These tiny bits of polymer infiltrate almost everywhere, and likely wrapped around the globe before we even realized they existed. And now, we’re finding them in our poop. (They’ve probably been there a while, too.) Researchers at the Medical University of Vienna and the Environment Agency Austria are the first to find microplastics in human stool samples. They plan to present their findings at United European Gastroenterology Week this week....

As with most facets of wildlife trafficking, the immensity of the pet trade can quickly become overwhelming. But homing in on one peculiar yet exemplary case study can help bring the subject into focus: that of the earless monitor lizard of Indonesia. The story begins on May 30, 2008, when a research team armed with GPS units, notebooks, and binoculars set out into a dense patch of jungle in Indonesian Borneo....

On January 26, the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO) released images of the heart of the Milky Way taken using its radio telescope, MeerKAT. MeerKAT captures radio waves using 64 antennae spread over almost five miles, and it’s the most sensitive telescope of its kind. A radio telescope like MeerKAT was necessary to take these images because only radio waves can penetrate through the dust between Earth and the center of our galaxy....

This constant low level of battery power can significantly drain a vehicle (as anyone who’s ever had their car go dead after leaving their headlights on overnight can attest). While the problem is clear, the solution–adding more batteries–isn’t so simple. Take the Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicle, a tank-like tracked troop-carrying armored vehicle with a gun in the turret on top. First introduced in 1981, the venerable body is already as full as can be of required parts, so there’s not really any room inside to add batteries....

Hasselblad’s cameras have gained iconic status throughout the decades—they’re the cameras that went on the first moon walk, after all. But, those Hasselblad V cameras are boxy and rather bulky. Now, the company has released a new modular system that pairs the CFV II 50C medium format back—the sensor is larger than the typical “full frame” chips found in pro DSLRs—with a 907X slim body, and its X1D lenses. Because the body is so slim, there’s no room for an optical viewfinder—the typical V-series cameras employ a mirror that flips up and down as you shoot in order to give you a view through the camera’s lens....

Researchers at Yale, Oxford, the University of Leicester, Imperial College London, and University College London combined hundreds of images to reconstruct an image of the 430-million-year-old fossil’s soft tissue. The new species of echinoderm––the taxa which includes sea urchins, sea cucumbers, and sea stars––reveals clues about how the modern day sea cucumber evolved. Sollasina cthulhu roamed the Paleozoic-era seafloor, using its 45 tubular tentacles to travel and collect food. Scientists discovered its fossil in the Herefordshire Lagerstätte, a rock formation on the Wales-England border known for its abundance of exquisitely-preserved sea invertebrates....

When fungal spores get inside an ant, the spores chow down on the animal’s winter fat supply, slowly starving the insect from within. And in a recent field trial on crazy ant colonies, a team of entomologists at the University of Texas Austin’s Brackenridge Field Laboratory was able to eliminate a local population in a matter of years by exposing the ants to the fungus. Crazy ants were first spotted in southern Texas in the 1930s, and by 2012, were established across most of the Gulf Coast....

In some levels, you have to find buoys hidden deep within mazes of ice; in others, you have to capture sea creatures on camera. But your success is based off about how well you can get around the virtual waters. That’s because for the first five years it was available, Sea Hero Quest was actually a science experiment, testing players’ spatial navigation by their age, country, and much more (with their knowledge)....

Compared with solar panels and wind turbines, the harsh marine environment makes wave energy devices more expensive, and the need for large waves restricts possible installation locations. Much of the engineering research so far has focused on making devices more cost effective by increasing how much power they can extract from a given wave, but one team of physicists is testing a different approach: just make the waves bigger. Windmills and wave devices both take advantage of movement in nature to generate electric power, but while three-bladed turbines increasingly dot the landscape, bobbing buoys have yet to take over a single US shoreline....

“Their early history is very mysterious because there are very few fossils,” says Christian Kammerer, a paleontologist at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences in Raleigh, who reported the ancient reptile’s discovery on July 6 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “Looking at body size evolution in the group, we find good evidence that the common ancestor of dinosaurs and pterosaurs…would have [had a] very small body size....

