As a portable light source, only the LED flashlight is superior to the carbide miner’s lamp, which had been the standard for brightness, weight and reliability since the early 1900s. Carbide lamps have an upper chamber full of water and a lower chamber full of rocklike calcium carbide (CaC2). A valve lets the water drip onto the CaC2 at a steady rate. When water hits carbide, it produces acetylene gas, which is directed to a nozzle in a parabolic reflector and then lit manually....

A new report out today from independent research organization Rhodium Group shows how the country’s emissions have shot back up 6.2 percent relative to 2020. In 2020, emissions were 22.2 percent below 2005 levels, but in 2021 those rose to 17.4 percent compared to 2005. At the same time, the economy only grew an estimated 5.7 percent—meaning our fossil fuel footprint outgrew even a restarting economy. “We need to repeat 2020 in terms of emission reductions while achieving economic growth,” Kate Larsen, a partner at Rhodium Group and a co-author of the report, told CNN....

TIME magazine announced Wednesday that 16-year-old Greta Thunberg is its 2019 Person of the Year. The teenage Swedish activist, who popularized the idea of climate strikes and has spoken to world leaders all over the world, has said publicly that she doesn’t want to be idolized. But whatever her intent, she’s now the articulate, passionate, immovable figurehead of a movement. In another time, Thunberg’s days skipping school to go on “climate strike” outside the Swedish Parliament might have remained a fringe event....

Even though common wisdom holds that allergies of all kinds have been on the rise in recent years, researchers actually have very little data on allergies in adults since many of them never get diagnosed by a physician. Some studies have attempted to use hospitalization data as a proxy, but that only picks up people with sufficiently serious allergies to go to the ER for anaphylaxis. Another study used data from NHANES, a massive national survey study that occurs every few years, to look at actual blood test results....

In a media statement, officials explained that the cull was needed to control the thousands of camels trodding into Aboriginal communities in Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) lands, located in the northwest part of South Australia. Particularly during times of extreme heat and drought, the animals bust into towns, clogging roadways and smashing through fences in search of water. And Australia’s had a hot year—2019 was its warmest on record and rainfall was 40 percent below average levels....

Most of us probably use the snooze function on our alarm clocks at some point in our lives. Just a few more minutes under the covers, a time to gather our thoughts, right? While such snoozing might seem harmless, it may not be. For starters, it is important to understand why we are using the snooze button in the first place. For some it’s a habit that started early on....

Every wildlife rehabilitator’s goal is to introduce animals back into their natural habitat. But sometimes due to illness, injury, or, as in Thumbelina’s case, a deficit of squirrel skills, an animal is deemed non-releasable. If that happens, rehabbers are obligated to put the animal down. Unable to bear the thought of euthanizing a perfectly healthy—albeit slightly slow—squirrel, Christina and Michael decided to keep her. “There are people who think if the animal can’t survive outside it should be put down, and we decided that wasn’t going to be an option,” says Michael....

FACT: The winner of the 1960 Olympic marathon did the whole race barefoot By Claire Maldarelli Running shoe technology has come a long way in the last 100 years. Companies have added arch support, ridged soles designed to minimize shin splints, and, most recently, literal carbon-fiber plates sandwiched between an energy-returning ultra-lightweight midsole. All of this research and investment is meant to help athletes run their best races, and while world record times, particularly in the marathon, have come down with the advent of higher-tech shoes, sneakers aren’t everything....

Yet, despite being the heftiest and noisiest being on the planet, blue whales are difficult to spot, due partly to their reclusive nature, but mostly to the detrimental effects of human activity. Commercial whaling in the twentieth century brought these gentle giants to the precipice of extinction. Researchers estimate that less than one percent of the global population of blue whales, including Antarctic and pygmy, survived worldwide, and less than 0....

After he disappeared trying to rescue a fellow explorer in 1928, Popular Science published a tribute to the lost adventurer, calling him “the last of the vikings” who, of all humans, “alone had stood at both frozen tips of our spinning world.” As a Boy Scout of today hunts out sparse woodland near our cities to practice “frontier” life, so young Amundsen practiced living as an Arctic explorer. He began to train his body to endure hardships....

