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“Unhealthy diets can create an environment that is toxic to the brain,” says neuroscientist Nicolas Cherbuin. So you might want to lay off the Big Macs. This article was originally published in the January/February 2016 issue of Popular Science.

The “super-Wifi” would use a portion of the wireless spectrum currently used by television broadcasts, which has significantly more penetrative power than the current wi-fi spectrum. This would make it possible for the signal to travel greater distances and pass through buildings and other obstacles. Companies that make their money from consumer telecommunications are not thrilled about the idea, as one might guess. According to the Washington Post, Verizon, Intel, AT&T, Cisco, and others have opined that the spectrum should be auctioned to businesses rather than used for the FCC’s proposed plan....

Novavax’s COVID-19 vaccine is coming at a time when the US faces a lag in vaccination. As of July, 78.4 percent of the population has received at least one dose, and only 67 percent is fully vaccinated. What’s more, the rapid spread of multiple Omicron variants— BA.5 now makes up nearly 70 percent of coronavirus cases—has accelerated interest in variant-specific vaccines. On June 30, the FDA voted to change the formulation of the next set of COVID-19 boosters to include components of Omicron BA....

Today, EarthScope, a geological project focused on understanding the North American continent, invites us all to play around with a new tool called BirthQuake. BirthQuake is a website lets you discover the major earthquakes that were happening on your birthday. Put in the month, day, and year of your birth, and uncover the largest earthquakes that happened the day you were born. Or, you can do the same for celebrities and scientists....

The bacterial strain is infamous for causing excruciating and even deadly gut infections. The pain and disruption C. diff wreaked on her life forced Snyder to quit her job, and she even moved to Santa Fe in the hope that living “stress free in this good vibe town” would help her get better. But, she says, “that doesn’t treat C. diff, so that didn’t work.” What typically does successfully treat C....

If you’ve ever spent time hiking, you may have heard this dramatic saying: cotton kills. That phrase exists because of the fact that when you get the material wet—through sweat or precipitation—it wants to stay wet, because it’s hydrophilic. And if it’s cold and clammy out, the clingy, damp garment could start its wearer on the road to hypothermia. For that reason, outdoor explorers typically prefer to wear synthetic clothing....

Sometimes the best ideas are the simplest—which is certainly the case with this collection of outdoor tricks and gear hacks that readers have sent us over the years. In the next few weeks, we’ll be sharing our “greatest hits” of those reader tips, starting with this list of camping tips. From a toilet-paper protector to a modified mousetrap, these tips are simply brilliant. Make sure your toilet paper stays safe and dry Two of the most annoying problems at my hunting camp are wet toilet paper and mice getting into toilet paper....

For the electric Mustang Mach-E, this is the GT. The GT is a legendary Mustang name, one that predates Shelbys, Mach 1, Boss 302, Bullitt, SVO, SVT, and various other hot-rod models, so it seems appropriate that Ford’s EV crossover SUV with the Mustang badge would return to these roots for its first performance variant. Like most EVs, the regular Mach-E is pretty quick. But the GT adds power to deliver the kind of electric speed that has been the source of so many YouTube videos depicting Teslas roasting exotic Italian supercars in drag races....

It looked to some spectators “as if the wretched man was on the eve of being restored to life.” By the time Aldini was experimenting on Forster, the idea that there was some peculiarly intimate relationship between electricity and the processes of life was at least a century old. Isaac Newton speculated along such lines in the early 1700s. In 1730, the English astronomer and dyer Stephen Gray demonstrated the principle of electrical conductivity....

The latest and most significant drama comes from a cryptocurrency exchange called FTX, which has made headlines over the past 10 days or so as shocking details have emerged about the state of its internal operations. If you’re just catching up, here’s everything you need to know. What is FTX? FTX is a cryptocurrency exchange based in the Bahamas founded by Sam Bankman-Fried (known as SBF). It and 130 or so affiliated companies are currently in the middle of Chapter 11 bankruptcy filings brought about by, well—stay tuned, and we’ll explain....

It’s news that many Americans have long been waiting for: The CDC announced today that people who are fully vaccinated against COVID-19—that’s two weeks after either the one-dose Johnson & Johnson shot or the second dose of the Pfizer or Moderna shots—no longer need to wear masks in most situations. “The science demonstrates that if you are fully vaccinated you are protected,” Rochelle Walensky, the CDC’s director told reporters in a news conference....

When Ralph Fisher, a Texas cattle rancher, set eyes on one of the world’s first cloned calves in August 1999, he didn’t care what the scientists said: He knew it was his old Brahman bull, Chance, born again. About a year earlier, veterinarians at Texas A&M extracted DNA from one of Chance’s moles and used the sample to create a genetic double. Chance didn’t live to meet his second self, but when the calf was born, Fisher christened him Second Chance, convinced he was the same animal....

“Ghost forests are the best indicator of climate change on the East Coast,” says Matthew Kirwan, a professor at William & Mary’s Virginia Institute of Marine Science studying coastal landscape evolution and author of a recent review in Nature Climate Change on the appearance of these forests. “In rural, low-lying areas, there are so many dead trees and farmland that’s either stressed or abandoned that the signs of sea level rise are obvious....

Inspiration Wilker drew inspiration from mollusks that cling to rocks in stormy seas. The secret to their adhesion is the cross-linking of special proteins, which he tweaked for even greater effectiveness. “In biomimicry, you don’t usually beat out nature,” Wilker says, “but we made some stuff that’s crazy strong.” Application Wilker thinks his glues could eliminate the need for surgical screws, plates, sutures, or staples—fixtures he says belong in carpentry or a medieval torture chamber, not modern medicine....

In fact, Google hit an inflection point around 2015 when it realized it had to change its strategy for keeping their maps updated, according to two Google Maps staffers who spoke exclusively with Popular Science. Andrew Lookingbill, the director of engineering for Google Maps, describes the moment as an “epiphany.” Keeping maps updated in over 200 countries is hard—so the team had to pivot from just making maps to something more meta....

In a recent study published on November 30 in the journal PLOS One, a team of biologists from Sorbonne Université in France have discovered 195 species of bacteria living on microfibers floating in the Mediterranean Sea. According to their analysis, a single microfiber could be home to more than 2,600 bacterial cells. While not all marine microbes on the plastic particles were dangerous, the researchers were particularly concerned about the level of bacterial species that could be potentially harmful to wildlife and humans....

Waste management was a bit of an afterthought when the space age started. Waiting for his Redstone to launch on May 5, 1961, astronaut Al Shepard famously (or perhaps infamously) wet himself. The mission was slated to last just fifteen minutes, so mission planners reasoned he would certainly be able to hold it for a quarter of an hour. The problem NASA hadn’t foreseen was that Shepard was sealed in his Freedom 7 capsule for hours before the short flight....

Though Johnson knew this about women and vouched for them through much of her career, it’s taken the U.S. space program much longer to catch on. By the time she passed earlier this year, the ranks of female astronauts had nearly pulled even with males. But NASA still isn’t quite there. Of the agency’s 48 active astronauts, only a third are women—and none have stepped foot on the moon yet....