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Rare, endangered ocelot caught on camera
For the first time in half a century, an ocelot has been spotted in the Atascosa Highlands region of southern Arizona. The endangered wild cat was caught on cameras installed by The Phoenix Zoo’s Atascosa Complex Wildlife Study in June. A multi-agency review of the 50 cameras in Arizona’s Coronado National Forest’s Nogales Ranger District confirmed that it was a new cat and not one that has not been seen elsewhere in the state.
Rat poison is moving up through food chains, threatening carnivores around the world
This article was originally featured on The Conversation. Rats thrive around humans, for good reason: They feed off crops and garbage and readily adapt to many settings, from farms to the world’s largest cities. To control them, people often resort to poisons. But chemicals that kill rats can also harm other animals.
Apple’s latest MacBook Air is an excellent laptop for students—and $250 off on Amazon right now
We may earn revenue from the products available on this page and participate in affiliate programs. Learn more ›. School is nearly back in session, which means scoring great deals on a new laptop. The best laptop deal we’ve seen so far is a 13-inch M3 MacBook Air, which typically costs $1,099 but is currently $849.98 if you shop right now. We reviewed this laptop earlier this year, and were very impressed for its performance at full price. At its sale price, the laptop is a no-brainer for college students. Apple is also holding its own back to school savings event, offering gift cards up to $150 when purchasing select MacBook and iPad models.
How to block websites on your home network
Whether you’ve got young kids you want to protect, or you’re keen to cultivate healthier online habits for yourself, there are a number of ways to block access to specific websites on your home network. As far as self-discipline goes, since you’re the person setting these rules, it...
New forms of steel for stronger, lighter cars
This article was originally featured on Knowable Magazine. Like many useful innovations, it seems, the creation of high-quality steel by Indian metallurgists more than two thousand years ago may have been a happy confluence of clever workmanship and dumb luck. Firing chunks of iron with charcoal in a special clay...
7 tips to make the most of using a VPN
The benefits of using a Virtual Private Network (or VPN) on your computers and other devices is well documented. These software programs reroute and secure your internet traffic, making it harder for hackers to intercept your data and for your internet provider to keep tabs on what you’re doing.
How ‘psychics’ use psychology to create the illusion of telepathy
This article was originally featured on MIT Press Reader. This article is excerpted from Chris French’s book “The Science of Weird Shit.”. There is a hidden cause behind a fun little demonstration of an ostensibly paranormal experience that I often include in public talks on anomalistic psychology, especially when I have a reasonably large audience. I explain to my audience that an important part of proper skepticism is to always be open to the possibility that you may be wrong. In that spirit, I tell the audience that I would like to do a little experiment with them to see just how psychic they are. I tell them that I am going to try to telepathically send a simple message from my mind to theirs. “I’m thinking of a number between one and ten,” I say. “Not three, because that’s too obvious. I want you to make a mental note of the first number that comes into your mind now!”
Microsoft Office for $45! (Cheaper than Amazon)
We may earn revenue from the products available on this page and participate in affiliate programs. Learn more ›. We love Amazon just as much as you, but they don’t always have the best prices on what you need. Why are they charging $120+ for Microsoft Office 2021 downloads for Windows when we’re selling them for $44.97 right now (reg. $219.99)? That’s crazy talk—but this price won’t last long.
Saturn’s moon Mimas may hide a surprisingly young ocean
This article was originally featured on Knowable Magazine. The outer solar system is awash with liquid water. A briny ocean is concealed beneath the icy crust of Jupiter’s fourth largest moon, Europa — with more water than all of Earth’s oceans combined. A subsurface sea on Saturn’s moon Enceladus spews plumes of water vapor into space. And there are tantalizing hints that oceans could exist on Ganymede, Callisto, Titan and other distant moons, too.
Boost your IQ with daily Babbel lessons (77 percent off)
We may earn revenue from the products available on this page and participate in affiliate programs. Learn more ›. Wanna hear something totally insane? Not only does learning a new language make you smarter (duh, you’ll know how to speak French or something), but it essentially rewires your brain. That’s if you trust the findings from Harvard University.
