Sci-Tech news

• Scientists Uncover How the Infant Brain Rewires Itself at Birth

  21-11-2024 19:18 via scitechdaily.com
  New research explores the developmental trajectory of global functional neural networks before and after birth. A study recently published in the journal PLOS Biology, led by Lanxin Ji and Moriah Thomason from New York University School of Medicine, reveals that brain-imaging data from fetuses and infants shows a rapid increase in functional connectivity between brain [...]
  
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• How gross is it to leave a toothbrush exposed in the bathroom?

  22-08-2026 19:19 via popsci.com
  
  You put your toothbrush in your mouth. You store it in your bathroom, near your toilet. If that’s something you’d rather not think about, I understand.In 2015, a grad student at Quinnipiac University found fecal matter on toothbrushes in communal bathrooms, research that was presented at the annual meeting of the American Society for Microbiology. It was certainly attention grabbing, prompting widespread media coverage. But besides driving clicks, and making people feel generally unc
  
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• New Fat Bear Week children’s book turns Katmai’s famous bears into wrestlers

  22-08-2026 16:14 via popsci.com
  
  The bears of Katmai National Park and Preserve in Alaska are gorging on salmon and packing on the pounds ahead of the long winter. With the days growing shorter, it means that the annual Fat Bear Week tournament is just around the corner.A new children’s book, Big Fat Bear Battle!, celebrates the famous bears. Written by Alaskan author Brooke Hartman and illustrated by Can Tugrul, the book follows reporters Goldie Fox and Moose McMahon, as they cover a wild competition between Alaska&rsquo
  
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• 5 tricks you can do on Android but not iOS

  22-08-2026 14:00 via popsci.com
  
  Android and iOS have competed against each other since 2008, and have borrowed a lot from each other over that time—so a lot of the differences that did exist between these two operating systems have now disappeared.However, Android and iOS are still unique in some ways. It’s worth knowing these differences so you can make the most of the handset you have, and perhaps make a more informed decision as to whether you want to switch OS the next time you upgrade your phone.Put two apps o
  
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• Oddly etched Neolithic arrowheads baffle archaeologists in Turkey

  21-08-2026 20:55 via popsci.com
  
  A set of carefully etched obsidian arrowheads stick out among other similar artifacts, but archaeologists in central Turkey have still amassed dozens of them over the last 40 years. Following excavation work at a site in Anatolia known as Tepecik-Çiftlik, researchers from France’s Aix Marseille Université have catalogued and described another 11 examples of the weapon tips in a recently published study in the journal PLOS One. But while 54 similar arrowheads—some crafte
  
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• Neck fans might look goofy, but tests show they work surprisingly well

  21-08-2026 20:07 via popsci.com
  
  Wearable neck fans, the kind that drape around users’ collarbones and shoot short streams of cooling air upward, have existed for the better part of two decades, but have never really taken off due to their unavoidable dork factor. But research recently published in the journal E3S Web of Conferences shows why employers may actually have a strong incentive to push these portable gadgets onto their workforce.In testing, portable neck and face fans performed about as well as bladeless desk f
  
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• Fisherman finds live WWII mine at bottom of Danube River in Slovakia

  21-08-2026 19:27 via popsci.com
  
  Europe’s brutal heatwaves have left the Danube River at historically low water levels. Over the last few weeks alone, residents in Serbia and Hungary discovered World War II artifacts like Nazi motorcycles and sunken ships that resurfaced after remaining submerged for decades.Yet another historic relic has recently been uncovered—this time in Slovakia. But unlike the summer’s previous finds, this one required a bit more finesse to tackle. Near the town of Virt along the souther
  
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• Flock Safety Extends Surveillance Capabilities As Sam Altman Hides In The Shadows

  21-08-2026 17:36 via technocracy.news
  
  Flock Safety received a startup grant from Y Combinator in 2017 when Sam Altman was President. YC bills itself as a high-touch startup accelerator that coaches early founders, connects them with a dense investor and alumni network, and prepares them to raise institutional capital. Altman always picked high-probability disruptive companies. Without Altman, Flock would never have been picked by Andreessen Horowitz for major funding. ⁃ Patrick Wood, Editor. .
  Vehicle surveillance giant F
  
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• Baby raccoon wrestling shenanigans caught on wildlife center camera

  21-08-2026 17:14 via popsci.com
  
  After a busy baby season, some of the raccoons at the New England Wildlife Center in Weymouth, Massachusetts were recently spotted having the time of their lives. The center recently renovated its outdoor raccoon enclosure, with a reinforced perimeter, better enrichment structures, and additional outdoor cameras. The cameras help staff keep an eye on the raccoons without going in in person—and they’ve recently captured “absolute chaos” at the wildlife center. A video show
  
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• Amazon just dropped our favorite Garmin running watches and fitness trackers to their lowest prices ever

