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Beulah Louise Henry was just nine years old when she came up with her first invention in 1896, a device that allowed a man to tip his hat without ever putting down his newspaper. 

By her death in 1973, at the age of 85, she’d come up with so many more—a doll with eyes that changed color with the press of a button, a sewing machine without a bobbin (a threaded spool that slowed down work because it had to be frequently refilled), a clock designed to help kids learn to tell time, and others—that the press even dubbed Henry “Lady Edison.” 

Her ideas, she once told a reporter, were “messages from a guiding spirit.”

Beulah Louise Henry’s early life

Henry grew up a daughter of fortune in Raleigh, North Carolina. Her father Walter was a prominent lawyer and orator. Her mother, who was also named Beulah—a common tradition in the late 19th century—was a homemaker and the daughter of the state’s former governor. 

After high school, Henry went on to Elizabeth College, a short-lived, private Lutheran school for women in Charlotte. Henry hadn’t yet graduated when, in 1912, she received her first patent for a device she’d dreamed up while there: a vacuum ice cream maker designed to use both a motor and a hand crank (since electricity was still patchily distributed in those days), as well as minimal ice (which wasn’t widely available until the freezer came about a few decades later).

Female students at Elizabeth College gather to play a game of tennis in 1903. Image: Public Domain

Henry tried and failed to sell her “ice cream freezer” in Memphis, where her family had moved. But the city’s retailers and manufacturers had no interest in the apparatus. 

That same stony resistance stymied Henry’s next attempt at commercial success, a parasol with a snap-on cover that could be changed to match a woman’s outfit. Sometime around 1920, the family agreed to relocate to New York where their daughter’s ingenuity might be better appreciated. 

In Manhattan, Henry hoofed through the city’s streets and into its clattering manufacturers’ workshops day after day, trying to drum up interest in her interchangeable umbrella. But it was to no avail. They not only failed to see the invention’s potential, they told her the design was irreparably flawed, that it would be impossible to pierce the umbrella’s metal ribs with the snaps needed to hold the parasol cover in place.

How Henry’s tenacity led to her first commercial success

There were—and still remain today—both implicit and explicit biases against women inventors and some of the types of inventions they created, explains Kara Swanson, professor of law at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts. While, unlike many women of her time, Henry had both the financial resources and at least some of the educational background required to develop her snap-on parasol, the technological advancement was one whose commercial viability the men that staffed patent and manufacturing offices struggled to envision.

Henry, however, “was obviously strongly motivated,” says Swanson. After multiple rejections to build the parasol prototype she needed to sell her invention commercially, she eventually gave up and made it herself. By the mid-1920s, Henry had managed to secure the necessary patents and successfully licensed her umbrella for sale. Displayed in the windows of the department store Lord & Taylor, it sold like hot cakes.

How Beulah Louise Henry transformed into “Lady Edison”

Henry didn’t have to live out of hotels but like many upper-middle-class New Yorkers in the 1920s and ‘30s, she chose to for the sake of convenience. The mid-priced stays in Midtown gave Henry, a woman always brimming with new ideas, easy access to the patent attorneys, model makers, and retailers her entrepreneurship required. 

Despite never marrying or having children, Henry could see the potential the market in children’s toys held. Her next inventions captured the kiddie entertainment zeitgeist of the early-20th-century, including a realistic doll with a built-in radio, a water floaty anchored by inflatable swans, and a variety of different ways of sealing and covering air-filled balls. 

In January 1925, Henry debuted her “Radio Rose” doll. The doll had a loud speaking unit in her bisque skull, the bell of an eight inch horn in her chest, and a complete self-contained three tube radio set in her dress. The radio doll made its first broadcast at the Gimbel Brothers Department store in-house 500W radio station, WGBS. Image: Underwood Archives / Contributor / Getty Images Underwood Archives

These toys, along with a variety of devices used primarily by women—a special attachment that allowed typists to create a duplicate of a document without getting their hands dirty, an industrial sewing machine that made two parallel rows of stitching for stronger and more durable seams, and others—were Henry’s specialty. As advances geared towards women and children, it may have been harder for Henry to secure patents than it would have been for inventions geared towards men. Once they made it into stores, however, commercial success was almost a given. 

