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Steamy sausages Stuart Farrimond, Author of The Science of Cooking Sausages are known for their mouthwatering sizzle. People think fat causes this hiss, but it’s the water in the dogs that spits as it turns into vapor. Kielbasa today are nearly 4 dB quieter than 1950s’ links. More meat and fillers mean bangers don’t sputter like they used to. Crackling coffee Preston Wilson, Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin A good brew starts with roasted beans that produce two choruses....

Design pair FG+SG has started enlisting a drone that can snag (very pretty) shots of buildings from the sky. The team plans on turning it into a client-based service, with the presumable sales pitch being: “Instead of trying to find that perfect position nearby, or paying up for a helicopter, let our drone do the work for you.” Of course, having a pro photographer behind the drone doesn’t hurt, either....

In addition to being big business, there are some psychological drivers behind why so many of us feel drawn to this musical genre like ants to a gingerbread house. “A lot of Christmas repertoire is very nostalgic. We listen to much older music [now] than we listen to in the other 11 months,” says Joe Bennett, a forensic musicologist at Berklee College of Music in Massachusetts. “So, it’s that one time of the year where we are prepared to go back to this old repertoire....

As first spotted by Motherboard, the newest anti-AI art individuals are the moderators behind the biggest subreddit dedicated to all things Dune. First introduced by author Frank Herbert via the 1965 novel of the same name, the “Duneiverse” now encompasses dozens of books, board and video games, as well as multiple media adaptations including last year’s blockbuster film directed by Denis Villeneuve and starring Timothée Chalamet, Oscar Isaac, and Zendaya....

In times past, a walk along Daytona’s pit lane during practice was a feast for the eyes, and one of the major attractions was the lightweight magnesium parts on factory bikes. My own home-built Kawasaki H2-R 750 had only the prosaic gray cast-aluminum ignition and primary gear covers carried over from the 1970–’71 500cc Triple. But on the factory bikes, those parts were finished with the gold chromic-acid process sometimes called Dow 19....

In a study published last week in JAMA Network Open, researchers analyzed the electronic health records of 571,256 international patients aged zero to 18 who tested positive for COVID-19 or other respiratory infections from March 2020 to December 2021. Of the total participants who received a positive COVID test, 123 (0.04 percent) were newly diagnosed with T1D. Only 72 (0.03 percent) with a confirmed respiratory infection that wasn’t COVID-19 ended up with a T1D diagnosis....

Warm weather is approaching, which means more days spent under the sun, splashing around at the beach, adventuring in nature, and generally passing any extra minutes outside. And when you step out for that first beach day of the season, your hair and skin are inundated with something they haven’t felt in a while—a flood of ultraviolet radiation (UVR), which are waves of energy emitted by the sun that can cause visible color changes to your body....

But you can make things better by using whitelists. This feature has been present in most email clients for years and gives you more control over which messages actually get through to you. Rather than letting everything through and then trying to filter out the junk—the normal approach to email management—a whitelist is a more proactive alternative. You’ll be setting up a roster of contacts you’re actually happy to get messages from, and your email client will demote the rest from the get-go....

But while those titles are single player, Gun Media, the studio behind Hard Lander, Breach & Clear, and Dead Line, is developing a giant, sandbox style slasher game, pitting hapless camp counselors against a machete-wielding marauder. And while they’re still raising money to finish it with an ongoing Kickstarter campaign, they’ve got one advantage they didn’t have a year ago: the license to call it Friday the 13th. At the time of this article, Friday the 13th The Game has raised over $588,000 on Kickstarter out of its $700,000 total goal, and has 11 days left to go....

Snowblower Train When winter storms threaten to shut down commuter trains, New York City’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority blasts snow off the switches with jet engines. Built and mounted on railroad vehicles by mechanic Olie M. Ericksen, so-called snow jets use old aircraft engines as heating units. Ericksen replaced the original ignition systems with acetylene ones, which use a lower-voltage spark to ignite the fuel. “It actually works much better than the high-voltage spark, especially in colder temperatures,” he says....

The study used an ocular prosthetic called the Argus II, which is approved for commercial use in Europe and has been implanted into about 50 people, according to researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne. The implant uses a glasses-mounted camera, a wearable computer processor to translate camera data into electrical pulses, and a grid of 60 electrodes implanted directly onto the retina. The device uses the camera to collect visual info and translates it into signals the retina can interpret....

The Withings Thermo takes about two seconds to read your temperature once it’s pressed against your forehead. Your body temperature reads out in a dotted LED display. A small light on the front will blink green if your temp is registered as a healthy rate. If you have a fever, a red light flashes notifying that you’re in poor health. The companion app keeps track of your temperature over time, which can come in handy especially when you’re sick....

That’s where electric vehicle (EV) accessory startup ZipCharge comes in. The British newcomer is offering EV owners a partial solution for range anxiety by offering peace of mind between chargers, should they wind up in a situation that calls for a few extra miles of juice to make it to a charger, or live in a place where overnight charging simply isn’t possible. Called the ZipCharge Go, the suitcase-sized battery pack on wheels is designed to hold a sizable amount of electricity that can be used to charge an electric car in a wide range of scenarios....

The long-awaited Oculus Rift will cost $599 (plus tax) and is expected to ship in March, according to Oculus’ website. However, the first month of orders is already sold out, and the site now says products ordered now will arrive in April. It will come with the Rift headset, an Xbox One controller, a motion-tracking sensor, and a previously unannounced Oculus Remote, which is used to more intuitively navigate VR spaces....

Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley announced today the release of a new app called MyShake, available as a free download for Android smartphones in the Google Play store. It uses the accelerometer in your phone (the device that lets your phone adjust the screen when you turn it sideways) and GPS to measure how much shaking is happening in a given location. The hope is that eventually, if enough people download it, the app will allow your phone to function as both a personal seismometer and an early warning system....

It doesn’t give you total anonymity, but it sends everything you do online through an encrypted tunnel that’s exceptionally hard for anyone else to break into. That means a lot for your online security and privacy. Dozens of the best VPN providers (Nord and IPVanish, for example) are ready and willing to set this service up for you, but if you want to cut out the middle man, there’s another option: pick a browser with a VPN attached....

A study published this week in Nature found that experienced mice mothers teach virgin female mice crucial parenting skills. Researchers at NYU’s Grossman School of Medicine and Rutgers, observed mother mice “shepherding,” or pushing young female mice into a nest with crying babies enlisting the youngsters as babysitters and possibly teaching them how to manage their own future offspring. “What we found astounded us, basically the mothers conscripted the virgins into co-parenting,” says Robert Froemke, a co-author of the study and professor in the department of otolaryngology and neck surgery at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine....

“As humans, we can chose to build the world out of petroleum from the ground, creating the plastics as fibers and sheets that we see all around us, or we could follow nature and use the carbon in the air,” said Michael Strano, professor of chemical engineering at MIT. “The first step is imagining materials that grow and repair like plants and trees. The next step is reducing them to practice....

The approprietly-yet-ominously named “Happy Goggles” is a variant of the classic McDonald’s red-and-yellow, smiling Happy Meal cardboard box, which is now celebrating its 30th anniversary. Except diners can easily re-fold this version along strategically placed perforated lines to form a cradle for their smartphones (sold separately). Once inside the Happy Goggles box, a smartphone can display VR content from supported apps and games. In this case, the first game specifically designed for the Happy Goggles will be “Slope Stars,” a virtual reality ski simulator endorsed by the Swedish National Ski Team, which will be available for download starting March 4....