This MacBook Pro has 512GB SSD and a Touch Bar for just $380
We may earn revenue from the products available on this page and participate in affiliate programs. Learn more ›. For those considering a reliable and versatile laptop, a grade-A refurbished Apple MacBook Pro offers a compelling choice. Not only does it get you a certified, like-new laptop at a much lower price, but it’s also better for the planet because, according to the EPA, it helps reduce e-waste in landfills.
Longest rocks ever recovered from Earth’s mantle
For the first time, an international team of scientists recovered a long section of rocks that originated in the Earth’s mantle. This layer just below the crust is the largest part of the planet’s interior, so understanding it can tell us a great deal about some of Earth’s more explosive characteristics. This nearly continuous 4,160 feet (1,268 meters) of mantle rock is described in a study published August 8 in the journal Science. The rocks reveal a more extensive history of melting in the recovered rocks than the team initially expected.
Scientists think atmospheric ‘glitter’ can warm Mars over 50 degrees
Researchers think a key ally in thawing out icy, barren wastelands of Mars is glitter—more specifically, literally millions of tons of reflective metallic nanorod particles seeded throughout the Red Planet’s atmosphere. But if that sounds like a huge order, the team calculates their proposal is potentially 5,000 times more efficient than previous ideas.
Social media bans could deny teenagers mental health help
This article was originally published on KFF Health News. Social media’s effects on the mental health of young people are not well understood. That hasn’t stopped Congress, state legislatures, and the U.S. surgeon general from moving ahead with age bans and warning labels for YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram.
This docking stand is your laptop’s new BFF
We may earn revenue from the products available on this page and participate in affiliate programs. Learn more ›. You’re in trouble if your workspace looks anything like this: Tangled cables, adapters lying everywhere, and your laptop propped up against books so you don’t get a stiff neck. It’s time to face the music and organize your space because your work isn’t going anywhere.
Love corn? Thank interbreeding
The story of corn is anything but corny. It’s a tale of resilience and survival–all because maize was selfish (genetically). Maize and its numerous varieties have quickly adapted to several types of climates over several millennia, while feeding countless generations in the Americas. Now, a team of scientists believe that a genetic process called selfish inheritance may be responsible for this rapid evolution. The findings are described in a study published August 7 in the journal Nature, and could have applications beyond agriculture.
The lost history of what Americans knew about climate change in the 1960s
This story was originally published by Grist. Sign up for Grist’s weekly newsletter here. To judge by recent Supreme Court decisions, the world didn’t know much about climate change a half century ago. In 2007, when the court ruled that the Clean Air Act of 1970 gave the...
New ‘Hobbit’ fossils discovered on Indonesia’s Flores island
An international team of archeologists and other researchers on the Indonesian island of Flores found new fossils that belong to extremely rare early human species. Homo floresiensis has been likened by scientists to the Hobbits from JRR Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings series due to their small stature. The three roughly 700,000 year-old bones shed light on the evolution of Homo floresiensis, or the ‘Hobbits’ of Flores.
Stuck bridges, buckling roads−extreme heat is wreaking havoc on America’s aging infrastructure
This article was originally featured on The Conversation. Summer 2024’s record heat is creating problems for transportation infrastructure, from roads to rails. New York’s Third Avenue Bridge, which swings open for ship traffic on the Harlem River, was stuck for hours after its metal expanded in the heat and it couldn’t close. Roads have buckled on hot days in several states, including Washington and Wisconsin. Amtrak warned passengers to prepare for heat-related problems hours before a daylong outage between New York and New Jersey; the risks to power lines and rails during high temperatures are a growing source of delays for the train system.
39% of electrodes work after second ‘successful’ human Neuralink implant
Elon Musk claims Neuralink has implanted a second human volunteer with its experimental N1 brain-computer interface (BCI) and that it’s “working very well.” But like the coin-sized device within the company’s first patient, only a fraction of the electrodes are reportedly functioning properly. “I don’t want...
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