“Think about who was doing the daily shopping,” says Swanson. “Women were in the department stores, clothing stores, notion stores (shops specializing in sewing accessories), grocery stores.” 

Even more expensive items like dishwashers and washing machines that most early-20th century women would not have been able to buy without the assistance of a husband or father, were still advertised to them. “Manufacturers understood that women were very involved in purchase decisions,” she says.

Henry, herself, was the model of a new kind of independent woman. She worked late and danced later, her hair fashioned into a stylish bob. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, even during the Great Depression, the inventor and her team at the Henry Umbrella and Parasol Company and, later, the B.L. Henry Company, turned out an average of more than two patents a year. 

“I invent because I cannot help myself,” Henry once said. Astonished by her prolific output, reporters drew the parallel between her and the New Jersey inventor of electricity. The moniker “Lady Edison” stuck with her for the rest of her life.

Henry’s eccentric lifestyle and invention empire

By the 1940s, the now middle-aged Henry was a public figure. She was considered proper and respected—if not somewhat eccentric. The suite of rooms she rented at the Hotel Seville on 29th and Madison Avenue was known to smell of incense and have a revolving door through which numerous pet birds, turtles, and a cat named Chickadee passed. She stationed a telescope by the window to gaze at the night sky.

After World War II, during which Henry joined the effort working at a machine shop, she returned to the inventing game with a slew of new ideas: Milka-Moo, a plush toy cow that spurted milk; a toy dog that consumed real food; an inflatable interior compartment that made dolls lighter weight and easier to clean; a device that continuously basted a roast with juice.

Beulah Louise Henry poses with her latest invention, a doll with an inflatable interior compartment that could be easily bathed. Image: Public Domain

Henry was granted her final patent, the 49th, for a new type of “direct and return” envelope in 1970. She’s believed to have come up with more than twice that many inventions over the span of her life, half of which never made it to the patent stage. Still, says Swisher, “it was rare for any inventor to [acquire so many patents],” regardless of their gender. 

It was another 36 years before Beulah Louise Henry finally shed her reputation as the female version of Thomas Edison. In 2006, she was recognized for her own brilliant mind by the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

In That Time When, Popular Science tells the weirdest, surprising, and little-known stories that shaped science, engineering, and innovation.

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Austin, TX, USA, 19th March 2026, CyberNewswire

Initial Super Heavy V3 and Starbase Pad 2 activation campaign complete, wrapping up several days of testing that loaded cryogenic fuel and oxidizer on a V3 vehicle for the first time. While the 10-engine static fire ended early due to a ground-side issue, we saw successful startup on all installed Raptor 3 engines. Next up: ...

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Tesla FSD 14.3 is in testing right now. Wide release in a few weeks. It’s in testing right now. Wide release in a few weeks. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 19, 2026 AI5 will punch far above its weight, because the entire Tesla AI software stack is designed to make maximally effective use of every ...

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Nvidia has new level 4 chips for autonomous driving. Will this kill Tesla? They have 19 car partners who collectively can make 18 million cars per year. How many Nvidia Thor chips are installed in those cars ? How many cars have those partners created that are gathering data right now for self driving? Have ...

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Designer crossbreed dogs are increasingly popular pets. By some estimates, the wider world of “doodles” alone rakes in over $1 billion dollars a year. Much of the rising interest is tied to claims that these mixed pooches possess more desirable aspects than many purebreeds or mutts. But according to a study published today in the journal PLOS One, at least three trendy designer breeds—labradoodles, cavapoos, and cockapoos—display more problematic traits than at least one of their origin breeds.

The latest findings come from a survey of dog owners in the United Kingdom representing 9,402 cavapoos, cockapoos, and labradoodles. Each crossbreed comes from a poodle bred with a cavalier King Charles spaniel, cocker spaniel, or Labrador retriever. Animal behavioralists from the Royal Veterinary College used an industry standard review called the Canine Behavioral Assessment and Research Questionnaire (C-BARQ), to collect data on behavioral traits such as aggression, excitability, and trainability. 

Their results contradict some of the most popular assumptions about these crossbreed dogs. In over 44 percent of comparisons, a crossbreed had more undesirable aspects than their purebred progenitors including excess energy, separation anxiety, and more. Meanwhile, they did not find any notable differences in nearly 46 percent of comparisons, and less than 10 percent of crossbreeds displayed fewer issues.

