Challenges of Designing Circuits for Flexible PCB
Designing Circuits for Flexible PCB Unlike rigid PCBs, flexible circuits are thin and light. This allows them to be placed in tight spaces. They can also bend and twist without compromising functionality or structural integrity. However, this flexibility comes with…
A Spacecraft Is About to Fly Into the Sun’s Atmosphere for the First Time
Almost no one ever writes about the Parker Solar Probe anymore. Sure, the spacecraft got some attention when it launched. It is, after all, the fastest-moving object that humans have ever built. At its maximum speed, goosed by the gravitational…
The World’s First Crispr Drug Gets a Slow Start
Deshawn “DJ” Chow waited a year to receive a treatment that could change his life. The 19-year-old was born with sickle cell disease, which makes his red blood cells crescent-shaped and sticky. The misshapen cells build up and block blood…
The Race to Translate Animal Sounds Into Human Language
In 2025 we will see AI and machine learning leveraged to make real progress in understanding animal communication, answering a question that has puzzled humans as long as we have existed: “What are animals saying to each other?” The recent…
The Universe Is Teeming With Complex Organic Molecules
Asteroids are less pristine than comets, having often endured heating and the effects of liquid water. But these effects can produce dramatic new organic complexity. For decades, scientists have known that meteorites called chondrites, which originate from asteroids, contain a…
December Wildfires Are Now a Thing
This story originally appeared on High Country News and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration. In Southern California, December wildfires are somewhat uncommon but not completely out of the norm. And this year, extremely dry conditions and strong Santa…
How to Manage Food Anxiety Over the Holidays
THIS ARTICLE IS republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Christmas can be a time of togetherness, fun, and relaxation. Yet, it can also bring unique challenges—particularly for those who may struggle with food anxiety, weight concerns, or…
This Tropical Virus Is Spreading Out of the Amazon to the US and Europe
outbreaks of Oropouche virus have flared up in the Amazon for decades, but historically the pathogen has little troubled the rest of the world. But this seems to be changing. In 2024, the virus showed that it can travel. Most…
What’s the Winter Solstice? Celebrations, Science, Livestream
Welcome to the official beginning of astronomical winter, which is marked by the winter solstice. In 2024, the winter solstice for the northern hemisphere starts on December 21 around 4:20 am EST. While this time won’t be as dramatic as…
Can flex PCBs be used in aerospace applications?
flex PCBs be used in aerospace applications Rigid-flex PCBs have become critical for aerospace electronic assembly, offering a unique combination of weight and space savings with enhanced reliability. They can withstand harsh environments and mechanical stresses while providing a compact,…
The Process of Designing a Printed Circuit Board Prototype
Process of Designing a Printed Circuit Board Prototype A PCB prototype is a key step in the development of an electronic device. The prototyping process is designed to ensure that a device meets its intended functionality before going into production…
Generative AI and Climate Change Are on a Collision Course
In 2025, AI and climate change, two of the biggest societal disruptors we’re facing, will collide. The summer of 2024 broke the record for Earth’s hottest day since data collection began, sparking widespread media coverage and public debate. This also…
CDC Confirms First US Case of Severe Bird Flu
The United States has now seen dozens of human bird flu cases this year, all of them mild—until now. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed Wednesday that a patient in Louisiana has been hospitalized with a severe case…
NASA Postpones Return of Stranded Starliner Astronauts to March
NASA has again postponed the return to Earth of Barry Wilmore and Sunita Williams, the astronauts stranded on the International Space Station after Boeing’s Starliner capsule malfunctioned in the middle of this year. The crew of the spacecraft arrived at…
The Study That Called Out Black Plastic Utensils Had a Major Math Error
Editors of the environmental chemistry journal Chemosphere have posted an eye-catching correction to a study reporting toxic flame retardants from electronics wind up in some household products made of black plastic, including kitchen utensils. The study sparked a flurry of…
How is trace routing optimized in PCB fabrication and assembly?
trace routing optimized in PCB fabrication and assembly Optimizing trace routing in PCB fabrication and assembly is a critical aspect of designing a printed circuit board (PCB) that meets performance, reliability, and manufacturability standards. The process of trace routing involves…
Antibodies Could Soon Help Slow the Aging Process
Normally, antibodies are protective proteins produced by our immune systems to fight bacteria or viruses. Their strength comes from their specificity—when you get ill, B cells in your immune system undergo an exquisitely precise process of accelerated evolution, rapidly optimizing…
A Third Person Has Received a Transplant of a Genetically Engineered Pig Kidney
An Alabama woman has become the third person to receive a kidney transplant from a genetically engineered pig, her doctors announced Tuesday. Towana Looney, 53, is off of kidney dialysis after undergoing the procedure at NYU Langone Health on November…
What type of testing is used in PCB fabrication assembly?
PCB fabrication assembly In the PCB fabrication assembly process, testing is a crucial step to ensure the quality, reliability, and functionality of the final product. Printed Circuit Boards (PCBs) are the foundation of almost all electronic devices, and any defects…
How Christmas Trees Could Become a Source of Low-Carbon Protein
Planting forests while growing protein-rich food seems like a win-win, so are there any potential drawbacks? Lynne Boddy, professor of fungal ecology at Cardiff University, believes that mycoforestry “absolutely” has the potential to produce significant food crops while sequestering carbon….
Creating a Global Package to Solve the Problem of Plastics
According to the United Nations, plastic production skyrocketed from 2 million metric tons in 1950 to about 400 million in 2024. This number is expected to triple by 2060. Only 10 percent of this plastic is currently being recycled and…
The Simple Math Behind Public Key Cryptography
The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. For thousands of years, if you wanted to send a secret message, there was basically one way to do it. You’d scramble the message using a special rule, known only…
Mega-Farms Are Driving the Threat of Bird Flu
In the West, where herds of thousands of cattle are common, researchers are seeing cases rise at poultry and dairy operations. More than 50 workers have contracted the virus.
