A new study published in the journal Current Biology suggests that a certain kind of bad sleep may be worse than no sleep at all, at least in terms of helping you regulate your feelings. The experiment, which involved bad karaoke, unusual smells, and MRI machines, took a novel approach to the question of sleep’s emotional function. And its results suggest that not all shut-eye is good for us. “It’s very difficult for people with insomnia or sleep disorders in general to get rid of emotional distress,” says senior study author Eus van Someren, a neuroscientist at the Netherland’s National Institute for Neuroscience....

In 2019, study coauthor David Gruber, a research associate at the American Museum of Natural History in New York and a distinguished biology professor at CUNY’s Baruch College, was out with his team on an expedition to eastern Greenland to look for animals that glowed in the dark under the ice. Located in the Arctic Circle, this region of Greenland gets near-full days of summer sun, but is plunged in darkness during the winter months....

In new research published in Current Biology on Thursday, scientists looked at 16 species of deep sea animals that can absorb more than 99.5 percent of visible light directed at them, making them some of the blackest known animals. They found that even though these 16 species were diverse, and some very distantly related, they all had dense pigmentation in their skin cells structured to both scatter and absorb light....

“Until now very few people would have considered that their clothing or textiles products could be used for generating electricity,” explains Theodore Hughes-Riley, lead researcher and an associate professor of Electronic Textiles. “… [T]he material which we have developed, for all intents and purposes, appears and behaves the same as any ordinary textile, as it can be scrunched up and washed in a machine.” Researchers also note that, because the tiny solar cells are comprised of silicon, wearers aren’t able to even notice a difference in the fabric’s composition when compared to standard clothing....

Having made just a few test flights, the XQ-58A Valkyrie Tail #1 is now a historical curio. The uncrewed Valkyrie drones as they exist in Air Force experiments are intended to be autonomous escorts for much more expensive, inhabited fighter jets. With its few flights and fast retirement, Tail #1 is demonstrating another key part of the Valkyrie’s mission: it’s designed to be expendable. Technically, the term the Air Force uses is “attritable,” a succinct if jargony reference to the expected attrition of aircraft from regular use and combat....

Now, using high-speed cameras to record then slow down dozens of sneezes, researchers from MIT learned that the combination of mucus and saliva has a predictable progression as it moves away from the body. The researchers reported their findings this week at a meeting of the American Physical Society’s Division of Fluid Dynamics and the study is currently in press with the journal Experiments in Fluids, as the BBC reports....

Air taxis, however, are different from typical planes. These little electric vehicles take off and land vertically, and transport people over short distances. While their flying styles are different, the vehicles still need to collect data about what they’re doing, too, in order to safely operate. Bosch has previously made sensors for cars and motorcycles, but now it’s throwing itself into the air-taxi arena with a sensor array that plugs into the crafts....

Fungi aren’t just singular mushrooms poking through the ground. They make up vast underground networks that can be the size of a state park. The networks’ impressive sprawl is matched by their many functions: Fungal networks help trees communicate with each other about things like insect infestations, they serve as nutrient superhighways, and they enrich the soil so that other plants thrive. One way they help keep soil healthy is through carbon storage, absorbing at least 5 billion tons of carbon every year....

The name “Otus” is the generic title given to a group of small owls sharing a common history, also called scops-owls. This group of owls are found in Europe, Asia, and Africa, and include the African Scops-Owl (Otus senegalensis) and Eurasian Scops-Owl (Otus scops). The second part of the new owl’s name, “Bikegila,” is in homage to a Príncipe Island park ranger, Ceciliano do Bom Jesus, whose nickname is Bikegila....

Last week, researchers from the University of California San Diego, Stanford University, and Universitat Pompeu Fabra published a paper in Cell that suggests communities of bacteria, known as biofilms, are much more intricate than previously thought. The researchers found that biofilms can organize themselves into a dart-board-esque pattern due to a mechanism researchers thought only existed in plants and animals. Even if you’ve never heard of biofilm, you’ve definitely encountered it....