But if you had to pick one of the three canine types, the study suggests avoiding cockapoos. These dogs scored worse than their parent breeds in 16 of the 24 behaviors, particularly when it came to owner-directed anger and excitability. Cavapoos came in second place, with worse scores in 11 out of 24 areas, although labradoodles appear to fare the best. These dogs only scored worse in five areas and actually ranked better in six subjects like aggression towards other pets.

While the findings aren’t a condemnation of any one specific crossbreed, the study’s authors hope the new information will help dispel ongoing myths about designer dogs. At the very least, pet owners should know what they’re in for when they bring their new four-legged friend home.

The post Cockapoos, doodles, and other crossbreeds have behavioral problems, too appeared first on Popular Science.

Over 200 colorful minerals will hit the auction block on March 20 as part of Heritage’s The Collection of William and Ruth Loomis Fine Minerals Signature® Auction. What started as a shared hobby evolved into a lifelong passion that soon will be offered to mineral collectors everywhere. Soon after marrying in 1987, the pair opened Loomis Minerals in Flagstaff, Arizona, which became the hub for their finds. 

“William and Ruth Loomis dedicated much of their adult lives to building this enticing collection, and their vast knowledge shines through in the lots that will cross the block in this auction,” Nic Valenzuela, Heritage’s Director of Fine Minerals, said in a statement. “This presents an opportunity to bid on some exceptional minerals from some of the most important mines around the world.”

Check out some of the items up for bid below. (Click to expand images to full screen.)

This aquamarine with muscovite was found in Nagar District in Gilgit-Baltistan, Pakistan. It is roughly the size of a cabinet and is largely composed of one massive crystal with a glassy luster and vibrant sky blue zoning and shiny bladed muscovite associations. Image: Heritage Auctions. Native gold from the Harvard Mine in the Jamestown District in Tuolumne County, California. This mine was among the first to be discovered in 1848, at the beginning of the American Gold Rush. Despite their rarity, when compared to the gold found in nuggets or veins, crystallized gold specimens often have a level of history and even aesthetics that go beyond their bullion value. This particular piece is 3.66 inches long and presented against a white quartz to contrast with its yellow color. Image: Heritage Auctions. This colorful elbaite (tourmaline) and quartz comes from Paprok, Afghanistan. The main focus of this particular specimen is a single immense, heavily striated, prismatic crystal that rises to a complex termination and is partially wreathed by striking parallel growths. This crystal is polychromatic, showing vibrant layers of deep red and pink that are topped by yellow, grass-green and blue-green zoning. Image: Heritage Auctions. 
This zincite is from Silesian Voivodeship in Poland and is 12 inches long in each direction. Zincite rarely occurs as crystallized examples in nature, apart from at a couple of localities. Similar to other zincites found throughout Poland’s various zinc smelting sites, this piece was found lining the interior of the smelter’s smokestack. Most of the hexagonal crystals are arranged in a jackstraw cluster of needle-shaped growths that come to very thin points. Image: Heritage Auctions. Opalized wood from Virgin Valley in Humboldt County, Nevada. It’s 12.68 inches long and boasts an extremely colorful field of opal,  showing large swatches of violet, blue, and green that cover most of the piece. Image: Heritage Auctions. The auction includes 20 tourmalines, including this tourmaline with lepidolite and smoky quartz from Paprok in the Kamdesh District in Nuristan, Afghanistan. It’s 7.64 inches long and has a large tourmaline crystal joined by dense clusters of lepidolite and associations of smoky quartz. It’s pink hue that is most intense at its core. Image: Heritage Auctions This schorl with goshenite comes from the Erongo Mountains in Namibia. It’s 4.45 inches long, and its schorl crystals intertwine in every direction. Hexagonal crystals of goshenite—a colorless variety of beryl—are also all over the mineral helping contrast with the black. Image: Heritage Auctions.

Images and information about all lots in the auction can be found at HA.com/8244.

The post 7 glittery minerals up for auction appeared first on Popular Science.

Microsoft is threatening to sue OpenAI over the February 2026 Amazon $50B investment and $100B cloud-expansion deal. Microsoft says the Frontier agent platform on AWS (stateful runtime) violates the Azure exclusivity for stateless OpenAI APIs that was in the original ~$13B Microsoft investment agreements (updated Sept 2025). Microsoft publicly restated Azure remains the exclusive cloud ...

