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Hey, Toyota—is everything, um, OK? Strapped into the new Toyota GR Corolla and sitting in pit lane awaiting our turn at a 2.1-mile section of Utah Motorsports Park’s wildly undulating road course, we felt slightly silly. Until now, we imagined, the only people who’d ever worn helmets inside a dealership-ready Corolla were unbalanced folks with visions of, well, something as absurd as a track-ready production Toyota Corolla. One such person is Toyota President Akio Toyoda. He’s been pushing the company’s Gazoo Racing (GR) subbrand, and he personally signed off on the final product. The result is the craziest showroom-spec Corolla hatchback ever built. Just how out of bounds is it? We can count on one hand the sporty Corollas sold here over the decades. It was long ago typecast as an anodyne, safe…

Apple is in the midst of a two-year rollout of its own Mac processors, with the first Mac System on a Chip (SoC) blowing away expectations. The entire company’s consumer lineup is outfitted with the incredibly fast M1, and with the recent release of the M1 Pro and Max in the MacBook Pro, we got a taste of what Apple can do with its silicon to meet the performance demands that pro users put on high-end Macs. When it comes to pro Macs, however, the model that most readily comes to mind is the Mac Pro, Apple’s high-end workstation. What optimizations does the M1 Max have that will dictate the demise of the old Intel guard? One important battle will come down to the graphics processor, which is traditionally the most…

At various points during the past several years, Apple has been rated the most valuable corporation in the world. And it’s pretty safe to assume the company didn’t get to that point without being strategic about how it positions its products. One big part of what’s made Apple so successful is that the company makes sure it’s got products at every price point. No, it doesn’t compete in the super-budget department when it comes to devices—Apple is happy to leave those low-margin offerings to the likes of Android phones and Dell PCs—but when it does enter a market, it makes sure it always has a solid spread. Of course, when you’re a company that builds powerful, good-looking devices and values its profit margins, your options are somewhat limited when it comes to…

We live in a wonderful era for Apple laptops. The 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros provide desktop power and stunning HDR displays. The new M2 MacBook Air has now joined the family, with a similar striking design and the Air’s trademark smaller size and weight. After a dark period where Apple struggled with flawed laptop keyboards, a painful transition to USB-C, and an increasingly frustrating relationship with Intel, things haven’t looked this bright in quite some time. That’s why, as Apple looks on proudly at the new line of laptops it has fashioned over the past couple of years, I have only one request: More, please. LAPTOPS ARE THE BEST Let’s start with the facts. For decades, the overall percentage of new Macs sold that are laptops kept going up. The last time…

Is the 2024 Cadillac Celestiq for real? This head-turning, all-electric superluxury sedan is longer than the brand’s Escalade SUV and priced in a stratosphere Cadillac has long only dreamed of returning to. To wit: Pricing will start above the $300,000 threshold, but customers can easily add up to $100,000 more via customization, all but guaranteeing no two owners have the same exact car. The mere fact Cadillac is producing the Celestiq is nearly as surprising as the vehicle itself, which fulfills a longstanding desire to build a proper flagship. An idea became a vision, then a concept car, and now a fabulous final-form four-door that brings to life almost all the gee-whiz features envisioned along the way. The Celestiq has an estimated 600 hp and 640 lb-ft of torque, a 0–60…

This wraps up the “Builder Basics” series for creating a fine ship model, no matter your experience level. In this final segment we put the emphasis on small details to give your ship a finished, realistic look. So far you’ve learned how to build the hull and other major components, add small parts and photo-etched (PE) metal that help detail modern ship kits, and then paint the vessel, after carefully and properly masking it. Now it’s time to paint tiny details and apply decals before adding the last of the parts, including PE metal railings.…

1 You were learning before you were born: By eavesdropping on their mothers while in the womb, babies pick up the sound patterns of their native tongue. 2 After birth, infants recognize these rhythms and are more attentive to them than the sounds of other languages, prepping for eventual fluency. 3 But infants’ first postnatal teachers are their mothers’ faces: Babies can distinguish their mothers from other women within hours of birth, and discern emotions within days. 4 That ability helps junior figure out whether a new toy is safe or a stranger is to be trusted. 5 This focus on mom has a cost, though. As a child becomes more familiar with their mother’s face, faces unlike hers become more vague, especially those belonging to people of other races…

Conventional wisdom says that when passenger revenues begin to drop, all a railroad can do is go before the Interstate Commerce Commission and ask for a rate increase. It’s also commonly argued that empty trains, not low fares, are the prime reason for insufficient revenues. Out on the West Coast there is a railroad that takes the latter view. It is the Southern Pacific, and it is demonstrating that it is quite possible to operate luxury trains at low rates and, by keeping an eye on the expected loadings, to change the consist to that happy point where the train is comfortably crowded rather than half full. This cuts empty carmiles and allows SP to show an operating profit on these passenger operations. Of course, SP has an enviable setup for its…

Officially, HP’s Envy laptops are only its second-best consumer models, slotted between affordable Pavilions and flagship Spectres—but you’d never know it from looking at the new Envy 16. A desktop replacement that straddles the content creation and gaming segments, it’s available with a blazing Intel Core i9 processor and a snazzy OLED display, as well as luxuries like a 5-megapixel webcam. It’s neither cheap nor feather-light, and its midrange Nvidia graphics processor won’t satisfy fanatic gamers, but it’s an attractive all-around performer that costs hundreds less than a comparably equipped Dell XPS 15. Indeed, it’s impressive enough to replace the XPS 15 as our Editors’ Choice holder among premium creative laptops. PROS • Gorgeous 4K OLED touch screen • Fancy 5-megapixel webcam • Great performance and battery life • Robust GeForce RTX 3060 GPU CONS • A…