Good at Reading? Your Brain May Be Structured Differently
THIS ARTICLE IS republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. The number of people who read for fun appears to be steadily dropping. Fifty percent of UK adults say they don’t read regularly (up from 42 percent in…
Why Soccer Players Are Training in the Dark
“What’s interesting is that they haven’t just changed the light levels, they’ve changed the specific quality and waves of that light,” says Niall Macfarlane, a professor in physiology and sports science at the University of Glasgow who wasn’t involved in…
Environmental Sensing Is Here, Tracking Everything from Forest Fires to Threatened Species
You are in a lush forest. Sunlight filters through the bright green canopy, casting dappled shadows on the ground. Towering trees rise over delicate ferns, wildflowers, and colorful mushrooms. A deer slinks behind a shrub. But there are subtle signs…
RFK Plans to Take on Big Pharma. It’s Easier Said Than Done
But the administration would likely face legal challenges if it proposed additional restrictions or an outright ban on pharma ads, says Jim Potter, executive director of the nonpartisan Coalition for Healthcare Communications. “The courts view advertising as a form of…
Humans Will Continue to Live in an Age of Incredible Food Waste
Let me start with the following principle: “Energy is the only universal currency: One of its many forms must be transformed to get anything done.” Economies are just intricate systems set up to do those transformations, and all economically significant…
US Meat, Milk Prices Should Spike if Donald Trump Carries Out Mass Deportation Schemes
In recent earnings calls, shareholders in some publicly traded meat companies have asked whether the Trump administration’s deportation plans—among other issues—may pose a challenge to their industry. “We’ve been there before. It did not impact our business,” said Tim Klein,…
Designer Babies Are Teenagers Now—and Some of Them Need Therapy Because of It
In these homes, a high value gets placed on achievement. I think the way these kids are created sends the message: “You’re not good enough. You need to achieve. You’re not accepted.” When the kids struggle, it’s especially devastating. Some…
Climate Change Is Destroying Monarch Butterflies’ Winter Habitat
every year, at the beginning of November, one of the most impressive natural spectacles in the world takes place in Michoacán, Mexico. Hundreds of millions of migrating monarch butterflies settle in the forested massifs of the country’s Monarch Butterfly Biosphere…
An Augmented Reality Program Can Help Patients Overcome Parkinson’s Symptoms
In 2018, Tom Finn took his father, Nigel, to a physiotherapy appointment. Nigel was living with vascular dementia, which can present with symptoms similar to Parkinson’s disease, a progressive neurological disorder characterized by motor symptoms such as tremors, stiffness, and…
Muscle Implants Could Allow Mind-Controlled Prosthetics—No Brain Surgery Required
Alex Smith was 11 years old when he lost his right arm in 2003. A drunk driver operating a boat collided with his family’s vessel on Lake Austin, sending him overboard. He hit a propeller, and his arm was severed…
Meet the Plant Hacker Creating Flowers Never Seen (or Smelled) Before
The money he earned doing that was enough to put Cocioba through the first couple of years of a biology degree at Stony Brook University. He completed a stint with a neglected plant biology group that taught him to experiment…
These 3 Things Are Standing in the Way of a Global Plastics Treaty
There is significant disagreement over whether to create a dedicated plastics fund, paid into by developed donor countries, or use existing mechanisms such as the Global Environment Facility. The draft treaty text mentions fees or taxes on plastic production, which…
Everyone Is Capable of Mathematical Thinking—Yes, Even You
The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. David Bessis was drawn to mathematics for the same reason that many people are driven away: He didn’t understand how it worked. Unlike other creative processes, like making music, which…
Skip the Sea Kelp Supplements (2024)
If you’re on HealthTok, you may have noticed a buzz around sea moss, sea kelp, or brown seaweed, which has become the latest “superfood” to capture the attention of wellness enthusiasts. Historically, seaweed has been used in indigenous medicine for…
A Uranium-Mining Boom Is Sweeping Through Texas
Michaelsen thought he had won. But when the TCEQ commissioners took up the question several months later, again they rejected all of the judge’s findings. In a 19-page order issued in September, the commission concluded that “faults within 2.5 miles…
A Mysterious Respiratory Disease Has the Democratic Republic of the Congo on High Alert
Deaths in the southwest of the Democratic Republic of the Congo from an as-yet unidentified disease are continuing to rise. So far there have been 71 confirmed fatalities, with 27 recorded in hospitals and 44 in communities in the southern…
Why Soccer Players Are Training in the Dark
“What’s interesting is that they haven’t just changed the light levels, they’ve changed the specific quality and waves of that light,” says Niall Macfarlane, a professor in physiology and sports science at the University of Glasgow who wasn’t involved in…
Mark Cuban’s War on Drug Prices: ‘How Much Fucking Money Do I Need?’
When Mark Cuban is feeling spicy, he’ll always let you know. The billionaire businessman, basketball owner, and Shark Tank impresario lit up WIRED’s The Big Interview event on Tuesday, dropping hot takes about Elon Musk, the pharmaceutical industry, and why…
We’ve Never Been Closer to Finding Life Outside Our Solar System
In 2025, we might detect the first signs of life outside our solar system. Crucial to this potential breakthrough is the 6.5-meter-diameter James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Launched aboard an Ariane-5 rocket from Kourou, a coastal town in French Guiana,…
Lasers Are Making It Easier to Find Buried Land Mines
scientists in the US have developed a technology that can detect land mines from far away and with high accuracy, potentially lowering the risk of removing mines from current and former conflict zones. Known as the Laser Multibeam Differential Interferometry…
A Parasite That Eats Cattle Alive Is Creeping North Toward the US
On November 22, the United States Department of Agriculture temporarily halted the import of cattle from Mexico after a flesh-eating parasite was detected in animals in southern Mexico. Before the discovery of cattle screwworm (Cochliomyia hominivorax) at an inspection point…
The Mystery of How Supermassive Black Holes Merge
However, modeling has shown that it is difficult to scatter enough stars toward the black holes to solve the final-parsec problem. Alternatively, each black hole might have a small disk of gas around it, and these disks might draw in…
These Stem Cell Treatments Are Worth Millions. Donors Get Paid $200
“If you are a student and you live on $700 as a monthly budget, $200 extra is nice,” says Bernow. “If you work 10 hours for me, I don’t mind paying $200. They should be paid more, but we’re not…
Can Artificial Rain, Drones, or Satellites Clean Toxic Air?