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Humans have inherited many ancient values mainly encoded in DNA. These are mostly negative values, about avoid things like death, pain, hunger, cold, injury, boredom, confusion, loneliness, etc. Our main ancient positive values are social, about wanting allies, respect, sex, progeny, etc.

But we are quite reluctant to admit that social values are our main positive values. So our cultures give us other varied “sacred” positive values to focus on and aspire to. While these sacred values seem to function in practice mainly to help us achieve our social values, it is important to us that we not see them this way. So each culture gives its members distinctive high positive values. Like their versions of freedom, purity, honor, justice, equality, art, exploration, and inquiry.

However, when our culture shows us several different such grand values, or we are exposed to different subcultures, how do we rank such values? Yes, we have a norm that sacred values don’t conflict. But we are at times forced to see that two values do in fact conflict, which we then resolve this by deciding that the lower one can’t really be sacred. To do this, we need a way to pick which value is higher.

George Simmel, “founding figure of sociology”, in 1900 published The Philosophy of Money, wherein he argued (quotes below) that a common human heuristic is that we judge our highest values to be those that we, or people like us, have recently sacrificed the most to achieve, via suffering those negatives that we usually try to avoid.

For example, Christians see the great value of God’s love in the sacrifice of his son Christ, and the value of Christianity in the sacrifices of martyrs, monks, and soldiers in religions wars. Citizens see the great value of their nation in the many harsh wars to promote that nation. Professionals see the value of their profession in the sacrifice of potential, years of practice, and hours per day of devoted work. Activists see the value of their causes in the suffering of advocates at the hands of opponents. We have record levels of spending on education, medicine, and legal process, and record levels of confidence in the high value of such spending.

You see, we humans aren’t satisfied to just enjoy tasty nutritious easily-prepared food. But foodies can hope that expensive ingredients, difficult preparation methods, and exceptional skilled cooks may deliver sensory nuance, harmony of composition, craft appreciation, place authenticity, novelty, and narrative. Enough of that and they hope to rise above the mundane to touch the sacred.

And we can’t just be entertained by engaging stories amid pleasing views in movies. But cinéphiles can hope that movie-makers’ artistic excellence and deep insight into human nature, obtained at great personal cost, can be combined with viewers’ careful attention, multiple viewings, literacy, and tolerance for ambiguity to let them see deeply, access serious emotions, encounter other minds and worlds, and join the community of those who “get it”. Which rises above the mundane to touch the sacred.

Now if we had some independent and strong grip on our greatest values, then we might only sacrifice for them when and to the degree that such sacrifice actually best achieved those values. But when we don’t have much of a way to tell which are our greatest values, but instead infer our values to be whatever we most sacrifice for, this can create self-reinforcing cycles that create great suffering.

For example, if we see that our greatest sacrifices lately have been for religion, we try harder to push more of us to be more strictly religious, via more personal sacrifice, and to convert outsiders, which cases suffering via conflict. If our greatest sacrifices have been wars to promote our nations, religions, or ideologies, then we get more eager to promote such things via new wars.

If our greatest sacrifices recently have been in culture wars, we get more eager to push for faster bigger cultural change, especially along the dimensions where we have faced opposition. For example, high levels of social conflict and sacrifice induced by recent “defund the police” initiatives on one side, and by anti-immigrant efforts on the other side, was probably part of the appeal of both approaches.

This makes me better appreciate ancient societies that spent huge fractions of their available labor on monumental architecture, and also that did lots of human sacrifice.

The longer the period where we have not seen great sacrifices lately, the more we fear that we have become decadent, selfish, profane, and have lost touch with higher values and deeper meanings. And the more eager we become to induce and join big sacrifice activities. For example, WWI ended an unusually long period of European peace and prosperity, and saw an unusually great enthusiasm for war on all sides.

Today we have also seen an unusually long period of peace and prosperity. I predict this will not last. We will come more see ourselves as out of touch with our grand values, and become more open and even eager for actions that induce new regimes of great sacrifice. Periodic high rates of sacrifice will probably continue for as long as we humans (or our AI descendants) use sacrifice as our key indicator of our top grand values. We really need to find a better way to find and affirm our highest values.