Difficulty rating Materials blue/gunmetal bangle 8¼ in. (21 cm) circumference, 2¼ in. (5.7 cm) inner diameter • 4 x 7 mm long magatamas (www.caravanbeads.com) -- 20 g color A (Miyuki 451, gunmetal) -- 20 g color B (Miyuki 283, noir-lined crystal AB) • S-Lon nylon cord (Tex 210, black) • S-Lon D nylon beading thread • Big Eye needle or cord stiffener • beading needles, #10 • kumihimo disk with 8 plastic bobbins and counterweight; or marudai with 8 tama and counterweight • chopstick and painter’s tape (if using a marudai) • 1 10 mm or larger split ring • pliers or hemostat • cord burner • super glue (optional) purple/cream/silver bangle colors • 4 x 7 mm long magatamas (www.caravanbeads.com) -- 14 g color A (Miyuki 1884, violet gold luster) -- 14 g color B (Miyuki 420, white pearl Ceylon) -- 14 g color C (Miyuki 1051, galvanized silver) red/orange…

IN THE LATE 1960s, a serial killer self-identifying as “the Zodiac” killed at least five people in Northern California and claimed to have murdered more. In November 1969, the Zodiac killer sent a card to the San Francisco Chronicle containing a 340-character secret message that for more than 50 years went unsolved by numerous detectives, cryptography experts, amateur sleuths and curious others. Wonder no more, true-crime aficionados. After months of crunching code during the pandemic, three researchers on three different continents announced that they’d finally decoded the message. Further bolstering the claim, experts at the FBI verified the solution (and even tweeted about it). The encrypted message didn’t reveal the identity of the Zodiac killer, but it did bring decades of speculation, conspiracy theories and guesswork about this cipher to a dramatic…

Extinctions of species occurred long before humans arrived on Earth. By that definition, it’s a natural process. But today, extinctions are increasing rapidly — and very often linked to human activities. Take the Bramble Cay melomys, a small rodent on a remote island uninhabited by humans. In 2016, it became the first mammal to be erased from the planet due to climate change. Some conservationists mourned, but others questioned whether every extinction is something to worry about. In the face of tough decisions about human lifestyles and the climate crisis, a split among scientists is surfacing. Losing one species may not change life as we know it, so perhaps our limited conservation resources should focus on preserving the biodiversity in those systems where it benefits humans. Sometimes, such as when dense…

HIS DAYS WOULD start promptly, like a banker’s — except he also worked weekends. At 8:30 each morning, Terry Manning would step outside his two-story brick house on Gipsy Lane in Leicester, England, walk through the yard, let himself in the house next door, climb the stairs and take a seat at his workbench, with a view onto the garden out back. There he sat for the next nine hours or so, surrounded by dozens of sand-colored eggs ranging in size from 1½ to 20 inches long. Soaking in plastic bowls of acid, these eggs were originally laid some 75 million to 85 million years ago by dinosaurs living in what is now China. Manning would break from his station around 5:30 p.m., head downstairs, watch the news and eat, maybe…

Lou Barbe wouldn’t call himself an avid gamer. As an ecologist at the Université de Rennes in France, he spends most of his time with plants. But one game has captured his imagination since childhood: StarCraft, the popular online strategy franchise in which players accrue resources and construct armies of alien fighters to wage war across extraterrestrial landscapes. “I’m not at all a very good player,” says Barbe. “But I understand what’s going on.” While playing StarCraft II — the latest version of the game — a few years ago, Barbe realized that amid all the explosions and lasers, something else was happening. StarCraft was behaving a lot like an ecosystem. “We have an environment,” says Barbe. “We have resources. We have organisms that are competing in this environment. That’s the…

Steven Jacobsen never planned on becoming a geophysicist. In fact, that might have been the furthest thing from his mind when he started college at the University of Colorado in the early 1990s, intent on majoring in music or business. But after he randomly chose a geology course to meet the school’s science requirement, he was inspired to follow a different path. “After all those days of playing outside as a kid and picking up rocks,” Jacobsen says, “I realized that this is what I wanted to do.” Now, he studies not just rocks, but the water hidden inside them. The more he and other researchers look, the more water they find all throughout Earth’s interior — even though it may not resemble the liquid we’re familiar with. Under the extreme temperatures…

Gravitational-wave astronomy is growing up. These ripples in the fabric of space-time are created by accelerating masses, which then travel outward from their origin at the speed of light. While anything with mass can produce a gravitational wave (GW), only the biggest events are currently detectable: either from two black holes colliding, or two neutron stars smashing into each other, or a combination of the two. The first GWs were detected in 2015 by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO), when two black holes about 1.3 billion light-years away slammed into each other. LIGO consists of two interferometers — one in Louisiana, one in Washington state — which are L-shaped vacuum tunnels about 2.5 miles long on each side. A laser is shot from the crux of the L to mirrors…

