Popular Science

Artemis II astronauts have entered final preparations for their historic trip around the moon, but they won’t be flying alone. While speaking recently at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, mission commander Reid Wiseman revealed the mission’s adorable zero gravity indicator. Designed by a 2nd grader from California, “Rise” is a tiny plush doll that will let the four-person crew know when they’ve reached zero gravity. Aside from being extremely cute, Rise is also a symbolic celebration of the first crewed NASA mission to leave Earth’s orbit and circle the moon since the Apollo program.

“Rise,” designed by Lucas Ye of Mountain View, California, as the zero gravity indicator that will fly with the crew around the Moon. “Rise” was inspired by the iconic Earthrise moment from the Apollo 8 mission. A zero gravity indicator is a small plush item that typically rides with a crew to visually indicate when they are in space.
Credit: NASA

A zero gravity indicator is an untethered object—often a stuffed animal or something similar—that highlights astronauts’ journey into space. However, their inclusion during flights wasn’t an original NASA idea. In 1961, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin was the first to pack a small doll alongside him during the Vostok I journey to showcase when he reached microgravity. Zero gravity indicators have since become an international staple of spacefaring, with past examples including plushies of R2-D2, Albert Einstein, and multiple dinosaurs. More recently, Snoopy was the sole inhabitant aboard the uncrewed Artemis I mission in 2022.

The Rise doll was one of over 2,600 submissions from more than 50 countries during NASA’s Moon Mascot contest. In August 2025, the Artemis II crew narrowed down the selections to 25 finalists before settling on the top five contenders:

• “Big Steps of Little Octopus,” Anzhelika Iudakova, Finland
• “Corey the Explorer,” Daniela Colina, Peru
• “Creation Mythos,” Johanna Beck, McPherson, Kansas
• “Lepus the Moon Rabbit,” Oakville Trafalgar School, Canada
• “Rise,” Lucas Ye, Mountain View, California

Ye’s creation is inspired by the historic Earthrise scene captured during the Apollo 8 mission in 1968. While Rise will only be one official zero gravity indicator for Artemis II, there’s a solid chance that its very trendy, planet-themed baseball cap may start showing up in stores after the mission’s completion. Artemis II is currently scheduled to launch no earlier than Wednesday, April 1.

The post A 2nd grader designed an adorable mascot for NASA’s Artemis II mission appeared first on Popular Science.

Peter Cottontail would probably pull a muscle trying to lug this giant chocolate egg down the bunny trail. After the success of the world’s largest Cadbury Creme Egg in 2025, Cadbury World has a new sweet concoction. Behold the world’s largest Cadbury Mini Egg, aka The Mega Mini Egg.

The Mega Mini Egg is currently on display in the U.K.  Image: Cadbury World / PA Media

It took chocolatiers Claire Fielding, Dawn Jenks, and Donna Pitt two days to craft the giant egg entirely by hand. The 27.5-inch-tall, 121-pound egg weighs about as much as an emu. The Mega Mini Egg has a pastel pink sugar coating on its crisp shell and some subtle speckles on the surface. 

“Cadbury Mini Eggs are another absolute favourite and a British Easter staple, so creating the Mega Mini Egg felt like the perfect next challenge,” Cadbury chocolatier Claire Fielding said in a statement. “We took that instantly recognisable shell and chocolate centre and scaled it up into a real showstopper. It’s been so rewarding seeing it come to life, and we can’t wait for visitors to come and see it in person this Easter.”

Cadbury World Chocolatier Claire Fielding with the “Mega Mini Egg.”  Image: Cadbury World / PA Media

The egg is on display in the Chocolate Making area at Cadbury World in Bournville, England, about 100 miles northwest of London. 

Even if you were able to take a bite out of this enormous piece of candy, it would take a lot of chocolate to kill a person. The adult human weighing 165 pounds would need to eat 75,000 milligrams to be at a toxic level. To reach that level, our estimates say that a person would need to consume:

• 711 regular-sized Hershey’s milk chocolate bars OR 

• 7,084 Hershey chocolate kisses OR

• 332 standard- sized Hershey’s dark chocolate bars.

You’d probably end up getting sick long before reaching that chocolate critical mass. 

The post World’s largest Cadbury Mini egg weighs as much as an emu appeared first on Popular Science.

Excerpted from THE EDGE OF SPACE-TIME: Particles, Poetry, and the Cosmic Dream Boogie by Chanda Prescod-Weinstein with permission from Pantheon Books, a division of Penguin Random House. Copyright © 2026 by Chanda Prescod-Weinstein.

Halfway through Space Is the Place, Sun Ra muses that scientists are fed on research while Black people have been fed on freedom. As a Black physicist, I have been fed on both, and I have tried to grow the seeds that my ancestors passed on to me. The ancestors could fly. I do too, whenever I am able to escape into looking at the universe through the lens of quantum fields. I am not the first to escape into the abstractions of space and time. If you’ve read this far, then you have joined me. We are not the first. We will not be the last.