Those Simmel quotes:

Even superficial psychological observation discloses instances in which the sacrifice not only increases the value of the desired object but actually brings it about. This process reveals the desire to prove one’s strength, to overcome difficulties, or even simply to be contrary. The necessity of proceeding in a roundabout way in order to acquire certain things is often the occasion, and often also the reason, for considering them valuable. In human relations, and most frequently and clearly in erotic relations, it is apparent that reserve, indifference or rejection incite the most passionate desire to overcome these barriers, and are the cause of efforts and sacrifices that, in many cases, the goal would not have seemed to deserve were it not for such opposition. …

Moral merit always signifies that opposing impulses and desires had to be conquered and sacrificed in favour of the morally desirable act. If such an act is carried out without any difficulty as a result of natural impulse, it will not be considered to have a subjective moral value, no matter how desirable its objective content. Moral merit is attained only by the sacrifice of lower and yet very tempting goods, and it is the greater the more inviting the temptations and the more comprehensive and difficult the sacrifice. Of all human achievements the highest honour and appreciation is given to those that indicate, or at least seem to indicate, a maximum of commitment, energy and persistent concentration of the whole being, and along with this, renunciation, sacrifice of everything else, and devotion to the objective idea.

Our ancient ancestors loved their birch tar. Neanderthals likely used the sticky substance to build and repair tools, but it also may have had another important use. With its antibiotic properties, birch tar could also treat wounds. The findings are detailed in a study published today in the journal PLOS One.

Long believed to be one of the less advanced Homo species, recent studies have shown that Neanderthals built tools, collected random items, and even made art using a type of crayon. Archaeologists frequently find birch tar at Neanderthal archaeological sites, which comes from birch trees. Some researchers have questioned if Neanderthals were using it for more than just making tools. Indigenous communities in northern Europe and Canada treat wounds with birch tar and there is growing evidence that Neanderthals employed a variety of medical practices, including helping their sick or injured comrades.

To investigate birch tar’s medicinal potential, the team extracted tar from modern birch tree bark, specifically targeting tree species known from Neanderthal sites. They used multiple extraction methods that Neanderthals would have used, including distilling the tar in a clay pit and condensing it against a stone surface. 

“The messiness of birch tar production deserves a special mention,” the study’s co-authors wrote in a joint statement. “Every step of the production is a sensory experience in itself, and getting the tar off our hands after spending hours at the fire has been a challenge every time.”

In the lab, the team exposed the tar samples to different strains of bacteria. All of the tar samples were effective at hindering the growth of Staphylococcus bacteria known to cause wound infections.

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According to the team, these experiments support the efficacy of Indigenous medicinal practices, and also reinforce the possibility that Neanderthals used birch tar to treat their own wounds. It also may have been used as an insect repellent.

“We found that the birch tar produced by Neanderthals and early humans had antibacterial properties,” the team said. “This has important implications for how Neanderthals may have mitigated disease burden during the last Ice Ages, and adds to a growing set of evidence on healthcare in these early human communities.”

Future studies of the potential uses of these natural ingredients could also lead to a more thorough understanding of a lost Neanderthal culture and could have a direct impact on the future of medicine as antibiotic resistance grows. 

“By bringing together research on indigenous pharmacology and experimental archaeology, we begin to understand the medicinal practices of our distant human ancestors and their closest cousins,” the team concluded. “Additionally, this study of ‘palaeopharmacology’ can contribute to the rediscovery of antibiotic remedies whilst we face an ever more pressing antimicrobial resistance crisis.”

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Organic molecules delivered from extraterrestrial materials may have played a key role in supplying building blocks for life on Earth. Scientists have found all five canonical nucleobases—purines (adenine and guanine) and pyrimidines (cytosine, thymine and uracil)—in samples returned from the C-type asteroid (162173) Ryugu by JAXA’s Hayabusa2 mission. This likely means that organic molecule building ...

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Web3 infrastructure and professional athletics never appeared to be a match in the early days of crypto, but they’ve proven to be a match made in heaven. It began as a niche interest in digital collectibles, hosted on the sports blockchain, but has since turned into a robust infrastructure that is changing how sports franchises ...

