Warming of the Arctic caused by climate change has increased the number of polar vortex outbreaks, when frigid air from the far north bathes other parts of the Northern Hemisphere in killer cold, a new study finds.

After objections about privacy rights, Apple said Friday it will delay its plan to scan users’ photo libraries for images of child exploitation. “Last month we announced plans for features intended to help protect children from predators who use communication tools to recruit and exploit them, and limit the spread of Child Sexual Abuse Material,” the company said in a statement. “Based on feedback from customers, advocacy groups, researchers and others, we have decided to take additional...

High-voltage direct current cables which can efficiently transport electricity over long distances play a vital role in our electricity supply. Optimizing their performance is therefore an important challenge. With that aim in mind, scientists from Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, present a new insulation material up to three times less conductive, offering significant improvements to the properties and performance of such cables.

In response to the Taliban re-conquest of Afghanistan, Hamas on Monday congratulated the Afghan people for “defeating” the US. “We congratulate the Muslim Afghan people for the defeat of the American occupation on all Afghan lands, and we congratulate the Taliban movement and its brave leadership on this victory, which culminated its long struggle over the past 20 years,” Hamas said in a statement.

CHICAGO (AP) — Michael Williams’ wife pleaded with him to remember their fishing trips with the grandchildren, how he used to braid her hair, anything to jar him back to his world outside the concrete walls of Cook County Jail.

Apple must pay $300 million in damages to Optis Wireless Technology for infringing a handful of patents related to 4G LTE technology, a Texas jury has ruled (via Reuters). In August 2020, a jury found that Apple had infringed five Optis wireless patents and awarded $506 million in damages, but a Texas judge vacated that award in April and ordered a new trial to focus on damages only.

If you struggle to find time for the gym, research suggests that high intensity exercise for less than 15 minutes a day may improve fitness. Repeated, four-second bursts of intense exercise, performed three times a week, was found to boost cardio and muscle power, according to a study published July 12, 2021 in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise.

You’ve probably heard of “open-source software.” If you pay at­tention to the politics of this stuff, you might have heard of “free software,” and may even know a little about the ethical debate underpinning the war of words between these two labels. I’ve been involved in it since the last century, but even I never really understood what’s going on in the background until recently.

In 1965, Gordon Moore published a short informal paper, Cramming more components onto integrated circuits. In it, he noted that in three years, the optimal cost per component on a chip had dropped by a factor of 10, while the optimal number had increased by the same factor, from 10 to 100. Based on not much more but these few data points and his knowledge of silicon chip development – he was head of R&D at Fairchild Semiconductors, the company that was to seed Silicon Valley – he said th...

Boeing's Starliner won't launch Wednesday as had been planned following problems with its propulsion system that prevented a key uncrewed test flight to the international space station a day earlier—and it's not clear when the troubled spaceship will fly next.

I watched a “documentary” a few days ago called End of the Road: How Money Became Worthless. One statement in the documentary stuck in my mind.

Lax vaccination and haphazard rules on masking sabotage the fight against the Delta variant in the U.S.

If you’re a member of the US military who's gotten friendly Facebook messages from private-sector recruiters for months on end, suggesting a lucrative future in the aerospace or defense contractor industry, Facebook may have some bad news.

Dennis Tamura never set out to be a bird-watcher. He’s been a farmer for over 35 years, and he and his wife grow organic vegetables and flowers on Blue Heron Farms outside Watsonville. But birds have become a part of the farm’s ecosystem. About 15 years ago, a bird-loving neighbor put up small wooden bird boxes on the fence posts that line Blue Heron Farms, and Tamura just started noticing the tree swallows and Western bluebirds that came to visit. Today, he points out a fluffy baby tree swa...

Eliminating plastic pollution, reducing pesticide use by two-thirds, halving the rate of invasive species introduction and eliminating $500bn (£360bn) of harmful environmental government subsidies a year are among the targets in a new draft of a Paris-style UN agreement on biodiversity loss.

Athought experiment, proposed with a grin by Dietmar Detering, a German entrepreneur living in New York: "What would the climate debate look like if all we had were fossil fuels and renewables, and suddenly someone said, 'I invented something, it's called nuclear energy.'"