Amid all of these concerns, the city has been turning to drones to monitor pollution hotspots, in addition to those spraying water to suppress PM2.5. “Drones are useful for accessing areas that are hard to monitor manually, like crowded urban…
The End Is Near for NASA’s Voyager Probes
Saturn as captured by the Voyager program. Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images Once the Voyagers’ planetary journeys were over, it was possible to begin a new mission phase. After their last planetary stops, both probes reached escape velocity for the solar system,…
Chocolate Has a Sustainability Problem. Science Thinks It’s Found the Answer
Elsewhere, Mars is looking to get to the literal root of the problem by improving the resilience of the all-important cocoa plant. The food giant is working with the USDA and UC Davis to genome sequence pathogens for the diseases…
An Uncertain Future Requires Uncertain Prediction Skills
We live in an Age of Uncertainty. Not just because of the global threats to societies, but many face unprecedented insecurity at a personal level, particularly the younger generations. None of us know what is going to happen, and we…
The $60 Billion Potential Hiding in Your Discarded Gadgets
Recycling is important, yes. But it is also utterly insufficient to meet our needs. We tend to think of it as the best alternative to using virgin materials. In fact, it often can be one of the worst. Consider a…
Tune In to the Healing Powers of a Decent Playlist
Beliefs and practices about music’s ability to heal the mind, body, and spirit date back to the Upper Paleolithic period, about 20,000 years ago. Music was widely used by shamans and other healers to treat a variety of ailments, from…
Returning the Amazon Rainforest to Its True Caretakers
In 2025, a small, indigenous nation that calls itself the “people of many colors” will go home for the first time in 80 years. Their return will drive a movement of indigenous peoples across the Amazon rainforest fighting for legal…
Tryptophan Isn’t What Puts You Under on Thanksgiving. It’s the Carbs
Every year, I promise myself I’m not going to eat myself into a food coma: I’ll eat responsibly, front-load my belly with salad, and go light on the turkey and gravy. Instead, I wake up three hours after Thanksgiving dinner,…
How the World Can Cope Better With Extreme Rainfall and Flooding
According to Bodoque, we need to improve flood-risk mapping too. There is a need to characterize vulnerability in a holistic manner, which implies considering the social, economic, physical, institutional, and cultural dimensions of what makes a community vulnerable to the…
Why an Offline Nuclear Reactor Led to Thousands of Hospital Appointments Being Canceled
“I remember in Geneva, two months ago, we said, ‘Pay attention, because on this specific week there is a risk of shortage if there is any problem with one of the active reactors’—and that’s what happened,” recalls David Crunelle, a…
The Physics of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade Balloons
If you double the radius of a balloon, you increase the volume by a factor of eight (since volume is proportional to the radius cubed). But what about the material on the outside of the balloon? Let’s say I want…
Combining AI and Crispr Will Be Transformational
In 2025, we will see AI and machine learning begin to amplify the impact of Crispr genome editing in medicine, agriculture, climate change, and the basic research that underpins these fields. It’s worth saying upfront that the field of AI…
3 Simple Rules to Beat the Downsides of Aging
We humans may be the only species that is aware of our mortality. We are obsessed with how to postpone the inevitable and, failing that, how to make the most of our lives. For much of our existence as a…
Neuralink Plans to Test Whether Its Brain Implant Can Control a Robotic Arm
Elon Musk’s brain implant company, Neuralink, announced on Tuesday that it is launching a study to test its implant for a new use: allowing a person to control a robotic arm using just their thoughts. “We’re excited to announce the…
How to Create a Future of Cheap Energy for All
When asked why they chose Tado, he said that customers’ main reason was, “I want to save money. The second reason is, I want to make the planet a better place. If we cannot fulfill the first one,” he stressed,…
Mathematicians Just Debunked the ‘Bunkbed Conjecture’
Their result shows the importance of not taking anything for granted, said Noga Alon, a mathematician at Princeton. “We have to be suspicious, even about things that intuitively look very likely to be true.” Gladkov, Pak, and Zimin found many…
How Trump Could Actually Increase Fossil Fuel Production
This story originally appeared on Vox and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration. During his campaign, president-elect Donald Trump had a pointed tagline for his energy policy: “Drill, baby, drill.” That statement is emblematic of where Trump is poised…
Why Is It So Tricky to Show the Sun, Earth, and Moon in a Diagram?
Earth, sun, moon: three objects in space whose interactions have a pretty big impact on our lives. Earth orbits the sun once a year, and it rotates on its axis about once a day (depending on your definition of “rotate”)….
Why Is There So Much Off-Brand Oral Ozempic for Sale Online?
Since they debuted, injectable GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic have been in high demand. In addition to treating diabetes and obesity, these medications have cardiovascular benefits, and there’s evidence they may curb addiction and possibly even protect against some types of…
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You Can Now Buy Lab-Grown Foie Gras
At an upscale sushi bar in New York last week, a smattering of media and policy types chowed down on a menu of sushi rolls, peking duck tapas, and mushroom salad. But what made this menu unusual was the one…
The First Crispr Treatment Is Making Its Way to Patients
Nearly a year after its approval, the first medical treatment that uses the Nobel Prize–winning technology Crispr is now being given to patients. Called Casgevy, the gene-editing treatment is for people with sickle cell disease and a related blood disorder…
Scientists Establish the Best Algorithm for Traversing a Map
“It’s a great algorithm,” said Erik Demaine, a computer scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “It’s very fast, simple, and easy to implement.” To put this procedure into practice, you’d need to decide on a system for organizing your…
What Lee Zeldin’s Nomination Means for the EPA
Zeldin, a 44-year-old attorney and former Army lieutenant, does not have a background in environmental policy. He made his foray into politics through the New York State Senate in 2011, serving until 2014. That year, he was elected to be…
These Rats Learned to Drive—and They Love It
THIS ARTICLE IS republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. We crafted our first rodent car from a plastic cereal container. After trial and error, my colleagues and I found that rats could learn to drive forward by…
Standing Desks Are Better for Your Health—but Still Not Enough
Without question, inactivity is bad for us. Prolonged sitting is consistently linked to higher risks of cardiovascular disease and death. The obvious response to this frightful fate is to not sit—move. Even a few moments of exercise can have benefits,…
How to Design a Real-Life Hot Wheels Loop
I get a minimum height of 2.5R. So if the loop is 4 meters high (with a radius of 2 meters), the car would have to start 5 meters above the ground to just make the loop. Of course, this…
Bone Marrow Donors Can Be Hard to Find. One Company Is Turning to Cadavers
“Today’s ecosystem is based around living volunteers,” Ossium’s CEO and cofounder, Kevin Caldwell, says. While the US organ donor system has existed for decades, bone marrow has never been regularly collected from those deceased donors in the same way that…
Scientists Have Pushed the Schrödinger’s Cat Paradox to New Limits
In the world of quantum physics, another record appears to have just been broken. In a paper listed on the preprint site ArXiv, researchers at the University of Science and Technology of China claim to have observed atoms in a…
Researchers Give Animal Cells the Ability to Photosynthesize for the First Time
Chloroplasts, the parts of cells that allow plants and algae to photosynthesize, are thought to have originated over 1 billion years ago, when photosynthetic cyanobacteria lived symbiotically within other primitive cellular organisms. Replicating the development of this photosynthetic capability in…
A Popular Decongestant Doesn’t Work. The FDA Is Finally Doing Something About It
In a long-sought move, the US Food and Drug Administration on Thursday formally began the process of abandoning oral doses of a common over-the-counter decongestant that the agency concluded last year is not effective at relieving stuffy noses. Specifically, the…
The Real Problem With Banning Masks at Protests
“There are lots of different tools that are available to law enforcement. Facial recognition is one of those tools that it’s about expediency,” said Nicole Napolitano, director of research at the Center for Policing Equity. But it’s not without its…
COP29 Begins With Climate Finance, Absent Leaders, and Trump Looming Large
And then, the main dilemma: Who has to take responsibility for what? The so-called global south is pressing for money to tread a path from developed countries to those left behind, who have not played a historical role in the…
The US Has a Cloned Sheep Contraband Problem
In September, a man from Montana was sentenced to six months in prison after he trafficked a clone of one of the world’s largest sheep species. Court documents allege that Arthur Schubarth trafficked body parts of a near threatened Marco…
The Incredible Power of Quantum Memory
The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. It’s not easy to study quantum systems—collections of particles that follow the counterintuitive rules of quantum mechanics. Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, a cornerstone of quantum theory, says it’s impossible to simultaneously…
Microplastics Could Be Making the Weather Worse
THIS ARTICLE IS republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Clouds form when water vapor—an invisible gas in the atmosphere—sticks to tiny floating particles, such as dust, and turns into liquid water droplets or ice crystals. In a…
Invasive Species Are Threatening the Quality of New York’s Tap Water
“You can see an ecosystem change overnight—specifically with hydrilla. You’ll see a normal pond, and then at the end of the growing season, it’s completely full of hydrilla,” said Nicole White, founder of Little Bear Environmental Consulting, which often works…
Starship’s Next Launch Could Be Just Two Weeks Away
Less than a month has passed since the historic fifth flight of SpaceX’s Starship, during which the company caught the booster with mechanical arms back at the launch pad in Texas. Now, another test flight could come as soon as…
What is the cost of a flex circuit compared to rigid PCBs?
