Dental plaque, which hardens into tartar, or calculus, is especially important when it comes to our dental health—and luckily for archaeologists, it’s the only part of your body that fossilizes while you’re still alive, says Warinner. Because of this, it can lend fascinating glimpses into our past. “It builds up like rings of a tree,” she says, establishing a permanent record of the bacteria that have lived in your mouth, as well as some environmental exposures (in artists, for example, “we sometimes find pigments that they were using”)....

GA Tech professor Ronald Arkin and his grad students programmed a similar strategy into some wheeled robots, and the tactic worked–the decepticon deceiving robot lured a “predator” to false locations. This could have great practical value in military situations, the researchers say. Say a small wheeled robot is guarding an ammunition cache, for instance. It can perceive a threat from a visitor–robot or otherwise–and put on a little deceptive show....

The findings come at the same time the Food and Drug Administration is considering adding sesame to the list of allergens required by law to be disclosed on food labels. The agency issued a request for information in October of 2018, and have been gathering information from clinicians and researchers. The new study, published this week in the Journal of the American Medical Association, wasn’t directly spurred by the FDA’s request, but the timing worked out, says study author Ruchi Gupta, director of the science and outcomes of allergy and asthma research program at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine....

While non-communicable conditions like heart disease and stroke are the greatest killers of humans worldwide, infectious diseases like tuberculosis, MRSA, and malaria are becoming more resistant to the medications used to treat them. The target of mostly effective treatment campaigns over the past century, these ailments have largely been on the decline—but that could change. Not only can these bacteria, fungi, parasites, and other microorganisms affect otherwise healthy humans, but they’re also a concern for those undergoing medical procedures like organ transplants, chemotherapy, and major surgeries....

Not anymore. Apple is putting the iTunes program out to pasture. Wall Street Journal writer Joanna Stern even penned an obituary for it, referring to the program’s early days as “a CD owner’s best friend.” (Before the iTunes Store existed, people used the program to rip and burn music from or onto compact discs, or transfer it to an iPod.) The New York Times released its own eulogy for the software....

The timing is less than ideal for the company, which is unveiling its new iPhones today in a keynote event. Usually, when malicious code worms its way into a device, it sends suspicious links through text or email, trying to get the users to click on it through phishing. But this particular spyware, called Pegasus, could infiltrate Apple devices without setting off any flags that made the user aware of its presence through a technique called a “zero click remote exploit....

Admittedly, most of our archive’s DIY projects are wildly eccentric, even impractical, but the point is that they’re fun to make. Who else but a tinkerer would build a crossbow in the year 1940? Who else would pave their own badminton court when they could hire the labor? Who else would think to build a scooter out of wood? The beauty of DIY features is that they introduce readers to unlikely projects....

The study started with something unexpected. Back in 2004, researchers observed phocine distemper virus—a highly contagious disease related to measles and canine distemper—in a population of North Pacific sea otters. Until that moment, says marine animal health researcher Tracey Goldstein, she and her team thought PDV was confined to the Atlantic. But they knew a population of North Atlantic harbor seals had suffered an outbreak two years earlier, and suspected there might be a connection....

What might seem a little scarier is the idea of taking a regular ol’ aircraft like a King Air—a two-engine turboprop—and converting it to fly totally autonomously, with no humans on board. A new outfit called Merlin Labs has announced a plan to do just that with Virginia-based company Dynamic Aviation. Merlin has been testing their system in the Mojave Desert since 2019, albeit with a safety pilot on the plane....

In a city that’s been layering on top of itself for nearly 3,000 years, there’s enough to keep someone like Rea, 64, busy around the clock. She’s the ­archaeological superintendent of the Colosseum, where she oversees preservation and curates exhibits. And, as the scientific director of the Metro C project, an effort to extend Rome’s outdated subway, Rea safeguards treasures that might otherwise be lost. “Some moments are for digging, some are for building, some are for teamwork,” she says....

At some point, almost every human has experienced daydreaming. It often happens in the late afternoon slump when thoughts of relaxing on the beach or curling up on your living room couch with a good movie are far more pleasing than looking at spreadsheets or meeting your deadlines. And while daydreaming almost certainly gets a bad rap for snatching up our productivity, the act itself might actually be good for our brains....

