How we selected the best smart speakers To select the best smart speakers, we considered about two dozen units, exchanging opinions based on our team’s own experiences with speakers in our homes and putting new units through the paces where possible. We also investigated the most recent developments in each category—considering some models debuting just weeks before publication. Our evaluations started with sound performance: While smart speakers aren’t designed to deliver the power and expansiveness of large stereo or multichannel sets, even the smallest should reproduce speech and music with clarity....

A great stand mixer can be a hefty investment, so it’s important to do your research before you bite the bullet. We compiled a list of the best stand mixers in every category so you can find one that your inner baker (and your wallet) will enjoy for years. Best stand mixer overall: KitchenAid Artisan® Series 5 Quart Tilt-Head Stand MixerBest value stand mixer: Hamilton Beach Electric Stand Mixer, 4 QuartsBest for a tight budget: Dash Stand Mixer: 6 Speed with 3 qtBest stand mixer for small kitchens: KitchenAid Artisan Mini Series Tilt-Head Stand Mixer, 3....

Adjustable standing desks easily conform to both sitting and standing positions to reduce the number of hours per day you spend sitting, which many medical professionals believe to be a healthier alternative to using a traditional desk. The best adjustable desk may effectively reduce the time you sit during a workday, anywhere from short, 15- to 30-minute intervals to several hours. Equally important, this type of desk allows the user to switch from standing to sitting throughout the day as desired....

A number of personal factors affect the strips that will work best for you. The size of the strip, the ingredients in the whitening gel, and even the flavor of the gel can influence if you’ve found the right whitening treatment. We’ve rounded up some of the fastest, best-tasting, and most effective teeth-whitening kits to brighten your smile. Best fit and coverage: REMBRANDT 1 Week Teeth Whitening KitBest whitening strips for sensitive teeth: Lumineux Teeth Whitening StripsBest flavors for whitening strips: Zimba Teeth Whitening StripsBest whitening-strip kit: Crest 3D Whitestrips with LightBest budget whitening strips: Crest 3D Whitestrips Vivid Plus Teeth-Whitening Kit...

But there are other reasons an under-desk bike could be right for you: Do you have trouble sitting still? Think of a pedal exerciser as a fidget spinner for your legs. Are you in a thermostat war at work and constantly freezing? Warm yourself right up with a few turns of the wheel. Some fans of the cycling desk even report increased focus and concentration. Maybe you’ve never considered incorporating home exercise equipment into your workday, but it could be time to!...

While 10-20 years ago, it would have been silly to suggest a pair of headphones could give you an immersive sound experience with your TV, technology has blessed us with a world of personal listening devices that are tech’d, tuned, and tested to bring the best out of Netflix, Blu-ray, Xbox, etc. Plus, isn’t versatility important? Nobody wants to be tethered to a device without the ability to walk to the kitchen to pop another bag of corn in the microwave while simultaneously staying in your program’s audioverse....

Paolo Luschi and Anna Gagliardo are both former pupils of the late Floriano Papi. Papi, who died only six months before my visit, had joined as a teenager the partisans fighting the Nazi forces then occupying Italy. He carried secret messages back and forth and would have been shot as a spy had he ever been caught. After the war, as a reward for his courageous services, Papi was given a scholarship to study at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, and went on to become an expert on flatworms, as well as light communication in fireflies....

In that spirit, I’m highlighting the best Black Friday and, eventually Cyber Monday deals on games and gaming gear. The PopSci commerce team will keep this post updated as the discounts come and go over the next few weeks. As always, I’ve also put together a few tips to help you figure out how to parse the good deals from the bad on your own, so you aren’t out there shopping all alone in the digital wilderness....

Predictably, the achievement caused a stir. On the one hand, it was a significant breakthrough. Opiates are useful and highly sought-after painkillers. Yet their manufacture still begins with physically scraping sap from the seedpods of opium poppies. That makes them expensive and limited. Smolke’s method breaks that process open in a big way. On the other hand, democratizing drug manufacture sounds scary. “People are trying to figure out potential abuses of this powerful technology,” says Kenneth Oye, a political scientist at MIT....

The Electra name was introduced in 1959, and denoted Buick’s largest and most luxurious model available at the time, slotting in above the Invicta and LeSabre. For over three decades the Electra was a large comfortable American luxury cruiser. It downsized in the late 1970s as a response to competition and rising fuel prices, but continued to fill the same slot in the General Motors lineup of automobiles. The name was last used in 1990 when the sixth-generation Electra was replaced by a vehicle with a totally new shape called Park Avenue....

Much of Florida’s aquatic life—including species as diverse as manatees and alligators—know what to do in a storm like Hurricane Ian. After all, these native animals have had millions more years of practice than us. But those age-old skills will only become more useful as hurricanes become more intense from climate change. “Aquatic animals respond to storms for the same reason we do—to avoid injury, death, and the destruction from hurricanes,” says Bradley Strickland, a postdoctoral researcher who studies aquatic animal response to hurricanes and climate change at William and Mary’s Virginia Institute of Marine Science....

Kwiatkowski is the wildlife conservation and sustainability manager for Mount Auburn Cemetery. Situated just west of Boston, the historic graveyard and arboretum neighbors Harvard University and Massachusetts General Hospital. Permanent residents include the behavioral psychologist B.F. Skinner, geodesic dome inventor Buckminster Fuller, and legendary botanist Asa Gray. And newly deceased members join the ranks each day. Like many burial grounds, Mount Auburn is also home to innumerable plants and animals, which skim the surface of its ponds, flutter in its treetops, and amble along its winding trails....

Today at 1:00 pm ET, Kashmir will answer your questions live on a Digg dialog! Tune in to watch and/or post a question.

Dubbed the Maker, the aircraft is theoretically capable of holding two people, but will only be used as a non-passenger test vehicle while the company works on a bigger air taxi. It’s a prototype—a stepping stone towards a future in which folks might hop into quiet electric air taxis for short flights to commute or just go somewhere fun. That’s the dream that Archer, and other companies, hopes becomes a reality....

Chess.com cited “statistically extraordinary” evidence drawn from its analytical systems regarding Niemann’s rapid talent progression over the years, specifically his rise between “international master” to “grandmaster” titles, part of a chess ranking system referred to as one’s “Elo rating.” The investigation also compared Niemann’s past performances to existing chess engines and consulted grandmaster expert opinions. A methodology breakdown courtesy of Chess.com can be found below. It includes a review of how long Niemann took to make moves of specific difficulty....

Individually, there is battlefield value of these robots both in civilian SWAT and counterterrorism missions, as well as for military operations, with even greater value of them as a team, becoming a force multiplier for units like infantry and combat engineers. Cheng Deqiang, sales manager for HIT Robot Group, mentioned that a set of three robots costs roughly 1.5 million yuan (slight less than $230,000 USD). The Beijing police department is already a customer of these robots, with other Chinese police departments likely to follow suit, as may foreign customers....

Reframing rhetoric in a way that speaks to conservatives can reduce partisanship, according to a series of five studies by psychologists at the University of California-Berkeley and at Stanford University. They set out to test a hypothesis that conservatives would respond to ideas like patriotism, purity and “reverence for a higher authority,” as explained in a Cal news release. They especially focused on the purity aspect. Matthew Feinberg, the lead author and a postdoctoral fellow in psychology at Stanford, recruited a few hundred people via Craigslist....