Zika, the mosquito-borne virus that has spread throughout the Americas in an outbreak that started in April 2015, has been linked to microcephaly, a severe birth defect that causes children to be born with abnormally small heads that can inhibit their development. Since there’s no treatment for Zika and the connection to microcephaly is still poorly understood, public health officials in several of the countries most affected by the outbreak have encouraged women to simply not get pregnant....

This general purpose light is a powerful, durable aluminum tool you’ll have for years. At almost a foot in length, it’s not the kind of thing you want to stash in your handbag, but it’s great to pack for a camping trip or to take with you into the dark corners of your basement. It’s water resistant, with up to 625 lumens of brightness and a beam distance of over 1300 feet....

Today President Obama is announcing a step forward in government’s role in the nation’s cybersecurity, requesting an additional $3.1 billion from Congress to update the nation’s “legacy IT that is difficult to secure and expensive to maintain,” referring to the dated systems used in government computing The Obama administration is calling this the “Information Technology Modernization Fund,” and it’s just one piece of a larger Cybersecurity National Action Plan. Overall, the White House wants to see $19 billion dedicated to improving cybersecurity nationwide for fiscal year 2017, which would be more than a 30 percent increase in cybersecurity spending from the 2016 budget....

Doctors hadn’t given him a satisfying answer about his recurring bloody diarrhea and other gut troubles. But Koop had learned on Facebook that he could test his gut microbiome—the community of bacteria and other organisms living in his gastrointestinal tract—to look for problems. Koop ordered a test from a German laboratory called Medivere. The results said his gut microbes were imbalanced, which was something he thought he could treat. Soon he would be attempting to correct this imbalance by chauffeuring a friend’s fresh stool samples home to implant up his own colon....

Today, BPR has announced that a project done by 21st Century Medicine and led by Robert McIntyre, a recent graduate of MIT, has won the prize and brought the five-year race to a successful end. The team was awarded $26,735 for their work. McIntyre and his team figured out how to preserve the brain’s circuitry by using strong chemicals to first fixate or suspend the neurons and synapses, and then chilling them to extremely cold temperatures....

The study predicted an amenable climate could prompt some of these new cases within regions not previously regarded as vulnerable, including the United States. These viruses can result in volatile outbreaks when conditions are right, as was the case with Zika. “We’ve known about Zika since 1947, and we watched it slowly spread around the world until 2015, when it arrived in Brazil and suddenly we had an explosive epidemic on our hands,” Carlson said....

There was no shortage of impassioned debate when we gathered to anoint the top 25 innovations in the history of Best of What’s New. But a dozen editors locked in a room can only get you so far. How do you rank the best of the best – the iPhone versus the Large Hadron Collider, the TiVo versus the Chunnel? How do you name the one product that has affected more, lasting change than all others?...

Drone delivery offers a chance to overcome the innate difficulties of regular resupply over difficult terrain, offering lessons for civilian and military logistics alike. In a release, the country’s postal service, the Russian Post, said it expects the use of drones along such routes to double the speed of delivery, increase the volume of freight traffic by 10, and at the same time reduce the cost of such logistics by half....

But having a complete collection also presents a curse: unbearable cable clutter. Until Apple finds a way to juice up all your devices without having to plug in a single wire, you have to make do with tethering each one to a cable and outlet. Unless, of course, you decide to leverage the power of wireless charging and use something like the OMNIA Q5 power station to refuel the gadgets you hold dear....

This Champion Power Equipment generator is 50% quieter and 20% lighter than other 3500-watt generators, with enough oomph to power your fridge and home lighting in a power outage. You can also use it for camping or in your RV thanks to its built-in 120V 30A RV power outlet, plus two 120V 20A household outlets and two USB ports to charge your phone, laptop, or other devices. Duel-fuel means it can be powered by gas or propane, with a switch of a dial changing between the two....

