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The report shows that deaths shot up nearly 30 percent in the United States last year compared with 2019. A combination of problems including difficulty accessing treatment and the economic and emotional fallout from the pandemic likely underlie the dramatic rise, experts say. “I think it is somewhat in line with what everybody was expecting, given the pandemic and given all the social isolation that happened together with the pandemic,” says Silvia Martins, director of the Substance Use Epidemiology Unit at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health....

The pangolin had previously been listed under Appendix II, which allowed for limited trade. But with booming demand for the animals’ scales, which have long been used in Chinese medicine, the illegal trade has continued to thrive. Poachers exploited this Appendix II loophole, struggling to keep up with increasing demand that drove the price of scales up 250 percent over the last five years, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council....

Parked in the dusty lot of the county fairgrounds in Auburn, California, I’m in the driver’s seat of a rental car, hands imperceptibly trembling. There’s a cold bottle of water sweating in the cup holder, a one-use relic of end-stage capitalism that will outlast us all. I’m recording the preamble to my pepper-eating video over and over again, the insides of my lungs thrumming with excitement. (I’m scared.) The seats are deep and dark, and all the lights shining through the icons on the dash are red, making me feel like I am in a spaceship....

But during the Holocene, the Sahara was lush—and full of fish. A study published last week in PLOS One reports that out of 17,551 faunal remains found in the Takarkori rock shelter in the central Sahara, 80 percent were fish. That’s a pretty stark difference from the dry desert we think of today. “Southwestern Libya is presently an inhospitable place—it is among the most arid locations in the Sahara—so it is really extraordinary,” says Kathleen Nicoll, a professor of geography at the University of Utah who was not involved in the study....

*The average U.S. household consumes 30 kilowatts a day. Instant Expert: Launch Your Quick and Easy Primer on Just About Everything at popsci.com/instantexpert.

View From a Blue Moon is why. The newly released surf epic follows rising surf star John John Florence as he cuts his way across 50-foot swells off remote shores in Africa, Brazil, and Tahiti. The 23-year-old Hawaii native starred in the roughly $2 million film, which was a partnership with Brain Farm, a production company that is the Lucas Films of action sports filmmaking. Florence and his crew spent three years, broke about 70 surfboards, and employed as many as three high-tech 4K RED cameras (cost: $50,000 each) in a day....

Almost no one had seen a juvenile leatherback before. Between the scurry of hatchlings down the beach until their return decades later to nest, leatherbacks simply vanish into the open seas, where this species as old as the dinosaurs undertakes one of nature’s great ultramarathons, swimming thousands of miles from ocean to ocean. Because leatherbacks travel so far, anything that disturbs the balance in any marine environment anywhere—from overfishing to global warming—affects the turtles and leaves a readable print in them....

A Deadly Russian Seadrone Model The Chirok UAV is a fat-bottomed craft, with engines above the body and an almost cartoonish shape. It looks like a child’s bath toy. The reason for the weird shape? Chirok will be a hovercraft-bottomed plane, allowing it to take off and land on water, snow, soft ground, and marshes, instead of runways. It will also be a lot less cute in application. The finished version is expected to have cameras and sensors for surveillance, and according to Russia defense consortium Rostec, “another feature of the vehicle design is that its weapons can be installed within the body....

This week’s episode is a recording of our latest live event at Caveat in New York City. Don’t worry, we’ll have another one soon. We can’t share all of our silly powerpoint visual aids in this article, but you’ll find the rules to the referenced drinking game at the bottom of this post! Enjoy the show: Fact: Naked mole rats will inherit the earth By Rachel Feltman Summarizing my live fact is simple, because it was based on an existing PopSci article....

Researchers at Liverpool University in the U.K. have created a material that, they say, has the worst heat transfer of virtually any solid material humans have ever grasped. If that sounds like a strange direction to go down, it isn’t—a material that’s a terrible heat conductor could make a superb insulator, and materials like it could play a key role in bringing the world to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions. The researchers published their work Thursday in Science....

