RASSOR–pronounced “razer” and short for Regolith Advanced Surface Systems Operations Robot–checks in at 2.5 feet tall and looks a little bulkier than past generations of rovers. That’s by design, NASA says: The robot is built to work through the day, and to last for years doing it. The job at hand: collecting resources. RASSOR will be tasked with digging up lunar soil and dumping it back into another machine on the moon’s surface....
New Balance isn’t the first shoe company or designer to invest in 3D printed shoes. For the past few years, major athletic companies have hinted at using 3D printing to create their running shoes, but it wasn’t until just recently that the goal has begun to come to fruition. In October, Adidas announced its partnership with the 3D printing company Materialise to create a similar 3D printed midsole for a running shoe, and Nike also announced its intentions to make a 3D printed sneaker....
CourseSmart, a big e-textbook publisher, just unveiled a tool called CourseSmart Analytics that can track students’ reading habits. Villanova University, Rasmussen College, and Texas A&M University at San Antonio will pilot the tool, which can determine how many pages students read, how much time it took them to read those pages, how many notes they took, and–here’s the kicker–how “engaged” they were by the reading, based on those figures. The idea is for professors to look at those numbers and adjust help and attention accordingly....
The wide, sunny streets of Miramar, a suburb of Wellington, New Zealand, give the impression of a peaceful neighborhood. On a midsummer day earlier this year, the pohutukawa trees were abloom in a blaze of red, and kids on vacation zoomed about on scooters and skateboards. But in the backyards of these homes, business, and parks, Miramar is quietly at war. Building traps, setting out poison, and keeping a guarded watch, Miramar is out to catch Wellington’s Most Wanted—every last rat, weasel, ferret, possum, and stoat that has invaded the city....
The study was commissioned by 23andMe, a for-profit personal genomics company best known for its at-home spit kits that use DNA to reveal a person’s ancestry or inherited medical conditions (and which has previously clashed with the Food and Drug Administration over its marketing.) Using 23andMe’s massive genetic database, the researchers analyzed the DNA from more than 89,000 people. The study participants also took a two-question online survey to qualify them as morning or evening people....
Many have attempted to release products that thread the line between portability and power, and Microsoft is one of the only few that has mastered that with their Surface series. Perhaps the only downside is they cost a pretty penny, but if you want to save, you always have the option to buy refurbished. You may want to take advantage of the last chance you can score a refurbished Microsoft Surface 3....
“The first couple of animals we tried, we gave them way, way, way too much,” says Dölen, a neuroscientist at John Hopkins University, ”because I thought, ‘well, if it’s going to work it’s probably going to need monster doses to see anything.’” The masters of disguise sent waves of color rippling down their arms, blanched white, and changed their breathing patterns. Suspecting that the ecstasy—also known as MDMA—was overwhelming the animals, Dölen and Edsinger, a marine biologist at the University of Chicago, dialed down the dosage....
Decades later, while living in a rural setting in upstate New York and approaching retirement as a geologist, my long dormant interest was rekindled by treks through the neighboring woods. By now I knew that stone walls in New England and New York are iconic vestiges from a time when farmers, in order to plant crops and graze livestock, needed to clear the land of stones. Tons and tons of granite had been deposited throughout the region during the last glaciation that ended about 10,000 years ago....
The White House is considering a herd immunity strategy that could lead to thousands of deaths On Monday, The Washington Post reported that Scott Atlas, a neurologist at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and one of President Donald Trump’s top medical advisors, wants the United States to embrace a controversial herd immunity strategy against COVID-19. The notion is that opening up businesses and lifting other social distancing restrictions would allow the virus to quickly infect a great number of people, leaving many of them with a resistance to the virus....
Until the food arrived. A peculiar baking dish arrived at my place, its contents hidden by a layer of bacon interwoven like the top crust of an apple pie. But the bacon was only camouflage. My host’s serving spoon cut through the crispy top layer only to retrieve a gray-brown blob which, to my horror, landed on my plate with a gelatinous plop. Liver pate—a tribute to frugal bygone days when no meat could be wasted—is a staple of the Danish diet and still features in the traditional cuisine....
