Fabrizio Stabile began feeling unwell and developed a headache while mowing his lawn days after visiting the park, which is part of what’s so dangerous about this disease: it starts off seeming quite benign. Stabile eventually couldn’t get out of bed or form coherent speech, at which point he was rushed to the hospital. Doctors couldn’t save him. It’s a terrifying story, which is why it’s making headlines, but how scared should you be?...

If you like these weird facts, check out our hit podcast The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week for loads more. Buzz Aldrin did his moon walk while sloshing around in pee “Buzz Aldrin often claims to be the first person to urinate on the moon,” Teasel Muir-Harmony, curator of the National Air and Space Museum’s Space History Department, tells PopSci. This is a frequent point of discussion in interviews about his role in the historic mission....

This week’s episode features special guest Jonathan Sims. Best known around these parts for writing and starring in Rachel’s favorite audio drama series, he’s also the author of “Thirteen Storeys” and a tabletop game designer. FACT: Bees can get jet lag (and probably know everything) By Sara Chodosh If you’ve seen the viral TikTok video about how bees perceive time, my apologies in advance—you’ll already know a lot of the information I dive into on this episode....

We tested them by sending video 25 feet from both a Blu-ray disc player and a Sencore VP401, a machine that produces test patterns that break up conspicuously if there are any reception problems. Through the Air Sony Bravia Wireless Link The Tech Sony’s Wireless Link uses a technology called WHDI to send data over a signal similar to Wi-Fi. WHDI favors data bits with a big effect on the picture — say, ones that change the color of an object....

Though a nematode doesn’t look much like a human, the two species have enough biological similarities that scientists often use nematodes to better understand human physiology. In this study, the researchers looked at the nematode’s anchor cell, which connects the worm’s uterus to its egg laying-structure during an essential stage in a nematode’s normal development. “That’s interesting because this process of connection involves an anchor cell invading through another cell’s basement [outside] membrane, which gives us a model for understanding cells’ invasive behavior,” says David Matus, a professor of biochemistry and cell biology at Stony Brook University and one of the study authors....

Multi-billion dollar companies (and the people that run them) mingle beside analysts, journalists, investors, researchers and other people who spend their entire year trying to figure out what the future will look like. Not every product is a success—but that’s kind of the point. The conference plays out like a scavenger hunt, with each individual scouring the city for tiny insights. At the end, everyone leaves having a better sense of where technology is going and how fast it will get there....

The National Laboratory for Quantum Information Sciences, slated to open in 2020, has two major research goals: quantum metrology and building a quantum computer. Both efforts would support military and national defense efforts, as well civilian innovators. But let’s back up. What is quantum metrology, anyway? Basically it measures minute changes in gravity and other physical effects, which can be used to build highly accurate, self-contained navigation systems. This has a key application for autonomous vehicles and submarines, which wouldn’t have to rely on GPS or other external navigation signals that could be jammed or used to detect their location....

These include variants of the DF-26, the DF-21, and possibly the DF-17 hypersonic glide vehicle. The PLA’s rationale for pursuing this conventional-meets-nuclear strategy appears to be a combination of the cost savings that a dual-use weapon represents and a belief that what is known as “strategic ambiguity” improves China’s deterrence against strikes on its conventional missile force. The thinking is that any adversaries pondering attacking China’s conventional force in a crisis or conflict would be worried that they might inadvertently hit nuclear weapons and thus catastrophically escalate the situation....

“America invented the semiconductor, but today produces about 10 percent of the world’s supply—and none of the most advanced chips,” the Biden administration said in its statement. Although the vast majority of chip manufacturing will likely remain in East Asia, even increasing US production by a few percentage points could have noticeable impacts on the global economy. “The underlying philosophy of the Chip Act is to ensure some balance—balancing risk, balancing national security, balancing economics, and hopefully try to produce a more reasonable system for the world electronics business,” David Yoffie, a professor of international business administration at Harvard Business School, told Popular Science last week....

“No other bird has this sort of intricate wing structure,” physicist Nigel Peake, who led the research, said in a press release. “Much of the noise caused by a wing–whether it’s attached to a bird, a plane or a fan–originates at the trailing edge where the air passing over the wing surface is turbulent. The structure of an owl’s wing serves to reduce noise by smoothing the passage of air as it passes over the wing, scattering the sound so their prey can’t hear them coming....

This increasing severity, intensity, and frequency of these devastating storms is linked to climate change and warming temperatures, which help drive more rainfall and higher wind speeds. “What we saw in 2017 is representative of what climate scientists have been saying all along,” says James Shultz, director of the Center for Disaster and Extreme Event Preparedness at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. Worsening storms have destructive effects both on infrastructure and on the physical health of affected people....

Vermillion has one slight downside. Chemists might know cinnabar by another name: mercury(II) sulfide. Ingesting that mercury, as you might imagine, is toxic. In fact, researchers recently found mercury’s fingerprints in the archaeological record in Spain and Portugal. Testing mercury concentrations in bones from ancient Iberia, researchers singled out a period in the region’s history when its denizens used a great deal of cinnabar—and may have suffered the brunt of its toxic effects....

Even if you learned this life-saving skill a while ago, it’s time to brush up. After all, if nobody takes action when someone collapses from cardiac arrest (that means their heart has stopped beating), that person will die. “Cardiac arrest is uniformly fatal unless CPR is delivered,” says emergency-room physician Benjamin Abella, the director of the Center for Resuscitation Science at Penn Medicine. The goal of doing CPR is not to bring someone back to life; it is to buy time until emergency services arrive....

The director of the FBI, James Comey, presented his case to Congress as to why he and his team deserved to get into that phone with Apple’s help. Along with lengthy banter about William and Mary College, Comey explained why using the All Writs Act from 1789 was a viable way to get Apple to open up the phone. In a court decision yesterday, New York’s Judge James Orenstein sided with the tech company....

Bleaching and scrubbing our pearly whites (so they become pearlier and whiter), has become an $11 billion-plus national obsession. Some of these off-the-shelf products, and even dental office procedures, have downsides. Before you beautify those canines, here are a few things to consider. How did we get here? Teeth whitening has been cultural compulsion going back to the Egyptians, who mixed wine vinegar with crushed pumice to polish their smiles....

As captured by drone, the facility looks as much office space as space office. The facility is located on the southern edge of the Amur Oblast in the Russia’s far east, not too far from the border with China. It will ultimately be the heart of a city of around 30,000 people, and will launch new rockets and new capsules, not the Soyuz capsules that are launched at Baikonur. Instead, writes Air & Space: Last week, Russian-owned media company RT provided a glimpse at the facility to the world, as filmed by drone....

In a paper published today in the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America, researchers showed that they could decode different kinds of munitions exploding at an ammunition dump in Baghdad using seismometer readings. The seismometer had been placed in Iraq years before, ready to measure large ground-shaking events like earthquakes, or nuclear explosions. But instead, in 2006, it noticed a different kind of shaking, as mortar fire ignited the ammunition dump, instigating one of the most horrifying (and awesome) fireworks shows of all time....