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In a newly released video from this year’s TED conference, Miesenboeck, a professor at Oxford, explains his pioneering work in the field of optogenetics, which involves genetically modifying nerve cells to react to light. Pulsing lasers at modified neurons mimics a brain impulse, allowing Miesenboeck and his colleagues to study what happens next. As he explains in the video below, the flies’ neurons were modified to develop light-sensitive “pores,” which open when exposed to light....

“Given the success of the pod in training and demonstrated ability to be reprogrammed, Air Combat Command recommended four pods be converted into combat pods to provide attack capabilities against enemy radio frequency threat systems, instead of simulating them,” reads the announcement. Electronic warfare is a crucial part of modern armed conflict. It involves, broadly, the transmission and obstruction of signals along the electromagnetic spectrum, primarily but not exclusively in the domain of radio waves....

Vivaldi instead of Google Chrome Google’s browser is packed with plenty of features, but Vivaldi might just have even more: it’s customizable, free, speedy, and smart. Whether you disagree with Google’s ad targeting, its company ethics, software design, or something else, know that you have options. You get tab stacking for keeping related web pages close together, built-in note taking for those sprawling research projects, and a clever tab tiling mechanism to avoid having to open up window after window....

Travel pillow Unless you’ve got the cash to travel business class, it’s a well-known fact that no one really sleeps on planes. This pillow won’t make it easy, but then again nothing will. What it will do is support your neck on all sides, front included, without pushing your whole head off the seat cushion thanks to its flat back. Plus it’ll squish down to a surprisingly compact size once you’re done dozing in and out for five hours....

Unfortunately, buying a smartphone isn’t quite as simple as rolling up to Best Buy and plunking down a couple hundred bucks for a big screen TV. This list singles out some of the best smartphone deals you’ll find this holiday shopping season. Just don’t hesitate if you see something you want. Everybody wants a phone and everyone likes to save money, so these deals can go fast. The Best Buy Black Friday deals on electronics, appliances, and more Shop Target’s Black Friday sale for gear, gadgets, and gifts The best Black Friday Walmart deals Great Black Friday deal we love...

Many of us do not have the luxury of spending a lot of money on a new laptop. In the world of gaming laptops, spending less money means you have a shorter window of playing the latest AAA games at high specs before you’ll need to upgrade again. If you’re willing to put concerns about fidelity aside, though, you can get a perfectly good laptop that should play a decent number of PC games for as little as $500....

Below, some items to show your bald friends that you appreciate them. I’ve owned an earlier model of these clippers for five or six years, and I’m super jealous that this newer, wireless model now includes a color-coded chart for guard lengths. It has a great motor that can power through hair of all lengths and I use it both to shave my head and trim my beard. And if you get your bald friend clippers (if you give a mouse a cookie…), you’ll definitely want to get them this brush with it....

You might be a heavy Instagram user, but you probably don’t know everything the app can do. Some of its best features may be hidden away, but we’re here to bring them to light. Change filter strengths Instagram originally made its name through filters, which overlay your image and make it look great. Today, filters are still the first set of options you see after you snap a picture in the app....

Top monitors for graphic design do a great job with accurate colors in a wide color space so that you don’t have to speculate as to how a T-shirt will look when it comes back from the printer. Their screens get bright enough so that lighter colors will pop and darker colors will recede into true blacks while lighting up uniformly without flicker. Great monitors for graphic design will also be highly detailed, with resolutions above HD, so that you can’t distinguish individual pixels with the naked eye....

Best overall: HP VH240aBest for stock trading: Dell P2419HBest for crypto trading: AOC C24G1Best for day trading: LG Ultrawide WN80CBest budget: Acer SB220Q How we selected the best monitors for trading To compile our list, we combined personal experience, peer input, respected critics, and user impressions. We also considered the environment of the modern work-from-home trader and what they needed. The reality is that there is a lot of diversity in these needs....

