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Their solicitation says they want to conduct research and development in automatic speech recognition, machine translation, natural language processing, information extraction, information retrieval, text-to-speech synthesis, as well as other speech and language processing technologies. Specifically, the Air Force says that these technologies are necessary as, “much of the information needed to effectively understand, anticipate, manage, and operate in the global environment is found in foreign language speech, text, videos, and images,” especially for “lesser spoken languages that have high military interest but lack sufficient linguists and automated language processing capabilities....

The best ball chair, which incorporates a stability ball used for exercise, can introduce a little bit of movement to your workday while engaging the core and improving posture. The ball’s instability forces you to engage your trunk and abdominal muscles to remain balanced, but don’t worry; you won’t find yourself sweating or out of breath. In fact, you’ll barely notice all the work your body is doing. This kind of subtle physical engagement can help improve posture and reduce back pain; the stronger your muscles are, the more they can support and protect your back....

Here are some of our favorite fax machines currently available. Canon’s Faxphone L100 is an easy-to-use fax machine that requires minimal set-up time to get started and offers a snappy print rate of 19 sheets per minute. It can store a whopping 512 sheets in its memory, giving it the ability to handle even the largest document transmissions and even remember them if you run out of paper, and the included toner cartridge can put out roughly 2,000 sheets before needing replacement....

Best for storytime: Slumberkins Narwhal Snuggler Having a new baby comes with endless gifts from well-wishers. While an abundance of toys, books and clothes is not inherently an issue, new parents may begin to worry about spoiling their young child from an early age. Enter Slumberkins, which pairs an adorable stuffed animal toy with a matching book focused on a specific theme of personal and moral development. We received a fluffy Narwhal, coupled with an accompanying story promoting Growth Mindset....

“For years, Ray’s crash sites remained largely hidden from the public. But in the late 1990s, an explorer named Jeremy Krans began what would become a decades-long quest to uncover it all, and ultimately to make Ray’s once-classified life public. ‘I felt that we needed to do something,’ he says, ‘because nobody knows who the hell Walt is.‘” “For the locals who’d been advocating for the Gorge’s designation upgrade, it was a long-awaited victory....

Best overall: Patriot Products CSV-2515Best heavy-duty: All Power America APWC460E Heavy Duty Durable ChipperBest mulcher: Landworks Leaf MulcherBest small: Landworks Wood Chipper ShredderBest budget: Sun Joe CJ602E-GRY How we chose the best wood chippers Some of us may be city slickers here on the PopSci gear team, but something raw and feral is unleashed when it’s time to write about lawn care machinery. Maybe it’s the inner prehistoric human in us—or maybe we’re all just a dad who looks for an excuse to go to Home Depot, explain to the salesperson what a Phillips head screwdriver is, and then go home and tinker in the shed....

We’re going to spend the rest of the week scouring the CES announcements for the coolest (and weirdest) products but, for now, enjoy this list of the best new stuff we found today. As always, remember that products announced during CES may not come out for quite some time. Some of them may never even come out. So, while it’s OK to get excited about new gadgets, don’t let the promise of an ambitious but ill-fated product break your heart....

The pits at Reno Stead Airport are where the planes, crew, and pilots hang out when they’re not racing, just like race cars spend time in pits. Here’s are some of the coolest machines we saw as we roamed the grounds under the hot sun. Editor’s note: We’ve updated this post. Popular Science was on the ground (and in the air) in Nevada covering the Reno air races. Check out our by-the-numbers breakdown of the high-speed aviation competition in the desert, a look at what it’s like to fly upside down, and a glimpse at the past and future of the planes fighter pilots train in....

“You can hit play and just get your product out at the end,” says Karen Hogan, co-inventor of the Biorealize Microbial Design Studio and biology lab coordinator at UPenn. The machine looks like a DJ turntable. But instead of records, it spins a wheel of syringes containing genetically engineered microbes. The machine works like an assembly line. First, it zaps the microbes with more than 200 volts of electricity to make them more amenable to genetic engineering before injecting in new DNA....

That’s where Endless comes in, with their $79 dollar computer called the Endless Mini. The company’s entire pitch is that internet access is already widespread, but people need low-cost hardware that still works if the internet cuts out. This isn’t Endless’ first product. In 2015, the startup launched the Endless computer, which costs $229 dollars. The idea is about the same for both, which is to pre-load a bunch of really useful information, like Wikipedia and Khan Academy, into the PC as apps, so even without internet the device is useful....