When I was younger, I knew I could be a scientist because I grew up watching LeVar Burton play one on television. As Geordi La Forge, chief engineer of the starship Enterprise on Star Trek: The Next Generation, Burton gave us a brilliant, Black nerd. Because I saw this early example, my child self never doubted that I had the freedom to be a professional nerd too. It was not a possibility that was, as it had been for Black generations before me, “Far Beyond the Stars”—the title of a powerful episode about twentieth-century anti-Black racism that aired during the sixth season of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. DS9, as many fans know it, was the first Trek series to feature a Black lead. Avery Brooks’s Benjamin Sisko broke barriers in what is to this day the longest-running television drama with a Black man in the leading role. Like Burton’s Lieutenant Commander La Forge, Captain Sisko taught Black children like me that not even the sky was the limit.

In this sense, representation has real material meaning: Trek has continuously pushed the boundaries of our imaginations for as long as it has existed. Burton’s performance as Geordi La Forge has its origins in an earlier iteration of Trek—the first Black person Burton ever saw on television was Nichelle Nichols as Lieutenant Nyota Uhura in the original Star Trek series. This milestone was marked in the January 1967 issue of Ebony magazine, which also features a cover photograph of Nichols. In the photo, she’s wearing a form-fitting red synthetic velour dress with a respectably high black scoop-neck collar—the uniform of a liberated Black woman who is Earth’s chief communicator in outer space. The dress looks straight out of the 1960s except for the small patch over the left breast, which is roughly shaped like an arrowhead and features a swirly letter e (for engineering). The accompanying feature story declared that Nichols, then a star of the brand-new NBC Color television show Star Trek, was “the first Negro astronaut, a triumph of modern-day TV over modern-day NASA.”

The Edge of Space-Time is available on April 7th from Pantheon Books. Credit: Pantheon / Penguin Random House

The decision to feature the stunningly beautiful Nichols on the cover, complete with a lengthy feature describing her significant contributions to the production of Gene Roddenberry’s new humanistic drama of life in space, was both clear and pointed. Not only was Ebony celebrating a great Black actor; it was also offering political commentary on the whiteness of the political zeitgeist, asserting that NBC had imagination NASA utterly lacked. Of course, there are limits to this way of looking at things. Roddenberry had filmed the first Star Trek pilot featuring white actress Majel Barrett (his wife) as second in command of the Enterprise, but NBC hated the idea of portraying a white woman in such a powerful position and refused to pick up the series. The franchise might have died were it not for the intervention of Lucille Ball of I Love Lucy fame, who insisted that Roddenberry be given a second chance. So Roddenberry got rid of the white woman first officer and replaced her with not just any male but a male alien: Leonard Nimoy’s science officer Spock. He also added pilot Hikaru Sulu to the crew, played by Japanese American concentration-camp survivor George Takei. And he cast Nichols, already a star stage performer, in the role of the communications officer whose last name recalls uhuru—Swahili for “freedom.”

It would be nearly three decades before a Black woman would finally make the journey to space in real life. Roddenberry, of course, was not the first to dream of it. I imagine that Black women have dreamed of space throughout the centuries—for much longer than the idea of “Black people” has existed. Even Star Trek was a few years behind journalist Edward Murrow, who, as head of the U.S. Information Agency, wrote to NASA administrator James Webb in 1961 to suggest that the United States send “the first non-white man to space.” Webb replied that such a choice was “inconsistent with our agency’s policies.” And so in 1967, it was Lieutenant Uhura who first fulfilled that dream in the popular consciousness. Beamed into the living rooms of Black children across the country, Nichelle Nichols transformed how Black children saw themselves and their futures. 

Media like Trek kept me open to the possibility that space represented. I am a child of the space shuttle era, so I never knew a world where humans, including Black people, weren’t annually flying to space. I was fascinated by the 1976 IMAX film To Fly!—and saw it at both the California Science Museum and the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., where it brought me “past Mars, past Jupiter and its moons, past Saturn and beyond.” The script of the twenty-seven-minute film, juxtaposed with the larger-than-life IMAX movie screen, was the best kind of propaganda, designed to inspire awe. Toward the end, the narrator sums up the journey: “Today we look upon our planet from afar and feel a new tenderness for the tiny and fragile Earth. And so I learned early on from documentary as well as Star Trek that space was a tapestry for our dreams.

______________

Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein is an associate professor of physics and astronomy and core faculty in women’s and gender studies at the University of New Hampshire. Her research in theoretical physics focuses on cosmology, dark matter, and neutron stars. She is also a researcher of Black feminist science, technology, and society studies. She is also the creator of the Cite Black Women+ in Physics and Astronomy Bibliography. Her first book The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred (Bold Type Books) won the 2021 Los Angeles Times Book Prize in the science and technology category, the 2022 Phi Beta Kappa Science Award, and a 2022 PEN/Oakland Josephine Miles Award.

The post When ‘Star Trek’ put the first Black astronaut into space appeared first on Popular Science.

Have you ever walked into an old garage or antique store, seen a VHS tape gathering dust and wondered: would those sad old pieces of plastic still play? An eclectic YouTuber named Brady Brandwood is taking that  curiosity to the extreme. Brandwood has collected a handful of neglected VHS tapes and CDs from long-abandoned buildings in Georgia and is setting out on a journey to bring them back to life. Remarkably, after likely spending more than a decade exposed to the elements, almost all of the old media still worked. Well, mostly worked, at least.

“I’ve heard the lifespan of a VHS tape is about 30 years,” Brandwood says in his video. “I’m betting it’s actually a lot longer than that. “They are obviously very durable, even when they are left out in the elements.” 