Find the base…rather, spot the top. Upon closer examination, you’ll realize that there is no beginning or end. There’s no way that’s feasible, right? These familiar steps, called the Penrose stairs, are a type of “impossible object”—a construction that could not exist in reality even though its individual pieces look totally valid, says Erez Freud, a cognitive neuroscientist at York University in Toronto. The paradoxical item takes form when the brain attempts to turn a 2D image into a 3D object....

As a preventative measure, cybersecurity outfits have time and time again recommended the use of a virtual private network (VPN) to safeguard your information against potential threats. And while there are a plethora of reputable services offering VPN, a safer and more economical option exists: the Deeper Connect Nano Decentralized VPN Cybersecurity Hardware. An IndieGoGo hit, having garnered nearly $3 million in funding, Deeper Connect Nano functions as a decentralized VPN and firewall solution and works even without a subscription....

So here’s to you, naysayers and doomsdayers alike. After the jump, a very special episode of “Science of YouTube,” wherein the LHC goes online and the Earth is destroyed. Enjoy! John Pavlus and Christopher Mims, also known as Small Mammal, are here again with the latest episode of The Science of YouTube, the Popular Science_ video series that humanely anesthetizes YouTube videos, deftly dissects them, and labels their exposed organs for all to enjoy....

Part of the problem is that increasingly warm temperatures have broadened the region where ticks can live, exposing more people who may not be used to fending off the little buggers. “Where there are ticks, there comes the disease,” explained Lyle Peterson, director of the CDC’s Division of Vector-Borne Diseases in a press call. “It also increases the length of tick season, causing people to be at risk for longer periods of time....

A case in evidence is that of Avni, a “man-eating” Indian tigress who achieved something close to global recognition at the end of 2018. Man-eating leopards, lions, and tigers aren’t uncommon in India—several are killed or captured annually. But Avni achieved fame when a designer cologne was used in an attempt to lure her into a trap. Sadly, the bait failed and she was ultimately hunted down and killed. This tragic tale of a tigress gone rogue unleashed a range of debates on the ethics of hunting, the pragmatics of capture, and the elitism of urban conservationists who were furious at her killing....

El primero de 64 encuentros será entre el país anfitrión, Qatar, contra la selección de Ecuador, y se llevará a cabo el domingo 20 de noviembre a las 7pm hora local (11am ET, y 8am PT). Y luego de la fase de grupos y las etapad eliminatorias, la gran final tendrá lugar el 18 de diciembre a las 6pm hora local (10am ET/7am PT). Ya seas fan de toda la vida o si te mata la curiosidad por saber de qué se trata el torneo, hay varias maneras de ver el Mundial de Qatar 2022: ya sean partidos en vivo o compactos con los mejores momentos en la cancha....

But anyone with a fascination for military aviation might be interested in learning more about the flying elements of the new film, which The New Yorker concluded “far outflies its predecessor.” Popular Science caught up with Vincent Aiello, host of the Fighter Pilot Podcast, a former F/A-18 pilot, TOPGUN instructor, and current commercial airline pilot, to ask him about his thoughts on the new movie and how it stacks up against real Naval aviation....

With seven continents, eleven biomes, and upwards of a trillion species, this planet has a lot to offer in terms of diversity. But the vast majority of us only experience a speck of it. Wildlife photography, however, helps increase our exposure to the unknown. Take the California Academy of Science’s BigPicture competition, for instance: It puts stunning, biologically insightful images out in the public eye each spring. The gallery of winners might cover close encounters with megafauna, glimpses of life hidden under water, dirt, and ice, and windows into ecological relationships that surpass our imaginations....

In a change up to one of its most central design elements, Twitter, which has been struggling to grow its user base, announced today that its rebranding the favorite. The fav, which has historically been a little star, will be replaced by the “like”. The “like” icon will be a heart, following in Instagram and Tumblr’s established footsteps. Twitter explains that the heart is a universal signal, that can express a greater range of emotion than a star....

However, as that work continues, researchers around the country are also working to understand the subtler impacts non-counterfeit, nicotine e-cigarettes can have on health—and how their effects may or may not be different than those seen with traditional cigarettes. Although e-cigarettes were billed as healthier alternatives to traditional cigarettes, emerging research shows that they aren’t harmless. In the latest, two new studies to be presented at the American Heart Association (AHA) Scientific Sessions this week found that they hurt overall heart health and cardiac function....