Sitting in an isolated room at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, Frank Nielsen steeled himself for the first injection. Doctors were about to take a needle filled with herpes simplex virus, the strain responsible for cold sores, and plunge it directly into his scalp. If all went well, it would likely save his life. Nielsen was a cancer survivor and, once again, a cancer patient. His melanoma, which had responded to conventional treatments the first time around, had returned with a frightening aggressiveness. Within weeks, a lump on his scalp had swelled into an ugly mass. Unlike the first time, options like surgery weren’t viable — it was growing too quickly. As a last resort, his doctors turned to a cutting-edge drug known as T-VEC, approved in 2015 in the…

Statistics research doesn’t usually require weapons. But to develop their latest algorithm, Iowa State University statisticians Alicia Carriquiry and Heike Hofmann needed thousands of bullets fired from a small collection of handguns. So they put the firepower in their own hands, and hit the range. criteria that distinguish science from speculation. That so-called sorcery has destroyed lives. The For nearly a year, Carriquiry and Hofmann, supervised by sheriff’s deputies, unloaded round after round into a tube with Kevlar fibers. After each shot, they fished out the bullet and tucked it in a plastic baggie labeled with critical data: gun, barrel, shot number. “If you had asked me a few years ago whether I was going to be doing this type of data collection, I would have said, ‘You’re crazy,’” says Carriquiry. It’s not…

DATA AS OF JULY 11, 2022 SOURCES: FACTSET, FORBES ASIA BAFANG ELECTRIC E-bike popularity accelerated during the pandemic as people looked to cycling for recreation and alternative transport. Riding the trend, sales at Suzhou-based electric motor and battery maker Bafang Electric surged 90% last year while net profit climbed 50%. It recently opened a new manufacturing plant in Poland to serve the European market. DOLLAR INDUSTRIES Following a recovery from Covid 19-induced trade and supply disruptions, Indian apparel maker Dollar Industries booked 30% sales growth for the fiscal year ended in March, with net profit surging 72%. Besides expanding its clothing range for women, the company also recently added a spinning mill and a warehouse. GIFT HOLDINGS The ramen restaurant company saw sales jump 22% to $124 million as pandemic restrictions lifted in Japan, bringing customers to…

When a big company with lax security suffers a breach that exposes your personal data, passwords, or profile pics, there’s not much you can do about it. That doesn’t mean you’re powerless to protect yourself, though: You can strengthen your security and guard your privacy at home. You don’t want to lose the novel you’re writing to ransomware or let a banking Trojan siphon off all your cash, right? Fortunately, you can mount a local defense against these local problems. Making your devices, online identity, and activities more secure really doesn’t take much effort. In fact, several of our tips about what you can do to be more secure online boil down to little more than common sense. 1. INSTALL AN ANTIVIRUS AND KEEP IT UPDATED We call it antivirus software, but fending…

Biplaza PARA ESPACIOS PEQUEÑOS Ideales para hogares reducidos, los sofás biplaza, como el Ness (750€) de El Corte Inglés, aportan comodidad sin empequeñecer visualmente las estancias. Puede personalizarse totalmente con varias opciones de tela, patas y relleno. EFECTO ÓPTICO Los tonos claros y las líneas rectas y puras son buenos aliados para generar luminosidad y armonizar el ambiente. NO HAY DOS SIN TRES Porque siempre hay hueco para alguien más en casa, el sofá Landskrona (599€) de Ikea consigue, con solo unos cuantos centímetros adicionales, añadir una plaza extra que a simple vista pasa desapercibida. ¿POR QUÉ NOS GUSTA? Por su estilo vintage, con su funda DJUPARP de terciopelo, tejido con una técnica tradicional que da colores más cálidos y profundos, y sus reposabrazos móviles, que permiten acoplar fácilmente una chaise longue. También por su excelente relación calidad-precio, claro. SIMPLE…

Making people laugh connects us to one another. But what humour endures? For me, it’s personal life stories and experiences. Life, twisted and moulded until you find the funny, will always evolve, and therefore endure. I’ve found that the closer it cuts to the bone, the funnier it is. The beauty of life is that everyone is similar in some way. While we may not have the same experiences, everyone can relate to observations on life, family and the varieties of behaviour we all encounter every day as we go about our lives. Humour is very helpful in everyday life. For example, it can end tense situations. In my life, humour has ended arguments at home and at work too many times to mention. Finding humour can break tension immediately. My…

Few vehicles sharing the same basic platform are better differentiated than the boxy, go-anywhere Bronco Sport and the urban-outfitted, lozenge-shaped Escape. Had these C2 platform-mates looked more similar, the former might have cannibalized the latter’s sales. Both are selling at or near capacity three years into the fourth-gen Escape’s model run, but Ford has toughened up softer-looking Escape’s visage and demeanor anyway. Most of the redesign comes courtesy of a bolder new hood, which sits atop a more deeply sculpted grille flanked by a pair of LED-outlined “four-eyed” headlamps. On upper trim levels, a so-called “coast-to-coast” LED light strip connects these headlamp DRLs, illuminating the gap between the hood and grille. A new fascia incorporating a faux skidplate completes the makeover. Other exterior changes are minimal: new 17-, 18-, and 19-inch…

MILLIONS OF PAIRS OF UNSOLD Yeezys are sitting in purgatory, stacked in warehouses from the US to China. Sneakers—some looking like cozy turtleneck sweaters for your feet, others like they’ve grown teeth on their soles or solidified into pillowy clouds—that once would’ve sold out in limited-edition drops, often flipped for much more on StockX and Goat, now await their fate seven months after one of the biggest corporate meltdowns in history. Their owner, Adidas AG, couldn’t decide what to do with all the tarnished merchandise created by the man who was, until recently, its most prominent business partner: Kanye West, who now goes by Ye. The total value of these sneakers: about $1.3 billion. At Adidas headquarters in the medieval town of Herzogenaurach, Germany, senior executives have spent months mulling their…