Searching abandoned homes for neglected VHS tapes 

Brandwood has odd tastes. The regular programming on his channel (which has nearly 700,000 subscribers) normally involves chronicling the life of wild lobsters and welcoming wild animals into his home. This video switches things up, opening with him wandering through creepy, rotting homes in Georgia’s woodlands from a first-person camera view. The creaky floors, rotted wood, and strewn-about furniture make it look like something straight out of a “Resident Evil” game.

“Kinda sad, all of this will be bulldozed down soon,” he says. Something like a fast food restaurant or gas station will likely replace it. And whoever, or whatever is living in this basement will be evicted.”

The YouTuber returned to the house with his camera, because he had previously spotted some VHS tapes scattered around and wondered if there was any way to find out what was hidden on them. He left with several dirt-filled tapes as well as a handful of CDs, each showing varying levels of apparent wear and tear. One of the CDs clearly had a picture of Elvis on the front, while another had the words “The Blind Side” written in black marker.

Brandwood didn’t actually own a VHS player, so he had to visit several thrift shops to find one—a hunt he also recorded. To play back the CDs, he used an old Apple Power Mac G5 from his storage unit. But even with the correct hardware on hand, neither the VHS tapes nor the CDs would play in their current, dirt-coated state.

Brandwood burned through plenty of paper towels and cleaning spray during his experiment. Image: Brady Brandwood / YouTube.

To clean the VHS tapes, Brandwood started by wiping down the exteriors to remove dirt and grime. He then opened up the top of the tape casing to get a better look at the mechanical innards. It was a mess, to say the least. Mold was growing on the inside, and a good deal of extra dirt was lodged within. Upon closer inspection, one of the tapes had apparently also served as a spider’s nest at some point.

After all that cleaning came the moment of truth. He loaded in one of the VHS tapes and, at first, nothing happened. He ejected it and loaded it once more, and this time, after a brief dramatic pause, the screen went gray and old-time swing music started playing. Moments later, the Paramount Pictures logo with the mountaintop in the background appeared. When he rewound the tape, he realized it was a recording of something from Cartoon Network. It wasn’t crystal clear, but the old tape worked.

The other refurbished VHS tapes managed to play as well. One showed what appeared to be a dinosaur documentary. Another loaded up to reveal a filmed Jerry Lee Lewis concert, in which the musician can be seen playing the piano with his foot. While  all of the VHS tapes were able to play, the same couldn’t be said for the recovered CDs. Some were simply too degraded, and the computer spat them back out.

Brandwood loaded one of the tapes and was greeted with this recording of Jerry Lee Lewis in concert. Image: Brady Brandwood / YouTube. The race against time to save physical media’s secrets 

Brandwood set out to the abandoned VHS tapes and CDs for fun, but figuring out the science behind preserving old physical media is serious work. Around the globe, archivists are racing against time to find the best ways to immortalize degrading tech and safeguard the contents held within them.

Popular Science recently spoke with Cambridge University Library archivist Leontien Talboom  who teamed up with video game enthusiasts to create a new stand for cleaning and imagining floppy disc drives. The square cartridges were the dominant medium for storing digital information throughout the last three decades of the 20th century and are familiar to anyone who remembers the Tamagotchi craze. 

Some of the CDs were too badly damaged to play. Image: Brady Brandwood / YouTube

Here in the United States, archivists at the Library of Congress are actively running experiments on CDs. They’re artificially exposing them to various heat and humidity levels to see how fast they degrade, and what can be done to slow the process. 

For CDs and VHS tapes alike, the best way to prolong their life is to keep them in a climate-controlled environment to prevent decay. Ironically, even though the transition from VHS to CDs was driven partly by the perception that the CDs were a more durable, long-lasting medium, Brandwood’s adventure shows that’s not necessarily the case. It turns out the humble VHS tape may have been a more robust engineering accomplishment than was previously appreciated.

The post Georgia man brings abandoned VHS tapes back to life appeared first on Popular Science.

In Hans Christian Andersen’s classic fairytale, “The Princess and the Pea,” a prince tests whether a young woman is, in fact, a princess. In order to authenticate her nobility, his mother (the queen) places a single pea at the bottom of the woman’s bed, beneath 20 mattresses and 20 quilts. If the woman is sensitive to the pea, she must have royal blood—obviously. Although she falls asleep easily atop the towering, the woman spends the entire night tossing and turning because the bed is so uncomfortable. Later, the queen confirms it was the pea that made her sleep so unbearable. But if you were to ask a sleep doctor today, it may have had more to do with the princess’s sleeping position. 

It’s no secret that your sleeping position can significantly affect your sleep quality. But according to science, which sleeping position is best? 

In order to determine whether we should be snoozing on our backs or curling up on our sides to achieve maximum health benefits (and a good night’s rest), Popular Science turned to  Dr. John Saito, a representative for the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. Apparently, the answer isn’t so clear-cut. 

A good sleep position begins with easy breathing

“Everyone has an idea of what a good sleep position may be,” says Saito, “whether it’s sleeping on your left side, ride side, back, belly, or even upside down. But it all depends on the context.” 

For example, say you’re lying on your back and have a good support pillow that keeps your spine and your neck in a neutral position. This, says Saito, allows your airway to remain unobstructed and you to breathe easily. That’s a good thing. 

