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As spring draws to a close, the long wait finally ends with the birth of thousands of flamingos. To document this sensitive process, I had to approach the sandy islet where the birds had settled in complete darkness. From the shore, the murmur of the colony was barely audible, but loud enough for me to estimate that the population was situated some 800 meters away from me, an assessment that I managed to confirm as soon as I crossed the water and mud to reach the islet....

A huge crowd turned out for its debut at the Experimental Aircraft Association’s AirVenture fair in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, and cheered when the Martin Jetpack team unveiled one of the two prototypes on hand. Martin talked of his Jetson-fueled inspiration, and his desire to build something that’s both safe and capable – something that anyone, not just a skilled pilot, could use. “We’ve got something you can strap on and fly around in for 30 seconds,” he said....

In a recent study published in the journal Nature, a group of scientists were able to restore light sensitivity to formerly blind mice using a protein extracted from algaes of the genus Chlamydomonas. The Chlamydomonas are of particular interest because they exhibit phototaxis—an ability to orient themselves toward light sources to aid in photosynthesis. Eager to understand what caused this phenomenon on a genetic level, scientists at the Max Planck institute in 2003 isolated a sequence of genes that stored the blueprints for generating light-sensitive proteins....

In preliminary studies, Vavelta has worked well at eliminating wrinkles and scars without any side effects other than mild redness and itching (and the weirdness of knowing that you’ve got a foreskin in your face). Whether it’s a viable mainstream cosmetic treatment remains to be seen. For one thing, a vial of the stuff costs around $1500. There are also ethical issues to consider, especially if the folks behind Vavelta start paying parents for their sons’ severed sheaths....

The next time somebody asks if you have a Band-Aid, just pull out this family-sized box that comes with 120 of them, in a variety of shapes and sizes. It includes sheer and clear bandages that cover both large and small minor wounds. The backing on these Band-Aids offers nice breathability, too. These durable adhesive bandages are the perfect solution to your painful heel blisters. They feature a hydrocolloid bandage to help speed up the healing process, and stay on even through showers....

Here’s everything you need to know about this almost total eclipse. What does an ‘almost total’ lunar eclipse mean? When the Earth, sun, and moon line up for a lunar eclipse, the Earth blocks the light of the sun from reaching the moon. Watchers see the moon slowly grow darker as the Earth inserts itself between the moon and sun. Sometimes, the Earth will completely block the sunlight, but in this case, Earth’s shadow will be covering roughly 97....

No. But if I replicated his (alleged) process, I might be able to get up a mountain I couldn’t get up before. Here’s a list of some stuff Armstrong is accused of doing–call it the Armstrong Cocktail. Let’s go down the list. BLOOD DOPING This is something of a catch-all term, says Don Catlin, a pharmacologist at the University of California, Los Angeles. Most of the time, people use it to describe a blood transfusion process that can improve athletic performance....

These scientific doodads will elevate your kitchen game with precision measurement and a general air of nerdiness. Give them as gifts to your friends who already spend all their time in the lab, or to your relative who longs for a more accurate way to serve food and drink. Or just buy them for yourself—you probably deserve it. Cocktails can be an art, but unless you have an intuitive understanding of how various liquors and bitters combine in a glass, your best bet is to stick to careful measuring....

You probably don’t need any more reminding that buying refurbished offers a ton of benefits outside of massive savings. You’ll get to contribute to minimizing electronic waste, receive a device that has been tested and certified to work as good as new, and even enjoy an additional warranty. And with this deal on the iPad Mini 4, you’ll even get accessories to boot. Cyber Monday price drops have been extended, so now’s your last chance to score it on sale for 60 percent off....

Architeuthis dux, otherwise known as the giant squid spends its life in the abyssal depths of the open ocean. These gigantic, solitary predators feast upon other deep sea fish or squid and are themselves hunted by sperm whales in what must unfold into epic battles of giants in the blackness of the deep ocean. They have been found dead washed up ashore or tangled in fishermen’s nets for centuries, but have only been captured on film alive twice before....