If all goes according to plan on Saturday—the new launch date for a high-profile mission—two NASA astronauts will blast off on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Florida, bound for the International Space Station (ISS). It will be the first crewed launch from US soil since 2011, when the Space Shuttle orbiter made its last flight. When the Shuttle made its debut on the Kennedy Space Center launchpad in 1981, it had two astronauts on board....

Over the past 20 or so years, scientists have confirmed the existence of nearly 3,800 exoplanets, or planets around other stars. However, although nearly 200 moons are known to orbit planets in our solar system—Jupiter alone has at least 79—up to now researchers had not yet detected any moons around exoplanets. Their discovery was published today in Science Advances. To look for such “exomoons,” astronomers from Columbia University examined data from NASA’s Kepler space telescope on 284 transiting planets—worlds that passed between their stars and the observatory, resulting in a brief dimming of the light of those stars....

In comparison to what we know about other aspects of Earth’s atmosphere, scientists still know relatively little about how clouds form. Now, an international group led by researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder has found that iodine—a naturally occurring chemical element—contributes to increased cloud cover and eats away at the ozone layer, the thin part of Earth’s atmosphere that absorbs nearly all of the sun’s harmful ultraviolet rays. Their research, published November 14 in the journal Nature Chemistry, details a new link between sources of iodine, how they’re emitted into the atmosphere, and how it helps clouds form and grow....

What is the Audeze Penrose wireless planar-magnetic headset? Planar-magnetic headphones like the Audeze Penrose X work differently than the typical over-the-ear ’phones you’re probably used to, which rely on cone-shaped drivers made of paper, plastic, or metal. This setup can produce some truly wonderful sounds but also experience distortion when that cone doesn’t move in perfect harmony. Audeze’s planar-magnetic headphones, however, employ massive, flat, extremely thin diaphragms and powerful magnet arrays that can move large amounts of air without malforming, which prevents the sound from breaking up and sounding, well, crappy....

You can’t necessarily stop companies from closing the shutters on their creations, but you can at least mitigate the damage and prepare for the worst. If you do, when something you’ve come to rely on does close down, the impact isn’t quite as great. Find a way to extract all your data Export options should probably be one of the first features you check for when you’re signing up for a new service—it’s much easier to endure the death of an app if you can send your data somewhere else before it shuts down....

For Mac fanatics: Apple Logic Pro XFor pro studio compatibility: Avid Pro ToolsFor electronic producers: Ableton Live 11For versatile musicians: PreSonus Studio One 5 ProfessionalFor beat makers: Image Line FL Studio 20 Producer EditionFor starving artists: Cockos Reaper 6 How we chose the best DAWs I have tested and written about audio hardware and software professionally for almost 20 years with outlets such as Electronic Musician, MusicTech, Mix, and DJTechTools. As a frustrated musician, I regularly use several DAWs; for example, I’ve been working with Ableton Live since its version 1....

Best treat-tossing camera: Furbo 360-Degree Dog CameraBest upgrade: Petcube Cam Pet Monitoring CameraBest design: Nooie Pet Camera 2KBest high-end: eufy Pet Dog CameraBest multi-camera system: YI 2pc Security Home CameraBest wall-mounted: Petcube Bites 2 LiteBest budget: Wansview Baby Monitor Camera How we selected the best dog cameras When selecting the best dog cameras, we compared over 50 products to select only those that offered high-quality features like night vision, 1080p camera quality, smart alerts, and other additional functions such as treat-tossing for the ever-so-slightly spoiled pup....

You may have seen “HDMI 2.1” and tensed up at the prospect of yet another changing technical standard with which to keep up. Don’t worry—it’s not as complicated as it seems. We’re here to help make sure you can find the best HDMI cable to suit your particular audio-visual needs. How we picked the best HDMI cables HDMI cables are very straightforward and inexpensive. There’s one stat you need to worry about: the speed....

This is your classic mini fridge—3.2 cubic feet with an adjustable thermostat. It features a small freezer compartment at the top, allowing you to make ice for your beverages. This fridge is great for storing small snacks along with canned drinks and smaller bottles. It has a can holder along the door for stacking cans in a space efficient way. The shelves are removable should you need to refrigerate larger items, and this also makes the fridge easier to clean....