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This article originally appeared in the October 2014 issue of Popular Science.

EMGs traditionally monitor a voltage change across the skin using a gel patch stuck to the body. In athletic competition, sweat, movement and comfort make this a less than ideal setup. The ConText project is instead focusing on capacitive sensors to monitor levels from a distance. In the capacitor model, the body serves as one plate while the electrode plate of the sensor acts as the counter plate. The electrode plate contains an insulating layer closest to the skin while the backside of the sensor has a second insulating layer to protect against external fields in order to reduce noise....

“Entomology Animated Episode 1: RIFA Madness” was an Honorable Mention Video in the 2016 Vizzies. See all 10 of the winners. This article was originally published in the March/April 2016 issue of Popular Science, under the title “The 2016 Vizzies.”

But if you’re in tech or at least thinking about breaking into the industry, there’s little to worry about, at least according to the Bureau of Labor. While it’s not completely recession-proof, the sector is resistant enough not to be severely impacted if the economy takes a nosedive. Employment in computer and information technology is predicted to grow at a steady rate of 15 percent through 2031, producing over half a million jobs in the next decade....

Why seals? “People don’t have many interactions with them,” explained a PARO robots spokesperson. “They won’t be let down by any preconceptions they might have.” See the cutie in action, after the jump.

Alfa Romeo has trimmed the fat without losing any of the luxury or safety that we want in a sports car. At 2,487 pounds, the new 4C Spider is the first modern car with vintage weight. Instead of employing a typical steel frame, its tub-like chassis is made entirely of carbon fiber. The lightweight material allows engineers to use a smaller engine, smaller brakes to rein it in, and lighter components throughout, and its stiffness enhances handling....

Canadian oil is closer to home, and also provides a closer look at the environmental havoc wreaked by the process of extracting oil from oil sands.It’s not a new suggestion that the drug company studies that make it into medical journals do not tell the whole story. But a new study takes a look at how data submitted to the FDA stacks up against what gets published.We are about 21 nanometers closer to self-powered electric devices....

Dubbed “Maxwell” in reference to the 19th-century physicist James Clerk Maxwell, the craft was adapted from a modified gas-powered Italian Tecnam P2006T, a small general aircraft that typically holds four seats. “What’s really exciting about electric propulsion technology is it gives aircraft designers so many new and interesting tools that we can use to make aircraft do interesting things and do them more efficiently,” says Sean Clarke, principal investigator for the project at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center....

The KC-10 tanker is a flying gas station, a cargo aircraft capable of offloading thousands of pounds of fuel into receptacles atop planes like the Raptor. Holed up in a cozy compartment in the tanker’s rear, a human—in this case Sebastian Dewsnap, a member of the Royal Australian Air Force on exchange in the US—watches through a rear-facing window to operate the telescoping delivery system. This is how the Air Force has handled refueling for decades: with a person like Dewsnap looking out through glass at a thirsty plane....

In the last two years, vaccines, rapid tests, and a growing body of scientific research have allowed us to get back some sort of normalcy as the COVID-19 pandemic trudges on. With vaccination rates still growing around the world and many major airlines are dropping on-board mask mandates in the US, people are flying again, both domestically and internationally. As we move toward an endemic phase of the pandemic, some countries have relaxed their COVID travel requirements, while others have eliminated them altogether, making it easier for travelers to go abroad even if they’re not vaccinated....

A gust of snow hits the windshield. Through the swirl, Weatherman spots a narrow break in the pine and fir trees lining the road. He pulls into a shallow ditch and opens his door. “He liked to take his girlfriends up here to party,” he says. Weatherman was a young officer in 1974 when he investigated the first in a series of gruesome murders that ended a way of life in Missoula, a place where people had left their doors unlocked and women felt comfortable walking home alone from the local bar....

