In many of the books, Crichton grounded the science fiction plot line in real world research, often crafting his characters as composites of actual scientists. Crichton also wrote non-fiction, including a computer-programming book in 1983. Lately there had been some controversy about Crichton’s writing when researchers criticized the scientific basis of his global warming facts in the 2004 book State of Fear. Born in Chicago, Illinois in 1942, Crichton graduated with honors from Harvard, and later graduated from Harvard Medical School....

A new study, however, indicates that the butterflies are especially sensitive to weather conditions in their spring and summer breeding grounds. Scientists analyzed data from more than 18,000 monarch counts from across the United States, Mexico, and Canada spanning 25 years. They found that over the past 15 years, climate had an influence on the eastern monarch population that was nearly seven times that of other variables such as herbicide use....

Mind, these hunts aren’t very frequent. In a study spanning five years, scientists recorded only ten, fewer than half of which were actually successful. And, true to their reputations, the bonobos shared the fruits–sorry, meats–of their labor. This study has produced the first evidence of bonobos eating mammals of substantial size, as well as the first evidence of bonobos intentionally pursuing their prey. While hunting and eating monkeys may seem to some as conducted in poor taste, bonobos are not actually monkeys themselves....

A volunteer diver named Allen Murray was recently exploring an area near the uninhibited rock island of Melledgean in the Isles of Scilly when he discovered the kaleidoscopic sea slug called Babakina anadoni. The animal is tiny: It only reaches about two centimeters in size. But what it lacks in length it more than makes up for in vibrancy–it’s a brilliant shade of purple, covered with sensory organs and other structures in shades of bright yellow, pink, and blue....

“It’s always interesting to see new data like this come in, because it gives us something more to think about and assess and analyze,” says Dorothy Oehler, a Houston-based planetary geologist and senior scientist for the Planetary Science Institute. The big question on everyone’s mind is whether there’s something we can glean from this peak that explains the origins of Martian methane better than previous investigations. “It’s obviously a pulse of energy and interest....

Click to launch the photo gallery_ The space shuttles are all nestled in their retirement homes, but NASA still has plenty of equipment, buildings and other infrastructure left over from their 30-year run. The space agency is quietly trying to sell it or lease it, and in some cases by the end of this year. The last shuttle mission ended a year and a half ago now, and the final pieces of cleanup and mothballing are just about done down at Kennedy Space Center in Florida....

And at the end of April, Boeing flew a second 777x test plane for nearly three hours. Besides the fact that the wings stretch out for a long distance and then hinge up at the tips when it’s on the ground, the new 777x aircraft—designed to carry as many as 426 passengers—looks basically like every other plane you’ve seen. It’s a tube with wings that stick straight out. But since 2008, NASA and Boeing have been researching a fascinating wing design that’s more suited for smaller commercial planes, like 737s or A320s, which seat a maximum of about 220 or 240 people....

To that end, US Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland recently ordered her agency to phase out the purchase or distribution of single-use plastics on the hundreds of millions of acres of public land the department oversees. But, an official ban on single-use plastics wouldn’t hit until 2032. Within roughly nine months, the Interior Department’s various bureaus and offices will need to submit draft plans for how and when they will gradually reduce their purchase and use of single-use plastic products, according to the order....

Over the past year, Popular Science met with members of the Veri-Fire team several times to examine the safety accessory,in the last stages of its development. On November 16th, the team’s crowdfunding campaign goes live on Indiegogo. Founded by Skylar Gerrond and Matt Barido, both U.S. Air Force veterans, Veri-Fire intends the Guardian to be a value-neutral tool for reducing harm. It is, first and foremost, a safety accessory. The Guardian works in conjunction with safeties in the firearm itself, and doesn’t preclude a gun owner from storing their weapon in a gun safe or lock box....

In this clip taken from the international TV spot, we see Oscar Isaac’s Poe Dameron leading a squadron of Resistance fighters against Imperial-esque First Order TIE Fighters. Notable in the clip is the diversity of the crew. The original Empire had some dark, human-centric policies, with non-human species kept out of the military. The one time in the Original Trilogy where we do see the Empire directly employ non-humans, they’re just freelance bounty hunters on contract....