Ninja, which is always in the mix of the best blenders on the market, has mastered the art of the multifunction machine. The Ninja Foodi, which retails for $140, is part of that legacy, with 3-in-1 capabilities including blending, food processing, and dough mixing—in case you’re still making bread and your sourdough starter hasn’t crossed the rainbow bridge. The variable speed control gives you customized chopping and mixing. However, six preset buttons take the guesswork out of it....

But just because a beloved jacket or tent has seen better days doesn’t mean it should go in the trash. In fact, you can often repurpose your old gear by using it to create something new. This has the simultaneous benefits of giving new life to a valuable item, saving you cash, and keeping perfectly usable materials out of the landfill. Good for you, your wallet, and the environment New gear is expensive, and so are the materials to make your own....

‘Oumuamua only made a brief visit, but has periodically popped back into the news as researchers puzzle over their scant available data to determine its make-up and origins. The newer object, dubbed C/2019 Q4 (Borisov), should prove easier to investigate. Borisov will continue to approach the sun until early December before it starts the outbound leg of its journey. That gives us plenty of time to keep gathering data. First spotted by astronomer Gennady Borisov at the MARGO observatory in Nauchnij, Crimea on August 30th, C/2019 Q4 showed itself off in more detail last week....

Note: this article was originally published April 3, and has been updated to include more current projections and information In the midst of a crisis, everyone wants to know when it’s going to be over. That’s especially true right now, as many of us are sheltering in our homes to flatten the COVID-19 curve, and hoping things are at least moving in the right direction. So where are we in the course of this global pandemic?...

His plan has the ring of truth. Scientists and policymakers continue to warn about water shortages all across the United States and the world. Yet both President-elect Obama and Senator McCain were notably brief on how they might deal with the growing disconnect between water policy and actual water use. No details on exactly what Greene has in mind, but I’d wager that he’ll have his hands full fending off a vengeful British super spy who’s sore over the ending of Casino Royale....

There is also the fact that “the lifetime of leaves is limited,” he added. “If leaves emerge earlier, they will also die earlier and hence cannot do photosynthesis in late summer.” Americans can see this process is already underway. “These changes do not happen at remote places, but in our backyards,” Buermann said, pointing to declining summer plant growth in the western United States. The scientists’ findings call into question existing climate models they believe overestimate the amount of carbon that plants absorb due to early growth, meaning the world’s climate is in an even more critical state than previously thought, they said....

What is it? The top of the Osmo Pocket is a camera, similar to what you’d find on one of DJI’s drones. It shoots 4K and captures still images with various shooting modes like time lapse. The camera is integrated onto a three-axis gimbal, which is basically a robotic cradle that uses information from internal orientation sensors to detect camera movement and counteract it by instantly adjusting to keep things steady....

Bring the creature comforts of your kitchen to the great outdoors with the Camp Chef Explorer camp stove, on sale $99.98, down from its $149.99 regular price. It comes with a three-foot hose and regulator to hook up to a propane tank, and packs 30,000 British Thermal Units (BTU) of power. Detachable steel legs and a three-sided windscreen allow you to cook anywhere and in most weather conditions. And, this stove is compatible with most 14-inch Camp Chef accessories to explore everything the outdoor cooking world has to offer....

Hendrik Hamann, a physical analytics manager at IBM, says the system uses historical weather records and machine learning plus real-time sensors on the vehicle – which is named Aurum, by the way – to create the most accurate forecast of sunny conditions, which power the car. The precise forecasts allow the UM team to make decisions for power management. If the skies are clear late in the afternoon and predicted to be clear again in the morning, maybe they’ll push a little harder....

The Kepler Space Telescope, which has helped astronomers confirm almost 3,000 exoplanets, retired in 2018. But the trove of data it collected during its nine-year tenure in space still holds secrets for astronomers to uncover, such as these new exoplanet candidates. Rogue exoplanets are exceptionally hard to detect because they do not have the benefit of a nearby star to illuminate them. Researchers circumvented that obstacle by looking for young planets, just a few million years old, that were still hot enough to glow....