  21-08-2026 16:48 via popsci.com
  
  There are plenty of fitness trackers and workout watches out there to choose from, but none of them have the same credibility that Garmin has earned. This has been a particularly…indulgent summer for me, so it’s time to lock in and start tracking some real workouts. Most of the cuts in this Garmin sale on Amazon match Garmin’s own store and REI penny-for-penny, which tells you the money is coming from the company rather than from one retailer clearing shelf space. A handful of
  
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• British man spends $7,000 building a street-legal sports car in his shed

  21-08-2026 16:07 via popsci.com
  
  Looking for a new car in 2026 can feel like a drag. Physical designs often coalesce into middle-of-the-road conformity, while increasingly complex components and additional tech make the more exciting, zippy cars unaffordable for many drivers. What once delivered a jolt of pure excitement now feels like a necessary chore. One particularly peeved British car enthusiast named Robert Ely came up with a simple solution: if carmakers won’t build affordable, fun cars, you just have to build one
  
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• How likely is a Yellowstone ‘supervolcano’ eruption today?

  21-08-2026 15:00 via popsci.com
  
  Picture this: You’re roaming Yellowstone National Park as the ground begins to rumble, pressure builds, and then…KA-BOOM! Goodbye to Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho.The last Yellowstone explosion happened 661,000 years ago, but could it happen again? On our latest episode of Ask Us Anything, editors Sarah Durn and Annie Colbert explore the chances of Yellowstone’s supervolcano erupting today. Let’s just say you shouldn’t cancel your vacation. But that doesn’t mea
  
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• OpenAI’s Two-Week Pause + Jill Lepore on the Threat of the “Artificial State” + Train of Thought

  21-08-2026 13:00 via nytimes.com
  “It is the first time that we know of that a major lab has voluntarily slowed down.”
  
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• New snake species named in honor of Guns N’ Roses guitarist Slash

  20-08-2026 22:09 via popsci.com
  
  Welcome to the jungle, Lielaphis slashi. The newly discovered snake is named after Saul Hudson aka Slash, Guns N’ Roses’ lead guitarist. The snake’s named translates to “Slash’s groundsnake” in English, and honors his lifelong love of reptiles and support for museums and zoos. “As a long time herpephile, I am extremely honored and humbled to have Lielaphis slashi from New Guinea named after me. It is really exciting, I never would have imagined this
  
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• Scientists smash atoms together to create ‘little’ big bangs

  20-08-2026 22:03 via popsci.com
  
  It’s difficult to imagine anything of consequence occurring within a millionth of a second, but one of the most pivotal moments in cosmic history occurred in that miniscule time.. Physicists believe the earliest form of matter in the universe—known as quark-gluon plasma—arrived in this brief blip in time following the big bang about 13.8 billion years ago. This incredibly dense, hot state of matter existed at a moment when the nascent universe was so hot that it prevented the f
  
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• Meet Bucky Dent, one of Katmai’s most innovative fish-finder

  20-08-2026 21:02 via popsci.com
  
  If you’ve followed explore.org’s livestream of the bears at Katmai National Park and Preserve in Alaska this summer, you’ve probably noticed a big bear nicknamed Bucky Dent who is great at catching fish. Officially designated as Bear 164, this roughly seven-year-old adult male is so good at catching fish, he invented a new way to find them as a young subadult bear. Today, the cameras spotted Bucky Dent catching a salmon that looked pretty determined to swim away. Cameras a
  
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• Meet Bucky Dent, one of Katmai’s most innovative bears

  20-08-2026 21:02 via popsci.com
  
  If you’ve followed explore.org’s livestream of the bears at Katmai National Park and Preserve in Alaska this summer, you’ve probably noticed a big bear nicknamed Bucky Dent who is great at catching fish. Officially designated as Bear 164, this roughly seven-year-old adult male is so good at catching fish, he invented a new way to find them as a young subadult bear. Today, the cameras spotted Bucky Dent catching a salmon that looked pretty determined to swim away. Cameras a
  
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• Excessive Air Conditioning Use May Cause Cities to Heat Up — and Passive Cooling Techniques Could Be the Future

  20-08-2026 20:38 via discovermagazine.com
  
  New research reveals how passive cooling techniques are going to be increasingly important to reduce energy use and cool urban areas. Learn more about them. 
  
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• 15,000 years ago, desert dwellers dined on snakes and lizards

  20-08-2026 20:03 via popsci.com
  
  The desert is a harsh environment, even if you’re equipped with the latest tools, protective clothing, and resources. But 15,000 years ago, a group of hunter-gatherers known as the Natufian culture living in the southern Levant did more than eke out an existence. Unlike other prehistoric communities, Natufians abandoned nomadic life across present-day Jordan, Palestine, and Israel for smaller, permanent settlements before they even developed agriculture.A major key to their survival? They
  
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• NASA abandons mission to save Swift Observatory from a fiery death

  20-08-2026 17:31 via popsci.com
  
  NASA engineers have confirmed they can’t spare the historic Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory from a fiery demise, despite their best efforts. In July, mission specialists partnering with Katalyst Space Technologies launched the Link spacecraft with the hopes of capturing the orbital telescope and boosting it into a higher orbit. However,numerous complications forced the team to finally abandon the rescue attempt.“This is not the outcome we were working toward, but it does not change wh
  
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• Quantum Fluctuations Break a Crystal’s Symmetry Rules

  20-08-2026 17:12 via scitechdaily.com
  Electronic fluctuations can act as a resonant bridge between normally separate crystal vibrations, offering a new route to study and control ferroaxial quantum states. Symmetry is a basic rule of the natural world. It explains why some objects appear the same after they are rotated, reflected, or changed in other ways. In materials, symmetry helps [...]
  
