where the concentration of these compounds could, in some cases, or in fact have, reached the concentrations that are detrimental to human health.” First, let’s start with a little chemistry. Urine is made up of tons of different substances, all of which can interact with chlorine....

These CBDCs would be a digital representation of a government-issued currency that can be accessed through a government-made wallet app, and many countries have been probing the feasibility of this idea. The Bahamas has already launched a digital sand dollar, and China is in a late-stage pilot for its digital yuan. The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology first announced they were teaming up to investigate how the US might go about building a central bank digital currency back in 2020....

If you love the idea of a team of in-house designers, “edibles experts,” and pet testers working to create themed boxes designed just for dogs, BarkBox is a great choice. Every month you and your pet will receive two treats, two toys, and one dental chew based on punny themes like “Australian OutBark.” Choose from three categories of boxes based on your dog’s size, and work with the BarkBox customer service team to customize toy selection and accommodate food allergies....

Plot Guru is, essentially, a quiz app about trivia. It’s a simple user interface that asks multiple choice questions having to do with plot, characters, and general show-related trivia while you binge from your couch. The app just launched November 2, but it already has 17 shows and 2,000 users and while it’s iOS/iPhone only, it has plans (and thousands of signups) for an Android version in early 2016. However, the app’s creators aren’t looking to become just another Trivial Pursuit-type game, nor are they planning to limit the app to just one or two shows....

Discuss your theories, successes, and near-successes in the comments. Also: what power do you most want, and what do you plan to use it for? Submit your science and technology questions to fyi@popsci.com.

Aldrin, speaking to the AFP (Agence France Presse, a global news agency), said the men and women who board the world’s first non-stop flight to Mars should establish a long-term colony on the Red Planet. The time and expense required to send them there warrants more than a brief sojourn, he says, so those who are on board should think of themselves as pioneers. Like the Pilgrims who came to the New World or the families who headed to the Wild West, they should not plan on coming back home....

Talon V is, like its predecessors, essentially a camera-toting arm on tracks. The body on display at AUSA had an arm made for work with chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and explosive (CBRNe) threats. This included a military chemical sensor, an industrial chemical sensor, and a sensor on the back to detect radioactivity. Its arm can lift over 65 pounds, and in can operate for 4-5 hours straight under typical use....

When it comes to food, “natural” is usually a byword for “good”. But some natural products are a bit disgusting. For example, a natural flavouring called castoreum is a thick, odorous secretion obtained from the anal glands of beavers. It is used to give a vanilla flavour to some dairy products and desserts. Towards the end of the 19th century, beavers were nearly hunted to extinction to acquire this highly desirable food additive and fragrance....

It’s a workaround I figured out on my own, a way to navigate a world not designed for grayscale peepers like mine. To be fair, it’s also not a problem most people would even realize needs fixing. Unless, of course, they are the type who looks at things slightly askance. A person, perhaps, like Stacy Branham. One of the early-career scientists honored in this issue as one of PopSci’s Brilliant 10, she applies tech in novel ways to improve accessibility....

Previously, we’ve seen video technology that could (sort of) graft a celebrity’s face onto your own in real time, but this system, moving your own facial features around under someone else’s guidance, is arguably creepier “Facial reenactment,” as the paper notes, is a bit more difficult than just mapping expressions onto a computer-generated avatar, which is known as re-targeting. “Reenactment is a far more challenging task than expression re-targeting, as even the slightest errors in transferred expressions and appearance and slight inconsistencies with the surrounding video will be noticed by a human user,” the study authors write....