Over the past two weeks, over 408 earthquakes have rattled the town of San Ramon, California. That’s a little over an earthquake every hour, and sets a record for the area, beating out a 2003 swarm which lasted for a month and had 120 earthquakes. It’s an impressive accomplishment, but San Ramon has a long way to go if it wants to beat seismic heavyweights like Yellowstone National Park, which recorded 3,000 earthquakes over 3 months in 1985....

The Alpha Z PRO 4K + Flying Fox 4K Wide-Angle Dual-Camera Drone Bundle brings not one but two of the best-selling drones for the price of one. They’re both outfitted with 4K cameras and features galore — sure to become a treasured addition to your gadget collection or an excellent gift for the drone enthusiast in your life. Ready for any adventurer who wants to view the world from above, The Alpha Z PRO Ultra HD Dual Camera Drone captures excellent images and video with its 4K wide-angle front camera and 720p bottom camera....

Officially dubbed photomicrography, the practice of taking pictures through lab-bench instruments has taken off in the past few decades. The captures are often taken candidly: by a medical expert examining a bacterial culture or a science student trying to suss a water sample. Regardless, they’re worthy of recognition, which is exactly what the Nikon Small World in Motion competition aims to do. Now in its ninth year, the annual award identifies astounding videos and time-lapses taken through a microscopic perspective....

Home Is Where The Voice Search Is Home provides a house for Google’s aptly-named Google Assistant. Introduced alongside the company’s chat app Allo, the Assistant received an encore with the release of Google’s Pixel. But what exactly can it do? For now, neither assistant will help you send a text or place a phone call, but that functionality is “a feature the team is working on” for Home, Google tells Popular Science....

The companies will be submitting data from their Phase 3 trials for their two-dose regimen with shots spaced three weeks apart. These doses demonstrate 58 percent efficacy against any signs of symptomatic COVID-19, they report, and 100 percent efficacy against severe COVID-19 disease and hospitalizations. The companies will also be submitting data from their booster trials, to show how their shot can increase immunity in individuals regardless of their initial vaccine types....

What do a hipster chandelier, an amateur telescope, and a living-room jet engine have in common? You can make each one with an ordinary pie tin! Click here to enter the gallery A version of this article originally appeared January 23, 2013.

Fall and spring are great times to plant milkweed, and even though this plant has an arguably undeserved bad rap amongst pet owners, there are ways you can incorporate it into your garden safely. Any seemingly inhospitable nook, including side yards, alleyways, or patios, can be home to milkweed—even if it’s surrounded by hardscapes like cement slabs. And your neighborhood’s furry residents shouldn’t worry if there are no walls or fencing around the area....

And you know what? You’re right. So this time around, the HHS decided to change tacks. Yes, they’re going to release information about exactly how much physical activity every American should get because that’s their job: to improve the health of our citizens. But for the same reason, they decided to emphasize something that’s actually been embedded in the guidelines for the last decade. More physical activity is better, yes, but any activity is better than none....

The division’s best-known project to date is ARkStorm, a realistic scenario of a California-wide meteorological disaster that would cause floods, mudslides, and an estimated $725 billion in damage. While it sounds Biblical in nature (and you would need an ark to ride it out), the name stands for “atmospheric river 1,000,” an unusually intense version of the winding, water-dense currents that were pummeling California when Cox spoke with me from his office in Sacramento....

But store-bought snacks and bars are expensive, and often contain huge amounts of sugar or preservatives that can seem excessive, even to someone walking for three to four hours straight. And then there’s the wrapping. Each snack is individually packaged to make it easier to transport, but ironically, this just means more trash for you to carry around until you find a garbage can. Making your own trail snacks, though, is much better....

In humans and all other mammals, gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) spurs the development of eggs and sperm. In this study, the researchers tested a shot that contains a small amount of DNA that enables muscle cells to produce special antibodies that attack GnRH. In the study, the researchers gave the shots to mice; two months later, after their bodies had started producing enough antibodies, the mice were completely infertile. And unlike similar methods that use the immune system to create these antibodies, this method could work for 10 years or more in animals without the need for booster shots, since muscle cells are some of the longest-lived in the body....

