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When to throw away your spices Spices (the root, seed or non-leafy bits of a plant) and herbs (the leaves, flowers, and stems) spread small amounts of the chemical compounds they contain into your food. These are volatile, in the chemical sense, meaning they change phase states easily. Once a spice is harvested, the clock begins ticking as those compounds turn to from liquids to gas. While it certainly depends on the spice, you’ll notice a loss in potency after roughly a year, and by three years in, they’ll need replacing....

Defense News reports that the Pentagon “chose not to announce the test of the Hypersonic Air-breathing Weapon Concept, or HAWC, for about two weeks to avoid inflaming already-delicate tensions with Russia.” A hypersonic weapon is any projectile that travels at least five times the speed of sound. Delaying the announcement of the test allowed the administration to avoid an unfortunate parallel with Russia’s claimed use of a hypersonic weapon in war....

Sure, you can unsubscribe from newsletters and delete accounts with companies you feel are sending you too many digital missives, but if that’s not enough, you can pull the shutters down on data-gathering in your inbox, no matter what email account or client you use. How email trackers work Email tracking is typically triggered by some kind of interactive element in a message. When your email client loads that element—often just a single-pixel image that you won’t even see—it notifies the sender, and they assume the message has been opened....

There’s no universally perfect age or method for introducing a kid to new physical or intellectual pursuits, but that doesn’t mean the timing doesn’t matter. We asked experts when and how caregivers should bring new hobbies and life skills into a child’s sphere. The best age to learn a second language (or a third one) Hoping to raise a polyglot? Get them started on speaking new languages as early as you can....

“The projected global population of 10.4 billion at the end of the century is more than a half a billion lower than what we projected three years ago,” John Wilmoth, the director of the Population Division at the Department of Economic and Social Affairs for the UN, commented in a press conference. The year 2020 marked the first time since 1950 that population growth slowed down by one percent. More countries are experiencing slower increases because of low fertility rates....

Colorful eggs evolved only once among dinosaurs, who then passed the trait down to their modern descendants, according to a paper published this week in Nature. Egg color popped up when dinosaurs started nesting above ground, much like many species of modern bird, the scientists found. “It’s really an important contribution to the literature, it illustrates that the eggshell pigments evolved much earlier than previously thought,” says Daniel Hanley, a behavioral ecologist at Long Island University Post who was not involved with the new study....

Scientists have been preparing for this for nearly a decade now. In 2014, Japan’s space agency, JAXA, launched Hayabusa-2, a robotic spacecraft designed to study Ryugu up close and help us learn more about the structure and composition of asteroids in the solar system. The spacecraft arrived at Ryugu in June, keeping pace with the asteroid’s orbit around the sun. Hayabusa-2 is, without a doubt, one of the wildest missions space scientists and engineers have ever attempted....

For starters, the effect has been observed in babies, so it’s probably not a learned response—but it could be genetic. One Swedish study found that in families where one parent had the condition, more than half of the children had it too. A separate research team even found two places in the human genome where the trait might reside, though they’ve yet to prove it. On a mechanistic level, the condition might result from crossed signals in the brain’s wiring....

One of the biggest issues is cost. Communities built in areas that are burning, drying, or flooding can’t just be rolled up like a carpet and carted off to a more suitable location. Both relocation and retrofitting (in which a community stays in its historic home) are both extremely expensive propositions, so it’s not a huge surprise that people are landing on some desperate solutions. This Includes the latest idea from Alaskan Governor Bill Walker: Use oil and gas revenue to help relocate Alaskan villages affected by climate change....

As this surge has ebbed, medications to combat COVID-19 have become more accessible. One particularly promising treatment is Pfizer’s Paxlovid, which has received emergency use authorization in COVID-19 patients aged 12 years and older who weigh at least 88 pounds and are especially vulnerable to developing severe COVID-19. In clinical trials, the antiviral pill was nearly 90 percent effective at protecting unvaccinated people at high risk of severe COVID-19 from hospitalization and death if given soon after symptoms started....

