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“For nearly 20 years, Sapa Profiles and Sapa Extrusions falsified critical tests on the aluminum they sold—tests that their customers, including the U.S. government, depended on to ensure the reliability of the aluminum they purchased,” said Assistant Attorney General Brian Benczkowski in a Department of Justice news release. “Corporate and personal greed perpetuated this fraud against the government and other private customers, and this resolution holds these companies accountable for the harm caused by their scheme....

Sane people, therefore, are quite happy to wear mouthguards. So why would someone need to create a dubious gimmick to entice people playing dangerous contact sports to wear a mouthguard? Well, I don’t know. But of course, someone has. Capitalism at work. What’s New “The challenge with current athletic mouthguards is that the experience of wearing one is just not that great,” says the first line of the brochure touting MoGo: The Flavored Mouthguard....

Tentacles work just fine under water, with buoyancy doing much of the fighting against gravity that rigid bones do on land, so under water is a natural place to test such a robotic limb. This one, from Matteo Cianchetti of the BioRobotics Institute in Italy, is one of ten soft robot designs competing in the RoboSoft Grand Challenge at the end of April. The robots will have to race across a sand pit, open a door by its handle, grab a number of mystery objects and avoiding fragile obstacles while under water....

The unidentified fossil was excavated from the surrounding sandstone fully in 2017 and donated to the Waikato museum. Now, paleontologists have identified the bones as a skeleton of a previously unknown species of giant prehistoric penguin. Using 3D scanning techniques, researchers created a digital model of the new penguin and compared it to other known specimens around the world. They concluded that this new penguin is between 27.3 and 34....

Resuppling forces in the field is a perpetual hardship facing militaries. To facilitate a new kind of air supply–and at greater distances than before–the Air Force announced an award of a contract for 15 “Precision Guided Cargo Delivery Drones,” from dronemaker Silent Arrow on November 29. This contract is, formally, “Guided Bundle Derivative of Silent Arrow for Side Door and Palletized Swarm Deployment at High Speeds and Altitudes,” with the drones themselves deemed Precision Guided Bundles....

That’s a huge number by any measure, but is even more impactful in India, where 100 million people just began using internet for the first time this year, leaving the majority of the country’s 1.3 billion people without. In a historic announcement posted on the official Google company blog, CEO Sundar Pichai, himself born in India, reminisces about his younger days when relied heavily on the Indian railway system to get around....

In a paper published in eLife, researchers say that they’ve figured out how cyanobacteria and other single-celled bacteria can detect and move toward a source of light. It turns out that they use their entire body as an eye. “The fact that bacteria respond to light is one of the oldest scientific observations of their behaviour,” lead researcher Conrad Mullineaux said. “Our observation that bacteria are optical objects is pretty obvious with hindsight, but we never thought of it until we saw it....

Withings Body Scan smart scale Withings, a longtime innovator in health tech, will (probably) add some interesting new features in its latest smart scale. The Body Scan smart scale can, like previous models, detect information about your body composition, including how much of your body is fat or muscle. Where previous models simply did this for the whole body, the new design can check specific body parts. In addition to letting you measure your gains at the gym more accurately, the scale can take a 6-lead ECG using a handle near the top of the scale....

Then it got hot. Starting last Tuesday, the National Weather Service warned that the heat index would climb as high as 105 degrees from a combination of high temperatures and excessive humidity. The humidity broke over the weekend, but residents still sweltered without air conditioning, and the city has opened emergency cooling centers at community centers. That heat is deadly. As people sat sweating inside their homes, or stood in hours-long lines for gas, the city’s ambulance service began seeing an uptick in heat-related calls....

While a few detractors have publicly wondered if Harley-Davidson’s LiveWire electric motorcycle would ever see production given its long, five-plus-year gestation, Harley addressed that issue at the 2019 Consumer Electronics Show on January 7, 2019. Yes, The Motor Company officially declared, the 2020 LiveWire will be produced, it will cost $29,799, and you can preorder it immediately at the h-d.com/livewire website. Deliveries will begin in the fall of 2019. Additionally, The Motor Company showed two lightweight electric prototypes that hint about what Harley-Davidson electric motorcycles may follow by 2022 or so....