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Clothing trends come and go, but in some cases, they don’t stay away for too long. For decades, both the fashion industry and its devotees have referenced the so-called “20-year-rule,” which suggests society is liable to see certain styles return at semiregular intervals. However, without any hard data to back up the claim, that “rule” has long remained more of a hypothesis.

That’s changing, thanks to recent analysis from mathematicians at Northwestern University. After examining nearly 160 years’ worth of women’s clothing, an interdisciplinary research team confirms that fashion trends frequently resurface every 20-or-so years.

“To our knowledge, this is the first time that someone developed such an extensive and precise database of fashion measures across more than a century,” study lead author Emma Zajdela said in a recent university profile.

Example of how the researchers measured features like hemlines, waistlines and necklines in archival sewing patterns. Credit: Emma Zajdela / Daniel Abrams / Commercial Pattern Archive

To reach their conclusions, researchers first compiled a dataset of about 37,000 garments by combining the University of Rhode Island’s Commercial Pattern Archive with generations of runway collection images dating back to 1869. They then broke down clothing based on specific features including hemline, waistline positioning, and neckline to assess each example in measurable, numerical terms. Finally, they built a new mathematical model to analyze the push-and-pull between novel and more recognizable fashion designs. According to Zajdela and her colleagues, the evidence clearly shows that the fashion industry routinely recycles certain themes and designs around every two decades.

“Historically, the lack of data posed a barrier to explicit quantitative study of this system,” explained Zajdela, adding that they now have “some very interesting results.”

Basically, the fashion industry is constantly fluctuating between originality and tradition. Once a clothing style is too popular, designers begin changing their new apparel just enough to stand out while still remaining desirable to potential wearers.

“Over time, this constant push to be different from the recent past causes styles to swing back and forth. The system intrinsically wants to oscillate, and we see those cycles in the data,” said applied mathematician and study coauthor Daniel Abrams.

The most obvious example of this pattern is the hemline. For more than a century, skirt fashion has swayed between short and long styles. Flapper dresses with short hemlines were all the rage in the 1920s, but gave way to lengthier designs in the 1940s and 50s. By the 1960s, the trend returned back to even shorter options like the miniskirt.

However, despite this mathematical support, the 20-year-rule may not last much longer. Beginning in the 1980s, the short-long skirt dichotomy began breaking down as both options remained popular for wearers.

“In the past, there were two options—short dresses and long dresses. In more recent years, there are more options: really short dresses, floor-length dresses and midi dresses,” said Zajdela. “There is an increase in variance over time and less conformity.”

Only time will tell if the 20-year-rule remains in effect. Until then, it’s probably best to hold on to that old piece of clothing for at least a little bit longer. It’s not only good for your wardrobe—it’s good for the environment.

The post Clothes really do come back in style every 20 years appeared first on Popular Science.

Over the long and complicated course of evolutionary history, mammals independently turned towards water to make a home multiple times. While many of the warm-blooded animals that abandoned dry land for a watery habitat no longer exist, we still have plenty of stunning examples: Think dolphins, whales, manatees, porpoises. There’s even a whole suborder of carnivores called the pinnipeds, which includes seals, sea lions, and walruses who move between land and water. 

But, just like all animals, marine mammals need water to stay hydrated to survive. The trouble is that salt water, which makes up some 97 percent of the water on earth and is home to mammals like orcas and bottlenose dolphins, is dehydrating by nature. “We have salt in our body fluids, but a lot less salt than in sea water,” Martin Grosell, an aquatic organisms researcher at the University of Miami, tells Popular Science. “This means that the high salt concentration in sea water, by osmosis, drags water out of the animal.” 

Despite the fact that you get wet when you enter the ocean, living in the sea is physiologically similar to living in a desert, Grosell adds. To live in any tough scenario, on land or otherwise, animals must adapt. To understand how mammals can survive and hydrate in the sea, we must dive in the evolutionary deep end. 

The difference between invertebrates and vertebrates

While scientists still can’t pinpoint the exact origin of life, many scientists believe it actually started deep in the ocean. But these early creatures hardly resemble what we think of as today’s sea beasts—they were invertebrates, meaning they didn’t have backbones. 

“Most of the invertebrates do not control their internal salt content, so they have the same salt content as the sea water,” says Grosell. “What that means is they are not dehydrating, they’re not losing water.” This strategy for survival, called osmoconforming, appears in all sorts of animals we are familiar with today: starfish, jellyfish, lobsters, mollusks, and more. 

