Recent Posts

How to Measure the Calories in a Candy Bar—With Physics!

This Halloween, when you grab a candy bar, pay attention to the wrapper. In the United States, a "nutrition facts" label has been required for all packaged foods since 1994, giving the serving size and the amount of sugar, protein, fat, and sodium the food contains. But the most interesting …

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The Second Person to Get a Pig Heart Transplant Just Died

Lawrence Faucette, the 58-year-old patient with terminal heart disease who was the second person to receive a genetically engineered pig heart, died on October 30, according to a statement from the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore, where the transplant was performed. Faucette received the transplant on September 20 …

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Everything Apple Announced at Today’s Hardware Event

despite the year coming to a close, Apple still has new hardware to unveil. During a spooky-themed virtual event held the day before Halloween, the company took the wraps off of its next-generation M3 chipsets: the M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max. Additionally, Apple announced some new machines powered by …

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Apple, Google, and Microsoft Just Patched Some Spooky Security Flaws

October has been a security flaw-fest, with Apple, Microsoft, and Google issuing patches for vulnerabilities that are being used in real-life attacks. There were also multiple enterprise fixes during the month, with Cisco, VMWare, and Citrix fixing serious security bugs. Some of the patches are more urgent than others, so …

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These Plants Can Sound the Alarm in a Toxic World

Thanks to some genetic tricks, plants can now speak in color. A team of researchers at the University of California, Riverside hacked the natural stress response system in Arabidopsis thaliana, a small white-flowered plant from the mustard family that serves as a common model organism in plant biology labs. When …

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Where You Live Is As Important As What You Eat

Tolullah Oni has a challenge for you. Next time you’re in a city—especially one you don’t know well—go for a long run, bike ride, or walk. See if you can tell when you enter an affluent neighborhood. You should, she says, be able to guess. “Suddenly it’s a couple of …

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Matthew Perry Deserved Better Than #DiedSuddenly

It didn’t take long for news of actor Matthew Perry’s death to go public. TMZ broke the story so early that paparazzi had already camped out to photograph the Friends star’s grieving parents as they arrived on the scene. The vulturous routines of the celebrity death news complex are, at …

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