However, if you have sleep apnea—a condition in which your breathing stops and starts throughout sleep, typically resulting from your throat muscles becoming too relaxed and blocking a body’s upper airway—sleeping on your back can be detrimental to your health. 

“If the tongue falls to the back of your throat when you’re lying on your back, that’s bad,” says Saito. For babies, most doctors recommend putting them to sleep on their backs to reduce the risk of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), an unexplained death that usually occurs during sleep. 

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Good news for side sleepers

For adults, “If you’re lying on your right side, it might be better for blood flow,” says Saito, as well as lower pressure on your heart. This is because your mediastinum, a flexible compartment located between the lungs, helps hold your heart in place. 

“If you’re lying on your left side, it may actually be better for clearing the waste product in our brain,” he says. This is called the glymphatic system, a brain’s specialized waste clearance network that washes away harmful metabolic byproducts, including proteins linked to Alzheimer’s disease, while we sleep. 

There’s also a difference between sleeping in a fetal or curled position, and sprawling out straight. Sleeping on either side with your body relatively linear helps to align your spine, while curling up on your side is generally good for easing lower back pain. However, being too curled up like a baby can compress your diaphragm and chest, and in turn restrict breathing. 

Finding the best sleeping position for you

Regardless of what science shows, certain people will have certain preferences when it comes to sleeping positions, says Saito, and for good reason. For instance, “ask someone who’s dealing with back pain to then sleep on their back and they’re going to curse you,” he says, “because even though they’re breathing better, their bones and joints are hurting terribly.”

So instead of a specific sleeping position, Saito says to consider the ABCs of respiratory therapy: airway, breathing, and circulation. “If you can’t breathe because you have sleep apnea or you have allergies and a stuffy nose, you want to find the best position that keeps your airway open,” he says. 

What if you move around, sleeping in multiple positions through the night? 

According to Dr. Saito, “There’s nobody that sleeps like a log and doesn’t move. You may start off in one position to be comfortable, but over the night you shift.” However, he says, there’s a difference between repositioning yourself throughout the night, and moving a lot because you can’t find a comfortable sleeping position. “Just like in anything, a little bit is OK,” he says, “but too much means you’re outside of the spectrum of normal.”

People who have trouble sleeping tend to move excessively. But there are ways to practice sleeping in better positions. If you’re typically a side sleeper, try placing a pillow between your knees to help better align your head, neck, and hips. This neutral posture can not only make breathing easier, but it can also result in deeper, more restorative sleep. 

If you prefer sleeping on your side, try placing a pillow between your knees to help your alignment. Image: Getty Images / bymuratdeniz

If you’re traditionally a back sleeper, place a pillow under your knees. Is sleeping on your stomach more your thing? Try placing a thin pillow under your hips. Choosing a mattress that adheres to the natural curve of your spine is also a key element of snoozing through the night.  

In the end, “There’s no one best sleeping position,” says Saito. In reality, it can depend on a myriad of factors, from whether you’re pregnant and suffering from bad back pain to battling sleep apnea and being a chronic snorer. 

Your ultimate goal is to find a comfortable, unobtrusive sleeping position that allows you to get a good night’s sleep. 

Ultimately, whatever sleep position you find comfiest is going to be the best one for you. This is because it’s what’s going to give you the most rest, which, in turn, will also keep you healthiest.

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.

The post The best sleep position, according to science appeared first on Popular Science.

When taking care of injured birds, sometimes a hands-off approach is the best place to start. And that’s exactly what was in store for two great-horned owls (Bubo virginianus) in the caring hands of the team at the Stanislaus Wildlife Care Center in central California.

“Great-horned owls often jump out of the nest before the babies can fly. The parents continue to care for them on the ground,” Donna Burt, a biologist and chairman of the board, executive director, and founder of the Stanislaus Wildlife Care Center, tells Popular Science. “That works fine if the owls are in a protected area, but these were in a soccer field.”

Fortunately, these birds did not have any injuries when they were brought into the animal care center, but they still needed a check-up. During a hands-off exam like this one, veterinarians look closely to see how an animal stands, walks, and looks around, to get a sense of their health and potential injuries. In the case of these four to five-week-old owls, the bird on the left is up on its feet, while the owl on the right is hock sitting. Since it is unable to stand, the bird sits back on its legs, which is a normal action for owls this age. Both birds can snap their beaks and spread their wings in threat displays, which indicates that they are feeling well. 

The team can also check on the birds’ eyes during this type of exam. They have a little cloudiness, which is normal for young great-horned owls. They will also blink by lowering the upper eyelids, which is sometimes another threat display. 

Great-horned owls reach adult size by 10 weeks-old. Image: Stanislaus Wildlife Care Center.

Great-horned owls are one of North America’s largest owls. They typically weigh between 2.5 and 4.5 pounds. Baby great-horned owls are also the first babies that the Stanislaus Wildlife Care Center receives every single year. Owl pairs begin their courtship in November and lay eggs in late January or early February. The eggs will hatch in March or April. Once hatched, the owls reach full adult size at 10 weeks, but will stay with their parents until the fall.

“When we get tiny baby great-horns, we put them with a non-releasable surrogate owl who cares for and feeds them,” Burt says. “Not only is that easier for us, but it’s better for the babies. Although it can feel rewarding to hand-feed and care for the little fluffballs, it is in their best interest to be raised by owls. They grow faster and develop normal behavior.”