cost of a flex circuit compared to rigid PCBs When designing electronic devices, cost is a critical factor in choosing between different types of circuit boards. Two commonly used options are rigid printed circuit boards (PCBs) and flexible circuits, also…
How does a flex PCB manufacturer support small businesses?
How Does a Flex PCB Manufacturer Support Small Businesses? In today’s dynamic electronics market, small businesses often face unique challenges when it comes to manufacturing high-quality, cost-effective products. For businesses looking to integrate flexible printed circuit boards (PCBs) into their…
States’ Abortion Rights Wins May Be Short-Lived Under a Second Trump Term
When the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022, it ended the constitutional right to have an abortion and returned the ability to regulate the procedure to the states. Now, amid a heated presidential election that resulted…
China’s New Heavy Lift Rocket Looks a Whole Lot Like SpaceX’s Starship
When Chinese space officials unveiled the design for the country’s first super heavy-lift rocket nearly a decade ago, it looked like a fairly conventional booster. The rocket was fully expendable, with three stages and solid motors strapped onto its sides….
Thousands of People Are Cloning Their Dead Pets. This Is the Woman They Call First
Nine years ago, a pair of freshly weaned British longhair kittens boarded a private plane in Virginia and flew to their new home in Europe. These kittens were no different than any other, except that they’d been created in a…
The Quantum Geometry That Exists Outside of Space and Time
“It provides a natural framework, or a bookkeeping mechanism, to assemble very large numbers of Feynman diagrams,” said Marcus Spradlin, a physicist at Brown University who has been picking up the new tools of surfaceology. “There’s an exponential compactification in…
How a PhD Student Discovered a Lost Mayan City From Hundreds of Miles Away
A new Mayan city, lost in the dense jungle of southern Mexico for centuries, has been discovered from the computer of a PhD student hundreds of miles away. This is the story of how he did it. The settlement, named…
How Researchers Are Using Geospatial Technology to Uncover Mexico’s Clandestine Graves
In 2014, after the disappearance of 43 Ayotzinapa normalistas in Mexico, Silván and other CentroGeo professionals joined the scientific advisory board on the case. During the search for the students, different civilian groups and government brigades detected dozens of illegal…
RFK Jr. Wants to Reshape US Health Policy. Good Luck With That
Kennedy’s past makes him an unlikely candidate for agriculture secretary, according to Daniel Glickman, who served in the role during Bill Clinton’s presidency. “It’s hard for me to imagine, given Trump’s traditional base in the heartlands, that he would pick…
A Lost Mayan City Has Been Found With Laser Mapping
A Mayan city lost in the dense jungle of southern Mexico has been revealed. The discovery occurred in the southeastern state of Campeche, and archaeologists have named it Valeriana, after a nearby freshwater lagoon. “The larger of Valeriana’s two monumental…
The Secret Electrostatic World of Insects
This developing field, known as aerial electroreception, opens up a new dimension of the natural world. “I find it absolutely fascinating,” said Anna Dornhaus, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Arizona who was not involved with the work. “This…
A Neuralink Rival Says Its Eye Implant Restored Vision in Blind People
One of these, called the Argus II, was approved for commercial use in Europe in 2011 and in the US in 2013. That implant involved larger electrodes that were placed on top of the retina. Its manufacturer, Second Sight, stopped…
OceanGate Faces Federal Investigation a Year After the Titan Submersible Implosion
The apparent success of the leaseback arrangement might explain how Rush was able to attract what was OceanGate’s largest ever investment in 2020, at a time when the company was working on the expensive task of replacing the Titan’s first…
How to Close the Gender Health Gap
If you’re a man, you are more likely to suffer a health condition that kills you. But if you’re a woman, you are more likely to live in ill health. Women spend 25 percent more of their lives in ill…
This App Set Out to Fight Pesticides. After VCs Stepped In, Now It Helps Sell Them
“Growth, growth, fast growth,” Strey says of what investors were after. “You burn money to grow.” Before its introduction to venture capital, the Plantix team had imagined success as simply making a profitable business. But a modest goal “hasn’t always…
The Maker of Ozempic Is Trying to Block Compounded Versions of Its Blockbuster Drug
Drugmaker Novo Nordisk is taking action to curb the massively popular compounded semaglutide industry, which provides copies of its blockbuster weight-loss drugs Ozempic and Wegovy to patients—often for much lower prices. The Danish pharmaceutical company is lobbying the US Food…
Here’s What the Sustainable Cities of Tomorrow Could Look Like
Haut is a 21-story timber-hybrid high-rise completed in Amsterdam in 2022. It was designed by the British engineering collective Arup and Team V, a Dutch architecture firm. Haut has 55 apartments, a bicycle parking area, an underground parking garage, and…
UK Considers New Smartphone Bans for Children
We know surprisingly little about the impact of smartphone bans in schools, says Sonia Livingstone, a professor at the London School of Economics who studies how digital technologies affect young people. There are relatively few good studies in this area,…
How Cells Resist the Pressure of the Deep Sea
To study the cell membranes of deep-sea animals, the biochemist Itay Budin (center) joined forces with marine biologists Steve Haddock (right) and Jacob Winnikoff (left). Photographs: From left: Tamrynn Clegg; Geoffroy Tobe; John Lee “They are looking into an area…
California Is Flooding School Cafeterias With Vegan Meals—and Kids Like It
Student nutrition directors like Primer say the foundation that allows schools to experiment with new recipes is California’s universal free lunch program. She notes that, when school lunch is free, students are more likely to actually try and enjoy it:…
Dolphins Are Exhaling Microplastics | WIRED
In fact, bubble bursts caused by wave energy can release 100,000 metric tons of microplastics into the atmosphere each year. Since dolphins and other marine mammals breathe at the water’s surface, they may be especially vulnerable to exposure. Where there…
Florida Hospitals and Nursing Homes Are Bracing for Hurricane Milton
Less than two weeks after Hurricane Helene tore through the American Southeast, hospitals and health care providers in Florida are preparing for yet another destructive storm as Hurricane Milton hurtles toward the state’s west coast. The National Hurricane Center described…
The Physics Trick That Makes These New Super Cars So Insanely Fast
With the extra downward force, the only way for the forces to add up to zero is if the normal force increases. This means the frictional force is greater, so the new acceleration is greater. Now instead of getting a…
