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Leftovers of a great meal are always welcome, but when it comes to wine, this is not good news, as the taste of the beverage changes quickly if you don’t store it correctly. Luckily, after centuries of drinking this grape elixir, some hacks and gadgets exist to help preserve the lifespan of an open bottle. “That’s why wine became such a big part of human society and culture—it’s generally safe to drink and it lasts a long time,” says Amanda Stewart, an associate professor in Virginia Tech’s Department of Food Science and Technology....

“There’s got to be a better way!” you exclaim, as if on your own real-life infomercial. And I assure you there is: using science and proper heat management, you can exploit the Leidenfrost effect to give your stainless steel cookware non-stick superpowers. We don’t want to oversell this, so let us clarify that you’re never going to be able to crack a raw egg into a cold stainless steel pan with no oil, fry it on low, and slide it right onto the plate....

Secure your system To start, you’ll need to establish solid protection for your computer. Most antivirus programs for both Windows and macOS will protect against keyloggers, webcam hackers, and other types of spyware, especially if you vigilantly keep this software up to date. Spyware can do everything from hijacking your webcam feed to recording your keyboard inputs. The culprits ultimately aim to collect enough of your personal data to steal your identity, take over your accounts, or expose your digital life in other ways....

So you want to make the world’s farthest-traveling paper airplane. There are four things to consider: No. 1: The Paper Paper is measured in the weight of a ream—500 pages. The average copier paper in the U.S. is 20-24 pound stock. Guinness World Record rules allow us to use paper that weighs up to 100 GSM (grams per square meter), or about 26.4 pounds. When you’re looking for distance, you want your paper as heavy as possible....

Use offline services to keep working When greeted with that dreaded “Unable to Connect” message, you may be tempted to play Google’s Dinosaur Game for the rest of the day. But you can do better. Plenty of online services allow offline access, including Gmail, Google Docs, and Google Calendar. You won’t be able to download new messages or sync new files, obviously, but you’ll be able to see whatever was there the last time your computer was online....

Whether you have a server or not, however, it’s not hard to set up direct syncing between your devices. I’ve spent years trying to find the perfect system for this, and these are the best apps I’ve found for the job. The main downside to this approach is that files will only sync when both devices are turned on, because there’s no always-on cloud for your data to sync to....

Origins Certain kinds of bacteria shield themselves from the attacks of other microbes by producing a biofilm—a water-repellent layer that acts like a microbial raincoat. Researchers isolated a protein responsible for biofilms, BslA, from Bacillus subtilis, a bacteria found in dirt. Execution When ice cream warms, the fat and sugar separate (like oil and vinegar). This causes trapped air bubbles to escape and ice crystals to melt. When scientists added BslA to ice cream, the fat and sugar remained mixed, so the matrix of ice and air stayed in place longer....

France recently used its military airborne hospital for the first time to take civilian patients, critically ill with COVID-19, from overstretched hospitals to other facilities better able to cope. The system was designed to bring seriously injured soldiers back to France from war zones, but so far, it has transported 24 people sick with the novel coronavirus. The flying medical facility is known by its French acronym, Morphée. That stands for “intensive care module for patients who need long-haul evacuation....

Ten years ago, the 1,200 residents of the tiny, mostly Inuit village of Nain, in Canada’s far northeast, lived through a natural disaster unnoticed by most of the world. From January to March, the average temperature—typically in the low single digits Fahrenheit—hovered well over 10 degrees above normal. What little sea ice formed was thin, cracked, and pockmarked with open patches. Hunting became risky or impossible, food supplies ran low, and a community survey found that one in 12 ice travelers suffered accidents that year....

After eating too much, have you ever felt like that dude from Alien whose stomach explodes? Like somewhere in the meat and potatoes, a baby alien snuck in? We all have. But, baby alien explosion aside, how much can the human stomach hold? It’s tempting to equate your stomach to a balloon. Both start out small when empty. Both get bigger when stuff goes in them. And, yes, both have a breaking point....