A baby owl with a surrogate. Image: Stanislaus Wildlife Care Center.

While these two can eat on their own, it will be another few weeks before they can fly. As soon as the birds reach that milestone, they will move  to one of the center’s larger aviaries that measure either 50 feet or 100 feet long.

If you come across baby great-horned owls on the ground who appear clean and healthy, the center advises people to leave them alone. If a bird looks injured or sick, contact your local animal control or wildlife rescue center.

The post Spunky baby owls examined after being found on soccer field appeared first on Popular Science.

When taking care of injured birds, sometimes a hands-off approach is the best place to start. And that’s exactly what was in store for two great-horned owls (Bubo virginianus) in the caring hands of the team at the Stanislaus Wildlife Care Center in central California.

“Great-horned owls often jump out of the nest before the babies can fly. The parents continue to care for them on the ground,” Donna Burt, a biologist and chairman of the board, executive director, and founder of the Stanislaus Wildlife Care Center, tells Popular Science. “That works fine if the owls are in a protected area, but these were in a soccer field.”

Fortunately, these birds did not have any injuries when they were brought into the animal care center, but they still needed a check-up. During a hands-off exam like this one, veterinarians look closely to see how an animal stands, walks, and looks around, to get a sense of their health and potential injuries. In the case of these four to five-week-old owls, the bird on the left is up on its feet, while the owl on the right is hock sitting. Since it is unable to stand, the bird sits back on its legs, which is a normal action for owls this age. Both birds can snap their beaks and spread their wings in threat displays, which indicates that they are feeling well. 

The team can also check on the birds’ eyes during this type of exam. They have a little cloudiness, which is normal for young great-horned owls. They will also blink by lowering the upper eyelids, which is sometimes another threat display. 

Great-horned owls reach adult size by 10 weeks-old. Image: Stanislaus Wildlife Care Center.

Great-horned owls are one of North America’s largest owls. They typically weigh between 2.5 and 4.5 pounds. Baby great-horned owls are also the first babies that the Stanislaus Wildlife Care Center receives every single year. Owl pairs begin their courtship in November and lay eggs in late January or early February. The eggs will hatch in March or April. Once hatched, the owls reach full adult size at 10 weeks, but will stay with their parents until the fall.

“When we get tiny baby great-horns, we put them with a non-releasable surrogate owl who cares for and feeds them,” Burt says. “Not only is that easier for us, but it’s better for the babies. Although it can feel rewarding to hand-feed and care for the little fluffballs, it is in their best interest to be raised by owls. They grow faster and develop normal behavior.”

A baby owl with a surrogate. Image: Stanislaus Wildlife Care Center.

While these two can eat on their own, it will be another few weeks before they can fly. As soon as the birds reach that milestone, they will move  to one of the center’s larger aviaries that measure either 50 feet or 100 feet long.

If you come across baby great-horned owls on the ground who appear clean and healthy, the center advises people to leave them alone. If a bird looks injured or sick, contact your local animal control or wildlife rescue center.

The post Spunky baby owls examined after being found on soccer field appeared first on Popular Science.

When taking care of injured birds, sometimes a hands-off approach is the best place to start. And that’s exactly what was in store for two great-horned owls (Bubo virginianus) in the caring hands of the team at the Stanislaus Wildlife Care Center in central California.

“Great-horned owls often jump out of the nest before the babies can fly. The parents continue to care for them on the ground,” Donna Burt, a biologist and chairman of the board, executive director, and founder of the Stanislaus Wildlife Care Center, tells Popular Science. “That works fine if the owls are in a protected area, but these were in a soccer field.”

Fortunately, these birds did not have any injuries when they were brought into the animal care center, but they still needed a check-up. During a hands-off exam like this one, veterinarians look closely to see how an animal stands, walks, and looks around, to get a sense of their health and potential injuries. In the case of these four to five-week-old owls, the bird on the left is up on its feet, while the owl on the right is hock sitting. Since it is unable to stand, the bird sits back on its legs, which is a normal action for owls this age. Both birds can snap their beaks and spread their wings in threat displays, which indicates that they are feeling well. 

The team can also check on the birds’ eyes during this type of exam. They have a little cloudiness, which is normal for young great-horned owls. They will also blink by lowering the upper eyelids, which is sometimes another threat display. 

Great-horned owls reach adult size by 10 weeks-old. Image: Stanislaus Wildlife Care Center.

Great-horned owls are one of North America’s largest owls. They typically weigh between 2.5 and 4.5 pounds. Baby great-horned owls are also the first babies that the Stanislaus Wildlife Care Center receives every single year. Owl pairs begin their courtship in November and lay eggs in late January or early February. The eggs will hatch in March or April. Once hatched, the owls reach full adult size at 10 weeks, but will stay with their parents until the fall.

“When we get tiny baby great-horns, we put them with a non-releasable surrogate owl who cares for and feeds them,” Burt says. “Not only is that easier for us, but it’s better for the babies. Although it can feel rewarding to hand-feed and care for the little fluffballs, it is in their best interest to be raised by owls. They grow faster and develop normal behavior.”

A baby owl with a surrogate. Image: Stanislaus Wildlife Care Center.

