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Both Senator McCain and Senator Obama answered the questions, and their answers can be read here. However, it’s easy for a politician to make promises, so Popular Science investigated both senator’s voting records to see if their history matched up with their promises for the future. Each day for the next two weeks we’ll present an analysis of the candidate’s voting records as compared with their answers to the ScienceDebate2008 questions....

Named the Jess Heavy Lifter 40 (JHL-40) after its inventor, SkyHook’s Peter Jess, the buoyant airship has a helium-filled envelope that will be enough to support its own weight, including fuel. This leaves its four rotors to provide enough power to carry a 40-ton external load for 200 miles without refueling—a bonus in harsh, isolated areas like the Canadian Arctic or Alaska. A hybrid blimp rotorcraft or “helicraft” is not a new concept at all, and, in fact, there have been many dead-end endeavors, like the Piasecki Heli-Stat in the 1980s....

Dubbed the “Spy Stone,” this little robot is the creation of Russian Air Force cadets, over the course of three years at the Military Educational and Scientific Center at the Zhukovsky and Gagarin Air Force Academy. It looks, in many respects, like a conglomeration R2-D2 from Star Wars, a remote control toy tank, and a hide-a-key rock. The robot is only a prototype, but it is one with potential real-world combat implications....

Sure, all these things—and the literal thousands of other inventions that have appeared in our pages—have common threads in research and innovation, but words like that are the low-hanging fruit. They’re our DNA, as opposed to a discrete thought. What could possibly bring all this to a head in a tangible way? The answer, oddly enough, was a theme the editors have batted around for years: metal. Eras of human technological development have been defined by metals (copper, bronze, then iron)....

On Thursday, the World Health Organization declared the novel coronavirus spreading out of China to be a global health emergency. But even with serious concerns over the disease, which has surged to nearly 10,000 cases in China and popped up in smaller numbers in 19 other countries, the WHO has strongly advised against limiting international travel and trade. “WHO doesn’t recommend limiting trade and movement,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said....

On August 16, defense company Rheinmetall Canada announced that the company had installed a PATH autonomy kit on a Polaris-made MRZR D4 for the first time, as part of Protect Theseus for the UK’s Ministry of Defence. Project Theseus is “an initiative to automate supply delivery to soldiers in hostile environments,” and the PATH kit is an AI-powered navigation system that should help with that objective. “Under Project Theseus, it is hoped the use of self-driving air or ground platforms to deliver combat supplies, including ammunition, materials, food and fuel, will reduce the need for personnel to risk their life by entering into what are typically hostile environments,” the British Army said in a release in January....

Residents of the 8.7-mile danger zone around Taal are still evacuated, and people from a larger zone are being encouraged to be cautious. The Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (PHIVOLCS) is also warning pilots to avoid flying through the area. Like many volcanoes around the Pacific Rim, Taal is what’s known as an “explosive volcano,” says Katherine Kelley, a University of Rhode Island professor of oceanography. This kind of volcano commonly occurs above places where one of the Earth’s tectonic plates is pushed underneath another as part of an active collision....

The Flyox first flew in 2015, and is undergoing further test flights this fall and winter. The firefighting mission is one of its flashiest, and gets central placement in the company’s materials about the plane. Citing the death rates of human firefighters–specifically the risk from smoke inhalation–Singular Aircraft owner and founder Luis Carrillo says the main goal of the drone is to “stop killing agricultural and firefighting pilots.” The risk fumes pose to a drone is just mechanical failure, rather than loss of life when human pilots are involved....

As first reported by The Guardian, the iKnife’s technology shows promise in identifying patients’ endometrial cancers with an almost 90 percent accuracy rate. “The iKnife reliably diagnosed endometrial cancer in seconds, with a diagnostic accuracy of 89 percent, minimizing the current delays for [patients] whilst awaiting a histopathological diagnosis,” the team wrote in a paper published in the research journal, Cancers, adding that the innovation could “pave the way for new diagnostic pathways....

Meanwhile, a different firm—Wisk Aero, which is backed by Boeing—unveiled the latest version of its electric flying machine today, and it’s designed to fly with no pilot at all. It’s an air taxi, intended to transport four passengers (and no human aviator) over distances of 90 miles, perhaps less for a smaller hop. The goal is to be an all-electric, driverless Uber in the sky that cruises at 138 mph....

