Posts

If you’re still confused, you’re not alone. The issue, say COVID researchers, lies with sky-high expectations during the initial round of vaccinations, and our continuing tendency to underestimate how infectious COVID can be. In February, the CDC declared that people who had been fully vaccinated would no longer need to quarantine after an exposure. It followed that announcement a few months later with news that the fully vaccinated also wouldn’t need to wear masks almost anywhere....

By instilling good online habits at an early age, we can help little ones grow up to be healthy, secure digital citizens. In general, young children can be very trusting and tend to believe most of what people tell them. Unfortunately, distinguishing between what’s real and what’s fake can be hard when you’re online—even for grown-ups. “The digital world makes it easy for people to dress up and play pretend,” says Ashley Rose, CEO of cybersecurity company Living Security....

In June 2008, a Dutch woman named Astrid Joosten left the Netherlands with her husband for an adventure vacation in Uganda. It wasn’t their first trip to Africa, but it would be more consequential than the others. At home in Noord-Brabant, Joosten, 41, worked as a business analyst for an electrical company. Both she and her spouse, a financial manager, enjoyed escaping Europe on annual getaways. In 2002, they had flown to Johannesburg and, stepping off the airplane, felt love for Africa at first sight....

Hand washing really, really works—and not just during outbreaks of new respiratory viruses. It also helps prevent the spread of a wide variety of disease-causing microbes, known as pathogens, from food-borne diseases like E.coli to flesh-eating bugs. And it works to contain the spread of illness whether you’re the one who is sick or you’re trying to avoid catching something in the first place. (It even works better than hand sanitizer, so lay off the Purell unless you’re on the go)....

Your clock is controlled by the suprachiasmatic nucleus, a part of the brain that controls the body’s biological rhythms. But, says Jean Matheson, a sleep-disorders specialist at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York, these preset natural rhythms often don’t align with daily realities—work or school start times cannot be adjusted to fit a person’s sleep schedule. People who have trouble crawling out of bed probably have an inner clock set to late wake-up and sleep times, a condition known as phase delay....

Part of the problem is that alcohol lowers the quality of your sleep. Several studies have shown that a bit of booze before bed can actually make you doze off more quickly, but things take a turn in the second half of the night as the body metabolizes all that alcohol. The body experiences a “rebound effect” as it pushes back against the physiological effects of alcohol, which knocks things out of whack once there isn’t any alcohol to counteract....

Think of it like the congested highway you use to drive to work suddenly getting new lanes, or getting an entirely new highway to commute on—things hopefully start moving quicker. “It will give people faster Wi-Fi, basically,” says Anthony Rowe, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at Carnegie Mellon University and a member of the institute’s CyLab. Rght now, many routers work on two different frequencies—either 2.4 GHz or 5 Ghz....

Americans love to labor. While full-time employment is characterized as a 40 hour work week, the average employee actually spends 47 hours at work each week, compared to 35 in Germany or Sweden. The United States is also rare among wealthy nations in that it does not guarantee paid vacation. And those working for companies that do offer paid vacation don’t even take it; 54 percent of worker bees squander half of their vacation days each year....

The video clip can only be a few seconds long, and it will play on loop, similar to Vine (which is owned by rival Twitter). And in a sign of our smartphone-addicted times, you’ll need to be on Facebook’s mobile app for iOS or Android in order to use the feature. These changes are just the latest and most noticeable to come to Facebook’s mobile app. The company has actually continually improved its apps with less flashy, but still useful features....

Microbiome might sound like a fancy term, but it’s pretty easy to understand. “A microbiome is a collection of all the microbes within a specific environment,” explains Northwestern University microbiologist Erica Hartmann. You’ve probably heard the term before in reference to your own body’s gut microbes. But anywhere life exists, so do microbes, and every environment—even the International Space Station—has its own microbiome. Don’t freak out. While bacteria, viruses, and other tiny organisms often get a bad rap for causing infectious diseases, microbes are not inherently bad....