What’s a ground delay? Every airport has an airport acceptance rate (AAR), which indicates how many flights can land there per hour. The number is guided by things like available runways, open airspace, weather conditions, and having sufficient air traffic control staff to guide the crafts in safely. According to the FAA, the most common reason for reducing an airport’s acceptance rate is weather, but the situations at LaGuardia, Atlanta, and—earlier today—Chicago were due to “staffing....

In their Science Debate answers, Senators McCain and Obama astutely link medical research to advances in medicine before going on to talk about what they see as two important aspects of healthcare. Obama focuses his answer on affordability while McCain concentrates on the role information technology will play in the future of medicine. While neither candidate has a history of votes that relate to either of those topics, according to Joseph Antos, the Wilson H....

If divorce was increasingly common, challenging a child’s legitimacy was quite a different matter. California law followed the deep-rooted legal tradition, dating back to Roman law, which declared a married man to be the father of his wife’s children. The law made it very difficult, and sometimes impossible, for a husband to challenge this “presumption of paternity,” a restriction intended to protect the rights of legitimate children and the integrity of marriage in society....

The case It’s not clear what the parents-to-be of babies Lulu and Nana (Grace and Mark, according to He) were told about the potential impacts of gene editing, including side effects like mosaicism and off-target edits. The consent form they signed, which was posted online around the time the news of He’s experiment broke, describes the procedure as “an AIDS vaccine development project.” Using CRISPR editing on the CCR5 gene in the embryos, the consent form said, He’s team “would help these CCR5 gene editing babies to obtain the genotype of the Northern European to naturally immunize against HIV-1 virus....

There have been 786 reviews of the Wii and Wii Fit by men and women far more qualified than myself to compare its gaming merits to Dance Dance Revolution (never played), Guitar Hero (dabbled once in Best Buy) and the best of PS2 (never touched it). PopSci‘s own gaming guru gave an excellent review of the system. But Wii Fit, and to a degree the Wii, isn’t only intended for Donkey Kong prodigies....

Even with bass rumbling, the Technics SL-1200GR turntable won’t skip. The aluminum platter (a.k.a. the playing surface) of these house speakers has a rubber lining, the footings are silicone, and polymer tubes string through the body—all absorbing bad vibes. $1,700 (needle cartridge sold separately). The preamp gets an audio signal ready for the amplifier to crankify. Unlike many big-box-store—even high-end—models, the Audio Research GSPre has inputs for modern devices and a circuit, complete with a pair of vacuum tubes, devoted to turntables....

He uses simple organisms, such as yeast and zebrafish, as his research tools, screening each against a large library of potential drug leads. But can his process, which he says is faster, cheaper, and better than those typically used, actually identify compounds be optimized and refined to become treatments? He’s already got his first hit. Perlstein spoke with Popular Science about why he went indie, the unmet needs of rare diseases, and what can be learned from about human disease from our distant animal cousins....

The United States announced its intention to launch a satellite as part of the IGY with an announcement from the White House on July 29, 1955. But Wernher von Braun, the former Nazi rocket scientists now working for the US Army, had already proposed a satellite program to the Assistant Secretary of Defense six months earlier. Called Project Orbiter, it wasn’t the long-term program of von Braun’s dreams. It would be a quick way to put a small satellite into orbit, as much a scientific endeavour as a psychological one; he knew the first nation into space would have an advantage in the space age he saw just over the horizon....

In microbe news After a short hiatus, Legionnaires’ disease is back in the Bronx, according to New York Magazine. There’s a horrible dengue outbreak in India, says Quartz. And this Smithsonian piece breaks down new research on what makes dengue so nasty. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is investigating Pentagon labs that apparently mishandled anthrax, plague, and encephalitis viruses, according to the New York Times. Then again, last year the CDC accidentally sent deadly flu through the mail, exposed workers to live anthrax, and found a misplaced container of smallpox in one of its labs....

As years of emails have begun to pile up, you might have noticed that Google’s email service no longer offers the slick and speedy experience that it once did. The fix is simple, though it might bring you out in a cold sweat: Delete, delete, delete. The fewer emails Gmail has to deal with, the faster your inbox, your searches, your labels, and your conversation threads are going to load up on screen....