THE EVENTS OF RECENT MONTHS HAVE QUASHED any remaining notion that Donald Trump might abandon his quest for political power after being turned out of office by voters two years ago. He is still holding his trademark rallies, sometimes complete with QAnon call-outs, in principle to support Republican candidates but in practice holding on to center stage to hawk his own accomplishments and grievances. The former president has had plenty of help in staying in the public eye. The House’s January 6 Committee recently voted to subpoena him to testify. The FBI raided Mar-a-Lago, his home in Palm Beach, Florida, in search of classified documents he kept after leaving office. And multiple other legal woes have ensured that some news of each day features Trump. A Trump bid for the White House…

Ambition can feel like a dirty word in the era of quiet quitting and the Great Resignation. Many Americans have realized that an always-striving mindset can come at a cost to mental wellness; in an October report, the U.S. Surgeon General even named workplace mental health a new public-health priority in the wake of the pandemic. Research has also linked chasing extrinsic goals, like power, to anxiety and depression. But is abandoning your ambition outright the secret to inner peace? Not necessarily. Instead, research suggests, the key is harnessing your ambition for a goal that serves your well-being. “We want to make sure that our ambition is being directed in ways that we care about,” says clinical psychologist Richard Ryan, a leading motivation researcher. Striving is healthy only if “we do it…

One of the major (and majorly controversial) changes in macOS Ventura is a redesign of System Preferences. It’s now called System Settings and it’s designed to better resemble the iOS Settings app. Apple’s desire to have more commonality between macOS and iOS is understandable, but the problem is that it’s now a chore to find the settings you need. The years of muscle memory developed by Mac users are out the window and it’s time to relearn where everything is. You can find most of the frequently-access preferences up front (Apple ID, Battery, Bluetooth, and Sound, for example). Others have been renamed to match the corresponding iOS setting, such as Security & Privacy, which is now Privacy & Security. But most notably, System Settings now uses a lot of subsections and lists,…

Sam Wedll has been driving his Toyota Tacoma pickup on the rugged roads of Northern California for seven trouble-free years, racking up almost 100,000 miles, so he’s interested in the redesigned version of the truck coming later this year. He paid $34,000 for his truck in 2016, loading it with plenty of options. Wedll is eyeing the new gas-electric hybrid that Toyota Motor Corp. is going to offer, but he’s not interested in paying luxury prices. “The hybrid is pretty interesting to me because I like the idea of the fuel efficiency,” says Wedll, 47, a casino operations manager in Blue Lake, California. “I’m just trying to save some costs wherever possible.” The Tacoma, known as the Taco to its legions of loyalists, is the leader of the pack in midsize pickups,…

Our “Builder Basics” ship series uses Trumpeter’s 1/350 scale USS Independence littoral combat ship to demonstrate all the techniques you’ll need to complete a ship model. Earlier, in Part 1 you learned to assemble the tri-maran hull and other major components. Part 2 focused on adding details, both plastic and photo-etched metal. In this segment we’re off to the paint shop where we’ll have fun airbrushing various grays and using a lot of masking tape.…

Imagine a world where, when a person died, they took all their riches with them like the pharaohs of Egypt. If you consider biological material to be of value, this is not so far removed from modern reality, except that instead of gold and silver treasures being buried with us, it’s our nutrients. These riches we hoard in our graves are the mineral building blocks necessary for those still alive — the carbon in our skin, the iron in our blood and the calcium in our bones. These nutrients exist as finite, limited resources in the world. But conventional practices of embalming and cremation prevent their recycling, hindering our ability to give back that which we have attained from other living things. The average human weighs 136 pounds at the time of…

THE FOSSIL was heralded as the smallest dinosaur ever found. Named Oculudentavis and known from a skull encased in 99-million-year-old amber, the living animal would have been about the size of the smallest modern hummingbirds. Strange, then, that such a tiny fossil stirred the largest paleontological controversy of the year. From the time of the fossil’s March publication in Nature, outside experts were skeptical of the animal’s identity. The initial analysis by paleontologist Lida Xing and colleagues couldn’t pin down where Oculudentavis fit in relation to other dinosaurs; if anything, the fossil had characteristics that were both primitive and advanced for a dinosaur of its age. Rumors began to spread that there was a second specimen of the same animal that confirmed the creature’s identity as a lizard. Then, on July 22,…

Since my first trip to the United States, I’ve been fascinated with the Utah desert in the western part of the state. This interest led me to build a 23" x 40" diorama, shown above, that captures the classic Western landscape most people see only in the movies. The diorama is big enough to take nice photographs, yet small enough that I can easily store it when I’m not staging trains or taking pictures. Modeling Utah’s desert scenery proved to be a challenge, especially since I live more than 5,000 miles away in Switzerland. Capturing the various textures and colors, such as the sediment layers and sandstone color of the rock outcroppings, the sandy terrain, and the desert vegetation, required a mix of old and new techniques. I referred to photos…