But things get complicated when you throw in a backbone. Fish, sea reptiles (think sea snakes and saltwater crocodiles), sea mammals, and even sea birds all require specialized body parts to remove the salt from the water they consume. 

“The big challenge for animals that drink sea water is the salt they’re getting with that water, ” Grosell says. “If they cannot get rid of that salt, there’s no benefit to taking in that water.” 

For fish, drinking salt water is just part of the day-to-day. The water gets absorbed into their intestines, but the salt is transported from their blood to cells in the gills, which then push that salt back into the sea. 

Humpback whales have really salty pee, relying on specialized kidneys to filter out salt from ocean water. Image: Getty Images / Westend61

But for animals without gills, like mammals, reptiles, and birds, the story is more complex. These creatures need to expel the extra salt somehow, which for mammals is via the kidneys. While it’s exceptionally difficult to measure, say, the saltiness of whale urine, what we do know is that the kidneys of marine mammals can “produce a urine that’s really concentrated,” Grosell adds. Some marine animals even have what are called reniculate kidneys. These organs are divided into hundreds of tiny filtering units that help expel a ton of salt. 

Birds, on the other hand, have glands above their eyes that secrete high-salinity fluid like a mammal’s kidney would. This comes in handy for feathered friends who spend swaths of the year with only access to saltwater, and research has demonstrated that salt gland masses of different birds may even vary seasonally. 

For reptiles, the process is quite similar. Sea turtles have salt glands behind their eyes (which makes them look like they are crying when above the water), marine iguanas have salt glands connected to their nose (which makes for some very salty sneezes), and sea snakes and crocodiles have salt glands on their tongues.

To drink or not to drink

While some animals certainly do, purposefully or otherwise, drink salt water and then deal with the consequences, this is a very metabolically expensive way to live. “If they can get water in other ways, they’re gonna prefer that,” Grosell adds. “And some of those ways, of course, are the water that’s contained in whatever prey they eat.” 

Almost all marine mammals are carnivores: Think orcas, whales, dolphins, and even walruses and otters. Even baleen whales eat swarms of tiny animals known as krill. Chowing down on fish and other marine creatures means eating animals with a similar water content as themselves, and it turns out to be a solid hydration strategy. 

For instance, one study from the 1970s demonstrated that this kind of lifestyle, merely chowing down on fish, allows for enough hydration that elephant seal pups don’t even need a sip of fresh water to stay healthy. In fact, they can fast on land for up to three months without drinking thanks to their unique combination of behavioral and physiological water conservation mechanisms. 

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Still, some marine mammals can’t resist a mouthful of unsalted goodness. This is especially true of manatees, which will seek fresh water sources near the shore or low-salinity river mouths, adds Grosell. 

Floridians may attest to this, he says, as manatees will sometimes approach boaters for a tasty sip. “They have a very strong ability to find water,” he says. “Water is a commodity for them, and it’s one they will work hard for.” 

On the other side of North America, hooded seal pups found off the Davis Strait, the coasts of Labrador and Newfoundland, and the Gulf of St Lawrence have been recorded slurping up sea water as well as snow. Snow, even when it falls over the ocean, is freshwater thanks to the tricks of evaporation. 

The key to remaining a hydrated mammal while thriving in sea water is threefold: eat watery food, find freshwater as needed, and pee out any extra salt that gets in the way. It’s a tried-and-true method that’s lasted millions of years. But humans don’t have these adaptations. So next time you hit the beach, remember to pack a water bottle if you don’t want to dehydrate.

In Ask Us Anything, Popular Science answers your most outlandish, mind-burning questions, from the everyday things you’ve always wondered to the bizarre things you never thought to ask. Have something you’ve always wanted to know? Ask us.

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Tuesday March 10th was a particularly punishing day of bad weather for the residents of Kansas City, Missouri. That evening, hailstones as large as grapefruits bombarded homes, businesses, and vehicles in the area, causing widespread damage to the community.

While such weather events remain comparatively rare, severe storms are continuing to strengthen due to climate change. Unfortunately, meteorologists still have a lot to learn about hailstorms in particular. It remains difficult to anticipate the size of ice chunks falling from the sky, and even estimating how hail melts as it careens towards Earth is a challenge.