Turns out, there is no right answer. “White or dark poultry meat, there’s not much of a difference [in terms of health],” says Dong Ahn, a poultry researcher and professor in the department of animal science at Iowa State University. “A lot of people in the US like white meat better than dark meat [in all poultry] because people are afraid of fat and try to avoid fats at all costs....

The JBL PartyBox 1000 design At first glance, the JBL PartyBox 1000 cuts an imposing figure measuring 41.3 inches tall, 15.6 inches wide, and 15.3 inches deep, with connectivity that towers above the average party speaker. Weighing in at 76.5 pounds, it has two rugged wheels at the bottom and a handle at the top for tilting it back and rolling it into the ideal party position. Fortunately, all that mass is not just for show....

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has announced a new potential risk associated with Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen COVID-19 vaccine. Out of about 12.7 million recipients of the J&J jab, there have been 100 reports of Guillain-Barré Syndrome, a rare but serious neurological condition that causes numbness and can lead to paralysis. While the agency has updated its fact sheet to include warnings about this potential side effect, it still says the benefits of the vaccine outweigh the risks....

Listen to the latest episode of the Techathlon podcast This week, the world’s foremost trivia-based technology podcast introduces the best and most accurate toy lie detector you can buy for $30—and we used it to uncover everyone’s shameful tech secrets. This week’s show also includes a quick-fire quiz about original content on streaming sites, and—as always—the 10-question Techathlon Decathlon to punish our contestants with a grab bag full of fun or pain....

However, no one is sure how much influence Ive will have any more, or really how hands-on he was in recent years anyway, so take all of those “end of an era” blog posts about Ive’s new gig with a pinch of beautifully-rendered salt. But Ive’s departure wasn’t the only news of the past week. Here’s what else has been going on beyond the drama at Cupertino. Listen to the Techathlon greatest hits There’s no new Techathlon podcast this week—we’re on a summer hiatus, actually, reading old copies of Popular Science by the beach—but that makes this a perfect time to dig into the archives and find some of the episodes you may have missed....

Your smartphone wouldn’t be all that useful without all the apps you’ve downloaded. Even when you’re not actively poking around within a program, they can run in the background—updating your location, checking your email, or playing music—to make life more convenient. But to do so, they need permission from your phone. Permissions let Google Maps check where you are in the world, your camera app peek through the phone’s lens, and your favorite messenger scan your contacts before sending a text....

Right now the Premium Python Certification Bootcamp Bundle is on sale for a hugely discounted rate as a part of our New Year, Same You campaign. Celebrate yourself by learning a whole new skill! This premium bundle comes with 13 courses and 41 hours of content to make sure that you excel. With Python for Absolute Beginners and All Ages, 4.2 out of 5 star rated instructor John Bura will teach you all of the material necessary to get comfortable with Python’s interfaces....

MATERIALS Protractor A record to sacrifice 18 LEGO miniature figures Superglue Record player Strobe light Cost: $$ Difficulty: 2 out of 5 STEP 1 Using the protractor, measure and draw lines every 20 degrees on the sacrificial record. Space out the Lego figures around the edge of the record according to these marks, and glue them down. STEP 2 Put the LEGO figures in positions of your choosing—think about creating the look of continuous motion by carefully changing each one’s position incrementally from that of the one before it....

Back to the Tsar. When the Soviet Union detonated this fusion bomb over Novaya Zemlya, an Arctic archipelago the USSR used as a testing ground, it yielded the equivalent of 50 million tons of TNT. That’s twice as powerful as the United States’ largest-ever weapon, the B-41 nuclear bomb. The blast completely destroyed buildings more than 30 miles away, produced enough heat to cause third-degree burns 60 miles away and to be felt 170 miles away, and released a shock wave that broke windows hundreds of miles away....

The robot is built by the Alphabet-owned Boston Dynamics. It was developed for DARPA under the name LS3, or “Legged Squad Support System”, and it can climb hills, carry weight, and follow humans into battle. It just can’t do it quietly. Rather than aiding Marines in battle, that noise turns the mechanical mule into a dead (and deadly) giveaway. From Military.com: For a military that wants to dramatically increase its robotic soldiers by 2030, this is a setback, but not an insurmountable one....