How a 12-Ounce Layer of Foam Changed the NFL
Late in his team’s game against the Green Bay Packers on September 15, Indianapolis Colts tight end Kylen Granson caught a short pass over the middle of the field, charged forward, and lowered his body to brace for contact. The…
Why Tampa Is So Vulnerable to Hurricane Milton
For more than a century, Tampa Bay has avoided Florida’s most destructive hurricanes. Now Hurricane Milton may end that streak of luck, as the storm is expected to make landfall just south of Tampa Bay in the early hours of…
How does a flexible printed circuit work?
flexible printed circuit work Flexible printed circuits, or flex circuits, operate on principles similar to those of traditional printed circuit boards (PCBs), but their unique structure and materials allow them to bend, twist, and fit into various configurations, making them…
After Hurricane Milton, Get Ready for Mold
After Milton made landfall as a Category 3 hurricane in western Florida last week, some residents who evacuated the area are now returning to discover water damage in their homes. And they may soon find something else: mold. Mold can…
NASA Will Do Space in Style With the Prada Axiom Spacesuit
This story originally appeared on WIRED Italia and has been translated from Italian. “We are witnessing the beginning of a new era, as the internet was in the 1980s. Today access to space is still something for the few, but…
How do flex PCB manufacturers ensure on-time delivery?
flex PCB manufacturers ensure on-time delivery For designers and OEMs who use flex PCBs in their products, on-time delivery is vital. This is because a delay in production can grind projects to a halt and cut into profit margins. To…
The AI Nobel Prizes Could Change the Focus of Research
The extent to which academics are likely to follow the media attention, money, and Nobel Prize committee plaudits is a question that vexes Julian Togelius, an associate professor of computer science at New York University’s Tandon School of Engineering who…
The Doctor Behind the ‘Suicide Pod’ Wants AI to Assist at the End of Life
“I see [technology] as important in democratizing the process and demedicalizing the process,” says Nitschke, adding the Sarco is not reliant on heavily restricted drugs to operate. “So all of those issues are ways to make the process more equitable.”…
Milton Disrupted the Flow of Drinking Water—so Florida Deployed a Machine to Harvest It From Air
David Stuckenberg, cofounder and chief operations officer at Genesis Systems, explains that the WaterCube uses proprietary liquid and solid sorbents—materials that absorb water—that essentially “form a handshake with the water in the air.” The machine then heats these materials to…
SpaceX’s Dramatic Rocket Catch Brings Interplanetary Travel One Step Closer
This story originally appeared on WIRED Italia and has been translated from Italian. SpaceX has reached an important milestone in testing Starship, the spacecraft it wants to use for crewed missions to the Moon and Mars. Following a test launch…
Why Hurricane Milton Turned the Sky Purple
Just before Hurricane Milton slammed into Florida as a Category 3 storm on Wednesday, many people reported that the sky above them turned a sinister purple hue. A sign of the apocalypse? Well, yes, actually—the climate catastrophe we’ve made for…
Cells From Different Species Can Exchange ‘Text Messages’ Using RNA
The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. For a molecule of RNA, the world is a dangerous place. Unlike DNA, which can persist for millions of years in its remarkably stable, double-stranded form, RNA isn’t built to…
The Origins of the Climate Haven Myth
The real estate industry has taken notice. Quite coincidentally, as Hurricane Helene was bearing down on the Southeast last week, Zillow announced a new feature that displays climate risk scores on listing pages alongside interactive maps and insurance requirements. Now,…
TikTokkers Say Cinnamon Helps Burn Fat. Here’s What the Science Says
So overall, the weight loss we see from these high-quality studies is very small, and mostly with no change in body composition. The studies included people with different diseases, and most were from the Middle East or the Indian subcontinent….
What is multilayer PCB manufacturing?
multilayer PCB manufacturing Multilayer printed circuit boards (PCBs) are essential components in modern electronics, enabling the creation of complex circuits in a compact form factor. As technology advances and devices become more sophisticated, the demand for multilayer PCBs has surged,…
The Hunt for Life on Europa Is About to Kick Up a Gear
If we’re going to find life on another world, Europa might just be our best bet. We think this icy moon of Jupiter has an ocean of water beneath its frozen surface, and it seems like this ocean might have…
Darpa Thinks Walls of Oysters Could Protect Shores Against Hurricanes
On October 10, 2018, Tyndall Air Force Base on the Gulf of Mexico—a pillar of American air superiority—found itself under aerial attack. Hurricane Michael, first spotted as a Category 2 storm off the Florida coast, unexpectedly hulked up to a…
The Crackdown on Compounded GLP-1 Meds Has Begun
The end of the tirzepatide shortage has created a fraught moment for many patients taking the compounded version of the drug. As WIRED recently reported, many of these patients are concerned that they will not be able to afford or…
Psychedelic Mushrooms Are Getting Much, Much Stronger
Earlier this year, Julian Mattucci, also known as “God Emperor Myco,” was creating new generations of spores from some Psilocybe subtropicalis mushrooms that he had procured online from a popular supplier. He claims to have not been “working them for…
Hurricane Milton Shows How a Storm’s Category Doesn’t Tell the Full Story
Milton’s enormous storm surge has also highlighted the growing danger from water. More intense hurricanes are pushing higher storm surges due to sea-level rise. These “hurricanes on steroids,” as Olson calls them, are also dumping larger amounts of rain inland,…
A Major GLP-1 Drug Shortage Is Over. Some Patients Aren’t Celebrating
“A lot of these patients have now been left flat-footed. They’ve got a prescription for a compounded drug that can’t be filled anymore,” says Alliance for Pharmacy Compounding CEO Scott Brunner. “I don’t think the way the FDA has done…
Through Hurricanes Helene and Milton, Amateur Radio Triumphs When All Else Fails
The morning after Hurricane Helene pummeled the eastern seaboard of the US, Thomas Witherspoon inspected the damage to his western North Carolina home. The night before, he listened to the wind whip down trees and snap power lines along the…
This Homemade Drone Software Finds People When Search and Rescue Teams Can’t
When Charlie Kelly first messaged saying he wouldn’t make it home that night, his partner wasn’t happy. It was September 6, 2023, a Wednesday, and the 56-year-old, a keen hillwalker, had left the house that he shared with Emer Kennedy…
This Man Found 1,650 Ways to Turn a Profit While Decarbonizing
Bertrand Piccard says sustainability doesn’t have to come at a cost—and that reframing attempts to hit net zero as a way of generating profit could be key to hitting targets.