Cheater’s Mac and Cheese Replacing a traditional béchamel sauce with cream cheese, which melts almost instantly, makes this recipe ultraspeedy. Feel free to swap in other vegetables, such as fresh or frozen cauliflower florets or peas, for the broccoli. 4 ounces short pasta, such as penneKosher salt and freshly ground black pepper (optional)1½ cups fresh or frozen broccoli florets2½ ounces cream cheese (⅓ cup)1 tablespoon unsalted butter½ ounce Parmigiano-Reggiano, finely grated (⅓ cup), plus more for serving 1. Cook pasta in a pot of generously salted boiling water 2 minutes less than per package instructions. Reserve 1 cup pasta water and cover to keep warm. Add broccoli to pot; continue boiling until pasta is al dente and broccoli is bright green, 1 to 2 minutes more. Drain. Return pot to medium heat; add…

How we communicate and the method we choose can make all the difference to the outcome. Workers have long been frustrated when the mode of communication is wrong for the message, because it’s ineffective, reduces productivity, or wastes people’s time. WHAT WE CAN LEARN FROM ALL-REMOTE ORGANIZATIONS? Remote organizations must necessarily think harder about workplace communication than in-person organizations, because they don’t have the same options as in-person teams. Remote organizations, which tend to be younger, also don’t typically have the same cultural baggage that older organizations do. Older organizations are more likely to be set in their ways. A classic example is a company whose culture gives undue significance to in-person meetings. People believe that the in-person meeting is the best way to, for example, kick off a project or regularly check…

THE WELSH VILLAGE of Llandudno went quiet in March as stay-at-home orders began. Then the goats descended from the mountain. A wild herd of Kashmiri goats has lived near Llandudno for almost two centuries, and they sometimes come down from the Great Orme Mountain during inclement weather. But this spring, while the human world hit pause, they settled into town for a few days, munching on hedges and trotting down the empty streets. The goats joined a host of animal celebrities flooding the internet after they supposedly reclaimed urban areas: dolphins frolicking in Venice’s clean canals, elephants drunk on corn wine in a tea garden in China’s Yunnan province. Tweets announcing these events proclaimed that nature was recovering from years of abuse by humans, thanks to COVID-19 shutdowns. While the goats really did…

In just one generation, childhood went digital. Even before they can say the words, “Hey, Siri,” kids are awash in smartphones, tablets and a torrent of interactive content. The average child younger than 2 spends around 40 minutes a day looking at screens — and that daily dose only increases as the years go by. One survey estimates that almost half of all American teenagers say they’re online nearly constantly. The proliferation of screens — and their potential impact — has sparked concerns. The American Academy of Pediatrics has recommended that kids under 18 months avoid screens altogether, apart from the occasional video chat. The group’s 2016 report on media use for children cites risks ranging from poor sleep to stunted language skills. Many Silicon Valley parents, including tech titans like Mark…

Stars and galaxies move around us at a pace that seems glacial on human time scales. Their dance is exceedingly gradual, taking place over billions of years. But if we could see time the same way the stars do, the neighborhood around our Milky Way Galaxy would appear surprisingly active. Galaxies swing around one another, slowly spiraling together until they merge. Many don’t travel alone but bring companions with them, in a dark collision that may tear some stars from the heart of their homes and splay them across the sky. Other regions grow rich in gas and dust and begin, in their newfound opulence, to birth new stars. The dance of the galaxies is slow and violent, filled with both life and death. The Milky Way drives the motion of the…

The night after their wedding in 1954, my grandparents sat on the bed in their motel room, counting the cash in my grandpa’s pockets. There was barely enough to open a bank account. So, the next morning, Eleanor Lowenthal — my grandmother — in desperate need of income to put her husband through graduate school, walked into the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology. There, she convinced some of the most prominent scientists in the world that she was the perfect person to mount and catalog their burgeoning ant collection. At the time, a promising graduate student named E.O. Wilson was coming up in the department. Wilson, who passed away in December 2021 at the age of 92, was called the “father of biodiversity” and the “heir of Darwin.” The myrmecologist —an…

How’s your tummy feeling today? Odds are, not that great. A new study estimates that Americans spent $135.9 billion on treatment for gastrointestinal diseases in 2015, over the course of more than 54.4 million trips to the doctor. Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) alone is thought to affect 10 to 15 percent of all people worldwide, many of whom are undiagnosed. Your digestive system achieves no small feat each and every day, as it turns things you eat into usable energy and nutrients for the rest of your body. It’s an incredibly complex system, which also means there’s incredible complexity in the ways things can get out of whack. But while gut issues are on the rise, so is our understanding of them. Researchers have made huge strides toward figuring out the causes of…

When we form episodic memories of things that happened to us, three areas of the brain are engaged: the hippocampus, the neocortex and the amygdala. The hippocampus takes the information from our memories and physically encodes it into the connections between neurons. Later, this data is sometimes transferred to the neocortex — the thin tissue that forms the brain’s outer layer — for long-term storage. But it is the amygdala, an almond-shaped mass of brain matter, that injects our memories with emotions like fear. “If an experience has a strong emotional component, the amygdala will squirt that into the newly forming memory,” says Burnett. “If someone has an active amygdala, they learn to be scared of things.” In recent years, scientists have learned a lot about the hardware in our brains that…

Archaeologists and astronomers don’t seem to have much in common. One digs into the earth while the other looks at the sky, and a stone tool once wielded by Homo erectus couldn’t be more different from an exploding star at the edge of the visible universe. But the sciences are actually fundamentally similar: Both try to understand the present by looking deep into the past, whether it’s the origin of the human species or of the universe. For some astronomers, the parallels are even closer. One of the great mysteries of the cosmos is how and when and why the first stars flared into light out of the darkness that followed the Big Bang. Nobody knows for sure what those first stars looked like, or how they lived and died. But…