Now, using the cleverly named Very Large Telescope, astronomers have figured out that WOH G64 is half as bright as they thought, and significantly less massive. The star’s shape has also garnered interest: It is surrounded by a dense, donut-shaped collection of gas and dust. The scientists now guess that the star’s initial mass was 25 times that of the Sun, and that anywhere from three to 9 solar masses have been siphoned off into this waistband of dust and gas, otherwise known as a torus....

The gloves use a heating system called Aevex that maintains an even temperature without a bulky, power-hungry thermostat. When your hands get cold, so does a thin polymer film in the gloves. This changes the density of the film, increasing its electrical conductivity so that it starts to pull power from a battery in the wrist. As your hands warm up to their usual temperature, they stop drawing heat from the film and instead start transferring heat to it....

The study was done on rats, but it follows that there may be some danger of the particles burrowing into the bodies of people who work with quantum dots if they have cuts or scrapes on their skin. Once they’re in the body, they could . . . well, no one is quite sure what they would do, though plenty of people are concerned about the unknown long-term environmental and health effects of nanoparticles....

Plenty of modern mattress-makers like Casper and Leesa offer to get us there by promising us the perfect mattress. But bed startup Helix Sleep says no such straight-from-the-factory mattress exists or will ever exist. Their counteroffer: a bed that you can customize, in your home, to fit your body and accommodate your sleeping preferences. The Premise Helix Sleep’s founders—Jerry Lin, Kristian von Rickenbach and Adam Tishman—started their company on a single premise: Each sleeper needs a fully tweakable mattress to account for all sorts of physiological and sleep-behavioral nuances....

TikTok’s relationship with ByteDance, its Chinese parent company, has long been an issue for the US government. Former President Donald Trump attempted to force ByteDance to sell the popular social media app to an American company in 2020, though it never happened. According to The New York Times, President Biden has been negotiating with TikTok in private over “steps that could mitigate the government’s concerns.” Apparently though, his efforts aren’t sufficient for TikTok skeptics....

Patricia is expected to make landfall in Mexico later today, between Manzanillo and Puerto Vallarta. Already three Mexican states have declared a state of emergency. As the storm has approached land, it’s continued to intensify, and by all metrics is an incredibly strong storm. Writing for Slate, Eric Holthaus notes “Patricia is now very close to the theoretical maximum strength for a tropical cyclone on planet Earth.” The storm is strongest in a radius just 15 miles from its center, which bodes well for everyone removed from the direct path....

The short answer is a lot. A team of scientists in the United Kingdom measured the electrical fields near swarming honeybees and found that the insects can produce as much atmospheric electric charge as a thunderstorm cloud. Their research was published today in the journal iScience and demonstrates how this type of electricity can shape weather events, help insects find food, and even lift spiders up in the air when they migrate....

As U.S. forces withdrew from Afghanistan’s Pech valley in 2011-13, the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) launched a drone campaign called Operation Haymaker to avoid the dangers of further ground raids in the surrounding mountains, where several helicopters had crashed over the years. “As I looked back in 2011 on what we had done in the past, it was hard to define a circumstance where we’d accept that risk,” explained Joseph Votel, then JSOC’s three-star commander....

The city of Austin, Texas, has been producing Dillo Dirt, a soil made of sewage and yard waste, since 1989. We were among the first U.S. cities with a municipal composting project. I oversee the process for the Austin Water department. When the human organic matter arrives, it’s mostly liquid—totally unmanageable. We filter it, mix it with ground-down trees and grass, and let it sit for 15 days in the hot Texas daylight....

Combine that with deficient human rights for poor and Indigenous communities across some Latin American countries and consistent drought in Central America, and it means that more people are heading to the US-Mexico border for work opportunities in the states. As of 2021, the Pew Research Center found that migrant encounters with border patrol were at an all time high. And when those migrants manage to make it to the border, be it in a caravan or with a small group being led by a coyote, they are met with miles of desert....