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Unless you’re designing skyscrapers or performing other extraordinary tasks, then you should love using this refurbished 13.3″ Macbook Pro, and you’ll be helping to keep more electronics out of landfills. Best of all, you can get one for just $299.99 until Jan. 9 at 11:59 p.m., no coupon required. A Smart dual-core 2.5GHz Intel Core i5 processor with four-way processing performance and turbo boost up to 3.1GHz will give you lots of power to work with....

Science fairs offer hands-on experience with the scientific process. Large ones offer their winners tens of thousands of dollars in scholarship funding. Plus, science fairs are really fun. Summer or early fall is not too early to start exploring a project that may not get judged until winter, science fair judges we talked with say. To get some tips for putting together a winning project, we interviewed judges from two of the world’s most prestigious science fairs, the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair and the Google Science Fair....

The paper, written by a group at Brazil’s Federal University of Viçosa, builds on recent work that showed the tomato has all the genetic information it needs to produce capsaicinoids. “We know that all the genes are there, but in the tomato they are silent,” study author Agustin Zsӧgӧn says. His paper proposes a method for using gene-editing techniques to activate the genetic machinery in the tomato that tells it how to produce capsaicinoids, transforming the plant into both a “biofactory” that could produce larger amounts of the chemicals than it’s currently possible to grow and a spicy snack....

However, these scary fangs, stingers, thorns are biological tools that animals use to defend themselves and can help humans develop more “pierce resistant” materials. In a new paper out today in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface, a team of researchers detail a model that can calculate the energetics, or how the energy behind the action of puncturing works when one organism stabs another. “The idea behind this was to come up with a quantitative framework for comparing a variety of biological puncture systems with each other,” Philip Anderson, a University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign professor of evolution, ecology, and behavior who led the research, said in a press release....

The One Ocean show in San Diego, and other ‘Shamu’ shows featuring orcas performing tricks in front of large crowds was a historically a big draw for SeaWorld theme parks across the country. But those shows in particular have come under fire in recent years from activists who protest the treatment of orcas (also known as killer whales) at the SeaWorld’s theme parks. SeaWorld has been under increasing scrutiny and pressure since 2013 when the documentary Blackfish premiered....

What are the CX True Wireless earbuds? The CX True Wireless follow up on last year’s CX 400BT True Wireless earbuds, which debuted for $200. The CX True Wireless earbuds are now Sennheiser’s entry-level wireless earbuds and $70 less, but they still manage to deliver the brand’s renowned balance of warmth and detail. These Sennheiser earbuds offer the same 7mm dynamic driver as the $300 Momentum True Wireless 2. That extra $170 buys you features like built-in sound equalizing and active noise cancellation, but the richness in the CX True Wireless’s sound comes from what Sennheiser dubs its “TrueResponse transducer,” a fancy name for tiny speakers that can reproduce a frequency range from 5Hz to 21,000Hz....

It’s not as hard as you might think, and you don’t have to be part of an environmental organization to give a hand to the the natural spaces you hold dear. Determine what you want to do, and where Putting together an afternoon or weekend event that benefits parks starts with deciding where you want to volunteer, and how. Selecting the location isn’t tricky. Joe Gibson knows a bit about rallying up volunteers....

Dior’s Ultra Rouge checks all the boxes. Formulated with camelina oil, it’s non-drying, smooth, pigmented, and has incredible staying power. Shade 999, Iconic Red, is the perfect festive color, too. You can sip drinks for hours without worrying about any fade whatsoever. This lip pigment from Rihanna’s cruelty-free brand Fenty Beauty has a paint-like consistency. Apply it with the doe-foot applicator, give it a minute to dry, and you’ll be set for the whole party....

That said, it doesn’t hurt to take stock of your grocery-shopping options and start adding other types of protein to your diet. It can be beneficial for your own health, and for the health of meat-plant workers and the planet. Bugs are one nutritious possibility (they’re the food of the future, we’re telling you), but you’ll probably need to log online to buy them. So, try expanding your palate with simple veggies, beans, and dairy products....

That’s big talk for a small aerospace firm, but then Skylon is a really big idea. The Sabre engine, if successful, should be able to double the normal top speed of conventional jet engines from 2.5 times the speed of sound to 5 times the speed of sound, and it should be able to do so using atmospheric air (rather than tanked oxygen, like a rocket). At that speed Skylon could climb to more than 15 miles up....

