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Despite having the why of it all, the team couldn’t help but wonder how exactly the stripes worked. To find out, they devised a handful of experiments to reveal the behavior and flight patterns of the flies as they circle and land on zebras. Their new study, published Wednesday in PLOS ONE, shows horseflies zoom straight toward their striped meals, and after getting close, wham into them so hard they bounce off like tiny cannonballs....

Daily life Every custom wheelchair has unique attributes tailored to the needs of the user, of which there are currently about 2.7 million in the US. This manual one weighs less than 20 pounds and has a foldable frame, so it’s easy to lift into a car’s trunk without injury. The handgrips collapse down so other people can’t push the chair without permission. A small detachable motor called a SmartDrive provides power so the individual doesn’t get worn out....

These responders have a challenging and dangerous job. Here’s how the process of digging and searching through rubble works, whether emergency personnel are dealing with a building that has collapsed because of an earthquake, structural failure, hurricane, or act of terrorism. The procedure: Searching for a ‘survivable void space’ A five-part procedure guides the rescue specialists who descend on a disaster for however long the process takes. The first step is straightforward information gathering: It’s “response, arrival, and recon,” says Larry Collins, deputy chief of Cal OES Fire & Rescue who has worked on disasters including the 2010 Haiti earthquake....

And for the extra curious student, there’s a way to learn more about it. Google has teamed up with the creators of Interstellar to launch a program for students excited about the science surrounding the epic space odyssey. And if you’ve seen the movie, you know that the film touches upon a ton of different science topics. To transform the movie’s plot elements into creative learning experiences, Google representatives worked with numerous Google Certified Teachers — teachers who have attended the Google Teacher Academy, a two-day seminar which trains educators on how to use innovative technologies (namely Google products) in the classroom....

Make sure you’ve been hacked Nowadays there are so many data hacks reported in the press that it’s all too easy to zone out and become numb to the threat. But these reports are an important early sign that one of your accounts may have been compromised and you may need to do something about it. Unwelcome visitors usually leave tracks behind, so if you’re vigilant, you can spot any unauthorized login early on and do something about it promptly....

This article was originally published in the January/February 2017 issue of Popular Science, under the title “How To Grow An Arm.”

MATERIALS Project box Drill 2.1-mm power-connector jack 10-position header 100k-ohm slide potentiometer Soldering iron and solder Electrical wire 10k-ohm resistor Wire strippers White LED design kit Five clear plastic tubes with endcaps Five two-position connectors 15-volt 1A wall-mount power supply STEP 1 Drill six holes in your project box to accommodate the various components, then assemble the controller by mounting the power-connector jack inside the box and the 10-position header and the 100k-ohm slide potentiometer on the box’s sides....

The tools you’ll need to roast your own coffee First, get yourself some green coffee beans, which are often available from specialty coffee retailers or local roasters. “Like bread baking, beer making, and other culinary hobbies, coffee roasting can be a fun way to demystify a broadly misunderstood craft,” says Peter Giuliano, executive director of the Coffee Science Foundation and chief research officer of the Specialty Coffee Association. Then, collect the necessary tools: one or two colanders or baking sheets, and a roasting device....

Seasoning cast iron is actually pretty simple: oil the inside of the cooking surface and then heat it until the fat polymerizes, repeating the process to build up a protective layer. Polymerized oil is more like a plastic than a fat, which makes it hard and resistant to sticking. By heating the whole pan to a high enough temperature, you permanently bond the oil to the raw iron. In this form, it protects the metal from air and food....

The easiest way to undo in Notes on iPhone When you open the on-screen iPhone keyboard in Notes, you’ll see several icons inside a light-gray bar at the top of it. Tap the one that looks like a pen tip inside a circle and the undo and redo icons (curved arrows) will appear at the top of your phone’s screen. The middle ground between your entire hand and one finger involves swiping across your phone or tablet screen with three fingers....