While these two can eat on their own, it will be another few weeks before they can fly. As soon as the birds reach that milestone, they will move  to one of the center’s larger aviaries that measure either 50 feet or 100 feet long.

If you come across baby great-horned owls on the ground who appear clean and healthy, the center advises people to leave them alone. If a bird looks injured or sick, contact your local animal control or wildlife rescue center.

The post Spunky baby owls examined after being found on soccer field appeared first on Popular Science.

Pepperoni or anchovies? Mushrooms or black olives? And what about the ever popular and polarizing pineapple? Pizza topping preferences are as varied as the people who order them. While that’s fine for one or two hungry friends, planning multiple pies for a larger group can quickly turn tense. Most of the time, it feels like diners simply settle on one-topping or cheese pizzas in the hopes of avoiding an argument.

From a technical standpoint, it is definitely possible to figure out the optimal pizza toppings based on a group’s various tastes. However, the time it takes to chart out and settle on the most democratically representative dishes may risk devolving into a dreaded “hangry” shouting match. Thankfully, a software engineer has a solution.

The recently launched Pizza Voter website is a free-to-use platform that allows you to email a pizza party invitation to every participant in an upcoming meal. Once accepted, each person then clicks whether they Love, Hate, or Don’t Mind each topping. There’s even a fill-in-the-blank option for the especially picky pizza fan. From there, an internal algorithm weighs each topping’s scores based on the answers, then calculates a perfect pizza that theoretically will satisfy everyone.

According to the creator’s announcement post on Reddit, it takes Pizza Voter about 60 seconds to generate an answer to each topping conundrum. And lest anyone think this is a covert ploy by Big Pizza to amass consumer data: the website includes a full privacy policy explaining that a geographic estimation of every user is the only data it is currently collecting from users.

Tracking location is also not for marketing. Instead, it simply lets everyone know where people are eating the most pizza. Judging from the project’s social media, it’s currently a toss-up between San Francisco and Chicago. We’ll let them argue over the best type of crust.

The post Software engineers design algorithm to solve pizza topping arguments appeared first on Popular Science.

It’s important to remember that we humans are simply animals. A very advanced species, but members of the animal kingdom nonetheless. We all need water, food, and shelter to survive, but we also share another similarity. 

Humans also find animal mating calls and signals appealing, whether it’s the bright colors of butterfly wings, a flower’s sweet smell, or a songbird’s melodies. The findings are detailed in a study published today in the journal Science and indicate that the preference for some animal sounds might be more common than previously believed. 

In 1981, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) staff scientist A. Stanley Rand and research associate Michael J. Ryan discovered that a female túngara frog’s (Engystomops pustulosus) preference for a mate depends on the complexity of the male’s call. For this new study, Ryan and his colleagues wanted to know if human preferences for certain animal calls—including those alluring calls from male túngara frogs—correlate with the preferences of female animals.

“After witnessing those female preferences Stan and Mike [Ryan] discovered when I got to measure them myself, I became fascinated with the question of where these preferences come from,” Logan James, a STRI research associate and the study’s lead author, said in a statement. “Plus, since that team released their initial findings, we’ve found that other animals, including eavesdroppers such as blood-sucking flies and frog-eating bats, also prefer complex calls. This got us wondering how common acoustic preferences may be.” 

For the study, the team used a computer game to test humans’ preferences for different animal sounds using an online computer game. They presented pairs of animal sounds from 16 different animal species, including crickets, zebra finches (Taeniopygia castanotis), and several frog species to over 4,000 human participants from around the world. 

“In gamified citizen science, people volunteer for experiments simply because they’re fun and interesting,” added Samuel Mehr, a study co-author and cognitive scientist at Yale University’s Child Study Center. “The method is perfect for answering questions from evolutionary biology where we aim to study phenomena across many species as opposed to just a few. Our game enabled us to test lots of humans’ preferences for lots of different sounds.” 

Three male zebra finches (Taeniopygia castanotis). Image: Raina Fan.

The sounds came from animals that are known to display a preference for one sound over the other. After listening to these sound parings, the humans were asked to express their preference for one sound or the other, the way that the animals making and listening to the sounds do. 

The team found a broad overlap between human and animal sound preferences. The stronger an animals’ preference for a specific sound, the more likely it was for a human to pick that sound as their favorite. The human participants were also quicker to select the more attractive sound. Humans and animals share a strong preference for lower pitch sounds and those with acoustic adornments, such as “trills,” “clicks” and “chucks” in bird songs and frog calls.  

“Darwin noted that animals seem to have a ‘taste for the beautiful’ that sometimes parallels our own preferences,” Ryan concluded. “We show that Darwin’s observation seems to be true in a general sense, probably due to the many sensory system properties we share with other animals.” 

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Chess is widely seen as a great equalizer. Players from every social, racial, and economic class have squared off across the board for nearly 1,500 years, with victories determined solely by skill and strategy. Unfortunately, the egalitarian foundations of chess are rarely reflected beyond the game itself. During the Middle Ages, for example, many contemporary accounts from both Christian and Muslim societies depicted their opposing side as barbaric, blasphemous, and inferior.