COVID-19 is here, and we must stay away from each other. Those of us who can are working from home and avoiding public spaces. In our spare time, we’re obsessively scrolling through news updates and social media posts. Yes, it’s wise to follow the important news in your neighborhood, but there is a limit. No matter how much media you consume, no post or story can tell you what the future holds....

According to Netblocks, an organization tracking global digital rights, Instagram’s blacklisting marks a stark escalation in online censorship, since the Meta-owned social media platform is one of the only allowed in Iran, and as such is utilized by millions of its citizens. Reuters notes locals have also cited that entire mobile phone networks were offline. Iranian WhatsApp users reported only being able to send text messages, as both photo and video sharing options suddenly became unavailable....

If your snoring is ruining your sleep, as well as the people around you, then you are in luck! Right now you can get the Snore Circle YA4200 Electronic Muscle Stimulator Plus for a huge discount as a part of our Black Friday Deals. Just be sure to hurry, because these deals will only be here through 11/27, so get them before they’re gone! Snore Circle helps alleviate snoring issues by stimulating the muscles under the chin using EMS+TENS technology....

Researchers have only recently been able to create superionic ice in the lab. Now, one group of scientists has teased apart its properties. Their results could answer a magnetic mystery in Uranus and Neptune: Superionic ice could be responsible for those planets’ odd, off-kilter magnetic fields, which have been puzzling scientists for some time. The researchers published their work on October 14 in the journal Nature Physics. Nature’s palette of ices When water freezes in Earth’s atmosphere, its molecules naturally sort themselves into hexagons; that’s why, if you live in a frigid enough climate, you see snowflakes that are six-sided....

Inside the hospital, Zamaryalai Ghafori, 34, moved calmly among the patients, helping to bandage a shrapnel wound on an officer before moving swiftly to dress the bleeding head of a young boy involved in a motorcycle crash. For all his calm, Ghafori and his small team toil daily against absurdly high odds. Long hours and low pay had recently driven another surgeon at the hospital to quit—a common occurrence. This has left Ghafori in the middle of a 72-hour shift and, on this morning, the only surgeon available at a hospital that—like so many in Afghanistan—faces chronic shortfalls of personnel, beds, and even standard medical equipment....

Rubber cabinet liner Keeping wood still while you work can be an annoying challenge. Some projects are too small to clamp, and other times clamps get in the way. That’s where rubber cabinet liners come in, providing a grippy surface that will keep wood in place for sanding or routing. Lay the cabinet liner on your workbench, place the wood on top, and start working. Depending on how heavy the piece is, you may need to hold it in place with your forearm or free hand, but it should mostly stay put....

But can you really blame them for being a bit terse? After all, people try to bring a lot of weird stuff on planes. There are a few things that the TSA is pretty chill about that might surprise you, though. We’ve compiled a handy list, but don’t recommend arguing about it with that compliance officer who’s at the tail end of an eight-hour shift dealing with annoying travelers. You can always just ask the TSA directly though....

Though sweat is mostly water, it also contains dissolved chemicals and minerals that can give scientists some insight into what is going on inside the body. The researchers designed their sensor to detect sodium, potassium, glucose, and lactate from sweat. Sodium and potassium concentrations can show if a person is dehydrated, lactate concentrations reveal muscle fatigue, and glucose levels in sweat correlate to glucose levels in the blood, which affect an athlete’s energy level and alertness....

“It got very sophisticated because obviously the battery doesn’t last long and then we had to look at circuits and interrupters, so we have been working on it around two months with a crack team,” swimmer Andrea Fuentes told Reuters. The Spanish team was told they would be unable to wear suits embedded with waterproof lights by the sport’s governing body. Spain argues the reflective capability of fourteen pounds of sequins plastered on other ‘uniforms’ is equivalent to a few dinky lights....

The Mobile Protected Firepower (MPF) vehicle weighs in at 38 tons, which is heavy by all standards, except it is light compared to the 70 tons of heft of an Abrams tank. That means it can go places the Abrams can’t, expanding how and where the Army can effectively fight war from vehicles. The MPF will also feature fire control and situational awareness sensors, which can allow enemy location data to be shared across vehicles in formation....