To Be a Good Pregnancy Surrogate, It Helps to Be a Dominatrix First
Hiring someone to carry your baby to term is a booming business. The market for surrogacy is expected to expand to $129 billion by 2032, fueled by older parents, rising infertility, and more same-sex families. Silicon Valley contributes to the…
Taiwan Makes the Majority of the World’s Computer Chips. Now It’s Running Out of Electricity
It is not just a case of building more capacity. Taiwan’s energy dilemma is a combination of national security, climate, and political challenges. The island depends on imported fossil fuel for around 90 percent of its energy and lives under…
‘Groups’ Underpin Modern Math. Here’s How They Work
Figuring out what subgroups a group contains is one way to understand its structure. For example, the subgroups of Z6 are {0}, {0, 2, 4} and {0, 3}—the trivial subgroup, the multiples of 2, and the multiples of 3. In…
Alcohol Plays a Major Role in New Cancer Cases
THIS ARTICLE IS republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. A little bit of alcohol was once thought to be good for you. However, as scientific research advances, we’re gaining a clearer picture of alcohol’s effect on health—especially…
What You Need to Know Before You Freeze Your Eggs
“This is Marina. She leads a feminist organization.” This is how I am introduced at the entrance of an event that aims to “normalize egg freezing,” run by a startup collaborating with a private fertility clinic. It’s a misunderstanding, but…
The US Is Loading Up on Bird Flu Vaccine
Amid a US outbreak of avian influenza in poultry flocks and dairy cattle, the federal government on Friday announced $72 million in funding to three vaccine manufacturers to expand the production of bird flu vaccines for humans, in the event…
Wastewater Offers an Early Alarm System for Another Deadly Virus
Toward the end of last year, US health authorities got a tip-off about an upcoming wave of respiratory syncytial virus, a seasonal virus that kills 160,000 people globally every year. Before hospitals reported an uptick in patients, they could see…
Inside the Anti-Vax Facebook Group Pushing a Bogus Cure for Autism
Czelazewicz is just one of many affiliates who sell Pure Body Extra online, including Larry Cook, one of the best known US anti-vax influencers. Cook and his Stop Mandatory Vaccination group was kicked off Facebook in 2020, but only after…
These New Biomaterials Can Help Decarbonize Fashion and Construction
The Exploring Jacket isn’t your regular anorak. Its color comes not from dyes, but from a pigment-producing bacteria called Streptomyces coelicolor. When applied directly to a fabric and left to incubate, the bacteria cells produce a compound in a spectrum…
Hurricane Helene Shows How Broken the US Insurance System Is
In comparison, North Carolina’s insurance market looks pretty good. No insurers have exited the state since 2008, while homeowners pay an average of $2,100 per year—high, but avoiding the sky-high rates of states like Florida, California, and Texas. “What traditionally…
Formula E’s Race to Get the Whole World Electrified
What sorts of offsets do you focus on? People have different opinions as to what is good enough, and they’re not all equal. We primarily focus on the creation of renewable energy, since that’s what gives the best positive impact…
The UK Has No Coal-Fired Power Plants for the First Time in 142 Years
On Monday, the UK saw the closure of its last operational coal power plant, Ratcliffe-on-Soar, which has been operating since 1968. The closure of the plant, which had a capacity of 2,000 megawatts, brought to an end to the history…
Ukraine Is Decentralizing Energy Production to Protect Itself From Russia
What’s the difference when equipping a school with decentralized solar power compared to a hospital? The capacity that we install is different, but the process is the same, in the sense that we identify what is needed according to our…
Solar Sails and Comet Tails: How Sunlight Pushes Stuff Around
During the Age of Sail, ships circled the globe on voyages of discovery and trade. That era ended in the 1800s, when coal-fired steam engines began to replace wind power. Now we may be entering a new age of sail—but…
A Lawsuit From Backers of a ‘Startup City’ Could Bankrupt Honduras
The flurry of private contracts became part of a “kleptocratic” regime, according to one 2017 report by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Nearly all of the ISDS claims have their roots in contracts, laws or other agreements made during…
The Vagus Nerve’s Crucial Role in Creating the Human Sense of Mind
The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. It is late at night. You are alone and wandering empty streets in search of your parked car when you hear footsteps creeping up from behind. Your heart pounds, your…
These Record-Breaking New Solar Panels Produce 60 Percent More Electricity
THIS ARTICLE IS republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. The sight of solar panels installed on rooftops and large energy farms has become commonplace in many regions around the world. Even in the gray and rainy UK,…
An International Space Station Leak Is Getting Worse—and Keeping NASA Up at Night
US space officials do not like to talk about the perils of flying astronauts on the aging International Space Station, elements of which are now more than a quarter of a century old. However, a new report confirms that NASA…
The Titan Submersible Hearings End With Few Solid Answers. Here’s What Comes Next
Another surprising omission was during Thursday’s testimony of Mark Negley, a Boeing engineer. Negley had carried out a preliminary design study for the Titan and assisted OceanGate with testing equipment and advice for nearly a decade. He testified to the…
Scientists Figured Out How to Recycle Plastic by Vaporizing It
Our planet is choking on plastics. Some of the worst offenders, which can take decades to degrade in landfills, are polypropylene—which is used for things such as food packaging and bumpers—and polyethylene, found in plastic bags, bottles, toys, and even…
The Outrageous Scheme to Capture and Sell Greenland’s Meltwater
Fresh water is becoming increasingly scarce in many countries, but not in Greenland. Its ice sheet contains around 6.5 percent of the world’s fresh water, and over 350 trillion liters are estimated to run into the ocean annually. And with…
An Ultrathin Graphene Brain Implant Was Just Tested in a Person
In 2004, Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov at the University of Manchester in England achieved a breakthrough when they isolated graphene for the first time. A flat form of carbon made up of a single layer of atoms, graphene is…
Titan Submersible Hearings Spotlight Multiple Issues With Its Carbon Fiber Hull
Wreckage of the Titan’s innovative carbon fiber hull was found separated into three distinct layers, US National Transportation Safety Board engineer Donald Kramer has told a Coast Guard hearing into the fatal implosion of the OceanGate submersible in 2023. Although…