Taiga Mitsuyuki, a marine systems engineer at Yokohama National University in Japan, holds a small plastic model in his hands. The 3D-printed ship, sporting twin hulls and rigid sails mounted on an A-frame, was built to illustrate a seemingly impossible purpose. If a full-scale version of the boat is built, it could draw energy from one of nature’s most destructive forces. Mitsuyuki and his colleagues have high hopes for such a vessel: The scientists want to make storm engineering a real prospect by 2050. Once deployed, these ships would enable the team to capture and store a typhoon’s energy with propellers and batteries. At the same time, an accompanying drone armada would inject a cooling agent into the storm, helping to weaken it. This mission feels increasingly vital as storms hitting Japan…

Several years ago, Sushma Subramanian was procrastinating on her work when she noticed her desk was a bit wobbly. It was a rather mundane moment, she recalls. But as she began to fiddle with the tabletop, the science journalist found herself noting how the experience felt: the grain of the wood against her fingers, the pinching of her skin and the sensation of her muscles straining to lift the desk. As Subramanian explains in her book, How to Feel: The Science and Meaning of Touch (Columbia University Press, 2021), it was a moment when she began to consider how little she knew about this multifaceted sense. The questions kept forming, eventually leading Subramanian to write an article for Discover in 2015 about the development of tactile touch screens. In her latest work,…

Despite the global spread of Covid-19, this year’s annual Best Under A Billion list highlights the resilience of 200 publicly listed small and midsized companies in the Asia-Pacific region with sales under $1 billion. Their sound financial figures reflect how well these companies coped in the midst of a global pandemic. No surprise: Healthcare and pharmaceutical-related companies were standouts while tech and logistics firms linked to the global e-commerce boom also benefited. As proof of BUB companies’ sustainable success, 42 were returnees from the previous year. This includes Taiwan’s Aspeed, now on the list for a notable eight years in a row. We’ve highlighted eight companies from the list with businesses that helped alleviate the pandemic’s effects. With reporting by John Kang, Danielle Keeton-Olsen, Zinnia Lee, Ramakrishnan Narayanan, Amit Prakash, James…

THERE’S A REASON all passenger jets are shaped like tubes. As an aircraft climbs in altitude, outside air pressure naturally decreases along with oxygen levels. To keep passengers from passing out, planes pump air into the cabin. This increases the pressure and the amount of breathable oxygen inside. But filling the enclosed space with air is a bit like blowing up a balloon. The challenge, explains R. John Hansman, a pilot and director of the MIT International Center for Air Travel, is designing a cabin that is strong enough to resist rupturing. “The most efficient shape for that is actually a tube,” he says. This is why airplanes on tarmacs around the world have looked unmistakably similar since the first jet airliner took off in 1949. The iconic tube shape plus two…

ESCENA I IN THE HEIGHTS ES UNA CARTA DE AMOR Había una vez un puente… La vida de Lin-Manuel Miranda está marcada por el Washington Bridge, el emblemático puente sobre el río Hudson de casi un kilómetro y medio de longitud que une el estado de New Jersey con la ciudad de Nueva York. Nació y creció al pie de la imponente estructura de acero, en el área de Washington Heights, al norte de la urbe neoyorquina, que hasta ahora sigue habitada por una comunidad inmigrante mayormente dominicana, como hace décadas, pero también cubana, puertorriqueña y mexicana. Este junio se estrena mundialmente la película In the Heights, una carta de amor que el actor, músico y compositor le escribió a su barrio en la que evoca con nostalgia, alegría y una exuberancia desbordante,…

The projects and areas of expertise among the honorees who made the final cut are diverse. But they have this in common: All of these Great Disruptors are using technology in a way that is either already driving fundamental, transformative change in their field—typically, with measurable, real-world results—or has clear and demonstrable potential to do so. The other common denominator: All are motivated in their work by a genuine desire to do good—to help solve a problem of global proportions on their own smaller scale or to improve the lives of people and communities in need. They are passionate about their mission. And while their work is defined by often breathtaking science and technology, the truly critical X factor in their great accomplishment is their humanity. We hope you find their…

My aunties all said my mother was a very beautiful debutante; shy, demure and dressed in the most exquisite lace gown. As the partner chosen by her parents to escort her to the 1938 Debutante Ball at St Margaret’s College, my father fell in love with her that night and eventually they married, and the rest is the unfolding history of our family. But my story is about my mother’s beautiful ball gown. She had carefully wrapped it in tissue paper and placed it in a cardboard box – carried from house to house in Christchurch, as over the years my parents had upgraded their dwellings – and it was hidden away in a top cupboard. From time to time it would be lifted out of its box and shown to us, and…

THE U.S. NAVY PLANS TO EXPAND ITS submarine fleet at a cost of $200 billion, equivalent to the GDP of Ukraine. But as Republicans hotly debate ongoing military aid to Kiev, neither party has questioned the far more costly submarine program—allowing the Navy to conceal a startling fact about America’s submarine fleet. The Navy calls its submarines “the most lethal and capable force.” It is also the “silent service,” shrouded in secrecy, the nature of its operations closely guarded. The American attack submarine force—the “fighting” submarines—exist in order to pursue enemy submarines and ships, eavesdrop on adversaries and support operations by special forces. Hollywood productions like The Hunt for Red October have created the impression of submarines tracking the enemy while moving noiselessly under the sea, operating stealthily for months on…