Benítez is a cosmologist at the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia in Spain. During his 20-year career, he has published papers on both the most distant known supernova and the closest one, and he was a core member of the ALHAMBRA survey of galaxies. Now, he is on a mission to define dark energy (like hundreds of other astronomers around the world) and has launched a project called J-PAS to do it....

The Basics Winter tires, marked with a snowflake symbol, are made with special low temperature resiliant rubber compounds and have deep treads that grip unplowed snow, ice and other inclement conditions under your wheels. All-season tires, regardless of being branded with M+S for Mud and Snow, might not be suitable in heavy snow. Robert Abram, product planning manager at Yokohama Tire Corporation describes the difference: “The compounding and tread designs for winter tires are altered from traditional all-season tires to maximize grip....

On March 4, eight days into its invasion of Ukraine, the Russian Ministry of Defense tweeted a video purporting to show a Russian-made Orion drone conducting an air strike against enemies inside the Donetsk region. Then there’s drone use by the other side: A Turkish-built drone that has become a sort of mechanical folk hero. In October 2021, Ukraine’s military used Bayraktar drones to attack separatists in the Donetsk region....

Halfway through training for my first marathon, I lost my period. I wasn’t that surprised. It had happened before, once at the beginning of college and again in my early 20s. Each came at a time when I increased my athletic endeavors, but what surprised me most were the seesawing opinions of the medical professionals I told: One was extremely concerned, another not at all, and the third gave me the answer that inspired this article: “I don’t think we really know what the effects are yet....

Clearly grasping the true cultural significance of Star Wars, our writer at the time, William J. Hawkins, did the sensible thing and gave the film only the scarcest of single mentions in a news blurb about Dolby theater audio (buried below a lengthier discussion of Barbra Streisand’s A Star Is Born, natch). We can only hope the Popular Science staff 38 years from now will look upon the many Star Wars articles published this year in the run-up to The Force Awakens premiere and wonder why we didn’t spend more time analyzing Streisand’s later career moves....

Stats Time: 2 hoursCost: $95Difficulty: Medium Tools Soldering ironPliersWire cutter Materials All materials can be ordered from SparkFun Electronics. Arduino Pro Mini 328 – 3.3V/8 MHz (DEV-11114)PIR motion sensor (SEN-08630)Hookup wire (PRT-08022)Two 1K resistors (COM-08980)Humidity and temperature sensor – RHT03 (SEN-10167)5V Step-Up Breakout – NCP1402 (PRT-10968)LiPo Charger Basic – Micro-USB (PRT-10217)Ambient Light Sensor Breakout – TEMT6000 (BOB-08688)MEMS Microphone Breakout – INMP401 (BOB-09868)Micro OLED Breakout (LCD-13003)Polymer Lithium-Ion Battery – 1,000 mAh (PRT-00339)Pi Tin for the Raspberry Pi – White (PRT-11979)...

Using items you probably already have in your kitchen, you can easily get rid of that ugly tarnish—just in time to show off your sparkling trinkets under the spring and summer sun. This is where sterling silver comes in—it’s 92.5 percent pure silver and 7.5 percent copper, which makes it stronger and more durable. If that number seems familiar, it’s because it’s common to find “925” engraved somewhere on a piece of sterling silver jewelry to denote the high quality of the metal....

If you want to instantly improve your digital life, take a sticky note, write “delete browsing history” on it, and place it near your computer so you never forget it. Web browsers keep track of your past activity because it comes in handy if you want to find a funny article again, return to your favorite photo of the kids, or if you want to restore a tab you accidentally closed....

Individual Instagram posts have been embeddable for a while now, so this ability is just an expansion of the site’s overall shareability. Instagram head Adam Mosseri announced the feature among a couple others in a video on December 16. He noted that profile embeds are currently only available for users in the US, but the company said in a blog post that it would be looking to include other countries “soon....