Large-format photographer Brendan Barry makes functional cameras out of everyday objects , but his latest project is also his largest. The shipping container camera, as the name implies, is a giant camera that is housed in a room-sized vessel meant for transporting goods on overseas treks. “It’s basically the world’s biggest, slowest, and most impractical Polaroid camera,” Barry says in a new web documentary about the project. The video was created by Exploredinary—the same folks that put together this video for Ilford Photo about the photographer a few months ago....

Meanwhile, chronic snorers often have sleep apnea, a health condition where breathing pauses while you’re sleeping. These people typically require a CPAP machine to prevent the collapse of their airways, but for those who only experience infrequent or mild snoring, less complex devices are fine. If you find your occasional snoring obstructive, you can put a stop to it with the help of the Hupnos Sleep Mask. For a limited time, you can get it on sale for over 50 percent off....

Study Finds A Daily Dose Of Peanuts Under Your Tongue Helps Treat Peanut Allergies Researchers Reverse Engineer Fireflies To Make More Efficient LEDs Captive Hyena Figures Out A Meat Puzzle Faster Than Its Wild Cousin The Science Of Getting On ‘The Price Is Right’ And don’t forget to check out our other favorite stories of the week: The Best Of CES 2013: Popular Science’s Products Of The FutureRalph Steadman Depicts Over 100 Extinct BoidsBeerSci: How To Make Strong Beer StrongerThe Self-Assembling, Self-Healing Material Of The Future Is… BloodFlexible, Paper-Like Tablet Computers Work Together To Make Computing More Like Shuffling PapersCES 2013: Wrap This Goop Around Your Fingers Then Smash Them With A HammerJapan’s 2011 Earthquake Happened In An Area Considered Low-Risk....

The 21st annual Best of What’s New celebrates all of those dreams coming true. Now we’ve collected them all into one single slideshow.

Toyota announced on Monday that it will build a new battery plant in North Carolina, the company’s first North American factory for car batteries. The $1.29 billion site will go up in the Greensboro Randolph Megasite, and is slated to go online in 2025. It’s expected to add 1,750 new jobs, with about a $62,000 yearly salary per employee on average. (The annual average salary in Liberty, North Carolina in 2019 was $37,350)....

The Treblab HD77’s design Comparable in size to a 16-ounce can of seltzer, the HD77 speaker is almost the exact same size as the JBL Flip 5. At 7.3 inches by 3 inches by 3 inches and weighing in at 21.92 ounces, the HD77 is comparable within a quarter of an inch or so. Treblab’s speaker comes with a similar removable carrying strap, as well as a carabiner for easy attachment to a backpack, bike basket, or even a belt loop....

“These forests are a source of wonder,” says Eileen Helmer, a scientist with the International Institute of Tropical Forestry, a program run by the U.S. Forest Service, and author of a new study in the journal PLOS ONE that describes the expected changes. “What makes them unique will disappear because of human-caused changes to the climate, which would be an unimaginable tragedy.” The research predicts that within the next 25 years, the wet, misty atmosphere that engulfs many tropical mountain forests in the Western Hemisphere could begin to evaporate, a victim of heat-trapping carbon pollution from burning of fossil fuels....

If you’ve been gifted a turntable from a friend or relative and just want to get it working with a minimum of cost, this preamp does the trick. It weighs less than a pound and is approximately 5 inches wide, 8 inches long, and 3 inches deep, so it won’t take up a lot of space in your entertainment cabinet. If you don’t have a stereo amplifier, you can connect it directly to powered speakers to save more space....

The indictment implies the men then gleaned personal information such as addresses from 12 Ring accounts, and either placed false emergency reports or called local police to those locations, citing fake disturbances. Law enforcement was then dispatched to the unwitting Ring owners’ residences. This dangerous and even occasionally lethal prank is known as “swatting.” Atop the attacks’ logistical and legal consequences, the events can lead to lasting psychological trauma in victims, and have long been a favored form of hate crime harassment....

Prioritize your packing When we first packed our van, we did it according to how things fit rather than how often we might need those things. For example, the box with most of our cooking gear ended up buried deep beneath our bed. It fit perfectly, but we had to dig it out every time we wanted to eat. And as it turns out, people need to eat pretty much all the time....