That’s why a nifty tool like the Scanmarker Air was invented. All you need to do is slide the handheld scanning pen across a line of printed text, and the text will automatically appear on the screen of your device. It’s like magic, and for a limited time, you can grab one on sale for 20 percent off. With the text to speech feature, it can also read the text back to you in real-time as it scans, so you also have your personal pocket-sized narrator....

FYI: What Is Deer Antler Spray, And Why Would A Football Player Use It? A Field Guide To Caffeinating Yourself Into Oblivion [Infographic] Family’s Pet Tortoise Found Alive, After 30 Years, In Locked Storeroom The Genius Who Plays For A Living And don’t forget to check out our other favorite stories of the week: Popular Science Is Building The Telepresent Robotic Boss Of The FutureOne Small Pawprint: Meet The Astro-Animals That Went Before Iran’s Space MonkeyMercedes’ New Safety Tech Aims To End Wrong-Way DrivingFYI: Do Men Really Fall Apart When A Female Soldier Gets Killed?...

If accounts continue to post similar content violating the guidelines, the company may instate a 24-hour “timeout” period in which their ability to comment is disabled. While yesterday’s update doesn’t indicate what will occur if consistent or repeat offenders ignore the penalties, YouTube’s existing community guidelines page lists a policy that bans channels if they violate the site’s rules three times within 90 days. According to YouTube, recent limited testing indicates that the combination of warnings and timeouts reduce the overall likelihood of users posting toxic content again....

In the video, the eagles appear to snag the quadcopter on its body between the rotors, which minimizes risk to the bird. That’s deeply important if birds are to be used for anti-drone work. In 2014, I spoke to several falconers about the mere possibility of training birds to attack drones, and while they all agreed it could be done, they were deeply skeptical that it could be done in a way that respected the safety of the bird....

Since laughter is a normal part of human dialogue, they reasoned, it might be useful to see how people respond to chatty robots with whom they can also share a chuckle. Their findings were published last week in the journal Frontiers in Robotics and AI. Artificial intelligence is good at logic, but laughing? Not so much. To start, researchers recognized that there are different reasons behind why people laugh—and that makes matters more complicated....

These macabre yet cute toys are designed with mouse-shaped “feeder skins” for tactile mousiness but are hollow on the inside to protect you from the horror of your cat playing with their (still alive) food. Fill them with dry cat kibble and hide them around your house to make mealtime last longer and stimulate their tiny feline brains. This set of three comes with a BPA-free trainer body with extra dispensing holes, three machine-washable feeder skins, and three regular bodies....

Nonetheless, in its continuing efforts to win back customer trust, Uber has announced a partnership with security behemoth ADT as part of its safety toolkit revamp. With a new “Live Help” feature, users can now get in contact with one of ADT’s safety agents 24/7 via phone call or text for issues that may not initially require dialing 911. The ADT employee will remain in touch with the rider until they reach their destination, and can call 911 for them if the situation worsens....

Now, in the face of some of the worst outbreaks the world has seen in recent years, Danish researchers have published one of the largest studies of autism and MMR to date. Its finding should come as no surprise: there’s no link. The results, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, are the result of following 657,461 children born between 1999 and 2010. Researchers followed up with those children starting at one year of age and continued through August 31, 2013....

In the study released online in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Berkeley scientists honed in on how I3C inhibits elastase, an enzyme which at high levels in breast cancer cells reduces the effectiveness of cancer-fighting chemotherapy and endocrine treatments. They found that I3C prevents elastase from shortening cyclin E, a cellular chemical that controls the cell cycle. At the moment, I3C is a supplement used as a treatment option for non-malignant tumors of the larynx....

In it you can see the crew capsule arcing upward some 2,307 feet from a simulated launch vehicle as it travels another 1,630 feet laterally downrange, ensuring that in the case of an actual ascent emergency it not only separates from a malfunctioning rocket but also gets out of its way as well. It then safely parachutes back to down to the West Texas desert floor. The Pad Escape system is a key part of Blue Origin’s spaceflight scheme, which aims to field a completely reusable manned spacecraft as part of NASA’S Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) program....