It was a crisp night in June, the sky bright from the light of the full moon. I stopped at a gas station to fuel up before heading to the hospital to see my father. Three months after heart surgery, his newly replaced valve had begun driving bacteria into his brain, causing multiple strokes. He was dying. Standing at the pump, I thought about how he would never visit our new home. How we would never dance together again. I paid for my gas, got back in the car and drove out of the gas station — with the nozzle still lodged in my tank. When I stopped the car, an onlooker who had watched the nozzle fly out of my car’s gas tank said smugly, “You’re lucky it snapped off.” I was…

Finishing the ends of a kumihimo project can be done in several ways, and each method serves three primary purposes: • Provide a secure and sturdy way to attach a clasp or closure so you can wear your piece • Prevent the braid from coming undone — ever • Conceal the end of the braid Most of the projects in this issue use one of the following three finishing methods. Get familiar with them now so you know how to proceed when it’s time to finish your braids. Glue and end cap with loops or a magnetic clasp Magnetic clasps are great for finishing kumihimo ropes. Most varieties have a magnet on one end and an opening on the other, which is where the end of the braid is inserted. End caps have an opening on…

EVEN IF IT’S BEEN a while since health class, you likely know how estrogen impacts reproductive health. Its levels rise as we reach puberty; then each month it surges, causing the uterine lining to prep for a potential fertilized egg, and drops, kick-starting menstruation. As the years go on, levels ricochet up and down in perimenopause and drop at menopause. And along the way, estrogen gets blamed for breakouts and breakups, mood dips and weight gains. But what else does the hormone do? The better question may be “What doesn’t it do?” “Estrogen touches basically every cell,” says Jen Gunter, MD, a gynecologist and author of The Menopause Manifesto (Citadel, 2021). “Until recently, we didn’t recognize its importance beyond reproduction,” adds Elizabeth Poynor, MD, a gynecologic surgeon and founder of the…

The Hisense 350-sq. ft. Window Air Conditioner is a reasonably priced Wi-Fi-enabled window AC unit that you can control with your voice, your phone, or the included remote. It’s easy to install and did an admirable job of cooling in our tests. It doesn’t offer power usage reports or compatibility with Apple HomeKit and IFTTT like some other smart air conditioners we’ve tested, but it also costs less than many 8,000-BTU models, making it an affordable option for small to medium spaces. PROS: Reasonably priced. Easy to install. Fast cooling. Voice control. Relatively quiet. CONS: Lacks usage reporting. Doesn’t support HomeKit or IFTTT. BOTTOM LINE: The Hisense 350-Sq. Ft. Window Air Conditioner is a smart AC unit that can be controlled by your phone, voice, or remote, and does a fine job of…

So you’re in the market for a detachable 2-in-1—a tablet you can use either by itself or with a keyboard and stylus? The Apple 10.9-inch iPad Air is a good choice—in fact, a PCMag Editors’ Choice winner—at $599. But if you’re willing to think different, HP’s 11-inch Chromebook x2 costs the same—including twice the memory as well as the keyboard and pen that Apple will charge you an extra $428 for. Tablet shoppers rarely consider Chromebooks, but the HP x2 favors the bold. It doesn’t perform as well as comparably priced Chromebook laptops (and we still consider our Editors’ Choice favorite, the Lenovo Chromebook Duet, a better value among Chromebook detachables), but it fills a nifty niche. PROS: Affordable price includes pen and keyboard cover. Available 4G mobile broadband. CONS: Tepid performance.…

Some scientists wish to uncover truths of the natural universe — to learn the properties of distant stars, or deep-sea creatures, or the interior of our cells. Others seek solutions, hoping to better our lives or undo the damage we’ve done to our environment. The list of motivations runs long, depending on who you talk to. But most people don’t know any scientists personally. In 2017, about 4 out of 5 Americans polled couldn’t name a single living scientist, according to Research America. Of those who could, top answers were Stephen Hawking (27 percent), who died in 2018; Neil deGrasse Tyson (19 percent), who last published research in 2008; and Bill Nye (5 percent), who quit his job as an engineer in 1986. Yet 1.5 million-plus Americans are currently working as…

Slowly and deliberately, I searched shallow, underwater outcrops covered in colors. Weightless amidst the invisible push and pull of the current, pink coralline algae hung closely to rock surfaces or branched skyward against sporadic patches of neon green and glimmering iridescence. Shades of yellow, brown, white and orange flora began to appear as I drifted past micro-environments dictated by sunlight and structure. I allowed my scientific brain to go to work underwater, relying on one of my first developed senses: observation. I had come to this underwater world to seek out a nudibranch. I had heard of this elusive marine organism, but until recently, knew almost nothing about it. My goal at the moment was just to find one, to examine it with my own eyes. I’ve always been drawn to scuba…

In Werner Herzog’s latest film, Fireball: Visitors From Darker Worlds, you’ll find no diagrams, no green screen backdrops, no points where the narrator stops to define terms. It’s not your typical science documentary. Of course, you wouldn’t expect that approach from Herzog anyway. The prolific German film and opera director has created Grizzly Man, Cave of Forgotten Dreams, Happy People: A Year in the Taiga and roughly 70 other films (fictional and documentary) over the past 50 years. He also made an acting appearance in The Mandalorian series — even though he’s never watched Star Wars. Most of his work, in one way or another, explores the recesses of human nature, often in the natural world. Herzog teamed up with volcanologist Clive Oppenheimer for a second time to make Fireball, released last…

