In the Midwest, for example, a new type of blow fly species — one that typically lives in southern states — has taken up residence. Lucilia cuprina has been spotted in parks and other public places more than two dozen times in Indiana between 2015 and 2017. It looks a lot like its sister species, Lucilia sericata, which is widely present in the state, but its maggots don’t act the same....
These days, it seems like everyone’s got an opinion on bone broth. The trendy, savory liquid goes for top dollar at urban eateries, but it doesn’t seem all that different from the stuff sitting in cans and boxes at your local supermarket. To some, bone broth is the answer to all bodily ills, from repairing a leaky gut to fortifying your joints to making your skin appear more supple. Since it broke into the wellness scene a few years ago as the perfect wintry health drink, you can now find it in all kinds of forms, from concentrate to powder to protein bars....
The true majesty of a bird can only be seen entirely when it is captured in flight. In general, this presents technical and artistic challenges to the photographer. Whether it is the hummingbird flying at 50 kilometers an hour and 60 wing beats a second or a wedge-tailed eagle (Aquila audax) gliding over the salt lakes of the interior of Australia—when captured properly, they pass a serene and poetic image like no other animal....
So it’s a good thing you don’t need one of those to play games. Sure, $400 or $500 might build you a decent budget gaming PC, but if money is tighter than that, your best bet is to go with something used. You might get lucky and find a cheap gaming PC on Craigslist, but you’ll get better bang for your buck going with something more common and less specialized: a decommissioned office PC....
At the heart of the dispute is a multilayer solid core technology with urethane covers. The Pro V1 is a 1.53″ polybutadiene core with a .045 ionomer casing covered by a 0.03″ urethane elastomer with 392 dimples (icosahedral).While Titleist parent company Acushnet claims its design is based on 70 of their own patents, the court found that patents acquired by Callaway in a purchase of Spalding put the Pro V1 in violation....
This isn’t science fiction, though it is something science fiction has explored. The patent was developed by employees of the U.S. Army Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center. These “Limited Range Projectiles” could be useful for three very different groups of gun users. The first are people who practice shooting at firing ranges. For safety, firing ranges need to be built large, which limits where they can be built. Limited-range bullets would mean fewer limitations on firing ranges....
“There’s no one that’s seen it all,” says Russell von Koch, speaking of the vast and wild lands around the town he’s lived in for more than 30 years. He pauses, then says, “There are many out trying.” And he does mean “many.” Moab, with a population of just over 5,000, is a capital-D Destination for outdoor enthusiasts. Three million people visit every year. Some go because it’s the gateway to both Canyonlands and Arches national parks, the latter of which regularly announces on social media that it’s at capacity....
Can thinking really make you fat? The Universite Laval study indicates that, although intellectual work sessions expended only three more calories than non-intellectual work sessions, those who thought more indeed also ate more, post-activity. In fact, participants who took on the challenging intellectual tasks consumed up to 29.4 percent more calories than those who did not. One reason for this behavioral discrepancy could be chemical: more grueling intellectual work corresponded with greater fluctuations of glucose and insulin in the body....
According to recent research, between 1950 and 2017, swaths of the Mountain West became 30 to 40 percent more suitable for the bacteria because of climate change. That’s a hint at how future warming might affect the transmission of animal-borne diseases in general. “There’s this conventional wisdom that the biggest impacts are going to be from heat and disasters, and I just don’t think that’s a sure thing,” Colin Carlson, the study’s lead author, told Gizmodo....
Christian Aid, a UK-based charity focused on addressing global poverty, released a report last week outlining some of the worst disasters this year–and the billions of dollars in damage they have caused. Out of the 15 climate-related disasters described in the study, ten have cost more than a billion dollars worth of damages. This will be the sixth year out of the last ten that have cost over $100 billion due to global natural catastrophes....