In a report published Thursday, the UK Health Security Agency released data on 147,597 Delta and 68,489 Omicron cases, using the country’s vaccination information to assess the longevity of the AstraZeneca, Pfizer, and Moderna vaccines and boosters. Every vaccine was less effective against Omicron than Delta over time, but to varying degrees, per the agency’s analysis. For those who received two shots of AstraZeneca, a booster from a vaccine using mRNA technology—which Moderna and Pfizer use—protected against symptomatic disease with 60 percent effectiveness two to four weeks after the shot....

Kidd, a doctoral candidate in brain and cognitive sciences at the University of Rochester, theorized that the kids are actually making a rational decision, not just gobbling the marshmallows without thinking about it. She thought this was related to their expectations about the world, so she set out to test that. “We decided we could manipulate their beliefs in the lab, so their decision-making could be influenced based on their expectations,” Kidd said....

But if terms like “NFT” make your head hurt, that’s ok. Here’s what it all means, and how it will all work. Non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, are one of the buzziest Web3 technologies. We’ve got a full NFT explainer you can check out if you’re totally new to the wild world of crypto, but in brief: Something that’s “fungible” is something in which each individual item is mutually interchangeable. A dollar bill is fungible....

Some research suggests that even the most stubborn night owl can indeed shift their natural sleep patterns. But that comes at a cost: Human sleep and wake cycles are deeply ingrained within our biology and they often don’t match completely with the Earth’s daily 24-hour spin around the sun. Throw modern society into the mix and that only heightens our natural biological tendencies. But if you are truly determined, there is evidence to suggest you can mold yourself into a morning person....

Disrupted sleep patterns have long been a common complaint for patients in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease, sometimes decades before they develop cognitive problems or noticeable memory loss. The reason, researchers have discovered, is likely the buildup of beta amyloid plaque, a sticky amalgamation of proteins that collects in synapses and is characteristic of Alzheimer’s disease. A number of studies published in the last five years have found that people (and mice) with disrupted sleep patterns had more beta amyloid plaque in their brains....

“I was open how it was made and put Midjourney on the cover page. It wasn’t altered in any other way. Just the way you saw it here,” Kashtanova wrote in an announcement posted to Instagram last week. “I tried to make a case that we do own copyright when we make something using AI. I registered it as visual arts work. My certificate is in the mail and I got the number and a confirmation today that it was approved....

Berger’s skeletons, aged 900 to 2,900 years old, are Homo sapiens, yet they’re much smaller than typical humans; some are only three feet tall. Their discovery feeds a stormy debate: How different can two related organisms be and still be considered H. sapiens? The issue flared recently when miniature human bones were found in Indonesia and named Homo floresiensis, a.k.a. “hobbit.” Berger’s discovery may weaken claims that the hobbits are a separate species....

What is the OnePlus Watch? OnePlus has been churning out excellent Android phones for years, but the Watch is its first venture into the wrist-based wearable market. Rather than opting for an existing operating system like Wear OS by Google, OnePlus equipped its watch with its own software, which is wildly efficient, but also very limited in some respects. The OnePlus Watch relies heavily on a companion app, which is (at least for the moment) Android-only....

Humans have already destroyed more than 90 percent of the planet’s grass, most of it to produce our food: Grazing alone takes up one-quarter of all land. What’s left is fragile because grasslands’ seasonality makes them vulnerable to climatic changes in precipitation and temperature. This is what remains. 1. The Serengeti Tanzania This savanna is one of the oldest ecosystems on Earth. Ecologists believe the area’s weather, flora, and fauna have barely changed over the past million years....

In the study, the researchers trained mice to associate a particular space with cocaine. Over time, they preferred to hang out in that space over the other places that were associated with a simple saline solution. They suspected that neurons in the hippocampus, a seahorse-shaped part of the brain that is essential for long-term memory and spatial navigation, were responsible for that association, but they didn’t know exactly which neurons were responsible....