Now that the South Korean phone-maker has gotten its washing machines and refrigerators out of the way, Sammie is almost ready to lift the veil off of its top contender in the phone race for 2016. But that hasn’t stopped the internet from lifting the veil itself. Thanks to the folks at ReviewDao (by way of Droid Life), we’ve got a preview of what to expect from the next Samsung flagship device....

There’s an image hidden in these black-and-white blotches. Once you spot the figure, that’s it: The shape will emerge, and then, try as you might, you’ll never unsee it. Consider yourself warned. It’s a Dalmatian, bending down to drink water. See it now? That’s because the images we “see” are really our mind’s own creations. In the early 1900s, the German psychologists behind Gestalt theory first introduced the Dalmatian scene with this reasoning: Humans aren’t passive recipients of incoming images, rather we impose a structure on what we see....

Most condoms are made from natural latex, and the silicon-based lubricant that’s frequently pre-applied isn’t perfect. “It actually wears away and rubs off and therefore it exposes the rubber surface, which then increases more frictional forces and discomfort for the users,” says Stacy Chin, a chemist, one of the coauthors of a new paper on the technology, and the CEO and cofounder of HydroGlide Coatings, the company aiming to commercialize the tech....

The Mach-E 1400 will never go into production, but Ford is using it as a demonstrator to brag about its $11.5 billion commitment to the electric vehicle space over the next several years. According to Ford, this one-off car will act as a “testing ground” for new technology and materials as they’re developed. Right now, the Mach-E 1400 is the first Ford vehicle to test out a material made of “organic composite fibers” made of flax in its hood....

Over the weekend, astronaut Scott Kelly showed the world a lovely orange zinnia, an annual that’s usually pretty easy to grow here on Earth. But up on the ISS, getting it to grow safely was a challenge. Back in December, NASA announced that the zinnias were not doing so well, nearing the end of their lifespan and growing a coating of mold. Frustrated with the prescribed instructions for plant care from the ground, on Christmas, Kelly requested permission to take over the plant’s care, becoming one of the first autonomous space gardeners (sorry, Mark Watney)....

Photomicrography is an art form that brings together the creativity of science by capturing breath-taking moments beneath the microscope. The annual competition has recognized dazzling images like these since 1974 and is widely regarded as the leading forum for acknowledging the skill involved in photomicrography. “Our goal has always been to show the world how art and science intersect,” said Eric Flem, communications manager of Nikon Instruments in a press release....

A video has been making rounds on the internet showing Heidi asleep in her tank. Her mantle (the ball of muscle behind her eyes) expands and deflates, and you can practically hear her tiny cartoon snores. Each time the octopus twitches, her body pulses with a new array of colors and textures and patterns. Her skin shifts from a dappled yellow to a pale white, then a dark, rippling magenta, before settling on a yellow and black paisley....

Scientists from the Royal Ontario Museum and McMaster University have discovered that an ancient triceratops-like beast that lived over 75 million years ago developed an osteosarcoma tumor in its leg bone. They published their new findings in The Lancet last week. The team of scientists, including health experts and paleontologists, had been searching for human-like diseases in ancient dinos by digging through old fossils at Canada’s Royal Tyrrell Museum and stumbled upon the fibula of a Centrosaurus apertus that had scientists had uncovered in Alberta thirty years ago....

Natovenator polydontus was a theropod (a hollow-bodied dinosaur) that had three toes and claws on each limb. It lived about 145 to 66 million years ago in Mongolia, during the Upper Cretaceous period. Its recent discovery was outlined in a study published last week in the journal Communications Biology. The name Natovenator polydontus means “many-toothed swimming hunter.” One of the similarities that Natovenator has with modern, diving birds is it’s streamlined ribs....

If you are in the market for a WiFi camera with both day and night vision capabilities, then you are in luck! Right now you can get the TOKK CAM C2 for an extra 20 percent off as a part of our Winter Savings Event with code WINTER20. And if you’re looking for even more great deals, be sure to check out the whole Winter Savings collection. Just hurry, because this event will only be around from 12/13-12/15!...