A scattering of fossilized 90-million-year-old crabs shows how an animal might turn from bottom feeder to dragonfly-like predator. Callichimaera perplexa, first identified from fossils in Colombia in 2019, lived in the warm oceans of the mid-Cretaceous. And they had truly enormous eyes: An entire adult crab was about the size of a quarter, and the eyes set in its head took up about 16 percent of that. A human with a proportionate anatomy would have dinner plate-sized peepers....

The U Lock is generally considered more secure than a cable lock. The Kryptonite New York Standard Bike Lock is larger than other U Locks on the market (it’s 4 by 8 inches), and thus is more likely to keep your bike safe in the city. This one also comes with a bracket you can install on your bike so that it’s easier to transport. You can register your keys with Kryptonite, and they will send you two replacements if you lose them....

A 2006 Japanese study indicated that rats fed dextrin and fat at the same time absorbed less fat than rats that weren’t fed dextrin. The Japanese government certifies Pepsi Special and another dextrin-containing soda, Kirin Mets Cola, as “foods for specific health use.” But what works for rats may not work for people, and anyway, “There’s no study that shows that putting dextrin in a beverage is going to cause weight loss....

Many European countries already allow women in combat, as well as Australia, Israel and Canada, but the decision still managed to spark controversy in the U.S. One persistent argument is that men have a natural “protective instinct” that would cause them to lose their marbles at the sight of a woman getting shot or killed. “It’s the fact that no matter what the situation in a combat roll, the male is going to be distracted because it’s natural instinct to want to protect her,” Army veteran Tim Hevrin told an Austin NBC news affiliate after Panetta’s announcement....

At the start of August, we got a tantalizing look at something we’ve heard about for decades, always seeing glimpses of, until it’s reached where’s-my-jet-pack levels of furor: a satisfying, mass-produced, consumer-ready virtual reality game. The Oculus Rift was on Kickstarter August 1 through September 1. Now it’s racked up $2.4 million. In the promotional video, Oculus founder Palmer Luckey laments how no equipment out there was good enough to “plug in and actually be in the game....

The Tasmanian tiger was a dog-sized carnivorous marsupial with sharp claws, that was native to New Guinea, the Australian mainland, and Tasmania for four million years. Sporting yellowish to gray fur and distinctive tiger stripes covering its body, it first disappeared from the mainland about 2,000 years ago. The National Australia Museum speculates multiple factors, including over hunting and the introduction of the dingo led to this first wave of extinction....

We’ve previously reviewed the Bip U Pro and praised it for its accurate fitness metrics recording. A voice assistant and GPS are built-in, meaning you can ask Alexa about the best running routes and promptly take them. More than 60 sports modes help you exercise at your athletic level—from running novice to marathon marvel—and health-tracking lets you collect heart rate, blood oxygen levels, stress, sleep quality, and more. The watch is as light as a feather at 31 grams, but its intelligence stings like a bee—you can even control the camera of your smartphone from it....

This mangrove forest in Bimini, Bahamas, is a nursery for lemon shark pups. At only a few weeks old, they are perfect miniatures of adult lemon sharks. The mangrove roots keep them safe from predators during the first few months of their lives, before these sharks head out into open waters. I wanted to capture images of sharks at this vulnerable stage of their lives to help show people that these animals are more than dangerous predators....

The Pixel 4 adds some more AI-powered smarts, relying increasingly on its software to determine the overall look of the final image. And while the camera has some moments where it’s truly excellent, I ran into a few growing pains as Google tries to calculate its way to perfect photos. What’s new? On paper, the Pixel 4’s camera doesn’t seem all that different from the hardware that came before it....

Once we’re among the headstones, however, there’s something for us to pause and examine every few steps. ”There’s a number of fungi here that are normally very rare, like our yellow puffball,” she says. “We’ve seen them maybe once [elsewhere] in New York City, but here they’re in the hundreds.” The puffball anomaly is just one of many mysteries Jakob and Palmer, both self-taught mycologists, are hoping to shed light on....

So, two decades of gaming coverage later, you can imagine my excitement when I heard that Guinness was publishing the inaugural volume of Guinness World Records: Gamer’s Edition. This is a substantial tome, a large-format, full-color, heavily illustrated 256-page bible of electronically powered amusement. If you care about gaming, something here is going to fascinate you. Know who developed the first rumble-equipped controller, or wireless controller? Nintendo (N64, 1996) and Nintendo (GameCube, 2001)....