Best overall: Aleko Outdoor Rustic CedarBest infrared: Enlighten Rustic 5-person SaunaBest steam: Traditional Outdoor Country Living Barrel Sauna by SaunacoreBest barrel: Redwood Outdoors Thermowood Panorama SaunaBest 2-person: Clearlight Sanctuary 2Best kit: Dundalk Leisurecraft Outdoor Luna SaunaBest budget: Sunray Grandby 3-Person How we chose the best outdoor saunas We scoured write-ups and reviews to find the best outdoor saunas for our readers. We wanted to include a range of products that could appeal to any user, no matter how much space you have for a home install....

As of September 7, 78 large fires have been spreading across 10 states in the US—burning across 1.9 million acres of land thus far, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. Over the course of this year, 5,104,228 acres have burned due to 43,555 separate wildfires. These fires have followed record drought and heatwave conditions across the western US, and have so far crushed towns and communities in their wake....

A young woman guides their group toward a full-scale replica of the massive Saturn V rocket that brought America to the moon. As they duck under the exhaust nozzles, Kenneth Wilson glances at his awestruck boy and feels his burden beginning to lighten. For a few minutes, at least, someone else will feed his son’s boundless appetite for knowledge. Then Taylor raises his hand, not with a question but an answer....

Update: This post has been amended to reflect clarification from the CDC. On Friday the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) updated its guidelines for quarantining to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Most notably, the agency now excludes “people who have had COVID-19 within the past three months” from the need to self-isolate after coming into contact with individuals infected with the virus. This guidance does not apply to people who have recovered and then develop symptoms again; the CDC still recommends they get tested to rule out an ongoing or repeat infection....

There are many good reasons to want a human in the cockpit of a plane, including their judgement, fast-thinking skills, and the capability to respond to unexpected threats. But there are hard physical obstacles that suggest maybe not every plane needs to have a pilot. Humans need systems to stay alive, and those systems sometimes break. Earlier this month, Air Force F-35As were grounded because the system supplying oxygen to pilots failed, and the F-22 struggled with oxygen problems for years as well....

“A joke I’ve heard is you’re talking to an old UFO-head who’s 40 or 50, and he says, ‘When I wanted to get conspiracy documentaries, I had to go find a weird guy in a trenchcoat in Times Square selling DVDs,’” says Chris Cogswell, co-host of the Mad Scientist Podcast, a show examining the science, philosophy, and history of weird claims. “Now I just go to the History Channel.” If you want slightly less conspiratorial UFO material, lately, you can also open the New York Times, the New Yorker, the Washington Post, NBC, CBS, and even, yes, Popular Science....

This makes dementia a top priority for organizations like the World Health Organization, which released new guidelines for reducing the risk of cognitive decline on Tuesday. The gist? Be generally healthy. “The scientific evidence gathered for these guidelines confirm what we have suspected for some time, that what is good for our heart, is also good for our brain,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO’s director general, said in a statement....

Seven years later, in June 2011, I had just finished my first year of college and couldn’t wait to see how Google+ would change the likes of Facebook and Twitter. Within 10 minutes of setting up my profile though, I was over Google’s fourth attempt at a social network. On the rare occasions I use my G+ profile in my personal life, it’s almost exclusively because it’s required to do Google Hangouts (another Google product I feel does its job better than competitors)....

Mari Di Chiara has loved having her husband around the past few months while the couple, like many parents, worked from home while taking care of their son. “He’s definitely taken on more than 50 percent of the childcare and household chores, so I can continue to bring in the same level of income I was when we had full-time childcare,” says the digital marketing consultant from Atlanta. Mari isn’t alone, according to a new paper published by the nonprofit Council on Contemporary Families....

The key to shrinking the chip is a new manufacturing process that prints each conductive wire inside the circuit at about 1/2,000 the width of a human hair, half the size found in conventional chips More circuits mean smarter features. The Atom’s sleep mode powers down parts of the chip when idling. And unlike other chips, Atom doesn’t run background programs if stalled on its primary task, which helps boost battery life....