The recent hubbub over plastic containers leaching chemicals into food and drinks has cast a pall over all kinds of plastics that come into contact with what we ingest, whether deserved or not. Some conscientious consumers are forsaking all plastics entirely out of health concerns. But while it is true that exposure to certain chemicals found in some plastics has been linked to various human health problems (especially certain types of cancer and reproductive disorders), only a small percentage of plastics contain them....

Apollo 17—the sixth and final mission of NASA’s history-making initiative to land human explorers on the moon—was a scientific breakthrough: During their 75-hour lunar stay, crewmembers Eugene A. Cernan, Ronald E. Evans, and Harrison H. Schmitt collected rare types of lunar rock and samples of “orange soil,” or regolith, that once formed in a lunar volcanic eruption, indicating that the moon’s past eras of geologic activity lasted longer than previously thought—which recent research has confirmed....

The good news is that the Food and Drug Administration—the agency responsible for authorizing COVID tests—is constantly using new data to extend the shelf life of these useful products. This means the ones you have at home may be good for up to 14 months beyond the expiration date on their packaging. All of this information is on the FDA’s website, but you’ll need some guidance to navigate it. If the expiration date on your test is long gone, go to the FDA’s list of authorized at-home COVID tests and check the database at the bottom of the page....

Several platforms can give new life to your old snaps with the help of neural networks. These intricate pieces of code use cues in the shading of black and white photographs to identify a grayscale value, and then cross that information with vast databases of sample pictures to find its colored match. This allows them to identify a specific hue and add it back to the image. This all happens in the background, though—the only thing you need to do is click on the right place....

What is loneliness? The effects of loneliness Most people can recognize the gnawing, painful longing that accompanies loneliness. But beyond feelings of sadness and depression, loneliness has been shown to affect the way our minds perceive social situations. Loneliness is more devastating than many of us realize—it has a profound impact on a person’s mental and physical health, and has even been found to be an accurate predictor of early mortality....

Netflix Ironically, Netflix is not the best source for telling you it actually has available. However, it does have a couple tricks you can use to learn about new content. For information about soon-to-expire titles, on the other hand, you’ll need a third-party service (we’ve listed some good ones below). Netflix doesn’t share this data within its own menus, possibly to avoid drawing attention to how frequently videos rotate out. You don’t want to find an episode you were about to watch has disappeared unexpectedly, or miss watching one of your favorite films because you never realized it had become available....

You can add your name to a splash screen, develop a new product feature, or — living life on the edge — rewrite the whole shebang and make an entirely new product: the sky’s the limit when hacking firmware. There is one very important caveat, though: if you don’t know what you’re doing when tinkering with firmware, you could destroy the product. In this introduction to firmware hacking, let’s try a simple modification....

In particular, it seems the government is upping its focus on the green goo that could satisfy some of Americans’ energy needs: algae. Earlier in February, the Department of Energy’s Bioenergy Technologies Office (BETO) announced a new round of funding worth $19 million for projects that can increase the capabilities of working algal systems to capture carbon dioxide. The goals are two-fold: to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to cultivate algae for biofuels and other bioproducts....

As interesting as this sounds, you should keep in mind this is only a surface-level change, so you’re not suddenly going to get FaceTime or iMessage on your Samsung. Your apps and system settings will stay the same, and data such as contacts and text messages will remain unchanged. Once you install and set it up, the launcher will wrap everything in a different interface, allowing you to enjoy the polished design of iOS without having to pay for your own iPhone or sign up for any Apple services....

The good news is that even if a floral arrangement is not actually part of a rooted plant anymore, you can keep the buds tight and colors vibrant for a fair amount of time. As with every living creature, caring for cut flowers is just a matter of managing and controlling basic conditions: water, food, temperature, and bacterial growth. Bouquets also usually come with a lot of ornamental greenery to make them look fuller....