The new species, now named Ca. Thiomargarita magnifica, is the largest bacterium ever found. It grows up to 2 centimeters long—making visible to the naked eye—and is 5,000 times bigger than some other bacteria. And while this alone is notable, its surprisingly complex cell structure distinguishes it even further from others of its kind. A study published today in the journal Science explains how Gros and other researchers from the Joint Genome Institute (JGI), a project run by the US Department of Energy, and the University of the French Antilles in Guadeloupe discovered and identified this category-defying bacteria....

Here is the scientific answer: Researchers from RMIT University call these little marvels “liquid metal marbles,” and they’re drops of liquid metal with a nanoparticle coating. They’re both heat- and impact-resistant (see above), and researchers say their conductive cores could be used for flexible electronics in the future. That is, if the researchers, unlike me, can stop watching this video.

Once a research team spots the whales, they will fly Typhoon and Tornado drones that are carrying petri dishes into the cloud of snot exhaled by the whale blowholes. Collecting this data looks like this: Gross, but a lot less invasive than snot research used to be. From a press release put out by Yuneec and Ocean Alliance: Previously, students from Olin college used drones to collect whale snot and Ocean Alliance this summer held a crowdfunding campaign for new snot bots....

Scientists are learning more about how COVID-19 affects pregnant people and the fetuses they carry all the time, but there’s still a lot they aren’t sure of. “People are working really hard to try to understand the effects of COVID-19 on [expectant mothers and their babies], so I think we will have information soon,” says Sonja Rasmussen, a University of Florida pediatrician and epidemiologist who studies the links between birth defects and disease....

A constellation is a group of stars that create a recognizable pattern in the sky. There are 88 officially recognized constellations, some of which are named after mythological creatures and might sound familiar if you’ve ever looked up your horoscope. Anthony Cook, an astronomical observer at the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles, says constellation patterns are useful for memorizing stars in the sky. In ancient times, different cultures recognized these patterns in different ways, he says, but a lot of the constellations we know today were defined in Ancient Greece....

Most programmable thermostats are clunky at best, and their user interfaces are about as intuitive (and technologically advanced) as the clock on a VCR. The Nest, conceived, constructed, and very cleverly marketed by a former Apple design engineer, was supposed to bring some much needed West Coast design mojo to this crucial but unexciting appliance. Sounds good! I got mine in May, and the installation and wiring were simple enough....

On Monday, the seven basin states—Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming—missed a deadline set in June by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to reach a voluntary agreement on how to reduce water use in the region by 2 million to 4 million acre-feet, or up to a third of the Colorado River’s annual average flow. “The worsening drought crisis impacting the Colorado River Basin is driven by the effects of climate change, including extreme heat and low precipitation....

Time and exposure have worn them down, but ­archaeology itself has been somewhat cruel to these relics. Eager treasure hunters of the 18th and 19th centuries often dug into the earth without much concern for what they destroyed as long as they found statues, gold, or other booty. Upper stories of buildings that hadn’t been demolished by Mount Vesuvius’ hail of volcanic debris in 79 A.D. were wrecked by picks and shovels....

Sounds simple right? Whether you’re out protesting for Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Tony McDade, or the hundreds of other Black Americans who’ve died from systemic racism in health care, community policing, and more, key precautions like these will keep you safe and strong as you march down the streets. For the past few weeks at PopSci, we’ve been talking to experts and diving into available research to get you information that could protect you from crowd-control weapons, digital surveillance, and of course, COVID-19....

All over the globe, vulnerable ecosystems like Gough Island are in a fight against invaders. Non-native plants and animals that have somehow entered these environments tip the natural balance and wreak havoc on native species, causing extinctions of local flora and fauna and putting human health and economies at risk. Invasive species in the United States inflict billions of dollars in damages, annually. And although all ecosystems suffer greatly from invasives, islands are particularly vulnerable....