By giving people an elevated view of the surrounding landscape, these watchtowers played an important role in history. Military structures allowed soldiers to spot enemies while they were still a long way off; fire lookouts raised spotters above the treetops so they could locate smoke and flames. And in the modern world, aircraft control towers provide a clear view of aviation activity on the ground and in the air. You don’t need a lofty purpose in order to build your own watchtower....

1. Use airplane mode One of the most effective ways to charge your phone quickly is to limit the amount of power it draws while it charges. And one of the best ways to do that is to hit the airplane mode button as soon as you plug it in. On the most hectic days, however, charging time will be at a minimum. If you’re running from place to place, for example, you may only have five minutes or so to plug in your phone before you have to leave your car or move away from the outlet you’re using....

Yes, we know—your screen is gross. Before you give into your impulses and wipe your screen with whatever you have at hand, let us stop you right there. Your display is way more delicate than you think, and if you want it to last a long time in optimal conditions, you’ll need to treat it with proper love and care. The good news is that cleaning a computer screen is more simple than you think....

If you’re the proud parent of a baby or share your home with a four-legged friend, you may be excited to enjoy a day of sunny weather and outdoor activity with them. But you may not be as thrilled about nighttime, when the loud explosions of colorful fireworks threaten your toddler’s precious sleep or your pet’s mental sanity. Preparedness is key to ensure all members of your family can enjoy firework season....

Most phones have a built-in Night Mode, but this doesn’t actually change the brightness. Instead, it adjusts the color temperature: Whites appear “redder” at night, blocking the blue light that can wreck your sleep. This is great for using your phone in the evening, but won’t soothe the pain of a too-bright screen in a too-dark room. For that, you’ll need a different set of tools. While you can’t technically dim the backlight lower than the device allows, these software solutions add a black filter over the image on your phone....

With some quick research, I found an alternative: virtual personal training. If the price of a single training session at your gym is keeping you from tackling your fitness goals, you might want to try out one of the many personal training apps or digital platforms on the market. While companies like Peloton feature large video libraries of classes online, virtual personal training platforms are different because they usually offer live one-on-one time with a trainer....

Even if you can’t relate, chances are someone around you still feels unprepared to go back to normal. Learning how to help them feel better in all this uncertainty can make this transition easier on everyone. That’s anxiety. “Anxiety can be a signal that something is important to you, and if you’re trying to get rid of anxiety entirely, dismissing or minimizing it can be unhelpful,” he says. Fear and anxiety evolved as a way to draw attention to potentially dangerous situations, but it becomes a disorder when it begins disrupting your day-to-day life....

This story has been updated. It was originally published on May 10, 2018. Summer is coming. And many parts of the country have already experienced days that encroach on the line between a lovely spring evening and one that’s so uncomfortably hot it makes you want to stand under a cold shower indefinitely. When those days come, every second you spend outside feels like a dehydrating walk through the sauna....

The problem with how people pack One bag travel is wonderful… in theory. It works great for short trips, but as you stay longer, the inconveniences add up. You’ve essentially got two options: pack really light—one spare set of clothes, your phone charger, and not a whole lot else in a small bag that’s easy to carry—or bring as much as you can fit in a single backpack that’s uncomfortably heavy to carry around all day....

It’s all about what you’ll move and how often If you’re only carrying a gym bag and a laptop from Monday to Friday, you don’t need to buy a trailer. And if you plan on bringing your three corgis along for the occasional weekend ride, trying to fit them all in a front basket—as cute as that might look—is just absurd. Let alone unsafe. The volume and weight of your cargo will determine what kind of gear you’ll need, and how often you have to carry it will determine how versatile you’ll need that rig to be....

For many of us, the humble text message remains an essential mode of communication. But while cloud-based services can back up our emails and social media posts when we lose an old phone or switch to a new one, our SMS (Short Message Service) and MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service) histories tend to disappear. You’ve probably got some precious memories and a few important nuggets of information tied up in your text message conversations....

One way to spend less time in the kitchen is by meal prepping, which at its core is making all or part of a meal in advance so that it’s easier and faster to cook when you need it. There are different approaches you can take—from making one or two recipes at a time to making everything you’ll eat for a month at once. It can be as simple or as elaborate as you want it to be....

The Hubble Space Telescope took new observations of the monster comet, C/2014 UN271, also called the Bernardinelli-Bernstein comet after its discoverers, Pedro Bernardinelli and Gary Bernstein. The comet was first observed in November 2010, when it was about as far away as Neptune, in the outer reaches of our solar system. Since then, astronomers have been trying to determine its true size and trajectory. The team that just confirmed the comet’s size used the Hubble to take five photos of it on January 8, 2022....

In August, NASA invited me and a few other reporters to get a last look at the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft before it embarks on its 1.2 billion mile journey to the asteroid Bennu. In the days leading up to the visit in the clean room at Kennedy Space Center, the space agency dropped quite a few warnings into my inbox about nylon–of which, I’ll admit, my knowledge does not extend far beyond seeing it written on my clothing tags....

It gets better; it is a makeover, after all. The new edition of the 460-lb rickshaw has a studier frame and better seats. It also gets a technological upgrade. The rickshaw comes with an FM radio, and a cell-phone charger. It may not have all the bells and whistles associated with the latest luxury sports car, but given that there are eight million cycle-rickshaws in India, the green upgrade could significantly reduce the country’s traffic woes....

He’s a bit muddled, but that’s not his fault. Few new neurons are being born inside his itty-bitty brain. The cells that once exuberantly branched, sending lush offshoots to interweave and connect with others, are now sparse and barren. This Lego test indirectly measures those physical changes by monitoring his behavior. When mice of a certain age become forgetful, they spend more time checking out little trinkets they’ve seen before—objects that should warrant only a quick “Oh yeah, that thing again” glance....

Each of the cars revealed are electric-drive vehicles, one of which is an all-electric sports car with more than just a visual connection to the Tesla Roadster. It’s called the Dodge EV, and by the looks of it, Dodge has appropriated the body and chassis of the Lotus Europa, a mid-engine GT car not sold in the U.S. Chrysler isn’t discussing where it got the rolling stock, but it is talking about the drive system....

After reviewing the targets of interest from NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, the team from Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Maryland honed in on hints of the exoplanet’s existence with JWST. With only two transit observations (when an exoplanet passes in front of its moon), JWST’s Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) captured the distant celestial body clearly. “There is no question that it’s there. Webb’s pristine data validate it,” said Jacob Lustig-Yaeger, an astronomer and astrobiologist at APL, in a statement....

The equipment the airlines were using in both crashes—Lion Air Flight 610 and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302—was a 737 MAX 8. While investigations are ongoing, and it is too soon to know if their causes were the same, some see a resemblance between the two disasters, as The New York Times and others have reported. The FAA itself has said it sees “similarities.” Even before the crash in Ethiopia, Boeing had been working on a software update for these aircraft....