However, recent reexaminations of medieval artwork are complicating these assumptions. After reviewing a range of artwork from Europe and the Middle East, Cambridge University historian Krisztina Ilko believes that chess players on either side of the board were well aware of the game’s capacity to humanize and humble. As she explained in a study recently awarded the Medieval Academy of America’s Article Prize in Critical Race Studies, chess has bridged cultural divides and subverted stereotypes at least as far back as the 13th century.

Abu’l Qasim Firdausi, ‘Buzurgmihr masters the game of chess’. Folio from the First Small Shahnama (Book of Kings) (Iraq or Iran, c.1300–30). Credit: The Metropolitan Museum of Art

“Medieval sources repeatedly state that chess is war without bloodshed, and that it represents a just world,” Ilko explained in a statement. “Chess was a powerful vehicle for people hailing from widely different places, even civilizations, to interact with each other. It was an intellectual exchange.”

Some of the most prominent examples are found in the Libro de axedrez, or Book of Games—a manuscript commissioned by King Alfonso X of Spain in 1283 CE. In the manuscript, dozens of illustrations in it showcase non-white players from Asia, Africa, and the Middle East holding their own against their European opponents. One scene features a Muslim and a Jewish player playing chess, while another reveals four Mongols peacefully enjoying a match. These are far cries from how such groups are described in other Eurocentric artifacts. 

“When people with non-white skin color are depicted in medieval images, scholars have tended to see them in either exalted or subdued positions. So you get the Queen of Sheba at one extreme, and executioners and other malignant forces at the other,” said Ilko. “Chess reveals a different, more complex story.”

Medieval rulers like King Alfonso were almost certainly keenly aware of the real problems these reductive stereotypes caused. Europe had famously fallen behind in science advancements by the Middle Ages, and the Spanish ruler’s court purposefully sought out and translated Islamic math, astronomy, and medical knowledge. These interactions inevitably led to chess games—and presumably, a lot of losses for Spanish diplomats. Of the 103 chess problems shown in Libro de axedrez, 88 are based on Muslim play styles.

St Nicolas miracle chess scene in the late 14th-century altarpiece from San Nicolas, Portopi, now in the Museu de Mallorca. Credit: Krisztina Ilko

Another example is visible in a late 14th century Spanish altarpiece dedicated to Saint Nicholas of Myra. The scene takes place in a Muslim court between a dark-skinned king and a light-skinned thief. Ilko argues that the players’ respective physical features challenged the prevailing European system that emphasized whiteness. She believes that these depictions along with many other examples show the importance of chess throughout generations—not only as a fun strategy game, but as a way to break down societal barriers.

“Chess was and remains a game of logic, where intellectual prowess matters. Chess operated on a different plane where people could engage with each other as equals, irrespective of their skin color,” said Ilko. “What mattered was ‘who’s smarter?’ [and] ‘who can win?’, not ‘who’s more powerful or socially superior?’”

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Spring has almost arrived in the northern hemisphere and with the new season comes warm temperatures, blooming flowers, and adorable baby animals. Right under our noses, coyotes (Canis latrans) may be building dens and having litters of pups. However, you probably won’t see them. These flexible wild canines will do everything they can to keep us out of their dens, according to new research published in the journal Ecology and Evolution.

Where the dens are located

Researchers followed 48 urban coyotes fitted with GPS tracking collars and located 20 dens throughout Atlanta, Georgia. More than half of the dens were located in natural structures such as burrows and fallen tree trunks.

“Basically, we saw that the coyotes were trying to avoid people,” said Summer Fink, lead author of the study and a University of Georgia doctoral candidate, said in a statement. “The animals didn’t want to den in areas where there was a lot of human activity and development.”

Some of the dens did incorporate human-related items: discarded piles of concrete, an overturned boat, and even a large, half-buried tractor tire. The researchers believe that the coyotes’ willingness to incorporate these human-made items into their dens shows the canines’  adaptability. That doesn’t mean they want to interact with people, though.

“Most people don’t even know coyotes live in our cities. This paper demonstrates that these animals are living and reproducing in the same spaces as us without people even realizing it,” added study co-author and ecologist Michel Kohl. “To me, this highlights how well coyotes are able to avoid us, which suggests that people’s fear of coyotes is often greater than the actual risk.”

Some dens were built near homes and buildings, but those houses were most often vacant and the buildings were abandoned. “It seemed like coyotes were perceiving that risk, realizing there weren’t people there and deciding to den in those locations,” Fink said.

The coyotes appear to be more concerned with their dens’ structural integrity. “As long as it was strong and it had visual cover around it to hide the coyotes from people seeing them, they were happy,” Kohl added.

The team put GPS collars on 48 urban coyotes in Atlanta, Georgia. All animals in the included images and videos are handled by trained wildlife professionals with legal permits. Image: UGA/University of Georgia. Leaping litters

Coyote packs typically include two to seven dogs. They live in every state except Hawaii and in every major city from Los Angeles to Chicago to Atlanta. This study found that in Georgia, coyotes give birth from mid-March through mid-April. In other parts of the country, coyote pupping season can last through mid-May. Litters generally range from two to nine pups. 

According to the Wolf Conservation Center in South Salem, New York, only the breeding pair in a coyote pack is allowed to reproduce. The other pack members help with hunting, babysitting duties, and defending their territory. Bringing food back for the new litter is essential to their survival, but coyotes are opportunistic eaters. They will consume what is easily available to them, typically small mammals such as mice and squirrels and anything seasonally abundant like berries. 