It was the first such incidence at Churchill Downs, but, the fifth horse put down during, or after, the past 13 Triple Crown races. As a result, the second most watched Derby in history is garnering more attention than the “fastest two minutes,” it advertises. PETA is barking for a suspension of the jockey, claiming it rode and whipped the horse too hard. More moderate voices are pondering if it’s bad luck or an emerging dilemma....

This energy storage technology has been transformational for the clean energy sector, all thanks to lithium-cobalt oxides’ high energy density. But on the flip side, these power sources are infamous for being volatile and turning into fire hazards—particularly at the end of their life cycle. In the last few years, dead lithium-ion batteries were responsible for catastrophic fires breaking out in various recycling plants in the US, UK, France, and China....

Explosives experts now say that the towering fireball was likely caused by a 2,750-ton stockpile of ammonium nitrate stored in a warehouse at the port. Ammonium nitrate is a highly reactive chemical used in fertilizer because the compound’s high concentration of nitrogen stimulates plant growth. It’s also a key component in a compound called ANFO (for ammonium nitrate/fuel oil), which is used as a blasting agent by the mining industry to shatter large aggregations of rock....

People living with individuals who have risk factors for severe COVID-19 should consider wearing a mask at home In a news conference on Sunday, the White House’s coronavirus coordinator Deborah Birx made clear that the epidemic in the United States is no longer confined to hot spots. Instead, the pandemic has entered what she called a “new phase”: The virus is sprawling across the country, even seeping into rural areas, which were, at the beginning of the pandemic, largely case-free....

“Listen, if the chickens ate ginger and lemon, you would have a gingery, lemony chicken, I think.” A ginger-lemon chicken sounds fantastic! But, um, wait a second. Is that scientifically possible? Basic question first: does what you eat affect your flavor? (Using “you” here is kind of odd, assuming that you don’t intend to be eaten later. Anyway!) The answer is, certainly, in a general way. What an animal eats has an effect on its fat: how much of it there is, what texture it is, where it is, and, yes, what it tastes like....

It happens—we’ve all forgotten to cancel free trials before we’re billed or that annual subscription is renewed. Or had our kid or our now least favorite nephew download a paid app or use our credit card to buy lives on Fortnite. And when it does happen, one thing’s for sure—we want a refund. Unfortunately, getting your money back for digital intangible goods isn’t guaranteed in the US. But if there’s any chance of getting one, here’s how....

That’s probably not what’s going on in those photos, says Rachael Rohde, the chair of the Public Education Committee for the American Society for Surgery of the Hand. “It would be pretty hard to deform any of your fingers just by holding a cell phone,” she says adding that it would probably take many years of gripping a phone really hard to make any noticeable change. “As a hand surgeon, I think it’s more likely there’s something going on here to begin with, another condition, that they didn’t realize [they had] and thought it might be related to the phone....

But it doesn’t have to be. Insects are the basis of many food webs in nature, are very rich in nutrients—including protein and all nine essential amino acids for human development—and can be delicious. Yes, you read that right—bugs are actually tasty. Introducing them to your diet doesn’t mean serving a tarantula on a lettuce leaf or biting into crunchy crickets right away (though, you could because, yum). If you’re curious about the insect-protein movement and wonder how you can start incorporating it into your menu, know that it’s easier than ever, and that there are experts out there who’ve tested the waters and want to show you the way....

The researchers identified a plethora of fungal DNA in the South American birds’ feces, and found that the spores were likely still viable—in other words, the avian gourmands may help the truffles proliferate. The researchers also noticed that some of the brightly-colored fungi closely resembled local berries, perhaps as a strategy to catch the birds’ interest. “These are really, really common birds that are really widespread over almost the entire area where you find these southern beech forests—and yet nobody has noticed this interaction before,” says study co-author Matthew E....

Even if you think you know what you’ve put out there and what you haven’t, it’s important to check once in a while. You might be posting out personal information without even realizing it. And this information takes all sorts of forms—not just your idle thoughts on Twitter and Facebook, but also your Spotify playlists, YouTube uploads, fitness data, and more. Your music playlists Sharing a public playlist isn’t quite the same as handing over your online banking details, but you may not want everyone knowing your fondness for bubblegum pop or death metal....