To improve their understanding and better prepare for future events, NASA researchers are asking the public to help contribute to their ongoing hailstone investigations. And as storm season gears up, there’s no better time to familiarize yourself with the free hail tracking app courtesy of the Community Collaborative Rain, Hail, and Snow (CoCoRaHS) network.

Designed in collaboration with the National Science Foundation and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, the CoCoRaHS Southeast Region (SEaRCH) project relies on volunteer submission reports on local hail events. Users can upload storm details including time, date, location, as well as hailstone photos and measurements directly to the CoCoRaHS app.

CoCoRaHS organizers estimate it only takes five to 10 minutes to finish per event, and free training is available through multiple outlets. Particularly dedicated citizen scientists can take it a step further, too. The SEaRCH app also accepts precipitation measurements using a rain gauge that costs about $42 to purchase.

With the aid of volunteer submissions, NASA scientists are now combining hail reports with archived satellite data to develop and hone hail prediction models, as well as melt profiles of the ice. Melt profiles do more than just improve forecasting abilities. They allow meteorologists to better estimate how various hailstone sizes melt over time.

Curious citizen scientists are encouraged to download the app and start submitting their data as soon as they can—just be sure to wait until a hailstorm is completely over before venturing out to take your measurements. No one wants to be beaned with a cantaloupe-sized ball of ice.

The post NASA wants your hail photos appeared first on Popular Science.

Nvidia has a structured data enablement strategy. Nvidia provides libaries, software and hardware to index and search data faster. The Indexing and retrievals are way faster 10-40X faster in most cases. How cuDF + cuVS Work Together (The GTC 2026 “Ground Truth” Pipeline) Unstructured data (PDFs, videos, logs, emails, sensor streams) → embedding model (NeMo, ...

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Jensen Huang GTC 2026 Keynote Highlights (March 16, 2026) NemoClaw Launch NVIDIA unveiled NemoClaw, an enterprise-ready, secure version of OpenClaw (open-source AI agents platform). This is the enterprise ready OpenSource form of Openclaw. Openclaw is by some measures the most successful open source project ever. Surpassing Linux in some ways. Nemoclaw adds privacy guardrails, sandboxing ...

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New York, United States, 17th March 2026, CyberNewswire

Most people today are confident that the US in 1860 having ~4M slaves (out of its 31M population) was a big moral mistake. But who exactly is to blame for this mistake? I broke the causal path into these 8 steps:

1. Africa Wars - African nations/tribes go to war against each other. Sometimes in part to grab slaves.

2. Enslave Losers - African war winners enslave losers instead of killing them. Other options more risked revenge.

3. Sell to Traders - African war winners sell slaves to African slave traders

4. Sell to Non-Africans - African slave traders move slaves to coast (~10-20% die on way), sell to Non-Africans

5. Move to US - European slave traders move ~4% of African slaves to US (~10-15% die on way), sell them there

6. US farmers buy - US farmers buy slaves, work them

7. Let slaves have kids - US farmers let slaves live long, and have kids. This was unusual in history of slavery.

8. Treat kids as slaves - US farmers treat kids of slaves as also slaves. If this were not allowed, they’d not have allowed step 7.

Polls with 4009 responses rated which of these were the worse moral mistakes, relative to a max of 100:

It seems that respondents put most blame here on people who choose to enslave over to kill or stop from existing. Even though when directly asked they say that slavery is not as bad an outcome as death or non-existence.

An ancient forager norm tells us to resist domination. And with mere words and other cheap public actions, we do. But when actions are more private, deniable, or expensive, we don’t.

For example, around powerful people we typically more laugh and agree, interrupt less, and are more deferential, polite and flattering. We are ingratiating and conformist to bosses, and less likely to criticize them to other people. And famously:

Economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence. (More)

I’ve written many times before on the subject of blackmail. As the main effect of anti-blackmail laws is to allow rich celebrities to more easily evade norms and laws, my best explanation for such laws is a widespread desire to give them what they want. The most telling evidence is that we allow exactly the same transaction, as an NDA, if initiated by the rich celebrity, but criminalize it if initiated by a poor observer of their transgressions. Which seems to me pretty clear evidence of who the policy is intended to benefit.