For years, Melanie Musson’s friends have marveled at her superpower: staying healthy no matter what germs are making the rounds. Colds and flu felled plenty of Musson’s dormmates in college, but the viruses always seemed to pass her by. “I never got sick once,” she says. “I got about five hours of sleep a night, I finished school in three years, and I worked 30 hours a week throughout. My best friends labeled me ‘the machine.’” Musson’s ironclad immune system also set her apart at her first job. While she was working at an assisted living facility, her co-workers succumbed to a stomach virus that was running rampant. Undaunted, Musson offered to cover their shifts. “There I was, the brand-new employee, getting as much overtime as I wanted. I wasn’t worried…

Late one night in 1982, a Yale University medical student named Martin Yarmush witnessed a harrowing scene at a local hospital. A toddler was admitted, and several nurses attempted to insert an IV needle into one of the child’s tiny veins. Each time they missed the vessel, the child screamed more shrilly, and the mother grew more worried. There has to be a better way, thought Yarmush, now a professor of biomedical engineering at Rutgers University. The incident changed his outlook on medicine. Thoroughly unnerved by the anguish he’d witnessed, Yarmush started to imagine what would happen if the process of drawing blood could be automated. At the time, automation was found primarily on assembly lines for cars, where robots were so powerful and dangerous that they were bolted to the ground…

Ann was a long-standing patient of mine whom I saw for severe gastroesophageal reflux disease, also known as GERD. She was extremely overweight and met medical criteria for morbid obesity. Doctors consider a patient morbidly obese when they are at least 100 pounds over their ideal body weight — and/or when their weight may significantly contribute to medical conditions, like diabetes, high blood pressure, or fatty liver disease, that put their life in danger. Ann was 5 feet 4 inches tall and weighed 250 pounds. She had been a slim 130-pound athlete as a teenager, but had gained weight with each of her pregnancies. During one of our clinic visits, the topic of her possibly undergoing surgery to lose weight came up. I was supportive of Ann seeing a surgeon who…

I never wanted to be an astrophysicist. While a lot of my colleagues were looking through amateur telescopes, I was dreaming of decoding hieroglyphics and brushing off hidden artifacts in newly discovered Ancient Egyptian tombs. As is the case with most young Egyptophiles, for me there was one story that captured the excitement of Ancient Egyptian discoveries more than any other: the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun. In November 1922, British archaeologist Howard Carter held up a candle and peered through a small drill hole in the tomb door. His patron, Lord Carnarvon, asked him if he could see anything, to which Carter, struck dumb with amazement, could only reply, “Yes, wonderful things, wonderful things!” He recounted later that, in the dim candlelight, “details of the room emerged slowly from…

“Capital goes where welcome, stays where well-treated.” The quote belongs to Walter Wriston, a famous U.S. banker. It is often cited as being about tax arbitrage, i.e., Switzerland, not France. But I once had a chance to ask Wriston about his quote. “It’s more than that,” he said. “The Latin word for capital is capitalis, which is the head, the source of ideas. Capital is ideas, entrepreneurs, and investment. It’s creative energy. It yearns to go where it can do exciting, productive things.” Venture capital seeks alpha investments—ones that can return 100x or more for early investors. Where does venture capital want to go today? Southeast Asia. “This year is the coming of age of Southeast Asia’s tech ecosystem,” says Amit Anand, founding partner of Singapore’s Jungle Ventures. “Today the region…

OVER $40,000 2019 LEXUS RX The RX is the best-selling midsized luxury SUV. And no wonder: It’s reliable, quiet, and comfortable; comes with all the latest advanced safety equipment; and is available with a powerful V6 or an efficient hybrid powertrain. $40,400- $47,775 PRICE RANGE 22/29 mpg V6/HYBRID FUEL ECONOMY RELIABILITY 2019 AUDI Q7 There’s a lot to like about this three-row SUV, including a comfortable, luxurious interior; standard automatic emergency braking; a pleasant powertrain; and an impressive 7,700-pound towing capacity. Far fewer new Q7 models are sold than Lexus RX models, so you won’t find as many used Q7s on the lot. $41,650- $54,625 PRICE RANGE 20 mpg FUEL ECONOMY RELIABILITY PRICES ARE SUBJECT TO CHANGE DUE TO MARKET FLUCTUATION. $30,000 TO $40,000 2019 TOYOTA HIGHLANDER You can’t go wrong with a well-maintained Toyota Highlander—either the V6 model or the fuel-sipping hybrid. The 2019 models will be coming…

Reggie, a 30-year-old pharmaceutical salesman, appeared in my office one afternoon to follow up on his cholesterol levels and other routine bloodwork. While the tests were all normal, I noticed he seemed to be in a bit of a funk, for lack of a more scientific term. Ordinarily an upbeat and positive person, he seemed to be down in the dumps. When I asked if anything was going on at home or at work, he said everything was fine. Still, he couldn’t deny that he did not feel like himself. “It’s hard to describe,” he told me. “Everything is fine, and I should feel fine, but I don’t. My marriage is fine, my kids are doing well in school, and I have money in the bank.” Nonetheless, Reggie told me that…