During Nissan CEO Carlos Gohsn’s keynote address the opening morning, it was possible to imagine a post-Detroit future. While the CEOs of Detroit’s Big 3 were in Washington, taking their lashes before an unsympathetic congress, Gohsn was speaking soberly and authoritatively about the challenges at hand and convincingly about Nissan’s plans to deliver mass-market electric cars within the next two or three years. In a post-Detroit future, Asian automakers would probably rule the mass market with their small, sporty, fuel-efficient cars, while German brands like Mercedes, BMW, and Audi will continue to dominate the luxury market....

But what’s an average eater to do? Going cold turkey on meat is certainly possible. Ditto on other animal byproducts, from eggs to milk. Vegetarians and vegans are thriving—and even weight-lifting at elite levels. But maybe that’s not for you. This week, 37 researchers from around the world published a new dietary recommendation in the journal The Lancet Planetary Health. It promises to be good for your health, and good for the globe, but doesn’t eliminate entire categories of food the way veganism does....

HIV is so insidious because it targets a type of white blood cell called CD4, which would normally be the first line of defense against infections. The virus hijacks these immune cells and turns them into tiny factories, producing more copies of itself, which then infect other immune cells. As the virus spreads, a person’s CD4 count plummets, leaving them prone to opportunistic infections (like Kaposi’s sarcoma, which is caused by a type of herpes virus and pneumocystis pneumonia) that a healthy immune system would easily quash....

But, having the big game in your home isn’t a given anymore. By the end of 2018, it’s estimated that 33 million people or so who once paid for cable had cut the cord. The typical TV route isn’t for everyone anymore, but there are other options for tuning into this year’s Super Bowl. Here’s a breakdown of your choices. Stream it Last year’s game was broadcast on NBC, but this year, the action is happening on CBS, a network with its own subscription-based streaming service, which is available on a wide variety of devices like Roku, Xbox One, Apple TV, ChromeCast, and some smart TVs, like Samsung’s....

1. Axe The 6-pound head on the Precision ­Competition Chopping Axe has a 7.5-inch hand-sharpened edge. The steel slices deep into timber without sticking, and it absorbs vibrations. 2. Gloves A pair of Husqvarna Functional Chain Saw gloves provides extra protection for your nonsawing hand. The left side has two layers of goat leather to shield it during a scrape with a blade. 3. Crosscut saw The 4-foot-long ­Lehman’s One-​Man Crosscut tool packs two types of teeth: The lance-shaped points are best at cutting, and the double-pointed rakers help clear dust from the groove....

Download the appropriate app before you get started While the idea of a smart speaker is to yell your questions and demands instead of using your phone, setup and operation require an app to get going. Luckily, the apps typically make the setup process a lot easier. If you’re starting up a Google Home device, for instance, the app can help you automatically detect and connect to your speaker. Some smart speakers, like Apple’s HomePod can automatically get information like the login for your wireless network directly from a mobile device, but others will require that you enter your network password, so it’s worth having handy before you get going....

The pair hope to crowdsource the discovery of new antibiotics. They’re taking on a hot topic in medicine right now. This September, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a report saying that drug-resistant microbes are a growing threat in the U.S., where 23,000 people die each year with infections that modern drugs can’t cure. These people need new drugs, but, the CDC’s director of antimicrobial resistance told The Washington Post, “We do not have antibiotics in the pipeline that are going to be available soon enough to address those problems....

And back in those days, it wasn’t cute emperor penguins hopping around Antarctica—it was ancient horned frogs. Swedish scientists discovered 40 million-year-old fossils of the little amphibians on Seymour Island, the only Antarctic spot where sediments aren’t hidden under masses of ice, and published their findings in Scientific Reports last week. “Frogs, nowadays, are known on all six other continents,” says Thomas Mors, the lead author of the study and senior curator at the Swedish Museum of Natural History....

Along with sympathy for the poor creature, this debacle aroused an interesting question: How does one autopsy a whale? With four-ton meat hooks, whaling knives and bone saws, actually. Michael Moore, a veterinarian and whale biologist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, does it all the time. Moore spends much of his time studying North Atlantic right whales, an endangered species whose name derives from whalers’ adage that these were the “right whales” to hunt, because they’re easy to spot and float when they die....