A little more 3D, the new emoji in iOS 10 can be accessed from the system keyboard in the same manner as before. First, go to your “Settings,” app, tap “General,” scroll down and tap “Keyboard,” and then tap “Keyboards” and select the “Emoji” option to turn it on. Then, whenever the keyboard pops up, look for the globe icon in the lower left hand corner and tap it to pull up the emoji keyboard....

At $900 retail, the Vive Cosmos Elite isn’t the kind of thing you can simply take out of the box and start playing. It requires a powerful-enough PC to run the games—I used an Alienware Aurora RYZEN edition for this review. With the much cheaper Facebook Oculus Go, which is meant mostly for watching content or playing simple games, you just use a dinky remote. Setting up the Vive Cosmos Elite involves placing two beacons in opposite corners of your room throwing infrared signals into your space....

One example is sled dogs, or modern-day huskies and malamutes. These big, fluffy animals make incredible pets and have a history of transporting people across barren, icy landscapes for thousands of years with the help of special heat-regulation and fat-digestion traits. And according to a new study published last month in Science, they may be one of the oldest unique dog types that have sniffed, barked, and run across the earth....

Once used, however, hydrogels tend to become brittle and deteriorate after redrying, making them inefficient and often cost prohibitive for everyday use(actual sheets of the polymers have previously been generally too labor-intensive and difficult to manufacture). If one could combine the best of both worlds, everyday cleanups—not to mention medical or hazardous situations—could become a lot more manageable and simplified. According to a new study published earlier this month in the scientific journal Matter, researchers at the University of Maryland are doing just that....

Dust mites are microscopic creatures that live in rugs, blankets, and cushions, triggering skin rashes and asthma in millions of people worldwide. In Pakistan, physicians started diagnosing people with dust allergies, using Western kits, in the mid-1990s. But no one knew if these allergy-inducing bugs actually lived there! Knowing which species—if any—lived in Pakistani homes could help doctors make more accurate diagnoses. So in spring 2011, I collected dust from 300 homes in urban areas of Pothwar....

But IBM has a new approach: by rotating the individual transistors—the basic building blocks of chips that control or amplify electrical signals—to sit vertically on a chip instead of horizontally, engineers could pack a lot more of them into a given space. “Historically, transistors have been built to lie flat upon the surface of a semiconductor, with the electric current flowing laterally, or side-to-side, through them,” IBM said in a press release this week about a new chip architecture design that they’re also presenting tomorrow at the 2021 International Electron Devices meeting....

“Last year, or last winter, we had by far the lowest sea ice extent by any measure in the Bering Sea,” says Rick Thoman, who recently retired from studying weather and climate for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and currently works for the Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Policy at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. From when reconstructed sea ice records begin in 1850 until now, this year was the lowest of the low in terms of sea ice, and “not by a little bit, by a tremendous amount....

But just how close to the edge was he? To get a sense of Fearless Felix’s actual proximity to space, we charted the altitude of his incredible jump in relation to some other objects strewn in the space between us and the International Space Station: (Click here to see a larger version.) _Credits: Clouds, Ian Image Library; Boeing 747, Eluveitie, via Wikimedia Commons; beaker, Silliusvia Open Clip Art; International Space Station, Ciniconoclasta via ClipArtsFree....

Veganism and using fewer animal products, whether in food or in fashion, is often touted as a sustainable solution. However, some industry experts and environmentalists argue that leather is a difficult material to find a high-quality sustainable dupe for. Though consuming less meat and dairy and having a more plant-focused diet has been proven to be better for the environment, consumers can be misled to assume that all things vegan, including pleather, are sustainable....

If there’s one thing that both CBD and THC have in common, it would be the endocannabinoid system. This is because both of them are cannabinoids, which means they act on different receptors within the ECS. This is the reason why they influence our bodies in different ways. But still, it cannot be denied that CBD and THC are very similar, although they’re also different at the same time. There’s one thing about both of these compounds that you should know: Marijuana actually has more than just the two cannabinoids that I mentioned earlier....