The vaccine uses what are called “virus-like particles,” which are essentially the outer shell of a SARS-CoV-2 virus, to induce an immune response. The technology was highly effective at preventing illness even against the Delta variant and several immune-escape strains, according to a summary of the trial. The trial was conducted before the Omicron variant’s spread, however. Like many of the other successful vaccines on the market, the idea is to build SARS-CoV-2 proteins without the virus itself, so that the immune system can be trained to recognize the invader without having to fight it off....

But there probably will be soon. This new information comes courtesy of a report from the Centers for Disease Control which investigated multi-drug resistance within the specific type of Salmonella that causes common food poisoning (not to be confused with the type that causes typhoid fever). About 12 percent of these non-typhoidal lines are resistant to three or more classes of antimicrobials, but previously most were still susceptible to the drug, azithromycin....

Over the course of several months, a remotely-controlled robot from the Pacific International Space Center for Exploration (PISCES) did just that. And now, thanks to Project Manager Rodrigo Romo we can watch that construction in all its impressive, tedious glory. While the video was released on Tuesday, the project ended in October. Here’s how PISCES described the goal: This was part of NASA’s larger Additive Construction with Mobile Emplacement (ACME) project, which wants to use found materials on alien worlds, builder robots like this one, and 3D printing, to build structures without needing to bring all the parts from Earth....

Until now, Hygiea (named after the Greek god of health and hygiene) was just one of millions of asteroids in the asteroid belt, the pre-planetary wreckage that fills the solar system between Mars and Jupiter. But advances in astronomy have brought the body into focus for the first time, revealing a smooth, round form at odds with its cratered, misshapen companions. The new observation, published Monday in Nature Astronomy, suggests that Hygiea hides a cataclysmic past, one that could gain it admission into the exclusive but poorly understood club of dwarf planets—potentially re-shaping the club itself in the process....

The two swirling objects make up a binary star system, and they’re at very different stages in their lives. One is a white dwarf: A small, burnt-out core of a star that’s one of the densest objects in the universe (a spoonful of its matter would weigh as much as a truck). The other is a red giant: a bloated, cooled-down star that’s stopped burning hydrogen and started burning helium, which is a sign that it’s well on its way to becoming a white dwarf....

Right now, RoboFly can only take off and land — but cutting the cord is just the beginning. “Before now, the concept of wireless insect-sized flying robots was science fiction,” says Sawyer Fuller, assistant professor in the University of Washington’s department of mechanical engineering and one of its creators. “Our new wireless RoboFly shows they’re much closer to real life.” The researchers presented their findings at the recent International Conference on Robotics and Automation in Brisbane....

All animals who have been confirmed positive for COVID-19—which includes the Bronx Zoo’s tiger, a cat in Belgium, as well as a cat and a dog in Hong Kong—are believed to have caught the virus following close contact with infected humans. A preliminary study from Chinese researchers (which has since been peer-reviewed and published in the journal Science this week) seems to indicate that companion species including dogs and cats can become carriers of SARS-CoV-2....

The NYC Subway map isn’t the only one that lies: London’s, Paris’s, and Boston’s maps are all lies too. I know Dublin’s is as well, and I’m sure many other transit maps are too. And while the lies they tell are useful, they can lead you astray if you’re looking for the best way to get somewhere. What looks like it should take a few minutes on the subway can be a 30-second walk....

This played out recently, with the announcement last month of the discovery of ancient organics found on the surface, and fluctuations of methane in the atmosphere on Mars. Methane is often produced through biological processes, so seasonal releases on Mars could be a sign that something is constantly replenishing an underground supply of that hydrocarbon. But yet again–life wasn’t found on Mars. And NASA won’t be announcing the discovery of life on Mars anytime soon....

That target likely won’t be Snake River, but the rock feature is interesting to NASA researchers for a few reasons, chiefly because it “has a crosscutting relationship to the surrounding rock,” says project scientist John Grotzinger, and that suggests it was most likely deposited there after the layer of rock that it cuts across. No is sure exactly what that means, but Curiosity is pausing there briefly to take a hard look at the formation....