Photo: ShutterstockPicking a birth control can seem scary, especially if you’re worried about the more extreme side effects. You may have heard the horror stories about the risks of organ perforation using intrauterine devices, or claims that birth control is linked to migraines. However, extreme side effects are rare, and usually only occur if you…
How to Plan a Vacation With a Lower Carbon Footprint
Photo: ShutterstockGoing on vacation is dreamy, and good for your brain whatever your budget. But when a single round trip from New York to London releases a literal ton of CO2 into the atmosphere (enough to melt three square meters of Arctic ice), it’s hard to relax and enjoy that free airplane booze without ruminating…
Flat Earth advocate dies after homemade rocket crashes
Hughes’ goal had been to verify his belief in a disc-shaped Earth by flying to space, with successive launches taking him higher and higher in altitude. His first rocket launch in 2014 took him to 1,374 feet, but successive launches didn’t travel much higher. A 2018 flight peaked at 1,875 feet.It’s not clear at this…
Starbucks embraces fake meat, starting in Canada
The lab-grown, plant-based meat trend is a product of science and tech, but it’s also driven by a growing awareness of the environmental impacts of meat production. Earlier this year, Starbucks said it was committed to a “resource-positive future,” which includes expanding plant-based options and creating a more environmentally friendly menu. The upcoming egg, cheddar…
After Math: Anything worth doing is worth overdoing
Did the Curiosity rover need to dutifully snap 1,200 images of the rugged Martian landscape? Not any more than the effort it took NASA engineers to stitch those individual shots into a mammoth 1.8-billion pixel panorama. But they did it anyway because science is awesome and it’s not like Curiosity has much else to do…
Canada’s first 5G network goes live in four cities
You can expect 20 more markets to get 5G this year, Rogers said. At the same time, it’l start using low-band 600MHz access that should both widen coverage and help you stay connected to 5G indoors. It’ll eventually start using 3.5GHz service as well as spectrum sharing that lets it use LTE airwaves for 5G.There…
Smithsonian opens up 2.8 million images to the public
The Smithsonian is encouraging the public to view, use and reuse the content however they see fit. The collection is listed under a Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license, which removes previous restrictions and copyrights, and it includes everything from portraits of Ida B. Wells to images of Amelia Earhart’s Lockheed Vega 5B, 3D models of…
‘Cosmos: Possible Worlds’ finds hope for humanity in a hopeless era
“This season is based on my belief that we have what it takes to get to a real exciting future,” Druyan said in an interview with Engadget. “I base my belief on stories of the courage of our ancestors, the generations of searchers for the truth who have been willing to die, to stand up…
Lettuce grown on the ISS is as nutritious as Earth harvests, scientists find
The main difference between the two is that the ISS vegetables have more microorganisms, but that’s probably just because of the microflora that live on the space station. None of them, however, are harmful to humans, such as E. coli and Salmonella. The scientists’ findings are significant, because they tell us that we can grow…
Scientists develop neuroprosthetic tech that amputees don’t need to learn
One of the biggest challenges in mind-controlled prosthetics is finding a strong and stable enough nerve signal to attach to the bionic limb. Scientists already know that peripheral nerves – the network of tiny nerves that fan out to the spinal cord and brain — are liable to offer the most precise and intuitive control…