However, most pups in the den will not survive to adulthood, partially due to vehicle collisions, lack of food, and other human impacts.

“They’re an incredibly adaptive species, and they’re very intelligent,” Kohl said. “But there is likely a limit. As urbanization increases and denning locations become more limited, it is going to put further pressure on the ability of these coyote populations to sustain themselves in these urban landscapes.”

Coyotes typically have litters of two to nine pups. All animals in the included images and videos are handled by trained wildlife professionals with legal permits. Image: UGA/University of Georgia.

While coyotes may have a bad reputation for spreading disease and eating cats and dogs, they fill important ecological roles, particularly in cities and more urban areas. In these ecosystems, they can be the top predator, keeping rodents and other small mammal populations in check. They will also eat native plants and disperse the seeds in their feces. Coyotes are also scavengers and will feast on roadkill and clean up the environment.

“Without an apex predator, ecosystems can get all out of whack,” Fink said.

How to protect coyotes and their pups

While coyotes pose little danger to humans and pets, they are wild animals and will be protective of their young.

To keep coyotes and their pups safe, keep dogs on leashes during walks and don’t investigate holes that could potentially be coyote dens. Coyotes will often attempt to lead humans away from their dens if they believe they’ve been spotted rather than becoming aggressive. If you do see a coyote, avoid interacting with them.

“If you are close to a den, the parents may make themselves more visible, more noticeable,” Kohl said. “But that doesn’t necessarily mean that there’s something wrong with that coyote. It actually may be a behavioral ploy, so to speak, to try and get you to go somewhere else.”

Additionally, do not feed coyotes or run away from them. If you see one that appears sick or injured, report it to your local animal control office. 

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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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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.

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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.

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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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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.

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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.

There are quite a few animals considered “living fossils” in today’s world. Once thought extinct, the prehistoric coelacanth has continuously swam through Earth’s oceans since the time of the dinosaurs. Horseshoe crabs exist in fossil records dating back hundreds of millions of years. Even many sharks look virtually unchanged from their Cretaceous Era ancestors. But although Tanyka amnicola was last seen about 275 million years ago, it was already a living fossil in its own time.

It was also an extremely strange creature. So strange, in fact, that paleontologists initially thought they were looking at an ancient aberration when they discovered the first jawbone of this salamander-esque creature in a dry riverbed near the Amazon rainforest in Brazil.

A Tanyka jawbone, with rock hammer for scale, found in the Brazil. Credit: Ken Angielczyk / Field Museum

“The jaw has this weird twist that drove us crazy trying to figure it out. We were scratching our heads over this for years, wondering if it was some kind of deformation,” recalled Jason Pardo, a paleontologist at Chicago’s Field Museum.

As Pardo and his colleagues detail in a study published today in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, Tanyka’s odd jaw was simply part of its evolutionary package. And they have eight other similar fossil specimens to prove it.

Tankya (“jaw” in the local Indigenous Guaraní language) was an incredibly early four-legged vertebrate, or tetrapod. Present-day examples of four-legged animals are found across birds, mammals, reptiles, and amphibians, but they all trace back to a single lineage called stem tetrapods. Eventually, stem tetrapods separated into two groups—one that laid eggs on land, and another that laid them in water. Tankya, however, firmly remained in the “stem tetrapod” camp.

“Tanyka is from an ancient lineage that we didn’t know survived to this time,” said Pardo.

He likens it to the present-day platypus. Almost every living mammal reproduces through live births, but the first examples laid eggs. The platypus retained its egg-laying abilities over millions of years, making a bit of a mammalian oddity.

And then there is Tanyka’s mouth. The bottom teeth didn’t face upward—they pointed to either side instead. Meanwhile, the section of jaw that faces the tongue in humans was oriented toward the roof of the mouth. These surfaces were also covered in tiny teeth known as denticles that turned the angled jaw into a grinding surface.

Fossil showing the denticles on the jaw, forming a cheese-grater-like surface that may have been used for grinding plant matter. Credit: Ken Angielczyk / Field Museum

“Based on its teeth, we think that Tanyka was a herbivore, and that it ate plants at least some of the time,” said Juan Carlos Cisneros, a study co-author and paleontologist at Brazil’s Federal University of Piauí.

This only adds to the animal’s uniqueness, since the vast majority of stem tetrapods were strictly carnivorous.

“We expect the denticles on the lower jaw were rubbing up against similar teeth on the upper side of the mouth. The teeth would have been rasping against each other, in a way that’s going to create a relatively unique way of feeding,” added Pardo.

Based on these details, its closest evolutionary relatives, and its river habitat, the study’s authors believe Tanyka likely resembled a three-foot-long salamander sporting a lengthier snout. But at least for now, determining what it looked like is mostly guesswork.

“We found these jaws in isolation, and they’re really weird, and they’re very distinctive,” said Field Museum paleomammalogy curator and study co-author Ken Angielczyk. “But until we find one of those jaws attached to a skull or other bones that are definitively associated with the jaw, we can’t say for sure that the other bones we find near it belong to Tanyka.”

Until then, Tanyka’s jawbone alone is still more than enough to raise eyebrows.

The post Bizarro salamander ancestor was an evolutionary oddball appeared first on Popular Science.