Given China’s role as a global leader in consumer drone and military unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) exports, it only makes sense that China is also developing a range of anti-drone capabilities to stop unauthorized or hostile flying robots from coming over sensitive or vulnerable sites. In the case of Wuhan, the jammer “guns”—known as such not just because they “shoot” but also because they look like an assault rifle—cost approximately $19,000, and can reportedly jam control signals up to a kilometer away (though that figure assumes that the user has exceptional aim)....

Building electrification is the process of replacing fossil fuel-powered systems and appliances in homes and buildings—such as gas furnaces, water heating, or stoves—with electric ones that run on clean energy to deliver climate, health, and economic benefits, says Stephanie Greene, managing director at RMI that leads their Carbon-Free Buildings Program. Seasonal peaks in energy demand are typically managed using fossil fuels, but electrified buildings must rely on renewable energy and energy-efficient measures instead....

It was hardly Sierra Negra’s first eruption: It’s blown at least seven other times in the past century alone. But what made the 2018 phenomenon special is that geologists had forecasted the eruption’s date as early as January. In fact, they almost got it down to the exact day. It was a fortunate forecast, to be sure. Now, in a paper published in the journal Science Advances today, they’ve figured out why their estimates hit the mark—and how they can make their simulations get it right again....

In October 2021, Google pledged to “prohibit ads for, and monetization of, content that contradicts well-established scientific consensus around the existence and causes of climate change,” but in the ensuing months has routinely failed to live up to its promise. This often takes the form of accepting fossil fuel companies’ “greenwashing” campaigns, a term referring to advertising and PR that makes businesses seem more environmentally conscious and active than they truly are....

That’s the story according to Rutgers professor Paul Falkowski, at least. The light-absorbing structures — chloroplasts — in plant cells are so similar from one species to another that it now seems apparent they all must have had one common ancestor. DNA and other analysis performed by Falkowski offers evidence that this family tree stemmed from the chance meeting of two unicellular organisms, close to 2 billion years ago. The amoeba (or amoeba-like organism) contributed its robust physiology to the pairing, and the cyanobacterium contributed its ability to power its metabolism with the sun’s energy....

It’s by no means a seamless process, but the existence of apps like Apple Music and the improvements the Cupertino-based company has made to the iCloud web platform and users’ ability to connect with its services on non-Apple hardware mean it’s no longer the frustrating exercise it once was. Hopefully, this trend will continue. How to use email, contacts, and calendars Accessing your Apple email is simple from any device, as it’s set up to work with whatever email app you prefer....

Instructions Cut: Take the thinner 24-inch pipe [2], and saw off a 2-inch-long piece. Smooth the edges with sandpaper. Drill: This is the fun part. New water guns let you pick nozzles that can soak people in a variety of ways. Imitate them by drilling one ¼-inch-diameter hole, or several ⅛-inch-diameter holes, in the end of one 2-inch PVC cap [3]. A small, ⅛-inch-wide slit also works well. (Our favorite configuration?...

Secure your router Smart home security starts with your router. This device serves as the main connection between your gadgets and the outside world, so unwelcome visitors can exploit it to gain access to your wireless gear. To stop them, you must protect your home Wi-Fi with a password. Even if you already have this safeguard in place—and especially if you’re relying on the default code that came with the router—change it now....

You probably noticed a lot of people on social media were really excited about this new feature, and if you’re an Android user, you might’ve felt a bit left out. But Android being Android, already has a third-party app that can implement this change for you. It’s called DynamicSpot, and it mimics a lot of the functionality that Apple has added to the latest update of iOS. The Dynamic Island also expands to a larger size in some scenarios....

Don’t replace the contents of your cupboard, though. Using items you probably already have at home, you can rescue your caffeine tankard from the scourge of mug gunk. Materials A lemon wedge1-2 tablespoons of baking sodaA sponge, cleaning cloth, or paper towel Pour in the baking soda. Depending on the size of your mug, you may need more than a tablespoon. Just make sure to pour enough to completely coat the inside of the mug in white stuff....