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• An India-Israel Corridor Is the Biggest Middle East Story Nobody Is Talking About

  20-08-2026 17:08 via technocracy.news
  
  This is the most astute article about the IMEC Corridor that I have seen, and that from a seasoned policy analyst. It is blunt and thoughtful. There are obstacles to the IMEC Corridor running through Israel, not the least of which is Saudi Arabia digging its heels in. Saudi-Israeli normalization becomes a make-or-break deal for Israel and the difference between huge investment flows and being shut out of world trade altogether. ⁃ Patrick Wood, Editor.About a month before the Oct. 7, 2023,
  
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• 11 stunning images celebrating Earth’s life—and the scientists who study it

  20-08-2026 17:00 via popsci.com
  
  An expressive little orange-tailed marsh dart damselfly (Ceriagrion cerinorubellum) peering through a hole in a leaf is the winner of the 2026 BMC Ecology and Evolution and BMC Zoology image competition.Since 2023, the annual competition highlights the beauty and diversity of life on Earth, while celebrating the researchers working to understand and protect the natural world. The judges selected an overall winning image and a runner-up, in addition to winners and runners-up in three categories:
  
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• Researchers Discover a Mysterious New Frog Species in the Amazon

  20-08-2026 16:37 via scitechdaily.com
  A small frog living in a flooded corner of the Amazon has turned out to be something scientists had never formally recognized before. Some species hide in remote places. Others hide in plain sight. In the western Brazilian Amazon, scientists have identified a new frog species, Adenomera varcena, living in forests that are seasonally submerged [...]
  
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• Scientists Spotted This Mysterious Congo Monkey 18 Years Ago – Now They Finally Know What It Is

  20-08-2026 16:02 via scitechdaily.com
  A newly identified Congo monkey represents an ancient evolutionary lineage that may already be endangered. A partly hidden monkey appeared in a photograph taken deep in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in 2008. Researchers saw the animal again a decade later, this time clearly enough to begin investigating whether it represented something science had [...]
  
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• Long-lost letter reveals bitter struggle between two rival popes

  20-08-2026 15:01 via popsci.com
  
  In 1066, the Battle of Hastings saw William the Conqueror (and Duke of Normandy), defeat England’s King Harold II. The famous Norman invasion of England came with the blessing of Pope Alexander II—but why? According to a medieval historian at the University of East Anglia (UEA) in England, Pope Alexander had his own bone to pick with King Harold. The Battle of Hastings was, simply put, a fight for the English throne. When King Edward the Confessor died on January 5, 1066, he cho
  
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• Why Does an Irregular Heartbeat Strike 40 Years Early in Some People?

  20-08-2026 13:44 via scitechdaily.com
  A hidden genetic threat may trigger atrial fibrillation decades early, raising the risk of stroke before symptoms appear. Atrial fibrillation (AFib) occurs when chaotic electrical signals cause the heart’s upper chambers to beat irregularly and out of sync with the lower chambers. Blood can then collect inside the heart, creating clots that may travel to [...]
  
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• Scientists Reveal How ADHD Could Fuel Creative Thinking

  20-08-2026 13:09 via scitechdaily.com
  ADHD-related attention patterns may become a source of creativity and focus when supported through structured creative expression. How can ADHD create serious everyday challenges for millions of people while also appearing among highly successful creative figures such as Justin Timberlake and Simone Biles? New research from Constructor University neuroscientist Dr. Radwa Khalil, published in iScience, [...]
  
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• Scientists Find a Surprising Diabetes-Fighting Compound in Turmeric

  20-08-2026 12:34 via scitechdaily.com
  Curcumin improved blood vessel health in diabetic rats, but human benefits still need to be tested. For people with Type 1 diabetes, controlling blood sugar is only part of the challenge. Over time, persistently elevated glucose can damage blood vessels, helping drive a higher risk of cardiovascular disease even when insulin therapy is carefully managed. [...]
  
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• Sennheiser’s new MOMENTUM True Wireless 5 earbuds bring refined acoustics and replaceable batteries to your pocket

  20-08-2026 12:00 via popsci.com
  
  Back in January 2025, we visited the Sennheiser factory and Audiophile Experience Center in Tullamore, Ireland, where we explored what goes into headphones that transport us emotionally. Having traveled for that Sennheiser sound, we can say we’re equally excited to travel with that Sennheiser sound. So we’re excited that Sennheiser’s natural, nuanced sonic signature and intelligent features first introduced earlier this year in the MOMENTUM 5 Wireless headphones have come to an
  
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