Patients Are Turning to Vibrators to Relieve Their Migraines
My friend Jack suffers from the most terrible migraines. But he has an unusual solution. When his migraine starts, he lays down and gently straps a vibrator to the top of his forehead. He swears that it offers instant relief…
I Tried These Brain-Tracking Headphones That Claim to Improve Focus
One afternoon I was using the device for a little over an hour when I heard a voice in the headset: “You’ve earned a brain break.” Alcaide says the device can detect when your focus is starting to decline and…
Microsoft’s Three Mile Island Deal Signals a Broader Nuclear Comeback
For five years, reactor one at Three Mile Island nuclear power station in Pennsylvania has lain dormant. Now, thanks to a deal with Microsoft, the reactor will start running again in 2028—this time to exclusively supply the tech firm with…
In Praise of Climate Virtue Signaling
These changes are real, and very significant, so it’s no wonder that some of the MPs Westlake interviewed said they’re more interested in reducing emissions through technological progress than behavior change. But emissions from things like diet, aviation, and our…
Why Women Get Migraines More Than Men
Migraine attacks are no ordinary headache. They can cause intense pain and sickness, lasting hours or even days, making it impossible to do anything but rest in a dark, quiet room. And for millions of women, these debilitating attacks aren’t…
The Multiple Ways Climate Change Threatens to Make Migraines Worse
Migraines have long had an intimate relationship with the elements. Alongside stress and hormones, fluctuations in meteorological conditions are one of the most commonly cited triggers for an attack. “Patients will often say that they can predict the weather,” says…
New Evidence Shows Heat Destroys Quantum Entanglement
But not all questions about quantum systems are easier to answer using quantum algorithms. Some are equally easy for classical algorithms, which run on ordinary computers, while others are hard for both classical and quantum ones. To understand where quantum…
California Can Slake the Thirst of Its Farms by Storing Water Underground
For example, two winters’ worth of snow followed by intense heat created a flood risk in 2023. State officials decided to release water from Lake Oroville and other reservoirs across Southern California and the Central Valley. Although this helped prevent…
America’s Dairy Farms Have Vanished
Does it become bottled milk? That’s Class 1 price. Yogurt? Class 2 price. Cheddar cheese? Class 3 price. Butter or powdered dry milk? Class 4. Traditionally, Class 1 receives the highest price. Do you know where your milk comes from?Photograph:…
The Titan Submersible Disaster Hearings Paint a Damning Picture
After they left, the Titan was rebuilt with a new hull that was never tested to industry norms nor certified by an independent third-party agency. Patrick Lahey, CEO of submersible maker Triton Submarines, said that certifying a novel hull was…
Unlock the Secret of a Gravity-Defying Parkour Stunt—With Physics!
We can break that diagonal motion down into horizontal and vertical portions; for now let’s just focus on the former. Say you start with a horizontal velocity (v1) of –1 meter per second and rebound with a horizontal velocity (v2)…
Everything You Need to Know About the WIRED & Octopus Energy Tech Summit 2024
Returning for its second edition this October in Berlin, the WIRED & Octopus Energy Tech Summit is bringing together Europe’s leading experts and visionaries in the green energy sector to explore how to accelerate the creation of a fully carbon-free…
Strange Visual Auras Could Hold the Key to Better Migraine Treatments
Exactly why CSD starts, nobody knows. Similarly, plenty of mysteries remain about what activates the pain of migraines. Past studies have proposed that migraine headaches occur when something in the cerebrospinal fluid indirectly activates nerves in the nearby meninges, the…
RSV Can Be a Killer. New Tools Are Identifying the Most At-Risk Kids
After 25 years as a pediatric infectious diseases specialist, Asunción Mejías is too familiar with the deadly unpredictability of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), an infection that hospitalizes up to 80,000 children under the age of 5 every year in the…
Project 2025 Would Drastically Cut Support for Carbon Removal
That’s why government support like the DOE Regional DAC Hubs program is so important, says Jack Andreasen at Breakthrough Energy, the Bill Gates–founded initiative to accelerate technology to reach net zero. “This gets projects built,” he says. The Bipartisan Infrastructure…
This Brain Implant Lets People Control Amazon Alexa With Their Minds
“It’s pretty exciting and freeing to keep my independence,” Mark says. “Some days can be more challenging, especially depending how I’m feeling, but the layout of the Amazon tablet makes it pretty easy to interact with and complete the tasks…
Scientists Crack a 50-Year Mystery to Discover a New Set of Blood Groups
There were many challenges in the process of confirming the role of the MAL gene, including a study by rival researchers that suggested a completely different gene could be responsible. “We suddenly thought, ‘Oh no, maybe all this work we’ve…
‘I Told Him I’m Not Getting in It’: Former Titan Submersible Engineer Testifies
The US Coast Guard’s Titan submersible hearing kicked off with a startling revelation. “I told him I’m not getting in it,” former OceanGate engineering director Tony Nissen said to a panel of Coast Guard investigators, referring to a 2018 conversation…
The Polaris Dawn Spaceflight Was More Than Just a Billionaire Joyride
A white spacecraft, lightly toasted like a marshmallow and smelling of singed metal, fell out of the night sky early on Sunday morning and splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico not all that far from Key West. The darkened…
AI Has Helped Shein Become Fast Fashion’s Biggest Polluter
This story originally appeared in Grist and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration. In 2023, the fast-fashion giant Shein was everywhere. Crisscrossing the globe, airplanes ferried small packages of its ultra-cheap clothing from thousands of suppliers to tens of…
Stephen Hawking Was Wrong—Extremal Black Holes Are Possible
Now two mathematicians have proved Hawking and his colleagues wrong. The new work—contained in a pair of recent papers by Christoph Kehle of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Ryan Unger of Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley—demonstrates that there is nothing in our known…
An ER Doctor’s Cure for America’s Gun Epidemic
In 2020, while the Covid-19 pandemic raged, a steadily growing epidemic continued to burn its path across the United States. Gun violence stole the lives of 45,222 Americans that fateful year, the worst year on record for gun deaths to…
South Sudan May See the First Permanent Mass Displacement Due to Climate Change
THIS ARTICLE IS republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Enormous floods have once again engulfed much of South Sudan, as record water levels in Lake Victoria flow downstream through the Nile. More than 700,000 people have been…