I’ve had a fascination with beer for a long time. I had my first one in Bavaria in 1961 when I was 16. It was legal there, but when I got back to New York, the drinking age was 18. One time, I wanted a pint so badly, I dressed in lederhosen, went to a nearby tavern, and pretended I was German. It worked—they actually served me. I began studying alcoholic beverages in the 1990s at the University of Pennsylvania Museum, where I now direct the Biomolecular Archaeology Project....

Not all animals rely on these sorts of movements to get around quickly. However, so-called asymmetrical gaits aren’t a new innovation among vertebrates, scientists reported on March 8 in the Journal of Experimental Biology. The researchers analyzed observations of movements from hundreds of species and concluded that irregular gaits may have first emerged in ancient fish-like animals even before vertebrates made the journey onto land. The findings suggest that different groups of animals gained and lost the ability to use asymmetric gaits throughout vertebrate history....

Measles had been relatively dormant since the 1970s, since the vaccine was first introduced on a mass scale in the previous decade, but it came back roaring toward the end of the millennium. In 1989, the U.S. saw 18,193 cases in a series of huge outbreaks that spilled into 1990, when there were an astonishing 17,786 cases. All told, 132 people died. The outbreaks were so severe that it prompted health officials to start mandating a second dose of the MMR vaccine....

Shut up and tell us about the keyboard Yes, Apple replaced the keyboard. Like the excellent 16-inch MacBook Pro, the new Air comes with a totally redesigned keyboard, which promises beefier defenses against Pop Tart crumbs and general desk detritus that could get in and make you typ lik this bcaus a ky stoppd working. It’s also just generally more pleasant to type on. The 1mm travel feels like typing into a memory foam mattress compared to the unsatisfying slaps that came from the previous model....

Throughout the interwar period and during World War II, we kept one eye open as Stalin groomed the Soviet Union for world domination, but it wasn’t until 1946 that we took active measures to contain the communist ideology. As an American magazine, Popular Science jumped aboard the anti-USSR bandwagon, publishing several articles informing readers of the latest, most ominous Soviet technology. What can we say, the prospect of being obliterated by an orbiting H-bomb put a slight damper on our usual enthusiasm for invention....

Queen Nefertiti ruled Egypt with her husband, the pharaoh Akhenaten, during Egypt’s 18th dynasty, around 1350 BC to 1334 BC. Archaeologists search for her tomb to this day. The bust of Nefertiti was found in an ancient sculptor’s workshop in Egypt in 1912, and taken to Germany, where it has resided ever since. Here’s what the scan of the bust looks like: Since the bust’s discovery, it’s become both a symbol and figurehead of tensions in preservation culture and museums....

Twenty-three minutes later, the Nebraska death row inmate, convicted of killing two taxi drivers almost four decades earlier, was pronounced dead. Moore’s August 14 execution, the 16th in the U.S. in 2018, marked the first time most of the drugs involved—fentanyl, diazepam, and cisatracurium besylate—had been used in a lethal injection. Concerned that the use of substances intended for medicinal purposes for lethal injection harms their reputations, several companies have filed suit to keep their drugs out of the execution chamber....

Keen-eyed star gazers in the southern hemisphere might barely be able to spot one such system in the constellation Telescopium. While the otherwise inconsequential pinprick doesn’t look like much to the naked eye, past analyses of its flickering light have discerned a double star. Now, follow-up observations have found traces of a third companion hiding in the dark. Weighing in at more than four times the sun’s bulk yet emitting no detectable light, the invisible partner is almost certainly a black hole, researchers reported Wednesday in Astronomy and Astrophysics....

Although British scientists formally announced the new record holder last week, the dead, female stick insect was found in Borneo’s rainforests by a local collector around 30 years ago. It was not until a decade later in 1989 that Malaysian naturalist, Datuk Chan Chew Lun, whom the insect is named after, saw the villager’s collection and noticed the insect, also full of eggs, as a new species. Megastick was later passed on to scientists in England, where it now has a new home in the Natural History Museum in London....