Autonomous vehicles have perception, or vision, systems designed to allow the car to see the real world around them. That way, it can (hopefully) carry out critical driving maneuvers like slamming on the brakes if a pedestrian steps in front of it. A self-driving car transporting a person with limited or no vision is a great example of a controversial technology’s promising uses—a machine that takes the wheel when a human cannot, and a smart intersection of tech and accessibility....

When you make coffee by pouring hot water over grounds, the liquid extracts oils, acids, sugars, minerals, and proteins from the beans, giving you a drinkable mug in minutes. To make cold brew using the most common method, immersion brewing, you put coffee grounds in cold water and let them sit for about a day. During those hours, the same chemical processes that occur rapidly during hot brewing take place far more slowly....

Lock screen settings for iOS By default, Apple lets you launch its smart assistant straight from the lock screen with a “Hey Siri” command. That’s fine if you want to check the weather or look something up on Wikipedia without unlocking your phone, but it won’t answer most personal questions about messages, emails, and other private stuff until you’ve passed through security. Adjusting those lock screen settings is relatively simple on both iOS and Android, but balance is key....

Finally, not all smart-home devices are needed–some get by because they add frills (or fun) to our lives.

While the citizen science movement has grown by leaps and bounds in the last decade, there is still much untapped possibility. A special platform of tools seeks to extract as much value as possible from citizen science projects. Called CitSci.org, the site hopes to standardize how data is collected, stored, and annotated. “Citizen science projects have the potential to advance science by increasing the volume and variety of data, as well as innovation,” said the site creators, Yiwei Wang, Nicole Kaplan, Greg Newman, and Russell Scarpino....

If you want to make the most out of the Microsoft Office apps you use on a regular basis, get the Premium Microsoft Office Training Bundle + Lifetime License of MS Office Home & Business 2021 for only $79.99 (reg. $1,549). With this 6-part bundle, you’ll receive 28 hours of expert-led content on Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams, and OneNote. You can expect to explore raw data structure, table layouts, styles, and working with Pivot Tables and Charts, on Excel, master document customization on Word, and build attention-grabbing slides and templates on PowerPoint....

The new booster is a bivalent vaccine, meaning it creates an immune response against the original virus and its variant. In this case, it contains the mRNA vaccine Spikevax, which the Food and Drug Administration approved for people 18 and older in January, plus a vaccine candidate that specifically targets Omicron. Omicron is the most infectious coronavirus variant yet. It has 37 mutations on its spike protein—the protein used by the virus to penetrate and enter cells—which is more than the Alpha and Delta variants....

The amount of monarch butterflies staying in Mexico this winter went up dramatically, increasing in area by 255 percent over last year. Populations of monarchs are measured in acres due to their migration patterns. In Eastern North America, monarchs spread across the United States and Canada in the warmer months, but migrate back to Mexico as winter approaches, clustering back into a small section of forest. Their populations coat the trees and branches so thoroughly that researchers measure the area of land covered instead of trying to count individual butterflies....

One reason for the increased twinning rates seems to be the increase in assistive reproductive technologies. These include fertility-boosting medications and artificial insemination, but in-vitro fertilization (IVF) is the most popular. As the average age of a first-time mother has risen in recent years—in 2014 it was 26.3, compared to 22.7 in 1980)—older moms with reduced fertility have a greater need for fertility-boosting technologies in order to conceive. Because of how IVF is done, multiple births, like twins or triplets, become more likely....

Rather, everything in that slice of the South Pacific seemed to be disintegrating—and fast. It was as though some invisible critter had eaten its way through the military encampment and the shirts on their service members’ backs. The culprit, the Army would soon discover, was a hungry fungus, which would be named Trichoderma reesei. But it would be better known by its military alias, QM6a. While the fungus initially gave the army a run for its money, today QM6a is prized by industry, the U....

Even if you’re the kind of person who avoids the news like the plague, it’s been hard to dodge the headlines discussing where, when, and what’s going on with COVID-19. But with cases now spreading across the US and much of the world, it’s even more important to follow those updates. It might be especially tricky to explain this stuff to children. Even though the main defense against the virus is to literally wash your hands, seeing people in face masks or hearing about COVID-19 deaths doesn’t quite set the stage for a calm discussion....

Tonight, the world got to see if NASA’s attempt to redirect the asteroid Dimorphos would be a smashing success. While it’s too early to know if the test fulfilled all of its goals, the first leg went exactly as planned. Around 7:16 p.m. Eastern, the car-sized spacecraft made kinetic impact with its target. After getting visual confirmation from the vehicle’s cameras, the operations team at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Maryland announced, “All right we got it....

NASA announced on August 6 that the rover had tried to take its first rock sample—but as often happens in science, things didn’t quite go as planned. A week later, a chief engineer wrote that the sampling failed because the rover drilled some unexpectedly crumbly material. But Perseverance will, well … persevere; it still has 42 sampling tubes to go. Getting up and flying Over the months, Perseverance has had to complete an enormous number of system tests after the team released this “animal into its native habitat,” says Jim Bell, a planetary scientist at Arizona State University who led the Mastcam-Z project, the zoomable camera on the front “mast” of the Perseverance rover....

The FDA proposed these new warnings this week, a full decade after they were originally directed to create new regulations for cigarette packages by the Tobacco Control Act. They actually did come up with those rules back in 2011, but several tobacco companies weren’t so keen on these graphic labels. So they decided to take the FDA to court, claiming there was no evidence that the change in labeling would influence a person’s decision to smoke, and thus that the FDA was infringing on First Amendment rights....

Thankfully for us, engineers from the Ohio State University have now developed a coating for plastic bottles that gets every drop out, like magic. And, the team says, the patent-pending technology is simpler, cheaper and has a smaller environmental impact than alternatives devised to conquer this sticky dilemma. Soaps naturally have low surface tension, making them stick to oil and water, hence making us clean in the shower. But that property also makes the soap, shampoo or dish soap stick to the inside of the bottle....

Ring-Con This flexible hoop controller pairs with the Switch’s Joy-Cons allowing players to control on-screen actions with physical movements. The included role-playing game, Ring Fit Adventure, guides gamers through a series of quests that require different movements and levels of exertion to combine a workout with game time. It’s fun, and often surprisingly tiring. Labo Like with the Ring-Con, Labo takes advantage of the Joy-Con’s modular nature and built-in sensors. On-screen instructions show players how to construct clever gadgets and machines out of included cardboard sheets....

The massively, massively open-world space exploration game, which earlier this week was teased for pre-order, finally has a release date for this year: June 21. The game pits users against the harsh wilderness of endless space: endless planets to explore, creatures to name and leave a mark on for the next traveler. It boasts endless gameplay potential, as well as both solo and cooperative play opportunities. An official release date is a big deal for a game that has suffered numerous setbacks since its inception, and overcome countless hurdles—all to deliver on an experience like no other....

Its popularity blossomed in spring 2016 and intensified as back-to-school season approached. Now that January 1—a heady day for the latent productivity nerd—is so close, the bullet journaling community is evangelizing in full force. Myself included, I guess. Intrigued? Here’s everything you need to know. What is bullet journaling? First of all, the system is totally analog. By that I mean it is done with a notebook (any notebook!) and a pen (or pencil, if you’re one of those people)....

Back in 2001, when he was working as a firefighter, Hardison received horrific burns that severely deformed his face. Strangers would stare, and children would react with fear, he says. But that all changed in August 2015 when Hardison received the most extensive face transplant ever done. Now, a year after the transplant, the 42-year-old Mississippi native is able to live a more normal life than he ever thought possible....