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Despite the heavy contamination in the surrounding forests, however, new evidence shows that many wildlife populations have increased significantly. The absence of humans for nearly 30 years has turned the disaster area into a sort of wildlife sanctuary. The damage incurred on the environment and its flora and fauna is still a matter of debate. Some studies found significant adverse effects to animal health and reproduction in the six months following the accident due to high dosages of radiation....

This means the way farmers manage their land, crops, and livestock can play a key role in helping the country hit its conservation and climate goals. The pastures, orchards, and fields they tend often overlap with wildlife habitat and hold carbon-storage potential. But current government programs that encourage farmers to adopt sustainable, climate-smart practices need more funding. In particular, two conservation programs are receiving more interest than they’re able to invest in....

Four years ago, Guestrin worked on an Intel project that involved placing tiny wireless sensors in a redwood forest. The researchers planned to use the sensors to learn about the forest’s microclimates. “I asked them how they were going to decide where to put the sensors,” he recalls. “They said they were more or less going to use intuition.” Guestrin knew he could do better, and began to devise a way to optimize both the location and the number of sensors to gather the highest-quality data....

Hardwire, the company behind the whiteboards (as well as a 10-by-13-inch ballistic clipboard aimed at serving the same purpose), has experience with combat defense. The white board material is a derivative of the polyethylene-based textile known as Dynameer, which Hardwire developed for the Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles most notably seen in Afghanistan and Iraq. Hardwire CEO George Tunis told USA Today that he wanted to throw his company’s expertise behind the problem of gun violence in schools and figure out an innovative solution....

The MOP is 20 feet long and can penetrate bunkers up to 200 feet before exploding. At 15 tons, the MOP is a third heavier than the previous “mother of all bombs”, the GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb, which was only 10.5 tons. The MOP also packs a whopping 5,300 lbs of explosives, which is 10 times the amount its predecessor bunker-buster, the BLU-109, carried. Basically, it’s massive. The push for accelerated deployment is due to the increased perceived nuclear threats from Iran and North Korea....

On a Wednesday press briefing, the CDC’s Nancy Messonier switched between 2019-nCoV and the new disease name, saying she was still adapting to COVID-19. The simple name (it’s short for Coronavirus Identification 2019, the year the disease emerged) was intended to meet agreed guidelines on naming a disease and also “prevent the use of other names that can be inaccurate or stigmatizing,” World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a prepared speech on Tuesday....

This guide is mostly basics; for incoming students who have special needs (like, say, graphic designers, or hardcore gamers, or musicians), you’ll need different equipment. But you already know if you’ll need specialized stuff, so this guide is for those who don’t have special needs. If you’re not a photographer, we’ve got a good camera recommendation to get you started. If you’re not a gamer, we’ve got the laptop that’ll be the best for most people....

It will be flying in uncharted and unstable aeronautic territory, and between the rigors of thin air and blistering ultraviolet radiation, the slightest miscalculation could be disastrous. If successful, the Perlan 2 could expand the parameters of high-altitude flight, enhance climate science, and provide new insights on planetary exploration. All without burning a drop of jet fuel. How It Works This article was originally published in the March/April 2016 issue of Popular Science....

Fortunately, this leak is very small and you can’t feel it. Unfortunately, your insides have sprung many other leaks since that first one. Fortunately, at the site of leak #1, several long, sticky molecules that were previously coiled like fruit roll-ups have come unrolled in the sudden torrent, and they’re sticking to small solid fragments and forming little globs that are getting tangled up with other globs, and now the whole blob is plugging the leak, patching things up temporarily until the reinforcements arrive....

With some 30 to 50 million Americans suffering from various degrees of lactose intolerance, and an estimated three million of us now eating animal-free (vegan) diets for humane, environmental, and/or health reasons, the production of alternatives to dairy products has started to become big business. But while substitutes for milks and ice creams abound, mostly soy- or rice-based blends that have come a long way since they first appeared on grocery shelves, finding satisfactory alternatives to the many varieties of cheese can be a challenge....