According to NASA, a new image taken by the telescope’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) is giving astronomers a better look at some of the previously unseen features of the protostar hidden in a dark cloud named L1527. The blazing occlusions are located within the Taurus star-forming region (about 430 light years away from Earth) and are only visible in infrared light. NIRCam can see in infrared light, so it can process images that previous space telescopes couldn’t and is giving insight into the humble beginnings of young stars....
A study published January 5 in the journal Cell paints the genetic history of Scandinavia over 2,000 years, using the data from over 200 published ancient human genomes, clues from multiple archaeological sites, and genetic data from more than 16,500 modern Scandinavians. One of the most intriguing findings is more insight into migration patterns and gene flow during the Viking age. “Although still evident in modern Scandinavians, levels of non-local ancestry in some regions are lower than those observed in ancient individuals from the Viking to Medieval periods,” said Ricardo Rodríguez-Varela of Stockholm University, in a statement....
“We just had to put it in front of one of the males. He immediately knew what to do. This is the first time we have tried to have a same-sex penguin couple incubate an egg,” keeper Norbert Zahmel told Reuters. If the egg is actually fertilized—which remains to be seen—this pair of penguin dads could facilitate Berlin Zoo’s first hatching since 2002 by September. Their group of six king penguins includes just one female, and she has a habit of abandoning her eggs....
Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont’s midterm budget, approved in early May, set aside more than $6 million to make improvements to the state’s election system. That includes $4 million to upgrade the infrastructure used for voter registration and election management and $2 million for a “public information campaign” that will provide information on how to vote. The full-time security analyst role is recommended to receive $150,000. “Over the last few election cycles, malicious foreign actors have demonstrated the motivation and capability to significantly disrupt election activities, thus undermining public confidence in the fairness and accuracy of election results,” the budget stated, as an explanation for the funding....
By mid-February, we watched our food supply become headline news. Worries about toilet paper shortages quickly shifted to whether we’d ever enjoy pasta again, not to mention whether we’d enjoy that meal in the presence of our loved ones. Just a few months before, we were debating whether we’d disavow meat in our diet or if vertical farms in cities would bring food closer to us. Whether we would eat at all had never occurred to us....
But as a new study shows cuttlefish experience this phenomenon as well. When equipped with little 3D glasses and placed in front of a screen with a 3D movie of a shrimp passing by, they actually tried to grab it with their tentacles. These new findings are laid out in a study in Scientific Advances, and it demonstrates more than just a cuttlefish’s ability to “hunt” virtual prey—it show’s that their vision systems are capable of stereopsis or “binocular vision”....
The graphic shows the connections between 300 actors in 23 Bond films. Each actor is represented by a node on the chart–the larger the node, the more films the actor appeared in– and the connecting lines indicate that actors appeared together in one or more movie. Desmond Llewelyn, the Welsh actor who played Q for over three decades, holds the record for most Bond films, with 17 appearances between 1963 and 1999....
But a technologically advanced nation developing a unit for cyber war is not itself unique. Rather, the fact that even Germany plans on developing these capabilities signals that the age of cyber war has finally arrived. “Other than Britian and France, European countries have not been very out front about their war-making capabilities,” said Martin Libicki, author of Conquest in Cyberspace and a senior policy research at the Rand Corporation....
Forget corpses. Those lost in a disaster such as an earthquake or hurricane are killed by injury, not disease.The logic, reinforced by study after study, is simple: There is no relationship between terrestrial disasters and the breeding of viruses and bacteria. Forget corpses. Those lost in a disaster such as an earthquake or hurricane are killed by injury, not disease—and given the victims’ inherent lack of circulation, so to speak, the colds a few might have had beforehand are even less likely to be spread than before....
Carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas we love to hate, doesn’t just wreak havoc on the atmosphere at high concentrations—it’s in the air all around us, even indoors. Because humans exhale CO2, enclosed spaces we occupy tend to have much greater concentrations of the gas than outside. The more people there are per unit of space, the faster the CO2 level in the air within that space will rise. And without proper ventilation, it can reach numbers that would make an atmospheric scientist shudder....