How to View the ‘Comet of the Century’ C/2023 A3
This story originally appeared on WIRED en Español and has been translated from Spanish. C/2023 A3, also known as Tsuchinshan–ATLAS and considered “the comet of the century,” will appear in all its splendor in our sky during September and October…
The Bird Flu Outbreak Takes a Mysterious Turn
This year in the United States, 14 people have tested positive for avian influenza, or bird flu. Nine of those became infected after coming into contact with poultry, and four got the virus from exposure to dairy cows. The source…
Amazon’s Shipping and Delivery Emissions Just Keep Going Up
“Amazon prides itself on being an ambitious and innovative company, but it’s making quite a problem for itself with its air freight cargo growth,” Archer says. “If Amazon is serious about climate progress, that’s a really easy place to start:…
Breadfruit Is Here to Save the World
Warming temperatures are making farming much more difficult in the tropics. Food systems across island nations in the Caribbean and Pacific are particularly vulnerable, being hit hard by a combination of heat waves, droughts, and unseasonal rain. And the impact…
The Cost of Lightning | WIRED
It was the terrible prospect of lightning one day striking the historic windmill that troubled Andrew Farrell. A bolt five times hotter than the surface of the sun instantly turning moisture in one of the mill’s timbers to steam, exploding…
Crispr-Enhanced Viruses Are Being Deployed Against UTIs
Locus’s therapy is actually a cocktail of six phages. The company used artificial intelligence to predict a combination that would be effective against E. coli. Three of the phages are “lytic,” meaning work by infecting E. coli cells and causing…
Billionaire Finally Launches on First Private Space-Walk Mission
One of the most ambitious space tourism missions in history has launched, with the all-commercial crew set to hit a number of milestones during its five days in space, including the first-ever privately funded human space walk. The mission, called…
What Cancún’s Tourists Don’t See Is a Sprawling Concrete Jungle
This story originally appeared on WIRED en Español and has been translated from Spanish. The wide mowed lawns and leafy trees, the sports fields shining under their illuminated lights, the bouncy castles in the children’s play areas—especially the bouncy castles—are…
The Biggest Controversy in Cosmology Just Got Bigger
A long-awaited study of the cosmic expansion rate suggests that when it comes to the Hubble tension, cosmologists are still missing something.
Alien Spaceships Could Be Detected Using Gravitational Waves
You could say that this is exactly what Isaac Newton’s picture of gravity does—giving a relation between an object’s mass and the gravitational force it exerts. And you would be right. But the concept of space-time curvature gives rise to…
The Mosquito-Borne Disease ‘Triple E’ Is Spreading in the US as Temperatures Rise
The disease is spread by two types of mosquito. The first is a species called Culiseta melanura, or the black-tailed mosquito. This mosquito tends to live in hardwood bogs and feeds on birds like robins, herons, and wrens, spreading the…
Why Polio Has Reemerged in Gaza
Why are most cases of polio vaccine-derived variants? Most cases of paralytic polio are now vaccine-derived due to the success of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative. OPV has been instrumental in the near-eradication of wild polioviruses around the world. However,…
Boeing Starliner Returns Home to an Uncertain Future
Until now, NASA has paid Boeing roughly $2.7 billion of the $4.6 billion total potential value of its commercial crew contract, according to Finch. The Starliner contract NASA awarded Boeing in 2014 originally had a maximum value of $4.2 billion,…
Why Super Typhoons Like Yagi Are More Common Than You’d Think
The year’s first super typhoon erupted over the steamy waters of the western Pacific Ocean on Thursday as Yagi churned toward an eventual landfall in southern China. Having formed as a tropical cyclone in the Philippine Sea on Sunday, the…
Moon GPS Is Coming | WIRED
“I refer to LunaNet as the big umbrella,” Gramling says. “It is an architecture that defines the standards that are going to be used for interoperable communications and position, navigation, and timing services. There’s a large effort underway to define…
Ski Resorts Are Stockpiling Snow to Get Through Warm Winters
“We provide 100 percent snow security,” says Antti Lauslahti, Snow Secure’s CEO, proudly. “Any ski resort can start the season at a specific date.” He adds that the system has performed well even when summer heat waves push temperatures above…
Wildfires Are Contaminating Water Supplies
If you stood on the banks of the Cache la Poudre River in Colorado after the 2020 Cameron Peak Fire, the rumbling water may have appeared black. This slurry of ash and charred soil cascaded toward the reservoirs that supply…
Strange Noises Are Coming from Inside Boeing’s Starliner Spacecraft
On Saturday NASA astronaut Butch Wilmore noticed some strange noises emanating from a speaker inside the Starliner spacecraft. “I’ve got a question about Starliner,” Wilmore radioed down to Mission Control, at Johnson Space Center in Houston. “There’s a strange noise…
Students Find New Evidence of the Impossibility of Complete Disorder
A new mathematic proof marks the first progress in decades on a problem about how order emerges.
Scientists Plan ‘Doomsday’ Vault on Moon
Thanga and his team have sketched a system that would use solar panels and batteries to provide the power to push temperatures inside a lava tube down to the deep freeze needed to create their lunar ark. This is the…
A Rare Coincidence of La Niña Events Will Weaken Hurricane Season
While much weaker than their Pacific counterpart, Atlantic Niñas can, however, partially counteract La Niñas by weakening summer winds that help drive the upwelling that cools the eastern Pacific. Why Are Both Happening Now? In July and August 2024, meteorologists…
John McFall, the Astronaut Flag Bearer at the Paris Paralympics, Is Ready to Fly
At first we studied how my disabilities and prosthesis might affect my ability to meet the requirements in-flight. At a later stage we went into detail, to the point of figuring out, for example, whether I should compulsorily use my…
The US Grid Is Adding Batteries at a Much Faster Rate Than Natural Gas
While solar power is growing at an extremely rapid clip, in absolute terms, the use of natural gas for electricity production has continued to outpace renewables. But that looks set to change in 2024, as the US Energy Information Agency…
Promising Mpox Drug Fails in Trials as Virus Spreads
As mpox continues to spread in Central Africa, a promising antiviral drug to treat the infection has failed to improve patients’ symptoms in a trial in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the epicenter of the outbreak. In the trial,…