Is a bidet ass-ential? Admittedly no, but the bottom line is it can be a worthwhile bathroom upgrade nonetheless. And you can get the TUSHY Ace electric bidet for $499 (regularly $599) if you use the code ACECLEAN at checkout. This deal is only good on Saturday, March 19, though, so act fast to save some paper of both the sanitary and currency varieties.

Drone Pilots Puppet Disney, whose theme parks are known for their animatronic robots, recently filed a patent for “Aerial Display System With Marionettes Articulated and Supported by Airborne Devices.” The puppet is suspended from a six-rotor hexacopter drone. In addition to moving with the drone as it flies, three arms below the drone manipulate the puppet like a human puppeteer would. It’d make an ideal addition to the Haunted Mansion....

Check out our second episode below, and keep scrolling for more info about the facts contained therein. Fact: Sometimes your brain just tells you that you’re dead By Eleanor Cummins Most people make it through the day without questioning whether or not they’re… alive. And if they did pose the question, they’d find a million comforting answers waiting for them, from the physical (do you move? metabolize? grow?) to the philosophical (“I think, therefore I am”)....

Our last two presidents don’t have much in common, but they have both struggled with one mutual, winged enemy: the fly. There are multiple YouTube videos of Barack Obama swatting the large, persistent insects during interviews. Donald Trump has complained about the flies amidst tours around the West Wing. A sampling of White House work orders from 2017 included “Install 2 Bug Light in the W.W. Kelli Anne [sic] Conway Office....

We have young activists to thank for this. For months, the most prominent voices advocating for climate action have been kids and teens, many of whom aren’t even old enough to vote. They have been organizing and mobilizing and motivating each other to speak out about the ongoing climate crisis. The upcoming protests represent an opportunity for adults to join in on the action. These activists are calling on grown-ups to stand with them in solidarity, to spread the word to friends and on social media, and to start organizing within their own communities....

These species, like cougars and geese, take advantage of habitats created by humans. Researchers who study evolutionary change in urban species have even seen changes in animal metabolic rates or increase in heat tolerance. Cities can also alter their genes. In a study published on January 9 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), scientists found that Anolis cristatellus lizards, a small species of lizard also called the Puerto Rican crested anole that are commonly found in Puerto Rico’s forests and urban spaces, have parallel genomic markers across different urban ecosystems on the island....

“Everybody was waiting for fireworks,” says Anna Ciurlo, an astrophysicist at UCLA. “We were going to see, for the first time, accretion onto the black hole directly.” But that’s not what happened. As G2—a cloud more than twice as wide as the distance from the Sun to Pluto—got nearer to its point of closest approach, it stretched out into a smear. It strained under the influence of Sgr A*’s pull, but did not break, and then drew itself back into its usual rotund shape as it retreated....

But one concerned group isn’t there to feel the heat: the main scientific and financial backers of the Thirty-Metre Telescope. They’re represented by an organization known as the TMT International Observatory LLC, aka TIO. It was established back in May 2014, according to the institutional website, “to carry out the construction and operation phases of the TMT Project.” None of its member organizations are located in Hawaii: they hail from California, DC, Japan, China, India, and Canada....

The winners of the fifth annual Nikon Small World in Motion were announced today, and the winning video featured this classic life and death struggle played out in miniature. Winner Wim van Egmond captured the encounter between two types of ciliates (single celled organisms) by filming the hunt at a visual magnification of 250X. “Wildlife is so close to us, yet most of us never look close enough to see it,” van Egmond said in a statement....

Six days later, he was back in the emergency room. He’d been spitting up blood and hadn’t been able to swallow any solid food since he went under. Doctors diagnosed him with a respiratory infection and other side-effects from being intubated during the surgery, and sent him home with mouthwash, antibiotics, and steroids. Two days later, he was back—this time with worsening throat pain and a hoarse voice. He couldn’t swallow medications....