POWER When the user pulls the trigger, a variable-speed switch draws power from the 20-volt lithium-ion battery and transfers it to the motor. The farther back the user pulls the trigger, the more power the switch draws and the faster the motor will rotate. ATTACH The motor turns a five-sided metal male joint that connects to a matching female joint affixed to the unique transmission of each tool head, be it drill/driver or oscillating tool [both shown]....
Here lies the National Ignition Facility (NIF) in California’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Inside NIF’s boxy walls, scientists are working to create nuclear fusion, the same physics that powers the sun. About a year ago, NIF scientists came closer than anyone to a key checkpoint in the quest for fusion: creating more energy than was put in. Unfortunately—but in a familiar outcome to those familiar with fusion—that world would have to wait....
If your mantra aligns somewhere with “you can never protect your laptop enough,” then this case won’t disappoint. It’s a durable, lightweight case with convenient cutouts for your device’s ports as well as cooling vents to allow your machine to plough through hours of use. The translucent exterior is unobtrusive, and also allows you to choose your machine’s aesthetic. For lasting protection, you can rely on non-slip grips to carry your machine through any conditions and avoid any sudden, frustrating drops....
To find out where the victors and the beheaded were each from, scientists took inspiration from the old maxim, “you are what you eat.” Researchers tested tooth enamel samples from 16 trophy heads housed in the Field Museum and 13 mummified bodies buried in the Nazca region. Due to the arid nature of the Nazca landscape, archaeologists found the skulls amazingly well-preserved (some still had hair on them). Three common elements in the samples—strontium, oxygen, and carbon—display subtly different atomic structures that vary by geographic location....
These particular lightning bugs, all in the Photuris genus, may have long escaped detection because no one was really looking for them. Few people spend their free summer nights cataloging minute differences in firefly flashing patterns. But Delaware State University wildlife ecologist Christopher “Kitt” Heckscher treks out a few times during the season, seeking out the perfect wetland wilderness for the hypnotizing insects. Among firefly experts, Heckscher is something of an outlier, targeting what he believes will be the fireflies’ favored landscapes in hopes of discovering new species....
Currently available for $1,999, $800 less than its regular $2,799, the 14-inch laptop runs on a Ryzen 9 5900x processor and has a 1TB of storage, 16GB of RAM, and an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 with 8GB of dedicated video memory. Its QHD display will allow you to play games at higher-than-HD resolutions, and its 165Hz refresh rate will make the on-screen action look super smooth. You’ll have a better experience playing games on the Razer Blade 14 than many cheap gaming monitors—despite the smaller screen size....
“Life-threatening wind chills over the Great Plains (will) overspread the eastern half of the nation by Friday,” the Weather Prediction Center said. Wind chills below minus 50 degrees Fahrenheit have already been reported, with two locations in Wyoming setting records early Thursday for the, “lowest temperatures ever recorded at a particular location, regardless of the date on the calendar.” Casper, Wyoming saw minus 41 degrees Fahrenheit and Riverton, Wyoming saw minus 29....
New research out last week in the journal Current Research in Environmental Sustainability found that out of 174 expert-reviewed studies on nature and mental health benefits published between 2010 and 2020, 95 percent occurred in high-income countries across North America, Europe, and East Asia. Research based in the Global South was more or less absent—and only 4 percent of studies took place in medium-income countries, with none in low-income nations....
Objects that have somehow managed to escape this constant churn, we call old. Earth’s oldest rock crystals, for instance, have survived nearly the entirety of the planet’s 4.5-billion-year history. Go back any farther, however, and you hit a wall. The solar system swirled into being from dust particles drifting through space about 4.6 billion years ago, and then energy from the young sun blasted apart anything in the vicinity, so it’s hard to get your hands on anything older than that....
Most robots are made of plastic and metal, which are non-biodegradable. But researchers at the the IIT’s Smart Materials Group have developed a way to create a bioplastic out of food waste. This material could eventually be used to make an entirely biodegradable robot. Athanassia Athanassiou, who leads the Smart Materials Lab at the IIT, says that the bioplastic can be flexible or tough, so it could be used for both robot ‘skin’ and interior robot parts....