When you set up a connected device, like a smart light bulb or your new Alexa-powered toaster oven, it has to connect to your network and the rest of the devices it will need to interact with. Problematically, not all smart devices connect the same way. Some rely on standard wifi, but there are different versions in play. Some use Bluetooth. Other technologies pop up over time. We want all these devices to work together and that fundamental difference in connectivity provides an annoyingly high hurdle right from the start....

Self-driving cars are nothing new, of course, although the vision that Zoox has is especially slick. The company is working on an autonomous vehicle that, in general, belongs to a category of vehicles that tend to jokingly be compared to rolling toasters. In Zoox’s case, their future taxi will seat four, and can drive bi-directionally, since it has no front or back the way a regular car does. It also boasts four-wheel steering, and lacks any spot for a driver....

In a new paper published in Scientific Reports, scientists in Ireland and the UK recreated miniature versions of Mars spiders in a Mars Simulation Chamber that recreates the planet’s atmospheric conditions. The team drilled holes into solid carbon dioxide—i.e., dry ice—to simulate the natural vent structures in Mars’s polar ice caps. Then they placed the dry ice over sediment that simulated martian terrain. When the solid ice touched the sediment, parts of it began to immediately turn to gas....

The current thought is that the mild climes of the MWP led the Vikings out to Greenland, and that the harsh cold climes of the “Little Ice Age” (LIA) drove them back to Iceland. Further, the MWP has also been a long time favorite tool of climate change deniers who use it to poke holes in legitimate climate science–as proof that there had been global periods of warmth before. According to the study, though, the Medieval Warm Period might not have been that warm at all—making the Vikings incredibly tough folks....

The European Space Agency recently awarded a grant to a team of engineers at the Robotic Building lab at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, to study how robot swarms could build such structures. This month, the founder and current leader of the lab, engineer Henriette Bier, posted some preliminary details of her team’s concept, which would use Zebro robots to excavate underground housing networks on the red planet, fortified with Martian, 3D-printed concrete....

Whether you’re looking for affordable cloud storage or productivity tools, here are deals on apps you can’t afford to miss. Koofr Cloud Storage: Lifetime Subscription (1TB) You can finally stop overpaying for cloud storage with this plan that offers lifetime access to 1TB storage. You can upload, access, and share any file without worrying about size limits, and you can even access files on your remote computer with the desktop app....

We reached out to Brad, and he was nice enough to send us a selection of some of his favorite photos, along with comments about why these photos are special to him. You can see more great astrophotography on his website. Click to launch the gallery.

But if you want to save and enjoy quality service at the same time, you may want to take advantage of this sale happening until May 24. Here are 12 VPN services to choose from, all available on sale for an additional 20-percent off with the code VPN20. FastestVPN: Lifetime Subscription Touted as “one of the most promising VPN services in the market” by TenBestVPNs, FastestVPN offers a user-friendly service that caters to all devices....

That’s something I have plenty of experience with. I was a digital nomad for more than a year before the pandemic, and in the last several years I’ve done my fair share of working from planes, trains, cars, Airbnbs, and hotels—from the far-flung mountains of Otavalo, Ecuador, to the shores of mid-coastal Maine. No matter your destination, if you’re considering taking your work-from-home office on the road, here are the top 14 items you should pack....

Best TV: Samsung QN65QN800A 65 Inch Neo QLED 8K Smart TV (2021)Best Windows laptop: 2022 Acer 15-inch HD IPS Chromebook Best MacBook: 2020 Apple MacBook Pro with Apple M1 ChipBest VR headset: Meta Oculus Quest 2 Headset Best smartwatch: Apple Watch Series 6Best iPad: Apple iPad (10.2-inch, 8th Gen)Best earbuds: Apple AirPods ProBest speaker: Bose soundlink Mini II Limited Edition Bluetooth SpeakerBest drone: DJI Mini 2 Fly More Combo QuadcopterBest mini projector: Anker Nebula CapsuleBest robot vacuum: iRobot Roomba i4Best handheld vacuum: Shark ION W1 Handheld VacuumBest blender: Vitamix Explorian Blender, Professional GradeBest air fryer: NINJA Foodi LG450 5-in-1 Air Fryer and Electric Grill...